Lost New York
Of all the magazines I subscribe to, the cover I pay the least attention to is the one of The New Yorker. It must be a sign of the times that I will study a building, an art piece or even a B list celebrity more than an often witty and thoughtful cartoon drawing.
The reason why I got stuck on the cover of the February 2 issue is because I did not immediately understand it. There was One World Trade Center, aka The Freedom Tower (or is it the other way around?) in the background, but that was not unusual. That structure has gotten plenty press and cover time already. And then there were billboards and a flatbed truck, loaded with office workers. I started reading the billboards, not understanding them (who is Eustace??) at first, but then it sank in. Eustace is of course Eustace Tilley, the Regency dandy who appeared on the cover of The New Yorker’s first issue, in 1925, and the parent company Condé Nast is moving its operations downtown.
The New Yorker is ninety years old and has been all of those years in or around Times Square, an area that has undergone several massive transformations, especially in the last few decades. Mayor Giuliani made the district vice free and Mayor Bloomberg made it car free, both to a large extent.
New York City keeps changing, which may be normal for a metropolis but not necessarily healthy. Gradual evolvement is good, and we can currently witness the dangers, both social and environmental, in too rapid development in places like Beijing. In the last few years however, I am seeing a change in New York, and its citizens, which gives me cause for concern.
My wife and I are raising two children in New York, and it is increasingly hard to instill and maintain proper values. The definition of success is increasingly tied to material possessions. The competition is fierce at all levels. My son will be entering his first year of High School next September, and he had to take four tests in a six week span last November and December.
Not only competitors, but also colleagues hope you fail. Studies have shown that mid level managers prefer to see peers demoted than being promoted themselves. There exists a total lack of empathy. People are visible unhappy and resentful. As a result they manifest a sense of entitlement, which puts them squarely against others.
Two incidents happened at my kids’ school this week. As in many City schools the drop-off and pick-up of the children results in total chaos and mayhem. Double parking, driving the wrong way, blocking garage exits, and most of all idling for 20 minutes are the norm. Offensive vehicles obviously require offensive driving, with the worst offenders being Cadillac Escalades, Mercedes GL and Audi Q7, none of which should be allowed in a household of less than 7 people. After asking, to no avail, both the driver and the drivee to shut of the engine of an Escalade, whose fumes were directly targeting parents and siblings waiting for the kids, I proceeded to stuff a traffic cone in the exhaust, telling the driver that he should open the windows. Since the early 1970’s, NYC law restricts the idling of motor vehicle engines while parking, standing or stopping as part of the City policy to reduce air pollution. No motorized vehicle can idle for longer than 3 minutes unless it is being used to operate equipment. Local Law 5 from 2009 further restricts engine idling near schools. How ironic is it then that the following day traffic tool M. Bowen, who is a disgrace to the NYPD and to African Americans everywhere, gave me a ticket for “no driver no activity no permit school days” even though I was next to my car and immediately made him aware of my presence. Out of a line-up of 8 vehicles, I was the only one who got a ticket, precisely because I was NOT idling.
A large part of this phenomenon can be traced back to inequality. A lot has been written about this, and I am not going to rehash numbers and statistics. I will only point out that inequality in the United States is similar to Sub Saharan Africa. In few places is this more visible than in New York City. The city is moving from a millionaire’s playground to a billionaire’s one, and the middle class is being squeezed out. Very few things that New York has to offer, like culture, cuisine, education is readily available to the middle class, let alone the lower class.
The American Dream has left New York City, and I hope to follow shortly.