I feel like I’m a historical artifact, telling people stories of the New York I grew up in as I navigate the New York I’m living in now. New York fify years ago was bucolic by comparison; it was a city in which a middle class kid could grow up in relative safety, roller skate outdoors after school, and make friends from the neighborhood while experiencing a unique cultural and intellectual environment. I can’t imagine a kid today living the Eloise-like childhood I lived, especially since I hear that the bottom floor of the Plaza Hotel, once owned by a friend of my father’s, has now become a food court. I’ve been in New York for the past week, visiting clients, seeing Randi Zuckerberg’s Broadway debut in “Rock of Ages,” and catching up with some East Coast friends and family. I’ve been walking around the city between Union Square and mid-town, and noticing some changes and some things that are remarkably similar to the New York I grew up in. One of the big changes I noticed is the influx of foreign money and foreign shoppers. While New York has always been a global city (fifty years ago when I grew up there were already European immigrants, Puerto Ricans, and Chinese), the immigrants of fifty years ago were often poor and trying to escape something. Now, much of the global cache of the city is due to the influx of fabulously rich people from all over the world stashing their money here and buying high end real estate, driving up home prices almost astronomically. When I was growing up, my uncle lived on Central Park West. No one I know could touch that location today. What has also been mentioned by everyone is the rapid climb in rents and the threat of destablized apartment rents all together. Friends of mine who have lived in the city almost their whole lives have recently been put on month-to-month leases while their apartments are turned into luxury rentals for the hordes of wealthy people descending on the city from all over the world. This is going to mean artists, theatrical people, advertising agencies and media people -- the creative class that gave New York City its historical flair, as well as the last remaining families with children--will be driven out, and the city will become a shopping mall for tourists with favorable exchange rates, banksters, and Saudi oil barons. New York is in real danger of becoming a much less interesting city. I’ve seen the city change many times over the fifty years. It almost went bankrupt once during my lifetime, and it drifted into a hell of welfare hotels. It has had it’s gentrification projects, and its urban decay. But this time it has hit a tipping point. Last night I was in Sardi’s after the show. When I was growing up, it was an honor to go there. When people went to theatre, they dressed up, and Sardi’s was where the after theatre crew hung out in minks and diamonds, drinking highballs and being sophisticated. Now, Sardi’s caters to out-of-towners, and the bar upstairs closes at midnight (formely unheard of in New York). People descend on the theatre in jeans and tshirts, drink all the way through the performance, and leave immediately on big busses for their hotels or cars for the trip back to New Jersey. Throngs of people roam through the theatre district without even noticing the Broadway tradition, which has itself descended into musicals and revivals. Fifty years ago, theatre was culture. Today it’s like an amusement park. Walking around, I do notice some things that haven’t changed: the parks and museums, with the exception of modernizations like the glass entrance facade added to the Piermont Morgan Library, and the new footprint of MOMA. The small awesome ethnic restaurants are still here, although they’re fighting a battle with McDonald’s and Starbucks. The city is more crowded as well; it was always a place where people walked fast, but it is coming more and more to resemble an Asian city where the sidewalks are so crowded you can’t get anywhere quickly. Walking is not nearly as pleasant as it was fifty years ago. I don’t dislike New York, and I’m not complaining. In fact, I love it, and for the first time in my life, I feel as if Manhattan at least is threatened. Threatened by money and developers to become what so many cities in America have become -- a huge, indistinguishable city of franchises and chains, serving people who don’t live in the city.
Posted on: Sat, 29 Mar 2014 19:14:45 +0000
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