“There’s another kind of activity that we call ‘People just standing there, alone.’ Life swirls about them, and they let it all pass by. They just ... stand there.”

From The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces, by William H. Whyte.

Cycling seems more dangerous, more hassle-filled, and generally more aggro than when I moved here. Why? Maybe it’s me. I moved to Berkeley recently, and I’m pretty close to having a lawn that I can tell kids to get off of. Maybe it’s that the city has changed a lot. There are more cyclists, more people in general (60,000!) and more density, especially downtown. On the other hand, there are more bike lanes and signage, and there’s more bike awareness among the pedestrian and motorist populations. You’d think that more cyclists + more cycling awareness + more cycling accommodation would have resulted in some kind of net improvement, but it hasn’t. Pedestrians seem more antagonistic to bikes; motorists of all types are much more antagonistic; and some of my fellow cyclists seem to be the most antagonistic of all. Why?

Felix Salmon has written a really interesting, and widely quoted, “unified theory” of cycling that touches on what I think is the heart of it all: That most cyclists think they’re pedestrians, when we’re actually more like motorists.

Bikes can and should behave much more like cars than pedestrians. They should ride on the road, not the sidewalk. They should stop at lights, and pedestrians should be able to trust them to do so. They should use lights at night. And — of course, duh — they should ride in the right direction on one-way streets. None of this is a question of being polite; it’s the law. But in stark contrast to motorists, nearly all of whom follow nearly all the rules, most cyclists seem to treat the rules of the road as strictly optional. They’re still in the human-powered mindset of pedestrians, who feel pretty much completely unconstrained by rules.

I really agree with this. I don’t know how to make it so, and I’m really not a law-and-order type. But I think that agreeing to follow the rules of the road would do a lot to make us all more predictable. Also, I’d like to add: Pass on the freakin left.

New York’s blizzard of 1977 makes a riveting cameo appearance in “El Super,” an indie (before the term was formalized) film about the hard adjustments that immigrants make in coming to New York. The movie is great for many reasons, but the blizzard steals a few scenes as the main character — a Cuban super — walks around town. Snow is massed on cars, piled high in the streets, and pedestrians stumble through snow-walled sidewalk canyons. Quite a scene, especially in the 70s, when New York looked crumbly and decrepit.

Amidst the blizzard, the film is a melancholy document of the lives of Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants as they reckon with the immensity of New York City and their dismal prospects for work in the bad old days of New York. The dialogue is great, often funny, just as often poignant. Good stuff. I had to resort to extreme measures to find it, but you can buy it on VHS from Amazon. Or you can let me know, and I’ll hook you up.

Speaking of the blizzard, there’s an amazing Barney Miller episode about the blizzard? There is. Worth watching just to hear the theme song again.

Even though I’m generally a West Coast kind of guy, I devour books about New York — its chaotic beginnings as a lawless, crazy quilt of neighborhoods and gangs; its transformation into a massive modern city; the peculiar dynamics of its organic growth. If New York didn’t destroy me everytime I visit, I think I’d probably live there.

A few weeks ago, the New Yorker’s Twitter stream pointed me to an excellent Joseph Mitchell essay about a (mostly) vanished New York tradition, the beefsteak. Mitchell laid out the basics in his classic 1939 essay, “All You Can Hold For Five Bucks:”

The foundation of a good beefsteak is an overflowing amount of meat and beer. The tickets usually cost five bucks, and the rule is “All you can hold for five bucks.” If you’re able to hold a little more when you start home, you haven’t been to a beefsteak, you’ve been to a banquet that they called a beefsteak. From Up in the Old Hotel, an amazing collection of Mitchell’s New Yorker essays

We’ve missed out on the beefsteak’s prime, so to speak, but the Beacon Restaurant started a new tradition 10 years ago. The New York Sun’s account of the 2004 edition includes courses very much like those Mitchell describes — tiny hamburgers, bacon-wrapped lamb kidneys, double-thick lamb chops, and of course steak — “huge roasted Certified Angus shell loins that had been cut into thick slabs and doused with melted butter.”

This year’s beefsteak is in February. I’m intrigued, though I’m sure it will destroy me.

This is an incredible mosaic in the bathroom of the New Museum of Contemporary art in New York. It is also EASILY the most impressive thing in the whole museum.

New York was filled with good times, as usual, but a couple of the things that totally blew my mind (and that are link-friendly) were Jamaican beef patties at a place called Christie’s in Flatbush and an offshoot of San Francisco’s Blue Bottle juggernaut that recently opened in New York, Abraco [a nice NY mag review]. Yoshi insisted that we stop at Christie’s even though we’d just eaten a big brunch, and we got a couple of warm, spicy patties to share on a walk through chilly Prospect Park. The first thing I noticed is that they’re not really “patties” in the sense of hamburger patties. They’re like hot pockets, but freshly baked, with an amazing crust and filled with super-spicy beef. Pretty much the perfect walking food.

On an unrelated note, last week’s This American Life was the best I’ve heard in a long time. Every segment is good, but the third is about what happens to chimpanzees after they “retire” from movies, and it reveals that Cheeta — the chimp from the 40’s-era Tarzan movies — is still alive, living in Palm Springs, enjoys drinking Diet Iced Tea, and was once quite fond of beer and cigars. There’s more in this funny National Geo piece from 2003, awkwardly titled Tarzan’s Cheeta’s Life as a Retired Movie Star.

Thanksgiving 2006 came and went, attended by friends, family and the customary dramas.

An East Coast / West Coast feud flared up in the week before the holiday. Gabriel (East) sent what some in the West perceived as “a salvo across the bow” in the form of a PowerPoint presentation (a slide of which is pictured below). It contained a financial-style analysis of Thanksgiving: how Thanksgiving East has performed over the past decade, trends, projections, and outlines for future growth.

Some saw this as evidence of a diabolical plan; I was naive and asked for clarification on specifics:

Dear Gabe, TYs (Thanksgiving years) 2003–2004 were characterized by broad guest sector diversification. What is the likelihood that a diversified strategy, with exposure to the Shanahan sector, for example, will be pursued in the future? Secondly, to what extent will “value” guests (e.g., McClorys and Preslers) continue to anchor the portfolio? Will you pursue more (potentially) volatile “growth” guests in order to boost performance in the coming years?

Gabe replied:

Like other mission-related offerings, we believe that diversification is important for ensuring steady, dependable performance in any environment to protect against sector-specific risk. But our commitment to diversification goes beyond our concern for the bottom line: indeed, we believe that it reflects our group’s core mission. We are convinved that when we serve a broad range of attendants and when our offerings range across the geographic and social spectrum, our Thanksgiving is ultimately stronger.

I want to emphasize that we consider all of our participants “core” candidates. Alas, our commitment to value–illustrated by our proven track record of offering Thanksgiving at a deep discount to its intrinsic value–means that we are not always able to serve as broad a constituency as we would like. For example, many of our sought-after participants fall outside of our geographic universe; we are particularly interested in opportunities in California.

Needless to say, this kind of talk elicited skepticism and cries of regional pride among the West Coasters, feelings which became even more acute when additional news arrived: The East Coast guest list had grown so large, so ginormous, that the hosts scrambled to find larger accommodations for their dinner.

Now [East Coast Thankgiving] reports that their 2006 expansion plan has been so successful that they’re relocating to a BAR for their festivities. clearly the bar has been raised. are we going to let presler corp. outdo us at what we do best? we have to rally around the turkey and show the east coast who rules this holiday.

Would cooler heads prevail? Some West Coasters called for “focus.”

i hate to say it, but this whole thing reeks of a ploy to take us off our game. start chasing the presler-yamadas with this whole thanksgiving at the bar thing, and next thing you know you’ll be doing blow off some stranger’s anatomy at 5am while realizing that you forgot to even *buy* a turkey. we have to stick to what got us here. the fundamentals and an easy-going attitude that there’s no reason to get stressed out because our moms are at least like a thousand miles away ... focus, people.

Of course, Thanksgivings of yore were characterized by spontanaeity that often resembled chaos. (See right. More here.). To this end, there were appeals to pull together:

If Robert Altman taught us anything it’s that great works of art are NOT created with scripts, business plans or PowerPoint presentations. We will honor his tradition and follow our usual free-flowing, improvised pattern. We will create a richly layered Thanksgiving that will touch on all of the major themes of modern life in a heartbreaking, at times comical, at times violent, but always incisive way. Like Altman, we are not afraid of failure. However, it’s also true that some great works of art were created with blow (John Belushi, the DeLorean, Dwight Gooden) ...

In the end, there was focus and togetherness on the West Coast, and, by all accounts, steady growth with dividends in the East. A wise man once said: “Let love rule.” It shall.

“People don’t know where they are anymore, “ [the writer Will Self] said, adding: “In the post-industrial age, [walking] is the only form of real exploration left. Anyone can go and see the Ituri pygmy, but how many people have walked all the way from the airport to the city?”

This is from A Literary Visitor Strolls in From the Airport, a New York Times account of writer Will Self’s walk from JFK to his hotel in Manhattan. Self walks 20 miles through a colorful cross-section of Queens, taking photos and chatting about his philosophy of perambulation. Cars (and TVs and computers and so on) have imposed a “windscreen-based virtuality,” he says, effectively cutting us off from the landscape around us. The NYT writer name-checks psychogeography in connection with this discussion, but doesn’t elaborate. Apparently, psychogeography is a common, everyday concept in which everyone is conversant. (I would guess that it’s not). Also discussed: Self’s seat-of-the-pants route-planning (he relied upon native New Yorker Rick Moody), and his experiences in the less-traveled parts of the borough:

Not long after negotiating the Cross Bay Parkway overpass, Mr. Self decided to go “off piste,” as he put it, borrowing the term used to describe [the act of leaving] groomed ski runs [to explore wild terrain]. He ignored Mr. Moody’s instructions and headed straight west on Glenmore Avenue, through East New York and Brownsville. Glenmore at this point slices through a long, grim stretch of low-rise apartments, pocket-size auto-body shops, razor-wired vacant lots harboring high-strung dogs, and a surprising number of churches, including one, Glenmore Avenue Presbyterian, that featured a Sunday-morning “Apocalipsis” service.

“What could be more suitable?” said Mr. Self, who had just been discussing the apocalyptic theme in his own novel and those of H. G. Wells.

A related personal account: Once, in the fall of 1997, my flight had arrived late to JFK, and I was racing to catch the last Delta commuter flight to Boston, which was leaving from a different terminal. When I arrived at the curb, the security guard told me that the shuttle bus had just left, and that I’d probably miss my flight. He mentioned that the terminal was “just beyond that big TWA hanger over there,” and I thanked him and set off walking. Needless to say, there weren’t sidewalks connecting the two, and I spent much of my time “off piste,” scurrying along the shoulders of frontage roads and across parking lots. It was scary and fun, with planes periodically screeching just overheard, but I arrived just in time, and since then I’ve always wanted a chance to do it again.

The NYT just rolled out a beta of something they’re calling MyTimes. As a daily reader of both the print and online editions, I’m intrigued by new developments and ideas at the NYT, and I’ve been pleased with their recent site redesign. MyTimes, however, strikes me as somewhat misguided.

First off, the name MyTimes sounds like a portal, recalling the confused era when every company wanted to make a my-prefixed version of their site. Unfortunately, it also evokes the subsequent realization that what people really wanted was not control over layout and content, but greater system intelligence — smarter defaults, recognition of the things they normally do, a clever way of pointing them toward related things. The portal-sounding name wouldn’t even be so bad if MyTimes didn’t look and act like portal. Alas, it’s got all sorts of crap to add and move around and modify, allowing the reader to add RSS feeds from anywhere on the web, view movie times, weather, Flickr images, whatever. To me, the problem is that the NYT isn’t “whatever.” It’s the authoritative source. So why all the other stuff?

A better question: What problem is MyTimes supposed to be solving? What is the user goal is it addressing? One would do research to answer these questions, but — to be self-referential — my own goals in reading the NYT: Get the authoritative answer, enjoy great writing, forumlate opinions on complex problems. A major problem of MyTimes is that the NYT is trying to be both the authoritative source, and the delivery mechanism of any other source you might want.

So, my advice to the New York Times ...

• Bring related information to me. Focus my attention to the news of the day, but make it easy to navigate to related things. These things may be within the NYT, or outside. Use what you know about me — from observing my behavior — to point me toward related things. Think Amazon, not Google Homepage or MySpace. Amazon remembers what you like, points you toward related stuff, tells you what other people have looked at, etc. It knows you; you don’t HAVE to tell it anything.
• Don’t create a separate place that requires configuration and expect that I will go there and wait for the information to start rolling in. The established framework works: Start at the homepage, drill to the detail. Why create another starting place?
• Integrate the good things from MyTimes — the journalist pages, for instance, are a cool idea, and they are most appropriately accessed within the existing framework. Localized content like weather and movie listings are fine, but I don’t understand why this needs to be separate from the existing framework of the NYT pages. Basically: Integrate the reader into the NYT, don’t create a separate place for him/her. Learn my zip code, remember it, push relevant local content to me. End of story. (And just because Flickr has an RSS feed doesn’t mean it’s worthy of your brand. You’re the New York Times! You’ve got the best photojournalists in the world! Get rid of it!)

While I’m on the subject, two additional things I’d like to see ...

• More exposure to the Times’ excellent archival journalism. Why not plumb the back catalog, and expose some of it to the readers? Many articles about current events refer to past events. Why not provide a list of related links to previous articles more often? Of course, I’d expect that this content would be free — not only because I’m a cheapskate — but because I would think it would pique people’s interest in seeing more of it, which would of course cost money.
• More journalist blogs and discussion. The Public Editor’s column has become one of my favorite parts of the paper, and he blogs about interesting journalistic issues as well.Here’s a great one about Nicholas Lemann’s article about citizen journalism in the New Yorker.

In any case, there are roughly one thousand web sites offering up customizable info widgets, web-wide RSS feed aggregation, and so forth. The NYT should continue to focus on the content, and leave the aggregation to someone else.

So it seems I’m a couple of years late to this particular artist, but some recent conversation on the Book Arts list turned me on to Swoon, a NYC street artist. Her medium is the cutout — from paper, wood, linoleum — and she attaches these to walls all over NYC. The paper ones are the most amazing to me; they’re like those snow flakes you make in grade school, but life-sized and really elaborate and of people. Check out this Flickr cluster to get a sense of the way that the paper ages on the wall, and the way that this fragility and sense of impermanence reacts with the rest of the wall.

This interview in the Morning News has some good detail about her process:

There’s something particular to the images that make me choose that material ... A lot has to do with the limitations of the material. The linoleum you can get so much more detail from. Everything that has more nuances, I use linoleum. The wood is rougher, but a good roughness. The paper is really hard to think about, and so it tends to be simpler. With paper, you’d choose simple subjects because it’s hard to create an expression. The challenge is to make the cutout so that it can get on the wall as a solid unit in two minutes or less.

Thanks to howmuchlongerkillmenow for the photo.

A few months ago, the NYT Sunday magazine ran a profile of architect Daniel Libeskind and his Tribeca loft. (Incidentally, check out that link to his website; there’s some pretty hot flouting of web conventions. For example, when you mouse over a link, almost everything on the screen disappears, except a few stray words and the other links. Hmm.) Anyway, the most memorable part of the magazine article was a photo of the interior of his sauna. In it was a very small window, perhaps 18 inches high by 4 inches wide, and through that window the saun-ee could achieve a compactly framed view of the Chrysler Building. How cool is that? The image here shows the architect’s rendering of the different landmarks visible from vantages within the loft. Neato.

Like most things in New York, the Park Slope Food Coop is exclusive, filled with beautiful people, and a source of high drama in the lives of everyone involved with it. Most everyone I know in Brooklyn is a member, and all of them are on some sort of weird coop probation because they’re behind on their shifts. Skipping shifts is really naughty, and the lengths to which some members will go to get out of them has become the stuff of folklore. On the other hand, others seem almost pathologically conscientious — in a recent issue of the newsletter was a story of a member who had written into the coop to explain his absence. You see, he was in prison for eco-terrorism. So he may not, you know, be able to cover that Tuesday afternoon produce sorting shift.

The roots of (modern) urban gardening can be traced to the Liz Christy Garden on New York’s Lower East Side. (Some good 70’s photos of urban hippies getting their hands dirty). When I visited, the cherry blossoms were going off.

A couple of weeks ago, Mara and Jonathan and I went to the Frick, where we saw this painting by Duccio. It’s called “The Temptation of Christ on the Mountain,” but I vastly prefer Jonthan’s title (hint: it’s the subject of this post). Incidentally, how great is the Frick? Ghostly Whistlers, multiple Vermeers, “St. Francis in the Desert,” an excellent sculpture of a dead bird (was it a bird?). One might say: Frickin awesome.