Month: October 2020

Pre-Instagram New York: Mean But Full of Heart

10.31.2020 •
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Pre-Instagram New York: Mean But Full of Heart

Every time I travel to a new city, I try to read up on its history and the people who had resided there before. It’s fascinating to learn about how these former residents lived and loved and died. I have an even more intense desire to explore New York City’s past not only because I consider it home and the best city in the world. It is a city of many faces and has gone through a multitude of transformations and reinventions over the last few hundred years. The city either saved you, condemned you, or a little bit of both.

I remember speeding down West Side Highway in the early 1990s as a kid in my father’s car as he gestured toward Chelsea and told us what a dangerous neighborhood it was. In fact, as a suburban kid from New Jersey, the entire city seemed terrifying. What I didn’t know back then was that the 1990s actually marked the beginning of a turnaround for New York. Some of its worst decades in terms of crime and violence had already passed, and we would soon see its streets captured and memorialized in filtered, curated, and glamorized instagram feeds.

To get a sense of what New York was really like in the 70s and 80s, I turned to a really special photography book by renowned photographer Edward Grazda called Mean Streets: NYC 1970-1980. In 1970, Grazda moved into an artist loft at the corner of Bleecker and Elizabeth Streets, across from a statue of Christ that was part of the Holy Name Center. He would go on to take photographs all over the world but always returned his lens to New York. This book is a collection of Grazda’s black and white photos of his city, an important documentary of a New York right before its streets, in his words, “lost their souls.”

The streets in the photos seem wider to me or perhaps it’s because their subjects are so captivating, each one beckoning for closer examination. I’m not sure there is one central theme that ties the images together; on the surface, the photographs are all about the decay and abandonment that ravaged the city streets: a man lies on the sidewalk, motionless. A couple sits 10 feet from him, unconcerned. Is he just drunk or taking a nap? Is he dead? They don’t seem to care. A TV set ablaze; an apartment fire at Crosby and Houston; a burning garbage can at Bowery and Houston. Everything’s on fire.

Buried deeper throughout the book, though, are messages of hope, like the recurring photographs of the statue of Christ across the street from Grazda’s loft. The streets were mean, but they were home to the New Yorkers who struggled and hustled and eked out a hardscrabble living. Apparently, gay is on sale every Monday, with a “march & gay-in” set to happen on June 28th. A black owl with damaged feathers sits on the sidewalk; right across the page, though, a Ford Thunderbird with its doors and trunk and hood open look like it could take flight instead. A photographer shows off his work on a Polaroid 250. Prostitutes waiting for work, making eye contact with the camera.

These days, I come across many of the intersections and streets that Grazda photographed, but all I see are nice buildings and hipster eats. No wonder Grazda said in an interview that he no longer wants to take photographs of the city. If I had seen and captured the New York of his day, I wouldn’t want to either.

Interested in more photos from this book? Get your own copy!

Posted by
Cat

Are New Yorkers Mean?

10.24.2020 •
Are New Yorkers Mean?

Type “are New Yorkers” into Google and autocomplete will generate some top search phrases; they look something like this:

Out of the top ten questions people are asking, six are related to whether or not New Yorkers are mean.

Before I delve into what I think, I’d like to talk semantics a little bit (yawn, I know, but it’s important). New Yorkers are sometimes described as mean or rude–the opposite of nice. Although they both conjure negativity, these two adjectives are not the same. Someone who is mean is malicious and unkind on purpose while a rude person is unintentionally offensive or insulting. The big distinction, then, is intent.

Anyway, using the definitions above, I would say New Yorkers as a group are not mean. Most of us don’t start our day with the intention of hurting anyone. We may come across as rude because we don’t always greet cashiers with a smile and make small talk. We are fast–fast walkers, fast talkers, fast eaters. We have a flow of doing things and dislike having that flow disrupted. It’s not personal. We are just… fast.

Note to tourists: please do not stop mid-traffic on the sidewalk to gawk at a tall building. If you must, kindly vacate your prime real estate in the middle of the sidewalk and stand off to the side. Once there, you can stare and take all the pictures you want while the rest of us can get to wherever it is we need to go.

With that said, we are also incredibly kind-hearted and generous. We won’t proactively offer to help you locate that must-see attraction in your guidebook, but if you ask, we will probably stop and point you in the right direction. We might even sometimes walk you there since it’s on the way to where we are going anyway.

Having lived here for a decade and a half, I have witnessed and been on the receiving end of many generous acts, a few of which I’m going to talk about below. For some reason, they’re all subway-related.

Free Subway Ride

A few years ago a woman approached me as I was about to descend the stairs of a subway station. My New Yorker instinct was to avoid eye contact and veer out of her path. She kept moving towards me, though, and began waving her MetroCard in my face. It turned out that she still had a few hours left on her monthly card and just wanted to give someone a free ride. I happily accepted and marveled at the kindness I’d just been shown. (This was before a new  MetroCards cost a $1, though; I wonder if people still do this?)

As I was about to enter the station for my free ride (yay free!), I saw a guy out of the corner of my eye asking exiting passengers if any of them could swipe him in. I’m not gonna lie; I love a free ride as much as the next person so I had an internal debate with myself. But ultimately I walked over and gave him the MetroCard. He seemed like he needed it more than me.

The F/M Subway Choreography

The F and M trains are part of the Sixth Avenue Line and share many of the same stops in Manhattan. At most of these stops, riders can simply hop on the first arriving train. Not for those going uptown at the Essex/Delancey station, though. Because of some crazy and illogical changes, the F and M trains stop at different platforms at this station. The M is up a flight of stairs from the F platform, and standing on either platform means you cannot see the train arriving at the other.

Before the MTA installed countdown clocks to alert riders of arriving trains, New Yorkers had to rely on one another to get to the right platform. What occurred was a modern collaborative dance of sorts: riders lined up neatly along two sets of stairs that led from the F to the M. Those stationed on either platform were responsible for communicating whether or not their train was arriving. The news would travel up or down the staircase like a game of telephone.

I participated in this dance for a few years, and it never stopped being amusing and heartwarming. Sometimes the signal was verbal, a loud and terse shout of “train!”. Other times it was more subtle, a silent nod or a thumbs-up. I usually positioned myself in the middle of the stairs–my reasoning was that while I wasn’t close to either train, I was equidistant to both–and my preferred signal was a quick wave of the hand.

The countdown clocks have rendered this dance unnecessary, but I still occasionally stand on the staircase between the two platforms. Just in case my service is needed.

My Human Pillow

After a long day of work and an evening of dinner and drinks with friends, I fell asleep on the subway (the subway is like a cradle. I have my BEST sleep on it. I need to do a separate post on this), which I do on the regular, except this time I apparently fell into such a deep stupor that my head slid down to rest oh-so-comfortably on the shoulder of the passenger next to me.

Not only that, I apparently also had my mouth open and drooled all over his shirt. Instead of shaking me awake and running to the other side of the train in disgust, my kind seat buddy kept still and did not shirk from the unfortunate role as my human pillow. He only woke me up (very gently) before he was about to reach his stop. I was mortified to see a big, fat wet spot on his tee and apologized profusely. He refused my offer to pay him for a new t-shirt and simply said “I hope you feel better now” before stepping off the train with a warm smile.

Stories from Twitter

Apart from my own personal experience, I’ve also seen plenty of tweets from New Yorkers about the kindness that people show one another in this city.

And finally, one of my recent favs:

So there you have it, while the sample size might be small and there’s no scientific data to prove my thesis, plenty of anecdotal evidence suggests I’m right. New Yorkers aren’t mean. We are just used to a different set of rules and norms than some other people. While we don’t smile and say hi to strangers, we are also never fake. As this guy puts it so well:

Posted by
Cat

We Are All Photographers, Right?

10.17.2020 •
We Are All Photographers, Right?

Have you ever wanted to be good at something but always felt like it just wasn’t meant to be? For me, it’s photography. I actually foolishly thought I was a pretty good photographer for a long time since my dad is a great amateur photographer. I just assumed that it was something that he’d have somehow passed onto me.

I got a rude awakening when I arrived in New York for art school in the early 2000s. I didn’t major in photography, thank god, but I studied among some talented budding visual artists, and every single one of them was a better photographer than I was. When they were shit-faced drunk. And high. In fact, my inability to take a remotely decent photograph became sort of a running joke among my classmates. One of my close friends would get frustrated when I tried to take even the most casual photos of her on our travels.

“Why can’t you frame the shot this way so I don’t look like a dwarf?”

“Don’t you see the light is hitting the statue here so if you’d pointed the camera the other way you would’ve gotten a nice burst there?”

“OMG, you just cut off the clocktower!”

Those exasperated remarks dominated the remainder of my 20s to the point where I was cowed to even take pictures for random tourists on the streets of New York. The comments weren’t vicious or mean; they were honest. Sure, sometimes I got a little hurt, but mostly I was just embarrassed I couldn’t take a good picture for my life. I watched with envy as talented photographers showcased their work, first on flickr and then migrated over to Instagram.

The thing is, even back then, I was baffled by my own ineptitude with the camera. I considered myself a pretty good visual artist and designer, both of which required a certain discerning eye. So what gives? Neuroplasticity says that our brains have the ability to form new neural connections throughout life. That sounds to me like we are able to change ourselves and learn new things even as we age. So, a couple years ago, I set out to conquer my great fear of photography by going out and taking pictures. Lots and lots of them.

Luckily for me, I live in New York, and it has proven to be a great and willing subject for my various attempts at becoming a photographer. There are just so many wonderful, weird, confusing, and beautiful corners and alleys and people in this place. Though I’ve been here a LONG time, I still come across new people/places/things that surprise me all the time. Some are less pleasant than others, let’s be honest, but all are welcome and appreciated on my journey.

New York is such an enigma. Though countless songs and books and movies and poems have been created in its honor, it really isn’t a place that can be boxed in or stereotyped. Around 8.6 million people call this place home so there are probably 8.6 million different ways to see and experience it. While lights and glamor and $100-million ultra luxury condos abound, NYC for me isn’t special because of those things. Instead, I love the talks in unassuming basement bars put on by sex workers who share their deepest secrets and desires with total strangers. I love the little mom-and-pop coffee shop where the owner is also my neighbor and friend. I love the murals and graffiti that adorn the city’s many buildings and reveal, if you’re willing to pay attention, both our struggles and triumphs.

I know I’m still learning, but I really hope I’ve been able to capture little bits of my New York in some of these pictures. They will probably never be those sweeping, breathtaking shots of the Manhattan skyline. Instead, my lens will always be trained on the streets and neighborhoods and people that I have come to know and love to the core of my being.

Posted by
Cat