Clifford Browder's Blog, page 16

411. Gold

BROWDERBOOKS


 

A story of the strangest friendship that ever was: a dapper young bank thief and the detective hired by the banks to apprehend him.  The latest review:

"Well written, flowing with a feeling for the time and the characters."  --  Reader review by Bernt Nesje.
For two more reviews, both five stars, go here and scroll down. 

This is the fourth title in my Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York. Three more, and then the big one; stick around.
My latest nonfiction work, Fascinating New Yorkers, has been reviewed by The US Review of Books. Reviewer Gabriella Tutino says, "There's something for everyone here in this collection of profiles, and it serves as a source of inspiration for readers who love NYC."  For the whole review, click on US Review.


For more about my other books, go here.  


                                                                              Gold

         What do all these things have in common?
·      Robber barons Jim Fisk and Jay Gould being chased down the street by a mob of ruined speculators.·      Siegfried.·      The first Wise Man.·      A flotilla of abandoned sailing vessels in San Francisco harbor.·      William Jennings Bryan.·      Abraham Lincoln pounding his fist on a table and saying, “I wish every one of them had his devilish head shot off!”·      Midas.·      Medieval alchemists.·      Fort Knox.
         The answer, of course, is gold.  They were all concerned with it in one way or another.
·      Fisk and Gould’s attempt to corner gold in 1868 convulsed financial markets on both sides of the Atlantic.  Speculators ruined in the panic tried to assault them, causing the merry duo to high-tail it out of Wall Street and take refuge in Fisk’s Opera House, its thick locked doors guarded by their crony Boss Tweed’s police.·      In Wagner’s Ring the hero Siegfried kills the dragon Fafnir and gets possession of the stolen gold that Fifnir jealously guards.


Siegfried



Fafnir guards the gold.
Illustration by Arthur Reckham, 1911.
·      In the Christmas carol “Three Kings of Orient,” sung by the three magi as they bring gifts to celebrate Christ’s birth in a manger, the first king sings, “Born a king on Bethlehem plain, / Gold I bring to crown him again.”·      During the Gold Rush of 1849 sailing vessels loaded with would-be miners rushed to San Francisco, where whole crews deserted as well to rush to the goldfields.


A miners' ball in the goldfields.  Alas, no women.
·      Bryan, the Great Commoner, was a champion of free silver and a foe of gold and the Eastern bankers and railroad men who supported it.  In 1896 he won the Democratic presidential nomination, though not the White House, with a fiery speech that ended, “You shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold!”


Bryan's triumph, after the Cross of Gold speech.
·      Lincoln deplored the traders speculating feverishly in gold on Wall Street during the Civil War.  ·      In Greek myth, King Midas of Phrygia got from the god Dionysus the  ability to turn anything he touched to gold.  In one version of the story he embraces his daughter and she turns to gold.  In another he starves to death, for the food he tries to eat turns to gold.


King Midas and his daughter.  An illustration by Walter Crane, 1892.
·      The alchemists tried to turn base lead into gold.


The Alchemist, engraving by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, 1558.
·      Fort Knox in Kentucky contains a fortified vault holding a large portion of the nation’s gold reserves.  It figures in popular culture, as in the 1959 James Bond film Goldfinger, when the arch criminal Goldfinger hires Pussy Galore and her lesbian gang to drop airborne poison to kill the garrison, so he can steal the gold.



[image error]Downloadall sizesUse this fileon the webUse this fileon a wiki Email a linkto this file Informationabout reusing The gold vault, Fort Knox.
         All of which goes to show how gold fascinates, tempts, deludes, and destroys man and womankind.  How come?
         How indeed?  The only gold I’ve ever seen is in jewels and fillings, the jewels not mine, and the fillings from my teeth – tiny bits and shavings – returned to me by a scrupulous dentist who had replaced some fillings.  Of course I’ve seen the gilt frames of paintings in museums, so I suppose that counts, but the gilt didn’t belong to me. 
         During and after the Civil War, men and sometimes women gambled huge sums on the rise or fall in price of gold on Wall Street, their eyes mesmerized by the fluctuating numbers displayed on a price indicator posted outside the Gold Room on the street.  Yet few if any of them had ever seen real gold.  All they were dealing with were certificates and statements of account – paper, flimsy substitutes for gold.  Yet the winners sported flashy rings, paraded in fancy trotting wagons in Central Park, and invited friends to Delmonico’s to dine on truffled veal.  And the losers ended up shuffling in seedy coats, boots unblackened, always asking prices, lunching on bread and milk for a nickel.  What was real, what was fake?
         Gold.  The very word casts a spell, it excites, it mesmerizes.  Fisk and Gould tried to corner it.  Midas prized it above all else, until he learned better.  It was so valued in Biblical times that legend has the Magi bringing it to Bethlehem, along with frankincense and myrrh.  In 1849 the hope of finding it uprooted young men from the best New York families – so-called Argonauts – and sent them by ship to Panama, to cross the rugged spine of the continent by mule, and then sail from the Pacific side of the isthmus to San Francisco, and from there on by land to the goldfields.  Or they took a ship all the way around the southern tip of South America and up to the same destination – a voyage that took weeks -- in hopes of making a fortune in gold, though few did.  The real fortunes were made by clever merchants in San Francisco who sold mining and camping equipment to the miners, and by moneyed opportunists who organized mining companies and hired the luckless gold diggers to work in their mines, extracting gold from the depths of the earth.  Such extracting, in the minds of the native peoples, was a violation of the Mother, a rape of the earth.


[image error] A gold digger.  An advertising card for Libby's Beef, ca. 1880.
         Gold digger – in twentieth-century parlance, a woman out to snag a wealthy lover or husband.  “I’m not much of a gold digger,” I told the older gay male couple running the gay rooming house I stayed at during my first and only visit to Provincetown, the gay summer resort, in 1955.  Not that I hadn’t had my chance.  I was 27, looked 24, and youth was esteemed, almost idolized, in gay Provincetown.  After Labor Day the bus to the beach stopped running, so I walked there and back; it was only a mile.  Coming back one day with the beginning of a tan, I was offered a ride into town by a man of about 40 in a Cadillac.  Why not?  So I hopped in.  He was well dressed, well groomed, well bred, and well spoken; he and his Cadillac said money.  He asked what I did at night, where did I go?  I was vague, then thanked him for the ride and hopped out.
         End of story?  Not quite.  The following day I was walking back again from the beach, when the same man in the same Cadillac offered me a ride.  Was he waiting for me, or for any young kid coming back from the beach?  I didn’t know, but again I hopped in.  Same routine: courteously he asked about my plans for the evening, and everything whispered money.  But I wasn’t comfortable in a Cadillac, so I was vague again, thanked him, and got out.  Never saw him again.  I hope he found a kid in love with money and all that it can do.  End of story?  No, a beginning.  Soon afterward I met a good-looking Canadian, age 30, with a Volkswagen.  Thirty and 27: perfect.  And a Volkswagen – just my cup of tea.  And so …  But that’s another story.  And my future partner Bob, at age 20, got an explicit offer from the first man he had sex with: "I can keep you good."  But that too is another story; let's get back to gold.


Gold Diggers of Broadway, a Broadway musical of 1929.
         So why all the fuss about it?  It has always been valued the world over as a kind of money.  But it was more than money.  The ancients thought it was the purest of metals, frozen God, a bridge to the spiritual, and used it in their shrines and temples.  Okay, valued since antiquity, but why?  Of all the many elements, why was gold so valued?
         Let’s have a look at those elements, many of which the ancients didn’t even know.  First of all, you wouldn’t want to use a liquid or a gas as money, they might just evaporate or flow away.  And you wouldn’t want anything radioactive like radium, or liable to rust like iron and copper and lead, or apt to fizz and pop like sodium and potassium.  Nor would you want anything that promptly decomposes like uranium and plutonium, or anything that is hard to extract like aluminum.  These conditions eliminate most of the solid elements, leaving just two: silver and gold.  But silver tarnishes, which is why we use silver tea sets less today than in the old days, when there were servants to polish it.  So we end up with gold.  


Panning for gold in Queensland, Australia, 1900.
         Consider: gold is rare, but not impossibly rare.  Chemically, it’s dullsville, not reacting with anything, and therefore wonderfully inert.  It’s solid, portable, nontoxic, and it lasts.  And alone of all metals, it’s golden, it’s just plain beautiful to look at.  Golden objects found in ancient tombs – by excavators who don’t like the name of grave robbers – still have their shape and shine.  But the real answer is that gold is valuable because we as a society choose to value it.  Like money, gold is fiction.  It lacks intrinsic value, but takes on the value that we project onto it.  And a multitude of societies past and present – including most of those we know of – have chosen to view it as valuable

         In myth and legend, as in reality, gold is no. 1, silver is no. 2.  Gold is the sun, silver is the moon.  Gold is masculine, dominant.  Silver is feminine, passive.  See what you’re up against, feminists?  But holy God, think of Medea, slaughtering her unfaithful lover’s children, which are also her own.  Or Clytemnestra, murdering her husband and his trophy spoil from the ruins of Troy, the prophetess Cassandra, so she, Clytemnestra, can rule and hang out with her fancy man, Aegisthus. – Some passive!
         So gold is tops, the best, what we yearn for and want to possess, which can be material or spiritual.  Like the legendary damsel in distress, it is the hero’s reward, won through acts of courage.  Wagner’s Siegfried wins both Brunnhilde and Fafnir's gold, thus achieving a rare double whammy.  But gold is also the divine intelligence and supreme illumination, accessing which requires more than killing a mere dragon or rescuing your future ladylove and wakening her to love.  Maybe gold is the dreamed-of unattainable, the buried treasure we search for all our life but never quite discover. Maybe it is the light we go to after death.  If so, we will all be rich in time, but not with ingots of gold, much less clinking coins and greasy dollar bills.


Gold bars.
Stevebidmead
         Still, it’s hard not to think about real, material gold, where it’s stored and who owns it.  If Fort Knox holds tons of it, New York does, too: the biggest stash of gold in the world.  In the underground vault of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York at 33 Liberty Street are 497,000 bars of gold, with a combined weight of 6,190 tons.  The vault can support this weight, because it rests on the bedrock of Manhattan Island, 80 feet below street level and 50 feet below sea level.  The value of it?  Maybe $240 to $260 billion.  And who does this treasure belong to?  The government?  Not at all.  It belongs to account holders who, to store it there, pay the government a handling fee for every transaction.  The bars were once rectangular bricks, but since 1986 they have been converted to the trapezoidal shape conforming to international standards.  They are stored in padlocked compartments in a depository safeguarded by a multilayered security system.  The only entrance to the vault is protected by a 90-ton steel cylinder set within a 140-ton steel-and-concrete frame that, when closed, creates an airtight and watertight seal.  And that’s only part of the security system guarding the treasure.  So, Goldfinger, forget about it.  Pussy Galore, you haven’t got a chance.
         But who requires such security?  Who in this day and age wants to lock away real gold bars in such a vault?  Do they fear a plunge in the value of the dollar, a financial convulsion making gold look like a desirable refuge?  One thinks of the people who used to have secret bank accounts in Switzerland, before the IRS and other nosy foreign entities came snooping around and pressured some of those banks to reveal the names of depositors.  One imagines a Saudi prince, a Chinese plutocrat, a dictator fearing overthrow, a moneyed U.S. divorcée still milking her ex for alimony.  Maybe they too, when not buying a costly pied-à-terre in a Manhattan high-rise, have gold bars stashed away in New York’s underground Fort Knox.  It must give them a warm, yummy feeling of safety, of protection against the fluctuations of markets, the whims and vicissitudes of time.  

          But no, it isn’t them at all.  Most of the gold – 98% of it – belongs to the central banks of foreign nations, who consider the U.S. a safe place for gold because, even in the age of Trump, it is free from revolutions, civil wars, and other upheavals.  Unless, of course, this is all fake news put out by the Fed itself, as various conspiracy theorists opine.  After all, no one but select Fed employees are allowed to see the gold.  So maybe it’s all a hoax.  Maybe there is no such treasure at all deep in the guts of 33 Liberty Street.  Something to think about, if you’re so inclined.  But I’m not.  For now, at least, I’ll take the Fed’s word for it, and wish those central banks well.  So gold, whether mythical or real, still obsesses us, and probably always will.  Poor silver, like Chicago, always no. 2.  (Or 3, given the intrusion of that upstart, the City of the Angels.)  So decree the markets, karma, and the gods of wealth.  Or maybe just the dictates of the human mind, that quirky and capricious determinant.  Maybe just us.
Coming soon: Fire.  Or something else.
©  2019  Clifford Browder

410. High Buildings, High Markets, High Debt. How Soon the Bust?

BROWDERBOOKS
The giveaway of 100 e-books of my latest historical novel, The Eye That Never Sleeps, ended May 8.  There were 467 entrants, 100 of whom got the e-book.  435 people marked the book as "Want to read."  For two five-star reviews, go here and scroll down. This is the fourth title in my Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York. Three more, and then the big one; stick around.


 

A story of the strangest friendship that ever was: a dapper young bank thief and the detective hired by the banks to apprehend him.  For more about this and my other books, go here.  
Fascinating New Yorkers has been reviewed by The US Review of Books. Reviewer Gabriella Tutino says, "There's something for everyone here in this collection of profiles, and it serves as a source of inspiration for readers who love NYC."  For the whole review, click on US Review.

                 High Buildings, High Markets, High Debt.
                                   How Soon the Bust?  
         I have expressed my admiration in the past for the towering high-rise 53W53 at, appropriately, 53 West 53rd Street in Manhattan, where its tapering glass pinnacle soars into light high above the Museum of Modern Art.  A self-proclaimed architectural wonder designed by the renowned French architect Jean Nouvel, it offers residential condominiums starting at $6.2 million, with the first cloud-loving residents presumably now in occupancy in light-filled residences high above the city’s hurly-burly.  Originally named the Tower Verre (verre = “glass” in French) – a name that I much prefer – it sends its flanks marked with crisscrosses and slanting beams skyward in a dazzling display of steel and glass design.  No friend of the bulky boxlike high-rises cluttering the New York skyline, I view this wonder in awe.



53W53 in June 2018, going up, up, up.
Griss.Jr
         And it is not alone.  Megatowers are taking over the city.  Across the street from legendary and distinctly low-rise Carnegie Hall, One57, a 1,005-foot luxury condo dubbed the “Billionaire Building,” jabs upward, flanked by other colossi giving this stretch of 57th Street the name “Billionaires Row.”  And right there at 225 West 57th Street is the supertall Central Park Tower, a 1,550-foot mixed-use commercial / residential building whose 95 floors now make it the tallest building in the city (if one excludes spires), and some say, the world.  All these architectural titans offer sweeping views of Central Park (unless your condo’s windows face south), and are priced for billionaire residents.



The Central Park Tower in March 2019, still under construction.
Griss.Jr
         So the city’s skyline, the most breathtaking in the world, especially if viewed at night, is going up, up, up.  Where else can it go, if go it must, since developers and residents alike are squeezed in on the narrow, cigar-shaped island of Manhattan, congested in the extreme and unwilling to grasp the daring and controversial new idea of controlled growth, or even no growth at all.  Such a concept is hateful to a city where growth is a tradition, a seeming need, a dream, and a compulsion.


At night there is magic.  Manhattan seen from Governors Island, 2017.
King of Hearts
         To my eye, the Central Park Tower and many other self-proclaimed wonders are just uninspired supertall boxes jutting cloudward.  But 53W53 is not the only one showing imagination.  111 at 111 Murray Street in Tribeca is a curious glass wrap-around of a cylinder gracing that part of town, which, like most neighborhoods, is deemed by designers to merit, in fact desperately need, more luxury condos.  Though offering a mere 64 floors, its crystalline façade emphasizes the curved or rounded form, declares that “modernism lives in Tribeca,” and claims to be visually striking from both inside and outside the building.  Original it certainly is, and the views of the city magnificent.
         Even Brooklyn has succumbed to the construction craze.  The Greenpoint at 21 India Street is a two-building residential complex near the East River waterfront in the Greenpoint section.  Soaring above a 5-story block-long building with rentals, the 400-foot tower offers a multifaceted glass façade that escapes the boxlike look and houses luxury condos with superb views of Manhattan.  The rents?  Starting at $2,383 a month for studios.  And the condos?  Since this is only Brooklyn, a mere $989,000 – under one million! – for a one-roomer.  Of course it’s the condos, starting at the tower’s 28th floor, that offer the spectacular views.  But the lowly renters at least get the Brooklyn waterfront.
         And who are the residents of these soaring, amenity-rich palaces?  Ah, that’s a well-kept secret.  But not for nothing are there references to the “Billionaire Building” on 57th Street’s “Billionaires Row.”  You get the idea.  As for the luxury residences themselves, perched high above the shabby neighborhoods of the less affluent, what are they like?  The glossy special sections of the giant realtor Brown Harris Stevens (“Bold Honest Smart”), often inserted in the Sunday New York Times, give us a glance.  Devoid of humanity, the living spaces shown are flooded with light and arranged impeccably, with plump, sterile sofas adorned with cushions, shelves of unread books, polished floors, and atrocious modern art on the walls.  There is a lack of the warmth and messiness of lived-in quarters; prevailing is the cold, rigid beauty of design. 
         Hopefully, even the affluent drop tissues, mess up upholstery, and befoul gleaming surfaces with telltale rings of wine glasses and brandy snifters.  But a March 24 front-page editorial of the New York Times, which so often features these glossy ads, suggests that the absentee residents of these condos, taking advantage of the city’s services as they so airily do, should be subject to a pied-à-terre tax to better fund the city’s schools, subways, and affordable housing.  The editorial notes that hedge-fund magnate Kenneth C. Griffin paid an unprecedented $238 million for a penthouse on Central Park South, when he has another penthouse in Chicago, a condo in Miami, and a mansion in London, each of them worth millions.


Midtown Manhattan, looking north from the Empire State Building, 2005.
And plenty more has happened since.
Jleon of En.Wiki
         But the city’s surging skyline reaps more criticism than this.  Putting up clusters of megatowers, some soreheads observe, contributes to gentrification, inflates real estate prices, and overburdens public services like schools, police and fire departments, and transportation.  Current zoning laws limit buildings not by height but by floor area, and have loopholes that clever developers exploit.  Yet these complaints have failed to impress the Department of Buildings, so developers insist that all is hotsy-totsy, and the craze continues up, up, up.

         Hotsy-totsy?  Certainly, to the infinite glee of our President, the economy is booming, and the stock market, after a nasty little correction last December, is going – you guessed it – up, up, up.  The averages have not quite topped the highs of last September, but they are close.  Tech stocks are the darlings of the moment, and Apple, a company valued at close to $1 trillion, or more than the economies of some entire nations, has seen its stock soar, then dip, then again soar to dizzying heights.
         As many a New York business person knows too well, commercial rents in the city have gone up, up, up, though signs announcing “retail space available” can be seen.  Likewise, consumer confidence, after hitting an 18-year peak in October 2018, has dipped and risen again, and is expected to remain up, up, up.  And consumer debt hit an all-time high of $4 trillion in February 2019, and most Americans are not paying off all their monthly credit card debt, but accumulating more at high interest, so here again is up, up, up.
         But better than any statistics in dramatizing up, up, up is an aerial view of those midtown supertalls.  A glance at just one of those pencil-thin structures soaring skyward, dwarfing all its neighbors, is enough to scare you.  Should buildings be so thin and so tall?  Is such engineering possible, or does it suggest, even scream, hubris?  How can you not think of the Tower of Babel in the book of Genesis (11: 1-9), where presumptuous humans built a tower to reach heaven and threaten You Know Who.  Not to be outdone, the Big I Am caused them to suddenly speak different languages; in the resulting confusion they abandoned the tower and were scattered over the earth.  His Nibs shattered not the tower itself, but the presumption it represented. 


The Tower of Babel, Lucas van Valckenborch, 1594.

         An even more troubling story, strictly historical, concerns the builders of the Gothic cathedrals of Europe, who were able to enclose vast amounts of space and thrust their towers higher.  In the thirteenth century the vaulting of the cathedral of Beauvais in France rose to 157 feet, the tallest in Europe, until in 1284 some of it collapsed.  Interrupted by the Hundred Years’ War with England, work resumed in the sixteenth century, and the central tower, soaring to 502 feet, made the structure the tallest in the world.  And in 1573 the tower collapsed.  What more need be said?


Beauvais cathedral, the high choir.
Txllxt TxllxT
         And could the markets topple as well?  In September 2018 a trader working from his seaside home in Norway made a bad bet trading futures contracts and couldn’t cover a shortfall of tens of millions of dollars.  This provoked a crisis in Nasdaq Clearing, a financial institution that supposedly guarded against any of its members failing.  Since the clearing house lacked the funds needed to cover the shortfall, the trader was declared in default.  It was the first time a Nasdaq Clearing member had defaulted; a crisis threatened.  The situation was contained only when other members pitched in to replenish the default fund.  So one man sitting in front of his computer in a little village in Norway provoked a crisis that shook the world’s financial system.  Nasdaq Clearing has since adopted measures to prevent another such crisis, but one can well wonder how stable the whole system is.
         Recently a book was published relevant to the situation.  Firefighting: The Financial Crisis and Its Lessons (Penguin Books, 2019) has three authors: Ben S. Bernanke, former chairman of the Federal Reserve Board; Timothy F. Geithner, former president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York; and Henry M. Paulson, Jr., George W. Bush’s Secretary of the Treasury.  These men held the three most influential financial positions in the country, when the financial crisis of 2008-2009 convulsed the entire U.S. financial system, and that of foreign nations as well.  The authors accept a tiny bit of blame for not foreseeing the crisis, and expect a bit of praise for confining it.  Then, having told their story, they assert that we have learned the wrong lessons from the crisis, which means that the next crisis will be worse than the last one.  And who should know, if not this savvy trio?
         Finally, my own two cents on the subject, in a debate with myself.
·      Is up, up, upat some point going to turn into down, down, down?  --  Of course.·      What does that mean?  Tumbling markets, toppling towers, the public stricken with debt?  --  Don’t know.  Maybe all of that, maybe some.·      Are the banks still too big to fail?  --  Absolutely.·      Isn’t there more government oversight than in 2008?  --  Yes, though not enough.  And what there is is being undermined by the Trump administration.·      How do you know all this?  --  I see what’s happening and reach a conclusion.  It’s just hunches, seasoned with a smidgen of history.·      Isn’t that presumptuous on your part?  --  It sure is.·      So you think you’re a market guru, a financial expert, a prophet preaching doom to the masses!  --  No, just a fool among fools voicing what’s on my mind and in my bones.·      Okay, fool, when will this crisis come?  --  No idea.·      But you’ll gloat when it does.  You’ll shout, “I told you so!”  --  I won’t gloat.  People will get hurt, lots of them, and not the ones most responsible.·      And you’re so sure of yourself!  --  Not really.  I hope I’m wrong.·      So what final advice do you give to the masses?  --  None.  They  haven’t heard of me.  This blog has a small audience.·      Well, then, what advice would you give your audience?  --  None, unless they ask.  I’m not their financial adviser.·      Okay, what advice to a close friend who asks?  --  Sell, don’t buy.  If you have a sound long-term financial plan, sit tight and wait this out.  But for God’s sake, shrink your debt.
·      Anything else?  --  Pray.


The collapsed tower of Fonthill Abbey in Wiltshire, England.  It happened three times from the 1790s until the early 20th century.  A reminder that towers do collapse.

Coming soon:  Gold.
©  2019  Clifford Browder

409. Surviving a Boss from Hell

BROWDERBOOKS

For two five-star reviews of my latest historical novel, The Eye That Never Sleeps, go here and scroll down.  The book's first two reviews -- too good to be true.

The e-book was released May 9.  The giveaway of 100 e-books ended May 8. There were 467 entrants, 100 of whom get the e-book.  435 people marked the book as "Want to read."  This is great exposure for the book.

 

A story of the strangest friendship that ever was: a dapper young bank thief and the detective hired by the banks to apprehend him.  For more about this and my other books, go here.  
Fascinating New Yorkers has been reviewed by The US Review of Books. Reviewer Gabriella Tutino says, "There's something for everyone here in this collection of profiles, and it serves as a source of inspiration for readers who love NYC."  For the whole review, click on US Review.
Surviving a Boss from Hell

         My deceased partner Bob left 21 volumes of journals covering his life from the mid-1950s well into this century, and he has tales to tell.  One that I find gripping recounts what he and his coworkers underwent when a new library director, whom I’ll call James Walsh, arrived at the Jersey City Public Library (JCPL) in January 1993.  Bob was head of the Reference Room at the time.  Here are excerpts from his entry for January 6, 1993.
          Our new library director est arrivé.  James Walsh.  Catastrophe hovers.  Took perhaps two hours, at a meeting with main library department heads.  Lovely fresh machismo in the head seat.  Age 47, although looks around 60 and frayed.  Largely bald.  Aggressive.  In  fact, smoldering viciousness apparent, despite the  jokes and labored chumminess.  Not to be trusted.  Asserted his power position in record time.  His thighs and legs constantly vibrating.  For every profanity he utters (son-of-a-bitch, Jesus, damn – and, in his mouth such terms do assume purple profane undertones), he removes a quarter from a roll and pushes it ostentatiously across the table!  His nervousness borders on the sick.  I’m convinced he is physically ill, perhaps on drugs.
         Such is the first impression that James  Walsh makes on his staff.  He then assembled committees and talked fervently about computers.  The staff laughed – unwisely, Bob thought – at his jokes, but there was a nervousness in the atmosphere.  Staff, he emphasized, must be “multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, and bisexual.”  By the latter, Bob assumed, he meant “multi-sexual.”  “Poor boobie, so inarticulate!  His vocabulary is coarse and limited, although not his abundance of voice and verbal offal!”  When he announced that he had no life outside work, Bob noticed that his legs vibrated.  “I saw everything.  I observed a bona fide S.O.B.”  The rest of the day “tootsie” lingered in his mind, “odorous, odious, yet alas, to be tolerated until he, too, exits and malfunctions unto death.”  Never, in all Bob’s journals that I have read, have I observed him generating so sudden and so intense an antipathy.  Unknown to his opponent, war had been declared.
         Bob’s entry of January 7 adds an incident of the day before.  “My sex life is my own business,” the new director announced, then turned to Bob and said, “Right, Bob?”  At this, Bob remained impassive.  Did the nut think him a predatory gay sex fiend, he wondered, or was Walsh himself gay and anxious to fend off any interest on Bob’s part?  Walsh was for him the stereotypical macho male, displaying “weary, heartless, relentless insipidity.  It was a surfeit of vomit.” 
         Bob managed to turn his mind to other preoccupations, and the journal records no further episodes with Walsh until February 1, when it describes a meeting with him and several other staff members in Walsh’s cigarette-befouled office.  “He proceeded to prattle, belch, fart, and prance about, as though hot from inner sexual frustrations,” and put everyone on the defensive.  “We nurtured his wounds, his persona, the juices in his groins.  Energy flowed in both directions, but it was deeply unpleasant.”  Whether Bob was right or not in perceiving a sexual malaise in the man will be clear enough in time. 
         The entries tell the story.  April 7, 1993: at a two and a half hour meeting in his office, the “Walsh man” asserts his determination to drastically reorganize things at the library, regardless of staff feelings.  Bob speaks forthrightly, urges caution, suggests examining what led up to the present situation. 
         June 24, 1993:  The Walsh man, failing to understand why queries go to another department first and then to Bob, attacks Bob personally: “What kind of fucking reference department can’t answer a simple question?  What kind of shit is this?”  Bob then explained the system and he “kind of apologized.”  But Bob notes that the supervisors are totally disrupted, since no one knows in what direction Walsh’s proposed reorganization will go, and least of all Walsh.  He has totally alienated the entire library staff.  He is “macho, lonely, embittered, I could almost say evil.”
         August 10, 1993.  At the Library Board meeting last night, Walsh’s reorganization plan was again given to a committee for further study – perhaps a way of shelving it.  Also, someone evidently snuck into the business office and photocopied the time-card records of Walsh’s crony, the supervisor of maintenance, which exposes Walsh as a liar.  A reporter for the Jersey Journal has learned of this; an exposé is imminent, Bob exults. 
         August 25, 1993.  A  “scorching” article in the Jersey Journal accuses Walshie of harassing the entire library staff, and also mentions a suspicious mishandling of money.  Bob’s reaction: “Hurrah!  Clap, clap!”  Bob fervently hopes the Walshie will be judged and terminated, fitting justice for the man who, months before, severely judged and terminated an employee for a minor infraction.
         September 15, 1993.  Walshie calls Bob to his office, says he will especially scrutinize any future staff recommendations on his part.  “What are you inferring by that remark?” Bob asks.  He then denigrates a staff member whom Bob had recommended, stating that she is not adept in using the new technology now installed  in libraries.  Bob defends his recommendation and the staff member, and Walshie backs down a bit.  Bob leaves the office “with my head and dignity as high as the sky.”
         October 11, 1993.  The Walsh man screamed at two supervisors and ordered them out of his office, calling their memos to him “shit.”  One of †hem is going to complain to the Library Board.  But the Board has approved Walshie’s reorganization plan.  “Enter, therefore, chaos.”
         April 13, 1994.  Walsh still rules the library.  “Deadline, last day, for my JCPL [Jersey City Public Library] years is to be June 19, 1995.  Enfin.  Bye-bye, tootsies.  Bye, Walsh pig.”  He then recounts how Walsh was leaving the third-floor men’s room as Bob entered.  Said Walsh, “The seat’s still warm for you!”  Bob doesn't give him the satisfacion of a smile.  But the Board has announced a 90-day delay until a final decision is made about naming Walsh top piggy.  No wonder he stomped into the reference room and screamed at a librarian for not being at the information desk, available to the public, when she was consulting an index so as to answer a patron’s query.  “The man is clearly sick.”
         April 25, 1994.  The Library Board president, a pal of Walsh's, is accused of using a library-authorized credit card to have his automobile repaired.  A first-page story in the Jersey Journal.
         June 13, 1994.  A double scandal: the Library Board president and Walshie have been accused of charging large amounts of money on their library-funded credit cards for personal expenses.  Amounts of up to $40,000 over a few months at disco clubs, sex-display clubs, motels, and department stores.  And the president is a bona fide minister at a Baptist church in Jersey City!  “It is a delicious little scandal,” Bob notes, “but it does the library not a jot of good.  The JCPL image has been spoiled to a green rot.”

         June 23, 1994.  The mills of the gods grind slowly, but grind they do.  Walsh has been suspended as the library’s top piggy!

         August 22, 1994.  More good news from the Jersey Journal.  Board President Williams and Director Walsh have been indicted by a grand jury for fraud, theft, and other charges, and are liable for 40 to 50 years in prison.  Does Bob exult?  No, he is thunderstruck, and then feels compassion for the two.  “What will or can ever emerge from all this crashing rattle that will ever reveal the underlying humanity, and what court of justice will make anything of that?”
         October 19, 1994.  Walsh has offered to testify against Williams in return for a light probationary sentence.  Asked to resign as director, he has declined, and will fight to prove his innocence.  No more compassion now.  “He’s a dog of evil stripes, a menace.”
         January 9, 1995.  Another article in the Journal,  The buzzard Walshie is trying to return as director.  “Nightmare again, should the wretch resume his dictatorship.”

         So end Bob’s entries regarding Walsh.  The buzzard never resumed his dictatorship.  In fact, I have been told by a reliable source that Walsh appeared before the Board, only to be arrested on the spot and taken away in handcuffs.  Yes, the mills of the gods grind slowly, but grind they do.   Yet a sliver of doubt remains.  Did Walsh actually serve time?  I have queried online, discovered nothing,  What is certain is that he never returned to the library. 
Coming next:  What Goes Up Has to Come Down.  How Soon the Bust?

©  2019  Clifford Browder

408. From Illusions to Gas: Mo Kwon Do, Bath Bombs, and Rolfing.

BROWDERBOOKS

For two five-star reviews of my latest historical novel, The Eye That Never Sleeps, go here and scroll down.  The book's first two reviews -- too good to be true.

The e-book was released May 9.  The giveaway of 100 e-books ended May 8. There were 467 entrants, 100 of whom get the e-book.  435 people marked the book as "Want to read."  This is great exposure for the book.

 

A story of the strangest friendship that ever was: a dapper young bank thief and the detective hired by the banks to apprehend him.  For more about this and my other books, go here.  
Fascinating New Yorkers has been reviewed by The US Review of Books. Reviewer Gabriella Tutino says, "There's something for everyone here in this collection of profiles, and it serves as a source of inspiration for readers who love NYC."  For the whole review, click on US Review.

                            From Illusions to Gas: 
              Mo Kwon Do, Bath Bombs, and Rolfing


         Certain stretches of sidewalk in the city are of special interest because of the shops and restaurants that happen to cluster there.  One that I have passed a number of times jst registered with me recently: Eighth Avenue just below West 14th Street, the west side, from the Museum of Illusions to Mobil Mart, one of the few gas stations, and perhaps the only one, in Greenwich Village.  So here is what you find, walking downtown from 14th Street, between illusion and gas.


Eighth Avenue, from West 14th Street and the
Museum of Illusions south.
Tdorante 10
         First, at 77 Eighth Avenue, the Museum of Illusions, a fairly new creature whose nest of illusions I have yet to penetrate.  Its Greek-temple-like appearance is a reminder that the building once housed a bank.  The museum's website promises photo illusions, optical illusions, a chair illusion, a head-on-a-platter illusion, and a rotated room where visitors are apparently rotated, photos showing them tossed head over heels in space.  An experience for the young, this last suggests, and maybe not for me.  I don’t need to be rotated or to see my head on a platter.
         75 Eighth Avenue.  At ground level, the West Village Veterinary Hospital, its window listing its credentialed personnel, but nothing visually appealing.  And upstairs, Filipino Martial Arts, including Mo Kwon Do, whatever that may be.



Use this fileon a wiki Email a linkto this file Informationabout reusing
Mo Kwon Do in action.  Care to learn it?
         73 Eighth.  Think Coffee.  “Feel good about your coffee,” says a sign on the sidewalk, and on the street-facing window, “Our coffee restores farm workers n Nicaragua.”  How can you resist the noble urge to enter, have a cup, and do good?  But resist I did, going on to
         71 Eighth.  Olde Good Things.  In the window, a big star with blinking lights, an imitation green crocodile, a toy red truck, a three-foot-high glass coffee urn, a Waldorf Astoria silver teapot with small glasses, a tall Cinzano bottle, a towering red tyrannosaur with yellow teeth, and in the center of the window, a huge classical or pseudo-classical bust of a smirking god, with what look like vine leaves in his hair.  The god dominates.  Obviously, a fun-loving, mischievous deity, not to be trifled with.  And on the sidewalk in front, greeting visitors, a three-foot-high yellow-beaked metal rooster labeled Quaker State, the name of a motor oil.  The most arresting display on the block, but what is it?  A store – one of four in Manhattan – featuring salvaged treasures: architectural items; antique mantels, doors, and mirrors; old signs; Art Deco hardware; vintage toys and furniture – you name it.  If it’s old and interesting, they will have it, if not in one store, then another.   And upstairs in suite 2R, by way of anticlimax, is Creative License, which describes itself as a “global entertainment licensing firm.”  There’s probably another story there, but Olde Good Things has stolen the show at no. 71.  I don’t know its prices, but that quaint e tacked on to “Old” makes me suspicious.  Not for the budget-conscious, I suspect.


Olde Good Things on West 24th Street in Chelsea.
Beyond My Ken
         69 Eighth.  Tiziano Zorgan.  Italian clothing, high fashion with a vengeance.  Two manikins loom in the window, garbed in garishly bright colors.  The woman’s high heels, blatantly green/yellow, bruise the eyeball.  If you want to make a splash, go with Tiziano.  And who or what is that?  A “who,” it turns out.  His website explains: an Italian designer whose collections are manufactured 100% in his own laboratory in his native Italy, and are imbued with the Italian tradition of art and beauty.  He has another shop on Washington Street and is headquartered in a third at 380 Bleecker, my street now given over to designer clothing and stratospheric rents.  A photo shows him as sleekly bald, with a very intense look.  Lucky the West Village is to have him, especially for those seeking a trendy, color-explosive look. 
         And again, an anticlimax: in suite 1D, not noticeable from the street, is Village Rolfing, offering healing through Rolfing.  Another mystery, at least for the uninformed like me.  So what is Rolfing?  A form of alternative medicine developed by Ida Rolf, involving ten hands-on physical manipulation sessions to alleviate pain and increase energy and mobility.  And Ida Rolf herself?  An American biochemist, born in the Bronx, who created Structural Integration, or Rolfing, and died in 1979 at age 83.  A photo shows a white-haired lady with a gracious smile, a lady whom you’d like to have as a grandmother.  I hope Rolfing works.
         But we aren’t done with 69 Eighth, where another clothing store is nested:  Meg, “Women’s clothing made in your neighborhood for women by women.”  Coming right smack next to Tiziano Zorgan, Meg would seem to issue a feminist and vibrantly American challenge to this Italian intruder.  And the clothing displayed is black, tan, and gentle pink: subdued colors of quiet elegance.  The contrast couldn’t be starker.  But who is Meg?  Meg Kinney, a clothing designer who loves “urban women with big lives,” and quotes online magazine publisher Amanda Carter Gomes’s statement that “style is eternal, trends are bullshit, and still after 20 years, there is so much to learn!”  Though I’m not tempted to cross-dress, my heart goes out to her.  May she continue to thrive!
         67 Eighth.  Soapology.  In front, a sign:
                           Affordable                                    Organic                           All Natural                                    Luxury
From the doorway comes an enticing blend of aromas.  In the window stands an old four-legged bathtub with a mesh of tiny cracks, topped by a shelf with clusters of beauty products such as Massage Candles, Dead Sea Scrub, Body Cream, and Natural Perfume Oil,   To which their website adds Anti-Oxidant Face Moisturizer, Black Amber Body Lotion, Black Coconut Bath Bomb, Blue Jasmine & Sandalwood, Black Coconut Aromatic Reed Diffuser, and a host of others.  No ordinary beauty products, these.  Their proclaimed philosophy: to combine the secrets of the Old World with those of the New, to create products specially made “to the needs of the everyday modern individual.”  They want “to inspire a more nurturing and health conscious lifestyle in a fast-paced and bustling world.”  And what “everyday modern individual” will heed their call and use their products?  The well-heeled, I suspect.  The fans of Tiziano Zorgan.  I can see them flocking in their blatant green-yellow heels, maybe after a session of Rolfing.
         67 Eighth.  Caserta Eye.  Optician, glasses, contacts.  Displayed in the window are eyeglasses, Easter bunnies, chicks, and fake flowers.  Inside one sees an optician servicing a client.  The website promises unworn vintage eyeglasses and current brands.  One reviewer proclaims it “Always the best,” and another declares herself “beyond thrilled with my new Victory glasses.”
         65 Eighth.  Village Pizza.  This one is obvious, offering heros, calzones, burgers, and rolls, plus free delivery.  Toppings include meatballs, broccoli, eggplant, pineapple, pepperoni, fresh garlic, roasted peppers, anchovies, spinach, artichoke hearts, sun-dried tomatoes, and more.  If pizza is your thing, what more could you want?
         65 Eighth.  Fresh Farm.  Last on the block, a grocery offering fresh fruit and vegetables, with apples, oranges, and bananas -- some of the latter blackened -- in bins outside.

         So ends that block.  Across West 13th Street, still heading downtown, we come to Mobil Mart, where trucks and cars turn in to fill their tanks.  Satisfying the most basic of vehicular needs, the place provides a sharp end note contrasting with the pretensions of Soapology, Tiziano, Rolfing, Olde Good Things, and the Museum of Illusions.  On solid ground at last.

Coming soon: Surviving a Boss from Hell.  How my partner Bob dealt with the most obnoxious library director that ever was.

©  2019  Clifford Browder        

407. Damn the Gatekeepers, or Why I Go with Small Presses or Self-Publish

BROWDERBOOKS
The release date of The Eye That Never Sleeps was last Thursday, May 2; pre-ordered copies have now been shipped.  For the first review, go here and scroll down.  A five-star review by jetangen. 

The release date of the e-book is May 9.  The giveaway of 100 e-books ends May 8; when I last checked, 251 people had signed up.  

 

A story of the strangest friendship that ever was: a dapper young bank thief and the detective hired by the banks to apprehend him.  For more about this and my other books, go here.  
Fascinating New Yorkers has been reviewed by The US Review of Books. Reviewer Gabriella Tutino says, "There's something for everyone here in this collection of profiles, and it serves as a source of inspiration for readers who love NYC."  For the whole review, click on US Review.

          Damn the Gatekeepers, or Why I Go
           with Small Presses or Self-Publish


         Literary agents are the first gatekeepers that aspiring writers bump their head against.  Just getting to them is tricky, since they are usually overwhelmed with submissions and want no more.  And if you do get to them, the odds are against their taking your manuscript on, and if they do, the odds are against its finding a publisher.  So the big publishers’ acquisitions editors are a second round of gatekeepers that writers come up against, and in doing so usually end up bruised.
         Let’s talk about the agents.  On page 8 of the Sunday Review section of the Times of Sunday, April 21, 2019, the Loose Ends column, under the caption Literary Agents Seek Fresh Voices, is a list of what some agents are looking for as the next big thing.  Here, seemingly, is a writer’s dream: agents open to new voices and telling those voices exactly what they want.  And here, in the words of the column, are some of their “perfectly reasonable requests.”

        Neil Gaiman, but a woman, and also not so tall.        I want a writer with a sensibility at the intersection of Shel Silverstein and Milo Yiannopoulos who can whip up a mean keto cookbook.        A sexy Ursula K. Le Guin.        A Stephen King type who loves adverbs.  No clowns.        Jane Austen geared toward men who hate manners.        Anne Lamott, but make it fashion.
         And more, but why go on?  The four authors of the piece – Caitlin Kunkel, Brooke Preston, Fiona Taylor, and Carrie Wittmer – run a satirical website, so I suspect that their presentation of the agents’ requests has more than a dash of humor, and edged, satirical humor at that.  And since no agents’ names are given, I suspect that the whole thing is one big spoof at the expense of agents and their demands.
         But let’s assume that it’s for real.  If so, what gives?  For me, not much, since I don’t recognize a single one of the names mentioned by the agents, except dear Jane.  Which means that I’m not “up,” I’m not "in the swim" or "in the know."  But let’s google a few of those names, to make sure that they, at least, are real.
         They are.  Neil Gaiman is an English author of fiction, audio theater, and films.  Fair enough.  But why not so tall?  Maybe that’s the point of the spoof.


Neil Gaiman answering questions while
on a book tour in Berkeley, CA, 2005.
Jutta
         Ursula K. Le Guin is an American author of speculative fiction and fantasy.  She is about 90, looks very human, but I wouldn’t call her sexy.  Maybe the books need to be sexy, not her.


Ursula K. Le Guin at a meet-the-author
Q&A session in Albuquerque, 2004.
Hajor
         Stephen King is a prolific bestselling author of horror, supernatural fiction, suspense, sci-fi, and fantasy – precisely the genres that I don’t do.  He wears glasses, looks serious, squints, and smiles, but I’d have to read him to know if he eschews adverbs.  (Another spoof, no doubt.)  He’s 6 foot 4, but in this case his height seems not to matter.


Stephen King at the Harvard Book Store, 2006.
bunkosquad/Michael Femia
         Ann Lamott writes fiction and nonfiction about subjects beginning, as her website states, with capital letters: Alcoholism, Motherhood, Jesus.  She has signature blond dreadlocks that hang down charmingly over her forehead, and at age 65 is about to marry for the first time; she met her prospective hubby through an online matchmaking site.  Of all these authors, she’s the one I personally find the most congenial, but is she lacking in fashion?  That too is probably a spoof, but if she does lack it, that may be why I take to her and wish her well in her new real-life adventure.


Ann Lamott at the lighting ceremony for the Rainbow World Fund's World Tree of Hope, 2013, in San Francisco City Hall.
Zboralski
         Spoof or no spoof, these are my betters.  They have agents, are prolific, do book tours and (hopefully) good works, sell well.  But I don’t want to copy them – least of all with the twists supposedly stipulated by the agents – any more than I would want them to copy me.  To each his own … or hers.  I have my path, and they have theirs.  Theirs involves fame, money, and success; more power to them.  Mine is a quiet bit of endeavor involving none of those things, but it’s my path and no one else’s.  So on I plod, agentless, and contentedly so.  Because I’ve bypassed the gatekeepers.  For me, they don’t exist.  I’ve found several small presses interested in my work, and if ever they reject a manuscript I believe in, I’ll publish it myself.  Self-publishing today is relatively easy.  Admittedly, it floods the world with bad books as well as good ones, but the good ones will win out – however modestly – in time.  We unagented authors are unknown to vast multitudes of readers, but one precious thing consoles us: we are free.

          Did I ever have an agent?  Yes, several for various manuscripts, back when the gatekeepers weren't so inaccessible.  But something was always wrong with the relationship.  For instance:She never answered letters, couldn't be reached by phone.She answered letters, but never the one that I'd just written.  She must never have kept files.She promised and promised and promised to read my manuscript, never did.Unable to sell my manuscript, he returned it to me, but said he'd offer suggestions as to where I should go next.  But when I asked about those suggestions, he always put me off.  Finally I realized that he had no intention of suggesting anything, just wanted rid of me.  At that point, I wanted rid of him.Those that took on my manuscript tried their best to find a publisher; for this I have no complaint.  It was their contact with me, or the lack of it, that was troublesome.

          I rarely saw an agent face to face.  My keenest memory is one of an older woman sitting at a desk covered with manuscripts, toiling away in solitude in a tiny inner office, her door open just enough to let me sneak a peek.  Ruling the small outer office was her one assistant, a younger woman, another gatekeeper, who received or returned manuscripts; beyond her I never got.

          One thing all agents want is for a manuscript that comes their way to be exciting.  They want to come alive when they look at it, want to be unable to put it down, want to keep turning page after page.  But -- and what a But it is -- it also has to be something they can sell.  Many of them tell sad stories of loving a manuscript but having to reject it.  Why? Because it's not what the acquisitions editors of the big presses want.  So what do they want?  A woman I know who represents authors at BookExpo, the annual gathering of the book trade in New York, tells how she gets the editors' attention.  She goes to them, promo sheet in hand (a sheet listing the basic features of a manuscript), sniffs it, and says, "I smell money."  And does that ever get their attention!  Because today that's all the big presses care about: money, and big money at that.  They want to drown in it, and I hope they will.
          Do writers ever have good relationships with agents?  Of course. Especially if you write books that sell, and sell big.  How-to books, celebrity biographies, vampire novels, another twist on Ann Boleyn, or how I got cured of cystic fibrosis: the stuff that I don't write.  No wonder I prefer small presses and the DIY option.

         Even so, I don't resent the success of my betters; they deserve it.  I especially wish Ann Lamott well, and hope that her newfound hubby will let her keep her dreadlocks.

Coming soon: From Illusions to Gas: Mo Kwon Do, Bath Bombs, and Rolfing.  

©  2019   Clifford Browder

Eye cover

406. Banks: Spiky Shafts and Swimming Pools Today

BROWDERBOOKS

For the first review of The Eye That Never Sleeps, go here and scroll down.  A five-star review by jetangen.
Countdown:  As of 7:30 a.m. today, 4 days, 1 hour, 30 minutes until the release of The Eye That Never Sleeps, at which point all pre-ordered books will be shipped. (Assuming the publisher starts shipping at 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.  But he may have started already.)  And the giveaway of 100 e-books continues: when I last checked, 198 people had signed up.  It ends May 8.

 

A story of the strangest friendship that ever was: a dapper young bank thief and the detective hired by the banks to apprehend him.  For more about this and my other books, go here.  
Fascinating New Yorkers has been reviewed by The US Review of Books.  Reviewer Gabriella Tutino says, "There's something for everyone here in this collection of profiles, and it serves as a source of inspiration for readers who love NYC."  For the whole review, click on US Review.



              THE  PALATIAL  BANKS  OF  YORE                          SPIKY  SHAFTS  AND                      SWIMMING  POOLS  TODAY

         The Sunday Times Real Estate section is rarely visited by me, for what do I know or care about real estate?  But the Real Estate section of the Times of April 21, 2019, caught my eye, for there on the front page was a big picture of the corner of West 14th Street and Eighth Avenue, where I tread almost daily.  Featured in the photo were two landmarked corner buildings: on the southwest corner, the new Museum of Illusions, and across the street on the northwest corner, a CVS pharmacy.  Both buildings are in the classical style, their columned façades vaguely reminiscent of the Parthenon, a style not particularly appropriate for a modern museum or a CVS.  As one might guess, they were once banks – the New York County National Savings Bank and the New York Savings Bank.  That was back when banking was a boring business, prudent and sedate, that preferred Greek-temple-like façades that oozed dignity and respect.  Ah, those good old days!
         So why are these buildings on the front page of the Real Estate section?  Because, in their modest way, they show how the bank buildings of yore are being put to new uses.  “Vaulting Ambition” says the article’s caption.  “New developments citywide are repurposing opulent bank spaces where New Yorkers once deposited their savings.”  But these two corner structures give hardly a hint of the grandiose buildings elsewhere being transformed.
         More to the point is the palatial Dime Savings Bank in downtown Brooklyn.  A wedge-shaped building built in 1906-1908 at the intersection of DeKalb Avenue and Fleet Street, it has a narrow but impressive classical façade with four tall columns topped by a sculpted pediment.  Its sides are adorned with long rows of columns, and topping the whole structure is a soaring dome.  Seeing photos of it for the first time, I marveled at its monumental grandeur, reminiscent of the old Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan that tragically succumbed to the wrecking ball.  They don’t build buildings like the Dime today, classical monuments of dazzling majesty, their vast ornamental spaces ill adapted to the needs of today.
The Dime before renovations.
Daderot
        And that is just the exterior.  Online photos in color reveal the breathtaking beauty of the interior: a high ceiling decorated with ornate hexagons, from which hang chandeliers; a rotunda of twelve Corinthian columns of Greek marble inlaid with silver dimes and topped by a dome; marble benches; and inscribed in marble,
HE  IS  RICHENOUGH  WHOOWES  NOTHING
And in the center of the rotunda is a large copper clock that visitors used to flock around.

The rotunda.
Glenda Altarejos
The copper clock.
Steven Bornholtz
         When first setting foot in such an atmosphere, customers must have felt awed, humbled, and overwhelmed, though with time they surely adjusted to grandeur and learned to do their banking unmindful of the splendor around them.  Just as hurrying travelers, myself among them, ignored the soaring majesty of the old Penn Station in Manhattan, as they rushed to catch their train.
         To create a home of such magnificence, the Dime Savings Bank of Brooklyn must have evolved from its humble beginnings in 1859, when it announced that one could open a savings account with a dime.  As the city of Brooklyn grew and flourished, so did the bank.  By 1884 it had over 40,000 customers depositing more than $12 million.  Which explains why, in the next century, it could expand into the vast, dazzling, and totally impractical magnificence of its final home.
         So what brought it to its lowly status today?  By 2016, ATMs and digital banking had done this palace in, and since then its landmarked Beaux-Arts interior has sat idle.  Meanwhile its new owner, Chase, moved into a lowly storefront across the street, a tenth the size of the abandoned Dime, and sold the building to a developer.  Today, palatial and grandiose are out; practical and dinky are in.
         So it would seem, but not quite, for the spacious and imposing Dime is being reborn as part of 9 DeKalb, Brooklyn’s tallest skyscraper, a 1,066-foot, 73-floor luxury apartment building now under construction with retail at its base.  The bank's splendid Beaux-Arts interior will become a flagship store topped by a roof with an outdoor lounge plus swimming pool wrapped around an ornate dome.  The bank’s marble and pink granite façade will be joined on one side in unholy matrimony to a skinny glass-and-steel tower housing 425 rentals and 150 condo apartments.  A Manhattanite, I have never laid eyes on the Dime, but a photo shows a skinny penile erection jabbing into the stratosphere, dwarfing a domed structure huddled at its base.  Once grand and imposing, as a part of 9 DeKalb the Dime now looks puny and squat.
The beginning of construction, but as yet no tower.
Griss.Jr         And what is behind these conversions?  The bank's being ornate, seemingly so passé, so nineteenth-century, doesn’t hurt.  As one developer observes, if you’re seen as a big, bad developer barging into a gentrifying neighborhood, monumental architecture can appeal to the richies moving in.  Being close to a subway station or two also helps.  And then there’s the matter of air rights.  These old banks were built before changes in zone allowed for greater height and density.  So right there above a bank is a lot of empty air just begging to be used.  By buying the unused air rights above a bank, and the lot adjacent to it, a developer can build bigger or taller or both on the adjacent lot.  So once again, in this age of sprouting high-rises, the sky’s the limit.
         Other such developments are transforming the old banking palaces of Brooklyn, but Manhattan is not exempt.  Metro Life, a development company that has completed 14 conversions, is doing another one at 20 Broad Street.  “Wait a minute,” says the history buff in me, “isn’t 20 Broad Street the address of the New York Stock Exchange?”  Indeed it is, but also the address of a 29-story tower housing the Exchange’s offices that is right smack next to the Greek-temple-like façade of the Stock Exchange itself.  (American money seems to have had an unnatural affinity for Greek temples.)  But surely the Stock Exchange, that Beaux-Arts Parthenon dedicated to the worship of money, isn’t up for grabs?  That building, and all it stands for, is to America what Notre Dame de Paris is to la belle France.  But that tower no longer serves the Exchange.  Last September it opened in its new persona as a residential tower with 533 luxury apartments starting at $2,685 a month.  And below street level are two vaults once used to store stocks and bonds; one will now hold electrical equipment, and the other will become a lounge for residents.

         So it goes.  In banking, grand and magnificent have yielded to plain and practical.  But the remnants of grand and magnificent have a new life joined to the spiky shafts of modernity, and the de luxe amenities offered to the rich.

Coming soon:  Maybe something about agents and me.  Maybe something about the Museum of Illusions, Filipino martial arts, Soapology, and Rolfing.

©  2019   Clifford Browder

405. Monster among Monsters: The Shed

BROWDERBOOKS

Countdown:  As of 7:15 a.m. today, 1 week, 4 days, 1 hour, 45 minutes until the release of The Eye That Never Sleeps, at which point all pre-ordered books will be shipped. (Assuming the publisher starts shipping at 9 a.m. Eastern Standard Time.)  And the giveaway of 100 e-books is in full swing: when I last checked, 168 people had signed up.

 

A story of the strangest friendship that ever was: a dapper young bank thief and the detective hired by the banks to apprehend him.  For more about this and my other books, go here.  
Fascinating New Yorkers has been reviewed by The US Review of Books.  Reviewer Gabriella Tutino says, "There's something for everyone here in this collection of profiles, and it serves as a source of inspiration for readers who love NYC."  For the whole review, click on US Review.

SMALL TALK: My Five Essentials, things I cannot do without.
In no particular order:
 Bread Trees Books Sleep Hope
1. My mainstay in the morning.  Needn't be gluten-free, since I'm not allergic to gluten.
2.  Since childhood, when I climbed riverbank willows and stared in fascination at the giant cottonwood overlooking our house.  Would it ever topple and crush us?  But it rippled in the noon breeze, flashing spots of silver.
3.  I was a bookworm from an early age, and it cost me jeers and insults, and the nickname "Glasses."
4.  Even in the City That Never Sleeps, I've got to have my eight hours daily.
5.  The past is horrors, and the present, problematic; but tomorrow ... 

Do you have five things you absolutely cannot do without? What are they?

                              Monster among Monsters:

                            The Shed

         The New York Times is Shed-obsessed.  By “the Shed,” of course, I mean the Shed in Hudson Yards, the multi-million-dollar 28-acre real-estate development on the West Side of Manhattan between West 41st and 30thStreets.  Built on a platform covering a storage yard used by trains of the Long Island Rail Road, the site sends soaring glass and steel boxes skyward so they can house luxurious residential units and office space for the world’s ruling class.  By way of contrast, the low-rise Shed itself huddles among these heaven-scratching Titans, though "huddle” may suggest some squat architectural monstrosity, which hardly describes this hulking structure, a monster among monsters.  The huge bulk of it, to judge from photographs, rises above mere tourist mortals like a Mongolian yurt, or better still, a quilted sleeping bag for an outsized mammoth.  And if the sheer size of it says money, the towering glass and steel giants in its proximity fairly scream it.  Hudson Yards is all about money.  Big money for a big project in a city that celebrates BIG.


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        I have yet to visit the site, but photographs and articles convey a lot.  I say the Times is Shed-obsessed because it can’t get enough of it.  The thing rated an article by Ginia Bellafante in the Metropolitan section of the Sunday Times of April 7, 2019, entitled “The Shed as Dispensation From Capital Sin,” with “Capital” used in the sense of – you guessed it – money.   And in the same issue of the Times, on the first page of the Real Estate section (which I rarely read), is C.J. Hughes’s article “Giants Within A City of Giants,” comparing Hudson Yards to another huge development, Battery Park City.  And in the Travel section, Sebastian Modak's article "New, Strange and Familiar, It's Still New York," recounts his attempt to walk the whole twelve-mile length of Manhattan in a single day (he got as far as Harlem).  En route, he took a look at Hudson Yards and the Vessel (a $200 million stairway to nowhere, mentioned below), and concluded that Hudson Yards is New York trying to be Dubai.

          And that's just the Times of April 7.  All this on top of Zachary Woolfe’s article, “A Shed Is Born,” starting on the front page of the Arts & Leisure section of the Sunday Times of March 31, 2019, whose inside pages also offered Michael Cooper’s article “Can the Shed Redeem Hudson Yards?”  Given the words “Dispensation,” “Capital Sin," and “Redeem,” one gathers that some gross offense has been committed, with the Shed as a possible gesture of redemption.  What gives?  The whole saga of Hudson Yards, it would seem.
         The best place to begin is Michael Cooper’s article, with the subtitle “How an arts center grew amid a Dubai-like development,” supplemented at times by details from that indispensable and infallible source, Wikipedia.
         It all began under Mayor Michael Bloomberg, when New York’s failure to get the Olympics left it with a rezoned district on the West Side and a rather vague plan to build some kind of cultural institution on a small parcel of city-owned land.  Brainstorming sessions with artists and others influential in the arts came up with the idea of a flexible project that would let artists, dancers, musicians, and theater people all work together.  So architectural firms were asked to design an undefined cultural entity that would be flexible.  They came up with an eye-catching feature, a sliding shell, and began referring to the structure as the Culture Shed.  In 2013 the mayor tossed in $75 million of city money and later added $75 million of his own.  It was all still undefined – a nice word for "vague" – and skeptics scoffed, while other biggies in the arts world, fighting to keep their own projects afloat in difficult times, seethed with jealousy. 
         In 2014 an artistic director was finally named: Alex Poots (rhyming with “snoots”), the British-born founder of the Manchester International Festival, who as artistic director of the Park Avenue Armory had made that venerable institution a hot new venue for must-see, cutting-edge art.  He declined the job at first, but then, having imposed certain conditions, accepted it and began making drastic changes:
·      The name was changed from “Culture Shed” to “Shed.”·      Seating capacity was increased.·      Better soundproofing was installed.·      The building was reoriented, so that it faced east instead of north.·      The Vessel, a shiny stairway to nowhere beloved of selfie-takers, was added to the north side.·      A tower was added to the structure, its first ten floors providing back offices and storage spaces for the Shed.

The Plaza, with the Vessel, like a stack of pretzels, on the left.
 Epicgenius
         Clearly, Mr. Poots too is thinking BIG, and that means BIG money is needed.  So far, the Shed has raised $529 million, but it still needs more and will have to compete with rival cultural institutions for philanthropic support, a matter that its supporters are reluctant to discuss in detail.  And it needs to define itself.  Is it the northernmost part of the popular High Line, the elevated park built over a stretch of abandoned railroad tracks?  Or is it a part of Hudson Yards, that glossy, much-ballyhooed clutch of towers and condos that includes a seven-story mall where a haircut can cost $800?  Which brings us back to sin and redemption.
Greaper37
         Those soaring towers sprouted by the Hudson Yards are doing anything to stand out, to be different: some rise at an angle, some curve.  Why?  Because every corporate tenant wants to “have brand.”  And who are those tenants?  Coach, L’Oréal, Neiman Marcus, KKR, Warner Media, Wells Fargo Securities, and DNB, for a start.  And if some of these names are unfamiliar, it means that you’re not “on trend,” you aren’t “in the know,” your knowledge of the upscale, whether corporate or retail, is deficient.  (As mine is, by the way.)  If you google “Hudson Yards” on the Internet, you’ll be immersed in flashy images that pop your eyes from their sockets.  It’s all luxury apartments, fancy restaurants, gourmet groceries, glitz.  Hudson Yards welcomes the trendy and the moneyed.  Especially the latter, because without moolah you’ll feel out of place.  But money, as we all know from both tradition and experience, is dirty; $ = sin.  And that’s where the Shed, which has just opened to the public, comes in.  It appears like a knight in armor, a radiant redeemer, a haloed savior … it is hoped.
         Those towers twist and curve and soar; the Shed crouches.  Its appeal isn’t to the trendy – at least, not to the moneyed trendy, but to ordinary, selfie-prone visitors on a budget.  Tickets to events there are priced as low as $10, restaurants are reasonable, and the lobby is oriented not toward grandeur but utility.  And the theater offerings include “Art and Civil Disobedience” and a woman-centered celebration of radical art entitled “Powerplay,” both of them in conjunction with DIS OBEY, a program for high school students from underserved communities that focuses on social protest through poetry.  Like the multi-level structure itself, theater in the Shed is thumbing its nose at the rest of Hudson Yards and the elite who come there to shop or reside.
         So will this venture redeem Hudson Yards from capital sin?  It’s too soon to tell.  But there are complications and ambiguities.  The Ginia Bellafante article points out that one theater in the Shed is named for its benefactor, Kenneth C. Griffin, a hedge-fund manager.  Recently Mr. Griffin bought a penthouse on Central Park South for $238 million, the most ever paid for a residence in this country.  The Shed, Ginia Bellafante concludes, is like a generous birthday gift from the rich man who stole your wife.

         Meanwhile Hudson Yards, aglow with dazzle, is still being built.  The anticipated completion date: 2026.  Well, what's the hurry?  We can wait.

404. Oceanscapes Like You've Never Seen: Michael McLaughlin

                                            GIVEAWAY                            100       100       100       100       100                                                    e-books                                                       of
 
This Goodreads giveaway is open for entries from April 12 to May 8, 2019.  If you want an e-book, here's your chance; the winners will be announced after May 8.  So far, 118 people have signed up, but plenty more will do so in the next 24 days.  But if you want a real print book, one you can touch and sniff and read voraciously, or put on a shelf to be looked at and gather dust, pre-order it now for delivery on the print book release date, May 2.
     Oceanscapes Like You've Never Seen:                   Michael McLaughlin
         It had been a long time since I had attended gallery opening,  but what could be more New York?  It wouldn’t be a big gala affair studded with celebrities, for the Robin Rice Gallery at 325 West 11th Street – just two and a half blocks from my building – is a small gallery featuring photography and open only certain hours on certain days of the week.  I had already mentioned this gallery in my blog, briefly in post #365 and more substantially in post #401.  It was near me, and I had glimpsed the photographer’s work the previous Sunday and wanted to see it again, together with whatever kind of a crowd the opening might draw.  And I might even meet the photographer himself, whose name appeared in an e-mail that the gallery had sent me, along with the title of the show:
Michael McLaughlin41 Degrees LatitudeApril 10-June 12, 2019
The opening was scheduled for 6 to 8 p.m. on Wednesday, April 10, so on that day, having had a light snack at home, I went.
         My first discovery – really a rediscovery -- upon arriving at the gallery: openings aren’t for serious displays of art; they are gabfests.  The small gallery was crowded with people, including one scampering child and one infant in arms, who seemed to all know each other.  Standing with their backs to the walls and the photos, and holding a small plastic cup of wine, they were fiercely jabbering away.  The photos themselves, thirteen of them and large, hung on the walls, unobserved, except for me and a Chinese lady, who maneuvered as best we could, so as to get clear of the jabberers and see the photos themselves.
         Ah, the photos!  Large.  Portrait style, meaning vertical, and not horizontal like a landscape.  Devoid of people and objects, and almost devoid of color.  Oceanscapes, so the gallery had informed me, taken by the photographer while standing in water at a beach in Rhode Island moments before dusk or dawn, and using long exposures.  At first glance the previous Sunday I had taken them for abstractions, but now I knew better.  Expanses of dark and light gray, or sometimes a misty vague bluish white, with a trace of light at the horizon.  In two of them a curl of foam could be seen, but otherwise one could barely make out the sea.  And two of them were so uniformly dark blue as to blur the scene completely.  Challenging, notable for what they left out, unique.  At first glance the previous Sunday, when I was the only viewer, I had thought at once: Whistler.  For he had done landscapes that were a study in color and little else.
         At the far end of the gallery was a heavyset man in his fifties, wearing a scarf and glasses like me, surrounded by friends and acquaintances who kept him busy with hugs and chatter: Michael McLaughlin, the photographer.  Since he had a broad, toothy smile that seemed cordial and welcoming, I inched closer, and when he said good-bye to young couple with their infant in arms, I addressed him.
         “They’re painterly,” I said.  “When I first saw them last Sunday, without the gabfest, I thought: Whistler.”         This sparked his interest at once: a stranger who had actually looked at his photographs!  I went on.         “I’ve never seen anything like them.  They’re unique.”         “I’m glad to hear you say that,” he replied.  “That’s what I was aiming at.”         I then told him about my blog and said I would do a post on the opening and his photographs; he was delighted.         “I’m Mike,” he said.         “I’m Cliff.”         We exchanged cards, and I identified myself as a transplanted Midwesterner who was now a committed New Yorker, incapable of living anywhere else.
         “I’ve just been out there” he said.  “In Nebraska and Indiana.”
         I told him I had relatives in Indiana, and we agreed that Midwesterners are good people, friendly, laid back, genuine, quite the opposite of intense, fast-paced New Yorkers.  But he too, Brooklyn-born, identified himself as a New Yorker, even though he travels a lot and did these photographs in Rhode Island.  And we agreed that New York was not for everyone; you lived here because you couldn’t live anywhere else.
         On this note we parted, and after a last lingering glance at some of the photos – those that weren’t blocked by the gabbers – I departed. 
         Why the title: 41 Degrees Latitude?  Because that is the latitude of the beaches in Rhode Island where the photos were taken.  And the prices?  Either $2500 or $3000.  For everyone to look at, but not for everyone to buy.  But I wish Mr. McLaughlin well.  His opening – his sixth at that gallery -- had been a good experience, a real New York affair, a discovery, an adventure. 
Coming soon:  Monster among Monsters: The Shed©   2019   Clifford Browder

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