Languid Urbanism

My fondest memory from my trip three months ago to New Orleans was walking through the side streets of the Bywater neighborhood on a sticky weekday night with two good friends. We were walking in the middle of the streets because there were barely any cars driving past or any sidewalks on the side of the road, which is apparently quite common there. (I've tried to adopt this around JP, but it's harder.) The small houses were very colorful and a few kids played in the neighborhood park. With the sun setting, it felt as though we were in a remote Southern corner rather than a city that, even if it's a fraction of the size it was 10 years ago, is one of the country's best known. When I returned in the mornings to my business conference and heard of people's trips through the French Quarter, I knew that my friends had shown me exponentially cooler times. (Among other things, we unknowingly dined next to Michael Fassbender at Maurepas Foods' bar.)


New Orleans' mix of people is inimitable: there are so many leisure and business tourists like me that the French Quarter felt a bit like Cusco;  there are also old-time wealthy and poor white people, old-time wealthy and poor black people, ambitious young professionals who want to help rebuild the cit, and young punk-rockers who can live cheaply (or squat) and push the boundaries because a fair amount of the city is still unattended. These aren't necessarily reconcilable demographics.

When I toured a few housing developments one afternoon, I saw the immaculately new apartment complex next door to broken-down houses and tastefully renovated shotgun houses next door to gutted, abandoned houses. As nice as the latter was, why invest on a street when the rest of it is absent? This is certainly one of the knottiest questions in urban planning, which was thoroughly debated in Hurricane Katrina's aftermath, with multiple rebuilding plans that had various levels of sensitivity. Those who remain often want to stay because their lifelong community is still theirs, even if it's in disrepair . And some of those remain don't have another option, are the most vulnerable, and are in need of care. I get it and sympathize deeply, but looking at it in the moment also exposes the ambiguity. When the pace of a city moves so slowly, to where should we divert the currents?

Above are photos from New Orleans of a salvage construction materials store and of the latter juxtaposition of new investment and ignored, washed-away investment.

Ladies And Gentleman, The Bronx Is Gentrifying

Adam Davidson, in his recent Times Magazine column analyzing why the Bronx hasn't gentrified at the same clip as Brooklyn (or even Queens), may have expertly summarized turn-of-the-century urban development in one quick swoop: "These neighborhoods [in Brooklyn] fell on hard times during the 1970s, but their expensive [housing] stock was perfectly positioned for revitalization as the Manhattan boom of the past few decades pushed young professionals across the river. The Bronx, however, never developed its own economic drivers. It became, by the late 19th century, a haven for immigrants attracted to (but unable to afford) Manhattan. The borough developed far fewer wealthy areas, and many neighborhoods became devoted to less-gentrifiable housing units."

If its housing stock keeps its original details, a neighborhood always at least has chance of reviving because people always care about where they live and because real estate can always appreciate. Well, that and a neighborhood's proximity to downtown via public transit. (North Brooklyn is much closer to downtown by subway than any part of the Bronx.) These two factors govern every neighborhood revitalization in major Northeastern cities. In Boston, the South End and Jamaica Plain are the classic examples, while a place like Chelsea, as much as I love its urbanism, won't be Fort Greene anytime soon (not that this is necessarily a bad thing; see my previous posts about the city) because its transit access is mediocre and its housing stock has too many decrepit triple-deckers. Charlestown's gentrification has always puzzled me -- it's so isolated that I don't understand the interest in living there. Expand one's view to the rest of America, where public transit systems are much thinner, and housing is left alone as the deciding factor. It easily explains German Village in Columbus, for example.

Thanks to Howard Cosell for inspiring the post's title, even if he apparently never truly said "Ladies and gentleman, the Bronx is burning" during a World Series broadcast that caught one of the Bronx's many late-1970s arsons in a skyline shot. As for whether the Bronx would gentrify, Davidson seems to think, Maybe one day. I think that New York's real estate market exists on some other loopy planet, devoid of any known rationality, so it'll probably happen in the next 15 years, if not 15 weeks.

From Woody Allen, With Familiar Tropes From His Oeuvre

So, "To Rome With Love," Woody Allen's newest movie isn't very good. The plot largely combines a cheerier version of "Celebrity" with "Deconstructing Harry," two of his most bitter offerings from the largely depressing turn he took in the late 1990s, with a little bit of "Mighty Aphrodite" -- a better movie from the mid-'90s -- thrown in. There are some zany comic moments, though Allen saves most of the best lines for himself, but you have to sift through a hefty amount of aimless scenes to enjoy them. Nonetheless, "To Rome With Love" also synthesizes many of Allen's most familiar themes, which, even if they aren't presented so enjoyably in this movie, resonate true and endear me to him:

* The number of beautiful women in the world is infinite. If someone as attractive as Greta Gerwig can be cast in as meaningless a supporting role as she has in "To Rome With Love," where she's only given three lines that are a variation on how nervous she is that her boyfriend, played poorly by Jesse Eisenberg, will leave her, then there must be an endless number.

* Culture's lowbrow has as much value as its highbrow. Each has pleasures that should be appreciated, whether it's shower-bound opera singers or balding Italian TV studs, as in this movie, or guilty pleasures of any stripe in music, movies, TV, and so on. Scoffing at the former because you think only the latter has meaning ultimately makes you foolish and shortsighted.

* As a corollary of the above: Knowledge can be found in all corners. It's not a surprise that Allen lets a chauffeur deliver the most lesson-filled line of the movie, in which Allen surprisingly admits that the celebrity life isn't so awful after all. Nor is it one that Penelope Cruz's high-end call girl proves to be the movie's steadiest, most instructive character. There are many different kinds of knowledge and one needs an open mind to learn.

* Death and suffering are forever in the foreground of life. That doesn't mean one needs to fear them, but one should acknowledge them and adjust life's daily rhythms accordingly.

* Be restless. Allen's character here equates retirement with death. That's a bit hyperbolic, but I like the idea of releasing a movie (or the white-collar equivalent) every year into my late 70s. Head to the top and then stay there.

Above is the trailer for "To Rome With Love." At this point in his career, Allen probably doesn't have to invest much in trailers -- you already know if you're going -- which is evident here.

Yogurt Is So Hot Right Now

Leave it to the Times' business section to write 950 words analyzing the yogurt market's explosion. If the story weren't so boring, it would be ripe for parody -- the long-missing "wanna have it" factor of yogurt and the Greek variety's chalkiness; PepsiCo's joint venture with a Saudi Arabian private equity firm to buy out a Russian dairy company; the cola wars becoming yogurt wars; stock analysts sweating about Pepsi's infamous healthy foods strategy; and so on. Since when is dairy a growth market? Doesn't every infant eat it? My life sounds so boring when even my choice of snack is reduced to average consumption rates, packaging that promotes ease of eating, and growth potential.

Fortunately I've been religiously eating yogurt from Sidehill Farm the past few months. Their maple and vanilla varieties are the creamiest yogurt I've ever had (talk about the "wanna have it" factor) and their packaging has a very cute cow with either a maple leaf or vanilla flower in her mouth, as well as a little narrative about how their cows stay happy! Sidehill is a small farm in Ashfield, Mass., and I buy their yogurt at City Feed, where it was discounted for all of June. When you stop over-thinking and eat food that's made well rather than targeted to focus groups, it just tastes better.

Above is a photo from Sidehill Farm's Facebook page of their baby cows' first grazing trip during the spring. There are more adorable ones on their page.

Thank You, Homage

Maybe one day Jon Caramanica will tweak Homage for designing T-shirts that are a tad too long -- one of those slight digs that he loves to give to tastefully nostalgic retailers in his shopping reviews in Thursday Styles. It seems plausible enough to me that Homage could reach such heights, with a store on the Lower East Side and a profile big enough to catch the Times' attention. Their calling card of comfortable, well-made T-shirts featuring vintage sports logos is easily appealing and easily adaptable across state lines. They sometimes stare into the Urban Outfitters abyss with cheeky catchphrases, such as one encouraging you to surf the Olentangy (which is impossible), but they never jump into it because they root their shirts so deeply in Midwestern places, times and sports. I could easily see the model applied to small colleges, minor league teams and minor celebrities in any state, though their authenticity is solid because they're Ohio kids making Ohio T-shirts.

When I was in their store on Brickel two weekends ago, there was more bros than I was expecting. But at the same time, I was also quite happy for the founders: Two years ago, their profile was quite low. I discovered their shirts in the Columbus Clippers' gift shop at Huntington Park. Now, their store is always crowded and I have four shirts -- the Clippers, Riverfront Stadium, the Toledo Rockets, and the Ohio State University. There's nothing wrong with Columbus kids blowing up, especially when their T-shirts are so fun to wear. I think they could easily have successful stores in Cleveland, Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, and maybe another Big Ten university town in the next year. From there, who knows?

Above is Homage's collection of Clippers T-shirts. I own the one in the top left corner.

What Does Anyone Want But To Feel A Little More Free?, Part N+1

Ellen Barry, the Times' Moscow bureau chief, published a news analysis in Wednesday's paper, positing why Russia's president, Vladmir Putin, has been so adamantly opposed to foreign intervention in Syria's cruel civl war. Is it because of his KGB days, when he watched the Soviet Union dissolve? His distaste for the post-Soviet states' "color revolutions" during the last decade, when the West supported administrations that turned away from Russia? Or maybe he doesn't want to lose the large arms buyer that Russia has in Syria?

But isn't the answer much simpler: That eventually Russia's growing, liberal middle class will rebel against the country's thin democracy in such numbers that Putin (or a like-minded successor) will have to face the same choice of repression or resignation, and he won't want the West to intervene when he chooses the military as his defense? And can't the same be said to explain China's support of Syria these days, on perhaps an even larger scale? This probably a very simplistic opinion, but I think Putin's administration recognizes that this is in the realm of possibility and it needs to keep all of its options available. Strategy is sometimes only self-preservation, no?

Thanks to Godspeed You! Black Emperor for again giving this post's title.