1920 Wall Street Bombing

On September 16th, 1920 a horse drawn wagon carrying 500 lbs of explosives was detonated on Wall St. killing 33 and injuring 400 people.

Yesterday I took a small walk down Wall St. to see the damage. 90 years later there are still marks left on the building as evidence of the attack on the financial district (pictured above). 23 wall has always been the headquarters of JP Morgan Inc. Also seen from that intersection are the New York Stock Exchange and Federal Hall.

No reason for the attack was put forth, but Russian communist and Italian immigrant groups were widely blamed. The bombers were never caught although even today on the historic landmark sign out in front, the incident is still being attributed to unknown and ubiquitous "Anarchist" factions.

Brooklyn Promenade

Brooklyn Heights is the oldest neighborhood in Brooklyn. In 1834 when the borough was formed, the Heights was still called Brooklyn Village. It still has that quiet feel of a nice town. It was the neighborhood where the Huxtables from the Cosby Show lived and it looks like it. With shady tree-lined streets and old Brownstones, on any given afternoon it feels like a Sunday afternoon. In the mid-nineteenth century, residents were known to feel a bit superior to the "dirty industrial" (at least Walt Whitman did) city across the harbor, and much of New York's founding families called Brooklyn Heights home. (The names of the streets still bear their names...Hicks, Degraw, etc.)

The area is called the Heights because of its location atop a bluff, once its defining feature. After Robert Moses failed to bulldoze through the cities elite for his BQE highway project, the bluff was to become another defining feature and one of my favorite places to sit and drink a cup of coffee. The highway route was moved to just below the Bluff and the view from the neighborhood like so many others after Robert Moses got to them was turned into that of a motorway. Instead, the now famous Brooklyn Promenade was built.

In another great adaption to over-industrialized urban landscape, a walkway and overlook was built on the bluff to cover that stretch of the BQE and create a nice, semi-quiet park that boast of amazing views of lower Manhattan, Governor's Island, The Statue Of Liberty and the Brooklyn Bridge. It is the premier spot in Brooklyn to watch the July 4th fireworks.

The sunset from there, which I have seen 5 times in the last month, does not set perfectly over the skyline or the Statue as you might want. However, on a clear night, when the sunset turns orange, the south faces of all the Manhattan buildings reflect the color with a unique glow that has to be seen to fully appreciate.

It is almost always a quiet place to sit and even now...especially now as the weather gets a bit colder one of those sit-and-gather-your-thoughts hot spots that makes New York so special.

The Muse

"And you can stand on the arms of the Williamsburg bridge, crying 'Hey man, well this is Babylon"

-Soul Coughing-

It's been raining here is NY for a few days and I haven't gone anywhere since last weekend. So that means I've been mostly sitting at home and doing 2 of my favorite things; reading and listening to music. Then I did some digging around for lyrics about New York or from New York musicians. I found them everywhere. I was reminded of a conversation I had with a friend of mine about which city is the greatest musical city.

"Detroit", he said "it is definitely Detroit."

He was, of course from Detroit. Naturally, I took New York, but we opened the discussion up for others as well. Maybe it was Nashville, or New Orleans, San Fransisco, Austin, LA? We talked about that topic for weeks. We changed the parameters often. Did an artist have to be FROM that city or just become famous there. Neither Stevie Wonder nor Frank Sinatra were from Detroit or NY respectively, but no one would argue that they weren't iconic figures of those cities.

Then we had to figure out a time frame. We certainly were not going to compare Mozart in Salzburg with LL Cool J in Queens. So we settled on U.S cities only, any time, any type of music...much easier.

Since this is a blog about NYC, I'll spare you the whole discussion but here are some of my thoughts about music in New York.

• Stephen Foster, the great writer of the Americana aesthetic, lived and died in tenement row in the Bowery.
• George Gershwin, possibly the greatest American classical music composer was from Brooklyn...so was Aaron Copland.
• Leonard Bernstein was the youngest conductor of the New York Philharmonic and brought New York music to the world with On The Town and West Side Story.
• The world's greatest Banjo player, Bela Fleck, is from New York.
• in the 1960's Greenwich Village was the epicenter for modern folk music giving voice to Pete Seger, Joan Baez and Bob Dylan.
• The whole style of the American Musical is named after Broadway...and Tin Pan Alley.
• Jazz great Miles Davis was kicked out of Julliard.
• KRS-1, MC of the ground breaking hip-hop group Boogie Down Productions, real name is Kris Parker, the same name as a friend of mine from High School.
• There is an area of Queens called Cyprus Hill in case anyone wondered where they got their name.
• It is said that salsa music started in NY, but i honestly don't know enough to talk about it.
• John Lennon, John Lennon, John Lennon.

There is literally not enough time or space to give anywhere near a good history of music in NY. New York gave birth to Punk, gave new life to Jazz and many if its forms, has always been a center of hip-hop and dance music. Every classical musician has either lived or passed through here. Antonin Dvorak and Rachmaninoff were drawn to the city by its sophistication...The Velvet Underground and Patti Smith by its dunginess. The worlds most famous music venues are here: Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, The Blue Note, Radio City Music Hall (CBGB-we miss you).

Sifting through all the lyrics about New York from the likes of Tom Waits, James Brown, Irving Berlin, New York Dolls, Ani Difranco, etc., I realized how some of these songs touch people and can live with you for life.

Once while listening to Guitar Man in central park sing Paul Simon's The Boxer, he paused after singing these lyrics:

Asking only workman's wages/ I come looking for a job/ but I get no offers...Just a come on from the whores on 7th avenue/ I do declare, / there were times when I was so lonesome/ I took some comfort there.

He told a great story about a kid that had heard him sing that song and kept nagging his mother that he wanted to go see the "Horse" on 7th ave. That is one of my favorite New York stories.

Of all the things that connect music to New York, all the things I have wrote about, read about or experienced, there is one thing above all that makes me happiest of all...music is what brought me to New York. New York is my Muse!!!

Tibbetts Wetlands

As I start my exploration of the Bronx, the borough I am most excited about seeing, one giant fact became clear: there are giant chunks of NY I just have never been to. For example, as embarrassing as it is for me to admit, I have never been to Van Cortlandt Park...until Yesterday.

I plan on going back to see the whole park later this week, but yesterday after my trip to Indian Pond, I took a small stroll through the Bronx largest open space. After passing Van Cortlandt House Museum and a large statue of Major General Porter, I came across a vast field of weeds and overgrowth that some park goers may mistake for neglected parkland. This is part of Tibbetts Wetlands. It is home to a very large population of birds, including the Great Horned Owl. The area also houses white-tailed deer, hare, wild turkey, and recently NYC's first sighting of coyote in over 50 years.

The Wetlands surround what remains of Tibbetts Brook. The brook was dammed in 1690 by Jacobus Van Cortlandt for his two mills and formed Van Cortlandt Lake, the largest fresh water lake in the Bronx. The northern potion of the brook has been turned mostly into marshland when highway construction diverted its flow and the southern portion has been covered and used as a drainage system into the Harlem River.

Walking through the wetlands is actually very nice. There is small trail with wooden walkways over the marsh and birds are really just about everywhere. I don't know how much maintenance is done in the area, but from what i saw, people have been very respectful not to go off trail or throw any kind of debris in the protected areas.

If this is any indication of Van Cortlandt park, i can't wait to go back to see it.

Secret Pond of the Super Rich

There is a small pond in the Bronx, on top of Fieldston Hill at the end of a dead end road that is quiet, serene and nobody wants you to know it's there.

Have you ever been to Riverdale? Its a very nice neighborhood in the Bronx between Van Cortlandt Park and the Hudson River. Inside of Riverdale is a small semi-gated community that is the nicest house-only neighborhood in NYC. Walking up the hill from the last stop on the 1/9 past Manhattan College (don't ask me why Manhattan college is in the Bronx), the apartment buildings give way to large beautiful houses tucked away behind maple trees and mansions built to compliment the exposed glacial boulders.

This is Fieldston. Entering this neighborhood, there are signs warning that all non-residential vehicles will be towed. There are private security cars driving around, and the locals eyeball anyone they don't recognize. This is a small ultra-rich Westchester-like hamlet right smack in the middle of the Bronx, the borough unfairly known by most of the world as a rough crime-filled cement block...and the home of the Yankees. What they don't show you are the rows of 200 year old mansions built by New York's elite before NY was NY. This area was a separate village when the Bronx was incorporated and may as well still be. It is a very pleasant neighborhood, but i suspect most New Yorkers would resent the signs and the "your not welcome" attitude.

I wasn't there to spy on the filthy rich and ogle their homes, however. I heard a rumor that there was a hidden pond somewhere within the no-park zone. There is. Its called Indian Pond and is at the dead end of Livingston just north of 246th st. It is a very small but serene little pond enclosed by rows of trees and a low rock wall. There are a few benches to sit at...but don't even think about it. There is a sign out front warning that the pond and surrounding park is for the enjoyment of residence of Fieldston only. FUCK THAT!!!

How can you have a private pond in NYC?

What is more enraging than the protectionist attitude of elitist millionaires is that my very up-to-date map has no pond or park to mark the spot. In fact the map shows Livingston as a through road. How does this happen? How does a map company allow a community to hide a pond and a park? Who made this decision? How much does it take to make Hagstroms map company outright lie?

Thanks to the fine folks of the book and website "Forgotten New York" for showing me this spot.

Kerouac at Columbia!

I got a book a month ago called "The Beat Generation In New York". Its a NYC guidebook of 9 walking tours focusing on the history of the Beat writers...mostly Jack Kerouac. Today i followed one of these tours...loosely. I spent the day hanging out in and around Columbia with my little guidebook reading about Kerouac and his buddies' college years.

I didn't follow the tour point by point (who really needs to see the facade of an apartment building). But the exercise of walking tours gives you a feeling of the scene and in my case a feeling of nostalgic attachment with those writers, those places and those stories. I went to school about a mile south of Columbia but lived in 3 separate apartments on the westside above 100th street, so I do have a personal history there as well.

Its a bit funny to me that the Beat writers went to such a stuffy University. But i guess it is just a reminder that most of the writers from that era were in fact from wealthy families and their Dharma-Bum reputations were the design of a conscious effort to strip themselves of their privilege...or at least take their clean-cut past to rebel against.

Years later in 1959, when the Beats were formally recognized and had become controversial literary figures, they were invited to speak to an overflowing audience at Dodge Hall, they had fully realized their dirt-of-the-earth aesthetic. In a scathing review of the evening the wife of Ginsberg's Professor Lionel Trilling wrote, "I took one look at the crowd and was certain it would smell bad." Certainly a notice a rebellious poet could be proud of!

At Columbia, Kerouac met Allen Ginsberg, Lucien Carr, Hal Chase, William Burroughs, Lawrence Ferlinghetti and many others. This group was the core of what became the Beat Generation. Their heavy literature background, mixed with normal collegiate rejection of authority and a heavy dose of the dark side of life (i.e. murder, drugs, jail) and a world ready for a little post-war social upheaval, and the rest is history.

Walking through Columbia with my handy guidebook, I saw:

• St. Paul's Chapel where Lucien Carr told Kerouac and Burroughs that he had just stabbed David Kammerer, a known stalker of Carr's.
• Hamilton Hall where Ginsberg wrote graffiti in the dirt on his windows...and act that got him expelled.
• Hartly Hall and Livingston Hall-buildings that Kerouac lived in.
• 114th and 115th street-streets that the group lived on and wrote about extensively. 114th is a street i was once nearly attacked by a drunk who tripped over a fire hydrant while running to grab me.

The group hung out often at a local pub "The West End", a bar I often frequented at roughly the same age as Kerouac. A different bar in the 1990's where i would go every weekend to watch a friend's Jazz quintet, Ginsberg remembers the stiff moralled Irish bartenders that thought all students were communists. HA!

Walking these street without a story, I guess is just a walk. A walk that most of us do everyday. With a story or 10, a walk can be thousands of times more fulfilling. New York is full of stories. They are everywhere. Today was fun, because i could compare a few of my own stories with a few of more historical importance. Kerouac wrote about 115th street imagining himself walking down the street years later:

"In years to come I shall walk down this street, this stage, and look at it in retrospect. It shall not then be a part of the present, but a reminder of the past to me. I shall value it and love it for what it once meant."

Well said Jack...the perfect sentiment for my day and my Farewell Tour.

Brooklyn Botanical Gardens

This Sunday I went to the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens for the first time in about 7 years, and went with a friend that has lived in NY longer than I have that had never been there.

It was a great day for mid-October but it was still a few months too late to appreciate all the trees and plants in full bloom. It took about 2 hours to walk around and see most of what was there without spending much time at any one exhibit. I think that's how most people enjoy the gardens...just taking a nice leisurely stroll.

My favorite exhibit the first time I went was still my favorite exhibit now: the Bonsai collection. We also saw the Shakespeare gardens with over 80 plants mentioned in his writing, the Fragrance gardens for the blind fully equipped with braille plant markers and the Japanese Hill.

The 52 acre gardens has been up and running since 1910 and continues to be a great little weekend adventure. I want to get up to the Bronx Botanical Gardens soon to compare.