At Mayor Bill de Blasio’s January 1 inauguration, speaker after speaker cataloged the inequalities of 21st-century New York (which are real, but would provoke envy in Oliver Twist). There were frequent references to the city as it existed before Mayors Mike Bloomberg and Rudy Giuliani; we were wistfully transported back to the days of Fiorello La Guardia and David Dinkins, when New York was just about piss and grime, not piss and grime and runaway wealth.
The shorthand for that New York was once “the bad old days.” In 1990, during Dinkins’s tenure, an astonishing 2,245 murders were committed in New York City, compared to 332 last year. How this precipitous decline in violence was achieved is a matter of intense debate—CompStat, broken windows policing, gentrification, abortion—but let’s leave that to the social scientists and acknowledge that the bad old days have long since past. A good development, one would think. But de Blasio’s inauguration was suffused with nostalgia for the bad old days. Indeed, the reflexive nostalgia for uglier, more “authentic” times infects most conversations one has about New York with other New Yorkers.
And it isn’t just New York. Everywhere, everywhere, one finds pessimism about the future, despite declining violence; rising wealth in India, China, Vietnam, and other once poor countries; and jaw-dropping advances in science and technology. The world is a vastly better place than it was 50 years ago. But the wealthy, educated, and impossibly right-thinking are bullish on the past, smearing Vaseline on the lens, lamenting a bygone era that probably never existed.
******
For those of us living in large urban centers, irrational nostalgia is unavoidable. Products made in the most cumbersome, time-intensive way—the artisanal processes that artisans once found tedious and unprofitable—are mindlessly celebrated and presumed to be “better” than mass-produced alternatives, even when they’re not. Science is celebrated when deployed in the Richard Dawkins way, against the rubes, but considered monstrous when transforming the “natural” into the “unnatural” (the genetic modification of plants).
Indeed, every topic is liable to get the it-was-better-before treatment. A few months ago, I had an argument with a friend, a brilliantly smart Los Angeles-based producer and television flunkie. At a dinner with other television flunkies—during which I acted as the sole representative of planet Earth—the conversation wandered onto the topic of childbirth, which many at the table had endured.
“I opted for a natural childbirth,” one woman said brightly.
“But natural in a hospital, surrounded by trained professionals ready to prevent a natural disaster?”
“Yes, but no drugs. None of that unnecessary, elective, intrusive stuff. I mean, people had children before epidurals, before all of this needless equipment. How do you think women had children in the 19th century?”
“And what was the infant mortality rate in, say, 1890?”
Well, yes, it was quickly conceded, there is that. (Incidentally, the infant mortality rate was 150 per 1,000 live births in 1890. It’s 6.1 today, a number often considered scandalous for a First World country.)
Food and medicine were once natural, and the city was once real. And like the medical profession and the food industry, New York has been spoiled by rapacious profit-mongers and hypercapitalists. Sure, in 1980s New York the possibility of randomly being stabbed in the spine might have been distressingly high, but wasn’t the increased likelihood of permanent disability the stuff that motivated great art?
After the quintessentially New York musician Lou Reed died last year, newspaper eulogies often doubled as eulogies for a more interesting New York. The Guardian complained that Reed’s “old haunts have been overtaken by sushi restaurants and parking lots.” Salon.com sighed that “the denizens of ‘I’m Waiting for My Man’ and ‘Walk on the Wild Side’ were priced out of Manhattan and gentrified Brooklyn. The grindhouses of Time Square were replaced with Disney Stores and TGI Fridays.” Fewer lamented the lost New York of Reed’s masterpiece “Street Hassle,” where dead junkies are dumped on the street (“and by morning, she’s just another hit and run”), or of his 1989 song “Romeo had Juliette,” which charted Manhattan’s collapse into poverty and crime. (And the rent was still too damn high: “This room cost 2,000 dollars a month / you can believe it man, it’s true.”)
Indeed, Reed was contemporaneously chronicling—not so much celebrating—bad old New York. In the 1980s, writer Kathy Acker argued that New York had collapsed from neglect, angry that those who stayed in the city did so because they couldn’t afford to leave. The rich were, by her estimation, guilty of abandoning the city: “New York City is a pit-hole: Since the United States government, having decided that New York City is no longer part of the United States of America, is dumping...all the people they don’t want (artists, poor minorities and the media in general) on the city and refusing the city federal funds; the American bourgeoisie has left. Only the poor: artists, Puerto Ricans who can’t afford to move...inhabit this city.”
Sure, the possibility of being stabbed in the spine might have been distressingly high, but wasn’t the increased likelihood of permanent disability the stuff that motivated great art?
But all of that is forgotten, replaced by denunciations of “Disneyfication.” In every issue, New York magazine asks a notable New Yorker a series of questions, including the standard “Which do you prefer, the old Times Square or the new Times Square?” To cite a random recent example, actress and West Village denizen Patricia Clarkson offered the expected and acceptable answer: “Old Times Square. It just didn’t seem like a theme park.” Because there is a correct answer, of course.
Nostalgia for a better past is a constant in the literature of New York. During his inaugural address, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer cited E.B. White, author of the classic paean to the city Here is New York. But read White’s celebration of Manhattan and you’ll find a yearning for the good old days. In 1949, White noted that the great hall of Grand Central Station was “one of the more inspiring interiors in New York,” that is, “until Lastex and Coca-Cola got into the temple” and commercialized it. (For author Henry Miller, writing a decade earlier, there wasn’t enough advertising in New York compared to his beloved Paris: “There are no advertisements of Pernod Fils or Amer Picon or Suze or Marie Brizard or Zigzag,” he huffed in his scathing letter-cum-essay Aller Retour New York. “The walls are bare…”)
And White’s account of the changing cityscape will sound familiar to those bemoaning Disney- and condo-fied New York: “ used to have a discernible bony structure beneath its loud bright surface; but the signs are so enormous now, the buildings and shops and hotels have largely disappeared under the neon lights and letters and the frozen-custard facade. Broadway is a custard street with no frame supporting it. In Greenwich Village the light is thinning: big apartments have come in, bordering the Square, and the bars are mirrored and chromed.”
Not everyone is nostalgic, though. New Yorkers of a certain vintage will recall Florent, the infamous all-night meatpacking district diner and regular haunt of vapid models and coked-out downtown club kids. Like almost every neighborhood in Manhattan, the meatpacking district has since transformed—haute couture and expensive restaurants—and Florent, owned by the eminently quotable French restaurateur Florent Morellet, was an inevitable casualty of the transformation. When Florent closed, Spike Lee provided a typical quote to The New York Times: “I’ve been going to Florent since 1986, whenever I can. But the whole neighborhood changed. Before it used to be transvestites and transsexuals on every corner. Now? Forget about it.”
But Morellet moved on, finding himself haunting the new bohemia of Bushwick, Brooklyn, an enclave of housing projects and dewy-eyed young artists. When The New York Times asked Morellet to be nostalgic about his restaurant, he wouldn’t bite: “On the island over there , people bug me. They say to me, ‘Oh, my God, you were a genius, you had the greatest restaurant on the face of the earth.’ And the next sentence is, ‘Isn’t it terrible what they did to you?’ I’m like, ‘No, I think it’s great...I’m so glad it’s over.’ I’m so sick of everyone in Manhattan complaining about the way things used to be.”
But Morellet is an outlier. The human instinct for nostalgia, the fantasy of returning to something simpler, more pastoral and idyllic, more My Antonia (or in the case of New Yorkers, more authentic, more Bonfire of the Vanities), can be impossible to resist. We can all conjure a past love, a personal belle époque, that was indescribably perfect, when lamenting loss and missed opportunities. But the psychology of memory is complicated: We remember simpler times that weren’t so simple, erasing inconvenient past events with the eagerness of a Soviet newspaper editor.
And with New York, we remember Halston, Warhol, Studio 54, and CBGB, we fantasize about the cheap rent and lack of German tourists clogging the streets, the porn theaters and graffitied subway cars. And we forget the things that made the bad old days so bad.
When asked if he would return to the city he once called home, actor Casey Affleck told The Daily Beast, “I’m waiting for it to get cool again. Maybe de Blasio?”
Let’s hope not.
This week marked the 20th anniversary of the MetroCard—but there won't be many more such milestones in its future. The MTA plans to supersede the MetroCard with a new form of "fare payment technology" starting in 2019. " was revolutionary for it's time," MTA spokesman Aaron Donovan told us. "It's time has come, and it's time to move on to the next innovation."
The MTA wants to switch over to an electronic system that would get rid of the need for separate cards: "It would be a new fare payment system that is based on a form of technology for payment," Donovan said, "which is technically known as the RFID or NFC for near-field communication type of payment. It's really common in Europe; you can pay for taxis with it. It hasn't gotten as much traction here but it has overseas."
The idea is to install an E-Z Pass-esque system in the subways: instead of swiping a magnetic MetroCard strip, you would tap a credit card, smartphone or keychain (anything with the particular chip embedded in it) and go straight through. D.C. has already adopted a similar technology with SmartTrip, but there's a key difference between their cards and the MTA's plan: the MTA doesn't want to produce any more physical cards.
In D.C., the WMATA produces the SmartTrip Cards embedded with the chip—the MTA's plan is reliant on credit card companies adopting the new technology.
What we're looking to do in 2019, or thereabouts, is to reduce the presence of the MTA in selling a particular card that you then carry around with you. What we're envisioning is the large banks and credit card companies will be moving towards including the RFID chips right in their credit cards. That takes place on a large scale. Customers would just be able to tap their own credit cards at the turnstile, rather than having to go to a machine, insert the credit card into the machine, take out the credit card, and get a new card from the MTA. We'd take away that whole step and say you just tap your own card—debit card or credit card—and then you would be able to see on your bank statement how much you paid to the MTA and when.
The MTA will still have unlimited and pay-per-ride plans—this technology wouldn't affect fare prices, in theory—but the physical mechanism at the turnstile would be different. The plus sides of this plan: it would reduce wait times on buses, it would end the need to have a separate card in your wallet, it would save the MTA approximately $6 million a year producing those cards, it would save the MTA money maintaining MetroCard vending machines, and it would mark the end of the tyranny of the missed swipe.
The challenge with the plan, assuming they stick to their goal of getting the first new tap machines installed in some subway stations by 2019, is that the MTA will be relying on another industry to implement it. While some companies have already adopted the technology, other credit card companies are still grappling with security risks associated with RFID technology.
The other potential problem: not everyone in NYC has a credit or debit card. According to a study commissioned by the city's Department of Consumer Affairs' (DCA) Office of Financial Empowerment (OFE) , more than 825,000 adults in New York City—13 percent of all households—do not have bank or credit union accounts. The MTA is hoping that smartphones will also be enabled with apps that can be used to tap as well, and they say there will be a long period of overlap between MetroCards and the new system. But there are still some serious questions to be addressed before any concrete plan is down.
These are all the kinks they are tackling now, as they begin to build a plan to introduce the new system. So NYC likely won't get more details on the future of mass transit till next year: "We will put flesh on these conceptual bones fairly soon, maybe a year or two from now," Donovan said. "The actual capital program is a five-year plan and right now we are in the 2010-2014 plan. So in the course of this year we will be putting forward details on the next capital program, 2015-2019."
New York City
and the light rail system has a 'farepay' (lmao) card thats only reloadable online via checking, and gives a 20% discount. lets tax people who use cash, that sounds pretty fare to me.
For those of us living in large urban centers, irrational nostalgia is unavoidable. Products made in the most cumbersome, time-intensive way—the artisanal processes that artisans once found tedious and unprofitable—are mindlessly celebrated and presumed to be “better” than mass-produced alternatives, even when they’re not. Science is celebrated when deployed in the Richard Dawkins way, against the rubes, but considered monstrous when transforming the “natural” into the “unnatural” (the genetic modification of plants).
i think this bizarre and backwards search for "authenticity" has a lot to do with the alienation innate in modern late-capitalism life. we cant have "real" lives or meaningful jobs or accomplish anything tangible or even speak to our loved ones frequently, but hell, we can fill the gaping void with pseudo-authentic products that act as freakish totems for this lost meaning
RBC posted:as a rich white person the 21st century owns
agreed
cleanhands posted:poo dork shitty and turds
was that a piece in jacobin?
roseweird posted:VoxNihili posted:the alienation innate in modern late-capitalism life
lakfjisfczmx
roseweird posted:the point for me is that regardless of the circumstances this girl has been suddenly put into a position of public importance, and we should celebrate that because one could hardly find a better person for it. her politics are not irrelevant because with the support of radicals she can use her public influence in radical ways. you're just embarrassed to be seen as the liberal by supporting someone liberals publicly celebrate. would you deliver such a lecture to her in person? she seems to me to be very self aware and to understand the importance of her position as an advocate against both american military intervention and religious terrorism and suppression of women. are you seriously going to say that because she was not a victim of an american weapon that she cannot be a prominent voice for the future of her nation? drones are very frightening and all but i think sometimes people living in a war zone don't care which party kills them. i don't know about that firsthand but for now i think i will trust her over what you and the taliban say
roseweird posted:i think alienation is a thing but i think everything you are saying is whiny nonsense so yes i am picking a fight with you 'voice of nothing' and you too 'swamp man' i didn't respond to your hyperbolic cynical argument because i thought it was boring and reactionary and i didn't want to but sure ok let's do this you cranky puppy boy i don't see where you get off just dismissing this girl bc you think you're some amazing radical stomping around new york with some people's dogs. maybe a smart girl living in a warzone in a country whose women and children probably sewed half the clothing you own knows more than you do about revolutionary socialism and has some idea of the best posture to take, young though she is. i listened to the interviews with her and the interviewers were stupid shit people saying stupid shit things, but malala and her father ignored them and used the publicity opportunity as best she could because wouldn't you ? it's so easy for you to criticize and dismiss them as "pro-western" (god forbid!) because they don't sufficiently ally themselves to the murderers whom you idolize simply because these murderers murder some other murderers you hate. you are ridiculous.
i was just saying that people buy fancy bread to fill the gaping holes that modern life punches in their lives i dont know why youre putting all this shit on me. i never said anything about being pro-taliban and most importantly i don't even live in your wretched city
roseweird posted:you cranky puppy boy
VoxNihili posted:i think this bizarre and backwards search for "authenticity" has a lot to do with the alienation innate in modern late-capitalism life. we cant have "real" lives or meaningful jobs or accomplish anything tangible or even speak to our loved ones frequently, but hell, we can fill the gaping void with pseudo-authentic products that act as freakish totems for this lost meaning
they found authenticity already its called my jeans. dwi. 
'swamp man' i didn't respond to your hyperbolic cynical argument because i thought it was boring and reactionary
reactionary in what way?
roseweird posted:i don't see where you get off just dismissing this girl bc you think you're some amazing radical stomping around new york with some people's dogs.
I am not dismissing the girl, i am dismissing the liberal, imperialist, pro-Western viewpoint that uses her persona to promote itself. I have nothing to do with Malala on a personal level, sorry! If Malala was advocating for race purity because Indians are genetically stupider to Pakistani, I would dismiss that too, and so would the rest of the world because there isn't a lot of need for foreign teenagers' race hate in the American propaganda machine. The only reason you know anything about Malala is because her viewpoint serves Western interests.
maybe a smart girl living in a warzone in a country whose women and children probably sewed half the clothing you own knows more than you do about revolutionary socialism and has some idea of the best posture to take, young though she is.
Ok. She is a smart girl. A smart 16 year old. What is she, a leader in her field? She gives speeches and interviews and she says coherent, honest things. It's not really that hard. Liberalism is easy for teenagers to fall into because it's all about "rights." Okay, she should have the right to an education, and actually, since she was a pupil, on her way to school when she took a bullet, she did have that right. Great, what is she going to use it for, it looks like... to go advocate for the right to an education. Okay, what are her classmates going to learn? Well, pretty much anything strip mining related, and some "life management" skills so they have more time in the day to work for others.
i listened to the interviews with her and the interviewers were stupid shit people saying stupid shit things, but malala and her father ignored them and used the publicity opportunity as best she could because wouldn't you ?
When an outright racist conservative politician blusters right past questions to put the focus on the issue of how often they talk about fucking in rap music (it's a lot), his outright racist conservative constituents say the exact same thing.
it's so easy for you to criticize and dismiss them as "pro-western" (god forbid!)
And made all the easier because it's not just my criticism, it's the criticism of Pakistani people, in Pakistani, who see her as a CIA-fronted distraction from drone strikes. This guy agreed with me that a pro-education is code for white people to take over the region. "Waziristan isn't safe for education?! Well, education is a right, so I guess we need to make it safe."
You should feel as dumb as you look for buying into this absolutely manipulative fluff journalism.
roseweird posted:swampman posted:This guy
so this "europhobic chauvinist" agreed with you, you're saying. fascinating, what a charmingly provocative stance
yeah click on the article that site has for pakistan. THINK for 1-2 second
have any of you considered that you are all liberals in the same sense that all christians are sinners
sure, there is truth to that, but only one of us goes on TV and calls for american intervention in the waziristan school system.
you could stop trying so hard
you could start trying at all!
