The Indignant Citizen took a vacation recently, and when he does that he usually returns to dis certain down in da Midwest with one of two feelings: 1) Chicago is the greatest city in the world; everyone else can go fuck themselves; or 2) Chicago is doomed. This time around, the Indignant Citizen is leaning more toward 2 for this simple reason: people in other places are nicer.
Case in point: Oregon. Specifically Portland and the Oregon coast. Very friendly people there. They smile at you in the grocery store, even at those awkward moments where your respective carts are trying to occupy the same space at the same time. They happily spend five or ten minutes discussing the weather, or which of the countless local beers they prefer, or the afternoon breeze that always cools the beaches in summer.
Of course, when your state’s unemployment rate is 6.5%, according to the latest figures from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, a good argument can be made that you don’t have anything better to do. But the Indignant Citizen prefers to think that Oregonians, even in the afterglow of the decades-long ejaculation of Californians into the forested folds of the Beaver State, have retained their friendly sensibilities. In short, they remember how to interact with one another.
Compare that to Chicago, where restaurant workers glower and act as if you’re inconveniencing them by being there, employees behind the deli counter of the Jewel at 95th and Pulaski pretend they don’t know how to slice bread because they’re interested in doing the absolute minimum before clocking out for the day, and making eye contact on the street results in either steely stares or getting a half-empty cup of change shoved in your face.
This aloofness and occasional downright antisocial behavior is part of living in a big city. It’s a way to cope with the scale of social interaction. When the Indignant Citizen first moved here, he tried saying “hi” or nodding to most people he passed on the street. He was ignored and discouraged. And among a certain segment of the population he was quickly identified as a “sucker” and regularly asked to part with change, dollar bills or money of any kind. Once a guy hanging out at the Adams and Wabash el stop caught the Indignant Citizen in a generous mood. When the Indignant Citizen reached into his wallet to hand the guy the dollar he said he needed for the train, the guy saw a fiver in there and had the gall to say, “Just gimme the five, man.” Seeing no weapon, the Indignant Citizen declined in the most polite but direct terms possible.
For the most part, outside the small social circles we construct for ourselves, we city dwellers have forgotten how to be civil with one another. This tattered edge of our urban fabric will, the Indignant Citizen fears, continue to fray until economic or political forces beyond our comprehension today finally tear it to pieces. Have a nice day.
Wednesday, July 27, 2005
Daley Goes Down
When Steve Warmbir and Tim Novak at the Sun-Times began bludgeoning Daley with the Hired Truck cudgel, I figured the whole mess would blow over eventually like so many others. It hasn’t, and Daley has thus far been incapable of staying ahead of the news cycle. He announces a change over here in the afternoon, but over there earlier that morning someone else got indicted or pleaded guilty.
I assumed early on that Daley would tough it out, that by the time the 2007 election rolled around all this would be forgotten. It won’t. And now I’m starting to wonder if Daley will even run again. Smart money would still have to bet on him to win, but his disapproval rating is on the rise and the media sharks are circling, waiting for someone with any kind of name recognition at all to announce they’re running.
This person, if he is out there, should be careful not to announce too soon. For instance, if someone were to announce next week, or even before the end of this year, it leaves way too much time for the media love fest to climax and subside. An announcement has to be timed for the middle of the third quarter of 2006, I believe, to most effectively ride the twin waves of scandal and disdain into office. No one will beat Daley by arguing Chicago is worse off than it was when he took office. No one will win by saying he’ll reduce crime that’s already falling. The road to City Hall will be paved with the bones of scandal, and they will have to be fresh bones, at that. There is still enough time for Daley to save himself if he isn’t indicted and if he can show he’s cracking the whip on patronage and waste and corruption. The prudent strategy for any challenger is to wait at least a year and see what happens.
I assumed early on that Daley would tough it out, that by the time the 2007 election rolled around all this would be forgotten. It won’t. And now I’m starting to wonder if Daley will even run again. Smart money would still have to bet on him to win, but his disapproval rating is on the rise and the media sharks are circling, waiting for someone with any kind of name recognition at all to announce they’re running.
This person, if he is out there, should be careful not to announce too soon. For instance, if someone were to announce next week, or even before the end of this year, it leaves way too much time for the media love fest to climax and subside. An announcement has to be timed for the middle of the third quarter of 2006, I believe, to most effectively ride the twin waves of scandal and disdain into office. No one will beat Daley by arguing Chicago is worse off than it was when he took office. No one will win by saying he’ll reduce crime that’s already falling. The road to City Hall will be paved with the bones of scandal, and they will have to be fresh bones, at that. There is still enough time for Daley to save himself if he isn’t indicted and if he can show he’s cracking the whip on patronage and waste and corruption. The prudent strategy for any challenger is to wait at least a year and see what happens.
Superstar? Superstar Archi-Clown, Maybe
So Santiago Calatrava swaggered into town Monday, waving his big dick of a skyscraper in the faces of the drooling Chicago media, and they eagerly lined up to fellate him. Stories about Calatrava’s soaring, twisting tower appeared in both the Sun-Times and the Tribune on Tuesday, and both papers referred to the Spanish architect as a “superstar.”
Fuck that. Calatrava’s grotesque tower would mar Chicago’s skyline, but more importantly it would be a giant ass pimple on the lakeshore. His big “innovation” is rotating each successive floor two degrees clockwise from the floor below it, thus giving the building the twisting appearance. In one story, Calatrava tried to say the design was meant to evoke the first wisp of smoke from the first fire lit by natives along the lakeshore. Whatever. It’s an overly narrow, overly tall building that—at 2,000-plus feet tall—is too tall for the Streeterville neighborhood in which it will be built.
I doubt the city will allow it, but the slobbering knob job both the Sun-Times and the Tribune gave the initial design is as good a reminder as any that newspaper architecture writers and critics are writers and critics—not planners or architects—for a reason: often, they have little taste and no sense of sustainable, practical and scalable development.
Fuck that. Calatrava’s grotesque tower would mar Chicago’s skyline, but more importantly it would be a giant ass pimple on the lakeshore. His big “innovation” is rotating each successive floor two degrees clockwise from the floor below it, thus giving the building the twisting appearance. In one story, Calatrava tried to say the design was meant to evoke the first wisp of smoke from the first fire lit by natives along the lakeshore. Whatever. It’s an overly narrow, overly tall building that—at 2,000-plus feet tall—is too tall for the Streeterville neighborhood in which it will be built.
I doubt the city will allow it, but the slobbering knob job both the Sun-Times and the Tribune gave the initial design is as good a reminder as any that newspaper architecture writers and critics are writers and critics—not planners or architects—for a reason: often, they have little taste and no sense of sustainable, practical and scalable development.
Tuesday, July 12, 2005
Cudgeled by the Sunday Trib
Every once in a while, the Sunday Chicago Tribune will land with a particular authority on the front porch, and The Indignant Citizen knows it’s going to be one of those rare papers that delivers a treat of some kind in almost every section. This past Sunday, the 10th, was one of those.
Two sections in particular stood out: Metro (the South-Southwest edition) and Arts & Entertainment. We’ll start with A&E. Headlining the page was a Blair Kamin architecture review of the new Hyatt Center at Wacker Drive & Monroe Street downtown, “Throwing Tradition a Curve.” Kamin likes it, as he likes the Hyatt Center’s neighbor to the south across Monroe, 111 S. Wacker Drive. He argues they make an attractive western gateway to the Loop that offers visual rewards for pedestrians, much as the Tribune Tower and Wrigley Building do on southbound Michigan Avenue, and the University Club and Monroe Building do at Michigan and Monroe. The Indignant Citizen agrees.
However the design of the Hyatt Center, and more specifically the design of the plaza separating it from Monroe Street, is to The Indignant Citizen more significant than the architectural statement the fish-shaped building makes within Chicago’s right angle-dominated skyline.
Some history. According to Kamin’s story, Hyatt’s new headquarters was supposed to be a showcase building. First, it was to be in a prominent location in Chicago. Second, the Hyatt hotel chain is owned by the Pritzker family, which gives out an annual award for architectural excellence that is the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for literature or the Pulitzers in journalism. Finally, the building was slated to be the first skyscraper completed in Chicago in the new Post-9/11 era, also known as the Time of the Fear.
After that wretched day, the Pritzkers knew hotels wouldn’t be making big money, at least in the short term, and they downscaled their dream. They told the original architect, Pritzker Prize winner Lord Norman Foster, that the “special shout” building project he had been commissioned to draw was dead. Instead the Pritzkers hired Henry Cobb of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners in New York. Cobb, whom Kamin described as a “distinguished elder statesman” was certainly more than capable of designing a quality office tower, having put his name on Boston’s John Hancock Tower. But one gets the impression that Cobb is to architecture what Shel Gordon was to sex in When Harry Met Sally. Sure, Cobb can do your taxes or give you a root canal, but humpin’ and pumpin’ out a hot building that leaves your nuts on fire and a silent scream in your throat ain’t Cobb’s job.
Nonetheless, his building has a certain grace, and it does one thing exponentially better than the much higher-profile, David Childs-designed “Freedom Tower” in New York City that will sit at Ground Zero: It relates to the street. Cobb’s Hyatt Center meets the sidewalk with a curving glass façade that gives pedestrians a chance to interact with the building. The “Freedom Tower,” on the other hand, meets pedestrians with a massive setback and a 200-foot-tall concrete pedestal that says, loudly and clearly “Get the fuck away!”
Argue all you want about how the “Freedom Tower” is a bigger magnet for Islamo-terrorists, but then face this fact: A truck bomb is a truck bomb, whether it explodes at the “Freedom Tower” or the Hyatt Center. The key is keeping the explosives away from the building’s structural supports. Childs did this by placing his building on a concrete turd. Cobb managed to effect the same protection using whimsically curved planters made of stone placed strategically in a pedestrian friendly plaza along Monroe Street. The planters are low, have ledges for sitting, contain grass and are curved to reflect the tower’s exterior. They allow pedestrians to walk in between them and easily access the building. And they are close enough together to keep any vehicle well away from the building’s lobby, where an explosion would cause the most damage.
Here’s Kamin: “Following the unveiling of the fortresslike Freedom Tower, [Hyatt Center] offers an alternative vision, one in which our fears—and, thus, our buildings—remain in proper proportion.”
Right on.
Now for Metro. There were four stories on the Metro front, each one worth reading. At the top of the page was the obligatory “public agency wastes taxpayer dollars” story about financial problems in the tiny but tax-rich Salt Creek School District 48 in DuPage County. It is the fourth-richest district in the state, thanks to a relatively low student population in proportion to tax revenue.
The discretionary income-drawing Oakbrook Shopping Center rests within its borders, and homeowners in the Salt Creek district enjoy the second-lowest school tax rate in the state. Yet the district still managed to spend $12,653 per student on 550 students in 2004. The Trib doesn’t include a current statewide per-pupil spending average in its story, instead saying Salt Creek’s spending is “far higher” than the state average. That is a lazy journalistic cop-out. Why not put real numbers in? Following a relatively simple Internet search, the Indignant Citizen found that Illinois’ total per-pupil spending in 2003, the most recent year statewide numbers are readily available, was slightly more than $8,400 per pupil. Half again as much could be “far higher” than the state average, but surely the state average increased from 2003 to 2004, right?
Anyway, the key to this story is the fact that despite this tax windfall, the district is going broke. It has prostrated itself before voters five times seeking tax increases, each time unsuccessfully. Meanwhile a teacher in the district has alerted the state attorney general’s office to some shady financing involving the use of Medicaid funds to pay for district administrators and board members to travel to winter conferences in places like Orlando, San Diego and Phoenix. At the same time the district is cutting teachers and programs. Parents are fed up, and berated the district at a recent meeting. District mouthpieces can’t get their stories straight about tapping the Medicaid accounts, but maintain the complaints about staffing and trips are coming from disgruntled teachers angry that their salaries have been frozen for four years and negotiations on a new contract aren’t going well.
The Trib reporter then helpfully points out that the “average” Salt Creek teacher salary is $63,065, “higher than all but a handful of elementary districts in the state.” What’s with the generalities again? Just give us the numbers so we can see for ourselves. And no shit the teachers are pissed. A four-year salary freeze is the same as a pay cut when you consider inflation, a point the Trib story fails to make, instead leaving the rhetorical impression that Salt Creek teachers are well-paid and should shut up and take it like good little whores.
To the Indignant Citizen, this relates back to America’s failure to properly compensate teachers for the work they do, which today includes babysitting as much as instruction. The problem isn’t teacher pay. The good ones aren’t paid nearly enough. (The bad ones should be fired, period. Unions defending lazy and stupid teachers are one reason the public regards teacher unions as it would a disemboweled squirrel falling from a tree onto the Sunday afternoon barbecue.)
For most districts, their problems revolve around bloated administrations and narrow mandates to teach children only what they must learn to do well on tests and earn the ho cash doled out by Pimp Daddy Bush and the Johns running No Child Left Behind. Add to that the fear of frivolous and/or zealous lawsuits against districts with teachers whose ideas challenge students to think critically and you have an education system that is surpassed in mediocrity only by our national public transportation system.
This Salt Creek story isn’t over. That money went somewhere, and not all of it went for $20,000 trips to warm locales. Someone’s got a nice house somewhere or a Mercedes in the garage that was paid for by the district. Just wait.
Then below that there’s a story about a freak murder near the University of Illinois at Chicago. The best anyone can figure, two punk bitches from the ‘burbs got their asses kicked or fell off a city curb late Friday night. When a UIC poly-sci student and his buddy noticed the two bleeding burbanites, they offered to help, an act for which one, Tombol Malik, 23, was beaten to death with his own bike lock and his friend tasered. The Indignant Citizen wonders what kind of fucking world we’re living in when a dude offering a hand gets beaten to death.
Finally the Trib has a story about new lights being installed that will cast a tighter beam on the Wrigley Building. That’s nice as far as it goes. The new light towers on Michigan Avenue are ugly, though, and the Indignant Citizen wonders whether it’s even worth the energy to light up the Wrigley any more, but the real news is buried in the ninth graf:
“The modification comes at a time when the company [Wrigley] is studying its long-term real estate needs and a possible move from its historic headquarters, a development that has prompted some real estate speculators to suggest that the building could someday be turned into luxury condominiums.”
The Indignant Citizen is all for more people moving downtown. But he is also for jobs downtown. Is Wrigley preparing some cut-and-run maneuver in which it downsizes and moves its operations to Beijing? Try it, bitches. I got $50 and a Kryptonite bike lock that says you’re stayin’ right the fuck where you are. Additionally, who’s going to live in these luxury condominiums when the last pump in the Gahwar oil field in Saudi Arabia starts spitting seawater instead of oil, dousing the oil-fired “global economy?”
Two sections in particular stood out: Metro (the South-Southwest edition) and Arts & Entertainment. We’ll start with A&E. Headlining the page was a Blair Kamin architecture review of the new Hyatt Center at Wacker Drive & Monroe Street downtown, “Throwing Tradition a Curve.” Kamin likes it, as he likes the Hyatt Center’s neighbor to the south across Monroe, 111 S. Wacker Drive. He argues they make an attractive western gateway to the Loop that offers visual rewards for pedestrians, much as the Tribune Tower and Wrigley Building do on southbound Michigan Avenue, and the University Club and Monroe Building do at Michigan and Monroe. The Indignant Citizen agrees.
However the design of the Hyatt Center, and more specifically the design of the plaza separating it from Monroe Street, is to The Indignant Citizen more significant than the architectural statement the fish-shaped building makes within Chicago’s right angle-dominated skyline.
Some history. According to Kamin’s story, Hyatt’s new headquarters was supposed to be a showcase building. First, it was to be in a prominent location in Chicago. Second, the Hyatt hotel chain is owned by the Pritzker family, which gives out an annual award for architectural excellence that is the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for literature or the Pulitzers in journalism. Finally, the building was slated to be the first skyscraper completed in Chicago in the new Post-9/11 era, also known as the Time of the Fear.
After that wretched day, the Pritzkers knew hotels wouldn’t be making big money, at least in the short term, and they downscaled their dream. They told the original architect, Pritzker Prize winner Lord Norman Foster, that the “special shout” building project he had been commissioned to draw was dead. Instead the Pritzkers hired Henry Cobb of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners in New York. Cobb, whom Kamin described as a “distinguished elder statesman” was certainly more than capable of designing a quality office tower, having put his name on Boston’s John Hancock Tower. But one gets the impression that Cobb is to architecture what Shel Gordon was to sex in When Harry Met Sally. Sure, Cobb can do your taxes or give you a root canal, but humpin’ and pumpin’ out a hot building that leaves your nuts on fire and a silent scream in your throat ain’t Cobb’s job.
Nonetheless, his building has a certain grace, and it does one thing exponentially better than the much higher-profile, David Childs-designed “Freedom Tower” in New York City that will sit at Ground Zero: It relates to the street. Cobb’s Hyatt Center meets the sidewalk with a curving glass façade that gives pedestrians a chance to interact with the building. The “Freedom Tower,” on the other hand, meets pedestrians with a massive setback and a 200-foot-tall concrete pedestal that says, loudly and clearly “Get the fuck away!”
Argue all you want about how the “Freedom Tower” is a bigger magnet for Islamo-terrorists, but then face this fact: A truck bomb is a truck bomb, whether it explodes at the “Freedom Tower” or the Hyatt Center. The key is keeping the explosives away from the building’s structural supports. Childs did this by placing his building on a concrete turd. Cobb managed to effect the same protection using whimsically curved planters made of stone placed strategically in a pedestrian friendly plaza along Monroe Street. The planters are low, have ledges for sitting, contain grass and are curved to reflect the tower’s exterior. They allow pedestrians to walk in between them and easily access the building. And they are close enough together to keep any vehicle well away from the building’s lobby, where an explosion would cause the most damage.
Here’s Kamin: “Following the unveiling of the fortresslike Freedom Tower, [Hyatt Center] offers an alternative vision, one in which our fears—and, thus, our buildings—remain in proper proportion.”
Right on.
Now for Metro. There were four stories on the Metro front, each one worth reading. At the top of the page was the obligatory “public agency wastes taxpayer dollars” story about financial problems in the tiny but tax-rich Salt Creek School District 48 in DuPage County. It is the fourth-richest district in the state, thanks to a relatively low student population in proportion to tax revenue.
The discretionary income-drawing Oakbrook Shopping Center rests within its borders, and homeowners in the Salt Creek district enjoy the second-lowest school tax rate in the state. Yet the district still managed to spend $12,653 per student on 550 students in 2004. The Trib doesn’t include a current statewide per-pupil spending average in its story, instead saying Salt Creek’s spending is “far higher” than the state average. That is a lazy journalistic cop-out. Why not put real numbers in? Following a relatively simple Internet search, the Indignant Citizen found that Illinois’ total per-pupil spending in 2003, the most recent year statewide numbers are readily available, was slightly more than $8,400 per pupil. Half again as much could be “far higher” than the state average, but surely the state average increased from 2003 to 2004, right?
Anyway, the key to this story is the fact that despite this tax windfall, the district is going broke. It has prostrated itself before voters five times seeking tax increases, each time unsuccessfully. Meanwhile a teacher in the district has alerted the state attorney general’s office to some shady financing involving the use of Medicaid funds to pay for district administrators and board members to travel to winter conferences in places like Orlando, San Diego and Phoenix. At the same time the district is cutting teachers and programs. Parents are fed up, and berated the district at a recent meeting. District mouthpieces can’t get their stories straight about tapping the Medicaid accounts, but maintain the complaints about staffing and trips are coming from disgruntled teachers angry that their salaries have been frozen for four years and negotiations on a new contract aren’t going well.
The Trib reporter then helpfully points out that the “average” Salt Creek teacher salary is $63,065, “higher than all but a handful of elementary districts in the state.” What’s with the generalities again? Just give us the numbers so we can see for ourselves. And no shit the teachers are pissed. A four-year salary freeze is the same as a pay cut when you consider inflation, a point the Trib story fails to make, instead leaving the rhetorical impression that Salt Creek teachers are well-paid and should shut up and take it like good little whores.
To the Indignant Citizen, this relates back to America’s failure to properly compensate teachers for the work they do, which today includes babysitting as much as instruction. The problem isn’t teacher pay. The good ones aren’t paid nearly enough. (The bad ones should be fired, period. Unions defending lazy and stupid teachers are one reason the public regards teacher unions as it would a disemboweled squirrel falling from a tree onto the Sunday afternoon barbecue.)
For most districts, their problems revolve around bloated administrations and narrow mandates to teach children only what they must learn to do well on tests and earn the ho cash doled out by Pimp Daddy Bush and the Johns running No Child Left Behind. Add to that the fear of frivolous and/or zealous lawsuits against districts with teachers whose ideas challenge students to think critically and you have an education system that is surpassed in mediocrity only by our national public transportation system.
This Salt Creek story isn’t over. That money went somewhere, and not all of it went for $20,000 trips to warm locales. Someone’s got a nice house somewhere or a Mercedes in the garage that was paid for by the district. Just wait.
Then below that there’s a story about a freak murder near the University of Illinois at Chicago. The best anyone can figure, two punk bitches from the ‘burbs got their asses kicked or fell off a city curb late Friday night. When a UIC poly-sci student and his buddy noticed the two bleeding burbanites, they offered to help, an act for which one, Tombol Malik, 23, was beaten to death with his own bike lock and his friend tasered. The Indignant Citizen wonders what kind of fucking world we’re living in when a dude offering a hand gets beaten to death.
Finally the Trib has a story about new lights being installed that will cast a tighter beam on the Wrigley Building. That’s nice as far as it goes. The new light towers on Michigan Avenue are ugly, though, and the Indignant Citizen wonders whether it’s even worth the energy to light up the Wrigley any more, but the real news is buried in the ninth graf:
“The modification comes at a time when the company [Wrigley] is studying its long-term real estate needs and a possible move from its historic headquarters, a development that has prompted some real estate speculators to suggest that the building could someday be turned into luxury condominiums.”
The Indignant Citizen is all for more people moving downtown. But he is also for jobs downtown. Is Wrigley preparing some cut-and-run maneuver in which it downsizes and moves its operations to Beijing? Try it, bitches. I got $50 and a Kryptonite bike lock that says you’re stayin’ right the fuck where you are. Additionally, who’s going to live in these luxury condominiums when the last pump in the Gahwar oil field in Saudi Arabia starts spitting seawater instead of oil, dousing the oil-fired “global economy?”
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
Opportunity Lost
Originally written on Oct. 10, 2001 by the Indignant Citizen when he was ... um, the Pre-Indignant Citizen:
Lately there’s been a lot of discussion in architecture and planning circles about what to do with the site that used to be the World Trade Center. Personally, starting to look ahead has helped me put this tragedy in perspective and allowed me to move on emotionally. The towers were as much of a symbol of New York–perhaps more so–as the Statue of Liberty. You could see them from miles away and they helped orient you. Their loss as physical structures, while leaving a hole, doesn’t compare with the immense loss of life at the site.
For families or friends of those who died when the planes hit and the towers fell, memorial services can begin the healing process. But what about for the rest of us? It seems to me the best course of action is to start talking about the future.
Much has been said and written about what should be done with the site. To start, let’s boil the arguments down into two categories: rebuild the towers as they were, or do something else.
This seems to me to be an easy choice. Rebuilding the towers as they were would be a monumental mistake done for purely sentimental and patriotic reasons. Instead let’s be practical for a moment. The Twin Towers and their accompanying buildings supplied 20 million to 25 million square feet of office space and were considered at the time to be highly efficient uses of space. But their inefficiencies probably killed thousands. It takes more than an hour to evacuate a 110-story using stairwells. An hour after the first plane hit, the south tower had collapsed. The north tower followed a short time later.
Buildings that tall have proven to be unsafe, not just if planes fly into them and explode, but in the event of any kind of damage. They are too big to be practical. And consider for a moment that at the time the World Trade Center complex was destroyed, New York City had a glut of approximately 25 million square feet of vacant office space. Much of that has now been taken, as well as hundreds of thousands of additional square feet across the Hudson in New Jersey, in the northern suburbs and on Long Island.
We don’t need to replace every square foot of space lost at the World Trade Center site. Let’s rebuild much of it, but allow other neighborhoods to absorb– and benefit from–smaller businesses that were displaced. That will help neighborhoods that were in decline or that never cashed in on the prosperity of the 1990s.
Another argument against rebuilding the World Trade Center as it was is that in fact the complex used space inefficiently. Its elevated, windswept plaza was an underutilized, impersonal waste of space. The complex was closed off from the surrounding street grid, making it an island on an island. Its monumental scale discouraged pedestrian traffic unless you had business there. The nature of the business that went on in the Trade Center discouraged mixed-income housing in lower Manhattan. Sure, some of the professional people who worked in the Trade Center lived in nearby Battery Park City, but most of them had above-average incomes or two professionals in the home.
Rebuilding the same inefficient complex would present the same problems and waste an opportunity to weave the site back into the urban fabric of a part of New York that, prior to Sept. 11, was taking small steps toward becoming a vibrant, 24-hour community. It would also ensure that lower Manhattan would remain an area where only the wealthy could afford to live.
If we eliminate rebuilding the WTC as it was, we’re left with only one question: What should we build there instead?
To this question there are many answers. I’m not an architect, so I won’t attempt to sketch out any rough drawings of what may eventually rise from the World Trade Center’s ashes and twisted metal skeleton. But planners and architects who eventually work on the project should keep several things in mind:
Whatever is eventually built there should have a human scale. The World Trade Center was in some respects too big to comprehend. Standing at the base of one of the towers and looking up, there was no sense of where the top of the tower was. The hulking black office buildings that were 4, 5 and 6 World Trade Center, although they were much shorter, did little to help the overwhelming impact of the plaza. Everything about the complex was giant. Even the in the center of the plaza fountain was huge.
Obviously, some space needs to be reserved for a memorial. If we extend the street grid into the site, perhaps two or four of the central blocks could be turned into a park with a memorial at its center. The park needs to have grassy areas, plenty of trees, benches, curving paths. Perhaps a fountain at its center that incorporates part of the steel skeleton of the Trade Center. The memorial needs to inspire hope for the future while at the same time serving as a reminder of that day. But the park should not only be a memorial. It should bring the surrounding community together, serve as a focal point for gatherings like concerts and rallies. It should draw the area’s residents and serve as a tranquil place in the midst of the city for lunches, sun bathing, reading. Picture something on the scale of a Union Square. Perhaps it could incorporate an ice skating rink on a plaza and/or some kind of outdoor amphitheater for summer plays and concerts. Around the park would rise new office buildings, many with ground-floor retail. It would be Rockefeller Center on a grander, greener scale. We might also incorporate a new museum, one celebrating lower Manhattan’s history. This is an opportunity to continue introducing cultural institutions into the area, thereby broadening the mix of visitors.
Any new construction should encourage a mix of uses. The World Trade Center had its underground mall, but it catered almost exclusively to office workers and commuters wandering through its corridors between trains or on their way from train to office. It did not draw pedestrians from above. Of course, there is a need to replace lost office space. However as I mentioned there is no need to replace the entire 25 million square feet. One proposal to build four buildings varying in height from 50-60 stories is a step in the right direction. But these should not be clustered on plaza as was the previous design. Instead, build these buildings on the blocks formed by the street grid. Return car and–more importantly–pedestrian traffic to the area. On the ground floors of these new office buildings should be retail stores, restaurants and bars. Perhaps one building could be modeled on the Chicago Place mall, with eight or nine stories of stores topped by an office building or hotel. In the basement of this building could be a supermarket that stays open late to draw residents from nearby areas. Somewhere there needs to be a movie theater or some other kind of business that draws crowds after the office workers have gone home.
At present, many Battery Park City residents are frustrated by the lack of information coming from the city and federal agencies in charge of the cleanup around the Trade Center site. Their frustration is understandable, as is the authorities’ need to keep some information under wraps. This is, after all, still a crime scene. The real risk here is that these frustrated residents will pack up and move away once they’re allowed back in. To be sure, some of the remaining apartments may be uninhabitable. Either the landlords and developers are going to have to pay to clean these places up, or the city or federal government will have to provide some kind of subsidy. These apartments must be restored and they must be filled with residents as soon as possible. This was an area on the verge of becoming a viable, 24-hour neighborhood. Ironically, the destruction of the World Trade Center may help further this development–if the area is cleaned up and the right mix of development occurs.
The World Trade Center was a vital transportation hub, as we’re all learning now that the subway service on the 1,9, N, R and PATH trains has been disrupted for what may turn out to be years. It must be a hub again. However we should take this opportunity to expand service there. Along with improved connections between the PATH and other city subways, the Long Island Railroad should build a station underneath lower Manhattan. I envision an expansive underground network of passageways and subway stations, with retail stores that cater to commuters similar to what used to be under the World Trade Center, but less mall-like and easier to navigate.
When we talk of extending the street grid, we must keep in mind that this should be a pedestrian-oriented area, not a car-oriented area. The sidewalks should be wide, the streets should be narrow, in keeping with the feel east of Broadway. Unlike the area east of Broadway, sidewalks in the new development should have trees to serve as a buffer between pedestrians and the street.
July 6, 2005: That’s as far as I got. Needless to day, none of that came to pass and what has been proposed instead seeks to replace all of the lost office space, build a “monument building” on the site and completely ignores the fabric of the surrounding neighborhood. This assumes anything at all gets built. The foot-dragging and appeasement that occurred early on, with squabbles among the families of office victims’ families and firefighters’ families, only set the table for the delays to come.
We’re approaching the four-year anniversary, and what have we got? We have a proposal for a poorly-designed, inartistic, over-large office tower sitting on a defensive pedestal with no relationship to the street. Replacing the Twin Towers with this boondoggle will send a clear message to the terrorists for sure. It says: “You win.”
On the Web: Lower Manhattan Development Coorporation
Lately there’s been a lot of discussion in architecture and planning circles about what to do with the site that used to be the World Trade Center. Personally, starting to look ahead has helped me put this tragedy in perspective and allowed me to move on emotionally. The towers were as much of a symbol of New York–perhaps more so–as the Statue of Liberty. You could see them from miles away and they helped orient you. Their loss as physical structures, while leaving a hole, doesn’t compare with the immense loss of life at the site.
For families or friends of those who died when the planes hit and the towers fell, memorial services can begin the healing process. But what about for the rest of us? It seems to me the best course of action is to start talking about the future.
Much has been said and written about what should be done with the site. To start, let’s boil the arguments down into two categories: rebuild the towers as they were, or do something else.
This seems to me to be an easy choice. Rebuilding the towers as they were would be a monumental mistake done for purely sentimental and patriotic reasons. Instead let’s be practical for a moment. The Twin Towers and their accompanying buildings supplied 20 million to 25 million square feet of office space and were considered at the time to be highly efficient uses of space. But their inefficiencies probably killed thousands. It takes more than an hour to evacuate a 110-story using stairwells. An hour after the first plane hit, the south tower had collapsed. The north tower followed a short time later.
Buildings that tall have proven to be unsafe, not just if planes fly into them and explode, but in the event of any kind of damage. They are too big to be practical. And consider for a moment that at the time the World Trade Center complex was destroyed, New York City had a glut of approximately 25 million square feet of vacant office space. Much of that has now been taken, as well as hundreds of thousands of additional square feet across the Hudson in New Jersey, in the northern suburbs and on Long Island.
We don’t need to replace every square foot of space lost at the World Trade Center site. Let’s rebuild much of it, but allow other neighborhoods to absorb– and benefit from–smaller businesses that were displaced. That will help neighborhoods that were in decline or that never cashed in on the prosperity of the 1990s.
Another argument against rebuilding the World Trade Center as it was is that in fact the complex used space inefficiently. Its elevated, windswept plaza was an underutilized, impersonal waste of space. The complex was closed off from the surrounding street grid, making it an island on an island. Its monumental scale discouraged pedestrian traffic unless you had business there. The nature of the business that went on in the Trade Center discouraged mixed-income housing in lower Manhattan. Sure, some of the professional people who worked in the Trade Center lived in nearby Battery Park City, but most of them had above-average incomes or two professionals in the home.
Rebuilding the same inefficient complex would present the same problems and waste an opportunity to weave the site back into the urban fabric of a part of New York that, prior to Sept. 11, was taking small steps toward becoming a vibrant, 24-hour community. It would also ensure that lower Manhattan would remain an area where only the wealthy could afford to live.
If we eliminate rebuilding the WTC as it was, we’re left with only one question: What should we build there instead?
To this question there are many answers. I’m not an architect, so I won’t attempt to sketch out any rough drawings of what may eventually rise from the World Trade Center’s ashes and twisted metal skeleton. But planners and architects who eventually work on the project should keep several things in mind:
Whatever is eventually built there should have a human scale. The World Trade Center was in some respects too big to comprehend. Standing at the base of one of the towers and looking up, there was no sense of where the top of the tower was. The hulking black office buildings that were 4, 5 and 6 World Trade Center, although they were much shorter, did little to help the overwhelming impact of the plaza. Everything about the complex was giant. Even the in the center of the plaza fountain was huge.
Obviously, some space needs to be reserved for a memorial. If we extend the street grid into the site, perhaps two or four of the central blocks could be turned into a park with a memorial at its center. The park needs to have grassy areas, plenty of trees, benches, curving paths. Perhaps a fountain at its center that incorporates part of the steel skeleton of the Trade Center. The memorial needs to inspire hope for the future while at the same time serving as a reminder of that day. But the park should not only be a memorial. It should bring the surrounding community together, serve as a focal point for gatherings like concerts and rallies. It should draw the area’s residents and serve as a tranquil place in the midst of the city for lunches, sun bathing, reading. Picture something on the scale of a Union Square. Perhaps it could incorporate an ice skating rink on a plaza and/or some kind of outdoor amphitheater for summer plays and concerts. Around the park would rise new office buildings, many with ground-floor retail. It would be Rockefeller Center on a grander, greener scale. We might also incorporate a new museum, one celebrating lower Manhattan’s history. This is an opportunity to continue introducing cultural institutions into the area, thereby broadening the mix of visitors.
Any new construction should encourage a mix of uses. The World Trade Center had its underground mall, but it catered almost exclusively to office workers and commuters wandering through its corridors between trains or on their way from train to office. It did not draw pedestrians from above. Of course, there is a need to replace lost office space. However as I mentioned there is no need to replace the entire 25 million square feet. One proposal to build four buildings varying in height from 50-60 stories is a step in the right direction. But these should not be clustered on plaza as was the previous design. Instead, build these buildings on the blocks formed by the street grid. Return car and–more importantly–pedestrian traffic to the area. On the ground floors of these new office buildings should be retail stores, restaurants and bars. Perhaps one building could be modeled on the Chicago Place mall, with eight or nine stories of stores topped by an office building or hotel. In the basement of this building could be a supermarket that stays open late to draw residents from nearby areas. Somewhere there needs to be a movie theater or some other kind of business that draws crowds after the office workers have gone home.
At present, many Battery Park City residents are frustrated by the lack of information coming from the city and federal agencies in charge of the cleanup around the Trade Center site. Their frustration is understandable, as is the authorities’ need to keep some information under wraps. This is, after all, still a crime scene. The real risk here is that these frustrated residents will pack up and move away once they’re allowed back in. To be sure, some of the remaining apartments may be uninhabitable. Either the landlords and developers are going to have to pay to clean these places up, or the city or federal government will have to provide some kind of subsidy. These apartments must be restored and they must be filled with residents as soon as possible. This was an area on the verge of becoming a viable, 24-hour neighborhood. Ironically, the destruction of the World Trade Center may help further this development–if the area is cleaned up and the right mix of development occurs.
The World Trade Center was a vital transportation hub, as we’re all learning now that the subway service on the 1,9, N, R and PATH trains has been disrupted for what may turn out to be years. It must be a hub again. However we should take this opportunity to expand service there. Along with improved connections between the PATH and other city subways, the Long Island Railroad should build a station underneath lower Manhattan. I envision an expansive underground network of passageways and subway stations, with retail stores that cater to commuters similar to what used to be under the World Trade Center, but less mall-like and easier to navigate.
When we talk of extending the street grid, we must keep in mind that this should be a pedestrian-oriented area, not a car-oriented area. The sidewalks should be wide, the streets should be narrow, in keeping with the feel east of Broadway. Unlike the area east of Broadway, sidewalks in the new development should have trees to serve as a buffer between pedestrians and the street.
July 6, 2005: That’s as far as I got. Needless to day, none of that came to pass and what has been proposed instead seeks to replace all of the lost office space, build a “monument building” on the site and completely ignores the fabric of the surrounding neighborhood. This assumes anything at all gets built. The foot-dragging and appeasement that occurred early on, with squabbles among the families of office victims’ families and firefighters’ families, only set the table for the delays to come.
We’re approaching the four-year anniversary, and what have we got? We have a proposal for a poorly-designed, inartistic, over-large office tower sitting on a defensive pedestal with no relationship to the street. Replacing the Twin Towers with this boondoggle will send a clear message to the terrorists for sure. It says: “You win.”
On the Web: Lower Manhattan Development Coorporation
Tuesday, July 05, 2005
A Note on New York’s ‘Freedom Tower’
Check out James Howard Kunstler’s Eyesore of the Month for July. ‘Nuff said. For now.
Later the Indignant Citizen will explain what should have happened in Lower Manhattan after Sept. 11.
Later the Indignant Citizen will explain what should have happened in Lower Manhattan after Sept. 11.
A Taste of Freedom
This past weekend marked the Fourth of July, and the Indignant Citizen was filled with patriotic Pride at the sight of his fellow citizens marking the day in solemn fashion, contemplating War and our country’s place in the world and in history, pausing to remember those who died and who are still dying so that we might enjoy. . . .
Aw, who is the Indignant Citizen kidding? We celebrated the way we always have: by blowin’ shit up, guzzling beer, ingesting large quantities of fried food and leaving behind an immense fucking mess for the New Economy’s bottom feeders to pick up.
We are a nation of slobs. Lazy slobs at that, for one can be a slob and at least bring some energy to the job. We just drop our shit wherever it falls out of our hands and let it blow in the wind—into yards, into the lake, into the trees, into empty lots. Take for example the parade and fireworks display in the Indignant Citizen’s leafy, inner-ring Chicago suburb. Lots of people came out, folks who see each other every day at the grocery store, waiting for the bus, buying an ax at the Home Depot. Everyone brings the brood, some portable chairs and a cooler full of Icehouse and plops down along 95th Street. The fire department rolls by, lights flashing, sirens wailing and a big Stars & Stripes affixed to the bumper, in the manner of the FDNY trucks after Sept. 11. The Hoses are followed by a high school band, and then a tiny tots dance school, and some fucker in a green ’72 Eldorado with “Support the Troops” hand-painted on the side—a true patriot at nine miles per gallon. Then comes a giant RV with cheap red, white and blue streamers duct-taped to the side and a tattered old flag pasted across the passenger side front window. Yes, sir, the heart swells with Pride at a display like that.
And just when it looks to be over, when the last squad car has cruised by, why then the fun’s just startin’, Bubba. That’s because it’s time to pack up da fam-damily and head on up ta da park fer da fahr-werks! Eeeeeyyyyyaaaaahhhh! Whoops! When did Howard Dean get here? Send that Osama-loving fag back Vermont. The Fourth of July is for Men and for Patriots! And to prove it we will discard our empty Icehouse cans, our plastic bags full of barbecue sauce-stained napkins and gnawed-on turkey legs, and our Styrofoam plates here on the sidewalk, inches from where we sat on our fat asses and watched the parade.
Yes! Yes! Leave it all! Real Patriots don’t put their trash in the garbage. This is America, goddammit, and we’ve no time to be walking an extra 20 feet to throw garbage in some enviro-hippie trash can. We have places to go. If we don’t leave now for da fahr-werks Right Now, we won’t have enough room to spread out our soiled Flag Blanket, since doing so is a ritualistic way of staking our Claim to space we’ll need so’s papa can change little Johnny’s shitty diaper in full view of the world and mama can whip our her teat and suckle little Susie. Hoo boy, it’s a real American Fourth of JU-ly.
Whoa. Got carried away, there. Sometimes the Indignant Citizen gets caught up in the Patriotism of it all, see, and he forgets. . . . But we were talking about trash of the refuse variety. At the local parade, at the local fireworks and at Chicago’s July 3 fireworks at the Taste of Chicago, the Indignant Citizen was struck dumb by the sheer stupid laziness of his fellow Americans, and by the king-sized mess we manage to leave behind after our “celebrations.”
The ground at Grant Park was covered ankle-deep in trash after the fireworks Sunday night. The Indignant Citizen saw one single family actually throw its trash away. Walking along the lakefront afterward, the concrete walkway and the grassy hill were strewn with paper and plastic and glass bottles. One guy picked up a bottle and threw it away. He gave up after that, realizing that to continue would be like standing at the bottom of an avalanche with a toy sandbox shovel.
And so much for the trash. Another observation from the long Fourth weekend: We are inches from anarchy in this country. The Indignant Citizen felt on several occasions that only a razor’s edge stood between uneasy calm and riot—most notably, the crowds at the central Taste intersection of Jackson and Columbus. On the busiest day of the Taste, this intersection is gridlock. You can’t move. Why? Plain stubbornness, mostly. Nobody wants to yield, everyone is standing or walking where they are by Right, and nothing will make them step aside. Of course, even if they chose to step aside, there would be no place to go, thanks in no small measure to the logic-challenged parents who insist on wheeling strollers through the dense crowd. Where the fuck do they think they’re going?! And exactly how much room do they feel they and their offspring are entitled to?
In another example, a large crowd waited to cross Lake Shore Drive south of Buckingham Fountain. Cops manned the crosswalks and the traffic light control box, presumably to help traffic and pedestrian flow. But they never allowed the pedestrians to cross, even when no traffic was coming on the Drive. Eventually the crowd reached half a block deep waiting to cross. Then, suddenly, people started out in frustration. They quickly spilled into the street, filling all lanes. One old cop tried to stem the tide, pushing a couple of pedestrians back onto the sidewalk. But by and large we ignored him.
We love our men in uniform, except when they get in our way.
Aw, who is the Indignant Citizen kidding? We celebrated the way we always have: by blowin’ shit up, guzzling beer, ingesting large quantities of fried food and leaving behind an immense fucking mess for the New Economy’s bottom feeders to pick up.
We are a nation of slobs. Lazy slobs at that, for one can be a slob and at least bring some energy to the job. We just drop our shit wherever it falls out of our hands and let it blow in the wind—into yards, into the lake, into the trees, into empty lots. Take for example the parade and fireworks display in the Indignant Citizen’s leafy, inner-ring Chicago suburb. Lots of people came out, folks who see each other every day at the grocery store, waiting for the bus, buying an ax at the Home Depot. Everyone brings the brood, some portable chairs and a cooler full of Icehouse and plops down along 95th Street. The fire department rolls by, lights flashing, sirens wailing and a big Stars & Stripes affixed to the bumper, in the manner of the FDNY trucks after Sept. 11. The Hoses are followed by a high school band, and then a tiny tots dance school, and some fucker in a green ’72 Eldorado with “Support the Troops” hand-painted on the side—a true patriot at nine miles per gallon. Then comes a giant RV with cheap red, white and blue streamers duct-taped to the side and a tattered old flag pasted across the passenger side front window. Yes, sir, the heart swells with Pride at a display like that.
And just when it looks to be over, when the last squad car has cruised by, why then the fun’s just startin’, Bubba. That’s because it’s time to pack up da fam-damily and head on up ta da park fer da fahr-werks! Eeeeeyyyyyaaaaahhhh! Whoops! When did Howard Dean get here? Send that Osama-loving fag back Vermont. The Fourth of July is for Men and for Patriots! And to prove it we will discard our empty Icehouse cans, our plastic bags full of barbecue sauce-stained napkins and gnawed-on turkey legs, and our Styrofoam plates here on the sidewalk, inches from where we sat on our fat asses and watched the parade.
Yes! Yes! Leave it all! Real Patriots don’t put their trash in the garbage. This is America, goddammit, and we’ve no time to be walking an extra 20 feet to throw garbage in some enviro-hippie trash can. We have places to go. If we don’t leave now for da fahr-werks Right Now, we won’t have enough room to spread out our soiled Flag Blanket, since doing so is a ritualistic way of staking our Claim to space we’ll need so’s papa can change little Johnny’s shitty diaper in full view of the world and mama can whip our her teat and suckle little Susie. Hoo boy, it’s a real American Fourth of JU-ly.
Whoa. Got carried away, there. Sometimes the Indignant Citizen gets caught up in the Patriotism of it all, see, and he forgets. . . . But we were talking about trash of the refuse variety. At the local parade, at the local fireworks and at Chicago’s July 3 fireworks at the Taste of Chicago, the Indignant Citizen was struck dumb by the sheer stupid laziness of his fellow Americans, and by the king-sized mess we manage to leave behind after our “celebrations.”
The ground at Grant Park was covered ankle-deep in trash after the fireworks Sunday night. The Indignant Citizen saw one single family actually throw its trash away. Walking along the lakefront afterward, the concrete walkway and the grassy hill were strewn with paper and plastic and glass bottles. One guy picked up a bottle and threw it away. He gave up after that, realizing that to continue would be like standing at the bottom of an avalanche with a toy sandbox shovel.
And so much for the trash. Another observation from the long Fourth weekend: We are inches from anarchy in this country. The Indignant Citizen felt on several occasions that only a razor’s edge stood between uneasy calm and riot—most notably, the crowds at the central Taste intersection of Jackson and Columbus. On the busiest day of the Taste, this intersection is gridlock. You can’t move. Why? Plain stubbornness, mostly. Nobody wants to yield, everyone is standing or walking where they are by Right, and nothing will make them step aside. Of course, even if they chose to step aside, there would be no place to go, thanks in no small measure to the logic-challenged parents who insist on wheeling strollers through the dense crowd. Where the fuck do they think they’re going?! And exactly how much room do they feel they and their offspring are entitled to?
In another example, a large crowd waited to cross Lake Shore Drive south of Buckingham Fountain. Cops manned the crosswalks and the traffic light control box, presumably to help traffic and pedestrian flow. But they never allowed the pedestrians to cross, even when no traffic was coming on the Drive. Eventually the crowd reached half a block deep waiting to cross. Then, suddenly, people started out in frustration. They quickly spilled into the street, filling all lanes. One old cop tried to stem the tide, pushing a couple of pedestrians back onto the sidewalk. But by and large we ignored him.
We love our men in uniform, except when they get in our way.
Monday, July 04, 2005
Smokys Serenade
Lest you get the impression the Indignant Citizen is a curmudgeon without a helpful or nice word about anything, let us focus for a moment on what is left of America’s natural beauty. Take, for example, the Great Smoky Mountains.
As the Indignant Citizen mentioned in an earlier post, he and his Smart & Beautiful Wife drove the Blue Ridge Parkway through the North Carolina portion of the Smokys before turning onto Highway 441, the Newfound Gap Road, and eventually encountering the Shimmering Port-A-Potty in the Valley known as the greater Gatlinburg-Pigeon Forge, Tenn., area.
Let it be known that the Smokys, when one is high up in them, are beautiful and awe-inspiring. The road through the Smokys offers stunning vistas around every turn. There are deep, densely-wooded valleys that bottom out in green carpets; smooth, tree-topped mountains rising into the haze and folded in behind one another as far as the eye can see; and above all, almost nothing else. No gas stations, no homes (or very few, anyway, we did see what appeared to be houses built into some hillsides but they were scattered and few), no restaurants, no outlet malls. Nothing. Even the occasional rest area with its bare-bones lavatory shack seemed like an intrusion.
It is nice to know places like this still exist in America—mile upon mile of wilderness. It’s easy to forget that they do. Growing up in the West, the Indignant Citizen took these vast areas of nature for granted. Intervening years spent in Chicago (now for the second time around) and New York City can leave one with the impression that man’s concrete reach has touched even the most remote parts of the country. Thankfully it has not and we have our predecessors to thank for that, at least in part. They recognized the importance of preserving open space from the country’s westward expansion. There’s even a Chicago connection, with Stephen T. Mather spearheading the creation of the National Park Service.
But back to the Smokys. Our drive started on a cloudy, cool day. We climbed into the clouds, and about a third of the way into the drive the fog was so thick we could barely see the lines on the twisting road. Occasionally we would round a bend and pop out of the fog for a moment, but the world around us was gray.
Then, as quickly as we were in it, we were out, confronted again with spectacular vistas (the road has pull-out points seemingly every quarter-mile, and each one is worth the stop). About the time we crossed over into Tennessee from North Carolina, we were hit by a dark and massive thunderstorm that forced most traffic off to the side of the narrow road, sent rivers of water and rock across the highway and dumped pea-size hail in a quantity sufficient to make the road slick and coat the sides of the hills in a winter-esque white.
The descent out of the mountains is quick, but the terrain takes its time flattening out. Not until just south of Lexington, Ky., does the landscape begin to yield to the glacially-smoothed topography familiar to most Flatlanders.
Something about the mountains is intoxicating. Perhaps it is the remoteness, the feeling that, once in them, one is disconnected from the world. Standing on the prairie, there is always the “out there,” the long thin line where the horizon meets the land. In the mountains, perspective is shortened—unless you’re on a peak, which is generally a temporary situation. In the mountains, there is only the here.
As the Indignant Citizen mentioned in an earlier post, he and his Smart & Beautiful Wife drove the Blue Ridge Parkway through the North Carolina portion of the Smokys before turning onto Highway 441, the Newfound Gap Road, and eventually encountering the Shimmering Port-A-Potty in the Valley known as the greater Gatlinburg-Pigeon Forge, Tenn., area.
Let it be known that the Smokys, when one is high up in them, are beautiful and awe-inspiring. The road through the Smokys offers stunning vistas around every turn. There are deep, densely-wooded valleys that bottom out in green carpets; smooth, tree-topped mountains rising into the haze and folded in behind one another as far as the eye can see; and above all, almost nothing else. No gas stations, no homes (or very few, anyway, we did see what appeared to be houses built into some hillsides but they were scattered and few), no restaurants, no outlet malls. Nothing. Even the occasional rest area with its bare-bones lavatory shack seemed like an intrusion.
It is nice to know places like this still exist in America—mile upon mile of wilderness. It’s easy to forget that they do. Growing up in the West, the Indignant Citizen took these vast areas of nature for granted. Intervening years spent in Chicago (now for the second time around) and New York City can leave one with the impression that man’s concrete reach has touched even the most remote parts of the country. Thankfully it has not and we have our predecessors to thank for that, at least in part. They recognized the importance of preserving open space from the country’s westward expansion. There’s even a Chicago connection, with Stephen T. Mather spearheading the creation of the National Park Service.
But back to the Smokys. Our drive started on a cloudy, cool day. We climbed into the clouds, and about a third of the way into the drive the fog was so thick we could barely see the lines on the twisting road. Occasionally we would round a bend and pop out of the fog for a moment, but the world around us was gray.
Then, as quickly as we were in it, we were out, confronted again with spectacular vistas (the road has pull-out points seemingly every quarter-mile, and each one is worth the stop). About the time we crossed over into Tennessee from North Carolina, we were hit by a dark and massive thunderstorm that forced most traffic off to the side of the narrow road, sent rivers of water and rock across the highway and dumped pea-size hail in a quantity sufficient to make the road slick and coat the sides of the hills in a winter-esque white.
The descent out of the mountains is quick, but the terrain takes its time flattening out. Not until just south of Lexington, Ky., does the landscape begin to yield to the glacially-smoothed topography familiar to most Flatlanders.
Something about the mountains is intoxicating. Perhaps it is the remoteness, the feeling that, once in them, one is disconnected from the world. Standing on the prairie, there is always the “out there,” the long thin line where the horizon meets the land. In the mountains, perspective is shortened—unless you’re on a peak, which is generally a temporary situation. In the mountains, there is only the here.
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