Rhapsody Spring 10 Issue by Emerson Argueta

Spring 2010 / Issue 10

RHAPSODY The Urban Affairs Magazine of Columbia University

In v is ib le New York

Letter from the Editor Dear Reader, Experiencing daily life in a city, we become accustomed to its idiosyncrasies. We don’t often take or have the time to explore the city’s eccentricities, which soon morph into the mundane. For this issue of Rhapsody in Blue, we encouraged contributors to question aspects of New York City that are typically overlooked yet unexplained. As a result, we give you “Invisible New York,” in which you can learn about how subway musicians earn their space, the significance of a decaying hospital for the city’s homeless population, and a farm movement afoot above our heads. We also offer revelations from foreign cities, since we believe there is something hidden in front of our eyes in every city. We hope these essays will encourage you to question some aspect of your daily life in New York City or any place you call home. Rebecca Davies Editor-in-Chief

Editorial Board Editor-in-Chief: Rebecca Davies Layout Editor: Yesol Han Treasurer: Emerson Argueta Webmaster: Jordan Schau Editors:

Fatima Abdul-Nabi Tom Breen Desiree Browne Megan Eardley Flannery Gallagher Sohani Khan

Contributors Michelle Conway Sylvia Khoury Nikitha Yereddi Mena Odu Emily Kager Katherine Carrington Meredith Hutchison John Gomez Andra Mihali

Table of Contents Letter from the Editor........................................ 2 Table of Contents.............................................. 3

Invisible New York

An Ear to the Underground............................... 4 Prophet for Profit............................................... 6 acking Trash Over Time................................... 10 Winter in New York City Parks........................ 14 What Working with Residents of Manhattanville Taught Me About Columbia’s Expansion......................................................... 16 Bread From Flowers.......................................... 18 The View from Bellevue................................... 20 Underscoring the Green in Greenpoint............. 24 The Times They Are A’Changing..................... 27

Invisible Cities

Jewel Tones and Path to the Sea....................... 30 In a Post-Apartheid Nation, Is Choice an Ilusion?......................................... 34 A Morning Run in Paris.................................... 37

An Ear to the Underground Desiree Browne

ife in New York moves at lightning speed. That’s why, on an afternoon at the Columbus Circle subway stop, most people are ignoring the three performances happening around them. There’s a man playing an East Asian stringed instrument, a few feet away, another tap dances on a two by three piece of wood, and still further down the platform, a jazz quartet performs, starring a man playing the flugelhorn and trumpet at the same time. A few people watch the quartet dispassionately—probably because their group is the loudest—but most gaze down the track, looking for a train, or distract themselves with cell phones. New Yorkers are famously unfazed by most things, and noise, melodic or otherwise, is no exception. But those hiding behind headphones are missing out; hundreds of talented musicians play in stations across the MTA. Buskers, or street performers, have been playing in the New York subway since it was finished in 1904 but not without consequences. Thinking them a nuisance, Mayor LaGuardia banned street performers of all kinds in 1936. When the ban was lifted in 1985, the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s (MTA) Arts for Transit program started a separate program called Music Under New York (MUNY) in the same year. Each year, aspiring subway musicians audition in Grand Central Terminal before a panel of twenty-five music professionals including music producers for film and TV, established performers, and a

Lincoln Center board member, competing for the chance to be sanctioned under an official MUNY banner. There are now 350 musicians playing under those banners, and each year more people seek auditions. Last year, 250 musicians auditioned for 25 new slots. The MUNY office then schedules performers for times and spaces in all 25 MUNY areas, all high-traffic locales. “We try to change things because as a commuter, you don’t want to see the same people every day,” explained Lydia Bradshaw, manager of Arts for Transit. An Arts for Transit employee since 1997, Bradshaw is committed to MUNY’s mission. “It’s a great program because it really brings music to the

“‘It’s wrong to bounce musicians, we’re just working,’ said one guitarist.” public.” Riders agree. “I’m on my way to a Knicks game, but I always stop here because I’m interested to see who they have,” one rider said in Penn Station. “They always have lots of different kinds of acts.” Floyd Lee is often one of those acts and has a long history of playing in New York

subway stations. He began as a freelance busker but has since joined MUNY as one of the audition judges. When asked how he became an audition judge, he replied, “I started the damn thing.” Originally from Mississippi, this blues man’s raspy voice and rich guitar sounds first echoed across subway platforms in 1975. He still plays a spirited tune at age 77, performing as part of MUNY roughly three days a week, in clubs like iconic blues club B. B. King’s, and working on albums, with just enough time for an international tour or two. While he believes in the work of MUNY, he remembers a time before it. “There used to only be a few of us down here. Now, everybody wants to do it.” Everybody may want to do it, but not everyone does it as well as Floyd Lee. On one afternoon, he attracts a crowd of about twelve people just while he’s tuning, waving at passersby and saying hello to familiar faces. Not all subway musicians have the blessing of MUNY’s banner. No one’s sat down to count the number of non-MUNY musicians playing the subways, but most estimate it to be a few hundred. Cyrano West, a guitarist, is one of those freelance musicians. A New Jersey resident, he spends several hours each day playing a mixture of rock and reggae in the subway and has been doing these performances for five years. “This is my day job,” he said. Matt Nichols, an Astoria resident, is another freelance guitarist who spends five days a week underground when he’s not gigging or doing commercial work. A graduate from Baltimore’s Peabody Conservatory, he finds busking a decent business. “One day I made $119, which was better than average, but it’s hard to make an estimate.” West agrees that it’s hard to guess just how much he makes on average playing in the subway, but whatever it is, it helps him pay his bills. Both Nichols and West bristle at the mention of MUNY. “I hate MUNY,” remarked Nichols. “They play favorites and accept musicians that suck.” He cites the case of a friend who’s a seasoned performer but couldn’t get a slot. Bradshaw, director of Arts for Transit,

denied any favoritism, citing the high standards for musicians during their auditions. “The program reflects who makes up New York,” she added. For West, there’s a separate issue. “They dictate to you where you play and when you play. That’s not acceptable. This is my work here, not a hobby.” Even when working outside the MUNY system, busking isn’t easy. Nichols and West have found that MTA police can be abrasive. West remembers being harassed by police on several occasions, especially in his favorite performance spot, the Columbus Circle stop. “It’s wrong to bounce musicians, we’re just working.” He said he’s been told to move several times under the pretense of him being in the way of construction, but it’s not consistent. This kind of harassment is so common, in fact, that the Street Performers Advocacy Project, an initiative led by cultural diversity advocates at the local nonprofit City Lore, has a list of the MTA’s rules on its website so buskers can be sure for what reasons police can legitimately require them to move. In November, AM New York reported a crackdown on freelance buskers, something both guitarists have noticed, though Nichols feels the crackdown has been going on for roughly a year and a half. “They kick me out a lot and I’ve gotten 20 tickets over the years. One sort of nice cop told me that his other cop buddies arrest every busker they see. Nice, huh?” It seems nothing can stop the city’s buskers from playing their music. The MTA can channel it and develop rules so no one bothers commuters, but this century-old tradition doesn’t show signs of slowing down. When asked why, after more than thirty years and several tours, he returns to the subway, Floyd Lee said, “When you do something you love, you keep on keepin’ on.” ■

Prophet for Profit Rebecca Davies S

ome operate only by telephone, others work in restaurants, hotels, even on Wall Street, while yet others maintain storefronts, offering their services to any one with five, ten or one hundred dollars to spare. Psychics have a long history in New York City from turn-ofthe-century seers crammed in crowded tenement buildings to more recent finance workers turned occultists, offering to read tea leaves for the business crowd. In 1909, a New York Times article counted 1,000 psychics in New York, mostly catering to a “sordid and commonplace” clientele of foreigners. While the exact number of practicing psychics in New York City currently is difficult to ascertain, internet search engines help sort today’s wideranging clairvoyant cast into specialties such as palmistry, astrology, tarot card reading, metaphysical gift shops and more. Destiny, a psychic and fifteen-year resident of New York City, boasts of corporate clients such as Time

magazine, Fox television network, American Express, and Soap Opera Digest. In a city home to the headquarters or outposts of numerous major corporations, why not market your psychic skills to the major league? But seers beware! As emphasized by Operation Crystal Ball, an attempt by the NYPD in 1999 to root out unlawful psychic profiteering, asserting the truth of your practice could amount to extortion under state law. New York State law section 165.35, “Fortune telling,” decrees that “a person is guilty of fortune telling when, for a fee or compensation which he directly or indirectly solicits or receives, he claims or pretends to tell fortunes…to answer questions or give advice on personal matters or to exorcise, influence or affect evil spirits or curses.” If convicted, the offending psychic receives a class B misdemeanor, punishable by up to six months in jail. Depending on the magnitude of the crime, the psychic could face

larceny charges. For entertainment purposes, fortune telling remains legally profitable, but the distinction between entertainment and crime can be difficult to discern. Clients usually willingly engage with the psychic, at least initially, complicating accusations of extortion. Furthermore, lax legal enforcement leaves the risk of arrest low. Reports on New York City occultists and their clients over time suggest that they consider their practice to be more than a carnival booth. With fees topping $100 per sixtyminute session, one would hope that at least psychics believe in their craft. Fortune telling has in fact gained legitimacy since the early 20th century. Take Mary T. Browne, “Wall Street’s Psychic Advisor” according to Forbes, who is based in New York City. Browne has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Vogue in addition to popular daytime talk shows, utilizing her psychic abilities to recommend stock purchases and offer career advice. Then there’s the Wall Street Hypnosis Center, which, although outside the psychic realm, provides a similar supernatural outlet for bankers. Unusually high concentrations of fortune tellers in the finance district of east Midtown and the wealthy neighborhoods of the Upper East Side reinforce the trend. If recent events have weakened your trust in financiers’ judgment, note that even the New York City government sought to profit from fortune telling in 2000 by offering tarot card reading as a learnable trade for welfare-towork participants. City officials shuttered the program nine months after it began, following complaints from fellow government officials and the general public. Even clairvoyants were offended. Yet as a form of counseling for harried New Yorkers, fortune telling resembles psychiatry with a lower price tag. Given New Yorkers’ reputation for frequent and expensive therapy sessions, perhaps the city’s prophets deserve respect for their efforts to sort out residents’ frenzied, unpredictable lives. Lacking a psychologist’s credentials, and subject to ambiguous legal hair-splitting,

psychics can be hard to locate. Beneath discreet awnings in basement alcoves or squeezed in ten feet of storefront real estate, New York’s psychics are both ubiquitous and hidden. When asked to identify the location of psychics visited or noted in passing, New Yorkers offer a general area rather than a specific address. “Somewhere near the Christopher Street subway stop.” “Chinatown.” In a way, the psychics’ storefronts function like local bodegas, significant for their function rather than their unique brand. If the urban walker held a bibliographic catalogue of city sights and stops, the fortune teller’s window front displaying a crystal ball amidst thick curtains would occupy a briefly-noted card with vague references to hours and places but no specific locations. One soggy afternoon in December I embarked on a quest to unearth an economical fortune. Sure that in prior strolls I had passed a sidewalk sign advertising inexpensive readings around W 106th Street and Broadway, I peered down side streets, visually scouring thin threestory edifices for my portal to another dimension. It remained hidden. I walked south to W 96th Street, figuring that a high-traffic transit interchange should welcome the entrepreneurial clairvoyant. Alas, my multiple rounds of neighboring blocks resulted in nothing, so I continued on to W 86th Street area where a friend assured me she visited a psychic just off of Broadway….“Well, maybe it was 85th or 84th Street,” she cautioned. I tried all to no avail, having long since partaken in a phone conversation with my mother to pass the time as I walked and walked. After an hour and a half I succumbed to dribbling rain and headed back uptown. In the weeks following I passed multiple psychics on my way to or from an engagement when time constraints would not permit me to stop. Milling about the city in the course of daily life, I spy psychics everywhere, yet when I actively seek the urban paranormal it slips discreetly into the shadows. If nothing else, I confirmed that the future is, in fact, an elusive notion.

Finally, determined to hear my fortune one Wednesday afternoon, I ventured to the Lower East Side where I had spotted a psychic’s awning across from my window seat at a restaurant on East 9th Street the weekend prior. Though I know hundreds of psychics read palms between the Upper West and Lower East sides of Manhattan, I refused to engage in any more hopeful wanderings. The Lower East Side retains a mix of new age mysticism and downtown grunge circa 1970s New York—a time when the subways were covered in graffiti, porn shops laced Times Square and civil unrest rocked city life. Its ragtag character is now part of its appeal, reflected in high rents. The neighborhood remains relatively hospitable to mystics as it was at the turn of the 19th century. My psychic of choice inhabited five feet of valuable sidewalk property, most of

tracing the long crease from the base of my thumb joint towards my index finger, “This is your life line. It shows a long and happy life ahead of you.” “Long” and “happy”? An auspicious suggestion for me personally, but a weak portent of the quality of the reading to come. Giving her the benefit of the doubt, I resisted premature judgment. A deluge of platitudinous prophecies followed in rapid succession. “You are smiling but I can see in your eyes that something is troubling you.” “You have worked very hard to achieve your goals and soon you will be rewarded.” “Your concerns for your family will be resolved soon.” And so on. She attempted to engage me further with questions, including, “What do California, Florida, and Europe mean to you?”, wisely choosing two of the most populous states in the country and a familiar continent. A few more

“Beneath discreet awnings in basement alcoves or squeezed in ten feet of storefront real estate, New York’s psychics are both ubiquitous and hidden.” which was taken up by her large window. When I hesitantly stopped to read the sidewalk sign advertising five-dollar readings, the woman behind the glass beckoned me in. I felt self-conscious, wondering if nearby amblers would eye me disparagingly. Then I walked in. Hardly a room but rather a window dressing, the interior smelled of smoke and incense. A curtain blocked the pathway deeper into the building and a man scurried into the back when I entered. Red walls displayed mystic imagery: cloudy orbs mixed with mythical creatures, stars, hands, cards and other tools of the trade. Trinkets laced a small side table with the teller’s service list and prices prominently displayed in the center. I noted the absence of the five-dollar reading and requested it specifically, wary of falling into a spending trap. She asked for my hand so I laid my palm upright in hers. “You see this?” she said,

trite phrases concluded the reading and soon she was asking what other readings I would like, such as a twenty-dollar “futures” reading. I declined and thanked her, asking if she might have change for a ten-dollar bill. She claimed she had none until I suggested I leave to obtain change, prompting her to call to the man behind the curtain. Receiving my five dollars, I asked her for her name, hoping to complete my experience with Stella, Esmerelda, Destiny, or another fitting cliché. “Pat,” she replied. Her annoyance at my refusal to purchase additional services apparent and exacerbated by my request to photograph the front of the shop (she preferred I didn’t), I rapidly left feeling no surer of my future than when I entered, though I could foresee that I would not visit another psychic any time soon. Total visit length: Approximately two minutes, including payment, suggesting a ripe

rate of $150 per hour if business was brisk. Yet with no other customers in sight before or after me, I suspected it was a rather slow day for Pat and her platitudes. On my way back to the subway I passed a storefront that, fittingly, I had not noticed previously, offering ten-dollar tarot card readings.

The glittering sign and quaint awning tempted me to enter to compare experiences. At the least, I wished to encounter a better actor or therapist. But then, reviewing my knowledge of occultist history in New York and my recent experience with Pat, I thought better, deciding that if I wanted to spend ten dollars frivolously I should purchase a lottery ticket. â&#x2013;

Tracking Trash Over Time Yesol Han

How does New York City Manage to Get Rid of Its Trash?

19th Centrury Garbage Destination

If you were to visit New

York City in the early 19th century, one would be assaulted by the very palpable reality of waste. The city’s streets were inundated with horse manure and man-made trash. People threw out garbage from their kitchen windows, filling courtyards with decomposing food and other leftovers that attracted rodents. Plagued by a series of epidemics in the early 19th century, the city’s residents began to suspect that the odor produced by such festering waste was not only deleterious to the city’s social and physical environment, but also responsible for the rapid spread of diseases. Time was ripe for a change. In 1860, private scavengers and municipal crews first organized an effort to remove 15,000 horse carcasses from the city’s streets. By 1866, New York City’s Metropolitan Board of Health declared a “war on garbage,” forbidding the “throwing of dead animals, garbage or ashes into the streets.” As the century progressed, garbage was increasingly recognized

as a public health issue, culminating in 1881 with New York City’s creation of the Department of Sanitation, originally known as the Department of Street Cleaning. As the city took more and more responsibility for the systematic collection and removal of garbage from the streets, it was faced with another serious question: what to do with all that trash? From ocean dumping to landfills, from incineration to long-term recycling, various solutions were proposed. As outrageous as the prospect of dumping massive amounts of garbage into the river and ocean may seem to the modern city dweller, the city government in the 19th century was desperate for any and all opportunities to dispose of its waste. The sanitation forces transported the garbage to the piers of lower Manhattan, piled it into big barges, and dumped it into the sea. Dumping garbage into the East River was finally outlawed in 1872, and the city’s residents were forced to look elsewhere to get rid of their trash.

20th Century Freshkills: from a Landfill to a Park In the 20th century, most of the city’s garbage was directed into landfills. In 1948 New York City decided to build a massive landfill at Fresh Kills, Staten Island. The Fresh Kills Landfill would become the largest landfill in the world. At the time, it was considered to be an “advanced waste disposal facility and a model for other landfills around the nation.” Covering 2200 acres of land, the landfill was three times the size of Central Park; the height of the tallest mound in 2001 was taller than that of the Statue of Liberty. With the total volume of the accumulated garbage exceeding the volume of the Great Wall of China, the Fresh Kills Land-

fills was one of the most immense man-made structures in human history. In 2001, Mayor Giuliani decided to close the Fresh Kills Landfill at the insistent request of Staten Island’s residents. Scientists believe that the landfill had the capacity to withstand at least 20 more years of municipal garbage at the time of its closure. Although the landfill reopened briefly in order to absorb the debris from September 11, it is now permanently closed. City officials have proposed to remake the landscape of Fresh Kills and are currently working to turn the landfill into a public park. According to the Fresh Kills Park website, the “transfor-

mation of what was formerly the world’s largest landfill into a productive and beautiful cultural destination will make the park a symbol of renewal and an expression of how our society can restore balance to its landscape.” One glaring obstacle remains. Despite Fresh Kills Park’s aim to become a symbol for environmental sustainability, its closing was determined not by long-ranging environmental concerns but by political expediency. The city still needs to dispose of its trash, and has yet to find an alternative solution to landfilling.

21st Century Present and Future of Trash New York City produces about 36,200 tons of solid waste each day. About 23,000 tons is produced by local businesses and restaurants, which private carters handle. The remaining waste is produced by private residents, public agencies, and non-profit corporations. The Department of Sanitation, which had spent half a century using the Fresh Kills Landfill, is responsible for this residential waste. After the closing of Fresh Kills, the city continues to rely on landfills as its primary means of trash disposal. The only difference is that now these landfills are not in the city but are dispersed throughout the nation. New York’s trash

now travels as far as Ohio and Pennsylvania. The city’s current policy of long-distance trash disposal has been criticized on economic, environmental, and even moral grounds. In 2001, a joint research project lead by Columbia University’s Earth Institute, Earth Engineering Center, and the Urban Habitat Project criticized the new plan because long-distance trucking increases both fuel consumption and air pollutant emissions. Moreover, the exportation policy promotes an “out of sight, out of mind” attitude, which encourages the city and its residents to neglect the importance of waste diversion and recycling. Critics have also pointed to

the fact that the New York City’s recycling program has been lagging behind other programs of comparable cities in the United States. Exporting trash cannot be a permanent solution to New York’s garbage problem, but what are its alternatives? Currently, Europe is experimenting with next-generation incinerators, also known as waste-to-energy plants. Incineration, however, is similar to landfilling in its political inexpediency and its inability to fundamentally alter the structure of waste production amd removal. In the long run, the city will have to design a policy that can realize efficiency as well as the three R’s–reduce, reuse, recycle. ■

Winter in New York City Parks Meredith Hutchison

Above: Sakura Park / Upper Right: Riverside Park / Right: Sledding

What Working with Residents of Manhattanville Taught Me About Columbia’s Expansion Michelle Conway Arriving at Columbia University as an en-

thusiastic first-year in the fall of 2009, I did not imagine that I would be immersed in the issues of West Harlem gentrification within my first two months on campus. As an urban studies major fascinated by the struggle for affordable housing, I tried to keep myself informed about the Manhattanville expansion project (through which Columbia will occupy a 17-acre area from 129th street to 133rd street between Broadway and Twelfth Avenue over the next two decades) even before coming to New York. It was the kind of complex urban issue I hoped to better understand during my years at Columbia, and, this past November, I was given an opportunity to do just that. I was going to be able to speak with residents of 3333 Broadway, a five-tower high-rise building with 1,200 apartments that faces 133rd street and Broadway—the eventual upper boundaries of the expansion. After meeting with employees of Tenants and Neighbors, a Chelsea-based tenants’ rights group that aims to protect low-income tenants from the discrimination and intimidation that often comes with gentrification of housing, I learned a lot about my school’s future neighbor in Manhattanville. I learned how the building’s 75 percent of the building’s tenants, most of them black and Latino, hold Section 8 housing vouchers, through which

the Department of Housing and Urban Development provides federal funds for rent support. These residents, I learned, face rodents, eviction, and increasing disrepair in their apartments, while new residents paying market-rate—most of them white—enjoy renovated apartments and friendly treatment from management. My job as a volunteer was to go doorto-door surveying tenants about their race, how long they’ve been in the building, eviction threats, and the responsiveness of management to maintenance requests. The part that excited me most was the fact that the surveys would then be used in a lawsuit by the New York State Department of Human Rights against the building’s owner. By accusing this company, Urban American Management Corp., the case will hopefully end eviction threats made to the Section 8 and non-white tenants and improve their living conditions. On my first visit to 3333, I knocked on the doors of Section 8 tenants whose apartments were identified as the more severe cases of disrepair due to the unfair treatment they received. I worried about how tenants would react to a white, 19-year-old Columbia student who speaks no Spanish appearing at their home, asking them how much rent they pay and whether their toilet leaks. I expected doors to be closed in my face. Instead, ten-

“Minority market-rate tenants did not receive the same treatment as the overwhelmingly white population of market-rate tenants new to the building.” ants were welcoming—perhaps because they understood that I was there to acknowledge the process they see going on all around them at 3333 Broadway, when new, white middleclass tenants move into an apartment with hardwood floors and sparkling new appliances, while management disregards their requests for repairs. Perhaps they were glad I was there to document the inequality they experience daily, visible in the peeling walls, the rusting bathroom fixtures, the mouse, rat, roach, and bedbug infestations, the loose floor tiles, the leaking faucets, a lack of testing for asbestos and lead paint, and baseless eviction threats. One woman I talked with shared a onebedroom apartment with her two teenage sons. She carefully led me through each cramped space, explaining her situation so I could check the appropriate boxes on my survey sheet: evidence of mold, repeated eviction threats, the months-long wait for a response to her request for a larger unit. Her Section 8 voucher was enough to cover a three-bedroom apartment, yet complications with management prevented her from moving. Another Section 8 tenant expressed fear that the mice she often found in her apartment would eat through her children’s bedding. After surveying a number of marketrent paying tenants, I began to realize why the Department of Human Rights was basing their case on racial discrimination. While it was true that every Section 8 tenant I spoke with was black or Latino, it was also true that minority market-rate tenants did not receive the same treatment as the overwhelmingly white population of market-rate tenants new to the build-

ing. I surveyed black and Latino residents, many of them in the building for more than two decades, who pay nearly the same rent as their newest neighbors, but continue to face apartment disrepair similar to that of voucher holders. While surveying, I realized that this instance of racial discrimination is part of the much larger process of gentrification. It is part of the slow and deliberate means by which entire neighborhoods become utterly unwelcoming to all but a select group of mostly white, young, well-educated professionals— the process that discriminates not just against people of color but against all people who do not belong to this select group. Naturally, the tenants of 3333 who do not belong to this group are angry. They see the gentrification of their building as inseparable from Columbia’s Manhattanville expansion, especially as a considerable number of the new tenants are Columbia students. Yet, it is the owner of 3333, not the university, that is attempting to make the building inhospitable to low-income tenants. The frustrated tenants, while they may wrongfully blame Columbia for gentrifying a building it doesn’t own, do understand that the changes in their building are connected to the changes that will come to their neighborhood when the university moves in next door. The force of gentrification might come from their landlord or from Columbia— whatever the source, if left unchecked, it will cause more of the inequity with which lowincome Manhattanville tenants have already become too familiar. ■

Bread From Flowers Sylvia Khoury

His name is Mamadou and he is 500 years old. He’s one of those guys who will lie about his

age by 494 years to impress you. I meet him three times a week in a room where they tape shut the mouths of noisy children and then stick them between the walls. He tells me this in a whisper with his hand on my arm, having scanned the room for eavesdroppers and eyed a baby a few feet away before determining she was no real threat. He doesn’t think it has ever happened before, but Miguel says he once heard something in the wall moving, so he can’t be sure. Anyways, if it does happen again, it won’t be to him. I’m too fast, he says, and explodes madly, running in place and pounding the linoleum floor with his little shoes. “Mamadou! What do we do with noisy children?” His limbs fall still except for hand, which he claps over his mouth to protect it from the tape the nun must be hiding under her habit. I hear her chuckle and know that he’s hearing a cackle. His name is Mamadou and his mother makes bread out of flowers. They don’t have flowers where he lives but the neighbors do, so she probably borrows from them. She puts the flowers in the oven with some water (because flowers need water and we learned that from his science worksheet) and when the bread comes out she mails it to people because it is that good. “Right?” he yells across me to his sister “Right? Mom makes bread from flowers? Tell her!” She looks up from her math worksheet, which I know she’s done perfectly but I’ll pretend to correct later. I see her consider him for a moment. She is two years and one waning dream older, the room with a computer waiting for her in West Africa flickering dangerously in her head, threatening to disappear. I watch her fading with it—her smile more muted and her laugh hollower than they were last spring. I exhale loudly when she nods silently and goes back to her work, and realize I’ve been holding my breath. She doesn’t want him to disappear, either. His name is Mamadou and he wants me to stay with him. I tell him that people are waiting for me to come home for dinner. I see his forehead wrinkle like an old man’s—the way it does when he’s trying to remember how many cents are in a nickel. Suddenly the lines are gone and he’s young again, putting his hand back on my arm and raising his eyebrows: “They have food upstairs. You should stay.” I bite my lip and tell him that my friends are waiting for me. There’s no look of consternation this time: “Well then you should just use your telephone, and tell them to come here.” He has an answer for everything as he describes the upstairs, which has enough food for all my friends, enough beds for us to sleep in, and enough big person books for us to read— even enough roads and enough cars in case we miss the scenery, and a secret room for no obvious reason. His name is Mamadou and he is my 500 year-old friend. We build palaces in our minds when we should be doing arithmetic or political science, draw pictures of the robots that inhabit them, and reassure each other that there will be flowers in every room so that everyone can eat bread, every day. The palaces have roads for us to travel, and beds for the liberated children once forced between the walls. And way at the top of the stairs—stairs without railings, so you have to be very careful—there’s that secret room with a computer and books inside, for a little girl who is too old to be eight. ■

I slunk along East 30th

The View from Bellevue Megan Eardley

magazine, The Real Deal, ran the Request with the quip: Street and 1st Avenue on an “Future dwellers at Bellevue early afternoon in October to Hospital’s old psych ward see how construction is progressing on the new biomedi- won’t be committed — they’ll actually be paying for their cal research park. stay in the historic institution” Coming from 30th, a new biomedical research the side of the old hospital is center has snapped up the immediately recognizable. I space for the world’s next life stopped next to a falafel cart science and technology comto take a few snapshots. Putting my camera away, I asked mercialization center. While the side enthe owner how often he sees trance has become the tourist tourists like me stopped at the stop-spot the iconic grotesque same place. He laughed. All of the Psychiatric Hospithe time, he said. It’s not bad tal, construction has begun for business. around the old main entrance On March 31st of 2008, the New York City Eco- of the building. The Alexandria Cennomic Development Corpora- ter for Science and Technolotion and the NYC Health and Hospitals Corporation issued a gy at East River Science Park Request for Proposals calling will keep the iconic edifice, but radically revise its status for project plans and bids to redevelop the former Bellevue as a public institution. The Psychiatric Hospital Building. changing built environment gives us a tangible way of unTheir joint-statement assures developers that the building’s derstanding transformations in New York’s social policies. architecture and layout, in For over a century, the shape of an “H,” make it Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital ideal for redevelopment as a has served as a physical rehotel and conference center. minder of governing policies While real-estate monitoring

“Bellevue. It is the single word that, for more than a century, has told the rest of New York City that there is now one less person on the streets about whom it has to worry.” Mark Harris, author of “Is it Check-Out Time at Bellevue?” 21

in New York that seek to make ‘problem people’ invisible in public places. Now, new plans to turn Bellevue into a destination hotel for a corporate biomedical research campus raise questions about what private city development by the city means for the public life of the city. The iconic campus of Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital was built in accordance with the most progressive recommendations for mental health services of the 1930s. As private hospitals began to refuse charity cases, Bellevue was offered as the solution for the city’s vulnerable men and women. For decades, institutionalized clients were carefully observed. Some of the mental deficiencies recorded in careful penmanship include: The Epileptic, The Moron, The Homosexual. Throughout the twentieth century, Bellevue was used as a holding place--a detention center- where abnormal behavior could be taken and contained. Amidst deinstitution-

“Most men and women who relied on Bellevue for a stable living situation Many have found themselves part of a ‘revolving door’ population of chronically mentally ill people.” alization in the 1980s, charges of overcrowding, negligence, and abuse rocked the hospital. Advocates for a systematic shift to treatment through community-based outpatient clinics cited the scandals to show the consequences of an ‘out of sight, out of mind’ public health policy. They argued that integrating clients into the community could help destigmatize and resocialize them. It would be cheaper for the city, too. In the last two decades, the results of deinstitutionalization efforts have been mixed, perhaps because it has proved difficult to destigmatize evidence of mental illness. Most men and women who relied on Bellevue for a stable living situation have had trouble finding jobs and housing. Many have found themselves part of a “re-

volving door” population of chronically mentally ill people who are periodically hospitalized, released, and rehospitalized. Deinstitutionalization (in accordance with the most progressive recommendations for mental health services of the last decades) requires greater resources to re-socialize. For the past decade, the Bellevue shelter has provided the only intake point for homeless single men into the municipal shelter system. In fiscal year 2007, of the nearly 22,000 homeless adults who sought shelter in this system, 7,164 men were new to the shelter system. In 2009, roughly 7,000 homeless adults slept in the municipal shelter system nightly. In addition to the $700 million to be invested by Alexandria Real Estate Equities, the City of New York is

providing $13.4 million in capital funds for the project, New York State is providing $27 million to be used for infrastructure in connection with the development, Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer contributed $500,000 to the project, and the New York City Industrial Development Agency (NYCIDA) is contributing $5.6 million to the project. Even as the city is generously supporting this private development project, its same public funds dispensaries are reducing homeless shelters. The city closed three drop-in centers in 2008. On July 1, 2009, the Bloomberg administration closed two more, leaving only three centers in Manhattan, of which two remain open 24 hours. In addition to cutting back the number of drop-in centers, the City is also making it harder for homeless men and women to gain access to the existing shelters by imposing

stricter requirements, such as demanding referrals from outreach workers. Indeed, to make room for the Alexandria Center, New York City plans to move the shelters from Bellevue, relocating the sole municipal intake center for homeless men from Manhattan (where street homelessness is most concentrated) to the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. Both Community Planning Board 6 and the Bellevue Hospital Community Advisory Board have publicly opposed the proposed hotel. The Coalition for the Homeless, a New York City-based nonprofit, appealed to the state government in Albany on September 19th in order to save the Intake and Vacancy Control center at Bellevue. From the plans that the developer, Alexandria Real Estate Equities, has published, it is difficult to imagine a place for current Bellevue community members. Virtual

models show no-frills glass skyscrapers arranged on a grid. Well-manicured lawns appear more decorative than functional. Strategically placed entrances to each building create the feeling of a private campus. A few minutes later, while I standing on my tiptoes pushing my camera between the chains of the metal fence to snap some shots of the remains of the ground’s murals, a second man familiar with my breed of tourism walked by. Come back in a week or two, he advised. When this big tree in front turns red, it’s really something. The men’s shelter is still active today. As I stood chatting by the gates, a few middle-aged men filtered into the building, weaving around temporary fencing. ■

Underscoring the Green in Greenpoint

Nikitha Yereddi N

ew York, while it should and does continue to epitomize the ultimate concrete jungle, has bits of green surreptitiously creeping into its urban landscape. I speak not of Central Park, or tinier cognates scattered around the city. These verdant developments have subtly arisen outside of the pedestrian’s radar, and ‘arisen’ is probably most apt here, seeing as they have sprung up largely unnoticed on the fair city’s rooftops. A rather glibly titled New York Times article from June 16th, 2009, “Urban Farming, a Bit Closer to the Sun,” attests, by way of a Green Roofs for Healthy Cities survey, that anywhere from 6 to 10 million square feet of green roofs were installed last year alone. Aside from the mildly unsettling allusion to the fall of Icarus, the article optimistically points out that both private individuals and schools are undertaking similar measures. P.S. 6 on East 81st Street has designated a third of its roof area as the Eric Dutt Eco-Center, to fill with herbs and vegetables that will supplement its cafeteria. It is the first of New York City’s public schools to break ground on a rooftop garden and potential greenhouse that was the brainchild of its namesake, science teacher Eric Dutt who passed away in 2007 from an enlarged heart. The school will draw less than a million dollars from city funds, while additional funds are to be drawn from alumni and parental contributions. It is perhaps surprising that green endeavors have become more kosher; they are held as far less moralizing and have become far more pervasive than most New Yorkers are probably aware. Rooftop Farms in Greenpoint, Brooklyn is clearly a collaborative venture on several communal levels. It spans a sheer 6,000 square

feet that comprise 16, 60 by 4 foot beds, or 1000 seedlings, 200,000 pounds of soil and 1,000 earthworms to help with soil aeration. The farm, i.e. planting and maintenance, is run by Ben Flanner and the New York Botanical Garden’s educational director Annie Novak. The former hails from Wisconsin, and chose urban farming over an internship at a rural farm- he couldn’t bring himself to leave the city. This venture, however, would not have taken off without Broadway Stages owned by Gina Argento and family, who for thirty years have and continue to actively support Brooklyn communities. Gina offered up a rooftop space, complete with the initial capital required to prepare the roof for planting; the actual green roof was then installed by Lisa and Chris Goode of Goode Green and their partner, Amu Trachtman. While Flanner and Novak’s profit from their organic vegetables is entirely theirs, Goode maintains that it is insufficient to earn a living. Perhaps it isn’t the best business model for churning out profit, but Rooftop Farms, and many comparable establishments, such as Chicago’s Uncommon Ground, appear more ideologically (and needless to say, financially) invested in local, organic farming, and, ultimately, in effecting sustainable systemic changes to the generation and consumption of produce. These are people committed to clean, sustainable, communal living. Through the Growing Chefs, cooking and farming lessons (“growing and cooking winter workshops”) are offered to willing listeners and volunteers at the farm. Both the Native American tradition of planting the corn-beans-squash triad, and the seemingly more bourgeois combination of basil

and parsley with tomatoes are put into practice in one of their demonstrations. The environment seems less bent on formal pedagogy than on gathering together communal information, recipes and DIY-type-anecdotes. Even though rooftop farming attracts fewer pests given its vertical advantage, the winged creatures still manage to pester the crop. The homemade solution for non-toxic pest management offered at Rooftop Farms is a 10 part water to 1 part Dr. Bonner’s Magic Soap, and more specifically, the peppermint one. Unsurprisingly, the soap too is fair trade and the Dr. Bonner website boasts of “150 years of Soapmaking Excellence.” Rooftop Farms is naturally irrigated by rain, a load off of the city’s already overburdened sewage system, while the soil is composted with mixed scraps from various local restaurants. The cabbage, kale, lettuce, eggplant, beans, tomatoes, peas and their latest additions- peppers- are intercropped to increase yield and maximize the utility of planting space. They will eventually be delivered to neighboring restaurants that receive their produce by bicycle. These include Anella, Marlow and Sons, and Vesta Trattoria & Wine Bar, and the list of participating restaurants is rapidly growing. Flanner is insistent, however, on keeping their produce local, and why not? It means fresher vegetables than those sold wholesale at Hunt’s Point, which trickle down through various intermediaries to our supermarkets and bodegas, and, more often than not, personal interaction with the people growing your food. There is greater assurance of quality when you can put a face to your food. The impersonal divide between you and the cashier at Westside Market, Morton Williams Supermarket, Appletree Market, Fairway Market and WholeFoods dissipates when you buy from local growers (hopefully). Also, Rooftop Farms doesn’t have the capacity to supply a larger demand. The downside to small-scale organic farming, however, is that produce and any production at all are necessarily seasonal. Rooftop Farms hibernates for the winter and opens late

spring. Cover crops like clover and hairy vetch take the place of kale and lettuce, while winter volunteers are called on to build cold frames and protect the carefully-laid soil. Another downside is that in order to make profit or simply break even, produce is sold at a markedly higher price. In spite of this seemingly nonnegotiable price difference, more people in New York are buying organic, small-farm produce than ever before. The growing wave of rooftop farming is an index of how green consciousness has swept through the urbanite psyche to the point that New York Magazine has dubbed a subset of residents ‘urban hippies.’ But it is not just the ardent pursuit of compost heaps that demarcates this new consciousness. There’s something deeply satisfying, I’ve been told on several occasions, about knowing exactly how your food has been grown- from the type of soil your vegetables grew in, the sort of fertil-

izer applied to their fragile roots, and the other produce varieties grown on the farm. The term ‘processed’ rightly implies to more people now than ever before a level of unseen meddling between food and its consumer, in which preservatives, additives and dubious substitutes are allowed to sneak in. Consumers are demanding to know the origins of their food, though whether from suspicion or genuine interest remains uncertain. However, the lexicon of food and eating has also been assiduously altered, simultaneously a cause and symptom of green fever. ‘Artisanal products,’ the ‘omnivore’s dilemma’ of Michael Pollan’s coinage, and the image of the Locavore have caught on phenomenally. Our daily vocabulary now includes these once jargon-y terms. New York has been changing intellectually and physically, unbeknownst to its majority, and has conjured an organic

uprising, appropriating a green ethos that is less forced, exclusive and fashionable than before. The residents of this city are learning to eat better: not only with health in mind, nor the freshness and quality of what goes into their stomachs, but also with variety. They are not only conscious of daily dietary requirements but engage in extended deliberation over cheese and cracker combinations when confronted with the sheer volume of culinary options available locally. Fairway’s hallowed aisles have left many a discerning shopper floundering and spoilt for choice. Perhaps it began as a trend, but the transformation of the city has convinced me that New Yorkers are finally learning to momentarily suspend their caffeine and nicotine addictions to eat, and eat well. Look out for families in Westside Market’s cheese aisles- these kids know their Brie from their Camembert. ■

The Times They Are A’Changing Flannery Gallagher Today, gentrification is the

dirtiest word of the urban lexicon, much in the way that ‘urban renewal’ used to be in the post-1950s realization of failed efforts to revitalize the nation’s cities. ‘Gentrification’ suggests displacement, rapacious landlords, racial discrimination and strife, with neighborhood residents grasping for remnants of identity and community while their homes come under siege or, at the very least, transition. Organic or manufactured, this process forces urban dwellers to adapt and learn how to renavigate their surroundings and can take both inconspicuous and flagrant forms. Though this is the dominant perception of gentrification, is it possible that it can occur in a way that is not wholly alienating and polarizing for the current residents? Fort Greene, Brooklyn is a neighborhood in constant transition that challenges conceptions of gentrification in a number of ways. The nuance of gentrification in Fort Greene takes on two components – first, that the gentrification occurring in Fort Greene is a unique form of gentrification in that both

middle-class blacks and whites are replacing poorer AfricanAmericans. This distinction changes the notion that gentrification is a racially polarizing process. Secondly, though defined as one neighborhood, the north side and the south side of the neighborhood each have very unique social and economic characteristics, and therefore, each interacts with

the process of gentrification very differently. Fort Greene is located next to downtown Brooklyn and has a rich and varied history. At the beginning of the 20th century, it was home to Italian-Americans, but more recently it has come to symbolize an inner-city ghetto, a haven for black bohemia, and an ideal of racial integration.

One of the neighborhood’s greatest assets is the Fort Greene Park, in which there is always a large group of people playing, jogging, or just socializing. The neighborhood also boasts many other fine institutions such as Brooklyn Technical High School, Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Long Island University. The area south of the park is comprised of Italianate brownstones and older housing stock. All of these amenities, paired with its proximity to downtown Manhattan, make Fort Greene a likely site for gentrification. The north side consists of the Whitman and Ingersoll housing projects, which originally housed men in the armed forces and their families. The main thoroughfare on the north side is

Myrtle Avenue, while DeKalb Avenue is the central street on the south side. Both of these streets and parts of the neighborhood have seen considerable change for decades, in the gradual process of gentrification. Despite the tensions that often accompany such a process, Fort Greene’s reputation today is that of a neighborhood where different classes and races coexist harmoniously. Nevertheless, there

are certainly some anxieties that bubble underneath the surface. An African-American life-long resident of the Whitman Houses who is very active in neighborhood affairs said of the changes, «There are a lot of new faces coming in, creeping in over night. The new people, I don’t know them. It’s not that I’m judging them, it’s just that they’re new. I like diversity. That was the way I was brought up. Blacks, Italians, Jews - we had it all».

“I like diversity. That was the way I was brought up. Blacks, Italians, Jews - we had it all.”

A former investment banker who first moved to the neighborhood ten years ago, offers a different perspective on life in the neighborhood: ÂŤI have everything I need right here. When I first moved here, there was only one good restaurant on DeKalb Avenue. Now there are lots. The West Village came to me.Âť These sentiments demonstrate that the racial, economic, and social diversity of the neighborhood extends to a diversity of perspective and experience. This key difference creates a unique form change, and gentrification, in this light, becomes more an issue of class and not of race. In many ways, the north and south sides of the park seem like two different neighborhoods. Structurally, socially, and economically they are very dissimilar, yet they are classified as one neighborhood. For Fort Greene, like many New York City neighborhoods, boundaries cant be a point of contention within the community. Often, these arbitrary divisions obscure a more nuanced, accurate view of the neighborhood and of the gentrification at play. Gentrification in Fort Greene is not a story of the past eight years, or even the past twenty. Like all neighborhoods, the racial, economic, and social nature of the community has been dynamic for quite some time. Some residents assert that the past ten years have been the most transformative, while others

claim that the changes that are seen today are the result of forty years of natural and manufactured forces. Despite the particularities of the respective arguments, a common theme can be found. Gentrification is a major force in the social fabric of Fort Greene, Brooklyn. It is clear, both in everyday interactions and over longer periods of time.

Though some people are more opinionated on the matter, all are extremely conscious of the presence of gentrifying influences in the neighborhood. Each and every day, all residents try to make sense of their changing role in their social environment, and, thus, Fort Greene is a rich subject for the study of gentrification. â&#x2013;

Jewel Tones and Paths to the Sea: Dakar’s Gorée Island Mena Odu

I t was love at first sight when I first glimpsed Gorée Island. I was sitting on the ferry from

Dakar, the capital of Senegal, with my father and sister, clutching two cameras in my freezing hands (the Harmattan heat of Lagos seemed incredibly far away this far up the West African coastline) as we chugged closer to this small patch of land sitting in the Atlantic Ocean. As our ferry pulled in and we jumped onto the wooden jetty, I was struck by an odd sensation—I felt as though I’d stepped into a whole other time period. Dakar is a bustling metropolis with street traders, traffic and shouting on every corner. Gorée, a district just 2 kilometres away from the main city, felt distinctly like a sleepy small town.

For one thing, it’s tiny - it’s only 300 meters by 900 meters, meaning that you can take a leisurely stroll around the island in 45 minutes or less. There are no cars on Gorée: instead of wide lorry-filled roads marked by zebra crossings there are dusty footpaths emptily crisscrossing the island. It’s quiet, and there’s an immediate sense of intimacy and mystery that draws you in and architectural surprises on every corner delight the eye.

A brief history: Gorée is a UNESCO site today, but a few hundred years ago it was one of the first places colonized by Europeans on the West African coast (first by the Portuguese, then the Dutch, followed by the British and finally the French). It has a population of approximately a thousand people, and is home to incredibly talented artisans, a famous girls’ secondary school and some of the city’s best poisson yassa, according to my father. La Maison de Esclaves (the Slave House) is one of its most famous landmarks and a reminder of Gorée’s small but historically significant role in the Atlantic Slave Trade. The airy architecture of the higher levels of the house where the slave traders resided was eerily juxtaposed against the dingy and windowless slave quarters on the ground floor. Our tour guide showed us a tiny cell where “truant” slaves were punished—a room that caused Nelson Mandela to shed tears when he visited a few years after he was released from Robben Island. In spite of the somberness of the slave trade’s legacy that lingers over the island, Gorée is a thriving community that continues to draw in droves of visitors with its vibrant colors, picturesque views and unique construction details. For this amateur photographer raised in the hustle and bustle of a West African city, this gem of serenity was a dream come true. ■

In a PostApartheid Nation, Emily Kager H ow much control do you have over your

own life? Did you arrive at the particular place you stand today because of the choices you made, and the path you opted for? I think we all want to prescribe to a notion which grants us a certain degree of agency in own lives. We want to claim our lives have been shaped not by the hand of the other 6.8 billion people on this planet but rather through our cognizant and mindful actions, are responsible for some part of us. The scary truth is, however, other people and the decisions they make always have and always will mold and remold the lives of those around them. Nowhere is that more true than in the great urban centers of the world. More people live in urban areas than in rural areas today and coupled with the driving effects of globalization and the mounting levels of global interconnectedness, oneâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s life is increasingly shaped by the actions of others. Amidst the political governments and bureaucracies, multi-national corporations and other various institutions, one is left scratching their head and begging the question, is our individual agency being stripped away? Is it childish to buy into the prospect of choice, especially for the under privileged and under resourced? Is it all an illusion?

Is Choice an Illusion? I think a reason why cities are successful in generating an illusion of choice is because they join drastically different ends of the scale of the socioeconomic scale. Prosperity and destitution, affluence and poverty are all seamlessly mixed with shared public space; when the businessman in a smart suit passes the homeless man slumped over a paper cup in the subway or by the park or on the street. Sure, certain places tend to be class specific but the mixing power cities claim over economic and social background is great. Cities bring us together, our actions and non actions continue to shape lives others around us. Nowhere is this more evident than Cape Town, South Africa. Often pointed to as the most cosmopolitan city in Southern Africa, Cape Town boasts some of the most expensive water front real estate in the world, world class dining, first rate tributes and museums to cultural expression and of course, the location for 2010 Soccer World Cup. However , this same city houses some of the poorest and most underprivileged in the southern province of Africa. In the post apartheid era, Cape Town has been forced to grapple with its identity on a national level and is a city which has struggled to reconcile the debts in which i incurred to so many of its

citizens. The Gini coefficient, which indicates the divide between rich and poor, is exceptionally high in South Africa. Rivaling only Brazil for the top spot, the level of existing inequality is appalling for one of the most advanced countries of the South. Slightly removed from the picturesque landscape of the waterfront and mountains but still far inside city limits, lies very real, concrete reminders of when Cape Town was strictly divided among the color line negating all sense of a collective national identity. With the government adoption of an apartheid system, townships, which are large spreads of land where Blacks and Coloreds were to relocate to after often forcefully displaced from their land, were created. Today, townships across Cape Town are home to hundreds of thousands who still feel the strangling grasp apartheid continues to hold on the city over fifteen years later. Water and electricity are often privatized and metered in townships, rendering many of the residents unable to pay and without these fundamental human rights. Police and political corruption, government negligence and the misadministration of aid have led many townships to be associated with crime, excessive levels of poverty, drug use and exceptionally high infectious rates of HIV. Within the townships one can feel the permeation of frustration and hostility and the materializa-

tion of prejudice and injustice. Many herald urban areas as places for growth and promise, but for the underprivileged hovering over the poverty line, living on $2 a day, urban areas come to signify the scarcity of opportunity and the diminishing agency one has to shape his own life. NGO’s, government and global institutions like the World Bank and the IMF claim increasing power of over the lives of individuals on the ground, whose resources and accessibility pale in comparison to these institutional giants. Cape Town’s mixing of extreme wealth and poverty illustrates the existence of vastly different lifestyles, which in turn lead to the materialization of a certain deception. One forgets

the various invisible hands at play which limit the scope of opportunity and restrict options. My dad always told me “Always have options, when you find yourself tied down, with no where to go and no options, that’s when you know you are in trouble. That’s when you’ll be forced to compromise yourself.” In a city still casting off the shackles of race-based oppression, the ability to choose a direction in life is a luxury not many can afford. The illusion of choice exists as just that, an illusion amidst the daily struggle to survive and access fundament human rights in the face of powerful institutions which shape the world around by the decisions they make. ■

A Morning Run in Paris Katherine Carrington

Bleary-eyed and half-awake, I leave the

apartment as the sun is beginning to burn away the morning fog. Rue St. Dominique is just starting to buzz and people are walking up and down: buying their bread, taking their kids to school, schmoozing in the old Tabac. The pace is slower in Paris and everyone seems to walk with a determined yet elegant step. There is no rushing and pushing others out of your way. If you’re late, you’re late… and everyone else will be too! The street is narrow with shops on both sides and café tables crowding the pavement. I dodge the people coming towards me, ducking in and out, and run hastily towards the patch of green that I see looming at the end of the street. Five minutes in, I run through the great park of Invalides. To the right I see the grand Domed Church where Napoleon rests in a tomb more gigantic than any other I’ve ever seen. To the left, the Grand Palais reigns over the Seine, a great green-house majestically decorated in gold ornaments. Except for a few tourists, this park is empty and the quiet grandeur is peaceful among the whirring traffic and urban rhythm. Running back into the traditional cramped back streets, I try to avoid the unyielding drivers while I window shop at a gentle jog. I pass the old and rugged Université de Paris with students rushing busily from Café to Café to gossip and enjoy a breakfast of coffee and pastries. Moments later, the narrow streets flow into a huge Boulevard. St. Germain, the center of shopping and night-life in the 6th arrondisement is forever bustling. Four lanes of cars and wide sidewalks are bordered with gorgeous buildings of the old Haussman style. This place is fun and classy with a mixture of people of all ages.

Breathing a sigh of relief, I enter the Jardin de Luxembourg. A runner’s haven, athletes flood the little jardin, overlooked by the former Medici palace. Among the trees and bushes, the foreigners stand out as those running countercurrent around the garden. Gliding around the circuit in the never-ending stream of runners, I am impressed by the historical loveliness of the park. Beautiful even in the winter, we know why Victor Hugo made this the meeting place of his two lovers in Les Misérables. Back on the winding streets, I weave my way past Beaux Arts and up to the Seine. The Louvre stands mightily across the river, already littered with tourists. Along the River, I see the people, the tug boats and the dirty water of the Seine. The vendors are out and cameras are flashing on every bridge. I run up to the Ile-de-la Cite and past the fountain of Blvd St. Mich. Finally growing tired, I cross the bridge in front of Notre-Dame. Light flowing through the colored rose windows makes the cathedral quite magical in the morning and I slow down a little to enjoy the sight. As I find my way back on to the Route de Seine, I look up to see the Eiffel Tower emerging out of the fog. My landmark and my home, I use it to find my way back to Rue St. Dominique. I jog past the Museum that houses my friends Monet and Renoir and past Boulangerie Kayser where I pick up my daily croissant and baguette. Still warm in my hands, I sprint the last part of my run, eager to get home for a bite! As I reach the door, I am happy and ready to face the day. I may have to go to class and run errands all day long, but I have seen Paris this morning and I will be ready to explore it all again tomorrow. ■

Rhapsody in Blue is Columbia Universityâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s undergraduate urban affairs journal exploring cities, how they move, change and grow. We welcome submissions of all varieties including drawings, essays, anecdotes, poems, stories and photographs. This year, we decided to transition from a semi-annual print publication to an annual magazine with an online component. The change has allowed us to pour more resources into our print publication, reduce paper use, increase content and connect to a broader audience. We encourage you to visit our website at http://curhapsody.org We thank the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy (ISERP) at Columbia University for their generous support. To join, contribute or submit questions or concerns, please email editor@curhapsody.org

Photo Credits: Cover..................................................................................................................John Gomez p. 4-5, 10-11, 36.................................................................................................Anda Mihali p. 14-15..................................................................................................Meredith Hutchison p. 6, 9, 12-13, 25, 27-29..........................................................................Creative Commons p. 18-21.........................................................................................................Megan Eardley p. cover, 23, 26...................................................................................................John Gomez p. 30-33.................................................................................................................Mena Odu p. 34-35..................................................................................................Flannery Gallagher 39

To learn more about Rhapsody In Blue at Columbia University, visit our website at www.CURhapsody.org