New York 2015, part 2

The Whitney

So the immediate raison d'etre for my trip was to make my bourgeois pilgrimage to the newly relocated Whitney Museum of American Art. As part of the revitalization of lower Manhattan, the move of a major cultural institution downtown reflects the return to urbanism that we've been hearing about so much lately. The new Whitney fits right in. The design is obviously informed by the aesthetic of the Apple Store, right down to guides dressed in color-coded T-shirts. Perhaps without the hubris of labeling things Genius bars, but definitely in the same wheelhouse.
Much like its spiritual sister on the West Coast, the new Getty museum overlooking Los Angeles from the West Side, the Whitney provides overlooks on the city it's part of, the people who are performing in the act of attending a museum, and how architecture remains a social signifier of a great city or a great institution. Being modern, I took part in the self-performance by taking a selfie. This was more a form of protection from the relentless march down from the top of the museum to its bottom, passing through the history of American art from 1900 to the present along the way. The name of the exhibit is America is Hard to See and boy is it.
As is well-known, the collection here is nowhere near the quality of the Museum of Modern Art. But it did provide at least one example of teaching me to see: Bill de Kooning's famous painting of Woman with Bicycle.

He's a controversial figure now because of his tendency to reflect the sexist social norms of his day (the link provides a more nuanced view, and also includes the story about my favorite conceptual piece of art, Robert Rauschenberg's Erased De Kooning Drawing), but he was generally considered by his peers to be one of the best painters of the Abstract Expressionists. This painting is less abstract than Rothko, but for the first time in contemplating one of his paintings, I could see what people were talking about. There were feelings about the woman, her hands moving in a cubist swarm but rendered in suggestions of paint wildly applied but perfectly under control, a suggestion of the bicycle moving by her, both future and past, her mouth in motion, with the second image of teeth and red lipstick famously suggesting a necklace, her feet in high heels. But unlike the carefully worked out abstractions of Braque and Picasso, the wild but perfectly controlled application of paint adds an unsettling element. So if for no other reason, I'm glad I went because he's been a nut I've been trying to crack for years.
But what I found really unsettling from the exhibit, which consisted entirely of works from the permanent collection, was how many times in the 20th century that artists were trying to tell us about social injustice. The plight of the striking coal miner, the lynchings of blacks, the war in Vietnam, the AIDS crisis, slumlords in Manhattan, over and over: to what end? Maybe it was a literal and also metaphorical hangover from the joy of Pride the previous day, but the show reminded me that America is Hard to See because our project is never done, our original sins of genocide, slavery, and racism, and our newer sins of capitalist rapacity are never behind us. Just today, I was reading an article about how the US Chamber of Commerce is fighting anti-tobacco forces around the world: the ur-text of American capitalism starts at Jamestown with the discovery of tobacco, our first cash crop that led to all the other victories of capital over the people and their land. As I write, I pass Mystic, CT, the site of the Mystic Massacre where the good Pilgrim fathers did in the Pequots who were standing in their way.
Thanks to the haphazard collection policy of the Whitney, examples of all these were on display all at once, so it was a little overwhelming. But where are the artifacts for the future? Will Facebook threads and tumblr feeds and twitter rants survive 100 years for our future selves to contemplate and understand?
I promise to remember the good things about America in time for the 4th of July.

New York, 2015

New York City sure has changed a lot since the last time I was here in 2007, and it's changed even more since 1995 when I made my first trip as a starving grad student traveling via Amtrak from Austin to Manhattan via Chicago, Pittsburgh, and Washington, DC. Astounding changes since then:
1. Bicycle infrastructure everywhere! Seriously, if you only needed to move around south of 59th Street, you could use Citibike to get everywhere, complete with European-style street furniture. Still a little sketchy riding on some streets, but those bikes are incredibly sturdy and easy to control. It really is amazing. As I rode down 2nd, then 5th Avenue from my midtown hotel (bike station across the street!) to Washington Square park in the drizzle yesterday morning I felt like when I was a kid and my mom let me ride in the overflowing gutters in Lake Jackson, TX during a heavy rain. Joyful!
2. The High Line! It's hard to overestimate what a magical thing this is. Yesterday as I was walking to 28th street from the new Whitney, I floated above the city on this greened walkway in the sky, overlooking the traffic and feeling like a God on a magic carpet, complete with people lying on grass, sitting on benches reading trashy novels, tending their children. You see the roofs and yards and the sides of buildings at your eye level. And, right in the middle, a Blue Bottle coffee cart with a line shorter than any seen since when the first cart opened at the SF Ferry Building. I probably just got lucky there, but I had my Gibraltar as I realized that this replaced the experience of walking in the streets with a sense of grandeur and peace. New York may have lost its grand old Pennsylvania Station, where, to quote Vincent Scully, "One entered the city like a god. One scuttles in now like a rat," but now you can at least stride like a god through Chelsea.
3. Parklets! New York has taken to this San Francisco treat, and as I sit writing in lower Manhattan I see one nearly identical to the one we have on 24th St in sleepy old Noe Valley, down to red cafe tables and steel flower planters.
I was here to celebrate Gay Pride on the 46th anniversary of the Stonewall Inn riots, and hoping / knowing that the Supreme Court would rule as it did. What started as an act of defiance by drag queens, saddened by the loss of Judy Garland and angry at the rejection of their freedoms in the land of the free, blossomed over the years into at least some agreement in the general society that the mere fact of being gay shouldn't mean a life of desperation on its margins. In fact, there is still legal discrimination in many states, and informal discrimination in many others, and our transgender, bi, and poly friends, and gay people of color, still face a more difficult road than the white affluent gay men of our big cities. But at the very least, if you want to tie your life to someone else you love, to make your own way together in life, you have that choice. We may not need the government to grant us dignity (thanks, Justice Thomas, for that piece of philosophy) but at least now it's not forcing us to accept the lack of dignity so many in our society wanted to ensure in perpetuity.
In myth, when I was young, New York was a frightening place: the New York of the French Connection and Mean Streets, of graffitied subway cars and fires in the Bronx and 2000 murders a year. I've only seen post-Giuliani New York, but I think of it in the same way: not perfect, but much improved. There's still an energy to New York not felt anywhere else in the country, and probably not in many places in the world, still. I think I was right to not try to make a life for myself here, although I was dearly tempted 20 years ago, but it still holds a place in my heart as a magical place where merely walking down the street can be a new adventure. I'm getting ready to head uptown to visit the new Whitney, displaced from midtown to downtown, in a bigger building anchoring the High Line. Much as I love San Francisco, its charms will always be smaller. Those who wish to develop in San Francisco would do well to remember this.

Happy Time

So from the first time I saw Pharrell Williams' 24-hour Happy video cycle / love letter to Los Angeles and its people, I've wanted to create a page where no matter what time it is, you can see a person dancing to the Happy video corresponding to that time. Note that the top of the hour is usually devoted to Pharrell himself, but other times appear to be random people dancing in an individual way at some random Los Angeles location.

The player is set up to stop after 4 minutes (which is one complete cycle of the song), except at the bottom of the hour, where you'll run up against the end of the hour. Refresh the page if you want to hear more.

Believe it or not, this is my first scripted web page, so be kind and let me know if it breaks for you.

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Discipline in the rain

So I'm going to set a goal and try sticking to it.

Those of you who know me well know that optimism, goal-setting, and expectations of happiness are not part of my natural worldview. I would rather be certain of unhappiness than allow for the possibility of a good time, to the point of avoiding interaction with others even though I know it will make me feel better. That's only a half-joke, but it's that line of thinking that represents my biggest hurdle in life.

This makes it difficult to be an American. Because we all know that Americans are the most optimistic, forward-looking, technology-loving workers in the world; if you don't believe me, just check out the new, Europhobic, almost ridiculous ad for the Cadillac ELR:

Because Neal McDonough has carved out a niche as a character actor (he's the guy to call when you want a self-centered jerk and / or sadistic criminal), this commercial works sort of ironically, but the attitude represented is real.  I hate it, but I love how good he looks in his tailored suit jacket.  

Being detached from the usual ambitions of American culture is useful, because you can then ironically appreciate them; the trap, naturally, is your disdain becomes your personality.  And then you're just a bore.  What to do, what to do?

I've decided to try to be disciplined and create a few lines of writing and post them when an idea, like this one, occurs to me.  Without thinking too much of editing and construction, but just to put it out there and see if it strikes a chord with anyone else.

The immediate impetus for this was something a friend posted on Facebook quoting Ira Glass about how creativity is stifled by self-censorship:

THE GAP by Ira Glass from frohlocke on Vimeo.

Curated Food Packages

First, off Hat Tip to the incomparable changoperesozo for giving me the idea.  Here are a few "curated food packages" as consumed by the digerati in modern-day San Francisco.   Warning: this post requires a degree of local knowledge about San Francisco neighborhoods similar to that implicitly assumed by New Yorkers when writing about New York, to wit: mention of neighborhoods east of US 101 and south of I-280.

• Brogrammer Bento: While influenced by traditional nori-wrapped rice, this bento provides Bro-friendly panko-crusted goodness.  Because they didn't serve sushi back in the frat house in Bloomington, the purely Japanese rice triangle with sour plum or salmon is augmented with good old-fashioned fried chicken croquettes, a few tired Iceberg lettuce leaves covered with sesame-infused salad dressing, and green-tea ice cream.  The rice is sourced locally from the rice paddies recently planted in Islais creek by anarcho-syndicalist Japanese-American 99-percenters, the chicken from coops installed in disused public housing units in the Crocker-Amazon, and the lettuce from the site of the old Schlage key factory.  The green-tea ice cream is sourced from a restaurant in the mall in Citrus Heights.    
• Salome Salumi: For Gay Pride, this Oscar Wilde inspired choice starts off with an assortment of "Herod" brand beef and turkey salumi.  This is followed by chicken a la Bosie: boneless white meat, lightly poached.  The "Pitcher of Dorian Gray" is a can of Red Bull.  The Salome theme is carried out finally with a dessert consisting of "seven veils" of cotton candy hiding a cupcake representing the head of John the Baptist, surrounded by a blood-red raspberry coulis on a miniature platter.  This meal includes a Flip Wilson video retrospective entitled: "The Importance of Being Ernestine".      
• Mid-Century, Cold War, Prop 65 nightmare: "Precious Inorganic" Farm organophosphate-dipped Gem Lettuce in a not-Tuscan-but-Tuscan-inspired California Mentholated-Kool vinaigrette (made from cigarette-infused vinegar and rancid California olive oil:  the Surgeon General warns this will give you the buzz of your life).  The main course is a von Neuman Ranch cornfed nitrate-cured machine-smoked ham and processed non-dairy-creamer-based cheese sandwich on No Wonder it's completely genetically modified bread.  For dessert, "Neapolitan Ice Cream" reconstituted from freeze-dried astronaut ice cream bought 20 years ago on a visit to the Johnson space center when the US could still launch their own astronauts without any help from those Commie bastards.  To wash it all down, Coca-Cola to protect your "precious bodily fluids" from fluoridation.  Dental implants and cancer treatments not covered by your high deductible insurance plan.                

Sunday afternoon in the city

So I spent the afternoon ranging up and down the Embarcadero in search of fine chocolate, sunny walking, and a first peek at the newly opened Exploratorium at piers 15 and 17* in San Francisco, at the Embarcadero and Green St.

I just have to say, to those who were worried that the new building would somehow be detrimentally slicker than the old, do not fear!  Yes, the steel struts in the ceiling are painted, and it lacks the dingy atmosphere of the old building in the Palace of Fine Arts.  There are no hordes of wedding parties having their pictures taken, no swans, no faux Roman ruins, and admittedly, no free parking.

And, on opening weekend, the way-finding was atrocious; I was there with my friend Simplicitus, who has a museum membership, and after stumbling in the first doors you come to (as you're walking from the Ferry Building side), being directed through the gift shop, and past the ordinary ticket line, all the way to a desk in the back, he was finally able to confirm his membership and we got in.

Once inside, things were much the same as at the old location; lots of interactive exhibits, more space, and a general air of controlled pandemonium.  Nowhere near as slick as the Academy of Sciences, and lots of old favorites I remember from my first trip 30 years ago.    The shop is still there, but cleaner.  The views out of windows to the surrounding piers and out to the bay do not detract but add a little needed light.

Upstairs and across a bridge to Pier 17, there's a great quieter room devoted to the Bay Observation Gallery, with some incredible experiments in scientific visualization, including an intriguing atlas presenting examples of archival material on various aspects of the Bay watershed; very nice!

A quiet oasis away from the more frenetic main floor.   All in all, I think a great addition to a waterfront that is spiffing up in preparation for the America's Cup as well.   The Giants won, the atmosphere was mellow, all was good in the city by the Bay today.  

*For those of you unfamiliar with the admittedly peculiar pier numbering system, remember that odd piers are north of the Ferry Building at the foot of Market Street, and even piers are south.

What's your brand?

There was a time, not so long ago, when the intended response to the question, "What's your brand?" was "Marlboro" or "Parliament Lights" or "Virginia Slims".   I had never heard it asked outside of the context of cigarette smoking.  The idea of a personal brand, other than a literal branding of the skin in certain sub-cultures, pretty much didn't exist.  

Don't get me wrong; marketing, in particular the psychological juggernaut that convinces people to desire what they do not need and create a culture in which not to have what everyone else has is a lonely, desperate place (truly lonely and desperate with actual physical effects of depression, not just those alleviated by Abilify in conjunction with your regular antidepressant), is America's greatest contribution to world culture. Let's get Godwin out of the way and point out that Hitler and Goebbels went to school on the Liberty Bond drives of WWI, marketed erroneously as "The War to End War".  Just ask Jeremy Pivin, now chewing the scenery over at PBS with the story of how Harry Selfridge single-handedly introduced the idea of American marketing and the shopping culture to England (surely an exaggeration).  God only knows what the Dowager Countess Grantham would have made of it, but I'm certain she never would have gone to Selfridges; Lady Edith, poor dear, on a lark, perhaps.

Personal identity, always an American obsession, primarily because we have no ironclad traditions to fall back on, has always been part of our culture.  We make it up as we go along and hope for the best.  As a multi-generational child of the American West (while your ancestors were at Ellis Island getting the consonants removed from their names mine were cutting down trees and operating steamboats in Washington Territory), I was brought up not to ask too many questions about people's pasts.  I think this was in part because my parents were young during WW II, when every question about how the family was doing was freighted with the possibility of the worst possible news about Uncle George, but also because one of the reasons people came West was to make a fresh start.

We are determined not to be defined by who our parents are and what they did.

We move to express our freedom and to get away from the communities that stifled or nurtured us.

We can all grow up to be president.

We are all individuals!

But, the point made by hushing of the lone voice in the crowd in "Life of Brian" who cried out "I'm not!" when Brian tells the crowd they are all individuals to great cheers, the truth of the matter is that while we are all individuals, we take comfort in being members of a group.  So we take short cuts to individual expression by identifying with groups.  This starts out small (son, neighbor, Cub Scout) and ends up big (Democrat, Libertarian, Notre Dame fan).    These identifications all become part of our personal brand.

Some of these identifications we chose freely, some are thrust upon us, but all of them are manipulated by that other great invention, the limited-liability corporation with all the free speech rights of the individual.  In the ever-more apparent second Gilded Age of the American experiment, are we truly free, or is our personal brand as permanent as the kind inflicted on our animals as a short-cut to identification: free to roam the range until our brand condemns us to the slaughterhouse.

My brand is skeptic, American, Giants fan, California native, scientist, engineer, brother, son, and uncle, Caltech graduate, former Austinite (it was better back in my day, man), gay man, cycling fan, and lover of police procedurals: the worst (NCIS: LA; you have to work hard to make the exposition that painful and wooden) and the best (Southland; man, what I'd give to be the guy who gives John Cooper a smile).  I live in San Francisco, where today the sun shines and the sky is blue after a horrible week for the country.  It's the city of Saint Francis, I always tell people who complain about the homeless, or the dogs, or the relentless do-goodery.

My hope is that we can set aside our brands and learn to work together, and recognize that an individual belief, identification, or surety about the superiority of our way over the other guys' leads to smugness, violence, pain, and a lifetime of regret, anger, and vengeance.