"I think a lot about the somatics, which is how the sound feels in your body."

Said Karl Scholz, the D.J. quoted in "What’s Loud, Pink and Drawing New Yorkers Together?With his Karlala Soundsystem, Karl Scholz is using nightclub-grade audio to ensure that neighbors gather" (NYT).

Ping-ponging around the makeshift dance floor was a bearded man in flamingo pink joggers carrying a laptop. Karl Scholz, 41, was using the computer to tune the sounds coming out of each of the six hulking stacks of speakers along the street, each painted the same bold pink as his pants....

If you don't like the noise, don't live in the city.

"President Donald Trump has directed federal agencies to find ways to make it easier to forcibly hospitalize homeless people with mental illness and addiction for longer periods...."

"The order... instructs agencies to prioritize funding for mental health and drug courts — and to not fund 'harm reduction' programs that the administration said facilitate illegal drug use. It also called for agencies to prioritize funding states and cities that to the 'maximum extent' enforce laws on open-air drug use, prohibitions on urban camping, loitering and squatting.... Dozens of states have added to or expanded involuntary commitment laws during the past decade. That includes states controlled by Democrats, an illustration that political momentum has shifted toward a more aggressive approach to dealing with the inextricably intertwined crises of mental health and addiction...."

I'm reading "Trump order pushes forcible hospitalization of homeless people/Trump’s executive order could increase hospitalization of homeless individuals with mental health and substance use disorders" (WaPo).

Looking for an existing tag that will fit this issue, I stumbled on "Trump's urban renewal." That could work for this... but what was it that led me to create it?

The oldest post with that tag was "Asking for the black vote" back in August 2016.

More relevant to today's post is this from July 2019: "'We have to take the people... And we have to do something... We may intercede. We may do something to get that whole thing cleaned up.' Said Trump, about the homelessness in San Francisco and L.A." 

"For 35 years, Bill Dilworth tended a Manhattan loft filled with dirt, otherwise known as 'The New York Earth Room,' a monumental artwork by Walter De Maria.... 280,000 pounds of dark, chocolaty soil, about two feet deep..."

"... on the second floor of an early artists’ co-op in a former manufacturing building on Wooster Street, in the heart of SoHo. It was installed in 1977, in what used to be the Heiner Friedrich Gallery, and it was intended to be temporary, a three-month-long exhibit.... [T]he artists who colonized the building and the area have mostly moved on, and the neighborhood, like the city itself, has evolved. 'That’s what makes the Earth Room so radical,' Mr. Dilworth said.... 'It’s here, and it remains the same.'... He watered and raked the soil, plucking the odd weed or mushroom. (The mushrooms were edible, and delicious, by Mr. Dilworth’s account.)... 'I found the art world to be something that doesn’t appeal to me.... This is about as close as I’m comfortable getting to it. But making art has been vital to me always. So how do you make art and not be in the art world? This job allows me to stay tuned to my own art-making — just by the freedom of thought and all that.'"

From "Bill Dilworth, Caretaker of ‘The New York Earth Room,’ Is Dead at 70/For decades, he tended a SoHo loft filled with dirt, made by the conceptual artist Walter De Maria. People made pilgrimages to see it — and Mr. Dilworth, its magnetic steward" (NYT).

"I’ve been wanting to come for weeks and weeks and weeks. I’m excited that the spring is happening and she’s really activating the girls to touch some grass — literally — and get outside."

Said Lydia Burns, a model, quoted in "These New Yorkers Are Touching Grass" (NYT).

I'm a devotee of ritualistic nature walks myself, but I still laughed at:

This Sunday, at 10:30 a.m. sharp, a group of stylish, mostly 30-something New Yorkers gathered at the Hare Krishna Tree in the center of Tompkins Square Park. Despite a few complaints of hangovers, they had made it there on time for a plant and history tour of the park led by Olivia Rose, who handed out tote bags and forest green zines she had made for the occasion....

I loved the video snippet of the stylish, youngish folk walking quite slowly, each holding a disposable plastic cup of something brownish and milky. Plastic cups, tote bags, zines — zines! — nature is so great.

Here's the Wikipedia article on Tompkins Square Park, where I learned that the park is the namesake of Daniel D. Tompkins, who was once Vice President of the United States.

"Neighbors soon grew frustrated with the constant hubbub at the house. They saw people coming and going carrying gun holsters..."

"... as the security team ballooned along with Mr. Musk’s safety concerns. Though Texas has permissive gun laws, the activity stood out. 'I call that place Fort Knox,' said Mr. Hemmer, a retired real estate agent who lives across the street and is president of the neighborhood homeowners association.... Mr. Hemmer, who has long owned a Tesla, grew so frustrated with his neighbor that he began flying a drone over the house to check for city violations, and he keeps a video camera trained on the property around the clock. Last year, he complained to West Lake Hills officials about Mr. Musk’s fence, the traffic and how he thought the owner was operating a security business from the property. Mr. Musk’s security team also contacted the West Lake Hills Police Department about Mr. Hemmer, according to city records. One security official accused Mr. Hemmer last year of standing naked in the street, according to the records. Mr. Hemmer denied that he was naked and said he was on his property wearing black underwear. On another night, he said, he was walking his dog fully clothed and stopped when he suddenly needed to urinate — which Mr. Musk’s camera captured. 'The cameras got me,' Mr. Hemmer said. 'It’s scary they have guys sitting and watching me pee.'"

I'm reading "Won’t You Be My Neighbor? No Thanks, Elon Musk. Residents of an upscale enclave outside Austin, Texas, learned the hard way what it’s like when a multibillionaire moves into the mansion next door. Some of them have started a ruckus over it" (NYT).

Some screwy details in that story — Texans bothered by holstered guns, flying a spy drone into your neighbor's airspace then complaining that he's got cameras aimed out at the street where you took the liberty to pee, that whole nakedness-or-black-underwear conundrum....

In any case, doesn't Elon have his own city now? I'm reading "Voters Approve Incorporation of SpaceX Hub as Starbase, Texas/A South Texas community, mostly made up of SpaceX employees, voted 212 to 6 in favor of establishing a new city called Starbase" (NYT).

"The TV show 'Girls' is a right-wing show.... [That's] some labeling we’re grafting onto this thing after the fact."

"But what these pieces of work are doing is telling the truth about the world in a way that is not compromised by artistic or ideological preferences.... about [what]... society wishes were true about these people. So my thing is that if you are telling the truth about the world, then you are going to make right wing art..."

I'm listening to Jonathan Keeperman on Ross Douthat's podcast in an episode called "The New Culture of the Right: Vital, Masculine and Offensive":

 

The quote above is Keeperman's. Douthat responds: "Then you’re saying all great art is somehow right wing." He thinks there can be some great art that is "left coded," but he agrees about "Girls," because "it’s a scabrous satire of a particular kind of upper middle class lifestyle in a liberal city."

Keeperman denies that he's saying "if I like it, therefore it’s right wing art, or if it tells the truth [it's right wing art]." Click on the embedded video if you want to hear Keeperman clarify or hear Douthat wedge in the concept of "vitalism" ("a celebration of individuality, strength, excellence, and an anxiety about equality and democracy as... enemies of human greatness").

That reminds me of the time — back in 2005 — I incurred the wrath of lefties by saying "To be a great artist is inherently right wing."

But back to "Girls." Why talk about "Girls" now? The reason for me is that Lena Dunham has a new essay in The New Yorker: "Why I Broke Up with New York/Most people accept the city’s chaos as a toll for an expansive life. It took me several decades to realize that I could go my own way."

"But if each of us moves about to a separate soundtrack, then is that even living in the city?"

"Or to put the question another way: If all space is private space, then what is public space even for?"

Asks the architecture and classical-music critic Justin Davidson, in "Public Space Has Become Earbud Space" (NY Magazine).

"Urban planners fit out plazas with a variety of seating, for instance... to accommodate a maximal range of groups and conversations. But most of those users just want to be left alone.... And yet I often suspect that... many people don’t actually like the isolation they permit. Lorde’s video ends in Washington Square Park, where the singer convened fans by TikTok for an impromptu concert that the police shut down for lack of a permit. When she did finally show up, that was the climax of an ultimate un-earbud moment...."

"Young people in the city are very boring now. I am only in my early 30s but the difference between 10 years ago is stark."

"When I was in my early 20s, you would go out and meet new people every bar you went to. Every night had a funny or interesting story. Contrast that with the Gen Zs you see out: they sit glued to their phones, are scared of speaking to new people, vape constantly, and are only interested in the latest viral tiktok they saw. If you are in New York and spend all your time hanging with other transplants from your same home city, scrolling your phone, and order delivery from a franchise for all your meals, why even live here? You can eat chick fil a and watch TikToks in any city in the US. Guess I'm getting old!"

Says Bud Weiser — if that really is your name — in the comments section of "Why Are These Clubs Closing? The Rent Is High, and the Alcohol Isn’t Flowing/The financial decline of some of the city’s most popular clubs has put a spotlight on the realities of nightlife" (NYT).

Agreeing with Bud is Clark:

"As Jolie moved through the rooms of her gallery with a cup of tea, she paused to take in the unlikely scene. 'Sometimes I think, what are we doing?'..."

"A clutch of women had found their place beside her, urgently wanting to talk about art and activism. 'And then I think, no, this is everything.'"

From "Angelina Jolie Wants to Pick Up Where Warhol and Basquiat Left Off/The actress is building a community of artists, thinkers and doers of all kinds, in a storied building in downtown Manhattan" (NYT)(free-access link, so you can see the art, the artists, and the artsy spaces).

Jolie listened intently to Neshat, the Iranian visual artist and filmmaker, a striking figure with kohled eyes. “Art doesn’t come from intuition,” Neshat said. “It has to come from the life you have led. It has to relate to the world.”

Meanwhile, Jolie's ex, Brad Pitt, is running into trouble with his real-estate-based humanitarianism: "Brad Pitt Suffers Major Setback In $20M Legal Battle Over Defective Homes For Hurricane Katrina Victims" (Yahoo).

The actor had built homes for these individuals in the wake of the natural disaster, but the homes reportedly developed dangerous mold, leading to the class action they filed.... Pitt had spent $12 million through his Make It Right Project to build these homes, which were designed to be ecologically sustainable....

"There are orange 'smart composting bins' on many street corners. But you’ll have to sign up for the NYC Compost app to open them...."

"You can also find a drop-off site with green bins that do not require an app. But the hours they are available may vary. The law says that any building with four or more apartments must have an area that’s accessible for compost drop-offs. What 'accessible' means is open to interpretation.... '"Accessible to residents" is going to look different in every building' and does not guarantee that a composting bin will be available around the clock or that there will be a bin on every floor...."

From "New York Is Getting Strict About Composting. Here’s What to Know. Starting April 1, buildings that don’t separate compostable waste from trash will face fines" (NYT).

Commence the ritual of atonement for your amorphous environmental sins. Or just eat every bit of every damned food item you buy. So: bone-out meat, fruit with edible peels, dried whole egg powder, etc.

"This is how I put a bunch of raccoons in trench coats inside of a secret art gallery."

A great art project....

"He Was Pushed in Front of a Subway Train. How Did He Survive?"

I'm using my last free-access link of the month on this very well-written NYT article by Katherine Rosman.

Suddenly he found himself in midair above the tracks. He saw the lights of an oncoming train, so close that he could make out the shape of the train’s operator. He did not expect to survive.

“My life did not flash before my eyes,” he said. “My thought was ‘I’ve been pushed, and I’m going to get hit by the train.’”

""For his part, Libeskind has no patience with housing advocates’ frequently articulated belief that, in an extreme crisis, developers should churn out affordable homes as quickly as possible..."

"... without worrying too much about design. 'That’s propaganda!' he protests. 'It says that poorer people should live in lower-quality environments: "Don’t waste your time on innovation." But it’s the other way around! I would love all my colleagues to concentrate on this kind of housing because it needs the same kind of passion as an iconic skyscraper.'"

From "Daniel Libeskind Tries His Hand at Affordable Housing/The Atrium, in Bedford-Stuyvesant, is a fine proof-of-concept, but does it scale?" (NY Magazine).

Meanwhile, in North Carolina... how architectually interesting does housing need to be to inspire someone?

"The accused firebug, who has not yet been charged, first entered the US illegally at the Arizona border in 2018, but was nabbed just days later and shipped back home."

That's the New York Post, using the cutesy word "firebug," in "Fiend accused of burning woman to death on NYC subway is illegal migrant from Guatemala who sneaked into US after he was deported."

I guess that's the way the New York Post has been talking for a long time. "Fiend" is another example.

By the way, the word "firebug" was originally used to refer to a firefly — AKA lightning bug — but it became a slang word for "arsonist" in the mid-19th century. I note that it would be highly abnormal to use "arsonist" to refer to a person who murdered someone with fire — not unless a building were set on fire and the death happened as an unintended consequence.

"Firebug" connotes pyromania — a crazy fascination with fire. The New York Post unwittingly helps this accused man with his insanity defense.

Much more could be said about the practice of likening a human being to an insect — a bug — but I will stop here... out of respect for the dead.

"[O]blivion is restorative: we come apart in order to come back together. (Sleep is a case in point; without a nightly suspension of our rational faculties, we go nuts.)"

"Another is the notion that oblivion is integral to the possibility of personal evolution. 'The main interest in life and work is to become someone else that you were not in the beginning,' Foucault writes. To do so, however, you must believe that the future can be different from the past—a belief that becomes harder to sustain when one is besieged by information, as the obsessive documentation of life makes it 'more fixed, more factual, with less ambiguity and life-giving potentiality.' Oblivion, by setting aside a space for forgetting, offers a refuge from this 'excess of memory,' and thus a standpoint from which to imagine alternative futures. Oblivion is also essential for human dignity. Because we cannot be fully known, we cannot be fully instrumentalized. Immanuel Kant urged us to treat others as ends in themselves, not merely as means.... [O]ur obscurities are precisely what endow us with a sense of value that exceeds our usefulness.... The modernist city promised anonymity, reinvention. The Internet is devoid of such pleasures. It is more like a village: a place where your identity is fixed...."

Writes Ben Tarnoff, in "What Is Privacy For? We often want to keep some information to ourselves. But information itself may be the problem" (The New Yorker).

The article is mostly about the book "The Right to Oblivion: Privacy and the Good Life," by Lowry Pressly (commission earned).

ADDED: Here, I made you an "Oblivion" playlist:

Trump loves bronze. Beautiful bronze. Beautiful everything — storefronts, so beautiful....

At yesterday's rally in Atlanta, Georgia, as he offered to protect us from urban crime and chaos, Trump fell into a reverie about beauty — the beauty of buildings and the tragedy of the desecration of the beauty of the urban landscape:

If Kamala wins it will be crime, chaos, and death all across our country.... They took over Seattle, 20%. If I didn't have the soldiers ready to go that morning... Seattle would still be occupied.... [W]hat they did with Portland... I was in the real estate business. I love storefronts. Beautiful bronze. I love bronze and beautiful everything — storefronts, so beautiful. In Portland... their storefronts have been so decimated they use old 2x4s with a wooden door — no glass no windows.... It's the worst looking avenue I've ever ever seen because, and I spoke to people that have shops there — they don't have many more—  they've all fled — but the few people that remain they have wooden storefronts made out of old lumber, and they said, no, anything we put up, including this, will be knocked down the next time, and it happens on a weekly basis and nobody does anything about it."

Background: "President Donald Trump’s bold plans didn’t change Oregon’s economic trajectory

What has President Trump done for Oregon? Here’s a breakdown on what he did and didn’t deliver" (OPB, October 21, 2020).

"Fat Beach Day... is being held to coincide with Pride month at Jacob Riis Beach in New York, a location deeply ensconced in the city’s activism space..."

I'm reading "New York’s Fat Beach Day gives plus-size people a space to be themselves/Jacob Riis Beach hosts the day of body positivity and fun, in the city at the heart of the fat acceptance movement" (The Guardian).

I didn't know that fat acceptance was part of what Pride month is about or that New York had something it wanted to call its "activism space." 

... New York has, for decades, been at the heart of the fat acceptance movement. In the 1960s, about 500 protesters held a “fat-in” in Central Park, burning diet books and photographs of the supermodel Twiggy, to publicly encourage body positivity and liberation.... 

Jacob Riis Beach is named after Jacob Riis, the "Danish-American social reformer, 'muckraking' journalist, and social documentary photographer" (Wikipedia). There is some criticism of Riis, you know. This doesn't have to do with fatness. The people in Riis's photographs were skinny — poor people living in tenements.

"Dogs in large cities are essentially settler-colonial—a way for their owners to move into and occupy more of the urban space than they are allotted while making it everyone else’s problem."

That's a tweet quoted in "Dogs slammed as ‘settler-colonial’ as pooches and owners blamed for ‘gentrifying’ NYC by woke activists" (NY Post).

"In a city where many feel ready to snap, dogs have become easy targets for a bubbling undercurrent of rage."

"Now, strangers will just tell my dog he’s an asshole. On three separate occasions, a woman in my building, who doesn’t know I work from home and who doesn’t live on my floor, has come downstairs to stand right in front of my door until Milo starts barking, then yells at him gleefully. Walking to the corner store the other day, Milo made a little woof while crossing the street. 'Shut up, dog,' a man told him, staring at me. The woman next to him started laughing. 'Yeah, shut up dog!'..."

Writes Bindu Bansinath, in "Why Does Everyone Hate My Dog? In a city bubbling over with rage, pets — and their owners — are enemy No. 1" (The Cut).

"It sounds like a dream for some working parents: school for 12 hours a day, starting bright and early at 7 a.m. and ending after dinner, at 7 p.m...."

"... all completely free. One elementary school, Brooklyn Charter School, is experimenting with the idea as a way to tackle two problems at once. The first is a sharp decline in students in urban schools. Families are leaving city public schools around the country, including in New York City, which has led some districts to consider merging schools or even closing them. The second is the logistical nightmare many parents face as they try to juggle jobs and child care...."

From "An Elementary School Tries a ‘Radical’ Idea: Staying Open 12 Hours a Day/A Brooklyn charter school is experimenting with a new way to help families by expanding the school day. Students can arrive at 7 a.m. and leave any time before 7 p.m. For free."

We're going to need to do things like this as the birth rate drops. We can't expect the parents of the world to do all the work and cover all the expense, while the childless enjoy living cheaply. We need people to choose parenthood, and just hoping to impose it on people who stumble into it as a side effect of sexual activity and abortion denial is not enough. Whether the days are short or long and whether we pretend or openly admit it, school is child care. Make it good.