Idea i’ve been nursing for a long time: reviews of or simply observations from nyc’s public spaces. These corporate-sponsored zoning bonuses got some sarcastic attention during the Occupy Wall Street shenanigans, which is unfortunate since i had thought of Public Space until then as one of the city’s better kept secrets. The Occupyistas compiled ordered lists of corporate-funded public spaces and, by some accounts, appear to have converted them into living room space for their personal selves. I would think a day spent at any of these spaces could be turned into a colorful narrative of some quality. I found a nice 2nd-floor outdoor space today near the old Mcann Erickson Building (whence I interviewed for a job and failed to get an offer) and near the Chrysler Building. There was another public space near Grand Central that looked like a McDonald’s employee dining room. I think the first NYC public space i remember frequenting was at the Trump Tower
lower level. They have public space through the tower, but no room to roam among the concentratedly wealthy who live in that guady, tacky column of conspicuous gluttony (Christ/ I’m starting to sound like an Occupyista)… Most spaces like this have tables and chairs, others have art work and galleries. Maybe it’s bottom feeding to think I could glean anything of substance from such a pursuit but I might give it a try anyhows. I think the only such space in Queens is at the Citi Building in LIC. Mostly these spaces are in Manhattan. Maybe the new Gehry Building? I guess if you include libraries the list expands considerably but I’d leave those out for having been pretty well covered. Toe Rose Reading Room is among the great open space sin town, though.
A bit of searchability shows that WNYC did a series of reviews, mostly catering to the Occupy set. Seems some public space is closed or essentially inaccessible to the public, a nonsurprising situation considering the assumed moneyed arrogance of the private parties involved.
Oh, but i nurse a lot of ideas. Ideas take time to implement.
Another idea in the hopper is to gather sounds of telephone recordings announcing that a number has been disconnected or no longer in service. Recording Skype calls directly proved more annoying than expected, with message board pundits recommending all kinds of cheezy looking freeware apps that probably work fine, but not as well as simply plugging the PC’s headphone jack into an external digital recorder.
Had this crazy dream about my friend D last night, he and i were supposed to meet for a business conference at some hotel, and i got there well ahead of him even though we had been scheduled to arrive at the same time. I sensed a panic among other conference attendees who thought they might not get decent hotel rooms if they waited until too late to check in, there was confusion among all regarding whether to use the human being checkin or a new automated checkin system that trimmed $5.50 sense off the price of the hotel stay. (It’s weird waking up from dreams with such specific numbers or other details as $5.50.) D never arrived at the hotel but the dream backtracked some to a few days earlier when we were in a basement trying to find murdered bodies of priests and nuns that had been stuffed into underground closets and cubbyholes by government informants. We found nothing but others who got there before us on the hunt found tons of carcasses. I don’t
know if the business trip was followup to that endeavor but it was a slightly weird dreamscape.
