Newsday: Security at Trump Tower

I remember writing about my fear that the Trump Tower, one of my favorite places to write, will become a focal point of negative attention. At first I thought it kind of cool if the building became the White House of New York. But the reality looks more hellish than highwater. I know some take offense at pitying the rich but man it has got to suck living in that building now.

I have a long and somewhat complex fascination with the Trump Tower. I would never want to live there but at times I felt like it was my office. The public spaces at the building have been one of my best kept secrets. The upper level garden area in particular is, as public spaces go, as quiet and isolated a sanctuary as you can find in midtown Manhattan. Only the most intrepid tourists seem to make it up there and when they do they do not stay long. I’ve had that space entirely to myself for hours some days.

I also had a memorable encounter with an ex-girlfriend at the “Tower Tower,” which is what I called the Tower Records store that used to occupy space in the building’s lower level. My first lasting job in New York was at the Tower Records at Lincoln Center, where I met B., the beautiful modern dancer with the Alvin Ailey Company. We had a somewhat tempestuous relationship but she will always be special to me.

I quit Tower for corporate and her job at the Lincoln Center store moved to the new location at Trump Tower. We did not talk long when I saw her but I remember the look in her face when I told her I scored a good job and was doing well. She was not happy for me, nor did she want to hear about it. She changed the subject to other things. I got the message to stop the appearance of boasting of my good fortune to someone still stuck in the same dead-end job she had made clear she wanted out of.

The Tower Tower is long gone, as are most of the shops that used to occupy the public spaces of the building. I bought my mother a music box for Christmas one year, probably in 1991. It was $50, which was a lot of money for me at the time. She threatened to throw it away when I told her I purchased it at the Trump Tower.

Of special interest to me is another curiosity lurking at the Trump Tower: A non-working payphone in the basement, by the bathrooms. I wonder now if that device will become a metaphor for a Trump presidency, or if the building’s paper-thin patina of elegance will come to represent the administration’s face of America. The building’s walls are frosted with casino-like décor. The ceiling windows were, last time I looked, filthy. The building has been described as tacky and gaudy. I don’t disagree but that doesn’t mean I cannot like it for what it is. It is very 1980s in its style and while it will probably never receive landmark status I think it is genuine for the time when it was built.

A sense of portent came over me one day several months ago as I entered the building and heard a woman shout “It’s the future POTUS Tower!” The building, previously only a minor tourist destination, gradually became a magnet for curiosity seekers and gawkers. I took a bunch of pictures from the garden area a few months ago, imagining a future when this might not be allowed. When I witnessed the suction-cup climber scaling a portion of the building I thought it was interesting at first but in time I compared it to shit being thrown at the façade. I began to imagine the place being bombed, or fired at from an anonymous distance. The Newsday story linked to below seems to say that all these possibilities and more are being considered — as they should be.