I quit Tower for corporate and\u00a0her 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
Of special interest to me is another curiosity lurking at the Trump Tower: A non-working\u00a0payphone in the basement<\/strong><\/a>, by the bathrooms. I wonder now if that\u00a0device 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\u00a0frosted with casino-like d\u00e9cor. The ceiling windows were, last time I looked, filthy. The building\u00a0has been\u00a0described as tacky and gaudy. I don’t disagree but that doesn’t mean I cannot like it for what it is. It\u00a0is 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.<\/p>\n 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,\u00a0previously\u00a0only a minor tourist destination,\u00a0gradually 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<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0I thought it was interesting at first but in time I compared it to\u00a0shit being thrown at the fa\u00e7ade. 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.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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