The Kids Club

In a recent blog I commented on the "F" word and the song about make-up sex and I used the term fuddy duddy as a joke.  I shouldn't have.  The whole point of my comment was to call attention to how much everyday life has mimicked the world of the adolescent male.  Think of all the ways "old" is used as a put-down: old thing, old style, old place.  You'll never hear young thing, young style or young place as put-downs?  I presume we all agree that this is a youth oriented culture and it has been for quite some time.   But sometimes it hits me that maybe we've gone overboard.  How about calling someone an ignoramus, instead of a "F". 
When, how and why did we get here?  I'll tell you what I think. The advent of adolescence began at the turn of the 20th Century with the implementation of child labor laws and universal education.  The period of dependency was prolonged.  Stanley Hall was among the first to address these changes in his 1904 study "Adolescence".
Steven Mintz, an historical theorist, believes it began in the 1950's with the teen youth subculture.  I can see how the influence of teenagers on the culture mushroomed in the 1950's and 60's.  I can also see the conflict in that culture: Tab Hunter vs. James Dean, Sandra Dee vs. Marilyn, Pat Boone vs Elvis, Patti Page vs. Peggy Lee, Our Miss Brooks vs. The Three Stooges.  The formation of an identity and the confusion around accepted roles for the adolescent are all present at this time.  Eric Ericson's theory of this stage of development says the conflict is between intimacy vs. isolation.  The unsuccessful resolution of this conflict, because of role confusion, leads to an inability to commit which can continue throughout adult life.  Fidelity is the hallmark.  "The ability to sustain loyalties in spite of contradictions and confusion of value systems."  During this period the adolescent is engaged in re-establishing boundaries for the self.  Crisis can bring sustained length of adolescence and unresolved conflicts in intimacy and isolation.
Was there crisis in the 50's and 60's?  Yes, nationally and also in the family.  The 1950's saw the beginning of the nuclear family and the growth of suburbia, creating isolation.  Mass media opened many more role choices.  In a recent Sunday magazine piece about H.S. Grads the career choice for quite a few of them was C. S. I.  I had never heard of C.S.I's in H.S.  Lilly Tomlin once said when she was growing up there were no gays or lesbians.  People were shy.  Now she would have to say there were no gays, lesbians, bisexual, transvestite, or transgender people, just a heck of a lot of shy people.
Commerce also changed and became a profound influence.  Though Henry Ford created the assembly line and mass produced his Model "T" between 1909 and 1927 it wasn't until 1956 that we began to build a national highway system.  After the Second World War, America experienced great prosperity, which brought something new, a disposable income; shopping became a pastime, and Teenagers became a target of advertising.  Today's teenagers and young adults are the prime market for advertisers, and it appears that each generation wants to be bolder in style, dress, media and language that the last generation.     

Baths

 On 11th Street between Ave. A and 1st Ave. is a private residence that was once one of NYC's Public Baths.  It opened in 1905 for the German and Irish immigrants in the neighborhood.

In the 1840's the New York State legislature enacted laws to provide for the hygiene of the many immigrants coming into the city.  The first Public Bath was opened in 1849 at 141 Mott Street.  Financing wasn't provided; the baths had to charge; the immigrants were poor; the baths closed.  After the Civil War New York followed the example of Boston and built inexpensive floating public bathing facilities in the rivers around the city.  Begun in 1870 by 1888 there were 15 of these free baths serving 4 million people a year, but they were seasonal.  This is also a time in the U.S known as the Gilded Age when there was a strong resistance to government intervention in people's lives.  It should be noted that NYC knew very well about the connection between the lack of hygiene and the incidence of epidemics: 1822-yellow fever, 1832-cholera, 1848-cholera, 1854-cholera, 1866-cholera.  TB was also a constant part of public life.  It wasn't until 1895 that the NY State Legislature passed a law requiring  public bathing facilities.  But it was still a struggle to implement and the first Bath did not open until 1901 on Rivington Street.  The last City Public Baths, The Allen Street Baths, closed in the 1970's.
 

The Russian and Turkish Bath is on 10th Street between 1st Ave. and Ave. A.  They have been in operation since 1892 but are not free.  Among their services are 2 types of saunas.  The Russian sauna has 20,000 lbs. of rock that are cooked overnight.  If it gets too hot there are plenty of buckets of ice water to pour over you head.  At the redwood sauna you can get the Platza Oak Leaf Treatment.  A Platza specialist scrubs you, actually beats you [this is from their website] with a broom made of fresh oak leaves sopping with olive oil soap.  The Platza treatment is also called Jewish acupuncture.  There's  massage, dead sea salts scrub, black mud treatment and a "soap wash where our specialist will wash you like you haven't been bathed in months."  There's even a restaurant so after all the shvitzing, maybe a little seltzer.  Tsar Nicholas never had it so good.

walking the web

When the UV index is 9, I don't walk the city as much.  Instead, I've been looking through the web for research on some things.  One has been a story I first read about in the book "Gotham" which is a history of New York City up until the 1880's.  The part I have been thinking about was the "Panic of 1873".  It is also called the long depression for several reasons.  It lasted until 1879; 89 of 364 railroads went bankrupt; 18,000 businesses failed and unemployment was 14%.  It was worldwide; Britain had 2 decades of stagnation.  The problem began with a housing boom in Paris, Vienna and Berlin.  Money for housing was available through the recently designed savings banks of the emerging Middle Class, and it seemed so abundant that mortgages were given for homes only half built.  When middle Europe and Russia could not compete with the American farmer the crash began.
One of the characters I was curious about is Jay Cooke of Cooke and Company.  He was issuing bonds to build a second Northern Pacific Railroad because he expected the western expansion to include Montana.  He wrote his liabilities against expected returns on his sale of bonds.  J. P. Morgan wouldn't buy; so no one else did.  There was no money to pay bills he had already listed as being paid so Cooke and Company went bankrupt, and this seriously affected the entire industry and country.  Except for Morgan who became involved in developing and financing his own railroad empire.
In 1874 thousands demonstrated in Tompkins Square Park which was the largest demonstration that had ever occurred in NY.   The panic of 1873 is also credited with ending the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 
But my focus of research was on Jay Cooke.  I wondered if it was because of him that the expression "cooking the books" originated.  It isn't.  According to the www. the expression is from the 17th century.  Yeah it's that old.  The more modern expression "creative accounting" is attributed to the comedian Professor Irwin Corey by phases.org uk and to Mel Brooks' film "The Producers" by Wikipedia.

The Weather Channel has videos of the "dust storm", Haboob, that hit Phoenix, Az. and the Valley of the Sun.  Extraordinary, it had 53mph winds. 
Yesterday I was in a department store that had a song on the overhead speakers about 'break-up sex'.  Fox movie channel on Sunday showed a movie that did not bleep the "F" word, just saying.

Free

I love the city on a holiday weekend and this is why:

That's 23rd street at 2PM.  It's a vacation from the hordes.  To quote Frank O'Hara, traffic was acting like the sky.
In this week's The Villager:
One of the person's responsible for the passage of the marriage equality law was Daniel O'Donnell.  He was the bill's lead sponsor in the Assembly where he is a member and he is also the brother of Rosie O'Donnell.
And in another part of the paper Jerry Tallmer writes about Peter Falk who recently died.  They were friends in the 1950's when Peter was starring as the bartender at Sheridan Square's Circle In The Square production of The Iceman Cometh with Jason Robards, directed by Jose Quintero.  From the article: Falk was born in Manhattan in 1927 but grew up in Ossining.  He lost his right eye due to cancer at the age of three.
Also mentioned P.S.122 is closing "for a couple of years" while the interior is upgraded. 

Charlie Parker, also known as Yardbird or Bird, live on Avenue B in the East Village.  He played a leading role in the development of Bebop.  When bebop was forming in NYC there was a Musicians strike so no recordings of it's formative years exist.  When the Union lifted the ban a concert at Town Hall on 6/22/45 was recorded with Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Max Roach, and Bud Powell.  I define Bebop as a form of Jazz that has a quick tempo, lots of extraordinary technique, and improvisation.
Bird became an icon for the beat generation because of their perception of him as an uncompromising artist and intellectual.  He is recorded as saying in an interview that for 3 to 4 years he practiced 15 hours a day.
As a teenager, Parker developed a morphine addiction while a patient in a hospital after an automobile accident.  He subsequently became addicted to heroin and died at the Stanhope Hotel accompanied by his patron and friend Nica de Koenigswarter.  The "cause of death" listed 4, lobar pneumonia, bleeding ulcer, cirrhosis, and a heart attack, any one of which could have killed him.  His age was listed on the death certificate as between 50 and 60.  He was 34.
You Tube has videos of him performing with Lester Young, and another video with Dizzy Gillespie.

House of Worship

The Central Synagogue at Lexington and 55thStreet is designed in the Moorish Revival Style using New Jersey Brownstone.  It is the longest continuously used Synagogue in the country.  Founded in 1846 by Jews from Prague and Bohemia it was initially located on Ave. C and 4th Street.  The cornerstone was laid in 1872 by Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise, one of the founders of Reform Judaism.
  The Moorish style was used to emphasize and recall the great history and accomplishments of the Jews in Moorish Spain.  It was designed by Henry Fernbach who is sometimes referred to as the first Jewish architect of consequence.  He is well represented in the SoHo Historic district with 35 buildings, 25 of them on Greene Street, alone.
Reform Judaism believes that Judaism and its traditions should be modernized and compatible with the surrounding culture.  Coming out of the mid-19thcentury enlightenment period of Germany it posed an intellectual challenge to traditional Jewish doctrines, such as the divine authorship of the Torah.
From one of my spiritual leaders:
Tennessee Williams:  "There are no 'good' or 'bad' people.  Some are a little better or a little worse but all are motivated more by misunderstanding than by malice.  A blindness to what is going on in each others hearts.  Nobody sees anybody truly but all through the flaws of their own egos.  That is the way we all see each other in life."

Passion

I went for a long walk, from my place on East 4th Street uptown to the Frick Museum on East 70th Street.  I wanted to see the restored St. Francis in the Desert by Bellini [ca.1480].  It is one of the earliest of Italian landscape oil paintings and the largest work on panel at the Frick.  It depicts St. Francis leaving his mountain cell at the moment of his stigmata.  I can not take pictures at the Frick.
The NY Times has a great photo and article on the painting.
On the way home I visited one of the buildings that evoke passion. 
The Chrysler Building in 1930 was the tallest building in the world for 11 months.  Currently owned by the Abu Dhabi Investment Council it was the headquarters of the Chrysler Corporation from 1930 to the mid 1950's.  The 61st floor eagles are replicas of the 1929 Chrysler hood ornament.  The 31st floor corner ornamentation is a replica of the 1929 Chrysler radiator cap.
The architect, William Van Alen, 8/10/1883-5/24/1954 was born in Brooklyn and studied at Pratt Institute.  The building was initially commissioned by William H. Reynolds but was taken over by Walter Chrysler so he could bequeath it to his family.  Van Alen failed to secure a contract with Chrysler and when he requested the standard fee of 6% of the building's budget, $14 million Chrysler refused payment.  Chrysler claimed Van Alen had committed fraud in budgeting the production costs.  Van Alen sued and won, but his reputation and career were ruined.  Because of the scandal and the depression he could not get any work.  He continued to draw and work on designs but only found work as a teacher of sculpture.  He died unheralded, leaving everything to his wife.  There were no children or other relatives.  None of his books, drawings or designs are known to have survived.  What we have is the Chrysler Building or what I like to call the William Van Alen Building.