soot

There have been a couple of cool photos of sooty buildings recently bouncing around the blogosphere. Here in New York, was this photo, originally posted at trevorlittle.com (click to see it full size):



That photo shows the dramatic effect of power washing a building on the Lower East Side, a building that apparently hasn't been cleaned since coal use started to decline many decades ago...

And today I ran across this photo on inhabitat (via Streetsblog), showing a "reverse graffiti" artist. Instead of putting paint on walls, these street artists "seek out soot covered surfaces and inscribe them with images, tags, and even advertising slogans using scrub brushes, scrapers and pressure hoses." Click to see more reverse graffiti images:



Even though the air here in NYC is vastly cleaner than it used to be, I still get black soot building up on the sills of open windows. Perhaps I should make an art project out of it rather than just spraying it into submission with 409...

NYC good news roundup

There have been several bits of news about NYC in the last couple of days that make me happy.

First is another hint of actual putting-bricks-together at the trade center site. They'd started regular work on the foundation of the Freedom Tower building a couple of months ago (after laying a cornerstone, now safely off-site, about a year ago), and now as the New York Times reports, the first steel I-beam is about to be installed:

Scores of relatives signed their names, wrote messages and taped photographs on the beam, more than 30 feet long, which was available to be signed for five hours yesterday in a vacant lot in Battery Park City. Gov. George E. Pataki, who leaves office at the end of the month, wrote on the beam, as did Daniel Libeskind, the architect overseeing the master plan for the ground zero site.

(Speaking of skyscrapers and the Times, the new Times building on 8th Ave. is substantially complete... And it's ugly. Drat.)

Second, New York City is still the safest big city in the nation, with another 7.2% drop in crime in the first half of this year. The murder rate is up a little, though, as it is nationwide.

Third, the mayor's office announced a new Third Way plan to reduce poverty in the city.

The city is planning to spend an extra $150 million a year in public and private money on the core priority of Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg’s second term: combating poverty that is hidden beneath New York’s vast wealth.

The effort would involve the creation of a new city office that would operate in part like a philanthropic foundation and in part like a venture capital company. The program, called the Center for Economic Opportunity, would administer a $100 million fund to support experimental programs, like giving cash rewards to encourage poor people to stay in school or receive preventive medical care, or matching their monthly bank deposits to foster greater savings.

The office would also oversee a program giving tax credits to impoverished families to offset child care costs. Programs are to be constantly evaluated, and those that cannot show success will be terminated.

Interesting. I do think that Bloomberg and centerist Democrats like Bill Clinton have a lot in common, in that both believe in active government action in social justice and equality, but tend to prefer more innovative free-market approaches than do traditional liberals. It'll be interesting to see if this new program can show results. Say what you like about Bloomberg, but he does believe in measurement, evaluation, and statistics...

And lastly, the Federal government yesterday pledged $2.6 billion in transportation money to finish the East Side Access project, which will extend the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central Station on the East side of town. My subway commute to work every day goes right over the construction zone for that project, which started up again about six months ago, well before most of the money had been found. So far they've just been preparing the site and pushing dirt around; in coming months they'll be digging a big ramp to connect the existing rail yard with the existing tunnel under the river. And speaking of subways, the Feds also pledged nearly $700 million for the Second Avenue Subway which will relieve congestion on the East Side (congestion that would be made worse by the completion of the East Side Access project).

As I've said before, NYC is growing rapidly (aided by the low crime rate), and the infrastructure
needs to grow with it. I'm looking forward to seeing real progress soon...

small-scale and large-scale development

Two very interesting essays in Gotham Gazette today (thanks to Curbed for the links). In one, Amanda Burden, the chair of the New York City Planning Commission and director of the Department of City Planning, talks about the competing influences of Jane Jacobs and Robert Moses on city development. Jacobs was an advocate of streets and neighborhoods. Moses was a central planner and an advocate of large-scale development projects. Burden comes down primarily on the side of Jacobs, and says that she has basically won the argument on style, but that Moses may have been correct on scope.

Moses may have gotten a lot done, built a great deal in the name of “the people”, but the truth is that he wanted little to do with the people who would live in the city he created. Their voices were dispensable, their homes were dispensable. And that is why he couldn’t conceive of the importance of neighborhoods.

Jacobs, on the other hand, knew that if you neglect neighborhoods, you do so at the city’s peril. People who no longer have faith in the future of the place in which they were brought up or where they are raising a family, will, if they can afford it, leave for a more predictable, safer place.

...

Where we do, or some of us might, have nostalgia for Moses is in the realization that it is very very difficult to get very complex and expensive projects built that are critical to our city’s future such as the Second Avenue Subway, East Side Access, a one seat ride to the airport from Lower Manhattan and the #7 line.

...

Big cities need big projects. Big projects are a necessary part of the diversity, competition and growth that both Jacobs and Moses fought for. But today’s big projects must have a human scale; must be designed, from idea to construction, to fit into the city. Projects may fail to live up to Jane Jacob’s standards, but they are still judged by her rules.

It is to the great credit of the mayor that we are building and rezoning today, once again, like Moses, on an unprecedented scale, but, with Jacobs firmly in mind, invigorated by the belief that the process matters and that great things can be built through a focus on the details, on the street, for the people who live in this great city.

In the other, Brad Lander of the Pratt Center for Community Development extends on this Jacobs vs. Moses theme and talks about how New York should balance affordable housing and grassroots neighborhoods with infrastructure development and the need for significant growth due to population pressures. He focuses on two recently proposed development projects, the sale and possible conversion to market-rate condos of Stuyvesant Town, the massive middle-class affordable-housing project in Manhattan, and the development of waterfront residential towers as part of the Queens West project.

It is not simply income and racial diversity that is in question. New York City’s growth and consequent market-led real estate pressures are putting strains on the quality of life of neighborhoods in every corner or the city – more traffic, more people using scarce open space, overcrowded schools in many growing neighborhoods, tear-downs of historic structures.

The answers will not be found in Moses’ style top-down mega-projects, which led to massive increases in traffic and were in many instance contemptuous of the very poor families they were serving (although he did create more open space that anyone before or since).

But the answers also won’t be found – as some who invoke Jacobs’ name today try to do – in seeking to prevent development altogether, nor in diminishing the role of government in city-building. New York City is expected to grow by one million people (mostly as a result of immigration) in the coming decades. We need thoughtful city planning and smart, activist government to make that growth work for New York’s communities.

I'm very pleased that this smart development approach is now in the forefront, and that the Mayor has decided that his legacy requires the creation of an Office of Long-Term Planning and Sustainability. Hopefully the combination of large-scale infrastructure development and small-scale, neighborhood-based community development will allow the city to grow in a way that will allow everyone to be able to live here, and also to want to live here.

Science of Cooking talk report

Well that was rather a treat. The New York Academy of Sciences has a new series(*) of public lectures on the Science of Food, and I went to see the first event tonight. Shirley Corriher was the guest this evening. She's a chef with a chemistry background, she's written a couple of books on the science of cooking (CookWise from 1997 won a Beard award; BakeWise is not yet available), she's been a guest star on Good Eats, and she's a complete character. An unstoppable talker with a Southern accent, she talked without notes or a break for nearly an hour about the science of food in an enthusiastic, clear, and entertaining manner.

She started out by talking about her background and an early lesson she learned. When younger, after quitting chemistry as a profession, she took a job as a cook at a boys boarding school. Her first educational mistake was trying to fry eggs by breaking them into a cold pan then heating the pan. If you do that, the proteins in the eggs soak into tiny fissures in the cold metal and then literally cook into the pan as you increase the temperature. If instead you drop the eggs into a hot pan, they cook (specifically the proteins denature and link up) before they soak in and don't stick as much.

Her talk was rambling, a series of amusing anecdotes and cooking chemistry lessons that hopped from one topic to another. Here, from my notes, are some other particularly interesting or amusing things she said...

• Sugar makes wine taste bad; sour makes wine taste mild; salt makes wine taste smooth and kills bitterness. If you ordered the fish and the person who ordered the steak got a Cabernet for the table, to prevent the strong flavor of the wine from clashing with your dinner, eat a bite of something with lemon and salt on it before taking a sip.
• On average, meats lose 30% of their moisture during cooking. If you brine the meat (1 c salt per gallon water) it loses only 15%. If you cook it sous vide, you lose almost none.
• Dried beans would fall apart if you cooked them for a really long time. Sugar and calcium both prevent a substance in the beans from dissolving and keep the beans intact. Molasses has both sugar and calcium, which is why molasses lets you cook baked beans forever without them turning to mush.
• The pastry chef for the White House used a technique where strawberries are quickly boiled in a strong sugar solution before being incorporated into a shortcake. The sugar (by the same process as above) prevents the berries from turning to mush when they're cooked. Bill Clinton ate half of one of these shortcakes one night when he was "dining alone."
• The metabolic byproducts of asparagus smell very bad to some people but not to other people. To those who smell the byproducts, the term "asparagus pee" makes sense. To me, it doesn't.
• Acid makes most vegetables turn brown when cooked (by changing the chlorophyll's structure). So don't cook green veggies in a vinaigrette. Roasting asparagus under a broiler works great. Use lemon zest instead of lemon juice to flavor vegetables.
• Acid also prevents potatoes from cooking. So don't cook potatoes in a vinaigrette either. Or with tomatoes, which are pretty acidic.
• On the other hand, Dutched cocoa powder is alkaline, and prevents eggs from setting in baked goods. If you're baking with eggs and cocoa, use normal cocoa.

Whew! And then we got hors d'ouvres in the lobby. Speaking of the lobby, the NYaS just moved from their old location on the Upper East Side to the 40th floor of the brand-spankin'-new 7 World Trade Center. (I blogged about the building in April.) The building is amazing. The views to the East (Woolworth Building) and North (the rest of Manhattan) from the NYaS's offices are completely spectacular. The lobby is gorgeous and modern. The elevators are a technological marvel. You type in the floor you want to go to before you enter the elevator, and it tells you which elevator to take so that it can optimize travel. And the interior of the elevators with frosted glass covering mirrors, and intelligent display screens are fantastic. I'm telling you, it's worth a visit just for the elevators.

(*) The other events are on the Science of Wine, the Science of Beer (both with tastings), the Science of Taste (hosted by Hervé This!) and the Science of Cheese.

Streetsblog: a great NYC urban planning blog

I've been really impressed by a newish blog about the streets of NYC, Streetsblog. It's a project of the New York City Streets Renaissance Campaign, and it covers the (slow) improvement of NYC streets as modern urban planning takes over from the (in my opinion) mostly misguided highway-centered development of the mid-20th century. Unlike my other favorite NYC blog, Curbed, it focuses on pedestrians and street culture rather than architecture and real estate.

Here are a few recent Streetsblog posts I noted:

Today, the Straphangers guild reported on the worst bus lines of the city, including the M14 crosstown bus that's slower than walking, and the M1 bus that tends to travel in herds instead of evenly spaced. (The bus I use the most, the M60 bus that runs between Columbia, Harlem, Astoria, and La Guardia, is actually quite punctual and evenly spaced most of the time.) Streetsblog notes the MTA's defensive statement that says that traffic = vibrancy, and then shows two photos of city streets, one of traffic-jammed taxis in Manhattan and the other of pedestrians in Copenhagen, and asks us readers to decide which is more vibrant. Nice. (Link)

A few days ago, Streetsblog posted a story about a plan in the works to redo a minor intersection, 9th Ave. and Gansevoort in the Meatpacking district. The interesting thing about the plan is the process by which the grassroots project looked at the problems at that intersection (horrible crosswalks, too many circling taxis, no street life) and figured out how to solve them. The solution involves restricting traffic by reducing four lanes to two, creating on-street areas for cafes to put seating, and adding public seating in the middle of the intersection. Looks great, and I hope they do it, that it works well, and becomes an example to others. (Link)

And then, in an example of the raison d'etre of blogs, spreading rumors, Streetsblog noted last week that Bob Kiley, the architect of London's highly successful congestion-pricing system (cameras take photos of your license plates and automatically bill you a few bucks for driving into downtown during business hours), will be moving to New York and will be heading up a study to see if/how this should be implemented here. (Link)

All this and nice visual design too...

urban renewal and Union Square

One of the topics I find really interesting is New York City's processes of urban renewal, as it comes back from the blight of the 70s and 80s (click on the famous image to the right for background), and expansion, as its population rises rapidly to record levels. The New York Sun has an article today about the history and development of Union Square.

In 1979, architecture critic Paul Goldberger wrote that Union Square "can accommodate flamboyant showoffs and it can accommodate derelicts, but not genteel matrons."

The vibrancy of earlier decades, he wrote, had died down, leaving a "dreary park" and a surrounding area that was "tawdry with no particular charm."

The article talks about the processes that led to a revival of the neighborhood, from rezoning in the 1980s, leading to a private developer taking the risk putting in condo highrises before anything else had improved, to the foodie culture supporting Union Square Cafe and the farmer's market, to NYU's expansion North and the rise of Williamsburg as a hipster locale just a short subway ride from the Square.

The area is now a development mecca, with new buildings and conversions happening continually. (Including the ongoing foodie-central nature of the neighborhood, with a Whole Foods, a Trader Joes, and (my favorite) a Garden of Eden all within a few blocks of the Greenmarket and several top-notch restaurants.)

The chairman of Prudential Douglas Elliman's retail division, Faith Hope Consolo, said rents around Union Square have tripled in a little over a year. Storefronts that used to rent for about $100 a square foot are now going for $250 to $300 a square foot, comparable to parts of Midtown and SoHo, she said.

Of course, with any rapid development, there are problems and growing pains, and the article points those out too.

An architect and a board member of the Union Square Community Coalition, Leo Blackman, said the area's rebirth is commendable, but it is taking a toll on the neighborhood, particularly the park.

"The demand on that little piece of green has really doubled," Mr. Blackman said. "The park is absorbing more people with more commercial activity on the southern edge.... From a business point of view, you want to jam people in the park... At a certain point it becomes unpleasant and less of a resource for people who live in the neighborhood."

Here's a map from New York Magazine:

Review: A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints

Exactly one year ago today, I posted here about the filming of a movie in the neighborhood. That movie, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, written and directed by Astoria-native Dito Montiel, has its official premier today downtown, and opens in New York and LA on September 29th. It won two awards each at the Sundance and Venice Film Festivals, and had a sneak preview last weekend here in Astoria, at the Museum of the Moving Image, with Mr. Montiel and actor Chazz Palminteri in attendance.

Along with a number of neighborhood friends, I got to see the movie last Friday night, and am very pleased to say that I very much enjoyed the film. (Contrary to my predictions of a year ago...) The movie tells a dramatized version of Dito Montiel's life as a teenager in Astoria in the mid-1980s, the violence and family drama that propelled him away from Astoria eventually to LA, and the experience of returning home from LA, 15 years later, to see his ailing father. Although Astoria, Queens was not exactly the center of urban violence in NYC 20 years ago, Dito and his friends were definitely on the rough side. There is plenty of violence and anger in the film, including several beatings, several murders, and much domestic strife.

The movie managed to create a series of remarkably compelling characters in only 98 minutes, including Dito himself, his violent friend Antonio, his sorta-girlfriend Laurie, and his old-school father and rather sweet mother. The cast was uniformly well-cast and remarkably good, especially the core actors, Chazz Palminteri as Dito's father, Diane Wiest as his mother, Robert Downey Jr. as the older Dito, and Shia LaBeouf as the younger Dito. The film-making and editing showed a number of non-traditional turns that worked for me, although friends disagreed. The beginning of the film was an Altman-like set of overlapping conversations. There were dramatic blackouts in one scene, and dreamlike offset dialogue and video in another. About 20 minutes into the movie, several of the major characters introduce themselves to the camera. All of these gave a feeling of recollection to the movie, rather than a feeling of being on the scene as it happened. A signficant draw, of course, were the location shots.

The movie was shot entirely (I think) in Astoria, with many of the outdoor scenes less than a block from my house, and Dito's house an actual neighborhood house, not a soundstage. Although this gives a striking realism, it was also quite distracting to viewers familiar with the neighborhood! It was somewhat difficult to stop saying "ooh, look, the corner deli!" in order to concentrate on the dialogue. Several scenes were shot at night on a building 100 feet from my apartment, and the back of my building was visible in a wide shot for about a second. This alone would have made the film worth the cost of admission, but it was a compelling drama above and beyond that. This was Montiel's first film of any sort, and it will be interesting to see if the likely success this movie will have will push him to make additional movies.

Three and a half out of four lamb chops.

hot

Looks like three days of 100 degree humid weather here in New York. Hooray. On the way into work this morning, I snapped this cell photo of a road construction area near my apartment....

Doesn't it look happy, next to the 8 foot tall concrete thing that's been parked on the street for six months?

power outage in Astoria

Although the outage is not as widespread as the one in St. Louis, the outage here in Western Queens has been going on for six days, and parts of it may last for several more. Which blocks have had outages and which haven't has been very hit-or-miss, and I've been very lucky. Some disruptions to my cell phone and cable modem, but I've had full power, even as people just a couple blocks in each direction have either had nothing or just a tiny bit of low-voltage power to light some light bulbs.

This afternoon I went for a walk to take some photos, and got a few shots of workers repairing the electrical system a few blocks from my apartment. In addition to ConEd workers, there are people from all over the Northeast here working on the wires. I've seen trucks from DC and Ohio. Here are my photos of the workers:











There have been a lot of cops around, traffic cops where stoplights were out, as well as a bunch of beat cops who were sent to "prevent looting". Apparently, there's been basically none. Squeaky clean people, we Astorians are...

I'm in Seattle and Vancouver for a week, visiting relatives and going to a conference, so this blog will be taking a week's vacation as well! Enjoy the rest of the Internet without me...

New York City water and bagels

There was recent news that there's been too much clay in NYC water, and the city might have to, for the first time, build a filtration plant to filter out impurities in the water we get from upstate reservoirs. Today, the Times had an article on reaction from bakers:

The wrong water can ruin things, he said. “You can’t use well water to make bagels,” he said. “You could, but they won’t come out right. What, exactly is in that water, I don’t know. I’m not a chemist, I’m just a bagel maker. All I can tell is the water in New York has always been good for bagels, Italian bread, pastries.”

Noel Labat-Comess, the president of Tom Cat Bakery, a wholesale operation in Long Island City, Queens, called the issue of filtration and taste a “nonworry.”

“Water used for bread that’s within a normal range has little or no effect on it,” he said. “It’s only when it gets to the extremes, when it gets extremely mineraly, that it can be a problem. I’ve never run into anyone in my years of baking anywhere that had a problem with their bread that was caused by the water.”

The article says that most of the people they interviewed didn't think water quality mattered much for most cooking, but they did definitely suggest using purified water for making coffee. I suspect Italian ices would also be badly affected by dirty water... I, for one, have a water filter in my fridge for some reason, but I always just use tap water, for cooking and for drinking.

Queens Plaza development

I take the subway train every day from home, in Astoria, to work, in Greenwich Village. The subway is elevated in Queens, and the last stop before it dives under the East River and into Manhattan is Queensboro Plaza. This "plaza" is the Queens base of the Queensboro (59th St.) Bridge, and it's a fairly ugly and industrial part of the fairly ugly and industrial neighborhood of Long Island City. But, as reported nicely by the New York Times today in their City section, the area is undergoing a renaissance of sorts. After being a center of prostitution and street crime for decades, with decreasing residents and crumbling factories, the area started to improve in the 80s. The Citibank Building, the lone skyscraper in Queens, three or four blocks from the plaza, was completed in 1990. The Museum of Modern Art, while rebuilding its Manhattan location, for several exhibited its collection in its warehouse and office facility in Long Island City, MoMA QNS. In 2001, much of Long Island City was rezoned for development, and several projects are underway or have been completed. A smaller skyscraper next to the Citybank Building is nearly done. Towards the river, new condo towers are going up daily, Silvercup Studios is planning to expand to a site next to the river, and there's even a little beach with genuine trucked-in sand. Several old buildings across from the plaza have already been converted to offices (Met Life) and condos (The Queens Plaza).

New to me in the Times piece were discussion of three new projects that are to start soon. Another residential tower is to be built next to the new condos. The horrifically ugly municipal parking garage on the South side of the plaza, a giant concrete blight, will be torn down and replaced with an office tower. And, most exciting to me as I look out the windows of the train, a parking lot next to the tracks will be converted into a park:

"The Warriors" at Coney Island

This is only partly on-topic for this blog, but I thought it was such a great idea I had to mention it! There's going to be a series of "classic" movies screened on location (!) in August, courtesy of Netflix. The first one will be The Warriors, the late-70s cult favorite about gangs in New York City. A gang from Coney Island has to make it back home, through the territory of other gangs, and mayhem ensues. It will be shown August 2nd, at Coney Island. That's so cool.

From the AP article:

"Field of Dreams" will be shown at the Dyersville, Iowa, baseball field surrounded by cornstalks. "Jaws" will be played at Martha's Vineyard, Mass., and "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" will get a screening by the Cedar Lane Water Tower in Northbrook, Ill.

Other stops include Stanley Kubrick's "The Shining" at the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colo., and the classic Western "The Searchers" at Gouldings Lodge in Monument Valley, Utah.

Director Kevin Smith and cast members are expected to be on hand for a screening of "Clerks" at the Quick Stop in Leonardo, N.J. Other screenings will include activities related to the films, like raft floating in the ocean during "Jaws."

Also to be screened on location is the Coen brothers'"Raising Arizona" at the Lost Dutchman State Park in Apache Junction, Ariz., "The Poseidon Adventure" on the H.M.S. Queen Mary in Long Beach, Calif., and Clint Eastwood's "Escape From Alcatraz" on Alcatraz Island in San Francisco.

(Image by d.r.lynch, some rights reserved)

Hurricanes in New York

National Geographic News has an interesting article about the hurricane risk in New York City. The risk is fairly low to the city itself, since most hurricanes parallel the coast this far North, and are unlikely to run directly into the city without spending a bunch of time over land first. Long Island, sticking out to sea, is at more of a risk. On the other hand, the potential consequences of such an unlikely event are really quite remarkably bad. Lower Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn and Queens could flood. (Not the part I live in; I'm probably at 50 or so feet above sea level.) The financial impact of New York City (financial industry, the Port of New York) being out of commission for a couple of weeks would be really huge on the US economy, more than Katrina taking out New Orleans. Also, transportation on and off of Long Island could be pretty severely impacted if bridges and tunnels were damaged.

In 1821, the eye of a hurricane pushed a 13-foot (4-meter) storm surge into New York Harbor that put Lower Manhattan underwater.

The flooding would have been much worse had the eye not arrived at low tide.

The National Storm Center is predicting another heavy year for hurricanes, although presumably not as heavy as last year's disaster. Normal years have about two major storms, last year had seven, and they're predicting four to six this year...

New York photos

Three crappy cell-phone photos for you, of hopefully amusing New York scenes...



Half-crushed Froot Loops on the floor of the subway.


You know you're in Queens when a house in the neighborhood has a six-foot tall plastic Statue of Liberty on the porch. In May.



A rant posted to a pillar in the Union Square subway station. It says: "In order to purchase tobacco products at Walgreens you will need a driver's license, passport, birth certificate and pictures of your grandchildren to prove you are over 40 years of age. An exception will be made if you can prove you have lung cancer so it does not matter anyway." And then there's (I think) a photo of Edward R. Murrow and some stuff about him that's not legible.

Movie Review: Eden

I obviously don't do a lot of movie reviews here, but I'm making an exception for Eden, a German film screened at the Tribeca Film Festival, and a film about glorious cooking. I saw the movie with several other foodie friends at a very nice theater in... the Upper West Side. The Tribeca Film Festival has outgrown its roots in Lower Manhattan, and has now spread a 20 minute subway ride away. But they put the film in the best theater in the multiplex, with very comfortable seats. The director, Michael Hofmann, who was present, said it was the largest theater his work has been shown in!

The film is a comedic drama with romantic overtones, about a married woman (Eden) with a young Downs-afflicted daughter (Leonie) and a frustrated husband (Xaver) who meets a fat, introverted, awkward, but extremely talented and warm chef (Gregor) in the spa village they live in. She becomes enthralled by him, visits his house, and begins a chaste affair with him where their mutual affection is expressed only through the food he cooks and her appreciation of it. Xaver hears about his wife's weekly dinners with the chef, and despite her renewed romantic interest in him, inspired by the "cuisine erotique" cooked by the chef, become jealous and angry and the plot proceeds from there.

Although the script is only fair, the film was, I think, saved by its casting. Josef Orstendorf is a German theater actor in his first leading role in a feature film. His character is lonely, possibly somewhat autistic, and we see how his childhood isolation turned into a love of creative cooking and a desire to connect with people through food. Orstendorf's performance is admirably nuanced, expressing both the torment of his physical and personal isolation and the joy he feels in cooking. The complexity of his relationship with Eden, played by Charlotte Roche as a naive but very attractive woman, is expressed well by both actors. The young girl with Downs syndrome (Leonie Stepp) is directed very well, and most of the other actors are good as well.

Besides the relationships in the movie, the other focus is the food. Hofmann gets half of this right, doing an excellent job of showing how the transcendent food (300 euros or $400 for dinner) affects the people who eat it. The interplay of smiles among diners in his restaurant is very enjoyable to watch, and is enhanced by visual touches such as the translucent white plates lit from below. However, with the exception of several beautiful cakes, the filming of food and cooking mostly does not rise to the level of other culinary films such as Like Water for Chocolate, What's Cooking?, or Eat Drink Man Woman, or for that matter to the level of food porn seen regularly on food blogs like Chocolate & Zucchini. As one friend pointed out, there wasn't much actual cooking seen, just eating. For those of us who are into fine cooking, not just fine dining, this was a disappointment. I'm sure the food was good (the director said that he gained three kilos during filming!), but it didn't look as radiant as the actors did while eating it.

Overall, I enjoyed the film. In some sense it wasn't as good as the three culinary films I listed above, with a more erratic script, a less-clear mood, and rather flat cinematography (another review called the visuals muddy), the heart put into the movie by the director and particularly by the actors was clear. I give it three out of four... oh, what should my icons be? stars? brains? skyscrapers? eggplants? Oh, I've got it! Lamb chops.

trade center site, new buildings

A magazine called Metropolis (which looks interesting -- urban design sorts of things) has an article this month entitled Ground Zero's Saving Grace, about the small, small shreds of hope that the new construction at the WTC site may actually be something other than a fiasco, contrary to all other current indications. The author of the piece, Karrie Jacobs, discusses how impressed she is with the new 7 World Trade, a replacement for the third building that collapsed that day. Since the building was not part of the master plan for the site, and since it housed a big power substation, it was redesigned and rebuilt as quickly as possible. The architects, Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, are the same firm who will be responsible for the Freedom Tower if/when it is ever built. The article describes how 7 World Trade is actually an architectural success, with interesting color effects in the exterior glass and a popular art installation (poems projected in giant letters on a glass wall) in the lobby, and how that leads her to some hope, perhaps unwise, that the Freedom tower may actually end up as an attractive building after all. She says:

7 WTC reminds me that architectural magic is more likely to emerge from necessity--terrorism proofing, green strategies--addressed with technological sophistication and a modicum of imagination rather than overworked symbolism and hot air. It also suggests that if we are trapped in a world where truck bombs are an eventuality, the awfulness of our current circumstances can be eased a bit by embedding our blast screens with poetry.

Several other tall buildings are going up in the city right now. The tower of the Hearst building is basically completed, with interesting diamond shapes that for some reason remind me of the considerably more ambitious China Central Television building under construction in Beijing. And the New York Times building, which I really like the design of, is also well underway. Below, from upper-left going clockwise, photos snagged off the web of 7 World Trade and the Hearst Building, and renderings of the Freedom Tower and the New York Times Building.

NYC film incentives

One of my earliest blog posts was on a movie being filmed in my neighborhood, Astoria. That movie, A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints, is now completed and screened to rather positive reviews (and two awards) at Sundance. I've seen some screenshots of scenes that were filmed half a block from my apartment...

What I didn't know at the time was that that movie was significantly aided by a package of New York State and City tax incentives that were started a few years ago. The NYT and WNYC have stories about this. Filming in NYC is more expensive than filming in other locations (Toronto and Vancouver being popular standins) due to the high cost of lodging and feeding the crew. The incentives, started in 2003, allow films and TV shows that do 75% or more of their filming in the city to get 15% of their production costs (not including director and cast salaries) to be written off their various taxes. It's been unbelievably successful. Since a low in 2002, the number of hours of film and TV filmed in the city have literally doubled. This has a large impact on the city, in both good and bad ways. In bad ways, filming disrupts traffic in all sorts of exciting ways. On the other hand, the economic impact on the city is significant. Silvercup Studios, down the road in Long Island City, is planning to build a huge new highrise development on the East River, with sound stages, cultural and retail centers, and (of course) apartments.

However, as a result of all this enthusiasm for filming in New York, the money allocated by the city and state for the incentives is running out very quickly. There's talk of making the intentives, or some version of them, permanent. On the other hand, that was $175 million in taxpayer money that was spent pretty rapidly. Was it worth it? Did that $175 million pay for itself in terms of generating tax revenues from other sources? At a minimum, did it spur enough economic activity to be considered a good investment, compared to other investments that could be made? This seems to be the key question, and answers don't seem to be clear. The Times says, "People familiar with the program said it appeared to recoup its costs by generating new economic activity, but city officials declined to detail such figures." That's hopeful, but not too convincing. Other investments that the government makes, such as building bridges and educating kids, make longstanding contributions to economic activity. One thing that's very clear, given how fast TV and film expanded here, is that if the incentives leave, the industry will be very quick to crunch the numbers, and will likely leave too.

WTC site and normality

I've been thinking about the World Trade Center site, the events of 9/11, and how they are viewed by people. 9/11 was of course an exceptional event, way outside our day-to-day lives, with terrific horror and heroism. The year after that day was also remarkable. The cleanup of the site was completed much faster than expected, for less money than was predicted, with fantastic organization and cooperation by all concerned, and astoundingly, with no fatalities among the cleanup crew. Truely exceptional, in the sense that it was an exception to the way we expect things to go.

It's been 4 1/2 years now, and, well, things are very different. Here's what Curbed is linking to today, in a posting called "WTC Chaos Update: The Times That Numb Men's Souls":

1) Oh ho, look at that—Larry blinked! Developer Silverstein for first time doesn't rule out surrendering building sites 3 and 4 to NYC. [NYPost]
2) Tunnel to funnel folks from New Jersey into city might be key in Silverstein/City negotiations. LES club owners rejoice. [NYSun]
3) Victims' families continue to protest subterranean memorial design a week after city declared the issue moot. Brace yourself: it's vigil time. [Gothamist; Newsday]
4) Downtown arts groups receive $27 million federal grant—almost enough to buy one of Calatrava's penthouses. [NYTimes]
5) SHOCK POLL: Most NY'ers think Ground Zero situation is FUBAR. No shit? [Crain's]

So, we've got arguments among property owners, developers, and politicians, ongoing struggles about what the memorial's going to look like, ongoing fights over money, and a survey that says that only 10% of NYC residents think the reconstruction is going well. (And those people are, well, wrong.) This is not an exceptional state of affairs. In fact, it's safe to say that this a completely normal state of affairs in this country and this city. So, we've got an event and a site that in the course of a few short years has gone from perhaps the definition of an exceptional event, to one that is now the quintessential typical state of affairs. And who said irony was dead?

I wonder, as well, if the horrific normality of the current situation has in some sense infected our views of the horrific exceptional nature of 9/11 itself? Do we view 9/11 as less of an iconic event because the reconstruction has been such a snafu? I've asked a few New Yorkers who were here on 9/11 about this, and they do seem to have at least some sympathy for this view. At least, I haven't been beaten up yet... Conversely, I also wonder if people far outside of New York City might view 9/11 even more iconic and exceptional than New Yorkers, simply because the New York Post doesn't tell them every day how badly the reconstruction process is going? What do you think?

becoming an artist, via NYT

The Times today has a photo of a melting glacier sculpture being constructed by artist Deborah Fisher, some of whose work is at the Socrates Sculpture Park here in Astoria/Long Island City. I wouldn't mention it, except that on the Times' web site, they have an interesting multimedia slideshow of Fisher, with her talking about how and why she became an artist. Recommended...

broadway

I managed to last 2 and a half years in New York City before going to see a Broadway musical, but the time arrived. A very kind friend had an extra ticket to Chicago, due to some relatives from out of town not being able to attend, and so I went. I've been to off-Broadway theater and dance performances, but not to any musicals, and not to this sort of well-hyped tourist-infested production. It's interesting, all the crazy lights of Times Square. Not a part of NYC I go to often. A nice place to visit, maybe, but I certainly wouldn't want to live there...

I'd seen the movie version of Chicago, twice I think, and rather liked it. In some senses I liked the stage production less. The singing was fine, the musicians were very good, the production (lighting especially) was excellent, and some of the performances were quite good. But for some reason it felt more... manipulative? cheap? something like that, when it was in person rather than on a screen. I haven't seen many musicals, and wonder if I'd have the same reaction in all cases... I did like the two Sondheim musicals I've seen live (Into the Woods at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, with Donna Shalala, future HHS Secretary, playing a cameo (!), and Sundays at the Park with George at Parkwood College in Champaign, IL). Maybe there's something about the style of musical that Chicago is that doesn't work for me live? Hard to say...

Incidentally, we had a conversation about the original of "Broadway"-style musical theater, wondering the origin, and whether it was on Broadway or somewhere else. It turns out that musicals have a long history, primarily in the US but with European influences. It seems that American musical theater is a combination of the European operetta (drama and singing, but no "show") and burlesque-extravaganza (singing and "show", but no drama) with the American minstrel show and American sensibilities. Musical comedies became very popular in the second half of the19th century. The idea of a musical that is drama rather than comedy is also apparently an American invention, starting with Show Boat in 1927. Interesting...