Grass Clippings approach the cost of Weed

Editor’s Note: We try to limit CountryMouse to just a few anti-New York rants per year. It’s hard enough to live here without being constantly reminded of the dirt, pettiness, corruption, trauma, and various indignities that punctuate daily life here in Gotham. In this case though, we determined that since Country’s diatribe is not limited to New York and because there are broader points contained therein, we should run the piece and let the pieces fall where they may. Enjoy.

I stopped by the local health food store yesterday to pick up some vitamin C packets to help nail the coffin lid on my broncitis. I shop at this place because it’s the closest thing to reasonable in the neighborhood. For example Kombucha costs $4 there, which is the prevailing market price in the City, but a dollar less than anywhere else in the hood. Nothing can be described as ‘cheap’ around here anymore—except the quality of the new construction, which is more like ‘shoddy’ anyway.

Well I had paid my $1 for three Emergen-C packets and turned to go. The guy at the juice counter put a tiny (1 oz) paper cup in front of me, with a thick green liquid. Thinking it a free sample, I swigged that little shot down. (My assumption was not unreasonable based on the tiny product size and the fact that there’s usually some kind of crumbled nutrition bar on a little plate at that spot). On my way out, I asked the juice-barista what it was and he told me "wheatgrass."
Not unexpected at a juice bar.

As I reached the door, the store’s only other customer, a thickly-bespectacled hipster from England yelled, "Hey! I just paid for that!"

"How much?"

"Two fifty," replied hipster and cashier in unison. "It’s really good for you, full of antioxidants," added the man whose morning concoction I had inadvertently swiped.

"It had better be at that price," was my grumple (a grumpy rumble).

Of course, it's a fad-inflated supply-demand thing just like the kombucha. Still, its a sign of a dying society that folks pay the rough equivalent of $40/pound for grass clippings and then drink it. Sebastian goes most days without seeing a single blade of grass, apart from what I grow in my flower box to keep the soil conditioned. I can never shake the contrast between that and the amount of time I’ve spent mowing, playing on, and rolling in the green stuff.

I think humanity’s future is an urban one, characterized by much increased density. Yet the human need for green is irrepressible and comes out like, well, grass through cracks in our paved lives and this is a pathetic response to that need.

I’m sorry: I know you may like your wheat grass shots in your custom juice drink and I may have offended you. I myself have written many times in praise of chlorophyll’s nutritional benefits. But a little drop of sunshine on your tongue a few times a week is no substitute for clean air, a sky that you can actually see, and a soft earth to lay on. No wonder everyone around here is in therapy.

But ya know, it doesn't have to be like that...

Please! Don't Buy Our Art!

If the sterile art, unfriendly staff, industrial surroundings, long walks,

opaque business practices, instituional spaces, and general unpleasantness

of the neighborhood don't scare you away from this Chelsea gallery, perhaps a

mad dog will do the trick!

Following on our revelatory visit to the Lower East Side galleries, we were wondering how we would find the Chelsea Scene. Let’s just say that it did nothing to change our Bowery Bullishness into 10th Avenue Ballyhoo.

It’s not just that the spaces are cold, the art uber-commercial, the walks interminably long, the staff often quite frosty, and the neighborhood about as welcoming as the surface of the moon. All of that is beyond dispute. The new thing that I noticed, and I suppose that it’s always been there, is that many of the galleries actively don’t want most people to buy their art. Which seems kinda strange.

It just got to be a bit much as we were bombing through the galleries in the Chelsea Terminal Building and almost none of the galleries listed prices on the "price list." My companion had to ask for the version of the price list that actually includes prices. When she jokingly probed the reasons for this double-list phenomenon (which made me wonder if there was more than one set of price lists behind that white window-wall) the attendant (who was really quite friendly) said that the gallery didn’t want to offend anyone by being too out-front with the prices.

Offend who? The one naive in the universe who mistakes the gallery for a museum? The artist who thinks the work should cost more? The jealous artist who thinks it’s worth less? The collector who spent five times more for lesser work in Miami?

The coyness actually offended me alot more for two reasons. First, as an art collector, I want the process to be easy, invigorating, and I want to know that I’m not being $crewed. Secondly as an artist, I want to know that the galleries are out there trying to sell work. We [artists] cannot survive if they do not. So if a gallery’s mission is to get art out there and into people’s lives, making the act of collecting more difficult seems...counterintuitive.

Well, it turns out that my sense offense was correct. What those galleries were doing was more than annoying; it was illegal. As retail establishments, galleries are required to post "in plain sight" the prices of all works for sale. Not "on request" and not behind the desk. In plain sight.

Remember back in the 80’s, when galleries had to be sued into posting their prices? This is the same old $hit and presumably for the same reasons. After reading about the experiences people had back then, it wouldn’t surprise me if there were, in fact, multiple price lists for various "types" of customer. It used to happen all the time and probably still does.

I don’t wish to make sweeping judgements: many of the galleries in Chelsea do everything exactly right. Many have been pushing art into public life for longer than I have been drawing breath and we can be thankful for all of them. And, let’s be honest, I would be thrilled to be represented by many (though certainly not all of them). But speaking in general terms, the district has a cold, unfriendly, and even outwardly hostile feeling that is not helpful to the cultivation of growing class of art collectors.

It’s like the inexplicably angry stare of a supermodel on the runway. Don’t worry: I won’t offend by asking how much that skirt costs. I’ll visit someone who actually wants to do some business.

Shady Ladies

The recent snowfall set off a different
type of storm at the Metropolitan Pool
This "ladies swim" thing at the Met Pool is plain ridiculous.

As you may know, the Metropolitan Pool has four sessions per week reserved for "ladies" only—Hasidic ladies, that is. That’s roughly a quarter of the available swim time. Truth be told, the official policy is that all women are allowed but no gentile will go there anymore because the Hasidim are likely to abuse and/or beat them if they try. Not very lady-like.

The word on the street is that this arrangement came about as part of a back-room deal between the Parks Department and the Hasidic elders. In exchange for partially funding the Pool’s 1992 renovation (the Hasidim claim they did, Parks says they didn’t), the Hasidim asked that several sessions be reserved for them, so their women could exercise without their modesty being offended by the presence of men. One shudders to hypothesize that this might be their modern-day version of a niddah. Of course, Parks could not officially reserve one of their pools for religious ritual, but they compromised by keeping the men out. The ladies themselves maintain the religious homogeneity on their own through bullying.

The ladies swim in their long dresses (which trail clouds of dye) and have a special technique for quickly swapping their wigs for bathing caps. They used to have their own Hasidic (female) lifeguard who they paid cash on the sly in the locker room at the end of each session. Parks closed this corrupt window and agreed to furnish a female lifeguard who is a Parks employee and certified life-saver.

Yesterday’s snow storm threw a monkey wrench in the works. Not surprisingly, the weather prevented the special female lifeguard from making it to work, leaving just the regular male lifeguard. This met water safety requirements but was unacceptable to the ladies and they demanded that the Met Pool request that the Crown Heights pool send over their woman. Obviously, Met could not commandeer another pool’s lifeguard. Undaunted, one of the Hasidic women called Crown Heights pretending to be from Metropolitan to ask the same thing. Smelling kvelte fish, Crown Heights rang Met back to confirm and the two were able to unravel the subterfuge. Perhaps they shared a laugh about it.

It’s silly and it’s ridiculous but most importantly it’s inappropriate. I’m sorry but there’s no reason why a public facility should be set aside for a single ethnic group. Can you imagine there being a session reserved for Sicilians or Puerto Ricans? Please. This episode does however illuminate how and why such an absurdity can persist. When the system doesn’t serve their needs, some people are willing to subvert it. You would be surprised what a gang of angry ladies can achieve, witness the French Revolution. But this was not about Liberty, Equality, and Brotherhood. Quite the opposite.

I’m not sure which is more disgusting: this perversion of democracy or Meredith’s descriptions of the coat rack full of wigs with the furry hats still attached.

Our Children OUT OF DANGER?

Following up on our recent post about P.S. 84, there was much rejoicing in the schoolyard as our lovely PTA managed to block the new charter school from opening, before they even knew anything about it.

No word yet on how they're going to address that failing school designation though.

Failing grade from the city, complete segregation, only half the neighborhood served, under 50% capacity. The math is not that complicated....

Update 2/1/07: There are pretty even-handed reports in the Daily News and the New York Sun.

Our Children IN DANGER?

So it’s finally coming to a head.

Sebastian’s pre-k class at P.S. 84 is a portrait of racial harmony, a best-case scenario where all kinds of children from around the neighborhood grow and learn together.

The later grades are an entirely different story, however. Situated in the heart of one of the City’s most rapidly changing neighborhood, where artists have been gathering for 20 years and are now leaving, and where one-bedroom condo price tags routinely surpass seven figures, 84’s demographics skew to a 90+% Latin (read Puerto Rican). The playground outside is a beautiful melting pot, but the school itself is more homogeneous than anything I’ve seen in the South or the White Midwest.

It’s not that the white parents don’t have children: they do. Nor do they send their children to private schools: these are artist-types who believe in the virtues of public education. I know several families who live directly across the street from P.S. 84, yet commute their children an hour or more every day to Manhattan to give them a reasonable education. I’ve worked hard to reduce my own commute and we’ve vowed to never follow the absurd path of taking our child to a whole other county for a public education.

Primary schools are the heart of a community and to give up on the local school is to write off one’s community. And therein lies the rub. Two (or more!) distinct groups live side by side in Williamsburg but they do not interact and in situations where real cooperation is required (like schools) things get very difficult. So P.S. 84 is this Latin enclave and the Latin community wants it to stay that way. Let’s be real: that’s the truth of the matter.

The problems of the school go far beyond its near-total self-segregation, however. I’ll leave for another entry my rants about the saint’s-day processions the school sponsors, or the fact that the PTA uses its treasury to hire a Santa to bring presents to the children. I’ll be generous and say that that stuff has anthropological value and it is undeniably sweet. Far more devastating is the failing performance measure the school recently received from the Board of Education. This is an objective evaluation that rates the school’s progress against its socio-economic peers, so it's not just that it's a difficult school; it's a difficult school that's not doing anything to right itself. Here are a few other failing grades: Great Schools Rating (Graded 1 out of possible 10); Inside Schools

The school’s leadership does not have a plan to correct the problem, which is how the school got into the mess in the first place. In absence of leadership from the school, the Board is required to provide other options in-district for parents—presumably to save parents from making absurd efforts of I’ve described above. So it was apparently announced (though the Board of Ed. denies this) there will be a charter school opening in P.S. 84’s underused third floor (the school is currently 60% capacity).

Reaction from the "community?" Quiet hallelujah’s from the middle class and very public outrage from the school’s PTA. The school was wallpapered with flyers proclaiming a threat to the children’s education and [ominously] safety. Anyone who has read American history should be able to easily decode invocations of "safety" when segregated communities see someone new on the block. There were women outside the school talking to parents (not me, oddly enough!) about the ominous news and telling them to write to their public representatives. Does that mean Sebastian is some alien agent, some kind of one-Booga sleeper cell?

I can well understand the concern of many people who have worked hard to make P.S. 84 reflect their family’s heritage and values. It’s very sweet and I want Sebastian to see it. Where, then, was the outrage when the failing grade was announced? Not a murmur.

My concern is that the school’s principal, who is very much complicit with this explosion of outrage, is creating a diversion from the real issue, which is the school’s performance, and her own inability to improve matters. Principals in more difficult neighboring schools have had success.

By telling the parents that "the Man" is coming to steal their kids’ school, she is invoking one fear that trumps all others for many long-time residents. And they’re buying it. If the school performed better, the neighborhood could have a school that the whole neighborhood could love. It seems that preserving cultural heritage trumps educational achievement in many minds. And the principal is playing into it.

Yet the school will change, one way or the other. The question is whether this latest spat of outrage is a communal coping mechanism or an active effort against the children’s interests that will prolong the school's decline.

Time will tell, and very soon...