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The Placebo Button

The elevator in my building has a door-close button that does nothing. I learned this the way everyone learns it, which is to say I pressed it for years under the impression that it was speeding up my departure. The button lights up. It makes a small click when pressed. It provides every sensory signal of function. What it does not do is close the door any faster than the door was going to close on its own. The elevators in most American buildings installed since 1990 have door-close buttons wired to nothing, because the Americans with Disabilities Act requires the door to stay open long enough for a person using a wheelchair or walker to enter, and the button that overrides that requirement is accessible only to the fire department with a key.

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The Face on the Building: America’s Palazzo Braschi Moment

In 1934, the Fascist Party Federation draped the facade of Rome’s Palazzo Braschi with an enormous sculpted face of Benito Mussolini, surrounded by the word “SI” repeated in cascading rows. The building sat between Piazza Navona and the Corso Vittorio Emanuele II, in the heart of a city that had been shaping political identity through architecture for two thousand years. That face functioned as an instruction. Citizens who walked beneath it understood, whether they could articulate it or not, that the state had claimed the visual field, and that to exist in public space was to exist under observation and under obligation, holding the urban semiotic.

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Incredible Beauty of the Bicycle Card Aesthetic

I was never a great skill card player growing up. I was quite excellent at War, and at 52 Pick-Up, but other than that, my mastery in card games was more in my mind than in my hand. I never played a dime or a nickel flush where I won any type of pot, but I always enjoyed holding the actual playing cards. The designs were a fascination to my young mind, and today, when I happened upon the Bicycle cards website, I was taken back to a time when a deck of cards lasted for years of regular use around the kitchen table with nickel raises and dime bets; but these cards, these new Bicycle cards, had a right life of their own. The opaque card box was gone; replaced by a lovely translucent plastic that was more welcoming to both hand, and eye.

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The Intemperate Tyrant Twins

We live in a time of Intemperate Tyrants — and the levels of expectation they set for those who elected them — leads us straight into the grave and never above the Heavens. What have we done, as a country, and a nation, to deserve the leaderless examples of the bloodless Donald Trump and the vampiric Chris Christie?

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Into the Insovereign: 2015 Invades 2016

2015 is coming to a close with a bang and a whimper. The bang of violence across the world beckons and the whimper of those right people who prefer to do the moral thing to make the world better, threatens. However, neither bang nor whimper now has a clear path to an endgame that can not only just win a moment, but change the world.

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Court Square Subway Wall Mural in New York City

Here’s a brief video of a wall mural from the Court Square subway station in Queens.  I like the colors.  I support public Art projects in public spaces.  Video after the break.

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The Eight-Year Jersey City Crossing Guard Who Lost His Heart

I do a lot of walking in New York City and Jersey City.  There’s one particular corner in Jersey City that always strikes fear deep in my heart and stabs me down betwixt my toes with absolute pity and terror:  The “crosswalk” — angularly located at the bisection of Nardone Place and John F. Kennedy Boulevard West — spans five lanes of traffic, at least six turning car angles aiming straight at you, and a long walk that means you actually must run as fast as you can to make it safely across the street.

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A Skewed Semiotic: When a Picture Speaks the Wrong Thousand Words

Nicholas Kristof wrote a fascinating couple of opinion articles for the NYTimes over the last two weeks, and the reason for some reader dissent and confusion in the first story appears to stem from a core misunderstanding — purposeful or not — about the image.

Here’s what Kristof wrote on February 22, 2014:

As an infant, Johnny was deaf but no one noticed or got him the timely medical care he needed to restore his hearing. He lives in a trailer here in the hills of rural Appalachia with a mom who loves him and tries to support him but is also juggling bills, frozen pipes and a broken car that she can’t afford to fix.

The first error Kristof makes — but has yet to apologize for, or clarify — is labeling Johnny “Deaf.”  Deafness is a cultural condition from which one does not get “healed” so the proper term should have been “hearing loss” since the “Deafness” was not actual, but imagined, by Kristof.

The real outrage aimed at Kristof was not over his inappropriate use of “Deaf” — but rather the way some of his readers felt he was celebrating a degenerate lifestyle of poverty in this image:

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When Your Third Place Does Not Want You: Elderly Entitlement and Fighting the New Old Korean Queens Gang

I’ve been following an ongoing saga in the New York Times concerning a local McDonald’s restaurant in Queens and how elderly Koreans in the neighborhood have taken over the place as their community hub.

This new, “old,” gang doesn’t really buy anything and they stay all day long taking up space and not making any money for the business.  There’s a Senior Citizen Community Center nearby, with van service for those who cannot walk that far, but the retired don’t want to go there because it’s in a Church basement.

The one thing you take away from reading about this ongoing conflict between elder entitlement and the business needs of McDonald’s is that the old people — like the Millennials behind them — believe they have the freedom and the right to sit wherever they want, and linger as long as they wish, with no repercussion whatsoever. Asking them to leave to make room for others is a cultural slap in the face that will not be tolerated.

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