Our Urban Odyssey » economy

Ugh… Frappe Haven Closed for Health Violations

Nova — Tue, 27 Sep 2011 14:43:02 +0000

What’s going on? Made the trek to Astoria and was looking forward to a nice, sweet, caffeinated frappe and a souvlaki to go at the great Athen’s Cafe. First noticed that the seats weren’t outside. Then saw the big health department sign that the place has been closed for health violations. WHAT? Come on Athen’s Cafe. With what’s going on in Greece, you’re needed more than ever. What’s left if we don’t have our kafenenion culture to sulk in? And you make a mean frappe, though apparently not a necessarily sanitary one.

Share on Facebook

The birds are back

Nova — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 13:49:27 +0000

It’s been awhile, but worth noting (for those who notice such things…) that the 59th street birds are back! When the Columbus Circle subway got its renovation, they uprooted the bushes by the entrance that was like a sparrow colony, probably the source of those grimy birds that resembled coal miners that you’d see while waiting for A,B, C, D or 1 or 9 train. But they planted new bushes and it seems the tenants did not waste time moving back in (more likely scenario- it’s a new wave of gentrifiers who took up this fabulous slice of real estate now that all the hard work has been put into renovating the neighborhood).

Share on Facebook

Architectural Abominations of Gentrification

Nova — Wed, 20 Apr 2011 00:43:22 +0000

Grab your bag of popcorn and take a look at how the Upper West Side continues to gentrify and loose some of its character. Gone is the beloved Greek diner that stood here (which took in some previously displaced diner workers and patrons that were usurped by the Whole Foods construction a few blocks over) and up went this white plastic…. what the heck is it? “Hip apartments” of course, that fit oh so nicely with the rest of the neighborhood’s architecture.

Share on Facebook

Barrio Dreams

Nova — Sun, 06 Feb 2011 17:32:43 +0000

A recommended book for those with an interest in topics on gentrification in NYC, NuyoRican Heritage and the politics of neighborhoods. Not a light read (very academic), but it provides some really interesting insight in some of the history of “El Barrio”- it’s relationship to Harlem, the Economic Empowerment Zone and El Museo del Barrio (had no idea it was originally a museum for Puerto Rican heritage that slowly erased its Nuyoricanness to market itself a more sanitized and profitable “Pan-Latin Museum” That’s a harsh summary and there’s more to it, but that’s the short you can take out from reading the book). Neighborhood improvement projects aren’t as simple as they sound. Neither is immigration.

Share on Facebook

If you’ve ever wondered…

Nova — Mon, 27 Sep 2010 00:48:24 +0000

Ever pass by a NYC garbage can and see something strange sitting in it? Things that leave you wondering what the story was that landed random objects in a public garbage bin? Well this weekend I had the privilege of witnessing the story behind one of the Twilight Zone activities of urban city living: Random Sh*t in the Garbage. It was like watching the tooth fairy actually deliver the money under my pillow, or catching Santa Claus leaving gifts under the tree.

A couple was having a very public fight, first in a restaurant (asked to leave), then up and down the streets, then in a bus (kicked out). Nobody probably knew what the heck was going on, because no-one probably understood the language. Agent Nova did, and between the man randomly drooling in between rants, he was in some sort of hot water that was going to cost him money he did not have. All of a sudden (either fed up with his stubbornness, his inebriation, his drugged up mind, his wrath) the woman takes his brand new suitcase and dumps it in the garbage and storms away. Seeing the perfectly fine looking suitcase dumped in there, handle extended out, would have provoked a “If you see something, say something” reflex in many a New Yorker who hadn’t seen the fight. I started wondering what was in the suitcase. Now I was in Pulp Fiction.

Eventually, they came back for the suitcase, but it was a 15 minute gamble; one person witnessing the spectacle already had their eyes on the can.

It was a very strange story to play out on the streets- the man was from another era and another continent, the woman too. They were so misplaced. And the suitcase looked so strange sitting alone in the garbage. I suppose it isn’t much of a surprise that Random Sh*t in an Urban Garbage usually has a Random Story behind it.

Other Random Sh*t in the Urban Garbage?

Share on Facebook

Where have all the comic stores gone?

Nova — Sun, 08 Aug 2010 22:23:52 +0000

What’s a girl-nerd to do? Some people take to booze, some drugs, some a little bit of both, others chocolate… Comic book stores used to offer a paradise of fantasy for those who need a little something more than the life of an urban odyssey. You’d save your allowance, or blow your measly first-job paycheck on X-Men, X-Force and Excalibur, crossing over to DC territory only for a Supergirl or Wonder Woman. Inside the pages of a comic book, bodies are perfect, men are heroes, you can sore through the sky and toast people who are bad. But now… now where are all the comic book stores? Big Apple? All that’s left of you are the markings of of where your bricks were ripped away to give way for the building of a new race of condos on the Upper West Side. Oh, the agony of seeing what is left of you advertised on the streets like a billboard: lines and lines of scratches against the building where you were once nestled, like a trail of scratches from bloodied fingernails.

I suppose the comic book stores have went the way of all small mom and pop shops, the predecessors of the plight of independent bookstores… No, don’t comfort me with the selection at Barnes and Nobles or Borders… I don’t even care for the comic book store near Union Square (if it’s still there) not because I have anything against it… it’s just not my hood.

Ode to the comic book store! A recently rejected-by-a-literary-agent- nerd-girl’s strip club, drug den, and escapist paradise.

Share on Facebook

How to train your tike to be a gentrifier

Nova — Sun, 20 Jun 2010 01:01:27 +0000

Wars for pre-school applications that happen pre-conception, helicopter parenting, entitlement lessons via a no-spanking-it’s-okay-to-run-amock-everywhere-and-throw-a-tantrum-policy… I should not have been surprised to see this little playset at a children’s store in the Upper West Side. Sorry, but I don’t think the Sushi Set is a lesson in culture. Anywhere else, yes. Learn, little tike, learn, after your lesson on The Kindergarten Spectrum Dogs what it is you are supposed to do when you live on the Upper West Side.

Share on Facebook

Ideas for the Greek Markets

Nova — Fri, 07 May 2010 01:24:31 +0000

So Greece is in a state of unrest… What are some brilliant ways we can fix this problem?

Start marketing frappes like you do Fage yogurt. This is an untapped market that can rival the Dunkin Donuts brand.
Become lifestyle consultants on how the rest of us can: drink crazy amounts of instant coffee, smoke like chimneys, lather ourselves with olive oil (not sun screen) and soak up the sun, f*ck like porn stars, argue ’til the veins pop out of our heads and still have one of the highest life-expectancies in the world. Here are some no-brainers: siestas are good. Loving life is good. Sun and sea… eh we all can’t have it all but it helps.
Become the next eco-gurus of Europe instead of one of its more infamous offenders.
Reclaim your agricultural roots, feed yourself first and then export what you want.
Keep working on your beautiful, neglected wines.
Forget credit cards, the stock-market and all other non-tangible nonsense.
Become a national consultant agency for how to strike, community organize and instill populations with a sense of advocacy.

Share on Facebook

If Cuba had a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade…

Nova — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:58:24 +0000

Once again I was not able to get myself out of bed at the crack of dawn, shuffle to the packed train, and join the mass of out-of-towners with their spawn in tow and witness the spectacle of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. I’m not hating on the parade. My childhood memories are filled of being dragged out of bed to go to it (after staying up late having visited the balloon set up the night before). Really I just wanted to go because it meant a container of hot chocolate and perhaps a visit to a Greek diner for some scrambled eggs. And we didn’t go to the musical orgy on 34th street- we kept it real as a parade should be enjoyed: people passing you, you cheer hooray! and then you walk away.

That said I watched some of it on TV this morning, not with child wonder eyes but as an anthropologist. We all know this, but either this year’s new balloon additions drove the message home more or things are getting worse: it is a parade of raw Dinsey packaged consumerism! All I got from watching that parade was what movie is coming out soon (Smurfs, 2011), whose CD is coming out next (Andrea Bociello Christmas albums and a plug for the opening musical, White Christmas), what retro toys are making a comeback (Care Bears?!) and that Planter’s Peanuts (making a cameo in his Monopoly Man tux) is now being made with sea salt. The recipe Macy’s uses is the same witchcraft Disney utilizes to mesmerize our oh-too-innocent young seeds.

That said, I wondered what a Thanksgiving Day Parade might look like in Cuba:

It would still be called “Thanksgiving” but with bitter sarcasm to drive the point home. “Thanks, white man, for bringing disease and genocide to the New World and strengthening the spirit of the descendants of oppression to make the revolution possible, liberating everyone, including you.”

Now that the theme has been introduced with a wide, white banner with red letters, speaking of disease, the first line of parade marshals would be the public health servants of disease control, reminding everyone of proper hygiene, the ills of still water and the glory of vaccines. They’d wave their hands with their medical masks covering their mouths, with white and blue coats, tugging the parade’s first balloon, a giant syringe with the letters “P-R-E-V-E-N-T-I-O-N” blazened along its graduation lines, followed by “THE NEW ARMS AGAINST THE LEGACY OF COLUMBUS.”

Next would come the float with an ode to the campesino. A giant gourd with yucca, greens, beans, eggs and young, strong looking people proudly holding adzes and rakes beside it. The balloon, of course, would be an image of the farmer himself and herself (gender equality emphasized- this aint no Grant Wood portrait) . People would clap in line with the party line, but gaze at the float, hungry.
There would be floats that honored the Afro-Taino roots of the Cuban people.
All floats would be pulled by farm tractors.
The car clubs would show off their pimped out, time-machine crazy mobiles, categorized by turn of the century, 30’s 40’s and 50’s.

Glory to the solider of the Revolution! High school marching bands would be replaced with various “Committees in Defense of the Revolution” from regions all over the island, singing, chanting (”¡En cada barrio, Revolución!” and dancing, demonstrating how the revolution is as relevant, raw and alive since the Granma ran ashore in Granma Province on December 5th, 1956. The ballon? Why a peasant man wielding a machete and shield draped in the unity star and stripes of the Cuban flag.
Now of course Cubans also know how to have a good time (a really good time), so expect singing, bands, and dance troupes of all forms, Casino Salsa, reggaeton, Son, Danzon, cha-cha, mambo and the ever so playful RUMBA.
Clowns would be in full force, except they would be dressed as Fat Cat capitalists with the US flag on their top hats. Their clothes would be sharp, their bow ties knotted in perfection, but they would be blindfolded with a black cloth, their blood-stained hands flayed out in front of them grasping the air, a long ball and chain shackled to their ankles. The crowd would roar with laughter, chanting, “Only revolution can free you, Sam!”
The cherubic child star of the parade, would be, who else? Elian Gonzalez, who mysteriously is still a child, and would be periodically given the mike to thank Cuba for bringing him back home.
The NY Thanksgiving parade ends in the mecca of consumerism, 34th street Macy’s. So where would the Cuban parade end for the big party? Why where all of Havana’s parties happen: in front of the American interest section (the former embassy). Replacing Santa Claus on his sleigh to give his saintly blessings for all to shop and trample eachother to death starting immediately after a gluttonous meal, would be ol’ Castro himself, beard and all, waving from a replica of the holy Granma, the boat that made him the Papa of new Cuba. He would chuckle, “Ho, ho, suckers! I’ve outlived all of you and the revolution is still here”.

Thus ends Nova’s Thanksgiving daydream of parallel universes.

Happy Turkey Day!

Share on Facebook

Respect the Hustle

Nova — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 01:52:33 +0000

If Cuba ever sinks down the cheese path of commercialism, one souvenir to buy will be t-shirts that say, authoritatively, RESPECT THE HUSTLE. Even if an influx of resources suddenly cure the population from the hustle bug of survival, surely it should be commemorated and included in the museum of the revolution. Because if you can trick material objects into longevity like making a 1950 Cheverlot run in 2009 like it’s (sort of) new, if you can sell people fake steaks that are really fried mats or pizza with condom “cheese”, then your ability of hustling a fellow human being with simple words has gotta be good by default.

Hail the hustle in Cuba! Done with a straight face, intelligence and craft, you got to respect it. Recognize and ascertain whether you should accommodate the hustle. How much is it for you to loose this battle? Can you acquiesce without being cheated and everyone’s dignity maintained? If not say, “I respect the Hustle”, then walk away. If acquiescing you have a choice of either remaining a passive participant, or leaning close to the Hustler and whispering with a tilted head and squinted eye, “Asere. Don’t try to hustle me. I got you anyways.”

More to come on some specific hustles.

Share on Facebook