Year Five: Reflections

 

Five years a blogger.

As is tradition, I reflect on the year of blogging on this the anniversary of Dislocations.

I apologize for the typos, I can’t afford a copy editor. I also appreciate the kind words, encouragement and compliments I’ve gotten in person and by email. I’m not sure exactly what service Dislocations actually provides, but it’s good to receive genuine appreciation. Originality and depth is something I strive towards and it’s nice to both have that acknowledged and to know that many appreciate such aspirations. Last year I passed 100,000 vistors or readers or however the blog-stats are interpreted.

God Bless you all

This may be the last one, by the way.

THE FINAL DISLOCATIONS!

I do not want to make such a grand statement – because, really, who knows how one will feel come any given morning – and it’s not that any hiatus is being planned – but the fact of the matter is that that each year I’ve written fewer blogs posts. This feeling has been nagging me, that maybe I’ve to the end of the blog format. Things I feel like writing about now, ideas that are coming, do not lend themselves to Dislocations posts.

Maybe blog notions will come again. Maybe I’ll just do pictures with funny captions, or maybe start another blog with a different mission than Dislocations. People have said to me, I love your blog about Jersey City. I thank them, but this blog was never really about our isthmus, it’s just mainly set in Jersey City. Ultimately, my statement is about the human condition, our experience of mortality, how we reconcile the need for community with our limited ability of understanding – we really can know nothing other than the self. Indirectly though, maybe it is about Jersey City, and maybe I do not have much else to say, especially about what fascinates me the most, ordinary life. Noticing anew things we experience every day. It’s those moments, the ones we hold in common, that I fnd the most revelatory. That keeps me going, gets me through.

I’m done. Okay, I’m not saying I’m done. Just kinda done. Maybe. 

Maybe I no longer feel the same Dislocation that inspired me five years ago to launch this endeavor.

For more traditional forms of poetry, fiction, and memoir, go visit my website, Timhrklit.

 

Without a doubt, the most fateful blog (s) was a pair I wrote about White Eagle Hall. Turns out, they were so well-received by the principals have asked me to work for Jersey City Theater Center, the organization creating a Theater & Arts complex in this neck of Newark Avenue. It’s very exciting and I’ve become their quasi-chronicler as well as publicist and general writer.

Basically though, I had been passing the four heads on this building near-daily for so long I had to find out who they were. The research was fun and included input from the Association of American Polish Historians, and the blogs formed the basis of an academic article available here.

A great place that serves both great tea and is a great drink that great tea opened, but this blog was a reason to write a memoir pieceabout why I never drink coffee, thus have devoted my hot (and sometimes iced) caffeinated beverage life to the leaf.

Always a favorite,  myfavorite reads, the best books of 2013, the most subjective reading list ever-committed to the internet.

A bad fire on Grove Street led to these empty lots and some memorable ponderings.

 

Jersey City got a new mayor this year, don’t you know. Steve Fulop, nice guy, fast talker, one of the leading young democratic politicians who are exemplifying that generation X is now taking the reigns of power. His inauguration was a city-wide block party, and his man of the people rhetoric struck a chord, and a pre-GWB-Gate Christie showed why his appeal is wider in person than on TV or YouTube. Is Fulop Bloomberg or DiBlasio or is it enough for the majority of the newly arrived that he isn’t Healy? But Fulop already performed a historical task no other media outlet deemed fit to acknowledge – Jersey City’s firstJewish Mayor – his family are Holocaust Survivors – lit the city Menorah. In the 1990s, Jersey City became the test case that led to permitting municipal governments to exhibit holiday decorations.  Nobody else appreciated the multi-layered irony of this moment. 

Murals have become the cornerstone of the art scene in Jersey City and some special city funding implemented a mural project, here are two examples, here and here, of some of the most compelling.

Paint the Car was this interactive art event at the regular interactive art event known as Creative Grove, a sort of artsy flea market that survives in town despite of its misguided detractors. The point, paint art and graffati on a car. FIGHT CONFORMITY NOW!!!

One of the greatest record stores in the history of record stores closed, JR Music, which is by the World Trade Center, downsized last year and will probably close this year. I happen to go to the old, two-level location on Record Store Day last year, the last Record Store Day of the oldlocation, whoo hoo! JR is a series of stores that sells appliances, electronic equipment, computers and CDs, but now that series has been consolidated into one brick and mortar store. I bought a couple of CD players there, recently a computer monitor. But they too are moving their selection online. Kind of sucks if your mouse decides to go kaput and you’re on deadline; I remember going there and finding a dozen different types of mouse to purchase. Now there’s one. Used to go to the record store, buy some CDs – they had a deep inventory and were really cheap –I got a Roy Acuff for $4.95! – but now everything is one location, they phased out the jazz selection. I get the feeling they are selling off the rest of the stock and that will be day. A way of life gone forever. This blog was not intended to be but turned out as both tribute and obituary.

 I love writing about Shakespeare and I caught some really fantastic summer productions, a really great King Lear up in Inwood, so far up the isle of Manhatto that my nose bled. A good buddy, Bob Armstrong, played the titular role of the man who usurped his life. On the Jersey Side, the Hudson Shakespeare Company presented the rarely performed Henry VIII – not the Bard’s best history, but this production made me realize how it is a significant footnote to the Henriad and its two Richard bookends. The same group later presented a remarkable interpretation of Macbeth and in October, presented Titus Andronicus in a cemetery production. I love Titus, and while I quibble with the black-comic interpretation, this was a very satisfying Titus.

 

My music obituaries are part-memoir. Musical tastes – what makes up our own personal soundtrack and how that soundtrack changes as we follow our journey through life – is an area of interest for me. Why we listen being as important as what we listen to is an idea I keep coming back to even. RayManzerak and Lou Reed provoked a reverie and Pete Seeger’s passing invoked a memory of my interviewing this friendly great man when I was in College, and I was writing it up, I had insight into his momentary bizarre behavior, something about Phil Ochs.  

He may not have died this year, but the Cohen Brothers released that film based on his life and his being in the news sparked a memoryof Dave Von Ronk.

Local singer songwriter Kelly Saint Patrick performed a splendid set at Groove on Grove, probably the best show of that summer series.

At the Exchange Place Starbucks, I witnessed a guy proposingto a gal. It was sweet and romantic and she said yes.

Dislocations revived my interest in photography as a hobby. I take pictures and think of funny or interesting at least, captions. A puddleforms in this lot after every rain. When the light is right, the puddle reflects our world back to us. This lot was paved over a few months later. The grass is gone, but the puddle still forms and the reflection return.  

Another down time there by the dock, got a good shot of aguy catching a flounder.

The place to be come mid-August is Sixth Street for The Feast. This year I “covered” some of the processions and other events as well as the evening bacchanals.

Winter. We just got through a doozy. I happen to be in the New Jersey Room at the main branch of our public library on a day of a real bad snow storm and a great shot of Van Vorst Park. Then I walked through the unblemished snow of the park, wondering about the illusion of infinite, icywhiteness.

Tachair Book Shoppe held its first annual theater festival, some really compelling performance.  Dare I say surprisingly fantastic.

Local artist, Kayt Hester, works in tape and celebrated the 7-year-return of the Cicada at a special show. A few months later, she had agallery show in NYC, but this space had large glass walls that Kayt had some fun with, messing with our perception of what is 3-D.

Living in Jersey City, warm-weather festivals are a way of life. You see family and friends and neighbors and have some fun and eat food you only eat once a year. The Santa Cruzan festival, a Filipino party, at the end of May, kicks off the season. The 2014 edition – the 35^th – was really fun. Jersey City has one of the largest populations of Filipino Americans in the country. What a blessing. What a fine bunch of folks.

I’m a film-buff. A cineaste. I’ve been seriously studyingthe western – by which I mean, I’ve  seen a ton of them and watch many several times. The genre’s best decade is the 1950s, and here’s a list of some more obscure Westerns that are noteworthy. If you haven’t seen The Searchers or Seven Men From Now, watch those agreed upon classics first and then you’ll be ready to appreciate the greatness of the american film-making these 10 films achieve.  

Here’s another piece of news, about newspapers, you will only find out about on Dislocations. The Jersey Journal moved their offices to Secaucus, and bequeathed more than a dozen metal filing cabinets of a meticulously kept clip file to the Jersey Room at the Main Branch of the Jersey City Library. You want to see the history of Hudson County, get a feel of what was important in the daily life, thus get an authentic peak into an area, spend some time with these unique files. 

Stephanie Riggi’s work I’ve seen around but I never had the pleasure of meeting this artist until last year.  Her illustrations are vivid and twisted, and she possesses one of the brightest pallets in town

Luca Casulito is a real go-getter in Jersey City, involved with the arts and her own business. But she also happened upon this process of creating this somewhat bizarre, but very moody and provocative abstract pieces, art objects. She’s always interesting to talk to, but talking about her art is a rarity. There’s a freshness and originally in her abstractions worth noting.

The 313 Gallery is a permanent gallery, meaning they are not a bar and have regular hours – albeit only on weekends – and that is rare and perhaps a first. Also it’s a really interesting space, whose history you can only read about here, and this show featured Bunny Pearlman, whose diverse array included water colors and found art.

Eva – this a German pop artist – had a wonderful show at the now defunct, gone but not forgotten, Fish with Braids gallery.

Art Activates is a mural project for alleys. This was fun to write. I not only wanted to report on this unique, urban beautification project as well as the really fantastic art that has been erected on these rarely seen surfaces, but I tried to convey the experience of seeing this art unfold as you stroll through the alley.

Here’s some wonderful religious statuary I saw in Clifton.

 

Some thoughts about missing cigarettes.

Saint Jude Thaddeus Pray For us.

 

Thanks Everybody. See Ya on down the line,

 

Hudson Dispatch Clippings Archive

 

When Jersey City’s Journal Square lost its Journal, the New Jersey Room at the Jersey City Library, main branch acquired a new archive of old news.

The Jersey Journal recently moved to Secaucus, New Jersey, because why should newspaper offices actually be located in the nerve center of the city reporters cover when they can reside in an office park constructed in the swamplands.  Prior to the move, the paper donated a vast archive – 18 metal filing cabinets, about five feet tall, 18 drawers in each – of newspaper clippings from the Hudson Dispatch, a long defunct newspaper, although sometimes still referenced by Dislocations.

This archive is not just a comprehensive collection of life in Hudson County as seen through the journalistic lens of  a daily newspaper, it is also a tribute to reportage, newsprint and paper. This archive is not just a vast resource of historical records, but a memorial to a way history used to be recorded. The archive is a memorial to the history of newspaper clips.

 In the drawers are min-manila folders, with sealed sides, essentially index card-sized pouches. They are arranged alphabetically by subject. Each story has been cut out and the subject is carefully circled or outlined in red pencil. There’s got to be millions, certainly hundreds of thousands of stories here – I estimated well over a thousand clips in each drawer (there are two rows of manila folders stuffed with clips in each drawer).

Opening the drawers, the acrid mustiness of yellowing newspaper wafts into your nostrils, slightly stinging your eyes, making them feel itchy. You are immediately aware that by peeking into the past, you actually are in what is left of that past.

 

 

 

The subject lines are carefully typed – by typewriter – on the upper edge of the mini-manila folders. Some folders had a single clipping, must had several, efficiently folded to fit into the small pocket. The preciseness of the how the thin paper was shaped by the scissor, the circling or underlining of the subject, the origami-like attention paid to the folding are breathing examples of meticulousness.

Little is known about this archive, just that it was in Jersey Journal offices and was not going with the move to the meadowlands. The Jersey City public library system saved it from being destroyed, these clips lost forever,.

In the pre-internet, pre computer days, maintaining a clip file was standard operating procedure. A reporter gets assigned a story, he or she first sees what has been written about the subject previously. Stories eventually get indexed in a directory, which are used as a guide for micro-film (or micro-fiche!) archives but for a busy newspaper room, a clipping library was more efficient. By the way, there were and still are, clipping services but back in the day (I’m old enough to have been at the tail end of this era) there were clipping services, subscribing to all sorts of publications and they had clients who needed to be alerted if their names were mentioned in the news no matter how small the circulation or exclusive the readership.

Of course, in this internet era of Lexus/Nexus and google, such archives are as obsolete as the thin paper they are preserving. And while this Hudson Dispatch archive is comprehensive, it is also chronologically narrow and why it was previously owned by the Jersey Journal is also sort of a mystery too. There are no clippings or files from the Jersey Journal or Star Ledger or other papers in the archive. The Dispatch was founded in 1874 and lasted 117 years, it was purchased by the Jersey Journal around 1990 and the “jay jay” folded its one time competitor in 1991. The archives only spans 1970 to 1990, ending with the sale to the journal.

Why only Dispatch clippings? What happened to the clippings prior to 1970? Was an archive kept and destroyed or was there a arbitrary “anno” year or start for this historical record.

 

 

 

 

My hypothesis is that in 1970 or so, for whatever reason – probably the beginning of a new regime at the Hudson Dispatch  – a clipping archive was created. The meticulous duty of clipping, sorting, organizing, creating a folder with a typed out subject and the underlining of the subject in that story was done by some underling, the editor’s secretary – when editors had such things – or some peon or that era’s version of a college intern. The archive was maintained from this arbitrary “year anno” to the Hudson Dispatch sale to the Jersey Journal and the archive ends with the demise of the “Dispatch.”

The archives was part of the acquisition of one newspaper by another, and its usefulness diminished with each passing year. The subjects of the clipping gradually becoming more and more historical than topical references. I imagine the bulky steel cabinets gathering dust, but no one had the heart to dispose of the contents. Maybe some researchers found them useful. A reporter stuck on some facts or background decides to take a shot and goes through the old Hudson Dispatch archive and discovers an epiphany-inducing fact that opens up a great news story.

I just randomly picked through the drawers, mainly for Dislocations pictures. A 1985 story about “Mom & Pop” stores facing market changes, now 30 years later, where are those Hudson County shops, mostly gone, a few reimagined.  Stepping back into history, yet so much of that history is the same stuff, now a different era. Our daily lives may change in detail, but only a few details. The clip files show how news is really not that new. Take a gander for yourself and see how they make you feel.

What a trove of history, and the fact that it will be preserved – the actual paper, the ultimate hard if slowly decaying copy – is a testament to the New Jersey Room’s commitment to Hudson County history, no matter how painstaking the task required by the staff or how incidental the material may seem to the cynical and ignorant.

But good lord, what a task – the cataloging of the contents of the Hudson Dispatch files – every min-folder will have to be inspected, every clip unfolded and read, at least scanned, and recorded. I admire the diligence required, and I both pity and envy those doing this work, which is essentially, a present-day archivist archiving the archival work of an archivist of the pasts.

 Nostalgia for the 70s and 80s remains a permanent part of today’s popular culture, ironically this love of the past seems strongest among the Gen Yers who were either not born or still in infancy back then. Now there’s portal directly to how Hudson County actually lived that era.

 

Gray’s Papaya

 

Empty letters on the façade above taped over windows. Sad, forlorn outlines reminding us something that we knew well is gone forever 

Used to be such a lively place, always lots of customers, take out or scarfing down some hot dogs with beverage. A place to pause for nourishment while in this city on the go.

Gray Papaya had great hot dogs. For the longest of time they sold two for 99 cents. You could eat lunch for two bucks through the 1990s. The hot dogs were loved for the garlic overtones. I liked them, I never really ate there but only because eating hot dogs is not a high priority. I’m more of a pizza slice guy.

But those who loved them really loved Gray’s. A friend tells me when her friend from Philadelphia visits, she insisted on Gray’s for one lunch. Another friend mentioned her days as a club kid, stopping at Gray’s after a long night of partying before getting on the PATH. I remember taking classes and walking a fellow student, she always stopped there to get her hot dogs before heading home. My sister told me of eating Gray’s before this event she went to – she needed something cheap and fast and while they may not have been the healthiest food item, they were great hot dogs.

All just memories now and the hollow frames where bight yellow letters that once tempted your taste buds into straying from your diet now remind us of not just a country that used to be, but how the wealthy class is transforming our surroundings to suit their purpose, and making the life we knew go away.

 

Gray’s Papaya on 8^th street closed without notice to the public. The social media outcry alerted me and while I was far from a regular, the news was another incremental heartbreak about what is happening to Greenwich village. Gentrification is an insufficient term to describe the accelerated transformation from an historic bohemian and working class enclave to a glossy and shallow massive college campus and student quad for the next generation of the privileged class.

Last year, I recorded the passing of the beloved Barnes& Noble, right across the street. The soon to be out of work employees told me that a lot of these buildings were owned by a single landlord who had recently denied, the family sold them to NYU who is jacking up rents because they have a vision of what the 21^st century village should look like, which I guess is to resemble as close as possible a food court in a the most upscale Shopping Mall in Dubai.

Facebook scuttlebutt confirmed the scenario described to me during the final days of 8^th street B&N. Gray’s Papaya rent was raised a whopping $20,000, forcing this outlet of the local franchise to close. It’s not that Gray’s Papaya was not a successful business. A valuable service – affordable food – was provided to a community – about a dozen people were employed and a profit was made – by both the owners of the enterprise and the owners of the property and lease.

But here’s the rub. The goal of the stage of capitalism we happen to be living is that profits must be maximized. It is not enough to just make a profit; and in fact, what is a reasonable profit is no longer specifiable. Greed is the objective. How else to justify an increase that doubles and triples a rent.

Even that explanation falls short of fully telling us why the 8^th street Gray was terminated. A sign says some kind of Bubble Tea (as a die-hard tea drinker (I never drink coffee) bubble tea is an acquired taste I’ve yet to acquire) emporiums is promised, although it is unclear that if this will include Gray’s and the adjacent now closed hat store (a great store that sold affordable headwear, closed around the same time as B&N and still shuttered) or if Gray will become what I can only gather from internet scuttlebutt to be some hideously sounding beverage place called : Liquidteria (does that sound awful or what!)

I find it dubious that these food & BEVERAGE chains, who sound as if they have a trendy and international sheen, will be drastically more profitable than Gray’s. Gray’s had a steady customer based – the place seemed always packed and lively – and was probably the cheapest lunch for a three block radius (there are inexplicably no pizzerias close to this corner, but even getting slices may be slightly more costly than the Gray hot dog special, they certainly are not less expensive). Of course, this is a prime corner, residents, workers, tourists, NYU and New School students and of course those who ride the PATH and consider this neighborhood another environ in our lives. It’s busy, so almost any establishment has a shot generating revenue just because of the potential revenue from the vast numbers of people passing by here any day.

Those same numbers were there for Gray’s. Will the enticement of Bubble Tea so significantly outweigh the proven demand for Gray’s that Bubble Tea generated revenue will cover the jacked up rent, provide a “reasonable” profit to the owners of the franchise, and employee the same number of people (that and their wages are of course, an ignored metric!)

 

I’m… to under-state my opinion… doubtful. If normal business practices and concerns still prevailed, the gamble of getting the jacked up rent from similar (F&B) businesses verses the infeasible rent increase that forced a proven and well established business to close seems like an unwise choice. There is no sort of rent control for commercial businesses; once the lease is up, property owners can do as they see fit. Residential laws are different, mitigating sudden displacements of populations from an area they call home. This contrast results in the urban experiencing of finding yourself living in the same home yet everything you used to know and love being here one year and gone the next.

Gray’s didn’t get killed because it was an outmoded business and “Liquidteria” isn’t moving here because it is some kind of superior business model. The degree of profitability is not the issue at all. Like the closing of B&N (a year later, the building is still fallow) the entire block – actually more than the block – is being transformed into some NYU vision of the village as a massive college campus. It does not take an unjustified leap of imagination to conclude the ultimate financier of this urban planning are the excessive college loans students require to pay for their education, a digression I’ll avoid. Gray’s – a business believed by students but not part of this vision – is only the latest causality. The leases and agreements with the business going into the space will not be made public, and there’s no recourse addressing how justifiable the rent increase was. It’s not like the corner of 8^th street & 6^th Avenue is up to plebiscite. One F&B business is the same as the next to a city’s Planning Board.

8^th street used to be so lively. Now, many storefronts are dark. Besides the cap store, there was the Silver Age Comic Book shop and 8^th Street records, which had a great bootleg selection and other funky shoe stores and clothing boutiques. All gone. The replacements have yet to arrive. I noticed this last year and I purposely walked the street again for this blog and those same storefronts are still dark. An entire year – and obviously more – of no business being conducted, no jobs being created.

All these businesses were profitable, met their lease agreements but when that lease was up for renewal, the increase was purposely too high for those existing businesses to afford. How can owners of property sustain what by all appearances seem to be years of revenue loss.

Because the profitability of Gray’s and the jobs it created and the service provided to the community are inconsequential to the NYU goal of global change. Higher education, especially in the private realm, now that is a money making racquet. No oversight to value delivered or limit to prices charged, students take out six figure loans, augmenting the wealthy spawn enrolled; adjuncts, who teach most classes, get coolie wages while presidents and deans make high six figures. (nearby Cooper’s Union is charging tuition for the first time in its 100+ year existence). The bigger picture is inconceivable to us mere mortals bemoaning the loss of a venerable and landmark hot dog stand. It’s not just abut the corner, or even about 8^th street and what it will become) it is about the entire swath of the isle of Manhatto from 14^th to Houston. Individual businesses and jobs, the fabric of what non-students, non-faculty members and other non-college employees once thought helped define the quality of their lives has been or soon will be eliminated. The business of higher education now dominates what once was a working class haven and bohemian refuge.

It sucks. It was not inevitable. It can still be changed, but there’s no counter plan and next to no hope.

Two economic news items ended 2013 and greeted 2014.

1)      The Stock Market had its best year in like 17 years or something, a year resembling not just a pre-recession financial crisis year, but a 1990’s boom year.

2)      Unemployment did not go down in any significant way and the jobs created pay about half as much as they did in the 1990s. 2013 ended with 20 people looking for every job created.

How can those two economic trends exist?

 

 

Easy. Companies can have increased sales but are under no obligation to create jobs in the United States. Corporations receive no tax breaks or other incentives for job creation. It’s not news that manufacturing is done overseas because workers are paid slave wages and working conditions are unsafe. It’s also not news that the tax laws and other economic policies favor the investor class, who now can pool larger resources to create a chain of F&B dispensaries the stock holders make dividends, a manger of several stores can work his or her ass off for the bottom rung of a middle class salary and everyone else makes minimum wage. Even franchises where there is an onsite owner/manager is an outmoded business model. If you’re an independent business owner, who took a risk on a neighborhood and became one of the stabilizing influences that midwifed the transition from urban decay to urban renewal, you get slapped in the face with an impossible to meet rent hike. If the corporation comes up with a F&B business conducive to the entire transformation of a city into a campus, there’s no risk for the chain’s investors or the investors guiding the ruination then reinvention of 8^th street.

This isn’t capitalism any more. The forces of supply and demand are not work. An empowered investor class intent on increasing investment derived revenue is not some function of an invisible hand. Those who have won will win again and those losing will not just lose more, but grow in number.

The nation’s economic wealth is not longer measured by job growth. In fact, lack of job growth enhances the stock market. Companies cut pay roll to become more profitable and those left work harder, use more technology and when it comes to the hard work of actually making something, that’s all done in other countries.

Those responsible, those making those decisions, they never ate at Gray’s.

Well, you don’t read Dislocations for economic lessons but this was an exception.

Remember Grapes of Wrath, when they push Muley off the land and he asks who is doing it, and he’s the Shawnee Land & Cattle Company, but and it is not a who, but a company, but the company is owned by the Bank in Tulsa, and that manager is just taking orders from banks “back east,” and Muley wants to know who to convince him to keep his land, “who to shoot.”

The man giving him the conviction notice, says “I don’t know who to shoot, if I did, I ‘d tell ya.”

Later, the cats – the large tractors – come by and plow the little shack away but he threatens the driver, who he knows, with shooting him and asks how can you do this against your own and he replies, “$3.00 a day,” telling Muley that everybody is their own look out and if you shoot me they’ll hang you for sure and there will be somebody here tomorrow to finalize the eviction, to remove a way of life, to ensure the profitability of the investment.

That early scene in both the novel and film came to mind as I took pictures of the renovation inside of Gray’s Papaya. The sink still working, the clock still telling the time, but everything else a dismantled mess, a crumpled sign still promising Tabs – you could run a Tab at Gray’s

This corner is as much a part of the life of many Jersey City folks as many corners in our own city. Gray’s is within our orbit, we share in the loss.

Cities change all the time. One person’s shock is another’s gradual process. I hate the idea of being a cranky old man croaking about how life was so much better back in my day.

What is happening now though – and Gray’s Paypa no longer being on 8^th street is the latest example of this – is upheaval. Our society’s priorities are now entirely to make rich people richer. Income inequality is being raised, the new Mayor of New York is a progressive, President Obama seems to fight the good fight but all to willing to settle for incremental victories.

 

 

The change that is needed is comprehensive. The New Deal got us out of the Great Depression by creating the Middle Class, but it was more than just a series of complex economic policies. The New Deal happened by  a change in attitude about the role of government in structuring the economy, a role that beginning with Ronald Reagan and finalized by George W. Bush has so unraveled that any solution now seems unattainable.

We can no longer buy affordable delicious hot dogs and there’s nobody to shoot.

 

 

Paint the Car

The story, according to Ray Schwartz and his wife, Beth, is that the car drives like a dream but after a couple of accidents, one involving a NJ Transit bus, it was dented and bland. They offered it to Uta Brauser, founder and proprietress of the oft-beleaguered Creative Grove as an art project.

Throughout the year, Uta has taken refrigerators and used them as canvasses, inviting people to paint whatever, sort of taking graffiti and street art, and the general inclination of visual spontaneity into a public space. Ray & Ben decided why not do something similar to the family vehicle. It doesn’t look that great to begin with, they said, why not turn the beat up automobile into art instead?

So, on the last Creative Grove before the Christmas Sales season is in full swing, the public art project of Paint the Car was held.

 

Interactive Art?

Highly.

Performance Art?

Partially.

I was reminded of those contests where people take turns destroying a car, hammering it with a sledge hammer, or they win prizes, often the car, when people keep their hands on a car and whoever can keep it on for the longest is the winner.

This was about endurance, it was just about passing inspiration. I went early in the event, saw the first squiggly line effacing the freshly washed paint job. Came about back an hour later. More artists were working. Everyone was strangely solemn, not in a overly serious or sad way; but they didn’t want to just create meaningless lines. There was a focus and intention by each person who picked up a brush.

The project was open to everyone, but it seemed most of the folks not only had some talent, but wanted to apply a worthwhile image, no matter how simple or fleeting. A visual idea had formed in their minds and they wanted to express that idea as accurately as possible given the spontaneous nature of the event and the imperfect canvas of an automobile. The process of paint expressing barely deliberated thought was fascinating to watch.

Art argues against conformity. What is more conformist than a solid color car, so bound by design and traffic laws, Paint the Car was a fun art event, but maybe it spoke to an inner desire many of us share. Why must all cars look the same mono-color? Why can’t a car be as unique as its driver?

Creative Grove needs funds to continue. Click here todonate.