High Line 28 Block Association
Stay informed about happenings in and around West Chelsea & Hudson Yards.
What I think about change, and a chance to meet Leslie Boghosian Murphy.
Cross-post from the Community Garden (& Other Initiatives) page.
You can RSVP to this event by responding to this email. Note that I probably told too many people about it already and my roof has limited capacity, so you should RSVP soon if you want to come.
Neighbors, what I’m certain about is very little. What’s worse is that what I’m certain about is actually decreasing as I get older. When I was 11 years old I was basically certain about what happens when we die; 20+ years later, holed up in my apartment on a rained-out Memorial Day weekend with my phone sitting at a precarious 2%, the only things I can tell you with any certainty are that you will lose track of a lot of umbrellas in your life and you should not buy off-brand iPhone chargers from the Rite Aid at 23rd and 10th.
What I believe to be true about the way things work is a bit of a different story, however, and one of my increasing number of beliefs is the following: Change—real change in your community that you can actually, tangibly feel on a day-to-day basis—is very rarely effected through bomb-throwing at people you don’t really know. Real change is also rarely effected through the literary equivalent of bomb-throwing, which is the strongly worded letter or email you send at the very moment you identify a problem or area of concern. Rather, I think that change which actually changes the temperature in your room is effected through forming genuine relationships with people before you need to ask them for something, and, of course, voting in your local elections.
That brings me to Leslie Boghosian Murphy, who has helped us with our budding community garden initiative and who is currently running for City Council in the Chelsea, West Village, and Hell’s Kitchen area. The Democratic primary for that race is June 22, and the primary will basically decide the whole election. I readily admit that I am too uninformed about the issues at present and too principled in my stance on never pitching about anything to give you some type of pitch for Leslie, but listen: We are going to host a meet-and-greet this Thursday, June 3, at 6:30pm at my rooftop at 507 West 28th Street (northwest corner of 28th Street & 10th Avenue) where you can eat a little, drink a little, and talk to some people, including Leslie. Regardless of who you plan to vote for or whether you plan to vote at all, I think it is worth it to stop by and check out the view.
The problem is that I probably already told too many people about this event and my roof has limited capacity. So you need to reply to this email with a bit of haste if you want to attend.
Post you missed this week (just one):
“The Blacklist” is filming on our block next Tuesday, June 1.
Bonus: the flyer says that actors will be in police gear with prop weapons.
The Blacklist, Season 8, is going to be filming on our block next Tuesday. I’ll let the flyer I saw outside provide the synopsis of the show:
In the show, a criminal mastermind aides the FBI in bringing down a network of previously unknown international villains and syndicates.
I gather that James Spader, who is one of those guys you’ve definitely seen in something before but can’t immediately remember what, plays the criminal mastermind. Here’s the teaser for Season 8, where Spader seems to play like a quippy killer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7U_chX0Ml_o.
Bonus—the flyer includes the following disclaimer:
***PLEASE BE ADVISED, STUNT WORK WILL BE IN PROGRESS, ACTORS WILL BE IN POLICE UNIFORMS AND PROP WEAPONS WILL BE IN USE***
I’m here for it.
I checked out Little Island, that new little floating park on the Hudson.
I liked it, but it was packed.
Sometimes things that are popular and mainstream are popular and mainstream for a simple reason: they are very good things. Avocado toast and White Claws aren’t flying off the menu because of some mass millennial delusion or deep-seated carelessness by the younger set about the value of money. It is because they taste good and feel pretty clean on the way down. Occam’s razor will tell you everything you need to know about brunches in the East Village.
That brings me to Little Island, the little floating park on the Hudson around 14th Street that just opened last week. It was designed by Thomas Heatherwick, the same guy who designed the Vessel in Hudson Yards (you win some and you lose some), and is made to look like leaves floating on the water. It is basically a hilly little greenspace with some winding walkways, a ton of plants, trees, and flowers, and a very cool wooden amphitheater overlooking the water. I visited with my parents last weekend (pictured!) who came up to visit from Georgia.
My one real problem with Little Island is that I’m pretty sure everyone else’s parents, grandparents, great-grandparents, etc. and every other living descendant on the family tree also came up to New York City last weekend and decided to visit Little Island. I mean this place was absolutely packed—it felt like Disney World out there. At some points you could hardly turn around and/or would get stuck behind those slow walkers with limited peripheral vision that typically hold their weekend congregations on the High Line.
But that is the price you pay for making a good thing, and my overall review is that Little Island is a good thing. Hopefully it will clear out a bit as fall comes into view.
Identifying with a townhouse.
Standing tall on 27th Street & 10th Avenue.
It’s not often that I identify with a townhouse, but then again, it’s not often that I see a townhouse flying totally solo without a single other house in frame. This house sits at the southwest corner of 27th Street and 10th Avenue and has caught my eye since I moved to the area a few years ago.
Who lives in this place? Should I think of is as the first of something or the last of something? How angry are the owners about the new building that I’m typing from right now? I’m pretty sure the answers to these questions get progressively easier to infer.
I think the reason this house continues to grab my attention is because it seems to be going its own way regardless of whatever its neighbors or surroundings or you or I or whatever or whoever or whomever thinks about the situation. Stand tall, brick house with the red door on 27th and 10th—you’ve always got to be willing to go it alone and no one is coming to save you. We’ll be rooting you on from one block up.
What is the future of New York City?
Cross-post from our sister publication The New York Times.
Every once in a while I’ll come across a title of an article that is better than the article itself, sometimes even on this very website. The book jacket is just better than the book. I’ve actually met a few people like this too, and after marveling at the beauty of the jacket and renewing the book a few times, I’ll come to the odd realization that the jacket may have atrophied the contents of the book.
With that complete digression I’d like to present you with an article I just read in the New York Times called New York Is Dead. Long Live New York. The title is very good and the content is kind of good. It basically posits five possible futures for New York: (i) a bankrupt, dirty ghost town; (ii) a progressive utopia; (iii) a party city; (iv) a concrete tech haven à la Silicon Valley; and (v) basically what it was before.
Chelsea resident Michael Musto offers some fun thoughts on option (iii):
“People will practically be mating in the streets,” said Michael Musto, the longtime nightlife columnist for the Village Voice, now back in quarterly form. “Fueling all that, cunning entrepreneurs will swoop into all the empty storefronts to reinvent them as dance clubs and other pleasure palaces.”
“People might even look up from their phones,” he added.
New York’s swingers clubs are already gearing up. Snctm, a members-only club, returns this month with erotic masquerades that recall the haute orgy scenes in “Eyes Wide Shut.” Killing Kittens, a London-based members-only club that throws lavish fem-dom erotic parties, returns later this spring, and the club’s founder, Emma Sayle, thinks that pent-up passions, along with more acceptance for non-monogamy and polyamory, will lay the groundwork for next-level indulgence. “As far as we’re concerned,” she said, “it’s go big or go home.”
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, though I should say I have no real sense of what and where the poles are. Whatever it was, whatever it is now, whatever it will be in the future, long live New York.
An exhibit featuring paintings of NYC community gardens is currently on display at Ceres Gallery, between 27th Street & 10th Avenue.
Some things were just meant to be, my friends.
Above: “October Harvest” and “Bird’s-Eye View of Brooklyn Grange-Future” by Elizabeth Downer Riker.
I’m not much of a believer in fate or anything adjacent to it, but I suppose sometimes God or whoever is up there just feels like testing me. Currently on display at Ceres Gallery, on 27th Street between 10th & 11th Avenues, is a collection of paintings of NYC community and rooftop gardens by artist Elizabeth Downer Riker. I reached out to Elizabeth last week and informed her of our own serendipitous efforts to build a community garden at the vacant lot on 29th Street & 10th Avenue. She is rooting us on.
The New York Times uncharacteristically beat us to the punch in reporting on this: https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/26/dining/elizabeth-downer-riker-urban-farming.html. Thanks to Susan Numeroff (as usual) for sending me the article.
Ceres Gallery is open on Tuesday-Saturday from 12-6pm, and this exhibit will be on display through May 22. I’ll probably stop by this Saturday to see it, because some things were just meant to be.
Alligators and the importance of how you say it.
Maybe love is cheaper than war, but still.
One thing I think we all learn relatively early on is that what you say can be just as important as how you say it. The sentence “I never said she stole my money” can, indeed, have seven different meanings based on what word you decide to emphasize.
And so it goes with “Love is cheaper than war.” If you say this to me in regular conversation, I will nod along agreeably while quietly wondering if you’ve been partaking in some activities that have recently been legalized in New York City. But if you spray paint it on the side of someone else’s tractor-trailer under a cracked-out alligator, and that someone else then parks his tractor-trailer outside of a pizza place on 28th and 10th, I will take a picture of it and think to myself that you may not be that cool of a guy. “I mean, really, dude?” said both me and the driver, I assume, after walking out with our pizza. So it goes, so it goes.
Minnie the cat lives at Pet Central on 23rd Street & 7th Avenue.
Finally, a cat on the front page.
One thing that has bothered me since starting this block association is the absence of cats on our front page. We have a whole set of Dogs of the Day at this point—if you’re new around here, allow me to introduce you to Macchia the Dalmation, Bosco the Mini Australian Shepherd, Jackson the Portuguese Water Dog, and Winston the Brown and White Dog. But no cats. Do you even exist on the internet if your page doesn’t have any cats?
That brings me to Pet Central on 23rd Street and 7th Avenue. On a recent late night walk around the city, I wandered across Pet Central, which is a small Manhattan chain that sells what it sounds like it sells, and I saw this cat in the window staring and then stretching back at me. I did a little bit of digging, and apparently her name is Minnie and she lives at Pet Central.
So Minnie is our inaugural Cat of the Day, and you are perfectly free to send in other Cats of the Day. Also, because our residence and species requirements are extremely lax, I’ve made the executive decision to add Minnie to our membership rolls.
What the hell is fly fishing?
Whatever it is, it’s filming on our block on May 3.
Fly fishing falls squarely into the category of things that (i) I’ve heard of before, but (ii) don’t really know what they mean. Given, however, that something called “Fly Fishing” is going to be filming on our block on May 3, I did a little research into it and here is what I’ve learned:
Regular fishing basically uses a rod, a relatively weightless line, some sort of bait like a worm, and a “sinker” or weight near bait. The weight of the sinker is what allows you to cast the bait and hook out into the water.
Fly fishing does not use an actual fly as bait, dork. It uses a rod, a weighted line (sort of like a heavy rope at the gym, I gather), some sort of artificial “fly” (made out of feathers or something that imitates an insect), and no sinker or weight near the hook. Because there is no weight at the end of the line, you sort of chop the fishing pole in a tomahawk-like motion to fling the “fly” away from you and out into the water.
Importantly, because there is no sinker on the end of the line, the bait doesn’t sink, and you can catch fish like trout that swim on the top of the water.
So why on earth would anything involving this slightly altered form of fishing be filming on our block? I’m not exactly sure, but I think that the shoot is associated with the “Fly Fishing Film Tour,” which is basically a collection of 10 or so fly fishing-related short films that are produced on a yearly basis by a small film company in Boulder, Colorado. The films tell true, up-lifting stories about fly fishing from around the world. You can see the winner of the 2019 Tour here (it’s only 12 minutes long): THE MIDNIGHT MISSION - Award Winning Short Film - YouTube.
Perhaps the 2022 Fly Fishing Film Tour will feature gratuitous shots of fly fishing on the Hudson. If so, we’ll organize a fly fishing event in 2023.
Back to the rat problem.
Still talking about the area on 28th Street between 10th & 11th Avenues.
Last week I posted about the rat problem on 28th Street between 9th & 10th Avenues (Should we just go ahead and solve NYC’s rat problem? — High Line 28 Block Association). As I said then, I raised the problem with Susan Numeroff, who is the president of the West 400 Block Association, which is a few streets below us in Chelsea. Susan in turn raised the problem with the NYC Health Department in the context of planning a virtual “Rat Academy” training for both her and our block associations. That training was put on yesterday by the Health Department and was designed to teach residents and property owners about rat prevention methods.
During the training, the Health Department put on screen the above “Block Summary Report” for Block 726, which is Chelsea Park. It basically says that the Health Department has treated the Chelsea Park block three times for the rats, with the last time being on January 15, 2021. Additionally, the presenter of the training, Martha Morales, informed us that our problem has been forwarded up the chain to the Health Department supervisor for our area. I’ll post any further updates here.