"Noo Yawk is a Summuh Festavull"

My title refers, with my typical lightly ironic touch, to the infamous slogan that New York City used for several years in the 60s. It was meant to convince people not to scamper off to the beach and mountains for the summer but to stay and enjoy the recreational and cultural opportunities of a racially divided city that was beginning to come apart at the seams. I think they abandoned the slogan after three "long hot summers" in a row -- an endlessly invoked journalistic cliche that was code for "the niggers are trying to destroy everything." And in the 70s the town's population fell by about a million. 

Well, as I walk from Penn Station to my shrink appointment near Union Square, it really does feel as though New York has become a summer festival. Oh, I don't mean cornball stuff like face-painting and crafts fairs. It's the whole look and feel of the place that suggests festivalhood. Lots of incremental improvements like the closing of Broadway to traffic, the pocket sitting and gathering areas at a lot of major intersections, complete with chairs, tables, umbrellas. No vandalism either. 

All the parks are safer and better maintained. Even Thompkins Park downtown, which was a drug supermarket for years, and never a place you'd take your toddler for some fun on the swings. (What swings?) 

There's far more common courtesy now, and it extends across racial and ethnic/religious lines as it did not 40 - 50 years ago. There's no longer that instinctive frisson of fear and guardedness when you see a group of black kids after school. They may be boisterous but they don't threaten as they used to, whether intentionally or not. A lot of people say that it was 9/11 that broke many of those old barriers down. If anything good came of that horror, that may be it. There was and remains this sense that "we're all New Yorkers and we're in this together." A sea change for sure. 

But as I was riding the subway Saturday and walking all over Midtown yesterday, I was struck by a huge development that we no longer much notice -- and it occurred to me only because I was trying to see New York through the eyes of a tourist. Immigration, and lots of it, from all of the nations of the world, has altered the racial/ethnic profile of the place so that the rigid, defining categories of US and THEM of the 70s and earlier no longer make sense. How can you stigmatize (say) Dominicans or blacks from South Carolina when they're just a small part of the human river that courses through these streets? When a flood from Central Asia, Africa, the Middle East, China and everywhere else mingles with us every day? It makes no sense. It no longer computes. 

Here is a new New York moment from yesterday, as stunning a day as today: Two little Jewish boys wearing yarmulkes were buying halal treats from an elderly Muslim at his cart on Park Avenue. The brothers were young, maybe 8 and 10. They were sweet kids, and they were both happy and polite. The pushcart man was enchanted by them and beamed as they devoured their snacks. He blessed them in broken English. So, yes, this is a movable summer festival. 

And for all its hassles, this is why it is (again) the best place to live in the United States. 

Sent from my Verizon Wireless BlackBerry

Comments

[organicabloga]

going to visit it, possible this season

[fredric koeppel]

you are such a patriotic boy.

[TH]

FK, you're just jealous.

[Morgan]

its funny what happens when kids arent taught to hate people that dont look like them or worship a different god.

if we dont teach our children to hate, they wont hate. great post.

[TH]

Thanks, Morgan.

You know, my mother, who was an abusive, crazy bitch, nevertheless told me it was wrong to be prejudiced against black people and Jews.

Of course, she was anti-Catholic and hated Japanese war brides because they had small feet.

She wasn't an across-the-board bigot, that's what I meant to say. She was awful but not in that way. Thanks, Ma.

[Morgan]

my dad always taught me that it was wrong to dislike people because of they way they looked or the things they believed in. i think he got that from your dear old ma, so theres one point for her.

that being said, it is completely okay to dislike someone because they are an idiot, regardless of what their skin color is. the end.

[TH]

You are wise for one so young. And moronic.