We’re in New York City, visiting with family and old friends, and observing how time has changed it all. Meetings with family and old friends begin with an extensive exchange of medical information, a catalogue of old pains, new pains, new medical treatments and the entire litany of aging. After 20 minutes, you can only conclude that it’s amazing that any of us are still alive.
But then you look at the next generation — nieces, nephews and cousins — and it fills you with hope and optimism about the future. Somewhere deep in our DNA, buried way under, is this absolutely unexplainable need to bring another generation onto the planet, and when they come along, it fills you with a wonderful warmth, a sense of completeness of life.
If you think about it rationally, why would anyone want children? They’re noisy, dirty and expensive, and yet, a smile and a giggle and you turn into mush. You also begin to understand the value of grandparenthood. People at the end of their career life, without much economic value in the general society, are suddenly very valuable to their children. With the cost of childcare in New York City roughly equivalent to the salary of a federal General Schedule 12 employee, children begin to look at their parents with a newfound respect and appreciation. When I grew up in Brooklyn, several generations of a family often lived together in duplexes with grandparents and maiden aunts in the same house, or at least close by. Maiden aunts were a much-undervalued category. People would say “poor Grace or Sally or Pearl, a spinster, never married,” but the truth was, they were the underground that raised generations of children. Today in NYC that maiden aunt is from Trinidad and can cost you $800 per week. So a silent thank you goes to Grace, Sally or Pearl for their many years of uncompensated service.
The city has also changed enormously. When I left Brooklyn in 1959, the borough was old and tired. You never would have used the words “Brooklyn” and “hip” in the same sentence. A few years later, the Dodgers left to go to Los Angeles and the soul oozed out of Brooklyn. Today, Brooklyn has had a renaissance with new theaters, new culture, an endless numbers of restaurants with outdoor sidewalk seating and people walking around at midnight. I had to check the street signs to be certain that I was actually in Brooklyn. Areas like Williamsburg and Red Hook where, in the old days, you wouldn’t have gone without a gun, no longer have pizza places or neighborhood bars. Now they are all trattorias and grills, and they no longer serve Seagram’s Seven and 7 Up, only Grey Goose on the rocks at $16 per glass.
A few days ago, Karen and I walked the High Line, which is an old, industrial, elevated freight line on the far west side of New York. It was originally built to service the Meatpacking District on the Westside and to get the freight cars off the streets where they kept running into things like streetcars, trucks and pedestrians. Over the years, it had fallen into disuse and was about to be torn down when some local citizens and developers had the idea of turning it into an elevated urban park. With a combination of public and private money, the support of then-Mayor Bloomberg, and some very wonderful landscape architects, they created an urban park, which is actually more an urban showplace. Everything has changed. Old factory buildings are now lofts. Sidewalks are filled with cafes and it has become a major tourist attraction, and, more than that, a place where New Yorkers go. The city has recreated and renewed itself, and it’s marvelous.
There is a moral to this story. Malibu is a suburb. Its principal architectural feature is shopping centers owned by billionaires, or at least multi-millionaires. Let’s face it guys, Malibu is boring. Now, I’m not suggesting that we turn Malibu into New York, but being boring is not some great esthetic standard that I aspire to. For example, Legacy Park (or Weed Park, if you prefer) is probably one of the most unimaginative uses of public space I have ever seen. I must confess that I walk it every day with my dog and, when it rains, it can be rather pretty. However, since it doesn’t rain very much, most of the time it looks like a field of weeds — indigenous weeds and very boring weeds.
How do I know this? It’s because people vote with their feet and it’s almost always empty, except for my fellow dog walkers. A full 19 acres in the very center of our town is virtually an unused weed park. We can do better; we should do better. We need a Legacy Park Conservancy the way NYC has a Central Park Conservancy, a group of dedicated citizens who want to make it work, and work for all of us to come up with something better.