New York International Auto Show '11

We went to the New York International Auto Show yesterday. I never make a point of going, but it just so happens that I’ve now gone two years in a row. Each year, it seems, it gets less inspiring. You pretty much get what you’d expect. Design, for the most part, has been taken off the table and replaced with paint. Much more attention is lavished on emissions and fuel consumption.

It’s a sign of the times, I think. Budgets are tight. It’s becoming more profitable to chase after tax breaks and other government incentives than actually go out and compete in the market place. Like in the old Soviet Union, all the cars now look pretty much the same.

Notable too has been the trend of the female ramp models dressing down. It is now become virtually impossible to tell them from the people who have come simply to gawk. Also, male models have now begun making inroads in a profession that had been purely gender (and beauty) based.

The car that drew my attention was the yellow 1970 Fiat. I guess this proves that I’m still susceptible to nostalgia. Fiat has come out with a new model that mimics the old but is quite a bit larger. By it, it hopes to replicate the recent success of the British (German-built) Mini Cooper.

Last week, there was an accident down the block where I live. I heard the tires screeching and the inevitable hollow bang while I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth. I went down to take a look. A considerable crowd had already gathered, but the police were still to arrive. Even from a distance I could see that a small Honda had rear-ended a much larger car at the intersection. The Honda (circa 1980) seemed pretty much intact. The larger car’s back end had been totally destroyed. Arriving at the scene, I saw that the large car was no less than a Bentley. I was truly surprised at the extent of the damage. It seemed incongruous to the car’s reputation. No one was hurt, which told volumes.

Peter Koelliker; pkoelliker8@yahoo.com

Midtown Manhattan

Midtown Manhattan, they say, is a place for people watching. Some would claim that Times Square is the crossroads of the world. No matter where you might be from, they would argue, you would meet someone you already know there (provided, of course, that you remain there long enough). It’s intriguing to speculate just who that someone might turn out to be. I myself have seen a celebrity or two there occasionally (which I would expect; why, with the theater district in such close proximity). Or, one is also likely to see the Naked Cowboy, posing along the center isle with his guitar and some smiling foreign female tourist. (Does that guy ever sleep?)

In any case, even if you’re a hermit - and live in a cave in Afghanistan, for example - you’d have to admit that Times Square (like Las Vegas) never shuts down; that there are always loads of people milling around, many so star-struck as to forget even to lift their cameras for the appeasement of the folks left back at home.

Suppose, for a moment, that there were no people; only you; say, a thousand years from now. This, of course, would be some time after the Great War in which they were said to have used the latest technology in weaponry - you know, those bombs that destroy only people, not buildings. All carbon based beings would long have evaporated into the now pristine biosphere. The sun would be shining. And you’d be looking up.

No longer having to be concerned with lights turning red, yellow and green; no longer having to adjust your pace to conform to the pack’s; no longer having to worry about protecting your back pocket, you’d be free to look around and imagine how it must have been. The clues would be all around you – and especially above street level.

You’d come to appreciate all the different types of architecture; the roof gardens, now threatening to take over what’s left of the city; the ads and promotions. It’s quite likely, that the solar-powered ticker would still be running, proclaiming the end of the world.

Midtown Manhattan remains a great place for people who love to watch people watching them. Looking up today would likely brand you as a tourist, or as one with his head in the clouds. Street-level action is what counts: all the fancy shops along side the sleazy bars and strip joints; the seditious shows in theaters; humanity aimlessly slouching toward some ambiguous abyss.

Looking up, then, will be for those who might come a thousand years later to try and figure out what may have happened; why this post-modern Machu Picchu no longer has anyone living in it; why the wells all are full and the buckets empty.

Peter Koelliker; pkoelliker8@yahoo.com

Lower Manhattan

This is where all the trouble started (if anything can be said to start at any given point). Anyway, there’s a big hole in the ground here and people from all over the world come to look. Some mark it as the start of something: a first strike in on our own shores, resulting in our “War on Terror”; others see it as a criminal act for which guys should be serving time in jail. Many - both at home and abroad - say that we’re the guilty ones by the way in which we’ve live our lives. We’re still allowed to disagree amongst ourselves about all this – and then cast our ballots.

However it happened (or happens), there’s still a big hole in the ground in Lower Manhattan which some have come regard as the center of the economic engine driving world economies. True or not, no doubt there there’s lots of money here (or is it debt?). It used to be that the highest building in any given town was the church; now it’s the bank. In Lower Manhattan one can hardly see Trinity Church squeezed in between the tall buildings anymore. We’ve all but forgotten that George Washington attended services there. It’s possible that some day we’ll decide to take it down and build another bank. - But wait! There’s still that hole in the ground to deal with. Let’s do something about that one first; just to show them that we still have some fight left in us. But, then again, how do we bring back the dead?

Truth is, we’ve been so traumatized, and we’re hardly in a position to do anything beyond putting up a fence around it so that nobody else gets hurt. Just a few blocks away, life goes on as if nothing ever happened. We’ve even built four waterfalls and billed them as a sign that New York City has moved on.

Still, we’ve felt compelled to build ramps and lookouts at Ground Zero. No tour guide dares to omit what happened here. It seems people from all over the world are coming mostly just to look at that big hole. They think of it as a metaphor of sorts. It’s been a bit unsettling for those of us who wish we could finally decide on something to fill it with - a waterfall, perhaps – and then be done with it.

There’s a Water Taxi that leaves South Street Seaport every hour on the hour. It takes about an hour to cruise around Lower Manhattan, up the Hudson River a ways and back down along the Jersey side to view Ellis Island and the Statue of Liberty. Then it loops around, past Governor’s Island and up the East River. This is the “waterfall” part of the ride. There are four of them. The one just under the Brooklyn Bridge, to my mind, is the most dramatic. Back at the Seaport, there are restaurants and shops. The day we were there, a contortionist was performing on the pier. From there, it’s a relatively short walk down to Wall Street, the Stock Exchange and Trinity Church. Most may want to see the site where the Twin (World Trade Center) Towers stood as well.

Peter Koelliker pkoelliker8@yahoo.com

New York City (winter)