Queens for a Day
The view from the 7 train.
The Number 7 MTA line cuts across Manhattan around 42nd street, and after burrowing under the East River, rises two stories on its way to Flushing, Queens. There is no “shoulder” along the track. It’s a straight drop to the street below and the trip is peppered with warnings about moving between subway cars. From your window, you can glimpse a nice panorama of the Manhattan skyline in the distance. But you mostly see rooftops, upper floors of apartments and warehouses. It’s abstract, almost serene.
But descend the stairs at 103rd Street-Corona Plaza and you slip into the clamor of city life. This isn’t Times Square’s free-for-all, with elbow-to-elbow gawking at four-story video fantasies (GoPro!, Budweiser!, Samsung!). This is real: grocery shoppers, street vendors, bus stops.
Corona was primarily Italian and African-American until the 1950s, when many Dominicans began settling there. In the 1990s, it became a destination for Latin American immigrants. Today its population is about 75% Hispanic, 10% Asian and 10% African-American. Queens as a whole is, according a recent census, the most ethnically and racially diverse county in the United States.
You can feel it as you walk Corona’s vibrant streets. Corona Plaza—despite a recent crackdown on unlicensed street vendors—is still teeming with activity. Business signs adorn three-story storefronts. Sidewalk tables and displays beckon potential customers into shops to buy kitchenware, clothes and even dental work.
On side streets, rows of houses are adorned with fences and window grates of polished stainless steel. Pocket front yards display religious statues or perhaps show what’s left of this summer’s gardens. If there is another place that exemplifies the American Experiment, I’ve yet to see it.
Make no mistake. This is a poor neighborhood. Corona was last in the headlines during the pandemic. It was the epicenter of COVID-19 deaths in the New York area. The charming street vendors are there to make a meager living, to put food on their family’s table. They are there just as my grandparents were in their own ethnic enclaves, getting by through pluck and community.
Appropriately, the day after my visit, I read of a former president’s harangue against immigrants. And blessedly, I also read Paul Krugman’s savvy response in the New York Times. I needed no confirmation that is one of the safest places in America with a life expectancy three-years higher than the American average. As Krugman put it:
“I see the essence of America as it was supposed to be, a magnet for people around the world seeking freedom and opportunity — people like my own grandparents.”
And that is why I ❤️ New York.
The Bridges of Central Park
There are 28 bridges in Frederick Law Olmsted’s Central Park, most of them built between 1859 and 1866 and designed by Olmsted’s collaborator, Calvert Vaux. Some are cast iron in the mode of that time—ornamental rather than merely functional. The majority are stone, remarkable in their variety—materials, geometry, design. None of them support automobile traffic—cars cross the park at four “Transverse Roads,” which are mostly sunk below the grade of the park to limit noise.
On a seasonably mild day in November, the paths were full of ramblers and strollers. Some lingered under the arches, — playing an instrument or dancing to a boombox—enjoying the resonance of the enclosed space. Most just moved along, dreamily surveying the landscape. These are some of the arches and bridges they saw.
Click on any image to see it full size.
Rollin’ Along
Lindsay Mendez, Jonathan Groff, and Daniel Radcliffe in Merrily We Roll Along.
Currently playing on Broadway, Stephen Sondheim’s Merrily We Roll Along begins—oddly enough—in Hollywood. Franklin (Jonathan Groff), one of the story’s central trio, is celebrating a major studio deal. His West-Coast hangers on include a fawning starlet, certainly a mistress-to-be, various toadying producers, and an angry wife who is a bit tired of Franklin’s serial infidelity. His longtime friend, Mary (Lindsay Mendez), no fan of LaLaLand, is hitting the liquor pretty hard. And Charley (Daniel Radcliffe) is referred to but not seen. He was invited, but the schism between him and his former songwriting partner is all too apparent.
So where do we go from here? The brilliant conceit of Sondheim's tuneful, cynical, heart-wrenching 1981 musical: We go backwards.
Back through marriages, breakups, unfulfilled romances, artistic differences—the stuff of life. You can probably guess where the show ends (and the story begins): an auspicious meeting of the creative minds full of sunny promise.
Based on a 1934 by George S. Kauffman and Moss Hart, Merrily’s premiere 40 years ago was less than auspicious, closing after only 16 performances. This revival is based on director Maria Friedman’s London production of 2012, and it shines as one of Sondheim’s great achievements. As you’d expect in a Sondheim show, It is often musically dense. But here the choral performances are radiant and seemingly effortless.
The central trio shines musically. But more importantly, they navigate the fraught journey from world-weary bitterness to buoyant optimism with an honesty that sits with you long after the final rooftop look into the rainbow future.
Collateral
Ahh, Netflix. That sea of colorful rectangles all aglow on your screen, scrolling endlessly, row after row: “Trending Now,” “Action and Adventure,” “Critically Acclaimed Suspenseful European TV Shows,” “Mind-Bending Movies.” Linger too long and that inert placard comes to life, morphing into an overproduced, two-minute preview of possible things to come. Keep scrolling. Preview after preview. If you like just spend an evening “sampling” a few dozen shows, one snappy montage at a time. The great entertainment bonanza has arrived.
Carey Mulligan in Collateral
But if you are looking for engagement—something well-crafted, smart, refreshingly original. Well….you might have to surf through a few previews.
My suggestion: start with the writers. That’s what brought me to Collateral, a 2018 BBC mini-series that’s now available on Netflix. Penned by the great British playwright, David Hare, it shows what a great dramatic storyteller can do given the luxury of a four-hour time slot. (four, one-hour installments).
It starts with a murder, a man gunned down after delivering a pizza. The case is assigned to Police Inspector Kip Glaspie (Carey Mulligan), but before she is even called, we catch glimpses of people in the neighborhood: a stoned young woman sitting on a corner, a minister making a mysterious after-dark visit to a church, a frazzled mother who tosses the pizza on the floor. Hare creates a neighborhood of intertwined stories that gradually morph into a network of motives, circumstances and not-so-usual suspects. They extend from pizza shops to immigrant detention centers to offices at Parliament.
Mulligan’s performance is somber and muted, but filled with ripe, world-weary silences. Set against the chaos of Hare’s fractured contemporary world, she is quietly heroic, but poignantly human.
No more scrolling. Sit down and watch.
Autumn in New York
More to come about Louis Armstrong, Manet and Degas at the Metropolitan Museum, and the American glory of the subway car. Along with some non-NYC thoughts. Until then, a little reverie about that great city in a great season: Click here to listen: Ella Fitzgerald and Louis sing Vernon Duke’s “Autumn in New York.”
I expect to be in a Turkey Coma next week, so The Friday Five will return on December 1.