Where the Battle of Algiers rages on ...Rick's Cafe Americain

As it happens, I live around the corner from the Brooklyn Museum and will be there for some of the weekend’s scheduled activities and looking for Francis and Rose. (Beyond a simple hello, my mother has recently gotten into knitting, so I have some questions for Rose).

I have been watching the building in progress since I moved to the neighborhood last June, my view of the grand columns and classic design marred by construction fencing and cranes.  I never took the time to examine the
plan for the building, so when I saw the entrance addition in progress, it looked to me like a frame.  It turns out, though, that what I thought was a step along the way is the intended design - and now the finished product. I’m not impressed.

The new entrance doesn’t fit at all with the preexisting architecture of the building. It is like a tour of the architectural oddities of my education: from the fishbowl at Cornell’s Uris Library overlooking Libe Slope (which I like) to the Jerome Greene Hall extension at Columbia Law School (which nobody likes). 

Uris Library uses the slope of the hill to create a sunlit reading room with a great view of West Campus. It is also open to passers-by and was known for years as a prime spot for the see-and-be-seen set.  Now that “facetimer” is more a slur than compliment, it is a charming quirk to be visible to the people walking by on the hill.  In its place, the curved glass is integrated into the building and it just ... works.

Greene, on the other hand, with East Campus in the background, looks like a toaster dropped into an aquarium.  The green glass is jarring; the horizontal slats unappealing.  It wasn’t much to look at before, but is just sad now. You can see the evolution here.  ‘Bellerophon Taming Pegasus’ remains a cool statue, though.

The Brooklyn Museum entrance strips the Uris fishbowl out of context and slaps on the slats and green glass of Jerome Greene to bad effect.  It compounds the error by affixing it to the front of a building with a classic look.  I look forward to a view of the museum without construction equipment, but the entrance itself is going to take some getting used to.

My alma mater, the Pitt Panthers were playing in the quarterfinals of the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden today at noon.  I had hoped to make it down there in time to catch the entire game but, alas, work interfered and I was not able to make until only about 10 minutes were left in the game. 

When I finally arrive, there is a line to buy tickets.  Figuring that most people are there to buy advance tickets, I step forward and get the attention of the guy in front of me.

“Excuse me,” I say, “are you here to buy a ticket for the game currently being played?”

“No,” he responds.

“Well, would you mind if I go ahead of you?” I ask.  “There’s only about 10 minutes left in the game.  My Alma Mater, Pitt, is playing and I’d like to catch as much of it as I can.”

He does not respond.  Rather, he just looks at me like I just asked him to step out of line and dance a jig.  After a few awkward moments of silence, I put a sort of exasperated look on my face, mumble “ok” and begin to step back, not feeling in the mood to push the subject.  At this point (did I mention, by the way, that this guy looked a little shady, perhaps a scalper type) he starts chastising me.

“Well, why are you arriving with only 10 minutes to go in the game?” he asks in a sort of neutral, but slightly derogatory way.

I smile.  “I got stuck at work.  But, I wanted to catch the last few minutes of the Pitt game anyway.”

“Why don’t you just watch it on T.V.” he asks in the same tone, waiving his hand at the Garden T.V. monitor (which is showing St. Joe’s v. Xavier game, rather than the game being played in the Garden).

“Well, that isn’t the game on the monitor and I wanted to support Pitt in person.”

“What are you”, he asks, “some kind of Pitt fan?”

I should note at this point that, in addition to my prior references to attending Pitt, I was wearing a t-shirt with the word PITT is huge letters covering my entire chest (which was just about eye level for this somewhat short man).

That was pretty much the end of it.  I said something like “yeah see the t-shirt and I mentioned I went there a few times” and then probably muttered “Jesus” as I stepped back, admirably restraining myself from telling this guy off.

When he did finally make it to the front, I only overheard snippets of his conversation with the clerk, though it didn’t sound like he was making much sense.  He left the window without buying a ticket.

Finally, I make it to the front and, of course, the game is sold out.  Fucking Syracuse fans! (2nd game of a 2 for 1) I caught the last 7 minutes on ESPN2 in my apartment.

My alma mater, the Pitt Panthers were playing in the quarterfinals of the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden today at noon.  I had hoped to make it down there in time to catch the entire game but, alas, work interfered and I was not able to make until only about 10 minutes were left in the game. 

When I finally arrive, there is a line to buy tickets.  Figuring that most people are there to buy advance tickets, I step forward and get the attention of the guy in front of me.

“Excuse me,” I say, “are you here to buy a ticket for the game currently being played?”

“No,” he responds.

“Well, would you mind if I go ahead of you?” I ask.  “There’s only about 10 minutes left in the game.  My Alma Mater, Pitt, is playing and I’d like to catch as much of it as I can.”

He does not respond.  Rather, he just looks at me like I just asked him to step out of line and dance a jig.  After a few awkward moments of silence, I put a sort of exasperated look on my face, mumble “ok” and begin to step back, not feeling in the mood to push the subject.  At this point (did I mention, by the way, that this guy looked a little shady, perhaps a scalper type) he starts chastising me.

“Well, why are you arriving with only 10 minutes to go in the game?” he asks in a sort of neutral, but slightly derogatory way.

I smile.  “I got stuck at work.  But, I wanted to catch the last few minutes of the Pitt game anyway.”

“Why don’t you just watch it on T.V.” he asks in the same tone, waiving his hand at the Garden T.V. monitor (which is showing St. Joe’s v. Xavier game, rather than the game being played in the Garden).

“Well, that isn’t the game on the monitor and I wanted to support Pitt in person.”

“What are you”, he asks, “some kind of Pitt fan?”

I should note at this point that, in addition to my prior references to attending Pitt, I was wearing a t-shirt with the word PITT is huge letters covering my entire chest (which was just about eye level for this somewhat short man).

That was pretty much the end of it.  I said something like “yeah see the t-shirt and I mentioned I went there a few times” and then probably muttered “Jesus” as I stepped back, admirably restraining myself from telling this guy off.

When he did finally make it to the front, I only overheard snippets of his conversation with the clerk, though it didn’t sound like he was making much sense.  He left the window without buying a ticket.

Finally, I make it to the front and, of course, the game is sold out.  Fucking Syracuse fans! (2nd game of a 2 for 1) I caught the last 7 minutes on ESPN2 in my apartment.

“Nets” was a stupid and derivative name when the current Nets’ ABA forbears on Long Island took it on to get fake local cred by rhyming with the Mets and Jets.  (Dumber still was the Team Tennis franchise the New York Sets.) It is time to put that stupid moniker to rest.

At first I was partial to calling the team the Brooklyn Bums in romantic homage to the Dodgers v1.0 and the love this town had for that team.  But now I’ve decided that I’d rather call them the Brooklyn Bridge, and if Bruce Ratner thought about it, he would also.

I admit that there is a certain lameness to the name.  It is sort of obvious, it is a non-pluralized word (though “Bridges“ would be far worse) and it doesn’t translate well to a plush toy.  At the same time the bridge imagery works.  The team would be a unifying source of pride for an almost inconceivably diverse borough.  The bridge also establishes Brooklyn as an important city unto itself, but still intimately tied to Manhattan.

Finally, since you know that Ratner won’t hold onto the team forever, is it possible that a real estate guy could pass up the chance to be known as the guy who sold the Brooklyn Bridge?

There is something to be said against New York getting derivative works - Calavatra’s Quadracci Museum in Milwaukee is an obvious precursor to the transit hubs, just as Gehry’s Bilbao Guggenheim, Disney Concert Hall in L.A. and even the doesn’t-quite-work EMP in Seattle (some people think it works) are reflected in his plans for the proposed Brooklyn basketball arena and new waterfront Guggenheim.  I’m not sure that is a bad thing, though.  I am glad that New York is attracting good architects to do good work - work that stands out in a city whose grand-scale architecture is often less interesting than its housing stock.

I wish I had a more sophisticated way of saying this, but ... Me likey. I second your emotion, Jen: Thank you Mr. Calatrava.

I really feel for the people who would have to move if the arena is built.  I’ve never been to Freddy’s - a bar in the destruction zone - though it looks like the kind of place I would really like.  It really looks like a horrible abuse of eminent domain, so I hope that the residents and business owners can fight hard enough to get real compensation.  Because I know that I’ll get the benefit without much cost because the arena is slated to be built in the northwest corner of Prospect Heights and I live in the very southeast corner, I shouldn’t be such a selfish prick.  I should stand screaming at the government for abusing the public and presenting us the distractions of bread and circus.

But I can’t help it.  There is going to be an NBA team in my neighborhood and I am fuckin’ giddy.  Bring on those damn circuses! The NBA will be here, and it will be fantastic.

Mom was from Coney Island and Dad was from the Bronx.  Although I grew up in Queens, all of my friends in high school lived in Manhattan, which seemed so much cooler at the time. I longed to rid myself of my borough roots and achingly looked across the river to the day that I could say that I live “in the City.”

Then I had to pay for it myself.  University subsidized housing made it possible during law school but after graduation I refused to bankrupt myself to live in a walkup shoebox.  So back to the boroughs I went.  I have accepted that I am a boroughs guy and really, really like Brooklyn.  I can’t bring myself to look at this realistically and think that the Nets coming to my ‘hood is nothing but great.

I am being immature. I know that I will regret it as the bills come due but for now I am pleased.

My father’s cousin, a 99-year-old woman, has had a rent-controlled apartment in the East 30’s since roughly 1940.  My immediate family finally moved her out of her apartment - and into an assisted-living facility - a few years ago, but we held on to the apartment because we were paralyzed by the daunting task of cleaning 60 years of history out of her apartment.  This was especially challenging because she didn’t become a pack rat in her old age - she had always been a pack rat.  The apartment had everything from troves of ketchup packets to personal letters from Chaim Gross and John Dos Passos.  There were volumes of her well-intended doggerel and good-natured rejection letters of same from Ron Alexander.  Not surprisingly, among the many finds in her apartment were family history.  There were photographs (though fewer than I expected), my thank you notes (both bar mitzvah and graduation), letters from my dad in WWII (Pharmacist 1st Class aboard the USS Mattaponi) and his cousin Joe during Vietnam (I don’t think he ever shipped out of Fort Benning).  But the best find of the day was the menu from my parents’ wedding at Chateau D’Or on Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn (which is now a bingo parlor).

I love this menu because it represents the 60’s that my parents appear to have experienced -which was really more like a Brooklyn-Jewish version of the idealized 50’s.  (I am comfortable with this as the truth.  I have no desire to see my mother as “free love” flower child.)

It also reflects the way I see my father before I knew him.  The man I knew was very set in his ways and so I thought there was a lot of friction in the relationship and I thought of him as anything but cool.  But I knew from old photos and letters - and my mother’s assurances - that my father was both a suave and stylish guy.  He was a clotheshorse and a world traveller and even though he married old he wasn’t lonely young.  So the Chateau D’Or seems like the kind of place that he would have a wedding.  Still, the inconsistent use of French is pretty funny.  Here is the bill of fare:

Smorgasbord Continentale
---
Pineapple Supreme
---
Coeurs de Celery
Olives Vertes et Noires
---
Old Fashioned Vegetable Soup
---
Roast Prime Ribs of Beef au Jus
Peas and Mushrooms with Almonds
Dutchess Potato
Derma Farci
---
Chocolate Mousse
Wedding Cake
Demi Tasse

I love the use of the term Pineapple Supreme - it was, I am told, a fruit salad served in a hollowed-out pineapple.  Celery sticks and olives certainly sounds better in French (though “couers de celery” is an abuse of language almost as bad as The Olive Garden’s “Chicken Con Broccoli").  But my favorite entry is “Derma Farci”. 

Derma Farci is kishke.  Kishke is essentially a sausage made from chicken fat and flour using cow intenstine for the natural casing.  It is the ultimate in Jewish cuisine, both horrifying and spectacular.  It is most certainly not French.  But derma farci is the combination of Bronx Jew and suave fellow that was my father.  And for that I was happy to see it on the menu.

I miss you, Dad.

I would prefer a memorial in which I was forced to face the reality of 9/11 undiluted by smokes and mirrors. I would weep as I confronted the reality of 2,819 deaths and I would want to be forced to consider the geo-political situation that led to a group of people sinking to the lowest depths possible in order to conduct an attack against America’s innocent population. Then I would step outside the memorial, into a world where our government was learning from the attacks and taking a more vested interest in world politics, and the colossal importance of a growing population of poor, disenfranchised, and angry world citizens. A growing population of ill-contents, with nothing to lose, who are easily manipulated to enter the ranks of an army of evil. A country that was exerting its overwhelming power to build alliances and coalitions. A country committed to spreading wealth, prosperity and freedom throughout the world, not just making the rich richer at other’s expense. I would exit the memorial into such a world and then I would wipe my tears away, and I would smile, because I would know that despite the tragic events of 9/11, I am living in a country where from the ashes of tragedy comes a vision of new hope and a better world.



Instead these eight proposals seem resigned to providing exactly the opposite. Instead of a weighty reminder of tragic time, these memorials offer an airy refuge, a fantasy of light and color. Gardens and reflecting pools where we can clear our minds and forget our worries, if only for a moment, before we must return to the reality of crumbling alliances, unilateral pre-emption and Republican “compassion”.



Perhaps then, I am saddened to say, these designs are exactly right for the world in which we live. Still, I hope for the future.

I would prefer a memorial in which I was forced to face the reality of 9/11 undiluted by smokes and mirrors. I would weep as I confronted the reality of 2,819 deaths and I would want to be forced to consider the geo-political situation that led to a group of people sinking to the lowest depths possible in order to conduct an attack against America’s innocent population. Then I would step outside the memorial, into a world where our government was learning from the attacks and taking a more vested interest in world politics, and the colossal importance of a growing population of poor, disenfranchised, and angry world citizens. A growing population of ill-contents, with nothing to lose, who are easily manipulated to enter the ranks of an army of evil. A country that was exerting its overwhelming power to build alliances and coalitions. A country committed to spreading wealth, prosperity and freedom throughout the world, not just making the rich richer at other’s expense. I would exit the memorial into such a world and then I would wipe my tears away, and I would smile, because I would know that despite the tragic events of 9/11, I am living in a country where from the ashes of tragedy comes a vision of new hope and a better world.



Instead these eight proposals seem resigned to providing exactly the opposite. Instead of a weighty reminder of tragic time, these memorials offer an airy refuge, a fantasy of light and color. Gardens and reflecting pools where we can clear our minds and forget our worries, if only for a moment, before we must return to the reality of crumbling alliances, unilateral pre-emption and Republican “compassion”.



Perhaps then, I am saddened to say, these designs are exactly right for the world in which we live. Still, I hope for the future.