Trump SoHo Redux--say what?

I don't blog everyday. Especially when I've started a new job and am madly figuring out how to put together a one woman show of my poet portraits (Cornelia St. Cafe art gallery in December)—maybe I let a few things slip.

Yesterday, I'd finally posted something new and idly checked my google analytics. My blog was showing a 985.13% improvement in visitors. SAY WHAT?!? I'd had this huge unprecedented spike on one day—May 27th, to be exact—over 1,300 people came to read something I'd written in 2007. The analytics indicated curious folks had followed a link from an article in The Daily Beast written by Wayne Barrett "Inside Donald Trump's Empire: Why He Won't Run for President" and read my "Possess Your Own SoHo--sez Trump". It's just possible Barrett* had meant to link to a news report and accidentally got me, but I prefer to believe this professor of journalism and major investigative reporter was tickled by my rant. 

How nice. I've wondered if anyone is reading the older pieces. On May 27th they did. And who knows what stray thoughts in 2011 will appeal to readers in 2015? Spike away dear readers and thank you.

*(or Valerie Bogard, Bryan Finlayson, Nichole Sobecki, Barry Shifrin, and Katie Thompson who contributed reporting to Barrett's article)

Evil Trump tower kills one

Working a block away from towers that fall is never a comforting experience to New Yorkers, especially since 9/11. The boom, the sirens, the crowds staring... one of my coworkers burst into tears "I'm worried!" A small knot of us went to the sidewalk to see what was going on. Trumps' tower looked like a monster took a bite out of it. The Trump SoHo has been going up faster than a mushroom and apparently safety has plummeted as it nears it's full height. Today scaffolding gave way and two men and a whole lot of wet concrete fell. One man landed in a net. He's in the hospital. One man didn't. He's in the morgue.


The view from our building was disheartening. I turned to my boss and said, "you were right to never walk near it." We silently watched news helicopters, ambulances, and black unmarked vehicles pull onto our now blocked-off street. "If that crane fell, would it reach us?" I asked idly. "No, I don't think so," said Jason, "but it would crush that storage building." "Oh," said my boss, I have things in there." "Anything you need?" asked Jason. "Oh no, just family heirlooms, nothing I really need to go in there for."

But, as so often happens, when something is too horrible, you just have to laugh. From where we stood, a poster advertising the storage building appeared to reach over to the tower. The theme is that storage is so compelling you will put everything you own, including all your clothing, into their care. A naked woman, back to us, is contemplating her nicely emptied closet. Just beyond the edge of the ad, I could see the tattered netting and splintered wooden scaffolding. "Well, both buildings now have cracks in them," I say.

As I photograph the poster, a passerby tells me how shameful I am to photograph a tragedy and laugh about it.

Eye of Sauron rises over SoHo

True story.

Russ, who works where I do, saw a woman fall to the pavement in front of the rising Trump Tower. "You OK? What happened?" He helped her up. She said she was OK but she'd been looking up up up at it and lost her balance. "Don't look at it, it's evil," says Russ. "Yeah, it is," she agreed.

"Possess Your Own SoHo" sez Trump

Near where I work, a Trump condo-hotel-luxury-tower is going up. Soon it will block all the morning light as I head for the office. Thanks Donald for the gray carpet.

I cannot stop wondering why I would want to possess my own SoHo. Couldn't I possess other more worthy edifices? Such as my own mind, for instance, it shows signs of being periodically vacant. Maybe I'd rather possess my own Paris (not Hilton) or possess my own really good diner on Rt. 347, the one with the moist grilled chicken and crisp but sour pickles? And what about all the other places that don't make it into the Trumpamerican skyline? Possess your own Levittown. Possess your own plot at Pinelawn Cemetery? Possess your own dreams, possess your own verse, repossess your own passion. If you must possess your own SoHo, please do it quietly and among consenting adults.

The traffic gets awful around here when folks try to drive to New Jersey after work. For some reason once drivers see the Holland Tunnel signs they no longer pay any attention to traffic laws, lights, cross streets, their memory of yesterday's commute, and pedestrians. They express their desire to have a revised reality by honking. I've seen traffic cops ticket one guy after another and none of them can stop themselves! They honk, they gridlock, they get ticketed, it's another form of possession I guess...

I was plotting a route across the mess when a woman in big sunglasses saw me looking at the satanic "Possess Your Own SoHo" sign and shook her fist at it. She shouted her story. Her neighborhood association had been so busy fighting towers of glass a little north of here, that they'd figured SoHo would quash the Trump thing. But nobody got on it. So, quite legally, Trump's tower goes up, up, up. Air rights. And once one too tall building comes in, it brings in more and when all the rich folks move in, out go us artists. "My daughter," she told me, "just graduated art school and do you know where she's moving, where she can afford to live and be an artist?" I didn't know. "Philadelphia, Philadelphia! That's where they're all going--forget Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Queens, no artists can afford New York City anymore."

Ok artists, you and Rocky can now Possess Your Own Philly. Really.