New York City Walk

Big props to Caleb Smith, who has walked every street in Manhattan:

Last summer, Caleb Smith, a thirty-four-year-old librarian at Columbia, came across an old Times story with the headline “NAVY OFFICER NEAR THE END OF 4-YEAR PROJECT OF WALKING IN EVERY STREET ON MANHATTAN.” The article, from December, 1954, was about an eccentric sixty-five-year-old named Thomas J. Keane, who, in the course of taking carefully planned weekend strolls, had managed to traverse some three thousand blocks and five hundred miles of Manhattan terrain. Smith, himself an inveterate walker, was then a little more than two years into his own all-encompassing Manhattan project—and, he estimated, about three-quarters of the way done. Why not pick up the pace and aim at finishing on the fiftieth anniversary of his predecessor’s achievement?

As big fans of such ambitious projects, this one is well worth noting.

See the website, New York City Walk.

The New Carhartt Guy

It’s official — The Christmas Tree Man is the New Carhartt Guy:

Once a year, something magical happens in New York. The metrosexuals, the unemployed artists and the unattainable are brushed aside. For five short weeks, the real men are in town. The Christmas Tree Men. They hail from Montreal, upstate New York and even Brooklyn. They are rugged and good-looking, and if you hurry, you might still find one packing up the remains of the holiday.

Some women like them because they are reliable. “He is there when I leave for work and when I get home at night,” Sara Booth, a filmmaker, said of the blue-eyed Canadian she often saw on her way to the A train from her Washington Heights apartment. “I don’t always know where my boyfriend is, but I always know where he is.”

Lindsey Schaeffer, a teacher who lives in the East Village, found them a pleasant break from the pressures of the usual dating scene. “They see me in sweat pants going to the gym,” she said, “and they still smile at me.”

They are almost too good to be true. “Not only is he nice, burly eye candy, but I know he has a job,” said Lisa Green, a graphic designer. For a holiday fling, you can’t ask for more.

Approaching a Christmas Tree Man is easy. Bring an offering – coffee or a slice of pizza will do. Remember, they are cold, hungry and would probably love to take a shower in your apartment. (After all, these are guys often known for sleeping in their cars.)

Of course, Jen notes that this story is old news: “Who among us hasn’t swapped spit with a Christmas Tree Guy?” Who among us, indeed!

See also: Carhartt Guy, as per Sunday Styles.

The Real Men are in Town:

Dear Diary

I can’t tell if today’s Metropolitan Diary is obnoxiously condescending or just obnoxious. Please someone help:

WAITRESSES
(a poem about working on the Lower East Side)

We work the late nights
in the blurred sight
of the drunks who drink in dim lights.
We share cab rides
in the sunrise.
We sit laughing at the stop signs.
We work the weekends.
We are a few friends.
We make the best of such a dead end.

I mean, I think I can visualize who could be writing this — somebody for whom waitressing is a stop-gap job in lieu of other interests — but on the off chance it isn’t, doesn’t it sound horribly obnoxious? Answer: Yes!

Also from today:

• Just Keep Telling Yourself That: Lo and behold, the high-rise tower that had sprung up a block north was reflecting the sun’s glorious afternoon rays into our humble one-bedroom, an unexpected benefit of gentrification.
• If I Had a Dime for Every Time . . .: My sister and I stared at each other dumbfounded as our heap of burdensome baggage at the top of the stairs was quickly transformed into a wonderful New York story at the bottom.
• The Happy Proletariat: The truck driver got out, tipped his hat to my aunt (who conceded defeat very graciously) and we proceeded on to the museum for a great afternoon.

Bonus Point: Better (and More Frequent) Metropolitan Diary.

“Nature Must Not Win the Game”

The Times, doing a fancy-pants version of that Jay Leno “Jay Walking” thing, asks subway riders what the cryptic quotes in the subway station under Bryant Park mean. Hilarity ensues:

In the subway there is a riddle disguised as a declaration. It is engraved in gray stone on a wall of the station at 42nd Street and Avenue of the Americas, atop a staircase to the platform where the B, the D, the F and the V rumble by.

“Nature must not win the game,” the inscription reads, “but she cannot lose.” Each day the words float briefly before thousands of eyes. A few riders pause to ponder them as they go on their way, perhaps seeking a clue in the backdrop, a mosaic of what look like berry-bearing vines creeping through and eating away at the gray stone.

The simple-sounding sentence, the inscription says, was written by Carl G. Jung, the psychologist and mythographer. What does it signify? And what is it doing in the subway?

Who knows? Not Joe Noto.

“Honestly, I couldn’t tell you what it means,” Mr. Noto, an electrician on his way home to Dyker Heights, Brooklyn, said the other day. Many other riders refused even to entertain the question.

Of course, this is New York, so no Jay Walking here:

But two recent afternoons spent conducting a semi-random survey turned up a fair share of subterranean philosophers intrigued by the cryptic pronouncement, which has been on the wall since 2002. Was it meant as a reassurance or a warning? Is it a good thing if nature wins, or a bad thing?

A police officer patrolling the station, Officer Russell King of Transit District 1, which includes the 42nd Street station, has worked enough slow shifts to have had time to chew over Jung’s words. “It seems like he’s an urbanite,” Officer King said. “It seems like we as a people in this city have to overcome everything to live.” But, he added, there’s a twist: we are part of nature, so if we defeat nature, we defeat ourselves. “It’s like a double negative, a Catch-22,” he said. “If we win, we lose.” Officer King’s partner on patrol, Wayne Steele, picked up the riff. “No matter what,” said Officer Steele, a beefy man with a prominent mustache, “nature’s going to win.”

Some people tried to break the sentence into its parts.

“‘Nature must not win,'” repeated an unassuming man in a blue-and-red windbreaker, who said he was a designer of women’s accessories and volunteered only his first name, Emilio, and his home country, Ecuador. “So man – man could win?” Emilio asked. “I think nature is bigger than man. At first glance, it makes me think two things. One is the grabs for a global empire – the power of the big corporations trying to run the world.”

A southbound F train pulled in and Emilio got on. “But beyond the greed itself,” he continued, “unless the people can make decisions in the world, it’s much easier to do just a few people’s interests.”

The train stopped at 34th Street. Emilio got out. “Nature,” he said. “Who controls nature? Nature is God. It’s the fight between the power of man’s greed and the power of God. And when it comes to reality, it doesn’t matter how much money you have, you can’t control the world.” He disappeared through the turnstiles.

But just so you know, some riders — not unsmart ones, we! — told the Times that the installation just makes them feel stupid:

“I don’t like it,” said Martin Bernier, a transplanted Parisian who owns a wholesale bakery in Queens. “I don’t think it’s appropriate for people to see in the subway. Why do they put this here? Who is Carl Gustav Jung? I know who he is now because I made a small investigation. But it makes me feel ignorant.”

Mr. Bernier pointed out that the Jung installation was part of a much larger piece that proceeds down the long corridor to the Fifth Avenue exit and includes quotations from Ovid, the nursery rhyme “Jack and Jill,” and an obscure passage from “Finnegan’s Wake,” each being invaded from above by mosaics of golden tree roots and from below by mosaics of bedrock.

Sipping quickly from his coffee cup, Mr. Bernier, 52, led a reporter down the corridor. “Look at this,” he said. “James Joyce. He’s Irish, right?” The decay hinted at in the mosaics, Mr. Bernier said, assaulted the eye.

“I’m glad to talk about this,” Mr. Bernier confided, “because I was very disturbed by this corridor. I have an average education, and I feel frustrated. It made me feel like an idiot.”

Finally, for the record, an expert’s opinion:

Meredith Sabini, a Jungian psychologist who recently compiled a book of Jung’s writings on nature, “The Earth Has a Soul,” said the quotation referred to a struggle between the conscious and the unconscious, or “natural,” mind.

“Jung is saying we’re not supposed to follow instinct blindly,” Ms. Sabini said in a telephone interview from her office in California. “We’re supposed to have consciousness. But that doesn’t mean you’re supposed to kill nature. Because the unconscious is wisdom that has grown over the millions of years we have been Homo sapiens.”

The full quotation, from Jung’s “Alchemical Studies,” says: “Nature must not win the game, but she cannot lose. And whenever the conscious mind clings to hard and fast concepts and gets caught in its own rules and regulations – as is unavoidable and of the essence of civilized consciousness – nature pops up with her inescapable demands.”

Bonus Point: MTA’s Arts for Transit Pages (curiously, no “Under Bryant Park”).

Pickpockets

Since it’s that the time of season, the Daily News has a helpful piece on pickpockets in today’s paper. Nothing groundbreaking, but it discusses the exotic-sounding School of Seven Bells, one of those Boo Radley-esque concepts that may or may not be an urban myth but is worth recounting (once again):

The worst of them are so slick that some cops believe they were trained at a legendary crime college in South America – the School of the Seven Bells.

The school, said to be in Colombia, has never been visited by a U.S. law enforcement official, and many believe it does not exist.

But as the legend goes, the final test at the school involves a teacher posing as a mark, his body booby-trapped with seven small bells, each strategically placed. To graduate, students must slip valuables from several pockets without ringing any of the bells.

Remember “School of the Seven Bells” for later use (lyrical, that!).

They also have a great glossary of “pickpocketing lingo”:

• The Pick – Snatching a valuable item from a person.
• The Dip – The thief who actually executes the pick.
• The Mark – The victim.
• Ripper – A fearless thief who brazenly rips or cuts items out of a pocket and runs.
• The Dish – A handoff. The thief who swiped the wallet gives it to another thief lurking nearby to prevent being caught.
• The Stall – A thief blocks the path of a walking target to allow a pickpocket to swoop in.
• Looping – Repeatedly passing a target or a store in order to steal something.

And don’t forget the colorfully named scams:

• The Squirt Job: A thief squirts a condiment like ketchup or mayonnaise on a victim’s jacket. The thief then points it out, or his partner points it out. While the victim wipes off the stain, the thief picks the pocket or bag.
• The Money Drop: A thief drops cash or other items in front of the victim walking down the street. Another thief comes from behind and picks the distracted victim’s pocket or swipes his or her bag.
• The Flat Tire: A thief looks for a driver sitting inside a car, punctures the car’s tire and then points it out. When the driver gets out of the car to inspect the tire, another thief steals valuables from the vehicle.
• The Bump: A thief bumps into a victim on the street, in a store or in the subway, giving his accomplice time to sneak up from behind and pick the jostled victim’s pocket.

To quote Hill Street Blues‘ Phil Esterhaus, “Let’s be careful out there!”