Gates Update: Raising the Gates

The gung-ho team of volunteers is busy raising the gates in Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s big project in Central Park. The Times has a big piece on the process today:

At 6:45 a.m. on Tuesday, as the sun was beginning to rise over Central Park, the Loeb Boathouse was buzzing. The artist Christo stood outside, admiring the way the soft morning light bathed the orange gates that teams of workers had put into place on Monday.

It was Day Two of installing his vast $20 million public art project, created with his wife, Jeanne-Claude, and there was a sense that there was no time to lose. So far, 261 16-foot-tall gates had sprouted around the park. By tomorrow evening, 7,500 will have to be in place along the park’s pedestrian walkways from 59th Street to 110th Street, in time for the saffron-colored fabric that adorns the gates to be unfurled around 8:30 on Saturday morning.

An image of the workers taken today:

The Times describes the volunteers:

While each team seemed diverse in age and profession, from college students to retired teachers and doctors, all had a common bond: a resolve to be a part of the city’s biggest public-art happening ever.

By 7:30 a.m., after a pep talk from Vince Davenport, the project’s chief engineer and construction director, and from Capt. Andrew Capul, commanding officer of the Central Park Precinct, everyone headed off to their assigned areas.

Although Mr. Douaihy called the 261 gates installed on Monday a “respectable” figure, he said that 400 to 500 more would have to go up Tuesday if the effort was to be completed by Friday.

Cruising around the park in a golf cart, he consulted with Guy Efrat, one of the area’s so-called “zone supervisors.” (Each area is divided into zones, and each zone into teams.) Mr. Efrat, who also works in movie production, was overseeing three teams in Mr. Douaihy’s area.

Like mutual strangers in a reality television show, each team felt somewhat randomly thrown together. But often, the common strand was art: Area One, Section 10, for instance, was made up of a performance artist, an advertising art director, a retired doctor/Yale University professor, a sculptor/gilder, an architect, an architectural draftsman, a freelance stagehand and a recent college graduate who is on his way to become an intern at the Chinati Foundation, a contemporary-art organization in Marfa, Tex.

“I’ve never seen so many artsy people in my life,” said Huascar Pimentel, the stagehand, who is one of the professional workers that was assigned to the team. “These guys are great – they don’t mind getting their hands dirty.”

Nor did the men mind taking directions from a woman, although some of them joked about it. (“You don’t see this much cooperation in the workplace,” said Robert Steigelman, the advertising art director.) Catherine Courter, the sculptor and gilder, had been named the team’s captain by the organizers. Michael Bianco, the recent graduate, and Arvin Garay-Cruz, the architect, had been asked to be the “levelers,” the team members who made sure that the steel plates anchoring the poles in heavy bases were installed correctly.

Each worker had attended a four-hour training session last week where the professionals took notes on those who demonstrated leadership ability (potential team captains) or mechanical ability (levelers).

It took only about three minutes for the workers to actually hoist a gate into place. The hard part was using the right size horizontal poles (which depended on the width of walkways) and wielding nuts, bolts and wrenches to attach parts like the orange boxlike sleeves that conceal the metal plates. And some spots were more difficult than others. On heavily trafficked paths, installers often had to stop working to let pedestrians pass. Hilly or narrow paths were harder to work on.

And then there was the saccharine music emanating nonstop from the ice rink. And the remarks of passersby. “I can’t work it out – it horrifies me that this is costing $20 million, I don’t care who’s paying for it,” a man carrying a briefcase said as he hurried past the workers of Area One, Section 10, on West 59th Street behind the Wollman Skating Rink.

Still, most people who stopped to chat had positive reactions. “I’m not sure about the color, but I’m a fan,” Douglas F. Eaton, a United States District Court judge, said after his daily round of skating.

On Monday the team members installed only 18 gates. But by 10:15 on Tuesday morning they were already putting up the 11th of the day. The key was establishing a rhythm: one person repeatedly readied the equipment for the levelers, and the levelers would begin their task as others trundled the gates over to their assigned positions.

“This is my cheap and cheerful vacation,” Robert Condon, the architectural draftsman, said, holding a pole in position. By noon the team headed back to the boathouse for lunch, leaving Mr. Pimentel behind to watch the equipment. (That job rotates among teammates each day.)

“Can you believe it, this was conceived the year I was born?” Mr. Cruz, 26, said as the group ambled toward the boathouse. (Christo and Jeanne-Claude have been working on “The Gates” since 1979.)

“If you look at one gate, it’s ugly, it looks like a guillotine,” he mused. “It’s the multiplicity of them that makes it a total artwork.”

“The more go up, the cooler it looks,” Ms. Courter agreed over lunch in the packed boathouse. Team members sat together, chatting happily while keeping a wary ear open to find out how many gates the other teams had installed.

See also: Preparations for Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Gates Project: Raising the Gates (Big Map page); “Barbarians (Well, Mostly Art Lovers) at the Gates” (NY Times, February 9, 2005)

A Post Kind of Story

What starts out as a typical Post kind of story — two Brooklynites arrested for having sex in public, motorcyclists caught doing it with their helmets on, no less! — takes a suspiciously Curb-Your-Enthusiamistic turn later in the report when the perp’s father blames it all on 9/11 (!) and the death of his mother:

A pair of motorcyclists were caught with their pants down — but their helmets still on — along a quiet Brooklyn street.

Robert Wallendorf, 45, and his fiancée Demetra Decolvenaere, 46, were spotted by a cop having sex in the median of a Shore Parkway service road, police said.

They were charged with public lewdness and nudity for the al fresco affair on Monday, near Bay 52nd Street in Gravesend.

Wallendorf was also hit with a single count of drunken driving, to which he pleaded guilty.

According to police sources, shortly after 1 a.m. Monday, Wallendorf and Decolvenaere had parked their motorcycle on the shoulder of Shore Parkway, walked across the road, and began having sex.

Officer Judy Emiliano, on routine patrol, came upon the 1981 Honda motorcycle.

She then saw Wallendorf and Decolvenaere in the median “with their buttocks exposed and their helmets still on, having sex,” said a police source.

The source said the suspects claimed they are engaged to be married. Concluding that the sex was consensual, Emiliano called for backup. Officer Diane McNamara arrived, and arrested them for public sex.

McNamara also smelled alcohol on Wallendorf’s breath, prompting the addi tional drunken-driving charge. He claimed that he was sober when he drove to the median make-out spot, but had “a few beers” once there, the source said.

Wallendorf’s father, Ted, who lives with his son on Marine Parkway, said his son has been drinking excessively since the death of his mother last week.

He added that his son, who works for the Postal Service, helped clean up Ground Zero after 9/11.

“He saw an arm and a leg there,” the father said. “That really got him drinking, but not like now. After his mother died, he got bad.”

“He got the motorcycle to forget his problems, but I don’t like it,” he said.

The man ended up paying a fine, while the public sex charges against the two were later dropped.

And why is it that it always seems to be people in their 40s who are charged with grody public sex acts? The younger and more beautiful are never charged!

The Nightmare of the Wedding Industrial Complex

The nightmare scenario for the Wedding Industrial Complex is a culture that avoids getting married during an entire year because of its bad luck:

With just hours to go before the Lunar New Year, dozens of Asian New Yorkers raced to the altar yesterday to head off a marriage potentially jinxed by bad fortune.

“Next year is bad luck,” explained Wilson Chau of Flushing, whose son Jason wed Camille Lee at the Municipal Building yesterday afternoon. “The Chinese don’t like next year,” he said, referring to the new year that began today.

This year in the Chinese 12-year calendar cycle is considered a less than auspicious one for nuptials because there’s no first day of spring, said William Dao, museum associate at the Museum of Chinese in the Americas, which is in Chinatown.

Known as Lap Chun, the first day of Chinese spring fell on Feb. 4, which means last year, the Year of the Monkey, saw two first days of spring. This year – the Year of the Rooster – has none.

This so-called lunar leap year happens about once every three years and is considered a bad time for weddings, Dao said.

Brides are more likely to be widowed, for instance, and couples may not be as successful as those who time their weddings more carefully.

“It stems from tradition,” Dao said.

The last few weeks have brought a flood of Asian New Yorkers getting quickie marriages to please their traditional – and more superstitious – parents back in their homelands.

According to City Clerk Victor Robles, 1,947 Asian couples applied for marriage licenses between Jan. 1 and Monday. That’s a 552 increase over the same period last year.

Among the couples who descended on the Manhattan city clerk’s office to beat the bad-luck clock were Noviyana Bong and Yauman Kirana, both 22, who are ethnic Chinese from Indonesia and live in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

On Sunday, both of their parents called them to demand they get married before today – or face waiting another year to exchange vows.

“I just follow my parents,” Bong said.

Revvin’ Kevin

Or, Life (Seems to) Imitate Curb Your Enthusiasm:

A former Brooklyn city councilman is accusing a political rival – controversial state Sen. Kevin Parker – of using official stationery to taunt him with a series of bizarre birthday greetings, months after his birthday.

“This is pure harassment and he shouldn’t be using government resources to do it, and I want it to stop,” said Noach Dear, who lost a close primary to Parker in September.

Dear, whose birthday is in November, said three such letters have arrived at his E. Seventh St. home – including one that wished him “a great lifetime.” He is demanding a Legislative Ethics Committee probe.

Parker, 37, who was arrested in Brooklyn last month for allegedly punching a city parking agent in the face after getting a $55 ticket, blamed a computer glitch.

“We often send seniors birthday cards because it’s a big thing to be a senior,” said Parker. “But unless he is coded in the Board of Elections database as someone over 65, he shouldn’t be getting anything from me.”

Dear, who is 51, doesn’t believe the mailings were a mistake.

“What he is doing now is really outrageous,” fumed Dear. “You’d think he’d want to protect the public’s money, but he spends his time wasting money with this sick joke.”

The cards, personally signed by Parker to his political enemy, were inscribed: “Heartfelt best wishes on this special day. … Here’s to a great day, a great week, a great year, a great lifetime!”

Parker raised eyebrows last spring when he awarded attendees at a political fund-raiser with a swag bag containing flavored condoms and lubricants.

The Daily News dubbed him “Revvin’ Kevin” last year when the paper reported Parker racked up three speeding tickets, had his driver’s license suspended and had two highway smashups in recent years.

Gates Update

Workers have begun putting up the orange support beams for Christo and Jeanne-Claude’s Gates project in Central Park.

Jeanne-Claude explains the project to a group of children:

“Know why we’re doing this?” Jeanne-Claude asked children yesterday after unexpectedly getting out of a car on East Drive near 90th St.

“They are a work of art, and a work of art is for nothing,” she said. “Only a work of art, for joy and beauty.”

Unfortunately, the Daily News omitted the children’s responses.

Meanwhile, the Post, doing the Postian thing, quotes an 81-year-old retiree doing the 81-year-old retiree thing:

Park-goers seemed excited yesterday as they watched the much-hyped project take form.

“I think it’s good that they are challenging people to re-envision their conception of a place they know so well,” said Chris Martin, 27, a Brooklyn poet.

Others weren’t sold.

“The park is for everyone, not for one person to gum up with their whimsical, individualist fancies,” said Louis Thorn, 81, a Manhattan retiree.

Bah humbug!