The New York Times Magazine dips to a new low – with an almost cover-to-cover feature on – GET THIS – “The City (read: Manhattan) in the Second Gilded Age.” I know the magazine has devolved into a marketing vehicle for selling expensive condos, high-end cars, and watches – not to worry this Sunday’s Times also includes an entire special magazine for the chronographically inclined. I can see Herbert Muschamp and Jane Jacobs turning in their graves. The whole thing would be completely inane if it didn’t include Bob Walker’s piece on “the Donald’s” new project downtown. Any artist or creative types left downtown are surely now packing their bags for Queens, Jersey City or Philly. And another by Dan Gross on how the place is losing it’s global edge in finance to London. After detailing the shift to London and other global financial centers, Gross tries to find light at the end of the tunnel. “So rather than high-end luxury services fueled largely by Wall Street wages and bonuses,” he writes,” New York will have high-end luxury services that
themselves fuel the economy. Wait til the dollar drops another 20 percent or so.” Maybe. More likely, the globally idle rich will buy up more of Manhattan, at the very moment its economic base is being eclipsed. Or as Jane Jacobs would say: “When a place gets boring even the rich people leave.”
October 17th, 2007 at 3:43 pm
The Donald is probably the tackiest person in the public arena, and my guess is it’s on purpose. I think he’s the PT Barnum of our time, selling the image of rich opulance while making money off the rubes. We were in New York last year and walked past the Trump Tower. We went in and I was amazed that the stores weren’t Sacs and Tiffany but Tower Records, discounters and a cafeteria — pretty low end stuff, so tourists can say they got this deal on 5th Avenue, and ate in the Trump Tower no less. And it all fit — the tasteless TV show, the obnoxious behavior, etc. This may or may not be who he really is, but he’s pretending to sell classy and delivering tacky. So he goes Downtown in the tradition of the barkers outside Greenwich Village clubs.