Analysis Of Moody Streets : Analyzing The Duality Of Atmospheres

Growing up in Manhattan was an epitome of excitement. Back in the day, and also to its founding, New York has always been a beehive of activities. Going down memory lane, I reminisce on trips that we’d take to loads of places around the city for entertainment during weekends and on holidays. Raised by Spanish immigrants, my father was a chef in a small but busy restaurant along Fifth Avenue. Since I can recall, fifth avenue has always had some of the major and well known fashion stores and hotels in the city. This would have

Hitchcock’s notoriously elaborate Rear Window set (under the art direction of J. Macmillan Johnson and Hal Pereira) is so significant because it contains the entirety of the movie. The rest of the city is a mere suggestion, hinted at by cars and pedestrians passing by a narrow strip of alleyway. Therefore, the real analysis of city life that Rear Window explores is that of the relationship between neighbors. In his essay The Metropolis and Mental Life, Georg Simmel comments that the city dweller must avoid overstimulation by practicing “reserve” among others and that,

It is no secret that homelessness is quickly becoming an epidemic in the United States, but the homeless population is not one secular demographic. For every person in the US living on the street, there is a unique story of how they got there; nonetheless, that is not to say that many of these stories are without some commonalities. Along with homelessness, there is another issue plaguing American cities, but this issue is much more covert, and exists under a guise of improvements like fancy apartments and trendy restaurants. Gentrification is defined as “the process of renovating and improving a house or district so that it conforms to middle-class taste” (Erikson); but what that definition fails to mention is the discourse it has on the

The Bowery is known for being a place of sleazy and sketchiness, riddled with punks, bums,con men, and other colorful folk. It was a dark neighborhood to be at, figuratively and literally– for the neighborhood was darkened by the shadow of the trains that ran above it. The blurring of gender was out in the open at the Bowery. Murderers and prostitutes in dance halls and dives claimed the neighborhood by the 1890s. (Moss, 86) What made the Bowery what it was, was it’s music scene. Famed punk venue CBGB was located there and in 2006 was made to shut its doors forever due to raising rent prices. For the Bowery had become the new “it” spot, with it’s edgy allure and overall toughness. CBGB was a landmark and the locals and true lovers of the venue wanted it stay and stand in the face of gentrification. Alas, it was not meant to be for the punks lost to John Varvatos who put his boutique in what was CBGB. What seemed to attract Varvatos to the space was its legacy, how it was a place for “others” to take refuge from the world and create. He had a “real reverence for the history of the space”, and yet in the next sentence Moss goes on to say how Varvatos would serve a “cleaned-up” version of the venue. (Moss, 82) A cleaned-up

Borough Park, a distinct Orthodox Jewish neighborhood in the southwestern section of the borough of Brooklyn, remains bound by family values and religious traditions. The architecture of the residential neighborhood consists of modest brick buildings no more then six stories tall. Borough Park does not boast Art Deco skyscrapers or wide avenues, which were known for in New York at the time of its production in the early 20th century. Its only differentiating characteristic is the constant repeated chatter of a specific ethnic group that persists all day long, except for the eerie emptiness from sundown Friday evening to sundown Saturday evening. The chatter is spoken in different tongues of Yiddish and Hebrew, disregarding those who don’t dress modestly or humbly. Creating a world that

The essay begins with a short description of the writer’s own experience when she arrived in New York, from the bustling in the crowded streets, to the impersonal existence in her apartment, as she knows none of her neighbors and can only speculate who they are and what they are doing by the sounds they’re making. She moves on to giving several examples of how New Yorkers react with apathy when in crowds, even when something utterly absurd happens, like a woman wearing only her bathrobe on the bus exclaims that she must have forgotten her token in

A trip to 42nd street circa 1990 was certainly no destination fit for a family. Walls of graffiti adorn the peeling awnings of storefronts and theatres promise private dances and live nude women. Porn shops dotted the city block with colorful invitations to sex hotlines and signs prohibiting entry to anyone under the age of eighteen (Wollman 445). Decades earlier, during the Prohibition era, speakeasies and brothels lined the city, creating New York’s red light district. Today’s Times Square, however, bares no hint of resemblance to its former image of sleaze and mystery. Neon lights that once illustrated silhouettes of burlesque dancers have since been fashioned into the welcoming faces of cartoon characters. Signs visible

Thomas Williams’ article in the New York Times titled “How Hipsters Ruined Paris” is an interesting take on the gentrification of Paris’s red light district. Williams begins his narrative with a description of the surroundings of the Northern part of the section of city known as ‘la Nouvelle-Athènes’. This section of the city is notorious for its seediness and for its importance to the history of modern art, two qualities that seem to always go hand in hand. However, Willams notes the grungy atmosphere and qualia that this Parisian neighborhood once held has been cleaned up and effectively gentrified. The number of regulated brothels in the district has gone down from 84 in 2005 to a mere 24 in 2016. Continuing with his description

In Jeff Ferrell’s “Tearing Down the Streets Adventures in Urban Anarchy”, it introduced themes of image of the city, rights to the city, and given different examples of anarchist activities in urban environments. In my opinion, I enjoyed the book’s narratives on urban cities trying to clean the streets of unwanted acts and people; along with the collective movements attempting to retake the open space and streets. However, Ferrell’s actions in his daily life to retake space are questionable. Ferrell considers cities are changing their images by undergoing “Disneyfication” (Ferrell, 2001, p. 8) with unnecessary security, planned entertainment and making it ‘beautiful’. Ultimately, it forces authorities to restrict and isolate unwanted acts

Thanks to slumming the middle class was provided with a new way to define its own social and moral superiority. It also created reformers that were against slumming, but this produced more amusement as it created more seekers. “the presence of reformers—especially female reformers—on the streets and in the tenements and dives of these districts paradoxically suggested that such spaces were safe for popular congregation, and reformers’ activities in the cities’ slums and red-light districts were often remarkably similar to those of their pleasure-seeking compatriots ” (18). As more people were attracted to slumming it created a mix of social classes that broke the social bounties and chains that keep society in a hierarchy. Heap argues that slumming promoted social mixing and change the racial and sexual system. Many opportunities for slum residents as whites’ interest more in slumming culture grow. Some slums stated to offer tours of the slums to attract more customers. Slumming gave the opportunities to cross over class lines as well as ethic boundaries; but more importantly it gave the opportunity to explore ones sexual identity.

In relation to this, Kern’s article “Gendered Urbanization” illustrates how the factors attracting affluent women to the new condominiums in Parkdale are often the same instruments of oppression against the residents; according to her research, an attractive aspect of the new condominiums are security measures put into place to keep out the impoverished, and therefore dangerous, communities within Parkdale, such as a 24-hour concierge, double locks on all apartment doors, and a video monitor at the front desk. Even if “street[s] are very quiet” (Kern 372, III) the design of the buildings project and imply a criminal, unpredictable nature onto the original residents of Parkdale, and “enshrines these expectations into the built environment”. One resident interviewed stated “ my [apartment] has twenty-four-hour security, and they don’t let anybody in without talking to security. Residents are not allowed to let anybody in, even if you open the doors” (Kern 372, IV). Therefore, the community lost to the shift in housing rates is not replaced with incoming residents, but rather the two communities are segregated by classist infrastructure and stereotypes that push the lower income people to the outskirts of Parkdale. This leads to a huge sense of isolation and unease in the community of original Parkdale residents because, not only are they threatened and disadvantaged financially, the implantation on these condominiums are actively keeping them out.

David Harvey’s piece on The Political Economy of Public Space explains the ‘kind of association or even identity that has been forged between the proper shaping of urban public space and the proper functioning of democratic governance’. He uses as an example the intriguing designs of Haussman’s boulevards and environments in Paris during the Second Empire. This public space sets a new stage of hope or Coalition and a ‘boundary between the public and the private spaces’. The design was to promote political agenda into the public collective nonetheless dictate and regulate how the spaces were used. I’d like to think of this boulevard as an instrument that reshapes an urban context constantly like when I walk through the streets of 125th street,

On this corner there are two corner stores, a police station and duplexes starting to appear. This bring the feeling of the city (busyness, hustle and bustle) to the quaint little suburb. And I fell it is the apartment buildings that trap you in and make you feel uncomfortable. This is where James Kuntsler’s and Montgomery’s ideas of happy cities come into play. For the most part the area is a happy place, nothing too ugly that you just can’t stand to be around. As you approach that corner the apartment buildings are sort of the ugly duckling, they weren’t built with the most fashionable facade; a brick wall with some windows. Not too visually pleasing, then you have the police station and again the front of the building is alright but go to the side3 and you want to walk as fast as you can to get past

In the article, “Gender, Class and Urban Space: Public and Private Space in Contemporary Urban Landscapes” Liz Bondi, puts forth her perspectives about the possible interconnections between gender dichotomy ,urban public /private space or city/suburb dichotomies and how separable or intertwined they are with each other. She attempts to further provide evidence that ‘the ideal of separate spheres’ (Bondi, Pg.162.) continues to affect our lives .She states that gentrification and class is intertwined in this dynamic interaction between gender and space. Bondi identifies these ‘dichotomies’ as duos, be it city/suburb, public /private or male/ female. She points out to the associations between masculinity -public space - city and femininity - private space - suburbs and that these interconnections are look upon as ‘ideologies rather than reality’ (Bondi 2013). The conclusions Bondi presented are based on the empirical evidence she collected which seem to lack abstractness, i.e they are specific to certain location at a certain time. But the interpretations and the data collected reflect the complex character of the urban realm, gender and the interplay between the two. They exhibit characters of being separate as well as being interwoven, distinct, ‘disentangled and a dismantled’ as well as overlapping each other. Although Bondi seems to acknowledge this complexity; she overlooks its importance in her selection of the research site and sample size.

From my office window, I could now easily see the glittering New York streets gradually becoming hectic as a result of wandering tourists and proletarians coming home from work. I missed the city – coming from my head, that statement sounded anomalous; but I really did.