Hindsight (is 9/11 vision.)

Tuesday October 19, 2004

The reason I came on my journey was to Vision Quest, a north American native practice of going out in the wilderness alone to contemplate life and get a vision for the future. This trip is performed once every 7 years according to the Cheef. Today was the day.

I took the 1 and dropped down to the World Trade Center site. Seemed like a great place to start. Almost everyone has been affected by September 11, 2001. The subway station has been rebuilt with a grand new entrance. Several NYPD stood at the entrance, a couple officers cradled machine guns.

I didn’t really see the need for the guns, (what were they supposed to do, shoot another jet out of the sky.) But as a graphic designer I realize the power of the symbol - to that end them guns worked extremely well. Gone were the hordes of souvenir sellers that were present the last time I visited, 15 months prior. I'm sure the dose of rain didn’t help.

Most of the construction barricades were down so you could look at the obliterated pit. There is still not alot to see. Just a cube. More striking is the patch of languid sky dramatizing what is otherwise a concrete canyon. Many managed to scrawl on the galvanized grating of the subway platform. Tributes and epitaphs. The most memorable was “Fucked Up”.

I wanted to see the Lower East Side. It’s tenements, I feel, are a tribute to the human spirit. The rain started coming down really heavy, So I veered right and took my ass-ets through the financial district, sloshed past city hall, staggering cross streets up-town.

Stopping in Chinatown at a corner of Canal, I was soaked but the rain began to let up. The tight stalls were laced with asian-made knock offs, like purses and watches, but no customers. It was at one of these that I snapped the picture below. To me an extremely deep statement of New York street mentality.

Grouped together were cheap color copied portraits of the Late Great Icons. Mother Teresa, Jerry Garcia and John Gotti. My breath would be wasted explaining the irony of this accidental triptych.

Blazing right up Bowery, momentum was starting to kick-in. Took some pics of CBGB and then into a restaurant supply store. Went past the frying pans to compare the Homer Laughlin and Buffalo China that was stacked high. I looped up to Houston - killer junk stores, one window display was loaded with old medical equipment and models. Why does medical shit have to be so creepy I thought as I glazed in.

Across the street was a sun lit meter-wide print of Andre the Giant plastered on a wall, behind a fence. That would be a Soho Plein Air. Dope. And then things started to change. Shoe box sized store fronts that are perfectly designed and filled with hand-picked object 'darte that wouldn’t be out of place on Rodeo Drive. Gonzo I'm in Soho.

It was 3:00 p.m. and the city was at a lull. Lunch hour was over, but the kids were still in school. A few minutes of peace before another cycle of rush hour and evening merry ment ripped through. It felt like a plastic bag swirling in the wind a la American Beauty.

Buzzing right along, I really wanted to see the nitty and gritty of Alphabet City, so I headed over to Avenue B, What I found was the amazing beauty and juxtaposition of Neighborhood Gardens spaced out through the blocks. What were once torn up and polluted vacant lots are now carefully planned artistic hideaways. A hearty assembly of planted and potted vegetation were covered with fresh liquid. I drunk in the beauty and hammered a Bass ale.

Take me out in the morning dew my friend. I was intoxicated by the beauty. Stoned walkways were cobelled together with old bricks, many were the bricks with names pressed in. Most of these lush gardens were closed, but one that held a two-story high Japanese style garden house. Irasshaimase.

I headed north on A until 11th Street and over to 1st avenue and 12th street to the East Village building I lived in November and December of 1984. Street-level was once a flipped-out Ukrainian Toy store but now a very slick brasserie, paneled with oiled wood. It looked toasty inside but “Hearth” entrees fetched $20 to $30 a plate.

I was feeling tight and not really in the mood for a $23 salad of marinated gorgonzola and pickled jicama. I headed back down to East 6th street and a late, late lunch of lamb stewed with curry, a mango lassi and nan. Suddenly a break in the weather and the sun ripped down

My anniversary journey would be wasted if I didn’t take in the acid-jazz/proto-punk of St. Marks place or McSorley’s Tavern, the oldest bar in the city, one block south. As I quickly downed a pair of darks, a mildly, developmentally disabled, and tipsy young man from Staten Island, walked in to reclaim his spot at the bar, his speech was unclear when he whispered “Rain is so Beautiful”.

I chatted with the guy for a few minutes before I was wiped out by the impending vision -- it I was all because I was kind-faced. After that realization I was gone. It was 4:20 and I was cooked. I went home, crashed and zonked out.