RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,214
(transistor radios)
The funny thing was, about the
Twin Towers, or the World Trade
Center as it was more officially
known, was how much I really
disliked them. In the beginning.
When they first went up, I detested
what looked to me like two
transistor radios jutting into the
sky. For you modern cats, that's
a throwback reference to the days
when Emerson and GE actually
made, wonder of wonders! hand
held radios for personal use. In
their days they were quite amazing,
and it all started about 1958. At
first, as the 'technology' of the
new 'transistor' developed, the
race was on for more and more
'transistor' in the radio; at first
6, then maybe 8, and as I recall,
by 1960 or so, 12 transistors.
I never rightly knew what was
going on with all that, nor what
a transistor even was - opposed
to a 'resistor', I figured - but the
more you had, the more the little
radio could pull in. It was as if
even this 'new' thing had to be
entered into the then-current
rat-race of more and bigger and
larger, all. It was funny too, since,
as the cars got longer and wider,
with fins and swoops and chrome
and all, so as to sort of represent
symbolic power, when I saw the
actual space capsules and stuff of
the Mercury rockets and John
Glenn and the space-shots I was
staggered by how, as of a sudden
they had been made to look like,
instead, toasters, stunted erasers,
or the silliest, most blunt-looking,
utility boxes winging in space.
So much for glitz and glamor, and
in the same manner the Twin Towers,
when finally completed, represented
nothing but expediency and an act
of 'efficiency' which brought forth
the most banal, neutral and generic
looking, vertical blocks; to make it
worse, twinned! America sure knew
how to pocket the 8-ball.
-
Walter Benjamin had it that 'all
paths lead to the present, and the
future leads there too.' I guess
that was sure truthful.
-
The hand-held transistor radio
for me, walking along Inman
Avenue, vivified life as I knew
it. Allowing me to walk down
Inman Avenue, where my 'home'
was, at #116, in a miserable row
of exact-pattern lookalike sand
castles, to be accompanied by
Ben E. King singing 'There is a
rose in Spanish Harlem...' Damn
it all, thought I, there really are
other places.
-
Anyway, moving along, the Twin
Towers represented to high-point
of that 1970's time, upon completion,
of flat planes, right angles, stern
visage, no windows, and people
otherwise ventilated and entombed
by 'technology,' though, then, of
the architectural operation. Complete
and utter rationality embodied in
steel and glass. Little did anyone
know what was to come. I wasn't
much interested and, at first, as I
said, really disliked them.
-
What happened over time, especially
at right about the turn of the century
to 2000, was that I had really grown
to love them. They stood for so much
of NY for me, whether good or bad.
They were useful as refence points,
visually, to one's position on the
island, or across from it, to the
outlying places of Brooklyn, or
New Jersey. I knew the sightlines,
from uptown or across town, and
was quickly able to determine
things from where I knew the
towers were; which streets opened
to their straight view, which were
angled, etc. I'd often sit at the
tiny outside-drinking balcony of
the Nancy Whiskey Pub and just
stare them down (a great vantage
point there).
-
Conceptually, it was all a different
matter. What had happened, actually,
was that, through the 1960's and with
only a modicum of consideration and
'public' permission, Authority itself,
(NY Urban Development, the folks
at Port Authority, to name but two) -
each seeking to increase their local
fiefdoms and commands, desensitize
neighborhoods to anything but greed,
profit, and commercial venture, and
the public be damned, took over the
lands, properties, and storefront small
businesses of an entire Lebanese and
Middle Eastern district of shops ,
grocers, and small stores. It had, until
then, been referred to as the electronics
district - since many of the shops
and workmen of the area were of the
repair-skills for small appliances,
TV's and radios, wiring, short wave,
buzzers, relays, buttons and (probably)
transistors too. They were unceremoniously
shut down, and the people moved out -
sent scurrying, in fact. I don't know to
where they were exiled, but like the
Lincoln Center district, at about the
same time, where the same thing had
been done to Puerto Ricans, I'd imagine
it was out to those gruesome apartment
and plaza projects like Starrett City, or
out to Flushing or Queens. There's an
entire book on this Trade Center
relocation and demolition, by Danny
Lyon, entitled 'The Destruction of
Lower Manhattan.' - a fascinating
read and photo book showing the
derelict district, the ruins and the
demolitions and the raw vacancies
of the area. Over what amounted to
maybe 5 years, the clearance and
land preparation for the massive
excavations of the towers got
underway - almost surreptitiously,
without big announcement and/or
publicity, an entire section of
lower Manhattan was removed.
-
By the time the towers were
destroyed, I had grown fond of
them and at that peculiar time
I'd frequented and gotten myself
used to, even, the concourse and
shopping mezzanine, outlandishly,
since it was like nothing other than
a suburban mall, a commercial
chatter-space serving the thousands
who worked there daily. Food,
clothing. Ties, belts, shoes, hats,
leathers, watches and jewelry,
books and expensive collectibles,
rare-items, antiques. It was, in
its respect, pure commerce. Above
it, in a myriad of offices and
corridors, there was, for a time,
nothing so much as a great vacancy.
So much so that, at first, around
1974, in order to keep the
enterprise solvent, the State of
New York itself became the
largest tenant; offices, boards,
bureaus and commission and
agencies too - let alone what
was moved there from Albany.
The place was, at first, a real
losing proposition.
-
Frankly, I was never sure what
to make of it. Ornament had
always been a part of architecture
on older NYC buildings - that
is why we note them and
remember them and why that
old style of 1880's grand and
stately architecture represented.
This, however was something
new, past even the steel and glass
modernism of Lever House and
the midtown ship/shape glass
and glitter buildings. The Twin
Towers were simply plain and
raw and brutish, sort of just as
they crumbled died too. The
commercial concourse within
represented nothing more than
commodity culture, internalized,
taken is and denied the street.
The business of the buildings,
in their aspects, wasn't in fact
'commerce' at all; nor was it
trade. Plain and simple, it was
mass-bureaucracy; it was the
buying and selling, and the
transporting of, great quantities
of everything, ('Trade, Global')
by way of clerks, trackers, typists,
accountants, and shipping and
receiving management in huge
numbers. Or Governmental-force
bureaucracy - a brutal, plain,
force in its own way. These towers
probably deserved to die, sad to
say. The least likely suspects did
it too - crazed, desert, nomads,
little different than the crazed,
desert American everywhere
doing the selfsame stuff just in
the habit and rubric of another
ideology. Supposedly. Mammon.
Allah. Yahweh. Pick it.
-
It's funny to realize that the first
attempt at taking the towers down
was a failure. It was 1986 or so
when some other Islamic cleric
masterminded a van laden with
heavy explosives to breach the
underground gates for parking
and explode beneath a tower,
which did occur, and took out
a large area and many vehicles,
etc., but nothing enough to
dissemble one tower, let alone
two. Same sort of terror-thought.
The blind cleric was tried and
sent away for many years, vowing
that the 'next attempt would NOT
fail.' (I don't know whatever
happened to him, I think he's
dead by now; but I know he was
imprisoned for a long time). It
was that first attempt destruction
that put up the vehicle-barriers,
gate-barricades, and no-parking
areas which were in place after
that. in any case, by 2001, that
problem too had been superseded,
in this case, by air travel. When
those towers came down, a great
part of whatever new-soul New
York was supposed to have been
getting, or building, went down
with it.
