RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,229
(superstructure vs. infrastructure)
When the Miller Expressway
collapsed - otherwise known
as the Elevated West-Side
Highway - the world little
noticed. For years afterward,
the fight was over what it
should be replaced with.
Every governmental and
municipal goon within range
had their say, and their plans.
Studies were done, for this
or that. Westway. Hudson
Docks. New Piers. West
Yards. Hudson Throughway.
It was weird, and it was
almost as if Jane Jacobs had
never existed nor beaten
the pants off of Robert Moses
with the neighborhood coalition
Hudson Street/Greenwich
Village supporters. The West
Side Highway (elevated) had,
since sometime around the
1920's run or stood (IT
didn't run; cars ran on it),
about 40 feet above the
ground-level (guessing), a
few lanes in each direction,
with a posted highway-type
speed. Lots of trucks, of
course, and commercial
traffic. In those early days
of the development of autos
as primary transport means,
no one knew, really, what to
do or where to place, cars and
trucks. Eventually all of that
became the main contributor
to the downfall of Manhattan,
as neighborhoods were squeezed,
abandoned and them obliterated,
and all other ideas of travel and
movement were sort of consigned
to the less-than-ideal idea of
gridded streets locking up with
zillions of cars, trucks, and taxis.
From the very first day, it only
got worse, and all of America
itself, leading to, and outside
of NYC, fell into the same trap.
There's nothing worse than
a planner with a plan.
-
The idea of an 'elevated' highway
was probably dreamed up in some
engineering-clerk's brain while
doodling on some Buck Roger's
comic strip; wiling away time
and intention. It's too late now
to ask great-grandparents or
grandparents about how this
all began. They're all gone, and
they probably liked it anyway.
One of the fondest memories
I have of the one grandmother
I had, born in like 1900, is of
her talks to me about the arrival
of cars and trucks; replacing the
street horses and foot traffic of
the city, as she'd replicate the
sights and sounds of all that
was lost - along with the new
things that came and got in
the way of all else : paved
road, curbs and sewers, drains
and sluices - all the stuff
that went into keeping all the
new streets from pooling or
flooding, and for the high
elevations and the low bogs,
all of which, or many of which,
were leveled and cut or filled.
She rued the loss of horses and
dirt. I was always fond of
having someone like her, who
didn't just applaud the new and
gleefully accept the losses. She
was adept enough to see what
was lost, how people were
coarsened by the supposed
'progress' which it all brought.
Forty-five years later, that
elevated highway, which ran
from the western terminus of
Canal Street from the Holland
Tunnel, and down to beneath the
Battery, and to uptown, into like
the west sixties or so to become
Riverside Drive back on solid
ground, was a tottering ruin
of neglected neglected and
rusted/corroded ironwork and
underpinnings, and shoddy
macadam and road surfaces.
It finally gave way and a truck
fell through, spelling the end.
By about 1980, whenever it was,
I was present at the demolition
of it - pieces of rebar and concrete
hanging everywhere, piles of rubble
along with it. Like the EL which
once ran the rails through the
heights of Manhattan, it too
would be gone. I made a super8
filming of it, and then had it
transferred to video-cassette.
It's still around here somewhere.
-
The truck fell through, the
highway was condemned, and
then all the ghouls came out
with their plans of refurbishing
the west side - piers, warehouses,
and sidings of which had, by the
1970's, become nothing much
more than derelict trysting places
for the wayward sex trades which
went on - gay, hetero, and all
in between - under the old
bridgeworks, along the old
building-strips, in abandoned
trucks and cars, and anywhere
else. Waterfront diners and
food stands here and there
still catered too - like popcorn
stands in movie houses - the
'trade. Hookers, hawkers, drug
lords and losers too. It was
apparent then that people
STILL didn't know what to do
about cars and trucks - which
old NYC was never really built
for (gridded streets, crowded
proximities, right-angles
everywhere, with trucks trying
to turn and double-parking
for deliveries while endless
taxis and cars back up, trying
to get across town to any of the
five or six narrow and clogged
bridges extending outward, east,
or the three going west to Joisey
and the rest of the country outward.
Truly, madness, made by Fenster.
-
One time, when my father was
seeking me out, on one of his
periodic car trips in, to make
sure I was alive and/or well, he
found me down there, under the
docks and bridges area. I was
surprised as all get-out when,
out of the blue, he found one of
the hot-dog guys to be an old
childhood chum of his from
Bayonne days. They hit it off
like two gems, going on about
all sorts of things. It was a feeding
frenzy of free hot dogs for 'Andy,'
and for me too, his son! I hadn't
eaten so well in three months!
-
That's the kind of happy and
serendipitous things that happen
when 'street-life' is allowed to
prosper and thrive. All the geeks,
with their plans and clipboards
and charts and designs, they spend
literal billions on forming a place
into their pre-ordained limits of
what will be built (for profit). That's
called 'infrastructure,' and it's dead
on arrival - stupid plazas and
sculpture and clean, open spaces
where no one goes and new crime
proliferates (in addition to the crimes
the planners are involved in. The
very idea of planned urban space
and infrastructure sucks and is
stupid. But people roll over, take
it, let the planners take over and
they try to live. What I call, instead,
the 'superstructure' over that, is the
real world of grime, crime, debris,
people using things, mingling,
gathering, accidentally getting
together, talking and exchanging,
OUTSIDE of the parameters of
standards and issues, government
and geeks. I'm betting that if the
Miller Expressway/Westside Highway
had fallen on the heads of our
accidental hot-dog fest, we all
could have died happily, and, in a
very urban style, quite unplanned.
No one anymore even gives the
real world a chance.
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