Spotted in Williamsburg on the inside of the narrow extruded steel pole supporting a parking sign.
Category: NYC
Ratzinger’s history in New York
how do you say “booga booga!” in ten languages?
In an email with the subject line, “My encounter with Pope Benedict XVI,” a friend and awesome activist colleague of mine reminds us today that our outrage over what Josef Ratzinger represents has a history, including one very much in our midst. The following paragraphs are an excerpt from Michaelangelo Signorile’s first book, “Queer in America: Sex, the Media and the Closets of Power,” published in 1993.
[The event described here occurred on January 27, 1988. I will forever be grateful to the new pope for being so integral to my development.]
One protest that was announced was an upcoming zap of Josef Cardinal Ratzinger, the German prelate who was head of the Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith. He had written a paper for the Vatican in which he said that homosexuality was “intrinsically evil” and a “moral evil.” Cardinal Ratzinger had said the church had to fight the homosexual and fight against legislation that “condoned” homosexuality.
The Ratzinger appearance was at St. Peter�s, a church known for its modern architecture, at Citicorp Center…When I arrived, the place was packed. It was in a big amphitheater that looked more like the United Nations General Assembly chamber than a church. This wasn�t going to be a Catholic mass; St. Peter�s wasn�t even a Catholic Church. Ratzinger may have been a religious figure but he was also a political leader, especially since he was the church’s antigay crusader, here to fight against gay civil rights legislation. The church wanted him to speak in a slick, modern, secular-looking space, free of ornate and intimidating religious d�cor and adornment. It made the gathering accessible and open to people of all faiths and political persuasions.
Ratzinger sat at the altar, along with Cardinal O’Connor and several other prelates. Judge Robert Bork, the conservative Supreme Court nominee who’d just been rejected by the Senate, sat in the front row. Mrs. William F. Buckley, Jr., was there too, as was an incredible array of Upper East Side women, the upper crust of New York’s Catholic Society. There were prominent Wall Street businessmen and local government officials. And rows and rows of nuns, brothers, and priests, perhaps the heads of orders and parishes. I began to feel very small � I hadn’t seen so many priests since Catholic school.
I looked for protesters, but I couldn’t see anyone with a sign or a T-shirt. I wondered for a few moments if anything was really going to happen. I had decided to go there strictly to watch, to check out how these people operated when they conducted these demonstrations. As for myself, I didn’t know the first thing about protesting and I still wasn’t sure about it. I certainly didn’t like the idea of getting arrested.
…Ratzinger took the podium and began to speak. As soon as he finished his first sentence, a group of about eight people to the left of the crowd leaped to their feet and began chanting “Stop the Inquisition!” They chanted feverishly and loudly, their voices echoing throughout the building. The entire room was fixated on them. Activists suddenly appeared in the back of the church and began giving out fliers explaining the action. Two men on the other side of the room jumped up and, pointing at Ratzinger, began to scream, “Antichrist!” Another man jumped up, in one of the first few rows near the prelate, and yelled, “Nazi!” All over the church, angry people began to shout down the protestors who were near them; chaotic yelling matches broke out.
It was electrifying. Chills ran up and down my spine as I watched the protestors and then looked back at Ratzinger. Soon, anger swelled up inside me: This man was the embodiment of all that had oppressed me, all the horrors I had suffered as a child. It was because of his bigotry that my family, my church — everyone around me — had alienated me, and it was because of his bigotry that I was called “faggot” in school. Because of his bigotry I was treated like garbage. He was responsible for the hell I’d endured. He and his kind were the people who forced me to live in shame, in the closet. I became livid.
I looked at Cardinal O’Connor, who had buried his head in his hands, and I recognized the man sitting next to him. It was O’Connor’s spokesman and right-hand man, Father Finn, who had been the dean of students back at my high school, Monsignor Farrell. A vivid scene flashed in front of my eyes: The horrible day when I was in the principal’s office talking to the principal, the guidance counselor, and the dean, the day they threw me out because I was queer. I looked back at Ratzinger, my eyes burning; a powerful surge went through my body. The shouting had subsided a bit because some of the brothers had gotten in front of the room to calm the crowd. The police had arrived and were carting away protestors.
Suddenly, I jumped up on one of the marble platforms and, looking down, I addressed the entire congregation in the loudest voice I could. My voice rang out as if it were amplified. I pointed at Ratzinger and shouted: “He is no man of God!” The shocked faces of the assembled Catholics turned to the back of the room to look at me as I continued: “He is no man of God — he is the Devil!”
I had no idea where that came from. A horrible moan rippled across the room, and suddenly a pair of handcuffs was clamped on my wrists and I was pulled down….
…I was excited the see something in the New York Post the next day besides the gossip columns: a headline � “Gays Rattle Pope’s Envoy” � next to a photo of an anguished Cardinal Ratzinger.
I joined the ACT UP media committee.
One year later Signorile and I both participated, along with thousands of others, in the 1989 “Stop the Church” action. One of the most important catalysts for its success was our community’s anger over Ratzinger’s 1986 letter to the bishops of the Catholic church, “On the Pastoral Care of Homosexual Persons.”
outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral, December 10, 1989
[image at top by Domenico Stinellis from the Associated Press via Robert Boyd; lower image is that of a Jack Smith photo on the front page of the Daily News copied from my archives]
NYC police are now proven liars, but nothing will change
Welcome citizens! (wire and flesh, inside the holding pen on Pier 57)
AND THEY’LL DO IT AGAIN
This is the political nightmare we fear the most. — joseph Keiffer
Six letters in the NYTimes today discuss yesterday’s news article about the confirmation of the false arrest of hundreds of people during last year’s Republican Parteitage in New York. They cover a lot of ground and every one of the short contributions is worth a read, but I feel compelled to add my own observation here:
All of this almost certainly means nothing over six months after the damage was done. These people were held captive in miserable conditions, their voices silenced, for up to five days. That time and those assaults can never be restored. The speech silenced then was not and will never be heard; it was unable to influence or effect anything while voices were locked up inside a filthy abandoned pier. [see my archive for posts from the end of August and the first week of September, 2004]
Even if the innocence of these victims is affirmed now, and the malfeasance of the police and city administration is made clearly manifest to the world, what most people are not thinking about is the fact that it worked very well. It silenced a people who thought themselves free, including countless numbers who were frightened into staying at home.
A radical, quasi-fascist regime is now firmly entrenched in the most powerful nation on earth, and there is no effective dissent anywhere.
Worst of all, in spite of what happened in the courts last week, it will work the next time too. The police will continue to suppress all dissent; it’s what our leaders want them to do. There will be no reprimands, no directives or new systems which might prevent a recurrence of last summer’s shame or an even greater debacle in the future.
[image, repeated from my September 3, 2004 post, via indymedia, by anonymous]
toward a more beautiful New York
sign race
This was the scene on 23rd Street a few nights ago. Boston Market was installing a long canopy stretching to the curb, presumably to compete for attention with its fast food and fast life neighbors. This miniature Las Vegas is immediately adjacent to our own building, whose storefronts are currently being restored to their restrained, mid-1930’s art deco appearance (including curved glass and awnings that roll out of pockets above display windows). A cab ride home in the rain the other night revealed that this electrified visual pollution is taking over much of the city.
Footnote: When I moved into Chelsea Gardens the buildings which stood where most of these signs are now composed a small row of once-dignified brownstones, the last on our side of the block. By the 1980’s it was clear that they were the victims of malign neglect by absentee owners. Their tenants were eventually removed by one means or another (except for the pigeons), and the buildings slowly disintegrated, their rotting carcasses meanwhile presenting a continuous assault to the aesthetics, health and safety of the neighborhood. Years passed before they were torn down altogether, and by that time only the birds seemed to care that they were gone. The two-story replacements seen in the picture are built of Styrofoam, bent aluminum strips and wallboard. Their property titles are very likely in the hands of the same people who once owned the brownstones.
garbage flowers
I spotted this garden planted just outside the long frontage of the Museum of Modern Art on West 53rd Street today. I was on my way to the American Folk Art Museum located next door.
Each “flower” bore one green leaf attached to its shiny metal stem. The individual pieces had been signed and numbered.
On the reverse of each leaf were the words, “Original – Garbage Flowers – Genuine,” arranged in an oval gently suggesting a logo.
Oh yes, when I passed the site again two hours later I was astounded to find that no one had removed a single blossom, and none had wilted, not one wit.
best in show – but it was no contest
untitled (1936 Lincoln Zephyr door handle) 2005
I saw no vehicle which pleased me more at the New York auto show than this seventy-year-old prop for the introduction of one manufacturer’s 2006 model.
I spent the entire afternoon at the show on Monday, but I don’t know why I bother anymore. The cars being sold to Americans are, almost without exception, pure junk and an appalling assault on the planet. We get to choose between trucks and “sport utility vehicles” (with no real truck, sport or utility capability) and the occasional but equally-ugly sedan or lets-pretend “sports” car.
Virtually every one of these adult toys is intended to do little more than satisfy the fantasies of a 16-year-old with nothing other than his member or the implied violence of speed on his mind. I suppose if your waking life revolves around driving, as it seems to for most Americans, what else is there to guide your transportation decisions? The few exceptions to that infantile appeal of the guy-demographic which manage to squeeze through are condemned as chick cars and either discontinued or pumped with steroids and the carworld equivalent of graceless football padding.
Only if you’ve ever been outside the country would you be likely to realize that nothing is really small in the American automobile market. We have no sense of proportion, and I mean that here in every sense. Even if it starts out with a modest footprint when introduced, any relatively compact vehicle is inevitably designed and equipped as a cheap substitute for the heroic virtues of the real thing. If it isn’t ignored and doesn’t quickly disappear it begins its inexorable course on the path toward gigantism with the very next model change. Has anyone seen a Geo Metro or Ford Fiesta lately, or looked at what passes for a Honda Civic these days? Remember when a Civic was smaller than the original Mini? [thanks, David, for the reminder]
Some of us have noticed that this commercial exhibition is being staged in the middle of the most urban civilization in a country engaged in wars over access to the world’s finite supply of oil. The NYTimes “Automobiles” section pointed out on Monday, there was not one city car in sight at the Javits Center.
In Europe, the “city car” is a well-understood concept, a vehicle whose dimensions and design are as ideally suited to its duties as the minivan’s multiple seats and cup holders are to its role in American suburbs. A city car is one intended primarily for urban use. Its size makes it economical and easy to park and lets it slip between huge trucks clogging the narrow streets. And, yes, a city car is a bit sophisticated in style.
In New York, a city car is not a tiny car. “Every time I come here I’m struck by the scale of vehicles,” Ed Welburn, vice president for global design at General Motors, said at the auto show last week. “It is unlike any other city in the world.”
Anyone who has travelled to Europe knows that vehicles there, whether “city cars” or not, are for grown-ups who want and get intelligence, beauty and function regardless of their transportation choices. If nothing else will bring us to our senses over here, perhaps the thought of billions of newly-prosperous car fans in Asia shopping for their own SUVs – and the oil to propel them – will be able to do it through self-interest.
I don’t believe I’m reading too much into the phenomenon if I say I really believe the design and scale of the cars we drive in the U.S. represents our increasing indifference to, hatred or fear of all the people on the outside (“the other”), however we define that.
Oh yeah, for what it’s worth, I don’t have a car of my own, and haven’t since moving to New York. But while I firmly believe in public transportation I’m fascinated with small, efficient vehicles and the idea of sharing their use whenever they might be needed. All of this seems to make me very un-American.
like a huge, colored Eostre egg
untitled (piebald Met Life Building and van doppel) 2005
There can only be one explanation for the exuberance of this neighborhood display tonight: The fecundity feast of Eostre [sic]. Excerpts from the Wikipedia entry for Easter:
The English and German names, “Easter” and “Ostern”, seem clearly unrelated to Pesach [that is, Passover, to which the name for this Christian feast is related in all other European languages] etymologically and likely derive either from Eostremonat, an old Germanic month name, or Eostre, a Germanic goddess associated with the springtime, who as the 8th century English historian Bede records was honored with a festival during Eostremonat. It has been suggested that many of modern Easter’s symbols, such as colored eggs and the Easter Bunny, are cultural remnants of Eostre’s springtime festival and that Eostre merged with the Christian Pesach celebrations after the Germanic heathens were Christianized (see Easter as a Germanic Heathen festival below.), even though giving of eggs at spring festivals was not restricted to Germanic peoples and could be found among the Persians, the Romans, and the Jews.
. . . .
According to the Bede, the word “Easter” is derived from the Old Norse Ostara or Eostre, a festival of spring at the vernal equinox, March 21, when nature is in resurrection after winter, hence, the symbolism of rabbits, notable for their fecundity, and the eggs, colored like rays of the returning sun and the aurora borealis. The Easter Bunny is a Western European tradition and has never been adopted by Orthodox Christians, showing as false the claim that the entire holiday is some sort of “Germanic Heathen” festival. Some historians assert that Bede falsely concluded the existence of goddess Eostre from the unquestionably real month name Eostremonat, as any references to such a goddess from other Germanic sources are missing. Children roll easter eggs in England and America but not in all traditionally Christian countries. They hunt the many-colored Easter eggs, brought by the Easter Bunny. Hidden in the play area, it has been argued, the vestiges of a fertility rite, the eggs and the rabbit both symbolizing fertility. (A rabbit, furthermore, was sometimes said to be the escort of the goddess, but there are no pre-19th century sources for this.) However, such claims ignore at least as ancient use of eggs as symbolic gifts among the Persians and Jews.
Anyway, in the spirit of this happy season, Barry and I have decided to share a great feast with friends tomorrow, built around an extremely pagan Agnello al forno.
it’s clear we really want these leaders
Jor-El, father of Superman
I haven’t posted much of a true politcal nature lately. Frankly, I’ve felt that the game is over as far as this benighted nation is concerned. We’ve failed as a society and as a republic. Except for my concern about this exceptional international republic called New York, I think I may have given up.
The damage is already too mortal. At this point I have no interest in incremental change. You’re not likely to find me at meetings any more. The option of revolt, which would require a count of people and a kind of awareness and courage totally inconceivable in a country which thinks the Democratic Party is The Left, would seem to be out of the question as a viable means for rescuing this state – in spite of Jefferson’s suggestion that we needed a revolution every twenty years. For the sensitive individual who mourns his country’s death both as an idea and as a reality, I see no real alternative but emigration, even if it is only an internal emigration. For now, I’ll be staying in New York City – and traveling abroad as much as possible. Like Tony Kushner’s Homebody, I love the world!
I see no argument why a reasonable person should raise a hand, even a computer keyboard finger, to fight for something the rest of America clearly doesn’t want. As hard as it has been to accept, I have finally come to the conclusion that most of my fellow citizens actually have the goverment they want right now. I don’t know how else to explain George Bush or the complacence of the entire population in the face of the tyranny, and stupidity, of this administration.
I have no doubt that there is going to be hell to pay, and although it will continue to be paid for by others all around the world, in the end we will not escape the damages ourselves. We will disintegrate. We can only hope we will be quaint enough, and sufficiently nonviolent, to attract foreign tourism.
The forces of ignorance, superstition, hatred and greed have certainly prevailed nationally and, because the institutions which might have saved us seem to have been irreversibly corrupted, I don’t see the country coming out of this in my lifetime. I hope I’m wrong, as I was when decades ago I assumed that the liberalism of the 60’s would just continue to thrive and expand here and everywhere, but I doubt it.
Arthur Miller doesn’t seem to have ever had any illusions about the triumph of goodness and light in this much-too-proud republic. A letter [by Barbara Allen Kenney] in the latest issue of The Nation reminds its readers of an article Miller wrote wrote in the NYTimes shortly before the 1972 election. He was addressing the reasons why George McGovern’s candidacy had not attracted serious support.
What this tells about our inner attitudes, I think, is that we are far more apprehensive than we are confident of ourselves; and that what we want in a political leader is enough larceny, enough insensitivity to permit him to do our dirty work for us, to fight dirty in a dirty world.
Miller was writing in an era when all four American “estates” were like pillars of the Enlightenment compared to the miserable players we have today. More than thirty years later the goverment of the most powerful nation on earth is fighting very, very dirty.
We’re all doomed.
If and when I begin to feel otherwise, it will show up here. Is that a qualification of everything I’ve written above? Maybe. After living with it all these years, how can I now let a mechanical George Bush doll take away my essentially pollyanna outlook?
[image from theages]
but how would a vegetarian say it?
spotted tonight in the 23rd Street 1/9 subway station
My first thought was, this is Chelsea, and some of our neighbors have interesting ways of showing affection, but then it occurred to me that the message could have been meant literally, a la Valerie Solanas. Gulp.
And oh yeah, for those who collect such details, or just for the record, the sign seems to have been re-constructed from one of the MTA’s advisories about service disruptions.
2nd Annual Drinkin’ and Drawin’ Championship
intense bar scene from last year’s competition
Dunno exactly why, but this sounds like a wonderful thing.
The promoters (yeah, that sounds so big-deal), M.River and T.Whid, have their explanation:
It might be interesting if an art idea conceived in a bar could use a bar as a site and context for said art idea and it’s been a long hard winter.
But I like the sense of place and proportion provided by the description of the first prize:
Win a $100 bar tab [at the event’s venue, Greenpoint’s Bar Matchless]
This year Inka Essenhigh and Steve Mumford will be the judges.
For images from last year’s event, go to MTAA.
[image from MTAA]