Elijah: God's Purpose Through Our Despair

 
How are you doing?

I'm hoping you're having a good day today.  I'm hoping this season of your life is going along nicely for you.  Really, I do!

However, if you're anything like me, you probably have times when it seems like your life is fairly insignificant.  Am I right?  Are you ever frustrated with the way your life seems to be going?  Do more than "rainy days and Mondays" get you down?  While a lot of people appear to be accomplishing grand things for themselves, for their community, and even for the Kingdom of God, do you fret that you're not one of them?

Boy, I do.  Maybe it's my chronic clinical depression trying to steal my joy, or maybe it's hearing about all the achievements people younger than me are scoring.  Maybe part of my blurry sense of personal value has resulted from helping to care for my Dad, who has senile dementia.  Seeing a man like him living in the physical realm, without being able to appreciate it, can be downright scary, and make you think about your own mortality.

Then, too, I'm closer to the dreaded 5-0 than I ever have been in my life, so maybe it's all simply a mid life crisis.  I can't really tell, since I've always had a hankering for a Corvette.

At any rate, I found myself reading the plight of the prophet Elijah, who had things rougher that I do, as well as just about anybody reading this essay.  In 1 Kings 17, Elijah had to deliver a dramatic doomsday message from God to the despicable King Ahab, to the effect that there would be no rain until God said otherwise.

In other words, Elijah was predicting a massive drought, which would lead to massive starvation.  Not something any oligarch wants to hear, let alone somebody like Ahab and his even more evil wife, Jezebel.

And then what happens?  God tells Elijah to flee and go live next to a brook.

Now, a brook is a body of water, and what had Elijah just told Ahab?  Of all the places where God could order Elijah to live, doesn't a brook seem counter-intuitive?

Yet Elijah was obedient, and he went and camped out by the brook.  God promised that He'd send ravens to him with food for him to eat, and sure enough, they did just that, twice a day.

We don't know how long God had Elijah live in this state of exile, but even if it was only several days - or however long it takes for an average book to dry up during a drought - imagine what was going through Elijah's mind.  Usually, I don't think it's wise to add to God's Word, even if it's to extrapolate our own assumptions, or read between the lines.  On the one hand, God didn't think it important for you and me today to know specifically what Elijah thought about while he was next to this brook, but do you suppose Elijah was rejoicing all the time at his predicament?

Sure, I'd be glad the ravens were coming, like God promised, twice a day.  I would be glad to have water from the brook, too, but how long was that going to last?  As the drought dragged on, you know Elijah could see the water drying up.  And then it was gone.  What was he supposed to make of that?

And while he watched the brook dry up, how did he spend his spare time?  He wasn't writing great literature, or building houses, or digging ditches, or even watching ESPN like a couch potato.  What does one do out in the middle of noplace, with not even anything to eat except what ravens brought - supernaturally - from far away?  What else, but think?

Think, wonder, imagine, worry, fret, stew, feel sorry for one's self... get angry, become really fearful, doubt, feel sorry for one's self... worry... have I missed anything?  I don't know about you, but when I have time to think, that can be a dangerous invitation to anxiety.

Some people make good use of their spare time.  They're actively productive.  But Elijah?  Productivity?  Worth?  How much was he contributing to his retirement accounts?  He wasn't earning any diploma, or raising children, or inventing anything, or working on a scientific theorem, or making lots of friends.  He was literally in a holding pattern, suspended between the time God had him prophesy to Ahab, and whatever big command God would give him next.

Whenever that would be.

Yet Elijah waited.  We don't know how patiently he waited, but still, he waited.  He waited for God's next move.  And God doesn't appear to give him anything else to do in the meantime.  The cynic in me might rationalize part of that patience as flat-out fear; fear of Ahab, fear of what might happen if he showed his face to somebody who'd heard his prophecy from God about the drought.  However, even if Elijah, in his mere mortality, was partially confined by fear to his outpost by the brook, God helped him to overcome it with some sort of patience.  Otherwise, might Elijah have finally broken down and gone back to civilization to take his chances?

I'm afraid that's what I'd have done.

Finally, the brook dried up.  It hadn't rained, just like God had said.  What now?

Well, God speaks again to Elijah, but it wasn't exactly what somebody in Elijah's position probably would have wanted to hear.  God told him to go "at once" - immediately - to Zarephath, where some widow woman would feed him.

What?  Was God getting tired of sending the raven out twice a day to feed me?  He plopped me next to this miserable brook, and I had a feeling it would run dry before God sent more rain.  And now He's telling me that some widow woman will feed me?  Widows are the poorest people, because they've no husband to provide for them.  How can He expect a widow to feed me?  She's probably as destitute as I am.

I'm assuming here, of course, that Elijah is as self-centered and negative-thinking as I am.  For all we know, he willingly, eagerly, and enthusiastically got up and followed God's orders with humble obedience.  And sure enough, he found a widow so destitute, she was foraging for sticks to make a fire, over which she was planning on cooking her very last meal for herself and her son.

Good grief - what a jackpot, after an ambiguous season spent by that brook!  The whole region was desperate for water.  At least God could have sent Elijah to a wealthy household with the means to have stored up a bit of food, and maybe some wine, for such an emergency.  Rich people always manage better during a crisis, don't they?

Instead, to my shame, the impoverished Widow of Zarephath lets this guy, who's been out in no-man's-land for who-knows-how-long, tell her to go bake him a cake of bread.  And yeah - oh, by the way, he throws in something about her jug of oil and jar of flour not running out until it rains.

Yeah, right, buddy - and I'm Julia Child.  I can see her rolling her eyes.  Then again, for all we know, God had prepared her heart so she'd was willing to follow His commands, no matter how wacky they sounded.  And sure enough, their new little household had just enough to eat.

Elijah's amazing adventures go on and on, of course, through the death of the son of the Widow of Zarephath (that she first blamed on Elijah), and God bringing him back to life through Elijah, and the oil and flour not running out, and God finally bringing rain, and God's bizarre demonstration of His power through Elijah in front of Ahab, Jezebel, and their evil courtiers.  There's even God's fantastic communication to Elijah through the "still small voice," one of the most dramatic accounts of His sovereignty in the whole Bible, in 1 Kings 19:9-18.  The great composer, Felix Mendelssohn, put that event to music in his epic oratorio, Elijah, in a piece called "Behold, God the Lord."  If you ever wonder what a glimpse of God's authority might begin to sound like, I highly recommend you check this out.

Meanwhile, the lesson of Elijah's service to God is one of holy providence set to God's timetable, not ours.  God provided guidance to Elijah, as well as purpose, and even the words to say, but the linear progression of God's visible providence likely made no sense to Elijah.  There were no dots to connect; no discernible progression to justify following Him day by day.  Amazingly, Elijah was utterly devoted to God, even though he despaired of what it all might mean.  Eventually, when God appeared to Him as the "still, small voice," Elijah was profoundly drained.  And God (finally) gave him relief.

I wouldn't even begin to pretend that my trials, struggles, angst, and questions stem from as anointed a life and ministry as Elijah's.  God spoke through Elijah because he was His prophet, but I'm no prophet.  Elijah faced death for obeying God, while all you and I face is some mild mockery and disdain.  Yet God still wants to use me, and you, to accomplish His will and proclaim His glory to our world, and our generation.  And mostly, I feel like I'm simply bumbling along, discouraged, despairing, and as bereft of joy as that brook of Elijah's finally was of water.

I have to say, however, that it's a lot harder to throw myself a pity-party after reminding myself about Elijah:  A man of God for whom rainy days were likely never gloomy again!

NYC's Old Piers Not What They Appear

A 1943 map of Lower Manhattan's piers

Much has been made about the offshoring of America's manufacturing industry.  When people begin talking about America's stagnant middle class, or about how blue collar jobs don't pay what they used to, the conversation usually ends up with something about how everything you buy at Walmart these days is made in China.

Of course, I don't shop at Walmart, on principle.  But just about everything I buy at Target is made in China, too.  Is that uncanny, or what?

Recently, I read an article* in a Christian magazine about all of the dilapidated piers ringing the lower half of Manhattan Island, and how those piers from yesteryear symbolize the downfall of America's manufacturing might.  Look at how great a manufacturing empire New York City used to be, the writer of this article bemoans, since these long-neglected piers used to see products being shipped from Gotham to every corner of the world.

Yes, almost all of those piers are gone.  In their place, sticking a couple of feet out of the water, black with rot, are rows of wooden poles that used to support the wooden piers upon which Manhattan's fabled maritime industry flourished.  Seeing them from the shore, or from a sightseeing boat, it can appear to the naked eye as though the city has suffered a mortal blow in its demise as a manufacturing and shipping center.  Sure, a handful of newer piers have been remodeled for recreational purposes, and a few continue to serve the luxury cruise ship industry, but a commercial freighter hasn't docked in Manhattan for decades.

Not that ocean shipping has abandoned New York Harbor, however.  Quite the opposite:  over in New Jersey, near Staten Island, and behind the Statue of Liberty, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey runs thriving freight operations for some of the world's largest commercial shippers.  But those modern steel and concrete piers, alongside which modern cargo ships dock, are a world away from New York City's historic waterfront.

Brooklyn's Red Hook terminal is the city's last redoubt for ocean freight, but it's a shadow of its former self.  Besides, its days may be numbered, too.  As Brooklyn continues to explode in popularity for millennials and new urbanists priced out of Manhattan, its waterfront districts closest to Manhattan are experiencing a sea-change in land use patterns, with residential construction and parkland replacing shipping and industrial concerns.  Large-scale manufacturing hasn't taken place anywhere in Brooklyn for at least a couple of generations.  It's quite likely that the business currently handled at Red Hook will be forced to relocate to another part of Brooklyn - if not New Jersey - if the borough continues with its aggressive gentrification.

Indeed, what's going on with Brooklyn's Red Hook terminal is representative of what has already happened with the piers that used to spike out from Manhattan's shoreline.  But drawing a correlation between New York City's changing waterfront and the offshoring of America's manufacturing jobs isn't as easy to make. 

First and foremost, we need to understand why Manhattan came to be the epicenter of America's commercial might.  And that has to do with its unique geography.  The only reason Europeans settled on Lower Manhattan Island was because it was easy to defend.  It is the pointy tip of an island, with a relatively narrow stretch of land they needed to patrol at the colony's northernmost border (along which a street now runs, following the route of a long-famous wall).  You could see who was entering the harbor to the south, and who was coming down both rivers on either side.  When warfare, disgruntled Natives, greedy explorers, opposing national interests from the Old World, and swashbuckling adventurers are all running into each other in the New World's frontier, such tactical considerations as location, location, location are critically important.

And even today, real estate - "location, location, location" - remains the most powerful force on the relatively small island.

In its beginning, of course, Manhattan's immediate success as a European colony came not just from its defensible location, but its strategic trading partnerships, which created its maritime economy.  Explorers, politicians, military personnel, and ship after ship of settlers eager for a new start in the New World came through what became New York, while America's bounty of natural resources was shipped back to Europe.  Between all of the coming and going, the city never stopped growing.

However, Manhattan was never an ideal manufacturing locale, although plenty of entrepreneurs were able to build fantastic fortunes on the island.  Some manufacturing companies started off producing implements for the island's specific economy, and then grew as our country grew.  But the more space an enterprise required, better success was achieved in areas of the city that were less densely populated, such as Queens and Brooklyn.  Plus, across the Hudson River lay mainland America, and as our young country grew and flourished, New Jersey eventually proved its logistical and economic superiority to Manhattan when it came to making stuff - and shipping it.

Remember, Manhattan is as much about real estate as it is anything else.  It's a relatively narrow island between two rivers that empty out into the world's second-largest ocean.  And maritime travel was the only intercontinental travel known to our planet until the 20th Century.  This meant that most of Manhattan's waterfront was teeming with factories, warehouses, and other gritty industrial uses.  Nobody went down to the waterfront for a casual stroll, or to soak in the view, or smell the sea air.  Actually, considering that today, much of Manhattan's border is lined with parks, tree-lined streets, and luxury apartment buildings, some would argue that its waterfront now is the most productive it's ever been, at least in terms of its value not only for property owners, but as a quality-of-life amenity that all of the city's residents can enjoy.

Getting back to manufacturing, however, brings us to problems even bigger than Manhattan's scarcity of affordable raw land for factories.  Being an island, Manhattan posed significant logistical dilemmas for getting manufactured goods to the rest of the country.  You had to either hire a barge, negotiate a tight tunnel, or cross a congested bridge to move product to consumers who didn't live on Manhattan Island.  Meanwhile, over in New Jersey, all you needed were surface roads or rails to take your goods deeper into America, and you could skip the whole cross-the-river drama.

At the same time, ships from abroad began docking in New Jersey, unloading their goods directly at the mainland's railheads, and loading up freight from across America without the added expense and bother of getting it across the Hudson.  Eventually, as American manufacturing matured throughout the Lower 48, shipments avoided the congestion of New York and New Jersey entirely, shifting through more modern ports in Maryland, Florida, the Gulf of Mexico, and California.

Not that Manhattan's piers could have hoped to remain competitive even if manufacturing hadn't been pushed off of the island by rising land values and logistical problems.  You seel, shipbuilding techniques themselves continued to evolve.  They may have been state-of-the-art for their day, but those wooden sailing ships that first docked along Manhattan's shore, and then the steel-hulled freighters, pale in comparison to the behemoth steamships used by the global maritime industry today.   Those old vessels were shaped like Manhattan Island itself:  skinny and lithe.  Today's new ones, however, are wide, long, and tall.  They could never hope to navigate the tight turns required by the relatively narrow widths of the Husdon and East rivers.  They're so tall, the Brooklyn Bridge would have had to be torn down to provide access for most East River piers.  And since virtually all freight today is shipped in containers, the entire island of Manhattan wouldn't provide enough land to accommodate their off-loading, sorting, and loading.  

To have kept the piers along Manhattan Island, everything famous and renowned about the borough would have had to be torn down to provide enough room  It's one of the many ironies that make New York City so complex:  The industry that made it famous can no longer function along Manhattan's shores.

Besides, New York City's economy is hardly the worse for wear now that virtually all of its maritime industry has moved away.  And its manufacturing industry as well.  Anybody living or visiting there can plainly see that the city has transitioned remarkably well to a service-based one.  What there is to argue about is whether that's been good for America as a whole... or not.  After all, New York's prime industry, Wall Street and too-big-to-fail finance, played a powerful role in forcing manufacturing jobs from America to lowest-common-denominator locales in the Majority World, and making the cost to bring manufacturing jobs back to America prohibitive.

Years ago, one of the reasons I left New York City involved the atrocious cost of living in the region.  And why is that?  Costs are high because plenty of other people still want to live there, and can make lots of money while doing so.  The city is thriving today - all while nobody is manufacturing anything in factories.

Nevertheless, when I see photos of Manhattan's trendy, transformed riverfront along the Hudson, and look at those stubs of wood still sticking out into the river, where piers used to hunch over the water, I tend to react just like the author of the article I'm writing about.  I catch myself being more nostalgic for what I imagine they used to mean for the city, than what they actually mean for the city now.

Sure, manufacturing's ghost is all that smells of soot, grease, and the body odor of factory laborers and longshoremen in the industrial buildings that now serve as luxury lofts and chic nightclubs for New York's postindustrial elites.

But frankly, would you want that old New York back?  Those rotting stubs of wood let us contemplate with rose-colored glasses an era that was dirtier, noisier, more dangerous, and more corrupt than we care to realize.

About the only thing I'd like to have back from New York City's past are it's housing prices.  Go back far enough, like maybe a century or so, and they'd probably be affordable for us today!
_____

* I'm getting kinda tired of identifying people by the errors I find in their articles, so I'm not gonna do it with this one.  Okay?

On the Loss of Robin Williams

Appropriately, most of the Western world today is mourning the loss of Robin Williams.

His death is a loss not only for those of us who enjoyed his incredible portfolio of work, but his represents an even more profound loss for his own self.

Hardly any of us knew him personally, but he was one of those celebrities who made an indelible mark on our culture.  (At which, Williams would likely interject, "I'm sorry - have you tried Clorox?")

Almost all of us can recite our favorite Robin Williams line, or movie, or episode of Mork & Mindy.  Yet as popular as he was, he was rare in many ways.  We enjoyed his singular brand of intensely brilliant comedy, but he oozed a genius so unique that we recognized it couldn't be taught or learned, or even mimicked.  Plus, he was one of those few bona-fide Hollywood A-listers who didn't seem to have any enemies.  Sometimes he could get vulgar in his humor, but it was still hard not to laugh, and he could be even funnier with tame family-oriented material that in anybody else's schtick would be merely ordinary.

Sometime between the late hours of this past Sunday night and noon on Monday, he hung himself in a bedroom at his Marin County home, at age 63.  Four feature films he'd completed are still being prepped for release.

His co-workers and friends today are describing him with every accolade and beneficent adjective they can think of.  President Obama has expressed his public condolences, and social media is overflowing with everybody from lesser celebrities to everyday fans posting their shock and dismay at Williams' passing.

Some people are angry.  I saw somebody on Facebook last night lash out in rage, asking nobody in particular why Williams didn't reach out to somebody for help this past Sunday night.

Mostly, however, people are simply stunned.  Some of his closest friends knew he was battling depression and addiction, but apparently they didn't realize his mental anguish was so utterly desperate.  Others are wondering if his brilliant wit and rapid-fire performances weren't signs of a mental condition that is commonly intolerable among people of Williams' extraordinarily creative personality.

Part of the dismay being so publicly aired from Japan to England and beyond stems from our common assumptions about famous people.  They're famous because we think we know more about them than we really do.  And celebrities like Williams, while never hiding his psychological problems, would usually couch them with humor, such as his reputedly joking that one of his rehab stints was in California's wine country so he could "keep his options open."

But nobody being interviewed today likely knew the private Robin Williams, which is why we're shocked.  His family obviously knew him well, but none of them are talking to the media today.  They're not just shocked; they're grieving.

Just like most families that suffer a suicide.

I can't make any estimation about Williams' faith, but even if he was an evangelical Christian, who trusted in Christ Jesus' sacrifice alone for his eternal salvation, suicide still happens.  I've known several professing believers who've taken their own lives, and it always seems that the faith we're told can save us from ourselves... somehow... couldn't.

Not in a mortal sense, at least.

Within Christianity, suicide has been erroneously called an unpardonable sin, because it involves the willful destruction of God's creation of life by the very benefactor of that creation.  But although suicide is bad, and is definitely a sin, it's not unpardonable.  The Bible tells us that the only unpardonable sin is denying what the Holy Spirit teaches about Christ.

In other words, when a person dies without ever professing that Jesus Christ is their Lord and Savior, they've committed the unpardonable sin.  For believers, however, everything else in which we fail Christ - including suicide - is pardonable through God's grace.

That doesn't necessarily take away the pain of loss, though, does it?  Or the confusing aftermath of suicide?  Loved ones are usually left with so many unanswered questions and guilt.  Couldn't we have worked this out somehow?  Surely alternatives existed!

I once attended the funeral of a college student who killed himself, ostensibly after an argument with his girlfriend.  Some cryptic messages were discovered later, but nothing definitive regarding the victim's precise reasoning.  As I sat in the church sanctuary that day, I stared at the overflow crowd numbering close to 1,200 and wondered how somebody with this many friends and family members could feel so utterly alone and destitute.

A few years ago, I attended the funeral of a bubbly, energetic older man who had become a millionaire through his own entrepreneurship.  He'd had an eye for seeing the untapped potential in offbeat products and obscure industries.  Speaking of untapped potential, he had once offered me a job in one of his businesses.  A couple of years after that, however, some final engineering tests determined his latest and greatest product would not work the way he'd hoped it would.

He was already rich, influential, well-loved, and respected.  A longtime believer, he was a church elder, Bible Study Fellowship leader, and Prison Fellowship volunteer.  But it wasn't enough.  He was so distraught that what he'd hoped would be his grand legacy had been deemed unworkable, he gave up.  Literally.

His funeral was standing-room-only, too, only not with fellow college students, but with business executives and local politicians; a crowd just as unused to suicide in their accomplished ranks as young adults so full of anticipation for the future.

While I don't remember much from the funeral homily for my college student friend, I distinctly remember the sermon at my older friend's funeral.  Grappling with how to summarize the profound discrepancy between a life and faith so apparently well-lived and such deep discouragement despite it all, the pastor came to a remarkable conclusion.

This suicide victim had won the war, but lost the battle.

Indeed, our friend was now in Heaven with Christ, but his own demons that had been so well-hidden from most of us were more powerful than he realized.

Which begs the question:  in a moment of weakness, who among us can say with complete confidence that we could spurn our darkest enemy?  Who doesn't have a so-called Achilles heel, whether it's hereditary, an acquired habit, a chemical dependency or deficiency - but something that we learn to hide exceptionally well from just about everybody?  Maybe, even, sometimes... ourselves?

We cloak it with tenacity, hard work, or a cheerful disposition, no matter how forced.  We train ourselves to be amazingly productive and even self-sacrificing.  We tell ourselves that people with a stronger faith conquer these foes.  Or, we blatantly ignore them.

And yes, maybe a stronger faith proves victorious for many folks.  But what about those folks who science suggests have a chemical imbalance that undermines even the staunchest faith or the most determined will?  Those who may not even realize their vulnerability, because no doctor has ever diagnosed it?

Yes, for those of us who trust in Christ, our faith surely will save us.  Which is an eternally good thing, because sometimes, our bodies won't.

I wouldn't be so crass as to hazard a guess regarding the type of conversation Robin Williams had with his Maker yesterday, but if any of us are tempted to look with contempt at the last decision Williams felt forced to make, don't.

Don't try to understand Williams' decision, either.  Don't try to explain it, or excuse it.

And certainly don't ignore it.

Why not?  Because even though we weren't alone with Williams two nights ago to know what he was going through, and even though we don't know for certainty where his soul is today, we all can treat his passing as a sober reminder.

A lot of frightful baggage can be hidden behind laughter.  And money, and charisma, and success, and whatever you're striving for right now.  And certainly, religion.

So remember:  what we see in each other and ourselves isn't all that there is.

Or could be.

Vanishing NYC an Apparition Instead?

Several years ago, when she was still living in New York City, my aunt went to an art show in Manhattan, and then out to eat with friends.

They were dining at a chic new restaurant near Union Square, when somebody behind my aunt bumped his chair into hers.

That being New York, and my aunt being a native, she barely acknowledged the disturbance, but the man in the other chair hurriedly got up, turned to my aunt, and apologized profusely.

Maybe that's the kind of behavior you expect from your fellow restaurant patrons wherever you live, but my aunt was shocked.  Shucks - to her, it was a story worth repeating to me; she was so amazed at the behavior of the young man.

"I don't think I've ever had that happen to me before," I remember her laughing.  Not that she'd never had somebody bang their chair into her, but that somebody in New York City apologized for doing so.

"New York is changing, isn't it," I replied, aware of the many articles online chronicling the evolution of Gotham's ethos from a city of grit and rudeness to a city of polish and civility.

Or, at least, a version of civility that is new to New York.

Last week, the Daily Beast ran an article lamenting what the writer, Tim Teeman, believes to be a wholesale rebranding of the city from a bohemian pastiche of raw personalities to a sanitized playground for well-funded hipsters.  In a city that used to be quite rough around the edges - with a fair amount of rotten spots in its core - a new atmosphere of standardized commercialism seems to have taken hold.  It's a form of intense gentrification that is gobbling up all of Manhattan and invading its outer boroughs, much to the dismay of longtime Gothamists.

Granted, throughout New York's history, each of its generations has decried the next era to transform the Big Apple - starting with the people who lived there first, who never were New Yorkers:  the Native Americans.  Their hunting grounds were dug up and replaced by military structures, wooden huts, docks, and that infamous wall after which a street eventually was named.

I recently met a lady here in Texas who told me that one of her ancestors sold his farm on Manhattan Island and went to San Francisco during the Gold Rush.  Part of that former farm of his became the depot that became Pennsylvania Station, which sits in the middle of Midtown Manhattan, right next to Madison Square Garden, down the block from Macy's.  But that farmer had finished with New York City back in the 1800's - too much change, too much civilization, and not enough adventure!

Isn't it simply the same story, different chapter today?  Only this time, the Daily Beast's Teeman isn't lamenting the loss of wide open spaces for farms, but the ouster of seedy dive bars from neighborhoods that used to be exceedingly dangerous, and now are fashionable hipster districts, thanks to gentrification in overdrive.

He quotes Jeremiah Moss, keeper of the blog "Vanishing New York," as saying that not long ago, “you needed chutzpah to live in New York.  Now, you just have to be very rich."

And certainly, most of New York City's story remains inextricably linked with the reason for its very founding:  money.  If it wasn't for New York's location on this continent, it wouldn't have been as appealing as it was to the European investors who funded its "discovery."  And if it wasn't for Manhattan Island's geography, its real estate wouldn't be so valuable, since it's so limited.

Nevertheless, another significant element of New York's DNA has always been its unique attraction to individualists, and its celebration of unique people, even if - despite its millions of residents - it can seem like the loneliest place on Earth.  One of the things I've always admired about the city is its uncanny juxtaposition of opposites, from its diverse architectural styles to its diverse employment base to its diverse cultures and languages.  Of course, plenty of other cities enjoy diversity, but New York used to thrive on it, with tableaux that would elicit the exclamation, "only in New York!"

By way of full disclosure, I haven't been to the city in years, but I read about it daily, on a variety of websites, and I can tell that the city I see online isn't the city I left in 1993.  Everything looks a lot cleaner, from the taxi cabs to the sidewalks.  There's a lot more glass, as if bricks and masonry have been outlawed.  Cacophonous streets have been "tamed" by bike lanes and pedestrian islands, and Times Square looks less like the "crossroads of the world" and more like a theme park.

Not that the city didn't need to get safer, or cleaner, or more polite.  When I lived there, sometimes I thought a lot of New Yorkers were rude simply because they could get away with it, since they lived in New York, and had an image to maintain.  People littered because everybody else did, and New Yorkers seemed to enjoy complaining about it.  Culture snobs coddled graffiti as a legitimate art form, even as they paid big money for contractors to clean their apartment buildings when they were tagged.  Vandalism was an art form, but only when it was perpetrated in poorer neighborhoods.

On the one hand, it's a bit amusing to read people like Teeman and Moss, complaining about the "old New York" of twenty years ago, disappearing right in front of their eyes.  Like the city's evolution was supposed to stop at some arbitrary point, like right after they first arrived on the scene.  "Yeah, take me back to the good old days, when the city was still cool, edgy, and had this great grunge vibe."

"But don't take me back to the 70's, man - that was way too dangerous."

Sure, back in the day, the city was more affordable than it is now, but was it really as good as we remember?  Hey, I can be as much of a sentimentalist as anybody else.  I hate change, and nostalgia can be exceedingly comforting to me.  But of all the places on the planet that are as unique as New York City, could anybody ever identify the perfect spot in time in which all five boroughs should've been frozen?

On the other hand, of course, are the valid concerns people like Teeman and Moss expose.  It does appear as though the city has passed a tipping point, where money may finally neuter New York's attempts at community.  And it's not just stratospheric rents we're talking about.

The super-luxury apartments stuffed into Manhattan's towering glass boxes may be selling for top dollar, but not everyone buying them intends to become invested in Gotham.  Many of New York's newest property owners are instead making a financial investment in Manhattan real estate, and don't plan on using these sky palaces as their primary residence.  Developers and the city's tax coffers benefit from such transactions, but local businesses on the street don't.  Teeman and Moss point out that a lot of mom-and-pop businesses are being shut down because of skyrocketing rents, and that no new businesses are replacing them.  One reason no new businesses are filling all of these increasingly vacant storefronts is because New Yorkers are realizing that these pricey new apartments are being sold, yet are sitting empty for most of the year.  You can't build a year-round business on part-time residents.

Empty apartments do not a vibrant city make, even if these empty apartments are completely paid for, their taxes and utilities are paid for, and they're lavishly furnished for the few weeks out of the year when anybody is actually occupying them.  Sure, it's a great gig for their doormen, who get to sit around most of the time, instead of hailing cabs and hauling shopping bags for their steady stream of active residents.  But these apartments take up space and drive up prices in a process that exacerbates the availability and affordability of housing quarters for people who want to live and work there.

To a certain degree, it's a phenomenon that's always been at work in New York City, but now seems to be unfolding at an unprecedented rate and scale.

Still, the game will probably continue, and in another couple of decades, the millennials who today are getting most of the blame for naively participating in the city's current changes may be the folks lamenting what was... back in the good old days around 2014.

And we'll have this debate all over again regarding whether New York's changes ever bring anything good along with them.

When I worked in Lower Manhattan, back in the early 1990's, a group of us were having an ordinary workday lunch at a restaurant on Water Street, when the chair of a young woman in our party was bumped from behind.  She turned around, and her purse was gone.  We all jumped up and high-tailed it after a short woman who was running to the door, but we lost her in the crowds on the sidewalk outside.

Ahh, the New York of yesteryear!

Right?

Herman's Toy Story

It was a little slice of paradise, right in the middle of Brooklyn.

Not the hip, trendy Brooklyn of today's Millennials.  I'm talkin' the old Brooklyn; the gritty, marginal yang to Manhattan's glittery, sophisticated yin.  For better or worse, these days, that old Brooklyn is apparently gone for good, but those of us of a certain vintage remember it well.

When I was a child, and my family would visit Dad's mother and sister in Brooklyn's Sunset Park neighborhood, there was only one store there that I cared anything about.  It was Herman's Toy Store, owned and run by a tall, thin, Jewish man named - not surprisingly - Herman.  His was a nondescript, narrow storefront on a nondescript block in what was a nondescript neighborhood of blue collar families.  Before white flight, those families were mostly Scandinavian, with Irish and Italians thrown in for some flavor.  A sturdy neighborhood, with solid, plain buildings, which when I was a kid, was turning from working-class whites into welfare-dependent Hispanics (hey, it's true), as the city writhed in the throws of bankruptcy, crime, and social disarray.

At the time, of course, all I saw as a kid was a lot of contrasts to where I was growing up in rural, bucolic Upstate New York.  Brooklyn was a dirty place, and my relatives would complain about how dangerous their neighborhood was becoming.  Everything seemed old, well-used, and crowded.  And Herman's Toy Store, located on the ground floor of an old merchants building, with tenements on two upper floors, was all of that:  old, well-used, and crowded.

It's been gone for about four decades now, but in a small part of my brain, I can still remember what a wonderful place it was.  Even though it was old, well-used, and crowded.

I remember its big, heavy wood door with a plate glass window, and the door handle so high, I could barely reach it as a little boy.  I remember that whomever the adult was (who had come along with my brother and me - to pay for whatever we found inside, of course!) usually had to open it.  Maybe that was part of Herman's anti-theft program:  having a front door heavy enough to be an impediment for young thieves fleeing with their loot.

The worn floor inside Herman's was made of wood, and the high-ceilinged shop was always musty and dim.  There were glass cabinets close to the door, upon which stood one of those rotating displays of miniature Matchbox cars.  Being an avid collector of both Matchbox and Hot Wheels cars, I could content myself with that rotating Matchbox display during my entire visit, while my brother would wander the store to check out all of his options, before settling on his selection.

Herman knew my aunt, since she made most of the purchases for us when we visited in person, and when she put together care packages to send to us.  He used to treat us to a gumball from one of those old dispensers he had near the door.  And, come to think of it, most of my memories are from that area in front of the door!  Herman's store was fairly deep, but I don't recall straying too far away from that Matchbox display.

I vividly remember one purchase that was made when we stopped by during a day trip to Brooklyn from our home in upstate New York.  A close family friend had passed away, and Mom and Dad wanted us all to pay our respects at her funeral.  I remember it was held at the venerable Halvorsen's Funeral Home, further down on Eighth Avenue, and that one of the deceased's grown sons sobbed loudly and uncontrollably through most of the service.  Probably in an effort to cheer up my brother and me after that awkward scene, before we headed back home, my parents let us visit Herman's, where I picked out a little lime-green Lincoln Continental sedan from the rotating Matchbox display.  I remember playing with that thing in our VW bus while dad fought rush hour traffic on the Palisades Parkway as the sun set, trying to get us back up to central New York at a reasonable hour.

It's weird the things I remember, huh?

Unfortunately for Herman, and for me, his store was ravaged by fire one summer.  I remember the telephone conversation I had with my aunt, who told me that the Salvation Army building a couple of doors down from Herman's had caught fire, and that Herman's store had been caught in the conflagration.  They were all old, wood and brick buildings, slapped up right alongside each other, with common walls, none of which were built to contain fires.  Fortunately, Herman's store didn't burn to the ground - none of the buildings did - but it did suffer extensive smoke and water damage.

The last time we visited Herman's was very sad indeed.  The narrow wood slats of his floor were warped and uneven, the walls were pitch black, and so was the ceiling.  While it had always been dim, this time, I remember feeling like I'd stepped into a pit of ash.  Thinking back now, I wonder if Herman even had any permits to re-open his store; these days, I doubt a fire marshal would let somebody go back in and set up shop in such a damaged space.  But that was a different time, and a different place; New York shopkeepers are a different breed anyway, especially in rough-and-tumble neighborhoods like Sunset Park had become.

I remember that my beloved revolving Matchbox display was still there, but it was sooty and mostly empty.  A horrible selection.  The shelves throughout the rest of his store had been hastily stocked with new merchandise, but everything was haphazard.  It was all very unlike the Herman's we knew, where merchandise had been carefully organized.  I remember Dad had gone in with my brother and me.  He shared his condolences with Herman, only this time, I remember Herman was unfriendly.  He was probably stressed from the fire, and from trying to salvage his business.  He'd probably hoped to sell it and retire.  But what could he sell now?  The shell of a fire-damaged building on a block that had become crime-ridden?  Would customers keep coming into a store that reeked of smoke?  If he closed for the extensive repairs that were needed, would they come back when he re-opened?

These days, that old storefront has a Chinese business in it, and any vestiges of that fire have almost certainly been remodeled, rebuilt, and removed from that commercial strip along Eighth Avenue.  It's a bustling place again, only this time with recent arrivals from China.  Indeed, Sunset Park is on the rebound these days, thanks to its decent subway access to Manhattan, and housing prices that, by New York City standards, are still relatively affordable.  After white flight decimated the neighborhood, and also served as one of the nails sealing the coffin for Herman's Toy Store, virtually all of that block stood empty for years.  Even if there hadn't been a fire, Herman may not have gotten anything for his store anyway.  Times had gotten that perilous for the neighborhood. 

Herman's was where the bicycle shop is now
(in the center of the photo).
The two buildings to the left are where the
Salvation Army was, and burned.
Photo by Robert Pennington.
Things are vibrant again in Sunset Park!

If my aunt ever told us about whatever happened to Herman, I don't remember what it was.  After college, when I lived with her for a while before getting my own apartment in Manhattan, I recall walking by Herman's then-vacant storefront on Eighth Avenue, and asking her.  She seemed to think that the fire had pretty much ruined him, and that he did close it to embark on a far less financially-robust retirement than what he'd planned on, before the fire.

I have no need to shop for toys any more.  My nephews and niece are no longer children, so  now I purchase them gift cards for Christmas.  But I see what toy stores look like these days, and something tells me that worn wood floors, dim lighting, and heavy front doors aren't appealing to today's toy shoppers.  The chances of you making your purchase from the owner of Toys-R-Us or Walmart seem pretty slim, too.  Having him or her know you're visiting relatives from out of town, and that you like Matchbox cars, and that you're not going to steal anything... apparently, none of that is important today.

Maybe Herman's was good enough of a store for Sunset Park, but I doubt it could have survived along Manhattan's tony Fifth Avenue.  Herman's certainly was no FAO Schwarz.  Or anything approximating the gargantuan toy department at Macy's flagship store in Herald Square.

However, I remember my aunt once taking us to Macy's in Manhattan, and me complaining that Herman's selection back in Sunset Park suited me just fine.

Kids!