Pushcart -- Itching and Ready
cherry tree at Stuyvesant Park
Alright, I'm gathering myself for the beginning of attempt two of the pushcart initiative. Attempt one involved trying to get a permit to operate a pushcart in Tompkins Square Park, which meant going through the parks department.
After weeks of being treated like a nuisance and potential criminal by Park Manager Elaine Crowley, it became clear that she viewed vendors not as assets to the park, but as potentially dangerous adversaries. Moreover, she wanted me to vend by the dog run. As I prefer not to prepare food next to dogs, dust, or the powerful odor of shit, I asked about another location, first at the south-west corner of the park (on Avenue A and 7th). Elaine refused me, saying that I would "compete with other businesses." Oh. I asked about the south-east corner (Ave B and 7th), and I waited to hear back. After a few weeks I called, and she said she was "still talking it over with Finance." As I happened to also be in contact with "Finance," embodied in the person of one Nicole Claire, I knew her to be agreeable, even guardedly enthusiastic about my proposal. I told Crowley as much, and asked her if she would approve my proposal. She said she "had concerns," and would call me back.
Two weeks and no call. Time was getting short. After a location is approved, the permit is secured through a bidding process, and the bidding period was coming soon. I called her back. In our short conversation, she tersely informed me that "the landlords had concerns" and that she would not allow me to vend at that location. With only a few days to decide, I chose not to bid. End attempt one.
It should not, perhaps, come as a surprise that I came into conflict with the Tompkins' management. This is, after all, the same administration which, under the foul direction of Commissioner Henry Stern, imposed a nightly curfew on park activity, savagely quashed neighborhood resistance with a series of brutal police actions, and shut the park for two years for "improvements," and finally reopened it as a handfull of green areas penned-in by high fences which are mostly kept locked. Charming. This is what they made of Tompkins, a park which has the longest and richest history of radical public gatherings of any place in the city, from the Triangle Shirtwaist protests to the tent city of the 80s. It was such a vital and breathing part of the community that when the curfew was first imposed, it precipitated a riot.
Stern considers the new Tompkins the greatest success of his administration and a model for the "renewal" of city parks.
Also, he added the dog run. No wonder they wanted me to vend there, and only there. Also no wonder Elaine Crowley was so non-plussed by my inquiries about after-hours vending to the Avenue B bar/club crowd. They are shills for the landlords, and landlords prefer restaurants, who pay them rents. No doubt the landlords Crowley serves were none other than the infamous 7th Street Block Association who were so instrumental in lobbying Commissioner Stern and Mayor Dinkins to brutally alter the park.
cherry blossoms
Scab
As you may notice, I am somewhat angry about my treatment at the hands of the parks department. Not only am I angry, I am enraged. Molly and I talk often about the difference between anger and rage. Anger is directed, expressive, and social. Anger is the only appropriate reaction to injustice. Rage is wild, blunt, and isolating. Rage is a response to hurt, and serves only to keep people away while healing occurs.
Confusion between rage and anger is devastating. Scott, one of the bosses at my last job was a classic example of a personality ravaged by the acid bath of rage mixed with anger, or rancor. His head was shrunken to the size of his skull. When I first saw him, I thought "Who is this wraith?" He haunted the restaurant like an ill spirit, communicating with tiny brutish notes, spreading bad sentiment and underming the good relations of the rest of the staff. He once told me after some small misunderstanding that he wanted to punch me in the face. I had an insight into his condition last night. I realized that he felt that the world owed him a step-by-step instruction on exactly how to behave, and he held every bump in the road against whoever was closest at hand. Needless to say, he was single.
In order to sort out the relations between the various moments of hurt, rage, sadness and anger, Molly and I developed the metaphor of a wound. An open wound is like rage. When a wound is too wide and too deep for a scab to form it can stay open a long time. Molly had a roller-scating injury on the back of her shoulder like this when she was a preteen. It just oozed and oozed, soaking the bandages with pus. When she would take the bandage off, it wouldn't seem to have healed at all, but it was healing from underneath. This is like rage.
This was an important breakthrough for Molly; years ago, she was badly betrayed, and for a long time when she removed the bandages from her rage it seemed just as ugly as ever. During this time she often believed that she was ruined forever. But then, one day, the feeling ended; now she can understand why.
A scab forms over a wound and, as it dries, tightens, pulling the edges of the cut together. This is like sadness, the shrinking emotion. Sadness contracts down until the hurt is manageable.
Anger is like the itching of a wound that is nearly healed. It guides the production of the new flesh underneath the wound, the new part that can work. Anger guides us into a better future.
Long live anger, down with Crowley!
Posted by Sam at April 17, 2003 03:04 AM
