« Brooklyn Politics Eight four-year-olds | Main | Bike Rodeo Story to come, »
April 21, 2003
Necklace Lights Somewhere around the
Necklace Lights
Somewhere around the Ides of March, the lights went out on the East River bridges. Not the roadway lights, mind you, but the bright “necklace” lights that run along the arching suspension cables of the Brooklyn, Manhattan, Williamsburg and Queensboro bridges.“Nobody has ever faced the kind of deficit that we’re facing,” said Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Tuesday in presenting his latest “doomsday” budget, and the darkened bridges were testimony to the stroke of his budget knife.
Of course, the decorative strings of light serve no practical purpose, and there is no group of concerned citizens to speak out on their behalf. Nor would anyone suggest that our attention stray from the fiscal threats to child welfare, schools, or public safety.
But how does one reckon the loss to the evening skyline? Can a debit be assigned for each tourist less charmed by a slightly less glittering metropolis? Does it matter if a thousand midnight couples dare just a little less romance as they stroll across the bridges, or if the weary minds of the 100,000 who commute daily in cars over the East River remain trapped by their workday concerns -- unseduced by the beauty of these urban constellations? And what micro-accounting can be made for the sparks of insight and inspiration that fail to occur in the minds of millions as they gaze from windows in Brooklyn or Manhattan?
Apparently, whatever the value, it’s less than $75,000, which is how much the Department of Transportation says it will save by not flipping on the light switch in 2004.
Since $75,000 is only about one-ten-thousandth of 1 percent of the total city budget of $44.5 billion, one is of course tempted to believe that the bridge blackout was motivated more by political than by economic considerations.
Could Mayor Bloomberg wish to send a signal to New Yorkers that tough times are at hand? If so, it remains unclear to what extent token measures of public austerity will help everyone get mentally prepared for the rough stretch ahead.
As the Mayor has said, “there are no answers, there are only tough choices.”
And there is a fine line between a legitimate choice to cut non-essential services and a misguided attempt at heavy-handed symbolism, or, perhaps worse, a fearful meaness in the city’s fiscal planning.
***
Not that many New Yorkers have noticed the change in the night sky. On the Brooklyn Bridge at dusk on Friday evening, most pedestrians were taken by surprise when apprised of the unlit lights.
“Yeah, so they can’t blow it up,” was one man’s immediate reaction, a thought echoed by several others.
“I don’t know what he’s thinking!” exclaimed a Brooklyn-bound West Indian woman of Mayor Bloomberg.
Even at Brooklyn’s River Café, a restaurant which owes its abundant charm to an unobstructed water-level view of the old bridge and of the Manhattan shore beyond, the staff had not noticed the change. But Javier, the Maitre D was quick to point out the potentially negative revenue implications for the city:
“People come from all over the world -- from Central America, Japan, Europe,” he said. “And they spend money all over the city. They want to see an attraction. If there are not attractions…they pay less in taxes.”
On the deck of the Fulton Ferry Landing next door, Paul Patous, a soft-spoken Swedish artist, had set up a table with a selection of his photo-realistic night scenes depicting lower Manhattan. Patous has been painting in this spot at night for two years, and in most of his works the lights of the Brooklyn Bridge appear twice – soaring out of the frame and then again reflected on the cobalt surface of the river. He was stunned to realize the bridge lights were out and laughed at himself for not having noticed. When he learned that the change was to be for at least a year, he became more serious.
“He’s crazy Bloomberg. How much can it cost?” he said, and then added: “Why doesn’t he just pay for it with his own money?”
Most of the pieces Patous had on display were copies of old works that feature the brightly lit towers of the World Trade Center. Pedestrians drifted by comparing the evening’s view with those in his pictures, and the discrepancies were not flattering to the present.
Back across the river at the cavernous and largely empty Pier 23 shopping mall adjacent to the South Street Seaport, Joe, a plain-clothes security man carrying a walkie-talkie, had also missed the change, and he walked briskly to the outdoor railing to confirm the news.
“Well, that’s not the direction we want to go in,” he said with wry fatalism. The mall had lost at least 25% of its business since 9/11 he explained. Yes, there has been a greater need for security, but he said he would give up all of the extra work “to go back to the way the world was before.” The loss of the bridge lighting, he said, was “not promising.”
***
The roadway and walkway lights on the East River bridges come on slowly. If you watch at dusk, you will see the lights popping to life, one by one, in seemingly indiscriminate order over a period of almost twenty minutes. The high pressure sodium and metal halide bulbs take a while to warm up, and the different rows of lights are controlled by different master panels which send their “on” signals at slightly different times. When the “necklace” lights are in use, the lighting spectacle appears even more elaborate and prolonged.
It’s a subtle spectacle played nightly for an anonymous audience of unknown proportions. And the orchestra seats belong to the projects.
Rising up before the Manhattan approaches to the Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Williamsburg bridges are the hulking rows of brick buildings that constitute the Lower East Side housing developments -- oppressive buildings that are no doubt a step up from the tenements that they replaced.
For at least those with apartments facing east looking out over the FDR drive, the drabness of the neighborhood is relieved by high-rent views of the river and of the three bridges sweeping across to Brooklyn with cars, trains and people flowing endlessly back and forth.
No doubt there are some in these buildings who have recently noticed a change in the shadows cast at night on the walls of their bedrooms, and perhaps a few have even gotten out of bed to stare out their windows at the familiar bridges that now sport a colder, unfamiliar look.
No doubt they will never get the chance to voice their concern to the City Council or to the Department of Transportation or to Mayor Bloomberg.
***
Though beautiful in its own way, New York has never been accused of an excess of aesthetic charm. Big and impressive, yes. But not “pretty.” Beauty for its own sake has never fared well in a city that reveres power, utility, and expediency. Lovers go to Paris, Venice, and San Francisco, not to the Bowery.
For this reason, even the smallest concessions to aesthetics are precious to visually-starved New Yorkers, and it’s not surprising that guerrilla artists like Keith Haring become heroes in New York.
And now the city faces its worst fiscal crisis in generations. By everyone’s admission, the choices that get made in the next two months will determine the color of life in New York for generations to come.
But in the melodrama of a New York budget battle, it seems unlikely that anyone will hear the few voices that speak in favor of intangibles like the value of the lights on the East River bridges. And so the lights may well stay off.
It’s a choice made in a political vice of peculiar dimensions, and one fears there will be a thousand other choices of similar ilk that, like this one, may take us a while to notice. But eventually we will go to our windows and look out on a city that sports a colder, unfamiliar look.
Back at Pier 23 on Friday evening, one of Joe’s uniformed security guards stood at the railing looking across at the Brooklyn Bridge and noticing the lack of lights for the first time.
To his right on the Brooklyn side of the river the massive red Watchtower sign flashed the time and temperature. Further up the eastern shore, past the Williamsburg Bridge, the yellow Dominos sign had reported faithfully to duty -- as had the usual suspects in Manhattan: a red, white and blue Empire State Building, the gleaming Chrysler building, the Citicorp building shining upwards at midtown, and countless others.
But directly in front of the guard, the stately Brooklyn Bridge just seemed big and gray in its darkness.
“Now that they’ve turned them off, it just looks like a regular bridge,” he said.
###
--------
Posted by oliver at April 21, 2003 05:16 PM