Not Just Shrinking Cities – Jess Lambert

Ever seen Dirty Dancing? Yeah, me neither – but it serves as one of those famous movies that represents a completely different era. In fact, Dirty Dancing was set in a Catskills resort, the same resorts that were famous during the 70’s, a sort of middle class vacation that was affordable, and in those days , booming.

Poolside Before

Poolside After

However, as time has gone on we’ve seen the retreat of that ideal – most middle class workers no longer can afford vacations, and hotels are either luxuriously catering to the elite, or, well, pretty much an Econolodge made only for sleeping in an area for convenience. Now, hold on, there is a parallel here – with cities like Detroit shrinking with the fall of the industrial nation in America – there are other areas suffering from the same shift in what is being consumed and outsourced. In my hometown there’s a small hotel called Grossinger’s, now abandoned. In it’s heyday, this was one of the most famous hotel resorts in the northeast, it brought people from all over the east coast and set a precedent that was quickly followed by the rest of the Borscht Belt ( a moniker given to the resort that sprung up all over Sullivan County that catered to middle to upper middle class Jewish families).

Grossinger's Indoor Art-Deco Architecture

These resorts were so popular that towns sprung up around them, enjoying the huge business that the hotels brought to the area. However, as disposable income fell and inflation rose, the typical family couldn’t afford to frequent the resorts much longer. As time went on, the decor became out of place, the number of people coming in fell and the resort, one by one went bankrupt and locked their doors. That’s all they did though, just locked the doors and walked away – making it a little too easy for urban explorers to check it out. Seeing as only 30 years have passed since Grossinger’s kicked out it’s poolside guests, to see it today is just an example of a economic interest, a service-producing industry that has fallen by the wayside.

 

Grossinger's as I know it.

        If you see these resorts now, especially Grossinger’s, you’ll note the lovely misspelled Neonazi graffiti, and enjoy the flooded basements, the spa turned into a murky pond, and the little messages for the last guests yellowing in their cubbies. To me, it’s beautiful. However, to the generation before mine, it represents a bygone era. My father was an employee for Grossinger’s in his youth. When he was our age, he was working as a valet, in the fancy red jackets, racing Cadillacs to the edge of the parking lot for a quick dollar – it was a place that was fun, one of the best first jobs you could want. To see it today is heartbreaking. It also represents the death of our area. Once the hotel business dried up, all the money left the area. There’s no destination in Liberty, it’s a midway point that people stop by only if they have to. The income to the area has left, leaving deserted street corners, empty, broken shop windows and one or two small seedy bodega left for those who grew up in the area when it was full of business – and never left.

Barrel jumping?

When the source of income leaves an area, just like in Detroit, the city quickly becomes undesirable. We see a 30% increase in crime every 3 years. Low-income housing has flooded the area – all the jobs are in the snack plant that hires illegal immigrants, and it’s hard to make ends meet. In 30 years, we have gone from a popular destination, a town that thrives, to a backwater town with nothing better to do than toss rocks at windows. It’s the change in wealth. The change in money influences the area so completely, that with a shift in interest by the public, comes a shift in living conditions for the townspeople.  I have a feeling this is exactly what has happened in post-industrial America to all the towns whose source of revenue has disappeared due to outsourcing, and other factors that are natural with progression in our economy. The only thing that truly scares me is the fact that no one’s going to restore Liberty. No one’s going to pour too much more money into reestablishing Detroit. What happens when this reaches the next city as it is inevitably going to? And what if the shrinking effect doesn’t stop?

Happy visitors

Does the shrinking city present potential for improvement?

Are shrinking cities inherently a problem?  The health of the modern city is based upon the premise of expansion; a healthy city requires physical growth and technological progression.  The modern city plans for growth, but in the face of post-industrial urbanity and decreasing urban populations, what if the new norm was to plan for diminishment?  Or, to plan for the possibility of fluctuations?

Why should we be pushing towards urban planning that discards old infrastructure to be replaced with the new, when the next generation of urban planning could be a push to retrofit the infrastructure that already exists to a new population with a new economy?

Can we look at empty land and vacant lots as an opportunity and not a hindrance?  Perhaps the shrinking city presents great potential for sustainable development, urban farming and the restoration of urban ecosystems.

A great example of the retrofitting of old structures is the Rails to Trails Conservancy project in Kingston.  The project works with railways, infrastructure that was once used for mass transit and shipping  but no longer necessary for the city, to use their locations and routes to renovate into walking/biking/running trails.

This act can contain much symbolic significance as well: transforming railways, a sign of Kingston’s industrial past, into user-friendly walking trails is a sign of the city’s commitment to sustainable practices, and the ability to adapt to its citizens needs.

here’s a link to some of the rail-to-trails around the Kingston area: http://www.traillink.com/city/kingston-ny-trails.aspx

Gender and Sexuality, Hallie Greenberg

When I was reading “Walking After Midnight: Women, Sex, and Public Space” I was instantly reminded of a conversation I had with my Mom over Fall break. The conversation began as we were talking about Occupy Wall St. and my experience at the protest. My Mom is a bit of a worry wart, and was concerned about the possibility of someone having a gun at the protest. She kept saying that “protests are dangerous”, trying to make me think that the actions of a protester may be more dangerous than those of the police.

By the end of the conversation, we had moved on to the subject of gender. Earlier, I had mentioned that I go on runs in the trails behind Bard. My Mom’s reaction to this and my experience at Occupy Wall St. was that I needed to be “more scared”, whether I am protesting on the streets or running in the woods. She believes, and I do too to a certain extent, that women cannot trust all men. I do take the fact that I am a woman into consideration when I enter a public space. I understand the risk of being taken advantage of by any person, male or female. I try not to be scared of this though. Instead, I think it is important to take into consideration how I am dressed or how I should act in a particular space to protect myself. As a woman, I do think it is important to be aware and cautious, but I do not think being “scared” is a productive way to experience the city.

The Benches on the Path to the Campus Center-Adam Skinner

There are two benches that are awkwardly placed on the pathway that leads to campus center. To me, it seems like a strange place to put benches. It’s right in the middle of walking space and seems to disrupt the flow of traffic.  One time I saw a biker (going pretty fast) trying to weave through a group of walkers while also trying to dodge the island created by the benches. —A close call to pretty painful collision. Maybe the disruptive aspect to the benches attracts people to sit there. Similar to the video that we saw in class of people stopping in the middle of the sidewalk to talk or simply stand there, the benches force people to sit in the middle of the walkway.   It seems difficult to explain why people enjoy being an obstruction.  Perhaps it is the human contact and a feeling of connection that comes with being in the middle of other people.  By sitting in the middle of traffic the sitter can take on an observational role while also shortening the gap between the observer and the subjects.

Even though I am guilty of sitting on those benches, I am constantly baffled that people actually sit there (I guess that I am drawn to sit there even though I am aware that it’s a strange place to sit).  It has an ugly view (looking straight to the entrance of the campus center) and is surrounded by seemingly more appealing places to sit including the benches in front of the chapel and the long winding brown bench in front of the fisher studio art building.  It is a mystery to me, that people seem occupy the disruptive island of benches more than the benches in front of the chapel.  The benches on the path are ugly and chaotic and the chapel benches are visually appealing and somewhat removed.

The Breezeway – Grace Diliberto

Living in Keene, I have come to spend a considerable amount of time travelling through or hanging out within the Cruger breezeway. Be it a place for an individual to smoke a cigarette safe from the rain, or housing for overflow from the spontaneous dance parties that occurred in the Cruger quad during L&T, it is rare to walk through an empty breezeway. While many spots around campus are identified as type-specific, meant only for certain people doing certain activities, the breezeway seems to be a place for all. From people sitting and conversing on the dusty concrete ground to those taking a homework smoke break and hoping a PC doesn’t come out and tell them to move, all are welcome in the breezeway.

It acts as both a place to pass through, marked by the speedy bikers gaining wind down the hill and rushing by and a leisurely spot to hang out for a while. Even those who do not live in Cruger are welcome, as it pulls those from Keene and the treehouses. It is not uncommon to spot a few trailer-dwellers mixed in the small groups that gather at nighttime in the breezeway. While the breezeway is only equipped with a single bench, this does not prevent the huddles of people from forming. In a sense the breezeway acts at the North Campus equivalent of the Tewksbury smokers’ patio, attractive to the masses of smoker freshmen, but open to all.

Bard Trails and Tivoli Bays- Barbara Haupt

The awesome, extensive trail-system that runs all along the Hudson on our campus is oddly enough the most empty place on campus. I sometimes wonder if students realize it’s there. It’s possible to walk all the way from the waterfall south of Blithewood to Tivoli through Tivoli Bays without ever emerging onto main campus. It’s not unusual during hunting season to see and hear hunters in the Tivoli Bays trails, and I’m sure I actually see more local people than students on all the trails in general. You’d expect half of the student body to be out there after class, but that’s definitely not the case. I guess that is partly what makes them so special for the people who do use them–they provide a real break from Bard/campus life, as if all you have to do to escape a city for a few hours is veer left five minutes, into the woods. They’re super fun, a natural playground, speckled with strange, mysterious spots, look-outs and structures (there’s a whole system of waterfalls and a little island where that river meets the Hudson if you continue past “The waterfall,” there’s a wide, beautiful platform just north of Blithewood that is becoming more and more slanted and broken as the trees its suspended from grow and slip into the Hudson, there are many crooked bridges going over little creeks, a look-out with a bon-fire pit halfway from Blithewood to Cruger Island Road, a labyrinth, an archaeological site just off of that same trail, there’s a giant, graffiti-ed, abandoned barn in the Bays, the boat launch in Tivoli Bays, and then Cruger Island, with the train tracks and mini-beaches covered with water chestnuts (although technically we’re not allowed to walk on this island because there’s a Bald Eagle’s nest way up in one of the trees, which is 6 feet deep!!!)—and all of this is a thousand times more bizarre and gorgeous when everything is covered in snow and ice sheets which crack apart and then shove up against each other over and over again as the tide comes in and out in the bay).

The trails also situate the school ecologically in the Hudson Valley, running parallel to the river itself, which is cool because Bard can feel like an isolated little intellectual/cultural island a lot of the time, rather than part of the area. I think the absence of Bard students on the trails highlights the fact that although our campus and position in Annandale-on-Hudson is very rural, the student body is largely urban.

The Shuttle, Hallie Greenberg

When asked to think about a public space on the Bard campus I immediately think of the Bard College campus shuttle. Though this is not a physical structure on our campus, I do consider it to be a “student space” of sorts.

The shuttle runs from Tivoli, to campus, and then to Red Hook (this year it also stops at the Hannafords grocery store at specific times). On campus, it makes stops at New Robbins, Kline, Blithewood, and the Triangle. It is primarily used by students but many professors ride the shuttle as well.

I have been thinking about how the shuttle is used on weekdays versus weekends; who uses the shuttle and who doesn’t use the shuttle during these times? Why?

On weekdays, the shuttle runs from 8:00 AM to 1:00 AM with several breaks for the drivers. Most students living off campus ride the shuttle to and from class. I have noticed that most ride the shuttle alone. Many listening to music, finishing up reading for class, or simply looking out the window at the foliage. The shuttle drivers play music on the radio, and the atmosphere is usually calm. Everyone has different destinations, whether it be class in Olin or the RKC, work at the Nursery School, or to Taste Buds in Red Hook, each person rides with his or her own agenda.

Weekends on the shuttle are drastically different. Beginning on Thursdays the shuttle extends its regular service and runs until 1:58 AM. During class hours the shuttle is used the same as it would be any other class day. But as the sun sets, the atmosphere changes. At Bard, most classes are held Monday-Thursday, for many students this makes Thursday night a party night. Around 9:00 students begin to board the shuttle (mostly to Tivoli, for music at the Black Swan or off campus parties). Many are inebriated, others sober. As it gets closer to midnight the shuttles get more and more crowded. Sometimes the shuttle completely skips the New Robbins stop due to over-crowding. As the shuttle pulls into Tivoli, it has to be careful not to hit any students that are roaming the streets outside of the Black Swan and student homes. On Friday and Saturday nights the shuttle again extends it’s hours until 2:30 AM.

The atmosphere inside the shuttle on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday evenings is…. crazy. The space is transformed. It is still a means of transportation but there is little sitting done in the seats. It is always packed, way past it’s legal capacity. People push and shove to get a spot on the shuttle before the doors are shut (meaning one would have to wait in Tivoli or Red Hook for the next 40 minutes- 1 hour). The shuttle driver is usually irritated, having to deal with hundreds of drunken, loud college students. The shuttle ride turns into a chaotic mess of people, instead of a scenic ride in the Hudson Valley.

I think the usage of this campus “space” is facinating. At some point, it includes all students, from the student who rides to class to the student that drunkenly kisses in the back at 2 o’clock in the morning. The space is transformed from one sort to another as the clock ticks and time passes.

J S HUSAK- Manor Dining Room

As I write this it is Fall Break and I am sitting in the dining area at Manor. It is dimly lit (as always), a bit chilly, and eerily empty. All of the chairs are pushed in so that their bellies are touching the tables, except for the one that is holding me. I can hear air and water surging through the pipes in the ceilings, carrying amenities to the rooms above. It smells the way it usually does: wooden with accents of food preparation. The ancient scent commingles with the smell of day-old concrete, the smell of maintenance. I’ve been working here for an hour or so now, and I have yet to see anyone. The doors were closed when I arrived. I had to jiggle the handle a bit in order to get in, as if something was carelessly attempting to keep me out. Even now I get the feeling that I shouldn’t be here.

I wonder what the original planners of Ward Manor would think if they saw how it is being utilized today. I have heard stories about the history of this place. One about how it was a wedding gift for a fiancee who tried to travel to America on the Titanic. One about how it was used as a summer camp for boys and girls. Another about Manor being an old tuberculosis clinic in the early 1900s. To me, part of the mystery and allure of the building stems from the fact that I don’t know its true history. There’s something almost mythical about this place. Today, it houses a bunch of students at a liberal arts college. Was this the buildings intended purpose? No, but through years of admiration and occupation Manor has become such a place. I wish these walls could talk.

Possibly the most dynamic space in the building is the one I am sitting in now: the dining area. While it is mainly used for eating food bought from the cafe, the dining room sees traffic from a variety of students throughout the day. There is always someone at the round table near the big window enjoying a book. There will always be a group of friends for which lunchtime is the only part of the day they get to relax and enjoy one another’s company. There will always be that kid sitting outside on the stone stair railing, smoking a cigarette. And you can almost guarantee that if you enter the building late at night to go to sleep, there will be someone in this dining room slaving over their laptop in order to complete an essay before the sun rises. Which is why it is so strange being in here alone right now. I came here to study because the library closed at 5pm today, and I wouldn’t even have been able to get in if it hadn’t have been for a shoddy lock. Why does the school attempt to keep people out of spaces such as this during periods such as Fall Break? Do they assume that all of their students have left campus? Is it because the cafe is closed and Bard admins view this dining area as merely a dining area? There are two things at this school that will always keep me wondering: 1. the origins of these most beloved spaces and 2. why the administration decides to manage them they way that they do. I wonder if I could get away with smoking in here…

Red Hook Stroll-Adam Skinner

Last Friday, I went on a stroll.  I started from my house in the outskirts of Red Hook to the town’s center. While I was walking I was thinking about the flaneur and how his detachment from the city perhaps allows him to understand the city. Even though it doesn’t seem to make sense that being detached from something would give you a greater understanding, my detached observation of the community of Red Hook seemed to capture the experience of the town.

I made three stops on my stroll: A local park, Red Hook High, and a Pizza Parlor.

At the park I decided to sit on a bench and quietly watch a little league baseball game.  Like the flaneur’s critical fascination with street life, I was fascinated by the baseball game. I was intrigued by the different interactions that took place. —A little kid cheering on his teammate, a dad smiling and giving a thumbs up sign to his son.  Even though it was interesting to observe, I felt self-conscious (maybe a parallel to the flaneur as he is highly self aware).  The feeling of being a disengaged participator felt strange. Unlike the other spectators, I was there for pure observation.

Red Hook High was the next stop.  I was particularly drawn to the high school because I thought that it would be something familiar to me. I went to high school only a couple of years ago.  Despite my preconception that I would be able to relate to the high school, I observed something foreign and felt once again like a distanced member of the space.  I wandered around the quad out front for a while listening to the students and feeling critical of them. —Their talk of partying and their bad music taste made me sad.  I put in my headphones and walked over to the field where the football team was practicing. I was the only one in the bleachers. I sat there for a while thinking about how I respected the football players for their hard work but also critical of the image of the stereotypical high school jock.

Next I walked into the center of Red Hook where I ate a calzone. The only person that I spoke to was the lady at the cash register.  I felt more attached and active as I ate.  Perhaps I lost the identity of an observer, as I became an active participant while eating the calzone.  While I was eating I felt happy and satisfied.

After a long day of strolling and watching I realized that perhaps the main source of the flaneur’s critical nature comes from his detachment and extensive observation.  He seems to be a contraction (being a disengaged participant of society), which gives him a different perspective to the city.

Barbara Haupt– College Space

Obviously coming to college is a huge adjustment in many ways, but I remember distinctly thinking often about how much more seemingly public my day-to-day experience had become. This is partly the size and nature of the community, but also that we lived in dorms, with at least one other roommate– as freshmen, in a small ten-by-fifteen room (more or less), with a common room, a common kitchen, and a common bathroom. Our meals, if we live on campus and eat at Kline, are rarely completely anonymous and rarely solitary. We can’t stretch on the floor of our living room, cry or sing alone (and walk to the bathroom without being seen while upset), or make tea for ourselves without interacting with a handful of people- usually. Things vary from this narrative bit by bit as we move through college, perhaps off campus. But even living in Tivoli means your house may be dropped in on at any moment, and most parties are regarded as open to public entry no matter what. There are certainly good and bad things about this situation, and different kinds of people deal with it differently, but I think it really makes for an unusual atmosphere. People who live on campus as upper class men (as opposed to freshmen– with already established friend groups and habits) describe feeling simultaneously isolated in their singles, even lonely, but also never really alone.

Facebook and the size of the school complement each other, ensuring that many, many shocking and mundane things are known about many people to many other people, and that most faces are at least very familiar. It’s interesting to walk by people on campus who you’ve seen in photos with mutual “friends” online, whose names you may know, whose cyber friendship you might even share, whose carefully or not-so-carefully constructed online persona you may be fairly familiar with, but not say hello or make eye-contact. I could go on and on, and talk about how the introverted student body + lack of school spirit/traditional social events interacts with this pseudo-public dynamic.  But writing this now, I’m realizing the parallels that can be drawn between this on-campus dynamic and dynamics of the modern cities that we’ve discussed. There is a sense of alienation from and also intense curiosity about those around you. It’s all so public, but also disconnected in many ways.  Of course not everyone wants to avoid eye contact or stroll around the campus center like flaneurs all day long, but enough that this sense of detached-ness is embedded within the culture here that it can be contagious at times.

O the other hand, I also think though that the decision to stop or avoid a conversation with a casual acquaintance and take a seat across from them rather than with them while on the shuttle is sometimes a form of courtesy as well. We think that sometimes a person may want to space out while looking out the window and listening to classic rock or other shuttle tunes in silence on the ride home. while I normally find it best to embrace our physical closeness to one another, and the fact that we really do know each other well after all this time (we hear each other argue and question Big Ideas in class, elbow/politely excuse ourselves while navigating the dangerous tea/coffee corner in Kline, lay in the sun with each other at Blythwood, etc.), but at times I do wish my home  and social world was more separate from my academic world. There is always a tenuous negotiation of private and public.

Post in the (Semi)style of Calvino

The city acts like a bog, dragging anyone foolish enough to enter down. Where is down in Liberty? Down is the houses, missing front steps, where homemade chemistry sets bubble and spew toxic colored air out from basement windows; down is unrecognizable faces shifting in the streetlights, hushed words and a badge twinkling among them – oblivious to how cheery it looks in this repugnant circle. Down is where middle-aged men trim their hedges in the dark in order to keep their neighbors on their toes.

Liberty does not represent freedom, does not ring true to it’s name, and most of all sticks to you – with an aching gravity and desperation. People do not enter Liberty to find a home, to meet someone, to have a good time – they come because they have to. They come for funerals, early ravaging funerals for people too young to be people yet. They come for relatives, dropping off and picking up relatives whose only real connection is not on a human level, but a biological obligation to get them to/from rehab, and from there they’ve done their duty, assured that “we’re good people”. The city isn’t a city, but  a squalid mass of ever consistent grimaces, and once you’re there, you’ll be one too. It has a way of shaping people into the same mold, newcomers become old hands, money moves into your palm, sweaty and crumpled, and rent has a way of paying itself. You’re held fast, nowhere to go, you don’t leave because old habits are new habits and all habits die hard.

The sky is bright in Liberty. Once you get past the layer of grime, that coats your sneakers, that permeates your lungs, that rubs off on you with every new acquaintance – the sky is bright. In day light, Liberty is average. We have a grocery store, and little mom n’ pop stationary business, and the streets are empty, save the occasional mother bringing her children out to play. But it’s hardly ever light out for long. And at night, things come apart at the seams and there’s no more women on the street. There’s just a feeling of being on the edge and a longing for the streetlight’s flicking light to strengthen into the sunshine that inexplicably scares all the boogeymen away.

Liberty is the city of lies, the village that has no community, where everyone keeps to themselves. It’s not that you don’t know your neighbors in this small place, it’s just that you wish you didn’t. In fact, most of the time, you wish you didn’t know Liberty. But, that’s okay, your life is here, and one day, you’ll move away, when that next check comes through, when you hear back from a stranger. But you never do.