I’m about to say something almost nice about Sheldon Silver, so I’m doing it early in the weekend so I’ll have the whole two days to recover. The next few years are certain to be years of severe fiscal pain for New York City and State, with higher taxes and collapsing services, and quite likely to be years of fiscal disaster akin to the 1970s. This is due not only to the recession, but also to the future-wrecking consequences of the deals, favors and non-decisions of the past two decades, consequences that are set to explode. Moreover, it may become increasingly difficult to defer (while increasing) those disastrous consequences through borrowing, which is what New York has done repeatedly in the recent past. Mr. Silver is among those who share most of the blame for this. But what would have happened if New York City and State, in addition, were staring down a multi-billion-dollar bill for the 2012 Olympics right now? Looks like Mr. Silver’s veto allowed New York to dodge an artillery shell. In any event, way back when a New York Olympics was first proposed by former Mayor Giuliani, I wrote that while other cities (such as Chicago) might need an established international event to bring the world to their door, New York City, being itself, could manage with something vastly lower (down to near zero) in cost and more indigenous. As they did with the New York City Marathon, the city’s people are organizations are capable of creating our own event. For those interested, my suggestion follows.
My suggestion was a “World of New York” festival in the first weekend in August, that would have been like all those ethnic parades and street festivals rolled into one, along with outdoor sports events that could fit within the boundaries of a street, and outdoor cultural events such as those at annual festivals in Spoleto, Italy and Edinburgh, Scotland. It would also resemble Manhattan on the night of the 2003 blackout, for those who had no choice but to stay over, but with more generally available rest room facilities. Virtually all the participants would be unpaid, or paid solely by the sale of related goods, sponsorships, and passing the hat, and anyone with anything real to offer would be invited to come and be a participant. Most participants would come from the New York metropolitan area broadly defined, with its 20 million people, but all would be welcome. In the evening, the city’s entertainment venues could choose to present paid performances by paid entertainers as well, for those with the money to pay.
The closest thing to what I had in mind is last summer’s “Summer Streets,” which turned Lafayette Street/Fourth Avenue/Park Avenue into traffic-free venues for sports and performances, walking and bicycling. My thought, however, was to eventually (if the event became big enough) close the whole of Manhattan south of 60th Street, save West Street and the FDR Drive, to non-emergency motor vehicle traffic for an extended weekend in early August. Traffic into the area would cease at, say, noon on Thursday — after that people could drive out but not in. Street closings would begin after rush hour Thursday evening. (I originally thought transit within the zone could be free, but in light of the MTA’s future-crushing debts, that is probably no longer possible).
Within the area of the festival, commercial blocks or portions thereof could be given over to the different ethnic organizations that sponsor the various parades, where they would set up a small stage for entertainment and booths and tables for other activities. In addition other countries, through their UN representatives, could be invited to send performers, etc. on their own dimes, turning the city into a temporary, low cost, mini “World’s Fair.” Cultural groups, for this purpose, could be broadly defined. There is no reason why there couldn’t be a “Texas” block where natives of the state played Country and Western and Tejano music and served chili, if the State of Texas or local migrants from there were interested in sponsoring it. And, in the face of the snarky posters on Curbed who are always telling those who weren’t born here to “go back to Ohio,” there could be an Ohio block as well.
Other blocks and locations could host ongoing tournaments in the sort of Olympic sports we didn’t get to see on free TV here, such as ping pong, or that are indigenous to city life as it exists today, such as handball and playground basketball. So-called “minor sports,” minor at least here in the United States, might appreciate the exposure, and their U.S. associations might be willing to sponsor the tournaments. So might the sports talk stations. Other blocks could feature ongoing tournaments in games like chess, or dominos, or Monopoly (appropriately a Great Depression era game that involves going broke on real estate), or bridge (but not, or course, poker). Others blocks could have physical art fairs. One block could be dedicated to stand up comedy, another to magic tricks, another to poetry. Merchants could be invited to move some of their wares, and restaurants some of their tables, to the sidewalks.
Large stages could be set up for more famous acts in locations where the local BID chose to sponsor them. In Times Square, for example, perhaps performers in Broadway shows running at the time would perform part of the shows, to try to induce people to buy tickets. Perhaps that stage would close during the part of the evening when those shows were being performed, and then re-open when the shows were over.
To wrap things up, there could be a large parade up Broadway from the Battery to Times Square on Sunday. Any group willing to put on costumes, create a float, or perform music on the move would be permitted to march. If it got so big there wasn’t enough room on Broadway for everyone to be included over six hours, the parade could be divided in half, with the other half going up Pearl Street/Bowery/Fourth/Park and over 42nd Street to Times Square. If it became bigger still it could be divided into three, with a third branch going up Trinity/Church/6th/Greenwich/7th to Times Square. From a dollars and cents perspective, it wouldn’t matter if anyone watched. Most of the economic value New York City receives from the New York City marathon is the spending of the marathoners themselves, who pay to eat, perhaps stay in a hotel, and perhaps attend a performance and do some shopping while they are here. The same could be true of the parade, and the whole festival. New York City could use an event that generated something while costing the taxpayer next to nothing. Even maps of what was where could be printed up by sponsors with their ads on the back.
There are areas within the central business district, broadly defined, where people choose to live, and in some of these areas those who choose to live in the central business district (ironically) don’t like it when lots of people from elsewhere show up. This could be a point of contention. On the other hand, on a weekend in August perhaps they wouldn’t be around to complain. I distinctly recall being assigned to take notes on testimony at a City Planning Commission on a citywide zoning action many years ago. The Community Board hearings had been held in August, and a representative from the Soho Alliance claimed that the entire process was invalid because everyone knows that almost everyone in Soho is at their summer houses in August. The rest, along with wealthy people in general, presumably join them on the weekends.
The city has many outdoor cultural festivals in the summer, but many of these wind down in early August. Perhaps, for one weekend, some of them could get a second wind by moving into the CBD. If, that is, those outdoor festivals don’t shrink to nothing as a result of a collapse of government and corporate support, thus removing one of the real attractions of living in New York City for those without massive wealth (or untaxed retirement income).
What would be the purported occasion for a “World of New York” festival? At the time, my practical interest in the idea was based on the absence of a paid holiday in late July/early August. Other parts of the summer are covered by long weekends, with Memorial Day on the border of May and June, Independence Day at the intersection of June and July, and Labor Day at the intersection of August and September, but in general the best part of the year for outdoor activities is barren of paid days off. Meanwhile, as I public employee I had lots and lots of paid holidays in less appealing months like November, January and February (a problem that, having moved to the private sector, I no longer have). With all due respect to veterans (and given that we also have Memorial Day), I though perhaps Veteran’s Day could be swapped for a new Friday holiday in early August. I had suggested that the holiday celebrate my early August birthday, but perhaps in light of subsequent events a celebration of Barack Obama’s birthday is more in order.
In any event, since the primary goal of government services in the past two decades, at least in Albany, has been to create a large stream of money from which insiders could extract a slice (kind of like mortgage securitization), cost vs. benefit hasn’t exactly been a consideration. Now that past bills are coming due, however, future politicians will no longer be able to offer much of anything to their constituents if significant amounts of money (let alone massive amounts, as in the Olympics) are involved. Our future taxes are going to the past, and we will be paying them not in exchange for public services and benefits for ourselves, not in exchange for assistance for the less well off (either we donate despite having lower after-tax increases or they suffer), but just to stay out of jail.
Like bicycle transportation and supported home schooling, which will have to take the place of two of the public services that are most important to me (transit and education) once they collapse, a festival created by the people with little public sector support, aside from turning over the streets to it, (perhaps) picking up the trash afterward, and hoping that a bump up in sales tax revenues covers the entire cost and more, is about the most our government will be able to offer. It looks like lots and lots of us will have the time, while looking for a job and collecting unemployment, to help produce such an event in the next two years. A semi-free festival may be the most entertainment many of us can afford. And helping to organize it is the least or local politicos, who otherwise do not provide benefits commensurate with their cost, can do for us.