Rockefeller Center: election night glow
Basking in the glow of Obama's historic victory, I am sickened by the passage of Prop 8 in California. While the country embraces the promise of civil rights, the state adopts a bigoted view of marriage. It colors our bright new future with Bush-era duplicity and fundamentalism. My dear friend Bryan Jackson sums up the rage that this hypocritical proposition invokes. I am heartened by the protests (Jack gives a good description of one such rally in West Hollywood) in the last couple days and I can only hope that lawsuits will halt the adoption of Prop 8.
Also sobering is the huge economic crisis still with us after the confetti, balloons, and hangovers. Job losses and unemployment claims are at a six year high. The layoffs remind me of my own time on the dole when Architecture magazine closed. I wrote about that experience for John Southern's pamphlet, Sumoscraper: A Cultural Content Container. The PDF is now online.
The End of Architecture
In the Fall of 2006 I found myself unemployed. The shock was less a full body blow than “Okay, what now?” I had just moved from San Francisco to Brooklyn and since July had commuted from that borough to the editorial headquarters of the now-defunct Architecture magazine located in the Wanamaker Building in Manhattan, former home of the Wanamaker Department Store—its 1,100,000 square feet designed by Daniel Burnham.
The building on Astor Place had a giant K-Mart on its ground floor and the fact that you could enter the store from the downtown 6 subway line was the only artifact left that tied the historic commercial structure to the underground network. But I didn’t catch the 6. I took the C, got off at West 4th, and wandered over to security entrance on Wanamaker Place (otherwise known as 9th Street, but changes for just the one block), I would then flash my ID badge, take the elevator to the 4th floor, and then be among a sea of beige cubicles. Some of which housed the magazine’s staff. Billboard magazine was (and still is) on the 11th floor. I heard tales of how they had a recording studio on their floor and multicolored carpet in the offices. Little luxuries like a café and not just a line-up of vending machines.
But I digress into snacks and interior design.