The first time I found myself in New York City was nearly 10 years ago, a very cold winter in my early 20s with a close childhood friend. I would return a couple of times over the next few years, and then not make another appearance in Gotham until this month to meet with clients, supporters, and friends. 

There were not many "must-sees” on my list this trip. I had some meetings to attend and people to meet. However, the twenty-five-foot, seven-ton, bronze statue of an African tribesman was at the top of that list.

Going out for a late walk after the first day in the city I departed the hotel and made my way towards Rockefeller Plaza. I turned the corner and upon seeing the giant statue I could not help but have the biggest grin. I loved it. I genuinely and sincerely loved the bronze Negro.  If I was tasked with creating an art installation for The Rockefeller Center in 2021 after a year of BLM riots and Covid lockdowns, I can't think of a better piece than "Oracle" by Sanford Biggers. 

 

Adjacent in The Rockefeller Center is a similar scaled bronze statue of Atlas with the world on his shoulders. Atlas, as strong as he is, struggles under the weight of the world and all its drudgery. In contrast to our Oracle friend across the way, relaxing on his throne, tired perhaps only from carrying around his giant head filled with a brain of magnificent proportion.

 Another bronze sculpture featured in Rockefeller Plaza is of Prometheus, at eighteen feet tall (to give some idea of scale). Another Grecian figure, a Titan who would betray the wishes of the Gods and give fire to humans, igniting our civilization. For this transgression against the Gods, Zeus would sentence Prometheus to an eternity of torment. The bronze Negro is seen holding a torch - it is kept to himself. 

It is almost a caricature of itself, a giant head, bug-eyed, and alien. It's how I see the race as a whole. It's honest. And for its honesty, I appreciate it immensely. I guess that’s the thing about art, sometimes it is honest in ways that even the artist could have not understood, if you subscribe to the New Criticism anyway, which I do. In short, I do not care what the artist claims the work is about, it becomes a thing unto itself and I will decide what I think it means to me and the society at large.

I wondered if the way the ancient Greeks saw themselves in Atlas is the way blacks see themselves in the Oracle, I tend to think yes. To belabor the point, one civilization sees itself as having a duty to carry burdens for the sake of mankind. Another civilization thinks their existence alone should be worshipped and revered.

The duality captured is magnificent, the yin and yang, all things in perfect balance, total harmony, a magnificent equilibrium. Two bronzed statues on the same street, both facing Saint Patrick’s, giving us insight into the two groups living alongside each other. One is tasked to lift everything; one is lounging with an inflated cranium massively out of proportion for its accomplishments. 

An article from Smithsonian Magazine said the Oracle statue "subverts traditional sculpture," they meant this to be positive. Something about African art being whitewashed or Europeans stealing African art and ideas. I'm not sure.[1] But I do wonder if headlines that speak of African art “subverting traditional” art are not somehow aimed at people like us, almost as bait. Maybe as a way to gloat that they are "winning." If so, message received, and I agree, for different reasons entirely, reasons that would make any victory of the Oracle pyrrhic for those who hoped for our chagrin.

I will not go into the negative aspects of New York City here, not because they do not exist, or because I did not notice them, but because you already know of them. 

Indeed, H.P. Lovecraft was writing about the negatives of NYC over 100 years ago, and frankly, I have nothing to add to his criticism that;

The population [of New York City]is a mongrel herd with repulsive Mongoloid Jews in the visible majority, and the coarse faces and bad manners eventually come to wear on one so unbearably that one feels like punching every god damn bastard in sight. ––from a letter written November 19, 1931.

For all its faults and drudgery, NYC is still a tremendous city, unlike anything else. It is city engineering taken to the zenith. Contrary to common online and right-wing discourse, I do not think NYC or San Francisco, for that matter, needed to be nuked to be repaired. Some demographic incentives in the opposite direction, a few more street sweepers, and a fresh coat of paint in the subway and we are as good as new. 

I’ll tell you why I enjoyed NYC so much, more than before, more than I expected; there is a lot of beauty that remains. The gothic architecture is magnificent, the New York preservation societies have worked hard to ensure it does not all become steel and glass monoliths. 

If you do it right, that is, go to NYC with a group of right-wing bodybuilders, nobody bothers you, at all. You don’t get people asking you for money, nobody tries to sell you their mixtape or fake Gucci bags, nobody even gives you dirty looks. The cabbies are even friendlier. Nobody tries to hustle you; this is a markable distinction from previous trips to the city alone or with one other friend. 

Walking along the High Line public park was an experience. I both appreciated and hated it. The concept of a suspended rail-trail park with views of the city is wonderful. Seeing the Hudson Yard redevelopment mega-project in progress was something I appreciated. As both the Hudson Yard and the High Line were brought up often in city planning and landscape architecture classes I attended during undergrad. 

With that said, contrasting the glass monoliths to New York’s more native Gothic, Beaux-arts, and revival architecture gives one the impression you’re in two different worlds, two physical planets perhaps. Some of the buildings along the High Line through Hudson Yard are physically uncomfortable to look at. The Vessel looks like a bug-person pod, The Shed looks like an inflatable building, and The Edge observation deck located at 30 Hudson Yards, 100 stories from the street, with a cantilever design to the shard make the walk feel very alien. It’s all too unnatural, those with me brought up my architecture article on the topic.

Globalism in light of New York City is an interesting topic, something I will discuss more at a later date. For now, I will say there are misconceptions about the city on the whole and I learned a few new things about diversity in proximity. I also gained some nuance on multiculturalism. For one, of course, the people are alien, there are residents and tourists and businessmen from every corner of the planet, especially the dark corners. They wear foreign clothes, speak foreign tongues, look as radically alien as anything seen in science fiction films. But that's a good thing. They don't seem to integrate (of course they cannot, but they make no attempt to curb their foreignness), something about being surrounded by “others” with no visible hegemon makes your own identity more salient and special. Seeing these people in New York was less jarring than in my hometown in a flyover state. I’m not sure why that is.

There are many healthy ethnic enclaves, and for being a massive city with global mega-corporations calling it home, you can easily spend all of your time in small, family-owned restaurants, grocery stores, and shops. Despite the move towards the International style of architecture, the glass and steel towers that make all cities look similar, there is a strong preservationist movement in New York. After the destruction of the original Penn Station, a fascination with preservation took hold all over the world, with a special epicenter in New York. I appreciate that, other political leanings of these groups aside. 

Hierarchy seems to be alive and well in the city. Something I’m not sure I expected to witness. Perhaps it is due to how striking the disparity is in the city. There is a new Lamborghini and G-Wagon parked outside the Louis Vuitton flagship, in the bank lobby across the way a homeless person is sleeping. Maybe that's a bad example. That might be simply a person with paranoid schizophrenia in the bank lobby and a person with oil money visiting the city in the Louis Vuitton store. But maybe it is a good example, maybe a city with a district called "Billionaire's Row" that features penthouses in the tens of millions of dollars that look down on some of the most destitute is the perfect example. Perhaps the hierarchy on display is unnatural, a perversion of a proper society. Not because there are billionaires or homeless people in existence, as you often see in left-wing critiques of American society or of “capitalism.” But because there is a feeling that our “elite” are anything but. The feeling that something is a bit askew is bolstered by the type of politics and “intellectuals” that New York generally produces. One gets the feeling that these people don't believe in what they are trying to sell. I think what I am trying to say is that I got the sense that New Yorkers as a people and the culture of the city greatly respects wealth, power, and prestige. New York rewards winners and punishes losers, in perhaps the most magnificent and harsh ways a city can. There is something here that remains elusive and inexplicable to me, I will try to revisit this later. 

The place is full of mystery and allure. An abandoned island can be seen from the top of the Rockefeller Center, that’s where I discovered it anyway. Intricate rooftop penthouses, businesses above and below the city street level. 

People from our metapolitical milieu are often surprised to hear that I love New York City. And I do. I suppose one could see it simply as a hotbed of globalism and Semitism, and they wouldn't be wrong, nor would I argue those points. Yet there is still something to the city that makes it worth visiting. I left with feelings of hope and possibility, far from thinking "we're doomed, it's over," I was encouraged to re-double my efforts. If a rat can scurry onto a ship, make their way across the Atlantic, find themselves in a New York slum, and one day, maybe later in life, or maybe the next generation, find themselves looking over Central Park from a penthouse where they destroy and re-create the nation in their image, maybe I can too. 

The city is haunting in the right and wrong ways. You’re in Gotham, you’ve seen the hotels, the famous districts, the famous streets, in films, art, and more your entire life. There is history packed into every block, you realize before there was ever a place called Ellis Island, there was already a New York City that somebody must have built before those huddled masses appeared. And we know who it was that did the building. I felt alive in New York City, I’m not sure I slept much more than four or five hours in the 48 hours I spent in the boroughs. Not that I sleep much anyway, but in New York, you need even less. 

New York is an inspiring city. Something about the energy makes you want to strive higher, for more wealth, more power, more influence. After all, much of the city was built by industrialists who reached the pinnacle of American society, building what some call to be the greatest city on Earth, in their image. Sure, things aren't looking great for us at the moment, I will freely admit that. But who doesn't love a comeback? 

 

 

[1] https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/25-foot-tall-sculpture-debuts-new-york-citys-rockefeller-center-180977692/ [https://archive.is/j33d7]