new york city: couture or off-the-rack?

was NYC made in the america? [the U.S of A kind]

no, don’t look at me like that, i can feel your ‘errrrr-what’s-wrong-with-you’ eyeballing over the internet:  

“It is puzzling but true that the outlook associated with New York’s cosmopolitan experience has been unable to establish itself as an American standard.”

Thomas Bender

Literature of New York

you see what i mean?

don’t get me wrong, i love the idea of new york, i like what I’ve seen so far – but what’s behind the hype and hoopla that is ‘new york city’?  

after reading a little about the american *COUGH-new york-COUGH* renaissance for class, i’m all caught up with the paradox of new york – is it a follower or a trendsetter?

the classical statues, the nymphs, the doric-ionic-corinthian columns.

the art, the artists, the architecture… hello paris and ecole-des-beaux-arts.

new york city became a trendsetter, by doing what’s been done, better.

maybe for you, it doesn’t matter, you don’t care. for me, well, i thought new york was something really unique, something new the world has never seen before.

is it?

“Only the newest comers or the dullest dwellers in New York are chiefly impressed by its size [or it’s been-and-done architecture]. If you know it all, and really see it and feel it, you must marvel more at its union of individuality and heterogeneousness. It is this that makes its character, and it is this that makes that character unique.”

Mariana Van Renssalaer, architectural critic for Century.

[New York Modern, William B. Scott and Peter M. Rutkoff]

if you read all of that and you’re still with me, congratulations.

you’re almost there.

i’m still a ‘newest comer,’ but i almost get it – see, it’s not just about the architecture, or who did what first, or who copied whom.

it’s the combination of the people, and the buildings, and the way of life that makes up an ‘aura,’ quote walter benjamin, that makes new york city an original, not a copy.

you've got to be here and feel it to get it.

THE END – of an

original blog post, made in new york city.

[not a copy made in china]