indelibly printed on my sense of right and wrong - Friday July 12 2002

Those of you not living in New York may not be aware of the austerity program initiated by our new mayor, Michæl Bloomberg (ironically, one of the richest people in America). One aspect of this program is that glass bottles are no longer recycled in the city. Mind you, five cent "deposits" are still being collected on these bottles, but there's no way to recoup the money. That's the beauty of the new system: what was once a deposit is now a tax. Bottles must now be thrown out with other worthless trash. There's no sense in separating them out, since they all end up in the same place: covered with enough dirt for us to forget about them so we can go out and dig up the virgin materials to make tomorrow's trash.
I don't know about you, but I've been recycling now for years and it's become indelibly printed on my sense of right and wrong, far more so than (say) the commandment "Thou shalt not download MP3s." To suddenly find myself tossing glass bottles in with the coffee grounds, snot rags, and tea bags is actually causing me a certain amount of mental anguish. I know it's just a little thing, but I feel like I'm attacking the karmic fabric of the universe (or its aspiritual equivalent). Only a man like Bloomberg, who evidently thinks wealth trumps karma, would force a whole city of people into such morally poisonous behavior. From a more practical standpoint, I anticipate this new policy have repercussions throughout the web of urban society in New York. For starters, I expect the woods of Prospect Park to soon to be filled with bottles, many of which will then be broken by the idle hands of the youth of today. Then there are the homeless, whose meager economy depended in large part on the refunds these bottles provided. What will they do now? It's not easy to just pick up and move to another city. I think some of them will be driven by desperation into mugging and property crimes, initiating a feedback loop of destruction with the potential to roll back grannies safely crossing streets, the returning of lost wallets, and all the other things Rudy Giuliani supposedly gave us.
Okay, never mind, the homeless economy lives on. You can still get five cents for bottle deposits if you take them to a store. Sorry about that, Mayor Bloomberg. I am humbled by the truth. Furthermore, I realize that further bad mouthing of your excellency would mean that the terrorists had won. Thanks to a reader named Anna for the link.

At 7:30 pm tonight I'll be going to the Prospect Park bandshell to see the famous Indie Rock band Yo La Tengo. I'll be bringing Sally with me.


Prior to the Yo La Tengo show, I rode my bicycle with Sally out to the Nethermead (in the distant southeastern end of Prospect Park) where it is legal to have dogs off-leash after 5pm year-round. I sat under a tree and Sally sat nearby, on the lookout for squirrels who never materialized. Occasionally another dog would walk up to her making friendly overtures and she'd get annoyed and run it off. There was, however, one little white dog who was extremely persistent.
Later I rode with Sally across the Long Meadow over to the 9th Street bandshell where Yo La Tengo would be playing as part of a multi-week event known as Celebrate Brooklyn. Gretchen had told me about these Celebrate Brooklyn concerts and had led me to believe that it was appropriate to sit just outside the concert (since dogs aren't allowed inside). So I went and found myself a reasonably comfortable spot just outside the fence near the road in a narrow sliver with an imperfect view of the stage. I'd thought to bring a coffee mug containing rum, but I hadn't remembered water for Sally or a blanket to sit on. Looking around at the other people who were setting up near me, it was clear that I was the least prepared of any of them. That's how I always have been - the kid behind you in second grade who was always "borrowing" paper and pencils and who never did his homework. Oh yeah, and I was never very clean back then either.
During the introduction to tonight's music, the speaker said something about how the music for this summer's Celebrate Brooklyn featured a lot of Latin bands. I wondered if the speech writer thought Yo La Tengo was a Latin band based only on the name.
The opening act was a performance poet with dread locks doing the familiar political-poetry-poured-over-jazz thing. By now I was looking out over the rapidly-expanding crowd and realizing that I would never be able to find any of the several people who said they'd be there tonight, especially if I stayed outside the show. So I decided to take Sally back to the house. Getting home seemed effortless; it only took a few minutes to traverse the length of the park riding alongside Sally at a full gallop.
Once I'd returned to the bandshell, I cased out the entrance gates to see what was being prohibited and whether bags were being searched. Not only were bags being searched, but I saw that videocameras weren't allowed. I'd brought my digital camera, and it looks enough like a videocamera that I expected the guards would give me shit. So I went in search of a place along the fence to hide my bag so I could retrieve it later. Then I came upon an isolated part of the fence where a guy suddenly and very matter-of-factly leapt over and disappeared into the teeming masses. His action had the effect of catalyzing a good half dozen imitators, all of whom where successful. But then that was it. I waited for awhile at the fence trying to muster the nerve to initiate another wave of good old American bum rush. After awhile, a group of bored-looking adolescent white boys showed up, and was it obvious to me that they were looking for a place to climb over the fence. So that was it, I jumped over (catching my wrist bracelet in the process) and vanished into the sea of heads. Looking back over my shoulder, I could see the teens leaping the fence like mountain goats. They weren't going to be out punk-rocked by an old fart like me.
So there I was, subject to the fluid dynamics of a vast gathering comprised of everybody cool in New York City. Let me tell you, there are a lot of cool people in New York. There seem to be enough cool people in New York to swell a Yo La Tengo show with the number of people one normally sees only at Van Halen concerts (not that there are such things anymore, but I felt like making that particular comparison). Unlike a Van Halen crowd, this Yo La Tengo scene didn't seem to feature a lot of blond chicks. It was surprisingly diverse considering that Indie Rock is largely regarded as a niche music scene for white people. Naturally, there were plenty of people there with the black-rimmed glasses, sideburns, and studied unkemptitude of Indie Rock fans nationwide. Yo La Tengo might be cool to those in the know, but, given the few sweatshirts, ponytails, and baseball caps evident in tonight's throng, they apparently haven't yet been noticed by any appreciable segment of the Great American Mainstream.
I wandered around for awhile, flowing with the various rivers of humanity, hoping to run into somebody I knew. I was down near the front in the area featuring genuine Celebrate Brooklyn folding chairs when someone called out my name. It was Ray, and there he was with his posse. He had a couple of open seats right next to him reserved for two members of his posse who never returned to reclaim them, so I sat down.
What can I say about Yo La Tengo? I like some of their songs, but I'm not much of a fan. Frankly, a large fraction of their music annoys me. Their brand of "controlled chaos," wherein whole anthem-length "tunes" consist of unstructured instrument noise created as performance art on stage, seems college-kid-pretentious to me. If you're going to create chaos on stage, why stand around looking studious? Why not smear yourself with feces and rape audience members too? And as for that jazzy tune "Nuclear War" and how "when you push that button, your ass gotta go," it irritates me that Yo La Tengo took up so much of their show performing an extended version of this Sun Ra cover when they have so much better (and less idiotic) material they could have been doing.
Nonetheless, I am intrigued by how the members of Yo La Tengo have mastered each others' instruments, being perfectly able to switch between songs. They also manage to pound out occasionally beautiful melodies from strange combinations of instruments. And their virtuosi manipulation of guitar feedback is most impressive.


Sally coaxed into action by the persistence of a small white dog.


Outside the main seating area of Celebrate Brooklyn.


The girl in the center is wearing a button reading "I hate boys."


The crowd that gathered for Yo La Tengo.


The Prospect Park Bandshell.


The two guys from Yo La Tengo. There's also a chick in the band.
None of them seem to have a specific instrument specialization.

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