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C103
Article; from Feature 'Life is what you make of it'
ORGANIC
DONUTS
2nd Avenue, New
York
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48th St 1st
Ave / Photograph: Helen Eger
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By the
Anti-Defamation League, running between 1st and 2nd Avenue,
is a linear strip of paving and planting. At one end is
a straight-forward coffee place. It is constructed from
widely available glazed units and the architect appears
to have evaded any complex design decisions. The staff
works in rotation but it is hard to predict who will be
there on any given day. One or two of them make the worst
coffee in the world, while the rest are pretty good at
it.
If you
are looking from 1st Avenue across to 2nd Avenue a planted
area is located on the left-hand side of the walkway.
It is overly complex, with too many railings and curved
areas of brick-lined bushes pushing out onto the pedestrian
zone. Ranged up and down on either boundary of the walkway
are benches. The wrought iron of their design doesn't
match the post-modern iron-work that abuts the plants.
French style, the benches face each other and provide
a place where you can watch all the people walking between
the two avenues. On the right side of the walkway, looking
from 1st to 2nd Avenue is a two lane, one-way street.
Not too many cars use this street, but it is often full
of limousines with diplomatic plates waiting for someone
or killing time.
At the
2nd Avenue end of the street, market stalls are set out
on odd days of the week and you can buy things direct
from farmers. It is unclear whether the farmers are ripping
you off or not, but the produce looks convincingly battered
and misshapen. It is unclear whether some of the vendors
are actually farmers at all. Organic Donuts? Extremely
small asparagus? Large woolly apples?
Along the
right hand side of the one-way, two-lane street, looking
from 1st Avenue towards 2nd Avenue, are a sequence of
buildings. A black-glazed tower full of basket-ball players
and extremely thin people; The Japan Center, which sold
its air-rights for the construction of the tower; a Catholic
church, with small meditative garden attached and plaques
about various papal visits; and the commencement of the
commercial buildings that take hold as you approach 2nd
Avenue.
A group
of people sometimes sit around just in front of the coffee
place. They look well fed and clean-cut. They have little
hand-painted banners and signs. Right on the floor are
piles of leaflets and papers. If you approach them they
smile and let you know that they are fasting for peace
and have been fasting for peace for the last three or
four weeks. They don't always fast in public, most of
the time they fast somewhere else. It is unclear whether
or not their fast is extreme and total. And they have
a long way to go before they start to wither.
If you
tell them that the current situation is a humanitarian
issue, they will defer to your view and won't try and
urge you to join their particular religion or take on
the fast. They appear serious and friendly, while casting
the occasional longing glace down towards the organic
donuts at the end of the street.
This place
is a site for controlled demonstrations. As such it is
not the worst in the world, for you are most likely to
be noticed and registered by a complex mix of babies,
baby-sitters, older people, limo-drivers and the occasional
artist. If you want to hold a real protest, you might
be better-off considering another location.
Article reproduced from CIRCA
103, Spring 2003, pp.57-58.
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