June 29, 2010
The culture of urbanism
By Barie Fez-Barringten www.bariefez-barrringten (8, 347 words on 27 pages)
Even before moving to the Bronx’s Hunts Point as a little boy of less than four years old, I’d explore the cellars where coal was stored and especially the underground grease pits below the street parking garage accessible from our Home Street apartment building. It was in this apartment I heard Roosevelt’s “Day of Infamy” “broadcast and nightly the roar of overhead planes policed the Bronx skies. Beams of lights searched the skies and illuminated our planes and I’d go out to the stairs before our apartment and greet the air raid warden, he and I got to be buddies and he let me try on his helmet. A year or two later, in my pajamas, and long before dawn I’d open the door to our two-family Faille Street house on the last street before industrial Hunts Point. I’d put my bare foot onto the red brick steps to descend to the glittering cement side walk. This was my first urban act when I touched the city and I could feel it under my feet.
One day we found a barrel and I ate a hot pickle which seemed to burn within my whole body, I felt like I was going to die, and ran to every factory till one kind worker gave me some sugar to relieve my suffering.
Five years later, we moved to a tenement in the Morrisania Fort Apache
neighborhood where I continued my practice of exploring the urban streets to discover sewers, cellars, iron guardrails, and the alleys behind buildings. My explorations were solo missions and since our block was very long there were many building stoops, cellar stairs, tunnels, alleys, and secret storage rooms I could enter and explore, when, that was not enough I’d explore the roof tops and fire escapes and chimneys; all that without crossing the street or leaving my block. These were the earliest manifestations of my urban passion.
Music and urban ethnic diversity was supplied by my Mediterranean grandmother from Rhodes as she taught me how to dance to her Greek music played on her manual wind-up Victrola. I also had multi-national best friends from whom I learned many colloquial, foods and customs so that when we later lived in Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia, European, and Asian cities, I was right at home.
I learned to first picture my words and then read them aloud when I sang or spoke. I also could not tie my shoelaces until an older blind girl taught me.
I knew I was emotionally compelled to make these urban explorations because no human being was whispering in my ear. All of these explorations were coupled with my building miniature rooms in the sun parlor of our Hunts Point house. I built them out of cardboard boxes, orange crates, and egg boxes from the corner grocery.
The roof was made out of rope and spare blankets my Mom permitted me to use. Later, in the tenement on Simpson Street, I’d build miniature stages and scenery out of “Marcel” tissue boxes and exhibit them on our oriental curio cabinet, a cabinet, which we inherited from my grandmother. This was all my idea of playing and exploring.
As I matured, I found that I had a plethora of visual and graphic vocabulary, which now needed explanations, and I did not stop asking adults at school or on the streets about each and every detail. So were the seeds planted of my passion for the city and its bits and pieces? About 45 years later, I shared this story with my Turkish friend, a professor and colleague at King Faisal University in Saudi Arabia, after which he explained how these experiences, made me an extraordinary architect. He said that I was “called” to be an urban architect, which made me very passionate about my
They sent me to a local junior college where some special teacher came up with a solution and appealed to the Pratt registrar, who agreed that if I could get great grades at Columbia’s School of General Studies they would admit me, surely, they thought that was the end of me. Well, not only did I get great grades but also I savored my courses in sociology, behavioral psychology, and especially Art History. The art history class culminated in a lecture commemorating the Christmas holidays showing stunning slides of the Vatican and St. Peter’s. Ten years later when the train pulled into the Rome train station I stood gazing out of the window at the front of the car as I had done for years with my uncle David in New York subways, only this time to see the Rome station getting larger and larger. When the train stopped and chills over my body subsided and after stashing my suitcase in a locker, (I) made my way to St Peters.
My every fantasy came true as I saw the over-scaled marble floors, gigantic Baldacchino, great Bernini statues, and Michael Angelo sculptures. It is from this experience and my fascination with Giovanni Battista Piranesi’s surreal romantic 16 prints of “Imaginary Prisons” that I urged myself)to draw pen and inks of the variations in scale and contexts for my “midnight in the oasis” fantasy collection.
Disciplined Passion
Through Pratt, my urban passion compelled me to befriend my Contemporary Theories professor, Gerald Popiel, who had been a writer in England for the Voice of America and was a member of the Polish intelligentsia. He mentored me in urbanity, urbaneness, and the significance of cities, civilization, and architecture. At the same time, I read Ayn Rand, and most of the great books under the guide of Mr. Fjelde, my great books teacher. I was blessed to have the Hollywood actor John McGiver as my high school English teacher who taught me to read and appreciate Shakespeare and
off-Broadway theater. I myself acted in the Pratt playshop and romanced a gifted artist, poet, and intellect named “Barbara Allen”.
With the encouragement of New York’s most famous radio disc jockey, Ted Brown, and his wife, I became a radio announcer and when they divorced, we had extravagant “la dolce vita” “parties and good times in the streets and theaters. She was my first interior design client and I not only hung all the drapes in their former residence but also now furnished her new house. At the opening of the movie, “Never on Sunday”, she and her actor friends and I sang and danced in the isles.
During the height of the sixties my Cousin Louis Abolofia and Christina’s close friend, Max Waldman, ushered us through the most artistic, fantastic theatre, and
At Pratt, I found the school’s radio station and when I later studied architecture at Yale, I worked at night as a broadcaster at a Waterbury radio station. The owner of the station was none other than the chief engineer for the then famous all music station, WPAT, in Paterson, New Jersey. With the encouragement of Dean, and Charles Moore; I created a lecture series called “Architecture the Making of Metaphors”, which had many of the period’s most creative urban architects and scholars including Robert Venturi, John Cage, and Christopher Tunnard. The architectural historian, Vincent Scully was my Yale student- adviser and I got to know New Haven’s Mayor Richard Lee over many personal conversations about this wonderful program of planning and selecting the world’s best architects for many buildings in his city. We also discussed the black riots. All of these people contributed to adding discipline to my urban passion. During this time the
extraordinarily talented, former Designs for Business supervisor and now one of my best friends visited. I even invited my former Pratt professor, then screen writer and Chef Editor of Progressive Architecture magazine, and author of many children’s books about architecture, to New Haven to present his ideas of metaphors at my lecture series.
We traveled with very short notice. For example, our trip to the western states from College Station was arranged and planned in twenty-four hours; when I heard the temperature forecast would reach 104 degrees and used this as an excuse to go to the mountains of Arizona, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico. But, neither Christina nor I were travelling to be adventurous or part of a class of people. We were caught up in the opportunity to change environments, habitats, venues, and contexts and decided that to do so was healthy and worth while. Such an attitude kept our passport always in order and our minds unglued from our current context, what ever it was in prior years. I had
detailed hand-lettered describing each and every city that I visited. I wrote them in carbon copy letters. One of my father’s clients was so impressed with my efforts she sponsored my writing by giving me several thousand dollars toward the publication of the book.
Additionally, I spent an entire day with a young female gypsy who welcomed me into her family camp. They only visited cites and urban areas but preferred to live in clusters and had no agreements with any one or another nation. Later, in Saudi Arabia, I was to meet Bedouins with similar points of view. In fact, many urbanized Saudis still prefer there own tribes to any allegiance to a city or the kingdom. Both the gypsy and Bedouin are inherently anti-urban. Yet they both work and live well in dense groups. However when they live in cities, the Saudis surround there house’ with walls while the Bedouins keep their tents separated and shielded with hanging carpets. I enjoyed many of Italy’s formerly royal and natural cities including the one month I spent in Florence filled with many adventures including the welcome surprise of meeting a former Pratt classmate on the other side of the Ponte Veccio, by the time I left, I felt likeI personally knew the Medici family, Machiavelli, and Michelangelo. In Milan, I welcomed architect Geo Pontes’ kindness and hospitality. But nothing could compare to my hostess and her Capri pension with its view over the Mediterranean, where I entered the glowing Blue Grotto and the mountain high flight of stairs I had to ascend to come home. In Solerno, my pension’s hostess, who when we met was pleased to meet and accommodate an American who she happily called a gangster which became my Solerno nickname. Her charm made me overlook her presumptuous generalizations. Perhaps that explains why the neighboring towns-people were so extra-welcoming.
In these circumstances, I pictured people like the character played by Deborah Kerr in the 1957 David Lean movie with Cary Grant called An Affair to Remember.
In Paris, on the French Independence Day (Bastille Day) I drove and the open-top car ride down the Champs ‘Elise while we shot guns into the air. My first visit to the Momarte and the Moulin Rouge in Paris led me down all its mysterious and tantalizing streets until I met a high school buddy, Frank Bozzo, in Paris, and together we visited Fontainebleau, Versailles, and the Blois Valley palaces. My sketches of the Eiffel Tower in Paris and San Marco in Venice looked like the commercial picture postcards being sold around the world and expressing my love affair with cities. Like the actor, Gene Kelly in an “American in Paris” , my urban passion combined with my romantic-mind as when I guided a young Danish girl though her own city of Copenhagen who finally told me that I knew her city better than the natives did.
On a ship to Holland, I met another like-minded world traveler, this time from Lapland with whom I went to East Germany; who assured me that if she were to marry me, her communist father world probably kill us both. In contrast, and on another ship, I met Dutch Henny d’Munch who zealously took me back to stay with her parents in the world’s windmill capital of Kinder Dyke. Since growing up in New Amsterdam, now New York, I always had a great affection for everything Dutch. It seems that as a traveling bachelor I was able to meet many lovely ladies including the daughter of a British couple in Vienna, who invited me to entertain their daughter since we all shared a pension in the outer ring. In our tours, the Englishman taught me a great deal about the Roman’s settlement of this and many other European cities. I partially enjoyed seeing Vienna before it was later covered up, remodeled, and modernized.
Europe had its many special and peculiar customs, which first hit me when in Luxemburg, the first time I slept in a down bed and when I awoke, the next morning ate a whole apple pie for breakfast. In a bakery, I didn’t know what else to ask for so I just pointed. Of course, in every city I ever visited, I never could pass a church and I built my vocabulary of these buildings including noticing the details of fountains, statues,
This part of Niece was built on a mountain and had a myriad of side and winding streets, which crossed and intersected. But most of the Mediterranean cites streets skirted the hilly terrain. even the spectacular Amalphi with its back walks, water falls and
breathtaking views. It is here in the adjacent city of Positano that the German composer, Wagener wrote “the ring”. In England, I Met Christine Keeler at the House of Lords and saw her fate being disputed, while makes a very detailed sketch of the House of Lords. In 1963, the Conservative Prime Minister, Harold Macmillan, suddenly resigned as an indirect result of the Profumo scandal involving Christine Keeler. Of course, England has other great cities where I had exciting adventures including Oxford; where I spent the night roaming the streets with Oscar Brown Junior after his outrageous performance of “Wam Bam, Thank You Mam”. However, nothing beats the English breakfasts lavished upon me by the inn-keeper’s wife on the Themes in the heart of London. Like most big old cities, London has a large number of distinctly different neighborhoods resulting from waves of migration, development, and trade over a long period of time. At that time, I particularly enjoyed visiting Soho before it was made popular by the creation of the mini skirts and the Beatles. In London, I drew St. Paul Cathedral and every different town-house building type. I particularly enjoyed the elegant and stately towntown-houses facing elegant parks. You know the ones you see in Sherlock Holmes’ movies.
This observation about this small and ancient city was a profound comment about the difference between urbanism, cities, and opportunities they afford the individual. Yet there are cites where great art movements have thrived. In Hamburg, while traveling as a bachelor, I met a religious man and philosophized about our place in the world. I also saw women displayed in store windows on the notorious Raperbahn. Also, in Germany with my wife on New Years Eve in Berchdesgarten, a man’s wrist had been cut open by a bottle in which he had inserted and exploded a flare to add to the fire work festivities. The women accompanying him called me in and I immediately lifted his arm, told the women to call the Green Crescent, put a Tourniquet on his lower arm, sat him down and gave him lots of water to drink. The whole crowd were German tourist there for the holidays who had been many times to this place and because we were new and outsiders they had given us the silent treatment. Well, the next morning and every meal there after we were treated like honored guests and in the most loving way. Of course, the Green Crescent was very pleased and commended me on my correct treatment, and the man’s life and arm were saved. There was a little four year old girl with blond curls and blue eyes that they would send over to our table to greet and give us a lovely little kiss. She was so precious. Before and after I attended Columbia’s classes in behavior psychology and perception by Dr. Hefferline and Pratt’s, Ara Ignatius little about cities escaped my attention. So much so, that on one four month trip visiting seventy-two cities all I did was pen and drawings of most every thing I saw, I took no photographs. I thrived on
I saw the figure of Mercury attached to building’s corners in Leipzig, gargoyles on New York and Paris buildings, water gushing onto fountains on the sides of buildings and in the middle of backyard plazas in Italy, Spain, and practically every European city. I saw the spaces, shades, and shadows cast by the volumes. I drew the relationships between the buildings and the buildings that define plazas, campanile, walkways, and gutters. I cultivated this skill on both the streets of the city and the many long rides I made on the New York subway. I’d continuously sketch the people, car, and platform details.
Especially impressive was the easy walk from the center of cities like Florence to its gardens in Fiesole. And, the easy walks in Capri and Ana Capri built by Mussolini filled with walks and benches with spectacular views, and the short trip from Vienna to
Grinsing. In their way, they were similar to Rye, Palisades, Orchard Beach, Long Beach, Brighton, and Coney Island, where I noticed the architecture and colors of the mid-east.
Even in Manhattan, one block from my bachelor apartment I found a small Hungarian restaurant with burgundy velvet wall paper where a violinist serenades the tables. What a great place it was to bring some one special. But nothing was more
spectacular than being entertained by a gypsy group of fifteen or so violinist in the city of Budapest. In many old cities, which thrived long before the auto, but had admitted vehicular traffic they decided to again accommodate the pedestrian and close their streets to automobile traffic. In Munich, we were able to see such an undertaking from the “underground up” when we visited Munich to make a report to the Mayor of the city of New York about the many things Germany was doing to improve its urban centers.
The occasion of the Olympics gave the city of Munich the chance to build a complex public transportation system connecting the Olympic complex and all the city suburbs with this mass transit. We particularly enjoyed seeing the very modern design of the stadiums, dormitories and support building that comprised this Olympic Village. It was a good example of a quasi-government and private enterprise to synthesize a combined urban renovation, urban cluster, and mass transit system. The organization, agreements, and management of programming, contracting, and planning of all this was in itself a demonstration of Europe’s version of new urbanism, except this took place in about 1971. In Leipzig, I particularly enjoyed photographing the largest terminal railway station in Europe, Leipzig's “Hauptbahnhof”, Europe's largest. I admired the steel and glass long span beams and many rail tracks and trains. Likewise, the Budapest station and the many other stations I traveled. The Budapest station was particularly authentic and urban; it still had the turn of the century decorations and had not yet been cleaned and scrubbed from the last one hundred years of use. Like Leo Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina 1940's movie version starring Greta Garbo, steam billowed from old locomotives as they came and went in the covered Paxton-like green house-like steel and glass enclosure.
Because musical culture celebrates urbanity, I enjoyed the small cameo opera theatres in Italy’s villages such as Lucca and Sienna where I saw performances played in the same costumes and same theatres as when composers such as Puccini first played their musical stories about the pomp, pageantry, and vulgarity of cities and the people that rule. Such theaters were intimate, smelly, and seated less than 150 people. Often the audience would sing or hum along with the players and converse with the players as they recited or sang their well known lines. It was the predictability, familiarity, and social aspects of the gathering that the audience came to see. Each of the players was well known, as were the members of the crowd that gathered. Once again, it was like a café, plaza, or boulevard where one came to “see” and “be seen”. I had no less joy for the Franz Lehar operettas in Vienna. These quality events hearken me back to the
breathtaking performances I enjoyed at New York’s “Radio City” especially Ravel’s Bolero and the Nutcracker preformed at the “City Center” during Christmas. My
childhood in New York was filled with stage shows and big screen movies at the Rialto, Strand, and Paramount theatres. These were inevitably coupled with spending pennies in the penny arcades on forty second street, which were filled with Ripley’s believe-it-or-not , pin-ball, shooting, and fortune teller scoping machines.
On Faile Street, my favorite was the peep show card flick for a penny, which stood in front of the corner candy store and ice cream parlor. As for recreation, in Amsterdam, I savored the hundreds of doors, door hardware and steps, which articulated one from another building and the 700 plus parks designed and built between 1947 and 1986 by architect Aldo van Eyck. The parks and the way they integrate into the
As I had in the yard of the little Italian general store across from Drake’s Park in the Bronx, I enjoyed playing with the goats on one of the canal bridges. My urban passion was able to make metaphoric connections between perceptions to make the strange seem familiar. Not only details, but also whole plans would mentally transfer and enhance my urban understandings. It is no wonder that I was fascinated with the very essence and application of the metaphor. Like urbanism, the metaphor was universal, synaptic, and instrumental to my maturity.
In the Philippines, we would visit the hotels in the evening, including the
gargantuan and opulent Shangri-La hotel. Adjacent to the lobby was a very large lounge where musicians would play while the most well dressed beautiful young ladies served drinks and refreshments. In the evening a marvelous elder gentlemen in a very well designed suit would sit and chat with visitors like myself who would find him conversing with the waitresses. He would play a remote control hand held electronic musical organ, which electronically signaled the house speakers. He was the anchor of the room giving it, its style and panache, like the old men I had talked to on Los Ramblas in Barcelona, I too asked him why he was doing all this and he said it is “his life”. That’s urban!
In South Africa’s Johannesburg called Jo'burg I visited SOWETO (South Western Townships) and the homes of Nelson Mandela and Desmond Tutu. Mandela’s was filled with books containing thousands of letters from universities throughout the world
My Saudi Arabia colleague and I ate well at various restaurants in Sandton’s Nelson Mandela Square, MonteAngelo Hotel’s gigantic courtyard plaza and resided at the Intercontinental Hotel. This was another synthetic urban cluster built away from the dangerous big city of Jo’burg. A female Africana agent was our guest at a Greek
restaurant in Mark’s Plaza (MonteAngelo Hotel’s gigantic courtyard plaza) where they played Greek, and Arabic music while we ate and broke plates. Breaking plates while dancing to Greek music was a custom my grandmother never taught me.
The name Sandton comes from the combination of two suburbs, Sandown and Bryanston, both of which were places in the United Kingdom. It had its own modern and trendy character. All the buildings were new and well away from the poverty of the rest of the country. Most had well announced security systems of each building. Theft was rampant and one day we came upon an exhibit in the shopping center connected to our hotel containing an exhibit of our of two gated and guarded communities into which white south Africans were buying shares.
Ambulating in the Urban World
Ambulating is the essence of the urban experience where ones own bodily motion controls the pace and direction as well as the selection of the surrounding sights and sounds. I thought of my body as the carriage of a television station’s camera and I the camera man. Less technically, I was formally introduced to the concept of “ambulating” in Spain where “Ambulatoria” is a custom people perform at night before dinner
Indeed, such walking and ambulating has been my life’s recreation and access to experiencing the “art form” of my choice: architecture. Interior design has to be seen inside of the buildings and in all my walks; I’d try to enter wherever I could. Like music, theatre, ballet, and writing, ambulating is also an art and a way of experiencing the world’s built arts. For example, the sidewalks of New York are made up of cement insitu-formed from naturally deinsitu-formed quartzofeldspathic rocks, such as the highest finite strain as a mylonite, in which quartz is completely recrystallized or present as ribbon-grains forming continuous and almost planar layers over large distances; which is not unlike today’s fiberglass reinforced concrete. The sidewalks are therefore strong and even, they glitter and gleam, if you wear taps on your shoes, you can hear them click as you walk.
Ambulating has allowed me to walk the streets and get lost in cities. I know... I’d loose my self in the streets and find my way back to reality by somehow seeing a
landmark or following the grid. I‘d enjoy seeing the lights, window displays, street people, facades, etc. I’d especially enjoy winding up someplace strange. Before I was married, occasionally, I’d meet some one like the time I followed and met a lovely model. In Manhattan, I’d walk in the rain and snow, day and night. I’d some times find a bar and have my maximum of one drink or after a party; I’d walk and feel the combined rush of the alcohol, cold night air, and the glitter and gleam of the city. On such occasions, I’d particularly relish the design and width of the familiar sidewalks.
The grid made such walks exciting and adventurous. On the weekends, I’d bus to the “Y” and later the Yale club. On a Saturday afternoon, I’d go to a movie and walk Broadway. I particularly found it thrilling to walk the dangerous streets of 42 Street between sixth and eighth Avenues where 25 years earlier my little brother, friends and I would go to the “laugh” theatres to see the Marx Brothers, Abbot and Costello, Three Stooges, Eddie Cantor, al Jolson and Laurel, and Hardy. Now these streets were lined with dope peddlers and prostitutes. The police are right there watching and monitoring the activities and limiting there arrests by the availability of courts and jails. In Saudi Arabia, I’d often calm my fellow westerners and Midwestern Americans that we see more crime in one day than Saudi sees in year. I’d ambulate in Europe, using maps, classified ads I’d perambulate the cities streets, seeing its landmarks, rivers, bridges, public
transportation, restaurants, CBD, residential and private zones and then in the evening investigate the other side of the cities night and cosmopolitan life. Within a short while, even local residents did not know their city as well as I did. I’d look for the local candy store, grocer and music shop. Yes, using my childhood street-models I try to find the cultural anchors in the neighborhoods I visited. I understood and enjoyed the hierarchies of building neighborhood, section, borough, city, and country. I could see the metroplex and understand the inner connections of people to their artifacts, modes of transportation, and resources. It was always as lovely to me as a symphony and an especial work of art, the city is a work of art and to me shall always be one of mankind’s finest achievements.
the experience, Yes, I had fought and been beaten in enough urban alleys to be selective, so I was bold but wise….this is called “street savvy”. Knowing who to look in the eye, and who to avoid, and when. As I learned to overcome my childhood fears as a mature urbanist, I looked forward to the occasional dark and mysterious courtyards and alleys. In hilly and foggy San Francisco, we enjoyed the side streets staying at either the Fairmont or Mark Hopkins Hotels at the very top of Nob Hill. In the morning, I’d order breakfast delivered to my room onto a table in front of my window so I could view the city as the sun’s rays evaporated the dense fog.
The same fog I experienced in Castine Maine where I’d walk amongst the rocks guided by a lonely lighthouse. As in the villages of Italy, France, and Spain, one is compelled to walk in search of views and vistas one street after another. I made it a habit to make a free hand sketch of the city plan of each city I visited with the help of my memory of my walks and a city map. I noted the streets I walked noting the streets pattern and curvatures graphically showing the grid, circles, plaza, landmarks and neighborhoods. These plans and my sketches filled my book of these cites.
However, sensuous, romantic and artistic are the aesthetics of cities there is the more mature and technical side, which is equally as thrilling. It was introduced to me by my father as he perennially reiterated the traffic flow and structure of New York City’s streets. Later when I’d visit any city, it was the first concept I‘d grasp to orient and direct my way.
Westheimer’s East west axial orients everything else. In the Bronx, I oriented myself on major boulevards, and avenues and according to the elevated and subway stops. Most spectacular was Amalphi, beginning at its rear base where the last street meets the looming mountain and the water falling into an open central basin carrying the water to feed the city. Every alley, street, window and door way leads to another open space and vista. The same can be said of Venice except with more opulence and surprise as one ambulates along and across canals and observes the distinct design of each bridge and building.
Dubrovnik’s main street was to be my life-time model of the perfectly scaled commercial street because of the width of the street and the height of the enclosing building on either side. The people dressed in traditional garb would openly feast there eyes upon each other and I did the same. I had good practice in los Ramblas in Barcelona and on Southern Boulevard in the Bronx. By the time, I learned more about architecture at Yale, I had already visited, mapped, and written about many cities, so my perception was at its peak. I was eager to learn and develop my abilities to design not only interiors, furniture, and buildings; but also to design cultural centers, stadiums, airports, medical centers, commercial centers, and whole cities. By the time, I reached Yale I had worked in New York City professional design offices designing commercial interiors, the state University in Albany, Israel National Bank, James Talcott Factorers, High-rise
apartments, and Hotel buildings.
years, in Mexico, I could not stop photographing the excellent views through one and another portico, small tunnels, and side streets that opens on to the town’s plazas and courtyards. As in Europe, many of the Mexican city’s courtyards are behind their streets and connected by a system of alleys and walkways that take you from one to another without going to the major streets and away from vehicular traffic. The excitement and enjoyment of discovering the difference of each inner city is furthered by meandering on straight side streets to major avenues and boulevards. Whether through alleys, tunnels, or gateways each vista and turn leads to something interesting, informative, and wonderful. Wonders which sometime are mysterious and other times informative but very often works of art and craft. The intercity relationship we enjoyed between Washington to Reston was similar to between Munich and Kitsbuhel; when Munich was our big city to shop and have an urban experience. It was as necessary as when we lived in Puerto Rico we just had to relive our “island syndrome” by a short weekend trip to the big apple.
On the other hand, when I visited Washington, D.C. from New York City, I regarded D.C. as a small but formidable town. However, when we lived in RESTON, Virginia it was the converse. My final impression of DC was when I came for a one week conference from Saudi to be a guest at the Willard hotel and was driven to and from the airport in a black Lincoln limousine and I spent some the evenings with my Saudi colleagues showing them the streets and buildings in Georgetown.
the trees and cast a shadow on the sidewalk, just like the one I recalled from my childhood with my father in Washington. During our twenty years in Saudi Arabia, I drove on streets devoid of pedestrian traffic as though I was in a suburb, while being in the middle of a big city. Pedestrians could be found in Malls and suks but not ambulating on the streets. I recall being in the city of Bari in Italy and noticing the same thing. I also noticed this in East Berlin before the wall fell. Most people go to and from their
destinations by car and the few who travel by foot do not linger. They usually were restricted by a combination of harsh governments and anti-social cultures, which discourage public exchanges and intercourse. In contrast, I can recall how I felt in Dubrovnik in 1963 when I’d walk down the streets, the men and women who filled the streets looked me over up and down and sideways. Women looked you in the eye, smiled, and welcomed me. The street language was open, communal, and very friendly. I only mention this to note the difference in Saudi Arabia; I am not the first person to notice this difference. This difference both defines the essence of urbanity and its’ passion. As the child who woke before mornings light, who without shoes walked the empty streets, exploring the alleys, stairs, fire escapes, sewer’s, manholes, back alleys, and streets I now continued my explorations to see, know, and understand the details of my surroundings.
