7 AM Eastern Winter Time

I go to Palisades Avenue in Englewood nearly every morning at 7 AM. I have come to expect it to be dark and dreary. Much to my surprise, this week I arrived to find that it was considerably brighter. What a relief! Winter is far from over -- snow is expected today in fact -- but nights are getting shorter and the days are getting longer so Spring cannot be far behind. All of this made me think about seasons on Main Street. Main Streets are tenaciously busy: the tracks in the snow are mute testimony to the many comings and goings throughout the day and night. But the ways of moving are tempered by weather. People walk quickly and rush inside on cold winter days. They linger over their coffee cups looking out the window with dreams in their eyes. In the summer they don't want to go in and they drink ice coffee while delighting in the patterns of the sidewalk ballet. In an urbanized world with cars and indoor heating we tend to keep going no matter what. We can lose sight of the cycles of the natural world, as I did in thinking it would always be dark at 7 AM. Yet if we look more closely, we find Copernicus was right and Main Street, like the rest of the Earth, revolves around the sun.

My old stompin' grounds

Professor Hirofumi Minami, an environmental psychologist from Japan, was in town for a visit just before Christmas. David Chapin, an architect on the faculty at CUNY Graduate Center, had hosted Hiro during a year-long stay that began in September 2001. For Hiro, whose research has focused on the recovery of Hiroshima after the atomic bomb attack in 1945, that was a remarkable time to be in New York. The three of us collaborated in an effort called "NYC RECOVERS," an alliance of organizations concerned with the social and emotional recovery of NYC after the attack on the Twin Towers. Hiro's knowledge of the recovery of Hiroshima was very inspiring to us. He pointed out that, in Buddhist tradition, the seventh year after a loss is a very important point in recovery. So, reconnecting in this seventh year after 9/11 was a great experience for the three of us. After much discussion, we decided to visit Hoboken, NJ, where I used to live. Both Hiro and David had read about my life there in my book, House of Joshua: Meditations on Family and Place. On Christmas Eve we set out to see three parts of Hoboken: the light rail stop at 2nd street, the new riverside park, and Washington Street. I proposed the light rail stop because the station is surrounded by a fence that cuts off access from the housing projects. We got the light rail at the Hoboken rail station, an elegant place with historic connections to the river and the world. We had a great ride on light rail and appreciated its speed and simplicity. While you might think that you would most want poor people to be able to access public transit, that does not appear to be the case in this instance. The fence at the 2nd Street station was a shock to my friends, as I thought it would be. Indeed, I was shocked myself, seeing it again. Why not put in a gate? We got back on the light rail, thinking to go back to the rail station, but instead ended up at Newport Mall. The crowds getting on and off there made it clear that the light rail is big help in the local system of movement. Another train took us back to Hoboken, and we walked over to the riverside park which is just next door. David pointed out that the park was deserted. Although there were a lot of people out, there was not much to do by the river on a rainy day and people were staying away in droves. About this time I got a call from my daughter Molly asking if I could get some yarn for a present. She quickly googled yarn and found out there was a store on 4th Street. Hiro and David were happy to go with me. We found Patricia's Yarns easily. Its warm display of yarn and the fortuitous presence of some happy young knitters inspired us all to buy yarn. Outside, David pointed out an empty store which used to be a unisex salon, a term he dated to the 1970s. Patricia's Yarns, by contrast, was definitely Hoboken now. We walked north on Washington Street, which Molly believes to be the best place in New Jersey to do Christmas shopping. David and Hiro were happy to stop again at Big Fun Toys for more last minute purchases for my grandchildren. David got interested in the absence of war toys which led to lovely conversation with the store personnel. Hiro and David agreed that doing a bit of shopping was an excellent way to get past the facade of a town and start to feel a part of its rhythms. I have found that having lunch also helps to get a sense of Main Street wherever you are. I proposed the Elysian Cafe. the Cafe is housed in space that has been a Hoboken eatery for more than a hundred years. Lovingly restored by Joyce and Eugene Flinn, the cafe has a Paris Bistro menu and feel. It was calm by the time we got there for a late lunch. Over lunch, we talked about cities. Hiro explained to us about urbanization in Japan, which began with his parents' generation and has continued in his. Managing the farms is becoming a pressing question, he told us. David spends his summers in farming country in Ohio and had much to add ab0ut the development of ex-urbs. As our time together drew to a close, we agreed that we should meet again soon and share visits to other cities in the US and Japan. (photo: Mindy Fullilove and David Chapin walking on Washington Street, taken by Hirofumi Minami)

Did we cancel Christmas?

As I have been walking up and down Main Streets, I realized that I wasn't seeing the lights and decorations that I expected.  I was missing the joyful shoppers, hurrying with their arms full of packages and contented smiles on their faces.  I was even missing the incessant Christmas carols oozing out of every possible auditory device.  I walk past stores with their windows plastered with "Huge Sale" signs, but hardly an elf or reindeer in sight.  All of this raises the critical question, "How did the Grinch get us?"  I have been thinking that it's time to shake ourselves out of these doldrums.  It's time to find that special, indefinable something that is the essence of Christmas, the thing deeper than cash and presents, the thing that in the face of everything will help us affirm that we will confront these times in solidarity and joy.  

Whose street?

"Main Street," according to Wikipedia, is a figure of speech indicating the retail and social center of neighborhood, village or city.  In the American collective imagination, Main Street belongs to the city and its people.  In older times, it's where the teens met at the malt shop and the farmers talked about corn prices.  More recently, it's where Starbucks is or isn't, depending on your town's social status.  What's important is its openness as the market center of a larger unit. In that vein,  Salt Lake City has an interesting counter story.  Several years ago, the city sold a block of Main Street to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, a church which is very powerful in the city and in the state of Utah.  The block has become a private park, governed by the Church.  Suddenly the collective thoroughfare is interrupted, and new way of organizing behavior inserted.  This manifestation of the beliefs of the Church of Jesus Christ is uplifting to members but an imposition to non-members who often feel oppressed by the Church's political power.  When are we entitled to access to that which flows?  To take another example, in a recent decision, the Montana Supreme Court ruled that wealthy landowners could not bar their fellows from the trout-rich stream that ran through their lands.  One of the landowners, Kenneth F. Siebel, was very upset.  He was quoted in the NY Times as saying, "I've put time and energy and love into the property and it's all gone and it's a shame."  Obviously the property was still there, and still in the improved condition to which he had brought it.  What made it seem "all gone" if strangers could visit?  And what about flow in cities -- should we protect the flow of Main Street the way we protect trout streams?

What will the recession do to Main Street?

According to Judy Peet and Jeanette Rundquist, the 234 Main streets in New Jersey are struggling to stay afloat during the recession. With consumer buying power down, businesses are making tough adjustments to their hours and their offerings, hoping to find a formula to make ends meet. On some of the Main streets I visit the "For Rent" signs attest to businesses that have folded. Sales are everywhere. For some businesses, extending hours seems to be the way to meet the challenge. For others, it's cutting back. One shopkeeper in Boonton told the reporters, "We need to work together, but I don't see that happening." Yet cooperation is obviously a key idea. What Main streets have is a rich mix of activities and history. These can be put together in ways that energize the whole surrounding area, making it safer and more fun, at the same time maximizing the turnover of dollars in the local area. This takes imagination and a bit of thinking outside the box. A Main Street business might not think about the neighborhood two blocks over, but those neighbors are certainly thinking about Main Street. There is -- in that possible exchange -- the potential to find a solution that gets all of us through this tough recession.

Long Boulevards: Anderson Avenue

Today I drove the length of Anderson Avenue, which serves as a Main Street for Fairview and Cliffside Park. It is lined by small stores and services. You can find a post office, library, barbecue spot and halal meat market along this street. It obviously serves as a center for organization for those two towns. What is surprising in driving this boulevard is that as one crosses over into Fort Lee, Anderson Avenue becomes a residential street, anchored by Fairway Market at its southern end and Main Street at the northern end. This sudden change in building type requires some explanation -- why should Anderson Avenue be a commercial corridor in Cliffside Park and then not on the other side of the "Welcome to Fort Lee" sign? On an earlier exploration, friends and I had traced Fort Lee's Main Street on its east-west course from the Palisades to Hackensack. Fort Lee grew up along Main Street, which is where its commercial center is located. Its leafy residential sections are away from the hustle and bustle of its center. Anderson Avenue, which is perpendicular to Main Street, heads south, eventually arriving at the Hudson River at Weehawken. The same logic works for Cliffside Park and Fairview that works for Fort Lee -- commerce on the main street and leafy residential streets at the edges -- but the orientation is shifted by 90 degrees. I learned while spending the summer in Paris that pathways often have their logic routed in history. I lived in small apartment on Rue Saint Andre des Arts, a street that has been the site of heavy foot traffic for about 900 years. Originally people were walking from the center of the city to the duty free market outside the city walls. The lively commerce that was started then is still located in the same place and still draws great crowds. Thus history guides our footsteps, whether we're walking the streets of Paris or exploring the major city streets of our hometowns in New Jersey.

Beautiful + What?

I had the pleasure of visiting St. Louis November 14th.  I wanted to visit the site of the Mill Creek Valley Urban Renewal Project, as well as the site of the Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project.  I was staying at the Hilton at the Ballpark -- a delightful hotel -- and these sites were close by.  I also got to see the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, which includes the Gateway Arch.  All of these places turn out to flank a downtown mall, which starts at the Old Courthouse, and ends by Union Station.  What splendor!  The arch is a stunning site and the museum well worth a visit.  The Old Courthouse, where the Dred Scott trial took place, is one of the most important places in American history.  Union Station, designed by Theodore C. Link, is a magnificent building, and a major project in adaptive reuse.  And the mall is also an attraction.  Yet, sadly, the magnificence is not well-used.  You would think that such a charming spot would be full of people but everywhere I went, the streets were empty.  There were a scattering of tourists in the park, but that was it.  Jane Jacobs, the great urbanist, made the observation that parks need people.  In general, she was quite skeptical about open space, seeing it as a potential rupture in the tight coherence of occupation that makes a city hum.  She was decidedly opposed to the orthodox view, as propounded by the great park designer, Frederick Law Olmsted, that city people are longing for great open spaces.   Evidence on the Jacobs' side: the most active place I was visited with the tiny stretch of historic waterfront, which is full of restaurants, shops and people strolling about.  St. Louis has much of beauty but to make the city vibrant again, its leaders might rethink all that open space that replaced what once was its energetic urban core.