On the other hand, if a loud noise or a whistle from a distant factory happens to hit his ear, if he so much as hears the monotonous clattering of the machines in a fac-tory, his face immediately brightens.

The arcades are something between a street and an intCrieur. If one can say that the physiologies~employ;.--n-.r!isti~-device;itisthe proven device of the feuilleton-namely, the transformation of the boulevard into an int&k~·'y~~~QecOmes a dwelling plac;&;r the flineur; he is as much at home amongJ~.-~es as a citiz;n is within hi£follr walls.

The constructive or combining power, by which ingenuityis usually manifested, and which the phrenologists (I believe erroneously) haveassigned a separate organ, supposing it a primitive faculty, has been sofrequently seen in those whose intellect bordered otherwise upon idiocy, as tohave attracted general observation among writers on morals.

Our player confines himself not at all; nor, because the game is the object, doeshe reject deductions from things external to the game. He examines thecountenance of his partner, comparing it carefully with that of each of hisopponents

The necessaryknowledge is that of what to observe.

And, as the shades of the second evening came on, Igrew wearied unto death, and, stopping fully in front of the wanderer, gazed at him steadfastly inthe face. He noticed me not, but resumed his solemn walk, while I, ceasing to follow, remainedabsorbed in contemplation.

His clothes, generally, were filthy and ragged; but as he came, now andthen, within the strong glare of a lamp, I perceived that his linen, although dirty, was of beautifultexture; and my vision deceived me, or, through a rent in a closely-buttoned and evidently second-handed roquelaire which enveloped him, I caught a glimpse both of a diamond and of a dagger

Setting aside a certain dapperness of carriage, which may be termeddeskism for want of a better word, the manner of these persons seemed to me an exact fac-simile ofwhat had been the perfection of bon ton about twelve or eighteen months before. They wore thecast-off graces of the gentry;—and this, I believe, involves the best definition of the class.

It is easy to dwell endlessly on Moses' personal power and style. But thiS emphaSis tends to obscure one of the primary sources of hJS vast authority: his ability to convince a ma~s public that.he was (It!'" vehid.:.,?f impersonal world-h!storical forces, the mq_yl!,1g. "ii??rit 1.?1 mOde~':uty. For forty yean, he was able to pre-empt the vision ol the mOdem.

M_<:>s~~ di!!.llil'.J:>~st,':'>_,!aiseJlJ.'!!.se!f t~mnti~ stature, and even_~_am~~ .. --!9_£!!iqy_his increasing r~tat~on as_? i11Q~. Which lie'bebeved would intimidate the public and keep potentialOppo-nents out of the way.

They looked numbly at the wreckers, at the disappearing streets, at each other, and they went. Moses was coming through, and no temporal or spiritual power could block his way.

People ~r. uses. with mo~e money at their command, or greater respectability (m a credit society the two often go together), can fairly easily supplant those less prosperous or of less status, and commonly do so in city neigh. borhoods that ac?ieve popularity.

One of the bitterest disappointments in housing project history is the failure of the parks and open grounds in these establishments to increase adjacent values or to stabilize, let alone improve, their neighbor-hoods.

Most of the land around the city was in private hands and closed to them. ~o th~ north, in Westc~ester County, there were indeed public parks, the rollmg hills and green playm~ fields they sought, but Westchester had barred its parks to anyone not a restdent of _the county.

Fo_r m!lhons of New ":'" ork fathers, fuanks to the machine parked near their door, no longer did a Sunday outing have to be to a Bowery beer garden or a hard-surfaced play-ground framed by the grimy buildings that they saw every day. Suddenly, it could be to grassy meadows beneath expanses of blue s~y, perhaps eve~ to white sand and sparkling surf.

Before World War I, a seventy-hour factory week had been common; in 1920, the average was sixty hours; in 1929, just before the Crash, it would be forty-eight

The city is subject to transformation and reinscription by the changing demographic, economic, and psychological needs of the body. Bodies “reinscribe and project themselves onto their sociocultural environment so that the environment both produces and reflects the form and interests of the body”

It affects the way the subject sees others...as well as the subject’s understanding of, alignment with, and positioning in space...moreover, the city is, of course, also the site for the body’s cultural saturation, its takeover and transformation by images, representational systems, the mass media, and the arts – the place where the body is representationally reexplored, transformed, contested, reinscribed.

First, if it is true that a spatial order organizes an ensemble of possi-~ (e.g., by a place jn which one can move) and interdictions (e.g., ?Y a wall that prevents one from going further), then the walker actliai-izes some of these possibilities. In that way, he makes them exist as well as emerge. But he also moves them about and he invents others, since the crossing, drifting away, or improvisation of walking privilege, trans-form or ab .. andon spatial element,;;.

Today, whatever the avatars of this concept may have been, we have to acknowledge that if in discourse the city serves as a totalizing and almost mythical landmark for socioeconomic and political strategies, urban life increasingly permits the re-emergence of the element that the urbanistic project excluded

Beneath the discourses that ideologize the city the ruses and combinations of powers that have no readable identity proliferate; without points where one can @hold of them, without rational transparency, they are impossible to ~er.

A vivid and integrated physical setting, capable of producing a sharp image, plays a social role as well. It can furnish the raw material for the symbols and collective memories of group com-munication. A striking landscape is the skeleton upon which many primitive races erect their socially important myths

An environmental image may be analyzed into three compo-nents: identity, structure, and meaning. It is useful to abstract these for analysis, if it is remembered that in· reality they always appear together

Moving elements in a city, and in particular the people and their activities, are as important as the stationary physical parts. We are not simply observers of this spectacle, but are ourselves a part of it; on the stage with the other participants.

The organization of human space is uniquely dependent onsight. Other senses expand and enrich visual space. Thussound enlarges one's spatial awareness to include areas behindthe head that cannot be seen. More important, sounddramatizes spatial experience. Soundless space feels calm andlifeless despite the visible flow of activity in it, as in watchingevents through binoculars or on the television screen with thesound turned off, or being in a city muffled in a fresh blanket ofsnow.17Human spaces reflect the quality of the human senses andmentality.

Experience is a cover-all term for the various modes throughwhich a person knows and constructs a reality. Thesemodes range from the more direct and passive senses ofsmell, taste, and touch, to active visual perception and theindirect mode of symbolization.

Isn't it strange how this castle changes as soon as one imagines thatHamlet lived here?

In these three portraits in villainy-the youth's urban compan-ion, the demagogue, and the gambler/speculator-the writers .of antebellum advice literature expressed a deep disenchantment with the direction of historical change in early nineteenth-century America.

Although the term confidence man does not appear in the advice manuals, it accurately identifies the villain of the piece. The seducer-whether rake or pimp, gambler or, thief-begins his as-sault on the innocent youth by winning his confidence through an offer of friendship and entertainment.

All the major elements of eighteenth-century republican ideology-the struggle between liberty and power, the danger of corruption and decay, the ultimate threat of tyranny and enslavement-were present in the nineteenth-century confidence game. In it, the passive liberty of tμe American youth falls victim to the self-aggrandizing power of the confidence man.

Struggle, motherfucker. Hustle. Fail, fail again, fail until you forget what succeeding is, and then, on your deathbed, as you’re full of rotten phlegm and regret, you can look back and crack a smile that you won a couple, and survived everything else.

New York’s indifference to your plight makes you strong. Fall to your knees and thank New York for making you strong.

New York City does not lie. Its honesty is the only thing that makes this cold chunk of over-developed concrete special.

It would be a long while because, quite simply, I was in love wiih New York. I do not mean "love" in any colloquial way, I lnean that I was in love with the city, the way you I love the first person who ever touches you and never love anyone I quite that way again.

I co d not tell you when I began to understand that. All I know · s that it was very bad when I was twenty-eight. Everyth' g that was said to me I seemed to have heard be-fore, an I could no longer listen. I could no longer sit in little bars ne Grand Central and listen to someone complaining I of his wffe's inability to cope with the help while he missed another train to Connecticut. I no longer had any interest in hearing about the advances other people had received from their publishers, about plays which were having second-act trouble in Philadelphia, or about people I would like very much if only I would come out and meet them. I had already . met them, always. There were certain parts of the city which I I had td avoid. I could not bear upper Madison Avenue on weekda4 mornings (this was a particularly inconvenient aversioi since I then lived just fifty or sixty feet east of Madiso1!' because I would see women walking Yorkshire terriers and shopping at Gristede's, and some Veblenesque 236 GOODBYE TO ALL THAT gorge would rise in my throat. I could not go to Times Square in the afternoon, or to the New York Public Library for any reason whatsoever. One day I could not go into a Schrafft's; the next day it would be Bonwit Teller.

There were. years when I called Los Angeles "the Coast,'' but they seem a long time ago.