Growing Old Ungracefully - an effect of the US youth culture

In Polanski's 1976 film, "The Tenant", a Polish immigrant in Paris takes the apartment of a woman, (played by Isabelle Adjani) who hasn't quite committed suicide. When I saw the film in Melbourne, I saw it as a horror fantasy. Now that I'm in New York, I realize it is cinema verité.

The New York Times (19th April) reported the increasing phenomenon of people, so desperate to get an apartment on the cheap, that they'll hang around funerals, look up police homicide blotters, and search the death notices. All this in order to find the grieving relative who may get them an "in" on the now empty, perhaps even blood-stained, apartment. Charles LeDuff commented (New York Times 19th April), "Usually a scavenger will wait till the carrion is cold, but the Gotham buzzard is a different breed". On January 6th I commented on The Case of The Missing Tenants. The missing tenants are still missing, feared dead. Although some people have been keeping a vigil outside their apartment, worried about the fate of the two tenants, other less sensitive souls are pestering the landlord asking if they can rent the apartment.

And you don't want to look ill or frail here. Apparently people bang on the doors of old people, trying to find out if they are dead yet. This sort of behaviour is so taken for granted, that it has even filtered into New York based comedy. The latest Seinfeld (April 30th, NBC) had Elaine losing her Manhattan 212 area code phone number, and considering killing the guy from the phone company who installed her line. Eventually, after waiting vulture-like, she manages to obtain the sort-after 212 number when a neighbour, an elderly grandmother dies.

Mayor Guiliani might be able to force civility through legislation, but can he stop the greed and insensitivity? I don't THINK so!

The British and the Bagelites

It seems that Mayor Guiliani's civility campaign is making news everywhere. A friend faxed me some pages from the English magazine, The Spectator (April 18th), where the New York City civility campaign is analyzed in typical Spectator manner.

Spectator's columnist Taki, sees New York as suffering from an egalitarianism, where the problem is that there are no "superiors" to set appropriate codes of behaviour. The problem, according to Taki, is that money "c'est tout" here, and that the city which he (she?) calls the "Big Bagel" is full of greedy people.

Well, I'm not sure about that. It is true that money rules here, and sure, New Yorkers can't last a minute without their bagels. But I very much doubt whether having a class of "superiors" to ape is helpful in creating a well-mannered society.

And who are these "superiors" that presumably London has, but New York has not? I assume that Taki is referring to the British aristocracy. In New York speak, I just have to comment, "Pleeeeeease!".

Come on! Come on! Please please me

Sometimes it's like living in a cracked sixties Beatle album here. The use of the phrase "Come on!" And the comment "Pleeeease!" are heard everywhere lately. Both are used as expressions of scornful disapproval. An example.

There has been of late, "elevator discussion" in our apartment building. It is all about the doormen's new uniforms. In an attempt to ape the upper-crust apartment blocks of Park Avenue, the owners of our building have renovated the lobby and organised new uniforms for the doormen. They used to be bare-headed, but now all the doormen have little caps and look like doormen in those old black and white Bogart movies.

Suddenly the tenants are pro-doormen. Usually they are just annoyed by the doormen. But now it seems from the mecca of social interaction - the elevator - that everyone feels for the doormen, and the new uniforms are the subject of much New York style discussion.

The fact that there is any discussion at all is amazing in itself. Usually all you get is a nod of acknowledgment. If you're lucky. But now the elevators are alive with the sound of human voices.

The "dialogue" is much the same on every elevator ride, however. It goes something like this:
"Did you see the poor doormen's hats? Pleeeease!" "It must be so annoying. Hats! Come on!" "I asked one of them and he said he hated the hat. A hat? Pleeeeease!! Come on!" "Do they think it makes it look like a hotel? Pleeeeease!"

The only piece of relief from this seemingly endlessly repeating conversation this week was when one of the apartment building supervisors was in the elevator, and asked me whether Paul Hogan ate live rattlesnakes. Come on!