I.
Waiting at the entrance to the Highline the other night, I realized that my favorite florist had closed. It had been years since I'd gotten flowers there, but every time I walked by I'd look in the windows and dream, and I had arrived early thinking I'd do exactly that. The shop had grown during the boom years, expanding next-door to host weddings and events, then just as abruptly contracted after 2008. But now: gone, replaced with a clothing store. The windows of the former event space were filled with "for rent" signs instead of orchids.
Maybe the closure was not surprising, I reflected, and not only because of the escalating Meatpacking District rent, because her speciality was orchids soaked in color - inky purples; deep, dyed pinks; crisp, stark whites - displayed in sculptural glass vases. All of her designs, no matter the bloom, were striking, bold, meant to impress. But the design world has long since moved on to nubby sedum and wildflowers in muted tones (fern greens, browns, dull-button purples, pastel pinks and peaches), arranged in loose, mixed displays that look like you and your Steampunk-suited groom did it yourselves.
[Elaborate aside: I find this new floral trend aesthetically and emotionally unsatisfying. These arrangements remind me of the wood-framed still-life hung behind the counter at my childhood public library, which was so small that I knew exactly where on each shelf all my favorite books were. The librarian kept all the cards in her desk and inevitably pretended not ever to have heard my name before, despite the limited number of library patrons. You could forget that she was there when you entered - she stayed silent as a spider, observing. Small and jowly, Mrs. Ayres appeared to puddle behind the counter, and it was only the opportunity for condescension that seemed to condense her body, draw her upright. As I approached she would smirk at me, greedy and quivering with anticipation, and after she finished implying that I was too stupid to know my own surname or to pronounce it correctly, she would settle in to her questioning: why was I checking out these books, and were they for a class project, and when was it due? Ah. She would pause, triumphant, and smile broadly with her lips closed. Hadn't I better have started work on it long before now? Only then would she slide my books back across the counter. Every time I waited to check out, I would look at that oil-painted still-life, that neat display of middle-class good taste in this temple of self-improvement - the matte roses and tulips flopping over the side of the vase, and maybe an apple or pear rolling around the base, set against a dull beige background - and know what I was in for.]
II.
As I walked the length of the Highline, all the way up to the hidden Buddha on West 30th Street, I noticed how, since the park first opened, the plants at the southern end had filled in, tall and lush, and so gestured to the random, overgrown jungle the tracks had been before the park was built. The Highline is a wonderful example of architectural re-use; one cannot even speak of the revitalization of West Chelsea, but rather its wholescale transformation, for better or worse, in little more than half a decade. But, I thought, passing narrow brick tenements huddled between the gleaming, new glass buildings, most of us don't think like city planners, and we certainly don't feel like city planners. Our concerns are affected by emotion and personal memory, and most of us, at one point, want our places to stop changing and to stay just as they were. It's the enduring song of the New Yorker, born or become: This neighborhood, this scene, this city, was better before - in which "better" is defined, narrowly, as "mine." Inevitably, those places that belong to you pass on to other people and other uses and other times, and suddenly you find yourself a stranger. If there is always something comforting (or so I think) about time expressed in the growth of a garden, the same cannot be said for the changes in a neighborhood.
III.
- Then, last night, I found out that the florist had not closed, but relocated three blocks away. She's not gone, she just moved, I said to myself. Like you.
Waiting at the entrance to the Highline the other night, I realized that my favorite florist had closed. It had been years since I'd gotten flowers there, but every time I walked by I'd look in the windows and dream, and I had arrived early thinking I'd do exactly that. The shop had grown during the boom years, expanding next-door to host weddings and events, then just as abruptly contracted after 2008. But now: gone, replaced with a clothing store. The windows of the former event space were filled with "for rent" signs instead of orchids.
Maybe the closure was not surprising, I reflected, and not only because of the escalating Meatpacking District rent, because her speciality was orchids soaked in color - inky purples; deep, dyed pinks; crisp, stark whites - displayed in sculptural glass vases. All of her designs, no matter the bloom, were striking, bold, meant to impress. But the design world has long since moved on to nubby sedum and wildflowers in muted tones (fern greens, browns, dull-button purples, pastel pinks and peaches), arranged in loose, mixed displays that look like you and your Steampunk-suited groom did it yourselves.
[Elaborate aside: I find this new floral trend aesthetically and emotionally unsatisfying. These arrangements remind me of the wood-framed still-life hung behind the counter at my childhood public library, which was so small that I knew exactly where on each shelf all my favorite books were. The librarian kept all the cards in her desk and inevitably pretended not ever to have heard my name before, despite the limited number of library patrons. You could forget that she was there when you entered - she stayed silent as a spider, observing. Small and jowly, Mrs. Ayres appeared to puddle behind the counter, and it was only the opportunity for condescension that seemed to condense her body, draw her upright. As I approached she would smirk at me, greedy and quivering with anticipation, and after she finished implying that I was too stupid to know my own surname or to pronounce it correctly, she would settle in to her questioning: why was I checking out these books, and were they for a class project, and when was it due? Ah. She would pause, triumphant, and smile broadly with her lips closed. Hadn't I better have started work on it long before now? Only then would she slide my books back across the counter. Every time I waited to check out, I would look at that oil-painted still-life, that neat display of middle-class good taste in this temple of self-improvement - the matte roses and tulips flopping over the side of the vase, and maybe an apple or pear rolling around the base, set against a dull beige background - and know what I was in for.]
II.
As I walked the length of the Highline, all the way up to the hidden Buddha on West 30th Street, I noticed how, since the park first opened, the plants at the southern end had filled in, tall and lush, and so gestured to the random, overgrown jungle the tracks had been before the park was built. The Highline is a wonderful example of architectural re-use; one cannot even speak of the revitalization of West Chelsea, but rather its wholescale transformation, for better or worse, in little more than half a decade. But, I thought, passing narrow brick tenements huddled between the gleaming, new glass buildings, most of us don't think like city planners, and we certainly don't feel like city planners. Our concerns are affected by emotion and personal memory, and most of us, at one point, want our places to stop changing and to stay just as they were. It's the enduring song of the New Yorker, born or become: This neighborhood, this scene, this city, was better before - in which "better" is defined, narrowly, as "mine." Inevitably, those places that belong to you pass on to other people and other uses and other times, and suddenly you find yourself a stranger. If there is always something comforting (or so I think) about time expressed in the growth of a garden, the same cannot be said for the changes in a neighborhood.
III.
- Then, last night, I found out that the florist had not closed, but relocated three blocks away. She's not gone, she just moved, I said to myself. Like you.
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