From Robert Whitcomb's Dec. 8 "Digital Diary'' in GoLocal24.com
“It's time to end my holiday and bid the country a hasty farewell.
“So on this gray and melancholy day, I'll move to a Manhattan hotel.
“I'll dispose of my rose-colored chattels and prepare for my share of adventures and battles,
“Here on the twenty-seventh floor looking down on the city I hate and adore!
“Autumn in New York, why does it seem so inviting?
“Autumn in New York, it spells the thrill of first-nighting.’’
-- The opening of “Autumn in New You’’ (1934), by Vernon Duke
We were in New York the past few days. November and December are, in my view, the best time to visit New York. It’s crisp outside, people seem to walk with a hopeful spring in their step and commerce is at its most colorful. It reminds me of what New York was in the '50s, in its “Imperial New York’’ heyday before urbanpathologies (especially crime, drugs, decaying infrastructure, “white flight to the suburbs’’ and yawning budget deficits) seemed to pose a lethal challenge to Gotham in the late ‘60s and the ‘70s. Starting around 1980, things started to get better.
You can now sense a little decline. That’s in part, I think, because Mayor Bill DiBlasio is no Mike Bloomberg. There seem to be more homeless people sleeping on sidewalks and some new graffiti but still, all in all, it’s a place of vast energy and idea creation and implementation.
Newly unhappy New Yorkers include those living and working around Trump Tower in midtown Manhattan. There, the security around what continues to be the president-elect’s base of operations has hamstrung residents and the many large and small businesses there. Mr. Trump has implied that even after he takes the oath of office on Jan. 20 he will continue to do much of his government (and business deals?) work in Trump Tower. Some local businesses may have to close as a result.
And the cost to taxpayers will be gigantic: Midtown Manhattan may well be the most complicated and by far the most expensive place in America to maintain a massive security operation. Once again, Donald Trump, who pays little or no federal income taxes, will take the taxpayers to the cleaners.
