Issue no. 265
Many bright stars
Everything has already been said about New York. The clichés applied to this city are manifold. At the moment, thousands of bargain hunters, driven by the weak dollar, are descending on the city. This won't change any perceptions.
One person has always had a unique perspective of New York. A perspective not to be found in any travel guide. Those familiar with Sidney Lumet's films find a city of abysses. A city that denies normality, so to speak. No other film director has brought New York to the screen with such passionate harshness. He presents police precincts with dusty lightbulbs and fissured walls, sad junkie warrens, bourgeois suburban homes and real estate offices. Lumet speaks in pictures about this city with its gray institutions and merciless forces, its tensions between races and classes. He says New York is a city focussed on the dollar and that almost exclusively. This ceaseless drive for the dollar is rooted deep in people's minds and has grown even more radical in recent years. It has isolated city life from everything external to it. Observing people in the city, one need not be an expert on the New York scene like Lumet to notice more is involved than the all-powerful dollar. It also involves a frightening lack of social vision, some deep dissatisfaction with life. People don't seem to enjoy their food, not even their whiskey. They have little joy with their husbands and wives, their families. This city, embodying life's center and goal for so many millions, devours just as many souls, leaving inhabitants and visitors with not a minute's peace. It does, however, engender a very creative unrest, especially appreciated by writers and artists (not only Sinatra!).
There are other cities in the USA without the magical attraction of New York but perhaps a little more humane. That's why we wanted to look at other regions, to discover different creative facets of the world of consumption. There is more than enough to discover in this sweeping country. And several very appealing cities as well!
