If I had one night in New York...

Driving from JFK over to Manhattan feels like being on a safari in Africa, but with no fresh air. It’s bumpy, smoggy and you’re wondering what the guarantee is that you actually end up in your requested address and not violated in some dark alley. The pavements are covered not only with sooty snow and ice but even more with trash. Houses are demolished and rebuilt everywhere in and might indicate that the time has come to an end for the original West Side Story-like architechtures. Rebuilding it must be the only salvation, the only chance for them to uphold new working systems for handeling the trash and for internal air conditions. The buildings are old and they have had no maintenance for soon to be a hundred years.

I did the two hours walk from Chelsea to Broadway 2427 to get a grasp of a part of Manhattan. It striked me that the people on the streets change quite a bit over that walk, from strange and maniacs to rich and desillutioned, but it’s just as dirty everywhere.

There are things certainly more fine things though that you find on Manhattan but not in clean, sane Stockholm. Having the specials presented at organic vegan Candle Café you realize that this is what you should try to make at home more often – real cooked amazing vegan food no different from any steakhouse-experience. My friend and old collegue informed me as always about everything crazy going on in his trend savvy mind. He and many others have supported a kickstarter project for inventing a nuitrition alternative that will let all these supporters (who altogether brought 755 000 dollars) to not have to eat again. As we both are into some charity projects we also exchanged ideas for bringing more people to microvolonteering. I got new links to dig into to Breakthrough , Digital Prototype Opportunity and to an idea we talked about how to reward supporters with bitcoins. I here provide my friend with a project I did a long time ago that never been realized. It's 64 My Human Rights cards in an app-format meant to trigger users to read one per day and spread them around the world the days they are triggered to do so.

 

Moving on to a reading of a play – the Homosexuals – seven actors gathered it appeared for only the third time to perform a humoristic and very serious play for an audience of about 25 people in an appartment reinstalled for this purpose. A system of readings with a chance of getting set on a theater and appartments transformed to locals for these readings is arty over the top for me. The play itself was not pretentious though, it was important and I hope they get to run it on stage and for more people to see it. 

The reading format itself is fascinating. Sitting right up in front of the actors, almost listening to the play as on the radio, but with faces telling the story. And yet, even if there was no other action, you totally believe that the actors are their characters and you get soaked into the story. Of course I could identify the best with the only woman in the play- a school teacher hanging out with gay friends in an unspoken agreement of that they all know about being minimized and limited by the society. The problems they cope with require different kind of courages though. Gay people have to stand up for their love. They must be brave to put some images of their family at their office desk. Women, on their hand, are considered less skilled and competent just by their own mere look, and will have to fight for their right to be presented in a righteous way in all different kind of professions and positions. Both are processes of fortitude for normalisation. 

If I had only one night in New York, this is it :-).