What's Wrong with a Nice Little Recession?

 A Lot.

The Scream, by Edvard Munch.

I don't like recessions. I remember two of them with a particular lack of fondness - the Reagan recession in the early 1980s and the financial meltdown in 2007-2009.  Both of these economic events substantially altered the path of my life. 

Even little recessions can do a lot of damage. And then there is always the possibility that, with appropriate mismanagement, things can spin out of control.

Kind of like a nice little war.

Also kind of like 1929.

Let's have a look at Walker Evans, one of the most celebrated American photographers of the twentieth century. Evans actually started his photographic career at the beginning of the Great Depression, and for a while, things seemed to be going well. Hart Crane's poem The Bridge was published in 1930 with three photogravures by Evans. But his work was not necessarily putting a whole lot of bread on the table, a common experience for many Americans at that time. 

Between 1929 and 1933 President Herbert Hoover presided over an amazing economic death spiral. Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected president in November 1932, but he did not take office until March 1933. Here's what Evans was doing a few months after the inauguration:

"July 13, 1933: A day in the life of an itinerant photographer. Evans was still in straitened circumstances, forced to cadge a midday meal with friends who were as badly off as he. 'Hungry, so walked to see Noda; they were in and I ate.' ... Considering Evans's situation, he was taking it with a certain equanimity: 'Not panicky, nor yet careless-bohemian about it.' ... 'Always wondering if past experiences with poverty have or have not depleted me.' ... That evening, another near-starving friend, the artists' model Avis Ferme, with whom he had once pursued a courtship if not an affair, telephoned him. He acknowledged a certain coldness in his attitude: 'I feel careless about it and don't know what that's a sign of. A sign that I am tired of the hypocrisy of sending stranded people around to unstranded people. Weary of this perpetual inability we all share to be strictly honest about our indifference. I don't care if Avis Ferme starves to death as long as I don't have to watch her do it; so I feel like writing that down."

(My source here is James Mellow's excellent biography Walker Evans, 1999. The quotations are on pages 195-196.) 

Things started going better for Evans in 1933. That year he had a one-man show at the Museum of Modern Art, and he also went to Cuba to take photographs for a book by Carleton Beals entitled The Crime of Cuba, which was published the same year. His big economic break came in 1935, when Roy Stryker of what would become the U.S. Farm Security Administration hired him as a staff photographer. He took a leave from his staff job in 1936 to collaborate with James Agee on a project centered on sharecroppers in Alabama that eventually became the book Let Us Now Praise Famous Men. His later career included a lengthy stint at Fortune magazine and a number of years teaching at Yale. 

I'm haunted by what those early years of the Depression did to Evans, and I expect to many other people. Exhaustion is here, and despair is close by.

Not too many years later FDR suggested that government had a role in giving the people freedom from fear, and freedom from want.  

But this appears to be a controversial proposition today.

See also Wounded Souls, Little Karl, The 800-Pound Gorilla in the Oval Office.

Advantage: Bicycle

Park in Front of the Entrance

Bike corral by 7th avenue entrance.

The SeaHearNow music festival in Asbury Park, N.J., this September 14-15 was another great success - how could it not be, with Bruce Springsteen appearing for the finale on Sunday evening? 

My impression is that the success was not just on the stage but also in all the logistical areas that people take for granted as long as they are working well. Many readers will know that I take particular interest in transportation - how people arrive, and how they get back home. Generally, things seem to have gone very well in that department.

One thing that surprised me was a motorist who arrived in the early afternoon on Sunday, apparently expecting to park his car more or less at the festival's front door. At any rate, I encountered him attempting to turn from Third avenue - one of the east-west streets that bring you to the beach - onto Ocean avenue, which, as the name suggests, runs north-south next to the beach. At Third and Ocean he was next to the box office and two blocks from the festival entrance at Ocean and Fifth. 

The driver seemed nonplussed by all the pedestrians walking around in the street, not yielding him the right-of-way and in fact totally ignoring him. Oh well. I hope he found a parking spot somewhere. There certainly weren't any on Ocean.

Unfortunately, I doubt that he was the only motorist who arrived at SeaHearNow with unrealistic expectations about parking.

The City does its best, but it's not a big place. Only about 15,000 people live there, and the 2024 SeaHearNow attracted 40,000 fans. For years the City has been encouraging people who arrive by car to consider parking at a nearby train station and riding a train into Asbury Park. In addition, many people park in neighboring towns like Ocean Grove and Loch Arbour and then walk to the festival. 

The City also has a scooter share program, but the scooters are geo-fenced and only operate within Asbury Park. People parking in the western parts of the city are encouraged to use the scooters to solve what transportation people call "the last mile problem." 

James Bonanno, Asbury Park's transportation director, informs me that the scooter company added 100 scooters to its Asbury Park fleet for the weekend. The scooters normally get turned off at 10 pm, but during the festival scooter hours were extended two hours in the evening. That said, the SeaHearNow weekend stands at the top of Olympus when it comes to scootering in Asbury Park. On Saturday, there were 2,017 rentals; on Sunday there were 1,926.

For comparison, the weekend of 8/31-9/1 saw 1,242 and l,081 rentals, and the weekend of 8/24-8/25 saw 1,261 and 1,232.

The only day last summer that topped either of the SeaHearNow days was July 4, with 2,892 trips. 

I saw quite a few people riding these scooters who didn't necessarily look the part, but many of them were clearly having fun with a new toy. Perhaps Asbury Park was making some new converts to micromobility along the way to the music.

The scooter numbers are the only data on how people got to SeaHearNow that I have been able to find. I'm mindful of an old business bromide: "What gets measured is what gets managed." As I said before, I do think that arrivals and departures worked very well this year. But a more detailed understanding might turn up a few improvement opportunities. I think the simplest way to get a sense of what was going on in all transportation modes would be to survey ticket holders and ask them, in some detail, how they came and left. Not just did you take the train, but where did you get on. And how did you get from the train station to the festival. Perhaps SeaHearNow would be willing to conduct such a survey.

Meanwhile, many bicyclists had the option of parking their bikes very close to one of the festival's entrances. The photo at the beginning of this story shows the corral that was directly across Kingsley from the 7th avenue entrance. Here's another view of the corral.

And here's a shot of the 7th avenue entrance. Note the barriers designed to discourage motorists looking for a parking spot by the front door. How unsporting. 

Other cyclists chose to lock up on basically anything lock-uppable. 

Generally, people were respectful of small trees - it appears the word has gotten out that locking up to young trees is very bad for the trees.

I walked south from the 7th avenue entrance and took pictures of another large corral near the 5th avenue entrance, and then walked up to the boardwalk, south of Convention Hall, intending to take pictures of the bikes chained to the railing on the boardwalk, which has the advantage of an ocean view. But I was frankly tired of taking pictures of bicycles - yes, it happens even to me - so Lois and I sat down and watched the parade of pedestrians walking north on the boardwalk, toward the entrance and the main stage. 

Then something really odd happened. A parade of sea creatures was coming north on the boardwalk. I didn't know what I was looking at, so I took pictures. A piece of advice I received from an old photographer friend: If you have no idea what you're looking at, take pictures of it. Concentrate on whatever attracted your eye. Then sort it out later. 

And much later, after pursuing a couple of dry wells, I got to Jenn Hampton, whom I should have contacted earlier. I think Jenn basically knows everything about the art scene in Asbury Park, and it turns out this promenade is sponsored by the Wooden Walls Project and has its own name: March of the Medusa II, Jörmungandr’s Journey. Jenn adds: "It is part mask-making workshop and a march that happens as a celebration of the students finishing their masks." 

Coney Island has a Mermaid Parade every summer. Maybe Jörmungandr can make his visit an annual event.

See also Sea Hear Now 2023; Bike Parking 9/29 Asbury Park; Surf School, Asbury Park.

What I've Learned

Thoughts on Reforming Our Streets - and Other Things

Generally speaking, our cities have not been designed for the convenience of the people who live there. They have been designed to make rich people richer.

This presents some challenges for people, like me, who are trying to make our streets safe, useful, and pleasant for everybody, not just rich people.

In the middle are the politicians, whose main job is to mediate between the rich and the hoi poloi. They used to have a side job of leading, and there have been some refreshing signs of actual leadership lately, but overall survival by triangulation still seems to be the basic approach.

If you are a policy person in this political schema, the simplest way to get things done is to become a servant of the rich. This will, of course, affect your work product in a variety of ways, but historically it was the only way, and if you admire the work of people like Michelangelo, you are a beneficiary of this system.

Rittenhouse Square was also a product of this system, as duly modernized to fit a more democratic society where money was not so tightly concentrated at the top as it was in the time of Pope Julius II.

Still, there is the lingering thought that policy, in a democratic society, should be able to speak for itself. That is simply not the way it works. In today's world, if you build a better mousetrap, you don't wait for the world to beat a path to your door. You have to go out and sell it. 

You might think that the policy entrepreneur could go and knock on the doors of politicians and sell them a policy or two. Again, that's not the way it works. Here, and now, all politics are interest-group politics, and every idea is a commodity looking for an interest group to peddle it to the politicians.

We're a long way from the Romantic ideal, expressed by John Keats, that a thing of beauty is a joy forever:

And now, at once adventuresome, I send / My herald thought into a wilderness: / There let its trumpet blow, and quickly dress / My uncertain path with green, that I may speed / Easily onward, thorough flowers and weed. 

If you have ideas about how to improve things, do not try to do it on your own. Find some like-minded people, work with them, build a constituency, find politicians open to your ideas, try to find a few rich people who may be willing to support you if it's convenient - and then expect a long, hard struggle, prepare to watch your best ideas deformed almost beyond recognition, and recognize that you will lose more often than you win. The important thing - the prize - is to win in the end.

I was fortunate to find, in the endeavors that I remember fondly, a few colleagues, often very different people from me, where the group dynamic proceeded to a deeper, more complex, and astonishingly strong bond that held us together in difficult times, and in less difficult times allowed us to flourish in startling and often new ways.

What Victory Feels Like for Me

I'm sitting in my armchair at the end of the day. The yellow and pink and sometimes red of the sunset sky is slowly fading, and the living room is quietly filling with blue light. Inside my body there is a warm glow. As I unwind from the challenges of the day, I look back and feel that I have probably accomplished something. Will anything come of all this work? I hope so.

I've found that actual victory - passage of legislation, winning an election - can be somewhat anticlimactic. I do know the victories are important, and I enjoy sharing them with friends. But what gets me up in the morning are those quiet moments of satisfaction.

See also Sandy's Book, For Athena, Ron DeSantis Comes to Philly, Rebecca Rhynhart for Mayor, Hector at Troy, Some Things Actually Get Better.