Transatlantic Zeppelin

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April 28, 2005

Ending radio silence

There has been radio silence from Transatlantic Zeppelin this week, and I have 131 emails in my inbox. But the silence is for a good reason. A friend was in town, and we spent the days enjoying what makes New York City so wonderful. Here are a few things to enjoy in NYC:

1) Baptist services at Abyssinian Baptist. Abyssinian, founded in 1808 in response to segregated downtown churches, is Harlem’s oldest black church. There were three things that particularly surprised us about Abyssinian.

a. The lines. Before services, there were two lines of people waiting to enter. The first group was dressed to the nines, primarily suits and ties. Members of the second line (which stretched two blocks) were shabbily-dressed and primarily wore jeans and t-shirts. The first line was 100% black folk (i.e. parishioners), and the second was almost all white tourists. What an embarrassment. It’s deplorable that hundreds of white tourists would turn up at someone’s church and act like it was a visit to ESPN Zone. In fact, the preacher was so offended that he even mentioned it during services.

b. The sermon. The Rev. Calvin Butts III is one of Harlem’s best-known preachers, for good reason. If Chris Rock were a bit more religious, he might have been a preacher at Abyssinian. I was particularly impressed that Butt's sermon was nothing like the race-baiting diatribes of Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton. Butts’s sermon explicated Psalm 15 for an hour, but it focused on practical ways of living.

On looking good: “I was walking down the street and saw a man who was dressed like a preacher. Now I’m supposed to know all the preachers in Harlem. But I didn’t know this preacher, so I asked him, ‘Brother, are you a preacher?’. He said: ‘No, I’m a bus driver.’ Even though he was a bus driver, he looked his best.”

On speaking no evil: “I may not agree with the administration’s policies overseas, but we have a black Secretary of State. So often we fall into the ‘crabs in a tank syndrome.’ As soon as one crab starts to escape, another crab reaches up and pulls him down. If you don’t like someone, keep it to yourself.”

c. The gospel choir. The choir was a group of perhaps 30 men and women, ranging in age from teenagers to the elderly. The singing was amazing four-part harmony and very technically difficult.

2) Lunch at the Delegates’ Dining Room. The UN opens its diplomats’ lunchroom to the public, though few people know it. After getting security credentials, one proceeds to a fourth-floor cafeteria with a 270-degree view of Brooklyn, where a long buffet features international food like Japanese dumplings, shrimp ceviche, French duck pate, and a carving station. It’s quite a civilized place. The service is faster than a speeding bureaucracy, the wine good, and the diplomats quite elegant. My friend and I were by far the youngest people there, which drew some looks from puzzled diplomats. And the best part? No sales tax, since this is technically international territory and therefore not subject to the laws of New York.

In fact, lunch was so good that we forgot to eat dinner that night! Not until we were sitting in Marquee around midnight did we realize that somehow we forgot to do something.

3) The Tribeca Film Festival. We saw a screening called “The American Ruling Class,” which follows two Yale 2004 graduates through soul-searching as they want to change the world but are torn as to whether to take their job offers at white-shoe investment bankGoldman Sachs. The two grads follow a Harper’s editor, who introduces them to celebrities like Walter Cronkite, Larry Summers, and Barbara Eherenrich. Although it occasionally falls into shorthanded Farenheight 911-style demagoguery (like one-second clips of Rummy), the point slowly emerges that there is an American Ruling Class and that one can do more as a member of it than outside. For all but the most extraordinary people, having money, clout, and connections makes it much easier to change the world. The people playing bongos in the street might have their heart in the right place (or so the film would argue), but they are largely ineffective. Unfortunately, at the same time, many of the natural members of the American Ruling Class are hypocritically complacent. One fictional heiress proclaims during a game of tennis on her estate: "The world is dying and you're going to go work for a f---ing bank?" She, however, has done nothing to stop the world from "dying" (which it is not). Although it is provocative, I doubt that the film has widespread potential, as it has many esoteric references like 85 Broad Street (the unlabeled headquarters of Goldman Sachs).

4. Amateur Night at the Apollo. The Apollo's legendary Amateur Night, which helped launch the careers of Ella Fitzgerald, James Brown, Michael Jackson, D'Angelo, and Lauryn Hill, is a weekly Harlem event on Wednesday nights. Two hours long, it is guaranteed to cause one's voice to go hoarse from either cheering or trying to boo the bad contestants off the stage. Frankly, the "executioner", who comes out to take away the bad contestants, is the best part of the show.

Posted by adrianjo at April 28, 2005 12:58 PM

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