Admit It: Central Park Sucks!

More Gates-related opinion, this time from the New York Observer’s Hilton Kramer, who is predictably crabby:

My own view is that the gates are nothing less than an unforgivable defacement of a public treasure, and everyone responsible for promoting it—including our publicity-seeking Mayor—should be held accountable, not only for supporting bad taste but for violating public trust.

What has to be understood about this whole affair is that it’s not only an assault on nature, but also the wanton desecration of a precious work of art. After all, Central Park is the creation of two of the greatest landscape artists in our history—Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux—and it’s entitled to the kind of care and protection that civilized societies normally accord to works of art that belong to the community. If some barbarian entered the Metropolitan Museum of Art and proceeded to drape orange banners on the paintings and sculptures, we can be sure that the police would be called in to halt such a flagrant violation of a treasured art collection.

With sincere apologies to Joe Queenan (whose [blank] Sucks! series of articles in Spy Magazine were some of the funniest things I’ve ever read and remember), I want to clear up something that I’ve been saving up for a while: Face it, Central Park Sucks.

This is not to say that it’s not a lovely place, a treasured oasis in the middle of a busy city, a stunning achievement of design and reinterpretation of nature, or what-have-you. It’s just that sometimes I question whether it’s really the “big, beautiful canvas” folks like Hilton Kramer constantly say it is.

Let’s review:

It’s certainly overexposed; try finding some solace for contemplative communing with so-called nature there on one of a handful of pleasant spring or summer days. You can’t. Even in New York there are more pleasant natural settings to “get away from it all.”

As a stunning achievement in landscape design, I don’t think it’s a myth that Olmsted and Vaux preferred their design for Prospect Park to the earlier Central Park. (I will gladly revise this if it turns out this isn’t the case; I’ve heard it so often that I believe it’s true.) Sure, you move through the formalism of the park’s southern end towards the untrammeled beauty of the Ramble; big fucking deal — Van Cortlandt Park, for example, is basically the same thing! Plus there are those absurd transverse roads that cut up the “genius design.” A revolution in traffic flow, but not exactly picturesque. And that gaudy Belvedere Castle — come on! A model boat pond — please! Statuary to well-known greats like Giuseppe Mazzini — what exactly does he have to do with Central Park? Nothing! And don’t even get me started on Sir Walter Scott or noted Confederate gynecologist James Marion Sims. Face it, this park was “defaced” long before Christo and Jeanne-Claude got to it.

For all Kramer’s righteous indignance over the “precious work of art” that is Central Park, he is perhaps forgetting the myriad transgressions perpetrated on it over the years. I’ll take fifty years of Gates before another crappy-ass ice skating rink, volleyball court, baseball field or playground — not to mention the yearly commercialization of Summerstage concerts in the park. If Olmsted and Vaux could see it today, I’m sure they wouldn’t take too kindly the encroachment on their “design.” Which is to say, it’s a fucking park, dude — it’s meant to be used! I have to say, I don’t really care whether there are five more places for lawn bowling (think about that violation of “democratic ideals” for a second there). Parks are meant to be inhabited. Even by dog runs! Call it what you want, but it’s far from a painting in the Met.

From stoners lighting up in Sheep Meadow to the used condoms in the Ramble to the countless movie crews restricting access to the cabs speeding down the drive to the hippies playing bad folk music at Strawberry Fields to the parasitic vendors to the crowds, crowds, CROWDS, the park is not all it’s made out to be. Face it, Central Park Sucks!

(Again, apologies to Joe Queenan, but I’m typing quickly here.)

By way of a bonus, here are Excerpts from Queenan’s piece, posted on a newsgroup back in 1993 (I can’t vouch for its accuracy, but it’s basically what I remember):

With one or two exceptions – Coltrane, Miles – jazz is an art form that has always been dominated by fat old men in sunglasses and ridiculous suits playing songs with names like “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat” and “Epistrophy.” And talk about role models: The most famous jazz musician of them all was a tubby old trumpet player who ended up singing “Hello, Dolly!” with Streisand while wiping his forehead with a soggy hankerchief like some lard-butt umpire at Wrigley Field on Nickel Beer Night. The second-most famous jazz musician was a self-anointed duke who wrote ghastly songs like “Satin Doll.” The third-most-famous jazz musician was an emaciated junkie who used to play with his back to the audience and occasionally sprayed the folks in the front row while spitting into his instrument. The list of deadbeats goes on and on. Stan Getz? Junkie. Chet Baker? Junkie. Charlie Parker? Junkie. Oscar Peterson? Fat, old, boring ivory-tinkler.

I wish, wish, wish someone would reprint these essays somewhere! “Greenmarkets Suck” was another hilarious one.