Our Town downtown
July 30, 2007
The man was wearing a dark cape and was standing inside the Washington Square Park fountain, which The City renamed “Tisch Fountain,” after a $2.5 million pledge from the foundation in 2005. He was near the northwestern rim of the fountain, and had something that resembled a do-rag on his head. He was speaking in a tone too controlled to call yelling, but more than loud enough to be heard by all those around him, at the very least, the people sitting directly in front of him and nearby. Exactly what he was talking about was unclear, but a substantial portion of it was a plea for anyone of influence who might be listening to please “publish” his “book.” He was not so far gone as to not know what city or day or century or planet this was, but mental illness comes in all shades of blue, and he was down in that sub-spectrum somewhere.
Up above this part of the fountain, a bare-chested kid with surfer hair, who looked homeless, approached a black man sitting on a bench in the shade. They talked quietly for a second or two and walked into the sunshine a few steps away. Then they stopped so the man could make a call on his cell phone.
Interactions like these are typical, but they’re only part of what goes on inside Washington Square Park on any given day.
On the Fifth Avenue side, a kind of retro ragtime band was unloading their gear while a string duo played chamber music behind them. At one point, two men on a bench in the same area were talking about the complications that could arise if one of them were to run for office. They didn’t say which office.
A courtly-looking senior couple walked by slowly, and two young women came in through the Fifth Avenue entrance just past the musicians. “This is where I used to hang out in college,” the first one said. “I was just thinking the same thing,” the other replied.
Graeme Humphrey, 24, was sitting on the southwest side of the fountain. It’s was his seventh or eighth time in Washington Square Park. Humphrey, an actor, works in the neighborhood. He likes hanging out near the large dog run since he’d like a dog, but affording and taking care of one is difficult in New York.
Irena Simonova, 20, a model from the Czech Republic, who lives in Soho, comes to Washington Square Park just about every day. She was sitting in her favorite spot, east of the Arch, near MacDougal and Washington Place, and said the only thing she’d change about the park would be to remove the drunks and homeless people. Maybe the police could help with that, she said, “because I’m scared sometimes.”
Tom, also sitting near the West 4th corner, who wouldn’t give his last name, goes to the park two to three times a week to read and relax. He’s been doing this for 50 years.
And Kristina Magcamit, 19, comes here to study almost every day. She likes to sit by the fountain and the dog run behind it. Magcamit, an NYU student, said she thinks The City’s plan to realign the fountain with the Arch is unnecessary.
All Carlos Casanova, 21, would change about Washington Square Park would be to place “more restrictions on drug-related problems.” He can’t figure out why they’re ignored. Casanova, a dog walker, hangs out by the main dog run, naturally, though he’s usually just passing through.
The controversy over the proposed redesign of Washington Square Park involves allegations that The City wants to privatize public space, or at the very least, make this very public space exclusive. It involves concerns about noise, and it has already been the subject of two lawsuits.
Landscape architect Robert B. Nichols designed the park in its current form, which was completed in 1970. Fifth Avenue ran through the Arch until 1964. And in 1995, The City completed a $900,000 renovation of the park.
An announcement the New York City Law Department made earlier this year called the Parks Department’s initial plan a “renovation” for a “heavily used park, both to restore crumbling park features and to enhance community members’ ability to make use of park space.”
The Parks Department first announced its intent to redesign the park in December 2003, and Community Board 2 voted unanimously in favor of “the concept to refurbish” it, according to court documents.
In February 2005, Parks unveiled its initial plans at another community board meeting. And though the plans provided did not include specific measurements, they showed the renovated fountain spraying a jet as high as the Arch, which is approximately 45 feet high, and increased lawn areas.
Neighborhood residents in attendance, like Jonathan Greenberg, were “outraged,” Greenberg said in a telephone interview.
But going into the meeting, he suspected The City might want to “transform the very nature and spirit” of the park. Greenberg, who polled the crowd there to determine what its priorities were in terms of improving Washington Square Park, said that 197 of 200 respondents favored a smaller, simpler, alternative plan that he and other members of the recently-formed Open Washington Square Park Coalition came up with.
To Greenberg, the results of this and other surveys he conducted were proof that “everyone” was against The City’s plan.
It wasn’t that the community didn’t recognize the need to fix certain things in the park – the bathrooms, the pavement and some of the benches needed repairs, the lighting needed to be replaced, the grass needed to be cleaned up and maintained, and the mound areas should be opened up, and the playgrounds expanded a little – but they did not want a redesign.
“Frankly, they wanted the park to be left alone other than that, for the most part.”
Greenberg said that Parks showed Community Board 2 plans at subsequent meetings as well, but that the department never left them copies to review.
Nevertheless, Community Board 2 approved the plan in April 2005, on the condition that the Parks Department work with City Councilperson Alan Gerson to decide where to put the dog runs and how to design the playgrounds.
And one month later, the Landmarks Preservation Committee approved the redesign.
Gerson and City Council Speaker Christine Quinn stated in an October 2005 letter to Parks Commissioner Adrian Benepe that they had reached “30 points of agreement” on the renovation and would support the release of city funds for it.
Some of these 30 points included a four-foot cap on the height of any sidewalk perimeter fencing, a three-foot-six-inch cap on any perimeter fences inside the park; a reduction of the inner plaza that surrounds the fountain by no more than 10 percent, with no reduction in permanent seating between the plaza’s inner and outer circles; and a provision that if a conservancy were created to raise funds for the park, the Parks Department would have to encourage the conservancy to include a representative of Community Board 2 and local City Council members as “ex-officio members.”
The Gerson-Quinn agreement also requires The City to shut down no more than half of the park at any one time during construction, and requires the Parks Department to keep commercial events in the park to a minimum, and consult with the Council members and Community Board 2 before approving them.
The budget is $16 million and a greater portion of the funding will be coming from a private-public partnership than from The City, according to several media reports. If the project goes forward, The City will be responsible for $6.8 million.
In February 2006, Washington Square News, NYU’s student newspaper, reported that the university had pledged $1 million. (Alicia Hurley, an NYU spokesperson, said that NYU is not involved in the renovation plans themselves, and that the university’s only involvement were two requests – that Parks allow it to continue to hold its commencement ceremonies in the park, and that Parks not put a dog run in front of the NYU library on the south side of the park. “There’s no reason for the institution to get involved in any of the design. So we have remained completely agnostic on it,” she said in a telephone interview.)
After reviewing the Gerson-Quinn agreement, Community Board 2 reaffirmed its approval of the first phase of the renovation. But when the Parks Department presented its plans to the Art Commission in January of 2006 – a slide show revealed the dimensions they had in mind for the fountain and grade-level changes for the plaza – opponents of the plan were upset. “They’re bringing the central plaza to a street-level grade,” Greenberg said.
The Art Commission withheld its approval because it wanted a chance to observe an on-site mockup of the fountain area and study the acoustic impact of the water jets, first.
In April 2006, Greenberg and three other plaintiffs sued The City to annul all the approvals the redesign had received, on the grounds that by first announcing specific dimensions at the Art Commission hearing – which included shrinking the fountain plaza by 33 percent, and creating a 45-foot water jet – the Parks Department had unlawfully withheld material information from the community board and the Landmarks Commission. Greenberg also alleged that a Parks Department employee purposely misled the Landmarks Commission regarding the
Department’s intent to reduce the size of the plaza, and that Parks had violated the Gerson-Quinn agreement (by planning to shrink the plaza by more than 10 percent).
The City contended that it had no obligation to show final plans to Community Board 2, since community boards only have an advisory role. But the District Court judge disagreed, and Greenberg and his co-plaintiffs won.
The City appealed, and although the Pataki-appointed, all-male appellate panel agreed that The City had to inform the community board of its final plans, in March 2007, it ruled that The City had fulfilled this obligation, and therefore did not have to resubmit its plans.
Greenberg and co-plaintiff Luther Harris, author of “Around Washington Square,” and another neighborhood group called the Emergency Coalition to Save Washington Square Park (ECO) filed separate suits that were heard together in May 2007. If The City loses either suit, it will have to conduct a time-consuming Environmental Impact Study of the renovation, a process which is subject to public review. Greenberg expects the judge in that case to issue a ruling sometime in the next two months.
If Greenberg is right, and most of the people who would be affected by the redesign don’t want anything more than minor improvements, why would the Parks Department, why would The City, be pushing so hard for it to go through?
To Greenberg, part of the answer is Mayor Bloomberg’s belief in private-public partnerships, “that conservancies are good. Funding a park is a liability to the taxpayers, and … privatizing through the use of naming conventions,” (he mentions Tisch Fountain) is an asset. “The next logical conclusion is renaming the … Arch … How much would Donald Trump pay to name it Donald Trump Arch? That’s where the logic leads. What’s not for sale since we are pimping out our public spaces? … By creating a plan … of which, only half of it is funded [by The City], you create a reliance upon private funding for the first time in the park’s 180-year history.” Greenberg said this would allow the conservancy to function like a Business Improvement District.
But above all, The City’s motivation as Greenberg sees it, is “transforming who uses the park and how … The Parks Department does not want this to continue to be a hangout park. It is the quintessential hangout space in New York City” … “They want to create a garden-style, pedestrian pass-through mall, with an ornamental fountain at the center … which people admire as they pass through and keep moving.”
By reducing the size of open spaces, The City reduces the number of opportunities for people to hang out or play music in the park.
And by doing that, The City can also accommodate its “post-9/11 reality,” in which spontaneous gatherings, especially protests, are security risks. “The euphemisms they use are getting rid of the homeless and drug pushers” … “Half of those guys are just selling oregano or something … I’m not a police genius but you’d think you could do something about that … You don’t need to completely redesign Washington Square Park.”
Of course not everyone is dreading the possibility of a redesign.
Gil Horowitz, a retired psychologist who once attended and taught at NYU, lives in Two Fifth Avenue, a co-op steps away from Washington Square Park. He’s been going to Washington Square Park for over 50 years.
Horowitz is President of the Washington Square-Lower Fifth Avenue Block Association, which he said has always worked with the Parks Department, and that represents residents between Washington Square and Lower Fifth Avenue, most of them co-op owners like himself.
He said the current design of Washington Square Park, which he dates back to 1969 (not 1970, the Park Department’s date), is a poor design and should never have been allowed to go through. The Nichols design “is one of many designs, and many people think, the worst of all the designs the park has ever had.”
Horowitz believes the Gerson-Quinn version of the redesign will go through, and is really hoping it does. “I’ve waited now almost 20 years to see this happen,” he said, referring to a failed attempt by the community board in 1990, when he was a board member, to redesign the park.
Washington Square Park’s condition is beyond simple repair, Horowitz said. “It reminds me of the Mayan ruins, when you go to visit Tulum, near Cancun.”
The renovation plans remind him of the design that predated the Nichols design. “It pays homage to all the prior designs which Washington Square Park has had—and yet takes a look to the 21st Century by moving the Arch. To recognize the Arch, which was not originally there when the park was designed, is an integral and central part of the design. So by aligning them … it recognizes the reality of the 21st Century, provides a view up Fifth Avenue from the fountain.”
He said that he knows of “tens of thousands of neighborhood people” who want a redesign and have championed the current proposal.
The reason you don’t hear as much from supporters of the plan as you do from opponents is that, according to Horowitz, they’re not as loud, and they’re too busy working and taking care of their families to constantly attend meetings. “The other side seems more at liberty for some reason … to come to every meeting and make themselves look like they represent great numbers of people. They do not.”
He thinks there’s nothing wrong with a nighttime shutdown of the park either. One thousand people live in his co-op, including 50 children, Horowitz said. They’re not snobs, they just like to sleep at night, which is why they don’t find a 1 a.m. curfew unreasonable, he said. (Horowitz is also the spokesperson for Two Fifth Avenue.)
Although he has an “emotional attachment” to the park, he said that “virtually none” of his neighbors still use it because the other side is so “possessive” of it. The neighbors tend to take their kids to play elsewhere instead. And the person getting left out is “the ordinary tax-paying, hardworking citizen of the neighborhood.”
The concerns about privatization don’t add up in Horowitz’s view because the supporters of the conservancy idea want the conservancy to have an advisory role, but that’s it, he said. “There would be an advisory fundraising group, and not an ownership group, much like the Board of Education has some business partners. Like IBM might partner with the school. IBM doesn’t organize the curriculum. IBM doesn’t manage the school.”
He noted that originally, the park had a fence, and estimated that in the photos he saw, the fence looked to be between five-and-a-half and six-feet high. Horowitz thinks a fence is a good idea because it will “keep the property safe.” Plantings are being stolen from the park at night, and if The City puts millions into the redesign, he suspects these types of problems will matter to them much more than they do now, in the park’s current state of disrepair.
“I see the golden opportunity to get the park we deserve – late, but not too late.”
-- Matt Elzweig
melzweig@manhattanmedia.com
Monday, July 30, 2007
Community Checks Out Parks Plan
Our Town downtown
July 30, 2007
At a City Hall meeting of the Washington Square Park Task Force on July 26, John Krawchuk, the Parks Department’s Director of Historic Preservation, presented the department’s Phase One drawing and took questions from the task force and the public. The proceedings were set up to begin determining, specifically, whether the Parks Department’s plans were in compliance with all the provisions of the Gerson-Quinn agreement.
Due to ongoing litigation, there were questions Krawchuk could not answer.
Members of the public were instructed to write their questions down on index cards and pass them up to the front, where Community Board 2 Parks Committee chair Tobi Bergman read them.
Later in the meeting they were allowed to walk up to drawings and examine them.
The Parks Department will make the Phase One plans available to the public from Monday, July 28, through Friday, August 3. They will be viewable by appointment at the department’s Manhattan Borough office, though Gerson urged the department to make the plans available at the American Institute of Architects near Washington Square Park during this period.
Mary Johnson of the Washington Square Block Association and Gerson raised questions about whether Phase One plans for the plaza that surrounds the fountain were in compliance with the 10 percent maximum reduction in space specified in the Gerson-Quinn agreement. However, that matter is still being determined.
The agreement sets the height limit of all sidewalk perimeter fencing at 4 feet, but Krawchuk said that including the base supports, the sidewalk fences will range from 4 feet 3 and 7/8ths of an inch to 4 feet 5 and 7/8ths of an inch.
A follow-up meeting will be held on Monday, July 30, at NYU, from 6:30 – 8 p.m., in the Great Room, 19 University Place.
-- Matt Elzweig
melzweig@manhattanmedia.com
July 30, 2007
At a City Hall meeting of the Washington Square Park Task Force on July 26, John Krawchuk, the Parks Department’s Director of Historic Preservation, presented the department’s Phase One drawing and took questions from the task force and the public. The proceedings were set up to begin determining, specifically, whether the Parks Department’s plans were in compliance with all the provisions of the Gerson-Quinn agreement.
Due to ongoing litigation, there were questions Krawchuk could not answer.
Members of the public were instructed to write their questions down on index cards and pass them up to the front, where Community Board 2 Parks Committee chair Tobi Bergman read them.
Later in the meeting they were allowed to walk up to drawings and examine them.
The Parks Department will make the Phase One plans available to the public from Monday, July 28, through Friday, August 3. They will be viewable by appointment at the department’s Manhattan Borough office, though Gerson urged the department to make the plans available at the American Institute of Architects near Washington Square Park during this period.
Mary Johnson of the Washington Square Block Association and Gerson raised questions about whether Phase One plans for the plaza that surrounds the fountain were in compliance with the 10 percent maximum reduction in space specified in the Gerson-Quinn agreement. However, that matter is still being determined.
The agreement sets the height limit of all sidewalk perimeter fencing at 4 feet, but Krawchuk said that including the base supports, the sidewalk fences will range from 4 feet 3 and 7/8ths of an inch to 4 feet 5 and 7/8ths of an inch.
A follow-up meeting will be held on Monday, July 30, at NYU, from 6:30 – 8 p.m., in the Great Room, 19 University Place.
-- Matt Elzweig
melzweig@manhattanmedia.com
Monday, July 23, 2007
Book Review: "After Dark" by Haruki Murakami
“After Dark”
Haruki Murakami
Alfred A. Knopf
Hardcover ($22.95)
191 pp.
By Matt Elzweig
Like the characters in his latest, brief, novel, “After Dark,” and the fluctuating realities they inhabit, Haruki Murakami is hard to pin down. In one breath, whether through his work or in interviews, he comes across as shy, sensitive and vulnerable, his passions for jazz and rock n’ roll, endearing in their nerdiness. In the next, he seems grandiose. His words start to scrape the borders that separate sincerity from pretension.
In a 2002 Japan Times article, Murakami talks about his commitment to readers. “I answer my readers’ e-mails … I read about 100 per day, and I write 10 to 20 replies … I think it’s very important for me to read the words from my actual readers, the ones who pay money to buy and read my books.” But in that same interview, he makes statements like this one, from a 2005 International Herald Tribune article. “I went to New York myself, found an agent myself, found a publisher myself, found an editor myself … no Japanese novelist has ever done such things.”
He often presents himself as a rebel pitted against the Japanese literary establishment, and when he says, in the Japan Times article, that Japanese critics don’t like him, he’s not kidding. They don’t appreciate his constant references to Western, especially American, pop culture. They hold his unusually straightforward, stripped-down prose in low regard. And probably see his psychodrama as psychobabble, his sentences more like pop lyrics than literature.
Whether he created this controversy or they did, is a good question, and Murakami offers one partial explanation: that due to the popularity of “Norwegian Wood” (1987), his breakout novel, he could never be considered a “literary” author again. “Most critics don’t like bestselling writers … In the West … my books sell very moderately. So readers there think of me as a kind of cult writer,” the way they used to in Japan.
Murakami’s strength is shining the light of his imagination on eccentric characters in dark landscapes, usually urban ones, and pulling everything – the superficial, the practical, the subconscious thoughts – out of their heads to articulate his ideas and questions, and leaving just enough unanswered.
But while his formidable knowledge of and fondness for Western pop culture gives Murakami, the person, a geeky charm, his pop references are transparent and get in the way of the imagery and dialogue, and everything else that makes his books unique. (“Only the area around the man’s desk receives illumination from fluorescent lights on the ceiling. This could be an Edward Hopper painting titled ‘Loneliness.’”) In a book just under 200 pages, these interruptions become more distracting.
The intersection of strangers and the way fate and free will (if you believe in either) egg each other on, both Murakami staples, always have the potential to make for an absorbing read, and this one’s not bad. It’s not great either.
Just before midnight, a young musician named Takahashi walks into a Tokyo Denny’s and sees Mari Esai, the sister of a girl he went on a date with once, and sits down with her. Mari, a student majoring in Chinese, is the awkward brain to her sister Eri’s superficial model.
The scenes, written from the perspective of a camera lens, are undermined by a screenplay treatment-like narration. Murakami could have written them in conventional third person to better effect.
When Eri is introduced, she’s shown, frame-by-frame, trapped in what seems to be some kind of parallel universe.
Eventually, Takahashi leaves the restaurant. But when one of his friends, the manager of a “love hotel,” finds a Chinese prostitute beaten in one of the rooms by an unknown assailant, they bring Mari over to translate. After they identify the attacker, a “salaryman” (or office worker), working late in the area, in a surveillance photo, they give it to the victim’s pimp.
What’s most satisfying about “After Dark” contradicts what is perhaps the Western media’s most common criticism of Murakami, which amounts to a naked emperor argument – that his books are high on vague metaphysics, and atmosphere, but low on substance.
But in this one, he explores an idea he has played with before, that a kind of moral dualism exists – a fluid border between kindness and cruelty, darkness and light. “There really was no such thing as a wall separating their world from mine,” Takahashi explains, remembering defendants in criminal trials he attended as a pre-law student.
“Or if there was such a wall, it was probably a flimsy one made of papier-mâché. The second I leaned on it, I’d probably fall right through and end up on the other side. Or maybe … the other side has already managed to sneak its way inside of us, and we just haven’t noticed.”
Just before three a.m., the salaryman is back at work. He has just beaten up the prostitute and skipped out without paying for her or the room, and is speaking to his wife on the phone; picking up a carton of low-fat milk on the way home will be no problem at all.
In Tokyo, residents talk constantly about when the “big one” is coming – the earthquake equal to or worse than the 1923 earthquake that killed over 100,000 people in the Kanto region. Who knows if earthquakes are the inspiration for Murakami’s often unstable world? But what could be less stable than a chain of islands on four tectonic plates, where change occurs in an instant?
melzweig@manhattanmedia.com
Haruki Murakami
Alfred A. Knopf
Hardcover ($22.95)
191 pp.
By Matt Elzweig
Like the characters in his latest, brief, novel, “After Dark,” and the fluctuating realities they inhabit, Haruki Murakami is hard to pin down. In one breath, whether through his work or in interviews, he comes across as shy, sensitive and vulnerable, his passions for jazz and rock n’ roll, endearing in their nerdiness. In the next, he seems grandiose. His words start to scrape the borders that separate sincerity from pretension.
In a 2002 Japan Times article, Murakami talks about his commitment to readers. “I answer my readers’ e-mails … I read about 100 per day, and I write 10 to 20 replies … I think it’s very important for me to read the words from my actual readers, the ones who pay money to buy and read my books.” But in that same interview, he makes statements like this one, from a 2005 International Herald Tribune article. “I went to New York myself, found an agent myself, found a publisher myself, found an editor myself … no Japanese novelist has ever done such things.”
He often presents himself as a rebel pitted against the Japanese literary establishment, and when he says, in the Japan Times article, that Japanese critics don’t like him, he’s not kidding. They don’t appreciate his constant references to Western, especially American, pop culture. They hold his unusually straightforward, stripped-down prose in low regard. And probably see his psychodrama as psychobabble, his sentences more like pop lyrics than literature.
Whether he created this controversy or they did, is a good question, and Murakami offers one partial explanation: that due to the popularity of “Norwegian Wood” (1987), his breakout novel, he could never be considered a “literary” author again. “Most critics don’t like bestselling writers … In the West … my books sell very moderately. So readers there think of me as a kind of cult writer,” the way they used to in Japan.
Murakami’s strength is shining the light of his imagination on eccentric characters in dark landscapes, usually urban ones, and pulling everything – the superficial, the practical, the subconscious thoughts – out of their heads to articulate his ideas and questions, and leaving just enough unanswered.
But while his formidable knowledge of and fondness for Western pop culture gives Murakami, the person, a geeky charm, his pop references are transparent and get in the way of the imagery and dialogue, and everything else that makes his books unique. (“Only the area around the man’s desk receives illumination from fluorescent lights on the ceiling. This could be an Edward Hopper painting titled ‘Loneliness.’”) In a book just under 200 pages, these interruptions become more distracting.
The intersection of strangers and the way fate and free will (if you believe in either) egg each other on, both Murakami staples, always have the potential to make for an absorbing read, and this one’s not bad. It’s not great either.
Just before midnight, a young musician named Takahashi walks into a Tokyo Denny’s and sees Mari Esai, the sister of a girl he went on a date with once, and sits down with her. Mari, a student majoring in Chinese, is the awkward brain to her sister Eri’s superficial model.
The scenes, written from the perspective of a camera lens, are undermined by a screenplay treatment-like narration. Murakami could have written them in conventional third person to better effect.
When Eri is introduced, she’s shown, frame-by-frame, trapped in what seems to be some kind of parallel universe.
Eventually, Takahashi leaves the restaurant. But when one of his friends, the manager of a “love hotel,” finds a Chinese prostitute beaten in one of the rooms by an unknown assailant, they bring Mari over to translate. After they identify the attacker, a “salaryman” (or office worker), working late in the area, in a surveillance photo, they give it to the victim’s pimp.
What’s most satisfying about “After Dark” contradicts what is perhaps the Western media’s most common criticism of Murakami, which amounts to a naked emperor argument – that his books are high on vague metaphysics, and atmosphere, but low on substance.
But in this one, he explores an idea he has played with before, that a kind of moral dualism exists – a fluid border between kindness and cruelty, darkness and light. “There really was no such thing as a wall separating their world from mine,” Takahashi explains, remembering defendants in criminal trials he attended as a pre-law student.
“Or if there was such a wall, it was probably a flimsy one made of papier-mâché. The second I leaned on it, I’d probably fall right through and end up on the other side. Or maybe … the other side has already managed to sneak its way inside of us, and we just haven’t noticed.”
Just before three a.m., the salaryman is back at work. He has just beaten up the prostitute and skipped out without paying for her or the room, and is speaking to his wife on the phone; picking up a carton of low-fat milk on the way home will be no problem at all.
In Tokyo, residents talk constantly about when the “big one” is coming – the earthquake equal to or worse than the 1923 earthquake that killed over 100,000 people in the Kanto region. Who knows if earthquakes are the inspiration for Murakami’s often unstable world? But what could be less stable than a chain of islands on four tectonic plates, where change occurs in an instant?
melzweig@manhattanmedia.com
Q & A with David Muñoz, a.k.a. Story Man, Hip Hop Artist
Our Town downtown
July 23, 2007
A young man with a bag of CDs and a pair of headphones approaches me in Washington Square Park, and asks if I listen to hip hop. I tell him not much anymore, and he’s not surprised.
David Muñoz, 28, who came to New York from his native California two years ago, sells his albums in Washington and Union Square parks, and markets them as a positive alternative to the brainless bling anthems that mainstream radio and music channels like BET keep in heavy rotation.
“Nowadays, a huge percent of the hip hop that people see in the mainstream is, just garbage. It’s just all about, you know, look at me throw money up in the air while half-naked women dance behind me and I drink a bottle of Cristal and show you all the jewelry I own, or I rented. But there’s still a few guys out there that are real good. And, they just don’t get pushed as well as they should, because of the belief the record company executives have that people want these buffoons, these fake thugs or whatever. But I think that with hip hop record sales going down in the last few years, it’s just a matter of time before the record executives see that they’re going to have to change. Because hip hop doesn’t suck. It’s just that, unfortunately, the image that hip hop has in the mainstream kind of sucks,” he says, when we meet in a coffee shop the following week.
Muñoz’s latest album isn’t political, but his music often is, which makes sense; he studied Government at Georgetown, led student walkouts over standardized testing when he was still an English teacher at his old high school, and in 2004, he ran for Congress as a write-in candidate.
How’d you end up running for Congress?
I was working on an album that was very political, talking about my whole marketing of it. I said, I’m going to be on the cover in a tie, like a politician. And then, one of my friends, he said, maybe you could like run for something, school board or something. I was like, I wouldn’t want to go for school board, I think I’d be wasting my time. And then I said, well I am 25, I could run for Congress. I found out it was too late to get on the ballot, but I could run as a write-in candidate. I liked that because it was highlighting how the way people vote is kind of like taking a multiple choice test. You don’t have to know the person or what they’re about. You just check the box off. As a write-in candidate—every person that voted for that candidate would know that person and know they really wanted that person.
Did you get any votes?
Like a couple hundred.
How do people respond when you approach them in the parks?
I get a great response because it’s just going directly to the people. It may not be, in the eyes of most people, the most glorious way to go about doing it. [But] it’s the most effective way because there’s a lot of people out there that still do listen to hip hop music. And I go out there every day and just find them without having to cross my fingers and hope they walk into a store or somehow find out about it on the Internet. It’s a way to be a cause rather than be the effect. Even if my stuff was in the stores and the Internet was helping me tremendously, I’d still be out there doing it. I get to meet the people that are going to listen to my music and they get to [meet] me.
You do it full-time?
Yup.
About how much do you make a month?
It depends on the weather, depends how much time I’m out there. But I can make anywhere from $20 to $60 an hour.
And what’s the most CDs you’ve sold in a month?
Maybe like 800. And total, I’ve sold, probably around 7,000 to 8,000 CDs.
How old are the people buying them?
Oh, all ages. I’ve had like 90-year-old women buy my CD. In a wheelchair.
Do you ever run into people who are skeptical that hip hop can be positive?
Yeah, but those are people that don’t listen to hip hop.
Are you happy just being your own boss or are you hoping for a record deal?
I would like to be my own boss as long as I’m making money at it. A lot of these guys who have record deals aren’t necessarily very free, and are almost like slaves to their masters. I would definitely go for a record deal as long as it was the right terms and somebody I respected, and they let me keep a lot of creative control. I wouldn’t want them to tell me to like, make songs like 50 Cent or something. Because I had that happen to me.
Really?
When I first got to the city, I ran into these guys in Union Square Park, and then they took me over to this guy’s office. He said, I want to sign somebody and invest millions of dollars. But, he says, two artists sold ten million albums this last year or whatever it was—Alicia Keys and 50 Cent. Then he starts playing me 50 Cent’s CD. And he said, yeah! Like this! like this! He didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. And he wanted me to go get buffed and make songs that weren’t political and sound like 50 Cent or something, and then he probably would’ve went for it. I wasn’t willing to do that.
—Matt Elzweig
melzweig@manhattanmedia.com
July 23, 2007
A young man with a bag of CDs and a pair of headphones approaches me in Washington Square Park, and asks if I listen to hip hop. I tell him not much anymore, and he’s not surprised.
David Muñoz, 28, who came to New York from his native California two years ago, sells his albums in Washington and Union Square parks, and markets them as a positive alternative to the brainless bling anthems that mainstream radio and music channels like BET keep in heavy rotation.
“Nowadays, a huge percent of the hip hop that people see in the mainstream is, just garbage. It’s just all about, you know, look at me throw money up in the air while half-naked women dance behind me and I drink a bottle of Cristal and show you all the jewelry I own, or I rented. But there’s still a few guys out there that are real good. And, they just don’t get pushed as well as they should, because of the belief the record company executives have that people want these buffoons, these fake thugs or whatever. But I think that with hip hop record sales going down in the last few years, it’s just a matter of time before the record executives see that they’re going to have to change. Because hip hop doesn’t suck. It’s just that, unfortunately, the image that hip hop has in the mainstream kind of sucks,” he says, when we meet in a coffee shop the following week.
Muñoz’s latest album isn’t political, but his music often is, which makes sense; he studied Government at Georgetown, led student walkouts over standardized testing when he was still an English teacher at his old high school, and in 2004, he ran for Congress as a write-in candidate.
How’d you end up running for Congress?
I was working on an album that was very political, talking about my whole marketing of it. I said, I’m going to be on the cover in a tie, like a politician. And then, one of my friends, he said, maybe you could like run for something, school board or something. I was like, I wouldn’t want to go for school board, I think I’d be wasting my time. And then I said, well I am 25, I could run for Congress. I found out it was too late to get on the ballot, but I could run as a write-in candidate. I liked that because it was highlighting how the way people vote is kind of like taking a multiple choice test. You don’t have to know the person or what they’re about. You just check the box off. As a write-in candidate—every person that voted for that candidate would know that person and know they really wanted that person.
Did you get any votes?
Like a couple hundred.
How do people respond when you approach them in the parks?
I get a great response because it’s just going directly to the people. It may not be, in the eyes of most people, the most glorious way to go about doing it. [But] it’s the most effective way because there’s a lot of people out there that still do listen to hip hop music. And I go out there every day and just find them without having to cross my fingers and hope they walk into a store or somehow find out about it on the Internet. It’s a way to be a cause rather than be the effect. Even if my stuff was in the stores and the Internet was helping me tremendously, I’d still be out there doing it. I get to meet the people that are going to listen to my music and they get to [meet] me.
You do it full-time?
Yup.
About how much do you make a month?
It depends on the weather, depends how much time I’m out there. But I can make anywhere from $20 to $60 an hour.
And what’s the most CDs you’ve sold in a month?
Maybe like 800. And total, I’ve sold, probably around 7,000 to 8,000 CDs.
How old are the people buying them?
Oh, all ages. I’ve had like 90-year-old women buy my CD. In a wheelchair.
Do you ever run into people who are skeptical that hip hop can be positive?
Yeah, but those are people that don’t listen to hip hop.
Are you happy just being your own boss or are you hoping for a record deal?
I would like to be my own boss as long as I’m making money at it. A lot of these guys who have record deals aren’t necessarily very free, and are almost like slaves to their masters. I would definitely go for a record deal as long as it was the right terms and somebody I respected, and they let me keep a lot of creative control. I wouldn’t want them to tell me to like, make songs like 50 Cent or something. Because I had that happen to me.
Really?
When I first got to the city, I ran into these guys in Union Square Park, and then they took me over to this guy’s office. He said, I want to sign somebody and invest millions of dollars. But, he says, two artists sold ten million albums this last year or whatever it was—Alicia Keys and 50 Cent. Then he starts playing me 50 Cent’s CD. And he said, yeah! Like this! like this! He didn’t know what the hell he was talking about. And he wanted me to go get buffed and make songs that weren’t political and sound like 50 Cent or something, and then he probably would’ve went for it. I wasn’t willing to do that.
—Matt Elzweig
melzweig@manhattanmedia.com
Monday, July 16, 2007
The Block: Fourth Street between Second Avenue and Bowery
Our Town downtown
July 16, 2007
At first glance, Fourth between Second and Bowery is yet another idyllic, but typical slice of East Village pie: lots of charmingly grimy to just grimy tenements, and a handful of trees that keep out the sun’s harshest rays and hide some of the local blemishes – mixed in with a sprinkling of storefronts gutted and turned into chic Boomer boutiques to top off the graffiti.
But this block is more than boarded-up windows and fire escapes. It has a rich past and present as both birthing and staging ground for New York theater, especially the experimental kind. It is now the “East Fourth Cultural District,” but it almost wasn’t.
In the 1960s, East Fourth Street was slated for “renewal,” along with eight other blocks east of Bowery, in a Robert Moses plan that really amounted to a full-scale demolition of what
proponents considered a “slum area,” to make way for large-scale housing.
By the mid-70s, the city had taken over all of the commercial buildings and many of the residential buildings in the area through eminent domain and tax lien foreclosures.
Artists, who already had a historical presence on the block, did their own renovations, but there was no official designation to protect and preserve the block’s character.
Fourth Arts Block (FAB) is an alliance of the 15 arts and community organizations based here. FAB negotiated with the city, and in October 2005, the city sold six buildings to cultural groups for one symbolic dollar-a-piece, and allocated the initial capital for renovations.
After the buildings then went through the city’s land use review process, all six received permanent nonprofit status; East Fourth between Second and Bowery became the “East Fourth Street Cultural District.”
What Happened Here
The famous La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and its annex are both here, and number 66 (the annex) was actually a center for the turn-of-the-century German immigrant community, and was also the first Yiddish theater in the city.
Ellen Stewart founded La MaMa (number 74A) in 1961. The focus has always been on new works, especially projects developed and produced by collaborating artists from a diverse mix of ethnic backgrounds and nationalities.
New York Theater Workshop (79) is another venue for original works, and its founder, Stephen Graham, created it in 1979 as an alternative to the commercial theater world, where new playwrights and directors could house their works-in-progress. Eventually, finished works received the same attention, but the emphasis on experimental productions remained. New York Theater Workshop is where Jonathan Larson premiered Rent in 1996, after developing it in the workshop program for two years.
Other arts centers on the block include Duo Multicultural Arts Center (62), which showcases Latino playwrights, actors and directors, and KGB Bar (85), a literary venue that used to be the Ukrainian Labor Home, a social club for Soviet sympathizers. KGB’s upstairs area was once Lucky Luciano’s Palm Casino. Alpha Omega Theatrical Dance Company; Choices Theatre Project; Downtown Art; Instituto Arte Teatral Internacional; Millenium Film Workshop; Rod Rodgers Dance Company; Teatro Circulo and Wow Cafe Theatre are all here, too.
Renting
The buildings on this block are mostly tenements, and according to Rana Maneri, a Sales Associate at Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy none of the rentals, which are in numbers 57, 63, 65, 69, 71 and 77, are currently on the market. Maneri says that the rentals are primarily rent-controlled or stabilized, and that the average price for a small one-bedroom is $1,995. Two years ago that figure was closer to $1,550.
In 54, 74 and 84, studios start at $1,750, and a lucky few can find one-bedrooms for the same price.
There’s a line of large two-bedrooms in 54 that are convertible to threes. They rent for $3,800.
Buying
On July 7th, a one-bedroom in number 99, a pre-war built in 1930, sold for $690,000. The maintenance there is $700, and an available one-bedroom is listed for $675,000. The maintenance is $770. One-bedrooms in this building range in size from 1,000 to 1,100 square feet.
Other sale properties include a condo development at 72-74.
Amenities
There are two small markets, one in the middle of the block, and one on the corner of Second Avenue. The Fourth Street Food Co-op is here as well, as are Cuppa Cuppa Coffee House, Stillwater Bar & Grill, Phoebe’s Tavern & Grill. East Village Music Store is under KGB Bar and sells used and new instruments. Keshav Music Imports specializes in Indian instruments.
-- Matt Elzweig
July 16, 2007
At first glance, Fourth between Second and Bowery is yet another idyllic, but typical slice of East Village pie: lots of charmingly grimy to just grimy tenements, and a handful of trees that keep out the sun’s harshest rays and hide some of the local blemishes – mixed in with a sprinkling of storefronts gutted and turned into chic Boomer boutiques to top off the graffiti.
But this block is more than boarded-up windows and fire escapes. It has a rich past and present as both birthing and staging ground for New York theater, especially the experimental kind. It is now the “East Fourth Cultural District,” but it almost wasn’t.
In the 1960s, East Fourth Street was slated for “renewal,” along with eight other blocks east of Bowery, in a Robert Moses plan that really amounted to a full-scale demolition of what
proponents considered a “slum area,” to make way for large-scale housing.
By the mid-70s, the city had taken over all of the commercial buildings and many of the residential buildings in the area through eminent domain and tax lien foreclosures.
Artists, who already had a historical presence on the block, did their own renovations, but there was no official designation to protect and preserve the block’s character.
Fourth Arts Block (FAB) is an alliance of the 15 arts and community organizations based here. FAB negotiated with the city, and in October 2005, the city sold six buildings to cultural groups for one symbolic dollar-a-piece, and allocated the initial capital for renovations.
After the buildings then went through the city’s land use review process, all six received permanent nonprofit status; East Fourth between Second and Bowery became the “East Fourth Street Cultural District.”
What Happened Here
The famous La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and its annex are both here, and number 66 (the annex) was actually a center for the turn-of-the-century German immigrant community, and was also the first Yiddish theater in the city.
Ellen Stewart founded La MaMa (number 74A) in 1961. The focus has always been on new works, especially projects developed and produced by collaborating artists from a diverse mix of ethnic backgrounds and nationalities.
New York Theater Workshop (79) is another venue for original works, and its founder, Stephen Graham, created it in 1979 as an alternative to the commercial theater world, where new playwrights and directors could house their works-in-progress. Eventually, finished works received the same attention, but the emphasis on experimental productions remained. New York Theater Workshop is where Jonathan Larson premiered Rent in 1996, after developing it in the workshop program for two years.
Other arts centers on the block include Duo Multicultural Arts Center (62), which showcases Latino playwrights, actors and directors, and KGB Bar (85), a literary venue that used to be the Ukrainian Labor Home, a social club for Soviet sympathizers. KGB’s upstairs area was once Lucky Luciano’s Palm Casino. Alpha Omega Theatrical Dance Company; Choices Theatre Project; Downtown Art; Instituto Arte Teatral Internacional; Millenium Film Workshop; Rod Rodgers Dance Company; Teatro Circulo and Wow Cafe Theatre are all here, too.
Renting
The buildings on this block are mostly tenements, and according to Rana Maneri, a Sales Associate at Coldwell Banker Hunt Kennedy none of the rentals, which are in numbers 57, 63, 65, 69, 71 and 77, are currently on the market. Maneri says that the rentals are primarily rent-controlled or stabilized, and that the average price for a small one-bedroom is $1,995. Two years ago that figure was closer to $1,550.
In 54, 74 and 84, studios start at $1,750, and a lucky few can find one-bedrooms for the same price.
There’s a line of large two-bedrooms in 54 that are convertible to threes. They rent for $3,800.
Buying
On July 7th, a one-bedroom in number 99, a pre-war built in 1930, sold for $690,000. The maintenance there is $700, and an available one-bedroom is listed for $675,000. The maintenance is $770. One-bedrooms in this building range in size from 1,000 to 1,100 square feet.
Other sale properties include a condo development at 72-74.
Amenities
There are two small markets, one in the middle of the block, and one on the corner of Second Avenue. The Fourth Street Food Co-op is here as well, as are Cuppa Cuppa Coffee House, Stillwater Bar & Grill, Phoebe’s Tavern & Grill. East Village Music Store is under KGB Bar and sells used and new instruments. Keshav Music Imports specializes in Indian instruments.
-- Matt Elzweig
Monday, July 09, 2007
Book Review: “Brother One Cell: An American Coming of Age – In South Korea’s Prisons”
Our Town downtown
July 9, 2007
“Brother One Cell: An American Coming of Age – In South Korea’s Prisons”
By Cullen Thomas
Viking
Hardcover ($24.95)
347 pp.
I’ve often wondered whether I’m the only one who has difficulty staying focused on books or movies that take place entirely in one setting—in a mental ward, on a bus, around a kitchen table, or maybe in someone’s office—or whether it’s a consequence of being born in a generation whose members expect images to flicker and flit along in from them just as quickly as they arrive on screen. I suspect it’s a combination, something both organic and circumstantial.
Whatever the cause, if the action isn’t packed-in, the characters aren’t larger than life, and the dialogue doesn’t snap, crackle and pop, drones like us float off into a parallel universe.
Prison stories can be difficult to bring to life, because like prisoners, and so many plays, they are usually confined to one, narrow setting. They seem to beg for flashbacks. Otherwise, all that’s left, in many cases, are the innovative methods inmates devise to pass notes, smuggle in contraband and fashion weapons from common items. For the most part, Cullen Thomas avoids this in his memoir of spending much of his twenties in a Korean prison.
After getting caught sending himself hashish from the Philippines, Thomas, then a 23-year-old English teacher in Seoul, receives a three and a half-year sentence and serves all of it. He is from the generation, a.k.a “Generation X,” just before mine. But his initial impulse to leave his recently-graduated slacker’s life in New York, for South Korea, sounds like it’s motivated by the same restlessness, that perceived-need for constant stimulation, that characterizes many of my generation. It also characterizes his vision of the vagabond’s unburdened life. And he sets out for Asia, delighted at the prospect of resurrecting the “Jolly Marauder,” an alter-ego he and his brother created when they were kids, “a kind of half-pirate, half-noble adventurer.”
After his unsuccessful foray into drug-trafficking (he is successful in concealing his intent to distribute from the prosecutor, and spares himself more time), Thomas gets a preview of what prison could mean, during an interrogation, when an agent zaps him with what sounds like a cattle prod, and a prosecutor urges him to confess to avoid a 10-year sentence. But the mini-electrocution is not characteristic of his overall treatment, unless Thomas is leaving out other instances of physical abuse; during the interrogation, Thomas realizes for the first time, the relative privileges an American in a foreign country, in legal trouble, enjoys with the local authorities. “The agent at my side says nothing; he just sits there and menaces … I’m lucky that’s all it is. A Korean would have been beaten; other foreigners were, and worse.”
But being American doesn’t exempt him from the underlying codes of behavior that govern the prisoners’ lives. Confucianism, with its emphasis on keeping appearances, respecting elders and maintaining hierarchies, applies just as it would on the outside.
When Thomas erupts after a gangster cutting his hair takes off more than Thomas expects, the gangster, exasperated, replies that “prisoners heads are shaved; it is prison law.”
“That the Koreans didn’t rebel much I understood. I’d been observing their Confucian codes and the ways in which they were intensified in prison. Those codes were strong on obedience, acquiescence, hierarchies that the Koreans couldn’t escape. They were bound together by strong ropes of pride and shame,” Thomas writes.
As Westerners must adapt to collective societies like Korea, it’s doubly so for prisoners there, judging by his experience. “Shame, success, blame, and punishment were shared by all.” While foreign prisoners are held in single cells, Koreans live squeezed together in theirs. Although not all the foreigners are Westerners, to Thomas, this set-up reflects their respective cultures.
During his stay at the Seoul Detention Center, and then at two prisons after his sentencing, he is subjected to sleep deprivation; life in tiny one-man cells, where prisoners stay for 23 hours a day; exposure to the elements; polluted water and generally unsanitary living conditions, minimal nourishment; inadequate medical care and serious limits on communication with the outside world.
But Thomas concedes that despite everything he has to endure, he’d rather do his time in Korea than in the United States. “If I had to be imprisoned, it was my good fortune it was in Confucian Korea … No doubt my life [in an American prison] would have been more comfortable in many ways … but also seedier, I’m pretty sure, more decadent, and more dangerous … In Korea I didn’t have to constantly think about my survival, about being raped or assaulted.” He thinks it also because of Korea’s homogenous prison population. “Korea’s one race has been marinating in a code of behavior and propriety and well-defined roles for centuries … [America has] no uniform code. It’s a cauldron of competing codes … some brilliant life gets born out of her complexity and chaos. But so do some scary prisons.”
His fellow inmates, some of them his friends, include killers, thieves, gangsters and rapists. They help him accept that he is a convict and a prisoner, and to understand how to make his time as bearable as possible. Once an English major at the State University of New York at Binghamton, the classic books family and friends send him add to his understanding of the situation he’s in, and of himself. The textual references he makes are appropriate, and there are just enough of them to enhance the details without sounding pretentious.
To get more time outside of his four-foot-wide cell, Thomas eventually elects to work in an on-site shoe factory, and he becomes a basketball star on the factory team. Work, basketball and teaching English keep him sane, and his outlook gradually transforms. He appreciates his old life more, his family and friends. And instead of rage, he begins to feel acceptance, and even at times, opportunity – the opportunity to face himself, and to see a part of Korea few foreigners seeking to understand it ever get to. Having spent formative years there, he is more mature and more thoughtful.
He brings up the idea that Confucianism is behind the various things he observes, so often that, at times, it’s hard not to wonder whether he’s over-generalizing, and whether more complex forces, either by themselves or in concert with Confucianism, are at work.
Thomas is at his best when describing what’s going on inside his head, the prison friendships he forges, which would probably be unthinkable anywhere else (one with an American child-killer comes to mind), and keeping everything in context.
There are moments, descriptions of the routines of his monotonous captivity that may make The Latest Generation antsy. But all in all Thomas provides a credible account of a worst-case scenario with a good mix of flashbacks, anthropological observations and self-analysis.
It would be easy to write off Thomas as a privileged kid from the suburbs who has committed a frivolous, unnecessary crime, and after all, is serving three and a half years, in a place where many others will never see the outside world again. But as he points out, referring to Nazi concentration camp survivor’s Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning,” “suffering in a man is like gas in an enclosed space; regardless of the volume of gas, a little or a lot, it will spread out to fill the space evenly,” and “each man … regardless of how his fate,” matches “up with the rest,” feels “his [suffering] painfully and intensely.”
melzweig@manhattanmedia.com
July 9, 2007
“Brother One Cell: An American Coming of Age – In South Korea’s Prisons”
By Cullen Thomas
Viking
Hardcover ($24.95)
347 pp.
I’ve often wondered whether I’m the only one who has difficulty staying focused on books or movies that take place entirely in one setting—in a mental ward, on a bus, around a kitchen table, or maybe in someone’s office—or whether it’s a consequence of being born in a generation whose members expect images to flicker and flit along in from them just as quickly as they arrive on screen. I suspect it’s a combination, something both organic and circumstantial.
Whatever the cause, if the action isn’t packed-in, the characters aren’t larger than life, and the dialogue doesn’t snap, crackle and pop, drones like us float off into a parallel universe.
Prison stories can be difficult to bring to life, because like prisoners, and so many plays, they are usually confined to one, narrow setting. They seem to beg for flashbacks. Otherwise, all that’s left, in many cases, are the innovative methods inmates devise to pass notes, smuggle in contraband and fashion weapons from common items. For the most part, Cullen Thomas avoids this in his memoir of spending much of his twenties in a Korean prison.
After getting caught sending himself hashish from the Philippines, Thomas, then a 23-year-old English teacher in Seoul, receives a three and a half-year sentence and serves all of it. He is from the generation, a.k.a “Generation X,” just before mine. But his initial impulse to leave his recently-graduated slacker’s life in New York, for South Korea, sounds like it’s motivated by the same restlessness, that perceived-need for constant stimulation, that characterizes many of my generation. It also characterizes his vision of the vagabond’s unburdened life. And he sets out for Asia, delighted at the prospect of resurrecting the “Jolly Marauder,” an alter-ego he and his brother created when they were kids, “a kind of half-pirate, half-noble adventurer.”
After his unsuccessful foray into drug-trafficking (he is successful in concealing his intent to distribute from the prosecutor, and spares himself more time), Thomas gets a preview of what prison could mean, during an interrogation, when an agent zaps him with what sounds like a cattle prod, and a prosecutor urges him to confess to avoid a 10-year sentence. But the mini-electrocution is not characteristic of his overall treatment, unless Thomas is leaving out other instances of physical abuse; during the interrogation, Thomas realizes for the first time, the relative privileges an American in a foreign country, in legal trouble, enjoys with the local authorities. “The agent at my side says nothing; he just sits there and menaces … I’m lucky that’s all it is. A Korean would have been beaten; other foreigners were, and worse.”
But being American doesn’t exempt him from the underlying codes of behavior that govern the prisoners’ lives. Confucianism, with its emphasis on keeping appearances, respecting elders and maintaining hierarchies, applies just as it would on the outside.
When Thomas erupts after a gangster cutting his hair takes off more than Thomas expects, the gangster, exasperated, replies that “prisoners heads are shaved; it is prison law.”
“That the Koreans didn’t rebel much I understood. I’d been observing their Confucian codes and the ways in which they were intensified in prison. Those codes were strong on obedience, acquiescence, hierarchies that the Koreans couldn’t escape. They were bound together by strong ropes of pride and shame,” Thomas writes.
As Westerners must adapt to collective societies like Korea, it’s doubly so for prisoners there, judging by his experience. “Shame, success, blame, and punishment were shared by all.” While foreign prisoners are held in single cells, Koreans live squeezed together in theirs. Although not all the foreigners are Westerners, to Thomas, this set-up reflects their respective cultures.
During his stay at the Seoul Detention Center, and then at two prisons after his sentencing, he is subjected to sleep deprivation; life in tiny one-man cells, where prisoners stay for 23 hours a day; exposure to the elements; polluted water and generally unsanitary living conditions, minimal nourishment; inadequate medical care and serious limits on communication with the outside world.
But Thomas concedes that despite everything he has to endure, he’d rather do his time in Korea than in the United States. “If I had to be imprisoned, it was my good fortune it was in Confucian Korea … No doubt my life [in an American prison] would have been more comfortable in many ways … but also seedier, I’m pretty sure, more decadent, and more dangerous … In Korea I didn’t have to constantly think about my survival, about being raped or assaulted.” He thinks it also because of Korea’s homogenous prison population. “Korea’s one race has been marinating in a code of behavior and propriety and well-defined roles for centuries … [America has] no uniform code. It’s a cauldron of competing codes … some brilliant life gets born out of her complexity and chaos. But so do some scary prisons.”
His fellow inmates, some of them his friends, include killers, thieves, gangsters and rapists. They help him accept that he is a convict and a prisoner, and to understand how to make his time as bearable as possible. Once an English major at the State University of New York at Binghamton, the classic books family and friends send him add to his understanding of the situation he’s in, and of himself. The textual references he makes are appropriate, and there are just enough of them to enhance the details without sounding pretentious.
To get more time outside of his four-foot-wide cell, Thomas eventually elects to work in an on-site shoe factory, and he becomes a basketball star on the factory team. Work, basketball and teaching English keep him sane, and his outlook gradually transforms. He appreciates his old life more, his family and friends. And instead of rage, he begins to feel acceptance, and even at times, opportunity – the opportunity to face himself, and to see a part of Korea few foreigners seeking to understand it ever get to. Having spent formative years there, he is more mature and more thoughtful.
He brings up the idea that Confucianism is behind the various things he observes, so often that, at times, it’s hard not to wonder whether he’s over-generalizing, and whether more complex forces, either by themselves or in concert with Confucianism, are at work.
Thomas is at his best when describing what’s going on inside his head, the prison friendships he forges, which would probably be unthinkable anywhere else (one with an American child-killer comes to mind), and keeping everything in context.
There are moments, descriptions of the routines of his monotonous captivity that may make The Latest Generation antsy. But all in all Thomas provides a credible account of a worst-case scenario with a good mix of flashbacks, anthropological observations and self-analysis.
It would be easy to write off Thomas as a privileged kid from the suburbs who has committed a frivolous, unnecessary crime, and after all, is serving three and a half years, in a place where many others will never see the outside world again. But as he points out, referring to Nazi concentration camp survivor’s Victor Frankl’s “Man’s Search for Meaning,” “suffering in a man is like gas in an enclosed space; regardless of the volume of gas, a little or a lot, it will spread out to fill the space evenly,” and “each man … regardless of how his fate,” matches “up with the rest,” feels “his [suffering] painfully and intensely.”
melzweig@manhattanmedia.com
Q & A with Jane Slotin, Director, Makor
Our Town downtown
July 9, 2007
“Makor” means “source” in Hebrew, and is the 92nd Street Y’s cultural center for twenty and thirty-somethings and Baby Boomers. Makor is moving to Tribeca this fall, and one thing Director Jane Slotin really likes about the sprawling new Hudson Street location is its accessibility from other parts of downtown, New Jersey, Brooklyn and the Upper West Side.
Why the move, and why the new location?
A lot of it had to do with our constituents. There was a time when the Upper West Side was definitely full of lots of young singles. And, as you know, Brooklyn has become a big hot spot, as well as downtown.
Does the move mean that young singles, particularly young and middle-aged Jewish singles, are migrating downtown from West 67th Street?
That’s part of the reason, because it is true, the Upper West Side’s gotten a little more family-oriented. But what we find with our programming, and I think it’s true for young professionals in their 20s and 30s, they will follow the event.
What types of programs are among the most popular?
Makor Music is probably our signature program. As you may or may not know, Norah Jones got her start there. Also, I think music, in terms of programming itself, is more universal. Our film program is also a heavy signature for us. We’ve previewed films for film companies, or HBO—the Marx Brothers is a very popular series—[we have] various film festivals. We do our “Reel Jews Film Festival” every year, which is quite popular. Every one of our films has a talk with it.
With all these areas, how do you stay current and select the kinds of things that appeal the most to the crowds you tend to draw?
We stay ahead of the curve. And our job is to really know what the next trend is, what is going to happen, what people are going to be talking about… And it kind of infuses what the staff does… [Programmers] mix it up. If there’s going to be a certain theme that’s going across some of the theater readings that we’re having, we try to get that kind of art or lecture to go along with it.
The 92nd Street Y values pluralism and encourages both Jews and non-Jews to attend its programs. Do conflicts ever arise when you hold talks and give classes about Israel and the rest of the Middle East?
It’s what we do best. We’ve done both the pro and the con of what’s happening over in the Middle East. We’ve done it through documentaries, we’ve done it through series. And that’s part of the talk element that makes our programming strong. It’s just—mix it up, and you get people talking, and you have a lot of pro and con. I get a lot of calls, sometimes there’ll be something, something might be too pro-something, and you get “how can a Jewish organization do this?” And it’s really our obligation to keep opening up, and to have passionate patrons who come, that leave discussing and thinking, and having a new way of looking at it. And we show all sides. We don’t have a party line.
Can you estimate the proportion of Jews to non-Jews in your programs?
Different programs have [a] different mix. But I’d say overall, it’s 60 percent Jewish, 40 percent not.
How do you balance the value you place on pluralism and dialogue with the desire to maintain a Jewish identity?
It’s about talking afterwards, you know, having that discussion that comes along. So, you can have someone like Tony Kushner come speak. He has a new film out. It’s not so new now. But, we showed it, and [it’s] all about his life and putting together “Angels in America.” But one thing about Tony Kushner, he’s very political. So then we talk back. We can say ‘so what (italics)are(italics) your feelings about Israel?’ Or, he might have talked about his family when they were growing up Jewish. So that’s what we’ll talk about. But we talk about it in the context of the art, or the event, or the program.
We have a yoga class, and the yoga teacher talks about the fact that the Kohans used to meditate also… When “The Passion [of the Christ]” came out, the film, we would take groups, and we’d come back and we’d talk. And sometimes it would be a rabbi and someone from a Christian organization… We don’t have an agenda… We want you to think.
What activities and programs are popular with the Baby Boomers?
Well first of all I do want to say, the Y actually started the Daytime @ program, five years ago. And so now where “Baby Boomers” are on AOL, and shows up on every ad, and almost every third article, again, the Y was very ahead of the curve on this. They [committed] and actually created programming that addresses what we call the “Rehire, Retire, Rewire,” transition part of life for Baby Boomers.
What draws so many musicians to Makor’s music club?
When Makor started, it was a venue for artists, a lot of them who didn’t have a place to play in. It was really when world music was becoming popular. And there weren’t a lot of venues. And Makor was a home for that. And Makor really, I would say in the beginning, was about much more the new, the emerging, the undiscovered. Now, a lot of the bands that started at Makor, musicians that didn’t necessarily have [any] other [option] for that kind of venue, now play all over New York. And when you are known for those kind of signatures, then [there are] more people who are calling you up. And we don’t just fill the space. We actually program it, and that makes a big difference.
—Matt Elzweig
melzweig@manhattanmedia.com
July 9, 2007
“Makor” means “source” in Hebrew, and is the 92nd Street Y’s cultural center for twenty and thirty-somethings and Baby Boomers. Makor is moving to Tribeca this fall, and one thing Director Jane Slotin really likes about the sprawling new Hudson Street location is its accessibility from other parts of downtown, New Jersey, Brooklyn and the Upper West Side.
Why the move, and why the new location?
A lot of it had to do with our constituents. There was a time when the Upper West Side was definitely full of lots of young singles. And, as you know, Brooklyn has become a big hot spot, as well as downtown.
Does the move mean that young singles, particularly young and middle-aged Jewish singles, are migrating downtown from West 67th Street?
That’s part of the reason, because it is true, the Upper West Side’s gotten a little more family-oriented. But what we find with our programming, and I think it’s true for young professionals in their 20s and 30s, they will follow the event.
What types of programs are among the most popular?
Makor Music is probably our signature program. As you may or may not know, Norah Jones got her start there. Also, I think music, in terms of programming itself, is more universal. Our film program is also a heavy signature for us. We’ve previewed films for film companies, or HBO—the Marx Brothers is a very popular series—[we have] various film festivals. We do our “Reel Jews Film Festival” every year, which is quite popular. Every one of our films has a talk with it.
With all these areas, how do you stay current and select the kinds of things that appeal the most to the crowds you tend to draw?
We stay ahead of the curve. And our job is to really know what the next trend is, what is going to happen, what people are going to be talking about… And it kind of infuses what the staff does… [Programmers] mix it up. If there’s going to be a certain theme that’s going across some of the theater readings that we’re having, we try to get that kind of art or lecture to go along with it.
The 92nd Street Y values pluralism and encourages both Jews and non-Jews to attend its programs. Do conflicts ever arise when you hold talks and give classes about Israel and the rest of the Middle East?
It’s what we do best. We’ve done both the pro and the con of what’s happening over in the Middle East. We’ve done it through documentaries, we’ve done it through series. And that’s part of the talk element that makes our programming strong. It’s just—mix it up, and you get people talking, and you have a lot of pro and con. I get a lot of calls, sometimes there’ll be something, something might be too pro-something, and you get “how can a Jewish organization do this?” And it’s really our obligation to keep opening up, and to have passionate patrons who come, that leave discussing and thinking, and having a new way of looking at it. And we show all sides. We don’t have a party line.
Can you estimate the proportion of Jews to non-Jews in your programs?
Different programs have [a] different mix. But I’d say overall, it’s 60 percent Jewish, 40 percent not.
How do you balance the value you place on pluralism and dialogue with the desire to maintain a Jewish identity?
It’s about talking afterwards, you know, having that discussion that comes along. So, you can have someone like Tony Kushner come speak. He has a new film out. It’s not so new now. But, we showed it, and [it’s] all about his life and putting together “Angels in America.” But one thing about Tony Kushner, he’s very political. So then we talk back. We can say ‘so what (italics)are(italics) your feelings about Israel?’ Or, he might have talked about his family when they were growing up Jewish. So that’s what we’ll talk about. But we talk about it in the context of the art, or the event, or the program.
We have a yoga class, and the yoga teacher talks about the fact that the Kohans used to meditate also… When “The Passion [of the Christ]” came out, the film, we would take groups, and we’d come back and we’d talk. And sometimes it would be a rabbi and someone from a Christian organization… We don’t have an agenda… We want you to think.
What activities and programs are popular with the Baby Boomers?
Well first of all I do want to say, the Y actually started the Daytime @ program, five years ago. And so now where “Baby Boomers” are on AOL, and shows up on every ad, and almost every third article, again, the Y was very ahead of the curve on this. They [committed] and actually created programming that addresses what we call the “Rehire, Retire, Rewire,” transition part of life for Baby Boomers.
What draws so many musicians to Makor’s music club?
When Makor started, it was a venue for artists, a lot of them who didn’t have a place to play in. It was really when world music was becoming popular. And there weren’t a lot of venues. And Makor was a home for that. And Makor really, I would say in the beginning, was about much more the new, the emerging, the undiscovered. Now, a lot of the bands that started at Makor, musicians that didn’t necessarily have [any] other [option] for that kind of venue, now play all over New York. And when you are known for those kind of signatures, then [there are] more people who are calling you up. And we don’t just fill the space. We actually program it, and that makes a big difference.
—Matt Elzweig
melzweig@manhattanmedia.com
Monday, July 02, 2007
Dead Air: Downtown Webcasters Join Mass Protest Against Royalty Hike
Our Town downtown
July 2, 2007
Internet radio stations across the country were quiet for 24 hours on June 26th. The small Webcasters who participated in the “Day of Silence,” to protest a federal ruling that increased royalties on the music they play, argue that the increase is unacceptably high and threatens to keep them offline forever. A coalition of Internet radio stations called SaveNetRadio organized the event.
“Small Webcasters” are defined by the Small Webcaster Settlement Act of 2002 as those with $1.25 million or less in revenues.
For SoundExchange, the performing rights organization that collects the royalties, and that proposed and negotiated the increase, the payment is long overdue and will compensate artists and copyright holders for providing products that are rightfully theirs.
In May 2007, SoundExchange made small Webcasters an offer, which would decrease the rates set by the Copyright Review Board (CRB) with the revenue-based ones they paid from 2003-2005, which set royalties for small Webcasters at 10 to 12 percent of revenue.
Tribeca Radio, East Village Radio and WNYC2, the public station’s 24-hour classical stream, all participated in the day-long hiatus.
As the composer of the “Nobody Beats the Wiz” jingle for the now-defunct electronics chain, which Biz Markie based his 1988 hit “Nobody Beats the Biz” on, and which was later featured in a popular “Seinfeld” episode, Tribeca Radio founder Leigh Crizoe is no stranger to royalties. But he says SoundExchange is asking for way too much. “Look, I’m a musician, I’m a writer too. So yes, I want to get paid when my music’s played… But make it a fair price. Let the big guys pay the most money.”
With his son, Shaune Velazquez, and his partner, Rhio, Crizoe runs the station out of his home on Hubert Street.
Crizoe created Tribeca Radio a year and a half ago in response to what he saw as a lack of choices and quality in the mainstream media.
As a music producer, Crizoe saw a “vacuum.” That is, he couldn’t get the records he produced played on mainstream stations.
Crizoe says there was a time when a producer could visit a DJ directly to promote his records. But eventually, the DJ lost the power to choose what was played, and it became the program director’s choice. That power was gradually given to consultants, who began to select programming for specific formats, with an individual consultant deciding what music anywhere from 40-100 stations could play. Today giant corporations like Clear Channel, which, according to its most recent annual report, owns 1,176 U.S. radio stations, control most of what DJs play. And Crizoe says the four major record companies – BMG, Sony, EMI and Universal – have drastically reduced the number of independent labels, which he says numbered in the hundreds ten to fifteen years ago.
Crizoe thinks the same thing is happening with Internet radio. “The same big guys who [ate] up all the … little record companies, and the same huge broadcasters, have gotten together, and they’ve decided to put Internet radio out of business by making the royalty rates that we pay to play music, literally, unconscionable.”
He finds it unfair that on-the-air stations don’t have to pay royalties for sound recordings, and says the way they pay the publishing rights organizations – ASCAP, BMI and SESAC – is the way Internet radio stations should be charged. “It’s negotiable. It’s not designed to put them out of business.”
Publishing rights is another area he knows about firsthand because he and Velazquez were once in the business of collecting publishing royalties for Latin artists, by acting as their liaison to ASCAP and BMI, in the days before the Latin divisions of the major record companies were significant portions of their business. (On the day we meet, Crizoe mentions that a BMI check earned from those days just arrived in the mail.)
Internet radio is full of possibilities, Crizoe says. And he wants to get advertisers, and provide a forum for beginning broadcasters, so that he can develop their shows until they’re good enough, he hopes, to be picked up for syndication, or to be recruited by big radio stations. And if any of them are, Crizoe will get to be their show’s agent for a specified period of time.
Velazquez is planning to set up an antiques and historical items-type business in another part of the space Tribeca Radio is housed in to raise money, so he can market the station more aggressively.
But Crizoe is nervous because Tribeca Radio is funded by his outside investments, and the station accepts donations, but is currently making no money. Last year he spent over $50,000 to run the station for streaming costs, errors and omissions insurance (for potential lawsuits related to show content), and equipment. Crizoe owns the building the station is in, and the studio is in a space that was once a source of rental income.
And he’s afraid that if the new rates are allowed to stand, he’ll be forced to make some serious programming compromises to avoid going completely under. He says that he’d have to stop playing mainstream music completely, and hire a full-time employee to make agreements with independent artists and copyright holders that would waive their SoundExchange rights. And if SoundExchange overruled him, he’d have to switch his programming to all talk.
“In other words, they want to be my partner.” And since he hasn’t made any money yet, “they want 10-12 percent of my losses,” he says, referring to the 10-12 percent that SoundExchange will expect from him if he becomes a “commercial” Webcaster, under their new offer. “If I lost $100,000, that means they want $10,000 to $12,000 … the government doesn’t even do that.”
According to SaveNetRadio, the list of 103 Webcasters who participated in the “Day of Silence” on its site is only partial – that “tens of thousands of U.S. Webcasters” participated.
The new rates, which apply through 2010, were contested by Webcasters. But in March 2007, the CRB, which has jurisdiction in the matter, upheld the rates in a closed-door proceeding. It set July 15, 2007 as the date that Webcasters will have to be paid up by.
The rates were originally set in January 2006, and the judge’s ruling is retroactive. That means all Webcasters who paid the previous royalty rate for sound recordings will have to pay the difference for the past 18 months, a major contention among them that is being used to justify the claim that they’ll be out of business if these new rates are not nullified.
They are advocating legislation, the Internet Radio Equality Act, filed in the House of Representatives, this spring, by Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and Don Manzullo (R-Ill.), that would vacate the CRB’s ruling and set standardized royalty rates for commercial Internet radio and other alternative platforms (satellite and cable radio, and jukeboxes).
In their ruling, the CRB rejected the Webcasters’ request that the rates be replaced with a revenue-based royalty structure, on the basis that it would be too difficult to ensure payment.
“You’d have to go in and audit them, and different people define revenue in different ways,” one reporter who is very familiar with the case explains in a telephone interview. “And what the judges said was that while they’re not necessarily against a revenue-sharing model … none of the parties who were in that proceeding proposed any solution that would overcome some of their concerns.” The source chose to remain anonymous because speaking to Our Town downtown without clearance is a violation of policy at the company the source works for, and there was no time for that.
Small, noncommercial Webcasters still pay the revenue-based 10-12 percent rate, the reporter explains, but are upset because under the new rate system, if they have beyond a certain number of listeners during an average number of listening hours, they will become “commercial broadcasters,” which will subject them to a fee structure that is calculated per performance, or the amount of times a song is played, and that number is multiplied by the amount of people listening to it. And that can really add up.
And even if they haven’t crossed over into “commercial” territory, under the new royalty system they will now have to pay a $500 per channel minimum, which many Webcasters are complaining they can’t afford. But the source points out that many of the small noncommercial Webcasters are members of Live 365, the largest Web radio network, and pay well over $500 for that privilege.
Currently satellite and Internet radio stations have to pay royalty fees for sound recordings, and publishing rights. Traditional, on-the-air stations only pay for publishing rights, but musicFIRST, a coalition SoundExchange belongs to, is lobbying Congress to require on-the-air stations to pay royalties for performance rights (the right to play sound recordings).
Richard Ades, a spokesperson for SoundExchange, claims that “more than half” of the Webcasters on the SaveNetRadio list are “noncompliant in general” with regard to paying royalties for the sound recordings they play. But, he says in a telephone interview, the large Webcasters are “pretty much compliant.”
Ades thinks the opposition has it all wrong and is spreading misinformation so they can keep playing artists’ and copyright holders’ (i.e. labels’) music for free, and making money off it in many cases. “We want the Internet radio to thrive. It’s important for all kinds of artists, a broad range of artists, the small artists … And frankly, there are a lot of new music platforms out there, and we support them all. We’re just saying the artists need to get their fair share of the pie.”
He says the “Day of Silence” was actually a good thing for the artists and labels that want the rate increase to stick, because it underscored their point in a way. “That is, without music, there would be nothing to build these radio stations and build these businesses.”
One thing he thinks people don’t realize is that SaveNetRadio is funded by The Digital Media Association (DiMA), whose board of directors consists of American Online, Apple, Live 365, RealNetworks and Yahoo! Not exactly a ragtag band of start-ups. “SaveNetRadio has testimonials from over 400 artists on their Web site,” Ades says. “Ninety percent of those artists have never received any royalties. And there’s two reasons. One, these people haven’t been played. Or two, they’ve been played, and these Webcasters have not reported and not paid them,” he claims.
To Ades, the Webcaster who installs software into his computer, plugs in a cheap microphone and starts playing music off his iTunes is a hobbyist. “Look, a lot of these operations … they would have to pay $500 a year to stream up to a [limited amount] of music. And that’s a reasonable amount to pay for a hobby. I mean, I don’t know what fishing costs. I think hunting costs like $1,800 a year, you know? It’s a hobby. But the artists are working very hard. They’re paying for music lessons, they’re buying instruments. They’re doing all kinds of things to perfect their craft, to perfect their art. Why shouldn’t they be paid?”
Ades thinks people have a sense of entitlement to music that doesn’t exist for any other product, and he thinks that all kinds of musicians and record companies are suffering because of it. “What’s being lost is the respect for the people who create the music.”
One common assumption is that on-the-air stations are exempt from paying royalties for sound recordings because to record companies, airplay is free promotion. And Webcasters argue that this freebie should be extended to the Internet since Webcasting has the same promotional effect.
Ades says the statistics don’t support the idea that traditional on-the-air radio stations are a promotional tool, and he says that on-air DJs don’t even mention artists and labels, for the most part. “Sales of music are way-way down.” On the net and other platforms, people consume music, but don’t purchase it, he says.
When asked about SoundExchange and DiMA/SaveNetRadio, the source familiar with the CRB proceeding says it’s important to take the facts and figures the organizations give “with a grain of salt [since] they’re all lobbyists” … “When SaveNetRadio says that they have X number of artists who are supporting them, you have to ask, are they professionals, people who are making a living by music? Or are they people who are sitting by their computer making music just because they like to, but they don’t depend on royalties to make a living? And are the large commercial Webcasters using the plight of small Webcasters in order to get rid of this decision so they don’t have to pay it either?”
One musician who can credit the Web with a lot of his recent success is Jonathan Coulton, a singer-songwriter (and happily-retired software designer) who lives in Brooklyn, and who’s developed a significant following through a combination of blogging, corresponding with fans, and allowing them to download, and also buy his music right off his Web site.
He’s also been able to promote his geeky brand of novelty folk-rock through Internet radio.
Coulton disagrees with the idea that SoundExchange’s rate-hike will help artists. “As an independent musician who doesn’t really get a lot of airplay, I’ve no doubt benefited greatly from Internet radio, and I depend on exactly these kinds of small-scale grass roots broadcasters to get my music out there,” he writes in an e-mail. “If they can’t afford to stay in business, I don’t see how the royalty hike is going to help artists like me at all.” (In fact, this reporter discovered Coulton’s music while listening to Pandora, one of the larger free Web radio services, when Coulton’s “First of May,” a song about having intercourse outdoors, came on.)
Coulton says that although he doesn’t “like to bash labels just for the sake of bashing them … it’s hard not to see this as another case of a frightened industry trying to muscle back some control.”
He notes that although Web radio services like Pandora play his music, he is not in the SoundExchange database, so he won’t benefit from a rate hike; Coulton would expect to find his name in the database, which is compiled from electronic play logs submitted to SoundExchange by cable and satellite subscription services, Webcasters and Satellite radio services, but when he checked it wasn’t there, and he had no idea why. “I suspect it’s an imperfect system … ;)”
-- Matt Elzweig
melzweig@manhattanmedia.com
July 2, 2007
Internet radio stations across the country were quiet for 24 hours on June 26th. The small Webcasters who participated in the “Day of Silence,” to protest a federal ruling that increased royalties on the music they play, argue that the increase is unacceptably high and threatens to keep them offline forever. A coalition of Internet radio stations called SaveNetRadio organized the event.
“Small Webcasters” are defined by the Small Webcaster Settlement Act of 2002 as those with $1.25 million or less in revenues.
For SoundExchange, the performing rights organization that collects the royalties, and that proposed and negotiated the increase, the payment is long overdue and will compensate artists and copyright holders for providing products that are rightfully theirs.
In May 2007, SoundExchange made small Webcasters an offer, which would decrease the rates set by the Copyright Review Board (CRB) with the revenue-based ones they paid from 2003-2005, which set royalties for small Webcasters at 10 to 12 percent of revenue.
Tribeca Radio, East Village Radio and WNYC2, the public station’s 24-hour classical stream, all participated in the day-long hiatus.
As the composer of the “Nobody Beats the Wiz” jingle for the now-defunct electronics chain, which Biz Markie based his 1988 hit “Nobody Beats the Biz” on, and which was later featured in a popular “Seinfeld” episode, Tribeca Radio founder Leigh Crizoe is no stranger to royalties. But he says SoundExchange is asking for way too much. “Look, I’m a musician, I’m a writer too. So yes, I want to get paid when my music’s played… But make it a fair price. Let the big guys pay the most money.”
With his son, Shaune Velazquez, and his partner, Rhio, Crizoe runs the station out of his home on Hubert Street.
Crizoe created Tribeca Radio a year and a half ago in response to what he saw as a lack of choices and quality in the mainstream media.
As a music producer, Crizoe saw a “vacuum.” That is, he couldn’t get the records he produced played on mainstream stations.
Crizoe says there was a time when a producer could visit a DJ directly to promote his records. But eventually, the DJ lost the power to choose what was played, and it became the program director’s choice. That power was gradually given to consultants, who began to select programming for specific formats, with an individual consultant deciding what music anywhere from 40-100 stations could play. Today giant corporations like Clear Channel, which, according to its most recent annual report, owns 1,176 U.S. radio stations, control most of what DJs play. And Crizoe says the four major record companies – BMG, Sony, EMI and Universal – have drastically reduced the number of independent labels, which he says numbered in the hundreds ten to fifteen years ago.
Crizoe thinks the same thing is happening with Internet radio. “The same big guys who [ate] up all the … little record companies, and the same huge broadcasters, have gotten together, and they’ve decided to put Internet radio out of business by making the royalty rates that we pay to play music, literally, unconscionable.”
He finds it unfair that on-the-air stations don’t have to pay royalties for sound recordings, and says the way they pay the publishing rights organizations – ASCAP, BMI and SESAC – is the way Internet radio stations should be charged. “It’s negotiable. It’s not designed to put them out of business.”
Publishing rights is another area he knows about firsthand because he and Velazquez were once in the business of collecting publishing royalties for Latin artists, by acting as their liaison to ASCAP and BMI, in the days before the Latin divisions of the major record companies were significant portions of their business. (On the day we meet, Crizoe mentions that a BMI check earned from those days just arrived in the mail.)
Internet radio is full of possibilities, Crizoe says. And he wants to get advertisers, and provide a forum for beginning broadcasters, so that he can develop their shows until they’re good enough, he hopes, to be picked up for syndication, or to be recruited by big radio stations. And if any of them are, Crizoe will get to be their show’s agent for a specified period of time.
Velazquez is planning to set up an antiques and historical items-type business in another part of the space Tribeca Radio is housed in to raise money, so he can market the station more aggressively.
But Crizoe is nervous because Tribeca Radio is funded by his outside investments, and the station accepts donations, but is currently making no money. Last year he spent over $50,000 to run the station for streaming costs, errors and omissions insurance (for potential lawsuits related to show content), and equipment. Crizoe owns the building the station is in, and the studio is in a space that was once a source of rental income.
And he’s afraid that if the new rates are allowed to stand, he’ll be forced to make some serious programming compromises to avoid going completely under. He says that he’d have to stop playing mainstream music completely, and hire a full-time employee to make agreements with independent artists and copyright holders that would waive their SoundExchange rights. And if SoundExchange overruled him, he’d have to switch his programming to all talk.
“In other words, they want to be my partner.” And since he hasn’t made any money yet, “they want 10-12 percent of my losses,” he says, referring to the 10-12 percent that SoundExchange will expect from him if he becomes a “commercial” Webcaster, under their new offer. “If I lost $100,000, that means they want $10,000 to $12,000 … the government doesn’t even do that.”
According to SaveNetRadio, the list of 103 Webcasters who participated in the “Day of Silence” on its site is only partial – that “tens of thousands of U.S. Webcasters” participated.
The new rates, which apply through 2010, were contested by Webcasters. But in March 2007, the CRB, which has jurisdiction in the matter, upheld the rates in a closed-door proceeding. It set July 15, 2007 as the date that Webcasters will have to be paid up by.
The rates were originally set in January 2006, and the judge’s ruling is retroactive. That means all Webcasters who paid the previous royalty rate for sound recordings will have to pay the difference for the past 18 months, a major contention among them that is being used to justify the claim that they’ll be out of business if these new rates are not nullified.
They are advocating legislation, the Internet Radio Equality Act, filed in the House of Representatives, this spring, by Jay Inslee (D-Wash.) and Don Manzullo (R-Ill.), that would vacate the CRB’s ruling and set standardized royalty rates for commercial Internet radio and other alternative platforms (satellite and cable radio, and jukeboxes).
In their ruling, the CRB rejected the Webcasters’ request that the rates be replaced with a revenue-based royalty structure, on the basis that it would be too difficult to ensure payment.
“You’d have to go in and audit them, and different people define revenue in different ways,” one reporter who is very familiar with the case explains in a telephone interview. “And what the judges said was that while they’re not necessarily against a revenue-sharing model … none of the parties who were in that proceeding proposed any solution that would overcome some of their concerns.” The source chose to remain anonymous because speaking to Our Town downtown without clearance is a violation of policy at the company the source works for, and there was no time for that.
Small, noncommercial Webcasters still pay the revenue-based 10-12 percent rate, the reporter explains, but are upset because under the new rate system, if they have beyond a certain number of listeners during an average number of listening hours, they will become “commercial broadcasters,” which will subject them to a fee structure that is calculated per performance, or the amount of times a song is played, and that number is multiplied by the amount of people listening to it. And that can really add up.
And even if they haven’t crossed over into “commercial” territory, under the new royalty system they will now have to pay a $500 per channel minimum, which many Webcasters are complaining they can’t afford. But the source points out that many of the small noncommercial Webcasters are members of Live 365, the largest Web radio network, and pay well over $500 for that privilege.
Currently satellite and Internet radio stations have to pay royalty fees for sound recordings, and publishing rights. Traditional, on-the-air stations only pay for publishing rights, but musicFIRST, a coalition SoundExchange belongs to, is lobbying Congress to require on-the-air stations to pay royalties for performance rights (the right to play sound recordings).
Richard Ades, a spokesperson for SoundExchange, claims that “more than half” of the Webcasters on the SaveNetRadio list are “noncompliant in general” with regard to paying royalties for the sound recordings they play. But, he says in a telephone interview, the large Webcasters are “pretty much compliant.”
Ades thinks the opposition has it all wrong and is spreading misinformation so they can keep playing artists’ and copyright holders’ (i.e. labels’) music for free, and making money off it in many cases. “We want the Internet radio to thrive. It’s important for all kinds of artists, a broad range of artists, the small artists … And frankly, there are a lot of new music platforms out there, and we support them all. We’re just saying the artists need to get their fair share of the pie.”
He says the “Day of Silence” was actually a good thing for the artists and labels that want the rate increase to stick, because it underscored their point in a way. “That is, without music, there would be nothing to build these radio stations and build these businesses.”
One thing he thinks people don’t realize is that SaveNetRadio is funded by The Digital Media Association (DiMA), whose board of directors consists of American Online, Apple, Live 365, RealNetworks and Yahoo! Not exactly a ragtag band of start-ups. “SaveNetRadio has testimonials from over 400 artists on their Web site,” Ades says. “Ninety percent of those artists have never received any royalties. And there’s two reasons. One, these people haven’t been played. Or two, they’ve been played, and these Webcasters have not reported and not paid them,” he claims.
To Ades, the Webcaster who installs software into his computer, plugs in a cheap microphone and starts playing music off his iTunes is a hobbyist. “Look, a lot of these operations … they would have to pay $500 a year to stream up to a [limited amount] of music. And that’s a reasonable amount to pay for a hobby. I mean, I don’t know what fishing costs. I think hunting costs like $1,800 a year, you know? It’s a hobby. But the artists are working very hard. They’re paying for music lessons, they’re buying instruments. They’re doing all kinds of things to perfect their craft, to perfect their art. Why shouldn’t they be paid?”
Ades thinks people have a sense of entitlement to music that doesn’t exist for any other product, and he thinks that all kinds of musicians and record companies are suffering because of it. “What’s being lost is the respect for the people who create the music.”
One common assumption is that on-the-air stations are exempt from paying royalties for sound recordings because to record companies, airplay is free promotion. And Webcasters argue that this freebie should be extended to the Internet since Webcasting has the same promotional effect.
Ades says the statistics don’t support the idea that traditional on-the-air radio stations are a promotional tool, and he says that on-air DJs don’t even mention artists and labels, for the most part. “Sales of music are way-way down.” On the net and other platforms, people consume music, but don’t purchase it, he says.
When asked about SoundExchange and DiMA/SaveNetRadio, the source familiar with the CRB proceeding says it’s important to take the facts and figures the organizations give “with a grain of salt [since] they’re all lobbyists” … “When SaveNetRadio says that they have X number of artists who are supporting them, you have to ask, are they professionals, people who are making a living by music? Or are they people who are sitting by their computer making music just because they like to, but they don’t depend on royalties to make a living? And are the large commercial Webcasters using the plight of small Webcasters in order to get rid of this decision so they don’t have to pay it either?”
One musician who can credit the Web with a lot of his recent success is Jonathan Coulton, a singer-songwriter (and happily-retired software designer) who lives in Brooklyn, and who’s developed a significant following through a combination of blogging, corresponding with fans, and allowing them to download, and also buy his music right off his Web site.
He’s also been able to promote his geeky brand of novelty folk-rock through Internet radio.
Coulton disagrees with the idea that SoundExchange’s rate-hike will help artists. “As an independent musician who doesn’t really get a lot of airplay, I’ve no doubt benefited greatly from Internet radio, and I depend on exactly these kinds of small-scale grass roots broadcasters to get my music out there,” he writes in an e-mail. “If they can’t afford to stay in business, I don’t see how the royalty hike is going to help artists like me at all.” (In fact, this reporter discovered Coulton’s music while listening to Pandora, one of the larger free Web radio services, when Coulton’s “First of May,” a song about having intercourse outdoors, came on.)
Coulton says that although he doesn’t “like to bash labels just for the sake of bashing them … it’s hard not to see this as another case of a frightened industry trying to muscle back some control.”
He notes that although Web radio services like Pandora play his music, he is not in the SoundExchange database, so he won’t benefit from a rate hike; Coulton would expect to find his name in the database, which is compiled from electronic play logs submitted to SoundExchange by cable and satellite subscription services, Webcasters and Satellite radio services, but when he checked it wasn’t there, and he had no idea why. “I suspect it’s an imperfect system … ;)”
-- Matt Elzweig
melzweig@manhattanmedia.com
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