[URBAN NOTE] "I Spent the Night with Jane Jacobs in an Abandoned Post Office"

[rfmcdonald]

Prince Edward Island blogger Peter Rukavina describes what sounds like a delightful evening piece of drama and performance art in New York City, a tour of the recent history of that city by none other than ... Jane Jacobs!

The James Farley Post Office is an imposing behemoth of a building right across 8th Avenue from Madison Square Garden and Pennsylvania Station. To say it’s “abandoned” isn’t completely accurate: it’s still a functioning post office – you can mail letters and buy stamps there – but the building is slated for redevelopment and many of its vast interior spaces, from mail sorting rooms to the headquarters of the Postal Inspector, lie vacant.

It was in those abandoned spaces that Catherine and Oliver and I journeyed on Monday night.

It was raining. We followed the instructions on the tickets to gather at the 31st Street entrance. We found a rag-tag group there, from well-dressed society types to poorly-dressed bohemians, and everything in between, all huddled under umbrellas. As it turned out we’d all gathered by the wrong door, but fortunately someone figured thise out and we went around the corner to the other 31st Street entrance.

At the top of the stairs our tickets were checked on a list and we were assigned to a group. Our group, as it happened, was to be led by Jane Jacobs.

Well, not Jane Jacobs herself, as she’s been dead since 2006.

But a pretty credible facsimile: an actor playing the role of Jane Jacobs in Manna-Hata, a singing, dancing, projecting, acting, shouting, moving, hiding, jumping, drinking and wandering spectacle held in the upper levels of the Farley Post Office.