New York’s Resolutions
By ALAN FEUER
Published: December 31, 2009
in The New York Times
THE making of New Year’s resolutions is, at once, the most optimistic and cynical of acts. The vow to change posits a continuing faith in human improvement (“I’ll lose 30 pounds this year”), but the format, a checkable mental list, is so tyrannical and skeptical of success that it often leads to failure (“Yeah, well, maybe 20.”)
... there seems to be a biological imperative to seek excellence each Jan. 1 but a genetic incapacity to obtain it. What better metaphor, then, for New York City, a metropolis forever chasing progress and perfection but perhaps best at making do with the reality of considerably less?
So we asked some prominent New Yorkers to muse aloud not on their own ambitions for the year ahead but on our collective objectives. What might knit New York together in 2010? What should be its goals, its boundaries, its promises to improve, and change, and grow?
The answers were grandiose and granular, silly and sublime, ranging from huge new social programs that ought to be established to the smallest sorts of elective surgeries.
What all of them had in common, though — clergy, columnist, clown, filmmaker, educators, executives and one mostly unclothed huckster — was a certainty that the city could be better, that it should be better, even if that was not likely to happen in a year.
Oliver Stone
Movie director
"For a city that’s been so revitalized, that’s become so incredible again, the airports are a disgrace. Any chance I get, I fly out of Newark. Even the smallest airports in China are better than La Guardia, and you can just forget about J.F.K.
My second choice is a little less important, maybe, but the cabdrivers here are horrendous, and something needs to be done. I’d say 22 percent of my cab rides recently have ended in near collisions. They drive like they don’t even care, like they just want to get to their destination.
But as much as I dislike the taxi drivers, the bicyclists are worse. I was almost hurt, twice, seriously, by bikes. One time, at night, a guy was going the wrong way down the street and almost ran me down. He called me an expletive, so I called him something back, and he came at me with a knife! I can’t believe their sense of entitlement.
Lastly, and I know it’s not doable, it’s just a hypothesis, but they ought to send Bloomberg up to Albany. You need a strong man up there. The best solution for New York is to get him up there as governor and let him clean house."
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RE: Oliver Stone: New York's resolutions -- 1/4/2010 10:03:18 AM posted by dan
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