April 04, 2006
Time was New York had a few streets, mostly in Manhattan, named for prominent personalities. You could stroll down West 106th Street and never let a song go out of your heart, knowing you were jumpin' and jivin' down Duke Ellington Boulevard. The Duke, one of our nation's most famous artists, undertook international tours sponsored by the State Department, and left a musical legacy that ranks among the top 100 composers in human history. So he got a wide street below the southern tip of Harlem named after him.
Flash forward to 1984, the anti-apartheid movement in full swing. We protested, wrote letters, boycotted Krugerrands, listened to Special Aka sing "Free Nelson Mandela" and generally were outraged that apartheid could still be ignored by Reagan. Nelson Mandela sat in a South African jail while Mayor Koch sat in his City Hall office waiting five months for the do-nothing Council to approve his measure to rename the southeast corner of Second Avenue and 42d Street as Nelson and Winnie Mandela Corner. The Council, ineffectual as ever, failed to take action, so the mayor had the sign installed. Few doubted its significance, installed as it was near the South African Mission to the United Nations. Another street, albeit smaller, renamed for a great figure of the 20th century.
Welcome to the new millennium, where the City Council, ineffectual as ever, renames streets and corners with blazing force, whereby hundreds of heroes, most of whose names you've never heard and will never know, get their claim to fame. ("Ineffectual?" he writes. Well, it's still illegal to dance in a bar or club without a cabaret license. Uh, when did Prohibition end in this country? Maybe the Council could take action and change the law?) Now if you were killed in the line of duty, you'll get your street or corner. I don't mean to be crass; those slain in the course of duty certainly deserve recognition and their claim to fame. But with dozens and dozens of renammed streets and corners—hardly anyone knows who these people were—it's time to reconsider the practice. There is a woebegone corner on lower Tenth Avenue, for example, named Special Agent Everett Hatcher Place. You could walk by that corner hundreds of times (as I have), not realizing the DEA has its unmarked New York offices there. Is this any way to really honor this slain DEA officer, by placing a street sign in a formerly semi-derelict area of Manhattan, where hardly anyone will know (or care) who this honorable guy was? Sure, once you do the background work (i.e. a Google search), you see he left behind a wife and two children. You also see it took over 7-1/2 years for the city to put up this street sign in his honor. While I would not be so crass as to compare the lives of Everett Hatcher, Duke Ellington and Nelson Mandela, I would simply say there has to be a better way to honor the fallen who are not internationally-known figures who changed the world. While it's nice that fire houses have distinguished and tasteful plaques outside their quarters that honor the fallen dead of 9/11, street signs are not the way to go. The desired effect falls flat; it's just not dignified enough. But the City Council, now that it has cranked out hundreds of these tribute signs, can hardly put on the brakes. So where does it end? Who deserves or doesn't deserve a sign anymore? Will the Council tie itself up in knots, eternally debating the merits of renaming? As Professor Peter Schickele says on his radio show, "It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that je ne sais quoi."
Tags:
city council, duke ellington, ed koch, everett hatcher, nelson mandela
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Posted on 4/4/2006
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