Ode to Bryant Park

Central Park is for weekend warriors, rollerbladers, ramblers. Prospect Park is where mad Olmstead's vision found it's full flourish. You are the park of the corporate citizen. The great green heart in a sharply delineated empire of shiny boxes.

Bryant Park, Friday, 1:15 PM 6/6/08

See white-shirted men flip their ties over their shoulders and squint at their Blackberries from 1:14 to 1:54. Glossy-haired women in slim, neutral colored skirts and alligator slingbacks throw their heads back and laugh. Oh, gotta go, another project to manage, pencil to push.
You are a patch of land we can stake our claim on for an hour or less. You defy the ring of skyscrapers with your flat expanse of green. Your lions guarding reams of paper valuable only to the bookish and anachronistic.


You are completely wi-fi enabled, which means that completely invisible to the naked eye, the trees and posting updates to www.bryantpark.org that say: "The lawn is closed. It is resting after a major event" and your human inhabitants are soundlessly running algorithms that will surely help them crack the quest for true love.
You are the place where, in my youthful adventurousness as a camera assisant, I floated high above the tree line on a crane. Basically, we were going to start tight on a mitten that was lying on your sidewalk. When a delicate woman’s hand entered the frame, the crane would begin its graceful arc, pulling back to follow the woman as she walked away from camera and towards the opposite side of the park. The cameraman and I, strapped to the end of the long crane arm, would then start our ascent, up to above the trees, where I was to quickly rack focus the on the glowing Chrysler Building in the distance. Today I looked up at the top of your trees and thought that they must have grown in the past few years.
Today I wandered through the flocks of watchers. Those of us who come here after work to watch movies like Hud and Superman, or during, to glaze over among the masses. To feel like our lives are intersecting, even when they aren't, and in the middle of the grid, to gaze on something alive.

The revolution will not have a Facebook page

It’s like it’s 1997 again, said one of the industry vets I was having lunch with at the IAB Social Media and User Generated Content Conference on Monday. If that’s the case, I want to know, where’s my ping-pong table? Why can’t I have a margarita machine in my office? Where is the launch party and, more importantly, my stock options?

Let’s face it, this is 2008. I’m not a millionaire on paper or anywhere else except the land called make-believe. Friendster, once the boon of noncommittal urban hipsters is now relegated to popularity only among Pilipino teenagers, and your grandmother has a Facebook page. Is social media the next big thing? In case you do not have the time or the cash to attend such an event, here is a summary of the day’s events:

Keynote: Seth Goldstein of Social Media

He talked about the social media challenge, how volume is up and effectiveness is down, but what struck me the most was how he mentioned his wife had come up with the term “social media” a couple years ago and they registered the URL. Which just goes to show you that when picking a mate, whimsical brilliance can go just as far as sheer dollars and cents in terms of net worth. Try to shack up with someone who thinks of good ideas and registers those domains, as your beloved may be in possession of the next google.com type idea!

It's All About Performance.... Isn't It?, with a bunch of people from DoubleClick BuzzLogic and AvenueA Razorfish

I love it when marketers talk about harnessing the power of the social media frontier. They are herding cats, as it were. That’s not the right expression exactly. What’s the term for taking a giant grass-roots movement and when your brand happens to come up, acting like you’ve influenced it? David-and-Goliathism? When David is the marketers and Goliath is the user base? There’s an anarchic side of me that loves this—that if you were in a pessimistic mood, you could say that marketing is in everything, or if you’re a believer in the social media space, you could say that people are taking control of brands from marketers.


Consumer Panel with Ideas to Go

Couple of things that I noticed here: focus groups are always funny. This was a group of so-called “creative consumers” who are impaneled by a group called Ideas to Go. They are like these strange animals, these people who do not work in marketing. They are seventeen year olds worth being flown out to sit on a stage in front of two hundred puzzled marketers in suits. The company had them list “social medias” that they consume. The moderator seemed like a sort of actor who rolled big, jargony words around on his tongue.

Facebook workshop

Again, I sat there wondering—are these marketers really creating phenomena on social media sites, or at they witnessing phenomena and then claiming credit? There was a dude who markets Proctor and Gamble brands like Tide with public outreach efforts like one called “Loads of Hope.” You can buy a hipsterish ironic t-shirt with a retro Tide logo and all proceeds with go to New Orleans, where presumably laundry detergent money washes away all sorrows. I was thinking there’s so little brand differentiation among detergents—they are all bright boxes with splashy comic book-like lettering—that it seems a bit of a lost cause to try and stand out. Yeah, it may be cool to wear your retro Tide shirt, but does that really make anyone think about the brand? I wasn’t sold on it.

There are days I long to escape to a land with no marketing in it. What would such a world look like? Is it a magical place in Canada that you can only reach by dogsled? And can you give me some directions?

Picture Monday: W'burg

W'burg, originally uploaded by Brooklyn Bridge.

Picture Monday: Travel edition

International electric closet, originally uploaded by Brooklyn Bridge.

Wonder what goes on in there?

To do list

• Arrive at Penn Station.
• Call Sally Hayes
• Grab a taxi.
• Ask cabbie about the Central Park ducks.
• Check in at the Edmont Hotel.
• Set up appointment with Faith Cavendish
• Go to the Lavendar Room to meet Marty, Laverne, and Bernice Kregs.
• Ernie's in Greenwich Village.
• Walk two miles back to the Edmont hotel.
• Talk to Allie.
• Pretend bullets in gut.
• Go to sleep.

Picture Monday: Sakura Matsuri at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden

IMG_0275, originally uploaded by Brooklyn Bridge.

Picture Monday: It takes a lot to laugh, it takes a train to cry

Project Sunday: Bike NYC like a messenger

My friend Rich and I were talking about how there are two types of messengers now in NYC. Kamikaze hipsters on fixed gears and the slightly older guys you'll see walking a Huffy over the bridges while smoking a cigarette. I love this video (made by Nada Surf for their single "Whose Authority") because it so deftly captures the former, starring the darling older brother in "The Adventures of Pete and Pete" playing a bike messenger. It's a great street view of what it's like to bike in the city, if you don't know it, whipping around businessman, smacking buses, and all. This is how it's done, people.

And I love how the hero rides off into the Williamsburg sunset at the end.

If you're a cyclist, be sure to check out my favorite bike blog for a good chuckle.