YOU’RE RISING FROM YOUR SLEEP

The eminent urban scientist and community activist Jane Jacobs was otherwise known as the woman who saved Greenwich Village from the wrecking ball cranes in the 1960s. When granting an interview with a journalist in her early 80s, she speculated that if she leafed through a single edition of his periodical, there would be at least five examples to illustrate the theories she brought to the world in her landmark Death and Life of Great American Cities.

This is ironic and telling because the interview took place in the 1990s, which unknown to us would become the decade in which everything came together to form the Golden Age of Creativity, when cities sprung back to life and suburbs developed initiatives of their own beyond strip malls and industrial parks, and I fathomed the premise of the Great American Short Story, Columbus Day. If not for Jane Jacobs, West 4th Street would not exist as we know it today, and Bagels on the Square would be someplace else, Astoria perhaps. The comedy clubs would have decamped elsewhere, Midtown for example.