And I don’t think my estimation of their worth really increased by seeing them in real life. I enjoyed seeing them, in the same way I enjoy seeing massive scales of almost anything (enough Oreo’s—which I don’t really care for—stacked in one place is interesting, too).
About the only thing I’ve heard that made me think differently about the Gates was the description of a story our pastor was told by an elderly lady whose husband had just died about why she spent much of her time during the 16 days the Gates were installed in Central Park (they were removed at the end of February) wandering through the almost 23 miles of “Gated” pathways. “I walked through the Gates thinking about all the Gates that had opened in my life and all the Gates that had closed…” Something to that effect. Sounded profound at the time but as I typed it in it seemed less compelling. I still think it looked a bit like a construction zone, or—as a friend Bryan Taback mentioned—perhaps like an oversized CalTrans ad (one of the very few organizations besides Halloween thinking orange is the appropriate color with which to market themselves).
I did like the Gates from the perspective that it let us spend some time with my folks outside during their visit to New York. Mom took some photos:
Joe—the friend from upstairs who is now something of a recurring character on the blog—sent us a link to NASA’s satellite photo of the Gates, which I thought was very cool. The image below is a very small (!) portion of the complete image, all 2.4 megabytes of which you can download here.
There, John, now there is a blog entry about the Gates.
Wednesday | March 2, 2005 at 6:31 pm
They are interesting….”the Gates”, that is. But I was shocked by the fact that they cost $21 million. And now I am further shocked by the fact that they were just temporary and they have taken them down already. What was the purpose of it all?
Wednesday | March 2, 2005 at 8:52 pm
There must be a whole lot of Buddhist monks walking around naked…(come to Cambodia and we’ll show you what I mean)
Funny story actually: The color of these things looks just like a monks outfit, they also carry umbrellas the same color. We sent out some couches and chairs to be reupholstered, we picked out the fabric for them beforehand. When they arrived back at the house I called Stefanie and said, “um, there must be a bunch of naked monks without umbrellas running around, because we’re now sitting on their clothes.” Absolutely hideous. Needless to say we sent the couches and chairs back to be redone.
Wednesday | March 2, 2005 at 10:22 pm
Thank you, Matt. I really thought you had an obligation to “culture” your younger brother. He did not have the opportunity to witness “The Gates” in person… the least you could do is throw him a virtual bone
Thursday | March 3, 2005 at 8:55 pm
Those “gates” were even sillier than I though they would be, but thanks for the aerial view (I clicked on the high resolution link). That gave me more insight into NYC.
Thursday | March 3, 2005 at 8:58 pm
I forgot to mention: That’s a good picture of Dan and Judy!
Friday | March 4, 2005 at 7:45 pm
I honestly can’t say what the purpose of it all was. I know it was a lifelong dream of “Christo” to get this installation art to become a reality, but beyond for the sake of “art” I guess tourism also benefited. We heard that some restaurants were doing 30% more business and saw one hotelier interviewing saying he was 10% busier.
In any event, I am glad no public money was spent on this—besides police protection for the installation, but I don’t know how much extra policing there was above and beyond what Central Park usually merits—it was all privately funded.
Sunday | March 6, 2005 at 11:53 pm
Apparently the ‘big waste of money’ actually /a>, who knew?
Sunday | March 6, 2005 at 11:55 pm
Crap, my html skills stink. Here’s the link…
http://abcnews.go.com/Entertainment/wireStory?id=549308 that should have been in the previous post.