Summer

An office. A window. A view of another Manhattan skyscraper. You're supposed to want this, right? It's definitely a step up from my 1940s-era government cubicle in my last job. That building had a brilliant facade that in no way extended into the building. This one is non-descript outside but I'm told is going co-op. There's a free gym. It feels corporate inside. Bland. What I do like is my commute here. In the first ten minutes I walk down Avenue C below Houston, and then walk east through lower east side stores putting out their wares. Fruit. Shirts. A breakfast place on Clinton that looks more alluring when it's empty. Chinese stores. Matzah (crates of it!). Then down Essex. I now take New York's most obscure subway line to work: the (brown) JMZ. It's still a mostly non-white and hassidic crowd where I get on at the first stop in Manhattan. Bowery, then Canal, Chambers (huge, decayed, my old stop, most people get off), Fulton. I'm not sure if I'm closer to Fulton or Broad yet. Fulton's old school and frumpy. A few blocks south it changes as you approach the Chase Manhattan Plaza from any direction. There's a new condo building with an independent coffee shop in it. Unfortunately the whole independent allure is gone the second you see it's called "financier," has an "expresso" menu, and find that its illy and pastries taste like different varieties of cardboard. Two blocks away is my building. It's across the street from a construction site where they've saved the facade of an old 4-floor building presumably to front whatever new building is coming in. It's across the street from an old school diner with a neon sign called the Pearl. It's at the bend, 1 storey, attached, beneath 60s-era skyscrapers. How could I not try it? With some luck I'll be able to go there by summer's end and order "my regular." Oh the charm of frumpy Lower Manhattan.

It's deathly quiet in here. But loud outside. Construction. Repetitive banging. I told myself that writing this here now would get the creative juices flowing since I have to hunker down and write about housing! It's just been so long since I really wrote anything long, concise, and policy oriented. Design School core was more about design. Striking, that. Even for a wonk. That's what I'm doing this summer. I'm a fellow of the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies, which is the one center at Harvard that I followed long before considering becoming a student there. It seemed a swell opportunitiy even for a brief diversion from my goal of going into development (in brief, I got bored of critiquing development; I want to build). After this the whole idea of doing affordable housing in some distant future will be easier. Though I definitely want to do more generic development first. Until then, I get to look at my screen, or my view south, across Maiden Lane, at an Andreas Gursky-like alleghory of office windows.

(Actually it's not that dull. Yesterday I was here an hour, and they told me to come to a big meeting about a program they're creating to counsel first time home buyers. So I met big time housing people after being on the job for an hour. People were really nice. I got cards. I met people in city and state agencies. Bankers and mortgage brokers too. I'm having lunch with a nice guy I spoke to who went to Harvard. Crazy to be in the office for an hour and already using that as networking fodder. So there will definitely be good networking. It's just weird to know that my summer is mostly independent. To make it better I think I just need to start setting up the meetings. I like networking. :)