vip in the city

StandUp for Kids

StandUp For Kids is the nation’s largest all-volunteer, non-profit organization dedicated to working with and for runaway, homeless and street-dependent youth since 1990.

The information session CS and I attended after work on Thursday was being held at the Time Warner Center (25 Columbus Circle, or according to the condo developers: One Central Park.) HN, StandUp for Kids – NYC’s new Executive Director, had arranged for the group to gather on the sun terrace of his building, and at first I was concerned that the breathtaking views from the 51st floor aerie would distract from his presentation. But once he began speaking in earnest about the organization and the volunteers’ works, we in attendance were hard-pressed not to take notice.

He began with a series of grim statistics about the plight of runaways: half of the children who leave home return within a week; those who don’t – or can’t — live on the streets for an average of three years. Of those, 5,000 die every year – 13 a day – from violence, disease or suicide. Half of the ones who do survive, become pregnant or infected with sexually transmitted diseases.

Although these children are notoriously difficult to document and track, most estimates put their numbers around the country at over 1.5 million — over 500,000 younger than 15 years old. New York City alone claims tens of thousands of these runaways in its streets, many of whom are trying to escape deep poverty, or unimaginable abuse. Once on their own, they have scant options for survival outside of begging, stealing, selling drugs or prostitution. StandUp For Kids runs an extensive community outreach program, with volunteers on the streets in shifts, reaching out to these kids, and distributing food and items such as shampoo, condoms and dry, clean socks. They target pockets of the city where runaways are known to convene: the Christopher Street piers, the Port Authority bus terminal, Columbus Circle — just steps from the very building we were sitting atop, where a two-bedroom apartment rents for $28,000 a month. For years, after late nights at the office, I’d see these gangs of teens circling aimlessly with their skateboards around 2 Columbus Circle, never realizing that they just didn’t have anywhere else to go.

As the sun set and the chill of impending autumn settled in the air, we retreated to the building’s private screening room and watched a short film about StandUp for Kid’s mission, featuring the founder, Richard L. Koca. For more information on what you can do to help, please check out the StandUp for Kids national or local websites.

After the presentation, CS and I joined HN and his friends SK and SN at Valhalla, where we met up with three other session attendees. Lively, if possibly young-skewing, crowd at this Hells Kitchen neighborhood spot, but she and I will probably stick to our own standby place. And in fact, we closed out our evening there over Diet Cokes.

Hope and despair

The public space at Broadway and Liberty, once known as Liberty Plaza Park, reopened — ahead of schedule — in June 2006. At the ribbon-cutting, it was rechristened Zuccotti Park in honor John Zuccotti, U.S. Chairman of Brookfield Properties (which owns The World Financial Center and One Liberty Plaza) and the chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York. Zuccotti is also a former first deputy mayor of New York City, and former chairman of the New York City Planning Commission. (So that’s  how you get a park named after you.)

I stepped out at 12:30PM for the second of three free lunchtime concerts in the square. Bassist-singer Esperanza Spaulding (whose name means “hope” in spanish) played a jazz set, backed by a keyboard player and drummer. The trio set up stage just in front of Mark di Suvero‘s 70-foot tall steel beam Joie de Vivre sculpture, which last year was relocated to the financial district from the Storm King Art Center in Orange County, New York, where I first saw it. I remember the ten months during which the park was closed off for construction, and how one leg of the sculpture’s tripod base emerged from over the plywood barriers set up along the perimeter – like an abstract red giant escaping easily over a too-low wall onto the sidewalks of Broadway.

After work, I met up with SN for our first Russian class of the semester, which despite our entrenched pessimism, had not been canceled after all. Good  because I genuinely want to advance my language skills; bad  because I had done absolutely no review or preparation for the first class. Which turned out for me to be very bad indeed.

This being a language skills course — and one with only eight students — the oral participation requirement per student was set pretty high. I spent the entire two-hour class in a state of nausea and anxiety. You know the dream about having to take an exam for which you haven’t studied — in fact: you’ve no clue about the subject, your pencils keep breaking and you can’t even read the test papers? Yeah — sort of like the waking life version of that. At least I wasn’t naked.

Kim & Sheu and Amy Sedaris

At lunchtime, the Kim & Sheu Duo: Jennifer Kim (Violin) and Connie Sheu (Guitar). The Juilliard musicians this afternoon seemed somewhat less prepared for public performance than last week’s Kang & Soto: playing quietly at times, seemingly to themselves, with repeated fits and starts. It felt more like we were witnessing an open, staged practice session rather than an actual concert, which probably suited the lunchtime crowd gathered at 180 Maiden well enough. SYB brought my favorite sandwich again. And I noticed for the first time today that there is a gallery located in the lobby of the building, which will only be open through the end of September 2006. I’ll have to remember to peek inside next week.

After the evening vegetable pick-up — more peppers, eggplant and tomatoes! — I did a quick dropoff at the apartment and then zipped back down to the W New York – Times Square for a book launch in honor of comic performer, actress, playwright, author and baker Amy Sedaris, whose upcoming book, I Like You: Hospitality Under the Influence, is being released in October by Warner Books. In it, she offers practical entertaining tips, like deal with the inebriated. (“Better to cut them off rather than pretend it’s not happening and then allow them to stay over and wet your bed.”)

In a kooky touch, quite likely cooked up by the guest of honor, everyone at the party was required to wear a name tag, not with his or her name, but with their occupation/industry and a red or green sticker, announcing their relationship status: single or taken. In rotation, I spied (mostly red-stickered) writers, singers, real estate developers… and a rocket scientist!

There was a crowd gathered around the bar — cosmos only — and among the guests, men circulated with trays of Sedaris’ famous cupcakes. Sedaris herself was seated at a table in the center, petite and elegant in her black silk dress and fishnets, chatting up fans (of which there were many in attendance) and signing CDs with audio highlights from her book. On mine, she wrote:

Vanessa,
Pee on me.
– Amy Sedaris

Oh! Um, thank you. I don’t know if that inscription is better or worse than B’s, which simply pronounced: “Fag!“