vip in the city

Senator Dorgan @ Columbia

It had been a while since I was up on campus, and I was sad to see The West End – a.k.a. the ‘Stend — gone, and in its place a not-yet opened bar/restaurant: “Havana Central at The West End” (part of the Havana Central chain of Cuban restaurants.) Ginsberg and Kerouac‘s old haunt had been a popular gathering spot for Columbia undergrads — in part because of its notoriously lax ID-checking policies — since 1911. End of an era.

Up at the Teachers College, Senator Byron L. Dorgan (D-ND) was giving a talk on how the current economic policies and “free trade” agreements have worked against the interests of America’s middle class.

Dorgan was reelected to the U.S. Senate in 2004 after serving two terms in the U.S. Senate and six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives. His public service career began at age 26, and he was the youngest constitutional officer in North Dakota’s history when he was appointed State Tax Commissioner by the Governor. He is the Ranking Member of the Senate Trade Subcommittee and in recent years has been a vocal opponent of most bills “liberalizing” trade policies between the USA and other countries.

His recently published book, Take This Job and Ship It: How Corporate Greed and Brain-Dead Politics Are Selling Out America features such chapter titles as “Exporting Misery” and “A Star-Spangled Rut.” In it, he draws attention to America’s $2 billion a day trade deficit and argues that “free trade” agreements primarily create conditions favorable to shipping American jobs overseas. Current economic policy caters to the greed of corporations at the expense of American jobs, and in the long run, the United States’s economic health. Dorgan cited the number of American companies whose primary manufacturing jobs have moved to other continents — primarily: Asia — at a rate of three million over the past five years. As a result, no Fruit of the Loom underwear, Huffy bikes or Etch-a-Sketches are made in America any more. The companies that eliminate the American jobs benefit their bottom line by exploiting cheap, unorganized labor pools elsewhere, and receive additional tax breaks for doing so. Additionally, tax loopholes exist such as the ones that allow for companies nominally headquartered in the Cayman Islands to avoid income tax, corporate tax, capital gains tax, withholding tax or estate duty. Dorgan mentions in his book the infamous Ugland House, an unassuming five-story, white office building on the George Town waterfront that serves as the official address to 12,748 corporations.

Dorgan’s views conflict contrast most obviously with Thomas L. Friedman, the foreign affairs columnist for the New York Times, who argues in his bestseller The World Is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century, that the forces of globalization are inevitable, and all societies must either adapt or be left behind. The unplanned cascade of technological and social shifts effectively leveled the economic world, allowing India, China and other countries to become part of the global supply chain for services and manufacturing. On this new playing field, misplaced focus on protecting domestic jobs is short-sighted: as the country’s scientific and engineering base erodes and American politicians peddle protectionist myths, the global economy is being “shaped less by the ponderous deliberations of finance ministers and more by the spontaneous explosion of energy” from eager Indian and Chinese entrepreneurs. Competing with low-skilled workers overseas should not be this country’s goal; rather governments should devote resources to assist workers in developing a skills base to succeed in this new “flattened” economy.

The authors argued their points on a recent PBS News Hour.

I slipped out of the book signing and after-reception to meet SC, JB, a few others in the Stern crew, CS and MB at Japonais. SYB kept me updated with periodic text messages from Shea where he was watching Game 7 of the National League Championship Series. Would our Mets be going to the World Series this year?

Alas, no.

Russian Film Week

Our professor was off in Pittsburgh, so Russian class was canceled this Wednesday. Appropriately enough, SN and I made plans to attend the 6th Annual Russian Film Week that night instead, which was being held October 13-19 at Cinema Village, highlighting current films by Russian directors. The dozen films were selected for their favorable reviews by critics and audiences from among the films released in Russia this year. The week-long event was presented by Interfest, organizers of the Moscow International Film Festival and Globe PR Group, under the support of The Russian Federation Federal Agency for Culture and Cinema.

That night, the featured film was Polumgla, by Russian director Artyom Antonov. Last Fall, Antonov won the “Iris of Tomorrow” for best debut feature at the closing ceremony of the first — and sadly: only — Festival International de Films de Montréal for this Russian-German co-production.

The film, set during World War II, tells the story of a young Soviet lieutenant sent to the far Northern reaches of the snow-covered taiga to supervise the construction of a strategic military radio tower. As he departs on his train journey, he learns that his construction team is made up entirely of German prisoners of war. The team arrives in the eponymous village, ill-prepared and under-supplied. The locals are primarily women whose men have gone to war, and whose fates they learn through an eerily cheerful sailor who travels by belled dogsled to deliver them tragic telegrams from the front. Their reception towards the POWs is at first strongly hostile, but over time, despite no common language, common human bonds are forged among the townfolk and the men, challenging their entrenched views of the enemy. This being a Russian film — and a war film — you don’t expect a fairy-tale ending, do you?

War! Germans! You knew that SYB would want in on this, too. SN and I met him for a quick pre-film bite at Cafetasia, the newish Pan-Asian (mostly Thai) eatery on 8th Street, down the block from the new Broadway Panhandler location.

The decor was slick and the food gently-priced if not particularly noteworthy — all as expected, given the NYU-centric location and provenance: the restaurant was started up by a former employee of the Spice mini-chain (not to be confused with the Cafe Spice mini-chain.) SYB and I took advantage of the 2-for-1 happy hour caipirinhas, which made it even more complicated to extricate ourselves from the immovable, too tightly-arranged communal bench seating. I did like these calamari fritters with light-spicy ginger-avocado dipping sauce.

After dinner, SN had to drop out of the movie at the last minute to tend to his ill wife back home in Jersey, so SYB and I were charged with unloading his ticket. I was concerned at first, but finding a buyer was not a problem at all: the film was sold out by the time we arrived at Cinema Village, and there were scads of Russian-speakers milling about on the sidewalk in front, presumably waiting for people like us to come along. We sold SN’s seat to the first women who tentatively approached. She thanked us after the exchange, and I responded: pah-ZHALu-stah! (You’re welcome!) I think she may have even understood me.

But her smile could have been one of amusement.

Maja Ferme fashion

I met up with M after work for the Maja Ferme “Nymph” fashion show. Ferme, a young Slovenian fashion designer, was presenting her Spring/Summer 2007 collection to the public at this independent fashion show, taking place at Midtown Loft. The event space was just a couple of doors down from the P.S. 260 penthouse loft I visited during openhousenewyork weekend, with windows on three sides offering similar views.

Lots of prettily flowing dresses in chiffon, silk satin, and silk shantung. As expected, the models were very tall and very thin… and at least one was noticeably high. As she teetered precariously past us on her four-inch stilettos, M and I kept expecting her to pitch forward on the runway like so much fashion roadkill.

Afterwards, M gave me a lift home in the Libby, where I had a few boxes waiting for her — souvenirs from her recent trip to the Sonoma Valley.

The laws governing whether consumers can purchase, and have wine shipped directly from wineries and retailers, are complex and vary widely by state. The fractured system of alcohol regulation dates to the repeal of Prohibition in the 1930’s. New Jersey, where M now lives, is one of the states that prohibits direct shipment of wine. The recent ban on liquids brought on airplanes meant she couldn’t hand carry any bottles back either.

The New York State laws on direct shipment are complicated (wineries must obtain 3 types of permits and file 3 types of returns), but do allow for consumers to receive shipped wine — up to 36 cases annually. Since it’s already October, the chances of my exceeding that allotment for the year are pretty slim, so I agreed to accept M’s Rubicon on her behalf. To my amusement, the boxes were marked “FRAGILE,” and had bright fluorescent warning labels not to deliver to anyone under the age of 21 or who appeared visibly intoxicated.  I’m not necessarily arguing against the second restriction; I just want to understand the reasoning behind it. You can accept wine to get  drunk in your home, but cannot already be drunk  when accepting it? It’s not the same as a bartender cutting off someone who has obviously over-imbibed. Bar owners have a responsibility, or at least an awareness of our society’s litigiousness, warranting that they do what they can to ensure that their patrons don’t pose a hazard to themselves or to others. But in the privacy of one’s home…?

As these packages tend to arrive in the early morning, or afternoon, I wonder how often the carriers are asked to enforce this “no drunk deliveries” rule.