If you really believe that the majority of bureaucrats and politicians care about and work against inequality, whatever that means, I think you can look forward to yet another epiphany.
I worked in Albany and its surrounding area from 1984 to 1994. Lived there from 1986-90. The late 1970s up until about the time I left, Albany was a place to thrive for working class youth, with plentiful opportunities for low-cost-to-free cultural enrichment for people who were barely scraping by.
I lived on the corner of Northern (now Henry Johnson) blvd and Washington Ave. The entrance door to our building had a broken lock. As a result, I'd often come home at night to find homeless drunks sleeping in the foyer. The paint was peeling throughout. My bedroom window was propped open with a Bullworker bar. But for me and my roommates, sharing a 3 br flat for $450 right across the street from QE2, it was paradise.
One block south was Washington Park, where we spent countless days at free music and arts festivals, Shakespeare and musicals all summer long. One block north was Arbor Hill; run down with impoverished African Americans, but with occasional bright spots (Kenneth's Taste Bud, you are missed). The Lark Street scene was freewheeling, with people out on their stoops in good weather (which is not expected in late Novemmber, btw).
Over on Delaware Ave is where you'll find the Price Chopper we called, "Ghetto Chopper." Go in at midnight and you would encounter everyone from your musician friends to state legislators and their dolled-up wives, to elderly black gentlemen buying Colt 45.
If Albany is a dead town now it's because it real estate investors and entertainment startups haven't yet gotten around to buying up all the places where low income people can live, taking away everything that feeds their souls, and repackaging it all to sell off to the highest bidder like Nashville has done.
One of the things I have learned as an amateur genealogist is how much of historical development has decayed and vanished. Much of the American frontier, for example, as it moved across the country, is gone. The land grant towns, the promises of small town America. Almost completely disappeared. I amazed to see those images of the old New England mill towns. There are a quite a few giant mill buildings still standing, but most of them are long gone.
I think quite a lot of what you are seeing on these walks is decay. Things constructed for a time of growth and opportunity, that are now shells of their former selves. The question I really have is whether today this decay is any different from any prior period in history, when people have moved on to newer, brighter, environs. I regularly drive around Seattle, where all these growth things are being built now. 40, 50, 100 years from now Seattle may be roamed by bloggers like you, staring at all the signs of what once was and the few remaining villagers. Decay as a kind of permanent condition.
Come visit my home. New Orleans.. unofficial motto is, Third World, and proud of it. This my first read of one of your walks. Got a lot of catching up to do
I came here after seeing you on Breaking Points, and I think this is the exact on the ground perspective I need to supplement all the political and policy oriented information I absorb. I really appreciate your courage in committing to this.
I also would love to hear more about what you think are real solutions to these massive systemic problems. First one that comes to my mind is eliminating the individual financial incentives of being a politician: corporate donations and influence, ability to trade stock, leaving office to go work at a consulting firm or on a board of directors, etc. What else do you think needs to be done?
Jeez, I really love this writing (AND photography AND map of the path). Great work and great eye.
You're probably tired of my over-long comments, but recently, I have like this almost mental crisis. I'm firmly in the front-row. I don't have to do anything different for the rest of my working life, and I retire to easy street. I don't have to care... But I've read about inequality and the economics of inequality throughout my life as kind of hobby. So, I vote Democratic AND nothing ever changes. I talk to a lot of people, and I listen to earnest justifications of the status quo, and I know they are wrong both philosophically and typically on the facts as well. But their confidence in their positions is unassailable. Educating myself and voting, and then going to work and doing my job... that is clearly not enough.
Well, for given value of "fix it" you could employ some of your easy street assets to build or fund a productive business; that is the historical and enormously successful path from back to front for those who embrace the opportunity in America. Might work, might not, might have to try again, but that's how the only realreal path to the front works for those that don't have the luxury and debatable advantage of starting out there.
Or by "what do I do" did you mean something political, to ensconce even more of the blobs and bots who embrace and employ the sickening "from each to each" bullshit (while taking a
nice slice of stolen pie for themselves of course), so you can be all smugly and snuggly there in (what you blithely seem to think) is your tenured front-row seat, just signalling away with your flag of virtue?
I heartily suggest the former, as you genuinely seem to be interested in helping provide and encourage opportunity and upward mobility for others you consider to be less fortunate; and if I may say so you do seem rather bored and unchallenged by your current position and status; the challenges and vagaries of capitalism will go far to fixing that malaise, and might very well be a real seed of wealth and health for others.
Love the series, Chris. Had to subscribe this time as this is where I grew up (right near the intersection of Rts. 20 and 85). I walked much of your route myself habitually as a kid (not the dangerous parts), just hanging out and exploring. I don’t think anyone in Albany was much impressed with the new downtown and the mega highways, which all went in while I was there. It is a mid-sized city with a lot of state workers just going about their business. I always had the impression that the real decisions were made in New York City. Also, many of the local power brokers don’t live within the Albany city limits.
There is a bit of a science/medicine/tech industry there because of the schools. I had an awesome database class with the guy that built one of the first Medicaid systems and I didn’t know then that I would still be doing that decades later.
Would love to know what it was like before the huge downtown construction, and then the highways. That is what I think of Albany now, despite knowing it is more than that.
So these are just personal recollections — I am not sure if they would be confirmed by historians. But they are probably pretty typical of some overall developments in the US, for cities/towns with enough of the type of institutions to participate, however unevenly, in the “knowledge economy.” In that area it was state government and GE in Schenectady. There were two engineering schools (RPI and Union), a medical school (it is a regional medical center), a law school etc. Population where I grew up was a lot of white ethnics, Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish, etc. Most did not send their kids to the public schools — top tier to private, rest to parochial schools. I assume the black population was concentrated down near the Hudson because that’s where railroads and industry were. The Hudson was quite polluted then, maybe better now. Because my parents were weird they made us take the city bus to school so I got to ride along Pearl St every day (where some of your pictures may be from) and switch buses downtown. I was too late for this, but my younger sister got to be friends with some black scholarship students that way. So we knew there was this other neighborhood very different from ours.
I don’t know if Nelson Rockefeller just wanted a monument, was taking advantage of federal money, or actually thought “urban renewal” would help people — maybe some of all of these. What it ended up doing was creating a few gentrified blocks around all the marble temples. We also got a gay neighborhood! The highways caused a lot of suburbanization and the retail moved out beyond the city limits to malls. I haven’t been there much recently but everyone I know in the next generation bought in the suburbs and sent kids to better public schools out there. GE and I assume a lot of other industry is gone.
Hi Rose! Isn’t it interesting to hear about Albany. The thing I remember is that there were medium sized businesses there, I even remember a slaughterhouse as a prominent feature. Dad occasionally took me to downtown, there were a few little stores selling Italian bread or whatever there. I’m pretty sure the Rockefeller plaza was built on cleared slums.
Hi little brother! It’s interesting that Chris found some breweries and the beer garden out on Broadway. I remember some viable businesses out that way, there was a good tire store and True Value Hardware and another place that was kind of hidden away but that had great deals on good quality office furniture. I think there was a good warehousing tradition down there and maybe still some light manufacturing?
I think our old neighborhood was the place to be for the upwardly mobile back in the ‘60s and ‘70s but it looks pretty run down now, and Chris seemed more impressed by the 19th century buildings in Pine Hills than by the postwar tract housing out where we were. You were probably too young to remember much about it though. Downtown, there was actual shopping at State and Pearl back then and some good restaurants around the Capitol. But otherwise, unless you were our father looking for deals, I don’t know how many people ventured into those other sections. Remember how we had to pick out all our toys at a warehouse and never bought retail? Also how all our sneakers came from Dad’s friend down on Green St?
Twenty-one years ago I worked for an Internet start-up on the fringes of Silicon Valley. The company had its own call center which was almost entirely staffed by young black people from Oakland. Transportation was problematic for them, so the company sent a shuttle bus to and from Oakland. Only a few years later, most of those types of jobs were outsourced to India or elsewhere. Those jobs were a ladder to the middle class and now they are gone. No one put up a sign in their yard protesting about that.
This is the crux of the problem. Jobs that don't require high IQ or "higher" education were either automated or outsourced overseas to keep prices down. It's not only industry and middle/upper class consumers who have benefited. We have effectively exported our inflationary pressure. This has allowed the U.S. government to flood the economy with money year after year w/o triggering inflation.
Chris, I appreciate what you're doing. Question about today's post: are the kids really so underdressed on these cold days, or were these shots not taken recently? I know we have warm days sometimes but these look like summer.
Also I wonder if there a lot of people who would say "I was middle row as far as education goes but I'm being treated like back row now, that's not right". I think that would explain a lot of the anger of the ... middle row.
This series of walking explorations has been exceptional. It could really be something as a documentary series. Using video to expand your photography. Hearing your conversations and thoughts as you go. Anyway, that probably sounds very front row of me :) Thanks Chris.
Many of us agree with you about inequality. Inequality is the direct result of Republican Party policies. Inequality would be much less in this country if the Democrats had guided the policy. You should support the Democratic party in your writing. You should at least meet with local Democratic politicians in the cities you walk in and get their view on things.
I agree that since 1980 (and largely driven by Republican policies), our society has gotten increasingly unequal. We stopped investing in our people and in our built environment. I'm hopeful the recently passed infrastructure bill and the still evolving BBB bill will *begin* to turn this around. It won't be easy and it won't be overnight.
But even in states dominated by Democrats (California, Oregon, Washington) the will to figure out how to house the poor and especially the homeless has been absent, ineffective or both. I spend a fair bit of time with my son and his family in the Greater Portland/Vancouver WA area, and the sheer magnitude of the homeless encampments shocks me. And it's getting worse, not better. Why can't we treat this as the public emergency that it is, put the necessary resources against it, and figure it out?
To give the Democrats a free pass and lay all blame for social and economic inequality at the feet of the GOP is simple partisanship. Now we know where you’re coming from, so thanks for that.
That's just partisanship, not much truth to it. The Democrats talk as if they care but look who governs cities, counties and states with the largest economic inequalities, largest poverty, homelessness, drug epidemic, violence etc. and that for decades and decades? NYC, LA, Chicago, Oakland, Philly, Baltimore, Detroit, Saint Louis , CA,NY, IL, MI etc.etc. You're conflating rhetoric with reality.
I lean toward dem policies but they were enthusiastic supporters of a number of very dubious bi-partisan decisions, particularly regarding financial regulation; the repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act is a prominent example. Much of the blight witnessed here is a bit of a downstream effect. But the lobbyist/financial class are richer than ever. Also a downstream effect. Btw, how do you feel about Cuomo?
BBB is predominately a state and local tax break for you rich new yorkers paid for by the middle class everywhere. Did not realize it was a republican bill.
I hope you make it out to Palo Alto sometime . . . a fifteen mile walk from downtown over to East Palo Alto and back would make the inequality in Albany look like a socialist nirvana.
Talk about your irony...the radically diametric contrast there is not in spite of but because of all of that communism and clueless virtue signalling I castigated before.
Please do take that walk, and be sure to do interviews on both ends of it to better understand that the ephemeral nature of the back row/front row concept can be made permanent given enough good and evil intentions, and abject indolence and ignorance.
Chris - These are so awesome. If you walk in downtown, midtown, Dunbar/Fort Myers/North Fort Myers - Florida this winter the weather will be perfectly mild - and you will meet some interesting people escaping the cold up north. Happy holidays to you and yours.
If you really believe that the majority of bureaucrats and politicians care about and work against inequality, whatever that means, I think you can look forward to yet another epiphany.
I worked in Albany and its surrounding area from 1984 to 1994. Lived there from 1986-90. The late 1970s up until about the time I left, Albany was a place to thrive for working class youth, with plentiful opportunities for low-cost-to-free cultural enrichment for people who were barely scraping by.
I lived on the corner of Northern (now Henry Johnson) blvd and Washington Ave. The entrance door to our building had a broken lock. As a result, I'd often come home at night to find homeless drunks sleeping in the foyer. The paint was peeling throughout. My bedroom window was propped open with a Bullworker bar. But for me and my roommates, sharing a 3 br flat for $450 right across the street from QE2, it was paradise.
One block south was Washington Park, where we spent countless days at free music and arts festivals, Shakespeare and musicals all summer long. One block north was Arbor Hill; run down with impoverished African Americans, but with occasional bright spots (Kenneth's Taste Bud, you are missed). The Lark Street scene was freewheeling, with people out on their stoops in good weather (which is not expected in late Novemmber, btw).
Over on Delaware Ave is where you'll find the Price Chopper we called, "Ghetto Chopper." Go in at midnight and you would encounter everyone from your musician friends to state legislators and their dolled-up wives, to elderly black gentlemen buying Colt 45.
If Albany is a dead town now it's because it real estate investors and entertainment startups haven't yet gotten around to buying up all the places where low income people can live, taking away everything that feeds their souls, and repackaging it all to sell off to the highest bidder like Nashville has done.
LOL. Gotta save some of this shit for when you reach Washington DC. Albany is small time
One of the things I have learned as an amateur genealogist is how much of historical development has decayed and vanished. Much of the American frontier, for example, as it moved across the country, is gone. The land grant towns, the promises of small town America. Almost completely disappeared. I amazed to see those images of the old New England mill towns. There are a quite a few giant mill buildings still standing, but most of them are long gone.
I think quite a lot of what you are seeing on these walks is decay. Things constructed for a time of growth and opportunity, that are now shells of their former selves. The question I really have is whether today this decay is any different from any prior period in history, when people have moved on to newer, brighter, environs. I regularly drive around Seattle, where all these growth things are being built now. 40, 50, 100 years from now Seattle may be roamed by bloggers like you, staring at all the signs of what once was and the few remaining villagers. Decay as a kind of permanent condition.
Come visit my home. New Orleans.. unofficial motto is, Third World, and proud of it. This my first read of one of your walks. Got a lot of catching up to do
Shally
Hey Chris,
I came here after seeing you on Breaking Points, and I think this is the exact on the ground perspective I need to supplement all the political and policy oriented information I absorb. I really appreciate your courage in committing to this.
I also would love to hear more about what you think are real solutions to these massive systemic problems. First one that comes to my mind is eliminating the individual financial incentives of being a politician: corporate donations and influence, ability to trade stock, leaving office to go work at a consulting firm or on a board of directors, etc. What else do you think needs to be done?
Jeez, I really love this writing (AND photography AND map of the path). Great work and great eye.
You're probably tired of my over-long comments, but recently, I have like this almost mental crisis. I'm firmly in the front-row. I don't have to do anything different for the rest of my working life, and I retire to easy street. I don't have to care... But I've read about inequality and the economics of inequality throughout my life as kind of hobby. So, I vote Democratic AND nothing ever changes. I talk to a lot of people, and I listen to earnest justifications of the status quo, and I know they are wrong both philosophically and typically on the facts as well. But their confidence in their positions is unassailable. Educating myself and voting, and then going to work and doing my job... that is clearly not enough.
But what? What do I do to really fix it?
Keep it up.
Well, for given value of "fix it" you could employ some of your easy street assets to build or fund a productive business; that is the historical and enormously successful path from back to front for those who embrace the opportunity in America. Might work, might not, might have to try again, but that's how the only realreal path to the front works for those that don't have the luxury and debatable advantage of starting out there.
Or by "what do I do" did you mean something political, to ensconce even more of the blobs and bots who embrace and employ the sickening "from each to each" bullshit (while taking a
nice slice of stolen pie for themselves of course), so you can be all smugly and snuggly there in (what you blithely seem to think) is your tenured front-row seat, just signalling away with your flag of virtue?
I heartily suggest the former, as you genuinely seem to be interested in helping provide and encourage opportunity and upward mobility for others you consider to be less fortunate; and if I may say so you do seem rather bored and unchallenged by your current position and status; the challenges and vagaries of capitalism will go far to fixing that malaise, and might very well be a real seed of wealth and health for others.
Love the series, Chris. Had to subscribe this time as this is where I grew up (right near the intersection of Rts. 20 and 85). I walked much of your route myself habitually as a kid (not the dangerous parts), just hanging out and exploring. I don’t think anyone in Albany was much impressed with the new downtown and the mega highways, which all went in while I was there. It is a mid-sized city with a lot of state workers just going about their business. I always had the impression that the real decisions were made in New York City. Also, many of the local power brokers don’t live within the Albany city limits.
There is a bit of a science/medicine/tech industry there because of the schools. I had an awesome database class with the guy that built one of the first Medicaid systems and I didn’t know then that I would still be doing that decades later.
Would love to know what it was like before the huge downtown construction, and then the highways. That is what I think of Albany now, despite knowing it is more than that.
Empire plaza kinda dominates the town
So these are just personal recollections — I am not sure if they would be confirmed by historians. But they are probably pretty typical of some overall developments in the US, for cities/towns with enough of the type of institutions to participate, however unevenly, in the “knowledge economy.” In that area it was state government and GE in Schenectady. There were two engineering schools (RPI and Union), a medical school (it is a regional medical center), a law school etc. Population where I grew up was a lot of white ethnics, Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish, etc. Most did not send their kids to the public schools — top tier to private, rest to parochial schools. I assume the black population was concentrated down near the Hudson because that’s where railroads and industry were. The Hudson was quite polluted then, maybe better now. Because my parents were weird they made us take the city bus to school so I got to ride along Pearl St every day (where some of your pictures may be from) and switch buses downtown. I was too late for this, but my younger sister got to be friends with some black scholarship students that way. So we knew there was this other neighborhood very different from ours.
I don’t know if Nelson Rockefeller just wanted a monument, was taking advantage of federal money, or actually thought “urban renewal” would help people — maybe some of all of these. What it ended up doing was creating a few gentrified blocks around all the marble temples. We also got a gay neighborhood! The highways caused a lot of suburbanization and the retail moved out beyond the city limits to malls. I haven’t been there much recently but everyone I know in the next generation bought in the suburbs and sent kids to better public schools out there. GE and I assume a lot of other industry is gone.
Hi Rose! Isn’t it interesting to hear about Albany. The thing I remember is that there were medium sized businesses there, I even remember a slaughterhouse as a prominent feature. Dad occasionally took me to downtown, there were a few little stores selling Italian bread or whatever there. I’m pretty sure the Rockefeller plaza was built on cleared slums.
Hi little brother! It’s interesting that Chris found some breweries and the beer garden out on Broadway. I remember some viable businesses out that way, there was a good tire store and True Value Hardware and another place that was kind of hidden away but that had great deals on good quality office furniture. I think there was a good warehousing tradition down there and maybe still some light manufacturing?
I think our old neighborhood was the place to be for the upwardly mobile back in the ‘60s and ‘70s but it looks pretty run down now, and Chris seemed more impressed by the 19th century buildings in Pine Hills than by the postwar tract housing out where we were. You were probably too young to remember much about it though. Downtown, there was actual shopping at State and Pearl back then and some good restaurants around the Capitol. But otherwise, unless you were our father looking for deals, I don’t know how many people ventured into those other sections. Remember how we had to pick out all our toys at a warehouse and never bought retail? Also how all our sneakers came from Dad’s friend down on Green St?
Thanks for walking Buffalo (in the past.) I was born there and got out because I could.
The eleven miles from Trenton, NJ to Princeton, NJ could be worthwhile. Another state capital....
Twenty-one years ago I worked for an Internet start-up on the fringes of Silicon Valley. The company had its own call center which was almost entirely staffed by young black people from Oakland. Transportation was problematic for them, so the company sent a shuttle bus to and from Oakland. Only a few years later, most of those types of jobs were outsourced to India or elsewhere. Those jobs were a ladder to the middle class and now they are gone. No one put up a sign in their yard protesting about that.
This is the crux of the problem. Jobs that don't require high IQ or "higher" education were either automated or outsourced overseas to keep prices down. It's not only industry and middle/upper class consumers who have benefited. We have effectively exported our inflationary pressure. This has allowed the U.S. government to flood the economy with money year after year w/o triggering inflation.
Chris, I appreciate what you're doing. Question about today's post: are the kids really so underdressed on these cold days, or were these shots not taken recently? I know we have warm days sometimes but these look like summer.
Also I wonder if there a lot of people who would say "I was middle row as far as education goes but I'm being treated like back row now, that's not right". I think that would explain a lot of the anger of the ... middle row.
They where taken with my pro camera a few years ago. During summer!
This series of walking explorations has been exceptional. It could really be something as a documentary series. Using video to expand your photography. Hearing your conversations and thoughts as you go. Anyway, that probably sounds very front row of me :) Thanks Chris.
Thinking of adding interviews with people I meet. Just have to figure out the best format.
Yes, please. I also love the documentary idea.
Many of us agree with you about inequality. Inequality is the direct result of Republican Party policies. Inequality would be much less in this country if the Democrats had guided the policy. You should support the Democratic party in your writing. You should at least meet with local Democratic politicians in the cities you walk in and get their view on things.
I agree that since 1980 (and largely driven by Republican policies), our society has gotten increasingly unequal. We stopped investing in our people and in our built environment. I'm hopeful the recently passed infrastructure bill and the still evolving BBB bill will *begin* to turn this around. It won't be easy and it won't be overnight.
But even in states dominated by Democrats (California, Oregon, Washington) the will to figure out how to house the poor and especially the homeless has been absent, ineffective or both. I spend a fair bit of time with my son and his family in the Greater Portland/Vancouver WA area, and the sheer magnitude of the homeless encampments shocks me. And it's getting worse, not better. Why can't we treat this as the public emergency that it is, put the necessary resources against it, and figure it out?
I like the way Nick Kristoff, former NY Times op-ed columnist, is approaching this topic as a candidate for governor of Oregon. He puts forth some good ideas in this column. https://nickkristof.substack.com/p/she-thought-she-would-die-homeless
To give the Democrats a free pass and lay all blame for social and economic inequality at the feet of the GOP is simple partisanship. Now we know where you’re coming from, so thanks for that.
It may be simple partisanship but it also happens to be true.
That's just partisanship, not much truth to it. The Democrats talk as if they care but look who governs cities, counties and states with the largest economic inequalities, largest poverty, homelessness, drug epidemic, violence etc. and that for decades and decades? NYC, LA, Chicago, Oakland, Philly, Baltimore, Detroit, Saint Louis , CA,NY, IL, MI etc.etc. You're conflating rhetoric with reality.
I lean toward dem policies but they were enthusiastic supporters of a number of very dubious bi-partisan decisions, particularly regarding financial regulation; the repeal of the Glass-Steagal Act is a prominent example. Much of the blight witnessed here is a bit of a downstream effect. But the lobbyist/financial class are richer than ever. Also a downstream effect. Btw, how do you feel about Cuomo?
BBB is predominately a state and local tax break for you rich new yorkers paid for by the middle class everywhere. Did not realize it was a republican bill.
I hope you make it out to Palo Alto sometime . . . a fifteen mile walk from downtown over to East Palo Alto and back would make the inequality in Albany look like a socialist nirvana.
yeah. If I want inequality, California is the state for me. Even walking from Compton or East LA to Hollywood.
Talk about your irony...the radically diametric contrast there is not in spite of but because of all of that communism and clueless virtue signalling I castigated before.
Please do take that walk, and be sure to do interviews on both ends of it to better understand that the ephemeral nature of the back row/front row concept can be made permanent given enough good and evil intentions, and abject indolence and ignorance.
Chris - These are so awesome. If you walk in downtown, midtown, Dunbar/Fort Myers/North Fort Myers - Florida this winter the weather will be perfectly mild - and you will meet some interesting people escaping the cold up north. Happy holidays to you and yours.