Vor America my teachers warned me. This land at the other end of the pond is essentially made up of plastic and artificiality. They said it was a haven of bad culture. Technically, these Americans are incredibly skillful (space flight), but unfortunately they are also without history. If my teachers could be trusted, the United States was a country made of circuits, atomic clocks, and the future.
The ancient had no chance over there. With its lack of culture, America is now threatening to overrun the planet: a danger that can only be averted by vigorously memorizing Latin vocabulary.
Apparently my teachers were unfamiliar with the power poles that stand near our house in Riverdale. You can also find these masts in Brooklyn and Queens, but I’ve also met them in other states – in New Jersey, Minnesota, Arizona. The masts seem to me to be symbols of what is really wrong in America.
The cables, which are supposed to supply an entire city with light, telephone and internet, hang from raw wooden posts
Source: Hannes Stein
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When you see them, you think for a moment that you are in the Third World or in the deep fifties. Of course, such roughly hewn logs are knocked down by any major storm. Any blizzard can mean a technical knockout for them. Then not only does the power fail, but also the television, the telephone and the Internet – because, of course, the entire cable mess is delivered into the house via these masts.
Canals date back to Victorian times
Why do these power poles seem like symbols to me? Because they make it clear how miserable, not to say: rotten, the infrastructure in America is. It’s not just the masts: our lines and substations are so ancient that it is only possible with great difficulty to feed the electricity demand of a large city like New York into the grid. A couple of years ago, the PBS station ran a documentary on public television about the underground sewer system that supplies New York with water.
Where New York is rotting
The glittering world of Times Square and digital natives who are always online: that’s how New York is known. But if you look around outside of the familiar streets and squares, you will discover how the city is rotting away.
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For the nerves, this TV show was about as calming as a horror film: Some of the sewers are from the Victorian era, they collapse in slow motion, but it is not possible to repair them because then you have the water for the whole City would have to turn off, and how is that supposed to work? My teachers, I found, lied. They whispered to me that America was the land of the future. In truth, it is horribly ancient.
Then there are the holes in the streets. You remind me of an old GDR joke: “Why are there so many potholes in our country?” Answer: “Because you can’t export them.”
– –In Brooklyn, these houses are in decline
Quelle: picture alliance / Photoshot
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In the immediate vicinity of our house in Riverdale, one can study excellently that both economic systems that are currently on offer do not work. Behind our house are the millionaires’ villas; Of course, the streets there are also all privately owned.
Streets like once in socialism
In front of our house, on the other hand, apartment buildings made of red clinker brick spread out. The streets there are normal, public streets, which the City of New York is responsible for maintaining. Haven’t we been led to believe that people take better care of something that belongs to them personally? that they regularly maintain, clean and repair it? And on the other side of the ideological barricade, did they not claim that only the state is able to take care of public affairs?
I can testify: both stupid. In Riverdale everyone can see with their own eyes: the capitalist potholes have Romanian dimensions as well as the socialist ones. The public roads are in a lousy condition, and so are the private roads. Those lead to bankruptcy, but these to bankruptcy.
So what should be done to bring the American infrastructure back into shape? Every German should know the answer: You live under a desolate dictatorship for forty years and then let yourself be swallowed skin and hair by your neighboring state. (The wonderful result can be studied in cities like Leipzig, Magdeburg or Rostock.)
Or you lose a world war and then let the victorious powers help you rebuild. (See Cologne, Hamburg, Munich.) Unfortunately, would-be dictators in the United States are chronically unsuccessful. And then this country also has the stupid habit of winning all world wars. So the situation is hopeless.
Why the Backroom Bar is shocking with alcohol in cups
The bar is hard to find. A doorman calls into the back yard of a former toy factory. Inside, hip guests drink from cups. Why? More in part 2 of our series “New York at Night”.
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