Yes NYC!

There is so much to write and so little time. As we are getting into our daily routine it is more the little things in daily life that we notice. Like the waiter at the diner around the corner on Sunday. He was abaout 50 and looked a bit disheveled and when asked by the people at the next table what he wanted for his birthday he said “two front teeth”. But when he noticed we were talking in German he also started speaking German and told us he tought hinself the language to read Rilke and listen to Mahler. That teaches you not to judge the people by what they’re doing here.

Then we met our neighbour on the street today and he started a political discussion right away. He’s been living in the building for the last 40 years but he says that he wants to leave the country if the Republicans still keep the majority in congress in November and elect more conservatives to the Supreme Court bench and thus supporting the “fashist” government. Then he went on to say that all policemen were rasits in New York. You’re used to very liberal ideas (especially in the Upper West Side) but that was extreme. On the other hand he loves major Bloomberg.

A more subtile political critique is what The Yes Men do. I saw them yesterday giving an artist talk at the Guggenheim. They are two artists who go to conferences or on TV shows under false identities for a good cause. In one case one of them gave a BBC-Interview as spokesman for Dow Chemicals promising payments to the victims of the Bhopal leak. In another case one of them presented a life saving device for CEOs and then they also promised to open houses that were supposed to be torn down in New Orleans. Check out the videos - they are funny and shocking.