Paved Paradise
Like with much of what is spewed out of New York’s over-hyped, PR-industrial complex, a closer look at Central Park reveals a thin green veneer covering a hollow and tired system.
One soon grows tired of being just.
—Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust
Central Park is the most famous, popular, influential, iconic, democratic, public park in the history of human civilization. And we need to destroy it. Not convinced yet? Neither am I.
I know the idea of taking a sledgehammer to the Bethesda Fountain—which captured my imagination as a young gay teen watching Angels in America on HBO—or a chainsaw to one of the last remaining stands of elm trees in North America, may seem a bit dramatic as my pièce de résistance against the forces that be, but a backpage column requires audacious, even ridiculous, thinking. Ideas that lead one to question the very meaning of free speech and its place in our society, or whether we should jail journalists. But before you do that, please know that this is just an opinion piece and that I don’t have room for a wrecking ball in my tiiiiny New York apartment.
To be honest, Central Park is a schlep-and-a-half. It’s far. Only by traveling to the park do I work up the stress that its bucolic landscape purports to reliev…
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