Spent time in NYC this week. Got back to LA yesterday. Which city’s better? Vote and then click the button to see what other readers think.
My take? Mayor Bloomberg of New York has banned smoking in public places, campaigned against junk food, defended the planned Islamic cultural center near Ground Zero, and has promised to make New York one of the most ecologically green cities anywhere. LA Mayor Villaraigosa has also accomplished many things. He had an affair and he fell off his bicycle.
Not fair? Breaking it down: Blue skies in NYC mean a green city. New York has become greener under Bloomberg’s leadership. According to Popular Science, it’s already number twenty in the top 50 greenest US cities. In LA, brown skies signal a not-so-green city. We might get some kickass public transit with a light rail line scheduled to roll out in 2015. Our mayor is pushing for better bicycle safety after a taxi driver cut him off while he was riding, causing him to fall and break his elbow. Villaraigosa wants a new law that would require cars to stay three feet away from cyclists. Staying three feet away would work, and it would have been a good idea for him to put three feet between him and a sexy TV reporter instead of having an affair with her and destroying his marriage. But he bounced back by dating a former Miss USA.
How about architecture on a human scale? Please. New York has some of the most walkable spaces in the world. LA has traffic. The “High Line” park on the West Side is an urban wonder, and the economy in New York City is recovering from the recession faster than the rest of the country. The LA economy is based on manufacturing, which has moved to China, and movies, which have moved to Vancouver and Mumbai. We have a thriving yoga industry (don’t laugh) and an important human consciousness movement that is growing in influence. If we could only get to the meetings on a bike without being hit by a cab, the movement would grow faster.
Here’s the surprise in all this. I voted for Villaraigosa because he is a Democrat. Republicans? I’ve always believed that if I ignored them sufficiently, they’d go away. Not so with Major Bloomberg, who started out a Republican and turned independent. You can’t blindly go by party affiliation anymore.
Yeah, one more thing. I hate the Yankees, but they play a good game. A Dodgers game is a good place to take a nap.
Yesterday we were at Tibet House in New York, filming an interview with Dr. Robert Thurman, the first American to be ordained a Tibetan Buddhist monk. The talk was all about karma, the role of chance events in life and, because we were filming in New York City, we talked traffic. (We all remember the ancient spiritual puzzle, “What is the sound of one car not moving in traffic?”)
I’m from New York, so when I complain about it I do so as a professional. I’ve always found New York to be challenging for film crews – just finding parking can eat an hour of the shoot, to say nothing of getting camera gear through security checkpoints, jammed into cranky old service elevators staffed by even older and crankier service elevator operators, and determining how much to bribe the nut next door who decides to hammer on the wall for a couple hours.
But now, there’s something else to contend with – Mayor Bloomberg. He wants to turn the city green.
“The city has changed completely in the past year. Eighth Avenue was down to one lane yesterday,” one crew member told me. Many other streets are the same way: one lane. Why? It’s crazy, but the Mayor is putting in bike lanes. The city’s full of them, big generous paths of green subtracting road space from cars and adding New Yorker-style bikers aggressive enough to turn you into road kill unless you’re vigilant. The West Side Highway is gaining green space, too, and there are 376 lawn chairs scattered around Times Square. They are, exotically enough, just for sitting in, provided as part of a plan to make the city more pedestrian friendly. That’s just weird.
“I’ve had people say to me both that it’s a stroke of genius and that I’m the king of trailer trash. The lawn chair decision is far and away the most controversial decision I’ve made in my seven years as head of the alliance.” — Tim Tompkins, president of the Times Square Alliance.
According to Popular Science, among America’s greenest cities, New York is ranked number twenty. (Portland is number one.) The NRDC (National Resources Defense Council) ranks New York as environmentally smarter than Los Angeles. New York was the first US city to require that manufacturers recycle the electronics they make. As of this summer you can’t just dump your old computer out on the street. You have to recycle it — and its maker, be it Dell or Apple, has to help. New York City is even playing around with using the tides in its waterways to generate electricity with turbines. San Francisco has outlawed supermarket plastic bags. Are you listening, Los Angeles?
LA has more palm trees, but the concrete canyons of New York might be the greener place.
Hello and welcome to my blog. This is volume one, number one, paragraph one, sentence two, so you might discover right away that I am writing with assurance or wandering in the wilderness with only a metaphorical flashlight to show the way. Both scenarios are true. That’s the reason I’ve decided to write this. Right now, we’re at a crossroads where the usual definitions melt away. It’s an intersection of science and spirit. There are some curious discussions happening out there. So each week, on Thursday, I’ll offer you 500 words about the questions people are asking.
Can you really think your way into better health? Are there any limits to human consciousness? Does the laying on of hands heal people? Will time ever go in reverse? What is the deep power of chance events? If you do enough yoga, do you go insane? (Probably.) My friends from New York will read this as proof that after twenty years Out West I’ve finally gotten Out There. My Los Angeles friends might wonder why I am holding back. I admit that it’s hard to exactly locate Around the Bend on your GPS, but I see this blog, and my role, as observing and facilitating the connection between two worlds. Can a language be forged that works for both the science talkers and the spirit seekers, without diluting the intent of either?
I’m amazed at the number of organizations springing up to study the connections across the divide. Just a few: The Center for Spirituality and Healing, The Rubin Museum of Art, Bravewell Collective, John Templeton Foundation, Life Science Foundation, Center for Mindfulness, Society for Science and Religion, Columbia University Center for the Study of Science and Religion, the Zygon Center, Adrian Wyard and the Counterbalance Foundation, Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, the Mind & Life Institute, and the Institute for Noetic Sciences. Researchers and scientists like E.O. Wilson, Bruce Lipton, Jon Kabat-Zinn and Ernest Rossi are stretching the boundaries of how we perceive science and spirit, mind and consciousness. Louise Hay and Dr. Mona Lisa make us wonder how we can direct our own wellness by our intention. Two conferences are coming up, one in Washington, DC, the other in Minnesota, to talk about complementary and integrative medicine. That’s a kind of healing practice that can blend East and West and makes mindbody one word. It’s pretty busy out there in the crossroads.
From time to time as a filmmaker and media guy I have the pleasure of meeting science-spirit leaders and I’ll write about those encounters here. I’ll keep you updated on our DocuCinema projects that go to this territory. I promise to veer terribly off course sometimes to rant about Youtube and also India, explain why I’ll never be on Facebook, write about what scares me, reveal who my heroes might be, throw in a movie review and some foodie talk, show why marriage can increase your Google ranking, why there are too many Lee Schneiders already and why videos of cats riding motorcycles are always good.
That’s about 500 words right there. If you’d like to add some, post a comment! Stay curious and see you next Thursday.
Not fair? Breaking it down: Blue skies in NYC mean a green city. New York has become greener under Bloomberg’s leadership. According to Popular Science, it’s already number twenty in the top 50 greenest US cities. In LA, brown skies signal a not-so-green city. We might get some kickass public transit with a light rail line scheduled to roll out in 2015. Our mayor is pushing for better bicycle safety after a taxi driver cut him off while he was riding, causing him to fall and break his elbow. Villaraigosa wants a new law that would require cars to stay three feet away from cyclists. Staying three feet away would work, and it would have been a good idea for him to put three feet between him and a sexy TV reporter instead of having an affair with her and destroying his marriage. But he bounced back by dating a former Miss USA.
Written by Lee Schneider, founder of DocuCinema
The city’s full of them, big generous paths of green subtracting road space from cars and adding New Yorker-style bikers aggressive enough to turn you into road kill unless you’re vigilant. The West Side Highway is gaining green space, too, and there are 
