The Gates

February 18, 2005

My co-worker Sarah and I cut out of work for a few hours and went to the Whitney to see Bill Viola's Five Angels for the Millennium. Along the way, we decided to detour through Central Park and check out The Gates. I admit that when I first heard about The Gates and saw the initial drawings, it sounded impressive, and I was excited to see it.

We wandered into the park near East 72nd Street and began talking about the project's color, scope, and 21-million-dollar price tag. "What do you think?" asked Sarah.

I looked around. I looked up at the gate we were under and at the line of them ahead of us. "I don't know," I shrugged. "It all just looks so—so—square."

"I know," she agreed. "I was expecting it to be more billowy."

"Everything about it looks cheap. The fabric looks like it came from Home Depot."

I couldn't shake the feeling that I was in the middle of a street fair, and found myself scanning for tables of tube socks, bargain cosmetics, and Italian sausages. It made me hungry, and when I saw the umbrella of a hot dog stand, I couldn't resist. The street vendor speared one of the puny dogs out of the dirty water and plopped it into a stale bun. "A dollah fifty," he said.

The hot dog was gone in two bites.

"It seems like a colossal waste of money," said Sarah. She meant the Gates, of course, though the same could've been said for my hot dog. "Are you going to take any pictures?" she asked.

I looked around and shrugged. "Meh." But when I saw the flags next to the flashing orange lights of a construction sign, along with matching safety cones, I changed my mind and snapped a picture, making The Gates look particularly unimpressive.

"Is that the only picture you're going to take?" asked Sarah.

Again, I looked around and shrugged. "Yeah."

"That's funny."

Maybe. But not as funny as the roast chicken we saw in the street on our way uptown. What made the chicken especially funny is that the argument I keep hearing in favor of The Gates is this: "Temporarily changing the landscape gives us license to look at it differently." That might be true, but the thing is, it doesn't take 21 million dollars to change the landscape. All you need is a roast chicken. And at the end of the day, despite all the art, that's what we remembered most.