If you’re like many people, who are like me, you do little more than dip your toes in local politics, staying somewhat abreast of things through bagel counter headlines, general hearsay, and the twelve minutes you inadvertently leave NY1 on after powering up your cable.
Even we semi-informed, however, are aware of the congressional redistricting hullabaloo in New York City. It made me curious and – since I was bored with refreshing my Ancestry page to see if my DNA magically changed again – I accessed an informative redistricting map, courtesy of The City, to see whence my Brooklyn apartment falls and under whose congressional fiefdom I now dwell.
And for a 150-year-old stationary brick edifice, my building has been on quite a journey.
OH, NOW I GET WHY IT WAS BATSHIT CRAZY BEFORE
Looking at the maps prior to this recent reworking of the districts, you can see the madness in it, regardless of party affiliation or political leaning. The damn thing just didn’t make sense as a pencil drawing.
My former congressional district, 10, fell under the jurisdiction of “Joltin'” Jerry Nadler – the long-time New York Democrat and the head of whatever-whatever committee of whatever.
District 10, impossibly, started all the way up in the lofty lands of Morningside Heights and Genghis Khan’d its way down the west side of Manhattan (encompassing Central Park and parts of the Hudson River according to the map – good to see squirrels and barnacles getting their say in the House of Representatives) before entering Brooklyn and finishing with a flourish down its west shore and south lands.
Yes, you read all that right. And seeing it on a map is a whole other mind-shag. This district didn’t look like a deliberate, bureaucratic, committee-outlined distinction. It looked like a drunk Wisconsin hockey bro urinated its borders in the snow.
Forget that my little alcove in Brooklyn between Red Hook and Park Slope was in the same zone as Columbia University and Madison Square Garden, but my particular block was under a different one than the next block over. The former district must’ve decided, while it was swallowing up Red Hook to reach out and grabass a piece of Gowanus for the bawdy hell of it. Which means, congressionally speaking, my corner bodega wasn’t a neighbor of mine but some asshole playing acoustic guitar in Strawberry Fields was. I could’ve knocked on Yoko Ono’s door to borrow some sugar!
(I bet you she’d lend it to me in the bosom of a lotus flower with the word “joy” written on the petals. That’s Yoko.)
It’s a good thing my new, improved congressional district – flashily rebranded as ‘7’ – remedies some of this geographical nonsense. Otherwise I would have to walk around my neighborhood with a suspicious eye, keeping my distance from the “others” in that separate political delineation on 12th Street. “I’m on 14th Street, you foreigners! Keep your outsider culture away from us!”
That’s old-congressional-district me ranting, by the way. New-congressional-district me would never do such a thing. Thank you, government!
Speaking of those admirable folk, it bears repeating: this is not a damning of the left or the right, one administration or the other, none of that. Screw all that. This is just another of the infinite examples of why politics – and I’ll try not to overstate things here – is the bane of all societies ever. When something only makes sense in the realm of politics, that probably means it makes no sense at all.
Problem is, even if all politicians disappeared tomorrow (doesn’t sound so bad, does it) along with every iota of political culture, they would both just regrow from scratch, and splinter, and the citizenry will choose sides and we’ll be back to where we are. Why politics, specifically party politics, is such an inevitability in our nature is a mystery to me. Maybe not a mystery, exactly, more like an acute, ongoing pain in my prefrontal cortex.
With that said, my representative for the new and improved district is Nydia Velazquez, a Democrat. She seems nice. Actually, I don’t know why I said that, I’m just going off a photograph. Anybody can look great/evil/insane in one snapshot, no matter how great/evil/insane they actually are. I’m sure there are shots of Martin Shkreli where he doesn’t look like a nefarious toad wizard. Somewhere. Crap, did I just inadverntently compare Nydia Vazquez to Martin Shkreli? Sorry, Nydia! District-seveners should have each other’s back!
She seems nice.
AM I THE SAME PERSON I WAS YESTERDAY, KNOWING THIS?
I did my civic duty the other day, vacantly placing a vote for governor, lieutenant governor, and a few other positions I’d never honestly heard of before. (Is it bad to say I picked randomly? What else could I do, you have to fill something in.)
Why I did this when my apathy could’ve easily led me to do something else – e.g. catch up on overdue work, play FIFA – I’m really not sure. It certainly has in past local elections. Maybe this, along with my sudden giving-a-hoot about my congressional goings-on, are signs my subconscious is telling me to be a more politically active New Yorker. “You’re a grown-up now, a father. Look around, pay attention to what’s goin’ on.”
My subconscious’s voice is Marvin Gaye for this.
I’ll think about it, Marvin. No promises though.
