Hudson Yards, How Do I Lukewarm Thee? Let Me Count the Ways...

I’m sure 5,000 years from now, during humanity’s new dawn, archaeologists will stand in wonder at Hudson Yards, along with the rest of New York’s charred/flooded/radioactive ruins. Its centerpiece – The Vessel – might even be considered an ancient wonder along the line of the Colossus of Rhodes or The Hanging Gardens of Babylon.

Here and now, however, walking through the mega-complex, it’s not wonder that I feel. Just unrelated indigestion. I’m not overwhelmed by the site, but I’m not exactly underwhelmed either. I’m basically whelmed. Hudson Yards whelms me.

With time, appreciation for the most expensive real estate project in U.S. history may grow, as it does with many things. People hated the Twin Towers when they were built, calling them “file cabinets.” And there were probably folks in 1931 who considered the brand new Empire State Building a bit much. The very act of aging brings esteem, even to dumb crap like baseball or the Pledge of Allegiance. So posterity may prove to elevate Hudson Yards. And the place is, after all, something of a marvel. At least to selfie-stick tourists.

But what’s another marvel in a city full of marvels? A toddler’s obsession with Bluey gave me the excuse to pay a visit and ponder such things.

My Hudson Yards Meh-dventure 

First off, it’s a shopping mall.

Like, a shopping mall.

You walk inside from 10th Ave, and the unrelenting din of Lincoln Tunnel traffic, and you might as well be in Woodbridge, New Jersey. I was afraid to make a left anywhere, that’s how Jersey it felt. “The Shops at Hudson Yards,” whatever they want to call it. It’s a mall, period.

There’s nothing worse than being in a mall in Manhattan. It’s like hanging out in a dentists’s office in Tuscany. There’s an entire constellation of things to do outside, why are you lab-ratting through the homogenized corridors of a false utopia? And why am I suddenly making up emo lyrics? I blame you for that too, malls.

Malls are for the suburbs. Because they’re soulless. It’s in their DNA. At least an old mall like Kings Plaza has some grimy character to it. There might be a public incident or two for your amusement. But a spanking new mall like Hudson Yards has less soul than an anti-D’angelo rally – which would be a bizarre rally to have, admittedly.

And then there was Bluey. The entire reason I was visiting Hudson Yards in the first place. Don’t get me wrong, I admire the hell out of Bluey. But meeting a person in a giant costume is for little ones, not me. A lot of times it’s not even for little ones, they hate it. Regardless, on we went, $25 ticket in hand, to Camp – the whimsical, woke toy store seemingly created to piss off bridge-and-tunnel football dads.

My kid, of course, didn’t want to take a picture with giant-costume Bluey (predicted it), didn’t even want to go near the thing (predicted that too), and instead just wanted to go up and down the in-store slide nine-hundred times. We have slides at the playground two blocks from our apartment. They’re free. Anyway, none of that is Camp’s or Hudson Yards’s fault. But it is symptomatic of mall life. Again, why am I in a mall?

Courtesy: Unsplash

Experiencing The Vessel Made Me a Vessel – of Indifference.

After finally escaping outside (with bribery ice cream for my son), we came face to face with it. You know, it. It. The Vessel.

I’ll just say this: Architecture is a ruthless art form. If you paint a terrible portrait, or write a bad novel, no one ever has to see it. But if you screw up a building, that shit is just standing there, all upright and unmissable, forever. Every moment of every day of every year, it’s there, your failure, staring you in the architect face. There’s nowhere to hide. Except inside your awful building.

I don’t like The Vessel. I should. I love experimental archicture. I think The Oculus is the coolest thing ever. The Vessel is very much not. Maybe it’s the color, a kind of luggage chrome. Maybe it’s the drab space prison concept. Maybe it’s the “from-up-here-they’re-all-ants” vibe of the surrounding office buildings.

I probably can’t dismiss the fact that it’s a ready-made tourist magnet either. And no matter how tolerant I want to be of tourists (after all, I’m exactly that anywhere else in the world), as a native New Yorker it’s like my muscles can’t let me not be annoyed.

Vessy (my new nickname for The Vessel) doesn’t go over the top enough, but it doesn’t have much of a practical appeal either. For all its visual bravado, Vessy is essentially a staircase that goes kind of high. I can just watch Sunset Boulevard for that.

Courtesy: Unsplash

The Shed

Now, The Shed I like. A nouveau cultural institution/performance venue, its retractable overhang has these enormous wheels that I assume are pulled by cyclopes. It’s a cutting edge all-purpose art space that showcases exciting work from talent across the globe.

It was also closed when I was there at 1:30 on a Tuesday afternoon. Which meant I just looked at it. From a fair distance.

As someone with a three-year-old and a pregnant wife, that’s what constitutes a night out for me these days: looking at an empty building mid-day.

Maybe one shining evening, far into the future, I’ll attend a show at The Shed. Then I can form a real opinion on the place, not whatever this article is.

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Listen, don’t go by me. Take a trip to Hudson Yards yourself, with an open mind. Perhaps after a stroll up The High Line. Not everything new is awful and you might find charms that eluded the oblivious likes of me.

But also, I warned you. Visit at your own risk. You may be whelmed.

Courtesy: The Shed / Jean Coleman