Empire State Plaza Archives - Ramblin' with Roger

Empire State Plaza pic — c. 2020 Chuck Miller. Used with permission.

It wasn’t that I needed another piece of “stuff.” But there was something both familiar and wacky about this piece of art and craft by Chuck Miller that I had to put in at least an opening bid on. And, as it turned out, I won.

Here is one of Chuck’s photos of the Empire State Plaza fireworks, this from 2018. He’s taken quite a few of them over the years. As he explains here, “I’ve dabbled with electro-luminescent wire projects – mostly my neon sign recreation projects that later became successful art sales at Historic Albany Foundation’s BUILT charitable auction.

“So I wanted to build another one, and this time I wanted to integrate sound-activated lights in it.” And he did and offered it to the HAF auction.

Yes, it does light up with sound activation, such as talking or clapping. Playing music on the CD, though was less successful unless I played it very loud. But two things really work to create sustained lighting. One is to sing Om at approximately the F below middle C. That is amazingly effective. And fun. One can do that for only so long, though.

The other is to take the sleep machine I use every night. For most purposes, I set it to Stream, which replicates a babbling brook. For this exercise, I put it on Calm, which sounds a bit like a chant. Maybe sometime, I’ll bug my wife to pull out her clarinet to see what sound is most effective.

Sight and sound

I’m musing on this piece’s appeal to me. It is a fine photograph. It’s also the Albany connection. The Corning Tower, at 42 stories, is the tallest building between Montreal and New York City.

The picture is a reminder of something approaching “normal” in 2020, though the shot was taken in 2018. I hadn’t gone down to the plaza to watch the fireworks n a couple of decades, as it’s too crowded and noisy. But I had done so frequently last century.

The combination of sight and sound connected with me. I always find my own photographs of fireworks depressingly lacking. And I have no skills whatsoever on the mechanical front.

If nothing else, I can put Empire State Plaza fireworks with sound below the front windows. If anyone tries to commit a break-in, the burglar will be startled by the flashing lights.

This is less an essay, and more a series of links to bits about Albany, New York’s past and present.

I just realized, though, that I’ve now lived in Albany, capital of the Empire State, for 35 years now. At least thirteen addresses, staying at the current one for the past 14 years.

The area’s airport has a great set of letters, ALB. Do you know how newspeople identify a state or country by its capital? “Moscow is thinking… Washington reacts…” People say that about our historically inept – though a little more ept in recent years – state government. “What’s wrong with Albany?” They MEAN the state; guess that’s the curse of living in the capital city.

Not that Albany itself doesn’t have its quirks. The current mayor is Kathy Sheehan, the city’s first woman mayor in its over 325-year history. The guy before her served 20 years; two guys before him, 41.
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Here’s a 17-minute video about the creation of the Empire State Plaza in Albany, a controversial project which meant dozens of houses and other buildings being razed. Then-governor Nelson Rockefeller, as the joke goes, developed an edifice complex.

This story puts the locally-familiar anecdote about the ESP in a somewhat different light:

It concerns a diplomatic visit to Albany from Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, during Rockefeller’s first year in office, and the new Governor’s embarrassment and chagrin when she rode in his limo through the “Pastures”, and witnessed the seediness of the neighborhood around the Mansion– this was the moment, it is alleged, that Rockefeller resolved to build something monumental, fitting the grandeur of his administration, so that foreign dignitaries could pay calls without having to see the slime and grime of a typical Northeastern city. The story may contain a grain of truth–and the visit was certainly real–but it also seems clear that Rockefeller even before his swearing-in, had begun… to think about fixing up the deteriorating neighborhood where he’d be spending the next few years

Andy Arthur ponders what would have happened to downtown If Not For the Empire Plaza.
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Former news reporter Ken Screven remembers Michael the Archangel, a legendary Albany street person of about four decades until he died in 2002. Someone made an eight-minute film about him.

I’d see Michael, dubbed the Archangel by a local judge, on Lark Street often, especially in Trinity United Methodist Church in the 1990s. My girlfriend at the time (now The Wife) was a tad afraid of him, and understandably so, but I usually got along with him. When I saw him with a legitimate job at the flower shop in the aforementioned Empire State Plaza, I was floored. But the gig, to no one’s surprise, didn’t last long.

There will likely be a casino in the area – for me personally, a big yuck – but Albany’s Exit 23 is now out of the running. Dan thinks that’s a good thing.

Crossing the street in Albany is difficult. Fundamentally true.

Albany, in an alternate future. A comprehensive plan for redeveloping the city of Albany — as proposed in 1963. As Albany Archives commented: “A convention center on Elk St, housing at Jennings Landing, ‘The Washington Park Arterial’… it’s so scary! Here’s the takeaway quote: ‘By 1980, the central area of Albany, like cities all over the United States, will be almost completely rebuilt.'”

Amy Biancolli feels a lullaby.
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When Sir Mix-a-Lot rapped “Baby Got Back” with the Seattle Symphony, David Alan Miller, conductor of the Albany Symphony Orchestra, was in the house.