Fuck The Vessel

"We were on assignment. We were supposed to kill 2 birds with one stone. Destroy a piece of corporate art...

Operation Latte Thunder, go.

and trash a franchise coffee bar."

Let's hope they put a starbucks in the thing.

I visited Hudson Yards and the Vessel on the opening day. I don't find the Vessel itself to be as architecturally offensive as others, I think it's a fine idea. A seven story mall, however, is a preposterous idea. In a day and age when malls are dying. Especially in a city! Malls were made to emulate city centers, and Manhattan already is great to wander around.

The whole experience is just so very clearly synthetic. There's no unifying theme or feel, other than that of "we spent a whole lot of money making this place, it can't fail".

I imagine I'll continue to see lots of marketing about it over the next 10 years, desperately trying to make it a tourist attraction. Maybe they'll succeed.

From https://www.newyorker.com/culture/cultural-comment/hudson-ya...

> Hudson Yards is a private space masquerading as a public one ... In reality it is an enclave, a high-end corporate park buoyed by six billion dollars in tax breaks—an amount that dwarfs the subsidies offered to Amazon for its scuttled Queens headquarters—and designed as a kind of amenity-stuffed Hotel California that its residents never have to leave ... The only thing that Hudson Yards is missing is its own weather ... what Hudson Yards really feels like is a nice airport terminal, with the High Line as its moving walkway"

Well at the very least one thing it has in common with the Eiffel Tower is that both were initially met with universal derision. The Eiffel Tower is now one of the most iconic and beloved landmarks in Paris...time will tell if the "Vessel" gets the same treatment.

“Fuck the vessel” can be taken more than one way. But that aside, I think is is great to have something weird in a city you can go visit. Something unusual that isn’t a business or a residence or a road. I think people stuck in a city all the time are missing out on nature, but something like the Vessel is an opportubity to escape and do something pointless for a few minutes.