Ever tried to get a seat in Starbucks on Eighth Avenue between 22nd and 23rd Streets around noon during the work week? It’s almost impossible trying to compete with PS 11’s tween crowd out on their lunch break. The girls stroll in with pizza, Chinese food or other food items that are not on Starbucks’ menu. A few might get a coffee beverage but most just get water. Every now and then one girl might buy a pastry and take it back to her table where her friends haggle over who gets a bite. “It is quite a cafeteria scene,” said a female customer ordering a non-fat latte.
The baristas rush to serve their guests unfazed by the cloister of young girls. One staff member on his break even went over and sat for a chat with the girls before having to give up his seat to new arrivals, late in joining their friends.
But as soon as they were done with their meals they dispersed, just a suddenly as they had appeared as if they had never been.
The posting of posters in Chelsea is prolific and unattractive. Posters can be found on the temporary walls around every construction site in the neighborhood, even though there are signs that read, “Post No Bills.” The content on some of the posters contains subjects that should be censored from young children. However there seems to be no stopping these overnight vandals. Since according to Section 145.30 of the New York penal code the law prohibits affixing advertisements to someone else’s property.
Strolling down 22nd Street pushing a stroller with my charge, I strike up a conversation with an accompanying mom of two. The subject is the number of stores closing in the community. “Are you aware that the hardware store on the corner of Ninth Avenue and 23rd Street will be closing in 3 months?” she asks. It was my turn to be shocked. The news that Dan’s Chelsea Guitar, an icon of Chelsea might be closing up shop and moving by the end of summer had barely been digested, and then this. Where is the neighborhood going?
“Whoever came up with this idea?” asked Danny, the owner of Dan’s Chelsea Guitar. “Do they think Europeans fly here all the way from Europe to see shopping malls! What are they going to do? Buy a Jamba!” He continued in his scorn against the commercializing of the community. Chelsea is fast losing all its originality and with the asking prices for rent, only high-end merchandise stores might be moving in.
Chain and Mom and Pop stores, alike, are unable to withstand the exorbitant rent increases in Chelsea. Recently two more stores have joined the ranks of the departed. Ben and Jerry’s, the ice cream chain on 23rd Street between Seventh and Eight Avenues, seemed under renovations over the past few weeks, but on investigating the site, it proved to be closed. Neighbor, Royal Choice French Dry Cleaners at 320 W23rd Street, between Eight and Ninth Avenues is also closing its doors on Friday of this week.
“I have used them for 5 years,” said Mary S., 43, a mother of two, who has a busy schedule and depends on the dry cleaners reliability and close proximity to her home. With the store closing down due to a rent increase of five to seven thousand dollars, the owner, who got a lease extension last year, has no other choice but to close up shop.
“There is a place across the street from him,” said Mary S., “but they look so crowded.” She, like others in the community, is struggling to find substitutions for the stores they have loved and trusted.
Living and working in Chelsea over the past 6 years has made clear that nothing is permanent. With so many luxury apartments being constructed and the neighborhood property values increasing, it is no wonder so many businesses are closing out and families moving to the other side of the river to Brooklyn.
The most recent business to go is the Clearview West Theater, which has been in operation for 11 years. The theater which sports twin auditoriums and is known in the neighborhood mainly for its big movie premiers, showcasing celebrities such as Joaquin Phoenix and Mark Wahlberg, has had poor attendance in recent years.
So it’s not that great a surprise that it is closing and that so few people are aware that it is no longer in operation. “It’s closed!” exclaimed a front desk staff member at New York City Sports Club, located on Eight Avenue between 23rd and 24th Streets, on Friday when asked if he knew of the closing. An usher at Clearview Theater to the East of Eight Avenue on 23rd Street, confirmed the closing, however he was unclear as to what would be replacing the theater, “Possibly a parking lot,” he suggested, which is greatly needed around here.
However, through further investigation it has been uncovered that the School of Visual Arts will be using the venue as a showcase and laboratory for the arts produced by the school in film and moving image. It won’t be a commercially operated theater anymore, but will boast a full calender of special events.
So you have decided that you are good with kids and you would like to become a nanny instead of working in an elementary school. The one on one situation suits you better. Some of the ways in which to go about finding yourself a job would be through an agency, an online nanny service or on your own; searching newspapers, walking the parks, pediatrician offices and other children/parent friendly atmospheres. After you have decided which route is best for you, find out what you will need and what to expect.
There are few laws that protect domestic workers, hence when entering the field make sure you know what you are getting into even if you are only doing the job to pay the bills and don’t intend to make a career of it. The NannyNetwork.com provides valuable legal information that many individuals entering the field are not aware of.
I conducted a survey in Thomas Moore Park in Chelsea and at the Chelsea Piers yesterday and was disappointed to find that approximately 60 percent of the 10 nannies interviewed did not get there taxes paid by their employers.
I then called a mentor of mine in the field to share the information with her and find out if her employers of six years paid her taxes and was told, “Taxes! Oh no they would never do that.”
The article referred, The New Nanny Dairies Online, is two years old, but provides a good example of the conflict between a nanny’s personal life and her job. The nanny in the article may not be showing good judgment in what she reveals about her personal life and where she does it. However, the issue discussed is a common struggle for most members of the profession, “How to perform the job and have an active personal life at the same time that doesn’t conflict with the job. How to find the energy and the attention needed for both without short changing the other.”
Sandy, a nanny, said, “I went on a date recently, and I found it hard to maintain a conversation. I have gotten to the point where I only know how to converse with parents and kids. It’s hard to talk with single people.”
The demands of the families that nannies work for are high and all consuming. There is a lot of overtime, weekends and traveling with very little personal time or space. Time-offs are almost impossible to get because there are no nanny assistants.
An acquaintance once, in a moment of amusement, told me that I had a cushy job. My first reaction was to laugh the statement away, but in retrospect she made me think about what other members of my community might be thinking when they see a nanny pass by on the street pushing a stroller or sitting in the park while the children we take care of run around. I wonder if they know the responsibilities that our job involves. The risk, the discomfort we experience knowing our every action, every word is being scrutinized, not just by our employers but by almost every resident we come in contact with in the community, even the children we take care of.
“Cushy,” its an interesting view of a nanny’s job. Speaking with a fellow nanny, Helen, on Thursday on the subject of what nannies experience on his/her job she said, “We are treated as one dimensional beings on the job, as if we don’t have lives outside of our jobs.” Most adults we come in contact with still treat us as if we are in the 19th Century, like servants not professionals.
With the re-emergence of the decade old case involving convicted babysitter, Audrey Edmunds, 45, for the death of 7-month-old Natalie Beard, I am freshly reminded of the risk my colleagues and I take each day we go to work. We are expected to always have a clear head. Moments of anger can be detrimental, not only in the extreme cases like Audrey Edmunds but on a mental level. Most of us, nannies, are integrally involved in the first five years of the children we care for, hence a fit of anger, that could be seen as normal with another adult, is “scary” to a child.
As summer approaches many homeless people will be taking to the parks and street corners in New York City. In the five years I have worked and lived in Chelsea, this has been the pattern. Some of these street side residents are teenagers who have been sexual and physically abused, put out by family members, or are suffering confusion due to their sexual-orientation.
I am grateful to learn from the Chelsea Now, that the Safe Horizon’s Streetwork Project will be opening a brand new 24-hr shelter program in Chelsea for young people living on the streets.
Two summers ago as I wandered after my charge in the Clement Clarke Moore Park, affectionately known as the “Seal Park” by the local parents due to the two seal statues that spout water for the children to cool-off in during the summer months, I noticed a gray haired man approaching individuals and inquiring whether they were residents of Chelsea. He asked them to sign a petition to stop the General Theological Seminary (GTS) from building a structure that did not fit the criteria of the historical district and would change the skyline of the neighborhood.
In October 2006, GTS unveiled a revised design of its controversial 17-story tower at Chelsea’s monthly community meeting reported in the October 20 - 26, 2006 issue of the Chelsea Now. Although the revised plan previews a slimmer, shorter tower with less glass and more brick material befitting the historical design of the neighborhood, the community board still withholds its approval. The community’s opposition to the plan despite the good deeds performed by GTS in the neighborhood is expressed by David Ferguson in Talking Point in last week’s edition of Chelsea Now.
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