Crying in Public
In Which We Don't Get a Plaque on a Central Park Bench
“Emma,” I was recently asked at a social gathering. “What are your top three personality traits?” At the time I did not answer this question because it sucks and I hated the person who asked me. Instead I said “That question sucks!” and moved on to talk to someone else. But now for you special people I do not hate I will share one of my top three personality traits:
Open mouthed sobbing in various public venues.
Last week I thought I was going to open-mouthed sob at Film Forum where I saw One Fine Morning, a movie I thought was going to be a French movie about an affair, and which actually turned out to be a French movie about watching your father die of a degenerative disease. The affair was just part of the movie being French. I recommend this movie, but in a chill way where I mainly want everyone else to go and then tell me that, yes, I was right, the male lead of this movie is very hot and very French.
This week I DID open mouthed sob alongside everyone else in the movie theater when I saw The Blue Caftan which every single person who can should immediately rush to see. This was also a movie which I thought was going to be about an affair but turned out to be not so much about an affair as it was about all the glory and beauty and pain that comes with being alive. The male lead of this movie is also very hot. And so is the female lead. And the story is so beautiful! And the film is so beautiful! And I could write a whole thing about it but instead I’m just going to tell you again to go see it and experience it for yourself.
So despite being a cynic and a critic, I am also an unmistakable romantic. I frequently read The New York Time’s mini love stories and modern love columns to induce tears (just like how I can cry at will if I think hard enough about how otters hold hands when they sleep). I want a love like that. I think love is beautiful. I find it questionable that people choose to publicize their loves in the newspaper of record and I also find it inspiring that you could love someone so much that you want The New York Times to know about it.
The cool thing about NYC is that I can also do this activity in an analog fashion, by walking around Central Park and reading the plaques on the benches. At first these plaques seem relatively innocuous. Most of the benches have them and they are mainly inscribed with sweet messages. Husbands leave them for their wives who like to walk around in the park, or wives leave them for husbands, or grandchildren get them for beloved grandparents on their anniversaries. Someone dedicated a bench to copywriters! It seems like a wonderful gift, a demonstration of love, a fun and quirky thing to do. A bench in Central Park! It is yours! That is adorable!
In the midst of reading a bunch of these a friend and I hit upon the question of how much they might cost. I am bad with money, believe that everything should be a little treat, and also have no sense of what a good price is for anything. This particular friend of mine is in grad school for economics. I thought the plaques might cost 500$ or something. He laughed and proposed 10,000$ for a plaque. That seemed ridiculously high.
Anyways—one of us was right and it wasnt me. 10,000$ for a plaque! That's the rent of a nice one bedroom in Williamsburg for two months (cries in housing crisis)! It's nine months of my current rent for my apartment with exactly zero natural light and two roommates (cries in housing crisis)! It's a romantic gesture I’d appreciate if the choice was a plaque versus a Cartier bracelet (cries in realizing that the possibly over 1000$ Cartier ring my dad found on the street was a dupe) but that I’d have trouble accepting when I’d see the cost broken down into over 100 Michelin starred dinners. Anyone who is reading this substack who is considering marrying me: Be cheap about the ring or get a family heirloom! Spend money on experiences and specifically a really nice romantic country house! Propose to me via a 10,000$ plaque on my favorite Central Park bench (it is a secret bench near the pond). For all the real couples who did this: Please please tell me you knew she was going to say yes ahead of time. That is a really expensive gesture to have flop.
But really, let’s get into the benches. If someone were to get me a bench, or if I were to get someone a bench (I will NEVER have those kinds of funds) how would this work? Well there are 10,000 benches in Central Park. Of these over 7,000 have been adopted through the Central Park Conservancy’s ADOPT-A-BENCH program. There are no more benches available in a number of the more desirable sections of the park. All the billionaires have already taken all the available benches near Strawberry Fields, so you cannot have your bench near John Lennon’s former home and assassination spot. The Boat Pond? Forget it.
Once you have chosen your bench in an undesirable section of the park you can choose the font of your message. The options are Helvetica, Times New Roman, Lithos Pro (which is my least favorite option), and Lucida Calligraphy. Honestly none of these are great but there are some obvious choices that are correct, and if you don’t know which they are I feel sorry for you I really do. The Park will monitor your message for appropriateness and reserves the right to not approve your message if it is lewd. Once they have received your full 10,000$ the fabricator will take around eight weeks to make the bench yours! So easy, so simple… so expensive.
I have engaged in a small amount of hypothetical research about if anyone would notice if I purchased the device used to attach and detach the plaques, had my own plaque made at the fraction of the cost, and installed it illegally. With 7,000 benches to keep track of, how would they know? Again—for legal purposes— this is purely hypothetical and I am an honorable person who would never do something like that. But keep your eyes peeled in Central Park. Who knows what I could be getting up to!
Other things I have going on that I may write about at a later date:
Listening obsessively to Caroline Polachek’s newest album and wondering if she wrote a song about Walter Benjamin’s Ninth Thesis on The Philosophy of History.
Listening obsessively to Lana Del Rey’s newest song A&W
Thinking obsessively about Mr. Flaco the Eurasian Eagle Owl
Making poor financial decisions involving beautiful dresses that I shall wear to publishing and literary magazine parties
Trying to scam my way into impressive dinner reservations for fractions of the price while thinking about this old New York Times Opinion piece.
That's all for this week,
Emma