A Journal of Humor and Verbal Anarchy

 

sidewalk critic

Ezra ran into Fay Gougakis outside of Juna's the other day. She had some poor hapless fool in tow. As the guy squirmed like fish bait, Fay launched into a tirade about the aesthetics of the Commons.

Ithacans might consider pooling their resources to send Fay to Cornell's School of Architecture. (That will keep her away from the Commons more.) Or else, they should elect her mayor.

If you're new to Ithaca, haven't caught her act on Channel 78 as she lectures Common Council or just haven't bumped into one of Ithaca's most eccentric yet, let Ezra explain who she is. . Fay Gougakis is Ithaca's resident gladfly, the unofficial Mayor of Ithaca. She's been around for 20 years, griping about landlords, disrupting Common Council meetings, stalking Alan Cohen. Fay can usually be spotted wearing a bright yellow helmet and a fluorescent flak jacket, riding her trusty bike over to to Juna's every morning.

Fay graduated from saving whales and dophins to saving Ithaca. Inasmuch as Ithaca, unlike dolphins and whales, has no natural predators except it's own stupidity, Ezra can only imagine that she's declared war on brainlessness.

Fay was arrested once for getting into a screaming match with Alan Cohen in Council chambers. The cops hauled her away in handcuffs. News of the ruckus spread like wildfire over the back pages of the newspapers. A regular Ithaca cause celebre. Is that French? Some Ithacans have really gotten into francopilia lately (rhymes with necrophilia.) Paul Glover wants to organize a French festival in Ithaca to celebrate France's UN stand against George Bush's ugly little war. He overlooks the fact that France had a few ugly little wars of its own. Paul is a '60s style radical who also seems to overlook the fact that this ain't the '60s.

The sad truth is that Fay has been much maligned and ridiculed by the very community she cares about so much. Nobody cares about this town like Fay. She even cares about what happens down at the Inlet despite the fact that she lives in Fall Creek. Nobody in Ithaca gives a hoot about the inlet - - except Alan Cohen's buddies, the restaurateurs and bar owners who run the show down there and, of course the Cornell rowers. Maybe Fay wants to be on the crew team.

On this particular morning Fay was haranguing some poor guy about the new brickwork on the Commons. So it ain't so straight. The guys who were laying it look like they might have learned their trade at the Chanticleer. And she soon goton to the subject of her favorite pet peeve. The ugly gray wooden 4 ft. high cover over the penny fountain between Juna's and the old Home Dairy. (Do you know how many people don't know the Home Dairy went out? There are still folks coming downtown looking for the Rosebud which went out 10 years ago. The fact that these same folks come downtown only once in ten years is a reason the Home Dairy and the Rosebud went out of business in the first place. People never seem to connect the dots around Ithaca. Or they assume their neighbors are going down to the Commons every weekend as proxies to support downtown businesses.)

Fay hates that ugly gray fountain cover with a vengeance. "Does that look aesthetically pleasing on the Commons?" Ezra heard her shouting.

Fay has only one volume - loud!!! When Fay goes into the Greek Orthodox church to say confession, the priest has to empty the building to afford her a little privacy.

But you know something, she's absolutely on target sometimes!

A bunch of cub scouts with a gift certificate from Home Depot could have designed a better solution to winterizing the fountain. Ezra thinks that the thing they have now, this gray wooden stage- like thing, could have made an interesting soap box. For spontaneous orations and agitprop. The sad fact is that there haven't been any Wobblies around town for decades. If there ever were Wobblies in Ithaca. Ezra has been searching for some sign of Ithaca's radical past. Like the traditional joke about Ithaca summers, the radical past probably lasted one day.

Al Cohen would probably turn that gray thingee into one of those lazy susan type pillories like in the movie Hunchback of Notre Dame. Give Fay a few spins.

Ugliness seems to be Ithaca's stock and trade. Let's face it, outside of the spectacular natural surroundings, a few buildings here and there, what's beautiful about Ithaca? If the new Alernatives Credit Union building across from the bus station represents Ithaca's latest architectural trend, give us a break, Look how ugly the Cornell campus is. A hodgepodge of styles from neo-Gothic to Office Max Modern. Functional clutter with no clue as to aesthetic unity. Check out the Vet building. Looks like some sort of a big red brick space heater or Coleman stove with glassed in stairwells.

Maybe we should really send Fay to Architecture school!

Sure, you say, Ithaca is just some small cold Northern town out in the boonies. Plagued with a bad climate and a worse economy. Not the Paris of the Finger Lakes or anything like that. Why would you expect to find Brancusi's on the Commons?

Ezra happens to think that beauty is the essence of life. The lack thereof reflects a lot of what's wrong in our society. For thousands of years, beauty has been the province of the well-heeled with a feeble trickle down effect benefiting the rest of humanity. That's the reason for museums. The real expensive VanGogh's , however, are kept under lock and key in some Japanese bank vault.

A local gallery owner told Ezra that Ithaca has the worse market for the visual arts he's ever seen. People will not spend $50 let alone $300 for an original painting. The large, ambitious, trendy gallery - Wessex -Bristol - over Angel Heart closed within 3 months of opening. Artists, on the other hand, complain that the their stuff goes unexhibited except in places like Autumn Leaves where the owner uses art to sell apple turnovers in his cafe. Little Joe also has a decidedly neo-Stalinist taste in art. If it's not a painting of a Green Party pioneer biting into an Autumn Leaves' apple turnover, forget it. The painting won't hang there. Ezra would think that artists might have gotten the message by now and moved to New Hope, Pa.

So what about the Ithaca Art Trail? Consider renaming it the Ithaca Art Crawl, Do you think people ever visit some of those remote studios out in the suburbs? Where you see a Cape Cod with two rusted Volvos parked outside and a sign that indicates it's a point along the Art Trail?

One day Ezra would like to sneak up on some unsuspecting outpost of art for art's sake and paint -NUDES! CHECK IT OUT! - on the signboard. Then, see if art tourism picks up.

The art and artifacts exhibited at the See-Spot Gallery represents the future of the visual arts in Ithaca, The cutting edge, if you want to go that far. Maybe you just want to go and cut your wrists. Who knows?

In closing, Ezra would like to spring a fantasy on the reader(s). In his soul of souls, he'd like to see something like an Ottoman Revival in Ithaca. A warm, bright, sensuous, sun-drenched, colorful celebration of the senses let loose on drab, dour Ithaca.

Turn the Farmer's Market into the Casbah. Have Moorish arches instead of golden arches. Bring back seraglios, eunuchs, minarets, janissaries, a sultan's palace or two.

Hey, maybe we could get one of Sadam's presidential palaces for a new city hall.
Comments invited at: ezrakidder@gmail.com - Peace, Ezra at 2:20 AM