3 lessons in good experience from New York City today

Three things New York City can teach you about good experience. I just came across these all today and thought I'd share the contradictions.

Over at Herald Square, not far from Macy's, the new JC Penney's gets reviewed by the NYTimes fashion section, with amusingly (and perhaps predictably) snobby results:

J. C. Penney has always trafficked in knockoffs that aren't quite up to Canal Street's illegal standards. It was never "get the look for less" so much as "get something vaguely shaped like the designer thing you want, but cut much more conservatively, made in all-petroleum materials, and with a too-similar wannabe logo that announces your inferiority to evil classmates as surely as if you were cursed to be followed around by a tuba section."

The rest of the article is complimentary, in a faint-praise sort of way, ceding that it's "a clean new space in Midtown to buy affordable clothes in hard-to-find sizes, as well as attentive service from attitude-free professionals."

Lesson: Thin is in.

But over in Brooklyn it's hip to be round - that is, to have a fashionable potbelly. If macho is out, and the recession doesn't allow for metrosexual fashion choices, then "the Kramden" is the way to go. Even if trucker hats are out, the the look (if not the Dude) abides.

Lesson: Thin is not in.

And above all, a good experience is the High Line, one of the best new arrivals in New York City: a completely free public park repurposed from an old elevated train track.

Perhaps a glimpse at New York's post-peak-oil, climate-changed future? Low impact, community-minded, green construction fostering native plants, overlooking an attractively decaying pier, and (just missed it) sail traffic in the river. In the future the air is cleaner - and humid. Anyway, that's what I experienced in the moment below:

That vision is perhaps what the founders of the Water Pod have in mind... a waterborne experiment in art and sustainable living, covered here and pictured below:

Lesson: Out is in. It's cool to be outside!

• Aug 13, 2009
• IN: Customer Experience
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