City Desk: Props to the Pram

I KNEW the situation had reached critical mass when I saw, on a street corner a block from my apartment, a thick-gauge wire-mesh garbage can holding-a mortgage? A sheaf of dollar bills? Presentation copies of John McCain’s energy policy? None of the above. What some New Yorker had discarded because, once broken, it was more cheaply and easily replaced than fixed, was a baby stroller. “The prams go rolling on,” wrote W. H. Auden (“Autumn Song,” 1936), and he hadn’t even moved to New York yet.

I live on a sort of dirt-track speedway of strollers, thanks to two institutions only steps from my door. One is a city welfare office, an imposing yet sad building that anchors one corner of an intersection. Some thought went into the design of it, in the La Guardia administration I would guess, for stylized wings sprout from each roof corner. But they are not numerous enough to be ornamental, nor are they large enough even to seem functional. Their futility serves instead as a metaphor for what transpires within. The building always seems to be girdled in scaffolding, which its bureaucrats lack the clout to remove, unless for reasons of their own they welcome its presence. It does give some shelter (except for leaks) to the people who pass in and out, and to the streetcorner merchants who serve them. A fast-food cart always sits outside the door; next to it, a table offering children’s books (Elmo learns the alphabet) and educational placemats (presidents, famous African

About the Author

Richard Brookhiser

Historian Richard Brookhiser is a senior editor of National Review and a senior fellow at the National Review Institute.

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I KNEW the situation had reached critical mass when I saw, on a street corner a block from my apartment, a thick-gauge wire-mesh garbage can holding-a mortgage? A sheaf of dollar bills? Presentation copies of John McCain’s energy policy? None of the above. What some New Yorker had discarded because, once broken, it was more cheaply and easily replaced than fixed, was a baby stroller. “The prams go rolling on,” wrote W. H. Auden (“Autumn Song,” 1936), and he hadn’t even moved to New York yet.

I live on a sort of dirt-track speedway of strollers, thanks to two institutions only steps from my door. One is a city welfare office, an imposing yet sad building that anchors one corner of an intersection. Some thought went into the design of it, in the La Guardia administration I would guess, for stylized wings sprout from each roof corner. But they are not numerous enough to be ornamental, nor are they large enough even to seem functional. Their futility serves instead as a metaphor for what transpires within. The building always seems to be girdled in scaffolding, which its bureaucrats lack the clout to remove, unless for reasons of their own they welcome its presence. It does give some shelter (except for leaks) to the people who pass in and out, and to the streetcorner merchants who serve them. A fast-food cart always sits outside the door; next to it, a table offering children’s books (Elmo learns the alphabet) and educational placemats (presidents, famous African