Far West Side Story (Published 2004)

Correction Appended

NO one is in love today," says a man selling flowers. It is a brisk Sunday evening, but business is slow. The man stands on a traffic island near the Lincoln Tunnel -- a triangle surrounded by West 36th Street, the Dyer Avenue approach and the ramp from Ninth Avenue.

A billboard painted on a nearby building encourages passers-by to "See yourself in the Bahamas." For the drivers mired in the heavy traffic here, imagining themselves in Weehawken would require no less a leap of imagination. Below the ad, a window has been cut out of the black-painted bricks. Red light glows through a curtain, as if the Bahamas themselves were on the other side of the wall.

Eventually, the flower man picks up a clutch of roses and wades into the traffic like a fly-fisherman, gliding downstream with the traffic. He makes his way toward the tunnel entrance, ambles back, and works the ramp from Ninth venue. When he comes back to the island, his hands are empty. A dozen roses are making their way under the Hudson.

But such iconic scenes of the far West Side may soon be altered or disappear entirely. In June, a few months after the flower man made his hard-won sale, New York announced a sweeping plan to redevelop his neighborhood. The proposal would result in nothing less than the transformation of a 59-block area -- partly in Hell's Kitchen and partly in Chelsea -- that lies west of Seventh Avenue between 30th and 42nd Streets. If it all happens, the revamping would include not only a bigger Jacob K. Javits Convention Center and a new Jets stadium, each costing about $1.4 billion, but also the addition of the equivalent of 13 Empire State Buildings of commercial space and more than 12,000 apartments.

Given the sweep of the plan, many New Yorkers, including people who live or work on the far West Side, have strong opinions about it. The Jets stadium in particular has inspired much combat, and by late October the two sides in that battle had spent $11.5 million on television ads and other promotional material. And skirmishes are taking place over many other aspects of the proposal, with critics pointing to displaced businesses and residents, and supporters emphasizing the city's need for office and residential space. State economic development officials approved the Jets stadium last Thursday, and the City Planning Commission is to release its final environmental review of the city's overall West Side plan this week. But those are just two of the many hurdles these hot-button proposals must jump.

Often lost in this loud debate, however, is the day-to-day rhythm of the area as it exists now -- the clack of a train on the track, the tap of a stable hand hammering a horseshoe, the "Next!" of the hot dog vendor who works near the flower man. These vignettes, drawn over the last 12 months, furnish glimpses of a thriving if eccentric ecosystem, whose roots stretch back to the 19th century, to piers and slaughterhouses, and to the construction of the Lincoln Tunnel.