Richie Was Having a Great Time

There's this art event happening in New York and London for the next few weeks, and I went to check it out this morning. It's the Telectroscope! If you want to know more about the Telectroscope and the myth the artist made up around it, you can follow the link.

What the Telectroscope does, in short, is allow Londoners to see New Yorkers, and New Yorkers Londoners. Just so you know you're really looking at London, New Yorkers get a view of the Tower Bridge in the background. Londoners get to see Lower Manhattan.

Because I'm a shallow simpleton, I tend to like gimmicky art. And I thought it would be fun to go check this sucker out and see if I could also catch a glimpse of a college friend now living in London. I went with another college friend (read her excellent review here), who pondered, "Wouldn't Skype be a lot easier and better since you can actually speak to each other?" "Yes," I said, "but this is art!"

When we got there, it was just us and a guy named Richie.

Our friend wasn't on the other side. We were a little early so we just sorta hung out for a while.

They had a whole system going on the London side. Giant crowds were being corralled a few at a time in front of the lens to spread their messages of good cheer or, more often, "What's your name?" written on the whiteboards provided. Richie wrote, "I'm Richie" probably about a dozen times in the ten minutes we were gawking at Londoners.

Meanwhile, I didn't know what to write (what do you want from me? I'm a writer), so I just sort of stood there awkwardly, somehow realizing that I was one-third of the people representing New York to the thousands of Londoners on the opposite side of this Telectroscope. Not only that, but we learned that the Londoners were being charged a pound to come up close to this thing, so I felt the pressure of giving them their money's worth. At least I was wearing my Mets cap, so I felt like a real New Yorker representing some real New York. A Yankees cap wearer in London didn't recognize the Mets logo. How does that work?

So you stand there with your whiteboards and try to communicate. Every two minutes or so, new Londoners were marched in front of the Telectroscope. Here's how they looked:

You can barely read the fucking whiteboards. But hey, look! The Tower Bridge!

Richie meanwhile was instructing the Londoners, through charades, how to hold their signs to make them legible. When you could finally read the goddamn things you learned some other stranger's name. Terrific. "Hi, Sophie, I'm Richie."

Because it was just the three of us, I felt bad leaving, but I really needed to get to work. So I wrote on my whiteboard, "We have to go to work. Bye." We got a hearty wave from the Londoners, and then we took off. The Londoners were left waving and writing to Richie, who was laughing in full merriment.

Later in the day, I heard from my friend in London who said there was a two-hour wait on her end, which totally blew our meeting time. Her four-year-old twins were disappointed, but forgot all about it when they got ice cream instead.

The unbridled enthusiasm for the project on the London side really made the New York side seem sad. Granted, it was 9:00 a.m. on a work day, and it's not like the Fulton Ferry Landing (the Telectroscope's location in New York) is easily accessible. But come on, man, there were three of us. From a city of nine million people, there were three of us. Oh, and a couple of workers. And one news guy who really couldn't have cared less. At one point, the Londoners got only a few of the news guy's ass. For two hours they waited just to see an arse. Poor bastards.

Still, my London-based friend and I may try again. Maybe Richie will still be there. At least he was saving me from terrible awkwardness.