Back from vacation, and quoted by Macleans

Well, folks, I'm back from a month-long vacation in Italy. More on that later, as well as sundry and scintillating politico-economic and sociological comments on the Old World vs. the New. In the meantime, I'm cited extensively in an article in this week's Macleans, Canada's premiere weekly news magazine. (Actually, it's the only one, so a fortiori it's the premiere one.) The interesting thing is that it's as a music critic, not an economist. Did I miss my calling? Here's the link:

http://www2.macleans.ca/2009/09/02/more-cried-the-conductor-more/

Oh, yes, there will be more economics later.

"The score contains everything but the essential"

A while back, I wrote an essay comparing two performances of the Mahler Fourth Symphony, for the National Arts Centre's new "musicbox", which archives some of the NAC Orchestra's finest performances as captured by the microphones of the CBC. Here is a link to the article in English:

http://tinyurl.com/mu7c7x

And here's a link to the article in French:

http://tinyurl.com/l5zdd8

Bons baisers de Montreal

If you've been following me on Twitter, you know I'm back from Montreal. It has been my primary source of urban oxygen for the past year, when, for a variety of reasons I don't want to bore you with, visiting New York City, where I lived as a graduate student and subsequently visited frequently, wasn't possible. Now, a couple of disclaimers. It doesn't make sense to compare New York, a city of, what, fifteen million people, with Montreal, that has two, or perhaps three, if you include the metropolitan area. If you wanted to compare by population size and rough geographical area, Boston, Barcelona, or Munich would be better comparators. In the same way, you wouldn't compare Vancouver to Los Angeles, you'd compare it to Seattle. Having said all of that, I'd argue that, for my money, if a weekend of urban pleasures is what you have in mind, Montreal is hard to beat, and hits the sweet spot in terms of the trade-off between urban density and depth on the one hand and liveability and manageability on the other (the same might be true for a choice of where to live, but I'll leave that bigger question aside).

Like New York, Montreal is eminently walkable, and it has an excellent metro system, and easy to hail cabs. Dining and shopping, as you would expect, are excellent, and, even with the Canadian dollar moving back towards par with the US dollar, still a good deal cheaper. Ditto for hotel rooms. Of course, it also has the unique appeal of being the world's most important French-speaking metropolis outside Paris, and has a distinctly un-Anglo-Saxon character, a refreshing change from Ottawa (where I live) or Toronto (which I have never really taken a fancy to, despite its many attractions).

Also, like New York, and like all great cities indeed, Montreal is a city of neighbourhoods, cheek by jowl, but yet each distinct, offering its own particular brand of urban interest. Downtown is the area that most tourists know, and stick to. The old port area by the river has also become rather touristy as of late. But for me the real interest lies in the area where "+" marks the spot, the intersection of Sherbrooke, the main east-west drag, and St. Laurent, the main north-south one, that, in fact, divided the city into the traditionally English-speaking and French-speaking zones, west and east of St. Laurent, respectively. While this is more myth than reality nowadays, with Anglophones and Francophones living on both sides of the putative divide, it's not entirely wrong. Look at the election map: the constituency just west of St. Laurent votes Liberal, and just east Bloc Quebecois (in fact, it's the seat of the party's leader). From this intersection, you can walk up St. Laurent, or the "Main" in Montreal slang, the old Jewish main street of the city (made most famous by Mordechai Richler). Most of the old establishments are gone, replaced by hip and trendy restaurants and nightspots. My favourite, Buonanotte, entices you in with a gaggle of waitresses who look and dress like runway models (I'm not complaining, by the way), but backs it up with superb food and a deep wine list. More like Europe than Anglo-America, it's both a fine dining establishment in the early evening and then happening nightspot into the wee hours. (If you're there after midnight, by the way, and have a large enough group, go for the bottle service in the VIP lounge area. $200 for a fifth bottle of Grey Goose, split five or six ways, works out much cheaper than individual drinks.) If you go further up the street, into the former Little Italy, you can try Casa Napoletana, or Bottega, for authentic wood-burning-oven pizza.

Go further east, to St. Denis, and walk across Mont-Royal, and you're in the heart of the Plateau, the traditional centre for French-speaking intellecual life in the city. It's where most of the Francophone writers, filmmakers, artists, and so forth live. It has a laid back, bohemian character, a little bit like the Village in New York, that's in marked contrast to the glitz and glamour of the Main. Connecting these two neighbourhoods are interesting cross-streets, such as Prince Arthur, a pedestrian-only thoroughfare with some interesting cafes. The most interesting new arrival is Marche 27, on Prince Arthur, just west of St. Laurent. Step in here, and you feel like you're dining in the Village, or maybe Nolita. Head south down St. Denis, as the street slopes steeply down towards the river, and you get into the Latin Quarter, another packed with restaurants and bars, many catering to the university students at UQAM nearby. And all of this is just scratching the surface of potentially interesting neighbourhoods to visit, walk around in, and dine and shop in.

All of this ... just two hours' drive from Ottawa, the civil servants' town that fun forgot? It feels more like jumping into a transporter a la "Star Trek" and winding up on an alien planet!

Back from the Big Apple

If you've been following my tweets you will gather that I was in New York City for a while, and am just back. You'll find some pictures on Twitpic - links from my profile on Twitter - and in due course, after some further ruminations, a post here will follow. In the interim, some random (and, hopefully, sufficiently impertinent) observations:

(1) New York City is more like Bombay or Bangkok than it is like Boston or Toronto, i.e., more a Third World City than a First World City. Piece of evidence (1): the ubiquitous Korean grocer. Piece of evidence (2): restaurant washrooms. If you know NYC, 'nuff said.

(2) The New York yellow cab is one of America's great contributions to world civilization. Second only to ice machines on every floor in hotels. Actually, now that you can swipe your credit card and go (without signing), I'd say in first place by a hair.

(3) Dining on the Upper West Side is marginally worse than dining in Ottawa, and marginally better than the average Glebe restaurant. Dining in Nolita is better than dining anywhere in North America, except Montreal, which has even honours.

(4) The lobby lounge of the Mandarin Oriental Hotel on Columbus Circle is a reminder of how breathtaking beautiful New York is, when seen from the correct altitude. Also, a reminder that you should bring your American Express Platinum card.

That's about it for now, folks. Agree? Disagree? Don't care? Post a comment either way. (Now, that's a subtle reference to NPR's "Car Talk". If you get that one, you're very, very good.)

A microcosm of America in despair

As you've gathered from my last post, I was just in Lake Placid, New York over the Canadian long weekend. Having recently only visited major cities on the two coasts, it was eye-opening to be back in small town America, and the contrast with Canada quite startling. Now, I realize it's not legitimate to compare Ottawa, a government town, known as fat city even in Canada, with Lake Placid, a faded resort town that has seen better days, but still the juxtaposition, and contrast, are interesting. In Ottawa, there is very little visible sign of a recession in progress. Restaurants, bars, and shops are always packed, the patios full on warm evenings, lots of traffic everywhere, and a general sense of bustle and activity. In Lake Placid, the once-charming Main Street is now almost a ghost town, the formerly elegant boutiques replaced by tacky souvenir stores that do very little business, even when times are good. There are four liquor stores on the small stretch of downtown Main Street, lots of fast food joints, several realtors, but not a single grocery store, health food store, or anywhere to get something moderately nutritious that isn't junk food. Lots of shuttered businesses, buildings for sale, others looking derelict or abandoned.

Now that's downtown Lake Placid. A few miles away, is the ultra high end, luxurious, and posh Lake Placid Lodge, a discreet and opulent haven that attracts well-heeled travellers from around the world and the occasional New York investment banker or celebrity who wants to get away from it all for a few days. The food is fabulous, nutritious, and tasty, the wine list extensive, the service impeccable, and the prices ... well, rather high. These are the two faces of America. A society in which the American dream has become, for many, a myth, and in which income inequality is on the rise while proleterian wages stagnate. The dream, such as it is, in tatters, is fed and fuelled by a culture of celebrity that seems increasingly disconnected from the reality of most peoples' lives. As a cash clerk at a local convenience store told us, she's making minimum wage, while a box of cereal now costs $5 at the one and only grocery store in town. Meanwhile, back at the Lodge, the chef is preparing a special tasting menu and suggested wine pairs for his bon vivant patrons the same evening. Two worlds, that seem to be diverging.

Smart border, forsooth!

I'm just back from the Canadian long weekend, named in honour of the Queen who gave Canada its independence. I was in Lake Placid, New York, and got there by crossing into the United States at the Seaway International Bridge, which crosses the St. Lawrence River between Cornwall, Ontario, and Massena, New York. This got me to experience a land crossing between the two countries for the first time in a while. All of this talk of the need for a smart border between the United States and Canada needs to confront the hard reality that the border infrastructure as it exists today is far from smart. It's pretty dumb, and really antiquated, and can't handle the large volume of people and commerce that cross everyday. The world's biggest trading relationship needs something better. At Seaway, for example, the bridge itself is in terrible shape, and the pavement all dug up, so that cars and trucks are bottlenecked into a few lanes in each direction. When I crossed, it wasn't particularly busy, but it was already getting backed up. I can only imagine how bad it was for someone who crossed at the very end of the long weekend, last night. The truth is, successive governments in both countries have taken the border for granted, and even 9/11 and its aftermath haven't led to much in the way of the new investment in the necessary infrastructure improvements that would be needed to make the land border crossings halfway decent. I'm not even of talking of a truly smart border, such as exists in Europe in the Schengen area, with a common perimeter around members, allowing for nuisance-free travel with no border inspections, allowing one to cross seamlessly from country to country. Now imagining such a border for the United States and Canada seems so remote as to be only a pipe dream. That's why I say, smart border, forsooth!

Digesting the Indian election results

It's worth remembering a few factoids about Indian electoral politics, to help interpret the results. (1) Participation rates are high, by any standard. (2) Participation rates are higher, other things equal, the poorer you are. This is the opposite of just about every Western democracy. (3) If you're a politician, you're less likely to win, other things equal, being the incumbent. This "anti-incumbency bias" is also at variance with most Western countries. (4) Regional issues matter. (5) This, coupled with shifting alliances between the national and regional parties, mean that national trends don't predict constituency by constituency election outcomes very well. (6) As India follows the Westminister first-past-the-post (called "winner take all" in US parlance) system, rather than proportional representation, small differences in popular vote amongst parties will have magnified effects on the distribution of seats.

In light of these, the Congress' victory, strengthening the mandate that they earned in 2004, is striking and surprising, and indeed impressive. It is true that the principal opposition party, the BJP, has suffered its share of infighting, and has been in something of a state of disarray in its leadership. But what seems to have resonated most with voters, based on people I've spoken to on the scene, is that the Congress was seen as a safe choice in difficult times. As India deals with the aftermath of the horrific terrorist attack in Mumbai last year, the possible spillover into India of the unfolding events in neighbouring Pakistan, and the aftermath of the global financial crisis, returning the Congress to power was a vote for the status quo. Voters also evidently gave the Congress high marks for finalizing the Indo-US nuclear cooperation deal, and pushing it through the Lok Sabha, despite opposition from the Left parties (who had their worst electoral results in years and will be a non-factor in the new scheme of things).

In terms of individual winners and losers, the election victory validates the alliance of Sonia Gandhi, the head of the Congress Party, and Manmohan Singh, the Prime Minister. They have a clear division of labour: Mrs. Gandhi runs the party, and Dr. Singh runs the government, largely keeping out of the political fray, and maintaining a squeaky clean image. Another clear winner is Jairam Ramesh, who had quit the Union Council of Ministers to run the election campaign as the party's chief strategist. It will be a major suprise if he doesn't receive a major Cabinet post. A new star on the scene is Shashi Tharoor, the former Under-Secretary General of the United Nations. Bitterly disappointed at being passed over for the top job, he has now catapulted himself into Indian politics in a major way, with a landslide victory in his constituency in Kerala. (In India, all numbers are large, and a landslide is a winning margin of about 100,000 votes!) Watch for him, too, to have an important portfolio in the new Cabinet.

In the midst of this overall good news for the Congress, several key ministers in the previous government went down to defeat. Most noteworthy is Mani Shankar Aiyar. Long the conscience of his caste (Aiyar was the only Brahmin from Tamil Nadu in the Lok Sabha), party, and the country, preserving its Gandhian and socialist traditions, an unrepetant secularist and critic of all fundamentalisms, a sharp and keen wit, and without a doubt the most brilliant political orator in India or just about anywhere (that, too, in three languages -- English, Hindi, and his native Tamil), he will be very much missed by his many admirers. Perhaps, taking a cue from Tharoor, Aiyar might now enter the fray of a major international organization? Let us hope so.