Tearing Down Kiosks on Nassau Street Would Diminish Idea of Community Itself
To the Editor:
I wish to add my voice to those opposing removal of the Nassau Street kiosks but from a slightly different perspective.
Twenty years ago, I began visiting the kiosks several times a week for a period of eight months. My initial goal was simply to photograph material relating to the then-unfolding presidential campaign. Soon, however, I became fascinated by the way all the posted items, not just the political ones, related to each other, how the weather and the imposition of new messages over old were creating a kind of running museum exhibit, one that changed weekly if not daily. My ambitions became more artistic and eventually the Princeton Arts Council hosted a well-received exhibit featuring a wide range of images.
Advocates for tearing down the kiosks call them a mess. Understandably, I don’t see it that way. I still make it a point to visit the kiosks and still find the visits endlessly rewarding, revealing in so many ways who we are as a community.
The kiosks represent a vanishing world, a world of paper and print, a world where you have to do more than press a keynote to get your message out, one which demands that you actually take the time to go outside and even perform modest physical labor to let the community know what you are up to.
I suppose in the end what I’m trying to say is that the kiosks provide a unique mirror for viewing ourselves. They are a running reflection of who we are, a stage on which time and space come together. Tear down the kiosks and you are removing much more than a couple of structures; you are diminishing the idea of community itself.