By Rev. Billy
The behemoth cannot be fully taken in. New York’s latest supertall rises into the sky like a steel interstate disappearing around the curvature of the Earth. You don’t know how this building is possible, and standing on the street corner looking up, you aren’t sure you want to know. It’s the ultimate gesture of USA post-war capitalism. It is Big Oil meets Infinite Credit meets Distraction meets War.
The violence of this bank makes for a scary presence on the uptown Park Avenue edge of Grand Central Station. The people look up once and then down and don’t look up again. Maybe they recognize it for what it actually is. This skyscraper is the color of old world war tanks. There is a life-in-Germany-in-1944 kind of feel. A helpless citizenry tiptoes around the world institution that year after year pours the most climate-harming toxins into the air, water and soil.
The billion dollar a month profits of Chase Bank come from the war against the Earth and the people who get in the way. The building’s lobby sports a big red white and blue flag at the top of a sort of indoor hill, waving valiantly in an artificial wind blowing from hidden vents. The top fossil bank, pouring methane and carbon into the air as the planet submits its 30th month of record heat…. is converting its mass mortality event into ordinary patriotism.
The 14,000 bank workers must work in the building – no remote work is permitted. On the building’s opening day, after a rally in the football field size lobby, they were shot into the sky by a bank of elevators, up to their air-sealed universe, 19 restaurants (with kitchen-to-desk delivery), a hair salon, meditation rooms, fitness centre, medical clinic and a pub… I wonder if these banker people in this ‘office-wellness’ luxury prison ever tussle with climate change questions.
And, the thing of it is, this 4 billion dollar building is so obviously the monument to a single individual’s personal issues, (CEO Jamie Dimon’s fear and shame and fear of smallness). That’s where suddenly this massive building loses its mass, becomes a comic book, and if you are still there looking up, you find yourself laughing on the sidewalk.
Part One of a Series