And a few random articles
Jul. 31st, 2010 08:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
conuly
One on (oh-so-unofficially) segregated schools for Roma in Hungary
One on child slavery in Haiti
And one on teenaged day camps in NYC
Come to Manhattan, a Web site urges young people, and experience a new sleep-away camp “in a totally cool, totally New York environment.”
The hip summer camp — it may be the one niche that has been underrepresented in the extensive options available until now. What is cool, after all, about bug juice, reveille and mildewing beach towels?
The three-week program, at the 92nd Street Y, is an urban answer to camping, an alternative that eschews the wild in favor of the hot. Called Passport NYC, it is a pre-preprofessional program for teenagers who can choose to focus on one of four creative fields. Fashion-focused students as young as 13 met, for example, with members of Michael Kors’s staff. Campers in the music program had the opportunity to hang out with the indie Brooklyn promoter Todd P.
Young people in the other two fields, film and culinary arts, also do their share of networking, a skill that has somehow become part of modern-day camp craft.
As ever-younger children insist on comporting themselves like over-it-all adolescents, even the term camper may be considered passé in some circles. At Teen Hampton, a program on the East End of Long Island, they avoid the word, said the owner, Jay Jacobs, so as not to alienate their main clients, Manhattanites ages 11 to 14. That crowd no longer “thinks of day camp as cool,” Mr. Jacobs said. Sure, Teen Hampton has a daily swim and tennis and possibly even some bonding and heartbreaking — but the young people who go there would probably prefer to think of it as an “organized club,” he explained.
Most camps have young people waking early and rushing to get somewhere by 8 or 9 — what, only 12 and already a slave to the Man? At Teen Hampton, activities do not start until 10:30, to accommodate middle schoolers’ sleep rhythms. Campers — patrons? — make their own schedules, choosing on a day-to-day basis whatever electives capture their interest. So how to explain the name of the camp, which serves children as young as those entering sixth grade? The name, Mr. Jacobs said, “is aspirational.”
At Passport NYC, the ethos is also aspirational, but if the young people there are racing toward adulthood, it is the Bravo television version, a New York existence in which everyone is passionately creative. On most days, the campers — a mix from all over the country, as well as Mexico, Canada and the Upper East Side — are out the door of the Y by 8:30 a.m., on their way to their first class or session with someone plugged in. “They’re really commuting,” said Molly Hott, the director of Passport NYC. “Parents today want to know their children are directed.”
By 11:30 a.m. on a recent Thursday, teenagers were wiping down kitchen counters in the basement kitchen of an Upper West Side synagogue, having already whipped up baba ghanouj and couscous with stewed vegetables for a Moroccan Shabbat dinner (the camp is financed, in part, by the Foundation for Jewish Camp, and has a community service component).
Some parents pay good money so that their children can come as close to possible to living out the fantasy that they are demigods battling mythological monsters; at Passport NYC, parents are paying ($3,900 for three weeks) so their children can test out the fantasy of a glamorous New York career.
“Meeting Johnny Iuzzini” — Jean Georges’s pastry chef — “was a life-changing experience,” said Jesse Nagelberg, 16, of East Brunswick, N.J., who was in the kitchen that morning. “To see him use molecular gastronomy, to take a strawberry compote and put it into calcium nitrate so that it totally changed the consistency — it opened my mind to an entire world of pastry.” Jesse already runs his own catering business; now he thinks he might shift his focus in the direction of pastry.
When the economy is good, it is easy to raise an eyebrow at parents who urge their children to consider careers before they have even filled out college applications. When the economy is slow, the push suddenly seems more practical, even when the children chase less-than-practical careers.
Worst-case scenario, we will have a generation of aspirational, empowered young people coming up against a still-sluggish job market, one that cannot accommodate all that confidence and expectation. Best case, they will use that energy and confidence to recharge whatever they find.
Maybe by then they will have figured out how to use molecular gastronomy to do it.
One on child slavery in Haiti
And one on teenaged day camps in NYC
Come to Manhattan, a Web site urges young people, and experience a new sleep-away camp “in a totally cool, totally New York environment.”
The hip summer camp — it may be the one niche that has been underrepresented in the extensive options available until now. What is cool, after all, about bug juice, reveille and mildewing beach towels?
The three-week program, at the 92nd Street Y, is an urban answer to camping, an alternative that eschews the wild in favor of the hot. Called Passport NYC, it is a pre-preprofessional program for teenagers who can choose to focus on one of four creative fields. Fashion-focused students as young as 13 met, for example, with members of Michael Kors’s staff. Campers in the music program had the opportunity to hang out with the indie Brooklyn promoter Todd P.
Young people in the other two fields, film and culinary arts, also do their share of networking, a skill that has somehow become part of modern-day camp craft.
As ever-younger children insist on comporting themselves like over-it-all adolescents, even the term camper may be considered passé in some circles. At Teen Hampton, a program on the East End of Long Island, they avoid the word, said the owner, Jay Jacobs, so as not to alienate their main clients, Manhattanites ages 11 to 14. That crowd no longer “thinks of day camp as cool,” Mr. Jacobs said. Sure, Teen Hampton has a daily swim and tennis and possibly even some bonding and heartbreaking — but the young people who go there would probably prefer to think of it as an “organized club,” he explained.
Most camps have young people waking early and rushing to get somewhere by 8 or 9 — what, only 12 and already a slave to the Man? At Teen Hampton, activities do not start until 10:30, to accommodate middle schoolers’ sleep rhythms. Campers — patrons? — make their own schedules, choosing on a day-to-day basis whatever electives capture their interest. So how to explain the name of the camp, which serves children as young as those entering sixth grade? The name, Mr. Jacobs said, “is aspirational.”
At Passport NYC, the ethos is also aspirational, but if the young people there are racing toward adulthood, it is the Bravo television version, a New York existence in which everyone is passionately creative. On most days, the campers — a mix from all over the country, as well as Mexico, Canada and the Upper East Side — are out the door of the Y by 8:30 a.m., on their way to their first class or session with someone plugged in. “They’re really commuting,” said Molly Hott, the director of Passport NYC. “Parents today want to know their children are directed.”
By 11:30 a.m. on a recent Thursday, teenagers were wiping down kitchen counters in the basement kitchen of an Upper West Side synagogue, having already whipped up baba ghanouj and couscous with stewed vegetables for a Moroccan Shabbat dinner (the camp is financed, in part, by the Foundation for Jewish Camp, and has a community service component).
Some parents pay good money so that their children can come as close to possible to living out the fantasy that they are demigods battling mythological monsters; at Passport NYC, parents are paying ($3,900 for three weeks) so their children can test out the fantasy of a glamorous New York career.
“Meeting Johnny Iuzzini” — Jean Georges’s pastry chef — “was a life-changing experience,” said Jesse Nagelberg, 16, of East Brunswick, N.J., who was in the kitchen that morning. “To see him use molecular gastronomy, to take a strawberry compote and put it into calcium nitrate so that it totally changed the consistency — it opened my mind to an entire world of pastry.” Jesse already runs his own catering business; now he thinks he might shift his focus in the direction of pastry.
When the economy is good, it is easy to raise an eyebrow at parents who urge their children to consider careers before they have even filled out college applications. When the economy is slow, the push suddenly seems more practical, even when the children chase less-than-practical careers.
Worst-case scenario, we will have a generation of aspirational, empowered young people coming up against a still-sluggish job market, one that cannot accommodate all that confidence and expectation. Best case, they will use that energy and confidence to recharge whatever they find.
Maybe by then they will have figured out how to use molecular gastronomy to do it.
