John Sterling RIP

The longtime Voice of the Yankees, John Sterling, has passed away. RIP.

Two Million & Up

So today Mr NYC hit another milestone -- two million views!

It took 18 years to get to one million but -- whatyaknow?! -- in just another a year this blog has doubled its total views.

The first million truly is the hardest. It's all compound views from now on!

Congratulations ... to me!

The King & Queen Take Manhattan

The English in NYC

As the British King and Queen visit America, it's a nice time to remember that, while England might be America's Mother Country, a lot of English people have found NYC to be a nice place to visit -- or even move to.

Including the Royals -- I've blogged a lot about royal excursions in NYC, and this big Vanity Fair article is all about their favorite hotel to stay in while visiting the city. 

After all, the bond between NYC and England is inescapable: the City of New York is named after the City of York in England -- although obviously the sequel has far surpassed its OG namesake. 

Anyway, here's a couple of interesting documentaries about English people in NYC -- including one about gay icon Quentin Crips aka The Naked Civil Servant. Enjoy!

Manhattan's Vertical Mansions

 

Remembering "The Howard Stern Interview"

In the early 1990s, radio shock jock Howard Stern was becoming a cultural force. Based in NYC, he had been syndicated around the country and was becoming a national media figure -- dubbing himself "The King of All Media."

Even though he was the star of radio, he wanted to be on television. He had done his local NYC show on Channel 9 for two years (1990-1992) but he wanted to go national. So in 1992 Howard did an interview show on E! Entertainment cable television.

It was a weird show -- it was just Howard sitting on a couch in a room with warm lighting interviewing someoone. His radio crew (Gary, Robin, Fred, etc.) wasn't there, he wasn't taking phone calls or doing bits -- it was just a stripped down, one-to-one talk show, Howard Stern without "The Howard Stern Show." 

And it was awkward to watch. Brilliant on the radio, Howard's broadcasting genius stumbled a bit on TV. He was clearly more comfortable behind a microphone and not in front of a camera. His outrageous morning radio NYC shtick didn't quite translate into this nation-wide televised mileau. It was soon cancelled and, in 1994, E! started to broadcast parts of his radio show -- and it was a big hit that lasted until 2005.

"The Howard Stern Interview" is largely forgotten in the long, incredible career of NYC's biggest radio talk show host ever. But this particular episode, where he's interviewing great NYC singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega, is a great example of what this show so odd and interesting. Enjoy!

Remembering the Lufthansa Heist of December 1978

The original news coverage ...

The history and fallout as explained by a former James Bond ...

And as it's immortalized in cinematic history ...

Last Paragraph of Jack Kerouac's "On the Road"

"So in America when the sun goes down and I sit on the old broken-down river pier watching the long, long skies over New Jersey and sense all that raw land that rolls in one unbelievable huge bulge over to the West Coast, and all that road going, and all the people dreaming in the immensity of it, and in Iowa I know by now the children must be crying in the land where they let the children cry, and tonight the stars'll be out, and don't you know that God is Pooh Bear? the evening star must be drooping and shedding her sparkler dims on the prairie, which is just before the coming of complete night that blesses the earth, darkens all the rivers, cups the peaks and folds the final shore in, and nobody, nobody knows what's going to happen to anybody besides the forlorn rags of growing old, I think of Dean Moriarty, I even think of Old Dean Moriarty the father we never found, I think of Dean Moriarty."

NYC Subway Action Scenes

The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 (1974)

Dressed to Kill (1980)

Nighthawks (1981)

Friday the 13th: Jason Takes Manhattan (1989)

Carlito's Way (1993)

Money Train (1995)

The Devil's Advocate (1997)

Knowing (2009)

Safe (2012)

Joker: Origin (2019)

Scream VI (2023)

Wag the (Ex) Mayor

The sleaze of former Mayor Eric Adams, cleaning up the trail of slime he left behind from his four years in City Hall, is apparently something that Mayor Z's administration is doing, to varied success.

In his last days in office, Adams moved around a lot of his cronies in his administration to obscure city jobs so that he could continue to have a toehold in city government. The new mayor is trying to find and fire as many of them as possible but it's not always that clear cut. Just a reminder of the disaster we got rid of as mayor, and how lucky we are to have someone like Mayor Z in charge now.

But don't worry, Adams is fine -- he just became a citizen of Albania because, ya' know, that's not weird.

In the 1997 classic movie Wag the Dog the president's advisors create a fake war with Albania to help distract from a scandal and win an election. In this case, 30 years later, a very real scandalous mayor is actually going to Albanian and becoming a citizen! Wag the Mayor I guess. Dear God. 

Please, Mr. Adams, please stay there!