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.
In the summer of 1996 I spent six weeks as a student at the London School of Economics. It was a nice experience, got some college credits, and enjoyed living in a foreign city (albeit one where people spoke English) on my own for the first and last time in my life (so far).
My life in London during those weeks was relatively quiet -- I lived in a small room of a student residence and was either studying, writing papers, walking the streets, going to museums (falling in love with the paintings of Camille Pisaro), or reading books about Woody Allen and listening to the Velvet Underground. Also, I remember that this was the time and place where I learned that you could put oil and vinegar on turkey sandwiches (something I love to this day), that I could buy achohol legally at the age of 19, that the British smoke like crazy (every restaurant and bar and public space I went to was basically one big cloud), and that I might have been able to hook up with a really gorgeous Chilean lady but was too shy to do so.
Anyway, what I was not aware of, apparently, is that culturally 1996 was a big year in the UK -- as evidenced below by this interview with a journalist who calls 1996 the wildest year in the wildest decade. My experience in the UK in 1996 was far from wild but I wuz 'dere! at that time and it's weird to hear this guy give an in-depth historical perspective about a time and place that I remember well but wasn't involved in -- so close and yet so far.
What I do remember quite clearly as that 1996 was a notable year for British filme: Mike Leigh's Secrets & Lies won the Palme D'Or at the Cannes Film Festival that year and Trainspotting also came out giving the world Ewan McGregor and introducing the world to the Scottish heroin subculture.
And that's not the only sense of deja vu I had this week. I was just listening to an interview with the actor Jon Cryer -- Ducky from Pretty in Pink, the not-Charlie Sheen character from Two and a Half Men, Superman's nephew in Superman IV and lots of other stuff. Anyway, in this interview he briefly mentioned that, when he was really young, he was an usher at Equity Library Theater on 103rd Street and Riverside Drive when he was a kid. That was hilarious because ... drumroll ... I also worked at ELT as a kid! I wasn't an usher, I worked concessions, but it's so crazy that we both worked at low-level jobs at ELTs in the 1980s. I only did it for a few months in 1989, years after Jon, but still ... I wuz 'dere! Again, so close and yet so far.
Recently took the family to Legoland, a theme park up in Westchester that opened in 2021. We had a great time -- lots of rides, lots lego stuff to do, and it had a chill, nerdy vibe that we all enjoyed.
My favorite thing, as you might imagine, were the big outdoor Lego builds of American cities -- Philadelphia, Washington DC, Chicago, Las Vegas, and Los Angeles were featured amongst others. But the really big one, the really major one, was of New York City (no suprise there). Here I will provide you a short photographic tour of Legoland NYC -- it's really amazing to see and something that I encourage all city buffs to check out:
We start out to the north in ...
Da' Bronx
We zoom down into Lego Yankee's Stadium and then visit the Lego Bronx Zoo and the Lego New York Botanical Garden ...
Then we traverse into Manhattan and breeze by ...
The Upper East Side & Upper West Side
Here we see the Lego Guggenheim, the Lego Dakota and Lego Sam Remo as well as the Lego Central Park.
Now let's hop on ...
The Subway
And go to ...
Queens
And go through Lego Long Island City and Lego Flushing Meadows Park to a Lego Mets game at Lego Citi Field.
Let's go back into Manhattan and hit ...
Midtown
We pass by the Lego AT&T Building, the Lego St. Patrick's Cathedral, the Lego Times Square, the Lego United Nations, the Lego Empire State Building, the Lego Madison Square Garden and Lego Pennsylvania Hotel, and the Lego Flatiron Building.
Now we go ...
Downtown
We head south from the Lego Washington Square Arch and Lego City Hall to the Lego Castle Clinton and Lego 9/11 Memorial to the Lego One World Trade Center, Lego Lower Manhattan and, in the midst of the Lego New York Harbor pool, the Lego Statue of Liberty.
But what, dere's more! Let's dip into ...
Brooklyn
And we finish up our visit passing by the Lego Brooklyn Museum, the Lego Grand Army Plaza Arch, and Lego Coney Island.
As for ...
Staten Island
It's not there (yet).
So that's my little tour of Legoland NYC -- but I highly, highly suggest that you go check it out, along with the whole park, yourself.
Over the years I've blogged a lot about how 1970's and '80s NYC was Funky Town.
And Funky Town was a big, wild place!
Here are some more examples of that time, that seems so far away and yet is right around (literally) the corner:
Back in those days trade school commercials were all over NYC television, like these for the Albert Merrill School and Apex Tech (that lovely set of tools is yours to keep after you graduate).
Then there's movies. A lot of great movies were shot on the streets of NYC back then -- The Godfather, Taxi Driver, Annie Hall, and Saturday Night Fever, just to name a few. As you might imagine, shooting them on location could be a challenge. Recently I read about the making of the 1974 original movie The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3. You gotta love it -- it's an action movie that stars Walter Matthau and Jerry Stiller! It's a great NYC movie that mostly takes place on the subway movie but it was a tough movie to shoot in the fall of 1973 -- as this article points out.
Talking about NYC movies of the 1970s, recently I was on the East Side and walked by The Copinette restaurant that has a plaque outside, commenterating its appearance in the 1971 Oscar Best Picture winner The French Connection.
And of course, there's The Sexy.
Before AIDS closed them down, sex clubs were prominent around town. Here's previous Mr NYC interviewee and former adult film star Hyapatia Lee talking about her visits to Plato's Retreat and The Hellfire Club and the wild, sexy times she had in this town.
And talking about sexy clubs, one night in 1975 a young songwriter named Van McCoy went to the Apple's Apple nightclub and saw people dancing in an interesting way. He therefore decided to write a song called "The Hustle" and it became one of the most famous, beloved, and iconic disco songs of all time:
So there's just some more examples of Funky Town, a place long-gone but that will forever live in Mr NYC's heart.
Mayor Z has been in office for 100 days -- a rather random benchmark but one that chief executives are always measured against.
Thus far, the mayor has had to deal with a budget shortfall and put together agencies that will deal with affordability. These first 100 days have been, it seems, all about putting the pieces in place to delivery his affordability agenda.
He still has high approval ratings -- but also high expectations. The next 100 days need to be more policy oriented so that the reality can soon match the promise.
Well, well, well, Mr NYC really is ... well, maybe not exactly prophetic than certainly perspicacious.
In the early days of this blog I wrote about the early 1950's NYC Mayor Vincent Impelliteri -- perhaps the city's most forgotten 20th century chief executive. Well, a man named George Arzt, a lifelong city government journalist and staffer, actually knew "Impy" back in the day. Arzt is retirning after 60 years working in and around city government and he's given a great exit interivew that you can read here.
And then here's another interview you can listen two between podcaster/comedian Billy Procida and adult film star Sonia Harcourt -- where they talk about polyamory and swinging and all sorta of sexy stuff. I interviewed both Billy and Sonia several years ago so it's great to here two previous Mr NYC interviewees talk to each other ... and apparently that's not all they did!
Recently I came upon an article in the Hollywood Reporter listing 47 iconic movie and TV sites in NYC. Read it here. (Why it's not an even 50, I can't say.)
One location that's obviously cited is Central Park which has been used in too many movies and TV shows to count. But one of movies that's not on this list but that makes great use of nation's most famous urban park is Hair from 1979.
Based on the late 1960s anti-war, anti-establishment hippie Broadway smash, it's about a young man named Claude from Oklahoma who comes to NYC on his way to enlist in the army before shipping to Vietnam. (Why a guy from Oklahoma would need to travel all the way to NYC to go into the army is odd but, hey, it's a movie). Anyhoo, while roaming around Central Park one afternoon he comes upon a group of hippies who befriend him and rock his world. He also gets close to a young beautiful society lady who is bored by her preppy boyfriend and upper class life. Eventually it all goes haywire and Claude goes into the army -- before his friends head out to Nevada, trying to rescue him from going to Vietnam. There's a big, surprising, ultimately tragic twist at the end about the randomness of friendship and fate.
When the musical Hair hit Broadway in 1968, it was a stunning, crazy, and almost dangerous thing. America was mired in the hopeless Vietnam war and the anti-war, hippie movement was gaining steam (Woodstock would be a year later). This musical rocked the culture, a show that was both highly political and highly entertaining -- plus, at various points, the cast members took their clothes off. Richard Nixon, right after he became President, imagined that he'd go to a show and, as soon as cast got naked, he'd get up and walk out, showing his solidarity with the Silent Majority, the squares in the "real America" (fortunately he never did it although it would have been lit). Like A Chorus Line, Rent and Hamilton later on, this show defined its time.
But when the movie came in 1979, times had changed. Vietnam was over, Watergate and stagflation had and were traumatized the nation, and this movie already seemed like a museum piece. It was of and about another time. Hair the movie was moderately successfull but didn't have the same resonance as it had had on Broadway 11 years earlier.
The movie was directed by Milos Forman, who had just won Oscars for One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest and would, later on, do so again for Amadeus. Hair is somewhat forgotten from his filmography. The cast is amazingly -- especially a young Treat Williams (RIP) as George, the hippie leader, and Beverly D'Angelo, the bored young deb. Claude is played by John Savage who had just had a huge success in The Deer Hunter. He's a good actor but rather miscast -- he's not really believable as a young Okie. The rest of the mostly unknown cast is quite good, including the late, wonderful Nell Carter singing in the park at night.
Still, there's something about the movie that sorta doesn't work -- it reminds me of the Rent musical, a great, brilliant show put to film that somehow, someway, sucks the life out of the story and score. But I still suggest seeing it for the music, the cast, and beautiful shot Central Park.
