The Further Adventures of Mr NYC

 

NYC's Summer of '26

On this first day of September, the summer of 2026 is winding down. Soon the autumnal equinox will be upon us, vacations will end, the air will turn crisp, kids will return to school, the leaves will turn, and thoughts will drift towards the holidays and year's end.

And yet ... and yet ... the summer of '26 in NYC is one for the history books.

Unlike most summers that vanish from the public memory year-after-year, this soon to-be-gone summer has left some traces that will not soon be forgotten.

Even two months ago, at the beginning of July, some in the media were calling it The Summer of New York. Here's a roll call of what happened:

• The Knicks win their first NBA championship in 53 years!
  
  
• The World Cup opens and closes at MetLife Stadium!
  
  
• Taylor and Travis get married at Madison Square Garden, the wedding of the year!
  
  
• America celebrated its 250th anniversary on July 4th with Sail4th in New York harbor!
  
  
• Crazy weather (thanks global warming!) with massive thunderstorms, high heat, and the smoky orange haze that blanketed the city due to the Canadian wildfires.
  
  
• A naked man jumped from the Brooklyn Bridge!
  
  
• The debut of Sterling Point, a lovely New Yorkers out of (and in the) water series!
  
  
• A glorious tribute to Dolly Parton from a gleaming Empire State Building!
  
  
• Even a documentary about NYC's favorite adult star Robin Byrd!
  
  
• And soon we will have a more serious milestone as we remember the 25th anniversary of 9/11/2001.

What a wild, historic summer! 

And here's something that might make 2026 the Summer of NYC into the Year of 2026: this fall are the midterm elections. If, some way, some how, the Democrats take back control of both houses of the US Congress, that means that the President of the United States, the Senate Majority Leader, and the House Speaker will all be from NYC. That'll be even wilder and more historic!

"I'm Waiting for the Man" -- The Velvet Underground in Dallas, October 1969

The greatest rock band ever to come out of NYC -- The Velvet Underground -- had a short life in the late 1960s. It would only be decades later that they would be considered one of the greatest and most influential bands of all time.

Still, during their brief existence, the Velvets toured the country. In the late 1960s they travelled to Dallas and their outdoor performance, and later another performance at a club, were recorded and can be seen/heard here.

There's actually very little footage of the Velvets during their time as a band so this is a rare and interesting treat, a small window into the past. 

Battle for the Pierre

Here's a fascinating article about the battle between owners and shareholders of the Pierre, the gorgeous hotel/apartment building on 59th Street -- across from its brethern the Plaza and the Sherry Netherland. It's a story of rich people vs. other rich people, corruption vs. stubborness, Old New York money and taste vs. global wealth and crassness.

It's an Only in NYC story!

FYI: the main dining room of the Pierre is where the legendary tango scene from Scent of a Woman took place.

NYC Remembers Dolly

Dolly Parton has died and I don't want to believe it but so it goes. Anyway, NYC is remembering the music legend by giving her the ultimate tribute -- illuminating the Empire State Building in her trademark pink.

And if you want to understand the true greatness of Dolly, a perfect example of her musical and performance genius, listen to her beautiful song "Butterfly" and watch her SNL monologue from 1989 -- part of it, uh ... doesn't really hold up but it shows you what a good sport Dolly was. RIP. 

Review: "Is This Thing On?" (2025)

Late last year a small film came and went that didn't get a lot of fanfare but is actually really good.

Called Is This Thing On?, it's about a middle-aged couples in suburban NYC who seperate. The forlorn husband finds himself accidently turning to stand up comedy to deal with his new, unwanted life, while he soon-to-be ex-wife tries to keep their old life and their kids lives going as before -- just without him.

This movie is something you don't get a lot these days -- a very funny, wonderfully acted story about regular people leading their lives. It was directed by Bradley Cooper, the movie star (who has a supporting role), and it stars Will Arnett and Laura Dern as the erstwhile couple and they excellent. Also in the cast are Christine Ebersole as the mother-in-law and the great actor Ciaran Hinds who plays the father -- and gives a beautiful, understated performance.

There are lots of movies about glamorous people in NYC living glamorous lives but this movie is about the regular, hardworking people dealing with their careers, their families, and their own sense of worth. You should see it!

Once Upon a Time ... in NYC

The Adventures of Mr NYC

Bret Easton Ellis's NYC

I've always had a love-hate opinion of the novelist Bret Easton Ellis. For the most part I don't think he's really that talented, most of his books are boring, and, in the interviews I've heard with him, he sounds like a massive asshole.

However, I do think his 1991 novel American Psycho is absoutely brilliant and, in a depressing way, it seems more relevant than ever. It's a classic.

Ellis is from LA and lives there now but, in the late 1980s and 1990s, he lived in NYC. He recently returned to the city after a long absence to promote his new TV show and, in this interview, he talks about his life in NYC.

What's funny is that, for many, the NYC of the '80s and '90s was a rough, terrible time of crime, crack, AIDS, and decay. But for Ellis it was a golden age, a wonderful fun time that he misses. Apparently he doesn't know how anyone could live in 2020s NYC!

It's a reminder than one person's paradise can be another person's hell -- and vice versa. 

Building the NYC Empire

Part of what makes New York City fascinating -- but also sometimes tough to talk about and understand -- is that this "city" isn't really a city in the traddional sense. The Merriam-Webster and other dictionaries define a city simply as a "large or important municipality in the U.S. governed under a charter granted by the state." 

That's it. And NYC certainly fits that definition.

But its size and geography and population make it unlike most other cities, both in the United States and the world at large. (This list gives 10 examples of the differences between NYC and just about every other city in the world.) As I've blogged about before, NYC isn't a single city -- its several cities joined up together. 

And that's what makes NYC not a city but an empire -- dozens of islands containing several different cites and towns and villages and arable land stiched together to become a whole greater than the sum of its parts. 

The size and scope and unwieldy nature of the five boroughs is so complex, so various, so wild and huge that the best way to understand NYC is not as a city but as an urban empire -- or, as the poet Emma Lazarus famously called it, a collossus. 

Empires don't just spring to life out of nowhere, they are built over time. And here's the story of building the NYC empire -- past, present, and future: