Much has been made in the last few years of the divide between rich and poor in NYC and around the country. After all, that was what Occupy Wall Street was all about in 2011 and it's what propelled President Obama to a second term in 2012.
Now, as we conclude 2013 and go into 2014, Bill De Blasio assumes the mayoralty of this town promising to make NYC an affordable place to live. But how?
A great new article in New York magazine offers some solutions. Some of them are much more achievable than others, but here's a thumbnail:
Raise taxes on the rich to give the city more revenues
Build lots more affordable housing, particularly in underdeveloped parts of the outer boroughs
Increase public transit, including more late-night bus service and new subway lines
Improve schools: universal Pre-K, longer school days, smaller class size
Focus on the homeless and starving
Bring back manufacturing jobs
Reform property taxes
More access to health care
Help people afford college
Establish an infrastructure trust
Some of these proposals are things De Blasio has promised to pursue, others he hasn't said if he will or not. But these sounds like good ideas to create a more aaffordable city.
As 2013 ticks away into 2014, our city is poised to get its first new
mayor in over a decade. At the stroke of midnight, the Bloomberg
era ends and the De Blasio era begins.
WNYC radio has had a
great series of reports called New York Remade: Before and After
Bloomberg. A lot has happened, both in the city and beyond, during these
past 12 years. As the series' website explains:
On Jan. 1, 2002, when Michael
Bloomberg was sworn into office, these things barely existed: iPods,
Blackberries, pocket digital cameras. These things didn't exist at all:
the Barclays Center, Citi Field, One World Trade, or the Gehry NY
building.
People smoked, all the time, in
restaurants and bars. Almost no one rode bikes, and T.V.-less yellow
cabs drove down Broadway right through Times Square. Back then, a market
rate apartment in Harlem was about $1,200 — about half of what it is
today. Pizza was $1.50 a slice, same price as a subway token.
Carrie
Bradshaw lived in a Manhattan brownstone, drank cosmopolitans and typed
onto a black and white computer screen. The High Line was a rusted and
weedy hulk, not the locale for furtive kisses for the "Girls" crew
before they head home to Brooklyn. Adlai Stevenson High School still
existed. The Success Academy and six hundred other schools did not.
You could be anonymous in 2001. Now, not so much. We are watched, everywhere, if not by security cameras, then by each other.
New York has been transformed in the last 12 years, in ways that are wrenching and huge and intimate.
Might I add: the city was also still
reeling from 9/11. Ground Zero was a smoking hole with clean-up
crews moving away the rubble of the old World Trade Centers and still
finding bodies.
Back then, our city's biggest fear was getting hit by another terrorist attack. Now it's being able to afford to live here.
The
first decade of the 21st century has been a profound transitory time
for our city. I don't recognize the town I was born in the 1970s, and
grew up in the 1980s and 1990s. The 20th century is but a faint memory
now, another time that is both feared and fetishized in our collective
memory. If you go back and watch movies made in NYC back then, movies
like "Taxi Driver", "Do the Right Thing" and "Bad Lieutenant", it
made NYC look like a nightmare. Now we go to movies like the recently
released "American Hustle", set in the late 1970s, and you'd think the
city was simply "funkytown" back then.
Perhaps it was better,
perhaps it was worse. Perhaps what we've gained in public safety,
health, and schools has been lost in a sky-high cost of living, a
bleaching of the culture, and a loss of communal spirit. The debate
rages endlessly on. But one thing is clear: maybe we don't actually want
to live in Funkytown anymore but we still want to talk about it.
And
in 2013, four notable New Yorkers died who lives embodied the late 20th
century city, who rode high during the era of Funkytown: former mayor
Ed Koch, rocker Lou Reed, pornographer Al Goldstein, and news reporter
Stan Brooks. They were four very different men,
occupying quite different spheres in this city's life and imagination,
but their lives and careers are essential to understanding that time in
our city's life that is now so definitely over.
Ed Koch was
mayor from 1978 to 1989. In his time, he improved the city's disastrous
finances and built affordable housing. He had a proud legacy but was
also very divisive. He was famously irrascible, screaming at
anyone who disagreed with him, and he seemed to relish conflict with
anyone who wanted it. Koch's natural successor was not his actual
successor, David Dinkins, but Rudy Giuliani: both men polarized the city,
setting black against white, rich against poor. The Bloomberg era has
been markedly different both in tone and governance: race relations have
greatly improved and he has openly supported gay marriage. As for the
poor, Bloomberg hasn't played rich against poor: he's simply forgotten
about the poor and forced them out of the city. (Problem solved.) So a
governing style of quiet ruthlessness and embracing diversity has
replaced the divisive, rough-and-tumble governing style of
Funkytown -- and the man who embodied its spirit left us in 2013.
Lou
Reed made his musical career in the 1960s and 1970s writing songs about
drugs, death, bondage, and drag. His music was about the dirty and
dangerous city -- and it was brilliant. As NYC changed and Lou Reed got
older, his music became legendary not only for its great experimentation
but also for its memories of the vanished city. The city of "Sally
Can't Dance" and "Dirty Boulevard" is gone and now, sadly in 2013, is Lou Reed.
But we'll always listen to his music and remember that time and its
poet, a man who made lyrical beauty out of the decay of Funkytown.
Today,
anyone can get porn on the web. My generation was the last that had to
work hard to get its porn (usually by begging an older friend to buy a
magazine from a creepy vendor and then hiding it under the bedroom mattress,
stressing out that mom would find it when making the bed or discover us
reading it when she called us to dinner -- let me tell you, it was
stressful) but today's "yutes" can simply go online, search vast amounts
of naughty content, and then hit the "Clear History" tab on their
browsers when mom calls. The man who represented
the mattresses-hiding time of porn was Al Goldstein, the foulmouthed
pornographer and provocateur and New Yorker extraordinaire, who founded
"Screw" magazine in the 1960s and then, from 1974 to 2003, hosted
the racy cable show "Midnight Blue" on Channel J. He was gross and
offensive and wanted you to know it. He was "the man" during the time
when Times Square was a bastion of porno theaters and drug dealers. Al
Goldstein became the symbol (for many) of everything that was wrong with
NYC back then, the filth that Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver" so
desperately wanted to wash away. Giuliani started the scrubbing in the
1990s with raids and new blue laws but, in the Bloomberg era, it was
washed away by the Internet and gentrification. Goldstein's magazine and
TV show didn't survive, and he literally became homeless as a result.
But his recent death is a reminder of that time, of the sleaze of
Funkytown, when the city was a wild place -- fun for some, revolting for
others -- that is now clean and, for many, very boring.
And finally, Stan
Brooks. You might know his name: he was a reporter for 1010 WINS radio
news for decades. He had a great voice, one that was born for radio, and he reported on everything from the 1971 Attica Prison riots to
the recent election of Bill De Blasio as mayor. Any history that was
made in NYC over the last 50 years, Stan Brooks reported it first. If
you ever saw the movies "Goodfellas", it's his voice that reports on the
Lufthansa heist made famous in that classic film. Stan Brooks was the
memory bank of this city, the man who explained what was going on in
Funkytown to its residents. Now Stan Brooks is gone, along with the city
he reported about for so long. We've lost a great reporter, a great New
York voice, and a living link to our city's past.
As another great New Yorker, novelist Don DeLillo wrote: "It's all falling indelibly into the past."
The song "Funkytown" was a one-hit
wonder released in 1980, a year when the city was deep in the era of Ed
Koch, Lou Reed, Al Goldstein, and Stan Brooks, and when yours truly
was just three years old. The song was written by a guy named
Steven Greenberg for a band called Lipps, Inc who were all from
Minneapolis and dreamed of moving to NYC. The song was an open
love letter to the dream of this city, to its spirit and danger, to why
people wanted to live here, even back then, the so-called bad old days.
Just remember the first few lines:
Gotta make a move to a Town that's right for me Town to get me movin' Keep me groovin' with some Energy
You can't be funky without some energy, and energy was the essence of the Funkytown era -- the era that the Bloomberg years have so definitively vanquished
Now our city moves into a new era.
Sadly, these four great New Yorkers won't be there to see it. But they
made NYC an interesting place in the last decades of the 20th century,
they gave the city its unique energy, and for that we thank them.
Now,
firmly in the second decade of the 21st century, and the dangerous
energy of that time has been replaced by a safe apathy. We may not be
going back to Funkytown anytime soon, but we need to shed the apathy and
re-find its energy. That's the way we'll honor their legacies in the new era that's about to begin.
As I've written before, there's nothing more magical than Christmas in
NYC. A couple of years ago, I blogged about a guy to the holidays in our
fair city and here's another one called "The Untouristy Guide to the
Holidays in New York."
Some of the suggestions, if you're celebrating the city here: go to the
big tree at Rockefeller Center, ice skate in Central Park, see "The
Nutcracker", the creche at the Metropolitan Museum, and window shop at
Macy's.
Frankly, I think these suggestions are pretty touristy but they're fun
all the same. My favorite spot for Christmas in NYC is standing at the
corner of Grand Army Plaza at night, looking at the Plaza Hotel and
lower edge of Central Park ablaze in lights and covered in decorations.
It's a very New York, very Christmas sight to see.
Literally -- he rules the nation of Vatican City and the worldwide Roman Catholic church.
But he also rules.
When
Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio of Buenos Aires was elected the 266th Supreme
Pontiff in March, he made history as the first Pope from the Americas
and the first non-European Pope in almost 1000 (that's right, a thousand)
years. First thing he did: paid his hotel bill before moving into the
Vatican full time. Then, instead of the lavish papal apartments, he took
up residence in a dorm room. Instead of eating in his own private
dining room, he eats in a cafeteria. But it's not all symbolic: he has
said that his goals as pope are to focus the church's work on helping
the poor, sick and elderly. Since then, he has said that he will not
judge gay people, wants to reach out to atheists, and help single
mothers. Also, he has said that the church shouldn't spend all its time
obsessing over divisive social issues like abortion. Oh, and he's also
rooting out the corruption in the Catholic hierarchy and bank.
Wow.
In less than a year, Pope Francis has shaken up the world's oldest
organized religion and is refashioning it for the 21st century.
Recently, he published a "papal exhortation" which brilliantly
dismantles the argument that raw capitalism is a force for good.
Specifically, he says that no economic system should practice exclusion
but be geared towards inclusion i.e. everyone should benefit from it.
Better than President Obama or Mayor-elect De Blasio or any other
politicians, Pope Francis brilliantly sums up the problem of economic
inequality:
"Just as the commandment “Thou shalt not kill” sets a clear limit in
order to safeguard the value of human life, today we also have to say
“Thou shalt not” to an economy of exclusion and inequality. Such an
economy kills. How can it be that it is not a news item when an elderly
homeless person dies of exposure, but it is news when the stock market
loses two points? This is a case of exclusion. Can we continue to stand
by when food is thrown away while people are starving? This is a case of
inequality."
He also makes an appeal to the essential nature of the Christian faith,
that we must not worship anything else besides God and our fellow man.
Money, in his view, as become the new idolatry:
"While the earnings of the minority are growing exponentially, so, too,
is the gap separating the majority from the prosperity enjoyed by those
happy few. The imbalance is the result of ideologies which defend the
absolute autonomy of the marketplace and financial speculation…. A new
tyranny is thus born, invisible and often virtual, which relentlessly
imposes its own laws and rules…. The thirst for power and possessions
knows no limits. In this system, which tends to devour everything that
stands in the way of increased profits, whatever is fragile, like the
environment, is defenseless before the interests of a deified market,
which become the only rule ... Money must serve, not rule! The Pope
loves everyone, rich and poor alike, but he is obliged in the name of
Christ to remind all that the rich must help, respect, and promote the
poor. I exhort you to a generous solidarity and to the return of
economics and finance to an ethical approach which favors human beings."
(If President Obama said stuff like this, he'd probably be a whole lot more popular.)
What amazes me and so many around the world is that this Pope not only
preaches his faith but also lives it and uses it as the compass for his
work. He walks the walk while he talks the talk and is getting the job
done. Like a truly great communicator, he is striking back at a world
where money rules and insists that only our common humanity must rule.
Naturally, conservatives hate him. Oh man, they are out there calling
this Pope a Marxist and all sorts of mean nasty stuff. But in doing so, they
expose their true nature. They are not really religious, they are not
truly people of faith -- they worship money, power, materialism, and
themselves. They see religion as a tool to divide people, to acquire
power and riches, not to improve humanity.
Case in point: former President Bush. Supposedly the most openly
religious president we ever had, he always droned on about how much he
loved God and how He had saved him. But his presidency exposed his true
loves: war, tax cuts for the rich, eliminating worker protections,
denying people health insurance, screwing up disaster relief,
politicizing the justice department. This is a man of faith? This is how
his faith led him to govern? He was never really a man of faith, he was
a man of power. I always remember that annoying smirk on his
face proved to me, more than anything else, what a fraud he was. What
kind of a man of faith smirks?
Not this Pope. Whenever you see Pope Francis smile, you see a man
genuinely motivated by his faith. When you're the real deal, you don't
have to fake it. His manner of living and his work prove it. He's an
inspiration.
Now I'm not Catholic or particularly religious. I still disagree with
the Catholic Church's doctrines on gay marriage, abortion,
contraception, and the role of women. Pope Francis isn't changing any of
this and it'll probably be generations before any future pope does. But
Pope Francis is talking about the most important issues facing the
world right now and he's doing it brilliantly. He is showing what a true
man of faith is all about. And in these trouble times, it's amazing to
see.
No, I've never heard of her either but you've probably heard of
Caroline's, the famous comedy club, that she founded almost thirty years
ago. And you've definitely heard of the comedians who got their start
at her club and who still perform there today: Jerry Seinfeld, Chris
Rock, Louis CK, Sarah Silverman, and Andrew Dice Clay (amongst many
others).
Thanks to her, our culture is a little bit richer -- and a whole lot funnier.
We can't all be geniuses, we can't all be the star of the show. But
sometimes we can be the Guy or Girl behind the genius, behind the star,
the person who makes it possible for genius to flourish and stars to
shine brightly. And that's what Caroline Hirsch has done, which makes
her a great New Yorker.
A few years ago, a website called Stuff White People Like enjoyed an
Andy Warhol moment and gained lots of buzz. Basically, it was a blog
that listed and analyzed the various things that we white people
supposedly love.
Problem is, the blog was inaccurate. It said that white
people love things like The Wire and grinding their own
coffee beans. Perhaps some white people living in
Portland, Oregon or Austin, Texas or San Francisco and parts of NYC like
this stuff, but let's be realistic: most white people could care less
about these things.
Stuff White People Like has been dormant since 2010. I wonder where it
and its creator, Christian Landor, have gone? Oh well, as a tribute to
him and his creation, Mr NYC presents a short list of the Stuff White
People REALLY Like:
Guns
The Tea Party
Sarah Palin
Natural Light beer
More guns
Unborn fetuses
Country Music Television
Medicare
Invading Arab countries
Confederate Flags
Fox News
Even more guns
Jesus fish
Wal Mart
Government shutdowns
Even more guns
Glenn Beck
Mega churches
Pick-up trucks -- with gun racks
Voter ID laws
Vaginal probes
Saying "y'all"
Shooting defenseless animals
Movies by Mel Gibson
The 700 Club
More and more guns
In a city of 8-plus million people, New Yorkers live in every imaginable
kind of home: single rooms, basements, attics, townhouses, penthouses,
apartments, regular houses, libraries -- one friend told me his sister
even lived in a boiler room. Most of us are struggling either to pay the
rent or beat it. Even those of us lucky enough to be owners gotta cough
up a mortgage payment each month.
Oy vey.
But there are those few -- very few -- New Yorkers who are
lucky enough to live in mansions. Not apartments or homes but actual
mansions! Back in the day, millionaires and billionaires in NYC would
build huge stand alone mansions for themselves uptown. If you ever saw the movie Gangs of
New York, there's a scene where the characters escape Five Points, go
uptown, and rob a mansion. Many of these mansions were built in the
mid-to-late nineteenth century and were torn down over time (the
building I grew up in used to be the sight of such a mansion). Some
survived and were taken over by businesses or non-profit organizations
or museums (like the Frick) or schools (one of the schools I went to as a kid used to be an old
family mansion).
This slide show of Gilded Age mansions will blow your
mind and there's currently an exhibition at the Museum of the City of
New York about them as well.
Today there are almost no stand alone mansions left in NYC. Even Mayor Mike's mansion is next to a
school and an apartment building. In fact, as far as I know, there are
one three fully-detached mansions left in NYC where people actually
live: the Steinway mansion in Astoria, Gracie mansion, and the Schinasi
mansion.
The Steinway mansion is a beautiful home but its located in an
industrial wasteland. The owner died a few years ago and, beautiful as
it is, its cost and location make it almost uninhabitable.
Gracie Mansion, of course, is the residence for the mayor of NYC and has
been vacant ever since Bloomberg became mayor since he has his own
(although De Blasio might move there).
The only fully detached, privately-owned mansion in Manhattan is the Schnasi mansion. Interestingly enough, it's not located on Fifth Avenue or Park
Avenue or somewhere like that. It's on Riverside Drive, nestled up on
107th street (near where yours truly grew up actually). It was built
about a hundred years ago and has been sold and re-sold and left vacant
over the decades. For years I would walk by it and wonder if anyone was
living there. Recently it was on the market for $31 million but,
allegedly, found a buyer for around $15. That's a pretty good deal for
the only fully detached mansion in NYC.
If you're interested in the historic mansions of the Gilded Age that still populate our city in one form another, this very cool web site is worth checking out. It's a reminder and legacy of another time, a living history of NYC in stone and granite.
