Artists, Gangsters, Strippers, Subways & Seawalls: NYC Past and Future

As 2017 recedes into history, we are thrust into a period of time I like to call Weird Week -- those strange days between Christmas and New Year's that are a kind of temporal No Man's Land (sorry, in the #MeToo era we should call it a No Person's Land). Now that the crush of the holidays are over, there's a general sense of looseness among people, a sense of fun aimlessness, lots of folks taking time off work or traveling, indulging in all the things they didn't have the time or energy for during the year. It's a short window to "chillax" until the demands of the New Year arrive.

It's also, of course, a time to ponder the year gone by and the one ahead. Here in NYC, a city that's always changing and making history, that's an especially fun thing to do.

So here's a post that's totally Weird, Loose and Aimless, a fin de l'annee medley of links to stories about the people and places that shaped our city (for better or worse, depending on your opinion) and a couple about our city's future.

First, read this absolutely fascinating story about the life of Lorenzo de Ponte. If this guy's story was a movie, you wouldn't believe it. He was like an Italian Forrest Gump but with a higher IQ and far less morals.  He knew Casanova, Mozart, and Clement Clark Moore, and he worked and scammed his way into European and NYC history.

Then jump ahead to the 1960s. Here's a brilliant sequence of photos featuring the singers and artists of Greenwich Village, including a young Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary. If you've ever seen the great movie Inside Llewyn Davis, this is a wonderful companion piece showing you the spirit of Kennedy-era NYC, a time of excitement and creativity -- before Vietnam, crime, Watergate, and stagflation washed it away.

And, talking about time, we move into the 1970s. If you know about the mafia in NYC, then you know all about the Italian, Irish, and Jewish gangs that roamed and ruled the city for most of the 20th century. There was also, at the same time, a powerful black mafia located in Harlem that for decades ran numbers games, etc. while also taking care of the most vulnerable people in the city. But the war on drugs made it come crashing all down. If you've ever seen the movie American Gangster, then you know the story of how Harlem drug kingpins Frank Lucas and Nicky Barnes rose to unprecedented power in the NYC crime world before being brought low. And this article tells the true story behind the one you see in the movie.

The Eighties: if the 1960s were exciting and the 1970s were scary, then the 1980s were sleazy -- really sleazy. Back then Times Square and Midtown Manhattan were populated by strip clubs and porno theaters. You couldn't walk around these areas without seeing them, they were ubiquitous. There was no adult entertainment space more famous or popular in 1980s NYC than Show World, the great sex palace where adult actors came to perform and New Yorkers and tourists went to ... enjoy themselves. Show World had stage shows, peep shows, and sold all sorts of movies and ... equipment. Show World's days as a pleasure palace are long over and, thanks the Internet and blue laws, has been reduced to a small store that, in addition to naughty items, mostly sells tourist chotchkies. These links here, here, and here (NSFW) tell the story of its glory days -- and end of days.

And now we turn to the future. 

On January 1st, 2017, the long-awaited multi-billion dollar Second Avenue Subway opened -- three brand new stations along the Upper East Side. As this article indicates, it's been downhill for the subways and MTA since then. This past "Summer of Hell" consisting of train delays and detours lead to furious squabbling between Governor Cuomo, Mayor De Blasio and MTA Chairman Joe Lhota about who really runs and finances the MTA. Cuomo and Lhota lied, saying that the mayor runs the MTA which led De Blasio to accurately retort that it's simply not true (the state leases the MTA from the city, finances its, the governor appoints the chairman, the chairman runs the organization, and no one really disagrees with that except the people who run and botched the subways this summer). If Cuomo runs for president in 2020, his mishandling of the MTA might come back to haunt him or, pun intended, "derail" his ambitions -- and might therefore affect the future of this nation.

Finally, the fun stuff! NYC is being affected by climate change and a swelling population. This article explores the most amazing ideas by city planners of what NYC might look like in the future. Imagine: the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn/Queens being drained and replaced by a park; sidewalks in the sky; elevated bike paths; whole parks on rooftops of buildings; massive seawalls protecting the harbor. These visions for NYC are, at best, fantastical but, if even one of them comes to fruition, the face and life of the city will be very different ... and the past will seem more distant than ever.