Last night, as the results were trickling in for the Queens DA primary and it became clear that Tiffany Caban was winning (although she's not the official winner yet since there are outstanding ballots left to count), I imagined what a great tabloid headline for her victory might be -- something like "Tiffany Takes Queens" or "Upset in Queens" or just "CaBAM!" I remember when Olympic skater Sarah Hughes won a gold medal in 2002, a tabloid headline was simple "Sarah!" -- so how about "Tiffany!"
Sadly, I didn't see anything like that today -- probably because the tabloids aren't too happy about a social justice-minded Latina winning power -- so I've provided the headlines for you.
Kidding aside, Tiffany Caban's primary victory is huge -- a very young queer Latina won a very competitive primary against the establishment favorite in a borough-wide race outside the Bronx. She will be, assuming she wins the November general election, the most powerful person in Queens and one of the most powerful in all of NYC. She will end cash bail, cease prosecute weed busts and sex workers, and seek compassionate solutions to crime, not the old shattering so-called "law and order" tactics of the past.
Tiffany's victory is a seismic generational and attitudinal change to law enforcement in NYC. The same multi-racial, multi-generational, multi-everything coalition that elected AOC last year came together again in this race -- and this is now the new normal, the new face of NYC. The future is here -- and it's not waiting its turn.
Just over a year ago the celebrity chef/traveler Anthony Bourdain died from suicide. Mass grief and confusion ensued with tributes and memories of him flooding the airways, Internet, and social media.
Now, a year later, people are turning their grief around. Today, on what would have been his birthday, Anthony Bourdain is being celebrated with the first ever Bourdain Day -- a movement created by his friends, the chefs Eric Ripert and Jose Andres.
To celebrate Bourdain day, all you have to do is raise a glass of something, toast the man, and perhaps post something on social media -- like I will with this blog post ASAP.
Bourdain was a world traveler, an international celebrity, but he was a true-blue New Yorker who always brought the city with him wherever he went -- and brought the world back home with him. His love of food and culture enriched our lives, making us all fuller in both literal and spiritual meanings of the word.
As a New Yorker, Bourdain had his favorite eating haunts has chronicled here. Also, you can read my tribute to the man here, about how I once met and did a small job for the man himself.
In 1989 NYC's racial politics came to the forefront. Though it was 30 years ago, 1989 seems to haunt our present.
In 1989 we had Central Park Jogger case that led to the wrongful conviction of the Central Park 5.
In 1989 Spike Lee's great movie Do the Right Thing premiered -- a movie that brutally looked at the racial realities of life in NYC.
And in 1989 Rudy Giuliani first ran for mayor on a platform of racial resentment. He came close to winning in 1989 and finally did in 1993. As this article points out, Rudy as mayor was a forerunner to Trump as president -- white backlash politics, promoting the idea that we were living in some kind of crime-ridden hell hole, blaming the previous black guy who held their office for all their problems, tell lots of lies, and using their power to fight against the demographic changes of the their city and county. The analogy, as this article points out, is imperfect but nonetheless resonant.
The problem for both Rudy and Trump and the people they claim to represent is that, ultimately, they can't change the future -- NYC is very different in 2013 than it was in 1989 (and 1993) and America will be a very different country in 2049 than it is today.
And one way we can make that change is here in NYC, specifically Queens, by voting for Tiffany Caban in the Queens DA race. A social justice reformer, she promises to radically change how we prosecute and handle crime. That's how we can fight the power of the likes of Rudy and Trump -- fight, vote, and make the future we want.
If you're a huge Howard Stern fan like me, then you remember when the Gary Love Tape was revealed to the world back in June 1999.
Back story: Howard's producer Gary made a tape to his on-again/off-again girlfriend back in 1988 begging her to come back to him. The tape remained a secret for more than a decade when a caller to the show revealed -- and Gary confirmed -- its existence. It was finally played on the show and became a classic moment in the history of Howard Stern.
Looking like Daryl Oates, talking into a microphone and video camera, the love-lorn Gary's tape is a hilarious, gut-busting mix of desperation, narcissism, and male entitlement. It's egomania run amock. He tells his ex "This is what I want" and "I feel like my professional life is at a 9" -- pronounced noine -- "and my personal life is at a 2." Then he says "I miss you man" and that he might be open to "mmmmmm-marriage."
This from a guy who was apparently cheating on her left and right. Fortunately, Gary matured from this and wound up marrying a great (other woman) and having a family.
It's amazing, after watching this, that any woman wants anything to do with any man. We should all probably be in jail.
P.S. The Gary Love Tape inspired a great rendition of Bruce Springstein's "Secret Garden" known as "Booey Maguire." It's beautiful, touching, and funny as hell.
I was obsessed with radio as a teenager -- my childhood dream was to become a hotshot DJ/personality who was as funny and wild as Howard Stern, as thoughtful and smart as an NPR host, and as souful as Allison Steele. Oh, and I wanted to play music -- lots of different kinds of music, from the Beastie Boys to Led Zepplin to James Taylor to King Missile to Mozart to Bing Crosby, whatever I thought was good or funky at the time.
Basically I wanted to be a free form radio host.
I tried my hand at it in college -- I had a short-lived free form radio show that was on at 6 AM every Tuesday. No one listened to it and, after one semester, I didn't have any more time for it (although I still have tapes -- yes, cassette tapes, remember those? -- of my old shows).
But it made me appreciate just how hard it is to do a good, entertaining radio program, free form or no. Sitting behind that microphone, talking into the ether, trying to entertain everyone and no one, might seem really easy but it's not. It's hard, brutal work, it demands everything of your brains and emotions. And knowing what kind of music to play takes some skill -- fortunately I had a friend who gave me all sorts of weird music (like Shonan Knife!) that gave my show some hipster cred. Otherwise, I was an awful DJ, a blithering, unfunny mess. It was an acid test of my total lack of natural performative talent. In part, that's why I started this blog -- it allowed me to do something creatively free form that more suited by meagre skills.
Free form radio barely exists anymore, if it ever really did. College and non-profit radio are the only places it ever really thrived. Even 25 years ago it was a strange offbeat thing. In these days of consolidated corporate ownership and public radio mega-organizations, the idea of free form radio is more unthinkable than ever. It doesn't really exist at all.
But there used to be one huge, great exception.
For roughly forty years a guy named Vin Scelsa hosted the ultimate free form radio show in NYC -- "Idiot's Delight." This show bounced around the NYC airwaves for decades, starting at non-commercial WFMU, migrating to commercial radio at WNEW and K-ROCK, then to its natural habitat on college radio at WFUV where it ended its long run in 2015. It was the ultimate free form show -- a quiet, well-spoken, very informed guy, Vin would play lots of different kinds of music and interview singers, musicians, filmmakers, writers, cultural leaders of all stripes. The show was never about Vin -- in fact, he was very unassuming. Instead, his focus was always on the music or his guests, and that made it wonderfully rich.
I started listening to "Idiot's Delight" on K-ROCK back in high school. I remember it was through this show that I first discovered the filmmaker Kevin Smith who was promoting his first ever movie, Clerks (I didn't understand why "37" was so funny until I saw the movie!). I remember it being such a great, relaxed, extremely interesting conversation -- the kind you hear on every podcast today but was unusual to hear on the radio, or anywhere, back in 1994. In fact, the show was basically the forerunner to podcasts with long form, intelligent, in-depth interviews.
Vin was a great host and always featured interesting guests and topics -- and he had the time to do it. On K-ROCK, the show was on Sunday nights from 8 PM until 2 AM so he had lots of time. This show was a miracle and it's unbelievable that it was ever on commercial radio -- then or now. I miss it to this day. I never understood, but always loved, Vin's intro to the show. He would state, simply, at the start of every show: Respect the elders. Embrace the new. Encourage the impracticable and improbable. Without bias. This ... is "Idiot's Delight."
P.S. I actually tried to interview Vin for this blog but he never answered my emails. Maybe, if he sees this post, he'll change his mind.
The second post I ever did on this blog -- way back in March of 2007 -- was about how I heard a young tourist on the subway talk about her desire to see "dope-ass graffiti." (I hope, for her sake, she did.) And I concluded this post by asking:
"Is graffiti, "dope-ass" or otherwise, something maybe we here [in NYC] take for granted? After all, it's something most New Yorkers find offensive and barely tolerate. And yet ... would we miss it if it ever went away? Is graffiti, at the end of the day, the only truly urban art form, the city speaking back to itself? That, dear city-dwellers, is one to ponder on."
In another post, in July of 2007, I also said that the best graffiti you could see in the city was on several buildings in Queens, easily visible from the 7 train. In 2007, my words about graffiti were merely speculative muses and observations. In 2019, my words about graffiti are business.
Today, in NYC and other cities, graffiti and street art of all kinds is actually welcomed. It makes neighborhoods more interesting, more tempting to the wealthy people who want to buy property in them. Some developers are actually creating dedicated walls and spaces for graffiti. The graffiti artist Banksy is one of the most famous artists in the whole world and his work sells for millions. Long gone are the days when graffiti was a scourge of urban decay -- today, it's a symbol of the urban Renaissance (although 5Pointz, the area I mentioned in 2007, is long gone). My how times have changed.
The Manhattan District Attorney Cy Vance continues to be an utter tool.
He didn't prosecute Harvey Weinstein in 2015 when he had clear evidence of the movie producer assaulting women.
He didn't prosecute Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump when he had clear evidence of their real estate fraud.
He loves prosecuting small-bore, powerless people but the rich and powerful, under his reign, always skate.
And now he refuses to the review the cases of former prosecutor Linda Fairstein -- or current prosecutor Elizabeth Lederer -- who wrongfully prosecuted and convicted the so-called Central Park Five. This is outrageous -- if they railroaded these kids, who knows how many others these two also wrongfully sent to jail?
Vance isn't up for re-election until 2021 and, if he's smart, he won't run again and instead leave office and go into obscurity. I predict that, if he does run, a lot of people will challenge him -- but hopefully one very strong reformist candidate will emerge and beat him.
Manhattan needs its own Ken Thompson/Eric Delgado/Tiffany Caban like DA ASAP! By the way, The New York Times and Senator Elizabeth Warren have endorsed Tiffany Caban for DA so, I beg you, people of Queens, please vote for her on June 25!!
For decades the real estate industry has controlled NYC by controlling its politicans -- both at the city and state levels.
Campaign contributions and cynical pressure groups (like "Jobs for New York") have made politicians cower and give landlords and big real estate companies whatever they wanted at the expense of renters and ordinary people. For years they have tried -- and, in some cases almost succeeded -- in getting rent control and stabilization abolished. Renter protections have been systemically weakened over the years, most notably back in 1994 and 1997 (read all about it here). So when the state legislature this week passed massive new tenant protections it was a huge historic victory for renters and ordinary New Yorkers after decades of being trampled on: security deposits will be limited to one month, tenant blacklisting and illegal evictions are criminalized, rents regulations are no longer tied to income, more apartments will remained rent regulated. These are amazing, great changes -- and show, now more than ever, how elections have consequences. Ironically, bizarrely, we have an extremely greedy NYC real estate monster to thank for these new laws: Donald Trump. If that psycho hadn't been elected president in 2016, it's quite possible that the Democratic grassroots wouldn't have turned out as strongly as they did in the 2018 elections, leaving the Republicans/IDC corrupt coalition in power in the state senate. Thanks Donald!
She's best known today as the mother of uber-newsman Anderson Cooper (product of her fourth marriage) but Ms. Vanderbilt had a life worth a novel or two -- in fact, she was allegedly the inspiration for Holly Golightly in Truman Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's.
Gloria was born to wealth and married wealth -- several times. She acted, she models, she wrote, she designed clothes, she was a socialite in the vein of Brooke Astor and a grande dame, a great lady of NYC, like her friend Jackie Kennedy (who died 25 years ago last month).
She was a true Renaissance woman and apparently also quite the lover: Marlon Brando and Frank Sinatra were just a couple of her lovers.
I think what separates the Gloria Vanderbilts from the "socialites" of today was the idea of refinement, elegance, conscientious beauty -- dare I say it, "class." She was the last of her kind, the last of the grand dames of NYC, and she will be missed.
If you've ever seen the 1991 movie New Jack City about the Harlem crack wars, you might be surprised to learn that the main character -- a violent but extremely smart drug lord -- is based on a real-life 1970s Harlem heroin gangster named Nicky Barnes.
Like John Gotti -- in fact, years before he came to power -- Nicky was a "celebrity" criminal. Nicky dressed fancy, appeared in public at hot spots around NYC, and loved to tease the Feds that they could never bust him. Nicky became known as "Mr Untouchable" -- until, in the late '70s -- he was busted and spent years in prison before vanishing into the Witness Protection Program. (Barnes has been dead since 2012 and, only now, is his death becoming public.)
It's hard to imagine that, today in NYC, criminals would dare to fashion themselves "celebrities." The city has become so safe and square, policing has become so sophisticated and tech heavy, the media is so obiquitous and diffuse, any big shot criminal would be caught and sent to jail ASAP if he (or she) dared live a public life. In a way, big time criminals are doing the inverse of what everyone else is doing -- instead of living on social media, instead of gleefully giving up their privacy, professional criminals have never been more DL than ever, totally on the QT.
An OG like Nicky Barnes couldn't and wouldn't exist today -- in NYC or anywhere.
P.S. A couple of interesting things: besides being the inspiration for New Jack City, the character of Nicky Barnes appears in the moving American Gangster, about Barnes sometimes rival, sometimes partner Frank Lucas (who just died too). Also, there was talk back in the 1980s -- after Barnes went to jail -- of making a movie about him starring Eddie Murphy, but obviously it never happened. There was also, apparently, some talk about basing the plot of Godfather III around Barnes-inspired character who gets involved with the Corleones (Barnes did get involved with the Italian mob thus increasing his wealth, power, and protection).
RIP Nicky. We'll never see your likes again -- and that's a good thing.
Last night there was a lively debate amongst the various candidates running for Queens District Attorney. You can watch it here.
This is a very important election because it will decide how and which crimes are prosecuted (or not) for possibly a generation. In NYC, elected DAs often stay in office for decades -- they're not supposed to but they are rarely ever challenged and they rarely ever lose (the Brooklyn DA's race in 2013 was a big exception). Mayors, Governors, and Presidents come and go every few years but DAs stick around. So whoever wins this race will probably be in office for a very long time.
This debate got a little odd when some of the candidates started talking about "crack McDonalds" and how prostitution has become such a serious concern because "even" white girls are doing it. Also, one candidate appears to believe that David Paterson is still governor -- that must please him.
Watch it for yourself.
My choice in this race is Tiffany Caban and I urge everyone in Queens to vote for her.
A few months ago I blogged about movies about New Yorkers who travel to strange lands and get into trouble. Now you can add another such movie to your list, and this one's notorious, the 1987 bomb Ishtar.
When it was released more than 30 years ago, Ishtar become one of those movies that everyone loves to hate. You get them every few years: Heaven's Gate, Howard the Duck, Bonfire of the Vanities, Battlefield Earth, Gigli, and many others. They cost a fortune to make, stories of production problems and strife get into the press before release, the critics trash them, the movies tank at the box office, studio executives get fired, the directors and actors involved go into hiding, and the only ones who benefit are late night comedians (and, these days, social media folks).
It's a kind of sick thrill for those of us in the general public to see the people involved -- rich and famous and glamorous movie stars and power brokers who have more success, money and sex then we'll ever have -- suffer a massive public embarrassment. It's schadenfreude for the great unwashed. But what about the movie? Well, that's were it gets interesting.
Ishtar is about two extremely untalented and clueless NYC musicians played by Dustin Hoffman and Warren Beatty who get a gig playing in Ishtar -- a country near the Moroccan border -- and who bumble their way into getting involved with the CIA, terrorists, archaeologists, and a hot chick. It's an extremely silly movie, totally ludicrous, and sometimes the storytelling is clunky and the tone of the movie inconsistent.
But here's the thing: Ishtar is FUNNY! Like, REALLY funny. Like, tears in the eyes funny. Ultimately, that's what a comedy is about: making people laugh, and this movie made my wife and I laugh a lot. So, in my view, Ishtar is a sucessful comedy, and I'm not the only one who, 30+ years later, has seen it and thinks this. Ishtar bombed for several reasons: first, there was a behind the scenes smear campaign launched by the studio that produced it since a new regime has come in after production had started -- and the new regime wanted to embarrass the old regime by making it fail, and also to embarrass Beatty and Hoffman who had difficult reputations. Also, the director, Elaine May, had a difficult reputation, and the studio wanted to embarrass her. Second, the movie suffered from the fact that it was an extremely silly movie (it was based on the old 1940's Hope & Crosby "Road" movies) starring two "serious" actors whose previous movies had been Reds and Death of a Salesman -- seeing Beatty and Hoffman in this zany comedy was probably disorienting for critics and audiences (as it was for me). Third, and finally, the comedy in Ishtar is way ahead of it's time. It's cringe humor, its existentiallist humor, it's not the kind of Police Academy comedy that was popular at the time. Audiences weren't ready for it yet. So you should give Ishtar a chance -- it's not the greatest comedy by a long shot but it's very funny and lighthearted. These days, we need that comedy more now than ever.
So this week the Four Seasons will close. The sixty-year old NYC institution that defined the "power lunch" is vanishing due to a lack of "bidness". Once upon you couldn't get a table at this sheek, glamorous eatery where the rich and powerful broke bread and made deals. Now they can't give tables away.
The "power lunch" that the Four Seasons championed is definitely the product of a by-gone era. These days even the biggest and richest companies don't want to pay for super-expensive business lunches, expense accounts are either much smaller than they used to be or gone altogether. Today, people don't even meet in person that much -- nearly all my work meetings are held via video conference, I don't even leave my desk. It's very efficient and much easier than dragging to meetings -- but it has no "class." "Class" is one of those things that's in the eye of the beholder. Some people think velvet and polyester clothes and gold-plated furnishings are classy. For me, "class" is pure, simple elegance. It's quality above all, beauty that seeks to inspire, not offend. I've blogged a lot about the travails of the Plaza Hotel over the years. Did you know that once upon a whole bunch of widows used to live in the Plaza and hold salons and parties? They gave this historic hotel not only wealthy prestige but they made it interesting, they made it culturally rich and fascinating, they gave it "class" above all. And that was the point of being rich -- not just having money and expensive stuff but making something unique out of it. That's what class is to be me: something beautiful and interesting and unique and memorable. And those values have declined as wealthy these days is more about raw power and demonstrativeness, not about making smothing of it. It's wonton in a way -- the point of being rich is to be rich, not to make something of it. It's sad. It's the fall of class.
The brilliant blues and rock'n'roll singer/musician Dr. John has died.
The original New Orleans voodoo daddy, he was a genius songwriter and piano player. He produced over 30 albums, performed in every venue and on every stage, big and small, grand or humble. He even had a Top 40 hit, "Right Place, Wrong Time." He was the consummate performer, a one-of-a-kind talent, and he will be greatly missed.
Dr. John lived in New Orleans almost all his life but, for a while, he also had an apartment in Washington Heights in Manhattan so he was a part-time New Yorker. He was also a big part of my childhood: his recording of "Splish Splash" was on a childhood record (yes, vinyl!) that I had, he wrote the theme song for a childhood guilty pleasure TV show of mine ("Blossom"), and he was the inspiration for Dr. Teeth of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem from The Muppets.
Rest in peace, John. Heaven just a lot more funky today.
So it's Pride Month, and it's a special one this year -- 50 years ago this month was the Greenwich Village Stonewall raid and riots that kicked off the modern-day gay rights movement. It's hard for anyone young these days to remember just how brutal it was for gay men and women to live in America back then. You could lose your job, your family, everything you had, if you dared to come out of the closet. Even into the 1990s and early 2000s gays were legally and socially discriminated against. There's little to say that's good about what's gone on in this country in the first two decades of the 21st century but, along with the election of President Barack Obama, gay marriage and the acceptance of gay life in America today is one of this country's proudest achievements.
In fact, the current NYC Police Commissioner made a formal apology for the Stonewall raid, closing a loop of history.
But history's not over! In NYC, and across America, Drag Queens are reading to and entertain young people in public libraries (it's called Drag Queen Story Hour). Needless to say, some closed-minded people don't like this, even in progressive Brooklyn.
So when my wife and I found out about this, we decided to invite them to our neighborhood public library to read to our kids.
If Little Orphan Annie is NYC's favorite fictional un-parented child, then Eloise is NYC's favorite parent-ignored child. Eloise lived in the Plaza hotel, the legendary home to NYC glamour and sophistication, with her nanny. Her parents were forever traveling, doing everything but raising their child.
The Plaza was the stuff that dreams were made of. Eloise was its spirit.
The Plaza Hotel is so famous, so legendary, so beloved, that just the mention of it makes people feel classy. Besides Eloise, other great works of American culture have taken place there: a pivotal scene in The Great Gatsby and Neil Simon's play Plaza Suite are just a few of them.
Several years ago the Plaza was ruined. It was bought by some sleazy investors who turned it into condos that almost no one lives in. Today the Plaza is a shell, it's glamour and sophistication severely diminished, almost gone. Like NYC itself, everything great about it has been gutted.
But the Plaza's long downfall began in the last 1980s when Donald Trump bought it. In a now legendarily bad deal, he paid too much for it, made all kinds of dumb changes to the characters of the hotel, turned it into a joke, and bankrupted it before selling it at a huge loss. The spirit of the hotel died.
Eloise, in a sense, died.
Much like America now, Trump took something great, turned it into an embarrassing joke, and sped up its reputational descent. Reading this long history of Trump's ownership of the Plaza is a long depressing reminder of how the Plaza, along with America and NYC, have gone on a downward trajectory.
