Never Forget Them

This is a post about my favorite kind of person, the NYC hustler -- in this case, a few of them. They include a poet, a movie theater programmer, a nasty guy who wrote nasty books, and a kooky faith healer. It's also about a structure that could have become one of our iconic buildings -- and was! -- until it wasn't.

They were (and are) regular New Yorkers who hustled in their odd respective fields and found great success -- and, in one case, great failure. All of them except one are gone now but let's remember them:

The poet was named Marie Ponsot who just died at 98. She was one of the last links to the Beat generation, a contemporary and colleague to folks like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and others. Her poems were about the complications of love and existence and she won big awards and taught at Queens College. Interestingly, she took a long hiatus from her career to raise seven kids but then later resumed publishing and teaching to great acclaim. 

Then there's Ben Barenholtz who used to program the downtown Elgin and Waverly movie theaters before having a very successful career in film distribution and producing -- including taking a chance on a couple of young filmmakers called the Coen Brothers. Ben's biggest claim to fame, besides launching two of America's greatest cinematic talents, was basically inventing the Midnight Movie. In 1970, he started programming movies at or past midnight, a move that people thought was crazy at the time -- until it was met with massive success. The midnight movie is now a tradition around the world and this guy was the hustler who started it.

And then there's another writer, a wacky guy named Harold Robbins who died almost 20 years ago. A Jewish kid from Brooklyn, he migrated to Hollywood where he wrote trashy books that become popular trashy movies. He made tons and tons of money and lived it up in lavish style. Lots of coke, lots of booze, lots of broads, lots of craziness ensued. He was also a complete liar, trying to convince people that he was some kind of war hero -- his life was fiction as much as his books. Of course, it all ended in tears -- by the time he died he was broke, disabled, homeless. He's one of those guys who lost everything but gained every kind of amazing experience in life that most of us could only dream of.

Okay, so this one isn't gone, she's still alive and apparently thriving. She's another New Yorker gone Hollywood -- Audrey Hope, "crystal healer" to the stars! She apparently uses crystals on the bodies of celebrities to help them restore "balance" and achieve "wellness" and all sorts of crap and yet apparently she makes a great living and is very popular. Talk about a hustler but apparently she's totally legit. Gotta give her credit for that! 

And keeping with the crystal theme -- did you know that Bryant Park is only a park today because the structure that once stood there, the New York Crystal Palace, burned down in 1858 (part of it also burned down in 1856)? This was a huge exhibition space, domed and massive, based on a similar structure built and designed by Prince Albert in London. It was, at the time, the tallest building in the city. The Crystal Palace was deemed so impressive and major that, at the opening ceremony in 1853, it was dedicated by then President Franklin Pierce. Within just a few short years it was gone, a hustle that failed. But for a time it reigned in glory. (It reminds me that great speech Tywin Lannister gives in Game of Thrones about how the castle Harrenhal was supposed to be the great legacy of the lord who built it but then it was destroyed by dragon fire by Aegon Targaryen).

These are my kinds of people, the hustler, the strivers, the people who took chances and made something. In many way, this little blog is my attempt to be one of these kinds of people -- people we should never forget.