T-Rex Rides the Subway on Halloween

Peter Luger in Winter

The hottest news buzzing around town has nothing to do with politics or media or the usual headline-grabbing subjects. No, the hottest news sizzlingly -- pun totally intended -- in our city is that the universally acclaimed Peter Luger's Steakhouse got a zero star rating in The New York Times. 

Ouch! That's like Einstein teaching at Harvard and saying that all of his students are morons. It is, what we would call these days, a sick burn.

Peter Luger's, for decades, has been considered the best steakhouse in NYC bar none. But people and places can only coast on a strong reputation for so long. You have to keep making a sustained case of your continued excellence, for your continued relevance, and you have to keep delivering the goods or, after a while, you'll get called out as an exhausted volcano, an emperor with no clothes, a has-been. That sadly, is Peter Luger's fate. However, I'm sure they'll be able to turn it around.  

Here's the truth: you can get a great porterhouse just about anywhere in this town or country these days. For a long, long time Luger's has not had a monopoly on that. And the best part of Luger's wasn't even the steak: it was the ambiance, the service, the incredible bacon appetizer, and the strudel with generous amounts of shlag. 

For my money, Christos Steakhouse in Astoria is the best one I've gone to NYC: great service and meat, very fresh and perfectly cooked, plus they've got oysters and a great wine list. It's small, initmate, and not a tourist trap. A real NYC steakhouse.

Also, let this be a lesson to us all of the dangers of "drift", of slow decay, of gradual decline. We must be ever vigilant to sustain our personal springs -- or else fall into winter and get frozen out.

1986 Redux

In the first year of this blog, I wrote about Robert Chambers -- the notorious "preppy murderer" who strangled a woman named Jennifer Levin to death one night in Central Park in 1986.

Before Lorena Bobbit, before OJ, before #MeToo, this was the big scandal that provoked the subject of violence towards women into the American conversation. The whole story was grotesque and sad. It was also an example of how men, especially handsome white men, who had committed horrific violence towards women (in this case, actual murder), got shockingly sympathetic treatment in the media and culture while the female victim became largely forgotten. 

Chambers even claimed -- like so many predators do -- that he was the real victim in this case!  He said that the slime petite Levin had actually tried to rape the massive, statuesque Chambers and that he was only acting in self-defence -- and some morons actually bought this BS. Chambers did some time, got out of jail, promptly became a drug dealer, and went back to prison. He's there now -- gone but not totally forgotten.

Now this case is the subject of an upcoming true-crime documentary -- revisiting 30+ year old scandals and stories seems to be all the rage these days. However, I'm curious to see how this case will be handled from a 2019 perspective -- and hopefully we'll learn less about Robert and more about Jennifer.

Talking about 1986, the final episode of The Deuce aired last night -- it ends in 1986 and then jumps ahead to 2019, showing in dramatic detail how Times Square and the city transformed in the 33-year interim but is still haunted by ghosts of the past. 

1986 is a year I remember well -- I turned 10, debuted in The Nutcracker at City Ballet, went away to sleep away camp for the first time, visited England with my mom, and saw the Aerosmith/Run DMC "Walk This Way" video for the first time. I was blissfully naive about things like the Chambers chase at the time -- and wish I still was.

"All broads, please call" - Howard Stern's Divorce @ 20

Ah, I remember this well.

Twenty-years ago today, a Monday morning, Howard hit the air. But it wasn't a typical Monday morning, and Howard was not at his usual wild rise'n'shine best. Instead, he was announcing something many of his fans thought previously unthinkable -- he had separated from, and was headed towards divorce with, his wife of 20+ years, Allison.

Only two years earlier he'd made a whole movie that was about his love her. She seemed to be his constant companion, his North Star, the person who grounded him, the better woman behind the flawed man. Howard's wife was a big part of his image -- yes, he was wild and crazy and raunchy on the air, but his fans took comfort that, at the end of the day, he went home to his wife and kids and lived a typical suburban life.

No more. Now Howard was single and living in the city and ready for action -- or, as he announced at the start of this show, "All broads, please call."

For some, this was unforgivable. Howard couldn't split with Allison! Who was he without her? Shortly after this, perhaps not surprisingly, his ratings dropped. For others, though, his separation promised wild times ahead that would be turned into great radio -- and, for a while, this was true. Until it wasn't (about a year later Howard met his current wife, Beth, and went back to being a boring married guy).

So this show, this moment, was an inflection point in the long history of Howard Stern in NYC radio. 

So Harvey Weinstein Walks into a Bar ...

... and gets his predatory balls broke by a lady. Good for her!

Much deserved. But what's even crazier about this is that he was invited to this event! People actually requested his presence! Who in God's name invites a notorious serial rapist anywhere? He should be in jail -- and probably will be soon.

No wonder Trump is president -- morality appears to be non-existent for, well, a lot of people. Egads. 

The City Beneath Our Feet

Late last year I blogged about the romantic allure of life "underground", of living at a remove from  polite society, of residing in a netherworld where the squares and scolds and scoundrels of The Real World dare not intrude. In some way, I mused, this very blog is an underground itself -- a totally obscure yet really cool little world within the vast universe of the Internet.

But only a privileged dude like moi could ever find the idea of underground life truly exciting -- or something that would make for a bearable way of life.

This massive journalistic photo project shows the literal underground life of New Yorkers in Queens who sweep our floors, clean our offices and homes, serve and deliver us our food, stock our shelves, and do all the brutal, nasty, boring work that most of us New Yorkers won't and don't have to do. They live in basements and basement apartments -- many of them illegal conversions -- often in bunks or with roommates. They have very little personal room or light, these places smell, and these underground lives are, to put it simply, rough. This is whole other city beneath our feet, a world most of us know nothing about but that keeps our city humming. 

But these folks, most of them immigrants (legal or not), persevere and keep working each day, sending money home, believing that better days for them and their families are ahead of them, that one day they will be able to emerge from this underground life and into the light of the good life. 

They're not oppressed -- they're optimistic. They don't complain -- they just work. 

And they are, truly, the best kinds of New Yorkers we have.

"The Deuce" - An Appreciation

Very soon the final episode of the three-season series The Deuce will air. Created by David Simon, whose previous shows The Wire and Treme examined the criminal underworld of early-2000s Baltimore and the cultural scene of post-Katrina New Orleans (respectively), The Deuce was about NYC. 

Unlike those shows, however, it was a period piece set in the 1970s and '80s. Ostensibly The Deuce was about the adult business and how it quickly rose into an almost respected art form ("porno chic") in the '70s until AIDS and videotape ruined it in the '80s. But The Deuce wasn't really about the adult business, it was about NYC -- specifically the Times Square area, and how it turned from a sleazy cease pool into a developer's wonderland. It's about how the forces of big money, real estate, law enforcement, and politicians came together to transform this part of NYC -- and, eventually, the city as a whole. In The Deuce, the adult business is an exemplar of this time in the city's history -- a beneficiary of the old NYC, a victim of the new NYC. It shows how, in detail, through the stories of its various interrelated characters, the city changed into the gentrified, clean-cut jewel-box it is today.

As I blogged about almost exactly two years ago -- two years before this show even hit the air! -- so goes Times Square, so goes NYC. The Deuce dramatized this fact brilliantly.

I'm sorry that The Deuce is going off the air after three great seasons -- each one jumped ahead several years from the previous season (1971 to 1978 to 1985) showing how the adult business and the city had changed in the interim. It'd be cool to see this show jump ahead to 2000 or 2001 -- just as the Internet was changing adult film yet again and 9/11 would change the city forever. Maybe one day David Simon will make a reunion movie.

Many thanks for this brilliant, one of a kind, only-in-NYC show!

NYC's Worst Bro-mance

Currently the greatest country in the world is being stunk up by Donald Trump, a wannabe presidential Lone Ranger, and his bizarro Tonto/lawyer, the former NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani. They seem to be having American history's most destructive bro-mance -- a criminal president being aided by a pathetic has-been henchman.

How did this happen? How the hell did we get here?

In NYC, for decades, Trump was a goofy real estate guy and media character, Giuliani a respected "law and order" prosecutor and mayor. It was hard to think, back then, that they would transmogrify into a neo-fascist buddy horror show, threatening to undermine our democracy and national security, pushing us to the brink of the biggest Constitutional crises since Watergate. Oh no. It seemed unimaginable just a few short years ago.

But here we are, and America is reaping the foul whirlwind. You should read this massive article that explores the Donald/Rudy tango, going back decades. The truth is that they were never particularly close and never really liked each other very much. However, at this perilous moment, they seem to need each other -- Trump thinks Rudy will save him from impeachment and historical disgrace, and Rudy is just happy that Trump is giving him a great last gasp of relevance, keeping him in the public eye. 

Politics is a cruel business which is why so few decent people get into it. You have to fight like hell to get elected to office and, once you do, work like a dog just to keep it. All the while you have people actively conspiring to get you thrown out, you have the press breaking your balls, you have to spend lots of time raising money, and it's very hard to actually get anything in government done -- it's just part of the job. And what's worse is that once you do leave office, for whatever reason, you immediately become irrelevant, a nothing. As the saying goes, all political careers end in failure. 

So this whole nightmare with Trump and Rudy is about two old guys who have been around forever, who understand that their time on the public stage is coming to and end, fighting like hell to stave off irrelevancy, to ward off the inevitable failure. They are drowning, gasping men, trying not to get swallowed by the tides of time and history.

And it all started here in NYC more 40 years ago.

By the way, there's currently a proposal in Albany to end what's called fusion voting (candidates runing for office on multiple party lines). Without fusion voting, Rudy would never have even become mayor more than a quarter century ago. We are always living in interesting times. 

Lou Reed (Literally) Hangs in the Subway

Budapest Cafe on 2nd Avenue

It's easy to bemoan all the great stuff that's vanishing from NYC so that's why it was so wonderful, this weekend, to discover the Budapest Cafe up on 2nd Avenue and 85th Street.

The family had one of the best meals we've had in long time. 

This is the kind of down-home, hearty-fair joint that I love. Great big portions of comfort food -- in this case, Hungarian comfort food -- that'll make you happy. The wife and kids had some savoury crepes which you can get with cheese or ham and cheese. She also enjoyed a delicious bowl of cucumber soup that I sampled and loved. Yours truly consumed a huge serving of veal goulash, absolutely delicious and very filling, and it was served with something I'd never had before -- Hungarian pasta, something called Nokedli. These are handmade noodles that are somewhat gnocchi-like but squiggly in appearance and don't have any kind of sauce on them (you mix it with the goulash, in case you were wondering). If and when I go back, however, I'll make sure to get the Chicken Paprikash which appears to be a customer favorite (everyone else there was eating it)

However, the real star at this place is the pastries. The restaurant is basically a bakery with a few tables in the back. The baked goods were amazing -- we had the massive, dense chocolate mouse, the delicious cookies and my personal favorite, strudel. Strudel is one of the hardest pastries to make, the dough and filling are complex and arduous to create, and most places give you substandard, non-flaky strudel. Not this place. This is hard core, multi-layered dough, fresh apple strudel with whip cream that puts you in pasty nirvana. My wife took me there precisely because she knows of my long love for strudel and she was, as usual, right!

So this is a great place to go, the kind of place that still makes NYC the greatest city in the world. 

Maybe the City Is Sleeping?

NYC is often called "the city that never sleeps." I used to think this motto was pure hyperbole until I visited, and even lived in, some other cities. 

In so many other cities, their downtown areas shut down tight around 6 PM. Stores close, the flow of people in and out of office buildings ceases, pedestrians on the sidewalks vanish, and the traffic flows to a trickle. At night, and on the weekends, these downtown's are ghost-towns. Oh, the local sports arena or concert hall might get a crush of people for a game or a show but these are the exceptions -- and once the game or show is over, the people flee. Otherwise, when you walk or drive around these cities at night, they are empty, almost completely devoid of human activity, shells of civilization. Coming from NYC, whose downtown is bustling with people every night all night, visiting such cities feels like entering some kind of post-apocalyptic hell scape.

It's just plain weird.

And because NYC at night is so busy, most major papers have had, for decades, overnight  newspaper reporters. They would monitor police scanners and rush to crime scenes. If something big broke overnight, about anything, there were a cadre of hacks ready to "get the scoop" and write the story cold, in the moment. The cry "Stop the presses!" is the legacy of overnight reporting, in order to get a hot story into the morning papers. 

And, like so many things about old NYC, the overnight reporters are vanishing. Few are left, and the Daily News now has none. Basically, overnight NYC isn't being covered anymore, there are almost no such reporters left. We might have a 24/7 cable news and social media but the legit overnight hacks are vanishing -- becoming ghost town of its own -- and the city's newfeed and lifeblood is the lesser for it.

It seems like NYC might becoming the city that sleeps after all.

Succession!

I LOVE the HBO show Succession which just finished its second season. Centered on a powerful media family, it is easily the funniest and most gut-wrenching show on TV. Can't wait for season three!

It also has a great opening theme song that encapsulates the show perfectly -- it's moves between being sly and upbeat to being sad and soulful, between being fast and uptempo to slow and melodic. And it does all this in about a minute and a half! 

The show also has great shots of NYC combined with old photos of the family -- the mighty and the intimate, the business and the personal, hopelessly combined. It's all around brilliant!

Investigate 'Dis!

The subject of investigations -- namely, who should or shouldn't be investigated and for what -- is much in the news these days.

In politics, the president is being investigated again after already having been investigated and people are either cheering on these investigations or decrying them by demanding that the investigations be investigated. Then, in media, we have Ronan Farrow promoting his new book about how he investigated the misconduct of powerful men and how these same guys were investigating him during his investigations! 

We now live in a world of investigations and counter-investigations and investigations of these counter-investigations. And on and on.

Quite frankly, I'm investigated out!

These aforementioned investigations are big time and dramatic, involving prominent people in the most powerful of industries, big money, and the highest of stakes. But most investigations are much more small bore.

For example, this woman named Marie Schembri who has been a private investigator for thirty years and works out of Brooklyn. She began her career following cheaters, namely romantic or financial ones, proving their indiscretions to their victims, i.e. her clients. Marie used to go on stake-outs, dressed in various disguises, snapping photos, nailing da' bastards in like an old-fashioned sleuth. These days she does most of her prying online.

What's interesting is there's apparently a new field of investigations that Marie specializes in: couples spying on each other at the beginning of a relationship. Not your classic case of people finding out if their spouses are cheating on them or stealing their money. No, instead she assists a person who is getting newly intimate with someone and vetting their l'object d'amour -- making sure the person really is who he or she says he or she is, making sure they're not already married or working for the mob or engaged in some kind of long-con or has a criminal record or is bankrupt or has tax liens against them or any such horror that you might imagine.

This is crazy and of course quite logical -- investigating your maybe soon-to-be-beloved to make sure they don't have any nasty surprises in store for you. Makes sense.

Still, investigating your paramour at the beginning of a relationship is decidedly non-romantic. It's depressing, shows that trust is basically non-existent unless verified. And it's a secret that you will need either to keep from your beloved or one day confess to -- and that could get messy.

If I found out that some lady I was dating (if I, pun totally intended, investigated this and found out that I was being investigated), I'd be pissed, deeply offended. And I'd tell her, like the true New Yorker that I am, "Hey! Investigate 'dis!" -- and leave.

Talking about investigations, I recently re-watched the great 1973 Robert Altman movie The Long Goodbye re-imagines private eye Philip Marlowe as a bumbling weirdo played by Elliot Gould. If I was ever to be a professional investigator, I'd probably be him! 

"Modern Love" on Amazon

There's lots of stuff I'm looking forward to seeing this fall -- the third season of The Crown, the movies The Two Popes, The Irishman, and Dolemite is My Name (all on Netflix) plus the new Watchmen series and the latest season of Ray Donovan on cable (really, I watch too much TV, shame on me). Then, on Amazon, there'll be the third season of Mrs. Maisel and something new called Modern Love, premiering on October 18th. 

Modern Love is what's called an anthology series, each episode being a stand-alone story that is loosely interrelated to the other episodes (similar themes, some similar characters, a similar setting or settings but otherwise totally different). What's interesting about this new series is that it's based on non-fiction, specifically The New York Times series "Modern Love" that explores relationships in -- you guessed it! -- the modern day and how complex, bizarre, unorthodox and surprising they are.

The "Modern Love" series has been going since 2004 and has become popular enough to become a star-studded show. The most amazing story was from a few years ago where a woman, dying of cancer, wrote a story about why women should want to marry her soon-be-widowed (i.e. soon-to -be-single) husband. She died 10 days after it was published -- heartbreaking and amazing at the same time.

From my experience, anthology series are completely hit-or-miss. Since it's basically the television equivalent of a short story collection, some stories are going to great, some are going to lousy, and most are going to be forgettable. But I'll definitely watch it!

Get Down Say Ugh! "Pulp Fiction" @ 25

Twenty-five years ago this week Quentin Tarantino's classic film Pulp Fiction was released and became the movie of the decade -- it was violent, profane, massively entertaining, and brilliant. It was a huge hit, launched and relaunched many big careers, made Tarantino a star director and a household name, and brought the independent movie world into the mainstream.

And it's still a classic, great movie a quarter of a century later.

I've blogged a lot about this movie and you can read it all here. But I don't think I fully appreciated the impact this movie had on me at the time until recently -- that it made me fall in love with art and culture in a way that my then-teenage self hadn't appreciated until then; that it made me love movies as an art-form and not just entertainment; that it made me fall in love with writing and storytelling, that it made me excited about creativity in a way that I hadn't been before. It made me realize you can take anything in the world, including things most people consider trashy, and turn it into art -- like, for example, this blog.

The movie is a pastiche of different stories, various characters, and old movies. It's the closest thing that a movie ever came to a collage while, at the same time, being totally original. It's artistic, slow-moving, complex -- and also simple and easy to understand, plus massively entertaining. It's a miracle of a movie, a true original.

It also had a great soundtrack! It was full of country songs, funk songs, covers of old songs, and classic rock. The soundtrack is as classic as the movie and introduced me to lots of great music that I had never heard before -- including my personal favorite, "Jungle Boogie" by Kool and the Gang. "Get down, get down!"

You should read New York Times film critic Janet Maslin's original 1994 review to see how this film was greeted back then -- and how it still resonates today.

   

A Witch Lives in Park Slope

Back in high school I was taking an SAT prep class and there was an odd girl in the class who  quickly dropped out. (I recall her telling everyone, "Oh, I've already gone to college, but I haven't taken my SATs yet." Huh?) 

Anyway, after she dropped out, this guy in the class said to me, "Yo man, da't bitch was carrying around some bag o' rocks and when I axe her about 'em she say they was fo' 'wicky-wicky' or some shit!" Later on I found out that "wicky wicky" meant she was a "Wiccan" or a follower of witchcraft. 

Cool, I thought, I was in a class with a witch!

My thoughts circled back to this moment because I just read a big story about a woman in Brooklyn who is a practicing witch and has a coven -- and also a podcast and now a book. Apparently she makes a good living from being a witch! 

This truly is the greatest city on Earth! Even for witches!

Ronan On The Rampage

A year-and-a-half ago I went to a taping of the Stephen Colbert show which I blogged about here. What I realize now is that I forgot to mention that muck racking reporter Ronan Farrow was also a guest on that particular show -- talking about how ex-movie mogul Harvey Weinstein had sicced former Mossad agents on Farrow in an attempt to stop his reporting on Weinstein's bad behavior.

Now Ronan Farrow has written a book called Catch and Kill about his reporting on Weinstein and also on former Today show host Matt Lauer -- and the whole sleazy cabal of lawyers, executives, PR flaks, and others who tried to suppress stories about the misbehavior of these famous and powerful men (they eventually, obviously, failed). 

Farrow documents stories of threatening phone calls, attempts to bribe reporters and others with book and movie deals, secretive pay-offs and non-disclosure agreements, bad-faith arguments about how stories weren't "ready" for publication when in reality they were being suppressed to keep people happy and in their jobs, and lots more. What Farrow's reporting -- and the whole wave of reports about the bad private behavior of prominent men in the last couple of years -- is that now we're seeing what goes on behind the scenes with the rich and powerful -- behind closed doors, late at night, on the phone or in emails and texts, when other people who might be able to stop it aren't around or are ignorant of what is going on around them, just out of sight and mind. Farrow and his fellow reporters are shining a light not only on bad -- sometimes criminal -- behavior, but also on the dark chasm that exists between men and women, the powerful and the powerless, the abusers and the abused, the rumors and whispers that float in the air, unproven and unconfirmed -- until now.

They're showing us the grime and dirt beneath the shiny surfaces -- the ultimate, ugliest of reality shows.

I'll be honest -- I'm not a huge fan of Ronan Farrow personally. During his Colbert appearance I found him impossibly smug and arrogant (I guess winning a Pulitzer Prize will do that to you) and I dislike this personal jihad he has against Woody Allen, his maybe father. That said, his reporting on this subject of institutionalized abuse is important and, if it has any value beyond pure gossip, is that hopefully it will make men in power change their behavior for the better -- if only so that they don't become future subject for reporters like Ronan Farrow, future victims of his rampages.

Is NYC in Decline? Discuss!

Memo from NYC

So a dancing proudly gay TV talk-show host named Ellen DeGeneres sat next to a former conservative Republican President named George W. Bush at a football game -- where they talked and yukked it up together, and declared that they are friends.

Isn't that great? 

People on "both sides" can find "common ground" and "come together" and "be friends" and "respect each other" even if they don't always agree or share the same "beliefs."

But what if those beliefs kill people? What if those beliefs terrorize the weak, the poor, the marginalized -- denying them their humanity, robbing them of their dignity, making them suffer even more?

As Governor of Texas George W. Bush sent people to be executed.

As President, he lied about and started an endless and illegal war killing thousands, botched the response to Hurricane Katrina, scaled back environmental regulations, made it harder for women to exercise their reproductive freedom, exploded the deficit while grossly favoring the rich, worked hard to deny gay people their civil rights, and ran for a second term smearing the service of a war hero.

George W. Bush is a bad man -- and his actions as president were terrible. There's a reason he left office hated, there's a reason you don't see Republican candidates campaigning with him, there's a reason his failures and destruction as president left a leadership vacuum in his party to be taken over by a con-man like Trump. Just because he's been out of office for 10+ years, staying quiet and painting, and another Republican president is currently terrorizing the country doesn't lessen the horror show that were the Bush years.

So, sorry Ellen, your friendship with this man is sleazy and your plea that we should just "be kind" to each other is offensive to everyone he hurt.

This situation, sadly, is example of something bigger than politics -- it's about wealth, power, fame, and privilege. It's about a greater corruption, about how people, once they crack a certain glass wall, become immune to the vagaries of mean spirited policies, are protected from consequences.

Showbusiness Gets the City Government it Deserves

New York City is so famous that people all over the world think they know everything -- or, at least, a lot -- about the city even if they know very little. This ignorance might even include New Yorkers themselves.

This lack of knowledge extends to the city government.   

I'm sure everyone knows NYC has a mayor -- but I'm also sure precious few know when or how the mayor is elected, if mayors are or aren't term-limited, etc. And besides mayors, how many people know anything else about city government and its elected leaders?

Movies and TV shows loves to have mayors and other city officials are characters -- think City Hall, Spin City, Ghostbusters II, lots more. Yet recently some new shows and movies have gone down the chain of city government and revealed this profound ignorance of NYC government in embarrassing ways.

A show called What We Do in the Shadow takes place on Staten Island and refers to the Staten Island City Council. It must therefore come as news to people on Staten Island who watch this show that their borough has finally achieved independence after all.

The Marvel movies seem to confuse the PATH trains for the subway.

A new show called Sunnyside has a New York City "Councilor" getting elected in 2004 and serving for 15 years -- something that is impossible since there are no city elections in 2004 and councilmen/women are limited to two four year terms.

And so much more.

Seriously, this is Mr NYC message to Hollywood: if you're gonna portray city government, GET IT RIGHT! Do a Google search! Or consult with me! It's embarrassing to see movies and TV shows get this town so wrong!

Phoebe Waller-Bridge on SNL

Classic Mr NYC

Here at Mr NYC we love delving into the past of this great city as well as sharing personal memories and getting wistful at things that change and disappear in it. It's only natural -- the longer you live, the more people and things you see come and go, resulting in a natural sadness. 

Such is the force of nostalgia.

But nostalgia can have a dark side -- it can make people mis-remember the past, fetishize the way things used to be, yearn for a distant world that is gone fforever, even if the past wasn't that great to begin with or is gone for a good reason.

That's why I love this long article that looks at the recent Downton Abbey movie and the Netflix series The Crown -- both are brilliant shows, beautifully written and acted, the production values are lavish, and the affluent, upscale appeal of them is huge (both are big hits with audiences). But, as this article states, they are also pieces of dangerous nostalgia, making people long for worlds of British aristocracy that were actually exploitative and oppressive.

And, in their way, they explain Trump and Brexit: yearning for a long ago world and painting it with rose-colored glasses. In these cases, the desire for nostalgia these days is so strong that people are willing to wreck their countries in pursuit of it, their oars against the currents of time, trying to be borne back into an un-real past. 

For example, in the Downton Abbey movie, King George V and his wife Mary are presented as kind, lovely people -- in reality, they were monstrous, horribly abusive  people. As parents, they psychologically and emotionally abused their children. They were such bad parents that their son, Edward VIII, abdicated the throne in perhaps one of the biggest FUs in history. 

Nostalgia, as the article explains, is a fantasy we sell ourselves -- the future be damned. 

Crazy Rudy!

Locations, Locations

In NYC real estate is king. As big as this city is, there are so many people who want to live and work here that every inch of the 5 boroughs is in demand.

Location, location, location is the constant refrain. Or is it?

In a city of 8.6 million people -- a city brimming with people who want to buy things and use services -- there is more vacant commercial property than ever before. That means lots of stores and places where people could shop and get services don't exist! don't This segment from WNYC radio yesterday explores the alarming rise of empty commercial space in NYC but I don't need the media tell me this -- just walk down any commercial street in this city, in an neighborhood in any borough, and you'll see lots of vacant store fronts. It's stunning to think that, at a time when the city's population is bigger than ever, there are fewer and fewer places for New Yorkers to shop. 

The reasons are obvious: rising rents, online shopping. Also: tax write-offs -- some commercial landlords can actually make more money writing-off empty space than getting rent. That's depressing -- and hopefully the tax law will be changed. What's awful about retail stores closing in neighborhoods that they help give neighborhoods a sense of identity, a sense of individuality, a sense of self. Take them away and you ruin the neighborhoods.

Vacant store fronts are the blight of NYC today. 

One thing, however, we don't want in NYC is a Trump Presidential Library. Hopefully that'll never happen although a Staten Island City Councilman wants it here (in Staten Island of course) and some nitwit journalist thinks it's a great idea. 

How can I put this? UGH!

The idea that we would build a monument to this evil man in this city, a monument of hate and division, is horrifying. I hope, when the time comes (sooner hopefully rather  than later), any proposal for a Trump Library in NYC will be stopped. It will be the last, great triumph of the Resistance.