NYC In Situ

Going through this blog's almost 2400 posts, I realize that I have never posted a comprehensive map of the five boroughs. So here goes:

Thanks to me you can now find all of the major parks, highways, museums, hospitals, stadiums, shopping centers, golf courses, and other vital points of interest in this fair archipelago.

And we truly are a city of isles, an eclectic array of floating landmasses (except for the Bronx), our geography and topography and demography and any and all "ographies" combining to make a triumphant whole, the nation's biggest city by far.

We are also connected in spirit. Not only do bridges and buses and subways and ferries bind these disparate parts of the city together, but the city is also kept together by "magic." 

At least, that's what popular culture tells us.

I direct your eyes to this lengthy, somewhat incoherent, somewhat interesting, article that examines the role of TV shows portraying this gentrifying, unequal, and diverse city as a place where people from all walks of life happily cohabitate. Increasingly shows set here want us to believe that NYC is a place where New Yorkers take active interest in each other, where we float into each other's lives, where we learn about each other. The article cites the show "High Maintenance" where different lives converge over a shared love of NYC and pot.  


It's a nice idea that popular culture is selling us, even if it's not entirely true. That is the real "magic", the real fantasy -- that, I guess, and weed.

My Public Access Memory Anecdote

Memory is a tricky thing: we remember some things very well, some things somewhat well, and some things not at all. 

Obviously we always remember the big things very well -- moving residences, graduating schools, getting and leaving jobs, taking interesting trips, losing virginity's, witnessing (or participating in) historical events like big elections or news stories, etc. Then there are things we do in our lives that are interesting but somewhat memorable: usually one-off things like seeing a good show, taking a short trip, having a  date, having good conversation, etc. Then there's everything else that we either can't remember or choose to forget -- like traumas.  

File this under "remember somewhat well", an interesting one-off: the one and only time I hosted a public access TV show. 

My recent post about public access television jogged this almost seventeen year-old memory. It's something I did completely on lark, enjoyed it, and, for reasons I cannot understand or remember at all, never did again. 

By 2003 I had been watching too much public access. It cured my boredom. Late at night there would be lots of call-in shows, where an assorted array of quirky New Yorkers would sit before a camera in a studio with poor acoustics and take calls from the freaks watching. I even called in  a few times myself -- just to have someone to talk to. After watching more than my fair share of this junk, I thought "Hey! I could do this!" So I contacted Manhattan public access, filled out some form, went down to their studios on West 59th street, took a short "training class", and then got an one night half-hour time slot in July of that year.

The idea for the show I proposed, that the public access station let me air one time and then, for reasons that were never explained to me, never again, was to take calls from New Yorkers where they would air their confessions. In fact, I was going to call the show "Nighttime Confessions".

Around 11:30 one Wednesday night, I went into a small TV studio and stood behind big table. Two cameras behind a glass shield pointed at me. There were lights overhead, blazing. I had written down the name of the show and the phone number to call in on a piece of paper and taped it to the table. I even included my email address. As soon as 11:30 hit, a red light went on. I smiled for the camera, briefly told the audience what the show was about, and started taking calls.

To my shock, the calls poured in.

I had never been on-air before, I was completely unknown as a host, and yet people were just itching to talk to me. Many of the calls were people just yelling or telling me that I sucked, and I quickly hung up on them. One guy, who I assume was gay, was very flirtatious. Then a girl called in for love advice, talking about how some guy had just gotten her pregnant. She asked me for advice and I don't remember what advice I gave but then the next call was another girl who scolded me, remonstrated with me, told me that I had no business giving anyone advice. And then ... the show was over. 

I left the studio, got in a cab, went home, and then ... nothing. I never got another shift and never did another show. 

And that was it -- a complete and total anti-climatic memory. Fortunately, after that, I started having more success with "da' ladies" and stopped watching so much public access. 

Footnote: I did get an email from someone after the show, a really nasty picture. I deleted it and that was that. 

Dr. Who in NYC

To be honest I'm not the biggest Dr Who fan but WHO the hell cares what I think? The show has been a huge global hit for literally more than half a century, it's survived numerous iterations, multiple doctors, and a countless number of dopey plotlines. 

It's the Energizer Bunny of TV shows -- annoying as hell and it just keeps going and going and going and going ... ad infinitum.

Certain members of my family are big Dr Who fans so that makes me a Dr Who adjacent fan. So it was cool to see that a recent episode had the good doctor and her mates visit NYC. Other doctors have visited the city in the past too. Here are some examples:

WHO knows? Maybe one day the Tardis will materialize here yet again!

Would You Hire This Man to Watch Your Dog?

Close(d) Captioning

A deaf Brooklyn man has recently sued an adult site because its naughty movies do not include closed captioning. This is actually a very interesting constitutional questions and it'll be fascinating to see if this winds up before the Supreme Court. In the meantime, let me help out with the closed captioning:

"We're out here looking for hot moms. Oh wait, look, there's one right now!"

"You know, your grades aren't good. In fact, you're failing."
"Please, I really need to pass this class."

"Honey, can you drive the babysitter home?" 

"You brought me a plain pizza? I ordered it with sausage!" 

"What's going on -- oh! Young lady! You are in SO MUCH trouble! When your father gets home ..."
"Please don't tell my dad! Please don't tell my dad!"
"You should be ashamed of yourself!"
"Please, please, I'll do whatever you want!"
"Well, your boyfriend is kind of cute ... I have an idea!"

"Where is that cable repair man?"

Remembering "Beyond Vaudeville"

Long before YouTube and the Internet allowed everyone to become a "content creator", the only place where you could find oddballs and fringe characters producing weird and uncommercial stuff was on public access TV.

In NYC, on Manhattan Public Access, there was a show that merged the amateur and fringe with the more mainstream -- called Beyond Vaudeville, it ran from 1986 to 1996, and was hosted by an Andy Kaufmanesque guy named Frank Hope. It was a talk/variety show where a number of randomly assorted guests would talk while Frank and his hyper sidekick David would say or do outrageous things that got amazingly cringey reactions from their guests.

Although Beyond Vaudeville was on for ten years, it only aired 75 time. The show did not have a regular schedule, it would just pop-up every so often, and its guests were beyond eclectic -- they included the dwarf from Twin Peaks, Barry Williams from The Brady Bunch, NYC talk show host Joe Franklin, WNBC news anchor Sue Simmons, actor Fred Williard, Grandpa Al Lewis, Tom Arnold, Oscar-winners Shirley Jones and Kim Hunter, Tiny Tim, as well as strange comedians, dancers, jugglers, and others. 

Others who appeared on the show were Mr NYC favorite Alison Steele and as well as Mr NYC interviewee Michael Musto.

I've posted a few episodes below -- watch them and take a peak at this memorably weird show at a time when NYC was still memorably weird.

Gotta Love New Yorkers

If you look at today's New York Times, you'll find two very different articles about two very different New Yorkers who are, in my opinion, the quintessential examples of what makes this city great.

The first is an obituary for Nina Griscom -- someone you may not have heard of but was an "only-in-NYC" type. She was a model, a TV host, a designer, a socialite, an "It Girl" of the 1970s and 1980s. Her career was varied, as were her marriages, and she lived a full, exciting life. Sadly she died recently from ALS but reading about her, and her unconventional path, was both heartening and inspiring.

The second is someone who is very much alive -- and thriving: Bowen Yang of Saturday Night Live. He's the first Asian cast-member in the show's 45 year history and he's become a huge breakout star. He's very funny and a brilliant mimic. Also, like many New Yorkers, he's a transplant -- making the little town blues melt away and making it big here.

They couldn't have lived or thrived anywhere.

Manning Retires

Byford Resigns

A Little Birdhouse in Your Soul: They Might Be Giants' "Flood"@30

Two weeks in the year 1990, and two weeks after I turned thirteen, a previously unknown band from Brooklyn called They Might Be Giants released their album Flood -- and made history.

It was the first big alternative album to go mainstream, with an array of hits like "A Little Birdhouse in Your Soul", "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)", "Minimum Wage", "Your Racist Friend", and many others. Along with The Simpsons, which had premiered on television only a couple of weeks earliers -- and later on Seinfeld and Nirvana's Nevermind -- this album announced that the 1990s had arrived. It was going to be a more funky, more ironic, less conformist than the conservative 1980s that had just ended. Soon enough Bill Clinton would be president and Tarantino movies would be in theaters, and the new decade would have a feel and sound all its own.

Flood is a perfect album of great songs that still hold up thirty years later. As my young adulthood commenced those decades ago, this album came with me through it, a friend that never went away. And I still listen to it today -- like folk music, the music feels like it was never new and it never gets old.

Harvey's Daze

Paul Simon, a boy from Queens, opened his classic song "Bridge Over Troubled Water" with:

When you're weary, feeling small,

When tears are in your eyes, I'll dry them all

I'm on your side, oh, when times get rough

And friends just can't be found 

Like a bridge over troubled water

I will lay me down ...

Somehow I don't think Paul was thinking about, or singing about, another boy from Queens named Harvey Weinstein. The former movie mogul is on trial for rape and faces the very real possibility of life in prison.

The tragedy of his case is immense: he harrassed and rape women, then doubly victimimized them by using his power and money to keep them quiet, in some cases for decades. And now that his predatory behavior has been revealed for the entire world to grapple with, now that he is on trial for his life, Harvey is all alone. (Believe it or not, he still doesn't understand why the world is so mad at him, he is dazed by his downfall.)

His friends and most of his family have abandoned him. The business he used to rule has disavowed him. And his future will either be in a prison cell like Bernie Maddoff or a purgatorial life like OJ's. 

To me, that must be the worst thing: going to jail must be horrible but there has to be some well of mental and emotional stregnth you can draw on knowing that you have friends and family who love you and care about you. That in the outside world, there is someone who wants to give comfort, dry your tears, lay themselves down for you, who is your bridge over troubled water between jail and freedom.

Harvey doesn't have that. He never will. And that must be the worst fate he'll ever endure. 

MLK in NYC 1962

Everybody Hates Him

In the movie Reversal of Fortune, about the 1980s Claus Von Bulow attempted murder case, there's a brilliant scene where Von Bulow (played in an Oscar-winning performance by Jeremy Irons) hires the lawyer Alan Dershowitz (played by the late Ron Silver) to handle his appeal. 

Von Bulow and Dershowitz are lunching at Delmonico's, the famed restaurant. As they dig into their food, you begin to see how different these men are, how they literally approach life (and food) differently, and what an odd pairing this will be: Von Bulow meticulously lemons his shrimp cocktail while Dershowitz voraciously tears into his salmon. 

As they eat, Von Bulow asks how much Dershowitz's services will cost -- $300 an hour is the reply, much of which will be plowed back into Dershowitz pro-bono cases defending innocent black people on death row. Von Bulow asks if that means Dershowitz will take him on as a client but he says he probably won't because the case doesn't seem to have any Constitutional stakes attached to it. Von Bulow asks him to read the record of the case to try to find something Constitutional. Dershowitz demures but then tells Von Bulow there's one thing that might make him take the case: "Everybody hates you."

That seems to be the Dershowitz M.O. -- take on cases where everybody hates the defendant, whether that's Von Bolow or OJ Simpson or Donald Trump.

Today he was announced as one of his impeachment lawyers, along with the loathsome Ken Starr, where he will try to argue that abusing presidential power by inviting foreign interference into an American election isn't an impeachable offense. Dershowitz now has the chance to gaslight the entire country, engage in his best through-the-looking-glass, up-is-down, night-is-day, left-is-right, the un-Constitutional is Constitutional mental jujitsu Olympics. 

I sure hope he's getting more than $300 an hour for this debasement of his entire career. 

But there's two big differences between the socialite and the POTUS: Claus Von Bulow was a disciplined, cooperative client who never pretended to know more than his lawyer, who didn't rant and rave or feel sorry for himself or engage in stupid conspiracy theories as to the reasons for his dillemma. Trump is the opposite. Also, Dershowitz brilliantly uncovered facts and evidence that exculpated Von Bulow -- with Trump, as more evidence emerges, the more it proves his guilt. 

It's sad to see Alan Dershowitz descend to this sleazy level but the man can't help it, he loves the spotlight too much.

But Trump does have one thing in common with Von Bulow -- everybody hates him. 

Awkwafina Rules the MTA

So the actress Awkwafina, one of those one-name wonders like Cher or Madonna, is promoting her new show about Queens -- the place where she is from -- by taking over the announcements next week on the 7 train.

This has to be the first.

Using the subway announcements to promote a show is genius and hopefully the MTA is making some good dough out of this. I don't regularly ride the 7 train but maybe I will next week.

My only problem: the subways riders will only hear her voice and not actually see her which is a shame because Ms. Awkwafina is super hot!

Gotta Love New Yorkers

When it comes to New Yorkers, we are audacious bunch of people, in ways both good and bad. Recently I have read about a few things that New Yorkers, both past and present, have done that have both inspired and shocked me, filled me with hope as well as dread, reminding me about what people in this town can do, for better or worse. For example:

There's the story of Neir's Tavern out in Queens -- the oldest one in NYC and one of the oldest in the United States, dating back almost 200 years -- that was literally hours away from closing. But then the mayor, the community, as well as some landlords who came to their senses, were able to broker a deal and keep the legendary pub open. It was a beautiful example of people uniting in a good cause to do something for the common good and prevailing, keeping part of our history alive. New Yorkers at their best!

Then there's Hope Consolo. Who was she? She was a very successful real estate broker in NYC for decades who died a few years ago. At first, upon her death, retrospectives of her life story had made it seem like she was an admirable woman who has forged a great career. In reality? She was a fraud. She lied about her background, her accomplishments, and was a sleazy and dishonest a businessperson. Her revised obituary makes for fascinating reading because it's a story of pure sociopathy, pure greed, pure vanity, pure heartlessness. If you wonder how another dishonest real estate person from NYC made it to the White House, this deep-dive into the life of this lesser known person gives you a glimpse into the fetid world of NYC real estate world they both operated in and that is now stinking up the country.

Another person with a less than savory legacy is William O'Dwyer. He was mayor in the late 1940s and his entire mayoralty was basically a tool for the mafia. He was controlled by organized crime. In 1950, just months into his second terms, he resigned, left the country, and never returned. The story of his rise and fall is fascinating and depressing, the story of a time in our city's history when its government was not being run for the benefit of its people. The story its like something out of a crime movie -- but it was depressingly real.

But then there's The Snowy Day. This is a great children's book by the NYC born author Ezra Jack Keats. Published in 1962, it's a very simple story about a young black boy who goes out and plays with the snow. The story is so simple and so beautifully told that it's become a classic. It won the Caldecott Medal in 1963 but it's now won an even bigger prize -- it's the most checked out book in the history of the New York Public Library, having been checked out almost half a million times. That's more than any Harry Potter book, more than any Dr. Seuss book, more than any other book ever. I've read this story to my kids many times and the fact that I'm sharing this story with them along with hundres of thousands of other NYC kids, is heartwarming indeed.

Clouds Over Lower Manhattan

The Lincoln Center Swimming Pool

This is sure to become an iconic photo, thanks to a water main break.

Review: "Girlfriends" (1978)

Recently I saw a movie on TCM that I'd never seen before. However, after watching it and reading more about it online, I discovered that it was a landmark of early independent New York cinema, Girlfriends from 1978.

This is the kind of movie Lena Dunham would have made back then. Instead, it was made by someone named Claudia Weill and it features an great cast and many touching scenes. The story is very simply but compelling: a young shluby woman named Susan lives with her gorgeous best friend Anne while trying to make it as a freelance photographer. They are both young and full of hope for the future. Then reality intrudes. Anne gets married and moves out, Susan struggles for a while in her career, and her relationships with men are fraught. Susan has a one-night stand that eventually turns into a strained relationship with a guy named Eric, plus she has a short weird relationship with a rabbi. She became alienated from Anne, whose new life and husband make her feel unwelcome. But, after many starts and stop, Susan's career takes off, Eric falls in love with her, and she and Anne evolve their friendship into a new understanding.

It's a deeply affecting film about love, friendship, and the vicissitudes of life. And it was way, way, way ahead of its time.

Susan is played by Melanie Mayron who had a big acting career in the 1980s, winning Emmys for her role on thirtysomething before she went on to become a successful director in her own right. The boyfriend, Eric, is played by Christopher Guest, years before he'd strike comic gold with movies like Spinal Tap and Best in Show. A very bearded Bob Balaban plays Anne's miserable husband and Eli Wallach, the great actor, plays the rabbi, making an otherwise creepy guy very likable.

This a movie that does what all movies should do -- show, and not tell. It's definately worth seeing if you can.

Deep Thoughts Inspired by the New York Hall of Science

Best "I Love New York" logo I've ever seen. Very cool.



Yes, we will find life on Europe! Specifically, Jeremy Irons.

And finally ...



It's great that we can finally determine the exact amount of the purity and essence of our precious bodily fluids. 

Art of the Brick

Over the weekend the family went to the New York Hall of Science to see the special exhibit Art of the Brick that's there until the end of January.

I've been to many an exhibit over the decades -- paintings, sculptures, installations, videos, etc. -- but never one where the medium of the work was exclusively done in LEGOs. But a former lawyer named Nathan Sawaya did just that, creating over 100 artworks completely out of the various colored pieces. 

They really are mind-boggling and I urge everyone to go see this exhibit before it closes. Many of the artworks are three-dimensional recreations of existing artworks like "American Gothic" or "The Scream." Others are massive sculptures of dinosaurs or ghosts, bigger than life-sized standing objects that are nothing like I've ever seen before.

What's so stunning about these works is the level of detail, clear precision, and obviously careful labor that went into their creation. It's a kind of craftsmanship I've never seen before and it's enjoyable for kids and grown up a like.

No War NYC

Caro Papers at NYPL

The great historian and biographer Robert Caro -- he of the legendary Robert Moses and LBJ tomes -- has just donated his vast collection of papers and reporting for his books to the New York Public Library.

Some people, if they ever hit the Lottery and never had to work again, would probably spend it on a beach somewhere. I'd spend it in the NYPL reading Robert Caro's papers, devouring the back story to his great books about political power and how it changes American life.

Talking about archives, if you want to read the extensive Robert Caro/Robert Moses posts on Mr NYC, go here.

And, hey, NYPL, maybe, just maybe, one day in the far, far, future, maybe you'll want to put blogs into your archives?

I can think of a couple!

Elizabeth Wurtzel RIP

Back before social media, before the age of over sharing was in full swing, before people like Lena Dunham and the Kardashians turned their lives and bodies and vanity into TV shows and multi-million dollar enterprises, Elizabeth Wurtzel led the way with simple prose.

When she published her memoir Prozac Nation in 1994, still in her late 20s, it was controversial and shocking. She wrote in raw and unsparing detail about her depression, drug use, self-mutilation, and personal life in ways that made readers and critics uncomfortable. She made the TMI, warts-and-all, too-soon-in-life memoir a trendy before it was trendy. 

Elizabeth broke a particular mold.

She was a native of the Upper West Side, wrote more confessional books and articles in the years after Prozac Nation, and also worked as a lawyer. She has just died at the age of 52. Despite a life full of drugs and depression, she died from cancer (not an overdose or suicide) so her passing in this way is particularly poignant.  

I never read the book that made her famous but I read her later book, Bitch, about angry, unashamed, out-spoken women. It was angry, funny, brutal, and unapologetic. Published in 1998, it was, in retrospect, well ahead of its time.

Real trailblazers are rarely appreciated in their own era, and Elizabeth Wurtzel certainly was one.

RIP

Harvey Weinstein Trial Starts

Review: "Weekend at the Waldorf" (1945)

Over the holidays the wife and I caught up on a movie we'd DVR'd from TCM: the 1945 all-star ensemble comedy Weekend at the Waldorf.

Remember a few years ago there was a batch of romantic comedies with all-star ensemble casts like Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, New Year's Eve, and a bunch of others? Well, those movies were clearly inspired by movies like this one. In fact, Weekend at the Waldorf was an inspired update of another all-star ensemble classic from 1932: Grand Hotel, set in Berlin, during the Weimar Republic.

The movie, obviously, takes place at the famous hotel in NYC during the last days of WW2. The war is ever present in this otherwise lighthearted movie, with people either coming back from, or headed to, the various battle fronts. This movie, like Grand Hotel, has all the elements: the crooked businessman, the dying man, the scoundrel, the ambitious and beautiful secretary, the exhausted-and-just-wants-to-get-away-from-it-all movie star, plus an array of goofy characters. Their lives and stories intersect over this one weekend at the Waldorf Astoria, and the movie is a lot of good classic movie fun with great writing and scenes.

The movie stars Ginger Rogers, Lana Turner, Walter Pidgeon, Van Johnson, Robert Benchley, and Keenan Wynn. Most people today have probably never heard of any of them but they were big starts 75 years ago and they are all clearly having a lot of fun working together.

It's definitely worth checking out if it ever winds up on TCM again.

Queens Borough President Special Election - March 24, 2020

Mayor DeBlasio just announced that there will be a special election for Queens BP in March.

The office feel vacant when former Queens BP Melinda Katz resigned to become the new Queens DA. This special election is non-partisan, with 5 candidates running -- and whoever wins it will probably be the Queens BP for the next decade.

You heard it here first. 

Prohibition Hits A Hundred Years Old

On January 1st, 1920, the legal prohibition of alcohol went into effect. Known as Prohibition, or the 18th Amendment, or the Volstead Act, it outlawed the production and sale alcohol to all Americans.

We are still living in the wake of this misbegotten social experiment.

To say that Prohibition failed is an understatement -- along with the Vietnam War, it's one of the most disastrous events in American history. Even though it was fully repealed in 1933 (via the 21st Amendment), Prohibition turned organized crime into the big business that lasts to this day. Suddenly, thanks to bootlegging, mid-level gangsters were multi-millionaires (like Brooklyn-born Al Capone), the tentacles of organized crime invaded every neighborhood in NYC and America, it infiltrated and corrupted government at the local, state and federal level, it turned America upside-down, and Americans on themselves. 

Popular culture was also deeply impacted -- The Great Gatsby and The Godfather Saga were inspired, in part, by the culture and legacy of Prohibition. Movies like The Roaring Twenties and The Untouchables, plus TV shows like Boardwalk Empire, are all about Prohibition. More broadly, they are about how American life was corrupted, and continues to be, by this massive mistake.

Here in NYC, New Year's Eve 1919 was one a huge party as people got in their last (they thought) legal drinks. Times Square, in particular, was a hopping place. Naturally, once 1920 hit, speakeasies began popping up all over the city. People (like my own grandfather) learned how to make their own bathtub gin. 

Like Vietnam, like Trump, Prohibition wouldn't be the last time Americans got together to make a huge, decades-ruining mistake.