USNS Comfort Arrives in NYC

Empty City

These photos are haunting -- images of NYC during the pandemic.

They are both sad and encouraging -- sad because this crises has literally changed the face and look of the city but also encouraging because it shows that New Yorkers are taking it seriously and doing the right thing by "social distancing."

I never thought I'd see the city so barren, so empty, so drained of life. Streets with no cars or people, closed storefronts, plazas and open spaces vacant, a sprinkle of pedestrians here and there wearing facemasks -- a city of concrete and steel, haunted by ghosts, devoid of its great spirit.

There's nothing eerier than a big, empty, abandoned city.

Recently I was reading C.S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew (part of The Chronicles of Narnia) to my oldest daughter. There's a brilliant, chilling part of the book where two children suddenly find themselves transported into another world -- specifically, a once great city, now dead and crumbling, frozen in time. They walk through buildings and courtyards, deadly silent, before they happen upon an area with men and women, dressed like nobles, sitting in chairs, who have been turned into statues. Through dark magic one of the people, a woman, rises from the dead -- and all hell breaks loose. It's great storytelling and, as it turned out, deeply prophetic.

But we are not a city of statues, not yet. We live within ourevels. NYC will rise again better than ever!

Mark Blum RIP

A great NYC actor of the stage and screen, Mark Blum, has passed away from this terrible virus.

He had long and busy career, and appeared in classic movies like Desperately Seeking Susan and Crocodile Dundee as well as brilliant TV shows like Mozart in the Jungle and Succession.

A real loss to the culture of this city. RIP.

USNS Comfort Heads to NYC

Mr NYC Becomes a Teenager

So this must feel what it's like to celebrate a birthday in the hospital but I'll try anyway.

Today is the thirteenth anniversary of Mr NYC. 

Yes, you read that right, on this very date thirteen years ago this blog debuted. Mr NYC has now existed in three different decades, spanning over 2400 posts and nearly half a million hits.

Not bad for a little piece of cyberspace that has never spent a penny on advertising or gotten any kind of media love. 

If you read this list of 13 Truths of Being Thirteen, you'll get a good idea of the maturity level of this blog and its creator (since this blog is now a teenager, expect it to get very very horny).

So happy birthday to Mr NYC ... or me, sorta.

Here's to thirteen more!

NYC Public Housing During Coronavirus

Terrence McNally RIP

One of the many sad victims of this horrible virus is the great playwright Terrence McNally.

An openly gay man writing about both gay life and the cultural elite, he was a pioneer, a brilliant wordsmith, and a New York City treasure. 

His life was like something out of one of his plays -- closeted gay boy from the sticks, comes to NYC determined to make it as an artists, and succeeds. 

Here he is talking about his popular and acclaimed play "Master Class".

RIP

Andrew Cuomo's Moment

If there's anyone who's doing better than ever during this coronavirus nightmare, it's Governor Andrew Cuomo. His leadership and communication skills are on big display, he seems to be handling it like a real pro, and he's becoming something of a national hero for the way he's guiding the state and the country through this crises.

And obviously his handling of this situation is miles and miles ahead of the buffon in the White House. People from around the country are looking to Cuomo for guidance and reassurance, not the Orange Cheeto.

Best of all is when the Guv goes on TV and breaks balls with his brother Chris Cuomo, the CNN anchor. If you have a brother (and I have one), you recognize the dynamic completely -- the competition, the constant bickering, the half-serious/half-kidding verbal play, the "Who do our parents love?" more schtick. It's disturbingly relatable.

But after this crises is over, there will be more to do -- namely, turning the Internet into a public utility. I just read this heart-wrenching story about a young girl who doesn't have WiFi and obviously can't leave the house -- now she can't do school work and her education is being endangered! Cuomo and all politicians will show true leadership going forward if they can make the Internet accessible to all. 

Classic Mr NYC

Recently I stumbled across this article by the sommelier of the restaurant Cote. It's all about how this place opened less than 3 years ago and become the hottest joint in town. 

Last year I ate there and blogged about it -- I thought it was good but not great, and I wasn't even aware of how popular and acclaimed it was.

Anyway, read both the article and the blog post, and try to remember a time when the city was normal.

Woody Rises Again

In the midst of this worldwide pandemic, a reminder of when life was still "normal" (so to speak): remember the ill-fated, controversial memoir by Woody Allen that was cancelled at the last minute by its publisher? 

Well, this too-hot-for-print book is the perhaps the only thing coming out of "quarantine" -- an independant publisher just released it today. 

This is a triumph for free speech and blow for bullying. It's a reminder that trying to supress speech is stupid and the people who engage in it look like morons. 

Times Square in the Age of Coronavirus

Mr NYC Goes into Quarantine

Fortunately, as of now, I'm healthy and my family is healthy and all is well -- or as well as can be given the circumstances.

However, the circumstances have forced my kids to stay home from school for more than a month and now I have to work from home full time. So now, obviously, blogging has to go onto the metaphorical back burner. I may try to check in but it's gonna be hard. 

Anyway, until then, stay healthy, stay inside, stay sane!

Coronavirus is Here

Well, this post certainly didn't hold up.

Coronavirus has hit NYC. It's not as bad as some other places but it's bad enough. The city government has a webpage dedicated to information about the disease, along with updates about how many people here have it (as of now, it's 62). 

The governor and mayor are doing a very good job handling this crises and are showing real leadership -- unlike the buffoon the White House.

Hopefully this will end soon!

Remembering Jamie Gillis

If you watched The Deuce, or listen to the great podcast The Rialto Report, you might have heard of Jamie Gillis. While not a household name among "the squares", he was a star, and now a legend, of the NYC adult film business in the 1970s and 1980s.

By all accounts Jamie was a wild man -- someone who didn't live life so much as charge through it. He wasn't your typical idea of a porn star, he wasn't some uneducated Neanderthal who was basically the life support system for a penis. He was a true Renaissance man. In addition to the naughty movies, Jamie also studied French Literature at Columbia University, was a collector of rare objects, a gourmet, and, apparently, a demon gambler. He knew everyone and went everywhere, a big man about town. Jamie died in 2010 at the age of 65 from cancer. If you want to learn more about his life, it's worth listening to these podcasts from the Rialto Report, one of which includes an interview with him from the 1970s.

The most recent podcast is about what was arguably the darkest moment of his life. In 1982, he was living on East 23rd street when a gorgeous model that lived in his building was killed. (The model was probably one of the few women Jamie wasn't shtupping.) Jamie actually found her stabbed body and called the police but then Jamie was held as a suspect -- apparently the cops thought that the man's chosen profession made him a potential murderer. Jamie was never charged but the incident haunted him for the rest of his life -- including a bizarre incident in the year 2000 when he was arrested -- again! -- for the same crime in San Francisco before being released -- yet again (a lawsuit ensued). Finally it was discovered that the model's ex-boyfriend had committed the murder but he had killed himself in 1987, never facing proper justice (Side note: the model's roommate was a young aspiring actress named Kim Delaney who later became a star on NYPD Blue.) Jamie never got over the fact that, twice in his life, he was suspected of murder and that his scandalous job was the reason for it. 

A truly weird, sad story.

This case is much lesser known than -- but in some ways a NYC equivalent to -- the Wonderland murders in California in 1981 (just a year earlier) both of which involved murder, porn stars, and a cast of bizarre characters including nightclub owners and drug addicts. 

But back to Jamie. His notoriety as a porn star remained even until the end of his life. Apparently he went to a boxing match in 2008 and someone yelled at him that he was the guy who had banged Vanessa Del Rio. He certainly had -- and lots of other women including every big name female porn stars from the 1970s and '80, over 400 women! 

What a life. What a legacy! What a loss to NYC. 

Jim Ryan vs. Dick Oliver on "Good Day NY" - July 19, 2001

You're Welcome

I've been thinking about the movie Once Upon a Time in Hollywood at lot lately. It just keeps invading my thoughts. Directed by Quentin Tarantino, it's my favorite of his movies after Pulp Fiction; and even more than that masterpiece, this one feels personal -- clearly for him, and especially for me. 

While largely plotless, at times meandering, this movie stays in your head for a long time after seeing it. It deposits itself in your soul. It makes you think in layers. The point of the movie isn't the story or action but its characters, their relationships with each other, and their place and time i.e. a culturally changing city and movie business in 1969. This movie is truly a work of art, a self-contained world that invites you to stay awhile and become absorbed in it. Like this blog, it captures "the spirit and psyche", the soul, of a particular time and place. 

When I think about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, the word "pastiche" comes to mind. Pastiche is defined as an artistic work consisting of a medley of pieces taken from various sources. This movie feels just like that, a collage, a repository for memories, a collection of favorite things, a funhouse of nostalgia, a love letter to the past and future (again, much like Mr NYC). Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is also Tarantino's tribute to working people, to the grunts, to the almost-was and never-weres, to the people who don't make history but live through it and deal with its consequences (much like Mr NYC).

Specifically, this movie is about a has-been C-list cowboy actor named Rick Dalton and his stuntman/gofer/driver/friend Cliff Booth. They are trying to find work in a newly swinging, hippy Hollywood that they don't recognize anymore (sort of like how I don't recognize NYC anymore while trying to keep a middling career going in it). Rick has never been a big star (he lost out to Steve McQueen for The Great Escape) and Cliff's stuntman days are over (many in the business believe he may have killed his wife; we never learn if he did or didn't, leaving a tantalizing mystery for us to ponder). Along the way we also meet Sharon Tate, their beautiful neighbor and an up-and-coming actress, married to the big-time director Roman Polanski. In real life, Sharon and several others were killed by the Manson Family in August 1969, sending shockwaves through Hollywood and the country, a dark moment in the shiny city.

This movie poses a simple question: "What if the Manson murders were thwarted? What if good prevailed instead of evil? What if guys like Rick and Cliff got a second chance? What is there was a real-life Hollywood ending? Would the future and past have been different? Would our world, our present, be a slightly better place?"

Once Upon a Time ... asks these questions but smartly doesn't answer them -- it leaves it to us, the viewers, to imagine the answers, the possibilities of the roads not taken. The brilliance of this movie is not only that it lovingly recreates the Hollywood of 1969, and tells the real-life and fictional stories of some of its players, but it reminds us of how life is a daily struggle between darkness and light, between hope and fear, between kindness and cruelty, between making this choice and that choice, between our love for the past and our hopes and fears for the future.

As the name connotes, Once Upon a Time ... makes you think that it's a fairy tale, a nostalgia trip, a mere backwards glace, but it's actually a very forward looking "pastiche" -- it makes you wonder about the future as much as gaze on the past. It's not un-coincidental that this movie takes place exactly 50 years (1969) before its release (2019) -- it forces us to confront where we came from, about what happened in those intervening 50 years, and about where we might be going in the next 50 years. That's the neat trick of this story, the many ironies within it -- a hero might actually also be a killer, an actor might actually play his role in real life, imaginary violence inspires real violence and vice versa, the real heroes are behind the scenes and never acknowledged, the heroes we see aren't really heroes at all, and the real villains are nowhere to be seen because they make others do their dirty work. It's about the illusions, the myths, the shadows and lights, that we see in the movies and that hover over American life. It's also about innocence lost, the falling away of real life into vague memories, the past gone forever, the evitable forward grind of the future.

Who are we? Where do we come from? Where are we going? Who will we become? And let's have fun along the way! That's the movie in nutshell: a series of these unanswered questions, beautifully presented, as well as a celebration of the journey of life.

And that, in many ways, is also what this blog is about for me and NYC -- a pastiche, a collage, a repository for memories, a collection of favorite things, a funhouse of nostalgia, a love letter to the past and future, a work of art, a self-contained world that invites you to visit a while and become absorbed in.

Welcome.

Look Up, Look Down

Woody Gets Cancelled

Woody Allen just got his memoirs cancelled due to pressure from his estranged family and the employees of his publisher. Okay, I get it, a lot of people think Woody Allen is a creep and maybe a pedo. And who knows? Maybe he is guilty! We'll never know for sure. 

But because a bunch of people don't like him, because people keep pressing allegations without proof (even though there's plenty of proof that the allegations are actually false), the greater public (i.e. you and me) have been denied the opportunity to read this book. 

This is censorship, straight up. And to those of you who are celebrating this cancellation, recognize that you are celebrating censorship. Don't pretend it's anything more than that. 

You might be proud of what you've done but I wouldn't be. Because while today a voice you hate got cancelled, tomorrow it might be one you like -- and then what will you have to say? 

Working Class NYC on the Screen

New York City is, fundamentally, a city of workers. We're not the richest and most powerful city in the country because we're a bunch of lazybones. There are numerous socioeconomic classes in NYC but combined they are all part of one big class -- the working class, the hard working class.

If you listen to the media, you'd be forgiven for believing that the "working class" is mostly elsewhere in "middle America" (coal miners in West Virginia that voted for Trump, for example). But the real working class, the biggest and most diverse working class in America, is right here in the buildings and streets of the five boroughs.

In fact, there's been a plethora of movies and TV shows over the decades of working class lives in NYC. Here are some of my favorites that are worth checking out:

The Nanny, the 1990s sitcom about a woman from Flushing who becomes not only the nanny but also the de facto mother for some rich Manhattinites (it stars the amazing Queens-native and current comeback Queen Fran Drescher).

Marty, the big Oscar-winning 1955 movie about a lovelorn butcher from the Bronx, starring Ernest Borgine. 

Working Girl, the 1988 classic about a Staten Island secretary who takes on and beats corporate America. Melanie Griffith is amazing as the never-to-be-underestimated Tess!

And, if you want to look at the dark side of the NYC working class, there's no better movie than 1975's Dog Day Afternoon about a 1972 Brooklyn bank robbery gone very wrong. It features probably Al Pacino's best performance and is a look at what happens when working class New Yorkers run out of dreams and hopes. 

All great movies and TV shows about hard workers New Yorkers (for better or worse) from all five boroughs!

Bloomberg Drops Out

He'll always have American Somoa ...

The First Couple of NYC Culture

There's a big profile today about the actors Matthew Broderick and Sara Jessica Parker who have been married for almost 25 years.

They've both had long, incredible careers and are, in very different ways, cultural icons. Matthew is, and probably always will be, Ferris Bueller; Sarah Jessica will probably always be Carrie Bradshaw. But despite the numerous movies and TV shows they've starred in over the decades, they are, at heart, NYC theater actors. Sarah got her start in the original Broadway run of Annie and Matthew began in the original Broadway run of Brighton Beach Memoirs. Amazingly, as long as their careers have been, and as long as they've been together, they have almost never worked together -- until now.

Later this month they will appear on Broadway in Neil Simon's Plaza Suite, and this will doubtless be one of the big Broadway events of the year. 

What's incredible about their careers, let along their marriage, is how long they've lasted and how multi-varied they've been. They've effortlessly go back and forth between theater, movies, and TV, and they also seem to be appearing in something, somewhere. And even though they're actors, there's been precious little drama in their private lives and marriage. 

They're not the most famous or glamorous couple in showbusiness but, in NYC, they are certainly one of the first couples of NYC culture. 

What It's Worth?

Tomorrow is Super Tuesday. Numerous states will vote in the presidential primaries -- and it's the first one where former Mayor Bloomberg will appear on the ballot. How well he performs on Super Tuesay (namely, how many votes translated into delegates he gets) will determine if his campaign is viable enough to keep going -- or if this will have a been a two month, nearly $500 million folly.

Bloomberg is worth $60 billion, a sum so vast that even rich people can't really comprehend how rich he is. His net worth is practically the GDP of some countries and he's attempting to use the force of that money to win the Democratic nomination and the presidency.

Bloomberg is basically trying, as close as one can, to buy the American presidency.

After all, he did buy the NYC mayoralty back in 2001, 2005 and 2009. In fact, he shouldn't have been allowed to buy it in 2009 but he got the law changed so that he could run again. Changing laws in their self-interest is the kind of thing that rich people can do! 

But so ghastly and horrible is the presidency of Donald Trump that the idea of yet another rich guy from NYC buying the presidency away from him seems almost worth it to a lot of people, including me!

The thing is, as stomach-churning as this is, the idea of rich people essentially buying things that  are supposed to be precious and sacred, is nothing new. 

Look at the college admissions scandal. Being admitted to a top college should be an honor bestowed on those students who have worked hard in school and achieved great grades, awards, and extracurriculars. But, as we've seen, for the right price and by pulling the right strings, parents can get their kids into great schools even if they don't really merit it.

Right now there's a new book about the movie Chinatown, the classic film about how developers bought huge swaths of Southern California land for next to nothing by starving it of water -- and then getting tax payers to sponsor a new dam to irrigate it, exponentially increasing the value. Even though the movie is fiction it exposes how rich people use their money and power to warp government resources for their own private benefit. "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown" is the short-hand way of saying, "We all know this is corruption but the forces behind it are so powerful that it's best not to ask questions or challenge it."

But you can go even further back into history and see how people like Rodrigo Borgia bought the papacy by paying bribes and granting favors to his fellow cardinals -- and by threatening violence against anyone who might challenge his plans. 

In all honesty, everyone and everything has a price, even though we like to pretend they don't.  Nothing really is sacred unless you make it sacred -- and other people might not agree that it's scared.

So forget it, everyone, it's politics!

More than 30 years ago, a book was written about presidential politics called What It Takes? Today the matra should be "What It's Worth" -- and this is something in American life that goes far beyond presidential politics.