Unintentional NYC Icons

New York City has many icons, buildings and structures and places that define the city's image to the world. Think the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Flatiron Building, Times Square, Central Park, Radio City Music Hall -- the list is endless. Elsewhere there's the Colloseum in Rome, the Houses of Parliament in London, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, you get the idea -- iconography is just one of the things that makes great cities great.

But why? Why are they so important?

Because, in their way, they tell the story of the city, they define them -- and they link the past to the present, the present to the future. They endure -- for the most part. The destruction of the World Trade Centers and the burning down of Notre Dame in Paris were so tragic because these strong images of their respective cities were violently wiped away. It wasn't just the physical destruction and the awful deaths, it was that the sense of the cities and their identities had become unmoored, the cities' physic roots had been pulled out. 

Icons are not only part of their cities's identities but of their residents and visitors as well. 

And yet ... some icons are unintentional. Sometimes a store or something else becomes so beloved, so integral to the commmunity it exists in, that it takes on icon status. 

A few examples that have been in the news recently:

The Paris Movie theater, that elegant, wonderful little place right across from the Plaza Hotel and Central Park, recently closed -- an NYC icon that had vanished. But it's been saved -- thanks to Netflix! It's become so integral to the neighborhood, a small bastion of culture and respite in the middle of a busy commercial area, that its closure made many so sad that Netflix decided to ride to the rescue. So another NYC icon endures ... for now ...

Then there's the Astor Place K-Mart. Now Astor Place is about as funky downtown Manhattan as NYC gets and the K-Mart, which opened in 1996, was considered a square intruder into this land of the tragically hip. But overtime, as it usefulness to the neighborhood become apparent, it became a much-loved, much-frequented icon. The fact that K-Mart is so uncool is what made it cool. But sadly it's going away, soon to be replaced by a Wegmans. An icon, a very unintentional of sorts, fading away.

Fortunately there's something else nearby that's remaining -- the Ralph Lauren billboard on Houston Street. It's so huge, so in-your-face, and the designer's ads on it are so gorgeous and sexy, that it's become an icon all its own. Celebrities and models feel that they have "made it", not when their ads appear on TV or in magazines or online, but when their ads appear on this billboard. Its power is in its size and shamelessness, "the medium is the message." Its iconic status comes from its sheer boldness, about as NYC as trait as there is. 

So NYC icons aren't always pre-planned, carefully built structures -- sometimes they arise out of utility and the profit-motive, and yet, when they do, the joy they create makes them icons of the city, icons of our hearts.  

Delilah, NYC's Radio Love Guru

Ya' gotta love this broad. 

Every weeknight, for five straight hours, the radio DJ Delilah plays the world's sappiest and most popular love songs -- and she scores major ratings and makes tons of cash doing it.

Delilah isn't actually based in NYC -- she apparently does her show from a farm in the Pacific Northwest and is syndicated around the country -- but her nighttime show in NYC is so popular that it's been on the airwaves (on WLTF 106.7 Lite FM) for fifteen years.

In radio years, that's many eternities. 

The centerpiece of Deliah's show are the dedications -- people call in and ask Delilah to play a song for their love -- either the one in their life or a long lost one -- hoping, one assumes, that the l'object d'amour will actually hear it and be moved to tears. Other times, it's a dedication to a friend, a family member, someone who means or meant something to the person in the past or present. You get the drift -- it's about appreciation, caring, and a hope for comfort, and connection in a brutal, cruel world.

While it's easy to mock a show like Delilah's, think about this: it's been on the air for so long that it must mean something to a whole lot of people. Also, Delilah is one of the last big-time personality DJs, the kind who were actually celebrities in their own right, who have basically been wiped off the dial by podcasts and music streaming, etc.

She is the inheritor and practifcians of a great, fading tradition and, in many ways, I'm grateful that Delilah, the music she plays, and the audience that adores both are still around ... for now.  

Mayors Make Announcements -- De Blasio 2021, Lindsay 1971, La Guardia 1941

 

Thank You!

Over the last few weeks, readership of Mr NYC has spiked tremendously -- like exponentially. 

I know if it's bots or some kind of joke but, assuming real live human bein's are reading this here blog, all I gotta say is, to each and every one of youse, is THANK YOU! 

Eric Adams on The New Yorker Radio Hour

Brooklyn Borough President and NYC Mayor-presumptive Eric Adams just did a long interview with David Remnick of The New Yorker on the magazine's radio show/podcast. In this interview, Adams refers to the city as "dysfunctional" and how he plans to make it functional.

It's the kind of high-flying rhetoric, the kind of Ialonecanfixit braggadocio that all aspiring chief executives in government promise when on the cusp of power. They yammer on about how "the system is broken" but some way, some how, with some magical powers that only they possess, some great wisdom and superior skill inherent within their person, are going to change decades, if not centuries, of government "dysfunction" and incompetence and make everything perfect -- or at least what their idea of perfect is.

Here's the dirty little secret: most of the government is functional. It provides more services, does more stuff, than anyone can possibly conceive -- and, like plumbers, does it so well that we don't notice unless there's a problem somewehre. The problem is that governments are big institutions, and all big institutions possess a level of inherent dysfunction, or at least strategic incoherence, because you have literally thousands, tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands (like the NYC government) doing myriad things at once. It's impossible just to change of all that, easily, if at all. It's like trying to turn around an aircraft carrier -- but much, much harder.   

So good luck, Mr Adams. Assuming you're elected in November, we'll check in on how "functional" you've made the city in four years. 

Staten Island Stubborn

When the history of COVID-19 finally appears in the history books, the summer of 2021 will be seen as the time when the pandemic, which could already be 100% over, got stuck in the mud.

Nearly 200 million Americans are fully vaccinated but now -- with the nasty Delta variant out there and huge swaths of the population refusing to get a shot -- we are backsliding. The infection rate is rising and, in some places, restrictions are being reimposed. We were making great progress but it's being put at risk, again, by stupid people, by the COVID deniers and vaccine refuseniks.

In NYC nearly 60% of the population is either fully vaccinated or has had at least one dose. But here, like everywhere else, there are pockets of recalcitrants who won't get vaccinated -- and it's spreading to the rest of the city.

And the biggest pocket is Staten Island.

The "forgotten borough" is making its presence known this summer by having vastly higher rates of unvaccinated and new COVID cases than the rest of the city. The politically conservative borough, our very own Alabama, has an arrogant "Don't Tread On Me!" stubborness and meanspiritedness that's keeping the pandemic going. These folks on Staten Island would rather die in order to "own the libs" than stay healthy and end this nightmare. They like making everyone else as miserable as they are.

It's cruelty personified -- and for, these stubborn people on Staten Island, that's the whole point.

So when the history of COVID-19 in NYC is written, and people wonder why NYC fell off the vaccine wagon, the finger can and should be firmly pointed to the city's smallest and most stubborn borough. 

Melanie Safka: Astoria, Woodstock, & "Boogie Nights"

Astoria-native Melanie Safka is one of those under-the-radar singer-songwriters whose name you don't readily remember but whose songs you know -- especially her 1972 hit "Brand New Key."

Yet three years before that big success, Melanie played Woodstock, one of only three female solo acts to perform (the others were Janie Joplin and Joan Baez -- great company). 

Melanie didn't die young like Joplin or have quite as colorful a life as Baez -- she just wrote and performed great songs, and continues to do so to this day. 

"Brand New Key" appeared in a VERY MEMORABLE NSFW scene in the 1997 movie Boogie Nights -- and the song is even sexier than the scene, truly, the the most sexy song of all time. 

The Battle for Hart Island

Currently the most hotly debated development plan in NYC has nothing to do with new highrise buildings or stadiums or convention centers -- it has to do with that 1-mile long island off the coast of the Bronx called Hart Island.

Small and remote as it is, Hart Island has a storied history -- it was a training ground for black Union troops during the Civil War and, more recently, actual missilles were stored there during the Cold War. However, the island is best known as a potter's field where poor dead New Yorkers found their final rest. In addition, the island and its 19 buildings have been used for drug rehab, tuberculosis and psyche patients, prisoners, the homeless, and juvenile deliquents. 

Basically, the history of Hart Island is a history of a place that's out-of-sight and out-of-mind, just the kind of place where society likes to put people it wants to keep out-of-sight and out-of-mind.

It's those 19 buildings that are the subject of this controversy -- they are old, very historic, imbued with lots of architectural and actual history. But they're also decrepit, unused, and unsafe. Now the city wants to tear them all down and turn the island into a wildlife and graveyard preservation refuge, part of something called the Hart Island Project. Others want to retain the buildings and turn it into an historic attraction.

Both ideas would be noble uses of this oft-forgotten part of the city and, of course, only one vision can prevail. The controversy is currently bogged down in protracted arguments over process, public hearings, transparency rules, and lots of other boring legal stuff.

But the result will be fascinating -- either Hart Island will become a gorgeous natural habitat or an amazing site for previously unknown NYC history. 

For more Mr NYC coverage of Hart Island, go here. 

Skyline Haze: Western Wildfire Smoke Hits NYC

Gotta Love New Yorkers

Read this great story about a volunteer group of people bringing cheap, non-commercial Internet -- or "guerilla Wi-Fi" -- service to low-income residents of the city. 

People like this give me a shred of hope for humanity. Find out more about NYC MESH. 

"And Just Like That" Starts Filming in NYC

"The Plot Thickens" Podcast: "The Bonfire of the Vanities" and a Look-Back at a Very Different NYC

Last year I blogged about the 1990 movie The Bonfire of the Vanities based on the 1987 bestselling novel of the same name by Tom Wolfe. The book was a big success -- the defining 1980s novel about greed, ego, lust, institutional corruption, etc., every cardinal sin -- but the movie was an historic flop, so historic that a book was even written about it.

The book was called The Devil's Candy, written by journalist Julie Salamon, and this book has now been turned into a mutli-part podcast, hosted by Salamon and produced by Turner Classic Movies, as part of a series called "The Plot Thickens."

While I made clear in my review that the movie is bad -- really bad -- I also indicated that it was worth seeing because, visually, it captured NYC in very original, beautiful ways. And this podcast is very much worth listening to because it not only tells the story of the making of this classic bomb but it also vividly brings back to life what NYC was like 30-odd years ago -- a very different city from today. 

So read the books (both the original novel and the making-of book), listen the podcast, and, if you're brave, watch the movie -- and, while you'll eventually be "Bonfired"-out -- you'll also be brought back to a New York City that is both quite familiar and very distant. 

Classic Mr NYC

Big article today about the "other islands" of NYC where people live or visit -- namely Roosevelt Island, City Island, and Governor's Island, and some others -- and how they're fascinating, self-contained communities unto themselves.

As usual, Mr NYC has been well, well, well ahead of his time -- I've been blogging about the islands of NYC, the Gotham Archipelago, for literally more than a decade. So read the article and this blog's previous coverage of our islands here and here. 

Queens Night Market

The best part about New York City reopening is that the communal activities which, until last year, we took far too much for granted are now back -- and more appreciated than ever. And if you want to do something that truly captures the spirit and excitement of NYC -- and that is decidedly not a tourist trap -- then the Queens Night Market is for you. 

Recently I went to the market with some friends and family and greatly enjoyed it. The market is a vast collection of food stands from different restaurants around Queens, selling dishes from nearly every country and cuisine in the world. Just a sampling of the food fare at the fair: Afghani, Bengali, Burmese, Cambodian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Mexican, Persian, Venezuelan, Norwegian, Indian, and so so much more. You can get fried ice cream, craft beers, and all kinds of baked goods. It's truly a cornucopia of great eats and culture, a festival of food and everything that makes this city great.

There are even bands that perform but you can still hear yourself think and have conversations. 

The Queens Night Market takes place every Saturday night through October, from 4 PM to Midnight, at Flushing-Corona park right near the New York Hall of Science. Warning: the crowds are big, the lines are long, you need to bring cash, you'll want to bring water and a blanket to sit on the grass, and you'll be getting up and down a lot. Also, no doubt, your eyes will be bigger than your stomach -- once you start eating, it's hard to stop. 

Oh yes, a fun place in NYC no tourists and lots of great food. What's not to love?

A "Gossip Girl" Reboot & A New Velvet Underground Documentary -- Old NYC Pop Culture is New Again

Jeremy Irons & Bob Odenkirk: A "Saturday Night Live" Memory

On March 23, 1991, two days before he won the Best Actor Oscar for the movie Reversal of Fortune, Jeremy Irons hosted Saturday Night Live and performed this wild monologue: 

Irons has said in interviews that hosting SNL was one of the most terrifying things he ever did -- which he why he's probably never hosted it since then. 

Almost exactly thirty-years later, the man behind the sketch, the man who wrote it, then-anonymous comedy-scribe and now current Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk told the story behind this monologue, and how Irons originally didn't want to do it and yelled at him:

Great story! The story behind the scenes is always more interesting than the scene itself. 

Funny Photos from the NY Hall of Science "The Happiness Experiment" Exhibit

Recently saw this great exhibit at the New York Hall of Science which I highly recomend. These pictures were part of it: 

Elsa Hits NYC

Amorous NYC

As New York City emerges from its long pandemic night of the soul, people are returning to the city streets and going to parties, congregating en masse, doing that which is usually normal but, for much of the last year, became abnormal.

And, uh, they're doing so in interesting ways.

If this story it to be believed, apparently New Yorkers are engaging in hardcore post-COVID PDA i.e. they're making out in public here, there, and everywhere, hither and thither as it 'twere. Oh yes, wherever you go, East Side, West Side, people are suckin' face on the sidewalks of New York!

But that's quaint compared to what's going on behind closed doors.

Apparently, orgies have returned -- particularly in Brooklyn and in other hip and trendy parts of NYC. The young and not-so-young are gettin' busy, reveling in each other's body parts and in a freedom that, for more than a year, was denied them. Oh yes, masks are not the only things being discarded! With presumably everyone vaccinated, people are have ditched social distancing with a vengeance.

Sounds like fun. And exhausting. 

But NYC has always been an amorous town, a place where freaks can freely get their freak-on.

This story about a woman named Eve Adams who lived more than 100 years ago and published lesbian literature and hosted a lesbian salon called Eve's Hangout was a wonderful, intriguing piece of NYC erotic history that, until now, I'd never known about. She was a real trailblazer, fully a century ahead of her time, someone who would be celebrated today. Sadly Eve Adam's life ended quite tragically in the Holocaust (long story), but she was and remains an inspiration.

This town ... we like our sexiness ... and our sexy people -- then, now, and forever.

Hometown Heroes NYC Ticker Tape Parade

NYC Primary Wrap-Up

Well, it's over, or at least it's the beginning of the end. The final results of the NYC muncipal primaries were released yesterday, and now we know the winners. Here are the primary results for Mayor, Comptroller, Borough President, and City Council. (The current Public Advocate easily won back in June.)

Technically none of these "winners" have won anything yet -- they still need to triumph in the General Election in November. However, political reality being what it is, most of the Democratic primary winners in the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn will win in the general as will most of the Republican primary winners in Staten Island. 

A few interesting observations: the Bronx will get its first female Borough President with Vanessa Gibson; former Congressman Vito Fosella, who left office in 2008 after being busted for DWI which lead to revelations that he had a secret second family, won the Staten Island GOP BP primary (the party of family values in all its glory); Brooklyn city councilman Brad Lander won the Democratic Comptroller primary which means that, if Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams (who won the Democratic Mayoral primary) wins in November, all three city-wide elected officials will be from Brooklyn. This will be an historic moment meaning, a real change in the political gravity of this town, since no one from Manhattan (or anywhere else) will hold city-wide office. 

And yes, the big news is that former cop and Brooklyn BP Eric Adams won the mayoral primary by a whisker -- something like 8,000 votes. I'd been pulling for Kathryn Garcia, and she came damn close, but here we are. Now Adams faces Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa in the General Election -- two colorful, outrageous personalities competing to run the country's largest metropolis and police force.

I can't pretend to be too excited about this choice for mayor -- both candidates seem problematic to me for many reasons -- but obviously Adams is vastly preferable to Sliwa. In some ways this mayoral election will be the battle of the tough guys, a brawl of two men who have literally patrolled the streets of this city. In some ways, they have more in common than not. 

New York City is writing its next chapter. 

P.S. Two years ago I was at an event where Eric Adams gave a speech and he "invited" the office to join him "at City Hall when I'm your mayor." Looks like he was on to something. 

Little Lady Liberty in NYC

Classic Mr NYC

The New York Times just published a long, magazine length feature called When New York Was Ours Alone.

The title of the article tells you exactly what it's all about -- the city, for once, was inhabited almost completely but its residents alone and not the tens of millions from around the country and around the world who visit each year. It particularly concentrates on the period last summer when the COVID surge had seem to come under control (although the infection rates were still high) and New Yorkers were out and about enjoying the city for themselves and each other. The article even goes so far as to say that this time was "glorious without tourists."

Well, this is some real ivory tower thinking. There was nothing, not ever, "glorious" about NYC in the time with COVID-19 -- not then, now, or ever. People were dying. The city's economy was in free-fall. Fear reighned. Okay, yes, so some places were less crowded -- but really? It was awful and I'll take lots of tourists and fully re-opened NYC any day!

I even blogged about it at the time, about how the city felt "in abstentia" at the time, how so much of it looked so close and felt so far. Go read that post and see how you feel vs. "glorious" opinion of this recent article.

Perhaps I was missing something. 

"Summer of Soul": Remembering the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival aka Black Woodstock

Review: "Serpico" (1973) & "The Turning Point" (1977) - Two Classic Gritty '70s NYC Movies

On the face of it, the 1970s movies Serpico and The Turning Point couldn't be more different: the former is a real-life story about dirty cops, the latter is a fictional story about ballet.

But watching them makes you realize they share a lot in common: besides both movies being made in the 1970s in NYC, they are gritty, brutal, totally realistic deep-dives into high-pressure, competitive, all-consuming worlds that their denizens both love and revile, that reach into the very cores of their being, enthralling and warping them, and completing devouring their lives.

Back in the 1970s Hollywood used to make movies like these, movies where not everyone and everything was beautiful, where the world was reflected back to us in all of its deformed glory, where we saw and heard people who were in pain, and where things didn't always end happily. These movies were overshadowed by many othe great classics from that time (The French Connection, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Jaws, Rocky, Star Wars, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, you name 'em), but these two slice-of-life movies of believable realism cut just as deep emotionally as any of those other great '70s flicks.

Serpico stars Al Pacino as real-life cop Frank Serpico who "blew the whistle" on massive, entranched corruption within the NYPD, leading to the Knapp Commission and major reforms. Serpico (who's still alive!) was an odd fit with the NYPD, more of a hippy than a tough guy, someone who didn't believe violence and brute force necessarily meant good policing, and someone who didn't think corruption should ever be "business as usual". He took his life into his hands to expose the corruption and, afterwards, quit the NYPD and left the country. Directed by Sidney Lumet at the height of his career, the movie was made just a year after the main events in the film so it was an almost real-time retelling of how and why Serpico changed the NYPD -- and the whole city -- forever. Pacino was just then becoming a star -- the first Godfather movie had just come out and he was just about to start work on the second one -- but this film showed his incredible range, his ability to transform into complicated people,  the depth of a soul that is both revealing and mysterious. The film is also a very realistic look at what NYC was like back in the early 1970s and, watching it now, you see how much the city has changed while also realizing that problems with policing are, well, perennial.

The Turning Point is much different but no less intense: as someone who had experience in the world of professional ballet, I can tell you that it's a tough, insular, and unforgiving world. People in ballet LOVE balletto an irrational level, it completely dominates their minds and bodies, they speak and think and do nothing else. They sacrifice their lives and physical, mental, and emotional well-being in pursuit of career in it. There is no divide between their personal and professional lives. This film asks but doesn't attempt to answer this question: at what price glory? Shirley McClaine stars as DeeDee, a woman who relinquished a ballet career to move with her former dancer husband Wayne (Tom Skerritt) to Oklahoma City and raise a family and live a quiet life. Events ensue bringing DeeDee and her daughter Emilia to NYC where Emilia shines with the company, and where DeeDee enounters her frenemy Emma (the always glorious Anne Bancroft) who started with the company at the same time as DeeDee, stayed, and become a big ballet star. There are affairs, fights, and great performances throughout the film that show, in raw and gorgeous ways, the constant fight between ambition and personal happiness, between career and family, about understanding your real values, and the sacrfifices and sadness that go with both. The film offers no easy answers and does what all great movies do -- it shows and doesn't tell (including showing lots of great ballet dancing). It's a film that moves you and makes you think about own life and values.

So if you want to see two old NYC movies that feel just as relevant today as they were more than 40 years ago, I can't suggest Serpico and The Turning Point enough.