What Happened to Millionaire's Row?

Review: "Escape from New York" (1981) and "Single White Female" (1992)

If you pay attention to the news, the media is full of hysterical fearmongering, trying to convince the denizens of this 8.8 million strong burg that it's a crime ridden hell-hole, a dystopia of sorts.

This, of course, is nonsense -- crime remains WAY lower than it was even twenty-years ago, the city is quite safe -- but fear sells, helps otherwise unpopular (i.e. Republican) politicians get elected, the media does everything to help them, and they use it to pursue an agenda in government that no one actually likes. 

It's happened before and will go on and on, ad infinitum. 

New York City is in no ways a dystopia but the image of the city as some kind of scary place persists. Obviously this has been captured in movies such as Taxi Driver and The Warriors from the 1970s, at a time when the city really did seem to be verging on the dystopic.

Two other movies, very different in premise and plot, show another way that NYC might be dystopic. They couldn't be more different in story and tone, as one is totally surreal and out-there while the other is disturbingly believable and possible -- and something some New Yorkers have really dealt with.

Escape from New York (1981) by John Carpenter is about how Manhattan island, in the year 1997(!) has become a literal wall-off prison where the most dangerous criminals have been sent to live out their lives in an abandoned urban jungle. When Air Force One crashes into the island (thanks to terrorists from the Soviet Union which the USA is at war with), a prisoner named Snake (Kurt Russell) is sent-in to rescue the President in 24-hours -- or he'll literally die. Along the way, he recruits a bizarro cab driver played by Ernest Borgnine and a man from Snake's past played by Harry Dean Stanton. There's also a hot chick and lots of weirdos who follow Snake on his mission, trying to free the president from the crime lord who rules this hell-hole played by, of all people, Isaac Hayes (he of "Shaft" fame). While the premise from Escape from New York is insane, it's a remarkably straight-forward and smartly paced action movie -- and unlike movies today that are non-stop action sequences with tiny bits of plot, in this movie the plot drives the action, and there actually isn't that much violence. And Kurt Russell shows what a great leading man he is, and why he's had a very long career. If you want to see the ultimate NYC as dystopia movie, this is it. 

Then there's Single White Female (1992). Now this is a scary movie -- it should have been called These White Bitches Are Crazy! This is a believably dystopic story -- in fact, the only unbelievable thing about it is that two underemployed women could afford a huge apartment in the Ansonia. This is about how the greatest danger you can find in this city might literally be in your own home! Bridget Fonda stars as a woman named Allie who finds out that her handsome fiance is cheating so she kicks him out and gets a roommate named Hedy (Jennifer Jason Leigh, brilliant as always). At first Allie and Hedy get along great, become friends, and life seems good. But when Allie gets back together with the fiance, all goes wrong -- Hedy becomes jealous, starts to pretend to be Allie, tries to seduce the fiance, tries to take over herself and become Allie -- and all hell breaks loose. This is the NYC  dystopia in the form of the roommate from hell, how our worst dystopia isn't a city full of criminals but a house full of craziness. It's also just a really good  mainstream thriller, the kind of movie they don't make anymore. 

Of course, if NYC had someone who helped to make the city a transportation dystopia that persists to this day -- Robert Moses, the 20th century "master builder" who rammed highways all over town and starved public transportation. There's a new play about him on Broadway played by, of all people, Ralph Fiennes called Straight Line Crazy. Believe it or not, even though it's about a famous New Yorker, this play is a fully British production -- Brit actor, writer, and director, first premiering at the National Theater in London. This news story about the play is fascinating -- watching Ralph Fiennes describe how Robert Moses wanted to thrust a highway in Lower Manhattan is bizarre and amazing to watch. 

Ted Cruz Gets a Bronx Welcome

New York values, beautifully on display. 

Ken Auletta Talks Harvey Weinstein @ Queens Public Library

"American Horror Story: NYC"

 

Feral City

Like something out of a dystopian horror movie, most New Yorkers spent the year 2020 indoors, leaving the city streets mostly empties, the storefronts mostly shut. In large swaths of NYC, the neighborhoods felt abandoned, forlorn, empty, drained of the vitality of that makes this city great. 

But not everyone felt that way, specifically my NYC fellow blogger Jeremiah Moss Vanishing New York. 

He loves the fact that the city felt left behind. He loved that tons of rich people skipped town and left the city to us smallfolk. He loved that the people one often found on the streets were the freaks, the weirdos, the homeless, the vagrants, the people society mostly looks down on, the Others.

For a brief moment, it became their city.

This is not how most New Yorkers feel, of course. Crime went up sharply, (here and everywhere around the country), and we're still dealing with it. But Jeremiah, in a new book called Feral New York, offers a contrarian view, arguing that NYC in the worst of times was actually experiencing the best of times, that COVID was an unlikely gift to the least amongst us in the city. The gentrifiers were (temporarily) ceding their power, the "poetry of the streets" taking their place. 

The city became "feral" -- and Jeremiah dug that.

Of course, for people who lost jobs, for people who got sick, for people whose lives were completely upending and are stilling dealing with the aftermath, this thesis will be a hard sell. But it's an interesting take, nonetheless, an offbeat look at a very weird time, and what's more NYC than that?

Fond Farewells

Though they couldn't be more different, two events happened this week that marked the passage of time, the end of eras in the history of NYC culture.

First, the passing of legendary stage, screen and TV actress Angela Lansbury. What can one say about this amazing talent who could sing and act like no one else, whose career spanned from roughly 1944 to 2018, who appeared in brilliant films like Gaslight (1944), The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971, one of my wife's favorites), a decade-plus run on TV with Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996) -- and multiple roles on Broadway including Mame, Sweeney Todd, and Blithe Spirit (amongst many others) that won her a total of 5 Tony Awards? She was an acting legend's legend, someone who made Broadway the truly "great" White Way, and we'll probably never see her likes again -- we only got to enjoy her talent for almost 80 years. 

Second, the news that the "news" will be replacing the music on that spot on the NYC radio dial 92.3 FM. It's been a music station for decades starting in the 1940s, and in the 1970s it became an all-disco station (WKTU) before becoming K-ROCK, a classic rock station in 1980s -- the station that thrust Howard Stern into the cultural firmament of NYC, then the rest of the country (I blogged about this in 2019). Howard went to satellite in 2006, and K-ROCK floundered, changing formats to "hot talk" then back to music, finally becoming "Alt 92.3" -- but now the station will dump music altogether and instead simulcast its sister station 1010 WINS, the "all news, all the time" station that keeps NYC moving (plus they "give you the world" in 22 minutes). K-ROCK was also the station of Allison Steele, Vin Scelsa, and lots of great music so it's sad to see it vanish into the ether, to become essentially an FM-offshoot of an all-news station -- but in this era of podcasting, streaming, etc. radio is in decline, and this just proves it. RIP 92.3 FM, and thanks for the memories. 

Memo from NYC

Thirty-years ago this month a little arthouse movie opened that portended a cultural revolution: Reservoir Dogs, the debut of director Quentin Tarantino, was a smart, violent, funny, thoughtful look at a bunch of professional criminals carrying out a jewelry heist that goes very wrong. It was a 1990s movie inspired by a 1970s grindhouse aesthetic, and a rare film where the storytelling and dialogue were as compelling as the action. 

There are many memorable moments in Reservoir Dogs: the opening where "the dogs" sit around and talk casually about Madonna and tipping waitresses before going to commit a violent crime; the gruesome, infamous ear-slicing scene; the "commode story" sequence where one of the characters tells a tall tale, and an enormous amount of tension is built up, about something that actually never happened; the debate about how "black bitches", unlike "white bitches", don't tolerate abusive men, along with a reminiscences of 1970s show Get Christy Love (catchphrase: "You're under arrest, sugah'!"); the assignment of the characters names like Mr White, Mr Blue, Mr Orange, and Mr Pink ("'Cause you're a faggot alright!"). And, of course, the brutal ending. 

For me, however, the best part is "K-Billy Super Sounds of the '70s", a radio show that plays throughout the movie and introduces the various songs we hear. K-Billy is voiced by a super-deadpanning Steven Wright, a flat monotone that contrasts with the hyper-violence and over-the-top behavior we see throughout the movie.

When this movie came out, I was in high school, and had fallen in love with the idea of being a "personality DJ", a voice that haunted the city and that gave resonance to the music being played. This was the time of Allison Steele and Scott Muni, and when Howard Stern was at his most outrageous self. This was before corporate-consolidation and voice-tracking and podcasts drained the life out of music radio -- the voice made the music, the music became something deeper, and it did so brilliantly in Reservoir Dogs. 

The Challenges of the Super City: Serious & Funny Perspectives

A Rainy Day in NYC

Yesterday, Tuesday, October 4th, was a rainy one in NYC. In fact, it was so rainy that a transformer near my house got flooded and we lost power in our kitchen. But enough about our good times -- yesterday was one of those days where two unrelated yet nonetheless semi-historic events took place that proves this city is and will forever be fascinating.

First, a princess took the ferry -- literally. Princess Anne, the daughter of the late Queen Elizabeth II, came to town for a bunch of events (I guess she's back at work now) and one of her excursions included taking the Staten Island Ferry. Don't worry, the princess is married so I don't think she was traveling to the Forgotten Borough in order to date Pete Davidson. Instead, her highness took in a unique and fascinating view of NYC -- even if it was in a rainy haze. I hope she had a good voyage.

Second, and most notable, Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees hit homerun 62 in a single season for the American League, besting Yankee Roger Maris' record from the 1960s. Now this isn't the first time 62 homeruns has been achieved in a single season. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa did it in 1998, then Barry Bonds did it in 2001. However, it's been revealed that they did this from using performance-enhancing steroids so Judge's presumably drug-free achievement is all the more remarkable. Sadly, he didn't hit this homerun in NYC -- it was down in Texas against the Rangers -- but nonetheless it's a big win for the city as well as for him and his team. Congrats.

And it all happened on one rainy day in New York City.