Visions of the NYC Subway

 

George Santos & Lester Chang: Flimflammers Are Why Nepo Babies Thrive

I really need to start an "ahead of his time" label for this blog because, once again, Mr NYC is ahead of his time -- specifically, this time, about nine months. In March, 2022 I wrote a blog post about Mayor Eric Adams and how his nascent mayoralty seemed to be all about flash over substance, about how he had no clear vision or policies for the city, about his associations with questionable characters, and, most of all, just about what a weirdo he is. 

Well, now, Vanity Fair has written an article about his first year in office and concludes much of the same thing as I did. Read it, then read my blog post from nine months earlier, and see if I wasn't ahead of the curve in this assessment of Mayor Adams.

That said, I will give him this -- Mayor Eric Adams is who he says he is, and his resume prior to being mayor was impressive -- more than two decades in the NYPD followed by service as a State Senator and a Brooklyn Borough President. He is, at least in NYC political terms, the real deal, l'article genuine -- even if we don't know where he really lives. To sum up Adams, he's a political heavyweight and a policy lightweight.

Even though there's a stench of dishonesty and sleaze around Eric Adams, he is who he says he is and worked really hard to get where he is -- literally over decades. 

Which, of course, brings us to George Santos, the new Congressman-elect from Northeast Queens (and Nassau County but who cares about that?) who's entire life -- his education, his resume, his finances, his religion, maybe even his sexual orientation, is completely bogus. How a complete charlatan like this could get elected in the New York area is well, if not completely, described by Steve Isreal who used to represent this district in Congress several years ago. His conclusion is that Santos got through due to complete and utter apathy by the NY political class, the media, and voters. This is obvious, not only in the case of Santos, but in the case of a recently elected Brooklyn assemblyman named Lester Chang who, it turns out, doesn't really live in the district. If his opponents and the media had done their homework before the election, they would have exposed all this and the voters would have known that frauds were running to represent them. But they didn't know, and now New York has these twin political messes to deal with. 

And it got me thinking. 

Recently New York magazine published a bunch of articles about "nepo babies" or people who have succeeded, in this case, in showbusiness largely because they have parents who were already in the business -- and had all of the connections and power needed to launch their kids' careers. Nepotism is as old as human history, of course, parents have always wanted to give their kids and family members every advantage to succeed -- power begets power, wealth begets wealth, opportunity begets opportunity. There's a reason why so much of human history has had hereditary monarchies and titles, why the legal concepts of inheritance and primogeniture exist, and so forth -- families want to keep their wealth and power intact for generations to come; they want, in a word, legacy. 

For example, the great director John Huston has been dead for over 35 years but his son, daughter and grandson all have big acting careers. The Huston name is still important in Hollywood today, even decades after the big man's death (and John Huston's father was an actor as well so there you go). 

The triumph of nepotism in America, of course, makes a mockery of the concept of "meritocracy", a cherished American notion that everyone who achieves success did so only through their hard work, and that nothing else matters. This is and always has been BS, of course -- hard work without connections is meaningless. Family support can be vital. But nepotism is powerful not only because powerful, wealthy, and highly-connected people can create great opportunities for their kids. It's also because people who come from such families have what you might call instant credibility, you can do an instant background check on them, you know who they are because you know who their parents and families are. You know the ecosystem, the environment they came out. Nepo babies are a brand, of sorts, a known quantity, and there's an almost instant comfort level with them because you know "their people."

That's why, decade after decade, people named Kennedy and Bush kept getting elected to political office. We know them, even if we don't really like them. 

And that is the huge barrier that people without such connections, without such family power, who are starting out in their careers, face. They're outsiders, unknown, almost bewildering creatures. Such career strivers, such outsiders trying to get inside, are often derisively called "climbers" or "gatecrashers" or "wannabes." They are held suspect until they prove themselves worthy. They have to prove themselves a lot, they have to be the best of the best of the best, they have to smart and crafty as hell, they have to be able to find and exploit every opportunity, they have to work really hard and have a lot of extra special luck to "make it" -- and, as soon as they do, such "self-made" people become "nepo parents" all their own.

George Santos and Lester Chang felt that they needed to lie and cheat in order to thrive. They are blatant climbers but they obviously didn't posses the superior skills, hard work, or clear opportunities to succeed honestly, to succeed on their own -- so they lied and cheated. They're flimflam men, and they are the kinds of people that scare what you might call the Establishment, the gatekeepers, the powers-that-be. The Establishment doesn't want criminals or liars or people they deem unworthy in their midst. So this is why nepotism  and "nepo babies" thrive -- better to go with who you know, better to stay in your comfort zone, better to give opportunities to the people are already "pre-approved." The Establishment doesn't want to let in someone who hasn't, in their view, demonstrated the superior abilities to earn membership in it -- but coming from the right family means you're there already. 

The Establishment doesn't lift the gate to just anyone who doesn't already have family on the other side of it. 

In many ways, I feel sorry for Santos and Chang -- they see what others have, namely money and power, and these guys want it to -- but they have neither the connections nor the skills nor the opportunities to get it on their own, they are unable to do the very hard work to get it, to prove that they're better than the nepo babies around them -- so they lie.

And compared to these guys and any other possible "flimflammers" in our midst, going with a nepo baby is a safe choice. 

What's the Deal with Apple Bank?

New York City is chock full of financial institutions, including many, many banks. There are numerous small banks, mostly clustered in various neighborhoods, but the big ones are JP Morgan Chase and Capital One and TDBank that have branches all over the city and country.

The bank that has always intrigued me, however, although not enough to become a customer, is Apple Bank. I don't know anyone who has ever had an account there, who's ever used it, and there don't seem to be very many branches for it around the city. But it's been in business for over almost 150 years and is a stalwart of the NYC financial community. 

Apple Bank is most notable for two things in my mind. First, it appears to sponsor a large number of events around town -- including the St. John's basketball team (I recently went to a game and saw its logo all over the place). Second, Apple Bank has probably the most impressive headquarters of any financial institution in NYC -- the large, fortress-like building on West 72nd street and Broadway, looming like a stern parent over Verdi Square (known back in the day as "needle park"). It's a formidable structure, military-like, and in a residential neighborhood with many impressive buildings (like the Dakota and the Ansonia), the Apple Bank building is an odd anomaly, a strange and permanent interloper of an edifice.  

The Apple Bank building is not only a financial headquarters -- it's also an apartment building with super-expensive residences therein. If you want to check it out, and can swing $12,500 a month in rent, you might find your next home in this iconic if underappreciated NYC building.

P.S. Apple Bank has nothing to do, it should be obvious, with Apple the computer hardware giant -- obviously Apple Bank is derivative of "the Big Apple." Also, the had a different name for a long time before it became Apple Bank -- it started as Harlem Savings Bank in 1863. In the 1980s Apple Bank even ran TV commercials (see below) but, apparently, no longer. 

The (Not So) Talented Congressman-elect Mr. Santos

"If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere."

And if you have no education, no professional credentials, are a wanted criminal, and, basically, are totally unemployable and have have nothing going on in life, you can still make it big in NYC by becoming ... a Republican member of the United States Congress! 

Footage & History of the Five Boroughs of New York City (1946)

 

Angelo Badalamenti RIP

Brooklyn native, graduate of the Manhattan School of Music, Angelo B was a brilliant composer of music and film and television scores. He worked with David Bowie and Paul McCartney, and composed music for many directors, most notably David Lynch. 

While Angelo B had a long career, perhaps he's most famous for the music he did for Twin Peaks. It is so brilliant, so magical, so amazing, that it define the word haunting. It's perfect. 

RIP.

Trotsky in Da' Bronx

A few years ago I wrote a short blog post about some of the more memorable headlines that have appeared in the NYC newspapers over the decades (most recently, in reference to the Good Morning America anchor adultery scandal, it was "Good Moaning America").

Anyway, in late 1917, a headline appeared in a local paper called Bronx Home News that had to make its readers do a double-take: "Bronx Man Leads Russian Revolution." 

The man in question was Leon Trotsky who, after Vladimir Lenin, became the second most powerful person in the newly formed Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the world's first Bolshevik i.e. Communist nation. Wrecked by its disastrous participation in the First World War, the centuries-old Russian Empire crumbled into chaos. After numerous political convulsions, the world's largest nation, once ruled by the sacred autocratic Tsars, turned into a supposed "workers paradise", a hypothetical communist utopia.

It was not to be, obviously, but in late 1917 no one knew that -- all that Russians knew was that a failed and discredited monarchy had been destroyed, and a new socialist experiment had come along. Trotsky was one of its primary leaders, its main apostles, and for the next decade he would exercise awesome power -- until, he too, met his ruin at the hands of Joseph Stalin. 

A professional revolutionary, Trotsky lived a nomadic, stateless existence. A wanted man in Russia, he was exiled to Siberia twice, and spent most of his time bouncing around Europe (Switzerland, the UK, France, and Spain) before arriving in NYC in January 1917. His first impression of the city was: 

"Here I was in New York, city of prose and fantasy, of capitalist automatism, its streets a triumph of cubism, its moral philosophy that of the dollar. New York impressed me tremendously because, more than any other city in the world, it is the fullest expression of our modern age.”

Taking up residence on either 164 street or 172 street in the Bronx (it's not certain exactly where he resided), Trotsky lived in the city for only ten weeks, leaving in late March 1917. However, he made the most of his brief American sojourn, doing research and writing at the New York Public Library, engaging in anti-war debates at Cooper Union, going to food protests in St. Mark's Place and City Hall, and engaging in socialist agitation. It's important to remember that, prior to the Russian Revolution and the Cold War, there was a strong socialist movement in this city and country before the FBI and the government shut it down. Trotsky's goal was to organize socialist activity in America -- but then, in March 1917, revolution broke out in Russia. Trotsky left, sailing away from NYC and into history. 

Perhaps, during his brief time in NYC, Trotsky should have realized that communism would fail. Even though he lived in a small and modest apartment, he was shocked to discover that it had things like electricity, heat, a phone, and even a garbage shoot. He could see, even then, that America was the future.

Back in Russia, Trotsky participated in the October 1917 Bolshevik seizure of power. Almost immediately a civil war broke out between the Reds (the Bolshevik forces) and the Whites ("monarchists, conservatives, and Tsarist generals", as the sneering Ian Holm character says in the 1971 movie Nicholas & Alexandra, "all our enemies). Trotsky led the Red forces to victory as War Commissar in 1922. This victory cemented the Soviet Union's existence. Trotsky was at the height of his power.

But in 1924, Lenin, the USSR's first leader and Trotsky's patron, died. A vicious power battle between Trotsky and Stalin ensued. Trotsky lost and was out of power by 1925 -- and by 1929 he was out of the Soviet Union, exiled from the nation he had helped found, resuming a stateless, rootless life. He eventually landed in Mexico City, living in a guarded house, until he was killed by a Stalinist agent who buried an ice pick in his head in 1941.

If Trotsky has survived, if he and not Stalin had become Lenin's successor, the history of the Soviet Union and the world would have been much different. Perhaps it would have become a humane socialist nation. Instead, with Stalin, the USSR became a cult of personality, it became a terror state of gulags and death, it did not become a worker's paradise, it became hell. Trotsky was an idealist but Stalin was a brutal tactician -- and that's why history played out the way it did.

At least Trotsky got to spend some time in NYC -- most of his fellow revolutionaries never did. 

Apropos of my comment about the 1971 movie Nicholas & Alexandra, I highly recommend it -- it's an old-fashioned costume epic about the last Tsar and his wife, the kind of big movie they don't make anymore. It also has an amazing cast including a very young Brian Cox who plays Trotsky. If you're a fan of his hit show Succession where he plays an old, super wealthy media titan, it's cool to watch him in this movie, nearly 50 years earlier, playing a young idealistic Bolshevik revolutionary. There aren't any scenes in NYC, sadly, but it's still worth watching. 

Farewell to Trevor Noah's Daily Show

Christopher Lloyd & Christopher Walken in "Macbeth" at Lincoln Center Theater (1974)

 

Review: "Fame" (1980) and Its Legacy

Warning: This movie review has a tiny plot twist all its own at the end. Read on!

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This summer I finally got around to seeing a movie that had been on my "When I get around to it" list for literally decades -- the original 1980 classic Fame.

The late great movie critic Robert Ebert wrote a review of Fame when it was originally released that is so good, so beautifully descriptive, that I'll quote part of it here (I certainly can't write anything better):

    "Fame" is a genuine treasure, moving and entertaining, a movie that                 understands being a teen-ager as well as Breaking Away did, but studies its      characters in a completely different milieu. It's the other side of the coin: A        big-city, aggressive, cranked-up movie to play against the quieter traditions of     Breaking Away's small Indiana college town. Fame is all New York City. It's    populated by rich kids, ghetto kids, kids with real talent, and kids with mothers     who think they have real talent. They all go into the hopper, into a high school    of kids who are worked harder because they're "special" -- even if they're secretly not so sure they're so special.

Fame centers around a bunch of kids over their four years at the High School of the Performing Arts, otherwise known as "LaGuardia." On the one hand they are regular high school kids, blossoming teenagers with all the regular wants and fears and academic pressures, but, in addition to their studies, they are also training to become actors, dancers, and musicians. Drawn to the school from all walks of life, from across all five boroughs -- rich and poor, black and white, very talented to barely talented -- they work hard, dream hard, and experience numerous joys and heartbreaks. The movie centers around Montgomery, an actor and closeted homosexual; Lisa, a dancer who becomes an actor; Coco -- a dancer and singer; LeRoy, a dancer who is as troubled as he is talented; Ralph, an actor and aspiring comedian, along with Doris, a shy fellow actor who falls in love with him; Bruno, a brilliant musician; and Hillary, a wise-cracking dancer who falls in love with LeRoy. The movie does not have a simple, straightforward plot but, instead, shows a series of interlinking stories, following the characters as their lives change and evolve over their four years together.

Released in May 1980, Fame became a sensation, a surprise box office hit considering that it had no famous stars, no simple or traditional plot, and was about, of all things, a bunch of odd-looking teenagers at a performing arts high school in NYC. It came at a pivotal moment for both New York City and America: NYC was still recovering from its mid-1970s almost-bankruptcy, and was still plagued with its "Fear City" moniker; culturally, however, it was thriving -- "Saturday Night Live" was the hottest thing on TV, Woody Allen was at the height of his career, Studio 54 was raging, and Broadway had big shows like "A Chorus Line" and "Annie" running. And then here comes along this little gem of a movie about a bunch of ragtag NYC kids trying to make it through high school while starting a career in the arts -- and audiences loved it.

America, on the other hand, was changing -- Ronald Reagan and the triumph of cultural and economic conservative was months away, and the country seemed more than ready to rid itself of the tumult of the 1960s and '70s. Fame, in some ways, was a last hurrah of that era, a paean to a time that was troubled but also creatively alive and exciting, a celebration of the arts and artists, and a love letter to NYC, a city that the rest of the country loved to hate. It was an early middle-finger to the political and cultural world to come -- but also, ironically, the unofficial beginning of the 1980s teen movie crazy.

Even though the movie is called Fame, it could also have been called "Sweaty" -- the students literally sweat for their art (especially the dancers) as much as they are sweating about their futures of making it in showbusiness. There are many uncomfortable scenes where the characters face the limitations of their talents, their relationships, their aspirations, their place in this crazy world of the arts. While this movie is a celebration of the artistic spirit, it's not sentimental in any way -- it brutally shows you the grimy, often sleazy showbiz world these kids inhabit, without sugarcoating it.

In that way, it's a real NYC movie.

As you might imagine, Fame is full of amazing acting, dancing and music. There are beautiful scenes of dancers moving gracefully, of musicians giving their all to make the best sounds they're capable of, of actors trying to nail a scene, and also wonderful show-stopping songs. These include the Oscar-winning title song "Fame (I'm Gonna Live Forever)", "Out Here on My Own", "Hot Lunch", and the amazing final number "I Sing the Body Electric" that is performed in rousing spirit at graduation. Everyone in the whole movie sings, "And in time, and in time, we will all ... be ... stars!" Most of them, of course, will never become stars -- but they can and should always dream.

And that's what this movie is all about -- always dreaming, never giving up, even when the world tells you that you should.

Fame has had a surprising after-life since it came out over 42 years ago. In 1982, it became a TV show that ran for five years, with some of the movie's actors joining the show along with a whole new cast of characters and stories. In the late 1990s there was a second, short-running series called "Fame: LA" with all new characters and stories set on the West Coast. And then, in 2009, there was a remake called, unimaginatively, Fame that the critics hated but had some box office success (Kelsey Grammer was in it if you can believe it). Fame was a forerunner to other "I wanna be in showbusiness" projects like Smash or Glee or even The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. In seems, in this era of a million TV shows, like the Fame property or IP or whatever is just ripe for a comeback -- heck, if they can bring back Full House and Quantum Leap, why not Fame?

A few ironies about this movie and my review of it:

First, the director. Even though Fame is a down-and-dirty NYC movie, it was directed by a British guy -- Alan Parker -- whose previous film had been the intense, Oscar-winning, Turkish-set triller, Midnight Express. Fame was obviously a big change of pace, and he would go on to direct other arts-centric movies like The Commitments and other intense movies like Mississippi Burning. A great talent, he died in 2020.

Second, Irene Cara. Oh, how I loved her! I was already planning to write this review before I learned, just days ago, that Irene Cara who played Coco in "Fame" had died at the age of 63. She is amazing in this movie, and performs its most brutal, emotionally intense scene. She also sings most of the songs, luminously, and, if someone became a big star out of "Fame", it was her. Three years later she would win an Oscar and a Grammy for writing and singing the song "Flashdance ... What a Feeling!", easily the best dance pop song ever. She was an amazing talent whose career and life ended far too early -- but her songs will truly "live forever."

Third, and finally, my "history" (of sorts) with Antonia Franceschi, who plays the funny, horny, and super-talented dancer Hillary in Fame. Antonia was a young aspiring dancer at the School of American Ballet when she was cast in Fame and, interestingly enough, even though the movie became a huge hit, Antonia eschewed an acting career to spend the next twelve years as a dancer at the New York City Ballet before embarking on a long career as a choreographer. Very recently, I contacted her to see if she would do an interview for this blog but it didn't quite work out, even though she was very polite and informative in her replies.

But here is the plot twist (of sorts) that was promised ... drum roll ...

I've blogged about how, back in the mid-1980s, I appeared in "The Nutcracker" at the New York City Ballet. Well, I recently went back to look at one of the old programs I saved for my run in "The Nutcracker" and guess who appeared with me (and many others) in the opening party-scene -- that's right, Antonia Franceschi! So yours truly, Mr NYC, has performed on stage with a cast member from Fame! How cool is that?

Fame is truly a classic, a movie that may be decades old but that feels so fresh, so alive, so true-to-life that it never gets old, never gets boring, never feels outdated.

It's a must-watch for anyone whoever was young, whoever loved the arts, and whoever loved NYC.

Hakeem Makes History