Gotta Love New Yorkers

You can't love a city unless you love its people -- the people who created it, the people who maintain it, the people who give it its vitality, from the folks who pick up the city's trash, teach in its schools, drive its buses and cabs and trains, police its streets, build its economy, help it to grown, preserve and improve its architecture and greenery, to the people who give it cultural vitality -- the characters who help to define the city's character. 

To say that New York City has produced some interesting characters over the centuries would be an epic understatement. But reading about some NYC characters, a couple of whom recently passed, a couple who are still with us but in their winter years. I blogged in the past about some of the NYC greats, the characters who contributed to its cultural and intellectual life, and it's a tradition I like to uphold. So here are a few more great NYC characters, NYC greats, both past and present, that we should appreciate:

- There's the actor Charles Kimbrough who recently died at the age of 86. Most people will remember him for the decade he spent playing the pompous anchor Murphy Brown. But he was really a man of the stage and he originated roles on Broadway in two of Stephen Sondheim's best musicals -- Company in 1970 and Sunday in the Park with George in 1985. What an incredible acting legacy!

- There was the movie producer Ed Pressman who recently died at the age of 79. A native New Yorker he produced classics like Badlands, Wall Street, Bad Lieutenant, Reversal of Fortune, and American Psycho. He was one of the last big-shot, svengali producers that don't really exist anymore, and he made great movies about people instead of superheroes. A great cinematic legacy.

- Then there's Sonja Wagner. Who's she? She's a classic NYC story -- a bored housewife from Kansas who escaped to our fair city in the last 1970s and built a successful if under-the-radar career as an artist. She worked for adult mags while also creating her own art, and she found a loft that became an epicenter for struggling and successful artists to meet, party, network, and get into chicanery. Sonja is 85 now and terminally ill -- but she's kind of New Yorker who made this city her own and contributed to its culture in great ways.

- And there's always Fran Lebowitz. Look, what more can I say about this fount of NYC wisdom that hasn't already been said more often and better by others -- especially Fran herself? Fran is an NYC treasure, an institution unto herself. If I had to say what it is I love about Fran is that, even though she's a public intellectual, if that she's focuses on reality and not pretentiousness. She focuses on the real issues, not the nonsense. Perfect example, as she says in her latest interview, is that we should stop worrying or caring about the dopey-ness of people like the Kardashians and more about the threat that someone like House Speaker Kevin McCarthy poses. Smart lady, a great New Yorker.