Fans Mourn Matthew Perry @ "Friends" Building, 90 Bedford Street

Remembrances of NYC Crime Bosses Past

There's something fundamentally criminal about America -- we love to steal and con people out of money, we love to grab anything and anyone we want, we love to hoard money or get into debt if we don't have enough of it, we love getting stuff -- in short, we love our hyper-capitalist materialistic society.

It's one of the reason we had the Red Scare, McCarthyism, the Cold War and Vietnam -- how dare anyone envision a society that isn't centered around money or based on greed.

And that's why we love crime bosses -- think Don Corleone or Donald Trump.

In NYC we've had a few colorful crime bosses. Here are two examples, one very well known, another much less known. 

There's a new Netflix doc about John Gotti, the late 1980s, early 1990s boss of the Gambino crime family. Gotti's career as the most famous crime boss in NYC - the Dapper Don, the Teflon Don -- was relatively short-lived but he made a memorable impact. (I remember as a kid watching him always get arrested, always standing trial, always getting acquitted until he was finally convicted in 1992 and died in prison in 2002 -- in friggin' Missouri of all places!). 

But another NYC crime boss is probably less familiar -- Stephanie St Clair, the young lady crime boss of Harlem who was queen of the rackets. Her story is far less known but no less fascinating. She was African immigrant who fell in love with the American dream -- with a vengeance.  

The Rolling Stones & Lady Gaga Play the Racket Club in Chelsea, NYC

 

The Rain. Will. Not. Stop.

This has to be some kind of record -- for the SEVENTH straight weekend IN A ROW it's going TO RAIN.

A LOT. 

Basically, ever since Labor Day, ever since Fall descended, the city has been bombarded with rain on the very days of the week when we'd all like to be out and about.

Mondays through Thursday have been, for the most part, pretty nice. But starting on Fridays, through Saturdays, it's been non-stop deluge after non-stop deluge, weekend after weekend after weekend. 

And it's driving New Yorkers crazy.

It's also having an economic impact: outdoor fairs and festivals are getting cancelled, outdoor dining -- at the very time of year when it's most pleasant -- isn't happening, people aren't going out as much. People are training for the upcoming New York City Marathon and it's hellish for them to run with rain bombarding them in the face.  

It's even stopping people from getting laid! 

Dear Lord, let the rain stop -- I beg to you on behalf of 8.8 million people.

By the way, I've blogged about other such bizarre rain events, you can read it here. 

Lou Reed: NYC Icon, NYC King

I've blogged A LOT about my love for the music of Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground. (You can go back and read my various posts about him and his legendary band if you so wish.)

But in addition to being a brilliant musician and band leader, Lou Reed was an NYC icon, an artist whose work helped to define the city -- or, at least, a certain kind of NYC, that of the counterculture, the artistic and sexual underground, the downtown scene.

As we come upon the 10th anniversary of Lou Reed's death, there's a new book about him coming out that's subtitled "King of New York." He certainly was a kind of NYC "king", a musical and cultural one, a bard of the city, a voice of its dirty streets. (One of his songs is literally called "Dirty Boulevard").

Encapsulating Lou Reed's status as one of the city's "kings" in words isn't easy but it's probably best done in this New Republic review of this new book. The reviewer writes: 

"[Lou] Reed was ... a divining rod for New York, tracking and manifesting the city’s raw energies. One subtext ... is the evaporation of New York’s counterculture in the wake of tangled -tions and -isms: gentrification, corporatization, conglomeration, rank careerism, and the ne plus ultra, the internet. Reed’s career arguably parallels the city’s ruthless professionalization—a cultural mode that shifted its calculus from DIY to ROI, from collectivity to the singular ... One other thing Reed has come to embody: a New York that exists only in memory, a city of unbridled id and romantic sleaze, 'something like a circus or a sewer,' as he sang. He connects us to a place where degradation was currency but redemption always in the offing—by some measures, the recipe for a perfect rock song. New York ain’t what it used to be. But as long as we pretend otherwise, Lou Reed will be its mirror."

Couldn't say it better myself.

Remembering the Croton Reservoir

As I get older I find myself fascinated by things that would have bored me stiff as a kid and, if I was a normal adult, would bore me now.

One of those odd things is water -- I'm obsessed with the connection between water and power, how water shapes the destinies of cities and their people, and about the simple fact that irrigation, aqueducts, reservoirs and the delivery of clean water to the masses is one of mankind's greatest achievements. 

I've blogged about this several times. 

For NYC, a city of nearly 9 million people, the city delivers gargantuan amounts of water to the populi every day. It comes from reservoirs from upstate, down through water tunnels, into reservoirs, and, finally, into our taps. One of those reservoirs is smack dab in the middle of Central Park -- it's so famous that it's even become a movie star.

The original NYC reservoir was the Collect Pond in lower Manhattan but, by 1838, as the city's population grew, it became polluted. A jail called "The Tombs" was eventually built on top of it. That triggered the building of a new, much better constructed reservoir in the heart of Manhattan -- 42nd street and 5th avenue, right where the flagship branch of the New York Public Library exists today.

Called the Croton Reservoir (because, I believe, the water came from Croton upstate,) it was a massive, almost fortress like thing covering 4-acres and containing 180 millions gallons of water. This reservoir was a fascinating thing to see and it kept the city hydrated until the late 1890s when it was dismantled. By 1902, it was a gone -- and a new public library in the new 5-borough NYC was built in its place.

All in all, the Croton Reservoir's lifespan was short and obviously no one alive today remembers it. But for a time, at a key moment of the city's history, it stood proudly and magnificently at one of the city's most important intersections -- and it literally kept NYC alive.

Review: "The First Deadly Sin" and "Dressed to Kill"

The year 1980 was a turning point in American history -- the election of conservative Ronald Reagan as President proved that the country was rejecting the progressive ethos of the 1960s and '70s, the white hot flame of disco music was burning out, and the culture was gradually turning away from the dark cinematic vision of the New Hollywood (think The Godfather, think Chinatown) to the more upbeat blockbuster era (think Rocky, think the Star Wars trilogy).

New York City was also recovering from the late 1970s traumas of near-bankruptcy, the blackout, and high crime. Ed Koch was mayor and, such were the times, that he turned being a belligerent, mean-spirited asshole into electoral gold.

This same year saw the release of two movies set in NYC that were very similar and very different -- but that showed that the city and the world were changing, as was the lives of their creators.

The First Deadly Sin is something that I can't believe I'm typing -- it's a gritty NYC crime drama starring Frank Sinatra. Yes, FRANK FRIGGIN' SINATRA! "Old blue eyes", in this movie, plays an aging NYPD detective named Delaney who is, yes, just about to retire to take care of his very sick wife (an always great Faye Dunaway, still riding her post-Network Oscar-winning wave before Mommie Dearest ended it all) but who becomes obsessed with finding a serial killer who has been menacing the Upper West Side -- and, it is later revealed, all of NYC. His investigation takes him into a dark realm of trying to understand systematic but senseless violence all the while tangled up in the bureaucracy of the NYPD and the heartbreaking illness of his wife. It's a tense, well-told story and it was a a rare, late-career movie performance by Sinatra -- long past his glory days as a movie musical star.

Sinatra is, of course, great in this movie, and you can see why he remains a legend 25 years after his death. In this movie, he quietly emotes such pathos, such sympathy, such complexity, that we root for him 100%. This was his last big movie and it's sad, in a way, that Sinatra didn't act more in the later years of his life because this movie proves what a perennial talent he was, what a great actor he was (he doesn't sing this movie so there you go), and how exciting he is to watch in every scene -- even in a dark, disturbing, non-glamorous movie and role like this where he is struggling with the horror of death all around him, in both his city and his marriage. It's about the totality and agony of loss. The movie was not a big hit at the time but it really holds up.

By the way, a totally unknown struggling actor at the time walks around in the background of this movie -- a man named Bruce Willis, also dealing with his own sense of loss right now.

Some might argue that this other movie from 1980 doesn't hold up -- and even the director of it seems to agree. Dressed to Kill by Brian De Palm is about a murderous transsexual menacing wayward women in NYC, and it was highly controversial then and even more so now. I get that criticism and sympathize with it. However, just as a piece of filmmaking, Dressed to Kill is brilliant, an amazing and bizarre thriller that basically takes the story of Psycho (if you know it) and twists the hell out of it. Angie Dickinson plays a rich, bored housewife who's afternoon of passion brings her an untimely death in an elevator, Nancy Allen plays a hooker who sees the murder and becomes the killer's next prey, and Michael Caine plays a psychiatrist trying to help both women -- or is he?

You need to see Dressed to Kill to fully understand it -- trying to describe it with words is hard because, like all De Palma movies, the essence of its storytelling is visual. He doesn't use lots of special effects -- it's his use of the camera that is its own special effect. The movie is highly unconventional, there are whole scenes without dialogue -- including a brilliant 10-minute sequence in an art gallery that makes no sense but that you follow anyway, and that has a a great payoff. Like all De Palma movies, it'll enthrall and repulse you but this may be my favorite of his movies and I'm not even a big thriller fan -- but you should see this!

Dressed to Kill was, shockingly, given both its subject matter and unusual storytelling, a big hit in 1980. It's hard to imagine audiences today going to a movie this dark, depraved, weird, and challenging but they did. It shows NYC as a sexy, glamorous, and dangerous place -- this is not a "gritty crime drama", oh no, it's a sexy, alluring one, and it really gets under your skin. Skin, that you should probably cover up with clothes although please don't, you know, get dressed to kill.

More Messages to Rep. George Santos

 

NYC Responds to Israel/Gaza Situation

Howard Stern's "Crucified by the FCC" (1991)

In the late 1980s Howard Stern was exploding on the radio, re-writing the rules of what you could and couldn't say on the public airwaves. Originating on station 92.3 K-Rock in NYC, the morning "shock jock" was getting his show syndicated in markets around the country, entertaining and outraging listeners across the fruited plain. 

This also brought his show into the crosshairs of the Federal Communications Commission which started imposing million dollar-plus fines on his company for "indecent content."

Until 2005, when Howard left regular radio for satellite, he would continue to get fined and harassed by the FCC.

But in 1991, Howard did something brilliant -- he took the uncensored segments from his show that had gotten him fined and produced an album of these supposedly "too hot for radio" bits -- including phone sex, people burping, and a man playing the piano with his wiener -- called Crucified by the FCC. The album included commentary from Howard and others about why these bits got them in trouble with the US Government.

Listened to today these bits are totally silly and not even that outrageous -- and compared with what's on social media and podcasts and YouTube, they're downright. But most of all, it's really funny stuff.

If you want to hear the whole album go here -- and watch these TV segments from the early 1990s when this album was released. 

Review: "Big City Blues" (1932)

I love old movies that give you a real-time window on the past -- of a world both distant and familiar.

Such an example is the 1932 B-movie Big City Blues. It's about a young man named Bud who leaves small town Indiana to start an exciting life in NYC. He connects with his con-man cousin Gibby and a dame named Vida who lead him to a party where things get out of control and someone gets killed -- making Bud hightail it back to Indiana but never giving up his dreams of living and making it in NYC.

This movie has to be seen to be believed -- it's a perfect example of early 1930s pre-code Hollywood with lots of fast-talking characters and hammy acting. It's only an hour long and doesn't have much of a plot but it's a fun short movie that's all about how NYC is a great place to live -- but also with dangers lurking around every corner.

There's a few interesting things about this movie, especially in retrospect.

First, as mentioned, it was made in the early '30s just before Prohibition was repealed so there's a lot of stuff about bootleggers and speakeasies in it.

Second, the cast: it stars a young man named Eric Linden whose acting career was short-lived although he later on had a small role in Gone With the Wind. The "dame", Vida, is played by Joan Blondell who had a long career afterwards -- one of her last movies was Grease in 1978. And in a small part as a guest at the party where everything goes wrong is a young, smart talking Humphrey Bogart -- then just an up-and-coming actor before being lifted to cinematic greatness in the 1940s.

Third, it was directed by a man named Mervyn Le Roy who a few years later would produce a little flick called The Wizard of Oz. 

Fourth, there's a lot of references to the then-Mayor of NYC, Jimmy Walker who had managed to become something of a national celebrity of that time. Much like our current mayor, Eric Adams, Walker was a notoriously corrupt party-hound incompetent. Funnily enough Big City Blues was released on September 10, 1932 just nine days after Jimmy Walker had resigned and fled the country due to corruption charges headed his way. Just two months later New York-native Franklin Roosevelt would be elected president.

So this movie captures NYC at a turning point in history, when the anything-goes, criminal culture of the 1920s was slowly being crushed under the heels of the Great Depression and the New Deal. 

P.S. There's a great monologue at the beginning of this movie by the Indiana train station master. I can't post a clip of it here but look for it here on You Tube -- it's brilliant.