It was the last day of the Bloomberg era, the end of a time of enormous change in the city. Mayor Bloomberg had taken office on January 1st, 2002, just months after 9/11, and the city was in full-recovery mode. By the end of his time in office, the look, feel, and life of the city had changed -- in many ways for the better -- but it had also become more expensive and difficult to live here, the city feeling more and more like any big international city around the world.
For the last ten years -- from December 31st, 2013 to December 31st, 2023 -- the city has been mostly the same as the Bloomberg era, except for the massive disruption and trauma of COVID.
In many ways, the last ten years can be divided into 2014-2020, and 2020 to 2024. COVID did something to the city's spirit, it enervated it, it seemed to bring up the decades of buried traumas of the past. Fear returned. Fears about crime, dislocation, seeing the city as failing. These fears are not in any ways borne out by reality -- NYC is booming more than ever. But these fears, exacerbated by the media and a new incompetent mayor, in this era of anti-progress, have had their impact. We haven't returned to "funky town", we've entered some new odd phase but I hope it ends soon -- and our city's great optimism returns.
It's hard to imagine but once upon a time, back in the 20th century, orchestra conductors used to be actual celebrties. Arturo Tosconini lead the NBC Orchestra and Lawrence Welk had his own popular TV show.
But no conductor was more famous, or more acclaimed, or left a greater legacy, than Leonard Bernstein.
Leading the New York Philharmonic for many years, Bernstein was the most famous conductor in America between the 1940s until his death in 1990. He was so famous that he was constantly on television, including with the "Young People's Concerts" series, and he also composed the scores for symphonies and requiems such as Mass. And his impacted popular culture too, writing the gorgeous scores for such musicals as On The Town, Wonderful Town, and, most historically, West Side Story.
And he was a true blue New Yorker, a keeper of the cultural flame at time when people loved to hate the city, and (even though he was a Massachusetts transplant), the spirit of his work -- as those three musicals prove -- was imbued with NYC.
Bernstein is the subject of a big new movie about his life called Maestro that was written, directed, and stars Bradley Cooper. It's an extraorindary movies but focuses mostly on his fraught relationship with his wife and the fact that he was a deeply conflicted bisexual. You should also listen, after watching this movie, to this Bowery Boys podcast episode about Leonard Bernstein's life in, and work about, NYC. His career could never happened without NYC, and NYC is a better place because of his work.
Before the 21st century Golden Age of Television, the 1970s through the 1990s was the Golden Age of the Television Mini-Series.
Whenever regular TV shows went on vacation, the networks would broadcast these multi-episodes series that were a little less than a movie but a little more than a regular TV show. Some of these mini-series, like Roots from 1977 or the 1980s civil war drama North & South, were great, classic TV. But a lot of it was stuff like the 1987 soapy mini-series I'll Take Manhattan, based on the 1986 novel of the same name by Judith Krantz (who wrote a lot of these kinds of books that then became mini-series).
The show's IMDB description tells you everything you need to know about it: "Maxi Amberville tries to save the magazine empire her father built, but her treacherous uncle stands in the way." The Amberville's are supposed to be a Murdoch-like, more like Sy Hersch-like, family running a magazine company very much like Conde Nast. The spirit of this show -- family members battle for control of a media empire -- is basically Succession thiry-years earlier, although nowhere near as funny, well-written, well-acted or well ... everything ... as the HBO show. The story is formulaic, the acting hammy, the dialogue stupid, everything's predictable and dopey.
So why does Mr NYC choose to remember it?
Because it's a relic,a time-stamp, of its age -- the Go-Go 1980s Reagan-era business drama that was very popular at the time. And because it's a very NYC story -- Money! Sex! Publishing! Betrayal! Donald Trump! Lots of shots of the World Trade Centers! Lots of music with saxapohones! Secretative calls being made in phone booths in the pouring rain in at nighttime! It's all there.
The most interesting thing about it is the cast -- it's truly a time capsule of actors and actresses whose careers were either on the way up or on the way down.
Valerie Bertinelli plays the heroic Maxi. She had just finished her long run on the hit TV show One Day At A Time and this show, one gueses, was supposed to demonstrate her great acting chops. She is a great actress but this show was clearly not the right vehicle in which to do so.
The always wonderful Barry Bostwick plays her father, the company's founder, and he's probably the best thing in it. A just-about-to-be James Bond Timothy Dalton is in it as are veteran TV actors Jack Scalia and Perry King who plays the no-good rotten scheming villanous uncle as a no-good rotten scheming villanous uncle.
There's also a few actors who went on to greatness: Jane Kaczmarek, thirteen years before Macolm in the Middle, Chris Noth a few years before Law & Order and Sex and the City, a pre-My Two Dads/Step-by-Step Staci Keanan, and, most notably, future Oscar-winner Julianne Moore ten years before Boogie Nights.
Also, future President and aspiring fascist dictator Donald Trump has a cameo because they filmed some of it at Trump Tower and gave him an obligatory cameo. You might otherwise call this show Trump's Bedtime for Bonzo.
It has to be seen to believed. But I'll give this show credit -- 1987 was the era of Bonfire of the Vanities NYC, the start of the crack epidemic, when people loved to hate this city -- and this show, at that time, dared to celebrate it.
Here are a couple of episodes (you can find the rest on YouTube) as well as some clips and promos. It was truly part of a TV era we probably will never see again.
True crime documentaries and podcasts have become a booming business in the last few years -- especially taking decades-old tabloid stories and turning them into a docu-dramas that go below the surface of, and tell more of the story about, once-screeching headlines. These series also try to provide a broader perspective of the times and places these stories occurred in -- and how they relate (or don't) to the present day's evolved sensibilities.
New York City has had numerous tabloid stories over the years and now, courtesy of the TV show Inside Edition, there's a YouTube channel dedicated to them called New York Gritty.
Some of these stories are very well known -- the deaths of John Lennon and Sid & Nancy, Robert Chambers, Bernie Goetz, and the late Mr NYC interviewee Michael Alig; others, like the Rikers Island Art Heist or a murder at the Met Museum, are less well-known.
It's fun to check-out these old NYC stories if you want to remember what the city used to be like -- and how the events of yesteryear were just as crazy (if not more so) than anything else going on today.
When this blog debuted in 2007 blogs were just starting to become a Thing.
By this time of the mid-aughts most people had gained access to high-speed Internet, but most people did not have the time, money, or energy to create totally original websites for themselves. So blogs filled the void since they were these templated and easy to create, easy to manage homepages.
Blogs at the time were competing for attention with the early versions of social media like Friendster and MySpace but they were primitive and cumbersome to use. Eventually, of course, Facebook conquered them, exploding in popularity and usage. Twitter came along on its heals and provided a more efficient, more public way for people to communicate with the world.
So blogs receded.
They were, and still are, around -- like this one! -- but there are way fewer of them and get much less traffic. Their day has passed.
During this aughties blog boom, however, there were a variety of blogs devoted to NYC, some that I even interviewed their creators about. (Some lasted longer than others, although few have lasted or been this active as this one!)
One such blog at this time was called Joey in Astoria, and it was so popular and active that it even got regular media attention (unlike this one!). It debuted in 2005 and published hundreds and hundreds of posts until, in June 2010, it just ... stopped ... and ... never blogged again.
The blog did not, and does not, explain its long radio silence. It has simply remained dormant for 13 years. It's the digital equivalent of a deep freeze, something stuck in time in an eternal present with no growth towards or expectations of the future. It simply exists ... neither changing or improving or decaying just ... there ...
I hope when the day comes that I decide to end Mr NYC that I will post a final valedictory statement, a fond farewell. I certainly plan to do so unless the tentacles of cirumstance snap me up and keep me seperated from a keyboard with Internet access.
So if this blog ever ends like Joey in Astoria you'll know that life simply overwhelmed me. Otherwise, one day, I will give you all a heartfelt goodbye.
Everyone dies eventually but not in the same way. Some people live long lives and die peacefully at a ripe old age. Other people live for a much shorter period of time and die suddenly. There are no good deaths but some deaths are much better or worse than others.
And some people leave huge legacies while others leave some something short of greatness but are otherwise notable.
Two people whose lives and legacies couldn't be more different just died, and I'm surprised how sad I am about both.
Norman Lear is one of the most important contributors to American culture of the last 50 years. In the 1970s he created the sitcoms All in the Family, Maude, The Jeffersons, Good Times, One Day at a Time, and others. His shows, many set in NYC, were hilarious -- he gave us Archie Bunker's "YOU ... are ... a MEATHEAD!" and Jimmy Walker's "Dyn-o-mite!" -- but they also forced Americans to look at uncomfortable truths like racism, sexism, single motherhood, broken families, and poor communities. He changed not only American television but American culture, and the legacy of his shows reverberate to this day.
Lear has just died at the awesome age of 101, and it's amazing to realize that he didn't create his most important work until he was nearly 50 years old -- and then got to live another 50 years to see how lasting it was. An amazing man, an amazing life, an amazing impact, he was an American original.
Ralph Cirella is someone you'd only know if you are, like me, a huge fan of radio icon Howard Stern. Ralph was his stylist, his friend, his flunkie, and a lot of people loved to hate him because he had a great talent of pissing of just about everyone. But Ralph was a colorful, interesting character who created some great moments for the show. And he was on the show for almost 40 years! I grew up listening to him on Howard so Ralph's death feels like the death of a friend I never knew.
While Ralph didn't leave some kind of huge cultural legacy he was a part of something, a supporting player, for someone who did. The show wouldn't have been the same without him. Sadly, Ralph died suddenly at age 58 after his heart gave out during a procedure to treat a rare lymphoma. It's a tragedy, and great loss.
So one guy lived until 101 and left a huge legacy while another lived much less long and basically left a dent. But they led interesting, impactful lives -- and we should all be so lucky.
Lin Manuel-Miranda is probably the most famous son of Washington Heights.
The other is Henry Kissinger.
The 1970s US Secretary of State, who died at age 100, was a refugee from Nazi Germany when his family settled in Washington Heights in 1938. Henry only lived there a few years, going to George Washington High School (other alumni include Alan Greenspan, Harry Belefonte, Maria Callas, Ronnie Spector, and Manny Ramirez) before heading off to Harvard and foreign policy fame and fortune.
Amazingly, Kissinger's mother lived in Washington Heights until she died in 1998!
After Kissinger's historic run as Presidents Nixon and Ford's National Security Advisor and Secretary of State from 1969 to 1977, Kissinger returned to NYC and lived in style as a foreign policy "consultant" and advisor, a sort of international wise man. He was capital-R Respectable, an icon of the high society circuit, and consulted by Presidents of both parties for his foreign policy wisdom -- mainly due to his role in opening US relations with China in 1972.
Of course, during his time in power, Henry also oversaw the carpet bombing of Cambodia, the defeat in Vietnam, and encouraged right-wing coups in Chile and Argentina that led to decades of dictatorship -- he was responsible for an incalculable number of deaths. His fans say that he was simply a practitioner of realpolitick, seeing the world as it is, not as we want it to be, and acting accordingly. His detractors say he was a war criminal who should have stood trial.
Well, whatever his legacy, Henry Kissinger was a child of NYC who made good in order to do bad.
The short, bizarre congressional career of George Santos has come to its predictable, ignominious end. He should be proud -- he's made history! -- only one of six members of congress in 234 years to be ousted prematurely from the US House.
We should all be so memborable.
Earlier this week, outside Santos' district office in Queens, news crews lined up outside on multiple days, waiting for this moment.
I don't know what kind of news they thought they'd find there but, down in DC, news -- and history -- was most assuredly made: Santos is now doomed to become a curiosity of history, a weird factoid and abberation of our times.
He'll probably go to jail but get out relatively soon, wind up working in right-wing media, spend the rest of his miserable life claiming that he was the target of a dark, vast, nefarious Deep State/Uniparty/Swamp/Establishment -- pick your favorite GOP buzzword -- conspiracy that directly targeted a gay, "Jew-ish" dark skinned immigrant Republican and his deep conservative values. He'll basically be a lifelong professional victim -- and not just the sleazy conman who lied about everything to everybody, broke the law, got caught and rightfully paid the price.
