WNBC-TV news anchor Chuck Scarborough has announced his retirement after 50 years.
Chuck is an absolute legend in NYC, someone who made local news cool. Mayors, governors, presidents, all kinds of other famous and powerful people have come and gone in this last half-century but Chuck remained, reporting on it all. The city won't quite be the same without his steadying, calming presence on our airwaves every night.
Here's Chuck announcing his departure, and some notable past stories he reported on.
Greetings! I haven't been blogging for the last couple of weeks because I've been super busy and also traveling internationally -- more to come on that later.
And yes, the results of the election this month also deflated my desire to blog. But if you want to know more about how I feel about this country's descent into fascism, please read this column by Elie Mystal that perfectly sums up my views on it.
I'll just add: we are living in the upside down, through the looking-glass, in bizarro-world, a banana republic. The abnormal is normal, the unacceptable is accepted, the gross has been made palatable, sickness is considered healthy.
It's "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown" time -- the darkness is bigger and badder than we thought, and beyond our ability to defeat it. We simply have to find someway to survive in it, lighting a candle -- or many -- in order to see our way thru it.
Listen to this brilliant British guy -- and his funny impressions of an American accent -- talk about the 2024 election:
He confesses that there's a lot about the United States that he doesn't understand and wishes that some Americans would enlighten him about how half the country could support a felon/rapist/traitor.
They don't make movies like this anymore -- well, okay, they do, but they don't play in movie theaters anymore; instead, they pop up on streaming.
But it's always great to see a fast-paced, character-centered flick with great movie stars -- especially when it involves them running around NYC.
Wolves stars George Clooney and Brad Pitt -- thirty-years removed from their starmaking roles on the TV show ER and in the movie Interview With the Vampire, respectively -- as two "cleaners" or "wolves" (like the one Harvey Keitel played in that other 194 classic Pulp Fiction), whose job is to mop up crime scenes, dispose of bodies and evidence, and make sure that the guilty get away with it and justice is denied to the victim. In Wolves, this crime scene involves a dead kid, a backpack full of drugs, and a hysterical female District Attorney (played by the wonderful Amy Ryan) who is running for reelection and needs this problem solved pronto.
The twist in this movie is that these two now middle-aged wolves are called to clean up the same crime scene unbenowst two each other. And when they clean up the scene and get the dead kid's body out of the downtown Manhattan hotel they were called to -- well, it all goes sideways and mayhem ensues when it turns out the kid really isn't dead.
Wolves then turns into a very fun, almost two hour yarn of car chases, shootouts, sleazy nightclubs, oddball characters, snappy dialogue, chowing down in diners, and everything that makes a good pulpy story. Most of all, it's great to see Clooney and Pitt act their hearts out, their chemistry palpable, in an original story not based on IP. It's just an entertaining movie. Remember those?
But other big thing I love about Wolves, as you might guess, its that it's a real NYC and a real NYC night movie. The story starts downtown but before you know it our heroes are zooming around Chinatown and Lower Manhattan, then they're out in the wilds of Queens. It's a movie that gives you a sense of the whole city.
And the whole thing takes place at night, when the city falls into a sense of sexy mystery, a place of danger and excitement, a whole other NYC. I think it's fair to say that Wolves joins the company of other brilliant NYC night movies like After Hours, Taxi Driver, Night on Earth, While the City Sleeps, the Whit Stillman classics Metropolitan and The Last Days of Disco, The Warriors, Nick & Norah's Infinite Playlist -- heck, I'll even throw in Eyes Wide Shut.
The neighborhood in the West 60s in Manhattan, now known as Lincoln Square, used to be called San Juan Hill.
It is centered around the mighty Lincoln Center Peforming Arts Center, a huge complex of theaters for opera, ballet, music, plays, and movies, and more, an amazing cultural touchstone in NYC.
I know a lot about Lincoln Center because, for years, my life centered around it. But I didn't know much about its history which, at the time, was relatively new.
In the mid-1960s, the working class and culturally and ethnically diverse neighborhood of San Juan Hill was effectively destroyed in order to build Lincoln Center. But many younger New Yorkers don't know anything about it -- until now. A new documentary tells this story and asks the question, "is art worth the price of ruining a neighborhood?"
Ironically San Juan hill became world famous just a few years before its end in the 1960 classic West Side Story. The famous opening prologue was filmed in San Juan Hill, on the very streets that would soon be transformed to make way for Lincoln Center -- the ultimate clash of art and the city.
Now NYC and the country are on tenderhooks: will the Yankees face the erstwhile Brooklyn, now Los Angeles, Dodgers or will they face the Mets -- and will NYC have its first subway series since the year 2000?
When the Yankees were last in the World Series, in 2009, I blogged about each game. Guess I should do it again this year.
Recently a loved one of mine had to visit the emergency room. All is well now but, across from my loved one, lay a dude cuffed to a stretcher under the watchful eye of a police officer (actually, his eye wasn't all that watchful, he was on his phone but his captive wasn't making any attempt to escape).
Anyway, it made me realize how lucky my life is -- ERs and cops aren't part of my regular existence, nor have I ever been arrested or held prisoner (in public no less).
Chat GPT: MrNYC.blogspot.com is a blog that offers insights and commentary on various aspects of life in New York City. It typically features posts about local culture, events, food, neighborhoods, and sometimes personal anecdotes or observations. The blog captures the vibrant and diverse nature of NYC, making it a go-to for both locals and visitors looking to explore the city through the author's perspective. If you're interested in urban life or want to discover more about New York City, it can be a great resource!
As the legal inferno involving Mayor Eric Adams continues to burn, some NYC scribes are rememebering other mayors from times gone by that also got into trouble.
The two mayors mostly commonly remembered for getting into big trouble are Jimmy Walker and William O'Dwyer, both of whom resigned in 1932 and 1950, respectively, and then fled the country. Also there was Fernando Wood, the 19th mayor who was vastly more corrupt than either Adams, Walker or O'Dywer -- and never got into trouble at all.
I recently came upon a few articles (here, hereand here) about these men, comparing their stories to the predicament that Eric Adams finds himself in (sadly two of these articles are behind a paywall).
But Mr NYC, yours truly, was blogging about these naughty mayors long ago, before any of this meshugas (read about them here and here) -- and remember, Mr NYC is always ahead of his time.
In 2018 I did a short review of the classic late 1970s adult film Debbie Does Dallas which, despite its title, was actually filmed in Brooklyn. It starred a woman named Bambi Woods who was catapulted to adult stardom by the film.
And in 2021 I interviewed the former adult star Lisa Cintrice who starred in Debbie Does Dallas 2 and had a scene in a bathtub with Ms Woods. After this, Bambi Woods vanished from the public eye, and in the forty-plus years since no one has been able to find her -- there have been rumors that she died in 1986, others that she moved and continues to live as a housewife in Iowa.
Either way, back in 1979, Bambi Woods was very much a star and she gave this short interview about the movie that had made her infamous. It's a moment in time when the adult films business in NYC was at the vanguard of popular culture -- a moment that, in retrospect, passed quickly.
The hottest thing in American popular culture today isn't superhero movies -- it's hours-long true crime podcasts, documentaries, and TV series.
In the last few years, tabloid scandals from the past about Jeffrey Dahmer, Andrew Cunan, Robert Chambers, OJ, and many others (more recently, the Menendez Brothers) have become massive hits in various multi-episode formats. And all of them seem to be about tabloid stories from the late 20th century.
But before the era of streaming and podcasts, where hours and hours could be devoted to telling these trashy tales, such stories would become network TV movies -- and instead of waiting years, these "ripped from the headlines" events became hastily-made, two-hour flicks.
One such story that, as far as I know, has yet to become a 21st-century multi-hour podcast/documentary/streaming series is about the June 1986 attack of Marla Hanson.
A Missouri-transplant and aspiring model, Marla Hanson was living in a Manhattan apartment, attending glamorous parties, pursuing romance, living the NYC dream, until one day her landlord, who was obsessed with her, slashed her face, ending her modeling dreams. It was a big, scary story about obsession, beauty, and the "face value" of human worth. Her attackers were eventually sentenced to prison, but not until she was, in her words, badly treated by the criminal justice system.
And this is why the 1991 TV-movie about the incident was called Face Value: The Marla Hanson Story.
This movie falls squarely into the now gone-and-forgotten sensationalist TV-movie with bad writing, bad acting, bad production values, and bad music. It's amazing to think anything this low-rent would get made today but, thirty-odd years ago, this was the stuff that millions of people watched when the big network TV hits went on hiatus.
There are, however, a few interesting things about this movie that make it worth watching (you can see the trailer and full movie below).
First, it's a real-NYC movie that, in its ways, captures the allure and danger of the late 20th century, pre-911 city.
Second, the cast.
Marla Hanson is played by an actress named Cheryl Pollack, who "had a moment" in the early 1990s. She was in the 1990 movie Pump Up the Volume, a memorable episode of Quantum Leap, and later on was on another show called The Heights. She continued to pop up in TV shows throughout the 1990s until, it appears, she left acting.
Marla's landlord/slasher was played by an odd-looking, odd-sounding actor named Kirk Baltz. And ironically, the very next year, he'd make movie history as the victim of a fictional slashing -- he's the guy who played the cop who memorably got his ear cut-off in Quentin Tarantino's directorial-debut Reservoir Dogs (while "Stuck in the Middle With You" played in the background). It must have been ironic for him to go, within a year or so, from playing a slasher in a totally forgettable TV movie to playing the most famous slashing victim in movie history -- and in a cinematic classic.
Then there's Marla's love interest. He's played by a very handsome actor named Dale Midkiff. His career caught fire in the 1980s when he played Elvis in a TV-mini-series, and then was in the 1989 hit movie Pet Semetary. But big screen stardom elluded him and it was back to TV. Not long after making this Marla Hanson TV movie, Dale starred in a very silly but massively entertaining show called Time Trax. It was about a cop from the year 2193 who is sent back in time to 1993 to find criminals who escaped from his time, hiding out the past, and sending them back to the future -- and justice. After Quantum Leap, it was my favorite time-travel show ever (although nowhere as good as QL), and he was really good in it. It only ran for two-years but it was fun to watch (interestingly, Time Trax premiered on January 20th, 1993, the same day that Bill Clinton became president).
As for Marla Hanson, after this horrible incident, she appears to have gone on and lived a nice quiet life. She married, had a child, worked briefly as a screenwirter, and seems to have had no interest in having a public profile in the almost 40-years after she was thrust into the headlines. And good for her!
These days the network TV movie seems to be a thing of the past. But this movie capture an era of TV, and NYC, that seems both far in the past and very familiar.
“What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” -- Shakespeare, Romeo & Juliet
Britannica Dictionary definition of BITCH 1
[count] : a female dog 2
[count] informal + offensive : a very bad or unpleasant woman : a woman you strongly dislike or hate * You stupid bitch! * I hate that bitch. 3
[singular] informal : something that is very difficult or unpleasant * Divorce is a bitch. * That word is a bitch to spell.
— see also "son of a bitch"
The word "bitch" is funny. And Howard Stern is funny.
So when Howard Stern talks about bitches, it's really funny.
Here's an excerpt from a 2005 New York magazine article where he was talking with the rapper 50 Cent about bitches:
... Howard had 50 Cent in the studio. Howard wanted to hear about 50 Cent’s “bitches" ... The rapper said a couple were waiting back at the hotel—he even remembered one of the bitches’ names. Howard wanted to call the bitches.
Howard clearly enjoyed saying the word bitches, which he thought was funny coming from him.
Tom Chiusano, K-Rock’s general manager, didn’t appreciate the humor.
“They call dogs bitches,” Howard said. “It’s a common word.”
Chiusano entered the studio, a small, dingy, low-ceilinged room where Howard sits behind a large U-shaped console. Chiusano, who favors black tasseled loafers and pinstripes, explained that the repetition of the word bitch made it potentially indecent. Obligingly, he spoke into a microphone. “I’m not wrong,” he said, which didn’t exactly sound bold.
... 50 piled on. “Bitches,” he mentioned.
And then listen to this more recent rap that Howard himself wrote and performed about bitches, specifically about "slow bitches":
A bitch said by any other name ... do you think Shakespeare would have been amused?
I'm not going to blog about Eric Adams anymore until something definitive happens -- namely, that he ceases to be mayor.
So this will be my last post on the subject until then.
That said, you shoud read this article by the political journalist & three-time Mr NYC-interviewee Ross Barkan about "The Fall of Eric Adams" -- and how we got here. As always, he summarizes the whole thing well.
Over the years I've blogged about my love of Venice, the great Italian city of isles that, in some ways, is the true spiritual sister of NYC.
And like NYC, Venice is a city of beauty and inspiration.
That's why it was fun to read this article about the legendary designer and business Diane von Furstenberg who has recently taken up residence in a Palazzo on the Grand Canal. Like many brilliant people before her, who came to NYC to realize their dreams, she's done the same with Venice. It's a fascinating story.
And, in some ways, she follows in the footsteps of those other great Venetians Marco Polo, Veronica Franco, and Casanova -- as well as countless New Yorkers -- who take their destiny into their own hands.
As always, Mr NYC pointed out the oddness and possible criminality of Mayor Adams well before most of the media -- once again, Mr NYC being ahead of his time.
Reincarnation may not exist but sometimes, as the saying goes, "what's old is new again"; people or things from the past are either resurrected, rediscovered, or reimagined for new generations.
Think of every reboot of every old show currently on television.
Well, this blog post is not about TV reboots but about two very seperate, very old, and very NYC things that have, in very different ways, gone from old to new again.
The first, most notably and most infamously, is the World Trade Center. For almost 30 years the Twin Towers glowered over NYC until September 11, 2001. The next several years a battle over rebuilding what was known, for a long time, as Ground Zero until, more than a decade later, One World Trade Center emerged as its replacement. The new tower was obviously a reminder and a replacement of the old World Trade Centers, the past coming back to life in a new way, up from the ashes, into the future.
The man at the center of rebuilding the World Trade Centers, of turning Ground Zero into a gleaming, shining structure, was Larry Silverstein. He has a new memoir about his long career as an NYC builder and what it took to rebuild in Lower Manhattan -- although, as this article points out, while a gorgeous new building was constructed, the thing was a big missed opportunity. Instead of reimagining the area as a mixed-use, residential/commercial, affordable neighborhood, they just built another big office buidling that, nearly a quarter of a century from 9/11, remains largely empty.
But another, more enjoyable rediscovery, is the 1981 movie They All Laughed. Made by NYC director Peter Bogdanovich, it was a mad caper about private detectives hired to follow unfaithful wives -- until the detectives get double-crossed by their prey and hilarity ensues. At the time of its release, it was a critical and commercial flop, and it marked the end of Bogdanovich's time as an A-List director. For decades it wasn't watchable anywhere but now it was reemerged, to great acclaim, on TCM and currently steaming on Max.
It's great to see older, excellent, and underappreciated work rediscovered. Also, directors Quentin Tarantino and Wes Anderson have said that this film specifically was an influence on them. From the ashes of critical and commercial ignomy to the heights of canon and influence, that is something great to see.
The daily weekday soap opera used to be a staple of daytime network television. All My Children, Guiding Light, One Life to Live and so many others entertained housewives, the unemployed and layabouts during the early afternoon hours for decades.
But then, about ten-to-fifteen years ago, they started to vanish. Some of these soaps, like Guiding Light, had started on radio in the 1930s and ran for the better part of 70 to 80 years! -- and then were unceremoniously cancelled. Today there are only about three or four left, as streaming and the Internet and production costs doomed them.
Most soap operas are generally set in some mid-sized fictional city in the midwest somewhere, usually with a name that starts with "Port." They exist in a mystical Everytown USA where everyone is beautiful, sex craved, greedy, venal, dishonest, and unusually prone to car accidents.
One outlier to these kinds of soap operas was Ryan's Hope, which ran from 1975 to 1989 and was set in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan.
Unlike most soaps, it was set in a real neighborhood in NYC with blue collar characters. Ryan's was a bar across the street from the fictional Riverside Hospital (i.e. Columbia Presbyterian) and the show explored the lives of its denizens. It still has the usual soap opera tropes of scandalous affairs and pregnancies and deaths but it was rooted in NYC and real community.
One of the original stars of Ryan's Hope was Kate Mulgrew who went on to greatness as the Captain on Star Trek: Voyager and later as the hilarious Russian prisoner on Orange is the New Black. Guest stars included a young Kelsey Grammer, Dominic Chianese (20 years before The Sopranos) and Christian Slater.
While it had a relatively short life compared to other daytime soaps, Ryan's Hope was an unusual slice of NYC life beamed each afternoon into homes across America -- and there's quite like it that exists today.
Things haven't been going too great for NYC Mayor Eric Adams, in case you hadn't heard. In fact, the stench of his travails has wafted across the pond.
On the great Rest is Politics podcast from the UK, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair sidekick Allistair Campbell and former UK Member of Parliament Rory Stewart discuss, and take listener questions about, political issues all over the world. Both men are brilliant, knowledgeable, and great broadcasters, and the podcast has become a worldwide hit.
On their latest episode they talk about the US-UK Special Relationship and they also talk Turkey -- the country that is. But for about five minutes, starting around the six minute mark, they talk about Eric Adams and the wierdness that is not only NYC politics but also all American urban politics.
It's a short segment but certainly worth a listen. When classy Brits start talking about what a weirdo you are, it can't be pleasant.
UPDATE - OCTOBER 3, 2024: These classy Brits keep talking Eric Adams -- see below, starting at minute 4:07.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of The Power Broker, Robert Caro's brilliant book about the career of NYC master builder Robert Moses.
I've blogged A LOT about Robert Moses over the years and you can find it all, including my own review of The Power Broker, right here (there's also a big exhibition about it at the New-York Historical Society).
When Caro wrote in the book in the last 1960s and early 1970s, he was a young man looking to reveal the story behind how Moses built NYC. By this time, Moses himself was an old man, looking back at his controversial legacy.
Now, fifty years later, Moses is long dead and Caro himself is an old man, looking back on the legacy of his book about the man and what he did to NYC.
Below you can see a 1977 interview that Moses gave to publica television about his career and the book that made him infamous. And then you can watch a very recent 2024 interview with Care reflecting how his great book came to be.
I'm a big fan of the author Rachel Kushner -- her 2013 novel The Flamethrowers a personal favorite. She also has a new novel coming out called Creation Lake that I'm looking forward to reading and that's just been nominated for the Booker Prize.
Kushner is a California-native and -based writer but she spent about a decade in NYC in the 1990s. She recently wrote about her experiences living in the city as a transient resident and how, although she's neither from here nor stayed here, her memories of NYC remain close to her heart.
For us NYC natives, this is and will always be home -- no matter how far we may stray from it.
But for people who were born and grew up elsewhere, then lived here for a while before moving home or moving on, experiencing NYC as a chapter in life is always a fascinating story. It's like they were dropped into the stream of a continuing soap opera, played their part, and then left while the storyline continued. Their time in NYC is finite, tied to a particular time in their and the city's life, and they are forever intertwined in a unique, unreproduceable way. What they remember about a city that's always changing but fixed in their minds is always something worth learning about.
The brilliant actor James Earl Jones recently died at the age of 93.
Yes, I know, he's best known as the voice of Darth Vader and the Lion King, and he appeared in many classic films like Field of Dreams, Conan the Barbarian, Coming to America, The Hunt for Red October, Matewan and others.
But James Earl Jones was also a great Broadway actor, appearing in numerous plays between the 1950s and 2010s -- including The Iceman Cometh, Of Mice and Men, Fences (a legendary performance), Driving Ms. Daisy and finally You Can't Take It With You. Even if he hadn't made any movies, his theater resume would enshrine him in acting immortality.
Yet not only did he make the aforementioned movies but James Earl Jones' very first movie was the Stanley Kubrick 1964 classic Dr. Strangelove. Jones was cast as one of the bombers that's been sent to attack Russia, faithfully executing his orders and mission while unaware that they're about to destory humanity.
If you want to understand the greatness of James Earl Jones' acting talent, just watch and listen to him flip switches, turns nobs, and repeat tactical orders -- and make it mesmerizing. And how amazing was it that, in the early 1960s, when black Americans were being terrorized by southern police and fighting for civil rights, the Bronx-born genius director Kubrick cast a brilliant young black actor in such an important role?
Such is the stuff as legend. Watch this great sequence from Dr. Strangelove below and an interview that James Earl Jones gave decades later about how he ended up in one of the greatest movie's ever made.
So the FBI just raided the homes of the First Deputy Mayor, the Schools Chancellor (on the first day of school no less!), the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety, and, oh, the police commissioner!
This is, uh, not good. But, if you've been following this blog and its musings on Hizzoner, it's not exactly a surprise. At this rate, Adams heading to be another Jimmy Walker or William O'Dwyer.
We live in interestinging times ... and it's so boring!
More than once or twice I've blogged about the oddity that is Mayor Eric Adams -- you can read all about it here, no need to rehash it.
This new article elaborates more on this oddness, calling him the "chaos mayor."
But more than cataloguing the mayor's chaotic reign, it also shows how Adams, like other prominent politicians of this era, simply have no idea whatsoever of what it means to be a leader. They spend their time blaming others for their problems, they use overheated crises-ridden rhetoric, they constantly attack the press as being out to get them, and they openly engage in self-pity.
Poor me! Poor me! Everyone's mean to me, I'm a victim, all these conspiracies and dark forces are out to get me!
It's not like they have power or something.
In Adams' case, it comes down to his handling of the migrant problem. When they started coming into NYC, Adams showed that he was overwhelmed and unable to handle it. He said this problem was a "crises" that would "destroy New York City" and that we were about to "lose" the city. When the press asked him how he plans to handle this problem, he told others that they had to provide the answers about how to handle the problem. He demanded severe budget cuts in order to handle the problem -- even though the city is running surplus. Instead of projecting confidence in his skills and in his administration's ability to handle this problem, he basically said "I can't handle it! Oh my god, the city is going down, you tell me how to fix it!"
Real leaders rush into a crises, come up with a plan, handle it in a pragmatic and confident manner, restore order, and fix it. Like that old guy in Godfather II, leaders say "This is the business we've chosen!" and get on with the job, showing that they're in charge and getting things under control. They don't whine and complain, attack their critics and demand pity. They work -- and the positive results speak for themselves and their leadership abilities.
You see this same problem with Trump --- the constant consipiracies, the constant attacks on critics, the constant self-pity. The former British Prime Minster Liz Truss, who managed to the screw up the UK economy in six weeks so badly that her own party kicked her out of office, is now out complaining that the Bank of England and the "blob" that is the UK Civil Service is responsible for her fall -- and not her own decisions. She was Prime Minister when the Queen died in 2022 and apparently Ms. Truss's reaction to this was "Why me?" Can you friggin' believe that?
It wasn't always like this. Leaders led and did the job. Jimmy Carter didn't complain, deflect, or demand pity during the Iran Hostage Crises. Reagan didn't either during Iran Contra. My God, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton got impeached and still worked hard!
Eric Adams, like Trump and Truss and others, doesn't seem to get this. They think serving in high office is an excuse either to live the high life or execute ideological agendas -- not govern, not serve the public. And when things don't go their way, instead of sucking it up and getting to work, they WAAAAAHHHHH!
The thing is, the public is much smarter than these folks. Trump lost the presidency (and hopefully will again), Truss was kicked out, and Adams looks like he'll lose next year.
The people want leaders and problem solvers -- not showboating, self-pitying egomaniacs. You chose this business, get it done.
A few years ago Mr NYC interviewed two people who were involved in the 1980s NYC adult film scene -- Barbara Nitke, an on-set photographer, and Lynn Paula Russel (a.k.a. Paula Meadows), an English actress who appeared in several films before returning to England and starting a successful career as an artist.
Both ladies worked, in their very different capacities, with a big adult star of the time named Siobhan Hunter. A gorgeous young woman with long brunette hair, she was a mysterious, alluring, and absolutely gorgeous creature of 1980s NYC adult cinema. She appeared in several films from 1984 until the early 1990s, working with all the big names of the era (men and women), and developed a huge fanbase.
And then ... she vanished.
The rumor is that she went to medical school in Mexico and became a pediatrician, living a quiet life far from her days -- in mind, body, and spirit -- from her time as a big NYC adult star.
Recently there was a short bio of her Siobhan posted to Youtube. You can watch it below and also read my interviews with Barbara and Lynn here.
If you're out there Siobhan, Mr NYC would love to interview you!
I'm a lover of history, not just because it's the greatest story ever told, but because it links to and tells us so much about our present -- and where we're going in the future.
When you link past, present and future in something, you get a sense of timelessness, a touch of the infinite.
The ultimate links can be several things -- including documents or records of events created in real time in the past or of places where history has happened.
You might not think that a Greenwich Village political club would be a fascinating hub of history -- but it is. The Village Independent Democrats is more than 70 years old and has been responsible for producing very important New York politicians including Mayor Ed Koch. The club is now archiving its records, which include meetings with Jane Jacobs when she was fighting Robert Moses's Lower Manhattan Expressway and documents about other important political events both from Greenwich Village and NYC history.
Also, a piece of NYC history that will hopefully see new life is the Metro movie theater on 100th street and Broadway. I remember this place as a kid and saw lots of movies there. It's a beautiful, unique, art deco theater with a beautiful stone insignia above it's huge marquee, the quintessential movie palace (it was even in a movie itself -- it's where Woody Allen goes to see a Marx Brothers movie at end of Hannah and Her Sisters, where he learns the meaning of life). Sadly the Metro has been closed since 2005 and multiple attempts to reopen it (including as an Alamo Drafthouse) have failed. However, there are currently negotiations to reopen it as a move theater/community space and it could be a great new addition to the Upper West Side which has, sadly, become something of a movie desert in the last several years. If it reopens, it will be a piece of NYC movie history living again.
When past, present and future link together in NYC, you see and feel how truly timeless this city really is.
I know a lot of people think this story about Robert Kennedy Jr. dumping a dead bear in Central Park back in 2014 is funny ...
... but it's not. It's deeply disturbing and gross.
He is a very sick man, a truly deranged individual, and to think that the scion of America's most famous political family would have done such a thing is mind boggling, truly stranger than fiction.
When this happened ten years ago it deeply confused and upset the city -- and this dude thinks it was a funny prank.
Now he wants to be president. Dear God. Here's the original story from 2014 -- ti wasn't funny then, and isn't now.
Just last week I blogged about the difficulties that NYC Comptrollers face when they run for NYC mayor -- only one comptroller, Abe Beame, has gone to sleep in Gracie Mansion.
For more than half a century every subsequent comptroller has succumbed to the Curse of the Comptroller.
Doubtless when each of these comptrollers were first elected they must have felt, elated with the flush of a great victory, that the mayoralty was their's for the taking (only to find, years later, that it was out of reach).
Well, the current comptroller Brad Lander must feel the same way because he's just announced that he's running for mayor in 2025. This is going to get nasty really quick -- and as unpopular and vulnerable as Mayor Eric Adams is, it could wind up with both guys heading to their political doom.
But remember, when pundits start talking about the difficulties comptrollers runnings for mayor have, remember Mr NYC wrote about it first!
Recently the boys did a series of episodes exploring NYC's Dutch roots by actually going to Holland and visiting the towns and areas where so much of this city's history began. It's a fascinating look at how much of the city we know today, the mightiest city in the world, came from this small European country -- and how this town was once a colony of a mighty overseas non-English speaking empire.
America may have been born in the streets of NYC but, before NYC was NYC, it was a small Dutch town in the New World.
After all, New York City used to be New Amsterdam, neighborhoods like Harlem came from the Dutch town of Haarlam and the entire borough of Brooklyn came from a place called Breukelen.
And if you've ever read The Great Gatsby, it's famous last paragraphs, as Nick Carraway stares across Long Island Sound at the huge rich homes and the symbolic green light, he wonders about what it must have looked at, unmolested, for "Dutch sailors' eyes."
I haven't listened to the entire series yet but plan to finish it soon -- and encourage you to do so!
In the final season of The Crown, Prince Charles ruminates: "To be Prince of Wales is not a position -- it's a predicament."
The same is true of the American Vice-Presidency. Much like the Prince of Wales, the job is mainly just to exist, to be ... there ... until the top job opens up ... or not.
Right now the American Vice-Presidency is under a microscope -- as President Biden steps aside, his Vice-President, Kamala Harris, is being vaulted to become the 2024 Democratic nominee for President (and, God willing, will be elected President in November). And President Biden, of course, was Vice-President just a few years ago.
And, yes, two years ago Prince Charles in real life became King Charles.
Eventually the predicament of being #2, the understudy waiting in the wings, comes to an end, one way or another (for the previous Vice-President, Mike Pence, it almost ended when his President, Donald Trump, sent a violent mob to attack him).
As the 2024 presidential race gets hotter and wilder, the 2025 NYC Mayor's race is being quietly talked about. Mayor Eric Adams is not popular and several people are being spoken about challenging him next year. Amongst the rumored candidates are Scott Stringer and Brad Lander, the former and current Comptrollers of NYC.
Much like the Prince of Wales or Vice-President, the NYC Comptroller is also a predicament. Now, unlike those jobs, it does have some real substance to it -- the Comptroller is the Chief Fiscal Officer of the city, overseeing the city's accounts, running audits of city agencies, managing the pension system, issuing bonds, reviewing and approving city contracts, etc. It's a very important position, and it's overall job is to make sure NYC tax dollars are spent legally, ethically, and transparently.
However, what makes the job a predicament is that it simply doesn't have the powers or glamour of the mayoralty -- the Comptroller is the CFO, not the CEO of the city, doesn't get to sign or veto legislation, doesn't get to set government policy, doesn't appoint agency heads, and doesn't get to live rent-free in a mansion. It's a job that's so close and yet so far from the top job, existing across a chasm that's a foot wide and a million feet deep.
On paper, the Comptrollership should be the perfect launching pad for the mayoralty. It's a citywide elected position, it has real power, and the comptroller's name is often in the media. And yet the last NYC Comptroller to be elected mayor was Abe Beame back in 1973 -- since then, almost every single Comptroller has run for mayor and lost, often badly. For more than half a century the #2 job, the job that seems like the perfect political stepping-stone to #1, has instead proven to be a political banana peal.
Of course, in every election, there have been various, often forgotten reasons, why these Comptrollers have never become mayor. But it will very interesting to see if, next year, two Comptrollers run and if either of them can actually topple Adams and become mayor.
If so, then the "curse of the comptroller" will be lifted. If not, it will be doubled.
Politics makes history -- that is something that we are depressingly learning the hard ways these days.
But hard times make history, and people make history, and they have to make it somewhere.
Many New Yorkers, for better and (let's face it, more recently) for worse, have made history and made it in various spots around this city. This article lists the most historically imporant places in NYC -- some that are obvious and others that aren't.
In the wake of the 2008-2009 cultural phenomenon "Jersey Shore", guidos and guidettes become, very briefly, all the rage. Hence, more than 15 and a half years ago, yours truly paid tribute to this with this rather odd blog post about a Staten Island girl who had posted a video where she complained about not being married.
It's a hoot. Anyway, enjoy. And if you want even more Staten Island girls, including another one from the girl in the original 2009 video, see below:
You must read this article from The New Yorker where the legendary writer Ian Frazier chronicles his many walks around the only NYC borough attached to the mainland -- and intertwines it with the fascinating history of the Bronx stretching back 300 years.
Much like Staten Island, one might argue that the Bronx is a "forgotten borough", perched to the north of its four sister boroughs, and more often driven through (or just visited for Yankee games) than really lived in or appreciated. But it has a great history, starting with the discovery and birth of America, the Revolutionary War, and the evolution of NYC.
Of course, the Bronx also has a sad history -- what was once a working class "paradise", a city unto itself of middle class homes, has brutally cut up by the various highways in the 20th century that literally destroyed neighborhoods and decimated communities, creating big pockets of crime and poverty that it's never really recovered from.
That said, as Frazier makes clear in his article, the Bronx is no longer "burning" -- like the rest of the city, it has been revived, many of the destroyed neighborhoods rebuilt, and yet an air of mystery and haunting still hangs over the only borough that attaches itself to the rest of the Lower 48 -- and that will always be its distinction.
A Holocaust survivor, an immigrant, a pioneering and influential sex expert, Dr Ruth was an inspiration and an American original. She has passed away at the age of 96 -- but her humor, her brillance, and her openhearted nature will live forever.
And she was a total New Yorker, a resident of Washington Heights, and beloved character of the city. She was one of us -- and always will be.
I wrote a few years ago about the time Dr. Ruth came to my college and brought the house down with a hilarious story involving a couple rekindling their intimacy with onion rings. I'll never forget it!
"Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives ..."
Thus spake Saint Augustine. Or an old soap opera. Either way time has been passing quickly lately because life has been quite hectic lately and blogging has gotten away from me lately -- until now!
But as I compose my first real post in over a month, the passage of time is very much on my mind -- and a couple recent events and remembrances have focused my mind on how people and things come and go, and either leave a lasting impression ... or don't.
First, a passing: the brilliant screenwriter and movie director Robert Towne recently died at the age of 89. He wrote and directed several films but the movie that catapulted him to cinematic greatness was his script for the 1974 classic Chinatown (which I've blogged about here several times). Besides being the most perfect screenplay ever written, Chinatown is also probably the best American movie ever made about the dark soul of a city and the forces that shape it. While it's about LA and not NYC, the movie has echoes of the real-life works of Robert Moses in NYC and how, to quote Chinatown, "he made this city." Towne understood the giant, secretive, menacing forces that surround and suffocate us, how cities are largely the products of deeply corrupt and powerful men, and how all of us are subject to their will and live within their warped creations. Hence the movie's iconic final line "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown." But we'll never forget Robert Towne, his great legacy, and what "makes" our city.
Second, another passing but one nowhere near as sad. As I've also blogged about several times, one of my favorite shows ever is the early 1990s sci-fic drama Quantum Leap -- about a brilliant scientist who travels back in time, "leaping" into the life of various people and "putting right where once went wrong," changing history "for the better." It had many great episodes, including several in NYC. A couple years ago it had a reboot that I had high hopes for -- only to see them dashed. The show was a mess. Instead of focusing on the humanity of the characters who were to be saved, it chose to be some kind of weird thriller with numerous and confusing storylines, too many poorly developed characters, and no real chemistry between the actors. It failed completely. Now it's been cancelled, put out of its misery, and hopefully it will be forgotten -- while the great original show will hopefully be remembered and rewatched for decades to come.
Third, it's hard to believe but it's been over a quarter of a century since Sex and the City first hit our airwaves. It's now become a part of NYC's culture and identity but, back in 1998, it was just a little show struggling to find an audience. The pilot was directed by Susan Seidelman who also made the funky 1982 NYC movie Smithereens which I reviewed back in 2017. In this recent big interview, Seidelman remembers the making of Smithereens, the S&TC pilot as well as her classic 1985 movie Desperately Seeking Susan. In many ways these movies and TV shows define late 20th-century NYC -- and Susan Seidelman's vision made them happen.
Fourth, an anniversary, a big one: WNYC radio is 100 years old! Yes, broadcasting in this town has existed for more than a century. Probably the most powerful public radio station in the country, WNYC has had a tremendous legacy -- and present day relevance -- to the life of this city. Besides going back and reading my numerous posts about WNYC, you can also listen to a history of the station here and also a recreation of the station's first July 8th, 1924 broadcast here.
All things and people pass, come and go -- but so much else lasts (like this blog!). And, for that, yours truly is truly grateful.
Apologies for the lack of blogging lately. All is well but life has gotten SUPER busy and yours truly just hasn't had the time or headspace to tap out anything witty or insightful here. But I shall do again soon!
One month from today there will be a big election, called a General Election, in the United Kingdom -- where the fourteen-year rule of the Conservative Party is expected to end with the Labour Party replacing it.
Ever since I saw the British show "Yes Minister"/"Yes Prime Minister" as a kid, I've been more than midly obsessed with British politics. Therefore, on the night of July 4th, as most Americans will be celebrating our independence from the UK, I'll be feverishly following the UK election results as they trickle in from across the pond.
Even though New York City has been independent from England's "Green & Pleasant" for over 240 years, the British impact on this city is inescapable. After all, this is New York City, after York, a big city in England. And over the years I've chronicled the deep synergy that exists between this city and Britain -- and you can read it all here.
This city would not, could not, exist the way it does today without it's British lineage and influence. And the UK wouldn't exist today without us -- after all Winston Churchill, Britain's savior of a Prime Minister, had a mother from Brooklyn!
If you want to get a literal taste of Britain in NYC, you can visit the great restaurat Tea and Sympathy downtown. And you want to learn more about British politics, you must listen to the excellent podcast the Rest is Politics that is so smart and informative and looks at policy and politics in the UK and beyond.
Al Ruddy produced The Godfather and many other films. He was born in Montreal but his family moved to NYC when he was seven and he graduated from high school in Brooklyn before briefly attending City College. Eventually he made it to Hollywood and changed our culture. RIP.
If you watched the great Netflix show The Crown, about the late British Queen Elizabeth II, it was all about how a country's monarchy survives in a world where most countries are now republics.
For most of human history, most of the world lived under monarchies -- but the last hundred-plus years has seen a reversal with monarchies falling and republics surging (see the brilliant 1974 series Fall of Eagles for more about why this happened).
As a study of history and politics, I'm fascinated by the diference between monarchies and republics. In short, a monarchy is a country ruled by one person and his or her family while a republic is a country ruled by the people. Most revolutions throughout history have been of countries overthrowing their monarchies and becoming republics -- although sometimes, like in Ancient Rome or 19th century France, it goes the other way (more than once).
Today, of course, these things are much more complicated.
In the United Kingdom and some other counties, they have the concept of constitutional monarchies where the people elect a government but the monarch remains a powerless national figurehead. In some supposed republics, however, like North Korea or Russia, there is supposed rule by the people but really these countries are ruled by strongmen and their families -- these pseudo-republics being more authoritarian and monarchical than any real monarchy.
But what exists in both monarchies and republics are dynasties -- families that build wealth and power and then exercise it over the people.
In America, a republic, we have and have had many dynasties: the Adamses, Harrisons, Roosevelts, Kennedies, Tafts, Clintons and Bushes all reaching not only the presidency but other high offices (like Congressional and Senate seats plus Governorships). First they dominate their political parties, then their states, then the country.
Closer to home, we've had multiple New York Governors named Roosevelt and Cuomo (although, in NYC, we've had never had mayors of the same family). However, in super-local politics, we've had many dynasties in the state legislature and various city offices: the Boylans in Brooklyn, the Vallones in Queens, the Diazes in the Bronx, the Molinari's in Staten Island, and others.
Dynasties in NYC politics are as powerful as ever.
That's why I was interested to read about how the former Harlem Assemblyman Keith Wright's son Jordan is running for his old seat, seeking to continue a family's power in Harlem and state government. This is how dynasties are made.
Even though NYC is a democracy existing under the framework of state and federal law, it has its own charter divvying up power between the mayor and city council as well as the borough presidents, Comptroller and Public Advocate. And even though this city has multiple dynasties, NYC is not a some kind of 16-century Medici-like Italian city-state under dictatorial rule of one person or family. However, Mayor Adams has just appointed a charter commission charter commission to try to rein in the council's power and increase the mayor's (i.e. his) power. It's a cynical move to become less accountable (where else have we seen this?).
What's interesting to me about the perennial existance of dynasties in democracies, and of power-grabbing politicians like Adams (and other aspiring American tyrants who shall not be named), is that the concept of rule by the people with divided, limited powers, is and forever shall be a boulder being shoved up hill.
By their very nature, people are greedy and family-oriented, and they want to accumulate as much wealth and power as possible for themselves and, when they age or die out, want their families to retain it. That's why great dynasties like the Plantagenets in England or the Habsburgs in Austria or the Romanovs in Russia held power for centuries and were only overthrown through violence and war.
It doesn't matter what high ideals we may claim to have, whether we've had revolutions to get rids of monarches and establish republican rule -- the hunger for power by people and their families remains and overwhelms.
