Barbie Tawks Brooklyn

 

Tom Stoppard RIP

Probably the world's greatest playright, Tom Stoppard, has died.

Plays like Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead, Jumpers, Travesties, The Coast of Utopia plays, and so many others, were like nothing that had ever been seen before. Stoppard's use of language was brilliant, complex and yet captured your mind and emotions in equal measure.

He was a true genius. 

I saw several of his plays on Broadway -- revivals of Jumpers, Arcadia, The Real Thing (in 2000 and 2014) as well as new plays like The Invention of Love and, most recently, Leopoldstadt. I reviewed this last play, his great swan song, in 2023, as well as the 2011 revival of Arcardia and the 2014 version of The Real Thing. Read them here. 

And yes, Stoppard also wrote for the movies, winning a screenplay Oscar for the 1998 hit Shakespeare in Love. It had the great line, "That woman ... is a woman!" 

Two amazing things about Stoppard's life and career are worth noting.

First, his native language wasn't English. He was borin in Czecholslovakia, escaping the Nazis with his mother in the 1940s, before landing and living the rest of his life in England. From there he would not only learn his new country's language but take it and mold it into magic for six decades. Stoppard is an open-and-shut case for why immigration, and welcoming migrants, is a smart thing to do.

Second, when my parents got together in the late 1960s, they went to the original NYC production of Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead (I actually have one of their Playbills in the family files). Forty-odd years later my wife and I got together, in part, via our mutual love his plays. Kismet.

RIP Sir Tom. We'll probably never see his likes again.

Here is a local NYC news review of The Real Thing from 1984. "Put the right words in the right order and you can nudge the world a little bit." 

Black Friday on 47th Street

 

Read more about the 47th Street Diamond District below:

Remembering Francis Ellen Work: Princess Diana's NYC Great-Grandma

There are, and have been, royal scandals galore -- Mrs Fitzherbert! Mayerling! Rasputin! Wallis Simpson! Epstein! Megxit! 

And, of course, Diana.

Her notoriously failed 1980s marriage to the then-Prince of Wales/now King Charles III has become the stuff of legend. 

The irony is that, while the marriage itself was a failure, as a royal union it was a huge success: Diana produced an heir and a spare, and they've now produced heirs and spares. The marriage of Charles and Diana may not have lasted but its legacy has kept the dynastic royal line for the House of Windsor secure for the rest of this century.

But did you know that the future Monarchs of the United Kingdom have not only American but also NYC blood?

See, Princess Diana's great-grandma was a New York-native named Frances Ellen Work. She was a classic "dollar bride", a rich new money American who married a broke English bloke with a title.

The marriage was as big a disaster as Frances Ellen's great-granddaughter's -- and Frances' father forced them to get divorced and bring her two sons back to America (much like Queen Elizabeth would force her son to divorce Diana and hand over their two sons). Frances Ellen's rich American father not only hated his British ex-son-in-law but gnerally hated the lust of Britain's nobility for American women and money. 

And here we get to a hinge of history.

Frances Ellen's father stipulated in his will that his sons must never go back to England. They must agree never to set foot in the UK or forfeit their $14 million inheritance. But, when the old man died, the sons appealed to their relatives -- who had also inherited money -- to see if they would agree to waive this clause and let them get their cash without the travel restriction. They agreed. And then one of the sons, Edmund, moved to the UK, married a woman named Ruth, and they had a daughter named Frances. This Frances then married Viscount Spencer and their daughter Diana would then go into history.

Imagine, for moment, if Edmund's relative's had so no. Imagine if they had enforced this clause. Edmund wouldn't have moved to the UK, married, and fathered Princess Diana's mother. And the course of British and world history would be very different.

But it's not. And one day the crown of the UK will be worn by someone with NYC lineage. 

Listen to this great podcast about the life and legacy of Frances Ellen Work. It's a story of booze, bucks, broads, gambling, divorce, and glittering crown.

Just Breaking Balls a 'Lil Bit

Actually, it's never really a good idea to bust a wiseguy's balls.

When the Russians Invaded NYC

It's impossible to imagine a time when the United States and Russia were strong allies. Since the rise of the Soviet Union more than 100 years ago, the relationship between the US and Russia has been fraught, to say the least.

But in the 19th century, Russia was America's best friend in the world.

Both countries, both great continent-spanning collosuses, were at odds with the then-greatest power in the world: Great Britain. Britain, still smarting from the loss of the America, wanted to kneecap the young republic by supporting the Confederacy in the Civil War. In fact, most of Western Europe at the time wanted to support the South -- they wanted access to Southern markets, particularly its cotton, and, like Britain, the other European powers wanted to keep America divided and weak.

Not Russia.

Russia wanted to check the Western European neighbors by keeping America strong. So in 1863, as the Civil War raged, and to prevent the Confederate Navy from attacking Union ports, sent its Atlantic Squadron to New York Harbor. They were welcomed as friends, Russian sailors were the toast of the town, the bond between the two great nations deep and strong.

So strong, believe it or not, that when President Lincoln was killed the next year, the Russian Tsar Alexander II made all of the empire mourn. Lincoln and the Tsar, though they never met, had a lengthy correspondence and both were liberators of their people (Lincoln, the slaves, the Tsar, the serfs). And then, in 1867, the US and Russia did a little real estate -- the Russian sale of Alaska to the US. Oh, and Russia had a naval base in California.

That's how close the two countries were. And then, in the 20th century, it all fell apart. 

But at least in 1863, when the Russian navy hit NYC, there was nothing by bonhomie. 

The City Within: Inside the Secret World of NYC's Orthodox Jewish Community

 

The Band on SNL — October 30, 1976

Nearly fifty years ago -- on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1976 -- the great rock band The Band gave their final performance (with the original lineup) at the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, CA. 

It was a nearly six-hour long show where The Band played their greatest hits ("Up on Cripple Creek", "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", "It Makes No Difference") with with many guests including Eric Clapton, Joni Mitchell, Muddy Waters, Ronnie Hawkins, Van Morrison, Neil Diamond, Neil Young, and Mr Bob Dylan (amongst others). 

The concert was filmed by Martin Scorsese (the same year that Taxi Driver was release) and it became a landmark documentary, considered one of the greatest concert documentaries ever made, called The Last Waltz.

This one concert -“The end of an era” was how many people referred to the close of 1976. The dreams of the 60s and early 70s had faded, and we were ready for a revelation, a revolt, a changing of the guard. Punk rock—and, later, hip-hop—wanted to give music and culture a good slap in the face. It felt like everyone wanted to break something. - performed and recorded just over a month before my birth -- was a singular moment in music and cultural history. Robbie Robertson, the lead guitarist and chief lyricist for The Band wrote, in 2016:

“The end of an era” was how many people referred to the close of 1976. The dreams of the 60s and early 70s had faded, and we were ready for a revelation, a revolt, a changing of the guard. Punk rock—and, later, hip-hop—wanted to give music and culture a good slap in the face. It felt like everyone wanted to break something.

The end of that era, that faded world, was what I was born into -- and its intense to think about, how my beginning was at the end of something.

I love the music of The Band, and I went to see a re-release of The Last Waltz with my friends in 2002. As mentioned, the concert took place in San Francisco but, about a month earlier, The Band appeared on Saturday Night Live and was introduced by the writer-actor Buck Henry who mentioned that their final show was coming up. 

What an amazing moment in culture -- and in the history of SNL, NYC, and the culture at large.

Two Classy Brits Talk About the NYC Mayor-Elect

I was going to blog a little bit how about the Mayor-Elect, Zohran Mamdani, is from my childhood neighborhood, Morningside Heights. Zohran grew up there and went on to greatness, and I grew up there and went on to ... anyway, read 'bout Zohran's Morningside Heights childhood ...

... and then listen to my favorite Two Classy Brits talk about Zohran's historic victory and the road ahead for NYC. 

Classic Mr NYC

Well, I'll be darned. Mr NYC's powers of prophesy have hit again. 

In 2021 I blogged about the late 1980s Broadway musical Chess, about how it was a big spectacle with great songs and a muddled plot, and how it didn't last very long. Towards the end of my post I speculated (if I may be so gauche as to quote myself): "Maybe one day it'll come back to Broadway, if the plot can be brought under control and if there is interest in a show about something that clearly is now a historical era."

Guess what? There is a revival! Currently in previews and due to open on Broadway soon. And apparently it has an all-new book, a reworked story, which it very much needed.

Hmmmmm? Do you think perhaps the producers behind this revival saw my blog post and it sparked the idea to bring Chess back? Probably not. But a blogger can dream. 

But wait, 'dere's more! 

There's a new mini-series on Netflix called Death by Lightening about the 1881 assasination of President James Garfield. His Vice-President was Chester Arthur, former head of the Port of New York who become the 21st President of the United States and created the Civil Service. 

I've blogged about Arthur a few times, including about the fact that he was the only other President besides Washington to take the oath of office in NYC. In this mini-series Arthur is played by Nick Offerman, giving this long overlooked historical figure his due -- but after Mr NYC gave it to him first.

Eric Adams, We Hardly Knew Ye

As the bizarre spectacle of Eric Adams' time as mayor comes to its ignominous end, The Daily Show did us a big favor of putting together several of his most memorable moments.

Goodbye Eric Adams, we hardly knew yet -- and hope we'll never hear from or see you ever again. 

East 149th & Exterior Street -- November 8th, 2025, 9:30 AM

Mr NYC Ahead of His Time

In 2017 I interviewed the journalist Ross Barkan when he kicked off his campaign for State Senate in Brooklyn. He made the bold decision to stop just commenting on politics and instead jump into the fray, slap down his credentials, and put himself before the electorate, ready to serve.

He lost -- and returned to journalism.

But Ross' campaign turned out to be an acorn from which a great oak grew. Ross' campaign manager in that race was ... drumroll ... Zohran Mamdani.

Zohran, as we know, would go on to be elected to the New York State Assembly from Astoria, Queens in 2020 and is now the Mayor-elect of New York City. 

Mind-boggling. 

Ross has written a wonderful column about his relationship with Zohran during the 2017-2018 campaign and afterwards. It is, as he notes, head-snapping to have known someone when he was an anonymous staffer and is now a world-famous, history-making political figure. 

I can only imagine.

But it is amazing to realize that, when I interviewed Ross back in 2017 (twice actually and later on in 2020), he was nurturing a one-in-a-million political talent who would go on not only to make NYC and American history but vanquish a fifty-year old political dynasty. 

And to think, to ponder, to be amazed by the fact that there is a semi-direct link from a post on this 'umble blog covering a mere State Senate race to, less than a decade later, worldwide coverage of a history-in-the-making election ... curious the fates are.

History has its eyes on us. And to prove, yet again, Mr NYC is ahead of his time!

Pauline Collins RIP

I was sad to learn this week that the wonderful British actress Pauline Collins has died at age 85. 

She had a long career in movies, TV, and the stage. Her most notable role was for the play and then the movie Shirley Valentine in the late-1980s. In fact, in 1989 she won the Tony Award for Best Actress and had the honor of being given it by Mr. Steve Martin:

But I first saw Pauline in the early 1970s TV series Upstairs, Downstairs where she played the parlor maid Sarah -- a young and motivated working class woman who refused to accept her station in life. She was so good in the role, her performance so touching and heartbreaking, she etched a memorable, multi-layered character that I remember decades after I first saw it. 

She was great. RIP.

Hizzoner-Elect in His Own Words

This may be one of the best victory speeches I've ever heard, not only in NYC politics, but ever:

 

And since NYC is the greatest city in the world, the ultimate international city, the world took note:

Us Morningside Heights kids gotta goin' on! 

Election Night Live Blog

I didn't get to do this four years ago because life events intervened but here, tonight, marks the return of the Mr NYC Election Night Live Blog.

By the way, this is the highest turnout NYC election since 1969 -- over 2 millions voters turned out. The eyes of the world are on NYC tonight -- the future is made here.

9:03 PM - Polls closed. The memory sticks are being loaded. Let the games begin! 

9:09 PM - Zohran has 51%, Cuomo has 39%, Sliwa at 8%.

9:16 PM - Democrats leading in Comptroller & Public Advocate elections and Borough President elections -- except Staten Island. Same with City Council.

9:24 PM - Zohran is a tiny bit under 50% now with 51% of the vote in -- 8% over Cuomo. Nothing interesting down-ballot.

9:32 PM - Now with 60% of the vote in, nothing's changed percentage-wise. 

9:36 PM - CNN is calling the Mayor's race of Zohran -- but still more votes to count.

9:47 PM - It's official -- Zohran will be the next Mayor of NYC!

The first Muslim elected mayor, that's wild -- and that's what's great about this city and America!

Is it too early to start calling him Mayor Z?

10:01 PM - Zohran is closing in on getting almost 1 million votes. That's crazy. Koch, Giuliani, Bloomberg, De Blasio, and Adams got nowhere near that many. 

SNL Does the Mayor's Debate

The Timeless Town

In the 1960s, some young writers like Tom Wolfe, Pete Hamill, Gay Talese and others began a movement called the "New Jouralism" -- a kind of rock'n'roll writing that was funny, nasty, entertaining, high voltage, and told from a personal perspective but that still skewed to the riguers of the journalistic craft.

They wrote for all the big magazines like Esquire, The New Yorker, New York, and others, and also published big best-selling books.

Most of the New Journalist writers are gone now but Gay Talese, at age 93, is still around. In fact, he's just published a new book about NYC called A Town Without Time, a collection of his writings about the city. I can't wait to read it -- a book about the greatest city by one of its greatest writers.

An NYC legend.

If you want to know more about Gay Talese excellent work, you should read his 1969 about The New York Times called The Kingdom and the Power, his famous 1966 essay "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold" (regarded as one of the greatest single pieces of journalism ever written), and his 1980 about the rise of swinging and sexual liberation called Thy Neighbor's Wife. We'll probably never see his likes again.

Not Dead Yet

Fifty years ago today, one of the most famous headlines in NYC history ran in the Daily News:

The city was on the cusp of bankruptcy and needed a bailout from the Feds. President Ford said no -- until a deal was later reached, a plan for fiscal stability created, and bankruptcy was avoided.

It wasn't the first, or the last time, when NYC seemed doomed -- and all the naysayers in the media were trashing the city, saying it sucked, and destined to go the way of Imperial Rome. But, as always, it recovered -- just as it did later from the crack epidemic of the late 1980s/early 1990s, 9/11/2001, and the COVID-19 pandemic.

People keep betting against NYC, and losing. You weren't dead fifty years ago and we aren't today. 

For all of Mr NYC's coverage about the prematurely called "death of NYC" go here. And also read this insightful article into how NYC has changed in the last half-century. 

Review: "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999)

The news that Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman is getting her second divorce made my mind race back to the early 2000s when she divorced movie star Tom Cruise.

In the 1990s "Tom and Nic" were the biggest celebrity couple in the world. Great actors, huge stars, they made lots of big hit movies (A Few Good Men, Jerry McGuire, To Die For, and many others), and they also made three together, including their last and most notable one, Eyes Wide Shut in 1999. 

I remember when news of this movie was announced. It was a big deal -- the biggest movie star couple in the world making a movie with one of the greatest directors of his time, the Bronx-born Stanley Kubrick. They were making a weird movie, in secret, in England, and no one knew anything about it. The entertainment media of the day was fascinating by what this movie would be -- and the secrecy of its making and content became its currency.

There was also a lot of other drama surrounding Eyes Wide Shut.

A noted perfectionist, Stanley Kubrick spent almost two full years shooting the movie -- keeping these two huge stars off screens and out of other movies, much to the industry's consternation. Various actors kept getting hired, then fired, or replaced because the open-ended schedule made their continued participation impossible. The movie was supposed to be released in late 1998 -- then was bumped to the summer of 1999 where it would compete with the big action movies.

Then, the biggest dramatic moment of all -- in the Spring of 1999, just a few months before the movie's release, Stanley Kubrick died. Suddenly. So this secret movie with the two biggest starts in the world would be the last movie from the directors of Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, A Clockwork Orange and Full Metal Jacket. Wow! 

Then, in July 1999, after all the hype, after reams and reams, hours and hours of coverage, the movie comes out and ... no one cares. It dies quickly. And more than 25 years later it's forgotten -- except for being the last hurrah for Tom and Nic. There divorce two years later would be its coda. 

So what's Eye's Wide Shut about? I still don't know. 

It takes place in Manhattan during Christmas time. Cruise is a wealthy, successful doctor, with a gorgeous, very bored housewife played by Nic. One night they go to a party, flirt with other people, then go home where Nic confesses her fantasies about sleeping with other men. Tom is horrified -- so he goes out walking the strees of wintertime NYC. He meets a friend of his who works in a piano bar and he tells Tom about a masked orgy out of Long Island where the friend plays the piano during all the nooky. Tom decides to go out to Long Island, puts on a Venetian mask, and witnesses all the nooky -- before he's found out, humiliated, ejected from the orgy, and made to fear for his life.

And there's something about hookers in the meantime too.

I love, love, love Stanley Kubrick's films but this one was boring, and his weakest effort. There's really no story, and you're not made to care about any of the characters. It's visually amazingly and it's more like an early-sound European movie than a modern organic film. 

When this movie was being made, and stories about it kept appearing, I was in college, and remember being super excited to see it. Then I graduated, came home, saw the movie that summer ... and left totally underwhelmed. Looking at the movie decades later, it's still lifeless -- and even more depressing considering the horrors we've learned about sexual abuse by rich people in the wake of Jeffrey Epstein.

Still, Eyes Wide Shut is an interesting look at a filmmaker at the end of his life, making his oddest movie ever, in a make-believe NYC at night, with two huge movie stars whose marriage would soon end -- and would gone on to other great movies, as well as more divorces.  

Curtis Sliwa Quits WABC Radio!

Well, maybe, maybe not.

The Republican candidate for mayor and founder of the vigilante group Guardian Angels Curtis Sliwa has only ever had one real job in his life -- radio talk show host on WABC 770 AM. I've blogged a lot about this only in NYC figure and you should read my archive on him.

Anyway, now he's running for mayor a second time and he's being bullied to drop out on the belief that this will transfer his support to former Governor Andrew Cuomo and get him elected instead of the scary brown Muslim Socialist. 

Sliwa was on the air the other day and wasn't taking the ball breaking lightly so he declared that he has formally quite WABC and will never be heard on its air again.

Well, it'll be interesting to see if he makes this pledge -- the assumption is he'll lose the mayor's race and I'm sure he'll need a job but I'll give him a little bit more respect if he actually keeps his word. 

NYC Mayoral Debate: The Final Showdown

Scenes from "No Kings" in NYC -- October 18, 2025

America's Gateway

On the edge of NYC -- the gateway, the doorstep of America -- the deck, the plants, the railing, the river, the cliffs and lights and landscape of the mainland, the rest of the America rolling out beyond them, vanishing into the night and the future. 

NYC Mayoral Debate

Diane Keaton on "The Tonight Show" -- December 28, 1972

On this night at the end of 1972, just months after The Godfather and Play It Again, Sam had been released, and The Tonight Show had moved to the West Coast, a very young, very nervous, very funny Diane Keaton spoke with Johnny Carson. 

They talked about a lot of things, including living in NYC. What a golden moment!

Remembering Josephine Earp

In the legend of the American West and cowboy culture, few people loom larger than Wyatt Earp. A lawman who roamed in 19th century America, his legend was enshirined at the Shout Out at the Ok Corrall, portrayed in many movies, a key moment in the wild history of the American story.

And his third wife, Josephine, had an amazing life too.

She was the daughter of a baker -- and was Jewish! Raised mostly in San Francisco, she ran away at age 14 and headed to Arizona. Allegedly she worked as a prostitute under the name of Sadie, got married, and eventually moved to the notorious Tombstone. Eventually she got rid of her husband and hooked up the frontier marshall Wyatt Earp -- they married in 1892 and stayed together until his death in 1929. After the infamous shootout, the couple moved around from Colorado, Nevada, even Alaska, prospecting for gold, until settling in Los Angeles. She died in 1944.

Josephine's life story is somewhat mysterious and controversial. In 1967 her supposed autobiography was published called I Married Wyatt Earp -- and it turns out most of it was made up. Also, Josephine was cagey about much of her past, mostly about the hooker part, so she remains something of a fascinating mystery.

That said, one thing is certain -- this legendary lady of the wild American West, this icon of the frontier was native New Yorker. Josephine was born in NYC in 1861 before her Polish immigrant baker father took the family west. Her life is a example of how NYC is not only the great American city but it's the great American entry point, the mother city, the seed from which the rest of the nation grows.   

Forbidden Planet

In a city where things change constantly, there's one place that has managed to hang on for over forty years -- the comics and pop culture store Forbidden Planet.

Located between 12th and 13th streets on Broadway, it's one of the last old school comic book stores left in NYC. It was opened in 1981, a spinoff location of a similar store in London, but it quickly became a much beloved, NYC landmark, a place where teenagers and comic geeks congregated to get the latest installments of their favorite series, meet and get autographs from their favorite cartoonists, and meet similar people.

I recently took my kid who loves graphic arts and comics and she liked it. Although the current Forbidden Planet is much smaller than it used to be, I'm so thankful that it's still there -- and that NYC kids like mine can still get lost into a world of fantasy.

Diane Keaton RIP

I cannot, do not, want to think about a world where Diane Keaton isn't in it. Sadly she is now gone at the age of 79.

Diane Keaton was more than just a great actress, she was a cultural icon and a cinematic legend, an actress who could deeply impact you with her dramatic work, and make you laugh out loud with her comedica performances.

Diane Keaton's acting showed that she could do anything -- and it didn't look like she was acting at all.

Her filmography is oustanding: all three Godfather movies; many Woody Allen classics like Sleeper, Love & Death, Annie Hall (her Oscar), Manhattan; other movies like Looking for Mr Goodbar, Shoot the Moon, Marvin's Room, Father of the Bride, Something's Gotta Give, and, more recently, bizarre and brilliant The Young Pope series. 

Keaton was from and mostly lived in California but her 1970s classics -- The Godfather, Annie Hall and Manhattan -- remain something of the greatest movies and New York City movies ever made. One is the most classic NYC crime story ever told and the others are the two most classic NYC romantic comedies ever made. Her leading men were Al Pacino and Woody Allen -- how cool is that?

RIP Diane. We'll never see your like again. La di da. 

Here is the Mr NYC Diane Keaton archive. 

Union Square -- October 11, 2025, 9:01 PM

Review: "House of Guinness" & NYC

I'm really digging the series House of Guinness about the infamous Irish brewery dynasty. It's set in the 1860s, and it's a King Lear/Succession-like drama about the children of a great, powerful, and wealthy man grappling with the immense legacy they've been left. 

Because I'm lazy, and don't want to spoil it for you, I won't review the whole show now but the writing, acting, and production values of the show are outstanding. It's like a soap opera with lots of history and cool Irish accents.

Best of all, while most of the show it set in Dublic, part of the show is set in NYC.

One of the characters named Byron, who's an illegitimate member of the family, goes to NYC to expand the Guinness business into America. He has to deal with lots of anti-Irish, anti-Catholic prejudice, working with the Irish disapora and others to get them drinking the brew.  

Also, Byron is played by Jack Gleeson who portrayed the monstrous King Joffrey on Game of Thrones more than a decade ago. He's now all grown up and here he's not crazy, just ambitious and fast-talking. He's great in this show, as is everyone else.

Check it out!

The Princess of Hell's Kitchen

New York City is not the capital of the United States (at least not for more than 200 hundred years). Amongst all the great real estate that exists in this town, it possess no buildings or centers of national power.

It goes without saying that it has no royal palaces or castles -- royalty has never originated in NYC. Quite the opposite, actually -- this city is where royalty was fought and defeated and caste off, giving birth to the American nation.

And yet ... royalty sure does love coming to NYC! 

Even more, they like living here. The former King Edward VIII and his American wife Wallis Simpson used to live for three months of each year at the Waldforf Towers. And just a few years ago a Japanese princess and her commoner husband moved to NYC, living in all places, Hell's Kitchen. This fascinating article tells her story and how she seemed just to vanish seamlessly into the lifeblood of Manhattan. 

There's something about NYC, part of its paradox, where you can both live in the center of the world and yet hide from it (like Greta Garbo). The stories these streets could tell!

Louis Armstrong House

Recently we visited the home of jazz titan Louis Armstrong.

Although a child of New Orleans -- and a Man of the World -- Armstrong spent the last thirty years of his life with his third wife Lucille in a small cozy house in the heart of Corona, Queens.

Lucille was a native of Corona, and Armstrong fell in love with the neighborhood and her in the late 1930s. Even though he was a rich man, he had good but humble taste, and was perfectly happy living his modest house in a working class neighborhood of NYC. That said, it's beautifully decorated with gifts he received during his extensive tours -- he was on the road for 10 months of the year -- as well as other collectibles. And his bathrooms are, to put it simply, lit.

Borin 1901, Louis Armstrong died in 1971.

We were not allowed to take any photos of the house during our visit but you should check out the home's website or, better yet, visit it yourself. Across the street from the house is a small museum dedicated to the man's life. During our visit, one of the people on our tour was someone who had came all the way from Japan -- a country where they love jazz.

It's a reminder that, in this town, you can find cultural history in the most unlikely places.

Sidenote: my wife's father used to deliver groceries to the Armstrong house when he was a kid. He never met the great man himself (he was usually away or upstairs) but Armstrong's wife and housekeeper would give him pancakes.

You can read more about Louis Armstrong on Mr NYC here as well as my earlier picture of his grave here. 

Adams Out

For the first time since -- when? -- a NYC mayor has quit his reelection campaign. 

Mayor Eric Adams has said that he won't continue his quixotic bid for a second term. Drenched in scandal, incompetence and unpopularity, he's bowing to the obvious and envitable.

Seriously, it makes no difference. Not only was he not going to win but his remaining support is so infinitesimal that it's not going to improve any other candidates support at all. Also, his name will still be on the ballot -- so people can still vote for him if they want. Oy vey.

Like his entire mayoralty, Adams dropping out is a sad joke. He's destined to be a forgotten failed mayor like Abe Beame or Vincent Impelliteri -- someone who was given the chance to make the city better and failed completely. 

Tales of the NYC Underground

Over the years I've blogged a lot about the NYC underground or underworld that I've called the underwelt -- the hidden city, the worlds within worlds of the world's greatest city that we don't see or hear about but that exists all around us.

Here are few stories told by the denizens of the NYC underwelt:

Classic Mr NYC

Last year I blogged about how,when Howard Stern talks about bitches, it's funny. And when he talks about bitches with rappers, it's really funny. 

In 2005 Howard and 50 Cent talked about bitches and remembering the names of 50's bitches, and then in 2007 they revisited the subject in a wide ranging interview. It's funny and fun. Watch it:

Henry Jaglom RIP

About five years ago I blogged about the quirky 1989 indie movie New Year's Day and the eccentric NYC filmmaker, Henry Jaglom, who made it. 

Jaglom made a lot of movies over his long career, and they were usually movies about actors and artists, and the burdens of a creative life. His movies were certainly an acquired taste but they were distinctive, and how cool is that. 

Mr. Jaglom has passed away at the age 87. RIP.

The FCC Goes Goodfellas

“Speech, it ain’t free no more. We’re charging by the word now ... Like if you want to say something nice about the president’s beautiful, thick, yellow hair or how he can do his makeup better than any broad, that’s free. But if you want to do a joke like he’s so fat he needs two seats on the Epstein jet, that’s gonna cost you.”

Casinos in NYC -- The Next Chapter

Back in early 2021, as that year's mayoral race was heating up, the issue of casinos in NYC became a topic. I blogged about it then and shared my lofty thoughts -- I can understand the economic appeal of casinos but worry about the impact they might have on the city.

Since then, three non-tribal casino licenses have been approved for downstate New York and currently community boards around the city are voting on approving  several proposals for those licenses.

So far, all of the proposals for casinos in Manhattan -- including one in Times Square, one proposed by Jay-Z, and one around the United Nations -- have been rejected. But it looks like a proposal by Steve Cohen in Willets Point, near Citi Field, will be approved as well as turning the Racino way out in Queens into a full-blown casino.

My 2021 view of casinos remains the same. I find the idea of casinos in Manhattan, well, gross. Manhattan is special, the epicenter of American culture, and inserting casinos into the middle of it would cheapen it. And there are obviously other parts of the city that might benefit from there.

Most of all, I think casinos should not be really easy to get to -- they should be somewhat remote and take time to get to. It's inevitable that they'll be in NYC soon -- just hopefully not too close to where anyone lives. 

The Russian Princess of Bergdorf Goodman

I'm endlessly fascinated by the Russian Revolution and how it completely capsized the world. In any epochal event -- wars, revolutions, you name it -- there are literally millions of fascinating personal stories that intersect with these world-changing times.

One such story is that of Maria Pavlovna, a Princess of the Russian Imperial family, the Romanovs. She was born into great splendor, wealth and power beyond imagination. She was forced into a an unhappy marriage with a Swedish prince and had a son, divorced him, went back to Russia and remarried -- and then got swept up in the revolution. She escaped to Paris, ran a couture business for a while, then came to NYC -- where she got a job as a fashion consultant at Bergdorf's. She also wrote her autobiography which became a big bestseller. But when WWII started, she was angry that the USA was allied with the Soviet Union, so she moved to Argentina before moving back to Europe, eventually living and dying in Germany.

It's a life of imagine tragedy and triumph and a fascinating example of a disrupted life that had a short but amazing chapter in NYC.

Manhattan -- September 17, 2025, 7:09 AM

Review: "My Favorite Year" (1982)

If you can ever call a movie nothing more than an expression of pure joy, it'd have to be the 1982 classic My Favorite Year.

It's impossible to imagine a movie this funny, well-written, heartfelt and wild coming out today. But back in the early 1980s this old-fashioned comedy gem slipped out.

The year in question is 1954, and a young comedy writer named Benjy Stone from Brooklyn is writing for the country's most popular TV variety show, Stan "King" Kaiser. One week a washed up British movie star named Allann Swan visits to guest star on the show -- and he's drunk and unreliable. Benjy is told to take care of him for the week -- and craziness and hijinks and hilarity ensue. 

The plot for this movie is slight -- it's more about the characters, their romances, their hopes, and their fears. And it's about a culture clash, two very different worlds smashing together -- the world of Jewish New York City comedians clashing with the world of a British master thespian, all told through a loving 1950s nostalgia lense.

Benjy is played by a very young Mark Lin-Baker, a few years before his long run on Perfect Strangers and then on Broadway. He's charming, and I don't know why he didn't make more movies, especially since My Favorite Year was a big hit. Alan Swann is played magnificently by Peter O'Toole, a truly titanic performance (he also got an Oscar nomination for it). Joe Bologna, the great character actor, plays a Stan Kaiser and the rest of the supporting cast includes a gorgeous Jessica Harper as Benjy's love interest, Lanie Kazain, and many others. You can tell they all had a lot of fun making this picture.

My Favorite Year is very loosely based on something that happened in the early 1950s when a young Mel Brooks was a writer on Sid Ceasar's variety show. The guest one week was Errol Flynn, the great British movie star of the 1930s and '40s who was also a hopeless drunk. Brooks was tasked with making sure he made it to rehearsals and the show, and that wasn't always easy. Nothing as crazy happened in real life as in in the movie, but it's great premise for a movie -- which is obviously why they made one.

The movie is also a look at a special moment in time when NYC was still the heart of television, and shows like Sid Ceasar's reigned supreme. While they never say what network the fictional Stan Kaiser show is on, most of the movie takes place at 30 Rock so it's obviously supposed to be NBC. 

In these dark times, My Favorite Year is a little piece of light.

Meet Mr. Milo Bloom

Growing up, my hero was Milo Bloom.

He was a kid, just like I was. Now, he's not a real person -- he's a cartoon characters from the series Bloom County -- but Milo was smart, funny, insightful, and, most of all, droll. Even though he was a kid, he worked as a reporter and he seemed to know everything. 

Milo was the kid I wanted to be -- and, even as a grown up, he's still who I kinda want to be.

Such was my Milo devotion that, as a kid, I drew a picture of him. Now my artistic talent is less than zero but, for one inspired moment, I drew a half-way decent picture of my hero. I share it with you now:

And here's how the "real" Milo looks. Not bad, right? 

Allison Steele Says Farewell to Summer

Thirty years ago this month we lost the brilliant radio DJ Allison Steele.

It's hard to think that the NYC airwaves have been without her soothing voice and gentle wisdom for so long. Since 1995 to be precise. I listened to her in high school and she died just after I started college. There was something about her death that marked for me, in a away, the end of my childhood.

But let's not dwell on that. Let's remember how long we had her. Let's go back in time to when Allison was at her height. 

It was another September just like this, in the fall of 1972. Like in 2025 or 1995, summer was ending. The leafs and moods were changing, the autumnal equinox was nigh, and Allison, in her wonderful way, helped us say goodbye to summer.

So as we say goodbye to summer now, let's remember when Allison did it for us 53 years ago this month.

Allison, like summer, may be gone but will always be remembered.

Review: "Highest 2 Lowest" (2025)

Few filmmakers capture the life and spirit of NYC like Spike Lee. He's been making movies for forty years and he makes movies like no other -- movies that make you think, movies that sometimes make you angry, sometimes make you laugh loudly, but that you never forget.

Spike and his movies have been part of my life since I was kid -- Do the Right Thing blew we away as a teenager. And then he started his fruitful collaboratoin with Denzel Washington and they have made some modern classics -- Mo' Better Blues, Malcolm X, Inside Man and, now, after working together for more than 30 years, Highest 2 Lowest. 

Denzel plays a music executive who is the midst of trying to save his business when his kid gets kidnapped -- only for a huge twist when its not his kid but his assistants. This awful situation leads him into a huge moral dillemma and leads to wild, unpredictable outcome.

Spike's approach to storytelling is unconventional -- he does not make predictably, standardly told narratives. And he really goes all out with that approach here. But, always, his visual flair is on full display, and Denzel just eats up the screen with a wild, fun performance -- a great actor, a master thespian, at the time of his craft. Also, Jeffrey Wright plays his assistant and, as always, he's great.

Late in the movies the rapper ASAP Rocky appears and, damn, he's got some real acting chops. There's a scene between him and Denzel that is so good, so intense, so amazing and mesmerizing that you have to watch the movies just for that. It's just two guys talking -- and its riveting.

Finally, this is a great NYC movie and it really goes from "highest to lowest", from the penthouses of highrises of gentrified Brooklyn, to the streets of Manhattan, to the subways and back alleys of the Bronx.

They don't make a lot of movies like Highest 2 Lowest these days so you gotta appreciate it when you can.

You can also listen to Spike talk about the movies with Marc Maron here. 

Remembering Silicon Alley

New York City neighborhoods are world famous -- Wall Street, Harlem, Park Slope, Flushing, Greenwich Village, and many others. They have identities all their own, little cities within the big city. These neighborhoods have been around and evolved and changed for centuries.

But there's one neighborhood that only lasted for about eight years -- a fleeting few blocks that had a big moment before it vanished (not literally but figuratively) completely.

In the 1990s, as the Internet and tech sector conquered the world, the capital of it was (and is) Silicon Valley in Northern California. Here in NYC a mini-tech sector sprang up at the same time on Broadway between the Flatiron Building on 23rd Street and Union Square on 14th Street.

It was called Silicon Alley. 

Most of the businesses there were "dotcoms", burgeoning Internet companies that helped new users do things like buy groceries and pay bills and other stuff. Their business plans were dubious but held promise. The Internet then was still very disorganized, you didn't have an "everything store" like Amazon yet -- and these new companies were trying to claim the parts of the Internet that Amazon would eventually conquer.

But then, between 2000 and 2003, the original "dotcom bubble" burst. Many of these companies, turning no profits, vanished, and the buildings they occupied fell vacate (for a while) -- and Silicon Alley ceased to exist.

Silicon Alley RIP, 1995-2003. 

I hadn't thought about Sililcon Alley for a long time until I discovered that the great author Thomas Pynchon wrote a book in 2013 called Bleeding Edge about Silicon Alley circa 2001 and during the events of 9/11. (There's a new movie based on another book by Pynchon that's opening soon called One Battle After Another that I can't wait to see.)

You see, yours truly actually worked on Silicon Alley for about nine months, from the Summer of 2000 to the Spring 2001. I blogged a little about it back in March, and it was, hands down, the WORST job I ever had. It was such a horrible place with such loathsome people that I'm shocked that I lasted there for almost a year. And not long after I vanished from the job, Silicon Alley vanished as well -- altough the company seems to have been bought by some other company later on so I guess it did okay.

What's interesting to me is to realize that my time in Silicon Alley corresponded to the same time as Pynchon's novel -- and to the same time when Silicon Alley was starting to fall. Believe me, it did not feel like I was living through a historical epoch at the time (I had left before 9/11 happened). And I hated working there so much that I just wanted to get out ASAP. But it seems that I was a part of a fleeting moment of Manhattan history, I was there, I was a witness ... even if I didn't want to be.  

And it's a reminder that today's torment is tomorrow's anecdote, yesterday's misery is today's good story. Life is truly strange.

Views of Manhattan from the Top of the Empire State Building

Classic Mr NYC

American politics has gotten ugly -- and, as we know, quite violent -- in the last few years. And especially yesterday. 

It's easy to point a finger at you-know-who but really that's the wrong person. 

Point it not at the clown in the White House but at his forerunner, the person who set the stage and made him possible -- Newt Gingrich. The former Georgia Congressman who masterminded the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress is the one who created the ugly political atmosphere that chokes us -- and sometimes kills us -- today.

Believe it or not, I blogged about all this back in ... drumroll ... 2008. The year 1994 was a transformative year in American culture and politics ... and, arguably, not for the better. 

You should listen to Mr NYC interviewee Kurt Anderson (also from 2008) talk about the lasting impact of 1994 on our politics in a recent podcast with Molly Jong-Fast. As always, Kurt is very smart and incisive. And, as always, Mr NYC was and is Ahead of His Time.