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!
