Okay, so this isn't a regular review, it's more of an anecdote: I took my kid to the "Dan & Phil: Hard Launch" show in Brooklyn because she's a huge fan of their show. It was a wild audio-visual comic experience, and just about everyone there was an emo-kid in their parents (save my kid and me and some other family members who went).
Anyhoo, the show went on at the Kings Theater in Brooklyn (lot of posts about Brooklyn lately). It was my first time there and it's a really gorgeous, huge, and cavernous theater. It used to be a movie palace and was beautifully restored as a live theater. I strongly urge you to go see a show there -- I didn't really care about "Dan & Phil" (although they were entertaining and my kid was happy) but man, oh, man, that theater is awesome.
Based on the blog’s recurring themes, tone, judgments, nostalgia, and observations over many years, The Code of Mr NYC can be understood as an informal moral philosophy of urban life: love your city fiercely, pay attention to the world around you, preserve what is worth preserving, distrust pomposity, and try to live with curiosity, humor, memory, and a certain New York toughness.
Love New York without pretending it is perfect.
New York is complicated, contradictory, beautiful, vulgar, historic, changing, and occasionally absurd. Its flaws are part of its character.
Pay attention.
Notice buildings, streets, neighborhoods, people, restaurants, music, movies, politics, history, and the strange little events that everyone else walks past. A meaningful life requires actually looking at the world.
Know your city's history.
Today's New York is built on yesterday's New York. Remember the people, places, disasters, triumphs, eccentrics, artists, politicians, and ordinary citizens who created it.
Preserve what deserves to survive.
Progress is not automatically improvement. New buildings, new money, new technology, and changing tastes should not erase everything distinctive about the city.
Accept that change is inevitable—but judge it honestly.
Nostalgia has value, but the past wasn't necessarily better. One person's golden age can be another person's nightmare.
Be skeptical of power, wealth, and self-importance.
Money and status do not automatically confer wisdom, taste, virtue, or legitimacy. Watch what powerful people actually do rather than what they claim to represent.
Respect competence.
Good institutions depend on capable people doing their jobs well. Leadership is not merely about the person at the top; it is also about choosing good people and giving them responsibility.
Don't take politics—or politicians—too seriously.
Politics matters, but political rhetoric can become theater. Look for facts, consequences, hypocrisy, and the gap between promises and reality.
Keep your sense of humor.
The world is frequently ridiculous. The proper response is sometimes outrage, sometimes sadness, and sometimes simply: You have got to be kidding me.
Have opinions, but remain capable of changing them.
Love and dislike need not be absolute. A person can admire one work by an artist while disliking the rest of their career, or appreciate an era while recognizing its ugliness.
Remember the people who mattered.
Death does not make someone's cultural contribution disappear. Remembering artists, neighbors, public figures, friends, and ordinary New Yorkers is a form of gratitude.
Take pleasure seriously.
Good food, music, movies, books, travel, beautiful places, baseball, architecture, nightlife, and simple experiences are not distractions from life. They are life.
Have some basic civic manners.
You don't have to become polite in the suburban sense. But don't make life unnecessarily difficult for everyone around you: move right on the sidewalk, don't block subway doors, and recognize that public space belongs to other people too.
Be yourself, even when you're a little weird.
New York's greatness comes partly from its tolerance for eccentricity. Conformity is not a virtue merely because it is conventional.
Don't confuse sophistication with cynicism.
You can see corruption, stupidity, hypocrisy, commercialization, and decline without becoming incapable of appreciating beauty or goodness.
Stay curious until the end.
The city keeps producing new stories. Keep investigating them. Keep wandering. Keep learning. Keep finding things worth writing about.
In one sentence
Love the city, remember its past, question its present, enjoy its pleasures, resist its bullshit, respect other people, and never stop paying attention.
That, more than any particular political or cultural position, seems to be the underlying ethical worldview of Mr NYC: a stubborn belief that paying attention to the world—and caring enough to remember it—is itself a moral act.
Last night I went to the Mets-Dodgers game and, yeah, the Mets lost.
Still, it was one of the more interesting games I've gone to because there was a lot of "extra."
First, it was "Japansese Heritage Night" so there were lots of Japanese people there. And there were also a ton of Dodgers fans. I've never been to a New York home baseball game with that many fans from the other city's team. I didn't realize there were that many Angelinos in NYC but apparently there are. It was weird.
Second, they were shooting a movie at this game. This announcement greeted us as we made our way into Citi Field:
And we saw some movie camera guys shooting during the game:
Also, upon our arriving we were given this wristbands. Stay tuned to find out why!
Then we sat down to watch the game. It sucked. But I did manage to get a cookie bucket and record one of two Mets' homeruns.
And once the game was over, we were treated to a East Coast-West Coast Hip Hop fireworks show -- presumably in honor of the East Coast-West Coast baseball game we'd just witnessed.
And the lights in our wristbands began to glow and yours truly got to be part of a massive rap fireworks lightshow. I managed to keep it real, get jiggy with it, and illuminate the NYC night sky. Yeah boyeeeeeee!
So I got to be part of Japanese heritage, appear in a movie, eat out of a bucket, and partake in a bad-ass fireworks show. Aww yeahhhhhh!
Recently I spent a night in Kennebunkport, Maine. It was my first time in the Pine Tree State and -- wow! -- it's beautiful.
Maine is much in the news these days for political reasons but most of the time it's a quiet, sleepy place up north.
In my mind it's The Place Beyond Boston, even more remote than Vermont and New Hampshire, basically a piece of Canada captured within the Lower 48. In Maine, the pace of life is slower, time is more important than money, and culturally it's actually more French-Canadian than American.
Several years ago the humorous write Drew Magary wrote a piece for GQ called "Maine: Do We Need It?" that dissects the vagaries of this odd place.
Unlike northern Maine -- where both its residents and geography have more common with the Wildings in the land beyond the Wall in Game of Thrones -- southern Maine is gorgeous tourist trap. Kennebunkport is its crown jewel, a beautiful seaside town with charming shops, great restaurants, and nice bed and breakfasts.
When we got there, we visited one of the beautiful private beaches (thanks to some family friends). Then we stayed at the Kings Point Inn which I highly recommend, is reasonably priced, gives you breakfast, and has a jacuzzi bathtub. The friendly guy at the front desk talked about how much he loves his town and state, and gave us a nice map -- even showing us directions to Walkers Point, summer home of the Bush family (don't worry, we didn't go). For dinner, we ate a place called Hurricaine -- while the service was slow and it was crowded, the food was amazing. After dinner we walked around the charming streets, getting ice cream, and enjoying the relaxed vibe of the place. I took lots of pictures which, you'll see here, and drank in its beauty.
A couple of interesting things: 1) Apparently the Bush family was in-residence on Walkers Point and good ol' George W. was there celebrating his 80th birthday. 2) Did you know that Maine used to be part of Massachusetts? It became independent in 1820 as part of the Missouri Compromise -- Maine joined as a free state, Missouri as a slave state. 3) There's actually two townd, Kennebunkport and Kennebunk that are divided/joined by a bridge and make us this area. 4) If you go to Maine, you better like seafood.
Recently I visited the birthplace of the only American president born in Manhattan -- the Theodore Roosevelt Birthplace on East 20th Street. It's actually part of the US National Parks so it was odd and fascinating to see people dressed as park rangers in the middle of the city.
Since it's a Federal site, admission is free. However, in order to see the whole house, you need to join one of the hourly tours. The house itself is a beautifully preserved example of a Knickerbocker 19th-century Manhattan architecture and interior decorating, with the museum to TR on the first floor.
It's a popular destination. I went at the end of the day in scorching hot weather in the middle of the week and there were lots of people on the tour. It's certainly worth seeing this historic place, and remembering that once upon NYC produced a president worth being proud of.
