1986 Redux

In the first year of this blog, I wrote about Robert Chambers -- the notorious "preppy murderer" who strangled a woman named Jennifer Levin to death one night in Central Park in 1986.

Before Lorena Bobbit, before OJ, before #MeToo, this was the big scandal that provoked the subject of violence towards women into the American conversation. The whole story was grotesque and sad. It was also an example of how men, especially handsome white men, who had committed horrific violence towards women (in this case, actual murder), got shockingly sympathetic treatment in the media and culture while the female victim became largely forgotten. 

Chambers even claimed -- like so many predators do -- that he was the real victim in this case!  He said that the slime petite Levin had actually tried to rape the massive, statuesque Chambers and that he was only acting in self-defence -- and some morons actually bought this BS. Chambers did some time, got out of jail, promptly became a drug dealer, and went back to prison. He's there now -- gone but not totally forgotten.

Now this case is the subject of an upcoming true-crime documentary -- revisiting 30+ year old scandals and stories seems to be all the rage these days. However, I'm curious to see how this case will be handled from a 2019 perspective -- and hopefully we'll learn less about Robert and more about Jennifer.

Talking about 1986, the final episode of The Deuce aired last night -- it ends in 1986 and then jumps ahead to 2019, showing in dramatic detail how Times Square and the city transformed in the 33-year interim but is still haunted by ghosts of the past. 

1986 is a year I remember well -- I turned 10, debuted in The Nutcracker at City Ballet, went away to sleep away camp for the first time, visited England with my mom, and saw the Aerosmith/Run DMC "Walk This Way" video for the first time. I was blissfully naive about things like the Chambers chase at the time -- and wish I still was.

"Once Upon a Time in Queens" and the '86 Mets on ESPN

The Year of Our Lord 1986 A.D. was a memorable one in 1986 for NYC -- and for me personally.

The city was bursting with renewal. The Beastie Boys were reinventing rap music out of Brooklyn; in Manhattan, Woody Allen was at the height of his career with Hannah and Her Sisters while nightclubs likes Tunnel and Limelight were the hottest places in the world. And out in Queens the Mets played the most memorable season in its history. 

In 1986 NYC was in a period of transition -- from the dark days of the "Bronx is Burning" 1970s to the "luxury product" of the 21st century. A new documentary from ESPN called Once Upon a Time in Queens covers the '86 Mets on the way to their World Series victory -- and how the city embraced and related to the team. 

The players on the '86 Mets are on the tip of any New Yorker's tongue who was alive at the time -- Doc Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, Lenny Dykstra, Gary Carter, and others. They played hard and, oh boy, they lived harder too! 

In between outings, they'd snork coke and bang chicks. They trashed hotel rooms and many of them got arrested. It's amazing that anyone playing on the '86 Mets was able even to swing a bat or throw or catch a ball, let alone win a World Series. The amount of wildness they engaged in, the all consuming debauchery -- the drugs, the booze, the broads, the fights, you name it -- must have exhausted them. And yet ... they played amazing baseball and achieved greatness. 

If you want to read more Mr NYC coverage about NYC in 1986, go here.

Remembering "Die Fledermaus" on Live from the Met -- December 31, 1986

In NYC the ultimate New Year's Eve tradition is the ball drop in Times Square. In Europe, there's another grand tradition -- a performance of Johann Strauss's comic operreta Die Fledermaus.

Roughly translated as"The Bat", the operetta is about a Viennese gentlemen who is sentenced to a few days in jail for having insulted a public official. Before going to jail, he sneaks out to party held by a mysterious prince, dressed in a bat costume. Little does he know that his wife and maid are also at this party, disguised. He tries to seduce his own wife at the party and then, after hilarity ensues, winds up where he belongs -- in jail. The operrata is a silly, raucous piece of fun, the perfect New Year's Eve show.

It's also has a really wonderful score, including an overture that is one of the greatest in history.

Even though New Year's Eve performances of Die Fledermaus is a mostly European thing, on occassion the Metropolitan Opera will stage one (most recently, I believe, in 2013). In 1986 the Met unveiled a new production of the operretta that it hadn't performed in 20 years and, on December 31, 1986, it was performed on national television on the PBS show "Live from the Met."

You can see part of it here.

Memories of watching television aren't the most interesting to share but I have one unique memory from that December 31, 1986 -- the first New Year's Eve I can remember celebrating, watching Die Fledermaus with my parents. I was also performing that night, doing the "The Nutracker" at NYCB, across the Lincoln Center plaza from the Metropolitan Opera house where Die Fledermaus was being performed. After my performance, my mother picked me up and took me home -- and I clearly remember our neighborhood being completely shut down, the streets deserted. We got home and my dad was watching and recording -- on the good ol' VCR -- the broadcast of Die Fledermaus. I started watching it with him, and fell in love with the music and gaity of this operreta (marveling that only a couple of hours earlier I was myself performing from just across the plaza where this show was being broadcast). Later, I re-watched Die Fledermaus and loved it all the more. The entire broadcast was a classy, beautiful affair.

Afterwards, midnight struck and I had my first glass of sparkling cider to rin in 1987. Then I went to bed.

A great memory and, to this day, my favorite New Year's ever. 

Woody's Oscars

You know I love Woody Allen and his movies. As someone who pretentiously calls himself Mr NYC, it would be a crime not to.

So Penelope Cruz just won an Oscar for her turn in Woody's Vicky Christina Barcelona. She makes the sixth performance to win an Oscar in a Woody movie. The other winners?

Diane Keaton for Annie Hall (1977)
Michael Caine for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)
Dianne Wiest for Hannah and Her Sisters (1986) and Bullets Over Broadway (1994)
Mira Sorvino for Mighty Aphrodite (1995)

The number of actors and actresses nominated for Oscars in Woody movies is also huge. Woody himself for Annie Hall, Maureen Stapleton and Geraldine Page for Interiors (1978), Mariel Hemingway for Manhattan (1979), Martin Landau in Crimes and Misdemeanors (1989), Judy Davis for Husbands and Wives (1992), Chazz Palminteri and Jennifer Tilly in Bullets Over Broadway, and Sean Penn and Samantha Morton in Sweet and Lowdown (1999).

If there are any others, I don't remember. But that's a hell of a list. (And that doesn't take into account all of Woody's writing and directing Oscars and nominations, which I certainly can't remember).

So that's six wins in thirty-one years, or a win roughly every 5.17 years. Considering that there are hundreds of movies released each year and a couple dozen nominated for Oscars every year, that makes his track record all that more impressive.

"Gods of New York: 1986-1989"

The years 1986 to 1989 were quite formative for me: I was a kid becoming more aware of the wider world, I was switching schools between elementary and middle, I was doing The Nutcracker and other ballets at Lincoln Center -- and NYC was in tumult.

Crack, crime, corruption, and big personalities ruled the town -- Ed Koch, Rudy Giuliani, Donald Trump and others were in the news every day ... and even though Koch is long days, the others still (obviously) haunt us.

This moment in time is the subject of a new book by Jonathan Mahler called Gods of New York. Mahler wrote the classic early-aughts book Ladies and Gentleman the Bronx is Burning and he is a great NYC historian.

You should listen to this great conversations between Mahler and Chuck Todd about how late 1980s NYC seems to be more relevant than ever in 2020s America.

And while yours truly wasn't a "God" of New York at that time, I was, in a way, a very minor princeling. 

Claire Shulman RIP

Claire Shulman served as Queens Borough President from 1986 to 2002, the first woman to hold the job and, for a long time, one of the only women to serve in high office in NYC. She has died at age 94.

Shulman was instrumental in the development of previously depressed parts of the borough like Jamaica, Flushing, and Long Island City. Most notably she speardheaded the transformation of Queens into a cultural hotspot, working to improve the Queens County Museum, the Museum of the Moving Image, and the New York Hall of Science.

Shulman also had an impressive personal legacy -- her daughter is an astronaut named Ellen Baker and her son is a prominent oncologist. She had another son who died in 2001 and was a budding director.

Her rise to the BP job was dramatic -- her predecessor, Donald Manes, a flamboyant old-school machine pol had dramatically committed suicide in 1986 after being caught up in a wild mess of corruption, mob ties, and nastiness. In many ways, her time in office was transitional, as the last remaining ties to Tammany Hall and machine/mob-domination gave way to reform, good government, and a new city. 

RIP.

WPIX Yule Log Intro (1986)

Ah, Christmas Day in NYC can only mean one thing - the Channel 11 Yule Log. Since 1966, this has become a city tradition. Since so many NYC families live in apartments and don't have fireplaces, this is their substitute. And at Mr NYC, we're bringing it to you a day early.

Here's the intro for the Yule log from 1986 - it vanished in the 1990s but it's back and now in the 21st century its probably more popular than ever.

Sam Kinison & Lou Reed on "Saturday Night Live" -- November 15, 1986

It's hard to imagine that an episode of Saturday Night Live like this would ever air today -- one hosted by the most outrageous comedian of his time and, as the musical guest, one of the darkest and most groundbreaking musicians in rock history.

But this actually happened on the night of November 15, 1986 when bad boy comic Sam Kinison -- riding high as a comedy king and coming off the success of his movie Back to School -- hosted the show for the second time. He was his usual over-the-top self, jamming with the band, performing an over-the-top monologue, and yelling and blazing his way through several sketches. There was no comedian quite like Sam Kinison before or since. Sadly he died in 1992 in a car accident, but his comedic legacy lives on.

I can't find any clips of Lou Reed from this show but, according to the information I have, he perfomed the songs "I Love You, Suzanne" and "The Original Wrapper." I've posted those songs here. 

This was just one of many shows in the long, long history of SNL -- but it was also a moment in time when the rebels, the contrarians, the lunatics of comedy and music crashed the gates and ran the asylum ... at least for this one night.

Mr NYC in London

I've been to London, England many times, most recently in 2008 (I even blogged about it at the time). But I never really took a lot of pictures when I was there until I travelled there quite recently and did just that. 

I didn't have a lot of time or energy to do anything too ambitious so I did the typically tourist route of walking from the Houses of Parliament up to Buckingham Palace (making a stop at the National Gallery along the way). Here are some of the pictures of my walk, starting at Big Ben and walking up Whitehall, the enormous city block that contains many of the government ministries including Number 10 Downing Street, the residence and workplace of the British Prime Minister:

Along Whitehall there is a giant arch leading to the House Guard Parade which is a massive field, right in the heart of central London, where you can see where the royal horses are trained and "paraded" around (most recently for the King Charles III coronation).

Then up to the palace, crossing under the Admiralty arch, where I caught the tail's end of the changing of the guard, and saw the outgoing regiment march along the Mall and vanish into nearby St. James' Palace:

Around the palace, in the nearby parks, are some other interesting things to see, including the Canada Gate (a gift from the Great White North to its imperial masters), Clarence House (where the King and Queen currently live, and which is interestingly not on any public maps of the area), the rather dull and old pile of St James' Palace, statues of King George VI and his wife, the Queen Mother, and a huge monument to a forgotten 19th century Duke of York (the Prince Andrew of his day) who was a great battlefield commander -- and the joke of why his monument is so high up is because he had huge debts so he didn't want his creditors to be able to get to him:

I went back to Trafalgar Square, the very center of London, where I stopped for a bite to eat a Pret'a'Manger (there are Pret'a'Mangers EVERYWHERE in London) and I saw a rally of sorts of Iranian dissidents who seem to want to bring back the Shah:

Right off Trafalgar Square is the beautiful small church St Martin's-in-the-Field (an interesting name for a place that's in the heart of a huge city). It's shockingly small and intimate, and not crowded at all -- and very beautiful and quiet (it also has a restaurant downstairs in its old crypt and it holds outdoor concerts during the summer):

I especially love this somewhat hokey, somewhat profound public art structure that contains the words, "Here times leaps up, and strikes eternity." 

Then I went to the National Gallery which will be a whole other blog post. 

Afterwards, I walked north and stopped at Sicilian Avenue, a small little side-street with a restaurant that I remember going to with my mom on my first night in London with her 1986 (I even remember what I ordered -- fish). It was nice to go back and check it out 37 years later:

Finally, I stopped off and had some gelato in Russell Square, a big park-like place with a beautiful fields and restaurant and benches -- and right next to it is a huge gorgeous (and expensive) hotel called the Hotel Russell (my mom and I had dinner there one night in 1986 where I ate more food in one sit-down then any other time in my life):

And that was my day! I always enjoy going to London and hope to be back there someday -- although I'd like to see many other cities in the UK sometime soon. Hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Robert Chambers: New York's Favorite Criminal

Egads, it's deja vu all over again: the "Preppy Killer" Robert Chambers is back in the news. This time he's accused to running a drug ring out of the Upper East Side flat he shared with his lady friend. If you're a tabloid junkie, then you've heard of Senor Chambers: in August 1986 this handsome psychopath strangled an eighteen-year old Manhattan prep school girl to death in Central Park (right behind the Met). He claimed "rough sex" made him do it but the jury didn't buy it. He copped to a manslaughter beef and spent fifteen years in jail. (This story was the OJ/Monica/Natalee Holloway story of its day, replete with teenagers, sex, drugs, murder, and very stylish clothes. Thankfully MSNBC and Fox New didn't exist then so we were spared the 24/7 coverage.) Chambers got out in 2003, vowed to go straight, and obviously failed miserably. Looks like he's headed back to the pokie for life.

What to say? This story makes for great TV. After all, with a war going on, the environment headed to catastrophe and nearly 50 million people without health care, isn't it nice to take a roll in the tabloid muck once in a while?

Mr NYC's opinion: this is all very sad. Chambers is clearly a hardcore drug addict and simply cannot change. He's one of those people genetically incapable of not breaking the law. The fact that he's made it to age forty-one is probably an achievement for him. And doubtless when he does leave this earth, we'll hear all about it.

'Preppy Killer' Pleads Not Guilty in Drug Case

Remembering Vanessa Del Rio, NYC's Greatest Adult Star

In the wild heyday of the NYC adult film scene of the 1970s and '80s, no star shone brighter than that of Vanessa Del Rio's. 

She was the Judy Garland, the Barbra Streisand, the Meryl Streep of that time and place -- quite simply, the best. She was famous and iconic in her time and remains so almost 40 years since she quit the business.

Born and raised in Harlem, Vanessa was the quintessential New Yorker -- and a striking contrast to most of the adult performers of her time and after. She was Latina, curvy, tough talking, odd-looking -- and a stunning, gorgeous ball of fire. From 1974 to 1986 she made roughly 80 movies, many of her as the star. And her various co-stars -- both male and female, and including some of the biggest names of the time -- were both the most fortunate of pepole as well as her helpless prey, so insatiable were her performances. She was amazing!

In the decades since she left the business, Vanessa has popped up here and there. She appeared on NYPD Blue and also had an entire Taschen book made about her. She's on social media and appreciates her fans. Now in her 70s, she lives quietly (I believe on Staten Island) and lives a fairly quiet life. But her legacy will never be quiet -- it will rage on forever.

Sid & Nancy Live!

New York magazine has a great article this week about Nancy Spungen, she of Sid and Nancy fame. She died thirty years ago this month at the Chelsea Hotel on 23rd street, the victim of a heinous murder that, to this day, remains largely a mystery as to how and why it happened. She was only 20 years old.

Nancy was the princess of punk, the ultimate groupie, and one crazy chick. In death, she became elevated to the status of music icon even though she never played a note herself. Her relationship with Sex Pistols guitarist Sid Vicious (who couldn’t play either, but that’s a different story) has gone down in history as probably the most infamous relationship since Anthony and Cleopatra. Their sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll saga, short lived though it was, has left a permanent imprint on the psyche of rock music and America in general. They represented the end of an era, the coke-fueled, reckless train-wreck of the insanely selfish 1970s, Tom Wolfe’s Me Decade. Two years later Ronald Reagan would be elected president and a new conservatism would grip America. Sid and Nancy would have had no place in this world, a kind of collateral damage I suppose.

Sid was accused of Nancy’s murder, although whether it was intentional or the result of a drug binge remains unclear. Sid overdosed in jail four months later so Nancy’s murder has never been fully solved. In 1986, a movie about their crazy life together was came out called, simply enough, Sid and Nancy. Gary Oldman played Sid and the very under appreciated Chloe Webb was Nancy.

About a month before Nancy’s murder, they appeared on a local cable show in NYC (YouTube won't allow me to post it for some reason but this link should take you to it; the quality is grainy to say the least). This show is referenced in the article and it's a total riot.

Courtney Love modeled her whole life on Nancy Spungen’s. Let’s hope it has a happier ending. And let’s hope that, after thirty years, Sid and Nancy managed to find some peace in that big amplifier in the sky (preferably turned off, like the Six Pistols used to do to Sid during his awful playing).

Classic Mr NYC

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.

Bobby Short - A New York Legend

For almost forty years, Bobby Short entertained New Yorkers with his magical singing at the Cafe Carlyle. He sang all the great jazz and blues standards - George Gershwin, Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, you name it - and getting a ticket to one of his shows wasn't easy or cheap. Bobby Short was probably the classiest man in New York City, a standard bearer of sophistication in an increasingly vulgar age.

I sadly never got to see Bobby Short perform live (he died in 2005) and have always regretted it. Thanks to TV and the Internet, however, we can still see him play. He also appeared in Woody Allen's great 1986 movie "Hannah and Her Sisters." And will always be remembered as a New York icon. The city even named the street around the Hotel Carlyle on 76th street and Madison as "Bobby Short Way."

Here he is performing in that other elegant venue, The White House.

Mentors and Mentees, Good n' Bad

I never had a mentor.

I never had someone say to me, "Hey kid, I'm gonna take a chance on you, show you the ropes, provide you some guidance, introduce you to some interesting people, give you a shot."

I never had someone who took any interest in me or my career or my hopes and dreams. No one ever showed me the way. I've always done everything on my own, unguided, unmoored. I guess no one ever thought I was worth the effort.

But I'm not bitter -- because mentors aren't always a good thing.

Take the example of Roy Cohn and Donald Trump. Roy Cohn was the lawyer for Joe McCarthy, the consigliere of Red Scare of the early 1950s, who also oversaw the prosecution of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg. Cohn moved back to NYC after McCarthy's death and spent the rest of his life (he was disbarred and died in 1986) representing all sorts of corrupt figures and people in organized crime. He also worked for Trump's company and was a mentor to the young real estate developer in the 1970s and '80s -- and much of the viciousness we see every day from this loathsome POTUS is the product of his mentoring by Cohn.

And yet ... mentors can be a wonderful thing. 

Lou Reed, one of the greatest singer/songwriters of all times, was a poet at heart. His lyrics were as poetic as his music was harmonious. That's because, as a young man, was mentored by the great poet Delmore Schwartz, a Beat poet turned college professor who taught poetry to Reed as a young man -- and was a lasting influence and inspiration to the then young man.

The mentor/mentee relationship can be, at heart, a wonderful meeting of minds and energy or a toxic brew of egos and darkness. They can give us amazing art -- and ugly politics. They can inspire us -- or drag us down. 

So if, like me, you've always craved a mentor, then, like me, you can feel the lack of one in many ways; and yet, at the same time, you can be glad that you've never let another person have so much power over you -- or your fate.  

Penny Marshall, RIP

Penny Marshall died yesterday at the age of 75. A Bronx native, she began as an actress on the TV show Laverne and Shirley before becoming a movie director of such classics as Big, A League of Their Own, and Awakenings.

Big and Awakenings are both great NYC movies, although they couldn't be more different.

Big is a magical-realist comedy about a boy who becomes a man after getting his wish granted by a genie. It's most famous moment is when Tom Hanks and Robert Loggia dance and play "Chopsticks" on the big piano at FAO Schwartz. 

Awakenings, on the other hand, is a very realistic drama based on the true story of Oliver Sacks, and the patients he treated at a hospital in the Bronx. Starring Robert De Niro and Robin Williams, it's a beautiful and tragic story of bare humanity and dashed hope. It's one of the most affecting movies I've ever seen.

Penny Marshall was a trailblazing talent who will be sorely missed.

P.S. Today is the 20th anniversary of another Tom Hanks NYC classic -- You've Got Mail, an ode to the Upper West Side. It's a fun, fluffy movie on the one hand but, on the other, it's a prescient story about gentrification -- an old fashioned movie that was way ahead of its time.

P.P.S. Apropos of nothing, did you know that Howard Stern made his movie debut in 1986 in a horrible and otherwise totally forgotten movie called Ryder PI? I've never seen it but, I'm just guessing, he's probably the only good thing in it!

Remembering "Head of the Class"

In retrospect it was a miracle that a show like Head of the Class ever aired on American television -- let alone for five seasons. A show about a bunch of New York City high schoolers, centered around their honors history class -- where learning and intellect along with the challenges of youth and personal growth were the main subjects, not teen cliches like parties and sex and "first love" -- doesn't exactly sound like the makings of a big hit.

Yet hit it was -- Head of the Class regularly appeared in the Top 25 most watch shows between 1986 and 1991, with an average audience of 14-17 million people. 

Set at the fictional Millard Filmore High School in Manhattan (apparently based on Washington Irving High School near Union Square), the show starred Howard Hesseman (from WKRP in Cincinnati) as Charlie Moore, an out of work actor working as a teacher who is especially good at motivating and helping his honors history students succeed. Other characters included the lovable if sometimes buffoonish Dr. Samuels as well as an assistant principal who Moore often flirts with. But the focus of the show was the students. Long before it was fashionable, the cast of students was highly diverse -- racially, ethnically, even different ages and body types were represented. Probably more than any other show set in NYC, Head of the Class truly reflected the city it was set it.

And the show emphasized the joys of learning along with the stresses of trying to achieve academically and develop into a well-rounded adult. The show enjoyed concentrating on the kids' minds and souls and not on their looks and groins. In its third season, they even did a very special episode in the then-Soviet Union, the first American show to do so.

I remember when this show was on the air. I didn't watch it regularly, the kids were a little older than me, but the times I saw it I thought it was funny. If I recall correctly, my brother watched it regularly -- a bunch of smart kids going to a special NYC high school at the same time as him certainly had its appeal. 

Head of the Class was one of those shows that was great -- until it wasn't. Eventually it hit a big wall in its last seasons. Cast member Robin Givens had a short, very public and tumultuous marriage to boxer Mike Tyson. Some cast members were replaced. And Howard Hesseman left after the fourth season because of "creative differences". He was replaced by Scottish comedian Billy Connolly which was an unconventional but doomed experiment. It also faced the problem all high school shows face -- eventually the kids grow up and either need to graduate (meaning other kids need to replace them) or the show has to cease being a high school show or the viewers need to suspend disbelief that these kids are spending the better part of a decade in high school. The final episode aired in the summer of 1991, almost 30 years ago.

And yet ... Head of the Class is coming back! A reboot is in the works at HBO Max although it's unclear when it will air. Hopefully it will retain the spirit and smarts of the original while also giving it a distinctly 21st centry edge. And, as  always, NYC will be the constant. 

Remembering the New York Coliseum

If you go to Columbus Circle, on West 59th Street next to the edge of Central Park, you'll find the blue twin towers of the Time Warner Center. This mighty structure is the home to numerous high end restaurants and stores and spas, luxury apartments and hotel rooms, the music venue Jazz at Lincoln Center, and the cable network CNN.

It's a true 21st century multi-use, multi-purpose behemoth. It's hard to believe that, twenty years ago, what sat on this very spot was an empty shell, the abandoned New York Coliseum.

The New York Coliseum was constructed in the early 1950s by the master builder Robert Moses. A huge post-war project, the building was a kitchy, tacky piece of 1950s nightmare architecture. It looked like an old-school television set without a screen, a boring lump of bad design.

In case you were wondering what I thought of it, I thought it was really ugly.

But for decades it thrived as a convention center, with events like the auto show, flower shows, home expos, and many others being held there every year. Then, after the Jacob Javits Center opened in the 1980s, the Coliseum went into a severe decline, closing in 1986 except for the very rare event.

As kid, whenever I passed it by, I was always amazed that this huge space was just sitting there, existing there, empty and largely abandoned. The only time I remember seeing it used was, once a year, when a bunch of bright red neon letters would be put over the entry, announcing the Coliseum as the location for the New York City Firefighters Annual Physical Exam. In the summer of 1996 I went to the Coliseum for the first and last time when there was a small exhibit about the New Deal (I got to see one of the microphones that FDR used for his Fireside Chats behind a glass screen). The exhibit was great but I remember thinking that the Coliseum was a depressing, sad, old building that was more than long in the tooth and probably doomed.

I was right. In 2000, a year before the original Twin Towers were destroyed, the Coliseum was torn down. By 2004 the Time Warner Center had risen to take its place. Columbus Center was reborn. 

And another piece of NYC passed into history, as unloved with its creator.