The Future Face of NYC

In the almost fifteen years of this blog's existence, I've written a lot about how the "face" of NYC keeps changing, transforming, evolving. It's inevitable that in a city of almost nine-million people that the physical, economic, political, and cultural infrustructure of it will forever alter itself.

Old buildings will be torn down, new ones raised. Some businesses will close, new ones will open. Politicians of various stripes will leave office, new ones will replace them. Shows and cultural institutions will dissapear, new ones will appear. It's a cycle, the constant churn of the city, the forever changing face of NYC.

Recently -- talking about a cultural institution that vanished and reappeared -- the sequel series to Sex and the City, And Just Like That, has inspired writers to look at how different NYC has become in 2021-2022 compared to the show's original run from 1998-2004. As this article indicates, the show feels less inspiring, less fun, in part, because the city of today feels less inspiring and fun than the one in the original show. It's vastly more gentrified, sleek, overbuilt, and boring -- plus it's been dealing with a pandemic. A young colleague of mine who recently discovered the original show has told me about her fascination of the NYC portrayed in Sex and the City -- it seems like another, wilder, funner, cheaper world. Even though the first show ended less than twenty-years ago, it feel literally like a whole different planet. It's amazing to contrast the NYC of And Just Like That to the 1950s, 1960s city of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. That city feels not only like another world, but another universe. 

But that's just the NYC of the popular imagination, popular culture, as re-interpreted by TV. The future of NYC is always, always determined by it's phyiscal shape, economy, and politics. And that's changing, big time.

Within the next fifteen years, by the time this blog celebrates its 30th (!) anniversary, the following developments will have profoundly altered the face and life of NYC:

First, there's the Interborough Express, a reconstituted freight train line that will be turned into rapid transit connecting Brooklyn and Queens. Until now, there has never been any good public transportation between the city's two biggest (by far) boroughs, and this be a big change. It will originate at Woodside, snake through Maspeth, Middle Village and Ridgewood, then curl into Bushwick, Brownsville, Flatbush, Borough Park, and terminate at Bayridge. It will connect to the 2, 3, 5, 7, B, D, F, Q, and R subway lines, plus various bus lines. It will be the most massive expansion of public transporation in this city in a century, make commuting to and from and between those neighborhoods and boroughs much easier, dramatically lower car and subway congestion, and its impact on housing values and businesses in the areas it serves will be immense. 

Second, casinos -- they're coming to NYC. There's the Racino way out in Queens but there are plans -- and new laws supporting them -- that will allow the construction of casinos all over the city. This city is, not suprisingly, the nation's biggest untapped casino market, and the city loses huge amounts of tax revenue that goes to Atlantic City and casinos out on Native American reservations. A whole new industry, a whole new tourist and cultural magnet, will have a massive impact on the cultural and economic life of NYC. No longer will people be coming here just for culture and history -- they'll be coming here to drop their kids college funds into slot machines, to "let it ride." 

Third, and final (for now), is the political map of NYC and the whole state. For decades and decades, the New York State Legislature had divided political control -- Democrats controlled the Assembly, Republicans controlled the State Senate. This wasn't an accident. When both parties got control of the respective chambers, they made a deal to gerrymander their districts, their political maps, basically guarenteeing each party control for each chamber. This lasted from the 1970s to the 2010s. It was unnatural, ridiculous, corrupt. But a few years ago the Democrats got control of the State Senate and now -- with a Democratic Assembly and Governor -- they are gerrymandering the state so that Democrats will control the New York State Legislature for the rest of the decade.

Also, and most controversially, for the first time in over a century, Democrats are able to gerrymander the state's Congressional Districts which could shrink the number of Republican representatives from 7 or 8 to 3 or 4. This means, at a national level, there could be up to four new Democrats in Congress and could, potentially (although not certainly), determine control of the US Congress. 

Needless to say, Republicans in New York and nation-wide are howling, yelling and screaming that Democrats are abusing their power in order to protect and consolidate their power. Obviously the Republicans are hypocrites and liars (what else is new?) because not only are they viciously gerrymandering the numerous states that they control but they engaged in gerrymandering for decades in New York to keep control of the State Senate -- not to mention creating a whole new State Senate district (did you know we have 63? Insane!) and engaging in outright bribery (remember the IDC?) to stay in power. The fact that this state had divided control of the State Senate for so long was because of gerrymandering, it just happened to be bipartisan gerrymandering. Now the state is being re-gerrymandered for Democrats, and there's nothing the Republicans can do about it. It's also a rare display of raw power, a power play, by Democrats and obviously Republicans don't like having to take their own medicine.

In NYC this means that the long-held Republican district in State Island will probably (although not certainly) flip to the Democrats, effectively ending any chance of a Republican representing any part of NYC in Congress. It's fun to watch the loathesome Republican representative bemoan her fate, accusing Democrats of trying to "steal" the seat. No, Democrats are simply using the power that the voters gave them and that's called democracy, something that, we know, Republicans actively want to overthrow.  

So, as you see, New York City is changing all around us and before our eyes. It's changing in our hearts and minds. It never stops and never stops evolving. The face of the city from yesterday, today, and tomorrow will always be diffferent. 

Face of a Changing City

When you think about how a city changes, it's easy to point to new buildings or public works that have been constructed -- or to remind people about the old ones that have been demolished. You can look at various neighborhoods and see how they've changed -- physically, economically, racially, etc. Cities change in many ways. The most obvious way is to see what exists vs. what no longer does, or to see who lives there vs. who no longer does, in order to measure the rate and scope of change.

Anyone who remembers what Times Square looked like -- or the kinds of people who inhabited it -- twenty-five years ago vs. today know exactly what I'm talking about. But what about the nature of experience when it comes to the face of a changing city? Increasingly, the very daily experiencing of NYC seems poised to change. 

Certainly the physical and sociological changes of NYC over the years have affected how we experience the city but what about the changes that are less obviously but still profound? A perfect example are the newly proposed taxi's that the TLC has proposed. New Yorkers, all of us, can actually vote on the new design and construction of the cabs and one of them will be selected to replace the current version. Personally I think they all look like the equivalent of spacecrafts from various bad sci-fi movies and TV shows, and they don't have anything that screams NYC about them ... but as the city becomes more global, I guess cabs are one of the first thing to lose that special New Yorkness. 

Face of a changing city.


But it's not just the cabs in our streets that are changing. Apparently more and more New Yorkers want to shed their accents -- the beautiful, unique NYC accent is under assault! According to this  article in The New York Times, native New Yorkers are being told to go to speech therapists in order to stop "tawking like New Yawkas'" because people in the global marketplace find them annoying and hard to understand. 

I find this horrifying. I don't have much of an accent but several of my relatives do and I find their accents endearing. The New York accent is so distinctive, so strong, so in your face and unrepentantly urban, that the idea that people are trying to get rid of them (or feeling forced to do so) is awful. Someone, somewhere in this town should be able to say "I'm going to Thoity-thoid and thoid!" without apology. If people from elsewhere don't like the New York accent, so what? 

Since when have New Yorkers ever caved in to outsiders? Since when have we ever given a damn what people outside NYC ever thought? Since when do we buckle and let the global marketplace dictate how we live? NYC is the global marketplace -- we are it's LEADER, not it's FOLLOWER! And lead we must! 


Do you think Fiorello LaGuardia wouldn't be outraged by this?

If we all want to start sounding like we're from Cleveland or something then we might as well all move to Cleveland! Well I don't want to move to Cleveland and I don't want New Yorkers to start sounding like there from there! Long live the New York accent! 

Do you think Southerners wouldn't be offended if we told them to lose their accents? Of course not! You know how much Southerners love guns ... if you told them to lose their accents, they'd probably shoot you. And in the old days, New Yorkers would too! 


Don't get me wrong, I know that NYC has to change -- I'm not one of those statists who wants the past to be ever present and who shuns the future. But change at the expense of identity isn't change -- it's loss. And telling New Yorkers to lose their accents is a loss. So while the face of our city must change and while NYC must adapt to the ways of the global community, I beg all New Yorkers not to lose to ignore what makes this city unique -- and the great leader that she has and always will be.

Extreme Makover NYC

I almost called this post The Face of NYC, but I think Extreme Makeover NYC gets more to the point (besides shamelessly riffing off the popular reality show).

As many of you know, plastic surgery has skyrocketed in popularity over the last couple of decades. People now shell out large chunks of their life savings in order to change their appearances and make themselves look younger. Wrinkles, moles, blemishes, bumps and odds and ends can be vanquished by the surgeons scalpel. Indeed, entire decades can be removed from the visages of those willing enough to pay the price and risk the consequences.

Here in NYC, however, it's not that simple. Plastic surgery is an industry but, like so many things these days, it's a niche one. Standards of beauty differ from culture to culture, and people from different cultural backgrounds who want plastic surgery want different kinds of operations. Asians, Russians, Latinos, in particular, have become big customers of plastic surgery but want very different kinds of augmentations. This fascinating article gives you an insight about the plastic surgery business in NYC and how, in order to survive in this competitive market in this competitive town, plastic surgeons better understand what kinds of enhancements their customers are going to want based on their ethnic backgrounds.

But it's not just the literal face of our citizens that are undergoing big changes. The face of this city has changed dramatically in the last forty years. Currently at Film Forum there is a retrospective of Al Pacino movies from the 1970s. Obviously The Godfather movies are his most famous but he made some other classics like The Panic in Needle Park (1971), Serpico (1973) and Dog Day Afternoon (1975) all set in NYC. As this article points out, the city we see in these movies is a very different place than it is today. The face of NYC from the early 1970s to the early 2010s has changed dramatically. Instead of trash and junkies, we have bike lanes and yuppies. Instead of run down rent-controlled buildings, we have glass condos. Watching any movies set in NYC in the 1970s is like peering through the looking glass, seeing a place that is at once totally familiar but also completely alien. 

By the way, not all movies set in NYC in the 1970s were scary ones. 2011 marks the fortieth year since Woody Allen released his second movie, and his first real big hit, Bananas. Watching this very funny trailer below from 1971, you see that they don't make movies -- or trailers -- like this anymore.  

The Facelifts of NYC

The definition of plastic surgery is, "the process of reconstructing or repairing parts of the body ... either in the treatment of injury or for cosmetic reasons."

As this definition indicates, sometimes plastic surgery is necessary -- when people get disfigured, it helps them restore their appearance and improve their lives. But most of the time, plastic surgery is just tinkering, an attempt by people to "improve" their appearance even if they look fine to begin with. And, of course, the fact that it's plastic surgery means that they look less than natural, their appearance is no longer organic. The reality is that people who get plastic surgery usually look worse than they did originally. Most people who get plastic surgery do so because they want to look younger than they are -- but, in reality, they don't look younger, just weirder.

NYC has never been this boring -- or this weird. 

Boring, because the city is getting gutted and homogenized, the businesses and buildings that made them unique are being destroyed and replaced by mega chains and uninteresting glass constructions. Weird, because there's something unnatural about this transformation, about how the city no longer feels like a special place but some kind of McCity. We talk a lot about "gentrification" but really, in my mind, it's the equivalent of urban plastic surgery -- tinkering with the face of NYC in an attempt to improve it but that really just ruins it.

And there's a reason for this beyond the usual complaint about gentrification -- tourism. As this exhaustive article from VICE indicates, the bending over backwards to tourists in NYC is one of the reasons why this city feels less and less like it belongs to the people who actually live here.

Of course, the face of NYC has always been changing -- just in a more organic way.

Once upon a time, on Riverside Drive, there used to be amazing mansions lining this most beautiful of boulevards. However, as these mansions became more and more expensive for their residents to maintain, and as the demands for housing exploded, these mansions were torn down and made way for apartment buildings (the building I grew up in used to be the site of an old mansion). This article is about one of those mansions that, before it was destroyed, was touted to become the official residence for the Mayor of New York City (the plan fell through when Mayor LaGuardia quashed it and, instead, Gracie Mansion was chosen). So the face of NYC has always changed -- but it used to be for the benefit of the people, not the visitors.

That said, some wrinkles of the past still appear on the face of NYC today. Take, for instance, the Ear Inn, the watering hole in Lower Manhattan. It's over 200 years old and still in business. I recently went there with a friend and it's still a vibrant, busy place. We quite enjoyed ourselves and felt, for once, at home in our hometown.

As long as we preserve some aspects of the past, NYC won't be entirely plastic -- and its soul will never die.

Transformation

When 9/11 happened, thousands tragically died and the world changed forever. 

And so, physically, did NYC.

The mighty Twin Towers had commanded the city's skyline for nearly 30 years and now -- suddenly, horribly, unthinkably -- they were completely gone. Yet the story of the Twin Towers is a case study of how NYC transforms itself. Certainly, the way they were extinguished is well-known and tragic but what is much less well-known is the scandalous, corrupt, bizarre way that they were built back in the early 1970s. By 9/11/2001, the Twin Towers were of symbols American financial power and nearly beloved icons of NYC. But when they first emerged from the concrete canyons of Lower Manhattan, they were viewed as egregious interlopers, totally out of character with the neighborhood, and monuments to the egos of the Rockefellers who spearheaded their constructions (Governor Nelson Rockefeller and his brother, the banker David). 

How NYC transforms is forever complex and unending.

And massive projects continue change the face of NYC -- and it's not just big buildings like the new Hudson Yards but there are proposals and projects underway that will literally be built into the East and Hudson Rivers. NYC is expanding! Literally! That's one way to transform NYC -- make more of it!  

But the transformation is not just literal, it's also political. NYC used to be a bastion of Irish-American power in the United States but that's changing rapidly. Last year, three prominent Irish American politicians lost their seats to non-Irish challengers (including Joe Crowley to AOC). The city is becoming less Irish, more diverse, and the political establishment is reflecting that. As the city transforms, so does the power elite.

And one final transformation is the death of NYC street photographer Vivian Cherry at age 98. She took photos of NYC life starting back in the 1940s and through the 1950s. She captured a city coming out of the doldrums of the Great Depression and World War II, transforming into the financial and cultural capital of the world. The NYC she photographer is long gone but remains in our memory. Her work is a reminder of what NYC was and of what it's become -- and the transformation of NYC is never complete.

Is NYC Tyrannical?

Recently a scribe named Conor Friedersdorf wrote an article in The Atlantic called "The Tyranny of New York." His thesis: that NYC produces too much culture, too much news, too much stuff, that it attracts too many people and too much talent, and that it shamelessly waves all of this in the face of the rest of the country so as to make the American people feel alienated and resentful towards NYC. He believes the relationship between NYC and the rest of the country is "unhealthy." Hence the supposed "tyranny."

What a tool. What an utter tool.

In fact, his theory was so dumb that Conor himself basically retracted it a week later in a piece called "The Tyranny of New York Revisited" where he calls his initial idea "flawed." Basically, he revised thesis goes, wouldn't it be nice if there was some other American town that could hold its own against NYC? And isn't it a crying shame that there isn't? Yes, that would be so lovely, Conor, I'm sure you're the first person to have thought of it.

You gotta read these two very stupid pieces by this very stupid man -- if you can, if you dare -- in order to see how embarrassingly dumb someone can be who thinks he is smart. It proves that anyone, really, can get published (particularly in a respectable publication like The Atlantic) if they have the right connections, know the right people, kiss the right tuchus, etc.

Woody Allen was right: Conor's writing proves that there really is such a thing as "mental masturbation." I'll be the first to admit that Mr NYC (like all blogs) is basically a big act of mental masturbation but at least no one pays me to do it like Conor or that kid in "Boogie Nights"! Egads.

Look, Conor, and all you NYC "playa hateas": my city, my hometown, is not tyrannical. It is, quite simply, one of a select few of the great cities of the world, up there with London, Paris, Rome, Moscow, Beijing, and Tokyo. It's really big, really rich, really exciting, and really complex because it attracts amazing people from all over America and the world. They come here because it encapsulates everything that's so great about America and these are the people that make it so great. NYC is a place where dreams come true, always has been, always will be.

"If you can make it here" and so on.

Some of you might say hey, Mr NYC, why are you taking this so personally? He's just a jackass (and he certainly is) so why do you care? Well, it's simple really: you attack my city, you attack me. I don't care if you're an Arab terrorist or a douche writing for The Atlantic.

But it goes deeper than that and it's more sinister. It's part of what I call a "red state narcissism", a belief that big cities are somehow "un-American." I really resent this. Big cities are the most American places in America because, you know what, they have more Americans in them! Conor reminds me of people like Sarah Palin who not only knock big cities and praise small towns but also use derisive terms like "liberal elitists", "illegal aliens", and "welfare recipients", etc. Let me clear up something right now:

Welfare recipients = black people
Illegal aliens = Spanish people and other swarthy foreigners
Liberal elitists = Jews.

And being a white person I know my own kind very well and can tell you that this is what people like Conor and Sarah mean when they use terms like this or trash places like NYC as being "tyranical. NYC and cities like it, as well as the people who live in them, make white people feel insecure and threatens their position of privledge. I mean, after all, the president is black -- what do these white folks have left if not there own sense of their own superiority?

So, in closing, I will simply say this: NYC is not tyrannical. It's just a great place. And lots of people know this and "want to be a part of it." I'm not even saying it's the greatest place in the world -- it's just one of them. And if people like Conor have a problem with that, well, tough noogies.

NYC at a Crossroads

"May you live in interesting times." This old maxim has lately become our reality. We certainly do live in interesting times, a period that history will remember -- and it's friggin' depressing.

What makes any period of time "interesting" anyway? That's a tough call. Any moment in the past has points that are interesting. But what makes some periods more interesting than others, I guess, are those times when a society -- be it a city, country, or even the whole world -- is going through a particularly fierce and tumultuous battle for its very identity and soul; when it appears that the future is a complete tabula rasa, a clean slate that the victor in the battle for power will be able to draw on; where the choices are zero-sum and the winner takes all.

In essence, history is most interesting when it is being transformed.

Think of the Revolutionary War. The Civil War. Certainly World War II. Think of the Battle of Waterloo or 9/11. Think of the Great Depression or the election of Ronald Reagan. People were faced with a choice about what kind of country and world they wanted to live in -- and the battle was on. Thus interesting times ensued. And the world was never the same again.

But interesting times must, at some point, come to a climax -- the story must reach its moment of maximum intensity before going into its denouement.

For the last decade, since 9/11, NYC has been going through some very interesting times. We suffered and then recovered from the worst terrorist attack in history. We went through a dreadful blackout. Most recently, the financial crises hammered the city and the country's economy. We took a beating but got back up.

Yet it feels, more and more, that the interesting times NYC has been going through has been leading right up to this very moment. The climax of our story is upon us. Perhaps I'm being overly dramatic but, when I read the headlines, I get the sense that NYC is at a crossroads, a turning point where we may be permanently transformed in ways in which our city's fate will be sealed forever.

The debate over the "Ground Zero mosque" is but one example. If the forces of darkness, of hate and fear, prevent a private entity from constructing a building purely for religious/political reasons, it will be a dark day for our city and a troubling precedent for our future.

But it wouldn't be the first troubling precedent we've seen lately: less than two years ago the city council blatantly ignored the public will and extended term limits for themselves after city voters had twice approved a two-term limit. This outrageous action spawned a city charter commission that has created two "ballot issues" for this fall's election: one where we get to change term limits back to two and another that is so confusing and strange that no one seems to understand it. This charter commission has been regarded, quite rightly, as a disgrace. It failed to do anything about structural reform in our city government and it allows those council members who are currently in office to still serve three terms! The changing of term limits already brought NYC to a crossroads -- and we went down the wrong path.

And yet another crossroads is one that, in years to come, we will be able literally to see outside our windows. The city council has approved, and financiers and developers are furiously working on, constructing enormous big glass box buildings that will change the city skyline. Now, we all recognize that NYC is dynamic and that buildings go up and down all the time. But as this fine article points out, this "cavalcade of skyscrapers" are ugly as sin and the skyline could start to look like any typically overbuilt, anonymous city -- not the NYC of unique architecture and spirit that we all love. Another crossroads and another (apparently) wrong turn.

Then, as always, there's the economy. Apparently the recession in NYC is over -- and we're doing great! But like everything else in these "interesting times", the reality is more complex and confusing. Apparently if you are professional and upper class and/or live in Manhattan, you are thriving. Wall Street is back! Bonuses are huge! We face less foreclosures and bankruptcies than elsewhere. But if you're middle class or poor, the future in NYC is bleak. Non-professionals who have lost their jobs are struggling mightily and wages for those lucky enough to work are declining. Most distressingly, high long-term unemployment is becoming a permanent fixture of the city economy. This really is becoming a city of the haves and have-nots, of rich and poor. Increasingly 21st century NYC is beginning to resemble 19th century Russia. Our economy, our city's very well-being, is at a crossroads as well -- and it appears to be going in the wrong direction too.

So as the long decade since 9/11 comes to a close in NYC, the interesting times of the last several years are playing out -- and this is how the city has been transformed since then; this is the climax to our story. The rich are richer than ever before, the poor are getting poorer. The middle class is becoming but a memory. The city is increasingly starting to resemble Dubai and our government is as rinky-dink as ever. We are allowing the forces of darkness to overwhelm the forces of reason and the city is more polarized than ever.

NYC will always be a great city and I will always love it. But we're at a crossroads now and it looks like we're inching down the wrong path. Let's hope we change course before it's too late.

Review: Forgotten NYC Movies - "Welcome to New York" "Exiled" and "Parting Glances"

There are so many NYC movies that reviewing the famous ones is pointless because they've been written about ad nauseum (and much better) elsewhere. That's why I like, here at Mr NYC, to review some of the forgotten NYC films, as I've been doing recently. Here are three very, very different NYC movies that are probably forgotten but worth checking out:

Welcome to New York (2014): This movie is a collaboration between legendary NYC director Abel Ferrera and French superstar Gerard Depardieu. A chamberpiece of a film, it is based on the 2011 incident involving former World Bank head Dominique Strauss-Kahn and a black maid in a Manhattan hotel room. Depardieu plays a world famous economist who has just left his big job in DC and, before heading back to France to run for president in an election he seems certain to win, goes to NYC to visit his daughter. While staying at a fancy hotel, he rapes a black maid and is soon arrested and confined to imprisonment in a Greenwich Village townhouse with his wife. While there, he ponders his life, his ambitions, thinks about how no matter how powerful he has become he is actually quite miserable, and how life is meaningless and only lust seems real to him. Eventually the charges against him are dropped -- but his repuation and life are ruined.

Exiled: A Law & Order Movies (1998): This is an old TV movie from back in the day when the major networks still did TV movies. It stars Chris Noth (just before he became Mr Big) reprising his Law & Order character Mike Logan. Logan (and Noth) left the show in 1995 when, in the season finale, he hit a politician in the face on the steps of a courthouse. Logan isn't fired from the force but he exiled from detective work in Manhattan -- the patroling the streets of NYC's Sibera, Staten Island. The movie is about how Logan is trying to break a big case, while romancing a young lady, in the hopes that it will revive his career and bring him back into Manhattan. 

Parting Glances (1986): set over a 24-hour period, mostly at a farewell party, it was one of the first movies to directly address the AIDS crises. It stars Steven Buscemi in his first movie role as a gay man dying of AIDS. This movie was part of the rough and tumble independent NYC movie scene of the 1980s, before such movies became big business in the 1990s. The director, Bill Sherwood, never made another movie because, shortly after this movie was released, he also died of AIDS. But this movie was well ahead of its time and gave us one my generation's greatest actors -- recently profiled here for GQ.

Artists, Gangsters, Strippers, Subways & Seawalls: NYC Past and Future

As 2017 recedes into history, we are thrust into a period of time I like to call Weird Week -- those strange days between Christmas and New Year's that are a kind of temporal No Man's Land (sorry, in the #MeToo era we should call it a No Person's Land). Now that the crush of the holidays are over, there's a general sense of looseness among people, a sense of fun aimlessness, lots of folks taking time off work or traveling, indulging in all the things they didn't have the time or energy for during the year. It's a short window to "chillax" until the demands of the New Year arrive.

It's also, of course, a time to ponder the year gone by and the one ahead. Here in NYC, a city that's always changing and making history, that's an especially fun thing to do.

So here's a post that's totally Weird, Loose and Aimless, a fin de l'annee medley of links to stories about the people and places that shaped our city (for better or worse, depending on your opinion) and a couple about our city's future.

First, read this absolutely fascinating story about the life of Lorenzo de Ponte. If this guy's story was a movie, you wouldn't believe it. He was like an Italian Forrest Gump but with a higher IQ and far less morals.  He knew Casanova, Mozart, and Clement Clark Moore, and he worked and scammed his way into European and NYC history.

Then jump ahead to the 1960s. Here's a brilliant sequence of photos featuring the singers and artists of Greenwich Village, including a young Bob Dylan and Peter, Paul and Mary. If you've ever seen the great movie Inside Llewyn Davis, this is a wonderful companion piece showing you the spirit of Kennedy-era NYC, a time of excitement and creativity -- before Vietnam, crime, Watergate, and stagflation washed it away.

And, talking about time, we move into the 1970s. If you know about the mafia in NYC, then you know all about the Italian, Irish, and Jewish gangs that roamed and ruled the city for most of the 20th century. There was also, at the same time, a powerful black mafia located in Harlem that for decades ran numbers games, etc. while also taking care of the most vulnerable people in the city. But the war on drugs made it come crashing all down. If you've ever seen the movie American Gangster, then you know the story of how Harlem drug kingpins Frank Lucas and Nicky Barnes rose to unprecedented power in the NYC crime world before being brought low. And this article tells the true story behind the one you see in the movie.

The Eighties: if the 1960s were exciting and the 1970s were scary, then the 1980s were sleazy -- really sleazy. Back then Times Square and Midtown Manhattan were populated by strip clubs and porno theaters. You couldn't walk around these areas without seeing them, they were ubiquitous. There was no adult entertainment space more famous or popular in 1980s NYC than Show World, the great sex palace where adult actors came to perform and New Yorkers and tourists went to ... enjoy themselves. Show World had stage shows, peep shows, and sold all sorts of movies and ... equipment. Show World's days as a pleasure palace are long over and, thanks the Internet and blue laws, has been reduced to a small store that, in addition to naughty items, mostly sells tourist chotchkies. These links here, here, and here (NSFW) tell the story of its glory days -- and end of days.

And now we turn to the future. 

On January 1st, 2017, the long-awaited multi-billion dollar Second Avenue Subway opened -- three brand new stations along the Upper East Side. As this article indicates, it's been downhill for the subways and MTA since then. This past "Summer of Hell" consisting of train delays and detours lead to furious squabbling between Governor Cuomo, Mayor De Blasio and MTA Chairman Joe Lhota about who really runs and finances the MTA. Cuomo and Lhota lied, saying that the mayor runs the MTA which led De Blasio to accurately retort that it's simply not true (the state leases the MTA from the city, finances its, the governor appoints the chairman, the chairman runs the organization, and no one really disagrees with that except the people who run and botched the subways this summer). If Cuomo runs for president in 2020, his mishandling of the MTA might come back to haunt him or, pun intended, "derail" his ambitions -- and might therefore affect the future of this nation.

Finally, the fun stuff! NYC is being affected by climate change and a swelling population. This article explores the most amazing ideas by city planners of what NYC might look like in the future. Imagine: the East River between Manhattan and Brooklyn/Queens being drained and replaced by a park; sidewalks in the sky; elevated bike paths; whole parks on rooftops of buildings; massive seawalls protecting the harbor. These visions for NYC are, at best, fantastical but, if even one of them comes to fruition, the face and life of the city will be very different ... and the past will seem more distant than ever. 

The British Monarchy & NYC

Like many people, I have an unhealthy amount of totally irrational interest in the British monarchy.

I love the PBS show Victoria, I'm almost as excited for the third season of The Crown as I am for the final season of Game of Thrones, the wife and I actually watched both royal weddings (in 2011 and 2018), I just watched the two-part documentary on Princess Margaret, I read all the click bait about the royals that I can. 

Basically, when it comes to the monarchy, Mr NYC is like an old bored housewife.

Pourquoi?

Well, I guess it's because the monarchy has "all the elements": politics, money, fame, glamour, celebrity, and history. The most amazing thing about the British monarchy, both in the UK and around the world, is how it's a chain that wraps around time -- it links to the past, present, and future. It's living history, it looks back and moves forward at once. There's nothing quite like it anywhere else in the world.

In a world of rapid change, the British monarchy basically doesn't change -- it's a perverse anchor of stability. Yet it does "refresh" itself -- marriages and babies bring new faces, new personalities, redefining and modernizing this very old institution.

Such is the case of Meghan Markle, the half-black American divorcee who married Prince Harry last year. She is the latest fresh face, the latest reset of the British monarchy, and she's also pregnant -- bringing a literal new face into the world.

The princess (or Dutchess as she's technically known) was in NYC this week for a baby shower. I'll let others say what they will about it. But she's basically getting good press, people are happy to see her here. She's getting better press than the old Edward and Mrs Simpson, the notorious ex-King and his American wife who used to blow into NYC every year, live it up in high-style at the Waldorf Astoria, and then get out of town without, apparently, not paying their bills. (Royals, apparently, can be deadbeats.) 

I think we can thus conclude: NYC, and the world, will be fascinated with the British monarchy and the British monarchy will always enjoy visiting NYC.

Dead or Alive. Or both?

NYC has "died" or "fallen" many times.

Jane Jacobs wrote about the "death" of NYC in the 1960s, Annie Hall declared that it was "a dying city" in the 1970s, and Robert Caro blamed NYC master builder/planner Robert Moses as contributing to its "fall" in The Power Broker. NYC keeps dying and falling and then revivifying and getting back up all the time.

Today, it seems to be doing both, depending on who you ask -- or, more importantly, read.

I turned your attention to two MASSIVE articles that examine this "dead or alive" debate. One is called The Death of a Once Great City and the other is New York City is alive and well.

Once interesting is that these two articles agree on a lot about the current malaise that afflicts NYC. Namely, the city is hostage to market forces, jacking up rents and the cost of living, and changing the face and character of the city for the worse i.e. rich and boring as opposed to working class and fun -- and that the state and city government needs to do more to stop this. But the "death" article seems a tad myopic since it seems to confuse Manhattan with NYC while the "alive" article rightly states that most of NYC is NOT Manhattan and is actually thriving. 

While I understand the feelings in the "death" article, I think the "alive" article is more correct: NYC is still a hot bed of excitement but its been moving out of Manhattan for a long, long time. The city has, in fact, been changing forever (another things both articles agree on) so declaring that the city is "dead or alive" is a pointless argument: it's changing, in some ways better, some ways worse, now and forever. And the government can and always should do more to help its citizens. 

Who shapes the city?

Robert Caro's 1974 masterpiece The Power Broker offered a cautionary tale about the power of unelected urban planners shaping cities. Caro's story of Robert Moses, the master builder who for forty-plus years misshaped NYC (destroying neighborhoods with highways and ill-conceived urban renewal housing projects, not building badly needed public transportation, cutting the city off from its waterfront) is searing since, in many ways, our city is still grappling with Moses' legacy today.

For many years after the Moses-era, urban planners went into retreat. NYC and other American cities were grappling with high crime, fiscal crises, and white flight. No one had grand ambitions to build in, and redesign, cities that were struggling for mere survival. But in the last two decades, NYC and other American cities have undergone a renaissance as crime has fallen, finances have been gotten under control, and people have been flooding in. So now urban planners are back, big time, with grand visions of new buildings, parks, and other public works.

But these are not your grandparents' urban planners.

Take this article from the The New Republic. It's about a man named Edmund Bacon who was, in his day and in many ways, the Robert Moses of Philadelphia. There is a new book about Bacon that seeks to re-introduce him to another generation as a great urban visionary who built Philadelphia into the great American city it is today. This is going hand-in-hand with some people who are trying to restore Moses' reputation and reconsider his legacy that The Power Broker so powerfully damned. (FYI Ed Bacon was the father of actor Kevin Bacon. Cut loose!)

But the new urban planners aren't people trying to be another Robert Moses or Ed Bacon. Instead, they are largely private organizations and companies trying to put a unique stamp on cities. Here in NYC, the most popular recent example is the Highline -- the old abandoned railway tracked turned into a park in the sky. It was mostly private funds that went into this project raised by Friends of the Highline.

Now comes Citi -- Citi Bank, that is -- with its new bike share program. If you've been walking around NYC in the last few weeks, you've probably seen these clunky blue bikes stuffed in docking stations at various points around the city. They have the words "citiBike" pasted on them, and you pay an annual fee to use these bikes -- but not to the City but to Citi.

These are the new urban planners -- companies like Citi Bank, organizations like Friends of the Highline -- literally changing the face of NYC. They are making their own imprint on our town. This isn't the government providing services, it's private enterprise making a mark, and sometimes we have to pay an additional fee (some might call it tax) for the privilege. For example, the 9/11 memorial museum is not public institution like you might think -- it's private, and you have to pay an entrance fee.

So, instead of a grand visionary like Robert Moses using government funds or bonds for big public works, it's companies and various private organizations finding incremental ways to shape the city.

In some ways, this has been going on for a long time. The big New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square was originally created by The New York Times about 100 years ago ... to promote The New York Times (before it was used by Dick Clark to promote Ryan Seacrest). The July 4th fireworks and the Thanksgiving Day Parade were (and are) sponsored by Macy's to promote ... Macy's. This was then known as good corporate citizenship -- and also good corporate PR.

Of course, private developers have been building residential and commercial real estate for centuries -- but they weren't shaping the life and identityy of the city in quite the same way.

Personally, I think the new urban planners are a mixed bag. Things like the Highline and New Year's Eve and the parade and fireworks are great; things like the bike share program are good if you really want to bike in NYC and have the money; things like paying money to go to the 9/11 museum ... eh, not so much.

Yet one thing is clear: no longer is the government of NYC truly shaping the city. Big money is shaping the city -- shaping its identity, its soul, and its future.

Let's hope they do a better job than the urban planners of yore.

Interview: Michael Alig on Clubland, "Party Monster", and Building a New Life in NYC

The story of Michael Alig is complex. His life has been one that is amazing, tragic, and hopeful. He was the ultimate NYC “club kid” of the 1980s and 90’s, who made club and party promotion into a recognizable art, and he became famous for it. Then he became involved in a brutal crime and spent many years in prison (you can read more about that here).

Since his release, Michael has returned to NYC, adjusting to a life of rebuilding and redemption in a changed city.  He was kind enough to answer some of Mr NYC’s questions about his past, present and future. Whatever one’s feelings about Michael’s life, his story deserves to be heard.

Tell us a little bit about your background and what attracted you to the downtown club world/party scene of the 1980s and 1990s?

I grew up in Middle America, came to NYC on a scholarship to go to college and was fascinated with the amazing mix of different kinds of people, different races and sexual orientations, all living together in one city. Clubland offered for me a more concentrated version of this, with an even more extreme mix of people. 

You were known as the ultimate party promoter. What made you so good at it? What makes someone a good party promoter?

I think I am a good party promoter because I love doing it so much that I would do it even if no one paid me. Anyone who loves their job--I don’t care what kind of job it is, from being a bartender to a garbage man--if you love doing it, you're going to be successful at it. 

What were some of your favorite clubs and parties back in the day -- and what are some of your favorites now? 

Probably my all-time favorite club of all times was Area, a giant warehouse in lower Manhattan that changed themes every six weeks or so--a concept that was cool and exciting at the time because no one had really done it yet. This club also massified the idea of selecting people, one by one, to come into the club the way a florist chooses flowers while making a bouquet. I always had goose bumps when approaching this club, worried I'd never make it past the doorman. Danceteria, Palladium, Red Zone, The World: all super fab. Today there is nothing even remotely comparable to any of these spaces, but The Box, the House of Yes and a place in Brooklyn called Members Only are perhaps the closest thing you'll find to what once was.

What are some of your best memories of the club scene back in the 1980s and 1990s? 

My fondest memories of the club scene from back in the day mostly involve outlaw parties, after hours clubs and other events skirting the edges of what was legal or acceptable. There were clubs like the World that didn’t even have working electricity, we had to attach wiring to the electric poles in order to have lights and heat. Places like Save the Robots would serve alcohol to underage kids at all hours--in complete disregard of the law. You won’t find anything like this happening in today's NYC.

Personally, downtown NYC doesn't feel very "downtown" anymore. The funky, dirty, mysterious vibe of the Village, Soho, and the Lower East Side is gone. Do you agree?

I do agree, not only Downtown Manhattan but all of NYC has become more Normalized and has lost most of its edge. It’s something that's happening not only here but all over the world, as things like the rising cost of real estate causes edgier, mom and pop-type shops to close down and get replaced by big box/chain stores, and the Internet makes it impossible for there to be any real "Underground" scene. You were in prison for many years. What did you learn from that experience and how what kind of perspective on life did it give you? Probably the biggest thing I learned while away was patience. Before going to prison, I was impossibly spoiled and impatient. Demanding, even. If someone didn’t have what I wanted when I wanted it, I would find someone else who did. Spending time in solitary confinement had an amazing effect on this, in that nothing there happens very quickly or without waiting patiently. A book you might want from the library can be had--but only after writing letters to the library clerk--that may take ten days to get a response to. There is something about waiting ten days for a response about a book from the library that will tame even the most jaded and impatient club kid.

Has it been hard to re-enter life in NYC and the club world?

I feel actually very fortunate that people have made it so easy to re-enter both daily life and Clublland in NYC. Not that I have much desire to get back into clubbing--Keoki did ask me to help promote a weekly Monday night event, which I did as a favor for an old friend--and I have done one-off parties here and there. But for the most part I'd like to do daytime work. I have a clothing line called SkroddleFace I’d like to get started; I do a daily web show with Ernie Glam called The Peeew; I’ve been writing and painting. I feel extremely fortunate being given the opportunity to work on so many things, especially considering the difficulties some of my fellow recently released inmates face on a daily basis trying to find work or a place to live.

Can you tell us what you thought of the movie made about you, Party Monster?

I was surprisingly pleased with the way the movie Party Monster turned out. Given the circumstances, things could have turned out a lot worse. If I have any complaints at all I guess I'd say I wish the characters in the movie had been fleshed out a little more, as they seem sort of one-dimensional. It’s possible that my feelings are a result of being so close to the storyline, however, as many young people I speak to say they love Party Monster, that it’s one of their all-time favorite movies. I see that you're writing a book.

Tell us about your upcoming book Aligula.

I suppose the question I get asked the most is “When am I going to release my own version of the story?”, and my answer is always, "I’m working on it." Truth is, I’ve written my own book, the problem is, I tried telling too many stories in one book. Between my own story, the story of post-disco NYC Nightlife, of the introduction of ecstasy and techno music, the rise and fall of Peter Gatien, the Superstar DJ Keoki story, the rise of RuPaul, Moby, Chloe Sevigny and other Clubland Celebrities--there is way too much content here for one book. I need to separate my biography from the other things, and make it into two books. So far, I seem to have been too distracted to get this accomplished. Hopefully this year will be different, and I will get these books done. 

Thanks Michael.

Review: "Face Value: The Marla Hanson Story" (1991)

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. 

Unintentional NYC Icons

New York City has many icons, buildings and structures and places that define the city's image to the world. Think the Empire State Building, the Chrysler Building, the Flatiron Building, Times Square, Central Park, Radio City Music Hall -- the list is endless. Elsewhere there's the Colloseum in Rome, the Houses of Parliament in London, the Eiffel Tower in Paris, you get the idea -- iconography is just one of the things that makes great cities great.

But why? Why are they so important?

Because, in their way, they tell the story of the city, they define them -- and they link the past to the present, the present to the future. They endure -- for the most part. The destruction of the World Trade Centers and the burning down of Notre Dame in Paris were so tragic because these strong images of their respective cities were violently wiped away. It wasn't just the physical destruction and the awful deaths, it was that the sense of the cities and their identities had become unmoored, the cities' physic roots had been pulled out. 

Icons are not only part of their cities's identities but of their residents and visitors as well. 

And yet ... some icons are unintentional. Sometimes a store or something else becomes so beloved, so integral to the commmunity it exists in, that it takes on icon status. 

A few examples that have been in the news recently:

The Paris Movie theater, that elegant, wonderful little place right across from the Plaza Hotel and Central Park, recently closed -- an NYC icon that had vanished. But it's been saved -- thanks to Netflix! It's become so integral to the neighborhood, a small bastion of culture and respite in the middle of a busy commercial area, that its closure made many so sad that Netflix decided to ride to the rescue. So another NYC icon endures ... for now ...

Then there's the Astor Place K-Mart. Now Astor Place is about as funky downtown Manhattan as NYC gets and the K-Mart, which opened in 1996, was considered a square intruder into this land of the tragically hip. But overtime, as it usefulness to the neighborhood become apparent, it became a much-loved, much-frequented icon. The fact that K-Mart is so uncool is what made it cool. But sadly it's going away, soon to be replaced by a Wegmans. An icon, a very unintentional of sorts, fading away.

Fortunately there's something else nearby that's remaining -- the Ralph Lauren billboard on Houston Street. It's so huge, so in-your-face, and the designer's ads on it are so gorgeous and sexy, that it's become an icon all its own. Celebrities and models feel that they have "made it", not when their ads appear on TV or in magazines or online, but when their ads appear on this billboard. Its power is in its size and shamelessness, "the medium is the message." Its iconic status comes from its sheer boldness, about as NYC as trait as there is. 

So NYC icons aren't always pre-planned, carefully built structures -- sometimes they arise out of utility and the profit-motive, and yet, when they do, the joy they create makes them icons of the city, icons of our hearts.  

The NYC Generational Divide

It's part of the great American story: the conflict between young and old, between parents and children, between keeping up Old World traditions and breaking them apart, between The Hip and The Square, between those who want to change and those who don't. 

Our nation's current political divide is largely the battle between those who want to restore some kind of idyllic 1950s America that never really existed (Red America) between those who want to realize the dreams of the 1960s that probably never will truly exist (Blue America). 

This conflict is at the heart of our identity and, if I may sound pretentious for a moment, represents the duality of the American character.

Here in NYC, that duality is presented in many forms, some of which are also contradictory. A few things I read recently demonstrate this perfectly:

For example, this review of some new books about NYC, show how the city has changed. There's a book about an old school NYC columnist lovingly remembered by his movie critic son -- in particular, lovingly remembering an NYC that didn't quite really exist. There are other books, one about the "other" islands of NYC (like Governor's Island) that more New Yorkers are accessing and that is changing the experience of New Yorkers in their city and will continue to do so for years to come.

There's also this funny, short dialogue between the writer Erica Jong and her daughter Molly, and their attitudes towards S-E-X. It's a perfect case of what's old eventually becomes new again: in this case, prudishness. In this dialogue, Molly talks about the new sexual cautiousness amongst her generation while her mother Erica talks about her generation's libertine-ness and how she doesn't understand how sex suddenly isn't quite so cool anymore. You should read it, it's a hoot, but one thing left unmentioned is that Molly (and mine's) generation is the first one to grow up in the era of AIDS -- an era which, coincidentally enough, began thirty years ago this month. Sometimes the battle lines between the generations are re-drawn for reasons far outside their control.

Finally, two New York Press articles, to me, at least, show how the face of our city is literally changing. First, there's an article about a Lower East Side bartender who has said that he's basically done with the LES since all the rich people who have moved in don't like the noise and craziness of his bars. Imagine that: people who now live on the LES, a neighborhood defined by it's loudness and boisterousness, are turning into fuddy-duddies who want to live in a "quiet" area. That's like moving to Florida and complaining about all the palm trees! So while the funky bars of the LES are beginning their said decline, you can literally look into the East River for our city's future. Someone is designing a public pool that will literally float on the river and will contain water filtrated from the river itself. This is what you might call "visionary thinking", out with the old school and in with the new school, the New York of the future. 

And that's what our city is fast becoming: less a city of funkiness and more a city of sleekness, less a place of comfort and community and more a place of dynamism and strident individualism. The generational divide in this city is, if these stories are to be believed, changing how the city is imagined, how it's functioning, and how it's experienced. 

Some of these changes are good, some not so good, in my opinion, but they are, I suppose, completely inevitable.