FDR and George Carlin: Getting their due

Was there ever a better president than Franklin Delano Roosevelt? (Well, maybe Lincoln but FDR is probably second).

Was there ever a better comedian than George Carlin? Short answer: no!

These were two great men, two immense figures, who's places in history are burnished like no other.

FDR saved America during the Great Depression and then saved the world during WWII. He gave us Social Security and destroyed Fascism. Pretty amazing.

George Carlin re-invented comedy in the last decades of the 20th century and has influenced generations of comedians ever since. He was also the first host of "Saturday Night Live", launching an important part of television history.

Both deceased (FDR since 1945, Carlin since 2008) both were great men who also happened to be native New Yorkers.

Now the city that claimed them is finally recognizing them.

Recently, on Roosevelt Island, a long planed and overdue memorial to FDR has opened: the Four Freedoms Park was recently commemorated by Mayor Bloomberg and President Clinton and is a fitting, amazing tribute to the man. About ten years ago a memorial to FDR was built in Washington, DC but there was no memorial to him in NYC. Now there is and it's a great thing.

As for George Carlin, he recently got a street named after him. Up in Morningside Heights, the community board recently voted to name West 121st street after the great comedian and the city council should approve it shortly. Yours truly signed a petition to make this happen so it's exciting to see it finally occur. Also, I grew up in the same neighborhood as Carlin so I'm happy about this on a personal level. Naturally, the eternal cynic George Carlin would probably find naming a street after him silly ... so, fitting, the joke is happily on him.

In a world of bad news, it's great to see these two New Yorkers be recognized by this city.

George Carlin RIP

One of the greatest and most fearless comedians ever, George Carlin managed to outrage people for more than forty years -- while also making them think. He blew apart American mores and social conventions with wild abandon, and he didn't care who he offended or delighted in the process.

Carlin will also go down in history as one of the most important comedians ever. He was the very first host of "Saturday Night Live" on October 11, 1975. His "Seven Dirty Word" routine, broadcast on NYC station WBAI in 1972, led to a US Supreme Court case establishing "family friendly" and "safe harbor" hours on TV. And while most comedians rise and fade with the times, he managed to stay relevant to the culture for decades. He will be sorely missed.

Best of all, George Carlin was a native New Yorker. He grew up in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan -- like yours truly -- walking the same streets and drinking the same water some 40 years before moi. If I was only one-fiftieth as talented as him, I would be a very happy man.

Here's a classic routine George Carlin did about religion. Needless to say, it's brilliant.

On the Street where George Carlin Lived ...

Many a time on this blog, I have quoted and paid tribute to the brilliant, late comedian George Carlin. He was a legendary comedian, pushing social boundaries that most of us didn't even know existed, saying things most of us would never dare even to think about let along say out loud. 

His place in history was secured in the 1970s when his "Seven Dirty Words" monologue challenged FCC guidelines that ended up in a Supreme Court case, and then in 1975 he was the very first host of "Saturday Night Live." Over the decades he influenced and inspired every comedian who came after him and his insights on the insanity of American life made him the Mark Twain of his time (in fact Carlin was posthumously awarded the Mark Twain Prize for comedy).

Carlin was an American original -- and a native New Yorker. 

Best of all, he grew up in Morningside Heights -- my neighborhood! (I've only mentioned that on this blog a couple million times.) Now there is an effort underway to rename a part of 121st street, the street where Carlin lived on Morningside Drive, after the late genius. This effort is, not surprisingly, something that Carlin would have mocked and pointless vanity. But his daughter Kelli is supporting this drive and so are many others. Thus far, almost 3,500 people have signed this petition, including yours truly. It is a petition to Community Board 9 in Morningside Heights, formally requesting that this name change be considered. And I greatly encourage all of my readers all over the world to sign this petition as well.

Oh, and while some might thing this re-name is a bit silly, consider this: Carlin was a life long, avowed atheist and yet he grew up, as all of us Morningside Heights natives did, in the shadow of Riverside Church. So a street bearing the name of an infamous atheist just down the block from a house of worship has a certain irony to it -- and it's something that I'm sure the great one would have approved of.

Sign it now!

George Carlin: Now More Than Ever

The great comedian George Carlin has been dead for fourteen years -- and yet he's more popular than ever.

It appears that his comedy, particularly his hilarious insights into the insanity of American life and politics, is sadly more relevant to today then when he made them -- in some cases, more than 30 years ago. He's the subject of a big article examining his continuing relevance and, here at Mr NYC, I've blogged about his timeless comedic genius many times over the years. 

You should read about, and watch, his comedy if you haven't already -- it's scary how prophetic Carlin was. 

The fact that we walked the same streets as kids (separated by four decades) fills me with unending pride and joy.  

A Tour of Morningside Heights

Morningside Heights is a neighborhood I know extremely well since, uh, yeah, well, you know, I grew up there.

It's a relatively small uptown Manhattan neighborhood nestled between the Upper West Side and Harlem, anchored by the mighty campus of Columbia University. In many ways it's more of a college town than anything else -- oh, and besides yours truly, it's the same neighborhood where George Carlin and Humphrey Bogart grew up in. How cool is that?

Over the years Morningside Heights has gone from a quiet middle-class neighborhood into a gentrified madhouse -- with more high-rise construction, more chain stores, more expensive restaurants and boutique stores, more tourists, more noise, and just more people conquering the streets than ever before. It doesn't even feel like a residential neighborhood anymore -- it feels more like a bustling commerical district where some people happen to live.

That's why this New York Times piece about Morningside Heights confused me -- according to the "paper of record", this neighborhood is still considered "affordable"? 

Really? Really? The average price is a million bucks for an apartment and it's affordable? Basta! It used to be cheap but not anymore -- and not for a long time. It just goes to show you how skewed the idea of what's "affordable" in this town has become.

However, the article does provide a nice "tour" of the neighborhood and it was a fun, nostalgic read. It you want to know more about the streets where Mr NYC, George Carlin and Humphrey Bogart grew up, read this and enjoy.

Interview: Billy Procida of the The Manwhore Podcast

Sex! Love! Comedy! You'll find all that, and much more, on The Manwhore Podcast with Billy Procida!

More to the point, you'll find an intelligent yet sexy untangling of the complicated emotions, pitfalls, and opportunities of being a sexual creature in 21st century NYC and America. I've never heard anything quite like Manwhore: on the one hand, it's very titillating (i.e. lots of sex talk) but the podcast is also about the emotional and societal complications of sex and dating in a time of social media, #MeToo, and social/economic/political insanity. Billy and his guests obviously love to talk about sex but the show isn't really "pervy" -- it's more existential, asking "who are we as human beings and what does our sex lives tell us about ourselves in this crazy time?"

Billy is an NYC-based comedian and was kind enough to answer a few questions for Mr NYC about his comedy, his life, his podcast, and NYC.

Tell us a little bit about your background and career in comedy. Who are some of your comedy idols and influences? 

I grew up listening to George Carlin and Chris Rock. I stumbled up on Carlin simply by searching 'comedy' on Napster. Whatever files weren't broken became my comedy library. Being as prolific as he was, there were many albums I became acquainted with. With Rock, I thought he was hilarious in Dogma and then discovered his stand-up. I think I had Bigger and Blacker memorized when I was 13. Today, I find myself falling asleep listening to Doug Standhope—which probably explains all the nightmares.

What inspired the creation of the Manwhore podcast? What in your life and career made you decide to do this?

I had this very peculiar problem: women would sleep with me, but they wouldn't date me. So I wanted to find out why. Because I wanted relationships; I wanted love; but anytime I wanted to get more serious, it was always the woman who told me she wanted to keep it casual. This rarely ended things—I was still told to come over and do that thing that I do with my tongue. When it happened for the umpteenth time, I decided to start this podcast where I reconnect with former flames and find out what went wrong. 

Your podcast, while obviously being about sex, seems to also be focused on how sex and fun should be enjoyable without being exploitative or demeaning to anybody. Do you consider yourself and the podcast "woke" or just smart? 

I'm just a comedian with a fuck show. But a lot of people have described me with a variety of adjectives from woke to feminist to problematic. 

You and your guests have done some pretty wild things on your podcast. What's the craziest interview or thing your and guests did? Don't spare us the details!

I had a listener 'blow her way to Brooklyn.' A woman slid into my DMs on Instagram earlier this year. She lived in a nearby city and really wanted to hook up with me. It was late one night and I suggested she find a friend to give her a ride to New York City and how she could "thank" him. Then I thought...what if she 'thanked' a series of drivers all the way to Brooklyn just to hook up with me? Fueled by an overinflated ego, feeling flattered, I pitched her this scene where I would coordinate several rides to driver her different legs of her journey. She was to give a blowjob on each leg to show her thanks. Then she'd get to my door and 'get' to blow me (I personally don't think I'm much of a prize, but hey, whatever gets you going). So we documented it through her solo recordings in-between each driver up until she was standing outside my bedroom door talking about the anticipation of meeting me. We had a super fun night together and the next day recorded a surprisingly intimate and raw episode. Having a hot chick suck some dicks just to suck mine might be the craziest thing I've done on the podcast. 

That's pretty wild! Who are some of your dream podcasts guests that you haven't interviewed yet?

Dan Savage. Charlotte Clymer. Janet Mock. Laci Green. Kevin Smith. Louis C.K. Barack Obama. 

What's been the biggest surprise or thing you've learned -- about life, relationships (and, obviously) sex -- in doing the podcast?

I've learned to listen better—which is difficult when your job is seemingly to talk. But my job is in fact to listen, because this show is nothing without the women from my life. The more I listen, the more they talk. The more they talk, the better the episode. At least in my opinion. The same holds true in dating (and sex). 

How do you think the Trump presidency and ugly political environment has affected sex and relationships? 

Oh god, don't get me started. My sex and my relationships don't really change—I'm a cis straight white guy. I'll be fine. But the lives and relationships of many of my friends and colleagues might change, if they haven't already. I don't want to speak to those changes, because I don't really experience them and others can speak on it better, but it's no surprise that the Trump Administration—as well as the Republican Party, since it's in their 2016 party platform—is anti-queer. If you're a Republican who is openly for LGBT rights, you're a deviation of the party, since the GOP put it in their literal party platform. Explicitly. Trump tweeted a trans military ban. His vice president has attacked queers when he was the Governor of Indiana. Trump even put money back into abstinence only education (even though it's been proven time and again that it does not work). A lot of 'sex-positive' people want to say that they support LGBT people and are sex-positive and all that jazz...but vote Republican (or, ugh, third party). If you were able to and didn't vote in this most recent midterm election—and didn't vote Democrat—I'm willing to say that you are not sex-positive. Full stop. 

What are your thoughts about #MeToo? 

Dude, you gotta tighten this question. I think it's great that women are stepping forward with their stories. I'm glad that it's raised the topic of consent into many people's consciousness, enough that we might try to teach kids comprehensive sex education so they can learn about consent at younger ages. 

What are your hopes of the Manwhore podcast moving forward? 

I'm super excited for ManwhoreCon 2019. We just wrapped up my second annual fanwhore weekend in August, but I'm already so stoked to do it again! Fans are already talking about it in our secret Patreon-only communities. I also want to do more live shows in other cities next year and, of course, some fun episodes. I'm thinking The Pepsi Challenge of Cocksucking. 

Finally, tell us about your life in NYC and what you love about the city. And tell us anything else you'd like us to know! 

I love New York City. I've lived here 11 years and I always feel the magic—even when I spend 95% of the day inside. It's both a historical city and a modern city at the same time—and you can feel that all the time. I feel connected to hundreds of years of stories when walking down a street I know used to house the city's largest orphanage, or sitting in McSorley's Old Ale House, an institution that's had its doors open since Lincoln. My favorite book on New York, Lowlife by Luc Sante, describes this city in the most beautiful way I've ever seen. And I quote it often. "The firmament that is New York is greater than the sum of its constitutent parts. It is a city and it is also a creature, a mentality, a disease, a threat, an electromagnet, a cheap stage set, an accident corride. It is an implausible character, a monstrous vortex of contradictions, an attraction-repulsion mechanism so extreme no one could have made it up." 

Great quote! Thanks Billy! You can find Billy on Twitter @TheBillyProcida and download The Manwhore Podcast on ITunes.

Zohran Wins, Heads Explode

Now Zohran hasn't actually won the mayoralty -- he still has to win the general election in November. It looks like there's going be a cluttered and super nasty general election campaign. He'll be up against the Republican candidate, the always crazy Curtis Sliwa, and Mayor Adams himself, running as an independent.  

Expect super racist, fear-mongering propaganda to flood NYC for the next four to five months -- the NY Post will go nuts on him, and he'll get little actual support from the Democratic party. 

And you should also watch this interview from CNBC who gives you an insight into his enemies minds. This prick totally contradicts himself when he says that city hasn't recovered since COVID but there's also not enough housing to match the city's job creation. Dig the logic: "The city is in crises, people are leaving! And too many people want to live here!" The truth: NYC has a bigger population than ever before, 8.4 million. Between 2010 and 2020 over 600,000 people moved in -- that's the equivalent of the entirety of Miami moving here. The DEMAND to live here is greater than the SUPPLY to house everyone -- that's capitalism, something I thought CNBC understood. And usually demands increases, and therefore prices go up, because it's a highly desirable product.

People move in and out of NYC all the time for work, family issues, life changes, many reasons, that's been true since the time the Dutch ruled this town. This focus on how rich people feel about this town is gross -- without a vibrant middle class that can afford to live here we'll turn into a dead city. I don't know if Zohran can actually achieve his goals but the voters clearly want someone who'll try.

I strongly advise watching these two videos from the Bulwark, one that analysis Zohran's victory and the other with an interview with Zohran himself. He's a natural politician, a super talent, one of a kind. 

Something I also learned: he's another Morningside Heights kid! Zohran, George Carlin, Fiona Apple and moi are all residents of those strange streets around Columbia University. Very cool. 

Also, apparently Zohran did very well in Waterfront NYC -- Queens (Astoria, LIC) and Brooklyn (Williamsburg, Gowanus) that's now being renamed the Commie Coast. Cute. 

Happy 110th Birthday Mr. Bogart

He was one of the greatest actors who ever lived and uttered some of the cinema's most classic lines: "Here's looking at you kid." "It's the stuff ... dreams ... are made of." And so many more.

Humphrey Bogart made great movie after great movie in the 1940s and 1950s: Casablanca, The Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, Key Largo, To Have and Not, The African Queen. And many more.

He was married four times, drank like a fish, smoked himself to death at age 57 -- and yet he burnished an enduring image in the America psyche. He epitomized cool before we even know what the concept meant.

Humphrey Bogart was also a native New Yorker and, on December 25, Christmas Day, it will be his 110th birthday. He also grew up only about ten blocks from where I did so (he and George Carlin both grew up in my neighborhood so I'm kinda like them. Right? Right?)

When it comes to Bogey greatest movie, there are too many classic lines to remember but one in particular is relevant to this blog: "I was born in New York City ... There are certain sections of New York, Major, that I would advise not even you to invade."

The Future Always Wins

We've been at war a lot for the last few decades -- and I'm not talking about literal shooting wars like Vietnam or Iraq. No, I'm talking about the various wars that we've declared on poverty, cancer, drugs, crime, terrorism -- you name it -- on any number of nouns and tactics. As George Carlin once said of Americans: "We like war! We're a warlike people!"

Indeed. And this year of 2016 might be the year that we declared war on something else -- the future.

You see it in our politics, both right and left. Donald Trump declares that he'll make America great "again" -- we were great once, in the past, you see, but no longer, so he'll bring that great past back if elected president. And yet another person named Clinton aims to occupy the Oval Office, with all the perils and benefits that a President Clinton can offer. Both candidates promise to take the world's greatest superpower into the future by appealing to our feelings about its past.

Our popular culture has been an even bigger dredger-upper of yore: look at the reboots of movies like Ghostbusters and TV shows like Full House. Even new stuff is old: the most popular new pop culture event of the summer was a Netflix series called Stranger Things, a creepy show that takes places in a creepily believable 1983. Nostalgia is all the rage.

More ominously, this strong desire to resurrect that which is gone has taken the form of terrorism, specifically those terrorists who think that if they kill enough people or blow up enough stuff that it will somehow resurrect a 7th Century Caliphate. Less bloodily, but in many ways more consequentially, the United Kingdom decided that it loved its past so much that it voted to shatter the post-World War II European economic consensus and chuck its membership in the European Union, thus becoming a true island nation once again -- the so called "Brexit."

The allure of the past is so great that the world seems ready to muddy its present and compromise its future in pursuit of a time that is well and truly gone -- forever.

Why? Why this overactive drive to revivify previous eons?

Well, the easy answer is that the present sucks. Wars, recessions, gentrification, growing student debt, decreasing worker wages, the spiraling cost of living and the stalling creation of jobs, technology that becomes obsolete the moment you buy it, is making people mushuggina. Things are changing, things are always changing, but more and more things seem to be changing faster and faster -- and for no good reason except that it benefits a wealthy, elitist few. More and more people feel that they have less and less control over their lives, that there are fewer paths to prosperity and security for them and their families, and that the future is a bleak, unsparing, hopeless place. So we want to retreat. We want to go back. We wish to return to a "safe space" where we are in total control, where we already know the ending to the story, where the worries of the present and the threats of the future are nought.

As the great English author Evelyn Waugh famously wrote: "We possess nothing certainly except the past."

Certainly, here in NYC, the past is something that people cherish. In a dynamic world, NYC is probably the most dynamic place in it, so attempts to remember, mourn, and, yes, even recreate its past abound. Just look:

• The Stork Club, the place where Walter Winchell once ruled, making and unmaking reputations with his powerful newspaper column, is fondly remembered.
  
• Television, specifically local television, which used to set the agenda for the city in a way it rarely does today, is also being recalled. Back in the day, a TV anchor named Bill Boggs was one of the most important people in town and these days he's reminiscing about it.
  
• Local businesses, stores that served the community while also making a profit, are vanishing. This article is about TekServe, the Chelsea Mac service store, that I used to go to many times back in the day and that was a staple of NYC life, has closed down. This one really hurts because, as the writer of this article notes, this closure is another "downside to the city’s real estate boom. It’s driving away the unique, friendly places that make living in the city worth the effort ... [a] rapid deterioration of the city’s street-level fabric."
  
• Here's one counterfactual: Chumley's is coming back. The old speakeasy that closed in 2007 after an industrial accident is set to re-open soon. I remember going there many years ago and loving it -- but this resurrected saloon just won't be the same, it simply can't be. Times may heal wounds but it doesn't fully obliterate them.

Then there are those who make it their business to give old NYC a voice:

• The Bowery Boys are a couple of guys with a long-running, very successful podcast about the history of NYC. Now they have a book out, about "adventures in old New York."
  
• Even porn is getting in on the act! Yes, pornography is now a nostalgic reference point for NYC. Check out the Rialto Report, a comprehensive website, blog, and archive about the adult scene in NYC back in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. For a subject matter that is so naughty, this is an incredible elegant and beautifully presented site that makes art and history out of something lots of people consider simply obscene. And it's history alright -- an incredible history that you won't learn about in school or museums.

What the aforementioned demonstrate, I think, are what is good and bad about nostalgia and our changing city and world. It is painful, awful, and ultimately detrimental for local businesses to close and even local television stations to become irrelevant. It lessens the vitality of life in NYC. And I do understand -- oh man, do I ever! -- at how frustrating and scary the rate of change in our world today is, at how fast things vanish only to be replaced by something unrecognizable and nowhere near as good. It's not something that anyone, I think, under the age of 25 will ever get used to. At the same time, how wonderful is it, thanks to the Internet, that blogs and websites can exist that remember the past, that preserve it, that give it context and meaning in a way that, otherwise, would elude it? And how wonderful it is that new things are being invented that will improve our lives and (perhaps, just perhaps) give us all better futures.


Loving the past and trying to remember it should never be the same as hating the future and seeking its destruction. Trump/Clinton, Brexit, terrorists, pointless TV show and movie reboots, etc. etc. do nothing, ultimately, to make us feel better. They don't bring the past back. They can't! They are, to varying degrees, acts of desperation, a metaphorical lashing out at our present (obviously TV/movie reboots are not as awful as Donald Trump nor are either as awful as terrorists but I hope you get the drift). The brilliant comedian Marc Maron recently said on his podcast, specifically about the 2016 election but also, I think, about this larger issue of fearing the future:

"It’s a tragedy that there’s so much desperation ... How do you relieve that desperation, that anger, that hopelessness? ... Here’s why people vote for Trump: ‘Fuck It!’ ‘Fuck It All!’ That’s got to be the rationale ... It's the possible annihilation of all progress with no real plan."

And that's ultimately the problem: people want to "annihilate progress" that they feel has hurt them but, for the most part, people have no idea what to replace it with except with some gauzy nostalgia. The Trump candidacy is a perfect, almost frightening example of this: he promises to "make America great again" and "bring the jobs back" and "restore law and order" -- but how? How will we be great again in way that we aren't now? What jobs are coming back? Law and order -- believe it or not but our country has never been this safe! Again, he plays on our anxieties about the present and our fears about the future by invoking a past that will never return. And here's the rub - that past was never that great to begin with.

Do you want to go back to a world where gays were closeted? Where minorities were openly discriminated against? Where smoking was tolerated everywhere? Where women were raped and the men who did it got away? Where there was no Internet? Where people who were born into poverty stayed there. Do you really truly want to return to that world? Not me.

But at the same time part of me does. Part of me wants to go back and relive those supposedly simpler times. Part of me, a big part of me, fears the future. But the future is coming, it's always coming. The future always wins even as we strive to beat it. So let's get ready for it and work to make it better. Not destroy it -- or think we can replace it with the past.


As the great American author Scott Fitzergerald wrote: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessy into the past."

Welcome to NYC: The Real America Starts Here

The always great Kurt Andersen has a wonderful article in this week's New York magazine about the election of Barack Obama. You might also want to read my exclusive interview with Kurt from January where he said that this would be the most fascinating presidential election of our lifetime. How right he was.

One of the points of Kurt's article, and of a blog entry I did the Friday before the election, is that NYC and big cities in general have largely been marginalized in America politics. Cities like ours might be rich and fun to live in but, when it comes to influencing les affairs d'etat, we've taken a back seat to mostly rural states and the South for the last few decades.

Until now.

Think about it: the President to be is from Chicago, the Speaker of the House is from San Francisco, and two of the powerful people in Congress are Charlie Rangel (Chairman of House Ways and Means) and Senator Chuck Schumer -- New Yorkers both. The electoral map indicates that America is swinging in a more liberal direction, and the South and rural areas -- the "real America" -- are becoming less and less powerful in American politics.

Naturally people in the real America are freaking out. "Oh no!" the Republican culture warriors cry. "What's happening?"

Well, it looks like the "real America" is shrinking. Or maybe they aren't the real America anymore -- we are. Might need to dig up those signs in the boonies that say "The Real America Starts Here" and plant them in NYC.

They're losing the culture war.

Starting with the election of Richard Nixon 40 years ago, the culture war has been effectively used by the Republicans to divide America and put them in power. Play on middle class fears and hatred of taxes, gays, abortion, race, immigrants, and losing their guns -- plus throw in a lot of jingoistic chest thumping and religiosity -- and that'll get people to vote against their economic interests.

The late, great George Carlin put it perfectly: "That's the way the ruling class operates in any society -- they try to divide the rest of the people. They keep the lower and the middle classes fighting with each other so that they, the rich, can run off with all the f******g money. Fairly simple thing, happens to work."

And it worked for a long time. The Republicans won a lot of elections using the culture war. But now Americans are sick of it. They've seen the horrible economy, disastrous war, and broken government the Republicans have given us and they've run gagging to the polls to throw them out. That's why conservative places like Virginia, Indiana, and Colorado have been swinging hard to the Democrats in just the last few years. They're leaving the "real America" behind and coming over to us.

Now we're the real America and they're not -- nah nah nah nah. The culture war, like the Iraq War of the War on Drugs, is not "over" by any means. Sadly, it'll probably never end. But for right now, we're winning. And let's pray -- haha -- that this continues.

Bob Dylan: Live from Riverside Church -- July 29, 1961

There's a new movie that's just come out called A Complete Unknown about Bob Dylan's early years in NYC. A Minnesota transplant, he hit the Greenwich Village club scene in 1961, and within a couple of years he was famous, his folk songs becoming an indeliable part of American culture. 

During those early days in NYC, Dylan was gigging everywhere he could, most famously at the Gaslight Cafe in the Village. But his first known broadcasting gig happened on July 29, 1961 -- just six months after he'd moved to NYC -- at Riverside Church in Morningside Heights. He was one of several singers to perform at the Riverside Church Hootenanny, and it was broadcast on the church's radio station WRVR 106.7 (today it's the much listened to Lite FM).

Below is a segment of that broadcast featuring young "Bobby" and you can find the set list of the songs he sang here. It was also at this event where Dylan met Suzy Rutolo who would become his girlfriend and creative muse -- they would be together when Dylan began to produce his most famous, legendary works. And even though Dylan in NYC in the early 1960s is most commonly associated with Greenwich Village (as the Bowery Boys have recently done an episode about), it was actually uptown -- in the same neighborhood that produced George Carlin, Fiona Apple and Mr NYC -- that the first step in the legendary journey of Bob Dylan through American culture was taken. 

P.S. Riverside Church means a lot to me -- it's right near where I grew up, it's where I went to nursery school and where I eventually got married. So it's really cool to find out what an important piece it played in both the lives of Bob Dylan and yours truly.

P.P.S. And while we're thinking about Bob Dylan, let's not forget about Llewyn Davis because, remember, for every Bob there's a lot more Lleweyns. In fact, you might say the Mr NYC is the Llewyn Davis of NYC bloggers!