Recently it's felt like a literal ghost town -- COVID-19 has emptied out the city's streets in ways that were previously unimaginable outside of a horror movie.
But in a city that's always being reborn, constantly changing, evolving, re-imagining itself, a perennial busy body, the relics, the parts of its past that still exist, still endure, are still here -- at least for a while -- reminds us of a previous time, an older city, a different world -- a city that, while mostly gone, isn't as completely gone as people might think.
Two most additions to the Mr NYC Ghost Canon:
There's the story of a woman who lived in Soho for almost 50 years, supporting herself in odd jobs and selling amateur crafts. She was a regular lady, the kind of middle-class NYC denizen that used to be able to live in Soho no problem, now replaced by the gentrifiers, the uber-wealthy. In 1972 she bought her loft for $15,000 -- and just sold it for $2.4 million. Yes, she's rich now, her loft a goldmine that will fund her later years. But it's gone forever, and all that she has left are the memories of it -- the ghosts of her past and of the city's past. It's amazing that she held out for as long as she did! She's moved out -- but the ghosts will endure.
Then, there's the Ottoman Empire. NYC is, of course, famous for its immigrant communities, many of which have come to define certain neighborhoods: Greeks and Egyptians in Astoria, Chinese and Italians in Lower Manhattan, Russians in Brighton Beach, Koreans in the East Thirties, Germans and Hungarians on the far Upper East Side, Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in East Harlem and the South Bronx, Eastern Europeans in what is now the East Village, the Hasidim and Orthodox Jews in Williamsburg. Turkish immigrants have never had quite such a defined geographical presence in NYC but, as this article points out, the Turkish imprint in NYC is quite strong, the long gone Ottoman Empire still present in NYC -- you just have to know where to look for it and understand its history.
The number of ghosts in NYC is forever unknowable.
Yes, NYC is a place where ghosts live. Not literally of course -- ghosts don't exist -- but the lives of past New Yorkers have shaped our city, literally and figuratively, and the spirit of New Yorkers past still haunt our collective memories.
And, to find them, all you have to do is a take a walk.
First, go to West 44th Street. This one block of Manhattan is one of the most fascinating in this or any part of any city in this country. This is where the Algonquin Hotel once existed, and in its restaurant, Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley and Edna Ferber and George Kaufman and all sorts of literary legends formed the Round Table -- perhaps the most famous American salon in history. West 44th Street is also where the Harvard Club is located, a place where New Yorkers at the pinnacle of wealth and power came and still do come to congregate. It's where The New Yorker used to have its offices. Under the decades long leadership of William Shawn, this magazine launched the careers of countless legendary writers, including JD Salinger and John Updike. And, much more recently, West 44th Street is the location of the Sofitel Hotel, where a certain former IMF chief got nasty with a maid and thus upended French politics.
This long, fascinating article from Vanity Fair gives a general and personal history of West 44th Street and how the people who worked, drank, and screwed there formed our city's cultural and political history forever.
Second, walk up to Fifth Avenue and 72nd street and pop into Central Park. And stare at Rumsey Playground and then close your eyes. Then open your mind and imagine a gorgeous Beaux Arts building standing right there. And imagine it's nighttime, and men and women in beautiful suits and dresses are getting out of limos and going inside into what used to be casino. Yes, such a place used to exist right there. It was a building designed by Calvert Vaux in 1859, one of the original architects of Central Park, that was originally called the Ladies Refreshment Salon. By the turn of the century it became a music hall and then, in 1929, under the infamous Mayor Jimmy Walker, it was turned into a Casino -- a sign of the wretched excess of Roaring Twenties New York. Walker's corruption, and the casino he helped build, became hated symbols after the Great Depression began. Walker was forced to resign in 1932 and Robert Moses, in a rash act of thoughtless anti-Walkerism, tore this beautiful historic building down. The ghosts of Walker and Mosesstill exist in this empty space -- a symbol of the price of corruption and zealous self-righteousness. (If you ever read The Power Broker, Robert Caro writes a lot about this.)
So today, people who visit Central Park, never know that such a building used to exist there. But the ghosts still do.
Two fascinating articles from this week's Times illustrate how life in NYC both changes but also stays the same.
First, an article about people who have lived in their apartments or in the same neighborhoods for decades -- and, in the case of one woman, for 100 of her 102 years of life. This woman has lived on East 84th street since 1911 and has, to say the least, seen her block and her city change quite a bit. She is a living, breathing memory bank.
As someone who has lived in two different places in this city in my life, I've seen both my neighborhoods change -- for the better (cleaner, less crime) and for the worst (mom and pop stores going out of business, rising rents and prices) -- and it's always fascinating to see the new up against the old. That, in many ways, is the story of NYC and all great cities -- new and old people, new and old buildings, new and old businesses, living side by side; lifelong New Yorkers existing along with recent transplants and immigrants, preserving old traditions and practices while creating new ones, the old timers giving lessons to the "new" timers, the new timers teaching the old timers a thing or two.
My mom has lived in the same building for over 40 years. Her friend has lived in the same building for over 50 years. Growing up, I remember elderly residents telling me about living in the same building since the 1920s and 30s. When you live in an old building in NYC, you can feel the ghosts of the past living with the occupants of the present -- who are, after all, the ghosts of the future. A little creepy maybe, but also kind of magical.
What isn't magical, however, what is rather kind of tragic, are when old school businesses disappear. And I'm not just talking about the aforementioned mom and pops, the decades old drug stores and restaurants that gave neighborhoods their character and that, when they vanish, lessen the neighborhoods character. I'm talking about big businesses too.
Remember Pan Am? If you're under the age of 20, probably not. Pan Am used to not only own the American airline industry but the Pan Am building on 42nd street used to rise proudly in the NYC skyline, the worlds PAN AM visible to anyone within miles site of the building. Today, Pan Am is long out of business, and the Pan Am building is now the MetLife building. When Pan Am went, it was like a part of Americana vanished. Part of the NYC skyline certainly did. It was the first big airline (it was for a long time) and most people took their first flights on Pan Am. Heck, being a Pan Am stewardess (now called flight attendant) was such a glamorous job that they even made a TV show out of it recently (called Pam Am but, like its namesake, the show went out of business too). And when a piece of Americana goes away, it can never really be replaced.
Here in NYC, a huge law firm called Dewey and LaBoeuf is on the verge of collapse. It used to be called Dewey, Ballantine and this isn't just some law firm. This used to be the creme de la creme of NYC law firms, the kind of place where any lawyer dreamed about working at. It was big, rich, represented powerful clients and companies, and had cache to burn. What it also did, in recent years, was burn through all its money. An ill timed merger in 2007 (hello 2008 financial crises) along with ridiculous compensation packages and mismanagement has not only put the firm on the brink of extinction but has also opened it up to criminal investigations. The firm was named after Thomas Dewey, who used to be a governor of New York and was twice the Republican nominee for president in 1944 and 1948. This firm history had a proud, fine heritage, and was a solid piece of the NYC legal firmament. But greed and stupidity by otherwise smart people has wrecked it. When Dewey goes away, it will dishonor the legacy of a great New Yorker and diminish a part of the NYC legal and business community. Ghosts will be dishonored by its future ghosts. And that is something that can never be replaced.
So I hope that we New Yorkers will preserve as much of our past as possible while, at the same time, smartly look to the future.
As we hurl towards Christmas Day with colored lights and wreaths displayed everywhere, perfumed trees for sale on every other block, Sidewalk Santas ringings bells for charity, we reminisce on the year coming to a close (what a bizarre year it's been!) and think about the year to come, that big blank slate ahead.
I don't know about you but, whenever a New Year begins, I think "I made it. Another year! Another year added to my headstone!" Such lovely thoughts I have.
But ghosts haunt us. Memories of people and places gone by. They're gone, in some cases long gone, but they imbue our thoughts and souls, never fully leaving. We remember, not always because we want to, but because we can never forget.
This is all a big fancy way of saying that you should really check out these two big articles that summon up the Ghosts of NYC Past.
One is about the relationship between the great pop artist Andy Warhol (who died 30 years ago this year) and his "Factory Girl" muse Edie Sedgwick. Was it love? Sort of. It was complicated. And sad. Very sad. One thing is sure: in these politically correct times, we shan't see their likes again.
The other is a 30-year retrospective on the great Tom Wolfe novel The Bonfire of the Vanities. Set in a nightmarish NYC, it's a tale and a document about another city in another time. Some things are still relevant (racial tensions) but the idea of this city being a boiling cauldron of rage seems totally dated. I shared my thoughts about this book ten (10!) years ago and it seems more distant than other.
NYC will always have these ghosts and, in my opinion, they are a crucial part of our identity and our future.
I've blogged over the years about the once mighty Tammany Hall, the political machine that ruled NYC for over 100 years.
Ostensibly just the Manhattan Democratic Committee (located in the aforementioned "hall"), Tammany ruled the city and state of New York with nearly unbreakable power from the early/mid-19th century well unto the 20th century (Tammany was just a local party committee the same way Tony Soprano was just a "waste management consultant"). But the Great Depression and reform politicians killed it, and the power of the political machine waned.
But not completely.
Today, no one machine rules the city or state. But local machines, local county committees in highly Democratic or Republican counties, still have enormous power in who gets elected to city and county councils as well as the state legislature. The machines still rack up the money, endorsements, and turn-out operations behind preferred candidates -- and usually win. They operate quietly, behind the scenes, and their power is enormous -- they decide who the voters get to vote for, and all of us live under the policy decisions those machine-backed candidates/elected officials make. People with that kind of power are the godfathers, the ghosts in the machine of our city and our lives.
For example, Marcos Crespo. Who's he? He's a State Assemblyman from the Bronx and heads the Bronx Democratic Committee. His power over the borough and the city is huge -- and most of us don't know who he is.
But we may be seeing the twilight of the machine. Ms. Ocasio-Cortez defeated the machine boss of Queens in the Democratic primary in June. The IDC State Sentors overwhelming lost their primaries in NYC to non-machine candidates. And now a reform city councilman is running for District Attorney. The machines can't stop these candidates or stop the voters from voting for non-machine backed candidates.
More and more, the political machine is becoming a quaint relic of another time and another NYC.
This blog, and others like it, love to reminisce about the old days in NYC, when the city was cheaper and funkier -- yes, it was much more dirty and dangerous but at least it was more accessible and more vibrant.
So often it feels, when you look at old movies, TV shows, and documentaries about NYC in decades past, that it's like looking through a fun-house mirror at a place that's both near and distance, familiar and foreign, so close and yet so far. And the feeling you get, or at least that I get, is that that NYC, that period in the city's life, whatever it is, whenever it was, is well and truly over -- buried if not forgotten.
But what if the past isn't fully over, what if the ghosts of decades-old NYC are still haunting us?
Such is the case of a former NYPD cop named Bill Phillips who, in the early 1970s, testified for the Knapp Commission and helped to expose massive corruption in the department. Unlike his contemporary Frank Serpico, a truly honest cop who blew the whistle about his dirty colleagues, Phillips was as dirty as any of them -- but, when he got busted, he agreed to tell the commission everything he knew in exchange for immunity. Lots of corrupt cops got in trouble from his testimony -- and they got their revenge.
According to this fascinating article, a year after Phillips testified, he was charged with a double homicide. He was accused of bribing a hooker and her pimp who weren't, allegedly, paying him their shakedown money. He was convicted and went to prison for decades. But he has maintained his innocence and the evidence it making it clear that he was intentionally framed by his fellow cops. It's a heartbreaking story of an institution meant to protect us but that, like most, is only interested in protecting its own.
To this day, more than 50 years since the murders and more than 50 years since Phillips went to jail, he is fighting to clear to his name (he was released years ago but his conviction stands). He's a very old man now but he's adamant about fighting for his innocence. Even today, half-a-century later, the NYPD is resisting coming clean about this, delaying and denying him justice. Phillips may get exonerated eventually or not but it's reminder that some of the old problems of old NYC haven't gone away -- and that the present NYPD is still very much like the past NYPD.
And it's a reminder that the past in NYC is never fully gone.
In the first year of this blog, I wrote about Robert Chambers -- the notorious "preppy murderer" who strangled a woman named Jennifer Levin to death one night in Central Park in 1986.
Before Lorena Bobbit, before OJ, before #MeToo, this was the big scandal that provoked the subject of violence towards women into the American conversation. The whole story was grotesque and sad. It was also an example of how men, especially handsome white men, who had committed horrific violence towards women (in this case, actual murder), got shockingly sympathetic treatment in the media and culture while the female victim became largely forgotten.
Chambers even claimed -- like so many predators do -- that he was the real victim in this case! He said that the slime petite Levin had actually tried to rape the massive, statuesque Chambers and that he was only acting in self-defence -- and some morons actually bought this BS. Chambers did some time, got out of jail, promptly became a drug dealer, and went back to prison. He's there now -- gone but not totally forgotten.
Now this case is the subject of an upcoming true-crime documentary -- revisiting 30+ year old scandals and stories seems to be all the rage these days. However, I'm curious to see how this case will be handled from a 2019 perspective -- and hopefully we'll learn less about Robert and more about Jennifer.
Talking about 1986, the final episode of The Deuce aired last night -- it ends in 1986 and then jumps ahead to 2019, showing in dramatic detail how Times Square and the city transformed in the 33-year interim but is still haunted by ghosts of the past. 1986 is a year I remember well -- I turned 10, debuted in The Nutcracker at City Ballet, went away to sleep away camp for the first time, visited England with my mom, and saw the Aerosmith/Run DMC "Walk This Way" video for the first time. I was blissfully naive about things like the Chambers chase at the time -- and wish I still was.
Over the weekend the family went to the New York Hall of Science to see the special exhibit Art of the Brick that's there until the end of January.
I've been to many an exhibit over the decades -- paintings, sculptures, installations, videos, etc. -- but never one where the medium of the work was exclusively done in LEGOs. But a former lawyer named Nathan Sawaya did just that, creating over 100 artworks completely out of the various colored pieces.
They really are mind-boggling and I urge everyone to go see this exhibit before it closes. Many of the artworks are three-dimensional recreations of existing artworks like "American Gothic" or "The Scream." Others are massive sculptures of dinosaurs or ghosts, bigger than life-sized standing objects that are nothing like I've ever seen before. What's so stunning about these works is the level of detail, clear precision, and obviously careful labor that went into their creation. It's a kind of craftsmanship I've never seen before and it's enjoyable for kids and grown up a like.
Being a New York City resident, being a denizen of this town, is such an identity unto itself that the debate over what makes someone a "real New Yorker" has and will continue to rage ad infinitum.
For me, however, you never feel more like a New Yorker then when you leave it. And you REALLY don't feel more like a New Yorker until you start living somewhere else.
I lived elsewhere for four years in college and I never identified more as a New Yorker than in those years where I was in exile from the city. And apparently this is a common phenomenon: many born-and-bred citizens of NYC who have moved elsewhere, who are "in exile" for reasons good and bad, have made it clear that they feel the same way.
Some famous exiles are people like Larry David, the brilliant comic-mind and co-creator of Seinfeld. If you watch him on Curb Your Enthusiam, you see the rich Brooklyn-native bumbling his way around Los Angeles, a New Yorker to his core. This reminds me, in a very different way, of what I wrote about the movie Heat, a great crime movie set in LA but starring two great New Yorkers (Pacino & De Niro) -- they never seemed more like New Yorkers to me than watching them in this movie where they are both in exile in a strange wild place, far from home.
It reminds me that no "real New Yorker" ever leaves NYC -- you take the city with you, its ghosts and memories exist within you, its roots to your identity gets stronger, and it makes you New Yorker wherever you go.
These photos are haunting -- images of NYC during the pandemic. They are both sad and encouraging -- sad because this crises has literally changed the face and look of the city but also encouraging because it shows that New Yorkers are taking it seriously and doing the right thing by "social distancing."
I never thought I'd see the city so barren, so empty, so drained of life. Streets with no cars or people, closed storefronts, plazas and open spaces vacant, a sprinkle of pedestrians here and there wearing facemasks -- a city of concrete and steel, haunted by ghosts, devoid of its great spirit.
There's nothing eerier than a big, empty, abandoned city. Recently I was reading C.S. Lewis's The Magician's Nephew (part of The Chronicles of Narnia) to my oldest daughter. There's a brilliant, chilling part of the book where two children suddenly find themselves transported into another world -- specifically, a once great city, now dead and crumbling, frozen in time. They walk through buildings and courtyards, deadly silent, before they happen upon an area with men and women, dressed like nobles, sitting in chairs, who have been turned into statues. Through dark magic one of the people, a woman, rises from the dead -- and all hell breaks loose. It's great storytelling and, as it turned out, deeply prophetic. But we are not a city of statues, not yet. We live within ourevels. NYC will rise again better than ever!
I do. Not literally, of course. I don't believe in white-clad spirits rushing around to and fro, haunting houses and terrorizing people. I don't believe our deceased ancestors spy on us from "the great beyond". I don't believe in anything mystical or spooky or weird. I'm not into any of that kind of stuff.
But I do believe that certain places can still capture the spirit of a person -- or people -- who inhabited them long after he or she or they have physically left it, especially after they have died. If you ever go to Rome and visit the Colosseum or the Forum or any of the great sites of Roman antiquity, it's impossible not to feel the eternal presence of Julius Caesar and the other great Romans who built it. (Rome is, after all, the eternal city). Go to Philadelphia and Constitution Hall -- it's impossible not to feel the lingering shadow of the Founder Father as they hammered out the Constitution.
You get the idea. When people make a profound impact on a place, the spirit of that impact endures on it, even after they have passed on.
Such is the case of Lou Reed and New York City. The self-proclaimed New York City man wrote extensively about his hometown, naming a whole album after it and penning numerous songs about this place: "Coney Island Baby", "Coney Island Steeplechase", "NYC Man", "Sally Can't Dance", "Rock'n'Roll", "Dirty Boulevard", "Walk on the Wild Side", and on and on. I don't think I can ever travel to 125th street, especially Lexington Avenue, without the lyric from "I'm Waiting for My Man":
This past weekend, as Lincoln Center, there was an all-day tribute to the music of Lou Reed. People performed his songs and read his lyrics. People kept his spirit alive -- not that they needed to since it never died.
There is a continuing series on WNYC's music show Soundcheck about long gone music hot spots in NYC called Vanished Venues. This series started in October of last year and so far they've done about eight installments with hopefully more to come.
Some of these venues you may have heard of, others you may not have, but all of them were places where past and future legends of music came to make music -- and history.
There was the Old Metropolitan Opera House on 39th Street where opera in America was born. There was the Palladium in Union Square where The Band, AC/DC and the Clash amongst others performed.
The Fillmore East featured the Allman Brothers Band and the Jefferson Airplane.
Max's Kansas City is where many great bands from the 1960s to the 1980s played and where the Velvet Underground performed several legendary shows.
And there was Danceteria on the lower west side where Devo and Phillip Glass amongst others used to perform -- and where young singer and Michigan transplant named Madonna got her start.
It's a really series that gives you a wonderful insight into the history of music in America and New York's past. Hopefully they'll do more installments -- I can't imagine how series about vanished venues in NYC can't include CBGBs.
Who knows? Maybe one day the Bowery Ballroom, Irving Plaza, the Hammerstein Ballroom or Terminal 5 will be all but a memory ...
These venues may have vanished but their ghosts live with us, and the music they produced and the cultural impact that they had are very much alive today.
The definition of something being "haunted" means it's been "frequented by a ghost." What's a ghost? An apparition, a nebulous image of something or someone that used to exist, used to live, appears to still exist but is in fact dead.
In some ways, every word that has ever been written is a ghost -- each word is an imprint of someone's mind, someone's thought at the time it was written. The words might have been written a long time ago, the thought long dissipated, the writer might long be dead, but their words still live, the thought they were recording at the time still provoke.
The written word haunts us all.
Think about it. The phrase "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" still gives me chills even though its author has been dead for nearly a century.
This idea of words being ghosts occurred to me recently when I read about a few perfect examples of their haunting power.
As I wrote last summer, Quentin Tarantino was preparing a movie about an underground 1970s movie critic that sounded intriguing. I called the post The Romance of the Underground Writer and I expounded on the idea of writers (much like myself) whose words are read by few people but are beloved by those who do read them. Sadly it appears now that Quentin has dropped this movie and won't make it so this underground writer will truly remain underground. This unmade movie, like the writer and his words that it was about, will remain forever a ghost.
Then there's a couple of Village Voice articles about music writers and their ghostly power.
Lester Bangs was a legendary rock critic who became nearly as famous as the singers and bands he reviewed. He was so influential and admired that Philip Seymour Hoffman played him in the 2000 movie Almost Famous. But even as brilliant as Lester was, he could get it wrong sometimes. In 1980, Lester wrote a long commentary about how the Rolling Stones 1978 album Some Girls wasn't that good and that, after almost two decades together, perhaps the Stones should break up.
Just to give you an idea of how wrong Lester was, Some Girls contains, amongst other songs, "Beast of Burden" and "Shattered", brilliant, classic songs. And, of course, 44 years after this article was written, the Stones are still together, selling out shows. Even though Lester Bangs has been dead for more than 40 years, these words from this review still haunt him, even if his overall reputation remains deservedly undiminished.
Another writer whose gone but whose words having staying power was and is Greg Tate. Another rock critic, he wrote about (mostly) African-American music and culture, and was one of the first critics to write about rap music seriously. He was so respected that he even became a professor at Columbia University.
One of my heroes is the great 13th century traveller and chronicler Marco Polo.
A native of Venice, a man of his city, he ventured far away from his hometown, with his father and uncle in 1271, into the vast rich world of Asia. He travelled to China, served in the court of the great Kublai Khan, worked as a representative for him in modern day India and Vietnam and other places, accumulated wealth and myriad experiences, and then returned to Venice in 1295.
Marco subsequently dictated his story to a writer named Rustichello and soon after published history's first bestseller, The Travels of Marco Polo. This book changed history -- Europeans learned about the mindblowing civilizations of the East, their huge cities, their sophistications in money and printing, and so much more. Eventually it inspired other Europeans to travel far and wide -- including Christopher Columbus 200 years later.
Yours truly, Mr NYC, has actually read this book, probably one of the few people alive who has.
But first and last, Marco was a Venetian, and for hundreds of years before and after Marco Polo's life, it was the NYC of its time -- an exciting city of islands where "things happened" and fortunes were made -- Venice was the original Crossroads of the World. This BBC article makes the case plainly:
"Venice at the time was the New York of the world," explained historian Pieralvise Zorzi, whose family traces its roots back to Polo's time and beyond. It was an openminded and multicultural metropolis, a vibrant centre for trade between the East and the West, where the only true religion was business – and the Polo family excelled at it.
Marco Polo died in January, 1324, approximately 700 years ago. But his legend and his city persists. Today there are celebrations in Venice commerating one of their favorite sons. But the Venice of his time no longer exists. As this other article states:
As with all great centers of wealth like London and New York today, Venice glowed even as it slid into political and economic senescence; its residual riches continued to finance art, architecture, music and, though evanescent, a sense of authority and grandeur. Still, at the very end, Venice was becoming little more than a souvenir … the ghosts of the city persist — in Shakespeare’s Othello and The Merchant of Venice, in Thomas Mann’s novella [Death in Venice], J.M.W. Turner’s paintings, in the canals and piazzas clogged with tourists, each looking for a personal Venice.
And so it is today in NYC -- we are a great city of wealth and excitement, people travel here far and wide to find their NYCs, but we risk sliding into being a souvenoir if we don't keep this a city where people can afford to live and work.
This city must preserve what's great about it -- and not become its own legend.
Marco Polo remains one of my heroes because he experienced a great life, loved his city, and shared it with the world. That is what this blog, in many ways, is all about.
Beating the rent is one of the fundamental characteristics of any New Yorker. Paying as little as possible for as much space as possible is built into the DNA of all the people who call this city home.
So how about living in a mansion for free?
Believe it or not, some people do it. There are a very, very lucky few people manage to land gigs as caretakers of historic homes all over the city. The basic gig: they get to live in these places rent free so long as they make sure the homes are properly maintained and sometimes give guided tours. Sure, they are paying rent in terms of labor (being a caretaker is a job) for which they don't get paid, but having a huge place to live in the densest city in the country ain't a bad deal.
Needless to say, as someone who loves NYC and history and would love to live in a big house rent free, yours truly is jealous.
Let's just hope that, for these caretakers, ghosts of the previous characters don't urge them to kill their families. Remember this dialogue from The Shining?
Jack: Mr. Grady, you were the caretaker here.Grady: I'm sorry to differ with you, sir, but you are the caretaker. You've always been the caretaker. I should know, sir, I've always been here. Did you know, Mr. Torrance, that your son is attempting to bring an outside party into this situation? Did you know that? ...Jack: It's his mother. She, uh … interferes.Grady: Perhaps … they need a good talking to, if you don't mind my saying so. Perhaps … a bit more. My girls, sir, they didn't care for the Overlook at first. One of them actually stole a pack of matches and tried to burn it down. But I corrected them, sir. And when my wife tried to prevent me from doing my duty, I … corrected her.
Awesome scene.
And talking about care taking and NYC real estate, some people are really taking care of their buildings roofs. Check out these photos, they're amazing.
Like many who lived through the twenty-teens, I was a huge Game of Thrones fan.
Set in a fictional world of seven kingdoms living tenuously under one ruler, the entire premise of the show was that a once great family, a once powerful dynasty (the Targaryens) that had united the kingdoms and ruled for 300 years, have been overthrown -- and the new rulers are still grappling with the problems left in its wake. While the various remaining would-be kings are battling it out for power, the last Targaryen left alive is prowling around distant lands, scheming to return.
The prequel show, House of the Dragon, flashes back to a time when the Targaryens were in power, fighting amongst themselves, their fall distant yet becoming more and more inevitable.
What's brilliant about each show, what draws so many people in, is that both shows are haunted. Both series have a shadow over them, an extra dimension of drama and meaning. In one we are haunted by the now-gone years of power; in the other, we see their power, knowing that it's going away.
The Targaryens are ghosts as much as people -- and they live forever in a kind of mythical world inside a mythical world.
In GOT, even though the Targaryens are almost completely gone, they haunt the show -- people keep talking about them and obsessing over their impact on the seven kingdoms (gone but not forgotten). They may no longer have literal power but they still have power over the minds and souls of the people. And in House, we can't help but watch with a sense of dread that this family, this dynasty, at the height of its power, no matter what's going on or what they're doing, is inevitably doomeed, destined for ignominy.
In short, the Targaryens are doomed but they are forever present in peoples' minds and still meddling, in one way or another, in the kingdoms' business -- even after their doom.
Doom seems to be on a lot of people's minds these days. Our democracy and our environment are in a precarious place, a downward slide. But doom is not final -- it is simply, in many respects, a new way of being, a new normal called the "undervelt."
The "undervelt": an undergroud or underworld where (if I can be gauche enough to quote myself), "defines itself in opposition to the above ground, the outside world. It is in constant friction, a perennial resistance. Like ... trash -- we want to forget it, we want it out of our lives, but it never goes away."
Woody Allen used to be one of America, and especially NYC's, most acclaimed filmmakers. For over fifty years, he made fifty movies, some much more successful than others, many getting nominated for and winning multiple Academy Awards (Woody himself won four). But he's been dogged by controversy about his personal life. In the USA and NYC, he's been "cancelled" -- actors won't work with him, financiers won't pay for his movies, and he can't (or barely can) get them distributed in this country. He's been making his last several movies in Europe but in America and NYC he's a pariah.
And yet ...
He's not gone. And even though his latest movie, Coupe de Chance, hasn't been released in NYC or elsewhere in America (at least not yet), apparently there are secret screenings of it around town that have become quite popular.
In short, Woody's career now exists in the "undervelt."
Woody is no longer a mighty, acclaimed filmmaker. He's fallen hard. But now he's a figure of rebellion, someone people want to ignore but can't -- a perfect denizen of the undervelt. And it shows that his impact and his importance to cinema is so profound that, even though everyone in respectable society says they hate him, they obviously still care enough about his work to go see it -- albeit in secret.
Woody's work is now like the last Targaryen, rattling around in exile but forever messing with the heads of its antagonists.
I know there are many who bemoan "cancel culture" (I've done so myself in the past). Reading about how the work of a decades-long, Oscar-winning auteur is now being consumed like Western media in North Korea or pre-Internet porn is sad, whatever you think about him.
However, I view this whole "cancel culture" thing in another perspective.
First, no filmmaker is guarenteed or promised massive distribution. Most movies never get seen, many directors get their movies dumped into barely enough theaters to cover the movie's catering bill. No director, not even a formerly big-time one like Woody, is promised a big audience. A big career is not a right -- it's a privilege, a privilege few get and most eventually lose, one way or another. I really don't feel sorry for him or any of these "cancelled" people.
Second, even if you become hated, even if you're "cancelled" or ignored, if you do good work, no matter under what conditions or in what environment, it will last. People can try to "cancel" it, suppress it, censor it, belittle it, ignore it, whatever -- but it doesn't matter. It stands firm like the rock of Gibralter. It leaves the haters in the dust. It cannot be erased or ignored. It lives. It thrives. It stands the test of time and, eventually, inevitably, leaves the haters in the dust. The work rides high, even if its creator does not.
Third, I know what it's like to labor in the shadows, to have your work ignored, to live in the undervelt. But I persist. Because my work has impact and, most importantly, exists. This blog has been read nearly a million times. It's never gotten any kind of big outside attention or attention from the media, but it gets readers -- and always will.
Thus my message from the undervelt -- don't worry, don't get crazy about "cancel culture". Just do the work. Do it well. No matter what happens to you, good or bad, whether you deserve it or not, your work will last. The impact of your work and your life will outlast everyone and everything else.
So get to work -- there's no time to lose. And, hey, I can tell you first hand, the undervelt ain't that bad.
Right now former NYC Mayor Giuliani is shredding whatever's left of his reputation by acting as Donald Trump's lawyer and apologist for treason. Each week the thrice-divorced so-called tough on crime mayor pops up on TV spouting some new outrageous lie like "Collusion is not a crime!" or whatever.
Rudy's gone from the hero of 9/11, America's Mayor, to the Disgrace of Donald Trump, America's joke. The whole reason Rudy's is doing this is, let's face it, because he's long out of power, long out of relevance, a ghost of the past desperately trying to stay in the spotlight.
But the darkness of the past can't stamp out the lightness of the future. Check out Eric Adams, the Brooklyn BP, who's going to run for mayor in 2021. He's Rudy's opposite in almost every way. He's a ghost of sorts, a potential future that our city might slide into. And he couldn't be more different than the past if he tried.
