Farewell Law & Order

Okay, Mr NYC is about to throw down, getting all East Coast-West Coast for ya'all.

Literally. But I'll get to that in a moment.

After twenty years, that venerable NYC institution, the TV show Law & Order has been canceled. Seems impossible. It's been on the air forever. When this show premiered, David Dinkins was mayor, the first President Bush was in the White House, the Internet didn't exist, and Barack Obama was still in law school. If you were born when this show premiered, you'd be in college now. But "to everything there is a season" and now Law & Order's twentieth season will be its last. This means the show is now tied with Gunsmoke as the longest running TV show of all time.

Wow. In a show-biz landscape that has changed many times in the last twenty years, that's about as spectacular a run as any show can expect to have. Only The Phantom of the Opera and The Simpsons have done better.

There are many reasons why L&O is DOA but the main reason, as usual in television, is ratings. For the last several years, the show's ratings have been very poor and it was getting tough to justify its continued economic existence. Granted this show and its spin offs have generated millions of dollars for NBC, particularly in re-runs (and re-runs of re-runs of re-runs) but the cost-benefit of new episodes had become prohibitive. So off the air it goes.

There are many conflicting stories about the show's demise. Some say it could have been saved, others that it was long, long past its expiration date. What's for certain, however, is that L&O's cancellation is yet another hit to an already lousy economy, since the show provided work for thousands of technicians, caterers, writers, administrators, and, of course, struggling actors. Now that spigot has been turned off. Sad.

But L&O will live on -- sorta. Law & Order: Criminal Intent and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit will continue. And apparently NBC is planning a new series called Law & Order: Los Angeles.

Ouch.

This is where NBC gets gangsta. WHY? WHY? WHY? Why are they creating an LA version of this show? Does TV really need this? L&O is a New York show, L&O is New York. What made the show great was its real NYC grittiness, it was filmed on the streets and in the apartments of real New Yorkers, it has the city in its veins, in its heart, in its soul. Every frame of the past twenty seasons screamed NYC. And now there gonna transpose that to ... LA?

It won't work. It can't work. I hope it fails.

Count this as yet another example of Los Angeles getting greedy and outright stealing - yes, STEALING -- something great from NYC and trying to make its own. First, in the 1950s, it was the Dodgers. This classic Brooklyn team was uprooted and taken to LA by greedy managers and that prick Robert Moses' machinations. Then, in the early 1970s, it was The Tonight Show, which ditched 30 Rock for "beautiful downtown Burbank" (yuck). And now it's Law & Order ... The show itself is its own most tragic victim.

Yes, if you can make it here then ... LA will try to steal you.

We gave them a great baseball team, the greatest talk show in history, and now a classic crime drama. And what did LA give us? The "Real Housewives" -- ugh. New York has been a creative and financial pipeline to LA for years, LA is basically NYC's bratty younger brother. Schnooks.

So farewell Law & Order. You did New York proud. Our city won't quite be the same without you. You really will be missed (well, not really, it'll be in re-runs until the fall of man but you get the gist). Goodbye.

The Wire - Season Two Titles (Tom Waits)

Like many Johnny Come Lately's to the HBO series The Wire, I've been catching up on it on DVD. And the rumors are true: it really is one of the greatest TV shows ever made. It's easily the greatest TV show about a city -- ever.

That city is Baltimore. It presents the whole complex tableau of cops, criminals, bureaucrats, politicians, lawyers, business people, union workers, journalists -- you name it 0- that make 21st century American cities whir. It also gets at why so many cities are not only crime ridden (drugs, greed, broken families, etc.) but just generally dysfunctional: the people in power benefit from the status quo and those who want to change it are usually shut down (brutally). Careerism and money too often get in the way of doing the right thing. Virtue is punished and venality rewarded. Yes, it's bleak comment on American urban life and policy -- but that doesn't mean it's not fun to watch. Despite being socially conscious, The Wire is massively entertaining and funny. I've never been more riveted by a series.

Most of all, The Wire shows how "law and order" is not a black and white business (racially or morally), how people aren't all good or all bad, how circumstances so often force us to make choices we don't want to make or shouldn't have to make, how the line between right and wrong, ethical and unethical, legal and illegal, is so often very blurry.

I could go on and on about every aspect of the show (the plots, the characters, the performances, the writing) but I couldn't do it justice. It's all perfect. So if you've never seen The Wire, get on Netflix ASAP and order the first season.

Now what does The Wire have to do with NYC? Nothing, sadly. There isn't a show half as good, even a quarter as good, heck even a tenth as good about NYC as "The Wire" is about Baltimore.

What are the big shows about New York? Empty cop procedurals like Law and Order (and it's clones) and CSI: New York or silly shows like Dirty Sexy Money and Lipstick Jungle. The closest NYC ever came to having a "great show" about it was NYPD Blue which managed to start sucking after a couple seasons and was never anywhere near as good as The Wire. Maybe NYC is just too big and too complex for a TV series to it just justice, but I'll hold out hope that maybe one day such a show will come along. Until then, any good New Yorker should watch, enjoy, and celebrate The Wire.

Greatest NYC

New York magazine has an interesting cover feature this week called The Greatest New York Ever. It is trying to determine what were the greatest times, and what were the greatest cultural artifacts to come out of this city, in the last 100+ years? Plus, who was the greatest mayor? There are articles, transcripts of round table discussions, and even charts are graphs all trying to determine what was "great" about NYC in the last century.

This seems like a daunting, impossible task but its worth checking out. 

Basically they break things down into various categories (greatest movie, book, TV show, mayor, building, athlete, etc.) and consider various cases for who and what should be considered New York's "greatest." The criteria used to determine this is slippery and totally subjective so, naturally, no one or nothing should be conclusively called "the greatest." But since this is fun, I will take a slab at considering who and what I consider NYC's greatest. Some of my choices might seem boringly obvious but, at the same time, my reasoning it hard to argue with:

Greatest Mayor: LaGuardia. The pint-sized politician guided this city through America's darkest days -- the Great Depression and World War II -- and NYC came out of it on the other end as the world's greatest city. This was no easy task and, considering the obstacles he faced, his achievement was amazing. No one has topped him since.

Greatest Musical: West Side Story. Besides being a collaboration of 20th century musical theater's greatest talents (Jerome Robbins, Stephen Sondheim, Leonard Bernstein), this 1950s update of Romeo and Juliet set in the gritty streets of our city still has resonance today. 

Greatest TV: All in the Family and Law and Order. All in the Family (no, not Seinfeld) is the most realistic sitcom about New Yorkers in any borough and no show set in this city made you feel it in your bones more than Law and Order.     

Greatest Athlete: Babe Ruth. 'Nuff said. 

Greatest Building: The Empire State Building. Iconic to its core. built in the 1930s during the Depression, a sign of enduring stregnth at a moment of despair, this great structure encapsulates the romance and grandeur of NYC like no other. 

Greatest Novel: The Great Gatsby. The greatest American novel of the last 100 years perfectly captures the restless spirit and sometimes tragic reality of the American dream -- and New York is a vital, almost starring character in the plot.

Greatest Film: Manhattan. No it's not the greatest movie ever (but it's up there) but no other movie makes such unabashed love to the city -- and no other movie captures the New York personality more perfectly.  

Greatest Song: "New York State of Mind" by Billy Joel. Combining rhythm and blues and soul, this soaring song about leaving and coming back to NYC puts the city in your soul like no other. 

Greatest Artwork: Anything by Andy Warhol. He defined what it meant to be an artist in this city and his work (like the Campbell Soup cans) still resonates and influences to this day. 

Greatest Year: 2011. The present is always the best time to be in NYC.

Classic Mr NYC

Last year when the TV show Law and Order was cancelled, I penned a post bemoaning its demise and assessing its legacy. I was particularly ticked off since it was being replaced by Law and Order: Los Angeles. Now it appears that L&O has crossed the pond to the Mother Country. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, presenting Law and Order: UK! 

Really. It's being shown on BBC America. And it's really creepy. It's just like the original L&O except everyone and everything is British. And the judges and lawyers wear wigs!

Bly me!

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."

Memo from NYC

President Obama's been in office over a year now. In my humble opinion, he's doing a great job. I know this flies in the face of the media, the Republicans, and the political intelligentsia's consensus of him, in which he's doing a horrible job. Never mind that he still has a 50%+ approval rating -- according to these brilliant folks, everyone in America hates him. He's a huge "disappointment"; "What happened to 'hope and change'?" And on and on and on. Because these insiders hate him so much, in their line of thinking, so does the rest of the country.

They are America, and so can we.

But no question about it, President Obama's had a rough year. Healthcare reform has stalled due to the Democrats dithering and financial reform is facing vicious resistance from -- who else? -- the financial industry! (Never mind that they caused this economic catastrophe in the first place -- it's just so unacceptable to them that the government dare try to prevent such a thing from ever happening again. Dah' noive!). And even though the bailout and stimulus plans prevented this country from slipping into an even deeper economic crises, the economy is still in very rough shape. Like most people I found the bailout and stimulus plans -- plus the resulting deficits -- distasteful. However, I viewed them as the economic equivalent of chemotherapy: as awful as the treatment is, leaving you feeling even sicker afterwards, it's quite preferable to the alternative, namely (economic) death. So thanks to President Obama, Congress, and the Fed, America is now recovering from a nasty recession instead of wallowing in another great depression.

But Presidents don't get credit for preventing depressions, only booming economies, and one of those is a long way off. Also, in tough times, it becomes uber-fashionable to bash the government both for not doing enough to solve the problems and for creating the problems in the first place. Never mind, in this case, that it was an out of control private sector that caused this mess and it's the government that's mopping it up. We can only vote against the President and the Congress -- not against Wall Street or the real estate industry -- so the political deathmatch continues.

Still, President Obama admirably labors on. And not only in economic matters.

He deserves credit for banning torture, re-establishing the rule of law, and improving the nation's image around the world. Yet these are intangibles -- it doesn't give any one a job. And none of this is easy and all of it is politically treacherous.

Cleaning up the slime of the Bush presidency and years of Republican misrule has ignited heated opposition from -- guess who? -- the Republicans! This is understandable. After all, his election was a total rebuke to their party, their governance, and their worldview. And he has kept his word since taking office, trying to pull us out of their wreckage. Needless to say, the Republicans are offended by this and, more importantly, very scared that if he's successful he'll do great damage to their future electoral prospects. So they're currently doing everything they can to ensure he fails, in order to make themselves look more politically palatable -- specifically, this November.

The scary thing is, it might work.

The Republicans are, in the words Bill Kristol, one of their intellectual henchmen, going for "the kill." And the Democrats are predictably acting like lambs at the slaughter.

Predictably. After first, I didn't understand why the administration and Democrats in Congress were so caught off guard by the Republicans exasperating, mean spirited, destructive opposition. Did they really think the Republicans would behave any differently out of power than in? Haven't Democrats learned anything about how Republicans operate after all these years?

Then I realized something. Something fundamental about the differences in the DNA of both parties.

Republicans look at Democrats and think, "They're bad people. Whatever we do to defeat them -- break the law, violate longstanding norms, engage in violence, use hate speech, shred the very Constitution we supposedly love -- is fine because it helps put us in power. "

Democrats look at Republicans and think "They're not bad people. They're good people who just disagree with us. And we should debate them civilly, work with them when we can, and respect the political process."

And so this nation's existential nightmare continues.

It's not so much a partisan divide as much as an attitudinal divide that's wrecking our country. The Republicans want to destroy the Democrats while the Democrats want to work with the Republicans. One side is engaging in battle while the other side wants to ... debate ... In short, there's a political war in this country and one side doesn't realize it.

This is not a choice the Democrats have right now. Or ever. They have to fight! I hope they realize this and sometimes I think they do but more often than not I see they don't. They have to wake up and start fighting the Republicans like their lives depend upon it because lives do depend on it -- their political lives as well as the physical lives of their constituents. This is a political war and there are no rules, there are no norms, the gloves are off, and all tactics (except illegal ones) are acceptable. And until Democrats start looking at Republicans as bad people -- which is what they are -- and develop a war-like, take-no-prisoners, damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead mentality -- in short, until they start hitting the Republicans harder than the Republicans hit them -- then the Democrats will keep losing.

And the people that the "party of the people" are supposed to represent will continue to suffer for years to come.

Boycott Shakespeare in the Park!

I'm a blogger, not a journalist, but this past week I decided to do a little shoe-leather reporting to see if I, a regular working stiff, could get tickets to Shakespeare in the Park. And the results were disheartening. Consider this the first Mr NYC Investigative Report.

First, some background.

Shakespeare in the Park was the brainchild of Joseph Papp, the legendary founder of the Public Theater here in NYC. The child of immigrants, Papp grew up in dire poverty in Brooklyn and always believed that theater in general, and Shakespeare in particular, could enrich and change the lives of anyone exposed to it. He wanted to democratize theater, bring it the masses, bring it to people who couldn't otherwise afford to go. His vision for the Public Theater was of a place that would discover new playwrights and dramatic voices -- and also be affordable for average people.

In 1957, he started the Shakespeare in the Park festival where the best actors in the world would perform the Bard's plays in the open air at the Delecorte Theater -- and it would be totally free. This meant a welder from Brooklyn, a cab driver from Queens, a garbage collector from Staten Island, a store owner from Manhattan, or a housewife from the Bronx could take their kids to see a Shakespearean play and give them a cultural experience their economic circumstances would otherwise deny them. This was the heart of Papp's vision for Shakespeare in the Park, his driving dream.

Sadly, Papp's vision has fallen into complete disarray. Today, Shakespeare in the Park has become the exact opposite of what he intended -- an elitist, snobby, and expensive experience. It needs to change.

Last year it was announced that Al Pacino would appear in "The Merchant of Venice" at Shakespeare in the Park. I excitedly blogged about going to see it. I had tried and failed the year before to see "Twelfth Night" with Anne Hathaway so I was determined to see this production this year. But first I had to get tickets.

Now there are a few ways to get them: 1) get free tickets at the Delacorte the day of the show; 2) enter an online lottery at midnight on the day of the show; 3) make a $350 donation to the Public Theater.

Option 2 is obviously the least time-consuming, most cost-effective way to get tickets but you're more likely to get into Harvard Medical School with a full scholarship than actually win it. Option 3 is the most direct way but only rich people can afford $350 on theater tickets.

Too whit: I was recently listening to Howard Stern who said on air that some entertainment hot shot he knew in LA was flying in to see the show and had invited Howard to go with him. The fact that some out-of-town hotshot can "donate" $350 for tickets and take fellow hot shots with them is not, I think, what Papp envisioned for Shakespeare in the Park. And every ticket purchased through these "donations" is one less free ticket available to the public.

So, you might say, why not just go to the Delacorte and get the free tickets that are available? Aye, there's the rub.

See, only about half of the tickets for any given show are available at the Delacorte theater. The free tickets that are available are distributed at 1 PM the day of the show (the performance is at 8 PM). And this is where it gets crazy. People literally begin to line up an entire day in advance! The entrance to the Delacorte is at 81st street and Central Park West. Central Park doesn't open until 6 AM. So people literally sleep overnight outside the park. And the line starting at 81st street goes on ... and on ... and on ... and on ... and on ... and on ... and on ... and on ... you get the idea.

This past week I showed up at Central Park West and 81st street around 5 AM. I had gotten up at 3:30 AM and shlepted all the way from Queens to get there at that time. (I would have gotten there earlier but the trains and public transportation run slowly in the middle of the night.) I showed up and had to walk to 89th street to get to the end of the line. As I walked down the line I noticed that most of the people camped out were young and white, looking mostly like students, tourists, or the unemployed. Some of the people were clearly homeless but most of them were the aforementioned. (Just so you know I wasn't wrong about my observations: the people right ahead of me in the line were tourists from North Carolina. The people right behind me were unemployed educators. So there.)

At 6 AM the park gates opened and the line was herded into the park. Under the supervision of the line enforcers, we all walked down a path where the line stretched back ... and back ... and back ... and back ... Many of the people behind me (and there were lots who arrived after me) were told they had no shot at getting seats and were told to leave. People in my part of the line were told we had a 50/50 chance of getting tickets. We waited ... and waited ... and waited ... for hour after hour.

Finally, at 12:45 PM, we were told to stand up and get ready for the distribution. The line inched forward slowly. Then, at about 1:20, people in my part of the line were told that no more tickets were available (each person can get two free tickets, hence it's a crap shoot). Needless to say, I was pissed.

And that's when I had the revelation: if you are a regular New Yorker then you are basically denied the chance of seeing the very theater that was created just for you.

Now don't get me wrong: I'm all for the homeless, students, tourists, and the unemployed getting to see Shakespeare in the Park. But it is impossible for ordinary, working New Yorkers, people with families and responsibilities, people who don't have the time or the freedom to camp out overnight, to get tickets and see the plays. Also, people from the outer boroughs like yours truly have a tough time getting into Manhattan at that hour to line up. And I think it's really sleazy that you can actually pay for tickets but that the price is so high that middle class and poor folks -- the very people Joseph Papp wanted to see these shows in the first place -- can't afford them. And why are rich people from out of town able to get tickets at all?

This ticket-distribution system is totally out-of-whack. Joseph Papp's vision is being discarded and the people he envisioned Shakespeare in the Park for are being shafted. Yes, I recognize that students and the homeless and unemployed aren't exactly elitist money grubbers but I hope you get my point: you shouldn't have to be either really rich, really young, or utterly destitute to see the plays.

And the thing that also galls me, and that's as big a part of the problem as anything, is that Shakespeare in the Park has become like a nightclub: just getting in and gawking at famous people is all it seems to be about now. Al Pacino! Anne Hathaway! That guy from Law and Order! That guy from Modern Family! Shakespeare in the Park is no longer about Shakespeare or good drama or the unique experience of watching it in the beauty of Central Park. Instead, it's become an elitist experience, it's become about celebrity and exclusivity -- not theater that can transform lives.

Joseph Papp would be rolling in his grave if he saw what his great creation has become.

If Shakespeare in the Park is really about bringing theater to the masses, then it would stop performing exclusively at the Delecorte and instead present the free plays all over the city -- Prospect Park, Flushing Meadows, Van Cortland Park, etc. -- in barebones productions with real theater actors and not vacationing movie and TV stars. This would be truly be theater for the people, the kind of people that Joseph Papp came from.

How many people would actully show up to see these less glamorous producitons? I don't know. It might expose the fact that maybe people aren't quite as interested in actually seeing Shakespeare as they are in celebrities. But at least it would return Shakespeare in the Park to its original vision and would be appreciated by the people more interested in seeing Shakespeare and good drama than famous people.

So for now I'm boycotting Shakespeare in the Park until the Public Theater changes the ticket distribution system, makes it more sane, and ends these phony "donations". I urge all Mr NYC readers to do the same. Tell your friends! Perhaps we can start a movement to return Shakespeare in the Park to the vision and spirit that Joseph Papp had for it more than half a century ago. We shall see.

"Law & Order" Returns!

Eleven-years ago the TV show Law & Order was cancelled by NBC. It was a big surprise, especially since it had run for 20-years and had become a television and NYC institution. Of course the Law & Order "franchise" still went strong with spinoffs like L&O: SVU, L&O: Criminal Intent, and a new one called L&O: Organized Crime. But the mothership had sunk, the "one that started it all" was gone.

At the time I blogged a passionate screed about its cancellation, and how odd it was that there were all these spinoff shows while the original show had been killed (a murder mystery that an episode of Law & Order might have even solved).

Well, never mind. After eleven years, the OG Law & Order is back! The show is being officially revived or renewed -- whatever -- for a 21st season. When it will premiere, and who will be in it, remains to be seen (rumors abound that some of the old cast members might return but nothing is confirmed yet).

I'm generally not a big fan of all these reboots since they almost always fail to capture whatever magic existsed in the original versions. But L&O was and is different -- it was like an old fashioned newspaper serial or a folk song -- it was never young and never got old. The cast kept changing, each episode was a stand-alone story, each week it basically renewed itself, and it's something that can probably go on forever. 

Let's hope it does -- for the sake of television and NYC.

Interview: Paul Krassner, Legendary Satirist and Founder of "The Realist"

If your life encompassed most of the 20th and all of the 21st centuries (so far) – and you knew and worked with people like Ken Kesey, Lenny Bruce, Kurt Vonnegut, Groucho Marx, John Lennon and Yoko Ono (amongst others) – you might think you’ve lived an interesting, even exciting life. 

But what if you changed the culture? What if you changed history? Then you’ve had more than an exciting life – you’re a flat-out legend.

And that moniker certainly applies to Paul Krassner.

A native of NYC, Paul was a child music prodigy who, as a young man in 1958, switched to journalism and founded the The Realist, the first truly great satirical magazine. A generational cousin to Mad magazine (where Paul used to work), The Realist went even further in mocking the hypocrisies of American social mores. Extreme and unflinching, it published things like the "Disneyland Memorial Orgy" poster and "The Parts That Were Left Out of the Kennedy Book", a vicious mocking of the Warren Report. Long before provocateurs like Frank Zappa and Howard Stern were shocking the culture, long before Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show were showing America its hypocrisies, Paul Krassner and The Realist were leading the charge and showing them how it's done.

Paul’s work, however, went far beyond satire. Thanks to Paul, almost three years before Roe v. Wade, Paul helped changed the New York state laws against abortion, ensuring a woman of her full reproductive rights. He was also a founding member of the Yippees and the Merry Pranksters which would have alone sealed his legendary fate.

These days, truth is stranger than fiction, and satire seems to be reality. That’s why it was so great for Paul Krassner to answer a few of Mr NYC’s questions about his life, his career, NYC, and the crazy culture that he exposed and shaped.

You were a child musical prodigy, playing the violin on stage at Carnegie Hall in 1939 at the age of six. Tell us a little bit about your upbringing in NYC, and how you made the leap from music to satirical journalism? 

Actually, the birth of such morphing occurred during that event in the middle of the “Vivaldi Concerto in A Minor.” I had been performing by rote until my left leg started itching. Balancing on that foot, I scratched the leg with my right foot without missing a note. I woke up to the sound of the audience laughing, and I opened my eyes. I could play the violin with technique, but I had a passion for making people laugh. It was to become the path of my life, starting in Astoria. I went to Long Island High School where I played on the baseball team, elected president of the Student Court — my first official act was to subpoena the new principal — and I wrote, produced, directed and acted in the senior play. In City College, I performed stand-up comedy, using my violin as a prop. I hadn’t touched it for several years, but now I took it out of the closet. 

The satirical magazine you founded in 1958, The Realist, was far ahead of its time. It was brash, rude, irreverent, and held nothing that was precious. Did you view the magazine and yourself as free speech crusaders, as speaking truth to power -- or were you just trying to be funny and outrageous?

I had been writing freelance scripts for Mad magazine, and the editor assigned their artists, though he rejected a few of my submissions because they were “too adult.” I complained to the publisher, Bill Gaines. He told me that since Mad’s circulation had reached over a million, he intended to keep aiming the magazine at teenagers. I said, “I guess you don’t want to change horses in midstream.” He replied, “Not when the horse has a rocket up its ass.” That was the precise moment I decided to publish a satirical magazine for grown-ups. There were none in America. I had no role models, and no competition, just an open field mined with taboos waiting to be exploded.

We seem to be living in surreal times that go beyond satire. What do you feel the legacy of The Realist is and what is the place of satire in the 21st century?

The more control by government, religion, propaganda, the more truth in satire is needed. My credo of The Realist was to communicate without compromise. The slogan was “Irreverence is our only sacred cow.” There were no labels of journalism or satire in order not to alert the readers from discerning their own pleasure.

In an intellectual property class I took several years ago, we discussed the infamous 1967 "Disneyland Memorial Orgy" poster (showing Disney characters in explicit sexual situations) that the Disney company then sued over and suppressed on intellectual property grounds. Can you tell us a little more about the background of this poster, this historic case, and your thoughts on "intellectual property?" Is it just another form of censorship and corporate greed?

When Walt Disney died, the libido of his characters were freed. The Disney attorneys considered suing me but didn’t because they knew that parody wasn’t against the law. I assigned Wally Wood, a Mad magazine artist, to draw a black-and-white two-page spread in The Realist, and then I published it as a poster. In 2005, an anonymous Disney employee painted a larger poster in authentic colors. You can see it on my website, paulkrassner.com.

You knew or were friends with a number of legendary cultural figures, among them Lenny Bruce, Kurt Vonnegut, and John Lennon. Telling us about them briefly is impossible but can you, briefly, tell us how you got to know each of these guys and how they impacted your life?

Steve Allen was the first subscriber to The Realist. He sent several gift subscriptions to friends including Lenny Bruce, who then sent several gift subs to his friends. Malthusian approach that peaked with 100,000 circulation in 1967. Playboy hired me to edit Lenny’s autobiography. He advised me to drop the violin prop. He wrote some things for The Realist. So did Kurt Vonnegut, who also wrote an introduction to one of my books. Realist readers John Lennon and Yoko Ono visited me. Lennon was absentmindedly holding on to a joint. I asked, “Do the British use the expression, to bogart a joint, or is that only an American term — you know, derived from the image of a cigarette dangling from Humphrey Bogart’s lip?” He replied, "In England, if you remind somebody else to pass a joint, you lose your own turn."

Are there any other famous or interesting people you knew who you'd like to tell us about?

Groucho Marx. On a visit to L.A. in 1968, I was invited to a comedic pro-acid movie, “Skidoo,” in production by director Otto Preminger, who had been turned on by Tim Leary. Groucho played a Mafia chief named God. Having read The Realist, he asked if I could get some that’s pure LSD, and also would I accompany on his first such trip. And we did. At one point he told me about one of his favorite contestants on the show: “He was an elderly gentleman with white hair, but quite a chipper fellow. I asked him what he did to retain his sunny disposition. 'Well, I'll tell you, Groucho,’ he says, 'every morning I get up and I make a choice to be happy that day.'” You were always a crusader for personal freedoms and the joys of pot smoking. Today, gay marriage is legal and recreational marijuana is becoming legal everywhere. Do you feel that the culture is finally catching up to you -- and do you feel you deserve credit for making the culture more tolerant? I didn’t think in my lifetime that legalized-pot, same-sex marriage, African-American president – they wouldn’t happen, yet they did – although the Trump administration tries to make a U-turn back in my lifetime to those reactionary taboos. My favorite bizarre claim was Attorney Jeff Sessions’ utterance that “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.” He also stated about the Ku Klux Klan, “I thought those guys were okay until I learned they smoked pot.” Yikes!

This is a blog about New York City. What was the NYC of your childhood like and how do you feel about the city today?

Well, I loved living in New York, walking around growing up and never learning to drive, being innumerable times on WBAI — a guest of three different programs hosted by Bob Fass, Steve Post, and Larry Josephson — but in 1971, after my first marriage broke up, I moved to San Francisco invited by Stewart Brand to co-edit with Ken Kesey, “The Last Supplement to the Whole Earth Catalog.” I continued publishing The Realist and got my own talk show on ABC-FM. I would visit New York two or three times a year to perform at the Village Gate, see old Yippie friends, writers, artists, my parents, ex-wife and our daughter. The latter stayed with me each summer, eventually all the time.

Tell us something about Paul Krassner that we might not know?

In the ‘60s when abortion was illegal, I published an anonymous interview with Dr. Robert Spencer, a humane abortionist, promising that I would go to prison sooner than reveal his identity. I became an underground abortion referral service. When Dr. Spencer retired, he gave me another such physician to refer. In 1969 Bronx DA (later judge) Burton Roberts told me that his staff found that abortionist’s financial records showing all the money I received but he offered to grant me immunity from prosecution if I cooperated with the grand jury. He extended his and as a gesture of trust. “That’s not true,” I said, refusing to shake hands. If I had ever accepted any money, I'd have no way of knowing that he was bluffing. The DA was angry, but he finally had to let me go.

Attorney Gerald Lefcourt (later president of the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers) filed a suit on my behalf, challenging the constitutionality of the abortion law. He pointed out that the DA had no power to investigate the violation of an unconstitutional law, and he couldn't force me to testify. In 1970, I became the only plaintiff in the first lawsuit to declare the abortion laws unconstitutional in New York State “Later, various women’s groups joined the suit,” Lefcourt recalls, “and ultimately the New York legislature repealed the criminal sanctions against abortion, prior to the Supreme Court decision in Roe vs. Wade.” I had morphed from a satirist to an activist. 

Finally, how do you want your life and work to be remembered?

Laughter from the satire I felt urged to share on Earth.

Thanks Paul! You’ll be remembered for that and lots more!

"When They See Us" on Netflix

If you remember the spring of 1989 in NYC, you remember the Central Park jogger case -- a young white woman who was raped and beaten into a coma, and the young black men accused of this crime called a "wilding."

I remember the case well -- the feverish media coverage, the trolling racism masking itself as law and order-minded public outrage, and how these young men were proclaimed guilty even before trial, turned into animals and not human beings, and how public opinion and the courts of law drove them into prison and infamy.

One problem: it was all a lie. 

They were totally innocent -- in 2002 they were released after DNA testing and another prisoner's confession exonerated them. But then they faced another kind of prison -- difficulties readjusting to society and the city government, then led by Mayor Bloomberg, refusing a financial settlement with these men. That didn't happen until 2014 when Mayor De Blasio finally gave them some kind of justice.

The Central Park Jogger case is coming to Netflix tomorrow in a new miniseries called When They See Us. It's a story of this case and of NYC at a moment in time when it was still Fear City and not the Oz we live in today.

It's also an indictment of our culture -- of then and now -- and how failed reporting, corrupt law enforcement, pure racism, and public hysteria led to this tragedy. (It was also a tragedy for the victim, who didn't get proper justice).

We should all watch this and learn.

Interview: Barbara Nitke, Legendary NYC Photographer

Great photographers don’t just take pictures – they capture the soul of their subjects, their pictures summon up emotions and thoughts, their lenses pierce into the fourth dimension. Photography is magic – it captures a physical moment in time but leaves a timeless, spiritual impression.

Barbara Nitke is one such magician, a New York-based fine arts photographer whose work concentrates on the sensual, the beautiful, the kinky, the romantic, and the unusual. She has photographed many human bodies in their most intimate, transitory of moments and has found, in her pictures, their deeper and perennial beauties. In addition to her amazing photographic projects, Barbara has worked as an on-set photographer for NYC TV shows and movies, and, most intriguingly, for the NYC adult movie and BDSM scenes. She has also taught at the School of Visual Arts and is a much accomplished, widely admired artist whose work is constantly in demand. She even took on the Attorney General of the United States in court over "indecency" -- and won!

Barbara was kind enough to answer some of Mr NYC’s questions about her love of photography and her career, and she shares her memories of being an on-set photographer during the last days of the NYC adult film world of the 1980s. She also gives some great advice for aspiring photographers, what she’s working on now, and why NYC will always be a great place to be a photographer.

Tell us a little bit about your background and how you became a photographer.

I had originally wanted to be a writer, but found that I don't like the process of it. Staring at a blank page, figuring out what I want to say, struggling to find the right words - all that. I was in my late twenties when I first picked up a camera and started taking pictures for fun. I loved it immediately. And I realized I could explore all the fascinating little nuances of people much better through pictures than I could ever do with words. So photography became my medium.

You worked as an on-set photographer during the last days of the Golden Age of Adult Film. How did you get involved in that business?

My ex-husband produced a famous porn movie called Devil in Miss Jones in the 1970’s. When he made the sequel in 1982, I had just taken up photography and asked for the on-set stills job. I was such a beginner that I’m sure no one else would have hired me. Fortunately the director, Henri Pachard, liked my work and started hiring me for all of his shoots. That was a great break because Henri was highly regarded in the industry and worked all the time. When I was working on my second movie, Nasty Girls, I saw the opportunity to do an art series of behind-the-scenes photos of that world. It totally ignited my passion, and that was what decided me to become a fine art photographer.

What was the adult business in NYC like back then? What made it a "golden age" – and why did it end?

It’s hard to imagine now, but back then we shot real 35mm film on big movie cameras. Home video cassette players had barely been invented. There were no DVD’s, no home computers, no Internet. People went out to old-fashioned downtown movie theaters and actually stood in line to watch sex movies. A lot of craftsmanship went into making the movies. There were scripts, script supervisors, lighting technicians, sound technicians, hair and makeup people and even wardrobe supervisors.

Looking back, that was pretty amazing! We made porn movies the same way that arty, independent features were made. All of that would be unheard of in today’s world, because now anybody with a GoPro or even an iPhone can make a porn movie. But at the time, that was all normal to us. We only realized it was a Golden Age later, when we looked back to how the industry had changed after cheap video productions took over.

What is the art of being a good adult photographer – and what was it like shooting people having sex right in front of you -- exciting, boring, weird, or something else?

Actually, I don’t think I ever was a good adult photographer. I’m a great observer of people, and I’ve been on a decades long mission to humanize what might be called the dark side of the sex world. But more on that in a later question. I always had a lot of mixed emotions working on the porn sets. The days were very long - often 12-16 hours - and at the end of a day I had experienced so many emotions that it would seem like a year had gone by. There were long boring stretches, followed by excruciating moments when I wanted to reach out and save someone from - I’m not sure what. From being exploited? From their drug habit? From their personal demons? The deeper I looked into that issue, the harder it was to define.

And then an hour later, someone like Miss Sharon K. Mitchell would sashay across the set, gloriously naked and unequivocally proud. Which would confuse me even more.

You memorialized a lot of your pictures from that era in your book American Ecstasy. Tell us about this book and why you wanted to publish it?

American Ecstasy is my personal memoir, in pictures and words, of the twelve years I spent working as a still photographer on porn sets in New York in the 1980’s. It was important to me to publish the work because of my conviction that porn stars, and all sex workers, should be valued and treated with respect. Our culture creates the need for them, and then trashes them for fulfilling that need. I think that’s wrong, especially having known so many of them, both men and women. They deserve a lot better from us.

I see that the introduction of your book was by the legendary art critic and "philosophical aesthete" Arthur C. Danto (who lived in the same building I grew up in!). Was he an influence on your work?

Wow, I can’t believe you lived in the same building! Arthur was not an influence on my work, but he should have been. He was a witness in a lawsuit a filed against Attorney General John Ashcroft back in 2001. I was incredibly honored when he agreed to write the introduction to American Ecstasy. A great man, and a great mind!

And talking about aesthetics, adult work is often accused as being "male-centric"? As a female photographer in that business, is this a fair accusation – and how was your work different?

I guess adult work is male-centric in that the intended customers are men. At least that was true back in the 80’s and 90’s when I worked in the industry. But I don’t think that’s because there’s any conspiracy against women or female sexuality - it’s just harder to figure out what visually turns women on, while making them feel safe at the same time. Women are a much more difficult audience to target. If someone could figure out how to make porn movies that turn women on, they’d probably make a fortune.

As a female working in the business, I realized from the beginning that my view was different from what was considered good porn photography. There was some cross over - some porn moments that I really did think were hot - but overall I thought the scenes were obviously fake and sophomoric. (Although I did get a big kick out of the really campy ones.)

I was much more interested in capturing the complex emotions both the male and female stars were experiencing than I was in making them look like heroic sex machines. I found that it was pretty easy to identify just the right angle that would work as a good porn shot. Once I had the shots the producers needed to sell their movie, I considered myself free to roam around and get the moments that I wanted for my art series. For example, I loved it when somebody would yawn and look at their watch during a lens change in the middle of an orgy scene.

How has the art of adult photography changed or evolved in the digital age?

I honestly haven’t kept up with pornography in the digital age. From the little I know, it’s a lot more niche oriented and features much more extreme acts. What we thought was really badass back in my day, would probably be considered quaint today.

You photographed some of the most intriguing NYC stars of that time like Ron Jeremy, Vanessa Del Rio, Jerry Butler, Siobhan Hunter, and others. What are your memories of them and who were some of your favorite stars to shoot?

I loved them all! I always thought Ron Jeremy was a lot more complex and a lot smarter that his public persona, but that’s true of a lot of public people. Vanessa was really, really a STAR. She was probably the last true big time porn star. What people probably don’t know is that she has always been extremely down to earth, and has a wonderful sense of humor about herself and her stardom. Truly refreshing. Jerry Butler was horribly conflicted about his choice to be a porn star, to the point that it was sometimes painful to watch him on the set. And Siobhan Hunter was a medical school student, and is now a practicing doctor. But it would take days to tell all the stories. Of course, there are some really good ones in my American Ecstasy book.

You were also the on-set photographer for the acclaimed film Three Daughters directed by the legendary Candida Royale. What are your memories of that movie and Candida?

Three Daughters was a milestone movie in the industry, and it was a great attempt by Candida to use porn in a very positive way. For one thing, she wanted to educate the viewers on better ways to have sex. She was a pioneer in exploring female sexuality from a porn perspective. My memories of working on the show, however, were conflicted.

Siobhan Hunter was cast in the lead role, and the role brought up a lot of bad memories from her childhood. Because we were friends, I was aware of the personal pain she was going through during the shoot. But in the end, I believe Three Daughters might have served as a catharsis for Siobhan, and I’ve always hoped it turned out as a positive experience for her. In mainstream movies, it feels like there are less and less "big stars".

It seems like in the Golden Age there used to be some big stars too (come to mind). Like the big movie star, is the "adult star" in decline today?

Yes absolutely! I’m not sure why, but that does seem to be the case.

Have you seen "The Deuce"? If so, any thoughts?

I could probably come up with little things to quibble about, but overall I LOVE The Deuce. Love Maggie Gyllenhaal, and have loved her all the way back to The Secretary. She is brilliant and utterly fearless!

You also used to photograph the BDSM scene in NYC. How did that differ from your earlier work -- and what did you learn about BDSM that "square" people don't understand?

What was really interesting for me was coming from the been-around-the-block, sex worker world of porn into the real BDSM scene, where people are inhabiting their own sex lives. They aren’t acting, they’re really falling in love and expressing their love for each other. It was so different to see, and I knew right away that I wanted to understand what they were feeling and express that in photographs. They taught me that everyone expresses love differently, but it’s all love, no matter what it looks like from the outside.

Do you feel like society has gotten less "prudish" -- and do you feel like your work contributed to that (or is it just the Internet's fault)?

Well, of course I would like to give myself lots of credit for changing society! But I think there’s really just a natural progression of people becoming more sophisticated as they are exposed to more imagery and different ways of thinking. Overall, I think that’s a good thing.

You also worked on mainstream movies and TV shows in NYC like Law & Order, The Producers and, a personal favorite, Slaves of New York. What are your memories of working on those and other mainstream projects?

When I worked in porn, the crews were made up of young people fresh out of film schools like NYU. It was the first jobs they could get, and they were all excited and eager to prove themselves. There was a great spirit of enthusiasm and pride in craft back then, which I hope still exists today in the porn world.

Slaves of New York was a lot of fun! And so was Law & Order and all the other shows that I currently work on. The work conditions are much better - union rules and all - but I do sometimes miss that youthful exuberance of the New York porn world back in the day!

You've also taught photography, including at the School of Visual Arts. What do you try to teach your students about photography and what are the best lessons an aspiring photographer can learn?

Here’s my biggest tip - take a lot of pictures. And I also think that boring as it is, you can’t avoid learning the nuts and bolts of f.stops and shutter speeds, lighting ratios, ISO and white balance, and all the other technical things that beginning photographers sometimes try to skip. Digital cameras make taking reasonably good pictures very easy, but to really be a photographer you have to know the craft. With your camera set in manual exposure mode!

As a professional woman, what do you think of the #MeToo movement? Considering your work, you must have an opinion!

It’s so hard to have an opinion on the #MeToo movement. Sometimes I think things have gone way too far, when anyone can be publicly called out for a bad date or a passing remark. And then I think of women being drugged and raped by guys who are powerful enough to get away with it, and I’m very glad for the brave women who have come forward.

Tell us a little bit about what you're working on today and your hopes for the future.

I moved up to Harlem four years ago and built a run down motel room set in my living room. I’m creating a series of work featuring all the different people who show up to stay in the room. We make up a character and a little story, and the people act it out. It’s been an amazing experience so far. Most of my characters are actually crew people who I’ve worked with for many years on the reality show, Project Runway. 

Finally, what makes you love NYC -- and is this still a sexy city worth photographing?

How can I count the ways that I love New York? It’s such a great city! I love all the tremendous energy, diversity and raw humanity that you can reach out and touch 24 hours a day. It really is the city that never sleeps, and always comes up with something new to inspire me.

Thanks Barbara!