The sleaze of former Mayor Eric Adams, cleaning up the trail of slime he left behind from his four years in City Hall, is apparently something that Mayor Z's administration is doing, to varied success.
In his last days in office, Adams moved around a lot of his cronies in his administration to obscure city jobs so that he could continue to have a toehold in city government. The new mayor is trying to find and fire as many of them as possible but it's not always that clear cut. Just a reminder of the disaster we got rid of as mayor, and how lucky we are to have someone like Mayor Z in charge now.
But don't worry, Adams is fine -- he just became a citizen of Albania because, ya' know, that's not weird.
In the 1997 classic movie Wag the Dog the president's advisors create a fake war with Albania to help distract from a scandal and win an election. In this case, 30 years later, a very real scandalous mayor is actually going to Albanian and becoming a citizen! Wag the Mayor I guess. Dear God.
As NYC prepares for a big snowstorm this weekend, our new mayor is on the case!
This is the first big test of his mayoralty and no doubt the tabloids and the Republicans want him to fail -- so it's good to see Mayor Z is preparing, communicating, and ready to go as this storm hits.
A month in, it's interesting to see what a quiet, competent, nose-to-the-grindstone leader he's been. It's a HUUUUGE relief from the chaos of Eric Adams.
And talking about our former, unmissed mayor, the great NYC journalist Erroll Louis has written an interesting article about how the full scale of corruption in the Adams administration is still unknown. Even though he was only in office for four years, he number of people who worked for Adams that got indicted, the number of sleazy deals and activities, is breathtaking. It remind me of Nixon -- even years, decades after he resigned in disgrace, documents and tapes kept coming out revealing he was even worse that we knew. I'm sure the same is true of Eric Adams.
As the bizarre spectacle of Eric Adams' time as mayor comes to its ignominous end, The Daily Show did us a big favor of putting together several of his most memorable moments.
Goodbye Eric Adams, we hardly knew yet -- and hope we'll never hear from or see you ever again.
I didn't get to do this four years ago because life events intervened but here, tonight, marks the return of the Mr NYC Election Night Live Blog.
By the way, this is the highest turnout NYC election since 1969 -- over 2 millions voters turned out. The eyes of the world are on NYC tonight -- the future is made here.
9:03 PM - Polls closed. The memory sticks are being loaded. Let the games begin!
9:09 PM - Zohran has 51%, Cuomo has 39%, Sliwa at 8%.
9:16 PM - Democrats leading in Comptroller & Public Advocate elections and Borough President elections -- except Staten Island. Same with City Council.
9:24 PM - Zohran is a tiny bit under 50% now with 51% of the vote in -- 8% over Cuomo. Nothing interesting down-ballot.
9:32 PM - Now with 60% of the vote in, nothing's changed percentage-wise.
9:36 PM - CNN is calling the Mayor's race of Zohran -- but still more votes to count.
9:47 PM - It's official -- Zohran will be the next Mayor of NYC!
The first Muslim elected mayor, that's wild -- and that's what's great about this city and America!
Is it too early to start calling him Mayor Z?
10:01 PM - Zohran is closing in on getting almost 1 million votes. That's crazy. Koch, Giuliani, Bloomberg, De Blasio, and Adams got nowhere near that many.
For the first time since -- when? -- a NYC mayor has quit his reelection campaign.
Mayor Eric Adams has said that he won't continue his quixotic bid for a second term. Drenched in scandal, incompetence and unpopularity, he's bowing to the obvious and envitable.
Seriously, it makes no difference. Not only was he not going to win but his remaining support is so infinitesimal that it's not going to improve any other candidates support at all. Also, his name will still be on the ballot -- so people can still vote for him if they want. Oy vey.
Like his entire mayoralty, Adams dropping out is a sad joke. He's destined to be a forgotten failed mayor like Abe Beame or Vincent Impelliteri -- someone who was given the chance to make the city better and failed completely.
Last year I asked Chat GPT to describe this blog. You can read it here.
And now I've asked Grok and Google AI to describe this blog and got the following:
Google AI:
The blog mrnyc.blogspot.com is a "fun, upbeat, and thoughtful blog about this great city". It aims to capture the "soul of the world's greatest city" and is described as "part of the NYC underground".
The blog appears to cover various aspects of New York City life and culture. The author, sometimes identified as [REDACTED], maintains an active presence on platforms like X (formerly Twitter) under the handle @MrNYCBlog and Facebook. The blog has been running for almost two decades and has reached a considerable milestone, having been clicked on over a million times.
Grok:
The website https://mrnyc.blogspot.com/ is a blog titled "Mr NYC," dedicated to capturing the spirit and culture of New York City. It describes itself as "Blogging the soul of the world's greatest city. Part of the NYC underground. Feel free to comment!" The blog covers a wide range of topics related to NYC, including its history, culture, media, politics, and notable figures, often with a personal and opinionated perspective.
Key points about the blog based on its content:
Focus: It explores various aspects of NYC life, from apartment living and late-night television to local politics and cultural events. Posts often reflect on the city's unique character, its underground scene, and its historical significance.
Content Style: The blog combines personal anecdotes, cultural commentary, and critiques of current events. For example, it discusses the significance of NYC in late-night TV history, the impact of apartment living, and political developments like the NYC mayoral race.
Recent Posts: As of July 31, 2025, recent posts include discussions about Awkwafina and Marc Maron talking about Queens, the history of NYC apartment living, the decline of late-night TV in NYC, and political commentary on the NYC mayoral election.
Social Media Presence: The blog has associated social media accounts, as mentioned in a post encouraging readers to explore its "multi-tentacled" digital presence.
Tone and Perspective: The author often takes a critical stance, particularly towards political and economic issues, as seen in posts criticizing corporate influence in politics and media, and expressing frustration with figures like Mayor Eric Adams and former Governor Cuomo.
The blog is hosted on Blogspot and has been active for years, with posts referencing earlier writings (e.g., a 2018 post about a Stephen Colbert show taping). It positions itself as an independent voice in the NYC cultural landscape, often highlighting lesser-known or nostalgic aspects of the city.
Now that Zohran has won the NYC Democratic mayoral primary, former Governor Cuomo and current Mayor Adams (as well as Republican gadfly Curtis Sliwa) are still running in the general election. Cuomo is running as an independent because he's a sore loser, Adams is running as an independent because he has no reason not to, and Sliwa is running because he's a publicity hound.
It's egos run amok! And that's what makes it funny.
But what makes it sad is that the vast majority of New Yorkers do not a want any of these guys as mayor and yet they're still running because a bunch of billionaires and cryto-bros are spending a fortune, several fortunes actually, trying to stop Zohran. It's a perfect example of how the will of the people, majority of the rule, is being thwarted by the oligiarchy.
New Yorkers want an honest, smart, hardworking guy who cares about their issues and doesn't putting his or her ego first. That's what Zohran is and that's what his campaign is about. But because a bunch of super-rich pricks don't want him the rest of us must suffer the tomfoolery of hacks, losers, and crooks.
More and more, everyday, I understand why communism happened.
There's nother weirder than listening to two upper class British dudes talk about NYC politics. Last year they talked about the legal predicament of Mayor Adams (that was interesting/weird) but this conversation, starting at 9:24, is really interesting -- they're impressed by Zohran and his superior political skills.
I hope they interview him sometime -- truly evidence that NYC is the Global City.
That's, yeah, A LOT -- and basically unheard of in a multi-candidate, competitive primary.
Now its onto November where Zohran will be running against the insane Curtis Sliva (the GOP candidate) and the corrupt failed Mayor Adams who's running as an independent. It's gonna be a rough, nasty, ugly campaign but, fingers crossed, hopefully Zohran triumphs and Eric can go back to New Jersey and Curtis can go home to his cats.
Now Zohran hasn't actually won the mayoralty -- he still has to win the general election in November. It looks like there's going be a cluttered and super nasty general election campaign. He'll be up against the Republican candidate, the always crazy Curtis Sliwa, and Mayor Adams himself, running as an independent.
Expect super racist, fear-mongering propaganda to flood NYC for the next four to five months -- the NY Post will go nuts on him, and he'll get little actual support from the Democratic party.
And you should also watch this interview from CNBC who gives you an insight into his enemies minds. This prick totally contradicts himself when he says that city hasn't recovered since COVID but there's also not enough housing to match the city's job creation. Dig the logic: "The city is in crises, people are leaving! And too many people want to live here!" The truth: NYC has a bigger population than ever before, 8.4 million. Between 2010 and 2020 over 600,000 people moved in -- that's the equivalent of the entirety of Miami moving here. The DEMAND to live here is greater than the SUPPLY to house everyone -- that's capitalism, something I thought CNBC understood. And usually demands increases, and therefore prices go up, because it's a highly desirable product.
People move in and out of NYC all the time for work, family issues, life changes, many reasons, that's been true since the time the Dutch ruled this town. This focus on how rich people feel about this town is gross -- without a vibrant middle class that can afford to live here we'll turn into a dead city. I don't know if Zohran can actually achieve his goals but the voters clearly want someone who'll try.
I strongly advise watching these two videos from the Bulwark, one that analysis Zohran's victory and the other with an interview with Zohran himself. He's a natural politician, a super talent, one of a kind.
Something I also learned: he's another Morningside Heights kid! Zohran, George Carlin, Fiona Apple and moi are all residents of those strange streets around Columbia University. Very cool.
Also, apparently Zohran did very well in Waterfront NYC -- Queens (Astoria, LIC) and Brooklyn (Williamsburg, Gowanus) that's now being renamed the Commie Coast. Cute.
Flying home from Paris one of the in-flight movie options was, naturally, Julie & Julia from 2009.
This comedy is a dual bio-pic about the famed cookbook author and OG TV cooking show host Julia Child, and a woman named Julie Powell who cooked all 524 recipes from Child's 1961 tome Mastering the Art of French. The movie flashes back and forth between the late 1940s/early 1950s (when Julia Child and her diplomat husband, Paul, were living in France and she was discovering her love of French food and the genesis of her book), and 2002 when a young, newly married woman named Julie Powell, living in NYC, decides to cook all of the book's recipes.
It's a movie about love and inspiration -- the love of food, of culture, of significant others, of the better and more refined things in life, and how these things are always challenged by the harsh realities of the world. In the Julia Child/French/mid-20th century part, Julia and her husband's life and careers are challenged by the Cold War and encroaching McCarthyism, and the Julie/NYC/early 21-st century part is challenged by the shortness of money and the dark shadow of 9/11. The movie's point is doing what you love, being with who you love, enjoying what you love is possible -- but it's a lot of hard work and sometimes we face big forces beyond our control.
Julia Child is played by Meryl Streep in one of her typical dazzling performances. Her husband is the always great, always lovable Stanley Tucci. Julie Powell is played by the perky Amy Adams and Chris Messina is her clueless but loving husband. The movie does a good job of interweaving the two stories and showing us the luscious world of post-war France and the gritty reality of early aughts NYC. And if you love food, especially French food, you'll get really hungry after watching this.
Julie & Julia was the last movie written and directed by Nora Ephron, three years before her death in 2012. She was the brilliant writer of When Harry Met Sally ..., Sleepless in Seattle, You've Got Mail, and other movies. This movie was her swan song -- and a really good one at that -- if not necessarily up there with her classics. It's worth seeing, especially if you love Paris, NYC, food, and everything that makes life worth living.
Whoever said "May you live in interesting times" was an asshole.
Actually, it was/is an old Japanese proverb and was in fact meant as a curse. The flip side to that is another Japanese proverb that states "May you have a boring life" and that was meant as a blessing.
As I get older, I see the wisdom in both sayings.
Here in NYC, we're living in the "interesting times" of Mayor Eric Adams -- the criminal who runs the city. Only now he's technically not a criminal any more -- the corruption charges against him were dropped -- with prejudice, meaning they can't be brought against him again -- and now Adams says he's running for re-election as an Independent.
I hope to heck he loses but who knows? These days the vox populi est imbecile.
Then again, in the 19th century there was Fernando Wood, in the 20th century there was Jimmy Walker -- so now, in the 21st century, we have Eric Adams.
Still, the whole thing is rotten and weird and depressing. New York City deserves so much better than this.
New York State Governor Hochul has the power to remove NYC Mayor Eric Adams from office.
Will she do it?
Adams is deeply compromised because the Trump "Justice" Department is ordering the dropping of Adams' corruption charges but the actual Federal prosecutors on the case are refusing to do so. Resignation is following resignation -- a rolling Constitutional Crises.
This is an NYC version of the 1973 Watergate "Saturday Night Massacre."
Growing up in decades right after Watergate, I assumed that something like this could never happen again. That America would never elect a bad, corrupt president again. But we did -- twice -- and it's even worse than fifty-something years ago.
I love history. Even though this is a blog about NYC, I'm obsessed with late 19th and early 20th century European history, the decades where the various rulers of the great empires in Europe made terrible decisions that led to war and revolution -- and shaped the world we live in today.
And in so many ways the lessons that can be learned from that time and place apply to our country and NYC today.
"It was hard to be Tsar." So begins the British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore's book about the Romanov dynasty that ruled Russia for 300 years. Ruling an empire, a country, a region or a city is hard work. Well, it's hard if you take the job seriously, if you strive to do it well, if you try not to make mistakes, and if you truly care about the welfare and progress of your people and your land.
But if you don't take it seriously, or handle it badly, catastrophe ensues.
In the years leading up to World War I, three of Europe's biggest empires were ruled by people who were unfit to rule. In short, they were really bad at their jobs. They were incompetent, arrogant, delusional, prone to magical thinking, made huge mistakes, and it all ended in horror.
In Germany there was Kaiser Wilhelm II. An erratic, arrogant, narcissistic man-child, he engaged in building up a navy that Germany didn't need, just to piss of England (and his English relatives), tried to play different countries against each other, fired the best Chancellor that Germany ever had (Bismark), and finally plunged Germany into war in 1914 that forced it to fight on two fronts. Eventually Germany lost the war and Wilhelm fled the country -- leaving his country in ruin, eventually leading to the rise of the Nazis.
In Austria-Hungary, you had Emperor Franz Joseph, an amiable but unimaginable ruler who refused to give the 11 nationalities of his empire any real political sovereignty or respect. He was also vulnerable to demands of his army chiefs who yearned for war, any war, and eventually capitulated to their demands to attack Serbia -- that triggered World War I. Franz Joseph died in 1916, was succeeded by his very young nephew, and eventually Austria-Hungary lost the war, the empire broke up, and Franz Joseph's dynasty, the Habsburgs, lost power after 600 years.
And finally, in Russia, you had Tsar Nicholas II, the most staggeringly dumb man ever to rule a vast empire, who believed he'd be a great ruler because God wanted him to, who refused to make reforms until violence ensued, started wars (like the one with Japan) that Russia list in 1905, oversaw the massacre of Bloody Sunday, and finally plunged Russia into war in 1914 with an army that was totally unprepared to fight. This led to the fall of the Romanovs and the rise of Communism.
Disastrous rulers all -- and some of the people who worked for them were even more insane (like advisors who wanted wars or encouraged repression or ... Rasputin). It was rule by the unserious, rule by the mendacious, and it had very serious and cruel conseqences.
We see this in America today.
Today we are being ruled by reckless and unserious people who are dismantling our government, draining our country's power, condoning criminality and violence and repression, and destroying our nation's reputation. It's a horror show (unless you hate America, in which case it's a triumph).
Closer to home we have Mayor Eric Adams, perhaps the worst and most unpopular mayor this city has ever had, a criminal and a narcissist, a disaster. And he sure doesn't take his job seriously -- Adams has even said that his job, being mayor of the country's biggest city, isn't hard! It's like when Donald Trump told Bob Woodward that he didn't think that the COVID crises was a leadership challenge!
Well, if you don't really care about your job or your city or your country or your people or the challenges facing them ... then leadership is easy. Then it's easy to be the Tsar, or the president, or the mayor, or the whatever. Like school. If you don't care about doing your homework or taking tests or getting good grades, then school is a cinch! But if you do care, well, it's a little harder.
If someone tells you that something that is intrinsically hard is in fact easy, then that is not a serious person -- and that person should never be in a position of power or responsibility.
Last year I did a blog post about the kingdoms of NYC and I included links to a British mini-series from 1974 called Fall of Eagles. In 13 brilliant episodes it dramatizes the 70 years leading up to World War I and the fall of the German, Russian, and Austro-Hungarian empires in 1918. I can't praise this show enough -- it's massively entertaining and also shows how the warped personalities and priorities of these rulers and their minions created hell.
I strongly recommend you watch it and you can find all the episodes for free on YouTube here. The best episodes, in my opinion are: Episode 4 about the 1889 Mayerling tragedy; Episode 5 about the Nicholas II and Lenin (played by a very young Patrick Stewart); Episode 9 about the annexation of Bosnia by Austria-Hungary; and Episode 10 about the start of World War I.
These episodes most of all demonstrate the failures of people unfit to lead or who operate through delusion and lies. And it makes you look at the people leading America and NYC today and realize that what happened in the past sadly is happening again today here at home.
As the legal inferno involving Mayor Eric Adams continues to burn, some NYC scribes are rememebering other mayors from times gone by that also got into trouble.
The two mayors mostly commonly remembered for getting into big trouble are Jimmy Walker and William O'Dwyer, both of whom resigned in 1932 and 1950, respectively, and then fled the country. Also there was Fernando Wood, the 19th mayor who was vastly more corrupt than either Adams, Walker or O'Dywer -- and never got into trouble at all.
I recently came upon a few articles (here, hereand here) about these men, comparing their stories to the predicament that Eric Adams finds himself in (sadly two of these articles are behind a paywall).
But Mr NYC, yours truly, was blogging about these naughty mayors long ago, before any of this meshugas (read about them here and here) -- and remember, Mr NYC is always ahead of his time.
I'm not going to blog about Eric Adams anymore until something definitive happens -- namely, that he ceases to be mayor.
So this will be my last post on the subject until then.
That said, you shoud read this article by the political journalist & three-time Mr NYC-interviewee Ross Barkan about "The Fall of Eric Adams" -- and how we got here. As always, he summarizes the whole thing well.
As always, Mr NYC pointed out the oddness and possible criminality of Mayor Adams well before most of the media -- once again, Mr NYC being ahead of his time.
Things haven't been going too great for NYC Mayor Eric Adams, in case you hadn't heard. In fact, the stench of his travails has wafted across the pond.
On the great Rest is Politics podcast from the UK, former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair sidekick Allistair Campbell and former UK Member of Parliament Rory Stewart discuss, and take listener questions about, political issues all over the world. Both men are brilliant, knowledgeable, and great broadcasters, and the podcast has become a worldwide hit.
On their latest episode they talk about the US-UK Special Relationship and they also talk Turkey -- the country that is. But for about five minutes, starting around the six minute mark, they talk about Eric Adams and the wierdness that is not only NYC politics but also all American urban politics.
It's a short segment but certainly worth a listen. When classy Brits start talking about what a weirdo you are, it can't be pleasant.
UPDATE - OCTOBER 3, 2024: These classy Brits keep talking Eric Adams -- see below, starting at minute 4:07.
So the FBI just raided the homes of the First Deputy Mayor, the Schools Chancellor (on the first day of school no less!), the Deputy Mayor for Public Safety, and, oh, the police commissioner!
This is, uh, not good. But, if you've been following this blog and its musings on Hizzoner, it's not exactly a surprise. At this rate, Adams heading to be another Jimmy Walker or William O'Dwyer.
We live in interestinging times ... and it's so boring!
