Interview: Claire Lower, Senior Food Editor @ Lifehacker & Host of the"You Like That?" Podcast on Good Food, Old Porn, and Portland vs. NYC

Food and porn -- we Americans consume lots of both. These days you can easily get food delivered to your house or dialup billions of porn videos on your computer. But just because food and porn are so easily accessible doesn't mean that writing and commenting about them intelligently is easy. It's a real skill requiring lots of hard (pun intended) work.

Someone who does that hard work and writes and comments quite smartly on both food and porn is Claire Lower -- the Senior Food Editor at Lifehacker.com and co-host of the "You Like That?" podcast about the Golden Age of Porn. In both her food writing and on her podcast, Claire makes observations and provides insights that are funny, smart, sweet, and -- like food and porn -- simply irresistible.

Claire was kind enough of answers some of Mr NYC's questions about her writing and podcast. A resident of Portland, OR she also answers some of my questions about how her city -- like mine -- has changed over the years, and how both seem to be at risk of becoming less sexy and fun. 

Tell us a little bit about your background and your work as a food editor. What’s the best part about being a food editor? Do you get to eat all the time?

I’ve been writing about food for almost a decade, and a full-time staffer at Lifehacker for 6 years, where I’m currently the senior food editor. I do get to eat all the time, but it’s not always what I want to eat in that moment. It’s nice when I get to develop an egg recipe in the morning, but this morning I ended up wrapping a pickle spear in fried cheese. Still good, just a little weird at 10 a.m.

I do love my job though. I’m able to talk about food in what I hope is a very accessible and fun way, and help people eat better.

What inspired you to create the “You Like That Podcast?”

I actually made a slideshow of Golden Age films for Lifehacker, and then I realized I actually had a lot to say, and a lot of love for these movies. I just think they’re so interesting from a historical perspective, and I’ve always been a slut for the 70s.

What’s your favorite thing about doing the podcast and the most challenging?

I really love finding interesting historical tidbits and anecdotes to share with Catie [her co-host] and our listeners, and I really like watching porn with a more critical eye. It can be challenging to watch THAT much porn, however. I watched Taboo five times to prepare for our most recent episode, because I wanted to listen to all of the commentaries.

What’s your favorite era for “Golden Age” adult films – the 1970s, 1980s, or another?

Late 70s and early 80s are great, but I really like the early Golden Age, right after loops kinda started to fade out and make way for capital-F films.

What makes a “good” adult film?

Jamie Gillis. Just kidding. I think a good adult film doesn’t have to be super serious, but I like a bit of plot, well shot sex scenes, and sets and locations. Give me something to look at! I don’t care is the story is goofy, I want to believe these two people have a reason for having sex with each other. Doesn’t even have to be a good reason.

Has there really ever been an adult movie where the story or the performances were compelling beyond the sex?

Oh, absolutely. Immediately, Mascara by Henri Pachard comes to mind. The sex in it is really interesting and inclusive, but the story about the relationship between the two women is so well told and acted. Both Lisa De Leeuw and Lee Carrol give these incredibly nuanced performances that are heartbreaking in moments, but they’re also very funny. It’s also got a great score, and a consistent mood.

Who are some of your favorite adult films and performers, past or present, and why?

Oh my gosh, so many. Jamie Gillis, R. Bola, Lisa DeLeew, Kay Parker, Herschel Savage (who I’m actually pretty good friends with), Richard Pacheco, Seka, Veronica Hart, Christy Canyon, Ginger Lynn, Andrea True (who also put out some great disco and rock records), Mike Horner. I’m sure I’m forgetting someone and going to kick myself later. A lot of my favorites were either actors who started doing porn for easy money, particularly Gillis, Bola, and Savage. I do think Gillis was the ultimate male porn star. A true pervert and artist. I always feel like Gillis is subtly mocking the audience, which I like. But it’s also not that deep. Some people are just fun to watch fuck.

Who would be your dream guest on the podcast?

We’ve actually got a lot of my dream guests lined up to be on here. We already released our Christy Canyon episode, we got to interview Lisa Cintrice about Mascara, and we’re currently editing our Howie Gordon/Richard Pacheco interview. Herschel Savage and Veronica Hart will probably be on at some point. I guess a dream guest would be Gillis, because that is obviously impossible and could only take place in a dream.

Are you a fan of the movie Boogie Nights?

I am, haha. I love PTA, and I love the 70s, and I love that pool party scene with that Three Dog Night song, even though Herschel told me that’s all a fairytale. They didn’t really all hang out in cliques and throw pool parties.

I do like the limo scene, which is based on Gillis’ On the Prowl Series. Tom Byron has told a great story about how Jamie wasn’t thrilled with it; he thought they took this beautiful thing he made and made it sad and tawdry, whereas On the Prowl is tawdry, but still kind of light and fun. But I think you have to be a real pervert to see the difference in the two.

What would you say is the biggest difference between “Golden Age” porn and today’s Internet stuff?

Lisa Cintrice said something in her interview that really stuck with me. She said “it’s all loops again.” And she’s right. There’s barely any plot, no real production value, and I just think digital looks so much worse than film. I know there is good porn being made, and I’m glad that women seem to have more control over their money, but the porn film is very hard to find.

Moving on: how long have you lived and Portland and what do you love about the city?

I’ve been here eight or nine years. I actually really like the weather. I like my house. I like that there are record stores everywhere and a good food and beverage scene. I also hunt and fish so it’s nice to have all that stuff nearby.

Are you a fan of the show “Portlandia” and was that an accurate or out-of-date parody of the city?

It’s barely a parody. I liked it before I moved here, but it’s hard to watch if you’ve lived here a while. You can still find “death to Fred and Carrie” graffiti in dive bar bathrooms. How has the city changed in the time you’ve lived there? Yeah, it’s just more sterile. More condos and little shops with Notorious RBG mugs.

I’m a New Yorker and it feels like NYC has become a less sexy, less wild, city than it used to be, thanks to gentrification. Portland strikes me as another sexy, wild city that has undergone a lot of change. Is it still wild and sexy or is it getting more boring?

We still have more strip clubs per capita than any other city, and several sex clubs of varying repute. They did shut down Hawthorne Theater though, and that was like the last seedy porn theater. I never got to go and I regret it.

Do you have a favorite adult film set in NYC – or Portland? Mascara is my favorite movie set in NYC. It’s so moody and pretty. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen a porn set in Portland. (I never go to Hump or anything like that.)

Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?

I really think it’s important to watch these old fuck films. We forget that porn was illegal and dangerous to make, and I really do consider those early actors and directors to be free speech heroes. They really are stars to me.

Thanks Claire! You can follow her on Twitter at @Clairelizzie. 

Graffiti Gangs of New York

Over the years, I've blogged about graffiti, the unofficial artwork of NYC (including the second post I ever wrote on this blog). 

In the past graffiti was viewed as a public menace, a defacement, a blight on the city. Of course, part of that hatred towards graffiti was towards the artists who created it (namely, people of color). 

Oh, how times have changed.

Today graffiti is high art. Graffiti is now being extolled and celebrated all over NYC, and some graffiti artists who, in the past, were viewed as criminals are now finding big careers in the art world.

These two articles (here and here) gives you some insight about the evolution of graffiti art and artists in NYC. It use to be a gang activity. Graffiti gangs roamed the city, making their mark, blatantly annoucing their existance to people who didn't want to know about it. Now these same people do. The evolution of graffiti from the streets to the galleries is an example of how creativity -- and the future -- is formed literally from the ground up, the grassrootes (or, in this case, the concrete roots), and how the future is all around us all the time. 

Dope-Ass Graffiti Revisited

The second post I ever did on this blog -- way back in March of 2007 -- was about how I heard a young tourist on the subway talk about her desire to see "dope-ass graffiti." (I hope, for her sake, she did.) And I concluded this post by asking: 

"Is graffiti, "dope-ass" or otherwise, something maybe we here [in NYC] take for granted? After all, it's something most New Yorkers find offensive and barely tolerate. And yet ... would we miss it if it ever went away? Is graffiti, at the end of the day, the only truly urban art form, the city speaking back to itself? That, dear city-dwellers, is one to ponder on." 

In another post, in July of 2007, I also said that the best graffiti you could see in the city was on several buildings in Queens, easily visible from the 7 train.

In 2007, my words about graffiti were merely speculative muses and observations.

In 2019, my words about graffiti are business. 

Today, in NYC and other cities, graffiti and street art of all kinds is actually welcomed. It makes neighborhoods more interesting, more tempting to the wealthy people who want to buy property in them. Some developers are actually creating dedicated walls and spaces for graffiti. The graffiti artist Banksy is one of the most famous artists in the whole world and his work sells for millions.

Long gone are the days when graffiti was a scourge of urban decay -- today, it's a symbol of  the urban Renaissance (although 5Pointz, the area I mentioned in 2007, is long gone).

My how times have changed.

"Around the Town in 26 Hours and 36 Minutes"

In 1974 a very brave Daily News reporter took a marathon ride across the NYC subway system -- and wrote about the entire journey.

Reprinted here for the first time anywhere, go back in time and take the trip of a lifetime around a very different NYC.
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AROUND THE TOWN IN 26 HOURS AND 36 MINUTES 

New York Sunday News March 31, 1974 

The Lefferts Blvd. Station at four in the morning could be the loneliest place in New York. Or maybe just the coldest. Wind blows across the elevated tracks. I look out the train – suspended here – waiting for the return runs to Manhattan. Outside the night is dark except for some metal lamps on the deserted platform. Bare light bulbs form little circles of heat in the cold air. I am absolutely alone. Reflected in the train windows are its baby-blue walls splashed magenta and orange with graffiti. Beyond them I can see the black tops of trees, the low buildings of Queens stretching west toward Brooklyn. Far off, a yellow glow indicates Manhattan. Shivering, I cross to the open door and step out onto the platform. It is very still. A quarter moon hangs over Ozone Park, where all sensible people are asleep.

It might be warmer below near the token booth. Perhaps there is even a candy machine. But if the train should suddenly pull away…? No, I decide. Even if there is a machine, it won’t be working. There are some 6,600 vending machines in the New York Subway System. I know of four that work. The Interborough News Co. owes me eighty-five cents. Dear Sirs … I begin composing a letter in my head – then stop. If I give the locations of all the stations where I lost coins yesterday, they’ll think I’m mad. Some of those stations are 50 miles apart!

It seems to me that I have been here an eternity. I look at my watch: 20 minutes. This wait could ruin my chance at the world record. It stands at 21 hours and 8 minutes.

The first subway riding record – traveling the entire system of routes for a single fare – was set October 27, 1904: IRT Opening Day. The subway, an historic 9.1 miles, extended from City Hall to Grand Central, turning west across 42nd Street to Times Square, and then up Broadway to 145th St. After an official opening trip by city dignitaries – with Mayor McClellan holding a silver controller – followed by several hours of invitational rides, the subway was opened to the public at 7 p.m. 111,881 passengers paid a nickel each to ride that day. Scheduled time for an express was 26 minutes; the local took 46. Although those early riders were conscious of making history, it is doubtful that they had any thoughts of setting track records. It was just too simple.

The new subway generated appendages almost yearly. It reached Brooklyn via tunnel in 1908. The success of the IRT encouraged more construction. The Brooklyn Rapid Transit (after 1923, the BMT) began operations in August 1913, and the city-operated IND was opened Sept. 10, 1932. Under the dual contracts by which the city had financed construction of the privately operated IRT and BMT, it had also retained the right to purchase them. In 1940 both were acquired for $326,248,000. The three lines were unified under city control on June 12 of that year.

Two days before unification, Herman Rinke, a curious and still indefatigable electric railroad enthusiast, decided to tour the existing system for a single five-cent fare. He had no thought of setting a record. With unification, the IRT-operated 9th Ave. El was scheduled for demolition. His trip was a 25-hour sentimental gesture. It turned out to be the first recorded try. Since that day, 66 people have ridden the entire system in 24 recorded trips. These records are kept in an unofficial file at the TA Public Relations Dept. No one knows how may kids have done it just for fun. The 1961 subway map cited the example of a Flushing youth who had ridden all the routes in 25 hours and 36 minutes for a single token. The TA’s aim may have been to point out the scope or convenience of the subway, but that record – set Jan. 25, 1957, by Jerome Moses, 16 – instead seemed to invite competition. During the 1960s, subway derbies became a fad with urban students; 11 of them were completed during the peak years of 1966 and 1967. On April Fools Day of 1966, the M.I.T. Rapid Transit Club began a highly publicized ride. They had used a computer to route their attempt and informed the newspapers. On April 2, they were feeling foolish by 1 hour and 1 minute. And Geoffrey Arnold, who had held the 24 hour, 56 minute record since 1963 when he was 17, remarked “Pacific St. was a ridiculous place to start.” That June, nine boy scouts from Troop 290 in Queens further shamed the computer by logging 23 hours and 18 minutes. And on Aug. 3, 1967, 16-year-old James Law, with six buddies, rode from 168th St., Jamaica to Pelham Bay Park in 22 hours 11½ minutes; a time cited in the current Guinness Book of World Records.

When the Bronx Third Ave. El was closed in August 1973, subway route mileage was diminished 5.5 miles. On Oct. 8, Mayer Wiesen, 35, and Charles Emerson set a “modern record,” riding over 230.8 route miles, changing trains many times, and passing through the 462 operating stations, in 21 hours and 8 minutes. A record which looks as if it will stand unless I get out of the Lefferts Blvd. Station.

At 8 yesterday morning, I am just starting out, entering the 168th St. terminus of the Jamaica spur, an old elevated line taken over and extended by the BMT. The 1893 span between Alabama Ave. and Cypress Hills may be the oldest el track still in continuous use. The train I board is one of the oldest also: rolling stock built in the mid- 1930s. Sixty-watt bulbs light the cars. Hanging down from the ceiling are fans with black blades. I make my way to the front car, intending to ride looking out the window next to the motorman’s cab, but a handsome black kid, about 13, has got there first. He stands, hands in his pockets, nose to the glass, alert, ready to “drive the train.” At 8:03 we head toward Manhattan – looking down long streets of old houses, over expressways clogged with morning traffic, rattling past Cypress Hills Cemetery where miles of tombstones cast small, neat shadows in the early light. At Broadway-Myrtle, I change to the M train, yoyo-ing up and back to cover the Myrtle Line – past houses whose third-story windows, with pulled blinds, are often no more than six feet from the train.

9:15. Manhattan comes into view from the Williamsburg Bridge. The huge building blocks that pile its shore jut powerfully at the sky. Below, the East River is gray. It is a postcard approach. The train “zooms-in” like a 1940s movie – so familiar that I almost expect to see titles flash across. No matter. The Manhattan skyline still makes me gasp.

10:00. I am changing trains in Brooklyn when I see the kid from the Jamaica el again. We grin in recognition. “Hey,” I shout, “Are you doing the system too?” As the train doors shut, I see him nod. He swings off to Coney Island, while I race up in search of the Astoria train. On the DeKalb overpass I spot a snack bar and buy a Coke for breakfast. Aside from some coins in my jeans, a notebook and map, I have decided not to carry anything – sort of an urban Camp Fire Girl.

11:12 – En route to Flushing on a blue World’s Fair train. To my left Shea Stadium passes; while off to the right lies Flushing Meadow. The ribbed Unisphere and skeletal towers of the ’64 Fair rear up out of the flat landscape – fossilized like dinosaurs.

12:05. Returning to Manhattan, I change at Jackson Heights for the newer IND. On the underpass is a Nedicks – coffee and a hot dog – breakfast is shaping up. I am wiping mustard off my fingers when I reach the underground Roosevelt Ave. platform. On May 2, 1970, this was the site of the first subway fatality due to collision or derailment, in 42 years; two GG trains collided during evening rush hour, killing two passengers and injuring 71.

1:55. The F train to Coney Island is one of the new, longer R-44 models: pristine and elegant, with seats of muted orange and yellow. Panels of fake wood are set into its walls and fluorescent lights line the ceiling. Just before the doors close, a chime sounds – rather like the Avon doorbell. The advertising cards, color transparencies lit from behind, glow. These are the poshest cars to travel the subways since No. 3344, “The Mineola,” rolled through in 1904. No. 3344 was the private coach of financier and IRT organizer August Belmont. His car had real wood, mahogany, with velvet-draped picture windows so that guests could enjoy the flashing signals while white-coated stewards broiled steaks in the galley and served iced champagne. Above them, Empire ceilings arched, pale green and gilt; the washroom windows were stained glass. If one cares to make a comparison, the Mineola can be found in the Branford Trolley Museum at East Haven, Connecticut.

I am about to succumb to the quiet style of these long, air-conditioned cars, when I notice that the doors between them are kept locked. Existing subway tunnels were built for 60-foot cars, more the size, if not the décor, of the Mineola. These new, 75-foot units do not mesh properly on curves; the space between cars becomes dangerous. Motormen, conductors, and presumably transit police, have keys, but New Yorkers are naturally leery. Many feel that being trapped in one car could become a risky situation.

The IND Coney Island line becomes elevated for a brief span entering Brooklyn; the highest point in the system, 87.5 feet above street level, is at the Smith and Ninth St. Station. Here the view is open in all directions: back toward postcard Manhattan, out into the harbor. Little automobiles crawl over the arched expressway ahead; below, the Gowanus Canal and Red Hook. Too soon, we are underground.

At Church St. the line ramps upward again, joining the 1919 BMT el track at Ditmas Ave., where it emerges and begins the long approach to the ocean. Coney Island, cold and closed, decorates our passage. Orange and green spokes of the Wonder Wheel circle blue sky; flags and bits of banner blow. A deserted but honky tonk air prevails. We pass the roller coaster, webbed and delicate in the afternoon light. The air is bracing.

2:54. The Brighton Line heads back to Manhattan, for a while paralleling the sea. Short views down streets end in ocean. The pastel acres of Brighton Beach Baths stretch, patterned, toward the sand. We stop at Sheepshead Bay before heading northwest, traveling over the old ground level tracks of the 1890s Brighton Railroad, widened in 1907 to cut through the tree-hung backyards of Victorian mansions facing Buckingham Road.

3:15. At the Prospect Park Station hundreds of high school kids mill, going home. Cops range the platform and one accompanies us onto the Franklin Shuttle. The kids are wonderfully natty; boys and girls stride aboard wearing platform shoes that defy balance, pants with big bells, hats, lots of jewelry, elaborate hair-dos. While I am aware that teenagers in groups are responsible for a fair amount of subway crime, I cannot imagine this stylish group doing anything to muss their clothes. Subway history is full of accounts of rampage and vandalism. Two days after the 1904 opening, eight youths armed with buckshot blowers boarded the new subway at 145th St. and proceeded to shoot out the electric lights while doing gymnastic stunts on the straps. Two were arrested at 96th St., the rest escaped. But this was not the first subway crime. That occurred opening night. During the crowded ride north from Brooklyn Bridge Station, someone lifted the $500 diamond stickpin that had been holding down the tie of Harry Barret of W. 46th St. When he reached Grand Central, his necktie was flapping.

3:50. The return shuttle is almost empty. As it approaches Prospect Park again, we pass near Empire Blvd. In November of 1918 it was still called Malbone St. The name was changed after the Brighton Beach Special, jammed with evening rush hour passengers, failed to make a curve at the tunnel there. Five wooden cars, taken over from the old Brooklyn Union Railroad, were dashed to bits, and passengers thrown rapidly along the tunnel walls, literally had their faces rubbed away. Ninety-seven lost their lives, 150 were injured, and for days the accident drove World War I right off the front pages, When motorman Edward A. Luciano gave himself up, he was found to have had only two hours of instruction before being given the controller at Park Row in Manhattan. Earlier that morning – before motormen walked out in a dispute over unionization – Luciano had been a yard switchman. His promotion was sudden – this was his first run. He was acquitted, and the union made its point.

5:02. I am picking up a few stray miles under Rockefeller Center when evening rush hour begins. While I know the total 3.8 million daily subway riders cannot all be taking the D train tonight – it feels as if they are. Jammed shoulder to shoulder, passengers have nowhere to look but up. Above our heads, “Miss Subways” stares out of her poster, giving us a strained smile, “hoping to do some modeling.” Since 1941, when the contest began, over 200 New York working girls have become “Miss Subways.” In the early years, a new face showed up every month. Currently, two winners, out of six finalists, are chosen every eight months by passenger vote. Miss Subways receives a $40.00 charm bracelet dangling silver tokens, and her picture decorates the 6,700 subway cards for a three-month period. I ride standing all the way to 205th St., Bronx. Sheer endurance does not win a girl the title.

6:10. At 168th St. and Broadway, I change trains again, and descend into the IRT on a hot automated elevator to ride the Seventh Ave. local to Van Cortlandt Park. The ride is through the deepest section of track in the whole system: 180 feet below street level at the 191st St. and St. Nicholas Ave. station.             

7:00. Moving under Harlem on the No. 3, a rather splashy train with big graffiti – mustard yellow and pink predominate. Despite $10 million spent to remove graffiti and 1,562 arrests in 1972, the TA is losing the “spray can war.” I read off the names: Supreme King 219, Snake II, Lopez 138, and amuse myself trying to think up my own subway logo – in case graffiti should become legal. Outside the stations pass, dingy, written all over. Two Black Muslims move in and out of the strap-hangers selling Mohammed Speaks. On this line, I am a “token white” – the pun lifts my spirits.

8:02. TA police range the E. 180th St., Bronx platform where the No. 2 pauses. One boards, walkie-talkie mumbling at his waist. He will be riding until 4 a.m. Since May of 1965, a uniformed transit patrolman has been assigned to every train during these hours.

10:30. I stand in the first car, face pressed against the glass, speeding through a dark, underground world, the lighted coach behind me forgotten, as the black tunnel comes on. Tracks in perspective lines rush, disappearing under my feet, crossing, converging ahead. Signal lights change: yellow – “proceed with reduced speed,” green over yellow – “on diverging track.” Express lines mount, as local tracks sink in the dark. In the distance, tiny orange lights flicker above the tracks, then disappear where track-men carrying lanterns dive into the sidings. Now the square, metal-pillared cut rounds into a tube; we approach the old, 1908, Battery-Joralemon tunnel. Green lights signal us through. I make myself useful peering intently at the dark curved walls, checking for leaks.

1:12. The Wilson Ave. station on the Canarsie line is a narrow, double-decked curiosity: one track occupies each level – the eastbound track emerges, briefly elevated, traveling above the underground westbound span. We pass the deserted platform in half light. It faces – a single track away – the Cemetery of the Evergreens. No one in his right mind would get off at Wilson Ave. at 1:12 in the morning. No one did.

2:30. The A train heads out over the waters of Jamaica Bay, leaving behind the huge glow of JFK that arc-lights the eastern sky. I have made the Rockaway Round Robin on schedule and can relax. Only between the hours of midnight and 6 a.m. is it possible to cover the entire Rockaway peninsula on a single train. This 19th century summer beach resort was linked to the L.I.R.R. until 1956, when service was transferred to the IND. The train moves further out across the vast, dark bay. Only feet below on either side, water laps the narrow trestle. Far out, a crescent of lights veers gently inward on the long railroad stem. Beyond that brilliant curve, the ocean pounds. For miles around the night is black and cold, the water deep. A strange place for a New York subway train.

4:00. And farewell to Lefferts Blvd.

5:30. Waits are long now. The work trains move slowly underground through nearly empty stations, picking up trash and cleaning out tunnels. The New York bars have closed, and some standees on the Hoyt St. platform bear witness to this fact. A heavy black woman joins me; she walks as if her feet hurt, and I suspect she has just got off work. The trains always take a while at this hour, she tells me. We stand together on the platform, unacknowledged sisters, re-enforcing each other. In 1907, the Hudson Tubes were still running Women Only Cars with guards aboard to insure protection. I guess we have come a long way.

At 6:26 the sun rises over Greenwood Cemetery where I am passing, for the second time, over an elderly bit of track known as the Culver Shuttle; 1.1 miles still bear tribute to Andrew Culver, who built a steam railroad to Coney Island that passed over this site in the 1880s.

7:00 – Coney Island for the second time in two days! Crossing the Stillwell Terminal overpass, I go by the employees cafeteria and smell breakfast. On the Sea Beach Line, morning rush hour is just beginning. This is the third rush hour I have ridden through without leaving the subway. The poignancy of that situation might be enough to make one who has dined off Zagnut bars, peanuts, and Lucy Ellen orange slices for two days, get a cramp. I try not to think of hot coffee.

8:10. Changing trains at Union Square I am especially careful, warned by history. The first subway passenger accident occurred here Opening Day, 1904. A Miss Sadie Lawson, 26, of Jersey City, who had been riding north and south for several hours, fell getting off the southbound train and broke her hip. I grab a metal strap and hang on tightly all the way to 42nd St. 

8:25. Times Square. The 42nd St. shuttle contains 2,700 feet of original 1904 IRT track, now isolated. In 1928, the second worst accident in New York subway history happened just south of here on the Seventh Ave. line. A defective switch broke as the ninth car of a 10-car theater rush-hour train was passing over it. The rear wheels switched to a diverging track and the ninth car, running suddenly at right angles to the others, was sheared in two by the steel pillars between tracks. This mechanical “crack the whip” killed 18 passengers and injured 100.

9:30. The Lexington Ave. Express emerges into bright sunlight just before the old Yankee Stadium. Once, under a glaring blue sky, its lacy wood trim gleamed white like decorative icing – a great hollow cake with a short right field. Now, under the ungentle touch of the renovators, the place is growing unrecognizable. At the Woodlawn terminus, the leaves have lost their Fall colors, but on the golf course below, lucky men tee off across rolling fairways. It is a splendid day for riding elevated trains.

10:39. Pelham Bay Park. I have made the trip – on 67 different trains – in only 26 hours and 36 minutes. 26 hours and 36 minutes! The thought that I may be the first woman to complete the ride does not console me at all. But the sun is shining. And I have my logo: Ms. Subways 114.
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You can read this essay and other great ones just like it in How the Camp Fire Girls Won World War II by Rebecca Morris. 

Also, read more 1970s subways coverage from the Village Voice here. 

Interview: Natalia Singer on New York, Work, and Optimism

Natalia Singer doesn’t just write about the 1980s. As an English professor at St. Lawrence University, she combines her love of literature and writing with her passion for travel and the beauties of the world, both literal and otherwise.

In this final part of our interview, Natalia tells us more about her work as well as her love for NYC, upstate New York, and other great places. Also, she tells us why, despite the ugliness of the daily headlines, she’s feels good about the future. 

You work in upstate New York and edited a book of essays about the region. Can you tell us a little about this book and what inspired it? 

Living North Country: Essays on Life and Landscapes in Northern New York was the assignment I gave myself when I came up to St. Lawrence University to give a job talk in the '90s—which led to my moving here. I drove up from Western Massachusetts (I’d just gotten my MFA in creative writing at U-Mass/Amherst) on a cold February day, which was the first time I saw the Adirondack Mountains. By the time I hit Blue Mountain Lake, where people were ice fishing under a brilliant blue sky, I was intrigued. Where was I going? How far north was this place? (Very far, it turned out. I now live near the Canadian border.) I promised myself that if I got the job I’d do my homework and find out more about the region, and I did. I teamed up with a talented writer and editor from this area that we call The North Country, Neal Burdick, and we put together the collection. We wanted the anthology to be partly an act of community-building so we solicited essays from writers both experienced and well-known (like Bill McKibben) and others who had never written literary nonfiction before, and we held a writing retreat with the first-time authors. It was a project by and about community.

Tell us a little more about your work in general and what you're working on today. 

I write fiction (including flash fiction), literary nonfiction (essays, books, lyric essays, and political journalism) and I teach creative writing and environmental literature.

For the past decade I’ve worked on a novel set in France. It opens in 1989 and ends in 2015, just after the Paris Attacks. My agent is sending it out in early May. Fingers crossed! It’s been a labor of love and has brought me back to France about a dozen times for research and creative exploration.

In that time period I’ve also drafted a new memoir, which I plan to return to after I send the novel to my agent. It’s about losing my dog to cancer, about our long walks on the river, about learning how to meditate, and about grief and mortality, as well as mindfulness and nature. I’m hoping to finish the fourth draft of it this year and send it out early next year. Then I have some other projects that have been in the back burner for a while, both fiction and nonfiction.

Since this blog is mostly about NYC, how do you compare life in upstate New York to the city?

There is no comparison. We might as well not be in the same state. And I love them both so much. NYC is one of my favorite cities on earth. If I had to list my top five, I’d say it’s NYC, Paris, London, Seattle, and Rome. I also love New Delhi. I’ve never had a bad day in NYC. Even if it’s pouring rain, and I’m waiting in line for hours on a crowded pavement to do something unpleasant, like get a visa in an office where someone will be mean to me and tell me I have the wrong documentation, I still feel more alive in New York City than I do almost everywhere else. I love walking down a crowded street and feeling the mass of humanity all around me, the smells of street food, the found art in everything. When I’m in NYC I always feel like I’m eighteen years old again on my first visit, where I discovered sushi and Star Wars movies and off-off-off-Broadway and got stung by a jelly fish on Long Island all in the same weekend. The sewer steam puffs and the sight of messenger bicyclists and yellow cabs and dog-walkers with six very different breeds, from Dalmatian to Shih Tzu, and Madison Avenue stores and bodegas and bookstores and graffiti and political pamphlets and kiosks and cumin-infused sweat on the subway: I love all of it.

On April mornings like this one I wake up in my home in the North Country to the sounds of the geese coming back. The geese are confused. They thought it was spring but then we had the same Nor’easters you had in the city, and this week we had an ice storm and lost power, twice. I pass my days attuned to small changes: sunset coming later each day and dropping a red fireball on someone’s barn when I drive to dinner with a visiting writer. The trillium that blooms in the woods in early May, along with fiddlehead ferns that we eat with pasta and pesto. The river that flows past our house still carries ice chunks away now; in warm weather my husband and I will get into that river in our canoe with our dog. Our big excitement for the summer ahead: dinners on our new screened in porch—bug-free bliss.

I feel very lucky to have the job I do, where I teach undergraduates literature and writing, but I also get to take them places. Locally we’ll go to farms and the students will help with the harvest. And I have had the good fortune to take students to France (twice), India (twice), and I have taught a writing course to students who spend the semester in the Adirondacks living in yurts, hauling their own water, splitting wood, and learning woodworking. Fitting all these very different locations and activities into one career and one life feels like living multiple lives at once.

Any final thoughts or something you'd like to share?

So I’ve just bombarded you with doom and gloom in all my answers. The '80s was a warm-up act that paved the way to the nightmare we’re living through now under Trump, our new normal in which every value so many of us hold dear—the right to have a good public education, clean water and air, shelter, health care, safety from violence—is being demolished with savage cruelty and indifference. It might not be evident that I’m also a humorist in a lot of my writing. I come from a people that laugh a lot—sometimes, just to keep from crying. And because I’m a professor and spend most of my time with people 18-22 years of age, I’m not a pessimist, despite all the doom and gloom I’ve lived through. I have great faith in the millennials and post millennials whom I teach. They’re smart, sensitive, kind, nuanced in their thinking, and they’re not going to let the recent tax scam and other heinous policies rob them and the planet of a future. When they’re in charge, we may very well achieve that “Great Society” that President Johnson saw as the ultimate fulfillment of The New Deal. But until then, we all have our work cut out for us. It starts with voting. And in active resistance: calling our representatives, writing op eds, and taking to the streets—a lot.

Thanks Natalia!

The Transforming City

In six days we New Yorkers will be going to the polls to elect a new mayor and a whole slew of new public officials. We will be deciding how our city is governed for the next four years -- and, like all politicians, they are promising a great transformation of the city's economy, schools, and transportation, housing, etc. -- while all the while being "fiscally responsible."

But the transformation is already taking place on a literal level. In the next four years, things both noticeable and unnoticeable will literally be changing the shape of this town.

New subway cars are coming that will look like big accordions without doors separating the cars. 

New water tunnels are being constructed that will change the delivery of water to our taps, with sewers and tunnels creating a whole new subterranean city. 

Just today, the city approved the construction a new mall on Staten Island that will be centered around a gigantic ferris wheel.

And One World Trade Center is nearing completion as the tallest building in NYC. Recently the elusive graffiti artist Banksy published an editorial calling it "vanilla" and something that would be built in Canada. However you feel about it, this building will be dominating the NYC skyline for decades to come. 

So the face and innards of our city is changing. We are constantly being reincarnated.

Banksy takes NYC

Banksy is in New York! 

Yes, the secretive, elusive British graffiti artist has taken up residence in our fair city, spray painting buildings nearly every day. If you're unfamiliar with him and his work, basically he's this artist that no one knows or has ever seen, putting museum-quality art in public spaces. Examples of his work:

Many in the city are thrilled to see his work appear around town while others, like our fair mayor, call him a vandal and want to catch him an put him in jail. Anyway, this artist that no one knows anything about and whose work can't be seen in any museum, is currently the talking of the town, getting immense press coverage.

Here's a review of his NYC "residency."

Here's a map tracking his "work" around NYC. 

Here's some coverage of the controversy that Banksy is causing.  

And here's an interview with the artist

How long will Banksy stay in NYC? Will he be caught? Will he get away? Will he come back?

We shall literally see. 

The World's Most Creative Marriage Proposal? A Graffiti Mural Time Lapse.

What Meets the Eyes

New York is, amongst it's many wonders, a feast for the eyes. Whether it's our amazing skyline or our beautiful parks, whether it's our impressive bridges or interesting streets, NYC is never boring to gaze at (scary, sometimes, weird, often, but never boring).

But what about the things we're not supposed to see -- yet do anyway?

Like graffiti sprayed on the metal gates of stores: graffiti is illegal in this town, it's the defiling of property and community standards. When we see graffiti, we have, in essence, seen evidence of a crime.

And what about voyeurs? In this crowded city, with buildings stacked close to one another, people can look out their windows and see other people in their apartments, their inner sanctums, their designated zones of privacy and respite. When people look into other people's homes in this city, they're being nosy neighbors. And when people stare into other people's homes with binoculars hoping to see people naked, showering, having sex, naked and showering and having sex, or perhaps doing something else either sexual or nasty, then they become naughty neighbors -- otherwise known as voyeurs or Peeping Toms.

Considering what a crazy crowded city we live in, it's amazing the whole place isn't sprayed with graffiti and that anyone anywhere has any privacy.

Two articles today look at these dilemmas of that which we see in NYC but should not.

First, an article in the Times about new city council rule forbidding the use of metal gates on stores precisely because they are graffiti magnets. The city council has ruled that from now on stores must have open weave gates, gates with spaces in them that will hopefully deter graffiti artists and other such miscreants.

Second, a column by a young woman recently arrived in our fair city. She describes what it was like stepping out of the shower one day only to see her neighbor (someone Archie Bunker might call a "prevert") ogling her lithe young dripping person and about how she totally freaked.

Both stories got me thinking: we see so much stuff in this city everyday, our eyes are bombarded with so much visual data each millisecond, what-oh-what are we to make of those very few things we shouldn't see but do anyway? Granted there's a HUGE difference between looking at (even admiring creative) graffiti and intentionally staring at a naked neighbor. Still, they got me wondering: how much of what we see every day in NYC is meant for our eyes and how much of it is accidental or perhaps unintended? Who knows? It's just another one of the endlessly interesting things about living in NYC.

But then again, as a character in Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors said "The eyes of God are on us always." So don't try to hide!

Dope-Ass Graffiti Part II

In one of my very first posts, I told of overhearing a young tourist on the subway indicating that she wanted to see some "dope-ass" graffiti, and I reflected on the social and symbolic importance of this particular art form. Well, the dopest of the dope-ass graffiti that I have found can be viewed on the #7 subway line between Queensboro Plaza and Vernon-Jackson. From this above-ground train, you'll see building upon building with some of the most colorful, artistic graffiti in town. In some cases, you'll marvel at the literal heights some of these "artistes" must have had to scale in order to create their work. It's really a sight to see, and unlike our $20 per visit museums, all it costs is a subway fare.

Dope-Ass Graffiti

Like most New Yorkers, I take the subway to work every morning. One sees the whole panoply of age, race, religion, and class all democratized by the need to commute. Most of these people look haggard and harried, unexcited by the prospect of spending long hours at work (the cliched "grind"). The most notable exception, however, are the tourists. Without fail, usually once a week or so, a group of them will board the #1 train (my train) in midtown around 8 AM. (Oh, and they're usually headed to South Ferry, presumably to see Ground Zero).

It's easy to tell that they're tourists since they're usually blond or otherwise fair, and usually very wholesome and middle-American looking. Mostly these are school trips are usually teenagers accompanied by panicked teachers. And man, these kids are PSYCHED to be on the subway! It's so WICKED to be in New York! A couple of weeks ago I overheard a girl in one of these groups say to someone, "It's so cool you get to spend your birthday in New York."

Yesterday, another slice of the heartland got on the subway. It was a small group. Two of them were very chatty girls, one of whom immediately began to coo over a small boy in our subway car whose shoes were lighting up. (She even took her picture with him.) Another girl asked me what happened to the train after it got to South Ferry, the end of the line. (I told her it just turns around and snakes back uptown.) Shortly thereafter this same gal began talking to the flashing-shoe lover and indicated that, now that they were in New York, she really wanted to see "some dope-ass graffiti." Not just any ol' graffiti, graffiti of the "dope-ass" variety.

And it made me wonder: is graffiti, "dope-ass" or otherwise, something maybe we here take for granted? After all, it's something most New Yorker find offensive and barely tolerate. And yet ... would we miss if it ever went away? Is graffiti, at the end of the day, the only truly urban art form, the city speaking back to itself? That, dear city-dwellers, is one to ponder on.