Remembering Joey in Astoria

When this blog debuted in 2007 blogs were just starting to become a Thing.

By this time of the mid-aughts most people had gained access to high-speed Internet, but most people did not have the time, money, or energy to create totally original websites for themselves. So blogs filled the void since they were these templated and easy to create, easy to manage homepages. 

Blogs at the time were competing for attention with the early versions of social media like Friendster and MySpace but they were primitive and cumbersome to use. Eventually, of course, Facebook conquered them, exploding in popularity and usage. Twitter came along on its heals and provided a more efficient, more public way for people to communicate with the world.

So blogs receded.

They were, and still are, around -- like this one! -- but there are way fewer of them and get much less traffic. Their day has passed. 

During this aughties blog boom, however, there were a variety of blogs devoted to NYC, some that I even interviewed their creators about. (Some lasted longer than others, although few have lasted or been this active as this one!) 

One such blog at this time was called Joey in Astoria, and it was so popular and active that it even got regular media attention (unlike this one!). It debuted in 2005 and published hundreds and hundreds of posts until, in June 2010, it just ... stopped ... and ... never blogged again.

The blog did not, and does not, explain its long radio silence. It has simply remained dormant for 13 years. It's the digital equivalent of a deep freeze, something stuck in time in an eternal present with no growth towards or expectations of the future. It simply exists ... neither changing or improving or decaying just ... there ...  

I hope when the day comes that I decide to end Mr NYC that I will post a final valedictory statement, a fond farewell. I certainly plan to do so unless the tentacles of cirumstance snap me up and keep me seperated from a keyboard with Internet access.

So if this blog ever ends like Joey in Astoria you'll know that life simply overwhelmed me. Otherwise, one day, I will give you all a heartfelt goodbye.

NYC Scrapbooking

At the risk of being gauche, allow me to quote myself: a couple of years ago I described this blog as a "pastiche" or "a collage, a repository for memories, a collection of favorite things, a funhouse of nostalgia, a love letter to the past and future, a work of art, a self-contained world that invites you to visit a while and become absorbed in."

You might also call it a scrapbook.

In its way, Mr NYC is a digital scrapbook, roughly defined as a document of precious memories, a collection of souvenirs and mementos, and an opportunity to channel one's inner artist.

Scrapbooks need not be literal books full of pieces of paper and objects of one's past or journey thru life. They can be, more metaphorically speaking, things like diaries or autobiographies or videos -- or blogs like this one -- anything that captures and makes sense of the past and provides tea leaves for the future.

I recently encountered two examples of metaphorical scrapbooking, both of which fascinate me: a new exhibit about Lou Reed at the NYPL that is a collection of his papers, recordings, and various nickknacks, showing the work and evolution of this great and influential NYC musician; and a new novel by, of all people, the actor David Duchovny that is based on his memories of growing up in NYC.

This exhibit and this novel are, in a way, scrapbooks of these two very different NYC artists -- as is this humble blog.

When Anne Frank wrote her diary hiding out in that apartment in Amsterdam or when Marco Polo dictated his memories of China while literally imprisoned, these two people who would otherwise be lost to history instead were made immortal.  They told their stories, they recorded and "scrapbooked" their lives, and in doing so not only made us better understand their times and adventures (told both from the perspective of two people who were literally trapped) but made us understand that the world was a greater place, and the human spirit more indomitable, than we could ever imagine.

Scrapbooking is a great start.

Mayor-Elect Adams

In 2013 and 2017, I did election night live blogs of the results as they came in. This year events ensued (good ones!) that prevented it. However, the big news is that Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams won the mayoralty and will replace Mayor De Blasio on January 1st, 2022. Above is his victory speech.

As for the outgoing mayor, what's his legacy? Previous Mr NYC multi-interviewee Ross Barkan has a smart, comphrensive look at what Bill DeBlasio did and didn't do as mayor -- and what was his "fault" and what was beyond his control.

NYC moves ever onwards.

Meet @NewYorkNico

When this blog started more than 14 years ago, social media was still in its infancy and blogs like this were sorta where "social media", as it was then, was where "it's at." 

Obviously time and technology have galloped ahead, and social media has largely left blogs like this in the digital dust. Now social media is Twiter, Instagram, and Tik Tok -- even Facebook is a little long in 'da toof. Bloggers have surrendered to "influencers" -- people who go on social media promoting various people, products, or places, helping them to gain fans and customer and visitors, often making some money in the process.

Such is the case of Instragram influencer @NewYorkNico, a 32-year guy with more 600,000 followers who has become one of NYC's biggest cheerleaders. He especially likes to promote small businesses, mom'n'pops, as well as people who make the city great. These posts helps their businesses and these peoples' work get attention -- and hopefully some dough. Even mayoral campaigns have sought him out, his reach has become that powerful. He calls himself "the unofficial talen scount of New York City." 

@NewYorkNico's account isn't really him -- it's about the people and places that make this city great. 

Hmmm ... I wonder if @NewYorkNico might want to give Mr NYC some digital love? I shall endevour to court him!

Caro Papers at NYPL

The great historian and biographer Robert Caro -- he of the legendary Robert Moses and LBJ tomes -- has just donated his vast collection of papers and reporting for his books to the New York Public Library.

Some people, if they ever hit the Lottery and never had to work again, would probably spend it on a beach somewhere. I'd spend it in the NYPL reading Robert Caro's papers, devouring the back story to his great books about political power and how it changes American life.

Talking about archives, if you want to read the extensive Robert Caro/Robert Moses posts on Mr NYC, go here.

And, hey, NYPL, maybe, just maybe, one day in the far, far, future, maybe you'll want to put blogs into your archives?

I can think of a couple!

Studio 360 New York Icons

The great cultural radio show Studio 360 (hosted by Mr NYC interviewee Kurt Anderson) has a recurring segment called American Icons that reviews important works from our nation's culture. These include things like the classic novels The Great Gatsby and Moby Dick, special moments like Jimmy Hendrix's performance of the "Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock, the Harley Davidson motorcycle, even the old TV soap Dallas. The segments look at why these various creations, from different points in American history and in radically different art forms, made a lasting impact on not only American culture but also the American psyche. These American Icon segments are some of my favorite things to listen to.

But wait, 'dere's more!

Recently Studio 360 launched a new New York Icons series that does the same thing for distinctly NYC-centric works. So far: the classic salsa album Siembra, Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar", and the musical West Side Story. There are lots of classic movies and books and shows that could qualify as New York Icons, as well as moments like 1951 "Shot Heard 'Round the World", or Mayor LaGuardia reading the comics on WNYC radio, or Studio 54.

The possibilities are endless.

May I make one suggestion to the creators of the New York Icons series? Maybe you should include blogs. And, if you're including blogs, maybe you could include, oh, I don't know, Mr NYC!

Is Mr NYC Rude Enough?

These days, thanks to the Internet, newstands don't sell that many newspapers anymore, they're mainly just places to get soda, gum, candy, or water. But when I was a kid, on the streets of NYC, there were myriad newstands bursting with piles and piles of the big daily periodicals, practically falling onto the  sidewalks -- The New York Times, The Daily News, The New York Post, Newsday, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today. There were even foreign-language newspapers -- Chinese, Russian, Arabic. This is where you went to buy "serious" papers for "serious news" but, if you wanted to read something that spit in the face of serious news and contained articles that were unapologetically nasty and controversial, you could, for free, get the "alt-weekly" like the Village Voice or New York Press in the single-standing kiosks on the streets.

Then the Internet came along and the alt-weeklies went into sharp decline as the "alt-press" went online. The most infamous of these online "rude" new sites was Gawker followed by other such sites as Vice, Deadspin, and others. For them, no one and nothing was precious, they didn't play the "inside game" of mainstream news reporting, they published the real dirt on politicians and celebrities, their "news" content was unabashedly voyeuristic, trashy, and mean. And, of course, there were blogs, where ordinary schmoes like yours truly could type away with giddy abandonment, being as rude and insulting to anyone and everyone as they wished.

But now these online sites are vanishing, either through declining readership, mismanagement, or lawsuits. And, according to some, so are blogs -- because social media rules our world now and is where all the "rude" content now lives, blogs have become passe, they are a relic of the mid-2000s. Blogs, apparently, aren't rude enough to exist.

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm?

That got me thinking. Would this blog get more traffic, get more hits, be more popular, even get some kind of media attention, if it was really really mean? If, instead blogging about the spirit and psyche of this town, I "went medieval" of people and said nasty stuff about them and just became, quite frankly, another digital prick? Or, as Mick Jagger might croon: "Ain't I hot enough? Ain't I rough enough? Ain't I rich enough?"

Well, I can answer the last one - I ain't rich enough but, for the last two, I'll let you, the dear readers, to decide.

Pump Up the Volume: The Rise and Fall of Pirate Radio in NYC

As a young'un, one of my favorite movies was Pump Up the Volume. It's about a miserably lonely teenager who starts a pirate radio station out of his bedroom/parent's garage that becomes a sensation in the desolate, boring Arizona town he's just moved to with his family. 

Operating under the name "Happy Harry", he speaks directly to the emotional pain and tumult of his fellow teenagers. Unlike his regular shy, reserved self (named Mark), "Harry" is funny, outrageous, profane; he plays wild music, calls kids who write confessional letters, and even prank calls the high school's guidance counselor. His craziness quickly becomes a target by the town elders and eventually the FCC -- and it all ends dramatically. 

As a teenager this movie "spoke" to me. It was and remains the most realistic, most accurate look at what it was like to be an early 1990's teenager. And the idea of creating your own pirate radio station seemed amazing to me at the time.

Of course, these days, we'll all pirate radio broadcasters thanks to the Internet. We can create YouTube channels, Facebook Live, or podcasts -- and, of course, blogs! Pump Up the Volume reminds you of a time where the idea of young, regular person reaching hundreds, thousands of other people to broadcast their lives was a truly novel, totally strange concept.

But pirate radio was a real thing! In Brooklyn, back in the 1990s, there was an amazing pirate radio station called WBAD, a hip-hop station that quickly become a local phenomenon (I remember a guy in one of my SAT prep classes talking about it). Eventually, of course, the media and the FCC got wind of it and pursued it to its grave.

Listen to this amazing Studio 306 segment about WBAD, a piece of NYC history, and remind yourself of another time when the idea of regular people broadcasting to the masses was a truly revolutionary idea 

Interview: Amy Sohn, NYC Columnist & Novelist

Back in the late 1990s, as the world was falling in love with the fictional Carrie Bradshaw and her friends, and their fictional friends’ dating adventures (in a mostly fictional NYC), a real columnist named Amy Sohn was writing about her real dating adventures in the real NYC.

First at the New York Press, then at the New York Post, then at New York magazine, Amy wrote with a blunt, hilarious honesty about the vicissitudes of not only sex and romance but also about the challenges of being a human being in a city that worships money, power, and vanity. I first discovered Amy in 1999, right after I’d returned to NYC from college, and her original New York Press column, “Female Trouble”, was an eye-opening look at the NYC single life that I was entering into. More than just entertaining and funny, her column was educational.

Amy’s work has evolved from those days, and she is now a successful novelist. Along the way, she’s also become a wife and mother. Amy was kind enough to share with Mr NYC some background about her life and work, as well as her thoughts and feelings about #MeToo and relationships and life in NYC today.

Tell us a little bit about your background and what made you want to become a writer?

When I was 19 I was a summer-camp counselor and my boyfriend at camp, the cook, turned me on to Bukowski, Fante, and Algren. I started writing autobiographical stories, mostly about dating and sex, in the vein of Buk, my hero, in a big unlined notebook. Around 1994, when I was a junior at Brown, I began performing the stories downtown at a performance space called AS 220, at open mics and variety shows. It was a vibrant scene filled with music and provocation. I felt I fit in really well there. I always wrote for the purpose of reading my stories aloud.

Your New York Press dating column "Female Trouble" from the late 1990s was shocking and groundbreaking. It was honest and raw, very personal and intimate, and I don't remember reading anything quite like it at the time. Then came along "Sex and the City", blogs, etc. and shocking became mainstream. What made you want to write this column back then and do you view "Female Trouble" as the precursor to a change in the culture?

I was a temp and actress (temptress) living with my parents right after graduating and my dad used to bring home this weird paper. I got into it and was taken by the first-person columns, especially Howard Altman and Jim Knipfel. The stories felt real and honest and they were painfully funny. I wanted to get published. I think my first actual published story was in Playgirl but that’s another story. I sent a piece to John Strausbaugh at New York Press and he sent it back with a note in the margin that said it might be right for SWANK or Penthouse. I had never heard of SWANK but I got the idea. I tried a different story, “The Blow-Up Boyfriend,” and sent that one to John. It was about my fantasy of having an inflatable boyfriend that I could deflate whenever he talked about his band too much. They bought that one, and one or two more, and a few weeks later they offered me a column. I wanted to call it Maidenhead, a terrible title. Sam Sifton, John, and Russ Smith convinced me to call it “Female Trouble.” Of course they were John Waters fans, Russ and John having come from the Baltimore city paper. (They later taught me what a "Baltimore round" is.)

I agree that the term “sex and the city” was very shocking at the time. Just the word “sex” was arresting. The nineties were very odd in the mainstreaming of sex. In my column I tried to be honest and self-deprecating. When I was grandiose it was done with a big wink. Behind my pathetic stories there was really a lot of rage. I didn’t understand why men my age were so cruel and disinterested in love and connection. But I picked very bad paramours. Thank God no one I was obsessed with in the 90s reciprocated. It would have ruined my life. I would be mother to a lot of elusive rocker boy babies and figuring out how to deal with my co-dependence. Did I really want to be a member of any club that would have me? Probably not.

“Female Trouble” had good timing. I think women my generation, dating in the recession, in the “reality bites” scene, were frustrated with these narcissistic guys. I can’t speak for why “Sex and the City” the column came along when it did. She was chronicling a different demographic but I think we were both struggling with a feeling of anger and powerlessness. Why did men control the stories? Why did men always get to pick? Why didn’t women get to pick?

You went from the New York Press in the 1990s to the New York Post and New York magazine in the early 2000s. What did you do at those jobs and what was it like working for those publications as the Internet was changing the journalism business?

I was at New York Press for 3 1/2 years, sometimes writing weekly, sometimes biweekly, and at one point also writing an advice column. I left for the New York Post, thinking it could be a chance to do more pop-cultural writing but it was a very bad fit. They wanted the sentences short because the typeface was big. I also made the mistake of posing in a nightie, lying on my stomach, feet kicked up behind me, with no shoes, and even though I have wide, flat feet I got fan letters from foot fetishists for years. I quit after about four months. I had also published my first novel, Run Catch Kiss by the time I left New York Press and wanted to devote time to writing a second novel.

At New York my column was first called “Sex Matters,” then “Naked City,” “Mating,” and “Breeding.” In it I interviewed New Yorkers about their sexual predilections. I learned not to judge people. I also learned that under the cover of anonymity people will tell you almost anything. Some of the people I interviewed are really famous now in their chosen fields - composers and stylists. They would talk to me about how there were no bottoms in New York or what it’s like to date two people at once. I enjoyed the chance not to write about myself but I also felt that the short length allotted to the column made it hard for me to dig deep with my subjects. The magazine was never quite sure where the sex fit in, I remember the column moved around, from the back near penis-enlargement and personal ads (when New York had its own personals) and later to the front when I was writing more about marriage and kids. I was at New York from 2001 to 2006.

You've published five novels (Run Catch Kiss, Motherland, My Old Man, Prospect Park West, and The Actress) about relationships, parenthood, and the challenges of life in NYC. Do all of these novels relate to your experiences that came with the stages of life in NYC, i.e. going from single woman to wife and mother?

Some of my books are less autobiographical than others. The Actress was mostly set in LA and I did a lot of research for it. I wanted to break away from social satire and try melodrama. It didn’t really work because the novel needed a murder and my editors and I did not agree about that. I also learned that modern novels about marriage and divorce are troubled and troubling because divorce is so widely accepted, even if upsetting and expensive.

What does feminism mean to you? Do you consider yourself a feminist and does your work relate to it in any way?

I have called myself a feminist since I was a teenager. I grew up in the progressive Jewish Reform movement and progressive values went hand in hand with religion. I attended a big pro-choice rally around 1992. I never thought “feminist" was a dirty word. Years later, in the 90s, I interviewed a celebrity who was uncomfortable when I asked if she was a feminist and I found it absolutely bizarre. That was another era, when the word itself was something women feared.

What do you think of #MeToo?

My feelings are incredibly complicated. It’s important that women are sharing their stories and bringing sexual harassment and rape into the national conversation. As a strong believer in due process, I'm concerned about the cases in which men have lost their jobs based on extremely limited evidence, sometimes just one story that has two sides. I worry that we are in a moment of sex panic. None of us know the ultimate outcome of the movement. I also think about women who need to be mentored by men to advance in their professions (because men still hold the vast majority of the power) -- and men who are now afraid to spend one-on-one time with them for fear of false accusations. As with so many things, women are the ones who pay the price for that. What do you hope to write about in the future? I’m now writing narrative non-fiction (historical) for Farrar, Straus & Giroux. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done but my book deals with women’s rights in the 19th century and I find the stories deeply gratifying. This was a time when marital rape and forced pregnancy and childbirth were the norm. It was just called “marriage."

How do you feel about how NYC has changed over the years? Do you ever get nostalgic for the old days?

Of course I do - I’m a native New Yorker! The money bums me out. The people bum me out. The phones on the subways. The phones everywhere. The corporate stores. But when I get depressed I walk up and down Church Avenue in Brooklyn. New York is still alive, you just have to know where to find it.

Finally, tell us something about Amy Sohn that we might not know.

I was a child actress and got my Actors Equity card at age 12.

Thanks Amy!

Vanishing New York & Mr NYC -- Blogs of a Feather

Once upon a time (2007, actually), two New Yorkers got brilliant ideas for blogs about their favorite city ...  one was called Mr NYC; the other, Vanishing New York. 

Unlike Mr NYC, Vanishing New York hit the big time. The eponymous Jeremiah's blog about the demise of Old New York City has attracted vastly more readers than Mr NYC ever did (and now a legit book deal and lots of media attention too). 

I bear no umbrage; Vanishing New York deserves its success. Its single-minded, determined effort to chronicle the changes of the NYC landscape is impressive and, especially these days, badly needed. It's a beautifully presented and extremely well-written blog.

Mr NYC has always been more general-interest and ramshackle. It's about everything and anything NYC. It has no specific focus. It has no specific theme. That's both its virtue and, I suppose, its shortcoming. 

But both blogs were born of a love for NYC and everything it means to people.

I do take some pride, however, that, while both Vanishing New York and Mr NYC started in 2007, mine started in March of that year and Jeremiah's began in July -- so this blog, technically, has some seniority. 

And yet, to quote Christopher Walken in "True Romance", that's of minor importance. What's of major effing importance is that both blogs started within months of each other at what was, in retrospect, an inflection point in NYC's history. Back then, the city was still recovering from the trauma of 9/11, the psychological wounds still raw, a sense of inertia still intact. But things were changing -- slowly at first, then faster and faster. NYC was, to quote then-Mayor Bloomberg, going from "open to business" to "back in business." The buildings were getting bigger and glassier, the mom and pop stores and old neighborhood businesses were disappearing at a quicker rate, and the already hot real estate market was turbo-charging thanks to the influx of foreign money. It was, many of us felt at the time, going to be a very different city in the years ahead. 

How right (unfortunately) we were. 

NYC in 2017 looks quite different than 2007. There are more and more big buildings, more and more chain stores, and less and less neighborhoods that look and feel like actual neighborhoods. This is still a great city but its spirit has been enervated by gentrification. 

Still, that spirit has not died completely. That spirit is reflected, in part, by Mr NYC and Vanishing New York and the fact that both blogs have lasted more than a decade. That fact should be a point of pride for both of us. So kudos to to both of us. May both blogs last another decade -- and more.

P.S. Grubstreet has a good list of some old school bars and restaurants that have yet to vanish. Go before they do! http://www.grubstreet.com/2017/08/22-low-key-bars-and-restaurants-in-nyc.html

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."

Interview: Rachel Kramer Bussel, "Come Again"

One of the most popular posts of all time on Mr NYC is an interview that I did way back in 2007 -- the first year of this blog -- with Rachel Kramer Bussel, the sex writer and social observer. It got such a positive response that I thought it would be a good idea to check in with her again to see how her career and the world of sex writing has evolved. I was also interested in her opinion about such cultural phenomenon as "slut shaming" and women speaking out against the predatory behavior of powerful men.  

Rachel has also edited a new book of essays called Come Again that you should definitely check out.   

Still as sexy and prolific as ever, Rachel continues to publish articles (recently in The New York Times), blog, host events, write and edit books, and even teach classes. Rachel was kind enough to take time out of her busy schedule to give us another great interview. 

Since we last chatted in 2007, how has the world of sex writing changed or evolved? Has social media had an impact?

I think there are more venues where people are writing about sex, and sex is more accepted as a topic worthy of discussion alongside pop culture or news of the day. I can’t speak as much to print, but online, new sex columns seem to be thriving, everywhere from Vogue.com (http://www.vogue.com/contributor/karley-sciortino/) to Feministing (http://feministing.com/tag/fucking-with-feministing/), and sites like Fusion and Buzzfeed and countless others are doing innovative takes on it, rather than just sensationalism. I think the world is figuring out that sex isn’t just about what takes place in the bedroom, but that it impacts all aspects of our lives, and that it’s so much more complex than just “sex sells.” So many of our cultural assumptions about sex, gender, dating and relationships are being questioned and upended and we are making more space for people who perhaps don’t fit into an easy label or have fantasies or interests that might not be considered “mainstream.” I hope that we are moving away from the idea that there’s “normal sex” and then everything else. There’s not. Just because what you’re into is less common (or seems less common), doesn’t mean it’s not “normal,” and I think the proliferation of sex blogs, columns and articles is helping people realize that. Social media has made writers across the board more accessible to readers, for both better and worse. In terms of erotica, Fifty Shades of Grey not only made readers more aware of the erotica market, it opened up so many opportunities for writers, many of whom read Fifty Shades and were inspired to start picking up their own pens.

I see that you've moved to the suburbs (like me). Has that changed the perspective of your writing?

The main thing it’s done is give me more time and space to write, which have greatly improved my focus. When I lived in New York, I did way too much socializing at the expense of my career. I loved living in the city, but by the time I moved in 2013, I could tell that I would never accomplish the goals I’d set for myself if I continued to live there, because my FOMO would win out and instead of staying home, I’d be off to this or that event. Since I’ve lived in suburbia, I’ve published an ebook, Sex & Cupcakes: A Juicy Collection of Essays, started sex columns in Philadelphia City Paper (http://citypaper.net/blogs/lets-get-it-on/) and DAME (http://www.damemagazine.com/shameless-sex) and gotten published by the Washington Post and New York Times, so I think it’s safe to say suburbia and writing agree with me. What I don’t get as much of is talking to people on a daily basis; I’m largely alone when I’m working, as opposed to at a café or observing people on the subway, but most of my work happens via online sources, whether that’s editing anthologies or researching articles.

How would you define "slut-shaming" and the damage it does to people?

There’s so many shapes slut-shaming can take, from outright being gossiped about or bullied to more subtle ways. It can happen plenty in the dating world, and I don’t think it always has to be over-the-top and sinister to have an impact. When I was single, I remember several times where no one called me a slut, but it was made clear that my behavior was pretty much too slutty to consider dating me. It can be blatant, but also so subtle we don’t realize we’ve internalized those messages, whether it’s about how soon we have sex or how many people we have sex with or what kinds of sex we have, or even what we wear or how we talk about sex. It’s almost impossible for many girls and women to keep up with the “rules” we are implicitly and explicitly told to follow in order to not be “sluts.” I think the psychic damage is one of the most dangerous aspects, because it can prevent us from exploring sex free of judgment, even our own judgment of ourselves.

What's the best way for women (or anyone) to fight back against "slut shaming?" (As the father of a young daughter, this is something I'm afraid of).

This is a tough question, because sometimes you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t. I think age is also a factor, because once you’re an adult you have more autonomy over your life, but if you’re being slut shamed in junior high or high school, you’re probably seeing the people doing the slut shaming every day, both online and offline. I think finding a support network of people you can trust to talk about it, and figuring out what approach will make you the most comfortable and true to yourself. I also highly recommend checking out The UnSlut Project (http://www.unslutproject.com/), which Emily Lindin started as a way of sharing her own school dairies about being slut shamed, which has morphed into a community around the topic.

Do you feel that women are less afraid these days to speak out against the sexual misconduct of powerful men (i.e. Bill Cosby, Woody Allen, Harvey Weinstein) and is this a new kind of feminism?

I definitely think there’s strength in numbers, especially with some of these high profile cases. Again, it’s probably much more challenging for a student to come forth with an allegation, whether that’s in middle school, high school or college, and trust that they will be believed and given a fair chance to tell their story and pursue charges, should they want to. I do think there’s been renewed feminist activism around the topics of sexual assault and sexual harassment, but we have a lot more work to do in terms of making sure these things don’t happen in the first place and giving women space to discuss how to proceed if it does happen. I was very disturbed to hear Katie Cappiello, author of the play SLUT and co-author of a book of the same name, tell me when I interviewed her for DAME (http://www.damemagazine.com/2015/02/12/does-word-slut-have-power-ruin-us), “We know so many boys who don’t see coercive sex as the same thing as sexual aggression or violence. So they don’t see a problem with forcing a drunk girl to have sex with them, but they would never rape them. That’s a problem; that right there is an indicator that we need to have deeper conversations.”

Tell us about your new book Come Again. 

Come Again is a collection of 24 sex toy themed erotica stories, and probably one of the most humorous erotica books I’ve ever edited, though still plenty hot. I wanted to make sure all the sex toys in the book were different, so readers got variety, and the authors came through big-time. So there are traditional sex toys such as vibrators and butt plugs and nipple clamps, as well as household items like ice and very inventive fictional toys, including a special bike, as well as a story told from the point of view of a vibrator. I was so impressed with the different ways toys play a role in the stories; some are very tender and loving, some playful, some down and dirty, some futuristic, all extremely creative. I had some expectations for the kinds of toys writers would cover, but the authors in the book went above and beyond my wildest dreams. You can learn more about it at comeagainbook.com and also read Q&As (http://www.comeagainbook.com/#!comegainqanda/c370) with many of the authors about their writing inspiration. We’re doing our first reading from the book in one of my favorite cities, Portland, Maine, the night of June 3^rd at restaurant LFK – stay tuned to the Come Again site or LFK’s Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/LFKportland) for details. I’m also tweeting @comeagainbook about the book itself and sex toy news and reviews.

Any plans for the future?

I’m editing the anthology Best Women’s Erotica 2016 for Cleis Press, which is open to women authors; I’m accepting submissions through June 1st and have the guidelines on my site (http://rachelkramerbussel.com/submissions.php). I’m teaching erotica writing online via LitReactor.com (https://litreactor.com/classes/between-the-sheets-with-rachel-kramer-bussel), a wonderful site I highly recommended for all writers—they host classes and post about writing and book news and have active message boards, and will also teach in-person classes June 2 at Nomia in Portland, Maine and September 11at CatalystCon West in Burbank – see my website (http://rachelkramerbussel.com/calendar.php) for details. Outside of erotica, I just had my first article published in The New York Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/03/fashion/oh-those-clever-librarians-and-their-bookface.html), and will continue to write about pretty much anything and everything that I’m interested in. I love (for the most part, when I don’t hate it!) that every day is different when it comes to my work—some days it’s writing, some interviewing people, some editing, some teaching, some walking around brainstorming story ideas. I post daily @raquelita on Twitter and post news and do giveaways in my newsletter, which you can sign up for at rachelkramerbussel.com.

Thanks Rachel! And I hope it doesn't take me another eight years to interview you again!

Transit Tidbits

Here in NYC, transportation is a constant concern. Anyone who reads this blogs knows transit is one of my chief areas of interest -- and gripes -- about this town. NYC is the greatest city in the world yet getting around it is always a challenge. Just one of the many, it turns out, about living here. 

Most of it is the fault of You Know Who -- but that's for another time. 

Yet two stories this weekend highlight a couple of interesting developments in the never ending saga of NYC transit.

First, there's the fact that as bridge and tunnels tolls have increased, there has been a 4% decrease in the number of cars going across and through them. In the last year, as tolls have gone up, there are almost a million fewer vehicles going in and out of this town. Subsequently, ridership on public transportation has increased! Fewer cars, more people maximizing public transit -- who says there's no good news?

Second, as the economy lumbers back to life, one of the sectors experiencing growth in NYC is the "tech sector." Yes, good ol' Silicon Alley is back and better than ever! One of those great pieces of 21st century lingo is the "tech corridor" -- areas populated with tech company giants and start-ups that are linked by similar transportation routes. Most people probably think of highways in Northern California when they think of "tech corridors" but the one in NYC connecting Silicon Alley together is naturally on the subway -- specifically, the R train. New economy meets old infrastructure, I guess. Who knew the future of NYC's economy lay on one of its crappiest subways line?

Moving around this dynamic city is and always will be ... dynamic.

Kudos, Props, and Requests

A lil' bit of blog bid'ness that I hope you, my sweet readers, will pay some sweet attention to.

First, if you check out my right-hand links, you'll see that I made some additions and subtractions. Added some new links, got rid of some dead ones, and re-arranged a few others. Browse and enjoy at your leisure.

Second, I'd like to request my great readers to send me any links to blogs or websites that are NYC-related so that I can add them to the link list too. If you have an NYC blog and would like it linked here, even better! Just click on the Comments and send me the link and, if it's cool, I'll include it here. Any other comments are welcome as well.

Third, I'd just like to thank the over 76 thousand people (and counting) who have stopped by this blog over the last four-plus years. The vast bulk of my readers are from the USA but there's also a strong number of visitors from the UK, Germany, Canada, Russia, the Netherlands, China, France, and the Ukraine. Considering that this blog is about NYC, a big international city, it's great to know that this blog has an international audience. 

Keep up the great work!

Four Years of Mr NYC

Today marks a milestone in Mr NYC history. Today we have crossed the threshold of four years -- a full presidential term -- of this blog's existence. 

Hard to believe. 

Feels just like yesterday when I started this thing on a whim and it's turned into something quite special (at least I think so but, obviously, I'm biased). There are lots of New York City blogs out there, some really great ones in fact, but I think this is the only blog out there that tries to capture this great city's spirit and mind in a unique, reverential way. Clearly that's an impossible task but I've always had a taste for the quixotic. 

Hope you've enjoyed it. I plan to keep doing this for a while. Into the future it goes.

Four more years! 

Interview: Simone Grant of "Sex, Lies & Dating in the City"

Dating in NYC is such a crazy adventure that, over the decades, there have been books, movies, and TV shows aplenty all trying to make sense of the madness. From Annie Hall to Sex and the City, the stories of New Yorkers and love has been exhaustively told -- and inhabited numerous multimedia platforms. Naturally, in the 21st century, this has come to include blogs, and numerous New Yorkers have created some really great ones chronicling their travails of the dating scene here.


Few, however, has done it with such originality as Simone Grant of the intriguingly named blog Sex, Lies & Dating in the City. Her blog might be called the first Web 3.0 dating blog, where she not only tells her own dating stories but also conducts polls of her readers on their dating stories/advice and  directs them to products that might make their love lives a little spicier. Simone was kind enough to share her thoughts of sex, love and dating in the city and what makes her blog so unique.   

There are lots of dating/sex/relationship blogs out there but yours is a little different than most. Tell us about what makes it so unique and why you named it "Sex, Lies & Dating in the City"? 

Well, to be fair, I'm sure every one's blog is unique in some way.  

Back when I first started my blog, in 2008, I wanted to make sure it was true to my experience of dating. I didn't want it to be one funny story after another, or one horror story after another.  I could have done that, and maybe it would have been more popular.  But all of my dating stories aren't funny.  Some are.  And some are sad, or frustrating, or just repetitive (because a lot of dating is just repetitive).  My goal was to create something that real people could read and relate to.

As for the name, that was just me being a dumbass.  I wasn't particularly experienced with blogs or publishing online and it hadn't occurred to me that putting SEX in the title would be a bad thing. Most people cannot read my blog at work, if they work in any kind of business environment; nor can you read it at public libraries or many chain coffee shops which seriously affects my blogs ratings. The name was just a mishmish of "Sex and the City" and "Sex, Lies and Videotape".  Neither are particular favorites of mine, btw.  I was just tossing around ideas for names and they came to mind and the next thing I knew ...  Like I said, me being a dumbass. 

You like to poll your readers about various aspects of their love lives. What inspired you to create these polls and what do they tell you about your readers?

I'm a question girl.  Always asking questions and attracted to people who ask questions.  I find the answers amusing, but take them with a grain of salt.  I find that people's answers change with time, with experience, with alcohol.  Seriously, I adore my readers and love reading the comments, but tend to think that people lie (on polls and most everywhere else).  

So what does Simone Grant look for in a guy? Has your blog affected your love life in any way?

What do I look for?  Damned if I know.  OK, that's a lie. But it's a complicated question.  I'd like to think I'll know him when I see him, but I've thought that before and been very, very wrong.  

For now, I'd like to meet a kind man who I'm massively attracted to (which has more to do with what's on the inside than the outside) to date and build a solid relationship with.  Slowly.  Like a date or 2 a week for the next couple of years.  

The blog has affected my love life, but only in that I know I cannot become involved with a man who would not be OK with it (the blog). And I know that many wouldn't.  A couple have already failed the test.  C'est la vie.  

A question about blogs in general: you seemed to have turned your blog into a successful business. What advice can you give to other aspiring bloggers to do the same?

I was a writer who became a blogger who then became a social media consultant. And, I'm still a writer at heart.  The writer in me screams, pretty much daily, at the horrifyingly low quality of much of what's out there in the blogosphere. Sometimes I'm screaming at myself, because I put stuff out there that I know isn't that good. I just don't have time to make it better (because I'm working on a deadline, or feel pressure to blog daily).  My advice is that content still matters.  Sure, good content marketed poorly won't find an audience. But bad content marketed well won't earn an audience.

One thing that comes through on your blog is that you're a die-hard New Yorker. What is it that you love about NYC so much -- and what is your opinion of the dating scene here?

As for the dating scene, it's not for the faint of heart.  One of my dear friends, and native New Yorker, is fond of saying that you have to fight for everything here. No where is that more true than in the dating scene.  You have to be wiling to fight.  For your sanity if nothing else.

Tell us something about Simone Grant that we don't know.

I'm a lot cooler IRL. For real. 

Thanks Simone! 

The Speech of His Mayoralty

That Mayor Bloomberg is one tricky SOB. He does one thing after another that annoys me (just read this blog) and that means I bust his balls on here on a pretty regular basis. Then he turns around and gives the most impassioned, sensitive, and amazing speech of his career -- a profound calling for religious tolerance. Wow.

NYC's mayors are not necessarily known as great speechgivers and, in his 8 1/2 years as mayor, our Mike has rarely said anything particularly memorable. But this speech was. Read it here:

“We've come here to Governors Island to stand where the earliest settlers first set foot in New Amsterdam, and where the seeds of religious tolerance were first planted. We come here to see the inspiring symbol of liberty that more than 250 years later would greet millions of immigrants in this harbor. And we come here to state as strongly as ever, this is the freest city in the world. That's what makes New York special and different and strong.

“Our doors are open to everyone. Everyone with a dream and a willingness to work hard and play by the rules. New York City was built by immigrants, and it's sustained by immigrants -- by people from more than 100 different countries speaking more than 200 different languages and professing every faith. And whether your parents were born here or you came here yesterday, you are a New Yorker.

“We may not always agree with every one of our neighbors. That's life. And it's part of living in such a diverse and dense city. But we also recognize that part of being a New Yorker is living with your neighbors in mutual respect and tolerance. It was exactly that spirit of openness and acceptance that was attacked on 9/11, 2001.

“On that day, 3,000 people were killed because some murderous fanatics didn't want us to enjoy the freedoms to profess our own faiths, to speak our own minds, to follow our own dreams, and to live our own lives. Of all our precious freedoms, the most important may be the freedom to worship as we wish. And it is a freedom that even here -- in a city that is rooted in Dutch tolerance -- was hard-won over many years.

“In the mid-1650s, the small Jewish community living in lower Manhattan petitioned Dutch governor Peter Stuyvesant for the right to build a synagogue, and they were turned down. In 1657, when Stuyvesant also prohibited Quakers from holding meetings, a group of non-Quakers in Queens signed the Flushing Remonstrance, a petition in defense of the right of Quakers and others to freely practice their religion. It was perhaps the first formal political petition for religious freedom in the American colonies, and the organizer was thrown in jail and then banished from New Amsterdam.

“In the 1700s, even as religious freedom took hold in America, Catholics in New York were effectively prohibited from practicing their religion, and priests could be arrested. Largely as a result, the first Catholic parish in New York City was not established until the 1780s, St. Peter's on Barclay Street, which still stands just one block north of the World Trade Center site, and one block south of the proposed mosque and community center.

“This morning, the city's Landmark Preservation Commission unanimously voted to extend -- not to extend -- landmark status to the building on Park Place where the mosque and community center are planned. The decision was based solely on the fact that there was little architectural significance to the building. But with or without landmark designation, there is nothing in the law that would prevent the owners from opening a mosque within the existing building.

“The simple fact is, this building is private property, and the owners have a right to use the building as a house of worship, and the government has no right whatsoever to deny that right. And if it were tried, the courts would almost certainly strike it down as a violation of the U.S. Constitution.

“Whatever you may think of the proposed mosque and community center, lost in the heat of the debate has been a basic question: Should government attempt to deny private citizens the right to build a house of worship on private property based on their particular religion? That may happen in other countries, but we should never allow it to happen here.

“This nation was founded on the principle that the government must never choose between religions or favor one over another. The World Trade Center site will forever hold a special place in our city, in our hearts. But we would be untrue to the best part of ourselves and who we are as New Yorkers and Americans if we said no to a mosque in lower Manhattan.

“Let us not forget that Muslims were among those murdered on 9/11, and that our Muslim neighbors grieved with us as New Yorkers and as Americans. We would betray our values and play into our enemies' hands if we were to treat Muslims differently than anyone else. In fact, to cave to popular sentiment would be to hand a victory to the terrorists, and we should not stand for that.

"For that reason, I believe that this is an important test of the separation of church and state as we may see in our lifetimes, as important a test. And it is critically important that we get it right.

"On Sept. 11, 2001, thousands of first responders heroically rushed to the scene and saved tens of thousands of lives. More than 400 of those first responders did not make it out alive. In rushing into those burning buildings, not one of them asked, 'What God do you pray to?' (Bloomberg's voice cracks here a little as he gets choked up.) 'What beliefs do you hold?'

"The attack was an act of war, and our first responders defended not only our city, but our country and our constitution. We do not honor their lives by denying the very constitutional rights they died protecting. We honor their lives by defending those rights and the freedoms that the terrorists attacked.

"Of course, it is fair to ask the organizers of the mosque to show some special sensitivity to the situation, and in fact their plan envisions reaching beyond their walls and building an interfaith community. But doing so, it is my hope that the mosque will help to bring our city even closer together, and help repudiate the false and repugnant idea that the attacks of 9/11 were in any ways consistent with Islam.

"Muslims are as much a part of our city and our country as the people of any faith. And they are as welcome to worship in lower Manhattan as any other group. In fact, they have been worshipping at the site for better, the better part of a year, as is their right. The local community board in lower Manhattan voted overwhelmingly to support the proposal. And if it moves forward, I expect the community center and mosque will add to the life and vitality of the neighborhood and the entire city.

"Political controversies come and go, but our values and our traditions endure, and there is no neighborhood in this city that is off-limits to God's love and mercy, as the religious leaders here with us can attest."

Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2010/08/bloomberg-stands-up-for-mosque.html#ixzz0vg8bMZMo