Review: "The Beast in Me" (2025)

The world of NYC real estate is cut-throat and, in the new Netflix series The Beast In Me, it's both metaphorical and literal.

The plot to this series is pure sensationalist thriller yarn -- dead wives! dead kids! trophy wives! domineering parents! broken families! horny FBI agents! and money, money, money!

It's total nonsense. But it's really well done and quite entertaining.

The plot involves a woman named Aggie, played by the always amazing Claire Daines, who is the author of a hugely successful book that got her a Pulitzer Prize and a big house in Oyster Bay ... but is now grieving her dead son, her failed marriage, and a horrible case of writer's block on her follow up book. She then meets her creepy neighbor Niles Jarvis, scion of a powerful NYC real estate family, who many suspect killed his wife (but was never charged criminally) and whose family is trying build a massive projects in Manhattan called Jarvis yards -- that is facing stiff community and political resistance. Niles is played by Matthew Rhys and man, oh man, he was is one scary dude in this series. 

Events and intrigues ensue, secrets are hidden and revealed, and it's all a lot of pulpy fun.

The reason I'm reviewing this show is that while The Beast In Me is pure sensationalist thriller, it also has a Power Broker-Chinatown angle that is quite intriguing -- namely, it makes us ponder who rules and controls the fate of great cities, how and why are these rich and powerful and murderous people allowed to control the future of millions, and how it impacts us all. 

In that way, it's a great NYC story, 

Moses & Caro Speak!

This year marks the 50th anniversary of The Power Broker, Robert Caro's brilliant book about the career of NYC master builder Robert Moses. 

I've blogged A LOT about Robert Moses over the years and you can find it all, including my own review of The Power Broker, right here (there's also a big exhibition about it at the New-York Historical Society). 

When Caro wrote in the book in the last 1960s and early 1970s, he was a young man looking to reveal the story behind how Moses built NYC. By this time, Moses himself was an old man, looking back at his controversial legacy. 

Now, fifty years later, Moses is long dead and Caro himself is an old man, looking back on the legacy of his book about the man and what he did to NYC.

Below you can see a 1977 interview that Moses gave to publica television about his career and the book that made him infamous. And then you can watch a very recent 2024 interview with Care reflecting how his great book came to be. 

Sad Day

This is very sad -- going from being a US Attorney and two-term Mayor of New York City, the chief executive of the nation's and the world's greatest city, leading it with acclaim during its darkest moment in history, going from that great height ...

... to being a indicted felon in Georgia.

It's been 20+ years since he left office but Giuliani had an opportunity like no other mayor in this city's history to be one of its greatest elder statesmen, a mandarin of sorts, it's greatest power broker. Instead ... he chose this dark, worthless path, debasing himself to serve a conman. It's like a piece of bad fiction, a depressing potboiler. Sad! 

Review: "Turn Every Page – The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb" (2022)

For the first time in way too long, I was able to do something I had done many times before kids and COVID took over my life -- go to a movie at Film Forum. And nothing could have been a more quintessential NYC experience that seeing a documentary there about two titanic New Yorkers, Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb, called Turn Every Page. 

For those who don't already know, Robert Caro is the author of the 1974 classic book The Power Broker about the NYC "master builder" Robert Moses who shaped this city in ways beyond comprehension. I've blogged a lot about Moses and this book over the years to the point of absurdity. 

I haven't done so about Gottlieb but he is no less a legend -- he is not only a book editor but is probably the most successful book editor of the late 20th, early 21st centuries. Since the 1950s, he's edited books by the likes of Michael Crichton and John la Carre, he edited all of Toni Morrison's novels, he not only edited but also came up with the title for Catch-22 (which has become a cultural catchphrase), he edited President Bill Clinton's autobiography in 2004 -- the legacy of the authors he's worked with and the books he's worked on is immense. And he's edited each of Robert Caro's books, starting with The Power Broker and then, for the last 40+ years, his multi-volume biography of President Lyndon Johnson, the last book of which they're still working on together.

Turn Every Page is about the working relationship of these two men over the decades, and how it's evolved but also stayed largely the same. They love each other dearly but aren't afraid to fight or disagree about their work, their passion for it being so great. Directed by Gottlieb's daughter Lizzie, it's a very affectionate portrait of these two men but also a very detailed, sober look at the extremely hard work of writing and editing -- they even spend time talking about semi-colons and stuff like that.

And that's what I loved about this documentary -- it's about the work just as much as it is about the personalities. It's about how these men actually get these books written, about how hard it is, about how exacting and time-consuming it is to create great, memorable books. It's also wonderful to see the story of two NYC boys who dreamed big and achieved greatness. But most of all, it focuses on the work, the toughness and demands of the work, and how there are no shortcuts. 

The documentary's title, Turn Every Page, is based on something that Robert Caro's boss told him when he was a young reporter at Newsday and was starting out doing investigating work: "Turn every page, turn every goddamn page!" 

Go see it!

Review: "Motherless Brooklyn" (2019)

Private corruption leads to public corruption -- the personal venality of those in power is inflicted upon the masses in terrible ways. We are seeing this in extremis with the morally rotten and massively corrupt presidency of Donald Trump. Although this reality horror show will end a week from today, its stench will linger over us for a long time afterwards.

And that's the overarching problem -- even when bad powerful men go away, we the people remain stuck with their corrupt works for years and decades to come.

If you've ever read The Power Broker, Robert Caro's biography of NYC "master builder" Robert Moses, or seen the movie Chinatown, a fictional retelling of engineer William Mulholland bringing water to Los Angeles, the central concept within both is that the personal corruption of these powerful men fueled and warped the development of our nation's two biggest cities -- and, even now, decades after their deaths, we are literally living in the crime scenes i.e. the cities they made. 

And that's the basic idea behind Edward Norton's 2019 movie Motherless Brooklyn: the city is a crime.

A very liberal adaptation of Jonathan Lethem's 1999 novel, Motherless Brooklyn is Norton's attempt to take the basic framework of Chinatown (a private detective investigating a weird crime) and marry it with the facts in The Power Broker (an unelected master planner who builds in NYC with dictatorial power) to make a 21st-century fable about the corrupt shaping of our city. 

A thumbnail of the plot: a private detective with Tourette's syndrome named Lionel Essrog investigates the murder of one his partners. His investigation leads him to Harlem where he meets a woman named Laura Rose who works with someone named Gabby Horowitz (based on Jane Jacobs) who is fighting the redevelopment plans of city commisioner Moses Randolph (based on you-know-who). Essrog eventually meets up with a man named Paul, another brilliant but failed city planner, who turns out to be Randolph's brother and who knows a dark secret that could bring him down. Essrog discovers that Randolph's redevelopment plan is just a scam to kick poor black people out of their homes and sell their property to private developers. Paul explains to Essrog how Randolph's power is beyond anyone else's in government and how, as the head of an unelected public authority, he is totally unaccountable to anyone. Events ensue and Essrog comes to realize that Laura's life is in danger -- unless he can somehow get to Randolph and blackmail him with his secret. There's lots of double-crossing and complexity that makes this a very noirish yarn. 

It's a story about the power behind the power, the secret history of NYC, and the darkness behind it all. Also, it's a tale about the basic evils of gentrification and how the "public good" is often a cover for private greed.

The cast is excellent: Norton is compelling as Essrog, Alec Baldwin is ominous as Randolph, and Willem Dafoe is the standout as the tortured Paul. The cast includes Michael K. Wiliams, Bobby Cannavale, a cameo by Bruce Willis, Cherry Jones as Gabby, and a very good actress named Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays Laura. 

Norton is a fine director and the movie holds your attention to a point but, ultimately, the story feels slight in relation to the heights of its ambition. You can tell, in a way, that Norton is suffering from the classic "anxiety of influence" -- he is cleary in awe of, and has great reverence for, Chinatown and The Power Broker and the original novel, that his efforts with this film feel stunted, as much as influenced, by them. Also, I think there's an inherit problem when you're trying to make a movie that's partly inspired by a novel but also trying to incorporate plot lines and factoids from another movie and another book. It's just too much -- and while a noble attempt it makes the story and its themes feel more jumbled than inspired.

Still, it's an interesting concept for a movie -- and it's more of a concept than a movie in my opinion -- but that's why I recommend people see Motherless Brooklyn along with enjoying it's wonderful cast.  

Archie Spigner RIP

Fascinating story about a former city councilman named Archie Spigner who had just died at age 92. Besides spending almost 30 years in the council, he was the great powerbroker in southeast Queens for decades -- making other council members, state legislators, and members of Congress along the way. He was also responsible for big projects getting done in the borough and for reshaping huge swaths of it. fa

Archie Spigner was the kind of power broker, the kind of power behind-the-throne, who fascinates me -- not famous or serving in high office but someone who those who do rely on, who knows where the power lies, and who make the city we all live in.

"The Power Broker" on TV!

Believe it or not, I haven't been watching much TV during this pandemic -- I spend so much time working at my job, taking care of my kids, keeping my house in order, cooking, and occasionally blogging, that my TV time is severely limited. When I do watch something, it's usually for only an hour or so before bed, usually some show that I've recorded or get off a streaming service.

But on the rare occasion when I do catch the news, I've noticed a trend: people who are broadcasting or being interviewed from home, a bookcase behind them, with a copy of Robert Caro's The Power Broker prominently displayed on a top shelf. Just last night I caught two minutes of Erroll Louis on NY1, and there was the mighty tome looming over his shoulder. 

I'm not the only one who's noticed this -- today there's a big article about how numerous politicians, journalists, and other assorted NYC bigwigs who appear on TV regularly are making sure that The Power Broker can be seen by the audience. Some politicians, like Congressman Max Rose of Staten Island, downright admit that they put it there just be seen. Displaying this book so clearly to the public is an perfect example of what we might call "intelligence signaling" -- it says, "look how smart, informed, sophisticated, and New York I am. Oh, and I really, really like to read." 

Unlike many of these people who've probably never actually read The Power Broker, yours truly has -- I even blogged about it twelve yearss ago. So there!

Other suggested big NYC books to have on your bookshelf to show what a super-sophisticated New Yorker you are: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe, Underworld by Don DeLillo (might want to throw in White Noise or Mao ii for good measure), maybe some older books like The Great Gatsby, Sister Carrie, and The Age of Innocence, and anything by Vonnegut. 

And here's 1977 interview with the "power broker" himself, Robert Moses!

NYC Turns, Turns, Turns ...

Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 and Pete Seegar taught us well: "To everything there is a season ... a time to live, and a time to die ... a time to break down, and a time to build up ... a time to mourn, and a time to dance ... a time to keep, and a time to cast away ... and a time to every purpose ... turn, turn, turn ..."

The yin and yang, the ups and downs, the hopes and dreams realized and dashed, the constant churn -- or turn -- of existence is something that you only begin to fully appreciate as you age. Life is never a permanent up or down escalator. In fact, as we get older, accepting this constant "to everything there is a season" fact of life -- and not just accepting but cherishing it -- is what makes the craziness and vicissitudes of aging bearable. It's a basic tenet of survival -- things happen, things change, sometimes for better, often for worst, but they are inevitable. Accepting them with grace is a greater part of wisdom.

Of course, in this day and age, there are lots of people who either can't or won't accept what the Bible and our greatest folk singer taught us. They go in the opposite direction -- trying hopelessly, miserably, quixotically to reclaim their youths, reclaim their pasts, reclaim times gone by. They express this in both harmless and harmful ways, like reveling in cultural nostalgia (harmless) or voting for Trump (harmful). F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote about this yearn for regression in his last, brilliant line of The Great Gatsby: "So beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

In NYC, we see this "turn" all the time, in ways both big and small. Concurrently, we also see the desire, in varying ways, to recapture the city's past.

For example, the neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn: this area has a rather bi-polar identity, as both the ultimate liberal hipster mecca and the home to the very conservative Orthodox Jewish community. But did you know there is highly Italian part of it? It's fading away, and the people there seem to accept that their neighborhood and the times have changed, as this article and its amazing photographs demonstrate.

Two recent deaths also show how people in our past made the city's present and future turn for the better. I love reading about New Yorkers like this because, without them, our city and its culture would be poorer. Genevieve Oswald created and curated the dance archive at the public library for more than 40 years. And Henry Stern was the Parks Commissions off and on for almost 20 years (from 1983-2001), the longest serving and probably most imaginative commissioner since Robert Moses. 

*Side note: I tried interviewing Henry Stern for this blog several years ago. I emailed him at an organization he ran, and got a rather weird message in reply that I didn't understand -- it wasn't an outright rejection but it certainly didn't read like an acceptance. It was more like, "If you call this number, something might happen but don't expect it." I never did call. His was one of a few interviews that just never quite happened.

Anyway, they were both great New Yorkers, they made it "turn" for the better. May they RIP.

Moving on ... I was a teenager in NYC in the 1990s. As much as I'd like to say it was a special time and place to be young, it sure didn't feel that way at the time. Honestly, I was a complete loser (unlike now, where I'm only a partial loser), and back then I had no money, no girlfriends, few real friends, and lots of school work. Le ugh. However, as the 21st century so far has given us 9/11, two endless wars, more and more mass shootings, more and more man-made natural disasters, the financial crises, and Trump, it's easy to look at the last decade of the 20th century as some of kind of "end of innocence" even though it really wasn't. In recent years, there have been movies about being a teenager in the 1990s, both in NYC and elsewhere, including The Wackness from 2008 and more recently one called Landline (I actually went to high school with the person who made it but didn't know her). This article is about these movies and their 1990s nostalgia is both misplaced and yet totally understandable (also, this year is the 30th anniversary of the classic NYC romantic comedy When Harry Met Sally which, in many ways, was a '90s movie even though it came out in the last year of the 1980s).

Things in NYC and the world have "turned" since the 1990s -- in some ways for better (the smartphone, the smoking ban, lower crime, Barack Obama) and, obviously, for worse. I know for me things have actually "turned" for the better, but even I sometimes looked back misty-eyed at the Clinton era.

And in understanding how the times "turn", no New Yorker explains not only history but power -- and how people in power made history -- than Robert Caro. Author of the Robert Moses tome The Power Broker and the Lyndon Johnson series, Caro has just published a book about his working life (literally titled Working). His advice to aspiring historians? "Turn every page." Turn over the pages, the materials, the people, the metaphorical rocks of the past to understand how our present was formed and how we are forming our future. 

NYC, like the world it exists in, turns forever -- and it is we who do the turning.

Interview: Greg Young of The Bowery Boys Podcast

Easily the best podcast about New York City history is The Bowery Boys, created and still hosted today by Greg Young and Tom Meyers. On each episode, these two uber-NYC enthusiasts deep-dive into so many aspects of this city's history: the people, neighborhoods, events, and eccentricities that have formed this most amazing of places. They go way back in history and make it relevant to life in the city today. The enthusiasm and joy that Greg and Tom bring to each episode is infectious, and the show has gone beyond the podcast into books and tours. 

It's brilliant and extremely fun, and I get excited every time I see a new episode pop up in my IPhone. 

The Bowery Boys, still going strong after more than a decade, is extremely popular with listeners from all over the world. Greg Young was kind enough to answer some questions for Mr NYC about the podcast, the city, its history, and his favorite NYC-related things.  

Tell us what inspired you and your co-host Tom Meyers to create The Bowery Boys podcast. What makes you keep doing it after 11 years? And why call is the "Bowery" boys? 

We started the podcast in 2007 as a way to keep us inspired about the city and to learn more about our neighborhood at the time (which was the Lower East Side). We have not been exhausted by the information we continue to find about the city, so we keep doing the show! The Bowery Boys were a 19th century gang that roamed the streets of Five Points, the notorious slum that once sat near Chinatown today. Although we like to also consider ourselves in the tradition of the ‘Bowery b’hoys’ and ‘Bowery g’hals’ of the 1830s and 40s, Irish-phrased slang for the new young Irish immigrant populations that were moving into lower Manhattan at the time.

While the podcast is about the history of NYC, it seems focused on how the history of the physical city intersects with its cultural and social history -- as well as its "mystique." Is this is a good way to describe the podcast or am I missing something? What else would you say the podcast is about? 

All of that – and more! I’d say the meaning of our show has evolved as well, especially now that we’ve done it for 11 years. Things we talked about at the beginning have changed or are now entirely gone. It’s interesting listening to our early shows just to compare how the city has developed – in some ways good, others bad. For instance, it’s almost amusing to hear our early shows on the High Line and the Meat-Packing District, recorded years before Hudson Yards project was dreamt up. 

How do you guys go about finding subjects to discuss and what is your research process like? How do you avoid being repetitive? 

Topics develop out of research or are inspired by current events or pop culture moments. For instance, our next show is on the history of the New York comedy scene, inspired by our affection for the The Marvelous Mrs Maisel on Amazon. And it’s okay to be a little repetitive, we have discovered. Sometimes it’s worthwhile to approach subjects again from a different point of view. We just recently did a show on Emma Lazarus, incorporating the history of the Statue of Liberty into that, but from the angle of immigration (a hot button issue these days). 

The podcast goes pretty far back into the history of NYC. Are you guys most interested in NYC before the 1950s and '60s or do you ever like to get into recent history? 

We do whatever interests us. When we do recent history, we like to interview people who remembered the history. Sometimes, due to time constraints, its just easier for us to talk about older topics but technically no decade is off limits. Our comedy show in two weeks will have a whole section about the 1990s. 

Do you have to fight the urge to make the podcast Manhattan-centric and is it harder to do episodes about the outer boroughs? 

It drives me crazy because I’d love to do more about the outer boroughs. But we have such a diverse audience at this point – with as many listeners outside New York City as in – and Manhattan tales are still the most popular. PLUS you can’t overlook how important New York (which was just Manhattan until 1898) is in American history. That said, there will be a LOT more Brooklyn and Queens in the coming year. 

Tell us about some of your favorite episodes and what made them so special? 

So many ways to answer this! We love our ghost story shows of course – we get to be melodramatic and over-produced – and we love our big infrastructure shows the most (like the subway, Robert Moses, Jane Jacobs, the grid plan). Personally speaking, I love the music shows. I come from a career in the music industry and was so thrilled to do shows on Billie Holiday and The Cotton Club that were brimming with music. 

What are some of your favorite pieces of NYC historical trivia -- and what things about the city's history do you think are important for anyone who lives here to know? 

I’m currently obsessed with the origins of place names. Find an interestingly names street and go down a rabbit hole of how it got its name. For instance, there are a row of streets in Greenpoint that are alphabetical north to south (Ash Street, Box Street, Clay Street etc.) and its all to do with the 19th century industry that once lined the waterfront there. 

Have you ever read The Power Broker and what are your thoughts on the legacy of Robert Moses? 

One of my favorite books of course! I’ll say this – our city could probably use a 1930s Robert Moses right about now, to erase and reverse some of the damage that 1950s and 60s Robert Moses did to this city. 

What are favorite NYC neighborhoods and why?

I have about a million, but I always suggest people visit Roosevelt Island. You’d be surprised how many native New Yorkers have never been. It’s got a ton of history and some excellent views. Plus – SMALLPOX HOSPITAL RUINS. 

What are some of your favorite NYC movies, TV shows, and novels? Which movies, in your opinion, show off the city the best or makes people really understand why life is (or was) like here? 

The aforementioned Mrs Maisel, Mad Men, The Knick – are all excellent portrayals of New York. The Alienist was often good, even though it was filmed in Europe. In terms of recent movies – believe it or not, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them actually does an amazing job at re-imagining 1920s New York. Loved the Saiorse Ronan movie Brooklyn, the Oscar Isaac movies A Most Violent Year and Inside Llewyn Davis. I just recently re-watched Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence and thought it really held up. 

As the city becomes more and more gentrified, do you think NYC is in danger of losing parts of its history or has historical preservation done enough to, well, preserve it? Tell us your thoughts about how you think NYC should keep its history while also moving into the future? 

New York City always needs to keep changing; it can’t afford to be a museum artifact like Paris or Rome. We’ve got excellent preservation laws in place and well-regarded community groups fighting to save those artifacts that are most endangered. But I do worry about classic mom-and-pop places disappearing with skyrocketing rents. There are some excellent ideas in play to help save them, but the best way to save those types of businesses is to actually frequent them, spend money at them. We can’t lament the loss of a classic diner or a deli if we’ve never bothered to step foot in it. 

What are your hopes for The Bowery Boys podcast moving forward? What does the future hold? 

More live shows, a new spin-off show for 2019, and another book! 

Finally, what do you love most about NYC? 

My answer changes every week. Last week’s answer – the beauty of snow falling in a brownstone neighborhood with a canopy of trees. The week before – my local bakery’s bagels. Next week’s answer – visiting the American Museum of Natural History on Wednesday to watch workers inflate the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade floats. 

Thanks Greg!

You can find podcast episodes and more info about where to download them here. 

Dead or Alive. Or both?

NYC has "died" or "fallen" many times.

Jane Jacobs wrote about the "death" of NYC in the 1960s, Annie Hall declared that it was "a dying city" in the 1970s, and Robert Caro blamed NYC master builder/planner Robert Moses as contributing to its "fall" in The Power Broker. NYC keeps dying and falling and then revivifying and getting back up all the time.

Today, it seems to be doing both, depending on who you ask -- or, more importantly, read.

I turned your attention to two MASSIVE articles that examine this "dead or alive" debate. One is called The Death of a Once Great City and the other is New York City is alive and well.

Once interesting is that these two articles agree on a lot about the current malaise that afflicts NYC. Namely, the city is hostage to market forces, jacking up rents and the cost of living, and changing the face and character of the city for the worse i.e. rich and boring as opposed to working class and fun -- and that the state and city government needs to do more to stop this. But the "death" article seems a tad myopic since it seems to confuse Manhattan with NYC while the "alive" article rightly states that most of NYC is NOT Manhattan and is actually thriving. 

While I understand the feelings in the "death" article, I think the "alive" article is more correct: NYC is still a hot bed of excitement but its been moving out of Manhattan for a long, long time. The city has, in fact, been changing forever (another things both articles agree on) so declaring that the city is "dead or alive" is a pointless argument: it's changing, in some ways better, some ways worse, now and forever. And the government can and always should do more to help its citizens. 

Da' Bronx

Interesting article from NY Mag online about the only NYC borough grafted to the American mainland: the Bronx. Titled "What is the Bronx Anyway?", it's a meditation about the borough, by a native, about what makes the Bronx both fascinating and yet, at the same time, so elusive to New Yorkers who live outside it.

The author raises some interesting points, and the article is worth a read, but I think there's more to what makes the Bronx such a difficult place to describe and understandd. Three main points I'd include:

1. Other than Staten Island, the Bronx is very isolated from the rest of NYC. In fact, it's even more isolated: you can ferry it from Staten Island to lower Manhattan very easily or drive across the Verrazano bridge into Brooklyn. The Bronx, on the other hand, is only attached to the city by a few bridges and subway lines to upper Manhattan. So, for the rest of the city, the Bronx might as well be Westchester. Out of easy reach, out of mind.

2. The Bronx is not, shockingly enough, geographically homogeneous. Yes, the South Bronx is popularly thought of as a Bonfire of the Vanities-like urban hell hole, and other parts of it are very citified too. But remember, the Bronx is also home to the super-suburban area of Riverdale. Also, huge swaths of it are covered by park land: Van Cortland Park, Pelham Bay Park, Ferry Point Park, not to mention all of the space that the Bronx Zoo takes up (it's huge!). So the Bronx is hard to define since it's a patchwork of urban landscapes, suburbs, parks, and islands (like City Island).

3. The Bronx has a very sad history. In the 1950s, wonderful middle class, largely Jewish, neighborhoods like Tremont were destroyed and blighted by the Cross Bronx Expressway. When Robert Moses rammed this enormous highway straight across the borough, the wonderful Marty-like ccommunities housed in the Bronx were wrecked and scattered. No one wanted to live next to a big noisy highway and neighborhoods were literallyy gashed apart. Abandoned buildings turned into drug dens. Filth and grime took root. People who could afford to live elsewhere did. Read the chapter "One Mile" from Robert Caro's The Power Broker to learn about how an entire borough of this great town was basically ruined by this evil highway. The Bronx has never fully recovered.

"The Power Broker" @ 40

Several years ago I wrote about Robert Caro's 1974 classic book "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and The Fall of New York."

Clocking in at around 1,200 pages, "The Power Broker" won the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction and is generally considered the greatest book ever written about NYC. It tells the story of the long, complicated, and fascinating career of Robert Moses, the "master builder" who constructed roads, bridges, highways, parks, beaches, playgrounds, public housing, and huge structures like Lincoln Center and the United Nations. From the mid-1920s until the late 1960s, he was the most powerful man in New York City and New York State, a more consequential figure than any mayor or governor during that time -- or since. Because of Moses, the city's waterfront was cut off from the people, islands were bolted together, neighborhoods were destroyed, public transportation wasn't built, and over half-a-million people were evicted from their homes. The city was, as Caro writes, "flooded with cars" due to Moses' works, and our city's physical landscape changed forever. 

Most shockingly, even though Moses wielded more power and had a greater effect on this city than anyone else in the 20th century, he was never elected to anything.

The story behind "The Power Broker" is equally fascinating: how the young reporter Robert Caro wrote a series of stories about Suffolk County and how it got him a grant to write a book about Moses -- a project that Caro thought would only last a year. How, instead, Caro spent seven years chronicling this incredible story and he and his wife almost went broke, living a total hand-to-mouth existence. How Caro interviewed Moses several times before the great man cut off communication with him. How interest for the book, prior to publication, was generated by serialization in The New Yorker. And how, today, on the 40th anniversary of its publication, "The Power Broker" stands as a classic that has never gone out of print. This article tells the story of how "The Power Broker" came into existence and is a must read like the book itself. 

P.S. This article uses the word "archipelago" i.e. a group of islands, to describe NYC. That is, obviously, an apt description, and I feel deep shame that I have never, in almost a decade of blogging about NYC, never referred to this city as an archipelago. After all, not only is that a neat and proper word to call our fair city, but it's a really cool one. So expect me to throw around the word "archipelago" a lot on this blog going forward. I'll start now: archipelago, archipelago, archipelago, archipelago, archipelago ... archipelago.

Remembering the 1964 World's Fair

Some years are transformative -- and 1964 was one of them.

Like 1994, it was a "hinge-of-history" year, a year when everything changed, a year when events that happened in it had long-term repercussions. The previous year, 1963, ended on the tragic note of President Kennedy's assassination. For many American it felt like the end of innocence. In many ways, it was: in the near future were Vietnam, Watergate, race riots, stagflation, and rising crime rates. But despite the horror of November 22, 1963, 1964 was an exciting year. We got, amongst other things:

1. The British Invasion of Beatlemania that would transform rock music and American culture.

2. The 1964 Civil Rights Act that ended legal discrimination across the country and would one day lead to the first black president.

3. The historic landslide election of President Lyndon Johnson that (Vietnam not withstanding) lead to the creation of Medicare and Medicaid, the Voting Rights Act, and even the creation of public television (amongst other things).

4. The 1964 World's Fair in Flushing, Queens.

This last event, obviously, was a big deal in NYC. The world came to New York to see the future. Designed and overseen by legendary master building Robert Moses (it was his last big career triumph), the Fair stretched from April, 1964 until 1965 and featured thousands of exhibits by companies like Ford and GM, Pepsi, IBM, and Westinghouse all displaying their wares. Governments from the around the world came and had big displays and shows to "advertise" themselves to an international audience. And, of course, artists came to sell their work. Plus, this was the beginning of the Space Age, and there were lots of exhibits featuring rockets, some of which are visible in Flushing Meadows Park today. 

In 1964, America realized that the 20th century wouldn't last forever and the World Fair gave us a glimpse of things to come.

The actual Fair has taken on legendary status. It was the last of its kind in New York City and is considered the gold standard for all World's Fair since then. But it was not without its controversies.

First, there was financial mismanagement. Even though the Fair brought in tons of money, it cost more to run. Blame for this can be laid at the feet of Mr. Moses, as Robert Caro writes about extensively in The Power Broker. Its money-losing legacy is one of the reasons there hasn't been another World's Fair in NYC since then.

Second, a lot of stuff was built for it that has since fallen into disuse. There's a sphere in Flushing Meadows Park that, despite looking cool, had cost a fortune to maintain. And then there's the Pavilion, which has been called New York's most beautiful ruin. 

Third, there's the politics. In the 1960s, New York State was ruled by Governor Nelson Rockefeller. His money and political power made him invincible. The World's Fair was his baby, the crown jewel of his legacy that he hoped would propel him into the Presidency. Obviously, it didn't, but his political goals led to decisions in planning and management that led to the cost overruns. Most appallingly, however, is that it led to an unconscionable act of censorship by the then governor. The great artist Andy Warhol created his only work of public art for the Fair called "13 Most Wanted Men" (it was, bizarrely, a mural of the 13 most wanted criminals in America). Some people found it offensive, and Rockefeller pressured Warhol to paint it over. He did, and the public was denied seeing this amazing piece of art.  

Since 1964, Warhol has, like the World's Fair and unlike Nelson Rockefeller, become iconic. And, in fact, 1964, was truly an iconic year. It felt like, and was, a time when possibilities were limitless. We were going into space. We were ending discrimination. The culture was changing, become more radical, more weird. The middle class was exploding. It was a good time in America and NYC -- and the World's Fair encapsulated it.

Of course, it would all come crashing down very soon thereafter. The Kennedy assassination late the previous year seemed to be a dark foreshadowing of the many crises that would shake America and the world after that. NYC would go through turbulent times too (think the fiscal crises of the 1970s, booming crime, the destruction of the middle class). But the World's Fair showed then that the future should be something to be embraced and not feared -- and maybe one day, hopefully, it will be so again.

Who shapes the city?

Robert Caro's 1974 masterpiece The Power Broker offered a cautionary tale about the power of unelected urban planners shaping cities. Caro's story of Robert Moses, the master builder who for forty-plus years misshaped NYC (destroying neighborhoods with highways and ill-conceived urban renewal housing projects, not building badly needed public transportation, cutting the city off from its waterfront) is searing since, in many ways, our city is still grappling with Moses' legacy today.

For many years after the Moses-era, urban planners went into retreat. NYC and other American cities were grappling with high crime, fiscal crises, and white flight. No one had grand ambitions to build in, and redesign, cities that were struggling for mere survival. But in the last two decades, NYC and other American cities have undergone a renaissance as crime has fallen, finances have been gotten under control, and people have been flooding in. So now urban planners are back, big time, with grand visions of new buildings, parks, and other public works.

But these are not your grandparents' urban planners.

Take this article from the The New Republic. It's about a man named Edmund Bacon who was, in his day and in many ways, the Robert Moses of Philadelphia. There is a new book about Bacon that seeks to re-introduce him to another generation as a great urban visionary who built Philadelphia into the great American city it is today. This is going hand-in-hand with some people who are trying to restore Moses' reputation and reconsider his legacy that The Power Broker so powerfully damned. (FYI Ed Bacon was the father of actor Kevin Bacon. Cut loose!)

But the new urban planners aren't people trying to be another Robert Moses or Ed Bacon. Instead, they are largely private organizations and companies trying to put a unique stamp on cities. Here in NYC, the most popular recent example is the Highline -- the old abandoned railway tracked turned into a park in the sky. It was mostly private funds that went into this project raised by Friends of the Highline.

Now comes Citi -- Citi Bank, that is -- with its new bike share program. If you've been walking around NYC in the last few weeks, you've probably seen these clunky blue bikes stuffed in docking stations at various points around the city. They have the words "citiBike" pasted on them, and you pay an annual fee to use these bikes -- but not to the City but to Citi.

These are the new urban planners -- companies like Citi Bank, organizations like Friends of the Highline -- literally changing the face of NYC. They are making their own imprint on our town. This isn't the government providing services, it's private enterprise making a mark, and sometimes we have to pay an additional fee (some might call it tax) for the privilege. For example, the 9/11 memorial museum is not public institution like you might think -- it's private, and you have to pay an entrance fee.

So, instead of a grand visionary like Robert Moses using government funds or bonds for big public works, it's companies and various private organizations finding incremental ways to shape the city.

In some ways, this has been going on for a long time. The big New Year's Eve celebration in Times Square was originally created by The New York Times about 100 years ago ... to promote The New York Times (before it was used by Dick Clark to promote Ryan Seacrest). The July 4th fireworks and the Thanksgiving Day Parade were (and are) sponsored by Macy's to promote ... Macy's. This was then known as good corporate citizenship -- and also good corporate PR.

Of course, private developers have been building residential and commercial real estate for centuries -- but they weren't shaping the life and identityy of the city in quite the same way.

Personally, I think the new urban planners are a mixed bag. Things like the Highline and New Year's Eve and the parade and fireworks are great; things like the bike share program are good if you really want to bike in NYC and have the money; things like paying money to go to the 9/11 museum ... eh, not so much.

Yet one thing is clear: no longer is the government of NYC truly shaping the city. Big money is shaping the city -- shaping its identity, its soul, and its future.

Let's hope they do a better job than the urban planners of yore.

The Ghosts of NYC

Did you know we live in a ghost town?

Yes, NYC is a place where ghosts live. Not literally of course -- ghosts don't exist -- but the lives of past New Yorkers have shaped our city, literally and figuratively, and the spirit of New Yorkers past still haunt our collective memories.

And, to find them, all you have to do is a take a walk.

First, go to West 44th Street. This one block of Manhattan is one of the most fascinating in this or any part of any city in this country. This is where the Algonquin Hotel once existed, and in its restaurant, Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley and Edna Ferber and George Kaufman and all sorts of literary legends formed the Round Table -- perhaps the most famous American salon in history. West 44th Street is also where the Harvard Club is located, a place where New Yorkers at the pinnacle of wealth and power came and still do come to congregate. It's where The New Yorker used to have its offices. Under the decades long leadership of William Shawn, this magazine launched the careers of countless legendary writers, including JD Salinger and John Updike. And, much more recently, West 44th Street is the location of the Sofitel Hotel, where a certain former IMF chief got nasty with a maid and thus upended French politics. 

This long, fascinating article from Vanity Fair gives a general and personal history of West 44th Street and how the people who worked, drank, and screwed there formed our city's cultural and political history forever.

Second, walk up to Fifth Avenue and 72nd street and pop into Central Park. And stare at Rumsey Playground and then close your eyes. Then open your mind and imagine a gorgeous Beaux Arts building standing right there. And imagine it's nighttime, and men and women in beautiful suits and dresses are getting out of limos and going inside into what used to be casino. Yes, such a place used to exist right there. It was a building designed by Calvert Vaux in 1859, one of the original architects of Central Park, that was originally called the Ladies Refreshment Salon. By the turn of the century it became a music hall and then, in 1929, under the infamous Mayor Jimmy Walker, it was turned into a Casino -- a sign of the wretched excess of Roaring Twenties New York. Walker's corruption, and the casino he helped build, became hated symbols after the Great Depression began. Walker was forced to resign in 1932 and Robert Moses, in a rash act of thoughtless anti-Walkerism, tore this beautiful historic building down. The ghosts of Walker and Mosesstill  exist in this empty space -- a symbol of the price of corruption and zealous self-righteousness. (If you ever read The Power Broker, Robert Caro writes a lot about this.)

So today, people who visit Central Park, never know that such a building used to exist there. But the ghosts still do.

Robert Moses Revisionism

Recently I was sent an article about Robert Moses that attempted, awkwardly I must say, to revise and re-assess the master builder's legacy. You can read it here. 

Basically the argument is this: Moses did more good stuff than bad and, hey, he was a product of his times. It takes issue with The Power Broker and says that not everything in it is true.  

Well, I think this revisionism is nonsense. You should read my original review of The Power Broker here for the classic argument against the Moses legacy.

See, I grew up in the city that Moses built and I can say that the book is spot-on regarding his diminished legacy. This article lauds Moses for building bridges and, yes, he built lots of them -- with no accommodations for subway lines. Yes, he built lots of parks -- that are depressing and ugly. Yes, he built lots of public housing -- that was even more ugly and depressing. And he rammed so many highways through this town that it destroyed neighborhoods and flooded NYC with cars -- and for this, there is no counter argument.

And the "product of his times" argument holds no water with me. There were lots and lots of people at the time who told him he was wrong and who advocated for increased public transportation, for building fewer highways and building ones in ways that didn't destroy neighborhoods, for not cutting off access to the city's waterfront, and for building better public housing. Moses was not a victim of any kind of group-think: he was an arrogant, abusive man who misshaped NYC and there were lots of people telling him at the time that this was disastrous -- and he didn't listen. 

So beware the revisionists! Beware those who wish "to set the record straight." It's like people today who talk about Nixon and say, "Oh, besides that whole Watergate thing, he was a great president."  Or LBJ: "Besides that whole Vietnam thing, he was a great president."

Same thing with Moses: "Oh yeah, he destroyed neighborhoods, flooded the city with cars, built ugly and depressing public parks and housing, and starved badly needed public transportation of money, all of which still plagues us to this day but really, the good outweighs the bad." 

Ha! Please. Revisionism is a feeble attempt to make bad people and bad decisions look less bad. To somehow portray a negative legacy as a good one. It's an Orwellian exercise, like trying to make two plus two equal five. And it reminds me of that old joke: "Besides that Mrs. Lincoln, how was the play?"

The Robert Moses Debate

A couple of years ago I reviewed Robert Caro's 1974 book The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York. This Pulitzer Prize winning biography about NYC's "master builder" has been generating controversy for close to forty years. On The New York Times online, there has recently been an ongoing debate about the Moses' legacy that is captured in a new book called The Battle for Gotham: New York in the Shadow of Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs. The debate is monitored by the book's author Roberta Brandes Gratz and she provides some very smart answers to all sorts of reader questions about this man who continues to haunt NYC almost 30 years after his death.

Bloomberg Tied to the Mob!

Today's New York Times has a story about how the mafia has corrupted the city's Department of Buildings. Members of the Luchese crime family got jobs as building inspectors and, as the indictments indicate, there was a vast array of bribes, overlooked violations, false safety reports, siphoning of public funds, just vile stuff. This has been going on for years!

Remember those crane collapses which resulted in several deaths? That was due to false safety reports and bumbling by the DOB. Apparently the Bloomberg Department of Buildings is a cesspool of corruption.

However, what's most amazing about this is that Mayor Bloomberg has not been questioned or grilled by the press about any of this. The press has been totally docile and quiet. For some reason, Teflon Mike has avoided scrutiny or any fallout from this scandal. It's only coming out now because the Manhattan DA handed down indictments (thanks to Bob Morganthau, at least we still have one honest broker in this town. You'll be missed!)

But I'm wondering something: after all the big crane collapses last year, did the press do any in-depth investigative reports about the problems at DOB -- and what caused people to die? Did they try to hold the mayor accountable for what happened on his watch?

No!

The press can't hold him accountable even when a major scandal hits.

This was the headline of the story today: "Mob Infiltration Is Seen in New York City Agency." What a disgraceful use of the passive voice! Who was editing this story? Mob infiltration "is seen"? Is seen? What kind of sloppy, badly written headline is this? This is supposed to be The New York Times for cryin' out loud!

Now if the press wasn't trying to protect the Bloomberg administration and guarentee his re-election, I'm sure the headline for this story would be very different.

Certainly this story would be big news and treated much more sensationally if we had a Democratic mayor. For example, if we had a Democrat as mayor, let's call him Mayor D, all of the newspaper around town would scream today "Mayor D Tied to the Mob!" And there'd be story after story asking what the mayor knew and when did he know it, why didn't he try to stop it, why did he let a major government department in this town put New Yorkers' lives in danger, and on and on and on. If this was happening under a Democratic Mayor who wasn't worth billions of dollars, believe me, the press would be all over this asking questions. It'd be cheap suit time. This would be a full blown scandal! Which it is!

But it's not.

Mayor Mike escapes any and all culpability. This story mentions the Bloomberg administration once ... and it doesn't mention the mayor by name. Clearly, as far as the press is concerned, Teflon Mike couldn't have anything to do with this sordidness. He's too honest, too principled, too good a Mayor.

And maybe he's not corrupt. Maybe he's just a detached mayor who doesn't know what's going on at his own DOB. Hmmmm ... maybe Mayor Mike isn't quite as competent as everyone thinks he is? Maybe he shouldn't get a third term. Oh wait, of course he should. After all, he's rich!

I'll give the Times some credit: they at least reported this story. The Daily News and the Post, from what I can see on their websites today, have ignored it completely. Hopefully they will cover it soon and ask Bloomberg tough questions about it but I won't hold my breath.

This is just a perfect example of press hypocrisy in this town -- and how it goes out of its way to protect the powerful, wealthy, connected, and Republican. The New York City press went into hysterics over the City Council "slush fund" story, they covered Eliot Spitzer's hooker problem like it was Watergate, the flailed away at ACORN -- basically, any time a Democrat or progressive person or group anywhere puts a foot wrong, it becomes blaring front page news, a "scandal", an "outrage", yada, yada, yada.

But a major department in an administration run by a wealthy Republican is infiltrated by the mob and possibly results in multiple deaths and the press ... doesn't consider it a major story ... doesn't have the time to cover it ... it just doesn't rate as important. Just shrugs its collective shoulders and ... moves on.

So what's the point of really caring?

It's not like my little blog post is going to change anything. The poor stay poor and the rich get rich. But actually it's deeper than that: the rich continue to consolidate their power and face no consequences and the rest of us continue to be punished (and sometimes even killed) for not being rich. And I'm sure that in the minds of Bloomberg and his cronies and most of the press, that's just fine and how it should be and serves us right.

Must Read!

This week, The New York Times has a great article called Reading Underground where a reporter interviewed people on the subway about what they like to read during their daily commutes.

Some are students, studying for exams or doing homework. Some are people trying to learn a new language. Some are professionals catching up on work. Some are taking the time to read the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran or other spiritual texts. Some are actors or actresses, preparing for auditions and performances. Some are reading newspapers and magazines, fighting the good fight to keep print publications alive. And, of course, some are just reading to be entertained or edified, reading the latest bestsellers or old favorites.

Increasingly, many more people are reading all of these things on Kindles.

Personally, I enjoy reading the free newspapers every morning or one of my magazines or a good book. I read most of The Power Broker on the subways (how appropriate!) plus some of my favorites like Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, Brideshead Revisited, as well as some of the recent Bob Woodward books (Plan of Attack, State of Denial) and Tom Friedman's The World is Flat and Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

We New Yorkers still love to read. in this, the most sophisticated and modern city in the world, old-fashioned reading remains vital.

And in yet another example of why public transportation is a great thing, it gives people the time -- time! that most precious of commodities -- to educate and improve their minds instead of wasting it worrying about driving their cars and negotiating traffic. Books on Tape, well, they just ain't the same.