Who Will be City Council Speaker?

Now that the municipal elections are over, it's time for the newly elected and re-elected members of the City Council to choose their leader, the Speaker. 

There are currently eight people vying for the job and, for whatever reason, they're all men. After the mayor, this is the most powerful job in city government, since the Speaker decides which legislation gets voted on in the Council. 

Like a Papal Conclave in the College of Cardinals, the Speaker's election falls into the hands of a small elite club where they choose, mostly behind closed doors, which one of them gets the top gig. Let's hope they choose wisely -- our city's future depends on it. 

Consolidation & Andrew Haswell Green

If you want more info about how NYC consolidated in 1898, go the Bowery Boys website and download their great podcast episode about how it happened.

In essence, it comes down to one man: the father of consolidation, the one who got the ball rolling, is someone who most New Yorkers probably have never heard of: Andrew Haswell Green. And yet, if we seek his monument, look around us.

A 19th century lawyer, Green became parks commissioner and, like Robert Moses a century later,  was also a city-planning Svengali: he created the Museum of the Metropolitan Art, designed Columbus Circle, financed the creation of the New York Public Library, and facilitated the creation of Central, Riverside, Morningside, and Fort Washington Parks. Eventually he was appointed by the New York State Legislature to design a plan for consolidation and, although he didn't over "the final product", Green's efforts created the template.

His vision for the political, physical, recreational, and cultural life of NYC is the city we live in today. 

Greater Gotham: A Discussion

Interesting discussion with author Mike Wallace on his nearly twenty-years in the making sequel to his 1998 book Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898 (winner of the 1999 Pulitzer Prize). 

His new book, Greater Gotham: A History of New York City from 1898 to 1919, covers the first two decades after NYC consolidated into the five boroughs, struggling to find its identity as a massive, sprawling city. In this period, NYC transformed into a financial capital, survived the First World War, and saw the rise of Prohibition. 

Fascinating tidbit: why did NYC become the big, sometimes illogically-constructed city of five disparate counties? 

The reason: the harbor. In the late 19th century, NYC and the City of Brooklyn were competing over control of the harbor and this was diminishing the economic clout of the region and assisting the rise of that Midwestern city called Chicago. So as not to be overtaken as the nation's premier city, as well as its financial center, NYC and Brooklyn decided to put aside their differences and get together -- bringing Staten Island and Queens along for the ride (the Bronx was already part of NYC) which also had claims to the harbor. 

The result is the city we live in today. But, as this new book and discussion show, there were birthing pains and it took decades for NYC to realize itself as a functioning five-borough empire.

In many ways NYC is still an empire, a collection of different towns and villages and whole cities that make it like nowhere else in the world. That's what has and will forever make NYC fascinating. 

WE WANT WEED!!!

Recreational marijuana is now legal in eight states. Most are out west (like Colorado, California, and Nevada) and the closest state with legal weed to NYC is Massachusetts.

But that's set to change: the newly-elected Democratic governor of New Jersey has said that he will sign a legal weed bill if the legislature passes one -- and the legislature seems poised to do it. So we may very well have legal weed right across the Hudson River within the year. 

The reasons for legal weed are clear: it's safer and less addictive than legal tobacco and alcohol, it will generate massive amounts of tax revenue which will fund the government without raising other taxes, it will vastly reduce the number of arrests that will decrease the cost and increase the efficiency of our criminal justice system, it will give jobs to weed farmers, it will put dispensaries in business, and young people and minorities will no longer have their lives ruined just because they want to toke and got busted.

Only someone with a dishonest, mean-spirited agenda could oppose legal weed. Besides, how do you outlaw a plant?

Hopefully, if and when it happens in New Jersey, the usually New York State legislature will get its act together and legalize recreational pot ASAP. I can't imagine that New York City and State politicians will want to see all that business and revenue go to New Jersey and not here. A two-thirds majority of New Yorkers want  their weed legal -- so let's go ahead and do it! 

"The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel"

Looking forward to seeing this: it's a new Amazon show about a female stand up comic in 1950s NYC. This is the era that produced Joan Rivers who the titular character is apparently based on. I've seen posters for it in the subway so it's sparked my curiosity. Hope it's good!

Making NYC Radio Great Again

92.3 FM, the old K-Rock, which years ago abandoned rock music to become a pop station, is now a rock station once again. 

Sadly it won't be a resurrected K-Rock, instead calling itself Alt 92.3 and playing "alternative" rock. Back in the day, it used to be classic rock (until 1996), then became "modern" rock and then, after Howard Stern left, it became a short-lived "hot talk" station before becoming a modern rock station once more and then, finally, a pop station. It changed its call letters to WAMP and completely abandoned it's rock'n'roll identity -- until now. 

I guess K-Rock is gone for good but at least a great frequency is rightfully returned to its place in the NYC cultural firmament. 

*In 1996, when K-Rock flipped from classic to modern rock, Howard Stern was the first DJ:

Free Melania!

If you love trashy gossip -- and there's nothing trashier and more gossip-prone than the vile man currently "serving" as POTUS -- then you must read this exhaustive profile on his wife, Melania.

It's a perfect example of how getting what you want can sometimes backfire -- horribly.

The Slovenian-born former model married her husband in 2005, thinking that she had signed up for a life of luxury and ease. She got the luxury but ease is a little hard to attain when married to a world-famous narcissist. However, when that world-famous narcissist becomes president, the ease vanishes -- and now Melania is living a life she hates with a husband she hates as an against-her-will First Lady.

It's gotta suck. She traded one gilded cage (Trump Tower) for another (The White House). But at least the former one was located in NYC and not DC and she had her privacy (apparently there's always a Secret Service agent located outside whatever room she's in. That must get stifling). 

I worked in DC one summer many years ago and have visited many times and, let me tell you, it's like living in a post office. It's a bland, boring city that revolves around its one industry. As a kid I found DC fascinating -- the nation's capital -- but three months there cured me of that fascination.

Apparently the POTUS and FLOTUS live separate lives and a divorce has been rumored. I'm quite sure, out a sense of propriety, Melanie won't file as long as Donald is president. But as soon as he loses his office (the sooner than better!) I won't be shocked if he then quickly loses her.        

Ya'll go to Times Square now! Ya' hear?

How much is NYC changing? Here's one example of a change that's coming ... or, alternatively, a'comin': the Grand Old Opry, that venerable institution of country music and favorite of the Grand Old Party, is opening its first satellite in, you guessed it, NYC. 

Specifically, Times Square.

Next week the Nashville-based music mecca will open a restaurant/music hall in the former den of satan that is geared towards, you guessed it, tourists. A place created by outsiders for outsiders.

The world of The Deuce has never seemed more distant. 

I know ... I know ... we're not supposed to say we don't like this. We New Yorkers, after all, pride ourselves on our cultural diversity, we all started out as outsiders, and a honky tonk from Nashville setting up shop here is diversity ... sorta. To say you don't want the Grand Old Opry in NYC is ... elitist ... snobby ... looking down on the "good solid folks" of the South -- ya' know, God's Country. 

And hey, that Dolly Parton is sumpin'! She wrote that song from The Bodyguard after all, sung beautiful and made famous by one of ... those people (who's now deceased). 

So let's welcome the Grand Old Opry to NYC! 

But ... really? Really? The Grand Old Opry in NYC? Why here? Why not Vegas? Why not Hollywood? Those places seem more appropriate.

As if the fact that Trump is from NYC weren't bad enough! 

If this new Opry-land succeeds here than you'll know NYC has really changed. But if it fails, perhaps our city's spirit hasn't been totally bleached.

That said, the great 1975 movie Nashville, directed by Robert Altman, has many scenes at the Grand Old Opry -- and one of the greatest opening credit sequences of all time. 

Downton Abbey in NYC

Everyone's favorite British TV show went off the air almost two years ago but now you can re-live Downton Abbey in NYC.

I'm sure mega-fan P-Diddy would approve. 

The MTA: Decline and Fail

In the first chapter of his legendary biography of NYC master builder Robert Moses, Robert Caro quotes Sophocles: "One must wait until evening/To see how splendid the day has been."

Specifically, Caro wrote about how, in the evening of Moses's life and career, the  disastrous legacy of his transportation projects, housing initiatives, and various public works became clearer and clearer for all to see. It's a reminder that systemic failures take years, even decades, to become apparent and, once they do, they're almost impossible to correct.

This is especially true of the MTA.

This past summer in NYC was one of public transportation meltdown: stalled trains, signal malfunctions, derailments, and on and on. Governor Cuomo declared it an emergency ("the summer of hell!") and ordered massive improvements to the subways and trains. However, this is a Band Aid to a much larger wound. Well, not exactly a wound -- more like a starvation.

For the last twenty-five years, governors and mayors of both political parties have starved the MTA of billions of dollars in funds and much needed structural improvements. The result is the outdated, rickety system that's supposed to serve millions and millions of people every day. 

Why this starvation? Politics, naturally. These governors and mayors favored tax cuts or spending on other projects, including on opulent station makeovers that had nothing to do with improving service. It's a story of misplaced priorities, wasteful spending, and raw, short-term self-interest. 

The MTA is not of the cause of NYC's transportation woes -- it's the victim, as are all the rest of us.

You should read and listen to the authors of this exhaustive report on how the sorry state of the MTA came to be -- only twenty-five years in the making! 

Oh, and the MTA is bringing back "vintage" cars for the holidays -- 'cause, you know, that's worth spending money on!