Belvedere Castle

Plunked in the middle of Central Park, rising sphinx-like out of the boulders, sits Belvedere Castle.

Growing up, I always wondered, in my most Seinfeldian, "What's the deal with Belvedere Castle? Why's it there? Why's it called that? Is it even really a castle?"

Well, no, it's not a castle, not really -- it's a place where you can walk up to its big terrace and get great views of the city and park.

In fact, that's why it's called "Belvedere", which is Italian for "beautiful view."

It was built in 1869, back when the city did cool things like big huge parks and structures just to make life more pleasant for its citizens. You know, the public good.

Anyway, the public good is being served somewhat now as Belvedere Castle is being closed until 2019 for structural repairs.  So, until then, enjoy the "bella" view from here:

The Re-Purposing of NYC

It's a cliche to say that NYC is always re-inventing itself. 

Just walk around any neighborhood and you'll see old buildings being torn down and new ones being built, you'll see old businesses vanishing and new ones opening, you'll see old people and young people walking around -- the past receding, the future proceding.

But the city also recycles itself. It takes the old and, instead of replacing it, re-purposes it to make it new while also preserving it perennial qualities. The past remains and the future remakes it.

Take, for example, the turrets of old buildings and houses -- once decorative rooms for the wealthy, now they're apartments.

Or the old coffee houses of Greenwich Village -- they remain but either they've become more upscale and restaurant-like or they've become living shrines to the past.

Even the media gets re-purposed -- the hyper-local newspapers Gothamist and DNA Info closed a few months ago due to a union-busting owner but, thanks to the benevolence of WNYC Radio, they've re-emerged as non-profit news sites.

So while it's easy to mourn the lost, vanishing NYC, it's also important to remember that the city isn't always erasing its past -- it's simply re-working it.     

World Trade Center - February 26, 1993

Lower Manhattan has always been terrorist target.

9/11/2001 was only the most horrific example of attacks that have taken place in that area for nearly a century. Wall Street was bombed in 1920 and Frances Tavern was hit in 1975. And 9/11 wasn't the first time the World Trade Center was attacked -- it happened in 1993, twenty-five years ago today (below is a new clips from that day, showing what a relatively small story it was at the time). 

Densely populated, the economic center of the world, and a historical nerve center, Lower Manhattan shows both the greatness of NYC and America -- and these terrorist attacks also show the dangers that come with it.  

Meet the FLONYC

The current First Lady of the United States (or FLOTUS) is a European-born former model named Melania who is little more than a trophy wife/mail-order bride for a rich, unattractive, incredibly insecure horrible man who cheats on her with, and sexually assaults, other women. As a FLOTUS, she is useless. Most First Ladies have had causes they've worked on -- Michelle Obama promoted healthy eating, Laura and Barbara Bush promoted literacy, Hilary Clinton promoted children's issues, Rosalind Carter promoted awareness of mental health issues, and Nancy Reagan taught us all to "Just Say No" to drugs. Melania says she wants to raise "awareness" of cyber-bullying but, since she's married to the world's most famous cyber-bully, her cri de coeur is an obvious jokes and she's done nothing about it. In fact, she does nothing at all as far as anyone can tell.   

But the current First Lady of New York City (FLONYC), Chirlane McCray, is a marvelously accomplished and impressive woman. While married to the current mayor, she used to work as a speechwriter for past mayors, has published essays, and now works with her husband, the mayor, on a number of issues effecting the most vulnerable New Yorkers. She works tirelessly on issues regarding services for LGBTQ people and even established the city's first  24/7 mental health hotline. She's also working to make life -- and therefore rehabilitation -- easier for women in city jails as well as helping women flee the horrors of domestic abuse. Considering how many projects she's working on, Chirlane sounds busier than her husband! 

NYC is lucky to have a FLONYC like her. If only she could be our FLOTUS!     

Billy Graham, RIP

The legendary preacher died today at the age of 99. Here is his famous 1957 Yankee Stadium "crusade" service. And, of course, his early 1970s chat with Woody, as bizarre an encounter you could ever hope to see. 

Weird Weather

Let history record that in NYC on:

Sunday, February 18, 2018, it was cold and it snowed.

Wednesday, February 21, it's 74 degrees.

This weather yo-yo is, well, odd. 

A Taste of Old NYC

Once upon a time there was a restaurant called Sloppy Louie's. It was right off Fulton Street, way in the depths of Lower Manhattan, and was the kind of joint where guys in short-sleeve white button downs and ties would gather at lunch time, eat, smoke, and talk. It's the kind of place that doesn't exist much in NYC anymore but Sloppy Louie's had a great run, lasting 68 years, from 1930 to 1998.

Best of all, it was located mere blocks from the Fulton Fish Market and was able to serve some of the freshest fish in the city.

And while Sloppy' Louie's is, sadly, long gone, one of its best recipes survives: a bouillabaisse called Ciuppin di Pesce. It's very, very fish and seafood heavy and it looks amazing. So, while one can't time travel back to Sloppy Louie's and the NYC is thrived in, one can taste it. 

Ciuppin di Pesce

INGREDIENTS:1 medium Carrot sliced, 2 medium Onions sliced, 1 clove Garlic, 4 Tbsp Olive oil, 3
lbs Fish in season, cooked and boned, 1 cup Tomatoes, 1 Bay leaf, 2 cups Fish stock or water, 1 dozen Oysters, clams or scallops, 1 cup Shrimp or crab, 3 tsp Salt, .5 tsp Pepper, 2 Tbsp Lemon juice, .25 cup Sherry

DIRECTIONS: Brown the carrot, onions, and garlic in hot olive oil in a large pot. Remove the garlic clove. Add the fish, tomatoes, bay leaf and stock. Allow the mixture to simmer for 15 minutes. Remove the bay leaf and add all the remaining ingredients, except for the sherry. Add the sherry right before serving.

The Making of the Mayor 2021

Mayor De Blasio is less than two months into his second four-year term and already his would-be successors are circling the throne. The mayor is term-limited so, barring a catastrophe, De Blasio will be leaving office at the end of the 2021 and a new mayor will be elected to take his place.

Who will it be?

On the one hand, it's far too early to speculate -- after all, we're still almost three years away from the 2020 presidential election, who's thinking about the 2021 mayoral race? -- but, if you want to be mayor, it's never too early. In fact, as previous mayors and candidates indicate, it takes years to pull together a credible campaign, raise the necessary money, and position oneself to have a legitimate shot. The next mayor is out there, somewhere, planning his or her run.

Here are some of the rumored contenders thus far: 

City Comptroller Scott Stringer (D)

Public Advocate Tish James (D)

Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz (D)

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams (D)

Queens Borough President Melinda Katz (D)

City Councilman Eric Adams (R)

Of course, some of them might not run -- or run for other offices (I wouldn't be surprised if one or two of the borough presidents go for Public Advocate or Comptroller instead, like Stringer did). Some of them might get lucky and win a congressional seat or get a high-level appointment. Some of them (naturally) might be felled by scandal. And, of course, all of them might get swept away by another Bloomberg-like candidate, a super-rich outsider who essentially outspends and outsells himself/herself to the public (and does the whole "I'm a rich outsider who's beholden to no-one and can fix it" blah blah blah -- it worked out with Mayor Bloomberg but not so much with the current POTUS).

Four years is many eternities in politics so don't be shocked if some (or all) of the above comes true. But I'll be interested, in 2021, after we elect a new mayor, to see which one of these aspirants become part of history -- and who else is destined to be forgotten.

Debbie Does Dallas@40

Or: Debbie didn't do Dallas -- Bambi bonked Brooklyn. 

The movie Boogie Nights, made in 1997, is a nostalgic look at the late 1970s "Golden Age" of adult film. The basic premise of the movie is that porn was on the cusp of becoming respectable -- that these could be movies and not just prurient recordings of sex.  At one point in Boogie Nights an established porn director, played brilliantly by Burt Reynolds, talks about how he wants to make movies that people will remember, that people will want to see as much for the story and characters as for the "boinking", that porn will take its place in the firmament of cinematic art. "I'm a filmmaker!" he exclaims defiantly at one point. 

Then, as the movie shows, the 1980s and videotape (plus Ronald Reagan and AIDS) came along and ruined it all. 

Of course, this was never really the case. Porn movies were never really going to become mainstream cinema, people weren't really going to watch them for the story/characters, there were never any such movies (even classics like Deepthroat or Behind the Green Door) that could even remotely be called "good movies" (as opposed to "good porn movies"). All videotape did was put them in their proper place -- to be watched comfortably at home instead of embarrassingly in theaters. 

That said, some adult movies are certainly better and more memorable than others. Some craft a legacy. And probably the last Golden Age movie was 1978's Debbie Does Dallas, a movie that's now forty years old. For some reason, this one's remembered. Perhaps it's the alliterative title. Perhaps it's the plot (a bunch of cheerleaders try to raise money to send Debbie to try out for the "Texas Cowgirls" cheerleading squad). Perhaps it's because the star, Bambi Woods, made very few movies and then vanished. Whatever the reason, it's one of the few, very few adult movies that people have heard of even if they've never seen it.

And here's where it gets interesting: Debbie Does Dallas wasn't made in Dallas at all but in NYC -- specifically, in Brooklyn. 

It was filmed (mostly and covertly) around the campus of Brooklyn College. It's a New York production from start to finish, and its secret filming caused great controversy when revealed. It also stars NYC natives like Robin Byrd, giving it a distinct New York flavor. It has nothing to do with Dallas at all.

For whatever reason, this movie has become perhaps one of the most "respectable" porn movies ever made. When I was in college (actually, just before I arrived on campus) it was shown by the student film society. It was a big hit in 1978 and generated sequels. People have even gone back to find the original places in Brooklyn where it was filmed. It has, for whatever reason, endured beyond its merits as a film.

I'm not going to link to this movie for obvious reasons but you can find it on the interwebs. It fell out of copyright (it was lost for some reason) so it's free to all. 

What I find most interesting about Debbie Does Dallas and the Golden Age movies like them, and what makes them historic (if not "great") movies, is that we will probably never see their likes again. They tried, and in some cases succeeded, in being cinematic if not necessary "good" movies. Thanks to the short-attention span immediacy of the Internet, porn today is no longer cinematic in any regard -- even 1980s and 1990s videotaped movies look like Bergmanesque masterpieces compared to what's being produced today -- so Debbie Does Dallas, its Golden Age brethren, and the filmmaking community that produced it is yet another NYC scene that has vanished forever. 

So, when you watch Debbie Does Dallas, you're watching yet fascinating kind of cultural and NYC history -- and that's worth remembering. 

New Labels

Look to your right and you will notice a new feature on Mr NYC: all of this blog's interviews, reviews, "memos", "classics" and travel posts (tagged "Mr NYC in ...") are now neatly labeled and easily accessible. These Labels appear just above the Previous Entries section and cover the entire lifespan of this blog.

Many eons ago someone recommended that I label all of the blog posts but they are so random and various in subject matter that doing so would be an exercise in madness.

However, having done a wonderful number of interviews, reviews and travel posts, as well as the classic posts, over the years, I thought it would be a good idea put these specific posts together and make them easily accessible.

Enjoy!