Suicide Tourism

We'd like to think that all visitors to NYC come here to see the sights, see the shows, walk the streets, eat the eclectic food, and generally soak up the city's culture and spirit. Sadly, as this New York magazine article explains, some people come here expressly to kill themselves. Why? Well, as the city of opportunity, there appear to be many opportunities to kill oneself here. Some "hot" suicide spots:

The George Washington Bridge
The Empire State Building
The Subway (jumping in front of oncoming trains)

Interestingly enough this article doesn't mention NYU's Bobst Library which, a few years ago, was the place to off oneself. If you've ever been there, and I have, the library is about 8 or so stories high and, inside, the upper floors overlook a large atrium. Students and even some non-students would hurl themselves from these top floors down into this atrium. A few years ago they installed some kind of Plexiglas which has made this impossible. Still, it's scary to think about. Let's hope this is one tourist trend that doesn't continue.

Quantum Leap

Quantum Leap was one of the greatest TV shows of all time (which is why I've posted the very cool opening credits here). It's also the name of a vegetarian restaurant in Greenwich Village.

I don't usually patronize such joints (I'm a veteran carnivore) but I went a couple of weeks ago and, I must say, thought the food was great. Quantum Leap's menu is mostly macrobiotic but they also vegan options. You can get a wide variety of veggie burgers, sandwiches, and wraps plus they have healthy breakfast foods. I had a really good burrito with some kind of yam-like chips and the others had the aforementioned veggie burgers. They don't serve sodas or any of those unhealthy drinks, so plan to wash down your meal with a lemonade, fruit juice or some kind of natural tea.

Quantum Leap is located at 226 Thompson street, just of Washington Square. It's a small place but has a very friendly atmosphere, usually described by people as "chill." Best of all, the prices are modest and it's not too hard to get a table.

For a good, reasonably priced, not too crowded restaurant in NYC, Quantum Leap is a real find.

Here's a rave review from Healthy Living NYC.

Review: "Sunday in the Park with George"

There's nothing to raise one's spirits like going to see a glorious Broadway musical. And "Sunday in the Park with George" at Studio 54 is just such a show. This is a revival of Stephen Sondheim's 1985 Pulitzer Prize winning musical that made Mandy Patinkin a star and it's wonderfully done. It's a very unconventional show. Of all the audacious things, it's a musical about a painting (not painting, a painting).

The first act revolves around French artist George Seurat while he worked on his masterpiece "Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jette" in 1884 (pictured above, it's currently on display at the Art Institute of Chicago and was famously seen in the movie Ferris Bueller's Day Off). Seurat and this painting made famous the style called pointillism, which consists entirely of little dots of varying color; a dictionary definition of pointillism: "a style of painting that used points of color and relied on the eye and brain to blend them into a meaningful picture." Seurat was a difficult, aloof guy, the classic mad artist, and he drove his friends and mistress Dot to despair. Seurat died at the age of 31, a most controversial artist.

The second act takes place in 1984 where Seurat's great-grandson (also named George) is some kind of flailing video artist, living in the painting and his family's shadow. George seeks to learn more about great-grandfather, the painting, and art, and he comes to realize that art should be about one's expression, about what kind of legacy one wants to leave, and not about what critics and historians might or might not say.

This production uses special effects in an absolutely brilliant. The screens behind the actors literally come alive with color but does so in such a way as to enhance the performances and story, and not obliterate it. Many of the characters in the show are actually figures from "La Grande Jette" and in one brilliant scene, as the actors recreate the painting, they sing about how it feels to be stuck in a painting for over a century with lots of people starting at them.

The performance are uniformly excellent. Daniel Evans make Seurat into a likable if somewhat childlike person, someone you know is a good guy at heart but who can also be enormously self-centered and unthoughtful. You can't help falling in love with Jenna Russell as Dot/Marie (the mistress and, later on, Seurat's elderly daughter). She makes both characters wonderfully dimensional, sympathetic but nowhere near perfect. Needless to say, both actors and the supporting cast sing wonderfully and the music, while very spare and rather monotone compared to most Broadway musicals (in order to reflect the exacting style of pointillism) is beautiful.

If you have a chance to see it, I highly recommend going to see "Sunday in the Park with George." It's what great theater in NYC is all about. It runs until June 29.

So Long Vito

Short article in today's Times about Congressman Vito Fossella.

From a Bright Past to a Cloudy Future

As you probably know, last week he was busted in DC for a DWI (he wasn't just a little bit tipsy, apparently he was totally sloshed). He told the cops that he was on his way to see "his daughter" which confused everyone at first since his wife and kids live back on Staten Island. Whoops! The drunken tongue is so often the most honest one. Turns out this paragon of conservative Republican family values who screamed about what a louse Bill Clinton was has a mistress and illegitimate kid living in DC. Vito's so pro-family, he must have figured why have only one?

The papers on Staten Island are calling for him to resign. So are a lot of his constituents. Obviously he's gonna have a hell of a time surviving, let alone get re-elected. While it'd be great to see his seat go Democratic this year, I don't think politics should victimize families like this. I always feel sorriest for the innocent relatives and children in situations like this. Let's hope that they can heal and that Mr Fossella can carve out some kind of life for himself and his family in the future. My best to him and them.

Oh Those New York Politicians ...

Wow! What a lousy year to be a New York politician!

2008 will go down in history as the year New York's political leadership officially became a big joke. And it ain't even half over yet! First Rudy's presidential campaign went to Florida to die. Then Eliot Spitzer got down with a hooker and his governorship went down with her.

As soon as Eliot left, our new governor admitted to running around on his wife ad nausem.

That should have been enough -- more than enough. But wait! There's more!

Now, within the last two days, Hillary Clinton's campaign is over and everyone wants her to quit and she should quit but she won't quite and now a Staten Island congressman has been busted for drunk driving and fathering an illegitimate kid!!!

Oy vey. Madone. When will it end? All this nonsense and failure is enough to make this New Yorker nostalgic for Mario Cuomo and Ed Koch -- heck even Al D'Amato and George Pataki will do.

Al Smith, FDR, Daniel Patrick Moynahan, and Nelson Rockefeller must be spinning in their graves (and even though Nelson died in 1979 while shtupping his secretary, at least he had the decency to wait until he was out of office).

Let's just hope that Chuck Schumer and Mike Bloomberg aren't being naughty. We can't take much more of this.

Suzanne Vega - Luka

In 1987, little known singer/songwriter Suzanne Vega burst onto the music scene with this powerful, haunting song.

"Luka" was a Top 20 radio hit and this video played regularly on MTV. The success of this song was a bit surprising considering that it's about, of all ghastly things, child abuse. Bringing such dark subject matter into a popular song was a truly audacious thing to do, but the song's beauty made it a clear winner.

Vega is a born and bred New Yorker and her music over the years has always been imbued with the city's spirit. The dreamlike video for "Luka" shows the city as an unglamorous, almost mournful place, a place where you know all sorts of secrets (some tragic) abound. It captures the pain and beauty of city life, it's longings and mysteries, and it makes you think and feel at the same time.

A truly timeless song.

A Minor Celebrity Sighting - Pete Hamill

Being a New Yorker, I have a highly developed sense of tunnel-vision -- I don't usually look at other people on the street. Every so often, however, I do spot the occasional celebrity: Chris Eigman (the guy from the Whit Stillman movies, saw him on the subway), Robert Klein (ditto subway), Ralph Fiennes (actually rode an elevator with him once), and more recently Claire Danes with her boytoy Hugh Dancy.

Today, going to lunch, I saw someone who's not a big celebrity but is most definitely a New York legend: Pete Hamill, the great reporter and columnist, someone who calls himself and will forever be identified as an old-fashioned "newspaperman."

He's been writing about New York City for almost fifty years, has worked at almost every major newspaper in this town (he even edited the Post for a while), has written novels, and also appeared a lot on television. He even had the distinct yet scary honor of being on Nixon's enemies list back in the 1970s, along with folks like Ted Kennedy, John Lennon, Joe Namath, and Paul Newman (how freakin' cool is that?).

Hamill wrote the best book ever of New York nostalgia -- Downtown: My Manhattan. It's a loving tribute to this city, combining history with memories and anecdotes. It gives us Hamill's personal views and feelings about the city but manages to make them universal at the same time. I've never read a book quite like it and I highly recommend it as an upcoming summer beach read.

I didn't say anything to Mr. Hamill when passing him outside my office today. But I smiled, glad to know he was still roaming the streets, doubtless thinking of other wonderful things to write.

The Way We Live Now

"We" being New Yorkers that is (all due respect to Anthony Trollope of course).

Today I found four articles that perfectly sum up the exigencies of living in NYC today. In short, this city's getting too damn expensive. That's not news, obviously, but these articles make very clear how it's affecting people.

First, this article from the Times about rent stabilization. Yet again the Rent Guidelines Board is holding a vote to raise rents on these kinds of apartments. As someone who lives in such a pad, I'm obviously very interested in how it turns out. Last year two-year leases went up 5.75% and one-year leases went up 3%. In 2006, the raises were nastier, 7.25% and 4.25% respectively. How much rents will go up this year is any one's guess. It's a miserable situation all around: the landlords are getting screwed because the price of oil is driving up maintenance costs and the tenants are getting screwed because their wages aren't going up enough.

Second, and this one really bummed me out, was this Times article about supermarkets that are disappearing from poor and middle-class neighborhoods (due to, you guessed it, rising rents). People are being forced to take the bus and train to shop for food. Obviously poorer people don't have the best diets to begin with and suffer from things like obesity and heart disease in greater rates than most. Not having easy access to supermarkets where they can get fresh and healthy foods means, in the long run, that they'll eat more junk and have even more health problems. Not good. Not good at all.

Third and fourth were two very different articles in this week's New York magazine.

The first one was about the grueling and incredibly dangerous jobs of transit workers. I know I bitch a lot about the MTA but my wrath is directed to its incompetent crony management and not the decent folks who actually make it run. Several track workers and have been killed the last few years in tragic accidents. Like police officers and firefighters, these are good, middle-class New Yorkers who put their lives on the line each day so that the rest of us can be safe and, in this case, on time to work and play.

The other article is about, of all things, Sarah Jessica Parker, Miss Sex and the City herself. You'd think that she's the epitome of rich New York, pampered Yuppie who's driving up the prices of everything and driving out the middle class. The thing is, the gentrification of New York even upsets and bothers her!!! In this article she bemoans, as I do, how the city has changed in the last twenty years and how Manhattan in particular is turning into a big gated community. Now if the tyranny of uberwealth bothers this icon of New York City glamour, then you know it's gotten bad. Bravo Sarah Jessica. I like her even more than I did.

Sorry to make this post such a downer but when I saw these articles today, they really made me think. Think about how the city I love is becoming inhospitable for so many and instead seem to be catering more and more to so few (mainly the wealthy and wealthy tourists). It's nearly impossible to be middle class in this town today and maintain any decent quality of life. I grew up middle class here in the 1980s under Mayor Ed "How'm I doin'?" Koch and, while the city had a lot of problems then (namely a high crime rate), people and families of modest means could still hack out a decent living. Today, it's virtually impossible. The city's getting too gentrified and sterile, a city of the haves and have-nots, and it's making New York City lose it's gritty, sexy, distinctive edge.

While Mike Bloomberg's been a good Mayor in many ways, the dying middle class in this town has not been one of this top priorities. Let's hope his successor, whoever that is, feels differently.

And talking about classy New York ...

... a sad story in today's New York Times about the pianist in the lobby of the Waldorf Astoria hotel, who will be playing her last performance tomorrow evening. Apparently it's no longer affordable for these big fancy hotels to keep people musically entertaining the clientele. It's yet another tiny bit Old New York disappearing.

Fading Sounds of an Elegant Manhattan

The Real Housewives of New York City

Dumb people make for very entertaining TV - thus they are the staple of reality shows. Dingy women, in particular, make for very, very entertaining TV, which is why reality shows like "The Real Housewives of New York City" exist (a knock off "The Real Housewives of Orange County", which I guess is something to be proud of).

Basically this show follows around five shrill, insecure, social-climbing women married to men who make money in very dubious ways. These women are supposedly the rich, classy ladies of NYC (the kind that Tom Wolfe would call "Social X-rays" or "Lemon Tarts") but, as my very classy lady friend pointed out, "They're all so trashy looking!" Hear, hear.

I caught a few minutes of this show on Bravo and it's a total train-wreck. It's really obscene. I like it a lot.

And yet it proves the rule that, while some people might have a lot of money, it can't buy them even a shred of class. Enjoy!!