Bravo, America

It happened. It actually happened. Still hard to believe. America rejected the politics of hate and division and actually took a bet on hope, unity, and working towards a higher purpose.

It doesn't happen too often so let's savor the moment. American politics is cyclical and the bad guys'll get power back some day -- but after last night American politics and America will never be the same.

President-elect Obama (can't believe I just wrote that) has a very hard job ahead of him and let's pray that he succeeds. Good luck man!

New York City Votes

Hope everyone out there voted today. I got to my polling station at 6 AM and there already was a line down the block -- so many people anxious to make history.

The line moved pretty decently until we actually got inside the gymnasium where all the machines were. Once inside, several poll workers mistakenly sent people to the wrong lines and there was much consternation. Fortunately I had my voter registration card and got onto the correct line for my election district. Unfortunately the people working at the tables for my election district didn't seem to know what they were doing so the line got stalled. On top of that there were people doing dumb things like taking cameras into the booth so that slowed things up as well.

It took me almost an hour to vote and, while I was happy to do it, it was annoying that it took so long and it could have been avoided. That said, I won't be a baby about it -- as Americans, we're lucky that we can vote at all.

So now all we can do is hurry up and wait. The first polls close in about 5 minutes and the first big state, Virginia, closes in about an hour. Fingers crossed, breath held, eyes closed, America is about to make a big giant leap into the future.

P.S. I was included in a mass e-mail from Philip Leventhal of Columbia University who's plugging the new edition of The Almanac of New York City. He gives a short history here about how New York City has historically voted in Presidential elections, and it includes a few surprises.

It's Done

Bloomberg signed the term-limits extension into law today. Fortunately, he was forced to listen to why this was a bad idea.

After an Earful, Mayor Signs Term Limits Bill

Not that it'll change anything but hopefully it'll plague his conscience.

Election Eve

America tonight is one big raw nerve. We await impatiently to find out who our 44th President will be. Hopefully tomorrow night we'll know for sure. In the meantime, it's getting loony out there. Here's the round-up, and it's New York related as well.

First, you gotta check out the stupid attack ad posted above. Mitch McConnell is the Senate Republican leader and he's in danger of losing his seat out in Kentucky. So how does he think he can win? Oh, just a little good ol' boy, vaguely anti-Semitic New York bashing. (Listen to the laughably bad Jewish accent in this ad -- no Jew says "baddabing-baddabam-baddaboom." In fact, no one says "baddabing-baddabam-baddaboom." But try telling it to these yokels.) Anyway, the ad is blasting Chuck Schumer, our senator, and not his opponent, some guy named Bruce Lunsford. How pathetic and loathsome. Don't know how this race will turn out but the New Yorker wishes Mr. Lunsford well.

Second, a bit of sad news. Senator Obama's grandmother died today. While I hope to send him my congratulations tomorrow, I send him my condolences tonight.

Third, the latest polls: Obama is ahead. 270 electoral votes are needed to win the presidency and CNN gives him 291 with McCain at 157 and 90 in the toss-up category. Obama is holding all of the Gore 2000/Kerry 2004 states plus he's ahead in Virginia and Colorado. It's also in a dead-heat in Ohio and Florida. Obama just needs to get one of those 4 states to win. John McCain can only win by scoring all of them. Unless the polls in these 4 states are very wrong, it's mathematically impossible for McCain to win. But only time and the voters will tell.

Fourth, as it does for every presidential election, Rockefeller Plaza will become Election Plaza tomorrow night. A map of the United States will be projected onto the ice skating rink and the electoral wins will appear on it. Check out the video from the Today show about it here.

Fifth and finally, what makes living in a democracy so great? Elections are yet another excuse to party! The New York Press has list of election night events and About.com has one as well (not 100% sure where I'll be tomorrow night but it'll probably be at the beer garden in Astoria).

So please all go out and vote tomorrow. It's never been more important.

Congratulations to ...

... the winners of the New York City marathon.

Brazilian and Briton Are Fastest to the Finish

And good luck to the rest of the runners still out there trekking away.

"Curiosity Did Not Kill This Cat": Farewell to Studs Terkel

As America heads into its next chapter, it's sad that Studs Terkel won't be a part of it. But he'll have helped write it. A voice for working people for more than half a century, he was an author, thinker, entertainer, and activist. He hosted a radio show in Chicago for over 45 years that addressed the concerns of the common man. His books Working, Division Street: America, and The Good War (which won Studs a Pulitzer Prize) among others, are classic studies of American life. He will be missed.

Although he became a Chicago icon, Studs was born in The Bronx more than 96 years ago and lived here until he was 8 years old so ... we have a small claim on him as well. RIP Studs.

Studs Terkel dead

Plumbing the Depths of Liberal Anxiety

New York City is, as we know, a very liberal city. Hopelessly liberal, some might say. We New Yorkers have come to accept that, as Woody Allen said in Annie Hall, the rest of America views us as "left-wing, communist, Jewish, homosexual pornographers."

Even our Republicans are liberal (see Rudy, see Mike, see George). We've come to accept that we're not part of mainstream America. We accept our second class American citizenship. And we accept that, for the most part in recent decades, the people we support for president don't win.

So that's why our heads are spinning right now. We look at the polls and see a black liberal Democrat leading and Democrats poised, yet again, to sweep the Congress, and none of us can believe it. It must be a giant ruse, a nasty joke, a con-game by the media and right-wing. And like the good liberals we are, we're all very depressed about it.

Our neurosis even invades the headlines:

Liberals Worry as Election Approaches

Democrats' gloom deepens

How else would a good liberal feel? Or maybe ... just maybe ... just possibly ... miraculously ... after years and years in exile, New York City is suddenly part of mainstream America! Could it really be true? In about 100 hours or so, we'll know.

A few notes to both my loyal readers:

Mr NYC will be on hiatus this weekend -- life events are stealing me away from the beloved keyboard. But I'll be back next week to blog on the history in the making.

This blog hasn't been as NYC-centric in the last few days and weeks and I apologize for that. Once the election is over, we'll get this blog (like American hopefully will be) back on track.

Be Kanye/Absolut

I've seen these ads on the subways around town and they're on TV too. I don't really see what this has to do with Absolut vodka but I guess they're so weird you remember them ... and thus it makes you want to drink Absolut vodka or whatever. These ads are so brilliant, I guess, that I'm not smart enough to understand them.

"Howard Stern All Morning, Classic Rock'n'Roll All Day": K-Rock Memories

My previous re-post about Alison Steele, and a comment by the great blogger Zen Denizen, triggered a flood of nostalgia in me for the old 92.3 K-Rock. It was the only radio station I listened to in high school during the early 1990s, and it used to be the classic rock station in NYC. While everyone else in my school listened to Z-100 or Hot 97, I was one of only a few who listened to K-Rock all the time. I even remember the line-up:

Howard Stern, 6-10AM
Pete Fornatel, 10 AM-2 PM
Dave Herman's Afternoon Rock'n'Roll Show, 2-6 PM
The Greaseman, 6-10 PM
Maria Molito or Dea Snee, 10 PM-2 AM
Alison Steele, the Night Bird, 2-6 AM

I don't know why I still hold such affection for, of all things, a radio station line-up. Maybe it's just part of getting older and something like this reminds me of a simpler time in my life. Or maybe it was just that it had Howard Stern and my favorite kind of rock music on the same station. But I think what I liked about it most was that Pete, Dave, Allison, and Maria were classy DJs who you could tell really loved the music they were playing and seemed to respect their audience. And in this time of radio consolidation and voice-tracking, etc. they were people who made radio an art form and a community ... the way it used to be.

Gerard Damiano, RIP

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