The Transit Museum

Recently I had the pleasure of going back to the The New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn Heights. I'd been there a few years ago but since then they've done a massive overhaul of the place and it's now one of the best museums in town.

Located on the corner of Boerum Place and Schermerhorn Streets, you descend into the museum like you would a regular subway stop. In fact, the entire museum is a regular subway stop! As you enter, you come up to an old fashioned token booth where the cost for the entire museum is only $5 (or $3 for kids and seniors; a real bargain). You then go into a tunnel where you learn about the history of how the subways were built. You see how they dynamited underneath the streets, how the workers toiled, and also the various tools they used to hack through the rock and earth. This museum doesn't sugarcoat how hard this was. The work was dangerous, treacherous, and lots of workers died. You really appreciate what an amazing undertaking the building of the subways was -- and what a human toll it took.

This is only the beginning of the museum's wonders. There are several special exhibits as well: The Last Day of the Myrtle Avenue El (El trains used to populate the cities but today they are no more), The Triborough Bridge: Robert Moses and Automobile Age (a history of how this amazing bridge came to be built and how it changed NYC for better and worse), and Where New York Began (a show of discoveries at what is now the South Ferry stop). This month there is a Black History Month exhibit on how African-Americans contributed to the building of our transportation system as well as a special exhibit about the building of the LIRR.

What's best about the Transit Museum is that it's interactive. There are replicas of city buses where you can sit in the driver's seat and "drive." Most fun are the old turn styles and subways cars. The museum has a subway car from almost each decade of the 20th century with the original seats and ads. (Did you know that subway seats used to be padded -- with straw?!) Some of the old-time ads are amazing (for Stetson Hats: "84 out of 100 women prefer men in hats"; in a 1960s car, there's an ad that announces "Sean Connery is 007 in 'Thunderball'!). The old cars are really amazing and beautiful and it literally is a walk back in time when you stroll through them.

The turn styles are a lot of fun as well. You can go through turn styles from 1907 to today. There's also a big exhibit about the history of the token -- how the subway was a nickel from 1920-1948, then a dime from 1948-1953, and then the first token was introduced in 1953 when the fair was raised to fifteen cents.

Most interesting, there's a big exhibit on the history of money trains. These were special trains that ran late at night that would stop at each station across the city (there were usually about a dozen or so trains running each night) and collect the money deposited by riders during the day. The workers would take the bags of coins collected at the turn styles or token machines, count it against a ticker, haul it into the money train, do this at several stations, and then all of the money from all of the stations across the city would be counted in a huge secret safe room in Brooklyn. On January 13th, 2006, the money trains ceased to exist. However, at the Transit Museum, you can tour some of the old money trains, a piece of NYC history that is lost but not forgotten.

There's so much to see at the Transit Museum and I've only cracked the surface of it. If you're a subway junkie and a lover of this city and its history like me, I urge you to go there ASAP.

V-Day in NYC

Yes, that's right, it's here again, that most wonderful time of the year -- Valentine's Day.

February 14th is just days away, and I know how excited you all are. Married people, people in relationships, and those living-in-sin are now obligated to spend money on their significant others while those who are still single can either feel depressed that they're alone -- or be happy that they're saving money.

Ta-mato, toe-mato, I suppose.

My lady and I have our own Valentine's Day ritual but for those of you wondering what to do on this upcoming V-Day weekend, GoNYC has links to comprehensive info about romantic restaurants, bars, hotspots, even chocolate stores where you and your l'object d'amour can celebrate together. In these tough times, you'll not only be warming each others hearts but you'll also be pumping some much needed cash into the ailing NYC economy.

And talking about pumping, you might want to visit NYC Condoms for info about playing it safe this Valentine's Day.

Finally, Some Good News

New York Senate Expels Monserrate Over Assault

This guy got exactly what he deserved.

"Mayor Bloomberg King of New York, Is Democracy for Sale?

Interview: Suzannah B. Troy

If anyone is Jane Jacob's 21st-century, digitally-savvy successor, it would be Suzannah B. Troy -- the most outspoken political activist in NYC.

On YouTube, on her blog, and in the streets, Suzannah shines a bright light on things that the powers-that-be in this town would prefer you not notice: community destroying development, the vanishing middle class, official negligence, and the political cronyism that enables it.

Needless to say, the big media in NYC does its best to ignore people like Suzannah so Mr NYC decided to see if Suzannah would share her thoughts on these topics and she happily obliged. The interview is below:

You're an artist and outspoken political activist. Tell us a little about yourself and what fuels your art and activism.

I found the "on switch" when NYU targeted St. Ann's at 120 East 12th Street. I urge people to pass by and see the new hideous mega dorm. The facade from 1847 is still there fronting yet another zone busting mega-dorm. NYU mega-dormed the East Village to death.

I got the Parks department to return bathroom doors to the women's bathroom in Tompkins and DOT wrote me in response to passionate letters and a drawing of Alfredo Feliciano asking for two speed bumps for schools on the Lower East Side. A public member of the community board told me I would never get them. I have a letter from DOT stating they are coming and thanking me for caring about school safety.

Bottom line: write the city directly, write the newspapers, make YouTubes and band together.

I am part of a group Fed Up New Yorkers that fought Bloomberg and we wanted to hire a bus and drive from borough to borough protesting no third term. Judging by how close the election was I am sad we never got the bus!

Bloomberg's soul crushing tsunami of community crushing development really got me started using the term activist and take action.

How long have you lived in NYC and what makes you take such a big interest in the city's fate?

A big part of my family was born here including my maternal Grandfather on Ludlow Street in 1904. To have me they moved across the border to NJ and I moved back to the city in 1984. I have lived the most years of my life here. When I was six weeks old we moved to England for a year. I've lived there two years.

My first apt was an illegal sublet on Carmine St. Her rent was 100 dollars and she charged me 350.

I picked the Village because there were very few tall buildings and the light was spectacular. I loved how it was truly a village. I love the buildings, even the trees and nature seem beautiful and rebellious. I love the NY character and characters. I am one and I am sure you are. I love the passion.

Like you, I'm concerned that NYC is turning into a bland playground for the rich, squeezing out the middle and working classes. What do you think can be done to turn this around?

Bloomberg and socialite mega-millionaire city planner Amanda the peoples' Burden have crushed this city with reckless development fueled by the very same stupidity and greed that brought down this city.

It truly may take a revolution to turn this city around. If not a revolution than new dynamic leaders that truly care about the people. Benjamin Lesser of The New York Daily News wrote some articles that exposed city council members including Christine Quinn getting kickbacks aka campaign donations from developers.

New leadership, reform or a revolution...

You're a ubiquitous presence on the web and YouTube. Tell us how many blogs, websites, and YouTube videos you have, and how you use digital technology in your art and activism.

Short answer: a lot. All 334 YouTubes were removed before the election or theft of a third term by king Mike for 28 hours. Many activists spoke up on my behalf and Norman Siegel represented me.

Google wrote me an apology.

I use my IPhone and film as events unfold and post immediately to YouTube from the street.

The Villager and NYU hosted the debate between Christine Quinn and her opponents. Somehow magically Quinn's people all got to the front of the line and in. The Villager turned away the press including NY1. They told NY1 you had to stand in line with everyone else. I caught [them] turning away a senior citizen, long term community member who made an Olympic effort to get there in a wheel chair. Norman Siegel, I and some really dynamic activists fought hard and eventually we got him in. Huffington ran a piece on it. The IPhone described in the article as NYU's public relation nightmare is mine.

The associate editor Lincoln Anderson of The Villager sent me all these emails harassing me. I had told him to leave me alone and he didn't. I filed an aggravated harassment complaint.

The Villager and NYU backed Quinn who sold out to developers and Mike Bloomberg. John Sexton of NYU ran down to testify [that] Mike Bloomberg must have a third term. Sure, Mike and Amanda Burden care more about students than they do about New Yorkers.

The voters sent a message to Mike. The most humiliating and expensive win. It was proof we can't rely on newspapers and we have to take to the streets with video, go to churches, community centers, make YouTubes, blog because the media, even most little rags, are owned by developers or mega rich in bed with Bloomberg.

The night of the election they finally had to go off script and report the truth ... the election was too close to call.

Could you imagine is the press had given protesters some coverage, ditto for Tony Avella and Bill Thompson?

Mike Bloomberg barely won. The next morning I was receiving calls congratulating me.

You protested at Mayor Bloomberg's latest inauguration. What other kinds of protests and activity have you done and what advice can you give to other aspiring political activists?

I answered some of this already like getting bumps that DOT has promised to install by two schools not that far from where the tenement house were my Grandfather was born.

I have been urged to keep making my YouTubes even though I have to admit I am exhausted. My newest slams Mike for burdening tax payers to what The New York Post estimates is 2 million dollars to hire his campaign staff when he should and could have payed out of pocket. It is criminal to do vanity hires for his legacy when he is closing homeless shelters, firehouses, libraries, schools and laying off people! So I got on YouTube and made a series.

Many New Yorkers don't have computers so you have to get out on the streets to get your message out.

The city has a tremendously rich history of dynamic activists using every way possible to protest and I am sure the future will bring more ways that maybe we haven't begun to even fathom.

I am moved by how many hip New Yorkers bring their kids to protest. We had a stunning girl holding a protest sign at the mass eviction at 47 East 3rd Street. She is our future.

My advice is be passionate as if today is your last day on Earth because it just might be. Hold on to your passion!

What are your favorite things about NYC and your favorite places in the city?

I love what is left of the historic buildings, culture and history. I love the energy and the diverse mosaic of people. I will be in the subway crushed together with the broadest range of people, all colors, mixes, ages and I think wow they are beautiful and you won't find this mosaic in LA, Tokyo, anywhere.

Tell us something about yourself and NYC that most of us don't know.

Short answer: I did grunt work on the film Wall Street. That was not the original ending which was darker. Oliver res-hot the end which I thought was a mistake.

Long answer: after Sept 11 I can't express the pain, upset and grief but anyone here, anyone who lost someone knows the feelings.

At some point later I met this fireman that was clearly shaken. I think he had spent too much time digging in the rubble. I remember when Rudy tried to tell the FDNY they could no longer take the trucks down to pick up their guys if and when they were lucky enough to find the DNA. Of course they did go down.

He was huge! He looked like he walked out of a photo of New York firemen from the turn of the century. He was divorced, maybe six foot five and I call him Mr Heaven on Earth.

We were so sad and a service was coming up to honor a hero at St Patrick's we both knew. This guy did CPR on my soul. I am still in shock about Sept. 11 and I can't believe it happened. He was this one positive light.

I voted for Bloomberg twice and I would never vote for him again. He destroyed the city pushing massive displacement and pushing all these sky piecing mirrored buildings reflecting a history destroyed and communities no longer welcome.

I ask myself if this is another horrifying bad dream like 9-11 that I can't wake up from. I look around the city and I am shocked. It is unrecognizable, soulless, so many empty store fronts ... People have been forced out.

I do think about leaving. Reuniting with Mr Heaven on Earth or someone like him and finding some more Heaven outside NY.

I know whether I stay or go so many dynamic activists will keep on keeping on as they have before me and will after I am gone. I think of the kids that showed up with their parents to protest and truly I think a revolution maybe needed to bring change.

Thanks so much for taking the time to interview me.

Thanks! After this interview, Suzannah sent a couple of short notes which I'm happy to include here:

The air sale over St. Ann's by the USPS to NYU was illegal because the USPS never notified the State of New York as legally obligated. I called Environmental Crimes at the State Attorney General Offices and had him talk with Andrew Berman of Greenwich Village Society of Historic Preservation. He said we had a case. I gathered we needed as much money as NYU and the USPS to go after them. But still make the phone calls, leave a paper trial and blog on.

I would advise activists to seek out lawyers. Norman Siegel has been critical to me. I even discussed the law re: putting up my Mike Bloomberg King of New York Poster. I wanted to put the poster on every empty store front to highlight Mike's new NY but Norman said I could get ticketed so I turned to YouTube.

Thanks again!

Has it all been a lie?

For the last two decades, city officials have boasted about dramatic reductions in crime in NYC. Each year since 1994, Mayors Guiliani and Bloomberg have proudly announced plunging crime rates, pointing to various statistics and the use of things like CompStat and "broken windows" policing.

For these mayors and their flunkies, this has been political gold. Crime is at historic lows! The city is safer than ever! And on and on and on. This is the main reason our city has had Republican mayors for the last 16+ years. Can't trust those weak on crime Democrats, they argue, the Republicans are tough on crime and have the results to prove it.

But what if it was all a lie? What if those statistics were a fraud?

In the last decade, there have been scandals in things like accounting (Enron, Bernie Madoff, etc.) and war ("proof" that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction turned out to be less than accurate). Until now, however, no one questioned the drops in crime in NYC. Numbers don't lie, went the argument and besides, everyone felt like crime was going down dramatically so that must mean it was true, right?

Not so fast. Today there is a bombshell article that indicates that there was intense pressure on the police to cook the books and manipulate the figures to make it look like crime was a lot lower than it was. Mostly this meant discounting serious crimes and felonies as misdemeanors. Other changes were regarded by cops as unethical. Most of these revelations come from retired police officers who indicated that the golden years of crime reduction weren't so golden after all, and that the public was being fed a bunch of phony, misleading crime statistics.

Sadly there is no smoking gun in these surveys. It just doesn't look very good. But it has lead me and others to believe that our city might not be quite as safe as our public officials want us to believe. And if this is true, it's a disgrace.

The Court of Mayor Bloomberg

If you read history (or fairy tales), you know all about Kings and Queens and their courts. Not courts like courts of law, but courts that were extensions of the royal household, where the men (mostly) and the women (i.e. mistresses) who had the monarch's proverbial ear helped him or her rule the realm.

Since we live in a republican democracy, we don't really have courts but, hey, come on, people who work in the White House or for governors or chief executives are effectively courtiers if they're anything at all. All powerful people have their courtiers -- including big city mayors.

And what big city mayor is more royal than our own Mayor Mike? Everyone calls him the King of New York and he's just that in everything but name only. Actually emperor is more like it, since his power extends beyond politics into both business and media. He controls and influences all of it like the Tsars in Russia used to do.

And like a Russian Tsar, Mike is living large and rewarding his courtiers while the people suffer. Bloomberg is paying his closest fifteen aids high six-figure salaries. Meantime, for "budgetary reasons", he's closing firehouses, not paying teachers enough, and foregoing our city's security by not hiring a new class of police officers. He's also taking an axe to the city budget, slashing programs that help the poor, all in the name of "fiscal responsibility." And yet ... and yet ... there seems to be plenty of money to reward his courtiers, most of whom worked on his re-election campaign, huge salaries.

Now I'm not naive. In these brutal economic times, the mayor has no choice but to slash the budget. Unions and special interests will scream but that's what they're in 'bidness' to do. I hold no brief for them.

But Mike, come on, giving your staff and flunkies, your already wealthy courtiers, huge salaries in the midst of a budget crises is unseemly and grotesque. Oh, I know the argument: we want to hire the "best" people in key roles in city government. That's always your argument. But aren't these "best" people folks who love their city and might be willing to work for a little less -- say $99,999 a year? These salaries are obscene -- especially when one of those you just hired was recently hit with an ethics fine by the board of elections. The fact that this person is still on the city payroll is simply unacceptable.

So Emperor Mike and his courtiers live large while the rest of us do more with less and go without. It truly shows that if you break a certain glass ceiling, if you join the court, get into the club, then no matter the economic weather, you'll have shelter from the storm.

Ladies Who Lunch - Elaine Stritch

Elaine Stritch has been singing and acting in movies, TV and on the stage for decades. And at age 85 she's at the top of her game -- winning Emmy's for her turn as Alec Baldwin's crazy mother on "30 Rock" and selling out her performances at the Cafe Carlyle (I tried getting tickets -- really, really expensive tickets -- and they're all sold out). Anyway, here's Elaine Stritch singing one of her signature tunes, "Ladies Who Lunch", from the Stephen Sondheim musical Company (the original production of which she appeared in 1970).

In an era where old New York is vanishing, Elaine Stritch is a class act whose act will never get old and will never fall out of fashion.

"It's all falling indelibly into the past"

When I started this blog almost three years ago, it was never meant to be a nostalgia blog, a "those were the days" kinda thing. It was meant to be a dynamic forum capturing life in the world's most dynamic city. I still think it serves that purpose but, increasingly, it's turned more and more into a nostalgia blog.

Perhaps it was inevitable. And I'm the first one to dismiss people who carp about the old days being better than the present. But recent events make it seem like the city has accelerated in a direction that I don't recognize. And as a life-long New Yorker, I'm scared.

Last week I wrote multiple entries about how Old New York Charm (the closings of Tavern on the Green and Cafe des Artists, the ruination of the Plaza Hotel) and Old New York Grit (the cleaning out of Canal Street, Frank Serpico) are disappearing. Then this past week, JD Salinger died (a great NYC writer) and the sale of Stuy-Town officially became a debacle. Also, the great New York movie studio Miramax closed last week, now basically a studio in name only but not practice (remember the Miramax hey-dey of the 1990s? The Crying Game, The Piano, Pulp Fiction, Good Will Hunting, Chicago. Gone now.).

I feel like I'm looking out the back window of a car gaining speed as the city I once knew and loved is shrinking and disappearing into invisibility.

And what are we heading to? A city of soulless wealth, boring glass buildings, bad Yuppie taste, super-expensive real estate prices, and pockets of poverty and despair. At this rate, in twenty years, New York will be like Cleveland. Egads.

"It's all falling indelibly into the past." Don Dellilo wrote this as the last sentence of the opening chapter of his 1997 book Underworld. Indelibly -- not easily moved or erased. But increasingly the past is being erased and replaced with a new scary future. Instead of "indelibly" I would say it's inevitable. It's all falling inevitably into the past. Where do we go from here?

Talking about NYC in the past, there's some new books about the city during WW2. They sound interesting.

JD Salinger RIP

This week the great writer and notorious recluse JD Salinger passed away at the age of 91. A native New Yorker, he wrote stories about human foibles and dysfunctional relationships with a raw honesty that pulled at readers' emotions like few writers can. He also wrote about this city with an attitude that was both critical and snarky, but ultimately reverential.

Obviously Salinger is most famous for his one novel, The Catcher in the Rye, about teenager Holden Caulfield. Many people consider him the Huckleberry Finn of the 20th century, an iconic figure more real than most real people. Kicked out of boarding school, Holden escapes to New York and gets into various adventures and mishaps. Published in 1951, it became an almost immediate bestseller -- and highly controversial for years afterward. Not only was this a book about a not-so-sympathetic kid but -- told in the first person -- Holden talks openly and frankly about sex and humanity in a way that was shocking for a very conservative country at a very conservative time. He curses, he lies, he does all sorts of mean, nasty things -- and we're supposed to like this kid. Just consider the opening lines of the book:

"If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you'll probably want to know is where I was born and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don't feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth."

Nobody was writing quite like that back then -- until Salinger. Some people found his frankness refreshing while others thought it was crude. Whatever people's opinion, his literary voice certainly was different for 1951. Salinger was rock'n'roll before rock'n'roll was even invented.

Even if he hadn't written Catcher (considered today to be one of the greatest American novels ever written), Salinger would still be remembered for his wonderful short stories. He published a lot of them both in The New Yorker and printed collections. He published "Nine Stories" in 1953 (which includes, what my mother says is one of her personal favorite short stories ever, "For Esme, With Love and Squalor"). Other story collections include "Franny and Zooey" and "The Glass Family" (about a Jewish family on West End Avenue). His last published story was "Hapworth 16, 1924", published in The New Yorker in 1965. After that, he hid the fruits of his brilliant pen from the world.

Salinger escaped to New Hampshire, living in seclusion, almost never giving interviews, and never appearing in public. The world only knew he existed when, from time to time, he'd sue somebody or other who he thought was abusing or misusing his work or name. Rumors abounded that he was still writing and now, with his passing, speculation is rampant that his post-1965 work will be published. But that is all wait and see.

So farewell JD Salinger -- writer, New Yorker, voice of America's disaffected youth. Thank you for your timeless works and for being yet another great New Yorker of letters, a real attribute to this city's culture.

If you want to learn more about the New York of Salinger's day, The New York Times has some wonderful information about it.

A Walk Through JD Salingers New York
Salinger's Last Known Manhattan Home