Rockefeller Center Tree Lighting 2010

Meet Patti Harris

She's the most powerful woman in NYC  that you know nothing about. Read all about her here.

The Ed Bridge

You read that right. Believe it or not, the city has decided to name something after a mayor not named LaGuardia -- in this case, a bridge bearing the name of Mayor Edward I Koch (1978-1989). 

And which bridge will be forced to shed its identity for this new moniker? The victim is none other than the Queensboro bridge itself -- that gorgeous, amazing 101-year old structure spanning the East River, nailing together Long Island City and the Upper East Side, immortalized in The Great Gatsby, the movies Manhattan and Terms of Endearment, and by Simon and Garfunkel (in "The 59th Street Bridge" song). 

As Ed Koch himself might have said, I think naming this wonderful bridge after this repulsive man is "OUTRAGEOUS!" 

I hardly ever use foul language on here but, if this name change goes through, it should be dubbed "Monument to an Asshole" or perhaps "Monument to New York's Most Corrupt Mayor Since Jimmy Walker."

You heard that right. The Ed Koch administration was so corrupt that several people in his administration went to jail and a Queens borough president committed suicide. It even spawned a book by the great journalists Wayne Barrett and Jack Newfield, City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York. When I was a kid in the 1980s, my parents used to listen to a news program on WQXR called "New York At 6." Ed Koch's administration was so corrupt that almost every night there was some sleazy revelation of corruption that old Ed always claimed to no nothing about. Eventually my parents started calling "New York At 6", "Who's Indicted Tonight?"

During Ed Koch's reign, the homeless population in the city surged, the squeeze on the middle class began, developers started building huge buildings with apartments no one could afford, and the AIDS crises began -- a crises that Ed Koch, himself a closeted homosexual, totally ignored. 

Not a really good legacy. The best thing Koch did as mayor was balance the budget in his first term. After that, his remaining two terms, it was all downhill -- or, when it came to crime, it was up and up. By the time Ed left office in 1989 (thrown out by the voters), the crime rate had spiked way the hell back up ... and for some reason, then and now, it was and is blamed on his successor David Dinkins. It was Dinkins who then dramatically expanded the size of the police force and was responsible for historic plunge in NYC's crime rate. Sadly, when it comes to history and the city's collective memory, its Dinkins who gets all the blame for the rising crime rate, not Koch, and its Rudy Giuliani who gets all the credit reducing crime when it was already falling under Dinkins.

So why don't we name the bridge after Dinkins? 

Do you think the fact that Dinkins is black is the reason he gets no credit for reducing crime? "Oh no, of course not," most people will say. (Sort of like a current black president who gets no credit for fixing the economic mess left to him by his white predecessor).

It's amazing to see, when it comes to Ed Koch, how the historical slate has been wiped clean. You never hear about the historic corruption in his administration, about the rising crime rate, about how the middle class in this city began its long, sad decline. Instead, when you hear about Ed Koch today, it's all about what a great "personality" he is, how "lively" he is, and how he saved NYC from fiscal disaster. 

It's all a bunch of crap. It was Governor Hugh Carey who saved this city. And, to be fair, Hugh Carey is getting his due -- they're going to name the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel after him.

This just isn't right. A tunnel vs. a bridge. Which would you rather have named after you?

By the way, it's a total political payoff by Bloomberg to name the bridge after Koch, who supported the billionaire's three elections. Disgusting. Pathetic. And business as usual.

I hope to God the city council votes down this name change but you know they won't. After all, they all gave themselves an extra term -- there's no depth they won't sink to. 

So farewell beautiful bridge that connects two great boroughs. Your spirit will remain but sadly your identity will be gutted. Ed Koch deserves this city's contempt, not reverence.

When it comes to renaming the Queensboro bridge, Mr NYC is not feeling groovy.

As the City Turns

As you may have seen from my latest Tweets, Woody Allen turned 75 years old this week and Elaine Kaufman, owner of the celebrity restaurant Elaine's that he made famous in his 1979 classic Manhattan, passed away at age 81. There's something poignant and sad about Elaine passing in the same week that one of her most famous customers turned three-quarters of a century in age. The sadness if obvious but the poignancy, for me, comes from the fact that both events mark the passing of time. 

Old-time New York and New Yorkers are getting even older ... and disappearing.

And it's not just people. Case in point: the Scobee Diner in Little Neck, Queens. This little diner is about as far away from Elaine's, geographically and culturally, as you can get while still remaining in the borders of NYC. Thanks to rising rents, the Scobee Diner went out of business this week and it's many longtime patrons are, understandably, very sad. Like Elaine's, it was a place where lots of people could congregate and have good food and enjoy one another's company. It had a perennial quality, the kind of place that makes people happy, and in its quiet way it was as much a part of the city's fabric as the Empire State Building. Now it's gone. 

Elaine's catered to the rich and famous of Manhattan while the Scobee Diner catered to the working classes of Queens. But both restaurants were places with heart, places people liked going to for the community as much as the food. And while Elaine's remains open, it just won't be the same without its legendary proprietress. Same goes for Little Neck without the Scobee.

Just part of the old city that's slipping away.

Oh, but fear not dear New Yorkers and New York lovers. A new city is rising! A city where the likes of Cathy Black, an uber-wealthy business executive with no educational experience can be appointed to run the NYC public school system. A city where the working classes are not only being squeezed out of their  homes and neighborhoods but even their favorite dining and watering holes are being rendered kaput. And this week, Times Square officially sheds it unique past and firmly embraced its transformation into a Disneyland/Las Vegas-type playground. The last glossy office  building, 11 Times Square, is finally complete and will open for business in 2011. This marks the end of a 30-year transformation to "rejuvenate" Times Square and make it what it is today: a soulless, corporate, neon plaza -- safe for tourists -- instead of the sleazy and wonderful thyroid gland where New Yorkers could roam free and entertain themselves. 

Yes, the Times Square of yore is gone, the hookers and pimps and drug dealers and porno palaces have been vanquished, replaced by a newer, more respectable class of criminals: real estate developers and Disneyland. 

Old New York is disappearing, in ways big and small, obvious and not, right before our eyes. Our eyes have been closed way too long and hopefully one day we'll wake up.

Who said this is the city that never sleeps?

Cathie Black Not Qualified

She's In

It looks like Cathy Black will be the next NYC Schools Chancellor. Today the State Education commissioner granted the waiver she needs in order to assume the job on January 1st.

Now that its been granted, the only thing between Ms. Black and her Tweed Courthouse office is a lawsuit that her opponents will file in order to derail her. While I'm not a fan of this appointment, it's hard to see how it can be legally vetoed -- what would be the sound legally reasoning to say that the State Education commissioner wasn't allowed to, or somehow erred in, granting this particular waiver? Seems hopeless to me. So I think we'll be hearing Chancellor Black for the next three years. 

Whether or not she'll be a good Chancellor is almost besides the point for me. It's the arrogance that gets me.

Why, I wonder, is it okay for a rich mayor to appoint one of his rich friends with absolutely no experience in the education field to an incredibly important position? 

What's her vision for the education and the New York City Public Schools? 

What's her philosophy of education?  

How is this not just a case of upscale cronyism?

Ernest Hemingway once told F. Scott Fitzgerald that "the rich are different from you and me", to which Scott replied, "Yes, they have more money." But this appointment shows that differences between the rich and the ordinary go beyond dollars and the stuff you can buy them -- it goes to the matter of privilege. 

Cathie Black would not have the privilege to be serving in this post if she was not a wealthy and powerful person. 

She knows nothing about education or the public school system. Yet her wealth and position gives her the privilege to leapfrog over those who have spent years, decades, working in education, in order to get such an influential job. Just like the rich get the privilege to travel places most of us don't get to go to, meet people most of us don't get to meet, go to restaurants and parties that most of us can't get into, so they are able to attain a level of professional experience and fulfillment that they have NOT worked for, not earned ... because they're rich. They get the privilege to serve in powerful posts that only their money qualifies them for.

But then again, all's fair in love and capitalism -- especially in NYC. 

Bryant Park

Nestled behind the New York Public Library on 42nd Street, right between Times Square and Grand Central Station, Bryant Park is a beautiful oasis in the overactive thyroid gland of Midtown Manhattan.

The fact that it's just ... there, and has been there for as long as anyone can remember, means that it's easy for most New Yorkers to take it for granted. Yet it really is a jewel and, particularly this time of year, is one of the little things that makes you grateful to live in New York.

In many ways, Bryant Park is the place that most reflects of the city. It does this in three major ways.

First, it's a place where natives and visitors alike can escape, right in the middle of the city, from their work or their trips, and take a few minutes to restore themselves. The big beautiful green space is fun to loll on and there are lots of tables and chairs for people to sit and relax on. Best of all, you can get a great look at the majestic buildings that surround the park and really get a sense of what an extraordinary city this is.

Second, Bryant Park is a place where, especially in summer and winter, New Yorkers can get together and have fun. In the summertime, on Monday evenings, HBO shows free classic movies in the open air. I've gone to the movies there a few times of the year, seeing A Streetcar Named Desire and MASH with several thousand of my fellow New Yorkers. In wintertime, Bryant Park turns into a holiday theme park. The park is taken over with small stores selling everything from candles and toys to fragrances and jewelry. In the middle of the park, the green space turns into a free ice skating rink. My wife and I went there recently (neither of us had been skating since childhood) and we had lot of fun swooshing around the (frozen) Pond. Amazingly neither of us fell down and it only made us want to skate again soon. (Warning: the line to get into the skating ring, particularly on a weekend afternoon, is incredibly long but it moves fairly fast). So in Bryant Park, New Yorkers come together to have fun in the sun and celebrate the Season.

Third, the history of Bryant Park almost reflects the history of NYC as a whole. It seems that whenever New York falls on hard times so does the park. But whenever the city resurrects itself, the park leads the way. In the 1920s, Bryant Park had fallen into ugly disrepair -- the city government under Tammany Hall let it go completely to seed. In the 1930s, however, under the WPA, the park was restored and once again became an urban refuge. By the 1970s and 1980s, however, it had once again come undone, this time becoming a playpen for drug addicts and prostitutes. In 1988 the park was closed and was renovated for four years. By the 1990s the park had once again become the beautiful space that it is today. In many ways, if you want to see how the city is doing, go to Bryant Park.   

Lennon NYC

We are coming upon the sad anniversary of John Lennon's death. On December 8, 1980 a deranged fan gunned down the legendary Beatles singer in front of the Dakota on West 72nd street. Music, and the world, have never quite been the same since.

Lennon lived in NYC for almost a decade before his death and loved this city like no other. Though a native of Liverpool, England, like many a transplant to our fair city, when Lennon moved to NYC, he felt like he had come home. 

PBS is currently showing a documentary called Lennon NYC about his life here. These were tumultuous years -- Vietnam, Watergate, the financial crises, inflation, rising crime -- and through it all, Lennon's music and message of peace and love provided a ray, hopeful light during a dark, dark time. He wrote some great songs during this time and, in many ways, he became the ultimate New Yorker -- a strong, unapologetic voice fighting against the warmongering mainstream. 

Today it sometimes feel like we're living through dark times as well. This last decade has been a particularly rough one -- war, terrorism, oil spills, natural disasters, financial crises, the Bush Presidency, the Tea Party movement -- but we can listen to John Lennon's music and remember his legacy and that can help us keep the faith that things will one day get better. 

Only in New York. Imagine. 

Face of a Changing City

When you think about how a city changes, it's easy to point to new buildings or public works that have been constructed -- or to remind people about the old ones that have been demolished. You can look at various neighborhoods and see how they've changed -- physically, economically, racially, etc. Cities change in many ways. The most obvious way is to see what exists vs. what no longer does, or to see who lives there vs. who no longer does, in order to measure the rate and scope of change.

Anyone who remembers what Times Square looked like -- or the kinds of people who inhabited it -- twenty-five years ago vs. today know exactly what I'm talking about. But what about the nature of experience when it comes to the face of a changing city? Increasingly, the very daily experiencing of NYC seems poised to change. 

Certainly the physical and sociological changes of NYC over the years have affected how we experience the city but what about the changes that are less obviously but still profound? A perfect example are the newly proposed taxi's that the TLC has proposed. New Yorkers, all of us, can actually vote on the new design and construction of the cabs and one of them will be selected to replace the current version. Personally I think they all look like the equivalent of spacecrafts from various bad sci-fi movies and TV shows, and they don't have anything that screams NYC about them ... but as the city becomes more global, I guess cabs are one of the first thing to lose that special New Yorkness. 

Face of a changing city.


But it's not just the cabs in our streets that are changing. Apparently more and more New Yorkers want to shed their accents -- the beautiful, unique NYC accent is under assault! According to this  article in The New York Times, native New Yorkers are being told to go to speech therapists in order to stop "tawking like New Yawkas'" because people in the global marketplace find them annoying and hard to understand. 

I find this horrifying. I don't have much of an accent but several of my relatives do and I find their accents endearing. The New York accent is so distinctive, so strong, so in your face and unrepentantly urban, that the idea that people are trying to get rid of them (or feeling forced to do so) is awful. Someone, somewhere in this town should be able to say "I'm going to Thoity-thoid and thoid!" without apology. If people from elsewhere don't like the New York accent, so what? 

Since when have New Yorkers ever caved in to outsiders? Since when have we ever given a damn what people outside NYC ever thought? Since when do we buckle and let the global marketplace dictate how we live? NYC is the global marketplace -- we are it's LEADER, not it's FOLLOWER! And lead we must! 


Do you think Fiorello LaGuardia wouldn't be outraged by this?

If we all want to start sounding like we're from Cleveland or something then we might as well all move to Cleveland! Well I don't want to move to Cleveland and I don't want New Yorkers to start sounding like there from there! Long live the New York accent! 

Do you think Southerners wouldn't be offended if we told them to lose their accents? Of course not! You know how much Southerners love guns ... if you told them to lose their accents, they'd probably shoot you. And in the old days, New Yorkers would too! 


Don't get me wrong, I know that NYC has to change -- I'm not one of those statists who wants the past to be ever present and who shuns the future. But change at the expense of identity isn't change -- it's loss. And telling New Yorkers to lose their accents is a loss. So while the face of our city must change and while NYC must adapt to the ways of the global community, I beg all New Yorkers not to lose to ignore what makes this city unique -- and the great leader that she has and always will be.

Driving Around New York City - 1928