Donald Trump: A Playa' Playin' the Playas y'all!

Okay, so here at Mr NYC, we're gonna get all ghetto for a minute, layin' our smack down and hookin' with da' jive (I have no idea what that means but it sounds "funky").

Anyway, have any of you noticed in the last few weeks that New Yorker extraordinaire, our city's very own fine court jester, Mr. Donald Trump (of real estate and reality TV show fame), blitzing up a media storm, blabbing about running for president? Trump has even joined the lunatic fringe, going all "birther", screaming about President Obama's supposedly non-existent birth certificate (which in fact exists and has been proven multiple times to exist).

Trump is clearly having a good time. And why shouldn't he be? He's been doing this crap for decades, mugging to the camera and the press, saying outrageous stuff, promoting his various corny businesses, all in an attempt to shore up his shallow, narcissistic ego. 

Personally, I love the guy. He's a real character, he's never boring, and he's an only in New York type of guy. But the idea of him as a serious presidential candidate is clearly nonsense, and he knows it and we all know it. What's surprising to me, and probably surprising to Trump, is that the media seems to be taking him seriously.

As in, fo' real.

You would like to believe that, in the richest and most powerful country on earth, we would have a sophisticated and shrewd media. That the "playas" in the media world would check and balance the "playas" in the political, business, and entertainment universe. But they don't. They fail miserably. The media in this country continues to get played and made to look foolish.

Think back to when the Bush administration played the media into hyping the threat of non-existent Iraqi WMD that led to one of the longest and most disastrous wars in our nation's history.

Think about the cast of the "Jersey Shore" and all the attention they get for ... doing what exactly?

Think about Charlie Sheen and his insane rants ... and all the attention he gets.

And think about Donald Trump, a bored rich guy, a veteran self-promoter, talking emptily running for president ... and getting all this attention. 

I don't blame Trump. He's a playa'. I blame the media -- for letting him play them again and again and again. As foolish as he is, the media is just as foolish for paying him all this attention and taking this clown even semi-seriously. He's an object of ridicule ridiculing the press -- and the press, in its masochistic manner, seems to be enjoying it. As unbelievable as the idea of Donald Trump as President is, the press going gaga over him is equally unbelievable -- and depressingly real.

As the rappers and the pimps might say: either you're a playa or you get played. Donald Trump is a big time playa playin' the playas and they're getting played while he gets paid and gets laid and they don't get paid and probably not laid as much as him.  

Holla'.

A fight starts over spaghetti on NYC subway

Interview: Zack Hample of "The Baseball"

The first interview Mr NYC ever did was with Zack Hample, baseball fan extrodinaire and author of some very unique books about America's favorite past-time.

When we talked to Zack before it was about his book Watching Baseball Smarter:  A Professional Fan's Guide to Beginners, Semi-experts and Deeply Serious Geeks. His new book, just out this month, is The Baseball: Stunts, Scandals, and Secrets Beneath the Stitches. In this book, Zack looks at the object of the baseball itself and how it has influenced not only the game of baseball but the popular culture and conscientious at large.

So tell us what made you want to write The Baseball?
I've had a strange fixation with baseballs ever since I started snagging them at major league games in 1990. Back then -- and for most of the next two decades -- it was just a fun hobby that I obsessed over. All I wanted to do was collect as many as possible, but eventually I realized just how special baseballs are, and I thought it'd be cool to write a whole book about it.

Why do baseballs have so much symbolic power? Is it something about how they're designed and how they look? 

First of all, the baseball is THE object at the center of the national pastime. Secondly, baseballs have changed more than any other piece of equipment in the history of the sport. And third, baseballs are fun. There have been all kinds of controversies related to the ball. People have done all sorts of wacky stunts and experiments with baseballs. There have been lots of foul ball scenes in movies and TV shows, including Ferris Bueller's Day Off, I Love Lucy, Sex and the City, and Sesame Street. The baseball is a cultural phenomenon. You can pretty much trace the history of the sport -- and in some cases, the history of America as well -- through the ball itself.

Give us a few examples of the baseball-related stories or observations in your book.
Oh, man, where to begin? There was the time that Pakistani drug dealers tried to smuggle heroin into America by hiding it in the core of baseballs. Or the time that a wayward foul ball crashed through the windshield of a small airplane in the South Pacific during World War II and knocked the pilot unconscious. Or the time that Babe Ruth attempted to catch a ball that was dropped from an airplane. Or the time that Dave Winfield was arrested for animal cruelty after throwing a ball that struck and killed a dove. Or the stories of ceremonial first pitches that have been thrown by astronauts in outer space. Or the time that Charlie Sheen bought the entire left field pavilion -- more than 2,600 seats -- at an Angels game because he was so determined to snag a home run ball. The list goes on and on.

Tell us something about baseballs that most people don't know.

There are 350 employees at the Rawlings factory in Costa Rica whose sole job is to stitch baseballs by hand. Each employee has a stamp with a unique serial number, and after every baseball is completed, it gets stamped with invisible ink. Later on, the factory's inspectors pull out defective balls, examine them in ultraviolet light, make a note of the serial numbers, and send the balls back for repair to the employees who stitched them. Cool, huh? But wait, there's more. Toward the very end of the manufacturing process, the balls get wiped with a cleaning solvent to remove any smudges from the cowhide covers. Sometimes the solvent happens to remove the invisible ink stamps, but not always, so if you buy a major league ball or snag one at a game, check it out under a black light and you might see one of Rawlings' secret serial numbers.

So what's the latest number of MLB baseballs that you've caught?
My lifetime total is 4,662. If all goes according to plan, I'll snag No. 5,000 this season, and by the way, the final third of the book is called "How to Snag Major League Baseballs." It will teach you how to go to a game and catch a ball, guaranteed. And you'll have a few laughs in the process.

The new baseball season is about to begin. What are you thoughts?  

Well, on a personal level, I'm thinking about trying to hit up all 30 major league stadiums. I've already visited them all -- I've been to 48 major league stadiums overall -- but I've never done it in one season. In terms of how the season will play out, I'm predicting that the Phillies will beat the Red Sox in the World Series.

Thanks Zack! 

Geraldine Ferraro RIP

Almost thirty years ago, a plucky congresswoman from Queens was plucked out of political anonymity and became the first woman to run on a presidential ticket. She was the 1984 Democratic nominee for Vice President, only one of two women to this day to be on a major party ticket (for the moment, I can't remember who the other one was).

Her name was Geraldine Ferraro and she was a trailblazer. She died yesterday at the age of 75.

She showed that a woman could work as hard and compete with any man. Her career were multi-various -- schoolteacher, mother, lawyer (working as a real estate lawyer, pro bono attorney, prosecutor), and finally, in 1978,  one of a very few women in Congress. She was instrumental in improving public transit around LaGuardia airport and sponsored the Economic Equality Act. She also worked on the budget committee and in the Democratic leadership in Congress. She was a class act.

Obviously she didn't become vice-president -- she and Democratic presidential nominee Walter Mondale went down hard in 1984. But it was the the first presidential election that I remember and it never seemed odd to this boy that a woman might run for vice-president -- or even president.  I remember watching her in the vice-presidential debate against the then incumbent VP, the utterly loathsome George HW Bush (who sadly become President later on and, of course, is the father of any even more awful man who became president). I remember that she did really well in that debate, scoring many policy points against her heinous opponent, and many people felt afterwards that she had won the debate. Too bad she didn't win the election -- but a bell was rung.

She ran unsuccessfully for senate in 1992 and then retired from politics. But the left a mark.

So Geraldine Ferraro -- a brassy, proud lady from NYC -- should be remembered for her great public service, for the positive impact that she had on the trajectory of women in America.

Rest in peace.

Four Years of Mr NYC

Today marks a milestone in Mr NYC history. Today we have crossed the threshold of four years -- a full presidential term -- of this blog's existence. 

Hard to believe. 

Feels just like yesterday when I started this thing on a whim and it's turned into something quite special (at least I think so but, obviously, I'm biased). There are lots of New York City blogs out there, some really great ones in fact, but I think this is the only blog out there that tries to capture this great city's spirit and mind in a unique, reverential way. Clearly that's an impossible task but I've always had a taste for the quixotic. 

Hope you've enjoyed it. I plan to keep doing this for a while. Into the future it goes.

Four more years! 

Vintage Lenny's Clam Bar ad w/Frank Sinatra Jr, 1978

Review: "Arcadia"

"Et in Arcadia ego." Literally translated, it means "And in Arcadia I"; more figuratively, it is "And I too was in Arcadia." Arcadia is generally defined as a region of rural simplicity and contentment, a nice place to find happiness.

"Arcadia" is also the name of Tom Stoppard's great 1993 play, currently revived on Broadway.

It takes place in an English country house and alternates between the present and 1809. In the 1809 part, a  man name Septimus Hodge tutors a young girl named Thomasina Coverly. An intriguing character, Hodge is also a friend of the great poet Lord Byron (who we do not see in the play) and has been having an affair with the wife of another great poet, Ezra Chater (Hodge and Chater's wife were allegedly caught in a "perpendicular poke" in a gazebo, thus triggering the plot). Hodge's life is quite complex: he is called out by Chater to duel for his wife's honor and he is also developing an inappropriate relationship with Thomasina. As time goes by, it become clear that Thomasina is also a mathematically genius, understanding and discovering the second law of thermodynamics years before it officially was.

In the present, a writer named Hannah Jarvis and a literature professor Bernard Nightengale are  investigating a strange event  in the life of Byron. They believe that he, not Hodge, may have killed Chater in the duel. As they and other begin to go through the old treasurers in the house, they discover the truth about what happened -- and about Thomasina's early genius. 

"Arcadia" is a very complicated, intriguing play. You go in thinking this is a standard English drama set in the country -- albeit with a time twisting narrative and a murder mystery to boot -- but it turns out, instead, to be a discourse on how we come to understand the past (like mathematics, we try to make sense of it through deduction and reason and evidence -- but ultimately there are things we can never know and chaos plays a huge part). "The future is chaos" one character says. Living in these troubled times, that has never seemed more true.

Amazingly written by Stoppard, "Arcadia" is considered one of his best plays. The original Broadway production in the 1990s was a hailed as a masterpiece and, full disclosure, I'm a huge Tom Stoppard fan (I was unable to see "Rock'n'Roll" and "The Coast of Utopia" but did see the revivals of "The Real Thing", "Jumpers" and "The Invention of Love" several years ago). Stoppard's plays are so funny, his characters so interesting, and the language so beautiful, that he manages to effectively convey difficult ideas quite clearly. His plays are also very dense -- lots going at once. My brief synopsis above in way captures the full complexity of the play. After seeing it, I felt the need to go out and read the script for myself.

The current production is quite good if not great. The cast is mostly excellent with an actor named Tom Riley as the stand out playing Hodge. His performance is the glue that binds the play together, making a mostly awful guy as sympathetic as can be. Also great is someone named Margaret Colin who plays Lady Croom, Thomasina's mother, who rules the estate. In the modern day parts, Lia Williams is wonderful as Hannh Jarvis, the nutty author. Billy Crudup is good as Bernard Nightengale but his performance is a bit manic and overacted. I usually like Raul Esparza -- who was great in "Company" and "Speed the Plow" but I felt he probably wasn't right the part of Valentime Coverly (a modern day member of the family who helps Bernard and Hannah in their work). 

Also, and this has been mentioned by others, the sound in the theater was a little low so it wasn't always easy to hear the dialogue -- not good for a play trying to communicate such complex ideas.

Still, this production is very much worth seeing. When it's good, "Arcadia" is about as good theater as you'll ever see on Broadway. Tom Stoppard is incapable of writing a bad play and, even though this production is not the best interpretation of his work, you'll still be glad you saw this when you walk out of the theater.      

Tripping the Light Fantastic

Ever heard of James Randel Jr?

Probably not. He lived over 200 years ago. But you can file him in the "isn't famous but should be" file. Millions of people literally walk in his handiwork every day.

He created the grid system for Manhattan.

He's the guy responsible for shaping almost all the streets and avenues of the great borough, designing perhaps the logical urban landscape in the world.

At the time this was very controversial. The grid system was considered heretical, strange, weird. The great novelist Henry James called it a "primal topographical curse." Even some people today (like my own mother) will say that the grid system is "unimaginative."

But the results of Randel's vision are clear: the uniform simplicity of the grid system literally created the groundwork for Manhattan buildings and skyscrapers to rise and rise into the air. It made it easier for people to navigate the borough, streamlining pedestrian, and later motor, traffic. Without James Randel, NYC might not be what she is today. 

And this month marks 200 years since Randel, then a 21-year engineer working for the city, unveiled his plan that would forever shape this city's history. We should all tip a beverage of our choice to his memory.

But the debate about how New Yorkers get around town has not ended. Quite the opposite, it's hotter than ever. What's it all about?

Bike lanes!

Some people (namely bike riders) love them. Other people (namely everyone else) hates them. This week New York magazine has a long article about this raging controversy. For bike lane advocates, these new lanes are ideal, just what are needed to relieve congestion from the sidewalks and streets. Not only that but, since bikes don't burn fossil fuels or create exhaust, they're good for the environment (not to mention for the riders' waistlines). 

But the people who hate them, hate them with a blind white passion. They think the bike lines are ugly. And unsafe, since pedestrians walk in the bike lanes and then get run over by riders whizzing  by.  They think the benefits of bike lanes are vastly overstated and that they just don't fit into the NYC urban landscape. And now people are suing the city, hoping to get the law to force the city to rid of these hated routes. Congressman Anthony Wiener has declared that, if he ever becomes Mayor, he will rid NYC of bike lanes in one of his first mayoral acts.

Whew! Who knew that bike lanes would be so controversial? But it's only getting more so. And as this article points, there is a larger issue at stake. It's about what kind of city New York is going to be in the future. Will the car still dominate or will it be marginalized? How will these lane affect out future? 

Like many things, it's an unsettled subject for these unsettling times. And if the bike lanes remain or are removed, it will say a lot about what kind of town NYC will be in the future. 


Grid plans and bike lanes made me think, in an ancillary way, of that song, "The Sidewalks of New York." Particularly the lines:

East Side, West Side, all around the town ...
Boys and girls together ...
Tripped the light fantastic on the sidewalks of New York
 

So even 200 years after the grid system came to NYC, here we are once again debating how we get around NYC. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

I'm big in Russia

Well, sorta.

Since I don't make (hardly) any money off this blog, I almost never look at my stats to see how many page hits/views/whatever I'm getting. Frankly, I always assume that virtually no one reads this blog but I adore every person who does and am grateful for any and all comments I get (well, most ...).

So color me surprised when I checked out my stats yesterday. Shockingly, Mr NYC gets between 150 and 200 page views a day. That really amazed me since I thought it would be more like two. Even more surprising to me is that, after the USA, the country where this blog is most read is Russia. Comrades! Close on Russia's heels were the United Kingdom and Germany (I have one lovely reader from Germany who comments every so often and it's always nice to hear from her). Other countries on the most read list are Japan (my condolences) followed somewhat distantly by Canada, Denmark, France and China. 

Once I got a comment by a reader in South Africa. That was cool. 

So I guess you (okay, me) could call this an international blog for an international city.  And of course we have lots of readers here in the USA. 

Greetings to all my readers from across the fruited plane, around the world, and all the ships at sea!

And if you are an active reader to Mr NYC, 1) thank you, thank you, thank you, and 2) I'd love to know where you live (not your address or anything creepy like that, just your city/state or country). You can just hit the comment link on this post and drop it in. I'm sure your fellow readers would like to know too. Share and share alike. Thanks! 

No Sex and the City?

We New Yorkers are a randy bunch. Go on the Internet and you can scan countless ads by people looking for sex. Go out to a bar on any given night and you'll find multitudes of sharply dressed men and women -- bright young things "in the season of the rising sap" as Tom Wolfe would say -- meeting and greeting one another, honing in on finding some "action."

The evidence that people in NYC are trying to "get some" is overwhelming. It's all around you. Everywhere you go.

That's why articles like this recent one in the New York Observer annoy the hell out of me. 

Entitled Sexless and the City: Web Warps Libidos of Coked-Up Careerists, it draws some sweeping generalizations about the libidinal behavior of young New Yorkers based on a few anecdotes. The author, Nate Freeman, makes the audacious claim that "Young New Yorkers no longer care about having sex. It’s not the endgame, nor even the animating force of social interaction. Men and women still get dressed up, but not for the purpose of taking off their clothes in another’s company. What used to signify desire or the desire to be desired now boils down to narcissism."

Mr. Freeman apparently hung out with a bunch of young twenty-somethings snorting coke, who then all went home without getting laid, and he came to the stunning realization that all young people in New York are now disinterested in having sex and more interested in doing drugs, posting on Twitter and Facebook, and looking good.

Spare me. 

You don't have to a Freudian to believe that Eros is a powerful motivator, especially in a  meat  market like NYC. It's not surprising that a bunch of coked up people aren't interested in sex, at least not the time their doing coke. Now I've never done coke and don't hang out with people who do but, from what I understand, it actually dulls your sex drive and can, in men, cause temporary impotency. And I've gone to countless parties where people don't hook up. So what? Doesn't mean they didn't want to! I always did!

As for the narcissism charge, it's not like narcissism is anything new amongst young hot shots, either in NYC or elsewhere. Yes, we are a very narcissistic generation but I don't know anyone,  male or female. narcissist or not, who wouldn't rather engage in sexual congress with someone else (gender depending on their inclination) than stare at himself or herself in the mirror or browse the web. In fact, you might argue, getting laid is the ultimate act of narcissism: when someone submits to you sexually, that person is validating your existence, validating your sexiness and desirability, validating your prowess and physical power. Sounds pretty narcissistic to me!

Articles like this really make me despair for the future of journalism. Why write something like this when the evidence contradicting it is so overwhelming? The point of this article is so laughably, obviously wrong, so ridiculous on the face of it, that I feel embarrassed for Nate Freeman and the editors of the Observer. Just read the comments section of this article and you'll see how right I am.