Goodnight Elaine's

Well, I guess it had to happen eventually. Mark this under the "End of an Era" category. It's official: Elaine's, that legendary East Side watering hole to the city's cultural elite, is closing after forty-eight years.

Sad.

It appears that the saloon just couldn't survive without it's namesake. When Elaine Kaufman died last year, it seems that the spirit of the place died with her. The celebrities stopped coming so the tourists did too. Elaine's was never know for it's great food -- it was more about "the scene" -- so, after she died, it just became another overpriced restaurant, and not a very good one at that. Thus business dried up and its fate was sealed.

Woody Allen was recently interviewed about the demise of Elaine's and even he said that the food was bad but the atmosphere was great. Remember: Elaine's appears in the first scene of Manhattan, one of his greatest movies, so he'll be linked to its memory forever. 

So goodnight Elaine's. I was glad to have gone there for dinner once and thank you for adding to the cultural life of this town. You, like your late owner, will be missed.

If you're interested, you can read my Elaine's archive here.

We Wuz Played!

Last month I blogged about the joke that was the potential joke of a Donald Trump for President candidacy. I argued, quite well I must say, that his candidacy was nothing more than a joke and that he was playing the media into giving him lots of publicity.

I was right.

Today, Trump finally put up and shut up: he announced that he won't be running for president. His loud, riduclous freakshow has finally ended, not with a bang but a whimper. 

Now only two questions remain: who will the Republican nominee for president be and what silly publicity shtick will The Donald dream up next?

As this article suggests, with Trump gone, the silly season in presidential politics should end. All of the serious Republican candidates need to declare if they're in or out and all the non-serious Republican candidates need to go back to their reality TV shows. 

And so it ends, for now. New York's own carnival monkey is taking a break. The only thing left to be decided is the future of our great republic. 

Spy NYC

Big Brother is watching you ... and you can watch him watching you!

In this era of hyper-security, a major world city like NYC is locked, stocked, and barrelled with security and traffic cameras all over town. They spy on our streets and roads shamelessly, at all hours of the day and night, to make sure that traffic is moving properly and that people aren't up to any funny business.

Better be careful when picking your nose in public -- it's probably being recorded for all eternity. 

These cameras are everywhere. And, of course, if you go into any building or store around town, in all likelihood you are being watched by cameras there too. Basically, you can't go anywhere in NYC (except private homes) and have any expectation of privacy.

Scary. 

But you don't have to be a victim. You can sniff (some of) these cameras out. I found a link to a site that has lots of information about security cameras in NYC. Also, the Department of Transportation has a full list of its traffic cameras that you can check out -- and see which ones are active and which are inactive. 

Better yet, you can actually watch TV and see these traffic cams in action! NYC TV has a dedicated channel called City Drive Live (on my TimeWarner system, it's channel 72) where you see nothing but images of traffic all over town. Every few seconds they cut from Times Square to the BQE to the Verrazano Bridge to the Cross-Bronx and on and on. It's kinda of mezmerizing -- you get to see the whole city moving at once. But it's also kinda scary -- because you basically can't drive anywhere without being spied on.

Oh brave new world that has so many cameras in it.

 

So ... do you like to watch? (Sorry, couldn't help it.)

Hawk Cam!

Now from zebras to hawks. 

In keeping with the wildlife theme of this week's posts, you should go and check out the Hawk Cam that The New York Times installed outside the window of NYU President John Sexton. A hawk named Violet set up a nest right outside this window and has been nursing some eggs that hatched on May 6. Now Violet is a mommy and is taking care of her baby. Violet had to be rescued briefly because her leg got swollen because of a tag that was put on it a few years ago but now she appears to be better and is concentrating on being a mommy.

Could this story be any more adorable?

Zebra Update

In case you were wondering, the reason there was a zebra milling around Soho earlier this week (and thus the photos below), is that Men in Black 3 was being shot in the area. Apparently this was the reason for the zebra and for the entire neighborhood being menaced by this production all week.

I work in the area and was literally forced into streets since the sidewalks were jammed with over sized lights, production crews, Kraft service tables, and gigantic tubes (presumably there to blow area or something like that). Even worse, tourists and gawkers were crowding the vicinity, trying to catch a glimpse and shoot a picture of Will Smith. It was a nightmare! And not only that, but apparently Mr. Smith had a gigantic, oversized vanity trailer that had to be moved to a private parking lot -- since it was taking up valuable parking space.

Oh well, I hope this will help the NYC economy. And this movie better be good otherwise I will personally by PO'd.  

Soho, May 9, 2011

If you happened to be crossing Grand and Mercer streets at various points today, you would have happened upon ... a zebra. Specifically, this zebra.

Yes, a zebra in ... in Soho. Apparently it was part of some movie shoot going on in the 'hood.

What a noble beast. 

Gotta love New York!

What's In a Grade?

Big article in The New York Press this week about the grades we see on restaurants here in NYC.

In the last year, the Department of Health has been inspecting restaurants and forcing them to post their cleanliness grades in the windows. The best is an A (obviously), followed by a B (borderline) and a C or lower usually results in the restaurant either being shut-down or an appeal (which results in the "grade pending" signs you sometimes see).

Like all great ideas, this one works great in theory. It supposedly incentives restaurants to be as clean as possible and shames those that aren't. It also, obviously, affects business. My wife, for example, refuses to eat in any place with less than an A rating.

But according to this article, this rating system is deeply flawed and doesn't always reflect just how clean any restaurant supposedly is. Perhaps it's impossible to create a perfect rating system, but this article shows that perhaps we shouldn't take these restaurant rating at face -- or window -- value.

Arthur Laurents RIP

Few people defined Broadway theater more than Arthur Laurents. He died last week at age 92 and had been a force in entertainment since the 1940s.

An irascible, brilliant writer and director, he wrote the book for such classic musicals as Gypsy and West Side Story. He wrote a little show in the early sixties called I Can Get It For You Wholesale that marked the debut of a very young up-and-comer named Babra Streisand. He wrote movie scripts too, including three classics: Rope (directed by Alfred Hitchcock), The Way We Were (featuring Barbra Streisand's signature song), and The Turning Point (ones of the greatest ballet movies ever made). He also directed theater and taught the craft of writing and directing to generations of artists, including to people like Leonard Bernstein and Stephen Soundheim.

He was also openly gay, and proudly lived with his partner for more than 50 years. 

Arthur Laurents was one of the New York greats and he will be missed. 

The Decade of Bloomberg

On January 1st, 2012, it will mark exactly ten years since Mike Bloomberg took office as Mayor. We are fast-approaching that date and, two years from that day, he will be mayor no more.

This has been the decade of Bloomberg in NYC and already the man is thinking and talking about his legacy. Thing is, he doesn't seem all that interested in NYC anymore. He views himself as a national leader, a spokesman for the political center. And while people still think he's a smart guy and been a successful leader, at least at home, his charm and presence are wearing thin.

This article goes in depth about the developing consensus about the decade of Bloomberg and it seems to nail it quite right. Simply put, people think he's been a good mayor and good countervailing influence on our other toxic political culture. But they also think he's been around a little too long, overstayed his welcome, and the public is clearly getting sick of him. He's like the guest who's the life of the party and tells all the great jokes -- but the won't leave after his jokes become unfunny.

So as the decade of Bloomberg grinds on to its twelve year deadline, it looks like we have two and a half more years of unfunny jokes from our city's increasing unwelcome party guest.