Soul of a City Defined

It can become tiresome to hear New Yorkers, like yours truly, always moan and complain about how NYC is changing for the worse, how the "soul of New York" is being destroyed by money, how "this city ain't what it used to be" -- etc. etc., on and on, ad infinitum. But, as even paranoids sometimes have enemies, sometimes us complainers actually have a point.

Namely, the closure of neighborhood businesses.

Last week, Pearl Paint, the legendary Canal Street art supply store, closed. It had been in business for eighty years -- yes, 80 years! Eight-Oh! Actually, I'm wrong -- it had been in business 81 years, since it first opened in 1933.

To put that into historical perspective, when Pearl Paint opened, FDR was in his first year as president, Hitler was coming into power in Germany, Winston Churchill was still "in the wilderness", Fiorello LaGuardia had not yet been elected mayor, segregation was still legal in much of the country, and television was still two decades in the future. Countless numbers of NYC artists shopped there, including some legends like Julian Schnabel. Now its gone -- a piece of NYC history eradicated. We are a poorer city today because Pearl Paint is gone -- and the legendary downtown art scene has taken a big blow.

And this has happened as neighborhood restaurants have begun to disappear. In Manhattan, it's getting harder and harder to find a nice, funky, relative cheap restaurants with good foods that have a friendly neighborhood vibe. Places like Rocco's and El Faro's in Greenwich Village. Even diners are disappearing in Queens! Without neighborhood restaurants that regular people can afford, where are people in the neighborhood going to congregate? Not everyone wants to go to a bar. Our communities suffer as a result.

Cities aren't real places. 

Cities are neighborhoods -- a collection of neighborhoods, some different, some the same, but all unique. NYC is blessed to have 300 great neighborhoods. But, as local businesses close and are replaced by chain stores, expensive gourmet restaurants, and boutiques, they lose their identities. They stop being unique. There souls are gone. And our city suffers.

Interview: Jesse Thorn of Maximum Fun and "Bullseye"

If you're a pop culture and public radio fan like me, then you must check out "Bullseye", the "show about things that are awesome." Each week, host Jesse Thorn interviews artists and entertainers, and gets their perspectives their lives and careers, as well as about creating the music, art, movies, TV shows, and comedy that we all love. Jesse is also the creator of the great website Maximum Fun, a blog full of podcasts, events info, and forums that create a great community for all pop culture fans. You might call Jesse the great synthesizer of American pop culture.

Here in New York City, you can catch "Bullseye" on Saturdays at 1 PM on 820 AM and Sundays at 6 PM on 93.9 FM.

Jesse was kind enough to answer a few questions for Mr NYC readers about his show, his website, and what he loves about pop culture. 

What made you such a devoted pop culture junkie and how did it lead to the creation Maximum Fun? 

I've always loved culture - reading, movies, sports, television. Just as I was becoming a teenager, the Internet opened up a whole new world. Not just of culture to consumers, but of opportunities to discern or dive deep. Once upon a time you had a couple magazines and maybe your local alt-weekly, and all of a sudden you had access to everything. Think of how significant just IMDB's emergence is, or AllMusic.com.

So "Bullseye" (which used to be called "The Sound of Young America") grew up as a sort of celebration of stuff that I and we thought were great but weren't getting the attention they should. MaximumFun.org grew out of that. 

What inspired you to create your show Bullseye and how did you get it on the radio?

I heard someone on the college radio station, and thought they weren't doing that great of a job. I sort of figured, "I could do that." I went and did the station tour, and I was surprised that the equipment was so relatively uncomplicated. So I just signed up. You had to volunteer a certain number of hours and you had to take a class. Once I'd done that, I recruited my two funniest friends and started a show. It's gone through a few iterations, but it's been one, continuous almost-15-year evolution. 

Your show takes a very comprehensive look at "what's good in popular culture" -- what do you define as good? 

It's very subjective, and I don't pretend otherwise. All matters of taste are culturally relative, and our show is no different. But I do put a lot of effort into making the content on the show stuff that I think is recommendable, stuff that I believe in.

I try to focus on things that are intended as art, without necessarily being exclusive of commerce. And I try to give a little extra attention to things that are fun, because I think stuff that's enjoyable tends to be overlooked a bit by the people who give out seals of approval for "quality" culture. 

You seem especially interested in music and comedy.  Who and what are some of your favorite bands, artists, and comedians? 

Geez. Favorite music artists ever... let's say Sly Stone, Curtis Mayfield, Nina Simone, Outkast, The Staple Singers. That's off the top of my head. Lately I've been listening to Steve Reich a lot, so maybe my tastes are about to take a turn for the white :).

In terms of stand-ups... I love Maria Bamford, Bill Burr, Chris Rock, Andy Kindler. A million others, but let's leave it there. I think Chris Rock's "Bring the Pain" and "Bigger and Blacker" and John Leguizamo's "Mambo Mouth" really affected me a lot as a kid. And Whoopi Goldberg's Broadway show, which I had recorded on cassette from a library LP.

And movies, TV shows, etc? 

Favorite movies ever are probably Rushmore, A Thousand Clowns and Pee-Wee's Big Adventure. That's sort of about where they caught me in life, I think. Pee-Wee was (and is) very important to me and my taste. The Simpsons, obviously. And Python - the movies especially because I'm too young to have watched the show on PBS like some folks did. In high school, Newsradio and Seinfeld. Later on, in college, Tenacious D and Mr. Show and The Larry Sanders Show. The Wire. 30 Rock. 

When you interview artists, you seem very interested in how their lives influenced and affected their careers but not in a gossipy way. What's the key to giving a respectful but revealing interview? 

I'm honestly not that interested in artist's personal lives, except as they intersect their work. They're on the show because their work is special. I invite people on the show because I care about and respect their work, and talk to them in a way that reflects that. But I do ask them about their work and life, and ask them real questions. So that hopefully leads to some insight.

You did a very profound interview with actor Rick Moranis last year about his career and his decision to leave show business to raise his family after his wife's death. How were you able to get him to talk to you? 

We asked. I mean, he had an album out, he did other interviews, as well.

Almost nobody goes into show business to be interviewed. Relatively few are genuine recluses, but most people would choose not to spend time doing press if they had the choice - why talk about your work when you can make it? But in this business, it's a trade - you do press, people hear about your thing, they check it out, you get paid to make more work. People offer me their time, I offer them a platform. Hopefully it's pleasant for all involved.

With Moranis, he choose to do much less work, for very admirable reasons - his wife died and he needed to raise his kids. So he wasn't avoiding being interviewed, he just didn't have stuff to promote, and thus had to reason to engage in that transaction. But he cut this record, and was proud of it, and wanted people to know about it.

The two people I've had on the show who genuinely were "gets," folks who don't do interviews, were the musicians Betty Davis and Bill Withers. Both had been burned pretty badly by the music industry, and had chosen to step away from it. Ms. Davis hadn't even gotten her ASCAP checks for many years until a fan tracked her down. Both were challenging interviews, but with great artists like that, it was an honor to get to talk to them.

Rick is a dad, you're a dad, I'm a dad: what insights did you get from that interview about work and family?  

It's OK to be a decent human being in the entertainment industry. You don't have to put yourself at the center of everything just because that's what the industry seems to ask you to do.

Are there any other interviews you've done that you're especially fond of or were surprising? 

One of the early visits with one of my all-time favorite guests, Andrew WK comes to mind. My youngest brother was about 8 or 9, and had started a band. Andrew listened to his song, and I remember he asked if it was OK with my brother if he (Andrew) learned something from him. It was really touching. Andrew's been on the show many times since, and came to MaxFunCon one year. He's just a really good-hearted guy who has worked his butt off to make his own crazy way of being in the world work for him as a life, and it's an inspiration to me.

Tell us, where do Bullseye and Maximum Fun go from here? 

Space. 

Thanks Jesse!

Midtown Blues

Change is constant. In life -- and in New York City.

This wouldn't be the greatest city in the world if it wasn't always transforming. Sometimes it's for the better, sometimes it's for the worse but change is a perpetual fact of life. Like the passage of time, weather, death and taxes, change simply exists, it just is.

Well, Midtown is changing -- and not for the better.

Currently there are several super-thin, super-tall highrise apartment buildings being constructed in Midtown. Specifically, they are being built in the 50s, right below the southern perimeter of Central Park. A few are also being built downtown, in and around Tribeca. Many of them are close to 100 stories tall. And they are a threat.

They threaten to turn the Manhattan skyline into one overwhelmed by buildings that look like needles. No more iconic structures like the Chrysler, the Empire State, even the Citicorp building -- instead, needles. Manhattan will be turned into the world's most glamorous pin cushion.

They threaten to exacerbate the income inequality in this town. The apartments in these buildings are going to be purchased mostly by wealthy foreigners either as investments or pied-a-terres.

Most of all, these buildings threaten to caste huge shadows over Manhattan, blocking out the sun. And since most of them will be in Midtown, this means that large portions of Central Park could be caste into permanent darkness.

This. Is. Scary.

And it's not even like Midtown is that glamorous or exiciting anymore. Midtown is ... eh. As this article shows, we're a long way from the glamorous Mad Men days of Midtown. The economic and cultural vitality has left Midtown and gone to Chelsea (like Google), or the East Village (like Twitter), or Tribeca (like all the celebrities), or Brooklyn (like Girls). Heck, even Queens is getting more cool. Midtown has become like a boring middle-level Midwestern city's downtown. It's where people work and occasionally get dinner. But it's not where NYC's future lies.

So these new buildings contribute nothing to NYC or its future. This is one kind of change we can do without.    

Classic Mr NYC

In 2008, I did a couple blog posts about the year 1994. One concerned a movie called "The Wackness" that was a piece of nostalgia about 1994 New York. The other was a "cultural nostalgia" trip to that year -- a year when everything changed.

You think I kid. But I kid you not.
 

A lot happened in 1994. A lot that we're still living with today.

 

Tonya Harding vs. Nancy Kerrigan. The OJ Simpson case. Kurt Cobain's suicide. The Rwandan genocide. The Major League Baseball Strike. Nelson Mandela became President of South Africa. My So-Called Life, Friends, ER, Forrest Gump, Pulp Fiction and all the big careers that were launched (and re-launched).

 

And the world we live in today was largely created that year.

 

The Republicans took over Congress and George W. Bush became governor of Texas -- which lead to President Bush, the Iraq War, and eventually President Obama.

 

And 1994 was also the first year when this thing called the Internet began to penetrate the popular consciousness. As this clip from the Today show proves, before then, no one really knew what "Internet" was. People still had yet to grasp the concept of this rootless world of information. It would take years before things like Amazon, Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter would consolidate control over the Internet -- back then, it was an electronic Wild West. But 1994 was the year it broke through -- and changed our world forever.

NYC Etiquette

Interesting segment today on WNYC about how we New Yorkers should comport ourselves in the streets and public institutions of our fair city. Apparently someone wrote a book about it. 

I thought one of the joys of being a New Yorker was that you could be as rude and crude as you wanted to be. If this book is to be believed, however, this is no longer the case. 

The author does make some interesting points, however. Most of all: when walking down the sidewalk, keep to your right!

And my own personal tidbit: when riding the subway, don't eat and don't stand in front of the doors when there are open seats and space available!

Subway Cake

Is This Real?

In the late 1990s, I had a roommate with a subscription to The New Republic. One fine summer day, while he was elsewhere, I opened up an issue and read an article called "Hack Heaven." Written by a person named Stephen Glass, the article was about how companies were hiring teenagers who had previously hacked the company's computer systems in order to teach them to avoid future hacking. The article was so wild, the people so colorful, and the things they were quoted as saying so off the wall, that I thought the article was fiction. It had to be!

And it was.

It was all a lie. This article, and others by Stephen Glass, were so sensational, the people and events in them so Monty Python-esque, that it and they defied credulity. Eventually, Glass was revealed to be a fraud, his articles total fiction. A few years later a movie called "Shattered Glass", about this fake article and Glass's deceit, was released. Sometimes truth is stranger than fiction, sometime not. But truth will always out.

This week, while perusing the new Observer online, I came across an article that again makes you think: is this real? Called "Don't hate me because I'm 10021", it's about how rich people in NYC, specifically those denizens of the Upper East Side, are feeling persecuted and marginalized in Bill De Blasio's New York. Apparently, these rich folks all want to move to Miami -- no taxes, no Democrats, no "class warfare", and better weather. This article wants us to pity the rich and their difficult plight. The poor in this town? They got it made! It's being rich in NYC that's so very hard. Pity the billionaire. Screw everyone else.

Of course, this is Orwellian nonsense but this article seems to believe it. Really.

And yet ... I'm wondering if this article just isn't some big practical joke. I hope so. If so, who's it supposed to be punking? The rich -- exposing them as whiny, pathetic, selfish, greedy, narcissistic, mean-spirited pigs? Or the rest of us -- begging us to feel sorry for them? I can't decide. One of the commentators to this article even writes "This has to be fake, right?" I hope he's right. I just don't know.

If it's fake, it's hilarious, brilliant even. 

But if it's real ... it's scary, truly chilling. It shows how totally detached and out-of-whack the wealthy in this city are. This is a "Let them eat cake", Ayn Randian attitude that once permeated Ancien France and Tsarist Russian and led to revolution. I don't think New Yorkers are ready to storm the barricades quite yet but, when I read articles like this and then hear wealthy New Yorkers compare raising taxes on the rich to a Nazi invasion, it's clear that a class war is brewing, and may get hotter. 

Let's hope it won't. And let's hope this article is a joke. 

It begs the question: is this real or is April Fool's starting early? 

NYC Streets in Imagination

Cities are only as great as their people. And, of course, many great people have lived in NYC over the centuries. 

In fact, so many notable people have lived here that some of the very streets where they resided have been named after them. 103rd street and Broadway has been renamed Humphrey Bogart Way. The area on the Bowery near where CBGBs used to be has been renamed for Joey Ramone. And numerous streets in Queens have been named after cops and firefighters who died in 9/11. You can find a comprehensive list at NYC Honorific Street Names to see where they lived and are now remembered.  

Talking about remembering, you must take a look at these amazing photographs by legendary New York Times photographer Bill Cunningham. Although he's become famous for snapping pictures of the rich, powerful, and beautiful, he's also revered for his photos of ordinary New Yorkers walking the streets. He has an uncanny ability to catch people doing interesting, idiosyncratic things. A recently released collection of his photos were taken back in 1968, when NYC was in some trouble. It's an amazing visual record of a city on the brink of crises -- and the humanity it contained. All New Yorkers, at any time in our history, are iconic.

One of the most iconic New Yorkers was, of course, Jackie O. History remembers her as First Lady to President John F. Kennedy, queen to his king, as the two of them reigned over America in Camelot in the early 1960s. Then that tragic day in Dallas in November, 1963 took him away and she, in turn, moved to New York City to live the rest of her life (she died in 1994). But her legacy is not just to be found in her short tenure as first lady or her bravery after the assasination. Living for the last 30 years of her 64 years, Jackie O became one of the city's leading preservationists. She helped restore Central Park after the savage budget cuts of the 1970s. And she helped to save Grand Central Station, winning it landmark status, and preserving a great NYC icon. After her death, the reservoir in Central Park was named after her. Photos from her three decades in NYC have recently been published in a new book and you can see some great samples here. 

There has been some controversy about name streets and public spaces and institutions after people. But I think it's important to remember that NYC is place where talented and brave people have lived, and naming the streets where they lived, and remembering how they contributed to our city's life and history, is a good thing to do.

Harlem Building Blast

Where have you gone, Tammany Hall?

In American politics today, the most common complaint is, why can't politicians get anything done?

Of course, our political system of checks and balances was intentionally set up to make it difficult to govern, lest we slide into tyranny. However, in recent years, it seems like our politicians have gone from governing and legislating into simply engaging in deliberate gridlock. It does "We the people" no good.

The people, of course, are at the heart of any democracy -- because here the people rule. At least, in theory. In practice, of course, people powered government is rough and messy business, much like the people themselves. That is why political parties came into existence, as a way for people and groups with similar interests to organize and claim power. It's always why the engines of political parties, i.e. "machines", became so vital in the 19th and 20th centuries: they helped people claim power and use the government to improve their lives.

A machine works like this: the people who work and vote for or finance the dominate political party in their respective city or state get benefits when the politicians they support get into the power. This can be a job or social services or various government favors. It's very much a transactional, back scratching way of governing. It is the "business" side of politics and government. 

Political machines, of course, have long been derided as sources of corruption since they can warp the machinery and priorities of government and leads to bad policies. Government ceases to function properly when instead of being used an instrument to help the population at large it is used simply to benefit the people who run and support it. However, political machines were not always sources of patronage and corruption. Instead, they were mechanisms to help the poor and dispossessed grab away the levers of government from the rich and connected. 

Here in NYC, from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, Tammany Hall was the most powerful and notorious political machine in America. Tammany Hall ran NYC like the Vatican runs the Catholic Church: absolutely. The "bosses" of Tammany, like the infamous Boss Tweed and later people like Carmine DeSapio, would handpick candidates for mayor and other municipal offices and they were almost guarenteed victory on election day. At its height, Tammany's power reached to Albany, with even governors needed the backing of the powerful organization to get elected. But Tammany was not just a cease pool of power and corruption. In its early days, before the government granted social services, it was also a place where poor people and immigrants could go to get a job, food, shelter, even winter clothes. It helped the people at a time when the government and the wealthy didn't, and all it wanted in exchange was a vote. For many New Yorkers at the time, this was a great deal. 

In many ways, Tammany became a victim of its own success and power. By the mid-twentieth century, many of the politicians it had supported, like Governor Al Smith, had instituted social welfare programs in New York State that made the services Tammany used to provide people irrelevant. In the 1930s, the New Deal and the election of Fiorello LaGuardia as mayor made Tammany both irrellevant and, for the first time, politically weak. And, of course, corruption went from the "honest graft" of the 19th century, when politicians and bosses helped the people and themselves, into the vile corruption of Mayor Jimmy Walker -- who spent his days and nights drinking and chasing women while his city fell apart, thanks to the Great Depression and incompetency of City Hall. 

By the 1960s, Tammany Hall was dead. Many said and would say today good riddance. But is the city better off because of it? At its height, Tammany Hall was a strong advocate for New Yorkers who had no other. It truly cared and helped everyone. Today, who does that? Unions? The rich? Ha! And when you see ineffective the city, state and federal governments have became at truly improving the lives of ordinary people, Tammany Hall in its glory years seems truly glorious indeed. 

There is a new book that looks to reexamine the legacy of Tammany Hall. Perhaps, it argues, Tammany Hall has been unfairly condemned. And perhaps the people of our city would do better if another Tammany Hall could rise, a political organization that simply looked out for everyone without regards to wealth or connections. 

P.S. Where was Tammany Hall? It was originally located right off Union Square on East 14th street. The original building was demolished in 1927 but then moved to East 17th.