Madeline's NYC

"In an old house in Paris, that was covered with vines, lived twelve little girls in two straight lines ... the smallest one was Madeline."

I've read this opening sentence ad nauseum lately since Ludwig Bemelans' classic children's book "Madeline" is one of my daughter's favorites. The spunky young girl made her debut 75 years ago and would go on to appear in six more books. This month a big exhibit at the New-York Historical Society is opening called "Madeline in New York: The Art of Ludwig Bemelmans", featuring everyone's favorite Parisian convent girl and other art from the master himself.

But if she lived in Paris, you might ask, what does Madeline have to do with NYC?

Because she was born here. Bemelman had a Belgian father and a German mother and was born in Austria in 1898. As a young man, he immigrated to the United States and, after many years as a frustrated artist, he dreamed up the story of Madeline at Pete's Tavern on Irving Place, scribbling her for the first time on the back of a menu. Generations of children have grown up to love the "Madeline" stories and, Parisian that she is, Madeline definetely has a New York spirit.

This exhibit will be on display until October and the wife and I are hopefully going to see it soon. If you have kids, you might want to check it out.

Interesting postscript: Bemelmans decorated the bar in the famous Carlyle Hotel on 76th street and Madison Avenue and that's why, no surprise, it's called the Bemelman's Bar.

NYC Real Estate: The New Swiss Bank Account

Blind trusts. Tax shelters. Offshore bank accounts. Shell corporations. 

They are "barely legal."

These vehicles are ways for wealthy people to hide their money from government tax collectors, a bright shiny line between what is legal and illegal in the world of tax avoidance. 

Rich folks hire an array of accountants and lawyers to find such schemes, even traveling the world to find places where they can deposit their cash tax-free. The amount of time and money rich people will spend to evade taxes is incredible but, they figure, it's a bargain compared to what they would otherwise have to pay to the G. And they're always on the look-out for the next opportunity to avoid taxes.

For decades, wealthy people from around the world parked their dough in Swiss or Cayman Islands bank accounts. They would also create dummy corporations to "invest" their cash in and then take a tax write-off. Remember Mitt Romney when he ran for president in 2012? He had all sorts of money invested in offshore accounts and shell corps that he refused to release his tax returns -- something that helped cost him the nation's highest office.

But some tax shelters are not so hard to find. In fact, in one place, they are literally in the air. 

Here in NYC, real estate has become a very popular way for wealthy foreigners looking to avoid paying tax. They will buy expensive real estate in order to offload their money and pay less in taxes at home. Eventually, of course, they plan to sell the real estate at a big profit but, in the meantime, they are converting their money into real estate and not paying a dime in tax to their home governments.

This is, needless to say, sleazy, and it's one of the reasons why the NYC real estate market is so insane. Some have proposed laws to crackdown on this but, in the meantime, we are living in one of the world's biggest tax shelters -- and making real shelter even more difficult to afford.

WNYC@90

Today is a momentous day in the history of New York City. For 90 years ago on this date, WNYC transmitted its first radio broadcast.

It's hard to believe that this radio station, which is a staple of New York City, has existed for almost a century. In this world of crass commercial radio, it's a great thing that it does.

Back in 1924, of course, there was no television. Or Internet. Nobody had smart phones or even Walkmen. If you wanted to get news about the city, you had to either read a newspaper or listen to the radio. But as people quickly discovered, radio was more than about getting information -- it was about community, about literally bringing together the "8 million people who live in freedom and enjoy the benefits of democracy" as WNYC would proudly announce every day that it signed on.

Today, in 2014, WNYC still holds together this city's vast and diverse community. The station still has great news and entertainment programming. It respects the intelligence of its listeners and broadens our horizons.

All this week, WNYC is remembering its history by going into its vaults and re-broadcasting its classic programming. You can find a link to it here. You'll here a 1959 report on Greenwich Village where they talk about the "problem" of black men and white women being seen in public together. There's a bizarre and hilarious series from 1998 of Kurt Vonnegut broadcasting from the afterlife (I kid you not). And there are also interviews with the Master Builder himself, Robert Moses and his ultimate antagonist Jane Jacobs.

WNYC is a treasure, the crown jewel of the New York City air waves And as it complete its first century of broadcasting, I'm sure the best is yet to come.  

"Seinfeld"@25

Twenty-five years ago this month a little TV show premiered on NBC. Not considered good enough or appealing enough for mainstream audiences, this pilot episode was burned off during the summer, outside of the regular TV season. It was a show about a New York City comedian and his oddball friends as they did exciting things like talk about the placement of buttons on shirts and wait for a table at a Chinese restaurant. Many TV critics, as well as the executives at NBC, didn't know what to make of this odd pilot and figured that this show would be a "one and done" -- broadcast once and then never seen again.

Instead it went on to change television history.

"Seinfeld" was a show of its time and ahead of its time. Although the first episode was shown in 1989, it became the defining show of the 1990s. What made it stand out? What made it so great? What made it so ... revolutionary? 

Many reasons but, most of all, "Seinfeld" was defined but what it wasn't. It wasn't sentimental. It wasn't warm and funny. It wasn't about anything important. It was about four very unlikable New Yorkers as they wandered about the city and vented about the trivialities and petty annoyances of life. "No hugging, no learning" was the mantra of co-creator Larry David. But most of all, it was a show that appealed to the intelligence of its viewers, that invited the audience to be in on the in-jokes, that said "you're smart, you'll get this humor" -- and tens of millions of people did. It was a low-concept show with a very high IQ. 

It was a real New York show. It was the first time that a show with a deep-seeded NYC sensibility permeated middle America. You might say today that it was a very Blue America show that Red America embraced.

You also have to remember what was on TV in 1989. Shows like "Cosby" and "Cheers" were popular at the time -- family friendly, touchingly sentimental shows with an "aw-shucks" humor that were set either in family homes or work places. "Seinfeld" was the opposite of these shows -- it was about four single New Yorkers who were supposedly friends but didn't seem to like each other very much. 

"Seinfeld" went off the air in 1998 but today, 17 years later, it's still very popular. You can still catch repeats of it on TV. Also, there is a Twitter feed called "SeinfeldToday" that incorporates that various aspects of social media and smart phone culture that didn't exist back during the show's hey-day. The legacy and impact of this late 20th century show still reverberates here in the 21st. In many ways, in this age where the trivial predominates while the world burns, "Seinfeld" is more relevant today than ever before. 

Who is Melissa Mark-Viverito?

She's the new Speaker of the New York City Council and the second most powerful person in town. She's also the highest-ranking Latina woman in our city's history.

Her life story, as this article notes, is quite interesting -- and someday she may be our mayor. 

Spiritual NYC

Here's an interesting WNYC segment from last week about living a spiritual life in NYC -- with 8.4 million souls in this city, there's literally a lot of spirit in this town.

While people from other parts of the country think of New York as a city teeming with Godless-Communist-homosexual-pornographers, this couldn't be further from the truth. You can't walk down a street in this town without hitting a church, a synagogue, a temple, a mosque, or some other place where you can pray. The spiritual life in NYC is diverse and flourishing.

And not all the spiritual activity in this town is constrained to formal houses of worship. 

Many people think of Ground Zero as a holy site, understandably. And other spots in this town can provide emotional and spiritual uplift for people -- think of Central Park on a sunny day or an amazing view from a skyscraper. Those may not be places where you pray, but something transcendent can certainly happen.

Spirituality can be found everywhere in NYC. Sometimes you need to find it and sometimes it finds you.

 

NYC Odds 'n' Ends

Here are several unrelated things that Mr NYC readers might find interesting. They show, in my mind, the things that are both great and infuriating about this fair city o' ours.

First, Airbnb. Subletting your apartment to friends, family, or vetted strangers is an old right of passage in NYC. It's also totally legal since the rent money is going to your landlord and not you. However, renting out your apartment like a hotel room and pocketing the cash yourself is a much more tricky proposition. Namely, it's illegal. People who rent out their apartments on a short-term basis and keep the money are cheating the city of hotel tax and hurting the business of legitimate, modest-priced hotels (and all those they employ). Also, these "b'n'bs" have increasingly become de facto brothels, with sex workers using them to meet clients. This illegal trade is aided by the website Airbnb, and currently the New York State Attorney General is cracking down on it. These types of "hotels" fall into a legal grey area: like sex, giving it away for free is legal, charging someone for it is a crime (unless, of course, you're a legal hotel). And, like prostitution, this type of business is hard to regulate. If the AG prevails, this part of the burgeoning "sharing economy" will be kille. But, if Airbnb survives, it will be yet another transformative "disruption" in the city's economy.

And here's something that really should be disrupted: NYC may be the capital of culture, the capital of the arts in America but, when it comes to arts education in our public schools, we do a lousy job. Funding for arts education, particularly in public schools in the poorest parts of the city, is scandalously low. There are schools in this town that don't have art teachers or cultural enrichment programs. This is terrible because arts education isn't just about painting or learning about painters. It's about the mind to creative possibilities, about using another part of the brain. The arts makes people smart, makes kids smarter, so our public schools MUST increase arts education in our poorer schools. 

Moving on, but staying on the subject of capital (as in money) and "capitals" (as in centers of power), NYC is, in case you didn't know, the "capital of capital." Wall Street is located here and the financial services industry is headquartered here. How did this happen? It wasn't by accident. This great segment from WNYC radio gives you a comprehensive history of how NYC went from being merely another American city 200 years ago into the global financial powerhouse of today. American may be ruled in Washington, DC but NYC is where the real power, the power of money, still resides.

Finally, bagels. We're not only the capital of "dough" but we're also the capital of dough that it shaped into a circle and boiled into a bread-like substance that can be toasted and shmeared with cream cheese and, if you so like, other taste items (like lox and ham and capers). Here's list of ten of the best bagel spots in NYC - and, what's funny, is that so many of them are outside of Manhattan!  

So there's my little NYC odds'n'ends about what makes this city ticked. I hope that you learned something. And, if not, that's okay too. 

ODB and Me

New York City has produced any number of colorful characters over the years, and few were as colorful as Ol' Dirty Bastard -- the legendary Brooklyn-born rapper and co-founder of the Wu-Tang Clan who died in 2004. 

To think, our city and the American culture has been without this great creative mind and philosopher for almost a decade. It's a low down dirty shame.

Oh yes, he was a musical genius. The Wu Tang Clan was probably the most influential East Coast rap group of the last 20 years and Mr Dirty Bastard was one its pioneers.

But what really made ODB stand out was how chronically outrageous he was. 

In a day and age when hommies be frontin', all trying to be da' Mack, ODD kept it Real. He was one dope-ass brutha'. Who can forget when ODB interrupted a Grammy-winner's speech to declare that "Wu-Tang is for the children?" Or that he fathered 13 children? Or that he declared that his big plan for the year 1998 was to find some ladies to "put some babies in"? (He was apparently very fertile).

Or the time he went to go pick up his welfare check -- in a limo? 

But more than that, ODB was a deep thinker, a great mind. This was reflected in the lyrics to his music. For example, these choice gems of wisdom:

"Bitch ass niggaz counterfeit the funk
I smoke the bead and the skunk, treetop of the trunk"

"I don't have no trouble with you fuckin' me/ But I got a little problem with you not fuckin' me"

"Oh baby, this is dedicated to all the pretty girls. All the pretty girls in the world, and the ugly girls too cause to me you're pretty anyway."

 

Wasn't he sweet?

Anyway, we will never see his likes again. Mr NYC mourns in his continuing absence. And like any good hommie, I tip a 40 to the memory. 

What's Past is Present

A couple of recent WNYC segments are worth listening to if you're interested in drawing a line between NYC's past and present. They beg the questions:

What's changed? What's stayed the same?

And what might have been?

This segment is about a recently rediscovered list called "101 Things to Love About New York City." Every year New York magazine and other publications put out similar lists but this particular one is from 1976. This was the year after the financial crises had rocked the city and when Son of Sam and Travis Bickle were terrorizing the city. Still, people found reasons to love what Annie Hall would call the "dying city" -- and some of these reasons still ring true today. Namely: really good street musicians, hating ConEd, losing yourself in a crowd, and, like 1976 itself, "being nostalgic about things in New York that were never so great." A few things are definitely dated, like "East Siders on the West Side" (there is no longer a rich/middle class divide between the East Side and the West Side -- both are stinking rich) and "flipping the change tray in the plastic taxicab divider" (today most people pay for cabs with credit cards). But something things we love about NYC are perennial.

So what might have been? What happened in the past that affected our present? 

Specifically, NYC lost out to Northern California when it came to the tech industry. Silicon Valley is much bigger and more powerful than Silicon Alley.

This fascinating segment featuring sociologist Richard Florida gives a comprehensive history about why the tech sector moved out West. Basically, it came down to two things: space, and Stanford University. First, Stanford was the incubator for the tech industry, and many of the original brilliant minds in tech came from there. Second, many of these companies wanted to build campuses and there just wasn't enough room in NYC. This is changing, of course, with Google and other big tech firms opening offices here. Still, this city is a generation behind California when it comes to tech and we're still struggling to catch up. But what if NYC had been the leader in tech to begin with? What might have been? We'll never know. A lesson we can't always been #1 in everything.

Mr NYC: The Interviews

No one would mistake Mr NYC for "60 Minutes", and I'm no Babwa Wawa -- but in the seven-plus years of this blog's existence I've interviewed a wide variety of people.

These include fellow bloggers, comedians, sex writers, book writers, public radio hosts, even Richard Bey -- yes that Richard Bey -- himself. One of my first interviews was with Kenny Kramer, inspiration for the iconic TV character, and a New York legend.

Here's a look back at several of the interviews over the years. I think they still hold up and hopefully you'll enjoy reading them: 

Jesse Thorn
Zack Hample 2
Simone Grant
Imogene Lee
Urban Infidel
Suzannah B. Troy
Arianne Cohen
Richard Bey
Stefan Lawrence
Cheryl Harris Sharman
The Dateable Dork
Kurt Andersen
Russ Smith
Michael Musto
Rachel Kramer Bussel
Kenny Kramer
Stephanie Sellars
Zack Hample