Welcome to the Oculus

In a rare blip of good news, this week marks the opening of the much awaited, much anticipated, much debated Fulton Center. A $1.4 billion gleaming glass and steel behemoth, it's a strikingly bold move into the 21st century for the New York City subway system.

First conceived in 2002, right after 9/11, Fulton Center is a transit hub that pulls together a goulash of subway lines, namely the A, C, J, Z, 2, 3, 4, 5 and R lines. In addition, there will be "improved access" to the 1 and E lines as well as the PATH trains. In the annals of NYC transportation, this is a big effing deal. If you've ever tried negotiating the subway lines of Lower Manhattan, it's generally been a nightmare of ramps and staircases and seedy tunnels -- very often strewn with trash and bottles and reeking of urine. Also, these various subway entrances and connections were a test case in the limits of crowding humanity into tight areas, making Calcutta look spacious, and inducing numerous bouts of "walker rage."

Fulton Center corrects all this and provides subway riders much needed relief with widened tunnels, brand new staircases, and wheelchair access.

But it's the building itself that makes Fulton Center so impressive -- it looks like it has more to do with space travel than underground travel. Its exterior resembles the capital building of some alien planet from an old episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation (it has a baddass looking dome!). The interior appears to be the hybrid of the inside of a shopping mall and a space station -- a circular atrium, curving staircases, escalators, and numerous screens with dancing images. But the really impressive thing about Fulton Center, some would say the most "magical" thing about it is ... the oculus!

Ah yes -- the oculus!

“The lions at the New York Public Library, the clock in the middle of Grand Central terminal, and now, this jaw-dropping oculus." Thus spake MTA Chairman Tom Prendergast. He has declared that the interior of the aforementioned dome at Fulton Center will fast become one of wonders of NYC. Also called the Sky Reflector Net (no, not like the organization from the Terminator movies), the oculus is composed of 952 diamond shaped reflective panels that draw sunlight into the transit center in good weather and allow people to watch rain dance above them in lousy weather. It brings the millenniums-old natural world into this most cutting-edge example of modern building. And, sarcasm aside, it's really, really impressive.

In its every design and utility, Fulton Center demonstrates that the super-enlightened, super-tech future has arrived in NYC. It's good for the people riding the subways and negotiating the city, and it's a beautiful addition to the architectural splendors of the city.

Sadly, of course, it can't exactly change the behavior of subway riders but, hey, you can't have everything.

Never Leave NYC?

There are many, many, many, many, eighteen-thousand billion reasons why living in NYC makes sense -- namely, that it's the most exciting, dynamic city on earth, that there's so much to do that it's beyond comprehension, that there are eight million incredible potential friends you could make, and that this is the cultural and financial capital of the world. In short, living in NYC is like living in a microcosm of the world.

Then there are a couple of good reasons NOT to live in NYC -- namely, that it costs a bloody fortune to live in no space and your quality of life is always a secondary consideration to all that other great stuff.

So what about these 110 Reasons Why You Should Never Leave New York City created by Buzzfeed? 

I read them over and, quite frankly, they don't make a convincing case. This lists things like: pizza, bagels, fast walkers, numerous places for happy hour and brunch, not having to pay for car insurance and gas, people watching, bodegas, picnics on the roof, and looking at the view from a moving train.

I'll give this list that last one but the other reasons seem weak. Of course, I realize that this list is meant to be fun but it would have been better if it actually was fun -- like, NYC has the world's best tranny hookers, the male-to-female ratio weights on the male's favor, you can see SNL, Letterman, and the Tonight Show here, there are multiple airports here that can take you to anywhere in the world, and that NYC is the world's best food city. But hey, who am I to complain? 

Panic! Or maybe not ...

Just Enough

In 1973 Stevie Wonder released one of his greatest songs: "Living for the City." It's a heart-wrenching ballad about a young black man from Mississippi who comes to NYC to escape his hard upbringing, only to find it replicated in the big city. As the chorus goes, this kid is "living just enough, just enough for the city."

Struggle seems to be the defining characteristic of life in NYC. Life here is tough -- in so many ways. 

Whether it's metaphorically struggling to pay the rent or get and keep a job, or literally struggling to walk the streets and navigate the public transportation system, just getting through an ordinary day in NYC can often seem like a marathon made up of many sprints. Stevie Wonder hit upon an essential truth in his song that the young man of his song -- and so many others in this city -- are doing "just enough" to survive here.

This may be the city where dreams are made, where teaming millions with sweeping ambitions congregate, where fortunes are made, fame is gained, and legends are forged, but, for most of us, just getting here and staying here is a triumph. 

Living in NYC is so hard, getting to that "just enough" is so tough, why then do we stay? 

Because so many of New Yorkers, like yours truly, just "can't quit" this town. There's no sense to it, no rhyme or understandable reason, no train of logic that doesn't have many swerves and detours to explain why so many of us stay here, spend a fortune to live in no space, and put up with noise, garbage, crowds, etc. etc. etc. but ... we stay. Why?

Perhaps this article and this radio segment can provide some perspective. They provide good reasons why so many New Yorkers stay when logic and budgets should send us elsewhere. But, like Stevie, they hit upon another essential truth: for many of us, it's "just enough" to survive in NYC that makes staying here worth it, and most of us would rather do so than thrive anywhere else.   

Jan Hooks RIP

Back in the late 1980s, when I was a kid and started watching "Saturday Night Live", Jan Hooks was part of the cast. It was, in retrospect, one of the great periods for SNL. Along with Phil Hartman, Dana Carvey, Kevin Nealon, Mike Meyers, and Victoria Jackson, this was the time of such memorable recurring sketches as "Wayne's World", "Sprockets", "Church Lady", the first President Bush, Caveman Lawyers, and lots more. Hooks and Nora Dunn had a recurring sketch, the Sweeney Sisters, about two over-the-hill, over-the-top lounge singers which was very funny.

But Jan Hooks stood out as the best female impersonator in the history of SNL. There simply wasn't one female person of note that she didn't impersonate and totally nail: Tammy Faye Bakker, Nancy Reagan, Hillary Clinton, Sinead O'Connor, Diane Sawyer and, as you can see here, Kathie Lee Gifford. Jan Hooks just dissolved into whoever she was imitating and, sometimes, she seemed more real and believable than the real people. You never got the sense that Jan Hooks was trying to be funny -- she just was funny, naturally, and made it seem totally effortless. She was amazingly talented.

Jan Hooks never had a huge career after SNL -- she was on some sitcoms and did guest roles here and there. It's too bad, because she was as good as any man who came out of that show. It was harder, then, for female comedians to brake out but she paved the way for people like Kristen Wiig and Sarah Silverman who came afterwards. But Jan Hooks was a memorable talent and her death at age 57 is very sad.

But I'll always remember the laughter she gave me as a kid back on those dark Saturday nights in front of the TV. Thank you, Jan.    

Derek Jeter's Last Game at Yankee Stadium

Climate March in NYC

Is Airbnb Good for NYC?

Yes! Yes it is! Airbnb is wonderful! It's the best thing ever to happen to NYC! Everyone loves it! It's the greatest thing ever! Oh my god, I love Airbnb so much! It's so awesome! I want to marry it and have 10 million of its babies!

No, not really. I'm kidding. Hope you could tell.

Airbnb, the "sharing" website that lets people rent our their apartments, has been on an aggressive PR campaign to try to convince New Yorkers that not only is this business great for NYC but that New Yorkers love it and think it's a wonderful thing. I've written about Airbnb before and lots of electronic ink has been spilled over its merits and drawbacks but it all comes down to this: it's illegal. 

Airbnb is a crime syndicate. It is illegal for people to rent out their apartments if they are in a rental building or co-op. The renters are not paying hotel taxes. The buildings are not zoned to be hotels. And very often Airbnbers are using these temporary rentals to engage in drugs or prostitution or other illegal stuff. It's been leading to disturbing things like total strangers roaming the halls, young people having parties in the middle of the night, and all sorts of other unintended consequences -- like landlords not renting out apartments and turning them into permanent Airbnb hotels. This is illegal! 

And yet ... Airbnb will try to tell us otherwise. And man, they are out in force! This company is flooding the airways with ads, you can't go into the subway without an Airbnb poster getting in your face. They're more aggressive than panhandlers! And this article about Airbnb is fascinating -- not only for the article itself but also for the comments section. At first, all of the comments are anti-Airbnb, people who guinealy have a problem with the company, and then ... a little while later ... but then quite suddenly ... a stream of pro-Airbnb comments! Hmmmm ... wonder why? Clearly, Airbnb is paying these people to search the Internet and flood comments sections and chat rooms with the company line. It's Astroturfing at its finest.

I've seen this before. I wrote a few anti-Walmart blog posts in the past and they always resulted in pro-Walmart comments being instantely fired back at me. I wondered who in NYC loves Walmart so much that they would take the time to write corporate propaganda messages to me, a nobody blogger? Then I realized that I was being Astroturfed, that people on the Walmart payroll were doing it as part of their PR campaign. I'm waiting, waiting quite patiently, for the first Airbnb Astroturfing comment to be flung my way. Quite frankly, I'll be a lil' sad if they don't.

So no, Airbnb is not good for NYC. In fact, it's really, really bad. Like, really, really, really bad. 

NYC in 101 Objects

When we study history in school, generally it comes to down to "so-and-so did such-and-such on this-that-or-the-other date and it lead to this other thing happening and so on and so forth."
 

Pretty boring. 

It's easy to think of history as just a litany of interspersed dates and facts and figures. Occasionally you'll learn about some interesting historical figure -- Julius Caesar, Henry VIII, George Washington, Winston Churchill, etc. -- but mostly they are just color commentary for the boring reportage that passes for the study of history these days.

No, history isn't just something published in book or tested in an exam. It's not a subject to suffer through. History is what forms us, it's our present as well as our past. Real history is the legacy of our ancestors, a legacy we grapple with daily, something to be either continued or reformed. And history is something that we're always creating.

Literally. Think of the IPhone. In the present day, it's a popular piece of technology that just about everyone wants and has (including yours truly). To understand modern day America, you need to understand the IPhone and how people use it, how it connects us, and what it says about American society in 2014. In years to come, when something else has come along to replace it (possibly microchips in our brains that make all computer hardware obsolete), the IPhone will be a museum piece, an artifact of another age. Heck, when I was a kid, everyone had Walkmen and VCRs -- and they're museum pieces now! 

The history of NYC has been the subject of numerous books and documentaries and movies. But that's only part of the story. Our city's history can be found in the literal things that shaped it, that its people used over the years, that tell us everything about our past. This great segment from WNYC gives us 101 objects that tell the NYC story. For example, burial beads, the sewing machine, public school door knobs, AIDS buttons. They are emblems of our history and how our city got from there to here, from the 17th century to the 21st century and beyond.

P.S. My grandfather fought in WWI, the 100th anniversary of which is being commemorated this year. He fought in the Brooklyn regiment that, along with the Tennessee regiment, was one of the first to fight in the "Great War" (although there was nothing great about it). It was commanded under the British Expeditionary Force and my grandfather was given a BEF medal that my family still has to this day. That's real history. Actually being to hold something linked to that time is powerful. And that's the best way to appreciate it.  

"The Power Broker" @ 40

Several years ago I wrote about Robert Caro's 1974 classic book "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and The Fall of New York."

Clocking in at around 1,200 pages, "The Power Broker" won the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction and is generally considered the greatest book ever written about NYC. It tells the story of the long, complicated, and fascinating career of Robert Moses, the "master builder" who constructed roads, bridges, highways, parks, beaches, playgrounds, public housing, and huge structures like Lincoln Center and the United Nations. From the mid-1920s until the late 1960s, he was the most powerful man in New York City and New York State, a more consequential figure than any mayor or governor during that time -- or since. Because of Moses, the city's waterfront was cut off from the people, islands were bolted together, neighborhoods were destroyed, public transportation wasn't built, and over half-a-million people were evicted from their homes. The city was, as Caro writes, "flooded with cars" due to Moses' works, and our city's physical landscape changed forever. 

Most shockingly, even though Moses wielded more power and had a greater effect on this city than anyone else in the 20th century, he was never elected to anything.

The story behind "The Power Broker" is equally fascinating: how the young reporter Robert Caro wrote a series of stories about Suffolk County and how it got him a grant to write a book about Moses -- a project that Caro thought would only last a year. How, instead, Caro spent seven years chronicling this incredible story and he and his wife almost went broke, living a total hand-to-mouth existence. How Caro interviewed Moses several times before the great man cut off communication with him. How interest for the book, prior to publication, was generated by serialization in The New Yorker. And how, today, on the 40th anniversary of its publication, "The Power Broker" stands as a classic that has never gone out of print. This article tells the story of how "The Power Broker" came into existence and is a must read like the book itself. 

P.S. This article uses the word "archipelago" i.e. a group of islands, to describe NYC. That is, obviously, an apt description, and I feel deep shame that I have never, in almost a decade of blogging about NYC, never referred to this city as an archipelago. After all, not only is that a neat and proper word to call our fair city, but it's a really cool one. So expect me to throw around the word "archipelago" a lot on this blog going forward. I'll start now: archipelago, archipelago, archipelago, archipelago, archipelago ... archipelago.