It's 2016 ... and "things are changing"

As 2016 began, so did the final season the PBS super-hit "Downton Abbey", the British upstairs/downstairs story of a great estate, set in the early 20th century, when "things were changing." 

What kind of things? Well, women were getting the right to vote, this funky thing called radio was becoming popular, people were dancing the Charleston, and, basically, the landed gentry could no longer afford to own their huge, expensive estates and employ hundreds and hundreds of people. Pretty soon, the nobility would become more of a curiosity and less an imposing force.

This blog has exhaustively chronicled how NYC has been changing over the years. One of my favorites is from December 31, 2013, when I bade farewell to "Funkytown", remembering the deaths that years of Ed Koch, Al Goldstein, Lou Reed, and Stan Brooks, great New Yorkers all of a bygone era. As 2015 has now ended, we can add two more great New York icons to the memory bank: Janet Wolfe and Dr. Zizmor.

Who are they? New Yorkers who impacted our city in smaller yet wonderful ways.

Janet Wolfe, who died last year at age 101, was the founder of the NYCHA Symphony. After a career as a bit movie actress, doing PR, and working for the Red Cross in Italy during WWII, she founded this symphony orchestra (in her early 60s no less) for public housing residents in 1971. What a wonderful, imaginative thing to do! For four decades, she brought great music to people who would otherwise might not hear it, and she did with verve, with excitement, and with love. She was the best kind of New Yorker and, even though she lived a very long life, we lost her too soon.

And what about Dr. Zizmor? He's not dead yet (he's still a youthful 70-something) but the friendly dermatologist whose silly ads papered the subway system and local TV programming for decades has apparently closed shop and retired. No longer can people get appointments with Dr. Z to have their skin treated by one of his famous chemical peels. His ads were one of those things about the NYC culture that were just ... there ... never wavering ... and they provided a certain kind of reliability and comfort to people in an ever churning city. No more. And, as this article indicates, the old school, local pitchman in NYC is just another thing -- like the subway token -- that has gone away.

So "things" are always "changing" in NYC. Stay tuned. 

Woody Allen @ 80

Today one of NYC greatest living film directors, every body's favorite nebbish Woody Allen, turns eighty years old. 

Eighty! Who knew he was so young?

After all, Woody Allen has been a cultural force in this country and around the world for over fifty years. Since his days as a TV comedy writer in the 1950s, to his days as a stand-up comedian/actor/game-variety-talk show presence in the 1960s, to his now legendary filmmaking career which blasted off in the early 1970s and lasts to this day, Woody Allen has done so much to shape comedy, movies, and American popular culture over the decades that it seems like he has always existed -- and always will.

Only Keith Richards seems more durable. 

For a man who's so obsessed with and afraid of death, Woody seems impervious to any kind of mortality -- either physical or professional. He has just kept rolling along, producing a new movie every year, decade in, decade out. So many others actors and directors have risen and fallen during his time, coming and going like presidential administrations and TV shows, being "hot" for a time before fading away -- and yet Woody endures. How much longer he will endure is anybody's guess but, for the time being, he's still here, making movies. 

P.S. You might enjoy this 1996 profile from The New Yorker about Woody Allen. Even though the article is almost twenty years old, even then he was almost four decades into his film career and already legend. And to think he still had some of his biggest success, and another Academy Award, in his future. Amazing. 

Memo from NYC

In the history of art -- music, literature, painting, sculpture, film, etc. -- blogging is a very new arrival. In fact, it's so new that many people might not think of it as Art at all. How much skill, you might wonder, does it take to sit down at a computer, pound out a few words on the key board, link to a few sites, upload a few pictures, and hit "Publish"? Not much, you might presume. However, making an interesting blog takes a certain amount of thought, talent, and attention, therefore blogging is more of an skilled "art" than you might think.

In this era of the Internet, art of all kinds is widely disseminated online. How artists get paid for work available at the click of a mouse is an endless, almost maddening point of contention between artists and consumers. This is not a subject that I will belabor here because it is, quite frankly, a hopeless and unsolvable bore. But I do want to make one point: companies expecting artists to give them free work is a goddamn outrage! 

Remember Wil Wheaton?

If you're a child of the 1980s, like moi, you certainly do. He was in the 1986 movie Stand By Me and then the late 1980s/early 1990s TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation. Kind of a big deal back in the day. As a grown up, Mr. Wheaton continued to act but he also worked in tech. He also is a blogger and, apparently, he recently posted something on his blog that was so interesting that the Huffington Post asked if they could re-post it on their site. He asked, quite reasonably, how much they would pay him for it. Their answer? Nothing! Oh no, they told him, the compensation is that we give you a ... "platform" ... which will give you ... "exposure" ... so that somehow ... somewhere ... someone down the line will pay you for ... something ... But, in the meantime, a big wealthy company gets free content.

Mr Wheaton was livid. They wanted to post his work and not pay him for it. He was pissed -- and rightly so.

This happened to me very recently. I thought about blogging about it earlier but didn't because I assumed no one would care. But the fact that this happened to Wesley Crusher's doppelganger shows how over matched us humble artists are against the corporate behemoths that would exploit us like 19th century plantation owners.

This is my story.

Several months ago I got a message from Uber.

Yes, that Uber -- the corporate giant that wants to take over the taxi industry in every city around the world. They wanted me to blog about how great Uber was. I had never actually used Uber but, hey, if they wanted to pay me for a writing gig, I was willing to listen. Give me a free Uber coupon or something, give me some dough, and I'll write something. I'm happy to be a sellout -- for the right price. So I told them this (well, I left out the "sellout" part but said that I could write something) and asked how much money I would get.

Their answer? Oh, we can't pay you a dime but we'll link to your blog on our site and won't the "exposure" for you be great?

I didn't bother to answer Uber and deleted all their messages. Expletive them.

The noive.

Uber is currently valued at $51 billion dollars. The Huffington Post is valued at $1 billion. And yet, somehow, these BILLION DOLLAR companies can't afford to pay bloggers a few bucks to post their content? As De Niro exclaimed in Goodfellas: "What the matter with you? What's the f@#$@#@#ing matter with you?"

I get that we now live in a so-called "disruptive sharing" economy (whether we like it or not), but when big companies like the Huffington Post and Uber ask writers for free content, that ain't sharing -- that's theft. Plain and friggin' simple. Links that provide "exposure" on "platforms" is not compensation -- at most, it's a favor. Not compensation. Get the difference?

This blog is written by moi as a labor or love and its content is free. This is my choice. And what (very) little money that this blog generates goes directly into my pockets -- cause I created this blog and all its damn content. That's my business.  But if I write something for a big for-profit company like Uber that exists to enhance their business and not mine, then that is not a labor of love -- that's just good old-fashioned capital-L Labor. And, for most of the last couple of centuries, people have expected to be paid for their Labor. Civil wars have been fought and revolutions started over just this very point of contention. But now these big tech and Internet companies think they're so special that they should be the exceptions to this rule that undergirds most of civilization.

Some might think that people like Wil Wheaton and yours truly are just big greedy complainers. But no, this is not greed. This is about respect and proper compensation for "services rendered." Capitalism is about the exchange of goods and services. Asking people to give you free stuff ain't capitalism. It's not an exchange. It's not fair compensation. It's just nasty, mean-spirited theft and exploitation. And nothing more.

If getting people to work for free is part of the "new economy", then count me out. Call me old-fashioned, call me a troglodyte, but I think people should be paid for their work. I think big wealthy companies exploiting people is wrong. I've never sat at the cool kids table so if my attitude on this subject is "uncool" then so be it. The uncool never bothered me anyway. 

As a person I onced worked with said, "I may be a whore, but I will thank you that I'm not a cheap one."

Or, in this case, a free one.

HEY, WHERE DA' PORN AT? The New Times Square

So Goes Times Square, so goes NYC ...

I've blogged countless times over the years about the transformation of NYC from a bustling, fun, dirty, dangerous city into a sanitized fun-house mirror of itself catering to tourists and rich foreigners. The cost of living in this city, while never cheap, is now astronomical, and the vestiges of old NYC - like coffee shops, rent controlled apartments, corner drug stores, and porn theaters - are fast disappearing. Because NYC is so vast, because it's a hodgepodge of over 300 neighborhoods (many of which are bigger than most towns and cities in the rest of the country), it's impossible to point to one spot in NYC as representative of greater whole changing dynamic. However, if you had to look for one example, then obviously Times Square, Crossroads of the World, is the place. It has changed so dramatically over the last quarter century, done a complete 180 in the city's and the public's imagination, going from "scary" to "boring", from "gross" to "respectable", that's it's almost impossible to comprehend. Times Square basically is NYC -- only more so.

This lengthy article from this week's New York magazine reviews the transformation of Times Square over the years, from a den of moral inequity to a den of economic inequality. Times Square, it reminds us, has always been the nerve center of the city, representative of it in so many ways. So when it changed, the rest of the city was destined to follow it.

Also, you might be interested to read (or read about) a new book called City on Fire about NYC in the last 1970s era, when the city was dangerous -- and wonderful.

Then, finally, read this article about the boom in 1970s New York nostalgia. Apparently, it's a "thing" now.

If you get a time machine and travel back 40-something years and tell New Yorkers what their city would become, most of them would ask to get into the time machine and travel back to the future with you. But for many of us, if we could go back to that old NYC, some of us, including yours truly, might choose to stay there ... for a while at least.

As Fran Leibowitz said: Times Square today is like a gay bar in the 1970s -- no one admits to going there.

Preserving the Past

Sure, lots has changed in NYC over the years but two things in this city seem immune to the ravages of time: Chinatown and the Dakota building. How have they survived while so much has been changed?

First, in Chinatown, the community, politicians, and business leaders have made a concerted effort to keep this classic neighborhood intact. It's a wonderful example of how vision, intelligence, political will, and good old fashioned hard work and fight huge forces -- like big money and the real estate industry -- to keep a great neighborhood alive.

Second, the Dakota -- this old fashioned building has stood the test of time. Why? Who can say? Perhaps it's because it's just such a gorgeous building that the idea of demolishing it or changing it substantially seems incomprehensible. Perhaps the residents have kept its integrity intact (unlike the Apthorp). Who knows? The only thing we do know is that it still stands -- and probably always will.

Did you see this?

A couple of weeks ago, DNAInfo published a map of NYC neighborhoods -- the borders of which were drawn by their readers. 

There are several hundred neighborhoods around the five boroughs, all leading and bleeding into one another. Where the boundaries of one neighborhood end and the others begin has been -- and probably always will be -- a matter of debate. 

And what this map proves is that, while we may all agree that we live in NYC, exactly where in NYC is open for discussion. 

You know, us New Yorkers, we love to argue, even about where in the city we live!

Back

Apologies for the long absence. Since I last blogged, Mr NYC has reproduced yet again -- my second Little Miss NYC was born two weeks ago and, as you might imagine, that took precedence to blogging. However, I'm still sentient and will try to blog as much as possible. Till then!

Pope Francis in NYC

Trump at the US Open

The Mighty New York Times -- and Its Future

If you watch the TV show Game of Thrones (or have even read the books its based on) then you know all about Lord Tywin Lannister. He's the richest man in the "Seven Kingdoms", has served as "Hand" to two insane kings (one of them his own grandson), has won many battles and crushed many rivals, and who also controls the most feared family in the fantastical realm of Westeros.

In season one of the show, King Robert Baratheon, supposedly the most powerful man in Westeros, constantly moans about how much in debt (both literally and otherwise) he is to Lord Tywin. Tywin helped make Robert king and Robert is married to Tywin's daughter, Cersei, creating what has become a miserable alliance between Houses Lannister and Baratheon. At one point, a drunk and resentful King Robert calls his menacing father-in-law "the mighty Tywin."

Tywin is the ultimate "power behind the thrown", someone who supposedly does not wield the real power in the land but who controls the kings that do. He is in fact more powerful than the kings he's supposed to serve. He can make kings -- and destroy them -- like Tywin did to Robert's predecessor. Power brokers like Tywin do not get any glory but are deeply, deeply feared by those who do. And, as Machiavelli said, "'tis better to be feared than loved."

In New York City & State, and in the country at large, we elect governments to represent and rule us. Democracy is supposedly about the people controlling those who have power over them, but, as we know, a political system awash with money means that those with money really control our government. There are also "bosses" who can throw the weight of a political party apparatus behind selected candidates -- thereby choosing who gets elected and who gets shafted. But there is one thing more powerful than money and bosses -- the media. The people who "buy ink by the barrel", who broadcast and broadband to hundred of millions of eyeballs and ears around the country, who are the ones who really control the leaders we supposedly elect to rule us. They can make and break reputations and thereby empower or destroy the careers of our rulers. And in this town and country, no media outlet wields more power and influence over our governments than The New York Times. 

Oh, the mighty New York Times. The "newspaper of record" is easily the most feared news outlet in NYC and one of the most feared in the country. It wields enormous power and influence. 

Just some examples: In 2003, it published story after story saying that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction. The result? It gave mainstream, respectable legitimacy to the Iraq War which, of course, turned out to be one of the biggest foreign policy blunders in American history. (The stories turned out to be bogus, the Times later acknowledged, but the damage was done). Another example: the Times' power can directly affect the fortunes of politicians, especially in NYC. It can endorse candidates for office and make (or unmake) political careers. I recall seeing a TV interview with Scott Stringer in 2005 when he was running for Manhattan Borough President. He had just gotten the Times endorsement for his run that year and he looked like a guy who had just lost his virginity to a supermodel while being spoon-fed Beluga caviar from a crystal goblet. He won the borough presidency that year, he is now the Comptroller of NYC, and he very well may become mayor one day. Such is the power of the "mighty" New York Times.

So who controls the newspaper that controls NYC?

For over a century, the Times has been ruled by the Sulzberger family. Sons and grandsons of its founder, Adolph Ochs, have been running it for 119 years. The position of Executive Editor at the paper is the ultimate designation for the Power Behind the Throne of New York and American power. The current "mighty" Sulzberger is Executive Editor Arthur Sulzberger Jr. who is now in his 60s and is beginning to think about who might replace him when he retires. As this article points out, there are currently three leading candidates, all members of House Sulzberger, who might very well one day become the next Executive Editor. Currently, America is in the madness of a yet another protracted presidential election which will culminate in November 2016. However, something that will be less noticed by the populi but is no less in important is who will become the Times' next EE. Whoever that is will have tremendous power over our city and country for years to come -- as many mayors, governors, and presidents come and go.

Right now the Times is using its power and influence to unmake one potential president -- former US Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. They have been writing creepy, oddly-sourced stories about how she "might" be a criminal, about her complex marriage to former president Bill Clinton, about any controversy, real or imagined, concerning her life and presidential campaign. Anyone reading the Times' nasty coverage of Hillary Clinton can only reasonably conclude that "the paper of record" wants to prevent a potential Hillary Clinton presidency and destroy her and her family's reputation. The paper tried and, uncharacteristically, failed to destroy Bill Clinton's presidency. When he was in office, in the 1990s, as this article points out, the paper issued story after story, editorial after editorial, slamming the Clintons and their administration. Of course, Bill Clinton wound up becoming an incredibly popular two-term president still much admired to this day. But the Times' tried to stop that and they are trying to prevent what might become yet another incredibly popular two-term Clinton presidency. Many quoted in this article believe, quite rightly, that the paper has had a twenty-year plus vendetta against the Clintons, that they are the Times' White Whale, that to destroy the Clintons will be the ultimate demonstration of the Times' power. Of course, those currently leading the paper protest, way to much, that this is not so. But anyone rational person knows that it is.

So as we look forward to a change in leadership both in America and at the "paper of record", the question is simply put: will The New York Times remain mighty or has it, like American power itself, started a slow, long decline?