Nadler Won

As did sanity. Merci NYC.

A Primary Warning

Today is Congressional Primary Day in New York State. Since NYC is such a Democratic town, most the action is in the various Democratic Congressional Primaries taking place across the city.

The primary with the most historic importance is the one that will choose Congressman Charles Rangel's replacement. Rangel has represented upper Manhattan since 1971 and he was on the Watergate Committee (voted to impeach Nixon which is pretty cool) as well as on the powerful Ways and Means committee. Believe it or not, this area has only had TWO congressmen since World War II - Adam Clayton Powell and Rangel. So whoever wins this primary will be stepping into the shoes of giants.

Just south of Rangel's district, however, is a lower profile primary that is actually very scary.

Congressman Jerry Nadler has represented western Manhattan since 1993 (I grew up in this district) and he's done a fine job. (This district runs oddly shaped, running down the westside of Manhattan from Morningside Heights to Lower Manhattan and then hopping across New York harbor into inner Brooklyn. Honestly this district lines defy logic but it is what it is.) Anyway, Nadler is being challenged by a young man named Oliver Rosenberg. I wasn't paying any attention to this race until yesterday when, on WNYC radio, Nadler and Rosenberg debated. And. It. Was. Nuts.

Nadler is your typical Congressman -- on message, disciplined, touts his accomplishments, and takes about policy. He's not an exciting guy but he's clearly experienced and knowledgeable. This guy Rosenberg is ... obviously insane. Listen to the debate. He begins by yelling about his sadness that H&H Bagels no longer exists -- he literally shouts "We want our bagels back!" -- and then blames Nadler for gentrification (which I hate too but is not really a Federal issue) as well about how Nadler is "all talk and no action" and on and on and on. And he quotes Hamilton -- not the man but the musical and apparently he can't tell the difference between either. (Rosenberg also doesn't know that H&H closed down, not because of gentrification, but because the owner was a criminal). Rosenberg's main beef with Nadler is that Nadler supports the Iran Nuclear Deal which Rosenberg opposes. Okay, but Rosenberg, instead of giving a clear policy critique, yells about how horrible the Iranian regime is which isn't really the point. He's incoherent and evasive -- and nasty.

Rosenberg is clearly mentally unhinged and unfit to serve in any office -- he's basically a Donald Trump clone -- not to the mention the fact, as Nadler clearly exposed in the debate, Rosenberg is actually a Republican who's nostalgic for President Bush (!) and he's not even from NYC, but from California. Rosenberg talks about how he used to be a Democrat trapped in a "Republican body" and that he felt family pressure to conform -- until, apparently, the age of thirty.

Voters in Nadler's district -- please, please, please, for the love of God and everything that is holy, go out in droves and vote for Congressman Nadler. This is not a primary between equals, not a choice between two compelling candidates -- this is between an experienced, well-regarded congressman and a certifiable loon. Don't take it for granted that Nadler will win -- go out and vote! 

"Slaves of New York" @ 30

To read Tama Janowitz's acclaimed short story collection Slaves of New York is to gaze upon a world both familiar and distant.

Published thirty years ago this summer, the book was prescient about the exigencies of life in NYC: the spiraling rents, the ruthless ambition, the preening narcissism of the successful, the desperation of those who aren't -- and the way that people and their relationships are warped by this existential maelstrom. The book is set mainly in the world of artists, where creativity clashes with reality, where love clashes with money. According to the book, a "slave" is someone in NYC who lives with someone they don't really like (or even loathe) but are forced to by economic circumstances; the "slaves" are the focus of Janowitz's funny and moving book.

Today, when so New Yorkers can barely afford to live here, there are probably more "slaves" here than ever before. Ms. Janowitz was on to something way back when. 

And yet ... Slaves of New York is about a time and place gone by. In 1986, when the book was published, the "downtown art scene" still existed, even thrived. Sure, crime was a lot higher, the city was in rough shape, and people were fleeing. But the NYC art world seemed more like a community, a world unto itself that defied the city's decay, a defiant flower blooming in the tundra. Today, the downtown art scene doesn't really exist in NYC anymore. Sure, there are still big fancy galleries downtown but most of the struggling and innovative artists have been banished to the outer boroughs or out of the city altogether. The creativity, for the most part, has gone elsewhere. Go to downtown today and it's mostly fancy clothing stores and restaurants and glass buildings. The NYC art scene is much more diffuse today, less of a community and more of an abstract idea.

That's why, in many ways, Slaves of New York is more relevant today than ever. It saw where the NYC art scene and NYC itself was headed: into a world of concentrated wealth and mass economic disparities, into a world where art wasn't valued except for how much it could be sold for, where relationships were transactional and fungible, where NYC is a place so many live in but few believe really belongs to them. In many ways, this world existed then but in a somewhat more primitive form; today, it is institutionalized, absolute.

I wrote about Slaves of New York several years ago when I did a blog post about the NYC art scene in the movies. In 1989, the book was turned into a movie by the Merchant-Ivory team, better known for adaptation of classic British novels. The movie is, in a word, funky. It stars the always fabulous Bernadette Peters as Eleanor, an aspiring hat designer who lives with her awful boyfriend artist Stash in his downtown loft (she is his "slave"). The story concerns how Eleanor liberates herself from the her "slavedom" and re-starts her life as a single woman and an artist in her own right. (Some might call the story a feminist statement but, if so, it's not very a preachy one.) The movie, like the book, also concentrates on an artist named Marley Montello, a rather absurd character who intersects with Eleanor at various points.

What I love about the book and the movie is how the story is both so New York and so rooted in the 1980s art world yet also universal, timeless. It's about struggle, it's about love, it's about the complexity of all sorts of relationships, it's about wanting to become something and facing so many immovable obstacles to achieve it, it's about confronting your fears. And it's also a wonderful snapshot of NYC at a time when it was no longer a place where people really could afford to starve but where it was still possible, with very little money, to eke out an existence. Without knowing it, it was a swan song. Without knowing it, it was about the mythic downtown NYC art world -- just before the deaths of such icons as Andy Warhol and Basquiat, who ruled and defined it -- came to an end.

I remember discovering Slaves of New York and Tama Janowitz many years after the book was published and the movie came out. It was the summer after I had graduated from college, and I was working in a miserable job in a sterile corporate environment, dreaming of a life that was more artistic, more fulfilling, more ... funky. The Bravo Channel (then a great arts and independent film channel and not a reality TV grindhouse) was showing Slaves of New York endlessly. The movie and then the book inspired me. It felt like Tama Janowitz had created this story just for me. She seemed to get me -- get my anxiety, my fears, my hopes and dreams, and my romantic yearnings about the possibilities of life and NYC. No, I wasn't an artist and didn't aspire to be one (except, maybe, a writer). But Slaves of New York, Eleanor's story, seemed to be the only thing understanding me at a time when no one else seemed to. Eleanor, c'est moi (even though I'm a dude).

Slaves of New York has a proud legacy. It's a real NYC story and a poignant encapsulation of an era. But its the pure delight of the writing and the story's universal message that makes it great. And that's why, three decades after it's publication, people still read and remember it. And when my kids are old enough to read Slaves of New York, and I want them to learn more about the NYC I grew up in, it will be one of the first books I'll give them.

Making it in NYC

"If I can make it there ..."

As NYC falls further into the abyss of gentrification, "making it" in NYC is harder than ever before.

Now "making it" is an abstract term -- does it mean becoming rich and famous or just being able to "make" a living? Maybe it means eking out a minimal existence while doing something you love? Or maybe it has nothing to do with money or success -- maybe it just means being happy? It can mean anything you want it to! "Make" of that what you will ...

Still, the idea of "making" in NYC is an irresistible one, subject of many a romantic song and film. Make it here and "you can make it anywhere."

WNYC radio has a good series this week called Making It in NYC. The series mostly interviews artists about how they are making it (or not) in the world's greatest metropolis and the various challenges they face. Since this is a subject that will forever obsess almost all New Yorkers, it's worth listening to.

NYC is Orlando

"Taxi Driver" @ 40

"Someday a real rain will come and wash all this scum off the streets."  

No, this wasn't something said by a Donald Trump supporter. It was a line memorably uttered by the great actor Robert De Niro in the 1976 movie Taxi Driver which turns 40 years old this year. If you've never seen it, Taxi Driver is about a mysterious cabbie named Travis Bickle who roams a nightmarish NYC, lonely, detached, adrift in a chaotic world that he doesn't understand and hates. Eventually he becomes a gun-totting vigilante and unleashes his fury. It's a horrifying and amazing film to watch. 

Taxi Driver was a quintessential example of the 1970s New Hollywood ethos: brutal, profane, centering on an "anti-hero," and totally unsentimental. It's also, in many ways, a document about NYC in the mid-1970s: dirty, crime-ridden, and failing. The film was directed by Martin Scorsese, right after his earlier films "Mean Streets" and "Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore", and it rocketed him into the leagues of major American directors, paving his way to legendary status. The cast is also notable: besides De Niro, the film stars a pre-"Moonlighting" Cybil Shepherd, Harvey Keitel, a very young Jodie Foster, and, of all people, a frizzy haired Albert Brooks providing some much needed comic relief. Like all Scorsese films, it's brilliantly directed and has first-rate performances.
 
Looking at Taxi Driver today, it seems both very dated and totally relevant. Dated, because it's about an NYC that doesn't exist anymore. Watching the film, in an NYC where broom closets cost millions of dollars, is like looking at a world that is both familiar and distant, recognizable and unrecognizable, a friend from the past who has aged and whose body has changed (either really well or really badly). Yet, it's more relevant than ever because it's about rage, alienation, mistrust, a world gone mad, and the temporary but very real allure of senseless violence. Look at our current political climate. Can anyone possibly argue that this atmosphere of anger isn't even more real and toxic today? Is rage not a constant in American life today? Taxi Driver was prophetic.  

This fascinating oral history tells the story of how Taxi Driver was made and about the impact it left on America and American film culture. Forty years on, and so much and so little has changed.

Clinton and Sanders: The Batte of Brooklyn

Plus: Who's the best or worst  New Yorker? 

Trump: Can he win NY?

"This is Not an Exit": American Psycho @ 25

Twenty-five years ago this month a novel was published -- and it drove people crazy.

It's probably appropriate that it was called American Psycho.

You may have heard of it. The term has, quite appropriately, entered the American vernacular. Looking at this presidential race, the GOP is on the verge of nominating one. But the novel was not about politics -- its about America's soul. It centers on a young, handsome, very masculine Wall Street banker named Patrick Bateman who enjoys, in his off hours, clothes shopping, renting video tapes, going to fancy restaurants, and committing horrendous acts of murder.

Written by Bret Easton Ellis, American Psycho was a strong indictment of the 1980s "greed-is-good" consumerist ethic. But the novel also has a clear fascination with it. The book itself is a bit of a slog to read. It has no real story, no discernible plot -- it just drags along, scene after scene, nothing really interesting happening, until your brain goes numb. In between graphic descriptions of Bateman's murders and scenes of him hanging out with his atrociously shallow friends, there are lengthy descriptions of beauty products, electronics, work out routines, and hilarious dissections of forgotten 1980s pop songs like "Hip To Be Square."

The numbing affect of all this is quite intentional. It's what makes American Psycho a strangely brilliant novel. The book wants you to hate it! It wants to dull your brain to the point that the murders are yet just another thing in the banal life of Patrick Bateman. It makes us, the readers, feel almost indifferent to them and it also makes us, in a way, complicit in his crimes as we are in creating a society that nurtures the evil likes of him.

Read it ... if you dare.

Before American Psycho was even published in March, 1991, it had become a scandal. Apparently the book's original publisher dropped it after Ellis delivered the manuscript and the publisher saw what a violent, disturbing "story" it was. Many employees at the publisher refused to work on the book and it was eventually published elsewhere in a first-edition paperback (I happen to own one of these copies). Much of the violence, it should be said, is of a sexual nature -- it graphically describes the mutilation of women and the violence visited upon them makes rape seem almost like a quaint, preferable alternative (it's that vile). This caused various feminists groups to call for boycotts of the novel. Many public intellectuals (like Norman Mailer) and reviewers condemned the book for existing at all and Ellis for writing it. It was hard to imagine, even back then, that a novel -- a work of fiction, after all, mere words on a page, the oldest of old school media, describing things that had never happened to people who had never existed  -- could create such a raucous. But it did. And, naturally, the novel became a bestseller.

In the years since, American Psycho has never fully gone away. There was a movie of it in the year 2000 and now, believe it or not, a Broadway musical, soon to open. Both retellings are not quite as horrendous as the original source material, a perfect example of how something is changed and diluted when it goes mainstream.

As for Bret Easton Ellis, he had written a couple of books prior to this one (most notably Less Than Zero), and several since, but American Psycho is the book that defines him and will probably be his greatest literary legacy.

Why does American Psycho endure? Because it's more relevant than ever. Ultimately this book is not about murder but about the insanity within America, within all of us, about how we live our lives, and about how the ways we try to define our identity in this materialistic culture actually thwart our common humanity. It exposes something within us. And we cannot look away no matter how much we wish we could.

Again, just look at the current presidential race. Can anyone argue that our society is more sane than ever? American Psycho was prescient.

Read on. 

NYC is Thriving

As the great comedian Stephen Colbert once told us, reality has a well-known liberal bias. 

Ever since liberal Democrat Bil De Blasio became the Mayor of New York City two years ago, the media and special interests in this town have pilloried him. They've been trying to make the public believe that the city has descended into chaos and poverty, that crime is rampant, that businesses are evaporating, that the "bad old days" are here again. Oh, no, heavens to Betsy, the sky is falling! The sky is falling!

And, of course, what they hope is that all of this fear mongering will force De Blasio's defeat in the 2017 election. They hope that a Republican or at least a non-liberal Democratic will be elected in his place.

They better not get their hopes up. Not yet anyway. 

As this New York Times article indicates, NYC is thriving like never before. Private sector job growth is flourishing. Crime continues to fall. Public school graduation rates are increasing. The quality of life is great. And De Blasio? He's more popular than ever.

Oops. Looks like that well-known thing called reality is really messing up the haters' plans! It was supposed to be like this! Oh no, they were gonna keep telling us how awful De Blasio was, how the city would fall apart, and they'd be proven correct. Sadly (for them, not us), the haters have been proven wrong (again and again and again). Remember, these are the same people who thought we should invade Iraq).

Naturally, NYC still suffers from one big problem: the lack of affordable housing. This is and should be De Blasio's main focus over the next two years. More people than ever want to be New Yorkers. Which sort of contradicts the idea that this city has become a hell hole that people want to flee. No, the problem is that too many people want to live here. And that won't be an easy problem for De Blasio or any mayor to solve ... ever.