The Jails of NYC

One of the unofficial features of this blog is discovering the cities, big cities, that fall within the Big Apple.

NYCHA, the harbor, the airports, the parks, the public schools, etc., are all sprawling organizations that make up important, if unseen and unacknowledged, systems across our city.

This is most true of our city's jails.

Right now NYC is in the process of closing Riker's Island over the course of the next decade. One day, if all goes according to plan, that little rock off the coast of Astoria will be vacant -- and probably turned into luxury high-rises. 

The prisoners of Riker's are moving elsewhere and, surprisingly, there are lots of places for them to go. I was shocked to discover that there are approximately thirty-two jails within the five boroughs that house the city's criminals. This article gives provides more info about them as well as a multi-media map showing the location of each one. It's a fascinating look at this city within NYC that most us are lucky enough to (and hope we never will) visit. 

Trump Tower Fire

Read more about the victim of this fire who was trying to sell his apartment and wasn't able to give it away! The Trump name is toxic. And now its literally deadly. 

Rudy and Judi Getting Nasty

Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani is getting divorced from his wife and former mistress Judith Nathan. This is the same woman he was cheating on his previous wife with during the end of his mayoralty.

This is Rudy's third divorce. (Three strikes, I guess.)

This divorce is getting nasty since they're going to fight over assets. Amazingly, this famous couple didn't have a prenup! When Rudy left office at the end of 2001 he wasn't rich but, obviously, he earned millions during his return to the private sector. He also didn't marry this lady until 2002, right when the big bucks started rolling in, so it's stunning that he didn't get her to sign a prenup to protect his future earnings. 

Now, to quote Eddie Murphy in Raw, Judi is gonna "take half his shit!"

You would think that, after being divorced twice before, Rudy would've taken this precaution but I guess that, at the time, he was "in love" and thought "we'll be together forever" and so a prenup wasn't necessary.

Howard Stern put it best: when guys fall in love, when they get all crazy about some "broad", they get a fever -- like Spock in Star Trek, when he enters the "pon farr" i.e. he gets so horny and crazy that's he willing to do anything, even kill Captain Kirk, in order to get "some poontang." 

So you get the aforementioned "poontang" -- yeah! -- and the years pass and then, all of a sudden, all your money, everything you worked for, is legally stolen from you. 

God Bless America.

Part of me feels sorry for Rudy but not really -- he must be such a nightmare that Judi probably deserves all the money she'll get. Then again, she's a homewrecker so ...

 

We're all artists!

Cogito ergo sum: "I think, therefore I am" - Rene Descartes 

In my most narcissistic moments I sometimes fancy myself an "artist". This blog is my "art" because it's my creation. Therefore I'm an "artist" because I created it and continue to do so. 

I'm not sanctimonious about it, however; I'm John Cusack in Bullets over Broadway shouting "I'm an artist!" But I am a creator and that, in my mind, gives me a shred of artistic pedigree. To me, that is the essence of art -- the act of creation, the act of making something exist which didn't before and wouldn't have otherwise. Whether it's something we look at or listen to or use (or even, and I'll get to this in a moment, feel), to create anything is to be artistic. 

Full stop ... in my humble, wanna-be-artistic opinion. 

That said, when you see great or moving art, in whatever format, you get overwhelmed by the notion that anything you might create is less than worthy, that so much other art is the work of hacks. And, as a hack myself, you stand in awe.

Right now there's an amazing exhibit in Brooklyn chronicling the work of NYC painters from 1985 to 1995 -- a look back at a time when the city and its social attitudes were changing. It was an era when the city was becoming more tolerant and less affordable. It was an exciting time to be an artist and also a time when they were becoming victims of their own excess. It was a time of community -- and AIDS. It was a time of opportunities and closing doors. It was a time of contradictions. This exhibit captures that mixed-up time lovingly and everyone should see it. You should see what they were creating at the time, fashioning an era that now lives lovingly in many people's memories. 

And people are still creating news things -- and they aren't always things that are visual or audible. Something they are ... tactile. 

Naturally, that gets us to sex. 

On Palm Sunday 2018, we were made familiar with a lady named Stormy Daniels. She is popularly known either a porn star or an adult film actress. Others call her a sex worker. But why not an artist? Everything about her is artistic. Her name is an act of creation -- it's not really Stormy, it's Stephanie Clifford, and for years she's been making adult films to much success. In fact, it led her to have an affair with the current President (and, as we saw from her interview, she's a much more honest, dignified, and decent person than he is). She's an artist, and a damn good one at that, and should be celebrated as such. Yes, her art isn't displayed in museums or in "polite society" but why can't people like her be recognized for the art they create and that, uh ... inspires lots of people? I admire her for that alone!

Yet society says we shouldn't admire her because of what she does -- or that we should condescend to her and call her just a "worker." Certainly, she works (hard, hahaha let's just get that out of the way) but how many people could do what Stormy does as well and as successfully and for as long as she has? She's an artist.

Again -- full Stop. 

Sadly, when it comes to sex, the people who "create" it best are either scorned or sidelined even though we consume their work en masse. But notice how, when you think of Stormy as an artist, it elevates her in your mind? It makes her work into an act of creation, not something nasty. And it gives her dignity, which she deserves. 

Talking about the erotic arts, I was fascinated to read about a mysterious man who apparently gives women great massages that end ... interestingly. Let's just leave it at that. Some might call him half a gigolo or a scummy guy or "whatevs" but, according to these testimonials, he's certainly an artist since he creates something for women that, uh, in many cases, didn't exist before (or for a very long time). That's creation ... in my worthless opinion. 

As a guy with a blog, or even a humble minor "artist", or just a hack, I stand in awe of all these varied, successful creators. And quite often it's the things we create that outlive us and make people remember us.

So I think we should amend Descartes -- "I create, therefore it is -- and I was."

NYC - Rich & Poor

The Real Housewives of NYC@10

Okay, it's starting to get to the point where, the more I do this blog, the older I feel. (Perhaps I should retire but that's for another time.)

Two weeks ago I wrote about the end of the eight-season TV show Portlandia -- and how I had blogged about it even before it premiered.

Next up, and even more appropriately: The Real Housewives of New York City. 

This show about a bunch of rich, blithering yentas is now one decade old -- and yes, I blogged about it at the time it premiered, back in 2008.

It has, for whatever reason, become the most popular and -- gasp! -- respected of the "Real Housewives" series. I don't know if its the characters or the NYC setting that's made it so perennial but it's endured, despite of its awfulness. 

I haven't seen it in years and the cast has changed many times over so I'm not an expect on these catty ladies' latest machinations but ... here's to the "Real Housewives of NYC!". In this era of Trump grotesqueness, this show is, after ten years, more relevant than ever. 

MLK in Washington Square Park

Meet Adam Wren, the Idiot from Indiana

Ever told a bad joke?

I've told many -- some might even call this blog a bad joke, just thought I'd get that obvious one out of the way -- and there are many reasons why a joke "fails to land."

Maybe the idea behind the joke was funny but the execution was bad.

Maybe the idea behind the joke was flawed and it falls apart when told. 

Maybe the joke wasn't just as funny to the person hearing it as it was to the person telling it.

Or maybe ... maybe ... just maybe the joke betrays something bad about the person telling it. Maybe the jokes reveals something ugly that makes the joke not only unfunny but also disturbing.

Such is the case of Adam Wren, a supposed "humor" writer from Indiana who allegedly came to NYC for a few days to visit the "bubble" of "Clinton Country."

Oh yes, Mr. Wren the Hoosier thinks he's just the funniest guy there is. Oh, he's a hoot. So funny. So witty. So wry. And if you don't think he's funny, if you don't get the joke, then you're just a crabby liberal elitist who doesn't understand the oh-so-virtuous world of "middle America."

Mr. Wren recently posted a long, long, long, long, long, long (and I do mean long) supposedly "humorous" piece on Politico where he visited trendy parts of Brooklyn and Manhattan to try to "understand" the people who voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and are horrified (how dare they!) by the Donald J. Trump Presidency. "Aren't these people ridiculous?" Mr Wren is saying. "Aren't they arrogant and dumb?" He makes fun of their habits like eating organic food and doing yoga, he makes them out to be precious little cry babies, and he's just so mean but, oh, just so funny, that everyone should love his "skewering" of blue America -- even idiot liberals!

This piece was clearly meant to be a "humorous" answer to all the journalism in the last year where reporters from Blue America traveled into the heart of Red America to try to "understand" Trump Voters. I get that Mr. Wren the Red American Trump voter found these pieces annoying and condescending -- I frankly found them boring myself, only because they were trying to make me feel sympathy for people who don't deserve it and all those pieces did was confirm that for me -- so attempting a humorous "answer" might have some merit to it. But his piece is hateful and not funny and, more importantly, it revealed something about Mr. Wren -- that he's an arrogant racist idiot.

Why?

Because if you want to visit the real "Clinton Country" go to the South Bronx. Go to the poorest areas of NYC where vastly more people voted for Clinton over Trump than in other, better heeled parts of the city. But Wren didn't do that, not only because it would ruin the central premise of his piece, but also because "those people" i.e. black, Hispanics, basically anyone non-white, doesn't exist for people like him. They're non-people to people like Mr. Wren. 

I'm not going to post Mr. Wren's garbage (you can seek it out if you'd like) but I will highlight some selections that Ben Adler, a very fine writer from City and State wrote in response to Mr. Wren's piece that was "lazy bias masquerading as anti-elitism."

In New York City, the borough that went for Clinton by the largest margin isn’t Manhattan or Brooklyn; it’s the Bronx, where Clinton won 88 percent, versus 86 percent in Manhattan and 79 percent in Brooklyn. This is not because living farther uptown inherently makes you more Democratic; it’s because the Bronx is the poorest and least-white borough. But Wren didn’t go to the Bronx.

n fact, only the white working class went for Trump, while the non-white working class went overwhelmingly for Clinton – hence, Clinton’s victory among lower-income voters. Wren and his editors chose to reinforce faulty stereotypes merely because they already exist. It’s a feedback loop of malicious ignorance.

Trump won voters making between $50,000 and $200,000 per year, while losing those making less than $50,000. The portrayal of Trump voters as mostly blue-collar folks suffering from “economic anxiety” is inaccurate. The antidote to such flawed journalism is careful, nuanced reporting, not incurious, prejudiced claptrap.

I'm quite sure Mr. Wren enjoys the "outraged" responses to his piece like those of Mr. Haber and me. When you're a bad person like he is (or the President he admires) you enjoy upsetting people.  You enjoy making hurting people who are unlike you. And that's who Republicans and Trump voters and Red Americans like Wren are -- bad people, people who enjoy inflicting pain on "the other." Good people don't inflicting pain. 

It's that simple. Really.

But we're all capable, I guess, of telling bad jokes.  

Spring Snow Showers NYC

Tangled Webs

I find the people in these stories so repulsive -- yet, oddly fascinating -- that I can't help but share them.

One is about a group of NYC socialites/friends from 2005 who now, more than a decade later, have been hopelessly torn apart by the presidency of ... you know who. One is a now a "Real Housewife" and claims to be a-political. One is fiercely political and a strong member of the Resistance. And another if you know who's daughter. Truly a weird tale.

The other is about Republican Staten Island Congressman Dan Donovan, supposedly the "good guy" who succeeded two other scandal-tainted Republicans. Turns out, he's got a scandal all his own. If he was a Democrat I'm sure the New York Post would call him "Dan the Crooked Congress-Man." 

Enjoy. Well, not really.