Tom Wolfe RIP

Just the other night I was looking over my bookcase and pulled out a book I bought a long time ago called The Devil's Candy, about the making of the disastrous movie version of Tom Wolfe's novel The Bonfire of the Vanities. 

How ironic then, that, very next day, Tom Wolfe died here in NYC, aged 87.

Starting in the 1960s, along with writers like Gay Talese and others, Wolfe was an originator of the "New Journalism", a style of non-fiction where reporters would embed themselves with their subjects and write long, probing articles and books in a highly personal, provocative, almost literary way. Wolfe became the most popular New Journalist of all, writing about the heroes and anti-heroes of American life, from hippies to astronauts like Ken Kesey and the Yippies in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, the Black Panthers in Radical Chic (a term he coined), the Mercury astronauts in The Right Stuff (his most acclaimed work). 

Wolfe's observations were always satirical, never sentimental; always honest, no puffery. He was "politically incorrect" but never offensive -- he held the mirror up to nature, oftentimes brutally, and did so in wild, hyperbolic prose. Wolfe loved periods and italicizes and fast, whirling sentences -- there was a rock'n'roll sensibility to his words, an energy that hit your "solar plexus" (to use a term Wolfe repeated ad nauseum in his writing).

In the 1980s, Wolfe switched from journalism to fiction, publishing his legendary NYC novel The Bonfire of the Vanities in 1987. I've written a lot about this book over the years -- a novel that presents NYC as hellish landscape of greed, crime, and yes, vanity -- so I won't say any more except that it serves both as a piece of great entertainment and a lacerating commentary of this city at that time. Wolfe wrote a few more novels, most notably A Man in Full in 1998, but none equaled Bonfire -- his last few novels received poor reviews and sales -- and he became a relic of the 20th century. But he influenced endures.

Wolfe also became famous for his trademark white suit that he always wore in public. I saw him speak several times over the years and he always donned the suit with complimentary white reading glasses. 

And I ever spoke to him once. 

Once, at a book signing, I mentioned that he had been a big influence to me and that I wanted to write as well. "What kind of things do you like to write?" he asked. I said fiction. He wished me luck -- and, years later, I published my first novel Leaving New York (which you can look to and purchase on the right-hand of this blog). 

Tom Wolfe inspired me to do it and, for that, I thank him  -- and for everything he ever wrote.

Seinfeld Finale @ 20

It's crazy to realize that it's been twenty years since one of the greatest shows of all-time, and certainly one of the quintessential NYC shows, went off the air.

Seinfeld defined the '90s and popularized the NYC neuroses for middle America like no show before or since. In many ways, you can look at this show as part of the transformation of NYC from Fear City to Luxury Product. 

Read more about how Seinfeld came to be and also check out Mr NYC's various Seinfeld-related coverage over the years, including my exclusive interview with Kenny Kramer! 

Even though it's two decades in the past, Seinfeld is a show that'll never be forgotten and that people'll always yada-yada about. 

$28 Per Month

What's the biggest story in NYC this week?

Not the resignation of the AG or any of the important stuff but the fact that there was a woman who, until she died recently, was paying only $28 per month for a Greenwich Village apartment.

It's truly a story out of time, of another time, of the past made present -- a story of a woman who found a great real estate deal back in 1955 and stuck with it for the next 63 years. All New Yorkers should be so lucky.  

In this case, the rent was too damn low. 

Review: "Three Tall Women"

The playwright Edward Albee shot to fame in the early 1960s with his masterpiece Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe? He followed that up with other successful plays, including the Pulitzer Prize-winners Seascape and A Delicate Balance (oft revived on Broadway). But in the 1980s and early 1990s, his plays fell into critical disfavor, and Albee was viewed as a once-great, now mediocre talent. 

Three Tall Women in 1994 marked his comeback, snagging Albee a third Pulitzer Prize.

A very "meta" play featuring three women simply named A, B, and C, it's an examination of aging and the pain of life. In the first act, A is an old women being looked after by B and working with C, a lawyer, on her legal and financial matters. A is a loud, crass woman, torturing B with her bad behavior and largely ignoring C's concerns. Then A has a stroke -- and we literally go inside her head as B and C become A at earlier times in her life, and we learn more about the story of A's background and her broken relationship with her son. It is, in some ways, a nihilistic play as we learn that the happiest moment in any person's life is death -- but that we should always remember what joy (no matter how little) we have had.

The production of Three Tall Women currently on Broadway has become the event of the season as it marks the return of Glenda Jackson, the brilliant British actress, to the New York stage after 30 years (she spent 23 of those last 30 years as a member of the British parliament). Jackson plays A, and commands the stage as only a monster talent like she can. She is loud, vulgar, funny, narcissistic and, ultimately, sympathetic. Jackson blasts humanity into A, making us rattle her wake, and her performance is both a tour-de-force and a gale force of great acting. Seeing her on the stage was something I'll never forget. It's her show all the way. 

 The other two actresses, Laurie Metcalf (from Roseanne and the wonderful film Lady Bird) as B, and Allison Pill (from The Newsroom) as C, support her well. While A is the star part, B and C are vital in reflecting her, both as separate characters and as part of her. Metcalf brings her easy charm to B, making us remember why she won two Emmys for Roseanne -- she's naturally funny, comfortable and confident in both her parts. Pill has always been a good screen actress but she's even better on the stage -- her part, and her performance, have a mystery that makes you almost wish the play was about her, although it would be a very different play. 

 All of the parts are well written. Albee's plays are always rather over the top with people yelling at each other at top volume but he strikes at what makes people tick and, in Three Tall Women, he does it very well. Go see this if you can, you won't forget it.

Picturing the City

Among the many, many, many-to-infinity things I have no talent at, you can include drawing and photography among them. I can't take a decent photograph to save my life (ask my wife, ba dum bum) and, when it comes to drawing, it's like trying to breath in outer space -- hopeless, not at all possible, entirely for naught.

So people who can draw well and take great photographs, I admire the hell out of.

Naturally, a beautiful, diverse, teaming city like New York provides ample opportunities for sketchers and photographers to record great images. Be it the buildings, the streets, the parks, the people, the opportunities NYC affords to such artists is never-ending.

That takes us to two very different projects, currently on display in NYC, where you can see photos and drawings of the city that'll amaze you.

First, Stanley Kubrick. Yes, that guy, one of the greatest filmmakers who ever lived. Years before he made such classics as Dr. Strangelove, 2001, and A Clockwork Orange, Kubrick was a kid photographer from the Bronx, working for Look magazine. He took a vast number of pictures all over the city in the late 1940s and early 1950s, and you can see them in an exhibition at the Museum of the City of New York. These pictures are amazing, brilliant captures of New Yorkers and the post-war city. If he had never directed film, Kubrick's photography would still be worth showing all these decades later. It's amazing to think that these photos, which look like they were done by a seasoned professional, were made by someone just out of high school with no formal training. You can see how Kubrick, even then, had impressive visual sensibility, a great "eye", and an innate ability to recognize and frame memorable images. Years before he had a guy riding a missile and crafting some of the most memorable images in cinema history, Kubrick's vision was at work on the streets in NYC.  

Second, the subway. A man named Philip Coppola has undertaken a mission to sketch every one of the 400+ subway stations in NYC. He's been doing it since 1984 and has so far produced six volumes of these drawings. These are meticuleous, finely realized pictures and reveals the true beauty and craftsmanship that went into the building of many of these stations. Right now, at the New York City Transit Museum Annex at Grand Central there is exhibit of several of these pictures and they really make you look at the subway, literally, a different way. Coppola says that he think he'll be dome by 2030 so there's lots more to come.

Picturing NYC is truly an art unto itself.

Schneiderman: Before the Fall

This week the New York Attorney General resigned due to some nasty personal stuff.

Honestly I'm conflicted if people should be hounded out of their jobs for stuff in their private lives (as opposed to abuse of their positions and power) but the sociopolitical environment clearly thinks otherwise.

So it goes. 

Just days earlier he had recorded an interview with Alec Baldwin on his podcast Here's the Thing. It was posted this morning. I haven't listened to it yet and don't know if I will but -- if you have morbid curiosity and want to hear a politicians speaking past the metaphorical grave -- give it a listen. 

Oh, and did you know that New York has the most "toxic" politics of any state? If you see the man in the White House, it's hard not to conclude that. 

Why is the Rent Too Damn High? Go back to 1994

As gentrification sweeps over our city, as the cost of living explodes, it's easy to point to many reasons: drastically lower crime rates, making previously undesirable neighborhoods desirable; more New Yorkers choosing to stay in the city instead of moving to the suburbs to raise families; massive infusions of foreign money spurring new construction and gobbling up real estate (mostly as tax shelters); more and more people moving here from across the country in pursuit of hot jobs; and, obviously, technology, creating a new class of rich people and sites like Airbnb. 

It all comes down to one basic thing: the rise of market demand. 

There's more demand than supply for housing in NYC, and thus the rent gets too damn high.

Very often, when it comes to massive demographic and economic shifts like this, in a city or a country, people will say, "Well, there's no simple explanation. You can't point to one thing."

But what if you can? What is there's one simple, clear explanation?

In 1994, the City Council passed a law allowing landlords to take apartments out of rent stabilization when the rent passed $2000 a month. Called "de-control", the arguments for this move were that rent stabilization actually subsidized wealthy people, that the "average" rent was $600 so the likelihood that it'd be $2000 for most were "remote". Well, since then, over 152,000 have fallen out of stabilization, and that number rises to almost 250,000 when coop conversions are included. Also, this law incentivized landlords to harass and evict tenants with impunity, trying to get the apartments vacated so that they would fall out of stabilization. 

Then it got worse: in 1997 the state legislature passed a law that made it impossible for the city council to change its own law. And it's been higher rents ever since. 

So there, in a nutshell, is why the rent is so damn high.

This effort was, as you might imagine, engineered by the real estate industry. A lot of astro-turfing and cynical politics was behind it: they mounted a big PR campaign to make council members and New Yorkers convinced that de-control was actually in their interest (when it was the opposite). They pointed to rich people and celebrities paying low rents, they found black and Latino landlords to appear in ads, trying to make this move into some kind of "progressive" economic thing. It's was a complete, very effective snow job.

What's most frightening is that many of the city council members who voted for it didn't understand what they were voting for. They were conned, ashamedly so. 

And now gentrification is everywhere, including in small, out of the way neighborhoods like Highbridge in the Bronx. No place is safe -- this is the new menace.

And it all goes back to March 21, 1994 when this law passed. This is why politics matter and why elections have consequences.    

Gotta Love New Yorkers

Let's get the bad stuff out of the way first: NYC produced both Donald Trump and Rudy Giuliani. This is a sad, depressing fact of life. These awful men are currently terrorizing the country, trying to obstruct justice and explaining away moral turpitude, making our city and our country the laughing stock of the world. It's an embarassement, a painful thing to see. 

So it's good to remember that there are New York who have made the world a better place.

Like Christo and Jeanne-Claude, the brilliant artists who gave us The Gates in Central Park back in 2005. Did you know that in 1968 they tried to "wrap" MoMA? After "wrapping" the Reichstag in Berlin, these two French immigrants came to NYC and attempted to turn the city's leading modern art museum into a work of modern art itself. It didn't happen but, for decades to come, they would continue with such projects, culminating with The Gates. And they remained New Yorkers for the rest of their lives.

And speaking about parks, there's a new exhibit of 60 photographs taken in various city parks and playgrounds in the summer of 1978. There was a newspaper strike that summer and the parks department hired out-of-work photographers to take over 3000 pictures of people enjoying themselves. Look at these pictures if you want to see New Yorkers hanging out over 40 years ago. 

Finally, the most amazing New Yorker of them all: a 96-year old legal secretary named Sylvia Bloom who died in 2017. Turns out, she was worth $9 million that she built up over the years through smart investing. In her will she donated almost $7 million to the Henry Street Settlements group and $2 million to Hunter College. Can you imagine the current president or former mayor being that generous? Me neither.

New Yorkers -- famous or not famous, generous or selfish, for better or worse, we're a wild bunch.

Yanks Win 15 in a Row - First Time Since 1980

Safe Injections

Today Mayor De Blasio quietly announced that the city plans to open "safe injection" sites in NYC. This means junkies will be able to go to these places, get high (shoot/snort/drop/maybe even smoke) their very hard drugs, and then get immediate assistance if they OD. The idea is for them to do this in a safe, clean, controlled environment.

So of you might be saying "What the hell?" but this is a great, mature approach, an advance off of needle exchange programs.

Instead of criminalizing addicts, this treats addiction as what it's always been: a health issue. And hopefully these centers will also be treatment centers that can help wean people off drugs. As long as drug use and addiction exists in the shadows, where people are persecuted instead of treated, we won't seriously make headway in treating addiction -- or drug crimes.

These centers are, as of now, illegal. The state still needs to approve them and the Federal government could prosecute. But assuming the state approves and the Feds lay off, this will be a significant advancement in the human dignity of people.