"The Deuce" Season 2 Starts 9/9!

Trash Tawkin'

Lifelong New Yorker though I may be, I was taught the golden rule as a child that, if you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all. At least not in public, and not to people that you don't know. Hold your tongue. Silence is golden -- and deafening. Let people hang themselves with their own words, and don't hang yourself. And on and on and on. 

Talk less, smile more.

Well, in the world of 2018, that golden rule is, as we might say in NYC, kaput.

And here some very dramatic, NYC-related examples:

Take Harry Siegel, the big-time city reporter, who trash talks the current owner of the Village Voice (you know, the guy who just destroyed it). Siegel talks about his encounters with this guy, about how's he's a complete liar. Trash talking, in-the-fray, at its finest.

Then there's the lady who might have been First Lady: Judith Giuliani who is currently in a nasty divorce battle with the ex-mayor. She talks about how he's changed, how he's become a worst man (not that he was ever that good to begin with). The thing about this particular trash talk is that it's less exciting gossip and more like depressing venting. It's sad -- sad trash.

And then there's the man we might call Deep Throat 2 or Deep Wrote -- the anonymous Trump White House official who trash talks the very man he works for in a recently published op-ed. It's amazing, mind-boggling stuff, and it makes you wonder what this country has come to. It's sickening, scary, and fascinating all at once.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of trash talking (perhaps I'm a victim of my breeding) because to me it seems like a lot of wasted energy. Ultimately, what does it achieve unless something tangible comes from it?

But in these divided, partisan, social-media times, trash talking is the only industry in this country that's thriving. 

P.S. Another word for trash talking is "jive talking" just like the Bee Gees told us back in 1977!

Commuter's Lament

The North & NYC

If you love Game of Thrones like me, then "The North" means something to you. 

The North is the most remote part of Westeros, the seventh kingdom that's far away from the six others in both landscape and spirit. It's a vast place where honor and family mean more than power and conquest. The North is pure, honest, simple. 

And cold! Really friggin' cold! 

It's also a little bit scary -- north of The North is the land of the Night's Watch, wildlings, and white walkers -- dark forces that secretly gather in strength to lay waste to those greedy, thoughtless hedonists below. The power of the North comes from the power of its secrets, its size, and its remoteness.  As one character says, no one will ever send an army into the wastelands of The North only to get swallowed alive.

Back in the real world, the north is similarly "scary" (where do you think the concept of The North in GOT came from?). Places like Alaska, Canada, Siberia, Scotland, Iceland, Greenland, and, obviously, the North Pole, seem, for the majority of people in Earth, like remote, very cold, somewhat scary, largely barren places. The north is the land of icebergs, Eskimos, igloos, hockey, and Sarah Palin (See? Scary!). The north is ... out there ... somewhere ... beyond ... 

Who would go there? Who would want to? What's even there to begin with? 

Most people don't know, don't want to find out, will never go -- and thus the power and mystery of The North endures. It's the land above, looking down at us, quietly judging those below. That's what gives The North in Game of Thrones and on planet Earth its enduring power -- it can never be fully known or understood. 

Here in NYC we have our north -- of sorts. Harlem, Washington Heights, Inwood, and the Bronx are, for most New Yorkers -- up there, out of sight and out of mind, places most New Yorkers won't visit unless for specific reasons. I grew up in northern Manhattan, and many people I knew from other parts of town treated me like wild man invader from a scary land.

Of course, more recently, one similar invader named Lin-Manuel Miranda came down from his native Washington Heights to produce a show about another northern Manhattan resident -- Alexander Hamilton. Hamilton and Miranda (and yours truly) are northern New Yorkers, two of whom revolutioned their respective professions (American finance and theater) and one who ... created this blog. 

But, getting back to the subject, there are interesting things happening in northern NYC: first, look at these amazing, delightful pictures of life in Washington Heights. Then, read about a brand new park in the Bronx, in Hunters Point of all places. There is such life, so many wonderful things about the northern part of this city that most New Yorkers probably don't know about.

So go north fellow New Yorkers, and discover a land you probably never appreciated before!

P.S. Here is some great, "north" content to enjoy:

City Charter 2018

This November, while Americans will be going to the polls to -- hopefully! -- engineer a "blue wave", here in NYC something quiet by very important will also be on the ballot: we will voting on whether or not to revise the city charter. 

There will be three amendments to be voted on: reducing campaign contribution limits to candidates for city office, creation of a new "civic engagement" commission, and term limits to community boards.

I plan to vote "yes" on all three amendments -- and encourage all New Yorkers to do the same. These seem like progressive, pro-active, and fair-minded reforms that will improve transparency and participation in the governance of NYC.

The Village Voice is No More

The last couple of weeks have been a parade of notable deaths -- Senator John McCain, Aretha Franklin, Robin Leach, and now the Village Voice.

Okay, so the Village Voice wasn't an actual person but, as a newspaper, it was a vibrant, living entity that covered the life of NYC in all its gory glory. It also colored the life of NYC, literally, the free weekly newspaper that any New Yorker could access in its trademark red and blue news boxes. It was part of the "New York alloy" (as Pete Hamill would call it), part of our city's spirit and psyche, and now, after 63 years, it's vanished.

The Village Voice was so many things -- investigative reporting, gossip, arts and culture coverage,  opinion, classified ads (including naughty ones), and lots and lots of info (want to find where the next poetry reading will be or where the newest indie movie was playing? -- the Village Voice would tell you). Obviously the Internet wrecked havoc on much of the Voice's raison d'etre (newspapers like the Voice were the Internet in many ways back in the day) but it had built lively website that was as good a news source as any. And now that's gone too.

What I'll miss most, what will be lost and never replaced, are the incredible writers who came from the Voice -- Wayne Barrett, Tom Robbins, Nat Hentoff, Micheal Musto, and countless others. Since the announcement of its closure, many of its former writers who went onto big careers have been waxing nostalgic about their time there, about how it made them into professional journalists and writers, and how the Voice's end is not only the end of a singular newspaper but the end of the kind of places where great writing can be cultivated. There's no web site, no app, nothing, that can replaced that. And that's the biggest loss of all.

NYC has always been, always prided itself, on being hive of opportunity, a place where people could come to discover and cultivate their talents. With the closure of the Village Voice, a distinct NYC resource like that made it only harder for such new voices to thrive, and it betrays, in its small way, what this city is supposed to be all about.  

Farewell Village Voice. You'll always be part of my NYC spirit. 

What a Con Wants ...

... is Ivy League graduates, apparently.

Allow me to explain.

Donald Trump is an obvious fraud, a con man (Trump University, anyone?) to everyone and anyone who either isn't a complete moron or a racist supporter. He lies and cheats and steals. But one thing a lot of people, even those who detest him, is that, because he's so crass, he's not a snob. How can he be? He loves the "poorly educated", he's personally gross, and promotes himself as a savior to middle America.

This is, of course, nonsense. He cuts the taxes of rich people while the factories he promised to save keep closing. But he's also a snob! Apparently, he doesn't want to hire anyone except Ivy League graduates -- and only those who graduate from the top, top Ivies. He apparently loathes his AG Jeff Sessions, not only because he refuses to un-recuse himself from the Russia investigation, but because he went to the University of Alabama Law School and not, say, Harvard. 

As this article points out, Trump is the exact kind of coastal elitist that so many of his supporters claim to detest -- he looks down on the poor, the poorly educated, the non-elite. He's everything that this supporters accuse his opponents of being. 

He's a snob! Of course, he says he's not because he's a con man. But really, for everything else you might call him (narcissist, racist, liar, etc. etc.) he's just a big fat snob.

And that might be his most unforgivable sin.

Is Louis CK Back?

Digital Gentrification: The End of "Taxicab Confessions"

Gentrification isn't just happening to the NYC streets, skyline, and pocket books -- now it's hit our TV.

Specifically HBO.

Like most legacy premium cable channels, HBO has featured uncut, uncensored, commercial-free movies, big-time sporting events (like boxing), as well as original programming (e.g. The Sopranos and Game of Thrones, as well as documentaries). They also featured "adult" fare, including shows like Cathouse, Real Sex, and others.

One HBO show, however, defied easy categorization. 

It was called Taxicab Confessions. It started on HBO in the mid-1990s and ran, off and on, for another decade or so. Taxicab was a brilliant, innovative program, an early "reality show", where regular people were filmed in the backseats of cabs, talking with their fellow passengers and the "drivers" (who worked for the show). These cab ride vignettes were usually filmed in the middle of the night, and all sorts of wacky characters and behavior would be revealed. It was an amazing "keyhole" into a moment in time, into simple interactions and conversations among people, a literal rolling revelation of human behavior. At the end of each show you'd see the drivers reveal to the passengers that they'd be filmed for Taxicab Confessions, and they'd freak out and then happily sign a release form. The show invented the whole genre of people talking in cars (Jerry Seinfeld even ripped it off!). 

The show originated in NYC, and most of the early shows were filmed here (before moving to Las Vegas for a while, and then returning to NYC). As you might imagine, the people featured in the cab rides were often dirty -- dirty mouthed, dirty minded, dirty moving. They were funny, weird, sometimes delightful, sometimes sad, sometimes confused and confusing, sometimes shockingly normal, but they were always interesting. Always. 

And now they're gone. 

Why? Because even though a new episode of Taxicab Confessions hasn't been produced in a while, up until recently, the past episodes were available to watch on HBO On Demand and HBO Go. You could go back in time to the 1990s and early 2000s, and see these parade of lovable freak shows in cabs. You could see NYC (and, yes, Vegas) in the middle of the night, for real. You could see a whole other strange, sometimes dangerous, sometimes sexy, sometimes just odd, world. But no longer. HBO has removed it from these streaming services, along with the rest of their "adult" programming. 

Taxicab Confessions is not only over but now it's gone, totally gone, a blatant garbage-canning of part of the city's past, a kind of digital gentrification. It's another dirty part of NYC that's been sacrificed to "taste" and cleanliness.

And it's wrong! While it certainly had "adult" moments (people removing clothing or getting frisky in the back of the cab), Taxicab Confessions was not necessarily an "adult" show like its other shows -- 99.9% of the time it was people just talking. It was a great show, a wonderful time capsule of humanity and NYC, and now it's vanished into the electronic ether.  

Farewell Taxicab Confessions. This one New Yorker will remember you fondly. 

Taking it away from us is just ... un-fare. 

Memo from NYC

Another title for this post might be "Profiles in Shame, Weirndness, and Dignity."

Today we live in a culture defined by these three competing, sometimes overlapping, existential worlds.

Here's the shame.

Here's the weirdness.

Here's the dignity.

And they're (mostly) NYC related.

Hear hear.