The TWA Hotel Lands at JFK

The 1950s and '60s are romanticized as the Mad Men era -- the "great America" that so many people want to somehow, spiritually and socio-economically return to; a time when people knew their place i.e. white men in power, blacks at the back of the bus, gays in the closet, and women either in the kitchen or only working as secretaries, nurses, and teachers.

'Dose were da' days!

It was a time when it was great to be a "mad man" -- oh yes, you could have three martini lunches, smoke everywhere, and bang your secretaries with abandon (no annoying sexual harassment laws or HR rules or hashtags to kill the fun).

It was white male nirvana.

Then there was the architecture. Lots of gorgeous but decaying buildings were being torn down at this time and replaced by boring Bauhaus inspired-monstrosities. Function, not beauty, dictated architectural style. And brand new diners (remember those?) and airport terminals were opening and they looked weird -- lots of curves and arched ceilings and warped roofs -- like spaceships out of Forbidden Planet.

One such prime NYC example was the TWA Terminal at JFK airport that opened in 1962.

It was a huge, hulking sweep of curves and open spaces, blindingly white, and it feels very 1960s post-modernesque. It was a functioning terminal for decades until TWA went out of business and the terminal closed in the early 2000s. It sat empty, ready to be bulldozed, until some developers bought and decided to turn it into a hotel.

And now the hottest new hotel in town is far from midtown Manhattan -- it's in southeast Queens!

Today the new TWA Hotel opens to much fanfare. It's obviously a massive, expensive undertaking ($300+ million) with a myriad of rooms starting at $250 a night. There are expensive restaurant (Jean-Georges has one there) plus luxury retail stores, and a 150 person bar inside an airplane tethered to the hotel. Everything is luxury and luxuriously kitschy -- taking something that was once plebian and turning it into something grand. Apparently the owners of this new hotel have huge ambitions for it, they think it'll have nonstop full capacity, and that travellers to and from JFK will want to pony up that much money to spend the night before either flying out or after having landed. 

Either the new TWA hotel will be a huge success or a colossal failure. I'll be watching its fate with keen interest.

Sidenote: I almost exclusively flew on TWA to and from college back in the 1990s. As I mentioned yesterday, I just passed the 20th anniversary of my college graduation so this nostalgia-themed hotel opening today is somehow -- le sigh -- appropriate.

It's just reminder that the present becomes the past quickly, today's ordinary stuff becomes tomorrow's cherished relics, today's noise becomes tomorrow's history, today's frustrations becomes tomorrow's nostalgia.

It was ever thus and forever shall be. 

Hinge Day

Today is a weird kind of day, a "hinge" day, a day where the past and present touch for a moment before going their separate ways.

Today Anthony Weiner is a free man, a dark chapter in his life over. Hopefully he will have a better future ahead of him.

It's also the day where the police -- FINALLY! -- determined that the cop who killed Eric Garner back in 2014 actually -- maybe, kinda, sorta, really -- killed him. Took long enough! Hopefully this police officer and Eric Garner's family will get the justice they deserve. 

And today is the day where Howard Stern's new book finally publishes, his first in almost 25 years! In the book, and this interview, he talks about his relationship with Trump (who used to appear on his show a lot) and how Howard, regrettably and certainly inadvertently, might have helped him become president. The book is called Howard Stern Comes Again -- so, today, officially, he will be coming all over the book stores and e-readers and best seller lists, we'll be drowning in Howard Stern's ... book.  

For me, personally, this is another kind of hinge day -- it's exactly 20 years to the day since I graduated from college. On Thursday it'll be officially 20 years since I moved back to NYC. It's hard to believe that it's been that long -- time gallops ahead, leaving many such hinge days behind us.

Howard Stern For Governor -- No, Forever!

Howard Stern is promoting his new book and, for the first time in years, he is out and about doing lots of interviews. (My wife has promised me a new Kindle with this book loaded on it for Father's Day.)

The recurring theme of these interviews, and apparent raison d'etre for his new book, is how the once raunchy and outrageous 1980s & 1990s radio DJ became a major 21st century media icon. It's about how Howard as "evolved" from "bad boy shock jock" to "thought-provoking" interviewer and cultural pulse-taker. 

As someone who has listened to Howard for almost 30 years, I can attest first-hand that this change in the man and his show are very real. In some ways they're both better than ever -- Howard seems like a much kinder, much more empathetic guy; the interviews are simply better than anything you'll hear anywhere else. But I also miss the old Howard -- the take-no-prisoners style and the (admittedly dated and "un-woke") craziness of having women come into the studio to have bologna and bread tossed at their smeared-with-mayonnaise posteriors, plus strippers and porn stars coming in to undress, get spanked, and operate various mechanical devices on their Devil bits. 

Oh, those were the days!

Back when I started listening to him, Howard loved to do stunts like the Open Sores tennis match in Flushing, his various "funerals" for DJs in other markets that he overtook in the ratings, the massive book signings he had for his first two books, and lots more. 

But nothing topped what he did in 1994 when he actually ran for New York State governor against then-Governor Mario Cuomo (the current gub's dad). Howard even secured the nomination of the Libertarian Party and had an agenda -- get highway work to be performed in night so he didn't have to sit in traffic, restore the death penalty (and fill pot holls on the highways with the chary remains of the executed), and then resign so his Lieutenant Governor, a real politician, could take over. Howard rose rapidly in the polls but then bailed on the campaign when the very real possibility that he might win materialized (he claimed that he didn't want to reveal his finances, a rather thin but good excuse to get out).

The "Howard Stern for Governor" stunt was short-lived and ridiculous but, at the time, it accomplished the task of getting him tons of attention. It even got his parodied brilliantly on Saturday Night Live -- 25 years ago this week! -- at a time when the show was otherwise awful. And it spawned a song called "Howard Stern for Governor" that was dopey and heartfelt. 

It's hard to believe that this happened more than a quarter of a century ago -- and, as we see, something much more awful and outrageous than Governor Howard Stern is happening now.

The big difference between Howard and other outrageous media personalities is that he understood that his shtick was always an act and not something to be truly acted upon -- unlike other DJs who performed truly dangerous and illegal stunts that got them fired or charged with crimes, or others who actually got elected to office on even more ridiculous and hateful agendas. That's why, after so many decades, Howard is still around and more respected than ever while other media figures of his ilk have either flamed out or became truly hated. 

Twenty-five years ago we said Howard Stern for Governor. Today we say Howard Stern Forever!

When Will a Woman Run NYC?

New York City has, in its almost 400 year history, never been run by a woman. No woman has ever ascended to the office of the mayor.

In a way, for a city as progressive and bursting with opportunity as NYC, this is a bit of an embarrassment. Many states, including some very conservative ones, have had female governors. Other big cities like Dallas and, as of this year, Chicago, have had female mayors. But not NYC.  

Women have done well in other high NYC offices. We've had a female comptroller (Elizabeth Holtzman), two female public advocates (Betsy Gotbaum and Tish James), two female speakers (Chris Quinn and Melissa Mark-Viverito), and, when the office still existed, a female City Council President (Carol Bellamy). There have also been several female borough presidents. 

And yet the top prize has proved elusive to many of them (and other women) when they ran for it.

Only two women, in fact, have ever made it to the general election ballot: Democrat Ruth Messinger in 1997 and Republican Nicole Malliotakis in 2017 (I'm not counting any candidates who ran third-party and never had a serious chance of getting elected). They both lost, badly, because they were running against popular incumbents up for re-election so their defeats had more to do with the political environments than anything else. Others, like Chris Quinn, simply were at odds with the primary electorate. No candidate has ever lost, from what I can tell, due to outright sexism -- like most candidates who lose (and most people who run for office, certainly mayor, lose) the odds were just against them.

This article attempts to do a deep dive into understanding why no woman has been elected mayor. Most of it is nonsense but it does make the case, as I've made before, that the city's insular political culture also plays a part. But in 2021, we may have a woman mayor, although, as of now, no one knows who that might be.

Stay tuned.  

Richard Brown and Weed

This past Saturday two things happened in NYC that are both completely unrelated and totally inextricable -- the death of longtime Queens DA Richard Brown and a big parade in support of marijuana legalization. 

Richard Brown was the last of the old-school NYC District Attorneys -- a "tough-on-crime", "law-and-order", "lock 'em-up-and-throw-away-the-keys" type. He became Queens DA in a time of high crime and the drug war, when a DA couldn't be tough enough on crime. Brown loved locking people up, he wanted to put as many people in jail as possible. He carried this kind of prosecutorial policy well into the 21st century, into the era of low crime and a re-thinking of the drug war and how the criminal justice system should operate. His successor will be elected this year (the primary is in June) and whoever succeeds him will probably have more evolved, more rehabilitation type policies.

Needless to say, DAs like Brown hated, hated, hated any kind of drug, even da' reefer. And the drive to legalize marijuana in New York is exactly the kind of thing that stands in diametric opposition to what he believed and how he worked. Hopefully, at some point, the legislature will get it together and actually pass a legal weed bill (considering that so many other states have already done this). But legal weed is coming whether we (or folks like Brown) like it or not.

It's just another reminder that NYC is forever at a crossroads.

The Met Gets Campy

Tonight is the big annual Met Gala, where celebrities and all the glamorous beautiful people converge to celebrate how famous and glamorous and beautiful they all are. In actuality it's a big fundraiser as well as a celebration of the museum's next big fashion show.

This year, the theme for the gala and the new exhibition is "camp" (the famous phrase coined by Susan Sontag in her legendary 1964 essay Notes on Camp), culture that revels in the love of the artificial, the tacky, the sleazy, the intentionally bad and offensive, the kitchy, the dumb. Sontag writes about how, in camp, "everything is in quotation marks."

For example: John Waters movies are homosexual camp. Russ Meyers movies are straight camp.  Michael Moore is liberal camp. Sarah Palin is conservative camp.

You get the idea. 

This Met Gala has to be the first big fashion event based on an intellectual essay. In many ways, it's appropriate that stuff that is or was once upon a time considered low art and sleazy is now being celebrated in the most prestigious and glittering museum in the world. 

I feel bad that Susan Sontag won't be able to attend the gala -- she's been dead since 2004 -- although some are saying she'd hate it. This "campy" gala and exhibit are, in many ways, a prime example of cultural appropriation, where the rich and famous and powerful adapt and glamorize and, in some ways, condescend to and patronize, the auspices of the poor (like old school European peasant food being fancied up and served in expensive restaurants) But what a tribute and honor this is to her legacy! 

By the way, if the Met ever wants to appropriate anything from this blog and make a gala out of it, please, be my guest! Just do it in my lifetime so I can attend! 

Wacky Woodstock

This summer marks the 50th anniversary of Woodstock, the legendary three days of "peace and love" music festival held up in Bethel, NY in August, 1969. It featured performances from (amongst many others) the likes of Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Country Joe and the Fish, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Santana, The Band, Crosby Stills Nash & Young -- even Sha Na Na! -- and closing out with Jimmy Hendrix's classic version of the national anthem.

Woodstock defined a generation and has captured the popular imagination ever since. It defined the anti-war, pro-diversity counter-culture that "square" America has been fighting ever since.

Since that event 50 years ago, there have been two sequels to Woodstock -- first in 1994 for the 25th anniversary, and then in 1999 for the 30th. The 1994 event didn't generate a lot of excitement and the 1999 one was a legendary disaster resulting in rioting and rapes and chaos. It was, in many respect, a fitting end to the 20th century and a harbinger of the dark 21st century to come. 

Now, 20 years later, there were plans for Woodstock 50 this August but, in the last couple of days, it's all fallen apart. Financiers are dropping out, artists are pulling out, and there's a big "Will it or Won't It Happen" question mark over the whole thing. The event planners are desperately trying to salvage the festival but it seems like it might be for nought, the event doomed.

Sad! But it seems, in a way, fitting for this age of disruption, instability, venality, and short-term thinking. The fact that, despite having literally YEARS to put this together, Woodstock 50 is on a knife's edge feels somehow, in the bizarre times we're living in, almost ... appropriate.

Personally, I'm agnostic about Woodstock 50. I hate seeing any big endeavor fail, I love comeback stories, so I hope that they might get this saved.

At the same time, trying to recreate something that was so special, so unique, so of its moment, is also kind of sad. Woodstock in 1969 was something the whole country needed, whether they liked it or not.  In 2019? It feels forced, and the only people who need it are the ones making money.

It'll be interesting to see how this whole thing -- wait for it -- "plays" out.  

"Knock Down the House" - The Rise of AOC (And Others) on Netflix

Garry Winograd - NYC Street Photographer - American Masters

Recording NYC

The New York Times likes to call itself "the paper of record" but this city does a good job of recording itself -- day-by-day, moment-by-moment.

To whit: 

Did you know that NYC puts out its own daily newspaper? I had no idea! Admit it, you didn't either!

And yet since 1873, for almost 150 years, "The City Record - Official Journal of the City of New York" has been published every day detailing the city's business. It's used by government officials and contractors and anyone involved with the city's business to get thumbnail info of what the city government is actually doing. It records what the city is buying and selling, who got this or that contract, agency and department budgets, election results, tax rates, property condemnations, newly issued policies, etc. -- the minutia that rules NYC and its 8.6 million residents. It's a treasure trove for NYC junkies and not only records what the city is doing but is living history, an ongoing record of this town.

Then you have something that records even more.

Welcome to the Domain Awareness System. This is a platform that aggregates the city's CCTV cameras and the feeds of private security cameras that basically records every second of every part of this city. You can't move around anywhere in NYC without your movements being recorded. NYC is, sadly but (I guess) necessarily, a surveillance state. 

In 21st Century NYC, it's hard to keep secrets, there's a record of everything.

Of course, there are still some secrets in NYC -- I guess, as of now, the government hasn't mounted cameras in people's homes. 

But secrets endure. Did you know there used to be an old luxury train car from Europe that was then turned into a cafe inside Bloomingdales for years and years? It was a secret cafe of sorts, visitors to Bloomies had to suss it out. It's gone now so it's even more of a secret. At least there's a record of its bizarre and amazing history.