Classic Mr NYC

Two years ago I blogged about how diners are rapidly vanishing from the face of NYC. Color me prophetic -- The New York Times only now has written a big article about how diners in this town are, bit by bit, disapearing.

The reasons are obvious (rising rents along with risings costs of doing business) but sometimes it's the case that the land the diner is on is so valuable that the owners can't help but give into temptation and sell it to developers (gas stations in NYC are suffering this particlar fate). 

Diners or "greasy spooons" are bastions of middle class NYC -- thick menus, fast service, open for long hours (sometimes 24/7); you can get a burger and fries or a BLT or a club sandwhich along with a milkshake and bottomless cup o'Joe and still have some cash left over. In an era of fast food and chain restaurants, diners were holdouts for homespun afforadble grub.

In my 2017 post, I sang the praises of the Neptune Diner in Astoria, one of the best in the whole city. Well, the land its on has been sold, its lease is up in August, and it's probably that it'll cloes by the end of the year. This makes me particularly sad because I have lots of great personal memories of this place. If and when it goes, a little piece of my heart will go with it. 

Who was Barbara Rubin?

Read this blog long enough and you'll find several recurrent themes -- my love not only of NYC but of the city's "characters" (both real and fictional), of its funky and sexy "underworlds", of movies and the creative arts it inspires, of the city at night -- and of the Velvet Underground, the greatest band NYC ever produced.

I never get tired of these stories and it's one of the reasons I never get tired of NYC.

So I just love it when I learn about someone who embodied so much of what makes this town's spirit great.

Her name was Barbara Rubin -- and she was an experimental filmmaker, part of the Andy Warhol Factory Scene, and worked with the Velvet Underground in the Exploding Plastic Inevitable. Originally from Queens, she made a crazy short film in the early 1960s called Christmas on Earth, am explicit film projected onto two screens that was so raw, so ahead of its time, that it was actually suppressed for many years after that. (And she made this movie at age 18!). Rubin also staged exhibitions, acted in other experimental films, had an affair with Allen Ginsberg (who was otherwise gay) and eventually left NYC for France where she had five kids before dying at age 35 in 1980.

Like her most famous movie, Barbara Rubin led a short, wild, sexy, and memorable life -- a real NYC character, the kind of person who, even in death, makes this city great.

World's Fare 2019 @ Citi Field

We went to this over the weekend -- it was expensive but the food was so damn good! Go to it next year if you can!

Memo from NYC

Let's face it: these new highly restrictive abortion laws in Alabama, Missouri, and elsewhere are really based on one thing: hatred.

Hatred of women but also hatred of poor women and poor women of color. It's two-headed monsters of classcism and racism intertwined. 

This isn't about "protecting life" or "protecting the unborn" -- it's intentional cruelty and punishing women and their families. Forcing women to have children they don't want, then limiting all the social welfare programs these women need to help raise these kids, is a form of social control. How can you progress in your education, your career, your finances, your life, if you are burdened with responsibilities you don't want and can't handle? These laws are about shattering lives and families that are already troubled and broken, making it infinitely harder to advance their socioeconomic well-being.

Wealthy women, especially wealthy white ladies, will still get their abortions, they don't have to worry. They won't be burdened by these laws -- and they know it. That's why so many white female politicians support these evil laws -- they know it won't apply to them, white privilege at its most vile. 

So my message to the people in these states who support these awful laws: when you get angry and resentful that the rest of the country look on you as a bunch of uneducated, bigoted, slack jawed, repulsive racists and haters -- guess why? It's because of stuff like this! 

Here in NYC, we have strong abortion protections and good social services so that's just one reason, amongst so many others, that we should be grateful we live here.   

Run Sacklers Run!

Well, my previous post about how to live in disgrace in NYC seems to have been ahead of the curve!

Probably the most reviled family name in town right now that isn't Trump is Sackler -- the family that owns Perdue Pharma which produces OxyContin.

Oxy, as I'm sure you all know, is the #1 abused opiate (or is it opioid?) in the country, devastating families and whole regions of the country. People misuse their prescriptions or get the drugs illegally and get hooked real fast. It's become an epidemic, much like crack was 25 years ago, with lots of people dying very suddenly. It's a made in America, corporate-made horror show.  

Let me tell you, oxy is some seroius stuff: I had a minor operation a few years ago and, in the recovery room, took an Oxy the nurses gave me -- wow, it's like being drunk without any of the nausea or heaviness or exhaustion, it feels really, really, really good. Having heard the horror stories, and since I wasn't in much post-op pain, I didn't take any of the oxy prescribed by my doctor because I was scared I might get hooked. It was certainly the right decision. 

Anyway, the Sacklers not only produced this dangerous drug but have, for years, secretly encouraged its over-perscription and abuse. Needless to say, its made them billionaires many times over. For years, the anger over the Oxy crises was directed at Perdue Pharma, not the Sacklers themselves -- but that's changing. Now the family is facing more and more scrutiny -- so some of them are getting out of town, moving to -- where else? -- Florida.

I guess if you can't take living in disgrace in the NYC kitchen, you get out and go to Palm Beach. 

Unlike the gross Trumps, the Sacklers were highly respected patrons of the arts and philanthropy. They endowed museums, including the Sackler Wing at the Met. They are uber cultured, uber sophisticated, and, until now, uber respected society figures -- and it was all based on human misery.

An old, old story remade for the 21st century.

Crazy S*%t!

So let's say you're dating some dame -- and she's hot.

Then let's say one day she asks you, "Hey, can you set me up with a hit man to kill my ex-husband, and your daughter?" Oh, and she's also a New York City police officer!

Yeah, that's some crazy s@#t right there!

Believe it or not, this really happened - a female cop asked her boyfriend to do this and he set her up with the FBI and now she's busted. Apparently, before all this, she'd been married twice, been put on reduced duty, and both her husbands had restraining orders on her. And yet she remained on the force! 

She's some wild broad. I'm sure she'll have LOTS of fun in prison! NY Finest ...

By the way, if some hot woman I was dating asked me to be an accomplice in a crime, especially one against my own kid, I'd have to seriously re-evaluate the relationship. I mean, I know hot chicks can get away with a lot of stuff but asking a guy to get into murder, especially against his children, is just asking too much.

P.S. I'm only joking about this because, mercifully, no one got hurt and this nut is in jail. But, lordy, what kind of people are becoming NYPD officers these days?

Woody Allen's "A Rainy Day in New York" Trailer

Finally!

Woody Allen's latest movie A Rainy Day in New York has not yet been released. Long story short: Woody made this movie for Amazon 2017, it was due to be released in 2018 but Amazon broke its contract with Woody because of old and discredited abuse allegations. Now it's not being released in the US at all -- but it will be released in Europe and other parts of the world later this year.

So, for now, we won't able to see a film by a great American director -- in America! -- and only have this trailer to go on. Insane! 

Memo to Amazon: please come to your senses and release this movie or put it on the streaming service soon. Heck, I don't know if the movie's good or not but that's not the point -- please don't let that professional creepy scold Ronan Farrow and his messed up family prevent the rest of us enjoying one of our greatest filmmaker's late career work.

Censorship is wrong! Let the art speak for itself! Release the movie! Now!

To Live in Disgrace in NYC

Public shaming has become, forgive the intellectual laziness, "a thing" these days. From misconduct allegations, to stupid social media posts, to getting arrested and sometimes even convicted of crimes -- whatever the offence or affront, either civil or criminal or purely social or otherwise -- more people than ever seem to have become pariahs, outcasts, socially toxic.

People who were once famous, beloved, and powerful -- Bill Cosby, Matt Lauer, Kevin Spacey, Charlie Rose, Harvey Weinstein, and others -- are now either unemployed or awaiting trial or already in jail or being sued or just ... cast out, totally banished from public life. Not only did these fallen people once have big careers that made them famous, rich, or just respected, but they were members of "polite society" and lived busy lives of glamour -- parties, premieres, award shows, galas, fundraisers, openings, talk shows, panel appearances, festivals, conferences, you name it -- the full smorgasbord of a successful life. The beautiful, the powerful, the rich, the famous, or just the merely popular and successful live non-stop on this circuit, this merry-go-round hamster wheel of events that prove and consolidate their vaunted status.

And when they fall from grace, for whatever reason, not only do they lose their jobs and sometimes face legal problems but the glamour evaporates. No more invitations. No more events. They fall off the hamster wheel, the circuit of a successful life shorts-out.

That has to be the worst thing of all. Not only losing your job, not only enduring great humiliation, not only living in legal jeopardy, but having all this excitement, all this stuff that kept your life busy and fun, just go ... poof. One can only imagine the emptiness, the loneliness, the boredom, the long days and nights at home, having nothing to do, nowhere to go, suddenly burdened with tons of unwanted time that you now have to fill yourself. The whole structure of your life is gone and there's nothing to look forward to. The volume of your life goes from loud to mute. You're in your own kind of dystopia, a unique and personal hell.

However, there's one place that pariahs can go -- or at least try to: restaurants. If you can get a reservation (presumably not under your name), or just walk in, even the most socially toxic people can eat out. After all, restaurants are businesses and need to make money and they'll serve and take the money of anyone so long as they don't think it'll cost them other customers (boycotts are, sadly, another "thing").

This article is an interesting look at how pariahs are sometimes seen in upscale NYC restaurants and how they are sometimes gawked at or ignored but are sometimes welcomed. The prime example: Michael Cohen, the disgraced former lawyer for Donald Trump. He may be a confessed liar, turncoat, and criminal but, at his preferred dining spots, he's still quite welcomed.

On a personal level, when I read about these fallen people, these once high flying people, now socially toxic pariahs, I have mixed feelings. If they did something really bad, if they damaged people's lives and careers, then social ostracism is probably the least punishment they deserve. But I also hate to see anyone lose everything, I hate to see anyone crash hard. Unlike a lot of people, I don't suffer from schadenfreude, I don't like seeing people suffer -- except for maybe Donald Trump and everyone around him.

I guess what I find interesting about people who are social pariahs is that I can, in some way, relate. Now, don't get me wrong, I've never been publically shamed or accused of anything nasty (Mr NYC is a very square dude). I've never been "disgraced" in the way so many have been lately -- but I've been never successful or popular in any way whatsoever (heck, I can't even get my friends or family to read this blog!). I've never been a high-flyer and lived on the circuit of success. In a way, I guess I've always been what one might consider a "natural disgrace" -- so how could I become a disgrace?  

You know how there are some people who're successful enough that you and everyone is envious or who are just so attractive and charismatic that people are naturally drawn to them? Yeah ... I'm the opposite of that!

I'm almost never invited anywhere or to any event, there's so social circuit hamster wheel in my life. On the rare occasions I do get invited somewhere, I'm overly flattered by it and it feels quite odd and unnatural, like something's wrong.

If I ever do become an official pariah (not that I want to!), I'd probably handle it quite well. Heck, I'm practically already one! So if you need any advice on how to negotiate life as a loser ... I'm your man!

From the Bronx to Jupiter: Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey"

"I'm sorry ... Dave" but I'm having a Stanley Kubrick moment.

Lately Dr. Strangelove has been on TCM. I hadn't seen it in a while but, as always, it's the funniest movie ever made about the end of the world and one of my favorites.  

Also, this past March was the 20th anniversary of the great Bronx-born director's death, just months before the release of his last movie, the bizarre (and NYC-based) Eyes Wide Shut. 

But Kubrick's masterpiece of masterpieces is 2001: A Space Odyssey which came out in 1968 and changed science-fiction and movies forever. It was, to put it mildly, daring -- little dialogue, little character development, almost pure visual storytelling, a plot that slowly, slowly reveals itself about a mission to Jupiter gone wrong, a story where the villain (HAL) is a computer and not a person, and an ending that can only be described as inscrutable. It's a movie that frustrating to watch the first time you see it but, like all great movies, it gets better and better with repeat viewings. 

So how did 2001 come to be? How did this poor kid from the Bronx wind up making an American classic that inspired the world?

You MUST listen to this episode of Studio 360 about the history of 2001 and Kubrick's back story that led him to make it. It's an amazing only-in-NYC story, of how a kid dreamed big -- universally big! -- and changed the world.

Also, please read my 2008 interview with Kurt Anderson, the host of Studio 360. He's fascinating too!

De Blasio Runs for President

Not going to blog about this here, check out the Mr NYC Twitter page for my deep, incredibly brilliant thoughts about this.