News Today, History Tomorrow -- May 31, 2019

Well, if today isn't a "hinge day" in NYC, I don't know what is! 

Today is the last day of radio station WPLJ before it becomes a "Christian music" station. At 7 PM, this legendary NYC rock station will be no more, a relic of another time and another city.

Today is also the first day of OMNY ("One Metro New York"), the new transit card the MTA is rolling out to replace the MetroCard by 2023. It'll start being used today on the 4, 5, 6 lines in Brooklyn and Manhattan, as well as all public buses in Staten Island. (This is what's called a "soft launch".) Unlike the current "swipe" of the MetroCard, all you'll have to do with the OMNY is "tap" (or scan it) it on an electronic reader, it will be a completely contact-less way to get onto public transportation. Soon the MetroCard will join the token as a relic -- instead, we'll OMNY our way around town.

So today, in a just a matter of hours, one part of the city's past is vanishing and another part of its future is arriving. 

Then there are a couple of issues that, if realized, will transform this city both socially and physically.

There's Hart Island -- the 150-year old pauper's cemetary off the coast of the Bronx that is closed to the public. The city council is now introducing a bill that will turn it into a public park (the  council speaker and mayor support it so it looks to be a done deal). Think of it -- not just another park or public space will be created but New Yorkers will have access to a whole new island, making this archipeligo of a town all the more ... archipeligo-ish. I once called Hart Island a "secret of NYC" but, if this bill passes and this island opens to the public, it will be a secret no more. 

And talking about taking something out of the dark into the light, one day soon New York might very well legalize prostitution -- otherwise known as "decrim." This is, as you might imagine, a divisive topic and many people have different ideas of what "decrim" should be. But the fact that this has a realistic chance of happening, that it's even being discussed, it transformative. Up until just a few years ago, the idea that something like this might happen seemed unimaginable -- like gay marriage or legal weed. Yet here were are. 

So while today might just seem like another day in NYC, it's not.

History is happening all around us!

"When They See Us" on Netflix

If you remember the spring of 1989 in NYC, you remember the Central Park jogger case -- a young white woman who was raped and beaten into a coma, and the young black men accused of this crime called a "wilding."

I remember the case well -- the feverish media coverage, the trolling racism masking itself as law and order-minded public outrage, and how these young men were proclaimed guilty even before trial, turned into animals and not human beings, and how public opinion and the courts of law drove them into prison and infamy.

One problem: it was all a lie. 

They were totally innocent -- in 2002 they were released after DNA testing and another prisoner's confession exonerated them. But then they faced another kind of prison -- difficulties readjusting to society and the city government, then led by Mayor Bloomberg, refusing a financial settlement with these men. That didn't happen until 2014 when Mayor De Blasio finally gave them some kind of justice.

The Central Park Jogger case is coming to Netflix tomorrow in a new miniseries called When They See Us. It's a story of this case and of NYC at a moment in time when it was still Fear City and not the Oz we live in today.

It's also an indictment of our culture -- of then and now -- and how failed reporting, corrupt law enforcement, pure racism, and public hysteria led to this tragedy. (It was also a tragedy for the victim, who didn't get proper justice).

We should all watch this and learn.

Bonnie is Funny

Several years ago I saw comedian Bonnie McFarlane and her husband Rich Vos at Stand Up NY. Personally, I'm not a big stand up comedy guy but they were funny and, I thought, quite adorable. I remember Bonnie talking about recently having a baby who is now, apparently, 11 years old.  

Time flies! 

Anyway, I enjoyed reading this big article about her life as a working mom and comedic groundbreaker. It makes you realize that being funny and being a parent is hard work -- and that lives in showbiz are anything but glamorous! 

Tornado Warning!!!

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?