Gotta Love New Yorkers

So yesterday someone crashed a helicopter on top of a building in Midtown and a street in Brooklyn was named for the late rapper Notorious B.I.G.

And that, kids, is why NYC is and forever shall be a crazy place to live!

Ali Stroker Makes Tony History

The Fall of Class

So this week the Four Seasons will close. The sixty-year old NYC institution that defined the "power lunch" is vanishing due to a lack of "bidness". Once upon you couldn't get a table at this sheek, glamorous eatery where the rich and powerful broke bread and made deals. Now they can't give tables away.

The "power lunch" that the Four Seasons championed is definitely the product of a by-gone era. These days even the biggest and richest companies don't want to pay for super-expensive business lunches, expense accounts are either much smaller than they used to be or gone altogether. Today, people don't even meet in person that much -- nearly all my work meetings are held via video conference, I don't even leave my desk. It's very efficient and much easier than dragging to meetings -- but it has no "class."

"Class" is one of those things that's in the eye of the beholder. Some people think velvet and polyester clothes and gold-plated furnishings are classy. For me, "class" is pure, simple elegance. It's quality above all, beauty that seeks to inspire, not offend. 

I've blogged a lot about the travails of the Plaza Hotel over the years. Did you know that once upon a whole bunch of widows used to live in the Plaza and hold salons and parties? They gave this historic hotel not only wealthy prestige but they made it interesting, they made it culturally rich and fascinating, they gave it "class" above all. And that was the point of being rich -- not just having money and expensive stuff but making something unique out of it. 

That's what class is to be me: something beautiful and interesting and unique and memorable.

And those values have declined as wealthy these days is more about raw power and demonstrativeness, not about making smothing of it. It's wonton in a way -- the point of being rich is to be rich, not to make something of it. 

It's sad. It's the fall of class. 

Dr John RIP

The brilliant blues and rock'n'roll singer/musician Dr. John has died. 

The original New Orleans voodoo daddy, he was a genius songwriter and piano player. He produced over 30 albums, performed in every venue and on every stage, big and small, grand or humble. He even had a Top 40 hit, "Right Place, Wrong Time." He was the consummate performer, a one-of-a-kind talent, and he will be greatly missed.

Dr. John lived in New Orleans almost all his life but, for a while, he also had an apartment in Washington Heights in Manhattan so he was a part-time New Yorker. He was also a big part of my childhood: his recording of "Splish Splash" was on a childhood record (yes, vinyl!) that I had, he wrote the theme song for a childhood guilty pleasure TV show of mine ("Blossom"), and he was the inspiration for Dr. Teeth of Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem from The Muppets.

Rest in peace, John. Heaven just a lot more funky today.

Stonewall @ 50

So it's Pride Month, and it's a special one this year -- 50 years ago this month was the Greenwich Village Stonewall raid and riots that kicked off the modern-day gay rights movement. It's hard for anyone young these days to remember just how brutal it was for gay men and women to live in America back then. You could lose your job, your family, everything you had, if you dared to come out of the closet. Even into the 1990s and early 2000s gays were legally and socially discriminated against. There's little to say that's good about what's gone on in this country in the first two decades of the 21st century but, along with the election of President Barack Obama, gay marriage and the acceptance of gay life in America today is one of this country's proudest achievements.

In fact, the current NYC Police Commissioner made a formal apology for the Stonewall raid, closing a loop of history.

But history's not over! In NYC, and across America, Drag Queens are reading to and entertain young people in public libraries (it's called Drag Queen Story Hour). Needless to say, some closed-minded people don't like this, even in progressive Brooklyn. 

So when my wife and I found out about this, we decided to invite them to our neighborhood public library to read to our kids.

President Roosevelt's D-Day Prayer - June 6, 1944

Donald Trump Killed Eloise

If Little Orphan Annie is NYC's favorite fictional un-parented child, then Eloise is NYC's favorite parent-ignored child. Eloise lived in the Plaza hotel, the legendary home to NYC glamour and sophistication, with her nanny. Her parents were forever traveling, doing everything but raising their child.

The Plaza was the stuff that dreams were made of. Eloise was its spirit. 

The Plaza Hotel is so famous, so legendary, so beloved, that just the mention of it makes people feel classy. Besides Eloise, other great works of American culture have taken place there: a pivotal scene in The Great Gatsby and Neil Simon's play Plaza Suite are just a few of them.

Several years ago the Plaza was ruined. It was bought by some sleazy investors who turned it into condos that almost no one lives in. Today the Plaza is a shell, it's glamour and sophistication severely diminished, almost gone. Like NYC itself, everything great about it has been gutted.

But the Plaza's long downfall began in the last 1980s when Donald Trump bought it. In a now legendarily bad deal, he paid too much for it, made all kinds of dumb changes to the characters of the hotel, turned it into a joke, and bankrupted it before selling it at a huge loss. The spirit of the hotel died. 

Eloise, in a sense, died. 

Much like America now, Trump took something great, turned it into an embarrassing joke, and sped up its reputational descent. Reading this long history of Trump's ownership of the Plaza is a long depressing reminder of how the Plaza, along with America and NYC, have gone on a  downward trajectory. 

Can the Plaza be restored? Its spirit saved?

Can Eloise be resuscitated? 

AOC & Tiffany Caban @ Queens Pride -- Vote Caban in the Primary, June 25, 2019!

The Final Moments of WPLJ

Claus von Bulow RIP (?)

The infamous Claus von Bulow has died -- the lifelong socialite hustler who married an extremely rich woman and was convicted and then acquited of trying to murder her.

This case was the big society scandal of the 1980s. Von Bulow was accused of trying to poison his wife with insulin which knocked her into a coma (she never actually died but spent decades in this coma). The fact that he was convicted before getting aquitted in a second trial, and the various confusing Rashomon-like nature of the case, fascinated and divided the public -- years before Lorena or OJ or Monica did. 

This case is also famous for what and who it spawned -- namely the 1990 movie Reversal of Fortune that garnered Jeremy Irons a Best Actor Oscar; von Bulow's defense lawyer Alan Dershowitz who got the man off the hook and became a celebrity out of this trial; and two of Dershowitz's Harvard Law School students who helped on von Bulow's defense -- Jim Cramer (yes, that guy!) and former Governor Eliot Spitzer (who himself became infamous).

Compared to later scandals, the von Bulow case was almost boring but it was a perfect example of how wealth, glamous, marriage and murder forever fascinate.

So long, Claus.