Classic Mr NYC

Two legendary New Yorkers just died -- Robert Morgenhhau and Paul Krassner.

Morgenthau, the longtime Manhattan DA, who prosecuted numerous high-profile cases (Bernie Goetz, Robert Chambers, Joel Steinberg, the Central Park 5, and many others) and, unlike many prosecutors today, also went hard after white collar and corporate crime. He was a child of great privilege who committed his life to public service, serving in WWII and a US Attorney before becoming DA in 1975. Famously, he was hanging out with then-Attorney General Robert Kennedy on November 22, 1963 when they together learned of JFK's assassination. He was 99 years old.

The other passing was Paul Krassner, the legendary satirist and social activist, founder of the satirical magazine The Realist and a brilliant mind. Krassner was a leader of the 1960s counter-culture, a member of Ken Kesey's Yippies, and a friend to people like Lenny Bruce. He knew everyone, went everywhere, wrote about and did everything, and lived an amazing, culturally-rich life. He was 87.

Even better, Paul Krassner was kind enough to do an interview for this blog in April, 2018 (just last year!). He was funny, kind, and told us many interesting things about his long life and career -- including being responsible for having abortion legalized in New York State before Roe v. Wade. He was a real original, an NYC legend, and it's a huge honor to have done one of his last (if not his very last) interviews. At the end of the interview I asked him how he would like to be remembered. He replied: "Laughter from the satire I felt urged to share on Earth."

Paul, you will be remembered thus. RIP. 

Flash Flood!

NYPD & NYFD Generations

In NYC, being a cop or firefighter is, for many, a family business. The sons, daughters, and grandchildren of cops and firefighters grow up to become cops and firefighters themselves -- generation in and generation out, decade after decade.

Not only are these good, secure, working class jobs with great benefits and pensions but there's an entire culture, an ecosystem of support, that comes with it. Someone enters the force and is mentored and looked out for by someone who knew his or her father or mother years earlier. It might seem like nepotism to some but these are, after all, very hard and life-threatening jobs, so having a family connection must make this grueling, emotionally draining much more bearable.

If you ever saw the show Rescue Me, the main character, firefighter Tommy Gavin, is the child of firefighters. This both helps and haunts Tommy, realizing that he is part of a legacy greater than himself.

That's why this particular story is fascinating: a man who works for the NYPD is the great-great-great-great grandson of the man who was the "high constable" of what is now the NYPD back in 1802. Can you imagine -- two people working for the same department more than 200 years apart? Now that's a legacy!

Generation after generation, public servants keep this city safe.  

The MLK of Bagel Boss

So a short man goes into a bagel shop and yells and screams about how women won't date short men and how he's the Martin Luther King of short men, then he threatens and incites another man to attack him -- and the guy does!

Because, as you know, MLK ranted like a madman in public and asked to be attacked. Yeah, that's what got him a Nobel Prize.

I was going to say that acting like this in public about how you can't score chicks probably isn't the best way to, you know, score chicks. But since this video has gone viral it appears that he's getting chicks! I was always taught that the best way to score chick was to act like a guy who gets chicks -- you know, fake it until you make it, if you build it they will ... -- and then the chicks will believe it and try to get with you. But, then again, what the hell do I know?

Gotta Love New Yorkers

I grew up in a house full of books. In fact, you might say it was lousy with books -- there were shelves in every room (except the bathroom), floor to ceiling, full to the brim. We didn't really have walls, just bookshelves. My parents collected roughly 3000 books, including some that were over 500 years old.

You might say, they literally lived and breathed books.

So that's why I loved reading this obituary about a guy who literally turned a whole apartment into a bookstore. He used to own real bookstores in Brooklyn and Manhattan but, once he lost his leases and got sick of selling at book fairs and such, he literally set up shop in a rent controlled apartment. His domestic bookstore became popular for "those in the know", a "secret haunt" for the beautiful people as you might say. People would make appointments to go buy books, groups would congregate in this place to drink and talk about literature. It was a real-life salon, a throwback to another time.

The place went under in 2015 from eviction and the owner just died. But he was another kind of NYC hustler, the kind of person this blog loves and celebrates. Rest in peace.

BLACKOUT!!!

"When Harry Met Sally ..." @ 30

Every so often a movie comes along that's more than just a movie but becomes a talisman for life. It helps you navigate your own path forward, your own relationships and feelings, and it becomes a part of your heart.

For my generation, it's When Harry Met Sally ... which came out 30 years ago this month. I was a kid burgeoning on teenager-dome, and this movie -- this great, brilliantly written, magically acted, beautifully made, perfectly executed film -- made me think about what it might be like to be a grown up, to date, to have different kinds of friendships, about what kind of person I might become. I can't say, by any stretch of the imagination, that I live a life like any of the characters in the film (well, maybe a little, once upon a time) but this movie, and the issues it raises about men and women, are as timely today as they were back then -- and, believe you me, this movie was the topic of many conversations I had as a young man with both men and women.

If you've seen this movie it's impossible not to fall in love with it. There are so many great scenes, hilarious lines and moments, such fascinating characters, that to try to describe it or sum it up here would be to do the movie a disservice. And, if you haven't seen it, stop everything and SEE IT NOW! You will fall hopelessly in love with it. 

Naturally, When Harry Met Sally ... is a great NYC movie. It is a shameless "love letter" to the city, showing its full beauty, you might call it pure NYC p-o-r-n. While today NYC is a dream scape for many (or nightmare, depending on who you talk to), it's hard to remember that, back in 1989, NYC was perceived by most of America and the world as being in crises -- the Central Park Jogger, the crack epidemic, high crime, urban decay, political corruption. The city was seen as a scary place and this movie said -- "No! NYC is as great as ever!" In so many ways, this movie was far ahead of its time.

I've blogged about When Harry Met Sally ... over the years and you can find the complete coverage here.

So go out, get a pastrami sandwich, and watch or re-watch this classic NYC fable.

The Movies Come Home to NYC

Hollywood, California has long been the capital of movie making in the United States, an empire of dreams and fantasies burned into celluloid, built in the desert West. 

But like all American myths, its story begins Back East.

The movie business started in New York and New Jersey more than a century ago. Before California almost completely annexed film production for most of the 20th century, there was a thriving movie business in Queens -- specifically the studio spaces of Astoria. Movie stars like Rudolph Valentino even lived in that natural precursor to Beverly Hills called Bayside. 

The Marx Brothers shot their earliest movies at the Kaufman Astoria studios and other movies shot here as well in the 1910s to 1930s. But soon thereafter movie making in NYC became scant, the exception to the rule.   

That's all changed today. Thanks to tax credits and other developments, movie making in NYC is thriving as never before. Over 300 movies were shot here last year! And it's not just because NYC is a great natural location for movies -- there is now extensive studio space in Queens (Kaufman and Silver Cup with outposts in places like the Bronx) and Brooklyn (Steiner Studios). And now the great actor Robert De Niro along with his real estate developer son are planning to open a new studio called Wildflower, also in Queens. If this plan goes through, NYC will rival Hollywood for studio space -- a coming home for the business that started here more than 100 years ago.

Sidenote: I actually briefly went to school with Robert De Niro's son. I didn't know him at all but sat in front of me in math class. He didn't care about math all then but, I guess, that's changed now! 

Women's World Cup USA Champions in the Canyon of Heroes!

Never Forget Them

This is a post about my favorite kind of person, the NYC hustler -- in this case, a few of them. They include a poet, a movie theater programmer, a nasty guy who wrote nasty books, and a kooky faith healer. It's also about a structure that could have become one of our iconic buildings -- and was! -- until it wasn't.

They were (and are) regular New Yorkers who hustled in their odd respective fields and found great success -- and, in one case, great failure. All of them except one are gone now but let's remember them:

The poet was named Marie Ponsot who just died at 98. She was one of the last links to the Beat generation, a contemporary and colleague to folks like Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg and others. Her poems were about the complications of love and existence and she won big awards and taught at Queens College. Interestingly, she took a long hiatus from her career to raise seven kids but then later resumed publishing and teaching to great acclaim. 

Then there's Ben Barenholtz who used to program the downtown Elgin and Waverly movie theaters before having a very successful career in film distribution and producing -- including taking a chance on a couple of young filmmakers called the Coen Brothers. Ben's biggest claim to fame, besides launching two of America's greatest cinematic talents, was basically inventing the Midnight Movie. In 1970, he started programming movies at or past midnight, a move that people thought was crazy at the time -- until it was met with massive success. The midnight movie is now a tradition around the world and this guy was the hustler who started it.

And then there's another writer, a wacky guy named Harold Robbins who died almost 20 years ago. A Jewish kid from Brooklyn, he migrated to Hollywood where he wrote trashy books that become popular trashy movies. He made tons and tons of money and lived it up in lavish style. Lots of coke, lots of booze, lots of broads, lots of craziness ensued. He was also a complete liar, trying to convince people that he was some kind of war hero -- his life was fiction as much as his books. Of course, it all ended in tears -- by the time he died he was broke, disabled, homeless. He's one of those guys who lost everything but gained every kind of amazing experience in life that most of us could only dream of.

Okay, so this one isn't gone, she's still alive and apparently thriving. She's another New Yorker gone Hollywood -- Audrey Hope, "crystal healer" to the stars! She apparently uses crystals on the bodies of celebrities to help them restore "balance" and achieve "wellness" and all sorts of crap and yet apparently she makes a great living and is very popular. Talk about a hustler but apparently she's totally legit. Gotta give her credit for that! 

And keeping with the crystal theme -- did you know that Bryant Park is only a park today because the structure that once stood there, the New York Crystal Palace, burned down in 1858 (part of it also burned down in 1856)? This was a huge exhibition space, domed and massive, based on a similar structure built and designed by Prince Albert in London. It was, at the time, the tallest building in the city. The Crystal Palace was deemed so impressive and major that, at the opening ceremony in 1853, it was dedicated by then President Franklin Pierce. Within just a few short years it was gone, a hustle that failed. But for a time it reigned in glory. (It reminds me that great speech Tywin Lannister gives in Game of Thrones about how the castle Harrenhal was supposed to be the great legacy of the lord who built it but then it was destroyed by dragon fire by Aegon Targaryen).

These are my kinds of people, the hustler, the strivers, the people who took chances and made something. In many way, this little blog is my attempt to be one of these kinds of people -- people we should never forget.