As New York City emerges from its long pandemic night of the soul, people are returning to the city streets and going to parties, congregating en masse, doing that which is usually normal but, for much of the last year, became abnormal.
And, uh, they're doing so in interesting ways.
If this story it to be believed, apparently New Yorkers are engaging in hardcore post-COVID PDA i.e. they're making out in public here, there, and everywhere, hither and thither as it 'twere. Oh yes, wherever you go, East Side, West Side, people are suckin' face on the sidewalks of New York!
But that's quaint compared to what's going on behind closed doors.
Apparently, orgies have returned -- particularly in Brooklyn and in other hip and trendy parts of NYC. The young and not-so-young are gettin' busy,reveling in each other's body parts and in a freedom that, for more than a year, was denied them. Oh yes, masks are not the only things being discarded! With presumably everyone vaccinated, people are have ditched social distancing with a vengeance.
Sounds like fun. And exhausting.
But NYC has always been an amorous town, a place where freaks can freely get their freak-on.
This story about a woman named Eve Adams who lived more than 100 years ago and published lesbian literature and hosted a lesbian salon called Eve's Hangout was a wonderful, intriguing piece of NYC erotic history that, until now, I'd never known about. She was a real trailblazer, fully a century ahead of her time, someone who would be celebrated today. Sadly Eve Adam's life ended quite tragically in the Holocaust (long story), but she was and remains an inspiration.
This town ... we like our sexiness ... and our sexy people -- then, now, and forever.
Well, it's over, or at least it's the beginning of the end. The final results of the NYC muncipal primaries were released yesterday, and now we know the winners. Here are the primary results for Mayor, Comptroller, Borough President, and City Council. (The current Public Advocate easily won back in June.)
Technically none of these "winners" have won anything yet -- they still need to triumph in the General Election in November. However, political reality being what it is, most of the Democratic primary winners in the Bronx, Manhattan, Queens and Brooklyn will win in the general as will most of the Republican primary winners in Staten Island.
A few interesting observations: the Bronx will get its first female Borough President with Vanessa Gibson; former Congressman Vito Fosella, who left office in 2008 after being busted for DWI which lead to revelations that he had a secret second family, won the Staten Island GOP BP primary (the party of family values in all its glory); Brooklyn city councilman Brad Lander won the Democratic Comptroller primary which means that, if Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams (who won the Democratic Mayoral primary) wins in November, all three city-wide elected officials will be from Brooklyn. This will be an historic moment meaning, a real change in the political gravity of this town, since no one from Manhattan (or anywhere else) will hold city-wide office.
And yes, the big news is that former cop and Brooklyn BP Eric Adams won the mayoral primary by a whisker -- something like 8,000 votes. I'd been pulling for Kathryn Garcia, and she came damn close, but here we are. Now Adams faces Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa in the General Election -- two colorful, outrageous personalities competing to run the country's largest metropolis and police force.
I can't pretend to be too excited about this choice for mayor -- both candidates seem problematic to me for many reasons -- but obviously Adams is vastly preferable to Sliwa. In some ways this mayoral election will be the battle of the tough guys, a brawl of two men who have literally patrolled the streets of this city. In some ways, they have more in common than not.
New York City is writing its next chapter.
P.S. Two years ago I was at an event where Eric Adams gave a speech and he "invited" the office to join him "at City Hall when I'm your mayor." Looks like he was on to something.
The title of the article tells you exactly what it's all about -- the city, for once, was inhabited almost completely but its residents alone and not the tens of millions from around the country and around the world who visit each year. It particularly concentrates on the period last summer when the COVID surge had seem to come under control (although the infection rates were still high) and New Yorkers were out and about enjoying the city for themselves and each other. The article even goes so far as to say that this time was "glorious without tourists."
Well, this is some real ivory tower thinking. There was nothing, not ever, "glorious" about NYC in the time with COVID-19 -- not then, now, or ever. People were dying. The city's economy was in free-fall. Fear reighned. Okay, yes, so some places were less crowded -- but really? It was awful and I'll take lots of tourists and fully re-opened NYC any day!
I even blogged about it at the time, about how the city felt "in abstentia" at the time, how so much of it looked so close and felt so far. Go read that post and see how you feel vs. "glorious" opinion of this recent article.
On the face of it, the 1970s movies Serpico and The Turning Point couldn't be more different: the former is a real-life story about dirty cops, the latter is a fictional story about ballet.
But watching them makes you realize they share a lot in common: besides both movies being made in the 1970s in NYC, they are gritty, brutal, totally realistic deep-dives into high-pressure, competitive, all-consuming worlds that their denizens both love and revile, that reach into the very cores of their being, enthralling and warping them, and completing devouring their lives.
Back in the 1970s Hollywood used to make movies like these, movies where not everyone and everything was beautiful, where the world was reflected back to us in all of its deformed glory, where we saw and heard people who were in pain, and where things didn't always end happily. These movies were overshadowed by many othe great classics from that time (The French Connection, The Godfather, The Exorcist, Jaws, Rocky, Star Wars, The Deer Hunter, Apocalypse Now, you name 'em), but these two slice-of-life movies of believable realism cut just as deep emotionally as any of those other great '70s flicks.
Serpico stars Al Pacino as real-life cop Frank Serpico who "blew the whistle" on massive, entranched corruption within the NYPD, leading to the Knapp Commission and major reforms. Serpico (who's still alive!) was an odd fit with the NYPD, more of a hippy than a tough guy, someone who didn't believe violence and brute force necessarily meant good policing, and someone who didn't think corruption should ever be "business as usual". He took his life into his hands to expose the corruption and, afterwards, quit the NYPD and left the country. Directed by Sidney Lumet at the height of his career, the movie was made just a year after the main events in the film so it was an almost real-time retelling of how and why Serpico changed the NYPD -- and the whole city -- forever. Pacino was just then becoming a star -- the first Godfather movie had just come out and he was just about to start work on the second one -- but this film showed his incredible range, his ability to transform into complicated people, the depth of a soul that is both revealing and mysterious. The film is also a very realistic look at what NYC was like back in the early 1970s and, watching it now, you see how much the city has changed while also realizing that problems with policing are, well, perennial.
The Turning Point is much different but no less intense: as someone who had experience in the world of professional ballet, I can tell you that it's a tough, insular, and unforgiving world. People in ballet LOVE balletto an irrational level, it completely dominates their minds and bodies, they speak and think and do nothing else. They sacrifice their lives and physical, mental, and emotional well-being in pursuit of career in it. There is no divide between their personal and professional lives. This film asks but doesn't attempt to answer this question: at what price glory? Shirley McClaine stars as DeeDee, a woman who relinquished a ballet career to move with her former dancer husband Wayne (Tom Skerritt) to Oklahoma City and raise a family and live a quiet life. Events ensue bringing DeeDee and her daughter Emilia to NYC where Emilia shines with the company, and where DeeDee enounters her frenemy Emma (the always glorious Anne Bancroft) who started with the company at the same time as DeeDee, stayed, and become a big ballet star. There are affairs, fights, and great performances throughout the film that show, in raw and gorgeous ways, the constant fight between ambition and personal happiness, between career and family, about understanding your real values, and the sacrfifices and sadness that go with both. The film offers no easy answers and does what all great movies do -- it shows and doesn't tell (including showing lots of great ballet dancing). It's a film that moves you and makes you think about own life and values.
So if you want to see two old NYC movies that feel just as relevant today as they were more than 40 years ago, I can't suggest Serpico and The Turning Point enough.
When this blog started more than 14 years ago, social media was still in its infancy and blogs like this were sorta where "social media", as it was then, was where "it's at."
Obviously time and technology have galloped ahead, and social media has largely left blogs like this in the digital dust. Now social media is Twiter, Instagram, and Tik Tok -- even Facebook is a little long in 'da toof. Bloggers have surrendered to "influencers" -- people who go on social media promoting various people, products, or places, helping them to gain fans and customer and visitors, often making some money in the process.
Such is the case of Instragram influencer @NewYorkNico, a 32-year guy with more 600,000 followers who has become one of NYC's biggest cheerleaders. He especially likes to promote small businesses, mom'n'pops, as well as people who make the city great. These posts helps their businesses and these peoples' work get attention -- and hopefully some dough. Even mayoral campaigns have sought him out, his reach has become that powerful. He calls himself "the unofficial talen scount of New York City."
@NewYorkNico's account isn't really him -- it's about the people and places that make this city great.
Hmmm ... I wonder if @NewYorkNico might want to give Mr NYC some digital love? I shall endevour to court him!
As Bill De Blasio's days as mayor come to a close, and as he takes stock of his eight-year reign of the world's greatest city, New Yorkers went to the polls yesterday to nominate the candidates to succeed him (and for all of the other city elected offices as well, excluding three district attorneys).
Who did they vote for? Look here:
Of course, all of these primary election results are just the raw totals of the in-person votes cast yesterday -- the early and absentee votes remain to the counted, and the process of rank-choice eliminations that will bump some candidates up needs to happen -- so some of the people currently in the lead might still lose once all these other votes are tallied.
That said, there was some big news last night -- Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams took a decisive lead in the Democratic primary showing the formidable power of the black vote, and Brooklyn in general, in NYC politics. If he gets upset by the absentee/ranked-choice votes, it will be either to Maya Wiley or Kathryn Garcia both of whom, until quite recently, barely registered in the polls and media coverage but proved to be great candidates.
And just to prove that polls and media coverage don't translate into a great candidacy and hard votes, just look at Andrew Yang -- the early "frontrunner" utterly collapsed, coming in 4th place, and has already been eliminated and conceded. It's quite a face-plant to be the person getting all the coverage, big endorsements, and polling love only to wind up losing so badly. It turns out that being totally unqualified and saying dumb things ultimately doesn't sell with voters who care very much about the future of their city. I hope (probably quixotically) that this will spell the end of people like this, these "celebrity" candidates, from running -- at least for NYC mayor.
Also, in the Republican primary, longtime NYC media personality and vigilante (sorry, Guardian Angel) Curtis Sliwa won. I obviously hope he loses the generally election -- badly -- especially since the Democratic candidate will be strong -- but don't count this guy out. He could win. Don't underestimate his appeal Sliwa has been a public figure in this city for a long time, he's a superb media manipulator, he's tireless in getting around town (he literally pounds the pavement, I even blogged about it in 2018), and he's big personality. Don't get me wrong -- I don't want him to win -- but while many in the media and political class might think of him as a joke, we saw what happened five years ago when people thought the same of another certain candidate for high office -- and we reaped the whirlwind. It could happen again -- and it could happen here.
