"Once Upon a Time in Queens" and the '86 Mets on ESPN

The Year of Our Lord 1986 A.D. was a memorable one in 1986 for NYC -- and for me personally.

The city was bursting with renewal. The Beastie Boys were reinventing rap music out of Brooklyn; in Manhattan, Woody Allen was at the height of his career with Hannah and Her Sisters while nightclubs likes Tunnel and Limelight were the hottest places in the world. And out in Queens the Mets played the most memorable season in its history. 

In 1986 NYC was in a period of transition -- from the dark days of the "Bronx is Burning" 1970s to the "luxury product" of the 21st century. A new documentary from ESPN called Once Upon a Time in Queens covers the '86 Mets on the way to their World Series victory -- and how the city embraced and related to the team. 

The players on the '86 Mets are on the tip of any New Yorker's tongue who was alive at the time -- Doc Gooden, Darryl Strawberry, Keith Hernandez, Lenny Dykstra, Gary Carter, and others. They played hard and, oh boy, they lived harder too! 

In between outings, they'd snork coke and bang chicks. They trashed hotel rooms and many of them got arrested. It's amazing that anyone playing on the '86 Mets was able even to swing a bat or throw or catch a ball, let alone win a World Series. The amount of wildness they engaged in, the all consuming debauchery -- the drugs, the booze, the broads, the fights, you name it -- must have exhausted them. And yet ... they played amazing baseball and achieved greatness. 

If you want to read more Mr NYC coverage about NYC in 1986, go here.

The NYC Waterfront

The most southern and northern tips of Manhattan ...

... and several points in between.

Grief and Grace @ Ground Zero: 9/11 @ 20

This past weekend was the 20th anniversary of the September 11 attacks -- the most tragic event in this city's history, a most solemn event. Grief, sadness, despair, anger -- the whole gamut of negative emotions -- New York City has experienced all of them, at every moment, since that day, and will forever. The sadness is as much a part of the city as its concrete, steel, and waterways.

And yet ...

For me, personally, as someone who saw the Twin Towers collapse from a window in the Flatiron Building ... for someone who felt the anger, the rage, the despair, the confusion on that day and those afterwards ... for me ... to paraphrase Evelyn Waugh, "something quite remote from anything" that the terrorists and the first-responders or anyone else ever intended came out of this tragedy that, collectively, we all suffered from, something that could never have been imagined at the time: a certain kind of grace, a strange, paradoxical enlivening of the spirit. It obviously didn't happen on 9/11 but a few short years aftewards.

Around 2 AM on January 1st, 2003, about 15 months after the tragedy, I found myself in Lower Manhattan on my way home from a New Year's Eve party. I walked by Ground Zero. This area, this sacred ground, which had become the center of the world for the last year plus change, was totally deserted, no one else there but me. The whole of Lower Manhattan was almost pitch black except for some low-lit street lamps and the floodlights around Ground Zero. I looked through a small window in the fencing and walls around Ground Zerp and saw the huge empty pit. My mind, obviously, leapt to the memory of 9/11/01, of the lives lost, of the chaos that had descended onto our world. But I also felt a certain kind of peace, a certain calm, a certain honor at being alone in the prescence of these departed lives, their spirits soaring about me. I knew, somehow, that they were okay. 

This might sound irrational but it's true. 

About a year-and-a-half later, I took my late aunt down to Ground Zero. Up until that time, we had never been close simply because I didn't know her very well and she lived out of town. But she really wanted to see Ground Zero so I took her. On the subway ride down, she told me all about her life, a fascinating story. And then, at Ground Zero, we walked around while she peppered me with questions about the speed of the recovery and everything that we going on down there -- and I answered her as best I could. Soon she burst into tears and I comforted her. After that, we became very close until her passing several years later. 

So, in a strange way, 9/11 and its legacy -- as awful and tragic as it's been -- provided me with as much grace as grief. And perhaps that's a perverse way to feel -- but it's the truth, a strange facet of what it means to be human. 

As Seen @ Citi Field -- August 31, 2021, 9:11 PM

This is an important message and, for some people, even quite romantic:

Daze Like These

The last 24-hours in NYC have been ... something.

As we move towards the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the city is struggling with other recent losses, losses that sadden and remind us that the only permanent thing in life is ... impermanence.

Last weeks storms, the offshoot of Hurricaine Ida, hit NYC hard, particularly Queens. President Biden came to the city to survey the damage and talk about how, with climate change, we'll only see more of thing kind of thing.

Over in Brooklyn, there was the death of the brilliant actor Michael K. Williams, Omar from The Wire and a searing, amazing talent. His death from an apparent overdose is a huge loss for the culture and the city. 

And there was another, quieter loss, a fellow name Phil Schaap, who was a professor of Jazz at Columbia and other city institutions as well as a radio-host at WKCR. He was the Jazz Bard of NYC, it's keeper of the flame, and his passing is, to be cliche, the end of an era. 

RIP to all.

Ida in NYC: Floods and Aftermath

Graffiti Gangs of New York

Over the years, I've blogged about graffiti, the unofficial artwork of NYC (including the second post I ever wrote on this blog). 

In the past graffiti was viewed as a public menace, a defacement, a blight on the city. Of course, part of that hatred towards graffiti was towards the artists who created it (namely, people of color). 

Oh, how times have changed.

Today graffiti is high art. Graffiti is now being extolled and celebrated all over NYC, and some graffiti artists who, in the past, were viewed as criminals are now finding big careers in the art world.

These two articles (here and here) gives you some insight about the evolution of graffiti art and artists in NYC. It use to be a gang activity. Graffiti gangs roamed the city, making their mark, blatantly annoucing their existance to people who didn't want to know about it. Now these same people do. The evolution of graffiti from the streets to the galleries is an example of how creativity -- and the future -- is formed literally from the ground up, the grassrootes (or, in this case, the concrete roots), and how the future is all around us all the time. 

Ida Whacks NYC

Literary Hangouts

The New York Times has published an impressive list of some of the legendary bars, restaurants, hotels, buildings -- even a church! --  where the great writers in history use to hang out, drink, chat, and make merry. 

There are some obvious places on this list like (the Chelsea Hotel, the White Horse Tavern, Elaine's) as well as some places that are reminders that the literary history of NYC is not exclusively white -- for example, a building in Harlem where W.E.B Dubois and other great black writers would congregate, or the largely Hispanic Nuyrican Cafe. Reading about these places, you are mentally and emotionally transported back to a time where the written word, and the lively mind, were celebrated.

That said, there are some notable omissions on this list, and I'll mention two of them.

First, there's Pete's Tavern on Irving Place where the famous short story writer O Henry often hung out and wrote, as well as where Ludwig Bemelsmans literally wrote the first and quite legendary children's book Madeleine. Pete's Tavern was more than a hangout -- it was a workplace, an incubator of literary inspiration.

Second, the West End Gate in Morningside Heights near Columbia University. This was a popular hangout for the Beat Generation authors, like Jack Kerouac, Allan Ginsburg, and William S. Buroughs. It even got implicated in a murder in 1944 involving a Columbia student named Lucien Carr -- bizarre story that become a movie called Kill Your Darlings several years ago.

There are literary and other cultural hangouts all over this town -- and that's part of what makes NYC so great.

Counting Crows - "Washington Square"