Penn Station Redesign

NYC Scrapbooking

At the risk of being gauche, allow me to quote myself: a couple of years ago I described this blog as a "pastiche" or "a collage, a repository for memories, a collection of favorite things, a funhouse of nostalgia, a love letter to the past and future, a work of art, a self-contained world that invites you to visit a while and become absorbed in."

You might also call it a scrapbook.

In its way, Mr NYC is a digital scrapbook, roughly defined as a document of precious memories, a collection of souvenirs and mementos, and an opportunity to channel one's inner artist.

Scrapbooks need not be literal books full of pieces of paper and objects of one's past or journey thru life. They can be, more metaphorically speaking, things like diaries or autobiographies or videos -- or blogs like this one -- anything that captures and makes sense of the past and provides tea leaves for the future.

I recently encountered two examples of metaphorical scrapbooking, both of which fascinate me: a new exhibit about Lou Reed at the NYPL that is a collection of his papers, recordings, and various nickknacks, showing the work and evolution of this great and influential NYC musician; and a new novel by, of all people, the actor David Duchovny that is based on his memories of growing up in NYC.

This exhibit and this novel are, in a way, scrapbooks of these two very different NYC artists -- as is this humble blog.

When Anne Frank wrote her diary hiding out in that apartment in Amsterdam or when Marco Polo dictated his memories of China while literally imprisoned, these two people who would otherwise be lost to history instead were made immortal.  They told their stories, they recorded and "scrapbooked" their lives, and in doing so not only made us better understand their times and adventures (told both from the perspective of two people who were literally trapped) but made us understand that the world was a greater place, and the human spirit more indomitable, than we could ever imagine.

Scrapbooking is a great start.

Moving to NYC Ain't for Sissies

Twice in my life I've moved to NYC -- first, when I exited my mother's womb, and, second, when I moved back from college (which I even blogged about).

So, really, I've never moved to NYC -- I sprouted out of here, then left at one point, then came back, and have stayed ever since. I've moved around NYC a couple times, but never to it. I'm a native, a product of it, a weed in the great field of the city (more on weed later).

But millions and millions of people over the centuries have moved here, sometimes from nearby places, sometimes from across the country, sometimes from the farthest reaches of the world. And yet wherever they come from, and whatever the reason they move here, it's a big change, an overwhelming experience.

As it's been said about getting old, moving to NYC ain't for sissies.

And the reasons, as mentioned, are various, and fascinating. The New York Times Magazine recently ran several stories about people moving to NYC for a variety of reasons, under a variety of circumstances. The stories are about:

- The dreamers, the people who move here to find great success but inevitably find living and achieving here harder than they could ever have imagined. If you can make here ... Heck, it's hard for us natives to succeed here but being an emigre to NYC makes it even tougher. It's a sobering experience, as this story tells us.  

- There are the people (including dreamers) who move here and find themselves living with people they could never possibly imagined even knowing, let alone co-habiting with. The desire to live here is so strong, and the availability of housing is so stressed, that people end up living in all sorts of strange circumstances, in ways they could never have thought before moving to NYC. 

- There are the people who moved here in 2020, at the height of the pandemic, for myriad wild reasons. Moving to NYC is tough at the best of times but moving to the epicenter of the deadliest pandemic in more than a century? That takes guts. That takes determination. And each story behind it is fascinating. 

 - Then there are the people moving here not because they want to but because they have been displaced from their homelands -- refugees, people feeling war and persecution. Ukraine and Afghanistan are the most recent, horrifying examples but over the centuries people have fled danger at home to find peace and prosperity in NYC. My daughter has a new girl in her class who just started school in April, whose family just got out of Ukraine. They may be safe and happy to be in NYC but no doubt miss leaving home under these extreme, tragic circumstances.

- And now, finally, to the weed: marijuana will be legal to sell soon in NYC and New York State, and people who have experience in the legal pot business elsewhere are moving here to get into the game. An influx of legal weed dealers -- not scuzzy guys in wife-beater T's selling dime bags in their gross basement apartments -- but smart businesspeople plying a legit and profitable trade in classy, hygienic stores are coming to town, soon to sell us a variety of Indica and Sativa in various forms. No doubt the competition will be fierce but those who succeed will really have "made it here", seeing their NYC dreams come true through ever inhalation we take.

Moving to NYC ain't for sissies -- but it's always interesting.

Review: The Who @ MSG

I'm a little tardy in writing this review (darn life gets in the way) but yours truly and the misses had the pleasure of going to see the great, legendary British band The Who at Madison Square Garden on May 26th.

In short -- it was a great show. Roger Daltrey and Peter Townsend are still incredible, even into their seventies. 

In my 'umble opinion, The Who is one of the greatest rock bands in history -- in HISTORY! I tells ya' -- in the Top 5 with The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin -- and I don't know who's #4. The Who have so many hits, so many classic and brilliant songs, that it would probably take a full 48 hours to perform all of them.

But they performed a lot of them: "Pinball Wizard" from Tommy (which I saw on Broadway in 1995 so it was great to see the band do it live), "Eminence Front" (perhaps my favorite song of theirs), "Won't Get Fooled Again", and many others, including songs from Quadrophenia. They closed out the show with a rousing version of "Baby O'Reilly" that rocked the house, with a young violinist ending the show that felt, in some ways, like a passing of the torch from Daltrey and Townsend to the next generation.  

Obviously, in this show, they didn't perform all of their hits (no "Magic Bus" or "My Generation" or "Squeezebox") but we left MSG happy to have seen this amazing band. 

Besides the music, this was the most touching and emotional show I've ever seen.

Most rock stars tell the audience "Hey, great to see you, thanks for coming out," but Pete Townsend went much farther. He told us that he's 77 years old and, after COVID and health problems, he couldn't believe that after more than 50 years with this band that people still want to see him and Daltrey rock out -- especially when there's lord knows how many young artists and bands these days. He was truly grateful, and you could tell how much he and the band really truly loved just playing and singing their music, amazed that after so many decades, so many shows in so many cities, they still get to do this and that we, the public, still want them to do it. 

Great music, great enthusiasm, great artistry -- that never gets old, that is truly timeless.  

This city is too funny ...

Meet "Grand Central Madison": LIRR East Side Access Is Here!

You might not have realized it but quietly, diligently, for the last fifteen years, roughly the lifespan of this blog, tunnels have been dug under the East River and East Side of Manhattan. Also, a brand new train terminal has been built underneath Grand Central Central that, in December, will open and be known as Grand Central Madison.

Grand Central Madison (I assume it'll become known as GCM), will connect all 11 lines of the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central Station. This means that commuters from Queens, Brooklyn and Long Island who work or want to visit the East Side of Manhattan, now won't be forced to go to Penn Station on West 34th Street and then tack east. 

Instead ... they'll be right there, able to get out and walk to their desired location or hope on the 4/5/6 subway lines. 

This is, in a word, huuuugggeee -- this is the most massive transformation of NYC transportation in the last century. It's a bigger deal than any of the bridges that Robert Moses built because it will greatly reduce commuting times in and out of Manhattan and will, no doubt, transform the economy of the city. 

I can't wait to see it!

Back to Virgin -- Would You Go?

This is real thing women can get at a spa.

Guys, you should ask your lady first before you get her a gift certificate for this.

Ladies, does something like this interest you?

What a time to be alive! All comments are welcome!

Michael Mann Takes NYC

A few years ago I blogged about the great 1995 movie Heat, a Los Angeles crime epic starring two of the greatest actors NYC ever produced -- Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. Although taking place entirely in LA, the New York sensibility of its two stars makes it ever greater.

It's one of my favorite movies, a true classic, about men and their work, men and their loves, about how work and love become one and the same, and overwhelms and subsumes them. I can watch this movie again and again and again and find something new each time to appreciate about it. 

The movie was written and directed by Michael Mann (himself a son of Chicago) who has made many excellent films over the last forty years including Thief, Manhunter, The Last of the Mohicans, The Insider, Ali, and Collateral. His movies, and the men and women who lives and work he portrays, are steely, unsentimental, brutal, and totally honest. In each movie he brings his exacting eye, his almost surgical camera-work, his extremely honest storytelling, not so much to tell a story but to reveal one through the motivations and actions of his characters. His movies manage to be both trilling and suspenseful while also soulful and meditative. Mann's movies, as I wrote before, are action movies for smart people.

And now Michael Mann is having a moment in NYC. His movies are enjoying a retrospective at the Museum of the Moving Image in early June and then, on June 17th, the Tribeca Film Festival is honoring Heat with a special screening where Mann, Pacino, and De Niro will be in attendance and speak afterwards. 

Truly a Mann and his moment.

Weekend Heatwave in NYC

Remembering Ben Gazzara

Almost all of my blog posts this week have been about actors so I think I'll end the week by writing about one more -- the late, great Ben Gazzara.

The quintessential character actor, Gazzara had a long and impressive career. A native of NYC, a child of Italian immigrants growing up in Kips Bay, Gazzara got his start in local theater and the Actors Studio before his big break, starring in the original production of Tennessee Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof in 1955, directed by Elia Kazan.

Numerous plays, films and TV appearances followed through the 1950s, '60s, and 70s, including A Hatful of Rain and movies with the John Cassavettes including the classic Husbands in 1970 and Opening Night in 1977. 

Gazzara's brief flirtation with movie stardom happened in the 1970s when he starred as Al Capone in Capone (1975) and the Peter Bogdanovich classic Saint Jack in 1979, playing an American running a prostitution ring in Singapore -- a thriller about the depths of human greed and depravity. 

Gazzara continued to work into the 1980s and 1990s, and I became aware of him when he had another golden era in the late 1990s with such classics as David Mamet's brilliant thriller The Spanish Prisoner, the super dark comedy Happiness by Todd Solandz, and as the sleazy Jackie Treehorn in the The Big Lebowski.

Then in 2002 he won an Emmy for his role in the HBO movie Hysterical Blindness.

A few years later I saw him on the Broadway stage in a revival of the Clifford Odets play Awake and Sing! He was an adorable, charming presence in that first-class revival. 

Gazzara died in 2012, leaving behind an amazing body of work. A great NYC, the last of a great acting breed.