Ken Auletta Talks Harvey Weinstein @ Queens Public Library

"American Horror Story: NYC"

 

Feral City

Like something out of a dystopian horror movie, most New Yorkers spent the year 2020 indoors, leaving the city streets mostly empties, the storefronts mostly shut. In large swaths of NYC, the neighborhoods felt abandoned, forlorn, empty, drained of the vitality of that makes this city great. 

But not everyone felt that way, specifically my NYC fellow blogger Jeremiah Moss Vanishing New York. 

He loves the fact that the city felt left behind. He loved that tons of rich people skipped town and left the city to us smallfolk. He loved that the people one often found on the streets were the freaks, the weirdos, the homeless, the vagrants, the people society mostly looks down on, the Others.

For a brief moment, it became their city.

This is not how most New Yorkers feel, of course. Crime went up sharply, (here and everywhere around the country), and we're still dealing with it. But Jeremiah, in a new book called Feral New York, offers a contrarian view, arguing that NYC in the worst of times was actually experiencing the best of times, that COVID was an unlikely gift to the least amongst us in the city. The gentrifiers were (temporarily) ceding their power, the "poetry of the streets" taking their place. 

The city became "feral" -- and Jeremiah dug that.

Of course, for people who lost jobs, for people who got sick, for people whose lives were completely upending and are stilling dealing with the aftermath, this thesis will be a hard sell. But it's an interesting take, nonetheless, an offbeat look at a very weird time, and what's more NYC than that?

Fond Farewells

Though they couldn't be more different, two events happened this week that marked the passage of time, the end of eras in the history of NYC culture.

First, the passing of legendary stage, screen and TV actress Angela Lansbury. What can one say about this amazing talent who could sing and act like no one else, whose career spanned from roughly 1944 to 2018, who appeared in brilliant films like Gaslight (1944), The Manchurian Candidate (1962) and Bedknobs and Broomsticks (1971, one of my wife's favorites), a decade-plus run on TV with Murder, She Wrote (1984-1996) -- and multiple roles on Broadway including Mame, Sweeney Todd, and Blithe Spirit (amongst many others) that won her a total of 5 Tony Awards? She was an acting legend's legend, someone who made Broadway the truly "great" White Way, and we'll probably never see her likes again -- we only got to enjoy her talent for almost 80 years. 

Second, the news that the "news" will be replacing the music on that spot on the NYC radio dial 92.3 FM. It's been a music station for decades starting in the 1940s, and in the 1970s it became an all-disco station (WKTU) before becoming K-ROCK, a classic rock station in 1980s -- the station that thrust Howard Stern into the cultural firmament of NYC, then the rest of the country (I blogged about this in 2019). Howard went to satellite in 2006, and K-ROCK floundered, changing formats to "hot talk" then back to music, finally becoming "Alt 92.3" -- but now the station will dump music altogether and instead simulcast its sister station 1010 WINS, the "all news, all the time" station that keeps NYC moving (plus they "give you the world" in 22 minutes). K-ROCK was also the station of Allison Steele, Vin Scelsa, and lots of great music so it's sad to see it vanish into the ether, to become essentially an FM-offshoot of an all-news station -- but in this era of podcasting, streaming, etc. radio is in decline, and this just proves it. RIP 92.3 FM, and thanks for the memories. 

Memo from NYC

Thirty-years ago this month a little arthouse movie opened that portended a cultural revolution: Reservoir Dogs, the debut of director Quentin Tarantino, was a smart, violent, funny, thoughtful look at a bunch of professional criminals carrying out a jewelry heist that goes very wrong. It was a 1990s movie inspired by a 1970s grindhouse aesthetic, and a rare film where the storytelling and dialogue were as compelling as the action. 

There are many memorable moments in Reservoir Dogs: the opening where "the dogs" sit around and talk casually about Madonna and tipping waitresses before going to commit a violent crime; the gruesome, infamous ear-slicing scene; the "commode story" sequence where one of the characters tells a tall tale, and an enormous amount of tension is built up, about something that actually never happened; the debate about how "black bitches", unlike "white bitches", don't tolerate abusive men, along with a reminiscences of 1970s show Get Christy Love (catchphrase: "You're under arrest, sugah'!"); the assignment of the characters names like Mr White, Mr Blue, Mr Orange, and Mr Pink ("'Cause you're a faggot alright!"). And, of course, the brutal ending. 

For me, however, the best part is "K-Billy Super Sounds of the '70s", a radio show that plays throughout the movie and introduces the various songs we hear. K-Billy is voiced by a super-deadpanning Steven Wright, a flat monotone that contrasts with the hyper-violence and over-the-top behavior we see throughout the movie.

When this movie came out, I was in high school, and had fallen in love with the idea of being a "personality DJ", a voice that haunted the city and that gave resonance to the music being played. This was the time of Allison Steele and Scott Muni, and when Howard Stern was at his most outrageous self. This was before corporate-consolidation and voice-tracking and podcasts drained the life out of music radio -- the voice made the music, the music became something deeper, and it did so brilliantly in Reservoir Dogs. 

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A Rainy Day in NYC

Yesterday, Tuesday, October 4th, was a rainy one in NYC. In fact, it was so rainy that a transformer near my house got flooded and we lost power in our kitchen. But enough about our good times -- yesterday was one of those days where two unrelated yet nonetheless semi-historic events took place that proves this city is and will forever be fascinating.

First, a princess took the ferry -- literally. Princess Anne, the daughter of the late Queen Elizabeth II, came to town for a bunch of events (I guess she's back at work now) and one of her excursions included taking the Staten Island Ferry. Don't worry, the princess is married so I don't think she was traveling to the Forgotten Borough in order to date Pete Davidson. Instead, her highness took in a unique and fascinating view of NYC -- even if it was in a rainy haze. I hope she had a good voyage.

Second, and most notable, Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees hit homerun 62 in a single season for the American League, besting Yankee Roger Maris' record from the 1960s. Now this isn't the first time 62 homeruns has been achieved in a single season. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa did it in 1998, then Barry Bonds did it in 2001. However, it's been revealed that they did this from using performance-enhancing steroids so Judge's presumably drug-free achievement is all the more remarkable. Sadly, he didn't hit this homerun in NYC -- it was down in Texas against the Rangers -- but nonetheless it's a big win for the city as well as for him and his team. Congrats.

And it all happened on one rainy day in New York City. 

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Out On The Streets

The streets of NYC have so much romance attached to them that there have literally been great songs written in their honor  -- "The Sidewalks of New York", "Across 110th Street", and "Positively 4th Street" just to name a few.  

Right now, and until the end of October, there's an exhibit in Greenwich Village called Village Voices 2002 where, on the streets of the beloved neighborhood, there are boxes with small exhibits and recordings that tell you the history of the streets their located on. 

The streets of NYC have a magic to them, representing the limitless possibilities of this city in concrete and steel.

But the streets of NYC also have an obvious menace. Danger lurks on them, intertwined with the glamour and excitement of the city. And while the streets of NYC are always fascinating to traverse, it's another thing if that's where you have to live, where you are forced to make your home. The expression "out on the streets" is as scary a threat as there is.

One Year, a podcast series that chronicles little-known or forgotten news stories from years past (recent seasons were 1977 and 1995) is currently doing a season on 1986. Their latest and last episode from this season is called "The Man From Fifth Avenue" about a movie of the same name that none of us have ever or will ever see but that became something a scandal in that summer 36 years ago. It follows a man named Joe being evicted from his apartment on the Upper West Side -- he faces life "on the streets", hurtling towards certain death in penury. This episode, which is a must-listen, tells the story of this man and his predicament, a fascinating NYC story that is way more complicated and with a much more unbelievable backstory than any of us could have imagined.

So why was the The Man From Fifth Avenue a scandal? Because it was -- ready for this? -- a piece of communist Soviet propaganda. This "movie" was created, with Joe as the willing tool, to demonstrate the greed and cruelty of American capitalism to Soviet citizens, to make them appreciate their "workers paradise" -- never mind that their country had many homeless people "on the streets" too. The problem for the USSR was that this movie came out around the same time as the Chernobyl disaster that would expose the venal dishonesty and incompetence of the Soviet system -- and that would lead to its demise five years later. 

There's another way to think about this movie and how it relates to our lives today: it was an early piece of disinformation -- although this time targeted at the Russians and not Americans -- that would eventually come back to haunt us in our presidential election 30 years later. It's also a reminder that while communism fell in the Soviet Union/Russia, what came afterwards was equally scary. And, closer to home, it was an example of dislocation and gentrification that have rocked NYC in the decades since. This propagandistic movie was a giant lie that also exposed certain uncomfortable truths. 

The streets of NYC have always held, and always will hold, so much promise and so much danger. 

Farewell to the "Phantom"

There are certain things we know are going to happen but still can't believe it when they do -- like graduating from school, the death of elderly relatives, the end of our favorite TV shows.

This month saw two such non-surprises surprises: the death of Queen Elizabeth II after 70 years on the British throne and the announcement that The Phantom of the Opera will close in February, 2023. It opened in January, 1988 so it will end after just over 35 years, the longest-running show -- by far -- in Broadway history.

In fact, it ran for nearly half the length of QE2's reign.

The changes to Broadway, NYC, and America between 1988 and now are almost impossible to list. Needless to say, it opened in a very different time and city from when it will sing its swan song. Still, much like QE2, it's had a run that will be almost impossible to top -- and a place burnished in cultural history.