Blood Moon NYC

Imperial City

If you think about it, the composition of New York City is crazy -- five counties of varying sizes and shapes, a collection of forty-something islands in a political mishmash, the map of which looks like some kind of modern art masterpiece. 

That's because NYC isn't really a city at all -- it's an empire, an Imperial City.

Prior to 1898, NYC was limited to Manhattan and large swaths of the Bronx (it included villages that had been incorporated). Brooklyn was its own large city. Queens and Richmond (now Staten Island) were like the counties upstate and on Long Island, a collection of towns and villages.

Consolidation, obviously, changed all that, making the political marriage of these cities and counties into one whole place called Greater New York -- but it was not a marriage of five equals. Manhattan, pre-1898 New York City, basically annexed its neighbors with political and economic pressure the same way the other powerful countries have (peacefully and violently) absorbed foreign lands, turning their solitary realms into expansive empires (think Tsarist Russia or Austria-Hungary). 

Today, we take it for granted that NYC is the way it is, the biggest city (by far) in the country, one of the greatest in the entire world. But our Imperial City was not always destined to be so -- it was a long, brutal, slog, and was largely the vision of one man, Andrew Haswell Green.

I've blogged about how consolidation happened before (most recently in 2017) but what I never appreciated until now how this city really does resemble an empire -- and how comparing NYC to any other city in the country is really an exercise in futility. It's so much larger, so much more complex, than any other city in the USA that it's like comparing an calculus problem to an algebra problem -- it's in a different league of complexity.

And, in some ways, geographically, NYC is like many great empires with a core city or country (Manhattan) with territories that spread out in multiple-directions beyond its borders. 

Think I'm wrong? Just think about how we talk about the "outer-boroughs" vs. Manhattan (which I guess we should call the "inner-borough"), think about the understated resentment that exists between Manhattanites and non-Manhattanites, between the "bridge-and-tunnel" crowd and those who live in, and refer to, "the city." 

That's what makes empire and what makes NYC America's Imperial City, a mini-empire inside a country that, if you think about it, is an empire as well. 

My Scott Shannon Story

In the annals of NYC morning radio, no DJ except Howard Stern (and probably Jim Kerr) is as legendary as Scott Shannon.

For nearly 40 years, he's been waking up this city with his hypnotic timber. After working in Florida, he came to NYC in 1983 and started the "Z-Morning Zoo" on Z100, a widely imitated morning radio show format of wacky phone calls, in-studio guest, stunts, and music interspersed with news and traffic. After a brief hiatus in LA, Scott returned to NYC and spent roughly 23 years at WPLJ where he co-hosted "Scott and Todd in the Morning", one of the longest running duos in morning radio history. Then, in 2014, he left WPLJ (five years before it ceased to exist) and did mornings at WCBS-FM -- and he'll be retiring from there, and from morning radio, this December.

I've blogged in years past about how, one summer in the 1990s, I was an intern at WPLJ. It was a pop music station with the forgettable slogan, "No rap, no hard stuff, no sleepy elevator music. Just the best songs on the radio!" At the time I was too ignorant to understand this dog whistle to mean, "No black stuff, no dirty stuff, no weird stuff. Just boring square white music!"

Anyhoo, Scott Shannon was in his "Scott and Todd" heyday and was a really big deal at the station. Not only was he the morning guy but he was also the program director, so he was treated as a God at the station. As a lowly intern, I had almost no contact with him -- except one day where I was given a huge stack of letters to fax (remember fax machines?) which happened to be located right next to his office. I spent the better part of this day just faxing stuff, and Scott Shannon would be in and out of his office, passing me by. He mostly ignored me but then, out of nowhere, he asked me if I "got chicks." I was a hopelessly nerdy no-girl getting shrimp so I just laughed nervously. So he started calling me "Chick Magnet!" Every time he walked in and out of the office he'd shout "Chick magnet!" For the rest of my internship, whenever I passed him by, "Chick magnet!" My only other interactions with him were when he asked me to fax something for him (I obliged) and then when he talked up and put his fingers around one of my wrists, telling me he couldn't believe how thin my wrist was. He was right, but it was weird.

Anyway, I never saw or thought about him or WPLJ for years after I left until the station went off the air in 2019. And, honestly, Mr Shannon was quite nice to me. So I congratulate him on a long career and wish him a happy retirement. His legacy in NYC radio is quite secure.  

What Happened to Millionaire's Row?

Review: "Escape from New York" (1981) and "Single White Female" (1992)

If you pay attention to the news, the media is full of hysterical fearmongering, trying to convince the denizens of this 8.8 million strong burg that it's a crime ridden hell-hole, a dystopia of sorts.

This, of course, is nonsense -- crime remains WAY lower than it was even twenty-years ago, the city is quite safe -- but fear sells, helps otherwise unpopular (i.e. Republican) politicians get elected, the media does everything to help them, and they use it to pursue an agenda in government that no one actually likes. 

It's happened before and will go on and on, ad infinitum. 

New York City is in no ways a dystopia but the image of the city as some kind of scary place persists. Obviously this has been captured in movies such as Taxi Driver and The Warriors from the 1970s, at a time when the city really did seem to be verging on the dystopic.

Two other movies, very different in premise and plot, show another way that NYC might be dystopic. They couldn't be more different in story and tone, as one is totally surreal and out-there while the other is disturbingly believable and possible -- and something some New Yorkers have really dealt with.

Escape from New York (1981) by John Carpenter is about how Manhattan island, in the year 1997(!) has become a literal wall-off prison where the most dangerous criminals have been sent to live out their lives in an abandoned urban jungle. When Air Force One crashes into the island (thanks to terrorists from the Soviet Union which the USA is at war with), a prisoner named Snake (Kurt Russell) is sent-in to rescue the President in 24-hours -- or he'll literally die. Along the way, he recruits a bizarro cab driver played by Ernest Borgnine and a man from Snake's past played by Harry Dean Stanton. There's also a hot chick and lots of weirdos who follow Snake on his mission, trying to free the president from the crime lord who rules this hell-hole played by, of all people, Isaac Hayes (he of "Shaft" fame). While the premise from Escape from New York is insane, it's a remarkably straight-forward and smartly paced action movie -- and unlike movies today that are non-stop action sequences with tiny bits of plot, in this movie the plot drives the action, and there actually isn't that much violence. And Kurt Russell shows what a great leading man he is, and why he's had a very long career. If you want to see the ultimate NYC as dystopia movie, this is it. 

Then there's Single White Female (1992). Now this is a scary movie -- it should have been called These White Bitches Are Crazy! This is a believably dystopic story -- in fact, the only unbelievable thing about it is that two underemployed women could afford a huge apartment in the Ansonia. This is about how the greatest danger you can find in this city might literally be in your own home! Bridget Fonda stars as a woman named Allie who finds out that her handsome fiance is cheating so she kicks him out and gets a roommate named Hedy (Jennifer Jason Leigh, brilliant as always). At first Allie and Hedy get along great, become friends, and life seems good. But when Allie gets back together with the fiance, all goes wrong -- Hedy becomes jealous, starts to pretend to be Allie, tries to seduce the fiance, tries to take over herself and become Allie -- and all hell breaks loose. This is the NYC  dystopia in the form of the roommate from hell, how our worst dystopia isn't a city full of criminals but a house full of craziness. It's also just a really good  mainstream thriller, the kind of movie they don't make anymore. 

Of course, if NYC had someone who helped to make the city a transportation dystopia that persists to this day -- Robert Moses, the 20th century "master builder" who rammed highways all over town and starved public transportation. There's a new play about him on Broadway played by, of all people, Ralph Fiennes called Straight Line Crazy. Believe it or not, even though it's about a famous New Yorker, this play is a fully British production -- Brit actor, writer, and director, first premiering at the National Theater in London. This news story about the play is fascinating -- watching Ralph Fiennes describe how Robert Moses wanted to thrust a highway in Lower Manhattan is bizarre and amazing to watch. 

Ted Cruz Gets a Bronx Welcome

New York values, beautifully on display. 

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.