Bad & Beautiful Perspectives of Penn Station

 

Mr NYC in the Poconos

Recently the family and I took an overnight trip to a resort in the Poconos, the beautiful mountain range in Northern Pennsylvania overlooking the Delaware River.

Despite being only a two-hour drive from NYC, this was the first time yours truly ever ventured there. Like the Catskills or the Berkshires, the Poconos is a place where people like to ski in the winter and swim in the summers, getting a literal and figurative breath of fresh air from the stresses of city life.

Since we really aren't skiers, we spent almost all of our time there in a massive indoor water park with slides and running rivers and hot tubs that we really loved. Outdoors the views were beautiful (if not quite as stunning as the Sierra Nevada ranges) and the air was very frigid -- you never realize how high up you are until that cold mountain air hits you in the face. The thing about the Poconos is that its heyday is long past -- before frequent air travel and rising incomes, families from NYC and Philly would go to places like this for vacations. It was a booming time of big resorts, vaudeville shows, and whole transient communities. Nowadays, that's a thing of the past, most of the resorts are gone or abandoned -- but the skiing and rivers still attract some tourists.

We had a few interesting and weird experiences during our 36 hours in the Poconos.

In addition to the water fun, my family and I did an "escape room" where a whole family gets trapped in a series of rooms and has to do a bunch of stunts to get out. The first room was so impossible to get out of that someone had to come in and help us but then I shot a bunch of fake rats (don't ask) that got us out of the second room (this made me a hero to the wife and kids) and then in the third room we didn't have to do much to do. While I'm glad we did the escape room, I can't imagine it's an experience we'll ever repeat.

The people working at the resort were very nice if a little eccentric. One of the guys who served us at the pool was from the Bronx and, when we decided to order pizza, he told us: "Remember, it's not New York pizza, it's Poconos pizza, best for kids and drunks."

We also did something called a "silent disco" where people congregate and are given headphones with pre-programmed music and they can dance to different songs. My family danced (I didn't) and it was a weird if lighthearted thing to experience. 

Then another time I ordered a cocktail off the bar menu called "On the Slopes" -- basically a White Russian except that it substituted Grand Marnier for Vodka. When I ordered the drink, the old lady bartender said: "That's a good choice!"

Me: "Thanks."

Bartender: "It's my drink, I invented it."

Me: "Oh, I see."

Bartender: "It's actually called 'Sex on the Slopes' but they wouldn't let me put 'sex' on the menu."

Me (unsure how to reply): "Well, this is a family establishment."

Bartender: "Kids don't look at the menu!"

She had a point but I still don't understand why you'd called a drink "Sex on the Slopes" since, unlike "Sex on the Beach", sex on skiing slopes isn't something people really do. Anyhoo ...

I liked the Poconos, it was very nice, and you should check it out if you'd like a brief respite from the crazy life of NYC.

Classic Mr NYC

Recently I went to see the special Edward Hopper exhibit at the Whitney Museum that just closed. Entitled "Edward Hopper's New York", the exhibit displayed Hopper's classic portraits of the the city as seen from the perspective of the common man and woman.

Hopper's NYC was not one of the skyscrapers, the famous tourists sites, the gorgeous parks or any kind of stereotypical cityscape. His city was the city of street corners and every day New Yorkers living their lives, of deserted streets as seen at night or first thing in the morning, of its beauty and loneliness, of people simply working to survive. Hopper's New York was the one we all live in but rarely see reflected back to us in art.

One of the paintings that was not in this exhibit, but that is probably his most famous, is "Nighthawks" that he painted in 1941. In 2018 I did a whole blog post about it and you can read it here.

In many way, this blog aspires to be what Hopper's paintings were -- an attempt to captures the city's emotional core, it's every day psychology, it's spirit and psyche, its underground existence. While Hopper certainly was a lot more talented than I'll ever be, he remains an inspiration to me.

The Hispanic Society of America

In a city with some of the world's most famous museums, perhaps the least known but most impressive is the Hispanic Society of America in Washington Heights.

I went to this museum several years ago, and recently read a new article about an exhibition that it's putting on in London, the first of its kind (the museum itself is currently closed for extensive renovations).

Founded at the turn of the 20th century, the Hispanic Society is not really so much of a traditional "society" or organization but a museum and research library focusing on the arts, culture, and history of Spain, Portugal, Latin America, the Spanish East Indies, and Portuguese India. There are extensive and gorgeous historical paintings, along with books and other cultural artifacts rom these parts of the world. The building itself is a stunning, palatial, Beaux Arts stone masterpiece that is even more jaw-droppingly beautiful inside than out. 

The reason, I'm sure, that this amazing museum is not better known is because it's located so far uptown and, let's face it, concentrates on peoples and parts of the world that White America and White NYC cares little about. But going there, and reading about this museum and the history it records, is a reminder that there is a whole other continent-spanning world (worlds, really), a whole other history, a whole other culturally-rich and fascinating immersive culture that most non-Hispanic peoples know nothing but can easily learn about. 

And that's what's so great about NYC -- you can literally go somewhere and enter another world, learn another history, and get immersed in another culture that is so far from your own but that enriches your spirit and expands your world. 

NYC and Film Forum Past & Present

 

The Prospect Park Alligator

The Lou Reed Files

Recently in the news there's been a lot of controversy about documents, specifically presidents and vice-presidents of both parties taking home classified materials from their times in office, presumably to be kept as mementos or to be monetized somehow. Government and corporate files, and what is done with them, can be a lightening rode of controversy, whether its presidential records, the so-called Twitter files that some people think are bombshells of corporate and political malfeasance or "nothing burgers" (as most people seem to have concluded they are), and even the British royal family has issues with their files, most of which are kept secret from the public at large.

Files, documents, papers, tchotchkes, and other stuff, the kind of things that are stuffed into draws and cabinets -- they are the history of our lives and times. A lot of this stuff might be considered garbage but some of it can be quite valuable, insanely valuable. Because if journalism is the first draft of history, the files and archives of a person, company or government are the raw materials of history; in many ways, they are history, history made read, tactile and indisputable. 

They are stuff that our history is made of. 

As any devout Mr NYC ready knows I'm a lifelong fan of the great NYC singer/songwriter Lou Read. (Talking about an archive, you can read my extensive Lou Reed archive here.) But even better, until early next month, you can go to the New York Public Library Performing Arts location at Lincoln Center and see "Lou Reed: Caught Between the Twisted Stars" which is an exhibit of Lou Reed's personal archives that were donated to the library after his death in 2013.

The exhibit is an extensive display of the original cassettes and master tapes of Lou Reed's music, including from his time with the Velvet Underground. There are numerous posters from his concerts over the years, and some of his guitars and other trinkets. But my personal favorite are the letters that were sent to him over the decades, especially from such fellow legends as rock journalist Lester Bangs, Czech President Vaclav Havel (who dubbed the fall of Communism in his country as the "Velvet Revolution"), ex-Velvet Doug Yule, a fellow singer/songwriter named Paul McCartney, and even a letter from the White House. It's a reminder that Lou Reed's music meant a lot to many different kinds of people, and the huge respect he was held in by many. 

I took some pictures of the exhibit and really enjoyed it. It's a reminder that the man and his music made an deep impact on our culture and our world, and here was the proof, right before our eyes.

Here are Lou's words about how his career started:

And here are some of the posters, from the last time the Velvet Underground performed together in 1970 at Max's Kansas City:

Finally, the aforementioned letters, some of which are quite touching and funny:

A person's archives, and what they reveal about a life, will forever fascinate me.

Save Flaco!

Review: "Turn Every Page – The Adventures of Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb" (2022)

For the first time in way too long, I was able to do something I had done many times before kids and COVID took over my life -- go to a movie at Film Forum. And nothing could have been a more quintessential NYC experience that seeing a documentary there about two titanic New Yorkers, Robert Caro and Robert Gottlieb, called Turn Every Page. 

For those who don't already know, Robert Caro is the author of the 1974 classic book The Power Broker about the NYC "master builder" Robert Moses who shaped this city in ways beyond comprehension. I've blogged a lot about Moses and this book over the years to the point of absurdity. 

I haven't done so about Gottlieb but he is no less a legend -- he is not only a book editor but is probably the most successful book editor of the late 20th, early 21st centuries. Since the 1950s, he's edited books by the likes of Michael Crichton and John la Carre, he edited all of Toni Morrison's novels, he not only edited but also came up with the title for Catch-22 (which has become a cultural catchphrase), he edited President Bill Clinton's autobiography in 2004 -- the legacy of the authors he's worked with and the books he's worked on is immense. And he's edited each of Robert Caro's books, starting with The Power Broker and then, for the last 40+ years, his multi-volume biography of President Lyndon Johnson, the last book of which they're still working on together.

Turn Every Page is about the working relationship of these two men over the decades, and how it's evolved but also stayed largely the same. They love each other dearly but aren't afraid to fight or disagree about their work, their passion for it being so great. Directed by Gottlieb's daughter Lizzie, it's a very affectionate portrait of these two men but also a very detailed, sober look at the extremely hard work of writing and editing -- they even spend time talking about semi-colons and stuff like that.

And that's what I loved about this documentary -- it's about the work just as much as it is about the personalities. It's about how these men actually get these books written, about how hard it is, about how exacting and time-consuming it is to create great, memorable books. It's also wonderful to see the story of two NYC boys who dreamed big and achieved greatness. But most of all, it focuses on the work, the toughness and demands of the work, and how there are no shortcuts. 

The documentary's title, Turn Every Page, is based on something that Robert Caro's boss told him when he was a young reporter at Newsday and was starting out doing investigating work: "Turn every page, turn every goddamn page!" 

Go see it!

Bobby De Niro Dancing in "Mean Streets" (1973)