True crime documentaries and podcasts have become a booming business in the last few years -- especially taking decades-old tabloid stories and turning them into a docu-dramas that go below the surface of, and tell more of the story about, once-screeching headlines. These series also try to provide a broader perspective of the times and places these stories occurred in -- and how they relate (or don't) to the present day's evolved sensibilities.
New York City has had numerous tabloid stories over the years and now, courtesy of the TV show Inside Edition, there's a YouTube channel dedicated to them called New York Gritty.
Some of these stories are very well known -- the deaths of John Lennon and Sid & Nancy, Robert Chambers, Bernie Goetz, and the late Mr NYC interviewee Michael Alig; others, like the Rikers Island Art Heist or a murder at the Met Museum, are less well-known.
It's fun to check-out these old NYC stories if you want to remember what the city used to be like -- and how the events of yesteryear were just as crazy (if not more so) than anything else going on today.
When this blog debuted in 2007 blogs were just starting to become a Thing.
By this time of the mid-aughts most people had gained access to high-speed Internet, but most people did not have the time, money, or energy to create totally original websites for themselves. So blogs filled the void since they were these templated and easy to create, easy to manage homepages.
Blogs at the time were competing for attention with the early versions of social media like Friendster and MySpace but they were primitive and cumbersome to use. Eventually, of course, Facebook conquered them, exploding in popularity and usage. Twitter came along on its heals and provided a more efficient, more public way for people to communicate with the world.
So blogs receded.
They were, and still are, around -- like this one! -- but there are way fewer of them and get much less traffic. Their day has passed.
During this aughties blog boom, however, there were a variety of blogs devoted to NYC, some that I even interviewed their creators about. (Some lasted longer than others, although few have lasted or been this active as this one!)
One such blog at this time was called Joey in Astoria, and it was so popular and active that it even got regular media attention (unlike this one!). It debuted in 2005 and published hundreds and hundreds of posts until, in June 2010, it just ... stopped ... and ... never blogged again.
The blog did not, and does not, explain its long radio silence. It has simply remained dormant for 13 years. It's the digital equivalent of a deep freeze, something stuck in time in an eternal present with no growth towards or expectations of the future. It simply exists ... neither changing or improving or decaying just ... there ...
I hope when the day comes that I decide to end Mr NYC that I will post a final valedictory statement, a fond farewell. I certainly plan to do so unless the tentacles of cirumstance snap me up and keep me seperated from a keyboard with Internet access.
So if this blog ever ends like Joey in Astoria you'll know that life simply overwhelmed me. Otherwise, one day, I will give you all a heartfelt goodbye.
Everyone dies eventually but not in the same way. Some people live long lives and die peacefully at a ripe old age. Other people live for a much shorter period of time and die suddenly. There are no good deaths but some deaths are much better or worse than others.
And some people leave huge legacies while others leave some something short of greatness but are otherwise notable.
Two people whose lives and legacies couldn't be more different just died, and I'm surprised how sad I am about both.
Norman Lear is one of the most important contributors to American culture of the last 50 years. In the 1970s he created the sitcoms All in the Family, Maude, The Jeffersons, Good Times, One Day at a Time, and others. His shows, many set in NYC, were hilarious -- he gave us Archie Bunker's "YOU ... are ... a MEATHEAD!" and Jimmy Walker's "Dyn-o-mite!" -- but they also forced Americans to look at uncomfortable truths like racism, sexism, single motherhood, broken families, and poor communities. He changed not only American television but American culture, and the legacy of his shows reverberate to this day.
Lear has just died at the awesome age of 101, and it's amazing to realize that he didn't create his most important work until he was nearly 50 years old -- and then got to live another 50 years to see how lasting it was. An amazing man, an amazing life, an amazing impact, he was an American original.
Ralph Cirella is someone you'd only know if you are, like me, a huge fan of radio icon Howard Stern. Ralph was his stylist, his friend, his flunkie, and a lot of people loved to hate him because he had a great talent of pissing of just about everyone. But Ralph was a colorful, interesting character who created some great moments for the show. And he was on the show for almost 40 years! I grew up listening to him on Howard so Ralph's death feels like the death of a friend I never knew.
While Ralph didn't leave some kind of huge cultural legacy he was a part of something, a supporting player, for someone who did. The show wouldn't have been the same without him. Sadly, Ralph died suddenly at age 58 after his heart gave out during a procedure to treat a rare lymphoma. It's a tragedy, and great loss.
So one guy lived until 101 and left a huge legacy while another lived much less long and basically left a dent. But they led interesting, impactful lives -- and we should all be so lucky.
Lin Manuel-Miranda is probably the most famous son of Washington Heights.
The other is Henry Kissinger.
The 1970s US Secretary of State, who died at age 100, was a refugee from Nazi Germany when his family settled in Washington Heights in 1938. Henry only lived there a few years, going to George Washington High School (other alumni include Alan Greenspan, Harry Belefonte, Maria Callas, Ronnie Spector, and Manny Ramirez) before heading off to Harvard and foreign policy fame and fortune.
Amazingly, Kissinger's mother lived in Washington Heights until she died in 1998!
After Kissinger's historic run as Presidents Nixon and Ford's National Security Advisor and Secretary of State from 1969 to 1977, Kissinger returned to NYC and lived in style as a foreign policy "consultant" and advisor, a sort of international wise man. He was capital-R Respectable, an icon of the high society circuit, and consulted by Presidents of both parties for his foreign policy wisdom -- mainly due to his role in opening US relations with China in 1972.
Of course, during his time in power, Henry also oversaw the carpet bombing of Cambodia, the defeat in Vietnam, and encouraged right-wing coups in Chile and Argentina that led to decades of dictatorship -- he was responsible for an incalculable number of deaths. His fans say that he was simply a practitioner of realpolitick, seeing the world as it is, not as we want it to be, and acting accordingly. His detractors say he was a war criminal who should have stood trial.
Well, whatever his legacy, Henry Kissinger was a child of NYC who made good in order to do bad.
The short, bizarre congressional career of George Santos has come to its predictable, ignominious end. He should be proud -- he's made history! -- only one of six members of congress in 234 years to be ousted prematurely from the US House.
We should all be so memborable.
Earlier this week, outside Santos' district office in Queens, news crews lined up outside on multiple days, waiting for this moment.
I don't know what kind of news they thought they'd find there but, down in DC, news -- and history -- was most assuredly made: Santos is now doomed to become a curiosity of history, a weird factoid and abberation of our times.
He'll probably go to jail but get out relatively soon, wind up working in right-wing media, spend the rest of his miserable life claiming that he was the target of a dark, vast, nefarious Deep State/Uniparty/Swamp/Establishment -- pick your favorite GOP buzzword -- conspiracy that directly targeted a gay, "Jew-ish" dark skinned immigrant Republican and his deep conservative values. He'll basically be a lifelong professional victim -- and not just the sleazy conman who lied about everything to everybody, broke the law, got caught and rightfully paid the price.
Before the Internet, before blogs and YouTube and social media, if you were a lonewolf amateur artist -- or, as we'd say today, content creator -- you had limited options to get an audience for your work.
For aspiring cartoonists this created a whole subculture of "zines", underground cartoon books, usually with outrageous and adult content, that got passed around by friends or sold directly by the artist.
Now zines, like all underground art of yesteryear, are finally respectable. It's finally gone from being alternative to the establishment. The Brooklyn Museum has a new exhibhit called "Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines" that displays more than 800 zines from the last 50 years and analyzes their cultural impact.
I really want to see this exhibit because I'm old enough to remember zines -- I even had a family member who created one and found them fascinating.
Hopefully, one day, there might be an exhibit on underground blogs -- and, needless to say, I have a suggestion for one that might be included.
So this will be a twofer today for "Mr NYC Ahead of His Time."
In 2011, and in the years since, I blogged about the great 1930s movie star Greta Garbo who moved to NYC in the early 1950s and spent the last decades of her life living as a recluse.
My first blog post about her was called Garbo Walks, and was about how for years on end it became a sport for people in Manhattan to spot the great star walking the streets. (She died in 1990.)
Well, it was a great to see the wonderful NYC podcast The Bowery Boys now do a podcast episode about this very subject called Garbo Walks: A Tale of Old Hollywood in New York City. It's a great piece of city nostalgia that looks at the contradiction of someone who many viewed as a goddess of cinema, a living silhouette of beauty and talent -- but who was in fact just an eldery retiree who kept to herself, who "'vanted to be alone."
But the world wouldn't leave her alone. Even in 1985, when she hadn't made a movie over 40 years, her 80th birthday became big news! Mr NYC may be ahead of his time, but Garbo is timeless.
Currently there is a swirl of buzz in the NYC media world about the corruption investigation into Mayor Eric Adams -- and whether or not it might lead to his resignation (including the idea that former Governor Andrew Cuomo might run to replace him, that'd be wild).
Now let's not get to hung up on the grammer of this headline ("No mayor" is singular, "they" is plural), and the article does a fine job explaining how the line of succession works per the city charter --- but the headline is just flat-out, historically wrong.
While a mayor, Jimmy Walker, did resign in 1932 another mayor also resigned in 1950 -- William O'Dwyer. I even did a blog post in 2019 about the special election of 1950. I even wrote a blog post about the mayor who was elected in that special election -- Vincent Impelliteri -- all the way back in 2007!
Yusef Salaam, an exonerated member of the 1989 Central Park 5, has now been elected to the City Council. Sometimes there is justice in the world. Congrats!
