As congestion pricing takes effect in NYC, we may very well be seeing the eclipse of the car in NYC -- or at least in lower Manhattan. Less cars, more money to public transit it music to the ears of any real New Yorker.
Take that Robert Moses!
But people still loves their cars -- I get it.
And even if you don't love cars (like me), you might have enjoyed theSaturday morning NPR show Car Talk (like me) that ran from 1986 to 2012 -- syndicated nationally from Boston and broadcast locally here on WNYC.
If you want to listen to some old Car Talk episodes, WNYC has a massive archive of old shows that are a pleasant diversion from the miseries of our time -- and love letter to the all-American automobile.
In 2008, when this blog was less than two years old, I made a trip to China that I blogged about here.
It was the second time in my life that I'd gone to China and, for literally years afterwards, I've been meaning to do another post about my first visit.
The problem is that my first visit was in 1985 when I was eight years old and we were there for a month. So I don't remember everything about it and couldn't, I feel, do a post justice.
But, finally, I will do a post -- picking up random shards of memories from long ago, providing impressions, of my first trip to China 40 years ago with my dad.
What I remember is that, back then, China was still coming out of its first years of hardline Communism. Mao had been dead for less than a decade, and the country had yet to experience the massive economic growth and wealth that defines it today. I remember everyone riding around on ringing bicycles, most people living in small thatched houses like huts, and lots of people walking down the street eating out of rice bowls.
It was, obviously, a very different world from 1980s NYC. Whe started our trip in Shanghai and I don't remember much about it except that, in the hotel lobby, they were playing Madonna's "Like a Virgin" in Chinese and that there was the first of several-to-be-encountered pitchers of boiled water in our room.
Later on we visited cities like Chongqing and also saw the amazing, historic Terracota Warriors that had only been discovered 11 years earlier in 1974.
I remember we went to Beijing and saw the Forbidden City for the first time -- and then one night ate Peking Duck and went to the Chinese circus.
I remember walking around Tiananmen Square, four years before the exploded in deadly riots.
I remember seeing pandas in the zoo for the first time, also the Summer Palace.
I remember we stayed somewhere at a hotel by the river and they would catch fresh fish from the river and serve it in the hotel dining room -- and I'd mash it up into rice and cover it in soy sauce and it was delicious.
I remember we took a cruise down the Yangtze River for more than week, and I'd stand at the prow, pretending to pilot the boat like any eight year old boy would.
I remember long, long train rides where we'd stare out the windows at farmers with huge water buffalo worked the land.
I remember visiting the house that my family built in a city on the sea back in the early 20th century -- and lots of Chinese school kids doing exericess on the beach.
I remember lots of rescheduled Chinese domestic flights on CAAC, the official Chinese airline, that everyone joke stands for "China Airlines Always Cancels."
I remember long drives where I would listen to tapes of "The Chronicles of Narnia."
I remember ending our trip in Hong Kong which was still a British colony at the time. The streets were even narrower than NYC, the wealth of the city fully on display. One day we went to the Royal Yacht Club for a drink -- that was cool! And I remember the huge, gorgeous harbor and the huge boats on it, glowing on the water at night.
I remember that, on our trip home, we flew from Hong Kong to Tokyo and then, flying westward, I remember that my last view of Asia was the gorgeous Mount Fuji shining bright in the night sky.
I remeber that Beverly Hills Cop was the movie being shown on the flight and, after it was over, that another movie called Iceman started but then I fell asleep and, when I awoke, we were back in NYC.
And I remember when I got back that I told everyone about this amazing trip I took -- and no one really cared.
China really is just amazing -- and it's more than a country, it's a civilization with a history we can't even begin to understand. You should go.
And if you want to understand the 20th century history of China, you should watch the 1987 Best Picture Oscar winner The Last Emperor about how the long, long, long reigning Chinese monarchy fell and it led to decades of war, leading to the Communist revolution and country that exists today.
I hope to go back to China one day -- and blog about it better then!
I barely remember it -- I think I caught five minutes of it on TV once when I was in college and turned it off because it was so dumb and offensive. But I'm "remembering" it now because it was and is a weird NYC-related artifact of late 1990s Ameriacn pop culture -- i.e. of my long ago, lost, misspent youth.
To wit: two New York City teenagers go to the same high school. One is a rich white kid, the other a poor black kid, but they are friends and engage in hilarious high jinks together while learning important life lessons and developing strong values, the racial and economic iniquities and divide between them be damned. Together, this "ebony and ivory" fantasia demonstrates that racism is a thing of the past.
In the last 1990s, we wanted to believe that. Okay, so that's the show. So why am I remembering?
Well, kids, there used to be a sitcom in the early 1990s called Save by the Bell about a bunch of wise-cracking high school kids. It aired on NBC on Saturday mornings and was one of the only things on TV that wasn't a cartoon or an infomercial. It was a real "tween" show and was very popular. Saved by the Bell ended in 1993 but it spawned a bunch of similar shows -- also on NBC on Saturday mornings -- about wise-cracking teenagers in various high school settings including Hang Time and California Dreaming and several others (I actually knew one of the girls on Hang Time but never mind). Anyway, City Guys was the "urban" version of these otherwise lily white shows -- it actually had black people! -- and instead of being set in a cookie-cutter high school in a cookie-cutter suburb it was set in NYC! And had black people!
By the late 1990s, NYC was in the middle of its renaissance so a teenage show set in the city probably made sense to the suits at NBC. At the time the Saturday morning "tween" sitcoms were at their height (there was even another Saved by the Bell show called Saved by the Bell: The New Class), and City Guys, though a little different, fit right in.
The show ran from 1997 to 2001 and was one of the last NBC Saturday morning tween sitcom to air. By 2002 these shows were gone -- its teenage audience (i.e. people like me) had aged out, ratings plunged, and the new teenage audience now had things like the Internet to distract them on Saturday mornings.
City Guys is an otherwise forgotten part of the NYC-set TV sitcome pantheon but, as mediocre as the show was, it had a very funky, very memorable, opening credits -- even though it was a laughbly dumb:
My recent review of the movie Anora cited the fact that it's largely about people who live and work in the "unknown, outerborough underbelly" of NYC -- and it's a great NYC adventure movie, buzzing around the city.
Five years ago, on New Year's Eve 2019, I did a big interview with former adult film start, and current Native American activist, Hyapatia Lee. She talked freely about her amazing life and career, including about the times she visited NYC and appeared on the Robin Byrd Show.
Well, Hyapatia also has a great YouTube channel and, in her most recent post, she talks more about her time in NYC, her visits to Robin's show, and her experiences in the business. Enjoy! Love you Hyapatia!
There aren't many movies these days like Anora so when a gem like this comes along, you must embrace it.
Anora is a reminder that movies can be funny and dramatic and entertaining at the same time, and all you need is smart writing, great actors, and an imaginative director. You don't need special effects, aliens, or things blowing up all the time -- the best action, the best humor, and the best stories come from showing human condition in all its reality.
And Anora is a great NYC movie that shows the city's unknown, outborough underbelly.
Anora, called Ani, is a stripper from Brighton Beach, working at a club, living miserably with her family, and hooking on the side. One night she catches the eye of a the son of a Russian oligarch and lap dance, a paid liaison, and some partying leads to an impromptu marriage -- until the oligarch son's father gets wind of it and all hell breaks loose.
What starts as a Cinderella story quickly turns into a madcap yarn where expletives, fists, and even cars go flying. Amazingly this movies quickly turns into the equivalent of an NYC road movie where Anora the oligarch's goons go looking for the wayward son. There are parts of this movie that are so funny and yet so intense that you can't believe them -- it's storytelling at the highest level, and the actors are amazing. (This is the first NYC gangster movie where parking problems are included in the plot.)
Anora was written and directed by Sean Baker, an indie filmmaker who won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival for this movie last year. Mikey Madison, until now a minor movie and TV actress, blazes as the titular character, giving an amazing, complicated performance -- and creates one of the most memorable endings I've ever seen in a movie. The rest of the cast is mostly unknown and Russian but really good.
Please, please see Anora -- it's the kind of movie that makes you laugh, cry, love NYC, despair about the impunity of wealth but also get inspired by the resilience of some people.
The thing about Italy is that, like all great places, it isn't just one place or one thing. There are so many parts of Italy that are so distinct and special, so unique unto themselves -- cities like Rome, Naples, Florence, Naples, Turin, Venice and others; areas like Tuscany, Lombardi, Sicily and others -- that visiting just one of them is an amazing experience unto itself.
And, of course, NYC and Italy have many historical links.
Of course, a big reason why Italy is so diverse and fascinating is that for roughly 1500 years -- after the collapse of the Roman Empire in the 5th century AD and the unification or "risorgimento" in the 19th century -- Italy as a country didn't exist. It was a collection of small kingdoms, duchies, city states, and republics -- and thus each city and region fashioned its own identiy.
I've visited Venice and Rome multiple times but, until recently, had only spent one night in the city of Milan. That changed last month when I visited the city for almost a week -- first for work, then for fun, with my wife. We had an amazing time and here I'll tell you all about it!
First, a few things to understand about Milan. It's very far north, very close to the Swiss border, and it's not only the biggest city in all of Italy but it's one of the biggest cities in all of Europe. It's also really rich, one of the biggest banking, fashion, and chemical capitals of the word. There's even a couple of jokes about this -- "For every church in Rome, there's a bank in Milan" and "Milan works so the rest of Italy doesn't have to."
While Milan has an ancient history, its doesn't have quite the same feeling of antiquity that Rome obviously does. Milan lives in the future. But it's still replete with history and we saw a lot of it.
The center of the city, what "ties it together", is the Duomo Cathedral. A massive structure, the Duomo is the biggest cathedral in Italy -- except for St. John's Basilica in Vatican City, technically not Italy -- and all the rest of Europe. It took 600 years to build -- between the 1300s and the 1900s -- and you can see why: it is the most ornate, intricately designed house of worship that you'll ever see. It's drench withed marble statues, beautifully carved, on the walls of Duomo and on the top of the cathedral -- that you can visit and that also provides amazing views of the square and city beyond the Duomo. We spent a long time there and this is what we saw:
Across from the Duomo, as you can see, is the King Victor Emmanuelle statue and the entrance to the Galleria which has lots of high-end stores. After we walked around the Duomo and the Galleria, we treated ourselves to a lovely Aperale Spritz:
That night we went to a ballet at the world famous La Scala Theater. It was under construction when we got there but, along the way, we saw a beautiful LED exhibit and headquarters for the 2026 Winter Olympics which will be held in Milan:
In fact, as the wife and I were crossing the street toward La Scala, a young guy behind us asked if we were American and, when we said we were, he excitedly told us that he was from East Flatbush, Brooklyn and was in Milan visiting a friend -- small town, small world!
Then we saw the ballet that consisted of three seperate pieces choreogrpahed, ironically, by Jerome Robbins and George Balanchine of the New York City ballet. Here's the program of the show we saw as well as the stunning interiors of La Scala (from our nosebleed seats):
Painted on the wall of the church, Da Vinci created the Last Supper between 1494-1498. You shoud read about it at the link above but a few interesting things to note about this painting: 1) Because it's painted on a wall, many people think the Last Supper is a "fresco" but it's not -- it's a "deco" or a mural. A fresco is something painted on wet plaster, which means it's captured and dried, much like a photograph. A mural is painted on dry wall -- like the Last Supper was. 2) You'll notice, in looking at the painting, that almost everything is grouped in threes and that Jesus himself looks like a triangle. This represents the Holy Trinity -- Father, Son and Holy Ghost. It's a stunning painting and, according to our tour guide, his greatest painting ever, even better than the Mona Lisa in Paris.
The church protects the Last Supper like a nuclear warhead -- it's in a air-controlled room, only a few people can visit it at a time for about 15 minutes, and you can go to through a few rooms before you get access to it. Also, there's another painting across from it, The Cruxification by Giovanni Donato da Montorfano, that is also an amazing thing:
Also, during World War II, Milan was heavily bombed by the Allies. The Last Supper was protected by a whole bunch of sandbags that kept it safe. In addition, there's a lovely little garden behind the church is a fountain with a some frogs that, our guide told us "No kissa, no prinza."
That afternoone was visited the stunning Sforza Castle. It was built by the family the ruled Milan in the 15th century and it's a huge fortress with massive battlements, courtyards, and walls:
On our last day, we visited the funky, vibrant, artistic neighborhood of La Brera -- it's like a Soho, Williamsburg, Upper West Side place -- full of culture, history, good food, and highly walkable. While there, we visited the Palazzo Brera which is a big building full of art academies and cultural institutions. It also has a beautiful garden in the back that was built by the Austrian Empress Maria Theresa in 1775 when Milan was part of the Habsburg Empire:
And, nearby, we also found another cute little church:
As you can see, there's so many fascinating and beautiful things to see in Milan that it's hard even to comprehend it all. Just so you also know, Milan has a really great Metro system, it's a super easy city to get around.
Finally, the food! We ate two really great meals in Milan that signify everything that's great about Italy -- the nouvelle restaurant 28 Posti where we ate a delicious tasting menu (and where we met a lovely couple from Chicago who were having a last big trip before the expected birth of their child in 2025) and the Boeucc, an amazing place that's been in business for 1696 -- it's older than the country of Italy itself! We had a dinner than included an incredibly good truffle pasta -- super good!
And then we left. Back to NYC. Just so you know, the airport is quite far from the city of Milan -- it's an hour by train. It's always painful to be in a train station in Italy because you can see all the amazing cities that are just one ride away, and it's tempting not to just hop onto one of them and go to Venice, Verona or so many other places:
But Milan is a great place and totally worth seeing.
I've been to Italy a few times now but, as indicated earlier, mostly in Venice and Rome. As a kid I spent some time in Florence and saw the David Statue and the Duomo there but I haven't been back since. One day I shall return there and also go to many other great places in Italy. And, when I do, I'll be sure to blog about it all here!
