Louis Armstrong House

Recently we visited the home of jazz titan Louis Armstrong.

Although a child of New Orleans -- and a Man of the World -- Armstrong spent the last thirty years of his life with his third wife Lucille in a small cozy house in the heart of Corona, Queens.

Lucille was a native of Corona, and Armstrong fell in love with the neighborhood and her in the late 1930s. Even though he was a rich man, he had good but humble taste, and was perfectly happy living his modest house in a working class neighborhood of NYC. That said, it's beautifully decorated with gifts he received during his extensive tours -- he was on the road for 10 months of the year -- as well as other collectibles. And his bathrooms are, to put it simply, lit.

Borin 1901, Louis Armstrong died in 1971.

We were not allowed to take any photos of the house during our visit but you should check out the home's website or, better yet, visit it yourself. Across the street from the house is a small museum dedicated to the man's life. During our visit, one of the people on our tour was someone who had came all the way from Japan -- a country where they love jazz.

It's a reminder that, in this town, you can find cultural history in the most unlikely places.

Sidenote: my wife's father used to deliver groceries to the Armstrong house when he was a kid. He never met the great man himself (he was usually away or upstairs) but Armstrong's wife and housekeeper would give him pancakes.

You can read more about Louis Armstrong on Mr NYC here as well as my earlier picture of his grave here. 

Adams Out

For the first time since -- when? -- a NYC mayor has quit his reelection campaign. 

Mayor Eric Adams has said that he won't continue his quixotic bid for a second term. Drenched in scandal, incompetence and unpopularity, he's bowing to the obvious and envitable.

Seriously, it makes no difference. Not only was he not going to win but his remaining support is so infinitesimal that it's not going to improve any other candidates support at all. Also, his name will still be on the ballot -- so people can still vote for him if they want. Oy vey.

Like his entire mayoralty, Adams dropping out is a sad joke. He's destined to be a forgotten failed mayor like Abe Beame or Vincent Impelliteri -- someone who was given the chance to make the city better and failed completely. 

Tales of the NYC Underground

Over the years I've blogged a lot about the NYC underground or underworld that I've called the underwelt -- the hidden city, the worlds within worlds of the world's greatest city that we don't see or hear about but that exists all around us.

Here are few stories told by the denizens of the NYC underwelt:

Classic Mr NYC

Last year I blogged about how,when Howard Stern talks about bitches, it's funny. And when he talks about bitches with rappers, it's really funny. 

In 2005 Howard and 50 Cent talked about bitches and remembering the names of 50's bitches, and then in 2007 they revisited the subject in a wide ranging interview. It's funny and fun. Watch it:

Henry Jaglom RIP

About five years ago I blogged about the quirky 1989 indie movie New Year's Day and the eccentric NYC filmmaker, Henry Jaglom, who made it. 

Jaglom made a lot of movies over his long career, and they were usually movies about actors and artists, and the burdens of a creative life. His movies were certainly an acquired taste but they were distinctive, and how cool is that. 

Mr. Jaglom has passed away at the age 87. RIP.

The FCC Goes Goodfellas

“Speech, it ain’t free no more. We’re charging by the word now ... Like if you want to say something nice about the president’s beautiful, thick, yellow hair or how he can do his makeup better than any broad, that’s free. But if you want to do a joke like he’s so fat he needs two seats on the Epstein jet, that’s gonna cost you.”

Casinos in NYC -- The Next Chapter

Back in early 2021, as that year's mayoral race was heating up, the issue of casinos in NYC became a topic. I blogged about it then and shared my lofty thoughts -- I can understand the economic appeal of casinos but worry about the impact they might have on the city.

Since then, three non-tribal casino licenses have been approved for downstate New York and currently community boards around the city are voting on approving  several proposals for those licenses.

So far, all of the proposals for casinos in Manhattan -- including one in Times Square, one proposed by Jay-Z, and one around the United Nations -- have been rejected. But it looks like a proposal by Steve Cohen in Willets Point, near Citi Field, will be approved as well as turning the Racino way out in Queens into a full-blown casino.

My 2021 view of casinos remains the same. I find the idea of casinos in Manhattan, well, gross. Manhattan is special, the epicenter of American culture, and inserting casinos into the middle of it would cheapen it. And there are obviously other parts of the city that might benefit from there.

Most of all, I think casinos should not be really easy to get to -- they should be somewhat remote and take time to get to. It's inevitable that they'll be in NYC soon -- just hopefully not too close to where anyone lives. 

The Russian Princess of Bergdorf Goodman

I'm endlessly fascinated by the Russian Revolution and how it completely capsized the world. In any epochal event -- wars, revolutions, you name it -- there are literally millions of fascinating personal stories that intersect with these world-changing times.

One such story is that of Maria Pavlovna, a Princess of the Russian Imperial family, the Romanovs. She was born into great splendor, wealth and power beyond imagination. She was forced into a an unhappy marriage with a Swedish prince and had a son, divorced him, went back to Russia and remarried -- and then got swept up in the revolution. She escaped to Paris, ran a couture business for a while, then came to NYC -- where she got a job as a fashion consultant at Bergdorf's. She also wrote her autobiography which became a big bestseller. But when WWII started, she was angry that the USA was allied with the Soviet Union, so she moved to Argentina before moving back to Europe, eventually living and dying in Germany.

It's a life of imagine tragedy and triumph and a fascinating example of a disrupted life that had a short but amazing chapter in NYC.

Manhattan -- September 17, 2025, 7:09 AM

Review: "My Favorite Year" (1982)

If you can ever call a movie nothing more than an expression of pure joy, it'd have to be the 1982 classic My Favorite Year.

It's impossible to imagine a movie this funny, well-written, heartfelt and wild coming out today. But back in the early 1980s this old-fashioned comedy gem slipped out.

The year in question is 1954, and a young comedy writer named Benjy Stone from Brooklyn is writing for the country's most popular TV variety show, Stan "King" Kaiser. One week a washed up British movie star named Allann Swan visits to guest star on the show -- and he's drunk and unreliable. Benjy is told to take care of him for the week -- and craziness and hijinks and hilarity ensue. 

The plot for this movie is slight -- it's more about the characters, their romances, their hopes, and their fears. And it's about a culture clash, two very different worlds smashing together -- the world of Jewish New York City comedians clashing with the world of a British master thespian, all told through a loving 1950s nostalgia lense.

Benjy is played by a very young Mark Lin-Baker, a few years before his long run on Perfect Strangers and then on Broadway. He's charming, and I don't know why he didn't make more movies, especially since My Favorite Year was a big hit. Alan Swann is played magnificently by Peter O'Toole, a truly titanic performance (he also got an Oscar nomination for it). Joe Bologna, the great character actor, plays a Stan Kaiser and the rest of the supporting cast includes a gorgeous Jessica Harper as Benjy's love interest, Lanie Kazain, and many others. You can tell they all had a lot of fun making this picture.

My Favorite Year is very loosely based on something that happened in the early 1950s when a young Mel Brooks was a writer on Sid Ceasar's variety show. The guest one week was Errol Flynn, the great British movie star of the 1930s and '40s who was also a hopeless drunk. Brooks was tasked with making sure he made it to rehearsals and the show, and that wasn't always easy. Nothing as crazy happened in real life as in in the movie, but it's great premise for a movie -- which is obviously why they made one.

The movie is also a look at a special moment in time when NYC was still the heart of television, and shows like Sid Ceasar's reigned supreme. While they never say what network the fictional Stan Kaiser show is on, most of the movie takes place at 30 Rock so it's obviously supposed to be NBC. 

In these dark times, My Favorite Year is a little piece of light.