NYC at a Crossroads

"May you live in interesting times." This old maxim has lately become our reality. We certainly do live in interesting times, a period that history will remember -- and it's friggin' depressing.

What makes any period of time "interesting" anyway? That's a tough call. Any moment in the past has points that are interesting. But what makes some periods more interesting than others, I guess, are those times when a society -- be it a city, country, or even the whole world -- is going through a particularly fierce and tumultuous battle for its very identity and soul; when it appears that the future is a complete tabula rasa, a clean slate that the victor in the battle for power will be able to draw on; where the choices are zero-sum and the winner takes all.

In essence, history is most interesting when it is being transformed.

Think of the Revolutionary War. The Civil War. Certainly World War II. Think of the Battle of Waterloo or 9/11. Think of the Great Depression or the election of Ronald Reagan. People were faced with a choice about what kind of country and world they wanted to live in -- and the battle was on. Thus interesting times ensued. And the world was never the same again.

But interesting times must, at some point, come to a climax -- the story must reach its moment of maximum intensity before going into its denouement.

For the last decade, since 9/11, NYC has been going through some very interesting times. We suffered and then recovered from the worst terrorist attack in history. We went through a dreadful blackout. Most recently, the financial crises hammered the city and the country's economy. We took a beating but got back up.

Yet it feels, more and more, that the interesting times NYC has been going through has been leading right up to this very moment. The climax of our story is upon us. Perhaps I'm being overly dramatic but, when I read the headlines, I get the sense that NYC is at a crossroads, a turning point where we may be permanently transformed in ways in which our city's fate will be sealed forever.

The debate over the "Ground Zero mosque" is but one example. If the forces of darkness, of hate and fear, prevent a private entity from constructing a building purely for religious/political reasons, it will be a dark day for our city and a troubling precedent for our future.

But it wouldn't be the first troubling precedent we've seen lately: less than two years ago the city council blatantly ignored the public will and extended term limits for themselves after city voters had twice approved a two-term limit. This outrageous action spawned a city charter commission that has created two "ballot issues" for this fall's election: one where we get to change term limits back to two and another that is so confusing and strange that no one seems to understand it. This charter commission has been regarded, quite rightly, as a disgrace. It failed to do anything about structural reform in our city government and it allows those council members who are currently in office to still serve three terms! The changing of term limits already brought NYC to a crossroads -- and we went down the wrong path.

And yet another crossroads is one that, in years to come, we will be able literally to see outside our windows. The city council has approved, and financiers and developers are furiously working on, constructing enormous big glass box buildings that will change the city skyline. Now, we all recognize that NYC is dynamic and that buildings go up and down all the time. But as this fine article points out, this "cavalcade of skyscrapers" are ugly as sin and the skyline could start to look like any typically overbuilt, anonymous city -- not the NYC of unique architecture and spirit that we all love. Another crossroads and another (apparently) wrong turn.

Then, as always, there's the economy. Apparently the recession in NYC is over -- and we're doing great! But like everything else in these "interesting times", the reality is more complex and confusing. Apparently if you are professional and upper class and/or live in Manhattan, you are thriving. Wall Street is back! Bonuses are huge! We face less foreclosures and bankruptcies than elsewhere. But if you're middle class or poor, the future in NYC is bleak. Non-professionals who have lost their jobs are struggling mightily and wages for those lucky enough to work are declining. Most distressingly, high long-term unemployment is becoming a permanent fixture of the city economy. This really is becoming a city of the haves and have-nots, of rich and poor. Increasingly 21st century NYC is beginning to resemble 19th century Russia. Our economy, our city's very well-being, is at a crossroads as well -- and it appears to be going in the wrong direction too.

So as the long decade since 9/11 comes to a close in NYC, the interesting times of the last several years are playing out -- and this is how the city has been transformed since then; this is the climax to our story. The rich are richer than ever before, the poor are getting poorer. The middle class is becoming but a memory. The city is increasingly starting to resemble Dubai and our government is as rinky-dink as ever. We are allowing the forces of darkness to overwhelm the forces of reason and the city is more polarized than ever.

NYC will always be a great city and I will always love it. But we're at a crossroads now and it looks like we're inching down the wrong path. Let's hope we change course before it's too late.

Velvet Underground Live at Max's Kansas City Story

Borough Tales

This summer, our great public radio station WNYC has been doing a wonderful continuing series called Borough Tales, where they examine the history of each of our city's five boroughs. This includes interviews with historians for each borough along with stories about the culture and secrets that give each one their own unique identity.

There's also a history about how these five odd, very different counties all became the five boroughs of NYC more than a hundred years ago. Today, obviously, we take it from granted that our city has five boroughs, each a little (actually, not so little) city in itself. But why did the city of Brooklyn and New York (i.e. Manhattan) agree to merge with the largely rural counties that became the Bronx (mostly farmland) and Queens (lots of farm lands along with little villages like Long Island City, Astoria, and others). And why did they also merge with Staten Island, that island far to the south of New York harbor that, culturally speaking, was practically in another country? And how has their history, both as unique boroughs and part of NYC, formed their identities today?

This series gives you some insight on this and, if you love NYC as much as I do, you'll want to hear all about it.

Katrina & NYC

Today is the 5th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, the Category 5 storm that wrecked havoc on the Gulf coast and the city of New Orleans. A vibrant, exciting, wonderful American city was traumatized and nearly destroyed, and five years later it is still struggling to come back -- slowly but surely.

New Orleans had a population of roughly 450,000 at the time and today its population is about 350,000. While nearly the entire city was evacuated during the storm and most residents have returned, some didn't and found new lives elsewhere.

This includes NYC. Many former New Orleanians are now New Yorkers and have success and happiness here. Some of gone back to school, found new careers, made totally new lives. And it just goes to prove that NYC is a place where people can come from anywhere, no matter what their circumstances or the situation that drove them here, and forge new paths. A hundred years ago it was poor immigrants from Europe -- today it's refugees from our country.

Out of tragedy, hope.

That said, some are sad that they find going back to New Orleans impossible and others are thinking about going back someday. I went to New Orleans last year and while the city is still recovering, its magic still remains. Hopefully one day New Orleans will be as amazing as ever, a great sister city to our own.

Hey Love - Old School New York

What's Going On?

Oy vey! Has it really been two weeks?

I guess so. I was out of town last week and, in the days just before leaving and after coming back, have been "mad" busy. Thus the blog was out of my mind, if not my heart.

And it looks like much has been going on in NYC since my last post. I almost feel like a stranger in my own town. Besides this "Gound Zero Mosque" controversy that keeps raging (and feels like it will never end), lots of other interesting stuff has been goin' on -- mostly concerning real estate?

Like the new proposed skyscraper for West 34th street that will rival the Empire State Building in size and scope and will alter the city's skyline. Mayor Bloomberg supports it, the City Council just approved it and, besides the owners of the ESB and some community groups screaming about it being an eyesore, most New Yorkers don't seem to have a problem with it. This includes me. After all, this city is already so overbuilt, what's yet another huge building? And considering that Ground Zero remains desolate and unbuilt (proposed "mosques" not withstanding), who can complain about some folks who can actually give this city another big office building?

Talking about office buildings, did you know that some renters and buyers of commercial real estate are demanding that it be feni shuied? No really, they are. New York, New York: If you can make it here, you can feng shui it.

And even though the housing market in the rest of the country still sucks, here in NYC it's apparently doing just dandy. People are still spending fortunes to live in NYC and it's still a boom market.

That's probably good news to some Queen's College students which just opened its first dorm. Saves the rent on an apartment.

One person who's having some trouble affording NYC these days is one of its most beloved icons -- Woody Allen. In a recent interview he said that he's been making movies his movies in Europe the last few years because the city's gotten too expensive to shoot in. Some people are disputing this claim and say Woody's wrong -- and please let's hope they're right, since NYC without Woody Allen would be a sad place indeed.

Yes, as the summer of 2010 winds down, it looks like real estate and money still rule in NYC. So what's going on in NYC? Nothing much new.

Where is Hugh Carey when we need him?

Politicians in general, and New York politicians in particular, are not a well-respected bunch. Even in the best of times they are viewed with disdain; during the worst of times they are downright hated. But it is a truism of American politics that most politicians and their legacies are viewed more favorably long after they've left office.

Take, for example, President Gerald Ford. His pardon of Richard Nixon in 1974 was met with universal condemnation and lead to his defeat in 1976. Yet more than thirty years later most Americans agree that it was the right thing to do -- he removed Watergate from the national agenda and put the business of governing the country first. Probably the most famous example post-presidential rehabilitation is Harry Truman. When he left the presidency in 1953, he had the lowest approval ratings ever recorded. He was despised. And yet today he is widely regarded as one of our greatest presidents: the Marshall Plan, the Berlin airlift, the doctrine of containment, the desegregation of the military, the ending of the rail strike -- he put America and the world back on track after the Depression and World War II and set for the stage for the eventual peaceful end of the Cold War. (No wonder Republican George W. Bush always compares himself to Democrat Harry Truman.)

Closer to home, and more recent in history, is the case of Hugh Carey. A two-term Governor from 1975-1983, he lead New York through the fiscal crises of the 1970s and saved the city and state from bankruptcy. It was a brutal time in the city's history. During the 1960s and early 70s, Mayor John Lindsay, Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and Presidents Johnson and Nixon had driven the city, state and country into a godawful fiscal mess -- their out of control budgets and loose fiscal policies had exploded government debt and caused awful inflation, and it was left to the likes of Carey, Ford, and Mayor Abe Beam to clean up the mess.

But it was Carey, most of all, who did it: a master at the art of politics and compromise, he managed to get the federal government to bail out the city by playing the business community against the labor unions and getting them to make concessions that made the bailout possible.

There is a new book out called The Man Who Saved New York: Hugh Carey and the Great Fiscal Crises of 1975 that chronicles how he did it. I haven't read the book yet but in only two reviews I've learned some fascinating tidbits. One is how he managed to compromise when necessary and stand his ground when vital, and how he built up relationships and credibility with both Republicans and Democrats and was able to work with them to solve the problems. Another is how, of all people, Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago and President Ford's then Chief-of-Staff conspired to strangle New York by refusing the bailout in an insane attempt to convince the financial industry to leave NYC and move to Chicago. They did this by putting pressure on the Illinois delegation in Congress to vote against the bailout. Fortunately, through Carey's maneuvering, Mayor Daley and this chief-of-staff were beaten and NYC got bailed out and the city was saved.

Today, when our city and state are staring down the barrel of yet another fiscal crises, we could really use another Hugh Carey. Here's hoping that, if he becomes governor, Andrew Cuomo will do his best. At the very least, he should read this book.

Oh, and what was the name of that Chief-of-Staff who didn't want to bailout NYC and had the crazy idea of relocating the financial industry to Chicago: Donald Rumsfeld! Not the first time he had a spectacularly bad idea (and his deputy chief-of-staff was a man name Dick Cheney who was also strongly against bailing out NYC -- as if we needed any more proof that these guys were just pure evil).

Free Steven Slater!

Here in NYC, this biggest new story of the day concerns one Steven Slater, until yesterday an anonymous flight attendant for JetBlue from Queens.

Apparently, as a flight from Pittsburgh he was working landed at JFK airport yesterday, a woman passenger stood up during the taxing and started to get her bag down from the overhead compartment. This is, as anyone who flies knows, a big no-no. Slater told the woman repeatedly to sit back down but she wouldn't heel. Instead this nasty bitch cursed him out and actually hit him in the head with her bag.

That's when it got cool.

Instead of taking her crap, Slater went on the plane's intercom and allegedly cursed her out: "To the f-----g a--hole who told me to f--k off, it's been a good 28 years." Then he opened the plane door, grabbed a couple of beers from the beverage cart, activated the emergency-evacuation shoot, and slid down off the plane. Then he got his car from the airport, drove home, and proceeded to bang his boyfriend silly. It was at that point that the cops surrounded his house and busted him. Talk about coitus interruptus.

And now Steven Slater is on Rikers, facing up to seven years in prison.

This is an injustice! This man, this veteran flight attendant, was literally attacked by a belligerent, dangerous passenger. She started this situation and Mr. Slater decided to end it -- in style. No, he probably shouldn't be a flight attendant anytime again soon, but he was the victim and this woman was the perpetrator -- she should be prosecuted, not him.

No jury in the world will convict him.

Fortunately many others share my opinion. Today, Steven Slater is a hero and there are Facebook pages and comments section galore paying tribute to a man who stood up to the Man, who wouldn't take being treated in a sub-human way and struck back. This dude is awesome. And he should be released right now -- and his attacker should take his place in the poky.

And what I love the most about this guy is that, one his way to the slide, he grabbed a couple of beers. Talk about a cool flourish.

Derek Jeter passes Babe Ruth on Hits List

The Lady is Not a Tramp

She's probably the hottest name in music today and -- in this increasingly segmented, niche-driven, eclectic marketplace -- she's that elusive White Whale of the music business: a brand new, universally beloved pop star.

She's also a native New Yorker and only 24 years old.

Of course I'm talking about Lady Gaga, the first big female pop star of the 21st century, probably the biggest one to come along since Brittany Spears in the late '90s and Madonna in the mid '80s. Her music is everywhere and her bizarre appearance and outfits are splashed all over magazine covers, TV, and the Internet.

You can't get away from this broad: every single time I'm at the gym, her music is blasting. Every time I'm in a department or grocery store, it accompanies my shopping. I'll be riding on the subway and it'll be bleeding through some chick's IPod headphones. Even my mother asked me: "What is a Lady Gaga?"

I told her I had no idea.

But what I do know is that Lady Gaga is a New York creation through and through. This month Vanity Fair has a huge "tell all" interview and profile of her. You can read a preview of it here and, if you're so inclined, actually buy the magazine to read more. Perhaps the most shocking thing she tells the readers: she's celibate. She eschews the nooky. Considering that one of the lyrics of one of her songs is "I want your disease", I'm shocked. I guess she really is a lady after all.