Monday, June 27, 2011
Gay Marriage Means Mo' Money
In all the arguments that were made for the passage of marriage, one very powerful argument that was not frequently made was -- and is -- this: money. Namely, the amount of money that gay nuptials will generate for the NYC economy.
Think about it: in these economically distressed times, a whole new business will be created out of gray marriage. Tthe Gay Wedding Industrial Complex!
Caterers and florists and wedding planners will see their businesses flourish, more people than ever will be booking spaces for weddings, friends and families will be coming into town will patronize our hotels and restaurants, boosting business. All in all, gay marriage will be great for the city's economy. That reason alone is enough to justify the legalization of gay marriage.
And as someone who got married in NYC two years ago, I can tell you this: the greatest city in the world is the greatest place to get married in.
One of Mayor Bloomberg's few remaining virtues is his knowledge about what makes money and he knows that gay marriage will make money for NYC. In fact, he's already boosting NYC as a gay marriage destination.
So come one, come all! Step right up and marry your boyfriend and girlfriend! (And drop your cash here while you're at it).
Sunday, June 26, 2011
So Long H&H
A staple of the Upper West Side identity, H&H Bagels, has closed. On Tuesday, it shuttered its doors after almost forty years.
Stunning. But not entirely.
While the closure of many a New York institution either has to do with skyrocketing rents (i.e. CBGBs), or declining patronage (i.e. Elaine's), the closure of H&H has less do with either than the fact that the owner was a crook who grossly mismanaged the store's finances. It went bankrupt and closed not because it didn't have loyal customers but because it had a disloyal boss. Also, the store got a little too big for its britches: they wouldn't toast their bagels for customers and, every time I went there, they treated us with contempt. Granted, their bagels were very, very good -- but not their attitude or their management. So its demise couldn't be helped.
Still, it's a lost part of the New York alloy, and it will be missed.
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Some thoughts ...
... on marriage equality in particular and social justice in general.
Like many New Yorkers, I am proud and happy that the state of my birth voted last night to recognize marriage equality. This is an amazing, historic moment and, for once, the New York State legislature should be proud of itself. The reactionary forces of hatred and oppression lost last night -- and thank God for that. For once, progress for humanity was made and we need to celebrate it since it's an all too rare occurrence.
NYC has always been the biggest and greatest city in America -- and last night it got even greater.
But I wouldn't be a true-blue New Yorker if I didn't get a little neurotic about this. The argument that I always made for marriage-equality was that it was about basic fairness: why should loving, consenting adult gay couples be denied the same rights as loving, consenting straight couples? There was no legal argument against this -- just one based in religious or political ideology or plain ol' bigotry. The issue of recognizing basic human fairness underlined this struggle as it has underlined all the great civil rights struggles in American history.
Yet here's the rub: this marriage equality victory is happening at the same time that union and middle-class workers are under siege both in New York and around the country. It's happening at a time where they are losing raises, pensions, and collective bargaining rights. Where their jobs are dissapearing and their wages are buying less. Where they -- the victims of our current economic doldrms -- are being scapegoated by politicians and the media and special interests for somehow being the cause of it. And where the richest people aren't being asked to pay even a penny more in taxes (even getting their taxes cut) or make any sacrifices whatsoever.
Many of the same people who support marriage equality and are socially progressive also support hurting the middle class and are economically regressive. I was recently reading the New York Observer where the editorial pages were strongly supporting gay marriage while also bashing unions and the working class while also ranting about how taxes must never go up on the rich.
And why is this the case? Because many of the same people who support marriage equality and are rich know gay people -- and it's hard to hate people you know. But many of these same people don't know union or working class people so hating them and blaming them is easy. When you or your friends are the subject of an injustice, fighting it is easy. Yet when you don't know the victims, who cares?
Equality should be about full respect for all human dignity, and this includes the right to marry and the right to earn a respectable living that can feed yourself and your family -- and also the right not to be scapegoated (i.e. gays are a threat to marriage, unions and poor people destroyed the economy).
In New York, the war on homosexuals may have ended but the war on the middle-class rages on. And it's a war that all those who truly care about social justice need to fight.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Spiderman is Back!
And damn, he is really expensive.
Over the last several months, this town has been all a-twitter (and Tweeting a lot, I'm sure) about the debacle that is the Spiderman musical on Broadway. This strange, clunky musical just opened after months and months and months of previews and the reviews have been mostly lukewarm.
The musical is making about $1.3 million a week in ticket sales but it costs about $1.2 million in weekly operating expenses. The total costs of this musical thus far is $75 million, double the cost of the most expensive show ever produced. Wow.
In the movie Chinatown, there's a great line: "In the middle of a drought and the water commissioner drowns! Only in L.A."
Only in NYC can anyone spend this much money on a dopey show in the middle of a recession.
That's even more amazing than the Amazing Spiderman.
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
"The rich are different ..."
The economic crises of the last few years was triggered, in large part, by the collapse of the housing sector. We all know the story: lots of unqualified people were given mortgages to buy houses they couldn't afford and many of them either defaulted or found themselves "underwater" when the value of their homes became less than their mortgages. It's a god-awful morality tale of unregulated capitalism gone amok -- and all of us are paying a huge, huge price for it.
Unless, of course, you're one of the people collecting on the people paying.
Meet Philip Falcone. A hedge-fund guru, he bet against, or "shorted", the housing market and began making billions when everyone else was loosing trillions. He's a Minnesota-boy-turned-New York Master of the Universe and he's one of the devil's with the black boxes who helped destroy the American economy, maybe for decades to come.
This fascinating article in Vanity Fair is about Falcone and his crazy wife and their outrageous life in NYC. These people represent everything that's wrong with America today -- people who make money out of nothing, who create nothing, who produce nothing, who contribute nothing to society but spend ungodly amounts of money of crap and, in the process, shove it in everyone else's face.
People like this used to be called nouveaux riche or "new money" -- and as socially unacceptable as people like this used to be, over the last century it became even more unacceptable for "society" or "old money" to sneer and look down at them. Over the last decades, the Knickerbocker set went into decline as the tech and hedge-fund millionaires and billionaires became the new NYC society. Snobbery was so passe.
But when you read this, you begin to sympathize with the snobs. You begin to think maybe the Knickerbockers were right to marginalize people like this. They are so awful, so nauseating, and they are the ones who give rich people in NYC a bad name.
"The rich are different from you and me", as Scott Fitzgerald once told his pal Ernest Hemingway, to which the Big Poppa replied "Yes, they have more money."
More money and, for many of them, no taste, no class, and no morality.
Monday, June 20, 2011
Will it happen?
The NYS Senate is only one vote away from passing gay marriage. It all falls on the shoulder of one State Senator named Greg Ball who is hedging and has apparently gone to Twitter, asking people to advise him how to vote.
So it's come down to this. Whether or not gay New Yorkers will be given full marriage rights falls on the shoulders of ... this guy ... who apparently has no real value system and has to poll random people to find out whether or not this is the right things to do.
Seriously. It's too bizarre. But I'll keep hope alive. If marriage equality passes, Sen. Ball will deserve all the credit. If it loses, he'll shoulder all the blame.
Come on Senator Ball ... get on the ball! Vote for marriage equality!
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