Hurricane Sandy: One Year Later

One year ago tonight the worst hurricane in our city's history slammed our shores. With the innocent, almost friendly name of Sandy, this storm pummeled our town, wrecking havoc to our beaches, laying waste to property, killing over a hundred people, and shutting down our city for a whole week.

A year later, we're still recovering. One place that is struggling to survive is the 219-year old Bridge Cafe in lower Manhattan. This historic watering hole's story is just one of the thousands in this ahttp://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/10/29/new-york-s-oldest-bar-stays-afloat.htmlrea still trying to come back.

Yours truly blogged constantly about the storm last year. If you want to revisit it, click here.

Let's hope that all those who were affected have either recovered or do so soon.

Lou Reed RIP

Queens: The Ohio of NYC

When people ask why New York City has elected Republican mayors for the past twenty years, the answer is to be found in Queens. In their tight victories in 1993 and 2001/2009, Mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg owed their wins to getting a large chunk of votes in the borough. According to the last Census, Queens has a population almost 2.5 million, a close second to Brooklyn. 

If Staten Island is the Alabama of NYC and the Bronx is the Massachusetts, Queens is the city's Ohio -- the swing borough, the place where mayors are made. Unlike the Bronx, Manhattan, and Brooklyn, which are highly urban and Democratic, or Staten Island, which is nearly highly suburban and Republican, Queens is a mixture of urban and suburban, Democrat and Republican. In a diverse city, Queens is its most diverse borough -- ethnically, racially, economically, and politically.

Most of our city's mayors have been Manhattanites or were living there when elected. After all, Manhattan was home to Tammany Hall, the political machine that controlled the city's government for close to two centuries. But Tammany Hall is long gone; Manhattan is no longer "the center of it all." These days, if you believe the hype, New York City is experiencing a Brooklyn Moment. From Girls to food co-ops, Brooklyn is on the rise -- heck, it's become a brand. If Brooklyn-resident Bill De Blasio is elected our 109th mayor on November 5th, the Brooklyn Moment will be complete. 

But his margin of victory and the depth of his support will be determined in Queens.

Assuming he wins, De Blasio will rack up huge margins in Brooklyn and the Bronx. Joe Lhota will probably win Staten Island and still lose the election overwhelmingly (much as Fernando Ferrer won the Bronx in 2005 and still lost the mayoralty by twenty points). Wealthy Manhattan may be more friendly to Lhota, as it was to Bloomberg and Giuliani, but De Blasio should still do well there. But if the middle-class white ethnic vote in Queens turns out for Lhota, and the minority voters in borough don't do the same for De Blasio, De Blasio's margin of victory might not be as huge as most polls predict. While De Blasio will certainly do better in Queens than previous (losing) Democratic candidates, he won't necessarily sweep the borough this year.

Also, Queens is the only borough to feature competitive city council races between Democrats and Republicans -- in areas like Bayside, Howard Beach, and Middle Village. Currently, two of these seats are held by Republicans. The Bayside seat is held by indicted Republican Dan Halloran (who is not running for reelection) and the race to replace him, between Democrat Paul Vallone and Republican Dennis Saffran, is fierce. In Howard Beach, Councilman Erich Ulrich is running for reelection against Democrat Lew Simon, who lost a close special election to Ulrich in 2009. The Middle Village race has Democrat Elizabeth Crowley running for reelection in a seat previously held by Republicans. If either Saffran or Ulrich wins, or if Crowley loses, in the face of a De Blasio landslide, it will show that even in a deeply Democratic city, these conservative pockets in Queens remain strong -- now and in the future.

However, if De Blasio triumphs in the borough and the Republicans lose these council seats, not only will De Blasio's margin of victory be enormous but it will show that the city has most definitively swung in a Democratic direction. His unapologetic progressive agenda will have the people's blessing. Like Ohio in presidential election, Queens will have the final word. 

So if De Blasio wins big, this Brooklyn Moment will have been brought to you courtesy of Queens.

Stephen Colbert at the Al Smith Dinner

Tavern on the Green Lives!

In 2009, the legendary Central Park restaurant Tavern on the Green closed, after almost 75 years in business. It was built in the 1930s by that grandaddy of New York City building, Robert Moses, and over the decades had become a bridge-and-tunnel destination and tourist trap. It was also a popular place for private events. For years, it was the highest-grossing non-chain restaurant in America.

And it still went out of businesss!

Like many places, it was a victim of the financial crises. Bad food and high prices and poor management sealed its fate. The Warner family, which had run it for decades, lost their lease and then restaurateur Dean Poll took it over and then walked away when he couldn't make a deal with the kitchen workers union. Since then, the big restaurant on Central Park West has sat empty, populated with food trucks out front. It was a modern-day relic, a burgeoning ruin in its own time. To say you had once eaten at Tavern on the Green was almost becoming like saying you had once gone to Woodstock (although not as cool).

Well, it's back. Two guys from Philadelphia have taken it over and plan to re-open it in December. The new Tavern will be half the size of the old one with less cheesy glitzy interior design. How good the food will be remains to be seen.

Some New York restaurant types predict it will fail. It's not haute cuisine but it's also not down-home cooking. It's sorta middle of the road. Also, it's not exactly a place for the hip foody crowd in this city and knows if it will pack-in enough tourists and B&Ters to make up its high overhead. But I wouldn't be surprised if it succeeds -- after all, it's a legendary place and has one of the best locations for any business in NYC. 

I doubt I'll go there myself anytime soon but, as the new owners said, it'll be a great place to take your grandmother for her 90th birthday so who knows?

P.S. I went to the old Tavern once back in the 1990s for my high school prom. Not all that memorable. I'm sure the new version will be better. 

Banksy takes NYC

Banksy is in New York! 

Yes, the secretive, elusive British graffiti artist has taken up residence in our fair city, spray painting buildings nearly every day. If you're unfamiliar with him and his work, basically he's this artist that no one knows or has ever seen, putting museum-quality art in public spaces. Examples of his work:

Many in the city are thrilled to see his work appear around town while others, like our fair mayor, call him a vandal and want to catch him an put him in jail. Anyway, this artist that no one knows anything about and whose work can't be seen in any museum, is currently the talking of the town, getting immense press coverage.

Here's a review of his NYC "residency."

Here's a map tracking his "work" around NYC. 

Here's some coverage of the controversy that Banksy is causing.  

And here's an interview with the artist

How long will Banksy stay in NYC? Will he be caught? Will he get away? Will he come back?

We shall literally see. 

Five is Really a Crowd

One of the things I love about New York magazine is how they run articles in the regular magazine that are very well-written, high-minded, and informative -- and then, on the website, how they run articles that are a little ... less so.

To whit: this interesting web-only piece by a young lady who talks about her experience arranging, and then being the focal-point of that exercise routine known as a ... gangbang ... For those of you unfamiliar with the practice, it's when a woman engages in coitus at the same time with multiple men, manipulating multiple male genatalia while manuevering her body masterfully. Multi-tasking at its finest.
 
Sounds exhausting!

And this article confirms it. At least it's exhausting for the lady involved. For the men, the experience must be similar to that of trying to get through a crowded subway door -- only with bodily fluids involved.

Gross.

The other interesting thing about this article is that it demonstrates the existential divide between men and women. Only a woman could advertise (like this one did) for men to join her in a gangbang and actually expect to get serious replies -- and for the event really to happen. Any man who advertised for a similar experience -- with women -- would get either joke replies or none at all. Also, this article shows the influence that porn has had on our culture -- I don't think most people would even think about doing something like this unless they'd seen it in a dirty movie first. And what this article also makes clear is that, as a sexual experience, gangbangs don't seem particularly pleasurable for either the men or the woman. In a gangbang, it sounds like there's not much actual bang from the bucks (sorry, couldn't resist).

So what's the point?

However, it sounds like it probably burns off a few calories, at least for the woman. But I think there are probably less disgusting and more comfortable forms of exercise. 

P.S. I indicated that this article was an example of one that wasn't high-minded, well-written or informative. While it was certainly not the former, it was the latter two. So I humbly apologize to the writer.

Political Theater New York Style

Right now NYC is going through its most competitive mayoral election in over a decade. The race to replace Mayor Bloomberg iz on! And it's getting exciting!

Except, well ... not really.

Sure, Public Advocate Bill De Blasio (Democrat) and former Deputy Mayor Joe Lhota (Republican) are attacking each other in debates, running ads against each other on TV, and doing all the expected stuff that goes on in political campaigns. (Trading barbs, as the pundits call it.) But it's all kabuki theater. Currently, according to the latest independent poll, De Blasio has a 67% to 23% lead over Lhota -- that's a 45%, almost 50%, lead for those of us who need help with the math. So, at this point, it looks like De Blasio is going to win in a landslide, Lhota is going to suffer an historic defeat, and the campaigns are totally pointless -- unless Mr De Blasio is caught with either a dead woman, a live boy, a dead boy, or in a compromising position with either a farm or domesticated animal.

At this point, instead of campaigning, De Blasio should probably start packing and calling the movers for Gracie Mansion, and Mr. Lhota -- who gave up the MTA chairmanship to run for mayor -- should probably scour Hotjobs or Monster.com or call a headhunter since he's probably not going to get the job he's currently applying for. Maybe he and Mitt Romney should start hanging out, two unemployed loser Republicans, and bitch about those darn Democrats and those darn minority and "entitled" voters (Lhota might want to go drinking while Mitt the Mormon would probably get wasted on Diet Coke).

Unless there is "movement" in this race, I probably won't blog about it until election night (or after) on November 5th. Until then, for those of us paying attention to the media, let's enjoy this Political Kabuki Theater -- New York Style.

John Gambling Should Apologize‏

On Friday October 18th, at around 9:27 AM, WOR radio host John Gambling called President Obama a "street thug, a community organizer."

Not cool. And Mayor Bloomberg had been on this show, in studio, about an hour ago.

Gambling should apologize. Bloomberg shouldn't appear on the show until he does.