I've blogged about the concept of "bohemia" before, a gathering or community of unconventional people, ususally artists, who live and support and love one another.
When the musical Rent came out in 1996, it glamorized and popularized the concept of NYC (especially the Lower East Side) as a great bohemian landscape, a place where people could congregate and let their various freak flags fly. Of course, the musical, set in the early 1990s, was about how bohemia was also being pushed out of NYC by the forces of money and gentrification, the coldly impersonal disrupting the highly personal.
But just like NYC is not just a city but a state of mind (hence this blog) bohemia exists in the imagination as much as in concrete and steel, and the flesh and bones of its denizens. Even as bohemia has been shoved out and marginalized in modern NYC, its has and will always exist in the minds and souls of those who consider themselves unconventional, artistic, different, weird, outlandish, etc. etc. etc. As this article from 1992 demonstrates, bohemia exists within anyone who considers himself or herself a bohemian.
Bohemia is everywhere and will live forever.
La vie boheme is more like la boheme vivra pour toujours (although that's obviously a bit of a mouthful for a song title or refrain).
Here's another flick in the cannon of movies about New Yorkers who find themselves far from home, getting into all kinds of silliness.
Angel Heart stars Mickey Rourke at the height of his short-lived 1980s stardom as well as Robert De Niro in a supporting role. Rourke is a guy named Harry Angel, an NYC detective in 1955, who is hired by De Niro's character Louis Cyphre to find a deadbeat singer named Johnny Favorite. Angel locates Favorite in a mental institution upstate, only to find that he left more than a decade ago, the records of his residency at the institution cooked by a drug-addled, corrupt doctor. Angel discovers that Favorite made his way to New Orleans so Angel follows him there -- and then is dragged into a labyrinth of murder, the occult, and gumbo, plot twists abounding.
When this movie came out there was a lot of controversy. Just before its release in March of 1987, the MPAA forced the director to cut time out of some of its nastier scenes. But most of the controversy came from the casting of a young Lisa Bonet as a young New Orleans woman who holds clues to the mystery of the plot -- and has a really wild love scene with Rourke. At the time Bonet was on The Cosby Show, playing a wholesome character on a wholesome family show watched by over 30 million people per week (obviously Mr. Cosby himself wasn't that wholesome but that's another story). Anyway, Cosby and many of the squares were critical of Bonet appearing in this film, and a lot of critics just hated it. But Angel Heart has earned its place as the kind of sexy, rough, sensational movie for grown ups that we just don't see much of anymore.
The movie is worth seeing, however, for the great acting by Rourke, De Niro, Bonet, and the always luminous Charlotte Rampling. It's a movie with a lot of atmosphere, a lot of exotic mystique, worth seeing if you're in the mood for something "out there."
As election day draws near, and a record number of New Yorkers turn out to vote early, much attention has been drawn to the operations of the NYC Board of Elections.
And it ain't good attention.
This brutal article examines how the BOE is a legacy, a relic, a complete vestige of the old Tammany Hall patronage system. It is not, and never has been, staffed by election professionals or even people who could get regular jobs either in government or the private sector. The people who run and work at the BOE are friends and relatives of a various elected officials, total amateurs, cronyism in its purest form -- people who don't even rise to the level of hacks.
The incompetence, the mistakes, the unforced errors, the dissaray of the BOE has a been an embarrassment to NYC for a long time. Sadly, it doesn't seem like reform will ever happen because the people in charge of reforming it -- i.e. elected officials -- are the very same people who have benefited from the BOE being this asleep-at-the-wheel mess.
No matter who wins in November, the BOE will probably continue its not-at-all funny comedy of errors.
Imagine a powerful ballad, requiring a singer of great vocal power, a wall of sound with violins swelling in the background, a full musical blast of profundity -- and imagine it's about groceries. Living in NYC in the late 20th century, you couldn't get away from it -- the Food Emporium supermarket "jingle" that was so much more than just a jingle. It was a statement. It was belief system. It was an identity. It moved your soul and gave you chills. It began with the great lyrics, "Someone made a store just for MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! Someone has my kind of QUALITEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE" Yes, this supermarket didn't just sell you milk and produce and and canned food, etc. -- it understood you, it cared about you, it took you into its warm embrace and loved you. These commercials saturated the NYC airwaves back in the day, and Food Emporiums were all over town. Before Whole Foods, before Trader Joes, Food Emporium was the classy, yuppie shopping joint for New Yorkers -- and its jingle emphasized this fact with relish (which you could also, presumably, buy at Food Emporium).
Then there was D'Agostinos. This was another sorta high-end grocery store ubiquitous around NYC back in the day. It also had memorable commercials but they didn't use emotion or appeals to one's higher nature -- they used sex. (D'Agostino's even went a little further in branding itself -- besides its commercials, D'Agastino was famous for its shopping bags called "D'Ag Bags.") But back to the sex: each commercial was about how much people loved D'Agastinos, how people couldn't get enough of D'Agastinos, how D'Agastinos gave its customers so much pleasure. And then the commercials would end with some sultry-sounding dame chanting, "Please, Mr. D'Agostino, move closer to meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee ..." That Mr. D'Agastino was quite the player! I guess the purpose of these commercials was to make its customers believe that shopping there would get them laid -- or at least get Mr. D'Agastino laid, it was rather confusing.
As you note, both supermarket chains emphazed ME in their commercials -- me, in this case, being you or us.
Food Emporium and D'Agastinos are still around NYC but are much diminished. No longer mighty and sprawling chains of stores, they are pockmocked around the five boroughs, here and there. I haven't seen or heard any commercials for them recently but I'll always remember these great jingle, these great appeals to our emotions and loins, to get us to pony up for grub.
On this day of Our Lord October 24, 2020 A.D. early voting began in NYC.
The polls opened at 10 AM and yours truly headed to the designated early polling site around 12:30 PM. The line was longggggggggggggggggg, massive, stretching out for blocks, and my total wait time was close to an hour-and-a-half.
Needless to say, it was worth it -- even though my paper ballot jammed when I inserted it, one of the poll workers shouting "Dat's duh fourth time dat's happened!" (Lucky me.) Fortunately the machine indicated that my vote was counted so my exercise of democracy was validated.
But what really impressed me was how well-behaved, how orderly, how drama-free, the whole experience was. No right-wing militia "poll watchers" blocked anyone's path. No one made noise or started fights or got into arguments or prevented anyone from voting. No one made trouble. No one cut the line. The horror shows you see about early voting in other parts of the country have not visited us. It was a just a bunch of solid citizens, salt-of-the-earth New Yorkers, doing the right thing with aplomb.
And everyone wore a mask.
Beautiful to behold. We New Yorkers do, indeed, rawk.
If you want more info about voting and early voting in NYC, go here.
Memory is tricky. Some things we remember as clearly as a blue cloudless sky. Other things we remember only faintly or not at all. It doesn't matter how long ago or recently these events were -- we remember what we want to, for whatever reason, no matter how long ago.
I think the memories that fade are those that can't be easily catagorized as "good" or "bad." We remember our traumas and our triumphs but rarely the things in between.
As our movements in the outside world have been limited by the pandemic, as I've clocked more time at home than ever before, I've spent a lot of time thinking about trips I've taken in the past. Most of them I've blogged about here already but then, quite recently, my memory was jogged about a trip I had taken the summer befor my freshman year of high school. It was a five week student trip to France, Holland and England. For whatever reasons, I honestly hadn't thought about or remembered even going on this trip for years and years and years.
Until now.
I guess I didn't really remember this trip because I didn't like most of the other kids on this trip and there was lots of teenage nonesense (who wants to remember that?). And yet, as I thought about the trip again recently, I realized I didn't remember any of the other kids on it -- but I remember what I saw.
And what I saw was amazing.
First, France. We landed in an airport in Basel, Switzerland and took a bus across the French border to a small town called Argentierre. It was a small, picturesque country town. We stayed in a hostel up on a hill, with a stunning view of the Alps. We would then walk down into the town to get food and change money but we spent most of our time hiking the Alps and beholding the amazing vistas. After a few days we took an overnight train to Paris, emerging into the city in the early morning (in fact both of my trips to Paris, nearly 20 years apart, have involved my arrival by train). We stayed in an old fashioned stone building on a beautiful street with a courtyard, and we walked streets and over the bridges of this stunning city every day. One night we even ate in a Chinese restaurant. We visited the Louvre and, yes, saw the Mona Lisa; we visited the bizarre-looking Centre Pompidou (a modern art museum that is a piece of modern art itself), we walked through the Luxumbourg Gardens and strolled around at night, the city truly living up to its reputation as the city of lights.
Second, Holland. We took a train to, if I remember correctly, the Hague but we didn't see any of the international courts of justice. Instead, we got on bicycles and biked for several days around the most hilly parts of this otherwise very flat country. This was the roughest part of the trip for me -- by far. The bikes were big and metal and I had neither the size nor stamina for long stretches of biking (at one point we even biked past some royal palace behind a big gate). At the end of each day, at the various hostels we'd stop at, I would collapse from exhaustion (we did, however, spend one afternoon during our biking adventures at a topless beach -- that was interesting!). At one point, as we were biking, I had a really nasty fall and the skin from part of my left knee was dug out, exposing a vein. It took a long time to heal and I still have a scar to this day. Fortunately, we soon ended the biking portion of the journey and headed to Amsterdam. I love this town. Highly walkable, gorgeous canals, lovely and simple architecture. We went to all of the big museums (I don't remember all of them, sadly), and, of course, we saw Anne Frank's house which was moving, sad, and inspiring. And, yes, we strolled around the notorious Red Light District although obvious we didn't patronize it. Nor did we go into any of the pot cafes. However, I did go into some of the McDonalds and, not for the nothing, I laughed the loudest when the movie Pulp Fiction came out and the Vincent Vega character talked about Royales with Cheese and people in Amsterdam soaking french fries with mayonaise. I saw all that with my own eyes, a couple of years before Mr. Quentin Tarantino did!
Third, England. We took a boat to get there, a boat from Belgium. I don't remember where in Belgium we left from or where in England we landed at. But on the day we landed we took a boat to Cambridge and stayed at the university. Our home was called Sidney Sussex College (British universities are made up of a number of "colleges"), whose most famous alumni (in real life) is Oliver Cromwell and (fictional) is Sherlock Holmes. Again, memories of this time was scarce, but I remember we ate in these huge neo-classical dining halls and we rowed down the River Cam in punts which is a huge tradition there. Next we headed north to the beautiful Lake District where we spent days backpacking around the stunning hills and dales around the lakes, mist everywhere. We also visited Rydle Mount, the modest but gorgeous home of the poet William Wordsworth whose family still owns it to this day. Then we headed down to London and stayed at the University of London, a massive and rather dreary modern-y place. I've been to London several times since then and I honestly don't remember much about this particular visit except that we spent a lot of time hanging out in the city's parks -- including the infamous Speaker's Corner in Hyde Park where, on Sundays, people stand and kvetch about whatever's on their mind. One guy I saw spent his time shouting "I'm perfect! I'm perfect!"
After that, we came back to NYC.
And that's it. That's all I remember. But these vague memories of that trip, a long time ago, has inspired me to go back to France, Holland and England as soon as possible -- and to enjoy it properly this time!
In the 1970s, there was a moment when it seemed like adult moves and mainstream movies might merge -- where actual hardcore sex movies would go mainstream. Much of this had to do with the twin successes of Deepthroat and Last Tango in Paris, both of which not only hit at the box office but became popular amongst the "beautiful people", the trendsetters, known as "porno chic."
In NYC, these movies were very popular, and the Village Voice even wrote an article about this supposedly burgeoning "movement" in 1973. It seemed to be the dawn of a new era, a whole new culture, a truly liberated world.
Nope.
If you've has seen Boogie Nights or The Deuce, you know that the concept of "porno chic", of adult and mainstream movies merging, of the freaks and the squares combining, died a quick death with the rise of videotape and Ronald Reagan in 1980s. So that's why it's fascinating to read about the height of this moment back in the 1970s when being freaky was very chic -- and when NYC was still a freaky place.
New York City has produced many unique independent film makers -- famous ones like Woody Allen and Spike Lee, mid-level famous ones like Jim Jarmusch and Abel Ferrara, and then more obscure ones like Hal Hartley and Henry Jaglom.
Jaglom is an interesting case. Born in England, his family fled the Nazis and came to NYC in the 1940s. Jaglom was part of the New Hollywood of the 1960s and '70s (he was an editor on Easy Rider in 1969), then became a director himself, but he never achieved the heights of some of his contemporaries. Instead, he's made a large number of very small, very intimate films, usually about people in show business, usually starring his friends and family members. They're almost like well-made home movies -- personal, naturalistic, short on story but big on characters, and highly improvised.
One of them is New Year's Day from 1989.
It's about a middle-aged New Yorker, played by Jaglom, moving back to the city after a failed marriage in Los Angeles. He arrives at the apartment he's just rented, on the first day of the year, to discover that the three women who are moving out are in fact still there for one more day. At first he tries to find a hotel but everything's booked. So the women invite him to stay and, over the course of the day, more and more people show up, an odd assortment of characters, and an impromtu party begins. Jaglom's character, Drew, begins to flirt and fall for one of the women named Lucy (played by a pre-Friends Maggie Wheeler) who is herself moving to LA to escape a bad relationship and recharge her career (her sleazy ex-boyfriend is a very young, pre-fame David Duchovny). The other two women are struggling themselves -- one of them, played by the late Gwen Welles, is depressed and behaves badly because her friends are moving away, and the other one, played by an actress named Melanie Winter, strongly wants a child -- and is looking for the right father. Over the course of the day, and many, many, many, many conversations (the movie is all conversations, no action), these lives touch and bounce off of each other (in some ways good, in some ways bad) as a new year and new lives begin.
The entire movie takes place inside this NYC apartment on this particular New Year's Day and there's really no plot to speak of -- just lots of talking and philosophizing. But the acting is very good, totally believable, and it's a rare movie where people speak like actual human beings. It's worth seeing and you can find it on Amazon Prime. New Year's Day is the only movie I've seen set on the always strange, weird first day of the year -- where everything seems and feels possible until you realize that the past is never gone and the future is never certain.
When that perfect day arrives -- if it arrives -- and COVID-19 is no more, people will look back at what others wrote about NYC during this time, and either praise or mock the predictions that the city was "dead" or would "never die."
Count me in the latter group but, that said, who knows? (Just to hedge my bet.) NYC is being altered by COVID-19 in ways we could never imagine before, and the fall-out is beyond anything we'll ever be able to reckon with. So maybe the city will go into decline -- but, for my money, it'll roar back better than ever.
So when I read yet another article about the future of NYC by a lifelong New Yorker, I really liked what this person said: "The city is so elastic."
The adjective of elastic is being "able to resume its normal shape spontaneously after
contraction, dilatation, or distortion."
I think that sums up what NYC is and has always been -- a place that snaps back after trauma. A place that recovers quickly. Although I would quibble with one thing: this city never goes back to "normal" because being "normal" is not what NYC does. We wouldn't want to live in a "normal" city -- there're are plenty of those if you want them. God help us if we were "normal"!
No, the elasticity of NYC is that we take a set back, build on it, learn from it, and become better. We snap ahead, not back.
