Classic Mr NYC

A few years ago I blogged about my trip to Denver, Colorado and what a great town it is. Included was a description, and pictures, of the glorious Rocky Mountain National Park that we visited as a side-trip. 

Recently I was contacted by someone who has created an online guide to the park with detailed information about various hikes you can take there. Check it out! 

New York Reefer Madness!

Weed is now legal in New York. The state legislature just passed a making the use of receational reefer safe and legal for all. Here are some details:

- Three ounces of cannibas or 24 concentrated grams are now legal.

- People can smoke in public only where regular smoking is allowed -- so not in many places. 

- All marijuana convictions will be voided; forty percent of pot tax revenue will be reinvested in those communities that had the highest number of convictions i.e. black communities. The law aims for equity, not only legalization. 

- A regulatory framework for the legal market and dispensaries is in the works -- although some localities can opt out of it if they want.

- Many jobs and billions in tax revenue are expected.

- The law is "tiered" so that no one company can become a weed monopoly. 

Andy Milligan & The Legacy of NYC Grindhouse Cinema

Recently I caught a movie on TCM Underground called, alternatively, Fleshpot of 42nd Street or The Girls of 42nd Street. Made in 1973, it was, to put it bluntly, one of the most amateurish and poorly made films I've ever seen. And yet it was fascinating. Directed by a guy I'd never heard of before named Andy Milligan, it was a leading example and artifact of early 1970s NYC "grindhouse cinema." 

Simply put, grindhouse movies were exploitation movies -- lots of horror, gore, violence, sex, nudity, and sheer nastiness. They were cheap to make and cheap to see, playing mostly in rundown theaters in rundown neighborhoods (like the old Times Square), and they would screen all day and night for the bored, lonely, horny and otherwise dissapossed people inclined to see them. In 2007, a loving homage to these movies was produced called, no surprise, Grindhouse, featuring two movies directed by Robert Rodriguez and Quentin Tarantino that were short, shlocky, and violent. Later on a series of movies based on a character called Machete were produced, introducing grindhouse movies to a 21st century audience.

But back to 1973.

At the time one of the biggest gindhouse directors was a guy named Andy Milligan and Fleshpot of 42nd Street is probably his most famous movie. The plot concerns a woman named Dusty, a "working girl", who sleeps with, then steal from, various men. Her partner in crime is a drag queen named Candy who helps set her up with the clients she scams. But along the way Dusty meets a charming fellow named Bob in a Manhattan bar who then takes her to his home on Staten Island where he treats her nicely. Dusty starts to fall in love with him and begins to think about another, better life that might be possible with him -- leaving the streets, crime, and hustle behind once and for all. But then ... well, you'll have to watch it to find out.

Dusty is played by a woman named Laura Cannon who was an adult star at the time but here tries to actually act -- badly, but she holds your attention through the film. Bob is played by the notorious Harry Reems and he's actually a good actor. Most of the other actors are people who probably never acted before and since, and it shows -- the acting in this movies, much like the camera work, is uniformly bad. And yet ... the movie works. It's a heart-wrenching story. This movie affects you.

And Ms. Cannon is naked quite a lot in the flick.   

But the real star of Fleshpot of 42nd Street is Andy Milligan. He was probably more interesting that any of the characters in his movies. He was basically an early 1970s NYC Ed Wood, a bad director who people remember. Originally from Minnesota, he migrated to NYC after serving in the army, working on off-Broadway shows and hanging out in the Village. He began making movies in the 1960s, eventually moving to a house in St. George, Staten Island that became his cinematic headquarters and the location 

for many of his films (like this one). Eventually he migrated to LA and, a gay man, died of AIDS in 1991. He apparently suffered from bi-polar disorder, had drug and alchohol problems, could be insufferable and difficult, and yet was beloved by many. Like Mozart, he would up in a pauper's grave. And yet, here we are, 30 years after his death, and his movies are being shown on TV, folks like yours truly are writing about him, and his influence, and the influence of grindhouse cinema, has only blossomed since then. 

Andy Milligan was the true King of Grindhouse Cinema in early 1970s NYC, who work, like the man, was reviled and revered, master of a time and place and genre of film long gone but whose legacy endures to this day. 

Springtime in NYC Parks 2021 -- Life Blooms during COVID-19

Review: "The Equalizer" Then & Now

In the late 1980s one of the more curious drama shows of the decade popped up on network TV: The Equalizer.

Set in modern-day NYC, it was a show about a mysterious person with a secretive past -- it is understood that he worked for the CIA or MI6, simply referred to as "the agency" or "the company", some kind of spooky blackbag-jobbing government outfit -- who is now trying to redeem himself by using his vaguely criminal skills to help out ordinary people who find themselves in difficult situations. It was basically a serial with lots of stand-alone episodes, one-and-done storylines, following this flawed hero helping flawed people find justice that would otherwise be denied to them by a corrupt system.

He was, basically, a classy, super-smart, and well-spoken vigilante.

The original Equalizer ran from 1985-1989 and starred a British actor named Edward Woodward whose career was mostly in theater. This show was one of his only American projects and it made him, for a while, an unlikely star. It was one of the only shows made in NYC during this time, a sort of precursor to the decades-long run of Law & Order shows -- fictional crimes being solved by great actors on the real-life streets of NYC. During its short run, a huge array of actors with big careers ahead of them appeared on the show: Macauley Culkin, Kevin Spacey, Steve Buscemi, JT Walsh, one of the Beastie Boys, William H. Macy, Stanley Tucci, Cynthia Nixon, Tony Shalhoub, Ving Rhames, Chris Cooper, Oliver Platt, Christine Baranski, and many more. The Equalizer was never a huge show, it was one of those quiet sleeper hits that ran for a few years before vanishing completely. But then ...

... it had a second act. In 2014 a movie version of The Equalizer starring Denzel Washington came out and was a big hit. A 2018 sequel was also a big hit. And now ... 

... The Equalizer is back on TV! Back to returning justice on the streets of modern-day NYC only this time, instead of being an old British guy, The Equalizer is ... drumroll ... Queen Latifah! Who doesn't love her?

So this moderately popular NYC show that went off the air in 1989 became a big hit movie 25 years later and now a new show. And went from being an old English white dude to a funky American black lady. How weird is that? How great is that? Only in NYC.

Classic Mr NYC

One of the biggest casualties in this time of pestilence is the party. People can't party. They can't go to parties. They can't organize parties. They can't congregate to make merriment or "get down" or do whatever people like to do at parties. 

If they do, they're breakin' da' law. You may like the nightlife, you may like to boogie, but right now it'll get you arrested. 

So people are making withdrawals from their party memory banks, remembering times and places before the plague when they had carefree fun with their fellow homo sapiens en masse.  

I recently read a big article where a variety of famous and glamorous people were recalling the very best parties they ever went to. Most of these fetes were big bashes thrown by wealthy and famous and powerful people for other wealthy and famous and powerful people -- the kinds of parties that yours truly has never been, and never will be, invited to.

However ... I was pleasantly surprised to see that one of the folks in this article was previous Mr NYC interviewee Tama Janowitz, where she recalls going to an "after-party" of sorts for Andy Warhol's funeral. It's a touching, beautiful vignette of a time, place, and event celebrating the life of a unique and memorable figure. 

You can read all about it, as well as Tama's interview with this blog, here and here. 

NYC Cacophony: The Voices that Save Us

Last month I blogged about the voices in NYC that we regularly hear -- those of media figures, politicians, and various other public figures and assorted characters -- that command us, that run our city, that influence our lives here, and that possess some kind of authority within and over the five boroughs.

But those are not the only voices in the air that touch the lives of NYC. There are also the voices that soothe and save us, that enrich and help us.

Two great recent examples:

The New Yorker Radio Hour has a powerful episode recorded in April 2020 as the COVID-19 pandemic was gripping the city and upending the lives of every single New Yorker. They talk with transit workers, health care workers, new parents, and others who were trying to keep NYC, their lives, and the lives of their fellow citizens going. These are the helpers, the healers, the salt-of-the-earth people who we look to for stregnth in scary times, who keep our city and civilization alive. These are people trying to survive in a moment of great uncertainty, and helping the rest of us to do so as well. It's always said that we should "look for the helpers" in troubled times. These are them, these are their stories, the voices of the people who save us.

And not all the people who save us, who help us to survive, do so literally. Sometimes they do so spiritually and mentally.

In these hard times, mental health professionals and religious leaders have been much in demand, helping to ease the mind, soothe the souls, keep the spirit of this great city vibrant in a times when that's been very hard to do.

Artists also have a role to play here as well. For example, the Public Theater has created a radio/podcast version of Shakespeare's Romeo & Juliet called Romeo y Julieta. It is a groundbreaking bilingual adaptation of the play, in Spanish and English, that takes this very old, very famous work and gives it a new life and vibrancy, a new relevance, to this very different time and place. When we look back at the art created in this bizarre, frightening time, this kind of work will be a prime example of how the aritsts, the creators, helped to save our sanity and souls. 

Remembering WQXR 96.3 FM

If you scan the NYC radio dial and hit 105.9 FM, you'll land on the city's only classical music station WQXR 105.9 FM. But for nearly 80 years its home was a little further down at 96.3 FM. Back in 2009, when this blog was about 2 1/2 years old, I chronicled the station's historic move up the dial due to its change in ownership.

Between 1944 and 2009 WQXR was owned by The New York Times as a commercial entity. Not only did the station play classical music but it was, as you might imagine, heavy with news. In between the sonatas and interludes, symphonies and overtures, concertos and chamber music -- the whole array of the classical music cannon -- there would be news delivered directly by Times reporters. The station was a high-class, uber-sophisticate mixture of beautiful music and substantive infotainment. 

My dad used to listen to this station all the time, and I was introduced to all sorts of great music that a kid my age might otherwise not be exposed to. The hosts were amazing as well: amongst them, Robert Sherman, June LaBelle, and the afternoon guy, a very funny man called Lloyd Moss stood out (he used to joke, during traffic reports, how there was always some overturned tractor trailer in the report that someone must be moving it around the city). There were also lots of special music programs like "First Hearing" (where original recordings of classical music would be played) or "Woody's Children" (which Sherman hosted and that played folk music) or live broadcasts from Symphony Space and the Metropolitan Operas on Saturday afternoons.  

As a commercial station, WQXR played ads but they were ads made especially for WQXR. They were very well-produced, and I remember ads for champagne like Veuve Cliquot or B. Smith's or Broadways shows like "Six Degrees of Seperation" or "On Borrowed Time" or high-class restaurants like the long-gone Le 1900. 

Then there was the news.

I remember that every morning before I went to school, my dad would be listening to the news on WQXR and there was a special segment called "The Washington Report", a phoned-in segment by R.W. Apple Jr., the Times' long-serving Washington correspondent. (I remember right after the 1992 election, Apple talking about how the Republicans now had "re-find" themselves after their defeat, much like the Democrats in the 1980s.) At 6 PM every night there was a 45-minute news show called "New York At 6" where there would be a 10 minute national report, a 10 minute "metropolitan report" (i.e. local report), and then various Times' critics would do reports on things like theater (Frank Rich), restaurants (Brian Miller), movies (Janet Maslin) and others. My mom would usually be making dinner during "New York At 6" so I'll always associate this program with the smells of cooking. I also remember that each program would start with the announcer stating very proudly, "THIS ... IS ... NEW YORK ... AT SIX!" followed by swelling and soaring music. At 9 PM each night a reporter would then read the headlines from the front page of the next day's Times, a few hours before the paper would hit the streets. Remember, this was before the Internet or social media so broadcasting the next's days headlines was actually a big deal. 

WQXR also had an AM station. During the week WQXR AM would split off and broadcast a cooking show, a story hour, and a odd comedy show form the BBC called "My Music." You can hear all about that here: 

 

The station was a real jewel.

But then, in 2009, as the financial crises and vagaries of the newspaper business bore down on the Times, the "paper of record" decided to sell WQXR. The powerhouse public radio station WNYC decided to buy it and then turned it into the non-commercial entity it is today, moving it up the dial to 105.9 FM. So the good news is that WQXR still exists and NYC has a thriving classical music station. But the old WQXR 96.3, the WQXR of my childhood that was so great, is long-gone. Here you can listen to its sign-off and remind yourself that, in NYC, everything always changes eventually.  

Stop Asian Hate

Subverting Reality (and the Past) in NYC

"Reality TV" has so taken over our culture that we even elected a president because he starred on a reality show. As we know, there's precious little "reality" in "Reality TV" -- it's as manufactured and edited and manipulated as anything fictional, a subversion of reality -- but good reality TV, like any good fiction, doesn't need to be literally, factionally true to capture an essential, emotional, revealing truth.

Such is the case of The Real World. 

Back in 1992, when the genre was in its infancy, MTV stuck a bunch of twentysomethings in an NYC loft, filmed their comings and goings and interactions, and crafted what became a cultral phenomenon that reverberates in many interations today. Many Real Worlds ensued, in many different cities, but The Real World: New York was the OG, the one that started it all -- and now it's back! The new Paramount streaming service rounded up the original Real World NYC cast and stuck them back in the same loft and is basically doing the same show over again. But doing it again almost 30 years later is revealing a great essential truth -- you can't recapture, repeat, revive, or "do over" the past. It's over. It's done. You can remember the past but never relive it -- as Fitzgerald wrote, it's a boat against the current, a dark field rolling out under the night.

But the past isn't just there to be remembered -- it's also there to be discovered. For example, last year the director Joan Micklin Silver passed away. She made movies like Hester Street and Crossing Delancy, a great NYC director of the Jewish American experience. Before she ever made feature films, however, she made short films about NYC life. I was fascinated to learn about these, and they should regular New Yorkers (including her own daughter) running around the city doing odd things like touching fur or a black boy in a housing projects who owns a duck. These are odd, subversive looks at reality in NYC back in the 1970s. It's worth reading about and watching these films here -- and gazing upon a time, place, and people that may be gone but still fascinate.