As Seen @ Citi Field -- August 31, 2021, 9:11 PM

This is an important message and, for some people, even quite romantic:

Daze Like These

The last 24-hours in NYC have been ... something.

As we move towards the 20th anniversary of 9/11, the city is struggling with other recent losses, losses that sadden and remind us that the only permanent thing in life is ... impermanence.

Last weeks storms, the offshoot of Hurricaine Ida, hit NYC hard, particularly Queens. President Biden came to the city to survey the damage and talk about how, with climate change, we'll only see more of thing kind of thing.

Over in Brooklyn, there was the death of the brilliant actor Michael K. Williams, Omar from The Wire and a searing, amazing talent. His death from an apparent overdose is a huge loss for the culture and the city. 

And there was another, quieter loss, a fellow name Phil Schaap, who was a professor of Jazz at Columbia and other city institutions as well as a radio-host at WKCR. He was the Jazz Bard of NYC, it's keeper of the flame, and his passing is, to be cliche, the end of an era. 

RIP to all.

Ida in NYC: Floods and Aftermath

Graffiti Gangs of New York

Over the years, I've blogged about graffiti, the unofficial artwork of NYC (including the second post I ever wrote on this blog). 

In the past graffiti was viewed as a public menace, a defacement, a blight on the city. Of course, part of that hatred towards graffiti was towards the artists who created it (namely, people of color). 

Oh, how times have changed.

Today graffiti is high art. Graffiti is now being extolled and celebrated all over NYC, and some graffiti artists who, in the past, were viewed as criminals are now finding big careers in the art world.

These two articles (here and here) gives you some insight about the evolution of graffiti art and artists in NYC. It use to be a gang activity. Graffiti gangs roamed the city, making their mark, blatantly annoucing their existance to people who didn't want to know about it. Now these same people do. The evolution of graffiti from the streets to the galleries is an example of how creativity -- and the future -- is formed literally from the ground up, the grassrootes (or, in this case, the concrete roots), and how the future is all around us all the time. 

Ida Whacks NYC

Literary Hangouts

The New York Times has published an impressive list of some of the legendary bars, restaurants, hotels, buildings -- even a church! --  where the great writers in history use to hang out, drink, chat, and make merry. 

There are some obvious places on this list like (the Chelsea Hotel, the White Horse Tavern, Elaine's) as well as some places that are reminders that the literary history of NYC is not exclusively white -- for example, a building in Harlem where W.E.B Dubois and other great black writers would congregate, or the largely Hispanic Nuyrican Cafe. Reading about these places, you are mentally and emotionally transported back to a time where the written word, and the lively mind, were celebrated.

That said, there are some notable omissions on this list, and I'll mention two of them.

First, there's Pete's Tavern on Irving Place where the famous short story writer O Henry often hung out and wrote, as well as where Ludwig Bemelsmans literally wrote the first and quite legendary children's book Madeleine. Pete's Tavern was more than a hangout -- it was a workplace, an incubator of literary inspiration.

Second, the West End Gate in Morningside Heights near Columbia University. This was a popular hangout for the Beat Generation authors, like Jack Kerouac, Allan Ginsburg, and William S. Buroughs. It even got implicated in a murder in 1944 involving a Columbia student named Lucien Carr -- bizarre story that become a movie called Kill Your Darlings several years ago.

There are literary and other cultural hangouts all over this town -- and that's part of what makes NYC so great.

Counting Crows - "Washington Square"

Ed Asner RIP -- A Man and a Superman in Heaven

The great actor and activist Ed Asner has died at the age of 91.

His career was legendary: the Mary Tyler Moore Show followed by Lou Grant in the 1970s and '80s (winning several Emmys), then making innumerable guest spots on other TV shows and in movies, then finding late-in-life success with the movie Up and on the big Netflix hit Cobra Kai. He was Mr. Showbiz, a veteran actor, a brilliant talent.

Ed Asner wasn't a New Yorker (as far as I know) but in 1994 I saw him on the stage at Symphony Space on West 9th Street when he was part of a reading of Don Juan in Hell, the play within the play Man and Superman by George Bernard Shaw. The reading consisted of Asner, Rene Auberjenois (then on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine at the time, also now deceased), Harris Yulin (who would appear in Clear and Present Danger that summer), and Dianne Wiest (soon to win her second Osacar for Bullets Over Broadway).

It was a great array of talent to see reading this amazing work, and Ed Asner gave it his all. His joy of performing with his fellow actors, all of them at the top of their game, was memorable, and I'm honored that I got to see him, and them, do it on the stage. 

RIP Ed, you won't see your likes again. 

Dorothy Parker Comes Home

More than fifty-years after the death of the legendary comic writer and public wit Dorothy Parker (think Fran Liebowitz before Fran Liebowitz), the great lady has come home to NYC.

Specifically, her ashes were returned to the city and interred at Woodlawn Cemetary in the Bronx, now to rest in eternity with fellow scribes like Herman Melville and Irving Berlin.

Parker died in 1967, leaving her entire estate to the NAACP but not indicating what should be done with her remains. For various reasons, largely due to Parker not indicating what should be done with her remains after her death, the ashes bounced around lawyers' offices in Westchester and Manhattan before taking up a long residence in the NAACP offices in Baltimore (where the great lady stayed in a filing cabinet for years). After closing their offices in Baltimore, the NAACP decided to send Dorothy home to NYC -- all without closing her eyes or clicking any ruby red slippers.

Dorothy Parker may not be well known today but she was a rare female to succeed in the male-dominated 20th century snake pit of comic writers. She wrote stories, poems, and books, even working in Hollywood. She also had bad marraiges, love affairs, and drank LOTS of booze. She was a party.

I've written about Dorothy Parker before -- you can read it all here. However, I previously failed to mention that she was the subject of a fine 1994 movie starring Jennifer Jason Leigh called Mrs Parker and the Viscious Circle, about her days with the Algonquin Roundtable. It's worth a viewing if you want to know more about this quintessential New York City character whose like we won't ever see again (although Dorothy Parker would doubtless be brilliant on Twitter if she were still around).

Remembering "Diff'rent Strokes": 1978-1986

How exactly does it take "diff'rent strokes" to move the world? 

What are these strokes?

Who's doing the stroking?

And how in God's name does stroking, different or otherwise, move the world?

Lots of people stroke and the world keeps spinning on its axis!