New York City got a lot of rain on the day of our lord, September 29, 2023.
Like, a lot, a lot 'o rain.
Apparently city officials of all stripes were yelling about it late Thursday night, early Friday morning when the extent of this was becoming clear. If you monitored social media, local elected reps were literally waist deep in water, trying to help their constituents. But the mayor ...
... well, rumor has it that, while Thursday night the city gubment was getting warning of a massive rainstorm headed our way, Mayor Eric Adams was out late at a club. No statement, no press conference, no plan. And he slept in Friday morning while the city was getting hit by a monsoon, the commute disrupted by flooding, all kinds of mess -- and he was nowhere to be seen or heard from for hours.
I blogged in August about what kind of Mayor Eric Adams is -- and, yet again, as this lack of response to this mess proves, I was ahead of time.
In the mid-to-late 1990s the NBC television network was riding high with shows like Friends, Seinfeld, Mad About You, Frasier, ER, Law & Order and others. In an era before streaming and cable "prestige TV", before YouTube and social media, when hit TV shows accumulated literally tens of millions of viewers, NBC was the highest rated network with its Must See TV lineups.
One of those shows was Caroline in the City.
A sitcom about a cartoonist (Caroline) living in NYC with a wacky next door neighbor, an on-again/off-again boyfriend, a wacky assistant who's secretly in love with her, and various other wacky people who drop in and out of her life, the show ran for four seasons from 1995 to 1999. It was kind of like Sex & the City before that show ever aired -- but much, much more sanitized. Often squeezed between airings of ratings juggernaughts Seinfeld and ER, Caroline in the City was the classic "time slot" hit -- a show that got big ratings because the shows before and after it got even bigger ratings.
Unlike several of the aforementioned shows that remain beloved classics today, constantly in reruns or on streaming, or that have even been rebooted (like Law & Order and Frasier), Caroline in the City is completely forgotten today. Set in a fantasy-land NYC about white people obsessing about their love lives, it's the kind of show that, today, most people probably askance at.
Yet I remember the show, somewhat fondly, for a couple of reasons.
First, it starred the wonderful Lea Thompson who a decade earlier had been in the Back to the Future movies (as well as other '80s classics like Some Kind of Wonderful and Howard the Duck). While the show wasn't great, she was ... some kind of wonderful in this show. Second, the show aired during my college years -- in fact, interestingly enough, it premiered a month after I started college and went off the air a month before I graduated. So, for me at least, it's a kind of time-capsule of a very special, very specific time in my life -- even though I didn't watch the show regularly.
So today I remember a show that, while not great, while it might not "totally hold up", hold a weirdly special place in my heart.
This week Prince William of the United Kingdom -- who became Prince of Wales following his father's elevation to the throne last year -- will be visiting NYC this week. He'll be at the UN General Assembly, doing something with his Earthshot Innovation prize, and promoting various environmental causes.
This visit is, apparently, a new phase in his royal career -- now that William is next-in-line to the throne, only a heartbeat away from becoming the next UK Head of State, he needs to develop an image and reputation as a global statesman, a leader, as someone taken seriously by his country and the world as its next sovereign. Being Prince of Wales is a lot like being Vice-President -- being the the person who's there to take over when the top person goes, either suddenly or eventually.
The British royals have long visited our fair city -- as this articles indicates. The link between NYC and the UK is quite strong after all -- this city is named for a city in the UK (York), two of its boroughs/counties are Kings and Queens, the British imprint on this town is quite noticeable. So when they come to America, NYC might feel a bit like home.
You can also read my previous coverage of the royals in NYC here and here.
New York City is, for the most part, a one-party city -- the Democrats control the three city-wide offices, four of the five borough presidencies, the vast majority of the City Council seats, and most of the city's state legislative and Congressional delegations.
But there are red dots in this blue mess, a handful of Republicans in the council and state/federal delegations -- and, of course, for 20 years, we had two Republican mayors.
One of those red dots was Eric Ulrich.
First elected to the City Council in 2009, representing Howard Beach way out in southeastern Queens, Eric was young, smart, fast-talking, and good on TV. He popped up on NY1 and WNYC radio a lot and he always seemed to know what he was talking about, always had a quick answer to whatever question he was asked, always was engaging. He was seemed like a bright-light of young Republican promise in a sea of dull Democratic hacks. His promise was strong, his future seemed golden.
Eric was supposedly that thing the media and too many Democrats wish existed but really doesn't -- the "good Republican", the "reasonable Republican", the Republican who is conservative, yes, okay, but who you could "work with", someone with whom you could "find common ground" with and come up with "common sense solutions."
That kind of crap.
During the De Blasio years, along with most of the media, Eric would rag on the mayor all the time, even though he voted for most of mayor's policy agenda. I remember seeing Eric on TV once complaining about how the sanitation department hadn't plowed his neighborhood fast enough after a snowstorm (because, you know, some people think their neighborhoods get plowed too quickly) and this was apparently proof-positive that De Blasio was a bad mayor. When pressed that crime was low and the city didn't appear to be in any kind of crises (this was pre-COVID), Eric blithered on about how the city was experiencing "a crises of confidence" which is the kind of thing that's obviously impossible to prove.
But Eric also wasn't a big Trump guy so that obviously made him a "good Republican" in so many people's eyes -- that mythical creature like the Easter Bunny, Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy.
Eric Ulrich stayed in the council until 2021 when he was term-limited out. Then, Republican though he was, he joined the administration of Mayor Eric Adams, a supposed Democrat. At first Eric was a "special advisor", then he got a big job as the city's building commissioner. As you might imagine, in a city with LOTS of buildings, the building department is a very powerful, very important agency -- it has over 1700 employees.
Then, quite suddenly, after less than a year on the job, he resigned in late 2022.
Turns out, Eric was under investigation for participating in a gambling ring. Okay, that's not great -- but it turns out there was more. Eric apparently used his city elected and administrative offices to help himself get a steep discount on an apartment, Mets tickets, art, and repayment of his gambling debts. He's just been indicted for corruption and is looking at jail time.
I've always been fascinated by the 1930s movie star Greta Garbo, the great Swedish actress who made classic movie after classic movie -- before quitting and remaining a recluse for the rest of her life. Over the years I've blogged about her life in NYC where apparently she became known as the "hermit about town."
Equally intriguing is that apparently, in the 1950s, when Garbo was herself in her 50s, she went to a party one night hosted by the acclaimed playwright and screenwriter William Inge. He held it, of all places, in his apartment on my beloved Riverside Drive.
One of the guests was a handsome young actor, just starting out on Broadway, named Burt Reynolds. The older Ms. Garbo was quite struck by the hunky young thespian and made overture after overture to him to take her home and do the funny business ... and he chickened out.
That's right, "the Bandit" might have shtupped Ninotchka. How cool would that have been? And this meeting happened, of all the square places, on Riverside Drive!
Apparently the divine Garbo didn't always 'vant to be alone.
I'm so sad that NY1 reporter and anchor Ruschell Boone has died from cancer at the age of 48. She was so great on TV, such a magnetic presence, such a smart grownup reporting on a world run by children -- and she also just plain ol' adorable. A great journalistic talent and NYC icon. She'll be greatly missed. RIP.
I just finished reading the amazing book Blue Highways, a travel memoir by Missourian William Least-Heat Moon.
A contemporary classic, the book chronicles a three-month cross-country odyssey that Moon took in 1978 after he had lost his job and wife. Armed with little more than some savings and a truck that he owned call Ghost Dancing, Moon drove a circle around the southern, western, northern, and eastern parts of the USA on the "blue highways" -- the secondary highways on the maps shown in blue that were distinct from the main highways marked in red.
Published in 1982, the book spent 42 weeks on The New York Times Bestseller list. And it holds up as a deep, profound tale about this country more than 40 years later.
On his adventures, Moon encounters brutal racial segregation in the south, monks in the desert, the small towns of the west and northwest -- including several spots where Lewis and Clark once roamed -- the absolute blankness of the Plains and Prairie states, and the bustling seafaring and fishing life of New England.
And he even makes it to NYC -- briefly.
In his travels, Moon was determined to avoid going into any major cities. He wanted to visit the towns and places that were, we would say today, "off the grid", away from the cosmopolitan bustle of a metropolis. He was fascinated by people who made their lives away from the main arteries and gathering places of American life -- and, as you might imagine, he encounters some really interesting characters in these places.
Moon didn't stop for long in NYC but he did manage to capture the equivalent of the city's "blue highways", the places in the five boroughs where most of the city's residents and visitors never travel to -- or through. He writes about driving into southern Queens and Staten Island from Long Island (after having taken a ferry across the Sound from Connecticut):
"... Things raced past like the jumpy images of a nickelodeon: abandoned and stripped cars on the shoulders, two hitchhiking females that nobody could stop to pick up, a billboard EAT SAUSAGE AND BE HAPPY, low-flying jumbos into Kennedy International, the racetrack at Ozone Park, bulldozed piles of dirt to fill the marsh at Jamaica Bay, long and straight Flatbush Avenue, Sheepshead Bay, Coney Island, the World Trade Center like stumps in the yellow velvet sky. Then a windingly protracted ascent up the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge (the Silver Gate of the East coast) with its world longest center span, and below the bay where the Great Eastern, the Monitor, the Bonhomme Richard, and the Half Moon sailed.
The low sun turned the Upper Bay orange. Freighters rode at anchor or headed to the Atlantic, and to the north, in the distance, a little glint of coppery green that was the Statue of Liberty. I slowed to gawk and got a horn; the driver passed in a gaseous cloud and held aloft a middle digit opinion.
The lanes descended and shot me across Staten Island; just before it was too late, I pulled out of the oppression of traffic and drove down Richmond Avenue to find the bridge across Arthur Kill into Perth Amboy, the city (if you follow your nose) that gets to you before you get to it. I don't know how I lost my way on a thoroughfare as big as Richmond, but I did. I could smell Perth Amboy, but I couldn't find it. Instead, I found Great Kills, Eltingville, Huguenot Park, Princess Bay, and Tottenville. I asked directions from a nervous teenager who was either turning his engine or stealing someone's distributor.
Just as darkness was complete, I reached New Jersey ..."
As you can see from this passage, Moon is a great writer and wordsmith. Even though his time on the NYC "blue highways" is brief, he brilliantly captures the "other side" of NYC, the more obscure, ignored, downtrodden parts of the five boroughs, far away from the glamour of Manhattan, the bustling hives of Brooklyn, the leafy suburbs of the Bronx and northern Queens, and the so-called "inner cities" (It's just a shame he didn't make it to Broad Channel!) He finds not "the real NYC" as some might call it but the NYC of the fringes, the other NYC that people who rather not travel to and forget.
Obviously his observation of the World Trade Centers makes you shudder a bit but it's still beautiful how it existed and is forever burnished this is beautifully captured moment in time.
Read Blue Highways and you'll encounter many other such moments -- an amazing read!
If you love the movies of Martin Scorsese and the comedy of Fran Lebowitz, then check out their conversation from 2022 about what might be Marty's least known NYC movie -- After Hours from 1985 (I blogged about it very briefly in 2008).
Even hardcore Scorsese fans might have missed this one -- unlike his crime movies or period pieces, this is a wacky surreal comedy about a guy who gets lost in Soho at night because of some broad.
That's it, that's the movie.
But it's still worth seeing -- even though you should expect it to be a typical Scorsese movies. I love it, not only because it's a Scorsese movie or an NYC movie but because it's a night movie, a movie set in world of NYC all its own.
As I said in my 2008 post, Mary made this movie after his early Golden Age (Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) and before his platinum age (Goodfellas, The Departed, etc.). He had just made King of Comedy which was a big flop and he was on the outs with the big studios -- so he made this little independent movie (without regular star Robert De Niro) to show that he was still in the game, still a great talent.
And the rest his movie history. He ended up winning Best Director at the Cannes Film Festival for this and soon it was onto The Last Temptation of Christ, Goodfellas, etc.
After Hours might not be Scorsese's best or most beloved movie, but it's certainly one of his best NYC movies and it's the movie that saved his career.
