Mr NYC in Paris: Versailles

During our time in Paris, we took the train out of the city to visit the Palace of Versailles. The brainchild of the Sun King, Louis XIV, it was originally a hunting lodge that was built into a massive, ornate structure that has stunned the world to this day and is arguably the world's most famous palace. 

Ironically, Versailles was only a working palace for less than two hundred years  -- for most of its existence it has a been a museum to itself, also serving as a reminder of the greatness of monarchy (i.e. the Sun King) and its fall (mostly due to the ghastly end of the last queen to live there, Marie Antoinette). 

To be honest, as gorgeous as Versailles is, its legend outstrips its reality. Yes, it's huge and gorgeous but there's something kind of cold about it. The palace doesn't really give you a sense of what it was like to live there, its domesticity has been taken out of it -- it's basically just a museum to a bygone, feudal time (except you do see les royal bedrooms where they had le royal sex to make les royal babies). Also, it's not the biggest palace I've ever been to - the Forbidden City in Beijing, China makes Versailles look like a shed.

Still, it's gorgeous, and we greatly enjoyed visiting it. Just so you know, the "gardens" of Versailles are vast, and it requires a seperate entrance and you can really spend an entire day walking around just them. 

Here's our pictures of it:

Remembering My Crazy Great-Great Grandpa

Come and listen to a story about a man named ... my great-great grandpa.

He was an Irish-guy from Brooklyn, living in the nineteenth century when the borough was its own city, and he was a nut.

My great-great-grandpa managed, somehow, to get the money together to buy some property on the Coney Island Boardwalk. He rented out his space to vendors who paid him rent. Only they didn't always pay on time. So he got a cudgel. And he'd walk around his property with the cudgel, asking for the rent money, and if they didn't have his money ... they got the cudgel. I'm not sure if it was the vendors property or the vendors themselves that got the cudgel but, uh, "stuff" went down. 

My great-great-grandpa, being Irish, also liked to drink. A LOT. One day he and his brother were in a bar and got into a dispute that ended in a violent knife fight. His brother was killed, and I don't know what my great-great-grandpa did to the other guy but he decided it would be a good idea to get out of town ... so he got on a ship and hid out in the Old Country (Ireland), Michael Corleone-style, for two years.

After two years it appears no one was looking to kill him anymore, so my great-great-grandpa got on a ship, headed back to Brooklyn. On the trip he met two women. Again, I ain't sure what went down with these two ladies on the ship but, when the ship pulled into port in Brooklyn, he began walking down the gangway with them, one broad with an arm around him on one side, another broad on the other side. Then my great-great-grandpa looked down the gangway and saw his wife and kids ... and he pushed the two women away, telling them to get lost, and he happily reunited with his family.

In his later years, ruffian that he was, my great-great-grandpa decided to get some stability for himself and his family. So he got an engineering degree and ended up working, for the rest of his life, managing the steam in a burlap factory in Lower Manhattan -- actually, on the same street where I work now. 

And then he died and generations later I slunk out into the world.

So that was my great-great-grandpa. When my mom told me all about him, my instant reaction was "I didn't know I was descended from someone so cool."

They don't make men like him anymore ... and that's probably a good thing.

Making of the Mayor 2025

This blog has existed for two decades under three different NYC mayors. Unsurprisingly I have a blogged from time to time about the mayors and the elections that make them.

You can read that archive here. 

Currently there is a very crowded Democratic primary for mayor that includes a Muslim Socialist, a disgraced ex-Governor (and they're the frontrunners), yet another doomed Comptroller, and a bunch of Others. In some ways this primary resembles the 1977 mayoral election -- an unpopular, failed mayor who has become so irrelevant that the question isn't should he be replaced but by who, and lots of people are running to be that replacement.

And one of them might be a guy named Cuomo. 

Recently there was a contentious debate amongst the candidates, and it's clear how high the stakes are for each of them -- and the city.

But the bigger, more unanswerable question is "what makes a good mayor?" 

Elections and campaigns are all about who is the best, most appealing candidate but, sadly, that doesn't always translate into doing the best job. And as this article states, most of all, New Yorkers think being a good mayor means being a good manager. They think the mayor should essentially be a great COO, making sure that city services are delivered consistently and well, keeping the metaphorical trains running, supervising the machinery of government and ensuring its smooth operation.

Here's the dirty secret: managing the city isn't really the job of the mayor.

Part of the job of the mayor is appointing the people who manage the city, and then appointing the people who manage the managers. The real job of the mayor is to make policy, to sign or veto laws passed by the City Council, to work with the state and federal goverment to get the city money and laws favorable to it, to be the city's main cheerleader and public spokesperson -- and to handle all of the politics that flow from all that.

In short, the job of the mayor is not to manage the city on a daily basis -- it's to determine the course of its history for years and decades to come. Mayors need to be big picture thinkers, visionaries, conducting the great orchestra of city government, policy, politics, and media -- not just be its manager. 

Sadly whoever becomes the next mayor will be not have the same kind of robust local reporters covering them. For example, the great NYC muckraker Tom Robbins has died. He wrote, on and off, for the Village Voice for decades, and who lifted the stones and looked underneath what was going on in this city for decades. His kind are becoming obsolete and this city, no matter who runs it, will be all the poorer for it. 

 

Mr NYC in Paris: Luxembourg Gardens

Perhaps my single favorite place in all of Paris is the Luxembourg Gardens. Its name is deceptively -- it is in fact a park, a very large one, and it is perhaps the most amazingly manicured park I've ever visited anywhere in the world.

The Luxembourg Gardens, while quintessentially French, was actually the brainchild of an Italian -- Queen Marie de Medici, widow of French King IV. She built this, along with the Luxembourg palace, in the 17th century, and today the palace is where the French Senate meets. 

The highlight of my visit, and for so many others, is the huge pool where you can rent a toy sailboat and float it for half-an-hour. It's so much fun, so innocent and pure, that it was the highlight on my trip. I strongly suggest visiting every time you go to Paris.

Farewell to the Lion: Charlie Rangel RIP

Former US Representative Charles Rangel, who represented Harlem in Congress for nearly half-a-century, from 1971 to 2017, has died. He was 94.

Known as the Lion of Lennox Avenue, Rangel's career bridged the local politics of Harlem and NYC, and the vast power of the American government.

He was not only part of the Gang of Four that consolidated black political power in NYC but he also had the ear of mayors, governors, and presidents from both political parties for decades. He served on the Judiciary Committee in 1974, voting to impeach President Nixon for Watergate.

When Charlie Rangel spoke, people listened. He was a giant, truly a lion. 

I remember many years ago, Rangel was on the CNN political chat show Crossfire. Rangel was debating some issue against the conservative journalist Robert Novak. Novak was an asshole. He was super right-wing, he hated everybody, respected no one, trash talked just about everyone. But to Charlie Rangel he said, "Congressman, you know how much I respect you."

Now that's power. 

I'm currently watching the mini-serie The Leopard on Netflix, about a noble Sicilian family losing power in the 1860s during the Resorgimento, the unification of Itaty. The final lines are: "We were the Leopard, the lions; those who'll take our places will be little jackals, hyenas ..."

With the passing of Charlie Rangel, never has that been more true than today.

Mr NYC in Paris: Notre Dame

On April 19th, 2025, exactly six years to the day that it experienced a devastating fire, yours truly and family visited the rebuild, recently reopened Note Dame.

It was, as expected, gorgeous, and any traces of destruction long gone. Although crowded, we actually moved quickly and comfortably through this most historic of cathedrals. While still a place of worship, Notre Dame is also a museum of old French kings, reminding you how the history of the Catholic faith and the French nation are deeply, forever intertwined.

And you can learn more about how Notre Dame was rebuilt here: