"The Power Broker" @ 40

Several years ago I wrote about Robert Caro's 1974 classic book "The Power Broker: Robert Moses and The Fall of New York."

Clocking in at around 1,200 pages, "The Power Broker" won the Pulitzer Prize for Non-Fiction and is generally considered the greatest book ever written about NYC. It tells the story of the long, complicated, and fascinating career of Robert Moses, the "master builder" who constructed roads, bridges, highways, parks, beaches, playgrounds, public housing, and huge structures like Lincoln Center and the United Nations. From the mid-1920s until the late 1960s, he was the most powerful man in New York City and New York State, a more consequential figure than any mayor or governor during that time -- or since. Because of Moses, the city's waterfront was cut off from the people, islands were bolted together, neighborhoods were destroyed, public transportation wasn't built, and over half-a-million people were evicted from their homes. The city was, as Caro writes, "flooded with cars" due to Moses' works, and our city's physical landscape changed forever. 

Most shockingly, even though Moses wielded more power and had a greater effect on this city than anyone else in the 20th century, he was never elected to anything.

The story behind "The Power Broker" is equally fascinating: how the young reporter Robert Caro wrote a series of stories about Suffolk County and how it got him a grant to write a book about Moses -- a project that Caro thought would only last a year. How, instead, Caro spent seven years chronicling this incredible story and he and his wife almost went broke, living a total hand-to-mouth existence. How Caro interviewed Moses several times before the great man cut off communication with him. How interest for the book, prior to publication, was generated by serialization in The New Yorker. And how, today, on the 40th anniversary of its publication, "The Power Broker" stands as a classic that has never gone out of print. This article tells the story of how "The Power Broker" came into existence and is a must read like the book itself. 

P.S. This article uses the word "archipelago" i.e. a group of islands, to describe NYC. That is, obviously, an apt description, and I feel deep shame that I have never, in almost a decade of blogging about NYC, never referred to this city as an archipelago. After all, not only is that a neat and proper word to call our fair city, but it's a really cool one. So expect me to throw around the word "archipelago" a lot on this blog going forward. I'll start now: archipelago, archipelago, archipelago, archipelago, archipelago ... archipelago.

Houseboat NYC

So many people want to live in NYC -- close to 9 million of them -- that they'll grab any piece of the it and make a home. This includes the docks and shores of the city where people moor their houseboats.

The idea of living in a houseboat has always seemed rather romantic to me but it's not an easy existence -- as this article points out. You still have to pay rent for your houseboat, you still have to worry about being evicted if your marina or dock closes -- and then there's the waves.

Just another reminder that we are a city of islands, the world's greatest archipelago.

Strong & Unique

As 2022 unfurls -- and COVID rages on -- here are some reminders that the endurance and uniqueness of New York City is forever.

First, after slumping in the dark first COVID year of 2020, the NYC real estate market rebounded in 2021. People started buy lots more property, boosting the prices and numbers of sales dramatically -- even as the pandemic continues with no real end in sight. This comes as an addendum to the news over the summer that the population of NYC boomed during the last decade by more than 600,000 people making this city, by far, the largest in the country along with the highest growth rate. The strength of the NYC property market, and the continued growth of the population, truly proves that betting against this town, its people, and its future, is just a loser's bet. It's a stark contrast to the wailing you hear in the media, and on social media, with "Oh, New York City is over", "People are leaving in droves", "It's scary there," blah blah blah. The fearmongering, the negativity, the predictions of doom-- all lies! This town is stronger than ever before!

Second, another reminder that NYC is truly a city of islands, a beautiful archipelago, a unique place -- there's a guy who's job is clearing the NYC shorelines of abandoned boats. He works for the Parks Department and is head of "water and marine operations" and makes sure that any "derelict" or discarded vessels are removed -- he and his teams are basically trash collectors of the city's waterways. It's the kind of thing you never thought about before -- what happens in a city of islands like NYC when boats are orphaned and who takes care of them? -- but you then realize it makes total sense. How many other city's have a job like this? Again, one of the great, special things about NYC.   

Classic Mr NYC

Over the years I've blogged A LOT about the various islands that make up the archipelago of NYC. In fact, my coverage of this great topic has been exhaustive as can be seen here.

Well, as usual, Mr NYC  was ahead of his time because New York Magazine has just released a huuuuge article about the various islands of NYC -- complete with histories of each, pictures, and video. It's a great, deep dive that makes you look at NYC in a new way.

Just proud I thought of it first!

The City of Staten Island?

The thing about New York City is that it isn't a city -- it's several.

The City of New York is basically a holding company, an archipelago of cities, a stuffed box of a municipalities, a necklace wrapped around the throat of New York Harbor -- a true urban empire. 

Brooklyn was and, in many ways, remains its own city. Manhattan and the Bronx used to be the entirety of New York City before annexing Brooklyn and the county of Queens in 1898 -- a county that, by the way, had its own cities (Long Island City and Flushing) plus a bunch of towns and villages. The fifth wheel, the "Odd-Man In", was the county of Richmond, a lightly populated island of villages, that today is known as Staten Island.

And in any family, there are tensions.

While most of NYC is urban and racially diverse, Staten Island mostly suburban -- and white. While most of NYC is liberal and tolerant, Staten Island is conservative and angry. And while four of the five boroughs has a population of 1.5 to 2.5 million, Staten Island has around half-a-million. It's the black sheep of NYC.

Because it ill-fits the rest of the city, Staten Island has, over the last hundred years, made occasional noises about seceding from NYC and becoming the independent City of Staten Island. In 1993 there was a non-binding referendum about secession that passed -- and then went nowhere in the state legislature.

But now the seceders are making noise again -- they want to establish a commission to examine the legal, political, and economic feasibility of becoming its own city. This article gets into the dirty details of what this would entail.

Make no mistake -- at the heart of this secession "movement" is racism. It's about a bunch of white people who don't want to be governed by a majority-minority government. And it isn't really a movement -- no one's holding rallies or taking to the streets in support of secession -- it's mostly social media posts and the pontifications of politicians who know it'll go nowhere and don't want it to.

Like Brexit or Roe v. Wade or the Iraq War, people talk a lot of hot air about how great it would be if we just broke away/overturned/invaded this Big Bad Thing and then come to rue. Staten Island secession is just another such fever dream -- they would lose all city monies, their property taxes would explode, all the schools and police stations and firehouses and public services would vanish and have to be replaced overnight, they'd have to pay tolls to take the ferry into Manhattan -- it would be a mess. 

I've blogged about this before -- and it remains as true now as then.

The Water Borders of NYC

I never get tired of looking at maps of NYC. The city is such a massive, oddly-shaped, oddly-arranged archipelago of 40-odd islands that I feel like I discover something new each time: another island, another peninsula, another contour of the city and borough borders, another patch of park or green, another unexpected thing. 

Befitting a city of islands, the topography of NYC also includes vast amounts of water -- the Lower Bay, Jamaica Bay, the harbor, the East and Hudson rivers, Hell Gate, Little Neck Bay, and part of Long Island Sound. This map shows just how much water is part of NYC, almost a borough of its own. You could boat or swim far from the city's shores and still be within the borders of the five boroughs.

If you include all of the water that falls within the city's limits, NYC is even bigger than you realize. 

Gotta Love New Yorkers

I've been listening to the public radio show This American Life for over 25 years. Recently they did an episode called "In the Shadow of the City" about people who live on the fringes of big cities (something I've also blogged about). 

Anyway, one of the segments in this episode is called "Brooklyn Archipelago" about how a bunch of Ukrainian teenagers from Brooklyn managed to get themselves shipwrecked and washed up on a deserted island -- right in the sight of the Empire State Building and Midtown skyscrapers. 

A short boat trip in Jamaica Bay turned into a day-long saga more akin to Robinsoe Crusoe or Gilligan's Island (Castaway or Lost). It's a hilarious story about the immigrant experience, being young and reckless, and how the geography of NYC never fails to surpise.

It's also a classic example of how you Gotta Love New Yorkers. 

NYC In Situ

Going through this blog's almost 2400 posts, I realize that I have never posted a comprehensive map of the five boroughs. So here goes:

Thanks to me you can now find all of the major parks, highways, museums, hospitals, stadiums, shopping centers, golf courses, and other vital points of interest in this fair archipelago.

And we truly are a city of isles, an eclectic array of floating landmasses (except for the Bronx), our geography and topography and demography and any and all "ographies" combining to make a triumphant whole, the nation's biggest city by far.

We are also connected in spirit. Not only do bridges and buses and subways and ferries bind these disparate parts of the city together, but the city is also kept together by "magic." 

At least, that's what popular culture tells us.

I direct your eyes to this lengthy, somewhat incoherent, somewhat interesting, article that examines the role of TV shows portraying this gentrifying, unequal, and diverse city as a place where people from all walks of life happily cohabitate. Increasingly shows set here want us to believe that NYC is a place where New Yorkers take active interest in each other, where we float into each other's lives, where we learn about each other. The article cites the show "High Maintenance" where different lives converge over a shared love of NYC and pot.  


It's a nice idea that popular culture is selling us, even if it's not entirely true. That is the real "magic", the real fantasy -- that, I guess, and weed.

NYC & Venice: Sisters Forever

Some of you may be familiar with the so-called Sister Cities concept, the idea that certain cities share enough qualities to make them sibling-like entities. This movement began, like so many global initiatives, after World War II, and is run by a group called Sister Cities International. It might not come as a surprise to you that NYC's main sister cities are, among others, London, Beijing, Cairo and Madrid, big international cities all, that set the world's socioeconomic and political agendas.

Makes sense. But I have a different take: if NYC has a real bosom-like sister city, then it can only be one place -- Venice.

Dig this. 

Right now I'm reading (and also watching the Netflix show) about Marco Polo, the famous 13th century adventurer. In 1271, at the age of 17, he traveled from his hometown of Venice deep into the wild world of the Mongol Empire. This was the largest land empire in history to that point, swallowing up all of Mongolia and China and much of what became the Russian Empire (and later the Soviet Union, etc.). Marco spent two decades in service to the empire's great ruler, Kublai Khan. Marco's duties took him all over China, Mongolia, and Asia, including modern day Indonesia and Japan. He was one of the world's first global citizens and his book Travels set imaginations ablaze of distant worlds to be discovered (this book became Christopher Columbus' inspiration and personal bible). Without Marco Polo, history would have unfolded very differently.

And why did Marco hike across Asia, the so-called Silk Road, and into history? What motivated him? 

Money. Business. Trade. Marco came from a family of merchants in a city of merchants (The Merchant of Venice anyone?). 

Unlike other great cities, Venice was not founded primarily as a political or military capital: it was founded for commerce. It's primary raison d'etre was economic, financial, and commercial, not domination and power. It was literally built on water to facilitate the export and import of goods. Traders from around the world could easily land in and depart from this archipelago of trade. And from Venice, Marco Polo found a new world.

Sound familiar? Remind you of someplace else?

Unlike other big international cities, NYC is not a political capital (only temporarily more than two hundred years ago). NYC is and always has been a city of business. A city of commerce, not power. A city more interested in productivity, not ruling. 

And what made NYC the New World's business capital? Same thing as Venice -- water. 

Without the vast harbor, New York would never have become a business leader and America's economic engine. Even today, in this age of airplanes and the Internet, the harbor is one of the city's greatest economic asset. Cargo and cruise ships, and all sorts of commercial vessels, come and ago every day, a whole other city floating off the waterfront. 

   

And NYC is also not only a place for business but a point of entry and a point of departure: for centuries, into the current day, people come to America through NYC and then out into the rest of the country, the Wild West, to discover their futures and fortunes. Manifest Destiny, and so on.

And so I think it's fair to conclude that NYC and Venice have more in common, are more sibling-like, than any other two cities in the world. They are cities of islands, business built on water, beloved by their inhabitants, visited by millions every year, that people come to and sometimes leave to discover the wider world, motivated by the adventurous spirit of these cities. 

They are also, not surprisingly, cities of culture (think of the Met and the Tintorettos), cities of great architecture (think of the Empire State Building and the Doge Palace), cities of lust (think of old school Times Square and Venetian Seduction masks), and cities of diversity (think Chinatown and the Jewish Ghetto). They are cities built upon imagination, yearning, ambition, personal accomplishment -- and, ultimately, hope for a better world.  

So without NYC and Venice, without the drive and determination of their people and the people they've inspired, without creating a culture where human initiative is its primary purpose, the world would be a different, lesser place. These two great cities fit each other perfectly. 

Sisters Forever. 

And I'm sure Venetian Marco Polo would have loved NYC. 

P.S. Here's all my Venice related blog posts from years past. As you can see, it's a city that's always captured this New Yorker's imagination and interest.

  

Classic Mr NYC

Big article today about the "other islands" of NYC where people live or visit -- namely Roosevelt Island, City Island, and Governor's Island, and some others -- and how they're fascinating, self-contained communities unto themselves.

As usual, Mr NYC has been well, well, well ahead of his time -- I've been blogging about the islands of NYC, the Gotham Archipelago, for literally more than a decade. So read the article and this blog's previous coverage of our islands here and here. 

Everything You Wanted to Know About the Rockaways

Amongst the many worlds contained in NYC, the Rockaways is easily the most beautiful. It really is a world all its own. It's the pennisula of the archipelago that is the city, sprouting out of the southeastern part of Queens into its own magical land.

There are nine neighborhoods that make it up, almost all of them beach communities that feel more like Miami or Southern California than the Big Apple. About 130,000 people live there, enjoying a different kind of life than most of their fellow New Yorkers. The beaches are vast and beautiful, the streets mostly quiet. And, in a city that operates on high octane neuroses, it's a calm, chill, blissed out oasis.

There's A LOT to learn about the Rockaways. In fact, The New York Times did one of their "36 Hours In ..." features on just the Rockaways alone. The history of this pennisula is profound -- it literally began as a vacation resort for many city residents, a relaxed beachy escape contained within the city limits where people had second homes. Robert Moses, of course, got his mits on it, constructing roads and bridges that directly connected it to the rest of the city. And, more recently, it got hit hard by Hurricaine Sandy, and, although it survived, it is still recovering.

So, if you really wanna know more about the Rockaways ...

Read about its history.

Read about the experience of a young teacher who worked at a Catholic School there.

Read about what you can do there in 36 hours.

And read Mr NYC's own past Rockaways coverage and coverage of Sandy back in 2012.

New York City is a place you can never stop discovering.