Remember, it's Chinatown

One of the greatest movies ever made is Chinatown, the 1974 crime thriller about the corrupt  political machinations that built Los Angeles. Funnily enough, the actual neighborhood of Chinatown appears only once at the very end of the movie. But, as it proves, Chinatown the place isn't as important as Chinatown the idea -- the idea of foreignness, mystery, scandal, and excitement. It's a ready made place for the movies, a cinematic treasure trove.

Chinatown, like any and all foreign language urban enclaves (think Greeks in Astoria, Russians in Brighton Beach, Orthodox Jews in Borough Park, Italians in Little Italy) is like a little world within a world, a satellite of the country its residents come from. The people there live insular lives, their families and communities are more important to them than the city as a whole, and they operate by their own rules, dictated more by their home country's customs and traditions then by their new country's laws. They speak their native language, the signs for their stores are in those languages' alphabets, and they read newspapers, watch TVs show, and listen to radio programs about their home counties.  

And woe unto those outsiders who dare intrude and seek to change them! These neighborhoods live in perpetual conflict with the outside (i.e. mostly white and English-speaking) world. Sometimes these two worlds come into conflict -- and drama obviously ensures. As mentioned, this makes great material for the movies.     

No movie as great as Chinatown has been made about NYC's own Chinatown but, over the years, several movies have been set in that little area of Lower Manhattan. Until Monday, at the Metrograph on Ludlow Street, several New York Chinatown movies will be playing in a festival called Imaginary Chinatown. Some of them, as this article indicates, perpetuate ugly racist stereotypes of Chinese people and that shouldn't be ignored. But what's interesting about these movies is how when outsiders (i.e. white people) go into Chinatown, they are entering a new world within their own city, a world they don't understand, and a world where they don't rule. For most, it's a rude awakening, and their arrogance, their sense of superiority, is quickly extinguished. 

My favorite NYC Chinatown movie is the 1985 Michael Cimino flick The Year of the Dragon. It's a fun, pulpy, violent movie starring Mickey Rourke as an NYPD detective trying to take down a Chinatown drug gang and the great John Lone as his arch-nemesis. It's dives deep into the culture of Chinatown and it explains, as few other Chinatown movies do, that this a world few white people and outsiders will ever understand. 

And that's, ultimately, what it's all about: understanding. Understanding the "other", the mysteries in our midst. The classic line "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown" is all about how people who meddle in places they don't understand are headed to certain ruin. So before you go into Chinatown or any other place and try to change it, either understand it first -- or forget it.   

Who Will Inherit Chinatown?

Chinatown is one of the few Manhattan neighborhoods (actually, the only one) that retains its strong ethnic identity. Little Italy barely exists anymore (it's basically just a couple of blocks of restaurants now), Harlem is now majority non-black, and Spanish Harlem and Washington Heights have a huge number of non-Hispanic residents. Gentrification has basically rendered asunder the "ethnic" Manhattan neighborhood.

Except Chinatown. Strong communities activism, community boards, and real estate owners have kept this part of Lower Manhattan identifiably Chinese.

Small family businesses have played a huge part of this ongoing legacy as well. Generation after generation of Chinese Americans have inherited their families restaurants, clothing stores, supplies stores, laundromats, eye glass stores, you name it, and kept them going.

But for how much longer? Will young, highly-educated Chinese people from Chinatown who maybe want to make their fortunes in other businesses, in other industries, maybe even (gasp) in other cities, want to keep family businesses like this going? And, if they don't, will this erode the life and community of Chinatown?

Perhaps but some young people do want to keep their family businesses in Chinatown, and Chinatown itself, going. Sometimes family and community and continuing a legacy are more important than money.

Clocking the Passage of Time

 "Like sands through the hourglass, so are the days of our lives ..."

Thus spake Saint Augustine. Or an old soap opera. Either way time has been passing quickly lately because life has been quite hectic lately and blogging has gotten away from me lately -- until now! 

But as I compose my first real post in over a month, the passage of time is very much on my mind -- and a couple recent events and remembrances have focused my mind on how people and things come and go, and either leave a lasting impression ... or don't. 

First, a passing: the brilliant screenwriter and movie director Robert Towne recently died at the age of 89. He wrote and directed several films but the movie that catapulted him to cinematic greatness was his script for the 1974 classic Chinatown (which I've blogged about here several times). Besides being the most perfect screenplay ever written, Chinatown is also probably the best American movie ever made about the dark soul of a city and the forces that shape it. While it's about LA and not NYC, the movie has echoes of the real-life works of Robert Moses in NYC and how, to quote Chinatown, "he made this city." Towne understood the giant, secretive, menacing forces that surround and suffocate us, how cities are largely the products of deeply corrupt and powerful men, and how all of us are subject to their will and live within their warped creations. Hence the movie's iconic final line "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown." But we'll never forget Robert Towne, his great legacy, and what "makes" our city. 

Second, another passing but one nowhere near as sad. As I've also blogged about several times, one of my favorite shows ever is the early 1990s sci-fic drama Quantum Leap -- about a brilliant scientist who travels back in time, "leaping" into the life of various people and "putting right where once went wrong," changing history "for the better." It had many great episodes, including several in NYC. A couple years ago it had a reboot that I had high hopes for -- only to see them dashed. The show was a mess. Instead of focusing on the humanity of the characters who were to be saved, it chose to be some kind of weird thriller with numerous and confusing storylines, too many poorly developed characters, and no real chemistry between the actors. It failed completely. Now it's been cancelled, put out of its misery, and hopefully it will be forgotten -- while the great original show will hopefully be remembered and rewatched for decades to come. 

Third, it's hard to believe but it's been over a quarter of a century since Sex and the City first hit our airwaves. It's now become a part of NYC's culture and identity but, back in 1998, it was just a little show struggling to find an audience. The pilot was directed by Susan Seidelman who also made the funky 1982 NYC movie Smithereens which I reviewed back in 2017. In this recent big interview, Seidelman remembers the making of Smithereens, the S&TC pilot as well as her classic 1985 movie Desperately Seeking Susan. In many ways these movies and TV shows define late 20th-century NYC -- and Susan Seidelman's vision made them happen.

Fourth, an anniversary, a big one: WNYC radio is 100 years old! Yes, broadcasting in this town has existed for more than a century. Probably the most powerful public radio station in the country, WNYC has had a tremendous legacy -- and present day relevance -- to the life of this city. Besides going back and reading my numerous posts about WNYC, you can also listen to a history of the station here and also a recreation of the station's first July 8th, 1924 broadcast here.

All things and people pass, come and go -- but so much else lasts (like this blog!). And, for that, yours truly is truly grateful.

Review: "Year of the Dragon" (1985)

The subject of immigration has been a political hot topic for years, decades, now. It's a paradox: America is a country built by immigrants, almost all of us are the children of immigrants, and yet most of this country hates immigrants. 

America is a contradictory country if there ever was one.

But a lot of the war of American immigration comes between those whose families have been here for years, decades, or centuries and more recent arrivals. For a lot of people, the old immigrants (i.e. them or their families, usually white) were great but the new ones (usually not white) ... not so much.

One of my favorite movies about the clash between the Old World and the New, between the nativist Whites and non-White arrivals, is the 1985 crime flick Year of the Dragon that came out in the summer of 1985, forty friggin' years ago. 

It's a tight, fast-paced crime thriller about an out-of-control NYC cop named Stanley White (played amazingly by Mickey Rourke at the height of his 1980's movie career) who is determined to take down the Chinatown gangs, the Triads. The Triads are at war with the Italian mob, the Thai mobs, as well as each other. The main crime boss Stanley is trying to bust is a young, handsome, very smart guy named Joy Tai (played really well by John Lone). 

The problem is that Stanley is being thwarted by his bosses in the police department who are willing to look the other way as long as they get their bribes. Into the mix comes a young, gorgeous, Asian-American TV reporter (played by an ex-model named Arianne) who wants to help Stanley bust the gangs, free the slave labor that the crime bosses exploit, and make Chinatown a crime-free, honest place. (In their first meeting he tells her, "You're a helluva lot sexier than those other broads on the other channels." Sweet man.)

See, Stanley is a tough, politically-incorrect, totally honest, incorruptible cop who doesn't care how the Chinese did things in the old country, or how they ignore law enforcement -- no, he's gonna make them follow the law like everyone else, "even the Polacks." What evolves is a cool story about how personalities, violence, greed, and an overwhelming passion for culture and justice make NYC (and America) a wild place. I won't give it away but the ending chase scene is classic. Quentin Tarantino himself said it's one of his favorite scenes in all of cinema, and that Year of the Dragon is one of his personal favorites. 

Mickey Rourke is great in this movie, a really fun, blazing talent. It's a shame that his movie career became so hit or miss (mostly miss) after this but his perfomance is a reminder of what a talent he is. John Lone was also great in this movie, and shortly after that he starred in the 1987 Best Picture Oscar-winner The Last Emperor because of his performance in this movie. The only sore point is Arianne - she really can't act and she didn't have much a movie career after this. Even the director said afterwards about her performance "I tried ..." But all of the other actors are good, and 

Year of the Dragon was the first movie that director Michael Cimino made after the historic debacle of Heaven's Gate in 1980. Cimino's first movie, the 1974 Clint Eastwood crime caper Thunderbolt & Lightfoot had made Cimino a notable director but then his 1978 operatic Vietnam masterpiece The Deer Hunter made him an Oscar-winning, big-time director. But his attempt to make another epic masterpiece with the Western Heaven's Gate was such an overlong, ponderous and financial failure that he didn't make another movie until this one in 1985 -- and it was a return to form, in a way, back to the taught crime movie that started his career. And interestingly, even though this movie really captures Manhattan's Chinatown well, you really feel and small the streets when you watch it, it was actually all shot on a soundstage in North Carolina!

Cimino was an intriguing figure -- a director of both great talent and great sloppiness. I've blogged about his bizarre life and career many times over the years but when he hit -- like with Thunderbolt, Deer Hunter and Year of the Dragon, he hit the bullseye. 

Even though this movie came out forty years ago, I think it's more relevant than ever. Watch the whole thing below and let me know what you think!

Review: "Motherless Brooklyn" (2019)

Private corruption leads to public corruption -- the personal venality of those in power is inflicted upon the masses in terrible ways. We are seeing this in extremis with the morally rotten and massively corrupt presidency of Donald Trump. Although this reality horror show will end a week from today, its stench will linger over us for a long time afterwards.

And that's the overarching problem -- even when bad powerful men go away, we the people remain stuck with their corrupt works for years and decades to come.

If you've ever read The Power Broker, Robert Caro's biography of NYC "master builder" Robert Moses, or seen the movie Chinatown, a fictional retelling of engineer William Mulholland bringing water to Los Angeles, the central concept within both is that the personal corruption of these powerful men fueled and warped the development of our nation's two biggest cities -- and, even now, decades after their deaths, we are literally living in the crime scenes i.e. the cities they made. 

And that's the basic idea behind Edward Norton's 2019 movie Motherless Brooklyn: the city is a crime.

A very liberal adaptation of Jonathan Lethem's 1999 novel, Motherless Brooklyn is Norton's attempt to take the basic framework of Chinatown (a private detective investigating a weird crime) and marry it with the facts in The Power Broker (an unelected master planner who builds in NYC with dictatorial power) to make a 21st-century fable about the corrupt shaping of our city. 

A thumbnail of the plot: a private detective with Tourette's syndrome named Lionel Essrog investigates the murder of one his partners. His investigation leads him to Harlem where he meets a woman named Laura Rose who works with someone named Gabby Horowitz (based on Jane Jacobs) who is fighting the redevelopment plans of city commisioner Moses Randolph (based on you-know-who). Essrog eventually meets up with a man named Paul, another brilliant but failed city planner, who turns out to be Randolph's brother and who knows a dark secret that could bring him down. Essrog discovers that Randolph's redevelopment plan is just a scam to kick poor black people out of their homes and sell their property to private developers. Paul explains to Essrog how Randolph's power is beyond anyone else's in government and how, as the head of an unelected public authority, he is totally unaccountable to anyone. Events ensue and Essrog comes to realize that Laura's life is in danger -- unless he can somehow get to Randolph and blackmail him with his secret. There's lots of double-crossing and complexity that makes this a very noirish yarn. 

It's a story about the power behind the power, the secret history of NYC, and the darkness behind it all. Also, it's a tale about the basic evils of gentrification and how the "public good" is often a cover for private greed.

The cast is excellent: Norton is compelling as Essrog, Alec Baldwin is ominous as Randolph, and Willem Dafoe is the standout as the tortured Paul. The cast includes Michael K. Wiliams, Bobby Cannavale, a cameo by Bruce Willis, Cherry Jones as Gabby, and a very good actress named Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays Laura. 

Norton is a fine director and the movie holds your attention to a point but, ultimately, the story feels slight in relation to the heights of its ambition. You can tell, in a way, that Norton is suffering from the classic "anxiety of influence" -- he is cleary in awe of, and has great reverence for, Chinatown and The Power Broker and the original novel, that his efforts with this film feel stunted, as much as influenced, by them. Also, I think there's an inherit problem when you're trying to make a movie that's partly inspired by a novel but also trying to incorporate plot lines and factoids from another movie and another book. It's just too much -- and while a noble attempt it makes the story and its themes feel more jumbled than inspired.

Still, it's an interesting concept for a movie -- and it's more of a concept than a movie in my opinion -- but that's why I recommend people see Motherless Brooklyn along with enjoying it's wonderful cast.  

What It's Worth?

Tomorrow is Super Tuesday. Numerous states will vote in the presidential primaries -- and it's the first one where former Mayor Bloomberg will appear on the ballot. How well he performs on Super Tuesay (namely, how many votes translated into delegates he gets) will determine if his campaign is viable enough to keep going -- or if this will have a been a two month, nearly $500 million folly.

Bloomberg is worth $60 billion, a sum so vast that even rich people can't really comprehend how rich he is. His net worth is practically the GDP of some countries and he's attempting to use the force of that money to win the Democratic nomination and the presidency.

Bloomberg is basically trying, as close as one can, to buy the American presidency.

After all, he did buy the NYC mayoralty back in 2001, 2005 and 2009. In fact, he shouldn't have been allowed to buy it in 2009 but he got the law changed so that he could run again. Changing laws in their self-interest is the kind of thing that rich people can do! 

But so ghastly and horrible is the presidency of Donald Trump that the idea of yet another rich guy from NYC buying the presidency away from him seems almost worth it to a lot of people, including me!

The thing is, as stomach-churning as this is, the idea of rich people essentially buying things that  are supposed to be precious and sacred, is nothing new. 

Look at the college admissions scandal. Being admitted to a top college should be an honor bestowed on those students who have worked hard in school and achieved great grades, awards, and extracurriculars. But, as we've seen, for the right price and by pulling the right strings, parents can get their kids into great schools even if they don't really merit it.

Right now there's a new book about the movie Chinatown, the classic film about how developers bought huge swaths of Southern California land for next to nothing by starving it of water -- and then getting tax payers to sponsor a new dam to irrigate it, exponentially increasing the value. Even though the movie is fiction it exposes how rich people use their money and power to warp government resources for their own private benefit. "Forget it, Jake, it's Chinatown" is the short-hand way of saying, "We all know this is corruption but the forces behind it are so powerful that it's best not to ask questions or challenge it."

But you can go even further back into history and see how people like Rodrigo Borgia bought the papacy by paying bribes and granting favors to his fellow cardinals -- and by threatening violence against anyone who might challenge his plans. 

In all honesty, everyone and everything has a price, even though we like to pretend they don't.  Nothing really is sacred unless you make it sacred -- and other people might not agree that it's scared.

So forget it, everyone, it's politics!

More than 30 years ago, a book was written about presidential politics called What It Takes? Today the matra should be "What It's Worth" -- and this is something in American life that goes far beyond presidential politics. 

Preserving the Past

Sure, lots has changed in NYC over the years but two things in this city seem immune to the ravages of time: Chinatown and the Dakota building. How have they survived while so much has been changed?

First, in Chinatown, the community, politicians, and business leaders have made a concerted effort to keep this classic neighborhood intact. It's a wonderful example of how vision, intelligence, political will, and good old fashioned hard work and fight huge forces -- like big money and the real estate industry -- to keep a great neighborhood alive.

Second, the Dakota -- this old fashioned building has stood the test of time. Why? Who can say? Perhaps it's because it's just such a gorgeous building that the idea of demolishing it or changing it substantially seems incomprehensible. Perhaps the residents have kept its integrity intact (unlike the Apthorp). Who knows? The only thing we do know is that it still stands -- and probably always will.

Review: "The Great Beauty" & How to Love a City

Can you love a city like you love a person? Can the pure romantic ardor for a particular urban environment replace, or possibly distract from, the complicated and messy entanglements of relationships?

That question, and the quixotic attempt to find the answer, is posed in the brilliant and gorgeous 2013 Italian film The Great Beauty. Set firmly in the calamitous Berlusconi period, the movie follows the sometimes glamorous, sometimes dissolute, often quite empty life of man named Jep. Recently turned 65, Jep works as a celebrity journalist, 40 years removed from his one and only triumph as a novelist. He spends his nights partying or interviewing his article subjects and sleeps away the daytime. He hangs out with his pretentious friends, drinks and smokes, and walks -- a lot -- around the city that entraps him and that he irrationally loves and cannot escape -- Rome. His goal, for too long, was to be the king of the Roman high life, the man who went to every party and could "make them a failure."

Now that phase of his life has left him sad. Jep needs a new purpose.

The film is a series of vignettes, a necklace of tales wrapped about the throat of a city that cages a man trying to find a goal in his rapidly receding life. In walking around and enjoying Rome, Jep is running away from his emotions, from a long and now deceased love, from a past once full of promise that has become a present of aimlessness, hopelessly trying to replace it with a passion for the great beauty of the Eternal City.

The movie's love for Rome, and its wistful meditation on the ravages of time and misplaced priorities, captures exactly what this blog feels about NYC -- and the course of life. Both the film and the blog are about how the love for a city affects and distracts us, and how the simple love for a plac helps us to leaven but also sometimes exacerbates the complexity of human entanglements. You can love a city -- a great city, a great beauty, like Rome or NYC -- but ultimately it cannot fulfill you like the love of a person. It can supplement but not replace that kind of love, enhance but not complete it. In loving a city, there is ultimately a sadness because it cannot really love you back.

But even then, you still can't abandon it.

If the 1974 movie Chinatown is about the corrupt and disturbing undercurrents of a big city -- in that case, Los Angeles -- revealed by private detective Jakes Gittes (one of its more infamous citizens), The Great Beauty is about the unrealistic romantic promise of one -- in this case, Rome -- by one of its obsessive inhabitants. One is about the darkness, the other about the light, of an alluring metropolis. But the two films, along with morose and romantic Issac in 1979's Manhattan, look at the man in the city, about the city, and of the city -- and how the man and their relationships with others are defined and mixed up by the city.

It is both a great and awful thing to have a great beauty in your life -- whether it's Rome, Los Angeles, NYC or someplace else. And yet that love for a city is the seed that can grow into a love for a person, and for life in general, and for something that is forever timeless and can give us true happiness.

In some ways, that's what Mr NYC is all about for me.

P.S. This expression of a complicated and ultimately unknowable love for a place, its people, and life, is best expressed not in words but in music.

The theme of The Great Beauty captures the film's melancholy romance about Rome the same way that the theme to Chinatown expresses that film's sleazy gaze and understanding of Los Angeles or the way that Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue in Manhattan perfectly encapsulates the nervous energy and excitement of NYC.

You should listen to all three and you'll see -- or hear -- what I mean.

Classic Mr NYC

"He made this city!"

In the movie Chinatown, the evil Noah Cross says this twice about his former business partner Hollis Mulwray. Cross both loved and hated him. Mulwray built a dam that brought water to LA and made them rich. But when Mulwray refused to build another dam -- as part of a dark plot to steal water and land in the Valley, and to make LA even bigger -- Cross murdered him. Still, even after that, Cross pays tribute to his victim's great legacy.

Cross and Mulwray are entirely fictional, obviously, but Mulwray is based on the very real William Mulholland who built the Los Angeles Aqueduct in 1913, bringing massive amounts of fresh water to the young desert city. Within a decade its population has tripled -- oh yes, Mulholland made that city.

New York City is, of course, much older and not on a desert. And if you asked most people today who "made" NYC, they might point to Robert Moses or argue that no one person is responsible for "making" NYC in its 400-something year history.

But they would be wrong. One man did make NYC, at least the city of five boroughs we live in today: Andrew Haswell Green.

I blogged about him briefly a few years ago, specifically citing a Bowery Boys episode about the man. Yet I realize that I have not really given him his due: Green truly is the "Father of Greater New York." His vision, his efforts, his ideas, were resposible for: Central Park, The New York Public Library,The Metropolitan Museum, The Bronx Zoo, The American Museum of Natural History, Riverside Drive, Morningside Park, Fort Washington Park. And Green chaired the committee, and had the vision, to consolidate the five counties of Bronx, New York, Queens, Kings, and Richmond into one city -- Greater New York.

So yes -- he made this city! The NYC we live in today was Green's vision. 

And the reason, I think, I never properly gave him his due it because our city, his city, hasn't done it either.  

Remember in Godfather II when Hyman Roth says about his (also) dead former partner Moe Green that he was responsible for creating Las Vegas? And remember when Roth yells that there isn't even a signpost or plaque commorating this "great man"? 

Well, in Mr NYC's opinion, the memorials to Green NYC are extremely insufficiant. There's a small park on the Upper East Side and a bench in Central Park. There's also an island up in the Niagara River named after him. But these minor memorials don't seem to, in any way, really give the man his due. He doesn't even have a street or a building named after him! Ed Koch has a friggin' major bridge named after him -- but not this guy? Green needs to have a massive memorial named after  him, a huge tribute.

Why not City Hall? 

Because he made this city! 

Odds and Ends

Mr NYC doesn't have a comprehensive post today, just some random interesting stuff.

First, there's a new book about the battle between Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs called Wrestling With Moses: How Jane Jacobs Took On New York’s Master Builder and Transformed the American City by Anthony Flint. It's about how Jacobs mobilized grassroots support in opposition to Moses's proposed highways that would have destroyed Washington Square Park and whole parts of Soho, Greenwich Village and Chinatown. Ms. Jacobs succeeded and defeated these proposed highways which were, as the author of this review of the book indicates, "clearly insane."

That's putting it mildly. All New Yorkers owe Jane Jacobs a great debt of gratitude.

Moving on, I got an email from someone asking me to plug a new website called the New York Future Initiative that's sort of like a New York City version of Digg. It's a localized news aggragator and is associated with the Democracy Forum and the New York Observer. It's pretty cool, check it out. I've also added it to my NYC blog roll.

Finally, someone named Carrie sent me the following message:

Hi!

I was reading through your post about the Green Day show at MSG .. and it really sounded amazing! I've been a fan of Green Day, but wouldn't say that I am a fanatic .. but reading through your post made it sound like even I would've had an awesome time there. Definitely am going to have to check out their show, next time they're in town.

Anyway, I thought that you and your readers might be interested in the following Green Day content.

Think that you're the ultimate Green Day fan? Check out Alex Iglesias and the FanCam, as they hit up the Green Day concert to see just how poetic the fans can be. Check it out here: http://video.msg.com/Videos/MSG-Networks/7LvrHcj0JANB_367O95RvDat3vvxLXa_


Thanks, and please share with your readers!

Best,
Carrie

Done and done. Looks like Mr NYC is becoming an trend-maker. Ha!

Review: "The Beast in Me" (2025)

The world of NYC real estate is cut-throat and, in the new Netflix series The Beast In Me, it's both metaphorical and literal.

The plot to this series is pure sensationalist thriller yarn -- dead wives! dead kids! trophy wives! domineering parents! broken families! horny FBI agents! and money, money, money!

It's total nonsense. But it's really well done and quite entertaining.

The plot involves a woman named Aggie, played by the always amazing Claire Daines, who is the author of a hugely successful book that got her a Pulitzer Prize and a big house in Oyster Bay ... but is now grieving her dead son, her failed marriage, and a horrible case of writer's block on her follow up book. She then meets her creepy neighbor Niles Jarvis, scion of a powerful NYC real estate family, who many suspect killed his wife (but was never charged criminally) and whose family is trying build a massive projects in Manhattan called Jarvis yards -- that is facing stiff community and political resistance. Niles is played by Matthew Rhys and man, oh man, he was is one scary dude in this series. 

Events and intrigues ensue, secrets are hidden and revealed, and it's all a lot of pulpy fun.

The reason I'm reviewing this show is that while The Beast In Me is pure sensationalist thriller, it also has a Power Broker-Chinatown angle that is quite intriguing -- namely, it makes us ponder who rules and controls the fate of great cities, how and why are these rich and powerful and murderous people allowed to control the future of millions, and how it impacts us all. 

In that way, it's a great NYC story, 

Interview: Greg Young of The Bowery Boys Podcast

Easily the best podcast about New York City history is The Bowery Boys, created and still hosted today by Greg Young and Tom Meyers. On each episode, these two uber-NYC enthusiasts deep-dive into so many aspects of this city's history: the people, neighborhoods, events, and eccentricities that have formed this most amazing of places. They go way back in history and make it relevant to life in the city today. The enthusiasm and joy that Greg and Tom bring to each episode is infectious, and the show has gone beyond the podcast into books and tours. 

It's brilliant and extremely fun, and I get excited every time I see a new episode pop up in my IPhone. 

The Bowery Boys, still going strong after more than a decade, is extremely popular with listeners from all over the world. Greg Young was kind enough to answer some questions for Mr NYC about the podcast, the city, its history, and his favorite NYC-related things.  

Tell us what inspired you and your co-host Tom Meyers to create The Bowery Boys podcast. What makes you keep doing it after 11 years? And why call is the "Bowery" boys? 

We started the podcast in 2007 as a way to keep us inspired about the city and to learn more about our neighborhood at the time (which was the Lower East Side). We have not been exhausted by the information we continue to find about the city, so we keep doing the show! The Bowery Boys were a 19th century gang that roamed the streets of Five Points, the notorious slum that once sat near Chinatown today. Although we like to also consider ourselves in the tradition of the ‘Bowery b’hoys’ and ‘Bowery g’hals’ of the 1830s and 40s, Irish-phrased slang for the new young Irish immigrant populations that were moving into lower Manhattan at the time.

While the podcast is about the history of NYC, it seems focused on how the history of the physical city intersects with its cultural and social history -- as well as its "mystique." Is this is a good way to describe the podcast or am I missing something? What else would you say the podcast is about? 

All of that – and more! I’d say the meaning of our show has evolved as well, especially now that we’ve done it for 11 years. Things we talked about at the beginning have changed or are now entirely gone. It’s interesting listening to our early shows just to compare how the city has developed – in some ways good, others bad. For instance, it’s almost amusing to hear our early shows on the High Line and the Meat-Packing District, recorded years before Hudson Yards project was dreamt up. 

How do you guys go about finding subjects to discuss and what is your research process like? How do you avoid being repetitive? 

Topics develop out of research or are inspired by current events or pop culture moments. For instance, our next show is on the history of the New York comedy scene, inspired by our affection for the The Marvelous Mrs Maisel on Amazon. And it’s okay to be a little repetitive, we have discovered. Sometimes it’s worthwhile to approach subjects again from a different point of view. We just recently did a show on Emma Lazarus, incorporating the history of the Statue of Liberty into that, but from the angle of immigration (a hot button issue these days). 

The podcast goes pretty far back into the history of NYC. Are you guys most interested in NYC before the 1950s and '60s or do you ever like to get into recent history? 

We do whatever interests us. When we do recent history, we like to interview people who remembered the history. Sometimes, due to time constraints, its just easier for us to talk about older topics but technically no decade is off limits. Our comedy show in two weeks will have a whole section about the 1990s. 

Do you have to fight the urge to make the podcast Manhattan-centric and is it harder to do episodes about the outer boroughs? 

It drives me crazy because I’d love to do more about the outer boroughs. But we have such a diverse audience at this point – with as many listeners outside New York City as in – and Manhattan tales are still the most popular. PLUS you can’t overlook how important New York (which was just Manhattan until 1898) is in American history. That said, there will be a LOT more Brooklyn and Queens in the coming year. 

Tell us about some of your favorite episodes and what made them so special? 

So many ways to answer this! We love our ghost story shows of course – we get to be melodramatic and over-produced – and we love our big infrastructure shows the most (like the subway, Robert Moses, Jane Jacobs, the grid plan). Personally speaking, I love the music shows. I come from a career in the music industry and was so thrilled to do shows on Billie Holiday and The Cotton Club that were brimming with music. 

What are some of your favorite pieces of NYC historical trivia -- and what things about the city's history do you think are important for anyone who lives here to know? 

I’m currently obsessed with the origins of place names. Find an interestingly names street and go down a rabbit hole of how it got its name. For instance, there are a row of streets in Greenpoint that are alphabetical north to south (Ash Street, Box Street, Clay Street etc.) and its all to do with the 19th century industry that once lined the waterfront there. 

Have you ever read The Power Broker and what are your thoughts on the legacy of Robert Moses? 

One of my favorite books of course! I’ll say this – our city could probably use a 1930s Robert Moses right about now, to erase and reverse some of the damage that 1950s and 60s Robert Moses did to this city. 

What are favorite NYC neighborhoods and why?

I have about a million, but I always suggest people visit Roosevelt Island. You’d be surprised how many native New Yorkers have never been. It’s got a ton of history and some excellent views. Plus – SMALLPOX HOSPITAL RUINS. 

What are some of your favorite NYC movies, TV shows, and novels? Which movies, in your opinion, show off the city the best or makes people really understand why life is (or was) like here? 

The aforementioned Mrs Maisel, Mad Men, The Knick – are all excellent portrayals of New York. The Alienist was often good, even though it was filmed in Europe. In terms of recent movies – believe it or not, Fantastic Beasts and Where To Find Them actually does an amazing job at re-imagining 1920s New York. Loved the Saiorse Ronan movie Brooklyn, the Oscar Isaac movies A Most Violent Year and Inside Llewyn Davis. I just recently re-watched Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence and thought it really held up. 

As the city becomes more and more gentrified, do you think NYC is in danger of losing parts of its history or has historical preservation done enough to, well, preserve it? Tell us your thoughts about how you think NYC should keep its history while also moving into the future? 

New York City always needs to keep changing; it can’t afford to be a museum artifact like Paris or Rome. We’ve got excellent preservation laws in place and well-regarded community groups fighting to save those artifacts that are most endangered. But I do worry about classic mom-and-pop places disappearing with skyrocketing rents. There are some excellent ideas in play to help save them, but the best way to save those types of businesses is to actually frequent them, spend money at them. We can’t lament the loss of a classic diner or a deli if we’ve never bothered to step foot in it. 

What are your hopes for The Bowery Boys podcast moving forward? What does the future hold? 

More live shows, a new spin-off show for 2019, and another book! 

Finally, what do you love most about NYC? 

My answer changes every week. Last week’s answer – the beauty of snow falling in a brownstone neighborhood with a canopy of trees. The week before – my local bakery’s bagels. Next week’s answer – visiting the American Museum of Natural History on Wednesday to watch workers inflate the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade floats. 

Thanks Greg!

You can find podcast episodes and more info about where to download them here. 

"Heaven's Gate" @ 40

Forty years ago today one of the most infamous movie reviews in American history appeared in The New York Times. It was written by Vincent Canby, the most respected movie critic in America, and he was reviewing the new movie Heaven's Gate by director Michael Cimino. Cimino's previous film, The Deer Hunter, had won the Oscars for Best Picture and Best Director the year before. Heaven's Gate had just had its premiere in NYC the night before, and this movie and review were much anticipated.

And movie history changed.

Canby wrote: "'Heaven's Gate' ... fails so completely that you might suspect Mr. Cimino sold his soul to the Devil to obtain the success of 'The Deer Hunter', and the Devil has just come around to collect ... an unqualified disaster."

Ouch. 

United Artists, the studio that had financed and produced this movie, cancelled its scheduled wide-release in December. Cimino went back to the editing room, cutting down his nearly four-hour disaster into a two-and-a-half less-of-a-disaster. It was released in April, 1981 and earned about $1.5 million against a roughly $40 million-plus budget. It was the biggest failure in American history at the time -- and United Artists was sold to MGM and effectively ceased to exist. 

One movie had brought down an entire studio. Like 9/11 or the Trump Presidency or COVID-19, something unthinkable had become quite real.  

Cimino's career nose-dived after this -- he only made four small movies afterwards and then nothing at all before his death in 2016. His career was one of the quickest rises and falls of anyone in the history of movies. Over the years many people related to this movie -- either directly or indirectly -- have shared their memories of this unprecedented flop. It premiered in NYC on November 18th, 1980, and has become perhaps the most infamous movie premiere ever -- a party no one wanted to go to, a party everyone hated, a party that quickly turned into a kind of funeral. It was like being at the election night event for a losing candidate -- a candidate losing big. 

Of course, in the forty years since, many other films have come and gone that failed bigger than Heaven's Gate. But this movie remains the most expensive failure in history -- it took down a studio, one started by, amongst others, Charlie Chaplin. 

What's also sad is that Heaven's Gate had the potential to be a truly great movie -- another Godfather, another Chinatown, another Gone with the Wind. It was a revisionist anti-Western, a re-examination of America's founding myths of the West being this vast welcoming space where immigrants to roam free and realize their dreams. The film, based very loosely on Wyoming history, was about how, in the late 19th century, immigrants were murdered by wealthy cattle barons who resented and feared immigrants' enchroachments on their land (sound familiar?). These murders were, apparently, sanctioned by the Federal Government and President Benjamin Harrison. It was an American genocide, and all perfectly legal. Sadly the movie's notorious production and failure overwhelmed any interest in its plot or the history behind it -- and, instead, it was derided as American history's most expensive "minor footnote."

The movie also became a footnote in Hollywood history, a not-so-gentle reminder that no one controls  or has the final say over history -- any kind of history. 

If you want to more of Mr NYC's Michael Cimino/Heaven's Gate coverage, go here.

Review: "Bugsy" (1991)

Recently I blogged about The Godfather Part II where the character Hyman Roth talks about his childhood pal Moe Green who invented the city of Las Vegas. In reality Hyman Roth was a gangster named Meyer Lanksy and his friend was Ben "Bugsy" Siegel, the mastermind behind the gambling mecca of America. Like Lansky, Siegel was a Jewish kid from Brooklyn who grew up to be one of the most feared and powerful gangsters of his day -- or ever. 

Bugsy was a killer and a visionary, a psychopath and a builder, a monster and a genius -- in many ways, the ultimate product of his hometown and country.

The 1991 movie Bugsy tells the story of the man's creation of Las Vegas. In the early 1940s, the powerful NYC mobster traveled to Los Angeles to take over the gambling rackets for his bosses in NYC, only to realize that next door in Nevada gambling was actually legal, and that an entire city and industry could be built around it. Bugsy's pursuit of this dream leads to his greatest professional triumph, something so much more than the life of crime and violence he had previously lived. But as his dream comes to fruition, his destruction comes with it. It's the story of triumph and tragedy, creation and death -- the American paradox that fuels our history.  

Warren Beatty, nearing the end of his leading man days, plays the title character, and a young Annette Benning, in one of her break-out roles (both as an actress and Beatty's future wife) plays Virginia Hill, Bugsy's movie-actress mistress and partner in creation of the Flamingo, the first Las Vegas hotel. The supporting cast is the real treat of this movie -- Harvey Keitel plays Siegel's one-time adversary-turned partner Mickey Cohen, and the absolutely brilliant Ben Kingsley plays Meyer Lansky in a career-best performance (with all due respect to Gandhi, both the man and the movie, this may be his best work). It was directed by Barry Levinson, coming off his great success with Rain Man, and this movie is beautifully directed and produced. Made almost 30 years ago, this is the kind of dark, brutal, mature, literate, deeply dramatic movie that the big studios used to make and don't anymore. It was, in many ways, the last of its kind. While not a great movie like Chinatown or The Godfather flicks, it's worth seeing. 

Bugsy is yet another in the unofficial Mr NYC canon of movies about New Yorkers far from home who either go on to greatest or ruin. This movie is really about both. 

Bolt Bus

Recently I had to go to Philly for the day and was directed to take a Bolt Bus there. I hadn't heard about this company before but was surprised and pleased. It is NOT, repeat NOT one of those scary Chinatown buses nor does it force you to brave the hell that is the Port Authority.

Instead, you book your ticket online, print out your confirmation, and pick up the bus either on 34th street and 7th or 8th Avenues or downtown on 6th Avenue between Grand and Watts. If you have an "A" confirmation number, then you're guaranteed a seat. Anything after that is the equivalent of stand-by. The buses leave every half-hour or so.

The cost of a one way trip is $13 and round-trip is $26. Much, much cheaper than Amtrak and it only takes a little longer to get there.

After my trip on Bolt Bus I decided to dub it the "Yuppie Express." See, it only serves the big cities on the Eastern seaboard -- Boston, NYC, Philadelphia, and DC -- so you're out of luck if you want to go to places like Baltimore or Wilmington or Hartford or places like that. Also, the buses have Wi-Fi service and nearly half the people on the bus were firing up their laptops. Most of all, you have to get your tickets online, you can't buy them at the bus stop so it requires all its passengers to be Internet users.

However, if you're reading this then you're probably a pretty regular Internet user already -- and if you need to get around the Northeast, this is a great find.

Who Makes a City?

Recently I watched again the great 1974 movie Chinatown, the noir thriller about the battle for land and water in 1930s Los Angeles. While the movie itself is fiction, the story is based on the very real history of how William Mulholland brought water to -- and stole it from -- Los Angeles. He was a man of humble origins, a hardworker, an immigrant (!) from Ireland who worked his way up the economic ladder, and helped shaped the nation's second largest city -- while making himself rich and causing the death of 500 people in the meantime. A legend and a monster all at once.

History is made of such people, and the people who powered the growth of cities are no exception.

In NYC, the masterbuilder Robert Moses is the most obvious example -- a great builder of roads, bridges, parks, and everything else who brought this city into the 20th century -- and also destroyed neighborhoods and lives forever. But Moses was not the only transformative New Yorker -- think of the great artists and businesspeople who have shaped it -- Broadway producers like the Shuberts and the Nederlanders, filmmakers like Scoresese and Woody Allen, businessmen like the Rockefellers and Lew Rudin, the list of New Yorkers who built this city and made it rich (literally and figuratively is great). Some were great, some were awful, and many were both -- but they gave us our city, for better or worse. 

That's why I loved reading this excerpt from a book about the growth of New Orleans. It's about the various characters -- some inspiring, some frightening, many just down right weird -- who shaped the Crescent City in the 20th century. I love New Orleans and have blogged about my 2009 trip there as well as other things I love about. As a city, it couldn't be any more different from NYC but, like NYC, it has great characters over the years who made it the great place that it is.

And, if you're the mood for some good New Orleans grub, consult this list of the best canjun-creole joints in NYC.  

Frugal New York

In these tough economic times, with money tight, it gets a little harder to enjoy NYC. There's lots of great to do here but, of course, a lot that costs tons of money. That's why you should read this article in today's times, about fun things to do and good places to eat that are either free or cheap.

Frugal New York

Some things I learned from this article: there are a lot of Indian restaurants on Lexington Avenue between 25th and 30th streets and I've gone to several of them (including a Kosher Indian place once). What I didn't know is that this stretch of restaurants has a name: Curry Row. Also, there's a second Chinatown in this city, out in Sunset Park in Brooklyn. Apparently there are some great, cheap restaurants out there. Check it out on Chowhound.

Did you also know (this isn't in the article but I'm just remembered it) that the area between 5th and 6th avenues between 31st and 36st streets is called Koreatown? Some friends and I went to a restaurant there once and they actually cooked the food in a stove in our table. You order something, then they bring out the food and throw it stove, and then you eat it right off it. From what I'm told, this is very typical in Korean restaurants but I hadn't experienced this before and it was very cool. I don't remember the name of restaurant but highly recommend going to Koreatown and checking one of these places out.

Don't Forget Chinatown Stories

Read more about this series. 

Review: "The First Deadly Sin" and "Dressed to Kill"

The year 1980 was a turning point in American history -- the election of conservative Ronald Reagan as President proved that the country was rejecting the progressive ethos of the 1960s and '70s, the white hot flame of disco music was burning out, and the culture was gradually turning away from the dark cinematic vision of the New Hollywood (think The Godfather, think Chinatown) to the more upbeat blockbuster era (think Rocky, think the Star Wars trilogy).

New York City was also recovering from the late 1970s traumas of near-bankruptcy, the blackout, and high crime. Ed Koch was mayor and, such were the times, that he turned being a belligerent, mean-spirited asshole into electoral gold.

This same year saw the release of two movies set in NYC that were very similar and very different -- but that showed that the city and the world were changing, as was the lives of their creators.

The First Deadly Sin is something that I can't believe I'm typing -- it's a gritty NYC crime drama starring Frank Sinatra. Yes, FRANK FRIGGIN' SINATRA! "Old blue eyes", in this movie, plays an aging NYPD detective named Delaney who is, yes, just about to retire to take care of his very sick wife (an always great Faye Dunaway, still riding her post-Network Oscar-winning wave before Mommie Dearest ended it all) but who becomes obsessed with finding a serial killer who has been menacing the Upper West Side -- and, it is later revealed, all of NYC. His investigation takes him into a dark realm of trying to understand systematic but senseless violence all the while tangled up in the bureaucracy of the NYPD and the heartbreaking illness of his wife. It's a tense, well-told story and it was a a rare, late-career movie performance by Sinatra -- long past his glory days as a movie musical star.

Sinatra is, of course, great in this movie, and you can see why he remains a legend 25 years after his death. In this movie, he quietly emotes such pathos, such sympathy, such complexity, that we root for him 100%. This was his last big movie and it's sad, in a way, that Sinatra didn't act more in the later years of his life because this movie proves what a perennial talent he was, what a great actor he was (he doesn't sing this movie so there you go), and how exciting he is to watch in every scene -- even in a dark, disturbing, non-glamorous movie and role like this where he is struggling with the horror of death all around him, in both his city and his marriage. It's about the totality and agony of loss. The movie was not a big hit at the time but it really holds up.

By the way, a totally unknown struggling actor at the time walks around in the background of this movie -- a man named Bruce Willis, also dealing with his own sense of loss right now.

Some might argue that this other movie from 1980 doesn't hold up -- and even the director of it seems to agree. Dressed to Kill by Brian De Palm is about a murderous transsexual menacing wayward women in NYC, and it was highly controversial then and even more so now. I get that criticism and sympathize with it. However, just as a piece of filmmaking, Dressed to Kill is brilliant, an amazing and bizarre thriller that basically takes the story of Psycho (if you know it) and twists the hell out of it. Angie Dickinson plays a rich, bored housewife who's afternoon of passion brings her an untimely death in an elevator, Nancy Allen plays a hooker who sees the murder and becomes the killer's next prey, and Michael Caine plays a psychiatrist trying to help both women -- or is he?

You need to see Dressed to Kill to fully understand it -- trying to describe it with words is hard because, like all De Palma movies, the essence of its storytelling is visual. He doesn't use lots of special effects -- it's his use of the camera that is its own special effect. The movie is highly unconventional, there are whole scenes without dialogue -- including a brilliant 10-minute sequence in an art gallery that makes no sense but that you follow anyway, and that has a a great payoff. Like all De Palma movies, it'll enthrall and repulse you but this may be my favorite of his movies and I'm not even a big thriller fan -- but you should see this!

Dressed to Kill was, shockingly, given both its subject matter and unusual storytelling, a big hit in 1980. It's hard to imagine audiences today going to a movie this dark, depraved, weird, and challenging but they did. It shows NYC as a sexy, glamorous, and dangerous place -- this is not a "gritty crime drama", oh no, it's a sexy, alluring one, and it really gets under your skin. Skin, that you should probably cover up with clothes although please don't, you know, get dressed to kill.

Spiderman is Back!

And damn, he is really expensive.

Over the last several months, this town has been all a-twitter (and Tweeting a lot, I'm sure) about the debacle that is the Spiderman musical on Broadway. This strange, clunky musical just opened after months and months and months of previews and the reviews have been mostly lukewarm. 

The musical is making about $1.3 million a week in ticket sales but it costs about $1.2 million in weekly operating expenses. The total costs of this musical thus far is $75 million, double the cost of the most expensive show ever produced. Wow.

In the movie Chinatown, there's a great line: "In the middle of a drought and the water commissioner drowns! Only in L.A."

Only in NYC can anyone spend this much money on a dopey show in the middle of a recession. 

That's even more amazing than the Amazing Spiderman.