Little did I know, as I approached the periphery of the Columbia University campus, that the weeks-long protest/sit-in/riot -- whatever you want to call it -- was in its NYPD-enforced final hours.
Before around 200 cops stormed the campus that night -- breaking up the encampments, cleaning out Hamilton Hall, arresting people -- I walked around the walls of Columbia in waning daylight to see what was going on.
Honestly, at the time, not much, but here is a short photo-chronicle of what I saw:
First, there were multiple helicopters overhead, a symphony of chopper blades soon becoming a kind of unremarkable white noise.
I then approached the campus on 120th street, walking down Amsterdam Avenue, where the bulk of the protestors outside the campus were congregated. There was a heavy NYPD and campus police prescence, urging us pedestrians to move on and not gawk. There were multiple signs indicating that university ID was needed to enter the campus.
There were also multiple areas cordoned off for the media, plus lots of news trucks on the streets. Interestingly I walked right past the bestselling author Michael Wolff, obviously looking to find a juicy story to write about.
I walked down to 114th street, crossing over to Broadway, then up to 116th to the main grand entrance of the Campus. There was no crowd there, no protestors, just a lot of bored-looking security standing at the barricades or before the locked gates or coming and going. It was actually (relatively) quiet.
Finally I walked back down to the entrance of WKCR radio, the Columbia University radio station, where I talked to two young ladies standing outside. To be honest, they seemed bored with the whole protest but I told them that, in the 1990s, we college students were totally politically apathetic. One of the ladies subsequently shamed me by saying, "There was the AIDS crises ..." And, needless to say, I then felt like a bigger-than-usual asshole. I wished both ladies well.
Then I left.
Honestly, I saw more security than protestors and obviously I couldn't get on the campus or really take any pictures despite my best efforts. I only wish that the US Capitol had been this well patrolled, or that law enforcement had been this aggressive, on January 6, 2021 (but, you know, I think we know why).
And, later that night, in came the cops to shut it down.
Much like the whole Israel-Gaza situation/war, there seems to be no ground for reason or compromise or mutual understanding. For so many it seems to be either/or, one side against the other, no debate, no concessions, nothing but anger and violence. It's really sad.
But Columbia has big history of sit-ins and protests -- this is just another one in its long, long history.
Let's take a little trip. Let's travel from one end of Manhattan to the other.
Let's traverse this narrow thirteen-mile island that fascinates and captures the imaginations of peoples around the world.
And let's do it via the #1 subway line, noting the most signficant stops along the way, subway stations that are more than just various gateways into Manhttan -- they are portals into American culture, history, and power.
Now there's something important to remember: Manhattan technically extends beyond Manhattan Island. There is a small neighborhood just north of the island called Marble Hill that is legally part of the Borough of Manhattan. So as we look north from the bottom of Marble Hill, we can look north towards the Bronx.
Then we turn around and see the northern tip of Manhattan island as well as the bridge with the crosswalk and subway tracks that will take us into it.
Now we'll go upstairs to the Marble Hill 225th Street station and take a look at the subway route on the #1 that we'll be following (as well as map of the geographic route we'll be crossing).
Now the train has rattled into the station, we get on and sit down, and we're off!
After a few stops we hit 181th street street. This is where we'll find the George Washington Bridge. Dubbed "the world's busiest bridge," this northern-most expanse connects the city to the rest of America, with cars flowing in and out of NYC and the rest of the continent. It's also, apparently, a popular place for some lost souls to end their lives -- sometimes to dark, comic effect.
Few more stops and we hit 137th street and City College.
This public college in the heart of Harlem is one of the great institutions for American learning. For over a century, poor kids from all over NYC could go to City College and pursue the American dream. The students and graduates of City are extraordinary: ten Nobel Prize winners, mayors, Supreme Court justices, US Senators and Secretaries of State, Oscar-winners, Emmy-winners, Pulitzer Prize-winners, astronauts and founders of big companies, and so many more! Heck, even fictional people have gone to City College: Gordon Gekko from Wall Street and Don Draper from Mad Men most notably.
Also, it's where both of my parents worked for almost 40 years, met, fell in love, and produced Mr NYC.
One more stop and we're in Harlem, above ground, at 125th Street.
What else can I say about Harlem, the capital of the black American experience, where great black artists and pioneers lived and worked. Also, it's also one of the hearts of American culture with Apollo Theater and the Cotton Club.
One of the seven Ivy League Universities, this institution of higher learning pre-dates the United States itself, originally chartered in 1754 by King George II (hence the original name King's College). Besides being a great and famous university, Columbia has been a site for brilliance and controversy, where great minds have flowered and fought over decades.
Now we chug down past several stops on the Upper West Side to 66th street and Lincoln Center.
Home to ballet, opera, symphonies, musicals and plays, Lincoln Center is the multi-theater complex that, along with Broadway, defines NYC as the cultural capital of America. While encompassing only a few small blocks, its impact across America is massive -- including the many performances that are broadcast from there. I have personal recollections of performing at Lincoln Center and have blogged about it a lot -- including my own experience in partaking in a live broadcast.
One more stop and we're all 59th Street and Columbus Circle.
The site of the big memorial to Christopher Columbus, it is one of the crossroads of Manhattan, with different avenues intersecting and hugging the lower southwest portion of Central Park. It is also, to my knowledge, the only traffic circle in all over NYC. And these days it is now home to the massive Time Warner building that looms over it.
Two more stops and we're in the most square in all the world -- Times Square.
Dubbed the "Crossroads of the World" it is the very center of American culture, bedecked with electronic billboards, Broadway theaters, massive chain restaurants -- for many it is New York City, the heart of the heart of it all. And, obviously, it's where the world celebrates New Year's every year.
A quick one-stop and we're at Penn Station on 34th street -- or Pennsylvania Station as it's officlally known.
If the George Washington Bridge is the city's businest car-route into America, Penn is the easily the busiest railway route. Amtrak, New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Railroad all go through it, a central hub that connects the outer-edges of Long Island to the West Coast of the United States.
Penn Station also has a tortured history -- the once gorgeous station was torn down in the 1960s and replaced by a dingy undeground hovel. In the last twenty-years it has been dramatically rebuilt and re-imagined, a vast improvement of what it was but a sad reminder of what we could have had if we had only preserved the original. Hey, at least the new Penn Station now has a Dunkin' Donuts!
Now we go down several stops and hit Christopher Street -- Stonewall Station.
Christopher Street is actually a quiet, beautiful area of Greenwich Village but it is now of the iconic birth place of American gay rights movement. On June 28th, 1969, right after the death of gay icon Judy Garland, the Stonewall Inn was raided by cops -- and for the first time, gay people fought back. It took decades for gay rights to be enshrined into American culture and law but it has triumphed mightly. And it all started on this small block of Manhattan.
Our journey is almost over but we have one more stop until the end -- the World Trade Center.
Of course it used to be the World Trade Centers -- until September 11, 2001 when it became Ground Zero, then, after an extensive rebuilding, One World Trade Center.
The story of this patch of Lower Manhattan is one of great triumph and tragedy in American history, where George Washington celebrated his victory in the American Revolution and where American was also brutally attacked two centuries later. It's the symbol of American financial power and dominance. Its where Manhattan and NYC began and where it grew out from. It is the complicated heart and soul of the world's greatest nation and its greatest city.
And now we come of the end of our journey. We reach the South Ferry-Whitehall Station aka. the Battery, and we pop up out of our seat and go upstairs into the very southern edge of Manhattan.
We're right across the street from the entraces to the Governor's Island and Staten Island Ferrys, and we can see (and smell) the vastness of New York Harbor, the watery gateway to city and the force that unites the five boroughs.
And then we walk down a few blocks, turning to look uptown to see where we came from ...
... and then we look down to the southern tip of Manhattan with the rest of NYC and America beyond it.
I hope you've enjoyed this trip along the #1 subway line, seeing the amazing stops and spots of Americana along the way. You can do it yourself in just under and hour. And I hope, maybe, that you learned something!
The New York Times has published an impressive list of some of the legendary bars, restaurants, hotels, buildings -- even a church! -- where the great writers in history use to hang out, drink, chat, and make merry.
There are some obvious places on this list like (the Chelsea Hotel, the White Horse Tavern, Elaine's) as well as some places that are reminders that the literary history of NYC is not exclusively white -- for example, a building in Harlem where W.E.B Dubois and other great black writers would congregate, or the largely Hispanic Nuyrican Cafe. Reading about these places, you are mentally and emotionally transported back to a time where the written word, and the lively mind, were celebrated.
That said, there are some notable omissions on this list, and I'll mention two of them.
First, there's Pete's Tavern on Irving Place where the famous short story writer O Henry often hung out and wrote, as well as where Ludwig Bemelsmans literally wrote the first and quite legendary children's book Madeleine. Pete's Tavern was more than a hangout -- it was a workplace, an incubator of literary inspiration.
Second, the West End Gate in Morningside Heights near Columbia University. This was a popular hangout for the Beat Generation authors, like Jack Kerouac, Allan Ginsburg, and William S. Buroughs. It even got implicated in a murder in 1944 involving a Columbia student named Lucien Carr -- bizarre story that become a movie called Kill Your Darlings several years ago.
There are literary and other cultural hangouts all over this town -- and that's part of what makes NYC so great.
If you watched The Deuce, or listen to the great podcast The Rialto Report, you might have heard of Jamie Gillis. While not a household name among "the squares", he was a star, and now a legend, of the NYC adult film business in the 1970s and 1980s.
By all accounts Jamie was a wild man -- someone who didn't live life so much as charge through it. He wasn't your typical idea of a porn star, he wasn't some uneducated Neanderthalwho was basically the life support system for a penis. He was a true Renaissance man. In addition to the naughty movies, Jamie also studied French Literature at Columbia University, was a collector of rare objects, a gourmet, and, apparently, a demon gambler. He knew everyone and went everywhere, a big man about town.
Jamie died in 2010 at the age of 65 from cancer. If you want to learn more about his life, it's worth listening to these podcasts from the Rialto Report, one of which includes an interview with him from the 1970s.
The most recent podcast is about what was arguably the darkest moment of his life. In 1982, he was living on East 23rd street when a gorgeous model that lived in his building was killed. (The model was probably one of the few women Jamie wasn't shtupping.) Jamie actually found her stabbed body and called the police but then Jamie was held as a suspect -- apparently the cops thought that the man's chosen profession made him a potential murderer. Jamie was never charged but the incident haunted him for the rest of his life -- including a bizarre incident in the year 2000 when he was arrested -- again! -- for the same crime in San Francisco before being released -- yet again (a lawsuit ensued). Finally it was discovered that the model's ex-boyfriend had committed the murder but he had killed himself in 1987, never facing proper justice (Side note: the model's roommate was a young aspiring actress named Kim Delaney who later became a star on NYPD Blue.) Jamie never got over the fact that, twice in his life, he was suspected of murder and that his scandalous job was the reason for it.
A truly weird, sad story.
This case is much lesser known than -- but in some ways a NYC equivalent to -- the Wonderland murders in California in 1981 (just a year earlier) both of which involved murder, porn stars, and a cast of bizarre characters including nightclub owners and drug addicts.
But back to Jamie. His notoriety as a porn star remained even until the end of his life. Apparently he went to a boxing match in 2008 and someone yelled at him that he was the guy who had banged Vanessa Del Rio. He certainly had -- and lots of other women including every big name female porn stars from the 1970s and '80, over 400 women!
Now Zohran hasn't actually won the mayoralty -- he still has to win the general election in November. It looks like there's going be a cluttered and super nasty general election campaign. He'll be up against the Republican candidate, the always crazy Curtis Sliwa, and Mayor Adams himself, running as an independent.
Expect super racist, fear-mongering propaganda to flood NYC for the next four to five months -- the NY Post will go nuts on him, and he'll get little actual support from the Democratic party.
And you should also watch this interview from CNBC who gives you an insight into his enemies minds. This prick totally contradicts himself when he says that city hasn't recovered since COVID but there's also not enough housing to match the city's job creation. Dig the logic: "The city is in crises, people are leaving! And too many people want to live here!" The truth: NYC has a bigger population than ever before, 8.4 million. Between 2010 and 2020 over 600,000 people moved in -- that's the equivalent of the entirety of Miami moving here. The DEMAND to live here is greater than the SUPPLY to house everyone -- that's capitalism, something I thought CNBC understood. And usually demands increases, and therefore prices go up, because it's a highly desirable product.
People move in and out of NYC all the time for work, family issues, life changes, many reasons, that's been true since the time the Dutch ruled this town. This focus on how rich people feel about this town is gross -- without a vibrant middle class that can afford to live here we'll turn into a dead city. I don't know if Zohran can actually achieve his goals but the voters clearly want someone who'll try.
I strongly advise watching these two videos from the Bulwark, one that analysis Zohran's victory and the other with an interview with Zohran himself. He's a natural politician, a super talent, one of a kind.
Something I also learned: he's another Morningside Heights kid! Zohran, George Carlin, Fiona Apple and moi are all residents of those strange streets around Columbia University. Very cool.
Also, apparently Zohran did very well in Waterfront NYC -- Queens (Astoria, LIC) and Brooklyn (Williamsburg, Gowanus) that's now being renamed the Commie Coast. Cute.
One fine day -- around noon on March 6th, 1970 to be exact, nearly 55 years ago -- a townhouse located at 18 West 11th Street exploded. In this beautiful, serene part of Greenwich Village, an unimaginable act of terror had occurred.
Inside several young people who were part of the left-wing terrorist group the Weather Underground had been building bombs. They were planning to cross the river and attack Fort Dix in New Jersey, then Columbia University, but these young, brash, radicals had no experience handling explosives -- and tragedy ensued.
This very public act of (accidental) domestic terrorism freaked the city out -- as well as the White House of President Richard Nixon. And it set off a chain reaction that eventually led to the first Presidential resignation in American history.
In the aftermath of the Greenwich Village explosion, a young White House aide named Tom Huston wrote a 43-page memo. Dubbed the Huston Plan, it outlined how the US government should fight back against groups like the Weather Underground -- including break-ins, kidnapping, intercepting mail, wiretapping, blackmail, psy-ops, all kind of nasty and ILLEGAL stuff. Huston presented his plan to then-FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover. No stranger to the dark arts of surveillance and disruption, Hoover actually rejected the plan -- he didn't want his agents to be put into a position where they might get arrested by local law enforcement and, as an old man, he no longer had the stomach to explain this kind of stuff to Congress. So he dismissed the Huston Plan and that, so it seemed, was that.
Nixon was pissed. He didn't want any more domestic terrorism on his watch and he ordered the plan implemented anyway -- until he backed off. But the idea that his White House might have to freelance on its own to stop America's domestic enemies remained a widely held belief amongst All the President's Men.
A year later, in April 1971, the Pentagon Papers were leaked to the press. This massive, secret report detailed how the United States had gotten mired in the Vietnam War and lied about being able to win an unwinnable war. The Republican President Nixon, at first, actually was delighted about the leak -- the Pentagon Papers indicted Nixon's two Democratic Presidential predecessors, JFK and LBJ, over their handling of the war -- and viewed it as a political boon for him. But then his National Security Advisor, Henry Kissinger, told him that if the Communist Russian and Chinese governments saw that someone could leak secret information to the press and get away with it they would think that he, Nixon, was a "weakling."
Nixon flipped out. He ordered that the man who had leaked the Pentagon Papers to the press, a former Pentagon aide named Daniel Ellsberg, be prosecuted or neutralized. And Nixon didn't want anymore leaks or terrorism or anything like it -- thus the White House Plumbers, a secret group of former FBI and CIA agents, to do dirty jobs for the White House to "plug" the leaks.
In the fall of 1971 two Plumbers -- G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt -- broke into the Los Angeles office of Daniel Ellsberg psychiatrist to find information about him that they could use for blackmail. They found nothing and ended up smashing up the doc's office. They returned to the White House empty handed, the Plumbers were disbanded.
But what should have been the end of the story was only the beginning.
Hunt and Liddy were sent to the Nixon reelection committee called CREEP (Committee to Re-Elect the president). Even though this two dopes had messed up their previous assignment, the geniuses at CREEP decided to put them in charge of "black advance" -- spying in Nixon's potential Democratic opponents and sabatoge their campaigns. Eventually this led to Hunt and Liddy and a group of Cubans breaking into the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee on June 17, 1972. Thus Watergate, the most consequential political scandal began. And two years and two months later, on August 9, 1974, Nixon would resign the presidency.
It's hard to realize that such momentous history happened within less than five years in the early 1970s. And obviously Watergate is the famous scandal in history.
The seeds of this most American tragedy weren't planted in the White House or even in Washington, DC -- it happened here on the streets of NYC, where history is always happening, once upon a time.
With the opening of the Highline, NYC now has its first park in the sky. But according to this in-depth article in the New York Observer, "skyscraper restaurants" that look literally look down on the town are withering away.
The Rainbow Room is closed and is having trouble finding a buyer. Other such restaurants are falling on hard times (what isn't these days?). The most popular of these eateries remains the one that revolves at the top of the Marriott Marquis hotel in Times Square. The views sound great but I've never known anyone who's gone there -- or wanted to -- and it's supposed to be not only tacky but something of a culinary graveyard. Considering it's at the top of a hotel, what can you expect?
Obviously the most tragic of the city's sky-high restaurants is Windows on the World that was atop the World Trade Centers and came crashing down with it. I went there once for a party about ten years ago and the views were stunning but the food ... eh. Still, we all wish it was still there.
I haven't been to that many "elevated" restaurants in NYC but I did go to one recently and it's the fantastic. Interestingly, it's far away from midtown and doesn't attract a tourist crowd. It's called Terrace in the Sky and is located on 119th street between Morningside Drive and Amsterdam Avenue. It attracts a lot of people associated with nearby Columbia University and it not only has gorgeous views of Manhattan but also really great food.
The Terrace is a particularly great place in the summertime as you eat in twilight, watching the sun going down over the city and then seeing the glittering lights of Gotham coming alive. Along with a great meal, this place makes for a magical night.
NYC is a great food town, and I'm not just talking about the fact that this is probably the best restaurant city in the world (although citizens of Paris might claim their city is the best; let's call it a draw). Anyway, in the last few years, with the local grown/organic food movement taking shape, New Yorkers are getting more interested in doing such novel things as buying and cooking their own food -- and not always eating out and ordering in. Increasingly, we Gothamites are interested in where our food comes from, how it's grown, and how we can prepare it ways that are both healthy and tasty for us. This goes beyond just going to the supermarket and cracking open a recipe book. I know some people who have compost heaps in their buildings' backyards and are growing their own fruits and vegetables. People are seeking out grocery stores that sell locally grown food. Greenmarkets and farmer markets are getting more popular (the one in Union Square is the best known; there's also one outside of Columbia University that is set up twice a week; there are others around the city). There are even now carts serving poor areas selling fresh fruits and vegetables -- and business is booming.
This is an encouraging development. You only have to look at the obesity epidemic to see why eating fast food and junk and prepared foods with lots of preservatives and fat isn't good. Also, in the last few years, grocery stores have been closing in poor neighborhoods, leaving the people who live there with little else but fast food -- and they've been suffering the resulting health problems. Not only that, but one of the downsides of gentrification has been that fruit and vegetable stores have been closing so there are fewer options for good, fresh fruits and vegetables (not that what you get in supermarkets is bad but there's better selection in these stores; fortunately, here in Queens, there are still some of these stores left).
This month the Leonard Lopate show on WNYC is doing a series called Food in the City about this very topic. He interviews NYC food experts and they examine "the different ways that food makes us New Yorkers." I heard the first segment of it today and it was great so I strongly suggest checking it out.
Basically where we live has a lot to do with what we eat. And if you are what you eat, and where you live has a lot to do with what you eat, then you eat where you live and you are where live.
Mr NYC, for one, has no problem consuming this great metropolis. It's quite yummy.
Hope everyone out there voted today. I got to my polling station at 6 AM and there already was a line down the block -- so many people anxious to make history.
The line moved pretty decently until we actually got inside the gymnasium where all the machines were. Once inside, several poll workers mistakenly sent people to the wrong lines and there was much consternation. Fortunately I had my voter registration card and got onto the correct line for my election district. Unfortunately the people working at the tables for my election district didn't seem to know what they were doing so the line got stalled. On top of that there were people doing dumb things like taking cameras into the booth so that slowed things up as well.
It took me almost an hour to vote and, while I was happy to do it, it was annoying that it took so long and it could have been avoided. That said, I won't be a baby about it -- as Americans, we're lucky that we can vote at all.
So now all we can do is hurry up and wait. The first polls close in about 5 minutes and the first big state, Virginia, closes in about an hour. Fingers crossed, breath held, eyes closed, America is about to make a big giant leap into the future.
P.S. I was included in a mass e-mail from Philip Leventhal of Columbia University who's plugging the new edition of The Almanac of New York City. He gives a short history here about how New York City has historically voted in Presidential elections, and it includes a few surprises.
Every so often there will be a "scandal" when a prostitution ring gets busted. And while sex always sells, the media goes especially nuts when the ring in question turns out to have been run by a woman.
Back in the 1980s, there was the Mayflower Madam, Sydney Biddle Barrows, a lady with a distinguished pedigree (private schools, good jobs in the legit world, a descendant of the Mayflower passengers). More recently there was Kirsten Davis, the ridiculous character whose agency was involved in the Spitzer scandal back in 2008.
New York City has always produced eccentric characters doing weird, fascinating, and sometimes illegal things -- so it's no surprise that our madams are equally colorful.
But perhaps the most colorful of madam in NYC history was Polly Adler. Born a Jew in Russia in 1900, her family sent her to Massachusetts to live with relatives so she could avoid the horrible, state sanctioned anti-Semitic pogroms. After growing up, she moved to NYC and opened her first brothel near Columbia University. Her establishment became the best in the business, the most popular brothel in town. She had to turn away clients and woman who wanted to work for her, the demand was so high. She would get busted every so often -- and then went right back to work. Her clients included the powerful columnist Walter Winchell, Mayor Jimmy Walker, a soon-to-be famous singer named Desi Arnez. Polly even became personal friends with the famous writer and notorious wit Dorothy Parker.
And yet it wasn't the law that was Polly's most formiddable enemy -- it was the mob. Shakedowns, violence, and an unending stream of threats put her life in perpetual danger. Eventually she went to jail and finally quit the business in the 1940s, moving to Los Angeles, writing a book about her life, and dying in 1962 -- at age 62.
Polly Adler was a denizen of another age, another NYC. Her life was one of glamour and danger, of excitement and pain. She had an amazing life -- just one that I don't think any of us would ever really want to live ourselves.
Morningside Heights is a neighborhood I know extremely well since, uh, yeah, well, you know, I grew up there.
It's a relatively small uptown Manhattan neighborhood nestled between the Upper West Side and Harlem, anchored by the mighty campus of Columbia University. In many ways it's more of a college town than anything else -- oh, and besides yours truly, it's the same neighborhood where George Carlin and Humphrey Bogart grew up in. How cool is that?
Over the years Morningside Heights has gone from a quiet middle-class neighborhood into a gentrified madhouse -- with more high-rise construction, more chain stores, more expensive restaurants and boutique stores, more tourists, more noise, and just more people conquering the streets than ever before. It doesn't even feel like a residential neighborhood anymore -- it feels more like a bustling commerical district where some people happen to live.
That's why this New York Timespiece about Morningside Heights confused me -- according to the "paper of record", this neighborhood is still considered "affordable"?
Really? Really? The average price is a million bucks for an apartment and it's affordable? Basta! It used to be cheap but not anymore -- and not for a long time. It just goes to show you how skewed the idea of what's "affordable" in this town has become.
However, the article does provide a nice "tour" of the neighborhood and it was a fun, nostalgic read. It you want to know more about the streets where Mr NYC, George Carlin and Humphrey Bogart grew up, read this and enjoy.
I recently read this interesting profile of Dale DeGroff, considered by toute le monde to be the best living bartender in NYC. He's a legend in the field, a man who can make any cocktail sing, and he's more than just a great mixologist -- he's a beverage innovator, a man who'll take a variety of ingredients and invent a brilliant drink on the fly.
And it got me depressed.
Years ago I took a bartending class -- actually, the bartending class at Columbia University. It was, as you might imagine, a lot of fun, learning how to mix a variety of drinks, how to stock a basic bar, how to shake and stir properly, how to interact with customers. It was great, I loved it ...
... and then I never worked as a bartender. I actually had a good job (still do) and a busy life and a bartending gig just didn't fit in. Besides, I had no idea how I'd get one in the first place!
Still, I adore the mystique of the bartender, the creator of beverage bliss, the temporary friend who makes drinks and conversation, who becomes the recipient of secrets and stories, who sees people at their worst or their most honest, who becomes, at least for a little while, a port in the storm of life, a helper in a world of hurters (I think I just invented a word). For some reason, I never made this work in my life and it bums me out.
That's why I envy guys like Dale DeGroff -- they had the courage to go into a tough, not necessarily lucrative field, like bartending and make a big career out of it.
I have, on my bucket list, the goal to one day work as a bartender. And there's lots of bars in this town! So one day, here in the wilds of NYC, you may get a drink served to you by yours truly. I hope it'll be tasty ... UPDATE: Did you know that, among his many other sins, Donald Trump destroyed the legendary tiki bar Trader Vics and basically destroyed tiki bar culture in NYC? Many of his supporters like to brandish tiki torches when they chant about how much they hate black and Jews. That's some kinf of messed up Jungian synchronicity right there!
The definition of something being "haunted" means it's been "frequented by a ghost." What's a ghost? An apparition, a nebulous image of something or someone that used to exist, used to live, appears to still exist but is in fact dead.
In some ways, every word that has ever been written is a ghost -- each word is an imprint of someone's mind, someone's thought at the time it was written. The words might have been written a long time ago, the thought long dissipated, the writer might long be dead, but their words still live, the thought they were recording at the time still provoke.
The written word haunts us all.
Think about it. The phrase "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" still gives me chills even though its author has been dead for nearly a century.
This idea of words being ghosts occurred to me recently when I read about a few perfect examples of their haunting power.
As I wrote last summer, Quentin Tarantino was preparing a movie about an underground 1970s movie critic that sounded intriguing. I called the post The Romance of the Underground Writer and I expounded on the idea of writers (much like myself) whose words are read by few people but are beloved by those who do read them. Sadly it appears now that Quentin has dropped this movie and won't make it so this underground writer will truly remain underground. This unmade movie, like the writer and his words that it was about, will remain forever a ghost.
Then there's a couple of Village Voice articles about music writers and their ghostly power.
Lester Bangs was a legendary rock critic who became nearly as famous as the singers and bands he reviewed. He was so influential and admired that Philip Seymour Hoffman played him in the 2000 movie Almost Famous. But even as brilliant as Lester was, he could get it wrong sometimes. In 1980, Lester wrote a long commentary about how the Rolling Stones 1978 album Some Girls wasn't that good and that, after almost two decades together, perhaps the Stones should break up.
Just to give you an idea of how wrong Lester was, Some Girls contains, amongst other songs, "Beast of Burden" and "Shattered", brilliant, classic songs. And, of course, 44 years after this article was written, the Stones are still together, selling out shows. Even though Lester Bangs has been dead for more than 40 years, these words from this review still haunt him, even if his overall reputation remains deservedly undiminished.
Another writer whose gone but whose words having staying power was and is Greg Tate. Another rock critic, he wrote about (mostly) African-American music and culture, and was one of the first critics to write about rap music seriously. He was so respected that he even became a professor at Columbia University.
President Obama has to have the most fascinating upbringing of any of the forty-three men who've served in that great office.
Born in Hawaii (yes, he was born there), his mother was a white woman from Kansas and his dad a black guy from Kenya. The president has lived all over the country and the world: Hawaii, Indonesia, Los Angeles, and, more recently, Chicago and Washington, DC. Obama has to be one of the only presidents who has lived on both coasts, in the American Midwest, and one of our country's two non-contiguous states. Unlike the morons who say he's not an American, Obama has probably lived in, and knows more about, our country than any of them.
And one of the places that Obama has lived was NYC.
He came here in the early 1980s when he transferred to Columbia University. After graduation, he worked for a time at a company near the United Nations. He lived on the upper west side (in my old neighborhood actually) and enjoyed eating in local diners, including the famous Tom's, as well as going to dinner parties. For a time, he had a very serious girlfriend and contemplated life as a New Yorker. Eventually, he would decide to head to Chicago where he would start his career, meet his future wife, and eventually forge a path to his historic presidency.
But once upon a time, about a quarter of a century ago, he lived here and it shaped the identity of the man who know is the most powerful person in the world.
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