The Great Precursor: "The Beautiful and Damned" @ 100

Last year saw the release of two movies based on musicals -- In the Heights by Lin-Manuel Miranda and tick ... tick ... BOOM! by Jonathan Larson (the movie of which was actually directed Miranda) -- that would never have been made had their respective creators not then, for their next shows, created arguably the two greatest musicals of the last 25 years -- Rent and Hamilton.  

Call them precursors, forerunners, warm-up-acts, playing in the minors before the majors, what have you -- the small things that came before the big things, the good things before the truly GREAT things. Their first shows got them attention and acclaim. Their next shows vaulted them into cultural history. 

Think Reservoir Dogs before Pulp Fiction, War of the Worlds before Citizen Kane, Llewyn Davis playing before Bob Dylan at the Gaslight, you get the idea. Before something really great, you have to have something pretty good -- but the pretty good won't get remembered unless followed by something really great. 

Got it?

Between 1919 and 1941, F. Scott Fitzgerald wrote four novels (plus one uncompleted one) and numerous short stories. The voice of his generation, doyen of the Jazz Age, Fitzgerald would be remembered today as a talented writer who was a product of his era had he not written what is arguably the greatest American novel of the 20th century -- The Great Gatsby. Gatsby's legacy towers over American literature, it's themes of the emptiness of the American dream, the false promise of wealth buying love and happiness, and how we can never recreate our idealized pasts even though we are haunted by them have made it truly timeless.

Every time I read Gatsby I'm just amazed by what a perfect, gorgeous, and powerful story it is -- and how its creation was nothing short of a miracle.

So what came before it? Even Fitzgerald had to have his own warm up act -- in this case, two novels: his youthful 1919 debut, This Side of Paradise, and his 1922 dark satire The Beautiful and Damned.

When Gatsby turns 100 in 2025, there will doubtless be myriad articles, documentaries, think pieces celebrating its greatness. It'll be a Gatsby melee. There will probably be a deluge of analysis of this seminal American work, this forever masterpiece. As well there should be!

But The Beautiful and Damned is being, no surprise, critically overlooked, ignored, on its 100th anniversary. It's like the ugly sibling being slighted for the gorgeous one. 

Thus it's left to yours truly to celebrate the 100 anniversary of Gatsby's precursor -- call it the Great Precursor -- The Beautiful and Damned, the novel you read constantly thinking, "And right after this book, he wrote The Great Gatsby!"

The novel is about married couple living a dissolute life in nineteen-teens NYC. Although Fitzgerald is mostly associated with the 1920s (and this novel was published in March, 1922), it's story is set between 1913 and 1921, bookending the First World War. The orphaned Anthony Patch is the grandson of a wealthy, irascible industrialist who spends his days sleeping and his evening partying -- and waiting for his grandfather to die so that he will inherit tens of millions of dollars (essentially the equivalent of a billion or more today). Anthony meets, through his friends, a debutante named Gloria from Kansas City. They marry and, together, they spend their days drinking and spending money they don't really have, alienating people and getting into trouble -- before Anthony is drafted and heads south for basic training for the First World War. Adultery and hangovers ensue, and a couple ugly twists rob Anthony of his inheritance -- and sanity. The ending is a real shock. 

It's an ugly, tragic tale but it's also a darkly funny book. Where Gatsby is elegiac, Beautiful and Damned is nasty. Fitzgerald does not get sentimental or deep here -- it's almost documentary like in showing and mocking the bad behavior of the ideal, mindless rich (who are never as rich as they think).

When I read this book in college, my professor said, "It's a very bad book." That took me by surprise since, in school, we're supposed to read the great works by the masters -- not one of their minor, or even bad, works. I didn't think the book bad at all -- it's entertaining, amusing, and quite appealing to the sarcastic mind, but it's also overlong and overwritten, clearly the work of a young writer trying to prove himself, favoring verbosity over restraint.

Still, I recommend reading The Beautiful and Damned on its centenary year since, while it's a product of its time, it's a time that reverberates today -- and, yes, because it's the one that came BEFORE, the Great Precursor to The Great Gatsby, the seeds of the timeless greatness that flowered afterwards.

P.S. I hesitated making this comparison earlier but here goes now: another way to put it is, The Beautiful and Damned is like the person you seriously dated before you met your spouse. Barack Obama, who lived in NYC during law school before making his career in Chicago, once called our city "The great love of your life that you never married." 

That's this book in a nutshell.

Beyond the Green Light

Over the years I've blogged about my love for F. Scott's Fitzgerald's novel 1925 The Great Gatsby.

Yes, it's the Great American Novel, one of best in all of American and world literature.

Yes, it's a beautifully written snapshot of life in Roaring Twenties NYC -- the parties, the bootleggers, the indulgent affluence leading to the Great Depression and the Second World War.

Yes, almost everyone reads it in school and either loves it or hates it (or, more accurately, either "gets it" or doesn't).

Yes, it's been made into movies, including the 1974 version with Robert Redford and the 2013 with Leonardo Di Caprio, two of the biggest stars ever.

Yes, it's the final word on the promise and tragedy of the American dream.

And that's where the novel's "greatness" lies. It shows that the American dream lies betwix and between tragedy and promise, between hope and loss, that both are true at the same time. After all, we're the same nation that declare freedom and human happiness the keys to human dignity in our nation's founding documents -- yet affirmed slavery at the same time.

Jay Gatsby, poor boy from North Dakota, reinvents himself as a Long Island millionaire (thanks to bootlegging) in order to win the heart of his lost love Daisy. But it all goes horribly wrong and he dies. He hope, as Fitzgerald writes, to recreate the past and, even though he fails, the hope endures. It is symbolized by the green light at the end of Daisy's dock that Gatsby stares at, night after night, his hope of winning her love back never dying. Love endures, hope endures, even when tragedy is everywhere.

Another thing that attests to the greatest of Gatsby is that you don't have to be an American to appreciate or be moved by it. Australian Baz Luhrman, who directed the 2013 Great Gatsby, writes movingly here about his love for the novel. Best of all, he reminds us that, as free people, as hopeful people, we should all "live for the green light."

F. Scott Fitzgerald couldn't have said it better. And these days, like the novel itself, it's more relevant than ever. 

Gatsby's Green Light in 2008

F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby is, of course, one of the absolute masterpieces of American literature. We all know the story (or should) about the poor North Dakota boy made Long Island millionaire (thanks to bootlegging) whose love for Daisy, "the golden girl", eventually destroys him. We all read it in high school so for many of us this novel reminds us of homework and book reports. But reading it again, one cannot help but be overpowered by the beauty of its words and themes.

This article from today's New York Times shows how this novel is still relevant today. Specifically, it concentrates on the central image of the green light, shining from Daisy's dock across the water, beckoning to Gatsby. Like the Mississippi River in Huckleberry Finn, taking Jim and Huck to freedom and exposing the madness and sheer idiocy of racism and slavery, the green light in many ways encapsulates America.

Fitzgerald, through the narrator Nick, sums up how the green light represents all the contradictory yearnings of the American dream. In the novel's closing passages, he writes:

... I thought of Gatsby's wonder when he first picked out the green light at the end of Daisy's dock. He had come a long way to this blue lawn, and his dream must have seemed so close that he could hardly fail to grasp it. He did not know that it was already behind him, somewhere back in that vast obscurity beyond the city, where the dark fields of the republic rolled on under the night.

Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us.
It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms further ... And one fine morning -

So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

So We Beat On ... "Gatsby" turns 100

One hundred years ago today, the third, relatively short, novel by F. Scott Fitzgeral. Titled The Great Gatsby, it got mixed reviews, sold poorly, and was generally viewed a failure.

Now, a full century later, its regarded by critics and generations of readers as one of the greatest novels ever written, and the greatest American novel of the 20th century.

The American dream -- its unending allure and its many dangers -- that the novel explores and lays bare, remains essential, more relevant than ever before. 

The green light still shines bright. And tonight, the lights of the Empire State Building will turn green. 

I've written a lot about Gatsby over the years so I won't rehash it here. But I always go back to this book, always re-read it, because the of the haunting final line: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

Mr NYC in Louisville, KY

One of the reasons why yours truly hasn't been blogging lately is because I was preparing for -- and then recovering from -- a trip to Louisville, Kentucky. The jaunt was for a friend's bachelor party and, needless to say, much about it cannot be revealed ('cause, you know, me and my boys are real wild and crazy guys) but we did do a bunch of stuff that you, dear reader, might find interesting. So here goes:

First, we stayed downtown at the Galt House Hotel. To say it's big is an understatement. It's a massive two building complex by the Ohio river, and lots of conventions are held there. In fact, when we were there last weekend, there was a Fandom Fest going on. It's basically a big horror/sci-fi convention and it was quite a sight to see all the people dressed at various weird characters -- and I don't think I've ever seen more people with tattoos outside a punk rock club. But aside from that, the hotel was very nice and, for a very low price, you can get a ridiculously big suite. Highly recommended.

Since it was a short trip, and since Louisville is not known as a gourmet capital of America, we did not have a lot of fancy meals out. However, our big dinner was at a place called Proof on Main which is also downtown. While not an incredibly fancy restaurant, it's quite elegant and, more importantly, it has really good food. Their food is grown and brought in from their own farm and I had, easily, the best pork chop that I've ever had in my entire life, along with a delicious octopus appetizer. (Farm fresh food is, truly, unbeatable).  What also makes this restaurant a treat are the cocktails. I had a wonderful Sazerac but, best of all, I relished one of their phenomenal in-house cocktails called a Close Call. It was so good that I took a picture of the recipe and post it for you here: 

I would strongly recommend making this if you are a cocktail making kinda person. Another interesting thing about this restaurant is that it's attached to a small modern art museum. On your way to and from the bathroom you can view some actually quite good modern art. Also, the bathroom itself is a trip: in front of the urinal is a one-way mirror covered by a waterfall looking out into the halls. It's definitely one of the more interesting bathroom going experiences you could ever hope to have. 

Later on, we had drinks in the hotel bar of the Seelbach Hotel. It's one of the old, elegant hotels of Louisville and it is actually immortalized in the greatest 20th century American novel -- and that quintessential New York story -- The Great Gatsby. If you don't recall, the characters Daisy Buchanan and Jordan Baker are from Louisville (Daisy was "by far the most popular of all the young girls in Louisvile") and, in the back story of Daisy's relationship with both Gatsby and Tom, we learn that when Tom and Daisy got married there and he "hired a whole floor of the Seelbach Hotel." By the way, the hotel today retains that some old money elegance although the bar is surprisingly small. Still, it's where the beautiful rich people of that town still hang out (so, needless to say, yours truly was a big out of place). 

If Louisville is famous for anything it's probably the following two things: bourbon and horse racing. No trip to Louisville would be complete without visiting either a distillery or Churchill Downs, home of the annual Kentucky Derby and probably the most famous racing track in the whole country. 

Our distillery trip was to a place called Buffalo Trace, located in the state capital of Frankfort about an hour's drive outside Louisville. This distillery is something like two hundred years old and, amazingly, they still make bourbon whiskey in much the same way as they did back then. I learned that the reason Kentucky is the bourbon capital of America is because there is a lot of limestone water available that makes the whiskey good. Also, they still to this day store whiskey in wooden drums in wooden warehouses. In hot weather (and it was ungodly hot last weekend) this is quite risky -- especially since a drum of whiskey contains about $6000 of the product and they have hundreds of thousands of drums. If a fire ever broke out, well ... you do the math. However, I greatly enjoyed the visit since it was my first distillery trip and I picked up delicious cream bourbon that is only available in the state of Kentucky. Unlike Bailey's Irish Cream, this whiskey is made with real cream, let's just say, the taste is vastly superior.  

Finally, Churchill Downs. Ah yes, a day (or two) at the races. The boys and I placed a number of bets and some of us even made money. I won a few bucks (but mostly did not) but I did enjoy seeing what is probably the most beautiful race track anywhere outside Britain. As the name implies, Churchill Downs is very much a re-creation and continuation of the British racing tradition. Here in the American heartland was little piece of England. The horse race announcers were British. Even better, a few minutes before a race, a guy dressed in an elegant red racing outfit would come out and blow his trumpet. It was quite Edwardian. The races took place every half hour and were thrilling. The track was long and winding and these were the best jockeys in the world. This made betting hard -- you would bet on the horses with the best odds and then they'd lose badly. If you ever visit Churchill Downs, get some good betting advice.


 On my last day, shortly before going to the airport, we dipped into the Louisville Visitor's Center. It was very small but they did have this interesting exhibit. 


Yes, besides bourbon and horses, Louisville is the home of Kentucky Fried Chick -- and they're darn proud of it! 

So, all in all, a good trip. Louisville has a very distinct culture and it probably the most under appreciated party town in America. If you go, you can have a really good time. 

NYC Kids

Wherever you grow up, wherever you spend your formative years from birth to adulthood, it stamps you forever -- no matter how far you may run away from it. 

Think of Gatsby. The Long Island millionaire bootlegger is revealed to be, at the end of The Great Gatsby, what he always really was -- a poor boy from North Dakota trying to make good. Think of Ronald Reagan -- yes, he was a Hollywood movie star and US President but he never really stopped being the poor boy from small town Illinois whose dad was a drunk. It haunted him and his years in power, informing his dark view of the world. 

You might not be able to "go home again" but your childhood home never leaves you -- no matter how old you get, no matter where you move to.

Being a kid in New York City is something special -- this city is so unique, so weird, so crazy, that growing up here defines you forever. You may move far away, you may grow old -- but NYC kids are always NYC kids no matter where they live or whatever age they are.

Here are two amazing examples of kids from NYC who grew up to define the culture: the movie director and author Peter Bogdanovich and the writer Diane di Prima. 

Bogdanovich grew up on Riverside Drive (like me), fell in love with the movies as a kid and spent his childhood and young adulthood in the NYC art house movie scene. Eventually he moved to Hollywood and became a successful (and then not so successful) director of movies like The Last Picture Show and Mask. He had a wild life, dating Cybill Shepherd and Playboy playmates, being best buddies with Orson Welles, acting on The Sopranos -- just an amazing ride. He's an old man now but, as this big interview shows, despite all his successes and failures, despite all his adventures, he's still just the kid from NYC who wanted to be in the movies. And he did it.

I had never heard of Diane di Prima until now but I wish I had: she was the leading female member of the Beat generation. A child of Greenwich Village, she wrote books and poems, taught school and college, and was an innovator in what today we'd call "confessional memoir." She's over 80 now and has had a crazy life but, you get the sense from this article, that Diane is still a young girl from the Village who just wanted to write.

And here's something that all kids in NYC and their parents have to struggle with: at what age can they be allowed to ride the subway alone? Believe it or not, this is a matter of great debate. Honestly, I don't recall how old I was when I started riding the subway by myself (I was 10 when  I started riding the bus by myself) but it's one of the "only in NYC" things that defines being a kid in NYC.

A Happy Anniversary

As we mark a sad anniversary today and celebrate our nation's strength, tomorrow we New Yorkers celebrate a happy anniversary: our city's discovery.

On September 12, 1609, Henry Hudson and his crew of Dutch and English sailors, employed by the Dutch East India company, sailed into what is today New York harbor. Their ship, the Half Moon, then cruised up what is now known as the Hudson River -- and the rest is American history.

They were just a bunch of men doing their job. When Hudson and his crew laid their sights on this bunch of islands, they thought they'd found a passage to the Orient.Little did they know they were making history.

So, in a nutshell, our city turns 400 years old tomorrow.

It must have been an amazing feeling for those sailors to have discovered this place. Especially since it turned out not to be a shortcut to Asia but instead a whole, wild New World. Not until men walked on the moon (another momentous event we celebrated this year) did mankind make such a reality-altering discovery.

And in homage to this great anniversary, let me quote what the great writer F. Scott Fitzgerald had to say about at the end of his masterpiece The Great Gatsby. His beautiful words perfectly express what must have been the thrill of a lifetime:

"... as the moon rose higher the inessential houses began to melt away until gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors’ eyes—a fresh, green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees, the trees that had made way for Gatsby’s house, had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams; for a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder."

Let's never lose that capacity.

Studio 360 New York Icons

The great cultural radio show Studio 360 (hosted by Mr NYC interviewee Kurt Anderson) has a recurring segment called American Icons that reviews important works from our nation's culture. These include things like the classic novels The Great Gatsby and Moby Dick, special moments like Jimmy Hendrix's performance of the "Star Spangled Banner" at Woodstock, the Harley Davidson motorcycle, even the old TV soap Dallas. The segments look at why these various creations, from different points in American history and in radically different art forms, made a lasting impact on not only American culture but also the American psyche. These American Icon segments are some of my favorite things to listen to.

But wait, 'dere's more!

Recently Studio 360 launched a new New York Icons series that does the same thing for distinctly NYC-centric works. So far: the classic salsa album Siembra, Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar", and the musical West Side Story. There are lots of classic movies and books and shows that could qualify as New York Icons, as well as moments like 1951 "Shot Heard 'Round the World", or Mayor LaGuardia reading the comics on WNYC radio, or Studio 54.

The possibilities are endless.

May I make one suggestion to the creators of the New York Icons series? Maybe you should include blogs. And, if you're including blogs, maybe you could include, oh, I don't know, Mr NYC!

The 59th Street Bridge

Taking a pause from the political happenings of today, I thought it would be nice to simply appreciate the beauty of NYC -- specifically, the romantic allure that is the 59th Street Bridge (otherwise known as the Queensborough Bridge or the Ed Koch Queensborough Bridge. Whatevs). 

As I wrote back in 2009, the 59th Street bridge is the coolest bridge in NYC. It's not flashy like the Brooklyn or the George Washington but is, as I wrote, the quiet sturdy bridge that doesn't call attention to itself -- the George Harrison of NYC bridges. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald memorialized it in The Great Gatsby, Woody Allen did so again in Manhattan, and Simon & Garfunkel wrote one of their greatest songs about it. 'Enuff said. 

Prohibition Hits A Hundred Years Old

On January 1st, 1920, the legal prohibition of alcohol went into effect. Known as Prohibition, or the 18th Amendment, or the Volstead Act, it outlawed the production and sale alcohol to all Americans.

We are still living in the wake of this misbegotten social experiment.

To say that Prohibition failed is an understatement -- along with the Vietnam War, it's one of the most disastrous events in American history. Even though it was fully repealed in 1933 (via the 21st Amendment), Prohibition turned organized crime into the big business that lasts to this day. Suddenly, thanks to bootlegging, mid-level gangsters were multi-millionaires (like Brooklyn-born Al Capone), the tentacles of organized crime invaded every neighborhood in NYC and America, it infiltrated and corrupted government at the local, state and federal level, it turned America upside-down, and Americans on themselves. 

Popular culture was also deeply impacted -- The Great Gatsby and The Godfather Saga were inspired, in part, by the culture and legacy of Prohibition. Movies like The Roaring Twenties and The Untouchables, plus TV shows like Boardwalk Empire, are all about Prohibition. More broadly, they are about how American life was corrupted, and continues to be, by this massive mistake.

Here in NYC, New Year's Eve 1919 was one a huge party as people got in their last (they thought) legal drinks. Times Square, in particular, was a hopping place. Naturally, once 1920 hit, speakeasies began popping up all over the city. People (like my own grandfather) learned how to make their own bathtub gin. 

Like Vietnam, like Trump, Prohibition wouldn't be the last time Americans got together to make a huge, decades-ruining mistake. 

The Bowery Boys Go to Holland

It's no surprise that I'm a big fan of the NYC podcast The Bowery Boys, blogging about episodes every so often and interviewing one of the co-hosts in 2018. 

Recently the boys did a series of episodes exploring NYC's Dutch roots by actually going to Holland and visiting the towns and areas where so much of this city's history began. It's a fascinating look at how much of the city we know today, the mightiest city in the world, came from this small European country -- and how this town was once a colony of a mighty overseas non-English speaking empire.  

America may have been born in the streets of NYC but, before NYC was NYC, it was a small Dutch town in the New World.  

After all, New York City used to be New Amsterdam, neighborhoods like Harlem came from  the Dutch town of Haarlam and the entire borough of Brooklyn came from a place called Breukelen.

And if you've ever read The Great Gatsby, it's famous last paragraphs, as Nick Carraway stares across Long Island Sound at the huge rich homes and the symbolic green light, he wonders about what it must have looked at, unmolested, for "Dutch sailors' eyes." 

I haven't listened to the entire series yet but plan to finish it soon -- and encourage you to do so!

The Ed Bridge

You read that right. Believe it or not, the city has decided to name something after a mayor not named LaGuardia -- in this case, a bridge bearing the name of Mayor Edward I Koch (1978-1989). 

And which bridge will be forced to shed its identity for this new moniker? The victim is none other than the Queensboro bridge itself -- that gorgeous, amazing 101-year old structure spanning the East River, nailing together Long Island City and the Upper East Side, immortalized in The Great Gatsby, the movies Manhattan and Terms of Endearment, and by Simon and Garfunkel (in "The 59th Street Bridge" song). 

As Ed Koch himself might have said, I think naming this wonderful bridge after this repulsive man is "OUTRAGEOUS!" 

I hardly ever use foul language on here but, if this name change goes through, it should be dubbed "Monument to an Asshole" or perhaps "Monument to New York's Most Corrupt Mayor Since Jimmy Walker."

You heard that right. The Ed Koch administration was so corrupt that several people in his administration went to jail and a Queens borough president committed suicide. It even spawned a book by the great journalists Wayne Barrett and Jack Newfield, City for Sale: Ed Koch and the Betrayal of New York. When I was a kid in the 1980s, my parents used to listen to a news program on WQXR called "New York At 6." Ed Koch's administration was so corrupt that almost every night there was some sleazy revelation of corruption that old Ed always claimed to no nothing about. Eventually my parents started calling "New York At 6", "Who's Indicted Tonight?"

During Ed Koch's reign, the homeless population in the city surged, the squeeze on the middle class began, developers started building huge buildings with apartments no one could afford, and the AIDS crises began -- a crises that Ed Koch, himself a closeted homosexual, totally ignored. 

Not a really good legacy. The best thing Koch did as mayor was balance the budget in his first term. After that, his remaining two terms, it was all downhill -- or, when it came to crime, it was up and up. By the time Ed left office in 1989 (thrown out by the voters), the crime rate had spiked way the hell back up ... and for some reason, then and now, it was and is blamed on his successor David Dinkins. It was Dinkins who then dramatically expanded the size of the police force and was responsible for historic plunge in NYC's crime rate. Sadly, when it comes to history and the city's collective memory, its Dinkins who gets all the blame for the rising crime rate, not Koch, and its Rudy Giuliani who gets all the credit reducing crime when it was already falling under Dinkins.

So why don't we name the bridge after Dinkins? 

Do you think the fact that Dinkins is black is the reason he gets no credit for reducing crime? "Oh no, of course not," most people will say. (Sort of like a current black president who gets no credit for fixing the economic mess left to him by his white predecessor).

It's amazing to see, when it comes to Ed Koch, how the historical slate has been wiped clean. You never hear about the historic corruption in his administration, about the rising crime rate, about how the middle class in this city began its long, sad decline. Instead, when you hear about Ed Koch today, it's all about what a great "personality" he is, how "lively" he is, and how he saved NYC from fiscal disaster. 

It's all a bunch of crap. It was Governor Hugh Carey who saved this city. And, to be fair, Hugh Carey is getting his due -- they're going to name the Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel after him.

This just isn't right. A tunnel vs. a bridge. Which would you rather have named after you?

By the way, it's a total political payoff by Bloomberg to name the bridge after Koch, who supported the billionaire's three elections. Disgusting. Pathetic. And business as usual.

I hope to God the city council votes down this name change but you know they won't. After all, they all gave themselves an extra term -- there's no depth they won't sink to. 

So farewell beautiful bridge that connects two great boroughs. Your spirit will remain but sadly your identity will be gutted. Ed Koch deserves this city's contempt, not reverence.

When it comes to renaming the Queensboro bridge, Mr NYC is not feeling groovy.

Donald Trump Killed Eloise

If Little Orphan Annie is NYC's favorite fictional un-parented child, then Eloise is NYC's favorite parent-ignored child. Eloise lived in the Plaza hotel, the legendary home to NYC glamour and sophistication, with her nanny. Her parents were forever traveling, doing everything but raising their child.

The Plaza was the stuff that dreams were made of. Eloise was its spirit. 

The Plaza Hotel is so famous, so legendary, so beloved, that just the mention of it makes people feel classy. Besides Eloise, other great works of American culture have taken place there: a pivotal scene in The Great Gatsby and Neil Simon's play Plaza Suite are just a few of them.

Several years ago the Plaza was ruined. It was bought by some sleazy investors who turned it into condos that almost no one lives in. Today the Plaza is a shell, it's glamour and sophistication severely diminished, almost gone. Like NYC itself, everything great about it has been gutted.

But the Plaza's long downfall began in the last 1980s when Donald Trump bought it. In a now legendarily bad deal, he paid too much for it, made all kinds of dumb changes to the characters of the hotel, turned it into a joke, and bankrupted it before selling it at a huge loss. The spirit of the hotel died. 

Eloise, in a sense, died. 

Much like America now, Trump took something great, turned it into an embarrassing joke, and sped up its reputational descent. Reading this long history of Trump's ownership of the Plaza is a long depressing reminder of how the Plaza, along with America and NYC, have gone on a  downward trajectory. 

Can the Plaza be restored? Its spirit saved?

Can Eloise be resuscitated? 

The Plaza in Winter

It's now old news that the sale, a couple of years back, of the Plaza Hotel to an Israeli investor has turned out to be a disaster. Vanity Fair wrote about this in December 2008 and I did a small post about it then.

Now things have only gotten worse.

This classic hotel -- a New York institution immortalized in film and literature (including The Great Gatsby, the single greatest American novel of the 20th century), a place where manners and taste still mattered, the epitome of Old New York charm and all that is classy and cosmopolitan in this city and world -- the Plaza was turned into a bunch of badly constructed, ugly condos, most of which were sold at outrageous prices and that lead to immediate, collective buyer's remorse. Now these buyers are selling them at huge losses, embarrassed at having been snookered by the idea of "owning" some of the Plaza.

One of the "brilliant" ideas of the new owners was to open a shopping center in the basement, mostly a bunch of luxury retail stores. That's right: these new owners took one of the most beautiful buildings in New York City and turned it into ... a mall ...

And why would anyone shop at these luxury boutiques when the Plaza is just blocks away from Fifth Avenue, the single greatest shopping district in the entire world?

Stupid. Nowadays when I see the Plaza I feel a twinge of sadness. A great New York institution has been wrecked. Needless to say the real estate crash and economic crises have done their share of damage to the place as well.

Oh yes, as this article in today's Times indicates, the rich and famous still eat and drink at the Oak Room and the Oak Bar. The Grand Ballroom is booked almost every weekend. "'The Plaza is the Plaza'" someone is quoted as saying. But the Palm Court is closed, the Edwardian Room is closed, and everyone who goes to the Plaza these days agrees that it just isn't the same anymore. It's lost something, some degree of cache, and it's probably gone forever.

Along with the closings of Cafe des Artistes and Tavern on the Green -- as well the loss of things like rent stabilization, corner delis, neighborhood diners, and several subway lines (or so it is threatened) -- it feels like more and more of the city that so many of us grew up in and love is slipping away before our very eyes.

And even though places like the Plaza are for the rich, when it goes into decline, it makes all us New Yorkers just a little poorer.

New York Ain't So New

The steam pipe that exploded yesterday was apparently laid in 1924 and working just fine until yesterday. It's amazing to think that any part of this city's infrastructure is 80 plus years old - think, when that pipe was laid, Fitzgerald hadn't published The Great Gatsby, Hitler was still ranting in German beer halls, and movies were still silent. How much more of this city's physical make up, both above and below ground, is that old? Certainly there are buildings that have existed for more than a century - the Flatiron opened in 1902 (full disclosure: I once worked in it) and many of the more beautiful apartment buildings around town are nearly that old. With the exception of terrorists and arsonists and demolition crews and poor construction, the city's infrastructure has basically just hummed along, housing and supporting 8 million people and their hopes and dreams. What was so unusual about yesterday what that one tiny chink, one little sliver, one minute cog in the enormous wheel that moves this city, just said ... "I'm tired. I've had enough. I give up!" And so it did, causing panic and havoc and injuries and, sadly in one case, death. Yet after 84 years, could you blame it?

So the all of this begs the question: what can the city do? Can we do anything? Should we do anything? We can't rip up the whole city and replace it, nor does anyone really want to. But after yesterday (or more accurately, after 400 years), while grateful that our city hasn't totally fallen apart, we'll just be a little bit more cautious.

PS. Thanks to those of you who viewed my first attempt at live blogging. Since this is not a news blog, it was more of a diversion than a general feature. But this blog tries to be relevant to the times (or more precisely the moment) so whenever the next city emergency happens, Mr NYC will be on the case.

"The Power Broker" on TV!

Believe it or not, I haven't been watching much TV during this pandemic -- I spend so much time working at my job, taking care of my kids, keeping my house in order, cooking, and occasionally blogging, that my TV time is severely limited. When I do watch something, it's usually for only an hour or so before bed, usually some show that I've recorded or get off a streaming service.

But on the rare occasion when I do catch the news, I've noticed a trend: people who are broadcasting or being interviewed from home, a bookcase behind them, with a copy of Robert Caro's The Power Broker prominently displayed on a top shelf. Just last night I caught two minutes of Erroll Louis on NY1, and there was the mighty tome looming over his shoulder. 

I'm not the only one who's noticed this -- today there's a big article about how numerous politicians, journalists, and other assorted NYC bigwigs who appear on TV regularly are making sure that The Power Broker can be seen by the audience. Some politicians, like Congressman Max Rose of Staten Island, downright admit that they put it there just be seen. Displaying this book so clearly to the public is an perfect example of what we might call "intelligence signaling" -- it says, "look how smart, informed, sophisticated, and New York I am. Oh, and I really, really like to read." 

Unlike many of these people who've probably never actually read The Power Broker, yours truly has -- I even blogged about it twelve yearss ago. So there!

Other suggested big NYC books to have on your bookshelf to show what a super-sophisticated New Yorker you are: The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacobs, The Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe, Underworld by Don DeLillo (might want to throw in White Noise or Mao ii for good measure), maybe some older books like The Great Gatsby, Sister Carrie, and The Age of Innocence, and anything by Vonnegut. 

And here's 1977 interview with the "power broker" himself, Robert Moses!

25 NYC Novels in 100 Years

The New York Times has recently published a list of 25 novels set in NYC, published within the last 100 years, where the city is more than just a backdrop or even a "character" in the story -- it is the story, NYC is intertwined with the plot.

These are books that, simply put, couldn't have taken place anywhere else. 

Believe it or not, some big titles are missing -- no Gatsby, nothing by Edith Wharton. Sadly Slaves of New York was not included either but the author, Tama Janowitz (a previous Mr NYC interviewee) was mentioned (with a photo) since her 1980s Brat Pack colleagues Jay McInery's 1984 novel Bright Lights, Big City was included (my review of the movie version of it can be found here). 

This list is very interesting, and it includes commentary by the various critics who chose the titles. Lists like this are inherently flawed and infuriating, but at least they remind you that there are lots of good books about NYC that you should put on your shelf -- or load onto your Kindle. 

One big inclusion is Don DeLillo's 1997 masterpiece Underworld. That is a great NYC novel but so much more -- its an epic sweep of an Everyman living through the second half of the 20th century while history unfolds around him and occasionally touches him. For me, it's not just a novel, or a great novel, or a great NYC novel -- it's a state of mind, a raising of consciousness, a story that makes you look at the world and history differently. I'm glad to see it on this list but Underworld is sui generis, like all great work. The same way that NYC is a city bigger than its population and its borders, Underworld extends beyond the story on its pages.

Review: "Bright Lights, Big City" (1988)

Continuing my catalogue of oft-forgotten NYC movies, my latest is Bright Lights, Big City from 1988. It's based on the 1984 debut novel by Jay McInerney who was one of the era's "brat pack" authors like Bret Easton Ellis and Tama Janowitz who published popular novels that were quickly made into movies.

When the book came out it made quite a splash due to the youth of the author, the zeitgeisti-iness of the story (a young man, like the author, navigating the world of NYC media, money, club culture, and drugs), and the fact that it was written in the second person (the narrator refers to "you" instead of the first-person "I" or third-person "he/she"). The plot concerns a guy named Jamie who lives in NYC and works as a fact-checker at a magazine that's basically supposed to be the stodgy and boring pre-Tina Brown/David Remnick version of The New Yorker (it had yet to transform itself into a media powerhouse). Jamie is trying to write a novel and live out his fantasies of being a literary star but he's been side-tracked by the recent death of his mother, his wife who has suddenly and inexplicably left him, and his growing drug addiction fueled by a sleazy guy named Tad. When not working and struggling to write, he spends his time snorting drugs and hanging out in clubs with Tad, processing his anguish over his marriage and mother. Eventually a series of events leads him to realize that he needs to change. And that's basically the whole story.

So is it a good movie?

Eh ... it's okay. The main problem is that Michael J. Fox, who plays Jamie, is totally miscast. Don't get me wrong, I love Fox in just about anything but he simply wasn't the right choice for this part. He was cast, I assume, because he was a massive star at the time, still riding the success of Back to the Future (this movie actually came out just before the two sequels and was part of Fox's dramatic interregnum) and he was still being watched by tens of millions of people a week on TV in Family Ties. (Rob Lowe and Robert Downey Jr. were considered for the part at the time and would have been much more believable as cokeheads because, well ...). Actually the best and most compelling performance is by Keifer Sutherland as Tad -- he's perfectly cast -- and you almost wish the movie was about him! The rest of the cast -- Swoozie Kurtz, Phoebe Cates, the late great John Houseman and Jason Robards -- are fine but they have little to do (Robards is only in a couple of scenes and is drunk in both of them). The movie was directed by a man named James Bridges (who died in the early 1990s) and who had earlier directed the classics The Paper Chase and Urban Cowboy. This did not have the same success as those. 

But it's still worth seeing for a couple of reasons.

First, flawed as this movie is, it's interesting to see because it's the kind of earnest, humane, character-driven sort of movie that the big studios hardly make anymore. It's an attempt to do something more interior, more emotionally complex, even if it doesn't entirely succeed and the result is mostly just depressing. Second, it's a fascianting piece of late 1980s NYC slife-of-life, of a world that's both recent and hopelessly in the past, of a city that feels so close but also so far away. 

If you want to know what NYC in the 1980s was like, this is the movie to watch. 

P.S. It's hard to remember now but, at the time, the author of the book, Jay McInerney, was being heralded as a 1980s F. Scott Fitzgerald. The big success of "Bright Lights, Big City" led many to believe that literary greatness awaited him, that this novel was a solid start and that even better ones would come along ... Yeah, not so much. He wrote several more novels, some better received than others, but none had the success or acclaim of his first one. These days he's better known as a Man-About-Town (he married a Hearst) and a wine critic. But who knows ... maybe one day he will produce his Gatsby but we're still waiting. 

Still Feeling Groovy at 100: Happy Birthday Queensborough Bridge

Of the three great bridges that connect the outer boroughs to Manhattan -- the Brooklyn, the Queensborough, and the Triboro -- the Queensborough Bridge is probably the overlooked middle child of the three. The Brooklyn Bridge is the one that has books written about it, and documentaries made about it, and the Triboro is probably the most impressive, but the Queensborough is, in my opinion, the coolest of the three.

So what makes the Queensborough so cool? Well, when you cross it, it provides some of the most stunning views of the city skyline you can see. As you go into Manhattan, you see the United Nations, the CitiCorp building, the Bloomberg building, the Chrysler building, and the Empire State Building towering over the city. And when you go into Queens, particularly at night, you see the gigantic signs for the Silvercup Studios and Domino Sugar factory, plus the other big CitiCorp building located in Flushing.

But what makes the Queensborough really cool in my opinion? It's the only bridge to have had both Simon and Garfunkful and F. Scott Fitzgerald write about it! "The 59th Street Bridge Song" is about, in part, the Queensborough Bridge (since you enter it in Manhattan at 59th street), and Fitzgerald sang the bridge's praises in The Great Gatsby when he wrote “The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.” (If you ever see the movie Terms of Endearment, there's a short scene where the Debra Winger character sees Manhattan for the very first time from the Queensborough Bridge and is enchanted.)

Anyway, the Queensborough is turning 100 years old tomorrow and many are debating its pros and cons. As for me, it's pros way outweigh its cons. You're still looking pretty groovy at 100.

And please note, I don't count the Manhattan Bridge as a "great" bridge, just a jolly decent one. Basically, if the Brooklyn and Triboro Bridges are John and Paul, then the Queensborough is George and the Manhattan is Ringo.

Must Read!

This week, The New York Times has a great article called Reading Underground where a reporter interviewed people on the subway about what they like to read during their daily commutes.

Some are students, studying for exams or doing homework. Some are people trying to learn a new language. Some are professionals catching up on work. Some are taking the time to read the Bible, the Talmud, the Koran or other spiritual texts. Some are actors or actresses, preparing for auditions and performances. Some are reading newspapers and magazines, fighting the good fight to keep print publications alive. And, of course, some are just reading to be entertained or edified, reading the latest bestsellers or old favorites.

Increasingly, many more people are reading all of these things on Kindles.

Personally, I enjoy reading the free newspapers every morning or one of my magazines or a good book. I read most of The Power Broker on the subways (how appropriate!) plus some of my favorites like Huckleberry Finn, The Great Gatsby, Brideshead Revisited, as well as some of the recent Bob Woodward books (Plan of Attack, State of Denial) and Tom Friedman's The World is Flat and Hot, Flat, and Crowded.

We New Yorkers still love to read. in this, the most sophisticated and modern city in the world, old-fashioned reading remains vital.

And in yet another example of why public transportation is a great thing, it gives people the time -- time! that most precious of commodities -- to educate and improve their minds instead of wasting it worrying about driving their cars and negotiating traffic. Books on Tape, well, they just ain't the same.