"The Sopranos" @ 20

During my final winter break from college, walking around a recently New Year's Eve'd Times Square, I looked up and saw a giant billboard for a new show about to debut on HBO: The Sopranos.

The billboard featured, if memory serves, several men and women (plus a couple of children) standing around and looking menacing. I didn't recognize any of the actors in this new series except for two -- the guy who beat up that girl in True Romance, and the wife from Goodfellas. I had no idea what the show was about but, from the looks of it (including the gun substituting for the "r" in title), I guessed it wasn't about opera singers. I also figured that I'd never watch this show (heck, I didn't even have HBO at the time) and it would probably get cancelled quickly. The Sopranos, as advertised, looked dumb and hammy. Who cared? 

How wrong I was. It turned out to be a groundbreaking, brilliant show -- a dark satire about American life wrapped up in a traditional mafia drama. A middle aged man, under pressure at work and home, goes to therapy to get cured of his recurrent panic attacks and tries to understand his life and existential dread. The fact that this man is also a mafia boss and killer only made it more compelling. 

And how appropriate that the show began in 1999 -- The Sopranos brought television, and really American culture, into the 21st century. It was post-modernist, destructive, and it re-invented the serial TV drama with cinematic storytelling and production values. Today, most of TV looks like The Sopranos (dark, profane, violent, extremely funny, nonlinear plots) but, back then, NYPD Blue and ER were considered edgy TV. The Sopranos, pun fully intended, whacked that idea.

The Sopranos was set in New Jersey and created, at least in its time, a sort of "Jersey Chic" (before Jersey Shore would have that honor). NYC was the place where mobsters and their family and friends would go to do business, have fun, and commit various crimes before going back to their suburban homes and lives. In the opening credits, Tony Soprano drives through the Holland Tunnel and we see the city fade away in his side-view mirror -- this is a show that exists nexts to and in the shadow of NYC. In that way, The Sopranos was and wasn't a NYC show.

HBO is currently re-airing the show and you can also find it on HBO Go and On Demand. It's worth re-watching and this handy guide can help direct you to its best episodes.

My "Sopranos" Story ... or ... How I Got a Book on TV

If you're a fan of the White Lotus series, you'll note that there are lots of scenes of characters lounging by pools or laying in bed, reading. Over three seasons, lots of different books have been used as props -- including Barbra Streisand's phonebook of an autobiography -- and they help to give the characters reading them another dimension.

In this third season of the show one of the characters is reading F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Beautiful and Damned -- a book I blogged about back in 2022. And there's a person whose whole job it is to get these books onto White Lotus, a sort of literary props master, that must be a fun job. (People on TikTok are chatting about it).  

This remind me of a story -- albeit, a very short, rather underwhelming one. But it involves another noteworthy HBO show.

In early 2001 I was working -- miserably -- at a company that produced trade books. It was an awful job at an awful company with awful people, and I didn't last long there. But there was one fleeting brief moment that catapulted me into cultural relevance.

One afternoon my phone rang and I answered. A cheery voice said to me, "Hi! I'm calling from the HBO show The Sopranos!" I was floored. In early 2001 The Sopranos was, by far, the hottest show on TV. Everyone was watching and talking about it. This was while they were making the third season that included the legendary "Pine Barrens" episode.

Of course, I thought, "Why the hell are they calling this company?" But the friendly guy on the phone informed me that they needed books on real estate for an upcoming episode and could we provide some gratis. I said I thought that was possible, took down the info, informed my bosses, they went nuts, and off the books went to the Sopranos production company.

Months later, I'm out of this job horrible job and, one night, catch the show. And there, at the end of the episode, is Edie Falco herself reading the book I sent. That was weird, and cool, and my only connection to one of the best TV shows ever made.

I don't recall exactly which episode it was but it's towards the end of the third season. So, if you ever see it, remember Mr NYC himself masterminded this epochal contribution to the culture. 

Chris and Lidia: Food, Show Business, and Nostalgia

A couple of week ago, the always great WNYC interview Leonard Lopate had a surprise guest host -- legendary, Oscar-winning actor Christopher Walken. Walken needs no introduction: he is one of the most beloved, amazing actors of his generation. He has made many great movies (Annie Hall, The Deer Hunter, True Romance, Pulp Fiction, Catch Me If You Can), has had career on stage (he recently appeared on Broadway and, did you know that he started as song and dance man in musicals?), and even music videos. He is also a frequent guest host of Saturday Night Live and crafted a couple of great characters -- "the Continental" and the music producer always screaming "More cowbell!" Imitating Christopher Walken has practically become a cottage industry -- Kevin Spacey, Jay Mohr and others have received acclaim pretending to be him -- that he will be remembered forever.

By the way, did you know Walken has been married to the same woman for 40+, casting agent Georgianne who casted The Sopranos? And that his mother recently died at age 104? Pretty amazing.

Recently, during Walken's hosting gig he interviewed a bunch of people including restaurateur/TV cooking host Lidia Bastianich. Both grew up in Queens in the 1950s and have knew each other back then (Lidia actually worked in Walken's Bakery in Astoria, owned by Chris's family). In this wonderful interview, they talk about their families and lives growing up back then and Chris talks about his family's bakery and how he used to work in the back. Lidia talks a lot about her career and her memories of Chris's family and they are joined by Lidia's adorable mama who shares her memories of Chris's dad and what a great, hard-working man he man. You don't hear a lot of interviews like this so it's something really special. Enjoy.

Memo from NYC

Tonight on PBS is the season finale of the British show "Downton Abbey." If you've never seen it, it's a costume drama about the complex lives and loves of a British noble family in early 20th century England -- and the lives and loves of their servants. It has a great cast, gorgeous production values, and is a lot of fun. The show was a big hit in the UK and is now a big hit here. Mr NYC is, for one, a big fan.

It's fast becoming the water cooler show of the Yuppie set -- think "Sopranos", think "Sex and the City", think "Mad Men."

But as good as "Downton Abbey" is, haven't we seen this show before?

Well, yes. It was called "Upstairs, Downstairs" and it ran for five seasons in the early 1970s. At the time, it was as huge a show as there has ever been. It was about a wealthy British political family in -- guess -- early 20th century Britain, and their servants. It was a high class soap opera but so much more. "Upstairs, Downstairs" was the first show to ever reach more than a billion viewers worldwide (the second show to do this was "Baywatch" in the '90s) and it won lots of Emmys.

Last year the wife and I watched the whole series on Netflix, right after seeing the first seasons of "Downton Abbey." And while "Downton Abbey" is good, "Upstairs, Downstairs" is truly great TV. 

What makes it great? Because it was a stark, unsentimental, visceral look at the English class system, and how it warped and distorted and corrupted the lives of both masters and servants. They all seemed trapped by this system that was bigger than all of them, and they were all quietly dying inside. Also, the performances in "Upstairs, Downstairs" were so powerful, you truly believed that the masters had been rich and privileged all their lives and the servants came from poverty. The sexual, familial, and social tension in every scene of the show was almost unbearable. That's great drama.

With "Downton," on the other hand, you get the sense that the masters and servants are all great pals and that this English class system is actually quite a great thing. And the masters and the servants seem, for the most part, indistinguishable from each other. 

As the author of this article says about "Downton Abbey"

Edward Gorey, that beloved and prolific purveyor of doomed Edwardians, once told an interviewer that his mission in life was to make everybody as uneasy as possible, because, he said, “that’s what the world is like.” What “Downton Abbey” offers, by contrast, is a utopian version of the past that’s custom made for the present sociopolitical morass. It presents a system so perfect that it can weather any upheaval, smooth out any wrinkle, absorb any shock. It refers incessantly to the coming collapse of the social order and then sets up its conflicts like bowling pins to be swiftly knocked down and neatly swept away.

And drama, like life, is never neat. So while we can all enjoy "Downton Abbey", I would urge all Mr NYC readers to get "Upstairs, Downstairs" on Netflix now. 

Digital Gentrification: The End of "Taxicab Confessions"

Gentrification isn't just happening to the NYC streets, skyline, and pocket books -- now it's hit our TV.

Specifically HBO.

Like most legacy premium cable channels, HBO has featured uncut, uncensored, commercial-free movies, big-time sporting events (like boxing), as well as original programming (e.g. The Sopranos and Game of Thrones, as well as documentaries). They also featured "adult" fare, including shows like Cathouse, Real Sex, and others.

One HBO show, however, defied easy categorization. 

It was called Taxicab Confessions. It started on HBO in the mid-1990s and ran, off and on, for another decade or so. Taxicab was a brilliant, innovative program, an early "reality show", where regular people were filmed in the backseats of cabs, talking with their fellow passengers and the "drivers" (who worked for the show). These cab ride vignettes were usually filmed in the middle of the night, and all sorts of wacky characters and behavior would be revealed. It was an amazing "keyhole" into a moment in time, into simple interactions and conversations among people, a literal rolling revelation of human behavior. At the end of each show you'd see the drivers reveal to the passengers that they'd be filmed for Taxicab Confessions, and they'd freak out and then happily sign a release form. The show invented the whole genre of people talking in cars (Jerry Seinfeld even ripped it off!). 

The show originated in NYC, and most of the early shows were filmed here (before moving to Las Vegas for a while, and then returning to NYC). As you might imagine, the people featured in the cab rides were often dirty -- dirty mouthed, dirty minded, dirty moving. They were funny, weird, sometimes delightful, sometimes sad, sometimes confused and confusing, sometimes shockingly normal, but they were always interesting. Always. 

And now they're gone. 

Why? Because even though a new episode of Taxicab Confessions hasn't been produced in a while, up until recently, the past episodes were available to watch on HBO On Demand and HBO Go. You could go back in time to the 1990s and early 2000s, and see these parade of lovable freak shows in cabs. You could see NYC (and, yes, Vegas) in the middle of the night, for real. You could see a whole other strange, sometimes dangerous, sometimes sexy, sometimes just odd, world. But no longer. HBO has removed it from these streaming services, along with the rest of their "adult" programming. 

Taxicab Confessions is not only over but now it's gone, totally gone, a blatant garbage-canning of part of the city's past, a kind of digital gentrification. It's another dirty part of NYC that's been sacrificed to "taste" and cleanliness.

And it's wrong! While it certainly had "adult" moments (people removing clothing or getting frisky in the back of the cab), Taxicab Confessions was not necessarily an "adult" show like its other shows -- 99.9% of the time it was people just talking. It was a great show, a wonderful time capsule of humanity and NYC, and now it's vanished into the electronic ether.  

Farewell Taxicab Confessions. This one New Yorker will remember you fondly. 

Taking it away from us is just ... un-fare. 

Remembering "Ryan's Hope"

The daily weekday soap opera used to be a staple of daytime network television. All My Children, Guiding Light, One Life to Live and so many others entertained housewives, the unemployed and layabouts during the early afternoon hours for decades.

But then, about ten-to-fifteen years ago, they started to vanish. Some of these soaps, like Guiding Light, had started on radio in the 1930s and ran for the better part of 70 to 80 years! -- and then were unceremoniously cancelled. Today there are only about three or four left, as streaming and the Internet and production costs doomed them.

Most soap operas are generally set in some mid-sized fictional city in the midwest somewhere, usually with a name that starts with "Port." They exist in a  mystical Everytown USA where everyone is beautiful, sex craved, greedy, venal,  dishonest, and unusually prone to car accidents. 

One outlier to these kinds of soap operas was Ryan's Hope, which ran from 1975 to 1989 and was set in Washington Heights in Upper Manhattan.

Unlike most soaps, it was set in a real neighborhood in NYC with blue collar characters. Ryan's was a bar across the street from the fictional Riverside Hospital (i.e. Columbia Presbyterian) and the show explored the lives of its denizens. It still has the usual soap opera tropes of scandalous affairs and pregnancies and deaths but it was rooted in NYC and real community. 

One of the original stars of Ryan's Hope was Kate Mulgrew who went on to greatness as the Captain on Star Trek: Voyager and later as the hilarious Russian prisoner on Orange is the New Black. Guest stars included a young Kelsey Grammer, Dominic Chianese (20 years before The Sopranos) and Christian Slater. 

While it had a relatively short life compared to other daytime soaps, Ryan's Hope was an unusual slice of NYC life beamed each afternoon into homes across America -- and there's quite like it that exists today.  

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 Great NYC Show: "Northern Exposure" at 20

It's so hard to believe but it was almost twenty years ago this summer when a funky little show called Northern Exposure premiered on CBS. Long before Sarah Palin, this was the thing that really put Alaska on the map (and was so much more appealing). And, ironically, it was also a great NYC show.

It was about a young Jewish doctor named Joel Fleishman who owes the State of Alaska several years of service in exchange for the state paying his medical school fees. At first he's going to be sent to Anchorage but then he's exiled to the tiny town of Cicely where he tends to the maladies of an eccentric bunch of people who wouldn't be out of place in NYC (take that, Wasilla). At its heart it was a New York Jew "fish out of water" story but it was also about how a bunch of people formed a special community and learn to love and depend on each other.

Northern Exposure was a funny, heartful show with razor sharp writing, great characterizations and, amazingly, it contained a lot of New York grit than most shows actually set here (take that, Friends). It lasted five years (1990-1995) and was really ahead of its time. Quirky shows like this were forerunners for later groundbreaking shows like The Sopranos, Lost and Mad Men and for that we owe it a debt.

Yes Virginia, There Really is a Mafia

We'd love to believe that organized crime is a vestige of the Bad Old Days, something we read about in the history books or watch in documentaries.

We'd love to believe that organized crime is more entertainment than reality, which is why we enjoy shows like "The Sopranos" or movies like "Goodfellas" and "The Godfather" flicks.

And we'd love to believe that organized crime doesn't in anyway threaten or affect us, that it's just something ... over there ... something that only "those people" who we'll never meet are involved in. It will never, ever touch our lives.

Oh, how wrong we are. Organized crime still exists in NYC. It's what brought down Bernie Kerick and, today, led to a massive sweep by state and federal officials. It touches us in ways we can't imagine or rarely think about. But it's there. A constant, evil presence.

In Big Mob Sweep, Gambino Leaders Are Indicted

So let's never forget, however much we idealize this city here at Mr NYC, that organized crime and the other cancers that threaten our common good, are still out there. And we must always be vigilant.

MAD MEN

Who is Don Draper?

That's the mystery at the heart of "Mad Men", the hottest show on TV right now. It was created by Matthew Weiner, one of the writers of "The Sopranos", and it just won the Emmy for Best Dramatic Series.

If you haven't seen "Mad Men", it's about an advertising agency called Sterling Cooper in early 1960s New York. Kennedy is President. Wagner is Mayor. Marilyn Monroe is about to OD. Beatlemania, the civil rights movement, and Vietnam are just around the corner. And New York is still an affordable place to live.

It was a simpler, more laid back time. In those days, men wore suspenders under double breasted suits and the women were encased in incredibly tight fitting skirts. Everyone drank and smoked all day and managed to do very little actual work. Most of the women in the office are secretaries looking to get married, all of the men are married but trying to sleep with the secretaries, homosexuals and black people live very much in the shadows, and a high paying salary is $100 a week.

In the middle of this lost America is a lost man named Donald Draper -- a high flying, unhappily married, perpetually adulterous ad exec. He's dying inside but we don't exactly know why. In fact, he's not actually Don Draper ... so who is he?

Obviously I'm much too young to know what 1960s NYC was like but I'd like to think it was like it is on "Mad Men." It may have been a more conformist, socially repressive time and it's probably good that a lot of the mores of that time have changed. But it also feels like it was a time where manners and respectability -- class -- was still important. And it's sad that we've lost that.

A Mafia Life Lesson

It's been over three years since The Sopranos went off the air but doesn't mean the real mafia went anywhere. Anyone who thinks that the mafia still doesn't exist like it used to is living in a dreamworld. There's a scary, revealing article in the recent Village Voice about a how a hip bar owner on the Lower East Side got shook down by the mob -- in this case, by a 93-year old gangster!

This story is a must-read if you want to understand how the mob still operates in NYC -- and how anyone can become their victim.

For other previous Mr NYC mob-related posts, you can go here and here.

"Quantum Leap" @ 30: The Golden Age of TV and NYC

We live, now and forever, in the "Golden Age of Television." TV shows are better than ever, thanks to cable and streaming. Television is no longer the "boob tube" of yore, the poor relation of movies, but a proud artistic medium in its own right. The Wire, Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Orange is the New Black, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel are just a few of the great "golden age" shows, featuring superior storytelling, acting, and cinematic qualities that capture our imagination and enrich our culture.

So when did the Golden Age of TV start?

Opinions differs, but the general "consensus" (if there can be such a thing) is that it began with two shows from the 1990s: Twin Peaks in 1990 and The Sopranos in 1999. Both shows broke normative TV boundaries, were daring, unsentimental, and nontraditional in their narratives, forcing viewers to watch people and things other shows shied away from -- and were hailed as masterpieces. I mostly agree but, pour moi, the Golden Age of TV started on March 26, 1989 -- thirty years ago today!

That's when Quantum Leap premiered -- a show about a brilliant scientist named Sam Becket from the (then) future of 1995, who invented a time travel project called "Quantum Leap" where his mind and soul "leapt" into the bodies of people in the past. His time travels were limited to the past of his own lifetime (roughly the early 1950s to the 1980s). Once Sam became someone else, his mission was to "change history for the better", "to make right what once went wrong." He was regularly visited from the future by his friend Al, who "appeared in the form of a hologram that only Sam can see and here." Al would give Sam the info about his missions, tell him about the "wrongs" he needed to "right", give him information from the future about the fate of the people Sam saved, and then after Sam accomplished his mission -- and only then -- would Sam leap into another life and point in time i.e. another episode.

I was obsessed with this show as a kid. I love time travel stories and history so this show was made for me. All my friends were fans too, and we talked about it practically every day. Quantum Leap was also, as a piece of pure TV art, stunningly good -- great writing, acting, and very original storytelling. So much of TV drama in the late 1980s/early 1990s was crime shows, lawyer shows, soap operas -- and here was this inventive, completely original show that exploded the hour-long drama narrative and did it amazingly well. There wasn't another show like it on TV then and there hasn't been a show quite like it since. 

Sam didn't just leap into lives but touched history, and the show was about the (then) recent past that America in the late 1980s/early 1990s was still grappling with. At times the show could be serious, at time it could be heart-wrenching, and at other times it could be hilariously funny. It tackled everything -- Vietnam, civil rights, Watergate, the women's movement, pop culture, you name it – Quantum Leap was a history lesson and drama wrapped into science fiction. Brilliant.

Quantum Leap starred Scott Bakula as Sam and Dean Stockwell as Al. Their chemistry, their repartee, their banter, the ups and downs of their buddy-dom is the stuff of legend, fascinating to behold -- they were funny, emotional, witty, and compulsively watchable together. They were and remain one of the great duos in TV history.

And each week there was a huge new cast of guest stars, including some actors who went on to have brilliant careers: Jennifer Aniston, Joseph Gorden-Levitt, Teri Hatcher, Diedrich Baeder, Michael Madsen, Bruce McGill, Jason Priestley, Patricia Richardson, Carla Gugino, and others. They all did memorable work. One thing that was so much fun about this show was that each week Sam not only leapt into another time (one week it was the mid-1950s, another it was the late 1970s, then the '60s, the '80s, and so forth) but also different places including the South, the Midwest, California -- and, naturally, NYC. 

There were many great NYC Quantum Leap episodes -- Sam became a cab driver, an actor, a butler, a fashion photographer, a gangster, amongst others. However, my favorite NYC Quantum Leap episode was when he leapt into the life of a Chip'N'Dale's dancer named "Rod the Bod" in 1979. The episode begins with Sam leaping into Rod's life while he is literally dancing in mid-air, crashing to the ground in front a bunch of horny and screeching women, Cool and the Gang's "Ladies Night" blaring. It's one of the funniest things I've ever seen and was the kind of comedy (and drama) that only Quantum Leap could provide.

You can find old episodes of Quantum Leap on Amazon and behold the birth of the Golden Age of TV, and see NYC portrayed in a way that's never been done before or since.

Where Did the Mob in NYC Come From?

The Mafia, "the Mob", la cosa notra, the Family -- organized crime has always intrigued New Yorkers. Whether its through The Godfather movies or "The Sopranos", New Yorkers have been fascinated with the people who live and work outside the law. They seem to do whatever they want (to whoever they want), they kill, rob, lie, deceive, extort, con, defraud, beat up, and then they finish their days eating big fancy meals at expensive restaurants with their wives or goomahs while wearing fancy suits and bling, and then drive home to their gorgeous houses in their sleek new cars.

Or at least that's what we think.

Of course while popular culture and tabloid headlines give us an idea of what the mob does, we know little of its history and how it took root here in NYC. There is a new book, however, they tells the history of the mob in NYC and how one immigrant's arrival here in 1892 was the beginning of what we know (and fear) today as "the mob."

One Night on the George Washington Bridge

I hate sitting in traffic.

This goes without saying -- everyone hates sitting in traffic. But late one Sunday night, around 10 PM, I was sitting in the cab of a U-Haul truck that my brother was drving, stuck on the George Washington Bridge. The traffic was bumper to bumper, and we inched ... and inched ... and inched ... and innnnnnnnnnnnnnnnched forward, bringing us slowwwwwwwly back home into Manhattan.

This was a transitional moment for both of us.

My brother was moving the last of his stuff home after having lived elsewhere for a few years, and he was driving me back from college after I had graduated two days earlier. All of my stuff, my entire life in a sense, was packed into that truck. My future, the entire rest of my life, was right ahead of me, just across this bridge, just sitting there, waiting to start. This wasn't simply another night in my life, just another traffic jam, just another bridge crossing -- this was a demarcation point, a special and a unique moment, a bridge both literal and figurative, between the past and the future, between being a kid and becoming an adult, between hope and destiny ... 

... and it was taking forever!  

Sometimes I feel like I'm still stuck in that traffic jam, an extremely young man, getting ready for my life to start, waiting for the promised excitement to begin.

I've thought about that night, that moment, on the GWB a lot lately because it's hard to square that world with the one we're living in now -- a triple whammy of pandemic, economic depression, and deep racial strife. On that night on the GWB, Bill Clinton was president, George Pataki was governor, Rudy Guiliani was mayor, the World Trade Centers still stood, Iraq remained uninvaded, George W. Bush was Governor of Texas, Barack Obama was an Illinois State Senator, Donald Trump was a has-been real estate developer, the Internet was brand new and could only be accessed with a phone dial-up, talking about phones, most people still used landlines, very few people had cell phones, smartphones were still almost a decade away from being invented, newspapers were still printed in abundance, Howard Stern was still married to his first wife and and Jackie Martling was still one of his sidekicks, Harvey Weinstein was still running Miramax and was a respected Oscar-winning producer, Bill Cosby was still America's dad, there were no pedestrian plazas or bikeshares on the streets of NYC, lots of old buildings still existed and lots huge fancy ones didn't, there were no streaming shows, no Golden Age of Television (not yet at least, The Sopranos had just hit the air and the "Golden Age" monicker was still not invented yet), Amazon still only sold books, and so much more that existed and was going on then that is gone or that has become unrecognizable today. 

Twenty-plus years later it feels like everything is falling apart. These days destruction rules and creation is in retreat.

We live in an age of nihilism, of "disruption", of "creative destruction," of "cancel culture" and neo-McCarthyism, of everyone just wanting just to "burn it down", of people wanting to destroy other people and cultures and businesses and governments and whole industries and whole societies, of ruining and wrecking and "taking down" people while not helping anyone or creating anything, of perpetual rage and ruin. 

This is not the future I wanted, for myself or anyone, during that night on the GWB so long ago.

I was deluded enough to think back then that the future ahead, my future, across that bridge, across the new century/millenium due to start in a few short months, would be a glorious place, an exciting world, one surely much better than the century and childhood I was leaving behind me in what F. Scott Fitzgerald called "the dark fields of the republic" that "rolled on under the night." The blinking lights of the city ahead, just over this jammed bridge, were my green light, my fresh new world, surely destined to be magical, an arcadia of sorts, where the old problems of the past would vanish and a new pancea of possibilities would emerge. After all, it was a time of great peace and prosperity and the future looked bright -- certainly it was only going to get better.

Right?

Nope. It got worse. A lot worse. And here we are today, living in the hopelessly divided "United" States of America, the future looking grim. If only had someone told me that one night twenty-something years ago on the George Washington Bridge ... I might not have gotten so annoyed at the traffic. 

P.S. This is one of the reasons Mr NYC exists -- it's an act of creation, an act of optimism in a pessimisstic place, a place where we "build it up", a place where hope and kindness rule. As always, Mr NYC remain perpetually unfashionable.

SATC & TV & NYC @ 20

Twenty years ago this week marked a key moment in the history of television.

And it happened on HBO. 

On May 31, 1998, the comedy The Larry Sanders Show aired its final episode. The creation of brilliant comedian Garry Shandling about a narcissistic talk show host, Larry Sanders was one of the great, defining shows if the 1990s. More than that, it looked more like what is on TV now than then: it broke down the barrier between reality and fiction, it was single camera, its humor had more "cringe" and less punchlines, it was funny but also dark, it was deeply human. Today, most comedies on TV are like this but, in a time when wild, hyper sitcoms like Seinfeld and Home Improvement were ruling the air, Larry Sanders was quietly revolutionary -- and influential. 

Then, on June 6, 1998, along came Sex and the City.

The show about four female NYC friends -- a sort of East Coast, female-centric Larry Sanders -- easily became one of the most popular shows about NYC but, more importantly, one of the first great "Golden Age of Television" cable shows. Six months later The Sopranos hit the air and the "Golden Age" had officially begun.

As this article indicates, without SATC, the culture as we know it today would be quite different.  

Think about everything that SATC influenced. There would have been no Girls, no Broad City, and a whole universe of shows and culture dedicated to the professional and romantic lives of women. It was a cultural trailblazer. Also, without SATC, there's be no Cynthia Nixon for Governor, no cupcake culture -- and, arguably, less gentrification in NYC. 

TV as we know it was largely shaped in that week back in the spring of 1998 -- and, today, we live in its wake -- as does NYC. 

Review: "Out for Justice" (1991)

There are many great NYC movies. Out for Justice is NOT one of them.

But while it's a very DUMB movie, it's also a very FUN movie. Lemme 'splain why:

Steven Segal, one of our great screen thespians, plays a goomba cop from Dyker Heights, Brooklyn named Gino Felino (yes, that's the fellow's name). Anyway, Gino's from da' neighba-hood and he's determined to bring down a goomba mobster named Richie Madano who's murdered Gino's goomba partner Bobby Lupo. (It's a movie that consists entirely of Goombas, many years before "Jersey Shore" mainstreamed them.) Anyway, the whole movie consists of Gina prowling around Brooklyn, lookin' for Richie, committing much violence along the way. "Anyone know why Richie did Bobby Lupo?" is Gina's constant, unanswered refrain, usually delivered before hurting someone really bad. Then he finds Richie, more violence ensues, and it's over. Complex it is not. 

But, you see, Gino's not "out for revenge" -- oh no, he's "out for justice." All of his violence is justified. This was the early 1990s, after all, when crime in NYC and the nation was very high, so the idea of ultra-violent cops delivering punitive justice was a more palatable idea than it is today. Capiche?

The plot of this movie is secondary to the numerous scenes where Segal demonstrates his superior abilities at beating people up. There's a small subplot where Gino gets back together with his estranged wife -- "Are we talkin' reconcilliation, ova' here?" is a real line -- plus we learn that our hero is also an animal lover (the movie ends with his puppy urinating on a man's head which is played for yucks and is one of the more lighthearted moments in the film). Shockingly, this stupid but very entertaining movie boasts a great cast (other than Segal): Jerry Orbach, Gina Gerson, John Leguizamo, a pre-Sopranos Dominic Chianese and a pre-ER Julianna Margulies are all in it. And there's also a great early Beastie Boy's song -- "No Sleep 'Till Brooklyn." 

This is a great movie to watch with a bunch of your friends while drinking heavily and yelling at the screen. In fact, there's no other way to watch it.

Enjoy.

July Monthly Read

As Phil Rizzuto would have put it: "Holy cow!"

Really. Hard to believe it's been two months since I last blogged but a daughter, house and busy life have kept me away from the keyboard. Nonetheless, the city keeps grinding along, not caring a wit whether I blog about it or not. (How dare it.)

Well, I won't try to re-hash all the events the last two months but here are a few things that have been going on in NYC recently. 

1. The death of James Gandolfini. The great actor died a few weeks ago in Rome from a heart attack at age 51. His funeral last week was a big event. 

Of course he was great on "The Sopranos" and in movies like True Romance and In The Loop. His death is a big loss. He was so talented and compulsively watchable on screen. Like most great actors, you could feel the complex emotions and thoughts that were boiling under the surface of his characters. He made Tony Soprano so real that at times it's hard to remember that Tony didn't even really exist! Truly great. I was fortunate to see Gandolfini on Broadway in the play "God of Carnage" in 2009. My review of this play and his performance are here.

So long, Jim. You will definately be missed.

Interesting side note: Gandolfini's funeral was at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine's which is also where my grandmother's funeral was many years ago. Small world.
 

2. After Sandy. There has been much discussion about how to protect NYC from another hurricane or natural disaster. The big proposal is the construction of storm barriers along the NYC waterfront, particularly in the areas most vulnerable to flooding. This New York Magazine article explores Mayor Bloomberg's exhaustive proposal for building various storm barriers as well as ceding various low lying areas back to nature (i.e. not building on them again). This project will take years, decades even, to complete, and cost billions of greenbacks. But we probably can't afford not to do it -- the  city might not otherwise survive. 

What's great about this article is not only its exploration of Bloomberg's ambitious plan but also putting it in the historical context of NYC's waterfront -- and our relationship to it. It's so easy to forget that NYC is unique because it is truly a city of islands -- over 40 of them! -- and so much of the city is literally water. Since I can't put it any better, I'll quote the article: "Glance at a map of New York, and what you see is a lot of blue, ringed by a piecrust of boroughs. This is a largely liquid city, a stunningly obvious fact that for decades was almost forgotten and that we’re only just beginning to remember ... New York’s relationship with its waters is a long and crazy romance, fueled by manic energy, gilded dreams, violence, abandonment, and elated rediscovery."

New Yorkers just don't live around water but also under it and in it. Water defines this city as much as buildings and parks, Wall Street and Broadway, the Mets and Yankees, delis and department stores. We've always had a complex relationship with our waterfront -- either ignoring it completely or trying to redeem it somehow. For decades, Robert Moses cut us off from the waterfront with highways and it's taken us decades to fix this with parks and places like Chelsea Piers and the South Street Seaport. Now with the explosion of ferries, we can get to places like Governor's Island which opens us the city even more. Reclaiming our waterfront for the people is a great thing but water can also be dangerous, as Sandy showed. Build to close to the water and it can literally be deadly.  "[T]he water is beautiful, alluring, and vicious. The storm demonstrated that we can’t get away, we can’t ­confine it, and we can’t beat it back. As the Bloomberg report makes clear, the only option is a cautious love."  

3. Whither Manhattan? Ever since the the City of New York (i.e. Manhattan), the City of Brooklyn, and the counties of the Bronx, Queens and Richmond (i.e Staten Island) consolidated in 1898 to become Greater New York, the identity of NYC has always been more or less defined by Manhattan.

The other boroughs, "the outer boroughs", were simply satellites of the mighty central isle, provinces of a great metropolitan empire. But the city, times, and the culture are a'changin'. Sure, Manhattan plays a big part in NYC culture -- still the center of fashion, theater, food, museums, etc. -- but these days the outer boroughs are stealing its crown.

Brooklyn is now considered the cultural hub of NYC. Look at the big hit TV shows set here -- like Girls and Two Broke Girls, plus other shows like the late Bored to Death and others -- and they're proudly set in Brooklyn, not Manhattan, In fact, Manhattan is now being influenced by the culture of Brooklyn!

And Queens is getting in the game too. In fact, amongst the biggest mucky mucks in the food world many believe the borough is one of the greatest and most exciting food destinations in the world. Not just the city but -- bang! zoom! -- the world! Having lived in Queens for six years, I can attest that this is a great, great place to eat. 

The cultural inferiority complex of the outer boroughs is clearly waning. And that's a great thing.

4. Woody Allen. How's he doing? When Ed Koch died earlier this year, NYC lost one of its great mascots. But, thankfully, we still have one of our greatest alive and thriving.

Woody Allen, the legendary film auteur, is still making movies. He's produced almost 50 of them, including great ones like Annie Hall and Hannah and Her Sisters and the recent Midnight in Paris. Woody's been directing for forty-four years now, ever since the first year of the Nixon presidency, and he just keeps going and going -- and going and going and going and going and going -- winning a few Oscars along the way and writing a chapter in film history.

What's amazing is that while the film business -- not to mention the city and country in which he lives and works -- has changed in so many ways, Woody's approach to movie making remains the same. He just keeps making his small, personal films on low budgets but with big names. He even still types his film scripts on the same small manual typewriter that he's been using for decades. He doesn't Tweet or use any social media -- he just makes films and enjoys life. And at almost 80, he keeps going strong.  

5. Jean Georges. Wow! What a great restaurant! Recently the wife and I got a baby sitter and headed out to celebrate our anniversary. We decided to try to try this place and had one of the best meals of our life. There were two prix fixe menus -- a regular plus a Spring menu -- and she got one and I got the other. Many of the dishes included fish, chicken, plus egg dishes that included caviar. The food was unbelievable. We also got excellent cocktails that were, to put it mildly, damn strong. Best of all, the service was incredible. When the restaurant found out that it was our anniversary, they gave us a surprise anniversary cake, as you can see here. This great restaurant made for a memorable anniversary.   

6. NYC domain name. Hey, if they can do it for porn, why not for NYC? This headline says it all: New York City gets its own .nyc Domain Name

7. Mayor's Race. I was going to do a post about this but I realize that it's gotten so crazy and complicated that it deserves its own post. To be continued.

So there are my updates -- for now. More will be coming -- in less than two months.