Pizza and Times Square - How did we get here?

If there's one constant in New York life, one reliable anchor in the tumult of existence here, it's pizza. Ever since the influx of Italian immigrants in the early 20th century, this concoction of flat bread with tomato sauce and cheese has become one of the staple items for all New Yorkers, providing sustenance and comfort to the world's greatest city for over 100 years. How this did happen? How did it conquer NYC? How come NYC is pizza's city and we just eat in it? This segment from WNYC radio explores why.

And talking about the anchors of NYC, no place anchors our town more than Times Square. The crossroads of the world in the center of the world, Times Square has been remade in the last few years with the introduction of pedestrian plazas -- large swaths of the public square where New Yorkers and tourists can roam free and "chill" sans the threat of cars. This other segment from WNYC is about the transformation of -- and caused by -- the new Times Square.

This past weekend, the wife and I found ourselves in the Times Square area. We got some ice cream and plunked ourselves at the public tables smack dab in the center of the crossroads of the world to enjoy our treats. There we were ... eating ice cream ... sitting on chairs, at a table ... in the middle of friggin' Times Square!  Reeled the mind at how this isn't our parents Times Square. It's almost a cliche to say it now, but the hookers, pimps, drug dealers, vagabonds, ruffians, porn theaters, and dilapidated structures that used to populate the area are truly gone, gone, gone. Now Times Square is a buzzing hive of tourists and merchants, ablaze with LED screens advertising ... everything ... a family friendly gathering place. 

The transformation of Times Square prove the old maxims: the old becomes new, the sleazy becomes respectable, the rebel becomes the establishment. Like the old man said in Chinatown, if something lasts long enough, it doesn't matter how outrageous it's past: it becomes respectable.

Review: "Times Square" (1980)

The 1980s remains the Golden Age of "teen flicks" -- movies like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, 16 Candles, The Breakfast Club, Back to the Future, Weird Science, Pretty in Pink, Heathers, Say Anything ... and many others defined what it meant to be a teenager in the Age of Reagan. These movies remain classics for those of us kids raised in that decade, time capsules of youth in a time before the Internet, smartphones, and social media.

My personal favorite is Pump Up the Volume which came out in 1990. The story of an angry, depressed teen who broadcasts a pirate radio show from his bedroom was, in many ways, a perfect ending, a coda, for the '80s teen flicks era. Ironically Pump Up the Volume was directed by Allan Moyle who, in many ways, kicked off the decade of teen flicks ten years earlier with Times Square, his 1980 debut about two teenage runaways in NYC.  

Starring Trini Alvarado and an actress named Robin Johnson (who had a brief career in the '80s before vanishing completely), Times Square is about a rebellious teenager named Nicky (Johnson) who winds up in a mental hospital with another teenager girl named Pamela (Alvarado). Nicky appears to be an orphan but Pamela is the daughter of a wealthy commissioner who is trying to gentrify Times Square. Together they escape the hospital and begin raising hell around the city, calling themselves the Sleaze Sisters. They throw TVs out of windows onto the the street, they steal, they work and perform music in a strip club, and they just act crazy. A nighttime DJ named Johnny LaGuardia, played by the brilliant Tim Curry, follows their exploits on air and discovers that one of them is the same person, Zombie Girl, who used to send him letters about how miserable she was. Johnny tracks them down, as Pamela's father desperately tries to find his daughter as well. Eventually, after several twists and turns, the Sleaze Sisters wind up performing a concert above a marquee in Times Square for their fellow teenage misfits, their rebellion embraced by the whole city. 

Times Square is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a great movie. It's not even really a good one. But it has a great spirit, a lot of life to it. The performances are raw, intense, the characters believable. Johnson is really good, and Alvarado is good as a good girl gone bad. The biggest problem is Tim Curry as the DJ -- he's not in a lot of the movie which is a shame since Curry is such a great actor, and LaGuardia is a compelling character. 

Also, as you might imagine, it's a lot of fun to see a movie set largely on the street of NYC forty years ago. It really was a different city back then -- it looked different, it felt different, it's totally uncognizable from today.

But the angst, the emotion, the rebelliousness of Times Square -- and what it means to be a teenager -- remains quite relevant today. 

HEY, WHERE DA' PORN AT? The New Times Square

So Goes Times Square, so goes NYC ...

I've blogged countless times over the years about the transformation of NYC from a bustling, fun, dirty, dangerous city into a sanitized fun-house mirror of itself catering to tourists and rich foreigners. The cost of living in this city, while never cheap, is now astronomical, and the vestiges of old NYC - like coffee shops, rent controlled apartments, corner drug stores, and porn theaters - are fast disappearing. Because NYC is so vast, because it's a hodgepodge of over 300 neighborhoods (many of which are bigger than most towns and cities in the rest of the country), it's impossible to point to one spot in NYC as representative of greater whole changing dynamic. However, if you had to look for one example, then obviously Times Square, Crossroads of the World, is the place. It has changed so dramatically over the last quarter century, done a complete 180 in the city's and the public's imagination, going from "scary" to "boring", from "gross" to "respectable", that's it's almost impossible to comprehend. Times Square basically is NYC -- only more so.

This lengthy article from this week's New York magazine reviews the transformation of Times Square over the years, from a den of moral inequity to a den of economic inequality. Times Square, it reminds us, has always been the nerve center of the city, representative of it in so many ways. So when it changed, the rest of the city was destined to follow it.

Also, you might be interested to read (or read about) a new book called City on Fire about NYC in the last 1970s era, when the city was dangerous -- and wonderful.

Then, finally, read this article about the boom in 1970s New York nostalgia. Apparently, it's a "thing" now.

If you get a time machine and travel back 40-something years and tell New Yorkers what their city would become, most of them would ask to get into the time machine and travel back to the future with you. But for many of us, if we could go back to that old NYC, some of us, including yours truly, might choose to stay there ... for a while at least.

As Fran Leibowitz said: Times Square today is like a gay bar in the 1970s -- no one admits to going there.

Times Square Ferris Wheel -- Making Times Square ... Square

Starting today until September 12th, you can ride in a Ferris Wheel in Times Square. 

Let that sink in: a ... Ferris Wheel ... in ... Times ... Square. For $20 per ride, per person! 

Lest there be any doubt that this city has turned into an amusement, this seals it. 

Okay, this may be the Times Square of today but, for Mr NYC, this will always be Times Square:

The Brand Spankin' New TKTS Booth

Last week the new TKTS booth opened in Times Square to much fanfare. I went by it on Friday and it's really something to see. For those of you who don't know what TKTS is, it's the place where you can get same day, half-price tickets to various concerts and shows. Besides the big one in Times Square, there is another booth at South Street Seaport and also one at MetroTech in Brooklyn. Go here for more info.

This new "booth" is located at 47th street and Broadway and is actually more of a plaza now. The ticket windows are located on the northern part of the street and you check the available shows and prices on two large electronic monitors on either side of the block. The main attraction, of course, is the giant 27 step, ruby red glass staircase that encloses the booth. If you walk to the top, you can get a sweeping view of the whole blinking, vibrating, neon circus that is Times Square. It's also nice to know when there's another place where the public can literally get a new view of NYC.

Building this new booth took almost ten years due to numerous setbacks and various financial problems. It's great it finally came into being. See what other folks around town have had to say about it:

Atop the New TKTS Booth, Ruby-Red Stairs With a View of the Great White Way

The New TKTS Booth

New TKTS Booth to Take Credit Cards

Stepping Up: New Times Square TKTS Booth Finally Opens

That Old New York Grit

Where, oh where, has it gone?

Across the eons, what made NYC such an endlessly fascinating place for native and visitor alike was that our fair city always managed to encompass both glamour and grittiness in such abundant, gorgeous, and squalid quantities. Men in tuxedos and women in gowns, walking in and out of the Metropolitan Opera, was a part of the New York identity as much as some creepy guy with a folded up newspaper going into a porno theater in Times Square.

The rich and the poor, debutantes and street kids, glamour and grit, existing side by side. That was the New York way.

But now the porno theaters are gone from Times Square and newspapers are fast disappearing. This city is no longer hospitable to the poor and middle class. This is a rich person's city now. Bit by bit, that old New York grit (yes, I know it rhymes) is vanishing. And not just by market forces alone. The powers that be (more precisely, Mayor Bloomberg) has declared war on grit. Like Rudy did to Times Square, now Mike is doing to Canal Street.

Glamour is vanquishing grit.

The New York Press this week has a great article on what is going on in that last frontier of gritty New York, Canal Street. Long thought of as the "Counterfeit Triangle" or the place where hot merchandise was fenced and sold to tourists, Canal Street has been one of the few places in Manhattan where small businesses and immigrants could thrive. But in the last year there have been numerous crackdowns, not only on the counterfeiters, but also on legitimate businesses. The city wants to drive the mom-and-pop shops out and "clean up" the neighborhood. They want to totally change Canal Street, turn it into another enclave of the wealthy.

And why? Real estate prices of course. Developers want this. They want this area to be more "desirable" so that their real estate holdings will be more valuable. Not only that, but a couple of huge new hotels are scheduled to open this year near Canal Street, and the city wants to make the neighborhood more hospitable to tourists -- not New Yorkers.

I work in this neighborhood and have seen these changes first-hand. I've seen the building of that monstrosity known as Trump Soho -- technically a hotel, not an apartment building. A new Hampton Inn has been constructed right near the mouth of the Holland Tunnel. A giant new hotel is going up where the old Moondance Diner used to be. And walking along Canal Street most mornings, I see all these signs stamped on doors indicating that this or that business has been shut down for selling illegal or fake merchandise.

But sometimes I wonder -- are they all crooks down here? Or is something else going on?

At the Canal Street stop on Broadway, there's a little store between the staircases that sells things like water, candy, newspapers, etc. A few months ago, during one of these raids, this store was shut down. Each morning, I'd walk by it and see it dark and chained up, one of that nasty signs affixed to its front. But now it's open again. Hmmm? Maybe it was a victim of circumstance. Maybe the city (cough, Bloomberg) overreached? We shall never know.

Yes, that old New York grit is going, going fast. The rich are unleashing their fury on the poor. On Canal Street, old apartment buildings are being replaced by glass condominiums and high-rise hotels. The bridges and tunnels were built for a reason (thank you Robert Moses) and the rich are telling the poor to cross them. For all they care, the poor could go jump in the river. Before we know it, Canal Street will join Times Square and Astor Place and Harlem as gutted, soulless, gentrified areas. And that old New York grit will be just a memory.

As the City Turns

As you may have seen from my latest Tweets, Woody Allen turned 75 years old this week and Elaine Kaufman, owner of the celebrity restaurant Elaine's that he made famous in his 1979 classic Manhattan, passed away at age 81. There's something poignant and sad about Elaine passing in the same week that one of her most famous customers turned three-quarters of a century in age. The sadness if obvious but the poignancy, for me, comes from the fact that both events mark the passing of time. 

Old-time New York and New Yorkers are getting even older ... and disappearing.

And it's not just people. Case in point: the Scobee Diner in Little Neck, Queens. This little diner is about as far away from Elaine's, geographically and culturally, as you can get while still remaining in the borders of NYC. Thanks to rising rents, the Scobee Diner went out of business this week and it's many longtime patrons are, understandably, very sad. Like Elaine's, it was a place where lots of people could congregate and have good food and enjoy one another's company. It had a perennial quality, the kind of place that makes people happy, and in its quiet way it was as much a part of the city's fabric as the Empire State Building. Now it's gone. 

Elaine's catered to the rich and famous of Manhattan while the Scobee Diner catered to the working classes of Queens. But both restaurants were places with heart, places people liked going to for the community as much as the food. And while Elaine's remains open, it just won't be the same without its legendary proprietress. Same goes for Little Neck without the Scobee.

Just part of the old city that's slipping away.

Oh, but fear not dear New Yorkers and New York lovers. A new city is rising! A city where the likes of Cathy Black, an uber-wealthy business executive with no educational experience can be appointed to run the NYC public school system. A city where the working classes are not only being squeezed out of their  homes and neighborhoods but even their favorite dining and watering holes are being rendered kaput. And this week, Times Square officially sheds it unique past and firmly embraced its transformation into a Disneyland/Las Vegas-type playground. The last glossy office  building, 11 Times Square, is finally complete and will open for business in 2011. This marks the end of a 30-year transformation to "rejuvenate" Times Square and make it what it is today: a soulless, corporate, neon plaza -- safe for tourists -- instead of the sleazy and wonderful thyroid gland where New Yorkers could roam free and entertain themselves. 

Yes, the Times Square of yore is gone, the hookers and pimps and drug dealers and porno palaces have been vanquished, replaced by a newer, more respectable class of criminals: real estate developers and Disneyland. 

Old New York is disappearing, in ways big and small, obvious and not, right before our eyes. Our eyes have been closed way too long and hopefully one day we'll wake up.

Who said this is the city that never sleeps?

Times Square Ball Drop 2006-2007 New York City (Clean)

Hard to believe it but yet ANOTHER year is done and gone.

It's been a pretty good year for Mr NYC, after all, a year ago this blog didn't exist and the world was the less for it. (Wasn't it?)

Anyway, it wouldn't be New Year's in NYC without the Times Square ball drop so here's a great video of it from last year.

Why anyone would go to Times Square in New Year's is beyond me. It's an absolute mess. I was there on New Years 1993-1994 and 1998-1999, both times for reasons beyond my control. It's really better to watch on TV. It REALLY REALLY is.

What's Happening?

There's something always going on in NYC, even if it's not necessarily grabbing the headlines.

The big news in town today is that we now have our first confirmed death from swine flu -- Mitchell Wiener, an assistant principal from Queens. Obviously Mr NYC extends his deepest sympathies to his family and to all those who are suffering from this terrible thing. Let's hope this is the only death our city will experience and that everyone recovers from swine flu.

But there's more going on in NYC beneath the media glare. This Sunday, right before Memorial Day, the city will implement its new traffic strategies in Times Square. Several blocks are going to be blocked off to cars and trucks and, by this fall, Times Square (and eventually Herald Square and Madison Square) will be transformed from traffic clogged intersections into pedestrian plazas.

This week New York magazine has a great profile of Transportation Commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan who is overseeing this and other changes to the way New Yorkers get around town. What's great about her is that she is determined to make this city less dependent on cars and make alternative transportation more appealing. Some critics says she is some kind of hippie-crunchy elitist who doesn't understand how "real" New Yorkers live but, if you see how she wants to make moving around this city easier, I don't know how you can object to what she's doing. I know I knock Bloomberg a lot on here but Janette is really one of his best hires.

Finally, if you want to better understand how the economic recession is affecting average (and not so average) New Yorkers, check out Downsize NYC which gives first-person stories about how some people are coping with their changes of fortune.

No, it's never dull in NYC.

More People, Less Cars

Last year the city made radical changes to Times Square, Herald Square, and Madison Square when parts of them were blocked off to traffic and were replaced by pedestrian plazas.

The results have been wonderful: people are free and safe to walk around these very hectic areas, they can sit in beach chairs or at tables and eat, read, or talk, and it has brought a new vitality and relaxed energy to these crazy parts of town. Less car + more people = good.

But wait -- there's more! Now the city wants to create a pedestrian plaza around Union Square, closing the blocks just north of it to traffic. I was actually in Union Square last night -- a gorgeous, beautiful, Spring evening -- and the area was blazing with people and fun. Most of Union Square is already blocked off from traffic and is basically a big plaza anyway so extending it will only make it better.

Perhaps the most ambitious plan, however, is the DOT's proposal to eliminate most traffic from 34th street. The plan is to have traffic only going one way and to install dedicated bus lanes. Getting across 34th street, either by car or foot, is a nightmare so this will make buses go much faster and hopefully alleviate these bursting streets of people and get traffic across much faster.

It's nice to know that after almost a century of genuflecting and deferring to the automobile, finally pedestrians and public transportation are taking priority, at least in our city government's mind.

New York: Never a Dull Moment

Well, you've probably heard by now that some royal prick decided to set off a bomb in Times Square 'round 3 AM this morning. It damaged the military recruiting station there but fortunately hurt no one. Frankly I never understood why the military would set up a recruiting station in the middle of Times Square but hey, real estate is real estate. I don't know what point this bomber was trying to make but he failed to scare anyone or really screw up traffic. Still, I hope they catch him (I assume it's a dude) and dangle the slug from the Brooklyn Bridge with only dental floss around his ankles.

In other depressing news, it looks like Moynihan station is getting delayed yet again. Ya really gotta hand it to these New York State bureaucrats, they manage to make the Italian government look like a model of efficiency. I just saw the late great Senator's daughter on TV and she made the point that they built the Empire State Building in 13 months! As Henry Hill's father said in Goodfellas, "In months" (okay, technically a year and a month but this Moynihan station project has been going on for almost NINE YEARS). What's the hold-up? A disgrace.

But in happier city news, there are actually landlords in this city with a heart of gold who want to make it easier for artists to live here. Interesting article in today's Times: The Lords of Dumbo Make Room for the Arts, at Least for the Moment.

Interview: Lisa Cintrice on Her Adventures in Early ‘80s NYC

Forty years ago, New York City was a very different place. Dirty, dangerous, crazy, and too much fun for anyone’s good, this city was a cauldron of depravity, culture, and craziness. You didn’t live in NYC back then, you survived it – and no one survived it or had more fun in it than Lisa Cintrice.

A great beauty from Long Island and Queens, Lisa endured a rough childhood and made it to NYC, falling quickly into the adult film and club scene. She lived in the heart of Funky Town, a sexy and wild Bohemia, a time and place that has become mythic – although, as she makes clear, it came at a price.

Eventually, Lisa moved away and changed her life.

Lisa was kind enough to answer some questions about her life in early 1980s NYC, and she has some wild stories! She tells us about her early life, a memorable stunt she pulled off in Times Square, a unique record she holds, why she eventually left NYC – and also gives us the best advice about what all of us should do to get a great workout.

Briefly, tell us about your life. Who is Lisa Cintrice?

So Lisa Cintrice was an 18-year old adult actress who worked on 9 adult films and got a lot of publicity from how I got out of the army. I led a sheltered life as Lisa Vanasco and I ended up living the high life in NYC as a young adult actress known as Lisa Cintrice.

In 1981, still a very young woman, you enlisted in the Army but then, before shipping off, managed to get out of it in a way that literally made headlines - and got you TV. It’s a great “Only in New York” story. Even though I’m sure you’ve told it many times, please do share it here if you don’t mind.

So when I was 16 my dad went to federal prison and I got pregnant and married a man that was 26. I was very sheltered and naive. He became abusive very quickly so I left when I was 17.

At that point I had no direction in my life so I joined the army. I had 10 months before I shipped out. My husband's sister knew what happened, actually, she saw him punch me and pulled him off me. 

She asked if she could photograph me to send to her friend who worked with Oui magazine. I ended up getting a layout in Oui, and Peter Wolf took me under his wing and I ended up doing an adult film.

I went to my recruiter to tell him I was doing porn and wanted out of the army. I was told I had to go and I was also told not to link the army to my porn career.

Well, once I told Peter what the army said, he came up with an idea to get me out. Peter Wolf and Richard Milner did a press release where I was going to strip out of an army uniform in front of the army recruiting station in Times Square so that’s what I did.

I also was in every newspaper and magazine in NYC. I was going to be discharged but then I went on the Tom Snyder show. After Tom Snyder the army said if I stopped doing talk shows I would get a general discharge that turned honorable so I got out.

Truly, “Only in New York!” What was early 1980s NYC like for you? Did you find it scary, exciting, both?

I grew up in Queens and Levittown so the city was fascinating to me. I went to the city to shoot the Oui layout and literally never went home.

I ended up moving in with Tiffany Clark, Fred Lincoln, and Jean Silver. It was one big party to me intertwined with filming adult films. I honestly don't know how I survived.

Keep in mind I had just turned 18. Clubbing, coke, dancing at the Melody Burlesque, hanging out at Bernard’s which was across the street. Partied at Studio 54 and other clubs I don’t even remember. I had no fear. I would walk all over the city at all hours of the night not even thinking maybe it wasn't safe to be out alone at 3 AM.

I would end up in gossip columns because I was always taking my clothes off in clubs. Also spent a lot of time at Plato’s Retreat and the Hellfire Club which was an on-premise S&M club.

Those were the days!

Sounds like fun! I’m curious about two movies you made at that time: Mascara, about as NYC as any movie gets (it even has scenes on the subway), and Debbie Does Dallas 2 (a sequel to one of the most famous adult films ever). What are your memories of making those films?

I don’t remember much about Mascara. I remember I worked with Ken Yontz. He was Seka’s ex. I remember Lee Carroll and Tiffany Clark were in it. I haven't watched that one.

However, I do remember Debbie Does Dallas 2. I actually watched one scene and I will get to that.

So Bambi Woods clearly was only doing the film ‘cuz she needed money so it was obvious she didn't want to be there. I did a scene with her in a bath tub and Jean Silver and I bathed her with penis shaped glycerine soap so just imagine what we did with that soap LOL! I got the vibe that Bambi hated every minute of it.

I also had a scene with Ron Jeremy where I was supposed to give him a blow job. I told him I was going to deep throat him and he said not to do that because it was not possible and my teeth my hurt him.

Well, telling me I can’t do something is a sure way for me to do it. So I did it and that blowjob ended up in the book Only the Best by Jim Holliday which rates the best scenes in adult film. I was number 4 of the 5 best blowjobs. Number 5 was Marilyn Chambers and Ron Jeremy.

Now that is a very cool record to have! What made you move out of NYC?

I left NYC to tour with one of my movies and I was doing a lot of coke back then. I had a moment of clarity and chose to not go back to NY because I felt like it was too easy to score coke in NYC. I cut all contact with everybody I knew. I got sober, went to college, got married. I have grown kids, and I reconnected with my old crew a few months ago.

Was is hard leaving the city and the business?

It was hard at first because I didn't have job skills and I didn't want to call my family till I got my shit together which I did. Got sober, went to college, got married, had kids, and life is good.

It was difficult because of the publicity about the army and porn. The only time in my life that I was fired was from a bartending job where someone saw me in Debbie Does Dallas 2. I kept that part of my life private until recently when I finally felt ok to talk about it.

Do you ever visit the city and, if so, what do you think of NYC today? Do you miss anything about it? 

My dad died in 2016 but even though my dad moved to Los Angeles he kept a place in NY so I would go back every so often and see friends and family. I miss New York food the most.

You have a great Twitter account where you mostly chronicle your physical fitness regime. As someone who needs to get in shape, how do you get and stay motivated to exercise regularly – and what do you think makes for a great workout?

I have been lifting weights since I was 19 and I am 58 now. I posted my workouts to keep me accountable and, if it motivates someone, that's even better.

One thing about working out is the adrenaline you feel when your done training. I am addicted to how good I feel after. That feeling motivates me. I plan my workouts a week in advance so I don’t even have to figure out what I am going to do, it’s all on a list  I have good and bad days at the gym. Some days I am stronger than others.

You know you had a good workout when you feel energized. What I tell friends who want to be active is do it for 90 days and stick to the goals you choose. After 90 days it will become like brushing your teeth it will be habit. Think of it this way: there are 24 hours in a day so anyone can spare even 30 minutes to take a daily walk. Start slow and do what you like.

I love running, my husband swims, some friends bike. Do what you like so you look forward to working out. I need to follow this advice!

Is there anything else you’d like to tell us about Lisa Cintrice?

I am finally at a place where can embrace my past and my future. I outed myself to most of my friends that had no idea. I have no regrets. I lived an interesting life, and if no one likes it then, oh well, life goes on.

Back in 1981 there were only about 200 people who did adult films. Now it’s really evolved where anybody can be a webcam girl. I am glad it’s getting to be more accepted. 

Lisa, you will always be accepted! Congratulations on surving so much so well, having so much fun, and creating a great life for yourself. You are truly an inspiration.

Thanks so much for talking to Mr NYC!

The Path to 2021 in NYC

The New Year's Eve "ball drop" in Times Square has long been a beloved traddition in NYC. However, with literally a million-plus people crowding together in one big place, these days we would call it a "super-spreader" event -- and, this year, it will be organized very differently.

As this city has been re-adjusting to life in this new normal, the planners of the ball drop have spent months working to keep the ball drop happening -- and keep it safe. Times Square will be closed to all but a very few people and only VIPs, etc. will be allowed in and around the very modest festivities. However, there will be performances (Jennifer Lopez and Cindy Lauper among them), and the VIPs this years will a select number of frontline workers. 

Hopefully the ball drop this year will be an historic one-time only event -- and next year we'll be back to normal.

Review: "Vanilla Sky" (2001)

Today I saw a big article on NYC movies. Obviously there are tons of NYC movies and, when I review one here, I try not to review the big famous ones -- instead, I look for the forgotten or overlooked NYC movies, trying to make my meagre audience aware of those they might have missed. Like this article indicates, I also try to review movies that give you a sense of the city, a feeling of living and experiencing it -- not just where the city is used as a convenient, familiar backdrop.

One such example is Vanilla Sky.

A few weeks ago I blogged something that included a clip from the 2001 Tom Cruise movie where he is driving around a deserted Manhattan, stops in an empty Times Square, gets out of his car, starts running, then stops and yells into the (not exactly vanilla) sky. We learn later on that this moment was probably some kind of technical glitch in an artificial dream that he is living through --  and that is apparently the plot of the movie.

I say "apparently the plot of the movie" because, to be honest, the plot makes no friggin' sense. Tom Cruise plays a guy very much like ... Tom Cruise: handsome, rich, famous, lots of broads (one too many as it turns out) who gets into a car crash, messes up his face, gets accussed of murder ... and then, from there on, it becomes a weird heady trip.

This movie was on the back-end of a trend that really started in 1999 with movies like The Sixth Sense, Fight Club, and Being John Malkovich where the entire reality of the story, the world the movie is set in, gets totally undermind and flipped around. But instead of using this plot-twist once, Vanilla Sky tries to outdo them but have numerous "reality redefining" moments and you get nice and confused until you don't care anymore and you don't really understand what the "vanilla sky" is or why we should care and then Kurt Russell shows up as some kind of psychiatrist/interrogator and Cameron Diaz gets to look hot and act crazy and Penelope Cruz gets to look hot and get naked and a bunch of other really good actors spend their time telling Tom Cruise that he's an asshole and, yeah, that's about it.

But it's still a great NYC movie -- the city is not only lovingly rendered, it becomes a real character in the movie, the filmmakers give you a great sense of life in the city. I also have a personal love for this movie -- in the scene where Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz are driving around (she's busting his balls because she believe that once a guy sleeps with a woman, he owes the lady his entire soul -- and presumably money), and then she drives off the 96th street overpass on Riverside Drive. During this scene they drive past the building I grew up in -- so that was cool.

Anyway, see Vanilla Sky, preferably in an inebriated state, because then you might understand it better. 

Oh, btw, Tom Cruise couldn't drive into Times Square and yell anymore -- in 2007, the city turned most of it into a pedestrian plaza so now he'd have to go yell elsewhere.

"The Deuce" - An Appreciation

Very soon the final episode of the three-season series The Deuce will air. Created by David Simon, whose previous shows The Wire and Treme examined the criminal underworld of early-2000s Baltimore and the cultural scene of post-Katrina New Orleans (respectively), The Deuce was about NYC. 

Unlike those shows, however, it was a period piece set in the 1970s and '80s. Ostensibly The Deuce was about the adult business and how it quickly rose into an almost respected art form ("porno chic") in the '70s until AIDS and videotape ruined it in the '80s. But The Deuce wasn't really about the adult business, it was about NYC -- specifically the Times Square area, and how it turned from a sleazy cease pool into a developer's wonderland. It's about how the forces of big money, real estate, law enforcement, and politicians came together to transform this part of NYC -- and, eventually, the city as a whole. In The Deuce, the adult business is an exemplar of this time in the city's history -- a beneficiary of the old NYC, a victim of the new NYC. It shows how, in detail, through the stories of its various interrelated characters, the city changed into the gentrified, clean-cut jewel-box it is today.

As I blogged about almost exactly two years ago -- two years before this show even hit the air! -- so goes Times Square, so goes NYC. The Deuce dramatized this fact brilliantly.

I'm sorry that The Deuce is going off the air after three great seasons -- each one jumped ahead several years from the previous season (1971 to 1978 to 1985) showing how the adult business and the city had changed in the interim. It'd be cool to see this show jump ahead to 2000 or 2001 -- just as the Internet was changing adult film yet again and 9/11 would change the city forever. Maybe one day David Simon will make a reunion movie.

Many thanks for this brilliant, one of a kind, only-in-NYC show!

Ya'll go to Times Square now! Ya' hear?

How much is NYC changing? Here's one example of a change that's coming ... or, alternatively, a'comin': the Grand Old Opry, that venerable institution of country music and favorite of the Grand Old Party, is opening its first satellite in, you guessed it, NYC. 

Specifically, Times Square.

Next week the Nashville-based music mecca will open a restaurant/music hall in the former den of satan that is geared towards, you guessed it, tourists. A place created by outsiders for outsiders.

The world of The Deuce has never seemed more distant. 

I know ... I know ... we're not supposed to say we don't like this. We New Yorkers, after all, pride ourselves on our cultural diversity, we all started out as outsiders, and a honky tonk from Nashville setting up shop here is diversity ... sorta. To say you don't want the Grand Old Opry in NYC is ... elitist ... snobby ... looking down on the "good solid folks" of the South -- ya' know, God's Country. 

And hey, that Dolly Parton is sumpin'! She wrote that song from The Bodyguard after all, sung beautiful and made famous by one of ... those people (who's now deceased). 

So let's welcome the Grand Old Opry to NYC! 

But ... really? Really? The Grand Old Opry in NYC? Why here? Why not Vegas? Why not Hollywood? Those places seem more appropriate.

As if the fact that Trump is from NYC weren't bad enough! 

If this new Opry-land succeeds here than you'll know NYC has really changed. But if it fails, perhaps our city's spirit hasn't been totally bleached.

That said, the great 1975 movie Nashville, directed by Robert Altman, has many scenes at the Grand Old Opry -- and one of the greatest opening credit sequences of all time. 

Joe Allen RIP

Founder and proprietor of the eponymous Theater District restaurant, Joe Allen has died at the age of 87. Shows would come and go but his joint regularly served actors, actresses, directors, writers, agents, crew members, and theatergoers for over 50 years. He had another successful restaurant next door, Orso, that wound up opening locations around the world.

Joe Allen was from Brooklyn and, when he opened his restaurant in 1965, it was something of a leap of faith. Right off Times Square, at that time a seedy and squalid den of sin, his place started a rennaissance of sorts for restaurants in the area that eventually led to the creation of what today we call Restaurant Row. Joe understood that food and theater were inseperable twins, two parts of a night-on-the-town whole. He was, in many ways, a visionary, a man who saw what the Times Square area and NYC would become in later decades.

He built it and they came.

RIP Joe. I'll take an order to go in your memory. 

NYC Movie Theaters Are Vanishing

In some big news, the Regal Cinema multiplex in Union Square is closing. (This is part of a bankruptcy proceeding by Regal Cinema that is seeing its multiplexes close nationwide.)

While it's always seemed like it's been part of the Union Square scene forever, this multiplex has only been there since 1998. Nonetheless, it fast became a vital part of the neighborhood and its location made it one of the most heavily patronized movie theaters in the city. I went there countless times, seeing movies like Signs and Up and so many others. It was very popular with NYU students and it's also the movie theater where I once accidently bumped into Ed Koch on Christmas Eve 2004. Even though it was a big, impersonal, and wildly overpopulated multiplex, it had a cozy feel.

Now it's gone, following on the heels of so many other movie theaters around the city that are vanishing, especially in residential neighborhoods, and especially in downtown Manhattan. As sad as this is, it's not surprising. Streaming has utterly transformed how we consume movies. Now people can watch first-run movies on their phone while traveling or on their huge flatscreens on home -- why venture out and pay a ton of dough and put up with other moviegoers when you sit in the comfort of home, get some take out, and watch it there? In the same way that the Internet transformed Times Square by putting porno movie theaters out of business, streaming is transforming NYC and other cities by stamping out movie theaters. Sad but plus ca change. 

Video stores were an even earlier casualty of streaming. There's even a documentary about the once mighty, now gone, Kim's Video stores that used to populate the city (I used to live near one). Even though it was a basic CD/DVD store, it had a nerdy vibe that made you feel part of a movie-loving, pop culture community. That's been lost now -- the community belongs on remote. 

My favorite long-gone movie theater was the Ziegfeld on 54th street. It was a massive single-run movie house, the closest thing we ever had to a movie palace in this town. I saw many great movies there like Inglorious Basterds (and some not so great ones, like the Star Wars prequels). It was the kind of place that made movies feel important in a way that streaming and watching them on phones  doesn't.

There are a lot of great movies set in NYC -- it's just too bad there are increasing few great places to see movies in NYC. 

Farewell to Funkytown: A Tribute to Ed, Lou, Al and Stan

As 2013 ticks away into 2014, our city is poised to get its first new mayor in over a decade. At the stroke of midnight, the Bloomberg era ends and the De Blasio era begins.

WNYC radio has had a great series of reports called New York Remade: Before and After Bloomberg. A lot has happened, both in the city and beyond, during these past 12 years. As the series' website explains:

On Jan. 1, 2002, when Michael Bloomberg was sworn into office, these things barely existed: iPods, Blackberries, pocket digital cameras. These things didn't exist at all: the Barclays Center, Citi Field, One World Trade, or the Gehry NY building.

People smoked, all the time, in restaurants and bars. Almost no one rode bikes, and T.V.-less yellow cabs drove down Broadway right through Times Square. Back then, a market rate apartment in Harlem was about $1,200 — about half of what it is today. Pizza was $1.50 a slice, same price as a subway token.

Carrie Bradshaw lived in a Manhattan brownstone, drank cosmopolitans and typed onto a black and white computer screen. The High Line was a rusted and weedy hulk, not the locale for furtive kisses for the "Girls" crew before they head home to Brooklyn. Adlai Stevenson High School still existed. The Success Academy and six hundred other schools did not.

You could be anonymous in 2001. Now, not so much. We are watched, everywhere, if not by security cameras, then by each other.

New York has been transformed in the last 12 years, in ways that are wrenching and huge and intimate.

Might I add: the city was also still reeling from 9/11. Ground Zero was a smoking hole with clean-up crews moving away the rubble of the old World Trade Centers and still finding bodies.

Back then, our city's biggest fear was getting hit by another terrorist attack. Now it's being able to afford to live here.

The first decade of the 21st century has been a profound transitory time for our city. I don't recognize the town I was born in the 1970s, and grew up in the 1980s and 1990s. The 20th century is but a faint memory now, another time that is both feared and fetishized in our collective memory. If you go back and watch movies made in NYC back then, movies like "Taxi Driver", "Do the Right Thing" and "Bad Lieutenant", it made NYC look like a nightmare. Now we go to movies like the recently released "American Hustle", set in the late 1970s, and you'd think the city was simply "funkytown" back then.   

Perhaps it was better, perhaps it was worse. Perhaps what we've gained in public safety, health, and schools has been lost in a sky-high cost of living, a bleaching of the culture, and a loss of communal spirit. The debate rages endlessly on. But one thing is clear: maybe we don't actually want to live in Funkytown anymore but we still want to talk about it.

And in 2013, four notable New Yorkers died who lives embodied the late 20th century city, who rode high during the era of Funkytown: former mayor Ed Koch, rocker Lou Reed, pornographer Al Goldstein, and news reporter Stan Brooks. They were four very different men, occupying quite different spheres in this city's life and imagination, but their lives and careers are essential to understanding that time in our city's life that is now so definitely over.

Ed Koch was mayor from 1978 to 1989. In his time, he improved the city's disastrous finances and built affordable housing. He had a proud legacy but was also very divisive. He was famously irrascible, screaming at anyone who disagreed with him, and he seemed to relish conflict with anyone who wanted it. Koch's natural successor was not his actual successor, David Dinkins, but Rudy Giuliani: both men polarized the city, setting black against white, rich against poor. The Bloomberg era has been markedly different both in tone and governance: race relations have greatly improved and he has openly supported gay marriage. As for the poor, Bloomberg hasn't played rich against poor: he's simply forgotten about the poor and forced them out of the city. (Problem solved.) So a governing style of quiet ruthlessness and embracing diversity has replaced the divisive, rough-and-tumble governing style of Funkytown -- and the man who embodied its spirit left us in 2013.

Lou Reed made his musical career in the 1960s and 1970s writing songs about drugs, death, bondage, and drag. His music was about the dirty and dangerous city -- and it was brilliant. As NYC changed and Lou Reed got older, his music became legendary not only for its great experimentation but also for its memories of the vanished city. The city of "Sally Can't Dance" and "Dirty Boulevard" is gone and now, sadly in 2013, is Lou Reed. But we'll always listen to his music and remember that time and its poet, a man who made lyrical beauty out of the decay of Funkytown.

Today, anyone can get porn on the web. My generation was the last that had to work hard to get its porn (usually by begging an older friend to buy a magazine from a creepy vendor and then hiding it under the bedroom mattress, stressing out that mom would find it when making the bed or discover us reading it when she called us to dinner -- let me tell you, it was stressful) but today's "yutes" can simply go online, search vast amounts of naughty content, and then hit the "Clear History" tab on their browsers when mom calls. The man who represented the mattresses-hiding time of porn was Al Goldstein, the foulmouthed pornographer and provocateur and New Yorker extraordinaire, who founded "Screw" magazine in the 1960s and then, from 1974 to 2003, hosted the racy cable show "Midnight Blue" on Channel J. He was gross and offensive and wanted you to know it. He was "the man" during the time when Times Square was a bastion of porno theaters and drug dealers. Al Goldstein became the symbol (for many) of everything that was wrong with NYC back then, the filth that Travis Bickle in "Taxi Driver" so desperately wanted to wash away. Giuliani started the scrubbing in the 1990s with raids and new blue laws but, in the Bloomberg era, it was washed away by the Internet and gentrification. Goldstein's magazine and TV show didn't survive, and he literally became homeless as a result. But his recent death is a reminder of that time, of the sleaze of Funkytown, when the city was a wild place -- fun for some, revolting for others -- that is now clean and, for many, very boring.

And finally, Stan Brooks. You might know his name: he was a reporter for 1010 WINS radio news for decades. He had a great voice, one that was born for radio, and he reported on everything from the 1971 Attica Prison riots to the recent election of Bill De Blasio as mayor. Any history that was made in NYC over the last 50 years, Stan Brooks reported it first. If you ever saw the movies "Goodfellas", it's his voice that reports on the Lufthansa heist made famous in that classic film. Stan Brooks was the memory bank of this city, the man who explained what was going on in Funkytown to its residents. Now Stan Brooks is gone, along with the city he reported about for so long. We've lost a great reporter, a great New York voice, and a living link to our city's past.

As another great New Yorker, novelist Don DeLillo wrote: "It's all falling indelibly into the past."

The song "Funkytown" was a one-hit wonder released in 1980, a year when the city was deep in the era of Ed Koch, Lou Reed, Al Goldstein, and Stan Brooks, and when yours truly was just three years old. The song was written by a guy named Steven Greenberg for a band called Lipps, Inc who were all from Minneapolis and dreamed of moving to NYC. The song was an open love letter to the dream of this city, to its spirit and danger, to why people wanted to live here, even back then, the so-called bad old days. Just remember the first few lines:

Gotta make a move to a
Town that's right for me
Town to get me movin'
Keep me groovin' with some
Energy

You can't be funky without some energy, and energy was the essence of the Funkytown era -- the era that the Bloomberg years have so definitively vanquished

Now our city moves into a new era. Sadly, these four great New Yorkers won't be there to see it. But they made NYC an interesting place in the last decades of the 20th century, they gave the city its unique energy, and for that we thank them. 

Now, firmly in the second decade of the 21st century, and the dangerous energy of that time has been replaced by a safe apathy. We may not be going back to Funkytown anytime soon, but we need to shed the apathy and re-find its energy. That's the way we'll honor their legacies in the new era that's about to begin.

 

The Way Around Town

When someone or something becomes controversial, it's either because they're doing something incredibly good or incredibly bad. Either way, they are shaking up popular consensus, challenging commonly held practices and assumptions, saying to people "no, don't go this way, go that way."

This directional metaphor for controversy fits aptly to Janette Sadik-Khan, our city's transportation commissioner. 

Since her appointment a few years back, she's installed pedestrian plazas in Times Square, Madison Square, and Herald Square, routed bike routes around town, and reduced the number of parking spaces around town. She is probably the only transportation chief in any major city today (or ever) who has publicly said that the car should take a back seat (pun totally intended) to public or alternate transportation options. If Robert Moses was the quintessential 20th century transportation chief, trying to make NYC a car-centric town, Janette Sadik-Khan is 21st century transportation chief, trying to do the opposite.

Her efforts have ruffled quite a few feathers amongst some politicians and car owners in NYC. For them, bike lanes and pedestrian plazas are nonsense. They don't understand why the streets don't exist completely for them. They think they should be able to drive pollution spewing vehicles anywhere and everything in this town. They don't want this city's transportation infrastructure to change.    

But Sadik-Khan does and she's showing the leadership to do it. I think, years from now, people will look back at what she's done and be grateful that our city's transportation policies changed, taking us in a better direction.