Tom Wolfe RIP

Just the other night I was looking over my bookcase and pulled out a book I bought a long time ago called The Devil's Candy, about the making of the disastrous movie version of Tom Wolfe's novel The Bonfire of the Vanities. 

How ironic then, that, very next day, Tom Wolfe died here in NYC, aged 87.

Starting in the 1960s, along with writers like Gay Talese and others, Wolfe was an originator of the "New Journalism", a style of non-fiction where reporters would embed themselves with their subjects and write long, probing articles and books in a highly personal, provocative, almost literary way. Wolfe became the most popular New Journalist of all, writing about the heroes and anti-heroes of American life, from hippies to astronauts like Ken Kesey and the Yippies in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, the Black Panthers in Radical Chic (a term he coined), the Mercury astronauts in The Right Stuff (his most acclaimed work). 

Wolfe's observations were always satirical, never sentimental; always honest, no puffery. He was "politically incorrect" but never offensive -- he held the mirror up to nature, oftentimes brutally, and did so in wild, hyperbolic prose. Wolfe loved periods and italicizes and fast, whirling sentences -- there was a rock'n'roll sensibility to his words, an energy that hit your "solar plexus" (to use a term Wolfe repeated ad nauseum in his writing).

In the 1980s, Wolfe switched from journalism to fiction, publishing his legendary NYC novel The Bonfire of the Vanities in 1987. I've written a lot about this book over the years -- a novel that presents NYC as hellish landscape of greed, crime, and yes, vanity -- so I won't say any more except that it serves both as a piece of great entertainment and a lacerating commentary of this city at that time. Wolfe wrote a few more novels, most notably A Man in Full in 1998, but none equaled Bonfire -- his last few novels received poor reviews and sales -- and he became a relic of the 20th century. But he influenced endures.

Wolfe also became famous for his trademark white suit that he always wore in public. I saw him speak several times over the years and he always donned the suit with complimentary white reading glasses. 

And I ever spoke to him once. 

Once, at a book signing, I mentioned that he had been a big influence to me and that I wanted to write as well. "What kind of things do you like to write?" he asked. I said fiction. He wished me luck -- and, years later, I published my first novel Leaving New York (which you can look to and purchase on the right-hand of this blog). 

Tom Wolfe inspired me to do it and, for that, I thank him  -- and for everything he ever wrote.

Does Tom Wolfe's "Radical Chic" Hold Up?

Ever since the writer Tom Wolfe died a couple of weeks ago, many of his fellow scribes have been going back over his work, remembering what made the man in the white suit such a journalistic trailblazer.

One of the things that fashioned Wolfe's legend is his 1970 article "Radical Chic: That Party At Lenny's." 

Written in deeply cynical, highly detailed observational prose, it's an account of a fundraiser for the Black Panthers held in conductor Leonard Bernstein's Dakota apartment. Wolfe (and others) crashed the event and greatly enjoyed writing about the incongruity of the world's most famous conductor and other elite cultural machers hanging out with a bunch of big, tough bearded black militants.

At the time, the story caused a stir. This was a classic example of "limousine liberalism", liberal hypocrisy, run amok. Conservatives loved it (including the Nixon White House), and the rest of American didn't care. But in NYC journalistic circles, it was a smash because, as a piece of reporting, it was spot on. 

Much of a fan as I am of Wolfe's other work, "Radical Chic" doesn't hold up so well today. As a piece of writing, it's still a strong example of journalistic craftsmanship but it's morality, by 21st century standards is ... less strong. 

It's snarky, sneering, and, yes, racist. 

It's an example of white privilege at its finest -- a white man mocking a bunch of Jews trying to help a bunch "scary" black guys. It's tone is vicious, full of hate in the guise of amused irony. But, because it's so well-written, it's almost easy to overlook this.

In short, "Radical Chic" is like an Americanized "Triumph of the Will": ugly politics, very well-produced.

So, sadly, this article just doesn't hold up. Something that was once a comment on its time is now a dated artifact of another time. (The fact that the Nixon White House (pre-Watergate) liked it should tell you something.) 

You should read the whole article to see what I'm taking about.

And, if you want more of the history of this article, read this. 

A Wolfe in Library's Clothing

The New York Public Library has just acquired writer Tom Wolfe's personal archives for $2.15 million.

It consists of almost 200 boxes of manuscripts, interviews, correspondence, etc. that covers Wolfe's almost six-decade long career. 

Apparently it will be available for interested parties sometime next year. As a big Wolfe fan, I look forward to looking at it.

"The Bonfire of the Vanities" at 20

It's hard to believe, but 20 years ago this month, that enfant terrible of American letters, Tom Wolfe, published his first novel The Bonfire of the Vanities. It tells the story of rich Wall Street trader Sherman McCoy who has it all - lovely wife, lovely daughter, Yale pedigree, and a huge Park Avenue apartment - but who loses it all when he gets involved in a hit and run in the Bronx. Throw in an awful mistress, a media-starved DA, his career hungry ADA, plus a British alcoholic reporter looking to redeem himself, and the story becomes, as Mr Wolfe would call it, "a real rhubarb."

The defining document of the 1980s, Bonfire presents a nightmarish NYC - where greed, vanity, crime, narcissism, recklessness, and plain old nastiness reigned. It was, fortuitously enough, published around the same time as the big Wall Street crash of 1987 and it became the morality tale of its times. Amazingly, this novel has aged little - it's still funny, fresh, and timely. In many ways, Bonfire was prophetic: pre-OJ, pre-Monica, pre-Paris, pre-Anna Nicole, this book understood what made a story sensational and gave it legs. And if anything, the "vanity" of NYC in 1987 was, by today's standards, quite tame. The world of Masters of the Universe and Social X-rays is more outrageous than ever.

Always a fun read, revisiting Bonfire on its 20th is a good idea. And if you haven't read it, please note: while not a roman a clef, more than one or two characters is based on real people still alive and famous today. Most notably:

Peter Fallow = Christopher Hitchens
Sir Gerald Steiner = Rupert Murdoch
Reverend Bacon = Al Sharpton

A couple of more notes:

1. Do not watch the 1990 movie of Bonfire starring Tom Hanks and Bruce Willis. It's a travesty.

2. Check out Wikipedia's entry on where the title The Bonfire of the Vanities came from.

What Would Sherman McCoy Say?

In the 1980s, the Tom Wolfe novel The Bonfire of the Vanities coined the term Masters of the Universe -- Wall Street wheelers and dealers who moved billions of dollars around the world, making economies and businesses shake, all the while taking home millions for themselves, funding their lavish lifestyles.

For the last three decades, being a Master of the Universe was something that everyone on Wall Street aspired to. Not even the tragic tale of Wolfe's hero, Sherman McCoy, could dissuade a generation of young men and women from flocking to Wall Street, dollar bill signs glowing in their well educated eyes.

But the last few years have been unkind to Wall Street. The economic crises, new regulations, the evaporation of credit, the collapse of the housing market, the Occupy movement -- a perfect storm within a perfect storm has emerged to knock Wall Street down. Bonuses are being slashed, jobs are gone and aren't coming back, and a new ethos that making money off money probably isn't the most stable of business models. 

So what does this mean for NYC?

After all, Wall Street is a core of the city's identity and huge engine of our economy. This big article in New York magazine offers some insights. Among the tidbits:

- The housing boom led to a credit bubble. When it burst, it became harder for banks to get money. Banks make money off money. Go figure out the rest.

- It's a big question whether less pay and smaller bonuses will hammer the NYC economy. Hopefully not but only if the city's economy diversifies. 

- One banker laments that, without Wall Street, NYC will turn into Philadelphia.

On this last point I disagree. NYC has more than Wall Street. We have Broadway, movies and TV,  fashion, publishing, Silicon Alley -- and much, much more. We also have 8 million great, hard working citizens.

Even if Wall Street withers, I think NYC will be just fine.

And so will the Sherman McCoys.

Review: "The Bonfire of the Vanities" (1990)

This is a bad movie -- a legendarily bad one. I've blogged about it incidently over the years.

But the story behind its creation is fascinating. There's even an entire behind-the-scenes book about it called The Devil's Candy which is way better than the movie. 

"Bonfire" is based on Tom Wolfe's massive 1987 novel of the same name about how greed and, obviously, vanity corrupt not only people but an entire city. A high-living Wall Street trader named Sherman McCoy and his mistress get into a hit-and-run accident with a young black man in the Bronx -- and his life becomes a media storm that inflames the entire city's media, judicial, and political worlds.

Because the book was so successful, a movie version seemed inevitable. And then every decision the producers made was wrong.

Who do you get to play the to-the-manor-born, aristocratic Sherman? Why Mr. Middle America himself, Tom Hanks!

Who do you get to play Peter Farrow, the emaciated British tabloid reporter who turns the hit-and-run into a media sensation? Why Mr. Die Hard action movie hero himself, Bruce Willis!

Who do you get to play the 21-year old Maria, a Southerner, Sherman's mistress? Why thirty-something year old Melanie Griffith!

Who do you get to direct this social satire? Why horror/gangster movie director Brian De Palma!

What do you with material that's been highly acclaimed for its smart humor and biting wit? Why you turn it into a raunchy, gross, Animal House-like romp.

As one reviewer said at the time, "You've got to be a genius to make a movie this bad."

The movie really is a mess. It's not funny, not insightful, and doesn't work. 

But, as an NYC movie, it actually works strangely well. De Palma is a great visual stylist. The movie starts with a stop-motion view from the Chrysler Building, to making JFK Airport look positively cinematic, to making the South Bronx look truly menacing, to making Park Avenue and Wall Street look both properly gorgeous and monstrous at the same time, to all sorts of weird camera angles, it's worth see just for its imagery if for nothing else. 

I remember when this movie came out late in 1990. This is a now legendary movie season where lots of big movies with big stars, like "Bonfire", came out and bombed at the box office. Havana with Robert Redford, The Russia House with Sean Connery, and others just all tanked. The Godfather Part III came out and got a decidely mixed reception. 

No, the winners at the box office that winter were a snotty unknown ten-year old in a silly family comedy called Home Alone and an unknown theater actress named Kathy Bates in a horror movie called Misery (that got her an Oscar). 

Ah, memories ...

Interview: Michael Musto of "La Dolce Musto"

Cindy Adams, Liz Smith, Rush & Molloy -- and Michael Musto. He's one of the legends of the New York gossip and culture scene -- an iconic voice and authority of all things "downtown" -- and if he ain't written about it, it ain't happened.

Michael's been writing his Village Voice column "La Dolce Musto" for more than two decades. He's appeared on PBS, NPR, E! Entertainment Television, and MSNBC (amongst many other media outlets), and although he's got a national presence, Michael's never strays from his New York state of mind.

Michael was kind enough to share a few thoughts with Mr NYC readers about gossip, New York City, and bloggers.

How long have you lived in NYC and been writing "La Dolce Musto"?

I've lived in New York my entire life. I couldn't exist anwhere else. I don't drive and I'm allergic to too much sun--or at least to people who stay out in too much sun. I've been writing the column for at least 20 years. My first column was in hieroglyphics, ba dum pum.

What made you, an Ivy League graduate, want to become a gossip writer?

Even at Columbia, I mainly cared about gossiping about my dormmates and buzzing about Cher's latest hairstyles (in between studying The Iliad, of course), so it all made sense to me. Gossip is what I do best. It deflects attention from myself and onto others who live in a faster lane while at the same time, ironically enough, getting me some attention as well.

Tell us briefly about the art of gossip writing. What makes one a good gossip writer? Who influenced you?

Gossip writing should be fair (there are two sides to every story), yet a bit jaundiced, so your eyebrow is always raised in response to the p.r. hype machine. It should also be carried on with an underlying sense that none of this stuff really matters much--not in the larger picture--yet it's all important because we care about it passionately and guilty pleasures should not be ignored. A gossip writing style should be bold, personal, individual, and opinionated. Through the years, I've been influenced by Tom Wolfe, Rex Reed, Truman Capote, Liz Smith, Cindy Adams, and many others.

What are your favorite "gossipy" things to cover?

A walking train wreck like a Lindsay/Britney/Paris is fun to cover because their entire careers seem to consist of providing great tabloid copy. Plus I like what they do careerwise--Lindsay's a terrific movie star, Britney puts out really fun music, and Paris has a certain poise, even with egg on her face. She's telegenic and in fact so seemingly blank you can project whatever you want onto her and put her in any medium you like.

Who are your favorite people to cover? What makes a person good gossip fodder?

I'll cover anyone on the way up or the way down. These are the people who are desperate for press, so the'll say anything to get into your column. Once they're on top, they're generally too guarded by p.r. watchdogs to say anything interesting. I also like anyone who will provide conflict and good copy. "I hate my costar" is much more interesting than "My newest sequel was a labor of love."

What was your biggest scoop or most exciting thing you covered?

I was the first to run the details of the murder of drug dealer Angel Melendez by club kid king Michael Alig and his roommate Freeze. It was truly grisly, from the Drano injection to the smothering by pillow. I also was ahead of the curve on outing people like Rosie and Ellen, who weren't thrilled, but who ultimately came out with a vengeance and left me behind to out others. It was exciting to push buttons and go where no one was going at the time. Huge magazine profiles of Rosie were portraying her as an ambiguous single mom with a crush on Tom Cruise!

Did you really coin the term "Celebutard?" Please give us a brief definition.

I said the word on Countdown with Keith Olbermann and it somehow went into my Wikipedia profile as having been coined by me. I'll take credit, if they want to give it, but I can't say for sure if I coined it. On other sites, I've been credited with everything from being a martial arts expert to having written a movie starring Jayne Mansfield, so don't believe everything you read (except my column).

In many ways gossip columnists were the original bloggers. Are blogs and bloggers a threat to gossip columnists?

I feel like my column was the original blog. It consists of my wicked, personal thoughts and opinions interspersed (one hopes) with information and insight. The advent of actual blogs has been threatening to columnists, but I feel it's a welcome burst of energy that forces us to work harder and dig deeper to compete. And at least we get paid for it!

What do you love about NYC? How has the city changed in the years you've lived here?

New York has lost much "edge"--God, I hate that word--ever since Giuliani made it a giant Disneyland for tourists and rich people, but I feel those who fled in horror are complete wusses. I stayed and continue to find fringey nightlife and wacky people living on the precipice. I'd rather celebrate them than give up and move to San Diego just because you get a terrace there.

Is NYC still a great place for gossip?

Yes, it's great. L.A. has more celebrities per square mile--you can't even go into a 7/11 without running into a Pamela Lee--but here we have theater, movies, music, nightlife, everything, and it's all on a somewhat higher level.

Tell us something about Michael Musto we don't know.

He's actually a nice guy. Now THAT'S shocking!

Thanks Michael!

Check out La Dolce Musto every week in the Village Voice.

Sid & Nancy Live!

New York magazine has a great article this week about Nancy Spungen, she of Sid and Nancy fame. She died thirty years ago this month at the Chelsea Hotel on 23rd street, the victim of a heinous murder that, to this day, remains largely a mystery as to how and why it happened. She was only 20 years old.

Nancy was the princess of punk, the ultimate groupie, and one crazy chick. In death, she became elevated to the status of music icon even though she never played a note herself. Her relationship with Sex Pistols guitarist Sid Vicious (who couldn’t play either, but that’s a different story) has gone down in history as probably the most infamous relationship since Anthony and Cleopatra. Their sex, drugs, and rock’n’roll saga, short lived though it was, has left a permanent imprint on the psyche of rock music and America in general. They represented the end of an era, the coke-fueled, reckless train-wreck of the insanely selfish 1970s, Tom Wolfe’s Me Decade. Two years later Ronald Reagan would be elected president and a new conservatism would grip America. Sid and Nancy would have had no place in this world, a kind of collateral damage I suppose.

Sid was accused of Nancy’s murder, although whether it was intentional or the result of a drug binge remains unclear. Sid overdosed in jail four months later so Nancy’s murder has never been fully solved. In 1986, a movie about their crazy life together was came out called, simply enough, Sid and Nancy. Gary Oldman played Sid and the very under appreciated Chloe Webb was Nancy.

About a month before Nancy’s murder, they appeared on a local cable show in NYC (YouTube won't allow me to post it for some reason but this link should take you to it; the quality is grainy to say the least). This show is referenced in the article and it's a total riot.

Courtney Love modeled her whole life on Nancy Spungen’s. Let’s hope it has a happier ending. And let’s hope that, after thirty years, Sid and Nancy managed to find some peace in that big amplifier in the sky (preferably turned off, like the Six Pistols used to do to Sid during his awful playing).

Ghosts of NYC Past

As we hurl towards Christmas Day with colored lights and wreaths displayed everywhere, perfumed trees for sale on every other block, Sidewalk Santas ringings bells for charity, we reminisce on the year coming to a close (what a bizarre year it's been!) and think about the year to come, that big blank slate ahead. 

I don't know about you but, whenever a New Year begins, I think "I made it. Another year! Another year added to my headstone!" Such lovely thoughts I have.   

But ghosts haunt us. Memories of people and places gone by. They're gone, in some cases long gone, but they imbue our thoughts and souls, never fully leaving. We remember, not always because we want to, but because we can never forget.

This is all a big fancy way of saying that you should really check out these two big articles that summon up the Ghosts of NYC Past.

One is about the relationship between the great pop artist Andy Warhol (who died 30 years ago this year) and his "Factory Girl" muse Edie Sedgwick. Was it love? Sort of. It was complicated. And sad. Very sad. One thing is sure: in these politically correct times, we shan't see their likes again.

The other is a 30-year retrospective on the great Tom Wolfe novel The Bonfire of the Vanities. Set in a nightmarish NYC, it's a tale and a document about another city in another time. Some things are still relevant (racial tensions) but the idea of this city being a boiling cauldron of rage seems totally dated. I shared my thoughts about this book ten (10!) years ago and it seems more distant than other.

NYC will always have these ghosts and, in my opinion, they are a crucial part of our identity and our future.  

New Landmarks

As if the whole city weren't a itself landmark already, today the Landmarks Preservation Commission announced new structures in our city that will be saved from some developer's wrecking ball.

Some notables: One Chase Manhattan Plaza on Wall Street and Webster Hall in the East Village, the old ballroom-turned-speakeasy-turned nightclub.

I've never actually been to Webster Hall so I can't say whether or not it's really worthy of landmark status. But One Chase Manhattan Plaza? I worked in that building once many years ago and, call me a an architectural philistine, it never struck me as anything else but your typical 1960s pseudo-Bauhaus nightmare. What makes it so spacial, I don't know except that it has something to do with the Rockefeller family.

Tom Wolfe actually wrote a book in 1981 about the 1960s blight of boring architecture called From Bauhaus to Our House. Here's the original New York Times review. One Chase Manhattan fits the bill to me.

Love New York Style

The Sex and the City movie is about to open and New Yorkers can hardly wait.

Tabloids are ablaze with the our politicians' peccadilloes -- Eliot's hookers, Patterson's mistresses, Vito's love child, McGreevey's gay life/endless divorce.

Practically every woman in this town is reading Eat, Pray, Love (short review: lady gets divorced, goes to Italy and eats lots of food, goes to India and gets all spiritual, goes to Bali and screws her brains out).

New Yorkers write myriad blogs giving us the intimate details of their romantic endeavors.

In short, we New Yorkers are pretty frickin' horny. So what else is new, right?

Tom Wolfe has often referred to the "season of the rising sap" to characterize periods of lust. And as springtime gradually yields to summer, New Yorkers' collective sap seems to be brimming over this season.

To whit, how appropriate then to read Phillip Weiss's article in New York magazine, The Affairs of Men. What's interesting about it is how obvious most of his observations are. See, he arrives at the shocking conclusion that men want to cheat because, well, they crave sexual variety! Who knew?! And not just men, women too! Oh my God! The article also reports that 1 in 4 men and roughly 1 in 6 women cheat. Now that was a shock. I didn't realize the numbers were that low.

Weiss also concludes that the idea of marriage being synonymous with long-term monogamy is a puritanical American myth. The Europeans, he says, appropriately view marriage for what it is: a social convention, a socioeconomic arrangement, where sex and romance aren't its fundamental underpinnings by just by-products -- and that looking for "strange" elsewhere is normal and accepted.

So what does this have to do with dating and mating in NYC? Well, Mr Weiss doesn't go into it in his article, but my observations is that we're a little more European than most Americans but certainly more puritanical than most Europeans. Yet at their core, sex and love in NYC is all about status. It's social Darwinism run amok. Welcome to Love New York Style.

In a city like New York, with so many people, so much variety, and so many opportunities to meet new people, fidelity is practically impossible -- or at least really, really, REALLY hard.

If you're a guy, the better looking you are, the more affluent you are, the more socially accepted you are, the more chicks will be looking to snag you. And if you're an even an only half-way decent looking woman, guys will be willing to spend all of their disposable income, even non-disposable income, trying to score you (obviously if you're a woman, the hotter you are, the more money guys'll spend on you and the more picky you can be about selecting a fella but that goes without saying).

And because looks and money rule in this town, the more you have of both, the greater the opportunities you have to cheat. In New York, so much temptation exists, its really hard to refrain. Of course some people are more easily tempted than others, and temptation is not equally distributed to everyone but still ... in NYC, the lure of "sexual variety" exists for everyone and everyone feels its pull sometime. Cheating is therefore inevitable.

So ladies: the better looking and richer the guy, believe you me, he ain't gonna settle for only one woman for the rest of his life. And guys: the hotter the lady, the more vicious the competition for her affections will be and the more likely she'll have no problem dumping you at a moment's notice when someone better comes a long.

New York may be the epitome of civilization but, when it comes to sex and love here, the laws of the jungle rule.

Love New York Style is like so much about life in this town -- a tough game of negotiation wherein some win and some lose.

The Real Housewives of New York City

Dumb people make for very entertaining TV - thus they are the staple of reality shows. Dingy women, in particular, make for very, very entertaining TV, which is why reality shows like "The Real Housewives of New York City" exist (a knock off "The Real Housewives of Orange County", which I guess is something to be proud of).

Basically this show follows around five shrill, insecure, social-climbing women married to men who make money in very dubious ways. These women are supposedly the rich, classy ladies of NYC (the kind that Tom Wolfe would call "Social X-rays" or "Lemon Tarts") but, as my very classy lady friend pointed out, "They're all so trashy looking!" Hear, hear.

I caught a few minutes of this show on Bravo and it's a total train-wreck. It's really obscene. I like it a lot.

And yet it proves the rule that, while some people might have a lot of money, it can't buy them even a shred of class. Enjoy!!

No Sex and the City?

We New Yorkers are a randy bunch. Go on the Internet and you can scan countless ads by people looking for sex. Go out to a bar on any given night and you'll find multitudes of sharply dressed men and women -- bright young things "in the season of the rising sap" as Tom Wolfe would say -- meeting and greeting one another, honing in on finding some "action."

The evidence that people in NYC are trying to "get some" is overwhelming. It's all around you. Everywhere you go.

That's why articles like this recent one in the New York Observer annoy the hell out of me. 

Entitled Sexless and the City: Web Warps Libidos of Coked-Up Careerists, it draws some sweeping generalizations about the libidinal behavior of young New Yorkers based on a few anecdotes. The author, Nate Freeman, makes the audacious claim that "Young New Yorkers no longer care about having sex. It’s not the endgame, nor even the animating force of social interaction. Men and women still get dressed up, but not for the purpose of taking off their clothes in another’s company. What used to signify desire or the desire to be desired now boils down to narcissism."

Mr. Freeman apparently hung out with a bunch of young twenty-somethings snorting coke, who then all went home without getting laid, and he came to the stunning realization that all young people in New York are now disinterested in having sex and more interested in doing drugs, posting on Twitter and Facebook, and looking good.

Spare me. 

You don't have to a Freudian to believe that Eros is a powerful motivator, especially in a  meat  market like NYC. It's not surprising that a bunch of coked up people aren't interested in sex, at least not the time their doing coke. Now I've never done coke and don't hang out with people who do but, from what I understand, it actually dulls your sex drive and can, in men, cause temporary impotency. And I've gone to countless parties where people don't hook up. So what? Doesn't mean they didn't want to! I always did!

As for the narcissism charge, it's not like narcissism is anything new amongst young hot shots, either in NYC or elsewhere. Yes, we are a very narcissistic generation but I don't know anyone,  male or female. narcissist or not, who wouldn't rather engage in sexual congress with someone else (gender depending on their inclination) than stare at himself or herself in the mirror or browse the web. In fact, you might argue, getting laid is the ultimate act of narcissism: when someone submits to you sexually, that person is validating your existence, validating your sexiness and desirability, validating your prowess and physical power. Sounds pretty narcissistic to me!

Articles like this really make me despair for the future of journalism. Why write something like this when the evidence contradicting it is so overwhelming? The point of this article is so laughably, obviously wrong, so ridiculous on the face of it, that I feel embarrassed for Nate Freeman and the editors of the Observer. Just read the comments section of this article and you'll see how right I am.       

"The Power Broker" on TV!

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

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

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

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

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

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

Take Me Back to Funky Town

Mr NYC is nothing if not nostalgic. If you read this blog regularly then you know that plumbing the depths of New York's collective memory is one of my favorite things to do.

I'm not alone. For some reason, in the last few years, there's been a little boomlette of movies, TV shows, and other stuff that seeks to remember NYC back in what Tom Wolfe called the Me Decade -- the 1970s. Movies like 54, American Gangster, Summer of Sam, and the coming remake of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3; TV shows like Life on Mars and The Bronx is Burning (based on the book "Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx is Burning"); and a new exhibit about John Lennon in NYC, all bring back memories of the city in that most of tumultuous of decades.

Call this anti-, or ironic, nostalgia.

NYC in the 1970s was supposedly not a pretty place. Literally and figuratively. According to history, the city was a horror show back then. You couldn't go outside without getting raped, mugged, molested, beaten up, or kept out of Studio 54. Robert Caro wrote in The Power Broker that the city was in "chaos and despair." Annie Hall in Annie Hall said it was "a dying city." That's when the city almost went bankrupt and President Ford told it to "drop dead" (he never actually said it but it made for one of the greatest headlines ever).

Apparently, NYC in the seventies just sucked.

Or maybe not. Maybe it wasn't so bad. Maybe it was actually kinda great. Some people are looking back at this low, dishonest decade and thinking that for all the misery, there was something special about it. They want to go back to funky town.

One of these people is James Walcott of Vanity Fair. He has a great article and a slide show in this month's issue about NYC in the 1970s that remembers the city as a strange, exciting place. It hadn't totally and completely sold out to money like it would in the 80s, 90s, and the oughts. NYC back then was still a place that embraced funky people more so than now. This includes the band The New York Dolls and Walcott has another great short article about this band and the late, great CBGBs.

Reading this, I couldn't help but sigh a little. I don't remember NYC in the 1970s at all -- I spent the three years I was alive in it crawling and running around my parents apartment. All of the exciting stuff was happening downtown, far away. And while the city has in no doubt improved since then, for everything we've gained, no doubt, as Walcott says, we've lost something to.

So all we have now is nostalgia.

P.S. I managed to write two blog posts in a row with "funky" in the title. Good for me. Mr NYC vows to keep it (whatever "it" is, presumably this blog) quite funky indeed.

"The Plot Thickens" Podcast: "The Bonfire of the Vanities" and a Look-Back at a Very Different NYC

Last year I blogged about the 1990 movie The Bonfire of the Vanities based on the 1987 bestselling novel of the same name by Tom Wolfe. The book was a big success -- the defining 1980s novel about greed, ego, lust, institutional corruption, etc., every cardinal sin -- but the movie was an historic flop, so historic that a book was even written about it.

The book was called The Devil's Candy, written by journalist Julie Salamon, and this book has now been turned into a mutli-part podcast, hosted by Salamon and produced by Turner Classic Movies, as part of a series called "The Plot Thickens."

While I made clear in my review that the movie is bad -- really bad -- I also indicated that it was worth seeing because, visually, it captured NYC in very original, beautiful ways. And this podcast is very much worth listening to because it not only tells the story of the making of this classic bomb but it also vividly brings back to life what NYC was like 30-odd years ago -- a very different city from today. 

So read the books (both the original novel and the making-of book), listen the podcast, and, if you're brave, watch the movie -- and, while you'll eventually be "Bonfired"-out -- you'll also be brought back to a New York City that is both quite familiar and very distant. 

Happy 40th Anniversary New York Magazine

New York magazine changed the publishing industry when it was founded by the late Clay Felker forty years ago. It was brash, funny, strange, and original. Home to the New Journalism of the 1960s, New York published a huge variety of authors including Tom Wolfe, Pete Hamill, Jimmy Breslin, and so many other great writers who are still around today.

More than any other publication before or since, New York was the city speaking to itself, encapsulating our urban neurosis, spotting every trend before it hit and predicting its demise before its fall, and keeping everyone up to date on what was going on in this town. New York was and is the "go-to" magazine for everyone who is anyone (or no one, like yours truly) in NYC and New Yorkers ignore it at their peril.

Check out New York's 40th Anniversary section and read some old stories that still read as fresh as if they were published today.

The Lions of New York

In Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities, the father of main character Sherman McCoy is a partner at a prestigious New York law firm, hilariously called Dunning Sponget. The father is semi-retired but he still shows up to the office most days, does some work and makes some rain. He is called the Lion of Dunning Sponget, a man of sterling character and a lawyer of unquestionable reputation, who can never be fired and never quite retire.

These Lions are real. The New York Times has a short list of them, including recently retired Manhattan DA Robert Morgenthau.

Right after I graduated college I briefly worked at a law firm where I saw, roaming the halls every so often, a very elderly man. I didn't know what he did at the firm and he only seemed to show up there once or twice a week. Everyone seemed to ignore him and he seemed to ignore everyone else so I had no idea who he was but he had an absolutely huge office filled with an immense amount of paper and pictures and junk. Later I learned that he was an old partner who had represented kings, queens, vice-presidents, Fortune 500 CEOs, famous Old New York families, and was in fact the son (hard to think of him as anyone's son) who had served in FDR's cabinet.

Wow.

They may be lions in winter but they are certainly keeping warm in some very lucrative cages. And they are links to our history who we should appreciate while they're still here.

Are You a Happy New Yorker?

The New York Times recently published a city survey of 25,000 New Yorkers rating their quality of life. Not surprisingly, if you're wealthy, your quality of life in this city is better and you're a happier New Yorker than if you're poor. Also, the wealthy tend to live in Manhattan so that (again, no shock) is the happiest borough of the five. The Bronx is the poorest, and the least happy.

There was one big surprise in this survey: people generally find city government to be responsive to their concerns and needs. Again, the wealthy feel that the gubment is more responsive than poor people but basically New Yorkers feel positively about City Hall.

Well, that's nice. But since this is a city survey, I think that makes this finding a bit suspect.

So what is a good quality of life in NYC?

Tom Wolfe once said that New Yorkers live here for many reasons but quality of life most certainly isn't one of them.

My opinion? "Quality of life" is a slippery phrase. If your idea of quality of life is being able to afford a big house, own multiple cars, and live in peace and quiet then no, NYC doesn't offer much of that.

And yet ... if you're idea of quality of life is being surrounded by the greatest culture in the world, the most diverse and dynamic population in the world, the best economic opportunities in the world, and a place where all your hopes and dreams can come true ... then there's no better place than NYC. That, for me, is the best quality of life on the face of the planet -- and NYC has it better than anyplace else.

My biggest complaint of quality of life in NYC? Obvious: transportation. There are WAY TOO MANY DAMN CARS IN THIS TOWN! Thanks to you-know-who, public transportation in this city is totally inadequate for its needs. If I had that magic wand, I'd wave it and solve all our city's transportation problems: more subways, better bus routes, and congestion pricing. Ah, Mr NYC can dream can't he?

Dreams, after all, is what this city is all about!

Heavenly Riverside Drive

One of the defining features of great cities is that even its streets and avenues are famous: think Saville Row in London, the Champs D'Elysee in Paris, the Via Del Corso in Rome, Bourbon Street in New Orleans, Mulholland Drive in LA, and many others. 

In NYC, especially Manhattan, Wall Street, Park Avenue, Fifth Avenue, Central Park West, and Sutton Place are famous the world over because they posses some of the most expensive real estate on earth. These avenues are synonymous with wealth, power, fame, glamour -- you name it. The richest and most famous people in the world live there, its architecture and streets exude the 1%. Tom Wolfe wrote a whole book about it back in 1987. 

'nough said.

So what about Riverside Drive?

Unlike those avenues, it doesn't have anywhere near the fame and pedigree. But what's crazy is that Riverside Drive is probably more beautiful than any of them. Nestled next to the Hudson River, running quietly from 72nd street up to the top of Manhattan island, it's an amazingly peaceful avenue right next to one the most frenzied places in the entire world. You just walk a block west from the loud craziness of Broadway onto the leafy, zen-like Riverside Drive and it's like you've stepped out of one world into another. 

I know a lot about Riverside Drive because, well, I grew up there. And I've always felt like it never got the respect of Manhattan's other great avenue. But that's changed a little recently: there's now a book about it called Heaven on the Hudson that chronicles its amazing history. Riverside Drive is full not only of beautiful buildings, it's not only across the street from its own park with sweeting views of the Hudson River, but it's also full of monuments and also contains some of the last remaining free-standing mansions in NYC. You should read the interview with the author. I can't wait to read the book.

If you want to know more about what makes Riverside Drive so magical, you should read this 1998 essay "My Manhattan: 44 Blocks of Enchantment." I remember reading it when it was published -- I was in college, far from NYC, and it brought me right home in my mind. 

You can read all of Mr NYC's Riverside Drive coverage here.

I never say things like this but I'll say it here: Riverside Drive is the best avenue in NYC!