The Romance of the Underground Writer

The idea of an underground, an underworld or, as I once blogged about, the underwelt, is something I'm constantly fascinated by. This blog is an underground blog if there ever was one -- totally outside the gaze of, and unconnected from, the mainstream media, the square world.

This makes me an underground blogger -- an underground NYC blogger to be precise.

The idea of an underground writer, someone's whose work is mostly unknown and whose readership is small but passionate, is certainly something I can relate to. Many of them write about subjects that don't interest most people (like this blog) even if they're about some universal like sex and politics -- or the world's greatest city.

So it's with great interest to read that the brilliant filmmaker Quentin Tarantino is currently making a movie (possibly his last) about an underground writer from the 1970s. Few details about this movie are known except that it's tentatively called The Movie Critic, takes place in 1977, and is based on the life of a movie critic named William Mangold nom de plume Jim Sheldon who wrote movie reviews for a porn mag. Making a movie about an underground critic is certainly bold, the kind of unexpected story that Tarantino usually tells and that makes his movies so great and different. 

And if any other movie director, especially one as good as Tarantino, wants to make a movie about an underground NYC blogger, i.e. me nom de plume Mr NYC, I'm is happy to serve as the inspiration for such a project. Get in touch! 

Haunted Words

The definition of something being "haunted" means it's been "frequented by a ghost." What's a ghost? An apparition, a nebulous image of something or someone that used to exist, used to live, appears to still exist but is in fact dead.

In some ways, every word that has ever been written is a ghost -- each word is an imprint of someone's mind, someone's thought at the time it was written. The words might have been written a long time ago, the thought long dissipated, the writer might long be dead, but their words still live, the thought they were recording at the time still provoke.

The written word haunts us all.

Think about it. The phrase "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past" still gives me chills even though its author has been dead for nearly a century. 

This idea of words being ghosts occurred to me recently when I read about a few perfect examples of their haunting power. 

As I wrote last summer, Quentin Tarantino was preparing a movie about an underground 1970s movie critic that sounded intriguing. I called the post The Romance of the Underground Writer and I expounded on the idea of writers (much like myself) whose words are read by few people but are beloved by those who do read them. Sadly it appears now that Quentin has dropped this movie and won't make it so this underground writer will truly remain underground. This unmade movie, like the writer and his words that it was about, will remain forever a ghost.  

Then there's a couple of Village Voice articles about music writers and their ghostly power.

Lester Bangs was a legendary rock critic who became nearly as famous as the singers and bands he reviewed. He was so influential and admired that Philip Seymour Hoffman played him in the 2000 movie Almost Famous. But even as brilliant as Lester was, he could get it wrong sometimes. In 1980, Lester wrote a long commentary about how the Rolling Stones 1978 album Some Girls wasn't that good and that, after almost two decades together, perhaps the Stones should break up. 

Just to give you an idea of how wrong Lester was, Some Girls contains, amongst other songs, "Beast of Burden" and "Shattered", brilliant, classic songs. And, of course, 44 years after this article was written, the Stones are still together, selling out shows. Even though Lester Bangs has been dead for more than 40 years, these words from this review still haunt him, even if his overall reputation remains deservedly undiminished.  

Another writer whose gone but whose words having staying power was and is Greg Tate. Another rock critic, he wrote about (mostly) African-American music and culture, and was one of the first critics to write about rap music seriously. He was so respected that he even became a professor at Columbia University.

Sadly Tate died in 2021 but he was just given a posthumously awarded a Pulitzer Prize and his words still inspire other writers and creative people to this day. He's a ghost who still makes our culture more alive.

Interview: Stephanie Sellars of "Lust Life"

We continue to steam things up here at Mr NYC. "Lust Life" blogger and former New York Press sex columnist Stephanie Sellars gives us her take on sex, writing, and New York City.

Tell us about yourself and how you started writing your column in the New York Press?

I am a modern Renaissance woman with vintage sensibilities. Everything I do--writing, performing, film making--draws from the past, specifically in terms of style, but has a modern edge. In my column I wrote about kinky sex from a place of lyrical sophistication. When I first started writing for New York Press, I used a pseudonym--'The Libertine'--a word that originated in 1563, meaning 'freethinker.' The term became popular in 18th century Europe when it was used to describe freethinkers (usually men) who lived for pleasure unrestrained by conventions or taboos. It also refers to refined eroticism. A few years ago I wrote an essay called "Confessions of a Libertine" and gave it to my friend Jon Leaf who was the arts editor of New York Press. He liked it and passed my essay onto Harry Siegel who was then editor-in-chief; they invited me into the office for an interview and the rest is history. I wrote as 'The Libertine' for about five months then I did a cover story under a new editor (Adario Strange), and used my real name as the byline. The following week 'Lust Life' was launched.

Is being a sex writer in New York as glamorous as Sarah Jessica Parker made it look?

Sarah Jessica Parker as Carrie Bradshaw as the alter-ego of columnist Candace Bushnell is so far from who I am and what I'm doing with the sex column/blog genre. Am I glamorous? Yes. But is being a sex writer glamorous? Not at all. I don't spend my time lunching in trendy restaurants with girl friends or sipping cosmos at pretentious clubs in Chelsea or the Meatpacking District. I write about the alternative sex scene--polyamory, queer sex, S&M, swinging, orgies etc. so my social life is centered around underground loft spaces, yoga studios, and the LGBT Center. Of course some erotic events are very glamorous and take place in gorgeous upscale clubs, but I'm not slinking around in Jimmy Choo shoes 6 nights a week, hobnobbing with fashionistas in swanky Manhattan lounges of perpetual boredom. Besides no sex columnist can afford a life like that on a sex column alone. New York Press paid me $100 per 800-900 word column. Of course I get nothing for the blog.

Although it's a fun topic, how do you prevent your columns and now, your blog, from being repetitive?

Easy. My sex life is the epitome of variety.

How do people (okay, guys) react when you tell them you're a sex columnist?

The most common reaction I've gotten is something like, 'Oh, you're just like Carrie Bradshaw!' It's irritating because I am so not Carrie, and I have no desire to be like her. But once I explain a little about what I write, they are even more intrigued. People also tend to assume I'm an advice-giver like Dan Savage.

Do you get lots of creepy fan mail or messages?

Sometimes. I used to get handwritten letters sent to the old New York Press office. My editor at the time didn't even want me to read them because they were so gross. Once I got an email from a guy asking for advice on what to do about the female roommate he was stalking. I gave him some genuine advice, then he asked me if I would take him to a play party because he would not be able to explore the scene otherwise. I was so offended that I cut off our exchange. A lot of men assume I'm up for anything or I'll be their tour guide into the underground sex scene just because I write about it. I have to get to know someone first before I invite him/her to an erotic event.

Would you call New York a 'sex positive' city? Do you think New Yorkers have more sex than the rest of the country?

Definitely! New York is not only full of sexy people, it caters to people whose sexual expression is outside the norm. With several erotic events a week--from sex parties to Tantric workshops to gay pride--it's hard not to find your niche in a sex-positive community. Although I can't confirm that New Yorkers have more sex than the rest of the country, I'm fairly certain that we are generally more open about sex and therefore more into exploring alternative sex and relationships.

Besides your blog, what are some of your other projects?

I'm working on a book based on 'Lust Life'. It is the story behind the column--my sensual journey from small-town prude to big-city libertine. I also have a feature film project in development. I made two short films--the first was on Independent Film Channel for three years and the second is currently playing at film festivals. I also perform often as a singer and in readings like The Potable Dorothy Parker: A Literary Cocktail, a series that I co-created and curate.

Anything else you'd like to tell us? Any advice for our readers about love and sex in NYC?

Whatever your sexual preference, be honest with others and true to yourself. Don't be monogamous because that's what everyone else seems to be doing. And don't cheat! Monogamy is great if it is consciously chosen. If it is not what you really want, it is better to own your desire to be with more than one lover and enjoy.

Read Stephanie's blog at http://sslustlife.blogspot.com

Andy Warhol's New York

The first time that I ever heard of Andy Warhol was when he died.

It was February, 1987, and I had just turned ten, and some girl in my 4th grade class mentioned that he was dead. The name meant nothing to me (not many ten year old boys care about glam art) but in the passing years I learned about Andy Warhol, the artist, the man, the legend.

I learned about his iconic paintings -- Campbell Soup cans, Marylin Monroe, etc. I learned about The Factory, his downtown space where he made art and helped others to do so. I learned about his involvement in helping to launch my favorite band, The Velvet Underground, to prominence. And I learned his most famous quote about everyone being famous for fifteen minutes.

Warhol was a native of Pittsburgh (like my dad's family) who migrated to NYC as a young aspiring artist. In the 1960s, when he was producing his cutting edge art, he also became a celebrity, wearing his iconic jackets and over sized sunglasses, being seen at clubs and shows, and having lots of hangers on abuzz around him. Until his death, Warhol basically defined the New York art scene. He was New York art. 

His death was a trauma to the New York art world and it has never fully recovered from it. 

No one ever really did (or could) take his place. I suppose Warhol was sui generis -- a unique man producing unique art at a unique time, in a city that was very different from today. He could never be replaced. Back in '87, New York was still recovering from the fiscal crises, crime was high, white flight still occurring, a malaise still shrouding the town. Warhol wasn't just producing art, he was giving the city a much needed boost of confidence. A quarter century after his death, the city is much different (and much less depressed) and Warhol's work is now the stuff of art school curriculum). 

So what was his New York, what was the town that he inhabited -- and how did he inhabit it -- all those years ago?

This article sheds some light on the subject. A few takeaways about Warhol's NYC:

When he first came to NYC, Warhol practically stalked Truman Capote, so obsessed was the young artist was with the great writer's work.

Warhol was an intense, practicing Roman Catholic, and often worshiped at St. Thomas More on East 89th street (a rather uptown, bourgeois place that the downtown, hipster Warhol went).

He may have been the coolest man in town, but Warhol lived with his mother in NYC for 20 years.

He was shot by a deranged woman named Valerie Solanos but survived. You can see the movie "I Shot Andy Warhol" for the full story.  

And so much more.

Today Warhol has merged into NYC's collective memory. No longer a man, he's now one of our favorite myths. But he's still around. Oh yes -- go to Union Square and you'll see a hideous chrome statue of him. Personally, I think it does him a great injustice. 

I'm sure Andy would have loved it.  

Interview: Russ Smith, MUGGER Columnist and Founder of NYPress

Depending on your politics, Russ Smith can either make your blood pressure explode or your face smile with joy. But he doesn't care: he just tells you how he sees it. An unapologetically conservative voice in the media world, Smith writes the regular MUGGER column in the NYPress, which he also founded in 1988 (you know the NYPress, it's the free, funny, colorful newspaper you see each week in those green newspaper boxes on the street). Besides MUGGER, Smith has contributed to the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page and The New York Sun, amongst others.

But Smith isn't just a bold writer - he's also one of the great entrepreneurs of the alternative press. Before the NYPress, he founded the Baltimore City Paper and Washington City Paper and was lighting a fire under the media world long before things Gawker or TMZ came along. Smith sold the NYPress and moved to Baltimore a few years ago but his imprint on the NYPress and the New York press remains strong today.

Smith was kind enough to share his thoughts on journalism, politics, and what he misses about NYC.

What attracted you to journalism and, in particular, the world of alternative newspapers?

I was attracted to journalism as a kid, growing up on Long Island and having access to six or seven newspapers each day. I started reading the Voice in '65, when I was 10, and Rolling Stone when it started in '67, and wrote for the underground paper—The Crux—at Huntington High School. A summer job at the Baltimore Sun when I was 21 convinced me I didn't want to be a daily journalist, subject to the whims of self-important editors and in the company of reporters who wanted to be the next Bob Woodward.

Why did you found NYPress?

I founded NYPress in '88 after selling Baltimore City Paper the previous fall. I felt the Voice, which was still a paid weekly, had overpriced itself in the marketplace and that a quality free weekly could prosper.

You have strong political views. Tell us about your political philosophy and what kind of country you think this should be?

My political views are fairly straightforward: low taxes and tax reform (flat tax), strong foreign policy, steadfast defense of Israel, tort reform, Social Security overhaul and a sensible, humane policy on immigration. On social issues, I'm pro-choice, in favor of legalized gambling and prostitution, decriminalization of marijuana, dodge ball and kickball at recess in elementary schools and allowing gay men and women to marry.

You've been a big supporter of President Bush. Has he done a good job and has the country become a better place under his leadership?

Bush's tenure has had its ups and downs, but I believe he'll viewed more favorably in 20 years or so. His administration bungled the Iraq war after the initial invasion but it was the correct decision to get [rid] of Saddam Hussein, something his father should have done, like Bill Clinton as well. Bush had the right ideas about immigration and Social Security but didn't press hard enough for meaningful reform. That he at least partially caved to restrictionists in the Republican party, as well as kooks like Lou Dobbs is one of the huge disappointments of the past few years. His appointment of Roberts and Alito were significant achievements. Getting buffaloed by Teddy Kennedy on education--and backing down on vouchers--was not.

How do you see the 2008 presidential election turning out? Will it be a big
Democratic year or will the Republicans strike back?

It will certainly be a Democratic year in the Senate, if only because the GOP has twice as many seats to defend. Hard to tell, but it seems to me that if McCain isn't the nominee, a Democrat, even Hillary Clinton, will cruise to victory in November. McCain could beat Clinton, but probably not Obama.

What do you miss about NYC?

I miss the bodegas on every block in Manhattan. I don't miss the traffic, high cost of living, Yankee fans or the absurd competition among affluent parents trying to get their kids into the "right" private school. I miss decent takeout food, the ability to buy a copy of The New York Sun at a newsstand, outstanding Italian, Chinese and Thai restaurants, longtime friends in Tribeca and having a super who can fix leaky sinks and toilets.

Thanks!

MUGGER

Interview: Natalia Singer on the 1980s

It’s shocking at how popular the 1980s remain. After all, Roseanne is back on TV and a big ‘80s icon, Donald Trump, is now president (unfortunately). Sure, since the ‘80s we’ve had lots of changes: 9/11, two Iraq Wars, the fall of the Soviet Union, a black president (after two Bush presidents), the Internet, the IPhone, the OJ trial, the Great Recession, marriage equality, social media -- but, if you look at all the 1980s nostalgia around us, it’s clearly the decade that won’t die.

We still love the ‘80s … for reasons I can’t quite comprehend.

Natalia Singer has a few thoughts about that decade – and many more. She literally wrote a book about it, a memoir about her life as a young woman in the Reagan era. Now an English professor at St. Lawrence University in upstate New York, Natalia’s personal journey through that time was intertwined with its political and social changes. In the first of three amazing interviews, Natalia tells us about her book and her 1980s experiences, her life now, her thoughts about New York, and her visit to Rajnesheepuram, subject of the fascinating new documentary Wild Wild Country.

You wrote a memoir, Scraping By in the Big Eighties, about your life as a young woman in the 1980s. What inspired you to write a book that's personal but also sociological?

Thank you for this excellent question. I knew from the beginning that I wanted to tell this very personal, raw, intimate, and sometimes harrowing tale within this larger political and sociological context because I saw the two as inextricable. I was inspired by the work of George Orwell, James Baldwin, Adrienne Rich, Virginia Woolf, and Susan Griffin—writers who saw their lives within the larger context of history informed by a lens of race, class, and gender, and who provided a rich template for how to make the personal political, and vice versa. I read their work while I was telling my own story because my story is not only about what happened to me at various key moments in the 1980s but about what happened to us as a nation as the social safety net I had relied on as a child began to unravel under Reaganomics.

As the daughter of a single mother who was disabled, I would probably not be alive were it not for the social safety net. Lyndon B. Johnson’s dream of a Great Society “where no child will go unfed, and no youngster will go unschooled” had yet to be fully realized when I was growing up in a working class neighborhood on the West Side of Cleveland, but my family of three was able to rely on Medicaid, food stamps, Aid to Dependent Children, and a thriving public school system in which my honors track classmates and I went on to study at topnotch universities. I was able to get free legal aid during a family crisis, 3% student loans, fee waivers on college boards and applications, and, as a student and then a young adult, affordable rent.

And then Ronald Reagan happened. Watching him hasten inequality, exasperate America’s racial divide, roll back reproductive rights for women, kill the ERA, declare war on America’s unions, poison our air and water, all during a militaristic buildup that was frankly terrifying: I wanted to tell that story too and how it affected me personally. I wanted this book to dig deep to the marrow, to hit bedrock emotionally, but also to reach out to engage with others as a literature of witness.

I am a very political writer and I always look to find common cause with my readers. Writing for me is a form of resistance, and it’s also a way of building communities. I also teach the memoir, and I have always been really irritated with the way the American memoir relies on the conversion narrative (dating back to The Confessions of St. Augustine) married to the Horatio Pulled-myself-up-by-my-Bootstraps Alger myth. In other words, in hard capitalism, we like stories about people who suffer and fall and then rise—through self-determination alone. I wanted to write about what happens when you don’t rise because someone else’s boot (and presumably, bootstrap) is being held against your neck. I wanted to critique the mentality that says that we, as individuals, can do and be anything—an ideology that became very popular in the eighties as Ronald Reagan did everything in his power to hasten inequality and systemic racism and sexism.

But I also wanted to write a book that would bring all our disparate struggles for justice together—to unite us, not divide us. A quote I go back to repeatedly from Susan Griffin to inspire both my writing and my teaching is this one: “Any healing will require us to witness all our histories where they converge, the history of empires and emancipation's, of slave ships as well as underground railroads; it requires us to listen back into the muted cries of the beaten, burned, forgotten and also to hear the ring of speech among us, meeting the miracle of that.” Susan Griffin, The Eros of Everyday Life.

It seems like Eighties nostalgia never ends. I remember Eighties nostalgia starting in the 1990s! GLOW and Stranger Things are the most recent examples, and now Roseanne is back (it first premiered in 1988). You might even call Donald Trump's presidency (both the man and his reactionary agenda) a piece of ‘80s nostalgia. Why do you think this decade seems to hold so much power over the common imagination – and has it become almost self-destructive?

Donald Trump was a big joke in the Eighties. He was The Donald, a symbol of 80s-style materialism on steroids, and, for the people who had to run into him in the city and at all the clubs where he groped women, a shallow icon of male white privilege. He is and always has been a vulgar con man.

I am mystified as to why people are nostalgic about that decade. I spent most of those years in terror that we’d all be killed in a nuclear war—that we started. When I think of the Eighties, this is my montage: Jimmy Carter putting up solar panels on the White House and Ronald Reagan taking them down; Reagan’s myth of the Welfare Queen; first-strike nuclear capability; AIDS spreading unchecked because of our president’s neglect and homophobia; televangelism and Tammy Faye Baker’s mascara clumps; “Just say no;” $10,000 gold-plated nuclear sub toilet seats; the HUD scandal, the Savings & Loan Scandal; the Stock Market Crash of 1987; Iran-Contra; U.S. sanctioned torture and human rights violations in Central America; the Valdez oil spill in Alaska; the rise of the prison system and disproportional incarceration of people of color; I’m just getting started. Trump represents a continuation of this mass destruction.

But, I will say this: the Eighties had excellent music! The Pretenders, the B-52s, The Clash, some of Madonna, Sting, The Smiths, Cowboy Junkies, 10,000 Maniacs, U-2, Radiohead, The Talking Heads, Roxy Music, The Cure, Blondie. Who wouldn’t want to have an Eighties dance party and rock out to these songs again?

Talking nostalgia, what are your favorite memories of the 1980s (both personal and otherwise) – and your worst?

Before housing costs were insane it was possible to live in a gorgeous place, pay very little rent, and sort of eke out a life working part time and making art the rest of the time. This ended before the decade was over, but I still remember my $170 apartment in Ballard in Seattle, and my friends, Cindy and Dawn, who had a Thompson Street apartment in the Village where I stayed when I came to NYC and slept semi-comfortably on the floor (even if my head was in the bathroom and my body in the little hall in front)! Until 1985 I lived in the Pacific Northwest (Seattle, and then Port Townsend) and it was easy to scrape by on restaurant work, a little writing and editing, and to spend long, rapturous weekends hiking the Hoh River Valley or camping at Third Beach near La Push of bicycling and whale-watching in the San Juan Islands for very little money. Those memories are imprinted on me for life. Up on the coast, I met people who lived in trees—literally—and they functioned in a post-capitalist economy by bartering, foraging, and just hanging out. And in NYC and in LA, in those years, I met many people who got by just fine because of rent controlled apartments, free clinics, community gardens, and luck.

Low points—too many to count but I did list a few under 4. This is the decade in which we see the rise of homelessness and food banks, the backlash against feminism, increased police brutality, and the hard core resurgence of a kind of militaristic masculinity that seemed already passé in the seventies but came back with a fervor then—a harbinger for Trumpism. The ecological disasters—Valdez and Chernobyl. Industrial farming: get big or get out. Basically, it was a nonstop nightmare. 

What are some of your favorite music, movies and TV shows from that decade?

I didn’t watch TV in the eighties at all. I watched a ton of TV as a child, then stopped in college and didn’t really start again until the late '90s. I gave you a list of my favorite music from that era above (should have read all the questions first!) In the Eighties I watched a lot of foreign films by Werner Herzog and Peter Weir. I also liked Hannah and Her Sisters, A Year of Living Dangerously, and of course, The Big Chill. 

Thanks Natalia! In our next interview, Natalia tells us about her 1982 visit to the now mythical Rajneeshpuram, the Oregon site of the Rajneeshee cult, the subject of the hugely popular and controversial Netflix documentary Wild Wild Country.