Many survivors whine about Times Square being Disneyfied since it’s now home to refurbished theaters, theme restaurants, chain stores, and major retailers, in addition to all types of family-friendly entertainment. A host of cartoon and comic book characters roam the area waving, smiling, and offering to pose for pictures with visitors in hope of a tip. (When one of the dozen or so big, bushy, red Elmos broke rank and screamed obscenities at tourists there was a quick intervention and he was packed off to Muppet rehab.) As for the Naked Cowgirl, gravity would suggest that she’s more of a Naked Cowgrandmother.
Seriously, people, I realize we’re short on space in this city, but was it ever a good idea to combine a Theater District and a Red Light District into a hodgepodge crazy quilt of people seeking opposite types of entertainment all under blazing neon lights and a big zipper? The avant-garde and mostly nude Oh! Calcutta! was possibly the only crossover show between the area’s two clienteles. It was bad enough when I took an East Harlem school group to see Oklahoma and they assumed that the smokehouse was a crack house. Should children really encounter their first mainliner on the day they see their first headliner?
Central Park is now a fairy-tale playground visited by more than 25 million folks a year – second only to Times Square – in large part because of the nonprofit Central Park Conservancy. In this case, I must admit that I do miss being able to relax next to a dope peddler without being run down by another corporate-sponsored marathon or surrounded by throngs of excited bird-watchers. And I find it odd that among the more than two dozen statues in Central Park that commemorate artists, explorers, presidents, and military men, there are none honoring (real) women. Even Balto, the heroic Siberian husky sled dog, is a male. As a consolation prize, there are statues of the imaginary and nonthreatening females Alice in Wonderland and Mother Goose. At least the Angel of the Waters sculpture in the park’s Bethesda Fountain, which was unveiled in 1873 and had a starring role in Angels in America, was designed by a woman. Emma Stebbins became the first female to receive a public commission for a major work of art in New York City, and it clearly didn’t hurt that her brother was president of the Central Park Board of Commissioners. An old joke about all these monuments is that a statue of a pigeon should be erected so that generals can come and sit on it.
Tompkins Square Park is likewise a bucolic oasis complete with playground where it’s possible for children to run around without stepping on discarded needles. However, when the park hosts a riot anniversary concert, the event can be counted on to produce at least one brawl where the police need to step in.
Much of New York’s vast park system has been similarly upgraded, and there are now acres of space to picnic, relax, hike, and kayak.
Prospect Park in Brooklyn, with its rolling hills, immense lake, and ancient trees, has a more tranquil ratio of nature to humans than Central Park. It’s a spectacular galvanized jumble of flora, carousel, zoo, and women in burkas throwing a barbecue adjacent to a Ghanaian soccer game across from Mexicans celebrating a quinceañera. The only time to avoid the parks nowadays is right after the New York City Marathon when all the couch potatoes suddenly decide they’re gonna be contenders and clog up every woodland trail, outfitted in brand-spanking new sneakers and tracksuits. Fortunately, this rush for fitness lasts only a few days, and then they’re all back home with a platter of nachos on their laps, fully engaged in spectator sports such as Storage Wars and The Biggest Loser.
There are now dozens of community gardens throughout the five boroughs where it’s possible to volunteer, exercise your green thumb, and learn to harvest rainwater. Additionally, hundreds of tourist- and marathon-free neighborhood miniparks are safe places where children play, young people strum guitars, seniors cluster together for gossip or dominoes, and a variety of folk come together for games of chess. A regular is most likely feeding pigeons, and the sociable squirrels will eat right out of your hand.
The only threat in city parks nowadays is a new strain of brazen, stand-your-ground raccoon. Members of a theatrical troupe of raccoons living underneath the Delacorte Theater in Central Park revel in making scamper-on appearances during Shakespeare in the Park productions. It must be an acting challenge for Hamlet’s mother, Gertrude, to lie dead on stage while a raccoon is tugging at her braid. I believe this profusion of masked bandits may have something to do with the fact that I haven’t seen a rabbit in more than ten years, except on dinner plates in French restaurants.
The Hudson River was designated as a cleanup site by the Environmental Protection Agency in 1983, in large part thanks to efforts by folksinger/activist Pete Seeger and PCB archenemy Robert Kennedy Jr. “America’s Rhine” is now safe for fishing, jet skiing, windsurfing, and swimming, though the Department of Health recommends that you (1) don’t swallow water, (2) consider keeping your face and head out of the
water when swimming, and (3) wash your hands after swimming. Oddly, they say nothing about how long you must wait to swim after eating in order to avoid getting a cramp.
The Mafia have all taken jobs as television actors, writers, and consultants. As a result, what we used to be able to watch for free on the streets we must now shell out $15 to see in a movie theater or else subscribe to cable. Meantime, TV shows such as Seinfeld, Friends, Will & Grace, Sex and the City, Felicity, Ugly Betty, White Collar, Girls, and Smash started showing New York as a fashionable and fascinating place to live where excitement in the form of someone wearing expensive shoes or a Soup Nazi is always just around the corner.
New York has declined so far in crime that it didn’t even make the most recent list of the 100 Most Dangerous Cities in the United States, while my hometown of Buffalo was number 40! If you want some good old-fashioned New York City crime you’ll have to plunk on the couch and watch plotlines concocted by the writers of Law & Order, Castle, or Blue Bloods for actors with phony New Yawk accents.
The only thing I miss about the good old bad days is that if at the last minute you decided to bring someone back to the apartment and it was messy you could always shout, “Oh my God! I’ve been robbed!”
Chapter 10
Carpe Noctem
According to the first city directory, in 1786 every block had a tavern. From a total of 3,340 buildings, 330 sold liquor. The fact that the local water was undrinkable for the first 200 years probably helped contribute to alcohol consumption. Residents often quaffed beer for breakfast, and even children were given alcohol to drink. The completion of the Croton Aqueduct in 1890 and its delivery of fresh water from upstate New York at least helped get rid of the accidental alcoholics.
The intent of Prohibition (1919–1933) was honorable. Alcoholism was rampant, and this took a heavy toll on families. Paychecks habitually went to the barman and never made it home. Children went without food and were forced from school into the workplace.
Despite temperance soldiers and police officers, however, there’d be no end to libations in New York City. German immigrants had brought along their beer-brewing skills, Italians were expert at winemaking, and the Irish brought a talent for consumption. Meantime, a large number of prescriptions contained alcohol and doctors were suddenly writing a lot more of them. Likewise, the use of sacramental wine in churches rose by more than 1,000 percent.
The commercial booze biz went underground, and Manhattan became filled with speakeasies such as Chumley’s in Greenwich Village, the Stork Club in Midtown, and the Cotton Club in Harlem. Or as cartoonist Frank McKinney “Kin” Hubbard observed, “Prohibition is better than no liquor at all.” My grandfather was working as a waiter in
a restaurant where a prodigious amount of “cooking sherry” was kept in the kitchen for regular customers (and staff). Patrons joked about John Winthrop’s famous entreaty to build a pure “City upon a Hill” in the New World by calling Manhattan the “City upon a Still.”
Prohibition unleashed rampant criminal activity, including a nationwide network of bootleggers and a spectacular rise in gangland violence. With the Dep
ression bearing down hard, president and renowned martini-mixer Franklin Roosevelt decided everyone was in need of a picker-upper, and the government could use the tax revenues, so he repealed the ethanol embargo in 1933. Suffragettes were also indirectly responsible for its demise. Apparently, once the women all got the vote, the men all needed a drink.
By the time I reached New York City there was no shortage of bars and nightclubs to frequent, including the Palladium, Limelight, Area, Heartbreak, Danceteria, and the Roxy. Trendy, pricey, and exclusive Nell’s and Stringfellows would open in 1986. Young professionals were hauling in enough money or else had access to large enough expense accounts to support nightly club hopping and champagne popping. Models, celebrities, athletes, artists, rock idols, gossip columnists, self-styled freaks, minor European royalty, and trust fund babies (“celebutantes”) melded nicely into the party mix. World-renowned Studio 54 was home to the first glitter bombing during a New Year’s Eve bash where four tons of tin foil dropped from the ceiling that people would find in their hair and clothing for months. Eventually, there were allegations of cocaine use and tax evasion at the club – I’m shocked! Throughout the 1980s there existed an alternate after-dark universe particularly attractive to Type A personalities that largely entailed waiting behind a velvet rope outside the city’s hottest clubs attempting to look chic enough to be chosen for admittance like a bunch of eager children trying to get picked first for a game of dodgeball. Such velvet-rope profiling led to payoffs, fights, and a great deal of status angst.
“Club kids” partied all night and slept all day. However, I worked in a trading pit on the floor of the stock exchange where it was eardrum-bursting loud and people jumped up and down all day, shouted at each other, mixed vodka into their iced tea, and abused drugs. I didn’t
see the point of going out at night to a place that was eardrum-bursting loud with people jumping up and down, shouting at each other, and abusing alcohol and drugs. Furthermore, it was already clear from working on Wall Street that alcohol and drugs have a tendency to amplify the disposition, which can be problematic if you’re already a jerk to begin with.
Also, I had schoolwork from my night classes at NYU. Most traders popped home after trading ended for their disco naps before joining the aspiring fashion stars, media moguls, technology tycoons, and marketing mavens for a night on the town, an after-party, and a six a.m. breakfast at the Tick Tock diner or the greasy spoon–goodness of Odessa with its kielbasa and eggs. Then it was home to bed or, if it was a weekday, they stumbled straight to work. Early morning flights missed due to late nights on the town were known as Irish Layovers. These were different from Irish Handcuffs, which meant you had a drink in each hand and therefore couldn’t carry anything else or open a door.
Manhattan in particular is conducive to a colossal nightlife because with almost the entire island laid out on a grid, it’s difficult to get lost and has twenty-four-hour public transportation plus taxis, so there’s no place easier for an intoxicated person to safely get home. The club scene continues to roar today with designer drinks and happening DJs and an ever-rotating cast of what’s hot and what’s not. Some places are strongly promoted while others are supposedly secret and haven’t so much as a sign on the door. Recently there was a faux speakeasy in a water tower atop an abandoned Chelsea building where guests had to climb twelve flights of steps and a ladder before emerging through a trapdoor. That will build up your thirst. A number of the hippest spots have moved from the Meatpacking District (which landed the expression “meat market” squarely in double-entendre territory) to Brooklyn – Williamsburg garages, Bushwick warehouses, Gowanus factories, and Red Hook bars. Meantime, I have a secret list of the ten quietest restaurants in New York that I won’t be posting online anytime soon.
As for the city’s wide variety of music, from Tin Pan Alley ragtime to Harlem jazz-blues and New Wave to No Wave, it endlesly cross-pollinates and transmutes. Composer and bandleader Duke
Ellington noted that musicians were beginning to play a new type of music in the 1910s in the West Indies, New Orleans, and Chicago, but it wasn’t until they all converged and coalesced in New York that jazz emerged as a recognized art form in the early 1920s. Forty years later folk music turned to pop music in the Village, and twenty years after that funk became rap in the outer boroughs, the same way that clubs and neighborhoods change along with the tastes and lifestyles of their inhabitants. Greenhorns, dreamers, and carpetbaggers have always been welcome. No proof of residency is required.
The music scene is so diverse that New York must have ten times as many anthems as anyplace else. Take your pick among “The Sidewalks of New York,” “Give My Regards to Broadway,” “Manhattan,” “Take the ‘A’ Train,” “On Broadway,” “Spanish Harlem,” “Positively 4th Street,” “Across 110th Street,” “Walk on the Wild Side,” “Theme from New York, New York,” “Fairytale of New York,” “No Sleep Till Brooklyn,” “New York City,” “The Rising,” “New York, I Love You But You’re Bringing Me Down,” and “Empire State of Mind.” Or go ahead and create your own siren song, hymn of praise, or litany of complaints for the ultimate New York Mix Tape.
Chapter 11
The Real March
Madness
New York is living proof that the immigrant work ethic leaves the Protestant work ethic in the dust.
It’s been said that immigration is the most sincere form of flattery. Nowadays, more than 800 languages are spoken in New York City. In 1855, more than half of all New Yorkers had been born in another country, and by the late 1990s more than a third of all New Yorkers had been born abroad. There are more Irish in New York than in Dublin, more Italians than in Rome, more Jews than in Tel Aviv, more Mexicans than in Oaxaca, more Jamaicans than in Montego Bay, more Puerto Ricans than in San Juan, more Native Americans than in any other city, and more Greek diners than anywhere in the entire world. When I retire I may just go and open an American restaurant in Athens.
The term melting pot was originally coined to describe densely populated immigrant neighborhoods on the Lower East Side. So many famous people have emerged from the hubbub and hullaballoo of the Lower East Side that it would take an entire page just to name the musicians. Families may not have been able to afford a private bathroom, but everyone seemed to have an upright piano on the installment plan.
With an almost constant cacophony roaring through their streets, New Yorkers demonstrate that they are listening by interrupting. It’s a compliment. They are trying to be helpful when they give names of psychiatrists, allergists, aromatherapists, plastic surgeons, aestheticians,
epilators, stylists, personal shoppers, and trainers. Same with when they steadily contradict anyone else attempting to do likewise.
During my first few years in New York I wondered if there were billboards in other countries advertising specific opportunities here. More than 90 percent of shoeshine men in New York City are from Brazil. Are Brazilians genetically gifted shoe polishers the way Kenyans are marathon runners? Is there a rumor in Guadalajara that New York subway riders adore roving mariachi bands and will tip them with gleeful abandon? Did word of a dim sum shortage here reach mainland China? Do Koreans dream of running corner stores and nail salons? Does Nigeria have billboards saying come to Manhattan and sell sunglasses and umbrellas on a New York City street corner? On an overcast day you can get sunglasses for $5 per pair. As the sun emerges from behind the clouds they go up to $7 or $10. Suddenly it starts to drizzle and the table is flipped to display umbrellas. They’re $5, but as the rain comes down harder they go to $10 and $15. Talk about entrepreneurship.
An umbrella purchased on the street can sometimes last up to a month, whereas you’re lucky if a $25 “Rolex” watch makes it through the end of the week. I recommend the clear plastic umbrellas since you can see when you’re about to get hit with another umbrella and do the New York City rainy-day street ballet of raising and lowering yours while others do the same to avoid eye-piercing collisions. The
clear umbrella also makes it easier to spot a collapsing crane (the heavy machinery, not the bird).
New Yorkers on the whole are an entrepreneurial lot. During the last transit strike, people were offering to rent themselves out by the hour to help travelers and commuters meet the four-person minimum to drive a car. On TaskRabbit New York City you can find someone to come over and perform just about any job from cleaning, shopping, and cooking to filing, assembling, and research. So much for stranger danger.
The average New Yorker is not racist. This is a city where whites are now in the minority. The current denizens are such a hodgepodge of different cultural backgrounds, where would you start to discriminate and who has that kind of time? Likewise, if there are any homophobes,
they’re in the closet. Even the selection of mayors has been religiously, racially, ethnically, economically, sexually, and height diverse over the years. Strong female candidates have started running, and certainly we’ll have our first woman mayor before long. Bill de Blasio, the current officeholder, appears to have resurfaced from a 1980s Benetton ad with his African American–former lesbian wife and two biracial children. De Blasio is of German and Italian heritage, comes from a broken home, speaks Spanish fluently, admits to liking the Red Sox, is spiritual but not religious, and has tantalized a certain population with the possibility of legalizing ferret ownership. His father was an alcoholic and committed suicide while suffering from inoperable lung cancer. I think that about covers it. Oh, yeah – they live in Brooklyn, of course.
Life in New York Page 8
