8/17/2021: A DATE WHICH WILL LIVE IN INFAMY - PART 1
DUE TO NYC MAYOR'S APPALLING ATTACK ON PERSONAL LIBERTIES
Last night about 11:45 (AUGUST 17TH, 2021) pm it hit me.
All our rights, liberties, and even the freedom to go where we please minding our own dang business—GONE—with the stroke of a cheap Bic pen.
A bit more than 3 decades ago as a student I came to NYC to enjoy the "Ahrts" being something of a jack of all trades misfit fartsy type: an actor/filmmaker/avid theater-concert-movie-goer, sometimes writer and screenwriter and more when and as needed (lights, camera, costumes, props, dance captain, coffee-maker, kid wrangler—er, just pick a hat). My kids were raised on breastmilk and Broadway—no joke. Now, too old for the former offerings (I got a teen & a young adult), the “kids” are banned from the latter and indeed from all culture and from the world as they knew it. Ousted from their former classes (shunned by some former classmates too!), excluded from their clubs, from music, dance, stand up comedy (from all performance too!) — 86’d from just about all they used to do. No jab, no jumpin’ jive.
NOT WANTED. GO AWAY.
Folks, this SUCKS (and I truly don't like that expression but it fits too well not to use it). Perhaps I could say “Sucks Eggs” which sounds a bit less harsh and more Clampetty…? Anywayz…
Herewith I wax poetic about both Vanishing New York / what’s gone gone gone already AND what we’ll be missing as newly minted NY pariahs….
IF ya wanna JUST see the LONG LIST of stuff we’re banned from, jump over to PART 2 of this post. Otherwise below I share summa’ my various and sundry thoughts and musings about this newfangled “infamy” because it’s WRONG. It’s not American (“it’s a free country, I can say what I want!”) and it’s CERTAINLY not at all like New York, which was always and arguably a far more Free To Be You and Me place than any other in the ol’ US of A. Once.
SO… Our Gracie Mansion Miscreant (DeBlasio) is quite happy to ban us, the deplorables du jour, without qualm or regret. He thinks we'll take his genetically engineered gene-joltin' literal heart-breaker of a jab (SEE CAVEAT BELOW) because it will be too difficult to forfeit the supposed fun-fun-fun of the Big Box of Candy (BBOC) that he imagines is NYC —for our Mayor Big Cheeze literally calls NYC "a miraculous place literally full of wonders").
That’s pure TWADDLE, Mister, NO IT AIN’T, not for quite a long spell.
On one hand, I quibble muchly with da Mayo’s “nah nah nah nah nah nah” attitude marking what we are supposedly missing out on (if we don’t comply), especially lately. It’s petty, it’s ugly and unbecoming to a person in office but of course it be-HOOVES him (that lyin’ be-horned devil-man making this town a livin’ Hell for many of us…) to paint our city in far rosier hues in order to lead the foolish into TEMPTATION.
But Mayor DeBlasé-e.i.e.i.o., who likes not much more than his local gym, a NY Slice (crappy pizza folded over like a drippy wallet, only cool if you are HOT like Tony Manero…) and who reminds me of slightly acrid sweat socks (he certainly doth not reek of Kultur!)—is still and nevertheless stiffin’ us good, though nope, this city ain’t no longer “miraculous” or full of “wonders.”
Barnum's Museum (once Heapin’ with Humbug WONDERS) burned twice to ashes as did Luna Park, now no more than a glittering WONDEROUS seaside memory, Moondog (a WONDER himself from NYC’s hip-hep days) is six feet under as is the inspired musical extravaganza impressario & WONDER-MEISTER, Florenz Ziegfeld. And of course many WONDERFUL larger-than-life ladies also had their make-hay-days here too, from Hetty Green to Sophie Tucker to Maria Callas to Patti Lupone…the list is long! In NYC nowadays there is precious little “of wonder” (albeit much to wonder about!) and instead, we’ve got many ungainly “mine’s bigger than yours” irrationally tall, esthetically null dickhead schlong buildings which have blocked out the once stellar skyline (and sunshine), dwarfing both the Empire State Building and my other two favorites, the Chrysler and the Woolworth buildings. Phooey (on these obscene erections) which seem to define New York City far more than any true “wonders” of yore.
It’s actually a WONDER this place is still on the map…but okay, I’m a tad bitter… ya know, being zero’d out… We do yet and still have some truly great world class MUSEUMS and such….though given Cancel Cult-ure Inc. (and delusional diversity and divestment and devaluation of all once held dear…), they’ll be gone ‘fore long too…
Yeah, things ain’t what they used to be (Mercy Mercy Me!).
NYC had SPUNK —from the salty and salt-of-the-earth cabbies to the salty pretzels that sold on every corner. I may have missed some our formerly fair city’s most fabulous eras but still and yet—this was my kind’a town and we (including the fam’ here) sucked deeply from the paper city-straw even when all that was left was a little backwash from a once-great Gem-Spa Egg Cream.
SIDE NOTE: For those unfamiliar, Egg Creams were like a phosphate, a bubbly but thin sweet fountain drink that surprisingly had neither egg nor cream in them. The chocolate ones were especially delicious and featured Fox’s-U-Bet Syrup, which never changed it’s logo since maybe 1933. Only two places made them right—Gem Spa, a corner candy store of sorts on St. Mark’s Place—and Sammy’s Roumanian—a terrific throwback sit-down joint where you ate impossibly tender flanken while the likes of the late, great Sol Yaged was serenading you on violin with sweet sentimental strains of Ochichornye amply peppered with very stale borscht belt jokes. To make the egg cream there the waiter stood on a chair and dramatically poured the seltzer from on-high…to always-applause) SIGH. This WAS NYC. I miss. But I digress…
I sure loved this town even as a Judy-come-lately (in the late 1980s)— long after the era of dime museums and famous venues from Stork Club to Cotton Club. When I arrived here for good there were yet a few Chock Full O’ Nuts (a local chain of endearing diner-style coffee shops known for the nutted cheese sand. that was 2 bucks of genuine bliss, already an addiction of mine from many prior visits to the City I Loved). Back then there was even one remaining Automat (it wasn’t very good by that time but it was still cool anyway) and there was a really weird but completely fabulous HoJo’s in Times Square where I could get my clam roll while watching big-haired chain-smoking ladies (of sorts) get their Whiskey Sours at the candy-colored neon-lit bar (yes a HoJos with a BAR). There were midnight crazy Jack Smith movies at The Waverly and you could see Iggy Pop or Screamin’ Jay Hawkins or even Grace Jones by just showing up (no tickets, you just KNEW when and where to go).
I fondly recall the actual dizzy daze of the late 20th Century as a fully WONDER-FULL crazy quilt fit for an up-all-night young’un, dancin’ ‘til dawn at Danceteria and scarfing 3am pierogies with extra sour cream at Kiev, cuppa borscht on the side (both shuttered, sadly). We saw cool films at Anthology Film Archives (I screened my own there too!) and I always felt warm and fuzzy seeing Quentin Crisp preen down 2nd Avenue in his slightly unlaundered lavender splendor. Hugs and misses there. At 1am any night you could Xerox your face at Kinkos* or buy sparkle eye shadow (at Paint) or oggle eyeball rings (at Merchant of Oyo) on Bleecker Street. This WAS a place to BE, even as it started to show cracks aplenty. (Today of course we got crumbles…and leftover crumbs…)
*reminiscing here… anyone who ventured into Kinko’s copy shop past midnight was sure to see one dynamite dude on rollerskates clad head-to-toe in bright red, sporting a perky red Louise Brooks-style wig, and often known to photocopy his face…and feet
With Big BOX Store invaders (from SUB-urbia) and what with Disney replacing the infamous Watch-Live-Sex-jaw-dropper “Show World” of Times Square, NYC hadn’t been even close to what is once was for decades…let alone what it was for well over a century. Gone with The Wiz (& Sayonara Crazy Eddie). Bye Bye Mr Spoons. We (Daisy & Daughters) sadly bid a fond farewell to the LAST MATZO BALL at Hotel Edison’s haimish lunch counter. And yet (and yet) there IS—even now—even for us shunned ones—still much to miss for all its faults and foibles and free-FALLING, AND this is so in spite of the mean, mean man who rubs this fact in our proverbial noses and gloats over it.
No DeBozo BBOC (that overhyped Big Box of Candy) for you, you unjabbed anti-vaxxxer; get away, six feet away! or six feet under as implied! NYC is now a truant middleschooler aggressively pushing ersatz lead-full stale Mexican dollar-store chocolates on the A-train and trying to pass ‘em off as Callebaut. Once such antics were funny, met with a shrug. However this isn’t just another train and a minor con, it’s our lives and those of our kids—so now that we are BANNED, it’s still smarts. Plenty. Damit.
Per the above a…BIG OL' CAVEAT
Allow me to preface what follers here, today and moving forward, by sayin' to all the readers here (all one or two of ya’s) that if YOU or YERZ or anyone else ya know wants to take this jab (or any of 'em) by all means do it—I ain't a dockter (lawyer or Indian Chief neither) nor am I a'gonna stop nobody from doin' their thing or making their own free choice.
HOWEVER—if you disagree with my more jaundiced personal view of this artificial bat-souped-up Woo-ham-fisted untested, unproven, unwelcome injected “treatment” / con-coction, and ya wanna send me some nasty slings and arrows of outrageous misfortune in the comments section for saying things not so nice and fuzzy-warm about it, then please save yer breath, save yer ink, and go on n' turn the page and find another writer more yer speed or someone else to pick on as I'm for FREEDOM of choice (cherce in NewYorkese). I cannot say a damned good thing about these “jabbinations” myself, an’ this little "short stack" is where I speak my mind (what’s left of it!), so do lemme have my "say" here, just here, thank ya kindly.
NEW YORK—the loss despite the LOSS…
So as I wrote above, ramblin’ much along the way, NYC is NOT the Wonka-wrought “Wonder” that Mayor Big Cheese Ball thinks it is NOR should a vaxxxine pass be considered a Golden Ticket (more like an IOU that may not get repaid!) that gets you into Wonkaville.
But what gits my goat more—-as my own wheelhouse goes is that before this town got shut down like a raid on Minsky’s, there were singers, actors, dancers, and writers, composers, choreographers, directors, costumers, artists and within these creative spirits collectively and separately there was ample GOOD WILL and kindness and community and tolerance. This was my tribe and it was pretty supportive and welcoming and well…even purdy huggy… until it wasn’t. It became (almost overnight it seems though I imagine sentiments festering over lockdown lunacy time…) uncharacteristically UNsupportive and INtolerant. a masked (mass psychotic) mockery of its former self. And mean. And snarky. Not a PEEP of empathy for those of us who were banned; we will not be missed (nor methinks welcomed back into the fold).
So since me and mine won't cave to medically dubious procedures that invalidate bioethics and the Nuremburg code (eroding the health of me an’ "mah fambly") to enjoy this facsimile—this watered-down pas-de-tout-bon “bonbon” that NYC has become…now more than evah, I feel it my duty to actually sit down and LIST (in detail) what we’ll be missing even with the city’s latter day shortcomings …