35? 35?!?!?! (Broadway & Bowling Green)

Confessions of a New York City Tour Guide:

So a certain bus requested me to be their guide today. Hmm, must've made a good impression on a group leader a year ago or something. We were late, my brother and I, a mix up in information said 57th & 10th when we were supposed to be down at South St. Shit.

Half an hour and a $20 cab ride later, all was well. I didn't recognize the group leader, but he recognized me, and asked for one thing:

To climb the Bull. all right then.

Quick loop around Water st brought us right to the Bowling Green where I led them to one of New York's favorite climb-able sculpture: a 7000 lb, 11 foot long bronze beast. Staring down Broadway so fiercely, it splits upon it's polished horns. Every broker's favorite mascot: The Wall Street Bull.

"In 1987, the stock market was rocked by a terrible crash. People were concerned that the rip-roaring greed-is-good thrills of the 80's had come to an early end, and the dark days they had seen a decade ago were right around the corner. But one SoHo artist, a Sicillian-born sculpter named Arturo Di Modica decided that he was going to design a sculpture to rally the troops back on to the floor. After two years building the piece, he and a few friends loaded it onto a flatbed truck, and after timing the policemen's watch, dropped it off right in front of the stock exchange in the middle of the night. Exactly eleven days before Christmas.

The public was stunned, and the police were, well, unhappy. They impounded it, and Arturo had to pay an impound fine to release it. (His argument against paying was similar to most of those at the impound lot: "This is BULL!") It was moved to the Bowling Green five days later."

And with a straight face I always ask: "Who wants to climb the bull?" See, normally, the kids look at the adults, and the adults look at each other waiting for some sort of approval before a handful of them apprehensively climb on. Six or seven of them slowly make their way on, a couple of pictures are taken, and we move on.

See, this time around, by the time I finished the word "climb" six of them had already made it up there. Not even by the convention means of getting a boost and wrapping a leg around it's neck. I mean, one tall, strapping lad leapt up from behind the thing's rump, grabbed the tail and WOOSH! I couldn't keep 'em off the thing!

Someone asked "what's the record?" I fumbled for a second

"Uh, 19 high schoolers, 24 middle school."

"EASY!" Before I knew it, they had 25 and counting. One on each of the three available feet (fourth foot's innaccessable.), Kids on the top holding on to kids clinging to the side, three squeezing into a spot I thought could fit only one. Eight hanging from the head, three from the horns alone! Squeezing, twisting, getting into positions that would otherwise be thoroughly innapropriate for a group of High School Mormons from Idaho. (Two on the end of the tail. One male, one female. Facing each other? . . .) if, of course, it weren't for the record. I spun around keeping close count until I could not believe the number I had reached.

"35? 35???? You ANIMALS!!!" I cried. Di Modica, and Thomas Nast, the man who first sketched that hard-headed rallying monster. Would have been very, very proud.

A Grand Arch [Grand Army Plaza]

Note: Previously published in The L Mag's Brooklyn Edition, 2006

In 1865, two men stood on a hill’s crest in the City of Brooklyn and said: “Here. This is the spot.” The men were architects. Landscape architects, a new term that combined botanical arts with structural design into creating vast natural landscapes in the middle of bustling cities.
They were Calvert Vaux, a British architect and Frederic Law Olmstead, an American journalist & amateur botanist. In 1857, against all odds, they won the contract to design a park in the center of New York City. They had never designed a park before, but Andrew Jackson Downing who originally won the contract died saving his mother-in-law’s life during a ferry accident.
After a challenging thirteen years and over $5 million dollars spent, Central Park was hailed as an urban miracle. Vaux and Olmstead were given free reign to design a park of their own, without pressure or demands from officials and outside parties. A vanity piece.
They chose Brooklyn as their canvas.
The nation had just been torn apart from the strife of the Civil War (which Olmstead reported in his journals as a Northerner reporting from the South.) and here in New York’s prominent sister city, they wanted a grand sweeping entrance to a pristine urban retreat that would commemorate the fallen soldiers.
Check out Grand Army Plaza any day of the week to experience that sweeping entrance with it’s magnificent arch, inspired by the one and only Arc de Triomphe a la Paris. The bronze sculptures known as Spirits of The Army and Navy, and Lady Columbia up top were added in 1896.
The legendary Saturday green-markets arrived nearly forty years later.

King for a Day! Pt. 1 [Birthday Bar Crawl/Williamsburg]

Today is March 26, and I am 24 years old.

24. Nope, nothing special. Let's get drunk.

I have a personal birthday policy. Birthday boy is King for a day. Past years I developed a construction-paper crown a la Elementary School with a glitter number for whatever age I happened to turn, and I wore that baby all over town! Free sub at subway, smiles and winks and cheek-pecks from the ladies and, of course, a since-21 tradition: The birthday bar crawl.

First couple of years were in Western Mass where I went for college and last year's was hosted by the East Village. Now it was Billyburg's turn and living out by Morgan and Flushing, I figured I'd start out Bedford-ways and see which subway station on the L I'd stumble on to on my way Eastwards.

1. 11pm- CAPONE'S: (N9, Driggs & Roebling) ah, everyone's favorite speakeasy. A neon red sign on an otherwise desolate block and a free pizza with each beer consumed! Mazel-tov! Big Bro sponsored the first beer, and the bar-lady treated me to a Maker's Mark rocks. The dance floor was too much floor and not enough dance. DJs were lame too.

2. 12:45am- BLACK BETTY: (Metro & Havemeyer) Sweet sassy Molassey that's a stylish dance-spot. Too crowded with white people not dancing though. I bought myself my favorite cocktail (secret!) and bartendress treated me to a kamikaze shot. Dancing was fun, but too packed.

3. 1:15am- ALLIGATOR LOUNGE: (Metro & Lorimer) The bartendress couldn't care less it was my birthday, she was busy. Wouldn't even recommend a Bday shot. I sucked down a turpentine lemon drop for $6 and left without tipping.

4. 1:35 am- METROPOLITAN: (Lorimer & Metro) Aaahhh. So *this* is the neighborhood gay bar. Free tequila shot & a wink from the bartender. I left shortly

Hmm. can't seem to walk straight and vision's a little blurry. No problem, I'll walk it off. By the time I got to Graham avenue I knew I wouldn't last too much longer. I needed a sweet spot to end the night. When I found myself on Leonard and Metro I remembered a Time Out NY article about a little spot with it's own aphrodisiac house drink. A little blend of Dominican Rum and Herbs called

5. 2:00 am- MAMAJUANA: (220 Leonard tween Grand and Powers) The Mamajuana is a sweet and smoky rum-based cocktail that allegedy has both medicinal and rejuvinative properties. The bar had a lovely low-lit atmosphere infused with Afro-Latin themes and comfortable couches. There was an Itunes DJ by the name of Madame Turk spinning (mouse-clicking?) a blend of Hip-Hop, Latin dance music and the occassional rare-rock cover. There were 5 people in the place. 3 were dancing.

For smokers and lovers, there was a back door with led to an alleyway maybe 30 inches wide and twelve feet long. A plastic statue of a woman, painted to look like stone was at the end, surrounded by candles. Quite an impressive minimalist shrine. Something about it was undenialy sexy. I purchased one Mamajunana from the light-skinned, 100% bald bartender named Alister. A man I percieved to by the owner (tall, dread-locked and handsome) upon learning it was my birthday, nodded to Alister to refill my glass.

I stumbled to the Graham st. station and stayed awake/kept it down long enough to stumble home and down water to keep it settled.

My head & throat hurt the next day, but not enough to keep the King for a Day down. Winner of the night, was no doubt: MAMAJUANA. I reccomend you all check it out with someone you want to get busy with.

What a kick in the KOCH! [103 & 5th]

Well, I finally made it out, all the way up to the tenuous border between the Upper East and Spanish Harlem, a 45 - 60 minute ride from my home in Bushwick to the grand Museum of the City of New York

*Note* which by the way, is a fantastic, fun museum that doesn't get enough patronage do to its inconvenient location. It *almost* moved down to the Boss Tweed courthouse, on Chambers, north of City Hall, but Bloomy squashed that effort. Grrrr.

And what a Museum it is! Focussing on all aspects of city history, there's one exhibit dedicated solely to the history of trade in the city, and how New York became the top port city in the country. Greeting you on your way in is a twelve foot bronze (or some other metal) statue of Robert Fulton. Intense.

The section titled "Perform" (done up to look like an old-fashioned theater house) wonderfully portrays New York's long history of the stage, including pieces on Vaudeville, Burlesque, Minstrel shows and the difference between Broadway, Off, and Off-Off-Broadway (hint. It's got nothing to do with Broadway itself.)

But the real reason i came, was to catch the exhibit all about the mayor who was running things when I was just a wee little infant, and then through my toddler years. Both a jokester, and a man who knew how to get things done. A man who caame to be known as New York City's cheerleader at a time when we needed a morale boost the most. Sure, when a guy's around we like to bash his short-comings, but after history has had time to reflect on a public figure, we can see exactly what impact a handful of policies can really have on a city.

And Mr. "How'm I doin?" took the helm at the city's darkest hour (1977) and presided over the great turnaround that has resulted in the low-crime, booming-arts Metropolis that we see today. You did a fine job, Mr. Mayor.

HPD, (Housing Preservation and Development) was one of Koch's focal points for the city, doing what was necessary to revive old burned out buildings and neighborhoods. In some cases giving them away to those who had the money to renovate them, and could then turn a profit selling/renting them out.

He established the One Percent for Art initiative. One percent of the City's budget towards arts funding. That's a lot of dough, which in turn helped fund nearly 200 projects.

And no, he's not gay. Seriously, don't you think by now some guy would have come out to the press and said "I had sex with Ed Koch, and now I'm putting out an all-tell book on it!"

So here's to a blast of a mayor who really gave his all to help get a city back on it's feet without crawling on his knees to those bastardly feds the way his predicessor Abe Beame did. Loser.

I conclude with my favorite Koch story (told by Koch himself on a documentary I saw) The day after he left office, he went to a Deli to get lunch. Everyone turned and looked at the man they realized was no longer the boss. An old woman with a scowl on her face strutted up to him, looked him right in the eye and belted: "You were a TERRIBLE Mayor!" And realizing he was now free from any and all public service obligations, responded with his gut instinct and replied:

"FUCK YOU!" That's my man.

We're all a little Irish Pt. 3 of 4

“The first Irish resident of New York City? Why, St. Brendan the Navigator, of course! Eight-HUNDRED years ago…No! Just kidding, but Irish sailors and merchants have been coming here since the days of Dutch New York, or New Amsterdam as it was known. In fact, the first St. Patrick’s Day Parade was in 1766, ten years before the revolution. It was a very different parade, though. These were Irish Protestants marching as part of the British Royal Army. The sort that eventually perpetrated the Orange Riots of the next century as an attempt to suppress the new Irish Catholic uprising that was happening all over these streets.”
“Catholics…” At which point I suck my teeth dramatically. “It all started with the Irish in the 1840’s! Sure, you had Italians, Poles, some Germans, Jews even hanging around the outskirts of New York, but this was an proud old Knickerbockers town. names like Van Wyck, or Vanderbilt, of good Dutch or English protestant stock. Native Americans as they were called before that became a more politically correct term for In’jins. It was the potato famine of ’43 that sent them here by the boatload.
Poor dirt-farmers, carrying disease, hunger hanging around their gaunt frames like a plague. Alcoholism in the five points was an epidemic. Less than one percent of the immigrants who came over were literate. And the Nativists, the old guard who stood at the port watching ship after ship come into the busy harbor were ready for them. With rocks in hand.
This was, of course, before ’61. Before there was a dramatic turnaround and the boatloads of refugees were welcoming with open arms. The young men, mostly. They were given a cup of soup, and a crust of bread, and for just a quick X on a piece of paper filled with long words and small print, they were given a fresh batch of new clothes. Uniforms actually. All blue, complete with hat, badge and rifle. They didn’t stay in New York for long. By the next day most of them were off to places with names like Gettysburg or Antietam.
The turnover from Immigrant to Union Soldier to Corpse for those four years was startling. And it left a mark on those who survived.
Whether it was the Civil War, or it was the racism they faced from a nation that still clung to some of the ghosts of its father empire. Perhaps it was the Irish Need Not Apply or Dogs and Irish Not Allowed signs that most businesses put in their windows. Or it was the cartoons that were published in Harper’s Weekly that portrayed them as little more than well-dressed apes. For nearly thirty years, they had persevered under the city’s heel, with no jobs, no respect, no chance at upward mobility except for one essential bargaining chip that was their birthright upon their re-christening as Americans.
They could vote.
And with now thousands of Irish men on the streets of New York, a master King-Maker like William “The Boss” Tweed knew he could manipulate this influence. Tammany Hall, the old New York Democratic institution developed brute squads made up of some of the toughest gang-members that had sprung up out of the Irish populace. The Bowery Boys, the Dead Rabbits, the Forty-Thieves, and Plug Uglies would get to politicking months before the elections.
A one Capt. Isaiah Rynders way back in 1835 was the first one to really sway the vote. You could call him the “Jack Abramoff” of his day. He would organize the gang influence and use tactics such as spreading word through the saloons to vote one way. I remember the very effective Vote for Tim Sullivan or Lose a Finger campaign. Or reminding all the fellas to grow their beards out a couple months before election-day. When the day came, the barber shops were ready at first dawn for the drill: They’d vote, come in, lose the beard, vote, come back, lose the moustache, vote.
How else do you think a crooked saloon-keeper like “Big Tom” Foley could rise up to a Democratic party boss. He would eventually have a square around the corner named after him and he would act as a mentor to a kid named Al Smith. Al was from the Lower East Side, and he got his “degree” from the Fulton Fish Market University. And he eventually became governor of New York. A great governor at that, and eventually the Democratic Candidate for President in 1928. Would’ve been the first Catholic President, over thirty years before Kennedy.
The astounding spires at 50th & 5th completed in 1878 say it all: We’re here. We’re proud. We’ve got power now. And we’re here to stay.”

From there we returned to the bus. And were off to the Irish Hunger Memorial.

We're all a little Irish Pt. 2 of 4

Today’s tour started outside of Charlie O’s. A formula Irish-American Bar and Restaurant on 45th and 8th. The sliver between Times Sq. and Hell’s Kitchen that still hints at a time when both districts meant something else entirely. We were serving coffee and scones in Styrofoam cups on a card table to two and a half busloads of old Irish assimilates from ------ Pennsylvania. Of course we had a little “Irish” to put in the coffee. Most of them requested a little more Irish with each cup. Eventually, a couple of them dropped the ruse and just asked for the “Irish” straight. There were threee of us there. One to pour the coffee, one to pour the nip, and one to watch out for cops. I figured, “When in Dublin” and had a nip or four myself.

I hate “used to be” tours. So much of Manhattan’s history is apparent and visible: the Trinity church from the days of Washington, the Dakota Hotel from when the Upper West was a big patch of farmland. Then there are the parts that are always chaging, never the same. Like talking about the “Taxi Driver” days of The Deuce while standing under the Lion King marquee.
Scorcese’s grand cinematic opera situated in the mythical Five Points district set expectations pretty high for a walk through the old Paradise Square. Standing between the monkey bars and the jungle gym down at Columbus Park, I began: “Here’s a good example of how much New York City has changed in the past hundred and forty-odd years. What used to be the deadliest slum in all of New York, many would say in all of the Northern states of the U.S. is now a children’s playground.”
Nestled on the border between Chinatown and the Civic Center, Worth st. on the south side of the Park recalls scenes from Law & Order long before it would evoke memories of a Gangland Gomorrah.
The irony is not lost on me.

Fruit! Glorious Fruit! [Bushwick]

I'm a breakfast man.

Yes, it is the most important meal of the day, and sometimes for me, it lasts for two or three meals. Breakfast always goes in cycles for me too. The hearty whole-grain toast, eggs and bacon of the harvest season gave way to festive French Toast with, maple syrup, farmers jam and a cup of mocha over the holidays, paring down to yogurt and granola with a tall cup'a OJ for the New Year slim-down.

Now spring is here, and I'm craving me some fruit. Serious fruit, fresh, vibrant, colorful with variety! Oranges, apples, kiwis, strawberries, bring 'em all on!! Ssips lemonade a'int cutting it anymore.

Which is why I always balk at the $1.29 grapefruits at Brooklyn natural on Bogart & Meserole. Damn you gentrification! Raising the prices on everything! Unless of course, you're not a self-isolating idiot and hop a bike down Knickerbocker for five minutes into the Latin discount shopping paradise that is the KB strip!

Stop at Willoughby and KB, right by Maria Hernandez Park (also the only park of note in this 'hood) and stop into the amazing greengrocer there, with a plank of plywood up where a sign should be. You'll be greeted more friednly-like by all of the oranges (5 for $1) grapefruits (4 for $1.25) Red Peppers, Green Peppers, Pineapples, strawberries, et al out front waiting for you to squeeze their ripeness!

And that's only a sample of all the more produce you'll find inside!

I made off like a bandit for $7. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a salad to make.

We're all a little Irish. . . Pt. 1

It’s March 17th, 2006 and I’m dressed in more green than I’ve worn since Halloween ’97 when I was the Sociopathic Green Giant. Except for the Jameson, I’ve got no Irish in me. None. Ashkenazi Jew with roots all over Eastern Europe. A Fourth Generation New Yorker, great-grandson of Old Man Ellis, but no Irish, none.
Some random statistic I picked up said that 40% of all Americans can trace at least some roots back to Ireland. The Gothic Emerald Haven, with it’s intricate spiderwebs of stone masonry around two daunting spires, staring down Atlas himself on 50th and 5th bringing him in all his stoic bronze eminence down on one knee. The globe upon his back lowered more in symbol than substance across the avenue where the cross rests on high.
The Erin born, emerald clad, with skirt and knee-sock, pipes pressed on pursed lips. Pale, freckle-faced college kids tumble on to the E train at 1pm stopped at 34th st. Shamrocks a’blazin! “Ginger-ale” bottles passed between them claiming the day’s better than Christmas. I discreetly produce a thin steel screw-top tucked in my jacket pocket and have a nip. I guess we’re all a little Irish on St. Paddy’s Day.
On New Years, I told myself I’d quite drinking for the month of January. The holidays always get bombarded with more food and booze than any liver and intestinal should have to deal with in a three month period. I figured after New Years, 31 days dry would do me good, start me off right, eat better too. More vegetables and healthy food. The diet stuck (mostly). I made it twelve days drink free and congratulated myself for the effort.
Now it’s the turn of spring and I’m glancing at my watch, sometimes the sun’s angle for when it’s time to kick back and “start the evening”. Keeping close track of the happy hours in each neighborhood I might be in around 5 pm is a bad sign of progressive thinking. I check the open-bar website now almost as often as my email. At least the ink’s flowing again.
Shit, Edna lived a dozen live