RIP Al Goldstein

In June of 2000 I went to see Penn & Teller on stage at the Beacon Theater in New York. Being a big Penn & Teller fan, I bought tickets as soon as I could and got a really good seat for the show. When I was there, I was impressed that I was one row in front of Al Goldstein, editor of SCREW magazine and one of the people in my mind who embodied New York City better than anyone else.

Goldstein was dressed in cutoff jean shorts, hiking boots, and a red, white and blue sequined jacket. He had gorgeous woman on his arm that looked to be a 20-year-old porn star.

Years later I made a flier for the punk band I play in that featured Al with his middle finger extended, which was how he was often photographed. I emailed him a copy of the flier and he emailed me back saying it was wonderful. That made my day.

Goldstein was one of New York City’s great public personalities, one of the outspoken people who come to represent New York and its spirit. Much in the same way Ed Koch came to represent New York among the celebrated and in polite society, Al Goldstein represented the city’s gritty edge and its always sarcastic and sometimes obscene sense of humor. He was an overweight, cigar-chomping loudmouth who ranted against New York’s many annoyances as vehemently as he skewered the Philistines from both the left and the right. At the same time he never lost his sense of humor about himself.

We recently lost Al Goldstein. He died on Dec. 19 in a hospital and probably not under a pile of naked women like he would have preferred.

Growing up in New York, I would often see Goldstein on talk shows and news segments when he was often called upon to defend pornography. When I moved back to New York I was happy I could see his show Midnight Blue on cable access television. Al Goldstein was a ubiquitous advocate of enjoying sex for its own sake and being unashamed of it. He was overbearing and bombastic, but his case just made plain sense and went like this: Wanting to have sex is a very natural thing that has kept the human race going for millions of years, why be ashamed of it or think it is bad? I’m a man, why shouldn’t I enjoy looking at pictures of naked women? Pictures of vaginas in my magazine aren’t bad because vaginas aren’t bad. Fuck you if you don’t like it.  

Do you enjoy looking at tits in magazines or on the Internet? Thank Al Goldstein. He had been fighting for the right to publish his magazine before it was cool. Those days are mostly behind us in America. Except for rare cases that continue to be egregious and terrifying for free speech, porn is everywhere now and the government can’t stop it. But our access to porn today is because of the efforts made by Goldstein decades ago, often at great personal risk. It’s hard to believe in these days of celebrated promiscuity that people could actually be threatened with jail for publishing naked pictures in magazines. Goldstein was one of the first to do battle for those freedoms and he did it years before more celebrated personalities like Larry Flynt.

Lawsuits and bad business decisions left him homeless and destitute. Penn Jillette, recognizing the debt Americans owe to Goldstein, often helped him financially. Later in life he did express regret for some of his excesses. He was estranged from some of his family. He admitted to his faults and realized his mistakes, but never wavered from the blunt personality that made him essential.

Al Goldstein embodied New York City not because he published pornography, but because he fought for his right to do it and lived a life that was bold and unapologetic. 

Fear of a White Santa

The endless salvos in the American cultural war normally give me a headache and are usually beneath the dignity of comment. But the latest jeremiad against a Fox News host about the race of Santa Claus was informative.

            Megyn Kelly, on her program The Kelly File, remarked that Santa Claus is white. (She mentioned that Jesus Christ was white too, and while I’d love to discuss the colorful variations among the 12 tribes of Israel, I’ll instead point out that white people handed over the name Jesus to the Latinos a while ago.)

            Kelly was of course buried in a brouhaha of accusations of racism and “look what she said” type coverage, but if you actually watch the damn video, her piece is actually discussing an article on Slate that advocates doing without a white Santa, or a human Santa entirely, and replace him with a penguin in the name of helping nonwhite children love Christmas. Slate’s cultural blogger Aisha Harris recounts her childhood angst at the ubiquity of peckerwood Santa Clauses and thinks that a penguin Santa is a win-win for everyone.

            When I was a kid growing up in Yonkers, my brother and I were sent to an afterschool center on weekday afternoons in nearby Eastchester. The kids at the daycare center were mostly white, but sometimes our center would get together with a nearby black organization called CAP (Community Action Program). We would take trips with them and every year we went to their Christmas party.

            At every CAP Christmas party Santa Claus appeared and gave out presents, and at CAP, Santa was black. Not only was their Santa black, but he was someone that worked there that the black kids all knew. They laughed hilariously at the black Santa, in part because it was someone they knew and also because it was so obviously NOT Santa Claus.

            Like Aisha Harris mentions in her piece on Slate, a non-white Santa doesn’t look quite right, even to a sympathetic non-white audience. It’s an obviously pandering variation awkwardly hammered into place. And children, ever suspicious of adult manipulation into their world, resent such obvious engineering. Harris was right to take umbrage at the black Santa. Even though the adults in her life were doing it for her perceived benefit, it was too much adult interference and that just ain’t right.

           

            Us white kids resented the black Santa, not because we were racist or hated blacks but because we were treated to a needless maiming of a cultural icon that was supposed to be race-neutral.

And this fear of a white Santa is a very telling sign on the part of the multicultural left that’s calling for the head of Megyn Kelly on a charger. Wanting to get rid of white Santa is a tacit acknowledgement of the failure and hopelessness of multiculturalism itself.

            If you buy into the belief of Santa Claus and believe that he’s a kindly, saintly man who loves good children, then he certainly loves all the good children of the world and brings them all gifts. That nonwhite children are automatically aggrieved at the sight of a white Santa Claus means that the hopes of fostering an integrated, diverse society is hopeless. If all the races should be equally valued and accepted by everyone, then the traditional white Santa is for everyone too.

If my kids have to stand for a black President, why can’t black kids accept gifts from a white Santa Claus? If multiculturalism is for real, then it’s not a one-way street.  If non-white children can’t accept a benevolent white saint who gives them presents out of love, then there’s not much racial harmony in America’s future.

Santa Claus, like many other holiday trappings, developed from European traditions that were adapted to Christianity as it spread westward from the Middle East. Saint Nicholas, the Catholic patron saint of children and sailors and generally agreed to as the basis of Santa Claus, was Greek. If white people invented Santa Claus, then it makes sense he’d be white.

And so even assuming that Kelly was being racially assertive, what makes wanting Santa to look like you wrong? If Aisha Harris’ Christmas penguin catches on, so be it. I’ll be one of the last white fathers telling his kids about the real white Santa Claus. 

’Tis the Season to Watch Bad Santa

There are several great Christmas traditions that I refuse to surrender despite being a jaded, cynical atheist. I still give gifts to family and friends, I still buy a real Christmas tree and decorate it, and still I watch Bad Santa every year.

            If you have not seen it, do so; you won’t be sorry. The 2003 movie stars Billy Bob Thorton as a thief who works as a department store Santa in order to gain easier access to the safe. You could argue that the movie is dated on that count—the most successful retail thieves these days do their work from laptops and the prevalence of credit and debit cards means store safes don’t hold as much cash as they used to—but that’s a minor point that will not detract from the movie.

            Thorton is genius as the hard-drinking, serial-fornicating, foul-mouthed career criminal. The cast also includes John Ritter (RIP), Bernie Mac (RIP), Lauren Graham, Tony Cox and Ajay Naidu of Office Space fame as a “Hindustani Troublemaker.”

            Bad Santa manages to both piss on the fraudulent cheer that comprises so much of what passes for holiday spirit while still offering a tale of redemption. His sneering delivery and drunken slurs give the holiday season the violent kick in the groin it rightfully deserves. He exudes contempt for the pampered children and jabbering housewives that expect him to be at their beck and call. He’s a champion to anyone who has ever had to work at a department store at Christmas time (I have; it sucks). He is a hardened predator among easy prey, a prisoner to his criminal profession, but willing to commit to violent street justice without hesitation to help his bullied host.

            Cinema has given us no better Christmas hero than Billy Bob Thorton’s Willie.

Willie represents our great unbridled American spirit, unashamed to fornicate with strangers in department store changing rooms and tell shoppers to shove their holiday cheer right up their plus-sized asses.

            I saw Bad Santa in the theater reluctantly the year it came out. The TV commercials didn’t make it look very good and I didn’t need another silly holiday comedy. But the movie won me over before the opening credits were through. I was blown away by the excellence of the film. It is at the same time incredibly depraved and inspiring. No other movie better captured the dual hatred and love we often feel towards the holidays.

            The forced cheerfulness, the clueless do-gooder religious bleating, the consumerist fervor and the crowded conditions of our roads, trains and stores make all thinking men want to shit on the holidays with fiendish enthusiasm. Yet the undercurrent of holiday cheer is appealing. It is the end of the year harvest festival of the Roman Saturnalia, though colored by the pasted-on veneer of Christian myth. The silver lining to Christmas is that it promotes traditions that help strengthen the family, and it gets you gifts.

It’s for this reason that the next Christmas season I began a tradition of having a holiday party with watching Bad Santa the centerpiece of the event. This past weekend was no different, though many of my friends have now seen the move so many times that they didn’t pay as much attention to the movie, but it never fails to entertain.

If you’re going to watch a special movie for the holidays, there are many to choose from. Watch Bad Santa. It’s a holiday tradition you will want to continue.

A-Hunting You Should Go

New York City has no legal places to hunt and it’s a good thing that we can’t start shooting geese in Central Park or pigeons in Prospect Park. Although one could probably bag a nice wild turkey in Inwood Hill Park if you’re patient enough, it would be a bad idea to take your shotgun on the A train.

But there are plenty of opportunities for city folk to get into hunting. I’m originally from the Big Apple, have been back in the five boroughs 15 years and I’m hooked on hunting for good now. There is fine hunting land upstate, on Long Island and in New Jersey and Connecticut.

Hunting is good for the environment and will get you fresh, free-range meat. I only became interested in hunting over the last few years. I would be hypocrite if I was willing to eat meat and wasn’t willing to go get it. If you’re willing to eat it, you should be willing to kill it.

But the first step to start hunting is to take a free hunter safety class, which you can do throughout New York City. I took both my gun hunting and bow hunting safety courses at different places in Queens.

There are gun ranges in every borough of New York City, so if you can get a gun permit (which takes some doing—New York City’s gun laws are unconstitutionally strict and permit costs can run higher than buying a firearm), you can practice close to home if you live in the Big Apple. But you can also borrow a gun or a bow from a friend who lives outside the city. I go to a friend’s place in Connecticut, which is near a state forest.

            Hunting means you have to be alone in the woods with your cell phone off. You have to be very quiet and observe everything carefully. You will see notice things you haven’t noticed before and wouldn’t notice if you were hiking, camping or fishing. It requires mega amounts of patience, of sitting or standing very still for hours at a time in hopes of seeing a deer.

            I went two years of hunting without getting anything and coming heartbreakingly close to taking deer. That was hours every day for several days in a row, getting lost and coming out of the woods empty handed but still loving it.

            My first year, I was in a perfect position on an elevated ridge when two large deer walked by. When you first see deer that you have a chance to get, your adrenaline soars and your heart pounds furiously and you can hardly get the animal in your sites. I had a great shot on one of the deer and I was following them along. At the last second I stepped on a twig and the two deer bolted, their fluffy white asses taunting me as they ran away.

            The next year, I again had a great spot when three deer walked almost directly in front of me. When I moved ever so slightly to get a good shot on one, they spotted me. One of them screamed (deer can scream and sound like the Muppet Beaker) and my chance was lost again. I didn’t see another deer the rest of that season, and got lost in the woods, three times. It was still fun.

            And this year I made plans well in advance and was in the woods on the first day of the season. I was in a good position and I saw a deer only about a half hour into legal hunting. I shot at it twice, convinced I got a kill shot, but had only lightly grazed the beast. Hours later, after a fruitless search for a dead deer that wasn’t, I was confident that my day was over and was content to laze and doze on my old ridge from my first year.

Later on, early in the afternoon, at time when deer are not usually active, two more came to me. I managed to get off a solid shot on a small button buck. It went down quickly and I gave it extra time to die. I saw where he fell and waited 15 minutes. I found it, feeling proud and sad at the same time. 

My good friend Steve, who got me into hunting, helped me greatly and without his help I would have come home empty handed again. He was hunting nearby and came to help and take my photo with the deer. He showed me some of the finer points of field dressing and soon I was ready to go.

The deer looked small, but didn’t feel very small while I was dragging it out of the woods. In a few days I’ll return to Connecticut and collect a hefty box of delicious venison from a butcher. Our freezer will be full for at least the first part of the winter. And I can’t wait to go back next year. 

Ars Gratia Artis

The gay community is a collective rainbow huff over the movie “Ender’s Game” because Orson Scott Card, the author of the novel on which the movie is based, holds conservative views on gay marriage and homosexuality.  Lots of gays refuse to see the film and some have organized boycotts.

I have not read the book or seen the movie, but I understand it to be science fiction and that it does not overtly or metaphorically address any gay rights issues. It was written decades ago before issues of gay rights were as ubiquitous in our public discourse as they are today. The author is indeed outspoken against gay marriage and gay rights etc.  

People are welcome to boycott any film or book for any reason, but there’s one important element I think that the boycotters are missing. That is: Enjoying a work of art is not an endorsement of the political views of the artist.

I’m all in favor of gay marriage and treating gays equally under the law in all relevant respects, but it’s not something I’m going to let get in the way of reading a book or seeing a movie.

You are free to decide what you want to see or read based on the political views of the creators. But at some point you are going to paint yourself into a corner. You will at some point find yourself patronizing the work of an artist with whom you disagree vehemently.

            And even if Card penned a violent homophobic screed that called for some kind of lavender holocaust, reading it or watching it doesn’t mean you agree with it. Everyone should be willing to challenge themselves and purposely seek out opposing viewpoints in art, politics, religion and all aspects of life. If we can’t listen to the opposition, we can’t form our own arguments thoughtfully.

            But let us also enjoy art for art’s sake. If “Ender’s Game” is a shitty book and movie, let it fail on its own merits, not because you hate the religious or political view of the author.        

            I was disappointed to learn Pablo Picasso was a communist and Louis-Ferdinand Céline was a fascist. It broke my heart to see ZZ Top play the George W. Bush inauguration and to read about Julianne Moore shilling for illegal immigration amnesty. Should I boycott all the works of these artists? No. I disagree with them but my patronage of their work is not an endorsement of their views.

            The case of Alec Baldwin, a bona fide leftist who recently issued a mea culpa for calling a reporter a “cocksucking fag,” scrambled the minds of the powers that be at MSNBC, which suspended his TV show for the offense. But no matter how disgusted you are with him for whatever reason, you can’t deny his acting skills. Does watching his films mean you endorse his leftism or his gay slurs or his unique (gay) marriage of the two? No. You can watch “Glengarry Glenn Ross” guilt-free no matter what your political persuasion.

An artist’s goal is to make art that is powerful enough that it can overcome and outlast the foibles of the artist. Only time will tell. Did Robert Johnson approve of homosexuality? Did Nathaniel Hawthorne believe in equality between the races? Those questions are completely irrelevant to those men’s contributions to the world.

 At some point art and politics must go their separate ways. Whatever your politics, can we least agree that one of the biggest sins of all is limiting your intake of art? 

Our Rich Mafia Life

News from Long Island has come in that John A. Gotti son of the more famous Mafia boss and a one-time Mafia boss himself, was stabbed on Long Island. He survived the attack.

            Gotti Jr. told the police he was stabbed while breaking up a fight between two strangers. Police find that about as believable as him being stabbed by a unicorn.

            When I first moved back to New York, I worked at JFK airport and found a place in Ozone Park, on 101^st Avenue near Woodhaven Boulevard. A few short blocks away was the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club, which had served as John Gotti’s Queens headquarters before he became head of the Gambino Crime Family.

            The fact that we were close to a place of Mafia lore was a selling point.

            “You’ve heard of John Gotti?” the real estate agent asked.

            “Yes,” I said. Who hadn’t?

            “Well his club is right down the street. People know not to mess around here.”

            Gotti had been in prison for years by then, but there were still plenty of wise-guy types around. There were still old men playing cards in the Bergin Hunt and Fish Club when I would walk by. It is long gone now.

Gotti’s headquarters for the time he was the big boss was in Little Italy, the Ravenite Social Club, is now a shoe store. Only the tiled floor remains. John Gotti died in prison, ravaged by cancer, a shadow of the feared “Teflon Don” he was in the 1980s.

For better or worse, New York loves its Mafia heritage. There are tours in Little Italy featuring famous assassination sites. I love it too, no doubt. I was glad to walk by the Bergin Hunt & Fish club and gladly bragged to friends that I was in John Gotti’s neighborhood.

But really, when you get right down to it, the Mafia is bullshit.

We like to imagine the Mafia through the lens of “The Godfather,” the quintessential mob film that popularized the genre and made mobsters look good. It’s a great film. Anyone who doesn’t love “The Godfather” deserves to sleep with the fishes. But “The Godfather” is an accurate portrayal of Mafia life as much as “Star Wars” is an accurate portrayal of the space shuttle Challenger disaster.

The real Mafia is not a collection of earnest Vito Corleones living the American dream, it’s a gaggle of the worst grease ball Goombahs you can imagine but with guns and money. The real Mafia isn’t keeping your neighborhood safe, it’s stealing your car and shaking you down for protection money.

A few years ago I read the book Underboss by Sammy “The Bull” Gravano, who was John Gotti’s lieutenant who eventually turned on him and testified against him. Gravano’s memoir, like anything else told by a career criminal, can’t be taken at face value, but it describes a life not of dapper dons but of sleazy thieves and thugs, always looking for new ways to make money, usually by stealing from others in some way. A piece of shit thief in a tailored silk suit is still a piece of shit thief. 

Save the Tourists (and Airbnb)

Tourists: No other form of life on the New York sidewalks and subways is more simultaneously loved and despised. We love that they are here spending their money and enjoying the wonderment of our city while we hate how they slow us down with their clueless wanderings and slow gait unfamiliar with the pace of city life.

New York needs tourists. Tourism is a central part of the city’s economy and messing with the flow of tourists to New York is effectively kicking the Big Apple squarely in its big balls.

So the New York State Attorney General’s office threatens to throw cold water on this essential industry with its subpoena of Airbnb’s New York State records.

Airbnb is a web site that connects visitors with private hosts who rent out private rooms or apartments, usually for significantly less than hotels cost. The N.Y. Attorney General’s office claims that the platform is being abused by people operating illegal hotels and avoiding hotel taxes.

I did a quick search for hotel room rates in New York City for the first week of March 2014. Prices are higher around the holidays in November and December and the second week of March might see abnormally high rates for people coming for the St. Patrick’s Day Parade. This study was unscientific, and there are web sites like Priceline.com and others that can help you find discounts.

Starting with a non-luxury, well-known hotel chain, the Marriot Marquis in Times Square charges an average of more than $360 per night for one room for two adults with no children. That jumps to more than $430 per night if you want such luxuries as a sofa bed in your room. A Marriott on East 40^th Street got a rate of $206 per room.

Going to the cheaper hotels, Days Inn offered a rate of $131 per night on 94^th Street. The chain charges $95 per night to stay at their hotel at JFK Airport. Nothing at JFK Airport is worth $95 a night unless it comes with a free strippers and cocaine.

A similar search on Airbnb gets you $175 a night for a room near Times Square in Manhattan and as low as $57 per night near JFK. The offerings were scattered and not as numerous to put too much of a dent in the hotel business, judging by the search I did on the web site.

No doubt there are people using Airbnb who are running illegal hotels outside of the legitimate regulation of the law, but there is a way to differentiate between these groups and the people making a few extra bucks renting a room to budget-conscious tourists. And about 90% of the Airbnb hosts are people renting out rooms in the homes they live in.

For whatever its faults, Airbnb is American capitalism and New York ingenuity at its best.  Even with the abuses as they are the city and state gain more than they lose by enabling more tourism. The money tourists don’t spend on hotels they spend on Broadways shows, Yankee games, hot dogs and hookers. Let them. 

Standing Strong on Pier 17

Fried food is the last thing I need to eat, but I needed to eat at a seafood restaurant at the South Street Seaport just to give them my business.

As I approached the Pier 17 mall, I found it surrounded by barricades with the only entrance guarded by a security guard turning people away. He admits that the restaurant is open, but calls it a “café” when it clearly is not.

“I understand there’s one restaurant still open inside,” I said to the guard, who was discouraging someone from entering.

“Well it’s not a restaurant, it’s a café. If you want to check it out it’s on the third floor.”

The restaurant that remains open among dozens of empty storefronts is called ‘Simply Seafood’ and it’s clearly a restaurant like any other food court restaurant in any food court, only this one is the only business left in a large three-level mall at the South Street Seaport.

The restaurant is the lone holdout in a large mall that a developer is trying to tear down. They have a lease and expect it to be honored. The landlord has used illegal and very underhanded tactics to try to remove them, such as locking the doors to the mall and reporting that the restaurant had closed, and is still using dirty tricks today. With shady developers normally getting away with their violations of private property rights in the name of economic development and the city normally either turning a blind eye or helping out in with corrupt deals, the urge to score one for the little guy is immense and well worth the price of fried shrimp.

Howard Hughes Corp. owns the property and wants to build another, fancier mall there. I would hope that if Howard Hughes were alive today he’d throw a jar of his collected urine at the people running this namesake corporation. Howard Hughes didn’t need to harass small business owners; he flew airplanes and banged Katherine Hepburn.

Security guards pace the otherwise empty mall eyeing customers suspiciously. There are bathrooms open on the second floor, but otherwise the mall is a ghost town of abandoned stores, makeshift barricades, ‘No Trespassing’ signs and caution tape.

Despite the best efforts of the rent-a-cops, people continued to come for seafood. The restaurant’s struggle with the landlord generated publicity that has brought some people; it’s why I was there. The allure of touring a mostly-abandoned place brings more, and hopefully the chance to stick it to a real estate Goliath will bring more. New Yorkers can’t help but respect and admire the people who fight for their rights even against overwhelming force.

New York landlords are notorious for their unscrupulous behavior. The price of real estate is so high and both the expenses and potential profits so huge, a hold-out tenant can cost an owner lots of money. In the case of a prime commercial real estate in New York’s tourist-heavy downtown, developers stand to lose millions of dollars if they have to maintain a mostly abandoned building for the next seven years.

A small group of tourists asked the men working why they were the only business still open at the mall.

“We’ve got a lease,” said one of the men. “We’ve have a lease until 2020.”

I had a lunch of friend shrimp and fries. What made it such a delicious meal was helping a determined small business stick to their guns.

As I left the mall, the security guard at the entrance was turning away another group of potential customers, wrongly calling the restaurant a café. But not everyone was turned away, many continued through and moved on to give the restaurant their business, and I hope Simply Seafood is there for a very long time.

Atheist Church: A Most Unholy Dumb Idea

I don’t remember the exact time I converted to atheism, but the September 11 attacks were the nail in the coffin of religious faith for me. The deadliest faith-based initiative in New York’s history, the attacks illustrated religious fundamentalism and proved that human decency and religious faith were two very separate and unequal things.

            For years I had tread that line in the middle of the road as an agnostic, but that’s long over. I don’t believe there is a God or any gods. Of course I could be convinced if presented with evidence of the Devine, but so far none has been forthcoming. It’s not something I like to argue about or point out in conversation; most of my family and friends follow some sort of religion or another. But I left religion behind and never looked back. I gave up church for Lent years ago and my life has been improved.

            So it’s with a church scold’s dismay that I have learned that the “atheist church” that was started in London as a joke has become a real mega church with branches in several cities including New York.

            These gatherings, known as The Sunday Assembly, feature some interesting speakers at times, at least according to their web site, but otherwise seem to promise all the obnoxious kumbaya of hippie-poisoned religion with the self-congratulating zeal of evangelical nonbelievers.

            The atheist church is an illustration of the spineless nature of our times. People want the comforts of religious faith while being able to look down their nose at people with religious faith. They want to revel in the label of atheist while cocooned in a congregation of followers.

            Atheists don’t go to church and that’s one of its greatest benefits. We don’t have to sing hymns or put money into collection plates. Atheism is turning away from the comfort of religious faith because intellectual honesty and cold hard facts make it impossible to accept.

            Be above the constant navel-gazing identity affirmation that gums up so much of the current discourse. Not believing in God is a fine thing, but replacing faith in a mythical creator with an obnoxious need to belong just makes you another weak drone.

            These atheist groups are either a smug mocking of people who are religious or a sad admission that people can’t live without religion. When atheists flock to church, or some sad excuse for a church, they’re trying to have it both ways.

            The whole point of being an atheist is that you can’t be a follower like that. And this whole free-form meeting to read and discuss whatever you want, that’s been done already. The Society of Friends (a Christian denomination) beat you to this racket by almost 400 years, so congratulations: you’re Quakers.

            This is the same garbage attitude that sends people to new age religions. People want the transcendence of spirituality but don’t have the stuffing to make up their minds about the tenets of a religious faith.  

            So please, if you’re an atheist, be an atheist. Atheists don’t go to church. 

Beavers, Vultures and Lemmings in East New York

Beavers, Vultures and Lemmings in East New York

Famous street artist Banksy is currently in New York City leaving works of art here and there, and spectators are flocking to see these pieces.  

Recently he painted a picture of a Beaver on a wall in East New York, a Brooklyn neighborhood bordering Queens that is known for being dangerous. Art gawkers dutifully went there to view the piece, and local East New York residents promptly went about robbing these art tourists, blocking the view of the graffiti art meant to be public and charging people $20 to view it.

It’s to be expected that street criminals will look to make a quick buck off of less-than-streetwise tourists, what makes this latest hustle more bothersome is that it’s won approval from the very class of victims most likely to be taken by the scam. The Gothamist blog called the street thugs “savvy” and many commenters thought that since white people dared to go there to view some art, then they were serving some worthy cause to be ripped off by the locals. I disagree.

Robbery is robbery, and feeling you have a right to rip people off because they’re not from your neighborhood or they don’t look like you is no reason at all. What’s more reprehensible is the multitude of self-hating “enlightened” white people thinking this is a good thing or that local East New York residents have a right to a life of petty crime because of their race or their station in life.

Let the local residents capitalize on the Banksy art legitimately. Set up a food cart there or make picture postcards of the art. There are real ways to make money that don’t involve thuggery and intimidation.

And as for the sorry state of East New York, it wasn’t street artists from England or art enthusiasts from Manhattan who made East New York the way it is today. There are people there who can do better; let them. But treat street hustlers like the low vultures they are.

Cyclist Jerks from Hell

              One fine morning as I was about to cross a street in lower Manhattan and go to work, I had barely stepped off the curb when I heard the thin chimes of a bicycle bell. I looked to see a cyclist moving towards me.

“Get out of the bike lane,” sneered the cyclist as he pedaled past me.

Not only were we not in a bike lane, he was going the wrong way down a one-way street. I stood there flabbergasted as he rolled by. A few seconds later, I heard him ring the tinny bell once again from farther up the street.

That incident pretty much encapsulates much of the New York bicycle situation. A very large segment of the cycling population not only regularly violate all laws of traffic and common sense, they have an entitled attitude about it. They want all the rights of an automobile owner and none of the responsibilities of sharing the road.

Let me iterate that I am not against cycling or cyclists. I have many friends who enjoy riding bicycles and if I didn’t live 16 miles away from work, I’d gladly consider riding a bicycle to and from work. It’s good exercise, better for the environment and all that jazz. When I was a youth I rode a bicycle constantly and terrorized adults and other children with it whenever I could. I’m all in favor of bike lanes, bicycle parking and even the bike sharing programs that are finally starting to take shape in the Big Apple.

A good rule of thumb for cyclists is: If I can’t do it with a car, don’t you try it with a bicycle. That does not apply to keeping the bike in your apartment and walking it on sidewalks etc. If I drove my truck on a sidewalk, ran a red light and then drove the wrong way down a one way street, I’d expect to be arrested for reckless driving. Just because you can do less damage with a bicycle doesn’t excuse you from riding it recklessly, and the Big Apple is sick with reckless cyclists.

Walk the streets of New York and without fail you will see cyclists do one or more of the following routinely: running red lights; riding the wrong way down one-way streets; riding on sidewalks; passing traffic on the right, even passing cars making turns. It’s without fail. If a motorist is making a right turn and I try to pass them on the right, I’d be the biggest jerk in the world, yet a cyclist will yell and pound on a vehicle to protest their imagined “right” to be a reckless idiot. I’ve seen it happen.

They operate on the theory that they are an endlessly persecuted minority and thrive on being the victims of ignorant motorists, homicidal drivers and overzealous police.

In many cases cyclists are treated unfairly. Every cyclist I know has a litany of horror stories that involve being struck by car, hassled by the police or confounded by ignorant pedestrians. People that I know have been the victims of aggressive motorists who think they own the road, and I’ve had to break myself of the habit of prematurely stepping into the street before I have the right of way.

But bicycle culture has given us another urban horror that the city doesn’t need, that of a cyclist every bit as entitled and boorish as the most reckless motorist or thuggish pedestrian.

Witnessed one night on Stanton Street on New York’s Lower East Side: A van was driving the wrong way down this one way street. Next to the van was a man on a bicycle, yelling at the driver of the van for driving the wrong way while also driving the wrong way.

“You’re both going the wrong way,” I said to the man.

“I can do that faggot!” he called to me as he bravely sped away on his bike. Actually he can’t; cyclists have to obey the same rules of the road as cars. And unless he’s just won the Tour de France, a grown man in bicycle shorts has no business calling anyone a faggot. But more to the point, riding the wrong way down a one-way street is especially odious in New York, where pedestrians are accustomed to looking only one way before crossing a street because so many streets are one way. Yet many cyclists do this all the time and think nothing of it. 

Many of the cyclists are good people trying to escape the dual hells of public transit and city driving. I can’t blame them for wanting the freedom to move in a city that is so often confining. But having a smaller carbon footprint doesn’t absolve you from the rules of the road or the precepts of human decency. 

Kosher Pedophilia, NYC Approved

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The U.S. Open is Dumb and Depressing

The U.S. Open is getting underway not far from where I live in Queens, and it means that life for some subway commuters is going to get more difficult for the next few weeks.

There’s not much of a reason to watch tennis except to gawk at women in short skirts, and you can do that anywhere for free. I’m sure for fans of the sport in New York, the Open is a great opportunity to see some great masters of the game up close, but it’s not an interesting enough game for the price you pay. You can watch it on TV for free.

What the U.S. Open does for the many riders of the 7 train is flood our already overburdened subway with gaggles of U.S. Open attendees who do not know how to ride the subway.

I’m sure you’re thinking, ‘Riding a subway is easy. How can someone mess that up?’ Well, they manage. The tennis fans headed to the U.S. Open are easy to spot on the 7 train. Whereas the afternoon and evening 7 train is usually filled with haggard working people tired after a day at work and quietly waiting to get home, the tennis fans move as gaggles of cheery chatterboxes, filling the air with their inane conversations.

Tennis fans have every right to their inanity of course, but they are thoroughly unversed in the concepts of being courteous to others in a public space. Riding the subway is a quaint slumming experience for them, and their mannerisms betray them at every turn. They constantly lean on subway polls or spread out over spaces meant to accommodate several people. They constantly delay trains by hesitatingly getting on and off of a subway as they are unsure if they are on the right train or at the right stop.

On Main Street, Flushing the other day, I made my way to the subway for the second leg of my three-leg commute to work. A pair of older gentlemen made their way down the sidewalk among the throngs of Asian immigrants. They wore overpriced athletic gear though they looked like they had not exercised in years. One of them was bald but had hair around the edges of his head, and that hair had been dyed the color of a tennis ball.

Something about the soul-deadening luxury of the event and the blank eyes of many of the tennis fans that makes me vow that if I ever have enough money to attend the U.S. Open, I still won’t. I’d rather not be among people who can’t figure out how to use public transportation. 

The Cold Harsh Light of City Lights

            I have not visited San Francisco without visiting City Lights Books; I’d feel guilty not visiting if I’m there. It’s a great rite of passage for any lover of the written word.

            So it was with usual enthusiasm that I entered again on my most recent trip to California and the great city of sourdough.

            City Lights is well known for its fiction and poetry. It is of historic note as a center of the Beat writers and it is owned by the still-living beat writer and poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti (his book of poems A Coney Island of the Mind is one of the best ever by the beat generation).  

           

            Looking at the political books near the register, there was no attempt at balance. There was the latest from an aging academic and Soviet apologist, a diatribe from a racism hustler gloating over the demographic changes in the U.S., and the usual suspects. I bear no grudge against my many leftist friends and there are many left-wing causes I agree with, but a good bookstore will try to provide some balance, and you couldn’t balance this bookshelf if you put Mein Kampf on it. A bookstore has a right to stock whatever it wants on its shelves and I’m sure most of City Light’s customers gladly drink what passes for the “progressive” Kool-Aid today. But would it hurt to stock some opposing viewpoints? Politically speaking, our literary world has become an echo chamber of self-hating marshmallows.

            The upstairs room is dedicated to poetry and to the Beat writers. A chair by one of the bookshelves had a sign on it that read ‘Sit Down and Read a Book.’ The larger rocking chair next to it had ‘Poet’s Chair’ painted on it. I decided to sit there, since I do indeed write poetry. I picked up a book of poetry from a nearby table that looked interesting. It was a large but not thick book that had an interesting cover with what looked like a bloody doll or puppet on it. I don’t remember the poet’s name. I sat down and read some poetry and realized the stuff I write is better. I turned the book over and read the brief blurb about the author: someone with a predictable pedigree of the literary establishment and not the poetry power to match it.   

            But a good literary scene happens when people go off on their own and take inspiration from the real world around them. Flocking to a bookstore because Allen Ginsberg once took a shit there doesn’t promote good writing.

            I was no longer in the magical place of wanderlust young poets. I was in a retail store that helped suck the life out of literature by cashing in on long-dead celebrities and following the same institutional claptrap that would have made Jack Kerouac puke in his backpack.

There is a fine line between inspiration and commoditized hero worship. My latest trip to City Lights made me believe the venerated bookstore had crossed the line. But then again, it’s a business. It knows we’ll keep buying books there. I’m guilty as charged. I bought a large R. Crumb coffee table book and Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil.

            City Lights Books inspired me once again, but differently than in years past. I left with a determination that the current guardians of our culture’s literary estate need to have their throats cut. Let the call go out in America today for a ninja army of a new vanguard who will make poetry and literature real to people again, and not the province of the sad sacks of coffee shops and admissions offices. Great writers don’t eat tofu. Great writers eat sausage, spinach and pussy.

            American once found its writers among its strongmen, housewives, sailors and hardscrabble journalists. It will once again. 

Happy Summertime, New York

New York in the summer is for oppressive heat and simmering anger, for being tempted with the sights of more female flesh while blanketed with heat and the sweaty intrusions of more people.

City life is a trial of patience and suffering in the summer. Concrete and blacktop absorb and reflect the heat, exhaust fumes are trapped by tall buildings, and everything in the city is hotter than everywhere else. Cramped onto subways and busses, we bristle at the sweaty touch of others, suffering further in one another’s vulgar heat.

Summer tests everyone’s patience. The heat and humidity magnify the unending slights and annoyances that are the fuel of city angst. The unavoidable heat and its sweaty unpleasantness works to erode our patience and our souls boil over with anger and white-hot rage almost daily.

The sad realization of summer hit me just yesterday while I stood waiting for the 7 train in Flushing. The 7 train is populated mostly by Asians with sharp elbows who scramble for seats that they’ll only sit in for about 25 minutes at most and are less comfortable than standing. I prefer to stand so I can read the paper and not fight for a seat. But like other subway lines, the 7 train is a strange beast that operates on its own whims and curses its riders with frequent malfunctions. I was jolted to the realization of summer while standing and waiting for the subway at Main Street, which is underground – most of the 7 line is above ground. “Signal problems” caused a delay in subway service, and there was little to do but stand motionless and suffer as the platform became more crowded and sweat soaked through your clothes.

            Summer in the city has its fun moments. It’s sometimes nice to stay in the city while everyone else is away, especially Labor Day weekend to end the summer season. New York is forever populated with young women and the degeneration of our society has dictated that popular fashion becomes more and more revealing with each summer season.

             But at some point, you must leave New York City for at least 48 consecutive hours every summer in order to preserve some shred of sanity. Being baked in a concrete, glass and body odor oven for three and a half months will make even the strongest person go mad.

            I’m going to Connecticut to light off explosives with a few good friends and then to California where I will try to trace the steps of Henry Miller and light bonfires in tribute to John Steinbeck and the ghosts of Portuguese whalers. But I shall return soon to our sweat-soaked city to grab it by the throat once again.  

How to Go Crazy Properly

I sat in a room full of very well-behaved financial professionals and analysts wondering why no one was going insane. It was a day like any other and it was a financial conference in Manhattan didn’t suddenly give in to the orgiastic wills of the dozens of assembled people.

Most of us lose our minds at one point or another but almost always too slowly to register to the outside world. We let our own fears and disappointments torture and kill us, carving our minds and souls to shredded pulps.

Given the state of the world, I’m surprised more and more people aren’t dropping out of civilized society by going crazy. Many times I find myself in a situation where people’s acceptance of what’s given to them or the state of their surroundings is maddening and ought to result in a violent outburst of creative violence, but it never happens. And if it did, it would never be contained enough to be justified and righteous.

So even though I sympathize with crazy to the nth degree and feel the temptation to bring that measured and sane violence to our insane world, I can’t stand the people who force their insanity on the world around them.

The people who scream and rave in public, who throw themselves in front of trains or off of buildings, are childish egotists who think they are special enough to force others to notice them and rearrange their lives for them. You have every right to be crazy and are probably right to be insane, but force yourself on others and you’re not better than the rest of the cruel, cruel world, probably worse. That is one reason we have art, music and literature: it’s how we turn the pain of being alive into something worth living for.

You have to embrace your insane rage in the right way. The only worse than letting your insanity kill you is letting it make you an egocentric asshole first. 

The Fine Art of Not Belonging

One of the perks of working as a financial journalist is that you sometimes get to go to parties in nice places where food and drink are free. It doesn’t make up for working for years without a raise and being in constant fear of being laid off, but it’s nice nonetheless.

Last evening was one such party, a charity event put on by people in finance.

Ostensibly my coworker and I were there to meet people that would help us do our job. Schmoozing with financial people is part of my job, but it’s a part of the job that I am bad at.

I dressed well enough and was pleasant and polite and still had no hopes of blending in. Members of the financial class are their own race, though they are made of different races. They can look through you as if you are not there and walk with a confidence that bristles with a condescending hostility and feels perpetually offensive and false. I wore a nice suit but maybe there was something in the way I said thank you to the caterers, or the fact I thanked them at all, that gave me away as decidedly not one of the financial class.

There’s nothing wrong with finance, but the people who work in the higher echelons of finance today are not cut from the same material as the people who invent things or pioneered and forged new industries. They are custodians of other people’s money and often speak in a gloating jargon that moves lots of money but creates little of value. I’m sure many of them are decent people and good at their job, but they do not possess the fire of the technology entrepreneurs or venture capitalists I met during previous jobs.

After thirteen years of working in financial journalism, I have actually gotten worse at the art of fitting in at these types of gatherings. My motivation for the easy smile and the glad-handed talk has waned. But I am glad not to fit in among this alien class. Somehow I feel that in the important calculus of life I’ll have more to show for it at the unspoken reckoning at the verge of the great beyond.

I ate as many miniature lobster rolls as I could without making a spectacle of myself and made my discreet exit after putting in a respectable amount of time at the event. I briefly enjoyed the sights of the city on the first really warm evening of the spring before making my descent to the subway for home.