I cant wait to find out what I was doing in New York in the era that preceded this pandemic. To discover exactly what New York was like at a time in which I was its resident, to flit vicariously through those magical years of my prior first-person experience; to be given a context, provided a backdrop, a soundtrack to the life that Ill find out I had been leading. What zeitgeist will I soon be told defined my generation? What image will be chosen as the cover for my memoir?

When Bob Dylan sang that he was going back to New York City, I intended to go back there with him.

And while its true that memoir will largely have been ghostwritten, that shouldnt make it any less an evocative entry into the canon of Urban Non-Fiction. Think Patti Smiths Just Kids, but replace punk rock with to-be-determined transgressive art movement to which Ill eventually be claiming a retroactive affiliation.

Just as the coronavirus outbreak is reshaping New York Citys future, so too it will reach backward to largely redefine its past a past Ill be thrilled to have been a part of.

Im willing to wager that the pre-quarantine city will turn out to have been someplace essential and, as someone who lived there and moved about freely, Im excited to get to know why. Why that New York City was the real New York City, and why Im sorry to tell you: You missed it.

Which probably requires something in the way of explanation.

For as many years as Ive lived in New York, Ive been plagued by the nagging notion that I arrived in the city too late. A persistent insecurity that the city Id moved to for was not the city that Id moved to. The former being, in all fairness, not really a city at all more an anachronistic amalgamation of selected media imagery, a Scorsese-fied version of a gritty urban landscape that was one part Joseph Mitchell, two parts David Byrne and three parts dependent on whatever drugs Lou Reed was doing at the time.

But imagined or not, it was a city that struck me as vital, a sprawling concrete majesty of unimpeachable artists and impossible con-men, of graffiti-tagged subways and smoke-filled back rooms, of indescribable wealth tinged with a seductive seediness that seemed to reek of the human condition. It was the city of CBGBs and the Lower East Side, of chronic rolling blackouts ending dog-day afternoons. It was Phillip Roth and Debbie Harry and Allen Ginsberg in the Village, it was Harlem, it was Warhol, it was Katzs Jewish Deli. It was a place, it seemed, where life could be easy if one accepted that life would be hard, a place where a precocious philosophy minor could aspire to something authentic.

It was a city whose past I mythologized into a photo collage of my future, a place where my technical lack of career wouldnt mean Id have nothing to do. I would drink at the bar of the White Horse Tavern and Id buy Dylan Thomas a whiskey. I would eat lunch suspended on a wrought-iron beam hanging thousands of feet above Midtown. I would steal a guitar and Id dye my hair black and theyd christen me Timmy Ramone. When Bob Dylan sang that he was going back to New York City, I intended to go back there with him.

But by the time that I got there, that New York City was gone.

At least thats what everyone kept telling me. Which didnt feel, at least to me, an assertion necessarily borne out by the facts.

On the contrary: my formative years spent in New York City years in which I was lucky enough to not pay utilities due to my apartments steadfast inability to comply with the stickier standards of human habitability felt flush with the possibilities that Id always imagined of a life in the city. The buildings were as big, the subways were as crowded I met an old man at a day-drinking-dive-bar who claimed that hed known Dylan Thomas. I was young, I was poor, and I was living under a brothel. Replace long-form improvised poetry with short-form improv comedy and I was basically living Just Kids.

At least, I thought I was.

Yet at every turn I took I was met with the refrain that the New York that I had dreamed about was dead. Regardless of the source, the message was clear: New York used to be something and now it just wasnt. It was seemingly accepted as an a priori truth that old New York had been subsumed by something different, something corporate, something vacuous a playground for the rich, as one pejorative-du-jour put it.

There were thousands of essays titled Why Im Leaving New York. Could all of them really be wrong?

The metaphors were as varied as the speakers who espoused them. Some focused-in on the Disney-fication of Times Square, once a bustling porn emporium, now a whitewashed tourist Mecca (although that veneer would occasionally be shattered by a shoddily-costumed, ubiquitous army of Elmos). Others lamented the Giuliani-imposed exile of the Midtown squeegee men, a ragtag group of guerilla extortionists expert in the provision of both non-consensual windshield washings and expletive-laden demands for recompense. For those with a penchant for heavy-handed symbolism, CBGBs had been acquired by a high-end mens clothier, one specializing in the punk-rock aesthetic. The specifics would differ but the consensus was clear: Somewhere along the way, New York City had lost its soul a consensus that I rejected outright, yet one that somehow managed to take root.

Despite my best efforts to dismiss those assertions as the sour-grape-grumblings of a dying generation, try as I might to dispel any notion that the citys best days were behind it, each successive year that I spent in New York made me wonder if those pronouncements held true. Had the heart of New York City been priced out of its apartment? Was its culture now co-opted by some faceless corporate interest?

There were thousands of essays titled Why Im Leaving New York. Could all of them really be wrong? And what, after all, could I offer as evidence to the contrary? I loved New York City and it never disappointed, but could I also say it met my expectations?

My expectation being that the city would look like something out of a Robert Mapplethorpe retrospective, the reality, as I found it, was that New Yorkers spent a vastly disproportionate amount of time commuting to work and just buying groceries than they did lounging on fire-escapes while staring blankly into a camera and smoking in black and white. Where was the action, what was the scene, when would short form improv penetrate the broader culture? Did I need to acknowledge that the naysayers were right? Could it be that New York City was dead?

The answer, it turns out, was Nope. Quite the opposite, in fact. It turns out that the New York that I was living in had never been more vital. And I would soon learn why.

At the time of this writing, New York is in what appears to be an early-stage recovery from the crux of its viral pandemic. And while it remains to be seen just what city will emerge in the wake of this transformative crisis, what is certain is that it will be different. Which means it will be almost certainly better. Which will make it most assuredly worse. Which probably requires something in the way of explanation.

The simple truth is that New York City has never been a real-time phenomenon. Its a narrative created in hindsight, a curated series of revisionist histories that contrast the truth of the present. And it is in that contrast that those histories are defined, what it is versus what was. The citys future is often a construct of chance and its present is out on display. But its past is whatever we want it to be and thus so are our pasts within it.

The story of New York has always been told through its artists, but its a story that tends to be written much later, in the liner notes of future generations

Were constantly recreating the lives that weve lived in response to the lives that were living and, as the years of our future become those of our past, those lives become, more and more, a blank canvas true, of course, regardless of location, but you dont write Just Kids in Montana.

The creation of a New York City existence is a unique and deliberate thing, at least for those of us susceptible to that particular mythology of the city that places outsized emphasis on squalor and artistic freedom. Its an exercise in the selective juxtaposition of what used to be with what is, and when what used to be has been replaced, its value sees an ex-post-facto spike. It is, in a sense, a specialized form of delusion, a specific nostalgia for those things that were bad, precisely because they werent good. (And quite literally so: the era of squeegee men and all-access porn is now referred to, wistfully and with reverence, as the Bad Old Days of New York, because a New York City that was bad is also one that was authentic and authenticity trumps progress.

Sure, its nice to have a Duane Reade on the corner of 125th and Lexington. But now where will Lou Reed go to buy heroin? And is it even really heroin if it comes home in an Uber? Duke Ellington used to ride a crowded subway uptown, because of that we now have Take the A Train. Bono decided that he could just call Via and now were stuck with Angel of Harlem.

The struggle of New York gives New York its essence. Essence is the opposite of easy. A New York City thats easy isnt really New York City, its just another place to charge your iPhone. Theres a reason, after all, why the lyric isnt: If I can make it here that success will be in no way indicative of any future achievement in larger markets A life in New York City is supposed to be hard thats how you know its a life!

And life was so much harder in New York before you got here and thats what made the city so much better.

This crisis has locked us in a clear moment in time a process that would otherwise take decades. We get to engage in our revisionist histories while those histories are still cooling in the window. A life in New York City is usually one years spent in the making. After all, if one is going to create a past out of a repudiation of the present, then one had better leave some breathing room between the two, enough time, at least, for the edges to have blurred, to make ones claims more difficult to fact-check.

To wit: it seems to be a point of pride among aging New York punk musicians that they never really learned to play their instruments, which, forty years later, in a Village Voice interview, sounds irreproachably recalcitrant and pure. But forty years earlier, down the street from your apartment, it likely sounded more like awful music. We pine for the days of the White Horse Tavern, with its tables full of Boho Literati. But back then those were simply alcoholics wearing watchmens caps, drinking cheap gin on a Tuesday. The picture needs to fade a bit before it looks vintage. Ones generation wont be defined for generations, or until a once-in-a-century viral pandemic hits the city. And then youve got a clear before and after. And it is in some middle ground between those two where we find ourselves today.

The only path forward out of this bind seems to be a dramatic restructure the times, as they say, are a changin. (Although if Bob Dylan were truly prophetic, his opening exhortation to come gather round people, wherever you roam would have concluded with but please maintain at least a six-foot distance) This virus is an agent of irrevocable change. It will leave behind a vastly different city. And while it is difficult to ascertain just what that city will be staring, as we are, through the lenses of glasses that are consistently fogged-up by mask-breath we do know that it will look different. If the history of New York can be predictive of its future, the city will look better. But only objectively so. And just like a New Yorker, in true New York fashion, Ill be longing for those things that were worse.

Things like the subway.

As it was recently announced, for the first time in its history, New York subways will stop running after midnight. Night service will be paused so that the train cars may be cleaned. If COVID wants a ride uptown, it can Uber-share with Bono. The result of the service stoppage will be a cleaner, safer subway. Yet it will leave us with a subway thats not in any way worth taking. The subway is a proxy for the city. And a subway that is dirty means a city that is honest. When you clean the grime, you wash away the soul. Cleanliness, as they say, is next to godliness but only when it comes out of a mold-laden squeegee thats been soaking in stale hot-dog-water run-off.

The subway is essential not in spite of the urine. Its the urine that reminds us that were living!

How can one say that theyre experiencing life if they arent forced to sit in its waste products? The trains should hold a mirror to the city that they service. Yes, the D train may be gross, but so then is humanity! When you sanitize the subway so you sterilize the city. Its the subway, after all, its not the Monorail through Epcot.

Of course, all of the preceding will thus be rendered moot if there is nowhere left to take the subway to, when anywhere that once was good is gone. Or, if not gone, then at a minimum not the same which, when said with a dismissive snort and pompous grin, might be New Yorks most withering indictment. After all, a restaurant that has been strategically restructured so as to not be conducive to the immediate spread of a highly communicable and potentially life-threatening illness is just a fancy way of saying Applebees. And I can go to Applebees in Jersey.

Dining out in New York used to be a communal endeavor in fact, that was largely the point: to share cocktails and ideas within coughing distance of your neighbor, to wink at posted Occupancy Limits as ironic urban kitsch, to Heimlich yourself into the edge of your table whenever anyone got up to use the bathroom. But we were just so immersed in the energy of the city! We were all having one conversation! is the narrative I imagine that well land on later. We were always within a transmissions distance of some artist, rogue, or poet just please dont ask us yet for the specifics.

Because, at the time of this writing, every New Yorker is still in the process of workshopping their chronologically-undebatable-enough-so-as-to-not-invite-further-scrutiny anecdote about the time they spilled a drink on some generationally-transformative-artist-who-back-then-was-not-yet-famous in the basement of whatever-formerly-crowded-dive-bar-is-now-a-socially-distant-Chicos. (Im thinking that mine will have something to do with LCD Soundsystem in Brooklyn. But these works, as I say, are in progress)

And, speaking of art!

The story of New York has always been told through its artists think Basquiat, Beastie Boys, Baldwin. But its a story that tends to be written much later, in the liner notes of future generations at least for those artists who have been extended the cachet of being underappreciated in their own time. At their height, the Velvet Underground did not sell many records. But now everybody claims they knew Lou Reed.

Which is why I am perhaps most excited to find out about the to-be-determined transgressive art movements to which I will surely lay claim, the representative ethos of my generation that could not have existed today. Fingers crossed that it has something to do with unscripted comedy. After all, if theres anything thats unlikely to return in the form in which it existed, its amateur performances in windowless basements next to crates of unthawing mozzarella sticks. Its only a matter of time before they get recontextualized as outsider art.

Whatever it turns out that New York used to be, Im just happy that I was there for it. It was a magical time in an incredible place and one that well never get back to. So enjoy your time in the city, kid, just know that its not what it was. Because that New York City was the real New York. And Im sorry to tell you: you missed it.

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Things Are Different Today, Back In Old New York - The Indypendent

The past two weeks have seen the resignations of two powerful Jewish female voices: former New York Times editor and columnist Bari Weiss, and former University of Southern California student government vice president Rose Ritch. Weiss and Ritch both cited outright hostility against their Jewish identities and solidarity with the State of Israel as the reasons for their decisions to step down from their positions.At first glance, both women appear to check all of the requisite boxes on the progressive checklist of suitable qualifications to hold such positions. Weiss cites her accomplishments of bringing in political dissidents, minority voices and other voices that would not otherwise appear in your pages, while Ritch cites her plurality of identities including queer, femme or cisgender as rendering her qualified as electable when the student body voted last February.Yet in her resignation letter excoriating the blatant hypocrisy she had experienced during her tenure at the Times, Weiss signals that the lessons about the importance of understanding other Americans, the necessity of resisting tribalism and the centrality of the free exchange of ideas to democratic society have not been learned.Both Weiss and Ritch assert that it is their respective Jewish identities that have led to their verbal harassment and vilification in the physical and virtual space. Ritchs critics argue that her support for Israel has rendered her complicit in racism and by consequence guilty of espousing racist ideology. In her resignation letter, Ritch cites an aggressive social media campaign designed to impeach her Zionist ass, despite university claims to nurture an environment of mutual respect and tolerance.Similarly, in her letter of resignation, Weiss cites constant bullying by colleagues who disagreed with her views. They have called me a Nazi racist, chiding her about writing about the Jews again. In addition, several of her colleagues insisted that Weiss be rooted out if the company is to be a truly inclusive publication.As David Suissa, editor-in-chief of the Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, so keenly identifies in his recent article assessing Ritchs resignation, Arguably the worst insult in America today racist is being weaponized against Jews who have the nerve to support the existence of a Jewish state.The irony of this statement cannot be understated, and the inherent perils that the current climate of cancel culture presents cannot be ignored. In an environment where monuments are being torn down and, in the case of USC, buildings are being renamed in a campus-wide effort to right the wrongs of historic fascist and even Nazi affiliations, antisemitic rhetoric can no longer be given a pass.THE ATTACKS on Ritch are part of the broader corrosive influence of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement that has permeated the mainstream of progressive consciousness. By suggesting that Ritchs support for a Jewish homeland would somehow render her unfit for office or justify her impeachment in effect resurrects the oldest of Dreyfus Affair level antisemitic tropes that call into question the primary loyalties of Jews who hold public office and holding Jews responsible for the actions of the Israeli government. Political disagreements have always fueled the fabric of intellectual debate and especially on a college campus. Yet in Ritchs case, labeling her Zionism as racism effectively silenced her voice in the debate and rendered her fair game to be canceled under the guise of political correctness, which bends far toward the side of the anti-Israel narrative.What we are witnessing is a collective silencing of those who do not hold these toxic antisemitic views by those who do, ironically similar to the voices of moderate Islam squelched by the voices of extremism. Throughout modern history, intellectual curiosity and a sense of civic responsibility to repair what was broken in society were pursuits identified with both the college campus (think Berkeley of the 60) and the printing press (thing Enlightenment). Yet, what we are seeing on college campuses and in the press is a narrowing of the acceptable definition of woke consciousness, where membership is qualified by an asterisk that Jews need not apply.Our nation is at a crossroads with an upending of long-held beliefs, practices and even social institutions being questioned and redefined to fit the zeitgeist of the current political climate. We are not exempt from these vital conversations, nor should we shirk from necessary inward introspection as we strive to repair a world so broken by racism, elitism and discrimination. However, it is incumbent upon us to root out the misguided and misinformed ideology that has led to the resignation of these two powerful and important voices, and to decry all antisemitic rhetoric at every occurrence with a zero-tolerance policy. After all, If I am not for myself, who will be for me? But if I am only for myself, who am I? If not now, when? (Ethics of the Fathers, 1:14)The writer is an associate director of the USC Casden Institute, and lecturer of Hebrew language at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Los Angeles.

Excerpt from:

Bari Weiss, Rose Ritch resign after harassed over their Jewish identities - The Jerusalem Post

Dubbed by men in the music industry as too angry and man-hating, Helen Reddys 1971 feminist anthem I Am Woman rose to the top of the Billboard chart and became the sound of a movement. The story behind the song and the woman who wrote and performed ir is explored in the new biopic I Am Woman, starring Tilda Cobham-Hervey (Hotel Mumbai) in the titular role.

A struggling artist, Reddy left her native Australia for the heartbeat of the music industry in the United States and was unsurprisingly met with sexism. Her musical response to male executives controlling the narrative about women artists place in the industry dovetailed with the rise of the womens rights movement. The song became a number 1 hit and a cultural phenomenon and it made Reddy a star. She won the Grammy Award for Best Pop Vocal Performance, Female in 1972.

Reddy went on to record other hits, including Angie Baby and Aint No Way to Treat a Lady, but nothing matched the influence of I Am Woman influence as part of the zeitgeist of the era.

The film, from director Unjoo Moon, costars Danielle Macdonald (Dumplin, Patti Cake$) and Evan Peters (American Horror Story).

Watch the trailer for I Am Woman below.

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Helen Reddy & Her '70s Feminist Anthem Roar in Trailer for I Am Woman - Advocate.com

In America today, personal gain and economic advantage often trump social responsibility and concern for the commonwealth. In America, it depends on who you are. And who you are, very much depends on where you stand socioeconomically. As Edward Burmila put it recently, you are only as free as you are wealthy. For proof, look at what has happened during the pandemic: the economic elite has gotten richer, and people of limited financial means have died disproportionately.

Yes, life is worth living (per Fulton J. Sheen), but life is worth losing, too (per George Carlin). Sheens Life is Worth Living was a popular, 1950s television program. Life is Worth Losing is Carlins 2005 comedy album. Seemingly disconnected public expressions tell a tale about America. Its a tale about how a minority group has gained control of American society. Its a tale of subversion, strategy, and persistence. Regaining the edgevital for democracycertainly wont be easy and probably wont happen soon even if Trump exits The White House.

Life is Worth Living featured a Roman Catholic priest, the Reverend Fulton J. Sheen. Featuring isnt the right word: Sheen was the show. Televised nationally from 1952-57, LWL drew as many as 30 million weekly viewers. With hypnotic gaze, riveting presence, and resplendent dress, Sheen used a chalkboard to etch his arguments. In the episode shown here, Sheen launches into a lecture about the right to own property and rails against excessive wealth, calling it Monopolistic Capitalism. Sheen asserts that those who enable the accumulation of wealth (that is, employees) should share equitably in owners profits. To make that happen, Sheen supports participatory management and co-ownership of industry. Speaking professorially through most of the program, Sheen becomes emotional at the end.

Sheens program aired during the McCarthy Yearsa time when fear-mongering and conspiracy theories were the coin of the realm, and critiques of American capitalism werent taken lightly. But Sheen, who was staunchly anti-communist, stood above the fray.

Ill bet that Sheen was a Democratic Socialist long before that term came into public use. At issue is what America might have become had it pursued Sheens line of thinking. It didnt.

As we reflect on what Sheen said nearly seven decades ago, we know his thoughts arent unfamiliar. Ill bet that Sheen was a Democratic Socialist long before that term came into public use. At issue is what America might have become had it pursued Sheens line of thinking. It didnt.

Enter Life is Worth Losing, a George Carlin comedy album recorded in late 2005 and co-presented as an HBO special. In one routine, Dumb Americans, Sheen explains why dumbness serves an important political purpose. He calls it The Reason (listen, 6:40ff). The owners of Americathe wealthyown you, Carlin proclaims. They dont want people capable of critical thinking. They dont want educated people. Why? Its against their interests. They dont want people sitting around the kitchen table talking about how badly theyre getting (F-bomb) by the system. They want people who are just smart enough to do their jobs, but not smart enough to question whats happening to them. (Dumb Americans had 11,682,000 views on YouTube as of August 8, 2020.)

Carlin believed Americas wealthy minority (and their compatriots) had taken control by subverting systems in their favorthings like pouring money into elections to support candidates wholl do their bidding, engaging in electoral subterfuge (e.g., gerrymandering, voter suppression), getting their people in executive posts across sectors, and dominating organizational boards, locally and nationally. Theyre also adept at taking advantage of Americans soft spotsgood at throwing bones (e.g., tax cuts), using scare tactics (e.g., others ideas are radical), blowing dog whistles (e.g., White America is in jeopardy), and diverting attention from matters they dont want in the spotlight (e.g., Trumps tweets).

Yes, its about money and the influence that comes with it, but its about much more than that. These folks have a game plan, an associated set of strategies and tactics, and momentum, too50-years worth.

A half-century ago, a man by the name of Lewis F. Powell (soon to be U.S. Supreme Court justice) was flummoxed by successes achieved by the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. He was also perturbed that one of his own, namely Richard Nixon, had the audacity to establish the Environmental Protection Agency.

Powell believed firmly that social causes were dominating public and political attention, and he wanted to change that predilection. As counterstrategy, Powell proposed that the Conservative and business community embark on an organizing effort to serve commercial interests. In 1971, he wrote a 34-page treatise entitled, Attack on the Free Enterprise System (referred to generally as The Powell Report). In it, Powell wrote expressively and persuasively about how forces were conspiring against free enterprise. He submitted the report to the leadership of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, ending the missive with these words: The business and enterprise system are in deep trouble and the hour is late. (italics added)

Greenpeace has called the Memo a corporate blueprint to dominate democracy. It is that and more. Three things are apparent if you take the time to read Powells memo. First, Powell wrote in detail and across sectors about specific things that needed to be done. Second, if you reverse the timeframestarting with today and looking backyoull be amazed at how many of the things Powell referenced in general terms have become a reality (e.g., tax cuts, smaller government, Fox News, Citizens United, painting higher education as liberal). Third, Powell had clear sailing. While the Left has had episodic successes over the past half-century, it didnt (and doesnt) have a coherent, strategic, and sustained approach to achieving preferred objectives.

Without counterforce, the circumstances referenced by Sheen and Carlin have become deeply ingrained in Americas culture. Understanding just how deep is like peeling an onion: just when you think youve uncovered the revealing layer, another layer awaits. One example is systemic racism, a topic that is getting plenty of attention these days and for good reasons. But in her new book, Caste: The Origins of Our Discontent, Isabel Wilkerson contends theres much more to the story. Sunil Khilnani describes it this way: Racism is only the visible manifestation of something deeper. Underlying and predating racism, and holding white supremacy in place, is a hidden system of social domination: a caste structure (italics added) that uses neutral human differences, skin color among them, as the basis for ranking human value.

Maintaining social divisions, then, becomes le passe-temps de choix (the pastime of choice). Too many Americans seek rewards that, by design, flow to the few. In an exchange transaction, affluent Americans give back to society. But as Anand Giridharadas writes in Winners Take All, a good share of that philanthropy isnt about changing the system so that more people can live The American Dream. Its about helping people cope with the system that exists (a caste system in Wilkersons parlance).

Long before Wilkerson and Giridharadas were writing, two other messengersone sacred (Sheen), the other profane (Carlin)delivered similar messages. Fulton J. Sheen framed it discerningly, Monopolistic Capitalism. George Carlin called it out. The system is rigged, and the tables are tilted.

The zeitgeist then is the zeitgeist today. Americans have tons of skin in the game. We rely on others wealth for jobs and promotions, in politics, at nonprofits, at universities, and more. When it comes to power, influence, and (in many ways) control, America as plutocracy trumps America as democracy.

What are the odds of that changing? Without a Progressive coup, theres no chance at all. Yes, there have been and will be episodic wins, but Americas moneyed interests dont worry about losing a battle here and there. What matters is winning the war. And they are.

Frank Fear

You can listen to this article on Anchor, Apple, and other podcast platforms. Tune to Under the Radar with Host Frank Fear.

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Sheen and Carlin Had 2020 (In)Sight - LA Progressive