Last Night at the Rawhide

The Rawhide: soon to be turned into another high-rise, Starbucks, Duane Reade, bank,
Pinkberry, 16 Handles, cupcake store or all of the above.

Why am I sad about the closing of a bar I haven't been to in years?

Why am I sad about the closing of a bar where, the last time I went there, I was robbed?

Why am I sad about the closing of a bar whose customers I regularly warned to hold onto their wallets?

Maybe it's because it will probably be turned into another high-rise, Starbucks, Duane Reade, bank, Pinkberry, 16 Handles, cupcake store or all of the above.

Maybe it's because its closing symbolizes the latest step in the homogenization, gentrification and Cleveland-ization of New York City.

Maybe it's because it's the latest example of the cruel calculus of capitalism.

Are those the only two choices in the zero-sum game of our New Economy: crime-filled wastelands or Disney-fied shopping malls?

I walked into the Rawhide on its last day of business in late afternoon, laden with shopping bags from Dave's Army Navy store and Bed Bath & Beyond, for a last glimpse. Inside it was pitch black and crowded, but I could see that they had already started to dismantle the bar in preparation for its closing. The pool table was gone, as were the pinball machines and, of course, the iconic motorcycle which used to hang above the pool table had already been auctioned off.

I walked back out into the bright sunlight. It was too depressing, the years rushing past.

I walked back onto the newly heterosexualized sidewalks of Eighth Avenue, with its generic high-rises, its double-wide strollers and its kids on scooters and for a second I wondered, “Am I a part of the problem?”

So I walked over to Hudson River Park with my modern-day comforts of choice, a cup of coffee and a blueberry muffin, and wrote this story.

The Last Days of Bleecker Bob's

Bleecker Bob's, about to become a frozen yogurt store..

Today I had a depressing tour of some of the last remaining record stores in the Village: Rebel Rebel, Bleecker Street Records, Record Runner, Generation Records, Sounds and Bleecker Bob's. When these stores are gone, something else will be lost besides the ability to buy a record or CD from a bricks-and-mortar store. What will be lost will be another opportunity for human contact, the thrill of finding a certain record or CD after searching all over for it. Indeed, in the Age of the Internet, the whole concept of "hidden gem" or "best kept secret" has been lost.

A woman working at Bleecker Bob's (JK in the following video) told me that there's a documentary about the store on YouTube. Here's the link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iwHtZjMMvs4

Rude or Autistic?

This weekend I was awakened, not once but twice, by someone playing the piano in the park in front of my apartment building. The first time it happened, I emailed one of my neighbors who’s active in the community, she called 311 to file a noise complaint (I didn’t have time to call because I had to go to work, but I called them when I got back home), the cops showed up, asked the man to leave and he refused to leave.

The second time it happened, I called 311 again and went out to speak to the piano player personally. I spoke calmly, but I was so angry I was shaking. (This was after I had been woken up by a Falun Gong protest moments before. Yes, really.)  The conversation went something like this:

ME: Are you aware that you’re waking up the entire neighborhood with your piano playing?

PIANO PLAYER: Even with the traffic noise?

ME: When you’re playing piano, it’s like you’re playing piano in my bedroom. (What I should have said was, “It’s 10:30am. There is no traffic noise. But even if there was, it wouldn’t make a difference”.)

PIANO PLAYER: What would be a good time for me to start playing?

ME: There is no good time. There’s three bars side by side on the next block and I have to listen to drunks all night and then I get woken up by you at 10:30 in the morning. It’s not cool.

PIANO PLAYER: But I’m not breaking any laws.

ME: You’re disturbing the peace. The park is here so people can enjoy peace and quiet. I understand that the police were here yesterday and asked you to leave and you refused.

PIANO PLAYER: They just asked me to play softer.

ME: You shouldn’t be here, period. I don’t want you here at all.

At that point I left to have breakfast in another neighborhood because I literally could not stand to remain in my apartment while he was playing piano. When I returned from breakfast about two hours later, the piano player was gone. My neighbor emailed me that the police had shown up again, asked him to leave again, and this time he left.

But a few hours later, I happened to see him playing piano in another park. Apparently everything I had said to him earlier went in one ear and out the other.

This goes beyond mere rudeness. This verges on autism. I don’t mean to belittle the very real medical condition of autism, but it does seem that more and more people are unable to sympathize with others.

I’ve been witnessing this kind of behavior a lot lately, whether it’s the guy who gave me the finger a few hours later when, in response to his honking his horn, I asked him where the emergency was (because you’re only supposed to honk your horn if there’s an emergency. I know!  Silly me!); or the audience at the comedy show I performed at a week earlier that sat there mute and with their arms folded for the entire show. (So what are you doing at a comedy show?)

And no wonder.

We now have an entire generation of people who grew up in the age of the Internet and the cell phone. They increasingly don’t even have contact with other live human beings and so they don’t know how to behave when they do.

I happened to watch a rather shocking movie on TV the other night called “Detachment,” which illustrated an extreme example of this kind of behavior. The movie deals with a teacher played by Adrien Brody and his students, who are so detached from their own feelings that they routinely curse at and make sexual comments about their teachers and fellow classmates (a level of disrespect I would never have dreamed of when I was in school but that I know from friends who are teachers actually does exist today).

One of the students in this film is even shown bludgeoning a cat with a hammer because he’s incapable of feeling any emotions. (OK, I know it’s a work of fiction, but still.)

Sometimes I feel like there’s been a complete breakdown of the rule of law (at least in my neighborhood) and my opinion of people is pretty low to begin with. I think that people are basically uncivilized animals and that the only thing that prevents them from killing each other is the law.

So one day it’s someone playing piano in the park and the next day it’s what? What’s to prevent people from doing whatever they feel like just because they want to?

I really do believe that such “quality of life” violations do ultimately create an atmosphere where anything goes. And then who’s to blame?

We are.

Eagles vs. Beyoncé

Last night I watched two music “documentaries,” one heavily promoted and highly anticipated (Beyoncé: Life Is But a Dream) and the other which I came across by accident while channel surfing (The History of the Eagles).

First off, even though these two films are called “documentaries,” let’s call them what they really are: 90-minute (in the case of Beyoncé) and 3-hour (in the case of the Eagles) advertisements for the artists in question. In her documentary, Beyoncé says “I always battle with how much to reveal about myself.” Really? Is that why you filmed the most intimate details of your personal life and broadcast them on HBO for 315 million people? But that’s another story…

Beyoncé would seem to have it all: looks, voice, costumes, choreography, computerized graphics, lighting—the whole nine yards. But what’s missing are the actual songs. With a few notable exceptions (“Halo,” “Love on Top,” “Single Ladies”), you’d have to go back to Destiny’s Child (“Bootylicious,” “Survivor,” “Independent Woman”) to find a song that even has a recognizable melody. Beyoncé is capable of doing quite remarkable acrobatics with her voice, but that’s the point. Her voice becomes the star of the song rather than the song itself. Much like Mariah Carey, who perhaps is responsible for starting this disturbing trend, listening to a Beyoncé “song” is often like listening to a singer practice vocal scales before a performance.

How many times have you come away from a Beyoncé performance humming the tune rather than marveling at her vocal pyrotechnics? I haven’t. The closest I’ve come would be “Crazy in Love,” and what I’m actually humming is the horn riff from The Chi-Lites’ “Are You My Woman (Tell Me So).” (Now that group had some memorable songs!)

The Eagles, on the other hand, are almost the polar opposite of Beyoncé: four or five average-looking men (depending on the lineup), no costumes, no choreography, no graphics, minimal lighting. But the songs are instantly recognizable.

And, in contrast to the vocal grandstanding of a Beyoncé or a Mariah, you have four or five voices carefully blended to sound like one (not to mention some virtuoso guitar playing).

The other thing I would point out, of course, is that the Eagles’ best songs (“Hotel California” and “Life in the Fast Lane” come to mind) are lyrically light years ahead of any Beyoncé song I can think of, but I’m concerned primarily with the music here (and Beyoncé is primarily a vocalist, not a songwriter).

Eagles songs are still being performed, played, and listened to 40 years after they were first written. Can you imagine saying that about a Beyoncé song?

Scenes from My So-Called Unemployed Life

I had a crisis this morning. Looking at my checking account, I discovered that I had accidentally paid my electric bill with the funds I had set aside for my cable bill. Since both bills simply said “Payment Express” on the back, and I had just gotten out of bed, was stressed-out and had a cold, I made what for most people would be a slight accounting error. But when you’re trying to survive on $405 a week in the most expensive city in the United States, the smallest of errors can trigger a catastrophe.

My first indication that something might be amiss came when the voice on the other end of the automated payment system said that I had a credit of $54.91 when I was done making my payment. “That’s odd,” I thought and thought nothing further of it until a few days later, when I was trying to check my email and discovered that my Internet and email weren’t working. I called Time Warner Cable and was told not only that they had no record of my payment, but that my confirmation number was wrong! I wound up having to make another payment to Time Warner Cable and it wasn’t until a few days after that, when I was attempting to pay another bill, that I noticed the error. Thankfully, my bank was able to claw back my money so I could pay my other bills that were due that day. (I never thought I’d be grateful to a bank!)

These are the kinds of situations one has to deal with in our Winner-Take-All Economy.

Which is funny, because I had just been contemplating writing another blog post, tentatively titled Obama’s Wasted First Term and Our Winner-Take-All Economy.

I did not watch President Obama’s inauguration. I was too busy looking for a job and lamenting the missed opportunities of his first term in office. Remember those? We really thought he was gonna change things, didn’t we?

First on his list of failures was healthcare, where he started compromising before the debate had even begun. Rather than instituting a single-payer system, like most of the rest of the civilized world, he caved in to the insurance industry and basically handed them 315 million new customers.

Thanks a lot, Obama! Now I have another bill I can’t pay!

And now we’re witnessing his most recent failure where, in spite of the massacre of 20 children and six adults in Connecticut, he’s prepared to cave on an assault weapons ban.

How many assault weapons-related bloodbaths have we witnessed just since his first term in office? I literally can’t keep track. And yet we haven’t managed to move the debate on this issue one hair.

But his biggest failure has to be the economy, where he renewed the Bush tax cuts for the rich and, rather than spending money to create jobs by, say, rebuilding our crumbling infrastructure, chose instead to bail out the big banks that got us into this mess (and then failed to prosecute a single perpetrator).

We are now witnessing the end result of this disaster, which is what I call the Winner-Take-All Economy, where the top 1% enjoys all the economic benefits of the last 30 years and the rest of us are left scrambling for crumbs.

This situation is made worse, ironically, by Obamacare. Now people are tied to their jobs because of health insurance (unless they can afford to buy their own), so they can’t afford to look for another job even assuming one exists.

The role of government is precisely to step in where the private sector can’t. Health care should not be for profit, it should be a right of every citizen. And, by that measure, Obamacare is a failure.

Well, the gloves are off now. It’s time to hold Obama’s feet to the fire. It’s time for Obama to put up or shut up.

The Joke of Unemployment Insurance in a Shrinking Economy

I got laid off from my job two weeks ago. The first thing I did, on the first day after my contract ended—right after I got out of bed, before I showered, got dressed or had breakfast—was file for unemployment insurance, because I knew that it takes two weeks to receive your first check and, like 40% of the country (according to Time magazine http://business.time.com/2012/08/22/a-huge-number-of-us-have-no-financial-safety-net/, but I still think that number is too low), I live from paycheck to paycheck.

When I didn’t receive my first check this week, I called the New York State Department of Labor and was told that there was no record of my claim. Apparently, I had made a mistake when applying for a new claim on their Web site, but since there are so many people unemployed right now, it took me two days just to get someone on the phone to ask a question.

All of this is just a tempest in a teapot, however.

The larger issue is, How is anyone in New York supposed to survive on a maximum of $405 a week?

The last time I was laid off, a former boss of mine emailed me three days later with a job offer. Due to the incompetence of that company’s HR department (and the Christmas holidays), however, it still took four weeks for me to actually be hired. Even though I found another job almost immediately, I still had to borrow $900 in order to pay my rent.

This is why I go crazy when Republicans start talking about people “living on unemployment.” As if that was even possible!

The other thing that drives me crazy is how companies define “immediately.”

When I say I’m looking to start work immediately, I mean, right now. Corporations have another idea of what that means. I just had an interview where the company told me it takes them two months to hire someone. What position am I applying for? Keeper of the Nuclear Code? Do I need a security clearance from the C.I.A. just to be a proofreader?

The system has become so rigged in favor of the top 1%, it’s reached a point of no return. Companies are now routinely rewarded for destroying jobs. These same companies then pay off politicians (in the form of campaign contributions) to create tax breaks for them so they can make even more money. And then the banks (and other, more dubious “financial institutions”) swoop in to make even more money as people left scrambling for any means of support resort to credit cards and payday loans in order to put food on the table.

They say that it takes one month for every $10,000 of salary in order to find a job. And that, I presume, is during a good economy. Right now I have two friends who have been unemployed for over a year. And neither of them were hedge fund managers.

When you’re living paycheck to paycheck, being out of work for even one week can be catastrophic.

I would even be OK with unemployment insurance providing more money for a shorter period of time. That would at least allow people to get back on their feet. The current system barely provides enough money to eat and pay a few bills. It’s not enough to also be able to pay one’s rent. (And God forbid you have a car.)

As far as I’m concerned, “living on unemployment” isn’t even an option.

On the Death of Cities, Part 2

It’s been a bad week for New Yorkers of a certain age. On Monday, Big Apple Meat Market, a Hell’s Kitchen institution for 20 years and one of the last grocery stores in New York City that isn’t part of a chain, closed its doors. On Tuesday, Mxyplyzyk, a home design store in the Village for 20 years, shuttered. And today, Suzie’s Chinese Restaurant called it quits after 39 years on Bleecker Street.

In his invaluable blog, Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York (http://vanishingnewyork.blogspot.com/), Jeremiah Moss has been chronicling the creeping gentrification and homogenization of New York City (and Manhattan in particular). Every day, it seems, brings news of another mom and pop business forced to close by rising rents brought upon by the dominance of national chains. Slowly but surely, New York is losing the very quality that attracted people here in the first place. If you want to see the quirky characters and unique businesses that used to populate the countless cultural depictions of New York City, whether on Seinfeld on TV, in Neil Simon’s plays or Martin Scorcese’s movies, you have to go elsewhere.

Mayor Bloomberg bought the last election and used it to remake New York in his image: greedy, rapacious, and indifferent towards the needs of others.

As the owner of Mxyplyzyk put it in Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, “It is quite clear the current city administration prefers chain stores over the 'mom and pops' with their tax abatements. This island is destined to have a very boring retail landscape.”

I’ve been talking about the disappearance of mom and pop stores in my comedy act for a while now and last night in my comedy class I made the remark that New York is now as boring as Cleveland but 10 times more expensive. My teacher pointed out—correctly, perhaps—that Cleveland is now actually more interesting than New York. And, I imagine, less expensive.

Many of my artistic friends have already fled the city and many more, including native New Yorkers like myself, are thinking of doing so.

Perhaps our mayor should have thought about that before he handed the keys of the city over to Starbucks, Duane Reade and the banks that now occupy the ground floor of every new building.

Gentrification is like global warming. Once the damage has been done, there’s no turning back. And the damage has already been done.