Why the East Village Matters to Me

I may live in Nolita now (and have lived there for the last 28 years), but it was my first seven years in New York City, living in the East Village, that formed my identity as a New Yorker.

Between 1980 and 1987, I lived in eight different apartments in the East Village and Lower East Side. (Yes, I had to move, on average, once a year. Which is why I’ve been in my current apartment for 28 years. That and the fact that it’s rent stabilized.)

My first apartment in the summer of 1980 was on 14^th Street between Second and Third Avenue, next to the Metropolitan, a notorious porno theater. At that time 14^th Street was so dangerous, I used to take the subway to Astor Place and walk to 14^th Street.

Then I lived on East 4^th Street between First and Second Avenue, directly across from the basketball court (where I used to watch John Lurie play basketball) and the Ninth Precinct (as seen on Kojak).

Next up was East 10^th Street (between First and A). I lived in Steve Buscemi’s old apartment (I used to get his mail) next to the Fun Gallery. I wound up subletting that apartment to finance a trip to London (I was young and stupid) and was never able to move back in.

Hence my brief stays on 13th Street (between First and A), where I was mugged for the first time, and East Third Street (between B and C), where I was followed down the street by a drug dealer who tried to start a fight with me. Let’s just say I didn’t stick around long enough for him to succeed!

Fourteenth Street (between Second and Third, again!) was next. I lived in an abandoned building that was turned into an artists’ squat. One day I came down the stairs to see that my landlord had decided to renovate. I could see the first floor storefront through the floorboards of my living room!

That led to East Seventh Street (between B and C), where I lived in a de facto sex club and didn’t come out of my room for an entire year. (I used to eat all my meals at 7A.)

Last, but not least, was Norfolk Street (between Houston and Stanton) where my upstairs neighbor used to blast his stereo and have orgasms that sounded like he was laughing. (I could hear him through the vents in my bathroom.)

But there were good times, too!

The East Village is where I went to my first gay bar (The Bar, on Second Avenue and East Fourth Street).

The East Village is where I had enough Polish food to last a lifetime. Kiev, Veselka, Odessa, Leshko, Christina, Teresa, Lillian (the three sisters!), Orchidia, Baltyk, I went to them all. I ate at the Kiev so often when I first moved here (particularly their challah French toast), I once got a phone call there. (Their cashier at the time, who now lives in my neighborhood, is one of my oldest acquaintances.)

The East Village is where I went to the Pyramid and saw RuPaul before he became “RuPaul.”

It was where I went to Wigstock every Labor Day until it got too big for Tompkins Square Park (and eventually too big for New York City).

It was where I went to LaMama and Theater for the New City and P.S. 122.

So it should come as no surprise that when I heard there was a fire in the East Village that took two lives, injured 22, and destroyed three buildings, I was devastated.

Unlike those selfie-taking idiots on the front page of the New York Post, I studiously avoided going to Second Avenue and Seventh Street, not only because I didn’t want to get in the way of emergency responders, but because I was afraid of how emotional I might get.

Nowadways, my connection to the East Village is as a comedian doing open mics at places like Klimat, the Phoenix, and Otto’s Shrunken Head.

You can take the boy out of the East Village, but you can’t take the East Village out of the boy.

An Open Letter to Bill Maher

Dear Bill,

I’ve been a faithful viewer of your show for the last few years and I usually agree with what you have to say. However, during last night’s show you mentioned (yet again) how well the economy is doing and, as evidence, pointed to the following facts: the unemployment rate is down, the stock market is up, GDP is up, and the deficit is down. These facts may be true but these facts don’t tell the whole story.

Yes, the unemployment rate is down but that’s because a large number of people have stopped looking for work and have dropped out of the labor market. These people are not counted by unemployment statistics.

Furthermore, what kinds of jobs are being created? They are mostly low-wage jobs, part-time jobs and/or temporary/contract/freelance jobs without benefits. They are mostly in the service sector (i.e., low-wage jobs), as this article in The New York Times points out (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/07/business/economy/jobs-report-unemployment-february.html?_r=0). The same article also points out that wages only went up 0.1% last month, continuing a pattern in which real wages haven’t budged for decades.¹

The GDP has also been discredited as a measure of economic well-being in a number of articles, including this one (http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/10/30/alternatives-to-the-gdp/).

As I write this, New York City’s subway system is scheduled to raise their fare yet again (despite the fact that service has deteriorated to an all-time low²), dealing yet another blow to the middle class. But how would you know that? You live in Los Angeles and probably haven’t used public transportation in decades.

I can’t tell you how frustrating it is to see you constantly defending Obama’s economic policies and to see Republicans arguing (however disingenuously) on behalf of the middle class.

I’d be happy to go on your program any time to give the point of view of real people dealing with real struggles, rather than these professional pundits who “live inside the bubble” (as you’re so fond of saying).

Sincerely,

Paul Hallasy

1 http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

2 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/20/nyregion/delays-and-costs-agitate-mta-riders-in-a-system-bursting-at-the-seams.html

An Open Letter to Elizabeth Warren and/or Bernie Sanders: Part 2

 Last week I wrote a post in which I urged Elizabeth Warren and/or Bernie Sanders to run for president because I had just paid my rent and barely had enough money left over to make it to my next paycheck, even though I work full time.

Well, I made it to my next paycheck (on less than $20 a day, I might add), paid my utility bills and a few credit cards, and was left with barely enough money to get through the week again!

When someone working full time has to worry about how he’s going to survive until his next paycheck, there’s something seriously wrong with this country. And I’m not even talking about fast food or retail workers, here. I’m talking about someone with a white collar position, something that used to be known as a good job.

This past weekend I had a one-hour phone conversation with my brother. Even though we come from opposite ends of the political spectrum—I’m a liberal Democrat and my brother is an Independent (although his views tend to skew Republican)—we both agreed that the middle class is getting screwed.

Thing didn’t get this way by accident, they were legislated by rich people and organizations in order to maintain their positions of power.

What do you think Obamacare is? A law written by the healthcare industry for its own benefit.

Similarly, in perhaps an even more egregious example, Citibank wrote the Wall Street giveaway that was approved by Congress as part of the budget last year.¹

And, of course, it’s not just the healthcare industry and banks that write their own laws. Every industry has lobbyists on Capitol Hill who write laws and then submit them to Congress for approval.

Meanwhile, unions—the only organizations working on behalf of the other 99% of Americans—have become nearly nonexistent.

Just recently, Wisconsin became the 25^th state to pass a “right to work law,” a piece of legislation that weakens unions.²

Additionally, whatever’s left of the so-called “safety net” we have in this country—from unemployment insurance to food stamps—has been decimated by Republicans.

This is why we need Elizabeth Warren and/or Bernie Sanders to run for president. Because the American middle class is becoming the American poor.

1 http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/12/spending-bill-992-derivatives-citigroup-lobbyists

2 http://billmoyers.com/2015/03/10/gov-scott-walkers-approval-wisconsin-half-u-s-now-right-work/

An Open Letter to Elizabeth Warren and/or Bernie Sanders: Please Run for President

I’m sitting here in my rent-stabilized apartment on a winter Saturday reading the newspaper and surfing the Internet because I can’t afford to do anything else.

Despite the fact that I’m working full time (35 hours a week), despite the fact that I’m bringing lunch to work every day and cooking all my meals at home, I can’t afford to do anything because I just paid my rent and I’m literally counting the days until my next paycheck.

I should perhaps add that my current salary is the same as it was in 2008, despite the fact that the rate of inflation alone in the last seven years has been 15.3%¹. Despite the fact that, in the last seven years, my rent has gone up 21%, my phone bill has gone up about 500% (because you now need a smart phone in order to function in modern society), my cable bill has gone up about 50% (because you also need a high-speed Internet connection), and the MTA is about the raise their subway fare yet again.

Despite all that, my salary has stayed the same.

And that’s assuming I’m lucky enough to even have a job, because (as I’ve gone from one temporary job to another) I’ve been unemployed for half of the last two years and may soon be unemployed again.

And yet, everywhere you look, people say the economy is doing great.

On the front page of today’s New York Times² is the headline “After a Bounce, Wage Growth Slumps to 0.1%.” But all you ever hear about from President Obama (and even liberal commentators like Bill Maher, who should know better but doesn’t, because even he’s a millionaire) is that the economy is going gangbusters.

While “employers may have increased their payrolls by 295,000 workers in February,… job growth…was heavily concentrated in the service sector” (read low-paying jobs). And wage growth rose “only 0.1 percent.”

But the only debate you hear about in Washington is whether or not Janet Yellen, the chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, should raise interest rates.

How is that even a debate? And why aren’t we debating how we can create more jobs and raise wages?

The only people in Washington who have addressed this issue in even the slightest way are Senators Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders.

We, the struggling middle-class of America, who have seen our standard of living decline for the last 30 years (at least since President Reagan took office and created the greatest fraud ever perpetrated on the American people: “trickle-down-economics”), desperately need one or both of you to run for president, to reverse the downward slide that has been our reality since 1981.

And, while you’re at it, you might want to do something about the disastrous Citizens United decision that has sent our country hurtling towards plutocracy. Because, also in today’s New York Times, is an editorial about how Jeb Bush’s “fundraisers have reportedly been instructed not to ask megadonors to give more than $1 million each this quarter.”³

I could go on, but other people have written at great length and better than I have about how rising inequality in this country is a threat to our democracy. I would start by making Joseph Stieglitz’s The Price of Inequality⁴, Linda Tirado’s Hand to Mouth⁵, George Packer’s The Unwinding⁶, Barbara Garson’s Down the Up Escalator⁷ and Matt Taibbi’s The Divide⁸ required reading for every American. (I could throw in Thomas Piketty’s Capital⁹, for good measure, but it’s unreadable.)

But how are Americans even supposed to know how fucked over they’re getting when they’re working overtime or several jobs just to pay their bills?

Because, of all the great injustices inflicted upon this country by the Koch Brothers and their ilk, perhaps the greatest is this: the fact that in today’s America, there’s no time or energy left over for anything except survival.

1 http://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/

2 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/07/business/economy/jobs-report-unemployment-february.html?_r=0

3 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/07/opinion/the-jeb-bush-approach-to-campaign-financing.html

4 http://www.amazon.com/The-Price-Inequality-Divided-Endangers/dp/0393345068

5 http://www.amazon.com/Hand-Mouth-Living-Bootstrap-America/dp/0399171983

6 http://www.amazon.com/The-Unwinding-Inner-History-America/dp/0374534608

7 http://www.amazon.com/Down-Up-Escalator-Percent-Recession/dp/0385532741

8 http://www.amazon.com/The-Divide-American-Injustice-Wealth/dp/081299342X

9 http://www.amazon.com/Capital-Twenty-First-Century-Thomas-Piketty/dp/1491534656

Russell Tovey and the Plight of the “Straight-Acting” Gay

 This past Sunday, actor Russell Tovey, who plays the role of Kevin on the gay-themed show Looking on HBO, gave an interview to the British newspaper The Guardian in which he said,

 “I feel like I could have been really effeminate, if I hadn’t gone to the school I went to. Where I felt like I had to toughen up. If I’d have been able to relax, prance around, sing in the street, I might be a different person now. I thank my dad for that, for not allowing me to go down that path. Because it’s probably given me the unique quality that people think I have.”¹

Predictably, gay men who identify as effeminate seized on this quote as evidence of Tovey’s “femme-bashing.”

But, wait!

In today’s PC world, there’s lots of love and support for “sissy” boys. TV is full of them! (Ross the Intern, Brad Goreski, Chris Colfer’s character on Glee, Carson Kressley, Jack from Will & Grace, just to name a few.)

But where is the love for the “straight-acting” gay?

Shunned by his gay brothers for not being camp/bitchy enough, yet not accepted by straight society either because he doesn’t like sports, pleated Dockers or “bro”-ish behavior in general.

Where’s the love for them?

I remember the first time I tried to get a gig as a comedian on Fire Island and was explicitly told by the club’s booker: “We only book drag queens.”

Is there no justice?!

It seems to me that the vast majority of gay men are, like myself, neither camp/bitchy enough to be drag queens nor muscular/handsome enough to be go-go dancers. Yet those are the only two alternatives offered to us.

Rather than attack Tovey for owning up to the circumstances that made him who he is (an unsympathetic father, being attacked by two men with a knife when he was a teenager), we should feel sympathy for him.

After all, it must be difficult not to do that Take That dance routine² (like his character Kevin does on Looking), when you know you’re dying to.

1 http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2015/mar/01/russell-tovey-looking-banished-interview

2 http://youtu.be/qpqAXZI0s0s

Fade to Grey

Steve Strange

You know how a song can instantly take you right back to a certain place and time?

Whenever I hear “Africa” by Toto, it takes me right back to being on the dance floor of the Anvil at 4am. (It was always dj Bill Bahlman’s last song.)

Whenever I hear anything from Duran Duran’s Rio album, it takes me right back to the Chelsea loft of the designer I met who played that entire album for me.

And whenever I hear the song “Fade to Grey” by Visage (https://vimeo.com/95747996), it takes me right back to my college friend Tom Farrell’s NYU dorm room, where he first played me that song, as well as the first few 12-inch singles by a new British band called Spandau Ballet. He also introduced me to such British music publications as The Face and the New Musical Express. Tom Farrell was my introduction to the British musical subculture known as the New Romantics (which also included Duran Duran, Adam and the Ants, and Bow Wow Wow) and my introduction to the New York club scene, which at that time included such places as the Mudd Club, Berlin, the Pyramid, AM/PM, Area, Danceteria, and—for a brief shining moment—the Underground. (I’m sure I’m leaving some out, but Nina Hagen’s song “New York, New York” is a good reference for remembering the clubs from this period.)

My college friend, Tom Farrell, in bow tie.

I still think about the time I went to see Spandau Ballet play at the Underground on its opening night. That concert was so exclusive, Tina Turner was in the audience. (This was before Private Dancer.) And, of course, Tom Farrell was there.

But all of that started with Visage and its stylish lead singer, Steve Strange.

Steve Strange died today at the age of 55.

I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately. Maybe it’s because, coincidentally, there was another death in New York yesterday, of 60 Minutes reporter Bob Simon. His death could be called ironic if it wasn’t so tragic. Simon reported from some of the most dangerous places in the world and was even held prisoner in Iraq for 40 days. But he met his untimely demise because his livery cab driver sideswiped another car that was stopped at a red light in Manhattan.

Everywhere I look there seem to be people dying and I think that feeling has been exaggerated by social media. Why do people feel the urge to post someone’s death on Facebook (myself included)? To pay tribute, to share grief, or simply to appear great by association?

Another considerably less disturbing coincidence of events occurred yesterday when Jon Stewart announced that he was leaving The Daily Show and NBC announced that it was suspending Brian Williams for six months.

Of course, I took Jon Stewart’s announcement personally. I thought, “That does it! I’m officially too old to ever have that job!” I realize it’s the height of vanity to even suggest that I could take Jon Stewart’s place, but I’m talking more about demographics here. What I really mean is that I’m officially too old for Comedy Central.

I’m now at the age where I’ve seen the death of not just many of my musical heroes, but entire musical eras: the British Invasion of the ’60s (John Lennon and George Harrison from the Beatles, Robin and Maurice Gibb from the Bee Gees), disco (Donna Summer), punk (Joe Strummer from The Clash, all of The Ramones), ’80s pop (Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston) and, now, the first of the New Romantics.

I realize that Steve Strange probably wouldn’t even rate a mention in an American newspaper and that his greatest contribution may have been to style (or at least, music videos), not music.

But there’s something particularly jarring when a pop star dies, because pop stardom seems to epitomize youth.

Increasingly, I feel like each of us has a brief window of opportunity to make our mark on the world and if you miss that window, if you don’t get a lucky break early on, that’s it.

I was thinking these thoughts at my gym tonight when, as if I had telepathically summoned it, I heard the dj there play A Flock of Seagulls’ “Space Age Love Song,” with its soaring vocals and synthesizers, and suddenly I was back on the dance floor of the Anvil at 4am.

So maybe there’s hope for me yet.

Why Obamacare Doesn’t Work for the Middle Class

 I was late to the Obamacare debate. I just got an email on January 8th saying that I was no longer eligible for Medicaid (yes, Medicaid) and that I had to buy my own health insurance by January 15^th in order to be covered by February 1.

I had seven days to make a decision.

I went to see a so-called “insurance advisor” at the clinic I generally go to as my primary care provider (because I usually don’t have health insurance and they offer a sliding scale fee structure). The insurance advisor plugged in the income for my temp job into the New York State of Health website and, according to the website, I was entitled to $287 per month in subsidies.

But that figure was only based on my income through April. If I earned any income after April (which I would have to do in order to, you know, continue eating and paying my bills), I would not be entitled to those subsidies and would, in fact, have to pay them back.

Unfortunately, Obamacare only provides subsidies if you make less than $45,960/year¹.

Now, $45,960 may be a large sum of money in East Buttfuck, Arkansas, but if you’re making $45,960 in New York City, you’re barely paying your bills.

According to a recent New York Times article, in order to be considered middle class in Manhattan, one needs to make between $80,000 and $235,000².

Unfortunately, the median income in New York City is $50,711³.

In other words, in order to benefit from Obamacare, you have to be truly poor.

Now, we’re used to poor people being written off and treated like shit. What’s new with Obamacare is that middle class people are being written off and treated like shit.

And, unlike poor people, middle class people vote.

Ironically, it’s because of Obamacare that I’m in my current predicament. Since, under Obamacare, companies are only required to offer health insurance to “full time” (i.e., not temporary) employees, I haven’t been able to find a job that lasts more than a few months for the last two years! (Some companies have also been reducing their workforce to under 50 full time employees in order to avoid having to provide health insurance.)

Companies don’t care if you have health insurance. Why should they? They’re in business to make money. As far as they’re concerned, health insurance is your problem. That’s why it should be the government’s job to provide health insurance (i.e., through a single payer system), like it is in almost every other country in the civilized world.

So now, not only do most Republicans want to repeal Obamacare, but many middle class Democrats like myself want to see it repealed (or, at least, improved).

But, contrary to what Republicans have been saying, Obamacare is not a “government takeover” of healthcare. It’s a government capitulation to the healthcare industry.

According to a recent story on 60 Minutes, the health care industry got everything they wanted in Obamcare.⁵ And why shouldn’t they? The insurance industry spent $2 billion on lobbying the government last year.⁶ (The pharmaceutical industry spent another $3 billion.)

The only people who didn’t get what they wanted were the public.

Obamacare is creating an entire class of middle class criminals whose only crime is not having enough money to buy their own health insurance.

They’re either going to have to get rid of it altogether or increase subsidies for the middle class.

Otherwise, my only hope of getting health insurance is finding a “full time” job that provides it.

But first, I have to find a “full time” job.

1 http://www.financialsamurai.com/subsidy-amounts-by-income-limits-for-the-affordable-care-act-obamacare/

2 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/20/realestate/what-is-middle-class-in-manhattan.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

3 http://project.wnyc.org/median-income-nabes/

4 http://www.grayreed.com/NewsResources/Legal-Updates/50305/Obamacare-and-Seasonal-Workers

5 http://www.cbs.com/shows/60_minutes/video/ZiXofnyJSjH0KpbyJA_EPIoVLkb6Hc9Y/dissecting-obamacare/

6 https://www.opensecrets.org/lobby/top.php?indexType=i