Clifford Browder's Blog, page 29
April 19, 2017
292. Fearless Girl vs. Charging Bull: the War of the Statues
Once more, two LibraryThing early reviews of Bill Hope: His Story, and then we'll get to the war of the statues.
graham, March 30, 2017: I sat down to read this book around 6 p.m.; it's 11:20 p.m. and I've just finished it. I couldn't put it down. This is a very engaging, fast-moving first-hand "biography" of a turn-of-the-century petty thief turned con man which held me enthralled from start to finish.
terry, April 7, 2017: Engrossing novel that makes you want to continue reading in order to find out what happens next in the life of Bill Hope. Many ups and downs make it a truely enjoyable read, about a bygone time.
For a press release of Bill Hope: His Story, go here.
This is the second title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York. The first in the series is The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), mention of which appears at the end of this post.
The book can be ordered from Amazon and will be shipped after the release date of May 17, 2017. But the paperback, which goes for $20, will cost an additional $4.95 for shipping, unless you order books totaling $25 or more. The book is also available now from the author and will be mailed immediately ($20 + postage). And now let's have a look at a new version of the Beauty and the Beast.
* * * * * *
A favorite tourist attraction in Manhattan for the last 27 years has been sculptor Arturo Di Modica’s “Charging Bull,” a huge 3½-ton bronze bull, head lowered with flared nostrils, pawing the ground and ready to charge, which the artist planted in front of the New York Stock Exchange on Broad Street without permission on December 15, 1989, as a Christmas gift to the city. Hundreds of people had seen and admired it, before the police arrived to haul it away. Howls of protest immediately erupted, so the chastened authorities relocated the statue to nearby Bowling Green, where it stands at one end of a little park, facing up Broadway. Tourists from all over the world have flocked to see it ever since, a bold image of dynamism and virility, of massive and perhaps dangerous power. Mr. Di Modica says that it conveys his feelings following the 1987 stock market crash: a salute to a resurgent (i.e., bullish) stock market and nation. Onlookers snap photos of one another posing with it, children crawl over it, and adults touch the nose, horns, and testicles for good luck. It has become a symbol of the city, some even comparing it in this regard to the Statue of Liberty.
Gabriele GiuseppiniBut now the plot thickens. On March 7, 2017, the night before International Women’s Day, another bronze statue was placed directly in front of the bull: “Fearless Girl,” a four-foot-tall girl, chin up, feet apart, hands on her hips, standing defiantly as if confronting the bull. Once again, a surprise installation without a city permit, and once again an instant hit with the public, who have flocked to see, admire, and photograph the girl, and celebrate her feminine, indeed feminist, challenge to the snorting maleness of the bull. Designed by artist Kristen Visbal, the work was commissioned by State Street Global Advisors and the advertising firm McCann as part of a marketing campaign for SSGA’s index fund investing in companies with women in senior positions. Says a plaque below the statue, “Know the power of women in leadership. SHE makes a difference.” (SHE, be it noted, is the fund’s NASDAQ ticker symbol.) Another instant hit with the public, “Fearless Girl” has been granted a city permit allowing it to stay on the site until the next International Women’s Day in March 2018. Once again, a dramatic sculptural coup-d’état has succeeded.
Or has it? At a news conference in Midtown Manhattan on April 12, Mr. Di Modica denounced “Fearless Girl” as an insult to his bull, whose message, he insists, is not male power and domination, but “freedom in the world, peace, strength, power, and love.” Confronted by “Fearless Girl,” he says, the bull has been transformed into “a negative force and a threat.” While he insists that he is in no way hostile to gender equality, he wants “Fearless Girl” to be moved elsewhere, and he and his lawyers – he now has a team of them – have sent letters to this effect to the mayor and to SSG, McCann, and other relevant parties. But the mayor has already hailed “Fearless Girl” as a symbol of “standing up to fear, standing up to power, being able to find in yourself the strength to do what’s right.” And he sees the statue as especially relevant in the light of Donald Trump’s election, and the women’s rights marches that followed his inauguration. Which is a lot of relevance for a four-foot statue of a little girl facing down a massive bull on the verge of charging. And Mr. Di Modica, while hoping for a peaceful resolution, does not rule out the possibility of litigation, the threat of which only brings more gawking tourists to Bowling Green and its two bronze antagonists.
So who is right? Opinion seems to be divided, some agreeing with Mr. Di Modica that “Fearless Girl” ’s presence alters the meaning of the bull and thwarts the sculptor’s intent, while others hail “Fearless Girl” as a symbol of scrappy feminism and women’s newfound right to challenge the dominance of males. But some observe that if it came to a dust-up between the two, “Fearless Girl” wouldn’t stand a chance; her precious little torso would be hideously gored by the bull’s sharp horns. The solution, many assert, is to simply remove her to another site, so each of them can have his/her own space.
Personally, I agree with Mr. Di Modica: the intrusion of “Fearless Girl” is an unwarranted challenge to his work and therefore merits removal to another site. And aesthetically, I opine that when it comes to “looks,” “Fearless Girl,” scrappy and defiant though she is, can’t hold a candle to the massive dynamism of “Charging Bull.” And there are those who question whether an index fund and an advertising agency are appropriate vehicles for conveying the message of female independence – a debate that will probably rage fervently on, while the tourists continue to flock.
* * * * * *
BROWDERBOOKS: No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here. As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client It is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Coming soon: As previously announced, Americans Are Pigs.
© 2017 Clifford Browder
April 16, 2017
291. Helena Rubinstein: "Beauty is power."
First, two LibraryThing early reviews of Bill Hope: His Story. (Be patient, we'll get to Madame Rubinstein soon.)
graham, March 30, 2017: I sat down to read this book around 6 p.m.; it's 11:20 p.m. and I've just finished it. I couldn't put it down. This is a very engaging, fast-moving first-hand "biography" of a turn-of-the-century petty thief turned con man which held me enthralled from start to finish.
terry, April 7, 2017: Engrossing novel that makes you want to continue reading in order to find out what happens next in the life of Bill Hope. Many ups and downs make it a truely enjoyable read, about a bygone time.
MEET BILL HOPE, A STREET KID TURNED PICKPOCKET WHO WANTS TO LEAVE THE CROOKED LIFE AND YEARNS FOR BETTER
Bill Hope: His Story:
($20: Softcover: 6X9”, 158pp: 978-1-68114-305-7; $35: Hardcover: 978-1-68114-306-4; $2.99: EBook: 978-1-68114-307-1; LCCN: 2017933794; Historical Fiction; May 17, 2017) is the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his scorn for snitches and bullies; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; his brief career on the stage playing himself; his loyalty to a man who has befriended him but may be trying to kill him; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. In the course of his adventures he learns how slight the difference is between criminal and law-abiding, insane and sane, vice and virtue—a lesson that reinforces what he learned on the streets. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a yearning to leave the crooked life behind, and a persistent and undying hope. This is the second title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York. The first in the series is The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), mention of which appears at the end of this post. The book can be ordered from Amazon and will be shipped after the release date of May 17, 2017. But the paperback, which goes for $20, will cost an additional $4.95 for shipping, unless you order books totaling $25 or more. The book is also available now from the author and will be mailed immediately ($20 + postage). And now let's talk about beauty.
* * * * * *
On the first page of the Weekend Arts section of the Times of April 7 there appeared, under the caption “Sing a Song of Face Creams,” a review of a new musical that just opened on Broadway, “War Paint,” about the fierce rivalry of two great cosmetics queens of yore, Helena Rubinstein and Elizabeth Arden, both of whom were based in New York. A photograph shows the two of them sitting at separate tables in a restaurant or cocktail lounge, Rubinstein on the left in a wide-brimmed lavender hat, matching dress, and gloves, and Arden on the right, in a fantastic flying-saucer tilted hat topped by a plume and trailing a long white scarf across her richly jeweled bosom and over her right shoulder: two fiercely stylish women staring straight ahead, each seemingly oblivious of the other, their juxtaposition (with ample space between them) suggesting parallel existences destined from the start to clash. And clash they did, in real life, though never face to face, and clash they do in “War Paint,” albeit in music, with a big assist from makeup and costumes. All of which has inspired me to reintroduce here a post of long ago about Helena Rubinstein and her rival.
* * * * * *
Short and squat and built like an icebox, with a strong nose and a salient chin, she didn’t reek glamour or beauty, yet the promotion of feminine beauty was her lifelong obsession. Helena Rubinstein was a shrewd businesswoman who cut a striking figure with her high-fashion outfits and layers of jewelry, her dark hair pulled back in a tight chignon, her eyes traced in black, her lips bright red, and an air of dominance. Clearly, this was a woman to reckon with.
“Beauty is power,” she famously said, and her career confirms it amply. Born Chaja Rubinstein to a Jewish family of modest means in Krakow in Russian Poland in 1872, she was the eldest of eight daughters. Since there was no son, she was recruited by her parents to help keep the brood in order and so assumed responsibility from an early age. And being good at figures, she helped her father, a wholesale food broker, with bookkeeping, and at age 15, when he was sick, filled in for him at a business meeting.
But her mother was a great influence, too. With eight daughters to marry off, she drilled into the girls the importance of minding their appearance, and especially of taking care of one’s hair and skin, a lesson that her eldest thoroughly absorbed. And since her mother used a homemade face cream, her business-minded eldest began peddling it to the neighbors.
“I am a merchant,” she explained later. “To be a good merchant you need a sharp eye. I know a good thing when I hear it and I like quick decisions. Take advantage of the situation. Every situation. That and hard work.” A workaholic from the start, she worked eighteen-hour days. “Lost many a beau,” she later admitted, “and missed the fun of being young.” But she knew that work was her very life, preferable to any marriage her family might have arranged. “My only recreation is work.”
When her father arranged a marriage for her with an elderly widower willing to take her without a dowry, she rebelled. In 1902, at age 30 and with little money or English, she escaped by making a great leap from Poland to a small outback town in Australia, where an uncle was a shopkeeper. She had brought 12 pots of her mother’s beauty cream with her and was soon giving them away, then selling them, and asking her mother for more. When demand outpaced supply, she began making it herself. Sheep were abundant in the region, providing lanolin, a key ingredient for her products, whose pungent aroma she masked with lavender, pine bark, and water lilies.
Working as a servant and governess and then in Melbourne as a waitress, with some financial help from friends she launched her Crème Valaze (a French-sounding name that she invented), a face cream advertised as having rare herbs “from the Carpathian Mountains”; it flew off the shelves. Having skin often ravaged by the sun, Australian women marveled at her milk-white skin. This proved a great advertisement for her product, though the whiteness of her skin owed nothing to her cream.
Now calling herself Helena Rubinstein, she opened a fashionable salon where, going at glamour as a science, she donned a white lab coat and “diagnosed” the skin problems of clients and “prescribed” an appropriate treatment. (Her pretensions to medical training, like many of the facts she marshaled, were bogus; she was self-taught.) She knew she was selling illusion – the illusion of youth and beauty – and the higher the price of the products, the more her customers would want them. Those products now included soaps, lotions, and cleansers, and in time much more. Next she expanded her operation to Sydney, and within five years had realized sufficient profits to open a Salon de Beauté Valaze in London. Australia couldn’t hold her; she wanted the world.
In London in 1908 she married the Polish-born American journalist Edward William Titus, who became her partner in business. By him she had two sons – an inconvenience, she later admitted, since her obsession with business left little time for family. Edward was charming, witty, and urbane, but also, as she soon learned, incapable of fidelity. In 1912 they moved to Paris, where she opened yet another salon. Edward helped her meet writers and artists and thus recast herself as a woman of the world. She was doing well now and gave lavish dinner parties. But away from business, her perceptions were not always keen; meeting Marcel Proust socially, she shrugged him off because “he smelt of mothballs.” Her later observation: “How was I to know he was going to be famous?”
The outbreak of World War I put a damper on business, so in 1915 she and her husband moved to the U.S., which was still neutral, and opened a cosmetics salon, the Maison de Beauté de Valaze, on East 49th Street in New York, the first of what would become a chain nationwide. And her timing was good: American women were wrenching free of Victorian mores, taking charge of their lives, and demanding the vote. So Rubinstein urged them to take charge of their appearance, too. “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.” Whereas in Victorian times noticeable makeup had been worn only by actresses (always morally suspect) or prostitutes, Rubinstein promoted the notion that it was the means whereby respectable women could improve their appearance. Hers was a democratic vision: beauty obtainable by all. But the U.S. was a challenge, since immediately upon arrival she observed that American women had purple noses and gray lips, and faces chalk-white from “terrible” powder. “I recognized that the United States could be my life’s work.”
In New York she began a keen competition with that other great lady of cosmetics, Canadian-born Elizabeth Arden; there was no love lost between them. Both knew the importance of marketing, and the value of celebrity endorsements, overpricing, and the use of pseudoscience in skin care. “She tries to get me in every way she can,” said Rubinstein of her rival. When their paths crossed at social events, they made a point of not speaking. And when Arden hired away some of Rubinstein’s sales force, Rubinstein in retaliation hired Arden’s divorced husband, Thomas Lewis: “Imagine the secrets he must know!” And if an acquaintance of either confessed to using the rival’s products, sparks flew.
In 1917 Rubinstein took on the manufacturing and distribution of her products. She was a pioneer in many ways: selling her products in department stores, herself giving training to the clerks, and hiring women as traveling sales representatives to demonstrate her products in local stores. To her army of employees, whom she ruled demandingly, she was simply “Madame.” In 1928 – again her timing was remarkable – she sold her American business to Lehman Brothers for $7.3 million. Just one year later came the Crash, followed by the Depression. She then bought back the grossly undervalued stock for less than $1 million and in time saw its value soar.
Possessing a seemingly infallible instinct for what women would buy and how to present it to them, she built a brand long before business schools taught marketing. “I could have made a fortune selling paper clips!” she boasted, and she was probably right. Having established salons and outlets in many U.S. cities, in the 1920s she went to Hollywood to instruct film stars Pola Negri and Theda Bara in the use of mascara, which emphasized their eyes and enhanced their image as “vamps” – a significant contribution to silent films and the atmosphere of the Roaring Twenties. And back in New York she launched a new perfume called Heaven Sent by sending hundreds of pink and blue balloons floating down onto Fifth Avenue, with a sample attached and a message announcing this gift from heaven.
Theda Bara as Cleopatra. Yes, mascara did help.By the late 1930s her seven-floor spa at 715 Fifth Avenue included a gym, a restaurant, sumptuous displays of art, rugs by painter Joan Miró, and classrooms to give instruction in facial care. When a woman went there – probably a well-heeled woman -- she knew at once that she was in a different world, that she had left the daily and the humdrum behind. Here all the attention was focused on her, here she could be coddled and inspired. And also “fixed,” for she would be stretched and exercised, scrubbed and rubbed, wrapped in hot blankets, bathed in infra-red rays, massaged out of water and in it, and bathed in milk. And then, of course, her renewed self – or what was left of her -- could have lunch.
Rubinstein herself was a walking ad for her approach to beauty. Photos of her in her fifties and later show a well-preserved woman, her dark hair brushed back, her mascaraed eyes and dark lips sharply accented against her smooth white skin, with rings and earrings and a handsome dress. No glamour puss, perhaps, but the epitome of New York chic.
Having divorced her philandering first husband the year before, in 1938 Rubinstein, now 66 and a multimillionaire, married Prince Artchil Gourielli-Tchkonia, age 43, whose chief attractions were an exotic name hard to pronounce, good looks, and a dubious claim to Georgian nobility. A dedicated social climber, Rubinstein may have seen the marriage as a marketing tool that let her present herself as Helena, Princess Gourielli. In any event, she named a line of male cosmetics for him.
Frugal in many ways, Rubinstein would walk from her Park Avenue apartment to her office on Fifth Avenue wearing a fur coat but carrying a brown-bag lunch. She pinched pennies yet spent royally on clothing from the top Parisian couturiers, and on furniture and art. Her private collection included paintings by Renoir, de Chirico, Modigliani, Chagall, Utrillo, Matisse, and Picasso, Rouault tapestries, and portraits of herself by Picasso (sketches only), Marie Laurencin, Raoul Dufy, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, and others. But she also went further afield, buying what she liked without help from an adviser, and so acquired African and Oceanic art before it caught on, as well as Russian icons, American glass, artifacts, rugs, both fine and junk jewelry, and miniature rooms with objects made of ivory, silver, crystal, mahogany, and pewter that she loved to show off to visitors, especially children.
Nothing stopped her; she got into real estate, too. Having at first lived over the shops selling her products, when business expanded she moved into apartments. “So I bought the apartments. Next I bought the buildings. Then I bought the neighboring buildings. Why not? Real estate is a good thing to have.” In 1941, when her bid for an apartment at 625 Park Avenue was turned down because of anti-Semitism, she bought the whole building and established herself in a 26-room triplex penthouse with wrap-around terraces and lavishly decorated rooms, including one with three walls with murals by her friend Salvador Dalí. The furnishings reflected gusto, if not taste, with Victorian chairs covered in purple and magenta velvet, Chinese pearl-inlaid coffee tables, gold Turkish floor lamps, six-foot-tall blue opaline vases, life-size Easter Island sculptures, African masks, and walls crammed with paintings. Admittedly, connoisseurs might criticize Madame for a lack of discernment; she confessed to buying in bulk.
And 625 Park Avenue wasn’t her only pied-à-terre. She had residences in London and Paris, and two country homes in France – one near Paris and one in the Midi -- and a third in Greenwich, Connecticut. They were all crammed with art and objects reflecting her assertive taste, and the staff were trained to welcome her at a moment’s notice, which was just as well, since she did gad about.
When the U.S. entered World War II, there were those who suggested that beauty and cosmetics were now irrelevant, a notion that she royally rejected. A canny patriot, she partnered with the Army to provide the GI’s with smartly packaged sunburn cream and camouflage makeup.
When her second husband died of a heart attack in 1955, she mourned him deeply. In May 1964 thieves broke into her Park Avenue apartment, posing as deliverymen bringing roses. They tied up her butler at gunpoint and then confronted her in her bedroom. Or perhaps, at age 93, she confronted them. Having secreted the keys to her safe deep in her bosom, she watched as the intruders emptied her purse, which contained some handfuls of paper, a powder compact, five twenty-dollar bills, and a pair of diamond earrings worth $40,000. When they upended the purse, the earrings rolled away and Madame covered them with a tissue. Having tied her to a chair, the thieves departed with the hundred dollars in cash. When her butler freed her, she had him put the roses in the refrigerator, in case they had visitors that day. Since the thieves must have spent forty dollars for the roses, she calculated that their profit at a mere sixty dollars.
Even in her early 90s she was helping run her business from her Lucite bed with built-in fluorescent lighting. She died of a heart attack in 1965 at age 94, her business worth billions, and was laid out in an Yves St Laurent suit adorned with her famous black pearls, and makeup applied artfully by an expert from the Rubinstein salon. Thousands came to view her. Said one knowing visitor, “I bet this is the only time Arden didn’t mind Rubinstein being ahead of her.”
Some eighteen months later “the other one” would follow, laid out in the very same de luxe funeral parlor, overflowing with floral tributes dominated by pink, her favorite color, that gave off a heady perfume. “Too, too floral, dear,” remarked one beauty editor, “just like her fragrances.” Mercifully, she was buried in a different cemetery, far removed from her rival, though one does wonder how the two of them get along in the afterlife.
Helena Rubinstein was buried, minus the black pearls, beside her second husband in Mount Olivet Cemetery in Queens, their gravestone adorned with a coat of arms. (His, of course.) Again, good timing: she got out before the “natural look” came in, before feminists denounced makeup as a stratagem to appeal to lustful males. As for the black pearls, they soon reappeared adorning a relative. When her enormous estate was auctioned off by Parke-Bernet Galleries in 1966, the catalog ran to six volumes. Her company, Helena Rubinstein, Inc., was sold to Colgate Palmolive in 1973, and is now owned by the French cosmetics conglomerate L’Oréal. Published in 1966, her autobiography My Life for Beauty is a mix of fact and fiction.
And who then bought her fabled 26-room penthouse at 625 Park Avenue? Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon, a cosmetics competitor whom she had dismissed with scorn as a copycat, calling him “the nail man.” Madame must have turned over in her sumptuous Mount Olivet grave.
* * * * *
The Arts & Leisure section of the Times of April 2 had already interviewed the two stars of “War Paint”: Patti LuPone (Rubinstein) and Christine Ebersole (Arden), the sleek dark locks of the first contrasting vividly with the rich blond locks of the second. (Both are in their sixties, but who would know it?) The two are not enemies offstage, far from it, and the fight they play onstage is not waged by hurling insults and compacts, but as it was in real life, by introducing new products, raiding each other’s staff, and investing. And the two actresses share the greatest respect for the women they play, hailing them as inspiring role models paving the way for other women even before women had the vote. (Though it can also be said that they built their empires by exploiting the vulnerability of women, by convincing women that they needed cosmetics to compete and survive.) And David Stone, the producer, emphasizes that the musical isn’t about makeup, it’s about “women and beauty and power and how women treat each other.” It doesn’t hurt that the Broadway audience today is disproportionately female, though the show’s investors -- significantly -- are male.
* * * * * *
BROWDERBOOKS: No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here. As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client It is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Coming soon: Americans are pigs. (And no, I'm not anti-American, just a realist.)
© 2017 Clifford Browder
April 12, 2017
290. Additives
Two LibraryThing early reviews of Bill Hope: His Story:
graham, March 30, 2017: I sat down to read this book around 6 p.m.; it's 11:20 p.m. and I've just finished it. I couldn't put it down. This is a very engaging, fast-moving first-hand "biography" of a turn-of-the-century petty thief turned con man which held me enthralled from start to finish.
terry, April 7, 2017: Engrossing novel that makes you want to continue reading in order to find out what happens next in the life of Bill Hope. Many ups and downs make it a truely enjoyable read, about a bygone time.
MEET BILL HOPE, A STREET KID TURNED PICKPOCKET WHO WANTS TO LEAVE THE CROOKED LIFE AND YEARNS FOR BETTER
Bill Hope: His Story:
($20: Softcover: 6X9”, 158pp: 978-1-68114-305-7; $35: Hardcover: 978-1-68114-306-4; $2.99: EBook: 978-1-68114-307-1; LCCN: 2017933794; Historical Fiction; May 17, 2017) is the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his scorn for snitches and bullies; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; his brief career on the stage playing himself; his loyalty to a man who has befriended him but may be trying to kill him; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. In the course of his adventures he learns how slight the difference is between criminal and law-abiding, insane and sane, vice and virtue—a lesson that reinforces what he learned on the streets. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a yearning to leave the crooked life behind, and a persistent and undying hope. This is the second title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York. The first in the series is The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), mention of which appears at the end of this post. The book can be ordered from Amazon and will be shipped after the release date of May 17, 2017. But the paperback, which goes for $20, will cost an additional $4.95 for shipping, unless you order books totaling $25 or more. The book is also available now from the author and will be mailed immediately ($20 + postage). And now let's talk about food.
* * * * * * Here, in another midweek mini-post, is an additional thought about food to die for, or maybe food to die with. My partner Bob often orders take-out from nearby restaurants, and with the food come crackers and other packaged goodies. Of course the ingredients have to be listed on the wrappings, and if most people ignore this precious information in the tiniest print, I do not. So what have I found? Here follows, verbatim, the ingredients of the crackers that come with soup.
· Enriched flour, niacin, reduced iron, vitamin B1 (thiamin mononitrate), vitamin B2 (riboflavin), folic acid, soybean oil with TBHQ for freshness, salt, corn syrup, contains 2% or less of leavening (baking soda, yeast), soy lecithin.
All in all, it could be worse. Vitamins, and no long names of chemicals, at least. But then we come to TBHQ, an abbreviation for the preservative tertiary butylhydroquinone. Right off, would you want your crackers preserved with something called tertiary butylhydroquinone? Probably not. And sure enough, TBHQ is controversial, being toxic at high levels, even though allowed by the Food and Drug Administration at lower levels. Some online sources say that more study is needed, while others call it flat-out dangerous.
But that’s just the warm-up for this subject. Let’s look now at the ingredients of a banana nut muffin that also came our way.
· Enriched bleached flour (wheat flour, niacin, iron, thiamine mononitrate, riboflavin, folic acid), sugar, water, bananas, maltodextrin, vegetable oil (soybean, canola), high fructose corn syrup, eggs, contains 2% or less: pecans, walnuts, glycerin, modified corn starch, potassium sorbate (preservative), salt, leavening (baking soda, sodium aluminum phosphate, monocalcium phosphate), medium chain triglycerides, lactylic oleate, mono- and diglycerides, corn starch, xanthan gum, sodium stearoyl lactylate, enzyme, natural flavor, mixed tocopherols.
And you thought you were just getting a banana nut muffin!
But once again, it could be worse. While potassium sorbate is toxic in high doses, studies have not found it to be carcinogenic in rats. (Lucky rats!) And if sodium aluminum phosphate contains aluminum, a known toxin, it is described as “probably safe,” though watch out if you have a kidney problem. Xanthan gum at least doesn't sound intimidatingly chemical, and if it’s considered safe at low levels, it is also a laxative that increases “stool output, frequency of defecation, and flatulence.” Sodium stearoyl lactylate is a skin moisturizer that for some reason gets put into food, where one source calls it an “ingredient to die for,” a description that, under the circumstances, I could do without. Enough said; I won’t mention the sugars.
Conclusion: All these additives are FDA-approved, and as we all know, the FDA enjoys a sterling reputation and has our best nutritional interests at heart., even if our beloved President Trump has vowed to deregulate it. But what about the effects of combining all these “safe” ingredients in a single food? And what if one consumes that food daily? Ah, that might be another matter. So I think I’ll do without packaged crackers and banana nut muffins for the nonce and frequent the greenmarkets instead.
* * * * * * BROWDERBOOKS: No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here. As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client It is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Coming soon: As announced, Helena Rubinstein: "Beauty is power."
© 2017 Clifford Browder
April 9, 2017
289. Food to Die For
Two LibraryThing early reviews of Bill Hope: His Story:
graham, March 30, 2017: I sat down to read this book around 6 p.m.; it's 11:20 p.m. and I've just finished it. I couldn't put it down. This is a very engaging, fast-moving first-hand "biography" of a turn-of-the-century petty thief turned con man which held me enthralled from start to finish.
terry, April 7, 2017: Engrossing novel that makes you want to continue reading in order to find out what happens next in the life of Bill Hope. Many ups and downs make it a truely enjoyable read, about a bygone time.
Forgive my including them; not all reviews will be so positive.
MEET BILL HOPE, A STREET KID TURNED PICKPOCKET WHO WANTS TO LEAVE THE CROOKED LIFE AND YEARNS FOR BETTER
Bill Hope: His Story:
($20: Softcover: 6X9”, 158pp: 978-1-68114-305-7; $35: Hardcover: 978-1-68114-306-4; $2.99: EBook: 978-1-68114-307-1; LCCN: 2017933794; Historical Fiction; May 17, 2017) is the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his scorn for snitches and bullies; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; his brief career on the stage playing himself; his loyalty to a man who has befriended him but may be trying to kill him; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. In the course of his adventures he learns how slight the difference is between criminal and law-abiding, insane and sane, vice and virtue—a lesson that reinforces what he learned on the streets. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a yearning to leave the crooked life behind, and a persistent and undying hope. This is the second title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York. The first in the series is The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), mention of which appears at the end of this post. The book can be ordered from Amazon and will be shipped after the release date of May 17, 2017. But the paperback, which goes for $20, will cost an additional $4.95 for shipping, unless you order books totaling $25 or more. The book is also available now from the author and will be mailed immediately ($20 + postage). And now let's talk about food.
This post is all about food – dishes, snacks, and meals that I have thought superb. It began with a recent visit to the Patisserie Claude here on West 4th Street in the West Village that is said to do French croissants sublimely – so sublimely that they sell out every morning, long before my lusty palate crosses their threshold. What better place to begin than the French croissant, which long ago I had for breakfast on many occasions in France, where one can find them every morning in any café. Last year, in an unguarded moment, I bought one from my organic bread stand at the Union Square greenmarket – usually a reliable source of bread, muffins, and cookies – only to find it a poor imitation of the true French croissant. This poor imitation squatted on my palate like lead, whereas the true croissant, being light and feathery and delicate when fresh-baked, dances. “Fresh baked” says it all; never eat a croissant that is a day old; it isn’t a true croissant. And if you ever see one prebaked and packaged, register disgust and flee.
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Chi King Note on photos: Photos rarely do justice to food. The above one of croissants makes them look like a bunch of sleeping armadillos. I'm adding photos, but with reservations. Believe me, the food is delicious, no matter how it looks when photographed.
Another fond memory of French pastry is the baba au rhum, a rum-soaked cake topped with whipped cream and ideally, right smack in the middle of the whipped cream, a cherry. The very thought of it makes me drool. All authentic French pastry is superb, but for me, this one stands out. Though it is presumably available here in this city, I can’t recommend any bakery off the top of my head.
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Mogens EngelundIt was in France that I learned to dine. In a restaurant one doesn’t just plump oneself down and gobble. A traditional French meal – even a simple one – has a structure; it comes in courses. First, soup. Then one breaks the ever present bread and takes the first sip of wine (always there is wine). In a fancy meal other courses may intervene, but then, climactically, comes – not the entrée, as we incorrectly call it – but the pièce de résistance, the main dish that you ordered. And after that, in time (one must never hurry), dessert and, if one so chooses, coffee. And the entrée? That, in French dining, is another course that precedes and leads into the main course. How we came to so term the main course I do not know. Be that as it may, the French are insistent on being served properly, one course at a time. In Mexico I recall a Frenchman complaining vigorously to me of the barbarous custom the Mexicans had of bringing all the dishes at once. His emphasis on the word barbare summed up his shock and indignation at this uncivilized behavior, responding to which I told him that, being French, he was spoiled: he knew how to dine.
Obviously, French dining looms large in my culinary reminiscences. I will add just one more item: chèvre, or goat cheese, which I once encountered in – of all places! – Luxembourg, while visiting a married couple of my acquaintance. They served it as an hors-d’oeuvre and it was love at first taste. I can’t even describe that taste, but anyone who has experienced chévre will know what I mean. The stand of the Lynn Haven Farm at the Union Square greenmarket on Wednesdays offers a very acceptable goat cheese with many different seasonings; my preference is the herbed goat cheese with a thick coating of rosemary, tarragon, and thyme. Lynn Haven, a dairy-goat farm, is located upstate at Pine Bush, New York, 90 miles north of New York City, and glad I am that they make that long trip down to the city every Wednesday. But their goat cheese is too special to be consumed weekly; I reserve it as an hors-d’oeuvre to begin special home-cooked dinners for just Bob and me, the next one being Easter.
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Francophile that I am as regards food and culture generally, I have a place in my heart and tummy for Italian food as well. In the spring of 1999 I went to Italy with my partner Bob and our friend Barbara from Maine, and as marvelous as the art and architecture were, the food was even better. All the meals were good, and nothing so delighted us starting our dinner with fresh bread dipped in olive oil, and later to sprinkle Parmesan cheese on our salad. On two or three occasions the pasta was out of this world – better than the best pasta we have tasted here in the U.S., and on two occasions the same could be said of the bread. On one occasion we chose to wander through Canareggio, a working-class district in Venice rarely visited by tourists, where we stumbled on a little restaurant that had neither a sign outside nor a printed menu; the waitress simply told us what they had, and our limited Italian was just enough to make satisfactory selections. While Barbara and I sat facing the restaurant’s interior, simultaneously eyeing with delight the young workers sitting at another table, poor Bob, facing us with his back to them, missed that added attraction. But the hit of the day was the bread, probably obtained from a bakery nearby, and so good you could almost make a meal of it.
My favorite other reminiscence of Italy and its food hearkens back to a somewhat overcast day in Florence when we decided to cross the Arno and try to find Omero, a restaurant in the nearby countryside that Bob had discovered on a previous trip. This was an adventure, for it took us off our map of the city and its environs, but we trusted to our instincts and Bob’s memory to get us there. Across the Arno we wandered on a country road with the Tuscan landscape stretched out wide before us: skinny dark green cypress trees, dusty green olive groves, and vineyards with long rows of well-cropped vines. Lovely, but where was Omero? As we wandered, on the low rock wall beside the road we saw little lizards sunning themselves until they detected our approached and scooted off. Charming, but where was Omero? Bob’s vague memory, really just a hunch, had us make a turn in another direction, and there in the distance, marked by no sign but several parked cars in front of it, was a building that indeed turned out to be Omero.
Inside were a host of Italian diners, many of them professionals taking a lunch break, but we were the only Americans, and surely the only patrons to arrive on foot. But we had found a choice spot known only to the knowing few, and there we dined royally, with a view through wide windows of the Tuscan landscape. The whole meal was excellent, but this was one of the places where we tasted pasta like we had never tasted it before. What is the secret? Local ingredients, no doubt, plus age-old traditions passed down from generation to generation, this being a restaurant that the same family has run for many years – a formula that we shall encounter again at (of all places) Coney Island in New York. And if our walk back to the city was a bit anticlimactic, with a light spattering of rain, while high walls on either side of the road deprived us of views of the villas, it hardly mattered; we had had the meal of meals.
All right, French and Italian restaurants are superb, but what about the U.S. of A.? We’ll come home now and focus on New York, where fine dining was introduced in the nineteenth century by Delmonico’s, a series of French restaurants that adapted French cooking to American ingredients, and by the 1860s printed menus totally in French. Today New York justifiably has a reputation for restaurants of every national and ethnic persuasion, and of prices ranging from the modest to the stratospheric; my reminiscences will for the most part be confined to the modest.
Bob and I both love Chinese food, though he inclines to the spicy, and I do not. Now that I nibble cheese and sip wine with him on Sundays and then go out alone to lunch, I’m not looking for a full meal, only an appetizer or two, and usually settle on a hot and sour soup (the one hot dish I tolerate), then maybe a dumpling and, if they have it, green-tea ice cream. This was my Sunday lunch for years at the Empire on Seventh Avenue – not a gourmet restaurant, but adequate – until it closed a year ago. I then migrated to another Chinese restaurant on West 3rd Street, but had to do without my beloved green-tea ice cream. And now, just a week ago, I discovered Niu (yes, that’s its name) on Greenwich Avenue just across from the Jefferson Market Library and its adjoining garden, a quiet, discreetly lit restaurant that, in addition to scallion pancakes, does indeed – mirabile dictu – serve green-tea ice cream, and three big scoops at that. The well-being of my Sabbaths is now assured.
Scallion pancakesHoward61313
Speaking of spicy dishes, Bob and I and our friend John once tried a Burmese restaurant on the Upper East Side whose dishes were robustiously spiced. Being in an adventurous mood, I consumed a full spicy meal and was beginning to think I might adjust to this kind of food. But the next day my system rebelled, and in between trots to the john I concluded that spicy Burmese food was not for me.
The peak of Bob’s and my dining experiences was Gargiulo’s, an Italian restaurant on West 15th Street in Coney Island, but a few blocks from the boardwalk and the ocean. Founded by the Gargiulo family in 1907, it has been run since 1965 by the several generations of the Russo family and features classic Neapolitan cuisine. Coney Island is not the most refined of neighborhoods, and Gargiulo’s is close to the boardwalk and beach, and, at one time before it expanded and thus gentrified the neighborhood, had a brothel discreetly lodged next door. But even in those days it had a dress code: no shorts and, above all, no bare feet. Its clientele is strictly middle class and, I would suggest, middle class with taste. (Like Bob and me, for instance.)
For the two of us over the years, dining at Gargiulo’s, which Bob had discovered through a review in the Times, involved a long trip by subway through the outer wilds of Brooklyn, most of it above ground with vistas of rooftops with laundry on clotheslines, and other less-than-stimulating sights, until the high-rise apartment buildings of Coney loomed up in the distance, announcing the imminent end of our journey. We took this trip several times a year, budget permitting (Gargiulo’s is not cheap), but our favorite excursion was on the afternoon of Christmas Eve, when we went first to the Aquarium for a look at romping seals and walruses, keen-toothed sharks, and groupie penguins waiting to be fed. That done, by 5 p.m. we were on the boardwalk bound for Gargiulo’s, and if it was a cloudless day, en route we could see a sunset over the ocean.
Arriving at Gargiulo’s, we would be among the first diners to enter. After checking our wraps and lingering in the entrance hall briefly, to eye the lobsters lumbering about in a giant tank, we connected with our favorite waiter, Giancarlo, who guided us to our reserved table. What followed at a leisurely pace was a sumptuous meal, each course a treat in itself. First, mozzarella in carrozza (mozzarella cheese on toast), the most delicate of appetizers. (Literally, “mozzarella in a carriage,” but don’t ask me why.) Next, along with bread and a tri-colored salad, came fettuccine alfredo, a pasta tossed in Parmesan cheese and butter, pasta being the house’s specialty. All this with wine, our preferred choice being Amarone, a full-bodied dry red wine made from partially dried grapes in a very special process that gave it a very special taste and, of course, a very special price. Pricey, yes, but Giancarlo highly approved, and so did our palates.
Cannoli. A bit phallic, but let's pretend that's irrelevant.Joe Foodie
Our favorite dessert was cannoli, fingerlike shells of fried pastry dough with a sweet, creamy filling, the lightest, most delicate coda for the symphony of our meal. But the coda to the coda was coffee with Strega, a yellow-colored Italian liqueur, richly sweet, made of some 70 herbal ingredients. For me, the whole meal was a scandalous violation of my vegan principles, but I love Italian food, don’t dine this way often, and anyway, this is a chronicle of food to die for.
Other Gargiulo’s dishes to die for:
· Cold antipasto, each item specially marinated or otherwise prepared, and tasting like no other antipasto I have ever had.· Fritto misto, deep-fried vegetables, delicious.· Veal valdostana, veal chops stuffed with cheese, a dish so rich and filling that, having tried it once, I shun ed it thereafter in favor of lighter, less overwhelming fare.
And many, many more, including marvelous pasta dishes.
So much for dining out. How about meals at home? Good cooks, I firmly believe, are born and not made, and I have known several, none of whom ever attended cooking school. A friend of ours told us how her godson could come on a visit and, finding scraps of leftovers in her refrigerator, would then combine them in a gourmet dish that was absolutely delicious: obviously, a born cook. My partner Bob evolved as a cook, leaving behind pepper steaks and chunky cheese salad dressing to develop two dishes in particular, one for winter and one for summer. The winter dish was baked endives, which he did in our ancient oven wrapped in foil, and then, for the last five minutes of baking, removed the foil, thus giving the endives a marvelous taste combining a dry, crisp surface with a moist inside. The summer dish was a cucumber soup made with cucumbers, dill, yogurt, chicken broth, minced onions, and black pepper. Chilled overnight in the refrigerator and served the next day, it delivered us from the muggy heat of summer in our un-air-conditioned kitchen and hoisted us to pinnacles of bliss.
Other culinary highlights experienced in our apartment:
· The faint aroma of wine, teasing my nostrils as I sat on the sofa in our living room, when Bob added wine to a dish he was cooking in the kitchen.
· The earthy, mushroom taste permeating a veal dish, when Bob cooked it with truffles. (He tried truffles in various dishes at least four times; two times it worked, and two times it did not. And truffles aren’t cheap!)
· The taste of a red wine that we had stumbled on by accident, not paying a fancy price. It let us grasp at last what was meant by the French word velouté, describing the taste of a wine: velvety. The taste of a cheap wine is like a single bold note; the taste of this wine was like a musical phrase, the first impression yielding subtly to another.
To which I'll add Bob's French onion soup, based on a Julia Child recipe, which involved cooking the onions slowly for several hours, adding a touch of white wine (ah, that aroma!) and, just before serving, sprinkling the soup with grated Parmesan.
Yes, good cooks are born, not made. I am not a born cook; I need a recipe to guide me, and tend to repeat successful dishes rather than experimenting with new ones. Nor are my taste buds particularly sensitive. Tasting a wine, Bob and our friend John could discover nuances that I could not, pronouncing it “fruity,” for instance, with hints of cherry or peach, whereas I could only register dry and robust with maybe a hint of sweet. And when I tried to do Bob’s baked endives or cucumber soup, the result was a sorry imitation of what he could do. Maybe it runs in the family; my mother never claimed to be a good cook, whereas Bob’s mother had three dishes she did to perfection, my favorite being her turkey; the stuffing and gravy were out of this world.
I myself have one signature dish, which I owe to the Whole Foods Project, where I did volunteer work and took vegan cooking classes in the 1990s: millet and tempeh loaf, involving two foods I had never even heard of before that -- millet, a whole grain, and tempeh, a soy food. It takes several hours in the kitchen, but it’s worth it. It involves no less than six different cooking procedures:
1. Preboiling carrots cut into small chunks.2. Cooking the millet until all the water evaporates and steam holes appear.3. Steaming the tempeh.4. Rinsing the sea vegetable arame, to make it soft and pliable.5. Sautéing carrots, garlic, arame, scallions, and parsley in a skillet.6. Mixing the vegetables and arame with the millet and tempeh in a big bowl, then baking the mixture in loaf pans in the oven.
And this omits various seasonings to be added, and a sauce to serve with the dish when finished. The result is a dish with a marvelous blend of tastes that cannot be described, only experienced firsthand. Could the cooking be simplified? By no means. Veteran cooks have warned me that omitting ingredients in a recipe can be fatal to the dish involved.
If millet and tempeh – like so many good dishes – sounds a bit complicated, consider phyllo triangles, a specialty dish appropriate to winter holidays that I learned of in a Whole Foods Project cooking class, and that I attempted just once. To begin with, I didn’t even know what phyllo was: a paper-thin unleavened dough used in pastries. I tried three health food stores before I found it, and there it had to be brought up from refrigeration in the cellar. I won’t give a detailed account of this adventure – and adventure it was – in preparing crumbled tofu and chopped spinach, garlic, and scallions, and seasoning them with umiboshi paste (do you even know what umiboshi is? I didn’t) and tarragon and black pepper, and then placing the mixture on fragile strips of phyllo dough that are then folded over into triangles and baked in the over until the triangles are a light golden brown.
To do all this required three – yes, three – days. Not that you needed all of each day, but the recipe had to be done in stages. The result was admirable; when served to guests, the triangles brought cries of delight, followed by cries of amazement when I modestly announced that I had done the triangles myself. But three days of preparation? Life is short. I never attempted the triangles again.
Such are my culinary reminiscences, many of them garnered in New York City, where any cuisine you might wish for is available somewhere, and the ingredients too, if you just know where to look. New Yorkers are afflicted with high rents, noise, and congestion, but they eat out often, and well, and if they want to dine at home, all they need is available, and much of it at greenmarkets. Many of the foods I now consume I had never even heard of in my younger days, before coming to the richly diversified city of New York, which has never ceased to evolve in cooking matters since the first Delmonico’s opened here long ago.
* * * * * * BROWDERBOOKS: No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here. As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client It is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Coming soon: "Beauty is power." Another look at Helena Rubinstein and her arch enemy Elizabeth Arden, two cosmetics queens whose epic rivalry has now come to Broadway.
© 2017 Clifford Browder
April 5, 2017
288. Havana Today
MEET BILL HOPE, A STREET KID WHO DAZZLES AND PERPLEXES BROWNSTONE HOSTESSES WHEN HE PRONOUNCES HIMSELF ROBUSTIOUSLY EAGER TO SAVOR THE SPLENDIFEROUS MIX OF THEIR DISTINGUISHABLE AND RAFFINATED GUESTS
Bill Hope: His Story:
($20: Softcover: 6X9”, 158pp: 978-1-68114-305-7; $35: Hardcover: 978-1-68114-306-4; $2.99: EBook: 978-1-68114-307-1; LCCN: 2017933794; Historical Fiction; May 17, 2017) is the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his scorn for snitches and bullies; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; his brief career on the stage playing himself; his loyalty to a man who has befriended him but may be trying to kill him; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. In the course of his adventures he learns how slight the difference is between criminal and law-abiding, insane and sane, vice and virtue—a lesson that reinforces what he learned on the streets. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a yearning to leave the crooked life behind, and a persistent and undying hope. This is the second title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York. The first in the series is The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), mention of which appears at the end of this post. The book can be ordered from Amazon and will be shipped after the release date of May 17, 2017. But the paperback, which goes for $20, will cost an additional $4.95 for shipping, unless you order books totaling $25 or more. The book is also available now from the author and will be mailed immediately ($20 + postage). And now let's visit Havana, Cuba.
This will be a minipost, a quick stab at a subject, a glance at a city that presents a sharp contrast to New York. My friend Naqiya, a Pakestani American, recently went to Havana with two friends; none of them spoke a word of Spanish. They were there for a week, staying in private homes that rented out rooms (the hotels are fearfully expensive), and saw only Havana itself, didn’t travel to other parts of the island. The photos that follow were taken by Naqiya. She tells me that Cuban society is remarkable for a number of reasons.
· Free education for all.· Health care for everyone.· Scientists and trash collectors and everyone else all get the exact same salary paid by the government.· Music everywhere.· Beautiful old buildings, and a seaside promenade all in marble.· Art sold in little ground-floor studios.· No abject poverty.· Old-model cars painted in bright colors.· No crime.· A seemingly happy people.
Proud of their brightly painted old cars.
Beautiful old churches everywhere.
Friendly to American visitors. A bathroom attendant who hands outanother rare item: toilet paper.
But of course there are negatives:
The salaries are never quite enough, so everyone has to have a second job.· No free discussions of politics.· The beautiful old buildings have cracks; three or four a year just plain crumble and collapse.· People avoid the sidewalks, walk in the streets, so as to avoid falling debris from above.· No crime because the penalties are grievously severe.· Though scrubbed up and shiny in appearance, the cars, lacking spare parts, are in bad shape, go only 20 miles an hour at best.· No Internet.· Many basic items rare or nonexistent, as for example plastic cups and utensils, even toilet seats.· An economy crippled by the longstanding U.S. embargo.
A sunset view from the room where she stayed. The aerials catch non-state-sponsored TV, mostlyhigh-drama stories from Latin America. The dome in the background is the Cuban capitol, modeled on our own in D.C. and undergoing renovation, hence the scaffolding.
Wherever the three visitors went in Havana, there might be complaints and resentments regarding Yankee imperialists, but they were treated well; when informed they were Americans, vendors often refused to charge them anything, begged for help in learning English, which wasn’t taught in the schools, where Russian was favored. Having no Spanish, the Americans resorted at times to gestures, but many Cubans spoke a slangy American English picked up from clandestine TV. Yes, the Cuban males gave them plenty of attention, but it was flattering, not offensive. And if lovely old buildings were crumbling, new ones were going up: luxury hotels for the hoped-for swarms of foreign tourists. There were still few Americans, but plenty of Russians and Argentines, some of whom exhibited the crassness and ill manners of the Ugly American of yore. And everywhere, a flourishing black market. Renting out rooms in private homes had once been illegal, but the government found it impossible to suppress the practice; the solution: make it legal and tax it, which they did. Indeed, everything is taxed, and the taxes pay for the generous benefits.
After one week, what did my friend conclude? A creative people, but constrained. A happy people, especially when compared to other societies where the poor are not so well cared for. Happy and cared for, but not free. And all this in a lovely old city that was crumbling. All in all, a situation that she called (and she used the word repeatedly) unreal.
Now compare Havana with New York. New York is free, has toilet seats and toilet paper and (too many) plastic coffee cups, but is there music everywhere? In New York we have all the Internet we want, and go about with noses stuck in mobile devices, but do we have free education, health insurance for all, no poverty, and no crime? Our cars aren't always brightly painted, but they go more than 20 miles an hour. (In 2015, 230 of us died in traffic accidents in New York, which was hailed as progress, since 257 died in 2014). Freedom vs. security, the Internet vs. free education, soaring high-rises vs. charming old buildings that are crumbling: not all choices are easy. But who really has a choice? Havanans don't, and neither do New Yorkers. We take what is given us and make our peace with that.
* * * * * *
BROWDERBOOKS: No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here. As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client It is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Coming soon: Food to die for – dishes, snacks, and meals that I have experienced here and abroad, most of them exceptional. Beware of viewing it on an empty stomach.
© 2017 Clifford Browder
April 2, 2017
287. David Rockefeller -- Again!
MEET BILL HOPE, WHO TO WIN THE GIRL HE LOVES MUST PERFORM TWELVE LABORS, THE LABORS OF HOPE
Bill Hope: His Story:
($20: Softcover: 6X9”, 158pp: 978-1-68114-305-7; $35: Hardcover: 978-1-68114-306-4; $2.99: EBook: 978-1-68114-307-1; LCCN: 2017933794; Historical Fiction; May 17, 2017) is the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his scorn for snitches and bullies; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; his brief career on the stage playing himself; his loyalty to a man who has befriended him but may be trying to kill him; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. In the course of his adventures he learns how slight the difference is between criminal and law-abiding, insane and sane, vice and virtue—a lesson that reinforces what he learned on the streets. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a yearning to leave the crooked life behind, and a persistent and undying hope. This is the second title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York. The first in the series is The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), mention of which appears at the end of this post. The book can be ordered from Amazon and will be shipped after the release date of May 17, 2017. But the paperback, which goes for $20, will cost an additional $4.95 for shipping, unless you order books totaling $25 or more. The book is also available now from the author and will be mailed immediately ($20 + postage). And now on to David Rockefeller -- again.
* * * * * * At the Museum of Modern Art's annual spring benefit in June 2016, many artists were honored, but the longest line of well-wishers formed in front of a hundred-year-old gentleman in a wheelchair who appeared to be as curious and sociable as ever: David Rockefeller, the patriarch of the Rockefeller clan and a longtime patron of MOMA, who was hoping to go to Paris to see old friends.
That trip was not to be, for on March 20, 2017, at his home in Pocantico Hills, New York, David Rockefeller died in his sleep at age 101 -- a quiet exit in keeping with his mild-mannered, unostentatious life. The passing of the last grandson of John D. Rockefeller, the founder of Standard Oil and the nation’s first billionaire, marks the end of an era. Here now, with supplements, is a reprint of my post #245 of July 21, 2016: “Who Really Runs America? David Rockefeller?” plus the comments of an anonymous critic provoked by an earlier publishing of the post. My appraisal of David Rockefeller, who in his lifetime gave away $2 billion to worthy causes, and who instilled in his children and grandchildren the Rockefeller tradition of philanthropy, has not changed appreciably since.
On WBAI recently (where else?) I heard nutritionist Gary Null, who also comments on current affairs, expound seriously on a vast conspiracy of corporate and military powers who constitute a shadowy permanent government of this country and really rule it, our elected officials being their pawns or dupes. Prominent among these sinister figures he named David Rockefeller, the aging patriarch of that clan, whom I and many know only as the banker brother of the late Nelson Rockefeller, the forty-ninth governor of New York State (1959-1973) and the forty-first vice president of the U.S. (1974-1977) under President Gerald Ford.
Having heard vaguely of such theories before, I decided to look into David Rockefeller and his possible implication in such a conspiracy. I am no friend of conspiracy theories but cannot deny that important things happen that we ordinary citizens only learn about later, if even then. So who is David Rockefeller and what has he been up to? I launch my little investigation with no expertise whatsoever and with access only to information available to the public.
He was of course a banker, and this makes him suspect at once. We Americans profess to dislike bankers, since we think of them as fat cats with too much money who are not inclined to share it with the rest of us who have too little. This prejudice – and it is a prejudice – has seeped deep into our popular entertainments. Long ago, when the soaps were making their last stand on radio, I recall how, when the writers of Ma Perkins needed a villain in the little town of Rushville Center, they trotted out the local banker, who was referred to not as Mr. So-and-So, but Banker So-and-So. And our recent financial convulsion and its ongoing aftermath, brought on in large part by misbehaving banks, haven’t exactly enhanced the profession’s reputation. Still, with noble intent I shall push this bias to one side and proceed as objectively as possible. So what kind of a guy is David Rockefeller, and what are his connections to this alleged conspiracy?
A young David Rockefeller (far left) with Eleanor Roosevelt, Trygvie Lie, former Secretary-General of the United Nations, and Thomas J. Watson, CEO of IBM, in1953. From a young age, he moved in illustrious circles.
He is a son of John D., Jr., who, as I mentioned in a recent post, built Rockefeller Center at his own expense, and a grandson of old John D., the Standard Oil mogul and founder of the family fortune. David was born in New York City in 1915 in his father’s sumptuous residence at 10 West 54th Street, then the largest private residence in the city, and one full of ancient, medieval, and Renaissance art collected by his father, not to mention a whole floor devoted to his mother’s private modern art gallery. In his bedroom at one time were the famous Unicorn Tapestries now at the Cloisters museum in Fort Tryon Park, near the northern tip of Manhattan.
A Standard Oil tank octopus wrapping its tentacles around the steel, copper, and shipping industries, as well as a state house (upper right) and the U.S. Capitol (upper left), while reaching out toward the White House (lower left). A 1904 lithograph, showing the image that John D. Sr.'s descendants struggled to get free of. Much of David Rockefeller’s childhood was spent at Kykuit, a 40-room neoclassical mansion on a 250-acre family estate near Sleepy Hollow in Westchester County, N.Y., where he recalls visits by General George C. Marshall, Admiral Byrd, and Charles Lindbergh. And for summer vacations there was the family’s 100-room house on Mount Desert Island, Maine. Yes, a privileged childhood with wealth and connections right from the start, though he and his siblings were raised strictly, as his father had been before him.
Kykuit, where he grew up.Ad Meskens
David Rockefeller’s father, John D., Jr., was a passionate collector of traditional art of the past, while his wife, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller (David’s mother), was just as passionate a collector of modern art, which her husband professed to despise. She was one of the founders of the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in 1929, and persuaded her husband to donate land on 53rd and 54th Street for the present MOMA, which opened in 1939. To make room for the new museum, John D., Jr., demolished both his sumptuous residence at 10 West 54th Street, and his deceased father’s palatial mansion at 4 West 54thStreet; in their place today is the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Sculpture Garden. The Rockefellers have been affiliated with MOMA ever since. But if Abby’s modern art collection found a home at MOMA, her husband’s medieval collection went to the Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The Sculpture Garden, on the site of two demolished Rockefeller mansions.His education: He graduated cum laude from Harvard, did postgraduate work in economics there and at the London School of Economics, and got a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, his dissertation entitled “Unused Resources and Economic Waste.” My take so far: this was no playboy, and no slouch either. He had a mind and put it to good use.
For eighteen months he served as secretary to Mayor Fiorello La Guardia at a dollar a year, and then worked for the U.S. Office of Defense, Health, and Welfare Services. When we entered the war he attended Officer Candidate School and became an officer in the Army, working in North Africa and France (he spoke fluent French) for military intelligence. Serving as well for seven months as an assistant military attaché at the U.S. embassy in Paris, he made use of family and Standard Oil contacts and established contacts of his own that proved useful thereafter. Even so, an exemplary career and nothing that I find objectionable. In the military as in business, there’s nothing inherently wrong with developing a network of contacts.
In 1946 he went to work for the Chase National Bank, with which his family had long been associated. Beginning as a lowly assistant manager, he worked his way up through the ranks, developing relationships with correspondent banks throughout the world, and finally became president and CEO. In 1955 he persuaded the bank to erect its new headquarters in the Wall Street area, thus helping revitalize the downtown financial district, which other companies had deserted for locations farther uptown. In 1960 the new sixty-story building opened at One Chase Manhattan Plaza on Liberty Street, then the biggest bank building in the world.
The Chase bank. He did things BIG.wallyg
Under David Rockefeller’s leadership Chase spread internationally and became a major force in the world’s financial system, with some fifty thousand correspondent banks, more than any other bank in the world. He even opened a branch at One Karl Marx Square near the Kremlin and established relations with the National Bank of China. Trouble came in 1979 when, along with his friend Henry Kissinger and others, he persuaded President Jimmy Carter to admit the deposed Shah of Iran for hospital treatment in the U.S., an action that precipitated the Iran hostage crisis and brought him under media scrutiny for the first time in his life.
Now a major political and financial figure and a moderate Republican, he had relations with every U.S. President from Eisenhower on, and at times served as an unofficial emissary on high-level diplomatic missions. In 1968, when Robert Kennedy was assassinated, his brother Nelson, then Governor of New York, wanted to appoint David Rockefeller to the vacant senate seat, but he turned the offer down. Subsequently President Carter offered to make him Secretary of the Treasury and Federal Reserve Chairman, but he turned those offers down as well. Clearly, with all his worldwide contacts he preferred a private role, well removed from the publicity and brouhaha of politics. Which of course has made him a natural target for conspiracy theorists of every stripe and hue.
His contacts over the years included Henry Kissinger, a personal friend; Allen Dulles and his brother John Foster Dulles; former CIA director Richard Helms; Archibald Roosevelt, Jr., and his cousin Kermit Roosevelt, both involved with the CIA; and countless others. Who, indeed, didn’t he know among the rich and powerful? All of which, again, has made him a natural and inevitable target for conspiracy theorists.
Throughout his life he was involved with numerous policy groups concerned with domestic and international problems: the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; the International Executive Service Corps, promoting prosperity and stability through private enterprise in underdeveloped regions of the world; the Partnership for New York City, a group of CEOs seeking to promote the city as a global center of commerce, culture, and innovation; the Council on Foreign Relations, an influential foreign-policy think tank with some 4700 members; the Trilateral Commission, an organization of leaders in the private sector founded by him and committed to discussion of issues of global concern; and the Bilderberg Group, an annual conference of political leaders and experts from various fields to discuss major issues facing the world. All this, while becoming the family patriarch and looking after a fortune that came to him mostly through trusts set up by his father, and that is estimated at $2.8 billion, which makes him #193 in the current Forbes 400 List of the richest people in America.
President Jimmy Carter addressing the Trilateral Commission in 1978. Was David Rockefeller there? Probably, but I haven't picked him out. Can you?If one goes online, where conspiracy theories run wild, one can easily find websites warning that so-called Globalists are working secretly to establish a one-world government that will suppress national sovereignty and individual liberties and rule the world. Who are these nefarious individuals? International bankers, the super rich, the elite, members of the Council on Foreign Relations, the Trilateral Commission, the Bilderberg Group, and other mysterious, secretive, suspect organizations, including the Illuminati, an 18th-century secret society in Bavaria that opposed superstition, prejudice, and the influence of religion in public life, and that supposedly survives to this day. Among today’s suspect elite, obviously, David Rockefeller looms large, albeit at the age of 98. These power mongers, these “banksters” are everywhere, theorists assert; they manipulate everything, they will destroy the world as we know it.
Graffiti in a car park in Redhill, a town in Surrey, in 2009.allen watkin And what does David Rockefeller say to these charges? In his autobiography Memoirs, published in 2002, he observes: “For more than a century ideological extremists at either end of the political spectrum have seized upon well-publicized incidents such as my encounter with [Fidel] Castro to attack the Rockefeller family for the inordinate influence they claim we wield over American political and economic institutions. Some even believe we are part of a secret cabal working against the best interests of the United States, characterizing me and my family as ‘internationalists’ and of conspiring with others around the world to build a more integrated global political and economic structure – one world, if you will. If that’s the charge, I stand guilty, and I am proud of it” (Memoirs, p. 405).
“Aha!” cry many conspiracy theorists, seeing this statement as a brazen confirmation of their charges. But Rockefeller has in no way confessed to participation in a conspiracy, only to advocating a “more integrated global political and economic structure.” He then goes on to see his critics as influenced by Populism, and observes that Populists believe in conspiracies and consider him the “conspirator in chief.” He insists that the Rockefellers’ international role during the past half century has produced tangible benefits like the defeat of Soviet Communism, and improvements in societies around the world as a result of global trade, improved communications, and greater interaction of people from different countries.
So far, I think the defense of this “proud internationalist” sounds valid. David Rockefeller one of the Illuminati? Why not throw in the Hitlerjungen and the Ku Klux Klan as well? Except that, so far as I know, those groups lacked international connections and therefore might be allies of the conspiracy crowd. Rockefeller was certainly a lord of think tanks, but that doesn’t make him and them a clutch of conspirators. The conspiracy gang whom I have encountered online – and they are legion – strike me as paranoid; frankly, they are just plain nuts.
Noam Chomsky So let’s escape from cloud cuckoo land and enter the realm of possibility. Not all Rockefeller’s critics allege a worldwide conspiracy; rather, they see a shadowy permanent government that really runs this country, with whom our elected Presidents have to come to terms. Gary Null seems to be one of this tribe, though I’d need to know more about his views to be certain. But there are other voices of the Progressive Left whom I have to take seriously. Social critic and activist Noam Chomsky has argued that the Trilateral Commission’s report The Crisis of Democracy, proposing solutions for the “excess of democracy” characteristic of the 1960s, embodies “the ideology of the liberal wing of the state capitalist ruling elite.” Chomsky sees the Commission as advocating “more moderation in democracy,” a more passive and obedient citizenry less inclined to put undue restraints on government. He also asserts that the Commission had an undue influence on the administration of President Jimmy Carter. Whether I fully agree with Chomsky I’m not sure, but I listen to him. The Trilateral Commission is a creation of David Rockefeller, so any criticism of it implies criticism of its founder. Chomsky’s assertions aren’t all over the place, sniffing out conspirators everywhere; he is focused in his attack and raises questions well worth pondering.
So where do I end up? David Rockefeller has had a vast network of connections and has no doubt wielded tons of influence, perhaps at times too much. He has shunned the public arena, prefers quiet private conferences, is never flamboyant, eschews attention-getting gestures, is really quite quiet, even colorless. (Eschew: I love this word, even if it sounds like a sneeze.) But that doesn’t make him a conspirator or a nefarious person. He’s only one of many of the elite exerting influence on our government and society. Confirming my impression of him as an individual are reminiscences of him by my partner Bob’s doctor, who long ago met Rockefeller and conversed with him on several occasions. He found him very knowledgeable, very personable, unassuming, and easy to relate to, which is remarkable, given his privileged childhood.
Yet if Rockefeller or his associates are promoting the free-trade agreement known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which is being secretly negotiated now, then I have to agree that they are potentially eroding our national sovereignty. According to certain leaked documents, the TPP would exempt foreign corporations from our laws and regulations, and let them challenge those laws and regulations as being unfair practices in restraint of trade. Our hard-won regulations on clean air and clean water, for instance, could be imperiled, not to mention countless other measures, and this worries me a lot. And if Rockefeller isn’t personally involved in promotion of the TPP (he is, after all, 98), like-minded people of great influence certainly are. And the general public is barely aware, if at all, of what is going on. Whether it involves a conspiracy or not, the TPP merits scrutiny and should be fought tooth and nail, unless its proposed provisions are radically revised. So score one – and a big one – for David Rockefeller’s more responsible critics, among them Gary Null.
John D., Sr., in 1900, looking very moneybags but very respectable. Even so, my impression of the Rockefeller clan is favorable. They have long since risen above their robber baron origins, which were tainted with labor strife, to become philanthropists and patrons of the arts on a grand scale. John D., Sr., gave millions to worthy causes and created the Rockefeller and other foundations; John D., Jr., created Rockefeller Center at his own expense, and with his wife helped launch the Museum of Modern Art; and David’s brother Nelson, as Governor, built the magnificent Empire State Plaza in Albany, and in his will left his interest in Kykuit, the Rockefeller estate, to the National Trust for Historic Preservation, so that it is now open to the public. (For Rockefeller Center, see post #87, From Ghosts to Grandeur: Fifth Avenue; for the Empire State Plaza, see post #18, Upstate vs. Downstate: The Great Dichotomy.) All in all, this city, state, and nation owe them a lot..
3 comments:
. [image error] Anonymous January 27, 2014 at 5:15 AM Sorry to say, but you're too naive. This family has oppressed everything in sight for decades, centuries in fact. You think if they gave some dozens of millions to 'charitable causes', that evens the score? They are the Illuminati! They literally 'manufacture' money for Christ's sake! And the list of 'Richest People In The World' isn't even true at all. It's a giant lie. This Circle is tremendously influential and cover up their tracks effortlessly. . [image error] Clifford Browder January 28, 2014 at 1:56 PM I understand where you're coming from, Anonymous, and I welcome your comment, but I hold to my approval of the clan's later doings, which benefit the public. If you look closely at the most enlightened benefactors, you'll always find plenty of warts. I give the Rockefellers some slack, that's all. Well, at least we agree about trees. And you're from my home town, Evanston. Did you go to ETHS? [my high school]. I attended a gathering of graduates last fall right here in New York. . . . [image error] Anonymous December 18, 2014 at 1:03 PM bro you are CLUELESS. we know this EVIL demonic clan supported hitler during the war indirectly supplying him oil, we know that they funded the US neo-con movement birthed from socialism, supported the federal reserve, they funded bolshevik communism, their oil company(ies) have funded missionaries to latin america to remove natives from land they wanted ("thy will be done"), they've supported tyrants and genocide the world over for power and profit, along with many other american and international elitists, working with and through CIA and other fascist entities/secret societies. at least do some research what the Promethean torch at 1 rockefeller plaza actually means, along with the art surrounding it. someone who has a clue:. . http://modernhistoryproject.org/mhp?A.... . deuces
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BROWDERBOOKS: No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here. As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client It is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Coming soon: Who knows?
© 2017 Clifford Browder
March 26, 2017
286. The Mafia and Me
MEET BILL HOPE, WHO ONCE CLAIMED TO BE RELATED TO MARIE ANTOINETTE THROUGH HIS MOTHER'S FAMILY, THE SHAWNZAZLEEZAYS
Bill Hope: His Story:
($20: Softcover: 6X9”, 158pp: 978-1-68114-305-7; $35: Hardcover: 978-1-68114-306-4; $2.99: EBook: 978-1-68114-307-1; LCCN: 2017933794; Historical Fiction; May 17, 2017) is the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his scorn for snitches and bullies; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; his brief career on the stage playing himself; his loyalty to a man who has befriended him but may be trying to kill him; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. In the course of his adventures he learns how slight the difference is between criminal and law-abiding, insane and sane, vice and virtue—a lesson that reinforces what he learned on the streets. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a yearning to leave the crooked life behind, and a persistent and undying hope. This is the second title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York. The first in the series is The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), mention of which appears at the end of this post. The book can be ordered from Amazon and will be shipped after the release date of May 17, 2017. But the paperback, which goes for $20, will cost an additional $4.95 for shipping, unless you order books totaling $25 or more. The book is also available now from the author and will be mailed immediately ($20 + postage). And now on to bars and the Mafia.
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In New York City in the 1950s and 1960s, before the advent of Gay Liberation, it was common knowledge in the gay world that most of the gay bars – bars specifically serving the gay community – were run by the Mafia. This reminiscence conjures up in my mind a jam-packed, smoke-filled interior with a thug standing guard at the door to keep out desirables, so the undesirables would hobnob in peace – or at least without the annoyance of heterosexual tourists. Jam-packed they certainly were, on Friday and Saturday nights, far exceeding the capacity -- conspicuously posted on the wall – that the law allowed, and smoke-filled as well. But as for the thug at the door, I can now recall only one bar – a discotheque known as the Goldbug – with a forbidding guardian of the portal. (More of that anon.)
The Mafia’s control of New York gay bars in those days is covered in detail by Philip Crawford Jr.’s The Mafia and the Gays, self-published in 2015, which delves deep into such sources as FBI files now accessible (with deletions) to the public; New York State Liquor Authority (SLA) records; gay memoirs; and newspaper articles and columns of the time. Obtaining a copy, I have scanned it for accounts of some of the bars I patronized back in those long-gone days when the gay community lived a subterranean life visible only to those knowing heterosexuals who enjoyed participating in it – far more women than men – and to those who exploited it for profit. So what have I learned? Plenty.
The Cork Club at 375 West 72nd Street was mentioned in 1954 in an FBI New York field office report listing bars “catering to homosexuals and queers.” Since this was a part of the FBI’s Top Hoodlum Program launched the year before, the Cork Club was presumably a Mafia-run joint. It was also the first gay bar I ever visited, tremulously curious, in the company of a knowing friend in the fall of 1953, and subsequently one that I visited frequently on weekends, since it was only a short subway ride down from my dormitory at Columbia University, where I was doing graduate studies in French. There was no thug at the door, only a friendly hat-check woman, plump and cheerful, who urged the clientele to attend the Cork Club picnic. The very thought of being seen in daylight with a throng of queers put me off, but in the club’s shadowy interior I first beheld a very femme gay kid walking in a very fake way, doing his best to fulfill the heterosexual stereotype of gay. He turned me off, but on other occasions I made my first connections there, some of them delightful, but none of them destined to endure. And this in a bar that the FBI had its eye on, but where the Mafia’s shadow was nowhere to be seen. Heterosexuals occasionally visited the Cork Club as tourists, and there was no gatekeeper to keep them out. Once I saw four guys just outside, hesitating to enter. “C’mon, c’mon,” urged one, but the others were not persuaded; in the end they walked off, presumably to some hetero bar where they would feel more at ease. But on another occasion two hetero couples got in. “Do you want him?” one girl asked me, indicating her boyfriend. “No,” I replied, “he’s all yours. I’m not attracted to straight guys.” Which was true enough.
The Cork Club was just the beginning of my explorations, which soon extended to Greenwich Village and a string of bars on West 8th Street: the Old Colony at 43 West 8th, and a little farther down the block, the International and (I think) a bar called Mary’s, and just across the Street from the Old Colony at 40 West 8th, a popular nightclub, the Bon Soir. My favorite was the Old Colony, which functioned as a hetero restaurant during the day and then metamorphosed into a gay bar at night. Juke boxes were an essential part of the gay bar scene, and I can still recall the rendering of “The whole town is talking about the Jones boy,” which found immediate resonance with the throng of Jones boys crowding the bar, sipping beer, and cruising. Even more memorable was the plaintive rendering of “Annie doesn’t live here anymore,” a song dating back to 1933 and later sung by Eartha Kitt in plaintive English and Marlene Dietrich in German:
Annie doesn’t live here anymore.You must be the one she waited for.She said I would know you by the blue in your eye,Checkered suit, a fancy vest, and polka-dot tie.You answer to that description, so I guess that you’re the guy.Well, Annie doesn’t live here anymore.
This song too found resonance with its message of lost love and missed opportunities, of fault and failure and its consequences.
One of my least favorite memories of the Old Colony was the “last chance” moment when, on Saturday night close to the 4 a.m. closing, there came the announcement “Last Call!” – a summons to the last drink of the night, and the last chance to connect. Connect I rarely did, disliking the desperate intensity of the moment, but on one occasion succumbed when a decent-looking slightly older guy gave me a nod and a smile. And it was under the same circumstances that a friend of mine, likewise new to the scene and even – to his virginal delight – on one occasion labeled “chicken,” was spirited off by a chunky older man to distant Queens for his deflowering – a rather drab event, he reported to me on the morrow, but necessary and long overdue.
The Bon Soir just across the street was a different experience, for one went there not to cruise but to be entertained. The crowd at that time was a mix of gay and straight, and I remember two female performers, but not their names, one white and one black, both popular with the gay crowd and basking in their favor and applause. It was a fun place, free from the tensions of cruising. Only now have I learned that in the 1960s Barbra Streisand made her debut there, a prelude to enduring fame.
So much for my first experience of the bars of the Village. Mr. Crawford’s book informs me that the Village bars were controlled by the Genovese family, one of five Mafia families active in the city. Their dominance in Greenwich Village resulted in part from the presence of a large Italian immigrant population in the South Village that was tolerant of their activities and unlikely to complain to the authorities. Vito Genovese also excelled in marketing heroin to addicts, and two of his lieutenants were fronts for him, operating the Bon Soir. None of this was known to the 8thStreet clientele, nor was I aware at the time of any dancing at the Bon Soir, but Crawford says that Vito Genovese was a frequent guest there, and that the gay dancing there was wild. But that dancing was in the 1960s; when I went there in the 1950s, dancing in gay bars was almost unheard of. But the authorities had their eye on Vito Genovese; he was arrested for running heroin in 1959 and died in prison a decade later.
The Cork Club and the 8th Street bars were fine, but for a more elite experience one went to the East Side, and most specifically to the Blue Parrot at 152 East 52nd Street, which was part of the so-called “Bird Circuit,” a string of gay bars that included the Golden Pheasant on East 48th Street and the Swan on East 54th. The Blue Parrot was just a bit more tasteful and elegant than the West Side and Village bars, though this may have been mostly in the imagination of visiting West Siders. On the East Side I felt like a tourist, which is probably why I never seemed to connect there. The Blue Parrot too appears in the FBI’s 1954 list of queer bars, along with the Cork Club and many others, though which Mafia family operated it is not stated.
For true East Side elegance and exclusiveness, nothing matched Regents Row on East 43rd Street, where I never ventured. Coat and tie were mandatory, and a certain snobbish East Side elegance prevailed. When a casually dressed young friend of mine connected with an older man at Grand Central Station, he was whisked away to Regents Row, where there was a great fuss about attiring him in a jacket and tie to make him presentable. When I told this story later to an elegant older acquaintance at Provincetown (my only visit there and another story), he said with mild annoyance, “Yes, it used to be a nice place, before they started bringing in every Tom, Dick, and Harry.” Be that as it may, Mr. Crawford informs me that Regents Row was run by Tommy Dowling and his lover Lucky Moore, who reportedly had ties to the Mafia.
How did the Mafia get control of the bars and run them? Quoting various sources, Mr. Crawford makes it crystal clear: a “clean” man with no police record would apply for the state liquor license, for which service in the 1950s he got $50 to $100 a week from the mob. And since Italian names were associated with the Mafia, this front might have a name not ending in a tell-tale vowel; Irish and Jewish owners were not uncommon. The real owners, the Mafiosi, would keep t the shadows, only occasionally setting foot on the premises. If the bar got “hot” – meaning it was getting too much attention, maybe from a crusading newspaper columnist – it would suspend operations for a ten-day cooling-off period. And if it got “too hot,” the owners would be advised to sell to another “clean” operator who would have no trouble preserving the license. And the police? They were of course paid off. More than once in a jam-packed gay bar I saw policemen in uniform enter, proceed to the back of the bar for a brief meeting with the manager or owner, and then leave, taking no notice of the patrons and their numbers far exceeding the posted capacity.
A variation of the Mafia gay-bar operation in the 1960s was what was called a “bust-out” operation. Mobsters would take over a bar and have gay agents inform the Village gay crowd that a new bar was opening, usually one upstairs or downstairs and thus not visible from the street. A juke box was installed, patrons flocked, and in the dim light dancing was allowed, and marijuana as well. All this was of course illegal, but the owner wouldn’t bother to pay off the police. If he could keep the place open for six months before it got raided, he had made his money and was ready to move on to another bust-out operation. And if problems with the law developed, the Mafia had lawyers available, among them Roy Cohn, the notorious attack-dog lawyer and AIDs denier, who later became a friend of President and Mrs. Reagan and seemed to have a finger in every pie (see post #237).
Supervising the authorities’ monitoring of the Mafia in those days was FBI director J. Edgar Hoover himself, who got a weekly report on them from his New York Field Division. Cooperating with the FBI was the New York State Liquor Authority, eager to cancel the license of any Mafia-run operation, including gay bars. FBI reports and newspaper columns of the time refer frequently to “fag bars” and “queer joints,” and to gay men as “so-called unfortunates,” “dainty hand-on-hippers,” “deviates,” and “undesirables.”
Julius’s, a bar/restaurant at 159 West 10thStreet that I occasionally visited, has a special place in gay history. When I first came to the Village in the early 1950s, it was described to me not as a gay bar but as “Princeton on a weekend.” It was a colorful joint with sawdust on the floor and barrels for tables, and unlike out-and-out gay bars, the interior was quite visible from the street. By the late 1950s it was attracting a gay male clientele, and in 1964 it was bought by William Fugazy and George Chase, two local businessmen apparently without ties to the Mafia, though Fugazy knew Roy Cohn, whose keen and and vicious legal talents were often at the service of the mob. Trouble came to Julius’s in November 1965 when plainclothesman Stephen Chapwick visited the bar and observed patrons whom he described subsequently in an SLA hearing as wearing “tight clothes” and speaking with “shrill voices,” calling each other “honey” and “deary.” Some fifteen exhibited “limp wrists,” and five were walking about in a “mincing gate.” It was immediately clear to Mr. Chapwick that Julius’s had become a nest of degenerates.
(A personal aside: Yes, in my experience gay bars sometimes attracted very femme young kids who might exhibit limp wrists and call each other “honey,” but I never saw what might be called a “mincing gate,” except when gay kids were jokingly imitating the straight world’s stereotype of gays. And these kids were always a minority, albeit a conspicuous one, in the bars. As for Plainclothesman Chapwick, he was simply expressing the heterosexual world’s view of gay people. Today, of course, he comes off as hopelessly “square” – the worst label one could get in those days in either gay or mixed Village bars. Yes, times have changed. His testimony at the SLA hearing – a serious matter back then -- now comes off as funny.)
As a result of Chapwick’s report, the SLA issued an order dated April 1, 1966, suspending Julius’s liquor license for 30 days because the licensee had allowed “homosexuals, degenerates, and/or undesirables to be and remain on the licensed premises on Nov. 12-13, 1965, and conduct themselves in an offensive and indecent manner contrary to good morals.”
But that was not the end of it. On April 21, 1966, three members of the Mattachine Society staged a “sip-in” at the bar, identifying themselves as homosexuals, insisting that they were orderly, and asking to be served. Denied service by a bartender willing to cooperate, they challenged the liquor rule in court. “3 Deviates Invite Exclusion by Bars” ran a New York Times caption the next day. Though some accounts credit this trio of “deviates” with overturning the state law, it was in fact the restaurant itself that challenged the law, triggering a 1967 court ruling that a bar could not be deemed disorderly simply because homosexuals gathered there. Far from denying service to homosexuals, Julius’s had long since been protesting harassment of its gay customers. Since then it has appeared in several films and today it announces itself proudly as New York’s oldest gay bar.
Not mentioned by Mr. Crawford is the Gold Bug, a Mafia-run discotheque popular with gay men and lesbians alike in the 1960s. I’ll admit that I don’t recall its exact location, but my partner Bob informs me that it was in the basement of a Village residence where Edgar Allan Poe once lived. If so, that would have been a red-brick townhouse at 85 West 3rdStreet where Poe and his wife resided in 1844-45, since acquired by New York University in 2000 and mostly demolished. Guarding the entrance was a burly character charged with keep desirables out, so the undesirables could revel inside. One was required to buy a drink downstairs at the bar, before joining in the dancing on a crowded dance floor. One didn’t go there to talk, since the music was deafening. One went there to dance, and Bob and I danced there wildly, immersed in flashing strobe lights whose effect was psychedelic. Arriving there once after Bob and some other friends had already entered, I was stopped by the guy at the door, presumably because I didn’t look undesirable enough. “I’m joining some friends here,” I insisted. “What bars do you go to?” he asked. I had to think a moment, since I didn’t go often to bars. “I go to Carr’s,” I said. A magic word; the door swung open.
Carr’s was an old-fashioned “talk bar” at 204 West 10thStreet, a place where gay men actually went to talk – and of course (at first) to cruise. It had a woody interior with a bar that some remember as a carved extravaganza and a sight to cherish. It was here that I met my partner Bob on a fateful day in June of 1968, after which I went there occasionally, not to cruise but to see friends. It was a neighborhood bar, relaxed, never “hot” like the Gold Bug, never “in.” Gradually the clientele aged, and it earned the name of “the Elephants’ Graveyard.” Though it probably paid off the police, it didn’t have the feel of a Mafia-run joint. In all the years I went there, it never occurred to me to wonder who “Carr” might be. Years later I heard that it was closing, but I didn’t bother to go there that last night. Bob did and met many of our friends, and even reported that a Mr. Carr, the owner, had materialized and was there to say good-bye to his patrons. To this day I regret that I didn’t attend this farewell festivity, where I could have found many friends and talked with Mr. Carr himself, pointing to the very bar stool where, years before, I had met my longtime partner. I’m sure he would have been warmed to the cockles of his heart.
So much for the gay bars of another time, a time when they were the only social scene for gay people, unless a friend invited you to a party in his apartment. A sad yet joyous scene that has been celebrated and deplored in memoirs ever since, a scene reminiscent of the speakeasies of the 1920s, and one that, like those speakeasies, marketed pleasure to a knowledgeable clientele and enriched both the mob and the police.
* * * * * *
BROWDERBOOKS: No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here. As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client It is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Coming soon: Patients from Hell (to balance out post #283, Doctors from Hell). Unless some other idea overwhelms me.
© 2017 Clifford Browder
March 19, 2017
285. Profanity and Why We Need It
MEET BILL HOPE, WHO ONCE ESCAPED FROM PRISON IN A COFFIN
Bill Hope: His Story:
($20: Softcover: 6X9”, 158pp: 978-1-68114-305-7; $35: Hardcover: 978-1-68114-306-4; $2.99: EBook: 978-1-68114-307-1; LCCN: 2017933794; Historical Fiction; May 17, 2017) is the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his scorn for snitches and bullies; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; his brief career on the stage playing himself; his loyalty to a man who has befriended him but may be trying to kill him; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. In the course of his adventures he learns how slight the difference is between criminal and law-abiding, insane and sane, vice and virtue—a lesson that reinforces what he learned on the streets. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a yearning to leave the crooked life behind, and a persistent and undying hope. This is the second title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York. The first in the series is The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), mention of which appears at the end of this post. The book can be ordered from Amazon and will be shipped after the release date of May 17, 2017. But the paperback, which goes for $20, will cost an additional $4.95 for shipping, unless you order books totaling $25 or more. The book is also available now from the author and will be mailed immediately ($20 + postage). And now on to profanity.
* * * * * * Followers of this blog will recall post #263, “The Golden Age of Profanity, and Do We Have a Right to Swear?” In that post, inspired by a Times review of the two books mentioned below, I confessed my frequent resort to profanity, albeit mostly in private and with no intention of shocking others or violating things they hold dear. That post has since become one of the most popular, with many “hits,” so here is a follow-up to this most damnedly fascinating topic.
In the New York Review of Books of February 9, 2017, Joan Acocella reviews two new books on the subject: What the F: What Swearing Reveals about Our Language, Our Brains, and Ourselves, by Benjamin K. Bergen, and In Praise of Profanity, by Michael Adams. This article is much longer than the Times’s, allowing for a richer treatment of the subject. Rather than summarizing the reviews, which all serious scholars of dirty words should peruse, I will merely list the values of profanity that the two authors and the reviewer cite. Profanity is good because it
· Relieves tension· Helps us endure pain (quite literally)· Registers a complaint against the human condition· Prevents violence (better words than fists or guns)· Encourages fellowship (we share our taste for – or tolerance of -- dirty words)· Expresses machismo (he-men swear, sissies don’t)· Enhances sex (for some, but count me out).
Ergo, we all should feel good about swearing.
But the article shares other points as well:
· Graffiti from a brothel in ancient Pompeii are “disappointingly laconic” (an example is cited)· The FCC, that vigilant guardian of our morals, levies fines, but has never published a list of taboo words· Jonathan Green’s Green’s Dictionary of Slang (2010) lists 1740 words for sexual intercourse, 1351 for penis, 1180 for vagina, 634 for anus or buttocks, and 540 for defecation and urination, which shows how rich our English language is, and how long the FCC’s list would be, if it existed· By way of contrast, the Japanese language has no swear words; to insult someone, you can tell him he’s a fool, but you can’t call him an asshole.· People have been giving the finger to each other for over two thousand years.
Illustrating this last observation is a photo of the Donald in Paris in November 2016, right after the election, rather grumpy-faced, confronted by several Gallic hands each with one finger defiantly extended.
We also learn that in 2009 an author named McKay Hatch published a book entitled The No Cussing Club: How I Fought Against Peer Pressure and How You Can Too. Mr. Hatch, we further learn, was fourteen at the time and disgusted by the swearing he heard at school. Founded in 2007, his club now boasts 20,000 members, and teachers, the mayor of South Pasadena, and an international following have told him that he may have changed the world. Infinitely varied are the paths to fame and glory; I wish him well. But his website has been hacked by the website group “Anonymous,” which claims that his parents founded the club, write his material, and use his website for their own personal gain. Mr. McKay’s response: “I’m the most cyberbullied kid on the planet.” Even though I don’t qualify for his club, I not only wish him well, I applaud his courage and initiative.
At age thirteen -- one year short of Mr. Hatch’s year of inspiration -- I was so bereft of profanity that the other boys in my eighth-grade class apologized if they ventured a damn or a hell within my hearing, and did so with genuine chagrin and without a trace of mockery. Yes, my speech was pure, but little did they know what I had been exposed to at home, when my parents had such heated arguments that the house all but burst into flames. To this day I can hear my mother, usually the essence of gentility, telling my father, “You can go to hell!” Too tame, you think, and verging on innocuous? Not if uttered with passion. You should have heard and seen her say it.
As for my purity of speech, that fell by the wayside eons ago, though my profanity today lacks true originality, the kind expressed by Shakespeare’s Kent in King Lear, when he calls someone “a knave, a rascal, an eater of broken meats, a base, proud, shallow, beggarly, three-suited, hundred-pound, filthy, worsted-stocking knave,” and so on for a whole rich, savage paragraph.
But those naughty words we condemn and delight to use – most of them four-letter words ending in an emphatic consonant (vowels are too liquid, too soft, too wimpy) – are late arrivals in the arsenal of oaths, their emphasis on bodily functions being a symptom of our secular and perverted modern age. Back in the Middle Ages, that blessed epoch of faith, those words hardly counted as vile; what really counted was blasphemy, the taking of the Lord’s name in vain. In Shakespeare’s plays “s’blood!” is a common oath, meaning “God’s blood,” and as such can perhaps be viewed as not breaking (not quite) the Third Commandment, “Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain.” Similarly, “zounds” derives from “God’s wounds,” while “gadzooks” and “ods bodikin,” which I have always thought deliciously quaint, come from ”God’s hooks” and “God’s bodkins,” meaning the nails of the Crucifixion. Whether these expressions really avoid blasphemy I leave to the viewers of this blog – and to scholars and the arbiters of taste and decency.
Concern about blasphemy did not die out with the Middle Ages. In Catholic France, as late as 1866 the poet Baudelaire, was thrown out of a hospital for uttering the phrase sacré nom (“holy name”). But today who would be offended by such utterances as criminy, cripes, gee, bejesus, gee whillikers, jiminy, or jeepers creepers, all of them variants of “Christ” and “Jesus”? Or by gosh and golly, stand-ins for “God”? No, for cussing we prefer references to sexual body parts and acts of copulation and excretion. So it goes in this modern, and very secular, golden age of profanity.
Are there islands of purity of speech in this world of blatant profanity? Yes, for I'm told on good authority that Hoosiers, the residents of Indiana and a good and decent folk, eschew (my favorite verb) profanity. A woman newly arrived in the state asked a cousin of mine, "Don't Hoosiers cuss?" But I'm also informed that two genteel relatives of mine, a cousin and her mother, are known to get less Hoosier behind the wheel, when another motorist cuts them off or otherwise offends them. "Asshole!" the mother often exclaimed, within hearing of her young daughters. So maybe the urge to curse is inherent in us, just waiting for the right provocation to explode.
* * * * * *
A note on stars: The Science section of the New York Times of Tuesday, March 14, informs us that extraterrestrial dust – in other words, dust from vanished planets, asteroids, and stars – rains constantly upon us, though we are unaware of this shower of micrometeorites. Only experts can tell these tiny particles from the contaminants generated by human activities like construction, fireworks, and home insulation, but the fact remains that, all around us and even in our food and our hair, there is stardust. Which confirms a poem that I wrote long ago (and which I will spare my readers), announcing that our bodies are made of bits of stars. And speaking of stars, another article in that same paper – a review of Marilyn in Manhattan: Her Year of Joy, by Elizabeth Winder, reminds me how Marilyn Monroe, then at the peak of her stardom and between husbands Joe Dimaggio and Arthur Miller, fled Hollywood to spend the year 1955 in New York, an event that inspired in me no little anxiety and downright fear. Why should the displacement of the world’s most celebrated blonde, fleeing a movie industry that had trapped her in sexpot roles, affect me, a nobody, in any way? Because she was coming to New York, where she planned to enroll in the Actors Studio and perhaps also improve her mind by taking courses of adult education. And what was I doing at the time? Teaching French in General Studies, the adult education program at Columbia University, and probably the most obvious place for her to enroll. The very thought of that stellar beauty enrolled in one of my classes terrified me. How could I deal with her objectively, when everyone in the class would know who she was, and would be scrutinizing my feeble attempts to treat her like any other student? By chance, I escaped Marilyn by getting an appointment to teach in Columbia College, where I had as one of my students Arthur MacArthur, the general’s son, who was well-behaved and caused no problem. And Marilyn never set her lovely foot in the Columbia campus, spending her time instead drinking, reading Russian novels (not in the original, I’m sure), confiding in Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio, and enticing Arthur Miller into wedlock. But soon after that I joined the Playwrights Unit of the Actors Studio and saw, posted on a wall, a photo of one of the classes with Marilyn sitting alone and apart, radiating not just beauty but that intangible known as star quality. Yes, her presence in a classroom, however well intended, would have been vastly disruptive.
* * * * * *
BROWDERBOOKS: No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here. As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client It is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
/ Coming soon: The Mafia and Me. And then, Patients from Hell, to counterbalance post #283, Doctors from Hell.
© 2017 Clifford Browder
March 12, 2017
284. Gators, Monarchs, and Me
MEET BILL HOPE, WHOSE FINGERS HAVE SPENT MORE TIME IN OTHER PEOPLE'S POCKETS THAN HIS OWN
Bill Hope: His Story:
($20: Softcover: 6X9”, 158pp: 978-1-68114-305-7; $35: Hardcover: 978-1-68114-306-4; $2.99: EBook: 978-1-68114-307-1; LCCN: 2017933794; Historical Fiction; May 17, 2017) is the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his scorn for snitches and bullies; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; his brief career on the stage playing himself; his loyalty to a man who has befriended him but may be trying to kill him; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. In the course of his adventures he learns how slight the difference is between criminal and law-abiding, insane and sane, vice and virtue—a lesson that reinforces what he learned on the streets. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a yearning to leave the crooked life behind, and a persistent and undying hope. This is the second title in the Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York. The first in the series is The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), mention of which appears at the end of this post. The book can be ordered from Amazon and will be shipped after the release date of May 17, 2017. But the paperback, which goes for $20, will cost an additional $4.95 for shipping, unless you order books totaling $25 or more. The book is also available now from the author and will be mailed immediately ($20 + postage). And now on to gators, monarchs, and me.
* * * * * *
New York City, that congested urban maze, that jammed-up, noisy mess of asphalt, concrete, and steel, is alive with creatures other than commuting bipeds, if one knows where to look. So let’s look. It’s a relief to get away from politics and controversy for at least a little while. These creatures mean us no harm – at least, I think they don’t. On other occasions I’ve looked up high to see soaring peregrine falcons, red-tailed hawks, osprey, and even, if one goes out of the city and up the Hudson a bit, bald eagles and vultures. But now let’s look down and around us, much closer to earth, and see what we can find.
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Gong in form of an alligator, by an unknown African artist, Brooklyn MuseumAlligators in the sewers of New York? Grown reptiles, once flushed away by New Yorkers who bought them as cute little pets in Florida and were scared to see them growing into monster adults? Alligators that can grow up to fifteen feet in length? It’s an old New York legend, a perennial joke that writers and comedians have had fun with, but I confess that neither I nor anyone I know has ever seen or even heard of a full-grown alligator in the sewers. Yes, in the subways there’s a charming sculpture of an alligator devouring an infant, but it’s just a joke. So that’s all it is, just a legend and a joke, isn’t it? Not according to an article by Corey Kilgannon in the New York Times of February 11, 2017. The article reports these sightings, which I have supplemented with information from other sources:
· On February 9, 1935, a group of teenagers in East Harlem, while shoveling snow into a manhole, discovered a living eight-foot alligator under the manhole, looped a rope around its neck, and hauled it up into the street. When it snapped at them, they beat it to death. Its origin? Maybe someone brought it back from Florida as a souvenir, or maybe it was caught in the Everglades, escaped from a boat coming north from Florida, and swam into the Harlem River and into a sewer outflow.· A four-foot alligator was pulled out of Kissena Lake in Queens in 1995. (A photo shows it.)· A four-foot alligator was found crawling in the woods in Alley Pond Park in Queens in 2003. The police and Park Rangers were summoned and tied up the creature, probably abandoned by its owner, and removed it. · A two-foot alligator was spotted on the shore of the Harlem Meer, in the northeast corner of Central Park, in June 2001. The hunt for it mesmerized the city for several days, and it was finally captured in the glare of dozens of TV cameras a few days later. It proved to be a spectacled caiman, a crocodile native to Central and South America, probably brought into the city by a resident who became alarmed when it started growing into an adult.
The real McCoy.Now let’s not panic; these are rare and widely scattered incidents. Still, a baby alligator right in Central Park, in the very heart of Manhattan. And a current U.S. Postal Service regulation says that alligators “not exceeding 20 inches in length” can be shipped through the mail. Attention, all parents and nannies: Do not leave your infant charges unattended for even a minute or two in Central Park. Who knows what might emerge from a bush or pond or sewer nearby?
Stefan.lefnaerAnd now let’s look at one of my favorite summer wildflowers, mildly poisonous to humans, and at the creatures it nourishes. Common milkweed (Asclepias syriaca) grows in dry, sun-drenched soil throughout the city and its vicinity. In late June and the first two weeks of July I have often seen stands of it in the dry soil of Pelham Bay Park, and across the Hudson on the Palisades near the George Washington Bridge. The domed flower clusters are dusty rose or lavender or dull brownish purple in color and give off an intoxicatingly sweet aroma, and the stems and paired leaves, if bruised or broken, exude the thick milky juice that gives the plant its name. Soon after blooming, the flower clusters droop and the warty pods appear that by autumn will split open to reveal the tight-packed seeds that will escape into the air and drift about like hordes of tiny white parachutes.
I love this wildflower, its aroma, and its tiny seeds adrift in the autumn air, and often search its stem and the underside of its leaves for a black- and white- and yellow-striped caterpillar that feeds on its leaves, absorbing greedily their milky juice poisonous to humans. This caterpillar, feeding exclusively on milkweed, is the larva of the monarch butterfly (Danaus plexippus), a handsome species whose orange wings marked with black tracery I have often seen in autumn as it feeds on asters and other late-summer flowers, before beginning the annual migration south to Mexico. Their bright colors may protect them from predators, for it identifies the butterflies clearly as monarchs, whose foul taste, resulting from their feeding on milkweed, predators have learned to avoid. (Also protected is the viceroy butterfly, whose pattern resembles the monarch’s, deterring predators even though the freeloading viceroy doesn’t feed on milkweed and therefore is a tastier morsel than the monarch.)
The viceroy. Not a monarch, but close. Can you tell them apart?PiccoloNamek
Unique among butterflies, the monarch migrates each year from Canada and the United States to the forested highlands of the state of Michoacan, some 75 miles west of Mexico City. Amazingly, these fragile creatures, each weighing less than a dollar bill, can make this 2500-mile journey to Mexico, where they are now sheltered in the Monarch Butterfly Biosphere Reserve (Reserva de la Biosfera Mariposa Monarca). In late September and early October I have seen them southward bound in Maine and New York City, though never at the peak of the migration, when in some years they are so thick in the fields that you have to gently sweep them off your path with your arm. Arriving in Mexico, to survive the cool nights they cluster so densely on the fir and pine trees that their blanket of orange and black bends the branches and often breaks them. There they mate and reproduce, before beginning their return migration to the north.
Monarchs in migration.
Unfortunately, the monarch is vulnerable and easily decimated. In March 2016 storms bringing rain, cold, and high winds felled hundreds of trees where the monarchs spend the winter, killing more than 7 percent of the butterflies. Another threat is the illegal logging in their reserve, which the Mexican government hopes to control through a newly created special national police squad.
Just as threatening to the monarch’s survival is the loss in this country of milkweed habitat, because farmers use herbicides to control weeds, and mow the edges of fields. For farmers, milkweed is a “pesky” plant to be eliminated, and their practices, along with climate change, the conversion of habitat to cropland, and development (fields converted to luxury housing, etc.), have so decreased the monarch population that the butterflies could become extinct within twenty years, if the loss of habitat is not reversed. There is hope, for Americans alerted to the problem have been replanting milkweed in backyards, schoolyards, and parks, though the cooperation of farmers will be necessary as well. To secure that cooperation, the Environmental Defense Fund has created a Monarch Butterfly Habitat Exchange that gives farmers credits for growing milkweed, credits that can then be sold through the Exchange to buyers or investors interested in helping the monarch to survive. Will this program be enough to save the monarch? Time will tell.
And why is this butterfly named "monarch"? Because, back in the 1690s, English settlers in North America were impressed by the butterfly's bright orange and wanted to honor their monarch, King William, the Prince of Orange.
* * * * * *
BROWDERBOOKS: No Place for Normal: New York / Stories from the Most Exciting City in the World, my selection of posts from this blog, has received these awards: the Tenth Annual National Indie Excellence Award for Regional Non-Fiction; first place in the Travel category of the 2015-2016 Reader Views Literary Awards; and Honorable Mention in the Culture category of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2016. For the Reader Views review by Sheri Hoyte, go here. As always, the book is available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
The Pleasuring of Men (Gival Press, 2011), the first novel in the Metropolis series, tells the story of a young male prostitute in the late 1860s in New York who falls in love with his most difficult client It is likewise available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble.
Coming soon: Maybe patients from hell. Maybe a follow-up to post #263, The Golden Age of Profanity, since it has proved so popular. And maybe Gay Bars and the Mafia, reminiscences of the good old days of organized crime and gay life in the 1950s and 1960s. Maybe, maybe, maybe...
© 2017 Clifford Browder
March 8, 2017
Bill Hope Press Release
Bill Hope: His Story:
($20: Softcover: 6X9”, 158pp: 978-1-68114-305-7; $35: Hardcover: 978-1-68114-306-4; $2.99: EBook: 978-1-68114-307-1; LCCN: 2017933794; Historical Fiction; May 17, 2017): is the second novel in the Metropolis series. New York City, 1870s: From his cell in the gloomy prison known as the Tombs, young Bill Hope spills out in a torrent of words the story of his career as a pickpocket and shoplifter; his scorn for snitches and bullies; his brutal treatment at Sing Sing and escape from another prison in a coffin; his forays into brownstones and polite society; his brief career on the stage playing himself; his loyalty to a man who has befriended him but may be trying to kill him; and his sojourn among the “loonies” in a madhouse, from which he emerges to face betrayal and death threats, and possible involvement in a murder. In the course of his adventures he learns how slight the difference is between criminal and law-abiding, insane and sane, vice and virtue—a lesson that reinforces what he learned on the streets. Driving him throughout is a fierce desire for better, a yearning to leave the crooked life behind, and a persistent and undying hope.
![[image error]](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ae/Rocamadour_AOC.jpg){kind=link}