NOTE: If you are reading this, this is my written Blog. To LISTEN, please SUBSCRIBE to the Podcast at Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Podcasts, Spotify, iHeartRadio – or wherever you get your Podcasts. It helps get my podcast noticed. And if you’d like to rate it as well, PLEASE DO!
I consider myself fortunate. Even though I have no second home to which to escape from New York City, I have a healthy family and a close relationship with them. I have had an interesting life. I am grateful, but I need to expound on something.
The death of New York is a huge topic of conversation these days, and one that I can’t help but take personally.
I was born in New York, I was raised in New York, I very deliberately decided to move back to New York to begin my life in the so-called real world. When on my first tour around the United States, I found myself defending New York, exemplifying New York – both positively and negatively. I looked forward to returning home from trips and missed the thrum of the city’s energy.
I was married in New York and very determined to raise my own family here – which I did. There were years I felt I was more loyal to my city than my city was to me. How dare I think such a thing? It wasn’t due to the tough times; it was during the fat times, when people were making so much money so fast, that they quickly and ostentatiously ate up apartment buildings – because they could. Because their bonuses were so enormous they might as well buy the apartment below theirs, or next to theirs, or above theirs, and construct mcmansions within the building.
These people brought their aggressive style to other aspects of New York. They wielded money and entitlement like sabers. They had connections that brought them what they summoned: treasured spots in coveted schools, reservations at restaurants. Mergers & acquisitions that took place in private clubs, ski resorts, Teterboro Airport, in the Hamptons, and at Art Basel. They didn’t mean to be rude; they just needed what they needed more than we did. Did they take up all the air in the room when they took cell phone calls in public rooms? Yes, but it wasn’t worth getting tangled up with them.
The New York City they devised required they devour cherished institutions, like Rizzoli and other independent bookstores, luncheonettes, Gem Spa in the East Village, and other neighborhood-defining businesses, to make way for new luxury condominiums, serving newcomers with no skin in our game, here to invest or to show off until they lost interest (emotional or financial).
The city became homogenized. Where districts had flourished for decades, now was the same StarbucksStaplesSoulCycleSephoraDuaneReadeSweetGreensFedExRiteAidLePainQuotidien…. A continuous loop that became more generic each year.
You didn’t even need to live in New York to see the exact same logos, menus, and so on.
Scruffy, variegated New York City was the real New York City. We had strikes, black outs, and our set of problems, but we had orchestras, theater companies, art galleries, and bohemians. A little opera company had a stage a few blocks from the premier punk rock venue. We had texture and flavor.
Now we’re like America only we have never liked or admired or trusted Donald Trump for longer than the rest of you. He has punished our state and will continue to if re-elected.
Until Covid-19 is arrested or cured, New York will have to go on a kind of pause, but I for one will never give up on it. And if the super rich do, so be it.
Lisa Birnbach and Kurt Andersen
A great New Yorker, Kurt Andersen is back this week. His new book – a careful exegesis of how America became user unfriendly to the middle class and below – how the rich and the conservative ate us up – is called Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America: A New History, is now on the New York Times bestseller list. It is published by Random House.
First, my five things:
1. For the first time in 6 months I am with all my Exhibits™. I am cooking for them, hanging with them, and just enjoying our proximity. Cooking together. (Yes we had to leave NY to see them, and it was with a steamer-trunk full of precautions that we made the trip.). The risk on one hand, the emotional succor of being together on the other. No contest
2. Sunglass readers. Perhaps a most underrated invention. I have a pair of SEE over the counter reading glasses. I believe I bought them at the Museum of Modern Art gift store. They look good and enable me to read in the sun. (I have to be able to read in the sun too. How else am I going to relax?)
3. Oatly Full Fat milk. I’m embarrassed to crow about another Oatly product; I swear not only am I not on their payroll. I doubt they know how much I like them. The Full Fat milk, which I think is a newer product feels and tastes like half and half.
4. Green plants. We have some plants growing somewhat successfully in our apartment. I will get more. A sign of life is a great plus right now.
5. The truth. In the real world, which is based on science, there is one empirical truth. That is wearing a mask, keeping one’s distance, and obeying the laws of nature. This week the GOP is trying to persuade Americans that the 180,000 human beings who have died so far from COVID were a necessary sacrifice – just the right number for a country of our size. That is a lie.
More About Kurt Andersen
EVIL GENIUSES: The Unmaking of America - A Recent History
By Kurt Andersen
Published by Ebury Publishing a division of Penguin Random House.
Twitter: @KBAndersen
Instagram: @kurtbadnersen
Facebook: @kurtandersenbooks
Website: KurtAndersen.com
The 5 Things That Make Life Better podcast is recorded and produced at The Field in NYC https://thefieldtv.com
My team is Shpresa Oruci, Michael Porte, Sam Haft and Boco Haft.