When it came to casual wear the city was awash in parachute pants, leg warmers, headbands, and fingerless gloves, which never caught on in Buffalo, but have always been a staple of Manhattan street musicians. Perhaps taking a cue from the hit movie Big, fashion was big – big Brooke Shields eyebrows, big hoop earrings, and for rappers, big gold necklaces that wouldn’t look out of place on the front gates of a Hollywood mansion. Based on the mantra “The higher the hair, the closer to heaven,” we were living in a city of haloed seraphim. Mullets with their long back and short, high front had jumped from the hockey player backwater to a unisex staple on MTV. Your basic style choices were preppy, power broker, heavy metal, or Flashdance.
Nowadays, New Yorkers love their black. You’d think our city anthem would be Johnny Cash’s “Man in Black.” It can be hard to tell who is winning in school sporting events since so many New York school colors include black. You can always tell it’s summer when New Yorkers appear in their black capris, black T-shirts, black pantsuits, black sundresses, black sandals, and black baseball caps. However, all those psychiatrists who say New Yorkers wear black because that’s how they feel on the inside couldn’t be more wrong. It’s because black is slimming, doesn’t show the dirt, never goes out of style, and goes with absolutely everything except my particular coloring.
There’s no hunting season in Manhattan because with everyone wearing black, it’d be too dangerous. True, people like to say that if you sit down on a bench in New York you will eventually see everything. But, in more than three decades here I’ve never seen a Smart Car with a gun rack, a pickup truck with a Confederate flag, a baby in a camouflage onesie, or a local wearing a fanny pack (unless he’s selling tour bus tickets on a street corner or working as a second-story man). The only flocks, bevies, swarms, troops, and herds we have are of smokers
huddled together in front of buildings puffing on cigarettes, but they do look irritable and potentially dangerous when standing outside in the freezing cold, pouring rain, or stifling humidity.
In New York it’s possible to wander about in your nightgown or pajamas and not be bothered. In Chelsea it’s a fashion statement. On the Upper West Side you’re thought to be crazy. On the Upper East Side you’re considered eccentric. In the Village you’re one of them. And in Little Italy you’re going for the insanity defense.
A 1948 noir movie called The Naked City and shot on the streets of New York concluded with the now iconic line: “There are eight million stories in the naked city.” Well, they weren’t kidding. New York is essentially one giant nudist colony. There’s no particular beach, establishment, or vacation spot that caters to the clothing-free lifestyle. It’s just that people wander around naked in their apartments, and with 8 million residents in various states of undress throughout the day it’s hard not to see naked New Yorkers unless you’re blindfolded. No telescope necessary.
One of my early apartments featured the Ferris wheel from the Feast of San Gennaro turning directly outside all of my windows day and night. Honestly, you just give up after a while and become an accidental peep show. Whether Ferris wheel ticket sales went up or down I’ll never know. I wasn’t offered a cut of the profits and didn’t receive any complaints when the privates went public. Nowadays, most hotels overlooking the one-mile stretch of aerial greenway known as the High Line contain notifications in guests’ rooms about the possibility of being observed while engaged in “naked frolicking.” Whether these serve as a warning or a suggestion is impossible to say, especially in the already frolicsome Chelsea neighborhood.
Despite a recruitment booth in the heart of Times Square, the armed forces don’t have much luck signing up locals. Most of their enlistees are from outside the city and more often than not, out of state. The idea of wearing one outfit every day doesn’t appeal to style-conscious New Yorkers. At the Times Square office, four branches of the military (marines, army, navy, and air force) all share one small bathroom, but if you sign up for a tour of duty you get to use the lav for free
and that’s something to consider. The New York recruiters have a good sense of humor, and if you’re an antiwar protester who chains yourself to the flagpole out front, they’ll be sure to hand you a business card.
Fashion-forward New York women (and some men) are known for spending the lion’s share of their incomes on costly high-heeled shoes and handbags. Exclusive stilettos and slingbacks have starring roles in all of the TV shows shot here. During Fashion Week of 2012 the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology launched an exhibit called “Shoe Obsession” that may just as well have been called “Extreme Shoes,” with its 18-inch heels and equally lofty price tags. “Killer Heels” was the name of the Brooklyn Museum’s recent shoe show, which featured more than 160 radical designs while exploring the torture, pleasure, and power of footwear. It’s probably a good thing that a large number of our lesbians avoid heels and purses in favor of combat boots and big-pocketed cargo pants because it balances things out. More important, with the advent of “lesbian chic,” denim-on-denim appears here to stay.
The New York Mafia are well known for being fashionmistas. When godfather of the Gambino crime family Paul Castellano (also known as “Big Paulie” and “The Howard Hughes of the Mob”) was assassinated in front of Sparks Steak House in 1985, the killers were dressed in white trench coats and black Russian Ushanka hats. Castellano’s successor, John Gotti Jr., was known as “The Dapper Don” for his double-breasted Brioni suits, monogrammed shirts, hand-painted silk ties, and Italian loafers with a sheen that could blind a cat. This would all be exchanged for dull prison garb in the 1990s after he was convicted of committing five murders, racketeering, loan-sharking, tax evasion, and several other offenses.
Even garbage collectors have become sassy style icons, handling the trash with class. The Madison Avenue Business Improvement District issued new uniforms to its sanitation crew, replacing droopy gray coveralls with unisuits featuring gold-colored leg zippers. Its new logo has been incorporated into a patch designed by Karim Rashid, an Egyptian-born designer whose work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art and the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum.
Unfortunately for all the actresses, celebrities, and models, there’s no more slipping out unnoticed for groceries in sweatpants and a T-shirt without any makeup. These days, cameras are everywhere, and it’s time to raise your game if you don’t want to jeopardize your chances of landing on a best-dressed list. As for those who are slumming, or still stuck in the Earth Shoe Era like me, at the rate that government agencies are spying on us it won’t be long before their insecurity cameras record people’s wardrobe information and dispatch the Fashion Police, armed with clothing catalogs, color wheels, and websites.
Whenever I see a fashion magazine I think about group photos from ten or twenty years ago in which we all thought we looked marvelous in pastel overalls or day-glo tie-dye MC Hammer pants topped off with feather earrings or a Blossom hat. Now we howl with laughter. It should be called the Elton John Effect. Similarly, I’m reminded of visiting my dad in New Mexico where everyone appeared so cool and stylish in their western wear that I’d excitedly buy red cowboy boots, a hat with a silver conchos, and a turquoise-studded jacket. Arriving back in New York, looking ready to ride in a rodeo and instead boarding the tram to Roosevelt Island, I felt perfectly insane. I suppose I should just consider myself lucky that Dad didn’t move to Graceland.
Chapter 7
A Helluva Town
Throughout the centuries, New York has regularly found itself on the forefront of mass movements to effect social change, and has produced more than its fair share of martyrs, villains, monuments, and legislation. Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States, opened a Manhattan practice in 1852 despite considerable opposition. Next she founded the New York Infirmary for Indigent Women and Children where women served on the board, executive committee, and as attending physicians.
One could designate Ne
w York the Cradle of Feminization – or else Womanhattan since so many women followed in Blackwell’s footsteps. There was Emma Goldman, who illegally distributed information about birth control, and Emma Lazarus, who helped establish the Hebrew Technical Institute to provide vocational training to Jewish immigrants and whose sonnet “The New Colossus” (“give me your tired, your poor”) appears on the Statue of Liberty pedestal. There was also Grace Hoadley Dodge, a philanthropist who was the main source of funds for Columbia University’s Teachers College along with numerous societies to protect and assist women, and Bella Abzug, a founder of the National Women’s Political Caucus and one of the first members of Congress to support gay rights. Wall Street certainly had its prejudices, but in 1986 I became one of a handful of women to have a seat on the American Stock Exchange. The men had a palatial marble restroom, complete with an attendant, and conveniently located a few
yards from the trading floor entrance. The gals had a three-seater public school–style lavatory downstairs with metal dividers that was originally intended to serve the half dozen women who operated the pneumatic tube system.
Squabbles surrounding chivalry, chauvinism, and sexism continue to this day. A number of double standards still exist. Should men hold doors for women? Carry their parcels? Allow them to exit an elevator first? Let them be rescued first if the Circle Line sinks? If a man speaks rudely to a woman in New York he may be hit with a sexual harassment suit. If a man wants a woman to speak rudely to him it costs approximately $4 per minute.
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, Greenwich Village had a number of Black and Tan saloons where the races mingled freely and carried on relationships, an activity that could have led to lynching elsewhere in the country. While interracial marriage was not just socially unacceptable in most places but actually illegal throughout the United States, the Village was for the most part a safe haven where interracial couples could openly cohabit. Similarly, as far back as the 1920s Harlem was a place where blacks and whites might drink and dance together in clubs to the music of African American performers such as Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, and Duke Ellington. The rest of America didn’t allow blacks and whites to sit together in movie theaters.
But New York City was like most places in that the biggest reforms usually arrived late and in the wake of disaster. The General Slocum was a passenger steamboat chartered to take a group of German Americans to a church picnic but caught fire and sank in the East River on June 15, 1904. The fire hoses had been allowed to rot, the lifeboats were inaccessible, and the life preservers were decayed and useless. Of the 1,342 people aboard, an estimated 1,021 died. The disaster resulted not so much in regulations to improve the emergency equipment on passenger ships but in safety inspections (not involving corrupt officials) to make sure the standards already in place were being followed. The Triangle Waist Company fire in Greenwich Village on March 25, 1911, killed 146 garment workers, mostly young wom
en, because management had locked the exit doors and blocked the stairwells. This tragedy resulted in legislation improving factory safety standards, galvanized the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union in its fight for better working conditions, and gave laborers the support of politicians.
Many more fights were to follow, including those for a woman’s right to vote, seek equal pay for equal work, and make decisions about her health care. In 1947 Jackie Robinson would put on a Brooklyn Dodgers uniform (no. 42) and break the color barrier in baseball. Meantime, many locals fought for civil rights at home and by sending citizens down South to protest segregation and sign up voters. New Yorkers Michael Schwerner (age twenty-four) and Andrew Goodman (age twenty) would be shot dead at point blank range along with Mississippian James Earl Chaney (age twenty-one) for their efforts.
Author Tom Wolfe branded the 1980s “The Me Decade,” but in New York it just as fittingly could’ve been called “The HIV Decade.” Along with San Francisco, New York City had long been a safer haven for the LGBTQ crowd (before it had letters) than most of the United States. There was the famously tolerant Greenwich Village with its many gay bars and bathhouses on and around Christopher Street, and freewheeling Chelsea, where the McBurney “Y” on West 23rd Street was celebrated in the hit Village People song “Y.M.C.A.” All that began to change in 1981 when The New York Times announced the discovery of a transmittable “gay cancer” that we’ve come to know as AIDS. The news continued to grow worse as the paper filled with obituaries of talented men dying in their prime. Suzy Benzinger, my friend from Western New York, and now a Broadway costume designer, had her entire address book wiped out by AIDS. She can’t so much as look at a photo album without bursting into tears. By age thirty almost all of her contemporaries were ill or had died.
The city’s streets began to fill with protesters wielding
Silence = Death signs covered in pink triangles, demanding awareness and assistance. With more than one-quarter of all AIDS cases located in New York, it quickly became a hub for fund-raising to provide services for people with HIV/AIDS and find a cure. Help certainly wasn’t
coming from the top down. President Ronald Reagan, New York mayor Ed “How’m I doin’?” Koch, and religious groups were dismissive. It should’ve helped that Reagan was a movie star and had close friends like Rock Hudson, the first major celebrity to publicly admit to having AIDS and then die of its complications. It should’ve helped that cheerleader-in-chief Mayor Koch was most likely a closeted gay man. More than 850 New Yorkers were dead of the disease by the end of 1983, but the Koch administration had spent only $24,000 on AIDS. (That said, Koch did have a pro-gay-rights record when it came to pushing for equality and ending discrimination.) As for the many powerful church groups, it should’ve helped that Jesus healed the sick and fed the hungry.
An epidemic mindset took over the city, especially when it came to light that anyone could contract AIDS, including straight people, women and children, and drug addicts, though medical professionals weren’t yet certain about the specifics. It was announced that you could catch it from a routine blood transfusion. Somebody had contracted AIDS from a trip to the dentist! It was no longer safe to share a toothbrush. People were frightened, and not just with regard to dating. Whenever anyone, gay or straight, caught the flu or lost weight we questioned whether it was AIDS, and coworkers were probably wondering the same about us. A once routine scratchy throat or a canker sore was considered to be a potential death sentence.
In the absence of large-scale government assistance, the public took matters into its own hands by creating grassroots agencies. An enormous number of inventive, determined, and caring “average” gay and straight people helped millions of victims and continue to do so with dozens of organizations, including the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), God’s Love We Deliver, and Broadway Cares/Equity Fights AIDS.
If one good thing came out of the long horror that was and continues to be the AIDS/HIV crisis, it is that today most people feel they can be honest about their sexuality and not fear being shunned by society. The city and the country now have a number of openly gay politicians, many of whom are married to their partners, and some of
whom have divorced their partners and are fighting over property and child custody – like countless other Americans.
In other news, the Queensboro Bridge was renamed in honor of Ed Koch in 2010. Call it poetic justice or perhaps divine retribution.
Chapter 8
Stayin’ Alive
ford to city: drop dead was the famous Daily News headline on October 30, 1975, and in the annals of newsprint possibly only topped by the New York Post’s headless body in topless bar in 1982, though the Daily News got in a good jab with somoza slain by bazooka in 1980. The way it turned out to be a bad idea for President Lincoln to go to Ford’s Theatre, it probably would’ve been a bad idea for President Ford to go to Lincoln Center that week. The city teetered on the brink of bankruptcy and the federal gover
nment wasn’t inclined to help, though it eventually provided loans (which were repaid, with interest).
However, one headline credit goes not to a newspaper but to a sportscaster, ABC’s Howard Cosell. During the 1977 World Series he cut to a helicopter camera for an overhead view of the neighborhood surrounding Yankee Stadium where an abandoned elementary school was on fire a few blocks away and reportedly announced, “There it is, ladies and gentleman; the Bronx is burning.” The Lower East Side of Manhattan was also on fire since landlords there could make more money by burning buildings down rather than fixing them up and renting them out.
The French Connection was a dramatic thriller shot in New York during its glorious gritty phase, and in an online film forum someone recently asked, “Was it all filmed in ghettoes?” No, the movie was made in neighborhoods where people lived and worked, including the supposedly swank Upper East Side of Manhattan, where rats are
referred to as rodents. Former Beatle and peace activist John Lennon was shot outside of his Central Park West apartment building on December 10, 1980. The rock star’s assailant later claimed he did it to get attention. In his last interview Lennon had said, “Wasn’t the seventies a drag? Here we are, let’s try to make it through the eighties, you know?”
By the time I arrived in Manhattan, everybody had been the victim of some sort of crime. At the stock exchange a colleague’s twelve-year-old son had been mugged five times on the way home from school. I’d never even known a young person who’d been the victim of any type of violence unless it involved spitballs or snowballs. When I was sitting in a jury box with two dozen others and we were asked if anyone had ever been mugged, every single hand went up except mine.
Life in New York Page 6