New York Times finds that New Yorkers cuss a lot and don't even really notice

Clyde Haberman takes a look at "fucking" in the Times today (uh, the word):

The reality is that this vulgar word has been tossed about with such abandon in public for so many years that New Yorkers tend to tune it out. Its endless, and mindless, repetition left them numb long ago. By now, the word is no longer shocking, just tedious.

Through frequent use, “a word like this begins to be less of a curse word,” said Ricardo Otheguy, a sociolinguist at the City University of New York Graduate Center. “The more you use it, the less dirty it is.”

You routinely hear Wall Street suits use the word at high decibels in the subway. Police officers bounce it casually among one another, no matter who else is around to hear. Teenagers use it all the time. Some people walk around with the word screaming from their T-shirts — an insight, perhaps, into their capacity for self-degradation.

But for how much longer? I wouldn't be surprised if legislation was passed making it illegal to swear in New York City. At least indoors. If we want to swear, we'll have to go outside -- as long as it isn't 500 feet from a school or place of worship. And they'll be a steep swear tax. And landlords will begin offering apartments that allow swearing. That will jack up rents by $400 a month...

P.S. Thanks Sue Simmons!

Related (kind of!): Joan Acocella's essay in Smithsonian Magazine on why New Yorkers seem rude -- and smart!

[Via Gawker]

There are so many great New York movies

Though this isn't one of them -- Hercules in New York, starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Still, a hoot to watch. At least the highlight reel below.

Celebrating Arthur Russell

Happy to see so much press this week for something worthy of the attention — Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, the debut feature from Brooklyn-based filmmaker Matt Wolf. I had a chance to see a screening of this captivating documentary. I was only vaguely familiar with Russell, a talented player on the fringes of the downtown New York scene in the 1970s and 1980s. As many writers have noted in discussing this film, it's difficult to characterize what Russell was all about. (Part of what makes him so intriguing, of course.) He had a passion for all things related to music. He was a native of Oskaloosa, Iowa, who wore trucker caps long before they were, you know, ironic. He later became a Buddhist. He was an avant-garde composer and cellist. He liked the Modern Lovers and the Ramones. And he loved disco.

Upon arriving to New York CIty from San Francisco in the early 1970s, he collaborated with everyone from Allen Ginsberg to Philip Glass. Russell and his longtime partner, Tom Lee, lived on East 12th Street next door to Ginsberg. Richard Hell lived in the same building. (Lee, who first met Russell at Gem Spa on St. Mark's, still resides in the same building.) Going by Dinosaur (one of several monikers that he used), Russell wrote and produced “Kiss Me Again,” the first disco single released by Sire Records. Russell was later a co-founder of Sleeping Bag Records, which released hip-hop and oceanic dance music in the early 1980s. He wasn't afraid to admit that he wanted to be famous.

Russell died of AIDS in 1992. He was 40. He left behind thousands of partially finished songs that spanned every genre. His catalog was overlooked until recent years, when a series of reissues and tributes garnered the attention of a new generation. I hope the movie creates even more Russell fans. There are screenings of the movie tomorrow night at the Kitchen. It's sold out, but there are a few tickets available at the door, I'm told. The Kitchen is also hosting a celebration of Russell's music this weekend.

The Wild Combination blog has all the links to the recent articles as well as information on other screenings this summer.

Here's a trailer for the film:

Checking in on "the dildo of darkness" and other sun-blockers in the neighborhood

The good people at East Village Podcasts bravely took to the streets this past weekend for a video update on the 2,398 hotels and condos sprouting up in the neighborhood. (They call the Cooper Square Hotel the "dildo of darkness." Like it!)

Here's what they found:

The New York Post doesn't take kindly to cussers

Today's front page, from the arbiters of good taste.



So you just watch your mouth, OK? No more swearing people!

Report: A Big Apple coming to 23 Wall Street

"The Corner" is the iconic former home to JP Morgan & Co. at 23 Wall Street that sits across from the New York Stock Exchange and Federal Hall. Now it looks like the luxurious space will become home to ... an Apple store.

According to the New York Post:

Sources tell us that Apple is seriously negotiating for the entire 12,500-foot building at 23 Wall St.

It's now an empty building connected to its tall residential and luxury condominium neighbor at 15 Broad St., which has an Hermes shop on the Broad Street side, facing the New York Stock Exchange.

Lovely.

More from the Post:

Recall that 23 Wall also serves as the quirky Philippe Starck and Yoo Development-designed rooftop terrace for the residents of 15 Broad St.

It has tremendous windows that we're sure Apple CEO Steve Jobs will enjoy illuminating with neon Apple logos.

My office is nearby...so I walk by this area quite often. I'm sure the folks who sit on the steps of Federal Hall taking in the city's history may be lured to go buy an iPod.

Meanwhile, Forgotten New York has the story on the bomb that exploded in front of 23 Wall Street in 1920 that killed 33 people and injured some 400 people.

So what's the worst thing to ever happen to the Brooklyn Bridge?

Being torn down to make way for a floating bank/Starbucks/Duane Reade!

Oh, wait. That happens next year.

OK, OK...As we celebrate the 125th birthday of the Brooklyn Bridge, I wonder...what's the worse thing to ever happen to the Brooklyn Bridge? I'm thinking movies now. I Am Legend? Cloverfield? War of the Worlds?

NO! Getting blowed up by aliens or zombies would be sweet, sweet relief instead of being a plot point in Eric Schaeffer's heinous If Lucy Fell, in which the characters played by Schaeffer and Sarah Jessica Parker agree to jump off the bridge if both of them don't find true love by the time the time they turn 30. Or something.

Let's keep it clean, people

(Shh! It's a secret!)

I've said this before. I've seen these posters up around the neighborhood advertising the May 15 hillbilly extravaganza at Madison Square Garden. Whatever. But! What about the "with surprise appearances by" Rev Run and Peter Wolf part? How can it be a surprise if they're telling you they'll be appearing?

Reminder!

There 's an Informal Celebration of the Tower of Toys tonight from 7-9 at the 6th Street and Avenue B Community Garden.

The Villager has an article about it this week.

[Props to Jeremiah for having the original scoop. He has an update here.]

I'd love to be there, but I'll be far away at a family function. I look forward to hearing about it.

(And if you're new to all this, swing by Sophie's to take a look at some of his other pieces of art.)



Meanwhile, Alex has a great post at Flaming Pablum on another iconic piece of Avenue B that disappeared some 13 years ago....

Dare of the day

Walk into Nevada Smith's and ask if they'd put on the Mets-Reds game.

A shooting on Avenue A

Was running a few errands around Union Square yesterday morning. Started talking to one store employee who mentioned that he lived on 6th Street between Avenue A and B...and he asked if I saw all the police cars on 6th and A early yesterday. I hadn't. He said cops and news crews were everywhere...and that one passer-by told him it was a double murder. Before I could say anything, he offered. "It's a really nice neighborhood." A pause. "There's no regard for human life these days." I went home to check this out. I didn't see a thing about this on any news site. Later yesterday, I heard from a few other folks that there was a shooting outside Sing Sing Karaoke on Avenue A around 3 a.m.
The Daily News has this account:

A bouncer at an East Village bar called Sing Sing Karaoke took a bullet to the chest early Saturday after breaking up a series of melees, police and witnesses said.

As someone belted out Elton John's "Tiny Dancer" on stage, Carlos Salome staggered into the bar around 3 a.m. screaming that he'd been shot.

"He was yelling, 'My arm, my arm!'" said playwright Marissa Kamin, who was inside Sing Sing at the time of the shooting.

Salome was in stable condition at Bellevue Hospital.

The bouncer had been standing outside the singalong spot at 81 Avenue A when two groups of drunks began brawling, witnesses said. "He whipped out his security badge," said a worker at a neighboring bar.

After going their separate ways, the beer-muscled brawlers returned, the worker said, and the bouncers stepped in again. Two of the men walked by the bar a few minutes later, he said. "They walked to the corner and started shooting," he said.

No arrests have been made in the shooting outside Sing Sing, which lists a song by the rapper 2 Pistols atop its list of new tunes and counts celebrities like Cameron Diaz among its customers.

"[Carlos] had good intentions," the worker said. "He didn't want to fight those guys."

[An aside: Was it necessary to mention that someone was singing "Tiny Dancer" ... and that the place has a song by 2 Pistols on its playlist?]

I'd like to know a few more details on the case (and not who was singing what...) and the aftermath. Perhaps Bob Arihood was able to capture some of this?

Countdown to the Ukrainian Festival

Ah, yes -- one of my favorite neighborhood traditions kicks off this Friday afternoon on 7th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue. (Been saving up my $1 bills for Chuk-a-Luck all year!) Community spirit at its finest.

Here's a little on the history of Ukrainians in New York. And on the St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church, the centerpiece of the festival.


[©HK/BRAMA.com]

A little of the entertainment from last year:




Of course, how will this feel this year with all this crapola going on behind us?



Watch out for the cranes.

Scotch fans, perhaps?

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to deface these hideous ads for Rum. Not bad, people. Oh, why do you know they're selling rum? Because the women are all wearing bikinis and making suggestive faces. Duh.

EV Grieve Etc.: Looking at The Observer

Lots of good stuff in The Observer this week. (And why does my copy arrive Thursday or sometimes Friday? I know I can read it every day online. Still.)
The headline to a piece by Choire Sicha asks, "Who's Running New York? The Council sinks, rents rise, few notice."
Indeed.
He has a nice account of the New York City Rent Guidelines Board meeting from this past Monday, particularly an impromptu speech by Adriene Holder, a Legal Aid attorney and tenant representative.

“First of all,” she said, “I want to know where everybody is.” There were not so many folks there! When confidence in city government runs low, the people abscond.

“The tenants are here but not in the number that you would expect,” Ms. Holder said, “given how important this situation is, and how dire this is to what’s going to happen to tenants here in New York City. Perhaps they’re not here because they’re still working; perhaps they’re not here because they’re working their second job; maybe they’re not here because they’re discouraged, they’re disappointed; and maybe they’re not here because they’ve become weary of a process that guarantees that there’s going to be an increase.

“Increasingly, what we are seeing is two different cities,” Ms. Holder said. “We’re seeing a city that’s becoming increasingly rich, and a city that’s becoming increasingly poor, and a middle or moderate class that is moving away from the city.”

This week's issue also features a terminallly ill singer facing possible eviction from the Chelsea Hotel. Read it here. If you haven't already.

The 2008 Siren Festival, and one more summer at Coney Island as we kind of remember it?

[Photos of Coney Island courtesy of Mrs. Grieve]


Stereogum (and several other sites, actually) had the news yesterday about the 2008 Village Voice Siren Festival. Here's the good-looking lineup thus far:

Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks
Broken Social Scene
The Helio Sequence
Beach House
Times New Viking
Jaguar Love
The Dodos
Annuals
Film School
Parts & Labor
Dragons Of Zynth
These Are Powers

I went to the very first Siren Festival in 2001. And it was ungodly crowded. Too many stupid people there for the show. There was a line for Ruby's; people visiting it for the first time started acting as if they owned the place. Regardless! Seeing the festival lineup (I thought last year was it, to be honest) gives me hope for at least one more fairly normal summer at Coney Island, eating more expensive hot dogs at Nathan's and having beers at Ruby's. (They managed to eek out one more summer, right?) I don't know what's going to happen with this whole ridiculous development being bandied about. Still. But I plan on enjoying every moment I'm at Coney Island this summer.







Meanwhile, Gothamist has details on the May 22 rally to save Coney Island from the evil Thor Equities.

Posts that I never got around to posting: What could have been!

Heh.

It has begun

Looks as if street festival season has started up again...Third Avenue between 14th Street and, I'm guessing, 23rd Street was closed off last Saturday. Counted seven of them taking place in Manhattan this coming weekend. (That's SEVEN opportunities to buy four Gap T-shirts for $10 Or bags of tube socks! Or quickie back rubs!) Do these offer any benefit to the local community? I've never heard anyone actually say they look forward to a street festival -- or even admit actually going to one. I'm all for things to bring the community together (such as the various rummage and porch sales different blocks have), but just not the street fairs that seem to peddle the same crap weekend after weekend throughout the spring and summer.

Revisiting an old favorite

In a bit of a lousy mood for various reasons. (The whole city is going to hell -- more than usual, anyway!)

So! In times like these, I watch/listen to an old favorite. (Only seen this a few hundred times. But still.)



Oh, I liked that. Let's do another.

"This is one of the last vestiges of the anarchistic, crazy Lower East Side"

Jeremiah has the scoop that the Tower of Toys is coming down at the community garden at Sixth Street and Avenue B. This, of course, is the work of the late Eddie Boros, a lifelong resident of the East Village...not to mention a legendary regular at Sophie's. (A lot of his artwork still adorns the bar.) Mrs. Grieve and I just had a conversation about the tower over the weekend. The garden had an open, uh, garden on Saturday and Sunday. In the short time that I was there, I'd say some 20 tourists walked by and took admiring photos of Eddie's creation. However much we liked the sculpture, we wondered how much longer it would be part of the garden. (Eddie passed away in April 2007.) For starters, there was the community garden politics: Many people involved there hated the thing. Here's an article from The New York Times dated Nov. 22, 1998, by Karen Angel:

Junk Art Roils a Garden
The junk sculpture on Sixth Street and Avenue B looms above the surrounding tenements like a psychedelic treehouse. From its limbs of raw lumber hang a huge headless Godzilla, a gold mannequin with a horse's head, stuffed animals and other motley objects. For the community garden that houses Eddie Boros's growing sculpture, it has become a source of controversy along with the artist himself, a self-described alcoholic and trash picker who finds his materials in garbage cans and Dumpsters.

Mr. Boros, 66, began building on a 4-by-8-foot garden plot about 15 years ago, as a form of protest. He had been using the vacant land to make carvings, and when the Sixth and B Community Garden was organized, the founders wanted to relegate him to one plot. "I decided to build a little open shed," he said. "I was going up 10 feet, and something started in me. I went up 15 feet, 25 feet." Now the sculpture is about 65 feet tall and occupies six garden plots, and he plans to take it 5 feet higher.

"Eddie is building out of anger," said David Rouge, a founder of the garden. "He has never accepted the authority of the garden." Seven years ago Mr. Rouge led an unsuccessful effort to evict the sculpture. He had to settle for a ruling that forbade Mr. Boros from making it bigger. But Mr. Boros follows his muse, not the ruling.

The sculpture often elicits debate among garden members. "There are these wild raucous meetings with screaming," said Karen Schifano, founder of the garden's mediation committee.

Jimmy Dougherty, a garden member and a film maker, said that most members are defenders of the sculpture. "People are either repulsed by the sculpture, or they think it's beautiful," said Mr. Dougherty, who did a documentary about Mr. Boros that was broadcast on PBS stations this year. Because the sculpture elicits such strong reactions, he said, "it's a successful art piece."

Mr. Boros often climbs to the top of his sculpture. "He sits up there like a pirate in a crow's-nest surveying the neighborhood," Ms. Schifano said. "This is one of the last vestiges of the anarchistic, crazy Lower East Side."

(Here's another piece on Eddie from the Times.)

As Jeremiah notes, you can pay your respects: "Before it's gone, come to An Informal Celebration of the Tower of Toys, Sunday, May 11, 7pm - 9pm at the 6th Street & Avenue B Community Garden."

Anyway, another day, another piece of the neighborhood's soul is lost.

[A reader on Curbed pointed out this video from 1988:]