“What’s next here, Jay-Z?”
The reunited semi-replaced Replacements are coming to NYC. I feel slightly uneasy about that fact, but I’m quite excited about the venue: the Forest Hills Tennis Stadium!
The old home of the US Open is a legendary rock concert venue. It’s legendary mostly for time and place. The sound system was apparently awful, the aisles and backstage cramped and the streets and train stations overwhelmed by the throngs of rampaging kids. But at a time that rock-n-roll and youth culture were surging and there wasn’t much in the way of non-classical concert venues, the stadium served as a useful home for some of the first big New York concerts by The Beatles, Dylan, the Doors, the Stones – you name it.
When I lived a few blocks away, the stadium had long been supplanted by Arthur Ashe at Flushing Meadows. It was a quiet relic. I’m not sure what went on behind its ivy walls in that sleepy neighborhood. There were nights when I would try to imagine what it would be like to hear the distorted tinny amplified sounds of Keef’s clarion-call riff kicking off “Satisfaction,” fighting to be heard over the screams of a thousand girls wafting through the air like a bad block party.
So, the opportunity to see a show there? I’m in (if the scalpers don’t beat me to it). But it got me wondering, when did they start running rock concerts in Forest Hills again?. And then I found this gem, from the Queens Chronicle:
Last year’s sold-out Mumford & Sons concert at the iconic Forest Hills Tennis Stadium may have been declared an impressive success by elected officials and community leaders, but some area residents hope the curtain comes down on any future shows.
[snip]
“I can’t tell you what torture it was that day, getting back and forth,” Tola said to the crowd of around 70 people. “What’s in it for us?”
Tola, a resident of Exeter Street in Forest Hills for the last two years, defended his stance against concerts being held at the venue by claiming the shows booked by Madison House Presents will bring disruptive noise and open drug use by spectators to the immediate area.
“You’re bringing that element. You’re inviting them in,” he said. “What’s next here, Jay-Z?”
Stay classy, Queens. The NIMBYism, well, you can get that just about anywhere. But the dog-whistling racist NIMBYism? Well, that’s a Queens art form. And until the return of rock-n-roll to Forest Hills Tennis Stadium was one of the better known art forms in the borough. It’s time for new art in Queens. Even if it is an oldies concert.
Bloomberg’s “Kiss of Death”
Third-term disaster Michael Bloomberg is apparently so frustrated by every New Yorker’s determination to ignore him in the waning days of his administration that he took to the pages of New York magazine to weigh in on the current electoral race to be Not Bloomberg. Most of the digital ink being spread on this piece is on Bloomberg’s bizarre charge that current Democratic front-runner Bill deBlasio is being “racist” for, um, marrying a black woman and raising an adorable multi-racial family with her. Not to get all Inigo Montoya, but I do not think this term means what the lame-duck Mayor thinks it means. Which is odd, because I’m pretty sure if you look up the word “racism” in the Oxford English Dictionary, you will find a WSJ-style stipple portrait of hizzoner with a description of the NYPD’s “stop and frisk” program.
But the real red meat of el Bloombito’s interview is his weird, back-handed endorsement of human corporation Christine Quinn:
“Whether you are in favor of Chris Quinn becoming mayor or not, I will tell you this: She did a very good job for seven and a half years of keeping legislation that never should have made it to the floor, that would have been damaging to the city, from ever getting there.”
Earlier this year, Bloomberg called the United Federation of Teachers’ endorsement of Bill Thompson, an utterly decent man who is a wee bit skeptical of shutting down schools and labeling children as “failures,” a “kiss of death.” I’m sure that in the cocktail party circles in which the mayor, Cathie Black and various DFER’s travel an endorsement by the teachers union is a helpful guide for where to not invest your money. But that is hardly the “kiss of death” of a haughty billionaire praising a political hack for preventing an honest up-or-down vote on legislation that would allow hard-working New Yorkers to take a day off without financial penalty if they get sick. I hope Bloomberg Inc. publishes a helpful voter guide. I would like more guidance on whom to not vote for by The. Worst. Mayor. Ever.
The Sandpiper Serves as Lookout Against the Ferals.
I’m taking a mental health day; smoking a cigar on the fire escape. I bought my Padron at the Humidor, a neighborhood spot where the old men can smoke their stogies on the leather couches inside. They’re watching coverage of the Greek elections like it’s a soccer game. I’m not sure which side they’re on.
I take the opportunity to refill our bird feeders. Bay Ridge doesn’t have a lot of bio-diversity. We get lots of finches and the occasional mourning dove. Lately there’s been a couple of sand pipers to enliven the scene. They’re beautiful. Their tail feathers are slightly robotic in motion. I hear a bird whistling like an alarm. Is she pissed that I won’t vacate the fire escape so she and her comrades can enjoy the new snacks we’ve laid out for them? I notice it’s one of the sand pipers alerting all the other birds to the presence of one of the neighborhood ferals. She flies along the top of the fence that surrounds the Catholic Church’s parking lot and perches occasionally to renew the alarm as the neighborhood stray saunters along the bottom of it.
The kids from the Catholic junior high school stream into the parking lot with their parents, resplendent in their green “graduation” gowns. It’s “moving up” day. The girls are model-tall and stumbling in their high heels. The boys have the misfortune of looking a little too much like Glen Bishop from Mad Men. A couple of goobers toss their four-cornered caps into the air, in a re-enactment of whatever just took place in that 50-year-old auditorium. It’s hard to imagine being that excited about something ending and a new thing beginning. And yet we’ve all been there.
“yo,” my wife e-mails. “i forgot my phone. email in the next few minutes if you need anything. there’s a laptop on this pedicure chair.”
“this is the future.”
I take another drag from the cigar and look at the spray paint marks on the grating of the fire escape, where she preps her canvasses and think, “Maybe this is.”
Introducing…
I flew back from New Orleans yesterday feeling a little under the weather. Ordinarily, it’s the sort of thing I would power through. But the prospect of also having to push my way through the teeming masses of Super Bowl celebrants (good game, that) just to get in the front door of my office left me with a very definite case of Blue Flu.
On my day off, I helped a very talented local artist set up her personal website. May I introduce to you my wife, Kate Ostler.
Oh, yeah. By the way, this happened while I was neglecting my own website.