belaboring the point

Summer’s over! Welcome to Fall, welcome to the Atlantic Antic, to New York is Book Country, to the Feast of San Gennaro, to Christmas decorations in October, less tourists for a while, (maybe quite a while with all the slip-sliding down on Wall Street) – many of us lost our jobs over the summer, many of us who are now realizing that it’s September, and we ought to consider returning to work. Fall is here. Does anything else matter?

Been out. Out learning things.

Things like, there are but two areas in New York where the median income dips below $25,000.

Bushwick, Brooklyn – nobody’s idea of a party, and the South Bronx.

Things like, Bushwick and the South Bronx are now more than 60% Hispanic.

Which means that chances are, a poll of the city’s poorest residents would include lots of people for whom Spanish was the first language.

Which reflects on what this city has become. Even East New York, our own little version of Chicago’s West Side, the local chapter of Beirut in the Reagan years, has a median income hovering somewhere in the low $30’s.

My neighborhood’s somewhere around $50,000. In most places, that’d mean clean streets and a Whole Foods.

Just thought I’d bring that up.

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Summer’s over. I’d say thank God, but really, there’s nothing to complain about. The month of August was one of the coolest on record – after an excruciating first week, we were lucky enough to hide behind curtains of rain, and except for a few mind-bendingly humid moments, it was a fairly tolerable thirty days.

As far as things that happened in August, there’s really not much to complain about either, except for the final unleashing of terror at the friendly neighborhood google-plex. American Pie 2. Bubble Boy. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin. Lots of silly suburban children singing “Because I Got High,” this summer’s “Who Let the Dogs Out.”

Good Lord.

Hamptons wise, however, things were not so low key. Lizzie and her wayward SUV, the death of Jeff Salaway, the supposedly beloved restaurateur – staggering drops in purchase and rental prices for sub-par beach houses – is it over? One hopes. We’ll see, next year.

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This was the summer during which I reacquainted myself with the pleasures of a visit to New Jersey.

Anyone remember the billboard on 49th and 7th, the one bought and paid for by the good folks behind the Las Vegas tourism racket, the one that used, as it’s tag line, “Nobody ever wrote a song called ‘Viva New Jersey’?”

In the last couple months, I’ve been composing one in my head. I’d have to sing first about Newark, where I found a treasure trove of art at the Newark Museum, a world of fantastic performance art at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, which is in itself a major selling point – Napa Valley interior meets Northeastern sensible brick exterior – I go there every now and then to cheer myself up, and to remember that good buildings do get built on the East Coast.

Every now and then.

I’d sing next of Princeton, that oasis of sophistication in the tract-housing sea that is Central Jersey. Charming town square, more great art hanging on the walls of the university art museum, cool cafés and a stunning arrangement of trees on the campus. They have one of those planners, whose sole purpose for getting out of bed in the morning is deciding which trees look good. It’s a beautiful place. The architecture is incredible.

I loved Princeton. But the ultimate chaser is a visit to Atlantic City, which everyone’s already sung about. I like Vegas, but AC is the ultimate in tacky. If you miss the old Vegas, hop over here – you might be grateful for what Vegas has become. The hour from Camden to the shore we watched the westbound parking lot, thousands of Pennsylvanians going nowhere. Same goes for the northbound Garden State.

Coney Island on steroids, every color and shape in skimpy swimsuits on the beach.

I won ten dollars, my biggest take ever at a casino, on the wheel of fortune at the Tropicana. A hell of a lot of fun. We played mini-golf on the boardwalk, ate buckets of curly fries, rode a satanic roller-coaster on the Steel Pier. Mid-ride, I confessed all my sins and declared myself ready to stand before God. Moments later, I was smoking a cigarette on the balcony of the Taj and ogling the T&A parade down below.

How quickly we forget.

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Mayoral primary. Coming up.

For shame – who cares? We have to, but for what, for what, tell me, for what?

All we get is a bunch of old school, ivory tower schmucks.

Don’t tell me Freddy Ferrer knows what’s going on. I sat at too many of that man’s press conferences, his campaign people can’t even spell Giuliani correctly in their releases.

Guiliani. Hookd on Fonix didn’t work for Freddy Ferrer, I guess.

Love Rudy. Love him more than I ever thought I could. What that man has done for this city is beyond incredible. Was he always a good man? Did he always make good decisions? No.

But what about Ed Koch? What about David Dinkins? What about any mayor this city has ever had?

They’ve all been stupid, they’ve all been completely inadequate for the task. Under Koch, we had more homeless than ever. Under Dinkins, we had the worst racial unrest in years.

Giuliani actually did something noticeable. Little girls can take the subway at three in the morning to Brooklyn and walk home unmolested. Don’t tell me that Giuliani was not effective. Maybe you didn’t like him. So what. Admit it. Cry Uncle. The man changed the way we see our city.

If we have learned anything, it is that to get anything done in New York, you have to piss people off. The guilty white people who profess to hate Hizzoner secretly love what he’s done with the place.

It’s true – lots of us like him, us meaning New Yorkers of all stripes, shapes, income brackets and professions.

Which is why it’s distressing to watch campaign ads, most of them saying how they’re going to do things differently than Giuliani. Mostly because they hate the man personally, because he was so damn effective, he makes them all look like pussies.

They are. Unfortunately, one of those pussies is about to become our mayor.

Peter Vallone or Alan Hevesi, dumb and dumber, will probably come out on top.

Unlucky us – but considering the options, who really cares? If I had my way, I’d elect Bernie Goetz. If that whole unfortunateness in the subway had happened today, here, and now, no one would care. Hell – everyone has the right to protect themselves. I'm a low-key guy, but F with me in the subway, and i'll kick your ass.

Anyway, I’d vote Goetz, who promises to bring back Giuliani as the Deputy. Bernie’d tend to his squirrels which he’d keep in cages in the lobby of City Hall, while Rudy was upstairs Meeting the Press.

Smiling Rudy – post-Donna Rudy. You gotta love it – our mayor, living with Howard the Queen from Queens and his boyfriend Mark who has a fetish for throw pillows.

The pillow on our Mayor’s bed, one of Mark’s favorites, reads “It ain’t easy being King.”

If you don’t agree now, wait ‘til mid-term with the newbie. We’ll talk.

Rudy. Damn, you’ll be missed.