Things someone who grew up in NJ might write

Chicago Pulp – Look But Not Too Closely

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Stories of true crime have lurid appeal. We stop, we gawk, rubberneck, and then move on, usually feeling a little cheaper for doing it. It’s a guilty pleasure best enjoyed quickly. We can laugh about New York Post headlines without ever reading the articles.

Girls of Murder City

Occasionally a crime story – like the play/musical/movie Chicago – resonates.  A perverse curiosity pulls us in and something special in the telling and tone and the telling keeps us engaged and coming back. Exploring that tension is the critical thread that makes Douglas Perry’s The Girls of Murder City an interesting read. Subtitled “Fame, Lust, and the Beautiful Killers who Inspired Chicago,” it recounts the real-life murders and trials of the women in the play Chicago. Perry gives the histories of Belva Gaertner and Beulah Annan, who murdered and walked away free thanks to their beauty and all male juries. We learn of Kitty Malm and Sabella Nitti, who were less attractive and less fortunate. The distinction continues to this day. The prettier women rate a Wikipedia page while their less attractive Cook County jail fellows do not.

Perry takes a clever approach to his real-life history of 1920s alcohol, guns, and violence, by focusing on focuses on Maurine Watkins, a young female reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Watkins was a budding actress and playwright who took the newspaper job to learn more about life. Her articles on the crimes were well-written and well-received. Her sojourn in Chicago was short, however, ending as the Leopold and Loeb trial dominated the headlines. This cold-blooded kidnapping and murder of a teenager marked a different kind of crime and a different kind of zeitgeist. Watkins returned to the east coast, contacted her old Harvard theater professor, and began crafting a play about the women murderers. The Brave Little Woman in early versions, the play became Chicago. Watkins’ satirical take on violence and celebrity was an instant hit. Realizing that the underlying story of the women was depressing, Watkins found the right tone to give an audience sufficient distance to enjoy themselves. Satire is an effective tool to deal with the dreadful. Done well, we can even laugh at horror. Later reworked into a musical and more recently a film, Chicago is a mainstream cultural artifact.

Gold Coast Madam

Alike but different in important ways, Rose Laws’ Gold Coast Madam is a first-person account of a life of Chicago crime. Born to poverty in rural Tennessee, Laws recounts her rise to becoming a very profitable agent for prostitutes in Chicago (she does not consider herself a madam – even with the book title). Laws is unapologetic about her choices. She tells her tale in a straightforward manner, from early childhood abuse to a young marriage marked by violence and cruelty. Laws lost custody of her five children to an orphanage for several years and struggled to earn enough money to keep her family together. She eventually found her niche selling sex. Laws accepts the world as it is. Her candor is appealing. Her autobiography is absent moral or critical reflection, save for a deep wish that she had continued her education and had insisted on more education for her children. Without narrative distance or a different perspective, Laws’s history is sad.

How a story is framed and told can matter more than the story itself – and it is particularly true when it comes to stories of violence and crime.

David Potash

Chicago Pulp – Look But Not Too Closely

Measuring Manhattan

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John Randel was a brilliant crank, an idiosyncratic and irascible character who mapped Manhattan in the early 1800s. Randel made the world-famous grid of avenues and Measure of Manhattanstreets a reality through extraordinarily detailed maps. His obsession for accuracy was matched only by his commitment to his reputation. Marguerite Holloway’s The Measure of Manhattan is a generous and thoughtfully crafted biography of Randel. Holloway champions Randel, admits but tolerates his weaknesses, and lobbies mightily to raise his star.

The challenge facing Holloway is that Randel was not a visionary, a planner, or a  theorist. He was not even a particularly nice or interesting person.  Randel played a very important role in the mapping of Manhattan, but that role could have been shouldered by another. He was an outstanding surveyor.Randal’s role in history is notable because he possessed the right skills in the right place at the right time.

The true subject of the book is not Randal, but the processes involved in mapping the island of Manhattan. Surveyors imposed order on chaos and structure on the organic. If we equate happiness with property – and many Americans do – than happiness is only possible with a reliable map. It’s a good thing that Manhattan has so many happy people, and if only for that, I give thanks to John Randel.

David Potash

Measuring Manhattan

Fame in Familiar Flavors

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Bat Masterson used to be famous. A gunfighter, lawman, buffalo hunter, pugilist, gambler, boxing promoter, and newspaper columnist, Masterson was a man’s man from the Wild West who lived the latter half of his life on Broadway in New York City. He killed several men, was involved in countless brawls and lawsuits, and lived a life worthy of fiction. One of his younger New York friends, Damon Runyan, thought so – he created the character “Sky Masterson” thinking of Bat. Sky would later achieve a different kind of fame as the lead in the musical Guys and Dolls.  Theodore Roosevelt was equally enchanted. When President, Roosevelt arranged for a federal sinecure for Masterson.Bat Masterson

Robert K. DeArment is probably the world’s expert on Bat Masterson. His latest work, Gunfighter in Gotham: Bat Masteron’s New York City Years, chronicles Masterson’s life but focuses on his time on the Great White Way. Masterson’s New York City was very much Runyon’s: a small district around Times Square filled with types. Masterson did have exploits, but were they worthy of our collective attention? His prose was nothing special; nor were his opinions, causes, or arguments. He was not a leader and he left no exceptional mark on his environs. He was a friend and a colleague to many and a dangerous enemy to a few.

Thinking of Bat Masterson brings to mind other celebrities famous for being famous, a category now enshrined in popular culture. We often think that the rise of the fake celebrity is a recent phenomena driven by the internet and social media. In reality, it is a part of modern life and has been for decades.  We regularly think about, read about, and write about popular figures whose actual claim to fame is, at best, tenuous. Our fascination with fame is as much about us, the public, as it is about the object of our attention, the celebrity.

Those famous for being famous often share similar traits. They actively seek to maintain their celebrity. That kind of fame does not just happen – it requires ongoing work. And if you doubt me, consult with Kathy Griffin. Also, these kinds of celebrities tend to embody characteristics that are taken to an extreme. Masterson’s hyper-masculinity stands as a provocative counterpoint to the hyper-femininity of the Spice Girls or the Kardashians.

As for Masterson, DeArment’s volume provides more than I would ever care to know about the man in print. I will hold judgement about meeting Masterson in person – I think that he would have been a heck of an interesting fellow to meet at the bar.

David Potash

Fame in Familiar Flavors

Urban Violence And The City of Scoundrels

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Does history happen or happen to you? Historians like to focus on turning points, on dramatic crises, on changes that interrupt continuities. In City of Scoundrels, Gary Krist looks at twelve sweltering days in the summer of 1919 in Chicago.City of Scoundrels

The scoundrels were mostly Chicago politicians, especially “Big Bill” Thompson, Chicago’s mayor. Recently reelected due to a split field, Thompson was much more interested in campaigning and deal-making than governing. Thompson was poorly equipped to deal with the dramatic events that hot July.

A blimp caught on fire and crashed into a Chicago office building, a girl disappeared engaging the populace in a city-wide hunt until her killer confessed, a series of bombings targeting the black population swept the city, Chicago’s transit workers went on strike, and finally, a race riot erupted after when five young black men went swimming and their makeshift raft crossed into a “white” area. One of the young men drowned after being hit on the head from a rock thrown by a racist on the beach. His was the first death and thirty-seven more would follow in what is now known as the Chicago Race Riots of 1919. Wide swaths of the city were wrecked and burned as gangs of whites and blacks fought each other with clubs, bricks, and guns.

Where was the government? Thompson and Illinois’s governor, Frank Lowden, played politics with the idea of calling out the militia.

From this maelström, Krist argues, a modern Chicago was born. The city recovered and began a period of growth and expansion. True enough, but the real message of his Chicago history is its insights into the struggle between violence and governance in city life.

For most Americans living in cities, violence was an ever-present threat. It was no imaginary fear. Any general review of urban life across the United States reveals  common themes: growth, dynamic economics, and mobs wreaking havoc. Race conflict often drove the violence, with class and labor issues not far behind. Every major metropolis in America has wrestled with urban violence at least one point in its history before the 1970s.  Many cities have had multiple riots. Bombers and arsonists terrorized people in the 1800s and 1900s, but we did not yet call them terrorists. American identity was forged in revolutionary city violence – the Boston Massacre and the Boston Tea Party.

We no longer seem to fear urban mobs. Krist’s book helps us remember that urban violence is an important part of our heritage.

David Potash

Urban Violence And The City of Scoundrels

Sloppy, Anyone?

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NJ sloppyNew Orleans has muffalettas. Providence has grinders. Proust has madeleines. For those of us from northern New Jersey, we have something better: the sloppy joe. Just thinking about that taste of the Garden State makes me smile and want to sing Springsteen lyrics.

No, it’s not ground beef and barbecue sauce in a bun. I remember the first time I had one of those and it simply wasn’t right. The real sloppy is a triple-decker sandwich with meat, Swiss cheese, Russian dressing, and coleslaw. The bread is usually unseeded rye. It’s messy but still controllable. Done right, it as an absolutely delicious sandwich, a balanced mixture of sharp cheese and creamy dressing. The bread holds up to the moisture and the slaw provides an appropriate degree of crunch.

I wasn’t in double digits when I had my first sloppy – several of the delis in the Madison, Chatham and Livingston area made them. Meat choices are ham, roast beef or turkey. I have always been flexible about the meat. It is good to mix things up, just as it is always exciting to try a different deli’s sloppy. Not all delis make them and not all do them well.

If you ever find yourself talking with a denizen of Morris, Essex or Bergen county and you want to go deep, ask about their favorite sloppy. A genuine long-term Jersey denizen will always have a few favorites. I give a completely unsolicited and uncompensated nod to the Hickory Tree Delicatessen in Chatham Township. They usually have some pre-made – and if you are looking for a treat, call ahead and order the platter.

What exit indeed.

David Potash

Sloppy, Anyone?

Another Good Reason We Won the War

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Harry Hopkins is one of those historical figures that pops up in correspondence, photographs, history books and television shows about World Hopkins TouchWar II. He’s in the text, in the captions, but it is difficult to know exactly who he was or what he did. David L. Roll remedies this in an immensely readable book, The Hopkins Touch: Harry Hopkins and the Forging of the Alliance to Defeat Hitler. A big volume that is easily handled, The Hopkins Touch chronicles the life and influence of a Midwestern reformer who became one of President Roosevelt’s most trusted advisors.

Hopkins was a progressive reformer who found a home in the New Deal. As he became known to President Roosevelt, the two men hit it off and became very close. Hopkins was discreet with a real sense of humor. He did not need the spotlight and he had an unerring gift for discerning the true matter at hand. Loyal, smart, and extremely effective, Harry Hopkins was an extension of FDR.

Hopkins was also a very ill man. Following intestinal troubles as a young adult he had much of his stomach removed, leading to a lifetime of complications and pain. A chronicle of Hopkins life is filled with trips to hospitals, consultations with physicians, collapses and near collapses. At death’s door for the last two decades of his life, Hopkins nevertheless was able to engage and persevere. His ability to focus and work through extremely stressful and demanding responsibilities while in great physical pain was acknowledged by all around him.

Roll’s work highlights Hopkins’ diplomatic skills. He made a great impression on Churchill, Stalin, and many of the other wartime leaders. His charm was certainly enhanced by his relationship with Roosevelt, but it also was quite effective on its own. In many ways Hopkins’ communication ability and smarts was critical in bringing the Allies together and helping them fight collaboratively. That was no small accomplishment. So even though Harry Hopkins lacked a formal title through much of World War II, he is well worth considering, remembering, and above all, thanking.

David Potash

 

Another Good Reason We Won the War

Political Cartoons and Oliphant’s Lament

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Is it just me, or have political cartoons lost their punch? One would expect that in our visually rich society we would be awash in popular cartooning. Animation is everywhere, to be sure, but political cartooning – or “editorial cartooning” as the professionals call it, does not seem as relevant.Oliphant- Betsy

It could be that shrinking influence of newspapers has undermined the access of political cartoon. The rise of corporate culture, too, has been cited as a corresponding deterrent to stinging political cartoons. But other factors are at play.

It was not always such. From Thomas Nast’s Tammany Tiger to Pat Oliphant’s caricatured Nixon, talented political cartoonists have been able to reduce complex political situations into easily recognized images.  When they get it right, their visuals are widely copied and repeated. Yet in 2013 there has been no viral cartoon and no one image that sums up last year’s presidential election.

After reading Oliphant’s Anthem, a companion book and website to the Library of Congress’s 1998 exhibition (note – the website is live and worth a gander), I believe that the underlying cause of the political cartoon’s wane reflects a broader shift in American popular culture. Oliphant, an Australian native who won a Pulitzer way back in 1966, is one of America’s most influential political cartoonists. His work is reproduced nationally and readily available. Along with MaNelly and the late Herblock, the trio were the most influential American political cartoonists of the last 50 years.

Most political cartoons, from the 1800s through the early 2000s, shared a common purpose: to shine a light on hypocrisy, to knock the pompous off their perch, to mock. Politicians are often the target, but not exclusively. Political cartoons’ energy derives from the difference between what is and what is proclaimed. That difference is all the easier to portray if our leaders access and utilize the language and imagery of the ideal, the preferred. The more ambitious the claims of a political leaders, the more energy available for a political cartoons. And ambitious assertions – especially moral testaments – are unusual in our ironic age.  When the proud fall, it is far too often medicalized and pathologized. Elliott Spitzer and Anthony Weiner serve as prime examples.

We have come to expect our leaders to cheat, to philander, to obfuscate, and to lie. We have low expectations for presidential candidates a lower expectations for Congress. Without much faith in the system or the people closest to it, we gain little pleasure or insight from the humor of political cartoons. We have been habitually disappointed too often – and there are few professing optimism.

Ironically, we need a little more idealism for political cartooning, with all its dark humor, to gain traction.

David Potash

Political Cartoons and Oliphant’s Lament

Ann Hamilton – Hanging By A Chain

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Thread 1Since 2006 the Park Avenue Armory in NYC has been a mecca for performances and site-specific art installations. It is a difficult commission, for the building has a history and scale that competes for attention and can easily overwhelm.

Ann Hamilton’s Event of a Thread at the Armory was a complex “multisensory affair” featuring 42 swings connected to a large flowing curtain bisecting the Drill Hall, and a conglomeration of creative ephemera: caged pigeons, newspaper-wrapped radios, a daily song captured in vinyl (which was played back the following day), and some somber looking functionaries, dressed like extras in a Margaret Atwood dystopia, focused on various tasks with great seriousness.

Hamilton very cleverly coupled the swings, each of which could seat two comfortably, in the ceiling. This dampened their arcs and made for some Thread 2very interesting patterns in the curtain, which moved in relationship to the swings. Part steam punk, part Stevie Nix, the exhibit was both an invitation to play and a challenge to experience. What do you look at? And what do you take seriously?

New York State built many armories after the Civil War when wide-scale street violence was a near memory. Armories were military training grounds, repositories of weapons, club houses for militia, and visible reminders of the power of the National Guard to maintain domestic tranquility. The wealth of the NYC’s upper East Side insured that the Park Avenue Armory was much more than a very large military shed. Some of the period’s most successful designers contributed to the Armory’s lush and elegant social spaces. Its drill hall is enormous with 55,000 square feet unobstructed space. As a point of contrast, Tate Modern’s famous Turbine Hall in London is significantly smaller at only 36,600 square feet. The sheer size of the Drill Hall infantilizes most pieces. It is indifferent to the largest of objects.

The swings in Hamilton’s exhibit kept me busy for the better part of an hour. The swings, playful and childlike, belonged.  There was not question about their purpose or integrity. As for the extras, pigeons and the prose, I have not a clue. The complexity of the work rendered it inaccessible. The disparate activities may be related by some common reference, a shared thread of meaning. Or they may not.

Sustained engagement is a necessary but not necessarily sufficient criteria for art to succeed. Hamilton’s simple was far more effective holding attention than her complex. Isn’t it interesting how often that turns out to be true?

Ann Hamilton – Hanging By A Chain

Lovely Cities

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If we are now in an age of cities, P.D. Smith’s City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age  is the self-proclaimed resource for 2013. A richly illustrated compendium of history, biography, urban studies, anecdote and travel guide. Smith is an unabashed enthusiast for urban life and living. The chapters are arranged thematically (“Arrival,” “Where to City - Guidebook for Urban AgeStay,” “Money,” “Getting Around”) and jump from city to city across the globe. Less a travel book and more a considered reflection on all things urban, Smith’s work highlights the incredibly complexity that makes cities such important features. It is beautiful, thought-provoking, enjoyable, and interestingly, not quite right.

I was a frequent visitor to New York City as a child. My parents would take our family into the Village to eat, to midtown to hear music and see theater, and to the Bronx to visit my father’s relatives. The City  was always tremendously exciting for me. It usually was great fun, but not necessarily comfortable. It consistently surprised me. I loved being in the city but I did not love the city – I did not know it.

Demographers and planners consistently debate the relative impact of urban areas versus suburban areas. Most Americans live in suburbs, but recently population growth in cities has been faster than in suburbs.  Around the world, more and more people are living in cities, with a projected 75% of all humanity slated to live in metropolitan areas by 2050.  The overall vitality and strength the greater metropolitan area (that’s when you add suburbs to the city) are what matters, too; metropolitan areas are sites of energy, wealth and opportunity.

I grew up in Madison, New Jersey – the “Rose City.”  Located twenty-five miles from New York City, Madison was and remains very much a small-town suburb with 15,000 or so inhabitants. Most of the borough consists of single family homes and a small downtown with locally owned shops defines Madison’s shopping district. Understanding Madison is impossible without paying attention to its role and relationship with New York City. Some jobs in Madison require commuting, but also many other jobs depend upon the corporate headquarters and back offices that have sprung up in Morris County as part of the larger “edge city.”

Park Slope - 5th Ave and 9th StreetHealthy cities are never in stasis. Cities are inevitably changing, growing, realigning and shifting.

 As a toddler on one trip to Manhattan, pausing before a construction site, I had my parents in stitches when I asked if the city was every going to be “done.”

Cities defy omnipotent narratives and perspectives. Panoramic images may sell books – and Smith has plenty of these – but they are unhelpful fictions when it comes to understanding cities or why they are the future of mankind. Cities reveal themselves to observant participants, glance by glance, and only through multiples lenses – be it race, class, gender, time, space or mood. Pick a city block. It will never be the same block to a commuter, a tourist, or a resident. It is not the same block at 3:00 pm and 3:00 am. Rarely are two glimpses of a city the same. Smith misses this, amid all the photos, the walks and interviews. He writes that a city is its people, but never quite conveys the elusiveness of phenomenological meaning-making in an urban environment.

Last week we revisited Park Slope, Brooklyn , where we used to live. Walking well-traveled blocks and pointing to the children the entrances to buildings and houses where we once lived, it was familiar and not-familiar, same and different. Chance encounters with friends confirmed the vibrancy of the neighborhood, its constant state of flux, and the joy living in a city as dynamic and unknowable as New York City. 

Lovely Cities

Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll

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Ian Dury‘s lyric’s continue “very good indeed.” For that male musician, and for most male rockers, they are all of a piece. Music matters, to be sure, but so, too, does the lifestyle. It is what motivates pimply young men across the globe to pick up guitars and craft love songs, anthems and ditties.

Why do women rock musicians pursue the dream? The question drove me to pick up Kicking and Dreaming: a Story of Heart, Soul, and Rock and Roll. the joint autobiography of Ann and Nancy Wilson, the creative force behind Heart.  Did they do it for love? Did they do it for money? It turns out that they did it because they really liked making music together.

It is one of the oddities of the book, a strange mixture of wild tales and bourgeois sentiment. The sisters were raised in a Marine household, moving regularly but always remaining disciplined. The eldest sister rebelled, giving space for the two to explore music and eventually join in a band. The toured, they paid their dues, and then thanks to Dreamboat Annie and Magazine, they found commercial success. Accompanying the popularity were all the expected problems – relationships, drugs, personalities, and the loss of the values that propelled them to stardom, as relationships and sex is always popular, and that’s why people use apps like sexfinder to meet people online.

Unusually, however, Heart did not go away. They reformed, started working with other song smiths, and then found renewed commercial success. The use of someone’s else’s work was somewhat challenging, the sister’s tells us, but not overwhelmingly so.

Heart’s commercial popularity was significantly aided by the sisters’ sex appeal. They were well aware of their appearance (and the challenges posed by Ann’s weight), and they used it to their advantage. They also clearly resent the rampant sexism of the music scene. “Barracuda” – perhaps one of their most aggressive tunes – was driven by their record company’s rumor mongering that the sisters had a lesbian affair. Yet a decade later the two were unabashedly promoting their videos, the sister’s tell us, through imagery of their breasts. It was, of course, the record company’s idea. But what was Heart’s idea?

As much I enjoy Heart – and love Magazine – the sister’s book was surprisingly pedestrian. Sure there were wild anecdotes, and yes, they truly come across as nice people, but there is little in the book that gets into their perspective, their talent, or their passion with any depth.  The process by which they create music is treated relatively lightly.  The sisters do not talk about any creative differences and their focus, through much of the book is what happens to them – and less about what they did. Sure they did – and that’s there, but they tend to see it more as a matter of fact, a matter of record.

The two did struggle – with addictions and with destructive relationships – and happily they emerged as authors in a much better place.

It is a must, however, for Heart fans and aficianatos of 70s and 80s popular culture. Nevertheless, I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the next rock autobiography I come across has more substance to it.

Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll