On a Stoop in Chinatown, and Some Law and Order

Photo by myself just north of Chinatown, around Elizabeth and Broome Streets.

A group of older folks were sitting outside in the warm air. It was very humid on Friday, after a week of cooler temperatures.


I wasn't sure if I preferred the color version or the black and white. What do you think?

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Well, it had to happen at some point. The 20-year old New York-based television series Law and Order will end this May 24th.

I can't say I've watched a majority of the 450+ episodes. However the show has been dependable entertainment, when not much else is on. You can flip between the classic flavor, SVU and Criminal Intent, often running at the same time.

Each episode followed the same format - a crime is committed somewhere in the city. The address is displayed as a subtitle. Gradually the detectives bring the suspect to trial, before justice is more or less served.

I'll miss seeing the film crews on the streets and the myth of New York as a dangerous city. Not to say there won't be years of reruns in our future. But you know what I mean. It's the end of an era.

Related posts: Case Closed, Nearly Perfect and The Formula.

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Nearly Perfect

Photo by myself in Bay Ridge Brooklyn, on Fifth Avenue around 76th Street.

A black and white photograph shows how timeless this neighborhood is; the small shops with their canopies, the tree-lined streets and an almost sleepy pace of life.

There are diners next to discount stores, locksmiths next to law offices. Bay Ridge has mainly Italian, Greek, Scandinavian and Irish families. The town is separated from Park Slope by Sunset Park, which is populated by primarily Chinese, Puerto Rican and Dominican families.

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Happy Monday, everyone. I wanted to start the week off with a wholesome and comforting image.

Lately Mark and I have become addicted to The Wire, the HBO series about police and narcotics cases, set in Baltimore.

Friends had recommended this show, several friends. There were long, long conversations about how realistic, well-produced and addictive the series was. We were warned that we wouldn't become full addicts until the third episode, had dvds pressed upon us and were waved away.

Mark and I had heard a segment on NPR about The Wire, too, about how many of the actors had once been on the street, lending the show an air of authenticity. The show was conceived by an ex-reporter, based on the experiences of one of his detective friends. 'The Wire' refers to working undercover in the drug world.

As opposed to the formulaic New York-based Law and Order series, it's the characters of The Wire that make the show compelling. You bond with the good guys and the bad guys. Actually, the good guys aren't entirely good, and the bad guys aren't entirely bad. Instead, each side is decidedly flawed, just as they are in reality.

If you have spare time to be riveted to your television, check it out. But be aware, it is highly addictive and refreshingly intense.


For an NPR interview with the series' creator, David Simon, click here.

Related posts: The Formula and Urban Legends

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Case Closed

Photo by myself in Union Square.

This character, the late Joe Ades, is was well-known for his continuous spiel, hawking carrot peelers and drawing a crowd. His British accent and craggy looks remind me of Gandalf.

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Fortunately for us all, it looks like the police made their man: the person responsible for stabbing Upper East Side psychologist Kathryn Faughey seems to have been nabbed last night.

Phew. New Yorkers can breathe a huge sigh of relief.

The kooks we live alongside can continue to act mildly kooky in comparison to this very troubled man. Apparently David Tarloff was a former patient of Faughey's. He'd planned on robbing the doctor and running off with his mother, which explains the bags of womens clothing and adult diapers left at the crime scene. Tarloff confessed he was enraged at whomever had had him institutionalized 17 years ago. The police still don't have the story straight.

I googled Faughey last night and the website for her private practice came up. It was eerie and sad.

How many of you would like to bet that we'll see this crime on Law and Order in the near future?

On a happier note, since it's sunny, Mark, Clive and I plan to drive out to the tip of Lawn Guyland today. I'll post some nice photos when I return!


For an earlier post on Law and Order, click here.

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Evolution, or, How I got my TV

I guess my life, like most people's, could be broken up into little bits. One big bit would be labelled 'Before Mark', and the other, smaller, more evolved, remaining bit would be labelled 'Since Mark'.

Before Mark, except for my youth, I never watched tv. I didn't have cable. The extent of my visual technology included a 13-inch color tv and bunny ears. My remote control didn't work, so I changed the channel with my index finger. I was in the Dark Ages.

First, the cost of cable put me off. Then there was the very real fear that I'd lose myself to something huge and inescapable. My tv boycott was also a matter or principle - why pay money to take points off my IQ? And why squirrel myself away from the city where I was so lucky to live?

A few years ago, I met Mark, who works in tv. He knows almost all the commercials ever made and quotes them regularly (tonight's reference was the Hershey's 'messy Marvin' campaign from the 80's). And so this woman of principle acquired HDTV, a flat-screen LCD, and DVR. It helps, when you have someone tell you what to get and hooks it up for you. Our heroine is now hooked on Kitchen Nightmares, Family Guy, Top Chef, Project Runway and (gulp) America's Next Top Model.

My tv is now a little over a year old. I bought it over Labor Day weekend, when it was on sale at PC Richards. For whatever reason, I couldn't bring it home right away. Mark brought it to my place in a taxi (this was post-Mark and pre-Clive). He set it up for me (bless him) and I came home to a brand-spanking, humungous IQ-depleting television.

Sitting on the couch, engulfed by yet another Law and Order episode, the tv issue seems the biggest 'Since Mark' change. I'm sure there are a few others. They'll come to me.


For an earlier post about Law and Order, click here.
A Messy Marvin clip below:




Top photo by myself in Soho.

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The Formula

The other night I saw a rather different Law and Order episode.

Tracy Pollan, a familiar face, was the lead actress in this two-part show. She played a rape victim on SVU (the episode entitled ‘Closure’ from 2000), the special victims flavor, which focuses on sexual crimes.

Initially, the camera follows her by the hour as she’s interviewed, examined and probed. It was the first year of the show, when Mariska Hargitay had a different look (much more makeup around the eyes). Someone is fingered for the crime but there’s not enough evidence to hold him.

Part Two aired nearly a year later. More victims had surfaced in Philadelphia, and their testimonies are edited together. Stabler and Benson find enough evidence to take their suspect to court. The edited part was dramatic (tight focus on their faces) and it was a slight deviation from the usual formula.

It’s the formula, rather than the characters, that make Law and Order work – investigate crime, try the crime, and get the bad guy all within an hour, while encountering moral dilemmas along the way. The show is shot in a straightforward, realistic way that isn’t mannered and never becomes dated.

The formula has allowed Law and Order spawn offspring and a huge following since 1990. But the other night I felt a surprising relief to see something slightly different.

I usually catch the show by accident, and watch it with the same sense of security as visiting a chain restaurant, or eating directly from the box – I know what I’m going to get, which is good and bad. Good in that I’m not going to encounter any nasty surprises, bad in that I won't remember it the next day.

There are only a few Law and Order episodes like the ones I saw, that is to say, memorable. The ones intermingled with the Baltimore-based Homicide from years ago also stick in my mind, because two fictional shows were woven together in a way that made them both seem real. As far as all the other episodes go, well, I don’t recall.

Photo by Michael aka Hatman003. For more great images, click here.

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Urban Legends

We were out the other day at the Bowery Bar for drinks. It was a beautiful afternoon, perfect for sitting outside. The three-day weekend was just ahead, with summer tagging along after it. The mood was cheerful and relaxed.

Above the garden wall, the sky was filled with a huge crane. There have been concerns about the economy but all signs in New York are optimistic. There has never been so much construction.

Everywhere you turn, something is coming down and something else is taking its place. The Bowery, for instance, always the symbol of sketchiness, is undergoing a major facelift. There’s a new hotel and swanky bar that everyone’s talking about. Skinny glass condo buildings are popping up alongside the shlubby tenaments still selling restaurant equipment.

Throughout Brooklyn, the skeletons of future buildings are everywhere. It’s most obvious when you’re on the BQE, which winds along the edge of Brooklyn: Brooklyn Heights, Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Long Island City. It is all happening everywhere and all at once.

Now that New York is no longer a dangerous place to be, there’s no end in sight. There will never be a shortage of people who want to live here, or own a little place to stay on their visits. The Times reported recently that the median monthly rent for a one-bedroom is $2500. On television, I’d heard it was $2900. Whatever it is, the cost of living for a young person just starting their career is prohibitive, unless subsidized by parents or sharing a Brooklyn loft with multiple roommates.

I have a theory that Law and Order could not get on the air until 1990, because by that time, the dangers of New York were more myth than reality. Its producer, Dick Wolf, spent thirteen years getting the show to television, where it now has a small empire. The early episodes capitalized on urban legends like waking up in hotel room without a kidney . Back then, New York was mythic and tinged with danger, but no one considered it entertainment until danger no longer lurked outside.

Everyone who’s lived here a while has his or her war stories. Alphabet City is a popular setting, or Washington Square Park, or simply the subway. The city had been littered with needles, bums and graffiti. Times Square was as uninviting as it is today, but not because it was an overwhelming tourist trap. It was a desolate, scary place to be.

My first summer here, I encountered a man lying on the sidewalk, who'd been stabbed near the Pennsylvania Hotel. It was just after lunch, and I was on a coffee run for my boss. It was my initiation to the hazards of the city and the finer shades of coffee (‘dark’, I learned the hard way, is wholly different from ‘black’).

The contrast between then and now could not be more striking. Now you can get an ‘Iced Decaf Triple Grande Vanilla Non-fat Latte’ on every corner, without fear of walking down the street. But affording an apartment here is another story altogether.

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