Glory Days

[Kris]

January 2, 2005

Glory Days

Slide Show: New York's Golden Ages (http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2005/01/01/nyregion/20050102_GOLD_SLIDESHOW_1.html)

TO ask people to nominate one era of New York's history as its golden age is to ask for trouble. For one thing, the city is coming to the close of its fourth century, which means there are many tempting candidates. The 1890's, with its Vanderbilts? The 1920's, with its flappers? The 1960's, with its flower children? For another, there is New York's fabled disputatiousness: for every three New Yorkers, there are four opinions.

Nevertheless, 14 prominent New Yorkers with a keen sense of the city's past and present, from novelists like Cynthia Ozick to architects like Robert A. M. Stern to public figures like Vartan Gregorian, agreed to tackle the question.

Some chose a period they knew only through the lens of history; others selected one that they knew personally, often from their youth. Most pinpointed just a single era; a few chose more than one. And while some measured the luster of a particular period in terms of cultural achievements and mighty buildings, others used a more ethereal measure, call it climate, or vibes, or zeitgeist.

The Rev. Al Sharpton
Television host, former presidential candidate

The late 1960's, when I was a teenager.

Everything was vibrant. The Apollo Theater was vibrant; you could see James Brown, Ella Fitzgerald. Broadway was vibrant; real superstars were performing. Times Square was vibrant. Politically, we had Adam Clayton Powell, a charismatic congressman. Mayor Lindsay brought a certain glitz and flair to New York. The whole town felt lit up. Everything had a glow. You could feel an excellence in all arenas: culturally, socially, politically. There was a feeling that people had options, that they didn't have to settle.

I remember going to see "Hello, Dolly!" with Pearl Bailey and Carol Channing. I remember seeing Cab Calloway. The people we saw were giants.

You could go with your mom to see Miles Davis. All this opened up all kinds of dreams. You were there actually watching Pearl Bailey, and this gave you the capacity to dream. All this vibrancy made you think that anything was possible.

There was a real New York flair in that era, and that flair became a part of you. At Times Square, you could go with your buddies to the movies and then have a steak at Tad's Steakhouse and feel rich. You had a life that felt vibrant. The most violent thing I remember was the bumper cars in Coney Island.

Caleb Carr
Historian, novelist

The 1890's.

It may seem odd, to those living in a city sterilized by the Giuliani years, that anyone would feel fascination with or nostalgia for a decade that was almost as filthy, violent and degenerate as its predecessors.

But not only did the 1890's witness attempts at the kind of meaningful reform that eluded Mayor Giuliani - of the Police Department, labor laws, and living conditions for the poor - it also saw the blossoming of culture both high and vulgar: the dominance of the Metropolitan Opera and establishment of the city's great museums, along with the Bowery music halls, Broadway, and the proliferation of artists' communities throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. We should remember, too, that a New York scrubbed clean of prostitution, adult entertainment, drugs and other dark phenomena is a city that has lost its original dynamic, and therefore its meaning.

Like a troublesome child taking Ritalin, New York may be more manageable now, but it has also sacrificed its personality. That personality was crystallized during the 1890's, by a collection of idiosyncratic gang leaders, plundering corporate barons (who, while as vicious as any today, nonetheless lived in and tried to improve the life of their city) and reformers more concerned with improving sanitation on the streets and in hospitals than they were with minimizing the amount of annoyance caused the well-to-do by beggars.

Cynthia Ozick
Novelist, author, most recently, of "Heir to the Glimmering World"

The 1940's.

There was such a sense of cohesiveness in the city, and it was easy to be a solitary child. I went to Hunter High School, which was on 68th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. I used to stay late to work on the school newspaper and the yearbook, and I'd ride the subway back to Pelham Bay in the Bronx, often late at night. It never occurred to me or to my parents to worry.

Because it was wartime, there was a sense that the country was pulling together. As teenagers, we would write letters to soldiers. There was a sense of sturdiness and serenity in the streets of Manhattan. The trains were crowded with people reading and not talking to each other. The trains had a certain civility. Winter in Manhattan had a cozy smell of steam heat.

I was waking up to the world, to the world beyond my parents and my neighborhood. When I think of the 1940's, I think of how I was safely solitary, with my books and dreams. And it disturbs me to think that if I'd been alive in Europe then, I wouldn't be alive now.

Elaine Kaufman
Owner of Elaine's

The late 1940's and early 1950's.

I saw every show, standing room. I saw Ethel Merman in "Annie Get Your Gun." All of Tennessee Williams. I saw Marlon Brando eight times. I saw Tallulah Bankhead and Donald Cook. I saw all of Jerome Robbins. We'd stand, and then, for $1.50, the usher would give us a seat. We'd eat at the Automat, and it was delicious.

If I had the money now the way I had then, I wouldn't be able to open a restaurant today.

Louis Auchincloss
Novelist, author, most recently, of "East Side Story"

The last two decades of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th.

There was a great explosion in the arts; the Metropolitan Museum of Art was built, and the Museum of Natural History. There was opera. On stage, the Barrymores performed. The Vanderbilts built their Genoese and Florentine palaces, splendid and derivative houses, a gaudy magnificence. If you weren't on the Lower East Side, uptown would have been exciting, and must have been rather fun.

Fran Lebowitz
Writer, contributing editor of Vanity Fair

The 70's.

The city was a wreck; it was going bankrupt. And it was pretty lawless; everything was illegal, but no laws were enforced. It was a city for city dwellers, not tourists, the way it is now.

My youth was spent in New York in the 70's. We could live in Manhattan with no money, and we didn't mind. It was O.K. to live in a crummy apartment; that's what sent us outside. Who could stand to be inside a freezing place full of roaches? We used to stay out all night, and then see movies at noon at the Museum of Modern Art.

Today the city is preoccupied with food. In the 70's, we were preoccupied with sex. It was a moment of total hedonism with no consequences, no AIDS. And there was birth control and little thought of getting married. Now, a 25-year-old knows 70 kinds of sushi, but at what expense? A youth spent on restaurants is a youth misspent.

Mary Ellen Mark
Photographer

The late 60's and early 70's.

I came to New York in 1966. Central Park was such a scene, with all these events at the fountain, and there was a restaurant right there. It was an incredible time, a time for hope, especially hope of ending the war in Vietnam. It was a time of costume and excitement, a time of youth and great energy. In the streets, there'd be all these amazing demonstrations, in contrast to now, when you almost feel it's done for the media.

I took a lot of photos of war protesters, and of war supporters, too. Every Sunday I couldn't wait to go to Central Park to see what was going on. It wasn't just the park, it was the streets, too. People walked around with no clothes, there were flower children, dogs dressed up, people on roller skates. It was a time of fantasy and hope. I still go out on the streets to take pictures, but the possibilities were greater then that I'd see something interesting.

John Leguizamo
Comedian, actor

New York is in permanent golden age mode.

The early 1900's, with the Five Points and the wild influx of European ethnicities, definitely colored the future of America. From food to language, these diverse groups opened the way for all the trends we have today.

Then the Roaring Twenties, with all the gangsters, flappers and Broadway creators in their musical heyday. In the 50's we had beatniks, poetry, Jackson Pollock, Kerouac, de Kooning, Ginsberg. You name the icon, and he was cafeing and barring in some dive in the Big Apple. Then my favorite era, the 70's. New York was funky and gritty and showed the world how a metropolis could be dark and apocalyptic and yet fecund.

The death of disco and the birth of hip-hop all happened in our cradle of civilization, as if the Tigris and Euphrates Rivers, or rather the Hudson and East Rivers, were hugging the new Mesopotamia of funk. In the Bronx, my black and Latin brothers and sisters created break dancing and rapping.

Need a person say more?

Vartan Gregorian
President of Carnegie Corporation of New York, former president of the New York Public Library

The late 19th century through the first half of the 20th century.

Most of the major institutions of culture, commerce and transportation were built then: the American Museum of Natural History, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Carnegie Hall, the New York Botanical Garden, the New York Public Library, the Museum of Modern Art, all the major post offices and rail stations. These institutions rose as a tribute to America and its democracy and served as symbols showing that democracy and excellence are not mutually exclusive. They became monuments, laying the foundations of New York as a center, and they gave New Yorkers confidence about their city's power and virtue. They made a historical statement about New York being a great, sassy, unique and uniquely intelligent city.

Bill T. Jones
Choreographer

Right after 9/11.

New York had a true reappraisal of itself at a tragic and introspective moment. New York had the attention of the whole world; it was a frightening moment. But the world was ready to follow, to assist.

It lasted a few months. We were vulnerable and open to the rest of the world, and we were ready for a change. There was a chance to ask questions, and it was a time when we were forced to do so.

But it didn't happen. There wasn't a true conversation about what America means to the rest of the world or about why New York was chosen. It was an opportunity. And then the politicians took it.

Robert A. M. Stern
Architect

Now.

As an architect, I like physical planning and building. In New York, the present day is a time of big projects, with high ambition for architecture, design and planning. The city's infrastructure is in better shape than it's been in a long time. Our spirits seem high; Sept. 11, 2001, was an incredible disaster, but we've pulled through with amazing fortitude and a sense of momentum.

All over the city, there are fantastic projects in the public realm: the Museum of Modern Art has just reopened, and there's the New York Public Library, constant refinement at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Rose Planetarium at the Museum of Natural History. In the private realm, the development of Lower Manhattan may yet surprise us with interesting stuff - we just have to be patient: it takes a long time to realize grand projects. Very important, it's not just Manhattan that is in good shape, but the outer boroughs, too: long forlorn neighborhoods are coming back to life throughout the city. It's a golden age - take my word for it.

Laurie Anderson
Artist, performer, composer

There are a lot of golden ages.

The first was in what's considered the dark ages, the 70's. I was living in SoHo. There was one restaurant and one gallery. It was a tremendously exciting time, dangerous and fun and fantastic. We helped each other all the time on our projects - I could ask someone to light a dance performance, or help paint my ceiling. That's something I'd never think of doing now.

In downtown New York, there was still a little bit left of the commune spirit. I was aware we were making a scene, "we" being Gordon Matta-Clark, Philip Glass, Trisha Brown, Richard Serra, Tina Gerard, a mix of musicians, artists, performers. There was great music and everyone was broke. We all lived in cheap lofts, near each other, and we were all building stuff.

Sept. 11 was a brief golden age. There was a real tenderness, a moment I'll really treasure forever.

I had to wait a little while for another golden age, which is now. I live on the western edge of TriBeCa, and the city was going to build these ramps to the West Side Highway two feet from my studio. A bunch of us formed a citizens' group, and after three years we won. We said put the park back, and Canal Park will open in the spring.

Oscar de la Renta
Designer

Now.

The city feels so incredibly vibrant. I love downtown; there is extraordinary new energy there. I see it in Harlem, too. New York is by far the capital of the world today. I'm so very proud of my city.

Yoko Ono
Musician, multimedia artist

Always.

It is hard for me to pick a day in 50 years or more, and say that that day the sky was beautiful for some particular reason.

The sky in New York is always beautiful - in the morning when the sun goes up and shines on your face, in the evening when it goes down, slowly dyeing the skyline in soft pink, and at night when all the lights come up, creating the most incredible forest of tall, glowing buildings. Most people think New York smells of rats, or success, or both. To me and to my husband, John, New York was always in its golden age.

Compiled by Jennifer Callahan

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

[TonyO]

NYObserver
1/24/05

http://www.nyobserver.com/images/mainimages/gurley012405a.jpg

Blotto Tales of Manhattan

by George Gurley

I was in a slump, thinking about moving back to Kansas City. Nightlife had begun to suck. Even though there were 25 parties a night, every one of them was to promote some new liquor, restaurant, store or perfume. I spent lots of time in the bathtub. I watched Ken Burns’ 19-hour Jazz documentary and asked myself, "Why did I have to miss so much of the 20th century and get stuck in the New York of now? Why didn’t I get to see Billie Holiday sing?"

Soon I found myself in complete agreement with that breed of New Yorker who complains about how the city’s changed for the worse: Where are the drag queens, the pimps, the prostitutes, the muggers, the drug dealers, the porn theaters, the sleaze, the boom boxes?

On Jan. 2, I read an article in The New York Times in which New Yorkers had been asked "to nominate an era of New York’s history as its golden age." Novelist Caleb Carr lamented a city "sterilized by the Giuliani years" and longed for the 1890’s, "a decade that was almost as filthy, violent and degenerate as its predecessors …. " Actor John Leguizamo missed the 1970’s: "New York was funky and gritty and showed the world how a metropolis could be dark and apocalyptic and yet fecund." Writer Fran Lebowitz also cited the 70’s: "It was a city for city dwellers, not tourists, the way it is now."

I nodded. Why can’t it be 1977 again?

During the next few weeks, I found the New York of the 1970’s. The whole era, in all its danger and dirt and degeneracy, is still alive, in one bar on the corner of Second Avenue and First Street, as if a time portal had opened up on that intersection, sucking all who dared enter it back into a time when a night out didn’t guarantee you’d be waking up in your own bed—or even your own borough—the next morning.

Meet the Mars Bar. The windows are broken, graffiti is everywhere, the place stinks of urine and worse. The unisex bathrooms look 100 years old. Hallelujah, I thought when I walked inside late one night. Here was the antidote.

The patrons were unfriendly. I needed a beer right away before I had the nerve to speak to anyone. On my third beer, the door swung open and in walked a man covered in tattoos, wearing a red baseball cap turned sideways and a filthy, gray hooded sweatshirt. He jumped on the bar and began to sing along to the jukebox. "People are ignorant cocksuckers!" he sang, before pulling his pants down and shaking his stuff around. Then he did a 180 and squatted onto a beer bottle. He’s a regular.

Outside, he told me his name was Gerry Price and that he’s a steam fitter and artist and sings in a band called Two Minutes Hate. Above the bar is a portrait he made depicting a penis ejaculating into a woman’s face.

"I’m known for being naked, known for beating the crap out of people, I’m known for not taking shit," he said. "I’m known for having sex with any girl who will have sex with me—fat girls, skinny girls. If you can’t get laid in New York, you’re either gay or … actually, even gay guys get pussy in this city. But you know what, the city kind of sucks. One time, these yuppies came into the Mars Bar, and I took a swig of beer and spit it in their face. It’s called a ‘whammy.’ I go, ‘Get the **** out of my bar! There’s 4,000 other bars that want you!’ They were just there like it was Hogs and Heifers."

He talked about a recent night at Mars.

"I’m sitting here, this girl walks up to me, grabs my ass and gives me a bag of crack," he said. "So I turned to Jake—who’s a Calvin Klein model—and I’m like, ‘Jake, you want to smoke some crack?’ And he’s like, ‘No.’ So this Italian model—Picassio or some shit—she’s like, ‘I’ll smoke crack with you.’ So I’m in the bathroom getting high with her. She leaves with Jake."

Another night: "This girl comes up to me and goes, ‘You remember me?’, and I’m like, ‘No.’ She goes, ‘Your lips drive me crazy,’ and she starts making out with me there. So she drags me into the bathroom, takes off her Sassoon jeans and starts riding me, and I’ve got her jeans in my right hand. And she keeps going, ‘Don’t let my jeans touch the floor!’ So I take her jeans and I throw them in the toilet. She gets up and starts stomping on me with her high heels."

What was so great about the Mars Bar?

"There’s no more hard-core partying anymore. There’s no more smoking crack, doing dope. I’m ****ing 42 years old, I got two bags of dope right here, gonna do a little right here on the street corner. I’m a ****ing animal. My ex-girlfriend lives on St. Marks and she hears everything that I do here, and she’s ****ing losing it, bro! ‘Why’s he living his life like this?’ You know, women want to find an exciting guy who’s also responsible. There is no such person. You got your husband, and then there’s me."

He said he was up to 15 bags of heroin a day until last June, when he landed in detox after the owner of Mars Bar, Hank Penza, took charge of him.

He stopped his story and pointed back inside the bar: "Look at this."

A cute blonde was simulating cunnilingus with two fingers.

"There’s everything, bro," he said. "There’s lesbians, there’s ****ing sex—a guy just got stabbed the other night. This is the last party, because there has to be a last party. Young kids today don’t know how to do anything right. I feel I’m from one of the last great generations."

Back inside, I sat down with the cute blonde, Miss Eliesha Grant, an artist who puts on underground art parties.

She admitted that nightlife was leaving her cold. "It’s just not fun anymore," she said. "I ****ing wind up in here all the time lately, and I used to go out all the time, go dancing, have fun, run around. Everything is all sterilized. It’s all a bunch of douchebags with no personality."

Ms. Grant said she grew up in a Long Island town in the oldest house on Main Street. At Nassau Community College, she was an honors student before transferring to a small college in North Carolina, where she studied English lit. She moved to New York and worked as a bartender, seamstress and waitress. For a while, she worked as a go-go dancer at a nightclub.

"Now it’s called Plaid or some bullshit," she said. "It was so bad. One of the girls was go-go dancing with me, and we’re both up on the platform. And she went to go change into a different bikini and smoke a bowl. When she was in there, they ****ing threw her out. ****ing give me a break. It’s like, you can’t party anymore?"

She looked around.

"I always have fun here, but there’s a fine line sometimes when you’re at Mars Bar—it can be really, really horrible. You’re like, ‘O.K., I didn’t need it to be that punk rock.’ The first time I brought my friend here, this guy was walking around naked with no shoes on. And we were like, ‘You know what, you can have your dick hanging out, but could you ****ing put some shoes on? Because you’re gonna give me a heart attack. I’m scared for your well-being.’"

Kathy, a dark-haired jewelry designer and the wife of another Mars regular, an artist named Jiggers Turner, was wearing all black, drinking red wine and keeping an eye on her husband.

"Mars is a lot of fun," she said with a Spanish accent. "Trust me, I’m not a Mars regular, because they’re all drunks—but if somebody touch my husband, I’m gonna punch the shit out of them. I love Mars Bar. It’s really fun. But if somebody messes up with my husband, I’m gonna stand up and I’m gonna punch whatever ****ing drunk is punching him."

After a few nights at the Mars Bar, I decided I had to speak to its owner, Hank Penza. We met for dinner at a Spanish restaurant on Bowery.

At 72, he walks with a cane—his left foot was recently amputated after he got a staph infection—but he’s 6-foot-3 and looks like an Indian chief you don’t want to mess with. He was wearing a black leather jacket, a jump suit by Hugo Boss, Lands End sneakers and a diamond pinkie ring with a Caesar’s head on it. Also meeting him there was a young Asian woman in a black cleavage-and-tummy-revealing top. Mr. Penza told her she looked "absolutely gorgeous."

"Thank you," Fimiko replied, then went to freshen up.

"My life, it used to be …. I used to love black ladies," Mr. Penza said, sitting down. "I only went out with black women. Now I’m into Oriental ladies." He said he’s had a steady girlfriend for 30 years who lets him stray from time to time.

He told his story: His father came to New York from Italy as a boy and worked on the Brooklyn Bridge before serving in World War I. He was, said Mr. Penza, a "great provider" and a "stark-raving-mad right-winger" who hated Franklin Roosevelt and the smell of perfume.

Young Hank started working early. He and his pals in Corona, Queens, would go "junking": loading up a horse and wagon with milk bottles and stuff to sell.

Soon he was helping out at crap games, doing what were called "mopey pinches": Whenever the bookmakers got busted, they’d pay Hank $50 to go to court, and he’d be back on the street in hours.

He was a good-looking kid, into nice clothes. At 16, he was walking down the street when a woman pulled over to ask if he went by "Georgie the Gorilla."

"I said, ‘Are you crazy?’" Mr. Penza recalled. "She says, ‘I know you; these people, they know you.’ She asked me to buy her beer and a pizza. She was in a LaSalle! I said, ‘I’ve got enough money to buy you a beer—you’ve got to come up with the pizza.’ Now—listen very closely now, no bullshit, you gotta listen. So I get in the car. I look at her, she was gorgeous. So we go buy pizza and a beer—it was like $1.75 for a pizza and a beer. She says, ‘Do you wanna come up to my house?’

"I go to her apartment. I gotta be frank: My big thing is underwear, I love women’s underwear. That’s me. So we’re in the house. She came out of her bedroom in this black bra and a garter belt. Oh my God, I’m 16, I couldn’t breathe. She gave it to me like I owned it, you know what I mean?"

He went home and packed his belongings.

"My sainted mother—may she rest in peace—she was so good to me," he said. "She says, ‘Where you going?’ I said, ‘Mind your business!’"

He lived with the woman in the LaSalle for two years. He used to take her car for long drives. But after his mother approved of the woman, he had to let her go.

"As soon as my mother got to like her, I hated her," he said.

At 19, he got a $200-a-week job at the "21" Club. He wore a tux, took reservations and ran errands. If a man dining with his wife needed to make contact with his mistress at the Stork Club, he’d deliver the message.

He joined a crew called the 40 Thieves and started making money by "cleaning up" bars (i.e., getting rid of undesirables). Once they spent two weeks getting rid of some ruffians from a bar by sending them to another one across the street. A month later, they paid the ruffians $3 each to return to the first bar so the 40 Thieves could get the job back.

But he said he declined offers to join the Mafia.

"Nobody can make me, man," he said. "I’m a made man. My name is Penza—we’re made, period. We don’t need that shit. That’s all movie stuff."

His reputation grew. Two British guys gave him $1,500 to clean up their bar on lower Fifth Avenue, which had been overrun by pimps.

In 1957, he bought a bar at 12 Bowery and renamed it Henry’s.

"First year, I worked seven days a week, I never left the building," he said. "I used to get ****ed in the building, showered there." Unfortunately, there was a regular who liked the song "Splish Splash (I Was Taking a Bath)."

"He’d take a roll of quarters every day and he would play that on the jukebox," he said. "There were five plays for a quarter—and that’s all he played. I’d sit in a chair and listen to that and go crazy. When I paid off the place, I took the record out and I threw it across the street."

He bought a brand-new Cadillac.

"And that was it," he said. "I never worked since."

Over the next three decades, he owned several more bars on the Bowery: Hank’s Crystal Palace, Willie’s, the Penthouse. He said Judy Garland and Truman Capote were customers and that Lee Marvin practically moved into one of the bars, Bowery East.

There were fights. Mr. Penza has stab wounds and has been shot twice. In the 1970’s, he traveled, partied at Regine’s and Studio 54, was a bit of a playboy.

He said his secret was being tall.

"If I was short, you wouldn’t even look at me," he told Fimiko when she’d returned to the table. "If I was short, I’d look like a pizza man, a guy who makes pizza pies. Being that I’m tall, if I walk into a restaurant they pull me in, treat me like a king. That’s another thing: I never wait. Right or wrong, baby?"

"We never wait," she said.

"No bullshit," he said, eating off her plate.

"I wish this ****ing music would stop," he said. "Music makes me nauseous."

He turned to Fimiko.

"You look very beautiful, by the way," he said. "Thank you for looking so beautiful."

"Thank you."

Fimiko said she had to go to D.C. She kissed him and put on her mink coat.

"Bye, baby," he said as she walked away. "I love her. Bye-bye! ****ing psycho. I haven’t got her yet. I’ll get her. I told her, ‘Victoria’s Secret, buy some clothing, I’ll pay for it.’ Why not?"

He opened Mars Bar in 1982.

"I have to keep it open for my mind," he said. "Where am I going to go at my age? It’s the last bar. It’s hard to explain. People go there with their children, their wives—you only see the psychos at night. Lovely ladies come in there. I had two girls yesterday, they looked like movie actresses. I don’t **** the customers. I don’t like to have any sex or anything to do with the customers—that gets you in trouble. When you own a bar and you go out with the girls at the bar—that’s no good. All of a sudden, they become the boss. If you have a barmaid that you’re having an affair with, she owns the bar the next day—she’ll tell you what to do."

Why is Mars Bar an institution?

"I’ll tell you why: The bathrooms are like a hundred years old. You piss on the floor, you piss in the bowl—it doesn’t matter. People come in from all over the world—Japan, Germany, Finland, Iceland. Icelandics are beautiful people, especially the ladies."

Who doesn’t he want there?

"Stockbrokers, investment brokers, lawyers," he said. "They’re all phonies. Stockbrokers, they wouldn’t care if you were 80 years old and senile—they’ll take your money from you. They’re worse than used-car dealers. I don’t like people who use the N-word in the bar, I don’t allow that, or referring to Hispanics as slang terms. I don’t want Italian-Americans who want to be wiseguys and they’re not. They think they’re gangsters and they probably work in pizza shops."

We needed fresh air. We got into his banged-up Oldsmobile and drove uptown. "I’m a very bad driver," he said.

He parked outside the W hotel. He knew Jayna, the Filipino-American bartender.

"You’ll never ever speak to anyone more interesting than Hank," said Jayna. "Friends of mine who have met him, they say the same thing: big pimping. This is old-school to the core—he is big pimping. I’ve seen him roll in with these Japanese girls who are almost like anime characters: styled-out hair, funky boots, tattoos. He’s met a lot of them here and left with them."

Mr. Penza told her he wanted to buy her a house in Florida and she laughed.

A few nights later, Mr. Penza gave me a tour of his spacious bachelor pad near Union Square, where he’s lived for 22 years. There were pictures of him in front of his various saloons with colorful characters; a portrait of him looking suave in a denim shirt circa 1975; two antique pistols on a wall, not far from some bullet holes that missed rats.

We got in his car. He acknowledged that he sometimes missed the way his neighborhood, and New York, used to be.

"I miss the action, I miss the laughter, I miss the sadness," he said. "It’s a different feeling. We have to remember that the men on the Bowery were not bums. Ninety percent were workers, they all had jobs. You know, we kept guys in the bar—we called them ‘blotters.’ They’d sit there and guys would buy them drinks. Philadelphia Joe sat with me for 30 years in the bar and he got drunk every day for nothing."

Still, he said, even now, New York is the only place to be. "I love it," he said. "It’s the greatest place in the ****ing world. There’s no place like this, man, and I’ve been all over the world. I love this city because they make me somebody. When I go somewhere else, they don’t treat me as well as they do. Here, they treat me with elegance. In Florida, I’m a little ****ing scumbag."

He pointed to the skyline. "Take a look, man," he said. "Who the **** wants to destroy this beautiful place? Take a look at that. Now isn’t that a bitch? And they want to knock us out—why the ****, man? Because we don’t believe in Allah?"

I changed topics: Is the East Village better off than it was in the 1970’s?

"Absolutely—for people like me who don’t want to get stabbed and shot. When I came here, if you didn’t have a gun, you were dead. You don’t know what used to go on here."

We arrived at the Park Side restaurant in Corona, Queens. On the way to his table, we passed a photograph of his mother on the wall. He stopped to chat with Tony the manager.

"When I was a boy, Henry was the older guy who was watching out for everyone," said Tony. "There was one bully in the neighborhood, and Henry sort of straightened him out. Everyone looked up to him. He was always smart in school—Henry would pull up in his big red convertible with a beautiful blonde. He was about 16, and we were always hoping that, some day, we were going to be like that."

You may reach George Gurley via email at: ggurley@observer.com.

[TLOZ Link5]

New York has had many golden ages. They just take different forms and affect different aspects of the City.

From the 1890s to the 1920s New York came into its own by founding great institutions of culture, digging the first subways, and erecting the first skyscrapers. The Great Depression and World War II formed the era of "classic" New York, architecturally speaking (Art Deco) and culturally speaking (Broadway plays like 42nd Street, etc). This era might have ended with the 1939 World's Fair or with World War II.

From 1945 to 1964 was a period of great prosperity, the time when the City bore witness to the era that could be, taken at face value, be unanimously classified as a true "golden age." Suburbanization, rising crime, and the assassination of JFK hastened the end of this golden age, whose true end might have been the 1964 World's Fair.

The mid-to-late '60s, in addition to the early '70s, was a time when the arts and counterculture were both in full swing. This was the era of Fiddler on the Roof, the beginnings of Greenwich Village as we know it today, and a high-water mark for fashion and the arts, rivalling and possibly surpassing Paris itself.

Despite the apocalyptic aura of the City in the '70s, arts and nightlife boomed; this was Andy Warhol's finest hour; the years when Talking Heads, the New York Dolls and the Ramones lit up CBGBs; when the parties at Studio 54 lasted till noon the next day. Socially and financially, the City was dying fast in the disco years, but it evoked Rome in the last days as hedonists consumed themselves in one last reckless orgy without fear — or knowledge — of the consequences.

The '80s were when the City began to come back from the edge, slowly but surely. Breakdancing, the Mets winning the World Series, the beginnings of revival in many Lower Manhattan neighborhoods. New York University was shedding its image as a backwater commuter school (N-Y-Jew was the popular moniker of the time) to a presitigious university to rival the Ivies. The population decline had stopped, businesses moved back in, and real estate boomed. Battery Park City, a new neighborhood, rose out of the Hudson. It seemed that the City was going to make it. After the crash of the stock market, it all seemed to unravel — into another golden age.

The late '80s and early '90s were The Bonfire of the Vanities come to life. The City was falling apart yet again, yet signs of tentative rebirth were seen as residential real estate continued to boom and the arts and cultural scenes became the patrons of sophisticated City dwellers as opposed to tourists. It was a wild, historic era; a true tale of two cities who shared the same land, a fascinating study.

The mid- to late '90s saw a decline in crime, a real reinvestment in many downtrodden neighborhoods, a new image for a City once written off as a decimated relic of a bygone era. People across the nation and around the world truly wanted to move here. However bourgeoisie-oriented this new golden age was, the City maintained its position as the beacon of civilization — and unofficial capital of the world — that it was always meant to hold.

This golden age came to a crashing halt after 9/11, which spawned a new golden age. There was a sense of people coming together to comfort one another, to share in their experiences and losses. Many New Yorkers began to truly appreciate and love where they lived and feel a deep pride for a City they took for granted. (I was one of them.) That era lasted a few months, but we all remember it poignantly.

This new golden age continues to heal the City's social problems, while racial tensions that were prominent in Giuliani's mayoralty are also easing. But this golden age seeks the resurgence of all of the City's neighborhoods and boroughs, from the Bronx to Brooklyn and from Staten Island to Hollis. It's no longer simply about Manhattan anymore; "New York" now regularly brings to mind Brooklyn and Queens as well. It is this New York that embodies the urban success story in this country, as Americans began to believe in many of their cities once more.

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New York Waterway, the biggest operator of commuter ferries between the city and New Jersey, hopes to fix that deficiency by building a ramp at Pier 78, at the west end of 38th Street, to accommodate a fleet of buses that float. But first the ferry company has to deal with criticism from competitors and community groups that oppose adding to the cacophony of western Midtown.

The local community board has asked the Army Corps of Engineers to hold a public hearing on the duck ramp before deciding whether to approve it, said John Doswell, co-chairman of the waterfront and parks committee of the board, Manhattan Community Board No. 4.

"Right from the get-go, the concern the board had was yet more traffic in an area we feel has got way too much traffic already," Mr. Doswell said. As for being invaded by ducks, he said, "It all sounds a little strange, but I guess they figure people will pay money for this experience."

Indeed, people probably will. Each year, more than one million of them ride the vehicles, encouraged by guides to quack like ducks or blow kazoos as they bounce and bob along.

A few entrepreneurs have been studying ways to launch the ducks in Manhattan, and one startup, Big Apple Ducks, is considering hauling tourists from Lower Manhattan to Red Hook, Brooklyn, to plunge into the harbor. Carrie McIndoe, the president of Big Apple Ducks, said the company had bought three amphibious vehicles, called TrolleyBoats, that it hopes to start operating in Manhattan and Brooklyn by the spring.

But Gray Line, which runs dozens of open-top sightseeing buses all over the city, is trying to head off Big Apple Ducks by forming a partnership with New York Waterway. The Imperatore family, which controls the ferry company, would own and operate the ducks, while Gray Line would handle sales and marketing of the tours, said Tom Lewis, president of Gray Line New York.

The Imperatores have ordered eight amphibious buses that could navigate the clogged streets of Manhattan, then roll down the ramp for a quick float in the tricky currents of the Hudson River. Some duck operators use reconditioned military troop carriers that were nicknamed ducks during World War II. (Those boats have had several accidents, and one sank in Arkansas six years ago, killing 13 people.)
The New York Waterway group is planning to buy a modern model, known as a Hydra-Terra, that is manufactured near Rochester, holds 45 passengers and costs about $200,000.
Since May, two of them have been rolling into the Hudson in Albany, one of the latest entrants in the duck-tour derby. Bob Wolfgang, the president of Albany Aqua Ducks, said the Coast Guard would not allow a restored military duck to operate in the Hudson because its tides and currents are too strong.
He said the Hydra-Terra's have been "very reliable" and operated without incident on the 75-minute tours, for which he charges adults $22 and children $12. He said he sent one of his ducks down to Weehawken, N.J., in the summer so that New York Waterway officials could kick its tires and spin its 26-inch propeller.