Post 143 - August 1, 2020

Day 143…

Back in the 80’s, the painter Jean-Michel Basquiat lived and worked in a studio owned by Andy Warhol down on Great Jones Street just off the Bowery. There is now a plaque next to the door identifying it. The front door, itself and the walls surrounding it are completely covered in ever-changing street art.

When Basquiat was painting down there it was a rough place to be. For a while Basquiat and Madonna were a couple. They actually brought attention to the area. These days it is pretty trendy. New modern condo buildings have gone up along the Bowery and the neighborhood is now popular with young wealthy homebuyers. I rode down Great Jones Street on Wednesday on my bike. In just the last week or so, a chic local restaurant has set up socially distant dining tables on the street leading right up next to the door.

Further uptown, there is a huge mural over the Empire Diner on 10th Avenue. It’s visible from the street but you can also see it from the Highline. The mural is of Mount Rushmore as reimagined in riotous colors with artists. Jean-Michel Basquiat and Warhol are up there along with Keith Haring and Frida Kahlo.

A couple of years ago the New York Botanical Gardens did a huge Frida Kahlo display. They recreated some of the gardens from Casa Azul, the house in Mexico City that she shared with Diego Rivera. It was gorgeous and a beautiful way to experience her and her work.

When I was going to school at Columbia, the MTA would cover over old ads down in the subway with flat black paint before putting up new ones. Keith Haring, who was just starting out, would fill those temporary blank black squares with chalked in explosions of his radiant baby designs. He drew them all over the city.

Eventually, the chalk drawings would get covered up by a new ad and disappear. He drew one at the subway stop up near school that stayed there for a long time. There were so many layers of old paper and paint underneath it that all of the corners began peeling up. Pieces got ripped off. For a long time, I had a piece of it, myself. I have no idea what I did with it. At the time, Keith Haring was just a guy who graffitied things with chalk, he wasn’t an internationally recognized artist.

While I was still in High School, the New York Public Library would sponsor an event called New York is Book Country. They would block off a huge section of 5th Avenue and fill it with author booths. Writers would come in and do readings. There would be events for kids and book signings.

The year that I went during high school, among all of the other authors, Andy Warhol was handing out issues of his Interview magazine. I don’t remember there being much of a crowd around him. He signed the magazine for me and then with the gall only possible from a teenager, I asked him to draw me a soup can.

And he did.

That, I know I still have. Mind you, the scrawl is not at all recognizable as a soup can - it’s basically two curly lines in blue sharpie - but he drew it and he signed it.

New York is a city where, it seems, anything can happen. I have traveled all over the world and I have never found any other place that I would rather live. I have been fortunate enough to spend a lot of time in other great cities such as London, Chicago, Sydney, Melbourne, Los Angeles, Toronto, Amsterdam and San Francisco. They are cities that I am always thrilled to visit. I would love to spend a year in Paris to really get to know it, my time there has always been too short. Same with Rome.

None of those other places, however amazing, could ever really be home, I don’t think.

There was never a question in my mind that Michael and I wouldn’t ride out this pandemic in New York. 

For many years we had a weekend house in Pennsylvania. It was a place I had bought with my ex. When we split, I took out a new mortgage that was big enough that I could buy out my ex with half of what the projected profits would be if we sold it. I did that because my ex was such a pain in the ass that I thought it would be easier to sell it by myself than to have to deal with him.

Michael and I, who had just started dating, went out to look at it so I could figure out what was needed to be done before it went on the market. As we were walking around, Michael asked, “Why are you selling it?”

The house, itself, was basically a hunting cabin from the 1940’s that had been added to and modified over the years. It was completely secluded in the middle of the woods. The property was just within the most northern part of the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area. We were grandfathered in, and nobody else could build in there. The deck off the back of it looked over a wide-open area that led all the way down to the Delaware River.

So, we kept it. With a lot of the money that I had earned from Jersey Boys over the years, we completely renovated and updated it. We did very little to the outside, but completely redid the inside. Our contractor, who became a close friend, fell in love with the place, too.

I was in tech with Jersey Boys in London when a lot of the actual work happened. The contractor would do something that we’d planned and film it for me. Every step of the way, something completely unexpected would be revealed. Sometimes, as a result, we would need to completely rethink what we were going to do. Both the contractor and I had a blast putting that house together.

Once we were done, Michael and I enjoyed the house when we could. We were both so busy that we couldn’t get out there very much. It was just an hour and a half outside of the city, but it might as well have been in Fiji.

At that time, Michael and I each had our own apartments in New York. We were across the street from each other in Hell’s Kitchen.

My apartment was great, but it was tiny - 165 square feet. No, that’s not a typo, it was actually 165 square feet.

We would sleep in my apartment, because it was quieter, and then go across the street to Michael’s to eat. His apartment was much bigger and had a great kitchen. We lived that way, quite happily, for the first ten years of our relationship.

Finally, for a whole array of reasons, we decided that we wanted to change things up. After a lot of discussion, about whether we should stay in New York or move out either to New Jersey or up the Hudson River into New York, we realized that we wanted to stay in Manhattan. Nothing about our work really made living anywhere else make sense. We both had always wanted to live on the Upper West Side, so that’s where we looked.

I sold the house in Pennsylvania along with most of the furniture. The rest of it went into storage. That year we had only spent six nights out there. It was a painful decision to sell, but it was the right one. The upkeep was absurdly expensive on a place we never visited. We planned to use the proceeds from the sale for the down payment on the new apartment. I got rid of my little apartment and put my stuff from there into storage as well, then moved in with Michael across the street.

Once we found our new apartment, we did a huge renovation on it. Luckily, we were able to stay in Michael’s old apartment on a month by month basis while all of that was going on.  When it was all done, we closed up Michael’s apartment, moved in, and here we are.  

The morning of 9/11, I remember my ex and I were out at the house. The TV was on while we were packing up to head back into the city when the news started reporting that there was a problem at the World Trade Center.

Nobody knew what was going on. My ex and I watched in real time as the second plane hit the tower behind the reporter who was speaking from the street.

Fairly soon after that, there was an announcement that all of the bridges and tunnels into NY were being closed. We weren’t able to get back into the city for about three days. We had to watch what was happening back here on TV.

As soon as we could, I took the train in. As we approached Manhattan, there was a cloud of smoke over lower Manhattan from the still-smoldering ruins. Suddenly, everything that we had been looking at on TV was real.

In the days and weeks that followed the attack, New Yorkers came together. New Yorkers have a seemingly unique ability to drop their differences and work together to overcome disaster.

People around the country were terrified about coming into the city so the entire theatrical community gathered together in Times Square and filmed a TV commercial. I was stage managing Cabaret at the time and Brooke Shields was playing Sally Bowles. Because of her stardom, she was called upon to do a lot of PR to help portray the city as a safe place to come to. It was a thrilling and moving time to be a part of our amazing industry in the greatest city in the world.

Not being able to get home to the city during those first few days was truly frustrating. I wanted to be here.

I don’t regret for a second our decision to stay here in the city during all of this. As the pandemic rages all over the country around us, I don’t think that Michael does either. We had one of the worst outbreaks of COVID-19 in the world and we, as a city, beat it back. Together.

Most of us here are wearing masks.

Most of us here are respecting social distancing.

Not all, but enough.

If we still had the house out by the river, we might very well have decided to stay out there. I honestly think that after about two weeks I would have lost my mind.

Yesterday, on my bike ride through the city I ended up at the South Street Seaport. Just for the heck of it, I headed south from there and discovered a whole little part of Manhattan that I have never been in before. Water Street and Stone Street. Incredibly old buildings and great little restaurants. I love that there are still parts of this city that after forty years I have never been in before.

There have been a million songs written about this city, but I can barely follow music so I guess that this will have to serve as mine. I am so grateful to be here.

However much all of us here have complained about tourists thronging the streets in the past, it is now crystal clear to all of us how essential they are to the health and well-being of New York. We all look forward to the day when we will be able to share it with everyone again.

Don’t come yet, though. Please. We need everyone else out there to get it together first.

In the meantime, I am going to get on my bike and look for something new.

I’ll let you know what I find.