415. World Pride Day: Hope or Hype?

Bad news:  I'm fed up with Instagram.  It deliberately won't let you publish posts from a desktop computer, only from a smart phone.  I don't plan to get a smart phone.  If I can't publish posts, I don't need Instagram.  I've disabled my account. Tootsie, good-bye.


      World Pride Day: Hope or Hype?

         Yes, today is World Pride Day, with thousands of visitors expected in the city, and I ask myself, is this hope or hype?  A bit of both, I think.  Let’s consider.

         The brouhaha has been brewing for a week.  Last Wednesday, while walking down Christopher Street to a podiatrist appointment, I passed the storied Stonewall Inn, and in front of it were visitors taking photos of each other with the Stonewall as the backdrop.  The whole West Village has sprouted rainbow flags; hardly a shop or store or restaurant fails to have at least a bit of rainbow posted in its windows, and police barricades line Bleecker Street under my window, even though the parade will start uptown in the 20s, come down to the Stonewall, and then make a U-turn and go back uptown to dusband.  Just a block from my building, the Philip Marie restaurant, where I often lunch, has a whole bunch of flags out in front, while across from it the legendary White Horse Tavern, where Dylan Thomas quite literally drank himself to death, shows not a patch of rainbow.

         Is this an oversight or intentional?  My deceased partner Bob told me long ago how he and his good friend Rose, a Brooklyn-based lesbian, once went there.  The moment they set foot inside, they felt a palpable chill: gays were not welcome.  So Bob and Rose left, and Bob never set foot there again.  Nor have I, though things may well have changed.  But the lack of a shred of rainbow is curious; today, to display rainbow flags or bunting during Gay Pride Week is just good business.  If all goes as in the past, even though this year the parade won’t come down here, later today all the restaurants in the area will do a roaring business.  And yesterday, in the sidewalk dining area of one restaurant on Hudson Street, I saw two brawny guys at a table, both stripped to the waist.  Granted, it was hot (and will be again today), but I sensed in it a touch of gay presumption and, to be honest, I didn’t like it.  Liberation can be messy.

         Gay presumption?  Yes, Gay Lib, while it meant freedom, also involved a bit of presumption.  I remember reading, probably in The Village Voice, of “liberated” gay men strolling the Village streets and leering without shame at the young sons of families  walking by.  This disgusted me.  But for the fast-track gay crowd, gay lib meant more than this.  It meant wild partying with lots of drugs and liquor, multiple sex partners, plenty of action and not much sleep.  But Nature – whatever that is – has its ways.  The result: AIDS. 

         Which is not to deny the positive side of Liberation.  The veterans of the Stonewall riots of fifty years ago, when drag queens bared their claws and took on the police, are coming forth once again to tell their story, as in a whole special section of the Times of last Sunday (I haven’t seen today’s paper yet) that I intend to read, or at least scan.  (It takes me at least a week to read, even selectively, the Sunday New York Times.)  Usually the tone of these reminiscences is heroic and uplifting.  But let’s have a look at the account of another veteran of those days, my partner Bob, who left an archive of gay history, including journals from the mid-1950s on, of which I have scanned 21 to date, with several more to go.

         So what does Bob say of the Stonewall riots of June 1969?  Not a word.  Not out of indifference, but because he wasn’t yet in the habit of recording his daily thoughts and experiences.  After a high school journal of the 1950s, he doesn’t record much until March of 1977, and even then the entries are spotty, with only random entries.  But I can safely say that for him and me and our friends, all over 30, the Stonewall riots were a distant and puzzling event.  Fight the police?  Are those kids crazy?  Only with time did we come to grasp their significance, and the fact that Gay Lib was here to stay.  Then some still held aloof, but many of us joined the parade.  (Me, literally, in 1994.)  We had to, for we remembered only too well what it had been like before.  To get the flavor of those days, and how it was even long after the riots, let’s have a look at Bob’s journal.

July 29, 1977.  With my parents last night.  Strangely, against my will, I reacted to the subterfuge of my life.  They don’t know all of me, and sometimes this concerns me, affects my mood.  My veneer was, as usual, perfect (so I think), but the effort to maintain a composure takes its toll, as it did last night.

October 29, 1987.  AIDS continues and casts an awful sadness on gay life and, for me, the Village.  This is a different West Village from 10 years ago.  As I write this, the fact is that there isn’t a glimmer of a REASON for the horrible disease.  It remains an awesome mystery.  Cliff and I stand apart from ever acquiring the disease, insofar as we’ve remained monogamous throughout our relationship.

June 23, 1989.  Sunday is Gay Liberation Day and commemorates the 20^th anniversary of the Stonewall Rebellion.  Oh, how I’ve aged.  [He was now 49.]  I see myself surveying the Stonewall Bar in the days following the event -- there were strands of lights outlining the sign over the entrance – there was an excitement on Christopher Street as tangible as a heady wine.

September 27, 1990.  [After being moralized by an old friend turned Christian fundamentalist.]  I will not be viewed as a degenerate.  I have an excellent realization of my worth as a person.  I do not want to know anyone who cannot accept my gay nature.  I’m proud of all that I am, and that “all” includes much that is intelligent, sensitive, and kind.

February 19, 1992.  Dr. Fox [his doctor] expressed his anguish over the impending death of his friend.  AIDS.  A horrifying, wracking end period in cruel progress.  I held him and expressed my deepest concern.  Incredibly sad.       

September 8, 1992.  [Following a Newsweek cover story, “Gays Under Fire,” inspired by anti-gay statements at the Republican presidential convention.]  The gay community is now a known factor, it isn’t going to disappear, it is substantially large (larger than I ever realized, say, 30 years ago), and it is politically, legally, artistically active.  It blazes across the landscape, becoming more and more vivid.

August 10, 1993.  Sadism.  There has come to light recently a possible case of serial murders of gay men, middle-aged, over the last two years, where the unfortunate victims were brutally dismembered, with body parts stuffed into plastic bags.  Most of the murdered were last seen in gay bars both in the Village (the Five Oaks) and mid-town.  Frightening.

         So much for now.  The testimony of a sensitive and observant gay man, usually scribbled in a favorite Chinese restaurant, while sipping wine, a Manhattan, or a cognac on the house.  His entries give a flavor of how it was like back then, the ups and downs, the pride and the fear.

Coming soon: Descent into Darkness: Revelations, Fecundity, and Death.

©  2019  Clifford Browder

414. Donald Trump Soaked in Sweat and Other Tales of the Plaza

BROWDERBOOKS

Good News:

#1.  I'm on Instagram!  Just one photo now, but more to come.  Go here. 

#2.  Fascinating New Yorkers, my latest work of nonfiction, has been announced as an award-winning finalist in the Biography category of the 2019 International Book Awards.

 

A story of the strangest friendship that ever was: a dapper young bank thief and the detective hired by the banks to apprehend him. 

Reviews

"What a remarkable novel!  Clifford Browder's The Eye That Never Sleeps is an exciting cat and mouse game between a detective and a bank thief that is simultaneously so much more.  A lively, earthy stylist with a penchant for using just the right word, Browder captures a city pullulating with energy.  I loved this book right down to its satisfying, poignant ending." --  Five-star Amazon review by Michael P. Hartnett.

"New York City in the mid-nineteenth century is described in vivid detail. Both the decadent activities of the wealthy and the struggles of the common working class portray the life of the city."  --  Four-star NetGalley review by Nancy Long.  

"Fascinating!"  --  Five-star NetGalley review by Jan Tangen.

For the full reviews of the above three reviewers, go here and scroll down. 

"Well written, flowing with a feeling for the time and the characters."  --  Reader review by Bernt Nesje.  

This is the fourth title in my Metropolis series of historical novels set in nineteenth-century New York. Three more, and then the big one; stick around.

My nonfiction work Fascinating New Yorkers has been reviewed by The US Review of Books. Reviewer Gabriella Tutino says, "There's something for everyone here in this collection of profiles, and it serves as a source of inspiration for readers who love NYC." For the whole review, click on US Review.

For more about my other books, go here.

    DONALD TRUMP SOAKED IN SWEAT 

     AND OTHER TALES OF THE PLAZA

         There are three sections of the Sunday Times that I almost never read: Sports, Styles, and Real Estate.  Imagine my surprise, then, when on the first page of the Real Estate section of June 9, 2019, I saw an article by Julie Satow that I absolutely had to read.  Topped by a large photo of a massive French Renaissance-style building of circa 1907, it bore the title, “The Widows of the Plaza,” and the subtitle “Forget Eloise.  Wealthy dowagers once held court at the luxury hotel.”  In a chapter entitled “Legendary Hotels” in my unpublished but (I hope) ultimately forthcoming work of nonfiction, New Yorkers: The Feisty People of a City Where Anything Goes, there is a chapter, “Legendary Hotels,” that includes a brief account of the Plaza, a soaring mass of a hotel at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 59^th Street, just across from the southeastern corner of Central Park.  There I mention its celebrity guests over the years, and its famous Oak Room, closed in 2011 because of champagne- and drug-ridden orgies by Lady Gaga and her rowdy pals.  There too, and elsewhere in the book, I mention the reservation of a room in 1964 for “four English gentlemen” who turned out to be the Beatles on their first American tour.  The attempts of female fans to access the Fab Five, including two who mailed themselves in cartons to the hotel, caused the management to vow never again to house these superstars, a privilege that they gladly ceded to less legendary and more riot-tolerant hostelries.  For the Plaza, in its heyday, was quiet, elegant, and sedate, the perfect home for the multitude of dowagers chronicled in the Times article.

         The Plaza’s most famous resident never set foot there, for she was a fictional creation.  I mean, of course, Eloise, the precocious and mischievous six-year-old featured in Kay Thompson’s series of children’s books published in the 1950s and illustrated by Hilary Knight.  Eloise endeared herself to readers and later appeared in a film.  But even Eloise cannot top the real-life wealthy women who, right from its opening in 1907, resided and reigned royally amid the late Victorian splendor and sedate elegance of the hotel.  Julie Satow’s article brings them memorably to life.

         When Princess Vilma Lwoff-Parlaghy moved into the hotel’s largest suite in 1909, 90 percent of the hotel’s guests lived there full-time.  The Princess, who liked to be addressed as “Your Highness,” arrived with three French maids, three attachés, a marshal, a courier, a butler, a chef, a bodyguard sporting a tall plumed hat and a sword, a dog, two guinea pigs, an ibis, a falcon, several owls, and a family of alligators.  Divorced twice, she had obtained her title from her second husband, a minor Russian prince.  Photos show an attractive woman with a mass of dark hair topped by a bun.

Self-portrait of Princess Vilma.

         An artist as well as a princess, she advertised her portraiture services and soon recruited as a client Major General Daniel E. Sickles, who was 92 and minus a leg lost at Gettysburg.  When the two attended a Ringling Brothers circus at Madison Square Garden, she found a baby lion there so adorable that the obliging general bought it for her.  Named for him, the lion was lodged in the bathtub of her suite, which must have made Her Highness’s bathing awkward.  In time the lion outgrew the tub and the management’s patience, so the Princess donated General Sickles (the lion, not the general) to the Bronx Zoo.

         The source of the Princess’s wealth remained a mystery, but when World War I broke out, her wealth vanished.  Bedeviled by creditors, she decamped, leaving behind an unpaid hotel bill for $12,000.  In 1923 she died in a cramped room on East 39^th Street, surrounded by unsold artwork and one maid, and still bedeviled by creditors.  Wikipedia, that revered source of online facts and trivia, adds that she was Hungarian-born, did (perhaps) a portrait of Kaiser Wilhelm II and one of Admiral Dewey, lived in Berlin and Nice before coming here, and had a lifetime allowance from her second husband, the Prince.  And she is still with us, buried among notables in Woodlawn Cemetery in the Bronx.

         You think Princess Vilma was the most eccentric of the dowagers residing at the Plaza?  Not necessarily, for she had plenty of competition.  How about the recluse who hadn’t left her room in years, but called for her chauffeur and car every day at 10 a.m.  Or the fastidious old woman who spent her days patrolling the hotel’s perimeter, clearing the sidewalks of cigarette butts by stabbing them with her umbrella.  And then, there’s Clara Bell Walsh.

         Clara Bell Walsh arrived at the Plaza in 1907, the year it opened, and exited horizontally a half century later.  The daughter of wealthy Kentucky family, she was a skilled horsewoman and hostess, credited with holding the first society cocktail party.  She held forth in her suite wrapped in ermine, her nails matching the color of her dress.  Her celebrity guests sat on brocade Edwardian sofas among tables laden with Chinese lamps, costly thingamabobs, and tiny animal figurines.  One of her soirées had the female guests dressed as poor little rich girls, and the men in little boys’ sailor suits. This aging kindergarten crowd had to run an obstacle course to get to the bar, where drinks were served in baby bottles.  The world-famous party-giver Elsa Maxwell urged party hosts to do the unexpected, the weird; Mme Walsh had no need of Elsa’s advice, for she got there by herself.  No hearth-clinging homebody, she was often seen in the Persian Room, the hotel’s nightclub, and sortied to dinner parties with fake eyes painted on her eyelids.  And to have her hair done, she patronized the men’s barbershop in the Plaza’s lobby.

The Oak Room
Jazz Guy

         The most cantankerous of the Plaza widows was Fannie Lowenstein, a latecomer who arrived at the Plaza in 1958.  A young divorcée, she promptly married a fellow resident who had a seat on the New York Stock Exchange, and who lodged her in one of the few rent-controlled apartments at the Plaza.  When her husband died, she continued to live in splendor in their three-room suite, paying $800 a month for what might have rented for $1,250 a night – an arrangement that the city’s real estate industry decries to this day.  Since she couldn’t be evicted, the Plaza staff treated her with deference, fearful of provoking a tantrum.  When she came down for dinner in the evening, the musicians would serenade her with the theme song from the Broadway musical “Fanny.”  But one Sunday, when she came to the Palm Court for brunch and was piqued by some perceived slight by management, she is said to have relieved herself – urinated, I assume – on the rug in front of a shocked crowd. 

The Plaza in 1923.

         When Donald Trump bought the Plaza in 1988, la Lowenstein was one of the few widows still living there.  She was soon complaining of “indoor air pollution” in her suite, insisting that it caused her curtains to shrink and her Steinway grand piano to get moldy.  She called the city repeatedly to complain, and soon inspectors were bombarding management with urgent notices.  Though Trump was then divorcing his first wife, Ivana, amid rumors that he was having an affair with Marla Maples, his future second wife, he told The National Enquirer that his relationships with them were “smooth as silk in comparison to my contacts with Fannie Lowenstein.  When she’s done with me, I’m soaked in sweat!”

         Though always subject to caution, online sources add a few deft touches.  A little old woman of eighty, she walked around as if she owned the place.  The staff were terrified of her, called her “the Eloise from hell.”  Failing health finally dislodged her; she moved to the Park Lane and died there, age 85, in 1995.

                  Surrounded by their dogs, diamonds, and nurses, the dowagers lived extravagantly  and became known as the “39 widows of the Plaza,” though in time they numbered over 39.  People would visit the hotel just to rub elbows with them in the hallways, or glimpse them in the ornate downstairs lobby, where they might sit reading the New York Times.  One manager took to walking outside to get from one end of the building to the other, so as to avoid the lobby, where widows lolling on divans awaited him with volleys of complaints.  And the staff, when besieged by vociferous widows, developed a secret signal: a tugging of one ear indicated that a sudden summons elsewhere from a colleague would be welcome.  But when the Depression of the 1930s came, and the Plaza was in dire need of paying guests, it was the steady flow of rent from the widows that saw the hotel through.

The Plaza today, as seen from Central Park.  Its Victorian elegance is overtopped by supermodern high-rises.

         As for the Donald, he has said that he “tore himself up” to get it, paying $407 million, or a record-breaking $495,000 per room.  But a few years later it went bankrupt, though he of course did not.  In real estate, the Trump touch is lethal.  As of July 2018, the Plaza is owned by Katara Hospitality, the hotel division of the state-owned Qatar Investment Authority of Qatar.  And is the famous Oak Room open today?  Alas, only for private events.

Coming soon: Descent into Darkness: Revelations, Fecundity, and Death.

©  2019  Clifford Browder