By Connie Schultz
Sunday, September 19, 2010; B01
BIG GIRLS DON'T CRY
The Election That Changed Everything for American Women
By Rebecca Traister
Free Press. 336 pp. $26
In the early pages of "Big Girls Don't Cry," Salon's Rebecca Traister seems determined to alienate every female reader over 40. Had I fallen for her false start, I would have missed her considerable contributions to the ongoing feminist narrative described by Gloria Steinem as the "revolution from within."
At first, Traister gleefully harpoons the warriors of old to explain why her younger generation is done with antiquated notions of feminism. Consider, for example, her description of the women at a nonpartisan, pro-abortion-rights gathering: "It was a crowd of monied, Botoxed, electorally enthralled dames who, in the popular imagination of the time, should have had 'Hillary '08' mown into their Hamptons house topiary, if not their bikini lines." That comes a mere four pages after she argues that, if young women are to care about feminism, the "conversation had to be drained of some of its earnest piety. Talking about gender in the new millennium required us, I thought, to get over ourselves a little bit, to dispense with the sacred cows, to question power and cultivate new ideas and leaders."
Hillary Clinton had allowed her husband "to play her for a fool," Traister writes, before embarking on her quest to become "the most powerful girl on the Senate floor." A few pages later, Traister offers Princeton University associate professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell's parsing of Elizabeth Edwards's popularity: "A fat woman married to a good-looking man is always a good story, particularly if she is a breast cancer survivor who has lost a child."
Whew.
By the middle of Chapter 2, Traister's book felt increasingly like the minutes of the Mean Girls Club -- and a waste of this 53-year-old woman's time. But with age comes patience. Good thing, too. I ended up admiring Traister and loving her book. In its best parts, it is a raw and brave memoir of a journalist who discovered that all is not well for women in America, and a description of how she and other young women are laying claim to their rightful place in the fight.
Traister offers a first glimpse into her reluctant but hopeful heart when she describes following Michelle Obama on the campaign trail in late 2007: "It was November in rural Iowa, and between the Hopperesque towns in which we were stopping we drove through farmland, and brittle leaves blew across the road. I had thrown some CDs into my bag, and at some point on the drive to Michelle's next stump stomp, on a crisp bright day following this crisp, bright woman, Bob Dylan's 'The Times They Are A Changing' began to play. I was thirty-three years old; I had no memories of the 1960s, in which the modern civil rights movement took hold, or of the 1970s, in which second-wave feminism bloomed. But I felt for a few minutes as though, on some small highway east of everything urban in Iowa, I was living in the most powerful historic moment of my lifetime, as if the country I'd grown up in, with its rules and limitations and assumptions about who can do what and who can be what, was finally beginning to fulfill Dylan's decades-old promise."
Traister started out supporting John Edwards and opposed even the notion of President Hillary Clinton, but ended up sobbing when Clinton conceded. The author is at her best when she explores the confusion and contradictions swirling within -- and without. Boldly, she takes on the "frat boys" at MSNBC, as well as the many young, white males on Daily Kos and in the Obama campaign who trafficked in sexist and misogynist attacks on Clinton.
"A pattern was emerging in the liberal, privileged, predominantly white climes in which I worked and lived: young men were starry-eyed about Obama and puffed with outsized antipathy toward Clinton. . . . I was made uncomfortable by the persistent note of aggression that marked their reactions to Clinton, and puzzled by the increasingly cult-like devotion to Obama, a man whose policy positions were not so different, after all, from those of his opponent. Hating Hillary had for decades been the provenance of Republican blowhards, but now men on the left were spewing vitriol about her voice, her looks, her presumption -- and without realizing it were radicalizing me in my support for Clinton more than the candidate herself ever could have."
Despite the setbacks and disappointments, Traister believes the 2008 presidential race breathed new life into the women's movement, in part because a new generation came to own it. Such a youthful embrace of the women's work yet to be done is exhilarating -- for her generation and for mine.
And therein lies my only caveat, which Traister may see as a matronly reprimand: Do resist tagging all of us over-50 feminists as dour discards. Your youthful vision is better than our crinkled eyes for navigating the future, but we hold your history in our hearts. We are still in the fight, increasingly with men foolish enough to mistake a woman's sags for surrender. We were once you, and one day you will be us.
Connie Schultz is a nationally syndicated columnist for the Cleveland Plain Dealer and an essayist for Parade magazine.
View all comments that have been posted about this article.
Friday, September 24, 2010
NYT: Gucci: Somewhere in North Africa
September 22, 2010, 1:33 pm
By CATHY HORYN
Antonio Calanni/Associated Press The runway at the Spring 2011 Gucci show in Milan.
Merely as an exercise, I was trying to think this evening of a tweet-size summary of the Alberta Ferretti show, because I was pretty sure that if I wrote down peasant blouses, faded floral tiered skirts, long-sleeved linen dresses with white crochet trim, and floppy hats and rope sandals, you might get the wrong idea — that it was corny or something. But I guess I kept coming back to Nantucket in the summer of 1974 or ‘75 (I had my driver’s license). I was driving into town early one morning and I stopped to pick up a young couple hitchhiking on the Milestone Road. They had just been married on the beach, and the bride was wearing a dress with white crochet.
I like shows that make you think of something personal, because a lot of the time there isn’t much more you want to say about the clothes, and if they can evoke a place, then I figure they will do the same for someone else. What more do you want from chiffon?
Frida Giannini said in her press notes for Wednesday’s Gucci show that the “sensual colors” were meant to recall Marrakesh. But frankly, I didn’t see that. I think it’s pretty tough to evoke North Africa, or the American West, or Paris in the ’20s, without ending up with a big ball of khaki, or denim, or Lady Brett Ashley resting her head on poor Jake’s shoulder. Fashion just exploits everything, and you wind up with the YouTube version of a pair of Sahara pants.
One thing, though, that was puzzling about Ms. Giannini’s collection (oh, it was fine in the main) was that she seemed to have three separate shows in one. The opening part consisted of filmy black blouses with half-open backs worn with high-waist tulip skirts in deep purple, jade or iris blue. The outfits were nice but you wouldn’t cry over them. Then she was clearly somewhere in North Africa, with those beautiful leather Gucci jackets and soupy harem trousers we have seen enough of this year. Some of the jackets had sections thickly coated in fringe. The third mood was more exotic, with five dresses embroidered with feathers and beads; the patterns and textures evoked a standard African tribal motif as seen by Hollywood. And so we are back to the beginning.
It’s warm in Milan; amber light and voices outside my window.
See the full Gucci spring collection.
See the full Alberta Ferretti spring collection.
By CATHY HORYN
Antonio Calanni/Associated Press The runway at the Spring 2011 Gucci show in Milan.
Merely as an exercise, I was trying to think this evening of a tweet-size summary of the Alberta Ferretti show, because I was pretty sure that if I wrote down peasant blouses, faded floral tiered skirts, long-sleeved linen dresses with white crochet trim, and floppy hats and rope sandals, you might get the wrong idea — that it was corny or something. But I guess I kept coming back to Nantucket in the summer of 1974 or ‘75 (I had my driver’s license). I was driving into town early one morning and I stopped to pick up a young couple hitchhiking on the Milestone Road. They had just been married on the beach, and the bride was wearing a dress with white crochet.
I like shows that make you think of something personal, because a lot of the time there isn’t much more you want to say about the clothes, and if they can evoke a place, then I figure they will do the same for someone else. What more do you want from chiffon?
Frida Giannini said in her press notes for Wednesday’s Gucci show that the “sensual colors” were meant to recall Marrakesh. But frankly, I didn’t see that. I think it’s pretty tough to evoke North Africa, or the American West, or Paris in the ’20s, without ending up with a big ball of khaki, or denim, or Lady Brett Ashley resting her head on poor Jake’s shoulder. Fashion just exploits everything, and you wind up with the YouTube version of a pair of Sahara pants.
One thing, though, that was puzzling about Ms. Giannini’s collection (oh, it was fine in the main) was that she seemed to have three separate shows in one. The opening part consisted of filmy black blouses with half-open backs worn with high-waist tulip skirts in deep purple, jade or iris blue. The outfits were nice but you wouldn’t cry over them. Then she was clearly somewhere in North Africa, with those beautiful leather Gucci jackets and soupy harem trousers we have seen enough of this year. Some of the jackets had sections thickly coated in fringe. The third mood was more exotic, with five dresses embroidered with feathers and beads; the patterns and textures evoked a standard African tribal motif as seen by Hollywood. And so we are back to the beginning.
It’s warm in Milan; amber light and voices outside my window.
See the full Gucci spring collection.
See the full Alberta Ferretti spring collection.
NYT: The Roman Spring of Mr. Lagerfeld
September 23, 2010, 11:40 am
By CATHY HORYN
Antonio Calanni/Associated Press Dresses from the spring 2011 Fendi collection in Milan.
In one sense, Karl Lagerfeld was right on message on Thursday at Fendi. He got the memo about longer lengths, soft volumes and a cool, vibrant palette. Let no one say that Mr. Lagerfeld was slacking.
But in another way, this collection hovered above the fray. The perspective was utterly sophisticated — a summer dress in cotton or a microdot cotton or print with lantern sleeves, an open neckline and a belted waist. This is a season of dresses, and Mr. Lagerfeld knew how to make his grown-up and different. There is nothing about these dresses — in colors like pale aqua, coral, and various peony shades, and with those beautiful sleeves, that makes a bid to be liked — to ingratiate with luxury wampum. He doesn’t solicit, Mr. Lagerfeld. But then good designers rarely do.
Was there a twinge of “another time” in this collection? It’s hard to know what Mr. Lagerfeld is able to glimpse in his rear-view mirror because (a) his view is enormous and (b) he is going too fast to catch much. But sometimes a glimpse is enough.
View the full Fendi spring 2011 collection.
By CATHY HORYN
Antonio Calanni/Associated Press Dresses from the spring 2011 Fendi collection in Milan.
In one sense, Karl Lagerfeld was right on message on Thursday at Fendi. He got the memo about longer lengths, soft volumes and a cool, vibrant palette. Let no one say that Mr. Lagerfeld was slacking.
But in another way, this collection hovered above the fray. The perspective was utterly sophisticated — a summer dress in cotton or a microdot cotton or print with lantern sleeves, an open neckline and a belted waist. This is a season of dresses, and Mr. Lagerfeld knew how to make his grown-up and different. There is nothing about these dresses — in colors like pale aqua, coral, and various peony shades, and with those beautiful sleeves, that makes a bid to be liked — to ingratiate with luxury wampum. He doesn’t solicit, Mr. Lagerfeld. But then good designers rarely do.
Was there a twinge of “another time” in this collection? It’s hard to know what Mr. Lagerfeld is able to glimpse in his rear-view mirror because (a) his view is enormous and (b) he is going too fast to catch much. But sometimes a glimpse is enough.
View the full Fendi spring 2011 collection.
NYT: On the Colombian Coast, Natural Beauty, Gritty Charm
September 15, 2010
By LIONEL BEEHNER
IT’S not called the Parque de Los Novios — Park of the Newlyweds — for nothing. Young couples lock arms as they stroll past rows of freshly planted flowers. A Sinatra love ballad sung in Spanish echoes from a corner dive bar. Aside from a few mustachioed, sombrero-clad men playing a board game, it seemed as if everyone on this breezy August evening was on a romantic sabbatical.
Yet this square in the center of Santa Marta, a port city along the Caribbean coast of Colombia, was not always a streetlamp-lighted refuge of romance. Just a few years back, the park was a tumbledown area trafficked mostly by prostitutes and petty criminals.
Wedged between the sea and the snow-capped Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta peaks, the city may be Colombia’s oldest, but it has always been seen as the grittier and more industrial counterpart to nearby Cartagena — at best, a stopover point for visitors looking to trek through Tayrona National Park or hike to the Lost City, a well-known archaeological site nearby.
“Until five years ago nobody would come here because of the guerrillas,” said Michael McMurdo, a New York City-trained chef who recently opened a Mexican restaurant, Agave Azul, in Santa Marta. “While there is still some sketchy stuff going on, I like it here because it still feels real and Colombian.”
The town’s transformation began with a government crackdown on illegal drug and paramilitary activity in the region. The efforts have paid off: tourism has now replaced crime as Santa Marta’s claim to fame. The number of international visitors to Colombia in 2009 spiked 17 percent from the previous year, helped along by the emergence of former rebel hideouts like Santa Marta as new tourist destinations.
The Colombian government has also spent plenty of money to revamp the city’s parks and convert streets into pedestrian zones. But what the government started, a wave of polyglot businesspeople like Mr. McMurdo — restaurateurs, hoteliers, real estate developers and night life impresarios — has continued, helping to resuscitate Santa Marta’s colonial center. Shops selling religious iconography and smoky billiards halls are giving way to Tuscan-style hotels and tapas spots that double as jazz bars. Even the once-grimy boardwalk now feels more like a smaller-scale version of Rio’s Ipanema.
Perhaps the perfect monument to this city’s rebirth is a gleaming new marina that anchors the waterfront; huge and visually spectacular, it wouldn’t look out of place in Dubai. The terminal, which opened this month, can handle more than 250 yachts and super-yachts.
On a recent late-summer evening, a stylish crowd of Colombians and expatriates mingled at Ben & Josep’s, a new steakhouse run by a Spanish-Belgian duo, down the boardwalk from the marina. The steakhouse is just one of the additions to the city’s seaside area, which has been spiffed up in recent years with greenery and dotted with statues of shapely, warrior-like indigenous women (also found in every souvenir shop around town).
Away from the beach, the city abounds with Spanish colonial charm. Among the streets off Parque Simón Bolívar, wanderers will find a whitewashed cathedral that claims to be South America’s oldest. It may, in fact, be a 17th-century amalgamation of architectural influences, rather than the original structure, but the chandeliers and marble altar are still worth a peek.
To stay cool, visitors can grab some coconut water, sold just outside the cathedral, or rest in the shade of the patio of the nearby Juan Valdez Café, Colombia’s go-to coffee chain.
Of course there’s more to Santa Marta’s culinary offerings than coffee. The jumble of fare here is as multicultural as the city’s mix of ethnicities and musical influences; African, Caribbean, European and Latin flavors vie for space on menus. At Gourmet Plaza Bistro, where the décor includes old TVs and typewriters, diners can sample home-cooked pechuga ricotta, a Colombian-Mediterranean hybrid, as well as tasty crepes. For gourmet ceviche, head to Donde Chucho, an upscale restaurant on a corner of Parque de Los Novios.
The city’s reputation as an up-and-coming party spot is also growing, with bars and clubs of all stripes seeming to open weekly. On a late-night jaunt through downtown, one is as likely to hear European techno as the native rhythms of cumbia or vallenato music.
That Latin flavor is evident at La Puerta (the Door), a chic dive bar with retro iconography plastered across its walls of red, yellow and blue (the national colors), where the floor fills with dancers gyrating to the sounds of Colombian rap and reggaetón.
Santa Marta also benefits from the bounty of virgin tropical forests just miles from the city center. For a relaxing getaway, grab a taxi or mini-bus to Taganga, a laid-back oceanside hamlet ringed by a horseshoe-shaped canopy of lush green hills. The strip of sand in town feels more like a dirt driveway than a tropical beach. But the sunsets are breathtaking, especially from the rooftop bar of the Mirador de Taganga Hotel along the town’s southern fringe. The Caribbean waters there are also perfect for scuba diving.
On the other side of Santa Marta lies El Rodadero, a Cancún-like strip of stylish restaurants, open-air markets and high-rise hotels along beaches that fill with well-to-do locals on weekends.
But aside from the protected shores of Tayrona National Park, the beaches around Santa Marta are not always the best places to relax. There is the occasional whiff of sewage, and vendors who can bombard tourists with offers of chairs, massages and — yes — drugs.
Though Santa Marta is no longer plagued by the kidnappings and killings that kept tourists away for decades, petty crime remains a problem. It’s not unusual to hear stories of police officers planting drugs on tourists to exact bribes, or of pickpockets roaming the boardwalk. But the city has made great strides toward putting its bloody, drug-riddled past behind it. Evan Dore, a shaggy-haired native of San Francisco, remembers driving through this part of Colombia four years ago with his brother, Ryan, in a 1981 VW bus. The pair left unimpressed. But two years later they decided to return and restore an 85-year-old mansion, now La Brisa Loca, a hostel and bar aimed at backpackers. They were attracted by Santa Marta’s authenticity, which it has maintained despite the recent development.
“The city is full of people going about their daily lives, going to work or selling things on the street with almost no interest in a foreigner walking around,” Mr. Dore said. “Santa Marta is the real South America I was searching for.”
IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE
Colombia-based Avianca offers flights directly from Fort Lauderdale to Barranquilla, which is about an hour to Santa Marta by bus or taxi. A recent Web search found round-trip flights in October starting at around $400. Another option is to fly directly to Bogotá, from which there are several direct flights to Santa Marta daily; they take just over an hour. Round-trip flights start at about $200.
WHERE TO STAY
Many of the hotels in Santa Marta feel musty and dated, but there are plenty of upscale hotels in the works. For now, try La Casa (Calle 18, 3-52; 57-311-390-4091), a gorgeous three-unit hotel with high ceilings, antiques and original marble floors. Doubles from 237,000 pesos, about $135 at 1,752 Colombian pesos to the dollar.
For backpackers, La Brisa Loca (Calle 14, 3-58; 57-3183-030-666; labrisaloca.com) is a friendly hostel with a festive bar, courtyard pool and rooftop patio, though be sure to book a private room (70,000 pesos).
WHERE TO EAT
Gourmet Plaza Bistro (Calle 18, 3-103; 57-317-453-93 55).
Donde Chucho (Calle 19, 2-17; 57-5-421-4663).
Ben & Josep’s (Carrera 1, 18-57; 57-317-280-5039).
Agave Azul (Calle 14, 3-58; 57-318-598-1858).
By LIONEL BEEHNER
IT’S not called the Parque de Los Novios — Park of the Newlyweds — for nothing. Young couples lock arms as they stroll past rows of freshly planted flowers. A Sinatra love ballad sung in Spanish echoes from a corner dive bar. Aside from a few mustachioed, sombrero-clad men playing a board game, it seemed as if everyone on this breezy August evening was on a romantic sabbatical.
Yet this square in the center of Santa Marta, a port city along the Caribbean coast of Colombia, was not always a streetlamp-lighted refuge of romance. Just a few years back, the park was a tumbledown area trafficked mostly by prostitutes and petty criminals.
Wedged between the sea and the snow-capped Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta peaks, the city may be Colombia’s oldest, but it has always been seen as the grittier and more industrial counterpart to nearby Cartagena — at best, a stopover point for visitors looking to trek through Tayrona National Park or hike to the Lost City, a well-known archaeological site nearby.
“Until five years ago nobody would come here because of the guerrillas,” said Michael McMurdo, a New York City-trained chef who recently opened a Mexican restaurant, Agave Azul, in Santa Marta. “While there is still some sketchy stuff going on, I like it here because it still feels real and Colombian.”
The town’s transformation began with a government crackdown on illegal drug and paramilitary activity in the region. The efforts have paid off: tourism has now replaced crime as Santa Marta’s claim to fame. The number of international visitors to Colombia in 2009 spiked 17 percent from the previous year, helped along by the emergence of former rebel hideouts like Santa Marta as new tourist destinations.
The Colombian government has also spent plenty of money to revamp the city’s parks and convert streets into pedestrian zones. But what the government started, a wave of polyglot businesspeople like Mr. McMurdo — restaurateurs, hoteliers, real estate developers and night life impresarios — has continued, helping to resuscitate Santa Marta’s colonial center. Shops selling religious iconography and smoky billiards halls are giving way to Tuscan-style hotels and tapas spots that double as jazz bars. Even the once-grimy boardwalk now feels more like a smaller-scale version of Rio’s Ipanema.
Perhaps the perfect monument to this city’s rebirth is a gleaming new marina that anchors the waterfront; huge and visually spectacular, it wouldn’t look out of place in Dubai. The terminal, which opened this month, can handle more than 250 yachts and super-yachts.
On a recent late-summer evening, a stylish crowd of Colombians and expatriates mingled at Ben & Josep’s, a new steakhouse run by a Spanish-Belgian duo, down the boardwalk from the marina. The steakhouse is just one of the additions to the city’s seaside area, which has been spiffed up in recent years with greenery and dotted with statues of shapely, warrior-like indigenous women (also found in every souvenir shop around town).
Away from the beach, the city abounds with Spanish colonial charm. Among the streets off Parque Simón Bolívar, wanderers will find a whitewashed cathedral that claims to be South America’s oldest. It may, in fact, be a 17th-century amalgamation of architectural influences, rather than the original structure, but the chandeliers and marble altar are still worth a peek.
To stay cool, visitors can grab some coconut water, sold just outside the cathedral, or rest in the shade of the patio of the nearby Juan Valdez Café, Colombia’s go-to coffee chain.
Of course there’s more to Santa Marta’s culinary offerings than coffee. The jumble of fare here is as multicultural as the city’s mix of ethnicities and musical influences; African, Caribbean, European and Latin flavors vie for space on menus. At Gourmet Plaza Bistro, where the décor includes old TVs and typewriters, diners can sample home-cooked pechuga ricotta, a Colombian-Mediterranean hybrid, as well as tasty crepes. For gourmet ceviche, head to Donde Chucho, an upscale restaurant on a corner of Parque de Los Novios.
The city’s reputation as an up-and-coming party spot is also growing, with bars and clubs of all stripes seeming to open weekly. On a late-night jaunt through downtown, one is as likely to hear European techno as the native rhythms of cumbia or vallenato music.
That Latin flavor is evident at La Puerta (the Door), a chic dive bar with retro iconography plastered across its walls of red, yellow and blue (the national colors), where the floor fills with dancers gyrating to the sounds of Colombian rap and reggaetón.
Santa Marta also benefits from the bounty of virgin tropical forests just miles from the city center. For a relaxing getaway, grab a taxi or mini-bus to Taganga, a laid-back oceanside hamlet ringed by a horseshoe-shaped canopy of lush green hills. The strip of sand in town feels more like a dirt driveway than a tropical beach. But the sunsets are breathtaking, especially from the rooftop bar of the Mirador de Taganga Hotel along the town’s southern fringe. The Caribbean waters there are also perfect for scuba diving.
On the other side of Santa Marta lies El Rodadero, a Cancún-like strip of stylish restaurants, open-air markets and high-rise hotels along beaches that fill with well-to-do locals on weekends.
But aside from the protected shores of Tayrona National Park, the beaches around Santa Marta are not always the best places to relax. There is the occasional whiff of sewage, and vendors who can bombard tourists with offers of chairs, massages and — yes — drugs.
Though Santa Marta is no longer plagued by the kidnappings and killings that kept tourists away for decades, petty crime remains a problem. It’s not unusual to hear stories of police officers planting drugs on tourists to exact bribes, or of pickpockets roaming the boardwalk. But the city has made great strides toward putting its bloody, drug-riddled past behind it. Evan Dore, a shaggy-haired native of San Francisco, remembers driving through this part of Colombia four years ago with his brother, Ryan, in a 1981 VW bus. The pair left unimpressed. But two years later they decided to return and restore an 85-year-old mansion, now La Brisa Loca, a hostel and bar aimed at backpackers. They were attracted by Santa Marta’s authenticity, which it has maintained despite the recent development.
“The city is full of people going about their daily lives, going to work or selling things on the street with almost no interest in a foreigner walking around,” Mr. Dore said. “Santa Marta is the real South America I was searching for.”
IF YOU GO
GETTING THERE
Colombia-based Avianca offers flights directly from Fort Lauderdale to Barranquilla, which is about an hour to Santa Marta by bus or taxi. A recent Web search found round-trip flights in October starting at around $400. Another option is to fly directly to Bogotá, from which there are several direct flights to Santa Marta daily; they take just over an hour. Round-trip flights start at about $200.
WHERE TO STAY
Many of the hotels in Santa Marta feel musty and dated, but there are plenty of upscale hotels in the works. For now, try La Casa (Calle 18, 3-52; 57-311-390-4091), a gorgeous three-unit hotel with high ceilings, antiques and original marble floors. Doubles from 237,000 pesos, about $135 at 1,752 Colombian pesos to the dollar.
For backpackers, La Brisa Loca (Calle 14, 3-58; 57-3183-030-666; labrisaloca.com) is a friendly hostel with a festive bar, courtyard pool and rooftop patio, though be sure to book a private room (70,000 pesos).
WHERE TO EAT
Gourmet Plaza Bistro (Calle 18, 3-103; 57-317-453-93 55).
Donde Chucho (Calle 19, 2-17; 57-5-421-4663).
Ben & Josep’s (Carrera 1, 18-57; 57-317-280-5039).
Agave Azul (Calle 14, 3-58; 57-318-598-1858).
NYT: Buenos Aires: National Treasure in a Cone
September 16, 2010
By PAOLA SINGER
IN Palermo, a residential neighborhood of Buenos Aires, an elegant specialty store called Persicco doles out a confection called chocuquinna. Inspired by a popular Argentine birthday cake, it has a sweet dulce de leche base balanced with hints of cream cheese and laced with chocolate chunks of what could be described as a cross between a crunchy cookie and a spongy cake. This version comes in a particular sort of serving dish — an ice cream cone.
The flavor is one of many new ice creams that incorporate the traditional South American ingredient dulce de leche, a creamy jam made by slowly simmering milk and sugar. While this jam turns up in almost every kind of dessert — filling crepes and tarts, topping flans and cakes — it’s especially versatile as a frozen treat.
In the last few years, Buenos Aires’s heladerías, or ice cream parlors, have introduced a heap of varieties that include some form of dulce de leche, transforming one of the most traditional local flavors into an exotic scoop. Many of the city’s more than 2,000 creameries now carry up to 10 options in this category, in what seems like a race to out-sweet one another with elaborate inventions. It is as if peanut butter suddenly became an epicurean ingredient, served with raspberry coulis and crème fraîche on a sugar cone.
“The gourmet ice cream trend has reached a peak,” said Horacio Spinetto, whose book “Heladerías de Buenos Aires” was released in March. “The flavor that sells the most, by far, is dulce de leche. It represents the ice cream of Argentina.”
Dulce de leche scoops are nothing new. But lately, this flavor has been the object of much experimentation.
“My family broke with the custom of keeping traditional flavors plain,” said Juan Martín Guarracino, one of Persicco’s founders. His parents and uncles started one of the nation’s largest ice cream chains, Freddo, in 1969 and sold it to an investment group 30 years later. During Freddo’s heyday in the ’80s and ’90s, the company began offering crema tramontana — which contains dulce de leche jam and specks of malted chocolate balls — and banana split, two innovative dulce de leche flavors that had patrons lined up at the counter.
“Dulce de leche has always been a top seller,” Mr. Guarracino said. Since Persicco opened in 2001, he said, the store has used it in several new recipes, including one with brownie bites, and another, called dolcatta, with poached strawberries and baked meringue. “We are leaders in development; the others come and look at us.”
Fellow ice cream makers disagree. “Different creameries create different ice creams,” said Ariel Davalli, a co-owner of a chain called Chungo. “Our clients want novelty, and we have to be ingenious. Every season we come up with new flavors.”
Chungo has a dulce de leche and cream cheese helado, or ice cream, marbled with pure dulce de leche and cookie crumbs, named cucuruccino. Sitting at its new Palermo Hollywood branch, a modern spot with funky wallpaper and white leather chairs, I pondered the similarities between this cone and one sampled recently at a competitor’s. It was milder in taste and creamier in texture — and gobbled before any further conclusions could be reached.
This year, Chungo added rice pudding, cheese with sweet potato jam, and flan with dulce de leche ice creams, honoring three desserts considered emblematic of the national cuisine for Argentina’s bicentennial. Although the precise origins of dulce de leche are unknown, Argentina likes to think of it as homegrown. In fact, the government recently declared it part of the nation’s cultural patrimony, to the irritation of some neighbors. What’s indisputable is the Argentines’ adoration of this treat. “We were raised on dulce de leche,” said Francis Mallmann, a prominent chef. “It’s deeply rooted in our way of life.”
To unaccustomed palates, dulce de leche on its own can taste overly sweet. But as an ice cream, it has a global appeal. Häagen-Dazs introduced it in the United States in the late ’90s with great success, followed by Ciao Bella, Ben & Jerry’s and others.
To hear the heladeros, or ice cream makers, in Buenos Aires tell it, their versions may be hard to beat. “Argentine ice cream is known throughout the world because it’s still done the old-fashioned way,” said Mr. Davalli of Chungo, noting that natural ingredients like fresh eggs and fruits are often used.
Buenos Aires’s first ice cream stores were opened in the early 1900s by Italian immigrants, and their popularity surged in the ’40s. Today, many of the city’s creameries advertise their products as artisanal and natural. The top shops include Freddo, which is ubiquitous — along with smaller chains like Persicco, Chungo and Un’Altra Volta.
The market is big and keeps growing. Jauja, a Patagonian brand, opened its first Buenos Aires branch nine months ago on Avenida Cerviño, home to a handful of casual spots. Jauja’s latest flavor is called mousse del piltri, inspired by a mountain at the foot of the Andes called Piltriquitrón: it’s a dulce de leche mousse ice cream with slivers of caramelized almonds. The base is fluffy and sweet but not overbearing, the almonds perfectly toasted, with just enough crunch.
Purists tend to brush off these newfangled varieties. “I prefer the plain dulce de leche,” said Mr. Spinetto, who has also written a book on pizzerias and said he prefers simple pies, with just cheese. “That way you can really tell if it’s good.”
A new quality seal might assuage skeptics like Mr. Spinetto. This year, the Argentine milk industry created a contest for best dulce de leche ice cream, and awarded the top prize to Chungo.
“We’re very proud,” said Jorge Davalli, a co-owner, who founded the company in 1973. “We always choose the best natural ingredients.”
For their dulce de leche ice cream, the Davallis buy a confectioners’ version of the jam that’s custom-made by a respected local producer. Well aware of Argentines’ tastes, Chungo’s new advertising campaign is all about their award-winning dulce de leche.
“When Argentines move to another country, one of the things they miss, aside from their family, is dulce de leche,” Mr. Davalli said.
By PAOLA SINGER
IN Palermo, a residential neighborhood of Buenos Aires, an elegant specialty store called Persicco doles out a confection called chocuquinna. Inspired by a popular Argentine birthday cake, it has a sweet dulce de leche base balanced with hints of cream cheese and laced with chocolate chunks of what could be described as a cross between a crunchy cookie and a spongy cake. This version comes in a particular sort of serving dish — an ice cream cone.
The flavor is one of many new ice creams that incorporate the traditional South American ingredient dulce de leche, a creamy jam made by slowly simmering milk and sugar. While this jam turns up in almost every kind of dessert — filling crepes and tarts, topping flans and cakes — it’s especially versatile as a frozen treat.
In the last few years, Buenos Aires’s heladerías, or ice cream parlors, have introduced a heap of varieties that include some form of dulce de leche, transforming one of the most traditional local flavors into an exotic scoop. Many of the city’s more than 2,000 creameries now carry up to 10 options in this category, in what seems like a race to out-sweet one another with elaborate inventions. It is as if peanut butter suddenly became an epicurean ingredient, served with raspberry coulis and crème fraîche on a sugar cone.
“The gourmet ice cream trend has reached a peak,” said Horacio Spinetto, whose book “Heladerías de Buenos Aires” was released in March. “The flavor that sells the most, by far, is dulce de leche. It represents the ice cream of Argentina.”
Dulce de leche scoops are nothing new. But lately, this flavor has been the object of much experimentation.
“My family broke with the custom of keeping traditional flavors plain,” said Juan Martín Guarracino, one of Persicco’s founders. His parents and uncles started one of the nation’s largest ice cream chains, Freddo, in 1969 and sold it to an investment group 30 years later. During Freddo’s heyday in the ’80s and ’90s, the company began offering crema tramontana — which contains dulce de leche jam and specks of malted chocolate balls — and banana split, two innovative dulce de leche flavors that had patrons lined up at the counter.
“Dulce de leche has always been a top seller,” Mr. Guarracino said. Since Persicco opened in 2001, he said, the store has used it in several new recipes, including one with brownie bites, and another, called dolcatta, with poached strawberries and baked meringue. “We are leaders in development; the others come and look at us.”
Fellow ice cream makers disagree. “Different creameries create different ice creams,” said Ariel Davalli, a co-owner of a chain called Chungo. “Our clients want novelty, and we have to be ingenious. Every season we come up with new flavors.”
Chungo has a dulce de leche and cream cheese helado, or ice cream, marbled with pure dulce de leche and cookie crumbs, named cucuruccino. Sitting at its new Palermo Hollywood branch, a modern spot with funky wallpaper and white leather chairs, I pondered the similarities between this cone and one sampled recently at a competitor’s. It was milder in taste and creamier in texture — and gobbled before any further conclusions could be reached.
This year, Chungo added rice pudding, cheese with sweet potato jam, and flan with dulce de leche ice creams, honoring three desserts considered emblematic of the national cuisine for Argentina’s bicentennial. Although the precise origins of dulce de leche are unknown, Argentina likes to think of it as homegrown. In fact, the government recently declared it part of the nation’s cultural patrimony, to the irritation of some neighbors. What’s indisputable is the Argentines’ adoration of this treat. “We were raised on dulce de leche,” said Francis Mallmann, a prominent chef. “It’s deeply rooted in our way of life.”
To unaccustomed palates, dulce de leche on its own can taste overly sweet. But as an ice cream, it has a global appeal. Häagen-Dazs introduced it in the United States in the late ’90s with great success, followed by Ciao Bella, Ben & Jerry’s and others.
To hear the heladeros, or ice cream makers, in Buenos Aires tell it, their versions may be hard to beat. “Argentine ice cream is known throughout the world because it’s still done the old-fashioned way,” said Mr. Davalli of Chungo, noting that natural ingredients like fresh eggs and fruits are often used.
Buenos Aires’s first ice cream stores were opened in the early 1900s by Italian immigrants, and their popularity surged in the ’40s. Today, many of the city’s creameries advertise their products as artisanal and natural. The top shops include Freddo, which is ubiquitous — along with smaller chains like Persicco, Chungo and Un’Altra Volta.
The market is big and keeps growing. Jauja, a Patagonian brand, opened its first Buenos Aires branch nine months ago on Avenida Cerviño, home to a handful of casual spots. Jauja’s latest flavor is called mousse del piltri, inspired by a mountain at the foot of the Andes called Piltriquitrón: it’s a dulce de leche mousse ice cream with slivers of caramelized almonds. The base is fluffy and sweet but not overbearing, the almonds perfectly toasted, with just enough crunch.
Purists tend to brush off these newfangled varieties. “I prefer the plain dulce de leche,” said Mr. Spinetto, who has also written a book on pizzerias and said he prefers simple pies, with just cheese. “That way you can really tell if it’s good.”
A new quality seal might assuage skeptics like Mr. Spinetto. This year, the Argentine milk industry created a contest for best dulce de leche ice cream, and awarded the top prize to Chungo.
“We’re very proud,” said Jorge Davalli, a co-owner, who founded the company in 1973. “We always choose the best natural ingredients.”
For their dulce de leche ice cream, the Davallis buy a confectioners’ version of the jam that’s custom-made by a respected local producer. Well aware of Argentines’ tastes, Chungo’s new advertising campaign is all about their award-winning dulce de leche.
“When Argentines move to another country, one of the things they miss, aside from their family, is dulce de leche,” Mr. Davalli said.
NYT: 36 Hours in Rio de Janeiro
September 16, 2010
By ARIC CHEN
WITH the World Cup coming in 2014, followed by the Olympic Games two years later, Rio de Janeiro is thinking outside the beach. The historic port area is undergoing an extreme makeover, and museums by such vanguard architects as Santiago Calatrava and Diller Scofidio + Renfro are in the works. A long-anticipated bullet train to São Paulo seems to be finally happening, while the city is making strides (albeit fitful ones) tackling the problems of its notorious favelas. Indeed, there will always be sunshine, thongs and Carnaval, but these days, Rio has a whole lot more to strut about.
Friday
3 p.m.
1) CONCRETE CURVES
Long before the future arrived, Oscar Niemeyer was building it. Rio’s most famous architect (age 102 and counting) is best known for his work designing the capital of Brasília, but visitors need only go to São Conrado, about a 20-minute drive from the city center, to see Casa das Canoas (Estrada das Canoas 2.310, São Conrado; 55-21-3322-3581). Now home to the Niemeyer Foundation, this is the house the architect built for himself in 1953. Its curvaceous roof and jutting rock formations can be ogled only on Tuesdays through Fridays, from 1 to 5 p.m.
8 p.m.
2) SEAFOOD BY THE SEA
Continue the ogling over dinner at the Philippe Starck-designed Hotel Fasano (Avenida Vieira Souto 80; 55-21-3202-4000; fasano.com.br), right on Ipanema beach. Its seafood restaurant, Fasano Al Mare, serves dishes like crispy tuna with white beans, cream and red onions (78 reais, about $46 at 1.70 Brazilian reais to the dollar), while its breezy interior sheds a flattering light on the glamour pusses within. Afterward, head to the hotel’s London-themed bar, Baretto-Londra, for a nightcap.
11 p.m.
3) LAPA CRAWL
Have a second wind? This city parties late, so join the students, bohemians, yuppies and just-plain locals reveling in the streets of Lapa. This historic, charmingly shabby neighborhood in central Rio goes late into the night with plentiful street food — and cheap drinks. Duck into popular samba clubs like Rio Scenarium (Rua do Lavradio 20; 55-21-3147-9005; rioscenarium.com.br) and the intimate Carioca da Gema (Rua Mem de Sá 79; 55-21-2221-0043; barcariocadagema.com.br). Or just bar hop your way to tomorrow.
Saturday
10 a.m.
4) WATERFRONT BARGAINS
Time for some rummaging. Saturday mornings mean the flea market at Praça 15 de Novembro, along the waterfront in Rio’s historic heart of Centro. Browse the standard offerings of old china, vinyl records and secondhand clothing — but also the crafts, colonial-style knickknacks and other local curiosities you won’t find elsewhere. Don’t forget to haggle.
Noon
5) FROM THE HEIGHTS
Take the antique tram called the bonde uphill to the cobbled, winding streets of leafy Santa Teresa. Known for its crumbling mansions, some converted into museums and bed-and-breakfasts, this artsy, once-neglected enclave has come back to life. Consider the newish Hotel Santa Teresa (Rua Almirante Alexandrino 660; 55-21-3380-0200; santa-teresa-hotel.com), a former coffee plantation turned luxury retreat. Wander the artisanal shops and restaurants on the main drag of Rua Almirante Alexandrino. Have lunch there, or continue uphill to the thatched-roof pavilions of Aprazível (Rua Aprazível 62; 55-21-2508-9174; aprazivel.com.br) for the spectacular views and bacalhau do pai (71 reais), a cod pastry dish filling enough for two.
3 p.m.
6) ART CENTRO
History meets contemporary art in Centro. Just across from the flea market, the 18th-century Paço Imperial (Praça 15 de Novembro 48; 55-21-2215-2622; pacoimperial.com.br) mounts excellent exhibitions like the recent one on Gordon Matta-Clark. Not far away is the former bank headquarters that’s now the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (Rua Primeiro de Março 66; 55-21-3808-2020; bb.com.br/cultura), where you might find, say, a Rebecca Horn retrospective. The area is also home to a growing number of galleries. Don’t miss A Gentil Carioca (Rua Gonçalves Ledo 17; 55-21-2222-1651; agentilcarioca.com.br), an experimental space run by three artists including the Brazilian art star Ernesto Neto.
5:30 p.m.
7) A DIFFERENT VIEW
Forget those postcard-perfect views from Sugar Loaf and the Corcovado. This summer, as part of an effort to better integrate the favelas with the city, Rio unveiled a gleaming elevator tower that rises more than 20 stories to connect upscale Ipanema with the favela of Cantagalo above. At the corner of Rua Teixeira de Melo and Rua Barão da Torre, just off Praça General Osório, this progressive piece of architecture has an observation deck with views across Ipanema and Copacabana. Guards may stop you from taking a second set of elevators to the favela proper. But at least you’ve gotten as close as you’re likely to get on your own.
9:30 p.m.
8) GOURMET ALLEY
The peacocks of Rio flock to the Leblon area for dinner, specifically Rua Dias Ferreira. On a one-block stretch, you can choose from the always-busy Sushi Leblon (No. 256; 55-21-2512-7830; sushileblon.com), with its sometimes exotic sushi offerings (think quail egg and truffles, 11 to 22 reais), and Quadrucci (No. 233; 55-21-2512-4551; quadrucci.com.br), with its Italian takes like shrimp risotto with mango, mascarpone and arugula (47 reais). For other nouvelle concoctions, head for Zuka (No. 233b; 55-21-3205-7154; zuka.com.br) and try the white fish and pepper ceviche (27 reais) and rack of lamb with passion-fruit mashed potatoes (79 reais).
Midnight
9) SHABBY OR CHIC?
As Rio revamps its port, the docklands district of Gamboa is turning into a night-life hub that aims to compete with Lapa. (Still, the area can be a bit sketchy, so know where you’re going.) With a lively, down-to-earth crowd in a rustic 19th-century building, Trapiche Gamboa (Rua Sacadura Cabral 155; 55-21-2516-0868; trapichegamboa.com.br) is one of the city’s most popular samba spots. Or for a gay mega-party, cross the street to the Week (Rua Sacadura Cabral 154; 55-21-2253-1020; theweek.com.br), a São Paulo import for the muscle-boy and D.J.-groupie crowd. Alternatively, take a taxi to the Urca area and Zozô (Avenida Pasteur 520, Praia Vermelha; 55-21-2295-5659; zozorio.com.br). Dramatically situated by the beach, adjacent to the Sugar Loaf cable car station, this restaurant turns into a weekend after-dinner lounge and dance club where a posh crowd of 30-something Brazilians do what they do best: look good.
Sunday
11 a.m.
10) BRUNCH SET
Long night? Haul yourself over to Escola do Pão (Rua General Garzon 10; 55-21-2294-0027; escoladopao.com.br), run by a mother-and-daughter team that has turned this former home — once belonging to the Brazilian writer José Lins do Rego — into a French-style bistro, bakery, cooking school and labor of love. Settle into its cozy interior of cast-iron columns and tropical flourishes. Then start nibbling on the cavalcade of fresh fruit drinks, cheese gratins, finger sandwiches, light-as-air eggs and impeccable breads that make up its 62-real prix-fixe brunch.
12:30 p.m.
11) LAGOON TO GARDEN
Time for some air. Stroll along the lagoa (lagoon) — Escola do Pão sits right on its shore — or take the short walk to the Jardim Botânico (Rua Jardim Botânico 1008; 55-21-3874-1808; www.jbrj.gov.br; 5 reais). This impressive botanical garden, founded in 1808 by Dom João VI of Portugal, retains its imperial stateliness with rows of royal palms, ponds, monuments and orchid-filled greenhouses. Not a bad way to wind down.
IF YOU GO
Opened in 2007, the 89-room Hotel Fasano (Avenida Vieira Souto 80; 55-21-3202-4000; fasano.com.br) is Philippe Starck’s splashy contribution to Ipanema’s waterfront, with hardwood floors and Brazilian modernist furniture. There’s a rooftop infinity pool and a new spa. Doubles start at 1,200 reais ($710 at 1.70 Brazilian reais to the dollar).
The Ipanema Plaza (Rua Farme de Amoedo 34; 55-21-3687-2000; ipanemaplaza.com.br) is a favorite of the fashion crowd and is close to the gay section of the beach. The 140 spacious rooms start at 435 reais.
Copacabana isn’t what it used to be. But for a good value, try the new 135-room Arena Copacabana (Avenida Atlantica 2064; 55-21- 3034-1501; arenahotel.com.br), which opened last year with spare yet comfortable modern rooms right on the beach. Standard rooms start at 330 reais.
By ARIC CHEN
WITH the World Cup coming in 2014, followed by the Olympic Games two years later, Rio de Janeiro is thinking outside the beach. The historic port area is undergoing an extreme makeover, and museums by such vanguard architects as Santiago Calatrava and Diller Scofidio + Renfro are in the works. A long-anticipated bullet train to São Paulo seems to be finally happening, while the city is making strides (albeit fitful ones) tackling the problems of its notorious favelas. Indeed, there will always be sunshine, thongs and Carnaval, but these days, Rio has a whole lot more to strut about.
Friday
3 p.m.
1) CONCRETE CURVES
Long before the future arrived, Oscar Niemeyer was building it. Rio’s most famous architect (age 102 and counting) is best known for his work designing the capital of Brasília, but visitors need only go to São Conrado, about a 20-minute drive from the city center, to see Casa das Canoas (Estrada das Canoas 2.310, São Conrado; 55-21-3322-3581). Now home to the Niemeyer Foundation, this is the house the architect built for himself in 1953. Its curvaceous roof and jutting rock formations can be ogled only on Tuesdays through Fridays, from 1 to 5 p.m.
8 p.m.
2) SEAFOOD BY THE SEA
Continue the ogling over dinner at the Philippe Starck-designed Hotel Fasano (Avenida Vieira Souto 80; 55-21-3202-4000; fasano.com.br), right on Ipanema beach. Its seafood restaurant, Fasano Al Mare, serves dishes like crispy tuna with white beans, cream and red onions (78 reais, about $46 at 1.70 Brazilian reais to the dollar), while its breezy interior sheds a flattering light on the glamour pusses within. Afterward, head to the hotel’s London-themed bar, Baretto-Londra, for a nightcap.
11 p.m.
3) LAPA CRAWL
Have a second wind? This city parties late, so join the students, bohemians, yuppies and just-plain locals reveling in the streets of Lapa. This historic, charmingly shabby neighborhood in central Rio goes late into the night with plentiful street food — and cheap drinks. Duck into popular samba clubs like Rio Scenarium (Rua do Lavradio 20; 55-21-3147-9005; rioscenarium.com.br) and the intimate Carioca da Gema (Rua Mem de Sá 79; 55-21-2221-0043; barcariocadagema.com.br). Or just bar hop your way to tomorrow.
Saturday
10 a.m.
4) WATERFRONT BARGAINS
Time for some rummaging. Saturday mornings mean the flea market at Praça 15 de Novembro, along the waterfront in Rio’s historic heart of Centro. Browse the standard offerings of old china, vinyl records and secondhand clothing — but also the crafts, colonial-style knickknacks and other local curiosities you won’t find elsewhere. Don’t forget to haggle.
Noon
5) FROM THE HEIGHTS
Take the antique tram called the bonde uphill to the cobbled, winding streets of leafy Santa Teresa. Known for its crumbling mansions, some converted into museums and bed-and-breakfasts, this artsy, once-neglected enclave has come back to life. Consider the newish Hotel Santa Teresa (Rua Almirante Alexandrino 660; 55-21-3380-0200; santa-teresa-hotel.com), a former coffee plantation turned luxury retreat. Wander the artisanal shops and restaurants on the main drag of Rua Almirante Alexandrino. Have lunch there, or continue uphill to the thatched-roof pavilions of Aprazível (Rua Aprazível 62; 55-21-2508-9174; aprazivel.com.br) for the spectacular views and bacalhau do pai (71 reais), a cod pastry dish filling enough for two.
3 p.m.
6) ART CENTRO
History meets contemporary art in Centro. Just across from the flea market, the 18th-century Paço Imperial (Praça 15 de Novembro 48; 55-21-2215-2622; pacoimperial.com.br) mounts excellent exhibitions like the recent one on Gordon Matta-Clark. Not far away is the former bank headquarters that’s now the Centro Cultural Banco do Brasil (Rua Primeiro de Março 66; 55-21-3808-2020; bb.com.br/cultura), where you might find, say, a Rebecca Horn retrospective. The area is also home to a growing number of galleries. Don’t miss A Gentil Carioca (Rua Gonçalves Ledo 17; 55-21-2222-1651; agentilcarioca.com.br), an experimental space run by three artists including the Brazilian art star Ernesto Neto.
5:30 p.m.
7) A DIFFERENT VIEW
Forget those postcard-perfect views from Sugar Loaf and the Corcovado. This summer, as part of an effort to better integrate the favelas with the city, Rio unveiled a gleaming elevator tower that rises more than 20 stories to connect upscale Ipanema with the favela of Cantagalo above. At the corner of Rua Teixeira de Melo and Rua Barão da Torre, just off Praça General Osório, this progressive piece of architecture has an observation deck with views across Ipanema and Copacabana. Guards may stop you from taking a second set of elevators to the favela proper. But at least you’ve gotten as close as you’re likely to get on your own.
9:30 p.m.
8) GOURMET ALLEY
The peacocks of Rio flock to the Leblon area for dinner, specifically Rua Dias Ferreira. On a one-block stretch, you can choose from the always-busy Sushi Leblon (No. 256; 55-21-2512-7830; sushileblon.com), with its sometimes exotic sushi offerings (think quail egg and truffles, 11 to 22 reais), and Quadrucci (No. 233; 55-21-2512-4551; quadrucci.com.br), with its Italian takes like shrimp risotto with mango, mascarpone and arugula (47 reais). For other nouvelle concoctions, head for Zuka (No. 233b; 55-21-3205-7154; zuka.com.br) and try the white fish and pepper ceviche (27 reais) and rack of lamb with passion-fruit mashed potatoes (79 reais).
Midnight
9) SHABBY OR CHIC?
As Rio revamps its port, the docklands district of Gamboa is turning into a night-life hub that aims to compete with Lapa. (Still, the area can be a bit sketchy, so know where you’re going.) With a lively, down-to-earth crowd in a rustic 19th-century building, Trapiche Gamboa (Rua Sacadura Cabral 155; 55-21-2516-0868; trapichegamboa.com.br) is one of the city’s most popular samba spots. Or for a gay mega-party, cross the street to the Week (Rua Sacadura Cabral 154; 55-21-2253-1020; theweek.com.br), a São Paulo import for the muscle-boy and D.J.-groupie crowd. Alternatively, take a taxi to the Urca area and Zozô (Avenida Pasteur 520, Praia Vermelha; 55-21-2295-5659; zozorio.com.br). Dramatically situated by the beach, adjacent to the Sugar Loaf cable car station, this restaurant turns into a weekend after-dinner lounge and dance club where a posh crowd of 30-something Brazilians do what they do best: look good.
Sunday
11 a.m.
10) BRUNCH SET
Long night? Haul yourself over to Escola do Pão (Rua General Garzon 10; 55-21-2294-0027; escoladopao.com.br), run by a mother-and-daughter team that has turned this former home — once belonging to the Brazilian writer José Lins do Rego — into a French-style bistro, bakery, cooking school and labor of love. Settle into its cozy interior of cast-iron columns and tropical flourishes. Then start nibbling on the cavalcade of fresh fruit drinks, cheese gratins, finger sandwiches, light-as-air eggs and impeccable breads that make up its 62-real prix-fixe brunch.
12:30 p.m.
11) LAGOON TO GARDEN
Time for some air. Stroll along the lagoa (lagoon) — Escola do Pão sits right on its shore — or take the short walk to the Jardim Botânico (Rua Jardim Botânico 1008; 55-21-3874-1808; www.jbrj.gov.br; 5 reais). This impressive botanical garden, founded in 1808 by Dom João VI of Portugal, retains its imperial stateliness with rows of royal palms, ponds, monuments and orchid-filled greenhouses. Not a bad way to wind down.
IF YOU GO
Opened in 2007, the 89-room Hotel Fasano (Avenida Vieira Souto 80; 55-21-3202-4000; fasano.com.br) is Philippe Starck’s splashy contribution to Ipanema’s waterfront, with hardwood floors and Brazilian modernist furniture. There’s a rooftop infinity pool and a new spa. Doubles start at 1,200 reais ($710 at 1.70 Brazilian reais to the dollar).
The Ipanema Plaza (Rua Farme de Amoedo 34; 55-21-3687-2000; ipanemaplaza.com.br) is a favorite of the fashion crowd and is close to the gay section of the beach. The 140 spacious rooms start at 435 reais.
Copacabana isn’t what it used to be. But for a good value, try the new 135-room Arena Copacabana (Avenida Atlantica 2064; 55-21- 3034-1501; arenahotel.com.br), which opened last year with spare yet comfortable modern rooms right on the beach. Standard rooms start at 330 reais.
NYT: 36 Hours in Chicago
September 22, 2010
By FRED A. BERNSTEIN
ALL cities have their ups and downs, but Chicago has been on the rise by playing to its strengths, adding parks, architectural crowd pleasers and public art. Much of this has happened on the watch of Mayor Richard M. Daley, who, after 21 years in office, announced this month that he would be stepping down. How will the city fare without him? Just fine, probably, thanks to the raft of improvements that has left Chicago fortified both by 19th- and 20th-century public spaces brimming with 21st-century attractions.
Friday
4 p.m.
1) LOOP THE LOOP
Chicago is a city of architecture tours, but one of the best is right above you: the “L,” the elevated subway that circles the Loop (transitchicago.com). Get on the brown, orange or pink lines — it doesn’t matter which color, as long as you sit in the first car by the front-view window — and round the two-square-mile area. If you’re going clockwise, look to the left. Among landmarks you’ll see are Bertrand Goldberg’s spectacular Marina City, the new Trump International Hotel and Tower, Frank Gehry’s Pritzker Pavilion band shell and Louis Sullivan’s historic Auditorium Building. Miss one? No problems. The $2.25 ticket buys unlimited loops.
8 p.m.
2) MIDWAY FARE
Credit the recession, but a number of good midprice but high-style restaurants have opened in Chicago in the last two years. A favorite is Gilt Bar (230 West Kinzie Street; 312-464-9544; giltbarchicago.com), a casual restaurant in the River North neighborhood that isn’t casual about its cooking. The menu features New American dishes like blackened cauliflower with capers ($7) and ricotta gnocchi with sage and brown butter ($13). After dinner, head downstairs to Curio, a basement bar with a Prohibition theme. Try the Death’s Door Daisy, made with artisanal Wisconsin vodka and Aperol, a blood orange liqueur, for $10.
11 p.m.
3) COME ON IN
There are so many clubs on Ontario Street, just north of the loop, that it’s sometimes known as Red Bull Row. For a mellower jolt, head to the Uptown neighborhood, to Big Chicks (5024 North Sheridan Road; 773-728-5511; bigchicks.com) a gay bar that welcomes everyone. The drinks are cheap, the crowd is friendly and the décor is appealingly kooky.
Saturday
9 a.m.
4) FANCY EGGS
Couldn’t get to dinner at Frontera Grill, the nouvelle Mexican restaurant owned by the celebrity chef Rick Bayless? No worries. Just head over for breakfast at Xoco (449 North Clark Street; 312-661-1434; rickbayless.com), Mr. Bayless’s newest restaurant. It’s served till 10 a.m.; expect a line after 8:30. Favorites include scrambled egg empanada with poblano chili ($3), and an open-face torta with soft poached egg, salsa, cheese, cilantro and black beans ($4). Chocolate café au lait ($3.25) comes with a single hot, crisp, sugary churro.
11 a.m.
5) OFF-LABEL STRIP
The Magnificient Mile area is filled with flagships (Gucci, Vuitton — you know the list). But there are still some independent stores you won’t find at your hometown mall. Ikram (873 North Rush Street; 312-587-1000; ikram.com) is the stylish boutique that counts Michelle Obama among its customers, with fashion-forward labels like Jason Wu and Martin Margiela. East Oak Street has a couple of cool shops, including Sofia (No. 72; 312-640-0878; sofiavintage.com). Next door is Colletti Gallery (No. 102; 312-664-6767; collettigallery.com), with a gorgeous selection of Art Deco and Art Nouveau furniture and objets. It’s a short walk from there to the Museum of Contemporary Art (220 East Chicago Avenue; 312-280-2660; mcachicago.org), which has a spectacular exhibition of works by Alexander Calder — and works inspired by Calder — through Oct. 17.
2 p.m.
6) FIRST NEIGHBORHOOD
Walking around Hyde Park, a leafy enclave about four miles south of the Loop, it’s easy to see why the Obamas settled there. Their house, on South Greenwood Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets, is nearly invisible behind Secret Service barricades. Luckily, the nearby Robie House (5757 South Woodlawn Avenue; 800-514-3849; gowright.org), a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece, is open for tours. See if you can find an abstracted male figure in the Japanese-inspired leaded-glass windows. Across the street, the beautifully landscaped University of Chicago campus is worth exploring for an afternoon (or a term).
7 p.m.
7) LIVESTOCK MENU
Chicago was once the meatpacking capital of the world, and it still knows what to do with offal. Take Girl & the Goat (809 West Randolph Streeet, 312-492-6262; girlandthegoat.com), a much-blogged-about new restaurant where the Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard takes livestock parts seriously. The often-updated menu recently included lamb ribs with grilled avocado and pistachio piccata ($17), and braised beef tongue with masa and beef vinaigrette ($12). If you’re not a carnivore, try chickpeas three ways ($11), and for dessert, potato fritters with lemon poached eggplant and Greek yogurt ($8). The soaring dining room, designed by the Chicago design firm 555 International, is warm and modern, with exposed beams, walls of charred cedar and a large open kitchen. Reservations essential.
10 p.m.
8) FUNNY BONE
The owners of the Ontourage nightclub (157 West Ontario Street; 312-573-1470; ontouragechicago.com) were tired of waiting until midnight for the crowds to gather, so they began offering comedy shows at 10 on Saturdays. You won’t find big names, but a hit-or-miss roster of itinerant comedians, some who heckle the audience in language that can’t be printed here. Tickets, $10 include admission to the upstairs lounge, where bottle-service vodkas start at $200.
Sunday
10 a.m.
9) BEAUTIFICATION BRUNCH
Logan Square, about two miles northwest of the Loop, is a remnant of Chicago’s late-19th-century beautification movement, with a statue of an eagle by Evelyn Longman where two of the grandest boulevards meet. Nearby, Longman & Eagle (2657 North Kedzie Avenue; 773-276-7110; longmanandeagle.com) is a rough-edged bar that serves a refined brunch: a chunky sockeye salmon tartare with pickled mango ($10) or a wild boar “Sloppy Joe” ($10). Six hotel rooms are set to open upstairs.
1 p.m.
10) GRAND PIANO
Chicago knows how to mix neo-classical architecture with contemporary design, and no place does it better than the Art Institute of Chicago (111 South Michigan Avenue; 312-443-3600; artinstituteofchicago.org), which opened its celebrated Modern Wing last year. Designed by Renzo Piano, it the luminous addition contains a magnificent set of galleries for 1900-1950 European art (Picasso, Giacometti, Klee are a few of the big names) and a capacious room for the museum’s design collection. Hungry or not, check out Terzo Piano, the stunning rooftop restaurant with views of the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park across the street.
3 p.m.
11) WHEELS UP
From the museum, walk over the pedestrian bridge, also designed by Mr. Piano, to Millennium Park, and rent bikes from Bike and Roll (312-729-1000; bikechicago.com), about $35 a day, for a ride up the shore of Lake Michigan. You’ll pass Navy Pier, skyscrapers by Mies van der Rohe, and hundreds of beach volleyball courts, which make this the Malibu of the Midwest on summer and fall weekends. Along the way, you’ll pass Lincoln Park, with a new pavilion by the Chicago architect Jeanne Gang — another example of how the city is updating its open spaces.
IF YOU GO
Numerous airlines, including Delta, American and United, fly nonstop into Chicago from all three New York-area airports. Based on recent Web search, round-trip flights start at about $219 for travel in October.
The Allegro (171 West Randolph Street, 312-236-0123; allegrochicago.com), a 483-room hotel in the city’s bustling theater district, in the bold style of Kimpton hotels. Rooms from about $149.
Opened last year, the Elysian (11 East Walton Street; 312-646-1300; elysianhotels.com) is a cushy 188-room hotel where the beds aren’t made — they’re “draped” in 460-thread-count Rivolta Carmignani linens. From the outside, the building, not far from the Magnificent Mile, resembles a chateau. Rooms start at about $430.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 24, 2010
An earlier version of this column misstated the name of one of the most famous and well-known areas of Chicago. It is Magnificent Mile -- not Miracle Mile.
By FRED A. BERNSTEIN
ALL cities have their ups and downs, but Chicago has been on the rise by playing to its strengths, adding parks, architectural crowd pleasers and public art. Much of this has happened on the watch of Mayor Richard M. Daley, who, after 21 years in office, announced this month that he would be stepping down. How will the city fare without him? Just fine, probably, thanks to the raft of improvements that has left Chicago fortified both by 19th- and 20th-century public spaces brimming with 21st-century attractions.
Friday
4 p.m.
1) LOOP THE LOOP
Chicago is a city of architecture tours, but one of the best is right above you: the “L,” the elevated subway that circles the Loop (transitchicago.com). Get on the brown, orange or pink lines — it doesn’t matter which color, as long as you sit in the first car by the front-view window — and round the two-square-mile area. If you’re going clockwise, look to the left. Among landmarks you’ll see are Bertrand Goldberg’s spectacular Marina City, the new Trump International Hotel and Tower, Frank Gehry’s Pritzker Pavilion band shell and Louis Sullivan’s historic Auditorium Building. Miss one? No problems. The $2.25 ticket buys unlimited loops.
8 p.m.
2) MIDWAY FARE
Credit the recession, but a number of good midprice but high-style restaurants have opened in Chicago in the last two years. A favorite is Gilt Bar (230 West Kinzie Street; 312-464-9544; giltbarchicago.com), a casual restaurant in the River North neighborhood that isn’t casual about its cooking. The menu features New American dishes like blackened cauliflower with capers ($7) and ricotta gnocchi with sage and brown butter ($13). After dinner, head downstairs to Curio, a basement bar with a Prohibition theme. Try the Death’s Door Daisy, made with artisanal Wisconsin vodka and Aperol, a blood orange liqueur, for $10.
11 p.m.
3) COME ON IN
There are so many clubs on Ontario Street, just north of the loop, that it’s sometimes known as Red Bull Row. For a mellower jolt, head to the Uptown neighborhood, to Big Chicks (5024 North Sheridan Road; 773-728-5511; bigchicks.com) a gay bar that welcomes everyone. The drinks are cheap, the crowd is friendly and the décor is appealingly kooky.
Saturday
9 a.m.
4) FANCY EGGS
Couldn’t get to dinner at Frontera Grill, the nouvelle Mexican restaurant owned by the celebrity chef Rick Bayless? No worries. Just head over for breakfast at Xoco (449 North Clark Street; 312-661-1434; rickbayless.com), Mr. Bayless’s newest restaurant. It’s served till 10 a.m.; expect a line after 8:30. Favorites include scrambled egg empanada with poblano chili ($3), and an open-face torta with soft poached egg, salsa, cheese, cilantro and black beans ($4). Chocolate café au lait ($3.25) comes with a single hot, crisp, sugary churro.
11 a.m.
5) OFF-LABEL STRIP
The Magnificient Mile area is filled with flagships (Gucci, Vuitton — you know the list). But there are still some independent stores you won’t find at your hometown mall. Ikram (873 North Rush Street; 312-587-1000; ikram.com) is the stylish boutique that counts Michelle Obama among its customers, with fashion-forward labels like Jason Wu and Martin Margiela. East Oak Street has a couple of cool shops, including Sofia (No. 72; 312-640-0878; sofiavintage.com). Next door is Colletti Gallery (No. 102; 312-664-6767; collettigallery.com), with a gorgeous selection of Art Deco and Art Nouveau furniture and objets. It’s a short walk from there to the Museum of Contemporary Art (220 East Chicago Avenue; 312-280-2660; mcachicago.org), which has a spectacular exhibition of works by Alexander Calder — and works inspired by Calder — through Oct. 17.
2 p.m.
6) FIRST NEIGHBORHOOD
Walking around Hyde Park, a leafy enclave about four miles south of the Loop, it’s easy to see why the Obamas settled there. Their house, on South Greenwood Avenue between 50th and 51st Streets, is nearly invisible behind Secret Service barricades. Luckily, the nearby Robie House (5757 South Woodlawn Avenue; 800-514-3849; gowright.org), a Frank Lloyd Wright masterpiece, is open for tours. See if you can find an abstracted male figure in the Japanese-inspired leaded-glass windows. Across the street, the beautifully landscaped University of Chicago campus is worth exploring for an afternoon (or a term).
7 p.m.
7) LIVESTOCK MENU
Chicago was once the meatpacking capital of the world, and it still knows what to do with offal. Take Girl & the Goat (809 West Randolph Streeet, 312-492-6262; girlandthegoat.com), a much-blogged-about new restaurant where the Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard takes livestock parts seriously. The often-updated menu recently included lamb ribs with grilled avocado and pistachio piccata ($17), and braised beef tongue with masa and beef vinaigrette ($12). If you’re not a carnivore, try chickpeas three ways ($11), and for dessert, potato fritters with lemon poached eggplant and Greek yogurt ($8). The soaring dining room, designed by the Chicago design firm 555 International, is warm and modern, with exposed beams, walls of charred cedar and a large open kitchen. Reservations essential.
10 p.m.
8) FUNNY BONE
The owners of the Ontourage nightclub (157 West Ontario Street; 312-573-1470; ontouragechicago.com) were tired of waiting until midnight for the crowds to gather, so they began offering comedy shows at 10 on Saturdays. You won’t find big names, but a hit-or-miss roster of itinerant comedians, some who heckle the audience in language that can’t be printed here. Tickets, $10 include admission to the upstairs lounge, where bottle-service vodkas start at $200.
Sunday
10 a.m.
9) BEAUTIFICATION BRUNCH
Logan Square, about two miles northwest of the Loop, is a remnant of Chicago’s late-19th-century beautification movement, with a statue of an eagle by Evelyn Longman where two of the grandest boulevards meet. Nearby, Longman & Eagle (2657 North Kedzie Avenue; 773-276-7110; longmanandeagle.com) is a rough-edged bar that serves a refined brunch: a chunky sockeye salmon tartare with pickled mango ($10) or a wild boar “Sloppy Joe” ($10). Six hotel rooms are set to open upstairs.
1 p.m.
10) GRAND PIANO
Chicago knows how to mix neo-classical architecture with contemporary design, and no place does it better than the Art Institute of Chicago (111 South Michigan Avenue; 312-443-3600; artinstituteofchicago.org), which opened its celebrated Modern Wing last year. Designed by Renzo Piano, it the luminous addition contains a magnificent set of galleries for 1900-1950 European art (Picasso, Giacometti, Klee are a few of the big names) and a capacious room for the museum’s design collection. Hungry or not, check out Terzo Piano, the stunning rooftop restaurant with views of the Pritzker Pavilion in Millennium Park across the street.
3 p.m.
11) WHEELS UP
From the museum, walk over the pedestrian bridge, also designed by Mr. Piano, to Millennium Park, and rent bikes from Bike and Roll (312-729-1000; bikechicago.com), about $35 a day, for a ride up the shore of Lake Michigan. You’ll pass Navy Pier, skyscrapers by Mies van der Rohe, and hundreds of beach volleyball courts, which make this the Malibu of the Midwest on summer and fall weekends. Along the way, you’ll pass Lincoln Park, with a new pavilion by the Chicago architect Jeanne Gang — another example of how the city is updating its open spaces.
IF YOU GO
Numerous airlines, including Delta, American and United, fly nonstop into Chicago from all three New York-area airports. Based on recent Web search, round-trip flights start at about $219 for travel in October.
The Allegro (171 West Randolph Street, 312-236-0123; allegrochicago.com), a 483-room hotel in the city’s bustling theater district, in the bold style of Kimpton hotels. Rooms from about $149.
Opened last year, the Elysian (11 East Walton Street; 312-646-1300; elysianhotels.com) is a cushy 188-room hotel where the beds aren’t made — they’re “draped” in 460-thread-count Rivolta Carmignani linens. From the outside, the building, not far from the Magnificent Mile, resembles a chateau. Rooms start at about $430.
This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:
Correction: September 24, 2010
An earlier version of this column misstated the name of one of the most famous and well-known areas of Chicago. It is Magnificent Mile -- not Miracle Mile.
NYT: In Bing Crosby’s Wine Cellar, Vintage Baseball
September 23, 2010
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
How a near pristine black-and-white reel of the entire television broadcast of the deciding game of the 1960 World Series — long believed to be lost forever — came to rest in the dry and cool wine cellar of Bing Crosby’s home near San Francisco is not a mystery to those who knew him.
Crosby loved baseball, but as a part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates he was too nervous to watch the Series against the Yankees, so he and his wife went to Paris, where they listened by radio.
“He said, ‘I can’t stay in the country,’ ” his widow, Kathryn Crosby, said. “ ‘I’ll jinx everybody.’ ”
He knew he would want to watch the game later — if his Pirates won — so he hired a company to record Game 7 by kinescope, an early relative of the DVR, filming off a television monitor. The five-reel set, found in December in Crosby’s home, is the only known complete copy of the game, in which Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski hit a game-ending home run to beat the Yankees, 10-9. It is considered one of the greatest games ever played.
Crosby, the singer and movie, radio and TV star, had more foresight than the television networks and stations, which erased or discarded nearly all of the Major League Baseball games they carried until the 1970s.
A canny preservationist of his own legacy, Crosby, who died in 1977, kept a half-century’s worth of records, tapes and films in the wine cellar turned vault in his Hillsborough, Calif., home.
“Bing Crosby was way ahead of his time,” said Nick Trotta, senior library and licensing manager for Major League Baseball Productions, the sport’s archivist.
Three years ago, Major League Baseball acquired the rights to Yankees pitcher Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series — leaving the finale of the 1960 World Series high on its wish list. The hunt for old games — this one unseen on TV since its original broadcast — is constant, subject to serendipity and often futile. Great games like Game 7 in 1960 are often recalled with just a few newsreel clips.
Crosby was so superstitious about hexing his Pirates that he and Kathryn listened to the game with their friends Charles and Nonie de Limur in Paris.
“We were in this beautiful apartment, listening on shortwave, and when it got close Bing opened a bottle of Scotch and was tapping it against the mantel,” Kathryn Crosby said. “When Mazeroski hit the home run, he tapped it hard; the Scotch flew into the fireplace and started a conflagration. I was screaming and Nonie said, ‘It’s very nice to celebrate things, but couldn’t we be more restrained?’ ”
After Crosby viewed the 2-hour-36-minute game, probably in a screening room in the house, the films took their place in the vault, said Robert Bader, vice president for marketing and production for Bing Crosby Enterprises.
They remained there undisturbed until December, when Bader was culling videotapes of Crosby’s TV specials for a DVD release — part of the estate’s goal of resurrecting his body of work.
He spotted two reels lying horizontally in gray canisters labeled “1960 World Series.” They were stacked close to the ceiling with home movies and sports instructional films. An hour or so later, he found three others on other shelves. Intrigued, he screened the 16-millimeter film on a projector. It was Game 7, called by the Yankees’ Mel Allen and the Pirates’ Bob Prince — the complete NBC broadcast. The film had not degraded and has been transferred to DVD.
“I had to be the only person to have seen it in 50 years,” Bader said. “It was just pure luck.”
Bader’s call to M.L.B. officials last spring initiated months of talks that have led to an agreement allowing the MLB Network to televise the game in December, and to wrap interviews and other programming around it, with Bob Costas as the host. M.L.B. also plans to sell DVDs of the game.
“It’s a time capsule,” Trotta said.
Hearing of the broadcast’s discovery, Jim Reisler, a historian born in Pittsburgh, sounded stunned.
“Wow,” he said. His book about the game — “The Best Game Ever” — would have benefited from seeing the NBC production, he said; he relied on the radio call. “It would have given me a greater sense of the tremendous ebb and flow of the game,” he said.
Dick Groat, the Pirates’ shortstop, said: “It was such a unique game to begin with. It was back and forth, back and forth. It was unbelievable.”
The production is simple by today’s standards. NBC appeared to use about five cameras. The graphics were simple (the players’ names and little else) and rarely used. There were no instant replays, no isolated cameras, no analysis, no dugout reporters and no sponsored trivia quizzes.
Viewers looked at the hand-operated Forbes Field scoreboard, which on that day (of 19 runs and 24 hits) got a vigorous workout. Occasionally they saw newsreel cameras atop the ballpark roof.
Prince and Allen rarely interacted, with Prince calling the first half and Allen the second. That put Allen on the air for Yogi Berra’s three-run homer in the sixth inning (Allen first called it foul); Pirates catcher Hal Smith’s eighth-inning homer to put Pittsburgh on top, 9-7 (“That base hit will long be remembered,” Allen said as the film showed Roberto Clemente — Allen called him Bob — bounding around the bases with joy); and Mazeroski’s winning drive to left field (“And the fans go wild,” Allen said).
The game included the play on which a ground ball hit by Bill Virdon to Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek kicked off the dirt and hit him in the Adam’s apple. Kubek fell on his back, sat up within a minute looking dazed, stood up, then lobbied Manager Casey Stengel unsuccessfully to stay in.
It also included remarkable base running by Mickey Mantle with one out in the top of the ninth. The Yankees were trailing, 9-8, with Mantle on first and Gil McDougald on third. Berra hit a sharp grounder that was grabbed by first baseman Rocky Nelson, who quickly stepped on the bag for the second out. For a split second, Nelson seemed ready to throw home in time for a tag play on McDougald for the final out of the World Series.
But Nelson immediately became distracted by Mantle, who never took off for second when Berra hit the ball and was now standing just a few feet away. Nelson reached to tag Mantle, but Mantle made a feint and dived back safely into first. McDougald scored, and the score was tied, 9-9.
“How about that?” Allen said after Mantle’s play. But just minutes later, Mazeroski stepped to the plate. NBC’s sound was good enough to hear a fan shout, “Just get on, Billy, get on!” Mazeroski did more than that. After his home run, fans poured onto the field and danced on the Pittsburgh dugout.
Only later did Bing Crosby witness the joy and jubilation recorded just for him.
“I can still see Bing hitting the mantel with the Scotch,” Kathryn Crosby said.
By RICHARD SANDOMIR
How a near pristine black-and-white reel of the entire television broadcast of the deciding game of the 1960 World Series — long believed to be lost forever — came to rest in the dry and cool wine cellar of Bing Crosby’s home near San Francisco is not a mystery to those who knew him.
Crosby loved baseball, but as a part owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates he was too nervous to watch the Series against the Yankees, so he and his wife went to Paris, where they listened by radio.
“He said, ‘I can’t stay in the country,’ ” his widow, Kathryn Crosby, said. “ ‘I’ll jinx everybody.’ ”
He knew he would want to watch the game later — if his Pirates won — so he hired a company to record Game 7 by kinescope, an early relative of the DVR, filming off a television monitor. The five-reel set, found in December in Crosby’s home, is the only known complete copy of the game, in which Pirates second baseman Bill Mazeroski hit a game-ending home run to beat the Yankees, 10-9. It is considered one of the greatest games ever played.
Crosby, the singer and movie, radio and TV star, had more foresight than the television networks and stations, which erased or discarded nearly all of the Major League Baseball games they carried until the 1970s.
A canny preservationist of his own legacy, Crosby, who died in 1977, kept a half-century’s worth of records, tapes and films in the wine cellar turned vault in his Hillsborough, Calif., home.
“Bing Crosby was way ahead of his time,” said Nick Trotta, senior library and licensing manager for Major League Baseball Productions, the sport’s archivist.
Three years ago, Major League Baseball acquired the rights to Yankees pitcher Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series — leaving the finale of the 1960 World Series high on its wish list. The hunt for old games — this one unseen on TV since its original broadcast — is constant, subject to serendipity and often futile. Great games like Game 7 in 1960 are often recalled with just a few newsreel clips.
Crosby was so superstitious about hexing his Pirates that he and Kathryn listened to the game with their friends Charles and Nonie de Limur in Paris.
“We were in this beautiful apartment, listening on shortwave, and when it got close Bing opened a bottle of Scotch and was tapping it against the mantel,” Kathryn Crosby said. “When Mazeroski hit the home run, he tapped it hard; the Scotch flew into the fireplace and started a conflagration. I was screaming and Nonie said, ‘It’s very nice to celebrate things, but couldn’t we be more restrained?’ ”
After Crosby viewed the 2-hour-36-minute game, probably in a screening room in the house, the films took their place in the vault, said Robert Bader, vice president for marketing and production for Bing Crosby Enterprises.
They remained there undisturbed until December, when Bader was culling videotapes of Crosby’s TV specials for a DVD release — part of the estate’s goal of resurrecting his body of work.
He spotted two reels lying horizontally in gray canisters labeled “1960 World Series.” They were stacked close to the ceiling with home movies and sports instructional films. An hour or so later, he found three others on other shelves. Intrigued, he screened the 16-millimeter film on a projector. It was Game 7, called by the Yankees’ Mel Allen and the Pirates’ Bob Prince — the complete NBC broadcast. The film had not degraded and has been transferred to DVD.
“I had to be the only person to have seen it in 50 years,” Bader said. “It was just pure luck.”
Bader’s call to M.L.B. officials last spring initiated months of talks that have led to an agreement allowing the MLB Network to televise the game in December, and to wrap interviews and other programming around it, with Bob Costas as the host. M.L.B. also plans to sell DVDs of the game.
“It’s a time capsule,” Trotta said.
Hearing of the broadcast’s discovery, Jim Reisler, a historian born in Pittsburgh, sounded stunned.
“Wow,” he said. His book about the game — “The Best Game Ever” — would have benefited from seeing the NBC production, he said; he relied on the radio call. “It would have given me a greater sense of the tremendous ebb and flow of the game,” he said.
Dick Groat, the Pirates’ shortstop, said: “It was such a unique game to begin with. It was back and forth, back and forth. It was unbelievable.”
The production is simple by today’s standards. NBC appeared to use about five cameras. The graphics were simple (the players’ names and little else) and rarely used. There were no instant replays, no isolated cameras, no analysis, no dugout reporters and no sponsored trivia quizzes.
Viewers looked at the hand-operated Forbes Field scoreboard, which on that day (of 19 runs and 24 hits) got a vigorous workout. Occasionally they saw newsreel cameras atop the ballpark roof.
Prince and Allen rarely interacted, with Prince calling the first half and Allen the second. That put Allen on the air for Yogi Berra’s three-run homer in the sixth inning (Allen first called it foul); Pirates catcher Hal Smith’s eighth-inning homer to put Pittsburgh on top, 9-7 (“That base hit will long be remembered,” Allen said as the film showed Roberto Clemente — Allen called him Bob — bounding around the bases with joy); and Mazeroski’s winning drive to left field (“And the fans go wild,” Allen said).
The game included the play on which a ground ball hit by Bill Virdon to Yankees shortstop Tony Kubek kicked off the dirt and hit him in the Adam’s apple. Kubek fell on his back, sat up within a minute looking dazed, stood up, then lobbied Manager Casey Stengel unsuccessfully to stay in.
It also included remarkable base running by Mickey Mantle with one out in the top of the ninth. The Yankees were trailing, 9-8, with Mantle on first and Gil McDougald on third. Berra hit a sharp grounder that was grabbed by first baseman Rocky Nelson, who quickly stepped on the bag for the second out. For a split second, Nelson seemed ready to throw home in time for a tag play on McDougald for the final out of the World Series.
But Nelson immediately became distracted by Mantle, who never took off for second when Berra hit the ball and was now standing just a few feet away. Nelson reached to tag Mantle, but Mantle made a feint and dived back safely into first. McDougald scored, and the score was tied, 9-9.
“How about that?” Allen said after Mantle’s play. But just minutes later, Mazeroski stepped to the plate. NBC’s sound was good enough to hear a fan shout, “Just get on, Billy, get on!” Mazeroski did more than that. After his home run, fans poured onto the field and danced on the Pittsburgh dugout.
Only later did Bing Crosby witness the joy and jubilation recorded just for him.
“I can still see Bing hitting the mantel with the Scotch,” Kathryn Crosby said.
NYT: The Connecticut-Country-Club Crackup
Mark Peterson/Redux, for The New York TimesLinda McMahon represents a political culture that was unknown in Connecticut 20 years ago.
September 23, 2010
By MATT BAI
You could spend your life around political campaigns and never see a celebration quite like the one Linda McMahon held last month after Connecticut Republicans made her their Senate candidate in a three-way primary. McMahon is the fabulously wealthy founder (along with her high-school sweetheart and husband, Vince) of World Wrestling Entertainment, a company the McMahons transformed into a sort of Disney for the age of postindustrial American anger. Unknown to Connecticut voters before she began her run, she spent more than $20 million of her own fortune to beat out two Republican candidates — one of them recruited by the national party — for the right to square off this November against Richard Blumenthal, the state’s longtime Democratic attorney general, in a contest to succeed Christopher Dodd, who is retiring.
The first thing I noticed when I wandered into McMahon’s victory party, at a Crowne Plaza Hotel south of Hartford, was the lavish spread — not the usual weenies and plastic cups, but warm pasta and flaky pastries and drinks from an open bar, all of it consumed by supporters carting free “Linda” tote bags and T-shirts. The second thing was the vintage 1980s soundtrack, which included decidedly unpolitical tracks like the AC/DC classic “You Shook Me All Night Long.” She had the sightless eyes, telling me no lies, knocking me out with those American thighs. . . .
Onstage, a tableau of supporters carefully constructed for television in the way of modern campaigns — nonwhite faces up front, directly behind the candidate — stood assembled under a banner that read, blandly, “It’s Time for Something Different.” Just behind the lectern, alongside other family members, loomed McMahon’s ponytailed, R.V.-size son-in-law, the wrestler known as Triple H. Then a state senator, Len Fasano, delivered one of the more bizarre political orations I had ever heard, getting himself so worked up that he apparently forgot which state he served and introduced the crowd to “the next U.S. senator from the great state of New York!”
The 61-year-old candidate herself walked onstage in a pink suit and pearls, looking for all the world like the president of the Fairfield P.T.A., and proceeded to deliver a victory speech that was sort of amazing for its amalgamation of clichés and a complete, almost defiant, lack of substance.
“I had a great fear that the American dream was in the greatest jeopardy that it has ever been in our lifetime, and I didn’t want to lose that opportunity for the American dream for our children and our grandchildren.”
“The great communicator Ronald Reagan had it right, but this president and this Congress have it wrong!”
“This campaign has never been about the political pundits or the establishment. This campaign is about you!”
And so on. Then McMahon strode off the stage to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.”
Such a spectacle might not seem out of place in a state like California, where millionaires and celebrities are always jumping into the fray, or in one like Minnesota, where popular revolt seems to come in waves. But this is Connecticut, my home state, where the business of campaigns and governance used to be a predictable, serious affair, the province of mostly estimable public servants who worked their way up through town councils or local party machines. Sometimes called the Land of Steady Habits, Connecticut was never a place for garish campaigns and outsize characters with bank statements to match.
Until recently, the closest thing Connecticut experienced to an overturning of the political order, at least in modern times, was the revolt over a state income tax in the early 1990s. So incensed were the voters then that they replaced their moderate governor, the former longtime senator Lowell Weicker, with a more conservative career politician, a three-term congressman named John Rowland. Take that, status quo!
That, however, was before Rowland and a small cadre of other Connecticut officeholders were hauled away to prison on corruption charges; before Democrats ousted Joe Lieberman from the party only six years after they nominated him for the vice presidency; before the politicians in Hartford blew a hole the size of Long Island Sound in the state budget. As I watched McMahon’s hopeful supporters file out of the ballroom clutching their tote bags, I found myself wondering: when, exactly, did genteel Connecticut become Louisiana? And if politics could get this weird here, then what did that mean for the rest of the country?
As in much of the Northeast, Connecticut politics for most of the last century was the purview of two distinct cultural camps: the urban, ethnic machines that dominated the Democratic Party and the patrician Republicans (the Bushes of Greenwich, most notably) who considered it their duty to serve. In postwar suburbs like Trumbull, where my parents moved from Bridgeport and raised their three children, the two groups coexisted uneasily but, for the most part, productively and congenially. Democrats and Republicans might have argued over where to build a new school or whether to let the highway plow through a park, but rarely was there anything personal about it.
Things started to change in the 1980s, for reasons both cultural and economic. A new generation of politicians ascended to power — liberals and conservatives with sharply moralistic approaches to politics. At the same time, the manufacturing decline that was beginning to erode the nation’s economic base, along with the “white flight” that began in the 1960s, hollowed out Connecticut’s cities and weakened its governing establishment. Outsiders tend to think of Connecticut as a collection of wealthy suburbs and rural horse farms, as portrayed in books and movies like “The Ice Storm.” That side of things does exist, particularly on the “gold coast” that runs along the southwest edge of the state, where many hedge-fund managers and movie stars live. And yet much of the state is heavily industrialized, or at least it was until the 1970s. According to data compiled by the Brookings Institution that looks at the core cities of the 100 largest metropolitan areas, two of Connecticut’s largest cities — Hartford and New Haven — are now among the dozen poorest in the country. Hartford, the capital, is the poorest in America.
The effects of this kind of industrial decline, politically, were so gradual as to be almost imperceptible on a daily basis, but cumulatively they took a toll on the political climate. Fear of crime created political pressure for stricter sentencing guidelines, which drove up the state’s incarceration costs significantly. College graduates went off to other regions in search of jobs, leaving behind an aging population whose Medicaid costs are soaring. Public-sector unions replaced trade unions as the dominant political force, and soon the state was paying out unsustainable retirement benefits to its employees. The state budget has grown 60 percent in the last decade, sustained mainly by an income tax that everyone hates.
And then there’s the corruption, the sudden proliferation of which nobody I talked to in the state could adequately explain. No fewer than half a dozen major political scandals erupted in the past several years. Bridgeport’s former mayor just got out of jail after, among other things, accepting free gifts from city contractors; Hartford’s mayor is headed in for doing the same thing; and Waterbury’s onetime mayor (a convicted sex offender) isn’t getting out anytime soon. Governor Rowland, who also accepted free services from contractors, resigned from office in 2004 and served 10 months in prison.
Voter outrage at both parties, but particularly at Democrats, has been building since at least 2006. That’s when Ned Lamont, a cable-television executive whose great-grandfather was a partner at J. P. Morgan, defeated Joe Lieberman in a primary that focused mostly on the war in Iraq. (Lieberman went on to win re-election as an independent.) This year, Lamont spent $9 million to run for governor against another of his party’s entrenched politicians, a former Stamford mayor named Dan Malloy, but without a single galvanizing issue like the one he rode four years ago, he found himself unable to stir much passion from the disillusioned Democratic base, and lost.
The next incumbent after Lieberman to feel the walls closing in was Dodd, who just a few years ago seemed very likely to live out his days in the Senate. Instead, he decided not to seek a sixth term after polls revealed he had very little chance of winning. Dodd is the chairman of the banking committee and is the second-ranking Democratic member on the health-and-education committee — hard-won appointments that would, at another time, have made him seem virtually indispensable to the state. Instead, even fellow Democrats pilloried Dodd for his close ties to Wall Street executives, who make up a significant part of the state’s economy. In other words, Dodd was blasted as a sellout to his state for championing the interests of what had always been, up to now anyway, a crucial constituency.
The state has lost 103,000 jobs and counting during the current recession. And so the moment would seem well primed for Republican officeholders, who don’t control the government in Washington. The problem for Connecticut Republicans is that they don’t really have a lot of candidates left from which to choose. Ever since the party took a hard right turn in the 1980s, it has been slowly disappearing from the state. The last of the state’s moderate Republican congressmen, Rob Simmons and Chris Shays, were defeated in the past two election cycles. (Simmons, who was the national party’s choice to run against Blumenthal, was one candidate Linda McMahon defeated in the primary.) The one centrist Republican on the statewide scene, Gov. Jodi Rell, is retiring. The Republican who is bidding to replace her, a longtime party fund-raiser named Tom Foley, is, like McMahon, a self-financed candidate from Greenwich who had never run for office.
“The Republican Party is a nonentity in Connecticut today,” Weicker, who formed his own party when he ran successfully for governor in 1990, told me when I visited him at his home in Old Lyme. “It can’t find men or women that have come through the chairs to get to where they are. They find people with a wad of dough who just try to buy the office.” (Dodd, who said he was shocked when McMahon got the Republican nomination, puts it another way: “Her main selling point is money.”)
Coincidentally, and a little oddly, Weicker sits on McMahon’s board at W.W.E. After a lengthy discussion of the health care reform law, I asked him if McMahon, who favors repeal, knew what she was talking about. “No,” he answered, waving me away as if I had just asked whether either of his large dogs could fly. “I think she’s following the Republican line — to say no.”
Contrary to conventional thought, you can’t just go out and buy yourself a substantial political office in America. Al Checchi spent $40 million trying to become governor of California in 1998 and couldn’t get past the Democratic primary. Tom Golisano, a New York businessman and philanthropist, spent $93 million on three futile attempts to become that state’s governor between 1994 and 2002. The Texas entrepreneur H. Ross Perot spent $60 million during his 1992 campaign, back when 60 million bucks really meant something in presidential politics, and even though he won 19 percent of the vote, all anyone really remembers are a couple of flip charts and some “Saturday Night Live” skits. That said, $50 million — which is most likely a very conservative estimate of what Linda McMahon calls “investing in myself” — will get you a serious hearing in a state the size of Connecticut. And the way McMahon goes about spending her wrestling fortune is about as subtle as a folding chair to the skull.
Two days after the primary, I arrived at McMahon’s headquarters in the swanky suburb of West Hartford. The headquarters looked more like some interior-design-by-appointment showroom than any campaign office I had ever seen. The glass storefront, over which the word “Linda” was elegantly stenciled in small letters on a navy blue awning, sat between a toy store and an exclusive clothing boutique that had a rack of summer dresses on the brick sidewalk.
Inside, brand new iPads, still in their packaging, lay scattered on desks where you might have expected to see discarded pizza boxes. Upstairs, where the press aides sat, a dozen or so flat-screen TVs hung from a futuristic grid of metal rods, with a stack of digital recorders within easy reach. It felt as if McMahon were campaigning to be commander of Starfleet.
In person, McMahon has a confident, likable presence. Her voice retains the lilt of her native North Carolina, and she laughs easily and warmly, with the sense of humor of a woman who had no problem pretending to violently feud with her husband in front of a national television audience. She is also intensely disciplined with a script, and repeatedly, in the course of our hourlong conversation, she came back to her central theme — that what was missing in Washington were officials who understood what it took to make a small business work. “I’ve built a business,” she told me right off. “I’ve put capital at risk. I understand what rules and regulations and taxes do to business.”
At another point, she told me: “What I continued to hear even before I got into the race was: ‘Do we not have anybody who’s run a business, who can be a part of government? Can government not be run more as a business, with a little bit of attention to the bottom line?’ ”
What McMahon has in mind for the country, more specifically, is to slash or freeze a slate of corporate taxes, while also abolishing the estate tax and the gift tax and creating a series of new deductions for capital expenditures. Businesses will create jobs, McMahon says, when the government stops taking so much of their money away and wasting it on so-called public investments, and those jobs will in turn lift more Americans into affluence.
If all this stirs in you a feeling of nostalgia, like the songs on McMahon’s campaign soundtrack, that’s because it is a perfect distillation of what was once called “supply-side economics,” the gift that Ronald Reagan bequeathed to America in the 1980s and that George W. Bush then regifted in a sparkly new box. In fact, McMahon’s economic plan is largely the work of the economist and sometime television commentator John Rutledge, a supply-side evangelist who helped design Reagan’s program back in the day.
The supply-side argument, which George H. W. Bush once derided as “voodoo economics,” is prevalent among conservative candidates running this year. But as David Stockman, who was Reagan’s first budget director, argued in a Times Op-Ed essay in July, supply-siders during the Reagan and second Bush eras proved far more adept at cutting taxes than they did at scaling back federal spending, which is the main reason we have trillion-dollar budgets deficits. And so it would seem to be incumbent on a candidate like McMahon, who also rails against the debt and who advocates a balanced budget in Washington, to articulate some specific idea of where the budget can be scaled back.
I asked her, for instance, whether she was in favor of reforming entitlement programs that, along with military outlays, represent the principal forces driving spending levels ever higher. “We’re going to have to look at them,” she said, “but I can tell you that that has got to be done in the legislative arena, with open debate, with people on both sides really tackling this and talking about it. We’ve got to strengthen our entitlement programs. We’ve got to make sure that our contract with seniors is maintained and upheld.” But, she added: “I’ve made a specific point of saying I’m not going to go into that on the campaign trail, because I don’t think that’s appropriate. I think the appropriate arena is the legislative arena.”
In other words, this business of governance was too serious to be discussed in any detail during a campaign, which McMahon seemed to regard more as an exercise in theater, like “Saturday Night’s Main Event.” Instead, she returned, once again, to the value of her business experience.
“What I’ve said to people as I’ve gone around the state,” McMahon said, “is: ‘Look, I don’t have all the answers. I wish I had a magic wand and could go to Washington and wave it. But one thing that you will have from me is to take my 30 years of experience, roll up my sleeves. I built a company with 24/7 sweat equity, and I don’t think you can take your eye off the ball until you can solve all these issues and keep working at them.’ ”
For Republicans, the surprising win by the Tea Party candidate Christine O’Donnell in Delaware, in a Senate race they now seem resigned to losing, has made the campaign in Connecticut more pivotal. It is hard to see how Republicans can retake the Senate without capturing Dodd’s seat in November. But Democrats in Washington don’t seem terribly worried about McMahon’s candidacy. For one thing, they are confident that the details of McMahon’s lifestyle and her involvement in a steroid-addled industry won’t sit well with the state’s well-mannered voters. McMahon had a yacht called Sexy Bitch, and the most famous video clip of her — shown by a Republican opponent in the primary — shows her kicking Jim Ross, a W.W.E. announcer, in the groin.
And Democrats remain bullish on Blumenthal, a fixture in Connecticut politics for 25 years who has already won five statewide elections. Blumenthal’s campaign suffered through an existential crisis in May, after Raymond Hernandez reported in The Times that Blumenthal repeatedly misled voters about having served in Vietnam. But Blumenthal apologized — after several agonizing days — and maintained his double-digit lead over McMahon in the polls. This advantage, which has since narrowed considerably, led elated Democrats to conclude that if he could survive that kind of scandal with hardly a hiccup, then he could very likely survive anything McMahon might throw at him.
Near the end of my interview with McMahon, I asked her how exactly she intended to take on Blumenthal in a reliably Democratic state. What was her critique of a man the voters seemed to find eminently acceptable, even after his integrity had been called into question? McMahon didn’t hesitate.
“The voters in Connecticut are going to have a very clear choice in November,” she told me, describing Blumenthal as “a career politician” who has never created a single job. “He’s been in the lawsuit business. His business is suing people. My business is creating jobs. My business is adding and building to the economy. So it’s just a very clear choice.”
She paused and held up a hand to literally frame the choice for me. “The primary differences are career politician versus businesswoman,” McMahon said, sounding very much like a human bullet point.
If McMahon’s sleek storefront command center was the antithesis of what one would expect from a campaign office, then Blumenthal’s headquarters in downtown Hartford was depressingly predictable. It is just the kind of ground-floor suite that campaigns rent for nothing, with faded dingy walls and industrial-strength carpet to match, illuminated by yellowy fluorescent bulbs. When I met Blumenthal there, the day after my conversation with McMahon, he showed me into an office that was bare except for a couple of chairs and a battered wooden desk.
After decades on the immediate periphery of the state’s Democratic landscape, always next in line for a Senate seat but biding his time with the patience of a monk, Blumenthal is a recognizable brand in Connecticut. He doggedly shows up everywhere, listens attentively, takes copious notes and makes prudent statements. He has sued or subpoenaed tobacco companies and subprime-mortgage lenders, to name just a few, and even took on MySpace (in order to get the names of sex offenders) — a record of “standing up” for businesses and families that, more than any one issue, forms the basis of his pitch to voters. Surprisingly boyish for a man of 64, with prominent ears and squinty eyes, he comes across as earnest and a little robotic. “One of my most important strengths in this race is that people know me,” Blumenthal told me. “Not just from the TV, but personally. I’ve been to the parades and the fairs and the funerals and the christenings and, you know, places where people talk and interact.” He added, “I think that personal touch is still very important to people.”
Blumenthal said he can understand why Connecticut voters seemed enraged at anyone in power these days. “I feel the anger and frustration about the way Washington is failing to listen and to respond,” he said carefully. “And I share it, because I’ve fought it as well. So, you know, some of the sense of distance and frustration and even anger — I feel it as a public servant and as a citizen. It’s very well justified, and I share it.”
Blumenthal didn’t sound angry; he sounded as if he were dictating a letter. But this was his message, and he steered back to it no less than three more times in a 20-minute conversation. “So when people are angry and frustrated about what’s happening in Washington, they’re right,” he said at one point. “They’re dead right.” And then: “I’m an outsider to Washington.” And later: “I’m as frustrated and angry as anyone.”
Blumenthal has faithfully done the people’s business all these years, in a way that has apparently gratified them. But now that his moment has arrived, just having been in office for all that time turns out to be his most significant vulnerability. It may not help that Blumenthal just seems so stereotypically incumbent. Even if he hadn’t been in office for a quarter century already, it would probably feel as if he had.
The assault on Blumenthal’s Vietnam half-truths didn’t stick with the voters because it didn’t reinforce anything they already believed about him. This is how it is in politics; because the voters long ago decided that this Blumenthal guy they kept reading about was basically an honest sort, it will likely take more than a few misstatements to derail him. But the other argument that McMahon is just now beginning to make, that Blumenthal is your typical insider, a lifelong politician who just doesn’t get what they’re going through — this is an attack that might flower in the current environment, and he seems to know it.
And so perhaps Washington Democrats should be more concerned about McMahon and the challenge she presents. At a time when unemployment in the state hovers around 9 percent, voters may not especially care about McMahon’s yacht or whether she gave her wrestlers health care plans or tacitly encouraged them to shoot up steroids. (And, in any event, it’s doubtful they consider anything that happened at W.W.E. to be so much less respectable than the path traveled by some of the investment bankers and trial lawyers who have made it to the Senate.)
McMahon is a talented candidate, in the sense that she knows how to choose a point and drive it home, and you can bet she will spend the next six weeks hammering away at the center of the electorate — that is, at all those civic-minded former Republicans in Connecticut who routinely provide Democrats their margins of victory but who long for a better alternative. She has been careful not to box herself into any positions that might strike voters as kind of wacky, unlike the party’s Senate candidates in Kentucky (where Rand Paul qualified his support for the Civil Rights Act) and Nevada (where Sharron Angle has suggested that voters might look for “Second Amendment remedies” to a dysfunctional Congress). There is little Tea Party presence to speak of in Connecticut, and so McMahon was never caught having to take a stand on repealing the direct election of senators or anything like that. She is pro-choice and pro-stem-cell research, and she supports Connecticut’s right to codify gay marriages — all positions well within the mainstream of the state’s moderate electorate.
Blumenthal told me he takes “nothing for granted,” and apparently he means it. The day after I saw him, he left a phone message for my mother, who still lives in Trumbull. He knew my late father, a trial lawyer, and he wanted her to know he enjoyed talking with me, he said, and he left his home number. It was old-school, detail-oriented politics (what mother doesn’t want to hear kind words about her son?), and I had to admire the effort. But when I asked her about it later, my mother said she never called him back.
For the better part of three decades, from the years after World War II until his death in 1975, John Bailey was the most important man in Connecticut politics. Your classic cigar-chomping party boss of the industrial age, Bailey served as chairman of the state Democratic Party through five presidencies and as the party’s national chairman for seven years in the 1960s. He is said to have wielded nearly absolute power in the state’s urban wards, the force behind second-generation Irish, Italian and Jewish politicians who went on to long careers.
Paul Timpanelli, who runs Bridgeport’s business council — and who, as a young Democratic politician back in the 1980s, gave me my first summer internship — is just old enough to remember the tail end of that era, and over lunch at one of Bridgeport’s few really good downtown restaurants, he marveled at how party politics had changed. Specifically, Timpanelli was talking about how state Democrats failed to rally behind Dodd earlier this year — how they seemingly did not know how to offer an endangered incumbent, a man who served for 30 years in the Senate and became a giant of state politics, any incentive to seek re-election.
“John Bailey would have offered him the world, and he would have given the world,” Timpanelli told me. When I mentioned this to Dodd, he agreed. “The party apparatus didn’t seem to be there or know how to handle this,” he said, speaking of the erosion in his standing.
Party bosses like Bailey are a thing of the past in Connecticut, as most everywhere else. So is the party loyalty they inspired. As recently as 1982, Democrats in Connecticut made up 40 percent of the electorate, with Republicans making up about 27 percent and unaffiliated voters another third. By 2010, Democrats actually slipped a few points, to 37 percent, while Republican affiliation fell to 20 percent. Some 42 percent of the state’s voters now identify themselves as independent, a number that has been rising for 20 years.
Connecticut in my parents’ day was the kind of state in which institutions really mattered — religious congregations and city newspapers and insurance companies, garden clubs and the Knights of Columbus, with their towering headquarters in New Haven. Connecticut voters, like voters in a lot of the country, trusted in an established order that seemed to be working pretty well for them, but then people saw their cities and their industries collapse, and even the Catholic Church was tainted by scandal, and elected officials started selling their services for home improvements.
And this is what makes a Linda McMahon possible here and in other parts of America — not just her millions of dollars or the crippled economy, but the sense that the establishment has lost its credibility. It is something McMahon, having built a megaentertainment business without the imprimatur of cultural arbiters, intuitively understood about politics. The more her party’s leadership tried to write her off, the more Democrats scoffed at her candidacy, the more viable she became.
I was discussing the mood in the state recently with Tom D’Amore, a former state Republican chairman who has long since bolted the party, when suddenly he told me a story about his father, an Electrolux vacuum salesman who smoked more than a pack a day for most of his life. “One day, it must have been in the 1960s sometime, he just quit,” D’Amore told me. “Cold turkey. I said to him, ‘Dad, why did you suddenly decide to stop smoking?’ And I’ll never forget it. He pointed a finger at me” — and here D’Amore demonstrated by grimly pointing one at me — “and he said: ‘The surgeon general of the United States says smoking can kill you. And they wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.’
“I mean, can you imagine anyone saying that now?” D’Amore asked me. “In that generation, government really displayed by its actions that it was a force for good.” He leaned back in his chair and shook his head.
“Nobody here thinks that way anymore.”
Matt Bai is a national political columnist for The Times and a regular contributor to the magazine.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)