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The Settings of MANHATTAN .45 #2: El Morocco

El Morocco is long gone, as are most of the speakeasies that had their beginnings during Prohibition, like the Stork Club and the Cotton Club. The 21 Club survived until 2020, closing as a victim of COVID and never reopening.

But the speakeasy scene remains alive and well in New York City. An example is Apotheke, located at the elbow of a dark alley in Chinatown known as “the Bloody Angle,” whose claim to fame is that supposedly more murders have been committed there than at any other corner in America (see accompanying photograph—not a place one would willingly wander down late at night, although this author has managed cocktails there multiple times and survived; the hanging panel inscribed with the deceptive “Chemist” is the bar’s only signage). The Raines Law Room in Chelsea is another example: a dozen uninviting steps down from a dirty sidewalk leads to a plain black door with a bell push, but on the other side is a different world: dark, intimate, sophisticated, and the cocktails are well made. There are many others scattered across Manhattan, mostly below 42nd Street. The common theme is that they are small, tucked away in odd places, often beneath street level, either ambiguously signed or completely anonymous, and they don’t encourage drop-ins.

Outside the strictly speakeasy scene, Manhattan bars have evolved in odd ways not often encountered elsewhere. For example, they’re sometimes associated with performance. “Trust & Life,” immersive theater on an industrial scale, has a bar occupying their big former banking hall complete with historic WPA murals and brass teller windows still intact, behind which the bartenders take your order. The bar scene at “Masquerade”—formal wear required—is frankly a better spectacle than the show. These performances can get personal: at “The Clown Bar” this author had to comfort one of the clowns who began crying on his shoulder; at “Trust & Life” a more congenial task was to unzip an actress; and when leaving “Masquerade” the coat check lady laughed at all the lipstick from when one of the girls in the cast got carried away.

Then there are the hotel bars. The modern boutique hotel scene began in 1984 when native New Yorker Ian Schrager, freshly released from prison following the collapse of his Studio 54, and perhaps feeling the need for more upscale accommodation, opened the Morgans Hotel near the library of the same name. Now, forty years later, the world is awash in Morgans knockoffs, but NYC moved on long ago: Morgans Hotel closed in 2018.

The current trend in New York is not for modernism but singularity, and the fashionable establishments now either occupy or build quarters that will distinguish them architecturally, so there are superb bars like the Swan Room at Nine Orchard (in the 1912 Beaux-Arts Jarmulowsky Bank Building, illustrating the old) or like the under-the-see-through-swimming-pool lounge at Dream Downtown (an example of the new). The focus is not on comfort or convenience but pure style. A recent stay in the Empire suite at the Standard Highline, a top-floor corner set of rooms bigger than most Manhattan apartments, revealed a wall-length built-in bar in the main room, a secondary bar in the bedroom, presumably for mixing nightcaps without having to rejoin the party, multiple lounging areas with magnificent views through the floor-to-ceiling windows, and an excellent audio system—but there was nothing so everyday as a desk, nor even a coffee maker.

Then there are extravagant one-night-only black-tie affairs that often recall movie sets—a scene from The Thin Man, say, or Eyes Wide Shut. And, lastly, there is the ongoing round of cocktail receptions, exhibition openings, charitable galas, and the like. These are sometimes associated with the financial world, occasionally the musical, or directly with charities in which one is expected to not leave without writing a check, but the best are part of either the fashion or art worlds. When these two combine, the result can be a blast, as with the after-party following the global premiere of the movie “Simply Ralph,” held at the Met’s Temple of Dendur.

In summary, the old Prohibition-era speakeasies might be gone, but New York remains a pretty good drinker’s town.

By the author, ago

The Cars of MANHATTAN .45 #1: Auburn 851 SC Boattail Speedster

Lola Deshaines’s Auburn 851 SC (supercharged) Boattail Speedster represented a pinnacle of automotive achievement in 1936. To begin with, it had great presence, equal parts elegance and aggression (see accompanying photograph). It was also very fast. The threaded chrome exhaust pipes flowing down from the hood hint at the powerful engine, a hefty 4.6-liter straight-eight that was supercharged and produced about 150 bhp—a lot in those days for just a two-seater, and enough to break many a speed record at Bonneville (e.g., fastest flying start mile at 104.17 mph, and fastest over 1,000 miles at an average speed of 102.77 mph). Each individual 851 Speedster was driven at over 100 mph before leaving the factory and had a plaque mounted on the dash to certify it:



It was a superb sports car, but who could afford them in the Depression?—Auburn ceased production in 1937.

Strange to say, 851 Boattail Speedsters are still manufactured: several companies offer modern replicas, mainly for the SoCal market.

Photo credit: HymanLtd.com

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The Cocktails of MANHATTAN .45 #1: Plutoniums or Plutonia?

When used to reference the element with atomic number 94, plutonium is an uncountable noun and therefore has no plural form. In MANHATTAN .45, where Dorothy gives the term a second meaning as a type of cocktail, it is now reasonable to ask, as did she, what the plural should be. Invoking the grammatical principle of declension—meaning different noun forms, depending on context—and taking as a template the homoeoteleutonic (same ending) word stadium—which according to both Merriam-Webster and the OED is pluralized as stadiums in everyday usage, or stadia in strict academic or formal usage—both forms would be correct. So, “I prefer Plutoniums,” when, say, casually comparing cocktails, but “Two Plutonia, please,” when ordering them at the Plaza Hotel’s Palm Court.

The Plutonium cocktail was invented by the author. Here is the recipe:


☢ 4 oz. Physic Gin (distilled in Oxford using botanicals foraged from the plot across from Magdalen College, originally the “Physicke Garden”—hence the gin’s name—but now known as the Oxford Botanical Garden). If Physic Gin can’t be obtained, The Botanist, widely available, is a good substitute.
☢ 1 oz. L.N. Mattei’s Cap Corse blanc (don’t substitute another aperitif; the quinine in Cap Corse is what makes the cocktail radioactive)
☢ A dash of Lavender Bitters (the Original Lavender Bitters from scappysbitters.com, a Seattle maker, is a good choice)
☢ Shake well with plenty of ice and serve straight up with a generous twist. Serves two



An historical oddity: according to the OED, the term plutonium was first used in 1816 by the scientist Michael Faraday. How could this be, over a century before plutonium was discovered in 1941 (or, more accurately, when Glenn Seaborg first synthesized plutonium in a Berkeley cyclotron, since it doesn’t exist in nature)? Seaborg, following the example of uranium, named the new element in honor of the then recently discovered planet, Pluto.

In 1816, Faraday referred to “plutonium” in a letter to Edward Daniel Clark, but apparently he meant the element lately discovered by Humphry Davy, barium.1

1. “Faraday0067a,” in Ɛpsilon: The Michael Faraday Collection accessed on 10 June 2026, 
https://epsilon.ac.uk/view/faraday/letters/Faraday0067a 

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The Settings of MANHATTAN .45 #1: Empire State Building

The Empire State Building, despite recent vandalism inflicted on Manhattan’s skyline by poorly conceived new construction, remains the dominant Yang (assertive element) in the Yin and Yang of New York’s skyscrapers (the Yin, or cool element, being the Chrysler Building). See the accompanying photograph, contrasting the Empire State’s calm, confident dignity with its twenty-first-century neighbors. The strange jumble of off-kilter prisms to the left, seeking attention like some vacant online influencer, is One Vanderbilt; the uninspired pile to the left of that, which would have been more at home in a provincial Chinese city, is the new Chase headquarters. The building in the foreground with the flag is the former Port Authority building, a facility occupying an entire block in Chelsea, and which is now owned by Google—thus the big a/c units visible on the roof, cooling the many servers inside.

The shot was taken from the Standard Highline’s aptly named Empire suite.

MANHATTAN .45’s cover photograph of the Empire State Building during a spectacularly threatening sunset was captured from a corner office on the top floor of the nearby Socony-Mobil Building at 150 East 42nd Street, itself an architectural landmark.

By the author, ago

On the MANHATTAN .45 image

The black-and-white photograph on the website’s main page, reproduced here, is an AI-generated image that took as its text input descriptive phrases from Chapter One of MANHATTAN .45.

Apparently, the AI generator could not understand “pillbox hat,” nor any variation such as “brimless hat” or “Jackie-Kennedy-style hat.” Moreover, it seemed determined that if the dame was to be seen smoking, then so too must the detective, although, somewhat surprisingly, it understood “Zippo lighter” just fine. Despite these limitations, it has to be admitted that the image captures the overall mood of the first chapter well.

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On Psychological Novels

What is a “psychological novel”? It means one in which the author laboriously details characters’ thoughts, analogous to the “voice-driven novel,” which means using dialogue instead of action to move the story along. Both terms are really modern publishing code for dumbing down. The underlying premise is that readers are too dull to figure things out for themselves, so it all has to be spelled out. Both forms are very popular today.

Here is an excerpt from a 2021 lecture given by the late American philosopher Fredric Jameson, and published in THE YEARS OF THEORY: POSTWAR FRENCH THOUGHT TO THE PRESENT, page 48:

“…pure consciousness…is what Sartre calls freedom. It’s not a very pleasant idea…and it is a very difficult and demanding kind of system. That’s why psychology is of no use to us. Psychology is a kind of a lie. The psychological novel. What are my characters thinking now? That’s all made up….Pure consciousness doesn’t have a language.”

No doubt there will be many readers delighted with this panning of psychology. It’s notable that Jameson considered the statement “The psychological novel” as sufficient to convey disdain, despite the absence of a verb.

So it is that JOURNAL OF THE SUPERNOVA generally avoids anything along the lines of “He thought…” or “She thought…” although not so much for philosophical reasons as simply the principle that the story itself should reveal thought. Explicitly spelling it out is, to this author’s sense, lazy writing and dreary reading.

By the author, ago

On the Met Gala

The Met Gala, held a week ago last Monday, is supposedly the world’s “most prestigious and glamorous event.” What is not well known is that it supports not the Metropolitan Museum as a whole but just the Costume Institute, a distinct entity within the Met. The event is organized by Vogue, and that publication’s long-time editor-in-chief, Anna Wintour (famously portrayed by Meryl Streep in the thinly disguised roman à clef The Devil Wears Prada), co-chairs the institute. There is usually an associated exhibition, and this year’s—“Costume Art”—was a major one, displaying about 400 items and introducing the big new galleries directly off the main hall. This past Monday, a week after the gala, there was a cocktail reception for the show’s opening, and it was preceded by a lecture from one of the curators. The lecture was startling.

The exhibition’s purpose was not, as might have been expected, to display art. No, we were informed that the purpose was to show that all body types are equal. That is, the exhibition was to be prescriptive, instructing us on the virtues of equivalence: everything’s as meaningful as everything else (or at least must be pretended to be). This sort of social agenda-pushing is not uncommon today, although one doesn’t expect to encounter it at the Met. It can be at the level of whole peoples: primitive societies allegedly being equivalent to Western civilization is a common shibboleth, as if Eskimos were on the verge of E=Mc2 when Einstein just beat them to it, or Aborigines had narrowly missed arriving at the Moon before Apollo 11. Individuals, too, are supposedly equivalent, although one may be hard-pressed to see that the bum peeing on a wall outside Grand Central is in fact as intelligent as a professor and as productive as a magnate. So it is now in art: ugliness is beautiful, we are told, and disabilities are enabling—it all sounded like something from Orwell.

After such an introduction, one feared that the show would be very dull, but in fact the artworks spoke for themselves, as good art always does, and in contrast to the everything-is-equally-valid palaver beforehand, the exhibits were often engaging, sometimes striking, and operating entirely on their own individual terms, unaware of any claim that they were in the service of some imaginary collective kumbaya. The pieces were distinct, disparate, and irreconcilable with political correctness, running the gamut from classic glamorous beauty to a Poe-like body-horror (see accompanying photograph, two blood-red and veiny Yuima Nakazato-designed gowns that Morticia Addams might wear, should she intend using her pruning shears on you instead of the roses).

To put it bluntly, the exhibition itself metaphorically blew a big raspberry at its organizers.

But the bad taste from that introductory lecture would not go away. A curatorship at the Met is supposed to be a pinnacle of art scholarship, and one would have hoped for higher standards of academic objectivity and intellectual rigor. This 1984-style newspeak has spread deep into the sinews of society, and is symptomatic of what drove Urquhart into self-imposed exile.

By the author, ago

Is the Pirelli Calendar still published?

Yes, “The Cal” has been in production since 1963, with gaps 1975-83 (cost-cutting following the oil crisis) and 2021 (coronavirus pandemic).

The first one was shot by Terence Donovan, who is probably best remembered today for creating those two iconic Robert Palmer music videos of the 1980’s: “Simply Irresistible” and “Addicted to Love” (pictured)

These days, the Pirelli style is more portrait than pinup, and not always sans vêtements—the fictional calendar conforms to this trend.

By the author, ago

On “The Waste Land”

“The Waste Land” has often been interpreted in a framework of spiritual angst, a view based in part on the many religious references, and perhaps also Eliot’s own uneasy embrace of High Anglicanism five years after the poem’s publication. But when you examine it more closely, this is not really supported by the text. The religious allusions are mostly from the Vedas or Buddhism, fueled no doubt by Eliot’s studies at Harvard, and are not so much in the form of religious faith as moral philosophy. To this author, “The Waste Land” is not at all concerned with religion but instead with what could be characterized as the Nothingness part of Being and Nothingness (not yet written, of course)—that is, it is not spiritual; it is existentialist. Existentialism is not religious; it is anti-religious—Sartre was militantly atheistic. In this context, religion could be characterized as something of a plug that people employ to shut out Nothingness, that is, to paper over a sense of purposelessness vaguely perceived but too difficult to dwell upon. This helps account for the strange anomaly of the universal agreement that “The Waste Land” is a great work, despite the fact that no one seems quite able to explain why. The key, I think, is in the Quixotic grandeur of the quest: “The Waste Land” seeks to look Nothingness full in the face, and this gloves-off determination to do so is the real source of the poem’s power. It also explains the notorious obscurity: the text is operating at the extreme limits of understanding, a place where language, shaped by the quotidian cares of everyday life, necessarily flounders. Hence poetry; in prose form, “The Waste Land” would be ridiculous.

One can’t trust Eliot on the matter. Consider his odd note to line 199, “I do not know the origin of the ballad from which these lines were taken; it was reported to me from Sydney, Australia.” This sounds unlikely and, moreover, deliberately worded to sound unlikely. In his analysis, scholar Lawrence Rainey concludes, “this note may not be serious.” Eliot was prone to scattering a little sand in the eyes; for example, in the note to line 46 he delicately admits to having “departed to suit my own convenience” in making up [Tarot] connections; and line 356’s pseudo-academic note—“factitious,” according to Rainey—referring readers to Chapman’s Handbook of Birds of Eastern North America, where they will find a misattributed quotation supposedly elucidating the line “Drip drop drip drop drop drop drop.” I think these oddities can be attributed to Eliot’s wry sense of humor—one mustn’t forget that beneath the buttoned-down Establishment Englishman there always lurked the genial Midwesterner, not opposed to a gentle prank or two, even in the greatest of all modern poems.

In Floreat Lux, “The Waste Land” is introduced when Sabrina reads it in the forest while leaning back against the dragon plinth—it is not an accident that the really weird stuff begins at that point. The aim was that “The Waste Land”’s sense of uneasiness and menace should be present throughout the remainder of the narrative, and occasionally this is explicitly emphasized through episode titles taken directly from the poem (“A Game of Chess,” “The Fire Sermon”) or alluding to it (“The Unreal City,” “Unburying the Dead”).

These notes on the poem are being penned at the beginning of April, appropriate given the famous first line, but actually the timing is coincidental. “The Waste Land” is a constant thing, a little nugget that lies just beneath the surface of consciousness, subtly shaping thought when thought runs in those directions. This author has three copies of it, which sounds obsessive but isn’t: the first is part of a collected edition purchased decades ago; the second is Rainey’s excellent 2005 study and annotation; and the third was a gift, a limited edition printed on handmade paper and signed by Eliot himself (signature pictured, and in that simple autograph we perceive again the plain Midwesterner, no?)

“The Waste Land” is frequently characterized as the greatest poem in Modernism, but in fact it might not even be the greatest of Eliot’s. Try watching the film of Ralph Fiennes reading Four Quartets, something done during COVID when there wasn’t much else for an actor to do, and see if that’s not the most engaging thing you’ve seen on the screen in a long time.

By the author, ago