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Fran Lebowitz loves to talk -- so much so that when Martin Scorsese made a documentary about her he called it
Public Speaking. But before she was one of the world's greatest talkers, she made her name as a writer; first at Andy Warhol's
Interview and then with two collections of acerbic essays,
Metropolitan Life and
Social Studies. While a long-running writer's block limited her to an occasional magazine piece and two children's books, it liberated her voice to keep talking and developing into the type of personality that could only exist in NewYork City, specifically Manhattan, the only place she will consider living. An original gangster by any standard, she's completely self-invented and did it her way -- sardonic, entertain- ing, insightful -- inspiring a generation of humorists who followed. Even though Lebowitz is back to writing again (working on a novel she's been incubating), that doesn't mean she's stopped talking. On a recent summer day she sounded off on everything from Lena Dunham to gay marriage, and we did the only thing you really can do when Fran starts talking -- we listened.
New York, Mike Bloomberg and Rich People In Politics
I would say that the changes in New York that I most object to came under Michael Bloomberg, and I would have objected to these if I was 20 or if I was 12. The second that Bloomberg appeared on the political scene, I objected to him. Most people didn't know who he was so they didn't object to him, but I did know who he was, and I did object to him. I object to people who are rich in politics. I don't think they should be allowed to be in politics. It is bad that rich people are in politics, it is bad for everybody but rich people, and rich people don't need any more help. Whenever people say, "Oh he earned his money himself," I always say the same thing: "No one earns a billion dollars. People earn $10 an hour, people steal a billion dollars."
Tourists
Tourism as a number-one industry is a terrible, terrible idea for any city, especially New York. If you were going to turn a city, which is a place where people live, into a tourist attraction, you're going to have to make it a place that people who don't live here, like. So I object to living in a place for people who don't live here. As it became more and more intense, it became more and more a place where the actual citizens are pushed out to the edges. A friend of mine always says this: "I don't care what kind of aesthetic people have; the second they have a kid, their house becomes hor- rible." The second you have a kid, whether you think it's going to or not, your house becomes full of plastic junk. So this is the same with tourists. The city will sink to that level of having a house of three- year-old children, so they like certain things, they don't like certain things. And they like things that you don't like, or that I don't like. I do object to it. And I would like to see fewer and fewer tourists and I'm tired of hearing about how much money they bring to the city because the kind of jobs the tourists bring to the city are the worst jobs. They're hotel maid jobs, they're jobs that have no future to them.
Hotels
Everywhere that they put up a hotel, they did not put up an apartment building. Hence the housing shortage. Hotels are like anti-housing. To me, they're not only the opposite of housing; they are opposed to housing. They displace housing, and no one ever says this. Block after block, hotel after hotel after hotel. I remember Bloomberg, in one of his last acts that I recall as mayor, announcing at some opening of some hotel in Queens: "Who would've thought there'd be one million hotels in Queens?" No one, and you know what? There shouldn't be any.
Airbnb and Migrants
I object to Airbnb. I don't want these people to come here; I frankly do not care where they are staying. Stay home. Sometimes I walk around and go, "Go home." Doesn't anyone have a home? I think that at the same moment the country is at one of its high points of concern about migration, it is at a very low concern about tourists, and I would do the opposite. I would like to stand at the border -- I would volunteer -- and say, "You can come here, but you have to live here. If you're coming here for four days, you can't come. Sorry, let me give you a list of other boring places to go that you might enjoy."
Moving With 10,000 Books
I have made one bad real estate decision after another my entire life. Knowing this, I made a lot of effort to consult people who I believe to be intelligent in real estate. It made no difference. I made the worst decision of my life. Even if you're moving to an apartment that turns out being OK, like last time, which was only four years ago, if you have 10,000 books, it's a difficult undertaking. The more that you mention this to people, even if people know about it, the more you are criticized for having 10,000 books. I finally said to somebody the other day, "You know what? They are books. It's not like I am running an opium den for children. There's nothing wrong with that -- you may not want to have that, you may think that's crazy, but you cannot have a moral objection to this." Even real estate agents would say to me, "If you got rid of the books, you wouldn't need such a big apartment." And I would say, "Yes that's true, but what if I had four children? Would you say, 'Why don't you put them in storage, because you can't really afford an apartment for them?'" Basically my whole life, I've paid for these books. Buying them is nothing, but housing them is hard because they need a giant apartment. People say, "Why do you need such a big apartment -- do you throw a lot of parties?" No. It's for the books. I believe books to be the perfect companion. They're very good-looking, they're there when you need them, but it's not just the books. It's where they live, which is in bookcases with glass doors. I only put them in cases with glass doors because dust is very bad for books.
Moving to Brooklyn
I would never. Even though of course every time I have to hear, "You should move to Brooklyn." There are townhouses and brownstones in Brooklyn that cost millions of dollars, which is shocking, but that same house in a similar neighborhood in Manhattan-- twice the price. Why? Because it's closer. To where? New York. To where? Manhattan. Even though now, of course, I find myself in Brooklyn frequently because many people have moved to Brooklyn, still I come out of these places and I'm like, "Where am I? Is this east, is this west?" For someone such as myself with no sense of direction, I need New York.
The East Village
There are parts of the East Village that have something peculiarly New York: they've gotten expensive, but not safe. For this much money, I don't want to feel this unsafe. For this much money, I want to relax a little bit. This winter, I was walking over in the East Village one night in a snowstorm, and twice during my walk I was offered heroin by drug dealers. I thought, "Really? Are you blind?" Because at a certain age, drug dealers don't stop you on the street, just how construction workers don't whistle at you at a certain age anymore. The drug dealers hang on a bit longer than the construction workers do. So you forget about it, you don't think about it. And I thought, "Wow, there must really be some sort of recession among drug dealers."
Technology and Email
Everyone thinks I hate modern technology, and that is not true. I don't like machines, even older machines. I didn't have a typewriter. I never had any machines you didn't absolutely have to have, because I don't have any sympathy with them. I have a television, but I was forced to buy one of these new ones. I had a big television that was the size of a refrigerator, and no one could move it. They told me I had to buy one of those new flat-screen TVs. I told them I didn't want to, but I lost the fight. Then I was stunned because no one would take this perfectly fine, working TV, including the people who worked in my building.
Lena Dunham and TV
No, I don't watch
Girls, but I went to the opening where they showed the first three episodes. I think [Lena Dunham] is talented. I'm for her, which means I'm for
Girls in general. I don't know Lena Dunham. I always defend her when people say she's not that great. I tell them, "I don't know, I don't care, but let me assure you: the world is full of mediocre men who are stunning successes." She may well not be the most brilliant person that ever lived -- let's say she's not -- but these rejections are misogynistic, pure and simple. When I was that age, I did not watch television. We had sex. We were so promiscuous, we didn't have time to watch television. We didn't think of any consequences; we actually thought it was good for you. We thought drugs were good for you.
I don't sleep, so at four in the morning, I flip around on the TV. That's how I watch television. I used to always read before bed, but I couldn't sleep. It's too stimulating, so I thought I would watch TV since it's boring. I'm not knowledgeable about these shows; they're not on at three in the morning.
Movies
People don't like to go to the movies anymore, including me. I don't like to go to the movie theater because I cannot bear my fellow man. It's not that movies are bad; there are some great movies. I just can't stand the way people behave at the movies: they act like they're at home. I don't want them eating three-course meals, or talking. People used to be quiet at the movies. To me, the experience of being at the movies was that there was a giant screen.
I really go to very few screenings because you can't leave. If you do leave, people are so insulted. I don't want to sit there to avoid insulting someone. Even if you think you're slithering out the back, someone will see you. They will think you're criticizing the movie, which of course you are, if you're leaving. A long time ago, I decided: if you don't like the movie, leave. This is not a jail sentence.
Gay Marriage
The idea that those words are together is so hilarious to me. As I've said numerous times, I know that people wanted it, now they can do it in New York. I say "they" not because I'm not gay, but because I'm not getting married. In a million years I never would have thought of this. People always say, "You were always fighting for this, right?" No, I wasn't. I wasn't that kind of political activist. I never even imagined that anyone was even thinking about this, which I don't think they were in 1971. To me, this goes more along with the other ways in which this culture is how it was in the 1950s. For me, if you want to get married, get married, I don't care. I frankly don't understand why people get married. When I was young, nobody did. It seems to me so confined.
Legalization of Marijuana
I don't take any drugs, and I haven't taken any since I was 19; from 15 to 19 I took my lifetime supply. Everyone has an amount of time that they can consume drugs and alcohol, and you can either do it over 60 years or in a span of four years, which is what I did. I'm for the legalization of all drugs, not because they're all good for you, because they certainly give you the impression now that marijuana is good for you, like whole wheat. I don't really think they're good for you. I don't see them having a good effect on anyone I know and they didn't have one on me, although they work. They absolutely make people feel happier. My reason for them being legal is to take the crime out of it and to control it. I certainly know people who have been smoking the marijuana plant nonstop since the late '60s, and let me assure you, it definitely has an effect on your mind. These are not the sharpest people. It definitely has a softening effect on your mind. I'm even in favor of the legalization of heroin, which I know is a very destructive drug, mainly because I think people can do what they want.
Modern Times
This is an era of immense originality and innovation in machinery. Which is very sad to a person like me, because I don't care. I'm not saying it's a bad thing, but it's not interesting to me. These things weren't imaginable when I was young. It's almost as if all of humanity is concentrated on this, and we're being used for the transmission of these things; that's what bothers me. You're 25. Do something that angers me, or surprises me. Don't keep rediscovering things. Now the culture is made of old things, it's a collage. Art made out of art is not art. You're supposed to make art out of life. You go into studios and you see these mood boards or whatever? You think you saw that at Saint Laurent's studio? It's other people's art. I call that stealing.
Since 2008, former Hole and Smashing Pumpkins bassist, Melissa Auf der Maur, has been living in Hudson, New York with her husband, filmmaker Tony Stone. In 2010, the couple bought Basilica Hudson, a 19th century railroad foundry, which was later converted into a glue factory. Auf der Maur calls the cavernous space her "stack of steel and bricks"--her church and "beast of burden," both. But with the help of friends and collaborators, Auf der Maur and Stone established an annual music and film festival called 
Never stop, Snoop.
The majesty of the ass biscuit is rarely recognized. Thank you for this gift, manager. [
It was an honest mistake, Lisa. [
Fran Lebowitz loves to talk -- so much so that when Martin Scorsese made a documentary about her he called it Public Speaking. But before she was one of the world's greatest talkers, she made her name as a writer; first at Andy Warhol's Interview and then with two collections of acerbic essays, Metropolitan Life and Social Studies. While a long-running writer's block limited her to an occasional magazine piece and two children's books, it liberated her voice to keep talking and developing into the type of personality that could only exist in NewYork City, specifically Manhattan, the only place she will consider living. An original gangster by any standard, she's completely self-invented and did it her way -- sardonic, entertain- ing, insightful -- inspiring a generation of humorists who followed. Even though Lebowitz is back to writing again (working on a novel she's been incubating), that doesn't mean she's stopped talking. On a recent summer day she sounded off on everything from Lena Dunham to gay marriage, and we did the only thing you really can do when Fran starts talking -- we listened. 
When asked what was the inspiration behind Easternsports -- 
How did you decide to base the script around Thorton Wilder's Our Town?
AC: I think it is a critique of something else, but life imitates art and vice versa -- that something else is maybe what all of the characters in Easternsports are trying to define, us included.
AC:
This image is part of the four-channel projection from Scene 3 in
Easternsports. During this scene, several individuals perform rituals --
for meditation, for heroism, for transcendence, or for occupational
necessity. These men perform and reveal the absurdity of one particular
ancient ritual -- beer pong. Which raises the question, "What is winning if
losing is drinking?" and how do we win at masculinity? 
How would Hennessy Youngman describe Easternsports?
Fans of street art, graffiti and calligraffiti have a lot to see this week starting with your last chance to check out the incredible Martin Wong collection at 
Jose Parla's El Centro Habana
Venus Over Manhattan opens a group show of contemporary ceramics called "
Alexander Melamid opens a solo exhibition called "
Jeff Koons, Stacked, 1988, polychrome wood, 61 x 53 x 31 inches (154.9 x 13.4 x 78.7 cm). Edition of 3 + 1 AP. © Jeff Koons
Remember the artist Reza Aramesh's sculpture installation during FRIEZE New York 2013 at 5 NYC nightclubs? Well, now there's a book called "
Roxy Paine at 
DALeast at 
"tl;dr" by Cory Arcangel.
Salon 94 features a group show called "
We also love 
(Photo by Andrew Toth/
(Photo by Jimi Celeste/
(Photo by Jimi Celeste/
(Photo by Clint Spaulding/
(Photo by Jimi Celeste/
(Photo by Nicholas Hunt/
(Photo by Sylvain Gaboury/
(Photo by Sylvain Gaboury/
(Photo by J Grassi/
(Photo by Sylvain Gaboury/
Lee Quiñones • Howard the Duck, 1988 • Oil on canvas • Museum of the City of New York, gift of Martin Wong, 94.114.1
All the details on what happened 
Even the quails are like, "wut." [
Next Paper movie night! [
Bobby Solomon / Founder of 
Jason Polan / Artist / NYC
JiaJia Fei / Digital Marketing Manager at Guggenheim Musuem / NYC 
Mae Elvis Kaufman / Artist / NYC
Kalen Hollomon / Artist / NYC
Kimberly Drew / Communications at Lehmann Maupin Gallery / NYC
Elizabeth Huey / Artist / NYC
Ban Sanders / Artist / LA
Pari Ehsan / Founder of Pari Dust / NYC
Xavier Aaronson / Founder of Babes at the Museum / NYC