Good news! St. Brigid's Church on Ave B has been saved by an anonymous donor. Maybe there is hope in Mudville after all. Rob Hollander, of Save the LES, sent the news and he is lining up interviews and TV cameras will be there today in front of the church. City Room has more info on the deal. I wonder, could the donor be Matt Dillon? That would be kinda hot. Especially if he shouted, "Do it for Johnny!" before writing the check.
Photo by William Alatriste
I've long loved the church because it is the butter-yellow beauty that inspired Frank O'Hara's Hymns of St. Bridget, as in:
"How funny you are today New York
like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime
and St. Bridget's steeple leaning a little to the left..."
--from Steps
(It had steeples until the 1960s.)
photo by Bob Arihood: see his great pics here
And here is another from Frank:
Hymn to St. Bridget’s Steeple
It is to you, bending limp and ridiculous, on Ninth
Street, that I turn. colder than usual after a summer
of lime and smoke. I think you are the first of Ireland’s
saints, or the last, it doesn’t matter you are my dream
of an actual winter with your icicle hat and your arms
which somehow seem square like something I couldn’t see but
guessed at in the last Reinhardt I looked at. It wasn’t
black, it was red, like New York if you’re waste and
contained, or maybe maroon, like my heart which I imagine
inside me, although it looks black to you, St. Bridget,
although it is quiet and in need of filling. Please tell me
what it means “to pump,” as if I were a well
growing upwards and into a steeple which someone who cares
names my own, for always to face the dullest wind,
and you should know, St. Bridget.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008
St. Brigid's Saved!
Orchard Corset Center
There are some places in the city I simply cannot penetrate. One of these places is the back room of the Orchard Corset Center. Featured in yesterday's Times, complete with an audio slideshow and the good news that the shop is thriving and under no threat of vanishing anytime soon in the shark-infested waters of the endangered Lower East Side, Orchard Corset has hidden depths that I will never see.
For that reason, when I visited the place earlier this year, I brought a somewhat reluctant female partner in crime. I made her try on brassieres while I waited in the plastic "man chair" by the door. Since she boldly went where no man (except proprietor Ralph Bergstein) has gone before, I will let her tell the rest of the story:
The shop was stacked floor to ceiling with faded, battered boxes of brands you never heard of before. The proprietor was a yarmulked man with hair that stood out perpendicular to his head, like a curly shelf, on one side. There were several buxom black ladies shopping. I decided to try on a couple of brassieres. To do this, I went behind a curtain into the back where there were more buxom ladies trying on brassieres. There was no room for me, so I had to go through another curtain, into the storeroom, where I was surrounded by more boxes.
I tried on the bras and the proprietess came to help. She showed me how the nipple should align with the shoulder, placing her fingers on said parts, marking point A and point B. Then she tried to make me a deal, like buy both for some cheap amount you could hardly refuse, except I didn't really like the bras. They made me feel like an alta kocker. They definitely looked like bras for an older lady--but without a fun, 1950s fetish feel.
Even though I myself would never buy these bras, I loved the boxes and the odd brand names and the fact that the saleslady knew more about breasts and bras, and how they fit together, than anyone at Victoria's Secret. The shop seems to cater more to buxom ladies--of which I am not--because the bigger-busted women in the store seemed very relieved and enthusiastic about what they were finding there. It was as if they'd discovered the mother lode of bras.
*Everyday Chatter
Hey Chris Stein, those Blade Runner days you were hoping for? They're coming to LA and no doubt heading east quick as condos turn into giant TV commercials. [Curbed]
Scary term of the day: "Eviction Mill." Read about the diabolical plan to take your home away from you. [Voice]
Bid au revoir to Florent in a big retrospective by Frank Bruni. [Times] via [Eater]
Remember when tents in Tompkins Square Park meant Hooverville? Not anymore. Not at $25o a head. [NMNL]
Every time I see this ad around town, I think it says: "Gentrification so instant, it already happened." Which is kind of exactly how it is:
The Lower East Side is declared endangered by the National Trust who says the Vongerichtification of the place "threatens to erode the fabric of the community and wipe away the collective memory of generations of immigrant families." [Gothamist] and more at [City Room]
Bleecker continues to die as Nusraty Afghan Imports, one of the last old-timers (circa 1980), is likely closing to be turned into another swank clothier. [Racked]
Thank goodness we have preservationists like John Varvatos among us. [EVG]
Another New Yorker falls victim to the unstoppable virus of condoschmerz. P.S. Isn't that plant place the one that sells men with cacti penises in their pants? [Colonnade] via [Curbed]
Check out this lovely visual assortment of anti-yuppie/gentrification graffiti--and the news that councilmember Peter Vallone is putting his energy into getting rid of it. [Curbed]
Where were the Minetta fans reading from Joseph Mitchell when I was there? Sorry to have missed it. [Chowhound]
Starbucks says no more vagina dentata on their coffee cups. [Eater]
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Requiem for the Toy Tower
This morning I found some time to go over to the 6B Garden and watch the Tower of Toys be taken apart. It was an oddly hypnotic, elegant sight to see. Eddie Boros' sculpture, I am happy to say, did not go gentle into that good night. It resisted. Plank by plank, rusty nail by rusty nail, it fought back against the chainsaw and the cherry picker. A tangle of wood, wires, ropes, toys, and other junk, the tower, in its undoing, was perhaps just as regal as it was in its making.
The man with the chainsaw pulled on a hobby horse and the animal refused to budge. He tugged a board and was confounded. He placed a few strategic cuts, sending down a shower of golden sawdust. He tugged again. The sculpture resisted. He cut again. Withholding, restrained, the tower surrendered a few bits and pieces, which the man sent plummeting with a crash to the garden below.
Man and sculpture became--and it may be too sentimental to say so--like a pair of dancers, or boxers, moving from strike, to clutch, to separation. He tugged and the tower responded by twisting and swaying. He bumped and the tower shimmied. And like a tease, now and then, the tower relented, giving up a plank of wood, a silver ball, a string of Christmas lights, a bucket of water that tipped and cascaded down the length of the structure, foamy and brown.
Gradually, the tower gave in to the man's patient cajoling and coaxing. That little hobby horse that had at first resisted him, now seemed to leap into the man's hands. A lover to the end, he did not drop the horse. He lowered his cherry picker to the ground and gently, gently placed the toy upon a green bed of flowers.
Dare I say it? The tower has gone out the way it came in--with poetry and defiance and a fair share of beauty.
*Everyday Chatter
The bashing of Park Slope has reached critical mass. God, I miss Dyke Slope. [Gawker]
This article by Lynn Harris is a must-read: "our feelings about Park Slope are linked to our feelings about our entire city: our overpriced, chain-store city run by bankers, socialites and, it seems, mommies. The artists are fleeing and your friends, it seems, have become Park Slope pod people. (And they’re coming for you, too.) It’s starting to feel as if there’s nowhere left to hide." [Times] More background: [OTBKB]
Okay, maybe I was wrong about the Emerman coming, but the Barocco Cafe coming to 9th is definitely "upscale" and will help to inch MePa that much further north. [Grub St]
A fascinating timeline of the de-evolution of the Meatpacking District. The tipping point seems to be 1999, a year prior to Carrie's eating of the fateful cupcake and coinciding with the opening of McNally's Pastis. [Shecky's]
By now, everyone knows Florent is dead in the water. But here's the joint's official "au revoir" signage, spelling out a clever FOR RENT (let Ralph Lauren pay the $70,000 a month):
photo: micawave
“Flipping burgers, or folding shirts at a clothing store simply are not appealing to today’s technology addicted, career-oriented teen" -- nope, instead, go-getter teens are going after your job this summer. Hey, they need it for their resume. Resume? I didn't even think about a resume until I was in my 20s. [CNBC]
Since when did Ann Taylor loft qualify as a threatened mom-and-pop? [Crain's]
Back to that waiting in lines thing, I just found this article in the Sun with a choice quote from psychologist, Robert Leahy: "Today people are very insecure about getting the right thing, and the easiest way to make a decision is to seek out what everyone else is buying. If they didn't feel like they had to fit in, and they just looked at what they value, they might make different decisions."
Ancient "Die Yuppie Scum" cry of protest returns to LES. [Curbed]
And for good reason, when yuppies dream of $175 burgers that will let them shit gold. [NYDN]
And when the old LES exists today only in remnants. [Times]
“Sex and the City, the former HBO hit about four single women devoted to designer shoes and other forms of self-gratification, is about to be released as a feature film. But isn’t the film out of sync with the spirit of New York at a time when people are scaling back?" [Times]
The Post introduces us to a handful of real-life, 21st-century, Carrie Bradshaw clones who, in absence of actual personalities, eat lentils and touch their breastbones over and over just to get that SATC look just right. [EVG]
Monday, May 19, 2008
Toy Tower Falls Today
My tipster tells me the Parks Department is in the 6B Garden right now and is dismantling Eddie Boros' Tower of Toys today until 2:00. They will continue tomorrow morning at 8:00 until it's finished.
The big orange cherry picker is picking away, dumping a piece of East Village history into the toy-gathering Dumpster of Death. Sob.
Just in: Curbed has lots of gruesome pics and reports the workers are letting tower-lovers walk away with souvenirs. Get 'em while they last!
As an aside, last week NY Mag offered an IM of mixed emotions about the tower. And may I say to Cristal that "it made me think of RENT" is not a good reason to love the Toy Tower. "Eek! Shit-covered toys hanging from the sky," however, is a pretty good reason.
*Everyday Chatter
11th and 2nd: I went to this oft-frequented bodega this weekend to find it suddenly eaten by its neighbor, Carerra wine bar. Another casualty in the war on East Village bodegas. I guess they're keeping the awning for irony--and to confuse people like myself who go looking for a Coke to sneak into a movie at Village East:
Just as Woody returns to film in the East Village, could the 2nd Ave Deli also be coming back? [Eater]
NYU backs off from total demolition of the Provincetown Playhouse. This is the second reprieve they've recently granted (Met Foods seems safe, too). I don't trust them. What if they're saving up brownie points for something really heinous? [Times]
A couple with a high-gloss crash/party pad, a glass box containing glass boxes decorated with 11 televisions and 0 books, say: "We don’t need to have books out. We know that we know how to read." I guess they don't know that they know how to watch TV? [NYMag]
This weekend, the annual Ukrainian festival carried on like a trooper in the dark shadow of a giant, scary crane and Cooper Union's ever-rising beast, to which they supposedly surrendered amicably:
Chinatown and the Lower East Side are under siege and the residents are screaming back. [Villager]
A 101-year-old metalworking shop leaves Soho to make room for yet another condo. [Times] And here's the movie version: [City Room]
May 22: Save Coney Island and say NO WAY to luxury high-rises and mega-malls as Thor's BS "Summer of Hope" kicks off. [GL] via [Curbed]
Christians are upset over "Slutbucks" new old logo. Told ya it was a big pagan vagina. [HuffPo]
