One of my faithful tipsters, Kingofnycabbies, sent in a few news items, including one about another long-time restaurant shutting due to quintupling (!) rent. After 37 years, the Delphi Restaurant in Tribeca has closed. Again, a place and people with strong ties to the community, in good relation with the neighborhood, must fall to make room for the upscale and the oversaturated. [NY Sun]
Queens residents are kicking themselves for not landmarking the LIC Savings Bank gem. [NYDN]
They're trying to evict a long-time resident musician from one-time artist enclave Manhattan Plaza for being too noisy. [NYDN]
Some good news: The city is set to landmark 7 buildings -- and 2007 has the highest number of preservations since the good old year of 1990: "it is the very speed of development that may have sparked the current wave of landmarking activity." [AMNY]
How about a little vanishing San Francisco? "Gayborhoods" like the Castro and NYC's West Village are vanishing as young queers seek cheap rents outside the city centers and the dominant monoculture rolls in like the Blob, swallowing all in its path. Such is life in America's melting pot. [NY Times]
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
a.k.a. The Book of Lamentations:
a bitterly nostalgic look at a city in the process of going extinct
- Jeremiah Moss
- THE BOOK:
"We should all buy Jeremiah Moss’s book, Vanishing New York." --Sarah Jessica Parker
“Essential reading for fans of Jane Jacobs, Joseph Mitchell, Patti Smith, Luc Sante, and cheap pierogi.” --Vanity Fair
"a vigorous, righteously indignant book that would do Jane Jacobs proud." --Kirkus Reviews
THE BLOG:
"the go-to hub for those who lament New York's loss of character." --Crain's
"No one takes stock of New York's changes with the same mixture of snark, sorrow, poeticism, and lyric wit as Jeremiah Moss." --Village Voice, Best of NY
“Jeremiah Moss…is the defender of all the undistinguished hunks of masonry that lend the streets their rhythm.” --Justin Davidson, New York Magazine
"One of the most thorough and pugnacious chroniclers of New York’s blandification." --The Atlantic, Citylab
"Hyperbolic and combative, tireless and passionate." --Salon
On the sax player in Manhattan Plaza, why are there limits on practice rooms in the building? Why can't the guy spend as much time there as he pleases? Anyone know?
ReplyDeleteIt's a shame that he's been censured, but there are limits to our noise tolerance. Yes, New Yorkers should expect a certain chaotic background buzz, and then the periodic siren, car alarm, or drunk pedestrian. But hours of the same note or scale sounds like a Rumsfeldian Gitmo torture tactic.
Before anyone accuses me of being a yuppie sympathizer, I should say that I'm a writer in an artist-friendly neighborhood. I also have noisy neighbors, a band that practices for hours. My other neighbors, a sculptor and an aspiring orchestra conductor, also can't stand the noise. When one man's craft interferes with another, it's not always a case of yuppies whining to the Bloomberg police state.