Playpen Gutted

Monday night, I went by to check on the Playpen and all was placid. Even a few lights were still glowing in the marquee. This afternoon, however, I found all the lights off and the theater being gutted against the protests of preservationists. The front windows have been sealed with black plastic, but I managed to snap a few inside shots through a tear.


view through the old funny store & into the theater

From the back alley, the open rear door of the theater revealed a Bobcat machine plowing through the space, kicking up plenty of dust.



I spoke to a worker who told me that the original interior cameos have been covered and protected and may eventually be removed for either preservation or sale. But everything else, he said, is just sheetrock, totally stripped. He expects exterior demolition to begin very soon, within the next two weeks. So much for that petition.

Just the other day I spoke to Orlando Lopes, New York Director of the Theater Historical Society of America, and he updated me on the fight to save the Playpen, a.k.a. the Ideal Theater, a.k.a. the Cameo.

He called the theater a significant part of early-twentieth-century moviegoing, “How many 1907 buildings do we still have that were silent filmhouses?” Not many. And this one’s in decent shape. The proscenium, the stud lighting, the details on the exterior, and the original cameos on the interior walls are (were) still intact. But the fact that the Playpen has been a porno theater for the past several years is a strike against it in the city’s heart. “This is no saving the Helen Hayes or Belasco,” Lopes told me.

The preservationists have been trying to act fast. Once the owners catch wind that preservationists are interested, Lopes explained, they often start ripping things apart. And indeed, the ripping has begun.

The Clone Wars, Part II

bionic fembot shares ad space with pod-person

The Times reviewed Bionic Woman this week, saying the show is "more about fembot martial arts and slick 'Matrix'-ish special effects than about character development." The main cyborg is described as sullen, ungrateful, dumb, unpleasant, and basically anti-feminist.

Yes, the robotification continues. Tipster KingofNYCabbies turned me on to this Visa ad, which I later found plastered up on a condo-construction wall. Shown below, it portrays our city as completely digitized, gadgetized, and pod-ified. He writes, "To do another remake of Invasion of the Body Snatchers would merely require a camera and a few hours shooting in contemporary Manhattan."



I covered the subject pretty thoroughly in this post on the Clone Wars of New York. As the clones continue their hostile takeover of our city, their methods are insidious and often show up in advertising. I'll let the visuals speak for themselves. But here's a question: Why so many fem-bots, yet no man-bots? Is this all the collective sexual fantasy of under-30 males who were creeping towards puberty during the time when Weird Science would have been showing repetitively on cable TV? And do women of that same generation aspire to be like robots? The images shown here are most certainly aspirational.


bionic condos: ipod docks in every home


svedka fembot sells bionics alongside soulless
sociopathic techno-girl


the next top models looking so very cyborgy

*Everyday Chatter

Real estate is apparently "the sexiest sport in New York." And it's played by a "wide variety of people," if "wide variety" means a preponderance of yuppies who work in finance and can afford to pay $1400 per square foot. Just for the record, that's pretty much the exact opposite of a wide variety. [Observer]

Why the city we love is being lost (see above) -- and one woman's plan to save it. [Queens Crap]

It seems like everyone's talking about this vanishing city -- first Time Out and now the Municipal Art Society asks, "Is New York losing its soul?" Find out the answer (as if we have to ask) October 3. [MAS]


my flickr

Cabs are getting checkered again. "Nostalgic New Yorkers [like myself] might get a kick" out of the new design. Take a peek here and see if you get a kick. [AMNY]

After a bit of back-and-forth, Mo Pitkin's decides to close up shop and sell the building, as of October 20. [Gothamist]

Sign the petition to save the Playpen. Petitions never seem to actually do anything, but it might make you feel good to sign it anyway. [Curbed]

Wooden Water Tank Tops NYU

This morning I was pleasantly surprised to see a brand-new Rosenwach water tank perched like a cherry atop the risen NYU tower on 12th Street. I say surprised because I think of the iconic wooden water tanks as lovely anachronisms, symbols of the old New York that is rapidly vanishing. Yet here it was, topping one of the most offensive new buildings in the East Village.

The city's skyline is filled with thousands of these tanks, most of them weathered to a pigeon gray by the passage of time. "You can't draw a New York skyline without water tanks," Wallace Rosenwach said in a New Yorker article on the company, "You look down from the top of a high building and see a sea of tanks. We're stupid enough to insist on manufacturing our own tanks. They last forever, unfortunately."

I like looking at the water tanks of this city's rooftops. They make me think of Edward Hopper's New York, though I can't recall that Hopper ever actually painted the tanks. If he didn't, he should have.

"The tank is an icon of the city. You can almost consider it to be a flag," says current Rosenwach Tank President Andy Rosenwach in this NY1 clip, "It has so much local color in a city of glass and stone."

These days, we could use a little more of that color.

• View an ode to water tanks here.
• Listen to an ode to water tanks here.

Bowery Flops

VANISHING



A recent walk down the Bowery had me gawking at the perilous-looking, piled-block, mesh-covered construction of the New Museum of Contemporary Art. It reminds me of a kid's Halloween-costume version of a robot, all clunky foil-covered boxes. Squeezing in between the Sunshine Hotel flophouse, kitchen supply shops, and a homeless shelter, this building is another big-shouldered intruder into the once-filthy Bowery, now a playground for the filthy rich.

I guess they think I'm one of them because they just sent me a fund-raising package asking to send them $1,000 so I can join Bowery Bash, the "glamorous, pre-opening party celebrating downtown and the arts." Hmm. I don't think it's in my budget.

This map from New York mag is already out of date, but it shows how complete the transformation of the Bowery has been. For anyone who still believes that the changes here are gradual and natural, take another look. They are driven, they are targeted, and they are relentless.


sunshine in the shadow

What will become of the last remaining flophouses and the men who flop there? Bigger Apple explored that question back in 2004 when the owner of the Sunshine Hotel told the Times that, though he couldn't stand the stink, he would not sell the building and evict its remaining homeless residents. Soon after, City Limits reported that he began offering the men money to leave, a couple hundred bucks according to one resident, barely enough to survive for a week. And this was all three years ago when the giant museum was still a design on paper.

The squalor that once protected neighborhoods like the Bowery from total destruction no longer scares away the affluent and ambitious, who must be well-practiced in the art of denial and turning a blind eye, or else they turn squalor and misfortune into art installations. The museum might be covered in mesh, but its patrons will be sheathed in Teflon. At least until the Sunshine and the rest of the old Bowery can be swept away.

• The swank Bowery Hotel charges $450 per night. Quips the Times, "So what if you might have to step over a few vestigial bums to get there?"
  
• ForgottenNY takes a walk up the Bowery.
• Listen to a sound portrait of the men of the Sunshine Hotel.
• Take a look at Sammy's Bowery Follies.
  

a starbucks may be coming to this corner

*Everyday Chatter

The dealers may no longer stand on our street corners singing "dope, smoke, dope, smoke," but apparently you can still buy drugs "at the phone booth on Stuyvesant Street and 9th Street." [9th Precinct]

Community Board 3 is trying to save the Bowery from further development, but the towers keep coming. Another is set to plunk down near 3rd Street. Says one rent-stabilized resident who's been here since 1980, "My landlord said I should get ready to leave because he's had offers on the building." Words that strike fear in the heart of every long-term renter, myself included. [Villager]

Even the real estate investors are getting sick of the development onslaught. Says one, "Let Manhattan be just one big bullshit skyscraper. Tower of Motherfuckin' Babel. But for douchebags." [Curbed]

Kids on a Condo

9/30 Update:
This post was featured in Chelsea Now's "Buzz" column and they supplied some more info on the topic.


click image to read

Original Post:
The exterior of the condo building at 18th St. and 8th Ave. is finished, complete with a bank on its first floor where there used to be a popular cafe/restaurant.

Now the spot is most popular with the throngs of thuggy teenagers who spill out of the high school on 18th every day. For weeks they've been flocking to the condo's comfy slate ledge, where they perch, preen, and agitate the afternoon away, smoking cigarettes and spilling sticky cola onto the slate.


my flickr

Recently, a hysterical little fence of yellow caution tape went up. I can only assume that the tape is meant to keep these kids off. How long do they think that will work? These kids are a force to be reckoned with. If you've ever tried walking those streets after school has let out, you know what I am talking about.

That non-Jonathan-Adler-approved tape can't stay up forever and when it comes down, these kids and all their friends will take their seats once again. I, for one, get a big kick out of seeing them there.

*Everyday Chatter

Bill O'Reilly visited Harlem's soul-food mecca, Sylvia's, and was shocked to find it was "like going into an Italian restaurant in an all-white suburb." His crazy racism aside, his comment points to Sylvia's turning into just another doughy-white Olive Garden, as the City Room describes. [Media Matters]

The Flower District loves us, it loves us not. This fragrant and inviting part of town is abandoning pricey Manhattan, petal by petal. [AMNY]

Parts of the Domino Sugar plant have been landmarked. Sadly, the lovely yellow sign was not included. [Gothamist] HDC Voice puts in their two cents.

Angry villagers are ready to storm the gates of Marc Jacobs. [Racked] West Village Kid sums up the scene.

Tour Queens with an urban geographer. [NYT]

Williamsburg declared Condoburg by graffitists and satirists. [GL]

Here's a nifty tagline for the new Sex & the City movie: "turning a new generation of young female New Yorkers into cold, hard bitches, and keeping a new generation of young male New Yorkers from getting laid." [EV Idiot]

Out-of-control rents bring the grim reaper to the Upper West Side. [AMNY]

A friendly neighborhood mom-and-pop postal shop is being forced out for high-end retail. He's looking for a new, affordable space. May I suggest: Ohio? [Noho]

San Gennaro Feast

VANISHING?

a common plea in this new New York age

The San Gennaro feast, along with summer, has again come to an end. Gawker takes a look at where the carnies will go next and I wonder if the feast will return next year, as the neighborhood changes and the complaints from the locals mount.

This past spring, Community Board 2 voted not to provide the feast with a permit, claiming that nobody in the neighborhood likes the feast anymore. It's hard to tell who "nobody" is. Is it the Italians who've lived there for generations or the new gentrifiers? Some opine for the days when the mob ran the feast like a well-oiled machine. Others just hate the inconvenience and messiness of this traditional cultural festival.

Walking down Mulberry today is to see little trace of Little Italy. It's more like Little Hamptons. I moved through the crowded feast along the sidewalk, walking between two very different worlds: the backs of the carnival tents and fried dough carts and the plate-glass windows of high-end boutiques.


a boutique shopper with her back to the feast

"The people who objected to the feast, they knew about it before they moved in," said local pastor Fabian Grifone in the Villager. "It’s been going on for 80 years. If they didn’t like it, they shouldn’t have moved here."

As our neighborhoods change, so do our community boards. This happened in the Meatpacking District. When people with money began moving in, they pushed out the transgender prostitutes and queer clubs. Now some of them regret that move. Having upset the equilibrium of the neighborhood, they cleared a broad path for the hordes of drunk, conspicuously all-consumers to swarm right in.

I think something similar is happening to Little Italy. When you remove the mob and the other community members who kept the area neighborly, functioning, and appealingly "quaint," you invite the chaos and cold-heartedness of the narcissists and their suburban shopping-mall mentality. It's all part of the middle-Americanization of NYC -- which means: mainstream white, suburban, non-ethnic, definitely not Catholic, not too Jewish, kind of WASPy, and infused with a constant urge to buy, buy, buy. So say bye-bye and arrivederci to Little Italy!



You can read the relevant minutes of the community board meeting here and here.

*Everyday Chatter

Tune in today to find out the winners for the title of Worst Building in New York. [WNYC]

A commenter sent me this article about the new 200 11th condo in Chelsea. It has elevators that enable you to bring your car home with you every day -- straight into your apartment. "It's like suburbia in the sky" -- just more evidence that the new New Yorkers despise New York and everything to do with city living. [Wired]

View Manhattan before the first gentrifiers arrived. [New Yorker]

"In about 10 years, at the current rate of population turnover (not including deaths and births), New York City will lose over one-third of the people living here now. Will you be that one in three?" I just might be. According to this report, those who fly the coop are flying far away. Sometimes, I think this is a fantastic idea. [Observer]

This condo ad is, unfortunately, not a satire. [Curbed]

"there are more than 10.5 million cell phone subscribers in New York City alone, meaning our on-the-go phone chatter makes up 12 percent of the country's overall cell use." And every single one of them is yakking it up within earshot of me. [AMNY]

The new newsstand clones hit the streets. [DE] And here's more on Dave Herman of the City Reliquary -- I gotta meet this guy. [FNY]

They're remaking The Taking of Pelham 1-2-3. I predicted this one when the original showed recently at Film Forum. Unlike anything made in the past decade, all the characters in that movie are like real people. They're paunchy with bad skin and speak in authentic NYC accents. What grainy 1970s city classic is next to be given a scrubby makeover? Midnight Cowboy? Taxi Driver? [Gothamist]

Robo-Hotel in Williamsburg

Is this real or is it a brilliant satire of today's soulless New York culture? It is, thankfully, a joke/art piece. But god it seems so real, they totally had me. I was having one of those Orson-Wellian "War of the Worlds" moments.

The satirical site for the Platinum Empire Cove luxury development in Williamsburg rivals/copies the uber-fascist site for the Platinum in Times Square. The copy is so mind-blowingly accurate.

DeRobertis Pasticceria & Caffe

VANISHING? No way.



The Times got it right when they said that walking into DeRobertis Pasticceria & Caffe on First Avenue in the East Village "is to enter the Italian immigrant experience of the early 20th Century." The tile floor and pressed-tin ceiling are original and not much has changed here since 1904. The shop is still run by the family, and granddaughter Annie was kind enough to chat with me about its history and future.



Annie's family is a local institution. Her father’s father started DeRobertis and her mother’s father started Lanza’s restaurant down the block. Annie first went to work in the shop when she was 11, folding cake boxes and filling cannoli by hand with a knife. I found her on a quiet Friday afternoon sitting in the cafe, reading about city politics in the Post and wondering aloud if she shouldn't just go back to Bari, where her grandfather came from.

She remembers the East Village when it was still filled with Italian and Jewish businesses, whole shops dedicated to single products: pork, fish, freshly made pasta that hung in the windows. “Eleventh Street was all butchers and chicken markets,” she told me, “I used to go with my mother. I was terrified. My mother would pick out a chicken and, boom, they killed it right there.” She recalls the First Avenue Market as a whole world where you could get everything: cheese, clothes, stationery, fabric, buttons, pickles, hats. And the East Village was a place where no one locked their doors. “I’d go into your apartment and leave a note: I borrowed your sugar. And did you care? Of course not.”



The neighborhood has changed tremendously since those days and especially so in the past few years. I asked about her experiences dealing with the newest immigrants to the East Village, the young and affluent. She told me about impatient customers who whine about waiting in line, ignore her help as they talk on cell phones, then want service "right away, right away, right away." But worst of all are the Starbucks people:

“People come in and tell me I don’t know how to make cappuccino," Annie said, incredulous. (She's only been making the beverage for 50 years.) "They tell me, 'Starbucks makes it this way.' I tell them, 'I’m here before Starbucks.' They want flavors. I tell them, 'I got flavors. You want a flavor? I’ll put it in.' Put it in? They look at me," with a look of disbelief. "Do these people really think the coffee bean grows in flavors? Like it comes in hazelnut and mint? These are people with college educations. But they want Starbucks. So I tell them, very nicely I say," with a wave of her hand, "So go to Starbucks.”

After 9/11 it seemed the older people moved out and the younger ones moved in. The traditional Italian pastries don’t do as well as they used to. Millefoglie and sfogliatelle aren’t as popular as the “fancier stuff” that DeRobertis offers, like their many mousses introduced by head baker, Tony, who came from Ecuador and has been with the store since he was 18. He’s family now.


John & Annie

There’s a lot of La Famiglia in this family business. Annie’s nephew John helps her and her brothers run the shop. He’s fourth generation and counting. The family owns the building and, thankfully, no one’s interested in selling. Every year, 35 members from all 5 generations gather on Thanksgiving for a big dinner in the cafe. They bring food and warm it up in the baker’s ovens down in the basement. I asked Annie if she thought the store would last through the next generation.

“Like my father used to say,” she told me with a shrug, “It’s here if they want it and if they don’t, what can I do?”

*Everyday Chatter

Gossip Girl rapes and murders Manhattan -- and continues the Plain-Janeification of our city. [MO]

Starbucks set to clone itself and double in size. [Racked]

This weekend Mosaic Man Jim Power destroyed one of his own East Village mosaics, enraged and disheartened by life in this vanishing neighborhood. [NMNL]

While on one hand NYC mayoral hopeful John Catsimatidis bemoans the high rents that are driving his Gristedes and other supermarkets out of business, and as he fights eminent domain to keep the Second Ave Subway from taking his store, with the other hand he's evicting a popular neighborhood health clinic from the Bronx. The Jessica Guzman Medical Center just can't pay the rent hike. I guess Mr. Catsimatidis knows how they feel. [NYT]

New York State gets a big fat "F" for its failure to reform eminent domain laws, according to this report card from the Castle Coalition. [CC]

Bakeries

The Times reported recently that Italian bakery Morrone & Sons has closed in East Harlem after over 50 years of being part of the neighborhood fabric.

Earlier this summer, the Lower East Side lost Gertel's to an 8-story condo. AMNY has a wonderful slideshow of a place filled with history, where tea was once five cents and hot water was free: "So the old men would bring in their own tea bags, drop them into the free water, and then sit for hours talking about the war."


photo: AMNY

Lost City has some rather heartbreaking photos of the Village's vanished Zito Bakery, which closed in 2004 for a variety of reasons, including rising rent, the high cost of coal, and the war on carbohydrates. Images like this one from Berenice Abbott are only ghosts today:



All these vanishing Italian and Jewish bakeries make me think of two classics in my own neighborhood: Moishe's Kosher Bake Shop and DeRobertis' Pasticceria, both of which haven't changed in years. As the glass towers rise all around them, I worry for these little family businesses. So I stopped recently at Moishe's for a bag of hamentaschen, which comes in apricot, raspberry, and poppyseed. They also have delicious breads -- challahs, pumpernickels, ryes, and more. From the forlorn look of their sign, I think it's time to hurry and taste what Moishe's has to offer.







Today I took a seat in DeRobertis' tile and pressed-tin caffe for a little cannoli and a long, pleasant chat with proprietor Annie. Come back again to read my interview with this vibrant, long-term member of the East Village community as she discusses the changing neighborhood and the future of her century-old shop.

Suburbanization & Anti-semitism?

With further evidence that New York is going suburban, the Observer reports on the rapidly growing car culture of our city and Streetsblog gives their analysis on this process of Californication.

Who are these car-lovers? They're young people from the suburbs who like everything to be easy, convenient, and under their control. And, perhaps most shockingly, they don't want their lives to be too urban. Says one: "I don't think you need a car...but I think it's definitely a plus. And it definitely makes me feel more...well, not like such a city person." Writes the Observer, "For reasons both deep and ineffable, these young transplants just can’t help bringing suburbia with them."

This is clear from their love of not only cars, but Home Depots, Cold Stone Creameries, golf, anti-intellectualism, conservatism, and all the other trappings of suburban life that currently plague our streets. But what I find most baffling is why anyone would move to the city if they explicitly did not want to be a city person. And what exactly does "city person," uttered like a dirty word, really mean to these people?


American Apparel ad: L.A. Curbed

When I think of driving and New Yorkers, I think of the scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen's character, Alvy Singer, regresses to his bumper-car youth. Real New Yorkers, he was letting us know, are too neurotic to get behind the wheel of a car. Real New Yorkers walk or ride the subway or take cabs. If you want to drive, move to L.A. -- about which he famously said, "I don't want to move to a city where the only cultural advantage is being able to make a right turn on a red light."

The people who drove cars in Annie Hall were WASPs who loved or longed for suburban life. Which brings me back to my burning question: What keeps New York's new masses of suburban transplants from wanting to be city people? If Alvy Singer could speak from that American Apparel billboard, he might answer with these lines from Annie Hall:

the failure of the country to get behind New York City is anti-semitism… Don't you see? The rest of the country looks upon New York like we're left-wing Communist, Jewish, homosexual, pornographers. I think of us that way sometimes, and I live here.

Funny how that pretty much describes precisely the New York that is today being eradicated by suburban, assimilationist, middle-American values.

Starbabies, Lost Markets, Lost People

Is the city really going to allow Libeskind to plunk a luxury condo on top of the 100-year-old landmark MetLife clock tower? [NYMag]

Starbucks is seriously considering a baby-size cup so they can hook the next generation of addicts, I mean, customers. [MSNBC]

Scary quote: "the backbone of the city is weakening as hundreds of thousands of teachers, cops, firefighters, bus drivers, security guards, transit workers, barbers and administrators - a big slice of the people who make the city go - give up on New York every year." [NRA]

The city is snatching Moore Street Market from gentrified Williamsburg's Hispanic community. Says the local reverend, "They've taken the apartments, the churches, the stores, the shops.... The Marqueta is all we have left." [AMNY] For more outrageous loss, check out AMNY's Endangered New York slideshow here.

The former and once-gloriously stinky Fulton Fish Market might become a market for artisanal foods. [NY Sun]

East Siders are justifiably wary of a new mega-development that promises (wink, wink) to "create an open inviting riverfront destination that the entire neighborhood and city can enjoy." [AMNY]

What would Jane Jacobs think of the way we live now? Find out at the Municipal Art Society's new show. [NYO]

Coney, Carlyle, NYC's Soul

A new lease on life for Coney Island? Looks like there's a chance Ruby's and the gang will stay through 2008...keep those fingers crossed. [Gowanus Lounge]

Cell phones in the subway stations? Dear god in heaven, is there no peace? At least the tunnels are safe, for now. [NYT]

Cafe Carlyle reopens. It was a stuffy, WASPy joint, but it's also a classic of old New York. And who doesn't love Eartha Kitt? [NYT]

St. John's continues to try and force its dorm into neighborly Jamaica Estates, but the folks aren't having it. [Daily News] [Queens Crap]

Time Out tells its readers where to find Manhattan's remaining soul -- so they can run right out and kill it. [TONY]

It's the second announcement of a Barnes & Noble closing--this time it's the Chelsea B&N on 6th Ave. [Curbed]

Fighting Phallus with Phallus

trump soho ad: got narcissism?

Against laws both moral and civic, against the protests of citizens, and with blessings from our government, the Trumps are erecting their massive tower for affluent part-time residents who want to "possess" our city. Celebrating his most recent triumph yesterday, Trump looked down at the people protesting his plans and said, "The Trump SoHo is a very, very special building. It’s by far the tallest building in SoHo."

Though I applaud their efforts, I'm not sure that clever signs from 50 angry New Yorkers can stop such a force of phallic competitiveness.

Maybe they should fight fire with fire and whip out their own members as this gentleman did yesterday in a very personal "protest" of mega-condo One Jackson Square. Here is a photo of the lone activist zipping up after making an impressive puddle on the condo's property.



While workers were setting up the scaffolding around the site and continuing to chop up the asphalt, cops hassled the homeless guys who've made the scruffy park across the street their home for years. As predicted, now that the money's coming in, the current residents of Jackson Square are being forced to hit the road.


more pics on my flickr

Hey Tourists: The East Village Is So Cute!

The Times Travel section has kindly invited tourists from all over to take a swagger through the charming East Village, a place filled with cute dogs, cute dolls, and cute kids who hang out in Tompkins Sq Park with their cute Hello Kitty bags.

They write:
"There's even a fancy-schmancy new boutique hotel to stay in: the Bowery Hotel, which opened in February on what was once America's most notorious skid row. Its residents in the early 1900s could have lived (and drunk) for a year on the $500 or so it will cost you for one night's stay."

"For just hanging out, there's Tompkins Square Park, known in the East Village's bad old days (1988) and really old days (1874) for riots, and today for its pleasant greenery and ultrasocial dog runs."

How adorable.

Trump, Dump, & Undulate

Protest to dump the new Trump, Wed morning [GVSHP] UPDATE: Plenty of protestors (well, 50) showed up--maybe there is hope that the people who truly do love NYC, and not just the status of being the biggest and tallest, can organize and prevail. (Though I, for one, am not holding my breath.) [City Room]

Ground breaks on new super-condo One Jackson Square. The digging machines have rolled in, the trees have been felled, and half the street is blocked off. Say goodbye to this particular patch of sky and get ready to undulate. [Pics on my Flickr]

New York Shitty posted a lovely shot I took this past weekend and Miss Heather has some insightful commentary to go with it. [NYS]

This week's Time Out cover asks the big question: Has Manhattan Lost Its Soul? The answer, of course, is a resounding yes. [TONY]

For a truly vintage movie-palace experience, you have to go to Jersey. The Loews opens its season with a trio of classic anti-heroes: Stanley, Clyde, and Cool Hand Luke. [LJ]

Annoying hedge fund manager vs. berserko broker: The spin-class grudge match goes to court. The city's only hope is that people like these destroy each other. [Gothamist]

Aminova's Barber Shop

Aminova's Barber Shop, along with other merchants in the Essex Street Market, has apparently been targeted by the New York City Economic Development Corporation for vanishment. That's too bad, because you can get a good cheap haircut at Aminova's while you enjoy the unusual decor -- walls covered with dozens of clocks.



From the NY Sun:
"the EDC is looking into ways to convince non-food-related stalls, such as Santa Lucia Religious, which sells a variety of knickknacks and religious objects, and Aminova's Barbershop, which has one barber chair and a barber from Uzbekistan, to leave the market. 'During hard times, a lot of these other stalls moved in,' Mr. Figuereo said. 'Some of them might not get to stay.'"

"Ways to convince"? It all has the sinister tone of a Hollywood gestapo: "Ve have vays of convincing you not to schtay..."



The best thing by far about the Essex Street Market is the diversity of shoppers and merchants, an eclectic and harmonious mix of races, classes, and ages. It actually feels like New York City in there -- how shocking! But the new urban order dictates total uniformity and monoculture. It will not tolerate deviation in any corner of the LES. So get your Uzbeki haircut, religious candles, and other unacceptables before the joint is full of nothing but Big Brother-approved gourmet cheeses and artisanal meats.

Salvation, Baby Narcissists, Bowling

The Christian Salvation Army is evicting long-term residents from their female-only low-rent buildings to score a multimillion-dollar deal. What would Jesus do? Not this, certainly. [Curbed] [NYT] [Tenants' Blog]

More Christ-like than the Christians: Reverend Billy comes to the Highline Ballroom, October 7, for the Hot and Holy Highline Revival. [Rev Billy]

Okay, so this is exactly how narcissists are created. [NYMag]

The latest expatriate of NYC's brain drain, Horton Foote departs due to rising rents. You'd think that winning the Pulitzer, plus a couple of Oscars and Emmys, would help you earn enough to stay. So much for our city being the center of any kind of culture other than shopping. [Chelsea Now]

A bowling alley opens in Brooklyn, the first in 50 years. It looks comfortably retro, but the prices are strictly hipster. [Gothamist] Here's a little history about NYC's life at the lanes. [Bowery Boys]

Some good anti-condo graffiti. [Curbed]

And what's up with that psychedelic bus parked near Astor Place? [OFFO]

Ghost Signs & Essex St. Market

Ghost Signs are those old painted advertisements that you see here and there, high up on brick walls across the city. As new buildings rise to fill the available air space, these vestiges of the former city are disappearing behind walls of glass and steel, if the bricks aren't demolished outright.



We lost Seely Shoulder Shapes when the block between 40th and 41st on 8th came down for the Times tower. Griffon Shears has been partially obscured by a condo in Chelsea. The other day I passed this Baby Ruth ghost sign (circa 1930) over a construction site on Delancey. We can predict that by year's end this sign from the past will be concealed from view.

I also "discovered" a couple of vintage signs, right in the Essex Street Market. Schapiro's has been on the LES since 1899 and this little stall is their last remaining toehold in the neighborhood. Their jingle (in Yiddish) proclaims a wine so thick you can cut it with a knife. Ruhalter's has been in the area since the 1920s and great-grandson Jeffrey still cuts the meat.





Finally, a visit to the market's abandoned other half for the eerie funhouse-style installation by artist Mike Nelson revealed an old neon sign high up by the ceiling. This installation was a treat to walk through and it's a good opportunity to visit city-owned Building D before it may be turned into someone else's vision of prosperity.

10th Street Demise Update

A few weeks ago, Curbed passed on a rumor that the former art gallery and DeKooning studio buildings on 10th Street might be demolished for high-rise construction. Horrified at the thought, I went by and asked some shop employees what they knew about it. I was assured that they checked and double-checked, and buildings number 90, 86, and 84 are safe from demolition. That is excellent news.



However, they also told me that the corner Green East bodega and the building that houses the former St. Marx Music (formerly formerly the Atlas Barber School) are slated to be razed to make way for a high-rise luxe hotel.

O Humanity, Affluenza, Diner Death

Kids today are flustered by human contact. NYU tries to remedy the situation with a class entitled "Facebook in the Flesh," where an instructor explains that in-person meetings happen "in the same space” instead of in the different, distant spaces of the Web. Face-to-face communication? It's not an easy concept for kids raised by a narcissistic culture. [New Yorker]

Feeling foggy? It could be Affluenza. Some anonymous snarky artist has created a billboard spoofing the condos and clones of NYC. I dialed the number and got a very confused secretary at Forest City Ratner, the folks who are eating away like rats at our city. [Curbed]

Another vintage diner is falling to high prices and high rises. I never visited the Market Diner, but it sounds like it was pretty fabulous--I mean, Sinatra, faux snakeskin upholstery, and egg creams all in the same place? Is there any other heaven? [City Room] [NYT]

Coney Island, where are you going now? The tug-o-war continues. Gowanus Lounge announces a meeting to join the Save Coney group and an open letter from sideshow hero Dick Zigun.

How Jewish-Socialism begat Hilly and Hilly begat CBGB's and CBGB's begat...the CBGB's retail store. [Jewcy]

The Clone Wars of New York

A couple of recent commenters to a NYT's City Room post discussed the new type of New Yorker thusly:

"What once were streets filled with people who actually spoke to each other, now replaced by androids."

"I only wish whatever laboratory that is manufacturing these creatures would install a chip in them that would make them a bit more, well, human...there should be a massive recall."

I like this android idea and after writing this post on the Randian, Nazified-Nietzschean uber-urbanites, I am seeing this android imagery everywhere. In the Svedka vodka ads. In the mannequins in windows of high-end boutiques. In the undulating, silvery chill of the new condo buildings shooting up all over town. And in the Borg-like way people wander the streets symbiotically attached to technology -- strapped into headsets, clinging to handheld devices, plugged into wires as if they were life-giving IVs.


wired

This is all emblematic of what I think of as the Age of Narcissism. According to a recent study by professor and author Jean Twenge, "young people born after 1982 are the most narcissistic generation in recent history." Years ago, the slogan was "Don't trust anyone over 30." Now it's the under-30s we worry about trusting.

The android imagery suits the narcissists very well. They have no empathy for others. They see people as interchangeable, one the same as another. They throw items of value away, believing they can always get more. Here we can see how narcissists are attracted to disposability, easy access to objects of desire, and cloning in their environment. Sameness, uniformity, and countless xerox copies feel safe to them.


the repetition of steely perfection fences the site of a condo-to-be

Narcissists are created by other narcissists, parents who use their children to inflate their own grandiosity, and who fail to provide empathic mirroring. Their true selves ignored and unseen by self-absorbed parents, without a mirror to reflect one's authenticity, the narcissist does not develop a secure sense of self.



Without this sense of self, the narcissist goes through life hungry for mirrors. Unfortunately, our narcissistic culture fails them, just like their parents did, and provides only more warped mirroring filled with fluff fantasies of unachievable, superhuman ideals -- images that feed the corporation, not the consumer, who must continue to consume without ever feeling full. The superhuman ideal is pushed to extreme, where it becomes inhuman, mechanized, sleek as glass, invulnerable as steel, clean and vacant as ipod whiteness.

And there's our android image -- a self-replicating bot that multiplies and spreads like a virus. More narcissists equals more and more narcissists.





It's no wonder those condo buildings are sheathed in reflective surfaces. Like the android-style mannequins in shop windows, you can see your own image, however carnivalesque, in their silvery skins.



Is this the chilly home and the cool mother that the Yunnies recall in their most primitive memories? Is the Svedka fembot, with her icy titanium tits, the uber-mama for this new generation of New Yorkers? There is a solution. We must bring back another New York tradition that has been steadily vanishing from our city: Psychoanalysis.


svedka fembot: metal carved into ice, by gawker

Playpens, Carousels, Strippers, Dicks

I've reported on the closing of the Playpen a couple of times. NYT's City Room last week had a story about the marquee going dark and now Curbed alerts us to a fledgling, last-ditch movement to save the theater building. I wish I could say I felt hopeful. You can find all the info about the movement here at HDC Voice.

Burlesque has been deemed "grossly inappropriate" for the "less permissive environment" of the new, more conservative Lower East Side. So long Forty Deuce. [Daily Burlesque]

Looks like the B&B Carousell might yet be restored and returned to Coney Island [Gowanus Lounge]. Historian Charles Denson recently told me it's currently in storage at the Brooklyn Army Terminal, a place worth visiting.

In the East Village, Dick's Bar, shuttered for months, will not become another bank branch as predicted. It will, however, become another bar. (Also predictable.) This morning I snapped a few pics through the window. Here is more info if you want to speak up about it at the community board meeting.

We didn't need a study to tell us that rich people are staying put in NYC while poor people are leaving. The shocker (to me, anyway) is that "poor" is defined as earning between $40,000 and $60,000. And I thought I was doing alright. [Yahoo/Reuters]

At Astor Place, Mosaic Man Jim Power lets folks know there'll be "Hell to pay" if the city moves his 9/11 memorial planter. Go get 'em, Jim!

Newsstands

They are vanishing, turning into ticky-tacky boxes, according to this article from the Times City Room: "The common city newsstand, a bit of ungainly but plainspoken street furniture largely unchanged from the days of Berenice Abbott, has begun to give way to a sleeker version — arguably far more handsome and certainly far more corporate."

Handsome and corporate. We should ask much, much more from our city. Or else all we will continue to get is this constant attack on our eclectic, vibrant, urban "hodgepodge of unattractive things" (as Bloomberg calls our streets).

Many of these newsstands have stood for years, passed down through generations of vendors. But big business rules and you can't win the fight against City Hall. Or can you?

These words, from Jackie Kennedy Onassis, were spoken in response to a (thankfully defeated) plan to demolish Grand Central years ago. They still hold true today:

"Is it not cruel to let our city die by degrees, stripped of all her proud monuments, until there will be nothing left of all her history and beauty to inspire our children? If they are not inspired by the past of our city, where will they find the strength to fight for her future? Americans care about their past, but for short term gain they ignore it and tear down everything that matters.... this is the time to take a stand, to reverse the tide, so that we won't all end up in a uniform world of steel and glass boxes."

McHale's Sign Salvaged

photo from aboutmattlaw

I posted on McHale's when I began this blog, but recently stumbled upon its signage, thanks to this flickr stream. Apparently, the vintage neon sign was up for sale (a couple grand) somewhere on 26th Street. I'm not sure if it's still there. If anyone knows the fate of this sign, please let me know.

As for the former McHale's site, this monster condo rises from the rubble, a 43-story "power residence." The advertising imagery makes me think of Randian heroes, titanic John Galts who view free-market capitalism as the way to individual triumph. This isn't the only place Ayn Rand pops up these days. Are we in a new Randian age? Or is it the Nazified Nietzschean ideal of the Ubermensch that is overtaking our city? I am thinking here also of Thor Equities, named after the Norse warrior god celebrated by the Aryan Nation. I'm not the only one who sees the Uber-Nazi imagery here, Lost City takes an earlier look.



What world is this where power-hungry, hard-muscled men and women stride out of sportscars to ascend into flaming Babelian towers of steel? According to the Platinum website, it's a "rarified world etched in water and fire, stone and glass...and power." Who wants to live like this?

Gordon Novelty Shop

VANISHED



Opened in 1934, it has been closed for years, and while we could not step inside to shop for X-ray Spex and whoopie cushions, we could still walk down Broadway and enjoy the wonderful old facade of the Gordon Novelty shop. I took these photos in 2003. Now this nostalgic signage from another age has vanished. Today a tipster let me know that the building has been covered with a big Thor Equities sign. I went by to take some new pictures.



The front has been totally stripped. No more golden-lettered Bazaar Items, Chinese Lanterns, Noise Makers, and Joke Items. The building is for lease. Coney-destroyer Thor has struck again with his deadly hammer.

If you'd like to buy a letter from the sign, Thor will sell it to you for $200.


this photo by jschumacher

Radio Row

VANISHED: 1966

"Who's afraid of the big, bad buildings?" Ada Louise Huxtable wrote of the World Trade Center in 1966, "Everyone, because there are so many things about giantism that we just don't know.... The Trade Center towers could be the start of a new skyscraper age or the biggest tombstones in the world."

It sounds like an eerily prescient metaphor, but in 1966 the grave those towers marked was of a 13-block area known as Radio Row. "They were not killed, but they were the first victims of the World Trade Center," writes Syd Steinhardt in this article on the death of a once-vibrant mom-and-pop neighborhood. The article is filled with details about the shops and the merchants, many of whom died as "broken men" after having their livelihoods snatched away by eminent domain.


photo from flickr

Radio Row's plight brings to mind current struggles in Willets Point, Atlantic Yards, and elsewhere. And while today is a day to remember the victims of 9/11, it's also a time to think about the state of our city. New York is not threatened with destruction only by outside terrorists, but also by attacks from within, from politicians and businessmen who seek to wipe out a way of life.

Many people call for a replacement of the towers. They want to put things back "the way they were." What if we really put things back the way they were? What if, instead of erecting more "big, bad buildings" our city created a viable space for small businesses like those that were destroyed in the 1960s -- and continue to be destroyed today?

This, of course, will never happen. Memory is short, money is king, and big always wins out over small. But sometimes it's good to remember that New York was once more humble and no less great for being so.

For more information on Radio Row, check out NPR and the Sonic Memorial. For new information on digital memorials to 9/11, go to NYT.

Banks & Girls

PROLIFERATING

If you want to predict which neighborhoods are becoming cleaned up and gentrified the fastest, just look for banks and girls.


girls & the former 2nd avenue deli chase

Via the Times, a new report on the recent massive proliferation of bank branches in New York reveals that the wealthiest neighborhoods get dumped with the most banks. (Curbed is also keeping track.)

According to recent statistics, New York has about a million more single women than single men. The New Yorker has an interesting piece on "girl counting." It seems that "the presence of women indicates civic health," as they are less likely to tolerate foul odors, homeless people, or crumbs on tabletops.

The bank report does not include the East Village/LES on their 20 wealthiest list and no one seems to be counting girls in my neighborhood, but it isn't difficult to see that the LES is awash with bank branches and young single women.

I am not sure what to conclude from all this, other than that the presence of smelly homeless people and messy crumbs will undoubtedly continue to decline on the Lower East Side.

Quiet Cab Rides

VANISHING

Tipster KingofNYCabbies sent me an article from the Post describing the video consoles that will be standard in all NYC taxis in the next six months. Thankfully, these things come with off buttons, but it's another example of the overculture stuffing us with more noise and distraction.

When quiet is eradicated, we will have no time or space in which to think, to self-reflect, to analyze, to critique. And that makes us much easier to manipulate and control.

Can noisy distraction become addictive? I am thinking about the people who shared my Greyhound bus back from Massachusetts this weekend, many of whom seemed unable to shut up, turn off their phones, or turn down the volume on their ipods. I am thinking about the crowd of Yunnies who greeted me upon my return home at 1:00AM and acted like they did not hear my polite "excuse me" as I tried to move past them on the sidewalk they blocked. Heavy suitcase in hand, I raised my voice with a more forceful "excuse me." They parted reluctantly, one of them mocking, "Now there goes an angry traveler."


photo: NY Post

New York is a noisy place. Its siren songs and horn-honk cacophony have been celebrated and reviled. But there is another noise that is seeping in. It's a noise without rhythm, without the Broadway Boogie-Woogie that keeps New York shuffling. With its hobbled one-sided conversations, its headphony static, its TV-commercial assault, it's the noise of no one paying attention.

In a cab, on a bus, on the train, we are given a rare gift. Trapped by the necessity of travel, we have what is known as free time. We are permitted to pay attention, to take in our surroundings, to connect with others in a public way, and to process our own internal machinations. But cell phones, laptops, WiFi, Blackberries, video consoles all conspire to rob us of this free time. Many of us choose to be robbed -- because we have been trained to believe that to be alone with our thoughts is terrifying.

Yes, those taxi-cab video consoles have an off button, but how many New Yorkers will actually choose to push it?

Astroland, 9/11 Art, Death of a Great American City

Coney's Astroland saw its last day yesterday [Gowanus Lounge]. Or did it? Thor just received an ultimatum. Check out the overheard inside scoop. [Kinetic Carnival]

It's official: Bloomberg despises all that is good about New York City. [NY Sun] [Lost City]


art from howl fest

The Mosaic Man's 9/11 memorial may be smashed by the city. I guess street art in the New East Village is only acceptable if it's part of a controlled festival like Howl. [NMNL]

Where are you, Jane Jacobs? We need you! First she fled to Canada, then she died. But her memory lives on in a Municipal Art Society exhibit opening 9/25. [MAS]

The plight of the Breslin Hotel residents makes it to the pages of the Gray Lady. Is anybody listening? [NYT]

Vanity Fair redefines "Boho" -- now that the bohemians of New York have been pushed out, Boho stands for the luxury Bowery Hotel, natch! [Vanity Fair]

Old buildings lengthen your life. [HDC]

Ginsberg's Howl

This morning NPR visited the Howl fest in Tompkins Square Park and broadcast this little story which you can hear here:



I arrived home from vacation just in time for the final day of Howl. I have to say I have avoided this festival since it began in 2003. I was lucky to be a student of Ginsberg's and the Howl fest always seemed like a museumification of Allen and the former East Village -- like the way the vanishing Ukrainian population is now memorialized in the Ukrainian Museum on 6th Street. Once a culture gets a museum or a festival, you know it's over.

Much of the vendor area at Howl looks like those ubiquitous street fairs or scenes from a suburban mall. They take AmEx, Visa, and Mastercard. The Carl Solomon Book Expo was going on and one table of books featured titles on casseroles, lighthouses, and golf. Perfect for the well-heeled Stepfords now taking over, but these images do not say "best minds of my generation" to me:







Still, there were other vendors: the Bowery Poetry Club, ABC No Rio, St. Mark's Bookshop, the Yippie Museum, Punk magazine, and One Gun Press.



One Gun Press is run by Sally Young who has lived in the East Village for several years. She's got photographs going back to the 1980s, a documentary on local legend Eddie Boros, and these great t-shirts featuring silhouetted images of cranes and condo constructions with the words, "East Village: Come See What's Left." Sally gave me permission to post her email address so folks can send her orders -- she'll even do a little customizing, so drop her a line at sallysonegun(at)gmail(dot)com for t-shirts, the Eddie Boros DVD, and more.

In the end, I discovered that the Howl fest is not totally bereft of originality. But what does it mean when a philosophy and a way of life is turned into a party of fun and shopping sponsored (in part) by real-estate development companies? When Howl is just a slogan on a t-shirt, I have to ask, W.W.A.D.? What would Allen do?

Yankee Stadium

VANISHING: 2009

Admittedly, I am not a Yankee fan, but even the most apopleptic Yankee hater has to love the House that Ruth Built. Born in 1923, it's the third oldest park, after Fenway and Wrigley. But New York despises the old and celebrates all that is young and new. Like Shea Stadium, and like the elegant and elegiac Polo Grounds and Ebbets Field, Yankee Stadium is coming down. Already, the cranes are raising its replacement.


photo from urch

At least New Yankee Stadium will still be called Yankee Stadium, instead of something inhuman like Virgin Mega-Field or Starbucks Park. However, they'll sell naming rights so a company with deep pockets can dub the joint "Yankee Stadium at (corporate name) Plaza."

The local residents are not happy about the new stadium, but I can't tell how fans feel about it. Other than one polite New Yorker and this baseball fan, I haven't come across many complaints. What's that about?

Still, in this essay, writer and Dodger fan Pete Hamill makes a strong plea, arguing that "places contain memory, too" and we "shouldn't have to remember what used to be, as limousines deposit sleek strangers on their journeys to the skyboxes."