The Plaza Hotel/Condo is dead, an abandoned house where the lonely megawealthy roam the halls alone, forced to eat pizza with the security guards. Here we see the future of a city in which, with the poor to middle classes kicked out, much of its population will be out-of-town investors who are simply never here. This is the ghost town New York is destined to become. [Times]
OTBs closer to closing. I've said this before: Will some brave and talented photographer please visit all of the OTBs in town and capture the people and the places before they're wiped off the city map? April may be the deadline. [Gothamist]
Jeopardy answer: Like SOHO before the Bratz turned up. What is the LES? Mmmm...too late. [Curbed]
Rich kids say living on the LES is "like waking up in the apartment you partied in the night before." How about waking up where a bunch of bratz partied the night before? Which I experience every morning. [Observer]
As local grocers are replaced by condos, so says New York to its poor: Let them eat arugula! [Wash Post]
A message from Eisenberg's--It's enough already with the New Year's resolutions, time to eat some good greasy food:
Alex in NYC recalls the first eyesore dorm to land on the East Village, way, way back in 1993. [Flaming P]
"The Neighborhood Is Dying"--says activists in Gowanus/Carroll Gardens. [Gowanus L]
The closing of Sacred Heart School in the Bronx, due to financial constraints, is breaking the hearts of many generations. [NYDN]
Coney Island's B&B Carousell gets whitewashed over as Massey Knakal's trying to rent the space for $9500/month. [Coney I] via [Curbed]
SoYo? Give me a break! When are people going to get over that stupid naming convention? Anyone that calls Spanish Harlem "SpaHa" needs to be dragged into the streets and shot dead.
ReplyDeleteI have a question that is off topic.
ReplyDeleteJeremiah, is that you in the photo on the right hand side of the blog?
that's robert deniro as travis bickle in taxi driver--the man i channel as i express my rage about the city and its people (in a far less bloody way than he).
ReplyDeleteThanks for the link. Yes, this is a drag. Why is it that all these developers can imagine as worth going to is an imitation of trendy NYC?
ReplyDeleteI spend a lot of time up in South Norwalk, CT & my boyfriend & I get a certain amount of bitter amusement out of their "SoNo" district.
When I saw this - it was just, like, "No! No! NOOOOOO!"
As a person with some roots in Hawaii, I'm starting to worry that one of these days I will open the Honolulu Star-Bulletin page & see a headline - "Honolulu changing name to HoNo! Property values expected to quadruple!"
Seriously, though - I will be doing at least one more post on this.
On the plus side - word from my YPRC friends is that the city does want to leave their club where it's been for decades.
On the minus side - I hear the proposed development is about 6 times the size of this "SoYo" thing.
Long story short - nobody at that meeting was against development - just against density, and taking one of Yonkers' most remarkable assets (that view, that view) and sealing it off from the people who have lived there for years.
The Cooper Union dorm was hardly the first eyesore dorm in the neighborhood, as both of the NYU dorms on Third Avenue had long been in place and assaulting all onlookers years before Cooper added insult to injury.
ReplyDeleteWhat in heaven's name is a SoYo? It sounds like a frozen dessert. What is the matter with real estate people? Wait, I already know the answer.
ReplyDeleteI recently wrote a gentrification post, and it's the same themes: these moves are like slaps in the face.
ReplyDeletehttp://thejosevilson.com/blog/2008/02/20/gentrifuckation-part-1/
tell me what you think ...
Comment #1:
ReplyDeleteDid you know that some people are now referring to Washington Heights as "WaHi"? Syllabic acronyms are just an unstoppable juggernaut now.
well it can't be worse than what some people call the Williamsburg area now:
ReplyDeleteWillyburg.
I'm done.
And thanks for the link.
a "cool" sounding name does not make one chic or sophisticated, nor does it develop underdeveloped personalities.
ReplyDeletea generation "raised" in soulless suburbs ventures outward for something real, but instinctively gravitates towards the fake. the world worsens and whitewashes itself to keep up.
keep these cretins away from cuba.
I live in Chicago and recently saw an advertisement for some new building on North Avenue that used the term "SoNo." I laughed out loud.
ReplyDeleteIn San Francisco, Realtors have been furiously trying to re-dub the Pan Handle/Western addition neighborhood (both fine, practical names for the area,) as NOPA (North Of the Pan Handle.) Soon enough our cities will all read like text-messaged promo-copy.
ReplyDeleteLoving the comments.
ReplyDeleteSounds like we all say NoNo!
hi - just in case anyone was interested in a little more on the Alexander Street meeting I went to when I first spotted SoYo - I did finally do a short writeup.
ReplyDeleteBeen a little pressed for time so it wasn't what I'd originally planned, but it's better than nothing.
soyo = soYonkers
ReplyDelete1980's carcentric style waterfront development in 2008.
notice they have no public transit going to this area, a privatized spot,
even has a water taxi and valet parking for the restaurants.
they butchered the histrionic Yonkers city pier to build the restaurant's on the top level, in classic Yonkers tradition the city leaders tried to sneak in a hearing for the pier privatization and redesign while It was on a list for NYS historical preservation's , the restaurant owners and the city pushed in thoroughfare to a unknown hearing in typical yonkers style, IT was on the list to be granted historic status, but the developers got it started the week before,