A month ago, there was this ragged chunk of facade, still with hearts and arrows carved into it--reminders of the RSVP Club--hunkered down below the glassy hulk of the Standard Hotel, where a chandelier shines in the utmost flight.
The first floor ceiling still stood. A lone worker tore it apart, using his bare hands to shred what was left.
Next door, a ghostly remnant of the old meatmarket glowed golden in the light from a caged bulb. GOLDEN PACKING INC., CO. said the transom glass, webbed with chicken wire.
Today, the whole building is gone, cut down to the mud. Only Noury's graffiti continues to point out a massive crack he claims was caused by the Standard's construction.
The hearts and arrows have been ripped away. And unless that plywood is protecting it, we've even lost GOLDEN PACKING. What happened to the window, a wayward slip of the jackhammer? There's nothing to see here anymore. The last few artifacts, lost bits and pieces of a decimated civilization, have been all yanked out.
4 comments:
I agree, but "decimating a civilization" seems to be gilding the lily just a bit.
wow, I have photographed and wondered about the Golden Packing sign forever. Gone with the greed
Ugh, this hurts.
To quote Wikipedia:
The area was dubbed the "East Village", to dissociate it from the image of slums evoked by the Lower East Side. According to the New York Times, a 1964 guide called, "Earl Wilson's New York," wrote that "artists, poets and promoters of coffeehouses from Greenwich Village are trying to remelt the neighborhood under the high-sounding name of 'East Village.'"[1]
Newcomers and real estate brokers popularized the East Village name, and the term was adopted by the popular media by the mid-1960s.[6][7] In 1966 a psychedelic weekly newspaper, The East Village Other, appeared and The New York Times declared that the neighborhood "had come to be known" as the East Village in the June 5, 1967 edition.
Stop being high and mighty. Things change. You're nothing more than a previous generation gentrifier.
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