Contrary to previous reports, today is the last day of H&H bagels. The counter lady told me last night. You have all day today and this evening to get your last bagels from 80th and Broadway before it becomes a bank. And here is my last:
"What many natives of the West 70s and 80s have long prophesied has come to pass: The neighborhood is finished." [NYT]
Details on last night's rally to save H&H. [WSR]
I fucking love Fran Lebowitz: "What kind of moron would put their bag on the floor of a cab? Anyone who does that deserves to lose it. That’s what I mean — that’s a tourist. What New Yorker would let their bag out of their clutches? I have all the habits of someone who lived here in the ’70s, you know? Which is that, if I have a pencil, I have a death grip on it. I see the people on the subway, they take their Blackberry out, I think really? If that got stolen, I wouldn’t even feel sorry for you." [CR]
Free LGBT weddings on the LES all year long. [EVG]
What will become of the Essex Street Market? [BB]
Eleanor Henderson talks about her new novel Ten Thousand Saints: "These days, it’s hard to fear for your life when you walk down St. Mark’s Place, the East Village street that was the acid heart of the punk-rock scene in the eighties. Now it’s a caricature of its rowdy past self, a goth kid’s Disneyland." [NYer]
Saying goodbye to P.S. 122. [AF] & [MAC]
Bloomberg: "If New York City is a business, it isn’t Wal-Mart–it isn’t trying to be the lowest-priced product in the market. It’s a high-end product, maybe even a luxury product." Read an interview with Julian Brash on Bloomberg's Way. [OTC]
Bloomberg exploits the "pilot" program--undemocratically--to change the face of the city. [NYT]
Cro-Mag John Joseph offers a "three-hour walking tour of Alphabet City and takes you beyond the trendy upscale boutiques, coffee shops and condominiums that you see now, to the great music, drugs and violence that used to inhabit the surrounding area." [GG]
And here are H&H Bagel's light fixtures, lying on the floor:
My favorite PS122 performance was Danny Hoch's "Jails, Hospitals & Hip Hop." The EV nurtured real art once upon a time and I hope it continues to do so. 3 or more years is too long a time to be without the creative experimental explosions going on in the black box at PS122.
ReplyDeleteAs much as I absolutely love this site, and everything it stands for, it just gets more and more difficult to read all of this every day.
ReplyDeleteI feel sorry for myself, and all native New Yorkers. I feel sorry for all of the people who came here because they wanted to assimilate into and be part of what made New York great. New York is a state of mind, and those who came here to embrace the existing culture - not because they were influenced by Sex and The City, not to change it into their suburb back home - are real New Yorkers too.
I just don't know what to say anymore. Bloomberg might as well publicly decree with great personal pride that the Big Apple is dead.
New York should now officially be known as The Big Cupcake.
The Big Cupcake is right on.
ReplyDeletei know it's depressing to read this blog. it's depressing to write it. but i hope you'll stick around. it gets lonely in here without my fellow complainers.
Hang in there, y'all. I can't take the Jeff Goldblum Jurassic Park optimism of "real city attitude finds a WAY." Not that naive. But remember:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNWUB0Ji8vA
Some of the news here is depressing... but then you post a quote by Fran Lebowitz and I just crack up. That was the best thing I read all week and it sums things up for me perfectly.
ReplyDeleteI love that you post here... I love to read what you have to say. As a lifelong NYer I feel the sadness when things I grew up with go away to be replaced with cupcakes and banks and shops with $195 t-shirts.
"Today is the last day of business for David's Laundry, shuttering after 41 years in Park Slope thanks to a landlord who is forcing them out. "
ReplyDeleteAnd so it goes.
thanks Jennifer! true, it's not all bad news.
ReplyDeleteI agree with JAZ that NY needs a new name. We can start with the Lower East Side becoming the Lower EASY Side, that way it will reflect the city that it has become, very EASY to survive there, especially when you've got the money to do it in.
ReplyDeleteWhat's so suburban about pedestrian malls and walking in the street? No suburb I've ever been in has anything remotely like that. And yet that's always how they're characterized. I really don't get that. I mean, is there anything more quintessentially suburban than driving everywhere?
ReplyDeleteI have utter sympathy for JAZ and feel his pain, but this blog, and others like it, are essential tools in helping turn things around. It seems there are more and more people (and not just cantankerous folk who miss the '70s) who agree with the opinions voiced by many on the issues this site consistently draws attention to. The situation in New York has only gotten worse and we've reached a point where even Sex and The City fans are throwing down their cupcakes and saying "Basta!"
ReplyDeleteAnother commenter today mentioned a piece on BBC radio which asked the question, "Has NYC lost its edge?" I heard the segment this morning and thought to myself: if this phenomenon is being felt across the Atlantic, then surely momentum is building in its fierce opposition.
Have you ever thought about creating some kind of organization which would be able to stand up and publicly protest some of the actions this city has taken? I'm thinking somewhere in-between a satirical essay and an angry, trashcan-wielding mob. Remember folks, we may be a minority but we're not alone!
P.S. Fran Lebowitz should run for mayor.
James, i think you're right about a certain momentum that's been building over the past couple of years. it's the action piece that needs to happen, as you say. i'm not an action person, but there have to be some out there, who have what it takes to put something together.
ReplyDeleteright?
I, and generations of ancestors, grew up in working-class New York, not a goddamn brand. Why didn't that pompous little prick wreak his luxurificating havoc on Boston? Sorry, Boston, I love you, but better Boston than my home.
ReplyDelete"If New York City is a business, it isn’t Wal-Mart–it isn’t trying to be the lowest-priced product in the market. It’s a high-end product, maybe even a luxury product." Lord Bloomberg
ReplyDeleteJust hang on, man, a few more years and I am the fuck outta here.