The mainstream news has jumped on the Tompkins Square rats story [EVG]. 1010 WINS concluded their report this AM with the score: "In Tompkins Square Park it's red-tailed hawk: 1, kids: nil."
Chelsea Hotel to close for a year: " if you want to spend one more night at the Chelsea Hotel before it closes, now is your last chance." [LWL]
Drinking at Pete's Tavern. [MAD]
Park Slope kids invade Gowanus--creative types booted. [Curbed]
Coney loses a good friend. [ATZ]
Is the lower Lower East Side being rechristened LoDel by the real-estate machine? [BB]
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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
Oh no, a place to educate children is going to to be built!
ReplyDeleteRead your lease and get everything in writing.
My friend lives on 7th Street across from Tompkins Square Park. Technically ToPa South.
ReplyDeleteLoDel? NoLita? NoHo? We should just cut out the bullshit names, and pay tribute to these neighborhoods by honoring what they now stand for. How about we call em Carrie, Samantha, and Miranda?
ReplyDeletethese names were always childish, also lack dignity. after the idiot "SO-HO"- it went down hill. the "east village" was kind of a cheap shot. but these "ma-ma, dada, fu-pa, la-la", really bring new york down to a cheesy classless level. id be ashamed to tell anyone i live in "wa-wa"??? (yeah im east of wawa.....south of starbucks square, now called wawabuck). what ever happend to names like carnegie hill, murrey hill, clinton hill? yorkville? real names that mean something, now you why i like the upper east side. lets not forget flatbush, midwood, red hook, carroll gardens, sheepshead bay.....its all so anglo saxon w/so much history.
ReplyDeleteActually, SoHo, NoHo, TriBeCa and DUMBO were all coined by the artists and pioneers of those neighborhoods, not by real-estate interests.
ReplyDeleteIf the residents and pioneers want to call it whatever want to call it, why should you care?
In fact, DUMBO was coined by the locals to purposely make it sound silly, in order to scare away real-estate speculators, Yuppies and Yunnies.
response to downtowner: ok so the kids made up those names. the very young artists. then the real estate people picked it up. i dont "care" that much, but i dont feel comfortable saying those names. im an adult. i dont like nick names, slang, silly cyber talk, most of pop culture, slogans...... SO, instead of collegey "wawa", maybe i would say prospect heights. different stokes for different folks. i have no patience for merchandsing, marketing, & post college transplant identity labels.
ReplyDeletep.s. "LO DEL" sounds like a washing machine.
ReplyDeleteLauren:
ReplyDeleteProspect Heights? Now that's a real estate term!
I grew up in Prospect Heights. We never, ever called it that. I never even heard of the name Prospect Hgts until the 1980s, likely in the NYT real estate section.
We would define our neighborhood by the block, say "the guys from Underhill", or, "she lives on Butler", or the gang, "the Van-Dukes" or "the Washington Avenue Boys".
We'd alternately define our neighborhood by the R.C. parish: St. Theresa's or St. Joseph's, which was a very common method back then.
If people from another neighborhood asked where I lived, "I'd say, 'Near Grand Army Plaza". They knew that.
No one would know from "Prospect Heights".
"Bay Ridge", "Flabush", "Brooklyn Heights" were named neighborhoods, due to their size or history. But "Prospect Heights"? No way.
Nor would we refer to the adjacent neighborhood as "Park Slope". We'd simply say, "She is from 8th Avenue".
The current "Fort Greene" was "down Vanderbilt Avenue".
You can learn more about this use of nomenclature from a great old Folkways recording, now on Smithsonian, by Israel Kaplan, "When I was a boy in Brooklyn."
http://www.folkways.si.edu/TrackDetails.aspx?itemid=4570http://www.folkways.si.edu/TrackDetails.aspx?itemid=4570
Incidentally, the folks who coined "SoHo" and "TriBeCa" were hardly "kids". Most were in their 30s at the time.
E.g.: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Maciunas