Welcome to 1940s NYC--in a map! [Gothamist]
Sullivan Street Bakery opening soon in ousted Les Desirs spot--what about the singing ladies? [Eater]
Where is Zabar's? Don't ask your idiot phone. [NYT]
Go see My Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Film Fest. [BFF]
Reader Marcus lets us know that the NYC municipal parking garage at Essex and Delancey is booting the bicycles that park there. He cites the city law: "Garages or lots that accommodate 100 or more vehicles must provide bicycle parking at a rate of at least one space for every ten vehicle spaces":
Fight for your neighborhood library as the city cuts them off at the knees. [HNY]
Greenwich Village tourists attract a scourge of doo-wop singers--and the neighbors are angry. [NYM]
Hotel Toshi takes over at 9th and 1st. [EVG]
Looking at eagle-winged neon signs. [NYN]
Remembering Hav-A-Pizza. [LC]
What does Coney Island look like these days? You won't recognize it. [ATZ]
11 comments:
"sex in the city", "law & order......" how about racheal zoe project? (the documentary seris) it takes place in LA, but they come to NYC for the collections. i wonder how many people are outside racheal's studio? & how many people go to NYC to witness fashion week? a very gay crowd no doute. you know...... i liked NY better when the "honeymooners" (jackie gleason who drove a bus), "amos & andy" (remember kingfish)?, & "molly goldberg" (you hoo! mrs. blooommm.....)!!! see these reruns on youtube in black & white. they were hit sitcoms about regular people. i notice no one was up in harlem for kingfish, or in brooklyn for mrs. goldberg & mrs. bloom. (thank god). new york has always been a focus for TV shows. but the focus now is on the glamour. this soon will pass. theres a shelf life for everything.
This is a must read for everyone here:
http://grist.org/cities/the-great-inversion-cities-are-the-new-suburbs-suburbs-the-new-cities/
Its about how the centers of the cities are turning into what we used to think of the suburbs, eg a place for affluent squares. The former suburbs are becoming, well, slums.
This site has done a good job chronicling one half of this process. The last census confirmed that it is in swing.
Arguably, this will be an improvement over the old doughnut model as there will be less gasoline usage. But creative people won't have a place to flee to where they can both afford to live there, be tolerated, but be able to move back into the mainstream at times to see what they want to sell.
On the Wall Street Journal Article, I married a non-American, and live in Midtown, so the process they are describing is really obvious to me.
The weird thing is that retail prices for things is significantly lower in the United States than just about anywhere in the world. The difference is great enough that it actually makes sense to fly here from other countries just to shop. We have the cheapest prices for products made in China than anywhere, maybe even cheaper than stores in China.
So you can barely walk in Midtown because the area is packed with foreign tourists just over here to shop. New Yorkers get to pay really high rents for apartments too small to hold lots of cheap stuff, so we get the worst of both worlds.
Does anyone really want to hear up on the roof unless they are at a frat party?
thanks for that link, Ed. i just posted it on facebook. it's a frightening idea--and like you say, i can't imagine artists finding each other in the suburbs. but maybe it's possible.
That city/suburb inversion thing is almost a truism by now, isn't it? It's good to see it confirmed empirically.
Our metro areas are reconfiguring themselves to the way Europe's and Latin America's have always been. I tend to agree that this is very very bad.
In NYC it's not all that spread out yet. Maybe it won't ever be.
I wanted to help the library too, as I have in the past, so I signed the letter at my branch, which is identical to the letter generated if you click through at the link. The first sentence of the letter reads, "I am very worried that the library services I depend on would be severely curtailed if the proposed funding cuts are not restored." I asked my former high school principal about it and she agreed, it is not good English. At the worse, it reads like they want the cuts to be restored, not the funding. A friend of mine who retired from the library system told me that the letter writing campaign is staffed entirely by volunteers. But still, it is a poorly written letter from a library, and worst of all, from the New York public library. And New York used to set the standards, for everything.
heres another twist: LA is becoming more like NY. i read the downtown area is being built up. trains busses walking......lots of sky scrapers. wonder if they have built nice small apt buildings, or townhouse style. oh & to compare another city to new york: dubai is all about luxury, wealth, & the poor/working/middle class are being displaced. even the arabs are complaining. i like the concept of dubai where it isa free zone, east meets west. freedom of dress from burka to jeans& tank top. but the rest of same old stuff. i watch you tube.
"Our metro areas are reconfiguring themselves to the way Europe's and Latin America's have always been. I tend to agree that this is very very bad."
I don't know if going from poor-in-the-cities, rich-in-the-suburbs, middle-in-the-country to rich-in-the-cities, middle-in-the-suburbs, and poor-in-the-country is good or bad.
What is bad is that the middle class is shrinking, the quickness with which things can flip, and the all or nothing aspect of the change. It would be better of course to have no classes, but if you have to have classes its better to not to have segregation so strict so that the cities go from being "no go" areas for the middle classes due to violent crime by the poor, to "no go" areas for the middle classes due to real estate speculation (really non-violent crime) by the rich. And I think the bohemian element was really always a subset of the middle classes. We are just exchanging one class of criminals for another.
Semi-related, this web site is fascinating: http://www.1940snewyork.com/
In 1943, NYC was mostly a middle-class place, with some poor areas and some rich areas.
The city described in this map became basically unrecognizable within 30 years, except for a handful of neighborhoods.
The EV/LES is one of the few areas where the contemporary description suggests some kind of continuity--it even mentions barber colleges!
Why does 1940s New York have any relevance at all to Jeremiah or the regulars here? If it was mostly middle-class, they are anti-middle class in the way only children of the middle-class can be.
Don't snow us with gestures toward the 40s. The New York you long for is the New York of the 70s and 80s, the years of decline, social breakdown and dystopia. That's what's "real" now.
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