Jeremiah's Vanishing New York

Bleecker Bob's to East Village?

2012-01-27T10:29:00.007-05:00

Yesterday, the Times confirmed that Bleecker Bob's is leaving the Village--and that Starbucks is moving in. Now Ken Mac passes along this interesting comment from his news-breaking post:

"not sure who this reporter spoke to since he doesn't mention anyone by name, but Bleecker Bob's is currently looking at spaces in the east village. we are definitely NOT planning to close. please email us at bleeckerbobs@yahoo.com with any leads on storefront. thanks and stay tuned."

Ken Mac

Maybe they can move into the soon-shuttered Holiday Cocktail Lounge.

Novelties Gone

2012-01-27T08:30:00.002-05:00

Awhile ago I looked at the rarity of the word "novelties" on city signage. Now, it's even more scarce. One of the prime examples has vanished.

2010

In the flower district, from this floral supply store, NOVELTIES has been torn from the sign above the plate-glass window.

Parts of the facade are plywooded and a scaffold casts it in shadow. It's hard to say for sure, but this floral supply shop may be vanishing, too, with its window full of glitter pine cones, spools of ribbon, and green bricks of floral foam all covered in dust.

today

More Flower District:
Superior Florists
Rob Warren Books

Another word to read about:
Appetizing

*Everyday Chatter

2012-01-26T16:45:00.003-05:00

Bad day--first, Bleecker Bob's is turning into a Starbucks, then the Holiday Cocktail Lounge is closing, and then...

The last H&H Bagels location has been seized and shuttered. [Eater]

Timboo's of Park Slope is gone. [OMFS]

From strip club to strip mall, on the sad fate of JJ's Navy Yard Cocktail Lounge. [BP]

The man who played Juan Epstein in Welcome Back Kotter is dead. [NJ]

Artists attack Gowanus Whole Foods plan. [Racked]

The last days of Little Italy (I miss Sal the barber). [LIFE]

Excerpts from the New York diaries. [MF]

On Fraunces Tavern. [NYDN]

Take another look into the old Hollywood theater of Avenue A--before it's demolished. [EVG]

Holiday Cocktail Lounge

2012-01-26T14:34:00.006-05:00

In case you're still alive after hearing about Bleecker Bob's becoming a Starbucks, don't put those heart-attack paddles away just yet. Grieve just brought the depressing news that the beloved Holiday Cocktail Lounge will be shuttering forever--this Saturday night.

my flickr

Grieve writes that a "tipster notes that the Holiday as we know it will close after Saturday night. 'Locks will be changed immediately.' We understand that another bar will take its place. What happens to the current appearance is unknown. Per the tipster: "Another EV historical institution gone.'"

On the Holiday:
History of the Holiday
Stefan Lutak, 1920-2009
Holiday Survives

Bleecker Bob's

2012-01-26T13:51:00.005-05:00

VANISHING

Sweet suffering Christ, when will it end? Ken Mac over at Greenwich Village Daily Photo just reported the staggering news that Bleecker Bob's record store is becoming a Starbucks.

1983, NYU, via Flaming Pablum

He writes on his blog, "I walked into Bob's the other morning and asked him straight up, 'Is a Starbucks moving in here?' He replied 'Maybe,' not 'absolutely not!' The manager of Cafe Reggio confirms the Starbucks takeover of Bob's space, adding 'Starbucks will take 30% of our business. All the NYU kids want their mocha frappuccino.'"

Killing two birds with one stone, Starbucks?

Torrisi on Rocco

2012-01-26T07:30:00.004-05:00

When we first heard that the super-trendy Torrisi would be taking over 90-year-old Rocco's on Thompson St., I contacted the Torrisi team and asked them some questions about their plans and their decision to move into the ousted third-generation business' space when many already empty spaces were available nearby.

They didn't respond. But they seem to be answering my questions--and some of your comments--in yesterday's interview with the Observer.

Per the Observer:

The sniping came via comments appended to various blog posts concerning the newest addition to the Torrisi family: In November, the partners signed a lease for a Thompson Street space that, until now, housed the old-school red-sauce Italian joint Rocco Ristorante. The original owner’s rent was more than doubled by the space’s landlord. Rocco’s owner threatened to take the landlord to court, and the classic neon red ROCCO sign with him.

The new restaurant, which won’t open for “a while” (per Mr. Zalaznick) will cap an extraordinary growth period for the Torrisi empire, which seems to have struck a nerve by bringing a modern sensibility to Italian-American staples.

Still, the idea of the buzziest new restaurant group in town replacing a 90-year-old standby has generated a certain amount of controversy.

“This space was going to be available whether we took it or not,” Mr. Carbone noted. “And hopefully we’re going to be able to get in there and honor its history.”

“People want to talk about New York vanishing,” Mr. Torrisi piped in. “I think we’re rebuilding it.”

They don’t yet know exactly what they’re going to do with the space—no plans as of yet for the concept, the menu, the design, or even the name.

One thing about the Torrrisi boys’ growth into the old Rocco space is certain, however: They are definitely keeping the sign.

End of excerpt

Rocco shuttered: Stacy's Home Journal

So I guess accepting the landlord's inflated offer is not contributing to the demise of the existing business? All of this makes me tired.

Rocco's shuttered earlier this month and, at this point, all I want to know is: what's up with the sign? Is it going with Rocco's or staying with Torrisi? And will we see a Fedora-style xeroxing of it eventually?

Further Reading:
Red-Sauce Joints
Rocco Ristorante
Rocco's Update

Tiffany Diner

2012-01-25T07:30:00.003-05:00

I've been reading David Wojnarowicz's diaries, In the Shadow of the American Dream, for its detailed chronicling of New York City in the 1970s. At one point, he heads into "a new New York dive restaurant," the vanished Tiffany diner of Sheridan Square.

Tim Faracy, flickr

He describes the clientele: "three no-wave women behind us in the next booth with black short razored hair and gold-black circles around their eyes and cheap plastic black-and-white bulby earrings and sleazo clothes, neat lookin' and they left after flashin' us some lingering stares, over to the other side in a booth were two women on quaaludes nodding out over eggs and toast, chewing with eyes closed for minutes at a time, and the rattle of cars on the street, the crowds drifting by, one girl who was stunned tripped and dropped her radio which shattered into various pieces and got up smiling and walked on."

Shannon Davis, flickr

By the time I got to Tiffany's, the No Wave women were long gone, but the pink Formica had not yet been ripped out. I'd heard about the place and went in search of some kind of Village scene.

In 1995 the New York Times described it as "a dowdy, low-budget gathering place for a colorful cross section of Villagers. For the price of a cup of coffee, playwrights and older New Yorkers bought endless hours in the diner's gaudy pink booths. Gay men and lesbians considered it an all-night embodiment of the Village's tolerant spirit."

Tony Perez, etsy

After a fire and renovation in 1995, Tiffany's lived a little longer. But by 2001, after over 30 years in business, it was gone. A realtor hyped the space by naming its neighbors: "GNC, CVS Pharmacy, Gourmet Garage, Jekyll & Hyde, Citibank, Duplex Cabaret, Federal Express, and New York Sports Club."

Today it's a Bank of America.

*Everyday Chatter

2012-01-24T14:30:00.001-05:00

The East Village in chains: St. Mark's will have a 7-11 and 1st Ave gets its Subway. [EVG] [EVG]

A walk from Madison Square to Union Square. [FNY]

Pilar Montero's obituary. [NYT]

Meet Fanelli's Serbian boxer bartender. [Eater]

Alex in NY unearths a treasure trove of vintage Village photographs. [FP]

"In the last decade, the city that always (and somehow never) changes has shuffled itself all around. Notorious urban tundras are now upscale shopping zones. Areas that were once synonymous with exclusivity have given ground to mass-market chains." [WSJ]

Horse walks hiding in Greenwich Village. [ENY]

Today: fight against the seizure of books with the OWS Library at the Red Cube. [PL]

The Fate of J.J.'s Navy Yard

2012-01-24T07:20:00.001-05:00

Our friend at One More Folded Sunset points us to a recent New York Times Living In profile of "the two-block-wide semi-industrial neighborhood of Wallabout," which has, apparently, been "coming into its own." And you know what that means.

Embedded in the story is this stomach-churning bit of information about J. J.’s Navy Yard Cocktail Lounge: "its new owner plans to lease to a Dunkin’ Donuts and a Subway."

Dunkin Donuts and Subway? It's a double whammy of soul murder.

SWTCurran

J.J.'s Navy Yard closed in 2010 after over a century in business.

Once catering to the men who built warships for World War I and II, in its final days, it continued to serve as a second home to locals and Navy Yard laborers. So not much changed here between 1907 and 2010--except maybe for the addition of scantily clad dancing girls.

still from New York Dive (go to 2:33)

I never took the chance to go inside (still kicking myself), but filmmaker Reed Korach did for his movie New York Dive.

He interviewed the owner and one of the dancers, who said, "people come here, some people need somebody actually to sit and talk, it's not just all about the dancing and feeling up on nobody. Some people just need that common, you know, communication."

E.V. Grieve

E.V. Grieve went in, too. He recalls, "Eventually around 10 p.m., a lot more women are suddenly in the bar... they walk in, talk with the bartender, spend a lot of time in the women's room. Soon, there are anywhere from five to 10 women va-va-va-vooming around in lingerie, bikinis, etc. Oh! They're all very outgoing, especially when there are just two of you in the bar.

Every few minutes Delicious or Cinnamon or Diamond walks up and asks again if you'd like a dance."

Google streetview, 2011

You're not going to get any of this at Dunkin Donuts. And you're not going to get it Subway, either.

“They’re taking away a piece of history,” said owner Steve Frankel when the building was sold for $3 million. He told filmmaker Reed Korach, "If I close everything down, what am I gonna do, sit on my couch and get fat and dumpy? I don't want to do that. I'm not ready to die yet."

This whole miserable business makes me want to spit.

gutted and glassed--Brownstoner, 2011

Absinthe at Otway's

2012-01-23T07:30:00.001-05:00

If you haven't yet been to the William Barnacle Tavern at Theatre 80 on St. Mark's, go now. But not too many of you at once. The place is, as promised when it opened in 2009, "A quiet cafe where people can hear each other talk, and you can hear yourself think."

On a cold winter's night, wander in for a warming glass of absinthe. Bartender and life-long theater owner Lorcan Otway prepares the drink using a combination of the traditional and the "Bohemian Method."

He pours the liquor into a shapely glass imported from France. He sets a slotted spoon over the top, perches a sugar cube there and sets it burning. The blue flame is extinguished by drops of ice water dripped from an Art Deco absinthe fountain--a glass jar held by a silver goddess. The sugar cube crumbles. The drink turns milky.

You can stop there or ask Mr. Otway to mix it into a "Puca," his own invention. Named for a goblin of Irish folklore, the Puca is a combination of absinthe and Bailey's Irish Cream. Mr. Otway slowly pours the Bailey's down the inside wall of the glass so that it falls below the absinthe, creating a two-toned cocktail.

While he's pouring another, and while you're drinking, Mr. Otway will tell you stories about the theater and the bar, especially its history as a speakeasy. This is also the home of the Museum of the American Gangster.

If you're lucky, he will hand you a hardhat and lead you down into the basement where gangsters once hid their millions and rigged the windows with dynamite so they could make their escape through tunnels dug beneath First Avenue.

Back upstairs, the absinthe will make you very mellow very fast. Your fellow patrons all have a similar glow. No one is yapping on the phone. Everyone is talking to each other--about gangsters, strippers, the old East Village, music.

The tavern is other-worldly. You feel like you've come upon a weird oasis, as if you've slipped through the time-space barrier and landed in some alternate reality. It's not the absinthe, because you feel it the moment you walk in. Everyone else feels it, too. Newcomers step through the door with exclamations of relief--a quiet bar in the East Village!

Payphone

2012-01-20T08:00:00.005-05:00

Another payphone has bitten the dust.

It happened a few months ago, on the corner of 7th and 1st in the East Village. I took a photo of the extraction, but never bothered to post it.

It wasn't the infamous Pee Phone, but I'm sure it had its moments. There's nothing there now but a pale square of cement, cleaner than its neighboring squares.

Payphones are vanishing from the city all the time, never to return. Let's take a moment to remember this one and imagine all the junkies who once relied on it, all the lovers' quarrels it endured (receiver smashed into cradle), all the people who needed it for yelling at AT&T when their phones went out, all the drunk drivers who backed into it while trying to park, all the times a person in need slipped her finger into its slot, hoping to find a quarter but mostly coming up empty.

Such was the life of a city payphone.

Google streetview

See also:
Pupkin's Payphones
Payphone Man

Manhattan '43

2012-01-19T07:00:00.010-05:00

I got an email awhile back from a fellow named George Miller down in Florida. He sent along a couple of photo slides that his father took in Manhattan in 1943. He especially thought we'd be interested in seeing these two shots of Leon & Eddie's:

The first photo is taken from a very tall building (probably the RCA Building) and shows the roof of Leon & Eddie's painted in white with the words: UNDER THIS ROOF STARS SHINE ALL NIGHT. It's a rare view. And you get a great glimpse of 52nd Street before it was all bulldozed, back when it was known as Strip Street.

Here's Leon & Eddie's again, up close, complete with a sailor in the picture. It is 1943 after all.

I liked George's father's slides of the city and asked him for more. He digitized and sent along a handful. These were my favorites. Here's a wartime scene of Rockefeller Plaza. The statue of Prometheus is tarnished and grim beneath the words: UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER.

Nearby, a troop of young Nazis go goose-stepping past, decked in gas masks. This represented "The Militarization of Children," part of the Office of War Information's "Nature of the Enemy" exhibition, aimed to "expose the Nazi philosophy of 'fear, slavery, and death.'" (See more shots of the show here.)

After fear, slavery, and death in 1943 New York, you could head over to Larry Sunbrock's Big Top Circus on 50th Street behind the Roxy Theater. Sunbrock's circus didn't do very well and soon closed due to financial troubles.

It would return again to the city, however, and in 1947 Sunbrock's employee, a daring young man named John Ciampa, aka "The Brooklyn Tarzan," would be arrested after scaling the exterior of the Astor Hotel in a publicity stunt to promote the ailing circus.

Check out the incredible footage of Ciampa climbing tenement walls and running atop a subway train in Brooklyn here.

For more of this time in the city, read Jan Morris' wonderful book Manhattan '45.

And there's lots to see and read in these posts about Leon & Eddie's and Strip Street.

*Everyday Chatter

2012-01-18T12:00:00.001-05:00

A fantastic collection of Village Voice ads from the 1960s--it was a city of Nina Simone, dollar-fifty breakfasts, John Giorno's Dial-A-Poem, dancing at The Dom, plus dining at the intimate Beatrice Inn. [SYC]

Very exciting Upper West Side zoning may stop banks and chains from spreading like the plague. As Avi says, "what’s the point of living in New York? You could just as well move to Connecticut." [WSR]

A 7-11 is replacing the XXX video place on E. 14th St--right next to IHOP. Enjoy your dead suburban experience. [EVG]

Poet Elizabeth Bishop's paintings on view at Tibor de Nagy until 1/21. [PRD]

They've taken the subway car out of Golden's Deli on Staten Island. The rent was too damn high. [HNY]

Art, poetry, and more coming to derelict Park Slope building, once home to eccentric art bar the Landmark Pub. [BP]

Read an excerpt from East of Bowery by Drew Hubner and Ted Barron. Luc Sante calls it "raw and lyrical." Buy it in print at St. Mark's Books. [SS]

Coney Island 'possum rides the D train. [NYT]

Who lives in the Village today? Multimillionaire guys who love "adventure stuff" and who decorate their apartments like "super-luxe" hotels. [NYT]

On the LES

2012-01-18T07:30:00.001-05:00

This interview with third-generation Lower East Sider Chris Quinones from The Lo-Down is too good not to excerpt. (Thanks Goggla.) He loves the Cup & Saucer on Canal and Eldridge because "it’s authentic and it doesn’t come with some lame-ass foreign name. You say, 'Can I get a cup of coffee,' large or small, milk or sugar – that’s it. Not 'Venti,' 'Fettuchini,' 'Lamborgini' or whatever they have at Starbucks."

And here's his answer to the question "What sort of changes have you seen in the neighborhood in the last few years?"

"Are you serious? Dude, it went from Heroinville to art school hipster dudes with ugly flannel shirts and lame-ass facial hair. But I have to say, I can come home from work without having to worry about a junkie sticking me for my sneakers. The food and bars are all cool, the neighborhood has a lot of hot girls now – it’s safe, I can get Thai food, vegan food, get a quick workout and go to a bar themed after Detroit all on the same block. So that’s cool. But, the looks I get from these fuckin’ out-of-towners like I don’t belong in the neighborhood are infuriating.

It’s hard to find New Yorkers anymore; everyone came from middle fucking America for the 'Big City experience' and in turn gave me a 'everyone from outside of NYC is fucking lame' experience. (Disclaimer: I’ve met some amazing people from outside New York. It just pisses me off every time I try and (get lucky with) a chick, she’s telling me about some lame art/dance school degree and how she misses Cleveland or Michigan or fucking Pennsylvania or whatever else.)

It would be refreshing to talk to someone who was actually BORN in Bushwick, not someone who just moved in with three white girls from Utah and thinks they can shout out, 'Brooklyn!' every time a Notorious B.I.G. song comes on at the club. Not cool.

Another thing – when NYC was dangerous, it was cheap to live and party here, only because none of these assholes wanted to live here. Then they found out how lame it is everywhere else in the world outside of NYC and they realized if they want that bullshit art degree to get them any type of money, they had to try and get a slice of NYC pie. Now none of us locals can afford to live in the very same city…that we made awesome. Now we all have to move to lame-ass New Jersey or the fucking Bronx?!?!? Keep your fucking Asian fusion and vegan restaurants. Gimme New York the way it was before."

To read the rest, visit The Lo-Down.

*Everyday Chatter

2012-01-17T12:40:00.001-05:00

In Chelsea, chocolate and coffee are having a "love affair"--as Max Brenner's Little Brown moves to 8th Ave where Nooch used to be:

The once-wonderful Gordon Novelty Shop is getting filled--with fancy kitchen wares from Williamsburg, because food is New York's fetish. [Racked]

Ed Hamilton talks about the Chelsea Hotel demolition--and we learn what a PFA is--on the Mike & Judy Show. [M&J]

Check out Death and Life on the Bowery: an interview with Drew Hubner and Ted Barron. [NSTAW]

Bloomberg gets heckled and shouted down by crowd in Harlem. [RS]

Signs of Coney's Club Atlantis resurface. [ATZ]

A new batch of ghost signs. [FNY]

Script in New York neon signs. [NYN]

The last remnant of Mars Bar fades away. [EVG]

Pilar Montero

2012-01-17T08:00:00.002-05:00

Montero's Bar announced on their Facebook page yesterday the sad passing of matriarch Pilar Montero:

"Pilar passed away Saturday night and will be missed dearly by her family and friends. On Tuesday, January 17th, there will be a one-day viewing at Raccuglia & Son Funeral Home, which is located at 323 Court Street at Sackett Street from 2 p.m. to 9 p.m... Please feel free to pass this information on to others. We welcome you to share your memories of Pilar here, on our Facebook Page. We at Montero's thank you for the love and support."

photo: Fred Conrad, NY Times

Pilar and her husband, Joseph, opened Montero's on Brooklyn's Atlantic Avenue in 1947. It was once a haven for longshoremen and sailors--some of whom still find their way here during Fleet Week every year.

Reported the Times in 1995, Pilar "was born on West 11th Street in Greenwich Village and first came to Brooklyn as a little girl on the ferry on which her father worked." She recalled meeting her husband to blogger Lisa Leland, "When we met he was on a sea-going tug because there was a war going on." Says Leland, "In her youth, Pilar was a performing ballerina in her family's native Spain."

She and Joseph ran the bar together through the years, hosting a few luminaries, including (by legend) the King of Denmark. They rented a room upstairs to author Frank McCourt. According to McCourt's memoir Teacher Man, Pilar liked him because he "wasn't like the rest of the Irishers, who wanted to fight fight fight."

After Joseph retired to Spain in the 1990s and passed away, Pilar remained at her usual post, on a stool at the bar's corner, where she was well-known and loved by the regulars.

Said the Times of Pilar in 2006, "She is a human time machine, saying things like, 'Max Schmeling was a good-looking man' with such authority that you have no reason to doubt her."

Previously:
Montero's Bar

Hotel Chelscheetz

2012-01-16T08:45:00.006-05:00

Commenter Jeff calls our attention to the (real or faked?) Facebook profile pic (changed since this posting) of boutique hotelier Ed Scheetz, who is now heading up the management of the newly gutted Chelsea Hotel.

Says Jeff, "Its Patti smith standing in front of the Chelsea with Robert Mapplethorpe and Ed has photoshopped his face onto Roberts head!! and it says Hotel Chelscheetz."

This has to be a satire from a disgruntled tenant inside the hotel--right? If it is, it's no doubt a first volley in what will be a long battle against the new management. And if it's real? Oy.

Meanwhile, listen to Ed Hamilton talk about the hotel and last week's Patti Smith kerfuffle on the Mike & Judy Show.

Recent Chelsea coverage:
Patti at the Chelsea
No Patti, No Mob

*Everyday Chatter

2012-01-13T12:00:00.001-05:00

Chelsea residents reveal the secret Patti Smith "shrine." [Gothamist]

Bloggers Marty and Melanie star in a story by Mick--don't worry, it's SFW, no exchange of body fluids. [MAM]

The replacement for Ray's Pizza on Prince has opened--it's a pizza place run by Italians. And "The former site of the Ray's restaurant alongside the slice shop will become a luxury spa." [DNA]

Enticing and mysterious photos inside the abandoned Avenue A theater about to be demolished. [EVG]

Inside Lucy's Bar on Avenue A. [Eater]

The Times checks in on Little Wisco: "a Wisconsin accent [is] both out of place and right at home in Greenwich Village, 'Is that unbelievable or what?'" [NYT]

Check out the women photographers of the Lower East Side at the 14th Street Y.

No Patti, No Mob

2012-01-13T08:24:00.018-05:00

Last night, at the request of the Chelsea Hotel's tenants, Patti Smith canceled her show at the hotel. She said on her website, "My motivation was solely to serve the tenants. If this serves them better, than I am satisfied."

The hotel tenants were happy and thankful. But then people wanted to know: Was the flash mob "die-in" still on? In the lead-up to the mob, I heard someone had planned to burn Patti's memoir, and an artist in the hotel sketched her as a witch crushed beneath the hotel. That all seemed a bit extreme--would people be showing up with torches and pitchforks?

from Living with Legends

I'm not sure you can cancel a flash mob once it's been called into existence. There are no "how to" instructions online for doing so and Bill Wasik, inventor of the flash mob, offers no advice in his book on the topic, And Then There's This. Since the die-in was meant to offer support to and solidarity with the tenants in their plight to save their homes and the integrity of the Chelsea Hotel, then why not let the mob be? Concert or no concert, a die-in at the Chelsea still seemed relevant.

By 7:55 a small crowd had gathered under the Chelsea awning, watching a crew load Patti Smith's sound equipment into a van. When 8:00 came, nobody dropped dead, nobody lit a lighter, and nobody recited any song lyrics. The crowd stood there, looking around, waiting for something to happen. A handful of reporters holding notepads and long-lensed cameras waited for something to happen. Nothing did. Who wants to lie down on a cold, wet sidewalk anyway?

People walked along carrying shopping bags and checking their texts. It was just another night on 23rd Street. Except that it wasn't. The tenants had succeeded in getting their message across. The mainstream media listened--and so did Patti Smith. If the potential for a mob helped, then the potential-mob did its job.

There are still many questions to answer about the hotel's future. Rooms are still being gutted. Tenants are still fighting eviction. When will the city sit up and take notice? As hotel tenant and blogger Ed Hamilton told WNYC, "one of the things that everyone's been harping about" is "why didn't none of these celebrities who’ve lived here come to our aid."

*Everyday Chatter

2012-01-12T11:00:00.003-05:00

I'm posting at The Paris Review Daily today--a kind of behind-the-scenes blog-walk back in October to visit Ray's Pizza--if you like it, please leave a comment there. Maybe I can do some more. Thanks for reading. [PRD]

This week, street artist Jay Shells turned a JR eye on the old Village Paper into an exuberant homage to Clockwork Orange:

A round-up of media coverage of Patti Smith's controversial Chelsea Hotel concerts. [LWL]

The Voice reports on the Chelsea story. [RS]

If these walls could talk--an inside look at the Chelsea Hotel with a 17-year resident. [MF]

Take a photographic walk through the East Village in 1997. [EVG]

Retail company REI to turn public Sara Roosevelt park into advertising opportunity, aka "Winter Wonderland." [BB]

A "monster deal" for Shake Shacker Danny Meyer at Bloomberg's Hudson Yards. [Eater]

A 7-11 is birthed beneath the Flatiron Building. [FP]

Casinos for Coney? [ATZ]

Patti at the Chelsea

2012-01-12T08:00:00.006-05:00

Last night Patti Smith played a private concert at the Chelsea Hotel. Reported Ed Hamilton, blogger at Living with Legends, on his Facebook page, "tenants were not invited... Gene Kaufman, the architect, is in attendance."

An audience member--invited to the party by the hotel's controversial new management company, King and Grove (a "lifestyle hotel brand defined by modern luxury with eclectic influence")--tweeted a photo of Patti onstage in the hotel's ballroom. Hamilton shared the link:

Something about all this feels dirty. The grainy pic, the information leaking out across Facebook and Twitter. It's hard to accept that Patti Smith is working with the developers who are gut renovating the Chelsea and evicting its tenants.

An anonymous commenter here was at the show last night and wrote: "It was for 'press' but it seemed more like friends of the owner. First let me say that Patti Smith thinks she is doing the right thing by just being a positive presence." However, says Anon, "To say that 'I just want to do good' and turn a blind eye to the means to the end result is unacceptable... I leave Ms. Smith with these words: "Indifference to injustice is the gate to hell.'"

Tonight, she's playing a concert for the tenants--a move that many are not happy about. Wrote the Times last night, "Some wondered whether the new owner, the Chetrit Group, was using Ms. Smith in a craven attempt to make peace. Others demanded that Ms. Smith cancel the show."

Smith responded to the negative press on her website, outlining how she is working with the hotel's new management (without pay) and saying, "My small performance for the tenants was my own idea. My hope is that we might have a nice evening and the opportunity to communicate directly. I am an independent person, not owned or directed by anyone. My allegiance is to the Hotel itself, and I have done nothing to tarnish it."

I'm a fan of Patti Smith, of her music and her writing, and I want to give her the benefit of the doubt. I want to believe that she believes she's helping the tenants and keeping the Chelsea's spirit intact. But I'm not sure what to think.

If you're confused, too, and you'd like to make a statement about all of this, but you're not sure what kind of a statement to make, come to tonight's flash mob. Lie down and "die in" in front of the Chelsea at 8:00 p.m., concert time, raising a lit lighter in the air and reciting the lyrics to "People Have the Power" (click for lyrics to print), then leave. If it's still raining, turn to the hotel, light the lighter under your umbrella, recite the lyrics, and go.

What does it mean? I'm not sure. I do know that the tenants have been fighting this battle by themselves for years and they're getting picked off one by one. The people of the city have not shown up outside the hotel to lend support with any kind of protest. So look at it that way--or just see it as something to do as Patti plays guitar while the Chelsea Hotel dies.

Also read:
Find a New City
Patti's Allerton
Scribner's Bookstore
Last Night at the Chelsea

Rose's Turn Today

2012-01-11T08:00:00.000-05:00

"For 56 years," wrote the Times in 2007, "since it opened during the Truman administration, 55 Grove Street in the West Village has been a piano bar, cabaret and comedy club for the quick-witted and full-throated. First it was Upstairs/Downstairs, then the Duplex (which remains open at another location), and finally it became Rose’s Turn."

Rose's Turn closed in 2007, ending 56 years of history. Let's take a look at what has replaced it.

before

after

55 Grove is now the home office for interior design firm S.R. Gambrel. Town & Country called Mr. Gambrel "the darling of young Wall Streeters ... the go-to decorator for a great many of today's young titans of finance and technology."

after

What was a ramshackle, nondescript tenement is now a sleek showplace, like something flown in from the Hamptons. An alabaster lioness guards the big front window.

An apparent master of transformation, Gambrel has also taken a "nightmare" of a Village apartment building and turned it into his own luxury townhouse. (The man played by Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon once lived there.)

before, New York magazine

For half a century, 55 Grove underwent change--from one cabaret to another--then came the 2000s when we have just three choices for what will replace the old city: stratospheric luxury, pricey artisanal independent, or national chain.

It's startling to walk down Grove Street today, to pass Marie's Crisis and Arthur's Tavern and then to come upon Gambrel. I wonder what else will be transformed here--we've seen what happens when the neighbors go upscale.

I'm getting worried for Arthur's and Marie's with their gritty, old facades, their rusted neon signs, their hard-won character. Is someone already plotting their demise? Are The Joneses, concerned about property values, looking upon these classic New Yorkers and thinking, "This just won't do"?

Let's pray they own their buildings.

*Everyday Chatter

2012-01-10T13:30:00.002-05:00

Chelsea Hotel residents call on Patti Smith to cancel show for Chitrit. [LWL]

Sad shutter signage from Rocky's in Little Italy, as the 30-year-old small business has been booted to make room for newcomer Balaboosta:

A helpful guide for zombie texters. [NYT]

The Bed Bug Club (pic) has vanished. [LC]

On New Yorkers' passion for mega-supermarkets. [NYer]

Village Farms, formerly the Loews Hollywood, is being demolished on Avenue A. [EVG]

Eerie photos of Bloomfield, Staten Island. [NK]

A neon relic in the Bronx. [NYN]

Listen to photographer Frank Jump talk about Fading Ads of NYC on Leonard Lopate. [WNYC]

Frank also has a book of the city's ghost signs--order it from St. Mark's or find it today at the Strand.

TG170 closes for good after two decades on Ludlow. [BB]

On nostalgia and other things--blogger Joe Bonomo interviews me for No Such Thing As Was.

La-Rosa Cigars

2012-01-10T07:20:00.001-05:00

VANISHED (from Manhattan):

Last week Lost City brought the sad news that La-Rosa Cigars has left 6th Avenue and gone to the Bronx. We saw this coming in 2007 when the neighborhood of florists and wig shops was targeted for "revitalization." Now that the big glass towers have come, let's look back at what we've lost.

Originally posted October 2007:

Much is changing along 6th Avenue in the upper 20s and lower 30s, but there remains a fascinating assemblage of small businesses -- holdout flower shops, wig shops, and assorted wholesalers. Sadly, many of them are vanishing as luxury hotels, condos, and retail towers flatten the neighborhood.

On the second floor of 862 6th Avenue is a small cigar factory and shop that’s been in the area since 1958. La-Rosa Cubana Cigars was founded by A. Antonio Almanzar, a cigar maker from the Dominican Republic. It is now run by his son Frank.

When you step inside the shop, you are pleasantly overcome by the deliciously strong, organic fragrance of tobacco leaves. It feels like another place, another time. Bales of tobacco just shipped from the Caribbean wait by the door. Three master rollers make cigars in stages. Their work area is littered with brown leaves and brings to mind images from Lewis Hine’s Lower East Side, though La Rosa’s shop is more cheerful -- and those old Lower East Siders didn’t have posters of pin-up girls on their walls to keep them company.

La-Rosa has a packed humidor and 70-year-old wooden molds that belonged to Frank's father. Once inside the molds, the cigars are pressed for about an hour then wrapped in a sheet of Connecticut light, a soft leaf that feels like silk from being aged for five years. “Tobacco is like wine,” Frank told me, “When you age it, it gets a vintage taste.”

Frank knows cigars. He began working in his father’s shop when he was 9 years old. His job was to vein-strip the leaves until he learned to roll, beginning with mini-torpedoes. He still enjoys rolling these mild little cigars and generously gave me a handful. We lit up in the shop and it was a treat to smoke indoors. Since Bloomberg’s smoking ban went into effect, Frank has had to cut his production — and his workers. He used to have 7 rollers, now it’s just the 3.

Frank holding mini-torpedoes before a photo of his father

The view outside his window is changing, too. Where once there stood a mixed assemblage of low-rise buildings, there soon will rise a glass tower, with yet another giant coming one block north and several more just to the south. Like many of New York's remaining small businesses and longtime residents, La-Rosa is rapidly being surrounded by "revitalization." But what could be more vital to our city than shops like Frank Almanzar's?

The Adore

2012-01-09T07:30:00.001-05:00

VANISHED

The cafe The Adore at 17 East 13th Street closed in early December. The gate is down, a FOR LEASE sign is up, and there's a note covered with tearful customer goodbyes.

I never went there, but was fascinated by the old signage out front that says ERSKINE PRESS. Walter Grutchfield reports that Erskine opened here in 1911.

Sometime after Erskine, The Villager (?) moved in. When it moved out, Anais Nin and Gonzalo More brought in Gemor Press in 1944.

Nin writes about it in her diary:

Nin worked at the press eight hours a day and complained about it throughout her Diary. During this time she saw a lot of Russian movies, underwent psychoanalysis, and hoped for news of Hitler's death. She printed Under a Glass Bell and published a book of poems by the Syrian poet Berthie Zilka with a red suede cover. She struggled to "keep the press afloat."

In the fall of 1944 the press was harassed by a man "carrying some kind of a badge" and claiming to be a "night watchman." He told Nin that every shop in the neighborhood paid him for his protection and if Nin didn't pay they'd be burglarized. Nin refused and the next day the shop's plate-glass window was shattered. They fixed the window and it was shattered again. Getting drunk with the night watchman, however, got him to back off and he provided his protection for free.

But life at the press was taxing for Nin. In October she wrote, "I am smothering under the weight of the press." Gonzalo wasn't doing his job, claiming, "I'm an old anarchist. I cannot be disciplined," so Nin had to take time away from her writing to manage the business, which she resented.

I'm not sure when the press closed. Perhaps in the late 1940s. And what moved in to 17 E. 13th after that, who knows?

As for what's to come, I'll let a Yelper say it: "There's a liquor permit plastered to gate. This cozy place was my ace to escape the chaos of Union Square. Sad how something so adorable will be replaced with something expensive and lame."

The Commuters of 1982

2012-01-06T08:00:00.001-05:00

Three ghosts of old New Yorkers haunt the Port Authority bus terminal. You can find these walking anachronisms lurking in the back by the Red & Tan ticket windows and the desultory Book Corner where Kindle-less travelers pick up the latest Danielle Steels and John Grishams.

The Commuters, by George Segal

These ghosts, with their shabby slacks and jackets, with their heavy bags and heavy bodies, look nothing like today's New Yorkers. They hail from an earlier time, a time without cell phones or iPods. A time when people walked and watched where they were going simultaneously.

Their shoes are miserable. Their shoulder bags are miserable. All in all, they look rather depressed.

Unable to write texts or talk on the phone to their friends, they bear the heavy burden of actual thought. It is 1982 in this frozen scene. There is much to think about.

Ronald Reagan's recession is in full bloom. A frightening disease called AIDS has just been named. And the New York Times reports that "by the end of this century electronic information technology will have transformed American home, business, manufacturing, school, family and political life... a vision, at once appealing and threatening, of a style of life defined and controlled by videotex terminals throughout the house."

Pondering a life completely controlled by videotex terminals, the ghosts wonder "What will become of us?" as they step heavily through the bus station portal into a future nothingness.

Atlas Meats Demo

2012-01-05T07:45:00.001-05:00

A couple of weeks ago I announced that the demolition of Atlas Meats had begun. It's moving along at a lightning-fast clip. Most of the historic building is already in rubble.

June 2011

today

Above the wasted landscape of fallen bricks and dust, the painted red and pink lipsticked mouths of Diane Von Furstenberg's flagship hover, like alien spacecraft after an attack, surveying the destruction.

On the ground, the demolition claw grabs a hunk of twisted metal, shakes it in its massive fist, and lets it drop, a dog worrying its prey to break the neck.

A whole world is vanishing before our eyes.

*Everyday Chatter

2012-01-04T13:15:00.002-05:00

A melancholy round-up of the beautiful neon signs New York lost in 2011. [NYN]

Urban Baby today will make you nuts with its discussion of rich New Yorkers who feel poor: "Under 1Bil in savings in NYC, and you cannot buy anything." [Gothamist]

Books--are they "increasingly illegal intoxicants"? An interview with St. Mark's bookseller Karen Lillis. [SS]

Massachusetts fish coming to 1st Ave and St. Mark's--to the former home of Prana Foods where Allen Ginsberg used to buy his organic, bruised vegetables. [EVG]

An Art Deco masterpiece in the Bronx. [SNY]

3,000 polar bears take the Coney plunge. [ATZ]

e.e. cummings in the Village. [OTG]

Tonight: Go fight NYU's massive expansion. [WSP]

Why you should be afraid of NYU's juggernaut. [EVG]

At the High Line, a Scores billboard girl gets a cosmetic cover-up for her stubble:

Overheard at Arturo's

2012-01-04T07:30:00.000-05:00

People apparently now expect every bar to have a charger for their phone. I didn't know this until I read it in the New York Times. Phone "charging stations," says the Times, are "popular among bartenders who are increasingly inundated with requests from customers to charge their phones behind the bar."

But I did hear one of these requests recently at Arturo's, the wonderful 55-year-old Italian place that isn't being wiped off the face of Manhattan because the family owns the building.

Guy at the bar: Do you have a charger here for a Blackberry?

Bartender: A what?

Guy: I need my Blackberry charged.

Bartender: Uh, sure.

The bartender goes to get permission to let the guy plug in his Blackberry. There's a bit of confusion, but permission is given.

Bartender: Okay, I can plug in your charger.

Guy: I don't have the charger. I need a charger. You don't have one?

Bartender: No.

Guy: [to girl next to him who is texting on her iPhone] Can you believe it?

Girl: Every bar should have a charger for a Blackberry and an iPhone.

Guy: Right. Bars have whole set-ups now to charge Blackberries and iPhones. Most bars have that. But not this bar.

Not this bar. And thank God for small favors.

Doughnut Balustrade

2012-01-03T07:30:00.002-05:00

It's a sad thing to walk by the Chelsea Hotel these days. The big neon sign is dark, the lobby is desolate, and there's a miserable paper sign taped to the door to let everyone know the place is "closed to the public."

The Doughnut Plant downstairs isn't closed, though. It's hopping with members of the public. They make artisanal treats and do not spell their name D-O-N-U-T like the old-schoolers do. They moved into the large space formerly occupied by Chelsea Guitars.

I took a peek inside and was surprised to find the counter wrapped in the flowered, wrought-iron balustrade that frames the balconies of the hotel--the one that poet James Schuyler rhapsodized about. I kept trying to figure out if this is a copy or a piece of the original. I asked the barista and received a blank look.

Gothamist reported awhile back that the Doughnut Plant owner "temporarily removed a section of railing" from the hotel "in order to have it cast and replicated." He also plucked the flowers to make light fixtures.

Meanwhile, upstairs, the historic rooms are gutted as Chelsea tenants are evicted, and most of us have no hope of ever leaning on one of those balustrades--unless we're buying artisanal doughnuts.

Auggie's Coffee

2011-12-30T07:30:00.003-05:00

VANISHED

As an Anonymous commenter let us know yesterday, the Thompson Street location of the Porto Rico Roasting Company, more intimately known as Auggie's, has shuttered. Says Anonymous, "I had my last cup of auggie's yesterday afternoon, and this morning the windows are papered over. sad."

Porto Rico Times

Peter Longo at the Porto Rico Times confirms that Auggie's has closed after more than 45 years. Why? "The rent is too damn high." (That seems to be the case up and down Thompson these days.)

I just walked by there recently and took this shot of the great old signage, complete with a New York City phone exchange: WO-6.

These, too, are vanishing fast.

my flickr

Vanished 2011: People

2011-12-30T07:15:00.006-05:00

Finally, this week, remembering the people and personalities we lost in 2011.

Bobby Robinson, the proprietor of Bobby's Happy House in Harlem, passed away at age 93, three years after his six-decades-old shop fell to the forces of gentrification.

Lenny Waller, former manager of the Hellfire Club and a well-loved sex-positive AIDS activist, died in March. So did Chloe Dzubilo, transgender and AIDS activist, artist, writer, punk rocker, and East Villager. They were both memorialized by many.

We lost East Village blogger and photographer Bob Arihood in September. He was a friend and won't be forgotten.

memorial at Ray's Candy

In her 90s, the inimitable Fedora Dorato passed away just one year after her restaurant closed and she took her final standing ovation. Tony Amato passed at age 91, two years after his wonderful opera house shuttered on the Bowery.

Finally, she wasn't a person, but she was a unique and storied New York personality--Hijinx the Coney Island cat died last summer at 17.

As with all these lists, I am sure I'm neglecting many. Please add more names in the comments. Grieve has more.

Previous Year-End Reviews:
2010
2009: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter
2008
2007

Rocco's Update

2011-12-29T07:15:00.001-05:00

As you know, the 89-year-old, third-generation Village classic Rocco Ristorante is being pushed out by its landlord's skyrocketing rent to make room for another restaurant in the popular Torrisi mini-chain. Over a recent meal, I learned that Rocco's official closing date will be January 2.

"We're taking the sign with us," said the waiter, so Torrisi won't be getting a Fedora-like deal, even though they have used the sign on their own website to announce their takeover.

Owner Mr. DaSilva also plans to stay in the neighborhood--he's got a few places in mind for the new Rocco's. But go to the original soon, before it is vanished by the forces that be.

Vanished 2011: Structures

2011-12-29T07:00:00.001-05:00

Several buildings and other structures fell in 2011.

We're still watching 7 - 9 Second Avenue fall, a harrowing loss of history--including Mars Bar and much more.

35 Cooper Square, despite an outpouring of support for preserving its illustrious history, was turned to rubble.

The gorgeous neon signage from Jade Mountain was ripped away, carted off, and likely dumped.

Photo from warsze

One of the East Village's last bohemians, Edgar Oliver, was booted from his home on E. 10th and the place is being sold as a townhouse.

The home of Premiere Veal, formerly the Gansevoort Pumping Station, was demolished for the new Whitney Museum. And demolition has just begun on the Atlas Meat packing plant.

And we lost a lot of old newsstands--at 14th and 6th, in Times Square, on University Place, down on Water Street, and surely many more.

What else?

Previous Year-End Reviews:
2010
2009: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter
2008
2007

Vanished 2011: Food

2011-12-28T08:30:00.003-05:00

We lost many restaurants in 2011.

*Update: Regrettably, we add Polonia to the list, shuttered Christmas Eve after 22 years in the East Village.

*Update 2: We just learned that Auggie's Coffee shop on Thompson has closed after 45 years.

The city's red-sauce joints took more hits as Rocco Ristorante announced they'd be closing after 89 years due to a rent hike and takeover by the Torrisi chain. Rocky's Italian also announced their impending closure, also due to rent hike and takeover by a Nolitan called Balaboosta.

After 52 years in Little Italy, the original Ray's Pizza closed its doors. Less original, but also mourned, Famous Ray's in the Village shuttered.

We lost the second-to-last Andrews Coffee Shop and the Tramway Diner. Also vanished, Niko's on the Upper West Side.

Doyers Vietnamese was shuttered and recently became a trendy hipster spot.

And very quietly, without fanfare, two Latin places disappeared from Chelsea--Cabo Rojo off the High Line and the Cuban Chinese joint La Nueva Rampa.

What have I missed?

Previous Year-End Reviews:
2010
2009: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter
2008
2007

Vanished 2011: Businesses

2011-12-28T07:45:00.003-05:00

We lost a number of businesses in 2011. Today is the latest as 46th Street's drum mecca, Drummer's World, closes its doors after 32 years in business.

Covered in this blog, an incomplete list includes:

Iconic bars like Mars Bar and the P&G. The loss of Mars Bar was met with deep grief, especially from denizens of the East Village. The original P&G had already been lost, but this year its reincarnation also vanished.

We saw the shuttering of the Chelsea Hotel to all but its permanent residents. I spent the night there on its final night in business before it was ruthlessly gutted for a renovation that will surely be a gutting of its soul.

We lost (at least) two bookstores. Bookberries vanished and so did the Atlantic Bookshop, the reincarnation of the lost and beloved 12th Street Books.

West Chelsea's automotive-related businesses were mowed down after the second half of the High Line opened. Firestone Bear Auto was shuttered by its landlord for high-end development, as was the antique Olympia Garage and the third-generation business Brownfeld Auto. Two gas stations went with them--the Chelsea Mobil and the Village Lukoil. A quirky lunch spot for taxi drivers and mechanics, Poppy's Terminal Food Shop closed, and its neighbor 10th Ave. Tires was sent packing.

In other news, the Chinatown Fair, famed for its tic-tac-toe chicken, shuttered and moved away. Elliott Pharmacy was eaten by the many Duane Reades and Rite Aids. Wu-Tang martial arts studio fell along with Mars Bar. And we learned that Lucky Cheng's is on the vanishing list for 2012.

I'm sure I've missed many--please add them to the list. (Restaurants and buildings are coming soon.)

Previous Year-End Reviews:
2010
2009: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter
2008
2007

Lucky Cheng's Update

2011-12-27T07:15:00.001-05:00

Hayne Suthon, owner of Lucky Cheng's, commented on the epic history post with some good news: "no worries, the building is absolutely not for sale and my daughter, cats, dogs...and me are keeping our apartment there."

She says she will be "Looking for a great operator to create something truly fantastic, in keeping in the tradition of the building. God forbid someone upsets the resident ghosts."

Keeping those ghosts in mind, what would you like to see here next?

Saved 2011

2011-12-27T07:00:00.001-05:00

This week, as every year, I'm doing a roundup of what's been lost over the past 12 months. The next days will cover vanished restaurants, general businesses, buildings and structures, and people. But let's start with the good news.

A handful of businesses were saved or revived this year. The biggest victory has to be the rescue of St. Mark's Bookshop--a major boost for those who fight to keep the city's culture alive.

Caffe Vivaldi was also saved via petition.

The Nom Wah Tea Parlor was renovated beautifully and reopened.

The Waverly Diner, thought dead, came back to life.

Pieces gay bar, down for the count, got a new lease at the zero hour.

And Ray's Pizza on 6th and 11th will not be turned into a Starbucks, but another Ray's Pizza (albeit not the same Ray's, so this one goes into both the Saved and Vanished column).

Previous Year-End Reviews:
2010
2009: Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter
2008
2007

Christmas Trees & Canadians

2011-12-23T07:00:00.006-05:00

Originally published December 2007:

After every Christmas, we wake to find the trees have vanished. The Quebecois who brought them have left us after a whole month of filling our streets with impromptu forests and the sweet, sticky fragrance of pine. And, every year, I miss them when they go.

“People in New York have a romantic idea about us,” one tree lady told me. “They come by and say, ‘Oh, you must feel right at home with all these trees, like in a forest.’ Then I tell them I live in Montreal. A big city. They look disappointed.”

That romantic idea might come from French-Canadian folklore, where the coureur-de-bois (literally “runner of the woods”) stands as a vivid heroic figure, a carefree adventurer decked out in fringed buckskin and moccasins, trekking and trading across the great northern wilderness. History tells us that the coureur-de-bois have disappeared and yet, every year, truckloads of their descendants head for New York, bringing a little bit of the Canadian wilderness with them.

Many of us go out of our way just to walk past their trees, to press our faces into the boughs and breathe deep. We can’t resist. “New York people like to smell the trees,” the tree lady told me. “They stop and tell me ‘Thank you for being here.’”

People give the tree lady cups of coffee, magazines to read, even the keys to their apartments so she can have a hot shower once in a while (she's out in the cold 16 hours a day and sleeps in a van). But not everyone loves the tree lady. Some people let their dogs urinate on her trees, and some call her a tree killer. She doesn’t get that.

“The tree is grown in a farm, like the food we eat, like potatoes. If I eat the potato, are you going to say, ‘Hey, potato killer’?"

The tree lady explained, "The tree is like flowers. It’s a simple way to make happiness, to bring some warmness in the house. Plus, it’s good energy. Feng Shui recommends to have real vegetables in the house. Like flowers. It’s better to buy a tree than to say ‘Oh, I feel sad, I want to buy a sweater or I want to buy shoes.’ We’re consumers, yes, but I think this is a good part of the consummation about Christmas. The tree is something everyone can share.”

New York Bound

2011-12-22T07:00:00.002-05:00

GUEST POST

This month marks the online launch of New York Bound Books, an interactive site that resurrects the spirit and resources of the late, lamented New York Bound Bookshop, the last independent shop in the city dedicated solely to all things Gotham, out-of-print and new. It lost its lease in 1997.

As the proprietor of a Brooklyn bookshop that tries to approximate one-tenth of what New York Bound achieved, I was eager to sit down with founder Barbara Cohen to talk about those years behind the counter and her new incarnation on the web

--Peter Miller, Freebird Books

How did your store begin?

About 1974, I got interested in New York history and did research at the New York Historical Society thinking I would write a book about Dutch New York. I looked for used books locally, but no one, not even the Fourth Avenue shops, had much of a New York City section.

About the same time my husband and I bought a weekend house in Columbia County. I found a wonderful book barn near us and I went there all the time and became friendly with Maureen Rodger, the owner. I always loved books, history and bookshops, so I thought about starting one devoted to New York. From the beginning I carried out-of-print and rare books, old maps, photos, prints, and ephemera. Then I made book-buying trips to shops up the New England coast, New Jersey, and even California, as well as buying individual collections. I bought a lot of books at book fairs. I was lucky that in these years books about New York weren’t as coveted as they are now, and other book dealers would save their New York books for me.

In 1976, neighbors of ours who were city planners told me that I should look down at the South Street Seaport in the old Fulton Market. This would have been in the pre-Rouse days. It was just stalls and different shops, I think only $300 a month. There was a lot of traffic, I didn’t have to worry about anything. The stall was 10 x 10. I set up there thinking I didn’t have anything to lose.

How did you build the business in those days?

Publicity was key. I got reviewed in the New York Times and New York Magazine early on and they brought in a lot of curious people. The Seaport also brought in a lot of people before Battery Park City and the west side was developed, so I would get government workers, city planners, people interested in the city, plus Wall Street people, all guys, who wanted old books. I built a very nice business there. It was great. I lived on the Upper West Side on 96th and I drove down every day to a whole other world. I met Joseph Mitchell, who really went there. Sloppy Louie’s was still there.

How long did you occupy that space?

About 3 1/2 years. I left in 1980 because the Seaport was going to be developed. I knew I couldn’t afford to stay there. So I went looking for space. The real estate market must have been becoming more valuable because I would look at a space and agree to take it, but then it became a game of “Well, the price just went up.”

Eventually, you moved to the lobby of the AP building at Rockefeller Center and partnered with Judith Stonehill. There was a lot that was affordable in your store. You seemed to want these books to go to the right people. These were not just investments.

That’s how a real bookseller thinks rather than just moving merchandise. Interacting with the customers, educating them on the best books in their interest, not just moving merchandise, which is why I didn’t want an online business for just selling books.

Tell me about the last couple of years.

Rockefeller Center wanted us out and cut short our lease by a year. When we moved out, the shop was sealed by a wall, and we were replaced by a faux art deco glass panel.

It never became another shop?

No, just decorative. We were lucky because when we moved in there it was still owned by the Rockefellers and the atmosphere was genteel. It felt like an earlier time. The shops in the basement were little businesses. Now it’s all chains.

What did you do after the bookstore closed in 1997?

I decided to write a bibliography and reference to books about New York. I knew there was nothing like it. Because I specialized in New York, I know the literature very well, and I’ve handled a vast amount of books. Over the years I collected dealers’ catalogs from the ‘60s, ‘70s, and ‘80s, newspapers articles that were unusual and relevant, and illustrations and ephemera that I found especially interesting and informative. I applied and received a grant for the publication. The book turned out to be problematic and, at the same time, the word “bibliography” made publishers and agents roll their eyes.

Is that when you came up with the website?

The idea to make it much more than a vehicle for selling came about a year or so ago. I want to be relevant, to offer things that people don’t generally know about. Even people who do research about New York. For example, I was looking in one book and saw a credit for HarpWeek. This man came into the bookstore about 15 years ago and bought a complete run of Harper’s Weekly and ended up having it digitized and, with the help of scholars, creating an updated index. So if you wanted to know women’s rights or issues in 1860 you could find it in an index which you couldn’t do in the original Harper’s Weekly. So I thought Wow! I asked a lot of people and nine out of ten who know New York material didn’t know about HarpWeek. And I said, Great, this is the kind of thing I want to put in there.

You point out something that is really important, which is that I’m quite often amazed what resources are not available on the internet when I research New York-related titles.

Absolutely. You can Google and engine search all you want, but some more obscure material will never turn up. That’s the point of the bibliography. I have spent all of these years telling people what were good books on certain areas. I had all this knowledge and I was frustrated after the bookstore closed. I knew I didn’t want to just sell online. I enjoy talking with customers, sharing my information and learning what they offered.

Then in 2010 I went to a bookselling course in Colorado taught by leading book dealers whom I started out with 40 years ago. I realized people remembered me, that I still had a reputation. It made me think about what dealers who specialized in one area and had all this expertise do today? It’s a shame to let it be lost.

I’m glad the print version of the bibliography never worked out. If it had been published on schedule it would have been out of date today. The website is organic and slowly evolving.

Was the greatest pleasure about being a bookseller the interaction with customers?

Yes, talking about the books. That’s what I have in mind on my website. To make more of a dialogue, we'll eventually have a forum, and interview people, sponsor an occasional event and publish some books. I published four books in the 1980s and that was very satisfying. I didn’t go into online to move merchandise.

Kamco

2011-12-21T07:00:00.001-05:00

Since the second part of the High Line opened in June 2011, the neighborhood's small businesses have suffered and dropped like flies, especially those blue-collar businesses catering to car, truck, and taxi drivers. Here's a quick roundup:

6/2011: Poppy's Terminal Food Shop changes hands, later shutters
6/2011: 10th Ave. Tire Shop is pushed out for High Line development
8/2011: Bear Auto forced out by landlord for upscale development
8/2011: Olympia Parking Garage closes when landlord quintuples the rent
9/2011: Village Lukoil shutters
9/2011: D&R Auto Parts reports 40% drop in profits since High Line opened
12/2011: Brownfeld Auto pushed out by landlord
12/2011: Chelsea Mobil sold and shuttered for upscale retail

We can add Kamco Building Materials to the list, as it will be replaced by a pair of giant, $40-million condo towers.

The Real Deal reported the news in October but didn't mention Kamco. They said, "The two-towered project will have about 90,000 square feet of residential space--condominiums with the possibility of some rentals as well--rising both east and west of the tracks," because "apartments looking directly on the High Line are more valuable."

It's possible that few people will care about the disappearance of a business that sells plywood, drywall sheets, insulation, and some pretty snazzy hardhats.

Still, it's part of a larger story, one in which the High Line is like the asteroid responsible for the K-T Impact Event that wiped out the dinosaurs in a mass extinction, but the High Line is wiping out a neighborhood and its long-time dominant businesses.

One other thing--all these businesses are in open lots or single-story buildings. Above them, there's nothing but blue sky, blocked only by the ever-rising luxury towers. That will soon be gone, too.

Fedora Cocktail

2011-12-20T07:00:00.006-05:00

The new Fedora has added a new cocktail to its menu--the Fedora Dorato.

2011, photo by reader Beck O.

A mix of Grouse Scotch, Cynar, and Cocchi Americano, a trendy aperitif among "craft" bartenders, the drink is listed at the bottom of the cocktail menu, under the Black Squirrel Old Fashioned (an ode to a motel in Wisconsin), where it replaces the Mr. Graves Pendleton cocktail--"The spirit of the South and our pal Alex's grandpappy."

The Fedora Dorato's tagline reads: "The spirit of the West Village." If you didn't already know it, you might miss the fact that it's named after the longtime owner of this once legendary place, recently deceased.

It costs $12 (like all the cocktails on the menu), just $1.95 less than the old Fedora's dinner special, which included appetizer, entree, salad, dessert, and coffee.

2010

Marty recently wondered what might be done at the new Fedora to honor the memory of the true Fedora. Does this cocktail fit the bill?

Further reading:
Fedora's Goodbye
A Night at Fedora
A Regular Remembers
Faux-dora
Fedora's Last Days
Fedora Returns
Oscar & Fedora

*Everyday Chatter

2011-12-19T10:45:00.002-05:00

Spotted at the Union Square Craft Fair: "You Killed Brooklyn. Yeah, you." You know who you are. But what would Woody do?:

see more at Urban Cricket

Riding the Nostalgia Train. [FNY]

The demolition of Mars Bar continues. [EVG]

Gowanus Whole Foods--and inevitable hyper-gentrification of the Gowanus wilderness--has been suspended. [Racked]

NYU "has bent over backwards to create a Franco-friendly environment." [Gothamist]

The story behind the little abandoned terra-cotta building. [SNY]

Take a trip back in time to S. Klein's "on the square." [OTG]

Report shows Harlem Wal-Mart would shut down 25% of grocers in vicinity. [Gothamist]

Tonio's of Park Slope now officially another Dunkin Donuts. [HPS]

Mobil Gas

2011-12-19T07:00:00.005-05:00

VANISHED

In 2008, we heard that the Mobil gas station on Chelsea's 10th Avenue, just at the edge of the Meatpacking District and nestled under the High Line, was sold for high-end development. Still, it lived on. Last week, we heard that it was sold again.

This time, the new owners aren't screwing around--they want their 17,000 square feet of luxury retail and they want it fast.

I took a walk by and found the station has been shut down.

Yellow caution tape is strung across it and "SORRY CLOSED" signs are on all the pumps. The Lube Center is shuttered. No cars are being washed. The Market has been emptied of all its snacks.

Forlorn drivers roll up, look at the place in disbelief, then roll away.

It's another loss for old Gasoline Alley--and another win for the new High Line.

More of this:
Poppy's Terminal Food Shop
10th Ave. Tire Shop
Bear Auto
Village Lukoil
Brownfeld Auto

Overheard at Key Food

2011-12-16T07:45:00.002-05:00

Simon1961 sends in this report from Avenue A.

Signs of the East Village times: A generic hipster guy with bum fluff beard, $2 plaid shirt and $450 librarian-style glasses frames charging a 6 pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon and a bottle of supermarket wine to his credit card (!) and a woman one checkout over buying toilet paper yelling “You gonna fucking charge me sales tax? I’m from the Bronx; we don’t do no sales tax shit, t'fuck is this?”

I then walked out of the supermarket to hear someone say "Man, that hot tub was *amazing*!"

More overheard by guests:
Mars Invasion
B&H Pizza Bagel

*Everyday Chatter

2011-12-15T14:00:00.001-05:00

Stop Sugar & Plumm & Yumm from invading the Upper West Side with its oil-money and waste-management candies. [SSP]

Sad news--Anthony Amato of the Amato Opera House has died. [EVG]

Thinking about Frank O'Hara. [PRD]

The Village's Casa Oliveira liquor store gets a fresh-painted neon sign. [NYN]

Tasting the chicken wings at the renovated Waverly diner. [MAD]

Trying out breakfast at the Waverly diner. [FIR]

Gansevoort Square

2011-12-15T08:20:00.001-05:00

If you're wondering what giant development is going up like gangbusters on 14th Street near 9th Avenue, here it is.

It's DDG Partner's "Gansevoort Square." The name pulls the Meatpacking District into what is not the Meatpacking District, tugging the neighborhood's glamor eastward.

In case you think it's too far from MePa, the copy reassures that it's "no more than a stone’s throw away from the many amenities the neighborhood offers."

It's topped with five penthouse apartments and "will also feature some of the Meatpacking District’s newest ground-up luxury retail, creating a natural transition into the vibrant shopping and cultural district." (In reality, might we expect a 7-11?)

The rendering, covered with runaway greenery, brings to mind a post-apocalyptic scene. I can't help but think of Lori Nix's (condopocalyptic?) dioramas.

*Everyday Chatter

2011-12-14T13:30:00.005-05:00

David Cross, comedian and EVGrieve reader (what am I, chopped liver?), is fed up with life in the East Village: "...there's a big, huge 7-11 with big, beautiful 7-11 signs. There's an IHOP on 14th Street, Subway sandwiches all over the place. The thing is, I left Atlanta a long time ago and I'm spending way too much money to live in Atlanta again, you know? I mean it really is...it's just... It's mildly heartbreaking. It's just becoming more and more like a mall. I might as well be in St. Louis. It's very, very quickly, rapidly losing a lot of its character." [Gothamist]

Upper West Siders are nauseated by the "garish" and "too suburban" new candy shop coming to their neighborhood--and it's called Sugar & Plumm Purveyors of Yumm. [DNA]

Thomas Beller tells of life in the laundry room of a half-gentrified old NYC building. [PRD]

BMW Guggenheim Lab feels very proud of itself. [EVG]

After a painful, 5-year struggle, Our Lady of Vilnius is coming down. [NYT]

Visit the most adorable abandoned building in the city. [SNY]

Waverly Reopens

2011-12-14T09:16:00.005-05:00

This morning, the Waverly Restaurant diner is serving its first breakfast in months.

It's their first day open since the renovation.

Long-time customers walking by are surprised and excited to see the lights on and people dining in the windows. They step inside and shout, "Welcome back!" One customer hands money to the waiter behind the counter and says, "This is just to say welcome back."

Every time someone says "Welcome back," the people dining over plates of bacon and eggs pump their fists in the air and shout "hooray!"

It's a good day at the Waverly.

Previously:
Waverly Diner
New Waverly Revealed

Atlas Meats & Interstate

2011-12-14T07:00:00.011-05:00

Plywood, scaffolding, and an official death shroud have just gone up around 437 West 13th Street. Despite controversy and a landmarking battle, the longtime home of Atlas Meats and Interstate Foods is coming down.

today

I've taken a lot of photos of this building over the last few years--you might say too many photos. But when you know something's about to vanish, you can't help yourself.

I loved its crumbling beauty, its sidewalks slippery with animal fat, its meatpackers in bloodstained smocks.

undated, via GVSHP

2008

2011

Meatpacking stopped here in 2009, at the same time that the High Line opened and the Standard Hotel went up next door, casting its giant shadow on the plant's swinging slabs of beef and buckets of inedibles.

We knew it couldn't last. The powers that be would never permit it to survive--the blood! the fat! the smell! When Diane von Furstenberg moved in next door, she pumped perfume into the street from her flagship boutique, making passersby "dizzy."

2008

2009

2011

After the plant shuttered, Meatpacking cats still lurked in the doorways and the brick walls were taken over by street artists and graffitists. Details magazine caught on and took the walls for their own "Details Guild" urban artvertising campaign. (The building also became a billboard for iced tea and Adult Swim.)

Walking by, there was always something new to see.

2009

2011

Now the old bricks will be demolished so a 175-foot glass tower can rise--and what's left for us to look at?

Previously:
Interstate Foods
Details Guild
Meatpacking Cats
71 flickr shots
and
Meat on Hooks
Life in the Triangle

History at Lucky Cheng's

2011-12-13T07:00:00.010-05:00

The rumor has been floating for a few years, but by now you've heard the official news that, after nearly two decades, Lucky Cheng's is leaving the East Village for Times Square. Rumor says the building at 24 First Avenue will be sold, and that means either demolition or renovation--either way, we're going to lose a significant piece of history, and you can bet that whatever comes next will fail to be anywhere near as interesting as the last half-century here.

Formerly a Lower East Side Russian baths, the Lucky Cheng's building was home to Club Baths, the first openly gay-owned bathhouse, from 1971 - 1983.

from Vintage Gay--more NSFW pics inside

Keith Haring was a regular and preferred the Monday and Friday Buddy Nights.

Former manager Bob Kohler recalls the scene, "We had these huge palm trees, real live trees. For the people coming, you pay your money, there’s going to be sex. Boom, boom. You walk in and there are birds singing. Here you are, you came to fuck. And suddenly you are sitting there and there is a jungle, there’s parrots, and palm trees and exotic flowers."

from Vintage Gay--more NSFW pics inside

In 1975, lesbian author Rita Mae Brown snuck into the bathhouse disguised as a man in fake mustache and codpiece. She wrote about her adventure in the essay "Queen for a Day: A Stranger in Paradise."

In his book Make Love, Not War, David Allyn notes how Brown wondered if the "fuck palace" of the gay bathhouse meant total "erotic freedom" or "the ultimate conclusion of sexist logic." In the end, Brown decided that lesbians need bathhouses, too. She wrote: "I want the option of random sex with no emotional commitment when I need sheer physical relief... Our Xanadu would be less competitive than the gay man's baths."

from Back in the Gays

After Club Baths was shuttered during the AIDS crisis and ensuing municipal panic, Hayne Suthon and her family bought the building in 1986 for $2.9 million--money earned from their natural-gas wells in Louisiana, according to New York magazine.

Once a labyrinthine maze of small rooms filled with parrots, palm trees, and orgies, the interior was opened up with help from a crew of "neighborhood skinheads, models, and graffiti artists," wrote New York in 1988. "We found all these artifacts," said Suthon, "huge rubber dildos and everything--it would have made a great museum."

Suthon at Cave Canem, New York Mag., 1988

The New Yorker reported that Suthon "hired a Harvard food historian and converted" the bathhouse "into Cave Canem, a restaurant that served ancient Roman dishes. 'We had a lot of glamorous lesbians working here,' Hayne said."

Guests at Cave Canem sat in oxidized-metal chairs and ate lobster dumplings, but some bathhouse features remained, like the vaulted tile ceilings and a five-foot-deep empty jacuzzi surrounded by dog statuary. NY Songlines also reports a basement full of lesbian orgies--so maybe Rita Mae got her wish.

In the 80s, Cave Canem was called "a real hot spot for the chic-est of the yuppies" and "the place for downtown's hip art scene." (They threw a party for Bret Easton Ellis on opening night.) You could also take a dip by the dance floor. Said Suthon to TIME in 1989, "It's the only place you can go swimming in New York without cement shoes and garbage bags."

At Cave Canem, New York Mag., 1989

But Cave Canem didn't last. In 1993, Suthon turned it into Lucky Cheng's--named after a business partner and former busboy named Cheng who later went on to run the neighboring S/M-themed restaurant La Nouvelle Justine (Hayne took him to People's Court for stealing her chocolate shoe molds but they've since worked it out).

Prince Albert of Monaco dined at Cheng's in 1995 and the place became hugely popular. Still, it wasn't yet the "Bachelorette Party Capital of the Universe" we know today. In a 1994 New York profile of the place, the clientele consists of "nightcrawlers and voyeurs," some Wall Streeters, "waves of the aren't-we-trendy," and Yoko Ono.

New York Mag., 1994

Back then, all the drag queens at Lucky Cheng's were Asian. One described her style as very different from American drag queens--not Brady Bunch, but futuristic Asian sci-fi goddess.

New Yorker, 1994

The tide turned in 1998--Sex & the City premiered and used Lucky Cheng's as the location for their first ensemble scene in Episode 1: "another 30-something birthday with a group of unmarried female friends."

In the scene, the uber bachelorettes set the tone for the next decade in New York. (Says Miranda, "It's like that guy Jeremiah the poet? I mean, the sex was incredible, but then he wanted to read me his poetry and go out to dinner, and the whole chat bit and I'm like, let's not even go there." Not me, I swear.)

In the past decade, Lucky Cheng's has been taken over by screeching bachelorettes. I'll take the orgiastic, omnisexual art yuppies of the 80s over these gals any day. Limo'd in over the bridges and through the tunnels, they come like locusts for a night of suckling phallic lollipops, drinking to blackout, and puking in the streets. On their heads they wear giant penis balloons, complete with shooting semen (provided by John the erotic balloon man). It all seems like a pale parody of the erotic acrobatics that came before.

As blogger Tony Whitfield asked, "Do the straight girls know that they're celebrating impending nuptials among the ghosts of thousands of naked gay men? Do the trendy straight hipster boys fingering the Koi have any idea what else was once fingered in that pool?"

Once Cave Canem's "pit," and the Club Baths' Olympic-sized jacuzzi, and perhaps a cold plunge for the Russian Jews of the Lower East Side, the goldfish pond was drained some years ago. The customers at Cheng's kept throwing beer bottles into it and dumping in booze that harmed the fish.

The jacuzzi is now covered by a stage that hosts bands for avant-garde club Nublu. Overhead, you can still see the vaulted tile ceiling of the old bathhouse. Painted bright red, it's one of the last visible remnants of what used to be.

At the entrance to Cheng's, you can see the tile floor of the old baths and the guard dog of Cave Canem.

We will not miss the bachelorettes, but we will miss Lucky Cheng's. It won't be the same in Disneyland Times Square. It won't be scruffy and sagging, with worn carpets littered with years of glitter, and brick walls that could tell you stories. What will happen to the butch coat-check woman in her weary red blazer? What will happen to the foul-mouthed, big-breasted fortune-teller?

What will happen when the building is sold to someone with far less imagination and flair than Hayne Suthon? All that history--down the drain.

*Everyday Chatter

2011-12-12T10:30:00.004-05:00

The marketing of New York City's facial hair--"Rep your borough" with the Braun Cruzer. Why does Manhattan get the hipstery curly one?

Finally, some good news for Coney Island--Paul's Daughter has signed a 10-year lease: "Both Papa and Mama Burger and a mix of new and old hand-painted signage as well as a neon sign are expected." [ATZ]

And Ruby's has signed an 8-year lease: "We look forward to seeing our loyal friends and customers for many years." [FB]

Tom's comes to Coney. Says Zamperla, "We are learning a little bit. After a year and a half, we understand how important Coney Island is to the Brooklyn community." Dawn breaks on Marblehead! [Gothamist]

Yet another death for Gasoline Alley--the Mobil station in Meatpacking will become high-end retail. [Racked]

Hotel Chelsea is evicting long-time tenants. [Curbed]

One reason to love New York: "St. Mark's Bookshop Lives." [NYM]

Amazing film footage of Times Square at its sleaziest. [VS]

Loathing the SantaCon hordes on Second Avenue. [EVG]

Touring Calvary Cemetery. [FNY]

20x200 is having an open house tomorrow night--check out the affordable art, including some framed CBGB prints from Joseph O. Holmes. [FB]

Brownfeld Auto

2011-12-12T07:00:00.001-05:00

VANISHING

The High Line has just claimed another victim. Since the luxury park opened into the upper reaches of Chelsea, the existing long-time businesses have been under siege. The 10th Avenue Tire Shop was pushed out. Poppy's shuttered. Bear Auto was forced to close. And now Brownfeld Auto Service, after over a century in business, will be gone by Christmas.

When I walk into the Brownfeld autobody shop, a noisy garage surprisingly decorated with a gallery of paintings, I am greeted by its third-generation proprietor, Alan Brownfeld. A biker with a thick handlebar mustache and oil-stained hands, he's warm and welcoming. You can just as easily imagine him drinking with Hell's Angels as putting on a Santa suit for a roomful of needy kids--which he does every year on his motorcycle with Toys for Tots.

Alan is a busy and popular man. He answers my questions in between catering to customers and greeting the many friends who come by to spend time with him. As Alan says, "This is more than just an autobody shop, it's a social club for friends, family, and customers to hang out morning, noon, and night. People don't go home after work." They'd rather be at Brownfeld's.

A businessman on his way home to Jersey stops in, then a firefighter in uniform and a biker in leathers come by. A young woman customer visits after her dentist appointment and opens a beer. Her name is Amy and she says, "You come here and feel like part of a family. Alan is a New York City icon. Everybody knows his name. He's got a big heart and what's happening to him is an injustice. The neighborhood will suffer greatly."

"Even people without cars will miss us," says Alan. "They'll miss our Friday barbecues. I feed the whole neighborhood--homeless people, anyone who comes by." But this Friday will be the last of the famous Brownfeld cookouts.

Alan's landlord, inspired by the big money coming from the High Line, is pushing Brownfeld out. Alan has been fighting in court for seven months--"as a true New Yorker, I don't go down that easy"--but he knows he can't win and he's decided to take a deal. While he has hung his garage with found paintings, "to be part of the trendy art block," his type of business is no longer welcome here by the powers that be.

"This business has been a landmark since the 1890s," he tells me. "When my grandfather built it as a horse and buggy business, we were fixing wooden wheels and the springs on stagecoaches." He pulls a chain from his neck and shows me the gold replica of a stagecoach spring he wears in honor of his heritage.

"The New York City streets have been good to me," he says. "The potholes have been good to me. Things were great until Bloomberg came into office. He fixed the streets, he took away my prostitutes, he raised the tolls--and that all meant less business. The he decided to build his own fucking park and he called it the High Line. It's for the city's glamorous people--and it's pushing Gasoline Alley out of Chelsea."

"It's gotten so bad," he adds, "last week the son of the guy who ran Bear Auto killed himself, jumped from a seven-story window."

Alan is a survivor--and a real mensch. He has placed every one of his employees in new jobs and he's looking to the future. "I'm leaving on my terms," he says, "not being pushed out. To hell with Bloomberg. I'm leaving with my head held high."

He hurries off to take care of a customer--they don't all know he's closing and he hasn't had the heart to tell them. A big guy named Harvey, Alan's friend and sometimes business partner, says he's not sure what's next, but he knows Alan will figure out something. He tells me how they planned to open a roll-your-own cigarettes shop called Okee-Dokee Smokee. They got the licenses and everything, but then the city cracked down and the plan fell through. It's hard to think about the end.

"I'm sad," Harvey says, his eyes tearing as he looks around at the place. "Alan puts on a good face, you know, 'life is good' and all that, but--it sucks. It's just really sad."

Further reading:
Bear Auto
Goodbye Poppy's
The Upper High Line
New High Line
Eagle Under Siege
Folsom Under High Line

*Everyday Chatter

2011-12-09T11:43:00.008-05:00

Marty says the new Fedora should change its name to “Cheddarhead’s Amnesia Factory.” [MAD]

Stulman's "Little Wisco cannot and will not be stopped." [Eater]

The original Ray's of Little Italy is being turned into an upscale pizza spa--says the new owner, "This is a trendy area, so it's time for the building to take its rightful place in the neighborhood." [DNA]

Work stops at Mars Bar demolition. [EVG]

American Psycho to be remade for today's yunnie culture--putting the uber-Batemans on the big screen. [NYM]

iPhone mugger is a "smartphone connoisseur" who doesn't want your stinking Blackberry. [Gothamist]

Welcome to Fauxcotti Park--now with mad realness. [RS]

NYC ABCs

2011-12-09T07:30:00.003-05:00

Thanks to Bryan Waterman for calling our attention to this alphabet clip from an early 1970s Sesame Street. It used the streets of New York City to make the alphabet and many of its letters are from vanished signs.

The Q comes from the Stardust Banquet Hall and the R hails from a neon sign for RADIO appliances.

The T comes from a telephone booth, of course.

And the V is spotted on a sign selling hi-fi phonos, tape, rec'ds, and _OLO_ TV.

There are 23 more. Watch the video.

*Everyday Chatter

2011-12-08T14:38:00.005-05:00

Lucky Cheng's is being pushed out of the East Village--unless you want to buy and preserve it. [Grub]

Timboo's classic dive bar of south Park Slope to shutter New Year's Eve. [HPS]

The Chelsea Hotel and its tenants are under attack. [LWL]

Join the Washington Square Park Speak Out against the performance crackdown 12/19. [WSP]

Poor old Chumley's is coming along:

Is the DOH sucking quirky charm from neighborhood favorites? Yes! [Post via Eater]

ACME has gone upscale. [Grub]

A visit to Bill's Gay 90s--before its charm gets sucked out. [MAD]

Enjoy the neon of Howard Beach. [NYN]

Save Leo the famous barge cat. [EVG]

Bleecker Luxe Update

2011-12-08T07:42:00.008-05:00

Checking in on western Bleecker Street's luxury rampage, aside from some French boutiques opened farther east, we have two newcomers to the vulnerable block between 10th and Christopher.

Jo Malone fragrances opened in October, just a few doors from beloved Manatus. If you don't know Jo Malone, they sell "an exclusive lifestyle collection for the bath, body and home. From the refined, unexpected scents to the exquisite cream and black packaging, the timeless luxury of Jo Malone has captured the senses of discerning women and men around the world."

So now you know.

And into that plywooded space next to Comptoir des Cotonniers, which I thought would be "another Marc Jacobs or Coach or Ralph Lauren," comes Freemans Sporting Club, which is like Ralph Lauren for hipsters with trust funds. It has just moved from the other side of Christopher. I guess it wanted to be closer to the fancy stuff.

I'm not sure what to make of their window signage--which appears to be poking fun at stores that cater to the 1%--since the 1% are the people who can actually afford to buy anything at Freemans Sporting Club (along with everything else on this end of Bleecker). But we look forward to their Deli of Endangered Meats and human flesh.

Previously:
Manatus
Bleecker Luxe Blitz
More Jane, Less Marc

*Everyday Chatter

2011-12-07T13:25:00.003-05:00

Loving the anti-Starbucks paste-ups in the EV. [EVG]

"The affluent set invades the East Village." (In 1964) [ENY]

My new hero: the Williamsburg bicyclist who swipes smartphones right from texting pedestrians' hands. [NYS]

Tonight is the Voice Web Awards ceremony--thanks to everyone who voted for me and good luck to all. [VV]

Help fund Wednesdays at A's, a documentary about Arleen Schloss and the underground art scene in 1970s and 80s New York. [Kickstarter]

"On the Bowery" is coming to DVD. [BB]

Graydon Carter promises to bring back to the old Beatrice Inn. Sort of. [Eater]

Enjoying that lovely Automat ghost sign above a defunct OTB. [FNY]

A report on the state of Bob Arihood's blogs and his lifetime of work. [EVG]

Pieces Saved

2011-12-07T07:31:00.007-05:00

The 19-year-old gay bar Pieces has won the battle to stay put. The owner of the bar told Next Magazine, "We now have a multi-year lease from the building's owners. I wanted to get the word out that we’re open and not going anywhere.”

photo: New York

Pieces lost their lease last year so the building owner could "do a full-scale renovation of the three-story building, turning the upstairs floors into high-end apartments and the bar into upscale retail."

Pieces then tried to relocate to the Village Paper space, but they lost out to an upscale party restaurant. They then tried to move to West 8th Street, two doors from Gray's Papaya, but the Village neighbors vehemently opposed them. One woman at a CB meeting said that the bar was a magnet for "'private sex acts in doorways and basements' leaving behind a 'clutter of condoms' on the street." Pieces was denied.

The community spoke out in favor of saving Pieces and Michael Musto called it his "favorite hangout." He said it was "coming up against the usual 2011 prejudices, repressions, and challenges."

photo: New York

"Apparently," said Next, "the owners of the building took notice of the outpouring of support for the little gay bar that could and, in the end, decided to let it stay while postponing their renovations for a few more years."

As we add Pieces to the growing "Win" column, let's count it as a victory for a longtime piece of the Village against the forces of high-end apartments and upscale retail. That's one less Marc Jacobs/cupcake shop we have to contend with.

Hookers & The Sahara

2011-12-06T08:00:00.003-05:00

A comment on this post reminded me of the prostitutes that used to roam the upper, western edge of the East Village. There's a reason Taxi Driver's whorehouse SRO is on 13th and 3rd--but the stroll didn't stop after the 1970s. Prostitutes continued to walk these blocks as late as the mid-1990s. I did a little digging and found a relevant entry from my journals.

Journal excerpt from May 1996:

I walked up Second Avenue and turned onto 11th Street. Under the gingko trees, dark-green in the night, a woman came up to me.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, coming very close. I could smell the perfume on her skin. Her blouse was open, her chest dusted with some kind of glitter. I stopped. “Do you have a match?”

I fished in my jacket pockets and pulled out a half-used book of matches. The woman put a cigarette between her lips and I struck the match, cupped it in my hands, and held it out to her. She moved into it, all the while looking into my eyes. In the flickering light, I could see she was younger than I’d first thought. A teenager. Maybe 20. She had a tired, ravaged look, dark shadows on her pale skin. She thanked me and I stepped back, about to walk away, when she reached out and touched my sleeve.

“Would you like a date?” she asked.

It took me a few seconds to realize what she was asking me. “A date? Oh, no. No, thank you,” I said, flattered to be propositioned, even by a prostitute, and I wanted to be polite.

“We’ll have a nice time,” she said as I walked away.

I wandered up to Third Avenue where another woman approached me.

“Psst! Psst!” she hissed. “Hey, pretty boy!” Then she hissed again. I turned around. She was tall, with large breasts and a tremendous ass that made her wobble on her platform heels. She smiled at me, missing a few teeth.

“How about a date tonight? You’re looking lonely.”

“No, thank you,” I said, hurrying along. I didn't want her to hiss at me again.

“Don’t be scared,” she shouted. “You don’t know what you’re missing!”

I kept walking, hearing her footsteps behind me, until I got to 14th Street. On the corner, under a dilapidated scaffolding, glowed the neon lights of “VIDEO PEEPS, XXX, 25-CENTS.” Before going inside, I looked behind me and the tall prostitute was standing there, leaning on the scaffold, smirking like she could see right through me.

a rare photo--New York Magazine, 1990

That peep joint on the northeast corner of 14th and 3rd was located in what was then the Sahara Hotel. The Sahara was like a slice of Times Square's grittiest, an SRO known for danger and shady dealings.

NYU & Duane Reade, today

In August 1973, the Times reported: "police charged the manager of the Sahara Hotel, at 201 East 14th Street, with homicide after finding his wife's body on the roof. They said Umberto Rivera, 34, the manager, said he shot Pedra, his wife, in their apartment Friday night when she threatened him with a knife. A hotel night clerk, Alfredo Medina, 32, was accused of aiding in the homicide by helping carry the body to the roof."

Sahara (left), 1972, nycsubway

Not much changed over the years. A 1990 New York article cites suspicious fires, professional thugs driving out tenants, and crack dealers climbing through the windows where prostitutes did their business. The Sahara soon emptied of its occupants and stayed empty.

In 1996, when I ran in there, the tide was turning. Three businessmen involved in the Sahara's demise expressed their opinions to the Times: "The Sahara has been nothing but misery for this community" and "We're all praying that the Sahara will be sold so we can turn the page on an ugly chapter" and "this is the domino that could turn around what has been a laggard section of 14th Street."

201 E. 14th in 1936, NYPL

That last prediction turned out to be correct. After The Sahara was sold in 1999, the prostitutes seemed to vanish from the East Village, as if the abandoned old hotel had been their energy source.

The porno shop shuttered in July of that year--wrote the Times, "The last remnant of 14th Street's seedy past, an adult video store near Third Avenue, closed last week." The owners were given $100,000 to get out. Neighbors were hopeful that the closure would mean "the neighborhood will finally become what we would like it to become.''

If what they wanted was a bunch of NYU dorms, condo towers, and chain stores, then they got their wish.

today: looks like Houston, Texas

The dominos kept falling. After the hookers and the Sahara vanished, we lost much more from this part of town: Around the same time, the Palladium came down for an NYU dorm and Trader Joe's, St. Ann's Church was decapitated for another NYU dorm, the "should have been landmarked" Variety Photoplays fell for a beastly Toll Brothers glass tower (with bank branch), the Grace & Hope Mission shut down, several businesses on the southeast corner of 14th and 3rd were demolished for another condo tower (with bank branch), IHOP moved in, and yet another massive condo is going up at 3rd and 12th.

And now we hear chatter that the long-empty Mystery Lot of 13th St. will be developed by Hollywood hotelier Andre Balasz, who we guess will be bringing big, loud Meatpacking District glitz and glamor to Easy Iris' old block.

background: Mystery Lot before it was a lot, via SNY

See Also:
14th and 3rd
Little Jam
Movie Star News
Before IHOP

*Everyday Chatter

2011-12-05T12:15:00.004-05:00

Bad news for Billy's Antiques--more development takes over on the Bowery: "It’ll be part of that final transition to a landscape of Pottery Barns and Starbucks." [NYT]

And what's coming? Billy says it will be made of brick imported from a factory in Massachusetts--and built by Tony Goldman, the creator of Soho who discovers and articulates urban grit. [EVG]

More news and rumor from Bill's Gay 90s: The bartender said "the owner of the old tavern...wanted nothing to do with DeLucie, and that they were the victim of a spiteful landlord who was messing around with the fate of the bar. 'We're not going anywhere,' he said." [LC]

Lovely photos of the old B&B Carousell at Coney Island--it could be yours. [ATZ]

Gutting the Chelsea Hotel. [Gothamist]

Oh dear, there's a Sex & the City slot machine in Queens. [NYM]

The backstory on Dog Day Afternoon. [OTG]

Mick's new book Christmas Whore is "about the sleazy old area of the 20s and Park Ave South, wretched times were spent there all around the Belmore Cafeteria." [ABS]

Inside the insane car-vator of Chelsea's 200 11th Ave. [Gothamist]

Good news from Pat about the shuttered Cosmos Diner: The scaffolding is down and the new sign says "Orion Diner & Grill with a big picture of a bare-chested archer (Orion the Hunter) against an orange background with laurel leaves. Looks very Greek and not at all gentrified."

History of the B&H

2011-12-05T07:30:00.002-05:00

New York's great small places are not often included in the history records. They linger, or they vanish, leaving us to wonder about their stories. The B&H Dairy in the East Village is one of those places. As a longtime fan and customer, I was excited to hear from Florence Bergson Goldberg, the daughter of B&H founder Abie Bergson. She was kind enough to share her family photos and stories.

today

Bergson Goldberg: The B&H circa 1970s

Ms. Goldberg recalls, "My dad started his business on a handshake. He had worked as a waiter in a store across the street from where the B&H stands. When he decided he wanted to start his own business, he approached many of the restaurant supply merchants on the Bowery. They knew my father to be an honest man, and they all gave him credit with just a handshake."

"The B&H opened either in 1937 or 1938. Originally, B&H stood for Bergson and Heller. Later on, Mr. Heller left the business, and my father's friend, Sol Hausman, became his second partner, still B&H. Sol came up with an idea that B&H could also stand for 'Better Health.'"

The B&H was successful, but it never expanded and never really changed. As Ms. Goldberg recalls, "So many businesses, when they do well, begin to expand in the hope of 'making a killing.' My dad never thought in those terms. He would rather have had people waiting for seats than seats waiting for people."

Bergson Goldberg: The mom & pop, 1950s

Mr. Bergson and his partner sold the B&H around 1970. In 1978, counterman Leo Ratnofsky was profiled in the New Yorker's Talk of the Town. To hear Leo tell it, the B&H was the same in 1978 as it was in 1940 when he began--and as it still is today. The story is filled with buttered slices of homemade challah, bowls of soup, fresh-squeezed oranges, hungry crowds, and even "a meticulous Ukrainian" cook in the tiny back kitchen with a scarf on her head who now and then peeks out to see what's going on. I imagine she was back there peeling potatoes and mashing beets, just as her doppelganger is today.

In the New Yorker story, Leo calls out "Jumbo jockey!" when a customer leaves a tip of a quarter (or more), and the countermen mumble their thank-you's.

Ms. Goldberg remembers this B&H tipping ritual well. She says, "Whenever someone would leave a tip for them, my dad or his partner would tap the coins on the counter and call out 'Jockey!' to let them know a tip was left and allow them to say thank you."

Bergson Goldberg: The boss & his countermen

Said Leo on his last day of work, "I'll tell you truthfully--I don't feel bad about leaving the place. I've got bad feet, my fingernails are being eaten away from squeezing oranges. But to leave all these people--that makes me feel like crying. These actors and actresses, the hippies, the yippies, the beatniks, the bohemians, people who've run away from God knows where--I've always felt an attraction to them. Especially the starving ones."

Ms. Goldberg remembers the actors, too. She recalls how they "visited the store when they rehearsed at the Orpheum Theater. They loved my dad, and they loved the food served at the B&H. Among the many celebrities who graced the B&H were Shelly Winters, Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, Jack Klugman, and Rocky Graziano to name just a few."

Leo recalls Molly Picon coming in to chat with Abie Bergson over a bowl of soup--Bergson was an aspiring actor, too, and when lower Second Avenue was Yiddish Broadway, says Leo, "The streets were so crowded you had to walk in the gutter."

photo by Tony Marciante, 1968

"The store was more than a place to eat," says Ms. Goldberg. "It was a place where friends got together to trade stories about their workday and their families. It was a happy place, and some of my fondest memories were of my many times spent at the store with my mom and dad."

As Leo put it in 1978, "This place has always had a spirit." It still does.

today

De Lorenzo Pops Up

2011-12-02T08:00:00.002-05:00

Last week we learned from Racked about The Warby Parker Holiday Spectacle Bazaar, "a several-months-long pop-up fair in an old garage space in Soho."

I don't know from Warby Parker (named after Jack Kerouac characters, they sell reasonably priced designer eyewear, including monocles and also $10,000 yurts). I do, however, know what that "old garage space" used to be.

Since 1968 this little brick building was home to the De Lorenzo metalworking shop, a business that went back to 1907. It survived and thrived through three generations of the same family. They sold the building in 2008 for a large, undisclosed sum to a "developer seeking to put up a luxury condominium building."

2009

Oddly enough, three years later the little brick building is still sitting there. Maybe the money for the luxury tower fell through. It's only a matter of time. For now, on the fading signage, you can still see the old phone number with its WA.5 exchange--the WA stood for Walker. And inside the pop-up shop, you can get a glimpse of what was.

*Everyday Chatter

2011-12-01T11:50:00.002-05:00

Tony Bourdain officially endorses St. Mark's Bookshop--for the "oddball, off-the-wall hipster obscure"? [TC]

Celebrate the victory to save St. Mark's Books tonight, 5:30 - 7:30, at the shop. [FB]

Good to see 20-somethings caring about books and literature--and not just using it to get laid (like some). [NYT]

Auster and Delillo at Union Square: "an iPod-studded kid asked Delillo what he thought was 'the most mundane situation' he could think of... Paul Auster, with rolling eyes, flipped another copy on to its title page, readied his pen and answered, 'Signing books at Barnes & Noble.'" [EL]

"Any poet in New York has to write found poetry because there’s so much of it around on the street." --Harvey Shapiro [Bomb]

Marty stops in at the embattled Bill's Gay 90s. [MAD]

60-year-old Sherman's BBQ of Harlem may be shuttering. [Eater]

General Bloomberg: "I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world." [NYO]

Where are the ruins of the Smallpox Hospital in the renderings of wahoo-new construction Bloombie wants to bring to Roosevelt Island? [Gothamist]

Fun pictures of Bloomberg looking like a megalomaniac who has lost his mind (or Joel Grey). [EVG]

Someone in the Village wasn't happy with Obama's visit:

Ray's Revived?

2011-12-01T07:00:00.010-05:00

Is the Ray's Pizza that vanished from the corner of 6th Ave. and 11th St. coming back from the dead? Or will it be the reincarnation of our lost Joe Jr.'s? Or another Ray's altogether?

On the Friends of Joe Jr's Facebook page there's been chatter that the guys from Joe Jr's are talking with the landlord of the Ray's space to get a long-term lease here. But there is movement inside the space.

This week, the door was wide open and the FOR RENT and NO FOOD signs were gone. Inside, a white-haired man was tidying up. He wasn't tossing everything into the trash, he was actually tidying--putting the pizza pans in neat piles, straightening out the napkin dispensers.

I asked him, "What's moving in here?"

"Ray's Pizza," he said.

Incredulous, I asked, "The same Ray's that was here before?"

"Yeah."

"The same Ray's with the same people and the same name?"

"Yeah."

Still not quite buying it, I persisted, "So Ray's is coming back? Here?"

"Yeah! Yeah!"

The following day, a Ray's menu appeared Scotch-taped inside the window. On close inspection, the menu is from Famous Original Ray's, while this location was merely Famous Ray's, and the addresses on the menu are for Columbus Avenue and 9th Avenue. What Ray's is this? The Famous Original Ray's (est. 1964) Facebook page says, "Coming Soon 6 Ave & 11 Street." So there you go.

One Ray or another, it's something of a miracle. Now let's hope Joe Jr's finds another space nearby.

*Update: Eater notes that the Ray's moving in "looks to be the group that sued the original Famous Ray's owners here for trademark infringement back in June."

Previously:
Famous Ray's Pizza
Save Joe Jr's
Last Supper at Joe's
Auster's Joe Jr's

*Everyday Chatter

2011-11-30T13:25:00.005-05:00

Oh no, no, no--Bill's Gay 90s files for bankruptcy in financial rift with landlord. Here come the douchebags. [LC]

Take a look out Harvey Wang's window--at the Tenement Museum. [CR]

Harry Potter to play Allen Ginsberg--a better fit than Franco's Howl? [Gothamist]

Behold the horror coming to 12th and 3rd. [EVG]

Longtime holistic and homeopathic EV Veterinarian shuttered. [BB]

A drink at Rolf's twinkly spectacular. [MAD]

You can rent the last empty storefront in Coney's Stillwell terminal. [ATZ]

When will NYC's massive tourist bubble burst? [NYM]

On the Table

2011-11-30T07:30:00.002-05:00

Cooper Union students for preserving free tuition have launched "On the Table: An Exhibition for Free Education." It opened last night and remains open to the public until Friday. Reader EmG was there and sends in photos and details.

"There were lots of pics of the board members with the names of corporations they're involved with... They had a cool timeline of Cooper Union's role in development in the East Vill and how it corresponded to the national increase in student loan debt... and a video of Hitler and his Nazis talking in subtitles about paying tuition at Cooper Union."

Student artists have created posters that convey a generally unfavorable view of Cooper's financial dealings. One says "FUCKINTUITION" and another shows Peter Cooper sitting on a table with a $38,000 price tag attached to him--the caption reads, "Pay up sucka!"

$38,000 is, perhaps, the tuition fee being considered.

Another poster plays on the "green" nature of the new engineering building--here built of 100-dollar bills--and its position as a supposed structure of worship to be hailed. The poster may be implying that this building was a flagrant waste of money.

"...and they have a giant blow-up rat outside."

For more info on ways to support a tuition-free Cooper Union, visit:

The Cooper Union Task Force
As Free as Air & Water
and
sign the petition

*Everyday Chatter

2011-11-29T13:15:00.003-05:00

On saving Bill's Gay 90s, Brooks offers: "a news flash to Mr. DeLucie: Bill's already has an old-time feel. Don't fuck it up with your vile whoring-after-the-1%, faux-authentic sensibilities. This is not your element. You have no idea what a real New York tavern is. So: Back. The. Hell. Away. From. Bill's." [LC]

Hinsch's saved--reopens to great excitement in Bay Ridge. [NYDN]

French street artist JR covers the windows of unrented retail space at 456 West 19th with his big monochromatic eyes:

Finding an undiscovered clutch of vintage neon in the Bronx. [NYN]

Harlemisms from 1951--you dig? [DTDB]

What's the story with backhouses? (Not to be confused with the Italian back'ows.) [OTG]

7-story condo-type thing to replace countercultural theater on Ave. B. [EVG]

Last Ones Out

2011-11-29T07:30:00.001-05:00

As Grieve reported, Nevada Smith's on 3rd Avenue between 11th and 12th has closed and the building that holds it, along with its neighbor, is coming down. Said Smith's, developers are "poised to demolish most of the block and replace our place, and yours, with a new luxury apartment block."

The two doomed tenement buildings have been derelict for some time, a place for mysterious grubby curtains and wondering about weird interiors. They are also the last remnants of the old block.

photo: Mark Kane

In this late-1970s photo by reader Mark Kane, they are the tallest structures on the block. To their left is James Renwick's 1869 headquarters of the New York City Department of Public Charities and Corrections. It was demolished in 1989 for the Loews Village 7 multiplex.

The trio of three-story buildings on their right disappeared, said Mark, "when the landlord pulled some of those 'decorative' columns from the storefronts, only to have the building facades collapse." There's a parking lot there now.

Once this pair of antiques is demolished, nothing will remain from the above photo.

Last ones out, turn out the lights.

photo: Mark Kane, close-up

Previously:
Before the Village 7
Lost Renwick Found

*Everyday Chatter

2011-11-28T12:30:00.005-05:00

Zito's Sandwich Shoppe answers the question on every Park Slope parent's mind--and solves the babies in bars problem--"YES! We have Growlers & High Chairs." Feel free to get drunk with your baby:

Bill's Gay 90s (that fantastic spot that is completely unpretentious and accessible) is about to be fucked and you'll never get in. [NYP]

Are we losing the famous and wonderful Mike's Newsstand Candyland from Harlem? [HB]

There are now $14 foie gras dog biscuits. [Eater]

Here come demos and condos for the corner of 12th and 3rd. [EVG]

Garment District standby Spanish Taverna has shuttered. [LC]

Tour along the Harlem River. [FNY]

Epic article on the leaders of OWS. [NYM]

Inside the kitchen the night of the raid on Zuccotti: "the ruling class doesn’t want us carrying soap and deodorant, they want us to smell bad." [POW]

Best Vill Boogie

2011-11-28T08:45:00.004-05:00

The big plywood wall surrounding the vanished Village Lukoil on 8th Avenue and Horatio has a bright, bold new look, thanks to Jay Shells, aka Jason Shelowitz, creator of guerrilla urban etiquette signage and other street art.

photo: JVNY

He spent the whole weekend working on it, first outlining it, then filling it in with blue, purple, and black. I asked him a few questions about it.

photo: Jay Shells

What made you pick this stretch of plywood?

i picked this because i live up the street and saw it as a giant blank canvas. who wants to look at plywood covered in stupid fly-poster ads for months anyway?

What's the work about--waves? giant squid tentacles?

just some abstractions from my bag of tricks. i've done a bunch of paintings like this before. the fluid motion of the lines help me think. since it's not really about anything in particular, it's just real therapy for me. get to just flow with the paint and not worry about it looking like anything in particular. it's more about the medium and fluidity.

Does it have a title?

if i must, i would name it "Best Vill Boogie"

photo: Jay Shells

How many cans of paint did it take?

i didn't keep a perfect tally, but let's say 32 cans.

How many hours did it take you to do?

i've spent 12 hour so far, and have some more shadow work to do that should take another hour or two. then, it's done. also, i walked my dogs by it before and realized i signed it 2001 instead of 2011. d'oh. i'll have to fix that.

photo: JVNY

Vivaldi Saved

2011-11-28T07:30:00.007-05:00

First St. Mark's Books and now Caffe Vivaldi.

Originally aiming to triple the rent, landlord Croman has made a deal with Vivaldi to keep it in its Greenwich Village home for another 10 years. But they need major donations to stay afloat.

Here's the Facebook update:

Dear friends of Caffe Vivaldi,

Congratulations to all of you, the members of our "Save Caffe Vivaldi" family.

We have an agreement with our landlord. Without your overwhelming support this would not have been possible - almost 5,000 signatures in less than four weeks!!!

Our rent is going to be high, but manageable, provided we raise our revenue by soundproofing and renovating our premises.

Towards that end we have launched a fundraising drive. Our goal is to raise $75,000/- by the end of December. We have already raised $7,000/- in the past few days. We are very proud to note that our support is very broad, ranging from $5 - $1,000/- donations so far.

This enthusiastic response to our fundraising drive makes me certain by the hour that we will reach our target before the New Year. With your support now, we can continue this momentum and make the dream of preserving our beloved Caffe Vivaldi a reality.

Please go to www.caffevivaldi.com and make a donation today.

With Love and Gratitude,

Ishrat

*Everyday Chatter

2011-11-23T14:45:00.002-05:00

If you haven't yet been to visit the All City Student Occupation at the New School, go now--before they're booted out. [Gothamist]

Oh God, the miserable new individually wrapped Ritz crackers of DOH'd Sardi's! [MAD]

First they came for the cheesepots. Now Matilda the Algonquin cat has been banished by DOH. [Gothamist]

If you enjoy complaining that "New York just isn’t what it used to be," check out these links. [P&W]

Saying goodbye to the Coney Island Souvenir Shop--shuttered by Zamperla after 25 years in business. [ATZ]

IHOP stinks up 14th Street like a cheap hotel--an epic rant. [EVG]

Uncle Moe's burritos of Park Slope shuttered after 20 years. [HPS]

Walking on Waverly. [FNY]

Times Square's Rialto in the 60s and 70s. [VS]

Damaged book press conference from the OWS librarians. [RS]

Sign the petition to help keep libraries open and running in NYC's public schools. [THS]

How to Be a New Yorker

2011-11-23T07:30:00.003-05:00

In this week's Village Voice, on stands today, Jen Doll publishes a big cover story entitled "How to Be a New Yorker." It's a follow-up to a 1964 book with the same title by Joan and Leslie Rich and it's good fodder for debate about what being a New Yorker really means.

I offer the following excerpt, not just because I'm quoted in it (and get in a dig at Little Wisco), but because it covers the nostalgic part about living in the city, from both sides of the story. Which side do you take?

Jen writes:

Lament the way things change, even as you know it is inevitable. Despite our hard-edged reputation, we are, in fact, a bunch of nostalgic saps. Tough guys on the outside, pure mush in the middle. And we hate change, we really hate it, even though change has been a New York constant since before New York was born. In How to Be a New Yorker, the Riches write: "Long ago we realized that New York is the only place for heart-on-the-sleeve romantics like us, who shed tears over old monstrosities coming down, like Pennsylvania Station, and new ones going up, like the World Trade Center. Far from choosing Manhattan for its rigors and challenges, we live here because it's the only place we've ever found that's sentimental enough for us."

To be a New Yorker is to complain about how things are not the same as they used to be, whether you're Theodore Dreiser writing in the 1900s or Sandee Brawarsky writing about the Bowery in an essay titled, precisely, "Oh, It's Not What It Used to Be" in The New York Times in 2000. (Now, in 2011, it is even further from what it used to be.) As Colson Whitehead puts it in "City Limits," his intro to The Colossus of New York, "You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now."

Maybe we're losing our edge, our character, our authenticity. Or maybe we're just being New Yorkers. As Whitehead writes: "To put off the inevitable, we try to fix the city in place, remember it as it was, doing to the city what we would never allow to be done to ourselves. . . . New York City does not hold our former selves against us. Perhaps we can extend the same courtesy."

Do no harm. Jeremiah Moss, the writer behind Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, expresses a frequent complaint: "Newcomers to New York want backyards, bicycles, and barbecues. They want Greenwich Village to be like their hometowns in Wisconsin," he says. "Underneath this—and not very far underneath—there's a seething hatred of urban life. They don't like the dirt or the smells. They don't like the kvetching and the neuroticism. They don't like the layers of history. They want to tear it all down and make it clean and new."

In some ways, New York is the Madonna (Ciccone, not the Virgin) of cities, constantly re-envisioning itself—sometimes for better, sometimes for worse, and always in a way that draws a crowd of people who follow their city's lead and reimagine themselves as well. "What's new," says NYU professor of English Bryan Waterman, "is the rate at which the old is being wiped away and replaced with this homogenized reality with a really high entry point."

Progress is varied and debatable, as is what we have to lose through change, and the two will be in conflict until the end of time. Until then, it's up to us to defend the stories and histories we see as integral to our future, whether that means standing up for art, architecture, businesses, neighborhoods, culture, people, politics, and ways of life, or simply not doing anything to hurt them. Let the layers of history exist. At the same time, we have to acknowledge that the most anti-New York behavior of all would be stagnation.

"The thing about New York is it's based on the idea of change," [Milton] Glaser says. "It doesn't cling to its own history and has been free to invent new ones. Some changes are horrible, others lead us somewhere. They're discomfiting because no one likes change, but eventually, you end up somewhere else, and you discover you like that place. You may hate Starbucks, but it's done something, and eventually it, too, will disappear. This endless capacity for reinventing itself defines the city and also the opportunity that exists here."

Mayfair Neon

2011-11-22T07:00:00.004-05:00

We've lost another vintage neon sign.

verplanck's flickr

Mayfair Chemists on 7th Avenue at 12th Street, felled by Duane Reade in 2006, just had its chrome and neon sign removed.

What's moving in? The Duane Reade on the corner is expanding southward--now it will take up the entire block.

Let's hope Mayfair doesn't suffer the same fate as Jade Mountain--unknown but likely disastrous.

Auster in Green-Wood

2011-11-21T07:30:00.002-05:00

Married Brooklyn authors Paul Auster and Siri Hustvedt have just purchased a pair of plots in Green-Wood Cemetery. They will one day become "permanent residents," sharing prime real estate with the likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat, Louis Comfort Tiffany, and Bowery Boy bare-knuckle boxer William "Bill the Butcher" Poole. (Writer Pete Hamill will also be a neighbor.)

They made the purchase this weekend when Auster appeared at Green-Wood to read from his novel Sunset Park, answer questions, and sign books. Originally, he was to give a cemetery tour via trolley, but that part of the afternoon was cancelled--a disappointment, as I was looking forward to the weirdness of riding a cemetery trolley with Paul Auster as guide.

It was my first time at Green-Wood and a perfect day for it, crisp and autumnal, with the green monk parrots chattering madly in their nests high up in the nooks of the big entrance gate.

Immediately lost, I wandered into a building that looked like it could host a literary event and asked a man there if this was the place. "This is the crematorium," he said. "If you need cremation, I can help you." Then he laughed uproariously. Not to seem uninterested in his craft, I helped myself to a pamphlet called "Cremation Explained" and an urn catalog (for $1,200 Green-Wood will inter your cremains in a dolphin-shaped urn made of bronze).

The chapel, where the reading did take place, was built in 1911 and designed by the architectural firm that designed Grand Central Terminal. It was based on a bell tower in Oxford, England, and has that spooky Gothic look.

Luckily, I wasn't too late. The place was packed, with people standing at the back. They served coffee and cookies. Mr. Auster stood at a lectern positioned on a rectangle in the marble floor marked with the Christogram IHS--the spot where countless bodies waited in their coffins over a century of funerals here.

It's a great place for a reading.

He read the passages in Sunset Park that take place in and around the cemetery, then kindly and patiently answered questions from the audience:

What makes Brooklyn appeal to you as a setting? "I live in Brooklyn," he said simply, and "one tends to write about the places one is deeply familiar with."

Why do you use a typewriter and not a computer? "Habit," he said. "I'm not tempted to change." He uses an Olympia.

Do you think Brooklyn will always be a literary borough or will that be gentrified away? "When I moved here in 1980," he said, "there was just Norman Mailer and Paula Fox... Writers gravitated to Brooklyn because it was cheap... Brooklyn is very vast. It's been gentrified, but there are still territories to conquer. Maybe we're in the next world depression and it will all collapse again."

Then he told a story about going to see Elia Kazan's A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and crying like "a sap" through the whole thing.

After the reading, I walked out into the cemetery, wandering along winding paths covered with fallen leaves. There's nothing like a cemetery for peace. No radios, no cell-phone screamers, just peace. You don't get that in the city parks.

I almost caught a dose of real-estate envy for Auster and Hustvedt, thinking it might be nice to have a plot here. That view! But then I remembered I don't want to be buried to rot. When it's my time, I'll go back to the crematorium.

Besides, my corpse would be annoyed by the cemetery's newest neighbors--along the margins, condo buildings are cropping up. A clump of controversial nouveaux townhouses, known as the Minerva building, casts a modern backdrop for the ancient angels of the grave.

Moms with big-wheeled SUV strollers go charging past and kids climb the pyramidal tombs, squealing and whooping. Wherever you go in New York, there they are. Even in the city of the dead.

Sunset Park is out in paperback and available at St. Mark's Bookshop.

*Everyday Chatter

2011-11-18T10:00:00.006-05:00

The Torrisi guys taking over Rocco's are now offering a "gastronomic tour of New York City that runs $125 a head" and represents the current NYC moment with a tribute to Jay-Z: oysters in Armand de Brignac champagne and pieces of broken bottle. This isn't social satire? [F&W] via [Eater]

No more delicious cheese pots and crackers at the bar at Sardi's--I don't like this! [Eater]

Is this finally the end for Mary Help of Christians Church? [EVG]

"Years ago I used to see Johnny Ramone in Old Chelsea Station all the time, in his holey jeans and leather jacket, opening up his P.O. box. Back then the notion of any post office closing would have been as hard for me to imagine as imagining Johnny Ramone as a conservative Republican, which, I just recently learned, he was." [WIC]

Racugglia Funeral Home in Carroll Gardens takes down its great old neon sign--hopefully just temporarily. [LC]

A play-by-play of yesterday's Occupy Everywhere. [NYM]

Don't miss the Woody Allen documentary on PBS Sunday. [NYT]

Donate to Renovate Vivaldi

2011-11-18T07:00:00.014-05:00

Earlier this month we shared the news that Caffe Vivaldi would be forced to close due to a massive rent hike from its new landlord, Steve Croman. The petition to save Vivaldi gathered steam, with thousands of signatures, recently getting a boost from Move On.

Your support has helped get Croman to reduce that rent hike--temporarily. Now Vivaldi needs us to back up the support with cash so they can keep going.

Yesterday, the owner of Vivaldi gave the following update on the cafe's Facebook page:

"Here’s the latest: my last discussion with the landlord was yesterday, 11/16. My next meeting with him is on Monday. He is willing to come down substantially from his asking price of $16,000/- per month, but only for the first year. Even if he comes down to $9,000/- or $10,000/- It is a huge rent escalation. The fair market rate in our area is $100/- a sq. ft. So, the rent for 685sq. ft. that we have, should be $6,850/- per month. After 6 meetings with the landlord, I know this is not going to happen.

After almost 4,500 signatures, so far, on our petition, I know you are with me in keeping Caffe Vivaldi alive. I drive my determination and strength from you. Our solution is to renovate and sound proof Caffe Vivaldi and extend the live music playing hours and fully utilize the space in the daytime. If we succeed in doing that, I am confident we can meet the increase in rent in the range of $9K-10K the first year."

Vivaldi has put together a team of architects and builders, but renovations are expensive, so they've started a donation drive. You can visit their website to make a donation via paypal--and help keep a Greenwich Village institution from vanishing.

Related:
Save Caffe Vivaldi
Jones Street

Occupy Union Square

2011-11-17T15:51:00.006-05:00

Thousands of Wall Street occupiers are pouring into Union Square right now. They seem to be coming in from every direction.

And Bloomberg's Stormtroopers are at the ready--guarding the big Citibank at 14th and Broadway.

*Everyday Chatter

2011-11-17T13:45:00.001-05:00

Blayze sends in this pic and the good news--the Waverly Diner's neon lights are shining again:

The fight to save Caffe Vivaldi moves on to Move On. [BB]

Go behind the scenes at the great DeRobertis pastry shop in the EV. [RNYE]

The big M over the Milford Plaza has vanished. [NYN]

Before and afters for the Coney Boardwalk. [ATZ]

Joe's Bar has reopened. [EVG]

NYC's delightful decorative squirrels. [ENY]

Avenue Jew appears in Midwood--as anti-semitism is on the rise across the country. [NYM]

OWS tries to shut down Wall Street. Occupy everywhere--today. [Gothamist]

Coney Island whitefish, way off course, stuck to the floor of the C train:

Miller Fish Market

2011-11-17T07:30:00.002-05:00

City of Strangers recalled our attention to the photography of James Jowers. We'd first seen these shots thanks to E.V. Grieve and Stupefaction, but they bear looking at again--and again--for the fantastic shots of the East Village, its people, and environs in the 1960s.

This one, especially, caught my eye. It's a recognizable location, if you live around here, and the number 91 clinched it.

James Jowers, 1966

today

In 1968, two years after Jowers took that photo, New York Magazine wrote about the Miller Fish Market. It had been there since 1898 and was presided over by the brother and sister Miller, ages 72 and 81, respectively. They weren't so crazy about the Village View housing project that opened up across First Avenue in 1964.

There's a great shot in the magazine of Fannie Miller, "81-year-old fishlady extraordinary."

New York Magazine

Since 1989, 91 First Avenue has been home to the Dual Specialty Store, a beloved Indian market. This is the kind of change that makes sense--one neighborhood store becomes another, one immigrant group replaces another, it's accessible to all. Shoppers still climb up those stairs carrying bags full of goodies (though the entrance is now on the other side of the stoop.)

A kind of urban equilibrium we don't see much of in today's change.

The People's Library

2011-11-16T07:30:00.008-05:00

VANISHED (and then, partly, not)

"The books have been seized, librarians have been gassed and jailed." If this message wasn't coming over the Occupy Wall Street Library's Facebook page, you might think you'd been hurled back in time, to 1933 Berlin when Goebbels "consigned to the flames" thousands of books.

But this was yesterday in New York City and Bloomberg was the leader giving orders.

all photos November 2011

Just a few days ago, I made a visit to Occupy Wall Street and was impressed with the growth of the People's Library, which I'd seen evolve from a few cardboard boxes of books perched on a ledge to a lighted Quonset hut (donated by Patti Smith) loaded with well-organized titles in every genre. So it was with great sadness and outrage that I heard the news yesterday morning about the NYPD raid on Zuccotti Park and their destruction of the People's Library.

After the initial shock, we learned that the NYPD tossed more than 5,000 books into a Dumpster and demolished the library tent. One occupier and dedicated bibliophile ran into the library during the raid and strapped the homemade OWS Poetry Anthology to his body to save it from destruction.

Librarians gassed and jailed. Heroes strapping books of poetry to their bodies. Here's something: Nobody's doing that for a Kindle.

But Kindles are not books, because books are more than collections of words. Those creaky paper bodies, rejected today by so many future fetishists, have meaning. They take up space. And that space-taking matters, because it functions both to agitate and to bring people together.

Seeing books has an impact. Whether it's in a library or through the windows of a bookshop, just seeing large numbers of books together in one place has the power to stir emotions. And the People's Library was this kind of powerful place--not virtual, but real. E-readers like the Kindle do not have this power. "Vooks" don't gather. They don't mass. They don't burn and therefore do not, by the spectacle of their burning, shock us into action.

In their physicality, and thus vulnerability (like human bodies), books have the power to make us righteously outraged when they are threatened with destruction. When all books are electronic, we won't witness their destruction, a silent deletion, and so we won't feel it as much when they vanish.

And that's why the wanton Dumpstering of the People's Library could be a good thing for books.

The makers of Kindles and iPads and Nooks have been trying to make books uncool for years now--and they are succeeding. Only dinosaurs read real books, says Amazon and Apple. Only sullen necrophiliacs cling to those "dusty tomes," say even our Pulitzer Prize-winning authors.

But what if bibliophiles became, again, radical revolutionaries in the collective imagination? What if the borrowing, lending, buying, selling, and reading of real books became a renegade act?

The People's Library was started as a small stack of random books by Brooklyn librarian Betsy Fagin, then grew exponentially as book donations poured in. It hosted authors like Jonathan Lethem and Jennifer Egan. It hosted readings and took on the resistant mantra of Bartleby the Scrivener. Most of all, it served as an urban base for guerrilla librarianship.

I learned about guerrilla librarianship from a young student of Library Science in Zuccotti Park. He and his cohorts were so excited to talk about books. They wanted to spend their days in the presence of books, in the cold and damp weather, to catalog and organize these supposedly irrelevant objects, to provide pleasure and inspire thought in others. All of this human activity is unnecessary with e-readers. There's nothing to organize because there's nothing to put your hands on.

By yesterday evening, the People's Library blog reported: "The Mayor’s Office claims our books are safe," and included a photo from officials as proof. Most of the books might be returned to the librarians today--this morning, four books occupy the park--but the deed was still done. (Click for update on the destruction and loss--the poetry-book hero tells Gothamist, "we're pretty sure 90% of the books are destroyed.")

Librarians were gassed and jailed.

Books were seized.

It's time to start burning the Kindles and get back to the real thing.

Read Burn the Kindle at The Grumbler.

*Everyday Chatter

2011-11-15T13:20:00.004-05:00

From the Occupy Wall Street librarians: "Call 311 or 212-639-9675 now and ask why Mayor Bloomberg is throwing the 5,554 books from our library into a dumpster." [BB]

Rebuild the library tonight at 6pm. [OWSL]

The line at Pommes Frites in the East Village is getting bigger every day. Now they've got traffic cones on the sidewalk to control it. I'll never understand this phenomenon:

The Houston Wall shows up in a Scorsese fight scene--it's "an architectural extra in two classics of American cinema." [BR]

Sad scenes of the dismantling of Paul's Daughter at Coney. [ATZ]

Spend a week in New York culture with the Paris Review's Sadie Stein. [PRD]

Don Delillo talks about his new book. [AP]

Peek into the home libraries of six authors who still love real books. [FT]

RIP John Leeper, bartender at the Grassroots. [EVG]

Walking on Williamsburg's Berry Street. [FNY]

Park Slope's Dunkin Donuts conversion of Tonio's coming along. [HPS]

11/20: Union Docs presents "Block by Block: New York Street Historians." [UD]

11/30: Harvey Wang's photo show opens at the Tenement Museum:

Red-Sauce Joints

2011-11-15T07:30:00.006-05:00

VANISHING

The recent announcements about the coming death by rent hike (and foodie takeover) of Rocco's and Rocky's--along with the closure of Aunt Suzie's in Park Slope--has me wondering if we've been witnessing a mass extinction of the classic "red-sauce joint." Looking back, the answer is obvious.

Rocco ravioli

The Beatrice Inn closed in 2005 after about 80 years. The new owner promised "Monday Scrabble sessions and Italian-food specials will cater to the old regulars." That didn't happen. It became a celeb hotspot that enraged the neighbors and eventually shuttered.

The Minetta Tavern closed in 2008 after 71 years when the rent skyrocketed. Keith McNally took it over, changed the Italian menu to French, fancied it up, and stashed Joe Gould somewhere he may never be found.

Gino closed in June 2010 after 65 years. Once a favorite of Frank Sinatra, it's now a cupcake chain store from Beverly Hills.

Fedora closed in July 2010 after 58 years. The new owner had said it would remain almost exactly the same as it was, but that didn't happen. Like Minetta's, they also serve French-ish food.

Carmine's at the Seaport closed in July 2010 after 107 years. The rent was jacked up.

With Rocco and Rocky's both closing at the end of 2011, counting 90 and 30 years in business, respectively, that makes about 500 years of Italian-American cuisine and culture vanished in just the past 6 years. And I'm sure I've neglected to mention others.

Last meal at Minetta Tavern: Tortellaci Minetta

Interestingly, just as these classic places are vanishing, we're simultaneously seeing the rise of the hipster or foodie faux "red-sauce" joint, run by chefs who aim to "elevate" Italian-American cuisine from its apparently lowly position.

To wit: meatballs. They're everywhere, from the ever expanding Meatball Shops to the Meatball Factories. But they're not mom-and-pop meatballs. They're made by young, hip guys who attended culinary institutes and came up through French bistros and Hamptons clubs. They're made by guys from Top Chef, who top them with BBQ sauce or truffle cream.

The Torrisi team, though mostly Italian-American, caters to the foodie crowd as they perform "gourmet riffs on classic red-sauce fare" and create "upmarket versions of humble Italian-American deli favorites." They will soon plant their flag in Rocco.

Adam Platt called Danny Meyer's Maialino both "authentic" and a "painstakingly rendered facsimile" of a Roman trattoria.

Maybe that sums up the kind of place that is replacing the red-sauce joint--authentic facsimiles. Which is to say: ersatz.

Manganaro's

It wouldn't be so bad, having these upscale places around, if they weren't helping to slaughter mom and pop--or should we say Nonna and Nonno? The restaurants that are vanishing are so old, they are certainly grandparental, and we all know how elders are treated in this culture.

For awhile now, there's been something about "red-sauce" that inspires scorn from the foodie elite. A Wikipedist says the term is pejorative, and that the mom-and-pop image of these restaurants is a cliche. Italian-American food has been maligned in this city since at least the 1980s, according to Anthony Bourdain, who writes, "We were almost made to feel bad about any secret appetites we might retain for spaghetti and meatballs" once the gourmets took over.

Call the culprit classism, class climbing, or murderous Oedipal rage, either way, real Italian-American food, made simply and inexpensively, is vanishing from the city.

Last meal at Gino, ravioli and meatballs

For true authenticity, not the painstakingly rendered kind, we still have John's of 12th Street and Manganaro's, which are my two favorites of what remains. We also have Monte's and Villa Mosconi. We have the dwindling fragments of Little Italy. Outside Manhattan, you might have better luck.

If you have a craving for meatballs, or for anything Italian-American, find your way to these places. They survived the 20th century--help them survive the new New York.

Rocco Ristorante

2011-11-14T07:30:00.007-05:00

VANISHING

89-year-old Rocco Ristorante at 181 Thompson is about to vanish from Greenwich Village. "Rocco's lease is up at the end of 2011," reported Eater, "and to renew, the landlord is demanding $18,000 in rent, a hefty jump from the $8,000" they currently pay.

Many landlords are doubling and tripling rents these days. If no one takes them up on it, the existing businesses might stay, or else the spaces lie vacant. But someone is saying yes to Rocco's landlord.

Taking over the lease is a duo of young restaurateurs, Mario Carbone and Rich Torrisi, known collectively as "Torrisi." The group (there's a third partner) has a mini-chain of restaurants with two popular spots in Little Italy and a stand at Yankee Stadium. Formerly of high-end Cafe Boulud, they started small and have become quite powerful. Frank Bruni dubbed them "the newest darlings of the New York culinary set." Time Out called them the "savior" of "good old-fashioned Italian-American food."

By taking over Rocco's, are they saving good old-fashioned Italian-American food--or helping to kill it off?

According to Eater, they've made the deal with Rocco's landlord and quietly advertised the takeover on their website with a photo of the antique neon sign as if it were their own, all while Rocco's proprietor Antonio DaSilva was still trying to negotiate his lease. He told Eater, "We're fighting it." But the deal is done. Said one of the Torrisi partners to Grub Street, "We have a signed lease and we're going to be taking over next year."

Torrisi website

Why, when they can presumably afford any one of the many empty locations in the Village, did Torrisi choose Rocco's spot to move in on?

It's been here for almost 90 years, opened in 1922 by Rocco Stanziano. Mr. DaSilva is the great-nephew of Mr. Stanziano, making this a third-generation business. And the place still receives Village crowds seeking the good food that Carbone and Torrisi say they grew up on. As Italian-Americans, and one a native New Yorker, don't they value this?

I can't help but think if Torrisi didn't take the landlord's sky-high offer, maybe Rocco could have made it to 100. As one Eater commenter said, "This is very sad, almost Oedipal."

Rocco ravioli

I wrote to Mr. Carbone and Mr. Torrisi to get their side of it. I asked them the above question and also inquired if Gabe Stulman's takeover of Fedora was an inspiration to them, and if they are planning to maintain any of Rocco's history, including the neon sign. They have not responded. If they do, I will post their answers in an update.

Finally, a business calling itself "181 Thompson Restaurant LLC" was formed back in June. Assuming that's Torrisi, it looks like the plan to move in to Rocco's has been in the works for some time. They've applied for a new liquor license at this location.

Meanwhile, Torrisi denies rumors that this space at 181 Thompson will be a nightspot with investor Jay-Z. Torrisi was successful in getting a license for their latest restaurant, Parm. As Capital New York recently wrote, "it’s the cocktails that will transform the place from a lunch counter to a real hot spot."

*Everyday Chatter

2011-11-11T12:15:00.001-05:00

Jonathan Lethem says no to Citi (bank) Field--at Occupy Wall St.

facebook

Celebrate our victory to save St. Mark's Bookshop with a party at the store. There will be treats: 12/1, 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. [Villager]

More suspicion about Cooper Union's claims of financial woe: "Faculty and staffers...are suggesting that the board is using the financial claims to do something it has been wanting to do for years." Namely, charge tuition. [RS]

Rents in the East Village going sky-high. [EVG]

The legendary Algonquin Hotel is closing in January for a major renovation. [Crain's]

Read about R. Crumb's beef with the New Yorker. [Gothamist]

Remembering the Tunnel Garage. [GVSHP]

Crazy Eddie wears his original Norman Mailer for mayor button with pride. Maybe it's time to raise the dead:

Faile on Houston

2011-11-11T07:15:00.001-05:00

I've got issues with the Houston mural wall, but I can't hold it against this new one by Faile. It's my favorite so far. Maybe that's because I like comic books and movie posters and the ephemera of pop culture. Maybe it's because I'm a sucker for the gorgeous decay of urban street art and advertising, how the paper rips and tears, revealing layer upon layer underneath.

Anyway, I can see the trouble with something and still enjoy it--as I did a couple of weeks ago when I stopped to watch Faile--also known as Patrick McNeil and Patrick Miller--put the finishing touches on their mural.

I wound up talking to one of the Patricks while the other Patrick was pasting a Chairman Mao to the wall. He explained the way that many different existing designs had been incorporated into the collage. The woman shooting the bunny rabbit is from "Heartbreak in Brooklyn." The bikini girl in the dinosaur's mouth comes from "It Happens Everyday." And the Asian lady with the dragon is a piece of "Seduction of the Mask."

He told me how the images and text have all been pulled from found sources, saying, “We consider ourselves scavengers” of pop culture.

As the Chairman Mao needed direction, Patrick stepped up, telling the other Patrick, “Tear it a little more. A little more. A little lower. That’s right.”

How do you put together a giant collage on Houston Street? Piece by piece. Taped to the railing of their Skyjack scissor lift was the map to the work, showing the final layer they were applying.

Each piece is hand-painted in their studio, then torn, pasted to the wall, and torn some more. Many of the large tear lines, those ragged boundaries between one paper and another, are then painted white to help delineate one piece from the next.

The city itself is like this in places, one stratum revealed beneath the next. It used to be more this way. A rusted Automat sign perched atop a McDonald's, layers of ghost paint selling girdles next to beer ads, the name of a movie house half-covered by a XXX sign with "souvenirs" tacked over that.

Now, more and more, they're excavating right down to bedrock, erasing the strata to make us forget, to make the past disappear, as if the city had been born into glass from the start. And the Houston Wall? It began life as part of a handball court.

Finished product

Read More:
The Houston Wall
Billy on the Wall
Clayton on the Wall

*Everyday Chatter

2011-11-10T10:50:00.005-05:00

A Fresh Air interview with James Wolcott about life in 1970s NYC: "When you see a prostitute pulling a knife on another prostitute, that's something suburban Maryland didn't prepare me for." [NPR]

Romy's new Walker in the City tells of foxyknockers and debauched scenes in the Chelsea Hotel. [WIC]

Laura Rubin is now selling limited edition photos from her collection of Andy Warhol superstars, including Candy Darling and Mario Montez, printed and signed by the artist. For more info, email Laura at laurarubin(at)hotmail. Read Laura's JVNY interview here.

What happens when the Shaloms take a building? [EVG]

Something called Sticky's Finger Joint is coming to the ghost town of West 8th St. According to their Facebook page, they will be "New York City's first and only establishment dedicated to the all mighty and delicious CHICKEN FINGER."

Two mom-and-pop shops vanish from Cobble Hill. [LC]

A new book about 70s NYC: "moves panoramically from post-Dylan Greenwich Village, to the arson-scarred South Bronx barrios where salsa and hip-hop were created, to the Lower Manhattan lofts where jazz and classical music were reimagined, to ramshackle clubs like CBGBs." [FP]

Bloomberg and the myth of the progressive city. [Salon]

Norman Mailer for mayor! [ENY]

Here comes yet another fucking upscale pizzeria for the East Village, where there have always been plenty of good, cheap pizza places. Oh--and the mozzarella comes from Wisconsin too! [Eater]

Katharine House

2011-11-10T07:30:00.001-05:00

The Katharine House, one of the last of New York's residences for young women, opened at 118 West 13th Street in 1910 and closed in 2000. It was turned into a dorm for the New School. For nearly a century, it was a haven for young women with little money trying to get a foot in the door of New York City.

Said one resident to the Times in 1997, ''It's like a movie, like the old black-and-white movies I would sit down and watch with my grandmother." Said another to the Times in 2000, ''This place isn't even in the 20th century."

Aside from those two New York Times articles, info on Katharine House is scarce. I found one piece of its ephemera on ebay, a 1940 memo from superintendent Mrs. D.B. Creede that spells out the rules and regulations for this "permanent residence for young Protestant, business women" who could get a room and two meals a day for $17.00.

"Make your bed neatly," wrote Mrs. Creede. "Put away shoes, clothing, underwear." As for typewriters, they "may be used in ping pong room any time and in dining room except at meal hours. Positively no typing in bedrooms." There was also something called a Dime Fund--by putting in a dime a week, a fund was created for the specific purchase and repair of "electric irons, sewing machines, and radios," and for magazine subscriptions.

Times have changed a bit since then.

New School: dorm room with bikini poster

One of the young women who found a temporary home at Katharine House was JVNY reader Karen Gehres (artist and director of Begging Naked), who was kind enough to pass along her recollections. She lived there in 1985 while a sophomore at Parsons School of Design. She recalls:

"When you walked in the place there was one of the unfriendly looking women that ran the joint. At night there was a night watchman to turn us away if we were late for curfew. If you got past the front you walked into some very unused waiting room with formal uncomfortable furniture, very retirement home feel mixed with a good dose of nunnery. There was a cafeteria that served breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The room I had was jail-cell narrow. There was a bed, I think a dresser, and a wee little sink in the corner by the door. It was not pleasant to share a bathroom with a bunch of chicks."

Karen and her mom in Union Square, during her Katharine House days

She explains, "What I remember very clearly is the place was crawling with bulimic/anorexic ballerinas from The Joffrey Ballet. It was a regular yack fest every day. They'd get maybe an apple for breakfast. I was out the door as early as I could most days and stay out as long as I could. The place got to be kinda depressing. I did make a few buddies though. One of these girls had a window that looked out onto 13th. Directly across the street was the Salvation Army. They rented rooms to girls too, but you had to share a room with at least one other girl. There were more medical students that lived there for some reason. We had the ballerinas.

One morning, I got up and they wouldn't let me leave right away. They said a girl had jumped out her window across the street at the Salvation Army place and that her body fell onto the pointed spikes of the iron fence surrounding the building. I went up to my friend's room and looked out her window and there was the poor girl still on the fence with a white sheet that someone had put over her body. It made me shudder and feel very ill. This girl was our age."

Amazingly, the Salvation Army building is still a residence for women today. The fence around it is a lot less lethal.

New School: boys invade Katharine House

Fedora Dorato

2011-11-09T13:22:00.014-05:00

We just heard the sad news from Marty that Fedora Dorato, former proprietor of the once-great Fedora bar and restaurant, passed away last night.

photo by Myrna Suarez

My condolences to the Dorato family. I will always remember Fedora's nightly entrance at the old place, how the whole restaurant applauded for her as she opened her arms to embrace us. She was warm and kind, and created a true refuge where the castaways of the city could feel safe and at home.

She is missed by many.

The old sign

Further reading:
Fedora's Goodbye
A Night at Fedora
A Regular Remembers
Faux-dora
Fedora's Last Days
Fedora Returns
Oscar & Fedora

Meat on Hooks

2011-11-09T07:20:00.003-05:00

The last time we saw meat in the Meatpacking District was at Interstate Foods before it closed. But there's a yellow-brick, block-sized cluster of buildings on the farthest western edge of the neighborhood where meat can still be found swinging on hooks. It is a rare sight.

The Weichsel Beef plant is here--on West Street between Gansevoort and Horatio. They've been in business for over 70 years. NY City Watch reported that Weichsel's owner, Sam Farella, had just "a few more years left on his lease." That was in 2009. "This is my home," he told the Daily News this year, but that home is being surrounded fast.

A few doors south, on the Horatio corner, Bakehouse bistro is getting ready to open in another week. The Bakehouse people say it's going to be "the biggest mom-and-pop operation in the West Village. It’s going to boast a bistro, full bar, retail and wholesale bakery." Usually, "big" is the opposite of "mom-and-pop," but that term is really being stretched these days.

A peek inside reveals 3,500 square feet of old-timey, artisanal-style "simplicity." Big rustic wood tables, subway-tiled walls, antique bakery signage. That sort of thing. Just like old mom and pop.

Around to Weichsel's northern flank, 95 Horatio is renovating with a wall full of plywood that will soon be glitzed and glassed and filled with shops like Intermix: "An additional conversion of the building’s parking garage will add another 10,000 s/f facing Gansevoort Street, close to the new Whitney Museum... that space could house one to three tenants, and a high-end restaurant would be a strong candidate for the space, complementing the Whitney’s café."

Directly across Gansevoort from Weichsel, the new Whitney Museum has already broken ground. The last of the old buildings there have been demolished, and cranes are lifting and banging away. Meatpackers sit in the shadow of Weichsel's battered awning, their smocks bloodied, watching the future come barreling at them.

To review: MePa begat High Line, and High Line begat Whitney, and Whitney is begetting what is certainly the death of the last meatpackers in the Meatpacking District. Really, how long will the newcomers to this once-forgotten corner on the edge of Nowhere tolerate a view of hanging carcasses? Weichsel is being squeezed from every side.

For a little while longer, here by this lonesome loading dock at the city's margin, you will find the remnant of an urban feeling, a stevedore aroma of blood and guts, as you stand between the meat and the river. Seagulls complain overhead. Flies buzz. Men sit on folding chairs and smoke.

If you want to feel it, go soon. The tourists and the toddling Louboutin girls and the boutiques and the bistros are zeroing in on this spot, coming like a wave to wash all of it out to the Hudson, off Manhattan and gone. That wave never stops. It vanishes everything in sight. It's only a matter of time.

Further Reading:
Meatpacking 1997
Life in the Triangle
Pigs in Shit
Meatpackers and Meat