B&B Carousell Sign

We recently got some shots of Coney Island's B&B Carousell in the Vanishing New York flickr pool. One from 2007:


photo: jack szwergold

Another from 1976, complete with graffitied subway going by:


photo: tony marciante

And here's a fantastic shot of the interior from the 1950s. As I recall, the decor was exactly the same when the B&B closed. Same clowns on the wall. Same Popeye. Same basket for catching brass rings and same wooden arm that sent the rings out to the carousel riders.


photo: egulvision

Today, the sign has been painted over. The photographer of the pic below says on the Coney Island message boards that the inside has been painted over, too--no more clowns, no more Popeye. I wonder what happened to all those rings. It was from these carousel arms that we get the phrase "grab the brass ring."

Though we lost the sign, the horses were saved this spring when the city bought the carousel and sent them galloping off to Ohio for restoration.


photo: capt_nemo

Stroller Sports

As we all know, the Stroller Wars have been raging in Park Slope. Recently, EV Idiot worried the East Village would similarly be "mobbed by the stroller mafia." As young couples make more money and the city becomes more "liveable," they seem to be leaving for the suburbs less and less. (Are the suburbs, in turn, losing their children? Will the suburbs become NORCs?) And with more strollers in town comes more bad stroller behavior and more anger from the child-free. Here's a sampling:

• George Carlin (RIP) on our child-obsessed culture. [TBTI]
• Anti-stroller signage. [Gothamist]
• Moms and bars. [NY Times]
• The original Stroller Manifesto. [Heideblerg]
• Line-cutting, on-demand flat fixes. [Curbed]

• And one In Defense of Parenthood [Observer]
  

While it's one of my favorite topics, I go into bad-stroller territory with trepidation, because the mere mention of it seems to tick off every parent with a child under the age of 10. I can't understand why well-mannered, considerate parents aren't more angry at the rude, entitled stroller moms and dads who give them all a bad name. Still, I am too excited not to report that I recently encountered the jackpot of obnoxious stroller behavior.



Like Jim Knipfel with his Statistics of Contempt, I cope with sidewalk frustration by making a game of it. This scene scores a big six points:

1. Incredibly loud cell-phone talker (four blocks worth of it)
2. Talking about the top two most obnoxious loud cell-phone topics (money and real estate)
3. Pushing stroller with just one hand
4. Pushing enormous, double-wide stroller
5. Double-wide has just one kid in it (other side's for shopping bags)
6. Kid is big enough to be playing a handheld electronic game--and those legs, knees bent to her chest, look made for walking

I'm not sure this one could score much higher, unless she was also listening to an iPod in one ear and steering with her hips while sucking on a Starbucks iced coffee. And leading a small dog on a too-long leash. Now that would be something.

(Where is Seinfeld when we need someone to name and call attention to current urban behaviors? Larry David, come back to New York!)

If the grudge match between the Stroller Mafia & the Angry Child-Free is going to continue, and it is, then we should at least have team uniforms. It might help us all have a sense of humor about this issue. Below are a few design options--and, for the record, I would really love to see a mom or dad in the "I Hate Your Kids" shirt:






Where'd I find these T's?

• How We Roll
• Stroller Brigade
• I Hate Your Kids
• Back That Shit Up

Mermaids in Peril

This past weekend, amid a sense of impending doom and passionate protest, the mermaids paraded once again through Coney Island, many of us wondering if it would be for the last time.



You couldn't miss the message. T-shirts at Lola Starr's and Ruby's urged "Save Coney Island." There was an odd requiem or two here and there. Through a fence bannered with the words "The Future of Coney Island," you saw a view of flattened earth and digging machines. And in a window on Surf Avenue, sailor girls prepared a place for Queen Mermaid, Savitri D, to hold a hunger strike to rescue Coney from the "gentrifying apocalypse of retail entertainment hell."





She and King Neptune, Reverend Billy, led off the parade, following the big drum of Dick Zigun, the former unofficial Mayor of Coney, recently resigned in protest. One troupe sent evildoing real-estate developers in yellow hardhats, with money spilling from their stuffed shirts, running down the boardwalk while the good guys tried to capture them in nets. The onlookers booed and hissed. Thor pulled a luxury high-rise inviting people to the June 24 Community Scoping Meeting.

The rest of the parade was a swirl of glittering jellyfish, topless mermaids, and other people who love any excuse to get dressed up in some crazy outfit--proof that New York is still New York, at least once a year, in places like Coney Island.



After the parade Billy and Savitri gave their King and Queen speeches to a small but rapt crowd. Billy urged us to save Coney. Savitri spoke of her deep-sea sorrows and planned starvation. The rest of us crossed our fingers and prayed for a miracle.

• All my Mermaid Parade pics on flickr
• Watch the Queen Mermaid on live Hunger Cam
• Go to the Coney Rezoning Meeting June 24
• Find out how to save Coney
  

Montero Bar & Grill

I went to Montero's this Fleet Week in the hopes of finding a bar full of sailors, like they had last year. I passed a trio of swabbies walking down Atlantic Avenue--laughing with their white bell bottoms flapping in the wind, bringing to mind Sinatra, Kelly, and Munshin in On The Town--but none were drinking at Montero's bar.


flickr photos

I did, however, meet a merchant marine who told me about his life dredging sand from under the waters of the harbor's Narrows, that stretch that flows under the Verrazano and out to the Lower Bay and to sea. It seems the ocean is constantly pushing sand towards New York City and this sand must constantly be removed. It goes into concrete, mostly, but approximately 90,000 tons of it went under the parking lot of Red Hook's new Ikea. They needed that much to fill the historic Graving Dock. The guy I met at Montero's was the guy who dredged that particular sand.

He told me about how, for the permission to destroy a piece of New York's waterfront history, Ikea was required to preserve the gantry cranes that lined the former Graving Dock, which many people tried to save.

"I guess they're landmarks," he said. "They painted 'em blue and put floodlights under 'em. Can you imagine that? Floodlights on a buncha cranes."



The Graving Dock is gone, but Montero's still stands. It's a museum of Brooklyn maritime history, filled with model ships so brittle a single touch could crumble them, sailor hats yellowed by time, bright orange life preservers painted with the names of ships that no longer set sail. The original owner, Pilar Montero, still lives and sits at the corner of the bar. A poster of her in Flamenco garb hangs on the wall next to her husband's portrait in dress blues.

You could wander the bar forever and still find more to look at. On one shelf, there's a greasy, black steam engine that was built years ago by a sailor named Santiago. Flip a switch and you'll find, like the bar itself, in a sea of change, it's still going strong.

Life goes on at Montero's. They recently brought in a karaoke DJ--every Friday night in June, at 10:00, you can make a drunken fool of yourself among the artifacts. As long as they have "Wonderful Town" in the songbook, I'll be there.

Brooklyn Horseshoe Crabs

This week, horseshoe crabs mated on Brooklyn's shores. I went to see them awhile ago and wrote about it.

When the Sun and the full Moon aligned with our planet on Sunday night, their combined gravities swelled the ocean’s tides and pulled from the Atlantic depths the lumbering denizens of an ancient world. Every year, in a mating ritual that dates back 300 million years, horseshoe crabs make the journey from their winter residences on the continental shelf to a narrow stretch of Gerritsen Beach near Brooklyn’s salty Marine Park, lazily pushing their way past the shoreline’s litter of beer bottles, plastic shopping bags, and floating chunks of Styrofoam, to dig their nests and lay thousands of pearly, green eggs.

This week, the Urban Park Rangers hosted a crowd of nature-seekers that included local residents as well as hipster kids lured by the promise of something wonderful and strange. “The horseshoe has, like, a million eyes,” one young ranger-in-training explained. The crowd grew fidgety as the rangers talked on about photoreceptors. Kids chased each other up and down the beach, waving flashlights. Adults turned restlessly to cell phones, loudly bemoaning, “I’m standing on a beach waiting for some horseshoe crabs to mate.”


photo: Klaus Schoenwiese at urban calendar

We inched closer to the water. The rangers urged us to stand back, “Let’s step out of their bedroom and give them a little privacy.” The horseshoes clamored together at the surf line, the males clasping onto the backs of the bigger females, hoping to be dragged ashore where the females would dig their nests, lay their eggs, then allow the piggy-backing males to drop their sperm onto the clutch.

An older woman told me how she’d lived in the neighborhood her whole life, and “every year, the horseshoe crabs come to lay their eggs. My brother once brought an egg home in a jelly jar, and would you believe? It turned into a horseshoe crab. A little, bitty one.”

The woman's grandson, dressed in a Superman cape, flashed his flashlight over the water and shouted, “I’m attracting them! They like me!” before pouncing onto a slippery log and falling, up to his knees, into the drink. His grandmother fished him out and told him, “Your mother’s going to kill you.” Then his mother walked over. She calmly lit a cigarette, looked at the boy, and said, “I hope you’re happy. Now you can die of pneumonia.”


photo: Klaus Schoenwiese at urban calendar

Out on the water, a party boat cruised by, strung with lights and blaring music. The revelers didn’t take notice of our small crowd on the sand, nor were they aware of the antediluvian drama that unfolded under the agitated waves their boat made. I thought about the living fossils on the sand, surviving through multiple mass extinctions, and about our city and its own chances of survival.

No matter how our epoch ends—whether in fire, ice, or at our own hands--the horseshoe crabs will outlive us all. Brooklyn will one day be empty of hipsters and stroller mommies and condos. The Wonder Wheel will roll into the sea. Park Slope will be underwater. But as long as there are salty seas and a moon above to move them, the beaches will be crowded with the urgent, quiet couplings of the horseshoe crabs. In this, at least, there is some comfort gained.

Cheyenne Saved

Michael Perlman sent me a press release with the good news: The Cheyenne Diner is staying close to home!

"The architecturally & culturally significant Cheyenne Diner has been purchased, and will gain a new lease on life when transported to Red Hook, Brooklyn. A contract has been signed between property owner George Papas and its new owner, Mike O'Connell of O’C Construction, son of influential Red Hook developer, Greg O’Connell."

Greg O'Connell has been called "the real Goliath in Red Hook" for being its biggest property owner, but he actually sounds like a decent guy--"a socialist developer," according to this interview, in which he worries about the loss of artists and mom-and-pops.

If he truly is this conscientious and if his son takes after him, then the Cheyenne might really be in good hands.

• Moondance Update
• Cheyenne Diner
  

Gleason's Gym

The last time I went to the part of Brooklyn now popularly known as DUMBO was in 1997. I went to Gleason's Gym because I was interested in boxing and wanted to see one of the oldest boxing gyms in America.

Getting there felt like a dangerous adventure. It was the middle of nowhere, it seemed, a wasteland of forgotten cobblestoned streets in the dark shadow of the rusty Manhattan Bridge. I did not feel safe, but I did feel brave. And that seemed like the right feeling to have when you go to a real boxing gym. It's impossible to have that feeling today.



I went back to Gleason's last week to find an entire world turned upside-down. The gym is in the same place, but everything around it has changed. There's a West Elm and a Bo Concept on the first floor. The affluent walk the scrubbed cobblestones, shopping for luxury goods. Gourmet markets sell $5 single-serving bottles of juice.



Gleason's sign is on the outside door, but it's dwarfed by a sign for The Fitness Guru. I waited for their customers to come down the stairs, carrying a fleet of Bugaboo strollers, figuring a Mommy and Me class had just let out. I trembled to think what I would find inside Gleason's.



Thankfully, not much has changed inside the old gym. Once the door closes behind you, you can imagine you're still on a former Front Street. Aside from a few young women in hot-pink gloves and a few middle-aged men with white-collar faces, the room is filled with boxers, serious and sweating. Champions and contenders still train at Gleason's.

The owner, Bruce Silverglade, sits by the door and makes you feel welcome--but inside you still get that unsafe feeling. And it feels good. Men are beating each other. Other men dance around the floor, punching heavy bags. A bell goes off and they all drop their hands. It goes off again and the soft/hard sound of fists and gasps resumes. The room seethes with aggression.



I got comfortable next to a ring where two men were sparring, one small and brown, one big and white (and clearly white collar). Sometime in the late 1990s, about the time of my first visit, Gleason's instituted White Collar Boxing and this has enabled them to stay afloat.

I understand the businessman's wish to have his courage challenged--I long for it myself--and I could never get in the ring, so I hold back my judgment. But I did feel a thrill that day watching the small brown man beat the crap out of the big white man. His face turned red and, unable to bear it any longer, he threw in the towel.

The other brown men standing ringside (they looked like trainers or retired boxers) had a good laugh, slapping each other on the backs. One turned to me, flashing a toothless grin, and chuckled, "He quit! That guy quit. He quit!" Like it was the funniest joke in the world. And it must have felt like a triumph, a moment of victory over the Big White Man, that symbol of imperialism, invasion, gentrification. At least, it felt that way to me.



Back on the manicured street, the victory faded. I saw that beaten man again, in one of the gourmet markets. His face was still pink, but he didn't wear any look of defeat. He was glowing, proudly bearing to the checkout counter his overpriced bottle of juice, secure in the knowledge that, no matter how many punches he took at Gleason's, he would still walk out to the streets of DUMBO the winner.

Armando's

My last (and first) meal at Armando's 72-year-old restaurant in Brooklyn Heights was enjoyed this weekend beneath a water-damaged portrait of Marilyn Monroe, one-time habitue of the place, back when Arthur Miller lived in the neighborhood and the two were falling in love. The Brooklyn Dodgers drank here. So did Norman Mailer. But beginning in the mid-1990s, with an influx of chain stores to Montague Street, Armando's began to feel the pinch.


more photos @ my flickr

It was quiet at lunchtime, only a few tables occupied. At the bar, the regulars gathered for last drinks. "Where ya going?" they asked each other, wondering what the new hangout would be after Armando's is gone. Shrugs all around. Mancuso's? Harry's? "That's long gone, didn't you know." Callahan's? Joe's? "You can all come up to my apartment!" Laughter.



The place was closing at 9:00, the free drinks would start at 6:00, they said, but keep it quiet. Someone wisecracked, "I swear to God, if a stranger comes in here for free drinks, I'll break his arms." More laughter. Hugs and kisses as familiar faces came and went. They exchanged phone numbers. "Call me," they said, "Let's stay in touch. We'll have lunch." But where? Armando's is gone and only the chain stores and the fast-food joints will remain.

Donuts Coffee Shop

VANISHED: December 28, 2007

Unable to get to Park Slope on Friday, I sent one of my tipsters to the scene. She arrived in the afternoon and while there were still a handful of donuts in the window (including crullers cinnamon and frosted) and a couple of regulars at the counter, the owners waved her away as they stood counting their last dollars from the register.



She stood across the street and snapped a few pictures of the place, the sign already taken down, as people walked past, many of them waving in through the diner's window, saying goodbye as they headed into the Associated to do their grocery shopping.



The Associated will soon be expanding into the Donuts Coffee Shop space.

• More pics on my flickr
  
• Great shots at Gowanus Lounge
• Lost City got in for a last donut

Found Poem

As a post-script to my last post on the condofication of the South Slope, I offer this darkly hopeful snapshot of a doorway near 5th Ave and 9th St, where it seems some Slopers are keeping it real by taking dumps in this cozy corner. To them, Anonymous has chalked a poem.



The accent grave over the second E in "condemned" is an interesting choice. The em-dashes are reminiscent of Dickinson. Overall, the poem has a spare and simple, haiku-style quality. And I especially like the unexpected rhyming of "species" and "feces":

Dump no garbage
here!
Join the human
species--
Don't dump
--even feces!

(While we're in the neighborhood, fellow fist-shaker, blogger, and JVNY fan Flaming Pablum reminds us to ask "What Happened to Smith?")

South Slope

Some people, those living in the outer boroughs, like to tell me that New York is not vanishing at all because it's still alive and well in places like Queens and Brooklyn. But as we know, these boroughs are vanishing, too, neighborhood by neighborhood, and it's only a matter of time before they are completely sheathed in glass and Starbucks.

Park Slope’s South Slope, for example, is rapidly becoming condo-ized. Over the past year, at astonishing speed, sleepy little blocks long made up of working-class, aluminum-sided townhouses, brick and tar-paper tenements have been systematically leveled and rebuilt to look like the rest of the former city.


558 5th Ave rising over soon-vanishing neon sign

Much has been said about 16th Street. In just one block, there are more than half a dozen new developments. Between 5th and 6th Aves, there's Suite 16 at #198-210, something with semi-lunar balconies at #226, a primed empty lot at #228, Prospect Gardens at #251, The Athena at #245, and a rather dull gray number at #231 that has really upset the neighbors. Go across 5th and you've got the big, bad, controversial Vue.


#226 16th Street


#245 16th Street


#231 16th St.

Walk down 5th Ave and there's another condo building at #558 rising above the low-rise 99-cent stores, bodegas, and nail salons. A fenced lot at #514, surrounded by stone foundations, is littered with antique iron columns. At 13th Street, there is the monstrous #515 -- it used to be a Salvation Army where a chain-smoking woman at the back door presided over mounds of donated clothing, computers, and paperback books.


#558 5th Avenue


#515 5th Avenue

If 16th Street is over, 13th Street has just begun.

At the corner of 13th and 6th, there's a massive McFrankenMansion. It began its life as a multi-family tenement. Someone with the taste and sensibility of Russian mobsters added several rickety-looking roofdecks, suburban-style stonefacing, and an "exhibitionist special" glass-encased central stairway. The result is a three-car garage, single-family monstrosity.


McFrankenMansion


13th Street's new fuck-you finger

Further up the block, amid low-rise brick buildings and odd little houses with front porches, another sore-thumb asserts itself as different, special, and immune to the established rules and norms of the block. In a word: narcissistic.

Interestingly, both of these developments, like many of those going up in the South Slope, are topped by an extra turret-like structure, a mini-tower that makes the buildings look like they’re giving the fuck-you finger to the neighborhood. Which, in a very real sense, they are.

• More pics on my flickr
  
• South Slope
• A million Starbucks are coming
  
• [Gentrifying] NY As It Used to Be
• Starbucksifying Crown Heights
  

Radio Row

VANISHED: 1966

"Who's afraid of the big, bad buildings?" Ada Louise Huxtable wrote of the World Trade Center in 1966, "Everyone, because there are so many things about giantism that we just don't know.... The Trade Center towers could be the start of a new skyscraper age or the biggest tombstones in the world."

It sounds like an eerily prescient metaphor, but in 1966 the grave those towers marked was of a 13-block area known as Radio Row. "They were not killed, but they were the first victims of the World Trade Center," writes Syd Steinhardt in this article on the death of a once-vibrant mom-and-pop neighborhood. The article is filled with details about the shops and the merchants, many of whom died as "broken men" after having their livelihoods snatched away by eminent domain.


photo from flickr

Radio Row's plight brings to mind current struggles in Willets Point, Atlantic Yards, and elsewhere. And while today is a day to remember the victims of 9/11, it's also a time to think about the state of our city. New York is not threatened with destruction only by outside terrorists, but also by attacks from within, from politicians and businessmen who seek to wipe out a way of life.

Many people call for a replacement of the towers. They want to put things back "the way they were." What if we really put things back the way they were? What if, instead of erecting more "big, bad buildings" our city created a viable space for small businesses like those that were destroyed in the 1960s -- and continue to be destroyed today?

This, of course, will never happen. Memory is short, money is king, and big always wins out over small. But sometimes it's good to remember that New York was once more humble and no less great for being so.

For more information on Radio Row, check out NPR and the Sonic Memorial. For new information on digital memorials to 9/11, go to NYT.

Coney Island with Charles Denson

This past weekend may have been my last chance to enjoy a summer day at Coney Island before it falls to Thor’s mighty hammer. I visited my old favorite spots and one new spot, a little storefront wedged beneath the Cyclone. It used to house the two-headed baby in a jar, but now it’s the exhibition center of The Coney Island History Project.

Charles Denson, native Coney Islander, historian, and author of Coney Island: Lost and Found was kind enough to give me a few minutes of his time.


Denson with authentic Steeplechase horse

We sat in a back room where the window looks directly onto the underbelly of the Cyclone’s tracks. Periodically, as we talked, the room would tremble Annie Hall-style as the cars roared down from overhead. I asked Denson what he thinks about what's happening to Coney -- and what he wishes would happen. Here’s what he told me:

“Joe Sitt is holding Coney Island hostage. Historic preservation is not in his vocabulary. He’s a shopping mall developer. He's not an evil guy, but he is a liar. He says he’s going to have blimps landing out here. That's illegal. I called the FAA and they told me that 747’s have a better chance of landing on Surf Avenue than blimps.

Sitt wants to put up 40-story high-rises. Coney Island should be all low-rise: restaurants, theaters, amusements. I’d like to see historic rides come back. Whip rides, Thompson rollercoasters, the old arcade games—simple mechanical games would be a real novelty. I’d like to see the Henderson Building and Grasshorn Building restored. The city is negotiating right now to bring back the B&B Carousell. They bought it at the eleventh hour and it’s in storage out at the Brooklyn Army Terminal.

I’m not opposed to change. We want new and wonderful things for Coney Island. We want evolution. Low-rise amusements permit evolution, but nothing will change if you put up high-rises. High-rises are there forever. Once you put them up, it’s over.”

Ruby's Bar of Coney Island

VANISHING?

Ruby’s Old Time Bar was opened by Rubin “Ruby” Jacobs just a few decades ago, yet it looks like it’s been on the boardwalk forever. Maybe that’s because Ruby had been there all his life, first selling knishes on the sand then operating Coney’s last bathhouses, Stauch’s, Claret’s, and Bushman’s. Souvenir ticket stubs and photographs from the bathhouses line the walls of Ruby’s bar, along with hundreds of photos from Coney’s glorious past.

Ruby died in 2000 and now his legendary bar is about to join him, thanks to Joe Sitt, who sees himself as comic-book hero Thor, "protector of the cities."


painting in photo by robert leach

When you ask Coney people if they'll be there next year, they shrug and say, "Who knows?" A counterman at Gregory & Paul's responded by calling out, "Who knows, who knows, only the nose knows! Step right up for ice-cold beer here!"

At Ruby's, I asked Frank the bartender if he thought they’d have another season on the beach. He told me, “Sometimes I get a good feeling and sometimes I get a bad feeling. Maybe we’ll get another year, but I wouldn’t put my money on it. Why would someone pay millions of dollars for this property and then let us stay? I’m just taking it one day at a time. Like an alcoholic, or a drug addict.”

Mrs. Stahl's Knishes

VANISHED: 2005...or maybe 2004


photo credit: michael frucht

Since 1935, Mrs. Stahl's served knishes under the El at the corner of Coney Island Ave and Brighton Beach. It's been awhile since I was last there and I went in search of it today. I asked a couple of older Jewish ladies if they knew where I could find it.

"Oh, Mrs. Stahl's," said one wistfully, "I've been taking her since I was a little girl."

"It's gone," said the second lady, "It closed two years ago."

"No, it was three years ago."

"Was it three? Well, it's a Blimpie now."

"It's not a Blimpie. It's a Subway."

"Blimpie, Subway," the second lady shrugged, waving her cigarette, "What's the difference?"

Enough said.

7th Ave Books Revisited: The Joy of the Hunt

VANISHING

Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn has a great interview with Tom Simon of Park Slope's 7th Ave Books, which will be having a blowout sale starting today as it prepares for closing on August 31. Tom has some interesting things to say, including:

"For close to fifteen years, I held executive positions at both Waldenbooks and Barnesandnoble.com. No doubt I contributed to the demise of many an independent bookseller.... from what I have pieced together, the four independent Park Slope book stores combined gross sales are only 25% of our local Barnes & Noble's. Pretty astonishing and to many disheartening. And I helped this happen, not just in Park Slope, but all across the country."



It's got me thinking about how this culture of corporatization, suburbanization--I'm not sure what to call it, a friend once used a German term, Gleichmacherei, which translates literally to "same makery," or that which makes everything the same--how it is so alluring to us. How inescapable it is. Built and supported with the ideas of psychologists and sociologists, these big chain stores are created to reach us on deeply unconscious levels, where our reptilian brain craves safety, predictability, and abundance. Few of us are immune.

If Tom can admit to contributing to the demise of independent bookshops all across America, then I can admit to doing the same. I sometimes shop at Barnes & Noble. Yes, it's true. I, too, have a reptilian brain that hungers for abundance.

I am grateful that I can also move beyond that most primitive part of myself and take pleasure in the unfamiliar, the unsafe, the unpredictable, the scarce. It was that part that brought me to New York City many years ago to find like-minded people. It is that part that mourns the passing of Tom's shop, where I could never be sure I would find the book I was searching for, but I could enjoy the hunt.

It's that joy of the hunt we're losing as the city fills up with Gleichmachers. When all of our desires are met, what happens to desire? When the city is overrun by reptilian thinkers, how will the rest of us live? Hopefully, more people like Tom will leave the big boxes behind and create places like 7th Ave Books, places where you never know what you're going to find.

Black People

VANISHING

This week Time Out NY passes on the news that the black population of New York is decreasing for the first time. In the past 6 years, more than 40,000 African-Americans have fled the city. In Manhattan alone the black population is down 4.2% while the numbers of white people have increased by 5.3%.

The reason for this "black flight"? The rising cost of living. Affluent white people are pushing them out. Harlem, in particular, is being bulldozed and white-washed. Among the latest victims are neighborhood legends Bobby Robinson and Calvin Copeland.


map from ny post (click image to enlarge)

Where will all the black people go? Maybe they will become invisible, like Ellison's Invisible Man, and go underground to live "rent-free in a building rented strictly to whites, in a section of the basement that was shut off and forgotten during the nineteenth century."

Even the remnants of the Underground Railroad are being railroaded right out of town. Here's more info about the declining black population in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens.

Lincoln Plaza Hotel

VANISHED


photo from brownstoner

Curbed announces the conversion of Park Slope's 120-year-old hotel and former brothel to luxury condos.

The Times recounts several personal stories about the "hot sheets" hotel.

And Wendy Bryan in the Village Voice waxes nostalgic about her crush on this beautiful if bedraggled "neighborhood slut," imagining a pathetic future when "a few years from now, the building's new residents will hang their flat-screen television sets and watch Sex and the City reruns. The building remains the same, but the neighborhood has surely lost a conversation piece—not to mention a form of live local entertainment. And I have forever lost my crush."

I hear you Wendy.

Clover Barber Shop

VANISHING? Not yet.


my flickr

"I been a barber since seven," Ercole Riccardelli tells me in his thick Neapolitan accent as he holds a buzzing set of clippers over my head, "I was short. My grandfather gave me a step. I stood on it and put on the soap with the brush. When I was fourteen, I shaved the customers."

He's 84 now and plans to live as long as his grandfather, a man who made it to 99 (and 7 months) by never once seeing a doctor and by drinking a glass of Brioschi with lemon every morning then smoking a pipe while he watched the Naples fishermen fish before he opened his barber shop for the day.


photo by axlotl

If you go to the Clover Barbershop in Park Slope, be prepared to spend some time. Mr. Riccardelli moves very, very slowly. But his lines are straight and his hand is steady on the razor blade. When he finishes the hot-foam shave, he slaps your face with Osage oil and fans you coolingly with his towel. There aren't many places left where you can get treatment like this for little money.

Italian barbers might be the best. I used to see Sal on Mott Street, but a few years ago he closed up. First he stopped giving shaves because his hands got shaky. The next time I went back, he was gone. An upscale salon took his place. Then there's an amazing shop run by Harry Fini, but you have to go all the way to Philly for his hot towels, talk of Frank Sinatra, and the sign outside that says, "Enjoy barbering as did your dad."


Sal on Mott from Mr. Beller's


Harry's Shop from my flickr stream

Back in Brooklyn, Mr. Riccardelli's daughter has been urging him to close up shop and move to Florida, where he can enjoy the beach and swim in water as warm as the Mediterranean he longs for. But he's not ready to go just yet. "As long as my hands are good," he says, "I'll be right here."

Let's hope he lasts as long as his grandfather did.

Gregory & Paul's of Coney Island

VANISHING?



In yesterday's Daily News, Charles Denson, author of "Coney Island: Lost and Found" and director of the Coney Island History Project, writes about the fight Coney has fought to survive over the years:

"Power broker Robert Moses declared Coney an urban renewal site in 1949, opening the door for Mayor John Lindsay's infamous high-rise housing projects. In 1966, Donald Trump's father, Fred Trump, demolished historic Steeplechase Park for a housing project that was never built. And in a 2004 court case, then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani was finally forced to admit under oath that he had ordered the demolition of the derelict Thunderbolt Roller Coaster after publicly denying that he had been responsible."



Now Coney is threatened again and this may be the last season we have to enjoy it. Who knows what the future of Coney will be? It all hangs in the balance. One day, it's being leveled for a Vegas-style nightmare, the next, it may be saved. (See Kinetic Carnival for the whole scoop.) But like all good New York things, it's already vanishing, bit by bit.

If the developers have their way, one of the treasures we could lose is Paul Georgoulakos's fabulous Astroland food stand Gregory & Paul's.



Opened in 1970, the stand serves up classic Coney fare--clams, dogs, burgers, corn--and advertises on magnificent signage painted by local legend George Wallace, profiled here in Gowanus Lounge.



For The Brooklynites, a book of photos by Seth Kushner, Mr. Georgoulakos put it simply, "I like this place because it is something that you own and built from scratch and used my hands to make a living."

Someday (too soon!) few New Yorkers will be able to make such a statement.



#20 from Lawrence Ferlinghetti's A Coney Island of the Mind:

The pennycandystore beyond the El
is where I first
fell in love
with unreality
Jellybeans glowed in the semi-gloom
of that september afternoon
A cat upon the counter moved among
the licorice sticks
and tootsie rolls
and Oh Boy Gum

Outside the leaves were falling as they died

A wind had blown away the sun

A girl ran in
Her hair was rainy
Her breasts were breathless in the little room

Outside the leaves were falling
and they cried
Too soon! too soon!