Margon Restaurant

There are few places left in Times Square to enjoy authentic, tasty, inexpensive food. Margon Restaurant is one of them--and it's been serving up Cuban comfort on W. 46th Street since the 1960s.



This weekend I enjoyed a plate of beef stew with beans and rice and talked with Getty Rivas who told me about how his father came from the Dominican Republic and first worked in the restaurant as a dishwasher. In 1987, after Margon had moved into its current spot, a former go-go bar, Mr. Rivas took over. The place continues to be managed and staffed completely by the Rivas family--"aunts, uncles, cousins..."--17 family members in total. They have since added their own Dominican flavors to the Cuban dishes.



The place is narrow and cafeteria style. You order your food from the counter and take a seat. Salsa plays over the radio. People chat and sometimes dance while they wait for their plates of octopus salad, plantains, roasted chicken so tender it falls off the bone. Taxi drivers and tour bus drivers come for lunch. It just feels like New York City here.

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.

Chez Brigitte Turns 50

*Update: Vanished June 5, 2008

For those who miss Sucelt and anticipate missing Florent, there is a tiny luncheonette on Greenwich Ave, just past 7th Ave, that manages a loose combination of the two: French diner meets inexpensive Latin flavors.



Chez Brigitte has been in business since 1958--this year is their 50th anniversary--and was begun by a woman named Brigitte Catapano, a native of Marseilles. When she retired to Florida, the diner went to her partner Rosa Santos and acquired its Spanish touch. Both women have since passed away, but the diner is still in the hands of a Spaniard, and chef Raphael hails from Mexico. The atmosphere is friendly and the food is pure comfort, "la cuisine grandmere."



The Voice's Robert Sietsema writes: "The signature is beef bourguignon, a massive platter of tender gravied meat with a touch of red wine (that's the French part), with petits pois and a couple of starchy sides; or check out the poulet roti, a tender breast painted with a dark sophisticated demi-glace."



The names of the dishes may be French--Boeuf Bourguignon, Ragout de Veau, Fricassee de Poulet--but it's Latin-style eating at affordable prices. The lunch special is $7.40 and comes with dessert and soda. For breakfast, any omelette with potatoes is $3.75.

Even at these prices, business has been slow. Little Chez Brigitte tends to blend into the woodwork. I must have passed it a hundred times before I noticed it and bothered to stick my head inside. So here it is. It's good, it's cheap, it's the real deal. Now go--before they're gone.

*Everyday Chatter

Remarkably, after much construction and stop work orders, 27 E. 7th Street has become a (illegal?) hostel. Down by the Hipster reported this, Curbed commented, and Hostel World has all the details (free pizza parties!), but I didn't really believe it until I looked up last night and saw the rooms filled with bunkbeds and sleepy-eyed young Asians:


CBGB's will be a John Varvatos, but the 313 Gallery will still be a gallery--Morrison Hotel is moving into #313 and a little bit of rock-n-roll history remains on the Bowery, if only in museum form. It's better than another bank. The first show will feature work by rock photographer Steve Joester. [Stupefaction]

Here comes Karl Fischer. Despite protests to the plans to demolish these little buildings on 13th Street and replace them with a giant hotel, the first sign of demolition has appeared: The rat poison is out!


Celebrate 125 years of the Chelsea Hotel at the Museum of the City of New York. [Living w/Legends]

NYC construction accidents only to get worse--as billions of building dollars and another million people flood into the city. [Curbed]

Go inside an East Village open house--where you can get a teeny studio and access to a crappy rooftop "deck" for just $2,900. [EVG]

Ah, the disparity of NYC economics: See a family of 5 living in a two-room on Ludlow ($?) and then check out an empty two-bedroom in the Plaza ($16,500 per month!) just waiting for a single out-of-towner to call "not home."

What was once the Tiffany Diner, once beloved of drag queens, club kids, and leatherdaddies, and situated in a 1929 landmarked building, will now be...a Bank of America:

8th Street Ghost Town

Back in 2006, The Real Deal covered the demise of 8th Street's shoe stores, reporting that "Since the collapse of the World Trade Center towers, 24 of 54 shoe stores have closed, a devastating percentage." Since then, that number has most certainly gone up.



The street is a ghost town of soaped-over windows, for rent signs, and going out of business banners. Rugged Sole is currently holding a "Business Sucks" sale. The sidewalks are empty, which actually makes 8th Street a pleasant route for walking unmolested by jerks with giant shopping bags, drunken college students, and entitled Wall Streeters. It's a place to be (almost) alone. But that is going to change. Fast.



After the onslaught of rent hikes, the street has been in a holding pattern, waiting for super-gentrification to wash away the urine and incense vendors. Recently, the luxurification arrived.



In a space once occupied by a club called 8th Wonder, where Jimi Hendrix used to play, upscale restaurant Elletaria just opened. The crowds are pouring in for pigs feet and sweetbreads--washed down with the 8th Wonder cocktail--and I predict that its presence will tip the scales on 8th Street once and for all.

• Magic Shoes
• 8th Street Re-Visited

Join VNY Flickr Group

Many readers send in photos of places they love and are losing, interesting old signage, and other vanishing items. It's great--I can't be in all places at all times. So I've started a Flickr group:

http://www.flickr.com/groups/vanishingnewyork/

The group is open, so please join and add any photos--and descriptions--you think fit the category. I'll do my best to get them onto the blog.

Thanks!

*Everyday Chatter

Life's been hard for the shoe stores of 8th Street. Rugged Sole is holding a "Business Sucks" sale as most of its neighbors have shut down:


Coney Island opens! Perhaps for the final season of Astroland. [BIB]

Rundowns of recent construction accidents as the rush to super-gentrification continues. [Gothamist] [Lost City]

These days, many of us live anxiously in the shadow of teetering cranes. [City Room] [EVG]

Others tremble in the shadow of cell-phone towers. [PMFA]

I wrote about Extra Place in January--more recently, the Real Deal revealed the developers' dream for a "park-like environment that fosters a sense of community with lots of small retail shops and cafés." Whose sense of community will it foster? Just take a look at the cream-of-wheat folks in the rendering below. And here's the prediction: "It's like what Jeffrey did to the Meatpacking District." Couldn't be more prescient! [RD]

P.S. Both Curbed and Eater picked up my coverage of this debacle, and their readers' comments are worth checking out--for once, most are in agreement this plan is putrid.

Panic sets in as Brooklyn liquor store changes hands. [Brklynometry]

Miss Heather invents a fun new game: Gentrification Bingo! This is good stuff--send her your contributions. [NYShitty]

Ronald McDonald gets on stage at The Apollo--and a small note tells us that the Apollo is 1 in a total of only 4 landmarked buildings in Harlem, a neighborhood on the brink of being plucked clean by super-gentrification. [NYO]

Since Fontana's officially closed, Angelo has been going in to the shop every morning. I've seen him sitting by the window, reading an Italian newspaper, and I thought, Maybe he's holding out for a possible reprieve, maybe there's hope. Then I saw this sign: