*Everyday Chatter

Another miserable day at Coney, as the Astroland rocket is removed from the roof of Gregory & Paul's fantastic snack bar. [Curbed]

Is the Chelsea Hotel kicking out Storme DeLarverie, one of the first drag kings and pioneer of the LGBT movement? [LWL]

"Bitter Buyers" more common than bitter renters these days. [Curbed]

Downtown Music Gallery is leaving the Bowery. [EVG]

"After intense criticism, the Bloomberg administration has given up a perk it worked fervently to secure: a free luxury suite at the new Yankee Stadium." [NYT]

Boogie explores one of my favorite spots--the Chinese mall under the Manhattan Bridge. [BBoogie]

This week "the well-heeled LES Business Improvement District" requested a revision of the south of Houston rezoning with "a full 50% more commercial bulk." [SLES]

Credit Crunch: Now with electrolytes!

Ghosts of 8th Ave

This past summer, we started saying goodbye to a chunk of the West 40s.

Ken bid farewell to Frankie & Johnnie's and Lost City said "so long" to 45th Street where buildings had already started falling for the massive tower to come, a million-square-footer that will span the block from 45th to 46th, shouldering its way into Platinum territory, where the marvelous McHale's used to stand.

Today, the big Broadway Inn is gone. Here, glittering detritus of New Year's Eve clings to the chain-link fence surrounding the lot where not even a single brick of the old hotel remains.



Here's the corner last spring, where bricks and lintels are overshadowed by glass and chrome, the Platinum's Randian hero flexing his muscles as if readying himself for destruction (click for more photos of this block):



And still more buildings are yet to fall. Curbed covered the initial demolitions last year. The footprint for the coming monster is massive, crumbling how many old buildings? Count 'em:


image and story from NY Post

Just a block south, after knocking down the beloved Playpen (nee Cameo Theater), the Tishman hotel has begun its rise, furthering the massive transformation of what has been seedy Times Square's last holdout blocks:



Looking at select bits of 8th Avenue, like this chunk at 45th, you'd never know the city was crumbling and rising as glass. Winter sunlight shines on the weary bricks to reveal a pair of ghost signs, one on top of the other, artifacts from the age being wiped out today. A cigar box fades beneath a scrim of advertising for ROOMS complete with steam heat, hot & cold water, luxuries of the last Great Depression.

*Everyday Chatter

Z ya later: A St. Marks tipster says, "i'm looking out my window and seeing movers packing up the recently opened David Z across the street. one small victory against the banal will not make up for the many other losses in the EV."

What's happening with that Karl Fischer glass hotel going up on 13th Street? Absolutely nothing--it's been sitting like this since the big demolition last April:


The economic bust has saved another one! The Emerald Inn will live to see us through the Depression. [EVG]

Art deco Metro Theater to become an Urban Outfitters. [CR]

Bleecker to get its nine-millionth Marc Jacobs store. [Racked]

Market Diner Returns

Last week, Urbanite discovered the long-anticipated reopening of the Market Diner on 11th Ave and 43rd St. Since the loss of the Moondance and the Cheyenne (which Chelsea Now reports may not make it to Red Hook after all), New York City's diner lovers have been waiting with baited breath for the Market to return.

Being a diner lover myself, I headed up there for a New Year's Day breakfast of challah French toast and bacon.

At first glance, I was disappointed to find the new owners had stripped the spectacular old neon sign and replaced it with something far less than spectacular. Here's what it looked like before:


photo by urbanprose

And here's how it looks today. I'm hoping that little ovoid bit is just a placeholder for something better yet to come:


photo from my flickr

Originally opened in 1962 and closed in 2006, the diner was beloved by Frank Sinatra and west-side gangsters alike. Its closure, wrote the Times, "left some neighbors crying in their egg creams, wondering who will rent the corner lot in Hell’s Kitchen, in a quickly evolving area with an increasing number of high-rise apartment buildings." In March 2008, the Times reported the Market would reopen--nothing less than a miracle in the insane real estate climate.

So I'm not complaining.

The exterior has been beautifully preserved and revitalized, with chocolate-brown eaves and polished chrome along the zigzag roof. The cream-colored stoneface around the foundation has also been kept and the entrance has been re-tiled in orange. The parking has been mostly replaced by an outdoor seating area.




photos from my flickr

The orange and brown color scheme continues inside, with pumpkin-colored booths trimmed in brown piping. Overall, the interior has been stripped and modernized. I've only been able to find a couple images of the Market's former interior:


photo: Sara Krulwich, NY Times


photo: NYC architecture

They've taken out the wavy bits over the counter, the striped tiles, and the attached swivel stools, for a streamlined, simplified look. It's clean and attractive, but not very interesting. Sort of "West Elm'd":




photo from my flickr

As for the French toast and bacon: Yum.

*Everyday Chatter

Maybe we shouldn't get our hopes up by recent news that Jefferson Market is coming back to life. A commenter here writes: "Jefferson Market is being taken over by Gristede's. I saw the trucks and a man also confessed." I followed up with the commenter, who told me they're keeping the name Jefferson Market, but "It will be a different store, just a Gristedes with a different name." Can anyone confirm?

New York City just cannot hold on to its treasures--last week it was Kim's videos to Sicily, now we hear the Gotham Book Mart collection is going to UPenn. [CR]

Uncover the lost city in photos by Bruce Barone. [FP]

Remember the Caledonia's "library," which I wrote about here? Well, it's always empty. Says one renter, “The library is cool, but I’ve never used it, ever." [NYT]

Santa comes out as a queer polar bear at Nino's Pizza on St. Marks. And he's in search of a bootblack. Woof!

my flickr

Holiday Cocktail Lounge

I'm nervous. A reader wrote in this weekend to say: "One of my favorite EV bars appears to have closed--the Holiday Cocktail Lounge, on St. Mark's Place, between First and Second Avenues. Stefan, the proprietor, was a very old man, so it wouldn't surprise me to learn that he'd given up the ghost."

*1/19 UPDATE
*2/6 UPDATE: Stefan has passed on


my flickr

I went by a couple of times at night to find the door shuttered, the stools upside-down on the bar, and the only light coming from the blue glow of a Budweiser clock on a far wall. While I was loitering outside, I talked to a neighbor who informed me that Stefan went into the hospital recently.

If the Holiday Lounge has closed, if Stefan has "given up the ghost," this is a major loss for the East Village and the city.


from bunglehugo's flickr

One of our greatest dive bars, the Holiday was opened by Stefan Lutak in 1965. Wrote NY Press: "it quickly became a haunt for poets and intellectuals, or, as Lutak likes to refer to them, 'bullshitters and faggots.' The modernist master W.H. Auden, author of 'The Shield of Achilles,' was the star drunk. He drank here with Allen Ginsberg, among others, living on cognac, V.S.O.P.—whole bottles in an afternoon as he sat by the window, writing with a stubby pencil, constantly erasing and rewriting. 'When he sober, he can't write,' Lutak recalls. 'When he too drunk he can't write. You could never say when he was drunk, because he drinking all the time.'"

Over the decades, the bar remained a favorite of hard-drinkers, artists, and eccentrics. Madonna hung out there before she was big, and rumor has it the dive inspired her song by the same name. Ask Stefan what mixed drinks he offered and he might answer, "Wodka-tonic, wodka-soda, wodka-Coke." All of them heavy on the "wodka."

Gawker visited this summer, painting a scene in which a recently released prisoner of some kind returns to the bar after 30 years and the 89-year-old Stefan says that all he wants to do is sleep.


from adm's flickr

In 2006, Caroline Dworin wrote a lovely piece on the Holiday for the New York Times, saying: "There is great poignancy to the case of the New York dive bar. In such an ever-shifting metropolis, whose streets, like rivers, are never the same streets twice, whose heights rise ever upward into taller, better, sleeker plains of steel, those small and stagnant pools may be the only place left where a man can see his reflection."

Every day, that reflection fades more and more.

As my eloquent tipster wrote, "Increasingly, the city is like one of those terrible dreams, where the face of a beloved person is all wrong."



More dive bars:
P&G
Blarney Cove
Hickey's
Sophie's
Mars Bar
Holland Bar (gutted)
Dick's (vanished)
George's (vanished)

Grieve visits Port 41 and the Subway Inn
Ken snaps Dublin House and Smith's
Lost City lists 8 dives

*Everyday Chatter

Hey, it's 2009 and here's another post-holiday week in review.

First off, welcome new readers and thanks to Blogger for picking JVNY out of the hat as New Year's Day's Blog of Note.

Goofy 2000's glasses on St. Marks: They'll be vanishing after this year:


Yesterday at Coney, Ruby's opened despite the shuttering, the Polar Bears swam, and a lot of people braved the freezing cold (including Reverend Billy and Lola Starr) to protest Thor.

See Love Saves the Day says goodbye on the local news. [NY1]

Mr. Kim speaks about his collection's move to Sicily and the words are heartbreaking: "I think my passion in loving film to share and introduce to New Yorkers is no longer valid...I now do not want to fight against the new stream. I just want to disappear calmly." [NYDN]

Steve Zeitlin and Brooks of Sheffield (Lost City) offer a radio broadcast on the city's 2008 losses. [WNYC]

The Knitting Factory moves to Brooklyn--Tribecans happy to have a sophisticated new wine bar instead. NYT via [Stupefaction]

An early casualty of the enforced digital "upgrade," an old TV gutted and junked in the tossed-out packaging of the new:


New York State steps in to evict remaining tenants of Carnegie Hall building--Editta, age 96, says they'll have to "drag me out" with "their bare hands." [NYP]

The Moondance Diner is set to reopen in its Wyoming home. [NYT]

But the Cheyenne Diner might be doomed--it's just too big to get across the river in one piece. [CN]

Ken says goodbye to the P&G. [GVDP]

R&L, formerly Florent, formerly R&L, reopens in Meatpacking. [Eater]

Enjoy some vintage Jesus neon. [EVG]

Take in the top scaffolds of 2008. [Restless]

Blue seats on the F train are freaking people out. [BBoogie]