Union Sq. Newsstand

We've lost another newsstand. One of the more interesting ones. From the corner of Broadway and 17th Street, this cluttered little beauty has vanished.



It has taken its street art-decorated backside with it.



And it has been replaced by this dull, blank box, another ticky-tacky nothing, a hollow mirror reflecting not much. On the back, where a shifting gallery of street art used to be, you will soon see an advertisement--for Jaguar cars or Coach bags.

This is how a city dies, little piece by little piece. A thousand cuts.



Read much more on the vanishing newsstands here.

*Everyday Chatter

"'I am not trying to get rich selling ice cream,' said Mr. Frisch, who will begin studying for a master’s degree in the Violence, Conflict and Development program at the University of London next month. 'My goal right now is just to do an Israel-Palestine flavor that won’t get people upset.'" [NYT]

Maybe Patti Smith was right--it's time to go to Detroit. [NYT]

Barnes & Noble--the whole company--is up for sale. [NYT]

Please respect the vandalism on the Bowery. [BB]

Does New York need a "meathead ordinance"? [EVG]

Event Horizon man makes for an interesting sunbathing tableau:

Johnny Suede

A couple of decades ago, I loved the Tom DiCillo movie Johnny Suede. I haven't seen it since, and recently watched it again. It's one of those time capsules of the early 90s urban lifestyle on the edge--the crappy apartments painted in peeling pastel pink and blue, filled with cast-off velvet furnishings and 1950s flea-market junk.



It stars a wee Brad Pitt with an unbelievably tall pompadour, and Catherine Keener still with a touch of baby fat. And it was filmed in Williamsburg, when it was a burnt-out wasteland of crumbling graffiti-covered buildings and weedy vacant lots.

In the book Breaking In, DiCillo said, "Originally, I was going to shoot the film in the East Village, because that was where the story had originated. But by that point the East Village was no longer the East Village I had known. It was now Starbucks, the Gap, and Banana Republic, so I had to come up with a fictionalized version of it in Williamsburg, Brooklyn."


Johnny calls a yuppie a "stupid fucking idiot."

At one point, Johnny sings a song that goes, "I wanna work in Midtown and wear a three-piece suit," because that was back when people talked about the yuppie lifestyle like it was different from the usual.



Tom DiCillo told Moviemaker: "We shot the film in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, which back in 1990 really was not a place anyone was too eager to build a Starbucks in. Two weeks into shooting the assistant director came running up and cried, 'Someone left the wardrobe van unattended and all the costumes have been stolen!'

A day later they found the guys who’d stolen them. My relief was brief—about five seconds actually. The police informed us that the thieves had apparently liked Johnny’s clothes so much they were not returning them. The cops advised us if we wanted to continue shooting in Williamsburg we should accept these 'terms.'"

*Everyday Chatter

The Yunnie debate goes back and forth. [NYT]

Strolling Central Park in the late 1800s and today. [WOBA]

Out goes the last of Carnegie Hall's artist residents. [Curbed]

Haring makes an appearance on Bowery. [EVG]

Under the boardwalk on a hot summer day. [MPC]

A Jewish subway map. [Gothamist]

All Types

The Essex Ale House (formerly 12" Bar, formerly Filthy McNasty's) recently shuttered. But it's the location's formerly, formerly, formerly that reveals itself in this 1980s photo taken by reader Seena Liff:


Houston Upholstery

"ALL TYPES." That's what it takes.

Seena has a couple of other shots to share, like this oldie of East Broadway at Clinton Street:


The Mayflower

And this shot of Love Saves the Day, from before it went to 7th and 2nd. It's a rare capture of a lost piece of the East Village.


Love Saves the Day

And what do we find in that tiny spot of St. Mark's Place today?


from Google Maps

*Everyday Chatter

The indie bookshop revolution in NYC--they're "curated." [NYM]

As thrift shops disappear. [Racked]

A long-time resident remembers life before "MePa": "It was really gritty and dirty... Most of my friends didn’t even want to come down this way. It was really dark back then." [Villager]

Girls Gone Wild, East Village edition. [EVG]

Wall St. Station's wooden token booth. [ENY]

Hoping the Manhattan Triple Decker doesn't change its sign during the renovations. [NYS]

Scribbler Strikes Again

Back to 10th Street, where we last saw the Scribbler had admonished us to boycott the movies, because smoking is illegal in cinemas. Now, in fresh ink, he lends support to former Northern Exposure actress and tea-partier Janine Turner, who runs the Constituting America website.



The Scribbler tells us that Janine is being blacklisted by the "internazis" of Red Hollywood, who resemble "vermin like psychotherapists and 3-term mayors."

And while the Scribbler strongly supports our right to smoke in public, he launches this attack on Hollywood for teaching us to smoke in the first place, an indication that the Scribbler might feel some ambivalence about cigarettes.



Further down the plywood, we see a compatriot of the Scribbler has provided some cryptic mathematics:

Bloomberg = 8 yrs =/+ 11 BILL
Smokers 8 yrs, 10-12-PACK

What could it mean except: "Smoking Good, Bloomberg Bad"? And fascism lives. "But," says a newcomer in barely legible ballpoint, "smokers don't." Live, that is. "Be grateful!"



The addition of the Communist hammer and sickle might indicate the red politics of this writer, which I will call the Communist Smoker. It also begs the intriguing question: Could the anti-Red Scribbler and the Communist Smoker be on the same side? Could they be alters of the same individual?

Read back:
Scribbler 1
Scribbler 2