Jones Street

Is Jones Street the perfect, "undiscovered" New York street? A kind of un-Bergen, it is mostly residential, a surprisingly quiet oasis between the cacophony of tourists and conspicuous consumers that flood Bleecker and West 4th, the two streets that bookend little Jones.

Only a block long, it nonetheless manages to sustain not one, but two record shops--Record Runner and Strider Records--both since 1979 and not vanishing yet.



Caffe Vivaldi is here, a nicely rundown-looking, old-school restaurant serving mostly Italian food and jazz, dating back to the 1980s and boasting patrons like Woody Allen, Al Pacino, and Joseph Brodsky.



And finally there's the Florence Prime Meat Market, a beautiful old butcher shop with sawdust on the floor and a cat licking its paws beneath the cutting table. What could be more perfect that that?

Plus, as blogger Teri Tynes pointed out, the street also features on the cover of Bob Dylan's Freewheelin' of 1963.

*Everyday Chatter

New York foodies' pork fetish goes too far: "you will be bodily immersed in gallons of porcine fat." [Eater]

Birdbath, the expanding bakery chain, is coming to the East Village's NYU dorm on 3rd and 9th--down the strip mall from where Ben & Jerry's just closed:


Countdown to another Citibank branch. [EVG]

Looking at Drooker's Ginsberg. [P&W]

A shot of St. Mark's in 1967. [FP]

Cyclone roller coaster for rent. [Curbed]

Bay Ridge reminiscences. [FNY]

Avenue A Lounge. [NSC]

The story behind Park Slope's drippy building. [HPS]

Bobos on Bergen

In Brooklyn there's a block of Bergen Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues, that wasn't there a year or so ago. The block itself was there, the street, the sidewalk. People lived on it. But today, almost overnight, it has become a tightly constructed microcosm of hyper-gentrification. Urban scholars should study this block. It's a New Urbanist dream come true.

It went up as quickly and completely as a Hollywood set and exemplifies everything that "White People Like." Which, as we know, is less about whiteness and more about "Bobos in Paradise." In fact, the entire 21st-century, urban, upwardly mobile, heterosexual reproductive cycle can be completed utilizing only the new businesses on this block.



Imagine a couple, let's call them Ben and Lauren. They are 35 years old, both of them "creatives" at a multimedia design "lab." They go on their first date at Melt, which they love for its "pure, honest and sustainable" food choices and "live off the land philosophy." They marry. For the wedding, Ben buys a pair of John Varvatos Converse at the men's boutique Private Stock, because he doesn't want to look like a total douche in his tux.

They try to get pregnant. Sex becomes tense. So they head back to Bergen to do some shopping at Toys in Babeland. They pick up a vibrator for Lauren and a buttplug for Ben. It works. In a few months, Lauren is shopping at Bump, right next to Babeland, for maternity fashion. While she's browsing stretch-waisted skinny jeans and calendula nursing balm, Ben heads next door to Bergen Street Comics, that "sleek clubhouse for the sophisticated fanboy."

Little does he know, while he's reading the latest Dan Clowes book, Lauren's in Eponymy charging a Gucci handbag to the house account. They'll argue about it later, down the block, while sipping fair-trade coffees and dipping kale chips into a bowl of "live" hummus at Sun in Bloom cafe.



In time, baby Cullen will be born. Ben will rent a rugged jogging stroller at Brooklyn Ride, and while he's pushing Cullen through the bike lanes of the Brooklyn he will inherit, Lauren will stay on Bergen, taking her Pilates Garage class at Lululemon, trying to tooth-and-nail it back to her pre-baby body. Lauren considers herself a devout "Luluhead." After their morning exercise, the whole family will reunite at "artisan chic" Bark for hot dogs smothered in baked heirloom beans and oak barrel aged sauerkraut.

"Did you hear," says Ben, between gulps of his retro-hip Foxon Park diet white birch soda, "That crummy bookstore down the block is going to be a store for tweens."

"That's great," says Lauren, patting her flat tummy, "It'll really come in handy when little Sophie gets big."

"Little Sophie?" says Ben, "Really? Another baby? I guess it's back to Bump!"



I stepped off the Bergen Block (after my own browsing through comic books and personal lubricants) and wondered how something so unreal-looking could pop up in such a short amount of time. It couldn't have been an organic process, I thought. All the signs are exactly the same. What condo developer engineered this so he could stuff his brochures with pretty pictures of nearby amenities? It's like Disney's master-planned Celebration, I muttered, passing by sheets of blue plywood and the skeletons of up and coming condos.

The Brooklyn Paper reported that the engineering was done, indeed, by the Pintchik brothers of Flatbush fame. They carefully transformed the block, says the paper, "into a little slice of some small town Main Street in just two years."

I can't say what the ultimate goal is, but we all know that the Bergen Block will act as a fertile harborage for more of the same, that its commerce will attract, breed, hatch, and spread as efficiently as, well, bedbugs. It's biological class warfare--like introducing lady bugs into the garden to rid your prize roses of aphids.


Nantucket shops

Said one of the business owners on the block, "Coming here is like stepping off of Flatbush Avenue into Nantucket."

I guess if Greenwich Village has Little Wisco, Park Slope can have "Little Tucket."

*Everyday Chatter

Craigslister offers jars full of bedbugs as revenge on roommates. [RS]

Nights at the Playboy Club. [BBs]

Coney's Easter Island mystery solved. Sort of. [ATZ]

This Friday, more No Wave films to enjoy. [Stupefaction]

More wreckage from the Second Ave Subway. [NYT]

Pray cell phones never make it into the subways. [RS]

John Gruen's New Bohemia with a map of the old EV. [ENY] via [EVG]

McSorley's Lunch

I used to go for lunch at McSorley's, back when things were quieter. Then the crowds started growing, and I stopped. Now and then I go back. I like the single table by the window. I like the sunlight, though the new Cooper Union building and Cooper Square Hotel have blocked most of the old sun. I like the possibility of a cat underfoot, rolling in the sawdust, and there's always a cat at McSorley's.



At 11:55 AM, there's no one in the place except a trio of regulars. They stand at the rail and talk about their union jobs, their nights in strip clubs, their days placing bets at the OTB.

"Working at the OTB," says one, "That used to be a real tit job. You had to know a congressman to get a job at the OTB. You had to know a priest or something. It was a real tit job, and that was just 10 years ago."

They go to Belmont and bet on the horses. At Belmont, says one, "I'm happier than a pig in shit." They worry about the OTBs closing down, about having to bet over the television like they do in England. They worry about Type 2 diabetes and cholesterol. They think A-Rod is a "steroid-shooting motherfucker."



"They say in the paper," says one, "that cats grieve when their siblings die. You think that's true?"

"Sure, remember when Minnie died? Stinky went right after her, just like that. They get attached, cats."

There's been a cat called Minnie at McSorley's since Joseph Mitchell used to go there, and probably long before that.



By 12:15, the yellow cabs start rolling up outside, disgorging families of tourists, cameras around their shoulders, guidebooks in their hands, sunglasses on lanyards around their necks.

Two perky people walk up to the bar, "Hi! We're here with the Food Tour? You know, the Food Tour? Would it be okay if we ordered 25 light lagers now?" They do, and 50 Food Tour people come pouring in to the quiet.

"Food tour? And all they ordered was lagers?" says one of regulars, "I always told my wife beer was a food!"



The payphone on the wall keeps ringing. The regulars answer it. Someone wants to come in with a fashion model and do a photo shoot. Someone wants to make a reservation for a bachelorette party.

Says one of the guys, "Remember the time I took that reservation for the bachelorette party? 'Oh sure, 25 people for 9:00? We'll have your tables waiting.' You know they actually showed up? They were like, 'Hey, where's our tables?' At 9:00, everybody knows, you can't even get in the door."

*Everyday Chatter

Restless launches a new photo blog. Check it out. [NYCPB]

Spider-Man returns with his rickshaw. [SG]

Brunch parties in the Meatpacking District are still loud. The manager of CB2 "happened on one such brunch event that he mistook at first for a rock concert. 'I haven’t heard anything that loud since I was in Studio 54 30 years ago,' he said. Though the neighborhood’s reputation back then was dicier, he added, 'the meatpackers and the prostitutes were quiet.'" [NYT]

Bacon-Palooza--because New Yorkers are having a weird love affair with pork products. [Grub]

Fro-yo wars never end. [BB]

EV bank robbery. [EVG]

Pulino's says No, No, No. [Eater]

Helluva Lot of Beer

Walking around the East Village, loitering outside the many incoming bars and restaurants, you hear things. You get a glimpse of how the mainstream world thinks of this neighborhood.

One morning, a group of suits and younger guys, blue button-down shirt guys, are standing around holding clipboards. Behind them, a new bar is going in. I'm thinking: investors and wunderkind owners. They're talking about the frat bar they will soon unleash onto the East Villagers.

They are looking at numbers. Beer numbers.


Art by Victor Kerlow

Suit says, "That's a helluva lot of beer."

Blue button-down replies, grinning snarkily, "Have you ever been down here at night, on the weekend? Down to Second Avenue? It's unbelievable. Heh-heh. You should come down. You gotta see it. It's incredible."

"It's just a helluva lot of beer."


See more with artist Victor Kerlow:
Pig Sty
Nighthawks Op-Ed
Meatpacking Art

...and check out Victor's blog Chopped in Two