Pieces Saved

The 19-year-old gay bar Pieces has won the battle to stay put. The owner of the bar told Next Magazine, "We now have a multi-year lease from the building's owners. I wanted to get the word out that we’re open and not going anywhere.”


photo: New York

Pieces lost their lease last year so the building owner could "do a full-scale renovation of the three-story building, turning the upstairs floors into high-end apartments and the bar into upscale retail."

Pieces then tried to relocate to the Village Paper space, but they lost out to an upscale party restaurant. They then tried to move to West 8th Street, two doors from Gray's Papaya, but the Village neighbors vehemently opposed them. One woman at a CB meeting said that the bar was a magnet for "'private sex acts in doorways and basements' leaving behind a 'clutter of condoms' on the street." Pieces was denied.

The community spoke out in favor of saving Pieces and Michael Musto called it his "favorite hangout." He said it was "coming up against the usual 2011 prejudices, repressions, and challenges."


photo: New York

"Apparently," said Next, "the owners of the building took notice of the outpouring of support for the little gay bar that could and, in the end, decided to let it stay while postponing their renovations for a few more years."

As we add Pieces to the growing "Win" column, let's count it as a victory for a longtime piece of the Village against the forces of high-end apartments and upscale retail. That's one less Marc Jacobs/cupcake shop we have to contend with.

Hookers & The Sahara

A comment on this post reminded me of the prostitutes that used to roam the upper, western edge of the East Village. There's a reason Taxi Driver's whorehouse SRO is on 13th and 3rd--but the stroll didn't stop after the 1970s. Prostitutes continued to walk these blocks as late as the mid-1990s. I did a little digging and found a relevant entry from my journals.



Journal excerpt from May 1996:

I walked up Second Avenue and turned onto 11th Street. Under the gingko trees, dark-green in the night, a woman came up to me.

“Excuse me, sir,” she said, coming very close. I could smell the perfume on her skin. Her blouse was open, her chest dusted with some kind of glitter. I stopped. “Do you have a match?”

I fished in my jacket pockets and pulled out a half-used book of matches. The woman put a cigarette between her lips and I struck the match, cupped it in my hands, and held it out to her. She moved into it, all the while looking into my eyes. In the flickering light, I could see she was younger than I’d first thought. A teenager. Maybe 20. She had a tired, ravaged look, dark shadows on her pale skin. She thanked me and I stepped back, about to walk away, when she reached out and touched my sleeve.

“Would you like a date?” she asked.

It took me a few seconds to realize what she was asking me. “A date? Oh, no. No, thank you,” I said, flattered to be propositioned, even by a prostitute, and I wanted to be polite.

“We’ll have a nice time,” she said as I walked away.

I wandered up to Third Avenue where another woman approached me.

“Psst! Psst!” she hissed. “Hey, pretty boy!” Then she hissed again. I turned around. She was tall, with large breasts and a tremendous ass that made her wobble on her platform heels. She smiled at me, missing a few teeth.

“How about a date tonight? You’re looking lonely.”

“No, thank you,” I said, hurrying along. I didn't want her to hiss at me again.

“Don’t be scared,” she shouted. “You don’t know what you’re missing!”

I kept walking, hearing her footsteps behind me, until I got to 14th Street. On the corner, under a dilapidated scaffolding, glowed the neon lights of “VIDEO PEEPS, XXX, 25-CENTS.” Before going inside, I looked behind me and the tall prostitute was standing there, leaning on the scaffold, smirking like she could see right through me.


a rare photo--New York Magazine, 1990

That peep joint on the northeast corner of 14th and 3rd was located in what was then the Sahara Hotel. The Sahara was like a slice of Times Square's grittiest, an SRO known for danger and shady dealings.


NYU & Duane Reade, today

In August 1973, the Times reported: "police charged the manager of the Sahara Hotel, at 201 East 14th Street, with homicide after finding his wife's body on the roof. They said Umberto Rivera, 34, the manager, said he shot Pedra, his wife, in their apartment Friday night when she threatened him with a knife. A hotel night clerk, Alfredo Medina, 32, was accused of aiding in the homicide by helping carry the body to the roof."


Sahara (left), 1972, nycsubway

Not much changed over the years. A 1990 New York article cites suspicious fires, professional thugs driving out tenants, and crack dealers climbing through the windows where prostitutes did their business. The Sahara soon emptied of its occupants and stayed empty.

In 1996, when I ran in there, the tide was turning. Three businessmen involved in the Sahara's demise expressed their opinions to the Times: "The Sahara has been nothing but misery for this community" and "We're all praying that the Sahara will be sold so we can turn the page on an ugly chapter" and "this is the domino that could turn around what has been a laggard section of 14th Street."


201 E. 14th in 1936, NYPL

That last prediction turned out to be correct. After The Sahara was sold in 1999, the prostitutes seemed to vanish from the East Village, as if the abandoned old hotel had been their energy source.

The porno shop shuttered in July of that year--wrote the Times, "The last remnant of 14th Street's seedy past, an adult video store near Third Avenue, closed last week." The owners were given $100,000 to get out. Neighbors were hopeful that the closure would mean "the neighborhood will finally become what we would like it to become.''

If what they wanted was a bunch of NYU dorms, condo towers, and chain stores, then they got their wish.


today: looks like Houston, Texas

The dominos kept falling. After the hookers and the Sahara vanished, we lost much more from this part of town: Around the same time, the Palladium came down for an NYU dorm and Trader Joe's, St. Ann's Church was decapitated for another NYU dorm, the "should have been landmarked" Variety Photoplays fell for a beastly Toll Brothers glass tower (with bank branch), the Grace & Hope Mission shut down, several businesses on the southeast corner of 14th and 3rd were demolished for another condo tower (with bank branch), IHOP moved in, and yet another massive condo is going up at 3rd and 12th.

And now we hear chatter that the long-empty Mystery Lot of 13th St. will be developed by Hollywood hotelier Andre Balasz, who we guess will be bringing big, loud Meatpacking District glitz and glamor to Easy Iris' old block.


background: Mystery Lot before it was a lot, via SNY

See Also:
14th and 3rd
Little Jam
Movie Star News
Before IHOP

*Everyday Chatter

Bad news for Billy's Antiques--more development takes over on the Bowery: "It’ll be part of that final transition to a landscape of Pottery Barns and Starbucks." [NYT]

And what's coming? Billy says it will be made of brick imported from a factory in Massachusetts--and built by Tony Goldman, the creator of Soho who discovers and articulates urban grit. [EVG]

More news and rumor from Bill's Gay 90s: The bartender said "the owner of the old tavern...wanted nothing to do with DeLucie, and that they were the victim of a spiteful landlord who was messing around with the fate of the bar. 'We're not going anywhere,' he said." [LC]

Lovely photos of the old B&B Carousell at Coney Island--it could be yours. [ATZ]

Gutting the Chelsea Hotel. [Gothamist]

Oh dear, there's a Sex & the City slot machine in Queens. [NYM]

The backstory on Dog Day Afternoon. [OTG]

Mick's new book Christmas Whore is "about the sleazy old area of the 20s and Park Ave South, wretched times were spent there all around the Belmore Cafeteria." [ABS]

Inside the insane car-vator of Chelsea's 200 11th Ave. [Gothamist]

Good news from Pat about the shuttered Cosmos Diner: The scaffolding is down and the new sign says "Orion Diner & Grill with a big picture of a bare-chested archer (Orion the Hunter) against an orange background with laurel leaves. Looks very Greek and not at all gentrified."

History of the B&H

New York's great small places are not often included in the history records. They linger, or they vanish, leaving us to wonder about their stories. The B&H Dairy in the East Village is one of those places. As a longtime fan and customer, I was excited to hear from Florence Bergson Goldberg, the daughter of B&H founder Abie Bergson. She was kind enough to share her family photos and stories.


today


Bergson Goldberg: The B&H circa 1970s

Ms. Goldberg recalls, "My dad started his business on a handshake. He had worked as a waiter in a store across the street from where the B&H stands. When he decided he wanted to start his own business, he approached many of the restaurant supply merchants on the Bowery. They knew my father to be an honest man, and they all gave him credit with just a handshake."

"The B&H opened either in 1937 or 1938. Originally, B&H stood for Bergson and Heller. Later on, Mr. Heller left the business, and my father's friend, Sol Hausman, became his second partner, still B&H. Sol came up with an idea that B&H could also stand for 'Better Health.'"

The B&H was successful, but it never expanded and never really changed. As Ms. Goldberg recalls, "So many businesses, when they do well, begin to expand in the hope of 'making a killing.' My dad never thought in those terms. He would rather have had people waiting for seats than seats waiting for people."


Bergson Goldberg: The mom & pop, 1950s

Mr. Bergson and his partner sold the B&H around 1970. In 1978, counterman Leo Ratnofsky was profiled in the New Yorker's Talk of the Town. To hear Leo tell it, the B&H was the same in 1978 as it was in 1940 when he began--and as it still is today. The story is filled with buttered slices of homemade challah, bowls of soup, fresh-squeezed oranges, hungry crowds, and even "a meticulous Ukrainian" cook in the tiny back kitchen with a scarf on her head who now and then peeks out to see what's going on. I imagine she was back there peeling potatoes and mashing beets, just as her doppelganger is today.

In the New Yorker story, Leo calls out "Jumbo jockey!" when a customer leaves a tip of a quarter (or more), and the countermen mumble their thank-you's.

Ms. Goldberg remembers this B&H tipping ritual well. She says, "Whenever someone would leave a tip for them, my dad or his partner would tap the coins on the counter and call out 'Jockey!' to let them know a tip was left and allow them to say thank you."


Bergson Goldberg: The boss & his countermen

Said Leo on his last day of work, "I'll tell you truthfully--I don't feel bad about leaving the place. I've got bad feet, my fingernails are being eaten away from squeezing oranges. But to leave all these people--that makes me feel like crying. These actors and actresses, the hippies, the yippies, the beatniks, the bohemians, people who've run away from God knows where--I've always felt an attraction to them. Especially the starving ones."

Ms. Goldberg remembers the actors, too. She recalls how they "visited the store when they rehearsed at the Orpheum Theater. They loved my dad, and they loved the food served at the B&H. Among the many celebrities who graced the B&H were Shelly Winters, Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, Jack Klugman, and Rocky Graziano to name just a few."

Leo recalls Molly Picon coming in to chat with Abie Bergson over a bowl of soup--Bergson was an aspiring actor, too, and when lower Second Avenue was Yiddish Broadway, says Leo, "The streets were so crowded you had to walk in the gutter."


photo by Tony Marciante, 1968

"The store was more than a place to eat," says Ms. Goldberg. "It was a place where friends got together to trade stories about their workday and their families. It was a happy place, and some of my fondest memories were of my many times spent at the store with my mom and dad."

As Leo put it in 1978, "This place has always had a spirit." It still does.


today

De Lorenzo Pops Up

Last week we learned from Racked about The Warby Parker Holiday Spectacle Bazaar, "a several-months-long pop-up fair in an old garage space in Soho."

I don't know from Warby Parker (named after Jack Kerouac characters, they sell reasonably priced designer eyewear, including monocles and also $10,000 yurts). I do, however, know what that "old garage space" used to be.



Since 1968 this little brick building was home to the De Lorenzo metalworking shop, a business that went back to 1907. It survived and thrived through three generations of the same family. They sold the building in 2008 for a large, undisclosed sum to a "developer seeking to put up a luxury condominium building."


2009

Oddly enough, three years later the little brick building is still sitting there. Maybe the money for the luxury tower fell through. It's only a matter of time. For now, on the fading signage, you can still see the old phone number with its WA.5 exchange--the WA stood for Walker. And inside the pop-up shop, you can get a glimpse of what was.

*Everyday Chatter

Tony Bourdain officially endorses St. Mark's Bookshop--for the "oddball, off-the-wall hipster obscure"? [TC]



Celebrate the victory to save St. Mark's Books tonight, 5:30 - 7:30, at the shop. [FB]

Good to see 20-somethings caring about books and literature--and not just using it to get laid (like some). [NYT]

Auster and Delillo at Union Square: "an iPod-studded kid asked Delillo what he thought was 'the most mundane situation' he could think of... Paul Auster, with rolling eyes, flipped another copy on to its title page, readied his pen and answered, 'Signing books at Barnes & Noble.'" [EL]

"Any poet in New York has to write found poetry because there’s so much of it around on the street." --Harvey Shapiro [Bomb]

Marty stops in at the embattled Bill's Gay 90s. [MAD]

60-year-old Sherman's BBQ of Harlem may be shuttering. [Eater]

General Bloomberg: "I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world." [NYO]

Where are the ruins of the Smallpox Hospital in the renderings of wahoo-new construction Bloombie wants to bring to Roosevelt Island? [Gothamist]

Fun pictures of Bloomberg looking like a megalomaniac who has lost his mind (or Joel Grey). [EVG]

Someone in the Village wasn't happy with Obama's visit:

Ray's Revived?

Is the Ray's Pizza that vanished from the corner of 6th Ave. and 11th St. coming back from the dead? Or will it be the reincarnation of our lost Joe Jr.'s? Or another Ray's altogether?

On the Friends of Joe Jr's Facebook page there's been chatter that the guys from Joe Jr's are talking with the landlord of the Ray's space to get a long-term lease here. But there is movement inside the space.



This week, the door was wide open and the FOR RENT and NO FOOD signs were gone. Inside, a white-haired man was tidying up. He wasn't tossing everything into the trash, he was actually tidying--putting the pizza pans in neat piles, straightening out the napkin dispensers.

I asked him, "What's moving in here?"

"Ray's Pizza," he said.

Incredulous, I asked, "The same Ray's that was here before?"

"Yeah."

"The same Ray's with the same people and the same name?"

"Yeah."

Still not quite buying it, I persisted, "So Ray's is coming back? Here?"

"Yeah! Yeah!"



The following day, a Ray's menu appeared Scotch-taped inside the window. On close inspection, the menu is from Famous Original Ray's, while this location was merely Famous Ray's, and the addresses on the menu are for Columbus Avenue and 9th Avenue. What Ray's is this? The Famous Original Ray's (est. 1964) Facebook page says, "Coming Soon 6 Ave & 11 Street." So there you go.

One Ray or another, it's something of a miracle. Now let's hope Joe Jr's finds another space nearby.

*Update: Eater notes that the Ray's moving in "looks to be the group that sued the original Famous Ray's owners here for trademark infringement back in June."

Previously:
Famous Ray's Pizza
Save Joe Jr's
Last Supper at Joe's
Auster's Joe Jr's