Nostalgia Train

Riding the Nostalgia Train sounds like something you do when you're lost in reverie and memory, pining for what used to be. If that's what it is, then many New Yorkers are casting backwards through time on Sundays this month, riding antique subway cars along the M Line, from Second Avenue to Queens Plaza and back again.

The people on the Nostalgia Train are a different breed.



Some come dressed in period costume, Depression-era hats and coats, shoes and neckties, dark lipstick shades of another epoch. These otherworldly anachronisms dance on the station platform to the music of a little swing band, the slick-haired singer crooning "Night and Day."

Others come in MTA paraphernalia, railfans dressed in t-shirts and knit winter caps proclaiming their favorite subway line. The F and the 6 are tops. One young man sits grinning, running through a near constant patter of conductor announcements. He's got the script down and compulsively, giddily recites its length and breadth. "This is Broadway-Lafayette," he calls out. "Transfer is available for the 6 train. Stand clear of the closing doors." Another young man, wearing an Amtrak t-shirt, holds his iPhone by the open door between the cars, audio recording the clickety-clack in the dark tunnel's roar.



Haloed by warm incandescent light bulbs, an older man stands and pontificates on the state of today's New York, city of yuppies, cell phones, and drunk Santas: "Is this the city you and I were raised in? It's become alien. I have no feeling for it anymore. It's scary!"

But no one listens. They'd rather pretend it's the past.

Retired motormen trade stories. Clasp hands. Greet each other warmly, saying, "Hey, I ain't seen your ugly mug for a hundred years."

Among the fanatics and nostalgics, other New Yorkers climb aboard, acting like the everyday subway riders they are--tired, bored, going to work, coming home from a long day already. They've got no time for reminiscence.



The Nostalgia Train doesn't sound or feel or smell like today's bright and whispery subway cars. Heavy in its bones, it broadcasts a loud symphony of sound, rattling and wheezing through the underworld. Inside, ceiling fans whiz overhead. The air is olive drab or else some shade of sea foam.

Open windows let in the smells of the tunnel, which shift from swampy organics to a fragrance you'd swear was burnt buttered toast.

Soot flies in and lands in your eye. In these old cars, you are not sheltered from the city. You are joined to it.



There is no stillness here. The rattan benches bounce your spine up and down as the jolting car keeps all bodies in motion.

But the best part comes when the train dives beneath the East River and launches forth to Queens. The driver lets out the throttle, like letting loose the reins of a horse, and the whole thing torpedoes ahead. It dives deeper, faster, jerking from side to side, shuddering in its bolts. A gritty wind blasts through the openings, strong enough to knock off a hat, if it tried.

In this unbridled speed, the riders are giddy. It is a relief to feel the city thrumming in your gut, to not be insulated from it, to not be held in some sterile, hospital-lit tube.

This feels real. This knocking around. This sucking down the filthy wind. This robust mechanical jolt.

This is New York.

Going Into Black Seed

One year ago, right about this time, DeRobertis' Pasticceria closed after the family opted to sell the building in increasingly hard times for small businesses. It had been on First Avenue in the East Village since 1904. Last week I shared the news that they opened a new shop, way out in Clifton, New Jersey. You can order their pastries online, but it won't bring back the feeling of sitting in their glorious cafe.

Going into Black Seed bagels won't bring it back, either.


Black Seed, photo via Eater


DeRobertis

As I do with all of my favorite places when they've been taken over and partly preserved by new owners, I forced myself to enter DeRobertis' replacement.

Stepping inside Black Seed, I was surprised by a sudden physical dysphoria. My stomach clenched, my head spun, my whole body trembled like a tuning fork. The cognitive dissonance of being in a space so intimately familiar, yet rendered utterly strange, was too much to bear.

The Black Seed people have kept many of DeRobertis' antique features, and I should be glad for that. It still has the tile walls and floor, the pistachio green back wall, the mirrors with their star-burst centers, but everything else is wrong, modernized and hipsterized, crammed with different people--the wrong people, people who never set foot in DeRobertis.

I hurried out, gasping for air, but vowed to get my bearings and go back another day.


Black Seed, photo via Eater


DeRobertis

On my next trip, I steeled myself, only felt slightly woozy, and ordered a bagel sandwich and coffee. The total came to over $15. I sat in a wide wooden booth made of "reclaimed sycamore" and stared at the floor, at the empty spot where a mobster's 1821 half dollar used to be.

I focused on what felt familiar and attempted to mentally exclude the rest. The extant details of the old cafe served as potent memory cues that helped to reconstruct a vision of how the space used to be. I began to relax. But the alien elements kept intruding and unsettled me again. The smells were wrong. The sounds were wrong. My psyche flipped back and forth between the old and the new, unmoored again by a cognitive dissonance, a locational unease. Where was I? Maybe this is like getting into a bed with a lover who's just returned from a Body Snatcher pod. The voice is the same, the face seems right, but you just know you're holding an alien in your arms--and it gives you the chills.

My sandwich, if such things are important to you, was tasty. I might order another. But it's not at all difficult to find a tasty sandwich in foodie-saturated Manhattan today. What is hard to find is authenticity, history, and a haimish environment.

Even when a space is preserved, once the soul has vacated, it won't ever be the same.

Where Ess-A-Bagel Was

Where Ess-A-Bagel once was, there is a Tal Bagels (since September) and, just this week, a Bank of America.



Ess-A-Bagel was here since 1976. They were forced to close this past spring, to much weeping and rending of garments.

Why put another bagel shop where there already was a hugely successful and beloved bagel shop? I have no idea. At least Tal uses the term "appetizing" on their sign, a word with an interesting history.

As for Bank of America, there's nothing appetizing about it.

Ess-A-Bagel plans to reopen a new shop just a little further south on First Avenue.

DeRobertis Opens DeRoLicious

Some good news for a change. The DeRobertis family, moved from their historic space in the East Village one year ago, has just announced the opening of a new shop in Clifton, New Jersey.



Via email, they write:

"This is the DeRobertis Family. Well, the reason I am contacting you is because on Nov. 23 we opened up a place called DeRoLicious Delights. My Father John, Brother John, Tony the Baker and I (Dana) have decided to continue the business in Clifton, NJ. We are very excited to be back sharing our family tradition with new and old friends. We have a retail space available to visit AND an Online Shop available for people to order Biscotti, Butter Cookies & more."



You can find them online here -- follow them on Instagram -- and visit them in person at 64 1/2 Market St., Clifton, NJ.

Some of the old furnishings have gone with them, including the tables and chairs, and their excellent Wall of Fame:

La Taza de Oro

VANISHED

After nine months of sitting shuttered by the City, after hopeful rumors that they’d soon be reopening, Chelsea’s wonderful La Taza de Oro has called it a day.

Sadly, it's been confirmed, the beloved 68-year-old Puerto Rican luncheonette has closed for good. I will miss it.



A tipster wrote in, "They were looking forward to opening in January, and as of not that long ago were still going to open, but the city recently put additional financial burdens in the way that make it impossible for the small business to open back up."

I went by the restaurant to find proprietor Eric Montalvo, husband of Maria and son-in-law of the man whose uncle originally opened the restaurant in 1947.

Mr. Montalvo was mopping the floor, cleaning up the place and taking it apart. He let me inside and we talked awhile. The bright yellow hand-painted menu signs had already been removed, but he put them back up, proudly, so I could photograph and admire them.



He told me he’s retiring. His children don’t want the restaurant; they all have careers of their own.

The breaking point, however, came when the city made it impossible to stay open after the Second Avenue gas explosion this past spring caused city agencies to panic and tighten the rules, so that when a few bricks fell from the neighboring facade, Con Ed turned off the gas in the Montalvos' building and the Department of Buildings slapped them with an order to vacate. They lost nine months of income. (We nearly lost the B&H Dairy for the same reason.)

Even when you own the building, as the Montalvo family does, it’s getting harder for small restaurants to stay afloat in this town, thanks to increasing bills and a punishing Health Department.

"Small businesses are being pushed out," said Montalvo.

On top of all that, the neighborhood has changed dramatically in recent years. Google took over the building across the street, and its employees, by and large, don’t want the Puerto Rican home cooking at La Taza.

“The new generation,” Montalvo said, “they walk around with the Starbucks cups and the cell phones and…like this,” he turned up his nose and clutched his collar to mimic someone who acts superior, Starbucks cup in hand.



Through the years, La Taza soldiered on, a thriving remnant of the days when Chelsea was filled with Latin restaurants and people. It has served mofongo and tostones to many a celebrity -- Carlos Santana, Puff Daddy, Benicio del Toro, Madonna, Sandra Bernhard -- among the crowd of everyday neighborhood regulars who were devoted to this warm and comforting place.

Montalvo understands that people will be heartbroken to see La Taza go. “I’m sorry to them,” he said. “This is a landmark of New York. It’s the embassy of Puerto Rican cuisine in the city.” But, at some point, you realize you're fighting a losing battle.

“I’m going back to the Caribbean,” he said. “I’m going to swim in the rivers. And try to relax.”



Montalvo plans to rent the space out and hopes for a Latin restaurant to move in.

As for those vintage hand-painted menu signs, he’ll be putting them on ebay if you’re looking for a souvenir.


Previously:
La Taza shuttered by Con Edison
La Taza shuttered by DOH



Better than Starbucks. And only $1.50.

Sidewalk Cobblers

A little while ago, New York magazine published a piece on how Chinatown has stayed Chinatown, instead of becoming yet another bland, suburban, luxury Nowhere like most of Manhattan. It really is one of the last holdout neighborhoods of the old New York.

I love the relative lawlessness of Chinatown's sidewalks, where all manner of business is conducted. The place has not been regulated and tamed. One phenomenon I particularly enjoy is that of the sidewalk cobbler. While storefront cobblers across town are dying out, thanks to skyrocketing rents, these renegade merchants survive.

There are many of them, but my favorite has a wide space on Elizabeth Street by Grand. Not the ruined Elizabeth Street of "Nolita," but the other Elizabeth Street, further south.



The cobbler's stall, if you can call it that, consists of a long piece of plywood erected alongside a corner herb market. It is beautifully decorated with hand-drawn illustrations, glued to the brick wall. Most of the drawings are of animals--birds, horses, cats, pandas--but also waterfalls and warships and airplanes.



The cobbler and his assistant sit and smoke cigarettes while they work--and their customers wait, stocking-footed, on nearby stools, reading Chinese newspapers.



Most of the sidewalk cobblers will also sharpen your knives and scissors.

Here's another:



And another:



Writing for the Times about the shopless cobblers of Chinatown in 2003, here's Joseph Berger:

"No one knows whether this breed of entrepreneur is growing, but scholars say the phenomenon may reflect the city's rising costs of doing business.

'As rents increased, it became more prohibitive to open up a store, so if you can have a store without paying the rent you do it,' said Dr. William B. Helmreich, a professor of sociology at the City University of New York who specializes in urban ethnography.

These sidewalk tradespeople may be a throwback to the European immigrants of a century ago who would stake out a business wherever it was possible."

Pearl Paint: On Tour

When the Pearl Paint mothership suddenly shuttered last year, artists all over the city--and the country--wept.

Soon after, artist Barry Fellman recreated the interior of the store, traveling to Texas to buy Pearl's original cabinets, fixtures, and various products, and turn them into an installation. "Art Show" is on view once again at the Center for Visual Communication in Miami, and will soon be touring the country.



From the press release:

"The installation provokes questions about the availability of art supplies, how they are purchased, and how their use is changing as artists adopt digital technology and new forms of presentation. Art Store extends Duchamp's seminal Readymades, sourced from consumer culture, to a collection of mass produced objects actually used to create art."

"Art Store will be launched in 2016 as a traveling installation to activate communities nationwide by serving as a point of engagement to support local museums, schools and organization involved in arts and education. Institutions may contact CVC for more information on exhibiting Art Store in their community."

Meanwhile, back on Canal Street, the Pearl Paint space remains vacant, another casualty of high-rent blight.