My heart is breaking as, after the gutting, the exterior demolition of the Playpen begins. [Curbed]
I have long fantasized about visiting the potter's field out on Hart Island. Watching this movie is probably the closest I'll ever get. [City Room]
Sewell Chan moderated the latest discussion in the Jane Jacobs Future of NY series. With Gay Talese, Norman Oder of Atlantic Yards Report, and others, he explored the role blogs might play in crusading for the preservation of urban public space. [City Room]
Here's a video of those fabulous, but sadly vanishing Ukrainian ladies of 7th Street. [NYT]
Chelsea goes the Soho way as art galleries prepare to fall before the bulldozer of the affluence they invariably attract. “They are looking at much higher renewals of their leases...Fifteen years ago when I showed spaces, I’d be bothered by drug dealers and prostitutes, but now it’s little yapping dogs that a collector has brought along as they look at art.” [NY Mag]
The Bowery Boys tell the sordid tale of McGurk's Suicide Hall -- later feminist Kate Millett's place, which she then got kicked out of so we could enjoy yet another glass box. [BB's]
A Curbed reader notes that condo life is boring as hell. Says the reader, "the atmosphere in the building is one of dullness and boredom. I might as well be living in the suburbs!" [Curbed]
Friday, October 12, 2007
Thursday, October 11, 2007
The Gaiety Theater
VANISHED: 2005
When we tragically lost the Howard Johnson's in Times Square, we also lost the gay burlesque that lived on its second floor. The building was just demolished and last week's visit to the site revealed the zig-zag vestigial trace of the stairs you used to climb to reach the Gaiety.
my flickr
At the top of those stairs was a ticket booth where a woman sat behind the glass and took your $17 admission through a slot. That price was good for an all-day show. The theater was small and had a stage with a runway that reached out into the audience. The dancers, most of them muscled and tanned, would come out on stage and strip, then disappear behind the blue tinsel curtain. The audience would wait. And wait. Sometimes a movie screen came down to entertain with a film.
Finally, minutes later, the dancer would emerge fully erect, the audience would applaud his hydraulic achievement, and the dance would go on. If you were next to the runway, for the price of a dollar tip, you could sit like Tantalus beneath the fruit tree as the dancer dangled his family jewels over your upturned face, just out of reach. After the performance, you could take a break in the snack room, where boys leaned against the vending machines and chatted while munching bags of Doritos.
painting of the Gaiety by Patrick Angus
Gay New York -- and all lovers of burlesque and Times Square's sordid history -- lost a touchstone when the Gaiety closed. The building it shared with Howard Johnson's, now a pile of bricks, once housed the Orpheum "dime-a-dance" Dance Palace. It originally opened in 1917. Henry Miller danced with the girls there. In the 1970s it became the New Paris, where live sex acts were performed on soiled mattresses.
A visit to those bricks today won't make them talk, but we can still imagine the many stories they'd have to tell.
From The New York Times
April 24, 2005 Sunday
Quietly, a Bawdy Gay Beacon Goes Dark
By KATHRYN BELGIORNO
Most of the pedestrians who stream past the building at 201 West 46th Street, on Broadway, do not notice that its tenant has moved out. Then again, most of them probably had no idea who was there in the first place.
Only a flight of stairs is visible through a glass door. A black awning says, simply, ''Gaiety Theater.'' The small hand-lettered sign on the door is little help: ''The Gaiety Theater is closed. Thank you for your patronage. The Management.'' Scrawled like an afterthought are the words: ''Please see the G. publications for possible relocation address.''
The sign, so modest that the letter G must stand in for the word gay, is a fitting symbol of a 30-year-old salute to immodesty, the city's last surviving all-male burlesque house and the only remaining strip theater where performers danced completely nude.
What the sign doesn't illuminate is the lore that set the Gaiety apart from other clubs: the mainstream attention it attracted after photos of Madonna and some of the club's dancers were included in her 1992 book, ''Sex''; the cachet of visitors like John Waters, Andy Warhol and Shirley MacLaine; and the club's unrivaled ability to survive, despite the strict zoning laws instituted during the Giuliani administration, thanks to a location just outside a restricted area.
…What Gaiety patrons will do next is uncertain. ''I've seen a lot of customers standing there in shock,'' said John Galanopoulos, who operates a hot dog stand at 46th Street and Broadway. ''They're almost talking to themselves, like, 'What am I going to do now?'''
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
When we tragically lost the Howard Johnson's in Times Square, we also lost the gay burlesque that lived on its second floor. The building was just demolished and last week's visit to the site revealed the zig-zag vestigial trace of the stairs you used to climb to reach the Gaiety.
my flickr
At the top of those stairs was a ticket booth where a woman sat behind the glass and took your $17 admission through a slot. That price was good for an all-day show. The theater was small and had a stage with a runway that reached out into the audience. The dancers, most of them muscled and tanned, would come out on stage and strip, then disappear behind the blue tinsel curtain. The audience would wait. And wait. Sometimes a movie screen came down to entertain with a film.
Finally, minutes later, the dancer would emerge fully erect, the audience would applaud his hydraulic achievement, and the dance would go on. If you were next to the runway, for the price of a dollar tip, you could sit like Tantalus beneath the fruit tree as the dancer dangled his family jewels over your upturned face, just out of reach. After the performance, you could take a break in the snack room, where boys leaned against the vending machines and chatted while munching bags of Doritos.
painting of the Gaiety by Patrick Angus
Gay New York -- and all lovers of burlesque and Times Square's sordid history -- lost a touchstone when the Gaiety closed. The building it shared with Howard Johnson's, now a pile of bricks, once housed the Orpheum "dime-a-dance" Dance Palace. It originally opened in 1917. Henry Miller danced with the girls there. In the 1970s it became the New Paris, where live sex acts were performed on soiled mattresses.
A visit to those bricks today won't make them talk, but we can still imagine the many stories they'd have to tell.
From The New York Times
April 24, 2005 Sunday
Quietly, a Bawdy Gay Beacon Goes Dark
By KATHRYN BELGIORNO
Most of the pedestrians who stream past the building at 201 West 46th Street, on Broadway, do not notice that its tenant has moved out. Then again, most of them probably had no idea who was there in the first place.
Only a flight of stairs is visible through a glass door. A black awning says, simply, ''Gaiety Theater.'' The small hand-lettered sign on the door is little help: ''The Gaiety Theater is closed. Thank you for your patronage. The Management.'' Scrawled like an afterthought are the words: ''Please see the G. publications for possible relocation address.''
The sign, so modest that the letter G must stand in for the word gay, is a fitting symbol of a 30-year-old salute to immodesty, the city's last surviving all-male burlesque house and the only remaining strip theater where performers danced completely nude.
What the sign doesn't illuminate is the lore that set the Gaiety apart from other clubs: the mainstream attention it attracted after photos of Madonna and some of the club's dancers were included in her 1992 book, ''Sex''; the cachet of visitors like John Waters, Andy Warhol and Shirley MacLaine; and the club's unrivaled ability to survive, despite the strict zoning laws instituted during the Giuliani administration, thanks to a location just outside a restricted area.
…What Gaiety patrons will do next is uncertain. ''I've seen a lot of customers standing there in shock,'' said John Galanopoulos, who operates a hot dog stand at 46th Street and Broadway. ''They're almost talking to themselves, like, 'What am I going to do now?'''
Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
Chelsea Antiques Garage
VANISHING
A few years ago, the decades-old Chelsea Flea Market was forced to move to Hell's Kitchen, pushed out by the bulldozer of luxury high-rise development. As flea market founder Alan Boss told the Voice, "We as Americans, having little or no culture, we figure that if you can build on two feet by four feet, you should have a building there, and screw anything that came before it." So far, business in the new location has been slow, as Chelsea Now recently reported. Like many small businesses that try to survive on new ground, it's been hard to get a grip.
the site of the former flea market
The market's move was part of a rezoning plan that was hatched back in 1995, a plan that continues to ravage Chelsea today. The soul of what remains of the market in Chelsea, the Antiques Garage at 112 W. 25th St., will likely be the plan's next victim. The building that houses it was sold to a developer for $42.7 million a few months ago. And we all know what that means.
I visited Chelsea's Antiques Garage and talked to some of the long-time vendors. One told me that he's certain 2008 will be the final year for the Garage -- info he said he got "straight from the owner." So maybe it's time to load up on vintage comic books, taxidermied deer trophies, baby-doll heads, Bakelite jewelry, Shriner fezzes, and all the other good stuff that serves to remind us that the past exists and continues along with us, no matter how hard the city's planners try to erase it from our memories.
A few years ago, the decades-old Chelsea Flea Market was forced to move to Hell's Kitchen, pushed out by the bulldozer of luxury high-rise development. As flea market founder Alan Boss told the Voice, "We as Americans, having little or no culture, we figure that if you can build on two feet by four feet, you should have a building there, and screw anything that came before it." So far, business in the new location has been slow, as Chelsea Now recently reported. Like many small businesses that try to survive on new ground, it's been hard to get a grip.
the site of the former flea market
The market's move was part of a rezoning plan that was hatched back in 1995, a plan that continues to ravage Chelsea today. The soul of what remains of the market in Chelsea, the Antiques Garage at 112 W. 25th St., will likely be the plan's next victim. The building that houses it was sold to a developer for $42.7 million a few months ago. And we all know what that means.
I visited Chelsea's Antiques Garage and talked to some of the long-time vendors. One told me that he's certain 2008 will be the final year for the Garage -- info he said he got "straight from the owner." So maybe it's time to load up on vintage comic books, taxidermied deer trophies, baby-doll heads, Bakelite jewelry, Shriner fezzes, and all the other good stuff that serves to remind us that the past exists and continues along with us, no matter how hard the city's planners try to erase it from our memories.
Monday, October 8, 2007
*Everyday Chatter
At least two readers took Time Out NY to task for loading its "Has Manhattan Lost Its Soul" issue with luxury condo and chain-store ads. Asks one reader, "Why couldn't this issue also be devoted to the advertising of small businesses? Just one measly issue offering reduced-rate full-page ads for some of our good ol' homegrown New York entrepreneurs. For shame, TONY." This is an excellent suggestion, especially now that we know, from her passionate words at the Lost Soul MAS talk, that TONY president Alison Tocci longs for a city filled with thriving small businesses. Alison, are you listening?
A dream come true? New York considers a law against standing around like an idiot and gawking while blocking traffic on the sidewalks. I've got a few more suggestions for pedestrian behavior. [City Room]
Hooray for one mom who had this to say about uptight Village parents protesting the S/M leather fair this weekend: "This is the West Village. It's been like this for decades...Now all these families moving in trying to pretend it's the suburbs. If the culture of the West Village bugs them then move to New Jersey." Amen! [AMNY]
Take a tour of the Masonic Hall--anytime. [Blog Chelsea]
MAS sums up the press they got on their Jane Jacobs NY Soul discussion, including this blog's take, among many others. [MAS]
This guy is covering the vanishing downtown scene in his blog. It's good to see more people working to preserve our vanishing city--even if it's only in cyberspace. So give him a visit. [Flaming Pablum]
A dream come true? New York considers a law against standing around like an idiot and gawking while blocking traffic on the sidewalks. I've got a few more suggestions for pedestrian behavior. [City Room]
Hooray for one mom who had this to say about uptight Village parents protesting the S/M leather fair this weekend: "This is the West Village. It's been like this for decades...Now all these families moving in trying to pretend it's the suburbs. If the culture of the West Village bugs them then move to New Jersey." Amen! [AMNY]
Take a tour of the Masonic Hall--anytime. [Blog Chelsea]
MAS sums up the press they got on their Jane Jacobs NY Soul discussion, including this blog's take, among many others. [MAS]
This guy is covering the vanishing downtown scene in his blog. It's good to see more people working to preserve our vanishing city--even if it's only in cyberspace. So give him a visit. [Flaming Pablum]
Friday, October 5, 2007
Jon Baltimore Music Co.
For years, musicians have traveled to 48th Street off Times Square when they needed to buy a new instrument or have their old one spruced up like new. And if they were horn players, they often went to Baltimore’s. The Jon Baltimore Music Company is the latest incarnation of Baltimore’s, a local shop that’s been on Music Row for over 35 years. I found it during a recent visit to the block when I went looking for history and what remains of this vanishing marketplace.
At Jon Baltimore’s I was greeted with warmth by salesman and musician Pete Miranda, a cat (in Pete’s lingo) who’s played with artists like Tito Puente, Celia Cruz, and The Temptations. When I told him I was interested in the history of the place, Pete walked me through the store, telling me about its famous customers, like Gerry Mulligan, Ornette Coleman, and Doc Cheatham.
He introduced me to Jon Baltimore who was busy at his workshop making repairs to a customer’s Buescher saxophone, a beautiful instrument covered with intricate scrollwork. The customer had come in needing a quick fix, he had a gig that night, and Jon was happy to oblige on the spot.
The four of us hung out and talked about old Times Square, Pete and Jon reminiscing about the days when cats would come to 48th to do their shopping then, just for the hell of it, stand on the corner to play. It didn’t matter that they were major musicians, they just loved the fun of playing on the street. Pete remembered the joy of being a kid in Times Square when 8th Ave was full of pawnshops, the windows packed with brass horns, and for a dime you could visit Hubert’s and watch fleas toss a football back and forth.
Jon started his career as an instrument repairman when he was 9 years old. He learned in his father’s shop, a kind of musician’s social club where he spent much of his childhood soaking in the often exciting and sometimes dicey atmosphere of New York’s nightclub scene in the 1970s. He recalled sleeping in a booth next to his father when the now-vanished Latin Quarter was raided and escaping through a back door. Four years ago, he bought the business from his father, who wanted to change the shop to appeal to tourists. But Jon wanted to keep it real, and he has.
The place feels like it’s been there forever, with its gleaming inventory, pictures of famous faces, and Jon’s workshop—a cluttered space of controlled chaos, tools that look like they were forged in the 19th century, windows hung with horns in various states of repair.
Today, he told me, he tries to run "an authentic shop, like in the old days, with no horseshit." Most of his customers are regulars. He treats them fairly and never charges more than he thinks is right. “You can still make money but do it in a righteous way,” he said, “Sell quality instruments and charge a realistic price.”
He spent at least half an hour working on the customer’s sax, replacing the pads and making sure every pin, key, and screw was in good shape. When he was done, the horn sounded smooth and ready to go. Jon charged the guy just 20 bucks.
“Music is a beautiful thing,” Jon said, “You want to inspire people.” His shop is definitely inspiring and worth a visit for anyone nostalgic for an authentic New York.
*Everyday Chatter
Has NYC Lost Its Soul? Everybody, everywhere seems to be asking this question right now. What does that tell us? Here it's the cover story, featuring the lost and lovely McHale's. [AMNY]
After reading the above-linked article, I can hardly express how creepy and disheartening it is to hear that New Yorkers continue to clamor for more and more Starbucks: "Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz implied that New Yorkers were wholeheartedly embracing the changing character of their city. Asked just how many Starbucks locations he thinks the city can support, Schultz discussed the many emails he gets requesting new stores."
You know the soul of Greenwich Village is cold and dead when its citizens go on a suburban-style witch hunt, screaming hysterically about how the sight of S/M leather folks will damage their precious and infinitely sensitive children. I hope those parents all get their tight asses whipped black and blue by mobs of leather daddies. [Gothamist]
Maybe it's not too late to save what's left of the Bowery. Join the last-ditch effort next week. [Curbed]
After reading the above-linked article, I can hardly express how creepy and disheartening it is to hear that New Yorkers continue to clamor for more and more Starbucks: "Starbucks chief executive Howard Schultz implied that New Yorkers were wholeheartedly embracing the changing character of their city. Asked just how many Starbucks locations he thinks the city can support, Schultz discussed the many emails he gets requesting new stores."
You know the soul of Greenwich Village is cold and dead when its citizens go on a suburban-style witch hunt, screaming hysterically about how the sight of S/M leather folks will damage their precious and infinitely sensitive children. I hope those parents all get their tight asses whipped black and blue by mobs of leather daddies. [Gothamist]
Maybe it's not too late to save what's left of the Bowery. Join the last-ditch effort next week. [Curbed]
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Astor Place Facelift
Today I got the sad news that the venerable old Astor Place newsstand has been replaced by a regulation glass box.
I went by to investigate and chatted with a guy who works the newsstand. "It looks just like that building," I said to him, pointing to the glassy green monster condo looming behind us.
He nodded and said, "It's supposed to."
the box is yet another billboard
He added that soon everything is going to look like this. Then he dropped the following bomb: Cooper Union, he said, plans to move its Engineering School to their new building going up on 7th St and 3rd Ave and then they're going to tear down the low-rise brick Engineering building on Astor Place and replace it with, you guessed it, another glassy high-rise. Maybe a hotel.
I'd like to say this is just a rumor, but it sure sounds plausible. When is this going to end?
astor place stand a couple weeks ago,
asking the question on many minds
I went by to investigate and chatted with a guy who works the newsstand. "It looks just like that building," I said to him, pointing to the glassy green monster condo looming behind us.
He nodded and said, "It's supposed to."
the box is yet another billboard
He added that soon everything is going to look like this. Then he dropped the following bomb: Cooper Union, he said, plans to move its Engineering School to their new building going up on 7th St and 3rd Ave and then they're going to tear down the low-rise brick Engineering building on Astor Place and replace it with, you guessed it, another glassy high-rise. Maybe a hotel.
I'd like to say this is just a rumor, but it sure sounds plausible. When is this going to end?
astor place stand a couple weeks ago,
asking the question on many minds
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