*Everyday Chatter

The A Building on 13th Street is sporting some icicley-looking design over the front desk in its lobby. They've shown before that they have a penchant for silver robots--and as we know, robots love iciness. Oh, it's all coming together...the condos, the robots...the clone wars rage on!


Since I enjoy breaking the news about Euro acceptance, here's another--Rapture Cafe on Ave A is taking E's:


Somehow in the New Year's fray, I missed the sad news that Bobby's Happy House, which I visited back in November, has finally closed down. It's been in Harlem since 1946. Now it will be demolished for an office/retail building. Bobby was not invited to rent in the new space. [NY Times]

Fazil's Times Square dance studio has closed after 73 years. I never knew it--wish I did--sounds like an incredible real-New-York kind of place, i.e., Judy Garland, vaudevillians, flamencos, the Chiquita Banana girl, Broadway Danny Rose...of course it had to be destroyed. And for what? It's being demolished and you can bet a giant glass tower will take its place. [NY Times]

The fabulous and affable Footlight Records on 12th closed awhile ago (sob). The gutting has begun and the place is huge--they've got some crazy wide-open basement in the back. What are they putting in, a lap pool? I asked the Russian demolition guy but all he could tell me was, "Footlight kaput!"

La Casalinga

After 16 years on 1st Ave and 7th St., La Casalinga is closing on Monday due to a rent increase thanks to the building's new owner. They might be moving to the West Village or maybe Williamsburg. The future is uncertain. What is certain is that I will miss their delicious and cheap salads and pastas, which I've been eating for a decade and a half.

This was one of the last affordable places to eat in the ever-vanishing East Village.

*Everyday Chatter

A commenter just alerted me to the fact that I was not the first to mention East Village Wines' acceptance of the Euro. That prize goes to The Observer in 2005. It does, however, seem that I launched the current media terrorization of EV Wines and for that, I am heartily sorry--though I do hope all the attention brings them more biz. [Radar] *Note from the Radar pic, compared to my original pic, they changed the exchange rate and raised their limit! So I guess that Euro business is good for business. [JVNY]

Oh the irony! A bunch of affordable-housing activists are turning the tables and aiming to use eminent domain to snatch prime Brooklyn real estate from big, bad Pfizer pharmaceuticals. Fabulous. [The Day]

The sadness that is Sucelt -- a peek into the closed shop, heart ripped out:


People who are sad and self-absorbed spend more money--and are willing to spend much more on the same items than people who are not sad and self-absorbed. And so wounded narcissism drives the luxury economy that overwhelms New York with its misery. [Yahoo/AP]

The city moves closer to stealing property from the businesspeople of Willets Point's Iron Triangle, including the Bonos -- third-generation sawdust men -- take another look at my interview with them here. [Curbed]

Grimshaw, whose cold newsstand clones now dominate the sidewalk landscape, are bringing their magic touch to Coney Island. Gird your loins for further forced sterilization. [Gowanus L]

A little grandiosity goes a long way -- with their slogan, Duane Reade doesn't even try to pretend they are not taking over every corner of the city:

11 Spring

It's sad these days to walk past 11 Spring Street and not see the windows decorated with identical white curtains, a candle flickering on each sill, making you wonder what and who might be inside. On early evenings, I sometimes stood on the corner and watched those windows, just waiting for a human shape to pass by, for any sign of life. I never saw one.


photo: Goggla's flickr

In 2006, the mystery and fascination about the place vanished when the building was sold via Corcoran for condo conversion, taking away from the city another urban wonder and putting the nail in the coffin of Elizabeth Street, which used to be such a great street, filled with the smell of baking bread and the chatter of Italian ladies peeling potatoes on the sidewalks outside their tenements. Not so long ago, this still was Little Italy, not Nolita.



Today, the building is shrouded for its reincarnation into "three unique residences starting at $6,700,000." And another cog in the evil paradise is set into place.

For a brief moment, 11 Spring was opened to the public by artists from the Wooster Collective. I'm sorry I missed that event. But it would not have been the same--I would not have seen the previous owner's crazy Rube Goldberg devices; he had already dumped them and fled the city. John Simpson. He's the guy who tended the curtains and the candles. No one seems to know why he left town, but I can guess. The city's not the city anymore. No mystery there.

• New York Times article about the mystery building

*Everyday Chatter

Not to be a grabby blogger, but I have to say, I started the whole "East Village Wines is now taking Euros" thing. I just saw it today on Yahoo/Reuters. It no doubt traveled there by way of City Room 1/14, who admittedly got it from The Villager 1/9, who probably (though not definitively) got it from my post on 1/4. And such is the way small bits of news travel through the world wide webbernets.

On a warm day, the ledge of condo 300 18th is all aflutter with high-school kids, dogwalkers, disabled people--and I can't wait til spring. I wonder when the old crime-scene-tape fence will make its delightful reappearance...


How do those condo builders really think and feel? What goes on inside their heads? For insight, read this eye-opening interview with wonderboy builder Ben Shaoul as he discusses his important role in the decimation of the East Village. [Observer via Curbed]

Moishe's celebrates 35 years on 2nd Avenue and shows no sign of stopping (good news!) as Mr. Perl remembers a time when "You were able to get any sized store for $75 a month — landlords were begging you.” Can you even imagine such a thing? [Villager]

Meatpacking original Florent fights the fight against an insane rent increase of, like, 9 bazillion percent. [Eater]

A nice 90-year-old stationery store that brings to mind Paul Auster's blue notebook. [Brooklynometry]

A million cartoon shoppers are heading for the "gateway to Williamsburg"! [Gowanus L]

There's a disturbance in the Force: Bed-Stuy gets some Darth Vader architecture. [NY Shitty]

Stop the construction of Karl Fischer's 13th Street monstrosity! These flyers just popped up around the neighborhood. No mention of an organized protest, but a plea to contact Landmarks:

Water Sampling Revealed

I have often wondered what is inside those water sampling stations all over the city. But, like Julius Knipl Real Estate photographer, I never got the chance to see one in use.

As imagined by artist Ben Katchor, there are men who go from station to station, tasting the water with a little cup.


art by ben katchor

I like this fantasy, but sadly, the truth of water sampling stations is not so romantic. In reality, there is no little cup. There are men who go from station to station (and probably women, too), but they don't taste the water. They pump it through a tube into some instruments in the back of their truck and, apparently, take some measurements which they write on a clipboard.

Another city mystery demystified.



Now that I've got you in a Ben Katchor mood, go see his latest musical, The Slug Bearers of Kayrol Island (click link for discount) -- opening at the Vineyard Theater near Union Square, February 12.

*Everyday Chatter

The Sophie's Bar fan blog speculated about it and now it's official: Sophie's and Mona's have been saved! Let the drunken celebration begin. [Grub Street]

Speaking of curtain-free condo lives, an architect imagines a fantasy couple of successful sophisticates who don't mind (nay, enjoy) having a "floor-to-ceiling single pane that acts as one of the shower walls." This unfrosted glass "makes fun of prim notions of privacy" and reveals the nude showerer to the roof of a neighboring building, but who cares, because, "who’s going to be up there?” Hey, there are no other people in the world but us, right sweetie? and so the panopticon metropolis continues turning... [NY Times]

Nathaniel Rich reveals a city filled with dorms for adults, "special-interest housing, but for professionals," where it feels like it's freshman year all over again. "It was as if a new city had erupted overnight, devouring the old one in a panic of hunger." So he's glad to live in Brooklyn, which seems immune to going supermall. Of course, that's not true. Brooklyn is the next tasty morsel for that hungry new city across the river. Just wait. [NY Times]

The first review of Lipstick Jungle is in and it's not nice. It also has something to say about the city we live in: "Now New York is a frenetic but slightly bland city ... Yet the need to mythologize the place goes on, even if nothing much is happening ... the characters themselves behave like the human equivalents of the latest gimcrack designer condos." He's talking about the TV show characters, but that does apply to many people in the real post-SATC NYC. [NY Sun]