Holiday Update

The Holiday Cocktail Lounge is crowded tonight with regulars and well-wishers come to remember Stefan. A sign on the door announces his funeral service on Monday and all are welcome to attend at St. George's Church:



I spoke to a friend of the family who is helping to run the bar and asked their plans. He said, "We have to keep Stefan's spirit alive."

Are they going to change anything? He said, "Of course not. Why would you? Look at the place. It's perfect."

So with great relief I'm pleased to report it sounds like the Holiday will live on with no changes greater than "a spit and polish." For example, they recently retiled the bathrooms.

On the Holiday:
Stefan Lutak, 1920-2009
Holiday Survives
Holiday Closes

*Everyday Chatter

More signs of the Yunnipocalypse:
-The future of NYC? Worse than 1975
-Big designers like Vera Wang and Betsey Johnson save $$$ by skipping Fashion Week
-Even Sarah Jessica Parker "can't imagine going shopping" right now
-"Polls show bipartisan resentment at the lords of finance who expect continued gilded age rewards after ruining the economy of the Western world."
-To all those swinging dicks, we may be entering "The Testicular Age," marked by "Yin qualities like patience, steadfastness, supportiveness, solidity, stability, reliability, and resourcefulness."

-PLUS! Roy Edroso pens an enticing post-yunnipocalyptic Sex & the City sequel

Mercury Lounge building is up for sale. [Curbed]

St. Marks fixture, DJ Lenny M, that guy who sells mixed hip-hop CDs, has been suddently shuttered. [DBTH]

Worried about the battered Cheyenne? Read this comforting note from the folks who adopted the diner: "We have carefully removed the neon signs, delicate glass blocks and some of the stainless as well as the overhang lighting and booths and stools to protect them during the move. EACH piece has been meticulously labeled with pictures as well to ensure its replacement. This is a dream for us and we intend to restore this diner to it's original 1940's glory!!!!"

If you ever hear anyone actually referring to the Bowery as "The Bowery District," please slap them. [Curbed]

Campaigners for Bloomberg live in the lap of luxury. [NYT]

In parts of Williamsburg, it's still the bad, old days. [SL]

Have a seat with Abe Vigoda at Neil's Coffee Shop. [EVG]

"New Yorkers smell a little smell and they’re getting all paranoid." [NYT]

Stefan Lutak: 1920-2009

I am sad to report that Stefan Lutak, long-time proprietor of the Holiday Cocktail Lounge, has passed away.

For those who wish to pay their respects to Mr. Lutak, there will be a viewing on Sunday at Peter Jarema from 2:00 - 5:00 and from 7:00 - 9:00--an appropriate choice, as the funeral home is a neighborhood survivor since 1906. (Funeral services are Monday.)


photo sent in by Mike Marvin

Stefan Lutak was born in Ukraine in 1920. During World War II, he fought with the Soviet Army. Remembering Stalingrad he recalled to the NY Press, "The winter was terrible. The ice came from your mouth. We were sleeping in the snow, nothing to eat. Two, three, four days, a whole week with empty stomach. Kitchen? Gone! They killed the horses. Then they killed the cooks. We ate leaves, and in November the leaves were gone."

Stefan arrived by boat in New York City in 1949. He played soccer. With his wife he opened the Holiday on St. Marks Place in 1965. He served drinks to Allen Ginsberg and W.H. Auden. His bar became a favorite all across the city. The New York Times called it one of the best dives in town, "an eloquent rejoinder to a slick, rich, ever-changing city."


Stop in tonight & hoist a few in memory of Stefan

When Stefan took ill recently, the bar was closed for weeks and people were worried about its fate. We got some hope back when the beloved dive opened again. Now, with its captain gone, who knows what will become of the place?

Update here

*Everyday Chatter

More Signs of the Yunnipocalypse:
-Village shop successfully stands strong against Chocolate Tsunami
-Viva Chuck!
-West Broadway is over.
-Thor covers Gordon's Novelty shop with a faux facade, "so we can at least pretend that we are not in deep recession." Reminds me of what they did in the Bronx during the last economic crisis. Remember the urban blight decals?

photo source

More on the sad closure of the Oscar Wilde LGBT bookshop. [NYT]

Poor old 1551 Broadway, where once was HoJo's and the Gaiety, American Eagle has landed on you. [Curbed]

City Room digs up a NYC character, a lady who sells Civil Service books--and may be going under. [CR]

Remembering 172 Stanton, one of the uglier days in LES history. [EVG]

Before and after at Paul's Boutique. [BBoogie]

Nearly ever other window in this block of University between 9th and 10th looks like this:

Chelsea Still Rising

The new view of West Chelsea, as glass boxes grip the High Line, accompanied by Armani billboards in matching shades of icy glacial blue. This scene, with crane slicing the sky, epitomizes our present day.



The High Line, like a suddenly wet watering hole in a dry desert, has attracted condo and hotel towers like thirsty rhinos to its shores. They push and shoulder each other out of the way, crushing whatever gets underfoot.

And the developers demolishing the most ancient of meatpacking plants insist the High Line is a hardship, a detriment to construction. Tell that to the rest of the builders who just keep on building.

Nearby, 456 West 19th has been topped with a rollercoaster rail. No, that's just more undulation.



Also on the rise, HL 23 with its misshapen foldy bits beginning to recline over the High Line. Here its crane casts a shadow onto "Highline 519." And what is that below, a brick tenement with tin cornice? Shouldn't that have been demolished by now?



HL 23's "Sales Tin" features a quote from the building's architect from the following statement:

"In the early 1980s, I lived in New York City and spent a great deal of time in far West Chelsea, imagining and even drawing designs for buildings that would celebrate its gritty, industrial romance and the beautifully decaying form of the High Line. I cannot overstate how satisfying it is for our firm to create a formally challenging, artistic project here more than 25 years later, addressing a practical demand for the people who will live inside the building and a local demand for the public who will experience it from the sidewalks, the High Line, and from other buildings throughout the West Chelsea arts district."



There's almost nothing left of that romantic grit and industry, that beautiful decay. Not even a yunnipocalypse can save it now. There's too much glass. Too much stainless steel. We'll be shielding our eyes from their glare for eons to come.

But with everybody broke, will anybody actually be living here? Or will West Chelsea become nothing more than a decaying ghost town made of glass and blindingly bright ideas?

See more photos here

Further reading:
Glassing West Chelsea
Chelsea Towers West (Soylent Green)
The Condo Shall Inherit the Earth (Sylvia Plath)

*Everyday Chatter

More Signs of the Yunnipocalypse:
-Condo buyers abandon ship
-Restaurants kiss ass
-Landlords cry cataclysm!
-Bloomberg creates welfare program for Wall St's unfortunates
-"Madison Avenue...pockmarked with vacancies as retailers flee."

Chelsea Hotel residents prove there's still some crazy spirit left in this town. [NYO]

Memorial for Peeler Man this Saturday. [Gothamist]

The Holland Bar is open, after shuttering some months ago. [Grub]

In more sad diner news, the Miss Williamsburg after the fire. [Brownstoner]

Updike on New York: Uninhabitable. [NYT]

Is the city being attacked by UFOs, groundhogs, and Mrs. Butterworth? [Gothamist]

Vanishing Store Fronts

At long last, I finally got over to see Jim and Karla Murray's show "Counter/Culture: The Disappearing Face of Brooklyn's Storefronts" at the Brooklyn Historical Society. The exhibit is up until March, but if you can't make it there in time, you can bring the Murrays' important work home with you.



Their book Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York is now available. A $65 hardcover, it's an investment and well worth it--the book is a big, fat collection of gorgeous color photographs from the vanishing face of New York City.

I email-interviewed Jim and Karla about their work and asked them what they look for in a choice storefront. "We try to photograph storefronts that have a certain character due to their age," they said, "Old neon signs always attract us as well as hand-painted signs and interesting fonts that we haven't seen before."



Which vanished storefronts do they miss the most? "We definitely miss Katy's Candy that was in Bedford-Stuyvesant. The Everything Store and D. D'Auria & Sons Pork Store in the Bronx and Kurowycky & Sons in our own neighborhood of the East Village."

Many more of the shops and scenes in the Murrays' book have vanished--the Astroland rocket is gone from its Coney Island snackbar perch, Love Saves the Day has shuttered, and look at their 2001 shot below of 1st Avenue between 7th and 8th Streets in the East Village. These businesses had been there for decades. But today none of it is the same--and most of it vanished in just the past few years.


from Jim and Karla's flickr

For comparison, I took the snapshot below: Kurowycky Meats is now Kim's, Cosmo's Packages is for rent after being gutted for a cafe, the beauty parlor is a Ruben's Empanadas, and the International Bar was shuttered then reopened under new management.

Not bad. It could have been worse, considering. And that just happens to be a $110,675 Mercedes G55 SUV parked at the curb.


from my flickr

• See more of Jim and Karla's work on their flickr page
• Check out their blog