*Everyday Chatter

Ricky's expands their domain. Where Chelsea Custom Kitchens was, so Ricky's Beauty Shop and Revolver Salon shall be--on the corner of 17th and 8th. PLUS: A Ricky's Halloween costume shop is popping up at 147 8th Ave--that's the address of the defunct Marc Ecko Cut & Sew:


Haven't had your fill of the EV Noise Wars? Grieve and Jill have reports on last night's community meeting.

With all the complaining about prickly Manganaro's--a place I love--it's nice to see someone coming to their defense. Midtown Lunch gives guidelines for the uninitiated ("suck it up and follow their insane rules"), but if you know from Italian women, you should have no problem here. [ML]

Mars Bar: "still the type of dive where you can buy a dime bag of weed, get yelled at by an elderly alcoholic and make out with a teen runaway—all before 8 p.m." [NYP]

Take a tour of the city's fringe spots worth saving. [NYP]

Discovering doughnut ice-cream sandwiches at the ever-delightful Peter Pan Donut Shop in Greenpoint. [NYS]

On Bleecker, the former home of Magic Shoes is now history--and here comes another condo. [BB]

Rusty nails and white spiders--the vintage booze of Mad Men. [NYT]

This Virgin's got wood...


...big, fat, long plywood, of course, as the Union Square megastore gets prepped for Nordstrom Rack:

Henderson's Dance Hall

As we continue our tour of doomed Coney Island, The Henderson's Dance Hall Building is another one owned by Thor and slated for destruction. The current building replaced the original Henderson's vaudeville house soon after it burned in 1899.



Blighted but not totally defunct, the building still holds restaurants, novelty shops, and games like this long-lived Basket Ball Game on the side, directly across from Nathan's.



It was at the Henderson, writes Michael Immerso in Coney Island, that "Harpo Marx first teamed up with his brothers Groucho and Gummo...in 1907." According to Charles Denson's Coney Island, it later "housed the Melody Bar, the World in Wax, and the Surf Hotel."


1924, NYPL

The World in Wax Musee, opened in 1926 by Lillie Santangelo, ran for decades and featured wax figures of President Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr.--among other, more gory scenes, like the first woman executed in the electric chair. As late as 1981, Santangelo was still on hand at her dime museum for a "Tricks and Treats" special show that Dick Zigun recalls helped him to launch the Coney Island Sideshows.

See "World in Wax" right here.



Somewhere, there is a film by Tom Palazzolo called "Lilly's World of Wax," in which Santangelo "leads the camera on a tour of the museum with the lights and wires being dragged along before the eyes of the audience. The woman insists on looking into the camera as she delivers her absurd and touching stories about the figures."


1926, NYPL

It has always been the Surf Hotel's neon sign that draws my attention to this building. Shuttered by Thor, it was a fleabag joint, maybe an SRO, but I can't find out much about it--even though it was there, in the signage, as far back as 1926, above a chop suey dine-and-dance. Something must have happened at the Surf in all its years at Coney.

If you know anything more, please let us know. It, too, will be gone once Bloomberg's sickening plan goes through.

More Egg Creams

Last year, when talk of the egg cream's demise began circulating, I published a guide to the egg creams of the Lower East Side, mostly to show that the New York City treat is still alive and well. Since then, I've been collecting egg creams around town, because it's not only on the LES that you can find a fine one. So, in order of personal preference, mostly based on atmosphere, here's a bunch more.

1. Eisenberg's wins for overall old-world ambiance. I've written about the place here and here, where owner Josh Konecky extolled the virtues of Fox's U-bet syrup, which he uses with seltzer, now that the fountain is back up and running. With my egg cream, I like the big, fat tuna salad on rye.



2. Prime Burger comes in a close second for the best atmosphere in which to enjoy an egg cream. They don't use U-Bet, but a syrup called "Royal Treasure." If it weren't for the tourists, Prime might be perfect. Either way, their egg creams are good for washing down an un-fancy burger in those fantastic faux-bois vintage booths.



3. The Peter Pan Donut Shop in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, is another fine place to loiter at a lunch counter. Unfortunately, they make their egg cream with seltzer from a can, but it is probably the most interesting to look at, with its many striations.



4. Joe Jr's on 6th Avenue is best known these days for being ripped from the arms of its many loving customers. I got an egg cream as part of my last meal there. It looked a little sickly, like it had a skin disorder, perhaps a manifestation of the stress it felt about its impending doom.



5. The Roxy Luncheonette is nothing special, but it serves up a serviceable and super foamy egg cream from its non-descript little hole in the wall lunch counter.



6. Tom's Restaurant in Brooklyn requires, as I've said before, the taking of a benzodiazepine before you go inside to eat on a Saturday. Their egg cream comes with whipped cream and shredded nuts. I don't approve, on principle, but it is tasty nonetheless.



7. The Soda Shop is totally ersatz and filled with loudmouths. I thought their egg cream was decent. However, a more discerning egg-cream lover and commenter here wrote, "Sorry to be the killjoy but that egg cream was obviously made incorrectly. The big bubbles on top and single color demonstrate that they mixed the syrup and milk before adding the seltzer. The two tone color scheme of the proper egg cream (the white foam head atop the chocolate soda) seems to have been lost to the ages--I have only seen one egg cream made properly in the last fifteen years."

• See Food & Drink on my flickr
• Read about the Seltzer Man

*Everyday Chatter

Find out about taxi dances and more tonight with David Freeland at the Tenement Museum--and then visit the Parisian Danceland in your dreams. [P&W]

The StuyTown blogger wars have begun. [Curbed]

Will PS 64 be dormed after all? [EVG]

A new coaster for Coney? [ATZ]

MTV to leave Times Square. "Good riddance," says one JVNY reader. [NYP]

Help save Cinema Nolita--with movies and parties. [BB]

Dear Williamsburg, your neighborhood is a nightmare. 33 stalled construction projects! Infested with mosquitoes and overrun by rats! Thousands of feet of plywood! Not to mention the gutter punks. Now this, says council member David Yassky, is what you call "blight."

Shore Hotel

The Shore Hotel is one of the buildings owned by Thor and slated for the City's wrecking ball in their vicious plan for Coney Island.


my flickr

Located on Surf Avenue and Henderson's Walk, the Shore building was built in 1903, according to Charles Denson's Coney Island. Looking at this circa 1920 photo and some New York Times articles from way back, I suspect it may have once been The Brooklyn House, a bath and movie house with a Nedick's on the ground floor, seen here on the left.


circa 1920

In this 1932 photo, the Shore is seen in all its glory as the Newark House hotel, complete with an elaborate wooden cupola on top, and Nedick's replaced by a frozen custard stand.


NYPL, 1932

The following photo, dated 1936, has the hotel as the Surf Annex, with Shea's Gilsey House and Paddy Shea's Beer Garden on the ground floor serving rotisserie and roast beef. The Gilsey House may have been the post-Prohibition version of Paddy's Grisley House, originally on Coney's Bowery:

According to Jeffrey Stanton, "Paddy Shea's Grisley House originally on the Bowery suffered from a change of customer tastes, too. For years it attracted a middle class crowd mostly of Irish descent who enjoyed a 12 ounce glass well-brewed beer and had an affection for songs and dances of their homeland. When Prohibition and the subway came in 1920, Paddy wouldn't sell liquor illegally. Reduced profits and high rents forced him to move to a new location on Surf Avenue."

A 1944 book called This America still has Paddy Shea--a "dour, octogenarian"--taking his seat at the Gilsey House door at 10:00 in the morning.


NYPL, 1936

Today, the cupola is gone, but this decorative wooden cornice is still intact on the Henderson's Walk side of the building.


my flickr

Somewhere in time, the building became the Shore Hotel--"Paradise by the Sea." It was shady and mysterious--a hot-pillow joint where, until very recently, you could rent a room at $40 for a "short stay." That $40 would also get you a free porn video to watch in your room.


my flickr

In 2005, Dan Glass in L Magazine wrote an excellent article about what it was like to stay at The Shore. He writes, "Me and my girlfriend spent the night at the Shore Hotel a couple years ago, in a grimy green-walled room on a bed with springs compressed unevenly from years of by-the-hour use, with my underwear hanging under the bare fluorescent bulb to cut its dirty glare."

He recalls, "I lock the door and we fall on the bed. We dig it here, it’s got a little sink, the bed is big enough, and we have the car-bang clatter and shout of Surf Avenue one story below for a soundtrack--all we’re missing is a flickering neon sign out the window. Our stingy friend [the manager] knocks on the door, hands me a tape and leaves. 'I guess that’s part of the service,' she says. 'They even pick out the tape for you.' I turned it over. Just Black Cumshots."


my flickr

For more than a century, this little three-story building accommodated Coney's changing tastes and desires. Always a house of hospitality, offering rooms and baths for various purposes and countless people, it hosted beer halls, custard stands, and now a grocery store, forever being recycled and repurposed. But not anymore.

Today, the Shore is shuttered. Plywood went into the windows in the summer of 2007, as Thor and the city aimed to blight Coney in preparation for its demolition. When the City's Plan goes through, a massive high-rise will stand here.

*Everyday Chatter

"New Yorkers who incessantly gripe about gentrification have become as grating as the near-constant noise of luxury condo construction... But David Freeland's affectionate, detail-packed tome...adds a lyrical song to the cacophony." [TONY] Freeland talks 8/11 at the Tenement Museum.

You could live in Langston Hughes' Harlem brownstone--hey, it's a buyer's market. [GLF]

On the enduring question "Is a Barton gym better or worse than a Barnes & Noble?" The Post chimes in, "Locals who complained about the closing of the enormous Barnes & Noble formerly occupying this space might note: While a bookstore is very East Village in theory, a 700-plus-store national chain that displaces ma and pa bookstores is not... online retailers that are hurting bookstores have made gyms 'the new town square.'" [EVG]

Does this Store for Rent sign mean the EV Tasti-D has become a casualty of the bloody fro-yo wars? Across the avenue, will "16 Hindles," with its massive "16,000 cups" trash attack, reign victorious?


Check out the Glitz & Grime of old (and new) Times Square. [Gothamist]

The storefronts of NYC, as seen by James and Karla Murray, are restored to life-size and covered in graffiti art at MOM & POPism. Open to the public 8/15. [UIP]

Discover what is "so stinking special" about Knickerbocker Village. [ParisB]

Here's an excellent suggestion for Coney redevelopment: "Go totally nostalgic. Re-create Luna Park and/or Dreamland and Steeplechase Park. Build them the way they looked in their heyday." [Ex]

Mermaid Avenue

For the first time, I took a quick walk along desolate Mermaid Avenue in Coney Island. Woody Guthrie moved here in 1943. He wrote a song about it that begins, "Mermaid Avenue that's the street, Where the fast and slow folks meet, Where the cold ones meet the hot ones, Just a block from Coney's beach."

The song is full of borscht, beer, chop suey, and bagels. I didn't see many of the things Guthrie wrote about, but I passed the remnants of the Terminal Hotel, its windows plywooded shut. I saw the Jiffy Cleaners and a place that gives away free phones and sells hot bagels.



The Friscia Pharmacy announced its 90th anniversary with bunting and glittery garlands, faded by the Coney sun. I went inside, searching for some 90-year-old something.



I managed to find this handsome couple--a springless scale and a stamp dispenser. But mostly it's just a regular mom-and-pop drugstore, full of the usual headache pills, suntan lotions, and Mad Libs.



Jimmy Prince, the longtime butcher of Major Markets Meats, is gone along with his shop, which closed earlier this year after being in business since 1932. A new shop has opened in the space, but Prince's hand-painted signs are still there, urging people to keep Coney clean.



Gowanus Lounge visited Prince in February and speculated that this neighborhood will vanish with the Coney rezoning: "there is a developing pattern of speculators buying up dozens of properties, probably with the hope of demolishing the homes or businesses and rebuilding under as-of-right zoning that will allow development much larger than what is currently there."



The Coney that appears in the Major Meats mural, a light and airy Coney, hunkered low to the ground, is going to vanish. It may take Mermaid Avenue with it. We'll see. As Guthrie wrote at the end of his song, "Mermaid Avenue, she's a nervous jerk, But, still, she's hard to beat."

• Charles Denson has great pics of Mermaid Ave in the 70s
• Cinema Treasures recalls the Mermaid Theater
• Sinrod's visitors remember Mermaid Ave