*Everyday Chatter

A Fresh Air interview with James Wolcott about life in 1970s NYC: "When you see a prostitute pulling a knife on another prostitute, that's something suburban Maryland didn't prepare me for." [NPR]

Romy's new Walker in the City tells of foxyknockers and debauched scenes in the Chelsea Hotel. [WIC]

What happens when the Shaloms take a building? [EVG]

Something called Sticky's Finger Joint is coming to the ghost town of West 8th St. According to their Facebook page, they will be "New York City's first and only establishment dedicated to the all mighty and delicious CHICKEN FINGER."


Two mom-and-pop shops vanish from Cobble Hill. [LC]

A new book about 70s NYC: "moves panoramically from post-Dylan Greenwich Village, to the arson-scarred South Bronx barrios where salsa and hip-hop were created, to the Lower Manhattan lofts where jazz and classical music were reimagined, to ramshackle clubs like CBGBs." [FP]

Bloomberg and the myth of the progressive city. [Salon]

Norman Mailer for mayor! [ENY]

Katharine House

The Katharine House, one of the last of New York's residences for young women, opened at 118 West 13th Street in 1910 and closed in 2000. It was turned into a dorm for the New School. For nearly a century, it was a haven for young women with little money trying to get a foot in the door of New York City.

Said one resident to the Times in 1997, ''It's like a movie, like the old black-and-white movies I would sit down and watch with my grandmother." Said another to the Times in 2000, ''This place isn't even in the 20th century."



Aside from those two New York Times articles, info on Katharine House is scarce. I found one piece of its ephemera on ebay, a 1940 memo from superintendent Mrs. D.B. Creede that spells out the rules and regulations for this "permanent residence for young Protestant, business women" who could get a room and two meals a day for $17.00.

"Make your bed neatly," wrote Mrs. Creede. "Put away shoes, clothing, underwear." As for typewriters, they "may be used in ping pong room any time and in dining room except at meal hours. Positively no typing in bedrooms." There was also something called a Dime Fund--by putting in a dime a week, a fund was created for the specific purchase and repair of "electric irons, sewing machines, and radios," and for magazine subscriptions.

Times have changed a bit since then.


New School: dorm room with bikini poster

One of the young women who found a temporary home at Katharine House was JVNY reader Karen Gehres (artist and director of Begging Naked), who was kind enough to pass along her recollections. She lived there in 1985 while a sophomore at Parsons School of Design. She recalls:

"When you walked in the place there was one of the unfriendly looking women that ran the joint. At night there was a night watchman to turn us away if we were late for curfew. If you got past the front you walked into some very unused waiting room with formal uncomfortable furniture, very retirement home feel mixed with a good dose of nunnery. There was a cafeteria that served breakfast, lunch, and dinner. The room I had was jail-cell narrow. There was a bed, I think a dresser, and a wee little sink in the corner by the door. It was not pleasant to share a bathroom with a bunch of chicks."


Karen and her mom in Union Square, during her Katharine House days

She explains, "What I remember very clearly is the place was crawling with bulimic/anorexic ballerinas from The Joffrey Ballet. It was a regular yack fest every day. They'd get maybe an apple for breakfast. I was out the door as early as I could most days and stay out as long as I could. The place got to be kinda depressing. I did make a few buddies though. One of these girls had a window that looked out onto 13th. Directly across the street was the Salvation Army. They rented rooms to girls too, but you had to share a room with at least one other girl. There were more medical students that lived there for some reason. We had the ballerinas.

One morning, I got up and they wouldn't let me leave right away. They said a girl had jumped out her window across the street at the Salvation Army place and that her body fell onto the pointed spikes of the iron fence surrounding the building. I went up to my friend's room and looked out her window and there was the poor girl still on the fence with a white sheet that someone had put over her body. It made me shudder and feel very ill. This girl was our age."

Amazingly, the Salvation Army building is still a residence for women today. The fence around it is a lot less lethal.

New School: boys invade Katharine House

Fedora Dorato

We just heard the sad news from Marty that Fedora Dorato, former proprietor of the once-great Fedora bar and restaurant, passed away last night.


photo by Myrna Suarez

My condolences to the Dorato family. I will always remember Fedora's nightly entrance at the old place, how the whole restaurant applauded for her as she opened her arms to embrace us. She was warm and kind, and created a true refuge where the castaways of the city could feel safe and at home.

She is missed by many.


The old sign


Further reading:
Fedora's Goodbye
A Night at Fedora
A Regular Remembers
Faux-dora
Fedora's Last Days
Fedora Returns
Oscar & Fedora

Meat on Hooks

The last time we saw meat in the Meatpacking District was at Interstate Foods before it closed. But there's a yellow-brick, block-sized cluster of buildings on the farthest western edge of the neighborhood where meat can still be found swinging on hooks. It is a rare sight.

The Weichsel Beef plant is here--on West Street between Gansevoort and Horatio. They've been in business for over 70 years. NY City Watch reported that Weichsel's owner, Sam Farella, had just "a few more years left on his lease." That was in 2009. "This is my home," he told the Daily News this year, but that home is being surrounded fast.



A few doors south, on the Horatio corner, Bakehouse bistro is getting ready to open in another week. The Bakehouse people say it's going to be "the biggest mom-and-pop operation in the West Village. It’s going to boast a bistro, full bar, retail and wholesale bakery." Usually, "big" is the opposite of "mom-and-pop," but that term is really being stretched these days.

A peek inside reveals 3,500 square feet of old-timey, artisanal-style "simplicity." Big rustic wood tables, subway-tiled walls, antique bakery signage. That sort of thing. Just like old mom and pop.



Around to Weichsel's northern flank, 95 Horatio is renovating with a wall full of plywood that will soon be glitzed and glassed and filled with shops like Intermix: "An additional conversion of the building’s parking garage will add another 10,000 s/f facing Gansevoort Street, close to the new Whitney Museum... that space could house one to three tenants, and a high-end restaurant would be a strong candidate for the space, complementing the Whitney’s café."



Directly across Gansevoort from Weichsel, the new Whitney Museum has already broken ground. The last of the old buildings there have been demolished, and cranes are lifting and banging away. Meatpackers sit in the shadow of Weichsel's battered awning, their smocks bloodied, watching the future come barreling at them.

To review: MePa begat High Line, and High Line begat Whitney, and Whitney is begetting what is certainly the death of the last meatpackers in the Meatpacking District. Really, how long will the newcomers to this once-forgotten corner on the edge of Nowhere tolerate a view of hanging carcasses? Weichsel is being squeezed from every side.



For a little while longer, here by this lonesome loading dock at the city's margin, you will find the remnant of an urban feeling, a stevedore aroma of blood and guts, as you stand between the meat and the river. Seagulls complain overhead. Flies buzz. Men sit on folding chairs and smoke.

If you want to feel it, go soon. The tourists and the toddling Louboutin girls and the boutiques and the bistros are zeroing in on this spot, coming like a wave to wash all of it out to the Hudson, off Manhattan and gone. That wave never stops. It vanishes everything in sight. It's only a matter of time.



Further Reading:
Meatpacking 1997
Life in the Triangle
Pigs in Shit
Meatpackers and Meat

*Everyday Chatter

Signage is up for The Vinatta Project--in the space formerly occupied by Florent, formerly the R&L--once a place where longshoremen and meatpackers dined at night, they called it "Eatem and Beatem," according to the Chicago Sun:


After 25 years, Aunt Suzie's of Park Slope to shutter. [HPS]

On Extra Place, the birthplace of punk and cell phones. [EVG]

Buying kielbasa in the East Village. [GVSHP]

iPhone hostage learns valuable lesson. Sort of. [RS]

How to get a liquor license, and create a "hot spot," in Little Italy. [CNY]

Jonathan Franzen at the NYPL--talks about HBO, books, and more. [NYM]

Manhattan Theatre Source

VANISHING

Thanks to reader esquared for the info: Broadway World announced yesterday that Manhattan Theatre Source will be closing in January 2012 after a dozen years in Greenwich Village.


Wikipedia

Opened in 2000, Manhattan Theatre Source was named by New York as one of the city's Top 5 Off-Off Broadway theaters.

Said one of the board members to Broadway World, "Despite efforts to save it, we have finally reached a point where we can no longer sustain the running of our space at 177 MacDougal Street. Our deficits have grown too high, and the terrible economy has badly hurt small theater companies in NYC."

Blogger Andrew Bellware at Pleasure for the Empire has a different take on the closure. He recently wrote on his blog, "The present Board is actually and actively destroying the theater. And they're doing it willfully--not just from neglect... The theater is not going bankrupt... It's just closing because this Board lacks the imagination, the will, and the backbone one needs to keep a small business running."


Massey Knakal

Either way, the building, along with its neighbors, is up for sale. Massey Knakal has the listing with an asking price of $11,950,000. The realtors write, "Between the buildings, there are a total of 8 stores and 10 rent regulated apartments plus a theater space on two and a half floors at 177 MacDougal which will be delivered vacant and could be converted to residential."

In addition, in case you didn't know, "Retail stores have tremendous upside, as national tenants like Dallas BBQ and Le Pain Quotidien have come to the block."

There's even a video walk-through of the buildings, showing everything that could, theoretically, be wiped out should a new owner decide to demolish the lot or triple the rents or do whatever landlords do these days. I think about that whenever I walk by the dilapidated, low-rise corner to see the little barber shop that somehow survives.


my flickr

The video also includes a few shots of the wrecked interior of what was once Bon Soir, the cabaret on West 8th where Barbra Streisand (in 35-cent shoes) got her start, singing songs like "Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?"



So if you have $12 million to spend, you could own this piece of history, along with the theater, which you could choose to keep as a theater and not turn into a Pain Quotidien or an Au Bon Pain or any other kind of pain.

If you don't have that kind of money, you might want to spend a few bucks to see one of Manhattan Theatre Source's last performances. Here's what's playing now.

*Everyday Chatter

Jonathan Lethem visits Occupy Wall Street today at 3:30--Douglas Rushkoff will be there on Wednesday. [OWSL]

How did the second Buy a Book Weekend go? St. Mark's co-owner Terry tells me, "We've had a great weekend! The store's been packed." Thanks to everyone who bought books this weekend--keep it up.

Marty visits the EV and buys some books at St. Mark's. (I want that comic-book ad book.) [MAD]

Go to Rocco's soon--the new kids are (in their own words) "going to be taking over." [Grub]

Remembering Yiddish theater in the East Village. [Villager]

The historic 316 E. 3rd is about to be demolished for the "most loathed architect" in New York. [EVG]

Neon turns 100 this week. [NYN]



Holding an iPhone ransom on the Lower East Side. [BB]

Handsome Dick on the web. [FP]

Bloomberg has "engineered the perfect NYC, where anyone with initiative is worth millions, and where the rest of us should be content to Occupy Ourselves with the corporate morphine dripping out of iPhones and advertising." [Restless]

The weirdness of "Retail Grief." [NYM]

Among the ruins of Coney's Beer Island. [ATZ]

The 11-mile march to Occupy Wall Street begins. [Gothamist]