125th Street in Chains

The Pathmark supermarket on East Harlem's 125th Street closed this weekend amid controversy, more controversy, and the despair of 30,000 customers who have few places left to buy groceries.



After the Pathmark opened in 1999, a number of small grocers shut down, leaving residents dependent on the big supermarket.

The Times reported that the grocery store's intended role would be to increase development: "the Pathmark's popularity is having a big impact on the neighborhood. Not only has it altered the fortunes of the unsightly intersection where it is located, it is also helping to spur development across 125th Street."

At the time, Karen A. Phillips, chief executive of the Abyssinian Development Corporation, who put in the store, said the supermarket had "done what it was supposed to do -- inspire new commercial development" through the heart of Harlem.



Then, last year, Abyssinian sold the Pathmark site to mega-developer Extell for nearly $39 million. Extell, as you may know, is creating a giant luxury city at Hudson Yards, with hundreds of millions of dollars in tax breaks and other subsidies from Bloomberg.

Said Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito of the Abyssinian and Extell deal for Pathmark, “I believe they threw this community under the bus.”

A look inside the supermarket on Saturday evening revealed shelves already stripped bare, the registers closed, and the employees--200 of whom will now be out of work--gathering to say goodbye.



Also around 1999, the Abyssinian Development Corporation, with mega-developer Forest City Ratner (known for getting eminent domain land and subsidies from Bloomberg to develop Atlantic Yards), developed the Harlem Center to the west, a suburban-style shopping center with an Old Navy store, among other chains.

As promised, more development has come to 125th Street, especially after the major boost of Bloomberg's massive "river-to-river" rezoning in 2008, a brainchild of Amanda Burden, then director of the Department of City Planning.

The eureka moment came after a Roberta Flack concert at the Apollo, when Burden discovered there was simply nowhere to eat in Harlem--nowhere, not even at Sylvia’s or Manna’s or any of the other soul-food restaurants nearby. She realized that the neighborhood would have to change. “There should be a million different eateries around there,” she told the Times, “and this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to frame and control growth on 125th Street.”

Well, now Amanda Burden can eat at Red Lobster. There's one right next to the Apollo, just after the Banana Republic.



Since the rezoning, several mom-and-pops have been evicted and several chains have gone in.

How many?

I took a walk along 125th Street, from the Hudson River to the onramp of the Triborough Bridge. Along the way, I counted 77 national chains and 15 commercial banks -- even though Burden said that the rezoning would limit “bank exposure on the street level, positioning the banking floors on the second floor to encourage more vitality,” because "Banks can deaden an environment.”

The majority of those 92 chains and banks are located in the core of central 125th Street, which is maybe 7 blocks wide. That’s about 10 chains per block. And more keep coming. A new development under construction flies a banner that announces the future arrival of a Burlington Coat Factory.



As if the story can't get any worse for 125th Street, back on the easternmost end, just one block east of the Pathmark development, a group of businesses is under siege from the city government.
In 2009, the Bloomberg Administration blighted a whole block on 125th Street and 3rd Avenue, using eminent domain to claim it for a massive $700 million development project, the 1.7 million-square-foot East Harlem Media, Entertainment and Cultural Center, aka "MEC."

This, in addition to the eminent domain deal gifted to Columbia University at the westernmost end of 125th, means the street has been bookended in Bloomberg's land grabs.

Today this eastern, edge-of-the-earth block contains a dry cleaners, a hair braiding salon, a gas station, a flat-fix shop, an auto-body shop, a Baptist church, and other businesses. The city has already seized property, including a building from Demolition Depot. The owners are still fighting in court. Reported the Real Deal: "the de Blasio administration has not announced plans for the site, and is instead moving forward with the land seizure without defining a clear purpose for it."


blighted block

Call me crazy, but I don't think it's any coincidence that this block sits right over the Third Avenue Bridge from the waterfront of the South Bronx, where another Bloomberg rezoning helped to usher in major development.

Here, from Lugo's Flat Fix stand looking north, you can see clear to the so-called "Piano District," where luxury towers will soon be rising.

It would be naive to deny that it's all connected.

Harlem's 125th St.

There's been a lot of news lately about the steamroller of gentrification in Harlem, so I went to take a look.



First I fueled up on waffles and fried chicken at Sylvia's lunch counter, where the menu proudly proclaims that the restaurant "survived the social unrest of the 60s, the recession of the 70s, the decay of the 80s, the Renaissance of the 90s, and the devolvement of the Millennium." I think they meant to write "development" there, but "devolvement" does seem more appropriate, meaning “to pass or transfer to another” and “to deteriorate gradually.”

You have only to walk along 125th Street to see both forms of devolvement in action as black Harlem deteriorates, the property passing from local businesses and residents to major corporations and developments. For now, in places, the two continue to coexist.



Above a Rite-Aid, a second-floor hallway reveals a row of small jeans shops, hair-braiding salons, and graffiti on the wall that says, "Because we are from Africa the landlord do not want to clean the building this has been since last year..." Where a Harlem Gift Shop used to be, a Cold Stone Creamery banner announces its arrival next to the Body Shop. White people, sticking together, clamor around the Rhapsody on Fifth Avenue luxury condo sales office.



Ghosts of old Harlem haunt the side streets. The Mt. Morris Baths, closed in 2003, gathers dust and detritus. La Famille Restaurant and Jazz club, opened in 1958, is papered with movie posters. The dilapidated Corn Exchange Bank is scaffolded and draped for renovation. I don’t know what it will become, but I can guess. And the controversial Harlem Park announces its imminent arrival.



A shop specializing in hats and shoes made of stingray, alligator, and ostrich skins, Men's Walker has been here since 1970. The owner, Kevin McGill, is unfazed by the pressures of gentrification. “When you’re black,” he told me, “you always feel the pressure. This is just a different beast.” His father first opened Men’s Walker as a shoe store and repair shop on the corner of 125th and Lenox. Business was good there. But in 2003, McGill was forced to move mid-block. He’s not doing as well as he used to. And his old location? After nearly 5 years, it’s still a vacant lot, no doubt waiting for rezoning to take effect so it can sprout a 25-story tower. McGill thinks it will be a luxury hotel and he hopes they’ll have room for him in their lobby.



Further west, the area around 125th and Frederick Douglass is under major pressure from that different beast. After 35 years, the Harlem Record Shack has lost its lease from the church that owns the building. The proprietor, Sikhulu Shange, is fighting back. Outside the shop, a man called to passersby to sign their petition. “Come on y’all,” he shouted, “Come save the Shack!” People stopped and signed.



Nearby, an entire block has been served with eviction notices to make room for a 100,000 square foot redevelopment. Bobby’s Happy House has been here for 61 years. In his window are awards, trophies, photographs, and a television playing footage of Michael Jackson in concert, the music booming out to the street from speakers. A few men gathered in front and danced along with Michael. Inside, friends and family members ate lunch, watching a reality show on TV. There wasn’t much to buy, just a handful of cassettes and a few CDs. I got an Ike and Tina Turner compilation. The cashier told me the shop will be gone by the first of the year.



Next door, Manna’s Soul Food buffet, one in a small local chain, was packed with a crowd filling their styrofoam platters with pig’s feet, fried swordfish, greens, mac and cheese. It, too, will soon be gone. At the register, there’s another petition gathering signatures.



But signatures aren’t much against the powerful forces at work in Harlem and all across New York. As one graffiti artist on 125th Street noted, “There's a Jena in every city,” referring to the Jena 6, “In Harlem we have Jena-trification.”

• 125th St. Rezoning Meeting on 11/14
• Bobby's Happy House and Copeland's on JVNY
  
• Bobby's blog
• A guide to the devolvement
• More pictures on my flickr
  

Boro Hotel

The Boro Hotel, long condemned at 125th and 5th, appears to be coming down. I passed by yesterday and found it shrouded in demolition netting, its cornice wrecked. I was unable to get a picture, so these images from my visit to 125th last fall will have to do. (If you've got a shot, please add it to the VNY Flickr pool with any info you might have about this building...and here's a pic of the shrouded hotel.)


pics: my flickr



I'm not sure what's coming to this corner--covered above by a car advertisement showing the city's prickly, sleek vision for this neighborhood--but a possible suspect is this luxury hotel:



I love the Boro Hotel's yellow sign with its 1970s(?)-style typeface, but sadly can't find any information about the place.

However, on the first floor, on the 5th Ave side, there was a well-known, locally owned restaurant called La Famille, opened in 1958 by two sisters, Willette Craine Murray and Viola James, with their husbands, Oswald and Ben. According to Ms. Murray's obituary, she was one of the first African-American women to work on 125th Street, a position she fought for by marching in picket lines. She washed dishes in a dime-store and later helped to build La Famille into a Harlem favorite.



La Famille is gone and all traces of it will soon vanish, too, under the crush of Harlem's rezoning. This weekend, you can join The Coalition to Save Harlem in a human chain that will stretch the length of 125th Street, from river to river, and back through generations, back to Ms. Murray and all the people who fought for the right to make a dime, to build and nurture businesses of their own--businesses that are now being taken away by the new shapers of the city, people like "blue-blooded Upper East Side A-lister" Amanda Burden who was blasted last month by Harlem historian and author Michael Henry Adams. His angry words to her are well worth repeating:

"You're a rich, rich, rich horrible person. You're destroying our communities. You're a rich, rich socialite. You're a rich, rich socialite. How dare you! You're destroying Harlem. You're getting rid of all the black people."

Food Warriors

Talking to filmmaker Casimir Nozkowski about his new web series, The Food Warriors.



What's the series all about?

The Food Warriors is a web series by the Internets Celebrities (Dallas Penn, Rafi Kam, Casimir Nozkowski) where we travel an entire subway line--in this incarnation, the A--get off at key stops and seek the hungry traveler’s holy grail: where the people who live or work near that stop, eat.

The series in general is really an excuse for us to examine neighborhoods and talk to people on the street about their habits and tastes and see just how many things change over the course of one subway line. We've made a lot of movies about New York institutions (the bodega, the check-cashing place, the pizza spot, street vendors, Yankee stadium, the Coney Island polar bear swim, to name just a few of our past subjects) and it felt natural to track the city through the subway.

Why the A-train?

We chose the A train because of its historic importance and because it winds through three boroughs in what felt like dramatic fashion. The longest one-seat NYC train ride, at over 31 miles, the A starts at 207th street, slices down the west side of Manhattan, under the river into Brooklyn and out to Queens, and we're going to ride and eat all the way to JFK and the Rockaways.

We're all native New Yorkers who have ridden the subway all our lives (Dallas grew up on the 7, Rafi the L and I took the 6 to high school) so it's exciting to capture the city from this vantage point. Above and below ground. The 7 was our runner up and it feels like if we finish the A train, that'd be the next one we'd choose.

Is the New vs. Old debate going to be a theme throughout?

In many of the videos we've put out so far, there is a theme that keeps coming up: Old New York vs. New New York. Especially in the Harlem vids (145th Street and 125th Street). In those episodes, we found that some people we talked to were drawn to the classic restaurants (Famous Fish Market at 145th and Manna's at 125th) and some people celebrated the newer establishments that were now staking their claim to the neighborhood (Harlem Public at 145th and Dinosaur BBQ at 125th). Ultimately we leave it up to the people to tell us where to go and no spoilers, but Old New York does okay.

I would say the themes vary by neighborhood though. We really try to take what the people give us and in places like midtown on the A train, the old vs. new new york falls by the wayside because we run into way more tourists and people who just work in the neighborhood.

What's coming up next?

In the spring we are heading out to the Rockaways with stops at Broadway Junction, Ozone Park/Lefferts Blvd, Howard Beach JFK on the way. Like I mention above, the Midtown ones dwell more on just how hard it is to find a great place to eat there--even though it FEELS like you're surrounded by places.

Another recurring theme in the whole series is how much New Yorkers prize convenience over just about anything else sometimes in New York City--even pleasure.



See all the Food Warriors videos here

Check out more videos from Internets Celebrities:

Bodega: a celebration, indictment, and tour of a typical Bronx bodega
A Fare Slice: an examination of the correlation between subway fare and pizza slice prices
Stadium Status: about old stadiums being knocked down and new ones built up at the expense of the taxpayer
The Vend Diagram: about the struggle of the everyday NYC street vendor

Rebranding Harlem

Hyper-gentrification--the jet-fueled process in which city government and corporations collude to displace the existing culture and population of New York and replace it with something shinier, wealthier, and homogenized for your safety--is often used by real estate agents to rebrand and sell "newly discovered" neighborhoods.

Sometimes, the sell can be unabashed in its revanchist rhetoric. A reader sent in a newsletter from one real estate agent working to sell Harlem. I'll let the text speak for itself.



- "New Yorkers are always debating which hood is the hottest. Is Bushwick the next Williamsburg? NoHo the next Tribeca? It’s Harlem: buy now and you will thank me."

- "Harlem is getting a tech-led makeover, thanks to a new series of economic development initiatives aimed at combating the neighborhood's infamous high unemployment rates and widespread poverty."

- "Blue-collar retirees are watching their neighborhood, once crime-infested and poverty-stricken, being reborn and rechristened as money-hungry real estate investors mine for gold in the pocket between W. 125th St. and W. 150th St."



- "Harlem is facing another wave of gentrification, which will push prices up further than the current median."

- "Call it the Whole Foods Factor. The organic grocery has the power to remake neighborhoods, and it’s planning a new location at Lenox Ave. and 125th St."

- "That will add to a bevy of bars and restaurants that have opened up in the last few years, like Marcus Samuelsson’s Red Rooster and the 11 commercial banks on 125th Street from Lenox Ave to Morningside Ave. Some of the other retail giants following Whole Foods is H&M and Forever 21."



11 banks! And, ooh look! There's an Olive Garden, too!

Celebrate Katz's 125th

Katz's Delicatessen is 125 years old--and still going strong and now there will be a party, thanks to 5th-generation owner Jake Dell. And you could win $3,750 for eating a lot of pastrami really fast. Here's the scoop on all the upcoming festivities from Katz's.



Friday, May 31st
James Beard Award winner Danny Bowien of Mission Chinese Food, Bill Telepan of Telepan, Joey Campanaro of The Little Owl, Market Table, and Quality Clam, along with Pastry chef Sarabeth Levine will be the chefs interpreting Katz’s Delicatessen staples for a Shabbat dinner with all proceeds benefiting Henry Street Settlement! For Tickets, click here.

Saturday, June 1st
125th Anniversary Community Celebration continues, stop by and see live music from our stage inside Katz's, with festivities that will run all day.

Sunday, June 2nd
We will be participating in the DayLife Festival on Orchard Street between East Houston and Stanton Street for another fun filled day of events. Come watch or enter the first ever Katz's Delicatessen World Pastrami Eating Championship! There are 3 amateur spots to fill, if you think you can do it, sign up now!

If you want to eat A LOT of pastrami enter our eating championship.

Bobby's Happy House

VANISHING: August 2007

Photo from in8vision

Update: The Times just tuned in to this news.

There was a rally in Harlem this weekend to save Bobby's Happy House, the shop owned by record producer Bobby Robinson. Opened in 1946, it was the first black-owned business on 125th Street. Now, at age 90, Bobby is being evicted--along with other small businesses and residents. Like Copeland's, another Harlem landmark is crushed under the bootheels of gentrification.

I can't find any news about the rally.



From the Daily News:
Robinson himself wants to stay: "I've been on this corner since 1946. I came back from the war, I had some money and I became the first colored man to own a store on 125th St. It isn't fair to make businesses close."

If history counted, he'd stay there forever. His wall is solid with autographed pictures of artists who came over from the Apollo Theater, a half block away: Al Green, Eddie Kendricks, Berry Gordy, the Miracles with Smokey Robinson. There's Jackie Wilson and Fats Domino together, and of course, James Brown.
"Very good friend," says Robinson. Robinson has a lot of those.

"I was the only store to stay open the night of the [1964] riots," he says. "The liquor store near me, 10-15 guys smashed the windows, carried it out by the case. But I wasn't touched. Everybody knew me, respected me."

Showman's Jazz Club

Showman's jazz club has been in Harlem since 1942. They've hosted many of the greats, including Sara Vaughan, Eartha Kitt, and Duke Ellington. With 74 years under their belt, they are Harlem's longest running jazz club -- after the wasteful and tragic destruction of the elder Lenox Lounge.

Last week, Showman's posted the following "farewell" announcement on their Facebook page:



Reader Carrie Butterworth sent in the tip and followed up with some questions for the owners. She reports: "Mona Lopez and Al Howard are selling the business so they can retire."

Lopez and Howard have been running the club for the past 38 years. (Howard was one of the NYPD detectives who took the call when Martin Luther King was stabbed by a woman with a letter opener. He was also a supervisor on the hunt for Son of Sam.)

Showman's has moved three times since 1942. Their original building, next to the Apollo, was destroyed by fire. "After playing at the Apollo," writes Butterworth, "the musicians used to go next door and play their own music, hence the name Showman's."

They were pushed out of their second location by the Harlem USA mega-development. And they've been in their current spot on 125th since 1998.


Washington Post photo

Butterworth says, "What I and so many other people enjoy about this bar is the sense of community and family. It's full of regulars--Harlem old-timers and people who are friends with the musicians--who show up every time to support their friends. If it's your birthday, they'll have a cake and some chicken and rice.

A lot of the new jazz clubs charge you a cover, then you have to buy dinner or drinks, and then they throw you out after the set, unless you want to buy another table charge. At Showman's, there's only a 2 drink minimum per set. You can stay all night. The barmaids, or as they call them 'star-maids,' know what you drink, and have it ready."

She does not know who is buying the building. However, she adds, "they claim they'll keep it as a jazz club."

Let's hope they do. Rezoned by the Bloomberg administration, 125th Street is being destroyed by chain stores and other developments. Let's hope the new owners keep Showman's accessible, affordable, and welcoming to all, just as it has always been.

Harlem Mall

Earlier this month, The Real Deal reported that several of the small businesses at 125th and Frederick Douglass Blvd have settled their lawsuit against Kimco Realty, who plans to demolish the entire block of low-rise buildings and replace them with a big-box shopping mall. There were 16 tenants evicted by the Kimco plan--many of them, including Bobby's Happy House, have already closed.

The block, once filled with life, is now half dead.


formerly bobby's

I went to 125th Street last fall, when Bobby's was still there. It was a chilly day, but there was a crowd out front of the 61-year-old business. In the window, a television showed Michael Jackson in his prime, and men were dancing along with him, mimicking his steps on the sidewalk. Bobby's closed on Martin Luther King's birthday this year.

Today, the store is boarded up. The awning is down, revealing an old sign from a shoestore with an angry boot called "boss" who looks ready to kick someone. Bobby moved to this site about 20 years ago, after Kentucky Fried Chicken booted him from his corner spot.


city high sports

Next door, in the window of former apparel store City High Sports, African-American mannequins lay in naked pieces, in piles of arms and legs, torsos dismembered. The beauty supplier and the nail salon have also had their faces ripped off. Soon, the rest of the businesses, from Manna's soul food to Roti Plus and the House of Seafood, will be gone.


formerly beauty supply, formerly spatz furniture

What will come, we can well imagine. Everyone knows what a brand-new shopping mall looks like. And feels like. There probably won't be middle-aged men moonwalking out in front of it.

• Photos of Bobby's Happy House
• Harlem flickr set

Trowel and Square

The Trowel & Square Ballroom on Harlem's 125th Street had a great old sign. The typeface. The word "ballroom." And "social functions." Good stuff.



Anyway, it's gone.

The letters have been ripped down and the sign has been covered with a Ripco real estate banner. The Salvation Army thrift store on the first floor has also vanished. The entire building is available. It sold in 2014.



Located in the Croft Brothers Building, the Trowel & Square used to be the Tusken Ballroom, "used at least once as a meeting place by Malcolm X and his recently-formed Muslim Mosque, on June 22, 1964," according to Daytonian in Manhattan.

And next for this space? Probably another chain, as the whole of 125th Street is being wrapped in chains.

Lenox Lounge Demolished

After 73 years of legendary life in Harlem, and after 4 years of sitting empty and wasted, the once great Lenox Lounge is currently being demolished. It is a terrible shame that could have been avoided.


today

If the city had commercial rent control, as it did for many years, it would have been avoided. If the City Council had passed the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, it might have been avoided. But City Hall refuses to protect small business people against landlord greed, claiming that it's a free-market society--which it is not.

Corporate chains in the city are regularly chosen by Business Improvement Districts and given millions of dollars in tax breaks and incentives. That's not laissez-faire. That's corporate welfare.

Thanks to City Hall's catering to big business, we have lost the Lenox Lounge, along with countless other precious local landmarks. For the soul of the city, the price of that loss is high.


Owner Alvin Reed, Daily News photo, 2012

In 2012, the landlord of the Lenox Lounge doubled the rent, from $10,000 to $20,000 per month. This was more than small business owner Alvin Reed could manage. The lease was given to Richie Notar of the Nobu luxury restaurant chain.

At the same time, Whole Foods announced a move to 125th Street--later we would learn that it would land in the empty lot directly across from the Lenox Lounge. In the Whole Foods Effect, rents near the store increase. That's exactly what happened in Harlem. And that Whole Foods would not have been there without the Bloomberg Administration's rezoning of 125th Street, a controversial process that has strangled the historic street in chains.

After being forced to close on New Year's Eve 2013, Alvin Reed stripped the Lenox Lounge of its antique facade, announcing that he would resurrect it all in another location. That did not come to pass.

The landlord sued Reed for stripping the place. Cultural history isn't worth much without those antique details. Notar backed out of the deal, telling the Daily News, "the scope of the project (mostly the overall condition of the building) became bigger than anticipated."

The Lenox Lounge was left to rot. Someone spray-painted "1939 - 2012: 80 YEARS FOR THIS” across the plywood that covered the door.


2016

As the big, shimmery building that will house Whole Foods rose across the street, the rent on the Lenox Lounge space doubled again--to $40,000 per month.

Then we learned that it would be completely demolished and replaced with a dull glass box containing a Sephora. Two glass boxes, two hollow mirrors, will soon reflect each other across Malcolm X Boulevard. What effect will that have on the people there?


Whole Foods coming

In 2011, cognitive neuroscientist Colin Ellard studied what happens to people on the sidewalk when they stand in front of a bland glass façade. He placed human subjects in front of the Whole Foods on the Lower East Side, strapped skin-conducting bracelets to their wrists, and asked them to take notes on their emotional states. He reported, “When planted in front of Whole Foods, my participants stood awkwardly, casting around for something of interest to latch on to and talk about. They assessed their emotional state as being on the wrong side of ‘happy’ and their state of arousal was close to bottoming out.” The instruments on their wrists agreed. “These people were bored and unhappy. When asked to describe the site, words such as bland, monotonous and passionless rose to the top of the charts.” Ellard then moved the group to another site nearby, “a small but lively sea of restaurants and stores with lots of open doors and windows.” Here, these same people felt “lively and engaged.” Their nervous systems perked up.

In his book Happy City, Charles Montgomery calls this “an emerging disaster in street psychology.” The loss of old buildings and small businesses, the homogenization from suburban chains and condo boxes, is more than an aesthetic loss. It is damaging us psychologically and physically. Montgomery writes, “The big-boxing of a city block harms the physical health of people living nearby, especially the elderly. Seniors who live among long stretches of dead frontage have actually been found to age more quickly than those who live on blocks with plenty of doors, windows, porch stoops, and destinations.”

The big shiny boxes are literally killing us.



Small old buildings and businesses, like the Lenox Lounge, have a positive effect on our mental health. Just walking past and looking at them can be an emotional and physical boost.

Today, as the Lenox Lounge is demolished, there is no boost, only despair. The inside has been gutted to the beams and bricks. Sunlight streams in through the busted roof and shines in the place where the walls were once flocked in zebra stripes and Billie Holiday sang of "Strange Fruit." On the sidewalk, black Harlemites walk past shaking their heads. They stop to take a final photo, a memory of what's been lost.

Last week we also learned that New York City has lost 30% of its black-owned businesses--in just the five years between 2007 - 2012. The Lenox Lounge was one of them. Its loss was not inevitable. It wasn't normal or natural or part of that tired cliche of "New York is always changing." It was part of a systemic process rooted in the racism and classism of redlining and urban renewal, what James Baldwin called "Negro removal." Today, he could use the same words for hyper-gentrification.

The Lenox Lounge is yet another casualty in the long battle for the soul of New York.


For additional reading, see Michael Henry Adams' "Last Call: Who's to Blame for the Destruction of the Lenox Lounge?"

Lenox Lounge Stripped

The Lenox Lounge closed on New Year's Eve after 73 years in Harlem. The landlord doubled the rent on its current owner Alvin Reed, from $10,000 to $20,000 per month, essentially forcing him out of business after 24 years of stewardship.

On New Year's Day, these heartbreaking photos appeared on Twitter and Instagram. Already the gorgeous chrome neon letters are gone and the door has been plywooded and padlocked. The historically detailed facade has been ripped off, leaving only the underbelly of weathered wood. It is painful to look at.

Photo: Nobodies of Note 1/1/13

The interior gutting has begun. The long wooden bar has been ripped out.

Photo: Hosea Johnson

Was this done by Alvin Reed or the new owners? Black Enterprise reported last month, "When Reed leaves he’ll be taking the iconic Lenox Lounge neon sign with him." Said Reed, “If they want to use Lenox Lounge, they will have to negotiate with me. I brought it back and I want to see it stay there. I want to keep the legacy alive. I am Lenox Lounge, and I will be Lenox Lounge for quite some time. And if they want Lenox Lounge, they want me.”

I guess the new owners decided not to negotiate.

Photo: CMTapper

The lounge is being taken over by Richie Notar, who runs the luxury restaurant chain Nobu. Robert DeNiro may also be involved. According to the Daily News, Notar will rename the place after himself, putting up a new sign to read NOTAR JAZZ CLUB. He will close it until March to renovate and add a bakery. "I don’t want to change a thing about how it looks," he said, adding it will be "not too much different than what it is now."

We know what that means. We've seen it all before (again and again and again). The Lenox Lounge will never be the same.

Before it closed, I went up for a final drink (or two), to be in that rare atmosphere one last time.

The bar was quiet on late afternoons, as the sun goes low and golden over Lenox Avenue, streaming across the wide-open space of the vacant lot across the way, a grassy field that will surely one day be crammed with condos and chain stores.

Black men drank at the bar and watched the football game. A few couples, mostly mixed-race couples, sat in the ragged, duct-taped booths sipping neon-vibrant cocktails and eating fried catfish, lazily reading the newspaper. The bar felt easy like this. A neighborhood joint decked out in faded glamor.

A walking tour went by the window with people snapping photos. Inside, the bartender explained to a couple of white tourists exactly what made the Lenox Lounge so special, "All kinds of people come in here. All ages and ethnicities. On any night you can find a doctor, a lawyer, sitting next to some guy with no teeth."

Originally owned by Ralph Greco (whom Jet magazine referred to as "ofay" in the 1950s) and built for white customers seeking black jazz, the Lenox Lounge was bought and revitalized by Harlem local Alvin Reed in 1988. He brought jazz back in the late 1990s and the white people came back with it. As Reed told the Times in 2000, ''I thought I was bringing jazz back to Harlem for black folks. I thought I would bring out a lot of locals."

But the black folks mostly stayed in the bar, while the zebra-skinned back room was frequented by whites and tourists. Said Reed in the Times, "A lot of whites are very disappointed because they are coming for our culture. They want to see how we pop our fingers and get with it, and they get in here, look around and it's nothing but white folks." By 2001, reported Ebony magazine, 90% of the customers were white.

As Reed told Ebony, "I didn't envision Whites walking in my door. But they made it work. I have to be totally honest. Without them, jazz would not be in here right now."

That was 2001, a tipping point for Harlem and the city at large. Bloomberg was taking over where Giuliani left off and everything was about to change at an unimaginable pace and intensity. You could see the shift, you could feel it, but you could also stay in denial. In our own neighborhoods, we all thought: It can't happen here.

In the same Ebony article, Charles Rangel said about gentrification: "I walk the streets of Harlem and I don't see it. Sure, I see Whites, but I don't see them moving in and attempting to take over Harlem."

What a difference a decade makes. From river to river, Harlem has since been colonized. East Harlem got rezoned and loaded with condos. Manhattanville was nabbed via eminent domain and handed over to Columbia University for bulldozing. And many in Harlem have fought the big rezoning of 125th Street to no avail. Said planning commissioner Amanda Burden in the Times, "this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to frame and control growth on 125th Street." Since then, the chains have moved in and many local businesses, like Alvin Reed's Lenox Lounge, have been pushed out.

Said a shaken and heartbroken Reed in the Daily News recently, “It’s like I don’t exist.”

Previously:
Lenox Lounge Vanishing
Lenox Lounge at 70

*Everyday Chatter

The Observer turns us on to a new blog from Spanish Harlem, where the blogger states quite plainly: "the ultimate goal of this site is to promote and hopefully encourage Manhattanites to think about and improve the swath of neighborhood between 96th Street and 125th Street, from the FDR Drive to Fifth Avenue, helping to make it an area that people may actually want to move to..." Except, you know, lots of people already kind of live there. [No96]

...and read this post, too, for lots of observations about dirty, crappy, undesirable places that really ought to be cleaned up and gentrified.

HGTV, where soulless "Jasons and Jennifers" long for the good life of excess--including their very own "Man Rooms." [NYP]

Hank's Saloon has a big FOR SALE sign plastered on it. The Voice reports that the 100-year-old (really?) Brooklyn honky-tonk is on the market for $2.2 million and the space will fit a giant condo tower quite nicely:


Look at what's rising at 30 Orchard Street--a 12-story "see-through" condo that looks like something from Luke Skywalker's home planet.


Alex, you beat me to it--I am loving this week's Tomine New Yorker cover. [FlamingP]

Stuy Town is working really, really hard to turn itself from middle class to uber-hip and unaffordable. You really must look at this. [Curbed]

Tell me who, in a panicky "cheese emergency," calls this place for same-day delivery of artisanal cheese? Home or office! Natch this was spotted on 9th Ave in Chelsea. In the bike lane.