Folsom Street East

VANISHED

We knew it would happen, and now it's happening. Folsom Street East has been cancelled.

The organizers put out a message last night via Facebook and their website:

"It is with sadness that the Producers and Board of Directors of Folsom Street East have to announce that the 17th annual Folsom Street East Street Festival this June is going to be cancelled. Though we continue to receive support for this community-building and fundraising event from Community Board 4 and our neighbors on the block (including our producing partner The Eagle NYC), the ever-growing construction on the north side of 28th street has made it impossible for us to successfully and safely hold our annual street festival. Thank you for the years of support from our attendees, sponsors, partners, exhibitors, vendors, performers and volunteers; we are sad that we will not be able to celebrate Pride with you at our fetish-friendly event this year."



At the end of the message, they write: "Thanks for 16 great years celebrating sexual freedom with the Folsom Street East Street Festival, and we hope to see you back on the kinky streets of New York City in 2014!"

They don't say which streets and we can guess it won't be West 28th. Ever since the High Line opened in that part of town and Bloomberg rezoned it for luxury development, Folsom East has had a target on its back.



Here is a timeline of what has happened on this one block of West 28th Street since it became prime High Line real estate (click the dates for the full articles):

November 2010: A "High Line Boomlet" came to West Chelsea. The first residents of the +ART luxury condo moved onto this block of West 28th.

June 8, 2011: The second section of the High Line opened, bringing many tourists and other folks to a part of town they'd never before entered, including this once-industrial block, over which the High Line stretches.

June 19, 2011: High Line walkers got their first glimpse of Folsom Street East, right beneath their feet. Though the fair had been on this block for years, you had to be a part of it to go looking for it. At the time, I asked, "As the High Line spreads its luxurious seed across upper Chelsea, replacing every rough thing in its path with glass and glamor, how long, really, do you think Folsom will be allowed to party here?"

June 24, 2011: The Eagle gay leather bar was raided by the NYPD. They claimed the bar was the source of chronic noise complaints, but no such complaints were on record--only complaints about noise from all the condo construction. Around the same time, the massive Avalon West Chelsea condo tower broke ground right across the street, with advertisements proclaiming, "Don't miss your chance to be a part of the High Line!"



April 2012: We learned that another luxury condo tower would be coming to this block.

June 13, 2012: A resident of the +ART condo told us about the backlash against Folsom East, saying, "Residents from several surrounding buildings have passed fliers asking our residents to write to the Community Board to relocate or totally eliminate Folsom Street East because 'fetish' fairs shouldn't be allowed so close to so many residential buildings." Meanwhile, a slogan on the windows of the condo stated, "Chelsea is the birthplace of creative modern art and the home of bad behavior."

June 14, 2012: A representative from Folsom East responded to the backlash against them, saying they were doing everything they could to cooperate with the new neighbors.

June 17, 2012: Folsom East went on--surrounded by construction fencing and with a special path built for the condo people. Up on the High Line, tourists gawked like visitors to a freak show, while Christian right-wingers waved banners telling the fair-goers that only Jesus would save them from Hell.

January 2013: We heard that the scrapyard Central Iron and Metal, the last industrial business on the block, would be closing after 86 years in business. It sold for $65 million to a luxury developer.

March 2013: Not on West 28th, but still related, the Rawhide bar was driven out of Chelsea after 34 years of serving the LGBT and leather community.



Queer New York City has, once again, just gotten smaller. It's vanishing day by day. Don't blink, you might miss it.

Very soon, this entire block will be taken over by High Line culture, filled only with luxury condo towers and their occupants, with artisanal-foodie restaurants to feed them and high-end chain stores to fulfill their consumer needs. The Eagle remains, but for how long? In the end, Bloomberg's High Line always wins.

Folsom East & The Eagle

Last year, when the second part of the High Line opened, I wondered how long the sex-positive Folsom Street East festival would survive on West 28th, now that the once-desolate block has become a destination for tourists and condo-buyers. Soon after, I looked at the arrival of massive condo-box Avalon West Chelsea, coming to the same block, right across the street from the Eagle gay leather bar, and predicted that the Eagle would not last much longer, either.

As we come up on the 16th annual Folsom East fair this weekend, we hear from an anonymous resident of 540 West 28th (the +ART building) that those dire predictions may already be coming true. Folsom East and the Eagle, he tells us, are not long for this rapidly changing world.


2011: High Line tourists pointing at Folsom-goers

Construction began on the +ART building in 2008, when there was nothing on that block except for a gay bar, a strip club, a scrap yard, a truck yard, and some autobody shops. Our anonymous interviewee has lived there for the past year. He bought the condo because he, like many of his neighbors, was attracted to "the building, view of the river, wide open space, proximity to Chelsea Piers, High Line, and the Hudson River Park."

I asked him some questions and he provided us with an inside look into how the new condo dwellers of the High Line are forcing change on the once-wild, westernmost hinterlands of Chelsea.




Q: What is the prevailing opinion about the Folsom East fair among your neighbors--how do people talk about the fair?

A: It's a mixed bag. The primary issue is the zero access to the building without walking through the fair itself where lewd conduct and nudity isn't uncommon. Those with children find it particularly difficult.

Q: In what way have the neighbors organized, and what is your goal in terms of the fair--do you want it to stop running, move to another block? What are the neighbors doing to meet this goal?

A: Residents from several surrounding buildings have passed fliers asking our residents to write to the Community Board to relocate or totally eliminate Folsom Street East because "fetish" fairs shouldn't be allowed so close to so many residential buildings. There's word that a petition of some sort will be circulated but I'm not exactly sure what the details are.

A letter was written to the Community Board asking how they can assure residents access to the building without having to walk through the fair itself. Another suggestion was to move it to the next block where it's bordered (for now) by commercial on two sides, Con Ed to the north, and West Street.

The primary issue for us at 540 W 28th isn't the Eagle or even Folsom Street East. It's allowing residents access to the building without having to go through the fair itself. Other residents of the surrounding buildings and even my own building may have additional concerns with regard to the lewd conduct and nudity in full view from their units.

Q: Were you aware of the fair's presence before you bought property here? [The fair's been running for 16 years.]

A: Yes... It's only once a year.

Q: What about the Eagle and Scores? It's hard to imagine those lasting on 28th with the new Avalon West Chelsea going in. How long do you think they will last?

A: I can't speak for all residents but a group of us would like them to stay. We've gotten to know the bouncers and they always say hello or play with our dogs. The crowd that gathers outside of the Eagle is always very nice, and the clientele at Scores really just get out of their cars and zip right inside. No loitering in front for the most part. Having the bouncers out front also gives us an additional level of security. Sure, you'll always have those that will be obnoxious or use the side of our building as a urinal but doesn't that happen just about everywhere in NYC?

I did hear that this summer may be the Eagle's last which would be a shame. I hope they reconsider. [Note: To this, the Eagle says, "Don't listen to rumors."] With the addition of 700+ units in Avalon Chelsea, it may be a matter of whether or not Scores or Eagle even want to be there. I give it a year. Construction across the street is going at a rather fast pace.



Queer, kinky, weird New York is vanishing at an astonishing rate--as fast as the new condos are being constructed along the High Line's glamorous flanks. Folsom Street East and the Eagle are the last vestiges of a once-thriving queer leather scene in Chelsea, one that not so long ago stretched across the Meatpacking District, up and down the far west side.

In 2009, the New York Leather Weekend was canceled when the Standard Hotel and the Food & Wine Festival complained to the city, successfully ousting the queers from MePa's sacred cobblestone streets. I have no doubt that the people of West 28th Street's new condos will eventually win the fight against Folsom the same way--and, apparently, no one is even trying to stop them.


Previously:
Folsom Under High Line
Eagle Under Siege
Eagle's Nest
Pleasure Chest 1972
Men in Leather
Lenny & Leather

Folsom East Responds

Yesterday we heard from a resident of one of the luxury condos that have recently gone up along the High Line on formerly desolate West 28th Street. He told us about how the new residents are trying to shut down the Folsom Street East festival, now 16 years strong in Chelsea. I got in touch with Susan Wright, Media Liaison for Folsom Street East, and asked for her response.



Q: What was your initial reaction when you found out from my blog that the new condo residents of West Chelsea have been organizing against Folsom East?

A: We were surprised because we haven't been contacted by anyone. Folsom Street East is a community event, and is eager to work with the neighbors. We observed certain issues last year, so one of the ways we have adjusted the fair this year is to provide a 5-foot-wide sidewalk along the buildings that goes from 11th Avenue down to the condos at 540 W. 28th Street. That way residents don't have to walk through the attendees in the street. They will be able to walk alongside the buildings and enter their own home as usual.

Q: Residents are petitioning the Community Board to eliminate or move the fair. Has anyone ever complained directly to the organizers of Folsom East?

A: Folsom Street East has not received any complaints from anyone about the fair.



Q: How do you respond to the people in the new condos who don't want to see nudity and "lewd" acts from their windows? Or who don't want their children to witness the fair?

A: The attendees at the fair must follow our Code of Conduct, and that includes no lewd acts or full nudity. Attendees are allowed to wear street-legal clothes, which in NY city is fairly liberal, as it should be. There are some entertainment pieces that take place on the stage, at the other end of the block, that enter the "burlesque" realm, but legally it doesn't fall into the "lewd conduct" category. Security volunteers are in place to be sure that all the rules are followed by the attendees.

Q: The residents have also suggested that Folsom move "to the next block where it's bordered (for now) by commercial on two sides, Con Ed to the north, and West Street." If anything, I think that could only be a temporary solution, because certainly more condo development is coming. What are your thoughts about this suggestion?

A: Folsom Street East is willing to work with the community to ensure our fair is low-impact. We would be willing to discuss any potential options with Community Board 4 and the neighboring community. However, the current location adjacent to the Eagle is ideal for this street fair, and moving would cause difficulties.

Q: How long has the fair had its home on West 28th?

A: Folsom Street East has been on West 28th for 8 years, ever since we moved from our location outside the Lure in the Meatpacking district.



Q: How did the fair get started and what is its mission?

A: Folsom Street East is a celebration of the SM-Leather-Fetish community in New York City. Like the great Folsom Street Fair in San Francisco, we thought New York City should have its own leather street fair.

The BDSM-leather communities should not be pushed underground, and sponsoring our own street fair is a way of highlighting the existence of our community and the fact that we must fight against persecution and stereotypes every day. Folsom Street East is a nonprofit event run by volunteers--all of the funds that are raised are donated to charity. The three beneficiaries this year are the LGBT Center, the Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project, and the National Coalition for Sexual Freedom.

Q: What do you think is the future for the queer and kinky of New York City? What will the city lose when this culture is pushed out?

A: Leathermen and women will never leave New York City! We are as much a part of New York as bagels and the Empire State Building. What would New York City be without its diversity? Folsom Street East intends to do whatever is necessary to ensure that we can continue to come out as a group and celebrate our culture.

Come on down to Folsom Street East [this weekend] and see for yourself the spirit of togetherness and celebration that inspires Folsom Street East.



Previously:
Folsom East and the Eagle
Folsom Under High Line
Eagle Under Siege

Avalon has Landed

The Avalon West Chelsea has landed, and Jesus H. Christ is it big.


Avalon on W. 28th

According to the website, it consists of two buildings--one at a whopping 31 stories and the other at 13. One building is called Avalon West Chelsea and the other, capitalizing on the luxury park that spawned it, is called "AVA High Line."

We knew that 60,000 square feet, with 710 units and a parking garage for over 140 cars, was big, but until you see it live, you just cannot imagine. This one's a block buster--it takes up nearly the entire block between 28th and 29th Streets, and 10th and 11th Avenues. With no low setbacks, it's like a dark planet sucking light out of the sky.


From the Eagle's roof deck

We've been following developments on this block of West 28th for awhile. Someone must have pushed the light-speed button, because it's all happening. The little block has now been plunged into darkness. Walking on the block, which used to be open and bright, it feels like someone just bricked you inside a sarcophagus.

Right across the street, the gay leather Eagle Bar has its roof deck, soon to be invaded by neighbors too close for comfort. 

Because of all this construction, in part, Folsom Street East was canceled this year. 



Avalon from High Line

And it's not just the Avalon. Almost everything has been pushed out and demolished, thanks to the High Line and Bloomberg's luxury rezoning.

High Line Part 2 opened just two years ago, in June 2011, while Folsom went on below. Avalon West Chelsea broke ground across from the Eagle and the bar was raided by the NYPD, citing false noise complaints. In December 2011, one block over on 29th, Brownfeld Auto lost their business after a century here. It has been demolished.

In April 2012, demolition began on a former nightclub building on W. 28th, preparing for another massive tower to come. In June 2012, condo residents on the block began complaining about Folsom East, petitioning to have the fair removed. That year, for the first time and from the High Line, Christian right-wingers held protest signs telling the fairgoers they were sinners. Folsom East is unlikely to return to this block.

In January 2013, the Central Iron and Metal scrapyard, here since 1927, sold. It has now closed, part of the Great Die-Off of working class Chelsea, thanks again to the High Line. On my recent visit, I found two more blue-collar, auto-related businesses have gone.



Edge Auto Rental has shuttered, with a sign saying they've moved to Greenpoint.

And a mechanic's garage, in a prime spot right under the High Line, has closed up and moved to West 29th (how long will that last?)



This is all on one city block.

The area all around these former businesses has been demolished and cleared for new building. This is what hypergentrification looks like. Fed and nurtured by the city government, planned and strategized, it comes in fast and it comes in big. It wipes out everything in its path. Its appetite for destruction is boundless.

Where there was light and air, there will be darkness, brick, and glass. The High Line park is being suffocated, devoured by the beast it helped to create.


Behind Avalon, with Mr. Brownfeld's former site in rear

On their website, Avalon proudly calls itself "A Catalyst in Changing Neighborhoods," radically altering "neighborhoods that were 'up and coming,' but not yet 'arrived.'" Of Avalon West Chelsea, they say the building is contributing to "the revitalization of a neglected area." This area was not neglected. It was filled with thriving businesses and culture, just not the sort Bloomberg wants in his luxury city.

Well, here's a plus. A building of this magnitude is required to offer affordable housing, and 20% of Avalon's apartments fall under that rule. They're offering a percentage of those to "performing artists," and so they can claim that they're "ensuring the continued diversity of the Chelsea district." Here's a listing of those apartments.

Just think, if you lived here, you could have these people as your neighbors--instead of all the dirty queers, perverts, and working-class schlubs who long made this home.




See Also:
Disney World on the Hudson

Wholesale District

VANISHING

For the past decade, ever since the Ace Hotel took over the Breslin SRO hotel on Broadway and 29th Street, I've been watching the Wholesale District vanish. It is not dying. It is being murdered, shop by shop, building by building, all to create the fake "neighborhood" known as NoMad.

Hanging by a thread, it recently took a turn for the worse.

A major center of wholesalers on Broadway has just been wiped out in one fell swoop. Along the west side of Broadway in the upper 20s, the sudden mass erasure of so many small businesses is staggering.


1165 Broadway Before (taken in 2016)


1165 Broadway Today, 2019

Between 27th and 28th Streets, 1165 Broadway housed several small wholesale businesses, selling perfume, jewelry, handbags, African-American hair products, clothing, and more. For years, I have walked by it every week, lingering to admire what I cannot fully participate in, but appreciate nonetheless.

The small businesses attracted a diversity of people, many of them immigrants from Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. With them came gray-market dealers, ice-cream trucks, sidewalk vendors, and lots of Halal food carts. It was a lively, colorful block that always felt like the real New York, unruly, surprising, and rough around the edges.

But this is not allowed in the new New York.

Today, 1165 is scaffolded and shrouded. All of the shops have been shuttered and sealed behind green plywood. The building will be scrubbed clean, disemboweled and sanitized for white capitalist triumphalism, reamed with a luxury glass tower.


1165 Broadway Tomorrow (toasting colonialism's triumph on the rooftop)

It's not just this building. We're in the midst of a mass extinction event.

One block up Broadway, across 28th Street, low-rise buildings full of small businesses were wiped out for another tower. The site sat demolished and empty for a few years. I watched tomato plants grow lush, red fruit along the edge of the lot, presumably from people at the nearby food cart tossing tomatoes and accidentally seeding a wild garden.

Construction has now begun.


Northwest corner of 28th & Broadway, 2015


Northwest corner of 28th & Broadway, 2019

Heading up to 29th Street, the remaining building on that same block, also once full of small businesses, has also been emptied and plywooded.

The sidewalk is now dead.


Southwest corner of 29th & Broadway, Before (Google Maps, 2017)


Southwest corner of 29th & Broadway, Today

Step right across the street at 29th and you'll find the future--another block wiped out, another glass monstrosity like all the other glass monstrosities, soulless and banal, inspiring nothing, inhumane.


Northwest corner of 29th and Broadway, today

When all of this evicting and destroying is done, all we will have are glass towers into which no small businesses will go. A thriving cultural ecosystem is being eradicated, and it's by design.

What we are losing has gone largely uncelebrated in the mainstream conversation. The Wholesale District caters mostly to black and brown working-class people, many of them immigrants. It is scruffy and unfashionable. That makes it easy to kill. And then easy to forget.

But we must remember what happened here. The Wholesale District's death is not a natural one.


vanished

When the neighborhood's destruction began about a decade ago, the name "NoMad" was invented by the CEO of GFI Development, the company that took over the Breslin Hotel. That's where it started.

For many years, the Breslin served as a rent-stabilized haven for artists--along with writers, transgender women, glove makers, people with AIDS, anyone who might not easily find a comfortable and affordable home elsewhere in the city. When it was taken over, tenants reported harassment, got organized, and posted signs on their doors that read: “We will not move.” They went to court and lost. In 2008 the Breslin became Ace Hotel New York. The fights went on. Soon, all of the old ground-floor businesses vanished. That year, I walked around the block and counted 17 small businesses gone from the building. Part of the Wholesale District's hubbub, they were replaced by upscale hipster mini-chains like Portland’s Stumptown Coffee Roasters and Seattle-born Rudy’s Barber Shop, along with an oyster bar and gastro-pub that took the Breslin name.

The virus spread. Over the years, I've watched the eastern side of Broadway become evermore hip, expensive, and white. A wig shop became a matcha bar. In went places like Want Apothecary, Dig Inn, Black Seed, Opening Ceremony, and Sweetgreen. All cater to a higher class. Many don't take cash.



Often, when I made my weekly visit, I would stand on the median in the middle of Broadway and watch the tale of two cities unfold around me.

On the east side, in the crowd streaming past, almost everyone was white and middle to upper class, many of them tourists. On the west side, the crowd was mixed, with many black and brown people, immigrants, and members of the working class.

You could see it was only a matter of time before the whole corridor was whitewashed. It's hard to deny the colonization here, and not just as metaphor.


East side of Broadway at 29th


West side of Broadway at 29th

In her book Harlem Is Nowhere, writing about gentrification, Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts refers to the “exuberant myopia common to colonists,” people who speak of usually black and brown, working-class neighborhoods as if nothing and no one was there before the upper-class white people came. We hear it all the time when gentrification happens. It appeared in a 2010 story about the birth of NoMad from New York magazine.

"Close your eyes and picture Broadway between 23rd and 30th Streets," it begins. "There’s a good chance you’re either drawing a blank or you’re envisioning a long strip of wholesale perfume retailers, luggage liquidators, and stores that specialize in human-hair wigs. This is not the most picturesque area in the city, nor the most easily romanticized." The area is called nameless, "a nondescript no-man’s-land" dubbed "the Brown Zone" by one critic because it showed up as a brown rectangle on maps. But it also was, and is, brown in its people.



Why is it not picturesque or easily romanticized? Why is it thought of as nondescript, blank, a no-man's land? There was so much here. African women walking down the street in brightly colored dresses and head wraps. Shoppers striding through with armfuls of flowers from the (also vanishing) Flower District. The sidewalks lively with tables full of wares. Windows bright with bottles of body oils with names like Lick Me All Over. In summer, women selling ices in mango and coconut. Men calling out the bargains, barking their deals to passersby.

You could feel the aliveness, the giddy chaos of a street that was not engineered and designed by hyper-capitalists in remote offices. We need places like the Wholesale District. They are good for the soul--and for the city.

Now so much is gone. The shutters are down, the police are on guard. More dead towers are rising. There is more to save--but who with the power is willing?

Folsom Under High Line

*Warning: Images containing bare asses may not be safe for work.

In the 15 years that the Folsom Street East fair has been going, this is the first year it has had a High Line full of tourists directly above it. The newly extended High Line now stretches over 28th Street, where yesterday folks in leather and other fetish gear strutted their stuff--and did some damage with whips and chains.



As the fair raged below, High Liners gathered to gawk up above, craning their necks, pointing fingers, and aiming cameras over the edge. Grandmothers exclaimed, "Oh no, their behinds are hanging out!" Fathers said, "Don't let the kid look--that's too much explaining I don't want to do." Some young ladies squealed with delight and whipped out their iPhones. Others uttered the time-honored statement, "Only in New York."

High Line staff directed everyone exiting at the 28th Street stairs, "Once you go down, you can't come back up." It was an ominous warning.



Down below, boys were shackled to the St. Andrew's Cross and flogged until their backsides were bright red, blindfolded men got to their knees and licked the boots of leather daddies, and girls in fishnets arranged themselves into spanking daisy chains.



There was absolutely nothing "artisanal" at this street fair. There were corn dogs and fries. There was Budweiser. There were pina coladas served in big, plastic, penis-shaped sippy cups.

Couples dressed in leather dog masks enjoyed the fried sausages where a man knelt on the sidewalk with a sign around his neck that said, "Spit on me." Several of the fairgoers obliged.



On the main stage, the pie-eating contest was about to begin. The emcees called to the High Liners and waved, shouting into their microphones, "Do you out-of-towners want to see some men eat ass? How about you? Yeah, you, the tourist girl trying to look like Jackie O. in the sunglasses! You ready for some ass-eating?"



The queer crowd howled up at the High Line, waving and taunting. A few of the High Line tourists waved back. Others just shielded their eyes from the sun and gazed downward.

Then the men in jockstraps took their places on bales of hay and bent over, spreading their cheeks. Other men positioned themselves behind, slapped cream pies onto their partner's buttocks, and commenced to lick the platters clean.



Folsom Street East used to exist in the no-man's land that was 28th Street between 10th and 11th Avenues. To see it, you had to know about it. You had to want to be there. Today, that area is rapidly changing--luxury condos already share the block with the gay leather Eagle bar and Scores strip joint, and a huge swath has just been bulldozed for a new development.

As the High Line spreads its luxurious seed across upper Chelsea, replacing every rough thing in its path with glass and glamor, how long, really, do you think Folsom will be allowed to party here?



Further reading:
Eagle's Nest
Pleasure Chest 1972
Men in Leather
Lenny & Leather

Eagle Under Siege

This weekend, on the night when gay marriage was passed in New York State, the Eagle bar was raided by the NYPD. Was it homophobia or something else?


Inside the Eagle

The city's classic gay leather bar, the Eagle moved to desolate West 28th Street in 2001, after the original Eagle closed further downtown, where it had survived since 1970 in a former longshoreman's pub until the neighborhood went upscale.

As the Times reported on this weekend's raid, the police turned on the lights, shined flashlights in patrons' faces, and forced people to empty their pockets. Patrons report being harassed and intimidated. An NYPD spokesperson said the raid had nothing to do with the bar's clientele, "it has to do with complaints." Said the Times, establishments targeted for this type of inspection are "selected because they are the subjects of 'chronic complaints' from community members" for problems like excessive noise.

How many noise complaints has the Eagle had in the past year? According to the 311 Service Request Map, there have been zero complaints of any kind. Am I missing something here? Most of the complaints in this largely unpopulated area are about construction noise.


The Eagle is a red rectangle, complaints are yellow circles

What's really going on? Was the Eagle raided because it was Pride Weekend? Or because gay marriage just passed in New York? No. It was raided because the city wants to shut it down--because this block is changing fast and the Eagle boys are not what the Bloombergians want here.

Not only has the extended High Line just opened on this block, but AvalonBay is building their massive Avalon West Chelsea directly across the street from the Eagle, taking 60,000 square feet of space to put in a 700-unit residential development with "provisions for restaurants" and a "parking garage for over 140 cars located in the building." To do so, they have already bulldozed a cluster of industrial businesses long located here.



In this shot from the new High Line, you can see the digging machines next to the Folsom East celebration (just a week before the raid). That is a vast empty lot about to be filled. And what will the finished product look like?

Here is the rendering of the complex to come--it looks a lot like Avalon's giant glass boxes on the Bowery and includes their wish for a Whole Foods along with "restaurants, galleries, fashion." If they did it to the Bowery, they can do it to West 28th.


Newmark

What many of those south-facing windows look out on is the roof deck of the Eagle, where men in leather chaps and harnesses cavort. "Don't miss your chance to be a part of the High Line," says Avalon's ad copy. I don't think this is what they mean. Do the High Line huggers really want their view to include sweaty, furry leathermen?


The Eagle

The timing of this raid has nothing to do with Pride or gay marriage, and everything to do with the High Line's recent arrival on 28th Street and every glittering thing it brings in its wake. Mark my words, the Pride Weekend raid on the Eagle is Phase One of the city's plan to push this historic bar out of its home and put the kibosh on the Folsom Street East fair in the process.

This isn't your garden variety homophobia at work. It's Manifest Destiny. It matters to everyone who cares about the preservation of New York's soul because this is part of Bloomberg's plan to turn all of Manhattan into a luxury product. And the dress code does not permit leather and Levi's.


Further Reading:
Folsom Under High Line
Eagle's Nest
Pleasure Chest 1972
Men in Leather
Lenny & Leather

Central Iron & Metal

Another long-time, blue-collar business is about to be lost to High Lined property values. The scrap yard that runs between 27th and 28th Streets, between 10th and 11th Avenues, has been bought from the Central Iron and Metal, Co. by Related for $65 million.



Reports the Real Deal: "At 17,275 square feet and 14,800 square feet, respectively, the two lots have a combined maximum floor-to-area ratio of 241,204 square feet, making them a ripe prospect for residential or commercial development."

This is the latest in an ever lengthening list of blue-collar businesses that have vanished in the shadow of the High Line--some bought out and some forced out--including: the 10th Avenue Tire Shop, the Chelsea Mobil gas station, the Olympia Parking Garage, the Bear Auto Body Shop, the warehouse for Kamco building materials, and the third-generation Brownfeld Auto.

The Central Iron & Metal scrap yard has been recycling and "conserving for tomorrow" since 1927. A ghost sign of their name is (was?) painted on the High Line's flank.

From the history of "NYC's Original Recycler."

I've been watching the scrap yard for a few years now, taking its photo, waiting for it to go. Looking at it, you knew it would never last, not once the second part of the High Line opened right over it, giving tourists a verboten view of ugly old industrial New York. Not once the condo towers started rising all around it, their residents complaining about everything that came before they arrived. It was only a matter of time.



This may not seem like an important loss. (Personally, I like a scrap yard. I love those machines with the big magnets and the grabby bits that move the scrap from one pile to another. I could watch them all day.) But it is important because it's been in business for 86 years and it's one of the last remaining pieces of a neighborhood that has been gobbled up by the High Line and the massive hyper-gentrification it helped to create, including Bloomberg's rezoning of the "Special West Chelsea District," an area that had once been a thriving light-industrial zone, now being bulldozed for luxury housing and retail, the connecting link between MePa and the wicked Hudson Yards scheme.

Of course the scrap yard had to go. Such indelicate things don't belong in Manhattan anymore.

 

Aside from doing the valuable work of recycling metal, the scrap yard also served another purpose. I believe it was a bulwark between the High Liners and Folsom East, as well as the Eagle bar, located on the same block. Having a bit of rough-and-tumble, like a scrap yard with its imposing corrugated walls and junkyard dog warnings, helped to protect that block from infiltrators. Who wants to live next to a scrap yard? (Eh, who am I kidding? Condos will go anywhere.)



With the scrap yard gone--and with massive Avalon West Chelsea rising across the street, plus the existing condo dwellers starting to get cocky--I'll be even more worried about the future of Folsom and the Eagle.

This little block of West 28th Street is getting tighter by the minute.

 

Previously:
Disney World on the Hudson
West 28th Lot
Folsom East and The Eagle
Folsom East Responds
Folsom Fights On
Folsom Under High Line
Eagle Under Siege

West 28th Lot

There was a little empty lot on West 28th, just past 10th Avenue, between the back of a bodega and a scrap metal yard. It was just a slender slip of a thing, filled with green weeds. Nothing special, but kind of mysterious in its jungly way. I've had my eye on it for some time, waiting for it to be filled with an inevitable wedge of sleek modern architecture.


last year

A couple of months ago, a realtor's banner appeared, fixed to the lot's chain-link fence. It featured a sketch of the realtor's dream--a Frank Lloyd Wrightish house, a mini-mansion pressed against the High Line's flank.


a couple months ago

Today, the lot has been completely cleaned out, the weeds plucked and chucked, and the ground covered with gravel. Big, metal flowers stand there now. A sign says the installation is called "Bel Fiore" by Loren Costantini of the Brenda Taylor gallery across the street.

I guess the lot is their sculpture garden--for now.


today

Maybe you prefer metal flowers to wild and weedy things, but I'm sad to see the lot go. Mostly because of what it means.



It's one more sign of change on this block where the massive Avalon West Chelsea is rising fast and another 14-story tower is moving in. We all know what's happening here:

Folsom Fights On
Folsom East and The Eagle
Folsom East Responds
Folsom Under High Line
Eagle Under Siege

The Flower District & Superior Florists

Walking down 28th Street in the flower district is like walking through a tropical jungle – you duck under broad green leaves and breathe in the earthy smells – but it’s a jungle that’s being mercilessly clearcut for development. I wondered about the rumor that this traditional Manhattan market might be moving to the Bronx, so I asked around.



One longtime plant seller told me, “10 to 15 years ago, it was all flowers. Now it’s dead. They’re putting up 22 new hotels in a 5-block radius. Only those of us with a good lease will stay.” Another echoed the sentiment, “Some will leave, some will stay. All the city wants is big business. There are 3 hotels going up on this block.”


once a garden, now the Hilton Garden Inn...
and another one coming...


Thankfully, Superior Florists isn’t going anywhere. The shop has been in the same building since the 1940s and they own the property. “That’s the only reason we’re still here,” owner Steve Rosenberg told me.

Steve remembers when his whole block, from north to south, and 28th Street from Broadway to 7th Avenue, was all flowers. He remembers the characters, men who were like family, men who shouted curses and tossed their wares from one side of the street to the other. And he remembers the colors, “flowers piled up as far as the eye could see.”



His grandfather, Louie, opened the business in 1930. When I asked him how long he’s been working in the shop, Steve said, “Since I’m in diapers.” He started out sweeping the floors, then moved up to folding rose boxes and wiring flowers. He loved the shop and went there every chance he got, stopping in after school and later going home with his father, Sam, sometimes not until midnight on a Friday after spending hours “making weddings.” He wonders if he learned more in the shop and on those streets than he ever did in school. “You learned how to haggle,” he told me, “You learned when to open your mouth and when to keep it shut.”


Louie Rosenberg, founder

Haggling was a sport and an art. Steve used to go out early in the morning with his father and grandfather to buy from the wholesalers. “If a guy told you a dollar, you told him 50 cents and you walked away. The guy always came running after you, shouting, Okay, okay, 50 cents!” But there’s no haggling in the flower market today.

“The whole neighborhood,” Steve said, “has lost its character.”