Every Bodega

Gail Victoria Braddock Quagliata is a photographer in Brooklyn who has taken on the task of capturing every bodega in Manhattan. Her photos, along with a map, are featured on a webpage with the same name: Every Bodega in Manhattan.

I asked Gail a few questions about her project.



Q: Why photograph every bodega--what's important about the city's bodegas?

A: When I moved here from Chicago a decade or so ago, the bodegas were among the first features I appreciated as unique to this city. We don't really have them where I come from, it seems to be either chain convenience stores or grocers. The bodega seems to cater specifically to its own neighborhood in addition to carrying basics.

I've seen home-cooked Dominican food for sale in a largely Dominican neighborhood, religious tracts on prominent display near an Islamic center, and caviar advertised off ritzy 5th Ave, all crammed in next to cigarettes, flowers, diapers, beer, tiny overpriced bottles of aspirin. Plus, many of these shops are open 24 hours, so you've sort of got a perfect mini-metaphor for New York--the bodega never sleeps and is its own melting pot of cultural influences.

Watching these unique places get shuttered as 7-11 stores spread is, in my mind, like watching every random corner pizza shop turn into a Sbarro. Another piece of New York's specific identity is blotted out, to what end? So we can be a boring, homogenous strip mall like anywhere else? Why would anyone want that?

Q: What interests you visually about the New York bodega?

A: Visually, I'm fascinated by how differently each bodega presents itself in spite of essentially selling the same thing. Right now, you'll typically see that Arizona Tea ad, "I heart big cans," which has somehow inserted itself onto the exterior of an absurd majority of bodegas, and probably the NY Lotto logo, but other than that it's a completely unique collage of ads and products crammed into or onto the windows. They're usually quite colorful just because all of the advertisements are competing for your eye at once, or the packages of the products in the window make an interesting pattern, or there are flowers just...being flowers.

I'm also interested in the signs, the surprising lists of goods printed on the awnings, the names of the shops themselves. I realized I'd spent much of my time here not realizing what my own neighborhood bodegas have been called because they're just THE shop on the corner, period. Many of them have quite curious names. Then you'll hit a neighborhood where nearly every shop will have some permutation of the same name. Up near Columbia Presbyterian you practically can't walk a block without hitting a Presbyterian Deli of some stripe. And yet they're completely different in stock, signage, and just general tone. All these display choices are visually compelling to me.



Q: How do you tell the difference between a bodega and a grocer's?

A: Initially, I adopted the very loose Potter Stewart "I know it when I see it" type approach, which lasted for about a day of shooting in January after staring at one market for 15 minutes, freezing for no good reason, trying to decide if it fit. My criteria is that a bodega sells lotto tickets, beer, or cigarettes (preferably all three). Anything that advertises specials in the window not involving a deli counter is probably not a bodega--you don't need to have sales when your customers are desperate and it's 3am!

If it's a gray area beyond that, which is rare, I go inside the shop. More than a deli counter, say, a meat counter, no dice. If they have a printed circular with coupons, it's a grocer. I've found the cigarette requirement really helps in these cases, most bodegas sell cigarettes and most grocers or ambiguous-looking health food markets, in my experience, do not. Newspapers could probably fit in, here, too. Bodegas tend to sell newspapers where grocers may not. But cigarettes usually work as my deciding factor.

Q: How do you plan to get to every single one? There must be a lot of them!

A: Oh, man, there are thousands! I'm just walking the entire island block by block and marking off where I've been on a map. I started at the top and I'm working my way down, with the occasional interruption if I'm somewhere random with my camera. [Click here to see a map of Gail's progress so far.]

I think walking through the entire city is the only way to do it. I'm certain the entire list will have changed by the time I've finished. I know several of the shops I've shot in the past few months have closed already, I see new ones opening, and 7-11 stores keep popping up like weeds. My project is sort of a moment frozen in time, I guess.

Sweet Banana

Originally published for Eater's "Bodega Week" in March (hence the bodega questions), my profile of the Sweet Banana Candy Store, which is slated to be shuttered by the Stonehenge Group by the end of this month, along with several other long-time small businesses on the block.

The Sweet Banana Candy Store has been run by "Candy Lady" Patricia on 9th Avenue and 17th Street in Chelsea for the past 15 years. Wearing its age proudly, without a hint of vanity, it sits on a ragtag block that has somehow managed to stay frozen in time, almost untouched by the hyper-gentrifying waves that push in from all sides.

The shop's battered awning slumps down over a front window spattered with graffiti and ads for USA Gold brand cigarettes and Slush Puppie frozen drinks. A neon sign advertising "Fresh Coffee" has lost its light.



Patricia doesn't consider her shop a bodega. "It's a candy store," she tells me with a shrug from behind her counter where a postcard of a handgun-toting Jesus Christ guards the cash register. But Sweet Banana does have many markings of the bodega breed: lottery, ribbons of scratch tickets, bags of plantain chips, a display of vintage pocket hair brushes that fit right in the palm of your hand ("Slip it over your middle finger and feel the relaxation spread as it glides through your hair and gently massages your scalp").

And there's the quintessential hardworking bodega cat who likes to lounge among the newspaper stacks.



A few years ago, when Sweet Banana got a new landlord, we thought we'd lose it, but it somehow survived, despite the rapid changes that surround it. Asked how her business has been since the the rising tides of "MePa" and the High Line began flooding the neighborhood, Patricia shrugs and says, "So-so. It's okay." She's a woman of few words.


Patricia the candy lady

Sweet Banana also serves as a social center for many people of the neighborhood. Men and women hang out here to talk and spend time together.

On most days you can find a friendly woman named Hassie seated behind the stuffed candy rack, selling hot homemade empanadas from an insulated bag for a dollar apiece. They are delicious and come straight from her kitchen on 22nd Street where she has lived for her entire 52 years.



"We keep each other company," Hassie says of her time spent in Patricia's store. She appreciates how Patricia keeps her prices low so the neighborhood people can afford to shop, and she likes to watch the kids come in from the junior high and high school nearby. They come in packs, laughing and gossiping, to grab handfuls of their favorite candies out of the big wooden bin--individually wrapped Circus Peanuts and Swedish fish, mini Butterfingers and Laffy Taffy, Charms Blow Pops and Dum Dums.

Hassie tells me how she and Patricia have watched many of their neighbors grow up. "From little kids, they go to college and come back, and they visit her. They always come back here."

Sweet Banana is more than a candy store or a bodega, it's a meeting place and a home base, a part of the family for many local people. They go away from the neighborhood knowing that Sweet Banana will be here when they return. Of course, with the massive changes happening all around it, how much longer can it last? [This was written before we knew the answer to that question would be June 30.]

Further reading about this block:
New Barber Shop
Death of a Block II
Death of a Block
Saving 9th Avenue
Sweet Banana Candy Store
Chelsea Liquors
New China

Little Bodega

In the midst of great efforts to save our bodegas from 7-Eleven assimilation and destruction, miniature model artist Randy Hage sends in another of his masterful miniatures. This time it's the endangered species known as the New York bodega.


all photos: Randy Hage

Inspired by the R&R Deli Grocery, vanished from the corner of Albany and Pacific in Brooklyn, the mini bodega has it all. The crummy payphone and bubblegum machines (secured with a cinderblock) out front. The busted hand-painted sign loaded with a list of wares (BEER, MEAT, COFFEE). The window cluttered with junk ads for Mega Millions and menthol cigarettes. The sidewalk littered with dead leaves and trash.



Of course, it's what's inside that really makes the city's bodegas special.

As Randy says, "A chain store will never be able to foster the sense of community and meaningful friendships that a mom-and-pop type store can. In a busy city, it is the contact with people we know and care about that brings feelings of belonging. Community, diversity, and character are lost when the chain stores move in."

But if 7-Eleven gets its way, all we'll have left of the New York bodega are models and memories.



See more of Randy's work:
Model New York
Unreal Ideal Hosiery
Mini Mars Bar

Join the fight against 7-11:
No 7-11 on Facebook
No 7-11 on Twitter

And here's one more--with a quarter rolled in to show just how miniature this miniature is.

We Want Our Bodega

Something's coming to the corner of Mott and Houston.



The space used to be La Cocina corner deli, but it's been for rent for awhile now.

Its side has long been wrapped in a plasticky advertisement, hot pink and decorated with super-skinny women shoppers (some without eyes). They clutch their bags and strike poses around the words YOUR STORE HERE.



It's an insulting sign and appropriately attracted neighborhood rage from the beginning.

"We want our bodega," said one writer in black Magic Marker. "No more yuppies in Nolita."



A bit more recently, another writer got more colorful, saying, "FUCK YOU BLOODSUCKERS WE WANT A BODEGA BACK" and "FUCK YOU HOPE IT BURNS DOWN BEFORE IT GOES BROKE."

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

Merchants

VANISHED


photo by Brian

Brian writes in about the closure of Merchants, a popular Chelsea restaurant that had been at 17th Street and 7th Avenue for 25 years:

"The owner was papering up the place because they closed on the 28th. I knew that the day was coming because a developer bought the corner of that block and shuttered the health food grill and the bodega last year. In fact, the bodega owner I’d known for 16 years was so upset that he went home and died of a heart attack. They had just put money into remodeling, a brand new awning, and repainting. Now it’s a graffiti magnet."

I reported on the bodega's closure in July. It is, indeed, still sitting empty, more high-rent blight, collecting graffiti and garbage. The new awning has been carved up, the name of the store removed.



Brian continues:

"I spoke with the owner of Merchants and he told me landlords in the area are using the new Barney’s as a benchmark for their rents, meaning they’re not going to be affordable to the average non-corporate lessee. You need Walgreens or Red Lobster dollars to afford to open. He’s been looking to stay in Chelsea but says the prices are so high he’d have to do something beyond selling food and drink to actually make money."



And, as with many closures, there's a goodbye sign on the door. This one encircled with a glitter heart.

Washington Heights Gentrification Sale

When the 25-year-old Jesse's Deli got the boot from its landlord in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, local customers Doug Cameron and Tommy Noonan protested with a colorful collection of "artisanal landlord price hike" posters. They created a sensation.


all photos courtesy Doug Cameron

Now they've turned their talents to a block of mom and pops in Washington Heights. The businesses, many of which have been on Broadway and West 162nd for decades, have been evicted by the building's new owners, again with an impossible rent hike. (Read about their story in the Village Voice.)





Doug Cameron explained to Vanishing New York:

"This time an entire block in Washington Heights is throwing a ‘Gentrification In Progress’ Sale. The Punta Cana is officially rebranded as the Casa de Campo, which is the name of an extremely wealthy gated community and resort in the Dominican Republic. Posters in its windows now offer 'small plates for twice the price,' such as a single Hand-Cut Seasonal Summer French Fry for $8.99. The awning displays the new Casa de Campo name, along with the logo of a large wealthy man with a monocle eating a tiny portion plate of food."





"The only other business that has not yet moved in the past couple weeks is the Frutera El Buen Camino. The landlord can’t re-rent the space because of a structural problem. Now, next to the Frutera is a new awning: The Nueva Frutera El Buen Hipster, a yuppie juice bar offering Fresh-Mowed Wheatgrass Shots for $7.99, and Locally-Skimmed Pond Scum Smoothies for $14.99."



Doug and Tommy have included a call to action as well: "Tell Bill De Blasio to support the Bill De Bodega," a.k.a. the Small Business Jobs Survival Act (SBJSA). They've also created a site for the Bill de Bodega.


For more on what you can do to save small businesses in the city, visit #SaveNYC and join the group on Facebook.

7-11 Strikes Again

This past summer, we noted the construction of yet another 7-Eleven, plopped right next to Kyung's Korean grocery on 25th and 8th.



Now New York Neon chronicler Thomas Rinaldi writes in with a photo and the inevitable news:

"7-11 seems to have put another bodega down, and this time it's MINE. Kyung's at 25th and 8th shuttered at the end of March. Not sure how long they'd been there. A neighbor who has been in Chelsea probably 50 years told me there had been a bodega there as long as he could remember. They closed up almost overnight. The interior is already gutted. When I asked them what happened, they were somewhat elusive about the whole thing--mentioned something about a rent hike, said it was getting harder to do business in Chelsea, that they might open up a shop somewhere in Jersey. Though they did not specifically blame 7-11, I cannot imagine this was a coincidence. I wish I'd asked more, but they really seemed not to want to talk about it, and I didn't blame them. Anyhow, since I'm boycotting that 7-11, I now have to go annoyingly farther afield for my late-night ice cream sandwiches, my Sunday morning BLTs, my most-mornings coffee. I wait apprehensively to see what comes here next."

As do we all.

Les Desirs PLUS

Last week, I reported on the impending demise of Les Desirs Patisserie in Chelsea. Last night, their plight made the news on NY1, which you can watch here, and flyers have turned up all over the neighborhood asking you to stop in and sign the petition, which has so far gathered about 700 signatures.



But it's not just Les Desirs that's in danger in vanishing. It appears that the entire strip of businesses on this block is being flipped.

On the corner of 25th, the Marathon Bank branch closed in late September. Next to the bank, a Jackson Hewitt tax prep office has closed.



Next in line, there's a bodega called Lotto Center. Inside, it's the usual lottery tickets, bags of plantain chips, and dishwashing liquid. In the back, there's a makeshift cafe table where a small group of older men gather. They sit talking. Maybe this is their Les Desirs?

Last week, a woman in the bakery told me that the store's neighbor, upscale tapas restaurant Txikito, will be expanding and taking over the bodega.

Txikito, like the rumored incoming Sullivan Street Bakery, represents the new tone of this business strip. It's known for its big prices on small plates, from the quail eggs to the octopus carpaccio. Reviewers on Menupages note: "Our bill ended up being over $100 per person" and "the prices were outrageous and it almost seemed as if the management was trying to test how HIGH they could take their prices up."



The neighbors who frequent this business strip today cannot afford Txikito, just as they can't afford to eat at Co., on the 24th Street corner, just as the panini at Sullivan Street will be beyond their meager means.

At this rate of loss, I won't be surprised when the Cleaners & Tailor next to Les Desirs vanishes, too. Maybe it will be replaced by a wine bar. Or something equally vital to the people who actually live on the block.

*Everyday Chatter

Luna Lounge owner on the LES: "you get what you deserve in this life, I believe. And, because few people were standing up for places like Collective: Unconscious, Tonic, CBGB and Luna Lounge, the Lower East Side must now live with obnoxious bistros that cater to people with little interest or understanding of the former importance of this neighborhood." [EVG]

Death of a bodega prompts "No more yuppies--bring back our bodega" graffiti on E. Houston. [BB]

CB2 says "No!" to NYU's monster expansion. [Curbed]

Glenn Beck attacks the Park Slope Food Co-op for boycotting Israel. [BP]

When being an iPhone zombie just isn't enough:


Check out the LES Film Fest lineup. [TLD]

Harlem neon nocturne. [NYN]

Anapoli ice cream parlor celebrates 115 years in Bay Ridge. [NYDN]

Redesigning 51 Astor Place with "fragments of lost East Village landmarks." [Curbed]

March 9: Networked New York--with blogger panelists. [P&W]

"In Williamsburg, where tattooed moms and mustachioed dads trailed by toddlers are an increasingly common sight, the area is suffering from a shortage of family-size apartments with three bedrooms or more." [WSJ]

M&H Deli

VANISHED

It's the little places that make a neighborhood function like a neighborhood. Bodegas and other small, affordable markets are vanishing fast across the city. Here's another.

Mike writes in: "I thought you might be interested in the closing of the M&H Deli (bodega) on Dekalb Ave and Saint Felix Street in Fort Greene, Brooklyn. Closing after 35 years due to rising rent, per the sign. It was your pretty typical bodega serving the community and the Brooklyn Hospital across the street."



Once again, it's not due to lack of business. It's not the Internet. The sign makes the reason clear.

Sweetheart Coffee Bakery

For awhile I've been worried about the few remaining scrappy little businesses on the block of 8th Ave between 13th and Greenwich. Now that the undulating 1 Jackson Square is coming, it seems only a matter of time before the Fresh Farm bodega, Village Pizza shop, and Sweetheart Coffee Bakery vanish.



Yesterday, I walked by to find the Sweetheart boarded up with plywood.



I went into Village Pizza to ask about it and the guy assured me the facade of the building is just being restored and the businesses, including the bakery, which has been here for about 15 years, will be returning.

But why am I still filled with a sense of foreboding? Maybe because workmen were going at it inside with a circular saw. That's not facade restoration--which was done already in 2005, by the same company. And Racked says "the fate of the bakery is up in the air," though the luxy stores will be returning. (And nobody's touched the colorfully named "Shoegasm.")



Let's face it, that bakery is not coming back. Say goodbye to vegan and dietetic baked snacks, to giant chocolate muffins and little butter cookies, and to empanadas from "Daniel the king of empanadas"--after Sucelt closed, Sweetheart's Argentinian empanadas were a good alternative.

Isn't it then inevitable that Village Pizza and the neighboring bodega will also shutter?

*Everyday Chatter

Supermodel Kate Moss is cast in solid gold: "2.8 million, 110-pound solid gold...the largest such creation built since ancient Egypt." [yahoo]

Last year I visited the Antiques Garage, final holdout of the Chelsea flea market, soon after its building was sold to a developer for $42.7 million. It was just a matter of time, and today we hear it's leaving the hood for good. [Racked]

Huge East 125th Street rezone flies right under the radar. [Curbed]

Read this insane story about a self-described "loud, pushy," but "deeply sensative" [sic] wealthy mom's ad looking for a nanny--she's also looking for a book deal (aren't we all?). [Times]

Bodega cats rock. And for that they deserve their very own flickr pool--for when the bodegas vanish, so will the bodega cats.

Has NYC's flourishing bachelorette culture inspired little booze-flavored gummi penises? Only if you can wear them around your neck. [Grub St]

A commenter here mentioned "Shteeble Row," a term I was not familiar with. I had no idea that's what I was snapping pictures of along 225-283 East Broadway, now going "synagondo." A search turned up this appealing flickr set.

And checking in with some ongoing developments around town...

The first floor of 15 Union Square West, that big black condo, is shaping up to look an awful lot like a future bank:


The gutting of Kurowycky has picked up the pace and is going like gangbusters:


The foundation of 1 Jackson Square is cemented and now the scaffolding is expanding--into the street and into the sky:

Hudson Cats

There's a sign in the window at Myers of Keswick on Hudson Street announcing the Facebook fan page of Molly the cat. You might remember her as the cat who got stuck in the wall and captivated the city for two weeks in 2006.

During that ordeal, she even got a free therapy session from renowned cat shrink Carole Wilbourn, who played "the music of humpback whales and ocean sounds" to soothe Molly in her imprisonment.



Three years after her rescue, Molly seems to be doing fine. But all the attention may have gone to her head. I walked by recently to find her waiting on the shop's doorstep. She looked up, fully expecting me, a passing stranger, to open the door for her. Of course, I obliged. She entered and didn't even bother to say thank you.

Her next-door neighbor, an unnamed bodega cat, is not so famous. No celebu-cat, he's not a "Baby Jessica." He didn't get trapped in any walls or wells. He doesn't have a single Facebook fan and he never got featured in the New York Times. Does he care? Does he feel overshadowed to this day by his more celebrated neighbor?

We may never know.

*Everyday Chatter

For what it's worth, I am now on Facebook--with a regular page and a fan page. Not really sure what I'm doing there, but...

Some insider tips on how to research a building. [TM]

Now at Bergdorf's, for a mere $1850: "Marc Jacobs has been able to effectively channel some of that punky East Village spirit in his new St. Marks Hobo, a quilted black satin handbag that’s been studded (like most St. Marks denizens) for extra edge." [EVG]

Read it and weep. Writes Matt Harvey: "Traffic halts while the five blondes flash their popsicle-colored thongs as they drunkenly pile into a cab on East Houston Street..." [NYP]

Aww...bodega cat asleep amongst the Dipsy Doodles:


Artist Damon Rich maps foreclosures on the Panorama of NYC--a "pink stigmata" across the city. [NYT]

Developers in Harlem go bust--one considers "chopping up [a] home, which belonged to a Harlem family for nearly 90 years, and renting it out" to college kids. [NYT]

Joe Jr's closing covered by Serious Eats and NY1.

David's Bagels spot is still empty--says East Village Idiot, "serves their old landlord right." [via Eater]

The artisanal fetishists are now doing their damnedest to ruin pizza--"The only thing they haven’t brought over is the water from that polluted Bay of Naples." [NYT]

Edward Hopper's "Nighthawks" spot to be covered by MTA ventilation monstrosity. [Curbed]

*Everyday Chatter

After 18 years, the Viceroy restaurant in Chelsea has shuttered. New York once called it "a bit of a vanguard back in 1993...before an explosion of art galleries officially shifted the neighborhood from gay to gay and upscale."


Sonny's Grocery in Hell's Kitchen is shuttered by the City after 41 years. [DNA]

Classic: Paris Is Burning plays at the IFC Center on June 27. [IFC]

This weekend, "Theater for One" brings you into a black box in Times Square. [LM]

Intervideo is gone. Who knows what hell will replace it. [EVG]

Finding the Studebaker signage of the city--and more. [FNY]

Remembering old Yorkville. [LC]

A visit to the controversial bodega exhibit. [BB]

Ginsberg Photos

You have until April to go see "Beat Memories: The Photographs of Allen Ginsberg" at NYU's Grey Art Gallery.



A vast array of Ginsberg's black-and-white, hand-inscribed photographs, many were taken in the East Village where the poet lived first on 7th Street and later on 12th. (In the above photo, he's on the 7th Street rooftop, the steeples of St. Brigid's in the background.)

On one wall, a quartet of views from his 12th Street apartment show a ragged backside in winter, spring, and summer, scenes of ailanthus trees and chimney pots. Allen died there in 1997. Now someone new occupies that renovated kitchen, looks out that window, and does what with it?

Among the many photos, there are also artifacts in vitrines--letters, books, and other ephemera. In one hand-written letter to Carl Solomon, Ginsberg tells of visiting Ezra Pound, to whom he gave a Beatles record as an 82nd birthday gift. I keep trying to imagine crotchety old Ezra Pound listening to Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Allen mostly took pictures of his friends, so detailed city scenery is rare. But there is one shot in the show that does the trick, a rarely seen photo of Avenue A between 7th and 8th along Tompkins Square Park. Taken in 1953 of a "Shopping Cart Prophet," it shows the long-lost businesses of that time--the Volga Inn, a Bar & Grill, a Soda Ice Cream Candy Luncheonette, and the Park Center Restaurant (now the "new" Odessa, a photo lab, a bodega, and Sushi Lounge). Writing on the photo, Ginsberg recalls: "Leshko's Restaurant was cheap and popular as at present." That's gone, too.

A little more Allen Ginsberg:
Howl
Kiev

*Everyday Chatter

As predicted, the Robin Raj bodega/health and beauty aids shop on the corner of 14th and 3rd is going to fall. Of course. There needs to be a high-rise on every corner, right? [Curbed]

I recently went by Robin Raj to take a few snapshots. I was impressed by the presence of Christmas decorations still gracing the windows. I also like their cartoon hams and other food items on their outdoor menu. See more pics here.


Alex offers more fab vintage photography from his early days on the LES. [FP]

Chocolate Bar in the East Village wants to reinvigorate the egg cream. A noble intention, but the egg cream is alive and well across the LES and the city. My favorites can be found at Ray's Candy, Katz's, and Eisenberg's. As for hazelnut egg creams, that's a little hard to digest. [Times]

East Village synagogue to be demolished for luxury apartments/synagogue hybrid. Sounds kind of like a hazelnut egg cream, doesn't it? [Curbed]

...Or a Blackberry and an Orthodox Jew? If there's one thing I hate more than oblivious cell-walking, it's oblivious text-walking. In Brooklyn, you'll burn in Hell for texting. Gvalld! [NYW]

Artwashing 14th and 8th

About a decade ago, I had a dream that the southeast corner of 14th Street and 8th Avenue was being torn down to make room for WalMart. That didn't happen. At the time, I checked with one of the business owners (there was a popular Korean deli, a bodega, and a liquor store). He told me that the owner of the buildings had turned down offers of up to $45 million for the whole lot.



But then, last year, it all went.

We learned that a 10-story office tower is coming, designed by architect Gene Kaufman and developed by the Chun Woo Realty Corporation.

Chun Woo Realty Corp, DNA reported last year, "has owned the two properties for around three decades...noting that redevelopment was something they’d 'been contemplating for over a decade.'"

“We’re not developers who moved in and are pushing small businesses out. We’re actually the longtime permanent owners of the building, and it was actually our business,” the developer said of the deli. He didn't mention the other two businesses or any residents upstairs, or the impact this high-end office tower will have on the neighborhood.



In the meantime, until demolition, they're doing a little artwashing with Bombay Sapphire.



I walked by yesterday to find "Art in Progress" signs on the deli. Bombay Sapphire says, "Stir Creativity."

Security guards policed the installation of several canvases.



The booze corporation has a message for us:

"Creativity has no boundaries. It can flourish in art galleries, and it can thrive on the streets outside them. With Art in Progress, Bombay Sapphire is transforming the city's construction sites into open air art galleries to inspire New Yorkers' own creativity."

This is artwashing.

Defined by Feargus O'Sullivan, artwashing is a "profit-driven regeneration maneuver" in which "the work and presence of artists and creative workers is used to add a cursory sheen to a place's transformation.... It often happens...when developers spot areas that have attracted residents from creative industries, then earmark them as ripe for investment and remarketing to a new kind of customer."



Artwashing attracts hyper-gentrification and it is also public relations. And murky advertising. If you're looking at this and thinking it's an unmitigated good, well, they've got you right where they want you.

This is not spontaneous creativity. It's not bohemian aliveness in the Village. It's the spoonful of sugar that helps the poison go down.

This is a corporate-development collaboration that artists have agreed to participate in, though it would be better if they did a little more critical thinking about that participation.

It reminds me of when luxury neighbor, One Jackson Square, went up next door in 2007. The developers wrapped that site in billboards that capitalized on the creativity and bohemian history of the Village. "To this day," said the ad materials, "the birthplace of bohemian culture is still home to an eclectic mix of artists, iconoclasts and cognoscenti."

On the billboard, it read, "The Spirit of Greenwich Village Is Alive and Well."

Today, One Jackson Square is home to a Starbucks and a TD Bank.