Record Mart

VANISHED

After 62 years, Record Mart, "the oldest record store in Manhattan," has closed.


photo: Jesse Jarnow

Untapped Cities reports the sad news, “I’d seen them clearing the store out last week but I thought it was because of the fear of looting.” It was not the looting. It was "due to the pandemic," according to a sign on their door, which also reads, "We are moving into the vintage audio business, where we buy, refurbish, and sell audio equipment. Please visit us at recordmartwifi.com to browse our selection, or if you want to contact us to sell your audio gear."

I was last inside Record Mart in December. I worried about it then and bought a few things. I also took this video. A little moment of joy under the ground at Times Square.

Colony to CVS

When the great Colony Music was forced to shutter in 2012 by a massive rent hike, after 60 years in Times Square, its space in the Brill Building was gutted and turned into a revolving door of random businesses.


2013

There were Christmas and Halloween stores, a Build-A-Bear Workshop, and some other crap. That's what happens when the new landlord quintuples the rent to $5 million and there's no commercial rent control or any other policies protecting the small businesspeople of this city from unregulated greed.

Now, after 7 years of high-rent blight and unstable pop-up ventures, the space has been taken by the only kind of retailer that can afford such millions--a giant chain store.

Colony is now a CVS.


2019

To add insult to injury, the owners of the landmarked Brill have decided to obscure this gorgeous, historic building with digital screens. (How was the Landmarks Preservation Commission okay with this mess?)

Seven years. What a long, sad trip it's been.


a more beautiful past

Show World to Hive

After going, going, going, Show World is so very gone.

On 8th Avenue near 42nd Street, the buildings that made up Show World and its neighboring businesses are wrapped in scaffolding and demolition shrouds.


today

The interiors have been completely demolished, but the buildings will remain, renovated into something called The Hive, "an $80 million boutique office and retail property," according to The Real Deal, geared to "attract technology, financial and media tenants."

So what else is new?


architect's rendering

In the Commercial Observer, The Hive speaks for itself, describing itself as "authentic" to the neighborhood.

"On the inside," it says, "you will find a hip, urban interior featuring exposed hardwood floors, brick walls and steal columns throughout. The historic character of the building reflects the roll-up-your-sleeves work ethic that defined the success of the many companies that called this neighborhood home."

Roll up your sleeves? More like take off your panties.


1976, John Sotomayor/The New York Times

Richard Basciano, New York’s former "prince of porn," opened Show World in the mid-1970s.

It featured a circus theme, the interior decorated with weird clown dolls.

After Giuliani’s 1995 zoning ordinance to restrict adult entertainment businesses, Show World soldiered on, its naughty bits whittled away piece by piece. By 1998, the live girls were gone and the theater space was leased to an off-off-Broadway company that performed Chekhov plays on stages where naked girls once performed live sex acts, including Face Shows—as the sign said, “Let our girls sit on your face.” (Here's an NSFW look inside in 1980.)


2003


2003

The original, main section of Show World Center vanished (mostly) in 2004 and became a family-friendly entertainment place, featuring comedy and light horror (Times Scare). However, right next door, a smaller Show World Center remained a XXX joint, a sort of annex to the original.



Along with video peeps, dirty DVDs, and toys, you could also find rooms full of (almost) nothing but crossword puzzle books -- by order of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

When he passed his unconstitutional ordinance against sex shops, part of the ruling stated that a store would be considered X-rated if 40 percent or more of their stock or floor space was in adult materials. As the Times reported at the time, the sex shops complied--by loading their spaces with just enough non-adult materials to qualify them as not X-rated.

So you could wander through Show World, up and down front and back staircases, into warrens and hallways, from one room to the next, passing through smut and crossword puzzles. It was a strange experience.



That Show World went up for lease or sale in 2008, but did not close until 2018, after the death of Basciano in 2017.

The end had arrived.


Show World main lobby, 2003


Show World main lobby, 2018

Gone with Show World are a number of other businesses, including those in Three Hundred Three Towers. With the entrance around the back, it held offices and apartments, possibly an odd hotel--I could never quite figure it out.

I don't know where its people were displaced to.


2011


2018

What remains of Show World and its neighbors will be just a shell, all its dirty, unfettered history gutted and remade for a new population.

But it's all okay, because "Working at The Hive," says The Hive, "will impart a sense of pride and authenticity."

It's going to be so authentic, in fact, the architects have rendered a new retail establishment called AUTHENTIC--just in case anybody thinks The Hive is anything but.



Also, these people playing ping-pong on the roof!

McHale's Sign

When the beloved Hell's Kitchen bar McHale's was forced to close in 2006 and replaced by a luxury condo tower, New Yorkers wept. In 2012, its neon sign was salvaged and then resurfaced in a nearby bar. It wasn't McHale's, but one could dream.

Now a commenter alerts us that the sign has resurfaced once again--on ebay.


ebay

It can be yours for $2,500 -- or else it gets destroyed.

The seller writes:

"I bought this to repurpose the sign for something else, but was told this was a popular bar in the theater district at one time. Now demolished for more condos. I would prefer this go to someone interested in NYC history or Mchales and so I am giving this one shot, and then it heads off to the shop. This is located in NYC."


2006

A Good Corner

The surviving peep shows at the margins around Times Square keep vanishing. Yesterday I reported on the demise of old Show World. There's a smaller, less storied spot a few blocks south on 8th Avenue at 39th Street--and it's vanishing, too.



Vihan's Video, with the ever-photogenic neon sign on the front, has a giant FOR LEASE banner on it.

"3-Floor Flagship," it says. "Restaurant/Bar."



Sadly, this whole corner is being destroyed--and it was a good corner, too, an old slice of the old city hanging on at the edge of the Garment District.

Last year, the marvelous Mayfair Barber Shop was replaced by the boring, useless Corvo Coffee. More recently, NYC Fried Chicken shuttered. It was always a good spot to watch the people seated at the windows. The Shoe Repairs place next door is still open, but for how long? And there's a liquor store with two antique neon signs--for some reason, it is shown in the realtor's listing.



Barber shop, cobbler/tailor shop, fried chicken joint, liquor store, peep joint. It was a rare corner, a scrappy survivor, and it's being chipped away.

Show World Center

VANISHED

Last year, Richard Basciano, "New York’s former prince of porn," died, leaving behind the Show World building at 42nd St. and Eighth Ave. While the big Show World closed in 2004, the next door Show World Center remained, a glittering warren of peep booths, sex toys, and crossword puzzle books. I wrote, "Now is probably the time to go and say goodbye. The last gasp of smutty old Times Square may not be here tomorrow."

Well, Show World Center is now gone.



The lights are off and the shutter is down.



The inside is empty. A peek around back shows the hallway with its mirrored diamond decorations, along with stacks of boxes waiting to be moved out.



A number of other businesses in this building have also shuttered, making me wonder if the place has been sold and will be demolished for another glass hotel tower.

I talked to the Nuts 4 Nuts guy who works outside and he told me that Show World Center closed last month. He said the building will not be torn down. A security guard confirmed that information, saying the place will be renovated instead.

It's totally unlikely that a new Show World will open in the spot. We'll probably get a chain store of one kind or another. That's what the new Times Square deserves. But some will remember that for 40 years, Show World was here, smelling of bleach and orange-scented mop water, doing its service for New Yorkers, commuters, and tourists alike. With one more down, only a few peeps remain.

See inside Show World:
Last year
Before the closure in 2004 
In 1980
And read Death Knell of the Peeps

(Thanks to Warren for the tip.)

B.B. King's

VANISHING

B.B. King's blues club on 42nd Street is closing at the end of April.

In a press release, they wrote:

"Despite many sold out shows, the location's rent escalated to an unsustainable level, leaving us no choice but to close our doors. Unfortunately this has become a growing trend in New York City, with other iconic music venues and businesses falling victim to opportunistic property owners. This venue's legacy extends much further than the stage, playing a role in Times Square's revitalization two decades ago. It is a shame that wasn't taken into consideration regarding its future in the area."


after the death of B.B. King

As they say, B.B. King's played a role in the redevelopment of 42nd Street, helping to change it from honky-tonk to tourist-friendly. In her definitive book on the topic, Times Square Roulette, Lynn Sagalyn notes B.B. King's as one of the "rush of commercial developments" defining the New 42nd Street.

B.B. King Blues Club & Grill, she writes, brought "upscale style compared to its decade-old venue in Greenwich Village [The Blue Note]; if successful, the brand-hopeful will expand the concept to other cities."

When they moved to 42nd St. in 1999, the Times listed it among many other theme restaurants, noting, "The revival of Times Square has attracted everything from a wax museum and a Warner Brothers store to a restaurant for wrestling fans. But until now no new nightclubs have announced plans to move to the district, once the epicenter of night life in New York."

It's yet another case of hyper-gentrification eating its own. Still, B.B. King's was locally grown and it was loved by many New Yorkers--who would not be caught dead on the New 42nd Street except to see a show at B.B. King's.

It's also yet another case of hiked rent pushing out a successful business. While people like Deputy Mayor Alicia Glen want to say that the city should not be protecting businesses because “there are some small businesses that are probably going to just fail because they’re not very good businesses," New Yorkers know that good businesses "fail" every day because their landlords decide to force them out.

The club's owners are currently looking for a new location in Manhattan.

Boho's Lament

Filmmaker Dustin Cohen has made a poignant short film about the dying soul of New York with one of the last of the original East Village bohemians.

He writes: "I met Phillip Giambri at Grassroots Tavern (R.I.P.) on St. Mark's Place during the summer of 2016 after hearing him perform at an open mic in the East Village. He drank me under the table that afternoon, but not before we agreed to collaborate and bring his poem 'The Boho's Lament' to life."



Giambri was a Grassroots regular. He was written up in the Times a couple of years ago as "the Ancient Mariner, being a Navy veteran and as relentless a storyteller as Coleridge’s salty narrator."

As Cohen notes on the film's Vimeo page, Giambri "has been writing and performing in New York City's East Village since 1968," and you can find him "sipping cheap drinks and waxing philosophical at the some of the last remaining real East Village dive bars like Coal Yard, Doc Holidays, 7B, and International Bar. He hosts an open mic on the last Wednesday of every month at Three of Cups Lounge on First Avenue." (Which will also close, on April 1 -- so tonight is the last night of the open mic.)

You can also find him online.

Watch the video:


The Boho's Lament from Dustin Cohen on Vimeo.

John's Barber Shop

VANISHED

Just a couple of months ago, I wrote about the sudden disappearance of the Mayfair Barber Shop and the move of one of its barbers to John's Barber Shop on the underground mezzanine of the 42nd Street and 8th Avenue subway station.

Now we hear from reader Ken that John's Barber Shop has disappeared -- along with two other neighboring small businesses. Ken called John and reports: "He closed the shop because it became too expensive and no longer cuts hair. Bad for the city and bad for my hair."

What does that mean about the closure of the other shops? Does "too expensive" mean rents were hiked or leases not renewed?


photo from Ken

Before moving to this spot in 1997, John Drakakis worked with his brother Nick in another subterranean spot, in the subway station entrance at the northeast corner of 42nd and 8th. As the Times reported in 1995, "In 1993 the Transit Authority, citing security and maintenance problems, sealed the gate from the passageway to the subway track below. Pedestrian traffic plunged. All the merchants except the barbershop closed."

The site then became part of the Times Square hyper-gentrification project, and the barbershop was forced to close, "demolished to make way for an entertainment center." John had worked in the shop for 39 years.


New York Times, 1995

Nick moved to a little spot at 349 West 44th (he's still there). In 1997, John opened his shop on the subway mezzanine, mostly under the Port Authority bus station. It's an out of the way location, and business started slow, but it built up over the years.

Every time I walked past, John was busy with a customer.





Just last year, he got redecorated by ad agency Mother New York, who replaced his 1980s-looking hairdo posters with new shots.

Friedman's at the Edison

The fifth location of Friedman's has now opened in the space that long held the beloved Cafe Edison, which was forced to close in 2014 after decades in business.

The new restaurant announced its opening on Facebook a couple of weeks ago: "FRIEDMAN'S @ Edison has officially opened and we are super excited !!😊" Plus the hashtags: #eatgoodfood #mindfuleating #farmtotable #friedmansnyc #glutenfreee #celiacsafe #fall #edisonhotel #nowopen #2017 #goodvibesonly #dinner #breakfast #lunch #brunchnyc



Reluctantly, I went to see what had become of the wonderful Cafe Edison, the place we fought so hard to save -- and lost.

A sign at the door of Friedman's read: "A little taste of the farm for the big city." (See: The Wisconsinization of New York.) Already, everything was off.

Through the entrance, no more Betty at her cluttered cash register surrounded by signs that read, "No Large Luggage" and "Cash Only" and "If you are grouchy or just plain mean, there will be a $10 charge for putting up with you."



At Friedman's, all the character has been stripped away.

The dusty old chandeliers have been ripped out. The counter is gone. The giddy pink and powder-blue walls and columns have been painted beige. And beige. Two shades of beige.

As Rem Koolhaas wrote of The Generic City, "Close your eyes and imagine an explosion of beige."



At Friedman's, you don't have to close your eyes to imagine. The place has a beige personality--nice and neutral, completely inoffensive.

The water comes in a glass bottle that says, "Inspired Living." The music is as innocuous as muzak, but up to date, all soft jazzy hip-hoppy sounds, including a re-mix of Lou Reed's "Walk on the Wild Side," that iconic rock poem of transsexuality and prostitution, the stuff of old Times Square, now stripped of its language.



I forced myself to try the matzo ball soup, a staple of the old Cafe Edison. It tasted good, but so what? I missed the way the bowls of soup used to come crashing from the noisy kitchen behind the counter. I missed the counter and its swivel stools, its trays of glazed doughnuts under cloudy plastic domes.

I missed the people who used to sit on those stools and lean in over those bowls of soup, tossing their neckties over their shoulders, getting their eyeglasses steamed.

And I missed the brusque waitresses with their accents and post-middle age exhaustion. The ones at Friedman's are deferential, soft-spoken, and youthful. All perfectly nice.

Everything at Friedman's is nice.

#goodvibesonly!



Once again, New York has sold its soul for nice. In its restaurants, it has traded character and history for food that tastes clean and new. For a frictionless experience that neither agitates nor inspires.

In the 2000s, New York was remade into a city that caters to consumers. The Bloomberg Way, as urbanist Julian Brash has written, was "a notion of governance in which the city is run like a corporation. The mayor is the CEO, the businesses are clients, citizens are consumers, and the city itself is a product that’s branded and marketed." That product must be inoffensive, made beige and nice, so as not to disrupt or displease the average consumer.

This approach to city life comes from the radical free-market capitalist ethos of neoliberalism. Milton Friedman, the economist who helped popularize neoliberalism, once said, "There's no such thing as a free lunch." In other words, you can't tax businesses to pay for public services. Which brings us to the current federal tax plan of today.

It also brings us back to Friedman's restaurant, which was named after Milton Friedman and not after a Jewish family and their matzo ball soup. There was a Jewish family running the Cafe Edison for decades. They made good soup. They didn't worry about creating a beige experience. They were loved by many and they are missed.


2014

Read all about the closure of Cafe Edison and the fight to save it.

Tales of Times Square: The Tapes

Author and musician Josh Alan Friedman was working for Screw magazine, covering the Times Square beat through the late 1970s and early 80s, when he wrote the cult classic Tales of Times Square.

Recently, he dug up the tapes he made from that time--interviews with the denizens of the old Deuce--and turned them into a podcast. Tales of Times Square: The Tapes takes you back in time through the voices of "strippers, old fighters, burly-Q men, peep show girls, hustlers, cops," and one man who ran the penny arcade at 42nd and 8th since 1939.

I asked Josh a few questions.


All photos via Josh Alan Friedman's blackcracker

You've had these tapes for decades. What inspired you to digitize and turn them into a podcast now?

Two years ago people started asking if I was involved with The Deuce going through on HBO. So I offered to contribute but they wouldn’t take our calls. My wife, Peggy, said, "What about all those cassettes you recorded back in Times Square?" Stacked on the wall among hundreds of others. I’d forgotten about them, just scratch tapes. But she told me to digitize them before they dissolved. I’d just finished my last album, working from Logic Pro on my home computer. So I was able to formulate a podcast. I’m still not sure what’s workable, but I’ve managed six episodes so far. It’s spinning off differently than Tales of Times Square, the book. Hindsight and the fate of these characters.

What will people find in the tapes that they can't get from the book?

It’s startling to hear the ghosts of old Broadway come back alive. Voices were different then, like Edward G. Robinson or Cagney, see. Unnerstand? That beautiful New Yorkese, the Damon Runyon lingo you might remember from Guys & Dolls.  

Tales of Times Square came out in ’86, after a decade spent covering the Square. It’s had four different editions and a cult following--some of these readers are giddy to finally hear the actual voices—as well as seeing their pictures on the podcast site, BlackCracker.fm.



Seedy old 1970s Times Square is enjoying a revival, especially through The Deuce. What do you think it is about that place that draws so much interest?

Right after the Times Square Redevelopment Corp. and the Shuberts finally condemned the theaters on 42nd street, they approached the great Broadway composer, Cy Coleman. They were rebuilding the New Amsterdam, the Lyric (Foxwoods), and The Selwyn (American Airlines Theater). They told Coleman they wanted to designate the whole street for musicals only, get people back on 42nd Street. Coleman said he had a great idea. Great, whaddya got? Pornography.

His hit musical, The Life, played the Ethel Barrymore in 1997. Pimps and hookers, all singing, all dancing. Right after they’d eliminated all of it from the street. A future episode of my podcast is with Cy, who we lost a while back.

Nostalgia is easy once the danger is gone. During the years I spent in Times Square, I felt the dying embers of Old Broadway, a century of show biz, which was invented there. I loved the old days. And I guess I also loved the incoming Live Nude Girls, the peeps and burlesque; the way it intersected and cross-faded with old Irish bars and delicatessens, the faded glamour and Joe Franklin’s office. High life and low life, side by side. Of course, some of it descended into utter depravity on the street. What I hoped for was a compromise. Dial back some of the depravity, but keep a red light district in Times Square. Even if just one block, say 42nd between 6th & 7th, keep just one block for the millions of us who require a little decadence to stay sane. The city can have 50,000 other blocks for corporate domination and chains. But no, they had to bulldoze everything, to get rid of the social ills. No more ghetto entertainment or sex or urban spontaneity. A whole culture eliminated.



Why do you think people today are so nostalgic for 1970s Times Square? Is it a response to something lacking in the present moment?

The grit, the grime, and the attitude have been wiped clean. Is it possible that some millennials are beginning to realize that this total corporate domination and soulless architecture has a downside? Like no more wild west--which is what Times Square was. Pornography is not sex--but Times Square sex was a lot more interactive than internet porn. Neon is more beautiful than Godzilla-sized computer graphics. (But even neon was considered ugly and crass in the 1940s, by an earlier generation that preferred incandescent light bulbs). I say skip the nostalgia and bring it all back.

Listen to the tapes here.

Friedman's Moves In

Now and then, against my better judgment, I walk by the shell of the once great Cafe Edison to see how the renovations are coming along.

This week, it looks like its replacement, Friedman's, is close to opening.



There's neon framing the windows where the Friedman's signage has appeared.



They've painted over the once famous powder pink and baby blue walls, turning them beige. Which seems appropriate -- it's going from the best matzo balls and blintzes in town to a gluten-free existence.



While the hotel owners originally claimed they would replace Cafe Edison with a "white-tablecloth" restaurant and a "name chef," they later announced that mini-chain Friedman's Lunch would be going in. "Just like the Cafe Edison," reported the Daily News in 2015, "the new restaurant is not some flashy, white-tablecloth type space... It’s a modest, family business." The real-estate broker on the deal told the paper, “It’s old-school, hearty good food. We must have gotten 50 offers but the landlord didn’t want big chains or celebrity chefs. They wanted something warm. This is going to be everything the Edison Cafe was--just a few decades later."

But there's no Mom and Pop Friedman here. The name is a tribute to Milton Friedman, the modern-day father of neoliberalism, that radical free-market capitalist system that is driving the hyper-gentrification of cities around the globe.

You can't make this stuff up.

If you want to read more about this place, and the fight to save Cafe Edison, you can read more here.

Manny's

The heart of old Music Row has been just been cleared for demolition.



Fast Company reports:

"The former site of Manny’s Music at 156 West 48th Street in Manhattan has been approved for demolition, according to a city permit issued last month. It’s a final nail in the coffin for the legendary music store that served as a mecca for generations of musicians and once stood as the crown jewel of New York’s famed Music Row."



Manny's was here since 1935 and closed in 2009. It was a mecca for musicians famous and not. Then Music Row started getting murdered. One after another, the shops shuttered, replaced by Dunkin Donuts or nothing at all. Rudy's Music Stop and Alex Accordion were the last to go.


before

I walked along that block of West 48th a few weeks ago to see what had become of it.

The name MANNY'S embedded in the doorstep was oddly missing. It had been cemented over. Why? The only reason I can think of to do such a thing is to "scalp" the building, a tactic used by developers when they don't want a building landmarked before they can demolish it.

Manny's was not landmarked.

*UPDATE: Chris writes in the comments: "I heard from a trusted source that the MANNY'S terrazzo at the front door was removed and taken to the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland."


after

According to Fast Company:

It was "unclear if the former Manny’s site would even rise to a level city officials would consider worthy of such protection. A spokeswoman for the landmarks commission told me the agency has not received any requests to evaluate the building."