The changes of the past decade are killing the Bowery Lighting District. [WSJ]
Fishs Eddy celebrates 25 years of selling quirky dishware--owners recall delivering broken plates to Schnabel during the 1980s. [EM]
A wrap-up of the BMW Guggenheim protest in the EV. [EVG]
Elaine's memorabilia up for auction. [Eater]
Olek yarn-bombs Wall Street. [RS]
What's the story of the Salzman neon sign company? [NYN]
Greenlight Bookstore is expanding. What's their secret? [Racked]
Celebrate the oldest bialy business in NYC--out at Coney. [PM]
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
Monday, August 8, 2011
*Everyday Chatter
James Wolcott slams the BMW Guggenheim lab: "An interdisciplinary lab is what you get when there's no more Mercer Arts Center, Max's Kansas City, CBGB's, or Mudd Club--a buzzword mausoleum." [VF]
Scoopy asked BMW Guggenheim Labber about CBGB. He responded, “It’s still there, isn’t it?” [V'er]
More on the BMW Guggenheim Lab and the homeless guy. [EVG]
If These Knishes Could Talk premieres 8/20 at the Art of Brooklyn Fest. [PSF]
From the "Let 'em eat cake" protest. [NMNL] & [MAD]
Pete Hamill on subway reading: “...there are people thumbing away. I want to think that they are reading something good but I can never get a position where there is no glare on the screen. Somehow I don’t think they are reading Madame Bovary.” [NYO]
Cool off in Central Park's Lasker pool. [NYL]
A trip to Hinsch's luncheonette--in Bay Ridge since 1949. [OMFS]
Trading tips on how to be broke in Tompkins Square Park. [CNY]
Digging deeper into the white-washing of Bed-Stuy. [BS'er]
Scoopy asked BMW Guggenheim Labber about CBGB. He responded, “It’s still there, isn’t it?” [V'er]
More on the BMW Guggenheim Lab and the homeless guy. [EVG]
If These Knishes Could Talk premieres 8/20 at the Art of Brooklyn Fest. [PSF]
From the "Let 'em eat cake" protest. [NMNL] & [MAD]
Pete Hamill on subway reading: “...there are people thumbing away. I want to think that they are reading something good but I can never get a position where there is no glare on the screen. Somehow I don’t think they are reading Madame Bovary.” [NYO]
Cool off in Central Park's Lasker pool. [NYL]
A trip to Hinsch's luncheonette--in Bay Ridge since 1949. [OMFS]
Trading tips on how to be broke in Tompkins Square Park. [CNY]
Digging deeper into the white-washing of Bed-Stuy. [BS'er]
The Elder Ratner's
A recent post on the Greenwich Village preservation society's blog, Off the Grid, tells the story of the Saul Birns Building on 2nd Avenue between 6th and 7th Streets.
all images from NYPL
You may remember that this building held the Ratner's of Second Avenue in the space where the Met Foods grocery store is today. I've written about that Ratner's before--featuring their 1970 menu and a piece of their tiled wall--but what I did not know is that this Ratner's apparently began a couple doors down, at the corner of 2nd Avenue and 6th Street.
That elder Ratner's appears in a pair of NYPL photos found by Off the Grid for their post. Some zooming in reveals it: a wraparound neon sign, an awning, a window with the name painted on the glass. These shots are from 1934 and 1936 when the location of the later, more famous 2nd Avenue Ratner's still held the Stratford Cafeteria, and before the Loews Commodore theater became the Fillmore East.
While folks of the 1960s stopped in to Ratner's for blintzes after seeing the Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane next door, folks of the 1930s did the same after seeing a Shirley Temple movie.
Is anybody old enough to recognize this Ratner's from out of the sepia fog?
all images from NYPL
You may remember that this building held the Ratner's of Second Avenue in the space where the Met Foods grocery store is today. I've written about that Ratner's before--featuring their 1970 menu and a piece of their tiled wall--but what I did not know is that this Ratner's apparently began a couple doors down, at the corner of 2nd Avenue and 6th Street.
That elder Ratner's appears in a pair of NYPL photos found by Off the Grid for their post. Some zooming in reveals it: a wraparound neon sign, an awning, a window with the name painted on the glass. These shots are from 1934 and 1936 when the location of the later, more famous 2nd Avenue Ratner's still held the Stratford Cafeteria, and before the Loews Commodore theater became the Fillmore East.
While folks of the 1960s stopped in to Ratner's for blintzes after seeing the Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane next door, folks of the 1930s did the same after seeing a Shirley Temple movie.
Is anybody old enough to recognize this Ratner's from out of the sepia fog?
Friday, August 5, 2011
P&G Closing (Again)
After being tragically booted from its celebrated 66-year space, then surviving in a new location and closing temporarily in May for restructuring, it looks like the P&G Bar & Grill is now shuttering for good.
Says the fourth-generation owner on his Facebook page: "P&Gs will be closing on August 16th.Cant get past some old demons(and some old debt)thank you everyone, and my sincerest apologies to you all and all the musicians>I rode the old horse hard as she could go, and now shes tired and needs some rest.hope to be able to see you all sometime soon,on either side of the bar(like usual lmao) Thanks for the music and the love.drink up and think happy thoughts."
Raise a glass and say goodbye--one more time.
the original P&G
Recent P&G History:
January 2009: Shuttered after 66 years
April 2009: Gutted
May 2009: Opened in new location
May 2011: Closed for restructuring
Says the fourth-generation owner on his Facebook page: "P&Gs will be closing on August 16th.Cant get past some old demons(and some old debt)thank you everyone, and my sincerest apologies to you all and all the musicians>I rode the old horse hard as she could go, and now shes tired and needs some rest.hope to be able to see you all sometime soon,on either side of the bar(like usual lmao) Thanks for the music and the love.drink up and think happy thoughts."
Raise a glass and say goodbye--one more time.
the original P&G
Recent P&G History:
January 2009: Shuttered after 66 years
April 2009: Gutted
May 2009: Opened in new location
May 2011: Closed for restructuring
Thursday, August 4, 2011
Smith on Gentrification
I asked CUNY Professor Neil Smith for a quick lesson in his area of expertise: gentrification in New York City. Here's my question and Professor Smith's answer.
Q: I am really gripped by the following quote of yours from the NY Times: “The big perspective is that gentrification has changed tremendously since the ’70s and ’80s. It’s really a systematic class-remaking of city neighborhoods ...it’s about creating entire environments.”
So many people say that the massive changes of the past decade in New York are "just gentrification" and "the city has always changed." How does the gentrification of today compare to that of the 70s and 80s? Is "gentrification" really the right word for what's been happening in New York City today?
Neil Smith
A: Cities are indeed always changing and gentrification has now been with us for half a century. But that doesn't mean that gentrification is an old or even necessarily familiar story. Gentrification in the 1960s into the 1980s was quite exceptional. It represented an exception to a large scale disinvestment in the city center, the withdrawal of capital from the city in favour of the suburbs, the movement of many in the white middle classes out toward the suburbs. Buildings and entire neighborhoods were abandoned, peaking in the late 1970s--"the Bronx is Burning!" In this context, gentrification happened in one house here, a street there, perhaps a whole neighborhood, but it was the exception to the larger forces shaping urban change.
That all changed in the 1980s. Gentrification became a systematic attempt to remake the central city, to take it back from the working class, from minorities, from homeless people, from immigrants who, in the minds of those who decamped to the suburbs, had stolen the city from its rightful white middle-class owners. What began as a seemingly quaint rediscovery of the drama and edginess of the new urban "frontier" became in the 1990s broad-based market driven policy.
If the rehabilitation of a brownstone in the West Village or Park Slope typified gentrification in the 1970s, by the 1990s and 2000s it was the disneyfication of Times Square, the condominium frenzy on the Bowery, and a corporate fill-in of the previously low-rent spaces feeding out from Manhattan--Williamsburg, Fort Greene, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, etc., and now the superfunded Gowanus.
So yes, gentrification is a more appropriate term for the process today than it was even 50 years ago--quite literally, the take-back of the city by a privileged middle class or gentry. The class remake of the city was minor, small scale and symbolic in the beginning but today we are seeing a total class retake of the central city. Almost without exception, the new housing, new restaurants, new artistic venues, new entertainment locales--not to mention the new jobs on Wall Street--are all aimed at a social class quite different from those who populated the Lower East Side or the West Side, Harlem, or neighborhood Brooklyn in the 1960s.
Bloomberg's rezoning of, at latest count, 104 neighborhoods has been the central weapon in this assault, but it was built on Giuliani's explicit revanchism--his revenge against the street--the public, cultural lever that wedged the systematic class retake into place.
You can find Neil Smith's books at the St. Mark's Bookshop.
Also read:
The Bloomberg Way
Gentrify, Gentrify
Bobos on Bergen
Q: I am really gripped by the following quote of yours from the NY Times: “The big perspective is that gentrification has changed tremendously since the ’70s and ’80s. It’s really a systematic class-remaking of city neighborhoods ...it’s about creating entire environments.”
So many people say that the massive changes of the past decade in New York are "just gentrification" and "the city has always changed." How does the gentrification of today compare to that of the 70s and 80s? Is "gentrification" really the right word for what's been happening in New York City today?
Neil Smith
A: Cities are indeed always changing and gentrification has now been with us for half a century. But that doesn't mean that gentrification is an old or even necessarily familiar story. Gentrification in the 1960s into the 1980s was quite exceptional. It represented an exception to a large scale disinvestment in the city center, the withdrawal of capital from the city in favour of the suburbs, the movement of many in the white middle classes out toward the suburbs. Buildings and entire neighborhoods were abandoned, peaking in the late 1970s--"the Bronx is Burning!" In this context, gentrification happened in one house here, a street there, perhaps a whole neighborhood, but it was the exception to the larger forces shaping urban change.
That all changed in the 1980s. Gentrification became a systematic attempt to remake the central city, to take it back from the working class, from minorities, from homeless people, from immigrants who, in the minds of those who decamped to the suburbs, had stolen the city from its rightful white middle-class owners. What began as a seemingly quaint rediscovery of the drama and edginess of the new urban "frontier" became in the 1990s broad-based market driven policy.
If the rehabilitation of a brownstone in the West Village or Park Slope typified gentrification in the 1970s, by the 1990s and 2000s it was the disneyfication of Times Square, the condominium frenzy on the Bowery, and a corporate fill-in of the previously low-rent spaces feeding out from Manhattan--Williamsburg, Fort Greene, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, etc., and now the superfunded Gowanus.
So yes, gentrification is a more appropriate term for the process today than it was even 50 years ago--quite literally, the take-back of the city by a privileged middle class or gentry. The class remake of the city was minor, small scale and symbolic in the beginning but today we are seeing a total class retake of the central city. Almost without exception, the new housing, new restaurants, new artistic venues, new entertainment locales--not to mention the new jobs on Wall Street--are all aimed at a social class quite different from those who populated the Lower East Side or the West Side, Harlem, or neighborhood Brooklyn in the 1960s.
Bloomberg's rezoning of, at latest count, 104 neighborhoods has been the central weapon in this assault, but it was built on Giuliani's explicit revanchism--his revenge against the street--the public, cultural lever that wedged the systematic class retake into place.
You can find Neil Smith's books at the St. Mark's Bookshop.
Also read:
The Bloomberg Way
Gentrify, Gentrify
Bobos on Bergen
Wednesday, August 3, 2011
*Everyday Chatter
Before Mars Bar, there was No Se No, a haven for LES artists. [EVG]
Confronting comfort at the BMW Guggenheim "lab." [NMNL]
Visit the "galaxy of neon signs" that once was Chinatown. [NYN]
Chelsea Hotel is officially sold--Real Deal readers rejoice, agree the new owner should "kick all the tenants out." [TRD]
"Your city may be the future of all cities." Let's hope not. I'd like to have someplace to escape to once the soul-murder of New York is complete. [Gothamist]
Seltzer man Walter Backerman spotted in his new truck--see the old truck here:
Today: Rally to save the Bialystoker Nursing Home. [BB]
Tomorrow: Go see Scorsese's wonderful ItalianAmerican, a reminder of the vanished character of Little Italy. [AFA]
August 5 - 9: Check out the Boog City Fest, 5 days of poetry and music.
August 6 - 7: Commemorate the Tompkins Square Park riots in the park with bands, speakers, and more--brought to you by The Shadow. [FB]
Confronting comfort at the BMW Guggenheim "lab." [NMNL]
Visit the "galaxy of neon signs" that once was Chinatown. [NYN]
Chelsea Hotel is officially sold--Real Deal readers rejoice, agree the new owner should "kick all the tenants out." [TRD]
"Your city may be the future of all cities." Let's hope not. I'd like to have someplace to escape to once the soul-murder of New York is complete. [Gothamist]
Seltzer man Walter Backerman spotted in his new truck--see the old truck here:
Today: Rally to save the Bialystoker Nursing Home. [BB]
Tomorrow: Go see Scorsese's wonderful ItalianAmerican, a reminder of the vanished character of Little Italy. [AFA]
August 5 - 9: Check out the Boog City Fest, 5 days of poetry and music.
August 6 - 7: Commemorate the Tompkins Square Park riots in the park with bands, speakers, and more--brought to you by The Shadow. [FB]
Lights Out for the Chelsea
Last night, after a weekend of sudden closure at the Chelsea Hotel, and after news broke of the building's finalized sale, the lights of the iconic neon sign went dark.
It's a dreary and ominous sight over 23rd Street, but what does it mean? Is it a message from the new owner to say "It's mine now"? A signal from the tenants, symbolizing mourning? Or another form of sabotage?
Either way, it surely marks the end of a brightly shining era and the beginning of a darker time to come.
It's a dreary and ominous sight over 23rd Street, but what does it mean? Is it a message from the new owner to say "It's mine now"? A signal from the tenants, symbolizing mourning? Or another form of sabotage?
Either way, it surely marks the end of a brightly shining era and the beginning of a darker time to come.
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