*Everyday Chatter

Tourists officially to blame for turning Manhattan into a suburban shopping mall: "as the [WSJ] article reminds, the existence of shows like Law & Order, Gossip Girl, and Sex & The City means 'many tourists make pilgrimages to visit their favorite locations.'" [Racked]

Welcome to 1940s NYC--in a map! [Gothamist]

Sullivan Street Bakery opening soon in ousted Les Desirs spot--what about the singing ladies? [Eater]

Where is Zabar's? Don't ask your idiot phone. [NYT]

Go see My Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Film Fest. [BFF]

Reader Marcus lets us know that the NYC municipal parking garage at Essex and Delancey is booting the bicycles that park there. He cites the city law: "Garages or lots that accommodate 100 or more vehicles must provide bicycle parking at a rate of at least one space for every ten vehicle spaces":


Fight for your neighborhood library as the city cuts them off at the knees. [HNY]

Greenwich Village tourists attract a scourge of doo-wop singers--and the neighbors are angry. [NYM]

Hotel Toshi takes over at 9th and 1st. [EVG]

Looking at eagle-winged neon signs. [NYN]

Remembering Hav-A-Pizza. [LC]

What does Coney Island look like these days? You won't recognize it. [ATZ]

Prime Burger

VANISHED

By now you all know that the great Prime Burger closed last week after 47 years in business (74 if you count its days as Hamburg Heaven). I went in on its final weekend for a last supper.



The place was bustling, with lots of people taking pictures and saying goodbye to the waiters and to the DiMiceli family, owners of the place. Many of the waiters have been there for decades. They expected to stay for decades longer. (Watch this lovely, heartbreaking film.)



I was lucky to get a booth with the signature swiveling, faux-bois table that always makes me feel like a kid in a high chair. Adding to that effect, the food comes on small, beige, unbreakable Melamine plates.



Admittedly, the burger and fries really aren't special--it's the place that's special. That was special.

It's the look of the place, unchanged since the early 1960s, the people, and the feeling you get from it all. The feeling you got--and won't get ever again. It was a feeling of permanence, of continuity through time, a sense of being part of the city's history, connected to the people of the past--and of the future. When a place has been around this long, it's natural to expect it will last forever.

I think of these lines from Walt Whitman's "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry":

"It avails not, neither time or place—distance avails not;
I am with you, you men and women of a generation, or ever so many generations hence;
I project myself--also I return--I am with you, and know how it is."



The wonderful clock, I was told by Mr. DiMiceli, is going with them when (if) they find a new spot, but the conical ceiling lamps have been sold, and the Times reported that those one-of-a-kind booths "may have been too well installed to allow removal. 'We’d like to take the seats,' Mr. DiMiceli said, 'but the guys I talked to said that taking them apart would probably destroy them.'"

It sounds like a metaphor for Prime Burger itself, and for so many places that have vanished from the city. Pushed out of their decades-long spots, they try to survive in a new location, only to falter. Too well installed to allow for removal, taking them apart simply destroys them.



Previously:
Prime Burger 2008

Chelsea Gallery Diner

VANISHED

The Chelsea Gallery Diner has closed after 30 years in business on 7th Avenue near 14th Street.


photo: Visual Raconteur's flickr

Scott Stiffler has a eulogy for the place in Chelsea Now, and JVNY reader Tim Kirk sent in the sad news with a quick video he took of the shutter signage.

Quite pointedly, the sign reads: "Due to our Madison Ave. lease and a dying customer base we have been forced to close our doors after 30 yrs at this location. We have watched our quaint neighborhood turn into the very ‘upscale Chelsea’ of today’s Manhattan. So let us remember a time when this diner was a meeting place for so many strange, unusual & different people to say the least. All were welcomed at a time when St. Vincent’s stood tall, the Halloween Parade was small and our diner at any given time could turn into a fun free for all."



Writes Tim, "This was the kind of place where the management would feed locally known homeless people fresh food right outside the door. Can you imagine ANY joint in Chelsea being that compassionate to those less fortunate these days?"

Always accommodating to large groups, the compassionate Chelsea Gallery was also a safe haven for, as the sign says, the "unusual" people. On any given night, you might walk in to find the back tables full of trekkers from the New York City Star Trek meet-up, gay bears and their admirers getting together, transgender folks mixing and mingling after a support group, or sober gays and lesbians coming in for fellowship after their 12-step meetings. Many crowds came from the nearby LGBT Center--the Chelsea Gallery was a regular after-meeting haunt.


Adam Kuban's flickr

It was also not a place for the hyper-young and hip. Chelsea Gallery was the diner of choice for the NYC Individualists' Single 40 Plus social club (for the "not societally gorgeous, not religious, not slim, you're into politics, psychology, not perfect, too intellectual, left wing, chicken wing!!not a swinging single, not a drinker, not a smoker, not rich, not a Wall St. or Madison Ave. groupie, not a Happy Hour junkie, don't wear make up, or high heels, or ties, maybe you have beards, tatoos, long hair, maybe you are YOU!!").

These motley crowds could be off-putting to some newcomers to the city.

Noted one blogger who tried the Chelsea Gallery: "maybe there’s some kind of early bird special because all the old people in nyc are sitting right in my face. There are a sprinkle of young, my age, gay and lesbian couples here and there, but majority of them are old. They’re eating [alone], or they came with their girlfriends and families to chat. Not that I have a problem with that, it’s just a new experience that’s all. I thought I was at the old folk’s home or something. Let me tell you, this is certainly not a trendy place." [emphases mine]


Adam Kuban's flickr

Of course, if it's not a trendy place, it's not allowed to exist in the new New York. And I keep wondering: Where are all those people going to go now? All the trekkers, gay bears, and transsexuals, the sober queers and the over-40 individualists, not to mention "all the old people in nyc"--where will they go?

Where will any of us go when every single place we feel at home is wiped from the face of the city?

Atlas Barber School

VANISHED

I am sad to report, the Atlas Barber School and shop closed forever this past Saturday after the landlord raised the rent to an impossible $11,000 per month. Just off Astor Place in the East Village, on 3rd Ave. and 9th St., Atlas had been in business since 1948.


all color photos from last day of Atlas

When I heard the news from tipster Marcus, I ran in for a last cut. I talked to Sheila Gray, director of the school. She was too upset to talk much about the closure, except to express frustration about the rent hike and sadness about closing. She pointed to a statue of St. Jude in the back office, a room cluttered with papers and framed certificates, and said, "See that statue of St. Jude? My father carried it everywhere. He's the saint of lost causes." She shrugged as if to say "so much for that."

When I told her that Atlas had kept me in haircuts during my early lean years in the neighborhood, she gave me a hug. (She asked me to wait to post this story until today, when the closure is official.)


last haircut

The school began at 87 Third Avenue, then moved to Times Square in the 1950s where Atlas, unlike many schools at the time, trained several women barbers. As the Times put it in 1959, "The barber shop, long a sanctuary for the American man, is being invaded by women. And...they are barbers."

Atlas later moved back down to Third Avenue. There it weathered the "Scissorless Seventies," when the barbering world, having survived the female invasion, now panicked about the long hair trend. The venerable crew cut, said many reports, had vanished forever.


the Times Square school, 1950s, Atlas website

But the 1980s turned business around. Said Atlas instructor Lou Bucaria to the Times in 1985, "The future is bright. Although long hair once threatened to destroy the barbering industry as we know it, the future is short hair, more haircuts. Indeed, even women now want the same short haircuts as the men." At that time, the price for a haircut was $2.75.

By 1993, the price at Atlas was $5--where it stayed. Throughout the 1990s, there were 42 chairs at Atlas and "no waiting," with a storefront on 3rd and another running through to 10th Street. At some point, perhaps after 2000, they closed the 10th Street side. It's possible that times had gotten tough again for this long-time survivor and living artifact of another New York.



According to the school's website (now gone), Atlas was "the only barber school still thriving in the old Barber School District, which was once located in the East Village. In its heyday, according to the Museum of the City of New York, The Bowery had as many as two barber schools per block. Today, Atlas Barber School is the only barber school left from that era and it is currently the oldest barber school in operation in New York State."

Lillian Ross visited the school in 1980 to write about it for the New Yorker magazine. She called it "the only classic, shave-teaching barber school left in the city."


click to enlarge

With the loss of Atlas, we have lost the last of a breed--the last barber school of the old Barber School District; the last classic, shave-teaching barber school in the city; and the oldest barber school in the state of New York.

Atlas was in business for 64 years. They offered the cheapest haircuts around--pretty much anyone could afford it.

But none of this matters, because the landlord wants $11,000 a month. After all, Astor Place is changing--a shiny new tower is coming, and shiny new towers bring shiny new people who want all things to be shiny and new. As Sheila noted to me, Atlas and the East Village Cheese shop are the only old-school businesses left on the block--now the cheese stands alone and we have to wonder for how much longer.



I wrote here about Atlas in 2008. At the time I chatted with one of the instructors and asked her if she thought Atlas would last much longer. "She shook her head to say 'who knows'...and wondered about 'that big new building down there,' the Cooper Square Hotel, 'it's so out of place--did they mean to make it look like it's falling over?'"

This weekend, while waiting for my last haircut, I talked to a couple of old-timers. One white-haired man who'd just gone in for a trim, leaned on his cane and turned up his hearing aid when I asked him, "Where are you gonna go now?" He just shook his head and said, "That's right. Where am I gonna go?"



Post-Script: Reader Laura sends in a shot from today--as the school has been emptied into a Dumpster.

A Zillion Tourists

The mainstream media got itself into quite a lather over those High Line flyers from Anonymous last week--and it tells us something interesting, something critical, about the city and its changing face.


Shawn Chittle's TV

After I first posted the news, Fox 5 picked up the story with a video called "High Line Hater." One woman interviewed said, "Before they rented in this place, they knew this exists," referring to residents who live along the High Line. NY1 interviewed a young man on video who said, "It's the Meatpacking District, the nightlife here is crazy, so you should be kind of used to it. Live somewhere else if you don't like the noise."

CBS Channel 2 found someone to say, "This is New York City, if you want space, move to the country," while another called the flyer's rules "civility." The New York Post, with their take titled "High Line anxiety: Neighbor rips raucous rubes," also featured a video that is largely pro-High Line and pro-tourist, with one detractor who said that the High Line has changed the neighborhood for the worse. In the UK, the Daily Mail took offense, calling the flyer-maker a bossy, nasty, unfriendly whinger.

[*Update: The Atlantic Monthly Cities blog chimes in, recalling when "Many of New York’s neighborhoods weren’t tourist attractions. They were tourist repellents." TIME's blog does not approve of the "tourist hater." The Wall Street Journal looks at the negative impact of High Line tourism on Chelsea.]

In the comments to the original post, many people defended tourists (and many did not). One wrote, "I cannot stand when people hate on tourists." Another called the flyer writer "a flaming liberal...a bigot, a snob." Many of the commenters, here and elsewhere, said in essence: If you don't like tourists, you're an "elitist."

When did tourists become so protected in New York City? And when did local crankiness become elitism? However you feel about the High Line flyer, it has us talking about New York and its new relationship to tourists.



In the 1980s and '90s, the t-shirt "Welcome to New York. Now Go Home" (alternately, "Now Get Out") was popular, a New Yorker's message to tourists and rube newbies. Today, looking at the interviews and comments on the High Line story, the more popular slogan might be: "Welcome to New York. Leave If You Don't Like the Crowds of Tourists--You Knew It Was All One Big Tourist Attraction When You Moved Here."

New Yorkers, once proud of their crankiness, used to delight in maligning tourists. In the late 1990s, as the city was beginning its massive transformation into a tourist economy, Fran Lebowitz said, "What a nightmare! No one who isn't from New York knows how to be a pedestrian. Pedestrians don't mosey. And they don't walk five abreast. I'd like to make New York unsafe for tourists."



But by the 2000s, the "Now Go Home" t-shirt (and sentiment?) had vanished. Journalist Clyde Haberman tried to find it while writing a piece for the Times about the glut of tourists in town. ("We're Glad You Love Us, Don't Overdo It" was the gentle title.) Clyde carefully pleaded, "Really, is it asking too much to have our city back?"

In 2006, Bloomberg launched his multi-pronged marketing plan to bring a record-breaking 50 million tourists per year to New York by 2015. That number was surpassed in 2011—and the record was broken again in 2012, when the city endured 52 million visitors.

Recently, I conducted my own search for the Now Go Home t-shirt, which used to be prominent in the shops along St. Mark's Place. No dice. The salesgirl in Search & Destroy agreed, "That one is hard to find." The closest thing I saw was the anachronistic, gun-toting "Duck Mother Fucker."



So what happened? Why has New York become so welcoming to tourists, so gently tolerant, even protective and defensive? Something shifted somewhere between 1999 and 2006, and it wasn't just the election of Bloomberg. I've written about this extensively before, but briefly: The events of 9/11 turned New York City into America instead of a city of, in Woody's words, "left-wing Communist, Jewish, homosexual, pornographers."

And that scolding word--elitist--it comes right out of the Tea Party playbook. It doesn't mean rich people, as Fran Lebowitz has reminded us, it means smart people. And I think it also means non-mainstream people.


Fleet Week visitors

This past weekend, I visited the USS Wasp, in town for Fleet Week. It was loaded with tourists and with New Yorkers acting like tourists. A gay couple strolled along, one of the men dressed in a trim mini-skirt and high-heeled, snakeskin, go-go boots. (It's no secret that gay men love Fleet Week.) Excited to see such a bold and beautiful human being on the flight deck of a U.S. Naval warship, I took a photo. At that moment, a touristy-looking woman turned to me and said, "That's New York," and I thought she would say something appreciative next, about the city's gutsy individualism, but she didn't. She said, "Scary, isn't it?" I turned and snapped her head off.

As Fran Lebowitz said in an interview, "Present-day New York has been made to attract people who didn’t like New York. That’s how we get a zillion tourists here, especially American tourists, who never liked New York. Now they like New York. What does that mean? Does that mean they’ve suddenly become much more sophisticated? No. It means that New York has become more like the places they come from."

Attention High Line Tourists

We know that not everyone is happy with the High Line (thanks Mandy!) and the way it is putting old Chelsea out of business while attracting monstrous levels of luxury development and crowds to the area. Now someone is plastering Chelsea with a pointed message to the High Line tourists.

"Attention High Line Tourists," says the flyer, "West Chelsea is not Times Square. It is not a tourist attraction."



The flyer goes on to ask the tourists to "consider the following":

"Do not sit on the 'stoops' of buildings or take pictures of and film buildings or residents. Buildings are not tourist attractions: people live there, and sitting on the steps and taking pictures is as invasive, rude and inappropriate as a group of strangers sitting on the steps of your home and taking pictures of it and you from the yard. Think how you would feel in the situation were reversed and act accordingly.

3,000,000 (3 million) of you come to West Chelsea and walk the High Line a year. 40,000 (forty thousand) people live in Chelsea. That’s roughly a ratio of 100 tourists on the streets of Chelsea and walking the High Line to 1 resident trying to get to the store, ride her bike, take a stroll, go the gym or just have a quiet moment with his dog. Please consider how you would feel if 3 million people a year from around the world trampled your street, your neighborhood, and your local park, and act accordingly--in the way that your morals or religion or general human consideration would dictate.

Observe New York sidewalk etiquette. That means do not walk more than two people in a row down the sidewalk. Otherwise you clog the sidewalk for people to pass by either way.

If you see an empty space, leave it empty. Otherwise there will be no spaces for New Yorkers. …and if you love New York, leave it alone."

Prime Burger to Re-Open?

As you may have heard, the great and wondrous Prime Burger is shuttering, heartbreakingly, ass-kickingly, on Saturday after 47 years in Midtown (74 years if you go back to Hamburg Heaven). Photographer Molly Woodward visited yesterday and shares her gorgeous shots at her website Vernacular Typography.


all photos: Molly Woodward

One piece of hopeful news: The shutter signage says "We hope to see you in the near future at a new location." Let's pray they take the beautiful faux-bois clock, the baby-chair swiveling tables, and everything, just as it is. My fingers are crossed, though I doubt this will happen.

Until then, go now, eat a burger, drink an egg cream, enjoy the atmosphere untouched since the 1960s. It's another funeral for New York.







Previously:
Prime Burger
PB Egg Cream
Vernacular Typography