*Everyday Chatter

It's been a difficult week, but I am here. I've been keeping up with those of you on Facebook, and hope everyone got through the storm okay. The news could go on forever, but here are just a few links from the week with Sandy:

The Rockaways were devastated. [Gothamist]

Coney Island took a beating. [ATZ]

Central Park lost over 250 trees. [Gothamist]

The death toll on Staten Island keeps climbing. [SIL]

Images of flooding and wreckage keep coming in. [J&KM]

The payphone became necessary again. [HuffPo]

The uptown/downtown divide led one Melissa Kao to rechristen downtown SoPo--South of Power:



Gawker declared an Uptown/Downtown civil war. [Gawker]

People in the East Village resorted to Dumpster diving for food. [EVG]

While many New Yorkers were lining up for food, gas, transportation, hundreds were lining up for the latest Apple product. [Racked]

Battered Red Hook emerged from the flood waters. [Curbed]

The National Guard arrived on the LES. [BB]

Many heeded the call for volunteers and donations. [TLD]

A renegade Halloween Parade took over the Village. [Gothamist]

Bloomberg endorsed Obama for his stance on climate change. [MB]

*Everyday Chatter

You must see "Zipper" at the NYC Documentary Fest--a heartbreaking and enraging story about greed, politics, and destruction in modern-day Coney Island. [DocNYC]

Gimme Gimme Records is gone. Here's the last letter they received, from a distraught customer. [EVG]

About that random piece of High Line in Yvonne's 1980s photos...it was over Jane Street. [FNY]

On trucks full of firewood and ice. And icepicks. And stab wounds. [WIC]

Playland Arcade, the wonderful Coney ruin, is currently under demolition. [ATZ]

Going back to the Gas Station, the "former gas station that turned into a junkies' shooting gallery that turned into an art-installation-cum-performance space over on Avenue B," now a Duane Reade. [FP]

A new fro-yo joint is coming to Park Slope, and the locals share their thoughts: WTF. ANOTHER ONE? It's better than an effing cell phone store [crossed out]. We should get a Sprint Store.

History on the neon sign of the Keller Hotel. [NYN]

Take a walk down 2nd Avenue in the East Village--10 years ago. [J&KM]

Meet Ricky Powell, a native New Yorker and photographer, feeding squirrels and talking about the new Greenwich Village, where he writes graffiti to say: "Fuck the new-jack cornballs" with their "creepy, ugly vibes," and "Go back to schmucksville." [Vimeo]

In Astoria, the mayor is still Koch. [OMFS]

The watercolor streetscapes of 6th Avenue in the Village, by AFineLyne. [UNY]

An artist watches artist studios wipe out the factories and warehouses of Bushwick. [TUH]

A comic-strip take on the B&H Dairy. [YB]

Enjoy scenes of Tompkins Square Park in 1988--thanks to Michelle Shocked:

Colony Gone

In August, we first learned that Colony Music would be vanishing after 60 years in Times Square. Their landlord hiked the rent to $5 million. Now Colony is gone. All the sheet music, the CDs, the memorabilia is gone. A reader sends in the following snapshots.

The windows are empty.

The neon lights are off.

And the inside is gutted.

And what's coming to replace those 60 years of history?

1980s Treasure Trove

Every so often, someone scans a bunch of old photos of the lost city and puts them up on Flickr--and that is a glorious day. When Yvonne B. got in touch with me and shared the photos she took of the Meatpacking District in the 1980s, I got excited. And she had more. Now they're all on Flickr.

The photos mostly span the East Village, Greenwich Village, and the High Line (with whole lost chunks of 14th Street). Some of my favorites from the more than 100 images include:

A burned-out car on Crosby Street, and the crapped-out corner of 2nd Ave. and 5th St.

A lost theater on 2nd Ave. and 4th--does anyone know the name of it?

A mural on 8th St. at 1st Ave., along the side of what was once the St. Mark's Bar & Grill.

Rescued Estates, before the "Crazy Landlord" rented the place to The Bean coffee shop. And "Mambo Mouth" in the days before STOMP took over the Orpheum Theater on 2nd and 7th.

Here's a spindly, stand-alone piece of the High Line that has since vanished, never to be greened and surrounded by glass.

And a lovely, shadowy luncheonette beneath the old High Line--can anyone place this location?

There are so many more--coffee shops, gay bars, famous clubs, crumbled warehouses, scorched tenements, places familiar and forgotten. Yvonne can't name them all--visit her Flickr page and help identify some of the locations.

Help Unoppressive, Non-Imperialist Books

A few years ago, I looked at the survivors of Carmine Street. It seemed at the time like this little stretch of the Village had been forgotten by development. Of course, that could not last forever. Change is barreling in with the distasteful news of an IHOP coming to Carmine Street (the broker who made the deal said, "People don’t even know where Carmine Street is — yet. We’ll fix that").

And now we hear that Unoppressive, Non-Imperialist Bargain Books is struggling--and doing what it takes to stay alive in this unfriendly atmosphere for bookstores and other independent businesses.

Reader Felix sent in a shot of the bookstore--now sharing its space with a Metro PCS to make ends meet. Wrote Felix, "This can’t be a good sign, and this is one of my favorite book stores."

For the next 26 days, the bookshop's owners team up with Lucky Ant--and with you--to help them stay strong on Carmine. Says the press release, "Jim Drougas and his wife Indiana have run Unoppressive, at 34 Carmine Street, for over 20 years. They are a highly curated independent bookstore that has and continues to cater to the west village arts community. Unlike other bookstores, Unoppressive is not going under, but they do sense that times are tough and want to plan for owning a bookstore in the 21st century market place."



Watch the video, visit the website, and pledge some cash to help the bookshop expand to remain in business. (You'll get a nice gift!) Keep the Village safe from total IHOP-ization.

13th & Washington

At 837-843 Washington Street, on the corner of 13th, demolition has begun on what once held the last working meatpacking house in the center of the Meatpacking District. The space will soon command rents of $600 a square foot.


today: the plywood is up


2011: No signs, street art + small-wheel cyclist


2007: Signs on the awning for active business

837 Washington was sold back in 2008 by GOP leader James Ortenzio, after he pleaded guilty to tax evasion. He had been renting out the refrigerated warehouses here to meat businesses for well below market rate, keeping them alive.

Not very long ago, you could still see the movement of meat from the building's open doors, through which men labored at stainless steel tables.


2007: Wooden palettes, a sign of work being done


2011: Graffiti replaced by street art


today: workers bust a hole through the bricks

GVSP published a history of the building and images of its future. It was built in 1938 and housed throughout its lifetime almost nothing but meat. Among its last tenants were the Ottomanelli Co., Lamb Unlimited, and Diamond Meat Packer.

In these photos I took in 2007, you can still see the meatpackers' signage, bent and swinging under the corrugated awning.


2007


2007

There were once 250 meatpacking companies in the neighborhood. In 2003 there were only 35, and another 9 meatpackers moved out in 2009 alone, including the big Interstate Foods, which was demolished earlier this year to make room for a glass tower. Now that Weichsel's is being pushed out, what's left remains in the city-owned Gansevoort Meat Market Cooperative.

The red- and yellow-brick shell of 837 will remain, hollowed out to hold something very new.

There was a brief battle over the future of the building and what will stand on top of it--a giant glass box or a Niketown-style plan. The "twisty Mepa tower" won this past summer.


2011


today


the future

Meatpacking 1980s

When Yvonne B. commented on my post about Ivy Brown and the Triangle Building, I wrote to her and asked if she might share some of her memories of life as a young transgender woman in the Meatpacking District in the 1980s. Very generously, she sent along not only her memories, but also a group of wonderful photos. The following is all Yvonne.



I didn't live in the Meatpacking area. I just went there cause of the Vault club. I wasn't one of the regular street walkers, I was mostly a loner who at times would get picked up by passing guys who cruised looking for transsexual hookers. I wasn't dressed sexy like the other girls. I was a punk t-girl, but some guys thought it was a cute style, so they took me. I needed money to live.

I looked quite young for my age and I believe I attracted a maybe more perv type of guy, maybe pedophile type. They were nasty. I met them in Times Square, as well. One night a guy drove up to me and he looked just like a teacher I had in school. It felt strange so I walked away.




As I said, I was mostly a loner. I went to the Vault club quite a few times in the mid eighties. I had two friends that I went with, Jimmy and Linda. I would like to know what happened to them, maybe just to know if they are doing OK. I met a few strange characters at the club. One was a guy dressed in rags crawling around the floor. There was also the horse guy with a saddle on his back. It was a bizarre club but it seemed like the men outnumbered the girls in a big way, and single girls seemed kinda rare.



I do remember one night a bunch of street girls ran into the bagel store when a police car cruised by, as if the police would never think to look for anyone in the only store open in the area.



I don't remember the bone trucks. But I do remember the bone trucks where I grew up in the Bronx. People called them the glue trucks cause they thought the bones were used for making glue.



I did go to the Meatpacking area in the daytime when I sometimes went to Lee's Mardi gras store. I knew that Lee Brewster was an influential figure on the rights of the transgender, so I thought that buying things there was the least I could do to say thanks. The building that housed Lee's had an elevator that opened right onto the street. There was no lobby or entrance way, just an elevator door. Someone from Lee's would come down with the elevator to sort of escort one to the store. I kinda knew two people that worked at Lee's, Shannon and Robbie. Shannon was in the movie Wigstock. She was in the scene fitting Joey Arias with a wig that was like putting on a helmet.



I was told through the rumor mill that Raquel Welch would shop at Lee's, but I don't know for sure. The store had its mix of people, from transsexuals to hairy suburban crossdressers. I heard that some of the crossdressers were truck drivers shopping after they unloaded their goods and had spare time to shop for frilly clothing.