Rocco Simulacrum

"A new Italian spot? You've been there before," writes the New York Times in their recent review of Carbone, the latest link in the Torrisi chain of restaurants, opening tomorrow in the space held by Rocco's from 1922 until 2011 when they were evicted by an impossible rent increase--from $8,000 to $18,000--and the popular Torrisi company quickly took over their lease.


Rocco, 2011


Carbone, photo the Times

The Times says Carbone "pays tribute" to the red-sauce joints of the 1950s "in a space that used to house Rocco, which specialized in that kind of fare for nearly a century. Just about every element — the menu, the music, the uniforms, the décor and even the servers’ banter with customers — will be engineered to conjure up the feeling of a lively night downtown, circa 1958."

Of course, Rocco's had all of this--and it was actually authentic, because on the day it closed it was still basically the same as it was in 1958. And for years before. It didn't have to "engineer" or "conjure up" any feeling. It was the thing itself. But the real thing, we see again and again, isn't good enough for this new city. The real must be evicted and replaced with an upscale simulacrum of itself. 


Rocco: photo Mitch Broder


Carbone, photo the Times

The Times article continues, "you might say it’s the middle of the last century as interpreted by chic players from the early part of this one: the contemporary art on the walls of the three rooms will be curated by Vito Schnabel, a son of the painter and film director Julian Schnabel, and the servers will wear vintage-style vests and tuxedos conceived by the designer Zac Posen."

(They also ripped out the authentic, antique tile floor and put in a new tile floor modeled on an idea of the authentic--in fact, modeled on a floor seen in the Godfather movie.)


Rocco, 2011


Carbone, photo the Times

Fedora, Minetta, Bill's Gay 90s--you, too! None of you were living up to your potential. On it goes in the authentrification machine. We are surrounded by facsimiles of the erased, and The Powers That Be keep telling us: This is real. The buzzy Orwellian doublethink turns everything around. Can the real be engineered? Can authenticity be conjured? More and more, we're living in an Epcot Center Jurassic Park of a city. For your safety, please keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times.


Carbone homepage


Further Reading:
Rocco Ristorante
Rocco's Update
Torrisi on Rocco
Rocco's and Bill's
Red-Sauce Joints
Carboned

Coignet Building

Took a walk through Gowanus this weekend and visited the once-lonely, lovely Coignet Stone Company Building, long on a vacant promontory of empty space, beautifully decaying.



It's now hugged by the rising Whole Foods, girders pressing in on two sides, big-boxing it in.



If you want to hear the whole story of the mysterious Coignet Building's past, present, and possible future, take a look at the new documentary by Max Kutner, At the Corner of 3rd and 3rd.


"At The Corner Of 3rd and 3rd" Trailer from Max Kutner on Vimeo.

Frank in 1966

A perfect gem just came to my attention--a 15-minute film on the great New York poet Frank O'Hara, produced by Thirteen/WNET in 1966, the same year he died.

In the film, Frank visits the studio of artist Alfred Leslie (who would later depict O'Hara's death by dune buggy), and then the two of them take a walk down Broadway.



Starting at 23rd Street, they pass the glorious Gordon Novelty Shop, alive and well. A coffee shop on the corner of 21st called Barry's Deli-Makers. Signs for party favors, decorations, lanterns, balloons (this was once a district of novelty shops). A little stand advertising meatballs, beef stew, and thick shakes, next to a wedding photographer's studio, next to a barber shop.

Then Union Square Park, the stretch where the farmer's market is today a parking lot full of chrome. Union Square with its crowd. Barton's Bonbonniere (wow--look!), a jeweler's shop, a phonebooth. Men in hats. Cigarettes 37 cents.



And then they're in Frank's apartment, that last apartment of his, at Broadway where 11th should be, recently demolished and turned into a condo building, the first floor replaced by a fro-yo joint histrionically called "Yooglers."

The phone rings while Frank types and it's "Jim." Jimmy Schuyler? I wonder. Or another Jim? (He's got an upset stomach after a night at "the Kansas City.") Frank smokes and reads poems. His cat sits nearby.

He reads the great, wonderful "The Day Lady Died," the poem that made me come to New York in the first place, if a poem is the thing that did it.




Links:
Frank's Last Place
Novelties Unsheathed

The Rawhide

VANISHING

Opened in 1979, the Rawhide is one of the last of a handful of old-school, unpretentious gay bars left in New York City. It is a survivor. But it won't be for long. The building that houses it on 8th and 21st in Chelsea was sold a couple of years ago and, according to our tipster with inside connections, the new landlord has jacked up the rent, nearly doubling it from $15,000 to $27,000 a month. The Rawhide's last day will be March 30.


Time Out NY

Mayoral front-runner Christine Quinn just had this to say about the Rawhide to New York magazine in January:

“One of the things I loved about Chelsea is that on Eighth Avenue, there is the Rawhide bar--not a luxury product. And for many years there were Latino guys from the neighborhood who had a folding card table every Friday and Saturday night and played dominoes. And they knew every guy who walked into the Rawhide, and every guy that walked in the Rawhide knew them. A leather bar may or may not be the best example, but it is the type of neighborhood experience we want to be able to have, what Jane Jacobs called ‘the eyes on the streets’ all watching out for each other.”



Known as the oldest levis-and-leather bar in the city, the "neighborhood friendly" Rawhide smells of beer and motor oil, or maybe it just seems to smell like beer and motor oil, because it should. An old motorcycle hangs from chains over a red-felt pool table, a grimy baby doll strapped to its muffler. The ceiling is painted black, pockmarked by industrial staples still gripping gray fluff that once belonged to Halloween cobwebs.

The walls (also painted black) are decorated with Herb Ritts posters of muscle models, Mr. International Leather 1990, and Tom of Finland poses--everywhere Tom of Finland--pressed into the black walls so they look somehow melded there.

In one corner, a combination Ms. Pacman/Galaga arcade game glows next to a Sopranos pinball machine that periodically announces "JIM" as its big winner. The bathroom doors are corrugated, like something from a junkyard, marked by signs that read: "One person at a time."

On the wall, a lighted Michelob clock, the kind of artifact you find in a basement rec room, glows in grassy light, half of its innocent putting-green image replaced by a nude man in the midst of giddy priapic achievement.



In the afternoon, when it's quiet and the sunlight outside tries in vain to enter through shaded windows, you can sit at the bar and talk to strangers. The men here are mostly older, survivors too, and if you listen, they will tell you something worth listening to.

At night, more men crowd the bar, young and old, their eyes on the go-go boy dancing on a wooden box. He's dressed in only combat boots and a thong. Now and then, one of the men steps up and slips a dollar into the thong. The music throbs--Michael Jackson's "Rock with You."

A certificate behind the bar proclaims the Rawhide winner of the "NYC Landmark Award" for 2012 from Odyssey magazine.


Mr. Rawhide 2011

And why hasn't it been landmarked? Why isn't it protected?

Thanks to Chelsea's so-called "success," thanks to the High Line and MePa, to Bloomberg's "luxury product" vision of the city, we are losing the Rawhide, its presence, its history, its meaning in the queer psyche of New York City, and for what? What kind of business can afford $27,000 a month? A sterile bank branch, a bubbly fro-yo joint, a dead-eyed 7-Eleven? 

Every day, our city dies by one more of these thousand cuts. Some of the cuts are bigger than others, and this is one of them.

Tell Christine Quinn to put her money where her mouth is--if you value the Rawhide, then stand up for it.


from Colors of Leather

Thanks to reader Richie Cohen for tipping me off to this loss a couple of weeks ago. I've been waiting until the deal was done and Richie passed along the official go-ahead from the Rawhide to share the bad news.

Further Reading:
Folsom East and The Eagle
Folsom East Responds
Eagle's Nest
Pleasure Chest 1972
Men in Leather
Lenny & Leather

*Everyday Chatter

The Vanishing NY Facebook page is almost at 6,000 likes. If you like this, you'll like that--with more updates and more discussion. Please "like" it right here.

"Judith Malina will not go gentle into that good night. The fiery 86-year-old director of the Living Theatre is losing both her apartment and the Lower East Side home of the world renowned theater troupe she co-founded 66 years ago." [JDF]

Bloomberg to hatch a totally invented upscale new "community" in Greenpoint. [GPers]

Planet NYU and the mutiny within. [Voice]

NYU boots 40-year-old liquor store. [Villager]

Jefferson condos desecrate corpse of East Village with smarmy ad campaign. [EVG]

The real problem with gentrification--monotony. [NR] 

More gentrification on fast-changing Clinton St. [BB]

"Gut Renovation, a new documentary by filmmaker Su Friedrich, opens March 6 at Film Forum and takes a hard look at the changes that Williamsburg has undergone since the implementation of new zoning laws in 2005." [LMag]

1940s shooting gallery makes a comeback at Coney. [ATZ]

Eat at El Sombrero. [Villager]

Another tenement turned into another single-family mansion. [GVSHP]

Check out the fake townhouse hiding a subway tunnel. [MNC]

A goodbye to the 9th Street Bakery. [Voice]

Pearl Diner reopens--rejoice! [OMFS]

Finding Vivian Maier is coming--documentary on the greatest street photographer no one ever knew about. [MNC]

Kiev Card

Cartoonist Joe Dator sends in this shot of a business card from the long-lost Kiev.

Joe writes, "I was using it as a bookmark in something I probably purchased off a blanket on Second Ave."

Take a look back at the old Kiev. We still miss it.

Greek Corner Coffee Shop Diner

There's a window on 7th Avenue and 28th Street that has always attracted me, but only at night when it glows a yellow fluorescent glow behind a small gathering of dressmaker's dummies. The ceiling is pressed tin. A wall is hung with spindles of colored thread. Sometimes, you see the shape of a seamstress going by. It looks like a window into the past.



I've always been so captivated by the window that I never looked at what lies beneath it.



When I finally did, it was like a discovery. The Greek Corner Coffee Shop Diner, in business here since 1980, is another window into the past. (The building owner must be a decent human being to allow so much to remain.)



It has a long counter and matching tables covered in aquamarine Formica, a color perhaps meant to conjure memories of the Aegean sea. A poster of the Acropolis hangs above. At the other end, by the front window where it can be seen and admired, a hunk of gyro meat sits on its spit.





The Acropolis poster and the gyro rotisserie were once staples of the New York City dining experience. But we don't have many Greek coffee shop diners left. We don't have many coffee shop diners left. For now, we still have this one--with its sizzling eggs and sausages in the morning, its stacks of plates, its bread wrapped in wax paper from Bakers Best, its poster in the window boasting "We Make the Best Burger in NYC."

The Greek Corner Coffee Shop Diner also has an ancient cash register--and it's a Faerman, straight from the Bowery. When I tell the cashier that I love her cash register she tells me, "You love it? You can have it," and demonstrates how difficult it is to push the antique buttons. Her boss is old-fashioned, she explains, as the drawer pops out. It is lined in weathered wood. Gorgeous. "Take it," the cashier says, "Take it!"