No Salvation

The latest Scarano tower this week got its lower level glassed over the Bowery. A dark, black facade between the bricks, between a tenement and a Salvation Army residence hall.



When I first wrote about the tower here, I said something about how the people at the rooftop pool could send splashes down upon the unwashed masses--the people living and benefiting from the Salvation Army next door.

But that's not going to happen, because the East Village Residence has closed.



According to EV Podcasts, it's been closed for months now. This residence had a program which provided "independent living skills, vocational training and aftercare services to identified populations of children in foster care," including a culinary arts program.

Rob Hollander at East Village History reports the building was originally erected circa 1910 and added on to in 1951. He writes about its "understated cornice and spandrels abstractly suggesting festoons or swags; only the Salvation Army terra cotta emblems, an 'S' superimposed over an 'A' bedded in glazed oak leaves and acorns, breaks the abstract stone sobriety."


unemployed drinking buttermilk at Bowery Salvation Army

"Sobriety" is an apt word choice here, for this Salvation Army was originally dedicated to fighting alcoholism on the Bowery. Today, with the many luxury bars spilling well-heeled drunks stumbling to the curb to vomit, such salvation should still be in high demand.

What cruel irony when, inevitably, the building is turned into a boutique hotel complete with wine bar.

*Everyday Chatter

Ken peeps at the new Minetta. [GVDP]

The Pepsi sign is back up and running. [NYCG]

Ousted StuyTown renters may be getting windfall from the real estate monster that ate them. [Curbed]

Is the Rainbow Room really becoming office space? [Eater]

The gods of baseball aren't happy. "Three of the most expensive sports arenas in history are about to open, and the timing couldn't be worse." [EVG]

Canadian reader John Ellis sends in a rare and lovely snapshot of the Baby Doll Lounge in 1993 (read about it here). He writes, "I had just graduated from film school and thought having a picture in front of the Baby Doll Lounge was cool in a John Waters sort of way." Thanks John!


Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn has many updates and further info on the life and death of blogger Bob Guskind.

And Miss Heather's video, taken with Bob, of a woman exploring her family's lost home, is a must-see.

New York Environment

Two of my favorite halls in the American Museum of Natural History are the Hall of North American Forests and its neighbor, the New York State Environment.

The New York State exhibit hall opened in 1951 and I am pretty sure that not a thing has changed since then. With its shades of green and maple, its mid-century typefaces and faux-bois paneling, it's like stepping into a vintage Boy Scout Handbook.



Its dusty dioramas, filled with miniature farmers and horses, often go ignored. Away from the crowds, it's a haven. Few people come here to learn about the Rotation of Farm Crops.



They're not so interested to discover what kinds of life squirm beneath the soil.



And faced with the life-cycle of the Calcareous Bog, they turn away in utter boredom, running off in search of the next touch-sensitive video screen, the next dino-rama, the gift shop, the cafe.



And while this makes the New York State exhibit hall a peaceful place to contemplate the sleep patterns of the common chipmunk and the decomposition cycle of a dead owl, it also means that these halls could be endangered.

Every time I visit, I expect them to be gone. To find a sign saying "Closed for Renovation." To return again only to discover with horror that the sleeping chipmunk has been yanked from its burrow and the Catskills have been utterly upheaved, replaced by computer screens and "interactive" video images.

Museum of Natural History, if you're listening, please leave this hall alone. Leave the wormy apples and the mini windmills right where they are. Don't touch those typefaces. And for God's sake, let that chipmunk go on sleeping, curled in his earthy den, for another half century.

*Everyday Chatter

Sadly, Gowanus Lounge blogger and journalist Robert Guskind has passed away. Without his tireless reporting, the New York blogosphere is suddenly a much smaller place. [OTBKB] Curbed remembers.

The (de-) gentrification of the LES through comics--did you know the "whole area is known as Delancey"? [GSN] via [Curbed]

The New Yorker mines the East Village twice this week for Talks of the Town at Lakeside Lounge and McSorley's.

Is there a new "middle-class exodus" from NYC? [yahoo]

View the Chinatown Gentrification Map--and say goodbye to the authenticity of old streets like Doyers. [CR]

Professor of Economics Nancy Folbre touches on the issue of Post-Crash Revisionism, why now the culture suddenly decides greed wasn't good: "Greed seems tolerable when we are rich... When times get hard, greed begins to chafe." [NYT]

Reverend Billy for mayor--join his fight to stop Walmart. [Gothamist]

The LES swarmed by "proper heels." [EVG]

Enjoy a tour of some East Village storefronts. [GVDP]

*Everyday Chatter

One blogger tackles Bourdain's Disappearing Manhattan and wonders why Vongerichten and other high-enders weren't included as endangered species. [Murr]

Check out the Tenement Museum's new blog.

Woody Allen's "Whatever Works" to open Tribeca Film Fest--the film features many sites around the Lower East Side.

Boogie says goodbye to another Bowery tenement falling to make room for another Bowery art gallery tower. [BB]

Etherea records, almost saved, now vanishing again. [Stupe]

Saying farewell to Chico of the LES. [12oz] via [EVG]

Union Square Virgin Mega space a bargain--the rent just dropped by millions. [NYP]

Simon Houpt wonders if the downturn will save NYC's creative people or just keep on bleeding them out. [G&M]

"With the economy in shambles and so many people losing their jobs and homes, it is no longer considered cool to brag about possessions and purchases." [CNN]

Celebu-Rama

In the American Dialect Society's journal American Speech, Volume 3, Number 83, from Fall 2008, I came upon a pair of interesting articles on the popularity of the prefix Celebu.

The first of the two articles, "Paris Hilton, Brenda Frazier, Blogs, and the Proliferation of Celebu-," by David West Brown of the University of Michigan, traces the origin of the prefix to its first appearance in the nonce word Celebutante, coined not recently, but by Walter Winchell in 1939. He was writing about the coming-out party of banking heiress Brenda Frazier, who, he wrote, "inspires a new 1-word description: Celebutante."

Since the 1930s, explains Brown, celebutante receded into the background of the American language, reappearing in the 1980s to refer to club kids, but only gaining prominence thanks to the blogosphere and Paris Hilton. 2003 seems to be celebutante's tipping point, when Gawker editor Elizabeth Spiers listed it among her "Current obsessions/topics of interest."


Source: American Speech

"Thus," writes Brown, "when Hilton and Richie's television show, The Simple Life, debuted on the Fox network on December 2, 2003...celebutante was already circulating in the blog lexicon. The term quickly became associated with her, and its frequency of use mushroomed."

That mushrooming is displayed in the second article from the journal, "Celebu- Word List: An Interesting Foray into Calculating Relevance," by David K. Barnhart of Lexik House Publishers. He begins, "The combining form of celebu-, as in celebutard, celebu-chef, and celebuspawn, to name but a few, came to the attention of the New Words Committee of the American Dialect Society during its deliberations for Word of the Year for 2007."

First of all, how exciting is it that there is such a thing as a New Words Committee and that they've been deliberating on celebutard? Here then, for your reading pleasure, is a handful of celebu- words, provided by Mr. Barnhart:



The question now is, with the yunnipocalypse upon us and the party over, will celebu- keep spawning? Or will it return to the bottom drawer of the cultural filing cabinet, to be dusted off and trotted out again when the new Paris Hiltons of the future rise from the ashes?

*Everyday Chatter

Foreclosures at places like StuyTown could mean "renters come out ahead." [CR]

The Donnell Library was gutted, shredded, and all around decimated (click pics)...for nothing. [Curbed]

"not only is big spending unusual these days, it’s a little out of fashion, maybe even a little tasteless." [NYT]

Read an interview with an elevator man as his ups and downs come to an end. [NYT]

In the land of many banks, the Bowery loses a branch. [EVG]

Ode to Coney's Major Markets, home of the murder burger. [FNY]

Gearing up for the release of Brooklynite Jim Knipfel's new novel. [WWIB]