Chelsea Now follows up on the Les Desirs story: Turns out, Sullivan Street Bakery has been eyeing the spot since 2002, but the French baker said "Non." [CN]
Alabamans love our lost Cheyenne Diner so much, they're willing to kill for it. [Curbed]
Leaders of the censored Leather Fest send word: "We may be defeated, but we're still gonna celebrate!" As the Food Fest rages in MePa, go to the Leather & Bear Beer Bust & Bar-B-Que at The Delancey, 10/10, 1 - 5pm.
Vinyl sales are up--will used books be next for resuscitation? [CR]
A rare look inside the ancient Bank of Coney Island. [ATZ]
"The Lower East Side Remembered and Revisited" is coming up 12/2 at CUNY.
A video urges you to save the Marx Brothers' homeplace. [youtube]
An EV frat house for sale. [EVG]
Check out the Loews Village 7 classic film schedule: Jaws! The Godfather! Scarface!
Friday, October 9, 2009
NY Art Book Fair
Last weekend was the New York Art Book Fair at P.S. 1 in Long Island City. Like the Zine Fest, in this digital day and age, it's a pleasure to see people so avidly putting words and images onto paper. With three floors of books, zines, and posters, the place was packed.
Some highlights:
John Rafman's "16 Google Street Views" from Golden Age
Photo prints of bound periodical spines by Mickey Smith
The Thing Quarterly--with the latest "issue" as a pair of eyeglasses with text from Jonathan Lethem
Some highlights:
John Rafman's "16 Google Street Views" from Golden Age
Photo prints of bound periodical spines by Mickey Smith
The Thing Quarterly--with the latest "issue" as a pair of eyeglasses with text from Jonathan Lethem
Thursday, October 8, 2009
*Everyday Chatter
Greene Monsters
In Fort Greene, a pair of Frankenstein monsters can be found across the street from each other.
On Lafayette Ave, someone has turned a brick tenement's lower half into a modernist condo, leaving the upper half still tenementy:
And this lovely, 40-year-old cleaners lures you in with its antique signage, only to reveal its lower parts have been transformed into a "dressed down luxury store":
It all reminds me of those mix-and-match books I had as a kid, where you put chicken legs on a cat's body or an elephant head on a rabbit.
In a related item, some scary news comes in from The Local. The Lafayette Grocery & Dairy just had its old sign ripped down. I took these photos recently, happy to find one of these antique tin signs, an increasing rarity in the city:
To see the destruction, click here. Luckily, reports The Local, the sign is in storage and will go back up once the work is done. No monsterizing for this grocery store.
On Lafayette Ave, someone has turned a brick tenement's lower half into a modernist condo, leaving the upper half still tenementy:
And this lovely, 40-year-old cleaners lures you in with its antique signage, only to reveal its lower parts have been transformed into a "dressed down luxury store":
It all reminds me of those mix-and-match books I had as a kid, where you put chicken legs on a cat's body or an elephant head on a rabbit.
In a related item, some scary news comes in from The Local. The Lafayette Grocery & Dairy just had its old sign ripped down. I took these photos recently, happy to find one of these antique tin signs, an increasing rarity in the city:
To see the destruction, click here. Luckily, reports The Local, the sign is in storage and will go back up once the work is done. No monsterizing for this grocery store.
Wednesday, October 7, 2009
*Everyday Chatter
Penn South gives their side of the Les Desirs story in a letter to its cooperators. [CYB]
Is New York getting stupider? Doesn't even rank in the Top 10 Smartest Cities. [DB]
The Bronx says goodbye to Stella D'Oro. [NYT]
Check out Joel Meyerowitz's photos of NYC's wilderness. [DI]
Jonathan Lethem fans, get ready for the new New York novel and a marathon, bi-borough reading:
Paul Auster also has a new novel coming out this month: Invisible.
The demise of the Jewish deli--and a blog trying to save it. [NYT]
Bowery artist mocks mockers. [EVG]
A round-up of this summer's secret parties and "semi-clandestine" events. [NK]
Is New York getting stupider? Doesn't even rank in the Top 10 Smartest Cities. [DB]
The Bronx says goodbye to Stella D'Oro. [NYT]
Check out Joel Meyerowitz's photos of NYC's wilderness. [DI]
Jonathan Lethem fans, get ready for the new New York novel and a marathon, bi-borough reading:
Paul Auster also has a new novel coming out this month: Invisible.
The demise of the Jewish deli--and a blog trying to save it. [NYT]
Bowery artist mocks mockers. [EVG]
A round-up of this summer's secret parties and "semi-clandestine" events. [NK]
World in Wax
Between my research for this summer's post on the Henderson's building at Coney Island, and my interest in Zoe Beloff's "Dreamland" exhibit, I became fascinated by the long-vanished World in Wax Musee, which stood from 1926 until the mid 1980s, run by a woman named Lillie Santangelo.
Tomorrow night, Coney Island USA will be screening the film "Lilly's World of Wax" by Tom Palazzo. In the film, Lillie herself "leads the camera on a tour of the museum," delivering "her absurd and touching stories about the figures" made of wax.
photograph: Costa Mantis, 1981
Other than Palazzo's film, very few images of the wax museum's interior exist. Luckily, photographer, filmmaker, and Coney Island USA co-founder Costa Mantis was on hand back in the 1980s to preserve Lillie's wonders. He gave me permission to reprint his rarely seen photos here. Zoe Beloff, who will also be speaking at the film tomorrow night, provided the scans.
photograph: Costa Mantis, 1981
Many of the wax figures at the museum were of murderers. Posing in their gruesome moments of homicide, there was Julio Ramirez Perez, the screwdriver killer, plunging his tool into the neck of Vera Lotito in 1948; and Richard Speck, holding a nurse bound and gagged in her white uniform (she was one of eight nurses Speck murdered in 1966).
photograph: Costa Mantis, 1981
One of the bloodiest scenes in the museum was played out by Hickman the Fox, who kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Marion Parker in 1927. In this ancient wax tableau, itself dating back to the 1920s, Hickman dismembers Marion in a bathtub, removing her internal organs and wiring her eyes open.
photograph: Costa Mantis, 1981
And perhaps the most infamous of Lillie's killers was Ruth Snyder, the "Double Indemnity" murderer, later played by Barbra Stanwyck in the Billy Wilder movie. Here, Snyder stands by her lover, Henry Judd Gray, the corset salesman she seduced into killing her husband.
photograph: Costa Mantis, 1981
The museum did not focus only on murders. It also showcased presidents of the United States, celebrities, and strange births. The two-headed baby had a starring role.
photograph: Costa Mantis, 1981
As did little Lina Medina, "the youngest confirmed mother in medical history, giving birth at the age of five years, seven months and 21 days." Here she is in 1939, lying in her hospital bed under the headline, "Baby Boy's Mother Is Baby Too."
photograph: Costa Mantis, 1981
"No exhibition devoted itself more fully to the celebration of domestic trauma than Lillie Beatrice Santangelo's World in Wax Musee," writes Amy Herzog in an essay in The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society & Its Circle.
She shares with us Santangelo's own words, from an unpublished interview, about what the World in Wax meant to her: "a wax show teaches the good things in life and also teaches that crime doesn't pay. What makes a person bad? What makes a clock tick, good or bad?"
In the old Coney, with its bizarre juxtapositions and otherwordly representations, such odd and unsettling questions could arise. What makes a bad clock tick? In the clean and easy new Coney, we may never find the answers.
Tomorrow night, Coney Island USA will be screening the film "Lilly's World of Wax" by Tom Palazzo. In the film, Lillie herself "leads the camera on a tour of the museum," delivering "her absurd and touching stories about the figures" made of wax.
photograph: Costa Mantis, 1981
Other than Palazzo's film, very few images of the wax museum's interior exist. Luckily, photographer, filmmaker, and Coney Island USA co-founder Costa Mantis was on hand back in the 1980s to preserve Lillie's wonders. He gave me permission to reprint his rarely seen photos here. Zoe Beloff, who will also be speaking at the film tomorrow night, provided the scans.
photograph: Costa Mantis, 1981
Many of the wax figures at the museum were of murderers. Posing in their gruesome moments of homicide, there was Julio Ramirez Perez, the screwdriver killer, plunging his tool into the neck of Vera Lotito in 1948; and Richard Speck, holding a nurse bound and gagged in her white uniform (she was one of eight nurses Speck murdered in 1966).
photograph: Costa Mantis, 1981
One of the bloodiest scenes in the museum was played out by Hickman the Fox, who kidnapped and murdered 12-year-old Marion Parker in 1927. In this ancient wax tableau, itself dating back to the 1920s, Hickman dismembers Marion in a bathtub, removing her internal organs and wiring her eyes open.
photograph: Costa Mantis, 1981
And perhaps the most infamous of Lillie's killers was Ruth Snyder, the "Double Indemnity" murderer, later played by Barbra Stanwyck in the Billy Wilder movie. Here, Snyder stands by her lover, Henry Judd Gray, the corset salesman she seduced into killing her husband.
photograph: Costa Mantis, 1981
The museum did not focus only on murders. It also showcased presidents of the United States, celebrities, and strange births. The two-headed baby had a starring role.
photograph: Costa Mantis, 1981
As did little Lina Medina, "the youngest confirmed mother in medical history, giving birth at the age of five years, seven months and 21 days." Here she is in 1939, lying in her hospital bed under the headline, "Baby Boy's Mother Is Baby Too."
photograph: Costa Mantis, 1981
"No exhibition devoted itself more fully to the celebration of domestic trauma than Lillie Beatrice Santangelo's World in Wax Musee," writes Amy Herzog in an essay in The Coney Island Amateur Psychoanalytic Society & Its Circle.
She shares with us Santangelo's own words, from an unpublished interview, about what the World in Wax meant to her: "a wax show teaches the good things in life and also teaches that crime doesn't pay. What makes a person bad? What makes a clock tick, good or bad?"
In the old Coney, with its bizarre juxtapositions and otherwordly representations, such odd and unsettling questions could arise. What makes a bad clock tick? In the clean and easy new Coney, we may never find the answers.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
*Everyday Chatter
Is the East Village in a state of emergency? [EVG]
5th Street resident tosses bottles at ACE Bar, police show up with tear gas and riot gear. [NMNL]
In case you missed the Lost New York conference, here's a recap of Marshall Berman. [P&W]
Alex is not happy with the dog-piss tactics of the anti-Janes. [FP]
The old parts of Washington Square Park have been officially fenced off. [WSP]
5th Street resident tosses bottles at ACE Bar, police show up with tear gas and riot gear. [NMNL]
In case you missed the Lost New York conference, here's a recap of Marshall Berman. [P&W]
Alex is not happy with the dog-piss tactics of the anti-Janes. [FP]
The old parts of Washington Square Park have been officially fenced off. [WSP]
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