Greenpoint: Franklin St.

The signs of gentrification so glaringly missing from Manhattan Ave are abundant on Franklin. Not only the tell-tale businesses, but the people. Within minutes of stepping onto the sidewalk there, you will be bumped by someone talking on a cell phone. Even though Manhattan Ave is more crowded with pedestrians, people there know how to walk. They move to the right, as New Yorkers have done for generations. I tested this on both streets and I can assure you: On Manhattan they move to the right, on Franklin they don't.



On Manhattan Ave., it's discount stores selling flowery women's house coats called "dusters." On Franklin, it's high-end boutiques. There are no diners here, no Polish markets. There are outdoor cafes packed with wafer-thin women cradling chihuahuas in their laps, bars with clever names, "craft brew" beer stores, and coffee shops filled with bearded men peering at Mac laptops through chalk-white Wayfarer shades.

It is just one block away from Manhattan Ave., and it is a completely different universe with a completely different culture.

Overheard: "Oh my God, try the iced tea. It's blood orange and pear. Amazing. Especially when you've got a huge hangover."



To be honest, part of me wants to enjoy these new and independent businesses. They only span a few blocks, and they're off to the side. As Miss Heather attests, Word is a great little bookshop and Kill Devil Hill is filled with appealing curiosities. I'd like to lose myself in the fantasy of a "perfect mix": a liveable neighborhood filled with menschlich people and a handful of "cool" places to hang out with people who are, admittedly, more like me (in some ways).

But we all know that handful never contains itself. I looked at those "cool" places, and thought: This is The Blob. It grows and grows, and as it grows, it eats everything in sight. There will be no stopping it.

Already, the Horror of Greenpoint has landed. That Carnival cruise ship has docked at the Galapagos and boatloads of hungry monsters are coming ashore.



The luxury condos, lured by the hip cafes and shops, have taken over warehouses and factories. Tearing down buildings, they span whole blocks, sprouting towers at their centers. They muscle their way between smaller, cheaper homes, asserting themselves as "bigger and better!"



This is the second Greenpoint on our tour, and it threatens to destroy the first. But there is also a third Greenpoint, a sinister, dystopian layer surrounding the luxury.

Next stop: Post-Apocalyptic Greenpoint...

*Everyday Chatter

A wilding gang is beating people in Tompkins Square Park. One 26-year-old woman, after being beaten with bottles and sticks, went home and died. If Lesia Pupshaw had been a banker, stumbling home to her condo drunk and high on coke, it would be called a murder, not an overdose. And you would have read about her by now in the New York Times. But she was a heroin user and a "crusty" kid. So you haven't. Thankfully, we have Bob Arihood. [NMNL]

image from Village Voice, 2000

The just-vanished Chelsea Court Meat Market is being replaced by another meat market. Amazingly, a new butcher shop is coming to this spot, Knickerbocker Meat of the Bronx. (Thanks to the tipsters for this one.):


The New Yorker visits the ever-vanishing Music Row to say goodbye to Manny's. [NYer]

Why I avoid my local F station like the plague between 5 and 7pm on weekdays. [EVG]

Get ready to have your heart warmed: A mother's lost diary from 1939 turns up at the Strand's bargain rack, and the good folks at Freebird Books Google its way back to the son it was intended for. [FBB]

Find out why Sinatra loved Patsy's restaurant. [CR]

In the New Yorker poem "Bleecker Street," Philip Schultz wonders if:
"Perhaps these three Chinese girls
giggling into cell phones, lavishly spending
each moment of their youth, truly believe
the mountain of self has no top
and each breath is a reckoning with fate?
Perhaps these shiny boutiques, each
so resolute, so eager to please, are weary
of decorating the illusions of another century..."

*Everyday Chatter

More and more people are catching on to the bright side of this recession. In New York, Jennifer Senior writes about how the money-crazed days made people into anti-social, unempathic, well, yunnies. On a psychologist's experiments: "Just thinking about money made her subjects less likely to help strangers struggling with their belongings. Just handling money made her subjects less sensitive to physical pain." [NYM]

The collapsed building on 14th I reported on last week has now been completely stripped of its facade. You can see into people's bedrooms. At the building's feet, the klieg lights and wires from the accursed Sorcerer's Apprentice. (Curbed has the update with more pics):


Young men are wilding in Tompkins Square Park--one young woman is dead. [NMNL]

Not everyone's excited that Love Saves the Day is becoming yet another ramen place. [EVG]

A fantastic chance to catch up with the ladies who were once Miss Subways. [Gothamist]

Neighbors fight to save the mosaic that has graced 88 Perry Street since 1972. [Flickr]

me-myself-i's flickr

Alex wrestles with the meaning of a world in which CBGB and John Varvatos t-shirts co-exist. [FP]

Ken gives us reasons to go to Hoboken. [GVDP]

On the street in Greenpoint, two perfect candidates for the wonderful Museum of Bad Art. Words do no justice, just feast your eyes...and before you ask, yes, that is a woman with a uni-boob wrapped in an actual hot-pink mesh thong:

Greenpoint: Manhattan Ave

Traveling from the yunnie cacophony of the East Village, riding the L train packed with twitchy hipsters, to emerge from the G train and onto Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint may be akin to stepping off a Carnival cruise ship bloated with ticky-tacky people, their lips smeared with Chocoholic Buffet, and walking into the Edenic wonder of the Galapagos Islands.

You are simply in another country. One that remains mostly unspoiled and untrammeled, where the natives practice strange and wonderful customs--like saying hello, holding the door for you, and wishing "Bless you" when you sneeze. Instead of talking on cell phones, they are talking to each other or just not talking. Instead of ramming you with baby strollers filled with atrophying children, they let their kids walk.



I have been to Greenpoint just twice and saw only a sliver. For a thorough account of the goings on in this part of Brooklyn, see Miss Heather's extensive reporting at New York Shitty. Forgotten NY has also covered the neighborhood here and here. But even a sliver gives you a good sense of the strong community still thriving here.



I was shocked by the lack of gentrification. Yes, they have Chase Banks and Dunkin Donuts, even a weird Starbucks in a former theater, but these all have a run-down look about them and they don't keep places like the Peter Pan Donut shop from being packed with satisfied customers.



People speak Polish everywhere. And it's not just the older people--it's the twentysomethings in their trendy sunglasses, the teens, and the kids, too. Dinner at the Happy End will surround you in Polish. Its dark, Eastern bloc decor might intimidate you. But you'll be welcomed by a friendly young waiter who will urge you to eat the salad, the best part, the part that gives you vegetables. And the kielbasa, perfectly cooked by a staunch woman in a hairnet, is incredible.



At the Manhattan 3 Decker diner you can get a three-decker sandwich (a club sandwich) and enjoy the bickering of the owners, a Greek couple who reply to one another, "And the horse you rode in on!" Meanwhile, regulars are greeted by name and the waitstaff knows their favorite tables. And the children--you won't notice you are surrounded by them because they are so well-behaved, quietly eating grilled cheese sandwiches and coloring in books. A mother tells one, "When I was a girl, I wasn't spoiled. My mother disciplined me."



Walking west, you pass lovely rowhouses on tree-lush streets, and fantasize about living there. "Greenpoint is unspoiled!" you think, "How could it be?" Then you come out to Franklin Street, where you see the future of Greenpoint. It's a completely different world, running just one block parallel to the world you just left, and it is spreading.

Next Stop: Franklin Street...

*Everyday Chatter

Rent parties are back in vogue, and on the LES, it's "Slam the Landlord." Tomorrow night, help a couple of East Villagers save their home. [Blah]

Nothing inspires my own real-estate envy like a townhouse in the Village. And townhouse owners who can "flirt" with renting out their 4-bathroom triplex to go "see the world" really kick that envy up a notch. Or ten. These folks on 11th Street are advertising with a sign in their front yard. Any takers?


One man tells his tale of Tribeca Film Festival terror. [EVG]

Save the date: Manhattanville holdout Nick Sprayragen stands up against eminent domain and Columbia University. Join him on May 21 at 2PM, NY State Appellate Division, Madison Ave at 25th St.

Family Portrait Day invades East Village--what is this, Park Slope? [BB]

*Everyday Chatter

I got an email from a reader named Chris who wanted to share his photos of the vanished city. They illustrate how quickly and thoroughly New York has been replaced. It's as if we're looking into the deep past--the 1940s instead of the 1990s. Check them out on flickr.

photo by Chris Regan

How one "disturbingly handsome" family helped to gut and renovate parts of the city--so is a TV show and book about them "like a distasteful relic from another time and place"? [NYT]

...Runnin' Scared weighs in.

It's the time of year when our sidewalks shrink, getting more crowded, as outdoor cafes swell. Here comes another. Unless you fight it. [BB]

Mona Molarsky examines the "expansion" and vanishing of the Upper West Side. [Examiner]

Nothing goes together better like beer, bikinis, and high colonics. [EVG]

Finding beauty in an eyesore's ancient door. [GVDP]

*Everyday Chatter

Anti-overdevelopment street art about "architectural disaster" a new trend? [Curbed]

Nothing says "Mother's Day" like swine-flu hysteria:


Get a colorful inside look at life on the Bowery from 1969-1989. [EVG]

Another writer visits the cherry blossoms with their many attendant cameras and is "unbothered by the crowds," feeling like Georges Seurat on La Grande Jatte--a modern-day version of this painting would include a plethora of technology. [NYT]

Reverend Billy for mayor: "it was everyone's dislike for banks and frozen yogurt which caused the applause." [SG]

In a crashing economy, the Real Housewives of Jersey pay cash for their extravagance. [NYT]

In a time when more and more New Yorkers can't make the rent, rents are going up. [Curbed]