Cafe Thou Art

Over this summer, one night a week, you could find Jeffrey Packard's Cafe Thou Art in the small park at St. Mark's Church. It might still be there.



Packard sits with friends and passersby on folding chairs, by a neon sign, a pink flamingo, and a miniature mini-golf course (there's only one hole). If you stop and look curiously at it for a moment, he'll invite you to take a swing. It's not an easy shot.



On the Cafe Thou Art homepage, Packard writes, "The idea of the café is to create a place where people can meet. In its simplest form, the café consists of 2 chairs, a table, the lit neon sign: 'Café Thou Art' and refreshments and of course, mini-golf. The installations are sculptures that assemble time, space, and people. They are constructed in the Public domain to express the openness and expansiveness of hope in humanity."

It's a rare experience to sit and talk to strangers in a city where cafes are filled with laptops and cell phones--but even this installation has a live stream.

*Everyday Chatter

David Freeland introduces "You Are Here," a way to discover the past through current technology, like texting (which you should not do while walking and bumping into people--heads up!). [GLF]

A lost bell from Coney's Dreamland is discovered underwater. [CR]

Where once was hardware, there shall be sushi. And on it goes. [BB]

Check out a new book about Governors Island--Governors Island: The Jewel of New York Harbor by Ann L. Buttenwieser. The author will be speaking at the Skyscraper Museum 9/22.

Another sports bar for the EV. [EVG]

Mysterious Toynbee Tile demands "Justice for NYC Mosaic Man Jim Power" in the middle of 2nd Ave at 8th St.:

Fedora Returns

In July, the Fedora restaurant on West 4th closed briefly so that its proprietress, Fedora Dorato, could have back surgery. These events always unnerve me--when an old-schooler takes a health-related hiatus--because you just never know if that's the end and the place will next become the latest Beatrice Inn. So I was glad to get the chance to dine once again at the reopened 60-year-old Village haunt.



There were about 7 of us in the place, mostly older men with gray hair or no hair, sitting quietly alone over dishes of lasagna and veal parm. Occasionally, one of the men talked out loud to himself, then looked up surprised, as if he hadn't expected the words in his head to exit from his mouth.

The waiter brought my dish and asked what book I was reading. I showed him the cover. "The Culture of Narcissism," he read aloud, "Hmpf. Well, isn't that New York?"



On one wall of the restaurant are framed Playbills, pages of sheet music, and photos of handsome young men who autographed their head shots long ago to Fedora "with love." One called Fernando posed in leathers, shirtless, on a motorcycle. Most of them are octogenarians by now, if not gone, and I wondered if some of the men sitting alone at the tables were also on the wall.

They drank their espressos delicately, with pinkies raised, but belched like bears.

I thought: This could be me one day, alone but not alone, enjoying my usual table and usual meal. The peacefulness of the place was soothing and easy. Maybe it's the murky pink lighting, what painter Jon Hammer calls a "special kind of undersea gloom."



When Fedora walked in the front door, fit as a fiddle, the patrons applauded. The old woman, stooped yet elegant, warmly smiling, greeted everyone--many by name. "And how are you tonight, Jane," she asked, "And how are you, my dear friend Charlie?" Her patrons have been applauding her entrance for years. In 1992, she told the Times, "I love it when they applaud for me. Sometimes I go out just so I can come back in and hear them do it again."

She went behind the bar and poured a martini for one of her dear friends, knowing what he wanted without his having to ask.



When I walked out to the sidewalk, a young couple passed by. The guy tried reading the menu, but his girl pulled him along, saying, "Forget it, that place is empty."

Depends on your definition of "empty," I guess.

*Everyday Chatter

For those who just can't resist leaving their $1,000+ laptops unattended while they smoke or pee (who does this?), there's now a handy camouflage to fool thieves. [LH]

"French language bookstore Librairie de France--a Rockefeller Center destination for 74 years--is closing shop after its rent threatened to triple to an astonishing $1 million a year." [NYDN]

Discovering a last remnant of the old Ziegfeld theater. [HP]

A Beaux-Arts landmark is getting topped with a glassy sliver of a tumor. [EVG]

Without Internet service underground, people still read on the subway. City Room asks for your MTA reading list. [CR]

Mike Albo visits old-school, cost-conscious Syms and finds "my regard for the suit was re-attuned. Instead of a symbol of status, I began to see it as ordinary masculine work wear." [NYT]

A shoplifter gets exposed Luddite style--on paper, taped to a signpost. [Curbed]

Man with a Horn

Yesterday, I posted about the dearth of street theater at Astor Place. Last night, I stood happily corrected.

Crossing the glassy blue glow of the Chase bank, I heard the sound of a trumpet blasting, bleating, echoing like it was banging around inside a tin can. I didn't see any trumpeter until I looked into the darkened windows of the city bus parked in the shadows of the old Cooper Union building.



Between his shifts, the lone bus driver in silhouette paced up and down the aisle, trumpet in hand, brass catching streetlight.



No passengers troubled him in the empty bus.

No traffic shoved him.

No stop lights stopped him.



Whether he was practicing or just blowing off steam, I don't know. I don't know his name or anything more about him. He played only for himself. But his playing attracted a group of passersby who stopped to listen, and snap his picture, too--also pleasantly surprised, I assumed, to find New York suddenly New York again.

We felt--I felt--strangely redeemed.



And when the time came for his shift to begin, the driver turned on the engine and the lights, then took one last stroll--down and back once more, transforming a city bus into his own Carnegie Hall, blasting John Williams' theme from Superman.

On the advertisement beneath him, the headline read, "You never know who's going to save your life."

Next American City

An interview in Next American City: "The Gospel According to Jeremiah Moss."



Choice quote: “it’s hard to imagine New York without Moss…. Jeremiah Moss, the mourner of a lost Manhattan, could become New York’s conscience.”

*Everyday Chatter

"I Heart" takes a look at the High Line's graffiti cover-up. [IH]

Doctorow tackles Harlem's infamous pack-rat Collyer brothers in "a kind of male, New York City version of Grey Gardens." [NYT]

The Brooklyn Book Festival schedule is now available. [MCB]

Mark you calendars for Open House NY: 10/10 & 11. [OHNY]

Take an odorific walking tour of Manhattan. [NYT]

Getting clipped at Kings barber on 14th. [HG]

NY Post "scoop" ends with a punch in the nose. [NYS]

Viral corporate graffiti attacks the EV. [EVG]