Chinatown Fair

Recently, rumors have come out about the closure of the Chinatown Fair Arcade on Mott Street. Bowery Boogie shares a video of the manager who says he can't make money here and "runs the arcade for the community." Boogie reports: "store manager Henry Cen lost his lease on the Mott Street space, and will be moving out March 23."


New York Daily Photo

It's not the first time closure has been threatened here. In 2007, a For Rent sign showed up on the arcade, but the Fair survived. In 2008, a reader named Ben told us the For Rent sign was back: "Now you can't even see the old ghost lettering for the Tic-Tac-Toe chicken. Worst of all, it might close!" But it didn't.

This past weekend, an employee of the arcade responded to the current rumors, saying, "the truth is, that cf maybe relocating to williamsburg, brooklyn if disputes with the landlord r not settled. CF IS NOT CLOSING."


photo: Ben

The Chinatown Fair has been around since at least the 1950s, and possibly as early as 1944, when it was run by Frank Gee, who helped establish the Chinese American Legion post, holding tea parties for the organization in his arcade after World War II.

Author Bruce Hall recalls in his Chinatown memoir Tea That Burns when the arcade was owned by Frank Gee and was "noted for its pinball machines, shooting gallery with real bullets, and funny little 'museum' with its golden globe encircled with snarling dragons."


1958

But the Chinatown Fair's greatest claim to fame was its Tic-Tac-Toe Chickens. They were written about, more than once, by Calvin Trillin. In a 1999 New Yorker piece, he dug deep into the story of the birthplace of the tic-tac-toe chickens: They were trained in Hot Springs, Arkansas, by former students of famed behaviorist B.F. Skinner.

The same people, Trillin informs us, had created "such acts as a Vietnamese pig that drives a Cadillac and a parrot that rollerskates, a chicken that dances while a rabbit plays the piano and a duck plays guitar." Similar chickens trained here have also "told fortunes and sold postcards and played baseball."

According to the Arkansas folks, the first tic-tac-toe chicken was installed on Mott Street around 1974. Their chickens were unbeatable. They even beat B.F. Skinner.


from the New Yorker

One long-time Chinatown Fair chicken, named Willy, died in 1993 and received a moving obituary in the New York Times, which stated: "The bird was still smart enough to take our 50 cents. It was not like meat from Frank Perdue. It was our playmate, and since we have always been a particularly self-centered species, that elevated it."


1994, Michael Yamashita/Corbis

One of Willy's successors, called Lily, was rescued in 1998 by a concerned chicken lover and set free in Massachusetts to frolic with other farm animals. She may well have been the last tic-tac-toe chicken at the arcade.

(If you run a casino and would like to sponsor your own Tic-Tac-Toe Chicken Challenge, write to a guy named Bunky in Arkansas. He still trains his chickens using the Skinner method. If you just want to play a chicken, head to Foxwoods, where if you beat the chicken you win $10,000--check out the movie.)


photo: Elaine Norman

Sometime in the 2000s, the word CHICKENS disappeared from the arcade's sign. Chickens was plural because, in addition to the tic-tac-toe chicken, there was also a dancing chicken, whose life was maybe not as intellectually stimulating as the tic-tac-toe chicken's.


Adam Woolfitt/Corbis

What has remained at the Chinatown Fair, without the chickens, are lots of arcade games and lots of dedicated gamers. Scouting NY recently went inside to take pictures, and last year The Times did a profile on the place.

They wrote: "Chinatown Fair has become a center for all the outcasts in the city to bond over their shared love for a good 20-punch combo and 'old school' games that more popular arcades don’t stock anymore." But its glory has been fading for awhile. Said one gamer to the Times, the arcade is the "Last of a dying breed."

Its move to Brooklyn will be another blow for any such outcasts left in Manhattan.

*Everyday Chatter

Little Italy gets littler and littler. [NYT]

Protesters are holding a candlelight vigil for 35 Cooper Square tonight at 6:00--and the Times covered the story this weekend. [NYT]

Another double-dormered little house on Grand St., in 1932 and today. [MU]

Upscale vintage shop Life Emporium coming to "eco" condo 515 5th in the South Slope--where a Salvation Army used to be. [OMFS]

First they lost the Tic-Tac-Toe Chicken, now the Chinatown Fair Arcade may be shutting down. [BB]

The Post catches up with the San Gennaro battle, and we hear more about "greasy" Italians. [NYP]

"Hot Chicks Room" installed on Ave A, where Two Boots Video & Pioneer Theater used to be. [EVG]

A Q&A about Harlem's jazz history with David Freeland. [AMNY]

100 years later, Triangle Shirtwaist victims are identified. [NYT]

Most recent EV noise complaint bubbles from 311:

Niko's

VANISHED

Niko's Mediterranean Grill on the Upper West Side has closed after 50 years. They added this note to their Yelp listing: "Sun 2/13 was our last day. Forced to sell lease. Will miss you all. Please support Big Nick's on Broadway."


New York Magazine

Thanks to blogger and JVNY reader Marty Wombacher for sending in these shots of the restaurant's goodbye sign, where Big Nick says the decision to sell the lease was "difficult and painful," but "it is time to cut back":



See what a final meal at Niko's looked like from the blog Stuff I Ate. And the owners' other Upper West Side restaurant, Big Nick's pizza and burger joint, remains open--go there.



As for what might come next to this corner, Marty offered a theory:

"When I was looking through the windows an old woman came up and asked if I lived on the block. I told her I did years ago and was surprised that this place was closed. She said she was too. Then I jokingly said, 'Well, you can look forward to another Starbucks on the block.' She spat out, 'They put a fucking Starbucks in there and I'll fucking firebomb the place!'"

*Everyday Chatter

An Italian-American New Yorker asks that the San Gennaro Feast return to its roots. [Villager]

Live-tweeting Andy Warhol's 8-hour film Empire--you can follow Bryan Waterman and others. [WNYC]

March 29: Brian Rose is giving a slide talk on his excellent before-and-after Lower East Side photos. [BR]

Ancient advertising artifacts discovered in Bed-Stuy. [NYS]

A letter of "utter disgust" to the Landmarks chairman for not saving 35 Cooper Square. [EVG]

Check out Stephanie Gray's super 8 films tomorrow at Microscope Gallery, including many scenes of the vanishing city, including Jon Vie Pastries.

In Soho, a chair in the shape of an ass. An ass chair. [NYCPB]

La Nueva Rampa

Chelsea resident Stacy Torres brings us the sad news that 14th Street restaurant La Nueva Rampa has been shuttered for weeks now and is most likely closed.


Litherland's flickr

It was one of the last (maybe the last?) of Chelsea's once abundant Cuban-Chinese restaurants. These establishments began opening in the 1960s, when many of Cuba's Chinese population fled from Castro. Diners' favorites included La Chinita Linda and Sam's Chinita (replaced by Niso's). Both are gone.

At La Nueva Rampa, the decor was simple and blunt. Chinese and Spanish foods were served and both languages were spoken. The food was plentiful, messy, and tasty. It was also very cheap. So we've lost another affordable Chelsea eatery.

What in the city is left of the Chino-Latino?


eating in translation's flickr

Post Script: The neighboring Memory Keeper 1-hour photo lab is still there, but that name, that service...how long can it possibly last? In the front window a Russian man will fix your watch, change its battery and band. He's a careful and consummate professional. Go to him--just watching how he works with his tiny tools is worth it.

*Everyday Chatter

Where are the noisiest neighborhoods in New York City? You know it's the EV/LES. Also noisy: Greenwich Village and Inwood. Play with the city's 311 fun map to find out more--it's real-time--let's see what happens at 11:00 on Friday night:


Check out LES History Project founder Eric Ferrara's new book On The Bowery.

Jonathan Lethem responds to (still) heartbroken Brooklynites and scores one for ambivalence: "every time I write about [New York], I’m likely to end up with something as fiercely ambivalent as the earlier results--ambivalent, of course, in the sense not of muddled-in-the-middle, but of strong contradictory responses. Love-hate is rich as Brooklyn is itself vast and disjointed." [BP]

Celebrate McSorley's today at your own risk. [EVG]

40-year-old Donut Shoppe survives in Sheepshead Bay. [LC]

Greenwich Avenue businesses are in crisis. [FP]

Kramer was raving about gentrification back in 1994, against the day when all we'd have are “gourmet coffee or cookie stores.” Make that coffee and ice-cream and he hit the nail on the head. [BB]

When Mulberry had a Bandit's Roost. [P&W]

Some Mets fans have created a very special t-shirt for this upcoming season:

Main St. Ephemera

Recently, Lost City shared the sad news that Main Street Ephemera will be closing soon. The last time I visited the store, I worried this would happen. It's too good a place to last in this city.

Their big closing sale starts today and goes until Sunday, with 25 - 50%.



The shop is packed with ephemera--things made of paper that come and then go. They have fantastic movie posters, magazines, strange catalogs (for products like antique anal stimulators), and tons of photographs.



They've even got a collection of Jewish wine labels, including several from the Lower East Side's own Schapiro's--the wine “so thick you can almost cut it with a knife."



Browsing here, time goes by without notice. I ended up getting lost in a book of very old receipts from New York City businesses, and bought a few of them, which I have scanned here.

Each receipt is beautifully decorated. They come with handwritten details and notes. Eggebrecht & Bernhardt, importers of kid gloves, "regret being out of size 9."



Goodyear's India Rubber Glove company, manufacturers of rubber goods of every description, also had a store in town. The New York Times of 1865 recommended shopping there for Christmas gifts, including "a fine assortment of vulcanite jewelry, bracelets, brooches, ear-rings, sleeve-buttons, chains, chatelaines, charms, pencils, etc. Also, India rubber toys, balls and fancy articles of every description."



And then there's Rody Peters, the practical horse shoer, where horses were "shod up to nature and according to art." You don't see many of them around today.



After Main Street Ephemera closes, they will still be selling their wares online (visit their website here), but there's nothing like sifting through the many boxes, bins, and three-ring binders, to immerse yourself in the pleasure of paper, the smell and look and feel of it. So go soon. They may be gone before March.