1980s Treasure Trove

Every so often, someone scans a bunch of old photos of the lost city and puts them up on Flickr--and that is a glorious day. When Yvonne B. got in touch with me and shared the photos she took of the Meatpacking District in the 1980s, I got excited. And she had more. Now they're all on Flickr.

The photos mostly span the East Village, Greenwich Village, and the High Line (with whole lost chunks of 14th Street). Some of my favorites from the more than 100 images include:

A burned-out car on Crosby Street, and the crapped-out corner of 2nd Ave. and 5th St.

A lost theater on 2nd Ave. and 4th--does anyone know the name of it?

A mural on 8th St. at 1st Ave., along the side of what was once the St. Mark's Bar & Grill.

Rescued Estates, before the "Crazy Landlord" rented the place to The Bean coffee shop. And "Mambo Mouth" in the days before STOMP took over the Orpheum Theater on 2nd and 7th.

Here's a spindly, stand-alone piece of the High Line that has since vanished, never to be greened and surrounded by glass.

And a lovely, shadowy luncheonette beneath the old High Line--can anyone place this location?

There are so many more--coffee shops, gay bars, famous clubs, crumbled warehouses, scorched tenements, places familiar and forgotten. Yvonne can't name them all--visit her Flickr page and help identify some of the locations.

Help Unoppressive, Non-Imperialist Books

A few years ago, I looked at the survivors of Carmine Street. It seemed at the time like this little stretch of the Village had been forgotten by development. Of course, that could not last forever. Change is barreling in with the distasteful news of an IHOP coming to Carmine Street (the broker who made the deal said, "People don’t even know where Carmine Street is — yet. We’ll fix that").

And now we hear that Unoppressive, Non-Imperialist Bargain Books is struggling--and doing what it takes to stay alive in this unfriendly atmosphere for bookstores and other independent businesses.

Reader Felix sent in a shot of the bookstore--now sharing its space with a Metro PCS to make ends meet. Wrote Felix, "This can’t be a good sign, and this is one of my favorite book stores."

For the next 26 days, the bookshop's owners team up with Lucky Ant--and with you--to help them stay strong on Carmine. Says the press release, "Jim Drougas and his wife Indiana have run Unoppressive, at 34 Carmine Street, for over 20 years. They are a highly curated independent bookstore that has and continues to cater to the west village arts community. Unlike other bookstores, Unoppressive is not going under, but they do sense that times are tough and want to plan for owning a bookstore in the 21st century market place."



Watch the video, visit the website, and pledge some cash to help the bookshop expand to remain in business. (You'll get a nice gift!) Keep the Village safe from total IHOP-ization.

13th & Washington

At 837-843 Washington Street, on the corner of 13th, demolition has begun on what once held the last working meatpacking house in the center of the Meatpacking District. The space will soon command rents of $600 a square foot.


today: the plywood is up


2011: No signs, street art + small-wheel cyclist


2007: Signs on the awning for active business

837 Washington was sold back in 2008 by GOP leader James Ortenzio, after he pleaded guilty to tax evasion. He had been renting out the refrigerated warehouses here to meat businesses for well below market rate, keeping them alive.

Not very long ago, you could still see the movement of meat from the building's open doors, through which men labored at stainless steel tables.


2007: Wooden palettes, a sign of work being done


2011: Graffiti replaced by street art


today: workers bust a hole through the bricks

GVSP published a history of the building and images of its future. It was built in 1938 and housed throughout its lifetime almost nothing but meat. Among its last tenants were the Ottomanelli Co., Lamb Unlimited, and Diamond Meat Packer.

In these photos I took in 2007, you can still see the meatpackers' signage, bent and swinging under the corrugated awning.


2007


2007

There were once 250 meatpacking companies in the neighborhood. In 2003 there were only 35, and another 9 meatpackers moved out in 2009 alone, including the big Interstate Foods, which was demolished earlier this year to make room for a glass tower. Now that Weichsel's is being pushed out, what's left remains in the city-owned Gansevoort Meat Market Cooperative.

The red- and yellow-brick shell of 837 will remain, hollowed out to hold something very new.

There was a brief battle over the future of the building and what will stand on top of it--a giant glass box or a Niketown-style plan. The "twisty Mepa tower" won this past summer.


2011


today


the future

Meatpacking 1980s

When Yvonne B. commented on my post about Ivy Brown and the Triangle Building, I wrote to her and asked if she might share some of her memories of life as a young transgender woman in the Meatpacking District in the 1980s. Very generously, she sent along not only her memories, but also a group of wonderful photos. The following is all Yvonne.



I didn't live in the Meatpacking area. I just went there cause of the Vault club. I wasn't one of the regular street walkers, I was mostly a loner who at times would get picked up by passing guys who cruised looking for transsexual hookers. I wasn't dressed sexy like the other girls. I was a punk t-girl, but some guys thought it was a cute style, so they took me. I needed money to live.

I looked quite young for my age and I believe I attracted a maybe more perv type of guy, maybe pedophile type. They were nasty. I met them in Times Square, as well. One night a guy drove up to me and he looked just like a teacher I had in school. It felt strange so I walked away.




As I said, I was mostly a loner. I went to the Vault club quite a few times in the mid eighties. I had two friends that I went with, Jimmy and Linda. I would like to know what happened to them, maybe just to know if they are doing OK. I met a few strange characters at the club. One was a guy dressed in rags crawling around the floor. There was also the horse guy with a saddle on his back. It was a bizarre club but it seemed like the men outnumbered the girls in a big way, and single girls seemed kinda rare.



I do remember one night a bunch of street girls ran into the bagel store when a police car cruised by, as if the police would never think to look for anyone in the only store open in the area.



I don't remember the bone trucks. But I do remember the bone trucks where I grew up in the Bronx. People called them the glue trucks cause they thought the bones were used for making glue.



I did go to the Meatpacking area in the daytime when I sometimes went to Lee's Mardi gras store. I knew that Lee Brewster was an influential figure on the rights of the transgender, so I thought that buying things there was the least I could do to say thanks. The building that housed Lee's had an elevator that opened right onto the street. There was no lobby or entrance way, just an elevator door. Someone from Lee's would come down with the elevator to sort of escort one to the store. I kinda knew two people that worked at Lee's, Shannon and Robbie. Shannon was in the movie Wigstock. She was in the scene fitting Joey Arias with a wig that was like putting on a helmet.



I was told through the rumor mill that Raquel Welch would shop at Lee's, but I don't know for sure. The store had its mix of people, from transsexuals to hairy suburban crossdressers. I heard that some of the crossdressers were truck drivers shopping after they unloaded their goods and had spare time to shop for frilly clothing.

Highline Flats

This past spring, alongside the High Line at 10th Avenue and 17th Street, the old brick building that houses Artichoke Basille's Pizza was looking desolate, the windows empty or boarded up. I wondered what was happening there.


Spring 2012

On a more recent visit, what happened has become clear. From the High Line, you can see into the open windows--the plywood is gone and the apartments have been gut renovated.


Today

The building is now being marketed as "The Highline Flats." Per the listing, these are: "Newly renovated Pre-War Flats in the hottest section in West Chelsea. Steps from The Highline...Make the Highline Flats your new home in the city."

The open house is this week.



From the bits I can put together, somewhere between 2007 and 2009, the building owner changed from 114 Tenth Ave Assoc. to the aptly named Highline Properties, LLC.

Soon after, complaints to the Department of Buildings began to multiply, becoming more and more intense as time went on. Complaints about illegal wiring and lack of permits turned into reports about illegal subdivisions, with ceilings being opened to fit spiral staircases between apartments, removed walls, and even a removed staircase. That complaint reads, "CLR STS STAIRCASE WAS REMOVED FROM 4FL TO 5FL AND FROM 5FL TO ROOF, SO THERE IS NO WAY TO GET OUT OR IN OF THIS FLOORS." A stop work order was given and later rescinded.


Spring 2012

During that same time, attracted to the High Line, the hyper-popular Artichoke Basille's Pizza moved in after a battle with the neighbors. Reported Chelsea Now in 2010, "A female resident of 457 W. 17th St., the building that houses the restaurant, also objected to alcohol sales because of the already raucous situation she observes on the streets below her apartment. 'Every night we cannot sleep till 6 o’clock in the morning—6 o’clock... They’re vomiting there, they’re sleeping there—it’s terrible, it’s terrible.'"

But after November 2011, like magic, the residents stopped complaining about the renovations and the pizza place. Maybe that's because the residents had vanished. A partial vacate order went through that month.


my flickr, 2009

One apartment, however, has not been renovated. Through the window, you can see dusty plants and the clutter of a life long-lived in one small space. It's an island in the midst of The Highline Flats. High up, in the front, someone might still be seen leaning out, looking at the changing view, a human artifact of another city. I hope the new neighbors will be kind to her.

Shutting Down XXX Chelsea

Reader Chris writes in with a report on a flyer circulating around Chelsea calling for the closure of The Blue Store and Rainbow Station, two adult gay shops on 8th Avenue.



Chris writes, "I was walking my dog around on 8th Ave. between 20 and 21 when I saw a bunch of flyers calling for the neighborhood to get the Blue Store and the Rainbow Store closed down – because of children! This is the same corner with the Manhunt ad which had local mommies in a rage."

"This is clearly the work of local mommies who moved to a gay neighborhood and now are trying to de-gay it and completely familify and Disney-fy Chelsea. And these mommies who are so concerned for their children’s safety have 3-dollar-an-hour nannies take care of them most of the time, and then are on their phones texting when they are with their children."

photo from Elvert Barnes' flickr

photo from Senor Blancito's flickr

Chris adds, "Those stores have been there for a good 10 years and nobody complained about children’s safety when it was a bunch of brown and black children in the hood, or children of parents who moved to a gay neighborhood and wanted it to stay that way. And of course if they manage to get them shut down, no one will complain when they are turned into a Subway and a Bank of America."

El Faro

Recently, DNA reported that Spanish restaurant El Faro has been closed indefinitely, "as its owner tries to raise more than $80,000 to pay city fines and other expenses." The city found mice in the 85-year-old place--they also want El Faro to be renovated to meet the city's standards.



El Faro opened in 1927, when the Village was full of Spanish sailors, and has been surviving at the edge of the Meatpacking District ever since. It's got that Last Mohican look about it. I've gone in a few times, worried that it would not last much longer, that it would soon be targeted in the Bloombergian cross-hairs. A newcomer, I was always welcomed and felt as if I'd stumbled into an older New York, where everyone knows everyone, and they all have a dusty, slightly patrician air.

Nothing this warm and welcoming could be allowed to remain in the new New York. Not here on this plot of prime real estate.

El Faro is proud of the fact that it has never changed. On the website, they say that many customers "have grown up inside El Faro and it is a part of their family, a place that is as comfortable to them as the house they grew up in. El Faro is the same as it was when their parents came here on their first date, 30 years ago! They can sit in the same booth, eat out of the same pot, the food is the same as when they first came!"



As El Faro's owner told DNA, "A lot of people are distraught. We have people who have come here for four generations with their families. I am receiving a great amount of kindness from my customers... It's like an extension of their house," he said. "We delivered food to some of our elderly [customers] and even brought them milk and bread if they couldn't leave home. It was more than a restaurant."



But won't it look great as a Marc Jacobs store?

What can we do to make sure that never happens, and that El Faro stays open and unchanged for generations to come?