Bleecker Bob's: Closing

After nearly a year of discussion and speculation, Bleecker Bob's has made it official. On their Facebook page this weekend they announced:

"well, it's SAD NEWS people. don't really know how to say this so here goes.....after 40+ years in existence, BLEECKER BOB'S will be closing!!!! looks like another month or 2 maybe. we'll definitely be open thru to the New Year, maybe even a couple of months into 2013. as of right now though we're still buying, selling and trading music PLUS we have new tshirts in stock so you can remember us and tell your kids or grandkids about the legendary Bleecker Bob's!!"



Back in January, I passed along the news from Ken Mac at Greenwich Village Daily Photo who first shared the shocker that Bleecker Bob's was being taken over by Starbucks. That rumor was shot down, but later that month, the store confirmed to Ken that they were looking to move to the East Village. However, said the owner, "we are definitely NOT planning to close."



Throughout the year, bloggers and other journalists said their goodbyes, and told the story of Bleecker Bob's troubles and their hopes to find a space in the East Village.

Capital New York produced a heartbreaking documentary about the shop in July and wrote, "Bleecker Bob’s will stay open until the landlord has found a new tenant. When it goes, it will take with it a huge part of the history of the Village. And it looks unlikely to find a new place to open up."

In September, the record shop was still looking for a spot in the East Village. But the East Village isn't cheap and, as we all know too well, many mom-and-pops have been priced out.

Now, with their most recent Facebook announcement, it looks like Bleecker Bob's is done. Presumably, the landlord has found a new tenant. We won't be surprised if it does turn out to be a Starbucks. Or maybe a frozen yogurt shop. Or something equally useless and infuriating.



Admittedly, I've never been much of a music enthusiast. My passion goes to books. But I remember being brought to New York by a native, my first time as a young adult, and how she led me emphatically to Bleecker Bob's, saying the name as if it were a holy thing, the land of milk and honey. My friend knew the guys who worked there, moved through the place like she owned it, all confidence in her black leather jacket. As I shyly sifted through the records in their bins, I knew I was in an important place. But it was the presence of Bob's antique clocks that dazzled me and stayed fixed in my memory of that day.

Now I keep thinking about those clocks in Bleecker Bob's. With their neon rims and mid-century numerals, those dusty, busted, stopped clocks have watched over the place, watching the people come and go, watching them age and disappear.

Time stopped when you entered Bleecker Bob's. For a little while, anyway.

 

*Everyday Chatter

Last night I dreamed about a second, overlooked newsstand perched above Gem Spa... (send in your dreams...). [DVNY]

An amazing photographic journey of the NYC subways in 1973--courtesy of the EPA. [Narratively]

Enjoy the wonderful neon of New York City. [Stupefaction]

Sal Mineo shops for smut in an adult bookstore of 1965 Times Square. [VS]

"The Shore Theater’s iconic sign will not be coming back to the landmarked Coney Island building, according to the property holder, who says that the Hurricane Sandy-mangled marquee is unfixable and will have to be replaced." [BD]

Inside the East Village Eye. [EVG]

Watch the Deli Man--as the delis of NYC keep vanishing. [vimeo]

Looking back at Manhattan's lost diners. [NY90s]

Take a walk through a (mostly vanished) Hell's Kitchen. [J&KM]

There's now a Brooklyn neighborhood being called "Rambo." [Curbed]

Where do all the new New Yorkers go? To the most expensive neighborhoods. [WNYC]

Press play on this bedbug map of NYC and watch the epidemic explode. [bdbgs]

When a cupcake shop scene is deleted from Girls, is that a good sign that cupcakes are losing their luster? [Eater]

"How could she be so into frozen yogurt? I wondered. How could anyone? This was a dessert, after all, that oozed out of self-serve machines. It was served in a tub. Like margarine. It was nicknamed fro-yo." [NYO]

Click the following link only if you would like to see a man in crotchless pantyhose flash his penis on the L train. [Gothamist]

Support Queer Books

Support New York City's independent queer bookstore. Oh, wait, New York doesn't have a queer bookstore--Oscar Wilde, A Different Light, they all shuttered and became boutiques or condos while we were busy shopping on Amazon.

But now there's BGSQD, The Bureau of General Services Queer Division (a mouthful of a name), also known as The Bureau. I interviewed the co-founder here and he talked about how important it is for an LGBTQ bookshop to exist in Manhattan, the borough that is becoming blander by the minute.

Now is your chance to support The Bureau's endeavor. They've got a pop-up bookshop open now at 27 Orchard Street and a Lucky Ant drive running for the next two weeks. They're hoping to raise $15,000.

Please visit their Lucky Ant page and send them some money (there are prizes). Consider it making amends for every book you bought on Amazon. Thank you.

Village Voice Web Award

Thank you to everyone who voted, to the judges, and to the Village Voice for voting me "Blogger We Love" in last night's Web Awards! And congratulations to all the winners. Check out the list right here.



Winners received a giant foam hand, perhaps to symbolize the copious and warm embrace of your cyber love.

Candy Factory

VANISHING

The parking lot and two small brick buildings at the corner of Wooster and Grand are about to vanish.

They have been, for some time, a beloved and well-used graffiti spot. In recent years, the lot's walls have hosted a Banksy rat, a Fairey paste-up, and French street artist JR's paste-up of a giant photo of a member of the Standing Rock Sioux tribe. But it's around the corner where the real fun happened.

Those walls belong to what's known locally as the Candy Factory, a spot that the New York Times published a visual guide to in 2005. It has changed many times since then--images constantly coming and going--but here comes the biggest change of all. The Candy Factory and the parking lot are wrapped in plywood and readied for condo-fication. The parking lot is being hammered and drilled.

I miss the colorful collection of street art hidden here at the back end of what was once a Tootsie Roll factory at 325-329 West Broadway.

my flickr, 2010

The future of these buildings is unclear. The project is now on (at least) its third architect, as DDG Partners recently wrapped the plywood in vinyl printed to look like a chocolate candy bar in silver foil. 

The only rendering that DDG offers is one of the Candy Factory wrapped in scaffolding, which it currently is not.

In the previous architectural plans, these brick buildings would remain standing, "restored to their circa 1940 condition based on the city records and historic research by the architects and their consultants."

Beyhan Karahan Architects

Wrapping around them would be a nine-story, 45,000-square-foot, residential condo. It would be topped, said the developer's website, with "a two-story duplex penthouse set back from the perimeter walls, allowing a stone terrace to fully wrap the glazed, pavilion-like structure and its private swimming pool."

KPF

Will the Candy Factory still remain, in face-lifted brick, wedged between this new condo tower and the luxe SoHo Mews ("Life Cultivated")?

See all my Candy Factory photos here

Here's the spot in the 1980s, from the Municipal Archives, before the Soho Mews moved in, before scenes like this went on across the street--was it still churning out Tootsie Rolls then? And will the new building be cutely named "The Candy Factory Condos"?

Lenox Lounge

VANISHING?

This past spring, the Daily News reported that Harlem's legendary Lenox Lounge was losing its lease. Now we hear from Black Enterprise that the club will be closing its doors December 31. The rent has increased from $10,000 per month to $20,000.

Owner Alvin Reed, Daily News

Writes Black Enterprise, "Richard Notar, Managing Partner in Nobu Restaurants, will be taking over the space the bar currently sits at and plans to open a new spot named 'Notar Jazz Club.' Notar has already applied with the local community board for a liquor license." (Notar Jazz Club, LLC, was formed back in August, under Notar's company Raptor Capital Management. Raptor.)

Gawker describes Notar as "a 16-year-old from Jamaica, Queens when he landed a job as a busboy at Studio 54. He spent the next few years partying with the best of them, gobbling down Quaaludes by the fistful, he says, and getting high with the likes of Jean-Michel Basquiat." He is now a luxury restaurant chain mogul. Nobu is a favorite with the Sex and the City set.

Notar and DeNiro

Notar is also a business partner of Robert DeNiro. A tipster tells us that DeNiro has "stepped in to save" the Lenox Lounge: "A very prominent jazz musician friend just played there Sunday night and told me straight from the owner's mouth." Which might mean that the name and the neon sign will stay--something the current owner would not allow without a renegotiation. Reported Black Enterprise, "When Reed leaves he’ll be taking the iconic Lenox Lounge neon sign with him... He trademarked the club’s name and even though he’s giving up the space, he’s not giving up the name."

So it's unclear if, after December 31, the Lenox Lounge will still be the Lenox Lounge in name, and what's in store after the Nobu team takes over. We can say that the Lenox Lounge won't be owned by an African-American and it won't be owned by a long-time Harlem resident. History comes back around? When it officially opened in 1942, under owner Dominick Greco, the Lenox Lounge was built expressly for white customers heading uptown to see black performers.



So can we really say it's being saved? Or is this yet another example of "fauxstalgia," where trendy restaurateurs cash in on New York's history? (See: Fedora, Minetta Tavern, Bill's Gay 90s, Rocco's, Waverly Inn, Lion, and Monkey Bar...) Some would say it's all the same, that newcomers are saving these historic places. But many places wouldn't need saving if their landlords didn't have bigger offers. It's all part of the hypergentrification machine. And we have to wonder who will be sitting at the bar, nursing their beers, this time next year.

Harlem has been changing dramatically, and the loss of the Lenox Lounge as it's been is part of that change. Said a real estate agent to DNA one year ago when news of the club's rent hike first hit and restaurateurs were battling for its lease, "They already have a built-in brand, a history before opening the door. These famous places change hands and they have instant popularity. People are always looking for the hot place...Finally the hype has met up with Harlem."

That hype is also bringing a Whole Foods to 125th.

St. Vincent's Demolition

It's been awhile since I've taken a walk past the former St. Vincent's Hospital, and it was a shock to see just how far along the demolition has come.

The main buildings are wrapped in scaffolding and shrouded. Entire floors of brick have been stripped, rooms empty and exposed to the streets.

The western wall of the stately old building on W. 11th has been almost completely sheared off. Is the building being demolished, or readied for attachment to the new condo tower to come?

People suffered and died here. Many had their lives saved here. They left their notes and names on plywood after St. Vincent's closed, begging for a new hospital to open here, or anywhere in Greenwich Village. But the luxury machine has to eat. And eat, and eat...