Fur District

New York City's Fur District consists of a few blocks in the western upper 20s and lower 30s, just south of Penn Station. It began vanishing 30-some years ago. In 1979, there were 800 manufacturers here, by 1989 there were 300, and today there are certainly much fewer.

Recalled furrier Nat Berkowitz to the Times in 1995, "It used to be that when you drove up the New York State Thruway to the Catskill resorts, there would be a mink stole hanging in every car window." Times changed. Fur lost much of its luster. Protesters protested.



There are still fur dealers here, but not as many as there used to be. I remember walking through in the evening when I worked near the area, looking into the fur traders' shops--not showrooms, but wholesale rooms--bare little spaces painted hospital green, filled with racks of pelts on hooks, where men in yarmulkes and shirtsleeves plied their trade. Are they still here?

What does remain, and what will remain long after the furriers have vanished completely, are the stone carvings on the buildings that mark this place as the Fur District. On 29th Street, a pair of gargoyle furriers do their work--in one, a squirrel appears to be biting the furrier's finger, in the other, a mink is either being skinned or given a spanking.





There are other such fur-related carvings in this neighborhood. On 30th, a pair of handsome foxes guard an elegant doorway.



Until the planned Bloombergian rezoning, which aims to completely transform the Fur District into an extension of upscale Chelsea (Amanda Burden seeks to "enliven" it), this area remains very much itself--a bit down at the heels, desolate, and still interesting to the passing eye with its barber schools and crummy eateries, its kung-fu dojos and music rehearsal spaces, its guitar shops, cigar shops, and second-story signmakers.

This swath of the old city still exists. For now.

Rawhide Goodbye

The Rawhide is gone. After 34 years of holding down its corner of Chelsea, the bar closed for good on March 30.



And before the sweat has dried, already the space has come onto the market, with the realtor's sign hammered on top of its black awning, calling for "corner restaurant/retail" beneath the rainbow flag still flying.



The real estate listing for 212 Eighth Avenue includes a marketing brochure on the property. It highlights "neighbors" like The Gap, Starbucks, American Apparel, and many other national chains. However, it fails to mention the big Salvation Army right next door and the block's gay sex shops, The Blue Store and Rainbow Station (two businesses targeted by Chelsea's anti-sex brigade).

In addition, the brochure offers a delirious map of Chelsea pocked with countless chain-store logos. We know more is coming. We won't be surprised when we see a sickening 7-Eleven slithering into this spot, or a frozen-yogurt banality, another dead-eyed bank branch, a cupcake horror. We know the drill.





Says JVNY reader Chris, "As Chelsea turned into a bro, mommy, tourist, chain-store hell-hole, Rawhide became more than just a home for those who are not into 'marriage equality' and Grindr. It became a breaker holding back the forces of corporatization in Chelsea. We needed Rawhide because it stayed true to itself, and it was never going to become mainstream. It was not a bar full of zombies. Rawhide was real--and in a city that has become utterly fake and meaningless, we needed it more than ever."

As of this weekend, the bar's name has been ripped from the awning. A souvenir? Or an erasure?



As for last week's goodbye party, the place was packed. I said my goodbye earlier, to avoid the crushing crowd, but reader Chris was there (so was The Urban Bear). Chris reports:

"The room was wall-to-wall, with about four layers of men standing in front of the bar, and 3 or 4 biological women. Rawhide was never a place that lots of women went to, and it took a special kind of fag hag to go there. There was porn playing on the screen in the corner, and the go-go boys were classic: hot, young, and high, totally willing to go there for a dollar or more. There was nothing sanitized about them.

Around midnight the head of one of the bear groups got up and made a speech in honor of Rawhide. At one point he admonished gay men to 'Get off Grindr! Get off Manhunt! Get off Scruff! Go to bars to meet men!' The crowd roared. But one 20-something next to me just kept scrolling his device."

Reader Timmmy K. shot some video in those final hours at the bar:



Saving my drink tickets until the new Rawhide opens...




Read More:
The Rawhide Closure
An Interview with the Owner

*Everyday Chatter

Don't forget--this Sunday at 6pm: Mob The Hat. Tell them "Jeremiah sent me" and get a free margarita! Give this long-time local business a shot in the arm. They will gratefully appreciate it.

As with Bill's Gay 90s, the trendy new owner of Lenox Lounge thought he was getting the interior fixtures--but the true owner took his decor with him. Said the new guy, "It’s like buying a car, and you come back and the seats are gone, the tires are gone." Oh fucking well. [NYT]

Great article on the travelers, aka "crusties," of the East Village. [Villager]

What do you miss most about Soho in the 1970s? [SMP]

1980s NYC on Super-8. [FP]

Enjoy Grieve's round-up of Out and About interviews. [EVG]

A last-remaining low-rise strip of Delancey has sold. [BB]

What's happening to our libraries? [OMFS]

Check out the Downtown Literary Festival. [MJ]

Zamperla actually believes: "We are saving Coney Island. And we are preserving Coney Island. But we’ve renewed it." [CO]

Looking back at Harlem's Lafayette theater. [GLF]

The Emerald Inn will rise again--as the 70-year-old original becomes a Kate Spade boutique. [WSR]

Watch Dustin Cohen's beautiful short film about a Bensonhurst cobbler:


The Shoemaker from Dustin Cohen on Vimeo.

Author! Author!

The Al Pacino movie Author! Author! came out in 1982. It's about a struggling playwright who lives in a sprawling middle-class townhouse in Greenwich Village with a crowd of stepchildren. (Was that really possible in 1982?)

It was filmed in New York and there are a few shots of Times Square, including a scene in Sardi's, but I was most taken by the following.





In the screenshots above you can see the great Julius' bar on the right, with a much smaller window than what it has today. And in the background, there's a deli/liquor store where Three Lives & Co. bookstore is today. One of my favorite bookstores in town, it looks like it's been there forever...but there used to be Angelo's.


same corner today

In another scene around the corner, a bookstore appears at Grove and W. 4th, next to El Avram, a "Kosher Israeli-Mediterranean restaurant/nightclub, featuring a revue with Israeli singers and bellydancers."

The bookstore and El Avram are now the gay club The Monster, another place that seems like it's been there forever.

Does anyone remember a bookstore here?



Update: A reader sent me digging for this classic Reese's commercial, starring the bookshop (and Ralph Malph).

The Village Barn

Reader Herb W. sent in this shot of a souvenir photo envelope he'd recently come upon. He wonders what was the Village Barn and its "big doins"?



A little Googling and a visit to Ebay brings us to a plethora of images and souvenirs from this Western-themed restaurant, once at 52 West 8th Street. Wikipedia tells us that it was opened in 1930 by Meyer Horowitz, and went strong for 37 years.



It was a big basement space decorated with wagon wheels and saddles, with a stage that featured performances by Dell O'Dell "Mistress of Mystery," Zingo the Hollywood Horse, and Lou Mosconi "The Loveable Idiot" (performing nitely), along with much, much more.



The inside of the club's matchbook calls it "New York's ONLY Country Nite Club," complete with hobby horse races, square dances, musical chairs, turtle races, and dollar dinners (suppers just 75 cents).

They also had air conditioning.



And who was leading the calls on those square dances and games? Why, it was none other than "Piute Pete." Smithsonian Folkways calls Piute Pete "a fixture on NBC and on various radio shows during the 1940s." (If you'd like to listen to Pete's square-dance stylings, click here.)



No child of the Ozarks, however, Piute Pete's real name was Morris Kaufman, and he was born on the Lower East Side. Wrote Mel Heimer in the Titusville Herald in 1955:

"...many men and women enjoy this abortive pastime [of square dancing], possibly the way others like to eat opium or collect postage stamps. There are a handful like this in Manhattan and, together with great hordes of visiting firemen who presumably don't get enough of these ridiculous didoes at home, they find their way to the Village Barn and square dance to their dark heart's content."

After outing Piute Pete as a Jewish Lower East Sider, Heimer says, "Personally, I like to think of Morris Kaufman, rustic as all get-out, slapping his thigh and crying out the orders for his childish dances and reels—and then putting on his camel's hair coat when work is through and going up town to Tandy's for some strawberry cheesecake, and a quick thumbing-through of Variety."


1939 Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Whatever became of the Village Barn? Ephemeral New York explains: "When the Village Barn closed in the late 1960s, it became Electric Lady Studios, where Jimi Hendrix, The Clash, and pretty much every other rock group recorded. Above ground was the late, great 8th Street Playhouse, which ran cult classics and revivals until it shut its doors in 1992."


NYU archive photo, c. 1946

Mob The Hat

In February we got word that Ludlow Street's El Sombrero, aka The Hat, is "on its last legs." Longtime waitress (and artist and actress) Regina Bartkoff let us know all about it, and the fact that The Hat really needs our patronage. So with Regina's help, we've organized a Cash Mob for The Hat.

Date: Sunday, April 7
Time: 6:00 pm
Place: The Hat, at Ludlow and Stanton

Regina will be there to welcome you and she'll be serving up burritos, tacos, and the whole nine yards with her special flair. Plus! There's an extra incentive. Tell them "Jeremiah sent me" and you will get a free small margarita. Woo! If you know The Hat's margaritas, a small one's enough to get you off and running.

You'll also get a sense of deep satisfaction and righteous superiority just knowing you showed up to help save a Lower East Side institution, defying the evil forces of hyper-gentrification as they squeeze every last drop of soul from this city.

Be there! Eat, drink--and please help spread the word.

24 Heures

Talking about the High Line with Switzerland's 24 Heures: