Florent

After weeks of speculation, it's official: Florent will close on June 29. Confirmed by The New York Post, the closure comes on Gay Pride Day, though Florent's lease ends on March 31, at which time rent on the spot will jump from $6,000 to $50,000 per month.


all pics: my flickr

Many credit, or blame, Florent Morellet for launching the current super-luxurification of the Meatpacking District. It's a distinction he gives to himself, saying in The Times that his diner brought "the first bit of gentrification to the area.'' And Gawker, in their satirical history of Meatpacking, calls it "the root of the poisonous tree from whence springs all evil."

But it wasn't until Keith McNally's faux-Parisian Pastis moved in, almost 15 years after Florent, that the current slaughter of Meatpacking ensued.

During those 15 years, blood and other bodily fluids continued to flow freely on the cobblestoned streets. Meatpacking in the 1990s still had Jackie 60, the Clit Club, the Vault, the Lure...but it was vulnerable. Metromix put it aptly (if a bit transphobically) when they wrote, "If it weren't for Pastis, the Meatpacking District would still be an abandoned line of butcher shops littered with friendly trannies instead of today's trendy meet-market littered with, well, tranny lookalikes."



It is appropriate that Florent will close on Gay Pride since it was born from gay defiance, springing from the SM leather bars that once graced (and greased) the formerly gritty neighborhood. “Maybe it was 1978 or ’79 or ’81," Morellet told The Villager, "and I was coming from the Anvil, or the Mineshaft, or someplace...It was morning, and I went into the R&L diner for breakfast. I immediately loved the place.” In 1984, when the R&L went up for sale, Morellet bought it, leaving the old diner intact because he liked its Hopperesque feeling.


a recent note from Florent: is he hopeful when he writes, "real estate goes down, nyc survives"?

Saying goodbye to Florent most likely means saying goodbye to the R&L as well. Who but someone Furstenberg-sized can afford $50,000 per month? It was the site of a speakeasy in the 1920s and became the R&L in the 1930s. A place where longshoremen and meatpackers would dine at night, in the 1950s they called it "Eatem and Beatem," according to the Chicago Sun, "because they would zip in and out around 3 in the morning." The chrome sign still stands as much of the original R&L remains.



Whatever your feelings about Florent and its place in history, it's worth taking a visit if only because it is a part of New York history--a part that will soon be wiped off the map.


"no hard feelings"

Christopher's End

I was walking down Christopher Street recently when a for rent sign on the Badlands Adult Video emporium stopped me. When I asked the guy inside when they were closing, he only said, "When someone takes it, we will close." Any takers? At $40,000 a month, it's been up for grabs for a while now. Last summer, Eater talked with the broker, who urged prospects to "Do your part in the continuing gentrification of the West-Side Hwy and open a damn restaurant/ nightclub here already.”



Before someone grants his wish, take a walk to the very end of Christopher. It still feels like New York City out there. You'll pass Meier & Oelhaf Marine Repair, with its windows made from ship's portals (also for rent), and The Dugout, where you can enjoy beer in plastic cups and the company of friendly bears.



Badlands is in the Weehawken Street Historic District (click that link for lots of details). The building was built in 1937 and housed Harry's Men's Shop for seamen's supplies until the 1960s-70s, when it was claimed by gay men (insert seamen/semen joke here).

The end of Christopher was once a leatherman's paradise. The wooden shack at 392 West Street dates to 1834 and is the last remaining structure from the Weehawken Market. It also later became the home of gay bars and next door to it was the Ramrod, mecca of hardcore leather and much featured in the Pacino film Cruising. (Soon after the film's release, a man fired an automatic weapon on the Ramrod, killing two and wounding six.)



Like San Francisco, gay enclaves seem to spring up wherever sailors come to port. The Keller Hotel, once a home for sailors, where "ghosts of the past breathe deeply," stands like a fading oceanliner above the Hudson. It hosted a leather bar where disco was born. It went up for landmarking last year and there's rumor it's getting a surreptitious luxury remodeling.

Like the other vanished gay leather land, the Meatpacking District, there's not so much cruising at the end of Christopher anymore--unless you count rollerblading as cruising--but you can still get a taste of the real city, a gritty, desolate, riverside taste of it. Like everything else in town, it's a rare feeling that is fading fast.

• View more pics on my flickr

• ForgottenNY walks on West Street
• Bridge and Tunnel walks on Christopher

*Everyday Chatter

Extell giddily gears up for World War III as they market brand-new, 21st-century "prewar" condos. [Times]

Defunct Chelsea cabaret Helen's, nee Judy's, loses its cool purple entranceway to become a bar/restaurant called Ate Ave. Now hiring:


A burlesque roller-rink in the old Childs at Coney Island? It really is a dream come true! (It's also just a temporary stop on the way to something no doubt nightmarish.) [Curbed]

The rezoning of Harlem has pro-gentrifiers celebrating and defensive. [Curbed] But one brave man calls Amanda Burden (Bloomberg's city planner) "a rich, rich, rich horrible person." [Gothamist]

More Manhattan Apocalypse excitement--Columbia's aggressive redevelopment will end up underwater someday. Something to look forward to. [Gotham Gazette]

The East Village/LES is one of the loudest, most obnoxious neighborhoods in the city, and we lament the peace and quiet of pre-gentrification drug deals. [Gothamist]

"[W]here's the real St. Mark's?" asks one graffitist on this Pinkberry plywood. "Dead," comes the reply:


Sad to see banks changing hands? Here's a sort-of ode to dead regional banks. [AMNY]

From the ghost town of Orchard Street, Sammy Gluck, owner and son of G&G International Menswear keeps things alive. [Intothebox]

"Make Manhattan your own." Whose New York is this? Has anybody else noticed that many ads these days sell the city as a personal, individual possession?

Show World

VANISHED: 2004

A recent viewing, thanks to a tipster, of Guns N Roses' video for "The Garden," complete with footage aplenty of Times Square before Giuliani, brought to mind the old Show World, the adult emporium that once occupied the site of the current Laugh Factory next to the Duane Reade on 42nd and 8th.



In a 1995 article for the Times, Dan Barry wrote, "For two decades, Show World has been the brightest of the gaudy lights in the pornographic firmament of Times Square, so much so that one city official calls it the 'flagship of the sex industry in New York.' But Show World is in trouble. Its light now flickers and may be extinguished....the City Council passed a zoning ordinance designed to smash the clusters of peep shows and pornographic theaters that have cropped up throughout the five boroughs."

It was the beginning of the end for adulthood in Times Square. By 2001, the last of 42nd Street's peeps, Peep-O-Rama, would succumb to development after a lifetime on the Deuce going back to 1950. Its site is now buried under the ever-rising Bank of America Tower--you know, the one that keeps showering pedestrians with shattered glass and construction equipment?



But back to Show World. After the 1995 zoning ordinance, Show World managed to soldier on for another 9 years, its naughty bits whittled away, piece by piece. In 1998, the live girls were gone and the theater space was leased to an Off Off Broadway company called Collapsible Giraffe and Nada Show World, who performed Shakespeare and Chekhov plays on the stages where once naked girls performed live sex acts and something called Face Shows--as the sign said, "Let our girls sit on your face."

View an interview with one of those Show World girls here.



The interior of Show World, as seen in these 2003 photos, was decorated in circus style, complete with high-wire, bicycle-riding, acrobat clowns.



Sweet Dreams Come True--but not according to the sign on the wall. The live girls were gone--they used to stand above the stairs, on the second floor, catcalling and beckoning to the patrons as they climbed through the music and lights.



The video peeps kept running on the first floor until 2004, when the Laugh Factory moved in, today advertising "Family Friendly" comedy. A couple doors down is a new Christian bookstore and gift shop. As the Guns N Roses song ends, as if a farewell to old Times Square, "It sure was glad to know ya, bye bye, so long, bye bye."

• 1980s doc: Michael Weldon predicts death of Psychotronic Times Square
• Great film footage of Times Square in 1970
  

*Everyday Chatter

"The Museum of the City of New York will be mounting what is basically an infomercial for a private condo building." This kind of thing I'd expect from the New Museum on Bowery. Come on, MCNY! [Curbed]

Barnes & Noble revokes its liberal exchange policy. As of 3/3, you need a receipt and all returns must be made within 14 days. No exceptions. So much for one benefit of big chains. This is what you call a bait-and-switch folks!

An Upper East Sider grieves the chipping away of her neighborhood. [Times]

Creative people are being pushed further and further to the outer edges of Brooklyn--and many right off the NYC map. [Observer]

East Village bodegas are dropping like flies. [Racked]

God save the Minetta Tavern from whatever is stalking it! [Eater]

Before you jump off the Brooklyn Bridge (and before they convert the bridge into luxury condos), there may be good news:

"The great Manhattan bank branch boom is over. Financial players that paid top dollar to rent hundreds of retail locations, pushing out neighborhood coffee shops, florists and fashion boutiques, are ending their shopping spree, real estate sources say." [Crain's]

The Mayfair is still alive. Got my hair cut here not long ago. One of our last good barbershops. [AMNY]

The Moondance Diner isn't dead after this winter's roof collapse. [AMNY]

A blogger remembers Brooklyn's lost crayon factories. [PMFA]

A few signs with obsolete telephone exchanges live on--and, once in a while, I find one. They're not easy hunting, but Forgotten NY recently put up a bunch. Here are a couple of mine, the first in Forest Hills and the second in the East Village.

Ukrainians Surrender?

Curbed reports today on The Sun's story about the next giant glass box coming to Cooper Square. The Sun says the Ukrainian community "surrendered to it amicably." Surrender does not mean support and I can speculate as to why they surrendered, other than having no choice in the matter.



Let's not forget that a few years ago, Cooper Union was making moves to erase Taras Shevchenko Place from the map. The Ukrainians went wild. [NY Times] [Brama]

Then Cooper Union tried to reduce the transparency of their "communal hive," thereby blocking views of St. George's church. The Ukrainian community was not happy about this. [Villager] [Brama]

There was even talk about demapping Astor Place. [Villager] This was around the time Cooper Union was leasing the Astor Place parking lot to the "green monster." [Voice]



Then, "in a bizarre twist," Cooper backed off the demapping plan and, apparently, returned to their original design for transparency.

Super-gentrification is trauma. When someone is in the midst of trauma, they often dissociate. They go limp. Such a defensive strategy can look like surrender.



Cooper Union began the bulldozing of Astor Place at the turn of this century. [NY Press] There will be more to come. [Curbed] What else is there to do except surrender?

Grace & Hope Mission

Saw this coming when the Toll Brothers put their tower up on Third Avenue. After 77 years in the city, tiny neighbor Grace & Hope Mission is now defunct. They opened in New York City in 1930, first in Times Square, and then the building at 114-116 Third Avenue was built in 1964.


under Toll scaffolding October 2007

According to their website, "If you were to walk into 114 Third Avenue any evening (except Monday) you would find the chapel nearly filled to capacity and the singing enthusiastic. Those in attendance are mostly homeless, some living in shelters or hotels in the immediate area. Many are drawn to GHM by the necessity of food, which is freely, and compassionately, served, from these premises."



The women of the mission provided daily lunches and blankets. They visited the sick and dying. Now their building looks like the perfect spot for a Pinkberry.

So much for grace and hope.


today: scaffolding and mission gone