Blue & Cream on Mars

Tonight, the upscale Bowery (via the Hamptons) boutique Blue & Cream will be hosting a "Tribute to Mars Bar" photo exhibit. Says the press release:

"Photographer and native New Yorker, Debby Hymowitz, has captured the essence of this gritty and martyred establishment through her brilliant photos that will help carry on the Mars Bar essence, just as it should be remembered. After all, this is Blue & Cream’s neighborhood."


photo: Debby Hymowitz, Blue & Cream site

Back in 2010, when the bar was still standing, Blue & Cream's back to the Bowery lookbook described how the photographer "envisioned how a girl who has everything one could want in her wardrobe would dress when confined to this local dive bar."

The writing was already on the wall--authentrification at its height.


photo: Debby Hymowitz, Blue & Cream site

Of course, we have a thorough understanding of how the forces that birthed Blue & Cream on the Bowery--the forces that turned CBGB into a John Varvatos boutique and disgorged the Avalons complete with Whole Foods--also led to the recent death of Mars Bar.

From the Marc Jacobsian front on Bleecker to the Great Wall of Highline to the bloody Battle of the Bowery, we're in a culture war and our side is not winning.


photo: Debby Hymowitz, Blue & Cream site

The news of this event, buzzing across the blogosphere this week from Gothamist to Racked, has made more than one observer express the wish that the real Mars Bar regulars would show up at tonight's opening--to do what they do best.

But I have to wonder: Wouldn't the presence of Mars Bar regulars only feed the authenticity hunger of the New Bowery? It reminds me of Derelicte, the too-true satire from the movie Zoolander.



We see this all over the New Bowery, where flophouses become trendy boutique hotels, complete with homeless men included. Where tenement laundry lines become selling points for luxury hotel views. Where "Bowery" has become a luxury brand. Somehow, alcoholism, marginalization, and poverty have become hip to exploit.

As Mugatu says in Zoolander, it's "the future of fashion."


Everettsville: Looking east along 1st St. in 2002


Same view today: Chase and Blue & Cream

Also read:
About "authentrification" and the Bowery
The Loss of Mars
Bowery Tsunami
Varvatos Reimagined

Cube Christened

The Astor Place Cube has been christened.


photo: Joe Preston

After getting spruced up and sanitized almost a year ago by the Village Alliance BID for the new, more controlled, and semi-privatized Astor Place, The Alamo has finally attracted some good old-fashioned chaos. In yellow spray paint. With a Pac-Man and a heart.

Unless, of course, that's some stealthy authentrification.

Happy end of summer.

And Grieve reports -- the private forces of the Village Alliance have already been on it:

Gem Spa to Schitibank

Last night at midnight, all ready for Saturday's cash mob, Gem Spa was transformed -- into a vivid dystopian vision of the new St. Mark's Place. It is now Schitibank, a play on the rumor that Citibank wants to move into the corner space that has been Gem since 1957.



As Gem began struggling earlier this summer, it looked shuttered and bare, especially with the newspapers and Zoltar removed from the front, the signs taken down. People thought it was closed--or closing.

So I reached out to Tommy Noonan and Doug Cameron of the design firm DCX Accelerator. A few years ago, they staged what they called an “Artisanal Landlord Price-Hike Sale" for Jesse's Deli in Brooklyn. It brought awareness and customers to Jesse's and I hoped they could do the same for Gem.



Tommy and Doug said yes right away--DCX puts 20% of their profits toward "cultural activism" like this--and, with approval from Gem's Parul Patel, they created a (pro bono) full art installation, complete with a blue awning and creative riffs on the corporate co-optation of the East Village soul.

The result is an eye-catching satire of "authentrification," which can sometimes, in reality, be more outrageous than fiction.

The Schitibank project features bohemian East Villagers -- Jean-Michel Basquiat and Patti Smith (on Schitibikes), Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac, Ted Berrigan, the New York Dolls, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Gem Spa's own Candy the Cat (smoking weed).



When I should have been in bed with the flu, I spent the night watching the team install and asked some questions:

Q: You and your team said yes right away when I asked for help with Gem Spa. What made you excited to do this artist/activist makeover?

A: We see too many large banks and large chain stores move into these small neighborhoods putting mom and pop shops out of business. We wanted to see if our art could prevent that. Gem Spa is a fixture of the community and we wanted to help. DCX puts around 20% of our profits into ideating and printing our activist art or installations. This one lined up with us nicely because Parul wanted to do something provocative. We worked with her on all of the ideas, we bounced ideas back and forth. There was a lot of laughing, an instant connection between her and DCX. It made us want to push the idea even further. We love working with clients like that.



Q: What inspired you to do a Schitibank makeover and what is it saying about St. Mark's and the city?

A: The inspiration came from Parul, the owner of Gem Spa. When I heard from her that the landlord is courting a Citi Bank to try to get them to take over the space, DCX wanted to create an art installation that made the neighbors aware of what was happening. We like to channel the voice of a real subculture, in this case a "snarky NYC smoke shop owner," who is up against corporations with a lot of money. There’s something large corporations can’t do, and that’s have an authentic, combative voice, but we can do that.

The whole store will look as if a schiti bank has come to the East Village and tried to co-opt the space in a cool way, kind of like many other corporations, Chase cafés, TD Bank that knocked down Mars Bar, Target Greenwich Village, and how John Varvatos took over CBGB’s and kept the vibe. Many banks have created café-style atmospheres with rough-hewn wood tables and chairs and with some old photographs from the neighborhood that make them look like they are part of the history. They want to fit in, but mostly for profits, not to help the neighborhood. They treat their stores and storefronts like a billboard. It’s a space to do banking but it's also basic repetitive awareness advertising. Perhaps they think it gets them credibility; the fact that they are in an interesting neighborhood.



Q: What do you hope the makeover will do for Gem Spa?

A: We hope the schiti takeover will help the sales at Gem Spa. We ask people come in and read the signs and see how a famous "oasis" of the East Village may end up as "just another schiti bank." We hope that it gets people to buy all the great things Gem Spa has to offer, the New York Egg Creams (which they’re famous for), the wigs, the hats, the other cool things behind the counter to help with your nicotine or CBD fix. Besides that, we hope that schiti bank sheds some light on the corporate kindling that ignites gentrification in New York City neighborhoods.



Don't miss this one--while it lasts. You're gonna schit when you see it.

Come out this Saturday starting at 12:00 noon for the Gem Spa Cash Mob. Buy some egg creams. Take some selfies. Spread the word. Let the banks and the chains and the landlord know: We want Gem to stay put.

View the Facebook invite here.



And, later, in the light of day:



Update -- Citibank responds:

Coffee Shop to Chase Bank

A tipster friend tells us that the famous and just-shuttered Coffee Shop on Union Square is rumored to become yet another Chase Bank.



He attended the post-closing auction this week and chatted with insiders there. They told him: 1. The space is going to Chase, 2. The rent was hiked to $3 million annually, and 3. Chase might be keeping the antique neon sign and re-doing the letters so it spells out CHASE instead of COFFEE SHOP.

None of this is confirmed for sure, but if the sign switcheroo happens, it would be yet another example of New York City soul snatching, a.k.a. authentrification. (See also: Village Den, Rocco's, Bill's Gay 90s, and too many more to list.)



Ironically, the original coffee shop here before Coffee Shop was called Chase--possibly Jack Chase in the 1950s. The name is still in the floor of the doorway.

In the 1980s, it was Jason's Restaurant.


photo by Karen Gehres, via Flaming Pablum


Tax photograph

Now it's empty, the pots and pans auctioned off, the lamps and decorations removed.

It's time to pass the Small Business Jobs Survival Act and protect places like Coffee Shop from becoming more banks (and Starbucks, and Targets, and pricey boutiques). Go to the public hearing on Monday, October 22. Speak your mind. If that's not possible, here are more easy, quick ways you can make a difference today. The future of this city depends on you.

8th St. Hyper-gentrified

For some time, 8th Street has been a ghost town. The once-plentiful shoe stores and other small businesses that lined it have dropped like flies in recent years. Trendy restaurants have tried to get a foothold and failed. It's ripe for "revival" and now the big guns are being rolled in to force the street into hyper-gentrification mode.

The Daily News files a startling report on 8th Street's upcoming upgrade--it's going from "under-retailed" to an "artisanal center."


Marlton House, Jeff Bachner, Daily News

Stumptown Coffee is coming first--they're a foodie favorite in the uber-hipster Ace Hotel (formerly the Breslin, a tragic story there). After that, BD Hotels, of the Bowery and Jane Street Hotels (more controversy there), will open a new boutique hotel in the former SRO Marlton House.

The neighborhood flippers have arrived.

Says BD Hotels' Richard Born, "We’ve had the experience of changing neighborhoods like with the Bowery Hotel, where we saw the area take off. We think that will happen here. I bet we raise square-footage prices by $100 across the street when we open... The beats hung out here, and in a way, hipsters of today are the beatniks of yesterday. I think Eighth St. will be as cool as Prince St. in SoHo."

Now we know who to credit for the Bowery Tsunami that turned an edgy neighborhood into Meatpacking East--a massive wave that has kept rolling, most recently right over Mars Bar. But "edgy" is hip and that makes it a prime target for the hyper-gentrification juggernaut.

The Marlton House, most recently a New School dorm, has a storied past. It housed many artists and bohemians, including Jack Kerouac, Gregory Corso, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and radical feminist Warhol-shooter Valerie Solanas. That gives it cachet. New York City's counter-cultural history is catnip for the trend-makers of today--we see it from the current gutting of the Chelsea Hotel to the foodie takeover of classic restaurants and bars.

This is not to say let's celebrate shuttered shoe stores and college dorms that once were SROs, but it seems that every time a boutique hotel, a hipster coffee chain, or a foodie-fetish restaurant drops on a block, it all becomes "as cool" as SoHo--another manufactured neighborhood.



As urban scholar Neil Smith says, gentrification in New York today is "really a systematic class-remaking of city neighborhoods...it’s about creating entire environments." So let's not delude ourselves into thinking this is just normal New York change. There is a Big Machine at work.

From strategically designed Bergen Street to the deep reaches of "authentrification," New York is starting to feel a lot like a Disney "master-planned community."

Chumley's RIP

The powers-that-be have body-snatched Chumley's. Like they've done to so many of our classic joints. It happened to Minetta's, to Fedora and Rocco's, the Lion and the Waverly Inn. They tried doing it to John's of 12th Street, but were foiled.

Writing on the trend, the Times in 2010 noted that the Village "has become like a theme park of the past, as these restored standards offer a vision of a lost bohemian New York — albeit with a well-heeled clientele and prices to match."

"Authentrification" is one word for it. Wrote Alexandria Symonds in 2011 of upscale businesses that authentrify: "in their quest for authenticity, they’re seizing on elements that represent the area’s past and repurposing them as a design scheme."


photo: Alex Smith - Flaming Pablum

I don't have to go to Chumley's to know what's happened to it, but in case you need a first-hand account, here's Pete Wells in the Times this week:

"If you heard that Chumley’s is open again, you were misinformed. The dim, spare, beer-scented hideaway in the West Village is gone, torn down, not coming back. At its old address is a restaurant that has nothing in common with the original except a name, a door, an archway and framed photographs of, and jackets of books by, writers who used to drink there. Most of them wouldn’t be able to afford a cocktail there now, let alone dinner...

...Now, instead of atmosphere, Chumley’s has décor; the book jackets and photographs are elements in a haunted house attraction featuring the ghosts of Hemingway and Kerouac. The neighbors sleep better, but the neighborhood isn’t as interesting."

Here's when it used to be (minute mark 1:43). Pour one out.


before the collapse

*Everyday Chatter

Following the knit-bombing tea cozy craze? Some guy is covering bus shelters on 14th with doilies:





Talking about the Bowery and "authentrification" with Grieve and Boogie. [TR]

An obit for Bob Arihood--and a vigil tonight. [EVG]

More on the pinching of Hinsch's. [FNY]

An ode to Hinsch's neon. [NYN]

"Gone are the days when the words 'East Village' automatically conjured images of back alley drug deals and weathered performers trudging down St. Marks Place with their instruments strapped to their backs, as if heading off to some bohemian coal mine. Today, the East Village more likely brings to mind three things: college students, Starbucks and soaring rent costs." [MF]

Fewer GAPs for NYC. [Racked]

Books are getting movie-style billboards in Times Square. [RS]

Does anyone have a picture of the James Rizzi mural that used to be on Sullivan Street? [GVSHP]

Rocco Simulacrum

"A new Italian spot? You've been there before," writes the New York Times in their recent review of Carbone, the latest link in the Torrisi chain of restaurants, opening tomorrow in the space held by Rocco's from 1922 until 2011 when they were evicted by an impossible rent increase--from $8,000 to $18,000--and the popular Torrisi company quickly took over their lease.


Rocco, 2011


Carbone, photo the Times

The Times says Carbone "pays tribute" to the red-sauce joints of the 1950s "in a space that used to house Rocco, which specialized in that kind of fare for nearly a century. Just about every element — the menu, the music, the uniforms, the décor and even the servers’ banter with customers — will be engineered to conjure up the feeling of a lively night downtown, circa 1958."

Of course, Rocco's had all of this--and it was actually authentic, because on the day it closed it was still basically the same as it was in 1958. And for years before. It didn't have to "engineer" or "conjure up" any feeling. It was the thing itself. But the real thing, we see again and again, isn't good enough for this new city. The real must be evicted and replaced with an upscale simulacrum of itself. 


Rocco: photo Mitch Broder


Carbone, photo the Times

The Times article continues, "you might say it’s the middle of the last century as interpreted by chic players from the early part of this one: the contemporary art on the walls of the three rooms will be curated by Vito Schnabel, a son of the painter and film director Julian Schnabel, and the servers will wear vintage-style vests and tuxedos conceived by the designer Zac Posen."

(They also ripped out the authentic, antique tile floor and put in a new tile floor modeled on an idea of the authentic--in fact, modeled on a floor seen in the Godfather movie.)


Rocco, 2011


Carbone, photo the Times

Fedora, Minetta, Bill's Gay 90s--you, too! None of you were living up to your potential. On it goes in the authentrification machine. We are surrounded by facsimiles of the erased, and The Powers That Be keep telling us: This is real. The buzzy Orwellian doublethink turns everything around. Can the real be engineered? Can authenticity be conjured? More and more, we're living in an Epcot Center Jurassic Park of a city. For your safety, please keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times.


Carbone homepage


Further Reading:
Rocco Ristorante
Rocco's Update
Torrisi on Rocco
Rocco's and Bill's
Red-Sauce Joints
Carboned