Big Apple Meat Market

We've been hearing rumors about this for awhile and now it's happening. After more than 20 years in Hell's Kitchen, right behind the Port Authority bus terminal, the Big Apple Meat Market is closing. The good news is, they're moving to a new space a couple blocks away.



Hell's Yeah NYC got a shot of the goodbye signage and points to what's coming--the Times Square Hotel, a 38-story glass tower "consisting of 440 micro luxury guestrooms." Yes, "micro luxury." Click here for a look at the giant glass tower to come--it appears to be taking the entire block with it.

So the Big Apple market is surviving, but the building is not, and it won't be the same. Prior to housing Big Apple, this space was the home of meatpacking warehouse Washington Beef, in business for over 60 years. A ghost of the old name is still on the building, and in this 1934 photo of the block, that "meats and poultry" sign might be pointing to it, back in the day when this area held a lively marketplace for fruits, vegetables, and meat.


NYPL, 1934

People used to buy meat at Washington Beef, if they dared. New York magazine profiled it in 1970, calling it "the hardcore reason to shop along Ninth Avenue," but "you must be on intimate terms with the butcher" to do so. (The whole article is worth reading--it covers food shopping on 9th Avenue, a marketplace that "not even the Port Authority Terminal has managed to destroy... I'll bet someone is planning a 'renewal' right now." The fiscal crisis of the 70s made sure that did not happen. Until now.)



Another interesting tidbit about the address, if somewhat random, is this story about Ellen Meyer, a young woman who lived upstairs in the early 1900s, where she suffered from some strange catatonic condition for which she was taken to Bellevue and stuck with pins to no avail. But I digress.



The Big Apple market is a great place to visit in part because they never really renovated from the meatpacking days. The racks and rails for the meat hooks still line the ceiling, painted red. In the butcher shop, they're still use for hanging meat.





I've taken a handful of pictures at Big Apple over the years, knowing that a place so special could not possibly last.



There's something about the gloomy, semi-aquatic light, and the way the brands seem to hail from an earlier era, that lend Big Apple a frozen-in-time aura.

Signs are made by hand, not spat out of some corporate office in Texas. Above a ziggurat of pink egg cartons, the signs are hung on crooked strings.





The exterior is wonderfully dreary, covered in graffiti and pigeon shit. Standing here, you could dream yourself into a lost New York. But not for long. It's all coming down for more glass, more chain stores.



A couple of years ago, the Times did a piece on Big Apple. The article includes a wonderful slideshow of photos, featuring the sort of person who shops at Big Apple, the sort of person that is also vanishing from New York, replaced by the svelte and distracted, the hollow men and women, tapping away at iPhones in sterilized Whole Foods aisles.


Christian Hansen for The New York Times

Meanwhile, until January 13, there's the old Big Apple. Visit while you can. Buy some eggs, butter, and meat. “If it wasn’t for this store," said a Mr. Bozzonetti in the Times piece, "the majority of the people in this neighborhood would be out of luck."

Update: We wondered what would happen to the neighboring Stiles Farmers Market. Hell's Kitchen local Andrea Kleiman just sent in the following photo with good news, Stiles is "here to stay":

*Everyday Chatter

Steve Cuozzo: "Just to torment those who weep over every lost 'landmark' of the old Lower East Side: The former Mars Bar site at the corner of Second Avenue and East 1st Street will now become a TD Bank." [NYP]

Is there a chance Mars Bar will be making a comeback? [EVG]

Gallagher's Steak House gets a third life. [MBVNY]

Former Lenox Lounge's new owner says, "the thing needed a shot in the arm. It was really not reaching its potential lately. It was just a local spot that was OK." That's what they said about Bill's Gay 90s, too. Thank goodness we have all these saviors to rescue New York's historic icons from not living up to their full potential. [VV]

Ugly rumor: Big Nick's might be shuttering after 50+ years on the UWS. [MUW]

The gentrification of Brooklyn--in a handy map. [BM]

The wonderfully junky S&P newsstand in Park Slope got a boring facelift. [OMFS]

On the "Myrtle-Beach-ification" of Coney Island. [Brokelyn]

Remembering Sunando Sen--who worked in the East Village before being pushed in front of the subway. [TK]

Now they're trying to beautify sidewalk scaffolding. [Curbed]

Chumley's keeps trying to come back from collapse. [NYT]

Word Up bookstore gets funded. [NYDN]

Revisit Wigstock in 1992. [NY90s]

Visiting some of the last phone booths on the streets of New York. [youtube]

photo: EV Grieve

Rob Hollander at Save the Lower East Side reports that The 11th Street Resistance is taking on 7-11 and you can join the fight: "We're drawing the line of suburbanization here... We have had about enough of chain stores and suburban franchises, Duane Reades, Walgreens and Chase Banks on every corner. We've chosen to fight. Join with us and let's start a city-wide resistance:
MEETING: NO 7-11
WEDNESDAY, JANUARY 16, 6:30PM
545 EAST 11TH STREET
(Father's Heart Ministries, btwn A&B)"

Lenox Lounge Redux

After the closing and stripping of the famed Lenox Lounge on New Year's Day, this press release just came in from the publicist representing the club:

LENOX LOUNGE…THE FAT LADY NEVER SANG

Despite numerous reports to the contrary, the Lenox Lounge brand will continue without skipping a beat. Tyreta Foster, Esq. and Angélica Thomas, Esq. of Foster Lynch & Thomas, LLC negotiated in earnest throughout the 2012 Holiday Season with Eric Feinberg, Esq. to ensure that Lenox Lounge and its famed Art Deco sign would once again light up the heart of Lenox Avenue.

Alvin Reed, the owner of the lounge, finally inked the deal for the new location at 333 Lenox Avenue on New Year’s Eve. “Just as I restored Lenox Lounge in 2000, I am determined to expand the brand just 2 blocks away,” said Reed. Reed’s latest endeavor will feature 2 floors with an option of a third.

“Of course the famed Zebra Room will get a second act,” Reed continued. “Lenox Lounge has always been a spot where everyone--from Harlemites to foreign tourists--could hang out and listen to great music. Lenox Lounge has always been and will continue to be less commercial and more authentic.”

Michael Coker of Halstead Property and David Chkheidze of Massey Knakal Realty Services were the brokers on the transaction.


photo by Iman Abdulfattah

Central Iron & Metal

Another long-time, blue-collar business is about to be lost to High Lined property values. The scrap yard that runs between 27th and 28th Streets, between 10th and 11th Avenues, has been bought from the Central Iron and Metal, Co. by Related for $65 million.



Reports the Real Deal: "At 17,275 square feet and 14,800 square feet, respectively, the two lots have a combined maximum floor-to-area ratio of 241,204 square feet, making them a ripe prospect for residential or commercial development."

This is the latest in an ever lengthening list of blue-collar businesses that have vanished in the shadow of the High Line--some bought out and some forced out--including: the 10th Avenue Tire Shop, the Chelsea Mobil gas station, the Olympia Parking Garage, the Bear Auto Body Shop, the warehouse for Kamco building materials, and the third-generation Brownfeld Auto.

The Central Iron & Metal scrap yard has been recycling and "conserving for tomorrow" since 1927. A ghost sign of their name is (was?) painted on the High Line's flank.

From the history of "NYC's Original Recycler."

I've been watching the scrap yard for a few years now, taking its photo, waiting for it to go. Looking at it, you knew it would never last, not once the second part of the High Line opened right over it, giving tourists a verboten view of ugly old industrial New York. Not once the condo towers started rising all around it, their residents complaining about everything that came before they arrived. It was only a matter of time.



This may not seem like an important loss. (Personally, I like a scrap yard. I love those machines with the big magnets and the grabby bits that move the scrap from one pile to another. I could watch them all day.) But it is important because it's been in business for 86 years and it's one of the last remaining pieces of a neighborhood that has been gobbled up by the High Line and the massive hyper-gentrification it helped to create, including Bloomberg's rezoning of the "Special West Chelsea District," an area that had once been a thriving light-industrial zone, now being bulldozed for luxury housing and retail, the connecting link between MePa and the wicked Hudson Yards scheme.

Of course the scrap yard had to go. Such indelicate things don't belong in Manhattan anymore.

 

Aside from doing the valuable work of recycling metal, the scrap yard also served another purpose. I believe it was a bulwark between the High Liners and Folsom East, as well as the Eagle bar, located on the same block. Having a bit of rough-and-tumble, like a scrap yard with its imposing corrugated walls and junkyard dog warnings, helped to protect that block from infiltrators. Who wants to live next to a scrap yard? (Eh, who am I kidding? Condos will go anywhere.)



With the scrap yard gone--and with massive Avalon West Chelsea rising across the street, plus the existing condo dwellers starting to get cocky--I'll be even more worried about the future of Folsom and the Eagle.

This little block of West 28th Street is getting tighter by the minute.

 

Previously:
Disney World on the Hudson
West 28th Lot
Folsom East and The Eagle
Folsom East Responds
Folsom Fights On
Folsom Under High Line
Eagle Under Siege

Lenox Lounge Stripped

The Lenox Lounge closed on New Year's Eve after 73 years in Harlem. The landlord doubled the rent on its current owner Alvin Reed, from $10,000 to $20,000 per month, essentially forcing him out of business after 24 years of stewardship.

On New Year's Day, these heartbreaking photos appeared on Twitter and Instagram. Already the gorgeous chrome neon letters are gone and the door has been plywooded and padlocked. The historically detailed facade has been ripped off, leaving only the underbelly of weathered wood. It is painful to look at.

Photo: Nobodies of Note 1/1/13

The interior gutting has begun. The long wooden bar has been ripped out.

Photo: Hosea Johnson

Was this done by Alvin Reed or the new owners? Black Enterprise reported last month, "When Reed leaves he’ll be taking the iconic Lenox Lounge neon sign with him." Said Reed, “If they want to use Lenox Lounge, they will have to negotiate with me. I brought it back and I want to see it stay there. I want to keep the legacy alive. I am Lenox Lounge, and I will be Lenox Lounge for quite some time. And if they want Lenox Lounge, they want me.”

I guess the new owners decided not to negotiate.

Photo: CMTapper

The lounge is being taken over by Richie Notar, who runs the luxury restaurant chain Nobu. Robert DeNiro may also be involved. According to the Daily News, Notar will rename the place after himself, putting up a new sign to read NOTAR JAZZ CLUB. He will close it until March to renovate and add a bakery. "I don’t want to change a thing about how it looks," he said, adding it will be "not too much different than what it is now."

We know what that means. We've seen it all before (again and again and again). The Lenox Lounge will never be the same.

Before it closed, I went up for a final drink (or two), to be in that rare atmosphere one last time.

The bar was quiet on late afternoons, as the sun goes low and golden over Lenox Avenue, streaming across the wide-open space of the vacant lot across the way, a grassy field that will surely one day be crammed with condos and chain stores.

Black men drank at the bar and watched the football game. A few couples, mostly mixed-race couples, sat in the ragged, duct-taped booths sipping neon-vibrant cocktails and eating fried catfish, lazily reading the newspaper. The bar felt easy like this. A neighborhood joint decked out in faded glamor.

A walking tour went by the window with people snapping photos. Inside, the bartender explained to a couple of white tourists exactly what made the Lenox Lounge so special, "All kinds of people come in here. All ages and ethnicities. On any night you can find a doctor, a lawyer, sitting next to some guy with no teeth."

Originally owned by Ralph Greco (whom Jet magazine referred to as "ofay" in the 1950s) and built for white customers seeking black jazz, the Lenox Lounge was bought and revitalized by Harlem local Alvin Reed in 1988. He brought jazz back in the late 1990s and the white people came back with it. As Reed told the Times in 2000, ''I thought I was bringing jazz back to Harlem for black folks. I thought I would bring out a lot of locals."

But the black folks mostly stayed in the bar, while the zebra-skinned back room was frequented by whites and tourists. Said Reed in the Times, "A lot of whites are very disappointed because they are coming for our culture. They want to see how we pop our fingers and get with it, and they get in here, look around and it's nothing but white folks." By 2001, reported Ebony magazine, 90% of the customers were white.

As Reed told Ebony, "I didn't envision Whites walking in my door. But they made it work. I have to be totally honest. Without them, jazz would not be in here right now."

That was 2001, a tipping point for Harlem and the city at large. Bloomberg was taking over where Giuliani left off and everything was about to change at an unimaginable pace and intensity. You could see the shift, you could feel it, but you could also stay in denial. In our own neighborhoods, we all thought: It can't happen here.

In the same Ebony article, Charles Rangel said about gentrification: "I walk the streets of Harlem and I don't see it. Sure, I see Whites, but I don't see them moving in and attempting to take over Harlem."

What a difference a decade makes. From river to river, Harlem has since been colonized. East Harlem got rezoned and loaded with condos. Manhattanville was nabbed via eminent domain and handed over to Columbia University for bulldozing. And many in Harlem have fought the big rezoning of 125th Street to no avail. Said planning commissioner Amanda Burden in the Times, "this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to frame and control growth on 125th Street." Since then, the chains have moved in and many local businesses, like Alvin Reed's Lenox Lounge, have been pushed out.

Said a shaken and heartbroken Reed in the Daily News recently, “It’s like I don’t exist.”

Previously:
Lenox Lounge Vanishing
Lenox Lounge at 70

Happy New Year: 1984 - 1985!

I love this clip of CBS' 1984-1985 coverage of New Year's Eve in Times Square--hosted by Andy Williams (who just passed away in September) and Lily Tomlin as Ernestine the telephone operator. It's so unproduced, so unslick. They actually flub the countdown.



The masses in the streets are a ragtag bunch, none of them in today's uniform of corporate-sponsored hats and inflatable bats, all in their own hats (including one in a knitted beer-can hat, remember those?), with lots of noisemakers. And it looks dark down there on Broadway, not klieg-lit, more like some grim, brown, coffee-stained light.

The crowd's roar is loud in the broadcast booth, their noisemakers sending up an ear-splitting din that will eventually, in New Year's Eve broadcasts of the future, be blocked out by soundproofing.

2011's branded crowd on youtube

Tomlin calls the crowd a group of risk takers for being in Times Square on this night, and she laments the fact that so many people are not at home, using the telephone. (No cell phones.) "If somebody in this crowd is reaching out, it's probably for somebody's wallet."

As for the ball itself, it's not today's showpiece of 504 Waterford crystals. It's a wobbly red apple with a green stem, made of simple light bulbs.
 

See more years of New Year's Eve in Times Square here

2012 Vanishings

Every year, at the end of the year, we take a look back at what's been lost over the past 12 months. Some of the losses were big ones, some smaller. In chronological order (more or less), the ones covered here:



The Holiday Cocktail Lounge
After an illustrious history that included literary legends like Allen Ginsberg and W.H. Auden, after a few recent years of struggle, the great Holiday succumbed. It's been gutted and will be turned into a fish n' chips gastropub kind of thing. The Holiday had been here since 1965.

La-Rosa Cigars
This half-century old shop shuttered and left Manhattan for the Bronx, which is not exactly vanishing, but still--it was booted from a prime spot to the periphery.

Atlas Meats
In its never-ending vanishing act, the Meatpacking District demolished this Depression-era building. A glass tower is coming.



Manganaro's
After 119 years in business, Manganaro's Grosseria closed their doors and sold their building. After a painful gutting, a restaurant called Tavola moved in. This one hurts like hell.

A Clean Well-Lighted Place
One of the last places on the Rodeo Drive section of Bleecker Street that was not a luxury shopping mall store, this little gallery quietly closed and its space became...a luxury shopping mall store. The gallery had been here since 1976.

World of Video
After 29 years in Greenwich Village, this popular and beloved video store lost its lease.

Chelsea Gallery Diner
The city is losing its diners. Another one fell when the Chelsea Gallery was forced to close after 30 years on 7th Avenue. A sad loss for many in the area.



Bill's Gay 90s
Another especially painful blow, the loss of Bill's Gay 90s was one that should never have been allowed. After 88 years in business, Bill's lost its lease, which was handed over to trendy restaurateur John DeLucie. The place was gutted and upscaled.

Atlas Barber School
With a hiked rent, thanks no doubt to the hideous tower going up at Astor Place, this long-lasting barber school shuttered. It had been in business in Manhattan, and mostly right here, since 1948.

Arleen Bowman Boutique
When A Clean, Well-Lighted Place closed on Bleecker, it left one old-school shop standing. But not for long. After 25 years here, Arleen Bowman was forced to close by rising rent.



Prime Burger
More agony with this one. The wondrous Prime Burger closed after 47 years in business--and its gorgeous decor went with it. The building was sold and the new owner would not give them a manageable deal. An awful loss.

Lascoff Pharmacy
Without much of a peep, the beautiful Lascoff closed on the Upper East Side. Established in 1899, its interior was stunningly cathedralesque. Now it's gutted and gone.

Colony Records
After 60 years of "serving Broadway," Colony Records was given an impossible offer, a quintupled rent of $5 million. It shuttered.

Movie Star News
Opened by the infamous Irving Klaw, sustained by images of the great Bettie Page, Movie Star News was part of Manhattan since 1939. But then the rent went up, and now its space will become a luxury bathroom fixture store.

Lafayette French Bakery
After more than 30 years in the Village, this little (sometimes controversial) bakery was evicted. A trendy restaurant has taken its place.

Mei Dick
Another barbershop fallen, Mei Dick vanished this year, disappointing many photographers who enjoyed its homophonic joke.

Partners & Crime
After 18 years on Greenwich Avenue, this bookshop closed down due to the city's growing lack of interest in books and its passion for pawing at greasy little screens.

University Diner
And another diner gone. I'll miss this one, too. It shuttered after 60 years in business.

El Faro
It was 85 years old, surviving on the glammed-up edge of the Meatpacking District, and then it was gone. This one also really sucks. I keep hoping it will reopen.

9th Avenue Between 17th and 18th
All of the small, beloved businesses in the large, nearly block-long building were evicted this year.

Lucky Cheng's
After nearly two decades of drag, Lucky Cheng's left its dilapidated building in the East Village for Times Square. Again, not exactly a vanishing, but a vanishing--the old Lucky Cheng's and the strange history of its building has come to an end.

Village Chess Shop
They'd been on Thompson Street since 1972. Then they were evicted.

The Stage Deli
Without warning, this 75-year-old landmark closed, leaving many tourists and New Yorkers bereft. 

Lenox Lounge
Today will be its last. I went up for a final drink before the place is taken over and faux-stalgia'd by the Nobu team. The landlord had doubled the rent on this classic space, this gem of Harlem, open since 1942.



So many numbers, so many years. Some of these businesses had been in New York City for over 110 years, others a mere 20, but it adds up. In fact, if you add up all the years in business, just for these businesses listed here (there were plenty more), the total comes to approximately 1,255 years.

In 2012, we lost 1,255 years of history. That's more than a millennium--just gone.


Past year-end reviews:
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011: Businesses, Structures, Food, People