The wonderful, radical, fiercely essential, collectively owned Bluestockings bookstore and activist center is leaving.
"This is not goodbye," they write. "This is 'wait for our new location announcement,' hopefully soon."
"Though we wish we were making this decision on our own terms, our decision has been forced by the demands of our landlord for more money and by their inaction on necessary repairs to the structural damage our wild little slice of space has endured over these last 21 years."
Let's hope they stay in the neighborhood of the Lower East Side, though that seems rather unlikely. UPDATE: So happy to hear that Bluestockings bookstore has the keys to their new home--still on the LES--at 116 Suffolk! Here's a chance to send them some money for their move.
Showing posts with label lower east side. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lower east side. Show all posts
Tuesday, July 21, 2020
Bluestockings
Friday, February 21, 2020
Yonah Shimmel's 110th
On Sunday March 15, the great Yonah Shimmel knishery will celebrate 110 years in business on the Lower East Side. The first 110 knishes will sell for $1.10 each.
Go get 'em! And grab a delicious egg cream while you're at it.
Go get 'em! And grab a delicious egg cream while you're at it.
Monday, July 9, 2018
One Manhattan Expands
Your own private driveway. Your own private bowling alley. Your own private movie theater. Your own private spa. Your own private lookout.
These promises of privacy are repeated on banners that circle Extell's One Manhattan Square on the Lower East Side, the latest luxury monstrosity to vandalize our skyline and bully its way into our low-rise neighborhoods. (There will also be a private golf simulator, a private pet spa, a private fitness complex, a private squash and basketball court, and an entire acre of private gardens.)
With so much private space, why venture out of the complex at all? Why engage with city life? The insistence on privacy and the turning away from the street exemplify the suburban mentality come to the city in the 2000s.
One resident of a luxury building loaded with suburban amenities told The Observer in 2008, “Everything's always convenient, always safe, always clean. You don't have to worry about gross things. Like mice! And creepy things like that." Said another, "It sometimes feels like I'm not in New York when I'm in the building... It's trying to have things that a suburban housing complex would--everything at your fingertips, where you don't have to leave [the building] much if you don't want.”
As Sarah Schulman has noted, “They came not to be citified, but rather to change cities into places they could recognize and dominate.”
This process of domination has just begun.
Under the FDR, along the East River Esplanade, someone has taped several flyers from One Manhattan Square, saying: "Join us for weekly complimentary cross fit classes." They are posted all over the spot used by local Chinese people for Tai Chi and other exercise.
It's clearly some kind of tool for selling more condos, but we have to ask: Why, when the people of One Manhattan have so much private space, do they also need to expand into the public space?
I was recently watching the 1979 movie "Breaking Away." It's about conflict between working class townie kids and upper class college kids. On hot days, the townies swim in the quarries where their fathers once cut stone. When the college kids go to swim at the quarry, one of the townies gets angry and says, "They've got indoor pools and outdoor pools on the campus, but they still got to come here!"
One Manhattan has a private spa, a private fitness complex, and an acre of private gardens, but they still have to use the space long enjoyed by the lower income local people.
It doesn't matter if the cross fit class doesn't happen at the same time as the Tai Chi sessions. It doesn't matter that it's free for anyone to join. It is quite clear who the cross fit classes are for. Just look at the people on the flyer.
Recently I was introduced to the concept of "ontological white expansiveness." Shannon Sullivan writes, "As ontologically expansive, white people tend to act and think as if all spaces—whether geographical, psychical, linguistic, economic, spiritual, bodily, or otherwise—are or should be available for them to move in and out of as they wish. Ontological expansiveness is a particular co-constitutive relationship between self and environment in which the self assumes that it can and should have totally mastery over its environment."
I would add that it's not only whiteness, but also the power of class that convinces people that the whole world is for them. Try making this argument to the people who benefit from that expansiveness. They will often tell you that this is public space and "We have a right to be there." They might even say, "We're integrating this neighborhood." And they'll use language like, "Everyone is welcome here."
But all of that covers up what's really going on--the semi-privatization of our public space, and the turning of public spaces into amenities for luxury developments (like we've seen at Astor Place).
The thousands of new people who will flood in to this neighborhood are already changing the East River Esplanade.
More upscaling is coming.
The city just installed a ferry landing nearby. It is an absolute eyesore, blocking formerly uplifting views of the harbor as you walk or bike downtown. But as City Realty pointed out, "Residents of the Lower East Side apartments for sale at One Manhattan Square will have access to a brand-new stop on the NYC Ferry at Corlears Hook."
Who is the ferry meant for?
And, of course, the whole gritty, open esplanade is being renovated -- better to fit the needs and aesthetics of the condo developers and their clients.
More mega-towers are coming. Activists are fighting them.
When the towers come, they will bring more people who don't want to engage with the city as it is. They will emerge from their private pleasure gardens and they will expand into the public space, only to alter it to their taste. And it will be too late to fight it.
These promises of privacy are repeated on banners that circle Extell's One Manhattan Square on the Lower East Side, the latest luxury monstrosity to vandalize our skyline and bully its way into our low-rise neighborhoods. (There will also be a private golf simulator, a private pet spa, a private fitness complex, a private squash and basketball court, and an entire acre of private gardens.)
With so much private space, why venture out of the complex at all? Why engage with city life? The insistence on privacy and the turning away from the street exemplify the suburban mentality come to the city in the 2000s.
One resident of a luxury building loaded with suburban amenities told The Observer in 2008, “Everything's always convenient, always safe, always clean. You don't have to worry about gross things. Like mice! And creepy things like that." Said another, "It sometimes feels like I'm not in New York when I'm in the building... It's trying to have things that a suburban housing complex would--everything at your fingertips, where you don't have to leave [the building] much if you don't want.”
As Sarah Schulman has noted, “They came not to be citified, but rather to change cities into places they could recognize and dominate.”
This process of domination has just begun.
Under the FDR, along the East River Esplanade, someone has taped several flyers from One Manhattan Square, saying: "Join us for weekly complimentary cross fit classes." They are posted all over the spot used by local Chinese people for Tai Chi and other exercise.
It's clearly some kind of tool for selling more condos, but we have to ask: Why, when the people of One Manhattan have so much private space, do they also need to expand into the public space?
I was recently watching the 1979 movie "Breaking Away." It's about conflict between working class townie kids and upper class college kids. On hot days, the townies swim in the quarries where their fathers once cut stone. When the college kids go to swim at the quarry, one of the townies gets angry and says, "They've got indoor pools and outdoor pools on the campus, but they still got to come here!"
One Manhattan has a private spa, a private fitness complex, and an acre of private gardens, but they still have to use the space long enjoyed by the lower income local people.
It doesn't matter if the cross fit class doesn't happen at the same time as the Tai Chi sessions. It doesn't matter that it's free for anyone to join. It is quite clear who the cross fit classes are for. Just look at the people on the flyer.
Recently I was introduced to the concept of "ontological white expansiveness." Shannon Sullivan writes, "As ontologically expansive, white people tend to act and think as if all spaces—whether geographical, psychical, linguistic, economic, spiritual, bodily, or otherwise—are or should be available for them to move in and out of as they wish. Ontological expansiveness is a particular co-constitutive relationship between self and environment in which the self assumes that it can and should have totally mastery over its environment."
I would add that it's not only whiteness, but also the power of class that convinces people that the whole world is for them. Try making this argument to the people who benefit from that expansiveness. They will often tell you that this is public space and "We have a right to be there." They might even say, "We're integrating this neighborhood." And they'll use language like, "Everyone is welcome here."
But all of that covers up what's really going on--the semi-privatization of our public space, and the turning of public spaces into amenities for luxury developments (like we've seen at Astor Place).
The thousands of new people who will flood in to this neighborhood are already changing the East River Esplanade.
More upscaling is coming.
The city just installed a ferry landing nearby. It is an absolute eyesore, blocking formerly uplifting views of the harbor as you walk or bike downtown. But as City Realty pointed out, "Residents of the Lower East Side apartments for sale at One Manhattan Square will have access to a brand-new stop on the NYC Ferry at Corlears Hook."
Who is the ferry meant for?
And, of course, the whole gritty, open esplanade is being renovated -- better to fit the needs and aesthetics of the condo developers and their clients.
More mega-towers are coming. Activists are fighting them.
When the towers come, they will bring more people who don't want to engage with the city as it is. They will emerge from their private pleasure gardens and they will expand into the public space, only to alter it to their taste. And it will be too late to fight it.
Tuesday, May 15, 2018
2 Chinatown Newsstands
(From an old post I never posted.)
C&L Sunrise Grocery was a little newsstand on Hester Street at Bowery. Its facade is remarkable thanks to the old, hand-painted sign that hangs above its awning, announcing: "Chung's Candy & Soda Stand," with 7-Up and Coca-Cola logos, also painted by hand.
The place sold candy and newspapers, lottery tickets and umbrellas. The usual stuff. Awhile ago, I went by to find a "Space for Lease" sign on its rolled-down shutter. (Maybe by now it's reopened as a new newsstand?)
Meanwhile, at another corner of Chinatown, where Lower East Side-style gentrification is seeping in, another newsstand vanished.
before
At Rutgers and East Broadway, against community objections last year, Jajaja Plantas Mexicana moved in to what had been the Golden Carriage Bakery and a little newsstand with a metal awning.
The popular restaurant serves vegan Mexican food. They left the newsstand signage, but it looks kind of sad, hanging out there without its old soul.
after
C&L Sunrise Grocery was a little newsstand on Hester Street at Bowery. Its facade is remarkable thanks to the old, hand-painted sign that hangs above its awning, announcing: "Chung's Candy & Soda Stand," with 7-Up and Coca-Cola logos, also painted by hand.
The place sold candy and newspapers, lottery tickets and umbrellas. The usual stuff. Awhile ago, I went by to find a "Space for Lease" sign on its rolled-down shutter. (Maybe by now it's reopened as a new newsstand?)
Meanwhile, at another corner of Chinatown, where Lower East Side-style gentrification is seeping in, another newsstand vanished.
before
At Rutgers and East Broadway, against community objections last year, Jajaja Plantas Mexicana moved in to what had been the Golden Carriage Bakery and a little newsstand with a metal awning.
The popular restaurant serves vegan Mexican food. They left the newsstand signage, but it looks kind of sad, hanging out there without its old soul.
after
Monday, April 30, 2018
Gargoyle Hunting
On a warm spring afternoon I meet John Freeman Gill on the Lower East Side for a little gargoyle hunting. Gill is the author of The Gargoyle Hunters, a novel set in 1970s New York City about a boy and his father who rescue ornamental stonework from tenements and other old buildings under demolition. For the father, it's a way to preserve a vanishing city.
"The book is completely about the evolving streetscape of New York," says Gill. "The city is constantly destroying itself. Regenerating. It's always been a city in a hurry."
Gill's inspiration for the book was a man named Ivan Karp, a self-taught gargoyle hunter who put together a team in the 1950s and led "clandestine raids on demolition sites." It was the time of Urban Renewal when countless tenements were destroyed, taking their decorations with them. Karp saved some 1,500 sculptures and eventually got the Brooklyn Museum to take them in.
Since the days of Urban Renewal, housing for low-income people doesn't come with much in the way of beauty or aliveness.
Gill and I are standing on Madison Street and Rutgers. On one side are tenements, covered in ornamentation--demon faces, cherubs, sea monsters, nudes. Their first floors are full of businesses like bodegas and Chinese restaurants. The sidewalk is busy. Across the street are the public housing towers that came out of the 1950s. They are dull and drab. Little life occurs at their feet.
Decorating tenements wasn't an act of landlord generosity--it was a marketing tool, says Gill. "The goal was not to create beauty, it was just to dress up shabby housing for the poor. It makes it look fancier than it is." Still, the decorations made for a livelier streetscape, one much less homogeneous than what we have today.
"You can feel the imprint of the individual in the object," says Gill. Then he points across the street at the housing projects. "These monstrosities are just boxes for housing low-income humans."
On the tenements, the ornaments generally come in two types: terracotta and stone. The terracotta pieces, Gill explains, were produced in a factory. The stone pieces were carved. How to tell the difference? Terracotta works tend to be sharper, while stone pieces are more likely worn away by time.
Many men among the nineteenth-century immigrants who came to New York were stone carvers. "They carved the monuments, the statues and gravestones, of Europe," says Gill, and then they carved the monuments on the faces of the tenements built for them to live in. "These gifted carvers are decorating their own housing. "
The architects didn't specify on the blueprints what decorations they wanted. "They'd just write 'carving,' and then the foreman might say 'Give me a Mary' or 'Give me a Moses,'" generic terms for a type of male and female face. "So the carver would do what he wanted. They'd carve each other's faces. Or the cop, the barkeep, or a girlfriend. So when you look up at these buildings, you're seeing the New Yorkers of the late nineteenth century looking back at you."
This stuff is in Gill's DNA. His mother, Jill Gill, was a gargoyle hunter. A self-taught artist, she painted street scenes as they were vanishing, and when she came across a forsaken ornament from a demolished tenement, she'd load it into her baby's stroller and cart it home. "My mother was obsessed about this," says Gill, but he didn't pay much attention to it in his youth.
It wasn't until he started writing for the New York Times' City Section that he "Gravitated toward historic preservation." Now, he says, "The ephemeral nature of New York's cityscape is my eternal fascination."
He wants to make it a fascination for his readers, too. "New Yorkers never look up," says Gill. And there is so much they're missing. The carvers of the past "incised their imagination onto our streetscape. They turned the streets of New York into marvelous public art galleries."
After you read The Gargoyle Hunters, you might find yourself looking up more often.
Read more about The Gargoyle Hunters and find out where John will be next
"The book is completely about the evolving streetscape of New York," says Gill. "The city is constantly destroying itself. Regenerating. It's always been a city in a hurry."
Gill's inspiration for the book was a man named Ivan Karp, a self-taught gargoyle hunter who put together a team in the 1950s and led "clandestine raids on demolition sites." It was the time of Urban Renewal when countless tenements were destroyed, taking their decorations with them. Karp saved some 1,500 sculptures and eventually got the Brooklyn Museum to take them in.
Since the days of Urban Renewal, housing for low-income people doesn't come with much in the way of beauty or aliveness.
Gill and I are standing on Madison Street and Rutgers. On one side are tenements, covered in ornamentation--demon faces, cherubs, sea monsters, nudes. Their first floors are full of businesses like bodegas and Chinese restaurants. The sidewalk is busy. Across the street are the public housing towers that came out of the 1950s. They are dull and drab. Little life occurs at their feet.
Decorating tenements wasn't an act of landlord generosity--it was a marketing tool, says Gill. "The goal was not to create beauty, it was just to dress up shabby housing for the poor. It makes it look fancier than it is." Still, the decorations made for a livelier streetscape, one much less homogeneous than what we have today.
"You can feel the imprint of the individual in the object," says Gill. Then he points across the street at the housing projects. "These monstrosities are just boxes for housing low-income humans."
On the tenements, the ornaments generally come in two types: terracotta and stone. The terracotta pieces, Gill explains, were produced in a factory. The stone pieces were carved. How to tell the difference? Terracotta works tend to be sharper, while stone pieces are more likely worn away by time.
Many men among the nineteenth-century immigrants who came to New York were stone carvers. "They carved the monuments, the statues and gravestones, of Europe," says Gill, and then they carved the monuments on the faces of the tenements built for them to live in. "These gifted carvers are decorating their own housing. "
The architects didn't specify on the blueprints what decorations they wanted. "They'd just write 'carving,' and then the foreman might say 'Give me a Mary' or 'Give me a Moses,'" generic terms for a type of male and female face. "So the carver would do what he wanted. They'd carve each other's faces. Or the cop, the barkeep, or a girlfriend. So when you look up at these buildings, you're seeing the New Yorkers of the late nineteenth century looking back at you."
This stuff is in Gill's DNA. His mother, Jill Gill, was a gargoyle hunter. A self-taught artist, she painted street scenes as they were vanishing, and when she came across a forsaken ornament from a demolished tenement, she'd load it into her baby's stroller and cart it home. "My mother was obsessed about this," says Gill, but he didn't pay much attention to it in his youth.
It wasn't until he started writing for the New York Times' City Section that he "Gravitated toward historic preservation." Now, he says, "The ephemeral nature of New York's cityscape is my eternal fascination."
He wants to make it a fascination for his readers, too. "New Yorkers never look up," says Gill. And there is so much they're missing. The carvers of the past "incised their imagination onto our streetscape. They turned the streets of New York into marvelous public art galleries."
After you read The Gargoyle Hunters, you might find yourself looking up more often.
Read more about The Gargoyle Hunters and find out where John will be next
Wednesday, March 7, 2018
New Beer Distributors
VANISHING
New Beer Distributors on Chrystie Street just announced via their Facebook page:
"Sorry guys to announce we have a few days left till we shut down for good. We have a fire sale going on!!! 50% off on everything on our shelves. Thank you guys for all the business and memories you gave us for the last 50 years."
I recently walked by to find them flanked by luxury construction and demolition.
They say it was the rent. 50 years--wiped out by hyper-gentrification.
New Beer Distributors on Chrystie Street just announced via their Facebook page:
"Sorry guys to announce we have a few days left till we shut down for good. We have a fire sale going on!!! 50% off on everything on our shelves. Thank you guys for all the business and memories you gave us for the last 50 years."
I recently walked by to find them flanked by luxury construction and demolition.
They say it was the rent. 50 years--wiped out by hyper-gentrification.
Monday, February 12, 2018
Artwashing the Sunshine's Demise
The Sunshine Cinema closed last month--bought by developers who plan to demolish the historic building and put up a glassy office tower that will surely help to further hyper-gentrify the neighborhood.
All photos by Herb Jue
On Thursday of this week, those developers, East End Capital & K Property Group, are hosting a party to celebrate--what exactly? Their triumph over history? The invitation says it's to "CELEBRATE THE LOWER EAST SIDE & PREVIEW OUR NEW OFFICE DEVELOPMENT."
I'm not sure how one can do both simultaneously.
Anyway, it's free and we're all invited.
The party will feature some artwashing--or poetry washing, I suppose you'd call it. Yes, poets are performing at a party thrown by luxury real estate developers to hype a project that is literally demolishing Lower East Side culture.
Some protesters might show up, but probably not.
This is the new Lower East Side.
All photos by Herb Jue
On Thursday of this week, those developers, East End Capital & K Property Group, are hosting a party to celebrate--what exactly? Their triumph over history? The invitation says it's to "CELEBRATE THE LOWER EAST SIDE & PREVIEW OUR NEW OFFICE DEVELOPMENT."
I'm not sure how one can do both simultaneously.
Anyway, it's free and we're all invited.
The party will feature some artwashing--or poetry washing, I suppose you'd call it. Yes, poets are performing at a party thrown by luxury real estate developers to hype a project that is literally demolishing Lower East Side culture.
Some protesters might show up, but probably not.
This is the new Lower East Side.
Tuesday, January 23, 2018
Goodbye Sunshine
VANISHED
The Sunshine Cinema closed this weekend. It wasn't landmarked--though it should have been. Soon it will be a pile of bricks.
1930, via NYPL
It was built as a Dutch Reformed Church in the 1800s. In the early 1900s, it became the Houston Athletic Club, for boxing matches.
In 1909 it transformed into the Houston Hippodrome, an affordable vaudeville and Yiddish movie house frequented by Jewish, Italian, and other immigrants of the Lower East Side.
In 1913, the Hippodrome was the site of a deadly stampede. During the movie "Daredevils Species," while robbers held up a western train, a flash came from the camera, causing someone to yell "Fire!" Panic ensued. People trampled each other as they clamored for the exit. Crushed to death were two women--Mrs. Margaret Corsa of Chrystie Street and an unidentified woman whose dark hair was "tinged with gray," and who wore on her finger a wedding ring with the initials P.M.
In 1917, the Hippodrome became the Sunshine until it closed sometime in the 1940s and became a warehouse for hardware supplies.
photo by Judith Thissen
In 2001, it was renovated and reopened as the Sunshine Cinema. Its crowds boosted sales at Yonah Schimmel's next door. Said the manager to the Times, "Now, I get a lot more people buying knish and sneaking them into movies. I bet that theater will soon smell all of knish. I bet nobody minds."
Last year, the building was sold to developers East End Capital and K Property Group. As The Real Deal reported at the time, "Landmark Theatres co-owner Mark Cuban initially planned to buy the building with his partner Todd Wagner and build a dine-in movie theater, but their plan fell through in 2012 after the local community board rejected their liquor license application."
The developers filed plans to demolish the building. They will build another soulless piece-of-shit office tower.
Said developer Jonathon Yormark to the Times, “We’re big fans of the Lower East Side. It really needs more 9-to-5 activity and it tends to be very active, obviously, on a night life basis. We believe there is a real demand for office space and for people to work there during the day.”
(There will be a developer victory dance party. We're all invited.)
So we're losing another beautiful building for something hideous and dead. We're losing history for emptiness. We're losing culture for corporate culture.
And don't let anyone tell you the Sunshine closed because "No one goes to the movies anymore." Don't let them tell you it's "Because of Netflix," like they say "It's all because of online shopping" and "No one buys books anymore. No one goes to diners anymore. No one eats hot dogs anymore." Don't let the creeps get away with dodging the rent issue.
The Sunshine closed because of hyper-gentrification. Because the rents are too high. The Sunshine closed because it wasn't protected.
As Tim Nye, the Sunshine's co-owner, told the Times this week, "the theater 'was doing incredible' financially. But they were paying $8,000 in monthly rent, which they expected would skyrocket at the end of their 25-year lease on Jan. 31. 'It’s the economics. We cannot pay market rent.'"
The Small Business Jobs Survival Act could have saved the Sunshine. The return of commercial rent control would have saved the Sunshine. Landmarking would have at least kept the historic building standing, instead of the soulless piece of shit that's to come.
And what will that soulless piece of shit do to Yonah Schimmel's? The knishery opened in 1910, one year after the opening of the Houston Hippodrome. Surely, it benefited from the crowds going in and out of the theater, just as it benefited from the crowds of the Sunshine. Will the new people who work in the soulless piece of shit want knishes? Will the presence of the glass box pressure a sale?
Will the creeps soon be saying, "Oh well, no one eats knishes anymore"?
The Sunshine Cinema closed this weekend. It wasn't landmarked--though it should have been. Soon it will be a pile of bricks.
1930, via NYPL
It was built as a Dutch Reformed Church in the 1800s. In the early 1900s, it became the Houston Athletic Club, for boxing matches.
In 1909 it transformed into the Houston Hippodrome, an affordable vaudeville and Yiddish movie house frequented by Jewish, Italian, and other immigrants of the Lower East Side.
In 1913, the Hippodrome was the site of a deadly stampede. During the movie "Daredevils Species," while robbers held up a western train, a flash came from the camera, causing someone to yell "Fire!" Panic ensued. People trampled each other as they clamored for the exit. Crushed to death were two women--Mrs. Margaret Corsa of Chrystie Street and an unidentified woman whose dark hair was "tinged with gray," and who wore on her finger a wedding ring with the initials P.M.
In 1917, the Hippodrome became the Sunshine until it closed sometime in the 1940s and became a warehouse for hardware supplies.
photo by Judith Thissen
In 2001, it was renovated and reopened as the Sunshine Cinema. Its crowds boosted sales at Yonah Schimmel's next door. Said the manager to the Times, "Now, I get a lot more people buying knish and sneaking them into movies. I bet that theater will soon smell all of knish. I bet nobody minds."
Last year, the building was sold to developers East End Capital and K Property Group. As The Real Deal reported at the time, "Landmark Theatres co-owner Mark Cuban initially planned to buy the building with his partner Todd Wagner and build a dine-in movie theater, but their plan fell through in 2012 after the local community board rejected their liquor license application."
The developers filed plans to demolish the building. They will build another soulless piece-of-shit office tower.
Said developer Jonathon Yormark to the Times, “We’re big fans of the Lower East Side. It really needs more 9-to-5 activity and it tends to be very active, obviously, on a night life basis. We believe there is a real demand for office space and for people to work there during the day.”
(There will be a developer victory dance party. We're all invited.)
So we're losing another beautiful building for something hideous and dead. We're losing history for emptiness. We're losing culture for corporate culture.
And don't let anyone tell you the Sunshine closed because "No one goes to the movies anymore." Don't let them tell you it's "Because of Netflix," like they say "It's all because of online shopping" and "No one buys books anymore. No one goes to diners anymore. No one eats hot dogs anymore." Don't let the creeps get away with dodging the rent issue.
The Sunshine closed because of hyper-gentrification. Because the rents are too high. The Sunshine closed because it wasn't protected.
As Tim Nye, the Sunshine's co-owner, told the Times this week, "the theater 'was doing incredible' financially. But they were paying $8,000 in monthly rent, which they expected would skyrocket at the end of their 25-year lease on Jan. 31. 'It’s the economics. We cannot pay market rent.'"
The Small Business Jobs Survival Act could have saved the Sunshine. The return of commercial rent control would have saved the Sunshine. Landmarking would have at least kept the historic building standing, instead of the soulless piece of shit that's to come.
And what will that soulless piece of shit do to Yonah Schimmel's? The knishery opened in 1910, one year after the opening of the Houston Hippodrome. Surely, it benefited from the crowds going in and out of the theater, just as it benefited from the crowds of the Sunshine. Will the new people who work in the soulless piece of shit want knishes? Will the presence of the glass box pressure a sale?
Will the creeps soon be saying, "Oh well, no one eats knishes anymore"?
Wednesday, December 27, 2017
That Big Penis
So that big penis mural (or is it a dildo?) on Broome Street doesn't have much longer. Workers are preparing to paint it over today. The ropes and ladders are already in place.
It was painted earlier this week by Swedish artist Carolina Falkholt, as part of the New Allen project (which seems to have something to do with artwashing the Lower East Side for more gentrification).
Today, onlookers gathered in the freezing cold to gaze upon the mural. Many took selfies with it.
News crews interviewed the onlookers, asking their thoughts.
When asked about the negative local response to the mural, one guy answered, "If people can't appreciate the penis, they can't appreciate life."
Another reporter said he could see a face in the network of veins. "See it? Right there? You can see a guy's face. It looks kind of like a clown."
Down the block, guys on the corner were talking. One said, "It's just the same old neighborhood shit."
Another said, "It's vulgar. It's not good for the kids. But I'd like it better if it was a big vagina."
It was painted earlier this week by Swedish artist Carolina Falkholt, as part of the New Allen project (which seems to have something to do with artwashing the Lower East Side for more gentrification).
Today, onlookers gathered in the freezing cold to gaze upon the mural. Many took selfies with it.
News crews interviewed the onlookers, asking their thoughts.
When asked about the negative local response to the mural, one guy answered, "If people can't appreciate the penis, they can't appreciate life."
Another reporter said he could see a face in the network of veins. "See it? Right there? You can see a guy's face. It looks kind of like a clown."
Down the block, guys on the corner were talking. One said, "It's just the same old neighborhood shit."
Another said, "It's vulgar. It's not good for the kids. But I'd like it better if it was a big vagina."
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Call Your Mother Hot Dog Cart
The cart stands on Houston near Lafayette.
Between the many signs for hot dogs, hot pretzels, and honey roasted peanuts, hand-written messages tell passersby to call their mothers.
"A smiling face is a...beautiful mankind," reads another.
"Let's back to our childhood. There we used to mistake again and again. Some people used to forgive us over and over."
"Wake up! Re-start. U'll overcome this time."
The vendor says the signs bring people to him, inspire them to stop and talk. It's a good thing. "We're all turning into machines," he says, "in this system." It's a good thing to stop and connect.
And go call your mother. Which I did.
Between the many signs for hot dogs, hot pretzels, and honey roasted peanuts, hand-written messages tell passersby to call their mothers.
"A smiling face is a...beautiful mankind," reads another.
"Let's back to our childhood. There we used to mistake again and again. Some people used to forgive us over and over."
"Wake up! Re-start. U'll overcome this time."
The vendor says the signs bring people to him, inspire them to stop and talk. It's a good thing. "We're all turning into machines," he says, "in this system." It's a good thing to stop and connect.
And go call your mother. Which I did.
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Meet Me at the End of the World
Jesse Malin just released a video for the title track of his EP Meet Me at the End of the World, an album that Rolling Stone calls "a mix of Lower East Side grit and Simon & Garfunkel Americana pop."
The video features the great Ray's Candy and B&H Dairy, two luminaries of the East Village small business scene -- plus a cameo from Ray himself.
Check it out:
The video features the great Ray's Candy and B&H Dairy, two luminaries of the East Village small business scene -- plus a cameo from Ray himself.
Check it out:
Wednesday, October 11, 2017
Moe's Meat Market
VANISHING
I wrote a piece for the Times this week about the closing of Moe's Meat Market, a butcher shop on Elizabeth Street turned into an artist's studio and gallery in 1977. Back then, Bohemians and working-class Italians mixed on a street once affordable, now taken over by luxury.
Moe’s Meat Market, in Little Italy, hasn’t been a meat market for 40 years. But the floor is still tiled in black and white, the walls covered in porcelain-enameled tin sheets. When the artist Robert Kobayashi, known as Kobi, bought Moe’s and the rest of its building in 1977, he moved in with his wife, the photographer Kate Keller, and installed his studio in the storefront, leaving the walls intact. As a sculptor who worked with tin, maybe he felt an affinity for the sheet metal. Maybe he just appreciated the history.
Read the rest at The Times
the basement wine press
I wrote a piece for the Times this week about the closing of Moe's Meat Market, a butcher shop on Elizabeth Street turned into an artist's studio and gallery in 1977. Back then, Bohemians and working-class Italians mixed on a street once affordable, now taken over by luxury.
Moe’s Meat Market, in Little Italy, hasn’t been a meat market for 40 years. But the floor is still tiled in black and white, the walls covered in porcelain-enameled tin sheets. When the artist Robert Kobayashi, known as Kobi, bought Moe’s and the rest of its building in 1977, he moved in with his wife, the photographer Kate Keller, and installed his studio in the storefront, leaving the walls intact. As a sculptor who worked with tin, maybe he felt an affinity for the sheet metal. Maybe he just appreciated the history.
Read the rest at The Times
the basement wine press
Tuesday, September 19, 2017
Cup & Saucer Stripped
This summer we saw the tragic end of the Cup & Saucer, thanks to a non-negotiable rent hike.
It didn't take long for the beautiful old signage to get stripped.
And replaced by a bunch of shitty For Rent banners.
It didn't take long for the beautiful old signage to get stripped.
And replaced by a bunch of shitty For Rent banners.
Tuesday, August 29, 2017
Poetry and Punk
This summer, Columbia University Press published Do You Have a Band? Poetry and Punk Rock in New York City by Daniel Kane. I asked Daniel a few questions about his book.
Q: You make the point throughout the book that poetry in the 1950s and 60s, specifically New York School and Beat poetry, was far more transgressive than rock and roll of that time. How so?
A: Well, poets could write things like "fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy" as Allen Ginsberg did in his poem "Howl," or publish a magazine entitled "Fuck You: a magazine of the arts," as Ed Sanders did, and kind of get away with it. Sure, these poets faced hassles with the law--Ginsberg's publishers were charged with obscenity, as was Sanders later on, but these charges were later dismissed. These poets set the stage for the literary freedoms we've enjoyed since.
Pop music at the time simply didn't have that kind of radical ambition or sense of possibility. Particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, American pop music was schmaltzy and safe--think Perry Como's [Correction: Pat Boone's] "Love Letters in the Sand." Even in the late 1960s the MC5 had to overdub Rob Tyner's cry "Kick out the jams motherfuckers!" with "Kick out the jams brothers and sisters!" before Elektra Records could distribute their first album Kick out the Jams to the hoped-for masses. Poetry was where the really transgressive action was taking place, especially the poetry that was happening in the Lower East Side. Examples are endless. Amiri Baraka's and Diane di Prima's works dedicated to taking down the State, Leonore Kandel's outrageously explicit erotic poetry, Aram Saroyan's bizarre one-word neologistic texts including one of my personal favorites, "lobstee"--we could go on and on.
Q: How did poets kickstart the punk movement in NYC?
A: Richard Hell, Lou Reed, Patti Smith--even Lydia Lunch!--all moved to New York City initially to be writers, not musicians. They had all read the Beats before they made the move, but living in NYC meant they could actually encounter writers such as Ginsberg, and be introduced to New York School-affiliated poets including Ted Berrigan and Bernadette Mayer, who quickly challenged their notion of poetry as a "higher calling" and more generally schooled them in an anti-establishment poetic culture. Poetry, these future musicians understood, could be made in groups, collaboratively. It could be the occasion for wild, politically charged and drug-fuelled parties. Poetry readings were actually busted by city authorities, and poets dragged to court. These were not your parents’ visions of genteel poetry readings, by any standards.
In short, I make the case throughout my book that writers and the "scene" affiliated with the New York School of poetry (from, say, Frank O'Hara through Mayer, Berrigan, and others) taught these budding musicians -- at least in part -- how to be punk. I don't want to overstate the case, of course. Reed, Hell, Smith, and related artists certainly were responding to a wide range of artistic practices taking place in NYC during the period. And they obviously had their own innate genius to work off of! I just don't think that the work of the poets who were these musicians' contemporaries has gotten its due as informing proto-punk and punk rock sound, lyrics, and style. We often hear from critics about Rimbaud, Baudelaire, etc in relationship to punk -- my book takes a different approach.
Gerard Malanga and his whip
Q: You describe the scene at Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable on St. Mark’s Place, where poets showed people how to dance to the Velvet Underground. What do you think gave the poets this ability to translate the Velvets’ music into movement?
A: Yeah, you know Gerard Malanga was a poet throughout his tenure as assistant to Andy Warhol, right? And he was the guy dancing in leather pants while whipping Mary Woronov on stage during Velvets performances! I'm not sure why poets were so tuned in to the Velvet Underground that way, but perhaps -- and this is a grotesque generalisation, admittedly -- they had a particular sensitivity, given their work in avant-garde writing, to the possibilities of lyricism and rhythm in otherwise discordant, disjunctive sound. They could hear more complexly than most people at the time (I think the poetry I discuss throughout my book proves that), and maybe that ability helped them figure out how to dance to things like "Venus in Furs."
Q: What makes a punk poem punk?
A: I think Frank O'Hara nails it in his manifesto "Personism": "I hate Vachel Lindsay, always have, I don’t even like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone’s chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don’t turn around and shout, 'Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.'"
The poetry I write about in Do You Have a Band really responded to and expanded on that improvisatory, playful, and irreverent style O'Hara embodied so wonderfully. The poems are almost like a corollary to that punk slogan "this is a chord, this is another, this is a third. Now form a band." That kind of anti-specialist, no more heroes, neo-dada thing we associate with punk (however generally and arguably) was, I think, anticipated by the poets the punks read and in some cases hung out with.
Q: What’s the punkest thing a poet’s ever done?
A: How about poet Jim Carroll's transformation of Ted Berrigan's poem "People Who Died" into a pop-punk hit loved by millions? Jim Carroll, what a story -- poet becomes punk star, then soon says goodbye to all that and becomes a hermetic poet again.
Q: Who was the punkest poet? And the most poetic punk?
A: If we could combine Frank O'Hara, Eileen Myles, John Giorno, and Dennis Cooper into a multi-headed monster, I'd say that's the punkest poet. For me, the most poetic punk, even though he'd probably hate me for saying this, is Richard Hell. The surrealist imagery and radical enjambment evident throughout his lyrics, the fractured squall of his music and the way he synthesized that with a deliciously “pop” sensibility, makes him, in my mind at least, the most poetic punk of the New York scene.
Patti Smith reading poetry
Q: A few years back, punk poet Patti Smith said, “Find a new city,” explaining that New York has “closed itself off to the young and the struggling." Poetry and punk has often come from the young and the struggling. So does it still exist in New York? Can it still exist? And if not, then where?
A: Sadly, I must ask how could anyone not agree with Patti Smith's depressing conclusion? When she and Richard Hell and others came to NYC it was a time -- as you of all people know -- when you didn't have to have stable employment to live here. You could just show up, find a part-time job at a bookstore, maybe another part-time job as a bartender, rent a crappy apartment in the East Village, lose your crappy job, get away with not paying rent for a month or two or more, find another part-time job to tide you over, work on your art, your music, your writing.
Economics was crucial to providing young people with the time and space to do what they had to do. And, importantly, there were some rich New Yorkers that served as patrons to these artists. Think of, for example, the legendary Lita Hornick, publisher of Kulchur magazine, who held swank parties in her Upper East Side apartment where writers including Baraka, Ron Padgett, etc rubbed shoulders with high society figures, admen, doyennes. Or George Plimpton, who held similar parties, hired Tom Clark as poetry editor of the Paris Review, who went on to publish Lou Reed lyrics in the magazine! Or even the 1980s, when Madonna mingled with Basquiat, lived off nibbles at art gallery openings, etc.
That New York, as far as I understand it, is gone. On a brighter note -- though I am way too old and out of it to know where the new New York is -- I'm sure a new version of it is still there, but it’s just somewhere else.
Like, I was in Berlin in the early 2000s, and saw that possibility--so romantic--I was staying at a friend's squat, impossibly complicated music was being composed by her friends, she was writing poetry, artists mingled with architects, anti-fascist politics mixed merrily with hedonistic parties, sexuality was all over the spectrum, just heavenly....and of course, everyone there said I should have been there in the early to mid-1990s when it was really happening!
My friends who have moved out of Manhattan and Brooklyn have told me Detroit, and Buffalo, and certain sections of Queens, maybe, are pretty wide open. Are these places passé now? I personally don't know. At this stage, let’s face it, I’m not the person to ask where the new New York is. I'm almost 49 years old, after all, I live in fucking Hove, England, in a Victorian terraced house with my beloved wife, Jenny, and hilarious daughter, Bramble. As the Ramones put it, “we’re a happy family, we’re a happy family, we’re a happy family, me Mom and Daddy.”
Go see Daniel Kane discuss his book on September 7 at NYU's Fales Library:
Q: You make the point throughout the book that poetry in the 1950s and 60s, specifically New York School and Beat poetry, was far more transgressive than rock and roll of that time. How so?
A: Well, poets could write things like "fucked in the ass by saintly motorcyclists, and screamed with joy" as Allen Ginsberg did in his poem "Howl," or publish a magazine entitled "Fuck You: a magazine of the arts," as Ed Sanders did, and kind of get away with it. Sure, these poets faced hassles with the law--Ginsberg's publishers were charged with obscenity, as was Sanders later on, but these charges were later dismissed. These poets set the stage for the literary freedoms we've enjoyed since.
Pop music at the time simply didn't have that kind of radical ambition or sense of possibility. Particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, American pop music was schmaltzy and safe--think Perry Como's [Correction: Pat Boone's] "Love Letters in the Sand." Even in the late 1960s the MC5 had to overdub Rob Tyner's cry "Kick out the jams motherfuckers!" with "Kick out the jams brothers and sisters!" before Elektra Records could distribute their first album Kick out the Jams to the hoped-for masses. Poetry was where the really transgressive action was taking place, especially the poetry that was happening in the Lower East Side. Examples are endless. Amiri Baraka's and Diane di Prima's works dedicated to taking down the State, Leonore Kandel's outrageously explicit erotic poetry, Aram Saroyan's bizarre one-word neologistic texts including one of my personal favorites, "lobstee"--we could go on and on.
Q: How did poets kickstart the punk movement in NYC?
A: Richard Hell, Lou Reed, Patti Smith--even Lydia Lunch!--all moved to New York City initially to be writers, not musicians. They had all read the Beats before they made the move, but living in NYC meant they could actually encounter writers such as Ginsberg, and be introduced to New York School-affiliated poets including Ted Berrigan and Bernadette Mayer, who quickly challenged their notion of poetry as a "higher calling" and more generally schooled them in an anti-establishment poetic culture. Poetry, these future musicians understood, could be made in groups, collaboratively. It could be the occasion for wild, politically charged and drug-fuelled parties. Poetry readings were actually busted by city authorities, and poets dragged to court. These were not your parents’ visions of genteel poetry readings, by any standards.
In short, I make the case throughout my book that writers and the "scene" affiliated with the New York School of poetry (from, say, Frank O'Hara through Mayer, Berrigan, and others) taught these budding musicians -- at least in part -- how to be punk. I don't want to overstate the case, of course. Reed, Hell, Smith, and related artists certainly were responding to a wide range of artistic practices taking place in NYC during the period. And they obviously had their own innate genius to work off of! I just don't think that the work of the poets who were these musicians' contemporaries has gotten its due as informing proto-punk and punk rock sound, lyrics, and style. We often hear from critics about Rimbaud, Baudelaire, etc in relationship to punk -- my book takes a different approach.
Gerard Malanga and his whip
Q: You describe the scene at Warhol’s Exploding Plastic Inevitable on St. Mark’s Place, where poets showed people how to dance to the Velvet Underground. What do you think gave the poets this ability to translate the Velvets’ music into movement?
A: Yeah, you know Gerard Malanga was a poet throughout his tenure as assistant to Andy Warhol, right? And he was the guy dancing in leather pants while whipping Mary Woronov on stage during Velvets performances! I'm not sure why poets were so tuned in to the Velvet Underground that way, but perhaps -- and this is a grotesque generalisation, admittedly -- they had a particular sensitivity, given their work in avant-garde writing, to the possibilities of lyricism and rhythm in otherwise discordant, disjunctive sound. They could hear more complexly than most people at the time (I think the poetry I discuss throughout my book proves that), and maybe that ability helped them figure out how to dance to things like "Venus in Furs."
Q: What makes a punk poem punk?
A: I think Frank O'Hara nails it in his manifesto "Personism": "I hate Vachel Lindsay, always have, I don’t even like rhythm, assonance, all that stuff. You just go on your nerve. If someone’s chasing you down the street with a knife you just run, you don’t turn around and shout, 'Give it up! I was a track star for Mineola Prep.'"
The poetry I write about in Do You Have a Band really responded to and expanded on that improvisatory, playful, and irreverent style O'Hara embodied so wonderfully. The poems are almost like a corollary to that punk slogan "this is a chord, this is another, this is a third. Now form a band." That kind of anti-specialist, no more heroes, neo-dada thing we associate with punk (however generally and arguably) was, I think, anticipated by the poets the punks read and in some cases hung out with.
Q: What’s the punkest thing a poet’s ever done?
A: How about poet Jim Carroll's transformation of Ted Berrigan's poem "People Who Died" into a pop-punk hit loved by millions? Jim Carroll, what a story -- poet becomes punk star, then soon says goodbye to all that and becomes a hermetic poet again.
Q: Who was the punkest poet? And the most poetic punk?
A: If we could combine Frank O'Hara, Eileen Myles, John Giorno, and Dennis Cooper into a multi-headed monster, I'd say that's the punkest poet. For me, the most poetic punk, even though he'd probably hate me for saying this, is Richard Hell. The surrealist imagery and radical enjambment evident throughout his lyrics, the fractured squall of his music and the way he synthesized that with a deliciously “pop” sensibility, makes him, in my mind at least, the most poetic punk of the New York scene.
Patti Smith reading poetry
Q: A few years back, punk poet Patti Smith said, “Find a new city,” explaining that New York has “closed itself off to the young and the struggling." Poetry and punk has often come from the young and the struggling. So does it still exist in New York? Can it still exist? And if not, then where?
A: Sadly, I must ask how could anyone not agree with Patti Smith's depressing conclusion? When she and Richard Hell and others came to NYC it was a time -- as you of all people know -- when you didn't have to have stable employment to live here. You could just show up, find a part-time job at a bookstore, maybe another part-time job as a bartender, rent a crappy apartment in the East Village, lose your crappy job, get away with not paying rent for a month or two or more, find another part-time job to tide you over, work on your art, your music, your writing.
Economics was crucial to providing young people with the time and space to do what they had to do. And, importantly, there were some rich New Yorkers that served as patrons to these artists. Think of, for example, the legendary Lita Hornick, publisher of Kulchur magazine, who held swank parties in her Upper East Side apartment where writers including Baraka, Ron Padgett, etc rubbed shoulders with high society figures, admen, doyennes. Or George Plimpton, who held similar parties, hired Tom Clark as poetry editor of the Paris Review, who went on to publish Lou Reed lyrics in the magazine! Or even the 1980s, when Madonna mingled with Basquiat, lived off nibbles at art gallery openings, etc.
That New York, as far as I understand it, is gone. On a brighter note -- though I am way too old and out of it to know where the new New York is -- I'm sure a new version of it is still there, but it’s just somewhere else.
Like, I was in Berlin in the early 2000s, and saw that possibility--so romantic--I was staying at a friend's squat, impossibly complicated music was being composed by her friends, she was writing poetry, artists mingled with architects, anti-fascist politics mixed merrily with hedonistic parties, sexuality was all over the spectrum, just heavenly....and of course, everyone there said I should have been there in the early to mid-1990s when it was really happening!
My friends who have moved out of Manhattan and Brooklyn have told me Detroit, and Buffalo, and certain sections of Queens, maybe, are pretty wide open. Are these places passé now? I personally don't know. At this stage, let’s face it, I’m not the person to ask where the new New York is. I'm almost 49 years old, after all, I live in fucking Hove, England, in a Victorian terraced house with my beloved wife, Jenny, and hilarious daughter, Bramble. As the Ramones put it, “we’re a happy family, we’re a happy family, we’re a happy family, me Mom and Daddy.”
Go see Daniel Kane discuss his book on September 7 at NYU's Fales Library:
Monday, August 7, 2017
Amato to Nothing
Back in 2009, we said goodbye to the great Amato Opera House, on the Bowery for 60 years.
2009
The building was sold and sold again. Recently, the plywood was removed to reveal this--a stark white box awaiting a luxury chain store or an art gallery or a restaurant. Certainly not a rag-tag, affordable opera house.
As Bowery Boogie noted last year, infamous local landlord Steve Croman was "converting 319 Bowery into a mixed-use dwelling befitting Bowery 2.0. Three glitzy, full-floor apartments, including the aforementioned penthouse will sit atop the ground level store. The retail space was last on the market in 2014, asking a whopping $35,000 per month in rent."
2009
The building was sold and sold again. Recently, the plywood was removed to reveal this--a stark white box awaiting a luxury chain store or an art gallery or a restaurant. Certainly not a rag-tag, affordable opera house.
As Bowery Boogie noted last year, infamous local landlord Steve Croman was "converting 319 Bowery into a mixed-use dwelling befitting Bowery 2.0. Three glitzy, full-floor apartments, including the aforementioned penthouse will sit atop the ground level store. The retail space was last on the market in 2014, asking a whopping $35,000 per month in rent."
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