Vanishing New York Backup

VANISHING? The Barry Supply Co. has had this enigmatic storefront on West 17th Street for the past 40 years. It reminds me of something from a Ben Katchor comic. Sadly, this week there's a FOR RENT sign in the window. I don't know what that means. But it is amazing they've lasted this long with such a gloomy and poignant window display of "hard to get items."

VANISHED: June 2007 Photo credit Rising rents closed the Bright Food Shop after a couple decades in Chelsea. Honestly, I never ate there, but I loved the fantastic neon sign. It has been there since 1938 and the place has been a restaurant of one kind or another since 1907 (the original tin ceilings are still there). Walked by today and noted the lovely neon sign is gone. According to this article , the owners have salvaged it—maybe they’ll make use of it somewhere down the road, should they find a spot in New York City where they can afford the rent.

VANISHED: July 2007 Photo credit Walked by the Allerton in Chelsea today to find one of New York’s last welfare hotels is being gutted. According to this report , the one-time home of Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith was sold to a developer for $17 million. The demolition crew says it's turning into a swank hotel. In the pic I took below, you can just see the ornate stair railing and a chandelier still hanging in the background: The Allerton has been called a “tinderbox for the homeless” by the New York Times: "For decades, Chelsea residents have tried to stop the noise, crime, drugs and harassment they say come from tenants at the Allerton Hotel, at West 22d Street and Eighth Avenue. And a recent murder there, some say, is proof the situation is getting out of hand. ‘The Allerton has probably been the biggest problem that lower Chelsea has had for as long as I can remember,’ said City Councilman Thomas K. Duane, whose district includes the hotel."

VANISHED: May 2007 Teresa's closed a couple of months ago. We long ago lost Kiev and Leshko's . The Odessa still stands on Avenue A. Everyone and their mother loves Veselka , but I loved it better before the renovation. We still have Polonia . Or do we? The gate's been closed awhile, but the guy at the neighborhood video store assures me they're only renovating. Let's hope that's true--and that they keep it greasy. Thank God we've got the B&H Dairy. After a close call a few years ago, they're still churning out the most delicious loaves of fresh-baked challah bread. And the Stage was closed for awhile, for renovation. It's open again and I don't know what they renovated because, thankfully, it looks exactly the same as before.

VANISHED: July 29, 2007 Harlem's landmark soul food restaurant Copeland's closed today . When it comes to closing businesses that have survived the worst, what has more destructive power than AIDS, crack, crime, and arson? Gentrification -- according to the story in the Times . From the New York Times : Calvin Copeland was there when rioters burned and looted stores in 1964, when crack cocaine and AIDS tore families apart, when brownstones were for sale for $50,000 and few outsiders dared move in. He endured fire and financial ruin, yet each time he picked up the pieces and prospered, as bold and resilient as the neighborhood around him. If he could be the master of his fate, he would live out his days in Harlem, Mr. Copeland, 82, said yesterday, serving soul food from the restaurant he has owned for almost five decades, Copeland’s, a relic of the past anchored in a place fast in transition. Gentrification has pushed away many of the black families who used to pat

VANISHING: July 29, 2007 Two days until closing and the Playpen is having a "blowout" sale on all sex toys and DVDs. The live girls, however, are not on sale. For $10 + $20 you get a strip show, and for $10 more, you get the "full masturbation show." Since this would be my last visit, I let Marilyn, the girl behind the plexiglass, talk me into the full treatment. She sat back in her chair and did her routine. I asked her what her future plans were, now that the Playpen would be closing. She told me she was depressed to see the Playpen go, and that she planned to move down the block to the peep booths of Gotham City while she looked for "something legit." Together, as Marilyn kneaded her breasts and touched herself, we lamented the changes that have leveled Times Square. Next stop, the Funny Store . The owner, Arnold Martin , was there with his assistant, Stephanie. They were kind enough to chat with me and let me take plenty of pictures. Steph

VANISHING: July 29, 2007 *SUNDAY IS THE LAST DAY* According to the New York Times, The Funny Store—“must-stop shopping for fans of rubber rats, mice, snakes and chickens; fake excrement of all shapes and sizes; and trick playing cards and whoopee cushions”--on 44th Street and 8th Avenue is closing next month. The building has been sold to a condo developer. The shop owner, Arnold Martin, cannot afford to remain in Times Square where the store has been, in various locations, since 1957 and where rents have risen 400%. Presumably, this also means the tragic demise of the Playpen, which occupies the same beautiful 1916 theater building at 693 8th Avenue. It was formerly known as the Cameo Theater and still has many of the original details. There's not much time left. Take a tour of the upstairs and view the goddesses on the walls --and, downstairs, view the live goddesses behind glass partitions--before they're turned to dust. This from the Times: According to Mr. Martin, the m

VANISHING Shea Stadium in Queens was named for William A. Shea, the man who brought National League baseball back to New York after the Dodgers and Giants went west. Citi Field has been named for Citigroup, Inc., the multinational corporation that helped Enron steal money. In the bizarro world of the New World Order, Shea is coming down and Citi Field is going up . photo from Loge13 This summer, enjoy a game at Shea before the retro blue and orange stadium is demolished. Before the first pitch, head over to Willets Point , also slated for demolition. If you’ve never been to the Iron Triangle , as this working-man's neighborhood of 250 small businesses is fondly known, now is the time to go. The officially blighted area around Shea Stadium is picturesque for its shanty-style mechanic shacks, chop shops, and junkyards. Think stacks of rubber tires, corrugated tin walls decorated with hubcaps, stray dogs, and guys hanging around in grease-stained wifebeaters. But it’s not as scary as

VANISHING? (not yet) Had a drink at Mars Bar this weekend. Without the overflow from CBGB's ( vanished 2006 ), Mars misses the business from hordes of punks. Still, there's no indication that the bar is closing--according to The Voice , the owner has a "long-standing agreement" with the city and "It's here as long as the owner is alive, and that will be for some time." However, Mars Bar is literally surrounded by brand-new luxury condo towers and that does not bode well. You never know around here when the next good place is going to vanish without warning. A very drunk and friendly patron warned me not to take pictures inside the bar because, if he caught me, the owner would "go ballistic." I did not want that, especially after overhearing how the guy had recently beat someone bloody. I had to settle for a surreptitious snap of an infamous Martian toilet. As scary as it looks, Mars Bar is a comfortable and affable place. I even got some good

VANISHED (temporarily?): July 2007 Photo source Gothamist and the New York Post report that “Taxi Ray” Kottner has had his Checker Cab impounded, taken off the streets where it used to give anyone who hailed it a free ride. Here’s a story about riding with Ray in July of 2005: We were lucky enough to get into Ray Kottner’s cab the other day at 5th Avenue and 18th Street. The taxi, a 1982 Checker Cab built in the final year the Checker Cab Company manufactured such cars, is outfitted with a row of license plates across an ample front bumper that read RIDES 4 U R FREE. Its roof-top billboard advertises “Bloomberg for President.” Inside, the backseat is spacious, upholstered in weathered blue velveteen. There was no bulletproof plastic to divide us and no seatbelts to hold us. Unbelted and unobstructed, in the wide-open space of the car, we had the feeling of swimming. The windows were rolled down and the cab had the tired smell of old cars, musty sun-warmed vinyl, a smell you don’t get

VANISHED: June 2007 On dark winter mornings, the foggy window of Kurowycky Meats glowed warmly, garlands of sausage strung alongside Christmas lights. I bought ham there and chicken breasts that the butcher would trim with great skill, dumping the yellow trimmings into a bucket filled with fat. The place smelled deliciously of bacon and other smoked pork products. June 3, 2007 An East Village Haven for Meat Lovers Closes Its Doors By ANTHONY RAMIREZ There is no more of the best-selling baked ham, which takes two and a half weeks to cure and 24 hours to smoke in the shop’s own smoke pits, and sold for $5.59 a pound. And there is very little left of the second big seller, kielbasa, which takes four hours to smoke, and sold for $4.79 a pound. There is little of anything left in Kurowycky Meat Products Inc., which was 52 years and three generations in the making. It closed its doors yesterday in the East Village, succumbing to changing times and tastes. Acclaimed among gourmets (James Bea

When you walk through the neighborhood, you can’t avoid them. They are everywhere, the predatory derrick cranes, angling over corniced rooftops, ten stories high, the sunlight gleaming on their latticed booms, turning their guy lines to chains of gold, their hooks dangling like baited lures over the streets where moneyed suckers stroll dreaming of luxury condo lives. Entire blocks have been blocked. The construction crews have rerouted sidewalks into narrow corridors fenced by blue-painted plywood walls and plastic mesh fences printed with the names of the new retail-residential complexes, illustrated with pixellated images of giant youthful bodies power-cycling on gym machines, lifting fizzing flutes of champagne, laughing mightily, toothily, in glass-box penthouses. Up there, the new New Yorkers nest, oblivious in their glossy towers, as down below the lower buildings slump beneath rusted tin entablatures, bricks shrunken and shivering, waiting their turn to crumble to dust. I could

VANISHED: 1997 Personal journal entry July 28, 1995: I went into the Grand Luncheonette today for a Coca-Cola. A little hole-in-the-wall of vintage chrome and orange formica, set beneath the shade of a burned-out movie marquee, its few remaining bulbs still burning. I sat on the swivel stool and watched 42nd Street. I watched the flies hum around the ketchup bottles, the man turning hot dogs, the big cans of sauerkraut and chili stacked under the greasy counter. A fan turned and stirred up the dirt. Nothing much happened. I finished my soda and walked down 42nd, looking at the things in the windows of all the head shops along the Deuce--Magic Shaving Powder, Spanish fly ointment, corn-cob pipes, Rough Rider condoms. Men called out from shadowed doorways, “One-dolla, one-dolla, one-dolla. Live nude girls." I looked in the window of the Martial Arts Shopping Center, at the mechanical Victorinox army knife, folding and unfolding its blades. I looked at all the knives and the brass kn

VANISHED: New Year's Day 2005 On 7th Street since the 1930s, they could no longer afford the ever-rising rent. These images are slivers stolen from someone else's pictures discovered on flickr. I cropped out the people and kept the blurry bar backgrounds. Above, an orange martini glass frames the phrase (unseen here) "Have a Happy." Below, you see the stained glass doors of the cabinetry, decorated with beer barrels.

VANISHED (for now?): April 2007 Chumley's of Greenwich Village closed recently due to collapse. News has it , the classic speakeasy will be renovated and reopened. Cross your fingers it returns to its former glory, shown here. more pics on my flickr Lana Turner has collapsed! I was trotting along and suddenly it started raining and snowing and you said it was hailing but hailing hits you on the head hard so it was really snowing and raining and I was in such a hurry to meet you but the traffic was acting exactly like the sky and suddenly I see a headline LANA TURNER HAS COLLAPSED! there is no snow in Hollywood there is no rain in California I have been to lots of parties and acted perfectly disgraceful but I never actually collapsed oh Lana Turner we love you get up --Frank O'Hara