Vanishing New York Backup

With the Wall Street crash, I may be reporting on a whole different kind of vanishing. And here's one now: Whole Foods is dead in the toxic waters of Gowanus. [ Curbed ] Now if only the Whole Foods in Union Square would close in time to let the 89-year-old Jefferson Market take a breath. The neighborhood shop is on the verge of vanishing. [ Times ] How can you tell the health of seedy old Times Square? Like sea turtles in a revived East River, prostitutes have been discovered at 42nd and 8th . [ Curbed ] 65-year-old Emerald Inn to close due to massively rising rents. [ EVG ] UWS theme-dive bar Yogi's is closing on 10/4 --girls, pick up your brassieres and go home. [ NYBarfly ] Can we all agree to start using the term "Meatpuking" ? [ Grub ] A burly bouncer guards the potted bamboo at the Cooper Square Hotel --or maybe they just know 98% of the neighborhood would love to hurl a brick through the joint: New York Magazine's 40th Anniversary edition is chock-full o...

Brian Berger, writer and blogger behind Who Walk in Brooklyn , sent in this shot of what happens when you outsource New York's "street furniture." Can you find the typo? Luckily, a passing copy editor made the correction. Nice going Cemusa ! " The rich are staging a coup!" [ Michael Moore ] The New York Times has been chock-full of good stuff the past couple of days. Here they cover the drama of Extra Place --and toss VNY a little linkage. [ Times ] NYU students have moved into Gramercy Green, the luxury condo-dorm that devoured a block and continues to mount the Gramercy Pawnbrokers . Said student Damon Beres, " Young students like us don’t need this quality of living or, at the very least, we don’t need it provided by our college." [ Times ] Read Damon's full story on his blog : "Perhaps NYU could’ve done something better with its hundreds of millions of dollars, something other than establishing a beautiful castle for college kids to dum...

On Friday night, Slacktivist John Penley was on hand for the Outsiders art show at 282 Bowery, the former Adams Restaurant Supply, next to be transformed into what I like to call "Pastis East." With no placards, chants, or crowds, the silent protest looked a lot like part of the show. Something Penley himself observed, chuckling as he taped dollar bills to the "gallery" window, each bill graffitied in black Magic Marker with the words "worthless," "eat the rich," "riot." Every time he taped another dollar, a flurry of cameras snapped him in action. It might have been performance art. Bowery Grover The show included Jonathan Yeo's pornographic Paris Hilton and his lovely leaves, which at first glance look like nothing more than an homage to autumn, but on closer inspection reveal pornographic ins and outs. The artists on display at the Outsiders show are in no way outsiders. They are insiders, well paid, represente...

More news in the study of narcissistic disorder among us: Facebook a bastion. [ SciBlog ] Just stumbled upon a cool blog: Check out The Bridges of NYC . Enjoy the latest installment of lost city photos from Alex in NYC. [ FP ] Someone has decorated the former Chocolate Bar windows in the Village. What do Obama and little Nicholas Bradford have to do with each other? Eight is Enough! Get it? Say NO to McSame and the Mean Girl : Yesterday, 100s of Bailout protesters piled crap under the ass-end of Wall Street's ballsy bull--it was all about bullshit. [ NYMag video ] Grieve's got the scoop on the protest and much more from Wall Street, tracking the events of the past week with its "giddy undercurrent." [ EVG ] Why $700 billion for the bailout? Just cuz it's supersized , says the US Treasury. [ CR ] photo: majickthise flickr "Unschooling" is what city moms do instead of home-schooling--it means staying up late in Soho bars, sleeping late so mom can wor...

Very quietly, without warning, the Addukkan Moroccan crafts shop on East 7th Street has shuttered. A For Rent sign is in the window. Described as a shop for "Exotic crafted Moroccan jewelry, music, light fixtures, ceramics, tiles, mirrors and art," Addukkan has been on the street for many years. I don't know much else about it. The owner used to sit outside, a fixture, a familiar face. Another casualty in the 7th Street Clearance , which began (in my mind) in January 2005 with the closing of George's Bar and the opening of the Velvet cigar lounge , which has attracted its share of masters of the universe. Though now I wonder if they'll be vanishing next.

Today at 4: No Bailout for Wall Street protest. [ Naomi Klein ] Tomorrow night at 6: Slacktivists zero in on their next protest site--the graffiti art show at the future "Pastis East" on Bowery. [ EVG ] and [ NMNL ] Condo buyers are defaulting on their contracts--and boom! The Condopocalypse has begun. [ Sun ] via [ Curbed ] And now the banks are backing out , scaling back on new outposts in NYC. Bye-bye banks! [ Gothamist ] Oops, not so fast. Condo Yves is getting a bank. It's not a shiny, glamorous Chase, though. It's a, umm, Bank of Smithtown? Apparently, Long Island's "Premier Community Bank": I guess Yves' dream of attracting "flagship retail" didn't pan out . The rest of the first floor space will be taken up by the Core real estate marketing company, who brought NYC a whole bunch of big condos--which may or may not get swept up in the "default phenomenon" linked to above: Patrick Bateman , the American Psycho , i...

Time Out has a cover story on the 40 most loved New Yorkers and their thoughts on the city's changes and future. A selected selection: Amy Sedaris : "The future and fear is that it is turning into everywhere else and street names will eventually be replaced with corporations’ names: Meet me on the corner of Johnson & Johnson, west of Procter & Gamble, take the Costco 1 train, switch at Bell South. I’ll be in front of Mega Wal-Mart next to the Pfizer museum. Bullies always win." David Cross : " Should I get out of the East Village now ? Can you keep the proliferation of the mallification of New York to Times Square, which is already ruined? ...My pressing urgent hope is that the city is able to keep its character and doesn’t sell out to corporate interests... I remember when the Gap opened on St. Marks Street, and I remember when it closed. Throw it all in Times Square! That’s where people go who want that shit anyway." Nellie McKay : "Unfortu...

As the city creaks and groans in a shift to something like its former life , fighting off the culture of the last decade, listen closely. In all that creaking you can also hear the death rattle of the cupcake as it prepares to jump the shark. Two years ago, TIME branded them as "fake happiness... the dessert of a civilization in decline ." One year ago, the Times called attention to the growing war on cupcakes, and Blog Chelsea celebrated the death of "the hideous and disgusting" Burgers & Cupcakes after previously begging New York to " Send the Chelsea cupcake to Hell! " More recently, Jennifer 8. Lee proposed the cupcake might be at a tipping point, and Grub Street responded by declaring themselves " cupmudgeons, " wondering, "Is there no place for gloom and doom in this happy world of pink frosting and Day-Glo sprinkles?" Performance art troupe Unison Fetish uses song and dance to critique the Magnolia cupcake as a " ...

New East Villager Rachel Weisz doesn't see what all the complaining is about: "Everyone talks about how New York used to be. The East Village is how I imagine New York used to be. What's happening behind that door? There are just very authentic little pockets of life going on." Very little is left, indeed. [ Vogue ] Some folks are getting cautiously giddy about a return to 1970s NYC . [ Voice ] via [ EVG ] First we got cloned newsstands, then matching robot bus stops-- now it's happening to subway entrances . That condo-Cemusa look is everywhere in our Stepford city. This one seems to be courtesy of the very-glassy Bank of America building : Witness the death of a newsstand . [ Curbed ] Read an interview with Paul Auster : "I have this secret desire that one day New York City would secede from the United States and become an independent republic." [ Gothamist] When the kids run up a huge credit card bill, spending on parties, clothes, etc., with no thoug...

I wrote this post a couple months ago and kept it in the backlog. Now it seems more apt than ever. Back in June, the New York Post , with unusual eloquence, wrote, "Does it feel some days as if New York--wealthy, successful, seemingly at the top of the world--is slipping back into the bad old days of crime, noise, dirt, rudeness? Like pentimento rising from an old canvas..." I love the word pentimento . In her memoir of the same name, Lillian Hellman defined it beautifully: "Old paint on a canvas, as it ages, sometimes becomes transparent. When that happens it is possible, in some pictures, to see the original lines: a tree will show through a woman's dress, a child makes way for a dog, a large boat is no longer on an open sea. That is called pentimento because the painter 'repented,' changed his mind ." Is the city changing its mind about the sterile suburbanite it has become? Perhaps it is repenting, a word that also means to regret. Graffiti and panh...

Bye-bye Batemans: "Wall Street hotshots were never beloved figures on New York’s cultural landscape. It’s no coincidence that the protagonists of books and movies like 'The Bonfire of the Vanities' and ' American Psycho ' tended to be narcissistic jerks , or worse." Says one hotshot post-crash: "This is definitely going to suck the fun out of the industry." [ Times ] Wall Streeters turn to God as money fails them. Says one Reverend, "People are just sitting there, praying or crying and definitely exhausted." [ Reuters ] (Upscale) strippers going broke since market crashed--maybe there's hope for old dive joints, like defunct Billy's Topless and the Baby Doll , to make a comeback. [ EVG ] The bright side: " maybe Manhattan will become affordable again, and cool, and dangerous . Dangerous in theory, but not to you or your family and friends. Dirty, but in a good way." [ NYer ] via [ EVG ] From tipster Reed , the once Bo...

Angry drunk guys from Jersey ran their car over the Tompkins Square farmer's market--maybe it was the same jerks who got kicked out of Momofuku . Nah, plenty of jerks to go around... [ NMNL ] SLA renews Beatrice Inn 's liquor license against community protest and CB denial: "'Advise us on how to get rid of this place ,' pleaded one aghast neighbor." [ NYO ] "Over the last two years, news accounts across the country have chronicled the death or serious injury of people who walk into traffic while texting ." Fewer texters to annoy the rest of us. [ Times ] Gas station owner to Columbia U: “This business is like part of my family. Money is not everything. You don’t sell your children .” [ Times ] Enjoying the new anti-condo sticker-itti on the LES. [ EVG ] Looking for a "Kill Your Landlord" T-shirt? You found it! [ Blah ] Next at bat: Goodbye Shea Stadium. [ BBs ]

The Yankees have left the stadium. Fans today are grieving for the sacred soil as they look forward to the handsome new ballpark, which physically resembles the 1923 original, gut-renovated in the 1970s, though spiritually it will resemble something more like a luxury spa for the very wealthy. Says one angry sports writer: " The Yankees are blowtorching all this glorious history --not to mention the unmatchable history generated by Yankee Stadium I--for luxury boxes and premium seats. Those 8 million people passing through the Yankee Stadium turnstiles the past two years? The wrong kind of people. Modern sports economics have no interest--absolutely none--in the common man. You do not matter. The Yankees are only interested in the kind of people who will populate the luxury suites and who will pay somewhere between $500 and $2,500 per person, per game, to sit in the first five to eight rows of the new ballpark. These are the kind of people who, as a Yankee Stadium website explains...

The Marc Jacobs effect may be spreading ever more--to the East Village! And that potent pink cupcake just keeps on crumbling. [ Racked ] The clean-up and securing of Jackson Square Park might be in full effect, but as 1 Jackson Square begins to rise from its foundations, they're also getting a bit of old New York--their very own squeegee woman , helpfully cleaning the windows of passing cars: Read an "excerpt" from The Carrie Diaries , the new young adult novel about Sex & the City's Carrie Bradshaw. [ Jezebel ] I wrote about the Avalonization of Extra Place here , and we've seen the developer's plans here , but today we learn that Avalon plans to buy this public street from the city and make it their own private enclave. What's next? [ SLES ] The "avant-garde, rebellious spirit" of the East Village is now summed up in one of its first luxury condos, Red Square. Which shows us: When all authenticity has been erased, those that pretended ...

Blogger deleted this original post...sorry for the 404... On 14th and 6th, the Asian-chain takeover continues as New York's first Cookout Grill has opened, complete with a Korean caveman mascot made of (slightly obscene) balloons . Wakamaru, eat your heart out: The end of Chinatown is at hand --as the Times declares it on gentrification's cusp and the owner of Girls Love Shoes says “It’s crazy how things are blossoming here. It’s definitely becoming a little mecca.” [ EVG ] Bowery, get ready for the coming of "Pastis East." [ BBoogie ] Why I now feel ashamed to admit I live in the EV . The new stereotype: It's the home of "Snotty...Rich people who come from a rich family." [ TONY ] Jefferson Market needs your help:

Addendum to Sinking Ships, Limp Dicks : Fran Lebowitz on the crashing economy: "I can’t wait! Just when you think how horrible New York has become in terms of things interfering with the tone of the city, they’re finally leaving! The rich people! They’re leaving! They’re leaving! " [ NYO ] Join Danny Meyer and the Union Square bigwigs tomorrow, 9/18, for a celebration to save the park from privatization. [ SUS ] Super-trendy EV bar Death & Co. is fighting eviction . [ Grub ] Compare the beauty of old buildings built for the poor to the sterility of new buildings for the affluent. [ BBB ] Always wanted to buy a magazine storage box for $150,000 ? Now you can. [ Times ]

With all the hype and anti-hype surrounding The Eldridge--that LES club with the gold floors and gold-sprinkled cocktails for $32--what I have found most intriguing and vexing is the faux-bookshop facade . Book lovers have already been fooled . Grub Street wrote that The Eldridge has turned away at least one "book collector who spotted a certain tome in the window that he had spent 25 years looking for." And for only 27 cents! Which book was it? Was it C.P. Snow's The Conscience of the Rich , The Letters of Sigmund Freud , the Weight Watchers cookbook? These are some of the titles you'll find in the window of The Eldridge. Generally, when I visit someone's home for the first time, I look at their books to tell me something about them. In bookshop windows, the displayed titles tell you about the shop, the values and tastes of its owners and clientele. Collections of books are (usually) meaningful. So I wondered what meaning might be contained in the ass...

Mike Albo spies " pencils that have been chewed by the celebrated TriBeCan writer Max Blagg on sale for $25 each" at the new J. Crew store (in a former bar that was a liquor store ). [ Times ] ...and take a look back when J. Crew Liquor store was an actual liquor store : Unearthed! The pool where Esther Williams once swam for Fox Movietone, long buried beneath Sony BMG's soundstage on 54th, now demolished for another condo tower. [ Avatar ] Back to Doyers , where the battle for Chinatown rages on: Says Apotheke partner, “I’d like to maintain authenticity while I’m at the same time gentrifying.” Another says only the neighborhood natives have a right to complain. Exactly why we all must speak up. [ TO ] via [ Eater ] More on the David's Bagels closure backlash. [ Gothamist ] The EV fights back against bars-- The Box and more denied liquor licenses. [ Eater ] & [ SLES ] At Philippe Starck's appropriately nicknamed "yoo" condo tower, a fiddler fi...

The David Barton sales office is open at Astor Place. Maybe if that Barnes & Noble 's catchphrase had been " Read Fucker!" they could've made it: Remembering David Foster Wallace : "He talked about how difficult it was to be a novelist in a world seething with advertisements and entertainment and knee-jerk knowingness and facile irony..." [ Salon ] ...he "used his prodigious gifts as a writer...to create a series of strobe-lit portraits of a millennial America overdosing on the drugs of entertainment and self-gratification ." [ Times ] Novelist and playwright Arthur Nersesian on the new East Village: “Oh, God, we’re living in a hell that I can’t even begin to describe!” [ Times ] Scary 57-story monster condo coming to Tribeca looks like a precarious Jenga tower just waiting for a strong wind to topple it. [ EVG ] ...and fully loaded with amenities , the monster condo will even squeeze out a giant mirrored poo (that some poor slob will have...

This Observer article deserves its own post, belonging as it does in the Suburbanization of New York annals. In it, you will read about the world of New York's suburbanized gated communities . It's an odd world, custom-made for The Joneses , personalities recently attracted to the city, harboring fantasies of total cleanliness, safety, convenience, and spaciousness. It's a world peopled by 20-something interns who can somehow afford to split rents of $3000+ a month, who come to New York from the Midwest, eschewing things like walkups because living in a gated, fully loaded environment "is just so much better in so many ways. It's like living in a hotel. Everything's always convenient, always safe, always clean. You don't have to worry about gross things. Like mice! And creepy things like that." If "Consume!" is New York's post-9/11 war cry , then "always convenient, always safe, always clean" could be the city's post...

In making my Bowery Tsunami map last night, I noticed some changes to the Cooper Union "Hive" building. It's become more undulating, more bulbous, more wacky . Here's the architect's rendering from March and then today: Everything you might want to know about the Donut Riot . [ Villager ] Don't miss Pickle Day --hurry, before every last well-preserved treat is removed from Orchard Street. [ EVG ] Vesuvio Bakery closed for renovations--it is missed and rumors say it may never reopen. [ Eater ] Enjoy the "21" Club of old with Burt Lancaster. [ HG ] This weekend: Watch ladies in pink dance worshipful, " Unison Fetish " circles with Magnolia cupcakes on Bleecker. [ cupcakes ] via [ esquared ] I'm pretty sure they're on our side: Luxury buildings secure NYC's Joneses in suburban-style gated communities . [ Observer ] The final days of 12th Street Books are upon us. Before they move to Brooklyn, fill up a bag ...

Curbed's announcement that 257 Bowery will be turned into a big glass box means that the building that long held M. Kabram & Sons will be vanishing. It is only the latest victim in the unnatural disaster that is sweeping down Bowery today. Begun by three Kabram brothers in 1908 and moved to this location in 1920 , the restaurant supply store began renting its wares to television and movies in the 1950s. A diner counter appeared in The Honeymooners . A pizza oven starred in Goodfellas . The Kabrams sold the building (it was sold again in May for $8.5 million) and auctioned off their inventory earlier this year. Clyde Haberman covered the auction for the Times , reporting: "Just about every inch of space was crammed with wooden bars, booths, cappuccino makers, ancient cash registers, grills, soda dispensers, cigarette machines, menu boards with removable letters, butcher-paper cutters, mounds of cups and dishes, malted-milk blenders and a few tabletop juke boxes fl...