Vanishing New York Backup

The Times visits Freddy's for a last call. Bloomberg's muscle wins again. [ NYT ] The man who gave birth to the Anthora, the city's iconic Greek coffee cup , has died. Let's hope his cups don't vanish with him. [ NYT ] Take a look at ABC No Rio Dinero. [ EVG ] After the fire, 283 Grand comes down. [ BB ] Patti Smith stopped by St. Mark's Books, made some recommendations. [ SMB ] What's to become of the Limelight ? This bus ad tells you everything you need to know about what to find there and who will be there:

If you were around last summer, you might recall the seasonal saga Notes from the Backside . Written by neighbors of the Cooper Square Hotel, they began with a megaphone and ended with the the hanging of an actual douchebag . In between, their poopy laundry lines made it to 1010 WINS and the New York Post . Now, as warm, giddy, loudmouth weather descends upon the East Village, the Backsiders creep out of hibernation to report all about it. One Backsider writes: "This morning I wake up at 5:20 am--still dark out--to the sound of huge, heavy metal clanging. I get up and look outside and some guy at the hotel has a little lit workshop. He's installing these huge metal planters . At 5 am. I ask him to stop and remind him that he's not supposed to be out there till 10--according to their liquor license. And, to his credit, he does. This is just a week after I hear some guys laughing on the patio at 11:30, a few feet from my bedroom window. They also claim to be working on the...

Bleecker = "Gold Coast for designer boutiques" as rents continue to skyrocket. [ WSJ ] via Curbed Stacy Torres writes about the pain of losing St. Vincent's . [ NYDN ] Goggla shows video of Fairey's latest, simultaneous mural going up at Wooster and Grand. [ youtube ] Someone sticks a little sticker on the Houston Fairey : Joe Sitt reveals plans to demolish pretty much everything in Coney Island and replace it with fast food joints. [ NYO ] Take a look inside what's to go in Coney. [ KC ] Are noisy EV bar owners finally shaking in their boots? [ EVG ] Ray denied social security benefits. [ NMNL ] Saying goodbye to Admiral's Row . [ GVDP ]

Billy Leroy is the owner of Billy’s Antiques and Props, on the Bowery since 1986, and still hanging on despite a recent doubling of the rent and a raid from the NYPD. As The Villager wrote, "CBGB may have closed, high-rise luxury co-ops are invading the area, the local American Apparel is attracting yuppies in droves. A Whole Foods mega-supermarket has opened on the other side of the street, but Billy’s is still hanging in there." Billy also happened to hold the lease on the Houston Wall , where Deitch Projects has displayed murals by Os Gemeos and Shepard Fairey , along with a reproduction of a long-buried work by Keith Haring. Billy wrote in and let me know about his instrumental role in bringing the Haring back to life . photo: Billy Leroy He recalls: “In 2005 I was working on a project around the wall, a sorta cafe with Bistro tables, when I discovered through research that the wall had been Keith Haring’s first mural. I thought it would be cool to clear away the rotting...

Sadly, the ginormous fingernails have vanished, without a word--going as mysteriously as they came: Keep up with the yunnisphere as grueling narcissists are Tweeting Too Hard . The Bowery gets more glass. [ Curbed ] The Jane Ballroom rises from the dead. [ Gothamist ] Who's your favorite New York poet ? [ P&W ] Woodside 's "running whatsit." [ LC ] Enjoy the guide to Landmarks Preservation . [ EVG ] Fans of Joe Jr.'s keep hanging on. [ BB ] Coney gets a new ride. [ ATZ ]

When hipsters move to Chinatown : "look, this is Manhattan: Neighborhoods change, neighborhoods become yuppie. I don't feel I'm doing anything criminal by living here. I don't know, maybe I'm being naïve. It doesn't feel like an issue to me, but maybe that's 'cause I'm on the good end of it." [ Voice ] Tourist information that's useful, a sticker on the subway: Selling Willets Point , piece by piece, while the holdouts hold. [ CR ] This is your last week to visit Freddy's , before the city wields its eminent domain wrecking ball. [ FIB ] The East Village is now a suitable location for Smurfs . [ EVG ] Photos of NYC in the 1970s by Allen Tannenbaum. [ COS ]

Yesterday, the New York Times ' ArtsBeat Blog followed up on the recent attacks on Shepard Fairey's Houston Wall mural, asking if this weekend's puncture should "be considered an attack... Is it mere hooliganism? Or is it, in the vein of Mr. Fairey’s friend Banksy, all an elaborate stunt?" Blogger Melena Ryzik spoke to Mr. Fairey, who has not seen the damage. He said he expected to see tags and stickers and such on the work, “Because I’m straddling the line between all these different worlds--the fine art world, the street art world, commercial design, fashion --I think I’m a target for a lot of narrow-minded people who just aren’t comfortable with my multi-platform approach." “If that’s how they express their view is by vandalizing my mural, that’s fair. I assume that they think that putting a bullet hole through it is a clever interactive addition, which I actually agree with .” Animal New York shows a later photo with more holes --mine (both above) wer...

Graceland shutters after 25 years on Avenue A. [ NYDN ] The Empire Diner launches its official Goodbye page . Ghost signs across the blogosphere. [ CR ] ...as this weekend an old Coca-Cola sign in Soho gets covered in a drug-hazed flip-flop: my flickr The B&H gets new, old-looking, not bad signage. [ EVG ] As the subway swells: "There was enormous growth at the Bowery station on the Lower East Side." [ NYT ] Prankster sticks a Target logo on Fairey's Houston mural. [ ANY ]

Fairey finishes the Houston Wall in quickie wheat-paste fashion [ Gothamist ]... ...while a sneak peek has been sitting on a Dumpster outside the Cooper Square Hotel. Is one more "street" than the other? A fruitstand comes down on Bleecker and reveals a wall of scrappy 1980s-era advertisements . [ GVDP ] Coney Island deteriorates under Thor's hammer. [ ATZ ] Someone hates New York . [ FP ] At Atlantic Yards, the last holdout goes . Would you turn down $3 million, knowing you'd be booted anyway? [ Gothamist ]

VANISHED I got a few emails this month from readers telling me about the closure of Tah-Poozie , the little toy and tchotchke shop on Greenwich Avenue, and asking if I knew anything about its possible future. Author and Vanity Fair editor David Kamp wrote in, describing Tah-Poozie as "that rare novelty shop that was a proper novelty shop, as opposed to a sex shop. Lots of miniature wind-up toys and fake vomit, no dildos ." While Les Desirs champion Stacy Torres recalls, "it's been around since I was in elementary school... Please let me know if you've heard anything. I'd love if it just moved again, but I doubt it ." Mike Rogers, New York Magazine Time Out Kids reported that the store closed on April 5 after 23 years in business . New York Magazine once told the tale of owner " Shmuzie Tah-poozie, a kibbutznik who picked oranges all day. Now the tables are turned and Shmuel Kerhaus has the rest of us picking things from his goodies store, Tah...

In a follow-up to my post Before the Village 7 , reader, long-time East Villager, and blogger Mark Kane sent in this photo from the late 1970s, showing the lost James Renwick building that was replaced by the Loews theater in 1989. 3rd Ave. between 11th and 12th, looking west "This picture was taken off my terrace, facing west," Mark writes. "The NYU Third Avenue North isn't anywhere near built yet. The building in question is visible on the corner. You can make out the windows and pilasters." close-up of Renwick building "You can see the steeples of Grace Church and St. Ann's ," he tells us. "The small Hopper-esque buildings on Third Avenue disappeared when the landlord pulled some of those 'decorative' columns from the storefronts, only to have the building facades collapse . Ooops!" Where those three-story brick buildings used to be, there's a parking lot now, and a big blank wall often used for ginormous billboards .

I like seeing old restaurant signs with the words "STEAKS" and "CHOPS" on them. You don't see these words together very often. They're on the Washington Square Diner sign . They were on the Skyline Diner sign , which has vanished along with the Skyline. And they were also on the sign for Pete's Place, which vanished from Gramercy's 3rd Avenue about two years ago . my flickr, 2008 Barry Popik's Big Apple tells us that, in the 1920s, Pete's was an ice-cream parlor called the Gramercy Sweet Shop , where you could get Chop Suey Sundaes, Pineapple Temptations, and Broadway Flips. Then it was Pete's, for I don't know how long. This month, after sitting empty for a couple of years, it has turned into Exchange, a Wall Street-themed bar , which seems like bad timing, if you ask me. Watch the CNN Money video Author, Gramercy resident, and JVNY reader Charles Bock writes in with the news, saying : "...what could be more fun than hanging ou...

The Times Square public lounge-o-rama sinks to a new low with giant plastic baseball mitt seats for tourists to rest their weary backsides: Meet Mr. Feibusch of the ZipperStop , “Unzipping America since 1941.” [ NYT ] Ray becomes finally legal! [ NMNL ] Meet the Newspaper King of Chelsea. [ WIC ] You gotta love lost telephone exchanges on city signage. [ FNY ] Tuesday: Check out the latest Vanishing City event. [ EVG ] New Yorkers with doormen potentially freak out about not having a doorman: "Who will safeguard my apartment as I sleep? Greet my children when they come home from school? Accept deliveries? Clean the hallways? Sort the mail? Operate the elevator? And who, for goodness sake, will let the cleaning lady in?" [ NYT ] Houston Wall gets primed for Shepard Fairey . [ BB ] Enjoy Richard Sandler's "Former New York" at the Millennium Film Workshop . [ Gothamist ] Even today, now and then, " indie bookstores truly are the ones that can be movers ...

This week, I reported on AOL News' Bill Morris' account of the removal of the Lora Deli graffiti mural , a decade-old piece on Avenue D. Now Mr. Morris sends in the following photo of the gray-washed wall: Graffiti photographer Karla Murray, says Morris, was prophetic when she predicted about the buffed wall's future: " it'll probably get covered over with tags --the kind of graffiti nobody wants." Morris told me, " Less than 48 hours after she said that, a crew of no-talent taggers bombed the Lora Deli wall. Thank you, Mayor Bloomberg, for working so hard to improve the quality of life for all New Yorkers."

"'The city looks great at this moment of history because of the tsunami of money that washed over it for a couple of decades. But this is the turning point. From here forward fewer things will get fixed every month. After a while it will show. We'll get back to conditions like the 1970s rather quickly..." -- Kunstler Are annoyed neighbors throwing Shamwows at noisy Bar 81 loudmouths? [ EVG ] Evicted by Thor, a Coney ride finds a new home in Honduras. [ ATZ ] The misleading and vanity addresses of Manhattan. [ IL ] As artists and hot dogs are kicked out of public parks and off public sidewalks, the dreaded cupcake is welcomed with open arms. [ GG ] Getting ready for demolition in Chinatown ... [ BB ] and the damage done. [ TLD ] "When did libraries become a cacophonous combination of cafe, video store, music store, computer lab and playground?" [ NYT ] As the Internet "grows up," is it the death of anonymous commenting? [ NYT ] An interview wi...

VANISHED Alphabet City has lost a long-standing piece of graffiti , what AOL News' Bill Morris calls "an exuberant 60-foot-long, 10-foot-tall mural celebrating street life, female beauty, tropical sunsets, the Puerto Rican flag and Al Sharpton." It was on the corner of Avenue D and Fifth Street, on the side of the Lora Deli & Supermarket, and it had been there for a decade. from Addisko's flickr "Depending on your point of view," writes Morris, "New York City's 'quality of life' had just improved a notch, or the city had become a little bit more faceless and bland ." Photographers Jim and Karla Murray , authors of Broken Windows: Graffiti NYC , agree with the latter sentiment. Said Karla, "That wall (on the Lora Deli) beautified the neighborhood. It's free art in a neighborhood where a lot of people can't afford to go to a museum. You're taking away the flavor of the neighborhood and putting up a gray wall. And it...

In August 2008, I took a tour of the shuttered Schwartz funeral home on Second Avenue, thanks to the founder's great-grandson, Andy. I wrote about the funeral home's long and interesting history ( Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were memorialized here) and reported that a Duane Reade was planning a move into the space. Then the economy crashed, things changed. The space stayed empty. This week, a sign appeared on the facade : "Extraordinary retail space for lease." Extraordinary is right. Too extraordinary to be a Duane Reade. How about a theater? Or a permanent house of worship for Reverend Billy? Or...? P.S. A couple other changes on the block have happened since that last post. Max Brenner is now an HSBC bank and Tasti-D-Lite is an eyeglass store.

VANISHED After 17 years in business on East 9th Street, Atomic Passion has closed . Calling it "The End of the Atomic Age," Dirt Candy shares the sad news, saying, "This is the kind of store that makes a neighborhood in New York." Agreed. It was one of the last of the old-school vintage shops in the East Village , along with the vanished Love Saves the Day and Howdy Do . After the co-owner Justin Vogel told the Post in January that his shop might be closing, I stopped in. I snapped a few pictures, bought a couple dirty magazines, and said goodbye to the taxidermied squirrel. At the time, Vogel seemed resigned to Atomic Passion's fate. He expressed mixed feelings, including a sense of relief. It's tough to run a small business in the East Village, especially one that hearkens back to the way the neighborhood used to be. Here's what the Times said upon their opening. Stepping into Atomic Passion was like walking backwards in time, back to the early 19...

Arthur Ave . parking lot attendant turns 100. [ CR ] Say hello to Pablo of the Stanton Tailor Shop. [ BB ] Stumbling upon Spanoramic Recordings ("Solo Para Adultos"). [ WIC ] Alec Baldwin. Colson Whitehead. A city lost and found. [ NYNS ] Billy's Antiques still waiting for their hello from McNally--says the pizza at Parisi is better. Maybe the Pulino's bodyguard can chaperone him across that "sketchy corner." [ Villager ] She's back. With her glitter Blackberry, car keys, and lip gloss, the horrible "Generation O" girl has returned to the streets. She's a trender and a spender. And she "indexes high for word of mouth." Canceling a food order in the EV might get you arrested. [ EVG ] Where are the bones from under Trump Soho? [ Curbed ] South Brooklyn Pizza almost ready to open in the EV. [ Eater ] What will become of the Ridgewood Theater ? [ Gothamist ]

A mysterious set of enormous fingernails has appeared on the bricks above Seventh Avenue at 11th Street. There's no text accompanying the black-and-white image. Is it an advertisement? Is it art? It hovers right above Fantasy World , the sex-toy shopping center. Are the two related? There is such a thing as a fingernail fetish ( NSFW ). Maybe this is an homage to all the folks who have a thing for giant claws .

On Charles Street near 7th Avenue, through a locked and rusty wrought-iron gate marked 58A... ...there's a long and narrow passageway between two buildings... ...that leads to a secret yellow house with red trim. A wreath decorates on the door. A curtain hangs parted at the window. Who lives there?

According to a commenter here , in Harlem the beloved M&G Diner is being plucked by souvenir-hunting buzzards --or maybe just heartbroken lovers of the M&G. Dave Cook of Eating in Translation tells us, "Not only has the colorful 'diner' sign been loosened, but the lettered curtain of the awning has been removed, along with most of the awning itself." from Eating in Translation The M&G closed "for vacation" back in 2008 and never reopened. 2008, my flickr

Please, please, please don't let those Waverly/Beatrice types take over the wonderful Fedora restaurant. [ Eater ] Miracle: A used bookstore is coming to Avenue A. [ EVG ] If everyone obeyed the (unwritten until now) sidewalk rule of "Stay to the right," the city would be a better place. [ BB ] Steve Stollman's automats , moved from Houston St. , are being pushed out of Harlem. [ NYT ] When German McDonald's makes cupcakes about New York neighborhoods. [ Eater ] Jane Jacobs on the bad gentrification: "when a place gets boring, even the rich people leave." [ Atlantic ] Going to Puglia Ristorante. [ LC ] If Tina Fey had a penis , she'd stick in one of Greenpoint's Peter Pan donuts. [ GPs ] via [ Eater ]

Back in January, The American Prospect was all about The Post-Boom City . I just got around to it. In her essay " Gentrification Hangover ," writer Alyssa Katz discusses "how New York could create affordable housing from its empty glass condo buildings and failed takeover projects." Some excerpts: "Commuters arriving in Brooklyn via the Manhattan Bridge are greeted with a shiny vision of New York City's future that never came to be: condo buildings with names like the Oro, the Toren, and Forté, towering monuments to real-estate developers' credit-bubble hubris ..." "On the opposite sidewalk of Flatbush Avenue one drizzly fall evening, more than a hundred demonstrators, members of the Right to the City Coalition, drew attention to another possibility: A city starved for affordable housing could find it in the glassy confines of failed luxury dreams ..." "New York City made the Scarface mistake: It got high on its own supply ." ...

From my meager collection of scanned old photographs, I found this shot of the corner at Bleecker and Christopher . I liked the little grocery store for its vintage signage and the words "FANCY FRUITS." It is possible that DAIRY means not that the store sold milk, but that it once served kosher, maybe the remnant of an old dairy lunch counter. circa 1995 This building, Forgotten New York tells us, is one of the oldest in the Village, "constructed during the Jefferson administration" and photographed in 1935 by Berenice Abbott. 1935, Berenice Abbott Today, like a lot of things on Bleecker, the storefront houses a boutique. LTJ Arthur is a French luxury brand. Says Racked , the shop carries something called " charentaise lounge slippers." A different sort of fancy fruit. 2009 See Also: Times Square 90s

Happy Easter weekend from the house the Weathermen blew up . Except now, instead of radical bomb-makers, it's filled with stuffed plush bunnies, flowers, plastic eggs, and a Paddington Bear doll that gets a costume change according to the seasons and holidays.

An interview with the author of East Fifth Bliss . [ EVG ] Queer theater in New York, with Robin Bernstein. [ P&W ] Orchard's "tower of rust" condo to get a gallery. [ BB ] In-&-Out Burger hoax "occupies" long-empty and sad Gordon Novelty shop. [ Eater ] And be sure to wipe off that subway seat before you sit down...some hipster genitals might've been rubbing on it. [ Gothamist ]

The graffiti wall on Houston is scheduled to undergo another change, from the Os Gemeos mural to something from Shepard Fairey . (He's also looking for more wall space .) While we're enjoying these murals, it's important to keep in mind their hidden subtext--how they are, in fact, a cog in the wheel of the Big Machine that is turning the Bowery into a luxury lifestyle destination. 2008, from Super Touch Long an open canvas for graffiti artists, the celebratedly sanctioned muraling of the Wall began in 2008 when Deitch Projects recreated Keith Haring's work from the 1980s, one that Jeffrey Deitch called, " a fabulously renegade piece of New York City public street art ." As Deitch told the New York Sun , "At the time, the corner of Houston and Bowery was the center of the downtown art world, because the galleries were in SoHo and the artists were in the East Village. 1982 was the peak of this downtown art world culture, and it's also when it started...