Vanishing New York Backup

A grisly corpse in the East Village ...blood on the concrete at St. Mark's Church...a natural death or foul play by feline? Go see Lost Bohemia , the story of Carnegie Hall's studio tenants and their failed fight to stay at home--next week at the New York Documentary Film Fest . What to tip a cabbie when you puke in his car. [ Gawker ] Into the former Old Homestead Inn space comes the Coal Yard --another good bar from the fine folks who brought back The International , dedicated to preserving local life. [ EVG ] Hexing redevelopment at SPURA Site 4. [ BB ] Meet the Gowanus Dredgers Canoe Club. [ 13 ] How a NYC education can cost you over a million dollars--if you're one of those lunatic parents who believes the right pre-school is the golden road to Harvard. [ HP ] The city's candy stores. [ NYT ] Bedbugs at the UN--poor people setting fire to their mattresses. [ NYP ]

If you're shopping for last-minute Halloween stuff and missing Love Saves the Day since it departed the East Village back in January 2009, you have another chance to enjoy the ambiance of Pez dispensers, vintage collectibles, fright wigs, and rubber hands from the crypt. But you'll have to go out of town for it. Love is still saving the day in New Hope, Pennsylvania--and they still don't like strollers, cell phones, cameras, or unattended children. As far as I know, Madonna never shopped here, at least not on film as she did in New York , but the locals love it, especially at Halloween. And it has its own building, so nobody's going to give it the boot or price it out of business. Original LSD owner Leslie Herson moved out to the country part time nearly 30 years ago. Said Leslie upon the near-closing of the New York store in 2005, "It’s a shame. New York is losing its individuality because little stores like mine can’t compete." Now that individuality, lost ...

Fedora fans, shield your eyes . A tipster sends in this shot of the old place gutted to the studs, being prepared for her next incarnation : Good news from commenter Jordon on the rising of Village Paper : "This is very exciting! I stopped by last night and Sonny confirmed for me that this location will indeed be permanent! At the end of the Halloween season, they will be stocking all the paper products and assorted knick knacks that they have been known for. Huzzah!" Inside Otto's Shrunken Head after the fire. [ EVG ] Was this week's shooting on Stanton Street a turf war? [ BB ] Great film takes you inside the mysterious and amazing Uranian Phalanstery --go while you still can. [ TG ] Balloon shapes for adults only. [ SG ] Irony: Whole Foods is hosting an exhibit on the history of the Bowery --which it helped to push forever into the past. [ LESHP ] Take a walk from Astoria to Grand Central. [ FNY ] Bedbugs add to stress of moving. [ WSJ ]

The people who brought you the smell of urban renewal , continue the trend with the odor of "Nouveau Bowery." Smells like: " The sweet scent of skid row transitioning to ultra-modernity ." That is really, truly the actual ad copy. [ BB ] Tonight only: "Songs from Bedbugs!" a science fiction, thriller, comedy rock-musical, at the Beechman Theater. Sample lyrics: "We'll bite your neck and bite your fanny, hide in every nook and cranny." [ WSJ ] & [ McS ] Check out New York City Grid , a photo log of the city block by block. [ HuffPo ] Tonight at Niagara, the Club 57 Art Show. [ Stupefaction ] DOT gives bicyclists a lesson in how to use bike lanes. [ EVG ]

Enjoy 1966's Unexpurgated New York , the guide to "How to identify a plain-clothes cop. Where to 'peep' and where to go if you want to be 'peeped' at. Which public phones are tapped. Where to buy an eye-patch after midnight." If memory serves, you can find it at the Jefferson Market Library. [ VS ] A plain little building turns "Faux-Arts" with Ralph Lauren. [ SC ] Happy 55th to the Village Voice . [ RS ] NYPD steps up protection of EV awash in "wildings." [ EVG ] "Clean" graffiti goes virtual with an app. [ BB ] Rezoning Harlem screens tonight at Maysles Cinema. [ RH ] David Freeland and others talk about leisure in NYC tonight. [ CUNY ] Popular restaurateurs banding together to take down community board "kangaroo courts" standing in the way of their liquor licenses. [ Eater ]

The former Ruben's Empanadas in the East Village (formerly Caprice Curls beauty salon), as we know, shuttered suddenly last month and will soon be taken over by its new neighbor South Brooklyn Pizza (formerly Cosmos Parcels, almost Rokara Cafe ). ...today and yesterday... detail from a photo by Jim & Karla Murray Until the pizza place expands, the walls have been painted white and covered with art. It's a temporary gallery curated, I presume, by the pizza guys. But if you want to get in, you have to be hanging around in the "woo" hours of the night, between 10:00 p.m. and 1:00 a.m.

Patti Smith's Just Kids nominated for National Book Award. [ NBA ] Is Queens the new Brooklyn ? [ AMNY ] Freddy's comes back from the dead. [ HPS ] Go behind the counter with Di Fara's pizza man. [ Grub ] A history of the hipster : "rather than an indie or bohemian subculture, it felt like an ethnicity—with its clannishness, its claiming of microneighborhoods from other, older migrants (Chinese, Puerto Ricans, Orthodox Jews), and its total uninterest in integrating into the local populations." [ NYM ] "In the douchebag, the hipster had found its Other." [ N+1 ] An image of crumbling bungalow beauty from Staten Island: H.L.I.T.'s flickr When Ashley and friends tag walls. [ EVG ] "Flamboyant spectacle " rolls down Broome St. [ BB ] As the hyper-gentrification of Clinton spreads, Lucky closes. [ TLD ] Of the mysterious woman behind " Dress Suits for Hire ." [ HNY ] "New York City, the international capital of bedbugs ....

As a rash of anti-gay violence sends panic and rage through the city, is it time for The Pink Panther Patrol to take back the streets? I got in touch with Chris Kreussling, one of the founders of the East Village unit of the Pink Panther Patrol. He recalled the city in the early 1990s as filled with LGBT activist groups, including Queer Nation and the Lesbian Avengers. photo: Marc Geller In 1990, anti-gay violence was skyrocketing in the city. In April of that year, says Wikipedia , "responding to the 120% increase in violence against queers , Queer Nation climbs to the roof of Badlands, a Greenwich Village bar, and hangs a 40-foot banner that reads: Dykes and Fags Bash Back!" By August 1990, the Pink Panthers were patrolling the Village between midnight and 3 A.M. on Fridays and Saturdays. They wore black t-shirts printed with paws on pink triangles. The t-shirts said "BASH BACK!" Pink Panther, 1991, New York Magazine Why the upswing in anti-queer violen...

Happy in NYC? "White Manhattanites who make more than $75,000 are the most satisfied. " [ NYDN ] New York portrayed as evil by politicians' ads: "In one spot, the Statue of Liberty is enveloped by threatening shadows. In others, photos of a Wall Street street sign segue into scenes of corporate types swilling cocktails or puffing cigars, and smug-looking bankers roaming the streets of Manhattan." [ NYT ] Mugging- stabbing for iPod on 9th and Ave A. [ EVG ] Do not leave your belongings unattended at Whole Foods . [ BB ] The complete Metropolis at the Ziegfeld. [ NYT ] Budding New York fashionistas : See the tiny monsters our culture turns children into these days. [ Gothamist ] Bob Guccione 's New York. [ CR ] Writers engage in a dive bar brawl . [ Grub ]

It's almost Halloween--to celebrate, the Village Paper party store rises from the dead, from the ashes of the fire that consumed it back in February. Thanks to reader Grand St.'s tip, I checked out the boarded up store on 10th and Greenwich and found a sign stating "The Halloween Party Store" has moved to 8th Street between 5th Avenue and University Place. Indeed, in the former Metro Drugs location, owner Mr. Wong brings a new Halloween shop packed with masks, wigs, rubber body parts, plastic fangs, the works. Even their signature autopsy corpse made the move! Known to stand in the window every October, the corpse comes complete with its usual twisting serpents and autumn-leaf loincloth--but where's the Zagat Guide that always spilled from its guts ? I don't know if this is a permanent location or a temporary shop for the season, but if you were a fan of Village Paper, go in, say hello, and buy something for tricks and treats.

In my travels through the New York Public Library's digital archives, I came upon this shot of 14th Street and Avenue B, the southeast corner: And here it is today, courtesy of Google streetview, with much less sky and more crowded street. That's the Copper Building rising to the right, claiming this block for the up-and-coming. It's rare that one-story structures survive in this town. How much longer does such a prime corner have?

In this week's New Yorker magazine, funny guy Joe Dator has a cartoon about New York, King Kong, and cupcake shops. He sent it to me, I loved it, and asked him some questions about it. (Also, as a frequent rejectee of the esteemed magazine, I am inwardly thrilled to have helped inspire a New Yorker cartoon.) click here to buy it at the New Yorker cartoon bank What inspired you to do this cartoon? Well, aside from being desperate for ideas that day, I can thank JVNY for getting me thinking about the rapid outbreak of cupcake shops in this city. I'd been reading your posts about the cupcake blitzkreig for some time and it seemed like a good starting point for a cartoon. I'm also a huge fan of the original 1933 King Kong, and somehow the two things collided in my head and it made sense. That last bit is the hard part. I'm always looking for ideas that are New York specific. I live here, and as a native son I feel it's my province to do cartoons that are really about...

The Chelsea Hotel is for sale --and doomed for "boutique" death. [ Curbed ] Samsung targets EV on football Sundays --because the neighborhood is now full of football fans. [ BB ] As people leave the city, "NYC has no time for whiny sob stories ." [ FP ] Get ready for a future city full of robots more glued to screens than ever before. [ Gothamist ] Noisy restaurants make your food taste worse. [ Grub ] The vintage signage of Greenport, LI. [ LC ]

Yankees super fan Freddy Sez has passed away. [ Gothamist ] Change in Brooklyn on Brian Lehrer. [ BHS ] The amazing story of Fulton Fish Market Annie . [ NYT ] A day of pickles on the LES. [ BB ] Brooklynites are weather whiners , says Kansan. [ PMFA ] On the LES, life imitates American Apparel : my flickr Walking Queens' Main Street . [ FNY ] Is the Times ' Book Review "contributing to the unfortunate tradition of sexualizing female writers or at least obscuring their work with image"? [ RS ] More bicycle backlash . [ NYO ] At this weekend's memorial for Michael Shenker . [ EVG ] New Yorkers on the street say what they think about $500 socks full of holes . [ Racked ]

Bike lane protest tonight. [ EVG ] Pee-Wee Herman visits Katz's Deli--likes the Cat Sitter's glasses. [ CSIC ] Rare: Big green mohawk spotted on Avenue A. [ EVC ] Perusing rare books about New York. [ NYT ] VNY Flickr Pool: Galvarez51 Coney's Eldorado bumper car owner dies. [ ATZ ] Two Toms , Gowanus treasure reviewed. [ Eater ] Bloomberg wants Wal-Marts for the city. [ Gothamist ] A subterranean pool hall shutters. [ HPS ]

The good folks at Anthology Film Archives just turned us on to a silent black-and-white, 16mm chunk of footage of "New York City--Downtown." It has been identified as the work of Lowell Bodger. We see an empty urban landscape with only a few people walking. Few cars pass. The streets are cobblestoned--even Broadway at Astor , a desolate row of Automat, parking garage, upholstering and stationery shops. (Those buildings are gone and it's now Game Stop, AT&T, The Body Shop, Benetton.) There's Grace Church in the background as we look uptown. film still Nothing is hustling. Take a right on Astor. Following a white-finned car going east, past Cooper Union, you catch a ghostly glimpse of the neon sign for the St. Mark's Baths up ahead. But first let's stop for a slow pan of Astor Place and its Luncheonette . The square is quiet, empty. People walk very, very slowly. There are no skateboarders. There is no Cube. It looks like a forgotten part of town. film sti...

McNally gives up his fight to put a Pulino's in the former Village Paper spot . Would it be too crazy to pray for a bookstore? [ Grub ] Remembering Variety Photoplays : "you could get a handjob/blowjob, with no need of knowing who was giving it to you." [ LL ] From 1986, THEM returns to PS122 --Dennis Cooper reads to "cacophonous electric guitar live; frequently violent and exhausting dance sequences" culminating "in a horrific duet between Houston-Jones and an animal carcass on a dusty mattress." Bad old days are back? The Guardian Angels are papering the city with recruitment flyers: A newbie says Goodbye New York after two years. City Room commenters are unsympathetic. [ CR ] And another one bites the dust--bidding bye-bye to Brooklyn . [ LM ] East Village Colossus. [ EVG ] In the market for a coffin ? [ NYS ] ArchiTakes finds more to hate about historic rowhouse renovation that puts celebrities first. [ AT ]

One of the last vestiges of the real, old New York remaining in Times Square is Jimmy's Corner. Don't worry, it's not vanishing, as far as I know. A snug dive on 44th, dedicated to the sweet science of boxing, it's "exactly the kind of place where a stranger might walk up to you and ask you to step outside--the kind of place where almost anything could happen," writes Brendan Patrick Hughes in Mr. Beller's Neighborhood . When you step inside, the misery of tourist-clogged New Times Square, with its bland gruel of flashing TV screens and family-friendly fare, all falls away. It just disappears. The door closes behind you and everything else ceases to exist. You are suddenly in New York again. The regulars are talking and it's a pleasure just to sit and listen: "When my wife had another girl, I resented it at first. I wanted a boy! Then I saw she had 10 fingers and 10 toes, and I just thanked God for another healthy baby. Did you know, my aunt told ...

A look at good, old 4th and 10th . [ FNY ] Hail floods the toilets of Brooklyn. [ Gothamist ] No Lady Gaga at the Parkside--she does have a tendency to stick in the brain. [ BB ] Remembering the Cedar Tavern . [ FP ] The New York Burger Co . is bringing their "flagship" to 10th Avenue and 23rd. Someone doesn't like the lettuce: Intellectualizing hipsterism . [ RS ] Investigating the mystery of the EV's cemetery explosives . [ NYT ] Nick Denton's Gawker empire. [ NYer ] Keeping tabs on the M15 bus. [ EVG ] Glimpsing seamstresses in second-story windows. [ SS ] A lonely tenement survivor in a high-rising sea. [ NYT ] Video : Nightmare in the City That Never Sleeps. [ COS ]

After 150 years of unremitting squalor with bursts of wild creativity, and about 5 minutes of unrestrained excess and glamor, the Bowery "style" is now priced to sell and spreading out across the country. Here's how it happened. In November 2007, Hamptons boutique Blue & Cream moved to the Bowery and soon debuted the Bowery Hoodie for $140 : In April 2008, John Varvatos moved into the former CBGB . He sells the Bowery Boot for $698 , Bowery Sunglasses for $375, and Bowery Fit jeans for $198. In February 2010, J. Crew unveiled the Bowery Pant for a relative pittance at $98 : photo: EV Grieve In July 2010, Rag & Bone moved to Houston--it's not even on Bowery, just slightly off--but they still manage to sell the Bowery cargo pant for $240 : So far, Bowery-branded clothing has been putting up the big numbers, hauling in some major cash. But now, in a grand example of trickle-down fashion trends, Old Navy (also not on Bowery) has started selling the Bowery Bomber...

In 1995 the Whitney Museum held a retrospective on the work of Edward Hopper. I must have attended the exhibit a dozen times. One of my favorite paintings of Hopper's, Early Sunday Morning , can still be seen at the Whitney, and it was there then, too. I remember standing at this painting with a docent who described the shadowy block in the upper-right corner, how it symbolized a high-rise encroaching on these little brick buildings . It meant a dark future was coming and the world of these sun-drenched bricks would vanish. Sometimes, I find myself unconsciously repeating Hopper's composition in snapshots--the pairing of low-rise brick buildings, sunny and warm, blushing in the light, with a cold monolith encroaching, upper right. This isn't hard to do. The image is everywhere. my flickr Have you seen it? If you have, ad d it to the Vanishing New York Flickr Pool . Tag it "Early Sunday Morning."

The chef at the New Fedora comes from Montreal . [ DJ ] via [ Grub ] "Most New Yorkers, myself included, love pretending we live in a very big small town ...We love our delusion of quaintness." [ NYT ] Orange rinds in the window of a Chinese laundry in the Village: Remembering EV community activist Michael Shenker. [ EVG ] 16 iconic NYC dishes from Lost City Brooks. [ Eater ] Pee-Wee Herman takes Manhattan. [ Gothamist ] NYC personal income drops first time in 40 years. [ CR ] The perils of SUV umbrellas . [ Restless ]

Is Jones Street the perfect, "undiscovered" New York street? A kind of un-Bergen , it is mostly residential, a surprisingly quiet oasis between the cacophony of tourists and conspicuous consumers that flood Bleecker and West 4th, the two streets that bookend little Jones. Only a block long, it nonetheless manages to sustain not one, but two record shops -- Record Runner and Strider Records --both since 1979 and not vanishing yet. Caffe Vivaldi is here, a nicely rundown-looking, old-school restaurant serving mostly Italian food and jazz, dating back to the 1980s and boasting patrons like Woody Allen, Al Pacino, and Joseph Brodsky . And finally there's the Florence Prime Meat Market , a beautiful old butcher shop with sawdust on the floor and a cat licking its paws beneath the cutting table. What could be more perfect that that? Plus, as blogger Teri Tynes pointed out, the street also features on the cover of Bob Dylan's Freewheelin' of 1963.

New York foodies' pork fetish goes too far: "you will be bodily immersed in gallons of porcine fat ." [ Eater ] Birdbath , the expanding bakery chain, is coming to the East Village's NYU dorm on 3rd and 9th--down the strip mall from where Ben & Jerry's just closed : Countdown to another Citibank branch. [ EVG ] Looking at Drooker's Ginsberg. [ P&W ] A shot of St. Mark's in 1967. [ FP ] Cyclone roller coaster for rent. [ Curbed ] Bay Ridge reminiscences. [ FNY ] Avenue A Lounge. [ NSC ] The story behind Park Slope's drippy building. [ HPS ]

In Brooklyn there's a block of Bergen Street, between 5th and 6th Avenues, that wasn't there a year or so ago. The block itself was there, the street, the sidewalk. People lived on it. But today, almost overnight, it has become a tightly constructed microcosm of hyper-gentrification . Urban scholars should study this block. It's a New Urbanist dream come true. It went up as quickly and completely as a Hollywood set and exemplifies everything that "White People Like." Which, as we know, is less about whiteness and more about " Bobos in Paradise ." In fact, the entire 21st-century, urban, upwardly mobile, heterosexual reproductive cycle can be completed utilizing only the new businesses on this block. Imagine a couple, let's call them Ben and Lauren. They are 35 years old, both of them "creatives" at a multimedia design "lab." They go on their first date at Melt, which they love for its " pure, honest and sustainable ...