Vanishing New York Backup

More unlocked : "at Equinox, a 42-year-old man put his belongings in a locker without a lock before hitting the showers...when the victim returned he noticed his pants were off the hook and his $600 Louis Vuitton wallet was gone, along with two $600 BlackBerrys." [ BHB ] US Marshals seize H&H Bagels . [ WSR ] Is tonight the last call for Mars Bar ? [ EVG ] On the Bowery: "who would have imagined a fashion boutique on this strip of derelict buildings and insistent windshield washers?" But another new boutique is here--and the owner thinks CBGB still exists . [ WSJ ] Victoria's Secret invades a billiards hall in Yorkville. [ LC ] Documentary about George Plimpton getting kickstarted. [ LM ] Enjoy the trashy shores of Dead Horse Bay where a century of garbage "tinkles like ice cubes in a high ball glass." When will the hipsters artisanalize that? [ FVP ] St. Mark's Bookstore owner is "hoping that landlord Cooper Union will meet...

On 12th Street outside Strand Books, the asphalt is littered with small, white squares of paper. Is it trash or an important yet cryptic message from one of the city's forgotten souls? (Unless it's a viral marketing campaign hyping a new spy movie.) Entitled C.I.A. FRAME? the double-sided note, scanned below, is desperate, from someone "completely isolated" and "forced" to use the leaflet method "in order to reach as many persons as is possible with just one action." (They are also apparently without Internet access, or else they'd be blogging it). They say they are the " target of a very powerful cult, perhaps not a cult at all ." There is harassment, violence, and the use of powerful tracking chemicals. All of this is happening on East 4th Street, near Avenue C. "This residential street," says the isolated leafletter, "can be very active or very quiet, at the wishes of this group." The entire street may be contro...

You may remember miniaturist Randy Hage from an interview I did with him a year ago. Now he sends in his latest work--a Lilliputian version of the beloved Ideal Hosiery shop of Grand Street. Randy Hage's flickr Can you tell the real Ideal from the miniature? Visit Randy's flickr page for the answer and to see more incredible details of this artwork. Randy Hage's flickr To see how he does what he does, watch Randy's step-by-step video: Related Reading: Model New York Little Gritty City Mini Canal Visiting the Panorama

Today is the last day of business for David's Laundry, shuttering after 41 years in Park Slope thanks to a landlord who is forcing them out. [ HPS ] Contrary to previous reports, today is the last day of H&H bagels . The counter lady told me last night. You have all day today and this evening to get your last bagels from 80th and Broadway before it becomes a bank. And here is my last: "What many natives of the West 70s and 80s have long prophesied has come to pass: The neighborhood is finished ." [ NYT ] Details on last night's rally to save H&H . [ WSR ] I fucking love Fran Lebowitz : "What kind of moron would put their bag on the floor of a cab? Anyone who does that deserves to lose it. That’s what I mean — that’s a tourist. What New Yorker would let their bag out of their clutches? I have all the habits of someone who lived here in the ’70s, you know? Which is that, if I have a pencil, I have a death grip on it. I see the people on the subway, t...

Some sad news to report from the folks at Coney Island USA -- Hijinx the sideshow cat has passed away . She was 17 years old. From Coney Island USA's Facebook page I first learned about Hijinx and her infamous exploits from writer Romy Ashby, who published a story about the cat in her Goodie magazine ( buy it here ). Romy told me she was interested in Hijinx as an interview subject because of "her involvement with a gang of cats who were implicated in the murder of a New York Aquarium penguin . But, like anyone with a dicey background, she wasn’t talking, so we interviewed the sideshow people. When you visit Hijinx and she comes out of her hiding place, it’s like being greeted by Gloria Swanson . She’s so regal." Get Goodie #20 starring Hijinx

If the rumors are true, this week is your last chance to drink at Mars Bar : Another blogger party rages at the Chillmaster's . [ MAD ] Two West Chelsea deli owners fight over "High Line" name , including the former Poppy's . Of course, eventually, the High Line will put them both out of business. [ DNA ] Developers want to tear down Elaine's . [ NYO ] H&H Bagels might still be open --and tonight there's a meeting to protest its closure. [ Grub ] Behold the Ekonomakis dream mansion tenement that was once filled with long-time tenants. [ EVG ] The Ivy Brown gallery (that great place in the Triangle Building) has a new show up. Check it out. [ IBG ] Who goes to Liebman's Kosher Deli ? [ LC ] Woman with a loud cellphone screams and yells on a bus--caught on cam. [ Gothamist ] "In millennial New York, the predicament of LGBT youth is compounded by the twin pressures of rampant gentrification and the ongoing privatization of public space." ...

This weekend, on the night when gay marriage was passed in New York State, the Eagle bar was raided by the NYPD . Was it homophobia or something else? Inside the Eagle The city's classic gay leather bar, the Eagle moved to desolate West 28th Street in 2001, after the original Eagle closed further downtown, where it had survived since 1970 in a former longshoreman's pub until the neighborhood went upscale. As the Times reported on this weekend's raid, the police turned on the lights, shined flashlights in patrons' faces, and forced people to empty their pockets. Patrons report being harassed and intimidated. An NYPD spokesperson said the raid had nothing to do with the bar's clientele, "it has to do with complaints." Said the Times , establishments targeted for this type of inspection are "selected because they are the subjects of 'chronic complaints' from community members" for problems like excessive noise. How many noise complaints ...

Enjoy this lovely painting of the Gordon Novelty Shop --from much better days. [ Adolf ] Jogging through Central Park while carrying your $500 iPad --not a good idea. [ Gothamist ] What's up with the East Village door-shitter ? [ EVG ] Trouble on the sidewalk outside Ray's Candy. [ NMNL ] From the closing of H&H Bagels : "Barely stifled wails arose from some West Siders, who reacted as if the news marked the end of civilization as we know it." [ CR ] One UWS'er protests the closure of H&H Bagels: " We don't want another bank or cell phone outlet here ... This is a larger issue. We want big stores out of our neighborhood. ... We’re drawing a line in the sand over H&H. We don’t want banks. We don’t want Wal-Mart. We want neighborhood stores." [ Gothamist ] The Smolen Bar & Grill of Brooklyn is gone. [ OMFS ] New art on the Houston Wall --a Native American theme. [ BB ] Good old (107 years) Carmine's of the Seaport to become pa...

In my visit to the Wu Tang studio at 7 1/2 Second Avenue, I mentioned seeing a windowsill marked with ancient graffiti carved in another time. I include the photos here. One says only "S. ROSEN," the name underlined for emphasis. The other says "HOUSTON ST GANG" and is accompanied by a Christian cross and what looks like the ruined outline of a Star of David. The building, named on its cornice "Germania Flats," was built sometime in the mid to late 1800s. It was part of the sprawling complex known as Germania Assembly Rooms , a place for dancing, singing, and meeting, later a site of great vaudevillian debauchery. New York Times, 1890 In the early 1900s, the building complex was taken over by the Church of All Nations, which catered to Jews and Christians together. We might assume, based on the inter-faith images in the graffiti, that the carvings do not date all the way back to the Germania Hall days, but come from the era of the Church of All Nations...

How long will the tourist machine tolerate this industrial view from the High Line's new "viewing spur" before the Firestone Bear Auto Center is suddenly put out of business? Not that anyone's actually paying attention to the view, since they're all fiddling with their digital life-support systems: What is the narrowest house in New York City? [ OTG ] Enjoy those Coney Island mermaids while they're still legal. [ TGL ] Sam's in Carroll Gardens "is 81-years-old. Do you go off on your 81-year-old grandfather? No. And that’s because your grandfather is who he is. Call him set in his ways. Call him a tough nut to crack. The point is, he’s not changing. And he shouldn’t have to." [ CGP ] W. 3rd gets a frat-themed burger joint. [ EVG ] What color is the New York City sky right now? [ Gothamist ] LES BID pushes hard to remake the neighborhood : "We are also heavily involved in long- term planning for the neighborhood, advocating for new...

Yesterday we visited 9 Second Avenue , also known as 7 1/2 Second Avenue, one of the buildings that will fall this summer beside Mars Bar. Today, go back inside with resident Andrea Legge's blog " 7-and-a-half 2nd Ave: a pre-demolition memorial ." all photos by Andrea Legge Andrea calls the blog "a kind of memorial to the building I live in, have lived in for the past 20+ years. It's not gone yet, but the plan is for it to be torn down this summer." She tells the story of life inside the "Flats" side of Germania Flats, before and after May 17, when she and her neighbors received their 60-day notices to move out. She recalls, "Shortly after I came into the building in 1991 I moved from a small apartment on the 3rd floor to the top floor in the back, converting a space that was 2 half-railroad apartments destroyed; a windowless, windswept unlivable garret, into a home." It wasn't always an easy place to live. When Avalon demolish...

Breaking news: UWS institution H&H Bagels is shuttering tomorrow --forever. [ WSJ ] via [ Gothamist ] Since the East Village Miracle Grill shuttered in 2005, a condo has gone into their old garden and the space on 1st Ave has sat empty. Now a new tenant is coming in. It's a Ricky's : Where to party in the East Village --in 1985. [ ENY ] A guide to this summer's biggest, most heinous, neighborhood-changing developments in the East Village. [ EVG ] A day at Mars Bar's last art show . [ MAD ] Checking in on Pip, the young red-tailed hawk of Washington Square. [ WSPB ] A "vanilla box" is unveiled on the Bowery as another light goes out in the lighting district. [ BB ]

There's no buzzer. You get in old-school style. A key is dropped from a window, strapped to a Nerf football. Inside the door, a sign warns: "Unauthorized visitors will be beaten to a bloody pulp!!!" Welcome to 7 1/2 Second Avenue, also known as 9 Second Avenue , also known as the other half of Germania Flats, one of the 19th-century buildings that will come down alongside Mars Bar this summer. I have come here to visit with Frank Allen and Tina Zhang, residents of 7 1/2 and instructors at the Wu Tang Physical Culture Association , a martial arts studio on the third floor for the past 32 years. Their studio is a museum filled with artifacts, the school's books and videos , the walls covered with fight photos, statues, medals won in competition. History breathes here. In the window sill are carvings made by long-gone Bowery boys of the old Germania days. "Rosen" and the "Houston Street Gang." But, as Frank says to me, "Nobody cares about history...

The celebrated, brand-new Lawn of the High Line is already closed for restoration . Must be due to all the humping : How middle-class moms drove the drugs out of Washington Square Park : "By the end of 1987, the crack dealers had been driven from the park. The neighborhood got so nice that eventually we were driven out, too." [ NYT ] The final art show at Mars Bar before the condo comes. [ EVG ] EV bloggers marvel at a swizzle stick in Mars Bar . [ NMNL ] Is fashion in flight from the LES? [ BB ] This article will make you crazy: "what happened to our attention spans? Why must we talk, text and tweet in the middle of a movie? And what — if anything — can theaters do to stop this erosion of cinema civility?" [ yahoo ] A haunted house in Queens. [ SNY ] Williamsburg wall says " Artists go home ." [ NYS ] "Real estate brokers say that in the last year, they have seen more parents shopping for apartments for their grown children." [ NYT ] Enjoy th...

* Warning: Images containing bare asses may not be safe for work . In the 15 years that the Folsom Street East fair has been going, this is the first year it has had a High Line full of tourists directly above it . The newly extended High Line now stretches over 28th Street, where yesterday folks in leather and other fetish gear strutted their stuff--and did some damage with whips and chains. As the fair raged below, High Liners gathered to gawk up above, craning their necks, pointing fingers, and aiming cameras over the edge. Grandmothers exclaimed, "Oh no, their behinds are hanging out!" Fathers said, "Don't let the kid look--that's too much explaining I don't want to do." Some young ladies squealed with delight and whipped out their iPhones. Others uttered the time-honored statement, "Only in New York." High Line staff directed everyone exiting at the 28th Street stairs, "Once you go down, you can't come back up." It...

There's been a lot of news in the news about the Orchard Street boutique owner who was thrown through his plate-glass window when he tried to stop a shoplifter who was walking out with a $2,200 vintage Chanel purse. Said the boutique's co-owner of the shoplifter's accomplice, " She wanted Chanel. She was willing to die for it ." DNA also reported that the boutique had "two prior shoplifting incidents in which a $1,800 vintage Chanel makeup bag was stolen." Before this boutique was here, before there was vintage Chanel on Orchard, this was the location of the Lolita Bra shop. photo: verplanck's flickr On a recent walk down Orchard Street, filled with the same feelings I have when walking down Elizabeth Street , I noticed that the sign for Lolita Bras had vanished. I always loved this sign and guess it's been gone a few years now. It's likely that I noted its vanishing, then forgot, so when I saw it was gone (again) I felt the loss as if it w...

Look out Rockaway : "The boardwalk is the new Bedford Avenue." [ NYT ] Now they're making artisanal saltwater taffy . When is saltwater taffy not artisanal? [ Grub ] The old lady who planned to firebomb the former Nikos if a Starbucks moved in, won't need to take such a drastic measure-- the new tenant is a pizza joint run by Neapolitans. [ WSR ] Former shelter for homeless youth now another glittering playground for the 1% . [ Eater ] Check out this summer's line-up of free movies in Tompkins Square Park. [ EVG ] Bed bug bandits want to break into your apartment! [ Gothamist ] Taking a pee at the Old Town . [ LC ]

Since the tragic closing of Gino , I have stricken from my mind what would become of it, the fact that a Beverly Hills cupcake chain would be moving in to this wonderful, classic New York spot. I repressed it, like a traumatic memory, and have not dared to venture anywhere near the new incarnation. But blogger and JVNY reader Mitch Broder did. And he posted a photo. Gird your loins. photo: Mitch Broder It's so wrong in so many ways. One major way it's wrong is that it includes Gino's zebra wallpaper. After the cupcake people announced they were moving in, a rep for the company said they planned to keep the iconic wallpaper to " pay homage to Gino ," a sentiment to which Gino's co-owner Michael Miele responded: "We take our zebra with us." And they did, stripping the walls of every last arrow and stripe . Gino stripped, by Karen & Jon, 2010 The wallpaper was originally designed for Gino Circiello by Flora Scalamandre in 1945, expressly for the re...

The long-empty, 25-year-old Toons Thai restaurant on the western end of Bleecker is being plywooded as we speak. What do you think is coming? A: Another Marc Jacobs B: Another Ralph Lauren C: A bank D: Who gives a fuck--Bleecker is dead Where have all the Crusties gone? “It’s like the birds aren’t migrating this year; the salmon aren’t swimming upstream,” said Chris Flash. “The whole ecology of the neighborhood is out of whack.” [ NYT ] Crusties talk to Grieve about the NYPD crackdown. [ EVG ] Following up on the chess table arrest . [ NMNL ] Di Palo's isn't worried about the big bad Eataly . [ Grub ] Rally for rent reform tonight. [ Gothamist ] What will New York look like in 2040 ? [ Curbed ] What would you do if you ruled NYC ? [ Restless ] Check out unpublished photos of Bettie Page by WeeGee . [ VS ] On the history of the Umbrella House . [ GVSHP ] A KAWS sculpture appears on The Standard Hotel's doorstep . Shame-faced, the Mickey Mouse death's head sees no e...

After several years of lying empty, the former space of a classic record shop has been filled--and it's not with another record shop. photo: elizabethnewyork Footlight Records on E. 12th Street was one of my favorites. I went for CDs by obscure ukulele players, for crooners and torch singers, and for soundtracks. Mostly, I liked the place for its atmosphere. New York magazine described it well: "On a typical Sunday at Footlight Records, you’ll see hipsters snatching up Italian lounge CDs, hip-hop artists trolling for new beats among the vinyl movie soundtracks, seniors browsing through the Broadway cast recordings, a Liza impersonator scoring Cabaret on DVD ." New York Magazine, 1987 Opened in 1978, after three decades in business, Footlight closed its doors in 2005 . At the time, owner Ron Saja told Backstage , "right now, the industry sucks... there aren't a lot of collectors like years ago. You know, it used to be you went to your college dance and someone w...