Vanishing New York Backup

From the Vanishing New York dream blog, a dream from a young New Yorker--and a goodbye to Ray's Candy: "Ray hands me an egg cream and the shop starts to go dark. I look out the window and see huge trucks covering the building with cement. Ray yells at the top of his lungs 'get down here with me' as he opens up a hatch into a cellar." Read the whole dream here . And don't forget to send in your (real) Vanishing New York dreams (I'm running low).

H&H Bagels is going to be a Verizon--as Thomas Beller takes on the "new urban blight" of bankification : "nearly everyone in Manhattan has had a similar moment of staring with some mixture of disgust and amazement at a gleaming new bank branch and thinking, 'Why?' It’s like a retail version of invasion of the body snatchers." [ NYer ] A review of the new Coney Island: The " Starbucks of Amusement Parks. " [ NYLF ] A round-up of recently opened Coney businesses. [ ATZ ] Check out the Lunch Hour exhibit at the NYPL. [ NYT ] Video of people tripping up the subway stairs . [ Gothamist ] Before and after photographer Brian Rose on the changing LES. [ EVG ] The pleasures of reading a book in a churchyard. [ WIC ] Remembering the Stonewall Riots . [ NYO ] Filthy message at a pay phone :

Revolution Books on West 26th Street is fighting for its life. They're trying to raise $40,000 to keep their lease. erin m's flickr Opened circa 1979, they moved to W. 26th Street after losing their old spot on W. 19th in 2008. At that time, they signed a 5-year lease for $69 a square foot. Now, on their Facebook event page, they write: " Revolution Books' lease is up early next year. Major rent increases have already kicked in . We need you to help pull out all the stops to raise the funds, bring more people into the store, get the store out into the public square and parks this summer. Revolution Books is more than a bookstore -- it is a cause and a movement. It needs your generous financial donation now, and your help in building a much larger base of support." The tipster who let us know about this says, "I live next door and it is the only antidote to the frattiness of the neighborhood . Would be heartbroken if it closes. Perhaps you can get...

Filmmaker Casimir Nozkowski has made a short documentary about Caffe Capri, a longtime Italian coffee shop in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, that is quickly being surrounded by trendy newcomers and chains. Watch the wonderful little film, and read my Q&A with the director. Q: Why do you think places like Caffe Capri are important to a neighborhood? A: I think they're important because they're links to the past. The owners of Caffe Capri had so many great stories about former customers who used to come in, who lived and worked in the neighborhood. I think places where people gather, in particular, can be great records of all the different generations of customers who have come and gone. I think it's important to have unique places in a neighborhood--that are owned by people who live in that neighborhood. Let's face it, most neighborhoods these days are overrun with franchises that kind of blur together. A nice personal establishment like Caffe Capri gives a neighborh...

There was a little empty lot on West 28th, just past 10th Avenue, between the back of a bodega and a scrap metal yard. It was just a slender slip of a thing, filled with green weeds. Nothing special, but kind of mysterious in its jungly way. I've had my eye on it for some time, waiting for it to be filled with an inevitable wedge of sleek modern architecture. last year A couple of months ago, a realtor's banner appeared, fixed to the lot's chain-link fence. It featured a sketch of the realtor's dream--a Frank Lloyd Wrightish house, a mini-mansion pressed against the High Line's flank. a couple months ago Today, the lot has been completely cleaned out, the weeds plucked and chucked, and the ground covered with gravel. Big, metal flowers stand there now. A sign says the installation is called "Bel Fiore" by Loren Costantini of the Brenda Taylor gallery across the street. I guess the lot is their sculpture garden --for now. today Maybe you prefer metal flower...

It's always an exciting urban archaeological moment when a sign comes down from a facade to reveal an older sign underneath. It feels like a wrinkle in time, a stepping back into the old city. Andrew Fine at a Fine Blog sent in this shot from 71st and Lexington, where Staub the Chemist has been revealed, complete with a bonus phone exchange. Who was RH-4? Downtown, the former cafe The Adore has been stripped to reveal a sign for a children's barber shop. Greenwich Village Daily Photo also snapped shots of it, wondering if it dates to the 1940s. Let's hope the newcomers save this one, along with good old Erskine Press ( read all about that here ). If any knows these old businesses, please let us know.

Originally published for Eater's "Bodega Week" in March (hence the bodega questions), my profile of the Sweet Banana Candy Store, which is slated to be shuttered by the Stonehenge Group by the end of this month, along with several other long-time small businesses on the block. The Sweet Banana Candy Store has been run by "Candy Lady" Patricia on 9th Avenue and 17th Street in Chelsea for the past 15 years. Wearing its age proudly, without a hint of vanity, it sits on a ragtag block that has somehow managed to stay frozen in time, almost untouched by the hyper-gentrifying waves that push in from all sides. The shop's battered awning slumps down over a front window spattered with graffiti and ads for USA Gold brand cigarettes and Slush Puppie frozen drinks. A neon sign advertising "Fresh Coffee" has lost its light. Patricia doesn't consider her shop a bodega. "It's a candy store," she tells me with a shrug from behind her c...

Back in April, the Hamptons boutique Blue & Cream mounted a "Tribute to Mars Bar" photo exhibit in their Bowery location. Locals were appalled. I wrote about it then, but dared not venture inside for fear of coming out with post-traumatic stress disorder. Well, the exhibit is still up, and I couldn't help myself. Above racks hawking $600 dresses and $1,000 shoes, the ghosts of the old dive bar hang like trophies on a hunter's wall. The faces of barflies look back at shoppers from vanished stools, like the faces of the old Bowery, recalling Skid Row's down and outs--today washed away by the luxury Bowery Tsunami . Where did all those people go? At their feet, the price tags on designer leather jackets flutter ($1,350). The color of the leather? Cognac. At the cash register there's a pile of postcards for the taking. On the front, Blue & Cream has chosen to showcase one of Mars Bar's last murals. The words " The East Village Is Dead " are ...

After getting opposition from the newly arrived condo people , and agreeing to take measures to protect their delicate sensibilities, this weekend's Folsom Street East festival was a big success, with one of the largest crowds I've ever seen in attendance. click here for more Folsom photos Packed extra tight into a street narrowed by massive construction plywood, bodies pushed and jostled in the beer-soaked scrum, but the energy was joyful. It felt like everyone was keyed up in defiance of the recent anti-Folsom sentiment. Some of that sentiment was expressed by anti-sex, anti-gay Christians waving a banner on the High Line that said "Jesus Saves from Hell." Down below, a kinky couple held up their own sign in response, saying only "LOVE." There never used to be Christian protesters here --but now the High Line is bringing the mainstream in to what was once a relatively protected, unknown piece of New York City. Folsom is suddenly very visible. Up abov...

Yesterday we heard from a resident of one of the luxury condos that have recently gone up along the High Line on formerly desolate West 28th Street. He told us about how the new residents are trying to shut down the Folsom Street East festival , now 16 years strong in Chelsea. I got in touch with Susan Wright, Media Liaison for Folsom Street East, and asked for her response. Q: What was your initial reaction when you found out from my blog that the new condo residents of West Chelsea have been organizing against Folsom East? A: We were surprised because we haven't been contacted by anyone. Folsom Street East is a community event, and is eager to work with the neighbors. We observed certain issues last year, so one of the ways we have adjusted the fair this year is to provide a 5-foot-wide sidewalk along the buildings that goes from 11th Avenue down to the condos at 540 W. 28th Street. That way residents don't have to walk through the attendees in the street. They will be ...

Last year, when the second part of the High Line opened, I wondered how long the sex-positive Folsom Street East festival would survive on West 28th, now that the once-desolate block has become a destination for tourists and condo-buyers. Soon after, I looked at the arrival of massive condo-box Avalon West Chelsea, coming to the same block, right across the street from the Eagle gay leather bar, and predicted that the Eagle would not last much longer , either. As we come up on the 16th annual Folsom East fair this weekend , we hear from an anonymous resident of 540 West 28th (the +ART building ) that those dire predictions may already be coming true. Folsom East and the Eagle, he tells us, are not long for this rapidly changing world . 2011: High Line tourists pointing at Folsom-goers Construction began on the +ART building in 2008, when there was nothing on that block except for a gay bar, a strip club, a scrap yard, a truck yard, and some autobody shops . Our anonymous interv...

Another fucking Starbucks for 1st Avenue in the East Village. [ EVG ] And yet another fucking Starbucks comes to the Lower East Side. How many more...? [ BB ] Romy revisits Jackie 60 and the Chelsea barbers. [ WIC ] Talking to Taylor Mead in the vanishing East Village. [ PRD ] Our friends at Grade-A Fancy present " Truly Greenwich Village ," a guide to the neighborhood's surviving old haunts. Get it before they vanish. [ GAF ] Spend some time with Tom's neon sign. [ NYN ] On the return of Chinatown Fair (the chickens have been gone a long while). [ NYT ] Crawford Jewelry, with the fantastic old clock in the window, is closing on Canal. [ LC ] Remembering when Essex Street was the pickle district . [ ENY ]

The New York Pizza Project is a new website and blog (later, a book) that explores the relationship between New York City and its quintessential pizza places. Created by "Corey, Gabe, Ian, Nick, and Tim...5 dudes born and raised in New York City," the New York Pizza Project includes interviews and photos of pizza places across the 5 boroughs of the city. I asked the five guys some questions--they answered... All photos from the NY Pizza Project blog Q: Why pizza as the quintessential NYC food? Why not hot dogs or knishes or something else? A: New York had a much richer street food culture around the turn of the century. These peddlers pushed immigrant food like knishes, halal, oysters, sausages, and even pizza. Legal changes would eventually force most of these vendors off the street. After World War II, GI’s that were stationed in Italy came home demanding pizza. While I couldn’t really imagine some of these older street foods reincarnating as permanent shops, pizza made p...

After hearing the terrible news about the imminent closure of the New Barber Shop in Chelsea, and the loss of its neighbors along the block, I went over for a last haircut. Willie was in the doorway, smoking a brown cigarette and watching the rain. He told me they won't be closing until the end of June, so there's still some time to say goodbye. I sat in the dilapidated red barber chair and Willie draped me with a candy-striped smock, other men's hairs poking out through the fabric. From a dusty boombox, filmed with talcum powder, the radio station played hits from the 1980s--Bon Jovi saying, "We gotta hold on to what we got" and Journey telling us "Don't stop believing." But it's hard. As Willie went about selecting the proper tools, he told me he'd heard a rumor that the businesses coming to replace him and his neighbors will be a Duane Reade or a Walgreens and a bank . How can a little barbershop compete with that? A little barbershop that...

VANISHED In Chelsea, checking in with the long-surviving mom-and-pop block of 9th Avenue about to be completely revamped by its landlord, the Stonehenge Group, we hear that the New China take-out joint has been shuttered. Brad sends in photos with the sad news: "It's been closed since last Friday, which was June 1. I had a wonton soup from Chelsea Golden Wok on 8th Ave and 21st today and the proprietor told me New China closed due to rent increase ." New China wasn't glamorous and it wasn't special. It was a typical Chinese take-out joint with color photos of the dishes glowing above the register, a few booths for dining, and greasy meals served in Styrofoam containers. But it was family-owned and had been there for a long time--and it was always busy, always packed with neighborhood people, especially teenagers from the nearby schools. And the prices were cheap. As one Yelper put it, "considering the cheapo prices, it's actually damn good! ...

Lately, I've been thinking more and more about chain stores, their history in the city, and my own conflicted relationship to them. 7-11 on St. Mark's It seems there's been a big push from chains in the past few months--and a big push back from people. Looking just at recent developments in the East Village and Lower East Side: After a controversial 7-11 appeared on St. Mark's Place, the windows were smashed by anarchists, and New York magazine reported on 7-11's plans to put our local bodegas out of business. When Starbucks crept too far east, taking the former spot of Little Rickie , disgruntled locals pasted up anti-Starbucks posters and later egged the windows. As for Subway sandwich outposts, they're proliferating like bedbugs in summertime. On Grand Street, neighbors are petitioning to keep 7-11 and Dunkin Donuts out, and there's a petition to stop more chains from moving into the East Village, which ranked third on the list of most-chained neig...