Vanishing New York Backup

A reader writes in with these photos from outside City Hall. A "rich woman" was carrying an anti-Bill de Blasio sign and arguing with passersby. Get ready for "crime, muggings, rapes, murder," she insists. "Save yourselves, protect your children." According to the reader, "She was saying that she worked hard for her money, and that de Blasio is now going to take away her wealth so it can be distributed to those who don't work or are lazy . Then the argument was interrupted when a couple of tourists asked where the World Trade Center is. Amazingly, both parties lowered their voices and were helpful to point it out to them."

VANISHING Jack Bistro has been at University and 11th for 8 years. Not a long time, really, but people like the place because it's unpretentious and affordable ($10 lunch with soft drink). And now it's closing. The goodbye sign states the reason for the closure: "the financial obstacles in operating a reasonably priced neighborhood restaurant have ultimately become too great for us to overcome." A regular from the neighborhood got more specific. She told me, "The landlord is renting the space to a bank for $50,000 a month. Jack offered $30,000, but the landlord wanted more." Now the body hair waxing salon that replaced the Cedar Tavern next door will have an appropriate new neighbor, just as useless and vacuous, like the entire city is becoming. I hope they enjoy each other's company.

VANISHING Reports the pcvstBee , "After more than 100 years in business at the same address, Vercesi Hardware is closing at 152 East 23rd Street between Lexington and Third avenues. The building has been sold and is slated for demolition ." According to Flatiron BID , the shop began as a sheet music store in 1912 , opened "by an enterprising teenager from Italy by the name of Paul Vercesi. Later, the young man added film development and a new-fangled invention called radio. At some point, hardware became part of the mix. Eventually, the sheet music and radio tubes and film all but vanished, but the hardware hung on." "Don't Trust Your Films to a Butcher" (1936, NYPL ) In recent years, Vercesi became 23rd Street Hardware, with nothing more than a change of the name on the sign. I've always liked the look of it, signs piled high, the windows full of stuff--not much different, really, than it was decades ago. One neighbor summed up the

VANISHING Years ago, New York City had many stores that catered to avid collectors of movie memorabilia. The most legendary were Cinemabilia, where François Truffaut shopped when he came to town, Mark Ricci’s Memory Shop, and Irving Klaw’s Movie Star News , famous for its bondage shots of Bettie Page. Today, there’s only one store left in the city that specializes in movie photos, and it’s not going to be here much longer. Jerry Ohlinger’s Movie Material Store has been in business since 1978. It started on West Third Street, moved to West Fourteenth, and eventually ended up on West Thirty-fifth, in the Garment District. With the Internet stealing customers, business isn’t what it used to be, and the nine-thousand-dollar-a-month rent is more than movie photos can pay. Jerry will be closing his shop and selling just online in the next three to six months. This is unfortunate, because a computer screen will never provide the physical, sensory experience you get when you step

Heather Quinlan, the award-winning filmmaker who gave us " If These Knishes Could Talk ," offers her latest film, Spoke: A Short Film About Bikes , exploring New Yorkers' feelings about bike lanes and the Citibank-sponsored bike share program. “ The city’s been inundated with two-wheeled maniacs ," says a garbage truck driver. "They’re a cross between a vehicle and a pedestrian, so they think, ‘Okay, I can use the infrastructure that’s designed for vehicles, but I don’t have to obey the rules for vehicles, I’m a pedestrian on wheels.’” Meanwhile, a Citibiker enjoys the freedom of riding and tolerates the corporate branding, saying, “ I’m riding around on a giant advertisement. What can you do? They won. They won completely. You gotta live with yourself and measure the benefits against the drawbacks, and this has been a benefit.” SPOKE - A Short Film About Bikes from Heather Quinlan on Vimeo . For Quinlan, the bike issue is not black or white. She t

VANISHED After nearly 80 years in business, the home of Baby Watson cheesecakes, D'Auito's bakery has closed. Lost City had the news this summer, but we'd also heard it was closed for renovations and would reopen. It hasn't. When the building went up for sale a couple years ago, it looked like the end. But it kept going, sold to a man named Patel. He told Capital New York at the time, “We wanted the building for its location. New York is growing. Things are moving to 8th Avenue. The Post Office is going to turn into Amtrak, and 6th and 7th Avenues are already packed, so where do you think everyone will go, yeah?” Patel promised the long-time owner he would keep the business in place, even though “I’d never heard of Baby Watson before." He hoped to make it a family business with his son. I took these photos last October when rumors were swirling of the bakery's demise. The Halloween and fall decorations could trick you into thinking they're

Before the Meatpacking District was a glitzy and hollow shopping mall, it was the stroll for countless transgender sex workers. Invisible to many, eradicated fast, those girls can now be seen in the work of two photographers recently come to light. Jeff Cowen has a collection of five prints in the New York Historical Society's library , taken in the 1980s, showing the working life of the Meatpacking District's sex workers. For more, there is West Side Rendezvous , a book of photos by Katsu Naito, all portraits of the sex workers taken in the early 1990s. photo: Jeff Cowen Both artists' photographs show a lost world, desolate streets at the psychic edge of the city, where no one went unless they were looking for something a little bit dangerous. That began to change in the early 1990s. The gay sex clubs had been shut down during the peak of AIDS hysteria, the meatpacking plants were closing, and artists were moving in. No one seemed troubled by the sex workers-- some

The building that houses the Stage Restaurant has been sold, reported EV Grieve, supposedly to a bunch of "young guys" who were talking about clearing out the business. The Stage still has 6 years on its lease, but we know how that goes, especially when "young guys" are in the picture.  So I went for lunch to soak up the atmosphere while it lasts. Locals, regulars, working men in hard hats, people speaking Polish. And then a couple of young guys walked in. They weren't the young guys. They looked like NYU kids. They took a seat, ordered borscht and "holy bread." They meant challah, but I guess they didn't know the name or how to say it. And then they started talking. First, I've noticed that young people in New York today talk about two things, generally: (1) Work: usually something about "marketing" and/or "advertising," about which they're very, very excited, and (2) Technology: often involving Apple pro

I recently went to Sigfrido's Barber Shop for the first time. It's on First Avenue between 22nd and 23rd Streets. It's been here for 50 or 60 years and it's not vanishing any time soon. If you go, be sure to get the full treatment. The hot towel, the warm shaving foam, osage oil, and an old Italian man's hands on your face and head. I guarantee, you'll walk out feeling cool, clean, and good with the world.

When photographer Tony Stamolis wrote in to say he read my post on Billy's Topless and recalled renting the place out for a photo shoot just a week before it closed, I asked him to please send the photos. Billy's closed in 2001 and images of the interior are hard to find. Tony was kind enough to share these shots (the women here are friends of Tony's, not actual dancers). all photos by Tony Stamolis He writes, "They were taken as part of a project that was hung in the windows of Fun Box Times Square , an art/performance space on 42nd Street. That building was torn down soon after. Having spent most of my time (living and working) in that area in the early 90s, the focus was, obviously, on the Disney-fication of Times Square. It was titled "Quality of Life?" and had fake money covering the floors of the windows." Tony's photos show the crummy little stage that the dancers used, with its undulating three-part shape. The greasy mirror, t

It's been awhile since I took a walk on Music Row , that block of West 48th Street once known for its many shops full of instruments, sheet music, and men (mostly) who knew how to build and repair. A year ago, the Post reported that, after 50 years here, and ever expanding, Sam Ash would be leaving the block and moving to 34th Street. This meant leaving several empty storefronts behind. Sam Ash held so much real estate here, including the more recently taken over Manny's Music, their move effectively killed the block. Walking on Music Row today is like walking through a ghost town. Sam Ash's empty storefronts, once capped with red awnings, are empty, white-painted hollows, each covered by a roll-down gate--and they run for much of the block. It looks like urban blight. Demolition has begun for an incoming condo building. A Dunkin Donuts is "Now Open" in what had been Rod Baltimore's New York Woodwind & Brass Music shop . today before

When I went inside the closed Elk Hotel last year , I was told that the place had been sold in a purchase that nearly completed the acquisition of an entire block of tenements along 9th Avenue between 41st and 42nd Streets. Now the Real Deal reports that the Elk and its neighboring parcels have been put on the market "with brokers expecting offers of about $2 million per year in triple net rent." Said the broker, “The highest and best use is multi-floor retail. It would be a great branding opportunity with high visibility on 42nd Street." (It would also require a gutting that would curl toes.) The Elk is closed and vacant, but there are several other businesses still here, all included in the parcels up for rent. When last I checked, there was a 99-cent pizza place, a Papaya Dog, a barber shop, and the dive bar (with free nuts) Dave's Tavern , along with a few others. It's a regular New York corner, a bunch of cheap joints, nothing fancy. But wit

Filmmaker Matt Wolf has made a sweet short documentary about the New York School artist and writer Joe Brainard. Up until yesterday, you could have watched the whole film for free at Vdrome , but I screwed up the dates (sorry), so now you can watch the trailer and buy the film at Matt's site. The film features 1950s Americana footage, including scenes from sex education films about Syphilis, played while Brainard reads from the lovely "I Remember." In between, poet Ron Padgett reminisces about their close friendship, from their school days back in Tulsa to Joe's death from AIDS in New York. I asked Matt a few questions about the film. You said the vanishing of New York tapped into your desire to make a film like this--how so? Sarah Schulman's book Gentrification of the Mind really shook me. It helped me understand the connection between AIDS and the transformation of New York. It also helped me better understand the kind of artist's life that is no

Recently, for the first time, I came upon the Hua Mei Bird Garden in Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side at Chinatown's edge. The garden has been around officially since 1995, but you'll miss it, too, unless you're up and walking in the early morning. Hanging in trees, from poles, around the chain-link fence, and sitting on the leafy ground, are dozens of beautiful bamboo bird cages, some half shrouded in white cloths, most of them ornately carved, and all containing a songbird. Many of the birds are small--colorful finches, a few black-capped chickadees--but some are the Hua Mei, a fighting thrush from China for whom the park was named. Socializing around the cages are the elderly Chinese men who own them. Wrote the Times in 2007, "Most of the men who come to listen to them are retired; the oldest are in their late 80s. Yui Kang, who has been coming to the Hua Mei Bird Garden since the mid-1990s and has been collecting songbirds for more th

Next year, the Donut Pub on 14th Street turns 50. It shows no signs of closing and has outlived at least two Dunkin Donuts that have parked nearby in failed attempts to steal the Pub's customers. No dice. The customers here are loyal. The waiter knows their orders and gets them ready before they sit down--black coffee, jelly doughnut, coffee with half and half, decaf, sesame bagel with butter, glass of cold milk. Now, like many places, they have created their own version of the hysteria-inducing cronut --the "Croissant Donut." But there is no hysteria here. No all-night lines, no sidewalk campers, no groupies. The Pub remains the Pub. On an unseasonably warm afternoon, the Donut Pub is an oasis of cool and quiet. At the marble counter, a woman stirs her iced coffee, making the milk swirl. It feels like a long sigh. "Get a load of this," says a man reading the paper. "That neighborhood north of Madison Square Park? Now they're calling it No