Vanishing New York Backup

Recently, EV Grieve asked, "Should we start worrying about the Subway Inn?" The Real Deal reported that the development firm World-Wide Group, owners of the Subway Inn's building, just made another big purchase on the block, adding 155 E. 60th to their growing parcel, which includes numbers 143 (home of Subway Inn), 145-147, 149, 151 and 153. We wonder what it means. Surely, the global corporation plans to knock it all down and put up a giant glass sarcophagus in which to bury the soul of this block. Gothamist asked the owner's son, who said, "We're not worried about it anytime soon. As far as we know, everything is good." However, "We're probably going to end up moving somewhere else pretty close in the area. But right now it's not a concern, so we're not looking right now." I made a trip up to the beloved dive bar, on 60th Street near Lexington since 1937 , where it still sports one of the most splendid neon signs i...

Last week we learned that the original Junior's in Brooklyn is selling its iconic and beloved two-story building to the developers of a high-rise luxury tower. The Junior's building, with all of its flashy and fantastic classic details, will be demolished . During construction, the 64-year-old restaurant will relocate, and then they hope to move back in to the new tower's first floor--though there's no guarantee. “The only thing for certain in life is death and taxes, right?” the broker told the Daily News . “It’s our objective to move back in.” As the news spread, people across the city panicked, causing a run on Junior's cheesecake. “We literally had to cut cheesecakes quicker because people were buying them with a fervor...,” third-generation owner Alan Rosen told the Times . “People were under the impression we were closing, that we’re closing imminently. It was like a cheesecake panic .” 1958, photo via Brooklyn Historical Society Junior's ha...

Local photographer Brian Rose is publishing a sort of follow-up to his wonderful book Time and Space on the Lower East Side . This time, he reveals the Meatpacking District before and after hyper-gentrification swept across the neighborhood . In 1985, Brian photographed the streets of the Meatpacking District, a desolate and mysterious place. In 2013, he went back and photographed it again, recreating many of the shots for a fascinating "before and after" effect . Those stunning, full-color photos are now collected in Metamorphosis: Meatpacking District 1985 & 2013 . A self-publishing venture, the book needs your help--Brian has launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the publication. Please give your support. Just $50 will get you a signed copy : I got the opportunity the write the foreword for the book. Here's the first and last paragraph. To read the rest, well, you'll have to buy the book: ...

On East 59th Street since 1932, Jim's Shoe Repair is a fourth-generation business. But that's where their long and celebrated history comes to an end. Jim's is being pushed out. I talked to Joe Rocco, whose grandfather Vito (called Jimmy) opened the shop 82 years ago. Before S.L. Green bought 625 Madison Avenue in 2004, it had been owned by the Ginsberg family for many years. This September, the Roccos' current 10-year lease will come to an end. "My father went up to ask for an extension," Joe said. "S.L. Green told him no. They already made a deal with Walgreens. They didn't even tell us." Walgreens plans to expand their giant Duane Reade next door into the cobbler's modest 12-foot-wide space. The Duane Reade already takes up 5,500 square feet, running through the entire block from 58th to 59th Streets. Why do they need 12 more feet of frontage? The Duane Reade got a 15-year lease extension in 2008. At the time, an executive at ...

The following is a guest post by Charles Cosentino, who runs the Original Uncle Charlie's Downtown Facebook page : Uncle Charlie's Downtown opened in the early 1980s in Greenwich Village, part of a popular chain of gay bars in New York City. Born at the same time as MTV, it was one of the first video bars, and soon earned a reputation as a place where nobody spoke, but just stood and watched, a so-called "S&M" bar, for Stand and Model. During the AIDS crisis, Uncle Charlie's Downtown became one of the most popular gay bars of the 1980s with one of the busiest happy hours, packing them in with screenings of Dynasty Wednesdays & Golden Girl Saturdays. Maybe people needed something light during that time of tragedy. Scandal hit when the bar's owner was charged with the 1986 stabbing murder of a 37-year-old man who had a relationship with his former 20-year-old lover. After a hung jury in 1988, and awaiting a re-trial, he sold everything and dis...

The Heidelberg restaurant , on 2nd Avenue between 85th and 86th Streets, has been a surviving piece of old German Yorkville since 1936. But they're struggling. First they endured the construction of Georgica , a massive, 20-story, cantilevered condo tower that went up next door in 2008. But it's the Second Avenue Subway construction project that has been killing them ever since it plunked a giant god-knows-what in front of the restaurant, completely blocking it from view and plunging it into shadow. The subway construction has been decimating small businesses all along the Upper East Side. "Business has been down 40% since the construction started," said a waiter. "If we didn't own the building, we'd be gone by now. People drive by and they can't see us. They call all the time and ask if we're closed. We just have to hold out a few more years. I hope we can make it." A note comes with the bill that reads, " During these diff...

VANISHED Divino Ristorante , on 2nd Avenue near 81st Street, has closed after 37 years in business. The Italian restaurant was opened around 1977 by Mario Balducci and Antonio Bongioanni, who came to America from Northern Italy four years earlier. The restaurant did well and became a local favorite. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was a regular; he and his wife enjoyed the romantic Italian ambiance (though the neighbors did not care for the helicopters and snipers that came with him). After Mr. Bongioanni died in 2007 , Mr. Balducci continued to run the restaurant, telling a videographer, " I've been here for 32 years...and I hope to stay here another 32 ." But sometime in the past month, that hope apparently passed away, too. I asked the locksmith next door what happened. He said, "One day, they just closed their doors and were gone. That's it." The sign in Divino's window reads, "Because of special circumstances and after 3...

VANISHING Bad news for one of the last record shops in the East Village. In a Wall Street Journal piece today on St. Mark's Place, Richard Morgan notes: "Sounds, the last of once-many record shops on the strip, recently limited its business days to Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, said Felicia De Chabris, an associate broker with Halstead Property. She said Sounds' space went on the rental market this month, with its first showings this week." Let's hope the Grassroots Tavern down below isn't going anywhere.

We first met artist and activist Sally Young back in 2007, when she was selling t-shirts about the destruction of the East Village . Later, she helped lead the fight to save 35 Cooper Square --demolished now, its land awaiting a college dormitory. Currently, Sally has a show of paintings up at the Ottendorfer Library in the East Village. Visit her website to see her work. She writes: "My work is about the landscape of cities and how I see this landscape. Lower Manhattan, where I've lived and experienced its ever changing landscape for the last 32 years, is the subject of my current series of paintings. They are topographical maps with buildings, water-towers, tipping their perspective from looking up, or down, as if onto rooftops, fire-escape ladders rising to the top or descending below ground to areas that are below sea level. Exposed stairwells are reminiscent of partially demolished buildings in the LES during the 1980's that exposed the skeleton of the build...

That was fast. Nicky's magazine shop, containing the remnants of the beloved Nikos magazine shop , on 6th Ave and 11th, just shuttered last month . It already has a high-profile new tenant. The City Bakery's Birdbath is moving in. This will be the ninth Birdbath in town (not including the carts on the High Line). Says Birdbath, "The bakeries are built from recycled, found, vintage, and sustainable materials. Birdbath is wind-powered, and the food is delivered from our main kitchen in bicycle-powered rickshaws. We give discounts to any customer who arrives by bike." So virtuous, how can anyone possibly complain? But I'd rather have the old magazine shop. (Counting the seconds before someone says, " It's better than a bank .")

The Mid-Manhattan Library, long neglected, has seen better days. Due to be closed and devoured by the Main Branch, it won't be around much longer (assuming the NYPL's plan goes forward). While there's still time, go hang out with the Picture Collection . Located on the third floor, the collection contains over a million "original prints, photographs, posters, postcards and illustrations from books, magazines and newspapers, classified into 12,000 subject headings." One of those subject headings is New York City, spread across several folders, and organized by neighborhood, decade, and themes. You can sit and sift through this treasure trove to your heart's content. Totally unfussy, they let you take digital photos of as much as you want. It's a very hands-on, user-friendly experience. With so many images from the lost city, you can really go crazy in this place. Anything might suddenly appear. Here's just a few. Above, in the upper right, tw...

Back in November, based on a tip, I incorrectly reported that the long-shuttered Clover Barber Shop in Park Slope was up for rent . Now it looks like the news is coming true--and the old Clover has a tenant. The same tipster sends in the following photos, showing the Clover clearly with a liquor license application notice taped to its gate. The notice indicates that an LLC called 382 Wines has applied for an off-premises liquor store license for this address. That likely means a wine shop . 382 Wines is the LLC of Big Nose Full Body , located at 382 7th Avenue, across the street from the Clover. Maybe the wine store is moving, but I'm going to bet it's expanding. The owners, Aaron and Gillian Hans, also run the wine bar Brook-vin , which is also on the same block as Big Nose and the Clover space. Do three outposts make a mini wine empire--all on 7th Avenue between 11th and 12th Streets? Either way, it'll be tastings instead of trims. And, unless they'r...

The Cedar Tavern is getting its own art show. Or, more accurately, the phone booth of the Cedar Tavern is getting its own art show, now that the bar has been completely erased--torn down, condofied, its space turned into a European body waxing center ( a grotesque fact that one writer has celebrated ). The Cedar Tavern Phone Booth show opens April 12 at Westbeth . From the press release: The phone booth at the Cedar Tavern was the only part of the original bar that survived the move from the bar’s earlier location at 24 University Place to its location at 82 University Place. Therefore, the phone booth was truly a witness when Jackson Pollock ripped the bathroom door off its hinges and threw it at Franz Kline, or when Kerouac was thrown out for urinating in an ashtray. The phone booth witnessed Robert Motherwell’s weekly salon, and the literary and art discussions of Leroi and Hetty Jones, Allen Ginsberg, Grace Hartigan, D.A. Pennebaker and Bob Dylan. Later, it witnessed the ba...

Roy Colmer, the photographer who captured more than 3,000 New York doors in the mid-1970s, passed away on January 24 . His wife, Claudia, says that he'd been in poor health for months. Last year, I talked with Roy about his doors , a sweeping collection that gives you the real sense of walking through the city on an average day, at a brisk pace, just trying to get somewhere. The doors are not special, not set up to be admired, in some ways barely noticed. They just are. from Doors of New York As Roy explained, "I was not concerned with the particular street, historic or architectural importance of the door." He was also not interested in creating anything that wasn't simply there. "In the mid-1970s," he said, "no one noticed when I was photographing on the street. This gave me a great sense of freedom. I did not wish tension or drama to appear in the project." New York City, 1984 - 1986 Beyond the doors, Roy also photographed the movi...