Vanishing New York Backup

VANISHING? Some terrible news to kick off your holiday weekend: It looks like the great and venerable Arthur's Tavern is about to vanish. A reader alerted me to a new real-estate listing , where the jazz club's building is for sale at $6,250,000. This "Newly available mixed use building in the heart of the West Village," writes the broker, is located "off the high-end retail district of Bleecker Street ." It will be "delivered 100% vacant" and includes a "ground floor commercial space." Of course, that ground-floor space has been Arthur's Tavern since 1937 . "Called the 'Home of the Bird,'" reads the website, "this historic West Village entertainment nightclub is the last continuously operating New York City jazz club once regular host to the legendary Charlie Parker and the great Roy Hargrove." There is no cover charge at Arthur's Tavern and it's a wonderful place to just sit at the...

Hyper-gentrification --the jet-fueled process in which city government and corporations collude to displace the existing culture and population of New York and replace it with something shinier, wealthier, and homogenized for your safety--is often used by real estate agents to rebrand and sell "newly discovered" neighborhoods. Sometimes, the sell can be unabashed in its revanchist rhetoric. A reader sent in a newsletter from one real estate agent working to sell Harlem. I'll let the text speak for itself. - "New Yorkers are always debating which hood is the hottest. Is Bushwick the next Williamsburg? NoHo the next Tribeca? It’s Harlem: buy now and you will thank me." - " Harlem is getting a tech-led makeover , thanks to a new series of economic development initiatives aimed at combating the neighborhood's infamous high unemployment rates and widespread poverty." - "Blue-collar retirees are watching their neighborhood, once crime-infe...

A typed letter in the window of the City Opera Thrift shop says they're working to negotiate a new lease with the landlord. They were sold after the opera was forced to declare bankruptcy. (This after Mayor Bloomberg told the beloved institution to drop dead .) But even with that big, ominous "Retail for Lease" sign across the front, all is not lost. I hear that the sign is just a formality and that the negotiations are going well, that the landlord is being patient, until the thrift shop is adopted by another organization, possibly another opera. Nothing here should change and that's a relief. It's a wonderful thrift shop. The architecture of the interior alone makes it worth a visit, with its second-story gallery and its leaded windows in the back. The book selection is suprisingly well curated, unlike in most thrift stores where all you find are mass-market detective novels and self-help books. City Opera Thrift knows their books, and they have ...

If you're looking for a good time in the old New York, you have to go to Forlini's on a night when Angelo Ruggiero is performing in the back room. For one thing, Forlini's is something of a hidden treasure. Cut off from Little Italy by Canal Street, it's tucked away on Baxter, surrounded by Chinatown and unspoiled by tourists. The out-of-towners don't seem to know the place exists. Established in 1943, Forlini's is pure and authentic. New Yorkers eat there. It's a favorite place for judges , lawyers, and other people involved in the justice system, thanks to its location close to the State Supreme Court house. The rooms are filled with diamond-tufted, peach-colored banquettes and booths, the walls hung with an odd and fascinating assortment of massive oil paintings in heavy, gilded frames. The staff -- all family -- greet you with warmth and respect. Don't expect any "fixed-up," "revived" Italian food . Forlini's is o...

For my piece in this week's Metro NY , a visit to Dononue's Steak House on Lexington near 64th. ...it’s the people who really take you back to an older New York, before restaurant chatter was about nothing but money, work, and the latest technological toy—before people became so boring. At lunchtime, around the bar at Donohue’s, you’ll find the real New Yorkers. The scientist sipping a Manhattan knows everything about everything. The older lady quaffing white wine sounds exactly like Maureen O’Sullivan, with a slight slur that makes her only more elegant. The bartender, with his German accent, referees the conversation with jokes. In a discussion that bounces from George Orwell to life in India, a newspaper headline shifts the talk to Robin Williams. Comedians really are unhappy people, the group decides. “It’s the old Pagliacci thing,” says the scientist. “The weeping clown. It’s the misery behind the laughter.” Jerry Lewis? Miserable. Lenny Bruce? Wretched. Milton...

VANISHING After 56 years in the Villages West and East, the legendary vintage and custom jewelry shop C'est Magnifique closes tomorrow. Thomas Paladino writes in: "My family has owned and operated a small downtown jewelry store called C'est Magnifique since 1959, and it will be closing permanently this weekend. We were originally located on MacDougal street in the West Village up until two years ago, when rising rents forced us to move to East 9th Street. Unfortunately, the new location was not as lucrative as our previous one , and combined with a death in the family of my uncle (who was the main proprietor of the shop for the last thirty years), the store will have to close its doors. We have a rich and interesting history, having sold our wares to over five generations of the most interesting New Yorkers you can imagine, from all walks of life, including celebrity clients like Iggy Pop, Madonna, and Johnny Depp (among many others)." At the shop'...

Recently, I was disappointed to read about the shuttering of the Upper West Side's 3 Star Coffee Shop. On her Tumblr blog , Raven Snook took a photo of the papered-over windows and noted: "Apparently, 3 Star Coffee Shop went out with a whimper in February when it failed to reopen after being closed down for a third time by the Health Department due to violations ." West Side Rag went inside for a look at the trashed interior . Located at Columbus and 86th, across from a Starbucks, next to a Chase bank, and down the block from new luxury condo 101 W. 87 , the modestly named 3 Star (why not 4 or 5?) Coffee Shop had that look of something that could not last. 3 Star had an A rating at the time of its closure. Do city agencies like the health department target these old joints, especially when they're located on desirable corners? It often makes me wonder. Most of the reviewers on Yelp loved this place, citing it as one of the last old-school coffee shop...

We've been following the death of one block, 9th Avenue between 17th and 18th Streets , since 2008. One building, filled with several mom-and-pop shops was sold and sold again. Then all the businesses were evicted, their spaces gutted and upscaled. The empty retail space has been on the market for several months, and now a local tipster reports they've got their first shiny new tenant. It's a bank. Another bank. Multinational Wells Fargo is one of the "Big Four" banks in America, with about 25 locations in the city, all in Manhattan. The two spaces that this branch is taking over once belonged to Tamara Dry Cleaners and the New Barber Shop . Those businesses were an integral part of the community. They didn't only provide important services, they held people together and gave them a place to go, to connect. A bank branch can't do that. Neighborhood people fought for those businesses. They loved them and the people who ran them. A bank branch won...

For many years, by the northeast corner of 23rd and Park Avenue South, there stood a lovely little newsstand. It was bright blue. It remained, until very recently, an unlikely survivor of Bloomberg's Cemusa onslaught. I wish I could find my other photos of it Here it is (was) on Google maps, surviving defiantly in front of Pret A Manger, Bank of America, 7-Eleven, New York Sports Club, and Baked By Melissa cupcakes, across from Walgreens, Bath & Body Works, and the Vitamin Shoppe. It was crooked and quirky, just like all our newsstands used to be. It had character. Really, it was the only bit of original New York character left on that chain-strangled corner. I always admired it when I walked by, grateful to it for still standing against the dull tide of glass and chrome. But on a recent walk past, I found it was gone. Some construction is being done to the subway entrance. "Where's the newsstand?" I asked a nearby construction worker. "Disappear...

For my column in today's Metro NY , a visit to Leo's Latticini in Corona, Queens. “Is this your first time here?” she asks from the kitchen, her hands over a basin of milky water where she’s pulling mozzarella like it’s taffy. I nod. I must look lost. “You like mozzarella? Come. Taste.” She rips off a hunk of the soft cheese, squeezes it in her dripping fist, and thrusts it towards me. Like a good Catholic faced with the Eucharist, I take and I eat. The fresh cheese is warm, silky, and delicious. “Chew it good,” she says. This is my introduction to Irene DeBenedittis of Leo’s Laticcini, also known as Mama’s of Corona. Irene makes the mozzarella and her sister Marie does the cooking—turkey with gravy, roast pork, manicotti, you name it. “I don’t use recipes,” says Marie. “I just go on instinct" ... Please read the rest of the essay here .

From my most recent Op-Ed in the Daily News this weekend: Soon there will be no New York left in New York. The city is becoming, for the first time in its long and illustrious history of exceptionalism, just another Anywhere, U.S.A. What has de Blasio done to protect New York’s small businesses and control the virulent spread of national chains? Nothing much. Before he was elected, I asked him in an online Q&A what he planned to do. In his answer, he called small businesses “incredibly important to the character and strength of our neighborhoods” and said he wanted to follow the example of the Upper West Side’s “mom-and-pop” rezoning, designed to protect small shops from being forced out for chains. That’s actually a fairly weak rezoning, but it’s a start — one that de Blasio has yet to follow through on. It’s time for the mayor to step up and take action against the destruction of the city’s character. Read the rest here .

Reader Tommy Raiko writes in to let us know that the Mezza Luna Pizzeria at 8th Avenue and 15th Street has shuttered. Tommy writes: "It was just a typical get-a-slice-and-a-soda kind of place, but that's the kind of pizza place you think of when you think of NYC pizza, so I was sad to walk by the other day and see that it had been closed, emptied, and gutted. Just next door, to the north, what was once a deli is now behind scaffolding and green plywood--who knows what's coming there. And a few doors over to the south is the building whose facade infamously collapsed during Hurricane Sandy and has not yet been restored. I may just be thinking pessimistic thoughts, but there's something about this stretch of 8th Ave that seems ripe for some developer's something. Even if that's not true, I don't imagine that whatever's going to show up in that spot will be a cheap-and-easy eatery like Mezza Luna." Last time I walked by, the guys who sell...

VANISHED Thomas Rinaldi of NY Neon writes in to let us know that DVD Depot, an adult establishment on 8th Avenue and 45th Street, has closed. Its doors and windows have been stickered over with Thor Equities' "Retail Space Available" signage. Thomas Rinaldi Last year, as Crain's reported, Thor paid $12 million for the two-story building: "The building's sale is a sign of the area's changing face from the seedy video shops and fast-food outlets of yesterday to Times Square's newer breed of trendy tenants . The current tenant in the space is DVD Depot, which deals in adult films and has been there for more than a decade. It is on a month-to-month lease and not expected to remain at the site." Thor's rendering Thor's rendering of what they'd like to see here is the usual dull storefront, ideal for a suburban shopping mall chain. In fact, Thor names many of those chains as selling points in the listing for the space: ...

VANISHED  A tipster wrote in a few weeks ago to report that Di Fiore Marquet Cafe on East 12th had its last day in business after 22 years. While there has been no official word from the owner, no goodbye sign on the door, Marquet has remained shuttered and untouched since, the tables all set for customers who will never come again. An employee has posted on their Facebook page : "Out of business, thanks for your patronage." I don't know why Marquet closed, only that it's been darkened under scaffolding for quite some time, due to the construction of parking garage turned high-end luxury condo building 17 East 12, where the owners consider 12th and University to be "one of the most sought-after areas of the city," reminiscent of "the historic Gold Coast." The block is changing . In addition to 17 East 12, the Bowlmor building is going luxury condo , too. The stationery store shut down recently , chains are moving in. And let's not...

For my latest essay in Metro NY , a haircut at the Fiumefreddo brothers' barber shop in Park Slope. On a weekday morning, the Fiumefreddo brothers’ Park Slope Barber shop is quiet and easy. Ella Fitzgerald sings from the speakers, followed by Sarah Vaughan. “Hey,” says the barber, “this one could give Ella a run for her money. Her voice has a lot of, what do you call ‘em? Octabels. Is that the word?” Octaves, decibels, the word doesn’t matter. What matters is the sound—and the feeling. The place provides a honeyed sense of calm and connectedness, of being rooted through time, past to present. At this time of day, in high summer, with the door open to Seventh Avenue and a sweet breeze lilting in, the shop is a gentle country of old men. Their silver heads, with fringes of hair, are lovingly palmed and petted by the barber before his scissors start. “How short do you want it today?” “Same as always.” “Sarah Vaughan. What a voice.” “I remember when she died,” says the custo...

As we recently heard, Subway Inn, the beloved dive bar by Bloomingdale's since 1937 , has been given the ax by the building's new owner, World-Wide Real Estate Group. The building is scheduled to be demolished, possibly along with its iconic neon sign, for luxury condos . As of now, they're being forced out by August 20. But Subway Inn is not going down without a fight. They've started a petition and an Indiegogo campaign to help pay for lawyers. "Save Subway Inn! For our Neighborhood and our Family," reads the Indiegogo page . " We believe that New York City is about more than rich investors gobbling up small family businesses to make a quick buck thereby destroying the integrity of the Upper East Side of Manhattan . For more than 40 years -- the ENTIRE Salinas family has poured its heart and soul into this neighborhood landmark." "We call on lawmakers and concerned New Yorkers to STAND UP to these actions, and to stop World-Wide Real...

The collapsed and (almost) resurrected Chumley's just got a piece of its old self back. The front door was re-installed just yesterday. yesterday The door looks to be the original antique, albeit with a new green paint job. photo: Paul Rush NYC walks A peek inside the building revealed that the work is coming along slowly. The fireplace is in place, but otherwise it still looks like a hollow cinderblock, not yet the warm and cluttered old joint that collapsed in 2007 . The guy supervising the work didn't know when it would reopen. These days, the new neighbors are trying to stop Chumley's from coming back , saying they don't want the noise from this historic literary landmark. Maybe the new Chumley's can "86" all the loudmouths and keep the place as peaceful as it used to be: P.S. The back door has also been re-installed--you can see it through the wide-open windows of the opulent, high-security townhouse next door.

Journalist and author Tim Teeman just did an interview with me over at The Daily Beast. In "The End of New York," we talk about chain stores, cellphones, suburbanization, hyper-gentrification, and polar bears.   Read it here. P.S. You can buy Tim's book, In Bed with Gore Vidal , at Three Lives bookshop in Greenwich Village.

VANISHED On Spring Street in SoHo, the Hair Box barber shop has closed. Signs in the window say: "This has been a barber shop for over 100 years and we are sad to see it go," followed by a frowny face emoticon. Gone are the crazy Styrofoam heads from the window. Gothamist called Hair Box " The Best Place for a Shave " in 2006, and The New York Times profiled the place in 2010: "Many businesses in SoHo have come and gone, but 203 Spring Street has housed a barbershop, through several identities and owners, for over 100 years. It has been the Hair Box since 2001, but two of the shop’s three barbers began working there long before that, including Rocco Milano, 79, who had cut hair there for nearly 40 years before having a stroke in September. (He plans to return once he feels up to it.) Lingering like the combs submerged in dark blue Barbicide is a cast of neighborhood old-timers who sit inside, watching the weather forecast, or outside in lawn...