Vanishing New York Backup

There's a new zine in town. Time Warp , its editors say, will be "a sort of rallying cry, to pull people together and to inspire New Yorkers to create positive action against the forces consuming our home and creative culture." The zine aims to "break through the paralyzing nostalgia for the old city." They write, "The condition of our gentrifying city will not improve if we let ourselves wallow in sadness, self pity, and nostalgia." "Why Time Warp? Because PUNK IS NOT DEAD!! Because the situation facing our city (gentrification, class war, suburban invasion, cultural sterilization and parasitism) will not improve if we let ourselves be paralyzed by our longing for the past. We must realize that all is not lost. We must fight to PRESERVE what remains and to RESTORE what has been lost." The editors are looking for stories and artwork about New York City from the 1960s to today. They are currently accepting submissions through the f

The Lambs is America’s oldest professional theatrical club, founded in Manhattan in 1874. It is open to actors, writers, and other theater people. Members have included Fred Astaire, Irving Berlin, George M. Cohan, W.C. Fields, John Philip Sousa, along with thousands more. The club has moved around quite a bit, especially in its early years, starting out at Delmonico’s Restaurant, settling on West 44th for most of the 20th century, and then finally ending up at their current location on West 51st Street in 1976. But after 142 years, The Lambs may have come to the end of the road. Their landlord, the Women's National Republican Club, is hiking the rent -- and the future of this illustrious club is unknown in a city where the rent is too damn high. I chatted via email with Marc Baron, Shepherd of the flock, about The Lambs' history and its possible future. He explained: “The Lambs had a WW1 transport ship named in its honor, a train car in the 1920s (it still exists),

VANISHED When Charlie Mom was forced to close last year , the building at the corner of 6th Avenue and 11th Street had just one street-level business left: The Greenwich Gallery Frame Shop. Now it has none. After 35 years in business, the Greenwich Gallery has shuttered. photo: Richard Morgan On one side of its empty storefront is the empty storefront of Charlie Mom. On the other side is the empty storefront that had once been the amazing Nikos Magazine Shop and has yet to become a Birdbath bakery . More high-rent blight, all were shuttered--after decades in business--due to hiked rent. (I'm willing to bet that's the case here.) With no penalties and no regulations to stop them, the building owner has now emptied all the businesses from the first floor and is leaving them empty. Could they be hoping for a big-box chain store to take it all?  Meanwhile, no one in city government is doing anything to stop the total destruction of New York's distinctive, local

On West 53rd Street, under the green awning for the Hello Deli, located in the CBS building, is an old sign for a lost sandwich shop. Rupert Jee's Hello Deli was famous for its proprietor's appearances on the David Letterman show. But what of the Preview Sandwich Shop? Just look at that gorgeous typeface. What more is there to say?

There have been some rumors going around that the Greek Corner Coffee Shop -- which I first wrote about here -- is on its way out. So I went in and asked around. The place is located on 7th Avenue and 28th Street. It's been there since 1980. It's one of those New York places--cheap, simple, local--that's vanishing without relent. When I went in for lunch, a bunch of tourists standing around outside harangued me. They were trying to decide whether to eat there or at one of the many national chains nearby. "Do you like it?" they asked. Yes. "Is it clean? Is it clean?" They kept repeating this stupid question. "Is it clean?" I did not respond. They went away. I ordered a BLT and talked to the people in the coffee shop. Here's what I learned: The building has been sold. The building might be sold. There are holdouts who won't budge. The building won't be sold. Everything will be okay. Who knows? This whole neighborho

Hogs & Heifers closed last year, after 23 years in the Meatpacking District. As the Daily News reported at the time, "Thor Equities purchased the building on the corner of Washington and W. 13th Sts. in 2013 for about $100 million, and when Hogs’ lease expired last year, the proposed rent jumped to $60,000 a month, from $14,000." photo: Orchard View Here's what the once brassiere-cluttered and colorful honky-tonk bar looks like today. And the inside... Talking about Thor Equities and its boss, Joe Sitt, Hogs co-founder and owner Michelle Dell told the Daily News in 2015: “They don’t give a shit. At the end of the day Thor is a company that deals with chain brands. They make a big display of how honored they are to be in a historic neighborhood, but then they decimate everything that made it historic. What are you going to put in, another Le Pain Quotidien?” Looks like it.

What a thrill it was to round the bend on the 7 train into Long Island City and see the crazy, vivid vista of 5 Pointz, covered in graffiti art. Through the scrim of the dirty train window, all that color. You felt it in your chest. In your heart. That flutter. That sudden flooding of feeling. Remember that? from Untapped Cities Then they whitewashed it and demolished it. And here's what it looks like now when you round that bend. Just a muddy pit. The footprint of what will be more glass, for glitz, more generic towers for more generic life . New York, we are fucking everything up.

In case you're wondering how winter treated that little vintage block on West Street doomed to the wrecking ball , well, it wasn't good. Everything is gone. Gone is the car wash, the auto body shop, and the Westway club. Gone, too, is the little Kullman diner that glittered abandoned among the ailanthus trees, stirring our imaginations. Gone another piece of the real city, New York of usefulness and grit, of diversity and history. New York where you could get a grilled cheese sandwich while waiting for your flat to be fixed. New York of nude dancing and queer back rooms. New York of mortar and brick, of earth tones burnished in the sun. 2013 Gone. And what's to come? The usual thing. Another generic box of luxury glass. Ian Schrager What did Rem Koolhaas say about the Generic City? “The Generic City is what is left after large sections of urban life crossed over to cyberspace. It is a place of weak and distended sensations, few and far between emotions

At Barrow and West Streets, the Keller Hotel has been standing since 1898. Abandoned and boarded up, it is one of the last relics of the old age to remain along a stretch of Manhattan utterly glazed in luxury glitz. The building was landmarked in 2007 and a residential conversion was supposed to happen, but it never did. Now, a green scaffolding wraps around the Keller. The scaffolding joins white X's in boxes, spray painted by the door to indicate that the building is unsafe, possibly with floors collapsed. Does that new scaffolding mean work will finally be done on the old sailor's hotel? If the day of luxury conversion is upon the Keller, it is highly likely that we will lose that beautiful, beat-up old neon sign , a beacon from an Edward Hopper painting to tell us that the city hasn't all gone glam. Here's the sign when it was new, on the Keller in 1940: via NYPL And here's a rare shot from 1975 when the hotel housed Keller's bar, po

Last week I gratefully received two Apple Awards from the Guides Association of New York City . One was for "Outstanding Achievement in Support of New York City Preservation," for #SaveNYC , and the second award was for "Outstanding New York City Website," for Vanishing New York. Congratulations to the other winners and thank you to the GANYC. The apples have a good home, book-ending some antique guides to the city. Click here for more information on the Guides Association and the Apple Awards.

Neighborhood supermarkets are dropping like flies all over the city, pushed out by rising rents. Here goes another. The Associated Supermarket on 14th Street between 7th and 8th Avenues is being forced to close by a 500%+ rent increase from its landlord, Pan Am Equities. Councilmember Corey Johnson and a bunch of other folks will be protesting this Sunday, March 13, at 1:30 pm. They say: "This supermarket is an important source of affordable groceries for the residents of Chelsea and Greenwich Village. Join us on Sunday as we call on the landlord to negotiate in good faith and preserve a vital source of affordable groceries."

You may recall, back in 2008 or 2009, a building on 8th Avenue between 46th and 47th came down and revealed a fantastic ghost sign . Rooms with steam heat, housekeeping, hot and cold water. Superimposed over a cigar box. A beauty. Then another building came down , and a new building went up, the Hotel RIU Plaza . The tower was set back far enough that it did not cover the ghost sign. Still, how long could it last? Would the powers that be really let the sacred tourists look out from their gleaming windows of the RIU Plaza at a gorgeously scuzzy antique like this? No. On a recent visit to Times Square, I found the ghost sign has been wiped out. Buffed. Whitewashed. Destroyed beneath a thick coat of gray paint. Gone. In this city, nothing old is allowed to stay.

If you're on Facebook, you know about the new "reactions," a set of emojis you can choose to react to a post. Instead of just "like," you can now express: Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry. You can probably guess that this is all about collecting emotional data for the purpose of advertising. But it also provides data to the individual user about how readers are reacting to their posts. And that confirmed something I've long suspected about the emotional state of New Yorkers--at least the ones who follow Vanishing New York. Last week, we experienced a number of losses in the city, especially in the East Village. Trash & Vaudeville left St. Mark's Place. St. Mark's Bookshop shuttered for good. The Stage restaurant announced it would not reopen . I posted the news on my Facebook page and people reacted. While the majority still used the old "like" button, many others opted for an emoji. How do people feel about these closures?

Before the corpse could get cold this week, movers have already started emptying out the recently shuttered Trash & Vaudeville. The legendary punk shop closed this past Sunday. It is moving to a smaller space on 7th Street. According to the Times , owner Ray Goodman "decided to relocate because of the rent, which had risen to $45,000, and because the street, once synonymous with punk culture, 'became a food court,' he said." If The Gap and 7-Eleven and the 9 million Japanese restaurants and fro-yo joints didn't kill the iconoclastic soul of St. Mark's, well, the loss of Trash & Vaudeville has got to be the final nail in the coffin. (What's left to lose? St. Mark's Comics, Grassroots...) The Trash & Vaudeville movers moved quickly. Out went alien heads, framed Ramones posters, and Doc Martens boot stands. Boxes, crates, and lots of hot-pink bags. A crowd of mannequins, still dressed in their Blondie t-shirts and chaos pant

VANISHED After being forced to close after the Second Avenue explosion , after fighting eviction from their landlord, Icon Realty , and crowdfunding for support, The Stage just announced they will not be reopening. On Facebook they write: "Today we officially close our doors....As overwhelmingly unfortunate as it is, it's always important to look on the bright side of things. Time to say goodbye to yesterday and hello to tomorrow." Last night, their metal gates were open, causing some of us to hope for a reopening. Robert Brenner took a photo and wrote on his Facebook page: "Saw the gate up at the Stage Restaurant after being shuttered for months and got hopeful. But my source tells me the landlord was just changing the locks. The landlord has doubled the rent and wants the Stage out of there one way or another." And it's another heartbreaking loss for the East Village. #SaveNYC . photo: Robert Brenner Stage owner Roman adds the following

The Chelsea Stone Restoring St. Peter’s Chelsea Guest post by Romy Ashby One of my favorite neighborhood places is St. Peter’s , the pretty old stone church on West 20th between 8th and 9th Avenues where it has stood since 1837. It has a wonderful history , and I love the sight of it on misty nights when the tower all but disappears, leaving just the glowing clock. In nice weather I like to sit on the steps in the evening and read a book. Sometimes the mysterious black-and-white churchyard cat emerges from the shadows, at the magic hour before dusk, to examine the glass bowls set out for her at the side of the rectory. That’s a moment when I can feel flooded with quiet love for New York, and all feels right in that little corner of the world. I love the interior as much as the outside of the church--the original pews with their little doors and latches, the Tiffany windows, the wooden balconies, the two magnificent organs , both built by prominent local organ builders of th