Vanishing New York Backup

Jesse Malin just released a video for the title track of his EP Meet Me at the End of the World, an album that Rolling Stone calls "a mix of Lower East Side grit and Simon & Garfunkel Americana pop." The video features the great Ray's Candy and B&H Dairy, two luminaries of the East Village small business scene -- plus a cameo from Ray himself. Check it out:

VANISHING Frankel's clothing shop has been in Brooklyn for a very long time. Tucked into the shadows of the Gowanus Expressway in Sunset Park, the shop's painted bricks announce: "An American Treasure Since 1890," "The One," "The Only," and "We're Still Here." But Frankel's won't be here much longer. Third-generation owner Marty Frankel has decided it's time to pack up and move the shop to Jersey. With its selection of steel-toed boots and Carhartt work clothes, Frankel's caters mostly to laborers. They've covered his doorway with union stickers. "You know how the Jewish people have the mezuzah on the door and they kiss it? The union guys do it with a sticker," Marty says. "They walk out and kiss it." He demonstrates, kissing his fingers and then touching them to the door frame. Before work clothes, Frankel's specialized in western wear. Cowboy boots and cowboy hats. Marty wou

VANISHED After close to four decades, Argo Electronics on Canal Street has closed. Tribeca Citizen shared the news today, writing, "I’d have to wager that the building—and the one(s) to the west—aren’t long for this world." photos from 2015 Argo was a beautiful little remnant of old Canal, its wares organized in cardboard boxes spilling out to the sidewalk, a cacophony of useful junk and stuff. Power cords. Extension cords. Remote controls. Rolls of duct tape. Rolls of masking tape. Motherboards. Keyboards. Key chains. Coffee pots. Flip flops. Watch bands. I never got the chance to go inside, but I always liked the look of the place and photographed it each time I went by, mostly because it had that look. You know the look. The one that says: I won't last much longer in this new New York. For videos of the inside, visit Tribeca Citizen .

Rachel Shuman is the director of the film One October , a time capsule of New York in 2008, "when gentrification is rapidly displacing the working and middle classes, Wall Street is plummeting, and Senator Obama is making his first presidential bid." Along the way, radio host Clay Pigeon talks with everyday New Yorkers to "poignantly reveal urbanist Jane Jacobs’s idea of the 'ballet of the good city sidewalk.'" One October will be screening on November 8, complete with a live score and discussion with the director, at the Rubin Museum. Buy tickets here . I asked Shuman a few questions: JM: You ended up with a film in which many people speak about the changes of the city, about gentrification and "mallification." Did you know you would get that? Was that the intention or an accident of sorts? RS: The film was inspired by Chris Marker’s film "Le Joli Mai," which is portrait of his native Paris in the month of May 1962, a moment wh

Author and musician Josh Alan Friedman was working for Screw magazine, covering the Times Square beat through the late 1970s and early 80s, when he wrote the cult classic Tales of Times Square . Recently, he dug up the tapes he made from that time--interviews with the denizens of the old Deuce--and turned them into a podcast. Tales of Times Square: The Tapes takes you back in time through the voices of "strippers, old fighters, burly-Q men, peep show girls, hustlers, cops," and one man who ran the penny arcade at 42nd and 8th since 1939. I asked Josh a few questions. All photos via Josh Alan Friedman's blackcracker You've had these tapes for decades. What inspired you to digitize and turn them into a podcast now? Two years ago people started asking if I was involved with The Deuce going through on HBO. So I offered to contribute but they wouldn’t take our calls. My wife, Peggy, said, "What about all those cassettes you recorded back in Times Square?

VANISHING Last night, word circulated on social media that HiFi Bar on Avenue A is closing. HiFi was Brownie's from 1989 until 2002, when the concept changed a bit. The Voice called it "a quintessential neighborhood music staple in an era when any indie band with a guitar and a cheap band T-shirt to sell could get a record deal." Those bands included The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, the Strokes, and Death Cab for Cutie. photo of Stuto by Robert Stolarik, for New York Times The bar's co-owner Mike Stuto posted yesterday on his Facebook page : "I (sorta) regret to inform you that my bar HiFi will be closing at the end of this calendar month, ending my 23 year tenure at 169 Avenue A. All parties booked before the end of the month will happen as planned. The story? Quite simply, the renovations we undertook a few years ago to reinvigorate the business were not successful in putting us back on a good financial footing. The generation of people who inhabit this neighb

Next Tuesday, October 24 at 6:30pm, the editors of the book Deconstructing the High Line: Postindustrial Urbanism and the Rise of the Elevated Park will explore the after-effects of the popular luxury park, looking at gentrification along with causes and consequences of the “High Line Effect.” ( See more description and info here .) I asked co-editor Brian Rosa some questions: What motivated you to "deconstruct" the High Line? When the High Line first opened, and for quite awhile, it felt forbidden to critique it in any way. Why this book now? How has the possibility of deconstructing the High Line opened up over time? The genesis for this project was when Christoph Lindner and I first met at an authors’ meeting for a book he was editing, called Global Garbage, in June of 2014. We were wondering out loud why the reception of the High Line had been almost unanimously celebratory. Your op-ed in the New York Times from 2012 , along with a few articles here and there, wa

Last month I reported that Native Leather is closing after 49 years on Bleecker St. As owner Carol Walsh told me, "I was heartbroken when the landlord told me that he would not be offering me a new lease. The last lease expired 2 years ago and since then he has been trying to find a tenant who will pay double what my rent was." Now Carol has found a new location for the shop--at 46 Carmine St. But the move will be a costly one--the old machines have to come out of the basement, the new shop needs a plumber, an electrician, and a new awning. Carol is asking for your help. Too often, when a mom and pop is displaced, they don't last long in the new location, due to the high costs of relocating, the loss of clientele, and often a higher rent. Carol has set up a Gofundme page where you can donate. She writes: "If you were sad to see the big red For Rent sign in my window and equally happy to know that I was moving only a couple of blocks away, then I could rea

VANISHED Peter writes in to say: "The much-loved Chelsea Deli and Bakery on the southeast corner of 23rd and 8th has just closed for good. It had been there since at least 1999, when it was called Breadstix." google streetview And before Breadstix, it was known as S.G.S. Donuts -- I still have a dim memory of that great old sign . Photo from Peter It was a friendly and affordable spot. Unpretentious and easy. Exactly the sort of place that doesn't last anymore. The reason for the closure? Peter says, "Mandy, behind the counter, told us there weren't enough customers lately to pay the rent ." Yesterday was their last day. Photo from Peter

VANISHING I wrote a piece for the Times this week about the closing of Moe's Meat Market, a butcher shop on Elizabeth Street turned into an artist's studio and gallery in 1977. Back then, Bohemians and working-class Italians mixed on a street once affordable, now taken over by luxury. Moe’s Meat Market, in Little Italy, hasn’t been a meat market for 40 years. But the floor is still tiled in black and white, the walls covered in porcelain-enameled tin sheets. When the artist Robert Kobayashi, known as Kobi, bought Moe’s and the rest of its building in 1977, he moved in with his wife, the photographer Kate Keller, and installed his studio in the storefront, leaving the walls intact. As a sculptor who worked with tin, maybe he felt an affinity for the sheet metal. Maybe he just appreciated the history. Read the rest at The Times the basement wine press

VANISHING On Lafayette Street since 1985, The Noho Star still has an old-school vibe that attracts low-key neighborhood people along with New York luminaries like Chuck Close, Wallace Shawn, and Lauren Hutton. The restaurant's sister spot, Temple Bar , opened in 1989. Now both are about to vanish. The owners recently filed a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) with the New York State Department of Labor, indicating plans to lay off Noho Star's staff of 54 workers and close the restaurant on December 31 . Under "Reason for Dislocation," it says "Economic." The same listing is given for Temple Bar--all 13 employees laid off and the place closed December 31. Noho Star and Temple Bar were both opened by George Schwarz , a 1930s German-Jewish emigre who began his New York restaurant empire in 1973 with Elephant and Castle in Greenwich Village, followed by One Fifth (since closed). He then acquired and revived the great Keens Chop

After being pushed off West 4th Street by a rent hike (and replaced by a cafe that's now gone), and then having to leave their next location due to high costs of business, Left Bank Books has a new life online . You can't smell the books. You can't touch the books. But at least you can still find and buy the books . Plus: There's a note in the About section that says the owners "hope to re-open in the Village sometime in the near future." Fingers crossed.

Now and then, against my better judgment, I walk by the shell of the once great Cafe Edison to see how the renovations are coming along. This week, it looks like its replacement, Friedman's, is close to opening. There's neon framing the windows where the Friedman's signage has appeared. They've painted over the once famous powder pink and baby blue walls, turning them beige. Which seems appropriate -- it's going from the best matzo balls and blintzes in town to a gluten-free existence. While the hotel owners originally claimed they would replace Cafe Edison with a "white-tablecloth" restaurant and a "name chef," they later announced that mini-chain Friedman's Lunch would be going in. "Just like the Cafe Edison," reported the Daily News in 2015, "the new restaurant is not some flashy, white-tablecloth type space... It’s a modest, family business." The real-estate broker on the deal told the paper, “It’s old-s

VANISHING After nearly 50 years in business, Matt Umanov Guitars has announced they'll be closing. On the shop's website , Umanov writes: "After fifty-three years of having been in the business of helping so many guitar (and all the other fretted instruments) players have the tools with which to make music, forty-eight of those years at my store here in Greenwich Village, in the great City of New York, it is finally time for me to close this chapter of my life, relax some, travel some, play with the grandkids, all that kind of thing , though I wouldn’t quite call it 'retirement'; I’ll still be around." (Thanks to Jarrod for the tip.) Umanov, a native of Brooklyn, opened his first shop on Bedford Street in 1969 and moved to this spot on Bleecker in 1982. In 2013, he told New York Business Journal : “Bleecker was the shopping street for Italian immigrants in the Village. We had two fish stores, five bakeries, children’s stores and furniture stores

VANISHED When I'm in the neighborhood, along 8th Avenue in the lower 40s and upper 30s, I like to visit the Mayfair Barber Shop . If I need a haircut, I get a haircut. If I don't, I just commune with the place. This past Friday, I attempted a visit, only to find the Mayfair gone. 2013 I was shocked (though by now I shouldn't be) and heartbroken. I had that familiar sense of disorientation--was it here or there? An expanding coffee chain has taken its place, sanitary and generic, its windows full of people staring into screens. This is what change looks like in the city today, all moving in the same direction of sameness. today This corner of 39th and 8th has long been a holdout of the old city, containing the barber shop, next to a combination cobbler/tailor, a Halal fried chicken joint, a liquor store with a good neon sign, and an adult video store. The loss of the Mayfair has me worrying for the whole thing. 2013 It was a gorgeous little barber shop