Vanishing New York Backup

The Strand Bookstore has just issued a plea against the landmarking of its building . I spoke to Leigh Altshuler, Communications Director for the Strand, who explained the unusual situation. "They're building these big, new tech hubs," she said, describing the tech building boom south of Union Square that is threatening the historic neighborhood, driving up speculation and demolition . "And in a trade-off, the Strand and a few other buildings along Broadway are now being calendared for landmarking." But the bookstore and building owner Nancy Bass has not been part of that decision. She didn't receive the LPC's draft designation report until after Thanksgiving, giving the Strand little time to prepare for the public hearing on December 4. Leigh explains that the building is already protected--by the Bass family. "The building is already overbuilt," she says, meaning it has no air rights to sell and it cannot be expanded upon. "There i...

Robert "Bleecker Bob" Plotnik has died. 99snapshots_berman posted the news on Instagram yesterday. Academy Records wrote this farewell: "RIP to Bleecker Bob, a true legend on the NYC record store scene and probably the most singular character among that very idiosyncratic bunch. I first got to know Bob and his wise cracking sarcasm as a teenager in the late 70s as I soiled my fingers flipping through his grimy reused record sleeves. I also quickly learned that he loved an equal dose of sarcasm in return and our interactions were some of my first tastes of what it meant to be a real New Yorker. When I first opened my store in 2001 it was a real badge of honor when he came to check it out and told me it didn’t suck too bad. Catch ya on the B side." Bleecker Bob's Golden Oldies was a legendary record shop in Greenwich Village. In 2013, after 46 years in business, Bleecker Bob's closed , unable to pay the rent hike. While they discussed relocating ,...

VANISHING People keep telling me that Integral Yoga Natural Foods on 13th Street is closing after 45 years in the Village. @MarkMelnick10 shared a photo of the goodbye sign on Twitter. I believe they own the building, but as they say "the retail climate has changed" and "small local stores keep losing ground to big corporate chains." Owning the building doesn't always save you.

Since Amazon announced its controversial plan to move into Long Island City, Queens, New Yorkers have organized in force against the corporate tech giant. On Black Friday, a group called Amazons Against Amazon rallied on the steps of the NYPL Main Branch and marched to the Amazon bookstore on 34th Street, singing anti-Amazon carols while the NYPD guarded the store. Songs including "DeBlasio the Neoliberal Mayor," sung to the tune of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, and Countdown to Amazon HQ2, a.k.a. The 12 Days of Christmas. "Amazon got a buyout and gave to NYC: Skyrocketing rents, No more local bookstores, Tech bro invasions," among other undesirable gifts. More events and actions are being planned by multiple activist groups. Today, Amazons Against Amazon and the Queens Anti-Gentrification Project are calling for a Cyber Monday blackout of Amazon . Also today: Protect Queens: #NoAmazonNYC Nov. 26, 5:00 - 8:00pm Court Square, Long Island City, Q...

VANISHING The Gourmet Garage in Greenwich Village is closing next Tuesday, November 27. Elizabeth sent in these photos and writes: "The straw that broke the camel's back was when they were forced to close August-October last year due to the 2 or 3 floors of luxury housing being added to the top of the building. Forcing customers to shop elsewhere for 3 months doesn't help... So thanks NYC for approving more luxury housing on the backs of residents." Westview News reported in 2017 that the closing would be temporary while the building owner installed "columns to reinforce the building in order to add additional floors for new residential apartments." Temporary has turned out to be permanent. Gourmet Garage was founded in 1981 and started out in SoHo . There are two other locations left mentioned on their website. Everything at the Village location is now 25% off.

In good news for bookstores, Shakespeare & Co. has opened an outpost on the Upper West Side. From the press release: The new store is located at 2020 Broadway (between 69th and 70th Streets) and opened its doors Saturday, November 17. The Upper West Side is a homecoming for Shakespeare & Co. as the original flagship Shakespeare & Co. opened at 81st and Broadway in 1982. “I am thrilled to be returning to our original home on the Upper West Side. We see this as sort of a happier ending to You’ve Got Mail, where Shakespeare finds a new location a few blocks south,” says Dane Neller, the CEO of Shakespeare & Co. “The welcoming and good will wishes from the local residents have been overwhelming. The sales at the Upper West Side store were record-breaking over the weekend.” The company’s expansion plans continue as the Greenwich Village store is slated to open at 450 Sixth Avenue near 11th Street (the site of the old Jefferson Market store) in the spring of next ye...

When the beloved Hell's Kitchen bar McHale's was forced to close in 2006 and replaced by a luxury condo tower, New Yorkers wept. In 2012, its neon sign was salvaged and then resurfaced in a nearby bar . It wasn't McHale's, but one could dream. Now a commenter alerts us that the sign has resurfaced once again-- on ebay . ebay It can be yours for $2,500 -- or else it gets destroyed. The seller writes: "I bought this to repurpose the sign for something else, but was told this was a popular bar in the theater district at one time. Now demolished for more condos. I would prefer this go to someone interested in NYC history or Mchales and so I am giving this one shot, and then it heads off to the shop. This is located in NYC." 2006

Opened in Greenwich Village in 1990, Tea & Sympathy is struggling to survive in a hyper-gentrified neighborhood where small businesses have been decimated by high rents and other pressures. (This is the "tea house" that Governor Cuomo politicized unfairly when Cynthia Nixon was running against him.) Now they've started a GoFundMe online fundraiser to help keep them alive. Owner Nicky Perry writes on the page: "We need your help! We have been holding on by the skin of our teeth for years now and with increasing rent prices, rental taxes and overall increases in the cost of doing business our little tea shop is in dire need of your support! We have stood by and watched all of the local businesses who made the West Village what it is today lose to landlords and buyouts and profit losses. We are trying so hard not to be added to that list. These funds will be used to help lower our loan repayments, pay our vendors, pay our real estate taxes, assist in ou...

Yesterday, after Amazon, Cuomo, and de Blasio announced their widely despised plan to move HQ2 into Queens with massive tax-payer subsidies--and a private helipad gifted to Jeff Bezos (on our dime)--the Empire State Building jumped onboard, sparkling Amazon orange in celebration of the controversial behemoth's sucking up of $1,705,000,000+ in corporate welfare. New Yorkers on Twitter, unhappy with Amazon HQ2, were not pleased -- and swiftly ratioed the tweet with fiercely negative responses. They said "ugh" and "fuck you," "pathetic," and "this sucks and I hate it." They told the building to "read the room" and "Get wrecked by a giant gorilla." Keith Olbermann weighed in: And a couple of folks compared the shameful spectacle to the evil Eye of Sauron:

It's official. Amazon has announced they are opening a headquarters in Long Island City, Queens. Governor Andrew Cuomo and New York State has handed the mega-corporation a sweetheart of a deal--not yet including, as Cuomo suggested, renaming Newtown Creek the Amazon River. Until now, that deal was a protected secret. Here are the jaw-dropping details--from a PDF from the New York State Urban Development Corporation, d/b/a Empire State Development. (Thanks Robin Grearson for sharing on Twitter via Amazon's announcement ): If I'm reading this right, Amazon gets: - a 99-year lease on a whole shit-ton of square footage (more than I can calculate) - base rent of $850,000 per annum ($70,000 per month -- perspective: when Florent was kicked out of the Meatpacking District, its rent went to $50,000 a month. For a small space. Ten years ago.) - a package of incentives valued at up to $1,705,000,000 Those tax-payer funded incentives include: - A capital grant in the ...

Two Boots Pizza on Greenwich Avenue in the Village has been seized "for nonpayment of taxes and is now in the possession of the State of New York." A note from Two Boots in the window says the closure is only temporary and they will reopen shortly. Let's hope so. While we're in front of this lovely antique facade, and while we've been diving into the Municipal Archives tax photos from the 1940s... ...here's what Two Boots looked like when it was the Hanscom Bake Shop.

In some very exciting news , the New York City Municipal Archives has put their 1940s tax photo collection online. That's hundreds of thousands of historical photographs of every (or almost every?) building in New York City. And you no longer have to go down to the Archives to see them (although that makes for a great adventure ). Last night, within an hour of sharing the link on the Vanishing New York Facebook page, the Municipal Archives' Online Gallery crashed. People are clamoring! (It's back up now.) Before that happened, I went down the rabbit hole and got screenshots of a few of my favorite spots. On 8th Avenue off Times Square, here's the vaudeville house built in 1916 that later became The Playpen and then was demolished in 2007 (to become a hotel with Shake Shack): Here's Charle's Garden (which I always thought was spelled Charlie's) before it was Fedora on West 4th Street: And Julius' Bar -- still Julius' Bar (but with a dif...