Vanishing New York Backup

A dream-like dispatch from author Elizabeth Wurtzel (who lives above the hole in the ground that was the St. Denis building, whose illustrious history and miserable death you can read all about here ): I have no idea what is in the dirt next door, but my guess is Love Canal, sewage from the Mississippi, cigarette butts, marijuana ash, slave remains, rats, mice, Three Mile island, Mount Etna, Mount Saint Helen, Dust Bowl, Adam, Eve, serpent, Satan, Chernobyl, Berlin Wall, acid rain, asbestos, uranium, geraniums, 9/11, 7/11, Donner Party, bird beaks, pigeon claws, squirrel tails, Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Mafia hits washed up from the East River, cocaine, syringes, works, broken bottles, Bataan Death March, Manila massacre, Boston Tea Party, frog legs, goldfish, rusty pipes, mutant ninja turtles, alligators from Florida, red algae, yellow fever, Agent Orange, bubonic plague, gold teeth, silver spoons, copper wires, iron ore, Crest with fluoride, whitening strips, stripper tips, dollar b...

Saturday's cash mob for Gem Spa was a great success. I can't tell you how many gallons of U-Bet were used, but the egg cream soda fountain never stopped flowing for three hours, as fans of Gem lined up out the door of the store to get a taste of what the place does best--and to keep them alive. photo: NationofNY The event turned into a "happening," as attendee Lolita Wolf put it in a conversation on the sidewalk, a scene of locals and former locals hanging out and socializing, while characters showed up to perform for the documentary and news cameras, or to just look interesting. One young man, barefoot and with a head of blue hair that looked like cake frosting spooned onto his head, shook a bottle of BBQ sauce and ranted, then settled down to play with Candy the Gem Spa cat. Devlin, a jewelry designer who you might see walking the East Village dressed in leopard print and strumming a guitar, sang an impromptu song about not wanting a bank to move in here. A...

Last night at midnight, all ready for Saturday's cash mob , Gem Spa was transformed -- into a vivid dystopian vision of the new St. Mark's Place. It is now Schitibank, a play on the rumor that Citibank wants to move into the corner space that has been Gem since 1957. As Gem began struggling earlier this summer, it looked shuttered and bare, especially with the newspapers and Zoltar removed from the front, the signs taken down. People thought it was closed--or closing. So I reached out to Tommy Noonan and Doug Cameron of the design firm DCX Accelerator . A few years ago, they staged what they called an “ Artisanal Landlord Price-Hike Sale " for Jesse's Deli in Brooklyn. It brought awareness and customers to Jesse's and I hoped they could do the same for Gem. Tommy and Doug said yes right away--DCX puts 20% of their profits toward "cultural activism" like this--and, with approval from Gem's Parul Patel, they created a (pro bono) full art ins...

Until September 11, 2001, New York was not quite America. From its Dutch beginnings, the city existed as a space apart. Exceptionally able to tolerate, and celebrate, a multiplicity of cultures and ways of living, it had been both the gateway to America for foreign immigrants and the escape from America for those who never fell in line with the American way of normal. New York was a liminal space between inside and outside, a threshold neither here nor there but ultimately itself. It was a city that permitted transgression, the crossing of old boundaries, whether that meant a Jewish immigrant from Russia casting off her wig, or a young man from Nebraska putting his on (with false eyelashes to match). In The Island at the Center of the World, Russell Shorto writes, “It was no coincidence that on September 11, 2001, those who wished to make a symbolic attack on the center of American power chose the World Trade Center as their target. If what made America great was its ingenious openn...

Twitter tipster Sara Harvey, a Brooklyn resident, let me know that something horrifying happened to Papaya Dog on 6th Avenue in the Village. Gisou, Instagram It was turned into a pop-up for hair care products. Expensive hair care products. Dogs and fries were rapidly replaced by honey-infused hair masks and texturizing wave sprays. Yelp has it marked down as " closed ." cititourofficial, Instagram But fear not. The pop-up was only temporary. I gave them a call tonight. They answered "Papaya Dog" and told me "We're back again." Let this be a warning to us all. This Papaya Dog has been under threat of closure, so it may be a matter of time before something like this becomes a permanent installation. Read more here about the last remaining dog-and-papaya shops in town (minus some since then) and why they remain as important as ever to many New Yorkers .

This Saturday, September 14, at 12:00 noon, come spend some money at Gem Spa--and Instagram the shit out of it. At #SaveNYC , we are hosting a Cash Mob to help support this beloved and historic East Village business. Get some stuff--egg creams, pretzels, t-shirts, toothpaste!--and take your photo with a surprise work of guerrilla street art, as an acclaimed group of cultural activists and designers radically transform Gem into a dystopian vision for the new St. Mark’s Place. The event will take place from noon to about 2:00, rain or shine, but you can visit and spend your money any time. Gem Spa is located on St. Mark's Place at the corner of Second Avenue in the East Village. ( View the Facebook invite here .)