Vanishing New York Backup

The East Village/Bowery is slated for yet another luxury boutique hotel, and this time the historic Merchant's House Museum on East 4th Street is under threat. They have issued a call to arms, with instructions on how you can help . Curbed Not only that, but the hotel would mean goodbye to the little one-story garage where the neighborhood's hot dog vendors store their carts -- another small piece of New York's character. The Merchant's House Executive Director, Margaret Halsey Gardiner, writes: The proposed hotel, at 100 feet tall, is in violation of the City's Zoning Resolution. The developer's application for a zoning text amendment – "spot zoning" – would in effect rewrite the law for a series of waivers that benefit the developer alone. At eight stories, the proposed hotel towers over the 4 ½ story Merchant’s House (completely blocking sunlight to our rear garden) and is grossly incompatible with the surrounding buildings and neighbo...

Back in 2009, we said goodbye to the great Amato Opera House , on the Bowery for 60 years. 2009 The building was sold and sold again. Recently, the plywood was removed to reveal this--a stark white box awaiting a luxury chain store or an art gallery or a restaurant. Certainly not a rag-tag, affordable opera house. As Bowery Boogie noted last year, infamous local landlord Steve Croman was "converting 319 Bowery into a mixed-use dwelling befitting Bowery 2.0. Three glitzy, full-floor apartments, including the aforementioned penthouse will sit atop the ground level store. The retail space was last on the market in 2014, asking a whopping $35,000 per month in rent."

UN-VANISHING After seemingly shuttering and inspiring teary goodbyes , the Great Jones Cafe is rising from the almost-dead. Word is shooting around social media, and the cafe's website confirms it: "The Reports of Our Demise Were Greatly Exaggerated (to paraphrase Twain). After a week off, we reopen Wednesday, August 2nd at 5 PM. See you then !!!" Said one commenter on the cafe's Facebook page, "This has been an emotional roller coaster ride." UPDATE: Here's the inside scoop .

There's been all this panicked talk recently about an increased visibility of homeless people. The neoliberal media is worried about a return to the city's "bad old days." Mayor de Blasio just sent a swarm of NYPD to guard Tompkins Square Park from the people who sleep in it. Again, there has been no recent spike in the homeless population--the massive increase happened under Bloomberg's stingy policies. They're just not getting hassled, dragged away, and imprisoned like they were under our previous two mayors. The homeless have always been with us. Which brings me to a 1960 essay by Jack Kerouac, " The Vanishing American Hobo ." Wrote Kerouac, "The American Hobo has a hard time hoboing nowadays due to the increase in police surveillance." Prosperous towns "don’t want old bums any more." Bums, hobos, homeless--they don't vanish because the city takes care of them, giving them psychiatric care and affordable housing. They...

This weekend, May 2 and 3, come downtown for a Jane's Walk about Hyper-Gentrification and Appropriation on the Bowery . I organized and wrote the walk, while Kyle Supley from #SaveNYC will be your knowledgeable and charismatic guide. Jane's Walk is a global "movement of free, citizen-led walking tours inspired by Jane Jacobs." In New York City, the walks are sponsored by the Municipal Arts Society. Visit the site for more on the Bowery walk and many others . Here's a description: For over a century, the Bowery’s character had been of the countercultural sort. Since the late 1800s it had been the sleazy territory of outsiders—punks, artists, bums, queers, and drop-outs, drag queens, prostitutes, tattoo artists, and con men. It was a haven for homosexuals when it was illegal and unsafe to be gay. Groundbreaking artists, including Mark Rothko, moved to the Bowery in the 1950s. More artists arrived through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, including Jean-Michel Basqu...

As the Bowery continues its radical shift from Skid Row, restaurant supply, and lamps to stratospheric luxury, I am always relieved to walk by and see Globe Slicers still in business. It's been in business since 1947. Chances are, unless you run a deli, you're never going to need a slicer. But the place is worth a peek, if only for its windows. They are cluttered with a collection of random items--baseball photos, transistor radios, dolls, books that warn of "Genocide Emergency TODAY." There's a large and eerie doll dressed in a pith helmet and what looks like a Boy Scout uniform, a button pinned to its arm that says STOP IRAN. The interior of the shop is equally fascinating, a cacophony of slicers, boxes, papers, the detritus of 67 years, and a slice (sorry) of the old Bowery, before everything was sleek and clean, sterilized for the comfort of newcomers.

As Grieve reported yesterday, the White House hostel, nee flophouse, has closed forever on the Bowery. The building has been sold and it looks like the 97-year-old place will be demolished, replaced by a 9-story hotel. Awhile back, I went in to take a look around before it vanished. The old Bowery men were mostly gone, just a few "permanent" residents remained. The long, narrow corridors were quiet, except for some snoring. In 2009, the Times visited the White House before it had been turned into a tourist hostel. They described the lobby: "Residents sit hunched over cans of soda or cups of coffee, eyes closed or staring, lost in silence. A man in a wheelchair whose left leg ends in a stump below the knee can often be found there, listening to music on earphones." By the time I got there, the lobby was full of young foreign tourists clicking away on laptops. The Bowery men had been bought out for little money, sent away. Signs still warned, "NO...

While watching Kevin Frech's documentary Bowery Dish , I was excited to see the following shot of 38 East 4th Street, the former tenement that stood next to Bowery Bar: For years, I've been trying to find a photo of this window--and to find out who was behind the signs, a question that remains unanswered. In addition to " Cooper Union: How could you do this to our neighborhood ," there was also a box sign with a red blinking light inside of it. You can just barely see it in the lower left of the window here. I don't remember what it said. A little history: When nightclub developers Eric Goode and Serge Becker opened the "grit-to-glam" celebrity hangout Bowery Bar on the site of an old gas station in 1994, the locals got restless. The Times reported that many members of the neighborhood association and community board argued “that the bar, and others they believe would open in its wake, will erode the character of the area by changing it from a...

VANISHING A tipster writes in about the imminent closing of Plantworks on East 4th Street: "I talked to the owner who said after 40 years they will be losing their lease, and are closing. The rent has gone up from $15k to $34k a month." Plantworks is being essentially kicked out. The shop will shut down May 31, with the outdoor garden center closing June 31.  This may have been in the works for awhile, as Grieve reported back in 2012 when a For Lease sign appeared in the window. Plantworks has been in business since 1974.

Award-winning Village Voice cartoonist M. Wartella has just published a book of his work, Wartella's Strip Show . I picked one up recently at the Comic Arts Brooklyn fest and was impressed, especially by his giddily incendiary "Runnin Scared" pieces, many of which chronicle moments of extreme gentrification in the city. You'll be able to find the book in stores January 14. Until then, you can view an excerpt here and buy it online here --or get a signed edition on ebay . I asked Wartella a few questions about his work. What made you decide to publish a collection of your work and why now? I needed to unload all this crap! I've been cartooning professionally since I was ten years old, so that's 25 years worth of printed matter that was filling my closets. It was time to set it all free and the amazing guys at Burger Records, an awesome little record label outta L.A., they believed in it and made it happen! I'm most interested in your R...

From Savannah, Georgia, CBGB's lives--on a movie set for the 2013 film CBGB . (See EV Grieve for more.) Maya of Visualingual sends in this shot from a friend on the scene... ...and Will, a reader in Savannah, sends in the following. He writes, "1970s NYC, recreated next to Paula Deen's downtown restaurant. All cringing from that aside, I would say this looks pretty cool!" Before we know it, the real New York will be a Synechdoche New York , existing only on sound stages and recreations in other cities. What will remain in the real New York? As our vanished culture reappears across middle America, middle America sets up camp in the city--pieces of Brooklyn become Nantucket , the Village turns into Wisconsin . With the suburbanized city looking more like Anywhere, USA, we'll have to leave the city to get a glimpse of New York.

Back in April, the Hamptons boutique Blue & Cream mounted a "Tribute to Mars Bar" photo exhibit in their Bowery location. Locals were appalled. I wrote about it then, but dared not venture inside for fear of coming out with post-traumatic stress disorder. Well, the exhibit is still up, and I couldn't help myself. Above racks hawking $600 dresses and $1,000 shoes, the ghosts of the old dive bar hang like trophies on a hunter's wall. The faces of barflies look back at shoppers from vanished stools, like the faces of the old Bowery, recalling Skid Row's down and outs--today washed away by the luxury Bowery Tsunami . Where did all those people go? At their feet, the price tags on designer leather jackets flutter ($1,350). The color of the leather? Cognac. At the cash register there's a pile of postcards for the taking. On the front, Blue & Cream has chosen to showcase one of Mars Bar's last murals. The words " The East Village Is Dead " are ...

Tonight, the upscale Bowery (via the Hamptons) boutique Blue & Cream will be hosting a "Tribute to Mars Bar" photo exhibit. Says the press release : "Photographer and native New Yorker, Debby Hymowitz, has captured the essence of this gritty and martyred establishment through her brilliant photos that will help carry on the Mars Bar essence, just as it should be remembered. After all, this is Blue & Cream’s neighborhood ." photo: Debby Hymowitz, Blue & Cream site Back in 2010, when the bar was still standing, Blue & Cream's back to the Bowery lookbook described how the photographer "envisioned how a girl who has everything one could want in her wardrobe would dress when confined to this local dive bar." The writing was already on the wall-- authentrification at its height. photo: Debby Hymowitz, Blue & Cream site Of course, we have a thorough understanding of how the forces that birthed Blue & Cream on the ...

Thanks to Karen for calling our attention to the documentary " The Tao of 9 Second Avenue " by Michael I. Schiller. It starts with an image of Mars Bar before it was Mars Bar, but the film is really about the eviction and demolition of the buildings all around it--the rubble that Mars Bar will join later this summer . In the coming demolition, 9 Second Avenue will also fall--it is the last piece of what was, for over a century, a thriving cultural center of the Lower East Side . Mars Bar as a coffee, tea, & spices shop The film tells the story of 7-9 Second Avenue, which was the other side of 291-293 Bowery , and included a chapel on E. 1st St. Built on the site of Gotham Gardens--according to King's, "one of the most popular amusement resorts in the city in the '50s" (that's the 1850s)--the multi-building complex here began as Steuben House (some sources say its name was Volksgarten), later called the Germania Assembly Rooms . In the late ...