Vanishing New York Backup

For my piece in this week's Metro NY , something new that's not so bad. Yet: A new eatery called Hamilton’s Soda Fountain and Luncheonette recently opened in Greenwich Village, on the corner of Marc Jacobs and Marc Jacobs, also known as Bank St. and W. 4th. It’s one of those new retro places that both attracts and repels me, first for its nostalgic verisimilitude, second for its twee self-awareness. The real problem with most of these places is that they serve overpriced items for foodies who lust for fetishized fancywork. They also tend to fill up with the most irritating people on earth. So I approached Hamilton’s with suspicious curiosity. But after checking out their menu and finding it shockingly affordable and filled with plain basics, I tried the place out... ...At Hamilton’s, I was joined by an older lady, whose name I didn’t get, though she told me the story of her 50 years in the Village, and the flower shop she once ran, where gay men were her most appreciati...

From my piece in today's Metro NY: ...Mostly marked by plaques, some of the vaults here have monuments above them. One of the largest belongs to Mangle Minthorne Quakenbos, real estate magnate with a spectacular name. But the most famous here is Preserved Fish—famous for his curious name, not for his life, which was spent in shipping and banking and outliving one wife after another. A cemetery volunteer shared the apocryphal story behind Mr. Fish’s naming: “As a baby, while traveling by ship, he fell overboard. He washed ashore and was found by a whaling captain, who gave him the name.” Because he was like a fish preserved. It’s a pleasure to stroll through a cemetery, a peaceful activity not often possible in Manhattan. As people wandered over the graves, long-time East Villager Helen Stratford played her accordion. She wore a black dress and black-feathered wings, the angel of death playing Andy Williams hits, like “Moon River” and the “Theme from Love Story.” Please...

VANISHING When Melva Max and her husband Jean-François Fraysse moved their restaurant La Lunchonette from the Lower East Side to the remote corner of 10th Avenue and 18th Street in far west Chelsea in 1988, it was a different world. The Meatpacking District was the domain of transgender sex workers, queer sex clubs, and meatpacking plants. The High Line was a derelict rail bed covered in weeds. Gun shots cracked through the night air. Now, 26 years later, this is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in New York City, filled with luxury chain stores and luxury high rises. The sweeping change happened recently, in the blink of an eye—and it is forcing La Lunchonette to shutter. “The neighborhood is so gross now,” Melva says. “It’s all tourists coming for the High Line. People always say, ‘But wasn’t it great for you?’ The High Line has been the cause of my demise.” Since the pricey park opened, Melva’s landlord’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing, and it’s always a real-estate develo...

For this week's piece in Metro NY , a long walk to the Lemon Ice King of Corona. To get to the Lemon Ice King of Corona, especially on a day when the 7 train is running express, you walk from Junction Boulevard in Queens. The walk is half the pleasure. Under the elevated tracks, you go past the botanicas and tarot card readers, the driving schools and tortillerias, the women at sidewalk stands blending fruit into juice. You walk past the giant, flashing signs for Corona Oral Surgery–the ones that inexplicably advertise OB-GYN! OB-GYN!–and turn right onto 104th Street, through the land of barber shops... ...It’s Indian summer, or more Global Warming. The locust trees along the sidewalk are turning gold. The Mets have just one game left to play. At the Lemon Ice King, the candy apples have appeared, another sign of the changing season. A new crowd arrives, taking vivid colors into their hands—pistachio green, cherry red, blueberry blue. No one buys a candy apple. They’re not ...

For today's Metro NY , a visit to the Floating Library: Across the ship, readers lounge on mattresses and chairs, books in hand. All mobile devices must be powered off. The Floating Library is an analog experience. Swaying in the water, bumping against big rubber fenders that keen against the dock, the Lilac smells sweetly of rust and rot, of the saline Hudson and time gone by. Like a library, it is peacefully quiet. The only racket comes from the loud, intrusive music of the mini-golf course across the pier, another dubious amenity of the city’s suburbanization. Onboard, though roped to the city, you are yet away from it. The 1933 lighthouse tender is a floating artifact, a lovely ruin through which you are free to roam, peering through portholes and poking into musty rooms washed in river light. Read the whole piece at Metro NY

From my piece in today's Metro NY : On a Saturday morning at the Hua Mei Bird Garden in Sara D. Roosevelt Park, where the Lower East Side rubs up against Chinatown, the trees are full of birdcages. Half shrouded in white cloths, they look like Halloween ghosts, bouncing a little in the branches. Up close, you find that each one is carved from bamboo and contains a single songbird... ...It’s the end of summer. The air has shifted. Already, the leaves of the London Plane trees are brown and falling. One drops into my lap, like a living thing, and I think of a line from a poem by Lawrence Ferlinghetti: “Outside the leaves were falling and they cried Too soon! too soon!” Please read the whole essay here.

For my piece in this week's Metro , a visit to the Battle of Brooklyn celebration. On a beautifully temperate Sunday afternoon, I went to Green-Wood Cemetery to watch a group of Revolutionary War reenactors celebrate the Battle of Brooklyn. Dressed in their eighteenth-century best, they stuffed a cannon with balls of tinfoil and shot them towards the distant harbor. “Cover your ears,” warned a man in a tricorn hat before the boom and the ring of floating smoke. The monk parrots nesting in the nearby trees were not pleased. Benjamin Franklin walked around with his kite, ostensibly waiting for lightning to strike, but the sky was stormless, a clear summer blue. Another man held up a leafy twig, explaining, “This is from a tree planted during the American Revolution. It grows in Woodside, Queens. I think it’s called a beech tree, but I’m really not sure.” I walked to the top of Battle Hill to look at the statue of Minerva. In her helmet and armored breastplate, she waves down ...

For my piece in this week's Metro NY , a visit to Dononue's Steak House on Lexington near 64th. ...it’s the people who really take you back to an older New York, before restaurant chatter was about nothing but money, work, and the latest technological toy—before people became so boring. At lunchtime, around the bar at Donohue’s, you’ll find the real New Yorkers. The scientist sipping a Manhattan knows everything about everything. The older lady quaffing white wine sounds exactly like Maureen O’Sullivan, with a slight slur that makes her only more elegant. The bartender, with his German accent, referees the conversation with jokes. In a discussion that bounces from George Orwell to life in India, a newspaper headline shifts the talk to Robin Williams. Comedians really are unhappy people, the group decides. “It’s the old Pagliacci thing,” says the scientist. “The weeping clown. It’s the misery behind the laughter.” Jerry Lewis? Miserable. Lenny Bruce? Wretched. Milton...

For my column in today's Metro NY , a visit to Leo's Latticini in Corona, Queens. “Is this your first time here?” she asks from the kitchen, her hands over a basin of milky water where she’s pulling mozzarella like it’s taffy. I nod. I must look lost. “You like mozzarella? Come. Taste.” She rips off a hunk of the soft cheese, squeezes it in her dripping fist, and thrusts it towards me. Like a good Catholic faced with the Eucharist, I take and I eat. The fresh cheese is warm, silky, and delicious. “Chew it good,” she says. This is my introduction to Irene DeBenedittis of Leo’s Laticcini, also known as Mama’s of Corona. Irene makes the mozzarella and her sister Marie does the cooking—turkey with gravy, roast pork, manicotti, you name it. “I don’t use recipes,” says Marie. “I just go on instinct" ... Please read the rest of the essay here .

For my latest essay in Metro NY , a haircut at the Fiumefreddo brothers' barber shop in Park Slope. On a weekday morning, the Fiumefreddo brothers’ Park Slope Barber shop is quiet and easy. Ella Fitzgerald sings from the speakers, followed by Sarah Vaughan. “Hey,” says the barber, “this one could give Ella a run for her money. Her voice has a lot of, what do you call ‘em? Octabels. Is that the word?” Octaves, decibels, the word doesn’t matter. What matters is the sound—and the feeling. The place provides a honeyed sense of calm and connectedness, of being rooted through time, past to present. At this time of day, in high summer, with the door open to Seventh Avenue and a sweet breeze lilting in, the shop is a gentle country of old men. Their silver heads, with fringes of hair, are lovingly palmed and petted by the barber before his scissors start. “How short do you want it today?” “Same as always.” “Sarah Vaughan. What a voice.” “I remember when she died,” says the custo...

In my latest essay for Metro NY , I venture down into Smalls jazz club for the Wednesday night Tap Jam: On a recent summer night I wandered past Smalls jazz club on West 10th Street in the Village. The Maine Coon cat reclining on the doorstep caught my attention, and the chalkboard announcement of “Tap Jam” held it. The cat is called Minnow and the Tap Jam is not to be missed. On Wednesday nights, from 6:00 until 9:00 p.m., the basement club fills up with dancers. Dressed casually in shorts and t-shirts, baseball caps, and summer dresses, they are an unassuming group. No sequins, no bugle beads. No ramrod dancer’s posture or louche way of walking. On the street, you wouldn’t notice them. Then they put on their tap shoes. Michela Marino Lerman, the host of the jam and tap dancer extraordinaire, calls out a name and asks, “You got your shoes on?” ... Read the rest of the essay here

Starting this week, I'm trying my hand at a weekly column over at Metro NY on any and all things New York City. For my first essay, it's lunchtime at El Quijote. Read the piece at Metro here Lunchtime at El Quijote is a quiet affair. Classical music plays overhead, a series of waltzes, giving you space to hear yourself think. Patrons are gray-haired, hushed, some of them in singles, sitting with white napkins on their laps, not reading, just sitting. No one, not even once, takes out a cell phone. They sit without anxiety, self-contained. The waiter, dressed in his admiral's jacket, glides silently among the tables, bearing platters of meat and fish, cocktails, and salads. Bread arrives in a wire basket adorned with a paper doily. At the far end of the dining room, mounted on a wall painted with sky, a group of windmills slowly turn. The dreary ceiling, scalloped in stucco, brazenly shows its age, untroubled by the dark spots and cracks. Dim chandeliers hang by...