Vanishing New York Backup

At the end of each year, since 2007, I offer a list of places that vanished during the year. These are the ones I covered on the blog, but there were many more (and I've been blogging much less lately). Please add those not included here in the comments. Click the highlighted name to go to the post for more info. And for previous years' vanishings, just scroll down to the bottom. Greek Corner Coffee Shop , since 1980. Reason for closure unknown--possible sale of building to new owner Le Train Bleu , since 1980. Closed by Bloomingdale's. Fong Inn Too , in Chinatown since 1933. Family couldn't keep it going, sold the building. Leo Design , since 1995 on Bleecker, kicked out, then another 7 years on Hudson, where the rent was too high. The Waldorf-Astoria Hotel , since 1931. Sold to a Chinese corporation, closed for a renovation into luxury condos. Chez Jacqueline , since 1982. Reason unknown. Lenox Lounge , since 1939. Closed by rent hike in 2012, this yea...

Democratic mayoral candidate Sal Albanese has qualified to debate Mayor Bill de Blasio. The first primary debate is scheduled for August 23 at 7:00PM (aired on NY1 and WNYC radio), and the second is on September 6 at 7:00PM (WCBS-TV, 1010 WINS, and NewsRadio 88). photo: Jennifer S. Altman From the press release: "Sal Albanese’s mayoral campaign reports that not only has the campaign had its best fundraising month ever – bringing in about $65,000 – but that the campaign has exceeded the financial 'raise and spend' bar required to be in the official debates. The campaign has raised approximately $190,000, and has spent at least $174,000. 'I never doubted that we’d raise enough money to be on the debate stage,' said Albanese. 'Each month, as our message gets out, we are raising more awareness and more money. Everywhere we go, people are unenthused and even angry about Mayor de Blasio’s performance. He is uninterested in the job, and is a part-time May...

The Village Voice , historically the alternative voice of New York City, is struggling to save its soul. Two years ago the paper was purchased by Peter Barbey , a member of one of America's 50 richest families, according to Forbes . It looked good at first. The staff was hopeful. "The atmosphere at the Voice , though, quickly soured," Hamilton Nolan explains in his thorough piece on the story, " The Village Voice's Liberal Savior Owner Is Trying to Crush its Union ." An editor was hired and fired. The paper got a cosmetic overhaul. And Barbey "is no longer perceived as the hero who will save the day." Union negotiations have been especially tough. In his article, Nolan lays out the details of what could be lost, including Affirmative Action, child care leave, sick days, severance, and much more. In response, earlier this week, a host of respected authors and journalists signed an Open Letter to Peter Barbey . "We stand in solidarity ...

Come celebrate the publication of Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul . Where: Housing Works Bookstore Cafe 126 Crosby St, NYC When: Thursday, July 27, 7:00pm Books will be on sale. I'll be reading and signing. There will be refreshments. And--bonus!--downtown legend, the great Penny Arcade, will be performing. Looking forward to seeing you there! View the invite and RSVP on Facebook

As more and more mom and pops vanish from the face of New York City, people are getting sick of it, and the idea of saving them keeps coming up in the media. This past week, NY1's "In Focus" with Cheryl Wills had two segments on the subject. In the first ( watch here ), Wills talked with Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and Queens Councilman Eric Ulrich about the problem of chain stores in the city. As Brewer noted, "We don't live in a mall in the middle of Minnesota. We live in New York City." Of course, without real policy changes, like the Small Business Jobs Survival Act or commercial rent control, like we had from 1945 - 1963 , New York's looking an awful lot like a mall in Minnesota. And it will only get worse. In the second segment ( watch here ), Wills spoke with The Commissioner of the NYC Small Business Services, Gregg Bishop, and the President and CEO of the Greater New York Chamber of Commerce, Mark Jaffe. Unfortunately,...

At the end of each year, since 2007, I offer a list of places that vanished during the year. These are the ones I covered on the blog, but there were many more (and I've been blogging less lately). Please add those not included here in the comments. Click the highlighted name to go to the post for more info. And for previous years' vanishings, just scroll down to the bottom. Ziegfeld Cinema Forced to close after 46 years. I still want to know what happened to the artifacts from the Ziegfeld Museum. St. Mark's Bookshop Finally shuttered after a long fight to save it. 39 years old. I miss it every day. Left Bank Books The cost of doing business was too high. 24 years old. 69 Bayard The landlord hiked the rent on this 80-something-year-old Chinatown classic. Gene's Coffee Shop Just a regular little place that had been around for decades. Evicted. The Stage Restaurant After being forced to close after the Second Avenue explosion, after fighting eviction ...

Reader Pat lets us know: "a new diner finally replaced the old Lyric," in Gramercy. "Don't know much else, I only used to get breakfast in the Lyric, so not sure how the prices compare. Anyway, it is a diner, the new Tivoli." The Lyric vanished, then returned, then vanished again last spring. This summer, DNA reported that Gus Kassimis, owner of the Gemini Diner on East 35th, planned to open the Tivoli. He calls it a "traditional diner with newer flair." Score one for Greek diners. And just in time, too. Yesterday, George Blecher at the Times published an evocative piece about the city's vanishing diner culture : "Losing New York diner culture would probably be a watershed in the city’s history. How will New Yorkers get along without these antidotes to urban loneliness?" “The coffee shop orients us here, in this city and not another,” Jeremiah Moss, of the blog Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, said. “If we are regulars, we bec...

Jonny Aspen , Associate Professor at the Institute of Urbanism and Landscape in Oslo, Norway, coined the term " Zombie Urbanism " in 2013 to describe the way many urban environments are being designed today. I like the term, so I got in touch with Aspen and asked him about it--and how it applies to the redesigning of New York City, including the High Line, Hudson Yards, Times Square, and the new Astor Place. Astor Place Q: Can you give a definition of what you call "zombie urbanism"? A: I’ve coined the concept in order to encircle what seems to be an increasingly more prevalent, and increasingly more worrying, phenomenon in contemporary urban development, namely the cliché-like way that many developers and designers talk about and deal with urban environments in general and public areas and places more specifically. On the one hand I use it as a reference to what seems to have developed into an increasingly more homogeneous discourse, globally speaking, on...

If you're on Facebook, you know about the new "reactions," a set of emojis you can choose to react to a post. Instead of just "like," you can now express: Love, Haha, Wow, Sad, and Angry. You can probably guess that this is all about collecting emotional data for the purpose of advertising. But it also provides data to the individual user about how readers are reacting to their posts. And that confirmed something I've long suspected about the emotional state of New Yorkers--at least the ones who follow Vanishing New York. Last week, we experienced a number of losses in the city, especially in the East Village. Trash & Vaudeville left St. Mark's Place. St. Mark's Bookshop shuttered for good. The Stage restaurant announced it would not reopen . I posted the news on my Facebook page and people reacted. While the majority still used the old "like" button, many others opted for an emoji. How do people feel about these closures? ...

At the end of each year, since 2007, I offer a list of places that vanished during the year. These are the ones I covered on the blog, but there were many more. Please add those not included here in the comments. Click the highlighted name to go to the post for more info. And for previous years' vanishings, just scroll down to the bottom. Avignone Chemist Since 1832. Killed by its new landlord, a hedge fund that tripled the rent. The Unicorn Just 21 years old. Another piece of gay Chelsea gone. Rent increase. La Parisienne Since 1950. Cause of death unknown. Winnie's 28 years in Chinatown, beloved by gangsters and karaoke kids alike. Could not get a new lease from the landlord. Moran's Since 1957. Building sold, a new restaurant took over the space. Caffe Dante 100 years old. Sold by the owners. Penn Books Since 1962. Eagle Provisions Over 75 years old. Owners opted to close in a neighborhood where they no longer fit. Louis Shoe Rebuilders On t...

This is the mohawk wig that Robert DeNiro wore to play Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver . If you want to commune with it "in person," you can find it at the Museum of the Moving Image . Merry Christmas.

Riding the Nostalgia Train sounds like something you do when you're lost in reverie and memory, pining for what used to be. If that's what it is, then many New Yorkers are casting backwards through time on Sundays this month , riding antique subway cars along the M Line, from Second Avenue to Queens Plaza and back again. The people on the Nostalgia Train are a different breed. Some come dressed in period costume, Depression-era hats and coats, shoes and neckties, dark lipstick shades of another epoch. These otherworldly anachronisms dance on the station platform to the music of a little swing band, the slick-haired singer crooning "Night and Day." Others come in MTA paraphernalia, railfans dressed in t-shirts and knit winter caps proclaiming their favorite subway line. The F and the 6 are tops. One young man sits grinning, running through a near constant patter of conductor announcements. He's got the script down and compulsively, giddily recites its lengt...

There's a panic spreading across a certain sector of the city. Pre-Giuliani New York is coming back! For mega-realtor Robert Knakal at the Commercial Observer , crime is "increasing like wildfire." And along with all the "shootings and murders" comes "an alarming degradation in quality of life issues, which mayors Giuliani and Bloomberg worked so hard to improve." The terror? Squeegee guys and homeless people. All of this, Knakal argues, is bad for tourism and the high price of commercial real estate. "Fuck You Pay Me" guy, with anarchy tattoo, Times Square The New York Post is having a field day with this idea that New York is experiencing an increase in its homeless population. John Podhoretz is worried about the degradation of the urban streetscape . He wrote about high-rent blight, all those shuttered businesses sitting dead due to insane rent hikes, then argued about an apparent increase in aggressive "panhandlers fr...

Last week, author and journalist Amy Rose Spiegel asked me to make a diary of my Saturday for her site Enormous Eye, where writers record the details of their Saturdays, including people like Luc Sante and Tavi Gevinson , and a whole bunch more. Here are a few photos to accompany my Saturday diary, which you can read here , should you so desire.

Last week, I put up a new website: #SaveNYC . It came out of the SaveNYC Facebook group , which came out of the fight to save Cafe Edison. It felt like we had some momentum there and I wanted to keep it going, to bring together many voices in support of legislation and zoning to protect the city's beleaguered small businesses and vanishing cultural fabric. Maybe, with enough voices shouting together, City Hall will listen. #SaveNYC has already gotten media attention--from DNAInfo and The Atlantic 's Citylab , with inquiries from major television news. But we need more of you on the site, telling City Hall what you want to see happen. There are two ways to get your voice heard on #SaveNYC: Make a video statement or write your statement .  A video statement will have more of an impact--and it's easy to do. It requires a simple camera--a point-and-shoot or the one in your smartphone will do the trick. Then upload it to Youtube and send in the link. No need for fanc...

Last week, the Observer published an Op-Ed entitled "The Tyranny of Nostalgia." In the article, Anthony L. Fisher essentially named me as Nostalgia Tyrant #1. (If only!) There's so much to argue against in the piece, but I've said it all before, in depth, a million times . So I'm taking the Bartleby route on this one. That said, one line has stuck with me: "Not too many people eat hot dogs anymore." This is the real reason, says Fisher, that Gray's Papaya was booted from 8th Street and replaced with a Liquiteria . We've been hearing this argument lately. It goes: Tastes have changed, "people" aren't going to "those places" anymore, and that's why they vanish. But there is one reason why Gray's Papaya closed--the landlord nearly doubled the rent. Rent hike or denial of lease renewal is almost always the reason our favorite old places close . New Yorkers eat hot dogs. Unfortunately, low-priced everyday frank...