Vanishing New York Backup

Back in December I reported that a longtime funeral home on 2nd Avenue in the East Village had closed . I wrote, somewhat facetiously, “Maybe now it will become something really meaningful, like another Duane Reade.” Turns out, that prediction may be coming true. A Duane Reade has been proposed to go right next to the Chase branch that replaced the Second Avenue Deli. Andy Schwartz, great-grandson of founder Sigmund, was kind enough to share vintage photos and give me a tour of the funeral home. We visited the Sanctuary, where Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were memorialized after their execution, and the viewing parlor where Lou Reed and other mourners bid farewell to poet Delmore Schwartz (no relation). 1936: 2nd ave. building replaced by schwartz The funeral home opened in the 1920s on East Fifth Street. In 1938, the building in the photo above ( which housed The Daily Worker ) was demolished and Sigmund built a new building for his business. His son Harry carried it on until retirin...

Tour Manhattanville in pictures before Columbia scrubs it from the map. [ Times ] Give more love to the Iron Triangle before it's gone. [ FNY ] Go to Russo's with Baha and pick up a nice mozz. [ SE ] A fascinating discussion is happening about the ins and outs of kosher gym-going , which I didn't know even existed. Is this another clever satire? [ Gothamist ] We are losing Orchard Street building by building. Bowery Boogie looks at the rubble of #163 and here's demolished 139-141 . One of the lost includes a gallery , recently relocated to Brooklyn. Click here to see what used to be: Starbucks and Whole Foods have increased car traffic in the suburbs : “'It is not just that American households have more cars...it is that they are finding new places to take them.' ...They’re driving to Whole Foods because they don’t like the produce at their neighborhood supermarket. They’re going out to get coffee. (So much of Starbucks’s revenue now comes from drive-through...

Just before the rain swept in yesterday, the Giglio Boys of East Harlem got their handmade, five-ton, five-story tower off the ground. What a thrill to be alongside this massive, bouncing, gilded lily spire hauled on the shoulders of about 100 men and ridden by a brass band, complete with a couple of priests and a guy singing Italian folk songs. Unlike San Gennaro , this feast was small and cozy. Everyone seemed to know each other. There were few outsiders. It felt a little bit like crashing a family reunion. It also had a more traditional Italian ambiance, as if you might stumble upon this event in a Sicilian village. Like other southern Italian organizations, the Giglio feast has a hierarchy . There are capos, lieutenants, and paranzas, the lifters. They wore white caps and Old Glory bandannas that came in plastic packages with their blue t-shirts. Under the weight of the Giglio, the paranzas strained and groaned, their faces turning red, the veins in their arms swelling. The crowd c...

Last spring, I spent a couple of days guest-blogging for the fine folks at the Curbed Network . I'm doing it again this week, along with Restless and following fellow guest-bloggers, EV Grieve and Lost City . As before, I will add links here to stuff I do over there. Thanks for reading in both places. An update on the Hotel Allerton The "future" is coming to Avenue D and it's a motherfucker: Check out the big, awful hideousness The Essex Card Shop on Avenue A is expanding Not that I had great love for the Miracle Grill, but I'm sad to say its garden is about to sprout a condo that's taller than its neighbors: Miracle Grill Garden Goes Condo El Cid Shutters

Went by the shuttered Nikos yesterday , hoping to find it still open, a few offerings left on the racks. The gates were closed, the shop emptied, only the sun-faded journal covers in the windows. I took a few pictures anyway. A man peered in alongside me. "You could get anything here," he said sadly, "I knew this would happen. It was only a matter of time." A fellow Jeremiah. Why does it seem like a super-exclusive club that disguises itself as a used bookstore , in a town and a neighborhood that is helplessly watching its bookstores die one after another, is trying to induce in its neighbors feelings of impotent rage? [ Grub St ] Amanda Burden's underlying plan for the EV/LES: " we want five- to seven-story buildings and small retail on the first and second floors ... By encouraging retail on the side streets and allowing developers more floors in their buildings ..." [ NYDN ] via [ EVG ] Coverage of the Captured screening and interview with Clayt...

Perhaps lesser known than the Giglio festival in Williamsburg, the East Harlem Giglio dates back to about 1900, when immigrants from Southern Italy and Sicily settled throughout this neighborhood, all along the area around Pleasant Avenue. In the 1960s and 70s, the Italians fled Harlem--and took their Giglio with them. From 1971 until 2000, no Giglio danced in Manhattan. I've been lurking around the neighborhood lately and came upon the Giglio Boys prepping for their annual Dance of the Giglio . Men and boys sawed and hammered wood, constructing a tall tower that rivaled the construction cranes nearby. "Giglio" is Italian for "lily," and it's a 5-story, 5-ton tower covered in a papier-mache face decorated with statues of saints and angels. The East Harlem Giglio is topped with a Statue of Liberty. When I returned to Pleasant Avenue last week, the Giglio was complete. I found it standing by itself, without a fence or man to guard it from vandals. But I guess...

Slacktivist Penley makes peace with Bowery Wine--takes aim elsewhere. [ Grub St ] Mickey Mouse may take over your subway station and turn it into a Magical Kingdom of corporate ownership (...he said, looking at real estate listings for other towns, other cities.) [ Gothamist ] Very, very bad news: Nikos, the fantastic and ramshackle and overstuffed magazine shop on the corner of 6th Ave and 11th St, is closing. This was the only place in the entire city you could find the best selection of literary journals, including hard to find ones like New York Quarterly . [ Gothamist ] Nikos' empty racks, photo Sarah Weiser, NYSun But, look, a new used and rare bookshop just opened on the LES . Oops, my mistake, that's a complete impossibility. It's actually a super-exclusive nightclub. [ Grub St ] Long-term EV/LESers, get ready to be rezoned, evicted, and rent-hiked out your ass. [ SLES ] Someone asked why does Bald Man Chocolates repel me? Sure, it's subjective, but watching ...