Vanishing New York Backup

Janko Puls is a journalist and photographer--and also a reader of this blog. He recently published Point of View New York City , a guessing game of locations. Filled with photos of well-known city places, seen from unusual angles, the book challenges readers to test their knowledge of New York. On Thursday, August 7, at 6:30pm , Janko will present the book, along with a slide-show, talk, and guessing game, at the Mid-Manhattan branch of the New York Public Library. Q: What inspired you to do this book? A: I moved here from Germany in 2006 as a journalist and, driven by curiosity, I wanted to get to know my new home, workplace, and playground. During many city walks with my wife, a born Manhattanite, she commented all the time, "This was here, and that was there." To my surprise, I started singing along with her lamentations within a few months. Following blogs like yours and E.V. Grieve's raised my attention further to the rapid changes in the city. Seeing these...

On Sunday, I had a piece published in The Daily News on a new documentary called The Dog, about the real guy behind Dog Day Afternoon . You can read it here in the paper . The unedited, original version of my essay--including a few more details--is here: On a sultry day in August, 1972, John Wojtowicz tried to rob a bank in Brooklyn. He needed the money for his transgender wife’s sex reassignment surgery. He failed. He did succeed, however, in entertaining and titillating the entire city, becoming an “only in New York” cult figure, and getting immortalized by Al Pacino in Dog Day Afternoon . Wojtowicz gave the movie money to his wife, she got her surgery, and he went to prison—where he styled himself as a Gay Liberation icon. “I’m like Babe Ruth, but the gay Babe Ruth,” says Wojtowicz in The Dog , a riveting 100-minute documentary about one man’s unconventional life. After earning high praise on the festival circuit, The Dog , co-directed by Allison Berg and Frank Keraudren...

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

The last business to remain open in the former Bowlmor building on 12th and University has closed, leaving no more. University Pita has shuttered. In their goodbye note, they say they are not relocating. Around the corner, similarly displaced Japonica is relocating. Their plywood is up with a "coming soon" banner. Meanwhile, back at Bowlmor, flowers have appeared in the shuttered gate, along with a note, "In loving memory of Marky B." Mark Braunreuther was Bowlmor's greeter for 16 years. In the Times recently, Jo Certo wrote a memorial goodbye to him , calling him a "benevolent minder, gentleman greeter, peacekeeper on the rowdy corner" and "the mayor of University Place." Now that every single one of the many small businesses in this building have been pushed out--from Bowlmor to Stromboli Pizza--the luxury condo construction can begin. Already, the hardhats are revving their engines. Previously: Bowlmor Universit...

As neighborhood-changing high-end restaurants are shuttering due to high rents that they themselves helped to elevate, the trendy little places that followed in their wake will inevitably follow in their demise. In 1994, the trailer-park, white-trash, small-town theme restaurant Chat 'N Chew opened right across E. 16th street from Union Square Cafe, which opened in 1985. Union Square Cafe is shuttering--and it looks like Chat 'N Chew is already down for the count . Reader Ben writes in, "They closed down for 'renovations' a year or two ago and re-opened with an updated menu and look. Some of the old comfort food was still on the menu but much had been replaced with more upscale, trendy items. They were trying for a new and different crowd. It didn't work. I guess Sunday was the last day because Monday the paper went up on the windows. There is no sign or any indication that the space will re-open or if it's becoming something else." The res...

Recently we saw the former Bleecker St. Records turn into a Starbucks . This week, the former Norman's Sound and Vision record shop has become a Dunkin' Donuts. Monday was their grand opening . Located on Third Avenue between 7th and St. Mark's, Norman's closed in 2012 . The rent was too damn high. " The landlords pushed us out here ," said the owner in a video interview, referring to Williamsburg, where Norman's has since moved. According to the Center for an Urban Future's 2013 " State of the Chains " report, Dunkin Donuts is New York's most plentiful: "For the sixth consecutive year, Dunkin Donuts tops our list as the largest national retailer in New York City, with a total of 515 stores. Over the past year, Dunkin Donuts had a net increase of 39 stores in the city (an 8 percent gain)." Add one more to the growing pile.

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...