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A friend sent me the news today that the Second Avenue Deli is closing.

I love her commentary:

"As for this town and the rich, gosh I want a revolution, the rich here have not even an
air of skills or style to be credited with anything. Maybe the lack of struggle and [not having to be] earning
anything numbs people out to evolving.

"This is a town of past reputation. How can you create quality when you can not pay basic
survival costs. So you get rich kids who can spend their time designing and creating a
line of vanity items for other richies, that really are just boring and safe. So the people with new ideas
and skills can not compete with the rich brats and funded students who have all the free
time to shop and think they are so cool because they are here. But they don't add anything.

"Did you hear about
2nd Avenue Deli closing around the corner from my Apt. They have been there 50 years
and were paying nearly $27,000 in rent, and the Landlord wanted to raise the rent to
something around $32,000. Crazy, I can't imagine what the new level of standards are for some
people here now. It is more than just simple greediness, it is more like rapacious greed
without any consideration or restraints."
Went out last night with a merry band of bon vivants... real bright fiesty fierce talented folk who are all ...moving to Jackson Heights!! Seems that the E.V. has pushed em out to Bollywood.... apparently J.H is the new E.V. who knew!? Am ready.... (love the grocerys there and those indian buffets, not to mention all that random Columbian boy trade).
eeek oh seven that is such glum news - I live in Williamsburg and I barely know anyone here anymore. Many people have moved overseas. Or LA of all places. Or Philly. Or anyplace where they have time to make art and live creatively. People used to make fun of me for living in Brooklyn but for a short time it was magic to live here. Because the rest of the world left us the fuck alone to do whatever we wanted. Perhaps NY needs another crime wave. sigh
God how many times I fell asleep there over my $3 plates of fries on Sundays at 5 a.m., makeup running down my face.. Remember Lex? The Daily News yesterday said:

Are last orders in sight for the Meatpacking District landmark Florent?

Real-estate vultures have been circling the beloved Gansevoort St. diner amid rumors that its lease was about to become available.

A knowledgeable source tells me that the lease, in fact, has two years left to go. However, the source also says that it might not be renewed.

"I haven't made any decision either way," owner Florent Morellet tells me about the future of his restaurant. "I have a couple of years to be my fabulous self, so let people talk, and as long as they're talking, it means that I'm still alive."

Morellet has been a tireless activist for local preservation, as well as the gay and HIV-positive communities. (He quirkily keeps track of his T-cell count, an indicator of HIV progression, on the diner's specials board.) The restaurateur and City Council speaker Christine Quinn will be grand marshals of this year's gay pride march, and the AIDS group amfAR plans to honor him on June 7 at an Ellis Island gala.

Florent has been a pilgrimage destination for celebrities, club kids, families and new arrivals to New York for 21 years. Pals say they expect to mount a campaign to keep the restaurant open.
Last edited by Michael Madison
Ah, Madge ... the memories of Florent! Mine go even further back than the clocking of your post-Click-n-Drag 6 a.m. mascara runs. I can still remember performing at Florent's Bastille Day celebration in 1992 with my old band Louis Quatorze (we went on right after Sherry Vine as Edith Piaf in granny orthopedic shoes and support hose).

If it does close, can we really call it 'the end of an era'? Seems to me the era of the Meatpacking District already ended some time ago. But Florent's closing would mark it officially I guess, since they were the first ones there.

For a spell I had a studio apartment right next to the Old Homestead Steakhouse, circa 1993-95. It was such a kick when my mom and her brother came to visit me once and I took them to Florent one night for dinner. They had no idea where we were going as we trudged through darkened streets in that foul-smelling air with trannie hookers switching past and giving my uncle the eye. The cobblestones were so slick with lard and grease that my mother almost fell but managed to steady herself against an overflowing dumpster. Naturally I loved every second of the walk. Finally we turn the corner and see the light at the end of Gansevoort with limos outside and fun people going in and out. Home at last!
Last edited by Luxury Lex
Its always the same, when the lease is up the place has to go.
There is no more relocating.
Whomever owns New York New York Casino in Las Vegas should be alerted, maybe Florent's owner can garner a few retirement ducats... let the culture vultures
tear out the fixtures and 'recreate' our beloved last-stop dead-of-night Florent for the middle-American tourists.

BAH
I like S'tan's Las Vegas suggestion. There could be an alternate universe New York there. Kind of like a Twilight Zone scene. One street with Florent, the Second Avenue Deli, CBGB's, etc. You could dose someone here with roofies, fly them to Vegas, dump them on the corner, wait for them to wake up, and then watch them go mad.

The last time I ended up at Florent was around 1993, with this person who said they wanted to break up with me but couldn't quite do it. They kept coming back to fuck all night. And then we would end up at Florent around 3 or 4 AM. And everyone would look at us like they could smell the fornication. By that time in the evening I could care less about a scene and would just slump back from a table, usually massively intoxicated, and fit in without really trying to. But that is what the place was great for if you ask me. As much as there were people straining really hard to be some kind of scenesters there, the place was actually much more amenable to just letting yourself be your old outre' self and not care at all about having to be scrutinized for a hipness factor. In fact, most places in the district there at that time were like that, you could just be your regular old fabulously demimonde self and not give a shit about it being a scene. When there are too many self-conscious people, to my mind that is when a place starts to lose it.
Imagine this:
Florent 6:30 AM. After a very long Jackie. Unseen by the trickle of truckdrivers ordering egg sandwiches and the bombed eurocouple snuggling in the corner, a certain Showgirl's alter-ego, Justine, provides oral service to a certain Meat Market Gnome right at our table...

New York, New York undoubtedly features such performances at its Village eatery, no?
It's Spring. Everything is changing again. Just stand on the street, something will fall on you, or get erected over you. There's a nice Edvard Munch show up now at MoMa.

Let's see. Scenic, the bar that was Guernica, and in its ancient incarnation Robots, recently closed its doors because one of its weeklies got way out of control with regards to substance use and open sex. In the past that would be reason to franchise. But in this era it means time to close. But maybe by the time you arrive it will have opened as The Rack, or something like that, and there will be a momentary resurgence of naughtiness.
ewwwww I don't like to watch

Edvard Munch is more like it, and The Downtown Show!

I would like to ask your okay to burglarize your neighbors' apt. and trash their plasma TV. What are they like when they explode? As satisfying as shooting a regular tube model? Please post their hours, so we all have a shot.

I want to go back to Wonderbar and Hattie's night and etc. etc. it's not there.
And Hot Fruit! Madgie as DJ.

bye lovers of orange
There's also supposed to be a film by Matthew Barney and Bjork opening this week, I think. If you're a Barney fan.

Sorry. I already blasted the neighbors' plasma screen. It was a dissapointment soundwise. But I kept the 2001 Space Odyssey DVD running just for the symphonic overload. I used a huge pair of upholstery shears to whack the screen.

Maybe you can catch the last supper at Florent? We could just make a huge pile of escargot in one of the back booths and stand out front of the place with the door open to beckon all passing queens inside with the promise of a lot of ass.... all that escargot would be wafting out the door and literally pull our marks in. It has worked for me before.
An amazing (AND RARE) bit of good news to share:

quote:


> The New York Times
> July 4, 2006
>
> For $1, a Collective Mixing Art and Radical Politics Turns Itself Into
> Its Own Landlord
>
> By COLIN MOYNIHAN
>
> For decades the stretch of Rivington Street running east from Essex
> Street was a largely forgotten and gritty pocket of the Lower East
> Side, home to bodegas, nail salons and blue-collar residents. Over the
> last 10 years, though, the area has evolved into one of Manhattan's
> trendy neighborhoods, with new restaurants, bars and boutiques.
> Roaming heroin dealers have given way to throngs of young, noisy
> visitors.
>
> Standing on the north side of Rivington, between Suffolk and Clinton
> Streets, is one of the few buildings that have barely changed in two
> decades: a crumbling, four-story structure that at one time was
> inhabited by squatters and now houses ABC No Rio, a community and
> cultural center that seeks to explore the interaction of art and
> radical politics. The building has a prominent place in the lore of
> the Lower East Side, and at times has had a rocky relationship with
> City Hall.
>
> Some of the artists who helped found the group first came together
> with the unsanctioned takeover of an abandoned building on Delancey
> Street. A little later, when members of the group moved a block north
> to a vacant building on Rivington Street, they battled attempts by the
> city to evict them.
>
> Those days of disagreement have finally come to an end.
>
> Last week, the city sold the building, 156 Rivington Street, to ABC No
> Rio for $1, said Neill Coleman, a spokesman for the Department of
> Housing Preservation and Development. The transaction came after years
> of negotiations, and one of the conditions was that the nonprofit
> collective that runs the building had to raise hundreds of thousands
> of dollars to begin renovations. Mr. Coleman said the city sometimes
> sells buildings for a dollar to community or cultural organizations
> because such groups provide a benefit to the public.
>
> "ABC No Rio exists as a resource for people with a diverse set of
> politics and a very broad sense of what is art," Eric Goldhagen, a
> collective member, said. "They can exchange ideas in a nondogmatic
> atmosphere out of which dynamic and interesting projects tend to
> grow."
>
> The group raised its money primarily in small donations, some from
> local backers and some from artists and musicians in other cities and
> countries who had never visited the center but admired its history of
> surviving amid political and economic struggles; many of them faced
> similar difficulties in running performance spaces in expensive urban
> areas.


The whole story is at

Ny Times Story (login required)
Last edited by Chi Chi
Well, not exactly disappearing. But transformed in large part. Interesting to see is what will happen now that the years and years of struggle against the city -the Rudiani years were the hardest- are seemingly over. Will NO RIO slide or actually continue to build? Will it become even more just like another city 'alternative' arts venue that exists really just for a small coterie of insiders (too many examples to mention). Take PS122 as an example, loose collective become exclusive institution. Will NO RIO now just support and promote a small stable of 'art stars' or remain totally open to all comers who have contributions to the area's cultural vitality -actually, that stopped quite some time ago. Principally, it is just good the building can't be turned in to another condo like the one next door to it. There is a core of committed NO RIO 'board members' left but is the art 'community' that lives around it now committed to collectivized, cooperative efforts or are they really rank careerists doing grunge rock or poetry until their cable teevee show contract offer? In one sense even subordinating to the hoop-jumping demanded by the city bureaucracy in order to win the building for $1 is a capitulation and belies a seeping indoctrination to a level of being socialized that will automatically exclude goings on in NO RIO like to that which exploded out of the place from the early '80's through, say, 1996 or 7, after which the creeping institutionalization and neighborhood wash-out left the place bereft of its peak energies. But any level of creative life-living that gets an outlet there is way more than welcome. I do have respect for a few of the steerers of the place who are left. But I do not think the founding sense of total ANARCHY and chaos that got focussed by the place really even exist there at this point. Being unacceptable in an acceptable way isn't the same as avoiding acceptability out of indifference to it. Not at all. Farewell Charming Old New York, hello a bit more well mannered No RIO.
Well, THIS is what is replacing the gorgeous old Variety Theater on 3rd Ave.

Check out their website!
One Ten Third Avenue

Look at all the happy couples enjoying all the cultural riches that the East Village has to offer.
Like Off-Broadway theaters and...
OK, scratch the Off-Broadway theaters.

I'm so glad that Chi Chi and I can enjoy our golden years with these grey haired couples across the street. Maybe I'll meet some guy to golf with and Chi Chi and Anna Nicole can learn bridge!

Attachments

Images (1)
  • 2006_4_110third
funny i meant to talk to you about this as I saw the poster as I crossed the street the other day!
I think it will be less golf and bridge but more folks who can show us how to get into Tao at the weekend and can teach us how to order bottle service at Lotus and how to find THE to-die-for share in the Hamptons.
Urg urg urg!!! I feel a plane ticket to jamaica coming on..........
Last edited by Anna Nicole
Kind of like the luxury rental building that went up on the site of the former World nightclub right across the street from me. Now when I look out my window I'm peering right in to some yuppie woman's designer kitchen. I happened to do this a few days ago in the late afternoon, it was hot so I didn't have a shirt on, the occupant across the street happened to be standing in her window at that exact moment. She immediately threw a curtain on to her window. I'm hanging a very large sign from the roof on the top of my building so everyone will have a great view from their $4,000 a month apartments. The sign that will greet their need for a glimpse of downtown says, FUCK.
Goodbye Peter Cooper & Stuyvesant Town

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/30/nyregion/30stuyvesant...f107e321f&ei=5087%0A

....The deal is likely to lead to profound changes for many of the 25,000 residents of the two complexes, where two-thirds of the apartments have regulated rents at roughly half the market rate. Any new owner paying the equivalent of $450,000 per apartment is going to be eager to create a money-making luxury enclave, real estate executives say.

The sale would only add to the seismic cultural shifts already under way in New York City and especially in Manhattan, where soaring housing costs have made the borough increasingly inhospitable to working-class and middle-class residents. It would be another challenge to Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's effort to stabilize and expand the number of affordable apartments in the city.

"It's really sad," said Suzanne Wasserman, a historian and filmmaker who has lived in Stuyvesant Town since 1989. "New York has always attracted people who aren't just interested in money "” people interested in culture and poetry and music and dance and those young people who are the creative capital of the city. They aren't going to have a place here and probably really don't already. I think it affects everything about city life."
Not mentioned by the Voice article along with the massive sweeping change in the neighborhood is the change that took over the rock n roll scene economically over the past 15 years. It has long since been mostly a 'pay to play' equation with no way for an unsigned or even an indie signed band to make any profit at all by doing live gigs on a local scene. It became what the visual art scene became in Manhattan, the preserve of trust funded youngsters or out of towners who would do a gig in Manhattan just to be able to say they did. When a band rolls up in their $35,000 van and equipment trailer, piles out all that bourgeois furniture they need to rock, and afterwards heads to their next gig in Saddle River NJ, how can there really be any REAL volatile, rebellious boom boom.
S'tan, had to post this..it seems the Meat Market still lives on...

quote:

NEW YORK -- Police are investigating the death of an unidentified man found clad in leather early Wednesday on a Manhattan street.

A dog-walker found the body along Hudson Street in the West Village, police said.

The man, believed to be in his early 40s, was wearing a leather mask, leather clothing and two collars, according to police.

Police said he was slumped over, with one of the collars hooked on the spike of a 4-foot fence.

The medical examiner will determine the cause of death.

© 2006 by The Associated Press


Now THATS the Wild West Side we remember!
Last edited by Chi Chi
RE: Crane Support Collapse at 110 Third Avenue

As all must know from the posts above, construction had beeen going on at the heinous new edifice at 110 Third Avenue, where greed-fueled developers had overnight and without warning raised the venerable old Variety Photoplay building, one of our city's last surviving nickleodeons/vaudeville houses.

This afternoon, a support beam from the giant crane attached to the building fell 20 stories into the street, partially crushing a passing taxi (miraculously both the driver and passenger excaped physically unscathed) and injuring some workers on the crane's body. The incident caused concern about the stabilty of the remaining structure and so a 3 square block of surrounding 13th and Third was cordoned off and evacuated. The Third Avenue stop of the L train is closed as well.

Needless to say, many of our Motherboards compadres, including Empress and Daddy, resided close to the construction site, and are now staying courtesy of friends, thankfully with Casanova, in a "safe house" a few blocks outside of the "danger area."

Since New York 1 seems to be more interested in the filthy Jeanine F. Pirro/Bernard Kerik crookedness and have been only running pictures of the damaged taxi from this afternoon with very little update, I was wondering if anyone else in the East Village had more current information as to when the residents might be permittted to return to their homes.

Any definite breaking info and I shall relay the info to Chi via cell, since they are in an information blackout over there. Thanks.

And definitely send those beams!
Last edited by hatches
Well, according to the fruit man
(the man selling fruit on the street corner
-not the ones in Dick's Bar where we first took refuge)
"People will be let back into their homes at 2 AM".
That was at 5 in the afternoon.
And sure enough, at exactly 2AM we were let back into our house.

ALWAYS listen to the fruit man!

Thanks for all the calls and texts etc.
We are fine.
A little bit drunk but fine.
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