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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!

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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.
Update on the leather-masked man...

According to Andy Towle:

"The leather-clad man who was found adjoined to a metal fence in New York's West Village last week was a mentally-ill homeless man who "spent his last hours drunkenly regaling Village bar patrons with tales that he was a war veteran who wore a mask to hide his scars and glass eye." Police think the death may have been a suicide."

Towleroad Piece
Farewell Village Voice! What a rotten waste of paper THAT has turned into (La Musto excepted)!!! This week's cover story is some nimrod who used to be on American Idol; last week it was the monogamy-seeking gay rugby player. There is very, very little news anymore - did they completely overlook the crane incident (mere blocks from their offices), Flotilla, Quinn's police-state-like proposals for bars/nightclubs, Foley or even the wretched Pirro/Hevesi brouhahas? It's garbage.
I think Nat Hentof was the last real writer of substance. It has long since been an advertising circular. Maybe there just isn't the readership it needs anymore. Anyway, the 'Village' doesn't really mean the Village anymore either if you think about it. Lately I've started to get the sensation of being invisible myself when on the street, like that old Star Trek episode where there are aliens living at a different speed than the earthlings, I'm living in a different dimension and have become intangible to the critters who now populate the territory -one dimensional people who wear advertisements and consume the image of NY without actually living it. Like CBGB's which is now just a ubiquitous t-shirt worn by types of people who would never have gone to the actual place. Your own cultural proclivities haven't become history, but a kind of residue, a dust of spin-off products. The Village is a kind of archeological site whose cultural remnants are excavated as logos. But hey, Pat Fields has a new store on the Bowery. That's the kind of indifference to collapse I like.
Hie, Romy and Foxy just stayed here at Fingernails for a while on their way back East! I heard alot about the bad new changes.

I was horrified to hear they cut down all the trees around Grace Church, Broadway at 10th Street...as they are building a new gym there.

She said there were posters saying that the trees had 'lived out their full cycle' or something like that... to justify cutting them down. HOW HIDEOUS.

And that "they" tried to tear down (or have continued to tear down) St. Brigid's Church on Avenue B. Smashing stained glass windows and rolling over pews fom the 1820s with bulldozers. The only people who protested were Catholic in Ireland...?

And now there is a whole new thing being zoned called a "Condo Hotel.." Meaning you own a cubical, that you only live in now and then, that you can then rent out to tourists...?

It sort of sounds like living in an elevator.

So NY real estate continues to proliferate as a money-sucking entity. Is there any place like 'home' there?

Romy is a treasure-house of these kinds of horror stories.

Finally I said, Let's try not to think about all this horrible crap and just gaze at the mountainside. She concurred.
Last edited by S'tan
You should see the monster "LUXURY condo" building they are constructing on 13th St A/1st that stretched up to 14th St. It's HUGE and full of all sorts of obnoxious billboards already on what a "LUXURY" building it will be! Urg... I sort of miss the drug dealers that used to be on my doorstep when i used to come home. Mind u, I miss the days when I would walk home (to Horatio St) from Jackie and litterally stagger around huge meat carcass deliveries and men in blood sodden white coats...

Talking of local rags... does ANYONE read that "L" magazine... i don't know anyone who reads that, I find it a confussing difficult read.
Chi Chi and I were walking Casanova last night past this "LUXURY condo" construction site and these kids (about 4 or 5) were attacking a gay kid coming from Boy's Room with sticks.
Luckily American HE-ro Robert Flowryder came to his rescue and chased the hooligans away!
And the police reaction to this attack:
"Gays should know better".

Robert Flowryder (right), American Hero.

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Gee the Ninth Precinct has come a long way. Did anyone catch that officer's badge number or have they started using that black tape on their shields again?

From the nyc.gov website:

"The 9th Precinct encompasses the area from East Houston Street to East 14 Street from Broadway to the East River in Manhattan. Our community prides itself on its diversity... Many cultures are also represented in this area making it a true "melting pot." Being a relatively small command allows the police to interact more closely with the community."

Right.
Richard Hell's Op-Ed about CBGB closing

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/14/opinion/14rhell.html

...very sweet, saying it was where we were kids, we invented it, and of course we don't wanna see it thrown away. Even if it is moldy and stinks.

Apparently they are taking the ACTUAL interiors of the club and moving them to Vegas??? So no it wouldn't have opened yet... Yeccch!

As far as "growing up in CBGB's" went, I did my first-ever Domination session there.
I was sitting with Anya and this freak crawled under our table and offered us $20. to stand on his hands with our spiked heels.
I did it twice!
I'd be curious to see the CBGBs Vegas version. Of course it will not be the same but that can actaully work in its favor. I would never dream of hanging out at the Hard Rock Cafe here in NYC, for example. How hideous. But the Hard Rock Casino & Hotel in Vegas is one of my favorite places, filled with lots of hot guys and fun events, like UFC fights and concerts and very hip table dealers. A highlight of my recent trip there was our mini-baccarat dealer, an aging ex-showgirl who shared anecdotes about Vegas in the 70s when the gangsters still ran it.

I think it's brave of Hilly to try and re-invent the brand, after decades of representing one thing in people's minds. I wish the venture success and will check it out the next time I'm in Vegas.
NYC dive music clubs (endangered species in Manhattan) and Vegas resort properties -two verrrry different business cultures. Probably the biggest hurdle Hilly will have if it ever happens will be to work out a deal he will have enough control over. Vegas deals are made out of $1,000 suits, 40 lawyers, 67 secretaries, mountains of paper and verrry long terms of consideration. They'll roll over Hilly like a pair of two ton dice if he doesn't have decent representation. Then, how does some resort present CB's to the resort vacation crowd? As a show revue? Some kind of Disneyfied sanitary punk rock revue with plenty of sprayed on beer redolence and faux-grunge outfits for the staff? How will it ever book and present unheard of and barely heard of pay-to-play bands on the panel truck touring circuit -it won't of course.

I'd like the presidential suite at CB's.
I want a Crystal ammenity in my room upon check in.
I want front row seats, the $450 ones, to the Plasmatics tribute band.
Get a souvenier snap of me in front of the display case showing facsimile samples of all the drugs ever brought through the front door on the Bowery.

Maybe Hilly should just retire on the million dollars of CB's t-shirts that sell each year and call it an epoch!
It's a given that whatever CBs morphs into in Vegas will be nothing like the original spirit of the original venue. But I'm fine with that. If I were Hilly I'd probably retire on the t-shirt proceeds, but if he still wants to kick he should be thinking, "why try to repeat what I've already done? Re-invent!" CBs Vegas could be part of a hotel chain like Hard Rock booking nothing but tribute bands. Or it could be a standalone bar in seedy old downtown Vegas. Or it could literally be a museum piece, like the Liberace museum, holed up in some tiny strip mall with the orginal walls mounted and perfectly preserved alongside a little old lady tour guide with a pink mohawk. You have to judge it on different terms. I guess I'm the odd one out that way ... I was the only to appreciate Roger Daltrey playing Scrooge at Madison Square Garden while all my friends ripped on him! Youth doesn't last forever.
I just don't see how the original primo dirt and stench of CBGB's is going to survive the trip West. For starters there's a dead zone out there in the desert past Kingston Nevada for 90 miles
to Las Vaguest. And as you pass through it your soul is leeched out of you by the money-grubbing animals.
Y'all didn't know that?
Haven't you read your FUCKING HUNTER THOMPSON?

We predict GENERATIONS of Joey Ramone impersonators making a ghastly-enormous living playing that venue.

Before I get old and ugly next year, when my youth fails to last forever hehehehehhe
I want a job in Las Vaguest
doing Angel Stern doing Her First Session over and over and then I will train someone to impersonate Angel Stern and do that First Session over and over and over, and I also want an Anya Impersonator in her infamous black rubber bodysuit, with both of us in a vitrine grinding our stilettos into the guy's hands and snorting and laughing and spilling beer on the guy's head and etc. etc., etc. and I want to be the one to
hire the scads of cute Chinese girls to impersonate Anya...
and in "The CGBG Showcase Revue" there has to be a segue into the ladies' bathroom where Anya takes OFF the black rubber body suit and I wipe her off and powder her down and and and
of course there will be a steady, long, endless flow of potential 'slaves'
wanting to play
The Guy Who Gets The First Session
and all around us/them will swirl the degenerate cast of staged debaucheries
that will be corporate CBGBs
and
Seven can take tickets and steal from the box office and
we can thus retire filthy rich pigs with no souls who needs one anyway?

oh thats right... to sell it to...
Love,
S'tan
I've always been someone who changes jobs all the time... I've always managed to find fun gigs in creative industries paying top dollar... but this time its TOUGH - real tough... am currently looking for a new job and am finding FOR THE FIRST TIME that the creative industry just can't pay people any more... I don't know where the $ is... I am being forced more an more into muggle-world as they are the only folks paying. NYC NEVER was like this EVER. I'm pretty shocked by it all... never have I had to search so long for a new job and never have I really had to diversify out of my regular industry just to pay the rent... It's sad. But, u know me.. if it wasn't for my tyke I would be OUT of NYC fast....really
Anna, the 'creative' industries are drying up as a kind of canary in the mine thing. The general climate for creativity in the US is on one side getting paved over ( a la the CB's discussion here ). Sectors like the recording industry are going through a complete sea change (notice Tower Records on Broadway and 4th going out of business!) with a concurrent explosion of Do It Yourselfers and teeny tiny storefront labels marketing only on the web and through lower than no budget touring - think they got publicists, market researchers or even street teams? The cultural periodicals in print are sort of in the same predicament. In the city creative people have left in unprecedented numbers leaving whole creative sectors to be populated by the new nee-suburban class. Upper tier commercial production design firms will now do music videos for mid or low earning indie bands and actually take a loss. I myself have found it extremely hard just to book a gig for the kind of performance work that thrived only five or six years ago - the whole creative population of the nation is kind of running with their heads down just trying to make it through an increasingly paranoid social and economic environment. And like the classes in general the creative people in the midrange are disappearing increasingly leaving only the very ultracorporate concerns and brand names and the now burgeoning ultra alternative horde that works for expenses. My former employer during the 90's - a 55 year veteran of the commercial music business- had a very frequently mouthed mantra, "Why do they always treat the artist like shit!?" And it is more apt today than in the last 40 years. It is hard to tell where this is all going but it probably will get worse before it gets better.

But don't dispair too much. You have huge experience and a great depth of personal resources to be on the outs for long.
Ugly Buildings

I was thinking recntly about all of the silver and glass boxy buildings going up around Downtown. I wondered what they might look like in 20 years. Were they designed to last? Is that some fancy sort of composite metal that resists staining? Is that glass unbreakable? Well, my question has been partially answered. I walked past the one on Bowery and Bond today and noticed visible dents in the wall on the outer ground floor. I looked up a bit and saw scratches and discoloration. I knocked on the wall and realized that it's just a thin hollow aluminum-like material. I think they'll all turn into dumps sooner than we think.

High end buildings used to be made of marble and other pretty yet strong types of stone. Toaday's architecture is not only boring, it's flimsy!

It's like invasion of the body snatchers / building snatchers..... once were stood a friendly local bodega or row house is now being fast replaced with construction sites and banners proudly proclaiming "Luxury Condos". Styvesent town is a great example. But where do people live. I couldn't afford to move here in the E.V. And, I loathe the people that can.
I honestly don't know where any of the 'arts' communities are going. New Mexico? Even Williamsburg is a characature of itself now.
I wanna join class war and fight the yuppie scum but i think I'm part of it being forced to work in less creative environments just to pay the rent.
I think it's time I moved to chiapas. Seven are u coming with me?
Anna,
Who can afford to move anywhere these days.
Except maybe back home.
My Dad used to call me "The High Plains Drifter" but I feel more like The High Plains Squatter.

I don't think artists are moving anywhere in particular. Austin?

Miss U. that pic is heart-breaking but I am thrilled to know you can knock the shit over with one well-aimed drunken stilleto kick.
One night F-Major and I did kick a hole in the side of an NYU dorm being built on the Bowery
(across fom the Slide I think it was)
It was literally made out of paper and fibreglas crap.

I keep seeing press on Los Angeles being the astonishingly hip new place for artists. Where you can find a big old studio space and spread out and do welding and stuff like that... I wonder.
Like you used to be able to get a photography studio in Chelsea. Or a place to paint in Soho.
Could there really be real real estate on the cheap, with urban culture and nightlife in the mix?

Round about here on the high mesas there are plenty of artists, as well as artsy-fartsies, but I am still waiting to meet the pack of Kools. I don't think they're at the Hell Hotel with Brown Paul. I have to admit I am not looking that hard. I admit I am into hiding.

Nightlife in New Mexico seems to consist of many mice and rabbits for Binky and Beauregarde to feast on... miles of starshine (the Milky Way)... lunatic DUIs on Blood Alley... a very beautiful 24 hours Chevron Station when you are on empty and 20 more miles to go,
or maybe it's me
with my new purple hair and dark glasses, falling asleep in Whole Foods at closing
in front of the unaffordable bank of white Burgundies, lasciviously re-reading the labels and dreaming of Paris.

xoxoxoxo
Stan
I think we need to bring Commandante Marco here from Chiapas! One of those ersatze 'luxury' buildings went up across the street from me. It took the building code violating developers five fucking years to put it up. I nearly collapsed laughin on the sidewalk one day when I overheard the city code inspectors unceremoniously informing the developers that "You know there are no currently manufactured windows that will fit those holes you made for windows don't you." Now when the ultra yuppoid arriviste who occupied the top floor duplex holds a patio party one floor up and directly across the street from me it sounds like it is right inside my own apartment. It is deplorable to see the very young tennants of that building actually skulk out the front door looking ultra self conscious hoping not to attract too much attention. At least still at this point they are the ones who feel like strangers in their own neighborhood.

I think I will probably hang out here as long as possible since I do enjoy overstaying at any kind of humiliation. I am sure at the first healthy sustained dive in the economy the luxury rentals will be verry hard to rent out and the present occupants will actually wake up and see they are total outsiders.
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The architect of those buildings must be inspired by Bronx Zoo
I wonder what the residents of those buildings are expecting to see from that big glass windows??? Especially those live on below 3rd floor. Hey Confused



quote:
Originally posted by Miss Understood:
Ugly Buildings

I was thinking recntly about all of the silver and glass boxy buildings going up around Downtown. I wondered what they might look like in 20 years. Were they designed to last? Is that some fancy sort of composite metal that resists staining? Is that glass unbreakable? Well, my question has been partially answered. I walked past the one on Bowery and Bond today and noticed visible dents in the wall on the outer ground floor. I looked up a bit and saw scratches and discoloration. I knocked on the wall and realized that it's just a thin hollow aluminum-like material. I think they'll all turn into dumps sooner than we think.

High end buildings used to be made of marble and other pretty yet strong types of stone. Toaday's architecture is not only boring, it's flimsy!

Last edited by MaKi+
I'm reading a fantastic book called New York: An Illustrated History, by Ric Burns and James Sanders. It's the companion to the series you might have seen on PBS. Amazing pictures, but a really good read, too. Came across a poignant quote today
quote:
New York is notoriously the largest and least loved of any of our great cities. Why should it be loved as a city? It is never the same city for a dozen years altogether. A man born forty years ago finds nothing, absolutely nothing, of the New York he knew. If he chances to stumble upon a few old houses not yet leveled, he is fortunate. But the landmarks, the objects, which marked the city to him, as a city, are gone.

-- Harper's Monthly, 1856


The more things change...
Got this message in My Space today:
December 19, 2006 -- The former Episcopal church that once housed the sacrilegious Limelight nightclub will be born again - as a retail mini-mall.

Now known as the Avalon nightclub, the legendary 12,000-square-foot venue on Sixth Avenue at West 20th Street will shutter its doors in early 2007.

"The landlord has decided that he doesn't want to go forward with another nightclub," said broker Frank Terzulli, of Winnick Realty Group.

"He's going to cut it up for retail tenants and a restaurant with patio seating."

Terzulli added, "The area is becoming more upscale with high-priced condos and stores, and that will make it more difficult to get permits from the community board" for a nightclub.

Cops have been cracking down on Chelsea nightclubs and their rowdy and sometimes violent patrons since the murder last summer of 18-year-old Jennifer Moore, who was killed after a night of drinking at the Guest House nightspot.



cut and paste the link below for the complete story.

http://www.nypost.com/seven/12192006/news/regionalnews/...news_braden_keil.htm
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NOT SO FAST!!

Tricia Romano calls the club scene differently. According to her expose in this week's Village Voice, bottle service is on the way out and art/culture/intelligensia/sin is on its way back in. Pity I'm so sick of it all. A cup of tea at Rapture is good enough for me.

Read it and weep:

Put a Cork in it

quote:
Nightclubs are always opening (and closing) in New York, but this mini-surge of fresh venues is built on music and art, not the bling of bottle service, signaling the beginning of a hopeful new era in New York nightlife, one where the artists, musicians, and DJs"”tired of the bottle service boom bullying clubs into a world of materialism and monotony"”take back the night.
This should perhaps go under nightclubs. Or perhaps the nightclubs topic should just move here altogether.

I always look forward to making the rounds this time of year, catching up with old friends and generally just 'living' a little more; I really get caught up in the festiveness of the season, the socializing, the maybe too much drinking..all of which I found at the lovely RAPTURE recently, mmmmmm.

So, feeling in the holiday spirit, and just wanting to throw back some drinks in an interesting crowd, my man and I got all gussied up Tuesday night and headed over to our one reliable--Happy Valley--only to find it closed. Boy have I been out of the loop. There we sat in the cab, already a little tipsy, faces done, outfits on, staring out the window at the big grey door, barred and barren. My first reaction was embarassment. How could I not have known?

I was never what you'd call a regular, but despite mixed feelings about Suzanne and Kenny, I always had a good time there. More than most places over the past year, you could usually count on a good dozen (or two!) turned-out freaks, posing or on the dance floor, to watch and admire.

Talk about all dressed up and no place to go. As the cabbie sighed in his seat, waiting for us to get out, I hurriedly directed him to the east village, thinking, 'surly there's a place, some place, to go.' We got out on Bowery. Beige night. Ick. Peeked in. Ick. We kept walking. And as we walked and the giant new construction at Houston began to dwarf us, I suddenly felt so sad. Like such a stranger, in this, my neighborhood. For while I haven't lived in the EV in several years, I still, like many of us, claim it as mine. But it felt so foreign and forbidding.

You know when you just have your mind set on a particular thing, and it doesn't work out the way you wanted? That can be fatal for me. I was sooo in the mood for revelry. But had no idea where to even begin to look for it. Mainly because, probably, it's just that I'm so much more domestic these days, and I *am* out of the loop, and maybe there really are amazing things going on somewhere. And I just don't know about them. Even still, no matter, my getting older, my (albeit it happy) domesticity, my growing un-relation to New York City suddenly hit me all at once. It was a shock. "I don't want to be one of those sourpusses, always down on the city. That's not ME." But maybe it is. We walked a little further and finally shrugged, and in our party clothes, we hailed the next taxi for home.

Got in and I went online in search of an obit for Happy Valley and found the following piece that I had missed when you posted it under Crackdown Chi Chi. Sort of hit home:

Fly Life
Boo!
Halloween triggers another hellish series of misfortunes for New York nightlife
by Tricia Romano

November 6th, 2006 4:28 PM

All dressed up, nowhere to go
photo: Tricia Romano

During Halloween week clubgoers got three really nasty tricks, with nary a treat in sight. On Halloween night, Avalon was abruptly shut down around 1 a.m. due to one of the spookiest laws in the city: The club's cabaret license, which allows you to allow dancing, had lapsed. The nightlife nightmare was only beginning: The next day, celebrated nightspot the Roxy was seized by the state due to nonpayment of taxes. And just when you thought it was over, Happy Valley's smile turned upside down when the East 27th Street spot was shuttered as part of a court battle with its landlord.

The latest misfortune to hit Avalon, forever known to clubbers of a certain age as the Limelight, adds to a long line of setbacks for the beleaguered institution"”which rose to fame in the '80s and '90s, when Peter Gatien ruled clubland with an iron fist. Cabaret licenses citywide expired at the end of September, but the club's mid-September temporary closure for nonpayment of taxes prevented director of operations Ricky Mercado and other club employees from getting inside the venue to obtain the documents needed to apply for the cabaret-license renewal. "There was no way to renew, because we couldn't get the original forms out of the book until ten days after they shut us down," he says. "It's a long process." After he could access his books again, Mercado spent the rest of September updating other paperwork before submitting for a cabaret renewal, which was finally received by the Department of Consumer Affairs on Thursday, two days after the shutdown. (It will take up 30 days to be approved.)

Mercado, a longtime nightclub operator who used to own Speeed and Opaline, took over Avalon's operations four months ago. He says the paperwork snafu was made more complicated because the club technically has two addresses: 47 West 20th Street and 660 Sixth Avenue, both ofwhich appear on different licenses and permits. But even though the club had no cabaret license, says lawyer Robert Bookman"”who represents both Avalon and the New York Nightlife Association"”the police didn't legally have the right to close the club that night. The proper procedure, he says, would have been to issue a summons and hold a hearing to determine whether or not the club was in violation: "It's called due process." NYPD assistant chief and spokesman Michael Collins says that police were within rights to shut Avalon down because the club was "dangerously overcrowded." But Susanne Bartsch, who was cohosting the Halloween party with Kenny Kenny, says they had not yet clicked over 1,200 entrees"”well under the club's 1,557 capacity.

Outside Avalon that night, a line of police officers stood at the front doors while dejected revelers poured out of the venue, frantically dialing friends on cell phones to find their next destination. They may have eventually gone to Motherfucker's Halloween party at the Roxy, which the next day suffered the fate Avalon did in September"”a shutdown triggered by nonpayment of taxes.

David Casey, director of the upcoming movie about Motherfucker, learned of the closure when he went to retrieve some film equipment Thursday and found the place plastered with "seized" signs. The Roxy has been fighting financial problems for the past year"”filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in December 2005 and arranging payment plans to dig out of the hole but, according to a club insider, soon falling behind again. Numerous sources say the club has to cough up $300,000 to the state before reopening. (Owner Gene Denino and manager Jason McCarthy did not return repeated calls for comment.) Meanwhile, former employee Scott Aguiar, who'd promoted a Friday night party at the Roxy, says he and his team were "forced to move" to Webster Hall in the meantime, though he says Denino hopes to reopen by this Friday.

Though Avalon has since reopened, the Halloween incident calls into question the new partnership between city officials and clubs touted at September's nightlife summit, which had evidently succeeded particularly in opening new lines of communication between club owners and police. As Bookman pointed out, the paperwork for Avalon was as incomplete at 2 in the afternoon as it was at 2 a.m. Why arrive to settle the dispute at the height of the club's Halloween party? It's just the kind of action that club owners have continually complained about.

Bartsch was distressed about the treatment she personally endured. When she went outside to meet her husband, David Barton, who arrived to help her close out the night, the police would not let her back in. Despite her repeated attempts to explain that she was a promoter and that her personal belongings were locked inside, they refused to allow her reentry. (She eventually snuck back in a half-hour later). "He was so disgusting," says a despondent Bartsch of the officer who denied her entry. "The policeman was willing to send me into the night without a handbag, without money, without keys." She pointed out the hypocrisy of these actions, considering that the city has been in such an uproar over women wandering the streets alone in the aftermath of Jennifer Moore's murder this summer, which took place after Moore was clubbing on West 27th Street. "They say they are trying to protect people, but it symbolizes how unreasonable they are," she says. "They are just out to get the clubs."

Mercado agrees: "It's just like they are saying, 'Nightclubs"”get the fuck out of New York City.'"

Bartsch"”like another promoter, John Blair"”got hit with a double whammy: Her party at Happy Valley is over now too. Blair, in the oddest and cruelest sequence of events, recently moved his Sunday-night gay bash from Spirit (closed under the Nuisance Abatement law) to Avalon (temporarily shuttered over a cabaret license) to Happy Valley (closed in a landlord dispute). So he now finds himself without a home. Again. In this game of musical chairs, the chairs are disappearing fast.

Happy Valley is the latest to lose the struggle between real estate interests and clubgoing interests. According to a source, the East 27th Street landlord is selling condos in the building but is having a hard time moving units because prospective buyers saw that their future lobby is currently a club. Bartsch released an e-mail statement over the weekend announcing the demise of both her party and the club itself: "The owners of the club lost the lease in a court battle with the landlord."

However, when reached by the Voice, co-owner Joe Vicari says, "We cannot comment on, confirm, or deny any of this at this time."

The Roxy, which has been around for more than 20 years, also sits on land that's increasing in real estate value by the day. It's perfectly perched in the up-and-coming West Chelsea area, where developers are aching to put in condos and high-rises. "The community doesn't want it anymore," Aguiar says of the Roxy. "Nobody wants an eyesore of a nightclub there."

Avalon has it still tougher. As a landmarked space, it is nearly impossible to modify"” while the interior can be altered, the outside of the building has to be preserved. And even then, prospective buyers are hesitant to deal with the legalities of such a landmarked space. "The place will either be abandoned and deteriorate, or it'll be a nightclub," Blair says. "That's the truth of the matter."
Last edited by Michael Madison
Madgely that is so well written and mournful.
No you are not hallucinating nor growing bitter.
New York has changed forever.

I totally enjoyed the recent article by Guy Trebay in the NY Times, which I will not post here in entireity, only to say that Debbie is quoted as referring to downtown and the East Village as looking like a "penal colony."

For entire article,
Google on NY Times:

December 21, 2006
The Low Life and High Life, Hand in Hand
By GUY TREBAY

"....There are plenty who maintain that the streets of New York continue to serve as a rich source of design
inspiration...

Perhaps that is so. Yet a person could be forgiven for questioning whether Lou Reed would be moved to write "Walk on the Wild Side" by the Bugaboo platoons massed in Washington Square or whether the designer
Stephen Sprouse's fabled graffiti collection would ever have happened had Dondi and his fellow Wild Style writers not gotten there first.

"The economy has changed, and the downtown values, with rent control and cheaper housing, gone," Deborah Harry, the lead singer of Blondie, lamented not long ago. "What's
happened with the growth of N.Y.U. into the East Village is the whole student look has taken over," added the singer, whose disheveled punk Marilyn look evolved from a yeasty downtown scene where Dumpster and
thrift shop pickings were still rich, and where old clothes had not yet been rebranded as vintage and sold at Bloomingdale's. "Downtown is starting to look bland, like a penal colony," Ms. Harry said. "To me that's one of the worst things that have happened in New York."

Is it willful to lament the loss of the style that drag queens, hookers, hustlers and pimps once brought to
big cities? It probably is. Yet, as the long-delayed film, "Factory Girl" finally makes it to select theaters
late this year, it seems reasonable to point out that the look of both the real (biologically speaking) and
pretend girls at Andy Warhol's Factory was largely the invention of speed-addled transvestites with ash-blond dye jobs and 25-cent lipstick from subway vending machines.

And the gaudy 1980's styles now undergoing a loving revival among fashion types in London and Paris owe a
substantial debt to the hookers who once worked a stretch of Eighth Avenue known as the Minnesota Strip.

As little survives of that place and time as of Kabukicho, the district in Tokyo that Mr. Watanabe recorded just before its love hotels and hostess bars were plowed under to make way for high-end real estate. The
drag queen geishas, the rockabilly rent boys are gone from Kabukicho. So, too, are the Times Square sex
workers whose damaged poignancy was preserved by the photographer Joyce Baronio in her classic book "42nd Street Studio." The notorious gay theaters are gone. The hustlers and prostitutes rarely bother with the
streets. Why should they? In an age of online hookups, who needs to merchandise the goods with curb appeal?
With the relentless demolishing of the low buildings of New York and all the LUXURY (which has come to mean nothing but "expensive") I find the opening of the Rapture Cafe on Avenue A hugely uplifting. At the opening party on December 13th, that feeling was palpable in the crowd. A lot of us are sort of grandfathered in by what's left of the rent stabilization laws and while we're still here, I think it is so important that we make the effort to come together as much as we can, and that place is exactly what we need. I tend to be more and more of a hermit but I'm going to make myself go and hang around that damn bookstore. I know New York has always been in flux, but everyone can see that the current demolish and build thing is the biggest one any of us have ever seen, and there is a difference between this one and anything before, which is that this is really the first time that practically all of the demolishing is done to make way for more rich people and very little else, even in what were always poor neighborhoods. And since most of the new buildings really do look flimsy and poorly built, it also reflects an underlying hopelessness in general. Nothing is intended to last, it seems. There were always rich and poor in New York, and there was beauty every where. Just walk on the Lower East Side or the East Village and look at what were always low income houses, and over so many doors and windows are the most beautiful terracotta faces. In photographs from the 30s taken in those neighborhoods, you see all of the working class people on their stoops, under the gazes of those same terracotta faces, and most of those buildings had no history of being meant for anyone with means to live in. The new "luxury" buildings don't have even a whiff of anything comparable. We must stick together and perhaps decide where the hell to go once the laws finally change and we're all squeezed out. Any among us who actually do own their places probably won't want to stay when that happens anyway.
Well you won't catch me living in one of those overpriced glass Leggo houses, despite my moniker!

I've tried to find my outlet in other sources of creative inspiration NYC still offers, namely the finest theatre in the world, art openings, occasional concerts, the Metropolitan Opera and the once-in-a-while "parlor games" of family gatherings, like the opening of Rapture. I would not get any of those things in, say, Denver, where I grew up or for that matter in 99% of the cities in this country. What I used to derive from a night at Jackie 60 or Boy Bar or the Pyramid I now seek in season tickets to the Brooklyn Academy of Music, for example (the upcoming season featuring Ian McKellum as King Lear!!!!!!!!!) Undoubtedly part of this change is due to the homogenization of our blessed town, but in all honesty part of it is just me. The clubland of yesteryear will always be with me. But I lived that dream, and now I dream of other things, like a writing career and a summer place in the south of France. And as much as I got from the freakiness and performances and "living art" of NYC nightlife, a substantial part of my agenda back then was also about imbibing and scoring fresh trade. Even if I were single again tomorrow I doubt that I could go back to that approach. If there's one or two bars I like to go to now and then, that's good enough for me. So it's not for myself that I feel bitter ... it's the kids coming here now, seeking dirty, exciting, out-of-this world experiences who will come here and find ...... what?
Oy gavelt! Was at P & S Fabrics on Broadway near Franklin to get some findings that one just can't find anywhere else . . . and they had those banners hanging all over the place: Going Out of Business, Liquidating*, etc.

This fabric store had EVERYTHING - fake monkey fur, beads, grommet setters, everything . . . it was an incredible resource. How much stretchy sequin fabric have I bought there?

Closed on Saturdays, this place was an old school New York Yiddish store . . . the guys who worked there forever, never batted an prayer shawl when a bleached-haired, finger-nail painted, eye-liner-residued, draggoon (moi)marched up to the counter with an arm full of pink flouresent fun fur. P&S is ike Yentyl meets Dragzilla, and a customer is a customer.

I forget which stitch-withch drag queen first reccomended it to me. Ethyl or Agosto or maybe Madame . . . but 2 out of 3 of those legends are gone now too.

But now with P&S's demise, I don't know where I'll go when I need some thingamajib. I never needed another place; they had everything. I wonder where Messy Carly Simon is going to go to by her camel-hair cloth now? Oh dear!

Speaking of charming old NYC, did anyone see the article on Holiday Coctail Lounge in the Times on Sunday, City Section. That place is pickled . . . and will last as long as the owner does (but it will be a Chipolte Mexican before long).

Part of "charming" old NY was that there was a certain level of decrepitude to the charm . . . you know the floors slanted, the people working at the joint had something a little off perhaps -- sort of like they were from a Passolini or Fellini film . . . and there was some sort of left over energy from the 1940s gilded-age of NYC that managed to survive after the gilding wore off . . . I have been trying to put my finger on it.

I started thinking that NYC today is all hurry and hussle, but no NYC has always been hurry & hussle - but what I realized was that the finesse is missing. There used to be a dance to the the hurry an hussle when one was weaving one's way down a busy sidewalk.

The horror stories that barrrell down the sidewalk today - four abreast- don't get the dance . . . I remember thinking that walking through the streets of NYC was like shuttleing through a giant loom and we were all weaving this beautiful busy fabric . . .

but when you take thousands upon thousands of SUV drivers, bring them to the city -- one can't expect them to make nice as pedestrians. They are graceless energy hogs running over whatever gets in their damn way. Oy vey.

* Note To Sweetie: No, "Liquidating" does not mean peeing on the guy who buys your dinner.

xo Haps
As that Asian queen who used to run that boutique on Grove Street in the West Village would say, "Hattie, I'm in the rag biz!"

NYC was all about the rag biz from bolts of fabric to the finished item... and all those places are going or gone. That used to be one of the wonderful things about Manhattan-- clothing was cheap, "I can get it for you wholesale." Now all the cheap wholesalers are leaving, so expect the prices to rise. Thank you WTO!

Yes, Hapi... no finesse!

Here is an example:

When the old Jewish or Italian shopkeepers would give you your change, they would put the coinage in the palm of your hand first and then the bills. This insured that you wouldn't spill the coins all over the place, and also so that you would get the hell out of the way so they could make another sale.

Now observe how it's done today... the bills and a receipt are thrown into your hand first and then the change is tossed haphazardly on top so it is sure to slide right off the bills and spill on the floor. No finesse. No care. And why should they care anyway? They don't own the store. The Jewish and Italian shopkeepers are long gone and Sam Wall or his brother owns the joint. If you don't believe me, clock it next few times you go shopping!

No finesse.
There's a fab fabric store on Flatbush... I can't remember the cross street.... full of all sorts of adds and sods....but just a wonderfully insane wacky selection of fabrics. The place is packed of a Saturday with these crazy Jamaican Dancehall queen gyals buying up all sorts of garish prints colors and textures... i think that might be a good next step... must remember exactly the address.. or we should all take a family field trip!
I think what Hapi and Lex and Hattie are getting at about what the charm really was based on is very strongly pointed out. When all the places -local places that brought people into contact; the family owned stores or bars, the flavorfully slightly decrepit neighborhood clubs or bargain eateries- vanish then the ways that people were in order to interact in those places, the slightly challenging offnessess that more often had one identifying with the perpetrators of urban commercial behavior codes, schooled one in the ability to connect with streetworn neighborhood strangers, aprised one of the exact tenor of an entryway's potential menace, that kind of steep steep flavor of urbane comportments dwindles out. You're left with people pretending to be outlaws,soap opera stars,or expert consumers but who don't connect with one another, a population of uniformly impermanent normals that repopulate the area with a few standardized attitudes that no longer connect with how to be in this place but rather with how to occupy it or just pass through. The elderly woman in the schmatze who is the only one who has a key to the lock on the cyclone fence around the only empty lot left on this block seems like a public menace or alien to the young people who now walk past laughing at her inscrutable effort to make the lot a junk art gallery.

I'm not romanticizing the street this way. I'm pointing out how much less personable and how much more limited the humanness around here is.

This kind of reminds me of an idea someone told me about how a person's behavior is highly affected by the kind of space they occupy at the time -originally this was put to me about being in a subway car:-think about it, no one in there has a personallity, their minds become like the space of the car totally flavorless, quieted down, a sense-dampening space. You don't get people to act openly or unselfconsciously by giving them a big box store to be in. You don't get people to feel at home in a neighborhood where low rise apartments are being replaced by sterile antiseptic laughably priced rentals that guarantee a rapid turnover of tenants. People become less human in that environment, they aren't encouraged to be human in that environment. Humans are just processed by such spaces.
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That is all very true. It used to be (for a long time, too) that a person coming to New York had to brave the elements and earn acceptance into a neighborhood with solid old habits. Without trying, it seems to me, that chance hazing by the block gave the newcomer a kind of humility and if they stuck around, a desire to belong to that neighborhood, and to learn the right ways to do things in that place. Eventually, you found yourself part of the neighborhood. And each neighborhood meant something, like a lot of little towns with distinctive atmospheres of their own. I know that I always respected those ladies who swept in front of the stoop on E 7th Street a long time ago, and the ones who fed the cats in the lot-gardens all around. And just as I'm starting to count as one of those ladies myself, the lot-gardens are all being crammed with those big boring buildings and those boring people you describe, pouring in for their stints as occupiers. It's not to romanticize it that I write this either, but it was more human, and it was also more possible just to live. Those overpriced rents make for overpriced potatoes, too.
Found this beautiful Farewell Charming Olde New York quote tonight

quote:
No matter how long you have been here, you are a New Yorker the first time you say, That used to be Munsey's, or That used to be the Tic Toc Lounge.... You are a New Yorker when what was there before is more real and solid than what is here now.


--Colson Whitehead, The Colossus of New York

Quoted on the always-ruling "New York Songlines" site

http://home.nyc.rr.com/jkn/nysonglines/
Hapi Phace wrote:

"Part of "charming" old NY was that there was a certain level of decrepitude to the charm . . . you know the floors slanted, the people working at the joint had something a little off perhaps -- sort of like they were from a Passolini or Fellini film . . . and there was some sort of left over energy from the 1940s gilded-age of NYC that managed to survive after the gilding wore off . . .

"I remember thinking that walking through the streets of NYC was like shuttleing through a giant loom and we were all weaving this beautiful busy fabric . . ."

-------------

How gorgey a description... and it's true. With the cleaning up of New York City, all the charming old decreptiude also got cleaned up... charming decrepit old ladies and queens...

When I was on my last loft-hunt, I had an amazing conversation with an old Jewish guy who owned a building on West 37th. He explained to me the entire genesis of the destruction of the garment industry in New York. Yes Hattie, WTO and the flooding of this country with cheap Chinese goods. You can thank Bush for that.

This old guy would have been happy to rent to me, but he had to rent to the highest bidder in order to pay his taxes. He said it had broken his heart to raise the rent on his old buddies in the building in order to survive, and he was probably going to sell. He didn't want to rent to high-priced lawyers, or banks of servers. He wanted tenants he could relate to.

He predicted all the industrial spaces would go residential condo. Neither of us understood where, or how these people paying $3,000 a month rent for a studio were going to be employed.

But then Romy told me about the destruction of Vancouver, and how these glass towers that replaced little bookstores, shops and two-storey houses were suddenly filled up with mainland Chinese people. We considered that possibly the same thing will happen in NY... only the rich folks moving into NY will be from Middle Eastern nations?

Then I discovered my landlord had sold his building to an Arab/Muslim real estate conglomerate. Now if you walk down West 26th Street between 6th & 7th, the sewing machine repair shops are gone. (There used to be 6 of them.) The fencing school is gone. The Aikido studio is gone. The second-hand clothing store (a great old dame, Lucille) is gone.
Next to my old building a 33-story glass tower has gone up on what was once a little parking lot.
My old building now has no light or air except in the very front and the very back.

And who is living in this tower? Not alot of funky artists. Not even alot of New Yorkers.
Yeah S'tan. All the new glass towers and conversions will fill up with people who never would have wanted to live in Manhattan, especially in areas like W. 26th St. And probably a lot of those units will have very temporary occupants. Consider the tiny little tennament I live in where a maybe 450 sq.ft. studio now goes for $1,300 a month. It means the landlord now gets tennants who stay only for about 6 months and then cash out. Its almost like a pensione. And the proportion of wealthy young foreigners is about 50% when perviously it would have been about %10.

And all those glass towers that have and are going up on 6th Ave. from 23rd to 32nd have erradicated all the large weekend flea markets that used to operate on the parking lots that have been built on. Those markets kept the avenue totally alive on weekends. Now its a harsh wind tunnel with a few pedestrians at best.
Last edited by seven
It's past time to start Farewell Charming Old Paris, but at least that city is trying. When I was last there, Marc Jacobs' hideous Louis Vuitton had just infected the corner of Av. Georges V with a "super store," joining the likes of Adidas, Gap, etc. But then the city said no to H&M. It's a start. From today's NYT:

January 31, 2007
Megastores March Up Avenue, and Paris Takes to Barricades

By ELAINE SCIOLINO

PARIS, Jan. 30 "” There was a time when the Champs-Élysées stood for grand living, high style and serendipity. With the Arc de Triomphe on one end and the Tuileries Gardens on the other, you could discover an underground jazz band at midnight and down oysters and Champagne at dawn.

But the road where de Gaulle celebrated France's liberation from the Nazis, the one known as "the most beautiful avenue on earth," has, like Times Square and Oxford Street in London, turned into a commercialized money trap.

Most of the music clubs are gone. Movie theaters are closing. Sometimes, all that seems to be left on the 1.2-mile stretch are the global chain stores that can afford the rent.

And so, in a truly French moment, the Paris city government has begun to push back, proclaiming a crisis of confidence and promising a plan aimed at stopping the "banalization" of the Champs-Élysées. The question is whether it is too late.

The first step was a decision last month to ban the Swedish clothing giant H&M from opening a megastore on the avenue.

The decision is intended to slow the invasion of retail clothing stores and to preserve what is left of the diverse character of the most visited site in France, after the Eiffel Tower.

"We were losing our sense of balance," said François Lebel, a deputy mayor who administers the part of the city that includes the Champs-Élysées. "Drastic action was needed. We don't have anything against H&M. It just happens to be the first victim."

In a sense, the avenue is a victim of its own success. With rents as high as $1.2 million a year for 1,000 square feet of space, the Champs-Élysées is the most expensive strip of real estate in Europe and the third most expensive in the world, after Fifth Avenue in New York and Causeway Bay in Hong Kong, making it impossible for most small businesses to even consider setting up shop there.

Multinationals have no such problem. Adidas opened its largest store in the world on the Champs-Élysées last fall. Gap, Benetton, Naf Naf, the Disney Store, Nike, Zara, a Virgin Megastore and Sephora occupy major spaces. Car manufacturers including Toyota, Renault and Peugeot have huge showrooms that display flashy prototypes and serve largely as walk-in advertisements. Low-end fast-food chain restaurants like McDonald's and Quick do high-volume business.

And things seem only to be getting more expensive. The opening of luxury showpieces like Cartier in 2003, Louis Vuitton's five-story flagship store in 2005 and the Fouquet's Barrière hotel last year (the least expensive room is nearly $900 a night) have given the avenue new glitter.

Round-the-clock saturation of the street by teams of uniformed and plainclothes police officers "” in buses and cars, on in-line skates and foot "” has made it safer for its up to 500,000 visitors a day. Armies of street cleaners compensate for the scarcity of garbage bins, a grim reminder of the terrorist bombings on the avenue two decades ago.

Only seven movie theaters are left, however, half the number of a dozen years ago. The UGC Triomphe has announced that it will close in the next few months unless its landlord backs down from the rent increase it has demanded.

Jean-Jacques Schpoliansky, the owner of the independent Le Balzac movie theater just off the Champs-Élysées, greets customers seven days a week to give his business a personal touch.

His rent is 15 times what it was in 1973. But the three-screen theater shows "artistic" movies, so the city gives it an annual subsidy of almost $39,000 to help it stay in business. He says he still doesn't break even.

"My grandfather founded the Balzac in 1935," Mr. Schpoliansky said. "This place, the human contact with my customers "” this is my life."

Many other merchants lament that the move to save the avenue has come too late. "High-class Parisians don't want to come to the Champs-Élysées," said Serge Ghnassia, owner of the fur shop Milady, which opened on the Champs-Élysées in 1933. "It's not prestigious; it's not pleasant. The people who come are very common, very ordinary, very cheap. They come for a kebab sandwich and a five-euro T-shirt."

He said he kept the store largely for sentimental reasons, as a sort of shop window to advertise his more upscale stores on the Rue du Faubourg St.-Honoré and in the ski resort of Courchevel.

Underlying some of that resentment is that groups of young people descend on the Champs-Élysées from the working-class immigrant suburbs on weekend nights. The police keep a close watch on them, monitoring their moves.

But some old-timers praise the avenue as a sort of democratic "” and free "” tourist destination for the underprivileged. "The kids coming from the suburbs are coming from the suburbs to look, to see, to escape the places where they live," Mr. Schpoliansky said. "We are a multiethnic country, and that reality is reflected on our street."

The Champs-Élysées was conceived in 1667 as a grand approach to the royal palace at the Tuileries in what were then fields and swampland on the outskirts of Paris. In the 19th century, it was planted with elms, renamed after the Elysian Fields of Greek mythology and lined with hotels, cafes and luxurious private residences.

But the divide between the landmark avenue's mythic image and its gritty commercialism has troubled Parisians for much of the last century.

The prosperity of the 1960s in France attracted airline companies, car dealerships, fast-food restaurants, panhandlers, streetwalkers and badly parked cars. Rents plummeted and many commercial spaces stayed empty.

In 1990, Jacques Chirac, who was then the mayor of Paris, began a $45 million renovation project that broadened sidewalks, planted more trees, eliminated parking lanes and added elegant streetlamps and bus stops.

Some of the older enterprises use creative ways to stay in business. The 24-hour restaurant L'Alsace is on the ground floor of the Maison de l'Alsace, a tourism and promotion bureau financed by the Alsace regional government.

Fouquet's, one of the avenue's few remaining belle époque restaurants, resisted a nasty takeover bid years ago and has been officially designated by the city of Paris as a "place of memory" to preserve its position on the avenue.

Louis Vuitton is so popular that its customers (most of them tourists) often have to line up outside for entry.

All that activity has made the unanimous decision by the city's commerce committee to block admission to H&M particularly stunning.

H&M, which already has nine stores in Paris, had hired Jean Nouvel, a leading French architect, to design the 37,000-square-foot space in what once housed offices of Club Med.

The company has suggested that it will appeal.

But the ruling followed a study for the city of Paris last November that found that 39 percent of the avenue's street-front retail space was filled with clothing stores.

"The avenue progressively is losing its exceptional and symbolic character, thus its attractiveness," the study warned, predicting that if the trend continued, the Champs-Élysées would become as tacky as Oxford Street.

That gloomy assessment is not shared by Christophe Pinguet, the director of the Shortcut public relations agency and one of the two dozen remaining residents of the Champs-Élysées. From the terrace of his top-floor apartment, Mr. Pinguet looks out on the Eiffel Tower, the Place de la Concorde and the Arc de Triomphe.

"I know shops nobody knows," he said. "I know the butcher who delivers meat to Jacques Chirac. I know the police who dress like spies. Sure, the Champs-Élysées can be cheap. But it's not a museum. The battle shouldn't be to keep H&M out. It should be to make sure it's fabulous."
Last edited by Michael Madison
Michael,
That is a scarey article! But to tell you the truth, the Champs Elysees has always been somewhat disreputable. It was the very first place in Paris to have a McDonald's restaurant.

And going back yet further, one of its most expensive, elegant buildings, now used as a bank, (dozens of types of marble inside and out, incredibly luxe) was built for a fat, ugly, very sexy courtesan by her extremely rich German patron. It's always been rich and sleazy!!
De Gaulle's parades notwithstanding.

Love, S'tan
This entirely explains why, when I was walking east on Houston from Ludlow (under the scaffolding of the new luxury highrise on the corner) towards the Mercury Lounge last night, I was hit with a wall of cologne odor so thick it was repulsive. It was coming from the crowd half a block away milling in front of the lounge. All totally attired "countryclub", as I spontaneously remarked to my companion. She commented, "East Houston is now East Hamptons."
Oh help that place looks hideous enough but knowing it's in our lovely Chez Es Saada space!!!!

What is this some kind of incipient backlash to Bush-style, preppie crapola?
Someone should open a club next door and call it "VOMITORIUM."

Chez Es Saada was a beautiful PS to the 14th Street Jackie era. I still crave one of those pomegranate cocktails... what were they called?
Last edited by S'tan
It's funny, Yesterday I was talking to someone who lives in the building and he was telling me about "The East Village Yacht Club".
I thought it was brilliant!
But he was like, "It's not what you think. It's hideous. They are doing it for real".
I guess I'm retarded.
I thought it was a "Billionaires For Bush" type joke.
I mean "The East Village Yacht Club" is like something we would have done at Jackie as a theme.
Maybe with Davey Ilku as "Thurston Howell III" and "Marti Domination" as "Lovey".

(I don't think it's doing very well BTW.)

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