Farewell Charming Old New York

Hatches/ All of that is so familair to me. I arrivied in 1973 to live here but I started visiting on my own in 1969. I remember 42nd Street between Times Square and 8th Ave had male hustlers between the ages of 12 and 50 with their meat shoved down their tight jeans ( in those days tight jeans were the way to go) on both sides of 42nd st. As I walked by at 15 they'd make offers for me to "work" for them.
I didn't know what they were talking about. Work? I was on a weekend trip to the big apple, I wasn't looking for work. Little did I know.

The great porn palaces of the sixties and seventies were still alive and packed full at any time of day or night.

Years later after a night at Xenon I remember an old hustler still on the deuce asking me for a ciggerette and ending up telling me about his having spent the last 30 years hustling on the street. He even pulled out his huge uncut wrinkled cock right there in a doorway and offered it to me on the spot in exchange for another couple of smokes. I gave it a squeeze and him the smokes and headed back uptown to the upper eastside where I lived at the time.

Oh where have all the old timers gone.

I'm here Bobby
I know what you mean about the old queens, they were such a joy on the street...
(Taylor's here too.)

I can't get over we are the same age and came to NY the same year. What if we had met the same first month?
I'm boggled. What year did we meet? Could it have been 1978.

haches that block of west 43rd Street is a psychic disaster zone. Once Chi gave me a tome on the sexual history of NY, where the hot zones were, from colonial times. That block's been full of whorehouses since white man first dropped down here. So never fear, trade is in play as we speak at the heinous Westin. Dare I mention the Shack once held residence there for eleven months just shy of the wrecker's ball.

S'tan...Are you speaking of me? I think you are. We met in '78 I think. 1878. And I have pictures to prove it. I just found these super photos of you and Anya and also of you and Duncan. Remember when?

And this too!

You sickie! I wrote 1878 too.

Dunkie was very cute! awwww

More pics of Anya! I don't have one of us together, though we took alot of each other.
She is quintessential Farewell Charming Old NY though Chi apprises me of a whole new generation of gorgeous young stripper/dancer/clotheshorse/domme/darlings of Asian persuasion.

Stan

S'tan you were sporting a very Vincent Millay look back then! Or perhaps Karen Blixen on the coffee plantation...
Anya in the Kamali or is it her own?
Duncan of course I was frightened of, though he was gorge. John Tucker, the first Pyramid barkeep, would speak of him in glowing terms constantly.
Bobby, your archives are a treasure trove!
S'tan I have seen that book, and the maps of the whorehouses always amazed me because they were located exactly where our present day hotspots were. Ah, the ghosts of Olde New York!

Another odd thing that I am remembering is that there were periods when absolutely everyone new you met had moved here from a specific place, as if it had been a planned migration. At one point in the Seventies, it was Israel. Then later it was San Francisco. Much later, in the 1980s, L.A., South Africa and then, later still, London and Seattle. I wonder if that mass migration of people just having enough of their cities and moving to NYC happens today. Probably not, as our rents approach those of Tokyo.

Ah, tight jeans, Bobby! I can also remember a period when it was impossible to buy jeans that were not floppy bell bottoms. We had to have them "pegged" before we could wear 'em!

What's wrong with my computer, I don't see an Anya picture?

Hatches that was my no makeup look... I know what you mean about the migrations. E.g.. Duncan came to NY with about 10 friends and no, they didn't all live in the same apartment together,
like you'd probably have to now. Everyone got their OWN place, but would hang out together.

You did used to meet whole groups of artists/performers/writers, who from their home town decided en masse to move here together. This inspired those left back home to come here and give it a go, adding to the artist-bank, and an individual support system.

I'm wondering about those kind of demographics now. Can you imagine a gaggle of trust-fund kiddies coming here together, each getting their own place, paying on the average a $2K monthly rent? What would be the incentive? The fabulous kinky night-life? The burgeoning art scene?

I don't mean to sound cranky though. I went to a party last night at "Shore" and it was packed with cute young things all wearing wild Rites of Spring costumes and horns. The spirit lives on. But I guess we would have to admit it's no longer a wide open town.

Hat/ Oh yes hons, I recall those hideous floppy bell bottoms waaayyyy after we had already worn them and were ready to redefine a new style...I pegged many a bell bottom in my day dear. And now here we go again.. Bell bottoms anyone?

S'tan email me with your current e addy and I'll send you some pics of you and Anya.
kisses xxx

troubleblonde?
at?

stan@sternangel.com

I'm wondering if any young people are moving here at all. I attended a so called 'fetish party' the other night. Totally populated by middle-agers mostly fronting in their expensive off the rack fashions. I counted only one pair of partiers in their twenties in the whole place. It was quite tame. Nothing rough around the edges or actually edgy at all about it. I think we all need to move to Kiev.

Does Kiev still have the amazing blintzes? Leshko's turned into a trendy dump.
The Madge loves fallin' asleep on the table at Velselka at 5 AM so I fond of that joint... the service sucks, but the potato pancakes are total.

surprised to hear all this seven, as it would appear in print photo magazines that 'fetish' is the 'new' sex. like foam and underwear parties used to be. you can play all day (whatever that means) and not get......... tintilized to death?

we were all spoiled by the mix that happened at Click+Drag and nothing has replaced it. so those pretending-to-be-serious is all that is left? and please don't be surprised that the rich ones dress the best, it's like the ugliest ones are always the most naked at the japanese bath in santa fe too.

Merlin can't seem to see past the mtv/britney spears logger jam of current trends. cause everything is barrowed for two seconds and discarded as used while never being explored.

That is a poem Merlin. "cause everything is barrowed for two seconds and discarded as used while never being explored."

I guess fetish parties in NYC are the new Disco.

S'tan, I'm not sure, but I think I meant Kiev, Ukrain. Which oddly still doesn't quite get across that I mean, like, former Soviet Union, because that troika of diners has such monumental presence still. I guess when those stalwart high carb depots get replaced by McSchnitzels and BlintzKing it will truely be time for us to whip out the passport and depart. Michael O'Brien better have his half way house ready for us.

Merly, we were totally spoiled by that sophisticated mix at Click+Drag...
Even then though the blatant fetish exhibitions were a little boring to me! Not to mention getting 'mugged' by insistent (& broke) subs. I loved getting dressed up all gorgey with F-Major, and standing in line along the wall in the Versailles Room. We used to call it "being at court."

After years there was a certain 'pecking order' which added to the ideal of "The Court" as well.
The new parties are just brawls, ROUTS! in comparison.

I am not going anywhere seven.
Anyhow Paris has no "halfway house" for the likes of me.
Perhaps you have an engraved invitation?

lol, funny to hear what you were thinking standing there all these years later stan. always thought you were dreaming of poetry.

Click+Drag was a photographers wet dream. actually haven't looked through any photos from Click+Drag in years. you and seven know more about fetish than merlin. so the understated exotic implications of those nights was as important as anything that happened. it was all just a little too straight for merlin at times.

yes, fetish seems to be moving into mud wrestling these days at 'disco' events seven for sure.

Oh and Kiev (the one of Second Avenue) does not have good food anymore. New owners have replaced those large Ukraininan women in the kitchen with more recent immigrants and now they serve up literal slop to NYU students.

Thanks for the advisory Hatches. I figured after they closed to redecorate something of a downgrade was going to be on the offing. And it was the lesser of the East Block eateries to begin with. I haven't been to Polonia on 1st Ave. since they also cleaned up their facade. The food there used to be serviceable and the wait staff authentic but I am assumeing the face lift means another notch up in the bland spectrum for the fare. When I want some juicy poppy seed roll or a nice smoked herring I hit the little grocery across from Polonia, it is about the size of a small hallway and doesn't seem to have a name.

S'tan and Merlin, Click worked for me though I seem to remember splitting time there with the Bank, unless my mind can't sort these things out too well today. I really got in to Rob's work at Click and was impressed how much he kept it up (impute what you want to that phrase) even after the party moved way downtown where the crowd lost its focuss. I remember Garrett and Rob putting on several totally wet go-go stints at the downtown edition.

S'tan, I do have an engraved invitation, its right on my tongue. I'll show it to you sometime.

Above the Trendy, the Down and Out
By ALAN FEUER
NY Times April 7, 2005

Knock at Room 18 on the fourth floor of 559 West 22nd Street and an old man in a watch cap stumbles to the door.

"What am I doing here?" he asks, answering the question with a question. "I'm dying here," he says.

His name is George Ullrich and, according to his own account, he has been dying here for almost 30 years. He lives in a small room, 10 feet deep by 10 feet wide, and in rooms all down the hallway, a piece of the city's history is slowly dying with him, one old man at a time.

There is Bob Zillard, on the third floor, whose chosen company these days is a six pack of beer. There is Dennis Bolger, around the corner, who, because of hernia problems, can rarely get off the couch.

There is Mr. Ullrich himself, who spends his days reading books on hieroglyphics and ancient Greek. And then there is Kevin - none of his neighbors know his last name - who roams the streets in a baseball cap and white beard half as long as his arm.

These men are the last remaining tenants in No. 559, a building that, like the neighborhood itself, has been swept by major change. West 22nd Street, from 11th Avenue to the West Side Highway, has been transformed from warehouse space to art galleries, from auto body shops to coffee bars. Where once there were stevedores, there are now Italian tourists. Well-heeled women walk expensive-looking dogs.

In the way of these things, the first floor of No. 559 will soon become a glass-and-brushed-steel bar and lounge called Opus 22 where fancy liquor will be served to the cocktail set. The second floor is an art gallery named the Proposition where the current exhibition is titled "Systems Appearances Dogma Taboo."

"Art's not my thing," said Mr. Ullrich, who is 71 years old. "Places change, but people don't. People just get old."

Mr. Ullrich and his fellow tenants recall a different sort of neighborhood, a place of corner bars and broken windows, a place where the rents were so cheap that sailors could pay for six months upfront and then head off to sea.

There are more important matters in the world than the four old men living out their lives in a building that has changed around them. Their story does not concern the war or the economy, but here it is nonetheless.

Their building went up in 1889 as a rooming house for longshoremen who once plied the docks a short block to the west. It overlooks Pier 63 and sits around the corner from the old headquarters of the International Longshoremen's Association, whose onetime president, Joseph P. Ryan, was a model for the labor boss of "On the Waterfront."

There is not much interaction between the old men and the art on the second floor. It would seem that a chair made out of tape measures or a video installation of a young woman doing push-ups in a miniskirt are not much to their taste.

Ronald Sosinski, the gallery's director, said he saw the old men in "a coming-and-going sort of way" on the stairs and found them harmless, often full of humor. He opened the gallery in 2000 at a time, he said, that "everybody had to come to Chelsea; it was just not a question anymore."

Still, he seems to recognize the uniqueness of a building where the art he sells can cost 10 times what the tenants pay in rent.

"It's probably the only building like this around anymore," Mr. Sosinski said. "And it may be in its last moments, too."

The landlord is Alan Frank, who says he is content to have the men around. Mr. Frank presents himself as a lover of the old ways and charges his tenants the generous rate of $300 a month.

As landlords go, he is the sensitive sort.

"The cruel twist is that these guys were left here living among the yuppies and the galleries," he said. "All their haunts have disappeared. The coffee shop. The old Mexican restaurant. The little drugstore. I have a certain amount of sympathy for them living in an area that's not familiar to them anymore."

"In two or three more years, with attrition, they'll probably be gone," he says, adding that he has no plans to toss them out. "If I have nothing to do with it, I'll be happy."

As for the old ways, he, too, remembers the old bar on the first floor, a place named Catch 22 or Slavo's or Joey's, depending on whom you ask. Its nickname was "the Bucket of Blood," said Mr. Frank, suggesting that the stevedores and sailors who used to gather there often got out of hand.

The first time he set foot in the place, a sign on the bar reminded the patrons: "Management is not responsible for women left overnight." From the former owners, Mr. Frank said, there were tales of Thanksgiving dinners served to the salts upstairs at little or no cost.

It should be said that Mr. Ullrich, Mr. Zillard, Mr. Bolger, 62, and the elusive Kevin never worked on the docks. They are, respectively, two retired Teamsters, a firefighter and a military veteran, all lucky enough to have found cheap lodgings in rooms they secure with padlocks whenever they go out.

The rooms themselves are much as one might imagine, or worse. The furniture is spartan. The paint peels off the wall in continent-shaped flakes. An odor of cat urine hovers in the hall.

Each of the men arrived in his own way. Mr. Bolger's former home burned down. Mr. Zillard was a bachelor. Mr. Ullrich was drawn by the cheap rent. As for Kevin, his neighbors say he could not survive anywhere else.

Loneliness is often an old man's native state, and the halls here are filled with artificial voices: from the radio, the turntable, the television set. A decade ago, there were 20 tenants. Some moved out, some were asked to leave. Death has claimed the rest.

Mr. Zillard, 74, attributes his own longevity to drinking beer, never whiskey. He has outlived two generations of bartenders at his favorite haunt, Peter McManus Cafe, at 19th Street and Seventh Avenue.

As for the family life, he says he missed the boat. Thirty years ago he met a girl on the subway. Her name was Kathleen Clark. He got her name but not her address. He has been looking for her ever since.

"I got an icebox there I put my six packs in," he said. "That keeps me company enough."

"I'll probably die here," he went on, "waiting for them to paint."

That's a great article! I wonder if I've seen him at Peter McManus before. I hang out there with a girlfriend of mine sometimes and there's always this group of older men there. Same guys every time.

You have to totally love their landlord!