Revisiting "Riding out the Credit Collapse"

At BoingBoing today, Douglas Rushkoff passes along the link to an article he did this past spring for Arthur magazine titled "Riding out the Credit Collapse." As he writes on BoingBoing, this is "a way to review the steps that led to our current fiasco, explain it in the greater context of centralized currency, and help people not feel so very terrible about it all."

Here is an excerpt of the Arthur magazine piece:

...Bush’s tax cuts and other measures favoring the rich led to the biggest redistribution of wealth from poor to rich in American history. The result was that the wealthy—the investment class—had more money to invest, or lend, than there were people and businesses looking to borrow.
The easiest way to bring more borrowers into the system—and to create more of a market for money—was to promote homeownership in America. This is precisely what the Bush administration did, touting home ownership as an American right. Of course, they weren’t talking about home ownership at all, but rather pushing people to borrow money tied to the value of a house. If people could be persuaded to take mortgages on homes, real estate values would go up for those already invested (like land trusts and real estate funds) and banks would have a market for the excess money they had accumulated.
In short, there was a surplus of credit in the system. Americans were encouraged to borrow in the form of mortgages, which created demand for the credit banks wanted to sell. In many cases the credit itself wasn’t even real, but leveraged off some other inflated commodity that the bank or investor may have owned.

When headlines go terribly wrong

From today's Page Six:



Wow. A few angry readers have chimed in on the "fear of frying" headline.

Lou Reed wants us to remember him

The Daily Star has this Lou Reed item today:

The 66-year-old rocker was born in Brooklyn and has spent all of his life living in Manhattan, where he was once nicknamed the Bard of the East Village. Reed is fiercely proud of the city, and hopes a future mayor will recognise him - in the same way punk star Joey Ramone was honoured when the 2nd Street East Village block where he once lived was officially renamed Joey Ramone Place. Reed says, "Lou Reed Way would be nice. Any little street would do."

(Via City Room)

Bonus! Please watch Lou Reed in a Honda Scooters ad from the 1980s...

Wizz kids

Columbia University's New Media Newsroom site has a handy-dandy interactive map showing 311 reports of urinating in public in Manhattan since the beginning of 2008 by zip code.

And the winner? 10011 in Chelsea. Woo-hoo! Nice going! (Uh, so to speak.) And in the 10009 zip code of the East Village? Just one! Hmm.

According to the post:

Admittedly, information about where we pee illegally may be subject to reporting bias: residents of tony Gramercy, for instance, may be quicker to complain to 311 than those in the neighboring (and more transient) Lower East Side, which may explain some of the difference captured in the DoITT's reports. Indeed, neighborhoods that rank the highest in complaints may even try to claim superior citizenly virtue, for being so quick to notify the city of their misbehaving brethren. This isn't the last word in the Great Manhattan Inter-Neighborhood Piss-off. But until then, let's let the numbers tell their own story.

Things better than we think on Wall Street?

Here's a photo of a locked box for members at the New York Sports Club on Wall Street across the street from the New York Stock Exchange. As the photo below sent by a tipster shows, the occupant of this particular box couldn't be bothered with collecting the pennies that were left behind.

Was not Was

Gawker has this shot taken along Avenue A by a tipster:



As Ryan Tate notes at Gawker: "[G]iven that the WaMu's failure was the largest in U.S. history , the branch's signage could hardly have malfunctioned in a more appropriate fashion."

Farewell to the Emerald Inn

This just makes me sick. The Emerald Inn on Columbus Avenue (near 69th Street) will be closing next spring. Rent for the bar, which opened in 1943, "is more than doubling" to $350,000 a year "for the cozy, 800-square-foot saloon."

And get this: Owner Charlie Campbell, whose grandfather opening the place when FDR was in office, "got the bad news when he saw the location advertised for lease on the Web site of real estate brokerage CB Richard Ellis."

Here's some of the report from the Post:

The cozy inn, with a few booths and faded pictures on the walls, was once well known as a "beer and a shot" joint.

In the mid-1980s, Columbus Avenue was a rough stretch of blue-collar taverns, bodegas and hardware stores, with few of today's high-end boutiques and beaneries.

But the Upper West Side's whirlwind gentrification changed everything, and the Emerald Inn today draws mostly upscale customers.

Among them yesterday was Michael Morfit, 46, a partner in Lighthouse Financial, who said he comes in twice a week.

"We used to have all these ma-and-pa shops," Morfit lamented over a couple of Buds. "Now all you have is big companies like Circuit City and Best Buy, because smaller companies can't afford the rents."

Well, I'll spare you from yammering away about how much I like the Emerald Inn. It's expected to close in May. Go and enjoy while you can... and stop by the P&G while you're at it.

Four more years of Bloomberg?

Looks that way. (New York Post)

RIP Margot Gayle

Margot Gayle, who marshaled shrewdness, gentility and spunk to save the Victorian cast-iron buildings of New York — using a little magnet as a demonstration device — in a crusade that led to the preservation of historic SoHo, died Sunday at her home in Manhattan. She was 100. (New York Times)

[Photo: Don Hogan Charles/The New York Times]

The 10-year-anniversary celebration of when Drew Carey met Joey Ramone

From season four of The Drew Carey Show, which aired Sept. 30, 1998.

Noted

Before today's epic 777-point meltdown, Reuters had a piece on how the economic crunch may have an impact on downtown living:

The state labor department expects Wall Street to lose 40,000 jobs, perhaps permanently, which means the city's service industry could lose another 80,000 workers, in fields ranging from retail shops to law firms.

Lower Manhattan's future could rest on residential development, which has seen its population double to about 57,000 since 2001, as a older, obsolete office buildings were converted into trendy apartments for Wall Street whiz kids, said Mitchell Moss, professor of Urban Policy and Planning and director of the Taub Urban Research Center at New York University.

"That's going to turn out to be one of the great ironies that the residential development is going to create the demand for office space," Moss said, "because people enjoy working near where they live."

But financial sector job losses could drive down prices for apartments 20 percent to 25 percent, more than the rest of the city, said Bill Staniford, chief executive of real estate data web site PropertyShark.com.

"The buildings that have gone after this young hot Wall Street crowd will be the most vulnerable," said Pamela Liebman, chief executive at The Corcoran Group, which specializes in luxury homes in the metropolitan area.

"Finance is one of the more dominant buyer profiles that you'll see, so obviously it's a concern," said Angela Ferrara, a vice president of sales for The Marketing Directors, sales agent for The Setai, a luxury building at 40 Broad Street.

The week after Lehman Brothers failed, brokerage Cooper & Cooper received several calls from clients who needed to break their lease or could not take a new apartment, according to the brokerage's Vice President Jed Cohen.

More input on what NYC buildings should be demolished

Yesterday, Times architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff wrote a piece suggesting some dreadful buildings that should be torn down in NYC. This afternoon, City Room put the question out to its readers: Which New York building would you demolish?

So far, there has been a tasteless suggestion of the World Trade Center...all of Third Avenue in Manhattan...and the "astonishingly ugly Blue building on the Lower East Side. Who in their sane minds could have put up something as hideous as that."


[Photo by everystreetinmanhattan via Flickr]

25 years of yuppies

Lots to do and see in New York's 40th anniversary issue.

For instance, here's Jay McInerney in an essay he wrote titled "Yuppies in Eden"....He says he first heard the term "yuppie" in 1983 while having breakfast at Veselka. A painter he knew muttered "fucking yuppies" after seeing an Upper East Side-looking couple in chinos.

Not long after my first actual sighting, I would see the earliest DIE YUPPIE SCUM graffiti around the neighborhood, an epithet that was soon vying in popularity with that LES perennial EAT THE RICH. The vituperative tone with which the Y-word was pronounced on East Fifth Street was in part a function of rapidly escalating real-estate prices in the East Village; after decades of relative stability that had made the area a bastion of Eastern European immigrants and young bohemians, though, it’s easy to forget at this distance that it was also a war zone where muggings and rapes weren’t considered news. The Hells Angels ruled East Third Street, and after dark you went east of Second Avenue strictly at your own risk. The cops didn’t go there. East Tenth beyond Avenue A was a narcotics supermarket where preteen runners scampered in and out of bombed-out tenements. In fact, great swatches of the city were dirty and crime-ridden. Even the West Village was pretty gritty by today’s standards, and Times Square was a scene of spectacular squalor. Check out Taxi Driver or The French Connection if you want to get a sense of what this urban wasteland looked like.

And later...

My first novel, Bright Lights, Big City, came out in September 1984, although it was set a few years earlier, in a grubbier, less prosperous New York. No one was more surprised than me when The Wall Street Journal described me as a spokesman for the yuppies. The protagonist of the novel was a downwardly mobile fact-checker and aspiring novelist, and unless I’m mistaken, he didn’t eat any raw fish in the novel. His best friend, Tad Allagash, was a likelier yuppie, an adman with entrée to all the right places, an uptown boy who knew his way around downtown. And they both did a lot of coke, a.k.a. Bolivian Marching Powder, which was to become the emblematic drug of the eighties, what acid had been to the sixties.

On the Bowery Friday night

Bob Arihood, BoweryBoogie and Jeremiah have photos and words on the "Outsiders" protest Friday night on the Bowery.

[Photo via BoweryBoogie]

Noted

From Ivana Trump's Ivana-Logues column in Page Six Magazine:

Once a year, I go directly to the lingerie department at Bloomingdale's and I try on bras and panties. Then I gather each piece in four colors and buy 24 of each set. I send 24 to my home in Palm Beach, 24 to Saint-Tropez, 24 to London and 24 to New York.

No Rhyme & Reason

Rhyme & Reason, the card shop on 14th Street and Irving Place, is now officially closed. As Racked noted, the owner was facing a huge rent hike for this corner spot in the Zeckendorf Towers. What's to come? I have no idea! But it's a prime spot in NYUville. Also! There's a Duane Reade a block away on 14th and Third...and a Walgreens across the street. So this seems like a good spot for a drug store. Rite Aid?




Anyway, I figured something was up last month when the Christmas items went on sale...

"Hi, I’d like to start–"

New York Press has its annual best of Manhattan issue this week. Always a good read. Which reminded me of my all-time favorite "best of" recipient. Nothing against the Times, just this particular ad campaign. This best of is from Sept. 26, 2000. I'm not sure what to excerpt. So here's the whole damn thing. (The individual recipients do not have bylines, so I can't give props to the writer...)

Best Aggravating Media Ad Campaign
The New York Times

If you watched five minutes of tv in the New York metropolitan area over the past year, you saw this commercial twice. The New York Times must have spent the annual budgets of several Third World nations on this media buy. There has to be a term ad agencies use for a campaign like this that achieves such market oversaturation that it begins to have the opposite of the intended effect and only makes people hate the product. Relentless, remorseless, ubiquitous, inescapable–you couldn’t channel-surf fast enough to get away from it; often it is running on multiple channels at once. "Hi, I’d like to start–" Click. "–ting home delivery of–" Click. "–our financial sec–" Aaaiiieee!

Not only ubiquitous, it’s repulsive. The characters, whom we correctly identified some weeks ago a "rainbow coalition of hideous yuppies," are so carefully chosen for a p.c. spread–young, old, Asian, WASP, brown, male, female–and yet all cut an unmistakable figure of complacent upper-middle-class suburban domesticity. Notice they all seem to have big houses and sun-filled rooms, not a dim little Upper West Side rent-stabilized apartment-dweller in the lot. Clearly this is an ad pitched at the suburban LI-NJ-CT-Westchester-Rockland market. So why must the rest of us suffer through it? Don’t they have a way to narrowcast it only to those markets and leave the rest of us alone?

But back to that rainbow coalition. We got to know these people this year as intimately as our most hated neighbors. The Filipino-looking pederast who simpers, "First thing? I think about my family here–and in my homeland." Nice kneejerk liberal save-the-world touch, the way he overarticulates that word home-land, like he’s auditioning for a community theater production of The King and I. ("King is king of all people–here and in my home-land! Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.") The gender-stereotyping throughout the ad is also remarkably blatant: Man Breadwinner, interested in the business section; Woman Breeder, loves the crossword puzzle. Thus the presumably gay actor playing the empty suit droning about "our financial security" while his brainless Stepford wife literally leans on his elbow and gazes insipidly into middle distance, dreaming of Pillsbury cinnamon rolls and making babies. There’s the old WASP lady who cherishes "another day to learn something new..." ("...that I’ll forget in five minutes because I have Alzheimer’s. The paperboy has actually been delivering the same issue of the paper every day since 1996 and I haven’t noticed!") The positively scary woman with OCD who must finish the crossword puzzle. And the mocha hottie who just loves the arts and "nothing satisfies my passion like The New York Times." Nice subliminal messaging there. Very subtle.

Two or three times during the ad, one of these noids will look directly at you through the lens and repeat in their best, slow, hypnotist’s repeat-after-me voice, "I’d like...to start getting...home delivery...of...The...New York Times..." The ad ran so often, in so many places, that the message became Pavlovian through sheer, heartless repetition. Pretty soon you were shambling the streets of the city like a George Romero zombie, hollow-eyed, unkempt, muttering, "must...order...home delivery...of...The...New York Times...must...order..."

Condescending and yet browbeating, like the Times itself, this commercial was like an unwelcomed guest on our tv screen who just wouldn’t go away. People complained about the Taco Bell dog and the Pets.com sock puppet (the latter our favorite tv figure of the year, and when does he get to host his own talk show?), but both those campaigns combined didn’t add up to the sheer volume or aggravation of this single Times commercial.

I could not find the commercial on YouTube. But here's a parody of it...

New bar on Avenue A has pianos, fancy drinks and referral-only reservations

Thrillist has the following item today on Ella, the piano bar at 9 Ave. A that opens Thursday:

From the Gallery Bar guys, Ella's a semi-private, bi-level, black-lacquered and mirror-bedecked lounge that aims to provide classy ivory tickling from both accomplished house acts and the occasional signed artist (read: people no longer offering music lessons). The intimate, b&w-tiled downstairs sports a jet-black upright Yamaha, a small stage for jazz/blues/torch singers, and a DJ booth, all under a multi-colored lit ceiling evocative of Willy Wonka's terrifying psychedelic tunnel. For a break from the crooning, walk up to the chandeliered, Tinseltown-chic bar & lounge: floral-print couches and semi-circular red suede banquettes fresh from the '07 Oscars flanking a 15-seat bar, which slings speciality cocktails inspired by post-WWII cinema, e.g., the vodka & muddled grape Daisy Kenyon, and the ginny Mildred Pierce ("if you loved Working Girl...").

Ella's opening Thursday, reservations are referral only, and the door policy is doorman's discretion -- so there's a decent chance you'll be stranded outside with Paul and Davy, who's still in the Navy, and probably still hasn't finished The Duplex Supremacy.

Oh, and here's their drink menu.

STILL speculating about the future of 159 Second Ave.

Still going with a dessert shop.

The Times looks at Extra Place

The Times looks at the possible development of Extra Place. As you know, Avalon Bay wants to pave it and add boutiques and wine bars and stuff. Others argue that it remain a public space. And kind of like it was.

“The ground was magnificent,” said Danny Fields, the manager of the Ramones, who took the photograph in November 1976. “It was filled with junk, shreds of clothes and pieces of barrels, posters, leaves, ropes.”

(The article also mentions Jeremiah Moss.)

Previously on EV Grieve:
"All of Manhattan has lost its soul to money lords"

[Photo: Michael Falco for The New York Times]

Seventh Street, 1 p.m., Sept. 27

City businesses will reportedly miss out on making $141 million this fall because the Yankees failed to make the playoffs. How much will the city lose if the Mets lose today and miss the playoffs? (Oh, sorry -- I don't have the answer...just curious...)

“This used to be an area where people got their start. Now it’s a place to land once you’ve made it”

The Times has a great story today about two women who saved their home from destruction at 27 Cooper Square to make way for Cooper Square Hotel. We hear from 74-year-old Hettie Jones and her garden:

“I grew the most fantastic tomatoes and peppers up there, veggies that need lots of light,” lamented Ms. Jones. “We used to have views from every angle, but now they only exist from the hotel’s penthouse.”

She has lived here since 1962.

Pointing to the cluster of new luxury towers rising in the square, Ms. Jones added with a sigh: “This used to be an area where people got their start. Now it’s a place to land once you’ve made it.”

Jeremiah had a post on the history of 35 Cooper Square this past summer.

[Photo: Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times]

Some buildings that should be torn down

Nicolai Ouroussoff has an interesting idea in the Times today:

So here’s what I propose. True, the city is close to broke. But even with Wall Street types contemplating the end and construction of new luxury towers grinding to a halt, why give in to despair? Instead of crying over what can’t be built, why not refocus our energies on knocking down the structures that not only fail to bring us joy, but actually bring us down?

Ugliness, of course, should not be the only criterion. There are countless dreadful buildings in New York; only a few (thankfully) have a traumatic effect on the city.

Among the buildings that he suggests tearing down: That ugly curved glass residential building at Astor Place designed by Gwathmey Siegel & Associates:

[T]he crude quality of its execution is an insult . . . Gwathmey’s tower is squat and clumsy. Clad in garish green glass, it rests on a banal glass box that houses — what else? — rows of A.T.M.’s inside a Chase bank.

But lack of taste is not the point here. Neighborhoods are fragile ecosystems. And while enlightened designs can challenge the past, that is not the same as being oblivious to it. Astor Place would seem more comfortable in a suburban office park.

The East Village is saturated with memories of youthful rebellion. In recent years it has emerged as a crossroads between the world of would-be punks, awkward students and rich Wall Street types. The Gwathmey building serves only the last camp: it’s a literal manifestation of money smoothing over the texture of everyday life.

[Photo by everystreetinmanhattan via Flickr]

Paul Newman dies at 83

So many great films to choose from...Aside from the obvious, I always liked Fort Apache the Bronx.

The Post likes the LES on Sunday afternoons, though, wisely, not Saturday nights

The Post checks in on the LES:

On a Saturday night, the Lower East Side might as well be Meatpacking District Lite. Overpriced drinks? Check. Annoying restaurants? Check. And don't even get us started on the people.
Lower East Side Sunday afternoons are a different thing altogether. Because while the neighborhood is host to one of the more obnoxious night-life scenes, there's also another scene that's cropped up, and it's a cool one.
The 'hood has one of the most vibrant art scenes in town: 35 galleries, lots of them run by young, hot dealers. It also boasts a brand-new museum called, fittingly, the New Museum.

This was the caption to the photo (not the one that I'm using) that accompanied the article:

No red velvet ropes here! On a Sunday afternoon, art enthusiasts can chow down on doughnuts and stroll around the nabe without glimpsing any B&T barflies (They took the train home to Syosset last night).

A new name for Wall Street

Tom Robbins on the financial meltdown in this week's Voice:

Here's one small bit of payback that angry and frustrated New Yorkers could easily bestow on the grasping financial merchants behind last week's meltdown: Have the City Council — always down for a good street renaming — simply re-tag Wall Street with a new label, one more in line with its recent history: Boulevard of Greed? Gluttony Gulch? Chozzer Terrace?

For those of us prone to take the low road, these are the sort of names that instantly spring to mind, the nastier the better. And why not? How else to describe an industry that applauds nearly $500 million in bonuses for executives recklessly steering straight into the fiscal rocks, taking an entire economy down with them?

The drama of squirt guns

The Times has a piece today on people who go around town and shoot each other with squirt guns.

StreetWars was created in 2004 by Franz Aliquo, then a 28-year-old securities lawyer, as a cure for a boredom phase he was working through. Mr. Aliquo named himself Supreme Commander and, with a friend known as Mustache Commander and other helpers, has held several killing tournaments in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, London and Paris. The game resembles the 1980s campus phenomenon Assassin, itself a reminder of the 1985 film “Gotcha!” starring Anthony Edwards and his paintball gun.

The contestants are mostly in their 20s or early 30s, from what could be called the kickball set; about 35 percent in the current war are women.

Reminder: Help save the Bowery tonight

BOWERY ALLIANCE OF NEIGHBORS
presents
AN EVENING TO SAVE THE BOWERY

Saturday, Sept. 27
6:30 - 9:30 p.m.
at
BOWERY POETRY CLUB
308 Bowery
(one block north of Houston)

music, poetry, film
--art auction--
--raffle--

Information via Bowery Boogie and Save the Lower East Side!

And please none of those arm thingees...

A look at East Village real estate

From this week's real-estate section in the Post:

EAST VILLAGE $430,000

311 E. Third St.

Prewar one-bedroom, one-bath co-op, 500 square feet, with dining room, windowed chef's kitchen with stainless-steel appliances and butcher block, French doors, exposed brick, high ceilings and N/S exposures. Maintenance $284, 12 percent tax-deductible. Asking price $425,000, on market one day. Broker: Anthony Cangemi, Citi Habitats

Sounds nice...on market for one day?

A toe-tapper for these tough times

Bronx native August Darnell claims to have had a vision of the band he fronted -- Kid Creole and the Coconuts -- in a nightmare while walking down Fifth Avenue. (Must have been in August...) His Kid Creole persona was inspired by Cab Calloway. Here's 1985's "Endicott," a toe-tapper for these tough times.

Starting tonight at the IFC -- Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell

In May, I wrote a post about Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, the debut feature from Brooklyn-based filmmaker Matt Wolf. Russell, who died of AIDS in 1992 at age 40, was an East Village resident who "bridged the gap between the artistic vanguard and dancefloor hits, The Kitchen and Studio 54." The film starts tonight at the IFC.

Gothamist recently interviewed Matt Wolf. An excerpt:

What do you think of the New York music scene now, as compared to back then?

I think New York is more of a hub these days then a laboratory and breeding ground for experimentation. Musicians and artists seem to pass through to perform and to hang out briefly, but they work and go into hibernation elsewhere. That’s probably because New York has become such an economically straining and competitive environment. It’s hard to be free to experiment and play in this city.

You can still get a beer for a $1 in this town

Over at Metromix, Joshua M. Bernstein finds some bars that serve beers for a $1.

(Via Grub Street)

NYC in black and white

Thanks to Alex at Flaming Pablum for posting more of the photos from his NYC archives...including two of my favorites from the neighborhood, 7B and Mars Bar.

Two EV buildings designated as city landmarks

From The Villager: "The Landmarks Preservation Commission last week designated as city landmarks two East Village buildings dating from the 1920s, the Wheatsworth Bakery, now a storage warehouse on E. 10th St., and the Public National Bank, now a residential building on Avenue C (pictured right)."

[Villager photo by Caroline Debevec]

Noted

Since last Thursday, there have been 200 price cuts on properties listed at less than $10 million on Manhattan's Upper East Side or Upper West Side -- a 17% jump from the week before. Deanna Kory, a broker with New York-based Corcoran Group who's handling nearly two-dozen properties priced between $2 million and $10 million, says her showings are down by about 40% in the last two weeks compared to the same time last year. A slew of new buildings set to open in the next year will only increase supply. (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street week in review: Monday

So, how was your week? As I've written before, I work in the Financial District, though my job has nothing to do with financials (or districts). Or Wall Street. Anyway, as you read here exclusively last week, things aren't going so well on Wall Street. But seriously, this past week was -- for a lack of a better word -- interesting. I noticed this giddy undercurrent while walking around. Especially among the tourists, who sensed they were witnessing history. And there was no shortage of activity, which is documented in subsequent posts.
On Monday, a small group (uh, four) of Ron Paul's Campaign for Liberty volunteers took to the steps of Federal Hall to voice displeasure over the Fed's bajillion dollar bailout proposal.



[For the record, that is NOT my thumb with the dirty nail...]

Also! Reporters and various rubberneckers stood outside the Federal Reserve on Maiden Lane to look at some well-dressed white people in suits. They were waiting to see Hillary Clinton.





And I think we all know why there was such commotion at the Fed...the missing gold!

Wall Street week in review: Tuesday

Members of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) held a small demonstration at the side of the Chase Plaza on Liberty Street late in the morning. They ask that Congress protect homeowners facing foreclosures (paraphrasing here) instead of the Wall Street fatcats who got us into this mess.






Meanwhile!

Offices are being emptied...



Streets are being ripped up...



and this guy tried to charge me $20 to take his picture.

Wall Street week in review: Wednesday

VIPs are rushed to the entrance of the NYSE. A pack of photographers wait. Tourists get as close to the action as they can. Cops and Secret Servicey-looking people stand guard. Bomb-sniffing dogs whip into a frenzy. Who is it? Brad and Angelina?! (Oh, God -- please let it be! And who started this rumor in front of so many tourists? Heh.) It's, it's...




Anders Fogh Rasmussen, Prime Minister of Denmark.
Oh.
Let's hit Century 21!

Wall Street week in review: Thursday

Protest!

When: 4pm – ? Thursday, September 25.
Where: Southern end of Bowling Green Park, in the plaza area
What to bring: Banners, noisemakers, signs, leaflets, etc.
Why: To say we won’t pay for the Wall Street bailout
Who: Everyone!

Angry about the government's proposed bailout. Hundreds of protestors were on Wall Street and the steps of Federal Hall.













And video:

Depressed now? Make your voice be heard on Nov. 4!

In front of Federal Hall yesterday.

Um, where's that $20 million?

Curbed reports that the back wall at St. Brigid's on Avenue B and 8th Street is coming down.

Previous St. Brigid's coverage on EV Grieve.

Meet your new neighbors

Goldenfiddle has this. Footage of aspiring gazelles from DNA Models, located at 520 Broadway.

Hope this doesn't give Dov Charney any ideas

BoingBoing brings us this news:

In certain Asian countries, Betelnut is a popular stimulant sold by scantily-clad young girls in streetside booths. A couple years ago, artist Annamarie Ho recreated a Betel nut booth as a gallery installation commenting on this "sexually provocative sales style" in which, it would seem, customers are buying interaction with the salesperson as much as they're paying for the Betelnut. For the next two weekends, Annamarie is reviving the piece, Binlang Xi Shi (Betelnut Girls), but this time in the more unpredictable location of a New York City storefront.

Here's that storefront:

west side of Cleveland Place, south of Kenmare Street
around the corner from La Esquina

Opening:
Friday, 26 September, 6-8pm

Performances:
Saturday, 27 September, 5-10pm
Sunday, 28 September, 2-7pm
Friday, 3 October 3, 5-10pm
Saturday, 4 October, 5-10pm
Sunday, 5 October, 2-7pm

Noted: New Yorkers are neurotic, though not as neurotic as people from West Virginia

Researchers identify regional personality traits across America. With interactive maps! There goes the rest of my afternoon. (Wall Street Journal)

Wall Street is a mess

Really. Just look at it.

Greed may or may not be good

Funny item from The Superficial:

Michael Douglas fielded questions yesterday about the current economic crisis facing America. Apparently, playing Gordon Gekko in Wall Street over two decades ago makes him a financial expert. Wow, way to hit a home run, mainstream media. For a minute there, I was almost worried people might not think we're a nation of total idiots. The Associated Press reports:

After world leaders here condemned the "boundless greed" of world markets, Douglas was asked to compare nuclear Armageddon with the "financial Armageddon on Wall Street."
But the likening to Gekko did not end there, with a reporter asking: "Are you saying Gordon that greed is not good?"
"I'm not saying that," Douglas replied. "And my name is not Gordon. He's a character I played 20 years ago."

Ironically, no one asked Michael Douglas how to run the country even though he starred in The American President.

Stop me if you've heard this one before...

At Fulton and Nassau in the Financial District. By my count, this is the 11th Starbucks from Chambers Street on the east side to Wall Street.



Previously on EV Grieve:
Soon we'll be saying, "At least it's not a Starbucks AND a bank"

Meanwhile, in London: In case you're in Notting Hill tonight

Off topic (again)...Regardless, wanted to share this invite that was forwarded to me...:

“Select Group, the Swankiest party in town!”
Whilst most of us are facing a long miserable winter with a nose-diving economy, it appears that the cream of London’s A-listers are setting their sights to sunnier (and more profitable) climbs as they flock to the biggest and most prestigious party in London, of the year!

On the 25th September 2008, Select Property & Select Group Limited will be celebrating the launch of its new unique development in Dubai named ‘Aquitainia’ and who better to host this spectacular soiree than the ‘million dollar baby’ herself, Hilary Swank!

Two-time Oscar winner Swank, who is renowned for her astute business brain and love of Dubai, will play host at boutique hotel ‘The Hempel’ in Notting Hill showcasing the deluxe beachfront properties that epitomize glamour and style and are attracting fellow A-listers in droves.

This is the first time since 2006 that Miss Swank will be back in London Town, and she brings with her Grammy Award winner Kelly Rowland! Miss Rowland, a regular visitor and huge star in Dubai, will be setting the live soundtrack to the evening with whilst the guests rub shoulders and mingle with their potential new neighbours.

Miss Swank isn’t pulling any punches with this affair and has confirmed many other guests – to be announced nearer the time.
It looks like everyone who is anyone wants a piece of this million dollar action and with names in Aquitainia like ‘Cannes Beach Villas’, ‘Monaco Villas’ and ‘St Tropez Marina’ these properties are simply out of this world and a world away from the doom and gloom of the UK’s headlines.

There will be unique interview opportunities with Miss Swank and Miss Rowland. For more information or interview opportunities with Miss Swank or Miss Rowland, please contact XXXXX

MISS SWANK WILL PROVIDE A PRESS STATEMENT BEFORE ENTERING THE VENUE IN A PRIORLY APPROVED AREA OUTSIDE THE VENUE.

Information about the Party

The event in London will take place in “The Hempel” boutique hotel located in London’s Notting Hill. The event will include a champagne reception, speeches and live performances.

The party will take place between 19:00 – 22:00 on Thursday 25th September 2008.

"Back in that old shithole, New York"

Here's a snippet from the short documentary Henry Miller Asleep & Awake from 1975, "a voyage of ideas about life, writing, sex, spirituality, nightmares, and New York that captures the warmth, vigor and high animal spirits of a singular American artist." Miller was 81 when this was filmed.



(Thanks to Stories from the Apple Core for turning me on to this...)

The outsiders: Brit art on the Bowery

Page Six reports today: THE British are coming, but East Villagers don't want them. Famed London art gallery Lazarides is opening a show called "The Outsiders" at 282 Bowery tomorrow, which will display the incendiary works of Paul Insect, Jonathan Yeo, Miranda Donovan and others. But John Penley, leader of the Slacktivists, who are fighting the yuppification of the area, told Page Six his group will protest. "This is not street-level graffiti or poor starving artists from the area," he fumed. "They're all rich. Paul Insect's last works were bought by Damien Hirst for $1 million. And they are all Brits. There are plenty of local downtown artists more deserving." The gallery had no immediate comment.

More on what Lazarides have been up to on the Bowery.

Bowery Boogie's coverage is here.

Bob Arihood has details here.

Sure was nice out yesterday

Though was it this nice?

In Tompkins Square Park.

Like a crash virgin...

Doree Shafrir and Irina Alexksander look at "crash virgins" in this week's Observer, young New Yorkers experiencing their very first economic downturn.

An excerpt!

Lizzy Goodman was one of the fortunate ones of the class of 2002; upon graduating from Penn, she had a job lined up as an assistant teacher at Buckley, the all-boys school on the Upper East Side. Six years later, she’s an editor at large at Blender. Like some of her peers, she seems hopeful that, instead of being a harbinger of utter doom, this crash will instead level the playing field just a little bit.
“I don’t think anyone is hoping for American financial collapse just so that the Bowery can be seedy again,” said Ms. Goodman, who lives in the West Village. “But on the other hand, if in the wake of this collective shuttering and fearing comes a return to old school ’80s boho New York, I would certainly be in favor of that.”
The disconnect between the New York of legend and the reality of living here has perhaps never been starker. “I know a lot of people who moved to New York for something that isn’t in New York right now,” said Mr. Fischer, the marketing strategist. “There is a sense that things are in transition. I think there’s a big question of how this will change the social and cultural landscape of New York in the next two or three years. I wouldn’t necessarily say it’s excitement—but it’s apprehension that something is definitely happening.”
Of course, that’s a story that’s been years in the making; the disappearance of Lehman Brothers and the conversion of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley into bank holding companies—as recently as last year thought to be a sacrilege—isn’t going to make $4,000 a month one-bedrooms on the Lower East Side any cheaper. (Or if it does, they’ll go to $3,500 a month, not $1,500.) The days when a photographer could buy an abandoned bank building on the Bowery for $102,000—as the photographer Jay Maisel did in 1966—are over; they are not coming back. (See also: the Playpen, smoking in bars, liquid lunches, Passerby, subway tokens, the Barnes & Noble on Sixth Avenue and 21st St., et cetera, not to mention the Algonquin Round Table, the Automat, Spy magazine, Warhol’s Factory, and the Palladium. Also: typewriters.) Some Wall Street types may flee; a few Wharton grads might move to Boston or San Francisco. But it seems highly unlikely that the crash will herald in some utopian new era of “creativity” or allow artists to colonize Soho, or even the East Village, again. It’s over! You missed it! Even Rent has closed! Besides, the Russians are here now.

What will a return to 1970s NYC be like?: "Well find out when we get there"

Over at the Village Voice, Roy Edroso responds to Nick Paumgarten's New Yorker essay on Wall Street's collapse and a possible return to the 1970s NYC:

Paumgarten avoids going all the way with this, suggesting that we can have the sweet side of the 70s cup without tasting the bitter. The collapse has unloosed something in him; for a long time such as he could not mention New York's bankrupt days without a show of revulsion, as old-world types could not mention the devil without crossing themselves. But the Wall Street debacle tells him that those prayerful gestures have come to naught: the bubble's burst and the wolf is at the door. Now he can admit that there was something cool about those old days, and he can even be glib about them.
But when that 70s show really goes into re-runs, we won't be able to edit out the unfunny bloopers. There was never a chance that we'd get cheaper rents without a crash, and as of now the market fluctuations are only ruffling the high end of the market. We're a long way from the vintage conditions of that last renaissance. Before you can have the Ramones, you have to have rehearsal spaces that even glue-sniffing slackers can afford. Before you can have Taxi Driver, you have to have urban moonscapes that don't need to be built by film crews. And you only get those in the wake of real catastrophe.

Joy-popping the 70s is a fun pastime, but be not deceived: playful speculation is nothing like the real thing. We remember fondly our $125-a-month railroad flat in a forsaken neighborhood called the East Village, and the good times we had there. We also remember nightly gunfire, mugger money, and Etan Patz. Are we willing to accept one to get the other? It's not worth wondering about: we'll find out when we get there.

[Photo of 216 E. 7th St. in 1979 by Marlis Momber.]

Bonus: Are you ready for 1974 again?



And! If you don't have time to watch all of the 39 Death Wish movies, let's just get to it:

The many lives of the Roseland (For Part 2: Man, it's so loud in here)

I love the Roseland Ballroom on West 52nd Street. Not so much as a concert venue. But for its history. Since 1919, the Roseland has been an ice rink, a roller rink and a dance hall. Blogger Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company provides this summary:

The Roseland Ballroom was built in 1919 at 1658 Broadway, near 51st Street. It was the second in a string of three Roselands built by Louis Brecker (the original was in Philadelphia). Brecker envisioned a cheap but respectable dance hall: "home of refined dancing." It became one of America's most famous dance halls, in part due to its booking of upcoming jazz greats such as Fletcher Henderson and Louis Armstrong, in part due to stunts like female prizefighting bouts and law-breaking dance marathons.

After a couple of decades, it jacked up it's refinement factor in order to become "family entertainment": more decor, less taxi dancers, no jitterbugging, bouncers in tuxedos. In 1956, it moved two blocks into a former ice rink at 239 West 52d Street. The older Roseland was demolished.

(Cosmodemonic goes on to discuss how the Roseland played a key role in Henry Miller's "Tropic of Capricorn.")

As the New York Times noted in October 1996: The 1939 ''W.P.A. Guide to New York City'' described Roseland as ''the downtown headquarters for hot music and such urban dance steps as the cake and collegiate, the Lindy and the Shag.'' Tommy Dorsey, Count Basie and other big-band names played Roseland in the 1920's and 1930's.

Roseland was almost lost in the 1990s:

Roseland's dance floor is magnificent, but the rest of the interior is now well beyond shabby, with faded carpets and worn paint. The curved Iceland ceiling is painted black but marked with many holes; otherwise there is no trace of the rink. The gallery level is a warren of empty rooms, littered with debris. Graffiti and a black, spray-painted ''body piercing booth'' are leftovers from rock concerts that take over the house a few times a month -- ''Soul Coughing'' is due on Nov. 29.

Despite its age and condition, Roseland Dance City is a fascinating leftover in New York entertainment culture -- there is no hype, no flash, no marketing, no product tie-ins, just the swirl of dancers from expert to beginner. It's one of those unprocessed experiences that we say we want, but which may vanish very soon.

The Roseland survived, of course. Again and again. Different locations. Different genres. New tastes. A Time magazine feature from 1957 reports:

When a public dance hall named Roseland opened on Broadway in 1919, smart young people had recently deserted the waltz for the foxtrot, were just beginning to master the delicate nuances of the shimmy. Sam Lanin and his Ipana Troubadours were on the bandstand, thumping out such Ziegfeld Follies hits as Mandy and You Cannot Make Your Shimmy Shake on Tea. Since that distant New Year's Eve, generations of stag-line Romeos and their girls have bunny-hugged Lindy-hopped, Charlestoned, big-appled black-bottomed and jitterbugged under Roseland's star-studded ceiling. At 1 o'clock one morning last week the stars winked out for the last time; the following night Roseland reopened in glittering new quarters, billed as "a magnificent metropolis of melody and merriment."

Family Entertainment. Although professional nostalgics lamented the demolition of the old Roseland building as the end of an era, the dance hall had actually been changing its function for a long time. It started as a refuge for the "poor young clerks" Scott Fitzgerald wrote about; it evolved into a place of family entertainment.

Part 2:

Whew. Anyway! Why bring all this up? I was there last night for the My Bloody Valentine show. I won't get into all that here. But I will in the comments if anyone wants to chime in....Take it away Alex.

From last night:

P.S.

Oh, speaking of Roseland, here's a snippet of 1977's Roseland, the Merchant-Ivory film starring Christopher Walken:

About that "giant-robot laboratory" on East Sixth Street

As you may know, New York has a great piece this week on 190 Bowery, a space that I've long been curious about. Wendy Goodman gets right to it in her lead:

The building at 190 Bowery is a mystery: a graffiti-covered Gilded Age relic, with a beat-up wooden door that looks like it hasn’t been opened since La Guardia was mayor. A few years ago, that described a lot of the neighborhood, but with the Bowery Hotel and the New Museum, the Rogan and John Varvatos boutiques, 190 is now an anomaly, not the norm. Why isn’t some developer turning it into luxury condos?

Because Jay Maisel, the photographer who bought it 42 years ago for $102,000, still lives there, with his wife, Linda Adam Maisel, and daughter, Amanda. It isn’t a decrepit ruin; 190 Bowery is a six-story, 72-room, 35,000-square-foot (depending on how you measure) single-family home.

There's another building that I've been curious about: 421 E. Sixth Street between First Avenue and Avenue A.



I was told years back that an artist lives there. Indeed.

According to Forgotten New York: "421 was a Con Edison substation built in 1920-21 that converted direct current to alternating. It is at present (2008) the studio of modern artist/sculptor Walter De Maria. His most famous installation is The Lightning Field (1977) is permanently installed in the desert at Quemado, New Mexico, and was commissioned by the Dia Art Foundation, who run the site and provide accommodation for visitors. The work consists of hundreds of stainless steel rods projecting from the ground to a uniform height of around six metres (20 feet). Rows of 20 rods extend for one mile, while rows of 16 extend for a kilometre, making a square grid of standard and metric proportions. The work is designed to attract spectacular lightning strikes."

NY Songlines has a few more details: "This building, which looks like a giant-robot laboratory, was actually built in 1919-21 as a New York Edison transformer substation — turning DC current into AC. Since 1980 it's been owned by artist Walter De Maria."



Wonder if we'll ever get to see the inside of this space...

Related:
Miss Representation on 421 E. Sixth St.

The money shots of Wall Street (so to speak)

Someone did a nice little edit job on Wall Street, as in the 1987 Oliver Stone film.

An appreciation: A sign that I like

On Cherry Street. Haven't seen much lately about this site becoming a condo...

Looking at a review of Candace Bushnell's new book

Read Doree Shafrir's review of One Fifth Avenue, the latest from Candace Bushnell, in the Observer.

Bonus excerpt:

[T]he new breed of youngsters intent on highlighting the hypocrisy of their elders is meaner and, well, snarkier than their forebears, Ms. Bushnell implies. Their number is led by a smarmy 20-something named Thayer Core, who lives in a tiny East Village walk-up and yet feels qualified to lob his verbal grenades at the rest of Manhattan (including several residents of One Fifth). Thayer is a despicable character, and it’s not a stretch to imagine that she was personally offended by things written about her on Gawker (where, full disclosure, I used to work). And yet, Ms. Bushnell’s caricature of the Web site and its writers falls victim to the very same snarky, self-satisfied kind of writing she accuses the new generation of perpetuating.

Can't wait for the series!

[Via Gawker]

On returning to the 1970s in 2008 and beyond

Nick Paumgarten on the possible implications of the Wall Street meltdown (under the heading in The New Yorker this week of Dept. of Magical Thinking):

For example: let’s postulate that the collapse of the financial-services industry spells catastrophe for New York City, a return to the nineteen-seventies. Lost tax revenues, budgetary shortfalls, unemployment (not only of those in finance but of the hordes who rely on them), plunging property values, vanished retirement accounts. Let’s cut this up, like a pile of bad debt, into various strips, and, as the rating agencies did to various slices of subprime-mortgage debt, take the top layer and, abracadabra, rate it triple A. Throw out the other strips, the grim probabilities—the crime, the decaying infrastructure, the hardship all around, the heroin and the syphilis. What do we have left? The bright side: maybe Manhattan will become affordable again, and cool, and dangerous. Dangerous in theory, but not to you or your family and friends. Dirty, but in a good way. Night clubs where anything goes. Art, music, Billy Martin.

Four sightings in the neighborhood — officially a trend?

Yes, yes...I know that one is a Mini Cooper...it's still small.  Anyway, I included it so that you can see how much LARGER it is than the Smart Cars...

Speculating about the future of 159 E. Second Ave.

We've been keeping our eye on 159 E. Second Ave., the hallowed ground that was home for 27 years to the beloved A. Fontana Shoe Repair. There has been lots of activity there.  A tipster reported last night that the plywood was down, though the windows are still covered with paper. This is what we spotted earlier with our special spy-cam:



Sure, we could just do a little reporting and find out what's going in here...but let's just wildly speculate!...Because no matter how ridiculous our guesses, we probably won't be too far off! Based on the kitcheny-type wares, I'm going with a high-end dessert shop. Because this area desperately needs more dessert places!

At least there's good news at the tailor shop next door, as Jeremiah reported.

What happened when no one was looking

Airoots has an interesting essay on creativity and the creative process:

New York was creative when no one was looking. SoHo, The East Village, the Lower East side in Manhattan and more recently Williamsburg in Brooklyn were cultural hotbeds for as long as the city was bankrupt and they they were ignored. That’s when people like ABC No Rio and CBGB could squat buildings and Futura was spray painting subway tunnels, when artists that are now established, recognized and often no so inspired anymore where still crackheads, gays, punks, bums and squatters. There was nothing there to see. No hype and no romance. These much venerated places were at the periphery of a city on the verge of a breakdown.

Now that New York is universally recognized as a creative city all we see instead of artists are art directors, graphic designers, ad producers and so on. Established and wannabe communication professionals, commercial artists and other marketers come enmasse to such cities, where they know there is an industry that can use their know-how. Rather than breaking new grounds this so-called “creative class” recycles tired clichés and remixed proven formulas. New York is good at attracting people from elsewhere, but doesn’t breed much local talent anymore. Of course just like everywhere pockets of innovation remain. New York is big enough and its periphery is full of creative tension and driven people. But as a rule, creative work seems to happen where no one is looking.

The dog brothel and other fine works by Joey Skaggs

Meine Kleine Fabrik brings us this video and story of media hoaxster Joey Skaggs. Among his alleged early work:

In 1968, Skaggs noticed that middle-class suburbanites were going on tours of the East Village to observe hippies. Skaggs subsequently organized a sightseeing tour for hippies to observe the suburbs of Queens. On Christmas Day, he created the Vietnamese Christmas Nativity Burning to protest against the Vietnam War.

In 1969, Skaggs tied a 50-foot bra to the front of the U.S. Treasury building on Wall Street, organized a Hells Angels' wedding procession through the Lower East Side, and made grotesque Statues of Liberty on the 4th of July, again to protest against the Vietnam War.

Also!

Cathouse for Dogs (1976): Skaggs published an ad for a dog brothel in The Village Voice and hired actors to present their dogs for the benefit of an ABC news crew. The prank annoyed the ASPCA and the Bureau of Animal Affairs until Skaggs revealed the truth after a subpoena. ABC did not retract the story (the WABC TV producer insisted that Skaggs had said it was a hoax to avoid prosecution), possibly because the piece had been nominated for an Emmy Award. It was subsequently disqualified.

This short film, directed by Frederick Marx, shows many more of Skaggs's media pranks through the years...



Funny stuff. Though I'm easy. Heywood Jablome cracks me up every time!

The Bowery is nightlife

Down by the Hipster on the new powerhouse destination that is the Bowery:

There are at least 15 bars in a 3 block radius that are packed every weekend, and we are sure that we missed a few. Add in the new hotels, high rise condos, New Museum, pending Keith McNally restaurant, Daniel Boloud's new spot, Matt and Paul's pending space in the Puck Building etc., it will hit you too. The Bowery is nightlife. It's where operators want to open, and where New Yorkers can sip expensive drinks and still step over the homeless who are sleeping outside the Mission. It's feaux authenticity that the youth crave. The Bowery. Shudder.

[Image via Art Knowledge News]

Why strippers are all "moaning and groaning" at the Penthouse Executive Club

Wall Street's financial crisis has trickled down to Manhattan's mammary meccas. A source tells us jiggle joints all over the city are seeing a drop in business, with fewer customers, less bar traffic and a drop in lap dances. "The strippers at Penthouse Executive Club are all moaning and groaning," one insider tells us. "They say they aren't making anything at all since the market crashed." (Page Six)

Noted

HACKENSACK, N.J. (AP) -- The biggest danger for magician David Blaine when he hangs upside down above New York's Central Park for 60 hours next week? Going blind.

That's the analysis of Dr. Massimo Napolitano of the Hackensack University Medical Center in New Jersey. He is the chief of vascular surgery and is advising Blaine on the stunt.

Napolitano told the Bergen Record for a story Saturday that hanging upside down for a long time increases blood pressure in the head, especially in the eyes. That could lead to blindness.

The doctor doesn't say how long the blindness could last, but he says there's also a risk of swelling and cramps in internal organs.

"As much a part of the fabric of New York City as the landmarks she helped popularize: Magnolia Bakery, Pastis and her beloved Greenwich Village

Page Six Magazine puts Sex and the City author Candace Bushnell on the cover of its new issue.

And we begin:

Honey blond highlights? Check. Sample-size physique? Check. Closet full of designer duds to wrap around said physique? Check. But Candace Bushnell, the creative genius behind Sex and the City and the NBC TV hit Lipstick Jungle, doesn't just look like a character from one of her best-selling novels. (Take your pick: Sex and the City, Lipstick Jungle, Trading Up or Four Blondes.) By the way she lives (a feminist, she eventually married a much younger man) and who she writes about (most famously, of course, Carrie Bradshaw), Candace, 49, embodies a modern breed of New York woman that is as ambitious about love as her career. She is also as much a part of the fabric of New York City as the landmarks she helped popularize: Magnolia Bakery, Pastis and her beloved Greenwich Village.

Candace, who grew up in "upper middle class Glastonbury, Conn.," also recalls moving to New York:

After three semesters at Rice University in Houston, she dropped out to "run away to New York City." Her goal was to become a writer, but when she first moved to Manhattan in 1978 at age 19 she lived in a two-bedroom apartment on 11th and Broadway with three other girls. She had to scrape to pay her $150-a-month rent, often eating $1 hot dogs or a can of soup for meals. Dating was a way to score free meals and meet the city's glitterati.

The article doesn't get into what Candace thinks of a post Sex-and-the-City New York ... or the impact the show may have had on New York.

Still, the article notes that: she is relieved to be out of the dating pool. "There's nothing harder than being single. And things are even harder for young women these days," says Candace.When I was growing up in the 1970s, you didn't have to shave your legs, let alone have a Brazilian wax."

Questions and statements on the LES

At Clinton and Stanton on the LES.


In front of 32 Clinton, the four units ranging from $1.8 million to $2.5 million.

No, really? Seriously? SERIOUSLY?!

At 110 E. Third St. You can't make this stuff up.




So that glassy condo at 110 Third Ave. has a frozen yogurt shop and Bank of America branch in its adjacent retail space. Seems about right.

On Saturday, it looked as if today's forecast would be named after a stipper -- or maybe a poodle

Sprinkles?

Articles that I decided not to read

From NYU's student newspaper, Washington Square News.

Summer's officially over...

and someone apparently didn't get the bike out much during the season...Spotted on 8th Street near Avenue C.

So long to the summer....

"The voice of God" speaks

Wading through all the blather in the media today about the final home game at Yankee Stadium. One thing stands out, though: Bob Sheppard. The Post's Steve Serby did his Sunday Q-and-A with Sheppard, one of the city's most iconic and classy figures. He is the legendary voice of Yankee Stadium who started as public-address announcer in 1951. Unfortunately, an illness has kept the 97 year old (!) from the Stadium this season.

This passage really jumps out. Serby asks him his thoughts on various Yankees through the years.

Q: George Steinbrenner?

A: Do you know, after being there (more than) 50 years, I don't think we ever exchanged more than three or four lines over the time, and they were all cordial.

Wow. Well, given how shabbily Steinbrenner has treated his people, maybe this is a good thing...

Anyway, Sheppard ends on a hopeful note:

Q: The new Yankee Stadium?

A: Tell the people who read The Post I'm looking forward to next year.

He's too weak to attend tonight's last game. Still, as the Times noted in a profile of Sheppard yesterday:

Sheppard’s voice will be heard Sunday night, as it has been all season — as the recorded introduction for No. 2, the Yankee captain Derek Jeter, after Jeter requested this rare favor. The shortstop’s name — JEE-tah — has become a stylized flourish for Sheppard, who is otherwise a purist. Or maybe we all have exaggerated it, as we imitated it. At any rate, when they finally tear down the old place, that echo will bounce off the apartment buildings and bridges and hills of the Bronx and Manhattan — JEE-tah, JEE-tah, JEE-tah — forever.

Sheppard’s legacy is secure — half a century of Giants football games, including the classic 1958 championship loss to Baltimore, his voice and microphone ensconced in the Baseball Hall of Fame (even if the rules have not been bent to induct him along with hallowed broadcasters) and inclusion in a few movies and commercials over the years. (He does have a business side to him.)

Essentially, Sheppard is a simple man, as some poets and clerics and teachers can be termed simple. He never sought the company of the athletes. He had his own niche in life, and he still does, giving thanks that he can attend church each morning, go shopping, and in good weather walk the garden behind his home, always with Mary.

They are the most handsome couple in the world. I used to see them walking the shoreline at Jones Beach State Park in the summer of 1961, but what I did not know was that they were newlyweds. When I sat in their living room a few months ago, they told me how they met, at church, of course, after Sheppard’s first wife died of a brain tumor, leaving him with four children. He invited Mary Hoffman to the beach, where they swam and played pitch-and-putt golf, and, when he was ready, he proposed.

Bob has not resumed serving as a lector at Mass, but Mary reads from the scripture many mornings — “the best female lector I have ever heard,” he said Friday, as if he were saying “No. 2, Derek JEE-tah.”

The Sheppards resisted the Yankees’ kind offer of a limousine for Sunday night, but they do go out.

“You know how old I am?” Sheppard asked. “My daughter, Mary, is celebrating her 50th year in the convent. Can you imagine? And she is still young and beautiful.”

Sheppard in action from last season:

Some photos I took during the summer that don't really a thing to do with anything except that I took them this past summer, which ends today

Third Avenue and 11th Street, 7:50 a.m., Sept. 21

And now a word from our sponsor

In honor of the last game at Yankee Stadium. Or an excuse to run a silly commercial featuring Mickey Mantle.

And now, another word from our sponsor

Ditto.



Hmm, Dextrose food energy...

Breaking records; wasting gas

Hot off the wire! (And I'm assuming this is today...since it's hot off the wire and all...)

NY attempt at record for largest tow truck parade

NEW YORK (AP) -- Get ready for the rumble of 400 or more tow trucks parading through the streets of Queens and Brooklyn.

New York's towing industry plans to break the world record for the largest tow truck parade with a procession of 50-ton rotators, medium-duty trucks, flatbeds and wreckers.

The procession is slated to leave Shea Stadium and cruise along the Van Wyck Expressway before finishing at Floyd Bennett Field in Brooklyn. The trucks will then park on the 5,000-foot runway to spell out the words "New York."

Guinness Book of World Records representatives will be on hand to certify the results of the parade. The previous world record was set on Aug. 20, 2004, at Wenatchee, Wash., by a parade of 83 tow trucks.

Hmm, given the price of gas these days....seems like money well spent. Good luck fellas! Anyway, this is all well and good, but does anyone remember what happened last time?

Down and out in NYC

Headline from today's Wall Street Journal:

As Times Turn Tough, New York's Wealthy Economize:
Plastic Surgeons, Jewelers, Yacht Builders Brace for Leaner Times; Saying No to Caviar

And the first few parargraphs:

A nose job in a hospital with a private nurse in attendance had been something of a rite of passage for Joan Asher's children. But when her fourth and last child was ready for her own rhinoplasty recently, Ms. Asher asked her to postpone it.
The financial markets were simply more out of whack than her 16-year-old's proboscis.
"The other noses were more prominent," the stay-at-home mother from a tony New York City suburb in Westchester County told her 16-year-old daughter. She could get hers done when things settled down.
The financial crisis on Wall Street has New York's well-to-do reeling.

No one attended the schmancy Sex and the City DVD release party

Horrors! Writes Sheila at Gawker: There's no satisfying way to explain the party, other than a PR clusterfuck/fuckup. However, maybe people are getting a little tired of the franchise after a six-year TV run, one of the most-hyped movies of the year, and a cultural reach that, on some days, seems to have infected the entire city with luxury brand names and bus tours. What does this say about the sequel? We're guessing nothing good. Sometimes you just have to get the shotgun and take the old mare out behind the barn.

Saturday morning bonus!

Here's a feature on the Sex and the City Tour from April 2004 by Norwegian journalist Henrik Pryser Libell:

Dee Dee Ramone and Spikey Tops on the Uncle Floyd Show

From April 1991.



Who's Uncle Floyd?

Lucky Cheng's leaving the East Village for the wilds of Times Square

News from GNML via Eater.

As Down by the Hipster notes: "We are also happy that it will be bringing its legions of tourists and bachelorette parties with them. Walking past the restaurant on a weekend night is like walking through a gauntlet of cheese. You know what we mean. You know."

Thanks for the memories!

EV Grieve Etc.

A few things...

Avalon to buy Extra Place from City? (Save the Lower East Side!)

The growing number of tent cities (CNN)

Ken remembers HoJo's (Greenwich Village Daily Photo via Jeremiah)

An evening to save the Bowery (Bowery Boogie)

SJP on the possible Sex and the City sequel (Us -- no giggling, please)

Oh, to be rich and white...to have the ways and means to help out other rich white people (esquared)

[Photo via Forgotten New York]

In which EV Grieve panics for a brief moment

Was startled the other day when I saw the ominous-from-a-distance sign hanging above Life at 1oth Street and Avenue.

Just an "apartment for rent" sign. Uh. Carry on. Nothing to see here...

Anyway, forgive me for being a little jumpy. Last time I made note of a building for sale, the business on the ground floor moved...in this case, Vasmay Lounge at 269 E. Houston St.

Previously on EV Grieve:

Rent lives; Life lives on

Did the Donut Social cause a headache for HOWL?

Scoopy's Notebook in The Villager this week has more on the fallout from the Donut Social on Sept. 5:

The L.E.S. Slacktivists’ sound-permit flap spilled over to the recent HOWL! Festival, causing some howls of frustration from festival organizers. After John Penley, Jerry “The Peddler” Wade and Bill Cashman, Leftover Crack’s manager, argued in federal court that the local crust-core band’s planned concert outside the Ninth Police Precinct on Sept. 5 was being held to unfairly low decibel levels, police apparently felt they had to make a better show of monitoring HOWL! sound levels. Artist James Romberger, whose wife, Marguerite Van Cook, ran this year’s festival, as she did last year, said that “The Death to the Police Rally,” as he called it, caused a headache for HOWL! “We were enforced,” Romberger said. “They stood there all day with whatever those were…sound guns, or whatever.” Actually, Romberger said he’s more concerned about the whole “death” trend of late by local singer/activists, from Leftover Crack’s Sturgeon singing “Kill cops” to David Peel leading choruses of “Die yuppie scum!” “Anyone who’s against the death penalty cannot be behind calling for death,” Romberger stated. “Throwing donuts and pies is O.K., funny, ha ha. But calling for death is anti-reasonable and uncivilized.” Speaking of throwing donuts, we hear that the harassment charge against Sturgeon for trying to pelt police with the pastries on Sept. 5 was dropped but that he was asked to perform 200 hours of community service, which he refused.

Previously Donut Social coverage on EV Grieve.

The oldest tattoo shop in Manhattan

City Snapshots had a nice post this week on Mike Bakaty, proprietor of the only tattoo parlor left from the days when tattooing was illegal in New York. His shop, Fineline Tattoo, is on First Avenue between First and Second Street in the East Village.

As CS notes:

Mike Bakaty draws tattoos with a signed picture of Gandhi hanging in a frame over his shoulder: “To Mike. Your man, Mahatma.” He traveled a lot as a young sailor, and the navy is where he got a taste for tattooing. Then, during what Bakaty refers to as the bootleg years – the period in which tattooing was illegal in New York – he started practicing the art behind closed doors on the Lower East Side.

Among the people who have received a tattoo from Bakaty: Wilford Brimley.

Via a link at City Snapshots, here's a brief look at the history of tattooing in NYC:

For 36 years, there were no tattoo shop storefronts in New York City - not even on the Bowery, where modern tattooing was invented in the 1890s. There were no televisions in street-level store windows showing people getting tattoos, no advertising - save for the tattoos themselves - fliers or vague messages in the back of the Village Voice. Every Tom had to know Dick who knew Harry who knew where to get a tattoo.

Tattooing in New York City went underground after the City Health Department found what it said were a series of blood-borne hepatitis cases coming from tattoo parlors in 1961. Tattoos were done on the second story of buildings on Canal Street, in basements, apartments and backrooms.

Noted

The city’s unemployment rate rose to 5.8 percent from 5 percent in July — the largest monthly increase in more than 30 years — as about 5,200 private-sector jobs were eliminated . . . Many of the layoffs came in the tumbling financial sector, which is one of the city’s biggest employers and the provider of nearly one-fourth of its annual wages and salaries. (New York Times)

What a Steel!

Ads have gone up around the East Village, like the one below seen at 8th Street and Avenue C, for The SteelWorks Lofts coming soon to Williamsburg. The sales gallery is opening in October for the lofts that are priced from $495,000 to $1.5 million.


Seems perfect for the East Village resident who's sick and tired of the overdevelopment and condofication of this neighborhood...to move to a neighborhood with even more ridciulous overdevelopment and condofication.

P.S.
What exactly is "handcrafted living"? And what's up with the blowtorch? Why is Jennifer Beals coming to mind?

"Its quirky feel has come to symbolize the avant-garde, rebellious East Village spirit"

The Daily News takes a look at Red Square on East Houston:

Conceived by self-proclaimed radical sociologist-turned-real-estate-developer [Michael] Rosen in 1989, Red Square occupies land that served as an automobile service station for more than 25 years. Rosen's wife's family bought the property in the 1960s, and, he points out, no homes were destroyed and no businesses were displaced.Red Square was designed by graphic artist legend Tibor Kalman, a Hungarian immigrant. Its quirky feel has come to symbolize the avant-garde, rebellious East Village spirit.

Hmmm.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Looking back: Red Square and gentrification

Otis Williams Jr. on Wall Street

Otis Williams Jr. -- street performer, sculptor, poet and self-proclaimed health fanatic and ex-con -- took to the steps at Federal Hall on Wall Street after work Tuesday to talk about being clean and sober and, uh, some other things that I couldn't quite make out. The tourists seemed entertained. And the Federal Hall officer was jovial enough in ushering Otis off the stairs (in the second video).

Story of a City: New York (1946)

Here's a revved-up version via Rocketboom:


[Via AnimalNewYork]

"Freaks" and cheeks

Sorry, a little off topic here, but I wanted to make mention of this....On Monday, cops raided an S&M parlor in Tribeca and arrested two people, including the club's alleged proprietor, Collin Reeve, 35, of Staten Island. They two were charged with promoting prostitution. Whatever! Let's find out more about Reeve. As the Post helpfully notes in its case to assassinate the man's character:

Marie Santiago, who used to be the superintendent of a Staten Island building where Reeve lived for several years, called him a "freak."

"When they left, we found out they were total freaks. We found videos of him and people playing with people dressed up as dinosaurs," she said.

"When they had a party, the people who came were weirdos. They wore all leather. They would wear spikes around their necks, too."

Noted

Mayor Bloomberg is the 8th wealthiest person in America with a net worth of $20 billion. (Forbes)

A letter from The Bowery Presents

The following e-mail showed up in in-boxes last night...By posting this, I'm neither endorsing or criticizing what they're trying to do at 19 Kenmare...just telling people what is happening with the space. (Eater's coverage of the proposed new restaurant is here.) Oh, I did always like Little Charlie's Clam House, which was at 19 Kenmare on the LES for 80 years.

This email was sent to you by The Bowery Presents, 156 Ludlow St., 5th Floor, New York, NY 10002. You are receiving this email advertisement because your email address was used for a ticket purchase or you signed up via our website.

Dear Friends:
I am asking that you please forward the following email to http://us.mc904.mail.yahoo.com/mc/compose?to=TRAV200008@hotmail.com to help support a new restaurant that plans to open near The Bowery Ballroom. The restaurant, named Travertine, will be located at 19 Kenmare Street (near Elizabeth Street) in part of the space that was occupied by Charlie's Clam House. We want to encourage new, well-managed restaurants to open in the community so that our guests will have a place to eat both before and after shows. The Community Board has requested that Travertine show its widespread community support through letters or by having supporters attend the Community Board meeting tomorrow evening 96 pm [ED note: Eh?] at SEIU HQ, 101 Sixth Avenue, 22nd floor, between Canal and Spring Streets). If you are able to attend, the Community Board leadership is merely going to ask supporters of Travertine's liquor license application to stand up or show their hands (this should take no more than an hour).
Thank you,
Michael Swier

Following is the Following is the email that you can either cut-and-paste or revise and send via email to the email address stated above:
Mr. Ray Lee
Chair, SLA Committee, Manhattan Community Board 2
3 Washington Square Village, NYC, NY 10012
Dear Mr. Lee,
I am writing to ask you and CB2 to support the application by Travertine (19 Kenmare Street) for a liquor license. I look forward to the opening of a well-managed, quality dining option in my neighborhood. The location has been a restaurant for many years and the owners of Travertine should be allowed to open at this site, create jobs, pay taxes, and improve the neighborhood.
I hope that you will encourage your fellow board members to approve the application on Thursday, September 18.
Sincerely,
Name
Address

OH, THANKS A BUNCH, TIME OUT NEW YORK

In this week's "Best 'Hoods" issue, the East Village gets the nod for "best bar scene." As the magazine notes: "Hate on college students all you want: Fancy pants, fuddy-duddies and everyone in between still love the E-Vill for a night of boozing." Just what we need! More TONY-toting bargoers! Here's the write-up on the "E-Vill." (And if that catches on...)

Meanwhile, on the too-many-bars front. Save the Lower East Side! has news on the most recent CB3 meeting...while Tim at Colonnade Row has the latest on the Box.

Welcome to the East Village!: We're rich, drunk, snotty and LOVE John Mayer!

Also in Time Out this week:

What do you think of when you hear…We asked New Yorkers to play a little word association with NYC neighborhoods. Let the stereotyping begin!

East Village:

“Snotty — they like to go out every day, like to drink.”
Sohaib Marie, 22; Sunset Park, Brooklyn


“Rich people who come from a rich family. They listen to John Mayer.”
Thomas Morales, 16; Bronx


“They’re fun people. Easygoing, easy to mix with.”
Carson Roberts, 26; Bronx

The Times discovers Chinatown

Oh, boy. From today's Times. Titled: General Tso’s Shopping Spree.

In the film version of “Sex and the City,” Miranda, played by Cynthia Nixon, hunts for an apartment in Chinatown, eager to sink roots into this roiling neighborhood. Once a bit remote and gritty for Miranda and her acquisitive ilk, this Lower East Side enclave — home to Chinese, Burmese and Vietnamese, among others — is on the cusp of gentrification. Wine bars, art galleries, restaurants and boutiques have proliferated, turning the area into a magnet for real-life style seekers who can be seen on weekends casing out the string of shops scattered in the shadow of the Manhattan Bridge.
Intent on exploring this two-mile-square area loosely bounded by Kenmare and Delancey Streets on the north, and East and Worth Streets on the south, they thread their way past old tenements, knickknack shops and vendors selling windup toys. And they shop.
“It’s crazy how things are blossoming here,” said Zia Ziprin, the owner of Girls Love Shoes on Ludlow Street, just south of Canal. “It’s definitely becoming a little mecca.”
Merchants are lured by affordable rents; shoppers by the promise of forward-looking, and sometimes budget-friendly, wares at boutiques popping up along Orchard, Ludlow and Division Streets — and, more recently, on Canal, where closet-size outposts of chic rub shoulders with electronics and hardware stores.
For retailers, “Chinatown is a last frontier,” said Faith Hope Consolo, the chairman of retail leasing and sales for Prudential Douglas Elliman. Merchants leap at the chance to lease stores for $100 to $150 a square foot, roughly one third to one half the rent for comparable space farther uptown. “Here they can be big fish in a little pond.”

Lehman Brothers 1928 staff Christmas party

I hope they were serving a lot of booze...this is one dull bash.

A touch of Blarney

Not sure what to make of the stickers for EV Grieve favorite the Blarney Cove being plastered around the neighborhood. The "I love to party" message seems awfully fraternityish for the Blarney Cove. (ED note: Duh.) Unless they're trying to drum up some more business. Which I understand. That stretch on 14th Street between A and B is up for grabs in spots. Still.

Are you there God? It's me, Carrie

Candace Bushnell, whose mid-’90s New York Observer column was the basis for Sex and the City, has signed a deal with the children’s division at HarperCollins to write a young adult novel about Carrie Bradshaw’s high-school years. Hello! (New York Observer via Gawker)

Our billionaire mayor speaks out on the "I want it now" society

An "I want it now" society that refuses to live within its means is partly responsible for the subprime-mortgage crisis, Mayor Bloomberg said yesterday.

"I think you just can't blame the banks," he said, taking borrowers to task.

"They say, 'I want the great American dream. I want it now and I'm not going to wait until I put some money in the bank.' . . That's where we lost the moral compass of saying no to people who did not have the earning capacity to support a mortgage."

(New York Post)

Emily Brill weighs in on the Eldridge

On her Essentially Emily: Confessions of a 5th Avenue Misfit site, Emily Brill had this to say about the Eldridge, you know, the hidden lounge/restaurant on Eldridge Street with only 13 tables "manned by chaperones, butlers, table attendants, and a hospitality consultant"...:

The Eldridge is a nice space, but indeed, there’s nothing mind-blowing about it–unless, of course, you wanna talk location (and my friends are as obsessed with this neighborhood right now as I am). I know how stupid this sounds but for an uptown girl like me, stepping out of the cab last night on Eldridge Street was like stepping on to a soundstage. Maybe it’s because they had the sidewalk all glammed up for this party and the collision of flashbulbs and the unassuming nonchalance of East Village streets, graffiti and neon is what got me. I know the west village always used to give me this ‘you’re in a storybook’ feel and it still does from time to time–and the bowery can still feel like that during the day but it’s hard to feel like you’re in little ‘untouched’/unchartered new york by night. It’s an incredible feeling.

So whether or not we’re comin’ back to the eldridge, this is an area, I think, that’s going to see a lot of activity this year. But I hope it holds onto everything I described.

Here's the first comment in response to the post:



Related!: Jeremiah looks at the faux-bookshop facade of The Eldridge. What a kick in the balls.

Leaving Manhattan for Hooterville

For no reason, really. The intro to the long-running sitcom Green Acres from 1966.



Seems as if they could have reached a compromise -- just go to Hooterville on the weekends or something. You have to question how happy their marriage was. Sure is fun to over-analyze old sitcoms!

Condo calls

As the Post notes, in a tough real estate market, new buildings are doing whatever it takes to lure these buyers. "In an effort to be competitive, buildings are offering more and more extreme amenities," says Nathaniel Faust, vice president of Citi-Habitats.

Well, let's just have them report all this:

"Recently, rental buildings are going more full-service, and a lot of condos are making moves towards hotel amenities. Buildings going up now are gearing up to sell units over the next 24 months - they're counting on the weak dollar attracting foreigners - by providing the services that hotels do."

That's where Dr. Robert Glatter comes in.

Glatter is a board-certified emergency physician who has worked with high-profile clients - in certain circles he's known as the official doctor of the city's "fashion bitches" - such as Elie and Rory Tahari, Diane von Furstenberg, Devi Kroell and the cast of "Gossip Girl."

But when he's not taking the temperatures of the famous creative class or attending to patients at Lenox Hill Hospital, he's running his new business, Dr. 911. In addition to being sort of an old-fashioned house call medical care service, the business, which employs four other doctors, caters to luxury buildings such as 15 Central Park West, The Miraval and 40 Bond.

"And a lot of busy people - especially corporate types who have difficulty getting away from their desks - long for days of traditional house calls."

While the service might seem charmingly quaint and old-fashioned, it's not really for everyone - specifically, it's not for the poor. Prices vary on a case-by-case basis, but this personalized service does not come cheap.

"We have an upscale clientele," he says. "Sometimes we'll get a call from an outlying area, but the price deters them a little bit. I don't take insurance, and it's the patient's responsibility to submit the invoice to their company for partial reimbursement."

Love the cheesecake photo shoot the Post did for him, by the way.

Finally! Some positive financial news for NYC!

Federal homeland security officials are giving $29.5 million to the New York Police Department to develop a system to prevent a radiological or nuclear attack on the city.

Oh.

Tourists on hand to document our nation's economic collapse

Can't wait to show the kids! These photos were taken minutes after the Dow closed down more than 500 points yesterday. With the NYSE and Federal Hall right here, this is a heavily traveled area for tourists. Still, there were a lot more tourists milling about yesterday. Could have been the lure of the media trucks and lights...and blood.

Meanwhile, down the street. A few people in Tiffany's.



Not so many people shopping for BMWs. Except some dummies.

Dwell95 fiddled after Wall Street burned

About 90 minutes after the Dow closed yesterday, the big doings began at Wall and Water Streets. As Curbed reported yesterday, the Moinian Group, in some unfortunate timing, had scheduled the launch party for their Philippe Starck-designed luxury rental conversion at 95 Wall St. last night. Uh, oops? No matter! Despite a 500-point tumble (collapse?) on the NYSE, the mood was festive at the location known as Dwell95! A tux-clad musician with an electronic fiddle was on the red carpet delighting all who walked by, mostly confused tourists at the onset.

To hold space for the incoming town cars, Dwell95 planners implemented those festive "do not slip" signs indigenous to maintenance crews.

Meanwhile, here's a snippet of the energetic fiddle player's performance. (Oh, yes -- it's "La Bamba.")



I didn't stick around long enough to hear if he did "The Devil Went Down to Georgia."

Looking at the unintended victims of yesterday's stock market meltdown

How about the US Women’s Soccer team? They visited the NYSE yesterday to celebrate their Gold Medal victory in Beijing and ring The Closing Bell.

One argument for not mourning the destruction of Yankee Stadium

"The Yankees are pretending that, with a final, unimportant game this Sunday, they’re leaving the house that Ruth built: the majestic stadium that opened back when Harding was president. Wrong. That park died in 1973. In its place is a typical seventies improvisation, gritty, rickety, and ugly, something not built for the ages but just good enough to get us through the bad times." (New York)

Those who grease the wheels in Manhattan without (shudder) alcohol; and what's the booziest borough of them all?

Page Six Magazine covers an alarming trend: People who don't drink to wretched excess! No!

Meet the Wagonistas
There was a time when the fashion and media industries were known for their bacchanalian ways. Not anymore: The truly ambitious are giving up booze to boost their careers.

But while tastemakers often justify getting loaded as a way to grease the networking wheels, a growing number of ambitious New Yorkers in creative fields like fashion, media and entertainment say they are passing on the cocktails this year. It's not to lose weight and it's not a post-rehab regime. Instead, the impetus is much more mercenary: They're hoping that not nursing a hangover at work will give them a competitive edge in a tight job market.

And here's a stat from the piece:

According to the city's health department, about 16.8 percent of New Yorkers drink excessively, which is defined as imbibing more than two drinks a day for men and more than one drink a day for women, or consuming more than five drinks on any one occasion. Manhattan is the booziest borough of all, with about 23 percent of the population drinking excessively.

More than two drinks a day for a man is excessive? Good lord. What does three drinks an hour for, say, most of Thursday night and the weekend translate to?

Uh, any help here? Someone? Anyone? Jay McInerney?

"These people are probably giving themselves an unfair advantage by not drinking," says Bright Lights, Big City author Jay McInerney. "My friends still drink happily and copiously—except for the ones who went to rehab. These [ambitious teetotalers] are probably missing out on a certain amount of fun."

The last frontier on the LES?

Million dollar condos abound, of course, on the fringes of the Lower East Side, with River Ridge setting up shop on the wilds of Ridge Street and Karl Fischer soon to follow on Ridge and Stanton. Not to mention 32 Clinton at Clinton and Stanton. Still, for better or worse, there's still at least one stretch of the area where you can enjoy what the neighborhood used to look like -- the empty lot and few dilipidated buildings on Attorney Street between Rivington and Delancey. (Seems like the perfect place for a secret club!)






I have a few more shots from earlier this summer on my Flickr page.

Wishful thinking...?

For some reason I was looking at the CBGB Web site...Guess it hasn't been updated in a few years...And whatever became of the Vegas dream?

Going Nightclubbing

Speaking of CBGB...thanks to Stupefaction for telling us about the new Go Nightclubbing Web site.

NIGHTCLUBBING
THE ORIGINAL PUNK ROCK MUSIC VIDEO SERIES
by PAT IVERS and EMILY ARMSTRONG
Live videotaped performances from 1975-80
Described by the New York Times as, “The Lewis and Clark of rock video”, video artists Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong spent their nights from 1975-80 documenting the burgeoning punk scene in nightclubs around New York City. Ivers and Armstrong were acutely aware of the significance of that era and their material captures the sprit of the time. The edited results were shown on their weekly cable TV show NIGHTCLUBBING. These performances have been compiled and presented as the ultimate wish-I-was-there document of the groundbreaking punk, new wave, no wave and hardcore movement.

Lehman Brothers at night

Looks rather peaceful.


[Via Nickingle on YouTube]

"So on Monday we'll get to see what the failure of an investment bank with $600 billion in assets looks like." (Time.com)

A Nick Zedd retrospective

A little late on this...there's a Nick Zedd retrospective tonight and Sept. 28 at the Gene Frankel Theatre on Bond Street between Lafayette and the Bowery. (Here's more on Zedd's Cinema of Transgression.)

What follows is Thrust in Me, a short Zedd did in 1985 with Richard Kern in the East Village. (Zedd has both lead roles.) The song is "John Coltrane Stereo Blues" by The Dream Syndicate.

Oh, please be warned if you're new to this. It's graphic. Very, very NSFW. Oh, and nice panoramic shot of the neighborhood at the 7:26 mark.

The 57-story condo coming to 56 Leonard

From the Daily News on 56 Leonard Street:

The Swiss architects of the iconic Bird's Nest stadium at the Beijing Olympics are bringing their innovative style to New York City with a translucent glass skyscraper designed to look like houses stacked in the sky.

Architects Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron's $650 million, 57-story condominium featuring dramatic, cantilevered terraces is slated to begin going up in mid-October in the trendy Tribeca district in lower Manhattan.

Curbed has been following the story.

Anyway, this building won't look out of place at all! A fine addition to our city of glass.

"Giuliani will lock my ass up"

The Post reports: "Squeegee men -- the window-washing bane of city streets who became a symbol of Big Apple blight and a top target in former Mayor Rudy Giuliani's crusade to crack down on quality-of-life nuisances in the 1990s -- are making a comeback."

Noted from the article:

One press-shy squeegee guy, apparently still thinking it was Rudy's reign, asked The Post not to write about him.

"Giuliani will lock my ass up," he said. "There will be 30 cops up and down this street."

“Oh, God, we’re living in a hell that I can’t even begin to describe!”

That's Arthur Nersesian, the 49-year-old playwright, poet and novelist, talking about the changes in his home neighborhood of the East Village. He's the subject of an entertaining profile in the Times today.

Unlike many New Yorkers who inhabited the East Village of the 1980s, Mr. Nersesian seemed to remember every aspect of that gritty and often dangerous time with fondness. Even as he described the endless parade of prostitutes down East 12th Street or the bonfires set by the homeless in Tompkins Square Park, there was a palpable tenderness to his voice.
“There was a sense of community there,” Mr. Nersesian said. “I couldn’t walk down the street without saying hello to someone. You’d see Allen Ginsberg all over the place, and you’d see the other Beats.
“I wasn’t the biggest fan of the Beats, but there was an exemplary quality to the artist as citizen. You think about artists today in our society, and they’re kind of removed. You don’t really know them. When Ginsberg died, a definitive quality from the East Village — at least from my East Village — was gone.”
Perhaps inevitably, the East Village of today, with its fashionable bars and restaurants and its gleaming glass towers, fills him with despair. “Oh, God, we’re living in a hell that I can’t even begin to describe!” Mr.
Nersesian said mournfully that day at the diner. “It’s amazing how memory really does become a kind of curse. If I was just coming to the city today, I’d probably think, ‘Oh, this is a really interesting place,’ but it’s trying to tell people, ‘You know, there was a war fought here, a strange economic, cultural battle that went on, and I saw so many wonderful people lost among the casualties.’ ”

Also from the article:

In his 1992 play “Rent Control,” Mr. Nersesian incorporated an experience he had when he returned to the office tower that had replaced his childhood apartment.
“I tried to go to the exact same space,” he recalled, “and it turned out to be the romance division of Random House or something. I walked in and the secretary said, ‘Can I help you?’ And I think I tried to convey to her that this was where I lived for the first 10 years of my life; this space here was where I was bathed in the sink. And she looked at me like I was a nut.”

[Image: Andrew Henderson/The New York Times]

Welcome to our pretty bank branch

We've written before about the increase in bank robberies in NYC this year. Fancy bank branches abound on seemingly every corner of some East Village streets. It's so convenient! On the topic of the increase in bank robberies, the Times makes this observation today:

A look at the data shows that bank robbers seem to prefer some of the inviting environments of the newer banks on the city scene. Sovereign, Wachovia and Commerce — with plants arrayed on marble floors, jars of lollipops set on low-slung counters and no bullet-resistant barriers between tellers and customers — have some the highest ratios of robberies to branches.

I wonder when bank officials will realize these sparkly new branches are in the middle of an enormous metropolitan area, and not in Pleasantville USA...

EV Grieve's Fashion Week in Review (with apologies)

A tour of the LES

Big eater Crazy Legs Conti takes on the LES food scene here in this video clip...it's not that old...interesting to see what has changed since then...and what hasn't...

Under the Brooklyn Bridge

For Friday: "Nightmare In Pink Dead Cool"

The Chrome Cranks. The lone comment to this video on YouTube:

one of the best NYC bands when rock n roll in NY was really wild and pure... fuck williamsburg's pussie bands

Fashion Week photos found in the EV Grieve in-box

Was nice of someone to send them to me. 

Sweetness

Hunter-Gatherer takes a look at "21" via one of my all-time favorites, Sweet Smell of Success.

As he notes:

This movie is a must see for film buffs (especially NYC ones) but what struck me, while reviewing the film for the first time in a decade, is the ever-so-timely portrayal of media corruption.