[EVG file photo]There's an
Ultimately, it's about the new 250 Bowery condo, "where Paul Simon and Scarlett Johansson have looked at apartments." (Also, per the Post last month, Shaun White.)
Here are the best lines from the piece:
• The drunks are still there — only now they drive Bentleys, wear Prada and date supermodels.
• "This is not the Bowery of 20 years ago when we ... stepped over the homeless," said broker John Gomes
• "It has grit — and artsy people with good taste aren’t afraid of that," [250 Bowery developer Zach] Vella said.
• "The Bowery could be the Park Ave. of downtown someday," said Oren Alexander, 25, of Douglas Elliman.
Voting is now open for the best line...
Previously on EV Grieve:
The Post declares that the Bowery is 'out' for 2011
Page Six Magazine says the Bowery calls to mind "an L.A. vibe"
On no...no no! NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOO!
It has grit???? Really??
ReplyDeleteThat line just has to be the winner.
Yeah 'grit', the mainstream idea of grit which means it has no parking lots or drive-thru windows.
ReplyDeleteWhole Foods? Patagonia? Oooh, that's gritty.
Not Your Father's Bowery.
ReplyDelete$925k for a one-bedroom in a building like that? Either it's tiny or an awesome deal.
ReplyDeletenever been to the bowery but heard satellite records used to be there
ReplyDelete"The drunks are still there — only now they drive Bentleys, wear Prada and date supermodels."
ReplyDeleteThat is just such lazy writing. Pushing a narrative, rather than actual reporting.
@shmnyc
ReplyDeleteTrue. I happened to be on the Bowery with my father last night and he was reminiscing about how it was back when...50's, 60's, 70's, 80's and now he described it as yuppified.
By the way, if you have to describe something as having "grit" it usually means it doesn't unless it's sandpaper you're describing. Much like if you have to describe a bar as a "dive bar" it usually isn't.
My vote for best line...the one about the drunks still being there.
Can someone please show me where the grit is. I must have missed it. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI saw some grit last night, but a guy from 7-Eleven took care of it with some Windex and a sponge.
ReplyDeleteIf celebrities really want to help save New York City they should stay out of the East Village and Lower Eastside.
ReplyDeleteCelebrities are our biggest enemy.
E.B White is best known for Charlotte's Web, but he was also a great essayist. Here is his 1948 description of The Bowery from,"Here Is New York":
ReplyDelete" Walk the Bowery under the El at night and you and all you feel is a sort of cold guilt. Touched for a dime, you try to drop the coin and not touch the hand, because the hand is dirty; you try to avoid the glance, because the glance accuses. This is not so much personal menace as universal- the cold menace of unresolved human suffering and poverty and the advanced stages of the disease alcoholism. On a summer night the drunks sleep in the open. The sidewalk is a free bed, and there are no lice. Pedestrians step along and over and around the still forms as though walking on a battlefield among the dead. In doorways, on the steps of the savings bank, the bums lie sleeping it off. Standing sentinel at each sleeper’s head is the empty bottle from which he drained his release. Wedged in the crook of his arm is the paper bag containing his things. The glib barker on the sight-seeing bus tells his passengers that this is the “street of lost souls”, but the Bowery does not think of itself as lost; it meets its peculiar problem in its own way—plenty of gin mills, plenty of flophouses, plenty of indifference, and always, at the end of the line, Bellevue.”
Thanks for the E.B. White passage, Barney.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great quote, Barney. There's some grit.
ReplyDeleteBowery's still awesome below Broome. And while its yuppification really sucks, drinking your life away on the street is no great shakes either.
ReplyDeleteGreat quote by EB White, lousy writing by the Daily News.
ReplyDeleteI work on Bowery and I think I saw a Bentley maybe once. It is not Palm Beach. Did the writer even bother to come to this part of town? This worship of money and celebrity is getting nauseating. There is nothing of value to these people except money and status and being somewhere because of celebrities. NYC never cared about its celebrities- they would walk the street and no one would care. Now we are supposed to want to live near them or eat cupcakes that were mentioned on their tv show.