Get your new city maps!

The New York City Department of City Planning has released a revised neighborhood map updated with new neighborhoods, statistics and topographical features, according to a sentence that I just lifted straight from The Wall Street Journal today.

Head over to the Department of City Planning website to download a map for free.

Also, please note the disclaimer on the bottom of the map page:

"Neighborhood names are not officially designated. Due to space constraints, this map product does not include an exhaustive list of known neighborhood names."

Which explains why the map doesn't include such locales here as Astor Place, WeAs (West of Astor), LeLa (left of Lafayette Street), SoFaBo (South of Facebook) and Stuyversy (The merger beween Stuytown and Gramercy Park).

Thanks to Giovanni for some of those fine names.

'Another example of New York City's impending Americanization' — Street signs

We had a pleasant email exchange with East Village resident and EV Grieve reader James C. Taylor the other day. He sent us the following photo, noting that he was veering slightly off of our usual beat.

As much as we think we pay attention to things, such as street signs, I didn't see what the big deal was. He wrote:

"I spotted another example of New York City's impending Americanization: my first sighting of the generic conformist street signs. They may not look like much, but I was still shocked by their ability to make a quiet corner of Greenwich Village look like... well, every other town in the US."

Huh, don't these look like the street signs from, say, this corner?

No!

The signs themselves are basically the same, he said. The difference lies in the type. (He's a graphic designer, so he's into the whole font thing.)

"Notice how 'Greene' and 'St' are lower case? The signs on 9th and B (and all the others, going back to the yellow and black signs) all used a condensed uppercase typeface. The change is part of a federal mandate for all street signs to use a lowercase font called Clearview. I remember reading about it a few months back but hadn't seen one of the new signs until [the other day]."

Anyway, somehow we missed this entertaining story from the Daily News last Oct. 1, in which Bloomberg was a dick when asked about the federal mandate to change the font and capitalization on 250,000 city street signs by 2018.

Said James: "I used to refer to events like these as the encroachment of 'America' upon New York City, but these days it seems like New York is just submitting willingly to whatever 'America' wants. C'mon New York, where's your fight?"

According to that Daily News article, there was one man ready to stand up for New York: Rep. Anthony Weiner. Per the article: "Weiner ... wasn't shy about saying where he stood on the matter. He's considering sending a letter to the feds 'but I'm trying to figure out whether to put STUPID in all caps so they'll understand it.'"

Two old-school newsstands that are still holding on

Yesterday, Jeremiah noted the demise of another old-style newsstand near Union Square...

Which reminds me of the recent photos that I took...

Broadway near Astor Place...



... and 23rd Street and Park Avenue South...




Appreciate them while you can ... soon they, too, will be described as "dull, blank box, another ticky-tacky nothing."

Jeremiah has more on vanishing newsstands here.

One view on "Naked City"

At the Post today, Julia Vitullo-Martin, director of the Center for Urban Innovation at the Regional Plan Association, takes a look at the new book by Sharon Zukin, "Naked City: The Death and Life of Authentic Urban Places."

Vitullo-Martin writes:

While Zukin expresses substantial ambivalence, she ultimately believes that authenticity is its own reward. Indeed, she goes so far as to propose that authenticity should be used to "ensure everyone a right to stay in the place where they live and work." But this would be disastrous in practice, resulting in rent rules and protections that would leave a grid-locked and static city.

Down that road lies what Justin Davidson pondered in New York magazine ... her the "dedicated yearners would roll back" the tide of affluence, preferring the "cracked-out squats" of the 1980s.

Put that way, I vote for today’s New York, even without the authenticity.

Shake Shack and "Hale and Heardy" among the top-10 2009 Google searches in New York City

Drumroll!

1. cuny portal
2. duane reade locations
3. mta trip planner
4. seamless web
5. conedison.com
6. hopstop
7. hale and heardy
8. shake shack
9. nyu home
10. queens library

Why would anyone have to Google "Duane Reade locations"? Just walk two blocks in any direction and you should find one.

Also!

As EV Grieve reader T.E.V.B, who passed this along, noted, "C'mon people, learn to spell 'hearty!'"

What did other cities look up...?

Scouting NY's hidden gems of the city

Good feature in the Post today. Scouting NY's proprietor shares his 10 favorite finds in NYC -- "the places that remind you that the city has a lot to offer those who take the time to slow down and appreciate it."

And tops on his list?

1.) The East Village Beach House
First Avenue at First Street

"It's as if a tornado blew in from Cape Cod and deposited a beach house onto the East Village. Perched on the roof of a four-story brick apartment building is a shingled cottage, complete with bay windows and a weathervane-topped cupola. The owner calls it 'Up-Upon-It' (a joking reference to friends with cottages in Sagaponack), and rumors abound that it is surrounded with sand and lawn chairs."

More photos of last night's sky

Here are some more cool photos of last night's sky... these were passed along by EV reader Sergei. (And he didn't edit any of the colors...)

Fewer noise complaints to 311 -- except for that increase in complaints about loud music and parties

As the Post notes today: "Noise complaints phoned into the city's 311 hot line between January and March plummeted 16.5 percent compared to the first quarter last year -- from 9,292 to 7,755 -- and city officials cited fewer construction projects and slowing commerce for the newfound tranquility."

However!

"Economic misery might be prompting New Yorkers to seek company at raucous parties. Complaints of loud music and parties surged 18 percent in the first three months of this year."

At Manhattan's first Water Taxi Beach

If I'm getting dragged down to the vicinity of the South Street Seaport, I'm at least going to make us take a look-see at Manhattan's first Water Taxi Beach. Which opened this past weekend behind Pier 17, where the suburbs meet Manhattan.

First things. You will really want/need a drink.



I went to look for a beer in the tent.



There is food. Burgers. Hots dogs. Fish tacos. Etc. And there's soda. Including root beer on draft. The beer?



On the boat/yacht. Which seems to be lurching a bit in the wake. Or maybe I'm just lurching.



They have three kinds of bottled beer for sale now: Old Speckled Hen, Harpoon IPA and Jever. Nothing more obscure, like Budweiser?

Hey! Watch out for the bridge! Hard right! Hard right!



Anyway, I ask the bartender if they will sell beer elsewhere on the Beach. Like under the tent. Absolutely! Give them a few weeks. They are just getting up and running. Speaking of running, where are the bathrooms? Oh, you have to go up to the second level inside Pier 17. They'll have bathrooms eventually, too.

During this late-afternoon hour, it's mostly families on the beach. And tourists. Tourist families? Kids are playing in the sand. Having fun. Being kids. A mother changes her son's diaper on the picnic table. I wish I was wearing a diaper so I didn't have to traipse up to the second level restrooms. It's not so bad. It's a chance to browse in the As Seen on TV store.

As for the activities, you can listen to your fellow picnic tablers talking on cell phones to friends and loved ones back home. "I am L-I-T-E-R-A-L-L-Y looking at the Brooklyn Bridge..."

And there are activities for kids of all ages...like skee ball...



...Ping-Pong



...putt-putting (just watch the water hazard!)...



...bridge watching...



...trying-to-be-abstract photo taking...



...taking pictures of people taking pictures...



Uh, miss? Yes, you squatting there. The restrooms are on the second...Oh, sorry.



...listening/dancing to the DJ.



But there is no fishing.

In case you missed yesterday's street fair on Second Avenue, the exact same vendors are on Broadway today

From 14th Street on down....



With the winds today, the vendors were having problems setting up their stuff...






Previously on EV Grieve:
Pass the Tums: First of 458 spring/summer street fairs kicks off today on Second Avenue

Noted

"You know times are tough when the tony cafe at a prestigious Manhattan bank gets turned into a thrift store." (New York Post)

Oh, and anything good?

There were no Rolex watches or Gucci bags on hand to be picked from the tables in the Midtown cafe, on Third Avenue at 58th Street. A Versace jacket was spotted among the items, although it was at least a decade old.

And most of the other odds and ends were just old hand-me-downs, such as a can opener from the 1970s, a coffee maker with its lid missing, a book on ancient Indian head massage and a goblet in the shape of the comic-book villain the Joker.

More signs from the recession

Spotted on Avenue A and Third Street.


On the Bowery.


Second Avenue near Second Street.


Think everyone has seen this already, right? At Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue. Gray's Papaya.

Shocker: A Rite Aid is closing

Whoa. This is an unusual site. On Seventh Avenue just below 14th Street. I'm used to seeing, "Coming soon: Rite Aid/Duane Reade/Etc."



Given the sale, I thought I'd check it out... get a few basics (toothpaste, etc.) on the cheap. Maybe some kitsch? Well. Picked over isn't quite the right phrase. It was as if I was transported to the Warehouse of Shit No One Would Ever Buy at Rite Aid's Camp Hill, Pa., home office.

Like what, you ask?












I didn't buy anything. I asked the cashier why the store was closing, likely the 10,000th time that he had been asked this question this past weekend. "Business decision." Hmm.

Meanwhile, the Duane Reade down the block is already cherry-picking Rite Aid's old customers. (Never mind that there's a Rite Aid on Sixth Avenue and 13th Street...and Ninth Avenue and 22nd and Eighth Avenue and 24th and...)