Dupin' and Hoopin'

Knicks legend Walt "Clyde" Frazier in his NYC home circa 1971... via Curbed National via @si_vault,

A tribute for Tony Curtis on East Sixth Street

Between Avenue A and Avenue B....

Tony Curtis, 85

Tony Curtis, born Bernard Schwartz in the Bronx, died just after midnight. Read the Times obit here.



Curtis, as press agent Sidney Falco in EV Grieve favorite "Sweet Smell of Success," at Elpine Drinks at 46th Street and Seventh Avenue. (Read more on this at Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

[Top photo via]

Benefit for a Fug

St. Ann's Warehouse is hosting NOTHING, A BENEFIT FOR TULI KUPFERBERG on Friday, Jan. 22. Proceeds from the concert, produced by Hal Willner and featuring The Fugs, John Kruth, Lou Reed, Sonic Youth, Elliott Sharp, Pete Stampfel, John Zorn and others, will go to covering medical expenses for the Fugs co-founder, who suffered two strokes last year that have left him blind and in need of 24-hour care. Details here.

[Photo of the Fugs with Allen Ginsberg during a 1966 anti-war parade in NYC via Bettmann/CORBIS]

Voice of America features the Mosaic Man

"I'm a history teller," he confesses, "because I put a lot of history into these things that somehow connects. Without the public's involvement it really wouldn't mean anything. Just another piece of work out here. I'm not doing this to stay sane. I came out here to do something. And all I know is one thing, everybody is wondering what they're doing on the planet. I'm not. It's my job. I've no choice." (VOA)

Joe Strummer gets a splash of Niagara

A little something extra was added to the Joe Strummer mural on the side of Niagra at Seventh Street and Avenue A the other day.

Before:


Now:



Makes sense that Niagara wanted its name included on the mural — given how often fans/tourists takes its picture (though why wasn't this included when the mural was created in 2003?)...Meanwhile, there was a post/discussion on the mural last week at the Clash Blog

Previously on EV Grieve:
Joe Strummer gets a new look, skyline

Black market Clash: "This is Radio Clash" mural painted over on Third Street

Been meaning to do a post on graffiti legend Ezo's Clash-inspired mural on Third Street between Avenue B and Avenue C. It's on the wall outside the Nuyorican Poets Cafe.

Because of its more remote location in the East Village, this work didn't receive the same love as Joe Strummer on Seventh Street and Avenue A. I liked it just the same, of course.






Anyway, I'm sad to say, it's gone. Painted over. Black.



Well, Ezo's Clash mural had been tagged. And it was starting to chip away in spots... Couldn't it have been touched up like the Strummer mural earlier this year? In any event, we're hopeful something equally inspired goes up in its place.

Joe Jr's has closed

I thought that Joe Jr's was closing today. As you likely read (via Serious Eats, Eater, Grub Street, David Kamp or the Times), the iconic diner on Sixth Avenue at 12th Street was calling it a day. So I wanted to stop by one last time for a meal. Not to write about -- Jeremiah and Brooks both have eloquent posts on the topic.

Anyway, was too late. Joe's has already closed. (And the Joe Jr's on the corner of the sign is missing...)





There's a sign on the front window for people to leave messages...thanking Joe's for the memories, etc.






Meanwhile, the interior has already been pulled apart.




And the bat!



Back out front, a man remarked to his girlfriend: "All the great old places we like have been destroyed."

Happy birthday, Debbie Harry

Born July 1, 1945.

Stiles on your dials

As a follow-up to yesterday's radio post... I mentioned this in the comments: I do enjoy listening to Danny Stiles on occasion. He has been on the radio since 1946, and will remind you of this many times over. "No one else is doing what I'm doing on the radio. This is your last man standing -- Danny Stiles."

Here's his schedule in NYC:

WNYC AM 820
8PM - 10PM Saturday Nights

WNYC.ORG STREAMING
8PM - 10PM Saturday Nights

WNSW AM 1430
10PM - 12midnight MONDAY - FRIDAY

WJDM 1530 AM
1PM - 5PM Monday - Sunday

WPAT AM 930
7PM - 9PM / Weekday Mornings 3AM - 5AM

Or you can tune in anytime via his Web site.

If you're unfamiliar with him, Stiles plays American popular standards...Sinatra, Count Basie, Peggy Lee, Cab Calloway, Jack Jones, the Glenn Miller Band, Woody Herman, Al Hibbler, Morris Albert -- you get the idea. He doesn't care for much music made after, oh, 1960. (Except for maybe Herman's Hermits...)



Sure, his jokes are bad and he's long-winded...but... I enjoy his stories. Talking about how no one stops to pick up a penny anymore. He sees people throwing them away sometimes! Then he'll say how he shared a bed with his brothers growing up. And wait till he starts on the kids with their CDs -- and worse! "Now, they download music right onto their eyeeee-pods. It's very technical." He plugs his sponsors -- John's Pizzeria, say -- often and with many details. "Hmm, and the marinara sauce!... It's the best pizza in the world!" He's also prone to calling himself a variety of nicknames: the Archangel of Archives, Ballaboos of Beautiful Ballads, Didactic Doctor of Dreamy Discology, Dean of Deja Vu, Great Guru of Golden Gramophones, Passionate Pasha of Peripatetic Platters...

With Count Basie...



He is apparently still spinning records Friday nights at Zeppi's on West 56th Street.

Finally, here's what he says about his favorite place in NYC, the Red Blazer: "A stunning, posh place. It's the former home of John Drew Barrymore, and an excellent spot for the Lindy Hop or slow drag with a pretty girl."

Meanwhile, across 161st Street....

The old stadium sits empty... looking a little derelict...







... waiting to be torn down...







... while the new trophy wife gets all the attention.



Of course lifelong Yankees fans/NY residents talk about how Yankee Stadium hasn't been the same since the renovations of 1973-1975. As Maury Allen wrote in Baseball Digest when Yankee Stadum reopenend 1976:

"It was a building of stone and steel, that old Yankee Stadium, a massive monument to excellence in the middle of The Bronx, a structure of love and life and legend.

It is gone now, the old replaced by the new, the low fence in right where Babe Ruth set records and Roger Maris broke them, the vastness of DiMaggio's center field country, the hanging facade from the roof that Mantle would crush one day, the bullpen fence jumped by Joe Page, the dugout where Casey sat, the soft dirt around home plate where Lou Gehrig stood and thousands cheered.

Now it is of the past. Only the memories remain, the awe and the shock, the pride and the wonder, when a young man walked up through that tunnel and saw those seats, that size, that history surround him."

To be fair, I'm sure a kid will have that same sense of awe walking into the new stadium today.

At age 98, Bob Sheppard announces his retirement

Whether or not you hate the Yankees, you have to appreciate the iconic Bob Sheppard, who has been the team's PA announcer since 1951. Now, at age 98, he's retiring. Yankee games will never be the same. (Via Gothamist)

Joe Strummer gets a new look, skyline

On the side of Niagra on Seventh Street and Avenue A. Joe Strummer's mural, which went up in 2003, gets an update.

Before:


After:


And in case you've never seen the making of the wall...here's the cover of "Redemption Song" by Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros...



[Before photo via Union Song]

A New York state of mind in Wyoming, Alabama, Siciliy and maybe Pakistan

The Times today rounds up the iconic pieces of vintage New York that have recently been exported.

Cheyenne Diner to Alabama (and now they want the shuttered Ridgewood Theater in Queens)

Moondance Diner to Wyoming

Kim's video collection to a Sicilian town

"And from Pakistan came interest in another New York icon: the Astroland Rocket at Coney Island."

Hmm.

No, it’s not the faltering economy that’s putting venerable New York up for sale and shipment. It may be just coincidental that there is a flurry of outliers who are in a New York state of mind and want a part of it.

“We’re not taking anything from New York — the diner needed saving,” said Cheryl Pierce, who with her husband, Vince, bought the Moondance in 2007 for $7,500. They spent $40,000 to move it 2,125 miles to La Barge in western Wyoming, where it opened on Jan. 12 after a delay to replace a roof collapsed by snow.

It is hardly a new phenomenon, of course. New York has been exporting its bounties, willingly and unwillingly, since the days of Peter Stuyvesant and marauding redcoats.

More recently, according to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, cast-iron eagles from the old Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central Terminal have turned up at suburban estates, a kiosk from the 1939 World’s Fair is now a restaurant in New Jersey, parts of an 18th-century ship found at 175 Water Street were sent to the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Va., and old subway cars are swimming with the fishes as artificial reefs off the Delaware coast.

[Moondance photo: Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times]

About that iconic Pepsi-Cola sign in Queens

The City Room has the answer:

In Manhattan, they’re asking what happened to the “Pepsi-Cola” sign. In Queens, they’re asking what happened to the “aloC-ispeP” sign. In both cases, the answer is that it has been temporarily dismantled and will be reinstalled nearby. In any case, the Hunters Point waterfront will not lose this distinctive, ruby-red, 120-foot-long, 72-year-old presence.

(Photo via Wired New York)

Seen in the Bad Timing Department

At Whole Foods on Union Square.

Paul Newman dies at 83

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