The Timeshas a piece on how hoteliers often turn to movies for design ideas.
For his largest Manhattan property — the Bowery Hotel, in the East Village — Mr. MacPherson turned to an even more surprising source: Stanley Kubrick’s “The Shining” (1980), a horror film that takes place in the Overlook, a fictional hotel in the Rocky Mountains. At the Bowery, “There’s a bit of the feeling of the Overlook — hopefully without the creepiness,” he said. “The idea is to create something that is old and grand and hopefully slightly bigger and more storied than its guests and owners.”
Mr. MacPherson relied on another Kubrick film, “A Clockwork Orange” (1971), when he chose elements for the Bowery’s bellman uniforms, which evoke the film’s violent hooligans.
Though the literal associations with the film might elude visitors, they will probably know that they are someplace visually distinctive, Mr. MacPherson said. “It’s very much as if you’re building a set and everyone becomes a character in the film you’re making there,” he said.
So, is the Hotel Carter the dirtiest hotel in the United States? Not from what I could see. It's unkempt. It needs major renovations including new paint, carpeting, and lighting in both the rooms and the hallways. The bathroom tiles need to be completely replaced along with the vents. But overall, it's just not that disgusting.
However, it is the single most depressing hotel I have ever been in. In fact, it may be the bleakest place I have ever been. Period. The whole environment is joyless. The wan lighting wears on you after a while. It just makes you sad. The uninterrupted white walls offer no stimuli to keep your mind focused on anything other than the sadness of the room. If there was a sequel to The Shining about a hotel that made you despondent instead of insane, it would be filmed at the Hotel Carter.
Which brings me to today. A press release came through the transom from UrbanMaidGreen, an eco-friendly cleaning service on Union Square. They're offering "a cleaning to any couple spending their Valentine's Day in the infamous Hotel Carter." And. "We will send our staff to clean your room for free on Valentine's Day, to help get you out of the doghouse from your significant other."
Well, OK. Unlikely, but. Anyway, as Barish wrote, no guests are allowed at the Carter. Which means, presumably, no outside cleaning crews. Or hookers.
Earlier this week, CityRag had an appreciation of some NYC graffiti...with links to their older posts on graffiti around the city, such as in the East Village and on the Bowery...and LES.
What the hell. Former East Village resident Madonna appears in a 1,298-page spread in the March W with her boyfriend Jesus, who has his name tattooed on his back. The "Be a dear" line comes from a Goldenfiddle commenter upon seeing the photo spread of the 50-year-old Madonna and 22-year-old Jesus.
Lehigh graduate, who's now a real-estate agent, offered advice to Lehigh students thinking of moving to New York: "Renting in New York City is a little bit different than renting from friends you knew in South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania," he said. "The entire process from one to ten is definitely quite different from renting anywhere else in the United States." (The Brown and White)
Let me be honest here. Just for a moment. I found this shot on my camera awhile ago. I don't remember taking the picture. I don't remember who the arm belongs to. I just know that I really like the tattoo. That is all.
One of those unfortunate horrible combinations of front and back-page headlines...a late-evening tragedy bumps the original Page 1 story...the back page is already set...everything happening so quickly....The Late City Final is here....
Friday The 13th Part VIII: Jason Takes Manhattan is, of course, the most realistic film ever made about New York City. As the review on AllMovie.com notes, "Screenwriter Paul Schrader and director Martin Scorsese place this isolated, potentially volatile man in New York City, depicted as a grimly stylized hell on Earth, where noise, filth, directionless rage, and dirty sex (both morally and literally) surround him at all turns. When Jason attempts to transform himself into an avenging angel who will "wash some of the real scum off the street," his murder spree follows a terrible and inevitable logic: he is a bomb built to explode, like the proverbial machete which, when produced in the first act, must go off in the third."
[Hey...wait a minute here! C'mon, it has been a long week...In all seriousness, there are some unintentionally hilarious moments in Part 8...You get the idea just be watching the opening...]
There's a humdinger of a City Room post from yesterday....that resulted in one of the world's greatest blog responses.
Back story! Yesterday, City Room reported on a young Ivy League graduate who lost her class ring down a grate on 42nd Street. She wrote about the great lengths that some helpful folks from the MTA and Con Ed went to in order to help her retrieve the ring. She posted on this slice-of-life from the city on her blog.
Of course, this brought out some haters. While some readers enjoyed this one-of-millions-of-stories-that-unfold-here-each-day tale....others....didn't. From the comments:
First, I can’t believe you reported this story about this absolutely absurd space cadet who cost the city, literally, several thousands of dollars because she couldn’t get it together, after several years of having a too-large ring, to have it resized.
Second, and then you report the entire ridicu-blog. She sounds more like a high school kid.
Third, I find it hard to believe she graduated from Penn. Just doesn’t fit the known facts as we see them here.
Heartwarming this story was not. She needs to be reprimanded by a grown-up.
And:
No kidding. How hard is it for this ditz to have her ring re-sized?
Maybe she should go back to Pennsylvania. I hope someone in the Con Edison accounts billing department sends her an invoice for her stupidity.
And:
As a New Yorker, an Asian American and an Ivy Leaguer (Columbia University), my opinion is that Jean Hsu is definitely a pain in the butt. Unfortunately, NYC does continue to attract absolutely clueless individuals like her.
Meanwhile, the young woman with the class ring is upset...and the episode reminds her why she should "NEVER BLOG AGAIN."
But how is my uplifting story TWISTED by the cynical and narrow-minded people of the heinous Internet!!?! I am some stupid moron ditz who was practically asking for my ring to fall in a grate just so I could see how many people would be willing to come running to my beck and call. Wasting both time and money. WRONG, FOLKS.
She goes on to chastise the Times and Sam Roberts, who wrote the post:
Can I just first mention that for a reporter and editor of the New York Times, he wrote a completely disappointing and pointless blog. I know that my own blog is pretty pointless at times, but I also don't often think my writing or opinion is worthy of being published in the New York Times. And I write it to humor my friends who GET ME. And my pointlessness. But Mr. Roberts could DEFINITELY have done a better job in getting the ACTUAL POINT ACROSS about my story. Or at least formulating his own opinion about the situation.
Anyway, if you're interested, she sets the record straight today about what happened, corrects the Times and has words for each of the haters (like the one "ridicu-NAZI") who said horrible things about her.
Her last paragraph:
Before I depart, I wanted to take a moment to thank all my friends for being supportive, enjoying the story like they were supposed to, and ensuring me that all aforementioned haters have no lives and will be probably be really busy calling into WCBS tomorrow while listening to my radio interview. HI HATERS.
The survey found that small businesses are constantly facing the possibility of rent increases or eviction. Almost half of small business owners reported that their overhead costs were rising. Nearly one-third identified rising commercial property rents as their “greatest challenge,” and three-fourths said that their profits are not growing at a sustainable rate compared to the substantial increase in the cost of doing business on the Lower East Side.
Ninety-five percent of small business owners surveyed rent their store space, and nearly half of them hold leases of five years or less.
Redevelopment and gentrification of the Lower East Side were cited by 46 percent of business owners as directly affecting their businesses.
At the already reasonably priced La Isla Restaurant on 14th Street near Avenue B.
At Life Cafe, 10th Street and Avenue B. (If this wasn't so blurry, you could easily spot the "weekly recession specials" in the upper right-hand corner.)
Flier for a dog-washing shop on East Ninth Street.
Signs from around the neighborhood.
Near Wall Street.
On John Street in the Financial District.
Previously on EV Grieve: A few signs from the recession
As Jeremiah reported a few weeks back, a Subway was taking over the former Burritoville space on Second Avenue near Ninth Street...the signs are going as we speak. Or type. Or something.
Supposedly, all of New York City is suffering from a mass collective malaise, a dark cloud of shared pessimism. But the truth is very different. In reality, many of us are feeling giddily optimistic about this city for the first time in a decade.
Who are these crazy optimists? Head-in-the-sand deniers of the economic calamity? No, just people who welcome the possibility that the unique character of New York, sanitized in the Giuliani and Bloomberg years, may finally return.
As the writer of the blog Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, where I catalogue the city that's being lost to hypergentrification, I have heard hope rising from many vocal readers -- hope that we'll at last have our beloved, wild, creative, eclectic city back.
Since the boom began approximately 10 years ago, many New Yorkers have watched with grief and anger while the city we love was crushed by overzealous development, the all-encompassing renovation plan of Mayor Bloomberg. This plan has gutted countless mom-and-pop businesses and landmarks like Coney Island and Yankee Stadium. It has extended to the use of eminent domain to seize private property from its owners. What we have received in return has been a city of glass, cold and calculated, built for only the superrich seekers of safety to enjoy.
You may have heard the rumblings since last fall that "Slacktivist" leader John Penley was moving away from the neighborhood for the wilds of Erie, Pa. It is true...and today's Washington Square News has a feature on Penley, who's giving his extensive photo collection to the NYU Tamiment Library. (Scoopy reported this last month -- Runnin' Scared had the news back in October.)
To the article!
Penley made a name for himself documenting the turmoil of life on the Lower East Side and protesting big business, including NYU expansion, through the last decades of the 20th century.
“This one is my favorite,” Penley laughed, holding a Daily News front cover photograph he took after he discovered locals were growing marijuana plants in Tompkins Square Park.
“It was obvious. I mean, I know what pot plants look like,” Penley said. After Penley called the Daily News, a reporter from the paper went to the scene and brought a leaf of the plant to a professor at NYU who confirmed it was, in fact, marijuana.
Penley started taking photographs as a journalist in Nicaragua in 1983 when he covered the Contra War and continued to document life in the Village until about six years ago.
“I quit. I got completely burnt out. You know, it’s a very hard way to make a living. I was arrested multiple times,” he said. “I got tired of looking at stuff like fires and car wrecks.”
The activist will move away from the Village to live in Pennsylvania next month where he plans to deejay at his friend’s bar and ice fish in his spare time.
“To be honest with you, I’m really sick of the [Village]. The people who would generate creative things there have been forced to leave the neighborhood,” he said.
Hordes of NYU students only add to Penley’s annoyances with the comparatively bland flavor of the area has taken on in recent years.
“I think it was irresponsible to dump that many students on the Lower East Side without educating them about how to behave in our neighborhood,” he said.
Well! It appears as if that segment is ready to air this Feb. 23 on The Travel Channel...The segment, titled "Disappearing Manhattan," starts at 10 p.m. Don't worry -- it will be repeated many times, according to the schedule...
We've been watching the drama unfold on Pearl Street in the Financial District for years now...back to the days in 2003 when preservationists worked to rescue 211 Pearl St. from demolition by Rockrose Development Corp. Well. You know how this story ends. At least they were able to save the façade...
In case you don't know all the back story, here's a quickie from Downtown Express in 2003:
One of only a handful of existing Greek revival buildings that survived the great fire of 1835, 211 Pearl St. was constructed in the early 1830s by William Colgate, the founder of Colgate-Palmolive. Colgate used the building as a warehouse at a time when Pearl St. bustled as a hub for trading in dry goods.
The building's current owner, Rockrose Development Corporation, received demolition permits for 211 Pearl from the city's Buildings Department on Dec. 13, 2002, a Buildings spokesperson said. Rockrose is considering plans to demolish the building to make way for a rear entrance for a new, 650-unit residential development the company is constructing west of Pearl St., near Maiden Lane, Platt and Gold Sts.
"It's kind of ironic that, after having endured the tragedy of 9/11, we're talking about destroying a building that symbolizes the strength and endurance of New York," said Councilmember Alan Gerson.
Curbed ran an update on 211 Pearl yesterday...I don't have much to add to their recap from what I had ready to go...except...the What's Going on Here? sign for the project gives a finish date of Dec. 31, 2008. Definitely by Dec. 31, 2009!
And it's probably a good thing the northern side of the building is windowless...Someday they'll likely be a hotel next door...
Meanwhile, there's just that empty lot...
Complete with a handy place to sneak in...looks like a nice spot for some tags.
By the way! Before 211 Pearl St. was demolished, M. Fine Lumber Co., Inc. in Greenpoint bought all of the building’s pine ceiling beams -- roughly 350 in total. According to an article from the Oct. 7, 2003, Downtown Express:
At 211 Pearl St., only a silver remains of the historic Greek revival building that had stood there since the early 1830s. But elsewhere in the city, parts of the demolished interior have found new life, in a restaurant on the Upper West Side, in a tree guard on E. Fourth St., and possibly even on a music video set for Madonna and Britney Spears.
I was skimming over an article in Gourmet (no snickering!) on vegan bakeries ... and this passage about BabyCakes, on Broome Street between Orchard and Ludlow, jumped out at me...:
Since opening on New York’s Lower East Side in late 2005, it has enjoyed great success among vegans and non-vegans alike. BabyCakes reportedly grossed $1.2 million in sales last year, and, thanks to a significant number of customers whom McKenna describes as “celebrities who aren’t even vegan but [are] health conscious,” will open a second Los Angeles location in the spring, right around the time the BabyCakes cookbook is scheduled to hit shelves.
He was spotted, so to speak, by two of our commenters/fellow bloggers...and I didn't get around to doing a follow-up...
bryan said... I don't think it's the same dog, but there's one like it on Mulberry Street over the door to an Italian place. Careful to whoever's calling Mulberry above Canal "Chinatown": those kind of words could still get you hurt!
February 3, 2009 4:42 PM Jill said... I am sure it's the same one. My camera battery died on me during Chinese New Years, but Mulberry Street sounds exactly right. How many big brown dogs perched over a canopy can there possibly be in one small town?
