From this week's real estate section in the New York Post. One of the "dream" homes of the week (descriptions are written by Victor Wishna):
$3.475 MILLION
A century ago, you might have found two or three families squeezed into one tenement apartment along this stretch of Norfolk Street. Today, you'll find the 16-story Blue, a sparkling new condo of "pixelated" blue glass, and at its top, this roomy 2,494-square-foot penthouse duplex. It features two bedroom suites, three full bathrooms, a designer kitchen, a large private terrace and "stunning" city, river and bridge views through 40 windows. My how times (and prices) have changed.
The Wall Street Journal yesterday ran an excerpt from the new novel by Julie Salamon titled "Hospital." This passage caught my eye:
He traveled on the overnight flight from Phoenix, landing bleary-eyed in New York on a cold morning in December Sunday. He spent the day in Manhattan, staying with a friend on the Upper West Side. She showed him Times Square, Central Park, the usual tourist stuff. On Monday morning he took the subway to Borough Park, crossing the East River, away from the Manhattan skyline toward Brooklyn, once described by another transplanted midwesterner, Ian Frazier, as having "the undefined, hard-to-remember shape of a stain"—in other words, a place you wanted to be from, not head toward. In recent years, however, the real-estate craze in Manhattan had given the borough new definition, no longer stain but hot spot for the disenfranchised young people who couldn't afford the East Village or Lower East Side and for cramped, growing families looking for bigger spaces, more sky, yards.
St. George Church is sponsoring its 33rd annual street festival May 16-18 on E. Seventh St. between Second and Third Aves., featuring Ukrainian music, dance, art, food and more.
The three-day festival will benefit the St. George Elementary School and the College Preparatory Academy. Hours of the festival, which is held every year the weekend before Memorial Day, are 4 p.m. to 11 p.m. Fri., May 16; 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. Sat., May 17, and 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. Sun., May 18.
St. George students will give a concert of dance and singing at 7 p.m. Friday and at 2 p.m. Sunday. Two other main-stage shows will be at 7 p.m. Saturday and 3:45 p.m. Sunday. Featured performers will include the Ukrainian violin virtuoso and recording artist Inessa Tymochko-Dekaj and the New York City-based dance group, Syzokryli.
The Halychany Orchestra, originally from Ukraine, will play popular Ukrainian music at a dance in the school auditorium from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. Saturday.
St. George Church was founded in the East Village Ukrainian community in 1905 and the festival draws thousands of visitors from the tri-state area who come to celebrate their ethnic heritage in the old neighborhood.
Of course, though, it has to rain. I swear it has rained every year during at least part of the Festival. Still, just bring your umbrella...
The headline from this feature in the Times says it all:
From Metalwork to Luxury Condos: Century-Old SoHo Shop Ends Its Run
The shop, which opened in 1907 and had been run by three generations of the De Lorenzo family, closed yesterday.
Reports the Times:
Even today, the shop has plenty of work making custom furniture and fittings for the glitzy galleries and expensive lofts and apartments in the area, which is now known for manufacturing high-priced meals and cocktails. But no bending brake or arc welder or cutting torch can alter the hard economic fact that to the De Lorenzos — the third generation is now running the business — the place is worth more closed than open.
A developer seeking to put up a luxury condominium building has agreed to buy the De Lorenzos’ one-story building, a 30-foot-by-100-foot structure on Grand Street near West Broadway, said Thomas De Lorenzo, 84, who owns the shop with his son Thomas 2nd.
One more blow for the art community.
“This place is really the last of its kind in an area that used to have so many manufacturing businesses,” said Robert McDougle, a designer who has worked in SoHo for 30 years. He said he enjoyed and benefited from having a small metal shop with an experienced staff fabricate his designs and suggest methods and materials that expanded his vision as a designer.
“They helped many, many artists in SoHo,” he said, as the De Lorenzos and three longtime employees rushed to finish their last few projects.
Wow.
Mr. De Lorenzo Sr. said that in 1968, he and his father paid $65,000 for the building — “and that was a lot of money then.”
Now, he said, he will retire to his house in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. The price he is getting for the building is more than the business ever made in a century, he said, without revealing the amount.
There are beautiful photos by Chang W. Lee, like the one above, accompanying the article. I think Jeremiah wrote the very appropriate headline for the photo essay: A Remainder of SoHo's Industrial Past Vanishes.
Clyde Haberman takes a look at "fucking" in the Times today (uh, the word):
The reality is that this vulgar word has been tossed about with such abandon in public for so many years that New Yorkers tend to tune it out. Its endless, and mindless, repetition left them numb long ago. By now, the word is no longer shocking, just tedious.
Through frequent use, “a word like this begins to be less of a curse word,” said Ricardo Otheguy, a sociolinguist at the City University of New York Graduate Center. “The more you use it, the less dirty it is.”
You routinely hear Wall Street suits use the word at high decibels in the subway. Police officers bounce it casually among one another, no matter who else is around to hear. Teenagers use it all the time. Some people walk around with the word screaming from their T-shirts — an insight, perhaps, into their capacity for self-degradation.
But for how much longer? I wouldn't be surprised if legislation was passed making it illegal to swear in New York City. At least indoors. If we want to swear, we'll have to go outside -- as long as it isn't 500 feet from a school or place of worship. And they'll be a steep swear tax. And landlords will begin offering apartments that allow swearing. That will jack up rents by $400 a month...
Happy to see so much press this week for something worthy of the attention — Wild Combination: A Portrait of Arthur Russell, the debut feature from Brooklyn-based filmmaker Matt Wolf. I had a chance to see a screening of this captivating documentary. I was only vaguely familiar with Russell, a talented player on the fringes of the downtown New York scene in the 1970s and 1980s. As many writers have noted in discussing this film, it's difficult to characterize what Russell was all about. (Part of what makes him so intriguing, of course.) He had a passion for all things related to music. He was a native of Oskaloosa, Iowa, who wore trucker caps long before they were, you know, ironic. He later became a Buddhist. He was an avant-garde composer and cellist. He liked the Modern Lovers and the Ramones. And he loved disco.
Upon arriving to New York CIty from San Francisco in the early 1970s, he collaborated with everyone from Allen Ginsberg to Philip Glass. Russell and his longtime partner, Tom Lee, lived on East 12th Street next door to Ginsberg. Richard Hell lived in the same building. (Lee, who first met Russell at Gem Spa on St. Mark's, still resides in the same building.) Going by Dinosaur (one of several monikers that he used), Russell wrote and produced “Kiss Me Again,” the first disco single released by Sire Records. Russell was later a co-founder of Sleeping Bag Records, which released hip-hop and oceanic dance music in the early 1980s. He wasn't afraid to admit that he wanted to be famous.
Russell died of AIDS in 1992. He was 40. He left behind thousands of partially finished songs that spanned every genre. His catalog was overlooked until recent years, when a series of reissues and tributes garnered the attention of a new generation. I hope the movie creates even more Russell fans. There are screenings of the movie tomorrow night at the Kitchen. It's sold out, but there are a few tickets available at the door, I'm told. The Kitchen is also hosting a celebration of Russell's music this weekend.
The Wild Combination blog has all the links to the recent articles as well as information on other screenings this summer.
The good people at East Village Podcasts bravely took to the streets this past weekend for a video update on the 2,398 hotels and condos sprouting up in the neighborhood. (They call the Cooper Square Hotel the "dildo of darkness." Like it!)
