Celebrating James Cagney

EV Grieve favorite James Cagney was born on this date in 1899. According to Wikipedia (oh, c'mon): Cagney was born on the Lower East Side . . . above his father's saloon on the corner of Avenue D and 8th Street to James Cagney Sr., an Irish American bartender and amateur boxer, and Carolyn Nelson; his maternal grandfather was a Norwegian ship captain while his maternal grandmother was an Irish American. The family moved twice when Cagney was still young, first to East 79th Street, and then to East 96 Street.

Cagney and Jean Harlow in The Public Enemy (1931)

Almost as effective as any developer or greedy politico

From Gawker: "Here are clips of the 15 best films featuring New York getting annihilated, curated by Nick McGlynn."

Oh, wait -- this wasn't one of the 15?

Looking at 1980s New York via network television

Rolando at Urbanite brought back a memory for me with a post on The Equalizer from 1985. As he notes, The Equalizer shows Times Square in all its pre-Giuliani glory. (Via Jeremiah)

Here's a clip I found from the show's opening (New York looks so SCARY!):



And where was the Olde Garden, which you see at the 21-second spot?

Oh, and all this makes me think of Cagney & Lacey from 1982 (and what happened to Meg Foster?):


Still, I prefer the gritty realism of other shows. (ACID RAIN in MANHATTAN! @ the 2:26 spot)

Fun figures of the day!

From the Times today:

After more than two decades, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and one of his earliest business partners, Merrill Lynch, are parting company in a deal that places a public value on the mayor’s private company, Bloomberg L.P.

That figure: At least $22.5 billion.

Gothamist reported yesterday that Mayor Bloomberg had an approval rating of 71 percent. To which Gothamist commenter Bingosbackup responded, "I think that's supposed to be 7.1 %."

The new world order, at least on the LES

Do you remember the Iglesia Pentecostal Arca De Salvacion (above) at the corner of Houston and Suffolk? Well, here's all that's left of it.




Wow, that seemed quick. (I'm told the church moved to a new location.) I haven't heard yet what's going in here. I'm sure something useful and new and different. As I mentioned Sunday, Vasmay Lounge has moved from the other side of Houston and Suffolk to Essex Street. More change is expected on the relatively quiet Suffolk Street. One resident told me they are waiting to be bought out by their landlord, who plans on selling the old tenement building. And what became of those Starbucks-to-Suffolk-and-Stanton rumors? (Based on what I read and what people told me, Starbucks was opening on every street corner in the LES. And is Starbucks even expanding these days?)

I thought about this as I crossed Houston onto Avenue B, where the name of this newish store on Avenue B between Houston and 2nd Street really hit me.

Remembering the Revolutionary

Streets around Tompkins Square Park were blocked off yesterday for the crew to shoot something for that ABC series Cupid. I tried not to pay attention. I usually don't. However, last summer, before I was doing this site, I shot some photos of what promised to be an enormous project in the neighborhood.


The ominous-looking fliers went up several days before the blessed event was taking place on June 8. As the flier showed, the movie would feature Kate Winslet (ohh!) and directed by her husband Sam Mendes. The movie is based on the 1961 novel of the same name by Richard Yates. The flier failed to mention other co-stars, such as the leading man. You may have heard of him, an up-and-comer who I think has real potential -- Leonardo DiCaprio, who would be making a triumphant return to the East Village, where he shot parts of The Basketball Diaries in late 1993 and early 1994.

Anyway, as the week went on, more and more equipment was assembled around Tompkins Square Park. This thing promised to hog up most of Avenue B between 6th Street and 10th Street. Plus the north side of 7th Street between Avenue A and C. (Good lord, where would people heading to Le Souk this Friday night park!)

I chatted up some poor bastard who had to sit there in a folding chair and guard a truck. Turned out they were only filming interior shots at 295 E. 8th St. at Avenue B. That regal-looking building on the other side of the street from St. Brigid's was erected in 1887. It was known as Newsboys' and Bootblacks' Lodging House as well as Tompkins Square Lodging House for Boys and Industrial School, Children's Aid Society. Parts of Jim Sheridan's movie In America were filmed there a few years back too.

Anyway, after all that, the filming wasn't as disruptive as I thought. (I'm open to horror stories, please.) In fact, it was pretty mellow, as least what I saw of it. No obnoxious PAs barring residents from their homes or sidewalks, etc. No screaming fans looking to mob Leo (guess that's why his name wasn't on the flier). It was a pleasant change of pace from some of the other obnoxious shoots around the Park. The movie comes out here on Dec. 26. 

Earlier on EV Grieve:

Why the East Village will be a mess tonight and tomorrow

UPDATED:
Bob Arihood shows how Cupid disrupted the neighborhood, particularly the business at Ray's. (Neither More Nor Less)

At the construction site for the Wyndham Garden Hotel

The L-shaped hotel will wrap around three low-rise buildings that sit on the corner of Maiden Lane and Nassau Street. When I took this photo, two meatheads in suits standing nearby smoking said to me, "Hey, welcome to New York City." Then he turned to his friend and muttered, "Fuckin' tourists."

Previously on EV Grieve:
A Win Won situation

Window shopping on 10th Avenue (for some reason)

Somehow, these all seem related.

"Sitting through 'Rent' is more painful than a scrotal nick"

Jeffrey Goldberg at The Atlantic had a short post on Campbell Robertson's "Rent" essay from the Sunday Times that we had discussed. That piece began:

I WAS late to "Rent." Late to the show, and late to the city it portrays. When I arrived in New York, in the fall of 1998, bistros and boutiques had already infiltrated the East Village, gentrification was spreading into the Lower East Side, and northwest Brooklyn had largely fallen to the forces of the bourgeoisie.

According to Goldberg, Robertson broke an age-old journalism tenet. I learned a long time ago Peter Kann's rule concerning the first-person pronoun: "No reporter may start a story with the word 'I' unless he's been shot in the groin.

He continued:

On the other hand, sitting through "Rent" is more painful than a scrotal nick. Robertson is newly assigned to the Baghdad bureau of the Times, which has its hardships, but I'd take Baghdad over "Rent" most days of the week.

[Via Romenesko]

Previously on EV Grieve:

The East Village: "Where you can come live on dreams and tofu"

Elk in the City

OK, I have to admit I had no idea that there was an Elk Street in Manhattan. Stumbled upon it yesterday. Not much of a street. It starts at Chambers and quickly ends here:


But there's interesting history to it. According to Archaeology magazine, Elk Street's history goes back to 1867, when "a group of New York actors formed a drinking club called the Jolly Corks and held their first meeting at a boarding house on this street, which was then known as Elm Street. By the early twentieth century, the club evolved into a fraternal and philanthropic society, renamed the Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks, now with hundreds of chapters across the United States. The street's name was changed to honor the first Elk lodge in 1939."

[Image via Time Out New York]

Seeing this street name reminded me of a nearly extinct part of the city -- the Elk Hotel, which is, well. Here's how Steven Kurutz described it in a June 13, 2004, article in the Times:

A shabby little building at Ninth Avenue and 42nd Street, just down from the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the Elk is the kind of hotel whose reputation precedes it. It offers rooms by the hour to couples who aren't very well acquainted, and doesn't change the sheets a whole lot. Put simply, the Elk is a flophouse.

There's more, and it's a thing of beauty:

There are 50 guestrooms at the Elk, and they are remarkable less for what they contain than for what they do not. There's usually no TV, no phone and, beyond a nightstand and a bed, no furniture. There's also no air-conditioning, making the summers brutal. The bathrooms, two per floor, are communal, which tends to scare off most American tourists.
Once, Times Square boasted a dozen hotels like the Elk. There was the Evans on West 38th Street and the Woodstock on 43rd, once a favorite of winos and methadone addicts. But in the neighborhood's revitalization, the flophouses were mostly remodeled or demolished.
The Elk's miraculous -- some would say unfortunate -- survival stems from a real estate fluke (the building's owner doesn't want to sell) and from the tenacity of its proprietor, who would identify himself only as Dinesh. Sitting on a stool in the hotel's small glassed-in office, he emitted the weary impatience of a man who for the past 17 years has daily beaten back the devil from his door. It took great effort, he said, to rid the hotel of its drug dealer residents, and he continually defends the place against their return, denying a room to anybody he finds suspect.


[Photo via Lost City]

I haven't been in that neighborhood for a few months. So I thought I'd give the hotel a call. Just to make sure they were still open. I never thought about what I was going to say when/if someone answered the phone. Anyway, this is exactly how the conversation went:

Elk: Hello?

Me: Uh, is this the Elk?

Elk: Yes.

Me: Are you open?

Elk: Yes.

Me: Do you rent rooms by the month?

Elk: No. Only by the day.

Me: So I 'd have to pay you each day for a month?

Elk: No. You can only stay here for three or four days at a time, then we'll ask you to check out.

Me: I see. Thank you.

Meanwhile, not everyone shares my enthusiasm for the Elk.



These reviews were gleaned from Yahoo! Travel. (Still, four of the eight reviews were positive.)

For further reading:
Old 42nd Street Ain't Gone Yet (Lost City)

Batman Begins tonight in Tompkins Square Park

An obvious choice given that The Dark Knight opens Friday. This film series is all well and good. I'm all for free things that can bring the community together. Not to mention I enjoy cheesy Hollywood movies. (Not that the films in this series are cheesy.) Still, I'd appreciate an outdoor movie series showing more obscure mainstream and independent films and/or a showcase for local filmmakers. How about something on the history of the neighborhood, such as Clayton Patterson's Captured?

Anyway, back to Batman Begins...and one more wish: Wouldn't mind seeing another Christian Bale movie instead...

Gone but not forgotten

On 10th Avenue at 25th Street.

"Small businesses and low-income New Yorkers keep getting pushed out"

Juan Gonzalez checks in on the LES rezoning plan in the Daily News today in a piece titled Lower East Side rezone plan another Mike Bloomberg boondoggle:

Wah Lee, a slight, middle-aged factory worker, stood in front of the Municipal Building Tuesday vowing a long fight to save her Chinatown neighborhood.
All around her were dozens of Chinese and Hispanic residents of the lower East Side. They held up placards with words like: "Stop Racist Rezoning" and "Chinatown/Lower East Side Are Not For Sale."
They brought a box of petitions with the signatures of some 10,000 of their neighbors - all opposed to the City Planning Commission's new rezoning proposal.
Theirs is a story that has become all-too familiar during the Bloomberg era: another stable neighborhood turned upside down by a massive rezoning.
The sheer number of these rezonings - from Columbia University to Hudson Yards to Greenpoint-Williamsburg to Willets Point, boggles the mind.
City officials routinely claim it's for the good of the neighborhoods, but in the end a handful of well-connected developers and Big Box stores end up the big winners.
Small businesses and low-income New Yorkers keep getting pushed out.

[Downtown Express photo by Shoshanna Bettencourt]

Why the East Village will be a mess tonight and tomorrow

Hmm, there's an ABC show called Cupid (rhymes with stupid) in the works. (Get this: It's an update of the short-lived 1998 series by the same name. Are they so desperate in TVLand that they have to ransack shows that just aired 10 years ago?) From the looks of the parking restrictions starting tonight and lasting through Wednesday, only half the neighborhood should be inconvenienced by this! Hope they bring helicopters!

Even rich people can't afford to see the Mets or Yankees next season

Yesterday I mentioned how expensive tickets were to see the Home Run Derby at Yankees Stadium. That should prepare everyone for what will be charged for normal, everyday tickets next season. No surprise, steep ticket prices will be the norm once the Yankees and Mets open their schmancy new stadiums in 2009. In the Post last Friday, EV Grieve favorite Phil Mushnick wrote about a rather wealthy fellow who has been a Mets season ticket-holder since Shea opened in 1964. As Mushnick reported, this man decided he's not renewing his tickets. His four box seats cost him $5,837 in 1993, $11,836 in 1998, $23,702 last year and $33,300 this season. Last week, the Mets informed him that comparable seats next year will cost him roughly $60,000.

Yesterday, Mushnick wrote that his Friday column "led to a pile of missives from Mets and Yankees season and partial season ticket-holders; those who now realize that they, too, have reached the point of can't return.

"Friday, one wrote that he's one in a group of friends who have purchased the same box seats in Yankee Stadium the last 20-plus years. The first year, the seats were $12.50 per. By 1996, they were $25 per. Last year they went to $150 a seat. This year they are $250 a seat. And, he added, the seats have been in disrepair the last three years."


(Sidebar: And, given the insufferable John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman calling games on NewsRadio 880, you can't even listen to the Yankees...And why does Sterling insist on saying "an A-bomb for A-rod" as his signature home run call?)

Still, there are options left for those of us who like watching baseball: For the price of one draft beer at Yankee Stadium, you can get a good ticket to see the Staten Island Yankees. Better scenery along the way too. And, of course, there are the Brooklyn Cyclones and Newark Bears. And Long Island Ducks. And Atlantic City Surf.

The All-Star baseball theme continues: The Roger Clemens edition

In keeping with this all-baseball theme in honor of tonight's All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium (which I don't plan on watching...)... If you're looking for something to wear for the big game, the Yankees gift shop has some nice team jerseys on sale:


I'll be wearing my Jose Canseco Yankees jersey.

Bonus! Roger Clemens sings (sort of) in this 1987 commercial for Zest!

A Public Service Annoucement from EV Grieve

GOOD GOD, WHATEVER YOU DO, STAY AWAY FROM SIXTH AVENUE BETWEEN 40th STREET AND 58th STREET TODAY!

Oh, why? Let me get press release-y: More than 110 of baseball's greatest current and retired players will star in the fourth annual All-Star Game Red Carpet Parade presented by Chevy on Tuesday, July 15th from 1 p.m. - 3 p.m., before the 79th Major League Baseball All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium. The All-Star Game Red Carpet Parade, which will start at 40th Street and Sixth Avenue and end at 58th Street and Sixth Avenue, is expected to draw approximately 1 million fans on the streets and from office buildings along the route.

Oh, and Mayor Bloomberg will be there!

Anyway, hope someone pulled up the weeds from Sixth Avenue.

Survey: Yuppies in New York City not quite as upwardly mobile as in the past

Gawker has this item from UPI:


New York's hurting financial sector is causing it to slip as a destination for "yuppies," Forbes Magazine found in a survey of young professionals. Turmoil on Wall Street, with thousands of jobs being lost in the wake of the housing crisis, was blamed for New York's drop from first to fourth in the Forbes survey of upward mobility.

"Right now anything would be easier than New York," Richie Rivera, 30, a health insurance administrator from Brooklyn, told The New York Daily News. "A lot of people are losing jobs and trying to find work."

San Francisco leap-frogged over New York into the yuppie top spot thanks to a more diversified economy, followed by Boston with its booming technology sector. Also beating out New York was Houston, where record prices for oil are creating new jobs and more upward mobility in Texas...

Yeah, but I bet we have more wine bars than Houston!

Meanwhile, Gawker commenter averyreade had this response:

Suffer yuppies, suffer.

Now suffer some more. Now beat it. Scram!

Maybe NYC can breathe again soon...

Things that I won't be doing tonight

I keep getting e-mails from my good friends at Ticketmaster saying that seats are still available for tonight's Home Run Derby at Yankee Stadium. Plus, you can come early and watch the all-stars warm up for tomorrow night's annual All-Star Game! Wow, that sounds boring! Still, maybe I could get Nate McLouth's autograph! (Yeah, "who?" is right.)

So, I finally thought I'd take a look. Maybe I'd pluck down my $20 for a tier reserve seat.

Ha!

Let's see, Tier 11, Row X....$150. Plus! The $8 "convenience charge."

So what's the make a decent seat? Box 72, third-base side...$600! Plus! The $8 "convenience charge."

At Apiary: New American and no booze for minors

Apiary has been described as a "new American" restuarant. Open Table (via Eater) offered this description: "Apiary fills a unique niche in the East Village...the chef’s interpretation of American, Regional and Seasonal ingredients will exceed the expected and excite the palates of the guest, offered with all the warmth of hospitable service in a refined setting." It opens soon at 60 E. Third Ave. near 11th Street, a location that used to house the type of business that is becoming extinct in the neighborhood: a laundromat.

By the way, the management at Apiary wants you to know that minors won't be served any booze. Noted.