Highs and lows this week

Such good news this week about St. Brigid's.




Meanwhile, this is what's left of the Tower of Toys as of Friday afternoon around 4.

"A handful of its buildings may seem grimly picturesque, but for the most part this is unappealing New York"

That's Simon Jenkins writing in today's Guardian UK.

It's a reaction to the National Trust for Historic Preservation naming the LES in its 2008 list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

Here's an excerpt from his column:

A new facet of globalisation is well-meaning organisations roaming the planet listing things as threatened or on the brink of extinction. They may be a beetle, a rainforest, a Buddhist temple or, it so appears, the spirits of a city's past. Two years ago the Indiana Joneses of Unesco fought their way up the Thames to be appalled by the Tower of London. They found its setting blighted - as if overnight - by ugly office blocks, qualifying it for the "world heritage in danger" schedule. Liverpool waterfront received a similar finger-wagging.

The Tower of London is one thing, the Lower East Side another. I have been a "poverty tourist" in many awful places and felt the mix of guilt, shame and astonishment at such human resilience. But it never occurred to me to want to "save" the street camps of Calcutta, the shanties of Bogota or the inhabited concrete ruins of modern Baghdad.

The Lower East Side is not in this league, but the principle is similar. A handful of its buildings may seem grimly picturesque, but for the most part this is unappealing New York, an environment of drab tenements, public housing and vacant lots, where only the lifestyle of the fleeing minorities infuses the streets with some visual interest. The concept of "endangered" here applies to an idea, that of a cultural and social fabric, and one that is inevitably transient.

Yet the appeal of that fabric to local residents and to New Yorkers in general is undeniable. This may be a New York churning with "comers and goers", but both residents and those new to the area seem to agree on one thing: they want something of its character preserved. Conservation has matured from saving buildings to seeing them as a proxy for communities, cultures and a sense of physical identity. It is reflected in the British yearning to "save rural communities" by subsiding houses and preventing sales to newcomers, the so-called "yokel in a smock" syndrome.

Dumpster of the Day

10th Steet between Avenue A and First Avenue.

I had this dream in which I woke up and every corner in the city was now a condo, bank and Duane Reade

Then I woke up for real and.....AHHHHHHHHHH!

The Brooklyn Bridge really overdid it last night during its 125th birthday

Can't even call this a hangover. Still, what a blowout!

I'm really tired of suggestive advertising

What exactly does "come to your happy place" mean?



Now this is just too much!

Hmm, feel like seeing a movie at my neighborhood theater -- what shall I see?

"Just because a building is old does not mean that it is historically significant"

That's Mitchell L. Moss, professor of urban policy and planning at NYU's Wagner School of Public Service, in an op-ed in today's Post titled Death by 'Preservation.'

It's a reaction to the National Trust for Historic Preservation naming the LES in its 2008 list of America's 11 Most Endangered Historic Places.

An excerpt from Moss' op-ed:

New York City's Landmark Preservation Commission is focusing on the need to save important buildings in the area rather than to create a massive historic district that would limit new housing and development. Just because a building is old does not mean that it is historically significant. Landmark designation shouldn't be abused to achieve other political and social goals.

The Lower East Side is flourishing; the New Museum just opened on the Bowery and is the catalyst for the transformation of what was once the city's Skid Row. The Yiddish that once was spoken on Grand Street has been replaced by Cantonese and Mandarin.

If New York City is to accommodate the population growth projected over the next quarter century, neighborhood change is inevitable. This is not a city that stands still. It is always evolving.

We should be wary of strangers from Washington bringing their recipes for preservation; let New York be New York.

Days of Heaven? 7th Heaven? Little bit of heaven? Heaven sent?

Pennies from heaven? I think $20 million deserves better than "Pennies." Still, at least they didn't play up the "American Idol" winner any bigger on Page 1.

Here's the St. Brigid's piece from the Daily News.

And check out some of the reader comments:

Mrelvispelvis May 22, 2008 8:18:35 AM take that 20 Mil...divide it by 6K and think about how many PEOPLE you could feed for a year? far better idea than saving a building that is a sanctuary for child molesters and rapists !

sbtfaith@aol.com May 22, 2008 7:35:44 AM This is a miracle in the East Village and the school being saved is equally important. This church is stunningly beautiful and historically significant and for it to be torn down for some mirrored sky piercing condo or hotel that reflect history destroyed and a community no longer welcome. It would be terrible to have a Red Square with Lenin on top which looks like an NYU dorm with balconies replace the church or the old ps 64 building. The Red Square is co-owend by Mike Rosen and I had no idea he might have 20 mill to donate but I do believe him when he states he didn't donate it. I don't know who in the East Village has 20 million to spare. Mike Rosen lives in the Crista Dora and I am told that this building is the symbol of gentrification, the first and that it owes the community a community facility because of it's history as a building for the people. Ed Torres authentically sums up this miracle and it is a win for the East Village which looks more and more like a bad xerox

maribel May 22, 2008 7:01:43 AM church have a lot of values,but 20 million can be use for africa, haiti where the poor are dieying no food, that's what the bible said take care of the poor,children,widows

potobac May 21, 2008 10:30:27 PM How is one a scrooge when he regrets money being wasted on a building instead of being spent on people who need it? There are more than enough half-empty Catholic churches in the neighborhood where all parishioners of St. Brigid's could be comfortably taken care of without throwing away the money. A mass or whatever service would have just as much value at the other church and save the money for something useful.

"They tore it down. They tore it down. They tore it down."

Indeed. That's what a man remarked (over and over) this morning as he walked by the rubble that used to be the Tower of Toys in the community garden at 6th Street and Avenue B.

As you can see, there's not much left.





Wishful thinking.



The dumpster is full.

At least someone looks to be saving some of the toys from Eddie's creation.

Meanwhile, one-plus block to the east, as icons fall...

[Updated, 11:06 a.m.: Perhaps you'd like to go visit the Toyota Children’s Learning Garden at 603 East 11th Street, via Curbed.]

A St. Brigid's killjoy

I exchanged e-mails with a friend in the neighborhood last night about the new life for St. Brigid's. He seemed initially happy, I thought. I mentioned that the church is going to need a lot of work, hence the $10 million for the renovations. Then, in a subsequent e-mail, he harrumphed:

The construction will really fuck up the traffic and parking for several blocks. Not sure how I'll be able to find a spot.

I suggested that he sell his car.

St. Brigid's as it was...and as it will be...

I had mentioned Paul Dougherty, a longtime video maker, in a post on April 24. Given the good news about St. Brigid's, let's take a look at the church's history via Paul's work....

Wow -- St. Brigid's is SAVED (hallelujah!)

Just what the neighborhood needed. Amazing news.

The City Room has the story:

Donor Gives $20 Million to Save St. Brigid’s
By Sewell Chan

An anonymous donor has come to the rescue of St. Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church in the East Village, saving the building — which has presided over Tompkins Square Park since 1848 — from demolition and making it possible for the structure to be reopened as a parish church.
The Archdiocese of New York announced this morning that a donor had come forward with an “unexpected but very welcome gift” after a private meeting with Cardinal Edward M. Egan, the archbishop of New York.
The gift includes $10 million to restore the building, at 119 Avenue B; $2 million to establish an endowment for the parish “so that it might best meet the religious and spiritual needs of the people living in the community”; and $8 million to support the St. Brigid’s School and other Catholic schools in need.
Cardinal Egan expressed gratitude in a statement:
This magnificent gift will make it possible for Saint Brigid’s Church to be fittingly restored with its significant structural problems properly addressed. The two additional gifts, to create an endowment for the parish and to support the parish school, are a powerful testament to the donor’s goodness and understanding. He has my heartfelt gratitude, as I recently told him at a meeting in my residence.
The church was built by Irish immigrants who had fled the Potato Famine in the 1840s. Financial hardship has evidently been a longstanding part of the parish’s history. An 1889 article [pdf] in The Times reported that the parish was finally consecrated after a 40-year effort to repay its debts.
The church has witnessed momentous changes in the neighborhood. In 1991, the pastor of the church and two other clergymen were arrested on disorderly conduct charges when they crossed police lines to deliver food to protesters holed up in an apartment near Tompkins Square Park, which was the site of clashes between protesters and the police. In 1995, Pope John Paul II visited St. Brigid’s School — which was already suffering from declining enrollment — during a pastoral visit to the United States.
The church’s main building closed in 2001 because of structural problems, and the final Mass, in the basement of the Catholic school next door, was held in 2004. Despite fund-raising efforts, protests by parishioners and lamentations by Mary Gordon, a writer and memoirist who teaches at Barnard College, the church was scheduled to be closed. But supporters of the church filed a lawsuit, and in 2006, a day after demolition work began, a Manhattan judge issued a temporary restraining order halting the work.
Joseph Zwilling, a spokesman for the archdiocese, said that a precise date for reopening the parish had not yet been set.
“We obviously need to talk to priests in the area,” Mr. Zwilling said in a phone interview this morning. “It’s also going to take some time to restore the building. This is something that’s going to take months, at the very least, if not a couple of years. We can’t really tell yet. We’ve got architects who are starting to develop plans. Then we’re going to have to hire construction firms to do the work. There are significant structural problems that need to be repaired.”

Holy Fucking Shit. (Oops. Sorry God. But c'mon!)



[Updated] So this is all sinking in a little bit. Jeremiah floated the idea that perhaps Matt Dillon was the guardian angel. Interesting idea. (Does he have this kind of money? I helped the cause by buying multiple copies of Wild Things.) For whatever reasons, Dillon has been an ardent supporter to help save the church from the evil Catholics who likely wanted to turn it into another NYU dorm or condo to help pay for legal bills for you know what. (I'm Catholic, or was, so I know what.) OK, sarcasm aside, good for Dillon for helping out the Committee to Save St. Brigid's. And thank goodness for them. Without all their work, the church would have been destroyed years back.

With that extra $$$, you can buy two ounces of popcorn

Still, at least someone came to their senses for once. (And what's a movie ticket going for these days? Think I paid $11.75 to see the art-house sensation, Iron Man.)

Anyway, as the Post reports:

A movie-theater chain that stopped offering reduced-price tickets for kids and seniors at a Manhattan cinema did an about-face yesterday - and said it will restore them.

Clearview Cinemas, which last week quit offering discount tickets for children and seniors at its theater on First Avenue and 62nd Street, said it will restore the discounts.

Clearview Cinemas, which operates 52 movie theaters in the New York metro area, didn't explain its change of heart.

"Clearview did experiment with certain discount eliminations at a few select theatres," spokeswoman Kim Kerns said in a statement.

"Upon initial review, we have determined that we will return to our previous discounts at these theaters.

"We note that at the vast majority of Clearview theaters, the discounts remained in place and were never changed."

I suspect that the Post created this flap on their own just so they could run this headline:

'NO-KIDDIE' FLIX-TIX NIX

Here's the article from yesterday reporting on the increase.

Excerpt:

"I feel like everywhere I go, I'm getting nickeled-and-dimed these days," said Jack Miller, 40, who took his 7-year-old son, Benjamin, to see "The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian" at the Clearview yesterday afternoon, only to find that a children's ticket had shot up $2.50.

Is this really such a bad thing?

From the wire!

Public bathrooms in NYC subway close at midnight

NEW YORK (AP) -- New York City bar-hoppers heading home may want to heed nature's call before getting on the subway - or suffer for the entire ride.

New York City Transit has been shutting the 78 public bathrooms in the subway system between the hours of midnight and 5 a.m. for the past few weeks. Officials say the idea is to guarantee cleaning crew access during those hours.

Straphanger advocate Gene Russianoff says the bathrooms should seldom be closed.

Subway riders complain that the timing of the closures coincides with the hours that bars and clubs get out.

Rider Herby Campbell pointed out that the alternative to the public facilities - grabbing a corner for relief - could get you locked up.

The Tower of Toys lives for one more day (part of the Tower, anyway)

Well, it looks like Eddie's iconic tower will be up for at least one more day. I was there just after 6 tonight. There was a light rain. A few people scurried by, cursing that they didn't have an umbrella. I stood there for a few minutes. Depressed. A woman came by and stopped. "They're really taking it down, huh?" It wasn't really a question she wanted answered. "Fuck." And she walked away.

Was happy to come home and read Jeremiah's account on how the Tower was suitably stubborn earlier today while the city continued to tear it down.

"If you are at the corner of Bowery and Houston, and think about what it was like 10 to 15 years ago compared with today, you couldn’t recognize it"

As it was widely reported, the National Trust for Historic Preservation designated the Lower East Side as one of the 11 most endangered places in America.

In a City Room posting this afternoon, the Times asks: " 'Endangered’ Lower East Side? What’s New, Some Ask."

From the post:

Suzanne Wasserman, a historian and filmmaker at the Gotham Center for New York City History at the City University of New York Graduate Center, was similarly pragmatic about the Lower East Side having already been transformed.

“It is incredible, the changes that have gone on there in the last five to 10 years,” she said in a phone interview. “I would say the neighborhood is almost unrecognizable. If you drive south down Bowery, you almost have a sense of dislocation. If you are at the corner of Bowery and Houston, and think about what it was like 10 to 15 years ago compared with today, you couldn’t recognize it. Personally I find that sad, but we live a capitalistic society.”

By the way, photographer Brian Rose has some great shots of the LES here and here.

What movies people in the 10009 zip code are watching

Joshua Stein, a former writer for Gawker, has a nice item on his site, My Memoirs, in which he looks at the NetFlix feature that allows you to search for favorites by area code. He did this for his zip code in Williamsburg.

So I was curious about my area code, 10009. And?

Here's what people in 10009 are watching:

1. Next Stop, Greenwich Village

2. Barefoot in the Park

3. As Tears Go By (Mongkok Carmen / Wong gok ka moon / Wang jiao ka men)

4. Barbarians at the Gate

5.1900

6. Sunday Bloody Sunday

7. The Country Girl

8. Basquiat

9. The 39 Steps

10. The Panic in Needle Park

Hmm. Respectable enough. Given some of the people I've seen move in lately, I figured an Adam Sandler comedy would have made the list.

[Via Gawker]

John Varvatos saw the light

The Post has a special commercial real estate section today. (And it's not online.) The cover story is titled "New Lease of Life," about how landmark buildings require special tenants.

Here's a passage from the article:

Even though CBGBs was not landmarked and he could have ripped it all out, John Varvatos maintained in his shop many of the funky features of the former punk palace.

"John loves music anyway and it was perfect because so much of his business is entertainment related," said his broker, Robert Cohen, executive vice president of Robert K. Futterman & Associates. "We ... had been looking for a second location but uptown, and even if it wasn't CBGB, the Bowery wouldn't have been an option."

Cohen noted that nobody wanted to install a bank or an "ugly" restaurant or anything that would degrade the character and the history of what had taken place in the building.

"John saw the light," Cohen said.

In fact, brokers all said that if a client walks into a historical space and doesn't "get it," the space won't work for them.

Real estate update: "Much of Manhattan continues humming along"

The Wall Street Journal has a piece today on cities where home prices on holding up. While the housing market may be soft in, say, San Francisco, to no surprise, you won't many bargains in Manhattan.



According to the Journal:

While New York's commuter market -- which includes suburban New York, New Jersey and Connecticut -- is down about 8% from its peak in mid-2006, much of Manhattan continues humming along. Neighborhoods such as SoHo, the Lower East Side, Greenwich Village, Chelsea, Murray Hill, the Upper West Side and Harlem are all up in the past year, according to DataQuick's Zip Code analysis.

Bidding wars still happen. Toni Haber, an executive vice president at Prudential Douglas Elliman, a New York City real-estate firm, says 60 people waited in line recently at an open house to view a three-bedroom apartment in Greenwich Village. The owner had four competing offers within the week, and agreed to sell for about $2.5 million -- $300,000 over the asking price.

Part of the city's strength comes from the fact that few buyers were investing in properties to flip them. Moreover, many apartment buildings in New York aren't condominiums but co-ops, which impose financial demands on potential buyers far more rigorous than banks do -- which helps keep the number of foreclosures down. In addition, foreign investors have been exploiting the weak dollar by grabbing Manhattan real estate.
One area of weakness: the Financial District in Lower Manhattan, where median prices are down, in part because of an abundance of new construction in the area.

Those areas of Brooklyn that are close to Manhattan are also holding up well. On the periphery, places like Jamaica, Queens; parts of the Bronx; and nearby New Jersey towns such as Jersey City and Hoboken are off between 3% and 14%.