What's doing in...The Meatpacking District

From yesterday's Daily News:

The venerable neighborhood, long-ago habitat of butchers in bloodstained aprons, hosts an assortment of less savory sorts each weekend: Drunks. Cokeheads. Dealers.

"I hate it," said Johanna Lindsay, who's lived there for eight years. "It's gotten cool, and not in a good way."

The no-holds-barred party, as witnessed by Daily News reporters, knows few boundaries. One reporter was solicited by three dealers within two hours on a Saturday night.

Reporters watched a pair of twentysomething club girls vomit in tandem; a man urinate as he weaved along Washington St.; another man so blitzed he appeared paralyzed on W. 13th St.

Crime stat of the day: Bank robberies up 57 percent in NYC this year

"There are a lot more desperate people," a law-enforcement source told the Post. There have been 263 bank heists in the Big Apple this year, compared with 168 in the same period last year, sources said. That's an increase of 56.5 percent. Perhaps it's more tempting -- or convenient? -- to rob a bank these days since there are bank branches on nearly every corner.

New York Herald Tribune!

Breathless at the Film Forum today and tomorrow. And it's 2-for-1 with Band of Outsiders.

Tonight's forecast at Delicatessen: golden showers

Apparently some residents who live above Nolita hot spot Delicatessen -- with the glass-roofed lounge -- are unhappy with the party atmosphere that it created on their stretch of Lafayette Street. As the Post reports, "one unidentified building resident has taken matters into his own hands, emptying his bladder on the see-through ceiling from his apartment window above."

Mickey Campbell, 45, who has lived in the building for 18 years, tells the Post he "gets woken up nightly by garbage trucks and drunken patrons. The restaurant is filled with "f---ing wankers" and "yuppies, yuppies, yuppies." Delicatessen opened in July.

Oh, and the Post notes: Owners Susan Leonard, Mark Amadei and Stacy Pisonne opened Cafeteria, a 24-hour upscale diner in Chelsea, a decade ago. It quickly became a staple "Sex and the City" shooting location.

That article from the Times on becoming New Yorkers

There was a lot of reader feedback to Cara Buckley's article in the Times from Tuesday on "the sometimes painful adjustments faced by newcomers to New York City."

As she reports in the City Room, "scores of people, it seems, were reminded anew of the growing pains, and delight, that often go hand in hand with moving to the city. Readers’ comments ran the gamut, from lonely newcomers who still felt lost to people who remembered their early days here with great tenderness."

"A few native New Yorkers insisted that it was the arrivistes, rather than people born in the city, that acted standoffish and brusque, and gave the city its reputation for being rude."

Dennis Kelly, who grew up in Long Island and works in Queens, wrote:
As someone who regularly holds doors open for other people, and who is born and raised in New York I find that the rudest “New Yorkers” are younger professionals transplanted from other places that are trying a little too hard to be “real” New Yorkers. Everyone knows the stereotype from movies, and they try to live it. Their only guides along this path are other transplants who have “made it” because they have that “real” New Yorker attitude. Your article only managed to further entrench this stereotyping. Rude is not the new black. It never has been.

Second Avenue on Saturday night

"Nightlife destination" mania continues: 10 new applicants for full liquor licenses on the docket

Save the Lower East Side! brings news regarding the Community Board 3 committee that reviews liquor licenses. Its first meeting of the season is Sept. 15, 6:30 p.m., at 200 E 5th St., corner of Bowery.

Rob reports:

As Among the 40 applications, there are no fewer than 10 new applications for full liquor licenses (called "op" for "on premises" -- scroll down to item 21).

They're everywhere: one on Grand; another just around the corner from it on Eldridge Street; Chrystie is getting hit; around the corner on Rivington too; Allen off Stanton (right next to Epstein's Bar); 2 on 10th Street. Some are restaurants, some are bars; all add to the "nightlife destination" mania, the rising commercial rents, the selling off of the LES to Generation Bloomberg.

Is this finally the end for Astroland?

The Post reports:

The end could finally be here for Coney Island's fabled Astroland Park.

Longtime operator Carol Albert sent a recent letter to lawyers for the site's landlord, controversial developer Joe Sitt, threatening to shut down the 46-year-old amusement park if she doesn't get a two-year lease extension by Sept. 4 at 1 p.m. at the same rate, sources said.

Sitt, however, isn't budging.

"We are extremely disappointed that Carol Albert has decided to give up on the future of Coney Island when her current lease isn't even up for a number of months, said Sitt spokesman Stefan Friedman," adding Astroland would be replaced next summer by new "amusements, games, shopping and entertainment galore."

Astroland appeared doomed only last year until Albert and Sitt struck an 11-hour deal to keep the park open through 2008.

Many expected Astroland to return in 2009 since the city is at least a year away from implementing an area rezoning plan that, in part, would replace Astroland and other attractions with new amusements.

Bud select

Man watching an Anheuser-Busch truck receive a parking ticket the other day in the Financial District said to no one in particular:

"A beer truck getting a ticket? There oughta be a law against it."

Houston and Avenue A, 5:03 p.m., Aug. 29

[Photo by Mrs. Grieve]