Two storefronts on West 36th Street

After checking out the Holland Bar the other day, I walked a bit on West 36th Street between Ninth Avenue and Eighth Avenue. Always glad to see some good, old-fashioned businesses, storefronts that haven't been turned into a Marc Jacobs or something. Here are two examples. Neither of these stores really need to have any kind of compelling window displays. (Not sure how much of their business comes from people who just happen to be walking by..."Say, I should stop and get my sewing machine repaired!") Yet I'm glad they give it a try.

A WTF storefront

Good old Rite Aid...both the location on 14th Street near the Blarney Cove and on First Avenue at Fifth Street have the same storefront...some sort of wellness theme...where we get a good view of some yuppie's armpit at sunrise...



and some yunnie honey's butt-revealing running shorts...



It's like American Apparel as reimagined by David Zinczenko.

Two places temporarily closed for renovation/construction

First, as of last night, the Australian Homemade candy shop on St. Mark's Place near Avenue A was closed...seems as if they'd want to be open leading up to Valentine's Day...




(Hasn't been a good week for Australian places on St. Mark's Place, by the way...)

Meanwhile, over on Seventh Street between Second Avenue and First Avenue, Klimat, the Eastern European beer joint, remains closed. Haven't been here myself (a little clean and suburbany for my tastes), but a friend of EV Grieve's is bummed this place has been closed for several weeks...



At least it looks as if they'll be back in time for your Valentine's Day.

An East Ninth Street vintage shop is closing

M Sonii, the vintage-y, knicknack-y store at 220 E. Ninth St. near Third Avenue that featured local designers...


is closing...



In 2000, The Village Voice named M Sonii the best accessory store.

Life on Laura Mars

Ah, the Bowery Boys do justice today to a long-lost (unintentionally hilarious!) NYC classic...The Eyes of Laura Mars from 1978. With Faye Dunaway fresh from winning an Oscar for Network. As the Bowery Boys put it:

As such, it seems a thin but playful satire of downtown New York decadence. Manhattan looks unusually great for such a commonplace horror flick. The best set is easily Mars' studio, in one of the Chelsea warehouses piers overlooking the Hudson River, just steps from the West Side elevated highway. The most notable -- and campy scene -- erupts at Columbus Circle, at a ridiculous fashion shoot involving burning cars and models in lingerie and fur coats. Oh Columbus Circle! Were you ever so fun?

You get a taste of Hell's Kitchen in a brisk chase scene involving Tommy Lee Jones' cop character, his feathered hair flapping in the wind. But seeing Soho was more striking to me, devoid of shopfronts, mysterious flat warehouses during the day that open to become large, disco-thumping galleries at night. There are still galleries in Soho, of course, but the one in 'Laura Mars' is a big, hokey circus. (The director even condescendingly throws in a dwarf, to get the point across.)

Here's a trailer/infomercial for the film....



And those memorable, uh, lines...

Snow is in the forecast tonight, which means....

We'll be watching you, Haley Joel...or whoever the dastardly Penistrator probably really is! Our traps have been set. Oh, wait. No football tonight. Hmm.

Meanwhile, the Splash photo of Mr. Osment from the other day showed him in front of an apartment building marked 310...

That would be 310 E. 12th Street between Second Avenue and First Avenue...right in the heart of the recent trail of snowffiti.



Which means... absolutely nothing!

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning edition

That New York Giants-fan-is-inconsolable video that too many people are talking about. (YouTube via that guy in my office who told me about it)

Is there a secret rum bar on St. Mark's Place? (NY Barfly via Grub Street)

Buy the mural at Veselka (Grub Street)

More on the "Vanishing City" extravaganza (Washington Square Park)

At the Fourth Street Food Co-op (East Village Podcasts)

So long to the smell and slippery white film of fat in the Meatpacking District (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Discussion questions on E. B. White's "Here is New York": Which of White's characterizations of the city are still applicable today? Which seem out of date? (Patell and Waterman's History of New York)

Not even toilet paper is recession-proof (AdAge)

Whirly-Girly action (Greenwich Village Daily Photo)

The South Street Seaport Music Winter Fest starts Friday (Brooklyn Vegan)

A Richard Hell Obamicon (Stupefaction)

Dating a banker? (Esquared)

At the new Alice Tully Hall (The New Yorker)

PURE SPECULATION: Maybe people are stealing pets for the reward money?

Have you noticed how many missing pets signs there are around the neighborhood? A friend suggested that, perhaps, people were stealing pets in return for a reward...Maybe? Easy money in these difficult economic times, etc. He had no proof to back this up...He was just talking, but it was a rather chilly thought.






Stealing pets is hardly a new concept. In any event, whatever the reason for the disapperance, I hope these owners find their pets soon (if they haven't already).

T-shirt for tourists proof that bad old days are back?

And are they the bad old days of the 1970s or the 1980s? On Fulton Street near the South Street Seaport.

The Holland Bar may be open as soon as tomorrow! (Though you may not recognize much)

As we reported last week, the Holland Bar is set to reopen...very soon. The Times follows up today with confirmation the old joint on Ninth Avenue may be up and running by tomorrow. Golly. The Times talks with the bar's owner, Gary Kelly:

[L]ast summer the Holland became one of those typical New York institutions: the beloved local haunt forced to shut down. According to Mr. Kelly, who has owned the bar since 1998, the landlord refused to renew the lease in the hopes that he could make more money converting the building for residential use or selling it off. But such plans apparently did not work out, and the landlord offered Mr. Kelly his old space back starting Jan. 1, albeit at a 20 percent increase in the rent. Now the Holland is scheduled to reopen its taps as soon as Wednesday.

But will we recognize the place?

Although the location will be familiar to patrons, Mr. Kelly still had to start practically from scratch in recreating the place. Since the Holland closed its doors, the bar had been destroyed, the plumbing had been removed, the floor had been ripped out.

And much of the physical record of the bar’s history that had been pasted to its walls — the photographs of customers who had died years before, the posters for shows at the dear, departed CBGB — is gone, too.

Hmm, still, I'll take it. So the Holiday is back...The Emerald Inn won't have to close...and Frankie and Johnnie's will live...

For further reading:
Holland Bar (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)
Brightening Light at the End of the Holland Tunnel (Lost City)

FYI -- Most shit is on sale

Sixth Avenue in the 20s.

Franz Ferdinand are really trying too hard

From the Times, in honor of the band's new album out today:

It was around 3 in the afternoon when Alex Kapranos’s hangover began to wear off. Mr. Kapranos, the lead singer of the Scottish rock band Franz Ferdinand, and his bandmate Nick McCarthy, who plays guitar and keyboards, had spent the previous evening in a refined version of debauchery. They went to a concert — by the British group the Last Shadow Puppets — followed by a late-night feast at the Spotted Pig, the West Village gastropub. Mr. McCarthy capped it off with some dancing at a downtown club, staying out until 5 a.m.

Now both were sitting at Momofuku Noodle Bar in the East Village, recovering.

“I’m feeling very, very tender,” Mr. Kapranos, 36, said.

“Do you have any tea?” Mr. McCarthy, 34, asked the waitress.

“No hot beverages,” she replied. They ordered water.