A friend recently turned me on to the work of James and Karla Murray, photographers who split time between NYC and Miami. Last month, they released their latest book, "Store Front -- The Disappearing Face of New York." According to their site: "'Store Front' provides an irreplaceable window to the rich cultural experience of New York City as seen through its neighborhood shops. These stores have the city’s history etched in their facades. They tirelessly serve their community, sustaining a neighborhood’s diverse nature and ethnic background, in a city with an unmercifully fast pace and seemingly insatiable need for change.
Meanwhile, here's a video they did on Emily's Pork Store in Williamsburg.
Since seeing their "Store Front" work, I've started paying even more attention to the great old shops that remain in the neighborhood...and elsewhere in the city...
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.
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.
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...
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.
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.)
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.
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)
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).
[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.
