These are a few of the photos you'll find when you search for "Carrie Bradshaw" on Flickr

(Forgot to add this with the original post.) Part of the Sex and the City tours includes a stop at this Perry Street townhouse in the West Village. Yes, this is the stoop that the Carrie Bradshaw character sits on in the show. (Actually, five different stoops were used; this one most frequently, I'm told by someone who really likes and knows the show.) According to Forbes: The show, which made a fifth character out of New York City, attracts fans to the Big Apple in droves, and locals cash in. Location Tours offers a three-hour bus tour that stops at shops and bars that have appeared on the show. The tour costs $40 a head, and its owners say it attracts as many as 1,000 people a week. Destination on Location Travel offers "set-jetting" weekends in New York, where groups of up to twelve women are shuttled around town and given the fantasy that they're one of the four Sex characters. The price: a hefty $15,000 per person.

Linda Stasi on the "destruction of neighborhoods by big-bucks bullies"

New York Post columnist and Turtle Bay resident Linda Stasi has had it with the construction and the cranes. She lets loose in a piece today:

Turtle Bay is just one neighborhood under siege by foreign real-estate moguls building artless, tacky buildings with Chinese money to sell to Europeans, Chinese, Russians and Middle Easterners - the only ones, with the exception of Michael Bloomberg, who can still afford to buy in Manhattan.
Yes, kids, the Russians and Chinese are coming - but they're coming with checkbooks, not bombs - even though the effect is the same: destruction of neighborhoods by big-bucks bullies.

Meanwhile, a graphic from the Daily News (March 2008):

A short walk on 8th Street/St. Mark's Place

As you probably know, Dallas BBQ packed up last fall...and you'd never guess what's taking its spot...

On the other side of the street, Joyce Leslie is moving to Broadway and Bond. Perhaps a good spot for a bank?

Good! Need to stock up!

Gulp. That crane.

Random, etc.

Andrea Peyser does not like the Sex and the City movie (or, apparently, men in pastel shirts)

So New York Post Columnist of the Year Andrea Peyser caught the first screening of Sex and the City yesterday. What did she think?

In a roomful of women who looked as if they hadn't digested in months - and scant few breathing men - I saw the big-screen version of "Sex and the City," an excruciating paean to Manhattan, Manolos and menopause that should have been sponsored by Depends.

When did the story of four aging broads - and these women are about as far from being "The Girls" as Phyllis Diller is from puberty - turn into a horror show?

Time and the tyranny of the camera close-up have not been kind to Sarah Jessica Parker, who at 43 looks positively ghoulish as the still-single Carrie Bradshaw.

Her litany of lifestyle impossibilities continues to mount like her facial blemishes - a rent-controlled apartment, dozens of $525 pairs of stilettos, and a noncommittal, mega-rich boyfriend, Mr. Big. Sadly, the only thing large about Chris Noth these days is his protruding gut.

Ouch.

I spied a gaggle of gals who looked as if they'd eaten recently. I asked, Did you like it?

"Loved it!"

You can't be from New York, can you? "No, Connecticut," she said.

"Better than Indiana Jones!" trilled only the second man I saw. But this guy wore a pastel shirt. Figures.

I predict huge success in the multiplex. New Yorkers know better.

"Sex" sucks.

Hmm.

Well, it's really easy to make fun of a movie like this; it's even easier to make fun of the people who may enjoy this movie. Oh. And not to mention the looks of the actors in the movie. (Chris Noth fat? SJP ghoulish? C'mon.)

I wish Andrea would have written about the real problem with the movie -- how it ruined New York City. It's a subject worth repeating. Maybe she took a different route because the Post covered this a few weeks back. But is saying that Chris Noth has a beer gut do much to bring attention to the rampant commercialization, sterilization and development that the movie helped spawn here?

I invite anyone who may be new to this subject to read the following articles at Jeremiah's Vanishing New York:

How the cupcake crumbled

A plea to SJP

How SATC killed NYC

Related today:
Fashion review: 10 Years Later, Carrie Coordinated (New York Times)

What's happening here?

Construction continues in the front of 83 E. 7th St. near First Avenue. But never when I happen to be around. Otherwise I'd ask what's going on...Did I miss some news that this is going be be a cafe? Restaurant? Etc.?

Just asking

Once again, another tragedy. Does this crane look secure? Just asking. Can't tell. Too many of them around town.

Earlier on EV Grieve:

Accidents waiting to happen?

Here's to a "relaxing" weekend in the city!

Here's the real sex and the city. (OK, groan.)
Flanagan11 has these on his YouTube page. As he writes, "Some commercials that aired on Manhattan public access in the late 1970s during Al Goldstein's Midnight Blue program. The Taj Mahal has since been replaced by Kosher Deluxe restaurant and The Retreat has been replaced by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council."

[Pretty tame but likely NSFW]

A Win Won situation

I continued my walk around the construction-filled Fulton Street area in search of small shops surviving (or not) in the shadow of development hell.

I came across the Win Won Chinese restaurant that sits on Liberty Place just off of Maiden Lane. At least I think it's the Win Won. Hard to tell with Liberty Place closed for construction.

To access the Win Won, you simply need to mosey down this inviting-looking passageway.


I stopped by a little before noon. No one was dining inside, where you're treated to a view of darkness and construction debris. The place seems to do a healthier delivery business.


For the record, I ventured further down the sidewalk to check out this other store front. Not much going on. The front door was open that led to a small hallway. I didn't stick around.



In any event, sure, the Win Won isn't the greatest Chinese restaurant that ever existed, but it's certainly serviceable. More important, though, it's an inexpensive alternative to an area now catering to a more upscale market. With more and more condos going up, this area caters to the yunnies. Witness the openings in the last year of more familiar white-bread chains on Maiden Lane, including yet another Subway, Papa John's, Chipotle and one of those expensive custom salad places. Meanwhile, the mom-and-pop places for non-executive-type workers are seemingly becoming scarce.

For now, the Win Won continues to operate while the 20-story Wyndham Garden Hotel at 20 Maiden Lane inches skyward. This one is a doozy: The hotel is L-shaped and wraps around three low-rise buildings that sit on the corner of Maiden and Nassau.

These shots by Lofter1 on Wired New York provide a better look.

"The Lying, the Bitch, and the Wardrobe"

A review of a review! From Gawker's Ryan Tate:

Save for the use of the lame adjective "anti-sophisticated," Anthony Lane's New Yorker evisceration of Sex And The City is a schadenfreudian delight. Among the movie's crimes: Carrie whores herself out for a custom closet (women in the audience actually applauded); Carrie is more concerned about losing her access to nice clothes than about the disintegration of her marriage; and, apartment-hunting in a predominately Chinese neighborhood, Miranda, in a charming bit of racism, cries out, "White guy with a baby! Let’s follow him." Lane says the film is often "pornographic—arouse the viewer with image upon image of what lies just beyond her reach" and suggests the subtitle "The Lying, the Bitch, and the Wardrobe."

Meanwhile, here's Lane's reaction to Miranda's "white guy with a baby" line: So that’s what drives these people: Aryan real estate.

Then it gets really beautiful:

At least, you could argue, Miranda has a job, as a lawyer. But the film pays it zero attention, and the other women expect her to drop it and fly to Mexico without demur. (And she does.) Worse still is the sneering cut as the scene shifts from Carrie, carefree and childless in the New York Public Library, to the face of Miranda’s young son, smeared with spaghetti sauce. In short, to anyone facing the quandaries of being a working mother, the movie sends a vicious memo: Don’t be a mother. And don’t work. Is this really where we have ended up—with this superannuated fantasy posing as a slice of modern life?

"Bad" news for drummer and his West 11th Street home

From today's Post!

By LARRY CELONA and ADAM NICHOLS May 29, 2008 -- Thieves took more than $350,000 worth of jewelry in a Memorial Day raid on the Greenwich Village home of Bad Company drummer Simon Kirke, cops said.
The musician found the jewels missing from a safe when he returned home from a weekend out of town with his family. Two laptop computers worth $3,000 were also missing, cops said.Cops found the front and back doors of the West 11th Street apartment Kirke shares with his wife and four children unlocked with no signs of being forced, a police source said.
Kirke told them he couldn't remember whether he'd locked them.The Englishman was also unsure whether he had locked the safe inside the house before the family left, the source said.
Kirke was a founding member of the band Free, whose hit "All Right Now" reached No. 1in more than 20 countries.He set up Bad Company after Free broke up in 1973.That band sold 60 million records, including "Rock and Roll Fantasy" and "Feel Like Makin' Love."Since leaving Bad Company in 2002, he has been songwriting and occasionally performing. He made a how-to-play-drums DVD in 2006 titled "Lessons from a Legend."

And why did this take two Post reporters to cover? One to talk to cops, one to search Wikipedia?

Bonus!



Double bonus!

All is well at Stuy Town!

According to the Home Real Estate guide in today's Post anyway.

Says the article:

When it was announced in late 2006, it was one of those deals that knocked the wind out of you: The Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village complex - that beacon of middle-class Manhattan life - was being sold to Tishman Speyer for $5.4 billion. It remains the biggest real-estate transaction in New York City history.
Its residents were worried (68 percent of the 11,232 apartments in Stuy Town are rent regulated) and real-estate watchers wondered what would become of that massive 80-acre plot of land on the far East Side. Would some of the buildings be torn down and new ones go up? Would the place go condo? Would rent-stabilized residents be kicked out?
The short answer? None of the above. For many longtime Stuy Town residents, not much is different since the purchase. But that's not to say that there haven't been changes.
"We're focused on making it better," says George Hartzmann, managing director at Tishman Speyer. "That means focusing on the physical amenities, community activities, upgrading [apartments] and a lot of landscaping."

Yep, nothing but good things here! Keep going about your business!

Oh, well, there's this.

Meanwhile, back to the article. Sure, rents are going up...

"When I moved here, my one-bedroom apartment was $52.50," says Madeleine Sussman, who came to Stuy Town in 1949.
Sussman turned to her husband, Harold, who had moved to the complex a year earlier.
"What did you pay?"
"Fifty-eight dollars."
"Of course, that was a lot in those days," Madeleine adds.
Today, a one-bedroom in Stuyvesant Town starts at $2,950; two-bedrooms at $3,675; and three-bedrooms at $5,400. Peter Cooper Village (which has always had bigger and more expensive apartments) start at $3,250 for a one-bedroom, and $4,225 for a two-bedroom.
And those are the cheap units!

Golly! So what is a tenant to do?

And if the price sounds a bit high, Stuy Town has encouraged potential residents to take roommates.
Jill Durso, for instance, is splitting a one-bedroom with friend Christina Vargas.
"We converted it to a two-bedroom," says Durso. "They arranged to have a nice little wall put up, and we still have enough of a living room for our modest get-togethers."
Luckily, the one-bedrooms in Stuy Town are big. A typical one-bedroom measures around 755 square feet; a one-bedroom in Peter Cooper is around 947 square feet. (Two-bedrooms in Stuy Town average 943 square feet; at Peter Cooper they measure about 1,223 square feet.)
"I go to friends' apartments in the East Village, and they're paying more for the same amount of space," notes Durso.

The article does finally mention the rising rents, new money moving in (why not? they are wine tastings! ski trips! Hamptons shuttles!) and longtime residents getting the heave-ho, but...

That being said, one still gets the feeling talking to residents that the criticisms of Stuy Town are made out of love; longtime tenants are absolutely fanatical about the place - and not all of them object to newcomers.
"It's nice to see the young people," says Madeleine Sussman. "There was a population shift; most of the people who lived here together grew old together. And now it's still a comfortable place."
And new tenants seem to agree.
"I always said, it's the greatest suburb in New York," says Allison Kallish, who moved to a one-bedroom in Stuy Town two years ago. "I saw this parade of Little Leaguers, with bagpipes playing, walking through the [Stuyvesant] Oval back in April. How many suburbs do you see that in?"That being said, one still gets the feeling talking to residents that the criticisms of Stuy Town are made out of love; longtime tenants are absolutely fanatical about the place - and not all of them object to newcomers.
"It's nice to see the young people," says Madeleine Sussman. "There was a population shift; most of the people who lived here together grew old together. And now it's still a comfortable place."
And new tenants seem to agree.
"I always said, it's the greatest suburb in New York," says Allison Kallish, who moved to a one-bedroom in Stuy Town two years ago. "I saw this parade of Little Leaguers, with bagpipes playing, walking through the [Stuyvesant] Oval back in April. How many suburbs do you see that in?"

Condo owner who likes the finer things didn't appreciate bar with dirty floors or kids

While writing the previous post, I went to Citysearch to doublecheck the address for Ryan's Sports Bar on Gold Street, which recently moved to make way for some new condos. Anyway, while there, I found this patron's review. And he didn't like what he found!

I hope places like this close down soon

11/11/2007 Posted by jakesloanesq
We are all working on building a better downtown. I bought a 1.5 million dollar condo around the block from this place. I stopped in one weekday during lunch (i was off.) The place had 3 patrons at the bar, all of which looked worse then the other. The decor is lacking, the floors dirty, and the food was just ok. This place may be decent for someone who does not like finer things or if you are under-age. I went to Ryan's with my wife on a Thursday night to grab a quick drink before heading home. The entire place had kids drinking. We overheard a few kids talking about how Ryans is the only bar that lets the local college kids drink. I am not sure if anyone in the bar was 21 years old. Regardless, the building next to ryan's has been condemmed due to rodents. This was not a surprise because the rodents can be seen running on Gold street outside this dump.

I'm simply stunned a bar in New York had dirty floors! Hope it didn't bring the value down on his $1.5 condo! Anyway, Ryan's wasn't the greatest place around, but it had a divey ambiance to it that I appreciated --

Bonus review from a tourist:

Terrible pub with a very bad vibe!

07/27/2006 Posted by weesmcg
This is defiantly the worst pub visited in New York! Situated in a back alley near student accommodation its full of very young possibly underage drinkers at night time and it seems like a place where day time alcoholics go to try and escape their job in the financial district! Staff were quite rude and loud and only look after what seemed to be the regulars! The place is very dull, dark and no atmosphere probably due to where its situated! We werent made feel as welcome or at home as we were in other Irish pubs in New York! Very disappointed!!

Down on Fulton Street

As I've written before, my place of employment is near Fulton Street, that lovely stretch of misery between Broadway and Water. The street has been torn up for years. Meanwhile, businesses are seemingly struggling to survive. Still, there are some nice little spots tucked away on the side streets, like Ryan's, an Irish pub on Gold Street that's never too busy (except when the NYU and Pace kids get in with their fake IDs). Given the glitzy high rises going up nearby, you have to appreciate such a place. Haven't been there in a few months, so I thought I'd ... Oh. Shit.


Here's what remains of Ryan's and whatever was next to it. Torn down to make way for condos.


Well, at least Ryan's was able to move nearby. Meanwhile, I worry about some of the mom-and-pop shops on Fulton Street. Seems like someone is closing up all too often. And there's no place for them to go.


There's a nice cobbler on the street. An odd little jewelry store/barber stop combo. And the Blarney Stone.


Still making rubber stamps. But for how long?




So why are the little shops disappearing? Just look up.


Of course.

Earlier on EV Grieve:

Been on Fulton Street lately? What a treat!

"...it's not some perfunctory cinematic appendix to a popular series, but the beginning of a whole new string of films"

That's part of Mick LaSalle's glowing review of Sex and the City in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Hoo-boy, did he like this movie. A lot!

Yet even viewers coming in cold will appreciate "Sex and the City" as the best American movie about women so far this year, and probably the best that will be made this year. Indeed, at the rate Hollywood has been going, it may stand as the best women's movie until "Sex and the City II," if that ever comes along.

Meanwhile, Mick wraps it up:

There's something alive here. There's a feeling about this movie, that it's not some perfunctory cinematic appendix to a popular series, but the beginning of a whole new string of films. There's certainly no artistic reason "Sex and the City" can't be the women's equivalent of "Star Trek," with human emotion being the final frontier. Like outer space, that frontier is infinite.

Is it true that in space, no one can hear you scream?

So, what's going on in the world today?

The Post gives the film 1.5 stars out of four. As Lou Lumenick writes:

New Yorkers put up with noise, lack of privacy, tiny expensive apartments and countless other daily insults. But will they shell out 12 bucks for what amounts to a 21/2-hour "very special" TV episode of "Sex and the City" that feels like it was written and directed by an audience focus group in Omaha?

If the ecstatic reaction at the screening I attended is any indication, they might - at least if they're not heterosexual males bored by the movie's endless fashion montages, shameless product placements, lethally slow pacing and utterly predictable plot.

And how was the glitzy premiere of the movie last night at Radio City?

Everything must go?

The OTB drama continues today. As the Post reports:

The city's Off-Track-Betting Corp. is advertising today for an auctioneer to liquidate its assets as talks drag on in Albany on a new revenue-sharing formula to rescue the cash-strapped bookie operation before June 15.
Among the items that would be up for grabs are leases to 62 OTB parlors, a warehouse, a repair facility, a print shop and a storage depot.
Gov. Paterson, state Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno and Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver issued a joint statement on April 15 saying they're committed to saving OTB and its 1,500 jobs.
But one source said, "They're not close to consensus."
Mayor Bloomberg has threatened to shut OTB on June 15 if Albany doesn't change the formula that now forces OTB to pay out more than 100 percent of its profits.
"Everybody thinks this is going to go to the 11th hour, 59th minute," said one insider.

If you have the Post, the public notice -- "request for expression of interest" -- is on Page 55.

Previously on EV Grieve:

Scenes from a Derby day

So long, OTB (and happy Derby day)

"So I came to New York for the reason everyone comes to New York, because it is the city of changes"

So let's continue on with linking to about every article in this week's New York magazine...(Hey, lots of stuff that's of interest to me...)

Such as:

The 25th Hour of Florent Morellet...Florent will be closing soon after 23 years.

Says Morellet:

“I am from Bumfuck, France, okay? And when I grew up I wanted to kill myself every Sunday because nothing happened. So I moved to Paris, but you know what? Paris is awful! Americans, they love Paris, but I absolutely hate Paris. It is always gray, it is always the same. So I came to New York for the reason everyone comes to New York, because it is the city of changes. People forget this is what they love about New York. They get old, they get grumpy. They get … nostalgic.”

Speaking of restaurants, there's a small write up on Kafana, the new Serbian restaurant on Avenue C owned by former Sophie's bartender Vladimir Ocokoljic. (Despite the blog's origins -- see By the Way below -- I didn't know Vlade personally.)

In the movie reviews, David Edelstein likes Sex and the City! He calls it a "joyful wallow." (I always prefered "flounder.")

And finally, in the Approval Matrix, this falls under the "highbrow despicable" category:

"A preservation group calls the Lower East Side an 'Endangered' neighborhood. Should we also landmark the neighborhood from City of God?"

"Everything has a price. Everything except outsider eccentricity, which evidently is bad for business"

Excellent essay in New York magazine by Jerry Saltz on the Tower of Toys (RIP).

On the tower's creator, Eddie Boros:

He was a fixture in a neighborhood of human fixtures, a reminder that the East Village was still marginal, where odd things were normal and normalcy was odd.

On art and gentrification:

It wasn’t beautiful, but it was beautifully eccentric, part of a folk-art tradition put together from the detritus and wreckage of once-raggedy neighborhoods by individuals working on the edge of society. Adam Purple’s glorious “Garden of Eden” on Eldridge Street was torn down in 1986; the metal-sculpture garden on Avenue B and East 2nd was evicted in 1995. And last week, the Tower of Toys came down. All of these projects, and others elsewhere in the city, served as demarcation lines, stopgaps against encroaching gentrification. Now there aren’t any peripheries in Manhattan, and there are few anywhere in the city. Everything has a price. Everything except outsider eccentricity, which evidently is bad for business.

At the Loisaida Festival, May 25

Several of us were watching the couple passionately kissing by the port-o-potties.





Bonus: Part of the live entertainment