Noted

In a post last March on a fancy open house on 12th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B, I made reference to liking the doorway below...the building is next door to the big new one with $5,000 rents.



Anyway, not sure how long ago this happened (Jill?), but the building with the doorway got all gussied up.

Being a New Yorker vs. being from New York

I’m growing tired - have been tired for some time, I suppose - of writers using their New York residency as a rhetorical device. Maybe this was once acceptable, when being from the Upper West Side or the East Village had a concrete connotation, but increasingly the device feels like an amateurish way of bragging about living in New York, about - woah - renting an apartment in a city that’s - woah - big.

(Caine Blog)

Just a short walk to every faboo place that you can possible think of!!!!

A friend of mine in the neighborhood is looking for a new rental. Someplace not to far from his current home near Avenue A. The Mrs. wouldn't mind at least looking a little further west. Anyway, he's now sharing some of the annoying apartment ads that he has come across. I don't know, the one below doesn't seem any dumber than the usual. Of course, I'm not seeing 100 of these ads at a time.

Spectacular Soho Apartment * Skylights * W/D and D/W * Just a BEAUTYTRULY a BEAUTIFUL BEAUTIFUL apartment * Super Mini-Loft and HUGE, GORGEOUS SPACE * Spectacular kitchen with skylight, dishwasher, washer and dryer, microwave, FABULOUS counter space * Breakfast counter * Exposed brick * Skylights * Hardwood floors * Full, windowed bathroom * SENSATIONAL NEIGHBORHOOD AND LOCATION - near everything that makes Soho living sooooooooo wonderful (close to all the fabulous restaurants, cafes, boutiques, gourmet shops, services, transportation) and a short walk to Greenwich Village, Noho, Nolita, Tribeca, Lower East Side (you can even walk to the East Village and even Chelsea) * A MUST SEE IF EVER THERE WAS ONE !!!!

Santa fight

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition (for the evening)

Get ready for $2.50 subway rides (City Room)

Why more women are boozing it up (New York)

Concern about the fate of the Tile Bar? (Eater)

Jeremiah talks with Karen, the Love Saves the Day sidewalk vendor (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Defending Wes Anderson (Hammer to Nail)

Don't Mess With the Zohan doesn't make David Denby's top-10 list (The New Yorker)

Encountering a brass band after happy hour (Hunter-Gatherer)

Scaffolding ruins a nice holiday shot

On 15th Street near Union Square.

This seems like a nice spot for an ad

View from Houston of a new apartment building going up on Second Street between Avenue B and Avenue C.

"After watching all three films, New York just looks like the craziest place on Earth"

We've talked before about the work of photographer/filmmaker Richard Sandler. He has made several documentaries, including Brave New York, which chronicles the East Village from 1988-2003. Then there's Sway, which is 14 years of camcorder-recorded subway rides that have been edited together. These two films -- along with Subway to the Former East Village -- are being released on Brink DVD today.

Mike Everleth reviews the package in Bad Lit:

After watching all three films, New York just looks like the craziest place on Earth, which, for some including myself and obviously for Sandler, makes it just about the most beautiful place on Earth. There’s one touching scene in Sway when Sandler talks with an elderly gentleman about how great NYC is. The old man can’t find anything to love about it while Sandler gushes about the amazing parade of life that passes by everyday. And thank God Sandler was there with a camera to catch it all.

So do you think they bought the 1-Day Fun Pass from the MTA?

Just a quick mid-morning musical interlude.

Dog gone (groan)

I like to amuse myself in little ways. Like!: Walking by the condo construction site on 13th Street near Third Avenue, the place that had the "attack dog" on duty.



I was never convinced that a dog was on the premises...until the fall. Even then, I thought, perhaps this was all an elaborate (and expensive!) audio system.





Anyway, no more dog. [Sighs. Weeps.]



How will I pass the time now?

And look what those teases did.

Fixed Rate Mortgages are available

Noted Manhattan cakemaker April Reed created a gingerbread version of the Farnsworth House. Can be yours for only ... $4,320. (New York Times)

Noted

On 21st Street between Fifth Avenue and Sixth Avenue.

Looking at the photography of Nathan Kensinger

I first got turned on to the adventurous photography of Nathan Kensinger over at Curbed. From exploring the nooks and crannies of the Brooklyn Army Terminal to an abandoned train tunnel that runs underneath East New York, Kensinger has a knack for finding the most provocative and haunting images of the area's (remaining) industrial wastelands.

Most recently, he went underneath Shoot the Freak at Coney Island. As he wrote:

The freak's frontyard conceals an entrance to the strange world under the boardwalk, with long forgotten hamburger signs, picnic tables and strange lairs. Hidden in the freak's backyard is a concrete porch looking out on a vast empty plain that was once Coney Island's Go-Kart track, batting cage and mini-golf course. Beyond this empty lot lies the Wonder Wheel, which is now surrounded by the demolition of Astroland. The home of the freak, like the gritty spirit of modern Coney Island, may be gone by next summer, replaced by the promise of luxury condominiums.

My (arguably) favorite of his essays: The Victim Services center of Bayley-Seton Hospital on Staten Island. Check it out for yourself here.

The Times did a short profile of him here.

Here's his Flickr page.

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

Saving Mr. Purple's garden (East of Bowery)

The continued demise of East 10th Street between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Street art and procreating punks on the Bowery (Flaming Pablum)

Going back to 1996 Avenue A (Neither More Nor Less)

Unemployed hipsters line up for chance to work for American Apparel (Zimbio)

I Am Legend gets a prequel where we see how Manhattan gets fucked (Screenhead)

The hawks of NYC are dying (Plain in the city)

Soupy Sales (sorry, it's Monday morning)

Esquared has a post on a new boutique called The 1929 on Mott Street. As the Daily News reports:

A new SoHo boutique named The 1929 — after the Depression — and a place where fashionistas and the down-and-out soon could be rubbing shoulders. The street level store on 179 Mott St. is decked out with racks of snazzy dresses, pants and tops by independent designers.

The basement level has been transformed into an art and performance space by night and a spot where hungry shoppers, or even passersby, can pick up a free bowl of soup and coffee during the day.

“The store is inspired by the Great Depression,” said store manager Aaron Genuth, 25, one of three friends who created the business.

And there's one comment to the Daily News piece so far:

SinisterCadre Dec 7, 2008 4:59:14 PM
This is the epitome of tackiness. Who says people in SoHo have class? Just who do they expect to buy these expensive clothes? Definitely not someone who would resort to patronizing a soup kitchen. These people deserve to be slapped.

Not such a hot spot

OK, so. Earlier this year, the franks place Good Dog closed on St. Mark's Place between Second Avenue and Third Avenue...and the pooch on the awning stayed for the second incarnation, Spots' Cafe. Which I never set foot in. Maybe no one else did either. It's gone.

But of course!

Ha! on me. Jill nailed it in her comment on my post last Wednesday, "Hope for the Hudson's sign?"

No it can't be. You are falling into their trap of believing and hope for the future. Don't do it!

To which I responded:

Ha! You're right Jill! Bet they wait until the end to paint it...crushing all my silly hope!

A quick recap:

Was boohooing the other day about the faded Hudson's Army-Navy Store sign getting painted over during the renovation at 103 E. Third Ave. at 13th Street.



Well, maybe the sign will live...? The last time I looked, the painting had continued on the front of the building. The old sign had been spared...so far. Can it be?



And now...ta-da!



They were just toying with me! I fell into their trap of believing and hoping for the future...

No heedless intruder?

James S. Russell, Bloomberg’s U.S. architecture critic, uh, critiques the Cooper Square Hotel today. The hotel, which opens Thursday, includes a 1,600 square-foot, three-bedroom, full-floor penthouse ($7,500 a night) that features a private outdoor shower that squirts upward.

Anyway! Some passages from his very positive review. (Meanwhile, see you in the penthouse! I'll be in the outdoor shower wearing a diaper!)

Like a spinnaker frozen in glass, the 21-story Cooper Square Hotel billows above beat-up tenement buildings in Manhattan’s gentrifying East Village.

And!

The slim, all-glass tower, enclosing just 145 rooms, makes plenty of attention-seeking gestures. It swells outward as it rises, then tips back. Facets along the side wiggle in and out, changing from glass to hole-punched metal panels. These surfaces look stretched taut, as if under enormous internal pressure.

If it sounds like too many ingredients and too many ideas, [architect Carlos] Zapata molds them into a seemingly effortless whole rather than a nervous assemblage of tics.

He has fused the hotel with a battered tenement building next door, which has been saved along with the tenancy of two women who have lived through the neighborhood’s extended tough times to see it flower.

And!

Zapata animated the entrance by erecting a little four-story tower that bookends the tenement and looks ripped from the main tower at the base. Above, he has peeled away the shiny skin to reveal squared-off tubular shapes in tan and green. This lets the tower echo the ragged silhouette of the long-neglected tenement neighborhood. Its contrasting lightness doesn’t weigh down the layers of red brick, terra-cotta rickrack and dangling fire escapes that give the streets such evocative character.

In spite of its size and contemporary styling, the hotel is no heedless intruder.

Why you shouldn't be surprised if you run into Bill Murray at a bar or loft party or...

Page Six Magazine explains. Kind of.

"An irresponsible vanity buy"

Phil Mushnick in the Post today:

Two years ago, when the country's financial health was superficially strong, the Mets-Citigroup naming rights deal -- a record-cracking $20 million for 20 years to call the new ballpark Citi Field -- wasn't just gaudy, it was downright obscene.

Now, with Citi laying off thousands while reaching for billions in government bailout money, and with Citi's clients having taken a brutal beating, the declaration by the two parties that the ballpark naming deal will proceed as agreed upon is nauseating.

Two years ago, the $400 million deal to call the Mets' new stadium Citi Field was nothing better than an irresponsible vanity buy, one rooted less in advertising than in mad money beyond Madison Ave.

Today, that the deal will be sustained is no different than a welfare mother spending her family's subsistence money on booze, bracelets and the down payment on a brand new BMW.