New York's disappearing storefronts

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.

Through March 29, you can see their work at the Brooklyn Historical Society's exhibition, "The Disappearing Face of Brooklyn’s Storefronts." (Via Gowanus Lounge)

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...

A good storefront

On 14th Street near Third Avenue.

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.

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning edition

It's not your imagination: There are like 25,000 hotels now on the LES (BoweryBoogie)

Jeremiah swings by Ray's for an egg cream...and Bob Arihood was there to capture Ray's 76th birthday celebration.

So long to the Cheyenne (Greenwich Village Daily Photo)

Karate Boogaloo, who never fails to find interesting content, turns us on to the work of photographer Richard Friedman...including 24 shots from NYC circa the 1960s and 1970s. (Stupefaction)

For those of you who want to go to Europe without actually having to travel (Esquared)

What's so cool about Kool Blue? (Blah Blog Blah)

Legendary Lüchow’s on East 14th Street (Ephemeral New York)

Vanishing City was a success (Colonnade Row)

A little JSBX to get through the day (Flaming Pablum)

A stunning development: Is Haley Joel Osment the Penistrator?

Thanks to the tip from the commenter on the last Penistrator post for this news: So! Is Haley Joel Osment, the Sixth Sense star and NYU student, the notorious Penistrator leaving the snow penii on unsuspecting cars around the East Village? The always reliable TMZ.com had the following shot of someone who looks a lot like HJO...



That stroke looks very familiar. Is this how you Pay it Forward?



More TK on this worldwide, breaking, developing story...

Trend alert: The bad old days are here again!

Yesterday, we learned that maybe we won't want to watch realistic fare such as "Life on Marzzzzzzzz" since we'll all be out in the streets shooting each other and who needs TV when there's reality right out the window. Or something sort of like that. Today, the Post has a piece titled:

'SCARED TO COME TO NY'
LIKE BAD OLD DAYS OF PETTY CRIME

It feels like a flashback to the 1980s on city streets -- an era no one's nostalgic for.

Overstretched cops are struggling to combat petty crime, according to police sources -- resulting in an easing of enforcement that's taking Manhattan down fast, angry New Yorkers told The Post.

"People tell me they're scared to come here," said Greg Agnew, owner of the East Bay Diner on First Avenue at 29th Street. "Guys are hanging out in the street, doing things they're not supposed to be doing, loitering. They cause fights. They urinate on the floor, There's drug use."

How about the East Village?

In Alphabet City, residents are seeing signs of decay.

"You're seeing empty drink bottles in the street, you're catching people urinating. They're 'tagging up' [spray-painting graffiti]," said Anibal Pabon, 44, an office clerk. "All that stuff is coming back."

(Hmm...public urination: future trends piece!) I don't mean to make light of any of this...I've noticed a difference...The cynicism comes from how the media are portraying all this...Building an entire crime-trends article around the quote from one NYU student, for instance. So we're right back to the bad old days of the 1980s? (Or, in he case of the Times yesterday, the 1970s?) Things are just GETTING REALLY BAD HERE right?

Meanwhile, on the page opposite this scary crime story in the Post, there's an article titled Crime Dips on Subway.

Subway crime dropped by 3 percent in 2008 -- marking a third straight year in which the good guys gained on the underground goons.

Robberies went from 796 in 2007 to 823 and rapes from one to three, but murders, assaults and grand larcenies all declined, according to NYPD statistics.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Noted
Returning to the scene of the crime

Love Saves the Day is cleared out; Meanwhile, Karen will remain...

Since Love Saves the Day officially closed on Jan. 18, the store had still been full of good loot, like that Charlie's Angels lunchbox. No more, though. On Saturday, everything worth anything was removed and carted off...



A woman walked up and asked one if the movers if there was anything left to buy. He seemed slighly surprised. "NO, it's all gone. There's nothing left," he scolded.

Meanwhile, Karen was setting up shop out front per usual. Was this her last day too, I asked? "Oh no, I'll be here next week...either here or across the street," she said, pointing toward the old Kiev storefront. So that's good news...we'll still have Karen's flea market...and a true EV character.





For further reading and viewing:
Love Saves the Day is Closing, Karen wants to remain here in the East Village (YouTube)
Karen Saves the Day (Jeremiahs's Vanishing NY)
Last Trip to LSD (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)
End Comes for Outpost of East Village Counterculture (New York Times)

More turnover on St. Mark's Place: The Iron Fairies store closes

Last week, Crain's had the following news:

Vietnamese restaurant Pho 32 recently signed a 10-year deal for its second Manhattan location, leasing 2,000 square feet on the upper retail level of 13 St. Marks Place, between Second and Third avenues. In addition, Su, a Korean eatery, signed a 10-year lease for 650 square feet on the ground level of the same address.

Fine. The block could really use a few more Asian eateries so there is one in every other storefront...But. Hmm, 13 St. Mark's Place? Isn't that home to the Iron Fairies, the hippy-dippy Australian shop that sells soy-wax candles and handmade soaps? It opened in October 2007; the St. Mark's location was their first in North America.

Anyway, this is the same 13 St. Mark's Place. Which means the Iron Fairies store has closed.




In an article dated Oct. 25, 2007, the New York Sun noted the recent high turnover on St. Mark's Place between Second Avenue and Third Avenue. Iron Fairies was one of eight new retail outlets staking their claim on this block. According to the Sun:

Ashley Sutton, a director of the company that owns Iron Fairies, Wild Blue Holdings, said he settled on St. Marks Place after researching locations in the city for a year and a half.

"We were looking at six locations in Manhattan, but we ended up here," Mr. Sutton said. "The trash is moving out of the neighborhood. It's trendy and has a lot of Asian influence, as well."

Meanwhile, across the street, the former Mondo Kim's awaits a new tenant.



As the Sun article noted: "The owner of Mondo Kim's, Youngman Kim, had put 6 St. Marks Place on the market for $19 million, but he recently decided instead to lease the five-story, 15,000-square-foot building for about $1 million a year, his broker, Steven Rappaport, said. Mr. Kim is "in serious negotiations" with a food vendor, the broker said, but he would not disclose the company's name. The store, which has been at no. 6 for 20 years, will move to another space in the East Village, Mr. Rappaport said. Mr. Kim declined to comment."

Guess we're in for another turnover on this block (David Z shoes is apparently closing too)...just like in the fall of 2007. As the Sun reported then:

Two factors behind the revolving door of retailers on the street are high rents and a demographic of younger shoppers who do not have deep pockets. And despite the fact that foot traffic on St. Marks is usually heavy from the early morning to the late evening, this "gateway to the East Village" lacks luxury residential developments that could help anchor the retailers.

Sex and the recession

So, apparently, New York City is still being marketed in the Sex and the City manner in which this ad suggests:



Hot pink! A martini glass! Good times! All is well! Spend money!

Anyway, I'm glad a little reality worked its way into the top left-hand corner of the Cemusa ad on Second Avenue near St. Mark's....