Houses of worship are among the most sensitive issues facing the landmarks commission. Mandating that a church be preserved can not only impose a heavy financial burden on a congregation, it also raises the specter of state interference with religious freedom. So the commission has been especially loath to take on churches or synagogues that don’t want to be designated.
The pause in New York City's building boom may have one side benefit: It gives everyone a chance to think. As projects skid to a halt and buildings get stopped in mid-construction, developers - and their neighbors -- have an opportunity to reassess their plans and consider different options for the future. Can that gorgeous but crumbling church on the corner be saved with neighborhood support? Is an old industrial warehouse a candidate for rehabilitation rather than demolition? Could a clever architect renovate that empty commercial skyscraper for residential? This is the time to think about the importance of old buildings in New York's urban fabric -- and how to preserve those worth keeping.
The strategy has become wearyingly familiar to preservationists. A property owner ... is notified by the landmarks commission that its building or the neighborhood is being considered for landmark status. The owner then rushes to obtain a demolition or stripping permit from the city’s Department of Buildings so that notable qualities can be removed, rendering the structure unworthy of protection.
The number of pre-emptive demolitions across the city may be relatively small, but preservationists say the phenomenon is only one sign of problems with the city’s mechanism for protecting historic buildings. “This administration is so excited about the new that it overlooks its obligation to protect the old,” said Anthony C. Wood, author of “Preserving New York: Winning the Right to Protect a City’s Landmarks.”
Grand Opening, a glass-fronted gallery space between tenement buildings on the Lower East Side, has old Chinese men playing hipsters on its table despite the language barrier. “People can communicate through their game,” the owner, Ben Smyth, 27, said.
Eric Bogosian misses the dangerous and dirty old Times Square. In the monologist's upcoming novel, "Perforated Heart," his hero describes walking along the new "Deuce" between Seventh and Eighth avenues and being "jostled by tourists munching kosher hot dogs, their souvenir Playbills clenched in pale Midwestern fists . . . [taking] pictures of each other." He continues: "Thirty years ago, these same darkened doorways framed girls who chanted, 'Wanna go out?' 'Wanna party?' Prostitutes, drug dealers, pickpockets. Where are those wonderful folks now? Grown old. At home with their grandkids, or in drug rehab or in prison or pushing up daisies." The book hits stores next spring.
A six-month examination of the commission’s operations by The New York Times reveals an overtaxed agency that has taken years to act on some proposed designations, even as soaring development pressures put historic buildings at risk. Its decision-making is often opaque, and its record-keeping on landmark-designation requests is so spotty that staff members are uncertain how many it rejects in a given year.
This just after Anthony Bourdain, mourning the loss of Siberia, praised the Holland, which he called: "A classic old-man bar." He also hailed the Distinguished Wakamba Lounge, a former after-work haunt of mine, and now I'm worried. What if Bourdain has reaper powers?
Despite what Neil Young says (“Hey, hey, my, my”), rock ’n’ roll not only dies — sometimes it is crated into boxes and shipped off to a mini-storage unit in the industrial wastes of Brooklyn.
That, alas, is the precise and inglorious fate of CBGB, the legendary nightclub that for 33 years brought hardcore bands like Shrapnel and the Meat Puppets — not to mention chaos and cocaine — to the uplifted gormandizers of New York. Like all good things, the famous club (which closed its doors for good in October 2006) came to an end with a savage finality: the bar stashed in a trailer in Connecticut, the awning pawned off on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and much of the rest of it left to molder here, in a dingy 3,000-square-foot Moishe’s moving company storage space in Williamsburg, a stage dive from the Navy Yard.
“It’s sad,” said Louise Parnassa-Staley, who was the nightclub’s manager for 22 years, “but it’s not really dismal. It’s quiet here, you know. And there’s no rats.”
There is grim commentary to be found in the fact that Ms. Parnassa-Staley — who once booked acts like Hatebreed and Cattle Decapitation — now makes business calls for CBGB Fashions, a clothing operation run from the storage unit that sells T-shirts, belt buckles, onesies for kids, even a CBGB dog vest for your poodle. That ghastliness is matched only by the news that the club’s former barman, Ger Burgman, son-in-law of the deceased owner, Hilly Kristal himself, is now the customer service representative for online accounts.
NY public toilets feature TVs, tuxedoed attendants
NEW YORK (AP) -- What a relief! The free public restrooms operated by the Charmin toilet paper company in Times Square during the holidays are being rolled out for another year.
It's the third straight year for the 20 deluxe stalls.
The plush potties feature flat-screen televisions, attendants dressed in tuxedos and plenty of Charmin.
The loos are so luxurious that Charmin promises Times Square tourists will feel like kings sitting on their thrones before making their royal flushes.
The toilets are being inaugurated Monday with a ceremonial first flush by pop singer and Broadway star Joey Fatone.
They'll be open every day through the end of the year except Christmas Day. For the first time they'll be open on New Year's Eve for the crowd watching the 2009 ball drop.
