What They Tore Down McHale's For

I saw these horrendous billboards on the northeast corner of Eighth Avenue and 46th Street. (Sorry for the picture quality; I was there to see a show, so it was dark.) Followers of this blog know that that corner was home to the great old Broadway tavern McHale's, which bit the dust last year around this time, after 50 years in business, to make way for a much-needed condo tower.

The huns who perpetrated this act of barbarism were pretty low profile at the time, but they've since shed their crippling shyness, if the signs are any indication. My God, they are big, and well lit. You can't see in this photo, but the tag line at the top reads "The Power of Platinum." What the power of platinum—whatever power that may be (surely only superheros know)—has to do with a nice place to live I do not know. Judging from the internet address at the bottom of the sign, the tower will be called The Platinum or Platinum NYC or some such Uber-Alles nonsense. Makes you feel all cozy doesn't it? Platinum apartments.

The web address leads you to a most frightening site, where iconic images of New York flash by you, interspersed with photographs of muscular, Atlas-like men and women who have been recently dipped in a silvery substance. (What the fuck?) The montage is crescendoed by a few rendering of the building itself. Judging only by those pictures, let me just say that it's fucking tall, and it's Holy-God-fucking shiny, and the James Bond lobby has a long, looooong horizontal fireplace. No doubt stoked by the fires of Hades.