Bring Out Your Dead!: 2007

The Year of Our Mayor 2007 isn't quite over yet, but I figure the jackasses who run this City (developers, real estate agents, corporate CEOs who live far away and the backroom City Hall politicians they own) will be taking a break from their wrecking-ball shenanigans for the holidays. So, it's as good a time as any to toll the bell on the priceless and irreplaceable landmarks and businesses that were lost to good ol', sad ol' New Amsterdam during the previous, grievous nine months (the second straight year in which this blog has had to do what no one in power has the time or inclination to: NOTICE!).

Here we go. (Cue the mournful snare drum.) Since Jan. 1, 2007, New York City has lost:

Jade Mountain (one of the last old-style chop suey joints, closed after the death of its owner)
Gotham Book Mart (shuttered at this time last year, but now officially dead)
Gertel's Bakery (rent dispute, made way for condo tower, now living on as wholesale business)
Moondance Diner (following landlord dispute, picked up and moved to Wyoming)
Cité Restaurant
Vinylmania Records
The Lamb's Club
Jahn's Ice Cream Parlor (Forest Hills location)
Claremont Riding Academy
Ralph's Discount City
Kurowycky Meats
Rose's Turn
Morrone Bakery
Ramberg Marine
A five-story, 176-year-old warehouse between John and Platt Streets
Cedar Tavern (condos again)
The Wall Street Journal (lost to Rupert, anyway)


Meanwhile, on the Endangered List:

Chumley's (closed for business since April when its chimney detached itself from an inner wall; still hoping to reopen, which may require a miracle)
P&G Bar (lease running out in landlord dispute)
Katz's Deli (owner keeps fucking around with us about whether he's going to sell out)
The besieged Red Hook Ballfields Food Vendors (cross your fingers)
Admiral's Row (inside Brooklyn Navy Yard)
Community Book Store (Park Slope)
Chelsea Hotel (whatever's going on over there, it's fishy and full of foreboding)
Astroland (scheduled to die this summer, but given a one-year reprieve by Thor Equities)
Woodside's St. Paul's Episcopal Church, circa 1874 (damaged by fire)

On the Bright Side:
Monteleone pastries and Cammareri bakery reopened as a double act on Court Street in Brooklyn
The Second Avenue Deli reopened on 33rd Street.
The former Gage & Tollner will have life again, not as a TGI Friday's, but as Amy Ruth's
B&B Carousell in Coney Island may be restored to life

And These were Landmarked:
Domino Sugar Plant
Sunnyside Gardens
McCarren Pool
Lord & Taylor (Manhattan flagship store)
Eberhard Faber Pencil Factory complex
Staten Island's Standard Varnish Works Factory and Gillette Tyler Mansion
The Voelker-Orth Museum, Bird Sanctuary and Victorian Garden in Queens

Depending on how you look at it, this year was even worse that last year. But that's sort of like comparing the Great San Francisco Earthquake to the Great San Francisco Fire. What's the point? It's all of a piece and it's all bad.