Some people just don't listen.
For a week or so, the self-appointed protector of this Cobble Hill tree on Henry Street has pleaded to some mysterious powers-that-be to "Not Put a Guard Rail Around This Tree." Today, some one did just that. Well, not a guard rail per se, but some orange plastic netting, which is perhaps as bad, and hints at a guard rail in the near future.
Some curious stand-off in the making.
The is the fifth edition of a new Lost City feature wherein I rummage through my library of old New York restaurant histories and cookbooks and dig up the prime dishes the denizens of the five boroughs dined on in years gone by.
I know very little about Town and Country, a restaurant on Park Avenue that thrived in the 1950s, except that it stood exactly opposite the Waldorf=Astoria, and was the subject of a rather spectacular holdup in 1956 which left two robbers dead on the avenue.
Here is their recipe for Maine Blueberry Griddle Cakes. It looks quite easy.
Maine Blueberry Griddle Cakes
2 eggs
2 cups buttermilk
1 teaspoon soda
2 cups flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1 teaspoon salt
2 teaspoons sugar
4 tablespoons melted butter
1 cup fresh blueberries
Beat eggs and add buttermilk mixed with soda. Sift flour, baking powder, salt, and sugar into this mixture; then pour in melted butter. Fold blueberries into batter, and fry on a hot griddle. Serve with maple syrup and sausage and you have the perfect breakfast for a cold winter morning.
For months we have watched a pre-drawn conclusion play itself out as the landlord who kicked Meatpacking District legend Florent out tried to find success with her own sad replica of the diner, R&L Restaurant—and failed and failed and failed. As we all knew she would. Idiot. A thousand times over, idiot. (R&L was, of course, the name of the original diner that was there, but it's second incarnation was a hollow effort.)
The landlord eventually gave up, and R&L/Florent has been closed for a while. Now there's news from Grub Street of a new tenant:
When a reputable downtown restaurateur put in a competitive bid on the space a few weeks back, his offer wasn't even entertained. He was told the space had been leased; Grub Street has confirmed that a signed lease is now in place with another player, according to a source very close to Joanne Lucas, who owns the property. As for who this new tenant is, the facts are less clear.
We asked one nightlife expert about the space and he said, "At the numbers she was asking, I'm hard pressed to believe that anyone with any market knowledge would have signed. She was asking $30k/month, so assume it's $20k. The taxes are very high there and you'd be required to basically rebuild the space. It's in very poor condition and hasn't been touched in twenty years." Nevertheless, two more sources named David Graziano and David Cabo, of the Pink Elephant and Bagatelle cabal, as the new lease holders.
Just a tiny hand-painted sign and some unusual window adornment mark the location of John's Custom Tailoring on E. 79th Street. I assume John operated just inside that window.
Is this the oldest photo ever taken of New York City? Anyway, it sold for $62,500. [City Room]
Life is a Bagel Buffet, old pal. Come to the Bagel Buffet. [Greenwich Village Daily Photo]
To mark a decade of Forgotten New York, the blog takes a long ride down a dark tunnel. [Forgotten New York]
People won't stop posting fliers. And that's a good thing. [EV Grieve]
Old sign revealed on Houston. [Bowery Boogie]
Some nice pictures of the Queensboro Bridge, now celebrating its 100th Anniversary. [Musings of an Irate Communter]
And more on the Queensboro Bridge. [Bowery Boys]
I find the appearance of this Upper East Side deli to be bizarre.
Nothing inside is unusual. It's your run-of-the-mill neighborhood deli. But what's the story with the...well, I can only call it a marquee. This shop has the biggest, most imposing signage in delidom. Surely this space must have been something else in a previous life—maybe a movie theatre—because why else have that thing cantilevered ten feet out over the sidewalk? Certainly not only to protect patrons who get caught in the rain.
One other peculiar thing about the sign. The "S" in "St." is so much bigger than the numbers in "84th" that, upon first glance, I thought the deli had been named after an obscure religious figure named "St. Corner."
There will be a memorial gathering to honor the memory of Robert Guskind, the late webmaster of the popular blog Gowanus Lounge, on April 4. The event will be held from 2 pm to 5 pm Saturday, April 4, at the Brooklyn Lyceum, on Fourth Avenue between Union and President Streets in Park Slope.
I encourage everyone to attend. For more information, and to RSVP, go to Gowanus Lounge.
The identity of this romantically dilapidated corner store on Richards and Coffey in Red Hook has set my curiosity on fire for a few years now. I don't know why I didn't think of turning to the South Brooklyn Network for my answer until now, but that's just what I did this past weekend. The chatters there came up the information in mere hours.
The gold-leafing of "Restaurant" in this window notwithstanding, this building housed a bar. It was called Bud & Packy's (how's that for a memorable name), a pub run by Packy Laffan and Bud Fischer. It was popular with the workers from Todd Shipyards and Sucrest Refinery.
It's been vacant at least since the 1990s. Can you believe that, according to the DOB files, this building has only had two complaints against it in its entire existence? 
Mayor Bloomberg has found yet another way to tear a good-sized rip in New York's cultural fabric.
A few weeks back, he announced his proposal to bar automobile traffic from Times Square and Herald Square, allowing both areas to become the domain of pedestrians. Not a bad idea at all. But it has already had once unexpected, and thoroughly unwelcome repercussion. The Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade can now no longer follow its historic route down Broadway, and is now being forced to contemplate a trip down the much less glamorous path of Sixth Avenue.
Why the parade can't travel down Broadway for just that single day, I don't understand. Couldn't the rules be broken once a year for tradition's sake? The Macy's Parade is the only major parade that still uses Broadway, which, let's face it, is New York's most famous street.
Sometimes I think there isn't a single thing about New York that Michael Bloomberg understands.
I was walking by the corner that used to belong to the City Lights Diner of Boerum Hill on Friday and noticed that it was no longer there. There is paper over the windows of the long space on the northeast corner of Atlantic and Third Avenue, and signs indicate the address will soon be the location of the Ocean View Diner. Ocean View—is that better than City Lights? Third Avenue is a long way from the ocean. The building has been painted a nice ocean-like hue of blue, to match its new identity.
The Shreeji Deli, at the Carroll Gardens corner of Court and 1st, recently got a new awning. In taking the old awning down, the store reminded the neighborhood of the former occupant of the space. On the 1st Street side of the store, one can clearly see the outlines of letters spelling "Pepaw." This was once, in fact, the Pepaw Candy Store, a local hangout for the kids back in the day. Under the Court Street awning, you can see more faded letters, though they're not as clear.
Before it was Pepaw's, it was another candy store called Sergie's. (This location was always a candy store of some sort, apparently.) There was a guy named Peter who made fantastic egg creams there, so I'm told.
I have passed this little bodega on 9th Street in Gowanus many times, but always at night on the B75 when it was shut. I assumed it had closed for good a long time ago. But recently a biked by midday and it was open. Inside, they sell the usual deli stuff. They just happen to also served hot dogs and make that their claim to fame. They're not fantastic dogs; just the usual. But the staffer made a very pretty design in ketchup and mustard on mine that made me smile.
The sign has a real retro look, doesn't it? As if it's been around forever? It's only nine years old. I still like it.
There's a wonderful old stone wall lining the southeast corner of Kane and Henry Streets in Cobble Hill. It's rare that a wall should have a date inscribed in it, but this one does. Just above the eternally locked metal doorway placed halfway down the wall is the barely discernible year "1913." Which means the wall is a good decade older than P.S. 29, the public school that stands just across the street.
It's actually a wall within a wall, since a cast-iron fence stands between it and the sidewalk. And there a curious shape of a cross on the metal door, which makes me wonder if the property was ever owned by Christ Church down the street.
The wall has long been choked with dead vines, every inch of it. Some of them are quick thick and gnarled, others are thin and tendril-like I look looking at the wall. I imagine some terrible and terribly rich old miser lives within, or perhaps some hermetic widow like Miss Havisham. 
37 Carroll Street, once a facade without a back, is getting pretty much done. Such quick work they've been doing lately. I wouldn't mind living in that penthouse jobbie on the top. But what of the old cornice that used to grace the older (original) facade. Will it return?
How's this for a third-term campaign slogan for Michael Bloomberg?: The New York City mayor who closed down the most firehouses!
Bloomberg's already shut down enough firehouses to earn the enduring enmity of the city, but now he's at it again. He's decided to close four more: Engine Company 271 near the Ridgewood-Brooklyn border will shut permanently on July 1 due to budget cuts; also closing will be Engine 4 in Manhattan, Engine 161 in Staten Island and Engine 73 in the Bronx—by July 1.
The FDNY was ordered by City Hall to reduce its expenses by $95 million. The department also plans closures of 16 other FDNY units by Jan. 1, 2010. Hm. I wonder how long those firehouses could be kept open if provided with the millions Bloomberg plans to spend on his third-term campaign to be Mayor of the city he says he loves so much that he just has to be the leader of it for four more years.
Oh, by the way, I've decided that Bloomberg is, at this point, so contemptible a figure that he no long deserves photographic images of himself. From here on in, he will be depicted on Lost City solely by crudely drawn, homemade caricatures.
One year ago, it was revealed that Carroll Gardens' old red-sauce joint Casa Rosa was up for sale. Or the building was for sale. Which is the same thing, really.
There was a nasty old Massey Knakal "for sale" sign on the side, saying it was a "development site." $3.3 million was the asking price. Well, here we are in March 2009 and the sign is gone, but the restaurant is still there. The listing is also gone from the Massey Knakal site. Could the eatery be out of danger?
Each store deals with recession in its own way. At Sweet Melissa's, the pastry shop and cafe in Cobble Hill, it's by making sure the passerby knows its there—through the placement of sandwich board signs every ten feet.
Hey—it worked for Burma Shave back in the Depression.
My latest "Who Goes There?" foray for Eater took me unexpectedly to Lanza's on First Avenue. I hadn't planned to go there, but I was in the neighborhood and passing by and, it being dinnertime, I thought, "Why not? It fits the profile."
Who Goes There? Lanza’s Restaurant
Lanza’s Restaurant is easily the oldest eatery on the ever-morphing, East Village central alley of First Avenue. With the nearby John’s of 12th Street, and the DeRobertis and Veniero’s pastry shops, it forms a sturdy quartet of old-style Italian East Village eating traditions. Lanza’s, in some ways, comes off the most kitschy of the four, in part because of the stained-glass frontage and the trompe-l'œil wall murals of various famous Italian scenes (Mount Vesuvius, Lake Maggiore).
But all those features are original, or near original, as is the tin ceiling, and, truth is, Lanza’s has changed very little over the years—as one couple who hadn’t been to the place in 20 years remarked on a recent evening.
The place was founded in 1902 by Michele Lanza, who, if you believe the lore, was chef to Victor Emmanuel III. (If you were chef to the king of Italy, would you quit to open a small joint in New York’s then gritty Lower East Side?) Whatever his circumstances, Lanza must have been a culinary trailblazer; a 1935 menu indicates he was purveying a lot of Italian specialties then unfamiliar to American palates. The 2009 menu has changed a bit (more emphasis on pasta, and many fewer selections, if you can believe it; the old bill of fare was enormous), but it adheres to the classic southern Italian line-up: Chicken Scarpariello, Veal Scalopine, Trippa. The homemade gnocchi is prominently advertised in the window, and it doesn’t disappoint. Like the huge house meatballs, it stands up to the sauce and the teeth. The food in general, in fact, is a cut above the usual red-sauce joint fare. It’ll stick to your bones.
Regulars, who like the way things are and want to keep things that way, sustain Lanza’s. Ninety percent of the clientele are repeat customers from the local area, my waiter told me. Old couples joke with the very attentive waitstaff. Younger couples drink sangria after sangria. Friends sit down with a “Here we are again.” Content parents take their (largely unimpressed) children.
One imagines these loyal patrons weren’t too happy a few years back when Anthony Macagnone, local mini restaurant mogul, bought out the Lanza family interest and hung out a new sign that said “Sal Anthony’s Lanza Restaurant,” with the “Sal Anthony” part in big letters. That sign’s now gone—thank God—and it’s back to just Lanza Restaurant. (The original, far-more-appealing neon sign hangs back in the kitchen. You can see it on the way to the men’s room.)
In fact, one of the few main changes to the dining room of recent vintage are a couple stained-glass panels the vainglorious Anthony put in sporting the initials “SA.” The Lanzas probably cast a fish-eye on that. The family still owns the building, by the way, and some of them evidently live upstairs. From time to time, they have parties in the space. That’s one way to keep an eye on the family business, even if you don’t own it anymore.
—Brooks of Sheffield
The is the fourth edition of a new Lost City feature wherein I rummage through my library of old New York restaurant histories and cookbooks and dig up the prime dishes the denizens of the five boroughs dined on in years gone by.
Longchamps was medium-size chain of Middle-Class, Bourgeoise, well-designed eateries in New York and Washington, DC. They were popular with wives and working girls in postwar America. The restaurants attempted to combine European elegance and American efficiency and did a pretty good job of it. The chain was popular enough that, in 1954, a cookbook was produced.
Unlike other prominent restaurants of the time, Longchamps wasn't big on creating original dishes. Instead, it mainly offered its versions of classic European dishes, most of them French. One Italian recipe that sneaks in, in the chapter titled "Etceteras," is Spaghetti, Longchamps. (Spaghetti! How exotic!) It looks pretty standard, but may prove interested as an example of the kind of pasta dish New Yorkers ate in the mid-50s, and because of the inclusion of chicken livers and heavy use of butter. Here it is.
Spaghetti Longchamps
3/4 cup butter
1 medium onion, chopped
3 shallots, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1/4 pound fresh mushrooms, slices
4 fresh tomatoes, peeled and cut
1 1/2 cups tomato puree
1 teaspoon sugar
1 bay leaf
2 pinches allspice
Salt and pepper
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 pound chicken livers, cut in small pieces
1 pound spaghetti
Parmesan cheese, grated
Melt 3/4 cup butter in pan. Add onion, 2 shallots and garlic and brown. Add mushrooms and simmer for 5 and 6 minutes. Add tomatoes, tomato puree, sugar, bay leaf, allspice and salt and pepper. Simmer for 45 minutes. Remove bay leaf. Put 2 tablespoons butter in another pan. Add 1 shallot and chicken livers and saute for 5 minutes. Add this to sauce. Cook spaghetti; drain. Cover with sauce and Parmesan cheese.
I was browsing on the South Brooklyn Network, where Red Hook expatriates reminisce about the good old days on the waterfront, when I came upon a thread in which people were remembering the various small, family-owned businesses on their individual blocks. In this day, when Red Hook is best known as the home of Fairway and IKEA, the exchange gave me pause. Read:
Harriet: I think we were so lucky to have had all the wonderful Mom and Pop stores in our neighborhood now a days all the Mom and Pop stores are disapearing because all the giants who can buy in large quantities and sell things for less money are snuffing them out.
On my block alone Richards Street we had so many stores I can't remember them all and forget about Van Brunt Street they had double the amount. Lets see who can remember the names of some of them. On Richards street there was Volpie's, Mabel's candy store, John's Deli, Larrys Laundry, the Chinese laundry, Pop's Heros, Sweginnes Liquor, Dougherty's Bar, the shoe maker, Buddie's cleaners. On Van Brunt Street there was my favorite Tony's Pizza, Gambadell's Ices, Friedman's, A&P, Cullen's Bakery, mmmm good. Ok Peeps help me out if you can remember more of them. God Bless.
Bobbie (Arlene): I don't know how far back your talking about, but here goes: Van Brunt St—Mester's Fish Market, Davidson's Pharmacy, Trunz Butcher Shop, Meyer's Candy Store, Patsy's Fruits & Vegetables, Willems Ice Cream Parlor, a Barber (sorry, can't remember the name. Sal's Butcher Shop, Taffy Dicks, Pimpenelli's Bar, Lombardi's Grocery Store. Oh well, add these to your Van Brunt Street list. I'll keep working on it.
Richard St: You're right, there wasn't too much—Rosenman's Deli, Duh! I can't remember any others that you've already mentioned. By the way, my husband's Grandfather & Uncle owned the Shoe Maker. I'm still thinking.
Paddy Finucane: Skippy Cleaners, the store next to Hans' (thrift shop w/the Captain,); Frank the barber, Sam's.
On Van Brunt, Ally's grocery store, Manti's, Laub's, Mary's, the fruit stand guy (can't remember his name)
Tom Galvin: On the corner of Pioneer and Van brunt Sal Afee's grocery store. On the corner of Pioneer and Richard Andy's candy store across the street from the old Pioneer movie.
I think I'm going to have to revise my previous opinion that the new apartment complex going up on Columbia Street near Summit is not so bad.
I was walking by the thing today and—What the hell is that thing on top of the building? The structure has sprouted a two-story tower on its roof, like some sort of Crapitecture Florentine Palazzo. I mean, really, what is that? I've never seen anything like it. Will it be something practical, like a water tower container? A super-sized chimney? A really narrow penthouse? A place to store the tenants' javelins and tentpoles?
I don't know, but something inside told me, when I first laid eyes on it, that it would be some sort of belltower. The architect obviously has a grandiose streak. It comes out in the fussy brickwork, the balconies, the clock embedded in the facade. I think he would actually try for a belltower.
Anyway, the folks in the neighborhood aren't happy. They're complained to the DOB, which wrote on March 18: "THE CONSTRUCTION SITE AT THE ABOVE LOCATION HAS PERMITS TOBUILD A 5 STORY BUILDING,BUT THEY ARE CURRENTLY ADDING A NARROW CINDER BLOCK TOWER TO THE TOP OF THAT STRUCTURE OUTSIDE OF APPROVED PLANS." There was then a complaint on March 21 that work was continuing despite not having the require DOB variance. And then there was a complaint that a strange, hunchbacked figure had taken up residence in the tower.
Just kidding on that last one.
Carrying on with my treatise that Lexington Avenue—the part of it that lies in the Upper East Side—is (for whatever reason) very adept at preserving its old businesses, I explored the stretch of it between 86th and 72nd Streets, the other day.
Unlike the part of Lex between 72nd and 59th, which contains many a wonderful, but unsung treasure, this portion of the Avenue boasts a number of well-known and much-beloved shops. The 84-year-old Lexington Candy Shop, which serves egg creams and real malteds, perhaps tops the list of this category. Little ever changes in this misguidingly named diner, located at 83rd Street, except perhaps additions to the peculiar vintage coke bottle collection in the window.
Lascoff Drugs, at 82nd Street, is a pharmacy so majestic and solemn, you feel like your entering a church when you go in. High ceilings, high shelving, a balcony, ancient Pharmacuetical relics, and silence. No music. You'll find many old and classic brands here that you won't locate elsewhere. It's been here since 1899. If that sign ever falls down, it'll kill someone.
The Lenox Hill Grill, between 77th and 78th Streets, is all spanking new inside, but the sign and an old floor tile near the entrance betrays it at fully 50 years old. 
Eisler Chemist at 79th Street dates from the days when this area was crawling with German-Americans, though, again, only the sign and the name hint at its oldness. Further down the Avenue, between 75th and 76th Streets, the L&H Pharmacy was founded in 1964.
William Poll, at 75th Street, is a bit of oddness that I hadn't known existed before last week: an 88-year-old, somewhat mangy-looking, specialty food store that feels vaguely English, and specializes in Baked Potato Thins and homemade dips to go with them. Dozens of dips. The facade stretches out over the sidewalk as a circular metal structure, a king of unofficial private bus shelter. Weird.
Paul Mole, at 74th Street, is a sprawling, second-floor barber that's been in business for 100 years. They sell their own line of hair and shaving products. And there are barber poles of all sizes, upstairs and down.
The outside half of the endangered Ridgewood Theatre may soon be a protected piece of work. The Landmarks Commission heard arguments on March 24 in favor of protecting the 1916 structure. Present was diner-saver-and-shipper-outer Michael Perlman who has made the former vaudeville house his latest cause. Perlman himself testified "on behalf of Friends of The Ridgewood Theatre as Chairman, and as Queens VP of the Four Borough Preservation Alliance Corp."
The man is nothing if not industrious. Perlman actually tracked down Tom Lamb, the great-grandson of Ridgewood Theatre architect, Thomas W. Lamb, and got him to provide testimony. Perlman also said that "The LPC claimed that if not for my role in submitting a Request For Evaluation form & accompanying research in March 2008, they wouldn't have known of the theater's existence," which is a little hard to believe. But you never know. When it comes to LPC incompetence, there is no bottom.
A vote on the matter is expected in late spring. The theater may reopen in July as a mixed-use films venue and retail establishment.
"For trade only," warns a sign outside the store on Third Avenue at 84th Street. Just as well. The mirrors inside are hideous. But the sign is great. The business is an amazing 98 years old, founded by Stefano Cavallo, then taken over by his son Stefan, and then his son Stephen. Think they like that name?
Back in October, Lost City reported the sighting of a sleek new train ferreting through the F train tunnels, thus sending racing the pulses of subway geeks everywhere.
In-the-know trainophiles let people know that the trains, called R160s, were just being tested and it would be months until they were actually in service. Well, months have passed, and today we got this belated, completely unsubstantiated comment from the ever-popular Anonymous, crying, "HIPSTERS AND PARK SLOPE MOMS REJOICE! The R160s entered service in the (F) this morning!"
No telling if there's anything to this, but, what the Hell—let's go with it! Can anyone else verify? I'll be taking the train later today, and will report back.
From City Room:
Asked Tuesday afternoon why so many New Yorkers did not find him warm, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg told reporters, “I’m not big on psychoanalysis.”
On Tuesday morning, in a new poll from Quinnipiac University, Mr. Bloomberg was given high marks for job performance but was perceived by New Yorkers as cold and unable to relate to their problems.
The mayor, who was in Brooklyn for an event involving wireless water meters, told reporters:
"Look, I’ve got a job to do. These are very serious times. There are no easy answers. I don’t find anything warm and fuzzy about the potential of people losing their jobs, or losing their homes. I don’t find anything warm and fuzzy about city government having to reduce expenses and find alternative revenue sources. That’s the job, and that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to call them like I see ‘em. I will say that I don’t get any sense in the street of people being any less friendly than they’ve always been. I am what I am."
The New York Post found out why the developers of Sheepshead Bay's landmark Lundy's restaurant started taking a pick-ax to the exterior a while back. Because they were idiots!
The team behind the Cherry Hill Gourmet Restaurant and Market to open in Lundy's has finally revealed why it ripped up part of the historic building's exterior - it didn't know the building was landmarked.
Apparently, the architect hired for the project never checked city records.
"Our architect did not do that," project manager Anthony Kelley told residents at last week's Sheepshead Bay/Plumb Beach Civic Association meeting, which was held in the famed Emmons Avenue building.
As a result, workers replaced the concrete in front of the building with small, colored tiles and installed a black iron railing near Lundy's main entrance.
Remember Your Friendly Neighborhood Landlord who last year kicked out the beloved Trusting Tailoring and Cleaning out of its longtime Cobble Hill home on Court Street, in hopes of getting a better-paying tenant? Well, there the space sits, empty, many, many months later. Good move, Mr. Greedhead. Enjoy those property taxes this year!
Meanwhile, down the street, on Warren Street, is what used to be a lovely old carriage house. Not any more! Some proud property owner has gotten permission to build an ugly ol' bulkhead on top of it. The horses who used to live here never produced crap that looks as bad as that addition does.
Some good news from Eater regarding red sauce standby Gino:
A tipster tells us that Gino, the Upper East Side Who Goes There vet that was reportedly on the brink of shutter, just renewed its lease for five more years with rent relief. A call to the restaurant confirms the renewal and that they don't plan on closing anytime soon. The development doesn't change the fact that business has been down 70% over the last two years, but at least the owners of the 64 year-old restaurant are going to try to soldier through.
The is the third edition of a new Lost City feature wherein I rummage through my library of old New York restaurant histories and cookbooks and dig up the prime dishes the denizens of the five boroughs dined on in years gone by.
Luchow's, on 14th Street near Broadway, was the preeminent German restaurant in the city for the 100 years it existed (1882-1982). It was also a show business hangout during the days when Union Square was the center of New York's entertainment world. Everything at Luchow's was robust: the atmosphere, the hospitality, the music, the company, the music (there was an orchestra) and, above all, the food.
There were no "lite" specials at Luchow's. If you wanted salad, there was Pickled Beef Head Salad. The Herring Appetizer included herring and 16 other things, including three hard-boiled eggs. And that was before you got to the shellfish and meat courses. And well before you got to the Filled Berliner Pancake or Apple Fritters in Wine Foam.
Many of Luchow's celebrated entrees are accompanied by dumplings. An interesting aspect of the Luchow's cookbook, published in 1952, is that it boasts two house recipes for dumplings. For comparison's sake, I'm listing both here.
Potato Dumplings I
3 pounds (9) medium-size potatoes
3 egg yolks, beaten
3 tablespoons cornstarch
3 tablespoons raw farina or Cream of Wheat
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons salt
1/4 teaspoon grated nutmeg
1 cup toasted or fried bread cubes
flour
1 1/2 quarts boiling salted water (1 1/2 teaspoons salt)
Scrub potatoes. Boil in salted water until just soft enough to mash. Drain and mash smoothly. Add egg yolks, cornstarch, cereal, pepper, salt and nutmeg. Beat well; shape into dumplings; place few bread cubes in center of each. (It is a good idea to shape 1 dumpling first, and if it does not hold together while cooking, beat a little flour into dumpling mixture before shaping remainder.)
Roll each dumpling lightly in flour. Cook in rapidly boiling salted water 15 to 20 minutes. Remove cooked dumplings from water; serve hot. Makes 12 or more dumplings.
Potato Dumplings II
2 pounds (6) raw potatoes
10 slices bread
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 onion, grated
1 teaspoon minced parsley
2 eggs, well beaten
1/4 cup flour
1 1/2 quarts boiling salted water
Wash, peel and grate potatoes. Soak bread in a little cold water; squeeze out as much water as possible. Mix bread, salt, pepper, onions and parsley. Add potatoes and eggs; mix well.
Form into balls; roll lightly in flour; drop into salted boiling water (1 teaspoon salt to each quart water). Cover pot tightly; boil 15 minutes. Serve with sauerkraut, beef, or chicken. Serves 4 or more.
The fates are steadily chipping away at Music Row.
Less than a month after news came that Manny's, the W. 48th Street music institution, was closing in May, and further scuttlebutt that Rockefeller Center intended to make the entire block between Sixth and Seventh its second home, we see that the Department of Building has taken a mortal swing at 163-165 W. 48th, an old building that was until last week the home of Sam Ash's Sheet Music and Brass and Wind store.
A vacate order from the DOB, dated March 16 (last Monday), is pasted in several places on the store's facade. And the telltale orange X-ed box, with an "RO" next to it, was painted on the building, indicating roof trouble. The DOB record indicates that that rear wall was bulging, there was a leaning parapet wall and mortar joints were missing. A scaffold, we're told, went up on March 17. (By March 23, a homeless man had already taken up residence outside the store.)
The store apparently acted quickly. A sign alerts customers that the Sheet Music department is now located across the street at No. 160. Inside, the place has been torn apart, with all things of value removed. Word on the street is that the hammers will start swinging away at No. 163 today.
I don't know how old the building is, but it dates at least to the early years of the 20th century, and was a restaurant for most of its time. 
Go to the basement's fixture fire sale for a journey through a surreal retail cemetery.
Walking around Yorkville, it occurred to me that one of the cultural depletions New York has suffered over the past two gentrifying, blandifying decades is a death in nomenclature.
Once upon a time, Gotham was such a colorful town that mere numbers were not enough to properly characterize streets and avenues. Colloquial nicknames, appropriate to certain drags, cropped up on their own, a function of popular perception among the street-level denizens of the time. 52nd Street between Fifth and Sixth, for example, was Swing Street, owing to the number of jazz clubs and nite spots packed tightly into that happening block.
Some of these unofficial street names are still common parlance. 46th Street between Eighth and Ninth remains Restaurant Row to the world. 47th Street between Fifth and Sixth is still called Diamond Row. And 48th between Sixth and Seventh is Music Row—at last, for the next year or so. But many other names have dropped out of use as the city has careened toward willful homogeneity.
I've compiled a partial list of former New York street names, now only recalled by oldtimers and historians. Take a look and imagine what the town that held those throroughfares musta been like:
Now: Fourth Avenue between Astor Place and 14th Street
Then: Bookseller Row, home to countless used book peddlers
Now: Eighth Avenue from 42nd to 57th
Then: Minnesota Strip, because, in the 1970s, the area was swarming with teenage prostitutes from the Midwest
Now: 52nd Street between Fifth and Seventh Avenues
Then: Swing Street (see above)
Now: Doyers Street
Then: The Bloody Angle, because the Chinese Tong gangs would fight it out on this short, crooked street
Now: Park Row
Then: Newspaper Row, the location of all the city's great papers
Now: Myrtle Avenue, Fort Greene, Brooklyn
Then: Murder Avenue, for obvious reasons
Now: Eighth Avenue, in Bay Ridge
Then: Lapskaus Boulevard, home of a large Norwegian population
Now: Broadway, from 42nd Street to 57th
Then: The Main Stem, the Great White Way, Mazda Way, The Rialto, Coffeepot Canyon, all old terms from when Times Square was the center of American entertainment
Now: Broadway from the 50s to the 70s
Then: Automobile Row, home to many car dealers
Now: 72nd Street between Lexington and York Avenues
Then: Bohemian Broadway, the center of Czech life in New York
Now: 86th Street between Lexington and York Avenues
Then: German Broadway, the center of German life in New York
Now: 79th Street between Lexington and York Avenues
Then: Hungarian Broadway, the center of Hungarian life in New York
Now: Heath Avenue at Albany Crescent, in The Bronx
Then: Blood Alley, owing to the slaughterhouse nearby
Now: Alexander Avenue in the Bronx
Then: Doctors Row, where you went to get well
Now: West 133rd Street in Harlem between Lenox Avenue and Seventh Avenue
Then: Jungle Alley, home of many a nightclub
Now: Second Avenue between Houston and 14th Street
Then: Yiddish Rialto, the center of Jewish theatre in New York
Now: West 138th and West 139th between Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard and Frederick Douglass Boulevard
Then: Striver's Row, a set of townhouse where upwardly mobile African-Americans moved in the early 20th century
After a year of visiting New York's mysteriously enduring restaurants in service at the Eater feature "Who Goes There?," Lost City has learned a few things. One of the main lessons is this: in terms of enduring eateries in this town, the cuisine tends to be of one of three types: Italian, French and Spanish.
These are three of the ethnic groups that immigrated to New York City early on, so it makes sense that their food should be represented among the metropolis' culinary holdouts. They are also the three main "foreign" foods that New Yorkers first became accustomed to after they decided there was a world beyond steaks and chops. There were plenty of Scandinavians and Germans in the immigrant waves, but, for some reason, few of their early restaurants have survived. When I look at my list of Who Goes There candidates, I see a lot of Paella, Coq au vin and Spaghetti Bolognese in my future. (I will get to the Heidelberg in Yorkville one of these days, and if anyone can point me to a Norwegian or Swedish food survivor, I will happily check it out.)
Another thing I've found out: In the olden days, diners weren't so keen on people watching them eat. The facades of most of the restaurants I've visited are virtually opaque. The windows are small, and what glass there is is shaded by metal bars or thick curtains. "Air and light be damned! We want privacy!" If you want to see what these restaurants are like, or even look at a menu, you have to go inside. No noses pressed to the glass wall.
This week I went to Francisco Centro Vasco, known to all New Yorkers by the neon lobster sign hanging above 23rd Street near Seventh Avenue. Here's the piece:
With good reason is there a neon lobster hanging outside Francisco’s Centro Vasco, the old-school Spanish restaurant that has stood for 30 years, inscrutable and incongruous, on a bustling expanse of central Chelsea. When you sit down, before you’re even handed a menu, the waiter places a hand-lettered index card on your table, indicating the size and cost of the lobsters available that night. Everything from 1 ½ pounds ($20) to 14 pound whoppers ($225).
Very easily half the tables on a recent, busy weekday night ordered the butter-bathed red crustaceans, which flew out of the kitchen at an alarming rate. (There must be multiple caldrons of boiling water in the basement.) One can feel like a second-class citizen ordering something else from the menu. “Is the fact that no one’s ordering the Paella a signal that it’s not very good?” asked a woman.
The huge amounts of cash being laid down for high-end seafood has given Francisco’s a somewhat grand sense of itself. A short velvet cordon, controlled by a very proud, small and bald maitre’d, separates the bar from the dining room. He will lift it for you after you state your intentions. This formality is kind of funny, since Francisco’s may be the only restaurant left in Manhattan to hand out plastic lobster bibs (the waiters tie these around the diners necks with gracious ceremony) and to employ a guitar player, who strolls around the rather aesthetically chaotic dining room—fake marble, fake timber, fake brick, a large mural of some Spanish port, and lobster claws hanging from the stucco ceiling.
So, who goes here? People celebrating birthdays, that’s who. Within one half hour, the guitarist sang “Feliz cumpleaños” at three different tables. It was comic, but no one blinked. I was told that birthdays are commemorating with lobster tail and sangria every night at Francisco’s. No wonder they need a musician on the payroll. Beyond that, the crowd was one of the most pluralistic I’ve ever seen in any New York restaurant. There were tables of Asian-Americans, African-Americans, Jewish couples, Hispanic parties, Spaniards and one gathering of Wall Street young bucks. It was a melting pot. All were chowing down of mountains of seafood with the gaiety of invitees at a particularly jovial wedding reception.
My waiter said the place gets locals and “people from Long Island.” He could not explain why a place on 23rd Street was a magnet for folks in Nassau County. But then, it was hard to learn anything, for the staff is almost exclusively Spanish-speaking. So I turned to my neighbor, who had been to the restaurant many times, to get an opinion on Francisco’s bread and butter. “The lobster?” she said. “It’s OK. I like the king crab.”
—Brooks of Sheffield
Andrew Berman gets some things off his chest. [The Villager]
Coney Island scourge Joe Sitt is working his charm again, this time frightening clowns away. [Curbed]
Chumley's has a new predicted opening date—fall 2009! We sorta believe this one a little more than the previous nine predictions. [The Villager]
Why couldn't they have just let the roof cave in? [NY Post]
A nice film of the interior of the RKO Keith in Flushing. [Queens Crap]
Details magazine thinks Park Slope's O'Connor's is a dive (correct), as well at Times Square's Jimmy's Corner (wrong). Dives are on the decrepit side and are home to sad boozehounds. Jimmy's is simply a nice, well-kept, modest bar. It's old and unfancy, not down and out. [Details]
Queens is Pinko. [Restless]
There was a road called Bloomingdale. [Harlem Bespoke]
Some nice photos from near the Hudson. [Greenwich Village Daily Photo]
Abraham and Straus, "Brooklyn's Greatest Retail Store," remembered. [Forgotten New York]
There is very little about the George & Sons Gourmet Deli at 84th and York Avenue to interest one. But walk around the corner to lay your eyes on a portal of intrigue.
The ground floor of the building has a side door of handsome brickwork. But it is dramatically apparent that no one has used it in a long time. A metal gate, drawn decades ago I'm guessing, is a study in rust. Every inch of metal is pure orange. The padlock keeping it in place has not been touched since it clicked shut; it has literally become one with the gate, and could be opened at this point only with the help of an ax. Another lock inside the gate is equally rusted.
Behind the gate one can glimpse the ancient wooden door, the paint on it faded and peeling, it's window pane long ago broken. In the transom space above the door—also fortified by old metal fencing—a couple pigeons happily exist.
A way of dating the era of this permanently slammed door hangs on one side of the door jamb in the form of an old metal thermometer for Nature's Remedy Vegetable Laxatives, made by the A. Lewis Medicine Company of St. Louis. "NR To-night. Tomorrow Alright." The gizmo looks no less that Depression-era.
Who first padlocked this door? And why did they do it so resolutely that no one's ever thought of opening it since? And if the entrance is so unwanted, why wasn't it bricked up long ago? Does George know? Do his sons?
Shopping at the Gap gets as close to a Fifth Avenue experience as possible at the location at 85th Street and Third Avenue.
The store occupies a former kingdom of Manufacturer's Hanover Trust. The bank built the grand edifice in 1915 and adorned it with sculpted metal doors worthy of a baptistery in Florence. There is Latin engraved on either portal, as well of allegorical figure representing what I'm sure are great commercial virtues. It makes one momentarily think this particular Gap has the most lofty principles.
The letters held up by the dual griffins above the door stand for "Yorkville Branch."
Two Yorkville businesses with a classic New York look to them are gone.
I don't know when Charlie Mom Restaurant and Gold Star Deli, neighbors on First Avenue at 78th, bit the dust, but I imagine it must be recently, based on postings of various food sites (Charlie Mom was inspected by the DOH as recently as Feb. 17). I have no experience with either place, but I love the storefronts. Charlie Mom resembles a classic circa-1950s Chinese joint. Gold Star appears to be from the same era. Many fantastic old fixture have been abandoned inside the old deli. Imagine how the star must have looked at night when it was fully equipped with bulbs.
My preservationists' instinct tells me the the double closure means the building they were part of is coming down, no doubt to make room for an apartment tower.
There used to be a tremendously old-looking tuxedo rental joint called Jack & Co. on the second floor on the southwest corner of E. 86th and Lexington. I never did find out much about it, but it looked Depression-era and I loved the old-style signage and advertising it pasted all over the second-floor windows and fire-escape.
I was sad to see yesterday that it had disappeared sometime during the past year. It's been replaced by a real estate outfit called Manhattan Connection. The windows have been scrubed clean.
I had taken some pictures of Jack's some time ago, but never posted them. Now, I can't find them. Sigh.
It's not often that we take a business off the Lost Landmarks column. But we may have to do it with Armando's, the Montague Street eatery that closed last year about 72 years in business.
The owner, Peter Byros, tells the Daily News that the fast food joint that took Armando's place, Spicy Pickle (above), defaulted on their lease. Byros owns the building and has decided to bring the restaurant back. Maria Byros, Peter's daughter, will manage the new Armando's.
"We're going to keep it in a similar style - Old New York - but freshened up," said the younger Byros, noting the menu will feature some yet-to-be-determined new items, along with some old favorites.
Not having heard anything further about the feared-dead Garry Jewelers & Opticians of Park Slope since I reported about the mysterious lack of activity at the 58-year-old shop last week, I decided to check in on the story.
I called the shop, but the phone just kept ringing. Not good. Then I decided to call the neighboring Payless Shoes next door, and, by some stroke of luck, I got an extremely helpful young man on the phone. He said Garry was indeed still in operation and that the shop had been open for about three hours just yesterday. Today, he confirmed, it was closed.
Apparently, the owner has no operating hours, per se, but lifts the roller shutter when he feels like it. Sometimes he works late, sometimes early, sometimes not at all. Garry and Payless communicate daily, according to the man on the phone, and Payless often accepts packages meant for the jeweler. What a nice chain outlet.
A regular reader wrote in the other day to tell me that the "ugliest house on Strong Place" was up for sale. To which I responded, "Huh? Can there be an ugly house on the ritzy, enclosed, Cobble Hill block known as Strong Place?" I've always thought of the thoroughfare, along with its nearby partner Tompkins Place, as an exclusive enclave of Homes Beautiful.
But sure enough, here was No. 52 Strong Place, the street's ugly duckling, whatever majesty it once had completely masked by a sheet of yellow brick, and whatever handsomeness that brick ever had robbed by years of decay and neglect. It's a dirty house. The stoop is a distressed eyesore. The door and windows are stubby. There are patches on the facades where the brickface has fallen away. And the wall in front of the building appears to have been the victim of either a bad paint job or graffiti.
Perhaps the new owner will restore is to something more fitting its surroundings.
The is the second edition of a new Lost City feature wherein I rummage through my library of old New York restaurant histories and cookbooks and dig up the prime dishes the denizens of the five boroughs dined on in years gone by.
I'm about one day late for a good recipe of Corned Beef and Cabbage. Sorry. I didn't realize I had it until last night. The formula belongs to Ye Olde Chop House, of which no one talks anymore. It was, for a long time, the oldest restaurant in New York, having been founded in 1800 as Old Tom's Chop House. 118 Cedar Street was its original home and it stayed on that street for most of its existence until it expires in the 1970s.
The name can tell you what kind of place it was. Old and woody. A lot of pewterware and dusty pictures on the walls. The was a tap room and a "pleasantly gloomy" grill room in back. In the grill room, the booths were boxy and separated from each other by shared pieces of wood. Sorta looked like today's office cubicles, only much, much better. It closed down on the weekends, since its clients were virtually all Wall Streeters.
So, Corned Beef and Cabbage. Here's how they did it:
3 1/2 pounds brisket of corned beef
2 onions
3 carrots
celery leaves
1 head cabbage
bacon rind or ham bone
2 teaspoons salt
dash of pepper
4 tablespoons butter
Simmer beef slowly for 3 hours in water to which spices, 1 onion, carrots, and celery leaves have been added. Boil cabbage in fresh water with bacon rind or ham bone. Flavor with an union, salt, and pepper. Cook until soft, about 20 minutes, and drain. Brown butter and pour over cabbage. Serve with corned beef. Makes 4 or 5 portions.
Sarah Goodyear, a regular reader and a new member of the glorious Lost City Flickr Pool, submitted the picture of Carmine Merlino's hair replacement studio in Sheepshead Bay as a likely candidate for the "A Good Sign" series. Works for me.
The opposite side of the building is pretty good, too. Maybe better.
I like the intersection of 9th Street and Fifth Avenue in Park Slope. It's not particularly pretty or terribly significant. But it is a very New Yorky crossroads.
Aside from a bank branch and a Dunkin' Donuts, there are no chains. On the southwest corner is a old-style, anti-Cemusa newsstand and a place called the Pita-Hut (above). On the katty corner is a standard-issue New York deli, something every New York intersection should have. (below)
Down Fifth Avenue from the deli is the Record and Tape Center, an indy venture if there ever was one. Still further is a place that serves both Chinese and Tex-Mex food. And next to it is De Silva's Wines & Liquor, which looks pretty old.
Across the street from these businesses, and close to the northwest corner of the intersection, it the brutally straightforward Smith's Tavern. All in all, an amazing amount of New York authentica for one set of cross-streets.
I was kvetching just last week about the difficulty in finding a good espresso in either Carroll Gardens or Cobble Hill. That was true then. It is not true, however, this week.
I was directed by a couple savvy coffee drinkers to get myself to Coffee Peddlar, the collaboration between the Frankies 457 restaurant guys and Stumptown on Court and Warren. And, ladies and gentlemen, we have espresso. Dark and meaty and with an acceptable crema on top. Not perfection. But very good. ($2.25)
The vibe of the sparely decorated place is laid back and friendly, but be forewarned: the heavily tattooed baristas take their work very seriously. In other words, they are slooooowwwww. These are artists, bub, and it's one coffee at a time. Ya want speed? There's a Dunkin' Donuts down the road. But it's worth it when you see what designer magic they can do with the froth on a cappuccino.
This is a new feature on Lost City for those readers who hunger to know how New Yorkers ate in days gone by.
Over the years, I have collected a number of books about once-renowned, now-disappeared New York restaurants. Some are histories with a few recipes cataloged at the back, some are out-and-out cookbooks. Only the original chefs and restaurant owners, now all lying in Green-Wood and Woodlawn Cemeteries, can say whether the recipes in the books are truthful or authentic. (One would think they'd want to keep such secrets close to their vests.) But we are taking it on faith that they are fairly close to the true formulas.
I also take it on faith that this subject is of interest. For famous and legendary restaurants are not fascinating only because of the way they looked and who went there. At least, to me. There must have also been something about the food. Not that it was always fantastic, but it was specific, and of the place, and spoke of the joint's personality.
The Colony on E. 61st Street was the first restaurant to embody the idea of Cafe Society—social register folk and celebrities mashing up and chowing down together—in the New York of the 1920s and 1930. It was also known to have quite-above-average French cuisine that attracted discerning socialites like the Vanderbilts.
I have a copy of 1945 book by Iles Brody called "The Colony—Portrait of a Restaurant, and Its Famous Recipes." The first half is an extensive overview of the make-up of the place, its major players and the way it did business. The second half features a couple hundred standard recipes.
The Colony was apparently quite proud of its food; one dish in 10 bears the suffix "...a la Colony." I have chosen to share with you the Velouté of Whitebait Colony, because, among many a complex and vague recipe, this one is fairly straightforward. In other words, you can try it at home. Here it is:
Cook lightly three ounces of finely chopped onion in butter, sprinkle with a teaspoon of curry, add one and one-half pints of boiling water, an herb bunch, a pinch of salt, a little powdered saffron, and two ounces of crusty bread. Boil for ten minutes. Add a pound of fresh small whitebait, and cook over a brisk fire. Rub through a fine sieve, and thicken with the mixture of three egg yolks and a few tablespoons of cream. Pour into the soup tureen over some dried slices of buttered bread. As the last touch, add a very little good sherry. Serve at once. This soup must not stand.
One hears a lot about Yorkville's Germanic past, but it's hard to picture these days when all you've got to go on is the Heidelberg Restaurant and Schaller & Weber.
So I took an interest this weekend, when, at an antique store, I stumbled across a postcard for something call the Bavarian Inn, which used to stand at 232 E. 86th Street, the one-time main drag of German Yorkville. Looks cozy. The back of the card reads "Come in & stay with us a while. Eat and drink the German Style." They served broiled steaks and hamburgers and had an oyster and clam bar. Heck of an impressive bar, with plenty of stools and a scenic mural.
It opened in 1943, during wartime, and shut up for good in 1983. Dei Lorelei, another very popular German restaurant of the time, was right next door, and Karl Ehmer, a renowed German butcher, was on the other side. What a line-up!
There's a Barnes & Noble there now, and no trace of the original buildings that house the Inn, Lorelei or Elmer. 
The landmark (with a small "l") Streit's Matzo Factory is again on the block, notes Curbed, and just weeks before Passover. Oh, the bitter irony.
The property, put up for sale last year, was yanked from the market two months ago. Now it's again up for sale. It's got a new broker, Halstead, but the same asking price, $25 mil. Say goodbye to another vestige of the old Lower East Side.
A fire has ravaged Totonno's, the irreplaceable Coney Island pizzeria, causing extensive damage. According to the fire department, the fire broke out between the roof and ceiling around 8:45 a.m. on Saturday. Three firefighters suffered minor injuries.
The folks at the Slice blog called Totonno's owner Lawrence Ciminieri, who said "Everything is going to be fine. The fire broke out in the coal storage area when we were closed. It must have been ignited by something backed up in the oven. The back two rooms are gone. The dining room is fine. The oven will have to be re-bricked, but that is something we do every few years anyway. I think we'll be back open in a month."
The news about the dining room is critical, as the eating area is a virtual museum of New York pizzeria-dom, and couldn't readily be replicated.
What Totonno's Looked Like Before the Fire
So, we learned last week that the next tenant to enjoy the landmarked, gaslight-era interior of the Gage & Tollner brownstone on Fulton Street in Brookly will be Arby's, the fast food chain. To prepare ourselves, let's look at how the two restaurants compare in particulars.
GAGE & TOLLNER: Founded in 1879 in Brooklyn. Closed 2004.
ARBY'S: Founded in 1964 in Ohio. Still going.
GAGE & TOLLNER: Founded by Charles M. Gage and Eugene Toller, who named the restaurant after themselves.
ARBY'S: Founded by Forrest and Leroy Raffel, owners of a restaurant equipment business, who got the name by sounding out the letters "R.B.," as in "Raffel Brothers."
GAGE & TOLLNER: The signature dishes included the oysters and lobster.
ARBY'S: The signature dishes include the Roast Beef Sandwich, Curly Fries and Horsey Sauce.
GAGE & TOLLNER: Patrons included Jimmy Durante, Mae West, Fanny Brice and Lillian Russell.
ARBY'S: Patrons include Tom Arnold, who also voices the talking oven mitt in the Arby's commercials.
GAGE & TOLLNER: There was only one.
ARBY'S: There are 3,688 restaurants in the United States and Canada.
GAGE & TOLLNER: Interior inspired by the Pullman dining cars of the Guilded Age.
ARBY'S: The Arby's sign was designed by Peskin Sign Co. to look like a hat.
GAGE & TOLLNER: Has 36 gas lamps.
ARBY'S: Has four kinds of "Iced Fruitea."
GAGE & TOLLNER: The restaurant was so renowned that it was a favorite of abolitionist preacher Henry Ward Beecher, who was, during his lifetime, arguably the most famous man in New York.
ARBY'S: Last week, Arby's made news when a van rammed through an restaurant wall in Michigan.
Lost City has been getting an extremely different class of reader since posting that news that Music Row legend Manny's is set to close at the end of May. Musicians care deeply about the fate of this legendary store, which has sold instruments to just about every famous player you can name.
While I am saddened by the loss of this business, I am amused by some of the websites that have joined the chorus of woe in mourning its departure, sites I never knew existed until recently. Among them:
Acoustic Guitar
Walrus Comix
Les Paul Forum
The Fender Forum
Soundhole
Premier Guitar
Pro Sound Web
Harmony Central
The Gear Page
Stage to Rage
Rickenbacker
That's just a handful of the sites who care that the irreplaceable 48th Street shop is shuttering. Who doesn't care? Well, based on their absolute absence of coverage, the New York Times, the New York Post, The Daily News, the Wall Street Journal, Newsday—basically every single paper in town.
Ladies and gentlemen, this is exactly why I started this blog. The editors who control the flow of official news in this town wouldn't know a story that strikes at the heart of what New York is if was sung to them in three-part harmony by the ghosts of Horace Greeley, H.L. Menken and Arthur Brisbane.
I have previously expressed my admiration for the handsome storefront of the 58-year-old Park Slope Garry Jewelers in the past.
The blog This Is Park Slope reports the unsettling news that all may not be well with Garry's, which I passed by only yesterday. "It’s been gated and dark for the past few weeks, and phone calls have gone unanswered," says the site. This is bad.
There's still nothing happening over at the Domino Plant. [Restless]
The mystery of Brooklyn's forbidding looking Putnam Candy Store. [Gothamist]
Always liked the way the West Village's Tortilla Flats looked. [Greenwich Village Daily Photo]
Amazingly, you can now get Cammareri Brothers prosciutto balls on a cart in Midtown. [Midtown Lunch]
In praise of the plastic bags at J. Baczynsky Meat Market. [EV Grieve]
People have plenty of opinions about the new Minetta Tavern. As well they should. [Eater]
The Brooklyn Paper, which has been independent for 31 years, has been bought by Rupert Murdoch. With the Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Courier-Life chain of Brooklyn papers already in Murdoch's mitts, and now this, New York now has its own Berlusconi. If the Times goes under, this once-great newspaper town is dead meat. [NY Observer]
Yes it can. Chumley's, the former speakeasy that has been dead for two years now since its chimney collapsed, and has been in a state of snail-paced construction every since, is actually starting to look like a building again.
Curbed shows JVNY's pictorial evidence that the cinder-block walls now hold up the wooden skeleton of a roof, with dormers (!). (The above comparison shot is Curbed's.) A Curbed commenter notes that work has really stepped up on the place in recent months. I still suspect it will be 2012 before the place is serving beers again, but I'll what good news I can get.
First of all, Clinton is a perfectly fine and respectful name for a neighborhood, but to abandon the infinitely more expressive name of Hell's Kitchen is just foolhardy. The midtown blocks west of Eighth Avenue will always be Hell's Kitchen to me. Despite the increasing number of towers sprouting up and down Eighth, the area still has a raffish, slightly edgy charm which speaks of its immigrant, gangland past. And despite losing some irreplaceable landmarks like Pozzo Pastry Shop, Ninth Avenue and the side streets still boast a healthy number of independent and individualized shops and restaurants. Here are a few to catch. (FYI: I'm going to cover the blocks south of 42nd, which are often considered part of Hell's Kitchen, in a separate guide.)
HEARST TOWER: We'll start at the northern reach of the area, at the corner of Eighth and 57th. From 1928 on, William Randolph Hearst and his minions commanded the news magnate's empire from this former six-story Joseph Urban building, now a mere shell used to prop up Sir Norman Foster 46-story glass jungle gym.
THE WINDEMERE: (above) It's still there, for now, at the corner of 57th and Ninth Avenue, despite the malignant efforts of its negligent landlord, Masako Yamagata, to allow the 127-year-old building to fall in a heap of dust. The Romanesque Revival structure is one of the oldest large apartment houses still standing in Manhattan.
S. WOLF PAINT: Walk down Ninth to 52nd. Here is a big Benjamin Moore paint store. Peek around the corner and you'll see another storefront to the L-shaped building bearing the sign S. Wolf. That's what the store used to be, when old Simon Wolf, and later son Stephen, commanded the New York paint biz from this perch during most of the 20th century. Stephen's son, Matt Wolf, is a well known London theatre critic, which goes to show how far from the tree the apple can fall.
TOUT VA BIEN: Walk to 51st between Eighth and Ninth. Sixty years old and still basically the same, this old-school French bistro acts as if the neighborhood has never changed from the days when the visiting French fleet used to make it their home away from home.
DRUIDS: Walk to Tenth Avenue. Near 50th is Druids, a nice, dark, atmospheric bar that's been there for a decade or more. It was once the incongruously titled Sunbrite Bar, a haunt of the murderous Westies gang.
LANDMARK TAVERN: Walk to 11th Avenue and 46th. This 1868 building has always been a restaurant and bar. It once looked onto the lapping shores of the Hudson. It's owned by the same guy who runs Druids, who apparently has a thing for old Hell's Kitchen saloons. The upstairs rooms are where the original owner raised his family and where, during Prohibition, there was a speakeasy.
MARKET DINER: Walk down to 43rd Street. This diner, a favorite of cabbies and other working stiffs, almost died last year, but then reopened in December. A victory for budget-conscious eater and lovers of diner architecture.
MANHATTAN PLAZA: Walk along 43rd to Ninth. On the southwest corner stands this tall residence, built in 1977, the nondescript facade of which belies the colorful characters of its inhabitants. If you don't like actors and showfolk, don't step inside. Half of working-class Broadway lives here.
WESTWAY DINER: Look across the street at one of the last places where the starving actors in the neighborhood can get a cheap meal, and at any hour of the day, too. Cops like it, too. Supposedly, the idea for "Seinfeld" was hatched here. But I think a lot of ideas have been hatched here.
RUDY'S BAR AND GRILL: Walk up a block on Ninth, between 44th and 45th. Free hot dogs. Big statue of a pig outside. Duct tape on the well-worn red booths. Barflies aplenty. Everyone knows this place, right? 
POSEIDON GREEK BAKERY: Just next door to the raffish Rudy's is this dignified, longstanding family bakery, purveyors of Greek delicacies and old-style service. It's been around 89 years.
FILM CENTER BUILDING: Across the street is this landmarked Art Deco building. A hundred fascinating showbiz related outfits do work inside.
BRUNO RAVIOLI: On the next block north of this amazing section of Ninth is this 103-year-old maker of great pasta.
MAZZELLA'S MARKET: Between 47th and 48th, this half-inside, half-outside market gets my vote for the most purely old-New-York-ish business in Hell's Kitchen. The place, which sells both wholesale and retail, has done an impeccable job of ignoring every bit of modernity that surrounds it. All that's needed is a pushcart to complete the picture. 
RESTAURANT ROW: Jog back to 46th and walk the block between Ninth and Eighth. As long as anyone can remember, people starring in plays and people going to plays have eaten at restaurants lining this street. Among the most lasting is BARBETTA, more than 100 years old and with only two owners, the father and daughter of the same family. Among the most storied is JOE ALLEN, named after its crusty owner, who once dated Chita Rivera and who also owns Orso and Bar Centrale next door.
THE CAMELOT: Walk down a block to 45th. This apartment building was built in the 1960s and was named after the popular musical. I just like the fussy lettering on the side of the building.
THE WHITBY: Walk west on 45th. This sweetly old-fashioned apartment complex was built in 1934 as a residential hotel, and has a surprisingly starry history. The Andrews Sisters Doris Day, Joe DiMaggio, Charlie Chaplin and Betty Grable have all lived here. Somewhere on the south side of this block, at what was Billy Haas’s Chophouse, on Aug. 6, 1930, Judge Joseph Force Crater left the restaurant, stepped into a cab, and was never seen again.
Lost City's Guide to the Upper West Side
Lost City's Guide to SoHo
Lost City's Guide to Midtown East
What's worse? TGI Friday's or Arby's?
It's a rhetorical question. They're equally bad. Not relatively speaking—relatively speaking, if I had to choose, I would always enter an Arby's before I went in a TFI Friday's—but when the question is, "What business is the worse fit for the landmarked Gage & Tollner building?"
Is there no end to the indignities that the Fulton Street, 19th-century interior must suffer? Apparently not. Where you could once order Lobster Newberg you will now be able to get an All-American Roastburger.
Here's a scariest part of the story: "The city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission received a Jan. 16 application for interior alterations from Raymond Chera, a Brooklyn-based franchisee who plans to open 41 new Arby’s in the five boroughs over the next 10 years. Landmarks spokeswoman Elisabeth de Bourbon said the proposed alterations would be considered at a hearing. Chera, who expects to open the restaurant this spring and hire about 60 employees, insisted its gas lamps and wall-length mirrors will survive the dramatic transformation.
“We’re keeping everything in place, and anything we move in will be nonpermanent and easy to move out,” said Chera. “It will probably be the most beautiful Arby’s ever.”
I was swinging around the southwest corner of 34th and Second Avenue the other night when, Bam!, this neon beauty hit me square between the eyes. The Clover Delicatessen. I had never known it had existed, but it's been there for more than 60 years. Both the north and east sides of the corner store are adorned with gorgeous signage in green and pink neon. The curly font of the "Clover" is especially appealing. 
Sam's, the old-time Cobble Hill Italian place, is known for its coal-fired pizza. But some time ago, a foodie friend who knows his stuff recommended I stroll in some afternoon and get one of their heroes to go.
I finally got around to it yesterday, walking through the front and back rooms of the empty eatery to the small window, by a small cash register, that looks into the kitchen. I ordered a meatball hero. It took ten minutes. They wrapped it up beautifully is white paper and tin foil. I would have stayed hot for an hour if I had had somewhere to go. But I didn't. So I ate it right outside, on the sidewalk.
My friend was right. It put the crunchy, tough, chewy heroes you get at most pizzerias to shame. The bread was soft and fresh, the meatballs inside it moist and delicate, the sauce savory and not too spicy. Most heroes are heavy and sink like a rock to the bottom of your gut. This one was airy and light. (The picture above does not do it justice.) I had no trouble eating the whole thing in one sitting.
The next day I went back and order a sausage Parmesan hero and took the time to observe how they did it. The key seems to be that they treat the roll and the filling as two separate dishes which should be prepared differently. The filling goes in the pizza oven to heat, while the bread is placed just outside the oven, where it gets warm. The bread is later placed in the oven for a short time to develop a light crisp. Most hero places put the filling on the bread and then heat the whole thing together for about 10 minutes, rendering the roll horribly hard and crusty.
After the roll is taken out, sauce is spread in thin layers on either side of the loaf. The sausage is the put in carefully, bit by bit. I also noticed that they slice the sausage lengthwise, in thin strips, thus avoiding the big, unmanageable chunks that sometimes get in the way of eating a hero.
Sam's is going to have a hard time getting me to order a pizza from now on.
What's the story with the stretch of Lexington Avenue between the 66th and 59th Street stops on the 6 line? For some reason, right here in the middle of a high-rent district, there is a high concentration of old, unglamorous, shopworn stores. Among them are Empire Artists Materials, Lexington Hardware, Donahue's steak house, Gino's Italian eatery, Embassy Wine & Spirits, Lexington Luggage (which also repairs luggage!) and the second-story Sutton Clock Shop. It's almost a living museum of mid-century mercantile custom. All feature appealing, old signage.
Can't find out much about these places. Lexington Hardware was founded in 1929. Donahue's began life in 1950. They're not the kind of egotistical companies that draw a lot of attention to themselves. Walk in and you'll see some worn linoleum floors and sometimes an old tin ceiling. Maybe an old fixture or two. Not much else.
Are Lexington Avenue-area residents particularly loyal to their local businesses? Are Lexington Avenue landlords extremely kind-hearted? Whatever it is, a walk down the street toward Bloomingdale's makes for an especially New York-ish experience.
For those who were wondering, Rosario's Pizzeria survived the recent DOH scare. It's back and serving slices once more.
OK, let's go over this.
Huge, powerful hospital in quaint, quiet, historic neighborhood sez they need to be really, really big in order to survive. Only a huge tower—right over THERE!, among those tiny buildings—will save them. Over there, though, is the O'Toole Building. And the O'Toole is landmarked. We know that, sez Big Hospital, but we're poor. We're so poor. To walk over to the next block would cost us too much. We're a hardship case! Can we have an exemption, so we can tear the beautiful, but really inconvenient thing down?
"Landmark Schmandmark," sez Landmarks Commission. That's not a problem! But that tower you wanna build is too high! 329 feet is too tall! It's making celebrities like Susan Sarandon mad! And everyone else, too. And gets us bad press. We hate it soooooo much. What? Now it 299 feet tall? Still too huge! What? Now, it's 286 feet high? Oh, JUST RIGHT! That's what we were looking for in a neighborhood where most buildings are 15 stories smaller. You're swell St. Vincent! And good and kind, too. And you love Greenwich Village. Love it so much you're willing to destroy it in order to give its residents good health care!
Don't you think so, human rubber stamp, bad actor and professional puppet, Landmarks Commission chairman Robert B. Tierney? "A superb effort," you say? I thought you'd say that, Bob. What Lehman Brothers is to Wall Street, you are to historic preservation! Have an exploding cigar on me, motherfucker.
Why can I not get a decent espresso in Carroll Gardens or Cobble Hill?
I mean, they're trendy neighborhoods full of Yuppies who are obsessed with gustatory goodness. These are the ideal traits needed to engender a New York espresso haven, are they not? Plus, it's a neighborhood with a rich Italian heritage, and the espresso is an Italian thing. All this notwithstanding, not only can I not get a decent espresso, I can not even avoid an incredibly lousy one.
You'll have to forgive my irritability on this subject, but I recently returned from Italy, where, day after day, I ordered and consumed flawless and delicious espressos one after another. Not a dud in the bunch. Tight, short, dark and topped with beautiful cremas. Here, espressos are pulled so long you could swim in them.
At the Bagel Cafe near Carroll Park, you'll be given an "espresso" possessing the same mass and consistency as a regular cup of American java. The Coffee Den on Union and Hicks is equally unskilled at controlling the unbridled flow of their espressos, regularly serving them slack and sloppy. The guys at D'Amico, the old family coffee grinders on Court Street, know what an espresso should look like, and are fairly conscientious about getting the beverage right. But since the espressos are made with D'Amico coffee—which, I have pointed out before, I do not care for—it hardly matters.
Le Petit Cafe, Brooklyn Bread Cafe, Marquet, Sam's, Melissa's—I have had decent, but not thrilling espressos at each. And nobody seems to be really paying attention as they pull the coffee. There used to be one place in the area where you could be assured of getting a great espresso. It was a cafe at the corner of Henry and Union which lived for a short time under the awkward name of Henry's Cafe. It was run by two earnest and friendly Israelis. They served Bristot coffee and were intensely serious about delivering fine cups of coffee. Very often, the owners themselves would pull the espressos for regular customers, not trusting such an important task to their employees. It was beautiful.
But they left and sold the place to a new owner who hasn't much feel for the bean. He made a good move by contracting La Colombe, the fantastic coffee the comes out of Philadelphia—a coup in a neighborhood where no one currently carries La Colombe. But it's all for naught since the espressos aren't being made properly, despite the fact that the staff were given a tutorial by the La Colombe people. The espresso I had yesterday almost reached the lip of the cup. I stared in wonder at it. It was such a depressing sight.
I have been away for a few days, purposefully staying away from computers for a change. And so, I only discovered today that Robert Guskind, the creator and author of the widely read and highly influential Brooklyn blog Gowanus Lounge, died last week.
I never met Guskind, but, nevertheless, he loomed large in my blog life. He was the first important blogger to reach out to me during my early days of writing Lost City. I knew little of blog etiquette back then. While posting an item about the (now gone) Revere Sugar Factory in Red Hook, and lacking a photo of the structure myself, I trolled the internet for a few minutes and found a handsome shot on a site I had never heard of called Gowanus Lounge.
I don't know how, but Bob found out. During a time when no one contacted me about anything, Guskind sent me a strongly worded e-mail asking why I had "borrowed" one of his photos, of which he was "proud," without giving proper credit. I was a bit alarmed by the note and, after briefly considering the idea of ignoring it completely, I wrote back and offered to take down the photo. Bob replied in a much more friendly tone that I was welcome to keep it up, but to be sure to credit him in the future. Soon after, he added Lost City to his blog roll. It was the first major blog roll where Lost City featured, and, for some time, whatever small number of hits I received came from Gowanus Lounge.
Guskind accomplished much in the last three years of his life. Gowanus Lounge was christened only in April 2006, but it quickly became an area leader, rising to the top of the Brooklyn blog pile. Part of this was due to his exhaustive coverage. He posted more than a dozen times a day, covering every major issue affecting every neighborhood in Brooklyn. I always wondered how he managed it. (At first, I thought he had a staff. Gowanus Lounge was so comprehensive in its reporting, one imagined it had a City Room as big as the Times.) He was also generous, showing his support for other bloggers by frequently linking to their sites. Finally, Guskind led the way in the righteous fury that is a keynote of Brooklyn blogging, railing against the sort of corruption, cynicism and thoughtlessness that was destroying the borough he loved.
Through recently published posts and articles, I have learned a lot of sad things about Bob. The New York Post reported that he "was found dead in his apartment from what police sources said was an apparent drug overdose." Brooklyn Paper wrote that he had separated from his wife, whom he had married in 2007.
Blogging is hard. It eats up your time. It pays you little or nothing. And you have to care very much in order to keep it going every day. Brooklyn bloggers tend to care even more, I think, because to live in Brooklyn for any length of time is to care about Brooklyn. I always got the feeling that Bob cared very much, more than the rest of us. Maybe he cared too much. It's sad this think of Brooklyn's many days going past without him commenting on events. In the best possible way, his daily posts showed that what happened here mattered, every bit of it.
(Thanks to New York Shitty for the very nice photo.)
Remember the long public fight over the fate of 231 Duffield Street, thought by many to be connected to the history of the Underground Railroad movement? How people fought and protested, and the debate dragged on and on? Well, it's over. Over because the building is gone, torn down in one short weekend.
The good news is there is still hope for the neighboring 227 Duffield Street, which "may stave off the wrecking ball and undergo conversion to an abolitionist museum," according to Curbed.
And that's what amounts to good news in this day and age.
The iconic Pepsi sign, which as adorned the shores of Long Island City so long it has transcended advertising to become a sort of beloved public artwork, has been returned to its rightful place.
Considered how much is reported in the blogosphere about New York construction, it's surprising that next to nothing has been said yet about the two-month-plus-old work on the 133-year-old steeple at Carroll Gardens' Sacred Hearts of Jesus and Mary–St. Stephen Church.
Scaffolding has been hugging the tall spire since the winds turned chilly last fall, and, even in the worst weather, tiny figures of men can be seen scaling its vertigo-inspiring heights. Brave souls. I wouldn't want the job, not if it paid $100 an hour. Not sure how much work needs to be done. Roof tiles are obviously missing from the steeple, and it's always appeared to be a little tilty to me (there's no doubt that the cross on top needs to be set aright). The structure was built in 1875 by my personal favorite forgotten architect, Patrick C. Keely.
Not a big deal, I know. A lot of people eat at this Chinatown staple after hours. Well, not a lot. But enough. There was a large Chinese family (complete with kids) and a group of three Euro-hipsters when I was there.
The interior is stark, stark, stark. No frills. Clean, with large, round communal tables in the back, and a row of red booths along the wall, and one of those hideous, backlit, framed scenes of some exotic locale. (Why are those thought to be attractive?). The light was blindingly florescent.
The menu is large; many choices for midnight. My waiter quickly took my order and brought it out within seven minutes. I made few requests, for I had seen how pissed off he was with the Euro-hipsters, who kept asking for chopsticks, and special hot sauce, and this and that, to show that they were cool and knew what to request so as to be authentic Chinatown habitués. I hated them, too.
The food was good, not great. But there was a lot of it. I took my hand-written receipt with me, which panicked the staff. They stopped me at the door and reclaimed it, writing me a new one that I could take with me. Outside, it was dark again.
What I like about this sign is not that the word "kosher" is in neon—though that is pretty cool, but that it's in parenthesis! Neon parenthesis! The only in town, I'm sure.
This unique alleyway, right news to Sts. Anthony and Alphonsus Church in Greenpoint, reminds me of the sheltered passageways you're find between buildings in the heart of old London, the kind that open up of the other side to hidden courtyards full of homes and businesses.
This one leads only to a parking lot and the next street over. But it's very popular with locals, since it provides a welcome shortcut through what is otherwise a rather long block of Manhattan Avenue. The riot of odd-job windows and doors to be found along the passageway add to the general Dickensian character.
Look at this sad little Smith Street building. Doesn't look like much, does it. Tiny, drab thing.
Well, according to an old photograph in a real estate office window next door, it was a sweet, intimate hat shop 80 years ago. Get a load of that quaint storefront, its display windows choked with various lids and headgear. A nice awning. A sign saying "Boys Caps 75 cents" (for even boys must have a hat).
No trace of its former function today. Man, that must be one small house inside.
The bluntly named Bagel Hole of Park Slope. I like the way it just says it. No nonsense. On Seventh Avenue in Brooklyn.
I'd like to try one of those breakfast beers.
In the Garment District.
Real New York names have a redolence, audacity and pungency as thick as a Katz's Deli Pastrami sandwich. One of my favorite handles is that of the owner of this grimy, longstanding Atlantic Avenue law office, which dwells in the shadow of the grim Brooklyn House of Detention. Got a legal problem? Nelson W. Schmuckler can help you out!
I have to imagine that there's no character so hard, no crime so heinous, no talk so tough that they can disturb the calm efficiency of Nelson W. Schmuckler. He's been in the same location since 1971, when that block was a far more bleak place than it is now.
I've often stared at 143 W. 41st Street, near Broadway, and wondered what this dirty, thin, Gothic building was doing there at the back door of gaudy, modernized Times Square.
Well, it was being a back door, actually. I discovered recently that this address was indeed the back entrance of the fabled Knickerbocker Hotel, the shell of which still sits at the southeast corner of 42nd and Broadway. The Knickerbocker was the heart of Times Square society during the first two decades of the 20th century. Bluebloods, stars, swells—they are went there, dined there, drank there, stayed there. Some lived there, like Enrico Caruso.
The back entrance must have been near the kitchen, because it apparently attracted a regular bread line. Caruso once gave his coat and shoes to one of the desperate who stood there, a man named Emile Shubert. (Not one of the rich, theatre-owning Shuberts, I trust.)
Still, there's something unexplained about the 41st Street side of the Knickerbocker. It's too grand a facade, and a lot of the details indicate it once served as a theatre entrance of some sort. Indeed, a Certificate of Occupancy from 1921 issued to the Knickerbocker indicates it housed a "restaurant with dancing and cabaret." Perhaps this was where folks entered when their sole aim at the hotel was food and entertainment.
And those gargoyles up at the top sure are imposing. Finally, what on Earth is that large, oxidized metal bowl on top of the building? It looks like a huge Olympic torch.
I paid a visit on the luxurious and wonderful Bryant Park public bathroom this weekend. It's easy to forget that this imposed stone edifice is usually open, but if you're in the area and nature calls, you could do a lot worse.
Still, you could also do better. Or, rather, the Parks Department could. I'm happy to report that, last Saturday, the bathroom was in fine shape. The 10-foot coffered ceilings, mosaic tiles, the wainscoting of mosaic vines and flowers, the mirrors framed in cherry wood and the sinks and baby-changing table capped with Bianco Verde marble from India—all were all spic and span. There were even fresh flowers in the vestibule and at the sinks.
But that was all spoiled by the musical backdrop: a nonstop soundtrack of the most hardcore and explicit hip hop music you could wish for was piped through the bathroom speakers. I can only guess this was the aesthetic choice of the staff, who want to pass their dreary workday listening to music that they like. I understand that. But, really, how inappropriate can you get? If ever a bathroom screamed out for classical music, it's the classy one at Bryant Park. Or, if you must, showtunes, since it's so close to Broadway.
Also, sorry to be a prude, but the bathroom is visited by many tourist and their children, who may have a lot of questions for mom and dad after sitting in the stall for five minutes listening to the colorful sexual exploits of playas. C'mon. Change the channel.
The far-above-average piece of crapitecture at the corner of Kane and Hicks Streets, known as 115 Kane, is ready to go.
After years of construction, the plywood fence has come down, the new cement has been laid, and the garage doors have been painted. I don't know if there are any actual tenants chomping at the bit to move in, but the corner is no longer an eyesore.
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