That Sinking Feeling

Writing this blog, I'm used to tracking attacks on New York City's cultural legacy, and steeling myself against the often disheartening news I'm forced to report. But, I'm sorry, this week week has been a bitch.

DiFara's has been closed by the DOH again. The Parks Commissioner is menacing the Red Hook Ballfields food vendors. Kurowycky Meats shut down for good. And Katz's continues to listen to offers from a bevy of salivating developers. Add this to the continued fact that Astroland will be gone with summer's last breath, and Chumley's remains shuttered, and it's too much. I feel myself being sucked into the vortex of our crumbling cultural infrastructure. Is there to be no relief?

Every decision made in the town today is made with money foremost in mind. Now, don't call me naive. I know it was ever so in New York City. We're the city of Peter Minuet and Wall Street. But, I think, rarely has it been carried to the current heartless, blinkered extremes. The five boroughs are just a Monopoly board for the millionaires, a place to pile their building blocks one on top of each other.

Will the toothless Times, Post and Daily News do nothing but objectively report each landmark as it topples? With no one raise the red flag? Will Bloomberg continue to see every god-awful-ugly-inappropriate, make-it-yourself condo tower as a sign of the rightness of his economic plan for the City? Will the Landmarks Commission ever retrieve its backbone from that pawn shop on Fourth Avenue?

If Robert Moses came back from the dead and was reappointed building czar, you can bet he would get his highway through Soho, his Brooklyn-Battery bridge marring the view of the harbor, his thruway dividing Brooklyn Heights—all the horrible ideas of his that were stopped in their tracks by right-thinking, civic-minded citizens like Jane Jacobs. He'd get it all and City Hall would sit back and say, "Ah, progress!"

Kurowycky Meats in East Village to Close

This is a bad one.

Kurowycky Meat Products, the 52-year-old Ukrainian East Village butcher that made peerless sausage and ham, and one of the last working elements of the once robust Ukranian population in that neighborhood, will close today. Owner Jerry Kurowyckyj said in a statement:

It is with great sadness that I am announcing the closing of Kurowycky Meat products after 52 years. Today’s economic climate just does not support a small business on the scale that ours endeavors to survive in. Thank you all for all your years of support. We are closing as of this Saturday, June 2nd [2007]. It was a great ride and again, we thank you all.

An article in the Times revealed that a rent hike didn't do them in. The family owns the building. Profit margins have just steadily declined over the years, what with the changing nabe and changing eating habits. Slavic laborers eat ham. Artsy hipsters do not.

Every piece of meat I've bought from the timeless Kurowycky has been tasty and flawless. I had a friend once who lived around the corner. He said the butcher was the only reason he hadn't become a vegetarian. "The meat is just too good," he explained.

The business was founded in 1955 by Erast Kurowycky, who arrived in New York in 1949, having evaded the Nazis and Communists. His first store was located on Avenue B between 10th and 11th streets in New York City’s East Village. When Erast retired, his son Jaroslaw took over, and they moved to their present location. The shop is currently run by the third generation. Their website states that they "continue to operate one of the last existing smokehouses in New York City and still manufacture our sausages using the same methods that were used in Eastern Europe before the Second World War." Oh, and it's pronounced KOO-duh-vit-sky

Not any more. Enjoy your Boar's Head, everyone.