Sitt's Coney Island "Dead in the Water"?

It could be the beginning of the end for Joe Sitt's Vegas-tastic vision of Coney Island or could just be some City Hall yahoo shooting his mouth off. Either way, The Daily News yesterday reported that "a city ranking city official" called Sitt's Coney resort-condotower-hotel-shiny-shit conception for a New Coney "dead in the water."

That article stated:

Officials are steaming over the developer's plan for 350 time-shares at the envisioned hotels. The developer came up with the time-share scheme after it vowed to cut a luxury residential component from the blueprint.

Thor's push for $100 million in city subsidies - and fears that the developer might just turn around and sell the property once the zoning is changed - also irked City Hall. "It was clearly designed merely to try to get a lucrative zoning change and massive city funding without genuine regard to Coney Island's future," the city official said. "It's atrocious."

The official said Thor must toss its current plan and come up with a more acceptable plan before the city will even meet with the developer. "Thor's proposal is dead in the water," the official said.

Gowanus Lounge thinks the official is either New York City Economic Development Corp. director Robert Lieber or Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff himself.

Or course, this won't make Sitt give up the fight, any more than the world's opposition to the demolition of The Wall Street Journal made Rupert Murdoch shrink away. Moneymen want what they want. Their hearts won't be swayed. They're the idealists, you see. We're all a bunch of cynics.

Lost City: Wisconsin Edition: Don't Visit Racine on a Sunday

Not interested in Racine, Wisconsin? Well, sorry. When I travel, I write about where I am at the moment. And cultural landmarks are disappearing in every state and every time zone (though, I grant, not as fast as they are in New York).

I originally hail from Wisconsin, but it didn't necessarily occur to me how strongly the state adheres to its traditions and customs until I left the state some 20 years ago. The clock has an easier time standing still here. You notice that right off when you enter the state and can't get anything by Boston and Foghat on the car radio.

In the past few months, I have grown somewhat obsessed with the idea of visiting Racine, particularly after I learned from Roadside Architecture that it was the birthplace of Kewpie Hamburgers. In the early days of fast food, Kewpie was a chain of some strength. It was founded in the 1920s in Racine (although some say it was founded in Flint, MI) and there were once 200 outlets nationwide. Now there are only five: one in Lansing, MI; three in Lima, OH (huh?); and one in Racine. The chain has a certain place in history, because Dave Thomas, the founder of Wendy's, stated that, as a young man, he was inspired by Kewpie's way of doing thing—in particular their square burgers.

And, yes, their somewhat-queasy-making mascot is the Kewpie Doll.

Anyway, something so obscure, so centered on unexciting, mid-sized cities, captured my imagination. So I made a pilgrimage on Sunday.

What did I learn? Don't go to Racine on a Sunday. Ever.

The city, apparently very religious, shuts down. My beloved Kewpie was closed. All I could do was look at it and take a couple shots. The townfolk appear to know the place well and treasure it.



Hoping to salvage my trip, I decided to pick up a Kringle. OK, WTF is a Kringle? Well, it's that special thing: an intact local delicacy. Racine was once the Danish-American capital of the U.S., and Kringle is something they brought over with them. The large pastry is shaped in a circle, topped with creamy icing or glazed sugar, and filled will any number of things, mainly fruit and nuts. It's flakey in texture and very fattening, being full of butter and eggs.

There are a couple bakeries that are renowned (locally) for their Kringles: Larsen's Bakery and Bendtsen's Bakery. (O&H is also mentioned a lot, as well.) Larsen's and Bendtsen's are located directly across the street from each other on Washington Avenue. I like to imagine the owners getting into frequent street fights over who holds supremacy in Racine's Kringle world.

But, godammit, they were both closed tighter than a drum! Don't Racine-dwellers want fresh Kringle after church? The upshot: I left Racine a very frustrated man. And a hungry one, too.

Jade Mountain's Last Stand

The family who ran Jade Mountain, the Second Avenue monument to old-school Chop Suey, has been relatively non communicado on the subject of their defunct business, brushing aside the public and press' inquiries about the closure. Very little has been learned since the restaurant suddenly shuttered last January.

Apparently, the interior of the joint has remained untouched until recently. The Villager reports that the family held a sort of estate sale on July 21, selling all the goods inside, including plates, cups and the famous fishtank. Here's a nice photo of the sad event from Vanishing New York. Wish I could have been there. I would have like a menu or some such momento.

But what about the most valuable thing Jade Mountain owns: the iconic neon sign. Well, according to the Villager, "A family member said that someone had wanted to buy the Jade Mountain sign and resurrect it for use at another restaurant located out of state."

Out of state. Just like the Moondance diner. "New York: now coming to a city near you."

Lost City: Chicago Edition: A Good Sign: Malloy's

Liquor stores in the older suburbs of great metropolitan areas are dependable sources of fine signage. The signs are usually pretty big, with a dash of style, and have stood untouched since they were erected some 40 to 75 years ago.

Here's the sign for Malloy's Finest Wines and Spirits in the Chicago suburb of Glen Ellyn. It has "served DuPage County" since 1933, the depths of the Depression—and just after Prohibition was repealed. So that's about as old as a liquor store can be in America, since, with the Volstead Act rendered every booze shop illegal.

Lost City: Chicago Edition: A Good Sign: The Seven Dwarfs Restaurant

Lot of colons in that headline, huh?

Well, I couldn't pass this one up. I found this sign in Wheaton, IL, a western suburb of Chicago. Don't know how long it's been around, but by the look of the sign (weathered), it's some years. The restaurant has a Snow White theme. Can't imagine why a restauranteur would think that the characters from that Disney film would be a draw to folks hankering for coffee and a sinker, or a plate of hash browns, but here it is. The emphasis on "Patron Parking" is delightful. And extra points for spelling "Dwarves" wrong and never corrected it!

Naked Boys Stop Singing

The Actors Playhouse, home to the long-running show "Naked Boys Singing," among other attractions, will shut down after 62 years on lower Seventh Avenue near Bleecker. A helpful reader wrote in to inform us that a steadily rising rent has forced the theatre out of business. It's only the latest Off-Broadway commercial theatre to go under.

The Actors Playhouse has never been my favorite downtown temple of Thespis. It's always been a bit shabby and unattractive, and it's fare has tended to the embarrassingly campy: shows with titles like "Howard Crabtree's Whoop-Dee-Doo," "The Property Known as Garland," "Making Porn" and, or course, the eternal "Naked Boys Singing." Not exactly the Provincetown Playhouse.

Of course, a theatre that has stuck around this long can also lay claim to its share of theatre history. Harvey Fierstein's "Torch Song Trilogy" began life there. And a number of actors who went on to fame did some early work there. The owner of the property is planning to turn it into something other than a theatre.

Got Clams?

Coney Island does.

Hello, Ruby Tuesday

I know the arrival of a Red Lobster in Times Square some years ago was a low point in the ongoing corporate raid on New York City under the administrations of Mayor Rudy and Mayor Mike, but the building of a Ruby Tuesday right across the street from it, at the north east corner of 43rd and 7th—that's got to be one of the seven signs of Apocalypse, right?

Ruby Tuesday? Has it gotten so bad, that we have to contend with lame chains like that? What next? A Sizzler on Houston Street? (There's one in Queens, I know, I know.)

Ruby Tuesday I have never gotten. Can anyone tell me the rationale behind this chain? It's one of those character-free family eatin' joints, right? Like Houlihan's or Bennigan's or whatever. But what's with the psychedelic name? I assume they didn't hatch a deal with the Rolling Stones way back when, but the name sure as hell zooms you back to 1967 and images of drugs, war and hippiedom. Yet, that aesthetic is as far as you can get from these anonymous dining halls.

Are we supposed to see "Tuesday" and think "TGI Friday's" and go "Oh, it's that kind of place." Or do they just think Ruby Tuesday is just a cute, cheery name? Are they that clueless? Then there's their slogan, "Simple Fresh American Dining." I'll tell you what simple fresh American dining means to me: a picnic in the park. Not temporary imprisonment in an airless, joyless, tasteless wasteland.

Wikipedia tells me that "In 2007, the restaurant will be moving out of the `bar-and-grill segment' with changes including `higher-quality menu items,' `fully upholstered chairs', and `premium wines and beers.'"

I'm sorry. Fully upholstered chairs? My mistake. Rudy Tuesday does belong in swanky NYC. We're all about upholstered chairs.

Moon Over Wyoming

Well, whaddaya know? The Moondance Diner has been saved. But I'm never going to see it again. Because it's going to Wyoming!

La Barge, Wyoming, to be exact, population 493. Vincent and Cheryl Pierce bought it from the American Diner Museum, that wishful-thinking, Rhode Island-based nonprofit museum-without-a-home. It was actually given to the ADM by Extell Development, which is developing the site where the Moondance sat in Soho. Nice of Extell. Why the museum sold what would be the prize possession of its tiny collection, I don't know. No place to keep it, I guess.

Anyway, I like this comment in the Sun article by the executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation: "It's an indication that the real estate market in New York, and particularly in Manhattan, is so superheated that anything that doesn't dedicate itself to the super luxury market does not seem to be able to survive."

Amen, brother.

Wall Street Journal R.I.P.

Rupert got what he wanted, and what no one else in the thinking world wanted or should ever have wanted, if they care about minor things like truth, quality of life, ethics or the freedom of the press.

The Wall Street Journal is now owned by the scruple-free vulgarian from that former penal colony on the other side of the Equator. And the nation has lost one of its few remaining respectable broadsheets. You know, the ones that actually practice journalism and wonder what that word means and/or should stand for. Anyone who believes that Murdoch will stand by his pledge to protect the editorial freedom of the Journal staff is the rankest of fools; nine months from now, the paper will be a laughable shell of itself and be peopled with cave-dwelling amoralists culled from Murdoch's other rags-in-newspapers'-clothing outfits around the world.

Not a tear should be shed for the worthless Bancroft family that all-too-easily talked itself into the sale. Weak-kneed, weak-willing, mealy-mouthed, greedy, spoiled little third- and four-generation do-and-know-nothing failures who are incapable or unwilling to understand things like "legacy," "standards," "public trust," "greater good" and "heritage." May each and every one of them lose their windfalls in one fell swoop on a horse or a bender or an investment, and be lowered to hawking copies of the New York Post at street corners.

As for Rupert, I guess I should be angriest at him. But what do you do with a fellow who needs to destroy an information and cultural institution like the Journal, which contributes to every life by its very history and existence, jsut so he can use its pages to line the sides of the gold-plated private toilet he calls a media empire, and, eventually, the sides of his platinum, bejeweled coffin.

It's an unfortunate fact the one of the pillars of our republic, Freedom of the Press, has been and is left to the self-serving supervision of power-mongering, remorseless old men who care nothing for the public or country, but only for their accumulation of power and riches. Murdoch, Zuckerman, Hearst, Pulitzer, McCormick, etc. All the same guy.