For the third August running, I'm happy to say I'll be a guest blogger next week over at the estimable, brave and powerful Curbed network, so look for my postings on Curbed, Eater and Racked. They'll also be some traffic here at the home site, if my brain doesn't overheat and I don't get carpal tunnel syndrome.
Not everyone's falling for Bloomberg's con. Certainly not District Council 37, the largest union of city government workers. "He's arrogant," they said. Well, yeah. [NY Times]
The six-way race to succeed Councilman Bill DeBlasio (my Brooklyn district) has gotten slimy. Brad Lander's campaign has taken the low road by trying to make an issue of the fact that opponent Josh Skaller, his biggest rival, sends his kid son, who has special needs, to a private school. “I have pointed out that I am the only public-school parent in the Democratic primary, but I have never questioned or attacked any of the other candidates for their choices, and never said a word about anyone’s family,” Lander told The Brooklyn Paper. “It is simply false.” However, folks who have had direct contact with the Lander campaign know that the candidate's people have been trying to make hay of this issue for some time. [Brooklyn Paper]
Bloomberg has killed small business during his reign. [Queens Crap]
Di Fara's Dom DeMarco really look like what he looks like. [Slice]
Now that's a stove. [Scouting NY]
A variety of New York skylines. [Architakes]
The characters on "Mad Men," set in the 1960s in NYC, apparently are drinking with historical accuracy. [NY Times]
I like this large vertical sign on the building that holds Cobble Hill's Book Court. It reminds me of the way stores used to advertise their presence in the past.
The origins of this post began with an innocent-enough question: "Why does 135 Bowery have such a big flagpole protruding from its facade?" It looks like it could hold a whopper of an Old Glory, though it's un-used at present.
I thought a little research might uncover whether a particularly patriotic business once occupied the three story, dormer-windowed building. And hot dog!, but some wild times went down at 135 Bowery over the years.
Roundabout 1881, one Gottfried Walbaum, known to the authorities as "Dutch Fred," ran a "gambling house and dive" at 135 called, with amusing cynicism, the Red, White and Blue. Walbaum was a gambling king who later built the Guttenberg Race Track, which, if you believe the papers, brought degradation to Hudson County.
Walbaum must have had his gambling den on an upper floor, because around the same time, and for many decades, the address was the place of business for the more law-abiding William H. Wilson, who made hats for volunteer fireman. Wilson grew up and lived his life around the Bowery and was a respected figure. In the late 19th century, when some were thinking of changing the name of the street to Parkhurst Avenue in order to improve the Bowery's reputation, he said to a reporter, "I think, for my part, you could find worse men and tougher men on Sixth Avenue to-day than ever frequented the Bowery. The modern fellows are not so eccentric in their dress as our old rounders used to be, but they have not nearly as keen a sense of what is fair as they used to have."
The Pig & Whistle, a well-known, 19th-century tavern, was next door at 131 all these years.
The building of Walbaum and Wilson was replaced by a new one in 1900. But that doesn't mean the fun stopped. Seemed the people who lived at the address were always being hauled in by the cops for such offenses as stealing from a church. In 1921, two young tuffs tried to rob a jewelry store that was located there. The left-handed owner Henry H. Edson reacted by grabbing his gun and firing back. The "swarthy-skinned, undersized robbers" fled.
In 1943, George Somarindyck Gill, who had owned the property for 75 years, finally sold it. It was recently sold again, in December 2007, to First American International Bank.
That's a lot of history. Doesn't explain the flagpole, though.
Lowdown Boerum Hill dive Hank's Saloon is putting its second floor to good use as a billboard. For Health House. Nice synchronicity. You can ruin your health on the first floor and then get instruction on how to restore it on the second floor.
Sorry about the crappiness of the photo. I was on the bus. And it was raining.
Of all the things I blogged about on my "Positively Third Street" day on Tuesday, the item on the unsightly growth atop the Carroll Garden's brownstone 42 Third Place received the most attention. So I decided to revisit the property.
Built in 1910, the owners got the go-ahead from the Department of Building to added two extra floors back in April 2008. Since then, there have been plenty of official complaints and violations, including charges of unsafe scaffolding, the new floors not being equipped with proper ventilation, a lack of safety netting, and work continuing when a Stop Work order was in place. Not much work has taken place since May.
One reader wrote in, saying "But there are brownstones just down the block just as tall. Are they all inappropriate?" I checked out the block. It's mostly two-and-a-half story brownstones. There are a few that go up an extra story. But this is the only building that goes up as high as it does on the block. Another reader suggested that the new Carroll Gardens downsizing wouldn't prevent this sort of building, as I had said, since 42 Third Place is under 50 feet. Maybe so. It's hard for me to judge 50 feet with my eye. 
David Freeland, the author of the new book, "Automats, Taxi Dances, and Vaudeville: Excavating Manhattan’s Lost Places of Leisure," has the cover story on this week's New York Press, in which he not only does a kind shout-out to Lost City, but points out several hidden-in-plain-sight Gotham treasures that are in danger of elimination, including Harry Jennings’ Rat-Killing Pit; Scott Joplin's former residence; and, a Lost City favorite, New York's oldest hotel.
The story behind 190 Bowery makes you realize that certain things can only happen in New York.
The six-story, stone, corner building was built in 1898, designed by Robert Maynicke. It was once the Germania Bank Building, and then a Manufacturers Hanover Trust Bank. But since 1966, it has been the home of photographer Jay Maisel, who bought the massive beast for a mere $102,000. At age 79, he apparently lives in it still, and conducts photography workshops to boot. If you have $5,000 and are interested in working from 9 AM to 10 PM for five days straight, with meals thrown in, you could gain access. (I'd do it, but I don't have $5,000 or anything Jay would call a camera.)
Given the tenant, it makes total sense that the darkened and sooty first floor has been given over the rampant, highly artistic defacement. I doubt I have ever seen graffiti so beautiful and varied as to seem almost planned, as I have seen on the ground floor of 190 Bowery. (And I am not a graffiti-loving person.)
As you can see in the final two pictures, Maisel is still in there, somewhere. 
I quite like this wheeled advertisement for Red Hook's Liberty Sunset Garden Center. It's parked on Van Brunt Street near Fairway most weekends. It's like a rolling, mini botanical garden, complete with waterfall. 
Poet Frank O'Hara's former digs have been gutted. [Curbed]
Rainy Parachute Jump. [GVDP]
Scouting New York finds some streets with no names in Crown Heights.
Bloomberg can't hear us. [Bloomberg Watch]
Pardon Me for Asking making me jealous and angry for still being in France after nearly a month. Me? I'm hoping to make it to get to another Cyclones game one of these days. If I'm lucky.
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