And Another One Falls...

The music club graveyard grows more crowded. In addition to CBGB, whose days are numbered, The Village Voice tells us that The Continental, just up the street on Third Avenue and St. Mark's, will shut down this weekend and reopen as a bar adorned with not a stage, but a boring old wide-screen TV.

The Continental possessed far less notoriety than CBGB (The Spin Doctors, not the Ramones, started there) and has been around for only half as long (15 years). But it did have an equally kooky owner. Name of Trigger. Handle-bar moustache. Always wore one of those wide pointed Chinese coolie hats, like he'd just returned from laying rails out west.

In case anyone's worried, the McDonald's next to the Continental, and the Starbuck's across the street are not in danger and will remain in business.

New York sucks.

CBGB RIP

It looks like CBGB, the punk rock shrine on the Bowery, which has been fighting for it life in the press for more than a year now, will not prevail. Halloween is the closing date, according to most accounts. So, if you want to feel edgy, or at least grungy, and stare at the stage where The Talking Heads, The Ramones, Blondie and Telvision once stood, or staggered, and where much lousier bands have held sway in recent decades, better go soon.

The reason for its death is the usual one: a rent dispute with its landlord, the Bowery Residents Committe, which is run by one Muzzy Rosenblatt—a colorful New Yawky name just suited to face off against CBGB's owner, Hilly Crystal. Hilly vs. Muzzy. You can't make this stuff up.

I wish it weren't so—if any place ranks as a musical landmark in the city, it's this dank hole—but I'm not as sad as I thought I'd be, for two reasons. One: rock palaces always have a clock ticking somewhere in the corner. Max's Kansas City, The Bottom Line, Studio 54, etc. The shelf life is brief. They live while the music they specialize in is vital, and die quickly after. It has to be that way, because nothing is sadder or more ridiculous that a rock club that stays open for tradition's sake. CBGB lasted longer than most, but even its supporters agree its prime rounded the bend somewhere in the early '80s. It's been riding on it laurels and t-shirt sales ever since.

The second reason is Hilly. I don't know him well, but everything I've seen and every quote I've read suggests this is a man who can precede you into a revolving door and come out the other side behind you. He comes off as a shyster, lying and cheating his way through life, plying yet another con so he can slide through another day. It's hard to support CBGB when Crystal is it's public face. It's also hard to root against Bowery Residents' Committee, which is actually a nonprofit that provides housing and social services to the homeless. (Even if their wish to increase the rent more than three times to $50,000 a month proves nonprofits can be greedheads as good as the best of them.)

Appropriately enough, given his penchant for selling merchandise, Crystal has said he may reopen CBGB's in, of all place, Vegas.

P.S.—I saw a kid in my son's kindergarten class wearing a CBGB t-shirt. It already seems very retro.

Ballad of the Sad Cafe

I was trolling Lexington Avenue the other day and noticed that the old Skyline diner had bitten the dust, replaced by a branch of the weird new health-conscious, program-your-own-sandwich, badly named Starwich chain.

Skyline what now? Right. This appears to be a completely unmourned eatery, though it sat at the southeast corner of Lex and 75th Street for 45 years. Nothing was written about its passing (that I could find) and a search of the web contains barely a mention and a single, one-line review, on DineSite.com: "Visit Skyline Café and you'll get a leisure place that serves a Chinese cuisine." Hmm.

So, maybe people don't care about this one. But I'm a little sad to see it go. It was so odd. You'd know the place if you saw it because of the peculiar, vaguely Swiss architectural. A ponderous, filligreed, brown metal, circular awning (now painted dull green) loomed over the corner entrance, like the cornice over a brownstone. (I first mistook the place for an old-style pharmacy; that's the vibe it gave off.) And inside there was a line of window seating almost completely sealed off from the rest of the restaurant by a wall (a feature Starwich retained). Furthermore, the official name of the place is the charmingly redundant Skyline Restaurant Cafe.

Can't find out much more about the history of the place. But it's memory is not entirely erased. The word Skyline in gold letters is still inbedded in the sidewalk outside the door.

School as Cathedral

I dropped my son off at P.S. 29 in Brooklyn for his first day at Kindergarten. Approaching the monolithic buidling, I was reminded of my childhood elementary school, which took up an entire city block, when you took the playgrounds and all into account. It was a school with a capital "S."

P.S. 29 is a grand old, blocky brick building that rises about six stories up. It was built at a time when civic leaders obviously regarded schools as being as important as churches, and assigned them appropriately impressive, permanent-feeling architecture. They were not faceless buildings, made on the cheap and sandwiched between other structures. They stood alone, air on all sides, so that the surrounding neighborhood could gaze upon then from all sides and see them more than a block away. Their presence said, "I'm important. I'm a hub of the neighborhood. What goes on in here is significant."

It's healthy, I think, for kids to go to such buildings, and for parents to visit them. You can't help but take the place seriously, and be proud to go there.

I visited my old elementary school recently. It's been converted into condos. Funny, because that's been happening to churches a lot, too.

Losing Your Voice

The city is not only diminished when it loses a great buidling or a classic restaurant. It also slips a notch when a great byline is snuffed out.

New Times Media, the bare-knuckled knuckleheads out of Phoenix who have taken over the alt weekly of alk weeklies, The Village Voice (or, "The Village Fucking Voice," as Mark Jacobson puts it in his current colorful New York magazine feature), have axed another eight staffers. And, to show once more that they're big men and not afraid of kicking Voice legends down the stairs, they have axed Robert Christgau, one of the more distinctive rock critics in history and a Voice presence since 1969. His capsule reviews are veritable haikus of critical concision. Few people are so skilled at nailing an artist just right in under 50 words.

With Christgau gone, it's hard to imagine there's anyone else left from the Old Voice that the Phoenix boys consider sacred. Even Nat Hentoff must be freshening up his resume. It's all a dirty shame. I'm not a Voice lover—not in recent years, anyway—but it was one of the last places in American journalism where the writer and his/her individual voice was still important.

Lost City: Chicago Edition: City of the Big Closures

The wind blowing down Chicago's State Street is apparently blowing tumbleweeds, not shoppers.

For Chicagoans, the latest newspaper headlines have been worldview-shattering. Last week, the owners of landmark State Street department store Carson Pirie Scott announced it will close its doors. Even more unbelievably, CPS's State Street neighbor Marshall Field's—the very name of which says "Chicago" to most folks—is to be converted into a Macy's, as will all Marshall Field's across the nation. Add this to the shuttering of legendary Loop schnitzel house Berghoff's last February, and the effect is as if it was announced to New Yorkers that Sak's, Bloomingdale's and Peter Luger's would be closing after Labor Day.

I went to college in Chicago and know its downtown well. It's hard to imagine the Loop even existing without MF, CPS and Berghoff's. Remove three legs from a chair and does it still stand? Adding to the sadness is that all three were housed in beautiful old buildings. Walking into Berghoff's was like walking into the era of Sophie Tucker and Stanford White. And the filigreed charm of CPS's Louis Sullivan-designed corner entrance can hardly be matched. The store reminded one that going to a department store was once a momentous, semi-dignified experience.

The only good news is that the building's owner, Joseph Freed and Associates, said it plans a massive restoration of the building's facade. And the Berghoff's dining room is still owned by the Berghoff family and used for private events. (So, whereas before the price of a bratwurst would buy you elegant atmosphere, now it will take $10,000.)

But poor State Street. As the song goes, "On State Street/That Great Street/I Just Gotta Say/They Do Things They Never Do on Broadway."

Well, sure they do. They steamroll over irreplacable history—just like in New York!

New York: Not as Bad Off as You Thought!

I was watching the Doris Day-Rock Hudson film "Pillow Talk" last night (no jokes, please). Whatever else it is, it's a fine cinematic document of Manhattan in the late '50s, shot in glorious living color.

There's a sequence where Rock is conning Doris by posing as a Texan romancing her through the city on a series of dates. At one point there is, of course, a montage. Now, I spend most of my time on this blog bemoaning lost New York, but I was fairly stunned by the reality put forth by "Pillow Talk"—that much of what was great about the city then is still around today: Radio City Music Hall, Roseland, Broadway, the Statue of Liberty, the UN, Central Park hansom cabs, Times Square neon, Wall Street, Rockefeller Center's skating rink, Bowling Green, the Intrepid, the Circle Line and more. Even that old statue of mayor Abraham De Peyster downtown. The snapshots went on and on and my gaze grew wider as I thought: Golly, every one of those things is still here (save the Fulton Fish Market). New York's not as bad off as I thought. It's a hard thought for a curmudgeon like myself to swallow.

But, then, I watched "Where the Sidewalk Ends," a film noir from 1950, in which Dana Andrews buys a ticket at the old Penn Station, and I thought: God Damn the Bastards, they tore it down! And they'll do it again if they get the chance!

"The Palm Beach Story" has the same effect on me.

August in New York

Just want to take a moment here to praise the miracle that is August 2006 in New York City.

Since a heat wave broke on Aug. 3, August has been a beauty. Temperatures have rarely broken the 80 degree ceiling. Skies have been sunny and blue and a light breeze has hung around the harbor. In my 18 years in New York, there has never been such an August—that is to say, an enjoyable one. I oughta know; I stepped off an Amtrak train in the unmerry month in 1988. I've experienced every sweltering 30-day period, since country house I have not. None of them were worth a dime. Just a circle of hell to get through in order to reach lovely September on the other side.

What a difference weather makes. No really—we forget this. The worst circumstances can be improved by a day of perfect weather, in which you feel at home in your clothes, let the air and sun play about you, and relax your stride so as to further enjoy the given atmosphere. I doubt it's been more pleasant in the Berkshires or Hamptons.

Rain is expected off and on through Thursday, which means August will pass into history without a return to its scorching ways. Now, please God, don't send us an Indian Summer. Fall is short enough as it is these days.

Red Meat, Red Wine

I like the Palm restaurant on Third Avenue. It has history and charm and the feel of a former speakeasy. Food's good, too.

Recently I had occasion to visit the chain's branch on 50th Street in the heart of the theatre district. It's not old, but pretends to be, with caricatures and cartoons scrawled all over the wall. And I must say that, without the history, the old Palm charm flew out the window.

In theory, steak houses appeal to me. They reach back to different way of American dining, when meals lasted hours and hours and the meat was carved at your table; when Diamond Jim Brady spent ridiculous amounts of money to ship over a chef from Europe because he made a certain dish just right. New York is full of these places: Peter Luger, Smith and Wollensky, Keens, Sparks, Homestead, etc. The set-up is basically the same: dark wood; white or checkered tablecloths; ridiculous prices; inedibly large portions; and wine lists full of red, red, red.

So much for theory. In practice, I must admit, steak houses have begun to give me the creeps. First of all, I know I'm surrounded by fat cat businessmen with expense accounts who voted for Bush and follow sports. There there's the size of the steaks, chops, lobsters, potatos, etc. Must they be so enormous? Are they serving a race of Henry VIIIs? America has an obesity problem, guys, you know.

And where's it all coming from? The equivalent of a whole cow comes out of the kitchen every 15 minutes. As the plates go by, I start to think of vast herds feeding in swaths of Brazil that used to be rain forest, aiming their carbon dioxide burps right at the cracking ozone. I think is oceans depleted of lobster, clams, oysters and tuna. All while we bury our heads in the trough like Boss Tweed.

Also, lately, with my increased interest in wine, I have another, lesser gripe. Are there wine lists any more boring than the ones found in steak house? Hey! Buddies! There are other kinds of wine beside California Cabernet Sauvignon.

No, I Don't Want a Mojito

The New York Post, in an Aug. 23 article, claims bartenders at many of Manhattan's high end bars don't know their cocktail ABCs. True enough! In the city which has a drink named for every borough except Staten Island, every other barkeep is as dumb as a post, unable to properly mix such basic staples as the Manhattan, Magarita, Martini and Gibson.

Still fired up by my recent visit to New Orleans, where they know how to make a proper drink, I recently bellied up to a well known bar in Midtown and asked for a Sazerac. I knew this would be a tall order, but I didn't expect the ditz behind the bar to say "What?" exactly. I explained it involves Rye, Herbsaint and Peychaud's Bitters. Again, she said "What?" OK, now I know that your average stiff isn't familiar with Herbsaint and Peychaud's Bitters, both New Orleans products not always seen behind New York bars. But Rye? How could you not know about Rye?

Reminds me of the story my friend Bill, a Broadway bartender, told of watching a young pup next to him at the bar take an order for Rye and start pouring a Bourbon. "What're you doing?" he asked. "It's the same thing," argued the pup. Said Bill: "Not to the Rye drinkers!"

Are chefs hired if they don't know how to cook? Then who's hiring these would-be actors who only know how to make screwdrivers, Cape Cods and Cosmos and other drinks they've seen on TV? No wonder every Sidecar I order tastes like processed lemon juice.