The End Comes for 74 Grand Street

It had to come someday.

The Landmarks Commission decreed today that 74 Grand Street, which is only still upright due to some huge metal girders propping it up on one side, will have to come down.

That's what the owners have wanted to do all along. The cast iron building has been leaning as much as 30 inches since 2004. That's when heavy rains washed out enough of the dirt from the lot next to this building that it shifted. The people who lived there had to leave. It's been empty ever since.

The LPC dictated that the owners would have save and store the cast-iron façade. (Where do you store a thing that size?) Yeah, I bet the owners are really into that chore. They'll take great care in saving the facade.

Armando's to Reopen Sept. 28

Armando's Restaurant, the longtime staple of Montague Street in Brooklyn Heights, will reopen on Sept. 28, the eatery said.

As readers may recall, the place closed in 2008 after more than 70 years in business. It was replaced by New York's first Spicy Pickle franchise, which flopped quickly. Then owner Peter Byros had a surprising change of heart and decided to bring Armando's back, with a sleek new look.

Above is the much-loved, sorely missed neon sign that used to hang above the joint. It will not, sadly, be part of Armando's second coming.

What Your Mayor Is Up To

Not practicing what he preaches about food, calories and healthy eating. Why should he? Those dictum, like term limits, were meant for the little people, not him. [NY Times]

Forgetting who his running makes are on the Republican ticket. [NY Daily News]

Not getting the support of the firefighters' union. [Queens Crap]

Pretending to disapprove of the new MTA chief's huge pay package. [NY Times]

Thinking he's the only man in New York who could pass gay marriage legislation, saying “I’m the main funder. You know, you can’t dictate every piece of legislation, and I don’t want to say that they’re bribable. But they know where I stand, and they want me to be a supporter.” [Gay City News]

Being forced to run against another old, white, lying rich man: Montgomery Burns. [NBC]

Storefronts, Old Style

I like this stretch of uniform, mainly empty storefronts on W. 43rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in Midtown. They remind me of a time when even the humblest shop could present a handsome, dignified face to the street, and when the builders of large buildings with mercantile space on the ground floor cared about adorning the sidewalk with a sort of organized architectural harmony.

There are three spaces on either side of the building's main entrance. The doors to the shops are arched and recessed, set back from the street, with a bit of marble leading up to the threshold. There's plenty of room for display in the bay windows and I'm betting that the transoms above the windows and the doors were once made of transparent glass (they're been painted over).

This started out as the Hotel Renaissance back in 1891. One can imagine a tobacconist, a barber, and shoe shine shop, a parfumerie in these spaces—all the sorts of the shops typically associated with a hotel. There was an elaborate courtyard in the center when it was built. I don't know if it's still there. It was owned by David H. King, Jr. and billed as a "high-class family and bachelors' hotel." King was a huge deal in construction. He built the base of the Statue of Liberty, Madison Square Garden and the Washington Arch. He lived in the Renaissance, and died there, in 1916.

He was worth two-and-a-half mil when he kicked. That was some money then. Still is.

Later, in 1918, it was the Columbia University Club for many years. To bad these lovely storefronts aren't filled.

A Good Sign: B & H Daily Lunch

On Second Avenue in the East Village. One of the last remnants of the old Yiddish neighborhood. A kosher dairy restaurant. Mushroom barley soup, blintzes and pierogi. Priceless.

Need Cold Water? Got 95 Cents?

In the East Village.

Why Chase Sucks So Much More Than WaMu

Like most Americans, I was swept up in the financial turmoil of the past year. Aside from slicing my income to ribbons, one of the major ways it affected my life is in forcing me to switch banks from Washington Mutual to Chase. This was a particularly bitter piece of irony, since I had been with Chase for 10 years, and had fled to WaMu in 2007 to get away from the institution's vile, chilly, lying ways. (That's right. I knew banks lied long before the crash.) Now, here I am back at nasty old Chase.

The change has laid in stark terms the differences between the way the two banks serve their customers. Now, I know I ought to have no affection for WaMu, given the reckless way thye ran themselves, and a part of the economy, into the ground, playing fast and loose with the sub-prime mortgage game. But I'm just a working Joe. I experience WaMu the way most mugs do: at the bank branches, through one-on-ones with the tellers and other low-level bank grunts. And, on that basic level, WaMu had it all over Chase.

Some comparisons:

*WaMu had a weird round robin set-up of teller desks, corny in its way, but it allowed you to stand very close to the teller and have a more personal exchange with them. It was almost human.
*Chase tellers sit behind a thick plate of plexiglass.

*WaMu workers were evidently drilled by the company in matters of customer relations. They were always even-tempered, positive and made a genuine effort to seem warm and approachable.
*Every Chase teller I have ever encountered has had a frowning countenance and a demeanor so chilly as to invite frostbite. They seem to either hate their job, hate you or both. That they couldn't give a fuck whether they've given you good service is evident in their every move.

*WaMu workers always seemed anxious when the line for tellers got too long and often opened up new posts to relieve the back-up.
*Chase workers never glance at the line no matter how long the line gets. Often three people will hover around one teller station trying to work out a single transaction.

*WaMu, after initially checking the sources of checks, would make all the money from checks available upon deposit. With very large checks, there was sometimes a delay, but once, when I asked that a sizable check be made completely available the day I deposited it, the teller did so, overriding the old on the check. He did it because he knew me as a customer, no other reason.
*Chase still makes up bullshit excuses to give you just $100 or a portion of a check today, and the rest available the next day or later. When asked to explain, they never provide a cogent reason.

*WaMu had a form with which you could simultaneously make a withdraw and receive an official bank check.
*Chase makes you fill out two forms to accomplish the same act, as well as making you fill out your entire address every
time you make a deposit or withdrawal.

*WaMu did not charge a fee for a bank check.
*Chase charges $10 for a bank check.

*WaMu branches sometimes devoted a section of the bank to kids, provided toys and such.
*Chase doesn't give a damn about kids.

*Chase is purposefully polluted the City with branches.
*WaMu's signs were ugly, too. But at least they're all gone now.

You Tell Me

Someone Says the Unthinkable

From columnist Michael Goodwin in the NY Post:

Why Dems’ David can topple Goliath Mike

Winning the Democratic primary for mayor ain’t what it used to be. Still, it’s better to win than lose, so Comptroller Bill Thompson wakes up today with a new view of the world.

He’s standing on a molehill, looking up at a mountain.

Most bets are not on whether Mayor Mike wins a third term, but on his margin of victory. Five points, 10 points or a repeat of the nearly 20-point blowout of poor Fernando Ferrer four years ago.

I wouldn’t bet against Bloomy, but his re-election isn’t a slam dunk. Thompson can win.

You read that right. Thompson can win.

I’m not saying he will, just that he can. He won’t need a miracle either. Lightning, thunder and luck, yes, but Thompson would hardly be the first David to bring down a Goliath. One is in the White House, and there are days when Bloomberg looks as ripe for a fall as Hillary Clinton was.

If the upset potential surprises you, welcome aboard. I surprised myself when the words “Thompson can win” first came out of my mouth.

That was three weeks ago. Until then, I subscribed to the conventional wisdom that he didn’t have a chance.

But speed bumps are popping up on the road to the king’s coronation. Reports of Bloomberg Fatigue are coming in from key constituencies — Staten Island homeowners and well-heeled Manhattanites. That could spell trouble for him.

“Think about it,” one formerly firm Bloomy man told me. “He’s been mayor for eight years and he has to spend $100 million now to reintroduce his brand.”

The complaints center on the soaring cost-of-living and binges in government spending, along with a sense the mayor feels entitled to a third term.

Whether Thompson, whose campaign has been lethargic on its good days, can exploit the opening is a big question. But for the first time, he has a real shot. Although the latest Quinnipiac poll puts him 15 points back, one survey showed a majority of New Yorkers wants a new mayor.

I spy three reasons for shifting sentiment. First, elections are a referendum on the incumbent, and this is not a good year for incumbents. The recession pain for many here is acute as incomes fall and prices keep rising.

Much of the pain is driven by City Hall, with spending under Bloomberg about 25 percent above inflation. Real-estate taxes are climbing even as market values fall, and virtually every levy and fee has gone up sharply since 2002, and still it’s not enough to satisfy the government beast. The businessman mayor, who promised to guard the buck, has been too quick to spend it.

The second factor in Thompson’s favor is Bloomberg’s cheesy maneuver to eliminate term limits. He was for them until they hit home, so POOF, he made them vanish. Doing the dirty deed with a scandal-scarred City Council further tarnished the mayor’s reputation.

The third factor is the schools. Compelling evidence shows many of the gains Bloomberg touts are suspect because tests and standards were dumbed down. He has doubled education spending to $22 billion a year, but with 74 percent of city grads who enroll at City University community colleges still needing remediation, the smell of a scam is in the air.

The hitch for Thompson is that swing voters he needs don’t yet see him as a real alternative. While his team believes a black, liberal Democrat in a minority-majority city starts with a voter base of 45 percent, he can’t win without peeling away some of the mayor’s soft support.

To do that, Thompson needs to show more fire in the belly and appeal to a beleaguered middle class that increasingly finds a sour taste in the Big Apple. That means cutting spending so the pressure won’t be there to increase revenues through excessive fines, fees and taxes.

It is a fact that the recession and an empty state piggy bank will force the next mayor into a more penny-pinching course. The first man to admit it now and show the way forward deserves the job.

Don’t be shocked if Thompson’s the one.

Nice to read. Let's hope there's some truth in it, and that Thompson wakes up and realizes he has a chance.

Luquer, Not Luquere!

Over the years, there has been some disputation about the correct, historical spelling of Luquer, the name of a short length of street on south Carroll Gardens. There's a long pictorial essay about whether the original family name was Luquer or Luqueer. (The clan owned a lot of land around South Brooklyn in the 1900s.) The past few decades, however, everyone's gone with Luquer.

This homeowner, however, has a built-in street sign on his building that quite clearly reads Luquere, with an "e" at the end. Odd. But they don't want to be associated with that spelling at all! So they have simply refused to highlight that letter when painting the letters white. Queer, indeed.