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.
I was so heartened by the recent reports that the 76th precinct had caught a couple rampant Brooklyn bike thieves, that I started locking my bike outside for the first time in weeks, instead of bringing it in my building.
That didn't last long. My son pointed out to me that someone had obviously been trying to cut through my U-lock bike lock. They didn't succeed. But it was enough to get me to start carting my bike indoors again.
Also, not this gripping Park Slope tale.
And for my last posting on "Positively Third Street," something that's actually on the eastern dead end of Second Street (close enough), where the pavement meets the canal. An almost completely unnoticed—and certain unvisited—effort of the Parks Department's Greenstreet program. Love the old painted boat. If you look closely, you'll see it was christened the Gowanus Monitor. I assume this is a humorous nod to the famous Civil War "ironclad" USS Monitor, which was built at the nearby Continental Iron Works in Greenpoint, but who knows.
It doesn't take too much imagination, does it, to imagine this empty, graffiti-and-weed-filled lot decades ago, crowded with trucks and hard-working, sweaty men loading boxes and sacks on and off the loading dock?
A squat little survivor on Hoyt Street just off Third. It says "carriage house" like nobody's business. Maybe a stables, actually. Nicely preserved, arched wooden doors on the second floor. Good for throwing a bale of hay through.
This is actually on Third Place, not Third Street. But close enough.
I am guessing that, with the new Carroll Gardens downsizing rezoning is on its way to being a reality, atrocities like this two-story growth above a brownstone would no longer be allowed. Let's hope not.
The development alone is reason enough for having pushed for the downzoning.
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