The Refinery

Last week, Curbed shared photos from the marketing materials for the new luxury development of the former Domino Sugar refinery. The place is now being called "The Refinery." Because, yes, that's what the building was, but also--obviously--because that's what the developers (and City Hall) want the luxury development to do.

It will help to refine the neighborhood.



What do refineries do? They cleanse. They purify. Sugar refineries, in particular, take darker materials and turn them white. That is also being done--has been done--to Williamsburg and to much of Brooklyn and the city.

New York is becoming exponentially whiter every day, thanks to hyper-gentrification. The process acts as one big refinery, a factory for smoothing and bleaching.



Mayor de Blasio appears to be all for this. Or else he's been brainwashed by the neoliberal free-marketeer myth that luxury development is inevitable. (It is not.) He recently told Crain's NYC Summit conference that the "only way" to create an inclusive city "is through development."

He could not be more wrong. Development excludes. Development whitens. Development segregates.

The designers who created The Refinery's renderings know this. Look at the people in the images. What do you see?

San Loco Struggles

Jill Hing's brothers opened the San Loco taco joint in the East Village in 1986. A year later, Jill followed her brothers, moving to New York City from rural Nebraska. She soon joined the business. San Loco has been a Lower East Side staple ever since. On a personal note, I've been living off their tacos for half my life.

Recently, Jill got in touch to talk about the struggles of running a small business in the city today. "We have been feeling unbelievable pressure caused by the increased cost of doing business for quite a few years now," she wrote. "At this point, we are not sure how much longer we can hang on."

I asked Jill a few questions about San Loco's struggles in a rigged system where small businesses get the shaft--while big national chains get preferential rents from landlords, higher property values from banks, and corporate welfare from City Hall.



Q: What's been the biggest struggle to San Loco's survival these days?

A: There are many factors that contribute to our struggle to survive--and the noose definitely keeps tightening. Our customer base has been mostly squeezed out of this neighborhood as a consequence of hyper-gentrification. Rent is a constant source of stress. In our case, as with many long-standing businesses, we are at the mercy of the landlord and live in fear of our next rent renewal.

They can raise your rent exponentially to just force you out, or they can charge you above market because they know moving is not a viable option. For example, one of our location's lease is up in the spring, we have been tenants there for 20 years, but still they are asking about 15-20% above the comps around us because they know moving is expensive, disruptive, and can cost us our liquor license (although San Loco obtained the liquor license it stays with the address). And regardless of our good standing with the community board, we could be denied a new license, or most likely, be given one with limitations. There are moratoriums on most blocks now because of the over saturation of restaurants/bars in the neighborhood.

It makes me furious that landlords are able to manipulate the market and falsely inflate property values this way. Once we even had a landlord ask for a percentage of our revenue as part of our lease.

The other contributing factor is that the increased cost of doing business has gone through the roof. Some costs: Seamless has cornered the market with on-line ordering and they keep raising their percentage, they take 17-20% now, which is higher than our profit margin. Our blue collar lunch crowd dwindled when the cost of parking more than tripled. Our purveyor costs went up when parking tickets more than doubled. Yelp touts themselves as unbiased, but they aggressively try to force you to “advertise” with them, which includes manipulating reviews (good ones come to the top, bad ones go to the bottom).

Q: How has that changed in recent years?

A: While many of our old-school customers have moved out, the ones that remain are loyal to the death. We love them and are so grateful for their loyalty, but we also want to appeal to the new influx of people in the neighborhood. Because we are inexpensive, we have always been reliant on volume.

I’ve noticed that going out to dinner doesn’t really happen organically anymore, nobody just walks into a place to check it out and try it for themselves, they have to google it first to be told what to expect and if they’re going to like it. The nightlife has definitely changed as well. Our neighborhood has more professionals and students now. People aren’t out roaming the streets and leaving shows at 3 a.m. anymore.

Q: Did it used to be easier to run a small business in the city--and why?

A: Much easier. The regulations and restrictions end up costing so much money that it's almost cost prohibitive to open a business for people like us. Little hole in the wall places could open and survive in years past because the cost of doing business wasn’t so crushing, and getting started wasn’t so daunting. You could just work hard and go for it.

Q: How do you think the increase in chain stores has affected your business?

A: People seem to want to know what to expect, they aren’t looking for a surprise or an adventure, and they don’t want to be part of your weird world, they are looking for sameness. New York has lost so much of its character, it seems that we have sold our soul to the highest bidder (I think largely due to Bloomberg), and it makes me sad to say, but I think NYC has lost the plot.



Go eat some San Loco tacos--and save our small businesses by supporting the mission of #SaveNYC. Take one small action today. We made it easy for you. Just click here.

Child's Seahorses

The McDonald's on 6th Avenue and 28th Street is getting a gut renovation.



This would not be newsworthy, except for the fact that this McDonald's was once a Child's restaurant, a chain of long ago, beloved by urban historians, and this renovation has so far included the destruction of the antique terra-cotta decoration around the top of the 1930 building.



The motif includes intertwined seahorses, Child's signature style, with some creatures that look like bears.

A large portion has been scraped off so far.

In Coney Island, the Child's was landmarked. This one won't be worthy of preservation once all the seahorses are destroyed. Is this an intentional scalp job?

Tiny Food

The new Astor Place is at it again. Now that our public space has been semi-privatized by the Bloomberg administration and the Village Alliance BID, now that it's a prime example of zombie urbanism, it continues to push the interactive corporate advertainment installations.

First, there was the Design Pavilion. Now it's a "tiny food" pop-up cafe to "celebrate the new Zagat app!"



Yes, tiny food.

Look at it. So tiny. So cute. As Jim Windolf once said in Vanity Fair, "Big business is not blind to the power of cute... cuteness tricks you into forgetting that it represents something that’s not cute in the slightest."

Zagat is owned by Google, who basically owns everything about you. And there's that whole thing about public spaces being privatized. But don't think about that! Just get excited about tiny food!



Tiny tacos. Tiny burgers. Tiny pizza. Tiny cookies. All "versions" of food items from trendy eateries around town. Hurry up and stand in line!



But watch out you don't get rowdy near the corporate advertainment pavilion kiosk. Astor Place now has a private security guard.



Previously:
Battle for Astor Place
Astor Place Design Pavilion
Astor Place Farce
Controlling Astor Place

The Carnegie Deli & America

I went to the Carnegie Deli recently to experience it before it shutters forever this New Year's Eve after 79 years in business. It's closing not because of the rent, but because the owner is tired of it all. Someone wants to buy the place and keep it going, but the owner is not interested. It's closing. Period. So I went.



If you've tried to get into the Carnegie you know it's almost impossible, thanks to the hordes of tourists mobbing at the door day and night. Tourists have always dined at the Carnegie--I did when I was a teenage tourist--but today the city suffers under mass tourism and there are many places--parks, museums--that are no longer enjoyable because of them.

So I got there at 8:00 in the morning, the moment it opened. Only a few diners were inside. It was quiet, the speakers playing light music from the 70s and 80s. Kenny Rogers, Barry Manilow, Neil Diamond. Their images hang on the walls, in the famous sea of autographed head shots.

What will happen to all those head shots when Carnegie goes? What will happen to Larry Hagman, David Hasselhoff, Mr. T?



I couldn't bring myself to eat an overloaded pastrami sandwich at 8:00 in the morning, so I ordered eggs. A mistake. Nothing interesting happened. No Borscht Belt comedians were hanging out, cracking wise. Just the tourists, most of them looking tired and somewhat depressed.

As I was leaving, the place had already begun to crowd. A group of giddy young women took up a whole long table, every single one carrying those flowery quilted duffel bags you only see tourists carrying. They were loud. Bachelorettes. I left.



I decided to go to the Guggenheim just to use the golden toilet known as "America." I walked across Central Park, hoping that by the time I arrived at my destination my breakfast would have inspired a solid production. A shit in a golden toilet would be something. But this was not to be.



Again, I arrived early. I got to use the toilet right away, before the crowds showed up. The attendant informed us that people wait as long as two hours for the opportunity to evacuate into solid gold. Maybe they want to feel like Donald Trump. Maybe they want to make a statement, some sort of private protest. Or maybe they're just nihilists.

Does anyone prep for this experience by swallowing a handful of Just Another Rich Kid's gold pills so they can shit gold in the gold toilet?

I stepped inside and closed the door. Alone with the toilet, I snapped a few photos, then did what anyone does. A belly full of Carnegie Deli coffee went into "America." I can't say that I felt any better about the whole thing--the tourists, the loss of New York's character, hyper-gentrification, the presidential election, America, the way everything is going (down the shitter?). But I did feel like I'd accomplished some elemental mission, and it was still early in the day, after all. So there was that.

Bleecker St. Records

VANISHED

Last week, I shared the news that Bleecker Street Records would be closing. This past weekend, they shuttered.


from Bleecker St. Records Facebook page

As noted earlier, the shop left Bleecker Street in 2013 after over 20 years in business when the landlord hiked the rent to $27,000. They relocated to West 4th. Sadly, many relocations don't work out, and stable, long-term small businesses often fold after being forced to move.

The shop's old spot on Bleecker was turned into a Starbucks.

In more depressing news, the record store's famous cat, Creeper, died two weeks ago. Their Facebook page reported:

"She's up in rock & roll kitty heaven with her brother, Scuzzball, and probably sitting on David Bowie's lap on a sparkling cloud floating somewhere above Manhattan."


from Bleecker St. Records Facebook page

Gay Gotham

The Museum of the City of New York is currently showing "Gay Gotham: Art and Underground Culture in New York," a multi-media exhibit that "brings to life the queer creative networks that sprang up in the city across the 20th century."



It's a show worth seeing. I was most intrigued by a collection of small photographs taken on the streets of New York by an anonymous photographer in the 1960s. They show men walking, cruising, and meeting other men, mostly around 42nd Street.

The wall text references a 1960 New York Times article decrying the "decay of 42nd Street," thanks in part to homosexuals, at a time when the city wanted to attract tourists for the upcoming World's Fair.



In the article, reporter Milton Bracker hits the street to see the decay for himself.

"In two weeks of studying the area, virtually at all hours," he wrote, "this reporter encountered several of the most extreme types. One was a Negro who wore fluffed-up hair and heavy black make-up on his brows and lashes."



"Another obvious deviate," Bracker wrote, "was a white youth with thick blond hair and handsome features who wore make-up on his eyebrows. This youth wore a wind-breaker (sometimes called a 'tanker jacket') and tapered black trousers of the the style known as 'continentals.' His wavy hair was combed straight back and he spoke effeminately and shifted his hips and legs as he spoke."

When the blond boy walked with his friends into a cafeteria, he "attracted a great deal of attention and many contemptuous remarks." But he was not arrested. It was getting harder to tell the homosexuals from the beatniks, so police were making fewer arrests for "committing a crime against nature."

Bracker concluded, "He may have been a subject for a psychiatrist; he was not one for the police."



The article goes on to describe loiterers, drifters, perverts, prostitutes, purveyors of knives and itching powder, sailors, Murphy Game operators, and players of Fascination.

Vivid scenes from a lost 42nd Street, finally defeated in the name of tourism.