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.

Gotham Book Mart Project

I really loved Gotham Book Mart. I loved walking to it past all the diamond shops on 47th, glimpsing their famous sign--"Wise Men Fish Here"--and feeling that rush, browsing through the shelves, always finding something wonderful and unusual. For years now, every time I venture close to its former location, I get a pang of sadness that I can't go there ever again.

So here's something.

After the shop closed in 2007, its entire contents--about 200,000 books and other items--were donated to the University of Pennsylvania by Edmondo Schwartz and Leonard Lauder. And now they're gradually appearing on a blog called The Gotham Book Mart Project.

Here are a few that seem especially special:

Price on Harlem Gentrification

Author Richard Price spoke at the New York Times' "Cities for Tomorrow" conference earlier this week. He talked a bit about gentrification in Harlem and "that eternal argument: Is this good for Harlem or bad for Harlem?"


NY Times photo

He said: "The big picture is: Everything that's happening now in Harlem, everything that's being built in Harlem is with someone like me in mind, preferably 30 years younger than me. The born-heres? They're looking around and seeing new restaurants, and high rises going up, and new trees planted, and they know it's not for them. It's like: You're in the way..."

"It's like white people discovered Harlem like Europeans discovered America, and the Indians are going, 'Really? What are we standing on, cream cheese?' ... So whatever's exciting and new is a little bit of a death knell."

He talked about the recent closure of Pathmark and the opening of Whole Foods on 125th Street: "The minute that Whole Foods went up--game over."

And he had some sound advice on how to be a decent neighbor in a gentrifying part of town, including "learn manners" and "patronize businesses that were there a hell of a lot longer than you were." Also: "Be a good guy. Have a heart."

Watch here at minute mark 16:15.

Lydia Lunch's Sexy Stories

In "Sexy Stories from New York City’s Torrid Underground," the legendary Lydia Lunch will be hosting a series of events at The Roxy Hotel. She'll be performing stories from her book Paradoxia: A Predator’s Diary and presenting readings from the unpublished memoirs of Warhol Superstar Bibbe Hansen and Lower East Side raconteur Zoe Hansen. There will also be musical interludes.



Monday July 11, Tuesday July 26, and every other Tuesday in August
The Django
The Roxy Hotel Tribeca
2 Avenue of the Americas
Doors 8:00
Show at 9:00

Jerry the Peddler

DW Gibson, author of The Edge Becomes the Center: An Oral History of Gentrification in the Twenty-First Century, has a new project.

"Jerry the Peddler" is a documentary about a locally legendary Lower East Side squatter--and about an outlaw urban lifestyle that is rapidly vanishing. Visit Seed & Spark to find out more, and consider sending in funds to help complete the film.

I talked with DW about squatting in New York.




Q: How do you see squatting as "a critical challenge to our prevailing interpretation of 'The American Dream'"?

A: By and large, the American Dream is defined by property ownership. It carries all kinds of connotations with it but at its core it’s about having a place of your own for you and your family to be comfortable, and in America that means owning a home. But there are two other major elements of the American psyche that can be found in the world of squatting: hard work and personal liberty.

I don’t think most people understand that squatting, by and large, is about taking care of a building because no one else would do so. It’s about stewardship and making something out of nothing. And it’s about sharing space instead of obsessing over owning it. At first glance this last point is very un-American but when you think about it we actually have a substantial capacity to share space, as evidenced in our world renowned National Parks system. Those parks are our cathedrals and they are shared among us all. So we do know how to get away from our obsession with private property — or at least balance it with other aspirations. And squatting has a lot to say about this part of our collective character.

Q: What elements does a city need to make space for squatting and for people like Jerry?

A: There are still so many distressed and abandoned properties in NYC. Why not create a system — even if it has to be a lottery — where New Yorkers who do not have the money to buy property still have the opportunity to earn a place to live through stewardship of buildings? Let people with skills in carpentry and electric work and plumbing — or those who desire to acquire those skills — earn their homes. There are so many non-profits that could help organize and manage such a program (e.g. UHAB) with public — and perhaps private — resources.



Q: When the city government, in collusion with developers and business, wants to gentrify a neighborhood, one of the first things they do is to raid the squats. The East Village of the 1990s is a famous example, but we saw this also in Gowanus in more recent years, at the Bat Cave. How does squatting pose a roadblock to gentrification?

A: Squatting poses a roadblock to gentrification because a lot of developers (read as hardcore capitalists) are terrified by the idea of squatting. It completely undercuts their approach to commodifying shelter. It would be interesting to see what would happen if the city embraced squats (and here I specifically mean buildings maintained and repaired that would have otherwise fallen into disrepair) instead of running squatters out. Let’s remember that squatters are plumbers and electricians and woodworkers — they are stewards, the people who have put in sweat equity to keep a building standing and to cultivate community.

By embracing existing squats in any given neighborhood the city could *preserve existing affordable housing* instead of bending over backwards to try to get developers to add scant affordable housing to new projects. Let the developers' new projects become integrated into neighborhoods that already have strong squatting traditions. That would absolutely create dynamic neighborhoods and I guarantee you that the upper class home buyers in New York, ready to drop a million bones, would, in their own way, cherish the romance of co-existing with squats. That’s the kind of proximity to “cool” that all millionaires are pursuing when they buy up homes in places like Bushwick and East New York.


Photo: John Penley

Q: Back in the 1990s, when Giuliani attacked the squats by sending his NYPD through the East Village in an armored vehicle from the Korean War, New York magazine said, “The East Village squatters are New York’s last true bohemians. And they’re in serious danger of extinction.” What's your take on that quote? Were they the city's last bohemians? And how extinct have they become?

A: When we talk about squatters we’re talking about a wide range of communities and politics: anarchists, communists, libertarians, etc. I think that’s important to recognize. That said, the practice of squatting does indicate a revolutionary view in an American context because it rejects the idea of commodifying land. Which, again, is the foundation of the American Dream. We built — stole — this country on the idea of commodifying land.

Squatters don’t see it that way. Squatters see land as something to care for and a place to build and maintain shelter. So in that sense, squatters do represent the city’s last bohemians. Squatters are working outside the context of the singular force driving the city: commodification — and not just land but intellect and art and trade skills. Squatters are willing to live in a world not governed by legal tender, but by how much work you are able and willing to put in to any given task and the pride therein. That’s impressive--and in 2016 that’s definitely bohemian.

Q: What does it say about the city that squatting was once possible and today it's not so much?

A: Squatting is still possible in New York, though increasingly rare. People do still open buildings, but the chances to do so are, indeed, quickly vanishing. This speaks to New York's place in the international real estate market and our priorities as a city. We have made our commitments. And those commitments have been made to the international real estate market, not to New Yorkers.

The city values the people who bring money to the city over the people who bring life and energy to the city. Those priorities have to change if New York is to remain interesting and invigorating and a hotbed for intellectual and artistic output. As it is now, we’re becoming a city much less likely to make art and much more of a place to buy art.

The Holdouts

“The Holdouts” is a comedy series about New Yorkers who can’t afford to live in the new New York. Co-created by Stephen Girasuolo and Dan Menke, it stars Kevin Corrigan as Kevin Shanahan, a rent-controlled tenant who refuses his landlord's buyout as he bemoans the hyper-gentrification of the city: “They won’t be happy until this whole island is one big Duane Reade with a Starbucks inside and an IHOP inside that and a Bank of America inside that.”

The creators have launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund the show, which they hope will help bring attention to the plight of the vanishing city.

I chatted with Girasuolo and Corrigan about the show, the lost New York, and the life of a holdout.




Q: So the inevitable first question: What inspired you to do this project?

Stephen: I was being forced out by my landlord of 25 years in Hell's Kitchen at the time and my co-creator Dan Menke wanted to write a part for Corrigan as a man out of time in New York City. Something started there.

And I was away living in Paris and Brazil for 7 years and came back to a city I honestly didn’t recognize. That fed into it.

Kevin: I was born in the Bronx and, except for the years 2000 - 2005, I’ve lived in New York my whole life. Even during those five years in Los Angeles, I kept my apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, on West 51st Street. Like Stephen, I was forced out by my landlord. I wonder if we had the same landlord.

In 2007, I began following Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York. It was hard not to notice all the shutterings of all the old places. The closing that really got under my skin was Socrates Diner on Hudson and Franklin. I thought if they could close that place, they can close any place.

One by one, all these places began to disappear. It seemed like some terrible coincidence. As we know now, these changes are quite deliberate, calculated by developers, city officials, community boards.

I started to feel like Jim Carrey’s character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, as if some force of nature was targeting my memories and wiping them out, one by one. It was not uncommon to have the impulse to go somewhere I hadn’t been in a while only to find that place closed down, whether it was a record store or a restaurant or bar.

I took it personally. And then, finally, I was kicked out of my 51st street apartment. I’d become just like the doomed movie theaters and restaurants I loved. They were closing me down, like I was some old business, some thing from the past that needed to make way for the new.

Q: I feel disoriented in the city from day to day, it's changed so rapidly and so completely in recent years. How would you characterize the changes?

Stephen: I was used to, in Paris, just lounging around at a cafe or bar, meeting people on the fly. So when I came back to Hell's Kitchen, those places were not there. There was a place that had good chocolate cake and was open late at night. Now it was a gift shop. Very expensive places. There were fewer local coffee shops, doughnut shops, bars.

Union Square was completely revamped with Whole Foods, and I walked up to a city kid working there and asked, "Where are all the New Yorkers?” He said they moved to Canarsie.

Kevin: In this age of omnipresent technology, it is nearly impossible to form the kinds of relationships we grew used to pre-internet, when you had to deal with people directly, where you had to engage the city, one foot in front of the other, eye to eye. You had to make physical contact. You needed an imagination. Today, there is a disconnect, relationships are “virtual.” You don’t have to leave the house. An implied relationship will suffice. Places don’t stick around as long as they used to. No one expects anything to last. So the idea of developing attachments to places is archaic.

In order to fall in love, you have to have a heart. You have to be willing to put in the time. Being a regular somewhere, enjoying the company of familiar faces, this is a beautiful thing, to be part of a community.

Q: On the show’s Kickstarter page, it says, “Let’s take the stand together.” How do you see The Holdouts as taking a stand in the fight to preserve New York? What impact do you hope it'll have?

Stephen: It could wake up the need to address the rising costs more, for one. People are getting marginalized. It’s the people really. The storefronts are a huge problem, but fighting for the right to live and afford in the city you love and grew up in, or call your home, is important. Mayors know that. They should do more to address it. Serious comedy is one way to increase that conversation.




Q: Going back to that idea of the “man out of time,” and the holdout—obviously a holdout is someone who resists his or her landlord’s pressure to leave an apartment, but it’s more than that, too. Especially in today’s city. What does it mean to you?

Stephen: It means preservation and fighting to preserve a piece of history that is meaningful not only for me but for the people who come after me. But when they start building around you, it becomes sad, too. It’s affecting all classes of people.

Places give you purpose. A language will die if you don’t speak it. I came back to the city and a type of language had died while I was gone. A holdout fights to keep something alive.

Q: What language is that?

Stephen: A certain interaction of respect between us, of looking out for one another a bit. It’s still there but harder to find. Things are more distant. Separated. Many people I encounter have an entitled air. It’s a good question. I’m getting older, but younger people--"OH My god, oh my god"--young people like myself didn’t talk like that. That’s the new language.

Q: Kevin, in the trailer you give a dirty look to a table full of young women cooing over their iphones--how do you experience this "language" of many newcomers to the city?

Kevin: Everyone’s looking at their phone these days, even me. But like I said, it’s essential to know how to do things the old fashioned way, to make friends, to know how to banter. You have to be curious. How can you live in New York and not be interested in people, places, and things?

My father was a first-generation Irish American. He grew up in the South Bronx, as did my mother. By the 70s, they, and my brother and me, settled in the north part of the borough, the Norwood section. It was, and still is, a diverse neighborhood, and my parents never left. My father passed away in February, but he was a devoted Bronxite to the end. He would look out on Mosholu Parkway from his bedroom window. That was his Riviera. He was a conservative man, but a truly compassionate one, who appreciated the diversity of the neighborhood. He was my teacher. My love for New York, and particularly “old New York” came from my parents, and especially my father. He used to work in the Daily News building, so I remember being in there many times as a kid and marveling at the globe in the lobby where they shot Superman, the one with Christopher Reeve.

You have to love the idea of New York being a melting pot. You have to proud of the tradition and the history of this place where a thousand languages are spoken, where diverse cultures co-exist. It’s that thing of treating everyone with whom you cross paths with respect an open mind, and an open heart, because they could be God in disguise. They could have the answers you’ve been looking for.




Q: So Kevin is the holdout in the show, and then there's his preppy friend, who plays the foil. He likes Whole Foods, I imagine, and Starbucks, and those $20 glasses of wine. I'm curious about their relationship. How do they get along?

Stephen: The newbie Jayce character is in awe of Kevin because he is a "real New Yorker." Jayce wants to be a real New Yorker, but how? It’s funny. They have different views. They’re an odd couple. Jayce feels sorry for Kevin for being stuck in past. But we are playing with Kevin really getting to Jayce to the point where Jayce begins to side with him and holdout. He is a high-school teacher. His salary sucks. How can one live in the city on a teacher’s salary?

Kevin: I can’t say I have that much against Starbucks because my father and I used to meet every Friday at the Starbucks in the office building where he worked on 34th street and 7th avenue. Sometimes we’d have to wait for a table because people coming out of Macy's or waiting to catch the Long Island Railroad would be in there, drinking coffee or charging their computers. My father didn’t mind waiting. And, when I was with him, neither did I. All the people at that Starbucks knew and loved him. So I have no quarrel, except of course with the fact that they gutted that Starbucks, took over the 99-cent store next door and made a bigger Starbucks, which had none of the cavernous, cozy charm of the previous store.

Which reminds me, there used to be a great diner called The Astor Riviera on Astor Place. One night in 1987, Al Pacino took about ten or so students there from the Lee Strasberg School. The students had been in a play. Al came to see the play because these were students of Al’s mentor, Charlie Laughton. I wasn’t in the play, but I was a student of Charlie’s and I got to tag along. So, yeah, I had dinner with Al Pacino at the Astor Riviera, which is now a Starbucks. I remember Al saying, “All the world’s a stage, and the stage is your world.”

New York City is a big stage. Down every street is a memory. You come here and you
live out the movie of your life.

Q: Stephen, Kevin Corrigan is an inspired choice for Kevin Shanahan. He and I have been chatting online about the vanishing city for a while now, so I know he's passionate about it. How did he get connected to the project and how do you see him fitting the role?

Stephen: Dan Menke, my co-creator, is friends with him. They are passionate about the topic. Dan wanted to write a role for him. I suggested we use the gentrification as a backdrop. Kevin liked the idea. It’s also a lead role for him. He should be playing lead roles in TV. He's very versatile.

The script Dan wrote at first was called "The Characters," just two actors in New York City. One from New York, one newbie. I thought the script was hilarious, but felt it needed something more urgent and relevant.

Corrigan loves the smell of New York. He deeply understands the culture. He’s in love with the grittiness. He misses the squeegee guys. His deadpan personality, with the humor of someone lost in his own town, is funny. Putting him in a fancy wine bar or condo with a swimming pool is funny.

Kevin: RE: the smell of New York. I don’t always love it, but right now it’s nice. It’s 3AM and it’s 64 degrees outside. That’s a nice clean smell coming in the window. Coming in from the Harbor.

Q: When I watch Kevin in the trailer, it's uncanny, like looking in a mirror. So I have to ask--and this might be a rather egocentric question--how much Jeremiah is in there?

Stephen: Ha-ha! He said he is a big fan of yours, but he told me after we shot that. He could be channeling you. If he is a mirror, that’s a good sign.

Q: Kevin, the character has the same name as you--how close are you to him?

Kevin: He’s me, but he’s also my friend George from Astoria, and some other people I know from the Bronx. And he’s you, Jeremiah.



Visit The Holdouts on Kickstarter, watch the trailer, and consider kicking in some funds--time is ticking

Class Divide

Class Divide, a documentary about hyper-gentrification in Chelsea, the High Line, and the impact of stark inequality on both rich and poor, will be screening at IFC beginning this week.

I'm no movie reviewer. I'll just say that this thing had me in tears and you should go see it.



I talked with director Marc Levin and producer Daphne Pinkerson of Blowback Productions:

Q: The film is impressively even-handed. As a viewer, I felt empathy for both the rich kids of the Avenues School and the poor kids of the projects. Everyone seems caught in a system they have no control over. Did you go into making the film with a particular viewpoint? How did that change--or not--during the process?

A: We certainly knew that the gap between rich and poor was at Gilded Age levels and believed that was not good. Our last few films looked at the human consequences of this economic divide and we were searching for a way to continue covering this situation. We realized that the stark economic discrepancies were starting to close in around us in our own neighborhood of Chelsea where we live and work.

Every day there seemed to be a new luxury building going up, along with my monthly apartment maintenance. We thought we would focus on small businesses and tenants getting pushed out and the perspective of people as they were coming and going. But the point of view of this next generation of young people broke many stereotypes and changed our expectations, re-focusing the film.

Q: While at dramatically different levels, there yet exists some common themes between the two groups of young people, in terms of living with economic and social pressures. What do you see there?

First, the one area of common ground between the kids on both sides of the street is they are all anxious about where they fit into the future. The lower-income kids see the neighborhood changes compounded by political changes that have reduced social programs, like after-school, job training, and most importantly, funds for public housing. So they are legitimately concerned over not only their prospects, but what will happen to their parents and grandparents.

On the other side, the wealthy kids know they are no longer competing just against the kids from Dalton and Fieldston. Now they are also competing against kids from China, India, Korea, Russia, and Singapore. They know that today, no matter where they go to school, there is no guarantee that they will do better or even as well as their parents.

And that brings up the second important point, which I think the film reveals. This kind of income inequality and hyper-gentrification is BAD for everyone, not just the poor, working class, or middle class. There are no walls, fences, streets, or doormen that can protect even the wealthiest and most privileged kids from the reality of the world they inhabit. That exacts a real toll also.


photo: Marc Levin

Q: The parents of the NYCHA kids are very present in the film, but not so much the affluent parents, with the exception of one and we mostly see her selling real estate. What are your thoughts on their absence?

A: We got to know Rosa and Joel's parents better because they were always present to chaperone their children. There is a hedge fund manager in the film who lives on West 26th Street and sends his daughter to Avenues. He has lived in the neighborhood for quite some time and believes in the importance of mixed-income neighborhoods.

We did interview other parents from a range of socioeconomic backgrounds who were very articulate and thoughtful but the film became focused on the voices of the young people themselves. There were some Avenues parents, mostly husbands, who said nothing good could come of participating in a film comparing the rich and the poor. But they were wrong! Ha!

It would be interesting to do a film about how the super wealthy feel justified in using their resources to influence government policy and still claim to be living in a democracy. But I don't think telling that story through the parents of a liberal arts secondary school is going to happen.

Q: I read in Chelsea Now that the frame on the High Line at 26th Street was part of your inspiration for making the film. I've stood there myself and watched tourists pose in the frame with the NYCHA projects as backdrop. It always strikes me as a bizarre moment. Can you say more about the role this frame played in your making the film?

A: The frame became a sort of subtle leitmotif for us through the course of the film. What you see depends on the frame through which you look. What do the people in the projects see when they look across the street and visa versa? You see almost every subject in the film looking through window frames across the street.

What is it like to look through someone else's frame? How does it change your perspective? Luc really plumbs this idea speculating what the little boy in the elevator thinks of him and how that should influence how he responds. Deep.


photo: Marc Levin

Q: What's your verdict on the impact the High Line has had on the neighborhood?

A: The High Line was another metaphor for us as an example of what a community can do through activism. The activists fought the powerful real estate industry to preserve something for rich and poor alike. It is a beautiful public park for everyone. You see Rosa's joy there, and the mix of people at the Latin dance night. There are internships and planned activities for children in the community.

The irony, as Joe Restuccia from Community Board 4 says in the film, is that it has been almost completely commodified by the luxury real estate industry in terms of housing. Is there any mixed income housing on the High Line? And it is so crowded some days you can barely move! Maybe there needs to be crowd control and tickets like a regular museum?

Q: Another apt metaphor--as the hyper-gentrifying neighborhoods of the city become museums, to be looked at and consumed, largely by tourists, but not quite lived in. I'm thinking of how Restuccia says in the film: "This is not about a neighborhood or about New York. It's about: 'I want to take my money out of Singapore, out of Abu Dhabi, and invest and park it here,'" in those ultra-luxury condos along the High Line. In some ways, we're left at the end of the film wondering: Who is responsible for this? Or is it all just "natural market forces"?

A: First, what we are seeing here in Chelsea is a microcosm of a global phenomenon, where cities around the world, like New York, London, San Francisco, Hong Kong, etc., are becoming investment opportunities for the global elite, and where inequality is growing.

How to reform or transform the global consumer capitalist model so that it distributes wealth more equally is the great challenge now, especially for this next generation. The market is not an inanimate force of nature. It is very much a political, cultural, and social construct that was created by humans and can be remade by them. This is reflected in much of the recent populist politics we've witnessed, from Bernie Sanders, who will be holding a rally in Washington Square right before our film opens a block away on Wednesday, to Donald Trump.

Second, if there is any neighborhood in this city that can be a vanguard on how to create a thriving, mixed urban community in the 21st century, it is Chelsea.

So, from local to global, the message is the same. Organize. Remember how the High Line was saved and became a park in the first place. Become involved and informed, we need more citizen activists!



There will be four daily screenings of Class Divide from April 13 - 19. Visit the IFC Center to check ticket availability. All screening times will be posted by Monday evening. You can also follow the film on Facebook.

Time Warp

There's a new zine in town. Time Warp, its editors say, will be "a sort of rallying cry, to pull people together and to inspire New Yorkers to create positive action against the forces consuming our home and creative culture."

The zine aims to "break through the paralyzing nostalgia for the old city." They write, "The condition of our gentrifying city will not improve if we let ourselves wallow in sadness, self pity, and nostalgia."



"Why Time Warp? Because PUNK IS NOT DEAD!! Because the situation facing our city (gentrification, class war, suburban invasion, cultural sterilization and parasitism) will not improve if we let ourselves be paralyzed by our longing for the past. We must realize that all is not lost. We must fight to PRESERVE what remains and to RESTORE what has been lost."

The editors are looking for stories and artwork about New York City from the 1960s to today. They are currently accepting submissions through the first week of April. For more information, check them out on Facebook. And contact them at timewarpzine@gmail.com.

Meisler's Sassy '70s

Recently, Bizarre Publishing released photographer Meryl Meisler's book of photos, Purgatory & Paradise: Sassy '70s Suburbia and The City. In the book, Meisler "juxtaposes intimate images of home life on Long Island alongside NYC street and night life – the likes of which have never been seen. Quirky, nostalgic and a bit naughty, it’s a genuine cultural capsule of a decade that captivates today’s generation."

I asked the photographer a couple of questions.



Q: How do you see suburbia and the city as different and/or similar in the 1970s? Where did the cultures and aesthetics overlap and diverge?


A: From my personal perspective, both NYC and Long Island people identified as New Yorkers. Most of the Long Islanders I knew had a strong connection to The City, whereas the connection of city dwellers to Long Island was less apparent (unless they summered at LI beaches or had family there).

The majority of the people I grew up with in Long Island had roots in The City. My parents bought a brand new split-level development home in North Massapequa, Long Island when I was two years old. The farmland that surrounded our development grew into more developments so rapidly I don’t even remember the open land other than in my father’s photographs of the of our house being built. The suburbia I knew was neighborhood after neighborhood of predominantly 1st and 2nd generation Americans, who grew up poor during the Great Depression, mostly in The Bronx or Brooklyn, and bought their homes with the GI bill with the hope of giving their children a better life. Nearly everyone had a two-parent household with two or more kids. Most of the dads worked in The City, and moms I knew were stay-at-home moms until the kids were a little older. Divorced and single parent households were rare. I can’t even recall a family that had “only” one child.

Our town, Massapequa “Matzah Pizza,” was predominantly Italian, Jewish, Irish, German and very Caucasian. Jerry Seinfeld’s dad’s business “Kal Seinfeld Signs” was nearby. Seinfeld grew up in another section of Massapequa. In High School I didn’t even realize the kid with the last name Rivera was Hispanic. A girl in my Brownie troop whose family came from Cuba was the only person of color I knew. The kids whose family who owned the Chinese Laundry nearby were the only Asian students in our school. The next town over, Amityville, was predominantly African American, as were a few other neighboring towns.

Some families, like mine, brought their children into The City to visit family or enjoy theatre and cultural activities as well as to visit our family in The Bronx. Teenagers would take the LIRR or drive to go to theatre, concerts, or eat in Chinatown. NYC and Long Island were symbiotically connected. There were Long Islanders (then and now) who had no interest in going to The City, reminiscent of NYers who wouldn’t go above 14th St.

The NYC I moved to in 1975 was magnificently diverse. I met and socialized with people of multi- ethnic, racial, and economic backgrounds with similar interests in the arts. The NYC I discovered was also a place where you could live alone or with friends, be part of a non “traditional” family, gay and lesbian, free to discover who you wanted to be. The punk and disco scene was emerging and then in full swing. “Bridge and Tunnel” people were excluded entry from the most exclusive clubs. On Long Island, there were a few discos that emerged that emulated the NYC club scene such at Uncle Sam's in Levittown, The Ice Palace in Fire Island, and clubs in the Hamptons.

In the Long Island I grew up in most people went to their local public school unless they went to Parochial Catholic School. You didn’t have a choice. Local “zoned” NYC public schools varied radically from neighborhood to neighborhood. Students in The City could compete to get into the better public schools. In 1979, I began my 31-year career as a NYC public school art teacher and got to know it and photograph it from an insider's point of view very well.

Rents in NYC in the early to mid 70s were affordable, especially with rent control and rent stabilization. The idea of rental buildings “going coop” was just starting to happen. By the end of the decade, it was increasingly difficult to find affordable housing. At the same time, the inexpensive homes in Long Island bought on the GI bill were becoming very pricey too.

Small businesses were prevalent in NYC and LI in the 1970s. My dad commuted 6 days a week to the printing company he owned and operated in Chelsea, Excel Printing Company. Dad would be very surprised that the site of his factory at 418 West 25th Street is a super luxury building in a hot gallery district. I miss the smell of litho ink emanating throughout the many buildings in Chelsea that were filled with printers.





Q: How does that all compare to today? As the city becomes more suburbanized, is this something you see through your camera lens?

A: The suburbs I knew in the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s are becoming slightly more diverse. There are more businesses and opportunities to work in Long Island, but there is still a large influx of commuters who work in The City. Growing up, everyone I knew owned their home in LI but now I know of people who rent in LI as well.

There are children who are 2nd and 3rd generation Long Islanders, many people bought their parents' homes when the elders retired to Florida or other locales. Now I know of single people or people without children living in Long Island. The beautiful Long Island beaches still draw out NYC residents as day-trippers, renters, or vacationers. In Long Island and NYC, people are going further out in Suffolk County or neighborhoods in the outer boroughs to find more affordable communities.

I am far from a fan of big box or chain stores and cookie cutter mall culture. In my opinion they are destroying small family-owned businesses, making great stationery and hardware stores, for example, face extinction.

I like to photograph people and places I know well or find interesting. To me if you have seen one big box or chain store, you’ve seen them all. They aren’t subjects I am drawn to photograph.


all photographs © Meryl Meisler

You can find the book at The Strand and other independent local bookshops.

And you can find more of Meryl's work at her website.

Cinemaniacs

If you've ever been to a movie at the Museum of Modern Art (or Cinema Village or Film Forum) you may have encountered a cinemaniac. Obsessed and cantankerous, they are masters of the shush.

I once witnessed them nearly lynch an elderly woman for the crime of loudly unwrapping a hard candy. If you go to a movie here, you have to submit to the madness. Enjoy it. This is where all the eccentrics who've been driven from the streets of Manhattan have washed up.



I don't go to the MoMA movies as often as I used to, but I hear those characters are still there. What makes them so dyspeptic?

I suspect they shush so violently because, like many anxious obsessive-compulsives, they likely suffer from misophonia, an extreme sensitivity to annoying sounds. Researchers have also found a relationship between misophonia and the schizotypal personality. Schizotypals are your garden variety eccentrics. And they're a vanishing breed in New York City.

These are people who don't function well in a hyper-regulated city custom-made for the wealthy and the mainstream. They require rent control and stabilization. They require the freedom to be unusual, even difficult. They need a city that tolerates odd behavior. Really, they are some of the last of the New York characters. So next time one of them scolds you at the movies, be grateful. You've been touched by an endangered species.

But be careful. They might get a little out of control. "If you don't get up and beat the person up or threaten them or something, then you're going to actually have the film be ruined," says one in the 2002 film Cinemania. Watch it here in its entirety (bonus--it's New York before Bloomberg's erasure, filled with some vanished places and sensibilities):



Roger Ebert wrote about these New Yorkers:

"These are not crazy people. Maladjusted and obsessed, yes, but who's to say what normal is? I think it makes more sense to see movies all day than to golf, play video games or gamble. Not everyone agrees. I know people like these, and I understand their desire to be absorbed in the darkness and fantasy... They really, really like movies. They cry during them. One stumbled out of 'The Umbrellas of Cherbourg' and walked for blocks in the rain, weeping. 'A commitment to cinema means one must have a technically deviant lifestyle.'"

One-Thing Wonders

The following is a guest post by Mitch Broder, author and blogger.

It’s unlikely that nineteenth-century New York had an oatmeal saloon, but it reportedly had several hundred oyster saloons. The city more or less launched its food scene with its oyster joints, which set the stage for the present-day oatmeal joint, not to mention the present-day stuffed-bagel-ball joint.

In this century, spots like those two have been proliferating, not surprisingly as store rents have been tripling and sextupling. Non-billionaires who have a dream of opening a traditional city restaurant often find themselves scaling the dream down to, say, a city schnitzel spot.

This economic reality is what inspired me to write a book called New York’s One-Food Wonders: A Guide to the Big Apple’s Unique Single-Food Spots. The book tells the stories of all our offbeat one-food places, along with the stories of all our offbeat one-thing places.



My previous book, Discovering Vintage New York, covers the city’s classic old spots, but I’ve always seen the singular places as classics of their own. Like so many of the vintage spots, they keep originality — and peculiarity — in a cityscape that’s quickly and sadly losing both.

They also keep independence here. Nearly all of these spots were founded by passionate people, not by dispassionate investment groups. They’re a last stand for creativity — and some of the young ones are getting old. Peanut Butter & Co., the all-peanut-butter joint, is in its eighteenth year.

The places in the book range from far older to far younger. But this blog is city headquarters for the far older. So here, exclusively for Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, is my list of the elder statesmen — Manhattan’s ten oldest one-food and one-thing wonders.



1946: Fountain Pen Hospital (10 Warren St.) Though now more store than hospital, it’s still run by its founding family. And it’s the last major place to get pens that don’t come twenty to a blister pack.

1936: Kossar’s Bialys (367 Grand St.) This is the last major place for people who still know what bialys are. It’s run by two guys who took it over two years ago. Call first, since they’ve been renovating.

1932: Papaya King (179 E. 86th St. and 3 St. Mark’s Place) Hot dogs and tropical fruit drinks count as one thing, because in New York City they’re married — and this is the stand that married them.

1929: Marchi’s Restaurant (251 E. 31st St.) For the Marchis, I stretched the book’s concept; their single thing is their single meal. Every night they serve only the same five-course dinner they’ve been serving since the end of World War II.



1927: Gem Spa (131 Second Ave.) This newsstand actually has lots of things, but it’s famous for just one thing: its egg cream. The recipe for it is as closely guarded as the one for Coke.

1917: The Drama Book Shop (250 W. 40th St.) If it’s stardom you’re bound for, here’s where you find your vehicle. The shop stocks about ten thousand plays, and in 2011 it won its own Tony.

1913: Grand Central Oyster Bar & Restaurant (Grand Central Terminal) It’s a grand reminder of the city’s aforementioned oyster era. Also a grand reminder of what you can do with a ceiling.

1911: JJ Hat Center (310 Fifth Ave.) The last of the traditional men’s hat shops takes you back to a time when a gentleman was always topped off, and generally with something other than a baseball cap.

1910: Jean’s Silversmiths (16 W. 45th St.) It began as a curiosity shop, and a century later it still looks like one. (It was named for Jean Valjean, the celebrated silver collector.)

1910: Yonah Schimmel Knish Bakery (137 E. Houston St.) Even Yonah succumbed to economic reality, says the shop’s owner, Ellen Anistratov: “He wanted to teach people spirituality,” she says, “but there was no money in it.”

The Lost Arcade

The Lost Arcade, a new documentary film by Kurt Vincent and Irene Chin, tells the story of the legendary Chinatown Fair.

On Mott Street since 1944, the arcade owners lost their lease in 2011 and made plans to move to Brooklyn.


New York Daily Photo

"Its very existence was an anachronism," said The Verge; "the lone hold-out of a culture that had been long since overshadowed by the meteoric rise of home consoles." The arcade managed to re-open in the same spot, but it wasn't the same. Co-owner Lonnie Sobel called it "a cross between Dave & Busters and Chuck E. Cheese."

"But as the neighborhood gentrified," the filmmakers write, "this haven for a diverse, unlikely community faced its strongest challenge, inspiring its biggest devotees to next-level greatness."

See The Lost Arcade at its world premier November 14 and 18 at IFC Center as part of DOC NYC. Click here for tickets.

Exclusively for Vanishing New York, the filmmakers have put together a clip featuring the history of Chinatown Fair--and the story of its famous dancing and tic tac toe-playing chickens:


The Lost Arcade (Exclusive Clip) from ArcadeMovie on Vimeo.

For more on the arcade's history and those chickens, check out:
DeNiro, Streep, Chicken
Chinatown Fair

Goldsmith's Capital

This month, Verso Books publishes Kenneth Goldsmith's Capital, "a kaleidoscopic assemblage and poetic history of New York." Inspired by Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project, Goldsmith has spent the past decade researching and assembling a super-abundance of quotes on New York City, and then organizing them into categories like Celebrity, Danger, Graffiti, and Sex. The result is far from a simple quote book, however. Reading Capital feels like walking the city, through time and space, jumping neighborhoods, going in and out of buildings, slipping through wormholes. It's a kind of exuberant eavesdropping on the muttering, shouting narrative of the twentieth-century city.

I asked Goldsmith a few questions. He answered.




Q: I've been enjoying Capital, but is it meant to be enjoyed? You've called yourself "the most boring writer that has ever lived." Capital is not boring. Does this book feel like a departure from previous work?

A: I actually stopped being a boring writer almost a decade ago when I got bored of being boring. I’m known for a book called Day, which was a transcription of The New York Times of September 1, 2000 into a 900-page book. That was boring. When the book was reviewed, most people mistakenly thought I had transcribed September 11, 2001. I thought that was a great idea and went ahead and transcribed the 9-11 New York Times—the one that everyone carried to work that day, not the 9-12 newspaper, when you saw the planes crashing into the towers. And as I was doing the transcription, I found my keyboard soaked in tears. I mean, I wasn’t doing anything different than straight transcription, but the content was so emotional, that I produced an emotional text. After that I stopped being boring and wanted to find hotter and more emotional texts, which led to Seven American Deaths & Disasters, which are transcriptions of media broadcasts of national tragedies.

So, for Capital, I changed the lens again from tragedy and emotion to beauty and romanticism and have produced a beautiful and romantic text about New York City in the 20th Century. But the process is identical: this book is nearly 1000 pages long but I haven’t written a word of it.

Q: In a related question, you've also said, “My books are better thought about than read. They’re insanely dull and unreadable.” Capital is readable, but maybe not in the traditional sense of moving from point A to point B. How do you imagine Capital being read?

A: I think its unreadability is like the unreadability of the city itself: it’s too damn big to read New York City; perhaps the only way we can interact with New York is to browse it.

Q: How do you personally "browse" New York City? In the physical -- and maybe in the psychic -- sense. This book has a flaneur feeling about it, the walker in the city, capturing moments, observations, as he or she goes. That things that happens as one walks, fragments making up a whole. I think also of Mondrian's "Broadway Boogie Woogie." Do you identify as a flaneur, of the body and/or mind?

A: Walking the city invokes a text, one that is instantaneously written while, at the same time, one that is instantaneously read. The urbanist philosopher Michel de Certeau says, "They walk—an elementary form of this experience of the city; they are walkers, Wandersmänner, whose bodies follow the thicks and thins of an urban 'text' they write without being able to read it." Walking, then, is an act of reading the city with our feet.

The city itself is an epic novel: each building a word, each street a sentence, each block a paragraph. De Certeau's claim for unreadability is hinged upon three facts: the blur of motion, the speed at which the tale is unwinding, and the sheer of immensity of the text. When we speak of hypertexts, we usually mean those which exist online, but we might think of the city as the ur-hypertext, a dynamic, analog, predigital model of complex intertextuality.

Q: What does it feel like for you to walk the streets of the city today? In my experience, the feeling of it has changed dramatically in the past decade or so.

A: We are going to disagree here but I love the city today as much as I’ve ever loved it. Every moment in New York is the best moment. Yes, the city has changed dramatically, but that doesn’t mean that it’s less, it just means that it’s different. We can’t look to what New York was — that’s gone — but what it is now, which is still radically inspiring, energetic, and quite frankly, utopian.

I travel around the world constantly, and the whole world has gone the way of New York, so if New York was always more interesting than anywhere else, it still is today. While the city may not resonate the same way with me as it did 40 years ago — yes, I was here 40 years ago — I still find it intriguing, mysterious, and sexy in ways that I find few other places on earth. I adore this city, still, in the twenty-first century.

Q: We don't completely disagree. I wouldn't be fighting for New York if I didn't still love it. Though I sometimes hate to love it. Would you call Capital your love letter to New York? Apologies for the cliche, but the book does feel affectionate.

A: Yes, this book is a completely romantic love letter to the city. I was able to pen the ultimate love letter to this city without having written a word of it, which is pretty much what Walter Benjamin did to Paris with the Arcades Project, the inspiration for this project.

Q: Finally, the obvious question: What about the Arcades Project inspired you to do a New York version?

A: When Benjamin’s book was published in English in 1999, I found it to be the most profoundly emotional book I’ve ever read written about a city. It was a book that told what the city felt like, sounded like, and smelled like, instead of narrating official histories—god knows there are enough of those books about Paris. I wanted to write the same book for New York, a city I’ve lived in for my entire adult life. I’ve also seen the city drastically change, so I wanted to remember, for instance, the smell of Orange Julius. My book is 1000 pages of citation; I didn’t write a word of it, but it turns out to be the most autobiographical book I could write. This city has made me what I am today. It is, indeed, a love song to New York.

Q: Anything else I didn't ask that you'd like to answer?

A: Yes one more thing. I wrote much of this book in the New York City collection of the Jefferson Market Library, a place that I found about through your blog. I would spend the entire day, say, researching the blocks around the Library—Patchin Place, Eighth Street, Christopher Street, etc.— in the twentieth century. But when I would leave the library, I would enter a city that bore little resemblance to where I was reading about. I really might as well have been researching the book in, say, Switzerland, instead of in Greenwich Village.

This Land Is Not For Sale

Opening October 15 at the Jonathan LeVine Gallery is Brett Amory's "This Land Is Not For Sale: Forgotten, Past and Foreseeable Futures."


Brett Amory, CBGB

From High Fructose: "Amory describes his latest series of works as a sort of protest against the transformation of New York’s Lower East Side into a 'gentrified wasteland,' which is changing the social character of the neighborhood."


Brett Amory, Bleecker Bob's

From Juxtapoz: "Amory will install a faux construction site underpass leading to the gallery to parody the constant sledgehammering of gentrification."

In addition, there will be a panel discussion on October 20 that will "bring together some of the legendary figures and activists of the Lower East Side to explore the gentrification and cultural attritioning of this historic district," according to the press release. "This discussion will be moderated by author Alan Kaufman. Sitting on the panel will be Brett Amory, artist; Lincoln Anderson, Editor-in-Chief of The Villager; Clayton Patterson, LES-based photographer and activist; Jose “Cochise” Quiles (author of the forthcoming Street Gangs of the Lower East Side), the founder and former leader of the notorious Satan's Sinner Nomads, the last gang to fly colors in LES. This event is free and open to the public."

The gallery is located at 557C West 23rd Street.

On the Stroll

After 20 years of working on Wall Street, Chris Arnade walked away in 2012, disillusioned with the business. He kept walking, all the way to the Bronx, with a camera in his hand. In Hunts Point, he got to know and photograph the other humans of New York, the ones at the margins--prostitutes and drug addicts, living in poverty. Collected in a series called "Faces of Addiction," the images are both beautiful and heartbreaking.

Arnade has also photographed the pigeon keepers of New York, the people of Brownsville and East New York, the tricked-out bikes of New York, and much more, including the transgender sex workers of Jackson Heights, Queens. When we look to the Meatpacking District and wonder where did all those girls go -- they went here.


all photos by Chris Arnade

The following text is excerpted from an essay by Chris Arnade, from his flickr page:

At 4:00 am the 7 train over Roosevelt Avenue provides the rhythm for Jackson Heights, Queens. Each train spills out people from the late shift and fills with others going to the early shift.

The closing of the bars brings another rush: Drunken men to the sidewalks and hack cabs to the streets.

It is also the time the transsexuals start working, selling sex. They stand out: Tall, heavily made-up black and Hispanics dressed for show. They cluster about one intersection flirting with passing men and dodging the desperately drunk ones.

Their corner has two all-night bakeries where they rest. The young women working the bakeries know all of them; they have their drinks ready without the need to ask.



Jessica sits and sips her coffee. “Why 4:00 am? Because the men are so drunk they can kiss me and still pretend they are not gay.” Across from her is Claudia dabbing makeup on her face. “Hispanic men have to be all macho. Being gay is a no-no. This late, perhaps nobody will know, not their family. Even they can pretend.”

At the next table sit two men in dirty work-clothes eating plates of rice and meat.

None of the Johns say they are gay. “The men out here are in the closet or they don’t want to believe what they really like. They look for us to say they’re looking for a woman, but they know what it really is. There are more closeted gay people than we know.”

The transsexuals do not consider themselves gay. They are women who like men. “I am not gay. I am a woman. I just want what every other woman wants, a tall white handsome guy like you. Do me a favor, forget that camera and give me a big kiss, honey.”



They almost all come from very modest backgrounds and from places where homosexuality is not only shunned but a sin. They knew they were different early.

Desire, from Jamaica, knew when she was six. “My dad hated who I was. Jamaicans hate fags.” It took until the age of sixteen, when she went to jail and was happy for the attention of the other men that she was able to come out. “Guys started liking me in jail.”

Jessica from Puerto Rico had the same story. “I always knew I was different, from five. I did not want my penis. I wanted what the girls had. I came here because it’s better to be this way in New York than where I come from.”



Chris Arnade has since left New York City. He wrote an essay for The Awl about what he'll miss about Brooklyn. You can find his photos on Flickr.

"One Track Mind" Screening

On October 7, at 6:30 p.m., the Transit Museum will be screening Jeremy Workman's award-winning documentary "One Track Mind," the story of Philip Ashforth Coppola's 30-year devotion to and obsession with "meticulously cataloging every subway station--and corresponding mosaic--in the New York City subway system."


Phil Copp

You might remember Jeremy and Phil from an interview I did with them on this blog back in 2011. An excerpt:

Q: One of the people in the film says you are "possessed" by your study of the subway, that you have a "certain kind of mind." How would you characterize that kind of "one track" mind?

PC: What kind of "possessed" mind do I have? There's two of me, after a fashion. The everyday me goes to work, goes to church, does all the special occasion and holiday stuff, does the house chores, et al. Just like any of you. Then there's the me who has filled 36 notebooks with sketches & transcriptions, journeyed on field trips, drawn the illustrations, wrote the texts, and got it all published, and so on. Sometimes I don't know how I've done it. This endeavor has been my abiding passion for about half of my years lived so far. I'm possessed in that I know I must finish this.

JW: People are often blown away by Phil's level of commitment even before they've seen his book. Then, when people see the multiple volumes of Silver Connections (which can pile waist-high), their jaws invariably drop to the floor. I've never met a person with this level of commitment to one particular subject. He's been working on this study for over 30 years and is totally undeterred by anyone's else interest (or lack of interest) in his study. It's incredible.



At the screening, both men will be on hand to answer questions about "preservation, documentation, and the artistic idiosyncrasies of the City." In addition, Phil's original drawings will be on view. Don't miss this rare opportunity. Buy tickets here.

NYC RIP

Photographer Miron Zownir has just published NYC RIP, a collection of photographs capturing the "day-to-day lunacy" of New York City in the 1980s--mostly images of sex workers and drug addicts--with an introduction by Lydia Lunch.



In talking to Dazed, Zownir recalled of his time in New York, “Rents were still cheap, crime was high, most of the Lower East Side, Harlem and the Bronx were dangerous slums, the establishment was uncomfortable and scared, and the police corrupt or helpless to guarantee any protection. But NYC was bursting with a sexual and creative energy that was overwhelming.”

His beat was Times Square, the Bowery, the piers along the Hudson River. All places that have been sterilized since. As Lydia Lunch writes in the intro, the city has been "white washed of all its kaleidoscopic perversions in order to make it safe for anyone who could afford the ridiculous rents charged for shoe box size apartments."


see full NSFW image here

Recently in the Times, Edmund White asked why so many of us are nostalgic for the gritty New York of the 1970s/80s. He explained that there's "a craving for the city that, while at its worst, was also more democratic: a place and a time in which, rich or poor, you were stuck together in the misery (and the freedom) of the place, where not even money could insulate you."

In New York magazine this week, Mark Jacobson writes about the 1970s New York nostalgia trend. He says, "Change is the genius of the city, what has always made New York what it is. But the whiplash rezoning of more than 40 percent of the five boroughs during Bloomberg’s tenure has produced a generational-based moral crisis. Longtime residents no longer feel the joy of the ever-altering landscape, the rapid clip of cosmopolitan turnover that creates continuity. They walk about gaslighted, as if suddenly set down in a drug dealer’s apartment, with everything new and shiny, bought at the same time."


Read more at Dazed. Get NYC RIP. And see Miron's work here.

Pizza Rat Plushie

By this point, you are all familiar with Pizza Rat, the little rodent that could, made world famous for his or her New York-style moxie in dragging a whole slice of pizza down a flight of subway stairs.

Now Tina Trachtenburg, a.k.a. "Mother Pigeon," creator of soft sculpture pigeons and other urban vermin that she sells in the parks, has revealed her Pizza Rat plushie. (In addition to the following photo, there is also an inspirational video on Tina's Facebook page, complete with dramatic accordion music.)



Rats, pizza, and the subway. It doesn't get more authentic New York than that. And in a time when authentic New York is vanishing fast, we need Pizza Rat more than ever.

Has Pizza Rat become a symbol of all that is being lost in the sanitized city? The filth and grit, the moxie, the unpredictability that is meant to be inherent in urban life?

On her Twitter page, Tina says you can see Pizza Rat in person in Union Square Park this Friday. She can often be found selling her critters on the west side of the park. (P.S. You might also know Tina from the wonderful Trachtenburg Family Slideshow Players.)

I asked Tina how Pizza Rat came to be. She answered:

"I make urban soft sculptures. I already had a pizza and rats. My art collaborator Lippe saw the video of pizza rat. We made the video the next day since we had my props. You can buy/adopt them at my street exhibits. My rats are $80. My pizza is $20."

New Mini New Yorks

You first heard of Randy Hage's incredible New York City miniatures on this blog back in 2010 when I introduced him with an interview on his work. Since then, Randy has kept up the pace, shrinking Yonah Schimmel, Mars Bar, and many other vanished, vanishing, and hopefully never vanishing icons of the New York City streetscape.

Now he's giving us an exclusive first look at his latest creations.



In meticulous three-dimensional miniature, the shuttered Pearl Paint appears in sunlight on Canal Street. Closed in 2014, it still sits empty, covered in graffiti, another example of the city's ever-growing high-rent blight.



Randy opted to re-create the Lenox Lounge after it had been forced to close in 2012, but before it was stripped of all its gorgeous neon and exterior design elements. Here it stands, still intact, only a lot smaller -- 1/12th the size of the original.



From the grave rises CBGB's, before it was evicted and replaced by the John Varvatos boutique. Look closely--those windows are full of Lilliputian merchandise and nearly microscopic concert flyers.



Here's the Stage Restaurant, sadly shuttered as it remains today, in the East Village. We're hopeful that this local favorite will one day reopen. As far as we know, they're still fighting the eviction from their new landlord, Icon Realty.



Randy has also recreated two long-time survivors, McSorley's and Katz's. The level of close detail, as usual, is stunning.





All of these artworks will be in Randy's upcoming show, "Facade," at the Flower Pepper Gallery in Pasadena, California. The show runs from October 10 through November 18.

To see more of Randy's storefront sculptures, visit his website and his Flickr page.