La Lunchonette Souvenirs

You can now take home a piece of La Lunchonette. Owner Melva Max is selling many of the items from the restaurant this week. She writes on Facebook:

"Please contact us at lalunchonette@verizon.net with any questions on what we are selling and how to buy! You can also come by the restaurant this week. call ahead 212 675 0342 as the landlord plans to do some work and we may be closed at that time."



The items for sale include art, antiques, kitchen equipment, dishes, and glassware.



La Lunchonette was forced to close by the High Line Effect, when its building--along with its neighbors--was sold to be demolished for a luxury condo.

Little House on 18th Street

When La Lunchonette closed on New Year's Eve, forced out of business after the landlord sold the building, I wondered what would replace it -- and what would happen to the little house behind the front tenement along West 18th Street.

Berenice Abbott photographed the house in 1938, along with its equally diminutive neighbor.


via MCNY

Probably dating back to the 1880s, the two structures are hardly changed today. One had clearly been a stable for horses. It still has its arched hayloft window.

The interior of the living space above the restaurant looks like a hayloft, with wooden beams and ceiling. But it won't be here for long.



La Lunchonette's owner Melva Max told me that the little house will be demolished. A new luxury condo is coming. People are excited about it because it's made of wood, it's designed by Shop, the architects who did the Barclays Center, and we're all paying for it, through a $1.5 million grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

(If you've got some free time, check out what Shop's Vishaan Chakrabarti thinks should be done with the area south of Penn Station. Hint: redevelop the whole neighborhood--those manufacturing zones "have an enormous potential to be part of our new economy in New York City.")


475 West 18th, Shop Architects

Also falling to make room for the new building are the two galleries on 10th Avenue to the north of La Lunchonette.

Three businesses and five good old buildings, all gone for one more luxury condo.

And the High Line Effect just keeps on chopping 'em down.

La Lunchonette's Last Days

You may recall that last fall I reported that La Lunchonette would be forced to close, thanks to the High Line Effect that is sweeping small businesses from Chelsea.

The 28-year-old restaurant hung on longer than expected, but now the last supper has been announced. La Lunchonette's final night will be this New Year's Eve. 

Owner Melva Max adds, "A ten story building will be erected, another 'starchitect' flexing their creative muscle along the old rail line."



After the High Line opened, Max's landlord’s phone didn't stop ringing, and it was always a real-estate developer on the other end. She told me, “My landlord’s not a bad guy, but how you can you say no to offers of $30 million?” 

She also noted, “The neighborhood is so gross now. It’s all tourists coming for the High Line. People always say, ‘But wasn’t it great for you?’ The High Line has been the cause of my demise.” 

Stop in before La Lunchonette is gone -- taking its delicious lamb sausages with it.

Veterans Chair Caning

Veterans Chair Caning opened for business in New York City in 1899. Since the High Line opened and the Hudson Yards monstrosity began to rise across the street, I've worried about the modest little shop, located on the first floor of a tenement building on 10th Avenue and West 35th.

When I saw their building had sold and would soon be sandwiched between two glassy hotel towers, thanks to the Hudson Yards Effect, I figured it was time to check in.



Veterans is hidden behind construction scaffolding. They look closed, but they're open--and very busy.

I talked to Sean Bausert, the shop's fourth-generation owner/manager. When I told him I write a blog called Vanishing New York, he said, "That was almost us. We just came this close to vanishing."

He explained how the new owners wanted to knock down the building, along with its twin next door, but the tenements are full of rent-regulated tenants--and they're not budging. "They're fighters," Sean said. "Holdouts. They helped us tremendously."

By refusing to vacate, the holdouts have kept the buildings standing--and their two small businesses in business.



Veterans has managed to negotiate a few more years on their lease. After that, who knows? All you have to do is look at the luxury towers rising on all sides to know that their time here is limited.

The shop has been in this space for 20 years and was around the corner for another 30 or 40 before that. They're a neighborhood fixture, hand-weaving cane for chairs new and old, some antiques dating back to the sixteen and seventeen-hundreds.

But the neighborhood is changing at a breakneck pace, and even a venerable 116-year-old small business doesn't stand a chance. The city offers no protections. Veterans can be denied a new lease or have their rent quintupled. (Which is why we need to #SaveNYC.) At that point, they could move to Brooklyn or Queens, but would their customers follow?

As Sean put it, "Well-to-do people on the Upper East Side want nothing to do with Brooklyn or Queens. For them, crossing the bridge is like going to Jupiter."



The dramatic changes to the neighborhood "all started with the High Line," Sean told me, a sentiment he shares with many small businesspeople in west Chelsea.

"Once I saw the High Line coming in, I knew it wasn't going to be good. Over the last ten years, all the little guys are gone. The shoemakers, the bakeries. The past five years have gotten even worse."





Like Veterans, the Downtown Tire Shop next door managed to get a few more years on their lease. But that's no long-time guarantee, and they are the last of their kind in the neighborhood. All the rest have been driven out of what had once been a bustling strip that efficiently served the needs of city taxi drivers.

Now, "Cabs, cops, firemen, even regular joes," they all line up next door, because "where else are you gonna get your tires fixed?"



Across the street, another pair of tenements inexplicably remain, with a taxi supply shop on one ground floor. They're only standing because of a holdout upstairs tenant, said Sean. If not for him, they'd be gone.

Sean said, "They wanted to knock down those buildings and put up the tallest tower in North America. Right there? On 10th and 35th? Come on."



Sean sometimes thinks of going up on the High Line, after work, when the weather is nice. But he won't do it.

"I boycott the High Line," he said. "I'll never go on it. After I've seen what it's done--and what it almost did to us."


See Also:
The Hudson Yards Effect
La Lunchonette
Brownfeld Auto
Last of the Urban Horsemen
Blue-Collar High Line

Lost Wild High Line

About a decade ago, Damon Hoydysh, founder of Highline Studios, climbed up onto the old, pre-gentrified High Line and shot a whole bunch of film--of the weedy wilderness and graffiti tunnels before they were turned into artisanal food courts and tourist outlooks.

He shares it here for a first exclusive look (be sure to watch on full screen):



I asked Damon a few questions:

Q: How did you get up to the High Line to take this footage?

A: I hopped the fence at the LIRR railroad yard at the north end of the High Line. Once you cleared the fence, it was just steps to the beginnings of the High Line. It was really hot that day, and when I got to the end, I had to get down through a functioning meat processing facility on 14th street. It was just one of those moments, older guys in white butcher’s coats looking at me funny as I briskly exited via their huge, full-floor meat locker with my camera over my shoulder.

Q: What attracted you to the old High Line?

A: I was always obsessed with it. I just loved the actual structure, the rusted steel--like the biggest Richard Serra piece you've ever seen. When I first started my company, we were located on 23rd Street right above it, and that’s where the name Highline Studios came from. I've always been drawn to anything transportation-related, and even though the railway was abandoned, it felt like a lifeline that ran right through the heart of the neighborhood.

I loved it over there because the streets were empty and still felt industrial--beautiful old factories with smoke-stacks, rail yards, empty warehouses--just awesome, raw NYC. No condos. It was one of the the last vestiges of the old, gritty NYC that I had known as a kid. When I first got up on the High Line, I realized that it encapsulated all that I loved about the area, perfectly preserved, with gorgeous graffiti galleries everywhere. It was also striking how the vegetation had just naturally taken over and blended so perfectly with all the man-made, discarded elements, it was beautiful.




Q: Do you ever go up to the new High Line? How do you think it compares to the old?

A: I think they did a beautiful job for a modern park, but at the same time it's too sterile and user-friendly. We need to help preserve the street art so that it's not lost for future generations. It’s obviously a difficult balance, but I think the real history and heritage of the area has been lost, and it is pretty over-run with the crowds. It's truly the age-old debate, analog vs. digital. Analog for me any day.


Previously:
Disney World on the Hudson
Brownfeld Auto
Meatpacking Before & After 
J. Crew for the High Line
Special West Chelsea

La Lunchonette

VANISHING

When Melva Max and her husband Jean-François Fraysse moved their restaurant La Lunchonette from the Lower East Side to the remote corner of 10th Avenue and 18th Street in far west Chelsea in 1988, it was a different world. The Meatpacking District was the domain of transgender sex workers, queer sex clubs, and meatpacking plants. The High Line was a derelict rail bed covered in weeds. Gun shots cracked through the night air. Now, 26 years later, this is one of the most expensive neighborhoods in New York City, filled with luxury chain stores and luxury high rises. The sweeping change happened recently, in the blink of an eye—and it is forcing La Lunchonette to shutter.

“The neighborhood is so gross now,” Melva says. “It’s all tourists coming for the High Line. People always say, ‘But wasn’t it great for you?’ The High Line has been the cause of my demise.”

Since the pricey park opened, Melva’s landlord’s phone hasn’t stopped ringing, and it’s always a real-estate developer on the other end. “My landlord’s not a bad guy, but how you can you say no to offers of $30 million?” He’s giving her until June 2015 and then she’s out of business.

[A shorter version of this essay appears in today's Metro NY]



When the High Line opened its first phase in 2009, critics raved as neighboring small business people looked on uncertainly, hoping the park would be a rising tide to lift all boats. That didn’t happen. By the time the High Line’s second phase opened in 2011, small businesses in its shadow were dropping like flies (mostly blue-collar businesses), making room for massive, high-rise development exclusively for the global super-rich.

What most New Yorkers do not know is that the luxury mega-development scheme was baked right in to the High Line preservation plan.

In the book High Line, the park’s co-founders Joshua David and Robert Hammond explain how, in order to preserve the train trestle, the air rights above it would be sold off to developers to build a new neighborhood filled with soaring towers. David recalls saying to Hammond at the time, “If the result of doing the High Line is that you end up with all these tall buildings that you wouldn’t have had otherwise, I don’t want to be a part of it.” Gradually, however, David came around--“my perspective changed,” he wrote. As Joseph Rose, chairman of the New York City Planning Commission, told them, “The High Line had been an impediment for so many years. You and your group changed it into a catalyst.”

Still, what the High Line had catalyzed was unfathomable at the time. Glistening towers rising 20, 30, 40 stories into the air, pressed tightly together, casting cold shadows and blotting out the sky, all along the length of the park? Condos with their own personal swimming pools? Russian oligarchs stashing investment money in glittering vertical ghost towns? Who could believe this claustrophobic dystopian vision would ever be permitted?

In 2011, in a love letter to the High Line, Philip Lopate wrote, “Much of the High Line's present magic stems from its passing though an historic industrial cityscape roughly the same age as the viaduct, supplemented by private tenement backyards and the poetic grunge of taxi garages. It would make a huge difference if High Line walkers were to feel trapped in a canyon of spanking new high-rise condos, providing antlike visual entertainment for one’s financial betters lolling on balconies.”

That vision has come true—and more so every day, now that the High Line’s final phase has opened, a ribbon wrapping a bow around what will be the Hudson Yards billionaire city within a city. The poetic grunge has gone with the exiled taxi garages. And the tenements, like the one containing La Lunchonette, have been pulverized to dust as new towers rise in every remaining open space.



“People aren’t going to like me for saying this,” Melva says, “but it feels like Disneyland around here now. Everyone’s fighting the crowd to get to the next ride. People on the High Line look like lemmings, like they’re walking on a treadmill. They’re not even looking at the plants. They should sell t-shirts up there that say, ‘I Did the High Line.’”

But shouldn’t tourists be good for the local economy? Melva explains that, even though there’s a High Line staircase right outside her building, most tourists don’t come down.

“They get off their big tour bus down at Gansevoort, walk to the end of the High Line, and then the bus picks them up again. Most of them never get off the High Line.”

Those who do venture down the stairs aren’t interested in eating a meal. They’re interested in Melva’s bathroom. “People come down to use my toilet. I get 20 – 30 people a day who just want to use my toilet.” She lets pregnant women, elderly people, and children use her bathroom; the rest she turns away. “They yell at me! Like it’s my job to provide them with a toilet.”



Melva is a warm and generous person. She calls all her customers “Honey” and touches them gently on the shoulder as she quietly glides up to ask if they need anything else, more water, another glass of wine. She makes you feel welcome and well cared for. A reviewer at New York magazine once said that walking into La Lunchonette is “like having someone put two warm hands on your cheeks.” Those are Melva’s hands.

But she’s also angry. Her anger at the High Line, the tourists, and the hyper-gentrification that has decimated Chelsea is shared by many New Yorkers, people who are tired of their neighborhoods changing into pleasure-domes for the rich, amusement parks for tourists, Anywhere USA’s filled with suburban chain stores.

Still, Melva says, "I love the High Line," specifically the views, the sunsets, and the air, all things that are being destroyed by overdevelopment. Even the rich are starting to complain, she says, upset about tourist buses idling in front of their condos, belching black exhaust fumes into the air. Even the rich are talking of leaving.

“What people don’t understand,” Melva explains, “is that it could have been a nice park. The zoning could’ve stayed so it didn’t attract all this grotesque development. It could have been done in a more creative way. And I’d still have my business.”

She adds, “The High Line was a Trojan horse for the real-estate people. All that glitters is not gold.”



Back in 2005, with Dan Doctoroff and Amanda Burden leading the charge, and with support from the Friends of the High Line, the Bloomberg Administration rezoned several blocks of West Chelsea--all “with the High Line at its center,” recalled Hammond in High Line.

In the city’s zoning resolution, they wrote out the explicit purposes of creating this special district. Aside from encouraging development and promoting the “most desirable” use of land (already in use), one purpose was “to facilitate the restoration and reuse of the High Line” as a public space, through, in part, “High Line improvement bonuses and the transfer of development rights from the High Line Transfer Corridor.” Bonuses along the corridor meant that if a luxury developer provided improvements to the High Line itself, that developer would be given permission to build their condo towers even bigger. And they did.

Another purpose of the West Chelsea rezoning, according to the city’s resolution, was to “create and provide a transition to the Hudson Yards area to the north.” In essence, Special West Chelsea was zoned to provide a link between the glamorous Meatpacking District below and the glittering new neighborhood above, all with the High Line running through, like a conveyor belt ferrying tourists and money up and down. To the developers of Hudson Yards, Bloomberg gave millions of dollars in tax breaks, including approximately $510 million to the Related Companies.

On their marketing materials, Related calls Hudson Yards “The New Heart of New York.”



I ask Melva how she might respond to charges that her restaurant helped usher in gentrification back in 1988. She says, “I have to concede that the galleries came, in part, because we were here. But our prices have always been fair, and our clientele is not all rich people. It’s a middle-class place, but there’s no room left for the middle class here. It’s a matter of degrees.” We talk about gentrification versus hyper-gentrification, how today’s changes are being created by the city government in collusion with corporations.

The catastrophically rising cost of Chelsea has pushed many of La Lunchonette’s regulars out of the neighborhood. And for the newcomers who fetishize the flashy and new, La Lunchonette’s “low-key” and “divey charm,” as Zagat puts it, is not their cup of tea.

It’s really too bad because dining at La Lunchonette is an absolute pleasure—and a rare experience. The music is soft--Miles Davis, Edith Piaf--and the rooms are cozy. The food is good—I had the lamb sausages and carrot-pumpkin soup. And then there are Melva’s warm hands and her kind voice asking, “How’re you doin’ Honey?” as she refills your glass. In a city increasingly populated with iZombies, at La Lunchonette you feel like you’ve rejoined humanity, and it feels good.

Melva hopes that by letting her customers know about the closure well ahead of time, they’ll have the chance to come say goodbye and enjoy a last meal. She hopes more people will try La Lunchonette, so she can close next spring without too much debt. She doesn’t know what she’ll do next. With crippling taxes and a draconian Health Department levying Kafkaesque citations and fines, the city makes it very hard to run a small restaurant.

“This place has been my whole life,” Melva says. “I didn’t think it would end like this. This is not the New York that I love. All my customers say the same thing. And no one’s doing anything about it.”



Previously:
Disney World on the Hudson
Brownfeld Auto
Meatpacking Before & After 
J. Crew for the High Line
Special West Chelsea

Metamorphosis: Meatpacking

Brian Rose's book Metamorphosis: Meatpacking 1985 & 2013 is about to come off the presses. It features incredible photos of the meatpacking district before and after hyper-gentrification.



Some of those shots were first featured on this blog in 2013, and I got the chance to write the foreword for the book. I recommend it to anyone interested in the city's transformation during the Bloomberg years.

Brian's photographs will appear in a show at Dillon Gallery, from July 15 - August 15, with an opening and book launch party tomorrow, July 15. Don't miss it.

Rawhide & Folsom East

After being forced to close in March 2013, after 34 years in business, the Rawhide bar was set to become a California pizza chain. That didn't happen and the space remains empty to this day.



Recently, one of the front shutters was opened. I peeked inside. It isn't pretty.



Meanwhile, Folsom Street East was a success this past Sunday, moved to West 27th Street after being pushed off its long-time home of West 28th by: condo owners, the community board, the High Line, more rising condos.

Kinksters and queers came out in their full leather and latex regalia, the street was packed, and the music was fierce (Michael Tee and the Vanities are a must-see). The fair felt a bit tame, however, compared to years past. It was more easy-going somehow, and less dirty, less edgy, with what seemed like fewer flogging and spanking demonstrations and, regrettably, no ass-pie eating contest. Unless I somehow missed it. It also seemed shorter than in years past.

I wonder if these were concessions to the neighbors, all those luxury condos and hotels that just moved in about a minute ago.



A Jesus freak stood again among the gawking tourists on the High Line, holding up his "SIN" sign, and glossy blondes moved through the fair to get to their booze brunch at one of the luxe hotels on the block. But otherwise, the fair went unmolested, and remained on its best behavior.

Hopefully, the new neighbors won't be offended and will permit Folsom back in the future.



Previously:
Rawhide
Inside the Rawhide
Rawhide Goodbye
Rawhide Gets Chained
Rawhide: Still Empty

Folsom Vanished
Folsom East and the Eagle
Folsom Under High Line
Eagle Under Siege

Wartella's Strip Show

Award-winning Village Voice cartoonist M. Wartella has just published a book of his work, Wartella's Strip Show. I picked one up recently at the Comic Arts Brooklyn fest and was impressed, especially by his giddily incendiary "Runnin Scared" pieces, many of which chronicle moments of extreme gentrification in the city.

You'll be able to find the book in stores January 14. Until then, you can view an excerpt here and buy it online here--or get a signed edition on ebay.

I asked Wartella a few questions about his work.



What made you decide to publish a collection of your work and why now?

I needed to unload all this crap! I've been cartooning professionally since I was ten years old, so that's 25 years worth of printed matter that was filling my closets. It was time to set it all free and the amazing guys at Burger Records, an awesome little record label outta L.A., they believed in it and made it happen!

I'm most interested in your Runnin Scared cartoons, since they deal so much with gentrification in the city. They have a busy, jam-packed quality, such a departure from your previous work. How did you decide to go with that style for the themes of Runnin Scared?

I just wanted to do something different! I talk about this a little bit in the book, I was inspired mostly by super-old-school political cartoons like Charles Nast or the original Puck. Most cartoonists nowadays are doing either topical 4-panel strips (like Sutton, Sorensen, or Rall) or those obnoxious one-panel political cartoons like you read in USAtoday or something. But those are drawn so simply, I wanted to draw a complex cartoon with no beginning, middle, or end. Something that felt like a real New York street scene! I even based the drawings on how the locations actually looked at the time, right down to the street signs and characters I saw. Those are real New York Freaks in there!


"Bowery Booms: Whole Foods Grand Opening on the Bowery"


Detail: "There goes the neighborhood!"

Cartoons like Bowery Booms and others are amazing, fully loaded snapshots of moments in time when certain neighborhoods--the Bowery, the High Line--went over the edge into hypergentrification. What are your feelings about what happened to those neighborhoods at that time?

Well, gentrification is a double-edged sword. We all love the gritty city we first fell in love with. But change is inevitable. It's part of life. Some of the conveniences improve a neighborhood, but we definitely don't need more 7-11s. That's SO un-New York!!! Yeccch!

In many of the Runnin Scared cartoons, you've got an old New York character, usually down and out, a bum, wino, or bag lady, sort of caught surprised in the middle of it all. I wondered if that person represented some aspect of yourself?

Yeah, I think you're honing in on something. I do imagine myself as some of the characters. Or I did when I drew them, just watching the scene unfold, brown-bagging it from the sidelines!


"The Great Rock N Roll Swindle: The Gentrification of the High Line Area"


Detail: Lou dreams of luxury

In the Great Rock N Roll Swindle, you depicted Lou Reed as an aged sell-out dreaming of Starbucks and Chanel. Did this represent your feelings about him at the time, or a vision of the future?

A little of both, actually. I felt really bad about that cartoon after I drew it because it really painted Lou as a sell out. I decided after that not to draw mean cartoons ever again. Ha-ha... At the time, we didn't really know what the HighLine Park was going to be like yet, and I kind of feared it might be like an outdoor Chelsea Market. But the HighLine turned out really amazing... I love it! I actually ran into Lou Reed early on during Occupy Wall Street in Zucotti Park, and I chatted with him a bit. He said he saw the cartoon and thought it was funny. He was actually a really nice guy, very loving, beautiful energy.


"Bowery Booms II: Transformation of the Bowery"


Detail: Iggy gets a deal from John Varvatos

The Runnin Scared series is over, but do you ever think of doing more of them? What neighborhoods or scenes do you think deserve the Runnin Scared treatment today?

Well, the series isn't *totally* over, but we're not doing them regularly anymore either. I just haven't had time. But I'm still a VOICE contributor off and on, and I keep a list of potential cartoons in the back of my mind so a never know! There are tons of "Only In New York" scenes constantly unfolding. I already mentioned the Occupy movement, and I could do a whole book just on that. I was actually there on the very first day. What a trip, but no news outlets would cover it for over a month! Can you believe that?

Other scenes I'd love to draw: those kids who dance in the L train subway cars and swing on the poles and shit. They're insane, but great! The annual SantaCon is ripe for the picking, and I remember its origins over a decade ago as the original "Santarchy."

It's New York--there's ALWAYS something interesting going on. That's why I love it.