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.

Troll Museum Resurrection

In June, I reported on the eviction of Reverend Jen and her Troll Museum. Now she will be resurrecting the museum, for only a short time, in a community art space called Chinatown Soup.


photo by Mr. E

She writes on the Facebook invite: "For years the LES Troll Museum made many people happy, made them feel like, maybe, the LES hadn't turned into a real-estate shitshow bedroom community for the rich."

The event will run for one week, opening tonight, August 16 at 7:00pm, at 16 Orchard Street.

"Expect a killer opening, weird performances, drawings, paintings, plays, a troll hair-dressing station, a troll-coloring book station, shit that's for sale, a 'Troll Parade' and informative monologues about the importance of Troll Commerce."

Muste Gets Cruzed

The A.J. Muste building, at 339 Lafayette at Bleecker Street, has been completely covered from head to foot in green plywood. This weekend, the plywood was plastered with the apparently anti-Trump slogan Ted Cruz uttered at the Republican National Convention: "Vote Your Conscience!"

This is courtesy of luxury real-estate developer RFR.



Until recently, this building was known as "The Peace Pentagon." It was home to several activist and social justice groups, including The War Resisters League, Granny Peace Brigade, Global Revolution, Paper Tiger TV, and The Socialist Party.

The Muste Institute originally bought the building in 1978, providing affordable space for these and many other groups. Unable to afford expensive repairs, they sold it in 2015 for over $20 million, and moved to Canal Street, bringing their tenants with them. A documentary is in the works about the move.


August 2015

I always liked this low brick building, seeing its windows full of social justice slogans, especially as the neighborhoods around it changed so radically. It was a holdout, and we need holdouts. And we need holdouts that makes themselves--and their resistance--visible.

This is not quite the same thing.

Anyway, soon it will be demolished and replaced with (most likely) another luxury condo box with luxury chain stores on the bottom.

70 Hester Street

Casimir Nozkowski has made a lovely short film about life at 70 Hester Street, a building that was once a synagogue, a whiskey still, and a raincoat factory before it became a home and a studio for Nozkowski's artist parents in the 1960s.

It was recently sold and re-sold for millions and the Nozkowskis were forced to leave.

You can watch the entire film here and on Vimeo. I chatted with Casimir about old buildings in the city.


70 Hester Street from Casimir Nozkowski on Vimeo.

Q: What is the value of old buildings to the city and its people?

A: In my opinion, having grown up in a 130-year-old (plus) building, there is an enormous value to maintaining spaces constructed in long-ago eras or event recent eras. The personalities of cities are going to change over time, of course, and lots of new buildings and new spaces will be built. But being able to see and feel a connection to the past is a reminder that we occupy land that many souls have lived and breathed on.

I think seeing an older building is a way to inspire more empathy, to know that you're part of a continuum of people who have made the city into what it is. I know growing up at 70 Hester Street, I often thought about the congregants and factory workers and other residents of the building who had all left their marks on the infrastructure. I'm thinking of the little bits of prayer book that would just kind of appear in the corner, or fixtures that had once shone light on the shower curtains and raincoats that were produced there, or a sliding door with a peephole that had guarded the whiskey still running during prohibition. I was incredibly lucky to be able to see all those marks, and I think it made me more aware of the history we all share and that we're all a part of together.

Also it might just be my personal bias, or an oversimplification, but a lot of the new buildings have a lot less personality and detail than the old buildings I'm used to seeing on the Lower East Side. Is it me or all the new ones all about glass and steel and using a lot of the same silver, blue, shiny color palettes? The old buildings have more character.

Q: Your family home has a rare beauty that today seems only accessible to the very wealthy. (I'm going to assume that your family was not wealthy--I may be wrong about that.) What are your thoughts on what happens when only the rich of a city are permitted to live in beautiful, open, well-lighted spaces?

A: My parents moved into 70 Hester right out of college (they went to Cooper Union) and cleaned it out in exchange for a tidy rent of $100 a month in 1967. They weren't wealthy and were looking for space to pursue their art. Finding something that beautiful was a bonus. Once they cleaned it out I think that beauty became something that inspired them and may have informed the work they made (that's just my speculation though).

I think it's a shame when beautiful spaces are only available to the wealthy. But I guess I think it's a shame when anything is ONLY available to the wealthy.

When my parents moved into 70 Hester Street in the 60s, the Lower East Side was a kind of tough neighborhood. So it didn't matter how beautiful or well-lit a space was, there weren't any rich people (not the ones we're talking about) who were coming down to the neighborhood anyway. But then, of course, gentrification happens and neighborhoods get safer, relatively speaking, and more perks and franchises move in, and people with money scoop up all the beautiful, well-lit spaces and think they've discovered them.

I don't know what the policy looks like--is it rent control? Is it regulations that temper buying or flipping properties strictly for investment purposes? It's some combination of that, which we need, so that the people who want to be inspired, want space, want to live in a building with a shared, long history don't always have to have absurd means to do so.

My parents did not move into 70 Hester as any kind of financial investment. They wanted to have a place to work and live that didn't bankrupt them. That seems reasonable to me and I'd certainly prefer a city where a maximum number of people could choose where they live for similar reasons.



Q: So, the top 2 floors, where your family lived, is now renting to a gallery for $14,500 per month? I have to ask that very New York question: what was the rent before that?

A: Actually I think the building's owners couldn't find someone who would pay that $14K rent (I guess there are some limits to rent even on the LES?) and they sold the building again just this year for $5.9 million I believe (up from $3.5 million in 2012!).

Like I mentioned above, when my parents moved in, the rent was $100 a month. That was 1967. Their landlady and then her daughter kept the rent very low for many years. I think when my parents moved out in 2012, the rent was $1,200 or $1,400 a month. I'm not positive, but it was something well below market.

My parents were always very conscious of the deal that they were getting and put a fair amount of their own money and time into building upkeep (including literally building walls and making it at all habitable when they moved in). And the same goes for the family that lived below us on the first floor and the artists who worked in the studio below that. Everyone contributed in making the building livable.

But no one has to shed any tears for us. My parents and I had a lucky run in a space like this for many years at a great rent. It came to an end very abruptly, but I think we all feel very grateful for getting to live and work in a building like this for 45 years. That ability to live in one place--especially a place as special as 70 Hester Street--for so long feels more and more impossible in New York City every year.

Troll Museum and Reverend Jen

VANISHING

Legendary Lower East Side performance artist, poet, Elf Girl, and curator of the Troll Museum, Reverend Jen Miller has been evicted from her apartment, which also doubles as the museum.

In recent days, a city marshal entered Miller's apartment, where she was dressed in only a towel from the shower, and reportedly told Jen he wished he had a gun to deal with her. Video of the event has been posted to Facebook.

Misrahi Realty is her landlord. Sion Misrahi has had a major hand in changing the culture--and the residents, and the rents--of the Lower East Side. As he told the Times in 2007, "We decided to rent to bars and restaurants who would bring in the hipsters and change the neighborhood."


photo by Mr. E

Today, from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, the Troll Museum will be dismantled. 

All are invited to help "pack up one of the last magical places left in this fucking greedy city," in the words of the invitation.


photo by Mr. E

Reverend Jen shares a press release on her Facebook page in which she explains her case and adds:

"The Lower East Side used to be a great neighborhood but has now turned into the greediest shitshow on earth. The Troll Museum was one of the final holdouts of bohemian culture. Now is your chance to get pictures of Downtown's little gems. It's been featured on television all over the world, in magazines and newspapers. But if everything is not removed by 4 PM today, it will be destroyed. So, come get it and help bohemia kiss the Lower East Side Goodbye."

She is also asking for any legal help. You can contact her via email at: revjen12@yahoo.com

Missing Mural

Peter Missing is at work on a new mural at the First Street Green Art Park -- a giant, golden, cyclopean version of his infamous upside-down martini glass, a.k.a. "The Party's Over," with scenes of toppling buildings and flowers.



On his Instagram page, he writes:

"We have started a new mural at Houston and 2nd Ave Peter Missing and Cyril Mazard at Art Park, NYC ... Happy to be back in the ghostland and my hood of the Lower East Side. Stop by over the next week and spin the art and politics around and grab me a mud coffee with milk and sugar from 1st and 1st - the nexus of the universe. See you soon and bring good vibes."



To which he adds, "Missing Foundation performance in front of mural May 21, 2016."

Mark your calendars. And let's hope the performance will include witches, yuppies, and mysterious satanic rituals. Just like in the old days.

(h/t to Alex)

Celebrating Streit's

The Streit's matzo factory, on the Lower East Side since 1915, is scheduled for demolition, ironically, the week of Passover.

At the same time, Michael Levine's "Streit’s Matzo and the American Dream” will have its premiere at Film Forum from April 20 - 26.

To mark the occasions, Art on A Gallery will feature an exhibit on Streit's, opening later this week.



At the gallery, Michael will be showing photographs from the company's history, along with parts of the factory's antique machinery, which has been in storage since Streit's shuttered last year and moved out of town.

The stippler will be there--that machine that presses the little holes into the matzo--along with the cutting machine and some pieces of the Carnegie Steel rails that guided the swinging baskets of matzo through the factory.



Along with archival prints from history, you'll find the photographs of Joseph O. Holmes, who captured the last days of the Rivington factory, along with a film from the 1940s.


photo by Joseph O. Holmes

As an added treat, artist Judi Harvest will be showing her gold-leafed matzos. She's been gilding the unleavened bread since 2000, but for this show she is using rare pink gold leaf, to match the color on the classic Streit's Passover box.

She will assemble an entire wall of pink gold matzos. They will all be Streit's.


pink gold-leaf matzo by Judi Harvest

The opening of the gallery show is this Thursday, April 14, from 8:00 - 10:00 pm at 24 Ave A. Members of the Streit family will be present, along with some of the factory workers, the artists, and the filmmaker. The event will be both celebration and memorial, a piece of Lower East Side history encapsulated. For a little while.

When news first broke of the closure in 2008, I visited the factory, talked with one of the owners, and took a tour. We said our goodbyes. And then the winds shifted. Streit's was staying. As shown in Levine's poignant film, the family had the contract and a million-dollar check on their desk, but could not bear to sign it. Still, it was only a matter of time. A closure announcement would come again.

I have not been by the factory since it closed. I used to love to watch the men pull the matzo from the oven. Sometimes, I'd get a taste, hot and fresh. During their final Passover week, I bought a pink box of matzos. I have not opened them. The label says, "Baked with Pride, Lower East Side, New York City." And the address on the side is Rivington Street. I'll probably never open them.

The factory will be replaced with luxury condos. Nothing else is possible.

Kossar's Scoops

Kossar's Bialys, under new ownership, got a makeover a couple months ago. So I went by to check it out.

Founded in 1936, it's still on Grand Street and it's still called Kossar's. So there's that. The interior used to be unfussy, haphazard, almost industrial. I liked it that way.

Here's what it used to look like:



(Note the lack of cute sandwich names on the menu board.)



Now the place is shiny and new. With cute sandwich names. Which is the way everything seems to go.

Here's what it looks like now:



The new place is basically inoffensive. Nothing to be excited about and nothing, really, to complain about either.

Except.

The menu offers two special services: "YES," it reads, "WE TOAST AND SCOOP!"



This is not a message to New Yorkers.

This is a message to tourists and to the extended-stay tourists known as recent transplants who don't ever intend to become New Yorkers. Because while some New Yorkers might toast their fresh bagels when putting butter on them, scooping is a definite no-no. A shonda, you might say.

Here's Gothamist's take on scooping: "Did you ask for the dough to be scooped out from your bagel? Really? You demanded that the soul of your bagel be removed? Well, neither toasting nor untoasted freshness can save you. Please leave bagels alone forever. We have nothing more to say to you."

And the Post agrees, saying "Bagel scoopers are ruining NYC." In addition, it's wasteful.

Also, that exclamation point? Totally for the tourists.

Adam Purple Burial & Memorial

Earlier this month, Adam Purple, Lower East Side artist, activist, and creator of the Garden of Eden, died of a heart attack while riding his bike across the Williamburg Bridge. Since then, friends have been working hard to get him buried according to his wishes. Finances, however, are an issue.

The Adam Purple Burial and Memorial Fund is collecting donations to cover Purple's burial at the Greensprings Natural Burial Preserve in New York's Finger Lakes region, along with a memorial on the Lower East Side.

From the page: "He spent his life as an activist for sustainability, living sustainably himself. As such, he did not spend his life accumulating assets. It is up to us, his friends and those whose lives he enriched, to ensure that he has the final resting place that he wanted and believed in. We would also like to erect a permanent memorial on the Lower East Side where people can meditate, congregate, and remember Adam and what he stood for. On behalf of Adam, thank you for your generosity."

Please visit Give Forward to donate.


Adam Purple, by Harvey Wang

In addition, tomorrow from 4:00 - 8:00 p.m. at the LaPlaza Cultural Community Garden at Avenue C and East 9th Street, a memorial service will be held for Purple. It is open to the public.

Elizabeth St. Garden

An affordable housing project may be getting built on uber-luxurified Elizabeth Street. However, its construction could mean the demolition of the Elizabeth Street Garden. Neighbors have been fighting to protect this space--with a Friends of the Elizabeth Street Garden website that provides all the details and info on action you can take.

Now actor Gabriel Byrne offers his support in a new video by Simon J. Heath.



Byrne has a place on Elizabeth--he bought a $3 million condo at the newly constructed 211 Elizabeth in 2010.

The garden has been here since 1991. It's the place where the Elizabeth Street Gallery keeps its sculptures--antique angels, lions, gargoyles. Locked for many years, it opened to the public some time ago, after the gallery took over the space long occupied by La Rosa & Sons Bakery, back when "Nolita" was still considered Little Italy.

Watch the video here, in which Byrne quotes W.B. Yeats:



You can weigh in on the issue at the LMDC Hearing this Thursday, Sept. 17, 4:30 – 7 p.m., at the Borough of Manhattan Community College, Fiterman Hall, 245 Greenwich St., 13th Floor.

Ices of the LES

A summer re-run from 2011: A guide to ices of the Lower East Side. Know your piragueros.



Click for the story.

#SaveNYC Concert

This Saturday, May 2, #SaveNYC is sponsoring a rally concert/performance at Arlene's Grocery.

Organized by Blazes, "Brooklyn's musical superhero," the show will include downtown legends like Penny Arcade and DeeDee Luxe, along with several others. Ann McDermott from #SaveNYC will be there to speak about our mission.

Admission is $5, with the money going to the performers and the space. The first 20 people through the door get a free #SaveNYC t-shirt.

For more info, and to purchase tickets, visit Arlene's Grocery.


Blazes at the Small Biz Crawl

Jane's Walk on the Bowery

This weekend, May 2 and 3, come downtown for a Jane's Walk about Hyper-Gentrification and Appropriation on the Bowery. I organized and wrote the walk, while Kyle Supley from #SaveNYC will be your knowledgeable and charismatic guide.



Jane's Walk is a global "movement of free, citizen-led walking tours inspired by Jane Jacobs." In New York City, the walks are sponsored by the Municipal Arts Society.

Visit the site for more on the Bowery walk and many others. Here's a description:

For over a century, the Bowery’s character had been of the countercultural sort. Since the late 1800s it had been the sleazy territory of outsiders—punks, artists, bums, queers, and drop-outs, drag queens, prostitutes, tattoo artists, and con men. It was a haven for homosexuals when it was illegal and unsafe to be gay. Groundbreaking artists, including Mark Rothko, moved to the Bowery in the 1950s. More artists arrived through the 1960s, 70s, and 80s, including Jean-Michel Basquiat and Robert Mapplethorpe. The music scene at CBGB’s gave birth to punk rock. Then, in the 1990s, everything began to change.

Today, the Bowery, once synonymous with Skid Row, has become a luxury brand that appropriates its gritty past, sanitizes it, and then sells it for a sky-high price. On this walk, organized by Jeremiah Moss of Vanishing New York and #SaveNYC, and guided by preservationist Kyle Supley, participants will tour the main sites of the Bowery’s massive transformation and engage in a discussion about hyper-gentrification and appropriation. If time allows, participants will also loop back to Houston Street via Rivington and Essex for a look at how hyper-gentrification has transformed what is now known as “Hell Square.”

Amato & Planet Ludlow

Last week, I posted a film about the 2B art space by Corey Shaff. But that's not all he's got in his oeuvre.

Corey made another film on the Lower East Side in 1995, this one inside the Amato Opera House, a beloved old favorite of mine. The Amato sadly announced its closure in 2009, after 60 years of making music. The building was sold. It remains empty and abandoned today.

Corey's film is a beautiful look at a lost piece of the old Bowery--and the sort of people who used to make it such a vibrant and unique place.


AMAT\'/; Opera on the Bowery from Corey Shaff on Vimeo.

He also made a short documentary for PBS called "Planet Ludlow," about the Ludlow Street scene in 1995, just as the neighborhood was gentrifying with artists, and before it was hyper-gentrified by drunk students and the super-rich.


Planet Ludlow from Corey Shaff on Vimeo.

Remarkably, in this film, Corey captured extremely rare footage of Litzkowitz the pillow man, located one door south of Max Fish.



Digression: On the other side of the Max Fish was Joseph Yavarkovsky's paper supply, in business since 1898. That storefront does not appear in the film, but here's what it looked like:

2B

Stefanie Lindahl sends in a rare video made by her husband, Corey Shaff, of art gallery space 2B. It occupied an abandoned gas station on Avenue B and 2nd from 1986 - 1995, when it was evicted to make way for a condo building with a Duane Reade.



Stefanie writes, "2B was a place to hang out and make things. The video was a thing made by Corey as he hung out there at a time that simply happened to coincide with the extinction/extinguishment of the place. Parnassus Lost!

2B was easy to access via a large gate on Avenue B but foreboding enough, evidently, to keep most people who ultimately did not get to experience the casual, relaxed buzz of creativity inside. It was also a place for the 'crusties' of the East Village early nineties to apprentice in smithing, among other things. Although the place seemed to be an abandoned gas station, rent was paid. It nonetheless felt like a place for a squatting guild of artisans. It was homelessly homey. It was one Manhattan holdout for those who had already started forming the artistic diaspora to Williamsburg."


2B from Corey Shaff on Vimeo.

"Besides previously working with the photographer Robert Frank, another East Village denizen, Corey also chronicled a slice of Ludlow Street of that era, as well as the defunct Amato Opera House on the Bowery for PBS. I remember how Corey wanted to juxtapose the Bowery 'bums' with the goings on within the opera house, but PBS nixed the idea as 'too scary,' so he had to cut out the footage.

2B was just such a 'scary' unedited piece of the city that got nixed by the ensuing hyper-gentrification that you so often allude to. Another place of authenticity deemed dangerous and unprofitable in the growing inauthenticity of the city."

Walter Kuhr & Main Squeeze

Walter Kuhr's Main Squeeze accordion shop opened on the Lower East Side in 1996. Sadly, we have gotten word that Walter died recently, and the shop will be closing after next weekend.



Walter's good friend Marianne DeMarco writes:

"I've got some devastating news: Main Squeeze Accordions on 19 Essex Street for two decades, will be closing after next weekend. It might very well be the last of 'Old Essex.' When it opened it was sandwiched between a yarmulke shop and 'Mama's Kosher Deli.'

The Lower East Side original and all-around amazing person Walter Kuhr passed away on Friday after fighting lymphoma for 7 years. His way-more-packed-than-standing-room-only memorial was Wednesday. But even without Walter's leaving us, Main Squeeze would have to close, as the landlady chose not to renew the lease.

Here's where it's different from most 'lost the lease' stories. The landlady (and her partners) have been absolutely astonishingly wonderful. They've been wonderful to Walter, and he to them, because over the years he had become a friend. It was impossible not to become Walter's friend once you met him.

I've read Vanishing NY for a while now, but I never thought I'd have to write in about Main Squeeze. I know everyone says that their favorite bar 'was a real community.' But ask around and folks will tell you the same thing. Main Squeeze was the real deal.

We're having a 'stoop sale' next Saturday and Sunday [1/17 & 1/18], more to give people a chance to pick up something to remember the shop by, than to just to make some bucks."


Paris Review

The New York Times has a detailed obit today for Mr. Kuhr, who "was for decades an evangelist of the instrument, as a performer, bandleader and owner of the Main Squeeze a shop on the Lower East Side that he founded, in the words of its website, to meet 'all your accordion needs.'"

When the shop first opened, the Times did a story on it, writing:

"It's been a while since a new accordion store has opened. The city's only other one, Accordion-O-Rama, has been in business for decades. But as a new crop of musicians began working the bellows over the last decade, the instrument has shed some of its 'Beer Barrel Polka' image. And the Lower East Side is home to old and new practitioners alike: the older Jews and Italians who play klezmer and Neapolitan love songs, and the younger accordionists who play world beat and avant-garde jazz at bars and nightclubs like the Knitting Factory."

At the time, Essex Street was filled with Judaica shops. There are none left today. In the span of only two or three years, all of the Judaica shops were pushed out, replaced by trendy coffee shops and juice bars. I suppose the same fate awaits Main Squeeze.

If you're looking for accordions, sales or repairs, try Alex Carozza's on what's left of 48th Street's Music Row.

Sturgeon Queens

The Sturgeon Queens, a documentary about Russ & Daughters, premieres tonight on Channel 13. Don't miss it. In the meantime, a Q&A with director Julie Cohen.



Q: What inspired you to make this film?

A: In 2008 I made a film for channel 13 called "The Jews of New York" of which Russ & Daughters was one of six segments. For that program I interviewed Anne & Hattie, two of the three "daughters" for whom the store was named. At the time of our interview they were 88 and 95. They had style, great, poignant stories to tell, and the comic timing of borscht belt entertainers. It also didn't hurt that they had lovely singing voices and reminded me of my own grandmothers. I'd always wanted to go back and make a film just about Russ & Daughters using more of that amazing 2-hour interview. With the store's 100th anniversary in 2014, I knew this was the year for it.

Q: What was your favorite part of making the film?

A: That's a tie: A) the day I spent with Anne & Hattie at their condo complex in Florida hearing what it was like to work 12-hour days in an unheated store pulling herring from barrels for demanding customers. And B) the day we recorded our narration. Ordinarily, recording voiceovers is a pretty boring, uneventful part of the process. But for this film our narrators were 6 longtime Russ & Daughters customers in their 70s, 80s and 90s. These aren't professional actors, so I was really blown away by the feeling they put into the reading. And the fact that they didn't always read the script exactly as I'd written it led to some of the funniest moments of that day, and ultimately of the completed film.


the narrators

Q: How has Russ & Daughters played an important role in the neighborhood?

A: The great thing about R & D is that they appeal to both elements that make the Lower East Side what it is: the older Jews who remember childhood trips to the neighborhood with their parents and grandparents, and the young, often tattooed hipsters who've decided, for whatever reason, that lox is cool. For the most part these two groups stick to their own territories. Russ & Daughters is the big exception, where the hip and the haimish converge. There's something pretty awesome about that.

Q: What's your favorite item on the menu?

A: I'd vote for the pickled herring in cream sauce. This is not the fanciest item, but the combination of that unique soft fish with the slightly sweet sour cream sauce and the crisp onions reminds me of childhood breakfasts with my grandparents, only better.

Q: How do you like the new R&D restaurant?

A: Love it. There are purists who believe that standing and waiting on the counter line at the store is an essential part of the Russ & Daughters experience. But I'm definitely not such a purist. To me, the cafe experience is more fun. I love sitting in a big comfortable booth to enjoy my smoked fish. And I'm an especially big fan of the new menu items: the borscht is incredible, the smoked fish salads make a great, healthy meal, and do not even get me started on the halvah ice cream. I have a serious sweet tooth and I'd put it up against any dessert at any restaurant in NYC.


The film will air on WNET/13 Dec 2 at 10 pm and on WLIW/21 Dec 3 at 7:30 pm. It is expected to air on PBS stations outside New York sometime in mid-2015.

Watch the trailer here

Globe Slicers

As the Bowery continues its radical shift from Skid Row, restaurant supply, and lamps to stratospheric luxury, I am always relieved to walk by and see Globe Slicers still in business.

It's been in business since 1947.



Chances are, unless you run a deli, you're never going to need a slicer. But the place is worth a peek, if only for its windows.



They are cluttered with a collection of random items--baseball photos, transistor radios, dolls, books that warn of "Genocide Emergency TODAY."



There's a large and eerie doll dressed in a pith helmet and what looks like a Boy Scout uniform, a button pinned to its arm that says STOP IRAN.



The interior of the shop is equally fascinating, a cacophony of slicers, boxes, papers, the detritus of 67 years, and a slice (sorry) of the old Bowery, before everything was sleek and clean, sterilized for the comfort of newcomers.

Essex Street Judaica

Recently, Tablet magazine reported on the struggles of West Side Judaica, an 80-year-old shop swamped by the Upper West Side's rising rents and increase in chain stores.

It makes me wonder what I sometimes wonder: What happened to the Jewish supply stores of Essex Street? I keep walking down there, trying to find them--to find just one of them--but they all vanished, and in just a few years.


All photos taken in 2007--all have since vanished

It seems impossible. For decades, the street between Grand and Canal was full of them. Their signs swung out over the sidewalk, announcing Sefer Torahs, Mezuzos, Tallises, Bar Mitzvah Sets.



Customers roamed the shops, checking out the wares, buying everyday things and important items for special occasions.



Walking by, even in the late 2000s, you felt like you were in a Berenice Abbott photo. You know, that feeling. Especially at Zelig Blumenthal's, with the old writing painted on the window. It had been there for 60 years.

And then a big change came, all at once.



Blumenthal shuttered in 2010. The shop was gutted and given over to Cafe Grumpy, with high-priced apartments above. A neighboring shop, also 60 years old, followed in 2011.

One by one, in the span of only two or three years, all of the Judaica shops were pushed out by neighborhood changes, high rents, and pushy landlords. Deep history annihilated in an instant.



Today it's all cafes, bars, galleries. Something called "The Juicery." Everything new. Everything for the new population. I keep walking up and down, thinking I'll find one Judaica store, one sign, a lone survivor, but I haven't found one yet.

Bowery Bar Protest Signs

While watching Kevin Frech's documentary Bowery Dish, I was excited to see the following shot of 38 East 4th Street, the former tenement that stood next to Bowery Bar:



For years, I've been trying to find a photo of this window--and to find out who was behind the signs, a question that remains unanswered.

In addition to "Cooper Union: How could you do this to our neighborhood," there was also a box sign with a red blinking light inside of it. You can just barely see it in the lower left of the window here. I don't remember what it said.

A little history:

When nightclub developers Eric Goode and Serge Becker opened the "grit-to-glam" celebrity hangout Bowery Bar on the site of an old gas station in 1994, the locals got restless. The Times reported that many members of the neighborhood association and community board argued “that the bar, and others they believe would open in its wake, will erode the character of the area by changing it from a haven for light industry and artists into a trendy night spot."

That year, the New Yorker reported on "a curiously medieval sight" outside Bowery Bar, when "a small crowd of Bowery denizens were peering over the courtyard wall, like serfs at the castle gates." New York magazine called the scene “an exercise in extreme cultural dissonance, evoking images of Calvin Klein and Linda Evangelista sipping Cristal on the inside as derelicts guzzle Night Train on the outside.”


the cultural dissonance continues today

In 1995 a group of artists, purportedly led by bicycle activist George Bliss, painted a trail of footprints leading to the bar, marked with slogans like "Boycott the Bowery Bar" and "Don't Party on the Poor." Bliss and other detractors argued that the bar was operating without a zoning variance, doing business on land zoned for light manufacturing, an environment conducive to artists. In the Times, Goode responded, "We're manufacturing. We're manufacturing hamburgers."

At some point, in the tenement window next to the luxe lounge’s entrance, a protesting neighbor put up the “Cooper Union, how could you do this to us?" sign. (It was the college that owned the land and had granted the lease to Bowery Bar.) The sign lasted a long while, providing a constant protest that could not go unseen by Bowery Bar and its customers.


before

But by 2007, Goode and his new partner, Sean MacPherson, would take over the protestor's tenement, call it a brownstone, and turn it into the monied hipster hotel Lafayette House.

I don’t know what became of the protester and the angry sign--or to anyone else who lived in that building. (Does anyone know?) The window where the signs once hung is now the doorway into Bowery Bar's exclusive hotel.


after