Broome Street Bar to Close

VANISHING

Reader Leonardo Urbina writes in to let us know that Kenn Reisdorff, owner of Bob & Kenn's Broome Street Bar recently passed away--and that the bar will go with him. Leonardo writes, "It will be closing after the year finishes. The lease would renew in January and one of the two daughters doesn't want to maintain it. There goes another neighborhood institution."

*Update: Mr. Riesdorff's obituary calls him "a gentlemanly fixture in the neighborhood, recognizable by his custom-made cowboy hats from a hatmaker in New Mexico, turquoise jewelry, cowboy boots and friendly demeanor."



Located in a landmarked building that might be the oldest structure in Soho, dating back to 1825, the Broome Street Bar opened in 1972.

There's been a bar here since the 1850s. According to The Historic Shops & Restaurants of New York, the stained glass windows and panels around the bar come from the time when it was a German beer hall in the 1880s. I don't know where the lion heads come from -- they're on the sign that hangs outside and they flank the bar, a pair of them above the brass rail, with signs that read, "Last Man's Chance."



In 2005, journalism student Dana Lerner visited the bar and wrote in detail about it, including its colorful history:

"According to Reisdorff, the building used to be a 'sleaze joint,' or a house of prostitution, in the early 40s. The windows in the back of the bar were covered and blocked off so that women could perform sex acts. Reisdorff described the women as having puffed-out hair, high heels and wearing little clothing as they walked past the windows to 'market' themselves to customers... Reisdorff believed the establishment to be a German restaurant in the 1920s and an Italian restaurant called The 7 Wagner Bar until he took ownership. He declined to give the name of the owner before him, because he 'was not a good man' and shot and killed a customer who was sleeping with his girlfriend. However, he was not alive long after the shooting. The brother of the deceased customer gunned down the owner right outside his bar in the late sixties. After the owner was killed, the business went bankrupt."



Under Kenn and his brother Bob, the bar became an artists' hangout--De Kooning, Oldenburg, Haring, to name a few. Said Kenn to Lerner, “I opened up for the artist community, and lived here long before the Soho we know. My customers were all kinds of artists, from sculptors and painters, to what I call pretenders."

As the neighborhood changed and became more upscale, as the galleries moved out to Chelsea and other parts of town, the artists vanished. But remnants of their presence remain, here and there, throughout the bar. And, yes, the delicious burgers are still served in pita bread.


Kenn

What happens next for this long-time survivor is anyone's guess. Soho Memory Project wrote of the place a couple years ago, saying, "the day I turn the corner onto West Broadway and find that Bob and Kenn’s has been taken over by TGI Friday’s, I’m outta here."

St. Mark's Books to E. 3rd St.

At long last, the new location of St. Mark's Bookshop has been revealed.

Co-owner Terry McCoy writes in, "The space we want to move to is at 136 East Third Street, just west of Avenue A. We've been sent a proposed lease, and we have a lawyer who has gone through it and sent comments to the landlord, who is the city, or NYCHA. There's a long way to go to signing a lease, though."



Terry says, "We're trying to raise a lot of money to be able to afford to move, and the main thrust right now is our Indiegogo campaign, which is St. Mark's on the Move. We're working on a few other fronts as well. There is a committee of concerned people who want to help called the Friends of St. Mark's Bookshop, who are all working on the issue."

Please consider giving to the bookshop's Indiegogo campaign so the East Village, and the city, can enjoy this great bookstore for years to come.


All my previous coverage of St. Mark's fight to survive:
St. Mark's Success
Michael Moore at St. Mark's
Columbia's Precedent
An Open Letter to Cooper Union
Buy A Book Weekend at St. Mark's
Xmas in September
St. Mark's Vestibule

King Glassware

On the Bowery since 1933, Max Maged & Sons' King Glassware Supplies had been in business for 81 years, selling glasses to restaurants and other customers. They closed sometime in the past month.



Over at Yelp, one reviewer wrote, "it is nice to to do business with a family business that has been operating for over 80 years. when he is no longer there, i will know he sold his building at his prices as he so rightfully deserves."

Another reviewer, Kate in Brooklyn, recalled shopping for an obscure item. She wrote of the owner, "We talked about how his family had owned the business since the depression era, with his father and grandfather running it before him. Spurred on by a tall display of Libbey glassware (which you're familiar with if you drink in most establishments that serve decent cocktails), we talked about the ridiculous changes in bar culture and the horrorshow that is an 11oz martini glass." She added, "keep this place alive as the Bowery gentrification wipes out all the family owned joints, all the places that don't look like terrariums for stockbrokers and all the places that don't offer safe haven for tourists and bulimic choco-tini drinkers."



Through the dusty windows today, the shelves are still stacked with glasses.

I never got to go inside when it was open, but I love the signage, and especially the assertion painted on the window. Not 1,000 bargains, mind you, but 1,001.

Red Sauce Juggernaut

The New York Times today mentioned this blog in their piece on "The Red Sauce Juggernaut." Writes Jeff Gordinier:

"Click to a blog like Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, though, and you may get the impression that Major Food is forcing out ancient, authentic, downtown grit (such as Rocco, the sleepy old-school restaurant whose space Carbone took over) to make room for gentrified gloss.

'Leave it alone and it’s going to go away,' Mr. Carbone said. 'You’re not going to have the Colosseum to look at if someone doesn’t fix it.'

They see their efforts as a way to preserve and elevate each restaurant space, instead of letting it vanish in a landscape dominated by generic chain stores. As Mr. Zalanick said: 'What’s it going to become? A Chase? A Duane Reade?'"

(Echoes of the "Better Than a Bank" false dichotomy.)



If you're clicking over from the Times, and want to read more, here's everything I've written on the topic of Rocco's and the vanishing of authentic, old-school red-sauce joints:

Rocco Ristorante
Rocco's Update
Torrisi on Rocco
Rocco's and Bill's
Red-Sauce Joints
Carboned
Rocco Simulacrum

Whole Foods Gowanus

The Whole Foods recently built on the toxic waste dump that is Gowanus has been cited a second time, reports Brooklyn Paper, for not fulfilling their promise to fix up the lovely landmarked Coignet Building they abut. The Coignet stands crumbling in Whole Foods' grip, a remnant of the past and maybe a thorn in the corporate grocer's side.



I went out to visit this Whole Foods after it opened, knowing well that the chain is a catalyst for change, a tool for spurring on hyper-gentrification, and that the Gowanus landscape surrounding it will soon be dramatically altered.





The mega-chain is trying very hard to look local, with sections hawking "Brooklyn Flavor," bike repair services, and a mini shop selling vinyl, both records and objects made from recycled records, by "a Brooklyn-based design and lifestyle brand."

There's even a mustachioed artisanal knife sharpener who cobbles together hand-made knives from reclaimed materials. And the "Stroller Parking" section speaks to the Brooklynite baby boom. (However, they don't call this store Whole Foods Gowanus, but Third and 3rd. What, is "Gowanus" too evocative of fecal stink?)

Still, all the signs screaming the word LOCAL can't take away the undeniable fact that Whole Foods Gowanus is utterly suburban.





Their parking lot is huge. It sprawls across what had once been a vast and wild vacant lot, apologizing for its existence by sitting under a roof of giant solar panels.



Outside, beyond the parked cars, Whole Foods has landscaped their bank of the Gowanus canal with a path. You can sit on a bench and watch the junkyard across the way, or wait for human bodies and dead dogs to go floating by.

Couples meander, hand in hand, breathing in the stink of raw sewage, a special Gowanus odor that all the fresh mulch in the world can't cover up.



On one of the garden walls--made from scruffy, graffiti-buffed stone--stands a piece of fresh graffiti, surely commissioned by the supermarket. Its hunter green color matches the branded shade of the Whole Foods logo banners just above it. With awkward diction, the "local" graffiti admonishes passersby to EAT MORE OF YOUR VEGETABLES.

The Lively Set

The Lively Set, a vintage lamp store on Bedford Street, is closing on March 31.



From a past report at DNA, it sounds like they've been closing for a year now, but somehow hung on. Now they're having an "everything must go" sale.



They've been on Bedford for nearly 20 years, but can't afford the rent hike.

Rawhide: 1 year

One year ago, the Rawhide bar was forced to close after 34 years in Chelsea.

The space went to a west coast pizza chain called Project Pie, "the Chipotle of fast-casual pizza," but that deal later fell through. The Rawhide space remains empty today.



Did Project Pie back out of the deal? Why is 212 8th Avenue, a prime High Line-adjacent property, still empty? Reader Chris speculates, "I wonder if it has anything to do with the fact that that space is on the same block with two gay sex stores that are crawling with outer borough hustlers."

Indeed, neighbors have tried to shut down Rainbow Station and The Blue store, complaining to city officials about "24/7 Murder, Drugs, Male Prostitution, Rowdiness, Noise at Night Burglary." But the sex shops soldier on, keeping this stretch of rapidly hyper-gentrifying 8th Avenue safe for dirty queers, and not so safe for shiny, happy pizza chains from San Diego. For now.