Another Newsstand Gone

For many years, by the northeast corner of 23rd and Park Avenue South, there stood a lovely little newsstand. It was bright blue. It remained, until very recently, an unlikely survivor of Bloomberg's Cemusa onslaught.


I wish I could find my other photos of it

Here it is (was) on Google maps, surviving defiantly in front of Pret A Manger, Bank of America, 7-Eleven, New York Sports Club, and Baked By Melissa cupcakes, across from Walgreens, Bath & Body Works, and the Vitamin Shoppe.

It was crooked and quirky, just like all our newsstands used to be. It had character. Really, it was the only bit of original New York character left on that chain-strangled corner.



I always admired it when I walked by, grateful to it for still standing against the dull tide of glass and chrome. But on a recent walk past, I found it was gone. Some construction is being done to the subway entrance.

"Where's the newsstand?" I asked a nearby construction worker. "Disappeared," he said. "They got rid of it."

I asked another, who told me, "The City took it away."



Then I asked a neighboring newsstand vendor.

"I don't know. Maybe they're putting in one of these," he said, gesturing to his generic Cemusa box. "They did it to me."

He explained how the City removed his newsstand and then took two years to get him a new one. During those two years, he had no business. It's important to understand that the city's newsstand vendors used to own their stands, some passed down for generations, but Bloomberg took them away and gave them to Cemusa, a Spanish corporation that now leases them to the vendors who used to be owners.

"I consider that stealing," I told him, paying for my peanut M&M's.

"Yes, well," he replied with a shrug, "the City doesn't see it that way."


See Also:
History of the New York Newsstand
More Newsstand Deaths
Newsstand Slaughter
Hojo's Lost Newsstand
Another Newsstand
Union Square Newsstand

Leo's Latticini

For my column in today's Metro NY, a visit to Leo's Latticini in Corona, Queens.



“Is this your first time here?” she asks from the kitchen, her hands over a basin of milky water where she’s pulling mozzarella like it’s taffy.

I nod. I must look lost.

“You like mozzarella? Come. Taste.”

She rips off a hunk of the soft cheese, squeezes it in her dripping fist, and thrusts it towards me. Like a good Catholic faced with the Eucharist, I take and I eat. The fresh cheese is warm, silky, and delicious.

“Chew it good,” she says.



This is my introduction to Irene DeBenedittis of Leo’s Laticcini, also known as Mama’s of Corona. Irene makes the mozzarella and her sister Marie does the cooking—turkey with gravy, roast pork, manicotti, you name it.

“I don’t use recipes,” says Marie. “I just go on instinct" ...

Please read the rest of the essay here.

Unchain the City

From my most recent Op-Ed in the Daily News this weekend:

Soon there will be no New York left in New York. The city is becoming, for the first time in its long and illustrious history of exceptionalism, just another Anywhere, U.S.A. What has de Blasio done to protect New York’s small businesses and control the virulent spread of national chains? Nothing much.



Before he was elected, I asked him in an online Q&A what he planned to do. In his answer, he called small businesses “incredibly important to the character and strength of our neighborhoods” and said he wanted to follow the example of the Upper West Side’s “mom-and-pop” rezoning, designed to protect small shops from being forced out for chains. That’s actually a fairly weak rezoning, but it’s a start — one that de Blasio has yet to follow through on. It’s time for the mayor to step up and take action against the destruction of the city’s character.

Read the rest here.

Mezza Luna Pizza

Reader Tommy Raiko writes in to let us know that the Mezza Luna Pizzeria at 8th Avenue and 15th Street has shuttered.



Tommy writes: "It was just a typical get-a-slice-and-a-soda kind of place, but that's the kind of pizza place you think of when you think of NYC pizza, so I was sad to walk by the other day and see that it had been closed, emptied, and gutted.

Just next door, to the north, what was once a deli is now behind scaffolding and green plywood--who knows what's coming there. And a few doors over to the south is the building whose facade infamously collapsed during Hurricane Sandy and has not yet been restored.

I may just be thinking pessimistic thoughts, but there's something about this stretch of 8th Ave that seems ripe for some developer's something. Even if that's not true, I don't imagine that whatever's going to show up in that spot will be a cheap-and-easy eatery like Mezza Luna."



Last time I walked by, the guys who sell socks on the sidewalk had set up a makeshift (very makeshift) shop inside the dark and empty pizza place.

DVD Depot

VANISHED

Thomas Rinaldi of NY Neon writes in to let us know that DVD Depot, an adult establishment on 8th Avenue and 45th Street, has closed. Its doors and windows have been stickered over with Thor Equities' "Retail Space Available" signage.


Thomas Rinaldi

Last year, as Crain's reported, Thor paid $12 million for the two-story building:

"The building's sale is a sign of the area's changing face from the seedy video shops and fast-food outlets of yesterday to Times Square's newer breed of trendy tenants. The current tenant in the space is DVD Depot, which deals in adult films and has been there for more than a decade. It is on a month-to-month lease and not expected to remain at the site."


Thor's rendering

Thor's rendering of what they'd like to see here is the usual dull storefront, ideal for a suburban shopping mall chain. In fact, Thor loves those chains--naming about a million of them as selling points in the listing for the space:

"Across the street from the newly renovated Milford Plaza Hotel, and neighboring popular retailers American Apparel, American Eagle Outfitters, Forever 21, MAC, Oakley, Levi’s, Sunglass Hut, and more, and nearby Shake Shack, Chipotle, Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, Pinkberry, PieFace, Au Bon Pain, 5 Napkin Burger, Jamba Juice, as well as a multitude of restaurants well known in the Theater District, 725 Eighth Avenue is surrounded by only the most successful national and international retailers."

The newly renovated Milford Plaza--also bought by Thor--now has a glassy shopping arcade on its first floor, called "ROW NYC."

Maybe Thor's Joe Sitt bought the building just because he didn't want ROW NYC's suburban tourist shoppers looking out at flashy, trashy DVD Depot from the racks at Aeropostale and Build-A-Bear Workshop.


Thomas Rinaldi

As for the Depot, it wasn't a famous old-timer of 8th Avenue, but it held its ground and kept the avenue honest. And it got some good press.

Vice awarded the place three out of five chubbies, and Cruising Gays gave it a solid review: "Clean, newer, safe, attendants not too aggressive. Crowd: Very diverse, suits after work and regular guy types most of the time. Not too many trolls or hustlers."

Marquet Cafe

VANISHED 

A tipster wrote in a few weeks ago to report that Di Fiore Marquet Cafe on East 12th had its last day in business after 22 years.



While there has been no official word from the owner, no goodbye sign on the door, Marquet has remained shuttered and untouched since, the tables all set for customers who will never come again.

An employee has posted on their Facebook page: "Out of business, thanks for your patronage."



I don't know why Marquet closed, only that it's been darkened under scaffolding for quite some time, due to the construction of parking garage turned high-end luxury condo building 17 East 12, where the owners consider 12th and University to be "one of the most sought-after areas of the city," reminiscent of "the historic Gold Coast."

The block is changing. In addition to 17 East 12, the Bowlmor building is going luxury condo, too. The stationery store shut down recently, chains are moving in. And let's not forget the loss of 12th Street Books back in 2008.


Celeste di Fiore, via Homegrown

I never went to Marquet, so I will leave its description to this article from The Examiner's Leann Lavin a few years back:

"...it is owner Celeste Di Fiore who is the real-deal charmer – the Elaine of the downtown, Village cohort. For more than 10 years, she's looked after her customers like a doting, sometimes worrisome, always supportive, can’t-help-herself favorite friend or aunt. The customers are neighborhoodies: from the nearby Forbes magazine staff, the creative artists and patrons of the Salmagundi artist colony; writers and authors; along with students and professors from the Cardoza law school on the corner, or NYU. There are the quiet celebrities: Meryl Streep, Sean Pean and Giada De Laurentiis' mom, to name a few. Like a butterfly, Celeste can be seen alighting at a table to ask about the customer's latest book, or another’s health, or to agree with another about the neighborhood’s lack of a grocery store due to changing real estate."

Park Slope Barber

For my latest essay in Metro NY, a haircut at the Fiumefreddo brothers' barber shop in Park Slope.



On a weekday morning, the Fiumefreddo brothers’ Park Slope Barber shop is quiet and easy. Ella Fitzgerald sings from the speakers, followed by Sarah Vaughan. “Hey,” says the barber, “this one could give Ella a run for her money. Her voice has a lot of, what do you call ‘em? Octabels. Is that the word?” Octaves, decibels, the word doesn’t matter. What matters is the sound—and the feeling. The place provides a honeyed sense of calm and connectedness, of being rooted through time, past to present.

At this time of day, in high summer, with the door open to Seventh Avenue and a sweet breeze lilting in, the shop is a gentle country of old men. Their silver heads, with fringes of hair, are lovingly palmed and petted by the barber before his scissors start.

“How short do you want it today?”
“Same as always.”
“Sarah Vaughan. What a voice.”
“I remember when she died,” says the customer, holding still...

Read the rest at Metro NY