10 Years

Ten years ago last month I moved to New York.

In August 2001 I moved to the city to start grad school at NYU. I was here about two weeks when I knew I was never planning on leaving. Needless to say, it was interesting timing; about three weeks after I got here the city I moved to changed in an irrevocable way. But 9/11 and my experience with being new to the city just made me love it and its people more, and solidified how I felt about being a part of this place.

But, I'm not writing this as a reflection on that specific event-it's impossible for it not to be front and center in my thoughts when I think of how I got here, but what I've been reflecting on a lot is the ten years that have come after that.

I will state, absolutely, that my first 10 years in New York have included most of the best times in my life, and, I think, all of the worst. I would be a different person if I wasn't here. I suppose, who is ever the same person at 27 and 37? But I know one thing: I'm a New Yorker. This is where I belong.

And the city has changed as much as I have in the last ten years. New York has a sense of permanence, but it's only a sense--the only true constant here is change, whether we like it or not. So...what has changed in New York in the ten years I've lived here? When I moved to the city you could still use a token to get on the subway, where the M line was Brown and if you were lucky, you might ride one of the last of the Redbird trains. CBGB's still existed, along with too many other long-standing New York nightlife institutions; just until the last couple of weeks you could still get a beer at the Mars Bar. There definitely wasn't a Chipotle and a Supercuts on St. Mark's Place. Frankly, mostly irreplaceable stuff has disappeared and everything has gotten more expensive...it's not all bad though: when I moved here the Highline was a derelict structure still threatened with demolition. I was reminded that 311 was founded too, just about the best thing Bloomberg has come up with. Speaking of being reminded, I enlisted a certain native that I've been spending lots of time with lately (ahem) to help me think about it. Her perspective was great and totally different, and in fact I think she just started to get pissed off after a while: "we used to have subway clerks...we could find good pizza...we could still smoke in bars...we had term limits." And my favorite: "bed bugs were other countries' problem."

So...here I am. I've developed a new statement of purpose lately, that fits into my life and who I am now, and it fits here too.

I'm not going anywhere.

Ok, thanks everybody. I promise to start posting funny Youtube videos and shit again.

Man, I had just learned to love Luna Park, too.

Amusing the Zillion has good up-to-the-minute coverage of the heartbreak happening on the Coney Island boardwalk right now; a dozen of the classic boardwalk businesses, from Ruby's to Shoot the Freak, received their walking papers with two weeks to pack up and get out. Unless they can band together to successfully fight this off legally, which, if the ongoing history of Coney development is any indication, won't happen, next summer the old flavor of the Coney Island boardwalk will essentially be a thing of the past.

Also, the new Luna Park is totally cool

Dragged my hungover ass out of bed this morning to Coney Island...huh, first time I've been there in the daylight all summer! Anyway, for Save Coney Island's walking tour of Coney's remaining historic buildings along Surf Avenue. The organization is still fighting the good fight to save these buildings (including the theater where the Marx Brothers first performed together and the oldest, Victorian-era building still in the amusement district) in the face of Thor Equity's continuing demolition and high-rise development plans. Join their mailing list and come out for the next tour, it was fascinating and the grassroots groups like SCI and Develop Don't Destroy Brooklyn trying to preserve the fabric of the city may not succeed in all of their missions, but they can't accomplish anything without our support.

The dismantling of New York continues.

The Village Voice has an excellent obituary for the closing of a vital neighborhood resource, the historic St. Vincent's Hospital.

And that's really it, this time.

Saw the headline on the way into work today; finally, after all the back and forth and the one-year reprieve, Thor Equities is not renewing Astroland's lease at Coney Island, and this Sunday will be its last day in existence. If you haven't made it out there this summer, get out there; because no matter what Coney Island becomes, it will never be the same.

The other shoe has dropped

Well, it seems to be official at this point, that as of today the end of July, Rififi has closed its doors. After months of living month-to-month but seemingly stable, the owner is calling it quits...and gave all of the employees and show producers just about 24 hours notice that they no longer had a job, or a venue for their show, as of tonight. So, yeah, that is pretty much the worst fucking way possible to handle an already lousy situation. And now, one more venue for independent, live entertainment in Manhattan is gone.

Perhaps they should just put a roof over all of it and call it the Soho Experience.

On today's Curbed, some enlightening response to their ongoing coverage of the closing of Soho eatery Jerry's, to make room for a Michael Kors, from a realtor involved with the deal. A nice synopsis of the attitude that has made 95% of Soho a luxury mall hell not worth ever setting foot in.

Jerry's is a cute place that's been there since 1987. I think fondly of going there for department meeting lunches when I interned at the New Museum and Exit Art at their old Broadway locations. What a shock that neither of those cultural institutions are still in Soho.

They're taking the awning down right now.

Sometimes you have to make yourself go out on a cold Wednesday night, when you had a long day at the day job that you're getting the sneaking suspicion is kind of awful and you kind of wish someone had mentioned to you before you took it that it's kind of awful. I didn't want to go. I was tired. Last week, I went to shows 7 days out of 8, and it was a blast but it was kind of exhausting. Last Wednesday was the third What's My Line? and it was great! But it was a long week. But, Clams was debuting a new number at Jo Boob's show at the Slipper Room last night so I had to go support! And it's those nights, when the place is half empty, where so often you're really happy you made the effort. The World Famous BOB was the emcee, and I got to hear her story about a few nights ago when she did a benefit gala for P.S.1 and the Mayor was there, and she closed the show with her famous finale number set to the theme from 2001 (which yes I know is actually called Thus Spoke Therathustra, or something like that), which of course ends with her in nothing but glitter and a sly grin, legs akimbo. And then she did a great impression of Bloomberg's slack-jawed reaction (although to his credit, he was clearly there all the way to the end of that show, because our Mayor likes to party even though he makes you smoke outside and wants the bars to close at 2.) Also, I got to hear a fey goth version of Devil Went Down to Georgia by a singer from LA, and some women took their clothes off, and yeah ok, it was worth the effort.

I love BOB, and if you missed her one-woman show F To F at Mo Pitkin's this summer, don't miss any opportunity to see it in the future. She has lived a life, and she's an absolutely charismatic, charming and funny storyteller who has the most natural stage-presence (not hindered of course by being the most statuesque broad to ever wear a perfectly arched pair of eyebrows and not much else). And she's completely genuine; it's infectious, no one else would ever get me do the robot in public (come to her monthly show at Galapagos and you'll see what I mean), and last night she got the cynical lot of us to share an actual, sincere moment of silence for CBGB's.

Speaking of CBGB's, can I confess? I never went to a show there. Clams did a show at their next-door annex the CB's 313 Gallery, so I'm very fond of telling people she played CBGB's. But I never experienced the place in its true grimy splendor. We talked about it a lot, but when it came down to it I never really wanted to go take a chance on a no-name thrash band and a bunch of drunk kids so I could experience the famously disgusting men's room. As it's final closing neared, I had a moment of clarity that, more then I had any interest in going to a show there, I wanted to live in a New York where CBGB's still existed. And now I don't. And that sucks.

The Dismantling of New York.

I wasn't born in New York, I'm a transplanted Midwesterner. I've been here for a fair number of years now though, and coming from the Midwest, where the farmland and downtowns of my youth are being swallowed whole by exurban sprawl and big-box retail parking lots, one of the things I immediately loved about the city was the sense of realness, of connection to its history, and a shared understanding among its residents that part of what makes it great to live here are the neighborhood businesses and creaky old apartment buildings that may have leaky radiator heat but also have genuine character...ok, that all reads like total cliche, but I think it's also true.

But quite frequently, it feels to me now like I got here just in time for what I call the Dismantling of New York. At a terrible Off-Broadway play earlier this week (that shall remain nameless) I was flipping through the playbill and read the last page about the Barrymore, that charming theatre-crowd hangout bar and restaurant on 45th Street, that closed in January after decades as a neighborhood staple to make way for a luxury hotel. Now, I had already read about that in the Times, because, like the late, lamented McHale's in the same neighborhood, the Barrymore was the kind of place that inspires writers to lament their passing-and with good reason! But, what really bums me out are the places you walk by every day in neighborhoods all over, where a small business has been closed to make way for another condo, without anybody noticing except the people who cared, right there in that neighborhood where it had always been. Perfect example; earlier this year, my wife and I met her brother for late (LATE) weekend breakfast at the Skyline Diner on the corner of 75th and Lex. The Skyline was nothing more then a typically friendly Greek diner with faded celebrity pix over the counter and worn-down tabletops (although it had a nice, distinctive frilled canopy over the corner entrance, with the name in neon), but it's exactly the kind of spot you want to end up on a chilly late morning for bacon and a bottomless cup of coffee. Literally the next day, we walked past it on the way to the 6, and it was closed, with a for-rent sign in the window. Just like that. Uncertain what will take it's place-it's a corner property so indications would point to sun-blotting condo tower, BUT it could also be that distictive sub-class of the Dismantling: the Bankification.

My neighborhood is overrun by bankification. Virtually every store that closes turns to a bank, that sits humming and glowing with its vast empty lobby. Who the hell needs so many banks? All the people supposedly moving into the new condos, I suppose.

If I see a nice, neighborhood place close so we can have another condo/bank, that I seriously doubt will inspire a Talk of the Town piece, I'm going to try to write about it. Honestly, Gothamist can't get to all of them.