is New York City dead?

i also miss galapagos. interviewed there once!

Lol Kokie’s. I’ve read about it.

The Levee is, or was, functionally the same as Kokie's though Kokie's was clearer in its intent. They sold only the finest laxatives that helped one talk out of turn.

Having never lived in nyc proper but been a frequent visitor over the last 20 years, i've definitely noticed a change over the years in the way people I know there (older and younger, different walks of life) talk about the city and their relationship to it... a gradual transition from a sort of fun-cynical "this city is fucked up and everything is hard and all the good stuff is gone and i love it" to depressed-cynical "this city is fucked up and everything is hard and all the good stuff is gone and i wish more than anything that i could leave but i am stuck here".

Last time I was there it was almost surreal, everyone I spent time with, inevitably at some point they would circle around to the universal topic of how badly they wanted to leave, "we're thinking about in the next year or so", etc... wistfully telling stories of people they know who've left in the same way folks talk about survivors of risky operations: "she's doing FINE now, I just talked to her the other day and she says she's NEVER FELT BETTER, honestly!" Definitely some kind of slow psychic change that has not been super fun to observe from a distance.

Live in New York City once, but leave before it makes you hard
live in Northern California once, but leave before it makes you soft

Last time I went to NYC was 2005. Stayed with my sister who was on a business trip at some fancy hotel near Grand Central, visited friends in Astoria & Park Slope, saw Jonathan Richman play (!) somewhere in Williamsburg. W’burg felt measurably busier than when I was last there in 2002, but everything still seemed cool and New Yorky as a tourist might want to experience it. Has much changed since then?

I worked on Bedford for about 3 years in the mid 2000s. You could still walk around normally to grab lunch, find quiet moments, there would be maybe a smattering of japanese street photographers. Now it's a throng of euro/asian tourists, recent transplants, a Chase, Whole Foods, Sephora, Apple Store all in a row. Oddly enough Sea and Earwax are still around.

I still have a velvet suit jacket I bought new off the rack at Domsey's. It's been a while.

they used to have racks of old tuxedo jackets, pants, etc! i was an idiot for not buying that stuff. oh wait, not an idiot just broke.

It would be hard to convince me that NYC has not become a bland, (even more!) expensive and sad shadow of what it was even ten years ago.

It’s been hit hard by the “death of retail”. Lots of empty storefronts in central-ish Manhattan neighborhoods. Perhaps more noticeable than in car-centric cities where the downtowns were hollowed out a long time ago.

i got drunk and threw up in Max Fish. That was my first NYC experience in the 90's. Every subsequent visit has been tamer and less interesting.

It’s been hit hard by the “death of retail”. Lots of empty storefronts in central-ish Manhattan neighborhoods. Perhaps more noticeable than in car-centric cities where the downtowns were hollowed out a long time ago.

and the packed subways are very efficient!

i remember reading some article a couple of years ago that claimed Bleecker St mainly hosts "performative" retail now. that rents are so astronomical, only companies able to take on losses purely for the cachet of having an address on Bleecker can afford to open up a shopfront there.

I was reading a thing too where most landlords jack the prices up so much now to inflate the property value so that they can take cash money out to invest elsewhere (if they can't land the uber corporate tenant of their dreams).

i remember reading some article a couple of years ago that claimed Bleecker St mainly hosts "performative" retail now. that rents are so astronomical, only companies able to take on losses purely for the cachet of having an address on Bleecker can afford to open up a shopfront there.

just tra lala dee fuckin la, apparently, is how it goes, for some people

NYC is a vanity project.

I think I'm moving to the Bronx!

https://1010wins.radio.com/articles/man-stabs-bus-14th-street

xp to "looks like the onion" and fucking mass transit and every other damn thing

I was frightened when I went to Hudson Yards. It’s everything I came to New York to escape basically. It’s, like, a shopping mall. The whole thing is just like suburbia. In the middle of what used to be a great neighborhood for hookers. That to me is not progress, but I understand to most people it is. I’m not saying I don’t understand the other argument. It just doesn’t seem like New York to me.

NYC not dead, love this story

http://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/signs.jpg

A dispute between neighbors in Kew Gardens has become a real-life horror story — as a Queens man has decorated his yard with a Halloween-like monster mannequin that has left his next-door neighbors scared to enter their own home. “It’s gotten to the part where I can’t sleep. My daughter has nightmares about the mannequin. The whole thing is a nightmare,” said Jennifer Feldman, who is so upset at neighbor Shlomo Klopfer, she gone to the police over his yard display.

Feldman said the trouble on 147th Street began 11 months ago, when she asked him to remove a sign on his fence that read “Dead End” because it “creeped” out her then 6-year-old daughter. Klopfer, however, said he collects signs and he chose not to take it down. “I love signs, man. I collect signs,” Klopfer told the Post.

Things escalated from there. Feldman alleges that whenever she called 311 to make a complaint, Klopfer, 62, added more signs. She even went to the cops and talked to officers who deal with community relations. There are now more than a dozen signs that say “Private Property,” “No Trespassing,” and “Dead End” on a wrought iron fence separating the two 147th Street properties. There is also the gruesome-looking monster figure, featuring a blood-splattered t-shirt topped by a Halloween mask with stringy grey hair and blue bulging eyes.

http://thenypost.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/mannequin.jpg

Klopfer’s wife, Ilana, said the couple is angry that Feldman never asked for a face-to-face sit down to settle the issue before going to the cops. “You see a sign. Why won’t you come over and talk to your neighbor like a human being? You knock on the door. You ask nicely. ‘Is it possible to take the sign down?’ She never has,” she said.

For her part, Feldman says: “We just want peace. It’s not just us. He fought for decades with the woman next door. We would like an end to the harassment of our family.” Feldman said she even approached Klopfer’s rabbi in good faith to act as a mediator but things did not get better. Feldman also thinks her neighbor is harassing her because of her interfaith marriage, a charge that Klopfer denied. “The only thing I can think of is I’m Jewish. My daughter and I go to temple. My husband’s Christian. I can’t help that.”

Police can’t force Klopfer to take down the display, since it is on private property and not a criminal offense. Neighborhood Coordination Officers from the 108th Precinct are working with both parties to resolve the issue, the NYPD said. Klopfer is a chaplain who owns a landscaping company called “S&K Tree Service.”

A neighbor who lives down the street said he is to blame and that he generally has beef with a bunch of people. “Klopfer has been in disputes with two other people. I’ve never heard complaints about Feldman,” said the 39-year-old neighbor who requested anonymity. “I don’t know how it started. But it’s getting way out of hand. The evil eye, the scary Halloween thing and all the cameras. I think it’s going too far,” he continued.

https://nypost.com/2019/07/09/queens-neighbor-fight-becomes-real-life-horror-story/

lmao

contradiction here though:

Feldman said the trouble on 147th Street began 11 months ago, when she asked him to remove a sign on his fence that read “Dead End” because it “creeped” out her then 6-year-old daughter.

but

"You knock on the door. You ask nicely. ‘Is it possible to take the sign down?’ She never has."

🤔

he just loves signs, man

and hideous ghoulish lifesize dolls, it's a continuum

“You got beef?” Is one of my favorite expressions and one which has been directed at me during a mugging years ago

love that the monster is perched next to ye olde time telephone with 311 painted on, so petty

like at some point you just have to give the guy credit and bake him a pie or something and call for a truce

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT4lDU-QLUY&feature=youtu.be

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fT4lDU-QLUY&

It's weird to watch video now of crowds of people out in public, walking around, with no one looking at or talking on a cell phone.

heh, my thoughts exactly.

to me every day I walk among the zombies is weird

you are legend

tonight the UWS is dead

Living dead

Glad i didnt go by midtown as planned!

Yeah. At around 10:30 ran into a neighbor who had just returned home from his canceled Broadway gig.

Ha, I was having an early dinner in the financial district. Jumped on the A to go to Penn and it only went one stop to Chambers. Transferred to the most packed 2 train I'd ever been on, which immediately became all local. Transferred after a few stops to a 1 train that was going so slow, we eventually just got out and walked. Minimal lighting and no AC at Penn was spooky.

people got stuck underground for hours! some real nightmare shit there on a hot july PM

Corey Johnson was all "THANK U GOD" cuz he got to play mayor on Twitter

(such a ho)

https://vimeo.com/238073511
^pertinent

the midi cheese was really wearing on me but it was all worth it for “when people ask me what my block is like, I tell them one time they faked it for Syria.”

he has a good deadpan humor but why does he act like he can't read

this sucks
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/07/business/media/wbai-pacifica-layoffs.html

I agree... WBAI has sucked for awhile

yeah maybe but fuck's sake, they were one of the few remaining independent on the air

they drove me away around the time Mike Feder disappeared