If it weren’t for Starbucks, what would be have to complain about? Well, I’d have plenty, but I don’t know about the rest of you. The end of hipster civilization (LES, oughts edition) as we know it occurred last week, when the dreaded green awning appeared over a storefront somewhere on the frontier (I believe it was Delancy). I wouldn’t notice because that stretch of the LES is populated with such stalwarts of alternative culture as Dunkin Donuts and Payless.
I don’t know that there is as much of the presumed griping going on as is being reported — it’s all very meta-commentary, likely because we’ve heard the griping so much we just assumed it was happening. Maybe I just hang out in the wrong places, and as a result of this incursion, there is a groundswell of hipsters who are decamping for… the South Bronx? Chapel Hill? Good riddance.
It is coming of age ritual, certainly, to assail the befouling of one’s narrowly constructed artifice. To stay youthful, I do it a whole bunch. I imagine that much of what is being said about the mermaid beachhead bespeaks a similar amount of self-reflexive irony. If not, I direct you to Kim’s (the St. Mark’s outpost since the original — which you can find written about in Spy circa 1991 as part of a sidebar item chronicling business that had wacky juxtapositions [the original Kim’s was a laundry that started renting videos] — has been vacated, perhaps to make room for a Starbucks) to rent a copy of Theory of Achievement (found on the Surviving Desire DVD. Better yet, buy it.).
Now that the devil’s nectar has imposed itself, we will all be drawn inexorably to it’s siren call, no? Given it’s ubiquity, I doubt anyone is making the trek to the Essex Street station to see if the frappucinos are better. So the Green Giant must be confident the neighborhood is underserved, in the parlance of pervasive marketing (though some are certainly eager to demonstrate otherwise).
I didn’t really want to spend too much time on this particular instance, since the bones are still getting picked over daily (it gives something write about other than the plague that is Scarano & Associates), aside to offer my moment of apocalypse, which was walking home from work one night and seeing the very low key opening of 71 Clinton, and thinking “A $22 hangar steak on Clinton Street? Fuck. That’s the beginning of the end.” See, we all have our own particular threshold. Rather than assert the quality of one over another, I’d rather recall some things lost to me, which with resonate a few, while for others it will seem as tired as whining about a Starbucks.
I miss the drug dealers on Avenue B. They made the street life safer, and more interesting. Eric, who sold dope — dope dealers were the most gregarious; coke dealers were iffy, and the heroin guys never spoke to anyone, because they didn’t have to — was the best salesman I ever met. He was seemed genuinely cheery and collegial, and remembered everyone’s name. I hope he’s selling real estate somewhere now.
I miss the Gas Station. There’s no good way to describe it, and Google is of no help. A former Gas Station (what else?), it became a club and local workspace of sculptors, and the output of some formed a carbuncle worthy of a Mad Max film that loomed over the intersection of B and Second Street. It was grittier (oh, that’s overused, I know) than the 6th Street Garden, and was devoid of the hippie territoriality that pervades some community gardens. It reminded me of a children’s book I had about the Watts Towers, or maybe I just like industrial ruins. When it was torn down, I was living in Hell’s Kitchen. The first apartment I was shown when I moved back was in the awful building that planted on the site. I refused to walk in the door.
I miss Ci Vediamo. I was told when I first moved here that it was staff owned (which seemed like a very cool thing at the time). I never confirmed this, but they served the best cheap pasta — in one of the basement spaces flanking the aforementioned original Kim’s — I ever had in Manhattan. This opinion could be occluded by time and the fact that it was the place I ate to celebrate my first job in New York (followed immediately by the theft of my backpack in the bar that is now where Niagara is, an event and place I am not nostalgic about). And I miss The Friends and the Two Rabbits. I can’t remember the proper French version of this, but it was the place that was supposed to be what the idea of a restaurant in the East Village should be (and sure, there’s a bunch of places in Williamsburg that fit that bill now, except I don’t live there): small, friendly, interesting and tasty.
But if there is truly a sign of a changing of the guard, happening the very same week that Seattle interposes the worst — or best, depending on your viewpoint — idea to happen coffee since the invention of Juan Valdez, is something new to miss: Eric, bartender at Joe’s on Sixth Street, has moved on. I don’t know the details enough to write intelligently on the why, but, then again, it’s his business. Joe’s was never any sort of scene that I knew of, but it has a dependable jukebox, and has been a friendly place to drink the whole of my time in the East Village. Eric was there all along. I suspect being a bartender isn’t anyone’s lifelong dream after being in it for a few years (true to form, he was in a couple bands along the way), so valorizing one is probably just an inverse of decrying the imposition of a Starbuck’s. It’s not so much that I can’t look forward to quelling my own impending sense of non-accomplishment without him to pour a stiff bourbon; it’s just that he was a truly decent guy. And, Starbucks or not, we don’t get so much of that around here.
Previous Lore:
070605: Does this bus stop at 82nd Street?
060105: Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Your Grievances. 052505: Neither city, nor subway, but Empire. 050405: Like Usual? 042705: The best thing ever.
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Wednesday Lore: Boy, I sure do miss the Pyramid.
If it weren’t for Starbucks, what would be have to complain about? Well, I’d have plenty, but I don’t know about the rest of you. The end of hipster civilization (LES, oughts edition) as we know it occurred last week, when the dreaded green awning appeared over a storefront somewhere on the frontier (I believe it was Delancy). I wouldn’t notice because that stretch of the LES is populated with such stalwarts of alternative culture as Dunkin Donuts and Payless.
I don’t know that there is as much of the presumed griping going on as is being reported — it’s all very meta-commentary, likely because we’ve heard the griping so much we just assumed it was happening. Maybe I just hang out in the wrong places, and as a result of this incursion, there is a groundswell of hipsters who are decamping for… the South Bronx? Chapel Hill? Good riddance. It is coming of age ritual, certainly, to assail the befouling of one’s narrowly constructed artifice. To stay youthful, I do it a whole bunch. I imagine that much of what is being said about the mermaid beachhead bespeaks a similar amount of self-reflexive irony. If not, I direct you to Kim’s (the St. Mark’s outpost since the original — which you can find written about in Spy circa 1991 as part of a sidebar item chronicling business that had wacky juxtapositions [the original Kim’s was a laundry that started renting videos] — has been vacated, perhaps to make room for a Starbucks) to rent a copy of Theory of Achievement (found on the Surviving Desire DVD. Better yet, buy it.). Now that the devil’s nectar has imposed itself, we will all be drawn inexorably to it’s siren call, no? Given it’s ubiquity, I doubt anyone is making the trek to the Essex Street station to see if the frappucinos are better. So the Green Giant must be confident the neighborhood is underserved, in the parlance of pervasive marketing (though some are certainly eager to demonstrate otherwise). I didn’t really want to spend too much time on this particular instance, since the bones are still getting picked over daily (it gives something write about other than the plague that is Scarano & Associates), aside to offer my moment of apocalypse, which was walking home from work one night and seeing the very low key opening of 71 Clinton, and thinking “A $22 hangar steak on Clinton Street? Fuck. That’s the beginning of the end.” See, we all have our own particular threshold. Rather than assert the quality of one over another, I’d rather recall some things lost to me, which with resonate a few, while for others it will seem as tired as whining about a Starbucks. I miss the drug dealers on Avenue B. They made the street life safer, and more interesting. Eric, who sold dope — dope dealers were the most gregarious; coke dealers were iffy, and the heroin guys never spoke to anyone, because they didn’t have to — was the best salesman I ever met. He was seemed genuinely cheery and collegial, and remembered everyone’s name. I hope he’s selling real estate somewhere now. I miss the Gas Station. There’s no good way to describe it, and Google is of no help. A former Gas Station (what else?), it became a club and local workspace of sculptors, and the output of some formed a carbuncle worthy of a Mad Max film that loomed over the intersection of B and Second Street. It was grittier (oh, that’s overused, I know) than the 6th Street Garden, and was devoid of the hippie territoriality that pervades some community gardens. It reminded me of a children’s book I had about the Watts Towers, or maybe I just like industrial ruins. When it was torn down, I was living in Hell’s Kitchen. The first apartment I was shown when I moved back was in the awful building that planted on the site. I refused to walk in the door. I miss Ci Vediamo. I was told when I first moved here that it was staff owned (which seemed like a very cool thing at the time). I never confirmed this, but they served the best cheap pasta — in one of the basement spaces flanking the aforementioned original Kim’s — I ever had in Manhattan. This opinion could be occluded by time and the fact that it was the place I ate to celebrate my first job in New York (followed immediately by the theft of my backpack in the bar that is now where Niagara is, an event and place I am not nostalgic about). And I miss The Friends and the Two Rabbits. I can’t remember the proper French version of this, but it was the place that was supposed to be what the idea of a restaurant in the East Village should be (and sure, there’s a bunch of places in Williamsburg that fit that bill now, except I don’t live there): small, friendly, interesting and tasty. But if there is truly a sign of a changing of the guard, happening the very same week that Seattle interposes the worst — or best, depending on your viewpoint — idea to happen coffee since the invention of Juan Valdez, is something new to miss: Eric, bartender at Joe’s on Sixth Street, has moved on. I don’t know the details enough to write intelligently on the why, but, then again, it’s his business. Joe’s was never any sort of scene that I knew of, but it has a dependable jukebox, and has been a friendly place to drink the whole of my time in the East Village. Eric was there all along. I suspect being a bartender isn’t anyone’s lifelong dream after being in it for a few years (true to form, he was in a couple bands along the way), so valorizing one is probably just an inverse of decrying the imposition of a Starbuck’s. It’s not so much that I can’t look forward to quelling my own impending sense of non-accomplishment without him to pour a stiff bourbon; it’s just that he was a truly decent guy. And, Starbucks or not, we don’t get so much of that around here. Previous Lore:070605: Does this bus stop at 82nd Street?
060105: Don’t Let The Sun Go Down On Your Grievances.
052505: Neither city, nor subway, but Empire.
050405: Like Usual?
042705: The best thing ever.