S'tan..I am so sorry to hear about the closing. So many years, so many memories. But you are a true survivor my dear. On to bigger and better things. Maybe it's time for that vacation you've been dreaming about. Let me know, maybe I'll go with you my love.

Oh S'tan, it's heartbreaking and surely hits home with your post. It's as if the forces of greed have not only said farewell to Charming Old New York, but "Good Riddance!"

The rotten thing is that this city has never been supportive towards any kind of small business. I would suggest, should any one find any sort of humor in this, he or she should attempt to open and operate any business in Manhattan. Be it night club or bar, shoe repair store, bodega, or even something of a more "specialized" nature, the torture is incredible. Endless City agencies, countless tickets and violations, greedy, lying landlords and much, much more. (I am sure Daddy will concur) Unless of course, you are a huge international corporation with main offices outside of New York-- then you get amazing concessions.
It's little wonder most small businesses in NYC flounder and fail within the first year.
It used to be that they were happy to have us all in sections of Manhattan that nobody else seemed to want. Now, however, they want it all!

I wonder, as everything I know and love gets torn up, and replaced by thoughtless mediocrity, just how long it will be before the wrecking ball appears outside my own front door.

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The ironic thing is that these greedy souless "Masters of the Universe" types need your services MUCH more than anyone else. I'm sure you will agree Stan. They desperately need the vitriol that you dish out so graciously (and gracefully). How do you describe it in your books? Oh yeah, "That useful irritability".

Talk about biting the hand that spanks you!

Alarming, to say the least, this should be happening to a person and place that would not at all seem to be an obvious target. But as Hatches makes clear, it is all but a routine in this environment. It is a kind of civic beat-down, and there is no mistakeing the violence quotient. That such a person and thier highly distinctive establishment existed at all for as long as it did is a huge slab of grace. I think of all the people whose intense needs were served, on both the client and provider sides, through the existence of the place. To my mind S'tan's irritation is a sign of how she gets inspired by these kinds of obstacles.

Score One for the Mall Culture!!!
What could this mean for New York City?

On CNN.com today...

HIGH COURT OKs PERSONAL PROPERTY SEIZURES
Majority: Local officials know how best to help cities

WASHINGTON (AP) -- -- The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that local governments may seize people's homes and businesses -- even against their will -- for private economic development.

It was a decision fraught with huge implications for a country with many areas, particularly the rapidly growing urban and suburban areas, facing countervailing pressures of development and property ownership rights.

The 5-4 ruling represented a defeat for some Connecticut residents whose homes are slated for destruction to make room for an office complex. They argued that cities have no right to take their land except for projects with a clear public use, such as roads or schools, or to revitalize blighted areas.

As a result, cities have wide power to bulldoze residences for projects such as shopping malls and hotel complexes to generate tax revenue.

Local officials, not federal judges, know best in deciding whether a development project will benefit the community, justices said.

"The city has carefully formulated an economic development that it believes will provide appreciable benefits to the community, including -- but by no means limited to -- new jobs and increased tax revenue," Justice John Paul Stevens wrote for the majority.

He was joined by Justice Anthony Kennedy, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

At issue was the scope of the Fifth Amendment, which allows governments to take private property through eminent domain if the land is for "public use."

Susette Kelo and several other homeowners in a working-class neighborhood in New London, Connecticut, filed suit after city officials announced plans to raze their homes for a riverfront hotel, health club and offices.

New London officials countered that the private development plans served a public purpose of boosting economic growth that outweighed the homeowners' property rights, even if the area wasn't blighted.

Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, who has been a key swing vote on many cases before the court, issued a stinging dissent. She argued that cities should not have unlimited authority to uproot families, even if they are provided compensation, simply to accommodate wealthy developers.

The lower courts had been divided on the issue, with many allowing a taking only if it eliminates blight.

"Any property may now be taken for the benefit of another private party, but the fallout from this decision will not be random," O'Connor wrote. "The beneficiaries are likely to be those citizens with disproportionate influence and power in the political process, including large corporations and development firms."

She was joined in her opinion by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist, as well as Justices Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas.

uck...I'm feeling a bit nausious.

To jump back to The Whipshack for a second...

Stan,
Speaking of "Masters Of The Universe" and "Whipshack Legends"...
I walked out the door yesterday and bumped right into "Brown Paul". He's in town for a couple of days (which I'm sure you know). He looks great. High as a kite with a hot boy on his arm, just walking down the street taking in the beautiful day. God bless him.
We lamented The Whipshack closing but agreed that you will always prevail.

Brown Paul is on his way over as we speak to view Angel Stern Deconstructed.
He has retired to New Mexico, and is trying to get me to join him in the Deep Styx. I may yet.
But there are so few slaves there.

Thanks for posting that story about the Supreme Court ruling, Stan. When I read it in the NYTimes it really shocked the hell out of me, mostly because it was the moderate/liberals who ruled in favor of the real estate developers and the arch-conservative fiends (Scalia, Thomas, etc) who ruled for the small businesses and homeowners. You would think it would be the other way around. I understand the need for urban renewal in economically depressed towns, but it must be heartbreaking for those families that have operated small businesses in the disputed location for generations to be uprooted and bulldozed over. That story was the shock of the week for me.

That said, it may not mean anything for NYC. The ruling clearly stated that local municipalities have the right to make further restrictions as they see fit, and I believe NY state is one of the few in the nation that aleady bares a lot of rights on its books for homeowners. I could be wrong on that.

You're right Lex, NY State does limit "Eminent Domain" a great deal. However, we are also the state and municipality that invented the insidious concept of the "Authority"-- something that is beholden to nothing-- practically no limit or law or democratic process-- but itself. These include locally, The Port Authority, the Triboro Bridge and Tunnel Authority and many many others.
Who thought up this concept and created these monsters? Why Robert Moses of course. And the worst thing about them is that they are, by necessity, self-perpetuating.

What I find very fascinating in this, is the use of the word "blight." It comes up several times as a defining term, for whether steps can and should be taken. I ask you, how can anyone's HOME be considered "BLIGHT?" Just because they're poor. Where is the humanity and compassion in all this .

I think the homeowner should have eminent domain over
all other claimants.. Otherwise we are back to fleeing the country.

I'm so bo-or-ored with the U-S-A.

For example, was the old Variety Theatre
BLIGHT???

Yes, acc. to NYU!!!

In NYC real estate is the wealthy peoples' heroin. Nothing can stand in the way of their getting it. So some peoples' bliss is their blight.

The last Flea Market on Sixth Avenue is gone. I had heard they were putting another stupid high rise on the spot, but I thought it was going to be
next year. Yesterday I walked by and an entirely new chain link fence was up, one without any doorways in it.
I just walked across that lot the other night, as I usually do, enjoying one of the few block-long vistas in NYC without obstruction.
I lost that on the West side of the street, now it's gone on the eastside.

What can you do about a place that becomes more and more inhuman as the years go by.
I suppose that is what the city is about... a cluster of concretions, and the poor bioplasms trying to overcome it. Art being "how" they once overcame it. I really am feeling too crushed to try anymore.

Finally an article about the destruction of NYC's economic base for artists:


The New York Times
July 31, 2005
Bohemian Rhapsody
By RICHARD FLORIDA and ELIZABETH CURRID

NEW YORKERS already know that their city is a global center for everything from finance and business to arts and culture. But even the most self-assured resident would likely be astounded by the extraordinary magnitude of the greater New York regional economy.

The metropolitan area alone is the 16th-largest economy in the world; its annual economic output of nearly $500 billion puts it ahead of Russia and nearly on par with Brazil. The region as a whole - including Nassau and Suffolk Counties, Westchester and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut - has an output of nearly $900 billion annually, making it the seventh-largest economy in the world, behind China and bigger than Canada or India.

For the better part of the last century, New York has been the location of choice for the talented, innovative and entrepreneurial members of what we call a global "creative class" - those who use their minds and creativity in their daily working lives. With almost three million creative-sector employees, about a third of its work force, the metropolitan region boasts the greatest number of creative-class workers in the world.

New York City's economy is increasingly powered by these creative industries. Today, it has an even greater competitive advantage in fields like fashion design, art and music than it does in financial services and banking. The city's economy is 16 times more concentrated in fashion designers, five times more concentrated in fine artists and four to six times more concentrated in musical occupations, film and video editors and producers and directors compared with all other United States metropolitan economies as a whole. And as economists know, without a healthy New York City, the suburbs of Westchester and Long Island would falter too.

But recent trends indicate that New York's position at the forefront of the creative economy may face considerable challenge. For starters, foreign cities are stepping up their competition for talented and creative people. Cities like London, Shanghai and Sydney are increasing their arts and cultural spending, research and development activities and university investments. Famous as New York may be for its arts and culture, it ranks 11th in the world, behind Amsterdam and London, on our global Bohemian Index, which measures the proportion of artistically creative people, like working musicians, dancers, writers and designers in a city.

New York is also hampered by a series of misguided national policies. Today, tough visa requirements and an increasingly anti-immigration culture are stifling the flow of foreign talent. Columbia University, for example, saw an almost 12 percent decline in international engineering students and a nearly 18 percent decline in international medical students from 2003 to 2004.

Creative people want - and need - to be around other creative people, and that's something the density of New York has long been able to provide. But this clustering has been weakened by the lack of affordable housing in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn, fueling emigration by creative people. Some of these people are moving to the outer boroughs, New Jersey, Long Island and Westchester. But many are moving out altogether, attracted by burgeoning creative climates and less expensive housing in other parts of the country.

The New York region, which has long paid more in taxes than it receives in federal spending, stands to lose a great deal as the Bush administration slashes the existing meager support for urban programs like work-force development, low-income housing, community development grants and support for arts and culture. These and other federal cutbacks hurt New York's ability to generate affordable housing, upgrade its subway and support its arts and creative environment, putting further pressure on the city and region.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg does little to help things, having spent considerable energy and political capital on big-ticket items like the failed West Side stadium plan and efforts to attract the 2012 Olympics. The city would be far better served with smaller scale neighborhood and community-level efforts to ensure affordable housing and work space for artists, immigrants and entrepreneurs, to upgrade the city's open space in combination with more public art and to improve transportation.

To remain a stronghold in the global creative economy, New York must strive to rejuvenate the creative dynamism that has always been at the heart of its artistic, cultural and economic success. By strengthening the practices that have brought it fortune and growth, New York will continue to be a truly great center of the global creative economy.

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Very interesting article Stanley. Of course it's nothing new to anyone on the Motherboards but it's great that someone else is saying it too.

And yes, the famous 6th Avenue Flea Market is gone. It has moved to 39th and (I think) 11th Avenue. Hell's Kitchen. But don't despair, they are going to replace it with something we REALLY need... An ugly 30 story high rise with $4,000.00 a month studio apartments. They will be 300 square foot "luxury apartments" with 7 foot ceilings, cardboard walls and vinyl doors. I'm sure there will be a health club as well as a doorman.
And by the way, the famous "Flower District" on 28th Street and 6th Avenue (down the street) is moving as well. They can no longer afford the rents of the newly residential neighborhood.

I've just been reading all of the entries here, and I find some comfort in the laments herein, knowing that at least we all see what is happening. It's true that it's happening all over but that doesn't make New York any less heartbreaking. It seems to me that the tearing down of everything that is old, small, full of character, and the replacing of them all with those big ugly bland expensive buildings has reached a frenzy. Yesterday I took a big walk and saw it everywhere, on 18th and 8th a lovely Federal era building had just been demolished--it was always very well kept and beautiful, always had flower pots on the sills, not at all what we used to think of as something that would be knocked down--but ah, it was only two stories tall. Then 3rd Ave and about 10th Street, another pit, another one on Orchard Street, and then of course the poor Bowery, and poor Liz Christy garden and all its lush beauty sitting there so vulnerable. And I didn't even realize until looking at what Daddy wrote, about the old Variety. This makes me cry, actually, and I remember the old ruin of Luchow's and the feeling that I would have as I looked at it. Beautiful old creatures, those places. I remember sometime in the 80s, standing on Bleecker Street with my friend Liza Stelle and she said, Look, isn't that Grampa? I very rarely approach a famous person, but Grampa Munster was standing there and I just couldn't believe how tall he was and I went and said, "Grampa!" I ended up standing there talking with him for a long time on the sidewalk. Grampa gave me a little picture of himself and he told me all about his beginnings in Vaudeville, over at the old Variety Theater. Then soon after he opened a restaurant there on Bleecker Street. Remember Grampa's? Well, it's gone now, along with the whole building that it occupied, and so is the old Variety.

I feel ill at the thought of Terrence pushed out. We are going to go over and interview her for Goodie this week. Which reminds me. Daddy, we MUST finish the one with you and the Empress. Can we make a date? Now is more important than ever.

All these old NYC landmarks are all being moved out or pushed out by these ugly, monstrosities called luxury condominuims! Who can afford living here anymore? The new yuppies and rich Europeans? AGH!
These NYC tour opperators will have less and less to show to the tourists as these new residential buildings will take over and Manhattan will be nothing more than a grey city with no personality.
It was always nice to know that you could always go down to Fulton to buy fresh fish; the flower district to buy exotic plants; Greenwich Village for music and art...alas.....

The same thing is happening here in Ptown. Out with the old and in with the new..just like the way the youth of today treat the legends of yesterday. What happened to us? We can blame it all on Bush economics and his insidius political behaviors or we can take a look at ourselves and ask how we helped to contribute to this climate. The blame game will only take us so far, it will really come down to how we as individuals deal with our world and how we vote or spend our money. Ask everytime you spend a dollar who is the profit going to and consider if you really need the item you are buying. Take time to write letters to your congressman explaining how you want your tax dollars to be spent. Use every opportunity to use your voice. The time for lethargy and inaction is over. If we want change we must begin to act on it now. we must begin to be more considerate and caring towards others and not be afraid to stand up for what you believe is right. There is a tital wave of disater heading our way and we MUST begin to look for oppertunities to redirect our focus. The party is over and now it's time for some belt tightening and some truth telling and some damn hard work. Look for the doorway to freedom and realize that it involves our own behavior and action and a commitment to something more long lasting and important than a night out of boozing and gossiping. Personal values will be the road to freedom in the coming years and only our heart can lead us.

THE FLOWER DISTRICT IS LEAVING?

Every day I was over there getting roses , 2 dozen for $15. at the end of the day.

ALL THESE POOR PEOPLE.... the little flea marketers, the rose sellers, the plant people...
WHERE ARE THEY GOING?

I feel sick.

Bobby, at this moment it seems nothing can drown out the hideous drumbeat of the Money Grubbers.
To refuse to live for money or profit seems the only possible philosophy.

I walked up and down West 28th today and looked at all the little old buildings. Most are two and three storeys, and in pretty bad condition from years of neglect, just being used for the flower-merchants. You see water damage everywhere..
Most are very cute, sweet old places with the old paint still on them, funny rickety old wood windows...the wrecker's ball trembling above their heads.

I had looked at space on West 27th facing North, and the views from those lofts are stupendous
because of all those little old buildings on 28th. Raw lofts there were $4500. @ 2500 sq ft. but you have to put in at least $20K to make them livable. Private bathrooms are impossible too because the water seems usually to be in the center of the floor, around the elevators.

I asked several of the flower workers if they were moving. No-one seemed to know what I was talking about. Then one guy said, "Maybe the Bronx, we don't know." The BRONX? What local decorator, restauranteur in Chelsea is going to be trekking up there... I got 4 dozen roses at the 3 PM price of $5. a dozen. I mean having all these plants and flowers in midtown was such a joy. Living in the city you need reminders of the seasons like that!

Well I'm leaving this neighborhood anyhow... what do I care. Well I care!

Along with the dominatrix, the photographer, the little coffee shop owner goes alot of beautiful history.
We forget that NY has never respected its own history. There's an amazing book called "Lost
New York" I have seen and need to get again... you think the stuff they're tearing down NOW is sad.

Some of the 28th Street buildings are apparently in the throes of a clean-up and renovation. I imagine prices are going to be high.

On West 28th in the middle of the block, on the south side there's a tall strange building that looks amazing... it has fifteen foot ceilings, tall windows, it looks like it may have been a convention hall! I saw workers on the second floor, and went up and snooped around. The place was a wreck with a scarlet Police Closure sign on the door. I imagined it may have been some secret gambling den until recently...

I got the name of the owner, but unfortunately the water is all at one end. We can't have a public bathroom, now can we.

I have to get over this idea I'm going to find some great old wreck for cheap that I can fix up. I'm living in the past. It's over.

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