How Has Chinatown Stayed Chinatown?Against all odds, an ethnic monolith still exists within the most gentrified island on Earth. In part because of these 21 people.
I.M. Pei to Appear in ChinatownThe reclusive architect will show up at the reopening of the Museum of Chinese in America, the ‘pop-up park’ gets another month in Brooklyn Heights, and a pretty new footpath uptown on the High Bridge doesn’t mean you still can’t find drugs in the park! All in today’s boroughs report.
The Montauk Monster Has Competition. Sort Of.There is a colorful beast of some sort climbing out of the East River. Plus, Harlem’s eye-straining new condo, Chinatown’s intra-hood Olympics smackdown, and the big-cabbage guy of Staten Island. In our Freedom Friday edition of the daily boroughs report!
Andrea Peyser — Wait for It — Thinks Someone Is a BoneheadThat delightful harpy harshes on Dumbo, Robin Quivers leaves Staten Island for the Upper West Side, and a white Seattle woman gets stuck in Harlem and lives to tell. That and more tales of the miraculous in our daily boroughs report.
neighborhood watch
Greenpoint Gets a Thematic Swimming PoolA tourist treat in lower Manhattan, a vomit victim in Prospect Heights, and a paucity of pedagogy in Tribeca … all in our daily boroughs report!
in other news
Judith Regan Loves Karaoke, Just Like Us!This morning, the Daily News ran an excerpt from a first-person Harper’s Bazaar article by Judith Regan, in which the former editor announces that she’s going to start staying out of the spotlight. Hidden at the bottom of the News summary was a reference to an evening where Regan, licking her wounds from the bad publicity of her O.J. Simpson If I Did It book debacle, ducks into a karaoke bar in Chinatown and belts out Frank Sinatra’s “My Way.” Of course, we were dying to hear more about this anecdote, and not just because we’re pretty sure we’ve sang that exact song in that exact bar. So we tracked down a pdf of the article to read more:
During the ordeal, my friends stood by me. Blair Sabol made bracelets in support of me. Kate Li, with whom I used to sing in the Vassar Madrigals, traveled to visit me in New York in August. We wandered into a karaoke bar in Chinatown. It was crowded, full of young people who couldn’t sing, and thankfully too noisy to really hear anyone. I’d studied voice as a young woman but always hated performing. For the first time in my life, I didn’t have stage fright. The song we sang was “My Way.”
neighborhood watch
Hipsters on a RampageChinatown: In a fit of ironic violence or violent irony, a hipster mob (including, reportedly, Neckface) trashed an empty building slated for demolition. [
neighborhood watch
Tourists Held Hostage in ChinatownChelsea: Blood flows red in Chelsea. But is it an art project on Seventh Avenue, or a fight to determine which gym is fiercest? [Blog Chelsea]
Chinatown: Knockoff Louis Vuitton shoppers, beware! You, too, may be locked in a basement by vendors attempting to hide you from the cops. [NYP]
Coney Island: Thor Equities may one day close Astroland Park, but the Cyclone is safe and sound on city-owned land. [NYP]
East Harlem: How do you protect a community garden from turning into a condo tower and African art museum? Chain yourself to the fence. [On NY Turf]
East Village: Rififi, that fun dive of burlesque, live comedy, and the notorious dance bash Trash, is on the market, with rent at $15,000 a month. [Brooklyn Vegan]
Midtown: Iconic towers like the Chrysler, Woolworth, and Empire State don’t even make today’s list of the ten most valuable skyscrapers in the city. [NYO]
intel
Victorious Chinese Workers Celebrate Belated New Year
The Chinese New Year ended more than a week ago, but Chinese Staff and Workers Association — a militant labor-rights group trying to gain better pay and conditions for employees in the city’s Chinese restaurants — held a celebration at P.S. 2 on Henry Street yesterday. “It’s the Golden Year of the Pig, and it will be good for workers,” said Wing Lam, the group’s executive director. It’s a moment for the association to be celebrating: Its members refused to sign a contract with the Saigon Grill mini-chain, which led the restaurant to suspend its delivery service last week, and in February a federal judge ruled that managers at the 88 Palace restaurant on East Broadway wrongfully pocketed a service charge the restaurant had imposed on banquet tabs, ordering owners to fork over to eleven busboys and waiters some $700,000 in gratuities and other costs dating to 2002. Lawyers for 88 Palace’s owners have filed an appeal, and they’re also fighting the workers’ attorneys’ request for close to $1 million in legal fees. But for now, at least, happy Year of the Pig. —Mary Reinholz
developing
Forget Condos; It’s ChinatownAn old Chinatown building is being overhauled and prettied up, and — shockingly in today’s New York — it’s not for a condo conversion. The Oversea Chinese Mission, a 44-year-old evangelical outfit with fellowships and libraries and an aging membership, now has luxury condos on either side of its nine-story headquarters at Hester and Mott. But it announced a renovation last week that calls for reworking the building as a beacon to potential new members. “Right now you cannot see into the building,” Nancy Ruddy, a partner in local architecture firm Cetra/Ruddy, told us this morning. The firm has designed a two-story façade of glass, metal, and stained glass to lure locals, from late-shift waiters to early risers.
developing
Kids Do Grown-up Planning for a Chinatown Park
Find the development imbroglio at ground zero childish? Redirect your gaze to Chinatown, then, where some kid-focused planning is progressing in a very mature way. The nonprofit design firm Hester Street Collaborative is rebuilding Sara D. Roosevelt Park — that slab of concrete and turf running from the Manhattan Bridge to Houston Street — by using art exercises to determine what kinds of new fields and seating areas the local kids and elderly need, and the designers celebrated their progress last week at their second annual Chinese New Year party. Collaborative director Anne Frederick says she’s still building consensus and won’t show off designs yet to avoid ruffling feathers — Larry Silverstein, are you listening? — but her group and the schoolkids it trains have already made a mark. There’s talk of making the sidewalk-stenciled names and kid-painted historic signs it set up last spring at Allen and Grand into the basis for a permanent upgrade of the midblock malls. —Alec Appelbaum
neighborhood watch
Happy Chinese New Year!Carroll Gardens: Will a bank, national chain store, or real-estate office replace Bleach House, the Dickensiansly named, now-defunct launderette on Court Street? [423smith]
Chinatown: Party like it’s 4705! That’s right, the Chinese New Year kicked off this weekend. Welcome to the Year of the Pig. [Gothamist]
Coney Island: The PR firm for development giant Thor Equities has released another homemade-looking “newsletter” about future Coney fun — which yet again makes no mention of Thor’s planned condo towers for the area. [Gowanus Lounge]
Greenpoint: From the looks of the floor plan, it seems like the Polish movie house turned Burger King at 910 Manhattan Avenue is due to become Greenpoint’s first Starbucks. Rejoice or recoil? [Curbed]
West Village: When special people like Sarah Jessica Parker, Lucy Lawless, or Christine Quinn need to pick up a package, they do it at Something Special, a mailbox-rental place on Macdougal and Houston. [The Villager]
neighborhood watch
Don’t Mess With Bill Moyers’s ViewRed Hook: The shady demolition of the Revere Sugar Factory is making the neighbors furious. [Gowanus Lounge]
Brooklyn Heights: Want a Mexican restaurant? It’s yours for only $389,000. [Brooklyn Heights Blog]
Chinatown: Some major street changes are in place, including a buffered bike lane on Grand Street, making it safer to eat sticky pork buns while cycling. [Streetsblog]
Clinton Hill: Looks like the topiary-stealing first reported two weeks ago by Brooklyn Record continues. Who’s the sticky-fingered horticulturalist? [Clinton Hill Blog]
South Slope: Developer Gregory Rigas has been quietly been buying up — and not so quietly demolishing — mucho property on Fourth Avenue between Prospect Avenue and 16th Street. [Brownstoner]
Upper West Side: Bill Moyers leads a pack of angry rich people against the New-York Historical Society’s plan for a high-rise condo off Central Park West and 76th Street. [Curbed]
in other news
Forget Freshness, Shoppers. It’s Chinatown
A reporter for NPR’s Morning Edition today took on one of the pretty unvexing questions of our era: Why are vegetables in Chinatown so astronomically cheap? We were hoping the piece would reveal that it was one of those unanswerable but poignant New York mysteries “Metro” section columnists love to mull over — like, why are there no good independent radio stations, and where did that smell come from? But in fact, the question has an equally unvexing answer: Residents of Chinatown eat a huge volume of vegetables, and in volume lies discounts. Plus, because these shoppers cook fresh every day, the vegetables can be thisclose to going bad when they’re sold. (Now we understand why our toxic Met Foods apples are doing fine at two weeks and counting.) We confess, though, that we’re a little sad the answer wasn’t “Because they’re made in China.”
Chinatown Vendors Ripe For Bargains [NPR]
intel
For Chinatown Barber Shop, an Unhappy Ending
Thought Chinatown barber-shop brothels were a thing of the past? Not so fast. Recently Good Friends Barber Shop, at 72 Forsyth Street, was closed under the Nuisance Abatement Law after detectives made three arrests: one in February 2006, after a female employee offered an unlicensed massage for $45, and two more in September, when a manager offered an undercover cop a massage plus a sexual act for $90. (There’s a larger image of the restraining orders here.) According to posts on a so-called “hobbyist” bulletin board — an online spot where men exchange information on these things — the chop shop has had a reputation as a massage parlor for at least three years, though it seems to have been unreceptive to non-Chinese clientele. (The only bulletin-board member who was able to “crack” the back rooms was an Asian.) So will the busted rub-and-tug joint give way to a drinking den, as has happened in so many other spots across Chinatown? If the troubles of across-the-street neighbor 205 are any indication, not even that will save it from the long arm of the Nuisance Abatement Law. Daniel Maurer
the morning line
Forget It, Jake
• Chinatown business owners are beefing with Hollywood crews that have flooded the neighborhood, with 25 film permits issued over the last twelve months. City Hall says it’s the neighborhood’s fault for being so damn photogenic. [amNY]
• In one of the strangest street attacks in recent memory, a pedestrian was stabbed by a passing bicyclist last night on West End and 63rd. The assault appears completely random. Perhaps citywide bike lanes are a good idea after all. [NYDN]
• Local news predicts an unrelieved Manhattan Bridge traffic nightmare for the next year while the lower level is closed for a spruce-up. Daily Intel’s AccuChopper 20,000 predicts the same nightmare for the twenty years following the Atlantic Yards groundbreaking. [WNBC]
• Mets tie series, prompt the following tortured sports-pun headline of the day: NOW BATS MORE LIKE IT. [NYP, natch]
• Finally, some club called Country Bluegrass Blues and Other Music for Uplifting Gormandizers went out of business — with a name like that, what could be
the problem? — hopefully stemming the steady flow of elegiac human-interest features. [VV, NYT]
