#riffchorusriff photography

[notesonnewyork]

Editor’s Note (8)

Dear Friends, 

Thank you for all the years you’ve supported my work here on Tumblr. In July 2018, I launched my own website. It’s a continuation of Notes on New York, so I hope you’ll drop over and see me some time. All your favorites are coming with me, things like “Absurd New York” and “From the Long-Forgotten Archives,” so they’ll buttress the new features I’ve planned. The address is:

 https://www.notesonnewyork.net

As my new site will probably reference the old, this Tumblr will remain live for the time being. I mean, five hundred seventy-two posts--why not, right? When I began here in 2013, that number of entries felt flabbergasting and far beyond the reach of my meager skill set. But now, not so much. I can see doing another five hundred and seventy-two. There’s so much more of New York City to cover, and I’m just getting started. 

Rick

[notesonnewyork]

Just a perfect day You made me forget myself I thought I was someone else Someone good

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(Lyrics taken from “Perfect Day” by Lou Reed, 1972. Photo by Riff Chorusriff. The Manhattan Municipal Building as seen from the corner of Beekman and Nassau Streets. May 9, 2018.)

[notesonnewyork]

Do I dare 
Disturb the universe? 
In a minute there is time 
For decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.

For I have known them all already, known them all:
 Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons, 
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

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(Lines taken from “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock” by T.S. Eliot, 1915. Photo by Riff Chorusriff. View of the Brooklyn Bridge from the corner of Frankfort and Pearl Streets. February 13, 2018.) 

[notesonnewyork]

Sometimes it’s easy to forget  where you’re going Sometimes it’s harder to leave

And every time you think you know  just what you’re doing That’s when your troubles exceed

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(With Guns N’ Roses at Madison Square Garden. Lyrics taken from “Out Ta Get Me” by Axl, Slash, and Izzy Stradlin, 1987. Photos by Riff Chorusriff. October 16, 2017.)

[notesonnewyork]

One to Watch

While meandering past 152 West 49th Street the other day, I was startled to find Iroha, Sapporo, and Saki Bar Hagi all shuttered. Discarded fixtures and empty booths nodded off behind the wobbly window gates. Many years ago, I often dined in these places with a friend I had hoped would be more than ephemeral. Hagi, in particular, was a basement refuge suffused with something palpable from “old New York.” I could never put my finger on what it was though.

Back in January, the manager of Iroha told grubstreet.com that “We’re closing because the building hasn’t been able to be repaired for 40 years, and there are structural issues we are no longer able to ignore.” Fair enough. And in the past two weeks, the Department of Buildings (DOB) has issued work permits that support that assessment. One authorizes a renovation to the commercial space on the first floor, a second allows an upgrade to the apartment units on the five floors above, and a third enables crews to repair a structural joist below apartment 2F. 

But, as always, I’ve learned to be suspicious of these things. In the past 18 years, the DOB hasn’t written a single structural violation for the building. In fact, the only active violation against 152 West 49th Street is for the condition of its elevator; or, in others words, it’s been on the fritz since 2016. As a resident complained to the DOB as recently as three months ago (on November 9, 2017):

The elevator has been out since Sunday and there are 6 floors in this building. Three people have been stuck in the elevator since November and the Fire Department had to come three times for people in the elevator.

So, did the building owner oust the restaurants to upgrade the property or initiate some other ambition? Before the DOB approved those work permits the past two weeks, a resident registered this complaint on January 22, 2018:

They have been gutting out apartments and breaking walls without permits. When I asked about the permit he told me that everything is fine and [they’re] working on the permit and they don’t have it yet. 

When the DOB investigated the concern on February 16th, however, it didn’t find any “construction work in progress in apartment #6B at the time of inspection.” But, with the planned improvements to come, will the people who presently live in the building’s 30 apartments be forced to move? Moreover, is the 87-year-old structure just being prepped for a future demolition?

Given the major real estate deals happening on this square block of the city lately, I wouldn’t be surprised. 

Jack Cohen’s Comjem Associates purchased 152 West 49th Street for $30 million in 2014. Additionally, the firm picked up the address behind it--163-165 West 48th Street--for $19 million. It also bought 167 West 48th Street next door for $8.25 million in 2013 and 721 7th Avenue--aka 169-171 West 48th Street--next to that for $22.9 million in 2009. All in all, an $80.15 million investment. Each of these addresses connect to form an L shape between 48th and 49th Streets, so Comjem could potentially merge the lots, bulldoze what’s there now, and erect something more massive with all the unused development rights. Perhaps little restaurants like Iroha, Sapporo, and Saki Bar Hagi didn’t fit into the plan. We shall see.

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(Photo by Riff Chorusriff. View of 152 West 49th Street and the sign on the door of Saki Bar Hagi. February 15, 2018.)

[notesonnewyork]

You can’t trust freedom when it’s not in your hands when everybody’s fightin’ for their promised land, man! 

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(With Guns N’ Roses at Madison Square Garden. Lyrics taken from “Civil War” by Axl, Duff, and Slash, 1991. Photo by Riff Chorusriff. Axl lets loose with a harrowing wail. It’s about to get much louder here. October 16, 2017.)

[notesonnewyork]

New York by Numbers (2)

If you forced the street grid upon Central Park’s 843 acres, you’d have chopped it into some 34,000 tax lots. But, no need to try it at home, the State of New York already did. Back in 1853, after the Legislature used eminent domain to acquire the land that would become Central Park, its Commission of Estimate and Assessment (CEA) sent out surveyors to perform the feat. Two years later, they not only beveled the ground into all those tax lots, they also determined that 561 proprietors held the expanse. Needless to say, according to historians Mike Wallace and Edwin G. Burrows, “the 1,600 or so Irish, German, and [free] blacks who lived on the land...were evicted by 1857,” but how did the CEA deal with all those property owners?

It paid them a total of $5,127,637.30, or $150.81 per lot. As tallied to the penny in the state comptroller’s report for the period from July 1857 to July 1858, the New York Times also discovered that the CEA spent $275,000.00 to obtain the Arsenal and its lot at 5th Avenue and 64th Street. All told, that brought the initial expenditure on Central Park to $5,402,637.30; or, if you prefer, $161,642,432.51 in today’s terms. So how did the CEA pay for it?

Well, for one, as Richard E. Foglesong attested in his book Planning the Capitalist City [1986], the CEA assessed a total of $1,657,590 on the new park’s adjacent landowners for the “benefit” of its proximity. The rest, well, that was left for the City’s Common Council to collect from its other citizens. At this point in New York history, the State Legislature managed almost all of the city’s finances, surely placing the Council in an unenviable position. As if to remind its readers where not to direct their percolating anger, the Times wrote “The Common Council and the Departments are sometimes held responsible for seemingly excessive increases in taxes, over which they can exercise no control.” 

Additionally, since the CEA borrowed money to purchase Central Park, the interest on that debt was also passed along to city taxpayers. In 1858 alone, the state comptroller doled out a $255,760 levy. But that wasn’t all. Before Frederick Law Olmsted and Calvert Vaux’s Greensward Plan for the park was initiated, buildings, rubble, animals, and other unmentionable debris had to be cleared from the land. To make that happen, the Common Council appointed a Board of Commissioners to manage the operation. As of 1858, it had borrowed $600,000 to pay laborers and procure the necessary equipment. Now neither the comptroller’s report nor the Times is clear on the interest involved, so suffice it to say that preparing the future Central Park to be landscaped required an expenditure of at least $6,533,397.30--aka $187,938,007.11 by today’s accounting. And what unfathomable sum was needed to complete the whole of Olmsted and Vaux’s vision? Well, that’s an investigation for another post. 

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(Photo by Riff Chorusriff. Gazing south from the top of the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir in Central Park. Midtown and the monstrosity at 432 Park Avenue are 36 blocks away. July 2, 2017.)

[notesonnewyork]

“You fight, you miserable bastard; fight for that bench; fight for your parakeets; fight for you cats; fight for your two daughters; fight for you wife; fight for your manhood, you pathetic little vegetable!”

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(Jerry to Peter in “The Zoo Story” by Edward Albee, 1958. Photo by Riff Chorusriff. The stage of the Signature Theatre between Act One and Act Two of Albee’s “At Home at the Zoo: Homelife & The Zoo Story.” February 17, 2018....

Seeing the show before didn’t prepare me for its stabbing finale. Even having played Jerry once was nothing compared to the punch I incurred while sitting in the audience. As he succumbed to his wound thanking Peter for delivering the blade, Jerry made me wonder if Albee wrote Peter as a closeted gay man.

Now that “The Zoo Story” is performed with “Homelife”--something Albee wrote in 2004--there’s more evidence for the idea. In “Homelife,” we meet Peter before his “Zoo Story” encounter with Jerry in Central Park. As he speaks with his wife Ann, Peter reveals that their twenty-year marriage is a “pleasant voyage on a safe ship.” But Ann wants something more: chaos. Although they made a “pact” to live an uneventful life together, Ann worries that they have become too civil. Moreover, Peter’s reluctance or inability to “hurt” her is the most worrying. Why? Well, after a sexual experience in college where he became “animalistic” and took a woman from behind, Peter vowed never to act that way again. In other words, he “tamed” himself for Ann, but she can sense his uneasy restraint. She tells him plainly, “You’re good at making love, but terrible at f**king.” 

Thanks to Jerry’s emotional and sometimes physical “nudging” later on that bench in Central Park, Peter unclasps his self-control. Suddenly, he becomes who he really is, releasing an unbridled aggression upon Jerry. Was it sexual tension? Did Peter’s “pleasant voyage” with Ann simply constitute a vessel in which to imprison it? Was that college incident too frightening to dwell upon since it brought him in touch with his true nature? Whatever the reason, the consequence of Peter’s outburst is left slacking on the park bench as the stage lights fade: Jerry’s lifeless cadaver.)

[notesonnewyork]

I can make you dance, I can make you sing I can make you dance, I can make you sing If you want me to-- 

Oh, I can make you dance, I can make you sing I can make you dance, I can make you sing If you want me to--

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(Lyrics taken from “In the Mood” by Robert Plant,1983. Photo by Riff Chorusriff. On West 52nd Street between 8th Avenue and Broadway, this is all that remains of the old Roseland Ballroom. February 28, 2018. Previously:

http://notesonnewyork.tumblr.com/post/169418580448/blade-runner-part-7-actually-uh-im-from-the )

[notesonnewyork]

Editor’s Note (7)

East Harlem, April 28, 1947. You’re looking at the Marx Brothers Playground on Second Avenue between East 96th and 97th Streets. This image was taken a few days before it opened to the public on May 1st. Although dubbed the “96th Street Playground” then, it would eventually be renamed after comedic legends Harpo, Groucho, and Chico who grew up a few blocks away at 179 East 93rd Street. Today, the playground is the subject of a serious land use debate: Is it a piece of protected parkland or just a playground that generates floor area for development? On October 23, 2017, Governor Cuomo directed Rose Harvey, State Commissioner of the Department of Parks, Recreation, and Historic Preservation, to find out. 

I’ve been doing research on the topic for the past few months, and City Limits just published my investigation. You can check out the whole story here:

https://citylimits.org/2017/11/14/manhattan-parcel-with-murky-origins-could-frame-a-debate-over-parks-and-development-in-the-city/

A special shout out to Jarrett Murphy, who allowed my writing to appear in his paper’s pages. Thank you so much!

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(Screenshot taken from The New York Times’ article introducing the new playground on April 28, 1947. Retouched for clarity by Riff Chorusriff.)

[notesonnewyork]

A sweet love song, a melody that I still can recall Two young hearts filled with dreams to walk away with it all

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(Lyrics taken from “Tender Years” by John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band, 1983. Photo by Riff Chorusriff. The scene at Joe’s Pub at the Public Theater. March 13, 2017.)

[notesonnewyork]

"The Spaghetti Incident?” (A Second Helping)

Are they as scorching as the Mick Taylor-era Rolling Stones, their most comparable ancestor? Well, at the very least, this version of Guns N’ Roses is more of a hearth than the one we grew up with over 30 years ago. With a musicianship now flourishing in the wake of jettisoned addictions, feuds, and bad habits, this band is dangerous. Like Prince ripping through “Proud Mary” (Credence Clearwater Revival), “All Along the Watchtower” (Bob Dylan), and “Best of You” (Foo Fighters) at the Super Bowl Halftime Show in 2007, these guys can play just about anything. And they’ll do it on a dime. 

As if an open vein through which courses the Great Rock N’ Roll Songbook, Guns N’ Roses is the rarest of vessels that can both contain its ebb and flow and excoriate its nerves to siphon off something new. Who else could turn a reading of “Speak Softy, Love (Love Theme from the Godfather)” (Nino Rota) into “Sweet Child O’ Mine,” or parse sweet “Melissa” (Allman Brothers Band) into “Patience”? They can perform the reverse trick too. “Civil War” resolved neatly into a few riffs from “Voodoo Chile (Slight Return)” (The Jimi Hendrix Experience) while “November Rain” dripped into final strains of “Layla” (Derek & The Dominoes) like those associations were always meant to be. And, as if to relieve the vaguest hint of boredom, they can go about vivisecting other people’s songs as well. “Attitude” (The Misfits) was diced in favor of “You Can’t Put Your Arms Around A Memory” (Johnny Thunders) and the gospel remains of “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door” (Bob Dylan) were defibrillated by the stark musings in “Only Women Bleed” (Alice Cooper). 

Like the Stones reinterpreting “Just My Imagination” (The Temptations), “Not Fade Away” (Buddy Holly & The Crickets), or “Shake Your Hips” (Slim Harpo), Guns N’ Roses are often at the height of their powers rehabilitating classic songs. Slash and Richard Fortus dueled so elegantly on their acoustic guitars during “Wish You Were Here” (Pink Floyd) that the supposedly indelible mark of David Gilmour and Roger Waters was evanesced. “Live and Let Die” (Wings) was such a purge of pyrotechnic bloodletting that even Paul McCartney has had to admit to tinkering with his original to match the updated tenor these days. Later, in Slash’s suddenly power-chording hands, “The Seeker” (The Who) became freshly anthemic. “Black Hole Sun” (Soundgarden) was a crater, a slow-burning requiem hoisted to the ghost of Chris Cornell that moved the lips of even the most hardened fan in the crowd. And then there was Roise. A “Whole Lotta Roise” (AC/DC) is the song Guns N’ Roses should have written. Thumping, sneering, and almost combustible, it ought to have been on “Use Your Illusion I” between “Bad Obsession” and “Back Off B--”. The band tossed their way through it twirling and posing as if they were having the time of their lives. 

So what if they just did a set of covers? They certainly could. They have the special bloodline and extant stamina to pull off such a feat. What would they choose though? My money would be on things like “Tie Your Mother Down” (Queen), “Monkey Man” (The Rolling Stones), “Romeo’s Delight” (Van Halen), “Johnny B. Goode” (Chuck Berry), and “Why Does Love Got To Be So Bad?” (Derek & The Dominoes). Maybe even “Black Dog” (Led Zeppelin), “Love, Reign O’er Me” (The Who), “Helter Skelter” (The Beatles), or “Train Kept A-Rollin’” (The Yardbirds). But, then again, this Guns N’ Roses is too locked in right now to neglect its own catalog. While Axl’s voice is still waiting to yowl, Slash’s fingers still flailing to shred, and the two still willing to direct the ensemble with Duff’s support, let there be rock. We might not see another touring band like this in our lifetime. 

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(With Guns N’ Roses at Madison Square Garden. Photos by Riff Chorusriff. October 16, 2017. Previously, with GNR:

http://notesonnewyork.tumblr.com/post/149098187053/the-spaghetti-incident-the-history-of-rock-and )

[notesonnewyork]

“It may be that we have become so feckless as a people that we no longer care how things do work, but only what kind of quick, easy outer impression they give. If so, there is little hope for our cities or probably for much else in our society. But I do not think this is so.”

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(Words taken from pages 7 and 8 of “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” by Jane Jacobs, 1961. Photo by Riff Chorusriff. Sunset along West 53rd Street. September 20, 2017.)

[notesonnewyork]

Absurd New York #84

How bikers really feel about all that extra traffic.

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(Photo by Riff Chorusriff. As posted on the corner of Broadway and East 19th Street. September 5, 2017.)

[notesonnewyork]

Queen of the Cort

Today’s mournfully exposed facade of the Cort Theatre belies the cavalcade of celebrated actors who have played behind those 105 year old bricks. Stars of stage and screen like Eli Wallach, Jessica Tandy, Al Pacino, Ossie Davis, Ruby Dee, Kirk Douglas, Anthony Perkins, Robert Redford, Kevin McCarthy, James Earl Jones, Uta Hagen, Walter Matthau, Alan Alda, Grace Kelly, Marlon Brando, James Dean, Ethel Barrymore, Laurence Olivier, Lillian Gish, James Cagney, Katherine Hepburn, Denzel Washington, Nicole Kidman, Ian McKellan, and Patrick Stewart. 

But on December 20, 1912, perhaps the most mythical of all opened the theater portraying the titular heroine in J. Hartley Manners’ “Peg O’ My Heart”: Laurette Taylor (1883-1946). The comedy concerning Taylor’s poor Irish-American girl who visits relatives in London ran for 603 performances. It was such a triumph the Cort would revive it again with her on February 14, 1921 for 88 installments. Although Taylor would go to Hollywood to film the show with King Vidor in 1922, she’d never move away from her native New York. Her first line as Peg was simple: “I just came in.”

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(Photo by Riff Chorusriff. The west side fire-escaped wall of the Cort Theatre, 138 West 48th Street. Like many of its Broadway peers, it was designated as both an interior and individual landmark by the Landmarks Preservation Commission in 1987. December 11, 2017.)

[notesonnewyork]

Absurd New York #89

Which one do I press again?

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(Photo by Riff Chorusriff. Taking my daily IQ test in the lobby of 244 West 54th Street. February 20, 2018.)