Rebecca Nathanson

​Back in December Runnin' Scared wrote that Billy's Antiques an Props "is one of the last remnants of the 'old Bowery.'" Now that remnant has become a relic as the green tent housing Billy's has been laid to rest. Saturday morning, the tent was taken down, the New York Times reported. In the afternoon, mourners came out to mark the event with song, eulogy and procession. The tent was placed in a coffin, which then was paraded around the surrounding area.

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Even though there have been so many of these videos we're not sure whose saying what shit anymore, here we have via Gothamist "Shit Native New Yorkers Say," which you might think of as a companion piece to the earlier "Shit New Yorkers Say."

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The Hotel Chelsea.

​Three signs hang outside neighborhood landmark Hotel Chelsea. The first, a small laminated sheet of paper, announces the temporary closure of the hotel. After Hotel Chelsea was sold to developer Joseph Chetrit, things changed. On August 2nd, the hotel closed to vistors and guests, isolating itself as a massive renovation began. Non-union workers tore out century-old infrastructure, along with decades-old artwork by the luminary former tenants. Chetrit's vision is an Ace Hotel West, another upscale hangout spot for the cool and monied in the continued reinvention of Chelsea. As a result, the art had to go.

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Look: No turkey neck!

​Happy birthday to our very own Lady Liberty, whose 125 years of standing alone in New York Harbor we mark this very Friday. If you'll recall, the French gave us the statue to pay tribute to American liberty back on October 28, 1886. Now they've ruled against kids eating ketchup in their schools, so you see how far we've come. (Freedom fries!). In any case, the Statue is officially in her elder years, and though people are all going to say how good she looks for how old she is, and, sure, she does, given that she's a statue, we're going to take this moment to ask people to instead focus on her as a symbol of hope, promise, and how America once actually welcomed immigrants (or at least, pretended to symbolically) instead of blatantly trying to keep them out with giant fences.

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​Jeremiah Moss, the creator of the blog Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, has responded to yesterday's dispiriting denial of a rent reduction to St. Mark's Bookshop by Cooper Union with his own petition. (Nearly 44,000 people signed the petition to save the store, though those signatures did not convince Cooper Union to change their stance -- and, though Cooper Union is currently asking for a rent of $20,000, they have apparently told the bookstore owners they want to rent the space for $40,000.) Jeremiah's new petition asks for signatures to support a campaign to boycott whatever business moves into 31 Third Avenue if the bookstore is forced to close.

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​Dennis Mykytyn is likely the man (outside of the phone company, or another corporate entity) who would win the Guinness Book of World Records spot for holding the most phone numbers with the 212 area code -- the most prestigious area code there is in this town, until Brooklyn is completely repopulated by Manhattanites. He spent $3,000 on 100 numbers, which means, for those of us with questionable math, they were $30 apiece.

Why would anyone buy a hundred 212 numbers for $30 apiece?

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Lower East Side from Django's Ghost on Vimeo

Look at that fucking hipster! Wait...where are we? When are we? As this clip of the East Village in the '60s -- posted on Neighborhoodr via Handsome as Fuck and supplemented with music from the Velvet Underground -- demonstrates, nerdy black glasses, smoking, ironic headbands, skinny jeans, and an overall certain retro-vintage style was popular a long time ago, before there were assholes like us to dub it "retro-vintage." More >>

Esther Zuckerman

Legacy Russell

​Legacy Russell was sitting on a bench in Tompkins Square Park next to the playground. On a table in front of her sat a pink candle, a typewriter, and pages of typed notes. A man wearing a purple polo shirt stopped in front of her and asked what she was doing. She explained she was an artist working on a project in which she "collects memories about this neighborhood."

"I've never lived in this neighborhood so I guess I don't qualify," he shrugged.

"That's okay," she responded. "It's about the neighborhood, not if you've lived here; you don't have to bring a proof of address."

"So you're doing it right now?"

"Yeah, would you like to share a memory?"

The man then launched into a story about how he used to go around "smoking out all the parks I could find," including Tompkins. Russell's fingers came down on the typewriter keys. He finished his tale, adding that he is now sober, and left.

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Esther Zuckerman

​Even as the BMW Guggenheim Lab stands as another example of the gentrification of the East Village -- rats, rather than artistic types, used to be the dominant guests in the once vacant lot owned by the Parks Department that stretches between East First and Houston Streets -- it also aims to engage its guests in conversation about the neighborhood of yore. The lab, a hard-to-define project described in its press release as a "think tank, public forum, and community center," will be open Wednesdays through Sundays until October 16, after which it travels to Berlin and Mumbai. Though the theme, "Confronting Comfort," is constant between the worldwide stops, the content is site-specific.

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Esther Zuckerman

​A small white piece of paper was affixed to the left front door of the Hotel Chelsea today: "The Hotel Chelsea is temporarily closed. We apologize for any inconvenience," it read. There was a space. "Thank you."

As the hotel ceased operation and the last holdout guest packed his bags yesterday, the permanent residents of the famed building on West 23rd Street are left wondering what comes next. Of the seven we spoke to outside this afternoon -- we were told by a temporary security guard that we could not enter -- some were hopeful, while others took the closure as a death sentence. One anonymous resident described it as "funereal." "I feel like one of the survivors of the Titanic," said Brian Bothwell, a 53-year-old tenant who's lived there 16 years.

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