Jeremiah's
Vanishing New York

VANISHED

After close to four decades, Argo Electronics on Canal Street has closed. Tribeca Citizen shared the news today, writing, "I’d have to wager that the building—and the one(s) to the west—aren’t long for this world."


photos from 2015

Argo was a beautiful little remnant of old Canal, its wares organized in cardboard boxes spilling out to the sidewalk, a cacophony of useful junk and stuff.



Power cords. Extension cords. Remote controls. Rolls of duct tape. Rolls of masking tape.



Motherboards. Keyboards. Key chains. Coffee pots. Flip flops. Watch bands.



I never got the chance to go inside, but I always liked the look of the place and photographed it each time I went by, mostly because it had that look.

You know the look. The one that says: I won't last much longer in this new New York.

For videos of the inside, visit Tribeca Citizen.

Tribeca Citizen reports:

"SP’s Nuts & Candy, the store at 166 Church that you probably know as We Are Nuts About Nuts, is closing at the end of July."

Why is it closing? Is it because people don't buy enough nuts? Is it because tastes have changed? No, it's because "the landlord didn’t seem to want him to renew."



As the Times wrote in 2010:

"There are plenty of places to buy nuts in Manhattan, from Whole Foods to CVS to the occasional subway platform. But if you want them fresh, perhaps even still warm, from the roaster, SP’s Nuts and Candy may well be your only option.

Once upon a time, shops like this were a staple of city life, quick stops for a cheap, salty snack and a whiff of nuttiness. Today, SP’s owner, Michael Yeo, is keeping alive a New York tradition that has all but vanished over the past several decades, one he simply happened into."

When the Pearl Paint mothership suddenly shuttered last year, artists all over the city--and the country--wept.

Soon after, artist Barry Fellman recreated the interior of the store, traveling to Texas to buy Pearl's original cabinets, fixtures, and various products, and turn them into an installation. "Art Show" is on view once again at the Center for Visual Communication in Miami, and will soon be touring the country.



From the press release:

"The installation provokes questions about the availability of art supplies, how they are purchased, and how their use is changing as artists adopt digital technology and new forms of presentation. Art Store extends Duchamp's seminal Readymades, sourced from consumer culture, to a collection of mass produced objects actually used to create art."

"Art Store will be launched in 2016 as a traveling installation to activate communities nationwide by serving as a point of engagement to support local museums, schools and organization involved in arts and education. Institutions may contact CVC for more information on exhibiting Art Store in their community."

Meanwhile, back on Canal Street, the Pearl Paint space remains vacant, another casualty of high-rent blight.

VANISHING

Reader Shade Rupe writes in with the news that Tribeca Cinemas will be closing: "just last week the landlord told them they have to move out by the end of the month. They’re razing the building and...you know the drill."

The drill, according to the New York Post, is that the building is on the market and "could be transformed into all residential or all office... 'We think it will trade for over $120 million,' the broker told the paper. 'It has high ceilings and is great loft space--it’s what Tribeca is all about.'" As the Real Deal reported last year when the building was first being shopped around, "The property also comes with unused air rights which could allow for the construction of more units."

While the Post does not specifically mention the cinema's closure, a source close to Shade spoke to some employees: "They told me they just found out last week. Everyone there is really shocked as this came out of nowhere... Apparently, the landlord wants to tear the building down."

I have not been able to confirm with anyone at the cinema.



The little independent movie house opened as The Screening Room in 1996, a combo restaurant and theater, the "dreamwork of two young corporate malcontents in love with the movies," according to Gael Greene in a 1996 New York magazine. Every Sunday, they showed "Breakfast at Tiffany's."

The Screening Room closed in 2003. "The venue had been struggling since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11," reported the Post at the time, "as well as suffering from competition from newer venues like the Sunshine Theater in the East Village." The theater was then purchased by Robert DeNiro and his Tribeca Film Festival partners.

Since then, the theater has not been a regular for showing films, but dedicated to festivals, special screenings, and private events. At the moment, they're still scheduled for June 11 to host a 30th anniversary screening of Berry Gordy's "The Last Dragon": "An urbanized flip on Bruce Lee movies and chop-suey cinema," says Tribeca Film. "The Last Dragon combined NYC’s mid-’80s hip-hop culture with vintage kung-fu storytelling into what’s become a beloved cinematic time capsule."

VANISHING?

A tipster has written in that "Pearl Paint will be closing its Canal Street store soon," according to an employee.

The information has not been confirmed with Pearl; however, Tribeca Citizen also notes this week that the Pearl building is for sale or lease: "the store is a downtown icon, and from the sound of the listing, Pearl isn’t likely to survive a transition. The entire six-level, 11,850-square-foot space is listed on Massey Knakal’s website for sale or rent—or teardown."



A mecca for artists, with six floors of absolutely everything art supply, Pearl began closing stores in 2010. People worried about the Canal Street location, but it soldiered on.



Now, at the same time that artists are being pushed further out of town, it looks like time is up for this important piece of the old creative city.



What might come to replace it? The realtor suggests it's an "Outstanding Condo Conversion Opportunity."



And invites interested tenants to "Join Neighborhood Retailers" like Subway, 7-Eleven, Bank of America, and Starbucks...

Tribeca does not often compel me to visit, but I went not long ago to see what's there. Standing on a once-familiar corner, I noticed something I hadn't noticed before. At 279 Church St., a lonely BURLESQUE sign is still bolted to the bricks.



A remnant of another age, when this part of town hosted adult clubs and bars like the Baby Doll Lounge, the sign might have belonged to the Harmony Theatre, a place I remember as a cramped, womb-like room where men sat around in plush, red chairs while women writhed in their laps.

Author and former stripper Lily Burana called it "rough trade central" when she recounted her experience at the Harmony in a 1995 article for New York magazine: "Martha Stewart would have a coronary if she ever saw this place. The walls are covered in chipped red paint and promo stills of porn stars circa 1985. Garbage and stray butts collect around the legs of the chairs... The Harmony is commonly regarded as the bottom of the barrel, but I like it here. The money's good, most of the customers are sweet, you can work at your own pace, and there are no pretensions of gentility or illusions about the club's purpose."

The city shut it down in 1998, when Giuliani "proclaimed the Harmony, which employed 250 women, a ''corrosive institution.'" The dancers had few options, as the city made it impossible for small strip joints to operate, while glitzy "gentlemen's clubs," with airbrushed dancers, survived. As one Harmony performer told the Times, "I don't have that Barbie doll look, and I'm afraid of rejection. What am I going to write on a job application, that I was a lap dancer for the last four years?''

In 2006, non-profit theater group Collective Unconscious moved in for two years, and Pinchbottom Burlesque held regular shows. When Collective Unconscious shuttered, Trav S.D. wrote in the Voice that it meant "the demise of one of the last physical ties to a now-vanished time and place—the Lower East Side of the ’90s and early ’00s."

In 2009, the Harmony's manager, who owned the building, placed an ad seeking a new tenant. According to Downtown Express, the ad read: "‘Anything goes’ uses include bar/night spot/party space/restaurant/live theater/store." The neighbors opposed the liquor license and "anything goes" did not pass go.

The space is now occupied by Italian winery Mulino a Vino. Said the broker on the deal, “It’s pretty exciting. While [the patrons] taste wine, there will be cellists and violinists. It’s very classy."



But the sign remains--and so do the memories. On my Baby Doll Lounge post, many former dancers and customers of the Harmony shared recollections of the place. The comments are worth reading for their detail and vividness, but here are a few choice quotes:

"The place was filthy, dark, and the stuff that went on in there was raunchy on a slow day." --L'Emmerdeur 

"I guess the best way to describe the stuff that went on there was 'Medieval.'" --GMONEY

"We 'd pay the $10 at the booth and enter the dark Harmony illuminated by the faint red lights. We 'd recognize the same cast of characters week after week, the fat mailman, a wild old man, and the little man with the beard. Of course, there were the women. Fifi, Suzie, Faye, Claudia..." --Anonymous

"I do have many fond memories of being close to the other women who were also just trying to make a living, go to college, raise their kids, etc." --Anonymous

"Working there was soooo much fun--grimy but fun." --Anonymous

"One time Time Out did a write up about Harmony, and they actually wrote about my amazing lap dance, and how I washed their hands before with baby wipes or they could not put their hands on me." --Maggie

"It was a place we could be ourselves and not have to conform to the Barbie image they expected at the flashy clubs. It was NY through and through." --Katie

VANISHING

A couple of readers have written in to let us know that, after 128 years in business, Bell Bates natural food store in Tribeca is closing.


photo: Ron Greenberg

Tribeca Citizen first reported the story, saying, "it’s hard not to pin this as an inevitable consequence of Whole Foods coming to Tribeca." They hear the building has been sold to a school.

Located on Reade Street, Bell Bates has been family owned and operated in New York City since 1885.

“Oh no, oh no, oh no,” said one Tribeca resident to DNA when she heard the news. "Man, what a shame--this neighborhood is really changing. No more room for the mom and pop stores.”

In 2007, the Delphi Restaurant, on the corner of West Broadway and Reade, closed after 37 years. Wrote the New York Sun, "The restaurant is closing because of a clause in its 12-year old lease that would increase the rent to$55,000 a month starting November 1, up from its current $11,000." Said one of Delphi's long-time waitresses, "It's not about what the neighbors or the community wants."

In an area Zagat calls "Bouleyville" for its proliferation of restaurants owned by the same celebu-chef, David Bouley was then planning to open an "upscale Japanese-themed restaurant called Brushstrokes" in the Delphi space. That was two years ago. A liquor license battle ensued, fierce enough for Bouley to call it a "witch hunt." The Delphi waitress may have been right, but Bouley won the fight in March 2008.



Today, the building looks gutted and ready for demolition, marked by a big red X.

Through the end of 2008, the Department of Buildings shows complaints about after-hours work being done against a stop work order and "site conditions endangering workers."



This is a landmark building. The blog Haute Notes wrote extensively on its history, which dates back to 1860: "By the time of the First World War, photos show fine etched-glass entry doors and a sweeping canopy sheltering Vogric's Café. Its Slovenian owner advertised the Knickerbocker beers and ales brewed in Manhattan by Colonel Jacob Ruppert."



Most curious are the seeming ghost signs on the facade, which show a giant hand holding a paint brush and the words: "Brush Up Business with Paint, Paste, Paper, & Push." (Here, "push" means to sell, writes ForgottenNY.)

Frank Jump, in his excellent ghost sign blog, dates the signage to the 1910s. But Haute Notes writes, "the signs don't appear in any of the historic photos, even those from the 1940s."

Was the ghost sign somehow uncovered? Or was it put there later on, maybe for a 1970s movie, and made to look like the 1910s?



As a 2003 Downtown Express put it: "Whenever a trendy new bistro opens up, or a chain spreads its wings and expands into occupied territory, I imagine the neighborhood’s longstanding restaurants must brace themselves for the competition that comes along with gentrification... however, Delphi has held its own for many years, defiantly refusing to be intimidated by the influx of new options for hungry Tribecans."

Back on Canal, there are these odd little electronics shops. They are not the same as the forever going out of business electronics shops of 14th Street or Times Square. You don't come here, as far as I can tell, to buy a new digital camera.



Outside, in cardboard boxes, are weird wares. A box full of busted-looking remote controls for $2.00! A small assortment of fire alarm bells! Broken motherboards and gutted cameras! AM/FM radios! Piles of tangled wires for god-knows-what!

Off in the corner, a box of grungy keyboards separated from their PCs (long-dead dinosaurs leeching chemicals into some far-off landfill), mushroom-colored keyboards sticky with spilled Coca-Cola and sneezes, waiting to be adopted.



How can you not delight in the fact that junk like this perseveres, despite the overwhelming odds against its survival? Not trash, but treasure. With someone, somewhere, it will find a purpose.

This thrift shop has been around for 47 years. At least that's what the proprietor told me when I stopped by recently to discover, to my surprise, the place is still there. Long ago, in an earlier phase, I used to buy vintage skinny ties here.



Just off Canal, in the chaos of hawkers calling "Rolex, Rolex, Rolex," and tourists grabbing for counterfeit handbags, you'll find this little shop packed with second-hand military wear, hats and vests, a wondrous array of wool Pendleton shirts circa 1950s, and a stash of vintage fabrics and draperies.

As for the proprietor--I'd love to know his story. He looks like an aged Hell's Angel in a black leather biker cap, black t-shirt, black jeans, black boots. He's probably been there for 47 years, too.

Canal Street is not for the faint of heart. Mostly, it is to be avoided at all costs. The crush of counterfeiters hauling suitcases packed with knock-off handbags and the swarms of tourists who follow them like sharks in a feeding frenzy are enough to make you homicidal.

But there are a few gems here worth checking out if you can brave the throng. My two favorites are Canal Plastics and Canal Rubber. Their signage, more than anything, enthralls. Especially with their anachronistic-sounding catch phrases.

IF IT'S IN RUBBER - WE HAVE IT!



ALL YOUR PLASTIC NEEDS AND MORE...



I went inside, trying to think of what my plastic needs might be. I nearly convinced myself that those needs included a handful of solid lucite spheres or a couple of plastic ice cubes, or a sheet of psychedelic corrugated poster paper.

In Canal Rubber, I was fiercely tempted to purchase a lengthy coil of pink rubber tubing that looked, when held just so, like a human large intestine. I also considered getting a piece of rubber flooring cut to size to create an industrial-design bathmat.

Instead, I walked out of both places empty-handed, wondering who shops there and for what. And feeling grateful that people with truer plastic and rubber needs than mine continue to exist.

We lost the Moondance to Wyoming and the Cheyenne to Alabama. But we still have the Square Diner. It is not vanishing yet.



Since 1971, the Square Diner at Leonard and Varick in Tribeca has been under the same owner, but I'm certain it dates back further than that. Maybe a diner expert can identify its pedigree. Many of its classic features have been covered up by renovations, including the odd addition of a semi-pitched, shingled roof, but I'm willing to guess it might be a Challenger, made in 1947 by Kullman Dining Car Company. The Victory in Staten Island is a prime example.

The Square retains its curved glass-brick corners and blue-paneled front, as well as original chrome and blue-glass mirrors on the interior.



In Tribeca's sea of trendy, high-end eateries, the Square is an oasis of good old-fashioned grease. But with so many luxury buildings rising all around, how long can it last?