Happy Thanksgiving

In case you're left without a place to feast tomorrow, try some of these locales for homemade-like cooking. The Howard Johnson's menu looks good. Chilled fruit cup with sherbet. Mince pie. Freshly baked rolls and butter. Orange drink! Mints!


click to enlarge

Actually, this is a scan from a 1955 Village Voice. So, unfortunately, you won't be able to feast at the Greenwich Village HoJo's tomorrow, nor at any of the other places mentioned here. They're all gone.

Maybe it's best to take the writer's advice: "the wisest thing is to go to a friend's home and get fractured."

-A look back at the HoJo's of Times Square, the history of the building that held it, and what's there now.

*Everyday Chatter

The Papaya King on 14th and 7th is shuttered. The neon lights are off, the shades are down, and the interior is a wreck of packing boxes. It went on the market last January.:



Walker in the City visits Bleecker Street and the author responds to all those many Marc Jacobs stores: "I imagined myself, if I had a business, having three or four shops on one street with my name on them all and the thought embarrassed me." [WIC]

Avalon Bowery appears to emit "poison molecule," sends blogger into paroxysms of paranoid delusion. [Restless]

Brian Berger interviews Luc Sante about his new book. [WWIB]

Umm...what? "During his campaign for a third term, Mayor Bloomberg stifled a Freedom of Information Law request by withholding the release of photographs of himself with Sarah Palin until two weeks after the election, the Daily News reports." [Gothamist]

PJ Hanley's pub to move in next to the International Bar? [EVG]

"More Jane" Ts

We asked and we have received. Mike Joyce, creator of the "More Jane, Less Marc" guerrilla postcard campaign, has put his catchy slogan on a t-shirt.




I interviewed Mike last month after spotting his postcard in the Village and (offline) begged him to print up some t-shirts. I wasn't the only one--he received dozens of requests. Now you can own your very own "More Jane, Less Marc" shirt for just 20 bucks.

I suggest you wear it on Bleecker Street.

To order, e-mail Mike at his business, Stereotype Design, and specify your size: XS, S, M, L, or XL. (In a weird ironic twist, they're printed on American Apparel shirts--click here for size chart). Plus! If you order now, Mike will throw in a handful of "More Jane" postcards, so you can spread the love all over.

*Everyday Chatter

Loving the Garment District: "The area still has pungency. It has not surrendered to the great anaesthetizing march of modernity. It has not chased its working class to faraway suburbs. It has not become a hollow movie-set version of an authentic place..." [NYT]


photo from my flickr

London looks for New York's lost edge--and I do my usual complaint to the folks across the pond. [LT]

Alex's "Then & Now" looks back at Ludlow and Cortlandt. [FP]

The vendors ousted from the 17th St. flea market have found a home at the Chelsea Antiques Garage. [CN]

Alligators in the sewers. [CR]

Enjoying the elegance of concrete arches. [FNY]

99X to close on once-doomed 10th Street. [EVG]

Take a walking tour with Lost City Brooks. [LC]

Chelsea Guitars

After 20 years on the street level of the Chelsea Hotel, Dan's Chelsea Guitars is moving. Luckily, they're only going 52 1/2 feet away.



They are moving into the much smaller sliver of a room that once belonged to the Balabanis tailor shop. The Balabanis were pushed out last year by hotel management, who told them they were going to put a bar in their space, then raised their rent. The tailor shop has sat empty and gated since then.



As you can see from the (below) photo I took in 2007, it's a tight space. And while I'm happy to hear that Chelsea Guitars is remaining in the Chelsea--something of a miracle--I worry about how owner Dan Courtenay is going to cram all of his gorgeous guitars, taxidermied animals, rubber sharks, paintings, and assorted music memorabilia into the new space, and what losing those big display windows will do to business--not to mention where the sign will go, with its iconic painting of God Himself handing a guitar down from the clouds.



I guess, if this goes like every other recent Chelsea Hotel eviction, after the move, the old guitar shop will sit empty and gated, maybe hosting a temporary art installation now and then, until a bank decides to move in. Or a cupcake bakery.

Or a frozen yogurt joint.
Or a Keith McNally restaurant.
Or a Duane Reade.
Or a high-end burger joint.
Or a Subway.
Or an Artichoke gastropizzeria.
Or an artisanal chocolatier.
Or...

• Watch a movie about the guitar shop here
• Read more about the shop at Living with Legends

Westsider Books

On the Upper West Side, across from Zabar's, a bookstore has stood for more than three decades in one incarnation or another. Today it's Westsider Books and it has pretty much everything you could want in a bookstore.



Long and narrow, with high ceilings, Westsider is packed to the rafters with used books. The shelves are stacked 15 levels tall. Ask for a title you can't find and the knowledgeable shopkeeper will mount a tall rolling ladder to retrieve it.


view from the second level

Not only are the books packed high, they're also packed deep--two levels deep. If the book you're looking for doesn't come down from the heights, the shopkeeper will dig behind the first layer of volumes, pulling out handfuls at a time, to find your quarry in the depths.

It's the sort of place where you can lose yourself.

*Everyday Chatter

Artist Jeanne-Claude, of Jeanne-Claude and Christo, has died. [NYT]

Colum McCann's novel of '70s NYC wins National Book Award. [NYT]

Alex's "Then & Now" revisits Soho. [FP]

On the Bowery with Metropolis, the Cooper Square Hotel "appears to be a cartoon illustrating the evils of overdevelopment." [EVG]

Drinking at the Nancy Whiskey bar. [COS]

Someone doesn't like the proliferation of Mr. Brainwash wheatpastes in Meatpacking:



HuffPo catches up on the McDonald's mod redesign in Chelsea. Says a Mickey D's spokeswoman, "People are using our restaurants differently today than they did five, 10, 20 years ago. People are multitasking, doing more on a given day... You want to be able to open your laptop, log on and get some work done while you're eating." [HP]

A quick look at the city's vanishing Hallmark stores. [ENY]

A virtual tugboat appears with a ghost sign on Berry St. [NYS]