David's Shoe Repair

VANISHING

Time to pick up your shoes. After decades on 7th St. between 1st and 2nd Avenues, David's Shoe Store and Repair is closing. The owner says the rent has gone up too high, and he is forced to move out of the neighborhood. He'll be in business in the East Village until next week, and expects his last day to be Friday, May 31.



In 2008, we heard rumors that the old cobbler would be closing due to doubled rent. But then David's grandson, also named David, renovated the place and reopened in 2009. He continued his grandfather's tradition, and kept the window just the same, with its hand-painted red sign and its Cat's Paw ad that probably dates back to World War II, if not earlier.



The space has held a cobbler's shop for a long time. Certainly half a century. Before David's, it was A. Brym Shoe Repairing--also Ukrainian and the likely source of the Cat's Paw girl. There she is, with her kittens, in the old photos.


photo: Edmund V. Gillon, Jr.

Whatever is coming next to this space, we can bet it won't be a cobbler shop. They've been getting run out of town. And while it's good to know David will still be in business elsewhere, the soles of the East Village will suffer.

As for the Cat's Paw girl, she'll likely just be scraped away.


photo: Michael Sean Edwards, 1980

Also read:
Cobblers of Brooklyn
A. Fontana Shoe Repair

Moscot on the Move

On the occasion of their big move from one corner of Orchard and Delancey to the other, Moscot invited me to spend some time touring the shop and talking with the owner...



In the optical store that his great-grandfather, grandfather, and father ran throughout the 20th century, fourth-generation owner Dr. Harvey Moscot recalls being put to work at six years old. His job was to install screws into eyeglass frames. He quotes his father, saying, “I’m a graduate of DelChard University,” DelChard referring to the corner of Delancey and Orchard Streets.

After standing on the northeast corner of those streets for the past 77 years, its giant Eckleburgian spectacles keeping watch over the Lower East Side, the great Sol Moscot is moving. It won’t be the first time. Birthed from a moveable pushcart, they went brick and mortar on Rivington Street in 1915, later moved to 119 Orchard, then to their current spot in 1936. After this next move, they’ll still be on the corner of Orchard and Delancey, just not this corner. This corner is being demolished to make room for a 13-story condo tower.



“I learned this street when it was a tough neighborhood,” Moscot says. “Back when people from the methadone clinic nearby would come up to the get their eyes examined. Back in the Starsky and Hutch days when we’d jump across the counter to chase after people who lifted frames.”



The neighborhood has changed dramatically since then, and more so in recent years. Once a pedestrian mall crammed with bargain shoppers and merchants hawking cut-rate wares, Orchard Street is becoming a high-end destination for art collectors, foodies, and well-heeled consumers seeking designer boutiques. Luxury condos are rising left and right. If scruffy rockers like Bob Dylan and Jerry Garcia used to shop at Moscot, now it’s Johnny Depp and Kanye West. But Harvey doesn’t like to name drop.

“Every customer is equal to a celebrity here,” he says. “We treat everyone the same.”

Customers flow in and out, some old, some new. An elderly African-American woman pushing a shopping cart is greeted by her first name. A pair of European hipsters in straw boater hats browse the frames. When photographer and hipster icon Terry Richardson enters the store with an entourage of cameramen, there’s a murmur of curiosity. He’s trying on the Terry, the oversized frames that bear his name and signature style. But on closer inspection, it isn’t Terry Richardson at all. It’s an Italian look-alike who calls himself “Fake Terry Richardson.” Fake Terry puts on the Terry frames and poses with a photo of real Terry, also in the Terry frames. You get the feeling that things like this happen every day at Moscot.



While many customers have been coming to the store for generations, young people have seized on Moscot as a way to enhance their style.

Harvey explains, “The younger generation appreciates a 100-year-old business. We’re not virtual. We’re authentic. To be real is an asset. People want something with a true history that’s not conjured up by venture capitalists with a shelf-life of five years. People long for the real thing. It gives them a sense of security in an insecure world.”



Many of Moscot’s frames are archival, made from the original designs. They also have real rivets and true hinges. Harvey inspects a non-Moscot frame. “See these here,” he says, pointing to the chrome dots at the end pieces of the non-Moscot, “these are just decorative. They have no function. They’re not real rivets. See? They don’t connect to anything.” He pulls the Lemtosh from his own face, and says with excitement and pride, “Now look at this. This is a real rivet. It’s connected to the hinge. It’s not just decoration, it has a purpose.”

Harvey’s passion for rivets and hinges goes back to his boyhood days of installing screws, watching the older men conduct business. “I had the privilege of working with Sol Moscot on Saturdays and Sundays. He loved to adjust frames and remind people to come back for tune-ups. Even after the sale was consummated, he’d be out there working with the customer. He was like the old shoemaker who really cared about things.”



With so much history here, does Harvey feel any sadness about being pushed out of his store? He says, “You cannot stop progress. It’s New York. It’s what real estate people do. We do our own part to preserve New York. But I’ll tell you, I saw my dad walk down the steps the other day, and his eyes welled up with tears. I said, ‘You alright?’ He just said, ‘I’ve walked up and down these stairs for 50 years.’”



Though he mainly looks to the future, Harvey admits to being nostalgic. He is taking almost every artifact from the shop to the new space—the baked-enamel signs from the stairs, the neon eyeglass signs, the antique cabinets, the wooden peg and groove chairs from 1938 (aka The Thrones of Moscot)—all of it is being carefully moved to the new store across Delancey.

The new store will occupy the first floor, no more second-story business, with orders filled in the basement. They've installed a dumbwaiter, just like they have at the current shop, to ferry glasses up and down. (The dumbwaiter has impeded their opening date--it required an elevator permit and inspection.)

Harvey feels optimistic about the move. For him, it’s “an inflection point, where the new generation is coming in to work.” His son, Zack, will be the next Moscot to enter the business, making it a five-generation endeavor, and hopefully securing Moscot's future for decades. “We call him 5G,” Harvey says, laughing.



But mostly, what Harvey feels about the move is pride. He managed to keep Moscot in the neighborhood. He says, “Had I not been proactive, it would have ended. And that’s what’s burning inside me. Had Moscot not been able to operate where we were born, it would have been tragic. But they didn’t beat us. We’re rolling across the street, and the eyes of Moscot will still be looking down upon Orchard.”



The new Moscot is set to open on May 22--take a peek inside the new store.

See all my Moscot photos here.

Vigil for Mark Carson

At midnight last night in Greenwich Village a candlelight vigil was held for Mark Carson, the gay man who was shot in the head and killed this weekend by a man shouting homophobic slurs.

Photographer Stacy Walsh Rosenstock shares photos of the vigil:





View all of Stacy's photos here.

There will be a march and rally tomorrow at 5:30 p.m. beginning at the LGBT Community Center, 208 W 13th Street, and proceeding to West 8th Street and 6th Avenue.

Wojnarowicz Digitized

Gallerist brings the news that "New York University’s Fales Library has completed digitizing the journals of artist David Wojnarowicz and has released them all online."



Wojnarowicz did a lot in his short life. The library gives this description: "David Wojnarowicz was a painter, writer, photographer, filmmaker, performer, and activist. He made super-8 films, created the photographic series 'Arthur Rimbaud in New York,' performed in the band Three Teens Kill 4 - No Motive, and exhibited his work in well known East Village galleries. In 1985, he was included in the Whitney Biennial, the so-called 'Graffiti Show.' He died of AIDS on July 22, 1992. The David Wojnarowicz Papers includes journals, correspondence, manuscripts, photography, film, video and audio works, source and production materials, objects, and ephemera."

The journals span 1971 - 1991 and many are set in New York--in the Village and on the Lower East Side. The artist writes about hot knishes at an "ancient knish palace" on East Houston, and the characters playing bocce by Second Avenue, where winos set up their wash buckets for cars.



The pages are not transcribed into digital text, but photographed, so you see the diarist's handwriting, his typing, the corners of his notebook paper, his scratch-outs and doodles. Bits of ephemera are glued to the pages--take-out Chinese menus, news clippings about artists, ads for music shows.



What sort of future "papers" will we have after the Digital Age? Who keeps real journals anymore? In a world where, increasingly, we no longer have the thing itself (Dinge an Sich), to have the thing at least reproduced as it is--in blue ink and pencil, with sticky glue stains and faded newsprint--is a thrill.



View the diaries online here. If you'd like to read the diaries in print, check out In the Shadow of the American Dream.

New York 1971

It's always exciting to stumble upon someone's collection of scanned photos on Flickr featuring scenes from the lost city. Michael Jacobi (Gentle Giant) has two collections called "New York 1971"--one bunch of color photos and another bunch of black and whites.



The color photos were taken by his father, Hans Jacobi, and Michael did the black and whites as a kid. In just 65 photos, we go from Times Square down to the Village, Chinatown, and out to Coney Island.



The streets have a bit of grit, but it's only 1971. They're not yet grim. (I was excited to find the elusive Elpine drink stand in two shots.)



There are scenes of Hare Krishnas banging their drums. And those South American street musicians who've apparently been around forever. And women with magnificent afros shopping for art on the sidewalk at what looks like 11th and University.



You'll also find shots looking through shop windows, into collections of souvenirs and junk you don't find anymore--exploding snakes in joke cans of mixed nuts and big-eyed guys proclaiming, "I love you this much." (Remember Times Square's shops selling "Back Date Magazines"? There's still one that remains.)

They're large photos, too, so you can zoom in to see details. Click here and here to see more.

Katz's at 125

Katz's deli is crowded in the middle of a weekday afternoon, packed with tourists. All the tables are taken. Seats are being saved. I drift into the back with my hot dog and chocolate egg cream, and find an empty table. An older lady approaches, bearing a tray of fries, pastrami sandwich, and a Doc Brown's cream soda. I motion for her to sit.



Her name is Norma, she lives in Chinatown, and she's been coming to Katz's since she was a girl in the 1940s. "There were four of us kids," she says, "and my father would cut this pastrami sandwich into four pieces, one piece for each of us. That was plenty." Katz's pastrami sandwich is big. Norma only intends to eat half of it, saving the other half to eat in the morning with fried eggs.

"Please," she says, "help me with these French fries." So I do.

A young man asks if he can join us. He's wearing a Katz's t-shirt and carrying a brisket sandwich on a plate. He's friendly, chatting with Norma and me. I figure maybe he's a busboy or a ticket giver. He tells us he's the fifth-generation owner (or third-generation, if you're being picky). He says, "See that sign on the wall that says 'Jake's Bar Mitzvah'? I'm Jake."

Son of Alan, grandson of Martin (a close friend of the original owners), Jake Dell is a mensch. He talks with a boyish passion and excitement about Katz's, the way another guy his age might gush about working for the Yankees--or running an empire of artisanal gastropubs. I ask him how he got involved in the family business. "Since the womb," he says, laughing. "I was handing out tickets when I was six years old." But owning Katz's was never the plan.

Jake was pre-med, with plans to go on to medical school, when he took a year off after college to help out his dad at the deli. "I fell in love with the place, and everything about it made me realize that this is who I was meant to be." He never went on to become a doctor. "When I told my parents I wanted to do this, my mother said, 'Are you sure? Let's think about it,' but my father was grinning from ear to ear."



Before Jake came on board, the future of Katz's was uncertain. His father and uncle were getting older, ready to retire. It was 2009. The neighborhood was filling up with more and more condo towers and luxury hotels. While the family owns the building, rumors circulated that Katz's was not long for this world. Jake says, "I just couldn't imagine it becoming a condo, or having someone else running it. I could not handle that. So it was an easy decision. If I wasn't here, this place would disappear."

Jake loves his job. He loves talking to people and seeing them happy. He loves the food and its traditions. Katz's makes all their pickles in the basement, and behind the dining room wall there's a refrigerated room where 40,000 pounds of meat are pickling. Jake eats three meals a day at the deli. When asked about his heart health, he says, "I go to the doctor a lot to make sure I'm okay." He has no interest in updating the menu. His favorite dish is pastrami on rye, with a little mustard, washed down with a Doc Brown's black cherry soda. (Egg creams are for lighter fare, like hot dogs.)

He has zero interest in changing anything about Katz's. "If we keep things the same," he says, "that's what people love. It's nostalgia."

But he did come up with the idea to deliver--and to celebrate Katz's 125th anniversary with a street party on June 2. "We're shutting down Orchard Street. There's going to be klezmer music, maybe some old vaudeville acts, and a pastrami eating contest. Joey Chestnut, the hot dog eating champ, is going to be here. He told me to set aside six pounds of pastrami for him. He's going to eat it in ten minutes. Six pounds of pastrami! That's a lot of pastrami."



After Jake goes back to work, Norma and I talk and keep working on her pile of French fries. She tells me how she used to go to school with a hot Katz's knish in one pocket, to keep her hands warm on winter mornings, and a pickle in the other. But no matter how many layers of paper she used to wrap the pickle in, her teacher could always smell its strong fragrance, and she'd be forced to throw it out.

"So many memories here," she says. "It sounds silly, but every time I come to this place, I feel spiritually connected to my father."

I tell her there's nothing silly about that. Then we talk more about Katz's and about Jake, how lucky we are to have him, to keep Katz's going. I marvel at how a young man would give up a career in medicine to run the family deli. "That's very rare," I say.

Norma throws up her hands and says, "Oh, we have enough doctors. We don't need any more doctors. We need places like this. It's good for your soul."

Joe's Dairy

VANISHED

As we shared here last week, Joe's Dairy closed this weekend to retail customers. They served their last sandwiches on Friday evening. On Saturday, with lines out the door and the tip jar overflowing, it was all about the mozzarella. News photographers and reporters went in and out, aiming to capture something vanishing before their eyes.



As it often happens on these last days, the staff was surprised by the sudden outpouring of love. Vincent Campanelli told WPIX 11, "You think you’re selling cheese, and you start going up layers, it’s a whole of a lot more than you thought."

Customers gave their condolences, along with last-minute advice, "You should've put up a website, got on Facebook," and some dire predictions, "Marc Jacobs will probably move into this space next." Even with mom and pops vanishing all over town, it's hard to understand how, in a time and place where faux "artisanal" food is all the rage, actual artisanal food can't succeed.



But this wasn't the usual case of hiked rent. Some at Joe's said it was due to a shrinking customer base. One reader reported that owner Anthony Campanelli drove in to work on Wednesday and "it just struck him--'I can't do this anymore.' He was going to just close up and not tell anyone. He wanted to leave quietly. But then word got out and all the hoopla ensued... He, his wife and his daughter all told me that today is a happy day."

Mr. Campanelli told James and Karla Murray in 2008, "When I’m ready to retire, it will probably be a lost art in my family because I have a daughter but I won’t allow her to do this. It’s a lot of hard work. It’s not that a woman couldn’t do it, but you have to get up really early and work long hours. I feel like I do this because I chose to. Nobody asked me to do it. This is what I wanted to do but I wouldn’t suggest it to anyone."



Why don't we have more people like the Campanellis to keep our longstanding mom and pops going when Mom and Pop can't do it anymore? In 1977, they took Joe's over from Joe Aiello and they didn't glamorize it, they just kept doing what had been done. Why don't we have more people who want to keep traditions alive without twisting them into something exclusive?

If someone new took it over today, chances are it wouldn't be Joe's Dairy anymore. It would be Faux Joe's, some upscale reproduction with luxury prices and the clientele to match. They'd reproduce the sign to look like the old sign, only spiffed up. They'd serve "The Campanelli," a mozzarella and prosciutto panini drizzled with truffle oil and slapped with a $35 price tag. They'd have lines out the door every day. In their interview for New York magazine, they'd defend themselves to their critics, "We saved this place. A lot of banks and Starbucks were looking to move in here. No, it's not the same as before. What we're doing is an homage."

Here's a true homage, a documentary about Joe's directed by Piero Iberti and produced with Jeremy Zalben, due out this summer--online and (hopefully) in theaters:


Joe's Dairy (Teaser) from 10Block Productions on Vimeo.

I asked the filmmakers some questions about Joe's Dairy and their film. Here are their answers:

Piero Iberti: My parents first discovered Joe’s when they were going to Soho gallery openings in the early 1980s. As I grew up nearby, I began to frequent Joe’s on a regular basis. I'm a native New Yorker and, at the heart of it, I wanted to capture a New York story that was important and resonant to me. On a basic level, I wanted to know how they made the cheese. I was interested in finding out the story of the people, the shop, and who this Joe was.

Jeremy Zalben: We both grew up in the East Village, 10 blocks away from each other. I never personally experienced Joe’s growing up, but when Piero told me about it, I knew it was an important story that needed to be shared with people.

Piero: I found out about the closing the night before and couldn't believe it when I heard. I frantically called Jeremy to tell him, and scrambled to phone those close to me who knew the store as well. I knew I had to be there the next day.

Jeremy: When Piero called me and told me, I didn’t believe him. I told him to call Vincent at the shop to see if this was actually true. I was truly surprised. When we first started out making the film two years ago, no part of me thought that the end of Joe’s would come before we could put our film out.

Piero: The city has lost a tremendous cultural force with the closing of Joe’s. It has also lost a piece of its identity and what makes New York, New York. One of the main motivations we had in making this movie was to capture that old New York feel that still existed because of shops like Joe’s. Now that feeling is on the verge of extinction. With less and less "mom and pop" stores around to provide that character, I’m not sure it's possible to retain it anymore.

Jeremy: For me, the city has lost another piece of what made New York such a special place. Stores like Joe’s are what made people want to live in New York. Joe’s provided a place where you could go, not just for a piece of smoked mozzarella, but to see your neighbors while waiting in line, to have a conversation with Ro behind the counter, or say hi to Vincent and Anthony while they worked on the cheese in the back. Unfortunately, people don’t want that anymore. They would rather go into a store, buy what they want, and go. I don’t think it’s possible for New York to ever be what it used to be.