The "One from the Vault" feature plumbs the archives of back issues of block association newsletters for new neighbors and lovers of our community and its history.  To read others pieces from the vault, click on the category at right.


By Caitlin Hawke

First, I want to note the kindness of Chris Brady who gave me permission to illustrate this post with his technicolor photos of the Movie Place (TMP), the way it was. I found them at Chris's photo feed here a while back, and they stopped me cold, for the love of a place I remember so well. I've been saving them for you.

Incredibly, gone for 12 years already, the Movie Place hasn't come close to being replaced around here in its role as a neighborhood hub drawing from north, south, east and west. Never mind its mom-and-pop-edness.

The last owner of TMP was Gary Dennis, who is equally known for his efforts to get Humphrey Bogart his due by the dubbing of W. 103rd Street for him, replete with a ceremonial appearance of Bacall. Yes, right here in Bloomingdale.

I wrote a piece about that here last year. 

Now I love Bogie and Bacall as much and perhaps more than most. But it takes a force of nature like Gary to move city elements, NYCHA et al, to have gotten the naming done. So I want you to remember that when you are walking the block between West End Avenue and Broadway on 103rd staring at a "This is Us" rerun on your smartphone. Look Up! For the love of the silver screen, look up. Look up from your big sleep and appreciate that you trace Humphrey DeForest Bogart's footsteps as he left his home at 245 W. 103rd St. and padded over to the Trinity School. He lived there from about December 25, 1899 until he enlisted in the navy in 1918.

But I digress.

I still see Gary around from time to time. At a Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group meeting last year, he gave a great presentation on the neighborhood as portrayed in films. Many chase scenes later, he had the audience eating out of his hands.

He used to keep a wonky blog on lost cinema houses. And I think he still gives tours.  Bloomingdale born, Gary grew up loving movies. Ironic then that when it was a novelty, everyone said his was the voice that used to animate the old "Moviefone" reservation line. And that amused me. You remember the Moviephone? It's the line you dialed that responded in a quasi-human voice: "Hello, and welcome to Moviefone! Using your touchtone keypad, please enter the first three letters of the movie title now."

If you don't know the voice I am talking about, here's a fun clip. It's not, spoiler alert, Gary Dennis. But he sure coulda been a contender.

TMP lasted in situ for 22 years and it is now gone for 12. That's more than the full lifespan of a medium, video.

Yes, 12 years ago, our mecca of movies closed and it was noteworthy enough for the New York times to weigh in. If you never had the pleasure of pushing through the door into the high-ceilinged space bustling with first dates, lonely hearts, groups of buddies and old couples riffling through bins of movie titles, you haven't lived.

Sorry, but it was a thing.

People came from many neighborhoods away to partake. To feast in the selection.  And to go home with armfuls of movies. To come back three days later and do it all again.

It wasn't just the selection. It was the connoisseurship. The guys and a couple of gals behind the counter each had a specific taste. You could ask anyone anything and with just a few hints at what you liked, out poured 5 or 10 suggestions of other films to watch. An algorithm in flesh and blood. It's called a brain and memory, actually. And it worked.

Yet it wasn't just the connoisseurship, it was also the place.  Patina would be a nice way of describing the layers of this loft-like store. Grime would be a bridge too far. Let's call it wabi-sabi.

If the Movie Place were a rock star, it would have been Keith Richards.

Yes, technology has transformed our world since then.  And yes many don't even feel the need for a screen bigger than an iPad to enjoy a film, old or new. And yes, I'll even cede that streaming a movie is more convenient.  But algorithms will never replace synaptic encyclopedias like the brain that is Gary Dennis's or that of the employees some of whom, thankfully, still live in the neighborhood with their dogs or their now-grown kids. And for what the human touch is still worth, you can't get that kind of prickle online. Or snark. Or voice. Or, truth be told, that warmth.

Starbucks will never replace the town-square feeling that was the Movie Place on a Friday night.  And Tindr will never be as electric with possibility as browsing the Nouvelle Vague section over a handsome guy's shoulder.

Seek no more the ghost of the Movie Place, let loose to wander since 2006. For it is here. And this one from the vault of Block Association newsletters is a David Reich original. Scroll all the way down to read it.

Enjoy!

The "One from the Vault" feature plumbs the archives of back issues of block association newsletters for new neighbors and lovers of our community and its history.  To read others pieces from the vault, click on the category at right.


By Caitlin Hawke

In the February 2001 edition of the BA newsletter, Jock Davenport covered the opening of Silver Moon Bakery in November 2000.  Deep in the heart of Y2K.  In the very same month of the infamous "election."  A year before 9/11.  It's a veritable lifetime ago.  And yet 18 years have sailed by. 

Yes, other places mentioned in the piece like Mama Mexico and Turkuaz are gone, but it's nice to have moonlight glowing still.

If Jock's piece wets your whistle, there's more to read, such as the interview with Judith Norell here and an ode to a favorite hyper-local eat here.

On your 18th, I say, Judith, and to all your Silver Moon family: To life, to life, l'chaim!

Your lagniappe today is Lin-Manuel Miranda's rendition of the "Fiddler on the Roof" tune as a surprise to his bride at their wedding reception. You'll enjoy it for the showmanship even if the singing is a little dicey at times! Scroll down to view or if you are receiving this in an email subscription, click on the picture of Lin with his father-in-law below!

By Caitlin Hawke

​On a day when a random act of kindness might make all the difference, I give you this pop-up piece of human goodness. If you don't know about Flower Flash by this incredibly generous artist who, it must also be said, has a flair for great PR, it might brighten both your actual and virtual lives to learn more. 

​Flower-manipulator extraordinaire Lewis Miller made his way to the neighborhood shortly after resident gardener, Joseph Arbo, placed a wreath in the flower bed in memory of the hate crime in Pittsburgh. Two people on parallel trajectories of decency whose paths fused.
​
Hang in there, siblings of this valley of flowers known as Bloomingdale. Hang in there.

Community is what makes us strong when we are challenged. 'Memory' and Straus Park stand as witnesses to this truth. 

h/t to Terence Hanrahan for the picture below and the notice of these happenings at our local trivium.

By Caitlin Hawke

Thanks to the considerable efforts of a load of brave people of the female persuasion like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, her daughter and Bloomingdaler Harriot Stanton Blatch, Susan B. Anthony, and Gertrude Foster Brown, it was 101 years ago tomorrow that New York State accorded women the right to vote, helping to pave the way three years later for the 19th Amendment. And by New York State, I really mean New York City, because if you look at the county by county breakdown (scroll all the way down), our urban forebears padded the 80,000 vote margin of victory.

The day that women's suffrage was on the ballot, 12,000 women stood on corners throughout the city encouraging people of the male persuasion, aka the then voters, to grant women the vote.

They were angry women. Docile women. Black women. Chinese women. Uppity and arrogant women. Handsome and plain women. "Women who knew their place." Working women. Moms and daughters. Religious women. Temperate women. Righteous women. Organized women. Women who loved men. Women who loved women. Women who persisted.

And lo! That day nearly half a million men voted with -- and really for -- them all.

The NYC Women Suffrage Party was looking for twice that turnout in support. They advertised in Columbia's Spectator the day before shooting for a million-man team. But I can't fault them for dreaming big.

In and among all of this rich history of suffering for suffrage, there's a gem: the overlooked story of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's daughter, Harriot Stanton Blatch, is one my readers will relish. Harriot, according to Douglas Feiden writing in Our Town New York for last year's centennial, was an inveterate upper west sider who  lived at 250 Riverside Drive, right here at W. 97th Street.

Harriot had the distinction of living through most of the battle for women's suffrage, beginning as a babe in the arms of her mother, the battle's field marshal. Harriot grew to be a force to be reckoned with in Manhattan as the battle waged on to its glorious end on November 6, 1917.

Says Feiden: "Among [Blatch's] triumphs: In 1907, she founded the Equality League of Self-Supporting Women, which trained working-class women to campaign for suffrage and was “open to any woman who earns her own living, from a cook to a mining engineer. Then in 1910, she organized the city’s first blockbuster suffrage parade, a march down Fifth Avenue climaxing in a giant rally in Union Square. Blatch and thousands of like-minded activists transformed virtually every nook and cranny of Manhattan — its streets, salons, townhouses, tenements, clubhouses, concert halls, vaudeville houses, boarding houses, hotels, parks, pools, auditoriums, alleyways and office buildings — into a living, breathing operational base for the suffrage movement."

New York was far from the first state to let women into the voting club. But that's a digression. What's important is that the ultimate change came through the grassroots of the states. And that it took a long, long time. Ohio voted women's suffrage down on that same day. But New York's upvote cranked the motor hard.

Vagaries of our 'states rights' vs. 'federal rights' dynamic are evident throughout our legal system, from managing voting, to our banking system, to the electoral college to name only a few. These will likely persist, thanks to our country's reverence for its founding documents. And anyone who rides the subway knows the vagaries of state-controlled city budgets despite larger urban tax bases and headcounts.

What the story of 1917 tells us is that our populousness in the Big Apple matters. It matters to the state. And it matters to the federation. Our votes do count. History bears that out.

Today, I am grateful to those excellent women, like the ones above, who got out there 100+ years ago in each neighborhood of NYC. The women who patiently organized for decades. The people who made up the Women's Suffrage Party. And to the half million male voters of New York State on November 6, 1917 who just plain did the right thing.

Tomorrow, five score and a year later, the country will be looking to New Yorkers again.

Find  your poll. Tip your (big, black, feathered) hat to the Stantons, mère et fille.  Grab your umbrella. And hit the street, thinking about what corners all across the city looked like 101 years ago: 10, 15, 30 women deep. Recall for a moment those men who voted to enfranchise at long last their wives, sisters, mothers, grandmothers, aunts and lovers in the great state of New York.

And make your way to cast your vote as if someone else's suffrage depends on you.
​

By Caitlin Hawke

Kids weren't the only tribe out in force on Wednesday evening in Bloomingdale. Photogs Ozzie Alfonso, Celia Knight (at right in candy corn scarf, I swear!), Maria Vitagliano and David Ochoa were lying in wait to capture the wee sugar-fueled neighbors.

While one or two King Georges were spotted, there were no Hillary Rodham Clintons in the ratpack, but someone needs to say "It takes a village"!  'Cause it does.

Just look at that table of goodies below. Yowza.

This was of course thanks to your Block Association vols who made it all come true.

Hat tip to child-at-heart and toothfairy accomplice Jane Hopkins (depicted above in the boa and orange witch hat), who has been the field marshal for nigh on forever -- all right, not quite that long, but you get the picture. To her team of big kids who dole out the dough. To the good folks at St. Luke's who always pitch in. To the donors who made contributions of candy, time, and dollars. And to the families who came, saw and conquered the treats and the streets.

If you are sitting on the sidelines, thankful that we have a community-building association in our midst, consider pitching in and helping the Block Association. We're looking for why-oh-ewe!  To volunteer, email us at info@w102-103blockassn.org. To become a member, click here.

And now to our gallery: "Nightmare on 102nd Street!"  If you know someone in these pictures, send them this link and tell them to subscribe to the blog: https://www.w102-103blockassn.org/blog/nightmare-on-102nd-street.

By Caitlin Hawke

October 31 -- this Wednesday -- is fast approaching. If you are not planning on coming out after sundown to lurk with the best of us on W. 102nd Street and West End Avenue, you are gonna be missing the best night of the year in Boo-mingdale.

Details in the poster below.

Here's a shoutout to the Schuyler sisters who, via their dad, have a special connection to our neighborhood and make for a spooky jack-o-lantern. (Hat tip to young Honora Overby who posted her creation on Twitter).  Good enough to send squash sculptor Saxton Freymann out of his gourd with pride.

Stay tuned to this channel for the post-parade photo gallery like this one from a past year. If you plan to have your camera that night, send your best pix to blog@w102-103blockassn.org. I'll post shots of costumed munchins big and small.

By Caitlin Hawke

Here at the Block Association, we love a good green activity.

Under the "reuse" part of "reduce, reuse, recycle," this free Housewares Share N "Shop" is an opportunity to recycle any gently used housewares or to take anything you want home for free.

It all happens this Sunday, October 28, at 251 West 100th Street between West End Avenue and Broadway. All pertinent information is in the flyer below. But know that you don't have to bring something to take something. In addition to setting housewares free and back into the universe, it's a great chance to recycle used eyeglasses, batteries, CFC bulbs and more. Just don't bring any books or clothing because the organizers draw the line there.

Hat tip to Ansche Chesed's Greening Committee, the sponsor of this event, for giving me another reason to winnow.  I'm coming. Crockpot, yogurt maker, fondue set -- all firmly in hand.

Please pass it on! The event only works if lots of people give and take so spread the news widely!

By Caitlin Hawke

What I would LOVE is for some kindly neighbor at the Broadmoor somewhere up top to try to capture a modern day image looking west southwest out toward West End Avenue and the river over the rooftops.

This picture is a gem for, really, how much has remained so. The east side of West End Avenue both north and south of W. 102nd Street should be familiar to viewers as should be 855 West End Avenue dead center with its nearby neighbors, just as you'd see them now. I love it for the way 299 Riverside at the south corner of W. 102nd Street and Riverside Drive dominates the view. And for the absence of 300 Riverside Drive. You'll note that William Foster's second mansion sits where 300 Riverside Drive is today at the north corner of W. 102nd Street. Scroll down for an image of that house, built in 1888 by the glove mogul, and read more here, in Gary Dennis's blog, about the two Foster mansions that occupied that lot.

Of course, 865 West End as we know it today hadn't yet gone up, and the shot is remarkable too for a rare shot of the row of houses at the northwest corner of 102nd Street and West End.

Ah, but look at Jersey!!

Enjoy these nearly contemporaneous 1912 Bromley maps from the Atlas of the Borough of Manhattan.

By Caitlin Hawke

Thanks go to Celia Knight who sent the photo below of two hearty neighbors on a rainy Saturday. They  joined the Block Association team headed by Mark Schneiderman, head of the ecology committee, to weed, clean, plant bulbs and generally beautify our tree wells.

They came. They saw. They mulched. And our trees are all the better for it.

If you are interested in the state of city trees, on October 24, at 6:30 p.m., Parks & Rec is holding a street tree workshop. You'll find the flyer below.  I wanted to add a lagniappe from SNL this week, a rap ode to trees. But it truly wasn't ready for prime time. Best line: "You can agree that more trees isn't a bad thing, right though?"

#Truth

The "One from the Vault" feature plumbs the archives of back issues of block association newsletters for new neighbors and lovers of our community and its history.  To read others pieces from the vault, click on the category at right.


By Caitlin Hawke

This one from the vault makes a nice diptych with last week's post about the Roerich Museum.  There's no end to my appreciation for the rich history of 310 Riverside.  In fact, you don't have to go far to get elbow-deep in the Horsch archives if you are inclined.

 By Caitlin Hawke

A heads up on two events for you this week.

First, on Monday, October 15 at 7:30 p.m., librarian Fred Michel from our local library branch would like you to know that author and civil rights activist Susan Burton. Winner of the 2017 Goddard Riverside Stephan Russo Social Justice Book Award, Ms. Burton will be discussing her memoir Becoming Ms. Burton with special guest and Pulitzer Prize Winner James Forman, Jr., a professor of law at Yale Law School. Her book deals with the devastating impact of mass incarceration and identifies the structural changes necessary to restore the lives of formerly incarcerated people. The free event is co-presented by Goddard Riverside, The New Press, and Book Culture and will be held in Goddard Riverside's Bernie Wohl Center at 647 Columbus Avenue (at W. 92nd Street). For more information, click here.

Then, on Tuesday, October 16 at 6:30 p.m., our friends at the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group have a program on the architects of our beautiful buildings! This takes place at Hosteling International New York, 891 Amsterdam Avenue (at W. 103rd Street). The flyer is below.  Here's more:

This presentation focuses on the most influential architects in the Bloomingdale neighborhood from the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th--Richard Morris Hunt, Rosario Candela, Schwartz and Gross and others.

Before the  presentation begins, the first annual JIm Torain award will honor Peter Salwen. The Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group has established this award to honor the memory of Jim Torain, a neighbor who worked tirelessly to preserve the legacy of the Old Community where he grew up. The Old Community is the name given to the African American neighborhood that flourished on West 98th and West 99th Street between Central Park West and Columbus Avenue--a neighborhood that was destroyed in 1955 as part of the city's urban renewal plan. Without Torain’s work, the history of this vibrant neighborhood, once home of so many talented and accomplished people, may have been lost to time.

I've written about Jim Torain and the old community on this blog here and here.

By Caitlin Hawke

The Block Association walks the talk when it comes to covering the catchment. First in the Spring, you can beautify the tree wells with annuals and get a good workout in your knees, quads and back. Then come May, you can enjoy W. 103rd Street at the ever wonderful street fair, yard sale, bazaar, fest -- or what ever you wish to call it.

As Fall rolls in, the BA goes back to the planting of bulbs and neatening of tree wells, followed in quick succession by the Halloween Parade and Solstice Caroling.

All year long on second Tuesdays at 8 p.m. you have the chance to come to the monthly board meetings which are held at 306 W. 102nd Street. You can bring your questions or just come to see how things are done and offer your help.

This weekend is your chance to give a little sugar to our trees. And I don't know about you, but after the last few weeks, I am ready to think and act locally.

The BA is calling all new neighbors, kids, green-thumbed or not. The tidying and planting will run from 10 a.m. til it's done around noon. All the info you need is below and if you still have questions, email: trees@w102-103blockassn.org.

Then hold onto your hats because 0ctober 31 is blowing in quickly. That's the day we give sugar to our kids, big and small.  My observation is that the adults lean in almost as much as the young'uns. If you want to lend a hand, email Jane at halloween@w102-103blockassn.org.

Check out the galleries from past years like Ghoul's Gold here and Goblin It Up here. If that doesn't sell you on turning out at 6 p.m. on W. 102nd and West End, maybe the home-baked goodies or cider will.  I am resurrecting the Great Pumpkin Interview with Saxton Freymann here -- a blog favorite.

For more information, you can read the most recent edition of the BA newsletter here.

See you on the streets of the catchment!  Lagniappe from erstwhile Bloomingdaler Nina Simone below.  If you are reading this in an email subscription, you'll have to click on the blog post title to view the video.

The "One from the Vault" feature plumbs the archives of back issues of block association newsletters for new neighbors and lovers of our community and its history.  To read others pieces from the vault, click on the category at right.


By Caitlin Hawke

Born 144 years ago today in Saint Petersbourg, Nicholas Roerich is part of our neighborhood history. In the 1990s living just one block away, I learned of the Roerich Museum from a cousin visiting from Budapest who was horrified I'd never been not to mention never even heard of it!

Suffice it to say, this little-known pocket of culture dedicated to the painter, spiritualist and theosophist is worth checking out. Roerich's connection to Louis Horsch is a whole other saga.  It was Horsch in 1921 who financed The Master Institute of United Arts, which in 1929 became the site of magnificent deco 310 Riverside Drive, known as the Master Apartments! 

Read more below and here.  Spoiler alert: it doesn't end well for the Master mystic.

By Caitlin Hawke

I couldn't resist posting this 1934 ad from the Columbia Spectator beckoning neighborhood dancers from, wait for it, 4 p.m. to 3 a.m. What, may I ask, is even open anywhere at all on Broadway at 3 a.m. nowadays?

A cocktail for 20¢. No cover. No minimum Dancing all night. To my mind, it's pretty much what we could all use to take our minds off "other things."

For long time blog readers, you'll recall Old Algiers from these posts here and here. It replaced the famed Archambault where Mexican Festival now sits.

Clearly, they knew how to get around the longstanding Cabaret Law that was finally repealed last year.

By Caitlin Hawke

I've written again and again on the blog about the Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group. They've adopted a tag line that really encapsulates their raison d'être: "discovering, preserving and sharing the history of our neighborhood."

Make no mistake: these folks hardly need any help filling their auditorium when it comes to their excellent public programs -- all free and all organized with deep love of history if not just of Bloomingdale but of all the Upper West Side.

Now, on September 27, comes a special treat: social and architectural historian John Tauranac with stories from his new book about Manhattan's mysteries and secrets, one of which, you will learn, involves the re-purposing of some stones taken from a French donjon.

Tauranac is best known as something of a mapper, and you know his legacy as chair of the MTA's 1979 map committee if you've ever seen this map!

If you go to the talk, here's a tip you'll thank me for unless you like the floor: get thee there early!

If you can't find the info you need on their site, you can reach the BNHG at (212) 666-9774.

By Caitlin Hawke

Two weeks from today, on Saturday, September 29, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., West 104th Street between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue becomes the best place to be.  Our yard sale was rained out earlier this year, but our neighbors over on 104th are hard at work making offerings to weather gods and booking vendors for this annual event.

It's a great way to turn your unwanted household items into gold while someone goes off happy to give your junque a new life in a happy home. If you don't live on the block, a vendor space will set you back $60 and a space is big enough to split with a friend. All the details may be found here.

Once you are done vending on 104th, don't throw the rest of it away!  Discover (and thank me later for telling you now) the fabulous freecycling (freegan) community of trashnothing.com.  Part cult, part utopia, part distribution of resources, trashnothing.com is an electronic bulletin board where you can put up "haves" or "wants" for quite literally anything.  Trim your book collection, winnow your pots and pans, give away kid items and clothes. Or post an "ask" for a crockpot, a curling iron, an electric drill. You will be amazed by how this community comes through. And it's all in the name of not letting anything go to waste ever again.  The New York City group has 64,000 members.  Read the boards to get the hang of it, sign in, and get started decluttering today!

Only catch is that everything changes hands completely free.

See you in two weeks on 104th Street!

By Caitlin Hawke

If you've been watching and waiting for the great reveal at the seemingly stalled-out five-plus year reno of the Schinasi Mansion (sold for $14M in 2013) currently on-going at 351 Riverside Drive at W. 107th Street by a former Goldman Sachs "honcho", then perhaps this will come as a diversion.

It's the building that occupied a site just one block north at 355 Riverside Drive, the Samuel Gamble Bayne mansion, named for the eponymous -- and fascinating -- Donegal-born oilman and banker.

Below depicted circa 1893, the trophy mansion utterly dwarfs the well-dressed man sitting on the right of the steps to the main entry.  The Bayne mansion's story was told admirably by Daytonian in Manhattan here. It lasted only 30 years and by 1921, Bayne sold the site to a bloke by the name of Harris Uris who hired Bayne's son-in-law, British architect Alfred Charles Bossom, to design what now stands at 355 Riverside. Bayne had lost his wife Emily ten years earlier and was tired of padding around the mansion alone. In an act of human resilience, once the Bossom building was complete at 355, he planned to occupy the 14th floor penthouse for a bird's eye view from his same beloved plot. He died in 1924, a resident of the Wyoming at 853 Seventh Avenue, a Bloomingdaler at heart if not in body.

By Caitlin Hawke

This image is courtesy of Terence Hanrahan, and it comes from unearthed signage of The Master Apartments now on display at the Master, 310 Riverside Drive. I have a lot more coming on this unique building. But for now I just wanted to post this as having been seen in the neighborhood in all its glory.

If you see special, quirky things as you wander, feel free to send along a picture to me, and I'll post the gems.  Email to: blog@w102-103blockassn.org

By Caitlin Hawke

There is a season, turn, turn, turn.

From yesterday to today, there's a distinct change of air. Gone is that oppressive humidity and stratospheric heat. It could flop back, mind you. But we know now that the autumn train is unstoppable.

At this turn of season, it doesn't matter how old I get: those back-to-school butterflies and the urges for a sharp new outfit impose themselves like some annual version of a circadian rhythm. Those togs -- usually woolen, preferably plaid, always crisp -- chafed on the child's body that had been in a bathing suit and sundresses for the prior three months. But it was a rite of passage to go back-to-school shopping with my mom, the way she might have gone to San Francisco's City of Paris for her own new fall uniform with her mom. And to come out the other end of the mini-spree with something that said: "Fall, I am freshly clad for you and you alone."

The best were the patent leather Mary Janes. You don't see a lot of Mary Janes anymore. And Crocs still haven't caught on to patent leather. But Birks have.

And speaking of Birks, we won't give up the sandals just yet; summer technically still has a few weeks to wage on. With the warmer planet, high temps test their welcome, but the change of light always rats fall out. You've noticed the sun rapidly falling from its zenith, you've seen the equinox tugging down at the night shade. Yet tomatoes and stone fruits still roll in fast and furious.

It's been several warm weeks since I last posted, but I've been out there watching. The neighborhood provides endless inspiration as a muse. I promise, there's lots more coming as time permits.

For those neighbors who've been traveling or grinding away at work, you may not know that our ginkgo warrior at W. 103rd Street and West End finally came down on August 17. Bettina B. watched this from her window wistfully -- "like an old friend dying without a proper send off," she said.

Indeed.

That ginkgo's sad story will fade. Turn, turn, turn. 

Old neighbors are sort of like that, too. You miss them and feel as if they're still here. Then someone moves into their old space and you get used to the new normal. Then one day you wake up and you are in the old guard in your building surrounded by new neighbors who don't remember Positively 104th Street or Au Petit Beurre. The Movie Place. The Metro. The Olympia. La Casita or La Tacita d'Oro. And you think warmly of the neighbors who have moved or pushed on to the great unknown.

Reminds me of a lyric:

Which brings me to another thing seen recently in the neighborhood. This one, in flagrante grafitto, is courtesy of David O., taken from the terrace of a walk-up on the beautiful 300 block of W. 105th Street. Is it foolish to hope, 38 years after the tagging, that RC + MS are still going strong? Or were they just huckleberry friends back in the '80s?  If you are out there, let us know.

It's not all wistfulness about the end of summer around here, rest assured. There are great things to look forward to. The New York Film Festival fires up in a few weeks and neighbor Manny Kirchheimer will be on the slate with Dream of a City. You can buy tickets starting on September 9.

And there's the yard sale put on by the W. 104th St. Block Association fast approaching on September 29, 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Vendor tables are still available, but clear your Saturday and turn out. It's always fun. Plus with all the high holy days between now and then it will be here before you know it.

And last by not least, we have a primary coming up quickly. Thursday, September 13 is the day. You can find your polling place here.

Deep in December, you'll look back on mellow September. In the meantime, follow, follow, follow this blog for more.


My lagniappe today is a newly unearthed Pete Seeger demo. A piece of perfection, scratchy vinyl and all. (For those reading in an email subscription, simply click the link to hear the recording.)

By Caitlin Hawke

Easily my favorite facade in our neighborhood, the Alimar stands at the northwest corner of W. 105th Street and West End Avenues. It's another story of buildings in these parts that have names and I will have to dig on this one. But for now, behold the Haussmannian beauty of this grande dame. Her copper bays and sumptuous detail. I have often wondered if she's prettier from the outside than from the interior. Maybe if you are a neighbor there, you will comment about the Alimar below.

By Caitlin Hawke

A little slice of life on Broadway and a nod to the Mom & Pops of yore!

By Caitlin Hawke

Ma La. If you've ever tasted a sichuan peppercorn you know of what I speak. And Ma La is what you'll get, in literal varying degrees, at 108 Food Dried Hot Pot. How to describe this very specific taste? Ma La is to Sichuan cuisine what umami is to Japanese cooking. Indispensable. At its mildest, Ma La is the sensation of a peppery spice that tingles on your tongue. At its strongest, it's a three-alarm fire.

But let me assure you that I don't have a high tolerance for spicy, and 108 Food Dried Hot Pot has just the right level for me.

In what was Cannon's Pub on the southeast corner of Broadway and W. 108th Street in a cheery, cherry red storefront sits 108 Food Dried Hot Pot. It's a humble spot that looks more like a cafeteria or a food court than a mecca for thrill seekers. When Columbia is in session, watch out because the turnover and traffic is prodigious. I even know a colleague who travels 3.5 miles down to this spot when the urge hits.  He's Taiwanese and claims it's the closest he's come to the food he grew up on. I wouldn't be surprised if Tony Bourdain ate there. It's just his kind of place.

I've warmed progressively to this temple of spice. And here now is an ode to the thing on the menu that people come from all points to devour: the dry hot pot.

First keep in mind that you'll have to choose your spice level. The four-point scale goes from non-spicy, to spicy, then medium spicy and finally to very spicy. You'll actually have to choose everything. But be thinking about how brave you plan to be. You might want to be incremental and start on the low end of the Sichuan Richter scale.

That will be the last thing you tell the cashier. And she'll repeat the scale at least twice before you make a stab at the level you want. So think on it. Now.

Before you get to that, you are going to be under a little pressure to choose your stir-fry ingredients. Here, too, I advise prudence. It's priced per pound. Meat, fish and shellfish are weighed separately from the veggies and tofu you'll choose. And you want the person who is choosing your ingredients to not have too heavy a hand if you want variety of ingredients. Again, it's priced per pound.

So you could go surf and turf with sole and chicken, shrimp and pork, or focus on the more exotic meat choices like beef tripe and chicken gizzards. But in between, there are many other delicacies to choose from like squid, shrimp balls, and paper thin slices of fatty beef.

Once you've conquered the meats, turn to the body of your dish. Stoke it with bok choy, cabbage, string beans, enokis, three or four sorts of tofu, eggplant, bean threads, lotus, cellophane noodles and much more.

Then it's on to the weighing and paying. It's by the pound so make sure what you see is what you can eat! A very filling bowl will run you roughly $12-14. After you pay, your selections are whisked back into the kitchen and in 7 minutes later: Behold the Bowl!

Glistening with the spicy oil -- at the heat level you pre-selected -- your hot pot arrives with a side of rice. One bite of the fillet of sole -- slightly crunchy perhaps because it was dusted in flour on its way to a sizzling hot skillet -- and you know there's a master chef in the back. Then a bit of chicken: moist and delicious, again. And the supporting cast of vegetables? All have their crunchy snap. Each element is cooked to perfection and all together make up a meal, bespoke for you and you alone.

You can share a hot pot or create your individual dish.

People are trekking here because the hot pot spot has drawn raves. And you've been walking by it each week wondering what's going on in there.  Wander and wonder no more. Go in. Take your time. Ask for help. And enjoy your creation.

It's not glamorous. And when it's a full house, there can be some bustle. But if you choose your season and the right hour, you are in for one very satisfying, chowhounding meal in the neighborhood.

Just remember to spice it right.

The "One from the Vault" feature plumbs the archives of back issues of block association newsletters for new neighbors and lovers of our community and its history.  To read others pieces from the vault, click on the category at right.


By Caitlin Hawke

It's been 10 years since that freak 15-minute storm mowed through our neighborhood. This piece recounts the hard-to-imagine tale.  Dug out from our vault, this piece appeared in the September 2008 edition of the Block Association newsletter.

The "One from the Vault" feature plumbs the archives of back issues of Block Association newsletters for the benefit of new neighbors and lovers of our community and its history.  To read other pieces from the vault, click on the category at right.


By Caitlin Hawke

I am tagging this as both "One from the Vault" and a "Throwback Thursday" because it's that delicious.

First, a big shoutout to Ginger Lief for the feature, a charming, well-researched March 2006 piece from the Block Association's newsletter vault offering up names -- many long since lost or forgotten -- of the neighborhood's buildings.  Ginger's research reveals not only the names but the reasoning behind several of them. Often harkening to places in Europe, the names tell a story about who the neighborhood's builders were, and how they left their mark.

Having done a little research, I can add to Ginger's work about the building referred to in her newsletter piece below as the "Standoche" at 855 West End Avenue.

855 West End was established as the "St. Andoche," and the name came to be mashed up into the "Standoche" in various real estate ads and municipal documents.

But the actual name is two separate words, and its significance is connected to the builder of 855 West End, a famous Civil War era actress, Maggie Mitchell. Mitchell made her fortune in the play "Fanchon the Cricket," a stage adaptation by Augustus Waldauer of George Sand's novel, La Petite Fadette.

The second act of the play takes place during a festival, the feast of St. Andoche. Mitchell's shadow dances in the play, and particularly in the second act, were adored by theater-goers and garnered her fame from Louisiana to Massachusetts and beyond.

In 1895, three years after retiring from the stage at the age of 60, Mitchell bought the parcel of land on the southwest corner of W. 102nd Street and West End Avenue and built the building that stands there -- solid as a rock -- today. Since the role helped Mitchell earn her considerable fortune, it's not a leap to understand why she tipped her hat by naming her building for it.

Click on "St. Andoche" in the list below for more.

Like 855 West End, some buildings have been featured in my Throwback Thursday posts, and you'll find those links are clickable in the list immediately below. Others are still to come. I'll update this list down the line.


Our Buildings' Names
Broadmoor: 235 W. 102nd Street at the northwest corner of Broadway
Clearfield: 305 Riverside Drive at W. 103rd Street
Friesland: 235 W. 103rd Street at the northwest corner of Broadway
Haworth: 239 W. 103rd Street between Broadway and West End Avenue
Magnolia: 240 W. 102nd Street at the southwest corner of Broadway
Hotel Marseilles: 230 W. 103rd Street at the southwest corner of Broadway
Hotel Alexandria: 250 W. 103rd Street between Broadway and West End Avenue
Ideal: 315 W. 102nd Street between Riverside Drive and West End Avenue
The Master Apartments (originally The Master Institute): 310 Riverside Drive at W. 103rd Street
Rockledge Hall: 299 Riverside Drive at the south corner of W. 102nd Street
St. Andoche: 855 West End Avenue at the southwest corner of W. 102nd Street


If you are a Block Association resident and your building has a name (or had a name), yet you don't see it, contact Ginger, send me an email, or leave a comment below!  Crowdsourcing comes to Bloomingdale.

Enjoy!

By Caitlin Hawke


Manfred Kirchheimer has lived in our neighborhood for 54 years and his days of glory seem just to be getting going. Manny is an 87-year-old independent filmmaker. His documentaries are direct, personal, and driven by an aesthetic sense that can find narrative, meditative beauty, and social commentary in the claw of a huge excavator or a klatch of coffee-drinking friends.

Manny is a documentarian who received a Guggenheim at the age of 85, and a year later, in 2017, was honored by MoMA with its first retrospective of his films. The series unfurled over nine days with two screenings of each of his films and a world premiere of his film “My Coffee with Jewish Friends.”  The MoMA reviews were great.

The retrospective was the brainchild of Jacob Perlin, a sort of guardian angel of cinema. Jake is the artistic and programming director down at the Metrograph, now in its second year.

A little digression here about the Metrograph, which if you don’t yet know it, is worth the trek to 7 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side. Yes, you have to be able to tolerate its chi-chi side with a hipster restaurant-bar, not to mention the concessions stand which you just have to see and judge for yourself.

These revenue drivers, I suppose, are part of the business model to keep it afloat in today’s real estate market. But at its heart, the Metrograph is about cinephilia, screening archive-quality 35 mm films as well as new releases on state-of-the-art digital equipment. Quirky seating was made from reclaimed pine harvested from the now-demolished Domino Sugar factory. It’s a minimalist, gallery-type setting but that doesn’t stop the two-screen movie house from conjuring up the littlest film houses in Paris’s Latin Quarter, where you slip in and fall back in time.

The Metrograph has screened several of Manny’s films. “Tall,” Manny’s documentary about the American skyscraper and architect Louis Sullivan, ran there for five weeks and kept reeling them in.

The Metrograph-MoMA-Manny bridge is Jake Perlin. Jake became a celebrator of Manny’s work a while back and Manny now refers to him as his “agent.” The Jake-Manny story began when a cult classic of Manny’s film, “Stations of the Elevated,” went out of print from 1995 to 2014. It is known as the classic graffiti documentary.  Now a precious time capsule, it was shot over three weeks in 1977, released in 1980, and is somewhat surrealistic according to Manny. It forms a diptych with “SprayMasters,” which is about four graffiti artists in their 50s. Separated from “Stations” by 28 years, “SprayMasters” (2008) combines footage left over from the former with recent interviews of the artists.

VHS copies of “Stations” have circulated for years fueling its cult status, most recently on platforms like YouTube. Like all underground cult classics, it needed to ride again, but one major hurdle blocked it: the prohibitive cost of music rights. The score included Charlie Mingus and Aretha Franklin. To rerelease it meant to cough up $30K. That’s budget enough for two or three films, the way Manny works. So Jake rose to the challenge, got the rights, and “Stations” is back in circulation.

Perlin eventually found his way to Manny’s Broadway and W. 101st Street living room to see the documentaries on real film –- projected as they were meant to be. He quickly pulled in Josh Siegel,  MoMA's film department curator and, together at Manny’s home, they screened film after film. The idea for the retrospective was hatched and the rest, as they say, is history.

I caught up with Manny a few months ago and interviewed him. How was it to have this late career recognition? “It’s absolutely wonderful to have this moment,” he told me, “and it wouldn’t have happened at 40 years old. You have to live a long time!”

Manny retired from the School of Visual Arts in 2017 after teaching there for 42 years. He has taught for much of his career at places like CCNY, Columbia, NY Institute of Technology, and Philadelphia College of Art. But his movie-making days are far from done. “Dream of a City,” a tone poem about construction and other city phenomena, will be released soon.  He is currently editing his new film, “Middle Class Money, Honey,” based on conversations with friends and acquaintances –- from millennials to octogenarians –- about earning, spending, and their relationship to money as they live in NYC.

Manny emigrated to the U.S. at the age of five. Early on, he lived in upper Manhattan, including Marble Hill and Washington Heights. After a short decade in Rego Park, he moved to the UWS in 1964 where he raised his two sons with his wife Gloria, a partner in crime when it comes to the documentary-making family trade. For example, following Manny's documentary film "We Were So Beloved," which dealt with the history of the Jewish community in which he was raised, Gloria edited and annotated the interviews and these became the book "We Were So Beloved: Autobiography of a German Jewish Community" co-authored by the couple.

Before coming to our neck of the woods, the Kirchheimers had been looking for a new place for two years. At the time, Manny was filming “Claw” on the Upper West Side. It was Gloria who found the new apartment. Manny recalled that their original rent for seven rooms was $233, including electric. Suffice it to say, they snapped it up.

I asked him how he keeps his enterprise nimble and manageable. The secret, he says, is that he stays close to home. Because financing takes years, he keeps sets and travel to a minimum. He has a devoted crew, some of whom are his former students, and shoots only on digital these days. He can film for about $5,000 before getting to the sound mixing; that costs another $3,000. He edits the films himself -- generally a one to two-year process.

He filmed “Short Circuit” -- a rare fiction in his catalogue and dating to 1973 -- in and from his W. 101st Street apartment, much of it straight out his window. From there, his camera filmed westward straight down 101st Street to the undeveloped Jersey side of the Hudson, and south down Broadway with a good look at several old-time storefronts. Like the shot at the top of this post, the images of the neighborhood are excellent. And the documentary-style footage is remarkable for both how integrated Broadway is and the degree to which people on the street engaged with one another -- something that has been completely displaced by cellphone usage. The story is also one about complexities of race relations and socioeconomics. The following description comes from the Union Docs website where the film was shown in 2014:

"In his apartment on the corner of 101st Street and Broadway, a documentary filmmaker begins to question his interactions to the white family and black workers he shares his daily existence with. Staring out his window he begins to drift and fantasize a parallel life, which turns into a complex sound and image montage of street photography depicting a long­ since vanquished Upper West Side. Full of doubt, a lifelong city resident looks at his liberalism and doesn’t like what he sees. Constructed reality and documentary fiction, an unclassifiable masterpiece of ideas and technique that by all rights should be considered a landmark, had it not been virtually impossible to see."

One of his most well-known films, “Canners,” (2017) was largely shot on the Upper West Side. It’s about the industry begat by the 5-cent deposit on soda cans and water bottles. It’s social commentary and anthropology and art, rolled into one.

I asked Manny about the retrenchment of west side cinema, dwindling into oblivion before our eyes. He fondly remembered the 1986 screening of “We Were So Beloved” at the Metro, right around the corner from his place. And he recalled Dan and Toby Talbot, their New Yorker theater having been torn down, moving to the Metro for some years. The Talbots of course went on to build the Upper West Side's taste for foreign and independent film at Lincoln Plaza Cinemas. There, this past fall, one of the last films Dan chose –- not knowing it would be Lincoln Plaza Cinema’s swansong -- was Manny’s “My Coffee with Jewish Friends,” which ran until the very last day of LPC, opening shortly after Dan passed away.

I asked him to reflect on his body of work. Like children, how could Manny point to his favorite of his films? He hedged by telling me that by financial measure, the most successful so far have been “We Were So Beloved” with “Stations” incredibly only in second place. I suspect that might change with more time.

But, he softened and replied, “Claw” was his favorite. Asked why, he explained “I think I sank my heart into it and then it came out so nicely. It’s a good film.”

You can have a look at a series of Manny's film trailers here. And keep your eye open for the next chance to see these in an art house.

Right under our noses lives Manny Kirchheimer, a filmmaker who is part of the city’s history, recording it, making it, while instructing aspiring filmmakers as to the ways of observing, commenting and documenting.

Until there’s a new house or Lincoln Center picks up on Mannymania, I guess I’ll have to say “See you at the Metrograph!”

I am embedding above a very short film on Manny made by one of his SVA students, Bianca Conti. If you are reading this in your email subscription, click on the blog post title to view this directly on the blog.