By Caitlin Hawke

The last weeks have been a harsh blow indeed for several of our restaurant owners and their staffs, closed by ConEd.  But rumor is on that the gas is back! 

As you have noticed, several neighboring Broadway restaurants north of W. 103rd Street have been struck in the past two months by a ConEd shutdown of their gas.  These small businesses with tight margins and painfully high rents live or die with the slightest blip.  And I have been watching as the days have turned into weeks and now months due to an unattended gas leak.  And the restaurants fell victim to this.

Thank goodness our area didn't become yet another story in the paper about some conflagration.

But so it went.  First Ollie's. Then Aangan. Then Sun-chan and Broadway Pizza.  All shuttered.  Food wasted.  Staff benched.  Tables and chairs mothballed.  It's a devastation to them all.

So this is a call to arms -- or to mouths.  Show your solidarity and do something for mom and pop:  have a meal there one night soon and tell them good times are back in B'dale.  That we are their neighbors.  And that we all will erase this bad memory together!

I have the news straight from the windows of Aangan and Ollie's: as of tonight, Aangan is back and look for Ollie's to open tomorrow.  Let's hope it's true.

Pappadums and dumplings, here we come!

So it's all right now, in fact in celebration, I am appending a little vintage ditty from the Rolling Stones.

By Caitlin Hawke

By Caitlin Hawke

If you are a reader of this blog, I am guessing you like your community and share an interest in the neighborliness we all are privileged to have up here in Bloomingdale.  As an 18-year member of the block association and a huge fan of everything it does, I would be bereft to see this annual rite of passage dissolve into memory.

The community event formerly known as the yard sale and now festively as the Spring Bazaar is an all-out, hands-on, from-the-heart, laborsome, behind-the-scenes effort that surprisingly few people make happen for the delight of all.  But YOU, dear neighbors, pedestrians, passersby and bargain hunters, make it happen.

Come in large number!  Come in a swath of age groups! Come with a bounce in your step, a buck in your pocket and a gleam in your eye for that trinket and a hope in your heart of winning the raffle.  Come because neighbors are our fabric. Because New York is still a tremendous place to live.  Because place matters.  And because, let's face it, you are going to find the bargain of your life and wash it down with a homemade chocolate chip cookie and cup o' joe. And you are going to leave loving life and thinking, by golly, there actually is something real left in this city of uber-commerce.

Let's make it a Bloomingdale Bash.  See you in the streets tomorrow from 10 am to 5 pm -- come sun or soak!  (And keep an eye on our homepage in case Mother Nature has other plans for our day).

By Caitlin Hawke

h/t to Peter Frishauf for the WSJ video.

If you don't know about Audrey Munson (1891-1996), the darling model of New York sculptors of yore, you are in for an eye opening.  I mean, really, open your eyes and you will see: Audrey is everywhere!  But to start, have a look at the figure in Straus Park where she was sculpted by Augustus Lukeman.  Or check out the statues of Duty and Sacrifice on the Firemen's Memorial where Attillio Piccirilli sculpted her.

She wasn't just a Bloomingdaler, of course! You can see her atop the fountain in front of the Plaza Hotel (sculpted by Karl Bitter) or on the Maine Monument at Columbus Circle (also by Piccirilli).  Or if you are downtown, crane your neck to see her on the Municipal Building: a gilded Munson as Civic Fame.  I told you she was everywhere.  And I haven't even gotten to Brooklyn.

A lot has been written (for example, here, here and here) about this celebrated and classical beauty who was also rather a tragic figure.  Recently, the Wall Street Journal did this video which I thought would find a nice home on these blog pages in recognition of this honorary citizen of our neighborhood whose likeness stood for allegory and timelessness.  May her image endure in these parts forever.

By Caitlin Hawke

Jock Davenport is back. This time it is with a restaurant review from the eve of Y2K, May 1999.  How many times have I thought of this big, Bohemian space and missed it.  It was Jesse Sehla's gift to our neighborhood in the form of a place where you could sit, converse, brood, write, read, play backgammon, and nibble away the hours.  It was the anti-chain coffeehouse which then morphed into a more upscale restaurant briefly.  Read more about it in this one from the vault!

By Caitlin Hawke

Enjoying the hunt that this new blog feature naturally provides, I am struck by the sheer quantity of pieces in our block association's newsletter archives written by former co-chair Jock Davenport.  I am sure this will be the first of many that I post here "from the vault."  Jock headed this block association at a time that was just on the cusp of the corporatification of Broadway.  He was instrumental in facilitating the boycott of the CVS that was to replace the much-appreciated Associated market that, while modest, was a square-dealing grocery that served our community very well prior to the explosion of commercial rents.  You may recall that the boycotters won that battle, successfully fighting back the third (or perhaps fourth) chain drug store to move within a two-block radius.  But the ensuing result proved to be mixed with the passage of time and the continued escalation in retail rents.

I think you will find both prescience and quaintness in this piece from the vault.  Things have changed but I sense feelings have remained the same.  And more than anything, the episode reminded me that neighbors can move mountains together -- in this instance dressed either as a breadstick or celery stalk.  So be it.  You do what you gotta do.

And now your blast from the past. By way of Jock Davenport.

By Caitlin Hawke

Two organizations are coming together to present "Bloomingdale: A Musical History" on May 24th, 6:30 p.m., at the hostel:  What a Neighborhood! and our beloved Bloomingdale Neighborhood History Group.
Check out the poster below, mark your calendar, and come tune in to an overlooked but essential part of our common past -- one that over the years has made our neighborhood the talent magnet that it is known to be!

The program is free and open to all.

By Caitlin Hawk(e)

Calling all vendors.  Now is the time clear out all that STUFF!  Turn your closet clutter into cold cash.  Our annual yard sale, AKA Spring Bazaar, is upon us in a few short weeks. If you've been to one, you know how fabulous the vibe is.  Our city turns into a small town for the day.  No ersatz.  No faux.  No hipster bergamote macarons.  No street fair "Italian" sausage sold by vendors from Jersey.

Just real local neighbors, hawking real, useful stuff.  Recycling life's necessities, and giving new life to someone else's treasure.

You know you need to make room in your closets, right?  Let's do this.  Let's all hawk our stuff!

The who-what-when-how of it is all here.  See you on W. 103rd Street on May 21st!