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.

By Caitlin Hawke

The Alexandria was built as a hotel in 1916-17 and later converted to apartments. It's hard to make out but the awning below has "Hotel Alexandria" atop it in big letters -- well visible for travelers exiting the 103rd Street subway. The area had numerous hotels and the Alexandria was just paces away from the Hotel Marseilles built 11 years earlier to its east at the southwest corner of W. 103rd Street and Broadway.

The Alexandria is a 14-story classical revival stone and brick construction by architects William L. Rouse and L.A. Goldstone whose elegant work may be seen in many other buildings in these parts (Chesterfield, Allendale and Stuyvesant, to name only a few).

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By Caitlin Hawke

My guess is you'd have to have been born by 1960 or earlier to hear the name Vaughn Meader and begin to chuckle.  An old-time Bloomingdaler, Manhattan Mark, turned me on to this comedian and JFK impersonator whose 1962 album "The First Family" captured everyone's attention and won the Grammy for best album of the year.

It is hilarious. Good, clean, spoofing fun is made of JFK, Jackie, Bobby, Teddy, the kids and members of the kitchen cabinet.  Kids listened with their parents.  Adults popped it on the turntable after dinner parties. It flew out of stores as the fastest selling album ever with 1.2 million records sold in the first fortnight.

It was such a sensation that Kennedy quipped at one function that Vaughn Meader wasn't able to make it so he had come instead.

If you listen to the full first album at the bottom of this post (email subscribers, click on the post's title to listen to it on the website), you'll see Meader's spot on mimicry of Kennedy's accent and cadence and even the JFK wit.  It's so innocent and so clean by today's standards you'll be charmed.  And it plays as a very interesting counterpoint to contemporary comedians' take on the current POTUS.

To get to the UWS connection, the second volume, which Meader released in 1963, includes an adorable on-site interview with 2nd, 3rd and 4th graders at the Alexander Robertson School at 95th Street and Central Park West.  The first video below is teed up to take you right to the kids (you can rewind to listen to the whole record).  Make sure to listen to the first album when you have time -- the second video below.

The timing of the Volume 2 release was not felicitous, arriving in stores just a few months before Dallas. Meader's soaring popularity and lighthearted appeal had no place in the darkness and aftermath of JFK's assassination. The second album was withdrawn from stores. Meader's career never recovered, and he said that he himself also died on November 22nd.

That part of his career did go away, but Meader lived on through the tumult of the Sixties and had a few more turns to his career. He died in October 2004.

May 29th is the 101st anniversary of JFK's birth, and this is my nod to the legend that lives on.  And to a comedian whose timing was both excellent and terribly bad.

Above is an excerpt from Volume 2 featuring Vaughn Meader's visit to an elementary school on Central Park West and 95th Street circa 1962/3.  (To stream this in your browser if you are reading this via email, click here).

Above is the entire recording of "The First Family" -- Vaughn Meader's knockout comedy album of 1962.  (To stream this in your browser if you are reading this via email, click here).

By Caitlin Hawke

Note: For readers who prefer me to keep it hyper-local here on the Block Association blog, please indulge me today. It's a New York story, with traces of the Upper West Side. But it's a special occasion.


Losing Philip Roth is a body blow. I haven't processed his death yet, but I mention it because of the joy his writing has given me. Sentences that go on at the length of mini-novellas. Laugh-out-loud humor impregnating even the darkest of novels. Stories so imaginative, prophetic, true.

The magnetism of his narrative voice and sheer force of his imagination was singular.

And yet, as he'd announced and then enacted the halt of his writing career, I'd grown used to the idea that he was done producing and had chosen the Upper West Side as his home away from his Connecticut home. Over the last couple of years, there were many sightings of Roth near the American Museum of Natural History (he lived at 130 West 79th Street). And at 85, I thought hopefully, he still had a long time here with us. That comforted me.

When the Nobel brouhaha erupted recently, suspending the literature award this year, I thought: 'Philip hang in there old chap, 2019 is yours.' 

Alas, no.

Sort of like a Bizarro universe version of the Lance Armstrong Tour de France "victories" which now all have asterisks and blanks where his name once appeared, I propose that we ink in Roth for the 2018 Nobel-that-cannot-be and be done with it. Like swearing in Merrick Garland at the next possible chance. Because it's the right thing to do.

I know this is a very roundabout way of getting to Bob Dylan. And some readers may spontaneously link the two by way of the Nobel. Many felt Roth should have gotten it the year Bob Dylan did, figuring the prize committee would not name back to back US laureates. Some were outright scandalized that Dylan got it at all.

Not me. But it smarts that Roth's chances are now done.

Philip Roth and Bob Dylan are filed in the very same drawer of my brain right beside each other. Send me to a desert island and that's who I am taking. Just me and my American boys.

Their work provides a roadmap for our society. Rosetta stones decoding what it was to be American-born in the 30s and 40s. Creative consciences for when we'd veered off course. Commenters on hypocrisies peddled by politicians. And unabashed patriots whose Americanism defines them.

They are also wordsmiths unlike any others, Kilauea-like in productivity.

And so onto Bob who turns 77 today. I felt in the mood to celebrate him rightly.

I'm not asking you to like his voice. But it deserves a second listen. I'm not asking you to understand why he's not surrendered his personal life to the relentless tabloid consumer. But it merits respect and contemplation in an Instagram world, where Kardashians rule. I'm not asking you to sweep aside his 1960s self in favor of his post-Time Out of Mind full-bodied smoothness. But you could consider it. Nor would I insist you revisit the wrongly-reviled Gospel era. His born-again phase has already been born again with critics exalting it. If you live long enough, you see everything. And "Trouble No More" has been at long last deemed worth the trouble.

Bob Dylan contains multitudes, but he couldn't be what he is without his epic rise during his New York years.

Marguerite Yourcenar wrote that "the true birthplace is that wherein for the first time one looks intelligently upon oneself."  What makes Bob one of us is that his true birthplace is New York City.

This I know.

At his post-9-11 concert at Madison Square Garden, we -- all 19,000 of us -- were broken, shellshocked sleepwalkers. No matter which song Dylan chose the night of November 19, 2001, he found a way to comment on what the city had just been through, how we felt about NYC, how senseless the attack was, how we mourned the victims. His lyrics are that encompassing. But the songwriter also chose his setlist carefully. "Waiting for the Light to Shine," "Lonesome Day Blues," "Searching for a Soldier's Grave," and finally "Things Have Changed." There were lines like the following pouring out of those songs, resonating against the 9-11 backdrop:

"Folk lose their possessions, the folks are leaving town." "I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin'." "If the bible is right, the world will explode." "Some things are too hot to touch, the human mind can only stand so much." "There are many here among us who feel that life is but a joke."

With Ground Zero still smoldering and the spate of anthrax attacks fresh on everyone's mind, things were quite raw. And that night at the Garden, it was his references to our hometown and Dylan's own demeanor that were tenderest. With Larry Campbell and Charlie Sexton alongside him and the rest of one great Dylan touring band, he launched into "Tom Thumb's Blues" with its "I'm going back to New York City, I do believe I've had enough" earning a collective roar. And then nearing the end of his performance, in acknowledgment of the roomful of pain, Dylan pronounced: 'No one needs to tell me how I feel about New York City.'

This provoked a catharsis because Dylan had just made it very personal, a rare glimpse of the flesh and bones behind the song and dance man. There are other wonderful memories of that night, but I'll keep it about New York for now. And New York Town's 77 year-old son.

In his honor on this day, I give you below Bob Dylan in a New York state of mind.

(Email subscribers: you'll have to click on the blog post title to see the videos on our site).

"Hard Times in New York Town," 1962

"Talkin' New York," live at Town Hall, 1963

"Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues," 1965-66

"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," 1965 - One interpretation says this was Dylan slamming the door on the city's folk and protest singer scene. That of course could be disputed. I'm including it because it's hard to top.

"Visions of Johanna," 1966 - a slowed down live version from a Sheffield concert. The song references the D train.

I include these last two not for New York reference, per se, though the one immediately above is Bob's star-studded 30th Anniversary Concert at Madison Square Garden.  I'm posting these two renditions of "My Back Pages" as a birthday mantra: "Ah, but I was so much older then, I'm younger than that now...."

Happy Birthday from New York Town.

By Caitlin Hawke

This is really a Throwback Thursday post, but I am putting it up a bit early because it is pegged to an event today, Wednesday, May 23, that I wanted you to know about. But first the facts.

Yes, in the photo above, that is famed tightrope walker and master of mystery Philippe Petit walking a line to St. John the Divine on September 29, 1982, to fete the construction of a new tower. If you look closely at the grainy newspaper image below from the Columbia Spectator, you  can just about make out a trowel on his belt that he was symbolically delivering across Amsterdam Avenue -- 150 feet in the air -- to the cathedral and its Bishop. A flourish to inaugurate construction of the south tower of the cathedral's west elevation.

So, the photo above depicts an authorized -- orchestrated! -- walk to the cathedral. You don't have to imagine it because there's film of it (if you are receiving this message by email, make sure to click on the blog post title to view the video on our website). And indeed the trowel is looped on his belt as he makes his way across an unbelievably taught rope in his deacon purple stockings, pausing once to kneel on the wire and once to do a stork pose, then bowing deeply over the edge of St. John's roofline to the applauding crowd. One incredulous spectator shakes her arms over her head saying "Oh boy am I glad that's over!"

Great, yes. But let's just say it was not Petit's first walk at SJTD. That was in 1980, and he went stealth that time as was his wont.

Many a New Yorker knows Petit was a guerilla walker extraordinaire. In 1974, his clandestine operation and magnificent stroll between the two unfinished World Trade Center towers on a 131-foot cable suspended 1,300 feet above the construction site by his merry cabal was first one for the law enforcers; and then one for the history books; and finally one for the spiritual coda of those two towers whose fate we all remember too, too well. I've included two snaps at the bottom of that walk, one where he has an ear-to-ear smile, presumably elated or high on height. And the other of him lying down on the rope. He also danced on the wire that day in '74. Giddy, lollygagging about, and perhaps toying with the powers that be who had no way to get to him. That walk was an act of hubris, insanity, and majesty rolled into one.

In short, so great was Petit that his 1980 tightrope walk, which was inside St. John the Divine, led officials there to name him as one of the first Cathedral Artists-in-Residence. Better to have him with you than against you, you might suppose they reasoned. But actually, the Dean of the cathedral was all for the interior walk. He just couldn't get his board to sign off on it, presumably for liability reasons. Petit, characteristically undeterred, went ahead with the 1980 nave walk. The cops cuffed him on his way down from the wire that day for trespassing; but the Dean, James Parks Morton, intervened and thinking quickly informed the police that Petit couldn't be trespassing because he was, um, an artist in residence, right, that's the ticket.

To this day, the funambulist retains his resident artist title. And he's walked a wire many a time since including once after the terrible fire that broke out in the gift shop to help heal and herald a new beginning.

In a 1999 New Yorker piece by Calvin Tomkins, Petit was quoted as saying:

“When you think about it, wire walking is very close to what religion is. ‘Religion’ is from the Latin religare, which means to link something, people or places. And to know, before you take your first step on a wire, that you are going to do the last one—this is a kind of faith.”

Dean Morton told Tomkins that Petit was "one of the most religious people [I know]....Sometimes very unusual people turn out to be the most religious....I think of this as God’s joke.”

I do believe he believes. Just not in terrestrial authorities.

I love that he has this connection to our neighborhood. Since 9-11, Petit to me is an anthropomorphic poem. He's our living link to the towers he owned for a mid-seventies day. Religare.

In Bloomingdale, we live in the shadow of SJTD, the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, or if you prefer, one of the five largest church buildings in the world. You'll agree that its secrets -- like the Petit tales -- and its history are poorly known.

One place to rectify that is with the romp of a Bowery Boys podcast episode devoted to the cathedral -- I'm embedding the audio below. (If you are receiving this by email, please click on the title of the blog post to view the video on our website.) And if you can go to SJTD tonight, May 23, for $125 you can celebrate with the Bowery Boys the 125th anniversary of the ground breaking.

Probably tickets are sold out for the birthday bash. But tell me you weren't tempted!

Replete with peacocks, Greek revival remnants of the Leake and Watts Orphan Asylum of 1843, and the little rope-walking giant, the cathedral is a neighborhood gem, a work in progress, ours to cherish, and ours to divine.

The link above is to the Bowery Boys podcast #262: Secrets of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. You may not love their style, but stick with it for lots of great historical information.