The Scoop on Agyness Deyn’s Acting GigAgyness Deyn stars in her friend and bandmate Alanna Masterson’s short film. She plays the imaginary friend of a teenager grieving over the death of his sister.
The Gallery Aims to Bring South Beach to South BronxHip-hop artist Robert Salese and veteran D.J. Mikey Eyes will open a 6,000-square-foot lounge in Mott Haven. “We’re the first guys to come down and do something as chichi and bourgie as this,” says Falese.
Just in Time for ‘Times’ McCain Scuffle, ‘Time’ Editor Says Papers Shouldn’t Endorse CandidatesMEDIA
• What is the New York Police Department’s policy for awarding press credentials? Journalists wonder the same thing. [NYT]
• Time managing editor Rick Stengel ponders why newspapers endorse political candidates at a time when news consumers doubt the objectivity of the media. [Time]
• Details of the deal that Newsweek struck with George W. Bush’s former brain have emerged: It’s a two-year, sixteen-column contract. [NYO]
Back of the House
Venerable Meat Purveyor Struck by FireIn a city already starved for first-class steak, there’s going to be a lot less of it to go around, at least for a little while: Master Purveyors in the Bronx, one of the city’s top meat suppliers and a little piece of its history, suffered extensive damage from a fire at its Hunts Point building last night. Masters, as it was called, was a family business that had been supplying the city’s top steakhouses for generations, and it can’t be easily replaced: It’s the meat equivalent to Russ & Daughters burning down, or the Strand being evicted and replaced with a Virgin Megastore. Along with Pat La Frieda, the Piccinini Brothers, and DeBragga and Spitler, Master Purveyors are the last of the city’s great old-guard meat purveyors. Adam Perry Lang of Daisy May and (formerly) Robert’s Steakhouse, one of Masters’ most devoted clients, says, “This is a tragedy, but I know they’ll bounce back. They’re survivors … they’re the real deal and they have so much integrity.” Whether they will bounce back is still unclear. We hope to have more information tomorrow.
Fire Damages Big Market in the Bronx [NYT]
neighborhood watch
The Army Occupies East 103rd Street; Residents DispleasedEast Harlem: There’s outrage over a new Army recruiting center on East 103rd Street, on the heels of Army promo teams here this summer that included gals in camo midriffs and short shorts. [NY Latino Journal]
Jackson Heights: Starbucks is here! Gentrification officially begins! [Curbed]
Northwest Bronx: So many parks are being repaired here that there’s no place for the massive youth baseball league to play this spring! [Norwood News]
neighborhood watch
They Should Call It ‘Burrow Hall’!Bronx: Okay, okay, so this isn’t hood-specific … but how cool is it that there’s gonna be an online mag, called Cross Bronx (get it?), featuring writers and artists in the Boogie Down? [Talk Bronx]
Brooklyn Heights: The rats around Cadman Plaza are so out of control it seems the city’s called in a private exterminator, which may be wise judging from the massive size of those rat burrows. Burrow Hall? Ha-ha! [Pardon Me for Asking]
East Village: The old lady who sits next to Gino the tailor all day in his 14th Street shop is quiet when people come in, but when they leave, she yells at him about all the things he does wrong. Reportedly. [Vanishing New York]
developing
The Bronx to Get Another Golf Course in 2010Today the city issued a request for proposals to create a public golf course at Ferry Point Park, a patch of covered landfill at the Throgs Neck waterfront, in two years. Would-be developers have eight weeks to propose how that course will lie. (That’s golf talk, isn’t it?) Plans for an eighteen-hole links course at Ferry Point Park predate Mayor Bloomberg’s overarching PlaNYC, but if it gets done soon, it would be a good centerpiece for the master plan. Like many PlaNYC projects, including the conversion of Staten Island’s Fresh Kills landfill into a huge and sumptuous park, this aims to green up a dead place. It’s no easy task: Trees won’t grow on old landfill (hence the brilliance of a golf course), and the winning developer must propose an irrigation scheme to tax the city water table as little as possible. And it must harmonize with “the principles of green design,” which presumably means extra points if a windmill on the course generates electricity for the South Bronx. Is there a Bobby Jones out there for this bog? Your city needs you. —Alec Appelbaum
Construction of a tournament-quality golf course at Ferry Point Park in the Borough of the Bronx [PDF]
Neighborhood Watch
Green Coke in the Bronx a Good Thing; Eat a ‘wichcraft Sandwich, Save theAstoria: New Mexican restaurant Luna de Juarez at 25-98 Steinway is ready to be sampled. [Joey in Astoria]
Bronx: Coca-Cola’s added a handful of hybrid-electric trucks to its 90-vehicle delivery fleet based in the South Bronx. [NYP]
Cobble Hill: Sahadi’s has put up a new sign, possibly in preparation for the onslaught of Trader Joe’s. [Lost City]
East Village: A sushi bar called Nori will refill the Hip-Hop-Chow space on Second Avenue in hopes that this more banal concept will survive in the space for more than a few months. [Eater]
Meatpacking District: Paparazzi aren’t the only ones not allowed to photograph the hallowed spaces of Socialista; civilians were hampered from shooting as well. [Down by the Hipster]
Rockefeller Center: An eggplant sandwich “invented by three teenagers from New York City who spent a summer learning about the food business as part of a program connected to the Fresh Air Fund” (which will also snag some of the proceeds) has been added to the menu of ’wichcraft’s newest location at 1 Rockefeller Plaza near 50th Street and will be available at ten other locations by next week. [Diner’s Journal/NYT]
neighborhood watch
New Bronx Best Western: More of the Usual?East Central Bronx: Locals worry that a Best Western being built in a remote area off an expressway will be used either to house homeless people and/or prostitutes and johns. [NYDN via Queens Crap]
Fort Greene: Nostalgic for Chelsea’s old 26th St. flea market, this high-profile blogger is starting a massive one of his in front of Bishop Loughlin High School…but not till April. [Brownstoner]
Greenpoint: Locals often fear new construction sites…but now, it seems, such sites come with really creepy poems posted to them. [Newyorkshitty]
The New York Diet
Graffiti Goddess Claw Money Starts With a Bagel, Finishes with Champagne and
Now that she’s retired from the graffiti game, Queens-born Claw Money (whose signature claw you’ve seen all over the city and on Ecko apparel) says she has “like, 10,000 jobs.” In addition to designing her own line and finishing her second book, Shady Lady (it’s about eyewear), she’s the fashion director for Swindle magazine, a coveted brand consultant, and the wardrobe supervisor for a top-secret VH1 pilot. So how does she get into work mode? “It’s not a good day,” she says, “unless you start it out with a bagel.” As she prepped for a party launching the sneakers she designed for Nike, she told us what the rest of her days entailed.
VideoFeed
Two Chefs (and One Good Eater) Take a Trip to the Bronx
If there’s something you can think of better than going up to Arthur Avenue in the Bronx in a big white Buick, for the express purpose of eating sandwiches with your two favorite Italian chefs, then we would like to know what it is. We heeded our lust for salumi and mozzarella and recorded the results for Grub Street posterity. .
Roving Chef: Arthur Avenue [Video]
in other news
Michael Mukasey Fails to Incite RiotsHow about that attorney-general position? It’s as transitory as the seats on The View, no? According to the morning papers, the Justice Department’s latest benchwarmer will likely be a local boy: Bronx-born Michael Mukasey, a retired federal judge with formidable experience (he was a prosecutor during the Giuliani era and, after the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, presided over the trials of Jose Padilla and Omar Abdel Rahman). Other than the almost-sketchy (but not quite) fact that he and his son are currently serving as judicial advisers to Giuliani’s presidential campaign, there doesn’t appear to be anything particularly offensive about this guy. Even Senator Chuck Schumer, who loves him some outrage, is a fan: Mukasey “seems to be the kind of nominee who would put rule of law first and show independence from the White House,” the senator said in a statement yesterday. Well! We’re actually not filled with total despair! And at this stage of the game, if the administration doesn’t inspire bloodcurdling screams of outrage, even the littlest Hail Mary should be considered a total miracle.
Bush to Nominate Mukasey as Attorney General [NPR]
neighborhood watch
‘If These Walls Could Talk, They’d Probably Be Screaming’Bronx: A city inspector went to the basement of 1912 Holland Avenue to check on a hot-water heater, but he ended up contacting the police because he found a crazy laboratory, complete with vials of acid, and preserved bones and organs. As one resident said, “If these walls could talk, they’d probably be screaming.” [Gothamist]
Cobble Hill: A planned new building next to the incoming Brooklyn Trader Joe’s has caused a kerfuffle – developers want to build higher than zoning permits, but Borough president Marty Markowitz doesn’t want to set a bad precedent. Mm. We’re not sure “kerfuffle” is the word he’d use. [Brownstoner]
Downtown Brooklyn: The city has decided to use its powers of eminent domain to seize 21 downtown Brooklyn lots that are said to have been a part of the Underground Railroad. Oh, and the city is also about to spend $2 million to commemorate abolitionist activity in the area. [McBrooklyn]
Forest Hills: A planned shopping center in the hood hasn’t received approval, despite signage to the contrary. The suspicious civic association, naturally, have their caftans in a twist. [Forest Hills 72]
Soho: A giant, boxers-clad poster of Michelangelo’s David dominates Lafayette, trying to get you to donate sperm. Because, you know, Lafayette has the best daddies. [Copyranter]
the morning line
Murder at Deutsche Bank?
• The deaths of two firefighters in the Deutsche Bank blaze this weekend may be classified as homicides — and it could be negligent contractors, who disabled a critical standpipe, and chain-smoking Eastern European immigrants, who started the fire, who are accused of murdering them. [NYP]
Beef
The Mets Scored Shake Shack. What Will the Yankees Do?
Now that the Mets seem to have a lock on New York’s most coveted hamburger business, we’re waiting for the other shoe to drop: What will be the Yankee response? Clearly, it won’t do for the Bronx Bombers to let their National League rival upstage them like this. We fully expect the Yankees to open the vault in hopes of attracting a major free-agent restaurateur. But who?
Mediavore
Red Hook Vendors on the Run Again; Bourdain on ‘Top Chef’With the Parks Department temporarily off their back, the Red Hook food vendors now have a new enemy: the ever-mischievous Department of Health. [Serious Eats]
Related: The Threat to Red Hook’s Street-Food Paradise Unites New York Foodies
Anthony Bourdain doesn’t have any sympathy for last night’s Top Chef loser, Sara: “I’ve worked with women cooks who could crank out a hundred fifty meals off a very busy grill station in freakin’ stilettos and still have the energy to give Howie the beating of his life — so that don’t cut it as an excuse.” Bonus: Bourdain on Rocco’s career arc. [Bravo]
Related: Joey, Latest ‘Top Chef’ Non-Winner, on Why Rocco Is a Douche Bag
The hidden food treasures of the Bronx range from an ancient candy store where you can get a classic egg cream to a Chino-Latino place with great shrimp mofungo. [NYP]
neighborhood watch
You Can Choose Your Friends, But You Can’t Choose Your Friends’ CondosAstoria: Tonight at the Beer Garden, it’s Harry and the Potters. Get drunk with your fellow nerds! [Joey in Astoria]
Downtown Brooklyn: New buyers into 110 Livingston will be relieved of common charges for six months if they can convince a bud to buy in the building, too. [Curbed]
Harlem: Rumors are flying that rich, new white residents want the name of Marcus Garvey Park — longtime site of the Saturday-night African drumming circle — changed back to Mount Morris Park. [Amsterdam News via Harlem Fur]
Kensington: Local watchdogs regret to inform you that the hood ain’t got much crime, save the occasional Peeping Tom or delivery-boy mugging. [Kensington Blog]
Northwest Bronx: When Bronx councilmember Joel Rivera didn’t show up at a meeting to address restaurant workers’ rights, the workers flooded his office with “menus” demanding he hear them. [WestBronxNews]
Sunset Park: Construction is under way here on … no, not a new luxury condo, but an actual public high school, complete with bright yellow squares on it! [IMBY]
Upper East Side: Old-timers oppose a bike lane on a stretch of 91st Street that’s become an unofficial park over the years. Younger locals support it. [Streetsblog]
Neighborhood Watch
Varietal’s Kitchen Closes in ChelseaBronx: Italian pastry shop Egidio has a history steeped in family feuds, politics, and adultery; now a cannoli-wielding former owner has opened up shop nearby. [Lost City]
Chelsea: Varietal has closed its dining room, though wine’s still being served at the bar. [Restaurant Girl] Great Small Works performing-arts group will host a Spaghetti Dinner this Sunday evening on the roof of the 14th Street Y. Besides bowls of garlicky pasta, ticket holders can look forward to “puppet theater [and] New Orleans brass band music.” [Blog Chelsea]
Greenpoint: The Original Soup Man (a.k.a. the Soup Nazi) joins other chains on Manhattan Avenue and shocks customers by charging $9 for some selections. [Gothamist]
Hell’s Kitchen: Alex Garcia’s new restaurant, Gaucho Steak Co., at 752 Tenth Avenue, is now open for lunch and offering delivery. [Grub Street]
Soho: Savoy’s Clambake Dinners start July 6 and run through the end of the month. [Restaurant Girl]
photo op
Lambs Can’t Hang in SoBro
Lucky Lady, the sheep who tried to escape a live market in the South Bronx this week, moved upstate this morning. Six (unnamed) chickens and Lucky Lady hitched a ride from the Mayor’s Alliance for NYC’s Animals. They’re on their way to Farm Sanctuary in Watkins Glen.
neighborhood watch
Nothing Says ‘Small-Town Feel’ Like Community ToiletsThe Bronx: Car-free Sundays return to the Grand Concourse. [Streetsblog]
Clinton Hill: Hollenback Garden invites all the neighbors to soil the soil, but wait until the composting toilet is built on Saturday. [Clinton Hill Blog]
East Village: One Ten 3rd is still not ready for human occupancy, but for now it’s populated by a bunch of Sub-Zero refrigerators. [Curbed]
Jackson Heights: The normally private gardens here are open to the rest of us schlubs for the weekend. [OuterB]
Kensington: Virgin doesn’t even bother giving this underrated neighborhood its own ad. They just get a generic “Brooklyn” one. [Kensington Blog]
Park Slope: Anyone want to buy Seventh Avenue Books? It’s “priced to sell.” [Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn]
sex diaries
The Mid-Divorce MotherOnce a week, Daily Intel takes a peek at what your friends and neighbors are doing behind doors left slightly ajar. Today, the Mid-Divorce Mother: female, 50, Norwood (the Bronx), writer, straight, divorcing “after years of ambivalence.”
DAY ONE
6:00 p.m.: Dinner and drinks with four women, all over 50. They are all so intelligent, funny, evolved, and alive.
9:00 p.m.: Two of the women are a couple who met on an Internet matchmaking service four months ago. I wonder if I shortchanged myself in life by never truly exploring bisexual possibilities.
11:00 p.m.: Go to sleep on couch. Soon-to-be ex-husband of sixteen years sleeps in the bedroom, 15-year-old son in his room.
ByArianne Cohen
Neighborhood Watch
Chelsea Mourns the Loss of Chinese Vegetable Burritosstrong>Bronx: Ditri Coffee Shop has sold coffee and work boots for 28 years; it’s amazing this business model doesn’t seem to have been duplicated. [Lost City]
Chelsea: There’s a makeshift memorial set outside Bright Food Shop, which has closed along with sister-restaurant Kitchen/Market thanks to high rents. [Crazy Fingers by way of Blog Chelsea] Tasty Korean takeout near FIT. [Gothamist]
Clinton Hill: A bake sale gets frisky with a Middle Eastern dance performance this Sunday at 289 Grand Avenue. [Clinton Hill Blog]
Dumbo: Chestnut, Olea, and Sweet Melissa Patisserie are all participating in Tuesday’s tasting event at powerHouse Arena to benefit the American Cancer Society. [Dumbo NYC]
East Village: Bowery Whole Foods unveils plans to start serving brunch. [Down by the Hipster]
West Village: Murray’s Cheese is hosting a sparkling-wine course that includes cheese pairings on June 5th at 6:30 p.m. [Gothamist]
developing
What Does a $91 Million Train Station Look Like?
Because there’s news today that the new Metro-North station to be built at Yankee Stadium, set to open in spring 2009, will cost $91 million, twice its initial price tag, with the city kicking in some $39 million, and because we also like showing you renderings of construction projects under way throughout our fair city, we herewith present a sketch of the new station — that bridge on the right heads east from the station, above East 153rd Street, and lets fans off behind home plate of the current stadium, which will still leave them more than a few blocks from the new stadium — provided by the MTA. For what the thing costs, we hope the real one’s at least in color. —Alec Appelbaum
Next Stop: Yanks [Metro NY]
the morning line
Five Shots
• Another cop’s bullet, another unarmed man dead, another immigrant family demanding justice. An off-duty Manhattan officer apparently killed a Honduran van driver who sideswiped a parked car and tried to leave the scene. An investigation is under way. [amNY]
• New York State’s Republican party is beginning to line up behind Rudy Giuliani, on the logic that his candidacy will help the GOP hold the State Senate. One senator says “ethnic Democrats,” i.e. immigrants, will vote Rudy. Yeah, he’s got the Diallo vote all sewn up. [NYT]
• Bruce Ratner must be sweatin’ about something: He’s sent out letters to 700 addresses near Atlantic Yards promising residents free ACs and double-paned windows (to minimize construction nuisances). The kicker: Daniel Goldstein got one. [NYP]
• The City Council is touting the “undeniable success” of a campaign designed to inform clinics and drugstores that Plan B, an emergency birth-control pill, can be sold over the counter; some 94 percent of surveyed city stores had it available. [WNBC]
• And in lesser city initiatives, a Brooklyn assemblyman is aghast after having been hipped to the fact there are hookers on the Internet. Specifically, on Craigslist! You mean all those “18 y.o. bored females” aren’t just, you know, bored? [NYDN]
the morning line
Never Fear, Corzine’s Here
• Is New Jersey governor Jon Corzine a superhero? He’s back to work today, just a few weeks after breaking a leg, eleven ribs, his collarbone, his sternum, and more in a horrific SUV crash. Three-time acting governor Richard Codey again politely recedes into the background. [WNBC]
• Kirsys Rodriguez, a 12-year-old Bronx girl, is in critical condition after catching a bullet in a post-party “dispute”: She was trying to flee the gunfire that erupted over somebody’s Sidekick. [NYT]
• Roger Clemens is back with the Yankees for the rest of 2007, for the discussion-ending $28 million (the Red Sox put up a paltry $18 million). Since the Yanks’ starting pitchers have been dropping like flies, he’ll start within days. [amNY]
• Joseph Oddo, a Virginia-based writer whose pet cause is to draft independent candidates to run for president, ha set his sights on Bloomberg. The Website, DraftMichael.com, handily serves to raise public awareness of, well, Joseph Oddo. [NYS]
• And it’s not exactly local news, but since Spider-Man has been bugging this city for the last several weeks, the least we can do is report his box office: $148 million for the weekend (a record), $59 million on Friday alone (a record), and $375 million worldwide (a record). Can he go away now? [NYDN]
in other news
Wherein We Defend German RacismGovernor Spitzer, Bronx Borough President Adolfo Carrion, the Reverend Al Sharpton, and other local leaders are up in arms about a German military-training video that makes an offhand racist reference to the Bronx: An instructor orders his charge to imagine something along the lines of “You’re in the Bronx. Three black guys come out of a van and insult your mother.” The recruit responds with a bleeped-out curse and a furious machine-gun volley and is instructed to yell louder. A German TV station got hold of the video and broadcast it disapprovingly; naturally it’s made its way to YouTube. Now Carrion is demanding an apology and Sharpton is trying to get Bush involved.
developing
Pretty, Affordable Housing for Brooklyn?
Maybe visionary architects can do more than concoct condos and museums in this town. A competition to design affordable housing in the South Bronx, which ended with the January selection of U.K. architecture firm Grimshaw and local good-guy architect Richard Dattner, went so well that the city’s Department of Housing, with other agencies, is planning another, similar competition for later this year. The city will collect proposals for a 150-unit complex, dance theater, and retail space in Brooklyn, near BAM, by May 4, Housing commissioner Shaun Donovan said at the Center for Architecture last night, when he also announced another, unspecified competition for later this year. Architect Markus Dochantschi of StudioMDA, part of the runner-up team for the Bronx project, told us that he and his group will submit to the Brooklyn competition, and last night, for the first time, he showed off their Bronx proposal — a scheme of colorful mid-rise buildings that absorb sunlight and eschew dark hallways. The Brooklyn winner would face Frank Gehry’s Miss Brooklyn and her gargantuan friends — unless, of course, it’s built while lawsuits keep all those titanium panels waiting on the loading docks. —Alec Appelbaum