Day 101 - Midtown Modernism to Manganaro's

Had some time to kill today between a talk at the MAS and a food meeting at the Cornell Cooperative Extension on 34th Street. So I headed to B&H Photo on foot to get a new mic stand. This hazy late morning was perhaps the last mild day before the bitterness of autumn finally settles in on the City. I love the seasons--every one of them--but there is a bit of cruelty to offering a snap of springtime when it is likely to be followed immediately by autumn in earnest. Like an aperitif at the end of a meal.

As I wandered westward in the fifties past the Rockefeller tree enshrouded in scaffolding--like every other new or newly gussied edifice in the city these days--the monoliths of modernism along 6th Avenue yielded to lower-slung old taxpayers lining 8th and 9th Avenues. They're filled with modest businesses along the street that, in the old days, helped to subsidize the residential apartments in the 3 or 4 floors above. But they're all leaving. Ground floor shops and watering holes of long standing if questionable quality are closing up as their leases end and the buildings' owners realize the value that can be unlocked beneath their stately, if soot-smudged, brick facades. These are buildings from turn of the century New York when stone masons arrived by the hodful in steerage from Italy to erect handsomely clad buildings with decorative window lintels and pressed-tin-covered parapets that, on my of these old-timers, still cling to the top edges.

But now their time is past. Entrepreneurs rarely own, develop and run a business--or a building--on a single lot anymore. Aside from the odd sliver building that bucks this trend (see picture) most of these properties are being emptied, sold, and assembled by developers who are aggregating air rights and awaiting (or presaging) the transformation of the far west side. The most recent casualty close enough to me in my extended family of neighborhood joints for me to mourn a bit was the Collins Bar on the east side of 8th Ave, just north of 46th. Don't misunderstand: while this was a relatively young concern--less than 10 years--it was in a space that had all of the charms of a local gin mill for generations: darkness (true darkness, not loungy, candleflicker dark); dankness; improbably narrow with barely enough space to edge your way behind barstool patrons to the small dumbbell nook of tables at the back; tall, pressed tin ceilings; and a popcorn maker. Despite the cajun spiced salt and the high-end beers, this was still pure localism.

A little further down, a few relics which have hung on so long they're in danger of becoming, first, campy and, eventually, a kitschy throwback to yesteryear: Manganaro's Grosseria. Click here to read about the longstanding feud between it and the neighboring, not quite related, Manganero's Heroboy.