Even back in 1984 there was mainstream media attention on the ever-changing landscape of the Lower East Side and East Village. Real estate was "exploding," chain stores were popping up, and galleries were abundant. The New York Magazine cover story on May 28th of that year was titled: The Lower East Side -- There Goes the Neighborhood. Luckily, someone recently scanned the entire article, which could almost read like it was written today, if......

Books can be the perfect place to stick an orphaned piece of paper; bills, to-do lists, unsent notes often get discarded in between pages -- so it's not a surprise when an unknown scrap comes floating out of a used book. Adam Tobin, owner of Unnameable Books in Brooklyn, has now created a display inside his store for just such found objects.“It’s a motley assortment,” he said. “We’ve been doing it for about two years......

Preservationists and Greenwich Village community members are reporting that their efforts to stop NYU from demolishing the historic Provincetown Playhouse have paid off – to a certain extent. Andrew Berman, Executive Director of The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, tells us that NYU plans to preserve the facade and structural walls of the theater, but he says many issues remain unaddressed. Founded in 1918 by Eugene O’Neill and other trailblazers, the Provincetown Playhouse was......

Photo: Ed Levine’s Eats. Say goodbye to the maddening ear-poison of Kool Man’s “Pop Goes the Weasel,” and harken back to the more civilized jingle of a bygone era: the gently ringing bell of the retro Good Humor ice cream truck. On Sunday Adam Kuban got the scoop of the week when he happened upon this atavistic enabler of sweet teeth outside the Museum of Modern Art. The vintage customized Ford pick-up is just one......

Brooklyn Bridge circa 1896. The 125th birthday of the Brooklyn Bridge will be observed this month with a five day celebration from May 22nd through May 26th, Mayor Bloomberg and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz announced earlier this week. Completed in 1883, the bridge opened with a “People’s Day” celebration; for a penny toll the general public was permitted to traverse its span. (A few days later, on Memorial Day, 12 pedestrians were trampled to......

The historic – but not landmarked – Provincetown Playhouse in Greenwich Village could be the next building to make way for NYU’s ongoing expansion, which will devour six million square feet of space in New York in the next 25 years, if all goes according to plan. The theater is widely regarded as the birthplace of 'Off Broadway.' The local community board is open to NYU’s proposal (see renderings here), but some preservationists are trying......

A Wired reporter bemoaning the pizza backwater that is San Francisco rang up Mario Batali to find out why New York Pizza is so magnificent and got an intriguing theory out of the celebrity chef: New York’s old pizza ovens “capture the gestalt of beautifully cooked pizza.” A food development consultant believes Batali’s abstract ‘gestalt’ is, to scientists, vaporized ingredients that become “volatilized particles and attach themselves to the walls of the baking cavity. The......

New York has lost another vintage factory built diner: The Cheyenne, a popular all night eatery near Penn Station, will close its doors on Sunday after 68 years of operation. And the owner of a rival diner – the bigger Skylight Diner nearby – is to blame. Skylight owner George Papas also owns the narrow 20-by-100 foot site the Cheyenne currently occupies and he plans to build a nine-story apartment building on the property. Forgotten-NY’s......

This ad for Pakistan Airlines is real. And in the history of advertising, it really takes the creepy cake. Even worse than babies endorsing cigarettes! Seriously, if Nostradamus ran an ad firm to warn the world about blowback, this would have been in his portfolio. It appeared in the March 19th, 1979 issue of Le Point (and surely countless other publications). Yes, the shadow is in pretty much in the same place as where......