The Electric Egg Cream

In an effort to reimburse victims of the Prince of Thieves, the government has finally sold one of Bernie Madoff’s erstwhile properties here in New York City. His Manhattan penthouse (photo gallery), originally listed at a spine-tingling $9.9 million clams, then reduced to an equally hair-raising $8.9 million bucks, has ultimately sold for an undisclosed sum to an anonymous buyer.

The lucky owner will get 4,000 square feet of high-altitude living space in this duplex apartment on the 11^th and 12^th floors of 133 East 64^th Street.  Three bedrooms comprise the lower floor while a living room, kitchen and wraparound terrace proudly lolly-gag above.

The apartment is one of three Madoff properties the government seized and is selling to help reimburse victims of Mr. Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme. Anne Corey and Serena Boardman of Sotheby’s International Realty have the listing. The Madoff beach home in Montauk, N.Y., sold in the fall for $9.41 million, nearly 6% above its asking price. The buyer was real-estate mogul Steven Roth of Vornado Realty Trust.

The Wall Street Journal

Related articles by Zemanta

• Madoff’s Manhattan Penthouse Goes Into Contract (blogs.wsj.com)
• Madoff’s Manhattan Penthouse Under Contract for Sale (Update1) (businessweek.com)

Featuring the incomparable Harold Lloyd…teaming up with Babe Ruth.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Happy Birthday Babe Ruth (slidingintohome.blogspot.com)

An unfamiliar coyote has been spotted in Manhattan by an unidentified man walking his more urbanized dog. At around 6:45pm last night, he saw the prairie wolf (quite a long way from the nearest prairie) at the entrance to Central Park on 7^th Avenue and Central Park South. According to the man, the coyote approached from the east, positioning himself on an overhanging boulder, and took a canine-to-canine interest in the man’s dog; hence, a stare-down began twixt dog and coyote that lasted for five-minutes.

Someone called 311, the city’s hotline, but one and all could have died of old age while awaiting a response. In any event, the coyote cut-out of the staring and cut-off into the wilderness of the park. The Central Park Conservancy and Parks Department were also contacted by several parties and updates are forthcoming…eventually.

NYC’s first visiting coyote, Hal (pictured above), arrived in 2006. He began his tour in Central Park and eventually wound up in Harlem before being captured. Unfortunately, Hal soon died from an unhealthy mix of stressful captivity and of the rat poisoned he had ingested while roaming the town; he’s gone to his eternal rest in that Big Prairie in the Sky. Hopefully, our newly-arrived and currently touring coyote’s visit will end on a happier note.

Luckily for myself, I just live in this city and never visit…I only blog about it.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Coyotes Gone Wild! (harlemworldblog.wordpress.com)
• Rabies on the Green (electriceggcream.com)

The hot dog, crude delicacy of unknown origin that is, is one of New York City’s most essential novelties; in fact, it reflects this city’s essential ambiguity more than any other food item. Served in a bun, typically crowned with mustard and sauerkraut, the dog is a connoisseur’s delight for the common man and woman; a hearty supplement to their pedestrian itineraries or defined budgets.

While its origins are unknown, where the hot dog achieved eternal fame and glory is more than well-known: Coney Island. A German immigrant by the name of Charles Feltman ran a meat-pie wagon along the boardwalk in the 1860s. His cart was equipped with a heating unit (an innovation at the time) which allowed him to sell hot sausages wrapped in a roll to beachgoers and to boardwalk strollers.

Feltman’s sausage wagon business prospered and he eventually opened a restaurant on West 10^th Street that extended from the beach to Surf Avenue. A confluence of seven grills cooked thousands of newly dubbed hot dogs selling at 10 cents apiece. One of Feltman’s cooks, Nathan Handwerker, stared ambitiously long and calculatingly hard at the sizzling dogs and saw his future in an instant. In 1916, Handwerker opened his own restaurant strategically outside the newly constructed Stillwell Avenue subway line and sold hot dogs at 5 cents apiece. He attracted loads of customers from the ever-growing crowds to Coney Island and a new legend was born: Nathan’s Famous Frankfurters.

In time, Coney Island became a synonym for hot dog. It has been estimated that more than 100 million hot dogs were sold each summer at Coney Island during the amusement park’s heyday. Even now, the Nathan’s concession on Coney Island sells a little more than a million hot dogs a year.

Despite inroads made by the falafel sandwich, the shish kebab and the gyro, hot dogs still rule at a hefty percentage of the 4,000 carts licensed by the Department of Health.

In 1939, Coney Island honored its most famous symbol by organizing National Hot Dog Day. “It is difficult to measure the contribution the hot dog has made to the fame and popularity of this great resort,” one official said. “Why, Coney Island is even shaped like a frankfurter!” Catching the spirit of the occasion, Milton Berle stepped onto the podium and announced, “Let our slogan be ‘E Pluribus Hot Dog.’ ”

Here’s the sort of talk that puts this Brooklyn kid in the mood for a delectable, origin unknown be damned, hot dog!!! It’s one of those humble tidbits of life which makes life worth living…cholesterol count be damned as well.

William Grimes “A Man, a Plan, a Hot Dog: Birth of a Nathan’s”

Related articles by Zemanta

• Nathan’s Is a Solid Pick (seekingalpha.com)
• The best spots to grab a dog in New York City (locals.oyster.com)

Brooklyn while not always unwavering in its sanctity is impressively rich in its churches. In addition to being called the “City of Trees” and “City of Homes,” it’s also been called the “City of Churches;” lately, it’s more inclusively referred to as the Borough of Homes and Churches.” Most of these churches are Roman Catholic, built in the spiritual image of mostly first- and second-generation Italian-Americans, and have always maintained a prominent position among the faithful; indeed, parishioners would often identify themselves more with their respective parishes than with their respective neighborhoods.

A very comprehensive and very majestic example of a Brooklyn church is Regina Pacis (“Queen of Peace”) located at the corner of 12^th Avenue and 65^th Street in Borough Park. The church is an architectural masterpiece reflective of Italian Renaissance design…a European shrine rather than a neighborhood church.

While World War II was raging overseas, parishioners of the small and rather creaky St. Rosalia’s Church pledged that if the war came to an end they would erect “a lasting memorial to the ideal of peace.” Work began on one of Brooklyn’s greatest churches in 1948 with a price tag of $1,000,000 (by the time of completion, it rose to $2,000,000) and Regina Pacis Votive Shrine was dedicated in 1951.

It was a two-story building with 1,500 seats on the main floor and 1,200 more in the basement chapel.  It was the second Catholic church in the country to have air conditioning (at a cost of $70,000).  The 150-foot steeple was topped with four spotlights that illuminated an engraved bronze cross announcing “Pax”, or peace.  Two thousand tons of Italian marble were used in the building; sixteen stained glass windows told the story of the Virgin Mother, and fifteen Italian mosaics represented the Stations of the Cross.

To preserve the artwork, reducing soot and dirt, the church was among the first to use electric candles; the originals are still in place today.

As a testament to the communal involvement of parishioners, Regina Pacis’ construction was financed, to a large degree, by contributions. Even though they were poor Italian immigrants, parish members donated whatever they had to build the church: wedding and engagement rings, other kinds of jewelry, small and large sums of money…whatever they had to give, they gave.

Some of the jewels collected were converted into the crowns that topped the heads of the Virgin Mother and Child. In 1952, less than a year after Regina Pacis’ dedication, the crowns (with an estimated worth of $100,000) were stolen. The crime not only shocked the parish but became a national story. While some people started collections, others wrote editorials in newspapers condemning the criminal(s); the children of St. Rosalia, the parish school, prayed each morning for their return. Eight days later the church pastor, Father Cioffi, received a mysterious package…inside were the crowns almost perfectly intact. The pastor burst upon the next morning’s mass and announced the good news to a jubilant congregation. “Parishioners were overwhelmed:  some applauded, some prayed, some cried, and three fainted.”

Nonetheless, police were still searching for the thieves without any success. The theft rather than the return of the crowns was hot on many people’s minds and their anger was still unabated. Indeed, the Brooklyn Eagle downplayed the recovery of the crowns; its headline read: “Shrine Gem Thieves Hunted.” The police had only one suspect by the name of Ralph Emminio, a 38-year-old jewel thief. Strangely coinciding with the return of the crowns was the discovery of Emmino’s body on a street in Bath Beach (Brooklyn); he had been shot to death.

Many suspected that Emmino had either taken more than his fair share in a group crown heist or had been punished for stealing from a church — an off-limits zone for mob business.  Other leads developed from there: one man reported seeing Emmino’s car in the parking lot the night of the crime, and another claimed that two mysterious men asked him to deliver “a package” to Regina Pacis the day before the crowns appeared in the mail.  The Eagle reported that Catholic churches in Brooklyn refused to give Emmino, a suspect in the public’s eyes, a Catholic burial.  But no actual evidence was ever found beyond the package itself.  The case remains unsolved.

I grew up in Bensonhurst, which borders Regina Pacis’ parish in Borough Park; my parish being the less awe-inspiring Our Lady of Guadalupe, which borders it spiritually. Among the residents of that modestly intriguing neighborhood, traditional knowledge usually took hold where fact would end; that the Mafia had strong ties to Regina Pacis (as it did to Saint Rosalia, the church’s launch pad) was an accepted issue borne of traditional knowledge.

The Mafia never leaves one of its hits lying on a public street to be easily found; instead, it drives them to a New Jersey swamp to be found months or years later…except when it wants to make a statement.  Emmino’s body had been found on a Brooklyn street (photo/blog) on Bay 41^st Street between Bath and Benson Avenues in Bath Beach), shot twice through the chest and once through the head (“execution style”); he was clearly left on display. That the police had already suspected him for stealing the crowns, that his murder coincided with their return, tainted the magnificent holiness of Regina Pacis with an aura of criminality. The “Queen of Peace” may have had her crowns safely returned but they were forever tarnished by rumor and conjecture.

Brooklynology

A splendid Regina Pacis photo gallery can be found here at Bald Punk

SUMMARY Section of Coney Island amusement area with Scoota Boats entrance (sign above: “Motor boats”) and several pedestrians in foreground and Virginia Reel and Wonder Wheel in background.

Flickr: Brooklyn Public Library Collection

It’s often very easy to ignore many displays of racial and religious intolerance, casually writing these off as the works of a few misguided minds giving form and expression to their exuberant perversity. As long as no physical harm is inflicted, no considerable damage to property done, most acts of bigotry are quickly dismissed and soon forgotten.

Nonetheless, insidious evil is currently on the rise throughout the USA and oftentimes emerging in the most unlikeliest of places. This kind of evil, if dismissed, will simply have more time to grow; if forgotten, will soon remind everyone of its presence with overwhelmingly fatal consequences.

In my very own comfortably wondrous community of Park Slope, Brooklyn, antisemitism has once again reared its misbegotten head. The Brooklyn Paper is reporting that slips of paper reading “Kill Jews” were strewn along a major avenue here, Sixth Avenue from Fourth to Ninth Streets; the same demonic “paper chase” occurred last Halloween in this neighborhood.

Residents picked dozens of these ominous slips off the street and turned them over to the police. Karen Guilbert went one step further and played “amateur detective” in piecing the slips together in an effort to determine the source of this hatred; she performed the same task last Halloween. “All that emerged was that the slips had been cut from a document from a taxi driving school. Yet there were no addresses or phone numbers on the strips that offered any further clues.”

Most unsettling, this is not the first time the craven Anti-Semitic litterer has struck.

In addition to Guilbert’s Halloween discovery, last September, the same notes turned up in Bay Ridge, Boerum Hill and Clinton Hill.

To top it off, vandals struck two synagogues in Brooklyn Heights in 2007 and left the same message on car windshields.

In closing, a cautionary message  for Jews and, like myself, non-Jews alike:

“History has shown that wherever anti-Semitism has gone unchecked, the persecution of others has been present or not far behind. Defeating anti-Semitism must be a cause of great importance not only for Jews, but for all people who value humanity and justice….” U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum

—U.S. Department of State, Contemporary Global Anti-Semitism Report, March 13, 2008

Related articles by Zemanta

• Anti Semitism (recycleemail.com)
• Man Accused Of Fatal Shooting At Holocaust Museum Dies (alan.com)
• James Von Brunn Dies in Prison (blippitt.com)

Staten Island Chuck, that prognosticating ground hog of dubious fame and earthbound fortune, will be at it again. This Groundhog Day (Feb. 2), Chuck, like all true-blue if less notable (insofar as smug New Yorkers are concerned) groundhogs in America and Canada, will reemerge from his earthy hole for his annual moment of fame.

All eyes will be on the clever marmot this Tuesday, anxiously awaiting to observe whether or not Chuck sees his shadow in the sunlight (signifying six more weeks of winter) or not (signifying an earlier spring). Of course, Chuck’s calculations could be thrown out of whack due to stormy or overcast conditions; alas, by the pricking of my desktop weather station, cloudy wickedness will be coming in to darken that ceremonious day.

Regardless of rain or shine, snow or sleet, our indomitable Mayor Bloomberg will be in attendance. He’ll again play straight man to Chuck’s erratic and whimsical talents…hopefully not have his furry partner take a bite out of him, as he did last year (video).

Related articles by Zemanta

• Groundhog Day: Will there be violence? (hubdub.com)
• PETA wants Groundhog Day, the robot way (news.cnet.com)

Hipsters, that urbane set of groovy renegades, may be facing a sudden and untimely extinction. The New York Press questions if the cool and aloof look of hipsters may be out and a new look may be in…that of “helpsters.”

The peculiar neologism, helpsters, defines an up-and-coming, trendsetting breed combining the cool of hipsters with a social consciousness . Whereas hipsters are “disaffected aesthetes with nihilistic tendencies” these helpsters are “motivated and committed Samaritans.” NYP

Similar to their hipster counterparts, they’re by-products of gentrification; but, rather than luxuriate in gentrification’s epicurean delights they seek to undo its rampant disparities. Helpsters are critical of the social displacement and communal inequality caused by gentrification. They want to end the callous redevelopment of neighborhoods, systematically redesigned locales marketed for the prosperous, and make them more socially equitable.

So they’ve taken to organizing concerts by bands like They Might Be Giants to raise money for a community center in Williamsburg, launched “guerilla gardening” campaigns to create new greenspaces, held bicycle demonstrations and protests, and pushed to establish Brooklyn’s own currency. Helpsters even helped New York Cares have a 30 percent increase in volunteers last year, 60 percent of whom were between the ages of 18 and 34.  Gothamist

The helpster organization surveyed their fledgling group and found that one in five were motivated when President Obama was inaugurated and that economic insecurity and rising unemployment was the leading factor in motivating them to  focus on more selfless, community-oriented goals. Nevertheless, if the recession is waning and Obamamania is declining, we may be soon questioning whether or not helpsters may be facing a sudden and untimely extinction as well.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Defending Gentrification: In an early-week attention grabber that’s… (curbed.com)
• The Foreclosure Menace: Foreclosures Spread to City’s Fancy Buildings (curbed.com)

Subway riders on NYC’s IRT No. 6 train were entertained with quite a unique and original spectacle the other day. In a venue where originality in strange and unusual presentations is difficult to arrange (the competition is so intense), some feverishly ambitious individuals still strive for the best. Take this chicken-loving gentleman and his feathery friend, for instance. {read more} The Canadian Press

When the American photographer Berenice Abbott returned to New York in 1929 after nearly a decade in France, she found a city transformed by modern life. After the Works Progress Administration was established a few years later, she was hired to document the city, producing a large number of often dramatically composed images reflecting its changing features. In this image, Abbott photographed the Trinity and U.S. Realty Buildings (1904?07) on Broadway and Thames Street in the southern part of Manhattan. Older buildings and warehouses sit in the shadow of twentieth-century office towers. Abbott’s steep perspective emphasizes the contrasts in scale and the break between old and new.

Collection: Brooklyn Museum

An article in the Brooklyn Eagle of January 26, 1901 reported that police officials believed that “professional mendicancy” was responsible for an upsurge of beggars in New York City. In sync with the xenophobic mood of the time, city officials blamed the “wholesale immigration of professional mendicants [italics mine] from Europe” for a new, assertively exhibitionistic form of beggary.

“They are moved to this belief both by the nationality of the beggars and by the changed character of the begging habits.” Whereas native beggars were usually “content” to look shabby and miserable when soliciting handouts, the professional beggar would attempt to elicit pity by “prominently displaying their afflictions.”

While the article goes on to state that some people doubted police reports of this so-called professional mendicancy, it also claims that an “investigation proves it to be true and unexaggerated.” The investigation supposedly revealed that many prospective immigrants learned from their relatives already situated in America that all they’d have to do was to poignantly dramatize an actual or simulated affliction (blindness, paralysis, etc.) to play on the heartstrings of “those stupid Americans” and profit by it.

Professional mendicancy has actually become such a profitable occupation in Brooklyn and New York that these swindlers and loafers make more money than honest hardworking men. There is hardly a professional beggar in Brooklyn or Manhattan who is not considerably better off than 75 percent of the people who give alms. Nearly all of them have comfortable sums put away in banks…

While many of these “success” stories are probably true, I would suspect that even more of them are mostly exaggerated or entirely bogus; again, assumptions largely influenced by the prejudices of the early 20^th century. Untold numbers of immigrants, possessing the most noble dreams and upright motives in coming to the USA, were, despite their more laborious efforts, reduced to begging…for survival, certainly not for profit.

Brooklyn Daily Eagle (excerpt)

read full article here