Topic: $1 a piece out on Broadway!

[Gumbo]

Between 72nd & 74th streets. Books and records galore as the Intelligentsia of the bygone Upper West Side shuffle off their mortal coils and disgorge their lifetime collections of Philosophy books, Art Books, Medical books, Psychology Books, Literature in several languages, and Thousands of LPs mostly Classical to the indigent, sometimes homeless vendors that act as their temporary gaurdians. I feel not only that I'm watching a once in a lifetime transferral of knowledge and culture out of the hands of the older generation, but that I'm seeing my culture, my gestalt, paraded irreverently on the folding tables of indifferent commerce. Its like watching the sinking of Atlantis. A once great civilization sinking into oblivion, never to appear again. Get 'em while you can.

Nominated for the Quote Engine!

[harriet]

It wasn't on St Marks when I was down there recently and last year its almost completely changed. Maybe some around the 11th street area

[Stuart]

Also Harriet and other interested parties , the action resumes above 110th st. and gets really interesting book wise, not surprisingly, as you near Columbia (116th for you out of towners)

Several years ago when I was up there a friend took me to Ollie's, but from the ratings it looks like they're on the downhill slide.

[CF]

Phil . . . that wasn't Wallach in Treasure of the Sierra Madre, was it??

[Mr.OMuck]

Magnificent Seven my man!
Treasure of Sierra Madre was

Cast


Humphrey Bogart
Dobbs

Walter Huston


Tim Holt


Bruce Bennett


Alfonso Bedoya

[Mr.OMuck]

Stuart,
If you look under the recent Quotes in the who's been talking section you'll find one by Leadbelly on Chinese food in Chinatown.

Well its interesting that you bring up Ollie's because concurrent with the book & record disgorgment phenomenon is the death of Chinese food on the Upper West Side.
New York City has a HUMUNGOUS Chinese population. I once saw a statistic claiming 750,000 undocumented Chinese were arriving in NYC EVERY YEAR!
Thats just the undocumented mind you.
The lot of many of these people is not much better than that of indentured servants, forced to work in restaurants, sweatshops and laundries (or far worse) until they can pay off their "sponsors".
Huge tracts of Queens, New York's largest Borough, are predominately Chinese & Korean, meaning one can drive literally for miles of Queen's Blvd., as I recently have, seeing nary a sign in English. If you were dropped there blindfolded you'd assume you were in some Asian suburb.
The food seems to have followed the migration east from Manhattan.

Rents in Manhattan are so insanely high (the one remaining hardware store in my immediate vicinity pays $20,000. per month for an 10x30' street level space on a good side street, not an avenue, and can't afford to stay in business) making the restaurant and bar business precarious to say the least.

After more than a century of culinary dominance by the Cantonese the late sixties and Nixon's opening up of diplomatic relations with China in '70 saw an influx of cuisine from Sichuan and Hunan provinces that was truly breathtaking! You couldn't GET a bad Chinese meal and often what you got was spectacular! Now you can't get a good one, and those in the know are shlepping out to Flushing Queens for their fixes.

Ollies' main restaurant, close by, suffered a fire and went out of business recently.
New York under the Bloomberg administration has seen the steepest rise in commercial rents in its history and whole neighborhoods have little to offer other than bank branches and chain stores of the kind to be found in any mall anywhere in the USA. A sad fate for a neighborhood that prided itself on bookstores, bakeries, small hardware & houseware stores, Bars, and good cheap food of every stripe. Fuck greed. It stinks up the world!

[Mr.OMuck]

Nope its not Wallach and it IS treasure of Sierra madre, I wuz wrong! It must be that ol'timer's disease.




Alfonso Bedoya

Film actor

• 
  
  Alfonso Bedoya was a Mexican actor who frequently appeared in U.S. films. Wikipedia
• 
  
  
  Born: April 16, 1904, V?cam
  
  Died: December 15, 1957, Mexico City, Mexico
  
  Nominations: Ariel Award for Best Actor in a Minor Role

[attachment deleted by admin]

[eric]

My neighborhood is smaller in people, larger in geography, but the same thing is happening here: homogenization of culture and monetizing what's left. 

[Stuart]

Thanks for the post, Phil. I have my doubts about the 750,000 figure, but the exploitation factor is the same. Slavery or indentured servitude by another name.

My friends in the NYC area tell me the same thing. Rents and taxes force the small business person out. If Mott St was better than Flushing, no one would have relocated. Our cities used to be made up of interconnected small communities with local character, but now it's Starbucks across from Starbucks. Greed and deceit perpetrated by the "New Asymmetrical Ministry of Propaganda and Enlightenment." Brainwashing by any other name...