The Local | The New York Observer

The Hyperlocal Bandwagon Rolls On: AOL Acquires Patch; Times Wants You to 'Be the Journalist'

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 14:57:11 -0400

Today, June 11, AOL annouced that it is acquiring Patch, the New York–based start-up, as well as Going.com, a nightlife event guide "for people who love to go out." Patch's sites, which currently cover six towns in New Jersey (with four more in development, according to Patch's chief executive Jon Brod) are hyperlocal neighborhood information portals that combine journalism from professional reporters with information from local government. The sites also include various platforms for users...

Why Didn't 'The Times' Mention Its Own Hyperlocal Blog in Its Story About Hyperlocal Blogs?

Mon, 13 Apr 2009 14:04:32 -0400

Today The New York Times Business section featured a front-page profile by Claire Cain Miller and Brad Stone of a bunch of start-up blogs that are trying to do some start-up journalism.

“If your local newspaper shuts down, what will take the place of its coverage? Perhaps a package of information about your neighborhood, or even your block, assembled by a computer,” the piece begins. “A number of Web start-up companies are creating so-called hyperlocal news...

The Local: Condo Buyers Beg Off

Sun, 07 Dec 2008 20:22:22 -0500

When New York’s real estate market was at its peak, condo buyers and investors were not in the position to quibble if the ceiling of their new apartment was a few inches shorter than the one in the sponsor’s offering plan or if common charges were a couple hundred dollars more than expected. Now that the market is in the throes of a recession, those same buyers are finding themselves with the upper hand...

The Local: Tin Pan Alley Sounds Cautious Tune

Mon, 01 Dec 2008 01:45:42 -0500

“Tin Pan Alley is gone,” Bob Dylan wrote in the jacket of his 1997 album Biograph. “I put an end to it.”

The neighborhood that was once the hub of the American music-publishing industry in the early 20th century has undergone many transformations since it became known as Tin Pan Alley. Between 1893 and 1910, nearly 20 music-publishing companies moved to West 28th Street, according to the Historic Districts Council. Over the...

The Local: Code Red on Black Friday

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 19:42:27 -0500

Recession or not, when Erin Lima makes the trip from Philadelphia to New York City, “shopping is inevitable.”

“Every time you come here you have to,” she said, while browsing the handbag section of Bergdorf Goodman on Saturday with her husband in tow. “You can’t help yourself.”

The Limas and another couple got “the best deal ever” on a weekend at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Battery Park...

The Local: The Shiest Retail Remains Steady in Recession

Mon, 10 Nov 2008 08:31:48 -0500

Gary Gross’ family has operated a pawnshop near Penn Station for more than a century. Though he was not around during the “real depression” in the 1920s, S&G Gross Co. has emerged more or less unscathed from multiple economic downturns in Mr. Gross’ lifetime.

The bursting of the tech bubble in the beginning of the decade barely made a dent in the lending or retail side of what is formally...

The Local: Wall Street on Election Eve

Sun, 02 Nov 2008 20:41:17 -0500

Rocky Twyman, a Seventh Day Adventist who rallied hundreds of Americans to pray for lower fuel prices at gas stations across the country last spring and summer, camped in front of the New York Stock Exchange on Halloween for the inauguration of his latest movement: "Pray Down the Greed on Wall Street."

"This is just the beginning of our movement," Mr. Twyman said as a camera crew lingered impatiently for an interview. "We are...

The Local: Shrinks Anticipate Expansion

Sun, 12 Oct 2008 19:12:15 -0400

One of the inadvertent beneficiaries of the Wall Street meltdown may be the city’s mental health professionals. Many of them said their practices have either grown or stayed stable over the past year, as the economy worsened and the conditions that spawned Wall Street's meltdown coalesced.

They believe, grimly enough, their business will only boom as the bust reverberates.

"This is multi-level stress in that it is financial,...

The Local: Randiest Retail Rides Wall Street Crisis

Sat, 04 Oct 2008 16:19:37 -0400

Last week was probably not the most fortuitous time to open a new store in Manhattan. Sex shop Passion opened anyway Sept. 30 on West 14th Street.

After a slow first night, traffic had picked up by the end of the third day of business.

"Stocks may be down, but cocks are up," Tyrone, the manager, said deviously as a few older men and a gay couple ...

The Local: The Annotated Geoffrey Raymond

Mon, 29 Sep 2008 13:23:44 -0400

Artist Geoffrey Raymond did not have much luck soliciting signatures on his portrait of ousted AIG Chairman Hank Greenberg when he displayed it outside the firm's Wall Street headquarters last week.

When Mr. Raymond first unfurled "The Annotated Spitzer" outside of the New York Stock Exchange 15 minutes after the governor resigned on March 12, over 100 passersby reveled in the schadenfreude, scrawling messages like "Spitzer or Swallow" around the head...

The Local: A Record of Harlem's Change

Tue, 23 Sep 2008 10:04:11 -0400

Harlem's most ubiquitous activist and resident Cassandra, Sikhulu Shange, has been warning against the perils of gentrification and the displacement of small businesses in the community for decades. He became living proof of his most dire prophesies this summer when he was forced to close his iconic music store on 125th Street, the Record Shack, after losing a two-year legal battle with his landlord.

A team of city marshals seized...

The Local: Obama on Morningside Heights, Morningside Heights on Obama

Fri, 12 Sep 2008 12:02:42 -0400

Midway through Senator John McCain's interview at Columbia University Thursday night, the anticipation and energy that had coursed through the Morningside Heights campus, and into Harlem, all day started to dissipate.

Few of the thousands of students crowded on the steps of the Low Memorial Library even feigned interest in the Republican nominee broadcast on the jumbo screen above them. Those who were not tuned out or immersed in conversation...

The Local: McCondos in Bay Ridge

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 22:56:10 -0400

It's been over three years since the city passed a contextual rezoning of Bay Ridge to limit "out-of-character development" in the low-rise neighborhood, but tensions between nostalgic residents and developers who continue to squeeze three- and four-story apartment buildings into plots once occupied by single-family homes show no signs of abating.

The "Green Church" looks like it is slated for demolition despite the last ditch-effort of local activists; a seven-story apartment building will...

The Local: Bensonhurst—From 'Little Italy to Little Odessa to Chinatown'

Mon, 01 Sep 2008 15:42:33 -0400

Before the Italian-American exodus from Bensonhurst, only Italian food vendors participated in the annual 10-day Feast of Santa Rosalia--Brooklyn's version of Little Italy's San Gennaro Festival--in honor of the patron saint of Palermo, Sicily. But lately "The Feast," as it is dubbed by locals, has become less a nod to what was once Bensonhurst's most populous demographic group than a multi-ethnic smorgasbord.

At this year's Santa Rosalia, which ended Sunday, Middle-Eastern...

The Local: Dorrian's Gay!

Mon, 11 Aug 2008 15:05:18 -0400

Not since Zack Morris has a name been so often associated with the word preppy than Dorrian's Red Hand, an unabashedly anti-hip bar on 84th Street and Second Avenue.

Dorrian's became notorious during the investigation that led to the conviction of so-called "preppy killer" Robert Chambers, a Dorrian's patron, in 1988. But, for a close-knit cadre of boarding school-educated, liberal arts degree-toting young professionals, living uptown and toiling away at investment...

The Local: From 5-0 to 311

Mon, 04 Aug 2008 19:03:39 -0400

On July 22, just a couple of weeks shy of the 20-year anniversary of the Tompkins Square Park riots, the Parks Department opened a $150,000 dog run, complete with a canine paddling pool, in what was once a refuge for the homeless and all manner of fringe groups.

The inauguration of a sleeker, odorless, more expensive dog run is a fitting bookend to Tompkins Square Park's transition from a lawless swathe...

The Local: On Wall Street, Cautious Fatalism

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:41:03 -0400

Wall Street was swarming with camera-toting, fanny-pack-sporting tourists last Friday afternoon, but few of them dared venture past the doorman standing sentry outside the pristinely intimidating Hermes boutique on Broad Street.

Inside, a woman from Abu Dhabi, wearing a black abaya accented by a diamond-encrusted, Chanel wristwatch and an oversized, patent-leather bag emblazoned with the interlocking C’s logo, browsed the selection of branded watches while her four young daughters, dressed in matching...

The Local: Mandolin 'Mecca' on Staten Island

Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:14:50 -0400

In the spring of 1976, Joni Mitchell trekked out to the North Shore of Staten Island to the Mandolin Brothers, a vintage American guitar dealership that had opened five years earlier and had already become a well-trodden pit stop for musicians, guitar buffs, and fretted-instrument collectors.

Ms. Mitchell bought a 1915 Gibson Mandocello and a Martin herringbone guitar, Mandolin Brothers President Stan Jay recalled on a recent Friday afternoon. On the ferry back...

The Local: Homeless Feel Economy's Downturn

Tue, 24 Jun 2008 11:04:42 -0400

Mike Fleming, a 29-year-old Ohio native who has been living on the streets since 2003, had his 15 minutes of fame a few months ago when he discovered the building schematics for the Freedom Tower while sifting through a trashcan on Houston Street.

A couple months later, Mr. Fleming again finds himself facing the same grim realities he did before his brush with notoriety.

...

The Local: The Gang's All Here! Rent Board Puts on Its Annual Play

Tue, 17 Jun 2008 12:41:47 -0400

The third and final public hearing this year of the Rent Guidelines Board, the body that sets rents for the city’s more than 1 million stabilized apartments, at Cooper Union last night was theater as usual with both tenants and landlords hewing to a familiar script.

“These proceedings have become a predictable demonstration,” said City Councilman Dan Garodnick in his testimony.

At the very least they...

The Local: The Annual Socioeconomic Rorschach Test

Mon, 09 Jun 2008 18:59:24 -0400

After trudging back and forth around a 30-block stretch of the Upper East Side on Sunday afternoon and talking to a handful of the estimated two million revelers who turned out for the Puerto Rican Day Parade, I ducked inside one of the few open stores on Madison Avenue for a break from the grimy, suffocating heat. As the suited guard standing sentry at the entrance of the upscale shoe boutique closed the door...

The Local: Everyone Loves Tony

Thu, 05 Jun 2008 18:21:46 -0400

After months of uncertainty, one of the Upper East Side’s most popular street vendors, Tony Dragonas, settled a suit with the Health Department over violations that had threatened his license and livelihood, allowing him to continue operating his famed food cart on 62nd Street and Madison Avenue.

Once a deal was reached, Mr. Dragonas, his 19-year-old son, Dana, and a dozen of his regular customers who had trekked to the Financial District...

The Local: GM Building, One Week After

Thu, 29 May 2008 18:44:43 -0400

The first few days after the biggest U.S. building sale ever was inked, things at the GM Building were “pretty much routine” in the words of one doorman, save for the presence of a few unofficial, four-legged tenants seen scampering among the stuffed animals at FAO Schwartz.

Not many people who work at the GM Building appeared to notice that Harry Macklowe had hammered out a deal with Mort Zuckerman and partners on Saturday to...

The Local: Condo Crazy in the Hamptons

Tue, 20 May 2008 20:18:14 -0400

Coke Anne and Jarvis Wilcox wanted to sell their East Hampton inn, the Maidstone Arms, all along. During the summer season, the famed, 1850’s inn is fully booked, but the winter dry spell sends year-round occupancy rates plunging to around 40 percent.

When no acceptable offers came in, the Wilcoxes decided to begin what was ultimately an “arduous” and unfruitful condo-conversion process. Mrs. Wilcox, a trained architect and mother of...

The Local: Palestinian Yuppie Bodegas in Williamsburg

Thu, 15 May 2008 19:59:22 -0400

North Williamsburg does not have any major grocery chains. What it does have, in increasing abundance, is health food stores and small, family-run markets that blend Whole Foods with your neighborhood deli. We’ll call them yuppie bodegas.

There are four such shops on Bedford Avenue between North Seventh and North Ninth streets, with another on the way, and they have much more in common then the organic, vegan fare and Ramen Noodles...

The Local: Chinatown Frets Becoming Another Little Italy

Thu, 01 May 2008 19:33:11 -0400

“If we do not have [a Business Improvement District], we’ll be like Cinderella stuck downstairs while the rest of the city is having a party, and we will still be filthy and stinking,” said the executive director of the Chinatown Partnership, Wellington Chen.

A Chinatown BID is not a new idea. The proposal has been around for about 20 years, said Mr. Chen, and he has been promoting the BID since...

The Local: Flower District Clings to Manhattan Roots

Thu, 10 Apr 2008 17:52:23 -0400

Signs of change in Chelsea's flower district are as abundant as the plants blooming on 28th Street. An apartment building will soon rise from the vacant lot at the corner of Sixth Avenue, the eastern boundary of the district that once stretched from 26th through 28th streets, between Sixth and Seventh avenues. Moving closer to Seventh, a blue construction barrier demarcates another building site; across the street a Holiday Garden Inn and a residential...

The Local: Rezoning Anxiety Rends Garment District

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 23:58:10 -0500

No one knows what Manhattan’s Garment District will look like in 10 years, let alone whether the dwindling economy of designers, factories and suppliers who make up New York’s fashion industry will still be there.

The media has been covering the Garment District’s demise for decades, and lately the chorus of real estate developers lobbying for it to be rezoned for mixed usage, including less manufacturing space, has gotten louder.

The Local: Tribeca's Last Gritty Street

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 12:57:00 -0500

Watts Street does not have a sign at the moment, but residents of the edgy, untrammeled, Tribeca block cut-off by the Holland Tunnel probably prefer it that way.

At the crossroads of SoHo, Tribeca, and the West Village, the two-block strip of Watts below Canal Street had been passed over during the downtown development boom until recently. It remains the same gritty, inaccessible no-man's land today as it did 10 years ago;...

The Local: More Kids Dating SoHo, Marrying Upper East Side

Fri, 15 Feb 2008 11:35:41 -0500

Most children dream of moving to New York City, L.A., or another big city when they grow up. Some manage a post-college stint in the Big Apple before they pack it in and move back to the home they know. A few even stick around long enough to earn the right to call themselves New Yorkers.

But what if you grew up in New York, say, in the insulated, quaint little bubble that is the...

The Local: In Ridgewood, In Come the Hipsters and Out Go the 'Drunks and Crackheads'

Thu, 07 Feb 2008 23:56:31 -0500

Ridgewood, Queens, lies to the east of the up-and-coming Brooklyn neighborhood du jour, Bushwick, and is perhaps best known for suffering an identity crisis in the late 1970’s. Until then Ridgewood shared a border and zip code with Bushwick--which was even called Ridgewood, Brooklyn, at one point, lumping the neighborhoods together both practically and in the popular imagination. Much like the realtors who tried to rebrand Bushwick as “East Williamsburg” in the ‘90’s, Ridgewood...

The Local: Matzo-Gate and the Rise of Ridgewood

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 19:32:30 -0500

Once upon a time, before Williamsburg was a neighborhood of self-conscious hipsters and cookie-cutter condo conversions, it was a haven for the city’s artists.

As loft space in Manhattan became increasingly scarce and inexpensive throughout the 1990’s, artists flocked to commercial buildings in Williamsburg and DUMBO that were not certified for occupancy, but nonetheless provided ample space to live and work in.

One of the few de-facto artists’ colonies that had been...

The Local: Big Little West Africa

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 20:30:07 -0500

There are few places left in Manhattan where one encounters a genuine language barrier, and fewer still where the ability to speak the Senegalese dialect, Wolof, is an advantage and, in some cases, a necessity.

The block of West 116th Street between Frederick Douglass and Malcom X boulevards, dubbed “little West Africa" by some, is one.

“You speak Wolof or French?,” asked the owner of the Darou Market Salam, when...

The Local: In Prospect-Lefferts Gardens, It's 'Pure Poor People' vs. 'Gentrification People'

Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:00:22 -0500

In the three years since Prospect-Lefferts Garden was dubbed a neighborhood “on the cusp,” life in the African-Caribbean enclave has changed markedly for long-time residents. The eastward migration of middle-class house hunters priced out of Park Slope has stretched the boundaries of gentrified Brooklyn, and pushed the cost of living in neighborhoods like Prospect-Lefferts Gardens up.

The six-block stretch of Flatbush Avenue between Parkside Avenue and Beekman Place bears...

The Local: It's Koreatown! Immigrants Keep It Real, But for How Long?

Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:42:47 -0500

Editor's Note: Every week, Observer reporter Lysandra Ohrstrom will detail a New York City neighborhood in a new feature called The Local.

Koreatown’s answer to Bungalow 8 is hidden on the third floor of a shabby commercial building amid the BBQ and karaoke joints lining 32nd Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues.

On a recent Saturday night (verging on Sunday morning), I passed through two layers of doormen and rode a...