"Lost City" Latest Blog To Say Goodbye

Brooks wrote, "The late, great McHale's, the death of which inspired the birth of this blog."

After over four years of alerting New Yorkers to those bits of character buried under the Disneyfication, Brooks of Sheffield of "Lost City" is closing the book on what he called "a running Jeremiad on the vestiges of Old New York as they are steamrolled under or threatened by the currently ruthless real estate market and the City Fathers' disregard for Gotham's historical and cultural fabric." He says:

It is still inconceivable to me that New York could have (and elect, and "elect") a mayor who witnessed the extinction of such irreplaceable city landmarks—Chumley's, Gino, Gage & Tollner, Cafe Des Artistes, Manny's, Astroland, The Green Church, Cedar Tavern, Gertel's Bakery, CBGB's, Yankee Stadium, Shea Stadium and countless other institutions—and never uttered a peep. No comment, no stump speech, no recognition of what was passing into history on his watch. Not even lip service. He stood by and watched Coney Island, one of the most iconic neighborhoods in New York, utterly destroyed. He never saw the value of what was vanishing.

I'm proud of Lost City. As a writer, it's the purest and most idealistic thing I've ever done. It may not have saved a single building, or prevented a single piece of luxury crapitecture. But I know it occasionally caused discomfort to the powers that be, and that it alerted some readers to a few of the City's treasures. For that alone, it was worth it.

Brooks left readers with his Lost City List of places he recommends, saying, "Patronize those places. Let them know they're wanted and needed." The farewell is that much sadder given that East Village blog Neither More Nor Less called it quits last month. And another one gone...

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By Jaya Saxena in News on June 12, 2010 4:50 PM

Comments [rss]

TKaisen

The only people who would miss Shea Stadium are people who never watched a baseball game in Shea Stadium.

jaja007

However, the demise of the ESPN eatery in Times Square is nothing if not a hopeful sign!

John Clavis

The era when what made New Yorkers happy was what was important has passed. We live in the era when what's important is how to manipulate consumers into spending as much as possible on high-profit items while maximizing the traffic throughflow... corporations have neither the need nor the desire to maintain sites merely because they enhance our lives. We work for them, remember?

longacre

To suggest any restaurant or nightclub be preserved for all eternity even if it can't be operated as a profitable business you have to live in a fantasyland. CBGB's, Gage & Tollner, etc have made important contributions to the American cultural zeitgeist, but they folded for a reason. We're not talking about the Parthenon or the Pyramids here, or Grand Central Station or the Chrysler Building. The closest one he mentions to deserving that sort of treatment would be Yankee Stadium, but that was simply replaced by an even more elaborate temple to baseball.

TuraLura

But who's fault is it that they could no longer operate as profitable businesses? It wasn't their incompetence and bad management that kept them in the same location for upwards of 20, 30, sometimes even 50 or 100 years. And many didn't close because the public wasn't interested in them anymore, or because they were making less money than previously, or because of families relocating and grandpas retiring to Florida.

They closed because greedy landlords and developers made it impossible for them to continue business models that had been working for decades. In a city that actually gave a sh*t about ALL its cultural treasures, not just the ones that are considered worthy by the rich, the powerful and the tourists, owners of culturally significant businesses would be allowed to prove their worthiness to stay. If we can get behind too big to fail, we COULD get behind too special to fail. We just choose not to.

Perhaps you should put down your copy of Atlas Shrugged and start paying attention to what's really going on out there.

BongoBoy

Why does a quality blog like Lost City call it quits, and we still have to put up with the one below?

http://onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.com/

Mr. Know-It-All

It takes more than nostalgia to keep a buisness open. I tried to patronize Manganaro's when I moved to Hell's Kitchen, bought some pecorino Romano cheese and some oil-cured olives and both tasted like they'd been there since the place opened in the 1890s. I don't know how that place stays open. On the other hand, I'd hate to see Esposito's Pork Shop close.

Billiamsburg

things that are older are automatically better! Nothing good can ever be created ever again!

John_Matrix

damn, i could go for a mchale's burger. but shea stadium deserved to go.

i'm sick of the glass high rise crap though.

thefacts

An excellent blog, too bad it's leaving. The trolls and haters and newbies will be disappointed, but not us who love the city and what makes it unique. Meanwhile the yahoos will remain oblivious, as they pine for Disneyland and suburbia.