Results tagged “sangennarofestival”

The smell of sausage and zeppole wafting through Nolita has returned: Today marks the start of the Feast of San Gennaro.

No more Drown the Clown? No more zeppoles, chased down by some gelato? Or walks through Little Italy in a crushing sea of humanity? The Daily News reports that Community Board 2's street events committee is recommending that the board reject permits for San Gennaro.

Yesterday afternoon, a crowd of people excitedly waited on a line along Elizabeth Street. No, they had not missed the San Gennaro Festival - they were there for fashion. Emmett McCarthy, a season 2 designer from Project Runway, was having an event at his store, EMc2, featuring clothing and appearances from Project Runway designers like Chloe Dao, Kara Janx, Alison Kelly, Nick Verreos, and Emmett himself....plus Tim Gunn!

This week's New York Magazine has a nice little piece about the death of Nolita. Basically rents have gotten so out of hand that all the little boutiques are being forced out of business, and replaced by mini-chain stores like Ralph Lauren and Nike ID. More than twenty-four stores are currently empty in the neighborhood, and people aren't sure what's going to happen next. Apparently the high rents aren't the only culprit:

And then there’s the nabe’s previous claim to fame: September’s spumoni-and-beer-fueled San Gennaro Festival. “It’s crushing,” says Lindsay Cain of Femmegems, a do-it-yourself jewelry lab on Mulberry. “Those two weekends in September are really important—everyone is back from the Hamptons and women are excited to get shopping again. We tried to stay open during the festival our first year, in 2002, and there were horrid sausages and rats outside our door every morning, so now we just close."

Nothing says chic like sausages and rats! We mourn the death of Lunettes et Chocolate-- which had the best hot chocolate east of Broadway for lo these last five years. What stores do you guys miss the most?

This made Gothamist wonder about other smells in the city. There's the bus exhaust and the smell of bagels outside of H&H, as well as the more-than-earthy explosion of scents (good and bad) in Chinatown and the fried fumes of the San Gennaro Festival. Other bad smells in the city - the Gowanus, Subway sandwich shops, Times Square subway on a hot sultry day, bar bathrooms at around 1AM. And good smells - outside Jacques Torres' place in DUMBO (but a good kind of chocolatey smell), pizzerias, Peter Luger's, Krispy Kreme, freshly cut grass in the park, the Greenmarket, and a fresh newspaper.

If you didn't make it to the San Gennaro Festival, enjoy some pictures and a story (which involves a run-in with the police) from Bluejake. Related: NY Times on various Italian dialects heard around the city, a site for Arthur Avenue in the Bronx (think Little Italy North), and Gothamist on San Gennaro.

Little Italy's site has information on San Gennaro as well: The Grand Procession is on Saturday at 2PM ("the statue of San Gennaro carried from its permanent home in the Most Precious Blood Church through the streets of Little Italy") and the Big Feast is on Sunday. Gothamist thinks there's nothing better than wandering from booth to booth, eating gelati here, zeppoles there, getting a cheap drink there, trying not to get lost in the crowd of others, for a mid-September jaunt. And Gothamist Food has some picks for great Italian wine.