The Return Of A Missing Child Mystery To My Neighborhood

Yesterday on my way home from the subway, I was surprised to see all these police cars and FBI vans parked on Prince Street with barricades blocking the road. Just a few blocks from my apartment, a missing child mystery more than 3 decades old was back in the news as the search was on for remains in a building that is now a fashionable Lucky jeans store.

The NY Times has an interesting article today which talks not so much about this missing case but the neighborhood itself and how it has been radically transformed in the 33 years since Etan Patz disappeared in his way to the bus. They describe how it was quiet area, filled with artists and machinists and not high end tourists. At night, it was apparently so empty that couples would have sex in darkened doorways. My favorite quote from an old timer in the hood: "It wasn't seedy. The docs were sleazy. [Soho] was gritty." Okay!

As investigators dig into the basement at 127B Prince, they are (as they article points out) digging into the neighborhood's quiet and almost small-town past.  In my play WTC VIEW, one character reminisces about playing football on Broadway in the '70s...a speech that was based on a recollection of someone who grew up here back when it was, well, a neighborhood.  Even when I got here, 20 some years ago, it had that feel, especially on my block which was filled with old Italians and Portuguese families.  Anyway, I find it interesting to see how much has changed and how the reopening of this tragic case is bringing all of that into relief.

The Biennial vs. The Brucennial

The Whitney Biennial (photo above) opens to the public today uptown. Meanwhile, tucked in amongst the 10K handbags and designer snowboots, something called the Brucennial is opening in Soho.  


Filling the walls of a bi-level space, the show (pictured below) is a hodgepodge of new work and old, including paintings by superstars like Julian Schnabel and David Salle.  As stated coyly in their press release, the show "brings together 420 artists from 911 countries working in 666 discrete disciplines to reclaim education as part of an artist's ongoing practice." This is the third Brucennial, put together by the Bruce High Quality Art Foundation, a loose collective of five artists.  The big difference from the Whitney is that Bruce is run by artists and for artists.  There is no selection committee.  


The TIMES review of this year's Whitney Biennial is favorable, commending the museum for halving the number of artists included to a spare 55 and putting on a cleaner show.  The Brucennial aims to be the opposite.  And unlike the Whitney, it is free.    

Washington Square Road

This image comes from a book currently on my nightstand, Anthony Flint's "Wrestling With Moses". In the 1950's, city planner and master builder Robert Moses wanted to extend Fifth Avenue through Washington Square Park to connect with West Broadway, creating an express route through the village that would be called Fifth Avenue South.

This planned roadway that would have surely destroyed the heart of Greenwich Village looks almost quaint in this rendering. It's notable that, for an extension of heavily trafficked Fifth Avenue, there are only three cars visible. Of course, if this terrible plan had come to fruition, the park would be filled with the sound of bumper to bumper cars honking....just like the rest of Fifth Avenue. The reason this never happened is the topic of the book.

Jane Jacobs, a writer for Architectural Digest and a longtime Village resident, organized a group of local mothers and started a movement which not only killed Fifth Avenue South but also led to the cancellation of Moses's biggest potential urban renewal disaster, the scarily-named LOMEX (Lower Manhattan Expressway). This 6-lane superhighway would have sliced through Soho and the Lower East Side on what is now Broome street, carrying traffic from the Holland Tunnel to the Manhattan Bridge.

Anthony Flint's book is a true-life David & Goliath story. Moses, who had figured out how to manipulate the political, financial and social systems of New York to completely redraw the way the city was connected, was unstoppable...or so it seemed. Until, that is, Jacobs challenged him, killing the beast before it ate the Village and Soho. Of course, we now know how this all turned out but the book is still a very compelling read given the fact that it easily could have gone the otherway, like in the faux-pastoral picture above.

Shirtless Dudes From Cali Hit Soho....TOTALLY

I was walking home from the subway yesterday when I spotted two shirtless dudes wearing boardshorts and sunscreen on their noses, standing at the corner of Broadway & Houston. Apparently, they are the permanent doormen at the new Hollister store in Soho which just opened yesterday. Curious to see what that was all about, I stepped into the "Hollister Pier" which is a four story quasi-recreation of the Huntington Beach pier with supposedly live feeds of the real beach playing on Hi-Def windows.

Other than those windows, the space was incredibly dark and felt more like one of those "Dark Rides" at the boardwalk except, instead of a skeleton popping out from every corner, there were shirtless guys all saying the exact same thing; "Hey Man--what's up?" Scar-reeee! I wandered around and, no joke, was greeted 12 times in the roughly 10 minutes I was in the store. Oddly enough, I didn't see one cash register in the joint which I thought was odd given it is, like, a store and all. But there were piles of t-shirts with faux retro prints and board shorts that were nearly evening-gown length. I guess if you actually wanted to buy something one of the buff dudes would help you out, fer sure!

Anyway, the place is worth checking out for it's curiosity as a retail theme park. It also serves as a lovely respite from the July heat...they had the best air conditioning! Totally.