My Latest Walk Up The Bowery

SoHotel on the Bowery and Broome Street.

Avalon Bowery Place on the Bowery between Houston and 1st Streets.

Lately I've been reading "Up In The Old Hotel", a collection of stories by The New Yorker columnist Joseph Mitchell. All written around 1938-43, they're mainly human-interest stories of elderly, slightly off-beat New Yorkers whose heyday was about thirty years earlier. The latest one I finished was on a Commodore Dutch, an eccentric old man who wore a well-preserved but ill-fitting suit and survived solely off of the generosity of others. He was president of an "association", a hold-over from the rackets of the Tammany Hall days, that had "members" and "officers", who paid him dues regularly, and each year he would hold a ball. Dutch created the association because he owed a debt to Boss Sullivan after a long night of drinking along the Bowery, but long after the Tammany Hall machine had lost most of it's power, and the parties and fundraisers it held became a thing of the past, Commodore Dutch continued to hold his ball each year well into old age, relying solely on people around the city who seemed to get a kick out of his eccentric personality.

According to Mitchell, Dutch got the title "commodore" from John McGurk, a bartender who proudly owned "the roughest joint in town", McGurk's Suicide Hall. Every time I've read about this place, it has always been mentioned that at least five "back room girls" killed themselves by drinking carbolic acid there in 1901, thus giving the place its infamous name. Mitchell mentions this, too, in this 1941 story, and how Dutch got one of his best jobs around that time from McGurk, when he would round up sailors from the South Street Seaport and bring them up to that rough saloon at 295 Bowery at East 1st Street. Unfortunately, it was demolished in 2005. Despite a small fight to give the building landmark status, the Landmark Commission didn't feel that it had enough architectural significance.

The other day I got a well-needed haircut from my cousin who's salon is a block west of the Bowery on Elizabeth Street. So I walked around for a while while down there, noting the big new glass building that was built in place of McGurk's, and, half a block up, at Bowery and Bleecker, John Varvados, a ridiculously expensive clothing store, which used to be CBGBs. You've got to hand it to them, though -- they let people walk around the place without having to buy anything. So I walked around the old rock club, noting the old band posters and the drum set they had set up where the stage used to be, now covered in very expensive shoes.

I then walked around the corner to Marz Bar on East 1st Street and Second Avenue. This place has been long known as a beloved dive bar of the punk rock scene. Wow, what a dump this place was -- and I consider myself someone who likes dive bars. I looked around briefly and said, "Forget this, I've got to get out of here," or something like that. I read recently, though, that that bar and another one called Max Fish were going to be closed down in a matter of weeks, so I felt I had to pay them a visit.

A guy I met a few months ago who worked full-time at Lord and Taylor told me that the ill-fitting suit he was wearing was the only one he owned and that he was a punk-rocker at heart. He told me about the glory days of how those two awful little holes-in-the-wall Marz Bar and CBGBs were around the corner from each other, and how the city just isn't the same, etc., etc. If Lord and Taylor had considered me worthy to partake in their minimum wage payroll, it may have been the beginning of a beautiful friendship with this punk rocker, but as it turned out I don't even remember his name.

Mitchell's story of Comodore Dutch also mentions Big Tim Sullivan's unofficial headquarters, the Occidental Hotel on the corner of Bowery and Broome Street, which around 1911 was one of the fanciest hotels in town, but, as Dutch had bemoaned, by 1941 had become a run-down flophouse (like countless other on the Bowery) where one could stay for three dollars a week. Still standing today as a two-star hotel called "SoHotel", it is the city's longest continuously-operating hotel, dating back to at least 1805, with a chandelier store on ground floor.

Dutch recalled how the beloved, seemingly invincible boss of the Bowery slowly began to lose his mind as he got older, and was put in a home up in the Bronx, where he would occasionally escape, and cops would often find him a few hours later sitting in the lobby of the Occidental. Until one day he escaped for good. A body was found on railroad tracks up in Westchester, and remained unidentified for fourteen days. When it was about to be put in a potter's field, a cop identified him at the last minute. A funeral mass was held for him at Old St. Patrick's Cathedral on Mott and Prince Streets, where Dutch marched in the procession and as he put it, cried the whole time. Sullivan's funeral, according to Dutch, spelled the end of the racket scene on the Bowery, as the gambling dens and bars migrated uptown and then started to dwindle away. Dutch, though, kept the dream alive buy continuing to hold his ball each year. And in 1941, he was able to rent out the back room of a bar on 3rd Avenue near 50th Street. Some people would stick around out of fascination, but would leave out of frustration when Dutch's crazy friends got out of hand. Among them were Ed and Pegeen Fitzgerald, long time radio talk show hosts who my grandfather listened to for years.

Reading Joseph Mitchell's stories, I'm always amazed at how relatable they are considering they were all written about seventy years ago. As I walked around downtown, I was able to point out all sorts of places that Dutch mentioned. A hundred years later, although a lot has changed, other places haven't changed at all. It just goes to show that despite progress and technology and the like, people, and the streets they walked, rarely change at all.

Friends

Mitali East, Indian restaurant.

Mitali East, the sister restaurant of one that used to be around the corner from the Friends' building.

The former CBGB is now an upscale clothing store.

315 Bowery at Bleecker Street, John Varvados boutique, formerly CBGB.

P.S. 3, diagonally across from the building.

The Friends apartment building again, with Central Perk on the ground floor.

90 Bedford Street at Grove Street, where the the gang lived on Friends.

The house across the street dates back to 1822.  Rachel briefly lived next door to it.

Two doors down, 86 Bedford, legendary speakeasy Chumley's is undergoing construction after a chimney collapse.

Chumley's main entrance at 58 Barrow Street around the corner.

The Washington Square arch, Greenwich Village icon.

W.U. 1883 can be seen carved at the peak.  Now a bank with luxury condos.

The 1883 Western Union uptown branch in the shadow of the 1902 Flatiron Building.

A high-tech port-o-san in Madison Square.  I don't know why I took a picture of this.

It's 5:00, that means Friends is on! It's become part of my routine ... watching the TBS sitcom lineup ... "Very Funny". I've always hated that slogan ... it's like calling yourself "Very cool" or something. Anyway, I've got to get these Lean Pockets in the microwave ... Friends is on! Oh, how the mighty have fallen.

They happened to be showing that last episode this evening ... where Chandler and Monica move out of the apartment on Bedford and Grove Streets in the West Village, up to a house in Westchester. I think the reason I'm into the show is specifically because it is a New York show, and I love to point out city locations. I decide to take a walk down to the building on Bedford and Grove and I'm feeling pretty energetic so I think it's doable. By the time I get down to Madison Square Park, I see that the park now has a state-of-the-art port-o-potty. An electronic port-o-potty of the future!

I also notice a small ornate building in the shadow of the Flatiron Building, on the southwest corner of 23rd and 5th. The peak reads, W.U. 1883. So that must be the year it was built, but what does "W.U." mean, I wonder. When I got home later that night, I found out that W.U. stood for "Western Union". This was the original office, and messages used to be sent 2 1/2 miles to a downtown office via pneumonic tube.

By the time I got to Washington Square Park, I make a right on Macdougal Street, and come across Bedford Street. From there I walk straight a few blocks until I come across Chumley's, 86 Bedford Street, a storied literary hangout that collapsed into itself in April 2007. There's been talk of it being repaired and reopened even this year, but now it is still just a construction site. The unmarked door, #86, was a secret entrance during Prohibition, and supposedly the expression to "86" something, meaning to get rid of it or end it, comes from the owners telling to patrons to "86" out the back door when police raided.

Often tourists want to know where the real Central Perk is, the coffee shop that the gang hangs out in on the show, but that's just a studio out in California. On the ground floor of the building there is a little red cafe called, "The Little Owl", but it is about a quarter of the size of what is depicted on the show, and looks nothing like it. I like how the show found this building, though, and used it for authenticity, considering it is on a rather narrow, hidden street in the village.

The closing credits of the last episode show scenes of the West Village, and I try to figure out where they are exactly. It's mostly just unidentifiable streets, but there is also the Jefferson Market Library on 10th and 6th, and Washington Square. I did see one place called Metali West, so I looked it up online. It's a Five Guys now, but there is still a Metali East in the East Village.

The other corners of the intersection are interesting as well. Across the street is the home of window-maker William Hyde, built 1822, where author James Baldwin often stayed. Diagonally across is P.S. 3, where the Marquis de Lafayette was taken when he wanted to see the best example of the New York public school system, while visiting the United States in 1824.

I go around the corner to Bleeker Street, and after finding the former Metali West, (which I'm pretty sure I came across before, months ago, coming froma another direction ... boy, the West Village is confusing) I decide to walk its length all the way to its end at the Bowery, the site of the former CBGBs. As the New York Songlines webmaster wrote, "All roads may lead to Rome, but Bleeker Street led to CBGB's.

My cousin's hair salon is around the corner, a little street, Elizabeth between Houston and Bleeker, which in the mid-1980s got the notorious nickname "Crackhead Alley". I told her this once and she said that now the street should be called "Pothead Alley". I also asked her if she'd ever been to CBGBs, a place I've got to admit I wish I had visited when I had the chance, and she told me it was just a overpriced bar with bad service, kind of overrated, like most things. When I'm down around here, I sometimes feel like I should stop in and say hello, but I know she's very busy so I don't.

Before I head home, I've got to find Metali East, hidden on 6th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue, and so I do, in a basement location with the same sign, even though it is the only Metali left ... no "East" needed any longer.