East 1st Street between 2nd Avenue and the Bowery

The Mars Bar building in the 1910s as the Woolworth Theatre.

The new glass box that stands at the Bowery and E. 1st St. today.

A New York Times article from the 1870s.

Mars Bar in June 2011.

Another shot of Mars Bar in its final days.

Extra Place in June 2011, undergoing some renovations

The Mars Bar building sat empty toward the end of Prohibition.

Mars Bar in the '40s as a coffee, tea, and spices shop.

295 Bowery, formerly McGurk's, in it's final days.

The Ramones pose on Extra Place behind CBGB in the early '70s.

Another description of Extra Place from 1952.

A description of Extra Place from 1952.

Extra Place in 1934.

An 1890s map of E. 1st St. includes "Extra Street".

Extra Place in 1978.

Around the Old-New-York-memory-lane-blogosphere these days, there's been a lot of talk about Extra Place and Mars Bar, old-rocker staples that are drastically changing or being torn down all together, years after beloved CBGB's is long gone. In 2005, historic McGurk's Suicide Hall on the Bowery and East 1st Street was demolished amid protest and replaced with a glass box, and now the same is going to happen with to the buildings on East 1st Street and 2nd Avenue. Anyone who wants to have one last beer at the diviest bar in the city, I read that this is the last week to do it.

Looking down East 1st Street from the Bowery in 2002.

Looking down East 1st Street from 2nd Avenue in 2002.

A close up of 291-295 Bowery, demolished in 2005.

No. 295 Bowery went up shortly after the Civil War ended, where it served as a political and social club for the mostly German community that inhabited the Lower East Side at the time. But throughout the latter half of the 19th Century, the Bowery became increasingly seedier. While the more upscale theatre district could be found on West 23rd Street around the Chelsea Hotel, a less desirable row of opera houses and dance halls lined the Bowery, catering to the poorer lower class. Drinking and prostitution were rampant, and it was common to find sailors and longshoremen frequenting the saloons along this thoroughfare. Back-room girls would hang around these places looking for business. John McGurk, an Irish immigrant who owned a number of saloons in the area, all shut down by police by the early 1890s, took over the bar and hotel at 295 Bowery and immediately started having run-ins with the law. He is said to have had the first bouncer in the city, who was regularly taken-in by police for assault. McGurk's quickly gained a reputation as the seediest, most dangerous hang-out in town, which is saying something for the Bowery. The prostitutes who ended up frequenting this place were very much down on their luck. In 1899, there were at least six suicides and seven attempts by back-room girls here. Some jumped out the windows up above while others drank carbolic acid. One story is of two harlots, Blonde Madge Davenport and Big Mame, who had made a pact to end it. They bought carbolic acid from the local drug store, and while Madge drank her share and suffered an agonizing death, Mame accidentally spilled most of it on her face, horribly disfiguring it. Because of this, she was banned from the bar and thrown out on the street, no longer able to do her job. To bank on his bar's morbid reputation, he renamed it "McGurk's Suicide Hall" in 1901. Unable to fight the constant police crackdowns and owing money to several people, he abandoned the place and fled to California a decade later with his wife and daughter. A final blow came shortly before his death when his daughter was denied admission to a convent school out in California when the nuns learned of the girl's father's history in New York.

In Joseph Mitchell's 1941 essay "A Sporting Man", he interviewed Commodore Dutch, a neighborhood eccentric who decades earlier had gotten his start working for McGurk, bringing sailors and longshoremen there on the weekends. In Mae West's 1932 book Diamond Lil, there's a chapter entitled "Suicide Hall", describing the place. In the 1960s, writer and sculpter Kate Millet and photographer and custom furniture maker Sophie Keir worked there. Despite some protest, the building was unable to get landmark recognition due to its unremarkable architecture and unfortunate if not colorful past, and was demolished in 2005. Next month, the remainder of the buildings that originally made up the German theatre and nightlife scene will be razed as well, and sad to say, I'm sure some giant, expensive, glass hotel will go up in it's place just like one did with McGurk's.

I'm a guy who likes an unpretentious, affordable bar just as much as anyone else, but the first time I took a peak inside Mars Bar, it was almost scary. Talk about a bunch of degenerates and druggies. My cousin who works at a hair salon nearby said she dated someone who loved the place, and there would be people passed out on the floor and in the bathroom. That's why some of the locals are glad to see it go. In a recent article I read, some bartenders said that that place took all the drunks who would be rejected any place else, so all they did was cause trouble. But the buildings that opened up as the Volksgarten and the Steuben House in the 1850's have certainly seen a lot. Called the German Assembly Rooms by the late 1800s, they housed saloons, bowling alleys, and ballrooms. Thanks to the Vanishing New York blog, I've found some great pics of the building: one during Prohibition when it was boarded up and available for lease, and another from the 1940s when it was a coffee, tea, and spices shop. It can also be seen in the opening credits of NYPD Blue (for about a second), and I've added a link. Down with it will also go the locksmith shop next store, whose owner I saw the last time I was down there, but unfortunately only saw him in an online magazine article about a week later.

The glass box on the sight of McGurk's is called "Avalon Bowery Place", and their next project is to turn the easily-missed, yet very-old "Extra Place" into the next yuppified strip-mall, filled with over-priced cafes and boutiques. I had ventured down there a couple of times to see some sort of cafe ready and open for business, tables and chairs out side, and a number of twenty-somethings enjoying the closed-off space and fresh air, but other than that, not too much. The last time I was on the block, it was closed off again -- I guess more gentrification is on its way. The alleyway dates back to about 1800, when landowner Philip Minthorne divided his 110-acre farm equally among nine children. The tiny bit of land that remained was called "Extra Place". The great Vanishing New York blog provided a couple of priceless pictures of Extra Place in the '70s, and a long-lost 1952 interview of a man who worked in a garage that was on the corner at the time. He reminisced about a speakeasy that used to be there that he loved to frequent in the '20s. I also found a great shot of the ally in 1934. Extra Place, in what some would call it's heyday, was the back door of the Palace Bar of the Palace Hotel flophouse, which later became Hilly's on the Bowery, which later became CBGB & OMFUG. Country Blue Grass Blues & Other Music For Uplifting Gourmandizers reluctantly started allowing bands like Blondie and the Ramones to play, and became the birthplace of American punk and New York City cutting-edge Rock & Roll. But as we all know now, it was evicted in October 2006, and replaced by a shoe boutique that sells blank t-shirts for $800.

My plan in the next couple of days is to take a walk down to East 1st Street and walk up and down 2nd Avenue to the Bowery one last time, just to soak up the history, and if they'll let me, get one last beer from Mars (now that I know it's safe, haha). I just want to appreciate the old buildings that are left one last time ... and as for the others, I only wish I had explored down there sooner.

Central Park

A security guard company on 42nd Street near 5th Avenue.

Don't waste your money at this place on 42nd and 5th.

For the past three years or so, I've been on the lookout for a new job, trying almost anything. Sending resumes and cover letters online, going to job fairs, calling people, calling my old job, all for naught. Usually, when I get an actual response, it turns out to not quite be a real job ... just a commissions thing, or some kind of pyramid scheme where I would never really make any money, and maybe I'm supposed to pay them about a hundred dollars for "training". Craigslist is full of these listings for security guard jobs -- "Jobs available!", "Hiring Immediately!", "No Experience Necessary!", "Will Train!"

I unfortunately became a victim of this myself back in 2009. Desperate to find a job, I signed up for a three-day class at NYC Trailblazers out in Jamaica, Queens. Pay $320, take this class, and you'll be hired by Monday, they said. They were very accommodating to me, very willing to help me out and get me hired, which most of the time is a dead give-away that they're full of it. Any time a company wants to help somebody off the street because he seems like a good guy, that usually means somewhere along the way they're going to ask you for your money.

So, needless to say, I never got hired, and neither did any of the about thirty other people who signed up for that class. The class had all kinds, young and old, just looking for a decent job ... down on their luck. After I had taken these classes, the instructor proceeded to jerk me around for a while, sending me from one place to another, none of which had any jobs. Instead, I was sent from one agency to another, and each one had a deposit or two. Eighty dollars here, a hundred dollars there.

The last one I went to was on 42nd Street near 5th Avenue, right before Thanksgiving. After sitting there for about an hour, a big burly guy with a badge around his neck took me into his office and kept saying to me, "We're in the middle of a recession, I want to put you to work!" and "You seem like a good guy, I want to help you out! There's an ATM upstairs, go get me ninety dollars!" By the end of meeting, he wanted to take over a thousand bucks from me! Naturally, I didn't have that much money in the bank, or what would I even be doing there? He mentioned that I needed to take such classes as "Handcuffing", and "Homeland Security", and more nonsense like that I can't seem to remember.

These places prey on the poor and unemployed, claiming that the security industry is growing at about 500 percent a day or some absurd amount due to 9/11. This is what they do for a living ... take money from unemployed people? That's pretty low. During these tough economic times, a lot of us in the city are struggling to find work, so I just wanted to put the word out to not take these places seriously, and don't waste your money on them. They prey on the poor and unemployed, and exploit the memory of September 11th.

Securty Guard Jobs in the City

A security guard company on 42nd Street near 5th Avenue.

Don't waste your money at this place on 42nd and 5th.

For the past three years or so, I've been on the lookout for a new job, trying almost anything. Sending resumes and cover letters online, going to job fairs, calling people, calling my old job, all for naught. Usually, when I get an actual response, it turns out to not quite be a real job ... just a commissions thing, or some kind of pyramid scheme where I would never really make any money, and maybe I'm supposed to pay them about a hundred dollars for "training". Craigslist is full of these listings for security guard jobs -- "Jobs available!", "Hiring Immediately!", "No Experience Necessary!", "Will Train!"

I unfortunately became a victim of this myself back in 2009. Desperate to find a job, I signed up for a three-day class at NYC Trailblazers out in Jamaica, Queens. Pay $320, take this class, and you'll be hired by Monday, they said. They were very accommodating to me, very willing to help me out and get me hired, which most of the time is a dead give-away that they're full of it. Any time a company wants to help somebody off the street because he seems like a good guy, that usually means somewhere along the way they're going to ask you for your money.

So, needless to say, I never got hired, and neither did any of the about thirty other people who signed up for that class. The class had all kinds, young and old, just looking for a decent job ... down on their luck. After I had taken these classes, the instructor proceeded to jerk me around for a while, sending me from one place to another, none of which had any jobs. Instead, I was sent from one agency to another, and each one had a deposit or two. Eighty dollars here, a hundred dollars there.

The last one I went to was on 42nd Street near 5th Avenue, right before Thanksgiving. After sitting there for about an hour, a big burly guy with a badge around his neck took me into his office and kept saying to me, "We're in the middle of a recession, I want to put you to work!" and "You seem like a good guy, I want to help you out! There's an ATM upstairs, go get me ninety dollars!" By the end of meeting, he wanted to take over a thousand bucks from me! Naturally, I didn't have that much money in the bank, or what would I even be doing there? He mentioned that I needed to take such classes as "Handcuffing", and "Homeland Security", and more nonsense like that I can't seem to remember.

These places prey on the poor and unemployed, claiming that the security industry is growing at about 500 percent a day or some absurd amount due to 9/11. This is what they do for a living ... take money from unemployed people? That's pretty low. During these tough economic times, a lot of us in the city are struggling to find work, so I just wanted to put the word out to not take these places seriously, and don't waste your money on them. They prey on the poor and unemployed, and exploit the memory of September 11th.

The World Trade Center

The plaque on the Ground Zero cross.

7 World Trade Center being rebuilt.

The Ground Zero cross at St. Peter's Church.

The graveyard at St. Paul's Chapel.

1 World Trade Center being rebuilt. 

Looking down Church Street.

The area in the 1930s was known for it's radio-parts stores.

The twin towers.

This Sunday the twelfth will be one year since I've posted my first blog about the life and times of yours truly living in New York City, and, oddly enough, I've never even mentioned Ground Zero, the site of the city's biggest event, so I thought I'd give it a go. Actually, I think the name "Ground Zero" is practically never used anymore, because it looks like the city's actually making some progress. When I'm down there, its strange to see part of the Freedom Tower for real instead of just in CGI. (Forgive me, nobody is calling it the "Freedom Tower" anymore, either. That was just one of those terms that seemed to stir people's emotions shortly after 9/11, but nobody wants to call the building that FOREVER. World Trade Center 1 is a better fit.) That area remained a giant construction site for years, though. Like so many other places in the city, it was an inconvenient eye sore that stayed put while bureaucracy took over. But this September 11th will be the ten year anniversary, so suddenly everyone's rushing to get at least the memorial finished.

Plans to develop a World Trade Center in New York City were first suggested in the early 1940s, but the city's economic growth was concentrated in Midtown Manhattan, around the city's most striking skyscrapers. But by the early sixties, prominent businessman David Rockefeller suggested a new center in Lower Manhattan to promote urban renewal. Previously, the area had been somewhat neglected. Small antique shops lined the streets, and it was the center of the radio repair trade, with such prominent radio-part businesses as Heins and Bolet. Its hard to believe that there was once a time not too long ago where when you bought something, you kept it for life. That mentality, in a way rather regretfully, seems pretty far removed from how the vast majority of Americans live today. But it's also a result of progress, technology building upon itself at such a rapid rate that most people wonder if they can keep up ... myself included. How about a computer or a phone that doesn't go out of date in a year? I still use my phone to call people and talk to them (what a concept) and I'm sure my computer is a few years out of date but by God it gets the job done! (And by "the job", I mean departing this gem of a blog to you my readers. You're welcome.)

Anyway, I'm rambling. The twin towers, when completed in 1973, were the tallest buildings in the world, and despite their ugliness and plainness that everyone always criticized them for (I would've too if I had even been that aware of the city's landmarks back then), they were a pretty impressive testament to the city's industry. Like everyone else, I remember where I was that morning -- in my college dorm room at New Paltz, and, like most of us, it was the most unreal thing I'd ever witnessed. To this day I sometimes find it kind of absurd that these hijackers actually pulled it off. It also feels good to finally say the U.S. got Bin Laden, but I never would've thought it would take almost ten years.

Anyhow, I took a few pictures and started to take the long walk back up to the Upper East Side. In the quest to lose a few pounds and reacquaint myself with an active lifestyle, I've been trying to take these long walks around the city more. I headed north through the narrow streets of TriBeCa and SoHo, and up toward First Avenue, past Bellevue and the U.N., even briefly running for a block or two. Boy were my dogs barking, but you know me ... eye of the tiger!

Up In the Old Hotel

Graffiti dating back to about 1800 was found in the rooms upstairs.

South Street Seaport Museum's historian Jack Putman exploring upstairs.

Joseph Mitchel returned to the hotel in the '90s.

Louis Morino in the '50s.

A last look at the old hotel along water street.

The former Sloppy Louie's is now a dining room for the Heartland Brewery.

The Brooklyn Bridge from the South Street Seaport.

The front door of what is now a Heartland Brewery Branch.

The boarded up old hotel dates back to 1811.

A sign in the window for Pittsburgh's Iron City beer, a favorite of mine.

A ship sits in the seaport.

The Manhattan Bridge from the South Street Seaport.

I recently finished Joseph Mitchell's acclaimed essay, "Up in the Old Hotel". Written in 1952, it's an account of his many interviews with old friend Louis Morino, the proprietor of Sloppy Louie's, a seafood restaurant at 92 South Street in the heart of the Fulton Fish Market. The building, however, opened up in 1811 as a courting house (I'm not sure what that is), but was converted to an upscale hotel shortly thereafter. Sloppy Louie's, I was surprised to learn, stayed in business as late as 1998, and Sweets Restaurant next door was a city staple from 1847 to 1992. Unfortunately, in the nineties gentrification took over.

Louie always hated the name of his restaurant, but another Italian immigrant who owned the place before him, John Barbagelata, informally called his restaurant "Sloppy John's". The name was so popular with patrons that it carried over, and eventually Louie ordered a big sign with the name, saying that he couldn't beat them, so he joined them.

Mitchell had been going to Sloppy Louie's for years when he started to interview Louie about the building. By the early '50s, Louie had begun to need to expand. Stairs led to the second floor of the building, where he originally kept supplies and where the workers could change, but only an ancient pully-operated elevator led to the floors above. That being a rather unreliable mode of transportation, the floors above were simply neglected for years. Louie told Mitchell that in over twenty years of business, he had never been up there even once.

Louie at first wasn't aware of the rich history of the building his restaurant was in until he was unexpectedly visited by the matriarch of the Schermerhorn family, who arrived out front in a stretch limo to get an update on the condition of the building. The Schermerhorns were a prominent family who owned a number of popular hotels and boarding houses in the 19th century. With the ferry to Brooklyn right there, the old hotel at 92 South Street and others surrounding it became a bustling tourist destination. But over the years, with the building of the Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges and the subway system, the area went into decline, and what used to be a fashionable middle-class clientele turned more into a seedier breed of sailors and longshoremen. The nail in the coffin for the area was Prohibition, when the tavern on the ground floor of the building was forced to close.

By the early fifties, Louie and Mitchell had convinced each other to take that old elevator upstairs once and for all, and what they found among the cakes of dust was piles of old hotel furniture which had been sitting in the dark for decades. A sign on the wall read, "THIS READING ROOM WILL BE CLOSED AT 1A.M. FULTON FERRY HOTEL". Another read, "ALL GAMBLING IN THIS READING ROOM STRICTLY PROHIBITED. BY ORDER OF THE PROPRIETORS. FULTON FERRY HOTEL." Some cabinets, bureaus and mirrors were left in place, and around the corner there was a long hall with rows of bedrooms, that contained a couple of old bedframes and coat hangers,

Louie found the whole experience to be rather depressing, and wanted to get out of there, not even bothering to go up to the fourth floor, and so they left, without even bothering to go up again. It wasn't until over forty years later, when Jack Putnam, historian of the newly-opened South Street Seaport Museum, invited Mitchell to explore the floors on the upper level once more. Rarely opened to the public due to its unstable condition, the hundred-plus-year-old furniture, plaster and wallpaper remained virtually intact.

And so I decided to head way downtown to try to find the old hotel for myself. Following the door numbers along South Street, I eventually came across what is now a Heartland Brewery, a chain in the city, with other locations in Union Square and the Empire State Building that makes it's own line of craft beers. I went in, ordered a beer, and began to ask the bartender what he knew about this place. He had never heard of Joseph Mitchell, but he told me that this used to be the North Star Pub, and before that Sweets Restaurant. To my left was a dining room annex that was boarded up when Heartland moved in, but was recently opened to the public. That was once Sloppy Louie's, he told me. Around the corner is an Ann Taylor which also occupies the second floor, and further down the street is the museum. I asked him about the old abandoned hotel, and he said that the top three floors still contain all that old furniture from the nineteenth century, but very rarely is anyone allowed up there. He had never been up there, and neither had anyone he knew.

With that I thanked him for his help and told him I'd see him next time. I've heard that those floors are going to be renovated and opened to the public someday, but so far that isn't happening. Taking one last look, I headed back uptown, leaving behind that relic of a long-gone city.

The Chelsea Hotel

"The Corner" building on 24th and 6th.

The Chelsea Hotel on 23rd between 7th and 8th.

Another shot of the Chelsea Hotel.

Another shot of the Chelsea.

The historic Chelsea Hotel is up for sale again, and since the weather has been so fantastic lately, I decided to take a walk down there recently to take a look at it. In Chelsea you can find a number of great-looking old buildings from the late 19th century, many of which survived from when this area served as the most fashionable part of town. My mother has been reading a book about Robert Mapplethorpe's and Patty Smith's time spent there in the early '70s, when it was home to some of the most creative people staying in New York City.

The Chelsea Hotel was built on West 23rd Street between 7th and 8th Avenues in 1883 as the first co-op apartment building, and was the tallest building in New York City. It remained so for nearly twenty years until the Flatiron Building was completed as the tallest building in the world two-and-a-half blocks south in 1902. Once surrounded by Ladies' Mile and the theatre district, the co-op went bankrupt after only a few years when the city's theaters and shopping centers migrated uptown and the nation suffered a minor (comparatively speaking) recession. Abandoned for a few years, it reopened in 1905 as a hotel. It flourished for a few decades until being bankrupted again by the Great Depression, and in 1939 was purchased by Joseph Gross, David Bard, and Julius Krauss, who managed it as partners until the early '70s. With the passing of Gross and Krauss during this time, the management went to Bard's son, Stanley. In 2007, Stanley Bard was ousted by the board of directors and Dr. Marlene Krause, Julius Krause's daughter, and David Elder, grandson of Joseph Gross, replaced him with the management company BD Hotels, which has since been relinquished from ownership as well.

The hotel has been home to Mark Twain, O. Henry, William S. Burroughs, Leonard Cohen, Gore Vidal, Arthur Miller, Quentin Crisp, Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Brendan Behan, Thomas Wolfe, Stanley, Kubric, Ethan Hawke, Dennis Hopper, Uma Thurman, Michael Imperioli, Jane Fonda, The Grateful Dead, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Janis Joplin, Rufus Wainwright and countless others. Charles R. Jackson, author of The Lost Weekend, about an alcoholic who frequents P.J. Clarke's on 55th and 3rd, committed suicide in his room in 1968. Dylan Thomas collapsed in his room here after drinking too much at the Whitehorse Tavern on Hudson and West 11th Streets. Jack Kerouac wrote On The Road while staying here. Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious allegedly murdered girlfriend Nancy Spungen here in 1978, but many believe someone else killed her, such as one of the two drug dealers who visited their room that night.

Artists such as Julian Schnabel, Jasper Johns, and Andy Warhol lived here, and as I walked in the lobby I saw that it was adorned with some pretty crazy-looking art. I particularly remember the giant horse-head painting that was to my left. This hotel became a safe-haven for artist and the like who didn't seem to fit into the mainstream. Fans of the hotel have always praised it for it's inclusiveness, and some feel it is the last remnant of a once bohemian city. Many people who lived and hung out here long to keep its artistic tradition alive, and hopefully whoever buys the hotel next will respect this.

I walked around the neighborhood a little more on that Sunday evening, taking in what the neighborhood has become, and what it used to be that all these New York City bloggers wistfully reminisce about. "Billy's Topless" on 24th and 6th was shut down by Giullianni ten years ago this month, and has been a a cafe for a long time now. The "Limelight Disco" on 20th and 6th is now the "Limelight Marketplace" and just about a month ago has started selling Grimaldi's pizza. Of course not that these changes are all bad (anyone who longs for the old city has to admit that Billy's Topless and the Limelight weren't the most wholesome places in the world), but, as usual, it's all about making a buck, and the common New Yorker gets left behind. The Jefferson Market Library on 10th and 6th is locked up for some reason (hopefully not for good). I'm assuming it's just for renovations. The sign on the door directs people to go the the Muhlenberg branch near the Chelsea Hotel, named for William Augustus Muhlenberg, the first pastor of the Limelight when it opened up as the Church of the Holy Communion in 1846. When he donated his collection of books it became the core of that library. Anyway, my dogs were barking by the end of the night, so it was time to head on home until my next rambling.

Taxi Driver

Travis walks down 8th Ave. at 46th Street.

Iris stands in the doorway of 202 E. 13th St.

Travis meets the pimp at 204 E. 13th St.

202 East 13th Street, without the "ROOMS" pillars.

The brothel is at 226 East 13th Street.

Travis and Iris go to Disco Donut diner on 14th and 3rd, now boarded up.

This furniture store seen in the background still remains on 13th and 3rd.

Travis waits for the gun dealer on the NW corner of 19th & 5th.

This hardware store sign on 19th between 5th & 6th can be seen in the movie.

The NE corner of 19th and 5th used to have a diner, now a Sephora.

28th & Park, site of the Belmore Cafeteria.

Muldoon's on 45th & 3rd appears in the beginning as McAnn's.

The new New York Times Building, site of the Terminal and Exchange bars.

The porn theatre Travis visits on 45th & 8th in the beginning seems to be demolished.

A porn theatre seen in the back as Travis walks down 8th Ave. is now the Tour Bus staion.

The campaign headquarters on 63rd and Broadway.

A few weeks ago I saw Martin Scorcese's 1976 cult-classic Taxi Driver on AMC, and decided to take a walk around the big city to some of Travis Bickle's haunts that can be seen in the movie, much of which has changed a lot. It's been a pretty lousy past few days weather wise, but I figure the gloom of the weather coincides well with the ambiance of this movie. Although we don't always like to admit it, it can be pretty easy to become like Travis Bickle, at least a little bit. I found a special about the making of Taxi Driver on YouTube the other day, in which they said that the movie is about more than just loneliness, but a certain kind of loneliness that feeds on itself, that prevents someone from ever getting where he's going. In the special, I think it was Peter Boyle who said something along the lines of how the city is where you go to get crazy, but it's not a normal place to live. (I'm paraphrasing a lot here. I'll try to find what he said later.) And although the city is crowded with people everywhere you look, it fosters loneliness and isolation because we're all trying to keep to ourselves. When I first moved back to the city, it was a feeling that was very real to me, but which I didn't expect to feel at all.

A lot of critics say that the subject matter of this film wouldn't fly today. The concept of the anti-hero, who walks the fine line between hero and villain, would be too controversial. Travis, through happenstance, kills a pimp instead of a presidential candidate, is lauded as a hero for saving an underage girl from a life of prostitution, and continues living and working as a cab driver around the city, but with an extra bullet or a wrong turn, he would've ended up killing the wrong person or even himself. Travis, in his intense isolation, is in desperate need to give his life some kind of purpose, some kind of righteous mission to validate his own existence.

On that note, I headed over to 63rd and Broadway, where the campaign headquarters was located. Then I walked down to 48th and 8th, where I used to student teach a few years back. In the nineties 8th Avenue from 40th-50th Streets switched to being a tourist industry hub from a porn industry one, and the station for those big red buses we see all over the city can be seen in most Taxi Driver movie posters as a giant adult theatre in the background as Travis Bickle walks along 8th Avenue. In this shot in the beginning of the movie, he heads for a smaller adult theatre and once inside tries to hit on the concessions girl. According to one of my favorite websites, New York Songlines, this later became a dangerous pimp hangout called "Little Annie's Full Moon Saloon" and was now a dive called "Collins Bar", which I looked up and has subsequently closed down as well. In fact, I think the building might be gone. There's currently a giant lot next to the Subway shop I used to go to all the time when I was immersed in the joys of teaching eight-year-olds.

Further down on 41st Street were the Terminal and Exchange Bars right next to each other -- two more dangerous pimp hangouts seen early in the movie that were demolished in 2007 to build the 52-story glass structure that holds a family-friendly cafeteria and the New York Times newest home since moving from 43rd Street, where it had been since 1913.

Across town there's Muldoon's on 3rd Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets, which used to be McAnn's, yet another bar Travis hung out at, seen in the beginning of the movie, and, on 28th and Park, a 1983 high-rise condo marks the spot where the Belmore Cafeteria was. This diner, which I guess was on the decline even back then considering when the new building went up, was a well-known taxi-driver hangout. Wizard takes up the lost cause of trying to help Travis tame some of his demons as the reflection of the Belmore's old neon sign shines on the building across the street. My father was a taxi driver for a few nights in the mid-seventies, and recalls it as being an awful job, but told me the Belmore was mentioned as a popular hangout by the other drivers in the garage.

I further walked down to 5th Avenue and 19th Street, my old stomping grounds, and the corner where Travis gets into a cab with gun-dealer/traveling salesman "Easy Andy". Tomorrow, oddly enough, it will be three years since Alger laid me off and I'm beginning to feel like God's Lonely Man a little bit myself. These buildings are all pretty old so they look basically the same now as they did in the movie, except the diner across the street (the north-east corner) is long gone and has been a Sephora for the past few years. However, about last September or so I found a great website that dissected the movie scene by scene, pointing out things in the background, and it seems the only storefront that remains exactly the same is a simple vertical hardware store sign on 19th Street between 5th and 6th Avenues, seen when the cab drives off. When I was the generic assistant at Fred Alger Management around the corner, I was sent to this place often to go get keys made or buy nails.

As I walked along, I came to a boarded up one-floor structure on the southwest corner of 14th and 3rd. Slated for destruction, probably to make way for more NYU developments, in the '70s this was Disco Donut, a diner where Travis takes Iris out to lunch, and around the corner on 13th between 2nd and 3rd was where she lived and worked. I've added a video here of Travis and Iris talking for the first time and Travis meeting Iris' pimp for the first time, but YouTube might remove it soon ... they've done so with other scenes in the movie. Iris' silent friend was an actual child prostitute and drug addict who worked the city streets. She was about fifteen, and coached Jodie Foster on wardrobe, mannerisms, and the like. Harvey Keitel brought a great deal more depth to the role of the pimp than was originally intentioned. Originally offered Albert Brooks' role as the campaign manager, he asked for this one. Plus, the original plan to make the pimp black was scratched when it was thought that it would cause too much controversy, considering that the movie already contained a great deal of racial tension.

In the background, you'll see on the southwest corner of 13th and 3rd is a unpainted furniture store that is still there today, and the door at 202 East 13th Street used to be flanked by big, gaudy pillars that advertised "Furnished ROOMS". Probably the most famous picture of Jodie Foster as Iris shows her standing in this doorway, but Travis meets and talks prices with her pimp at 204, and the actual brothel with the bloody finale was at 226. All of these then-run-down buildings probably rent for thousands-a-month now. When I was standing on the block I saw a sign at one of them advertising co-op apartments. Boy have things changed.

That's what New York City blogs always seem to come down to these days: boy have things changed. Taxi Driver became a cult classic by telling the story of a loner who's disgusted by the cesspool that is Manhattan, but as many New Yorkers would say nowadays: At least he could afford to live there. At least he's not being pushed out. And a lot even say: At least the city had character back then. I don't know about that, although that time does kind of fascinate me. If this city is going to be salvaged for the middle class at all, though, its going to have to find a way to create affordable living and a low crime rate. Why having both seems so impossible is beyond me.