The Pen Behind Jeremiah Moss (Vanishing New York) + 27 Cooper Square Dedication

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For a decade, a blogger writing under the nom de plume Jeremiah Moss has been chronicling the Bloomberg and post-Bloomberg era gentrification--hypergentrification--of New York City, primarily through posts that tally the disappearance of countless small and medium-sized, often longstanding businesses. While not always avoiding nostalgia and though he has mostly focused on Manhattan, Moss's blog, Vanishing New York, has set the standard in consistently demonstrating city and state policies favoring plutocratic real estate interests, in combination with the national and global neoliberal economic system, have had a devastating effect on so much of the city's social ecology, its distinctive neighborhoods, and its diverse cultural vibrancy, let alone affordability, all of which have drawn creative people in particular to New York for more than a century.

Though gentrification in New York is hardly new, Moss has detailed how over the last 10 years, particularly in the lead-up to and through the Great Recession, whole sections--and increasingly boroughs--of New York have transformed into hollowed out museums of themselves. (Lost City was another blog that contemporaneously recorded the loss of many New York landmarks, from 2006 through 2014. Gothamist also provides updates amidst its general news about the city.) Among the terms I've learned from Moss's blog are yunny (young urban narcissists), zombie urbanism, and hypergentrification, to name just a few.  From my first encounter with Moss's lamentations--appropriately enough, an early entry from 2007 bore that title--and jeremiads, I became a fan, finding in his posts arguments that compellingly articulated what I saw happening as far back as the period right after 9/11, in 2001, and also underway simultaneously and without explanation, in Chicago.

From Jeremiah's
Vanishing New York

Certainly many have written persuasively about gentrification and its effects, and we can always use more informed takes. But Moss has also urged readers to go beyond mourning and support the pro-small business, cultural landmarking, anti-chain approach of SAVE NYC. Moss also has tried to address readers' questions, including why he began the blog, whether gentrification is (ever) good for working-class and poor people, how Bloomberg's tenure really affected New York (for the worse), and how New York City has become increasingly suburbanized, or a dense, vertical simulacrum of the suburban--an elite suburb, that is. Notably, he also has not shied away from addressing questions of race, class, and political access, among other topics key to the problem of hypergentrification.

For his efforts he has received a great deal of press, and some awards. Until now, Moss has not compiled his thoughts in book form, but that is set to change with Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul (HarperCollins), which will hit bookshelves shortly. A book party is set for July 27, in SoHo.

What also has remained unknown to most readers of Moss's blog is who the writer really is. (In fact I have to admit I was quite willing not to have his real identity revealed.) Recently, however, in a New Yorker "Talk of the Town" piece by Michael Schulman, Moss does share with the world who he really is: Griffin Hansbury, a transgender psychoanalyst, social worker, and aspiring novelist who has lived in New York for more than a quarter of a century. He lives in the East Village, and has shifted, as Schulman points out, from elegist to activist, when he rallied readers behind the attempt to save Midtown's Café Edison, which did not succeed but which fed into the #SAVENYC campaign.
So why did Moss (Hansbury) unmask himself?

[He] decided to reveal himself, he said, so he can show up at his own rallies and on panels. Also, “Vanishing New York” is now a book. Walking down St. Mark’s Place, past a dark-glass building that he called the Death Star, he mentioned a study that measured pedestrians’ skin conductivity outside a sleek Whole Foods and on a more diversified street. “They found that blocks that are all this glass stuff actually shorten the lives of senior citizens, because they’re so depressing,” he said.

And, as I can attest, they can turn into giant magnifying glasses, scorching the ground around them. I hope to share this and other thoughts--like the increasingly disturbing lack of adequate infrastructure in New York and New Jersey, especially to handle all of the building, new arrivals, or catastrophic contingencies like a worse version of the 2003 blackout (which I experienced firsthand) or another tropical storm as strong as or stronger than 2012's Hurricane Sandy-- in person with him, at his book event or another, but either way, I'll be picking up a copy of Vanishing New York, the book version, while continuing to read his blog.

***

A few days ago, another New York City blog I regularly browse, EV Grieve, posted about a plaque dedication at 27 Cooper Square on June 21. Though increasing swaths of Manhattan and New York City have been or are being leveled or built over in favor of the kinds of cookie-cutter designer glass luxury towers that Moss has decried on his blog, 27 Cooper Square managed to survive the wrecking ball, mainly because, as EV Grieve points out, two of the building's resident, including acclaimed poet and memoirist Hettie Jones, balked at moving out so that the Cooper Square Hotel could be built next door. Jones and her fellow tenant had secured artist loft status in the 1980s, and thus had the law on their side. Now, as the luxe Cooper Square Hotel looms beside them and an increasingly hypergentrified Downtown New York surrounds them, the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP), in partnership with Two Boots Foundation, will commemorate 27 Cooper Square's importance as a cultural node during the 1960s.

The 1845 building, as the plaque announces, was the home of several key artistic figures during the 1960s. Quoting EV Grieve (and the email the site received from GVSHP):

In the 1960s, this 1845 former rooming house became a laboratory for artistic, literary and political currents. Writers LeRoi [later Amiri Baraka] and Hettie Jones, their Yugen magazine and Totem Press, musician Archie Shepp and painter Elizabeth Murray all had homes here. The vacant building was transformed into a vital hub of cultural life, attracting leading figures including those from the Beats and the world of jazz. It was also the childhood home of a second generation of East Village artists and thinkers.

GVSHP and Two Boots Foundation will install a plaque on the building at 27 Cooper Square to mark the significance of the site in the artistic legacy of the East Village.

The event's slated speakers included Archie Shepp's son Accra Shepp, a noted photographer, and Hettie Jones, as well as a representative of the GVSHP, and poet and Bowery Poetry Club co-founder Bob Holman. You can watch a video of the dedication on YouTube, and see photos on Flickr. Though cultural producers still live in the area, as Jones pointed out in the 2008 New York Times article on her successful battle against the Cooper Square Hotel, "This used to be an area where people got their start. Now it’s a place to land once you’ve made it." And it's only more so these days, but the plaque will remind people, at least those who stop and read it, that the area was once more, much more, than a hub of global lucre.

St. Mark's Bookshop Reopens

The last of the old shop

Since 1977 St. Mark's Bookshop has been a cornerstone independent bookseller in the East Village. The global economic crisis in 2008, coupled with a dizzying rent increase (to $23,500 per month) by its landlord, The Cooper Union (embroiled in its own institutional dramas), imperiled its existence at its two-decades-old home at 3rd Avenue between 8th and 9th Streets, leading to several online campaigns to keep the store afloat and, most recently, to ensure it could find a new location in Manhattan. After a hunt the owners found that new location, signing a lease in May for a storefront space at 3rd St. and Avenue A, just a few blocks south of Tompkins Square Park and so, as of this past weekend, St. Mark's Bookshop has reopened.

The new location, under construction

A few weeks ago I met up with a friend, Tisa B., who was visiting from California, and we dropped by the old St. Mark's, which was in the process of being dismantled, shelf by shelf. I stood and watched for a while, wistfully, remembering how often I'd visited the store over the years. It was, I can recall, the first store to stock copies of my first book. It also became, along with the now shuttered Nikos', an indispensable spot to find unusual journals and zines. Though I never read there, I attended a number of readings and talks there over the years, and more often than not would run into friends and acquaintances I hadn't seen in some time. Tisa and I thought the new location had already opened, but instead we found them still under constructed. We were too early, but it was clear the new space would be inviting.

The new location's façade

On E. 3rd Street

The new St. Mark's is considerably smaller (by half), though with a cleaner, airy design. The size is deceptive, though, because there's more room than I expected in the back. White, curving shelves beneath a black ceiling line the shop, a modular unit in the front of the store holds journals, and the book sections are all easier to find by sight. The stock, however, remains on the leaner side (except, strangely enough, for works by Karl Ove Knausgaard), though nowhere near as threadbare as several years ago, when St. Mark's barren appearance suggested the store might not survive. I've never found the staff particularly friendly, and this has carried over into the new store, but the one of the owners was in the day I dropped in, and we had a pleasant chat about St. Mark's carrying the Hilst translations (not there), among other things. Other books I was looking for were not in stock either, but I bought several books I did not already have, and look forward to returning later this year, when they're more fully up and running.

The new space

The front of the store

What Next for St. Mark's Bookshop?

Almost two weeks ago, St. Mark's Bookshop, the 35-year-old independent East Village and New York City treasure that was nearly ousted from its home last year, met its crowd-sourcing goal on Lucky Ant, and raised the $23,000 it was seeking to show potential landlords that it did have the money for a down-payment on a new lease. (According to the Lucky Ant page, the store has now raised about $28,000.) It will be vacating its old home, no matter what.

The current landlord, The Cooper Union, has joined the ranks of Manhattan's rapacious speculators, and will be raising the bookshop's monthly rent to that outrageous $23,000 level, meaning the store would have to generate $276,000 in yearly sales just to pay the rent, all other costs--payroll and benefits, book orders, utilities, insurance, etc.--notwithstanding.  That a private, not-for-profit educational institution would be doing this to a long-time cultural landmark that benefits not only general readers but its own faculty and students is appalling, but appeals to The Cooper Union apparently have gone nowhere, and so St. Mark's must find a new home, lest it suffer the fate of so many other local independent booksellers, like The Gotham Book Mart, Christopher Street Books, A Different Light, and University Place Bookstore, to name just a few, that exist now as bookmarks in a future literary history of the city.

All of the communication I've received from St. Mark's has been quite appreciative of patrons' and the larger community's support, and suggested to me, at least, that things perhaps weren't so bleak. This past weekend and then again earlier in the week I had to grab some books for my classes, and what I saw in the store contradicted this somewhat, or at least complicated the picture. When I stopped in on the weekend, there was some traffic, but nothing close to what I imagined given the enthusiasm I'd seen online for the store. Rows of shelves stood stripped bare of books, some sections, like fiction, critical studies, and philosophy particularly denuded. Then when I met up with a friend there before lunch this week, it was equally sepulchral, which led me to ask one of the staff members about the move, and she politely told me that the situation was "up in the air," she didn't know what was coming, and that the store would be in contact with its supporters.

I snapped a few pictures of the moribund space. I hope the owners can find a new, affordable spot and long-term lease soon, though I know it will be very--no, extremely--difficult given the realities of Manhattan real estate these days. But the St. Mark's Bookshop has long been a vital repository and a cultural icon, and its loss would be a serious blow to the intellectual and creative ecology of New York; Manhattan may be able to thrive economically on luxury condo buildings and hotels, ultra-elite boutiques and boîtes, and a service industry catering to the 1%, but it will be a drastically different place from what it has been for the preceding 300 years, becoming an overstuffed Dubai with the memory of its once vibrantly diverse intellectual and creative past but a waning fragrance for those passing through. If you haven't already offered financial support to St. Mark's, please consider doing so at the Lucky Ant link above, or sending them moral support via stmarksbooks@mindspring.com.

In the front door

Where once stood full shelves of critical studies books

Part of the fiction section

Happy Martin Luther King Jr. Day + Rebuilding Haiti + Ray's Candy Shop + Jets Win!

Readers, I am now having to confront regular spammers who, I assume, are paid to post ad, phishing or malbot links on the blog. If these continue, I may have to move to a moderated comment approach, though I've always wanted to avoid that because I want it to be easy for people to post directly to the blog. I've been flamed on here only a few times; one of the most memorable to me was during the middle of George W. Bush's second term, when I posted snarkily on the Disaster-in-Chief and a pro-Bushite posted to defend him and slam me. Another came when I gave a mixed review of John Adams's opera Dr. Atomic (great music, muddled, undramatic libretto). But I'm willing to live with respondents, even negative, vituperative ones. Spammers are in a completely different category...

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It's Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and it strikes me that the Reverend Dr. King Jr. (1929-1968), who gave his life so that we could be free, would have had some profound things to say about our current era, including our first African-American president, Barack Obama, whose election he made possible; the ongoing and proliferating wars and imperial projects, promoted by said African-American president, that the US is involved in; the terrible financial situation wrought by conservatives and neoliberals, and the struggle, by millions of Americans and American immigrants, for a decent and sustaining wage, a roof over their heads, an affordable education, and the ability to live in dignity and be treated with respect; the continuing cancers of racism, sexism and misogyny, classism, and, I believe, homophobia and heterosexism; and the situation in our Hemisphere and continental neighbor, Haiti.

Jack & Jill Politics is already on this meditation, so I'll link to their post from several days ago, on Rev. Dr. King Jr.'s actual birthday (January 15), called "What Martin Luther King Would Say About Haiti On His Birthday." What they note is that Rev. Dr. King Jr., as is well known, spoke out about the Vietnam War and American imperialism, and they quote his speech on this topic to extrapolate on how he might respond to the multiple challenges Haiti is facing. One noteworthy issue, which I hope our government notes, is the discrepancy between the billions being blown on military engagements (Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Colombia, etc.) and support of dictatorial regimes (Egypt, Uzbekistan, etc.) and the comparatively paltry $100 million the US pledged towards Haitian relief. Many of those billions, of course, ought to have been and should be spent rebuilding the US ECONOMY, which was effective nuked by the conservative-neoliberal fantasists of the last 25 years, instead of being funneled into a for-profit military-industrial machine whose actions and accounting most taxpayers will never know. But I know that I'm talking about a fantasy of recognition that won't be happening. Instead, we will keep pouring money into "war on terrorism" phantasms, which is to say, the military industrial complex, and scolding Haiti when it doesn't turn things around fast enough, or pay off the onerous debts and financial burdens that so terribly weakened its foundations, and those of numerous other countries around the world, before the earthquake hit. Now, to quote the incontrably more eloquent Rev. Dr. King Jr.:

A nation that continues year after year to spend more money on military defense than on programs of social uplift is approaching spiritual death. America, the richest and most powerful nation in the world, can well lead the way in this revolution of values. There is nothing, except a tragic death wish, to prevent us from reordering our priorities, so that the pursuit of peace will take precedence over the pursuit of war. There is nothing to keep us from molding a recalcitrant status quo with bruised hands until we have fashioned it into a brotherhood.