April 12, 1981 - Booking after the Jefferson Raid - Journal Entry

Manhattan's Central Booking
Early Sunday morning

Our crew of ten from the Jefferson
Our crime
Serving alcohol after 4am.

Photos by an old black turnkey.
Empty our pockets.
Keys, wallets et al.
COs pushing us through a metal detector.
Our after-hour crew shoved in a holding cell
The clank of steel doors
Everyone else a black man
Not us.
Someone asks why we are there.
"After-hours club raid."
We are welcome guests.
I have Kools
Matches too.

Out of the holding pen.
Interrogation
I say nothing.
Forms filled out in triplicate Fingerprints.
Photos
Bad coffee
Someone getting a beating down the hallway.
Arrestees in and out.
I see two people I know from a Harlem after-hours

"When we getting out?"

We see the judge.
He cuts us loose.
We are released into the grey dawn.
Sort of free and I want a drink.
Elizabeth, my ex- shows up. We go to her place.
Free to go anywhere outside the concrete wall of jail.

Manhattan's Vanishing Gas Stations

The other day my boss and longtime friend Tem were driving along Houston Street to a job site on East 10th Street. The Californian had moved here in the early 80s and I had come to the East Village in the 70s. We spoke about the changes to the neighborhood, pointing out what was still where it was and what wasn't. Most of it was gone and turning onto Lafayette the architectural metal worker said, "There used to be a car wash here."

"With a gas station."

All the gas stations are vanishing from New York."

"The ones on the Bowery have been gone for years." I used to walk under the shelter of the 4th Street gas station in the rain.

"Like the one where I bought my old Soviet bike." It had been a bright orange.

"Or the one on the FDR."

"That's still there, but most will become skinny luxury condos."

"Like the rest of Manhattan." The borough had been undergoing a radical economic cleansing during Mayor Bloomberg's three terms.

"Soon motorists will have to get gas in Brooklyn."

"Unless there are no cars in the city." My dream for a carless society was not so farfetched without gas in a city.

"There'll always be cars." Tem came from California and the Golden State was the birthplace of America's love with the car.

"There are no cars in STAR TREK."

"And there's no STAR TREK on TV now."

"No, there isn't." For the first time in decades the Enterprise wasn't exploring the cosmos.

Tem dropped me on 10th Street to bondo the cracked metal door frames and I thought about a gas station on 10th Avenue which sold for a fortune. The developer planned a 12-story, 15-unit condo. Each one had to cost $5 million for him to break even.

Maybe more.

“Developers like these sites for the same reason gas stations wanted to be there originally,” Mr. Shvo said. “Lots of people and lots of traffic.”

Like laundromats, gas stations can be tough to sell because of concerns that the soil beneath them may be polluted, brokers say. A glance around any suburb can reveal stations that have sat empty for years, in part because the sites may be brownfields, requiring the cleanup of chemical pollutants — or at least the fear of that possibility makes it hard to get loans for redevelopment.

Often, deed restrictions have been placed on properties by sellers or long-ago owners, which can ban residential development to avoid health problems and potential lawsuits.

Those restrictions can be lifted before a deal closes, however, if the buyers reassure the sellers by excavating several feet of soil, for example, or installing protective shields.

Restriction like that is now in place at 718 11th Avenue, where a Mobil station on a corner lot at West 51st Street is for sale at $9.5 million. If affordable housing were included, a developer could put up a 29,000-square-foot apartment building on the site, which has a lease in place till 2015, said Matthew Nickerson, a broker with Massey Knakal Realty Services.

While cleanup and insurance can be expensive for these sites, the development potential of land in a bustling Manhattan neighborhood far outweighs those problems, said Mr. Nickerson, who was also involved in Mr. Shvo’s deal.

Still, “between construction and insurance,” he said, “this is not like building on a typical site.”

Next year, a BP station at 300 Lafayette Street, at East Houston Street in SoHo, is expected to close, to make way for a planned seven-story, 75,000-square-foot office tower from the LargaVista Companies, according to someone with knowledge of the project who requested anonymity to avoid damaging the project’s chances of getting city approvals.

LargaVista has owned the site since 1976, though gas has been pumped there since the 1930s, and plans to take advantage of the site’s prominent location by putting stores on the building’s three lowest floors, the person said.

It is not the first time the firm has hung up its nozzles. In the mid-2000s, it turned a nearby Gaseteria into a 23-unit condo called One Avenue B, although it had to shoehorn the project into a triangular lot.

In addition, at the nearby intersection of East Houston and Avenue C, where a Mobil occupies a trapezoidal parcel, a rental building will rise on the site when the station’s lease expires in two years, according to HPNY, a development firm that is a partner in the project.

The 12-story rental building will encompass 43,000 square feet of apartments, as well as 6,000 square feet of ground-floor stores, which will wrap three sides, HPNY said.

With so many gas stations going the way of Model T’s, crimping supply, holdouts may end up thriving, a possibility not lost on Vasilios Hondros, a manager of a Mobil that opened in May on Eighth Avenue and Horatio Street in Greenwich Village.

Replacing what was most recently a Lukoil, the station has, according to Mr. Hondros, tripled the size of its store, which sells candy, e-cigarettes and lottery tickets. Taxicabs provide three-fourths of the business, he said.

At $12,000, the monthly rent is not cheap, Mr. Hondros said, though he has no plans to leave before the end of his 15-year lease.

“They’re just trying to put condos everywhere, to make it so just rich people can live in New York,” he said. “I feel bad for the people who have to drive.”

Elegant Hands

This blonde on the Vespa in front of the Dakota says it all about the 1970s New York. A blue dress in front of a blue car. The blonde elegantly studying her nails and not a mobile phone. Big feet and you know what they say about girls with big feet? Big hands.

Rob The Rich

I know rich people.

They live mostly in Palm Beach, Millbrook, or the Upper Easts Side of Manhattan, because they feel safe in those wealthy enclaves, however armed gunman invaded a Tribeca condo a little after dark. One of the pair put a 9mm to the head of the young owner.

"Where's the safe?"

The young man told them without hesitation. He was worth multi-millions.

"What's the combination?"

Herman gave it up without a struggle.

They got $90,000 and left Herman tied to the chair. His wife found him an hour later. He got up and opened a bottle of wine.

"Aren't you calling the police?"

"What for?"

He didn't need the NYPD asking any questions and Herman phoned me later to ask, "Did I do the right thing?"

"Someone knew you had the money in the safe. Someone knew why." I wasn't asking any questions. "Are you okay?"

"Yes, but my wife is freaked."

"Are you going to tell her the truth?"

"No." And he wasn't telling me it either.

We are entering a time that I never thought I would see again.

1975 with all of America broke and people willing to take chances. but this time is will be worst, so you rich people, when Obama requests more taxes, don't say nothing or else you could end up like the Russian aristocrats in 1919 and that was a tough year for the rich..

Give and give often or else who'll meet Herman's friends. They number in the millions and there is no where safe in a revolution, unless it's in Cindy Crawford's arms.

Modern Forever

Ludwig Mies van der Rohe designed the Seagram Building at 375 Park Avenue to be the crown jewel of corporate modernism and the 38-story skyscraper has withstood the architectural assault of time. Last week I was walking past 375. My eyes were drawn into the granite plaza and my gaze rose up the steel and glass tower in awe of its spare aesthetics. At the time of its completion the Seagram Building was the most expensive office tower in America and that money continues to show the beauty of modern forever. Fotos by Peter Nolan Smith

Zombies on the Highline

They are everywhere. Photo by Jorge Socarrás He lived while others dined.

No Helicopters Over Brooklyn

Manhattan was a noisy borough. Sirens filled the canyons. Trucks and cars blow their horns, Helicopters fly overhead. There were even more noises from the alley behind my East 10th Street apartment. My windows were usually open. I didn't believe in AC. My alarm clock for several years was a young Jamaican girl, who woke me every weekday morning at 7:30 after her mother left the daycare's play yard in the alley, saying, "Please be a good girl." The well-dressed four year-old answered with a smile, "Yes, mother." As soon as her mother was out of sight, the neat little girl lifted her head to heaven and let loose a series of screams better suited to an exorcist movie. None of the daycare workers told her to be quiet. They believed in letting children express themselves. My neighbors and I were not so understanding. We preferred our sleep to her freedom.

One morning I shouted from my window for her to be quiet. More polite than angry.

"Fuck you, mistah." It was almost funny to hear the little girl speak with such conviction. "You ain't my father." "No, I'm not." It was too early in the day for almost funny and almost funny became very unfunny as the young girl repeats her high-pitched arias day after day after day. A ruthless fury seethed in my heart and I thought about physical revenge, except my mother had beaten her six children with a wooden spoon. Not often, but enough for me to remember and I never wanted to hit a child. Not mine. Not others. Kids deserved a wide berth, but this little girl had no cause to curse me out and I thought about revenge. After all I was tough in a neighborhood where tough meant something. This was 1986. I was 34. Still young enough to need my sleep after hard nights working at clubs and this cute little girl was stealing precious hours from my slumber. Finally I went down to the day care center and I complained to the principal. The older woman said that she would speak to the the girl.

Nothing happened at all.

The next morning the little girl gave me the finger.

It was 7:31.

I felt defeated. My good intentions were shot. My Hibernian sense of justice called for action. Firebombing the school was a little too extreme. My strategy required finesse and the next day at 5:30pm the little girl exited from the school to find me speaking with her mother. I was asking her for a date. The little girl stared at me in horror and understanding. Her mother was an attractive intelligent woman. She deserved someone more traditional than a nightclub person.

The following morning I slept in peace.

The girl respected my wishes and I hers.

In 2004 I moved from that apartment after the faceless landlords offered me a buy-out. I left the East Village for Brooklyn. Helicopters don't fly over Fort Greene. The only flight pattern is a southern approach for jets to La Guardia. I can't see Manhattan from my bedroom windows. Only the clock tower at the Atlantic Terminal. My windows are open today. I still have no AC, but a bird is singing in a nearby tree. Its song wakes me in the morning. Some things never change in New York.