First Published September, 1995

MALLIFIED IN MANHATTAN
Unshaven, fat, and dressed in authentic pirate attire, Captain Hook harangues anyone who enters his maritime junk shop at the South Street Seaport: “Any money to help save the seaport?” When a middle-aged man balks, I intervene: “Anything will do. Give him a penny.” The man gives two. Big mistake.

“I don’t want your pennies,” Hook growls. “If that’s all you think this shop is worth, get out!” The middle-aged man, with his cookie-cutter family in tow, happily obliges, and Captain Hook turns to me. “I’m not a monkey. I don’t take pennies. He can shove them up his ass.”

Hook owns the last authentic shop at the South Street Seaport. The rest are chains, the same retail outlets you’ll find in any mall in America. “They are trying to implant suburbia into urbia,” Captain Hook tells me, with marked irritation. “The cancer started in 1990 when they brought in Country Road, J. Crew, Liz Claiborne.”

“They” is the Rouse Corporation, mall developers who have earned a name gentrifying old seaports and landmarks, like Boston’s Fannueil Hall and Baltimore’s Inner Harbor. They’ve all but gutted New York’s South Street Seaport, turning it into a white-bread tourist trap. Now the landlord is eyeing Captain Hook’s. According to a sign hanging in the store’s window, Rouse is threatening to increase the rent to $19,780 a month. Hook is fighting back. Donations from visitors help defray legal expenses, which so far have amounted to $75,000. “I’ll move out of here when the courts tell me,” Hook says. “Then they can put in their damn clothing store.”

Captain Hook may be gruff, but he has certainly hit the rusty nail on the crusty old head. The “cancer” he talks about has spread, to SoHo, Greenwich Village, Midtown, and beyond. In the six years since my last visit to New York, the city has been hit by a tidal wave of gentrification. Union Square has shorn its radical roots to make room for the Zeckendorf Towers, the Heartland Brewery, Toys ’R’ Us, a Barnes & Noble superstore, and, soon, a Virgin Megastore. Lower Broadway, in SoHo, is now home not only to discount jeans’ outlets but also to the Pottery Barn, Williams Sonoma, Armani Exchange, and Eddie Bauer, among other outlet mall staples. (The last time I was in town, the classiest place on the street was the Canal Jean Company.) The All-Star Cafe and Disney’s "Beauty and the Beast" have colonized the down-and-dirty milieu of 42nd Street. Fifty-Seventh Street has become a row of theme restaurants. Starbucks clones are fast replacing standard-fare coffee shops, imposing the words “grande” and “Americano” where “regular” once ruled the day. And the list goes on.

SEE YA' LATER, MOM AND POP
New Yorkers are divided on the subject of their city’s fast-changing landscape. They remain socially tolerant, yet are tired of squeegee people mucking up their windshields. They relish the city’s unique retail climate, but are comforted by the presence of the nearby chain bookstore. They appreciate the city’s funky, dark esthetic, but are appalled by the desecration of its parks and buildings. They want to partake of a little herb, but are tired of crack merchants swirling around the ’hood. In other words, today’s New Yorkers are no longer afraid to admit to a few creature comforts, which national chains and a pro-growth mayor are all too happy to supply.

This mainstreaming of the city -- what The New York Times calls the “remodeling [of] New York for the bourgeoisie" -- is not a throwback to the materialist self-aggrandizement of the 1980s. New Yorkers in that edgy go-go decade liked the city the way it was; they just wanted to reward themselves for their hyper drive. Nineties’ New Yorkers, chastened by the excesses of the past, are more bucolic, more middle American. They want the good life -- the good suburban life, that is. But the new suburban-minded New Yorkers are still New Yorkers: their one-stop shopping has to be gourmet; their clean streets have to be lively; they like graffiti, but want it in art galleries instead of on subway cars; they want their homeless to be entertaining. Above all, they want a manicured, comfortable, sanitized urbanity, with pockets of orchestrated weirdness to keep everyone happy and spendy.

The city has become, as the economists say, "risk-averse." The signs are everywhere. David Letterman, whose early days were so pioneering, has lost his edge. His show, now at CBS, mirrors the city’s cultural makeover. It is more accessible, more predictable, and far less confrontational. Even Madonna, hardly a cultural critic, has noticed. “You really changed since the last time I was on the show,” she told Letterman in 1994. “Money’s made you soft. . . . I see all these, like, you know, movie stars coming here and you’re just all ga-ga.” On Broadway, new plays are a rarity these days; instead one gets bland reissues of such standard fare as "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum," "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," and "Hello Dolly."

V. S. Pritchett once wrote (in "New York Proclaimed") that there is no city outside New York where newness is so vigorously pursued. But the newness of '90s New York is safe, manageable, antiseptic; the type of thing -- albeit with a “hip,” “fresh,” “urbane” twist -- that you’d expect to find at Epcot Center, Mall of America, or Nike Town. It’s newness as marketing concept, not organic reality.

While New York has always been a battleground between the forces of sameness and diversity, there seems to be something palpably different this time around. Mainly it’s because, after years of knocking on the door, mainstream America has finally broken into the city. Here comes everybody, and with their arrival, there goes a lot of what made New York, well, "New York."

Call me nostalgic, anti-growth, or simply out of touch, but I think what is currently happening to the city is tragic. I liked the frumpy mom-and-pops, the quirky novelty stores, the grungy markets, the ethnic emporiums. I liked it that in the country’s largest city I had a hard time getting a Wendy’s Hamburger or a Seattle-style latte or a K-mart blue-lite special. I was relieved to find no microbreweries to speak of and so few megastores (Macy’s and Bloomies are beloved, Filene’s Basement and Old Navy are not).

HOPE FOR MIGHTY GOTHAM?
After many years, I returned to my favorite American city. I visited the Barnes & Nobles, the Starbucks, the Bed, Bath and Beyond, and although I enjoyed their practical virtues, I knew I’d find them in any city in the country. So I turned my back and sought out the funky, frumpy, eccentric New York of old.

My prognosis is a qualified mix of doom and delight. The bad news: a lot has been lost to the fast-emerging monoculture; a lot has been squashed by giganticism run amok. The good news: some genuinely great things still survive. The city may have lost Annie Sprinkle, the legendary porn star turned performance artist, but it still has Miss Vera’s School for Boys Who Want to Be Girls, perhaps the world’s only cross-dressing academy. It still has Jennifer Miller’s funky gender-bending Circus Amok; Raven Chanticleer’s African-American Wax Museum; and a host of one-of-a-kind characters such as Quentin Crisp, Gene Pool, Lady Bunny, Joey Arias, and Gary Panter.

Coney Island’s Sideshows by the Seashore may have lost its lease to a souvlaki stand (if the landlord hadn’t been so obstreperous, the new tenant would be McDonald’s instead), but it’s managed to find a new space just off the dilapidated boardwalk. Adam Purple may be gone, but the Mosaic Man is still around, beautifying the East Village with makeshift art (despite the city’s repeated attempts to force him out). On subway cars, the likes of Nike, Swatch, and Fruitopia may have knocked out many single-panel ads for hair replacement, AIDS prevention, and M.D. Tusch (hemorrhoid healer), but the inimitable Dr. Zizmor’s funky ads for laser dermatology live on. The Bowery Bar represents all that’s gone wrong in the East Village, yet, in a gratifying sign that the radical spirit of the Village is still alive, the next-door neighbors have hung a sign in their window that reads: “Lifestyles of the $ick and Shameless--Cooper Union, How Could You Have Done This to Our Neighborhood?”

Cookie-cutter L.A.-style cocktail lounges are ubiquitous throughout the city, but you can still find authentic dives like the Parkside Lounge and the Subway Inn. While on October 19th, 1997, 42nd Street's Grand Luncheonette served its last greasy hot dog and took down its famed “No Spitting," "No Water," "No Loitering" signs for eternity, the irrepressible Tad's Steaks and Holy Cross Church survive despite the Disneyfication of the area. The Bread Shop in Morningside Heights, where I first discovered molasses-flavored granola and natural bread while coaching debate at nearby Columbia University, is gone, but Peter and “Ma” Sylvestri’s lovable Whole Earth Bakery is still "shakin' and bakin'" at 130 St. Marks Place. B. Altman’s may be out of business, but the New York Doll Hospital, founded in 1900, is still around, as is CBGB’s, which opened its doors in 1973, unleashing punk rock on the world; as (just barely) is Schapiro’s House of Kosher Wines, since 1899 serving wine “so thick you can cut it with a knife."

In "The Mad Monks' Guide to New York City," I pay tribute to these people and places, and to others like them. I hope that, far from fragile relics of a fast-disappearing past, they are evidence of a still-diverse, still-offbeat, still-authentic present. Sadly, only time will tell.