They ran a bar, you could get food at lunch. Very rough neighborhood at the time. The Navy put singl

One of the weirdest little holdovers of a bygone Times Square can be found at 42nd Street and 9th Avenue, where a collection of four-story apartment continental airlines homepage buildings sit nestled in the shadow continental airlines homepage of the neighboring skyscrapers.
As I wrote a year ago in my post on the Elk , nothing beats the hotel s grime-covered sign on Ninth Avenue, featuring a Pepsi-Cola ad that probably dates back to when Taxi Driver was filming in the area (in fact, according to one reader, Pepsi was using this logo circa 1962):
Amazingly, the Elk is said to have been in business for over 100 years, originally serving immigrants passing through Ellis Island. Sadly, continental airlines homepage it s run has finally continental airlines homepage come to an end; last week, I got an email from a reader continental airlines homepage informing me that the Elk had finally closed its doors for good. Sure enough, continental airlines homepage when I went to visit on Friday, there was a white sign over the door reading continental airlines homepage Hotel Closed continental airlines homepage :
WOW – my first day in the NYC film industry took place in this seedy hotel, continental airlines homepage just after the massive blizzard in Jan 1996! 'Twas a low budget indie. I recall one of the location PA's breaking down in tears after the shoot because they had to 'clean' the areas we were in, which included bodily waste, used needles and stray condoms. YUCK! For my part I just had to shovel out the sidewalk continental airlines homepage of 9th and 42nd for an exterior shot.
I stayed there in the 90s, overnight a few times, while it was still a hotel. A real dump, nothing to get too nostalgic over. But it was cheap – and being poor it was a great place to stay at the time. … I bemoan the loss of housing for "transients." I was transient for several years in my 20s. My spirit still is.
I remember waiting for the bus going to high school right outside the entrance of the hotel And low and behold did not this pimp throw this ho right out the window one floor up and my hand to God that s the truth.
I was stationed there in the early 1980′s as my ship was getting overhauled in the Navy Yard. I am pretty certain J J stands continental airlines homepage for Jimmy Julia Constantino or a very similar continental airlines homepage name. It was barely hanging in then.
They ran a bar, you could get food at lunch. Very rough neighborhood at the time. The Navy put single sailors in some rat trap building in the yard and you had to go to war to get through the nearby projects (ironically Navy housing from way back) to the subway.
The ratrap was right on the fence with flushing ave, I recall the sailors drinking beer on hot summer nights, then filling the bottles as small Molitovs from the parked motorcycles and exchanging them for the rocks the natives would occasionally launch.
Another great scene: coming back 4AM on a Monday morning was a dumptruck on blocks, engine stripped, continental airlines homepage etc. It lingered all summer, graffiti, then arson, then finally gone. South of the yard is developing into a more trendy hip area. If I only knew I would have been buying up the war zone back then
Some people have bemoaned the loss of The Elk and the Navy Yard Lounge; my feeling is that most of these people never hung out at either, but liked the idea of a seedy side to New York still existing. And I get it there s something great in that, somehow, these pockets of down-and-out-ness have managed to escape the gentrification wrecking ball.
On the other hand, a few years ago, I was working on a movie shooting in a roach motel in Brooklyn. If you ve ever seen the movie (you probably continental airlines homepage have), the squalor of the hotel was played for laughs. While we were filming, however, one of the residents overdosed on heroin, continental airlines homepage and we had to stop the shoot as an ambulance arrived and he was somehow literally brought back to life.
Ever since I saw the guy get wheeled out on a stretcher, I ve had a hard time romanticizing the seedier side of New York. Honestly, doing so makes me feel like a tourist, and if you think about it, there really is no tourist worse than the one looking to go on safari to seedy, down-and-out places and think it s all so cool and then go home to a life of comparative luxury (note: some people have taken umbrage with this; see comments for clarification).
The value of places continental airlines homepage like The Elk and the Navy Yard Cocktail lounge continental airlines homepage is primarily in how they ve managed to survive continental airlines homepage through the ages. Unfortunately, that value is intrinsically linked to their one day disappearing.
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Love it! I feel a strong affinity for the seedier continental airlines homepage side of my hometown and as a former sailor, I especially like the unique blend of bad neighborhood and marine life you can find all over the world. It is sad in a way when these places get fixed up or razed. I agree with your sentiment at the end, we certainly shouldn t fight for these places. It is a tiny tragedy buried in a larger good. Also, I always remember that these places don t really ever go away they just move to some other dark corner continental airlines homepage of the city, to be rediscovered by some other photographer in 20 or 50 years.
I visited JJ s one evening about 2 years ago with 2 friends and my girlfriend. Nobody was there except the bartender, Mystique wearing super short shorts and a t-shirt with tears across her body, the owner who apparently just sits and watches wrestling all day and night and Mystique s friend who looked in pretty bad shape (high as all hell). It was happy hour and drinks were nice and cheap, minus the fact that every cocktail they had named was sweet as hell and had either Hennessy or Hipnotiq in it. We sat and drank with Mystique and had a a great time at one point my girlfriend was talking with Mystique and her nipple popped through one of the tears in the shirt. Mystique, continental airlines homepage your nipple Girl, that s what it s there for! At this point a man walked in, put some money on the counter. The bartender s friend walked over and mounted the guy in her mini skirt riding continental airlines homepage him like a pony. My girlfriend is convinced to this day she saw the man unzip his fly and the 2 were having sex but I can t vouch for that personally. All in all it was great fun and I miss that place.
I m not sure I understand. What I m saying is that I hate when people romanticize the elements of a city that have a very real dark side to them. When most people talk about wishing the gritty Times Square of old was still around, they don t actually mean they d start doing heroin, hire diseased hookers, or go to the peep shows; they just would like to have it as a colorful backdrop to walk through and take high contrast pictures of with zillion continental airlines homepage dollar cameras right before they grab lattes at Starbucks. In other words, experience it like a tourist.
I agree with what Scout is saying. A lot of tourist say they wish they could experience the Old New York but they don t want to live in. They eventually go home with a few stories to tell their wide-eyed friends, paying little to no thought to the people who are trapped in the cycle of hooking and drugs.
Let me see if I can put it another continental airlines homepage way. When I was on my cross-country road trip, I drove through dozens of small, derelict towns, many verging on abandonment. While I m fascinated by the history of them, the beauty that has somehow managed to linger, and by the fact they ve become abandoned, continental airlines homepage I would never turn to a resident and say Isn t it SO cool that your town is totally abandoned? Don t you hope it ll stay this way FOREVER?? Because the resident should have every right to turn around and smack me for being a dumb-ass tourist. That resident has to live there, and deal with the fact that their town is going through hard times; and here s this tourist saying how great it all is and then driving continental airlines homepage off to never return.
Now, there s an argument to be made that the seedy NYC of yesterday is way more desirable to the gentrified metropolis we live in today. There s a frequent commenter on the site named Karen, who s lived in NYC for decades and has been through it all, and really continental airlines homepage prefers the old days today. And she s absolutely entitled to that opinion. On the other hand, I never lived through those times, continental airlines homepage so I feel uncomfortable wishing it back, so NYC will look like the gritty high contrasty pictures you see in 70s and 80s photobooks; there s a saying that we all get nostalgic for places and times we never lived through.
Am I making myself any more clear? continental airlines homepage I m certainly not saying you shouldn t visit down-and-out locations, or poor countries, or anything like that. But I m saying to not act like a tourist about it; and DEFINITELY don t be mad that it hasn t stayed in some sort of photogenic state of shitiness so you can snap a picture and never return.
I wouldn t want heroin or diseased hookers, but I would want soft drugs, healthy hookers, and peep shows. Maybe it s because I grew up in whitebread Kansas, but I like the seedier side of cities and I seek them out when I go to new places but like in New York City, they re disappearing all over America and being replaced by cookie-cutter developments that don t have any character or soul. Maybe I m not the tourist that you have in mind, but I am someone who likes to go to seedy places to do seedy things. I like being able to buy drugs on the street, I like being able to pick up a streetwalker, I like being able to go to a big old theater to see pornography. Maybe that makes me a bad person, I don t know. I do know that there used to be places where you could do that from coast to coast, but they re almost all gone.
Scout, when I talk about the bad old days, I m not talking about roach-filled SROs full of junkies. I m talking about character. A city that didn t look like the cookie-cutter collection of glass skyscrap