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For High Line Visitors, Park Is a Railway Out of Manhattan
Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

Visitors on the Gansevoort Street end of the High Line, a park on an elevated railway on the West Side of Manhattan.

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By DIANE CARDWELL
Published: July 21, 2009

The High Line is still under construction, with orange-vested workers busily adding last-minute touches. Yet the park, perched on an old elevated railway on the West Side of Manhattan, already seems like a permanent fixture, almost a small town in the air.
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Ruth Fremson/The New York Times

A High Line staircase above 10th Avenue, one of five access points to the elevated park, which opened its first stretch June 9.
The New York Times

The High Line winds above Chelsea and the West Village.
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Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times

The 20th street end of the park.

It has its own mobile skyline in the steady stream of heads (or, in the rain, umbrellas) bobbing above the trestle. It has its own economy, including the $15 High Line Picnic Baskets for sale at Friedman’s Lunch at the Chelsea Market (sandwich, cole slaw, pickle, chips, cookie, beverage). It has its own art scene, drawing students from Parsons sketching panoramas, and photographers armed with devices from cellphones to Leicas. It has its own neighborhoods and hot spots, shifting in feel throughout the day.

It even inspires crusty New Yorkers to behave as if they were strolling down Main Street in a small town rather than striding the walkway of a hyper-urban park — routinely smiling and nodding, even striking up conversations with strangers.

“Here people tend to be more friendly,” Kathy Roberson, who is retired but does volunteer work with the poor, said on Saturday. “Those same people, you mig

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travel nyc

Now Chatting | The Guggenheim’s Online Forum
By Pilar Viladas
GuggenheimPhoto by David Heald Installation view of “Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward.”

Attention armchair curators and otherwise opinionated people: Today, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum inaugurates the Guggenheim Forum, a series of moderated online discussions. Each forum, which is pegged to one of the museum’s exhibitions, is two weeks long and includes live chat sessions with experts in various fields, while also giving visitors the opportunity to submit comments, some of which will be selected for posting.

The inaugural forum, “Between the Over- and Underdesigned,” coincides with the museum’s exhibition “Frank Lloyd Wright: From Within Outward,” and addresses architecture’s social and environmental value in the context of Wright’s work and philosophy. Aric Chen, a writer and curator who is a frequent Times contributor, is moderating this forum and will lead a live chat session on June 25th at 11 a.m. EDT. Panelists include Sarah Herda, the executive director of the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in Chicago; Arjo Klamer, a professor of the economics of art and culture at Erasmus University in Rotterdam; and Ellen Lupton, the curator of contemporary design at the Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum.

The forum’s second live chat, with David van der Leer, the Guggenheim’s assistant curator of architecture and design and a co-curator of the Wright exhibition, will take place on June 30th at 2 p.m. eastern time. For those of you who haven’t made it to the show, check out the video narrated by van der Leer on the Guggenheim’s web site. Upcoming forum topics will include the museum’s Kandinsky retrospective, which opens September 18th.

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museums nyc

A Tour Guide Tames Lunch in Midtown
By JULIA MOSKIN

A COUPLE of Fridays ago, the metal gates of Fashion Soup were pulled down and padlocked tight. A narrow storefront on the dusty edge of the fashion district, it served a peculiar menu of soups like tomato-basil-mozzarella and crawfish bisque, with Colombian empanadas on the side. Its regulars appreciated the $6 soup, bread, cookie and fruit combo, but few in Manhattan would mourn, or even notice, its passing.

Except for Zach Brooks.

“This is Midtown Lunch history in the making!” he cried, lifting his camera to get a good shot of the blank wall. With the photo, Mr. Brooks was poised to update Fashion Soup’s listing on his Web site, with a plea for information about its closing.

Mr. Brooks is the founder, editor, and chief correspondent of Midtown Lunch, midtownlunch.com, a three-year-old Web site that serves those who toil in Midtown and hope to find something decent and reasonably priced to eat on their lunch breaks.

The site brings a measure of order to the roiling chaos of the area, which has almost 3,000 food businesses — delis, pizza joints, trucks, carts and restaurants — and almost one million daily workers, according to the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

“Midtown Lunch rescued me from those awful salad bars,” said Regina Soto, a 21-year-old receptionist for a jewelry company on West 47th Street, who commutes from Queens. “It’s confusing when you start working here, because your lunch hour is short and there are so many places,” she added. “When I started I didn’t know what ‘glatt kosher’ meant, or ‘halal.’ ”

Where other food bloggers might seek out the most authentic Neapolitan pizza, the spiciest Sichuan chicken, the crème of the crème brûlées, Mr. Brooks is a lyricist of low expectations. Many of his finds — and his followers’ favorites — aren’t the best that New York has to offer, and aren’t especially comfortable or welcoming. “Almost everything on the site could be prefaced by ‘For Midtown,’ ” he said. “As in, ‘For Midtown, th

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food nyc

A Tour Guide Tames Lunch in Midtown
Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

GRAB AND GO Kati rolls at Biryani Cart on West 46th Street, a hit on the Midtown Lunch site.

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By JULIA MOSKIN
Published: June 2, 2009

A COUPLE of Fridays ago, the metal gates of Fashion Soup were pulled down and padlocked tight. A narrow storefront on the dusty edge of the fashion district, it served a peculiar menu of soups like tomato-basil-mozzarella and crawfish bisque, with Colombian empanadas on the side. Its regulars appreciated the $6 soup, bread, cookie and fruit combo, but few in Manhattan would mourn, or even notice, its passing.
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Diner's Journal: What's in the White Sauce? He Doesn't Want to Know
Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times

STREET PATROL Zach Brooks at Biryani Cart.

Except for Zach Brooks.

“This is Midtown Lunch history in the making!” he cried, lifting his camera to get a good shot of the blank wall. With the photo, Mr. Brooks was poised to update Fashion Soup’s listing on his Web site, with a plea for information about its closing.

Mr. Brooks is the founder, editor, and chief correspondent of Midtown Lunch, midtownlunch.com, a three-year-old Web site that serves those who toil in Midtown and hope to find something decent and reasonably priced to eat on their lunch breaks.

The site brings a measure of order to the roiling chaos of the area, which has almost 3,000 food businesses — delis, pizza joints, trucks, carts and restaurants — and almost one million daily workers, according to the New York City Economi

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food nyc

I was brought up on dim-sum all my life- my family would go EVERY Saturday and Sunday for dim-sum in Brooklyn, Chinatown, Flushing, Hong Kong, Guangzhou...and I never had anything as innovative and unique as Dim Sum Go Go serves. First off, for all of you traditionalists- many places don't have push carts anymore- even in China- instead, they have been replaced with the steam-to-order ticketing system. So, yeah, this place does not have push carts, it's not noisy or hectic as most traditional places, thus, there aren't a lot of Chinese people there. And, the price is more expensive than most dim sum eateries, but you pay the same price at an Italian restaurant or an Indian restaurant or an American diner, and no one complains about the price...the only reason why people notice the price difference is that, at traditional dim sum places, the prices are CHEAP as heck.
But you get what you pay for...most places aren't made-to-order dim sum - this place is FRESH. It stands out against a backdrop of the same old, same old Chinese restaurants. The soups - a staple of Cantonese cuisine are made with a delicious and subtly flavored broth. The mango shrimp roll is one-of-a-kind and out-of-this-world. Unlike many other dim sum restaurants, their shrimp dumplings are filled with fresh shrimp and GREASEless. The duck dumplings are phenomenal too. True, their main entree plates run on the more expensive side, but don't go to Dim Sum Go Go for the entrees, go for the dim sum.
The service is wanting, so that can be a bit irritating- but the food is worth it.

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Photo of Caesar R.



76

90

Caesar R.

New York, NY
5 star rating
1/30/2009

I've been many of times to this little gem of a Chinese restaurant in our beloved Chinatown. And every time, it is consistently amazing. Granted, I am usually here for dim sum but have sampled a few other items on the menu. But this review is solely about the AWESOME DIM SUM. I have been to a

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food nyc

Dim Sum go go

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$$$
Rating Avg. Dinner Entrée$$$$$ Greater than $25
$$$$ $18.01 - $25
$$$ $12.01 - $18
$$ $7.01 - $12
$ Less than $7
* Chinese, Dim Sum, Vegetarian
* 5 E BroadwayNew York 10038
* (Btwn Catherine St & Chatham Sq)
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* Phone: (212) 732-0797
* Fax:(212) 964-3149

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Lunch Daily: 10am-4pm Dinner Daily: 4pm-11pm

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User Reviews

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Posted by Nicole Friedman on 02/14/2009
Subpar Dim Sum

My review would not be as bad if the price had been cheaper. For GOOD dim sum, your meal should be very inexpensive. I ordered only 3 different dim sum and 1 small soup and my bill was $23. I did go at dinner but still- that was way too much and left a sour taste. Not to mention the food was mediocre at best. The duck soup did not taste like duck soup; it tasted like standard over salted chicken broth that any bad chinese take-out chain uses in their wonton soup that had bits of duck added to it the last second. The duck dumplings, turnip cakes and steamed beef balls were ok but nothing to rave about; and not worth the price. Also, the waiters were standing around doing nothing while the place was nearly empty. I had to ask for the bill and again for the change. For dim sum, go elsewhere.
*

Posted by dimsumregular on 10/29/2008
Was good then

Those who don't understand the negativity obviously haven't witness the decline of quality (portion, too). If you like what you eat there now, you would have loved what they offered b

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food nyc

Go Go Crazy
The light flavors at Chinatown's first nouvelle dim sum joint, Dim Sum Go Go, could keep you feasting for hours. There's nothing light, however, about Tao.

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* By Adam Platt
* Published Jan 29, 2001

My quirky feeding habits were mostly formed in Asia, where I lived for many years as a child. The big meals of my youth (served up in places like Hong Kong, Taipei, and Tokyo) were elaborate, messy affairs where experimentation was encouraged and it was easy to get carried away. My brothers and I learned to eat competitively at banquet tables filled with plates of scallion pancakes and delicacies like bird's-nest soup. By the time we got back to the U.S., these take-no-prisoners tactics were deeply ingrained, and dining on starchy American foods, we ballooned to enormous size. Perhaps that's why I've always had a soft spot for dim sum. The ancient Cantonese cuisine is a civilized antidote to the dangers lurking, for me, in standard Chinese food. Dumplings of endless variety appear at the table one by one. You sample them between sips of tea, and you're pleasingly full at the end of the meal, not bloated, and your ears aren't ringing with MSG.

Until recently, this kind of leisurely experience was hard to find down in Chinatown. At big ballroom restaurants like the Golden Unicorn and Harmony Palace, Sunday-morning dim sum is more of a cultural event than a culinary one. Good dishes can be hard to find, and the atmosphere can feel more like a rugby scrum than like a meal. The food writer and consultant Colette Rossant is a veteran of this roughhouse dining, and has conceived her new restaurant, Dim Sum Go Go, as a nouvelle alternative to it. The bright, fluorescent-lit little storefront sits just off Chatham Square, on East Broadway, between the Transworld Buddhist Association and a prosperous-looking cell-phone shop. If you don't want to sit in one of the Italian designer chairs to eat your jícama-and-lotus-root dumplings, you can spirit

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Dear Concierge,

My husband (a real foodie) recently lost his job, which cuts our previously generous dining-out budget by, well, a lot. Masa is obviously out. Where can two adventurous eaters get a great, inexpensive meal? We’re willing to hit outer boroughs, if it helps. —L
Answer

Dear L:

So sorry to hear about your husband’s job. I’m sure we’re all right behind him. Hopefully, being reunited with grad-student eating will be something of a pleasure and a relief: all that service and having to sit up straight gets tiring. New York is still a cheap eater’s town, if you’re free for lunch and like the subway.

My favorite cheap(ish) meals lately have been a giant $16 (tax included) pork chop at Roberta’s in Bushwick, a $4.25 bowl of pho at Nam Son in Chinatown, the $8.95 lunch buffet at Dhaba in Little India, the succulent $10.95 chopped lamb and beef platter and filling $3 breads at Gazala Place in Hell’s Kitchen, flavorful dumplings of all fillings at Dim Sum Go-Go, $5.25 goat paratha with mint chutney at Lassi in Greenwich Village (or the $5.25 harissa falafel with Israeli carrot salad at nearby Taïm), a $9 half salt chicken (enough for two) at the baroque Congee Bowery and, skewing higher price- and quality-wise, my latest lunch-special addiction, the $19 prix-fixe chirashi (mixed sashimi on rice) with a free salad or soup at Sushi Yasuda in midtown. I also have a strange fixation with the dosa-cart man at Washington Square Park, but that’s another posting.

At night, my Queens-snob friends swear by Spicy & Tasty in Flushing, and I’ve had predictably great meals at SriPraPhai in Woodside (hello drunken noodles). Sticking closer to home, Great New York Noodletown is the go-to spot for a big BYOB group or a late-night drive-by for $4.25 hand-cut noodles and shrimp dumplings in broth, as well as the $4 roast duck with rice. I’ve also been getting the $11 burger prix-fixe at Black Iron Burger (burger, big beer and side, amen) when in the East Village, and, if I can get a table, the pulled-pork sliders or a grille

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food nyc

Honk if You Think It’s Over
By JOSH BARBANEL

THE panic in the Manhattan real estate market of the winter of 2009 lifted in the last few weeks, brokers say, as more and more buyers and sellers have found the courage and the comfort level to sign on the dotted line. A bidding war has even occasionally broken out, though at prices far below those of a year ago, and often considerably below asking price.

“When we were in free fall, nobody was willing to pull the trigger,” said John B. Gomes, a broker at Core Group Marketing. “Sellers are more realistic and buyers are optimistic, and we have the lowest interest rates in a generation.”

There is considerable room for skepticism, since the number of closed sales filed with the city remains near the lowest level in many years. Prices are still down as much as 30 percent and show no signs of rising, low-ball offers remain common and some of these latest deals may never come to fruition. But brokers say the climate has definitely changed, producing sales at all price points, as some buyers, tired of looking and waiting, are seizing the moment. Suddenly, brokers say, it is exciting to be in real estate again.

Deals picked up first among studios and one-bedrooms, which benefited from a combination of lower prices, reduced interest rates and incentives for first-time buyers. Then apartments selling under $3 million began to stir. Finally, in the last few weeks, a number of significant deals have been done in the somnolent market for trophy apartments listed above $10 million, brokers say. Sales of many expensive new Manhattan condominiums remain sluggish, however.

At Brown Harris Stevens, a real estate brokerage firm, contracts were off 60 percent last fall, after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, and a steep plunge in the stock market brought deal making to a near halt. But Hall F. Willkie, the company’s president, said that as spring — the peak selling season in New York — got under way, contracts picked up sharply. Sales, off 30 percent in April from a year earlier, wer

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nyc

If You're Thinking of Living In/Sutton Place; Prestigious Address With Villagelike Feel
By CLAIRE WILSON

ELEANOR AND LEONARD GARBIN raised two children on a 14-acre property in Pound Ridge, a picturesque Westchester town on the Connecticut line. But when a three-year stint living in downtown Cincinnati convinced the two that they were city dwellers at heart, they embraced the convenience of a Manhattan co-op apartment just a few steps from the East River.

They have changed apartments in the 60-unit building, but the two Brooklyn natives have not looked back in the 22 years since they moved to Sutton Place, a tidy and somewhat out-of-the-way Manhattan enclave that runs from 53rd to 59th Streets between First Avenue and the East River.

''It's almost like living in Europe,'' said Mrs. Garbin, whose 13th floor two-bedroom apartment offers glimpses of the river and lots of light. ''There are little mom-and-pop stores, tailors, shoe repair places and cheese stores. I walk to the river and sit in the parks, and we have a garden in our building.''

Comparisons with blocks of London mews houses and Eaton Square abound around Sutton Place and Sutton Place South, the section of the street below 57th Street. The dozen or so town houses and numerous luxurious co-op apartment buildings on the thoroughfare, one of the borough's most prestigious addresses, as well as the east-west streets, have historically been home to luminaries of all stripes. Current residents include Secretary General Kofi Annan of the United Nations, the film star Sigourney Weaver, the entertainer Bobby Short and the architect I. M. Pei.

The neighborhood's slightly isolated feel provides welcome privacy for some, but for others it is too far off the beaten path, despite being well served by city buses, including express lines to Wall Street. Five blocks from the nearest subway, it is often dismissed by potential buyers who perceive it as a luxurious Little Siberia.

Michele Klausner thought the location might be a disadvantage when in 1990 she purchase

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nyc

Off-Duty Officer Fatally Shot by Police
By RUSS BUETTNER and AL BAKER

A New York City police officer who had just gotten off duty was fatally shot late Thursday in East Harlem by a fellow officer who mistook him for an armed criminal, Police Commissioner Raymond W. Kelly said.

The officer who was killed, Omar J. Edwards, 25, a two-year veteran who was assigned to patrol housing projects and was wearing plain clothes, was shot in the arm and chest after a team of three other plainclothes officers in a car came upon him chasing a man on East 125th Street between First and Second Avenues with his gun drawn, Mr. Kelly said.

The team’s members, assigned to the anticrime unit in the 25th Precinct, got out of their vehicle and confronted Officer Edwards. The police were investigating whether the officers had identified themselves or demanded that Officer Edwards drop his weapon before one of them opened fire.

Mr. Kelly identified the officer who fired the shots only as a four-year veteran of the department, and said he had fired six rounds from his 9-millimeter Glock. Two bullets struck Officer Edwards.

Officer Edwards, a recently married father of two from Brooklyn, was taken to Harlem Hospital Center, where he was pronounced dead at 11:21 p.m. No one else was injured.

"While we don’t know all of the details of what happened tonight, this is a tragedy,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said during an early morning news conference at the hospital. “Rest assured we will find out exactly what happened here and see what we can learn from it so it can never happen again.”

The shooting is likely to raise questions again about departmental procedures involving communications among plainclothes officers — particularly those in different units — as well as issues of race. Officer Edwards was black; the officer who shot him was white.

Mr. Kelly said the tragic string of events began when Officer Edwards, a member of the Housing Bureau Impact Response Team, left duty about 10:30 p.m., approached his car and saw that a man had b

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nyc

The only example of anything like that in the show is a wonderful Wright-designed theater curtain, which was included at the special insistence of Bruce Brooks Pfeiffer, the Wright archivist who also supplied all the drawings. The curtain has nothing to do with the rest of the show, but it's the one item that works with the Guggenheim's space. Everything about this exhibit feels thrown together. Nothing about it suggests the presence of a critical intelligence. The in-house principal curator, David van der Leer, joined the project midway in its development, and admits he had little previous background on Wright. The cosponsoring group, the Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation, certainly knows its man but it tends to ignore his numerous faults. You'd never guess from the show, or the catalogue that accompanies it, that Wright's buildings, however wonderful, were usually over budget and often plagued by construction flaws.
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FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT: From Within Outward At the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Av., New York, through Aug. 23. 212-423-3500, www.guggenheim.org/new-york

All that said, there's still a lot to like. No show about a figure as fascinating as Wright can fail to be interesting. Those 200 drawings, for example. Most are in Wright's own hand. Some are formal presentation drawings, some are quick and even sloppy sketches. You can follow some of the designs - that of the Guggenheim itself, for instance - as they developed over time. (In several early renderings, the entire Guggenheim exterior is bright red.) Fans will want to pore over these drawings, many rarely seen. There's a welcome emphasis, too, on Wright's larger, lesser-known works, most of which never got built, such as his amazing sci-fi-like proposals for Baghdad in the 1950s. Among his many other sources, Wright was an admirer of Islamic art and architecture.

Besides the main show I'd recommend a trip to the Sackler Center in the Guggenheim basement. Wright started a school for young architects, the Taliesin Fellowshi

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museums nyc architecture

The Boston Globe
Can so much Wright be wrong?
Exhibition of legend's work is vast, flawed
The great architect Frank Lloyd Wright was hyper-sensitive to the nature of place, as two houses he built for himself, one in Wisconsin (left) and one in Arizona, illustrate. Both of them are documented in a major new show at the Guggenheim Museum. The great architect Frank Lloyd Wright was hyper-sensitive to the nature of place, as two houses he built for himself, one in Wisconsin (left) and one in Arizona, illustrate. Both of them are documented in a major new show at the Guggenheim Museum. (Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation (Left), The Frank Lloyd Wright Foundation)
By Robert Campbell
Globe Correspondent / May 24, 2009

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NEW YORK - There's a major new show here at the Guggenheim Museum on the work of America's greatest architect, Frank Lloyd Wright.
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FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT: From Within Outward At the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, 1071 Fifth Av., New York, through Aug. 23. 212-423-3500, www.guggenheim.org/new-york

If, like this writer, you're a Wright fan, there's tons of stuff to look at. No less than 64 of the master's buildings are here in the form of drawings, models, photos, even computer simulations. The show is a grandma's attic of Wrightiania, and you're sure to be fascinated by stuff you've never noticed.

If you're not such a fan, though, and you don't already know your way around Wright's work, I'm afraid this exhibit will seem random, confused, and pointless.

The occasion for the show is a double anniversary. Wright died at 91 in the same year the Guggenheim opened, 50 years ago, in 1959. The museum, one of his most famous creations, has just completed a massive $30 million, three-year renovation.

It must have seemed like a great idea. But an anniversary isn't an agenda, and this show doesn't have one. Instead it settles for rehashing every cliché you've ever heard about Wright.

Start with the title:

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museums nyc

Made in U.S.A.’ Shines After Makeover
By HOLLAND COTTER

When the Metropolitan Museum set up its first sculpture department in 1886, it threw in anything and everything that wasn’t framed, stitched or printed: “all the sculptures, pottery, porcelain, glassware, jewelry, engraved gems, bronzes, inscriptions, and other such objects of art, commonly termed Bric-a-Brac.”

No doubt to some eyes the museum’s newly reopened American galleries look like Bric-a-Brac City. Twenty generously appointed period rooms, 12 of them seriously spiffed up, along with the glass-enclosed Charles Engelhard Court flooded with Central Park light, hold the full range of items specified in that early Met inventory and much, much more.

And all look good, especially the court. When it made its debut in 1980, it had a sunken floor and large beds of plantings. The floor has now been raised and paved with light-colored stone and the plantings reduced to clear a wide-open space. What was once a kind of oversize conversation pit with a cafe to the side is now a full-fledged sculpture garden, with a lot more sculpture and a lot less garden. (The cafe is still there.)

This is not to say that all has changed. Familiar architecturally scaled pieces have stayed more or less where they were. The two-story limestone facade of Martin E. Thompson’s Branch Bank of the United States, built in 1822 on Wall Street, still forms a main entrance to the American galleries. The pillared loggia designed by Louis Comfort Tiffany for his home, Laurelton Hall, in Oyster Bay on Long Island, continues to face the bank from across the court.

The spectacular pulpit and choir rail carved by Karl Bitter in 1900 for All Angels Church in Manhattan has migrated from the west side of the court to the east. Near it is the marble, oak and mosaic fireplace cooked up Augustus Saint-Gaudens for the Cornelius Vanderbilt II mansion on Fifth Avenue at 57th Street. The house, which took up an entire block, is gone. The fireplace, with its two chiton-clad caryatids named “Peace” and “

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museums nyc

For Sale by Owner: 13 Acres. All 6,500 Tenants to Remain.
By JENNIFER 8. LEE

For sale: 13 acres, 4.5 of them undeveloped. Easy access to public transportation. Walking distance to the waterfront. Historical details. Lush landscaping. Well maintained by its landlord of more than a century.

One last thing: It’s a cemetery, one that comes with 6,500 filled graves.

And it is not an easy sale.

Just ask New York City, which has been trying to sell Canarsie Cemetery in Brooklyn for more than 25 years.

This year, it is trying again. The city’s Department of Citywide Administrative Services issued a request for bids this week, and officials say they hope it will be more fruitful than the last round, which took place in the mid-1990s during the administration of Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

“I don’t think they got a single bidder,” said Richard D. Fishman, the director of New York State’s Division of Cemeteries, who oversees the 1,800 cemeteries in the state that are not owned by churches, families or municipalities. He added, “So we’ll see what happens this summer.”

There are about 6,000 cemeteries across New York State, and it is unusual to see one changing ownership, especially for money. Mr. Fishman recalled that a while back, the city of Buffalo took over a religious cemetery, but he added, “This is unique, taking over a municipal cemetery.”

New York City never intended to get into the cemetery business. It is an unhappy inheritance. The Canarsie Cemetery, at the corner of Remsen Avenue and Avenue K, was originally owned by the town of Flatlands, which then became part of Brooklyn. When the five boroughs merged in 1898, the ownership passed to New York City, which has handed it off to a veritable alphabet soup of agencies, some of which are defunct.

“Bureaucracies have changed, agencies have changed names, and the cemetery remains,” said Mark Daly, the spokesman for the administrative services department.

While the city oversees dozens of cemeteries, some of them very small, Canarsie is the only still operatin

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nyc

From Frisée to Finance, It Has to Be Perfect
By DAVID SEGAL

IN the middle of the kitchen at Daniel, a four-star restaurant on the Upper East Side, a set of steep stairs leads to a cozy little nook known as the skybox. It has one lacquered-wood table, room for four diners, a television and two large windows overlooking the action below. The space feels like the eating quarters of a yacht set in a tree house.

The skybox is available to customers by special request, but on a recent afternoon, the chef and co-owner Daniel Boulud is sitting here in a white, double-breasted chef’s coat, ready for the latest round of taste tests for a restaurant called DBGB. His first foray into casual fare and his 10th restaurant, it is slated to open on the Lower East Side in about two weeks.

First up is a small dish of escargot and tomatoes topped with a puff pastry, which is set before him by Jim Leiken, 34, who will be in charge of DBGB’s kitchen.

“Did you hear the music?” Mr. Boulud asks as he studies the plate and grabs some silverware.

“Yeah, it sizzled,” Mr. Leiken replies.

Mr. Boulud chews for a moment, and then there is silence.

“I’m still not convinced,” he finally says, speaking with the sort of French accent that sounds authoritative in any discussion of flavor. “I mean, I love escargot and garlic, and all that. But I’m still thinking of doing a custard on the bottom and then a purée of escargot and then the puff pastry so you have almost a reverse tart.”

Known for his sumptuous menus and seamless service, Mr. Boulud — the name, brain and palate behind one of the country’s gold-plated dining empires — has already taken a bow for just about every round of applause that the industry has to offer. With the Dinex Group, a management company he co-founded, he and a team of managers and accountants oversee an operation with more than 900 employees in markets as far-flung as Beijing and Vancouver.

They have not misfired yet, but Mr. Boulud and his cadre might be trying their trickiest maneuver to date, creating DBGB at a

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Hopes and Habits Persevere at Churches Gone, but Not Destroyed
By PAUL VITELLO and CHRISTINE HAUGHNEY

During the peak of the real estate boom, one of New York’s largest landowners unloaded more than $100 million worth of property — and might have sold more if not for the parishioners who clung to their churches and blocked the bulldozers.

The seller was the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of New York, which closed more than two dozen houses of worship and schools between 2003 and 2008. It sold development rights to a handful of properties, leased others and padlocked the rest in an effort to narrow a local budget gap, while confronting nationwide trends like low attendance, a priest shortage, the rising cost of maintaining century-old buildings, and a new demand for churches in the far exurbs.

Some people watched as their old churches were demolished.

Many more enlisted help from lawyers, politicians and historic preservationists, and in many cases wrestled the archdiocese to a Pyrrhic standstill. Today, their churches — a half-dozen in Manhattan and one in the Bronx — still stand, but are locked tight, unused, while the altars, pews, statuary and stained-glass windows of some have been removed piece by piece for use in other churches.

None of this necessarily changes now just because a new archbishop, the affable and ever-smiling Timothy M. Dolan, has taken over from Cardinal Edward M. Egan, the flinty administrator who engineered the archdiocese’s “consolidation,” as the sell-off and closings were called.

But people tied by mystic cords to aging churches — people who pray on sidewalks in front of padlocked church doors for two years of Sundays, for example — take heart according to intangible calculations of their own.

“Look! He’s waving! That’s more than I expected,” said Zaida Rodriguez, turning to a friend outside St. Patrick’s Cathedral last month, gauging what she hoped was Archbishop Dolan’s positive reaction to her sign: “Our Lady Queen of Angels in East Harlem Welcomes Our New Archbishop Timothy Dolan

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So sorry to hear about your husband’s job. I’m sure we’re all right behind him. Hopefully, being reunited with grad-student eating will be something of a pleasure and a relief: all that service and having to sit up straight gets tiring. New York is still a cheap eater’s town, if you’re free for lunch and like the subway.

My favorite cheap(ish) meals lately have been a giant $16 (tax included) pork chop at Roberta’s in Bushwick, a $4.25 bowl of pho at Nam Son in Chinatown, the $8.95 lunch buffet at Dhaba in Little India, the succulent $10.95 chopped lamb and beef platter and filling $3 breads at Gazala Place in Hell’s Kitchen, flavorful dumplings of all fillings at Dim Sum Go-Go, $5.25 goat paratha with mint chutney at Lassi in Greenwich Village (or the $5.25 harissa falafel with Israeli carrot salad at nearby Taïm), a $9 half salt chicken (enough for two) at the baroque Congee Bowery and, skewing higher price- and quality-wise, my latest lunch-special addiction, the $19 prix-fixe chirashi (mixed sashimi on rice) with a free salad or soup at Sushi Yasuda in midtown. I also have a strange fixation with the dosa-cart man at Washington Square Park, but that’s another posting.

At night, my Queens-snob friends swear by Spicy & Tasty in Flushing, and I’ve had predictably great meals at SriPraPhai in Woodside (hello drunken noodles). Sticking closer to home, Great New York Noodletown is the go-to spot for a big BYOB group or a late-night drive-by for $4.25 hand-cut noodles and shrimp dumplings in broth, as well as the $4 roast duck with rice. I’ve also been getting the $11 burger prix-fixe at Black Iron Burger (burger, big beer and side, amen) when in the East Village, and, if I can get a table, the pulled-pork sliders or a grilled gruyère on Blue Ribbon Bakery Pullman, served with McClure’s pickles, at Wilfie & Nell in the West Village.
When I want to splurge, I get the $35 dinner special at Matsugen. The room is elegant (if quiet), the food is excellent (service, however, is a little spotty — the servers are almost t

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Megabus builds up buses on busy route
Low-fare line will use double-deckers on Hub-to-New York runs

By Katie Johnston Chase, Globe Staff | May 13, 2009

Megabus, which offers free wireless Internet access and seats for as low as $1, is rolling out something new along the ultracompetitive Boston-to-New York route: double-decker buses.

Starting today, the company plans to switch all its buses on the route to double-deckers - 13 in all. They're not your typical open-air tour buses packed with sightseers. They seat 81 passengers - 25 more than a regular coach - and they're loaded with amenities that include Wi-Fi access, electronic outlets, and TVs. Some of the newer buses traveling to and from Boston will also have a 51-inch-wide glass ceiling.

The new double-deckers are only 18 inches taller than a regular bus, but this height difference means they can't maneuver inside South Station, where Megabus.com has been based for nearly a year, so the double-deckers will operate out of Back Bay Station. The 13-foot-1-inch buses drop off passengers at Penn Station in New York.

Double-deckers are common in Europe, but Megabus.com, a subsidiary of Coach USA, is the only North American company using them for city-to-city travel, said Dale Moser, chief operating officer. Megabus plans to convert its entire fleet, built by the Belgian company Van Hool, to double-deckers by September.

The change makes sense both economically and environmentally: The bigger buses carry more people, don't require additional drivers, and use less gas.

"It becomes a much more environmentally friendly vehicle," said Moser, who added the double-decker buses are four times more efficient than standard buses.

The buses can also be exciting for passengers, said New York University graduate student Denise Birkhofer, who rode a double-decker Megabus on the way back from a trip to Philadelphia to visit art museums last month. It sounded fun, she said, "like having a little piece of London." She sat on the top floor, and she wasn't disappointed.

Not

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Peace, Quiet and Pajama-Clad Jazz
By STEPHEN P. WILLIAMS

FRANKIE FOYE styles hair for a living, traveling to studios and locations around the world to make models look just right in fashion advertisements for such clients as Bergdorf Goodman and Victoria’s Secret.

Since she spends so many days working with big crews in noisy photography studios filled with blaring music and inordinate demands, she has made her large one-bedroom apartment in the West Village a serene, private sanctuary.

“I hardly ever have people over,” Ms. Foye said recently, as light poured into her living room and kitchen from the three huge windows.

She doesn’t want any bad energy messing up the carefully curated mood of the high-ceilinged rooms. “I love living alone,” Ms. Foye said.

Despite her penchant for quiet, she sometimes colors and cuts the locks of very good friends, or very interesting people, at home. In one corner of her eat-in kitchen, with its ancient painted cabinets and original hinges and door pulls, a chair sits in front of a tall custom-made mirror.

“This is the salon,” she said. “Debbie Harry has had her hair done here. Molly Sims. Jennifer Nettles, the singer from Sugarland. Another singer named Patty Griffin.”

Ms. Foye, who changed her name from Mary Ellen to Frankie years ago, just because it sounded right, grew up far from New York, and celebrities, in Manchester, N.H.

She was the last of seven children, raised by her father after her mother died.

“I’m third-generation Black Irish in America, and my father even had a trace of a brogue,” she said.

After high school, she studied hairstyling in Manchester, and found she had a real talent for the trade. Seeking to live in the broader world, she got a job at a high-end salon on Newberry Street in Boston. It was boring.

“One day I walked by another salon with amazingly high-energy music blaring, and the people looked like they were having a good time and I thought, ‘Wow, a black salon,’ ” Ms. Foye said.

She got a job there, and learned a whole new approach to hair

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