Tag: legends of new york

Remaster || Trash & Vaudeville

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They make an interesting pair, don’t you think?

  • Irena Haiduk, REMASTER, 2020
  • Irena Haiduk, REMASTER, 2020

REMASTER is Irena Haiduk‘s ongoing cinematic adaptation of Mikhail Bulgakov’s novel, The Master and Margarita (written 1928-40). Her project is guided by one of the central principles offered by the novel: the existing infrastructure of this world must be used to create a new one. Glittering surfaces, velvet furnishings, bright flowers, and shifting light conditions create a seductive environment containing fragments of spells and hidden designs. The sound of a cat’s purr reverberates around the galleries with both comfort and threat. [source: The Swiss Institute]

Trash and Vaudeville, was founded by Ray Goodman in 1975, back when St. Marks Place was the epicenter of the City’s rock-and-roll and bohemia. Iggy Pop, Debbie Harry, the Ramones, and everyone who was anyone in the rock scene, were regulars. Tommy Hilfiger would buy clothes and resell them in his upstate stores Underground and People’s Place. It introduced Doc Martens to New Yorkers, the first ever shop in the United States to carry the brand. In 2016, it was relocated to 96 East 7th Street, not far from its original location, just far enough from the noodle shops that have taken over St. Marks Place.

January 20th, 2020

Celebrating Bill Cunningham

The Humble Fabulist2 Comments

… the legendary journalist, one of New York City’s most beloved photographers, who started his long career as a milliner.

At once elegant and whimsical, Cunningham’s hats were favoured by upscale clients who enjoyed wearing fashionable works of art. His beach hats were, in his words, ”a bit outrageous”. Woven raffia show-stoppers topped with cascading sprays of feathers or chiffon, the hats sported deep crowns created to to fit comfortably over the high-piled bouffant hairstyles of the early 1960s.

Cunningham opened his first millinery shop in a brownstone on East 52nd Street, where he cleaned for his landlords in exchange for living and work space. He then moved uptown o West 54th Street and to West 57th Street, before relocating to the Carnegie Hall Studios. In addition to hats, he also made muffs and masks, often of feathers. Cunningham regarded feathers as the ultimate ”objects of beauty”. 

Bill Cunningham is remembered today as a milliner, photojournalist and social anthropologist. His most treasured, life-long pursuit, however, was that of a loyal friend. Over the nearly seventy years he lived in New York, he touched a wide circle of friends with his energy, creativity, kindness and quiet humility. 

New-York Historical Society acquired a number of objects, personal correspondence, ephemera, and photographs reflecting the life and work of Bill Cunningham, including his bike, camera and iconic blue jacket. They were all on display between June and September 2018.

New-York Historical Society

June 23rd, 2018

At Katz’s

The Humble Fabulist3 Comments

Before going to Katz’s make sure you work up a very healthy appetite. That’s what all that flânerie, walking from Hell’s Kitchen down to the East Village,  helped us do and even then we had to share a pastrami sandwich. For Katz’s Delicatessen is renowned not only for their legendary pastrami but also for their sandwiches of gargantuan proportions (ok, and for that orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally which, having tasted said pastrami, it totally makes sense).

August 20th, 2017