Life in and around Hell’s Kitchen, NYC
It’s almost time. The second location of the insanely-popular Totto Ramen is gearing up to open. The paper’s come down from the windows, and revealed a nearly-ready restaurant.
It’s a big change from the brick wall that used to be there, which street view captured:
They’ve been hard at work on the place over the past few months – here’s our previous coverage – but it looks like the construction’s quickly coming to an end. With any luck it’ll split the crowd outside the main Totto Ramen in half, so there’ll actually be a chance to get a seat at one of them.
Looking out over the rail tracks along 37th:
It seems like fall is the season to do renovations. A little bit late, but Energy Kitchen closed a few weeks ago while they update the store.
As the sign says, if you can’t survive without your EK fix you can visit their other locations, but be warned: the nearest ones are down in Chelsea or way across town.
At the latest art show at Shop Studios today:
They also had this going on:
Oh, art.
As you’re no doubt aware, today’s the NYC Marathon. The course doesn’t come below 59th St, so if you want to catch the action you can head up to the final corner at Columbus Circle. They already had all the grandstands and everything set up yesterday:
Of course you can always just keep up with the action on TV:
It’s going to be a long day for everyone involved. At least it’s cooler than yesterday.
Taking “fall” a bit too literally, there’s pieces of a fallen tree near the bike lane around 41st & 9th. In case you somehow were going to miss it, there’s caution tape around it, so don’t worry.
Nothing’s changed since last night:
Big day today.
An elderly woman had an accident this evening outside the uptown subway entrance at 51st & 8th. Apparently she either fell or just collapsed on the sidewalk without warning. Fortunately paramedics arrived within minutes, and quickly took her to into an ambulance.
Hopefully she makes a speedy recovery.
At the Cupcake Café today:
Because this show – which is filming just a few streets over – didn’t look terrible enough already. Posted on the window at the Broadway Comedy Club:
“All it craziness”, indeed.
Here’s a nice, in-depth article by Rachel Delia Benaim for your weekend reading, looking at something people might not really think about all that much: bakeries. Specifically, the struggles local bakeries in the neighborhood are having trying to keep up with the rapid gentrification things like Hudson Yards, Gotham West, and insert-your-development-of-choice are helping bring.
A taste (get it…because it’s food-related…):
Many bakeries in the neighborhood have already relocated or gone out of business. As she prepared baklava in front of well-kept antique baking ovens, Fable recalled, “We used to have two French bakeries, but they aren’t here anymore.” Italian bakeries no longer exist in the neighborhood either — “if you want Italian, head to Little Italy or cross town,” she said with a sigh. “We’ve seen many many changes in this neighborhood.”
Head over to the full article for an interesting read.
It looks like the always-busy Añejo Tequileria, across from Hell’s Kitchen Park, are planning to enter the world of “multi-location spots”. Not super relevant to our neighborhood I guess, but according to the Tribeca Citizen, they’ve submitted applications to open a second location down in Tribeca.
Always good to see one of our local places doing well, especially in the wake of the latest round of closures over the past month.
December 14. Mark your calendars. SantaCon put out a tweet the other day confirming the date of the event. We heard last month that the organizers had decided to officially skip Hell’s Kitchen during the “festivities”, so in theory this news doesn’t matter anymore, but there’s always the chance some of the “santas” will end up here. The more you know.
Here’s this photo from last year’s event again, because I just love it that much:
As we mentioned previously, members of the community wrote a letter after the horrors festivities of last year’s event, which got the organizers to agree to skip the neighborhood, but it turns out that wasn’t the only letter to get sent. Just last month, State Senator Brad Hoylman sent a letter out to the mysterious organizers asking them to work with the NYPD and community boards to figure out how to better handle the event. We’ll see if anything comes of that.
We’ve taking the day off for Halloween (too much sugar?). Have fun out there. Pretty much every bar along 9th Ave has had some form of Halloween celebration going, and they’re all still going, so go for it. You can always call in sick tomorrow.
There’s been an ongoing saga over the past year about the legality of sites like Airbnb, where people can rent out part or all of their apartment to short-term guests. The city views these as “illegal hotels”, emphasis on the illegal, while Airbnb and the “hosts” say it shouldn’t be considered the same, and are trying to get the laws changed.
With all that going on, The New York World have put together, amongst other things, a map of all of the complaints about potential illegal hotels across the city from Independence Day through to the October 1st, and there’s a lot. This comes to us via our “neighbors to the north”, West Side Rag.
Head over to the full article for more about the whole Airbnb vs New York saga in general. It’s quite an ordeal.