Damn That Moses!

The feather in every city reporter’s cap — the Times’ Nicholas Confessore finds a subject who still curses Robert Moses:

To survey the history of Frank’s Department Store, you need only look at the merchandise scattered and stacked about the place. A partial list, in no particular order, includes children’s sailor suits, bone knitting needles, thermal underwear, truckers’ caps featuring the 1980’s sitcom puppet Alf, corduroy slacks with blue piping, newsboy hats, bicentennial American flags, gray plaid knickers and black nylon stockings preserved in tissue paper.

Since the 1930’s, Frank’s has carried a little bit of everything for everybody, crammed into a single long, musty room on Union Street in Brooklyn, one block from the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Today the few leftovers layer the shelves and counters like rock strata.

. . .

Now Frank’s, too, is a relic. These days, if you want pantyhose, you go to Duane Reade; if you want corduroys, you go to Old Navy. (If you want knickers, you’re pretty much out of luck.) Some time in the coming days, when it finishes selling its stock, Frank’s will go dark.

“A store like this is really passé; it’s an antique,” Mrs. Milea said. “Business has not been good.”

Once, Frank’s was part of the thriving commercial district along Columbia Street. With the nearby waterfront booming, and pushcarts filled with fruits and vegetables lining the streets, Frank Sacco borrowed $1,500 from his in-laws in 1937 and opened the store in a space a few doors west of its current location.

. . .

Construction of the expressway in the 1950’s, however, sliced the area in half, cutting Frank’s off from many of its customers. “I wasn’t too fond of Moses,” says Mrs. Milea, referring to Robert Moses, New York’s master builder and prime mover of the expressway, among many other projects. Then the shipping industry began to trickle across the harbor to New Jersey, taking jobs with it and sending the Columbia Street area into a slow decline.

And big, big bonus points to dropping in a totally organic reference to Alf trucker caps . . . !

British Royalty In New York City Met With Wadlerian Yawn

We’ve come a long way since revolutionaries melted down a statue of King George III and used the scrap for bullets — evidenced by one-time Boldface Names Captain Joyce Wadler cutting to the chase on the topic Charles and Camilla’s royal visit to the city:

But since this is, after all, a marketing tour for Britain, the big question remains: How is the 58-year-old duchess, who has been viewed as an ungainly frump throughout her long liaison with the prince, looking these days?

This was a hard question to determine, for those in the small, undemonstrative crowd at Photo Op No. 1, the World Trade Center, had to squint through a chain link fence to try to see the duchess, who was outfitted as conspicuously as possible in a brilliant fuchsia suit with a matching velvet collar. She had several strings of pearls around her neck, carried a black rectangular clutch bag and – this is most important – wore black stilettos, a sign, when worn by a middle-aged woman, that she is really, really trying.

I Wanna Destroy You

You know rock music is fossilized when the mayor comes to the aid of CBGB:

CBGB – the punk rock mecca facing eviction from its East Village home – picked up an unlikely booster yesterday in the pinstriped form of Mayor Bloomberg.

Hizzoner, while conceding he has never set foot in the famed club, said the city was hoping either to keep CBGB from getting bounced out of 315 Bowery or find it a new home.

“It’s more than just another club,” Bloomberg said of the dank bar that helped launch Blondie, the Ramones and the Talking Heads.

Dirty Pillows

The Plaza Hotel is selling off its inventory in preparation for its overhaul. Gross old pillows are going for $6. Gross old comforters are going for $30. Gross old bellhop uniforms are going for $100. The Daily News has more. Its coverage includes liberal doses of phrases such as “glam garage sale,” “classy clearance sale,” “tony trinkets” and “leftover luxuries.”