Here’s Where We Insert A Snappy Reference To A Kinks Song*

But then you’d be asking yourself Who is Ray Davies and why should I care? I can’t completely argue with you there:

He wore a trilby, Ray-Bans, a multicolored scarf, gray stovepipe jeans, and running shoes, and a skeptical expression that belied an affable mood. “The first time I came to New York, with the Kinks, in 1965, we stayed in the Hilton,” he said, heading north on Broadway, toward Columbus Circle. “I was too intimidated to go out. Everybody went out and partied, but I stayed in. I got my six-pack — well, they weren’t six-packs in those days — I got my crate of beer and just drank.”

The Time Warner Center was news to him — “This went up really quickly” — but of little interest. As he walked uptown he pointed out landmarks: the homes or offices of various collaborators or friends — the remastering man, the press agent, the Broadway arranger, the actress from “The Edge of Night” whose story of the cast’s singing its lines in rehearsals (out of boredom) inspired Davies to make the not-so-well-received concept album “The Kinks Present a Soap Opera.”

*Oh, OK, you really got me: “Your Mama And Your Papa And Fat Old Uncle Charlie Out Cruising With Their Friends”.

In Old Timey Time, We Worried About Whether Our Esophagus Would Be Strafed By Stray Bits Of Glass

Brooklyn nostalgia reaches even more absurd heights:

Customers at Sahadi’s, Brooklyn’s primary stop on the Near Eastern spice route, are still fuming that the grocer has replaced the classic glass jars with generic plastic containers in the nuts, dried fruits and candies section.

“Everyone is talking about it,” said Charlie Sahadi, the second-generation owner. “No one likes change less than me,” but “my concern is about my customers, not about my jars.”

The jars were a big part of the shopping experience at Sahadi’s. The store, open since 1948, contained dozens of large, circular glass jars, each containing a different kind of nut, dried fruit or candy. Customers would take a number and wait for an employee to scoop out their order.

The shapely glass jars made a distinctive clinking noise when lid made contact with base, but that repeated clinking led to chipping, with bits of glass ending up in the food.

In other stores, a change like this would be insignificant, but like other recent changes to the Atlantic Avenue grocery, famous for foods of the Levant, anything that tinkers with the old-time atmosphere is sure to draw fire.

“I don’t like them,” said one longtime shopper who didn’t want to give her name. “The new ones look like any deli. I prefer to see broken glass because it has more identity.”

The Key To Unlocking The City Is Gold-Plated Pewter And Costs $100 To Make

And Fats Domino is still around:

Keep your eye out. Fats Domino could show up anywhere in New York at any moment. He now has the “freedom of the city.” And an official, five-and-three-quarters-inch-long gold-plated pewter key to prove it.

To honor Mr. Domino’s fund-raising efforts on behalf of the struggling musicians of New Orleans, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg presented him with a key to New York City on Thursday night, following a municipal custom going back 305 years. (The key was presented at the Pink Elephant club in Chelsea, a municipal custom going back only to Thursday night.)

Mr. Bloomberg may be better known for his advocacy of the latest technology than his fondness for historical pomp, but he has managed to hand out 28 keys so far in his mayoralty; not a bad clip compared with his immediate predecessor, Rudolph W. Giuliani, who had presented 32 keys by this point in his second term.

“Even as times change and technology advances, the key to the city symbolizes how New York City’s gates will always remain open,” said Matthew Kelly, a spokesman for Mr. Bloomberg.

Except as David Dunlap’s article points out, the key isn’t all that symbolic and really hasn’t changed all that much:

Ashburns Engravers of 90 John Street, six blocks from City Hall, makes the keys. They cost $100 each. A supply is always kept on hand in the mayor’s office. They are presented in black velour-covered boxes with a small plate on top saying, “Facsimile of key made in 1812 for the door of City Hall, New York.”

In fact, a jumbo skeleton key about nine inches long and bearing notches similar to the mayoral key is still used to unlock the rear door of City Hall.

And A-Rod has one, too (a gift from Bloomberg). I’m just saying . . .

Remembering The Greenpoint Terminal Market Fire Just Gets You In The Gutt, Man

The Landmarks Commission stokes, er, fans the, er, throws oil, er, should we say provocatively draws a link between the Greenpoint Terminal Market Fire and current preservation efforts around the neighborhood:

A city panel has landmarked Greenpoint’s Eberhard Faber pencil factory and several surrounding buildings — just in time, one commissioner remarked, to protect the building from “development fever [and] fires.”

In addition to the most famous of the Eberhard buildings — the factory at 61 Greenpoint Ave. with its distinctive pencil-shaped adornments . . . — the Landmarks Preservation Commission also protected eight other 19th- and 20th-century factory buildings, placing them all in the “Eberhard Faber Pencil Company Historic District.”

The district abuts the Greenpoint Terminal Market, a warehouse complex that burned in a suspicious fire last year — an incident in a rapidly gentrifying neighborhood that was evoked by Brooklyn Commissioner Elizabeth Ryan during Tuesday’s hearing.

“Development fever is raging through the neighborhood — as well as fires — so the sooner this is protected, the better,” she said.

Join The Starbucks Team — We’re On The Winning Side Of History

The Second Avenue Deli is now a bank and the site of an infamous 1950s mob hit is — what else? — now a Starbucks:

The barista stood stock still, her cold eyes glistening off the cool metal of the espresso machine. She grabbed the handle, and bang! bang! a few quick hits to the side, and before anyone knew what was happened, a Macchiato, double-shot, lay steaming on the counter.

Fifty years ago Thursday, in the same spot that very espresso machine sat coldly whipping nonfat mocha lattes, perhaps the most notorious mob hit in history happened.

Albert Anastasia, the powerful leader of Murder Inc., a man believed to be have personally killed 36 people, stopped in what was then a barber shop in the Park Sheraton Hotel’s lobby on West 57th Street. As he dozed in the chair, two gunmen walked in and fired a barrage of lead into the crime boss.

. . .

It is difficult today to stand on tiled floor of the Starbucks and imagine the pool of blood where the man nicknamed “The Executioner” once lay.

Those ghosts are all gone amid customers sipping Tazo teas and leaning over laptops, oblivious to the murder that captivated most of the country five decades ago. Back where the barber stood before the gunmen barged past him, a sign advertises the Starbucks song of the day: Dave Matthews’ “Grace is Gone.”

“You think people care?” says one barista, out on a smoke break and checking her Sidekick, and who, as per company policy, would not give her name. “That was 50 years ago. Trust me. They just want their coffee and they want to get on their way.”