As we say goodbye to St. Mark's Comics this month, one of the last older businesses on the block in their original location (having been at 11 St. Mark's for 36 years), I fear a similar fate will soon meet two other neighborhood institutions currently in their own precarious states. The first is Moishe's Bake Shop, opened by Moishe Pearl in 1974, only a couple years after the Fillmore East closed its doors down the block, and Ratner's Restaurant still held court in the Saul Birns building (in what would become Met Foods before being forced out by NYU). Besides Economy Candy, Moishe's remains the only other stop for sweets from my childhood still standing, and one of two kosher Jewish bakery in the LES. When I heard the news this past December that the building had been sold, I was devastated. Although investor Jay Schwimmer's lease for the property begins in March, there's still no concrete information as to what will happen with Moishe's Bake...
This is an ongoing documentary project on the neighborhood I was born and raised in, with a particular focus on its current re-development and so-called "revitalization".