And now for a little news from the Bowery Boys: We’re excited to announce the launch of Bowery Boys Walks — our official small-group walking tours that are taking our show into the streets!
If you’re a regular listener to the podcast, you know that we try to bring a little fun and humor to retelling the events and characters that have shaped New York’s history. We’re taking the same approach in developing the Bowery Boys walking tours.
Each walk has been developed by an expert tour guide working together with us, and most will complement episodes of the show that have already been released. So, if you’re in the mood to study up before your walk, there will be at least one episode you can listen to to get “situated.”
Our first tour: Broadway
We’re kicking things off on center stage with our first walking tour: Legends and Landmarks of Broadway. Led by professional tour guide and long-time theater insider Jeff Dobbins, the tour will trace the history of Broadway theater and the theater district from the days of Oscar Hammerstein I up through Broadway’s “Golden Age”.
Several additional tours are currently in development and will be announced shortly. Stay tuned for that announcement.
About the tours
Bowery Boys Walks are intended to be as intimate as possible, so groups are limited to 15 participants. Because of this, we strongly recommend booking in advance through the website to ensure a spot on the tour.
We want to offer heartfelt thanks to the many people who came out to our first live book event last Thursday night at the Museum of the City of New York.  It was a packed house that evening to hear us speak about our new book Adventures In Old New York with moderator Donald Albrecht. Afterwards, we did our very first (OMG!) book signing and got to meet a lot of you there. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being a part of a very important night for us.  Check out the bottom of this post to see some images from that evening.
If you didn’t get to go to that one, we’ll be having several more events throughout the summer and fall. I’ll be posting the information as soon as I get it.
“How much do you really know about NYC’s history? Introducing  a special program celebrating the launch of The Bowery Boys: Adventures in Old New York, the official companion book to the No. 1 travel podcast that offers an unconventional exploration of Manhattan’s historic neighborhoods, secret spots and colorful characters. The Bowery Boys  – Greg Young and Tom Meyers – will be here to discuss among other things,â€Top Ten Hidden Secrets†of New York.
20 West 44th Street (between 5th and 6th Avenues)
To register please  email: meg.stanton@generalsociety.org. Advance registration is recommended.
And if you can’t make this one, many more to come….
The book is finally here! If you pre-ordered it, you should be getting it in the mail this week or early next week.  If you’d like to pre-order it, head on over to Amazon, Barnes and Noble or visit your local independent book store in person. This should be popping up everyone — including international sales. AND digital versions — like this one for the Nook or the one at iTunes.
And there are a few press appearances on the way. SPOILER ALERT: Check our your copy of the New York Post this weekend. Â Also Brick Underground has a nice write-up from our event at the museum last Thursday (but a pretty cool picture of us). Read that here.
Courtesy Benjamin Stone Photography
Oh AND a new podcast this Friday. For this week’s subject, we go way, way, way back….
And finally here are the photos from last Thursday’s event:
That’s Tom’s brother Ben holding a hot-off-the-presses copy:
In this blog roundup, a Bowery Boys appearance in Vice, a threat to preservation, a classic restaurant closes, the story of two hotels with very different histories and more!
In the photo above and below — From the Museum of the City of New York collection, some images of the so-called Prize Fighters Saloon (at Sixth Avenue and 33rd Street) owned by boxer James J. Corbett.
LINKS OF INTEREST
— Vice Magazine’s John Surico wrote a great piece called ‘Why New Yorkers Love New York” and interviewed the Bowery Boys for it! Also — if you want to see us dressed in ridiculous Mermaid Parade costumes, you should definitely check this out. [Vice Magazine]
— An inconceivable and dangerous threat to New York landmark preservation is being debated at City Hall today.  “Intro. 775 would for the first time impose ‘do-or-die’ timeframes for buildings and neighborhoods being considered for landmark designation. If the deadlines are not met, buildings and neighborhoods, no matter how worthy or endangered, would automatically be disqualified for designation.” [Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation]
—  Destruction update! The beloved original location ofThe Palm restaurant — with its quirky wall of murals — has been closed for good. “The beloved hand painted caricatures were housed on walls made of plaster, which made it impossible to remove the caricatures for preservation purposes.” [Vanishing New York]
Below: The exterior of Corbett’s Prize Fighters Saloon:
Courtesy Museum of the City of New York
— The spectacular tale of thePierrepont Hotel in Herald Square, built in 1898 as a rare residential hotel for unmarried men.   “It is not so very long ago that the bachelor was not considered to be entitled much consideration; any old thing was good enough for him….” [Daytonian In Manhattan]
— That rather strange, kinda seedy, little-Flatiron hotel in Chelsea called the Liberty Hotel? Â That building has actually been standing there for well over one hundred years. Oh if only those walls could speak! [Ephemeral New York]
— Some rather sweet and amusing images pop up in this New York Times photo essay on the first day of schoolthrough the years. [New York Times]
— “The coolest place to eat is outside a smallpox hospital.” [New York Post]
TICKETS ARE GOING FAST for our live event with The Ensemblist this Sunday, September 13th, at 54 Below. Â Click herefor more information or go directly to 54 Below’s websiteto get your tickets!
Below: Another look at the interior of Corbett’s fancy saloon.
Many of you have asked if we were ever going to do a live event in the near future. Finally you can see us live this September for one night only AND on Broadway!
The Bowery Boys are pairing up with The Ensemblist podcast (hosted by wonderful Mo Brady and Nikka Graff Lanzarone) to present a one of a kind event — the history of an iconic Broadway theater featuring musical performances by people who have performed there.
The star of our show is the St. James Theatre, a Broadway stage which opened in 1927 on the spot of the original Sardi’s Restaurant. It was here that many great Broadway musicals originated including Oklahoma!, The King and I, The Pajama Game and Hello Dolly. Â Most recently the theater was prominently featured in the Oscar-winning film Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) with Michael Keaton and Emma Stone.
We’ll be discussing some of the history of this classic theater amid an entire roster of Broadway singers performing music that the St. James made famous.  The line-up is tbd at this point but we’ll present the names of the performers as soon as we have them.
This is going to be a cabaret extravaganza — so naturally the show will be held at one of New York’s greatest cabaret spaces —54 Below (254 W. 54th Street). This is the basement of the former Studio 54. Maybe we’ll dress up like Andy Warhol and Bianca Jagger?!
This is a ONE NIGHT ONLY event— two shows on Sunday, September 13, 2015. Â Visit their websitefor more information about the show andCLICK HERE to get your tickets.
The Thalia in 1986, showing a revival of Easy Rider and Drive He Said. Photography by Matt Weber
Last night the Guides Association of New York City (GANYC) presented their first-ever GANYC Apple Awards at the Leonard Nimoy Thalia Theater (part of Symphony Space), honoring accomplishments in preservation, history, museum exhibition and tourism. It was a rather lively evening, thanks to the night’s hilarious hosts Kevin James Doyle and Olivia Petzy whom you may know from the off-Broadway hit How 2 B A New Yorker.
The institutions and individuals honored at the ceremony last night include:
And a lifetime achievement award was presented to artist James Turrell who transformed the Guggenheim Museum in 2013 into a surreal cathedral of light.
And look who else won an award!
Thank you GANYC for this incredible honor! We are truly grateful for the recognition. Actually we were just honored to be invited in the first place so this was especially humbling! It was quite fantastic seeing all these different kinds of people — journalists, curators, filmmakers, politicians, tour guides, entertainers — together in one room to celebrate New York’s rich culture and historical legacy.
The award was presented to us by Ethel Sheffer from the Municipal Art Society who prefaced it with a moving tribute to her husband  Isaiah Sheffer, the founder of Symphony Space, and the man who helped save the very theater we were sitting in — Leonard Nimoy!
The building which contains the theater today was built one hundred years ago as an indoor market, owned by the Astor family.  In 1931 the basement was converted into the Thalia Theater. (Thalia is the ancient Greek Muse of comedy and idyllic poetry.)  To quote GANYC award winner in his history of the Thalia:
“Generations of Thalia patrons have assumed that its oddly sloping floor – with a depression in the middle – was the result of poor planning or unusual site conditions. But the Thalia’s parabolic reverse floor – apparently the first of its kind in the country – was just what its designer, Ben Schlanger, intended.
In Mr. Schlanger’s view, most movie theaters were poor adaptations of theater designs. The Thalia incorporated not only Mr. Schlanger’s patented floor system – designed to give everyone in the audience the same view of the screen – but also lighting, seating and projection provisions intended specifically for movie presentations.”
The Thalia is best known for showing art house movies and classic film revivals for decades. One might even say it was archetypal of the Upper West Side experience, immortalized in the movie Annie Hall.
Martin Scorsese attributes part of his cinematic education to the Thalia:  “That’s where I learned about films. I saw my first Eisenstein there: Alexander Nevsky. I also saw the Yiddish film series there: The Dybbuk and Green Fields and the films of Edgar G. Ulmer. It was the late 50’s. I saw Citizen Kane there and it was amazing on the big screen — well, the little screen. The films were programmed so that there was no intermission: one would end and the other would begin. It was really hard core. It was better than film school. It really was.” [source]
It was actually renowned for being a bit of a dump. According to GANYC nominee Clyde Haberman: “The air in the theater seemed left over from F.D.R.’s third term. Your seat was no thrill, either. It was upright, uncomfortable and usually torn. Pillars stood between it and the screen.”
The theater finally closed in 1987.  Its final screening was a double bill: The Night of the Shooting Stars and Paisan. During the 1990s,  its classic Art Deco interiors were removed to some controversy.  But its ultimate savior would come in the form of a science-fiction icon.
Leonard Nimoy, forever beloved as Spock from Star Trek, does have a background in theater — in 1977, he even performed in Equus on Broadway — and his work would sometimes be performed at Symphony Space.
By 2001, he was living in the Upper West Side, mostly occupied with his work as an acclaimed photographer.  Nimoy donated $1.5 million to the complete renovation of the theater which finally reopened in April 2002. In honor of the donation, the theater was renamed in his honor.  And,  honestly, the Leonard Nimoy Thalia just sounds cool too.
THIS WEEK IN MARVEL
The Bowery Boys are guest stars on this week’s official Marvel Comics podcast This Week In Marvel hosted by those virtual Avengers and Marvel editors Ryan Penagos and Ben Morse. Â We had an absolute blast recording this, talking about how New York City has implanted itself into the fabric of the Marvel Comics universe and some of its most popular characters like Spider-Man, Captain America and the X-Men.
What do Dr. Strange and Bob Dylan have in common? Â What superhero was created to monopolize upon New York City’s 1970s disco scene? Â What famous mystery author got her start writing comics? Â Why might comic books be partially responsible for my love of New York City? Â ALSO: Is Tom Meyers a member of HYDRA?
You can listen to the show here and also download it from their iTunes page. [This Week In Marvel]
We’re probably still very far away from getting our own blockbuster film, but this does get us one step closer than we were yesterday.
NYC, 1981 – THE RISE OF THE GUARDIAN ANGELS
And now for a different sort of superhero! Â Over at the A24 Films 1981 website (ramping up for next week’s release of A Most Violent Year with Oscar Isaac and Jessica Chastain) I write about the origins of the Guardian Angels, the independent squadron of subway defenders who patrolled the city streets despite some initial objections from the city.
Included with my article are some outright amazing photographs of the Guardian Angels’ early days, taken by Geoffrey Hiller.
THE BOWERY BOYS YEAR IN REVIEW ROUNDUP And we have a special holiday surprise for you — a new podcast this Friday! Â We present to you the first annual Bowery Boys year in review. Â Just update your podcast feed tomorrow or subscribe to the Bowery Boys on iTunes to get it first.
The Bowery Boys were featured in a profile this morning on NPR’s Morning Edition! You can give the segment a listen here. You can also download the segment from that site.
Our sincere thanks to NPR and to Caitlin Dickerson for featuring us on the show.
If you’re interested in any of the particular episodes mentioned in the piece:
And so our little history podcast experiences a little bit of a historical milestone itself.
Five years ago today, Tom Meyers and I sat down to record our very first podcast, over a bottle of wine and some brand new recording equipment. That first episode went by the unfortunate and unoriginal name ‘New York ‘Cast’, a name which we abandoned in the second show, having been suddenly inspired by a certain well-dressed street gang described in Herbert Asbury’s ‘Gangs of New York’. This blog came along a couple weeks later.
The first topic of our first show was Collect Pond and Canal Street. We re-explored the topic to far more interesting effect in our 50th episode.
Hopefully you’ll indulge us over the next few weeks as we look back on some of our big moments and give nod to some of the history we’ve already discussed.
I’m also using this occasion to launch a couple other Bowery Boys projects later this summer. The first should be ready to go starting late next month!
We’ve recorded 139 shows, with number 140 coming up next week. Although I’ve recorded a few solo shows — and there have been a handful with special guests — the most popular have featured both myself and Tom. If you haven’t yet listened to the podcast yet, give it a try! Go to iTunes and download a few shows.
Here’s a list of what I would consider our most successful episodes — either by number of total listens/downloads or by the overall quality of the program. If you wouldn’t mind, please vote for your favorite. This will help us come up with new ideas for the rest of the year.
Below: Take our poll!
The Bowery Boys: New York City History podcast: What’s your favorite episode?
At top: A rather unconventional looking New York City skyline. ‘High buildings in New York at night.’ Turn of the century postcard, courtesy the New York Public Library
