Once Upon a Radical Time on the Lower East Side

New York Times Blog: By Sewell Chan

Clayton Patterson — ex-teacher, artist, photojournalist, documentarian, as he describes himself — is a man obsessed. His first anthology, “Captured: A Lower East Side Film/Video History,” published in 2005, took up 586 pages. His latest anthology, “Resistance: A Radical Social and Political History of the Lower East Side,” weighs in at 624 pages. ...

Radicalism on the Lower East Side has a long history — settlement house reformers, garment worker organizers, Italian socialists, native-born Trotskyites and Yiddish-speaking intellectuals among others — but the radicalism that Mr. Patterson focuses on is more recent: the tenant, artistic, leftist, antiwar, civil-rights, gay-rights activism that dominated the area’s politics in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s. ...

The Lower East Side’s reputation as a refuge for struggling newcomers, down-and-out artists and nonconformist agitators appears to be fading, perhaps for good. “What we knew here before will never be here again,” Mr. Patterson said wistfully. Others were not so pessimistic. Mr. Rosen described local efforts to promote zoning restrictions that would prevent high-rise development in the area.

“Changing the zoning is not just a matter of how high a building goes, but it’s also a matter of remembering our history, being able to see our history, and beyond that, being able to protect our communities,” he said.

No More Babka? There Goes the Neighborhood

New York Times Blog: By Joseph Berger

Gertel’s, the legendary bakery on Hester Street on the Lower East Side known for its Jewish treats like rugelach, babka and marble cake, has closed its doors.

The closing is one more change in a string of changes on the historic Lower East Side, where hundreds of thousands of immigrants from Russia, Poland, Romania and Italy established their foothold in America and set up hundreds of dry goods and food shops that until recent years gave the area a characteristic pungency. But those shops are being replaced by hip boutiques and voguish restaurants, and only a few survivors, like the Russ & Daughters appetizing store and Katz’s Delicatessen, are left. ...

Reports on various Web sites say that Gertel’s is being replaced by a condo building and that a wholesale operation may continue. Gertel’s last babka was sold to a congregant at a Westchester synagogue, who gave the cake to her rabbi, Lester Bronstein.