WELCOME to the Bowery, DBGB — and welcome, jaded New Yorkers, to the Bowery itself, one of Manhattan’s great strolling grounds for those with a taste for urban misterioso.
Daniel Boulud’s new, reasonably priced restaurant, where “French brasserie meets American tavern,” epitomizes the gentrified northern spur of the new Bowery.
Not only does DBGB offer “interesting sausage,” as Boulud told us it would last fall — there’s a ton of it listed under a “to share” category of “links/bangers/saucisses/wieners.” The 13 choices range from “Touluse” (pork and duck gizzard and garlic link) to “Viennoise” (port and emmenthaler cheese “kaiserkrainer”) to “Polonaise” (smoked pork and veal kielbasa), with German, Tunisian, Spanish and Italian variants, as well.
Despite being cheaper than some of its neighbors, DBGB is the Bowery’s new Big Enchilada.
A few years ago, the idea would have been laughable: a great chef on one of the world’s most notorious former skid rows — a perception yet held by clueless tourists who think Manhattan still resembles “Taxi Driver” territory.
DBGB contains 175 seats in the dining room, bar and private room and is designed by the gifted Thomas Schlesser, who also did Bar Boulud uptown. Much of its rough-hewn look — bracketed by open shelving all around, stocked with dry goods, flatware and linen — is inspired by the Bowery’s historic role as home to the city’s industrial- and restaurant-supply wholesale/retail business.
Although diminished, that world still exists on the Bowery, within an easy stroll of DBGB. And I hope DBGB’s loving homage will inspire those who flock there for sausage, saumon a l’oseille and “piggie burgers” to venture south on foot — because the Bowery is one captivating walk, from top to bottom.
Most people still perceive the boulevard in discrete sections: the gentrified blocks north of Houston Street; kitchen supply and electrical fixture-heaven below Houston; and Chinatown, south of Delancey.
But there’s a cheerful, disheveled continuity here, an exotic ramble not yet homogenized by Duane Reades and bank branches.
Much of the Bowery still looks as it must have 100 years ago: a procession of low-rise, utilitarian structures, keepers of secrets known only to the weathered bricks and mortar. Thanks to the street’s unusual width and mostly low-rise scale, it opens up like a time capsule, especially on sunny days.
The lighting-supply shops are crystal wonderlands, and fun to browse even if you don’t need more than a three-way bulb.
And all around, there’s weirdness to spare. A ghost sign for the old chocolate syrup U-Bet recently vanished, but signs for surviving businesses are amusing enough: Hawaii Restaurant Fixtures; The Bari pizza-oven building boasting of “dough retarders.”
And what exactly do they make at Jiangu Hengshundan Bioenergy Co.?
The Bowery can be compelling even where it’s most contemporary. Skip the John Varvatos boutique on the CBGB site and proceed to the New Museum’s bookstore, where the selection is not like those at other museums. I recently stumbled on “I Love New York, Crazy City,” a compilation of city-image collages by the German artist Isa Genzken.
Connecticut throws a party on Saturday, and everyone’s invited. Connecticut Open House Day activities include free or discounted admissions, refreshments, tours, demonstrations, lectures, sales and special giveaways at close to 200 art galleries, museums, theaters, historic houses, tourist attractions and businesses across the state.
Imagine a world in which everything that you own is numbered and catalogued. All your shoes; every piece of clothing. A world in which nothing can be regarded as private, but where everything can be traced back to you. Take a step further in your thinking and you have a universe in which every movement is also registered. How many times did you visit the off-licence last month, and how many litres of milk did you buy last Saturday?
This situation is not far off, if we can believe Kathrine Albrecht, one of the USA’s leading experts on personal data protection. She is among those who regard with suspicion the potential applications of identifying individuals with the aid of the new technology known as RFID - Radio Frequency IDentification.
One American company has already developed a chip that can be implanted in your arm. This could allocate each of us a unique ID number linked to information in a central database. Quite impermissible, according to Albrecht.
However, such critical voices are few and far between. Most people are likely to think that RFID is primarily an identification technology that is tailor-made for industries that depend on supplies of services, flows of materials, stocks of goods, manufacturing and reliability of supply. And that the potential for improved efficiency and security is unimaginable