bridge-tunnel

Meatpacking District Beautification Plan

Chris Mohney · 10/23/06 02:10PM

Streetsblog details a laudable but doomed effort to improve the dead center nexus of the Meatpacking District by converting the confluence of Little West 12th Street, Gansevoort Street, and 9th Avenue into a "piazza." The project involves dedicating existing streetspace to delivery, hotel pickup, and parking lanes, all of which would be promptly filled with taxis (even the sidewalk cafe space). The plan's admirable in its intentions, but the little triangular plaza that serves as the centerpiece looks particularly unappetizing (unless you're a fan of sucking down auto exhaust with your app & bev). On the other hand, we approve of the prototype t-shirt pictured here, sent in by an anonymous reader and modeled by a pair of unsuspecting Meatpacking honeys. That, friends, is the past, present, and inescapable future of the neighborhood in question.

The "Ladies" of the Meatpacking District

Chris Mohney · 09/28/06 05:30PM

Sure, we could show you hours of B-roll depicting Jersey girls staggering over the Meatpacking District's cobblestones on unfeasible heels. OK, maybe we'll show you a little bit of that. There's the doll who shouts, "I don't smoke, I'm famous!", and the chicks swarming the utterly superfluous and yet ever-present NYFD fire truck on 9th Avenue ("Crowd control," muttered one fireman when asked why they were there, his eyes following a bevy of passing short skirts). Perhaps most compelling is "Suzetta," the "58-year-old Vietnam veteran" cross-dresser, and her handler, Jimmy. Suzetta was denied entrance to various Meatpacking bars due to leaving her ID at home. Still, she was quite willing to borrow Jimmy's van and our various nubile interns, for purposes best left unexplored on a family website.