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Tag: Times Square

What Manhattan Looked Like in the 1970s Through My Eyes, Part 2

All photos copyright Betsy van Die and available in high resolution from original negatives. Permission needed to reproduce. By the time I was in my second year at RISD, I considered myself a veteran visitor of NYC. I was attracted to Times Square and all the sordid sights. I never would have dreamed of photographing the seedier side of Chicago’s strip clubs in the South Loop. Somehow I felt emboldened being away from home and photographing in NYC.  Times Square was a far cry from my ivory tower art school existence in Providence and even farther from my idyllic suburban Chicago upbringing. I found Times Square both fascinating and repulsive and completely different than anything I had ever seen. I was not a total rube, having spent a lot of time as a kid in the City of Chicago itself – but NYC was unique and I was smitten. I shot a lot of B & W photos in Times Square, and in retrospect, I was lucky that nobody bothered me. But I have so many regrets regarding photos I didn’t take back in the day, including 42nd Street and the interiors of diners and bars. Probably best that I didn’t venture into the latter, since I was an attractive young woman by myself. November 1977 Tiger Sign Company, Bowery and Delancey I couldn’t find out anything about this business, but still love the signage.   Pearl Paint and Canal Street Jeans Canal Street was one of my favorite hangouts thanks to Pearl Paint, all the cool job lot stores, Canal Jean Co., a dingy little antique mall, and street vendors selling vintage stuff. Pearl Paint’s NYC demise reflected the passage of time and loss of my youth. It was one more sign of gentrification that has nearly destroyed the…

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What Manhattan Looked Like in the 1970s Through My Eyes, Part 1

All photos copyright Betsy van Die and available in high resolution from original negatives. Permission needed to reproduce. You might wonder why a Chicago native who has lived in the Windy City nearly all her life is so fond of the Big Apple and has an Instagram page dedicated to NYC in the 1970s. The answer can be traced back to my youth and coming of age when I was an art student at RISD. I took the Amtrak train from Providence to Penn Station many times during my four years at RISD, staying with my older sister in one of her many NYC apartments either in the Village or SoHo. I think the other reason I am enamored of NYC is that my dad was born in Brownsville, Brooklyn and while you can take the boy out of Brooklyn… Indeed, he adored NYC and made yearly trips there for many decades that combined work with pleasure. From the time I was a toddler until he was too old to travel, he would attend winter meetings of either the American Psychiatric Association or American Psychoanalytic Association in the Big Apple. My mom would hang out with the other wives during the day and my parents would go to art galleries, museums, and plays during his leisure time. He shared so many personal stories about NYC with me, both about his family and growing up in Brownsville, as well as about Manhattan, Coney Island, and the Catskills. And of course, he was a talented amateur photographer who taught me how to develop and print photos in our basement darkroom when I was just 12. It’s hard to forget my first NYC visit because my sister and I got our signals crossed and I waited in the wrong area of Penn Station….

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Homage to Howard Clothes and Times Square – Photo Documentary

As regular Consumer Grouch readers know, Howard Clothes is near and dear to my heart because it played a starring role in my dad’s family. While I have written pretty much everything I can already about Howard Clothes in three previous articles, I have since discovered many new photos. When I posted my first Howard Clothes article in September 2015, my dad has just been released from a four-month stay in the hospital and rehab after nearly dying from double pneumonia. By the time I posted my second article in January 2016, I had read Elaine Winik’s 1996 book entitled Still Looking Forward, which filled in some important details, along with hearing from many relatives of the founders. Elaine was the last surviving daughter of Sam Kappel, who founded this men’s clothing store with Joseph Langerman and Henry Marks. A few weeks later, I had the pleasure of talking to Elaine on the phone, and she graciously sent me a few clippings and photos that I added. Elaine passed away in September 2017, so she never got a chance to read the final chapter, which I posted in January 2020. My dad did, although he was nearly blind from macular degeneration by then and couldn’t see the images.  In September 2020, I finally decided to start an Instagram page devoted to NYC. Although the original intent was to showcase photos I took of NYC during my RISD years (1976-1980), I realized fairly quickly that I simply didn’t have enough vintage photos of my own to sustain this. Before my Brooklyn-born dad died of COVID-19 in December 2020, I promised him that I would honor his legacy by digitizing and posting vintage photos he took of his beloved NYC. I also looked for great vintage photos of NYC and gravitated to…

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Connecting the Past to Present in NYC Photographs

Over the last two years, I have scanned black and white negatives and a few color slides I shot in NYC between late 1976 and 1980 when I was a student at the Rhode Island School of Design. My older sister lived in various apartments in SoHo and Greenwich Village and I visited every chance I got on school breaks. I enlarged and matted about 25 of these photos and took them with me when I moved to Rotterdam, the Netherlands in July 1980. I never printed any of the other photos, so scanning them provided an avenue of rediscovery of my own youth and a gritty NYC that no longer exists. This project summoned an array of emotions and memories about this “coming of age” period in my life and the inevitable passage of time.     In 1981, I showed these photos in Rotterdam and got some press, one of which was a little critical and missed the point of my photographs. The critic said that my photographs lacked the social commentary of Bruce Davidson’s work. Although I admire Davidson’s work, it was never my intention to emulate his socially conscious photography. A few select photographers informed my early photographic work – especially those who worked for the Farm Security Administration, such as Walker Evans, Russell Lee, Jack Delano, and the great photographer Berenice Abbott. Today, my photos have far more meaning than they did back then because they picture a NYC that no longer exists due to gentrification, over commercialization, and greed disguised as progress. NYC in the 1970s I was a little astonished that I ventured into areas that were considered dangerous back in the 1970s, as evidenced by many articles written on this dark and turbulent era in NYC history. Yes, the city was edgy and…

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Reflections on a New York City Christmas

WashingtonSquare Park - Christmas 2012

    I have been experiencing a wave of nostalgia – it comes with age and recent losses of dear friends and our beloved little kitty Pepper. For me, the holidays seem to inspire reflections on the past – thinking back to how much New York City used to mean to me at Christmas. I have been digging up wonderful Christmas-related NYC photos from the Library of Congress and decided to delve into my own archives to see what I could find. When I was a child and up through about 2004, my parents would visit NYC every December for an annual psychiatric meeting at the Waldorf Astoria. While my dad was attending lectures, my mom would go window shopping with some of her friends. As children, my sisters and I always looked forward to my parents coming home with intriguing presents. My dad would also visit Russ & Daughters and purchase obscene amounts of candy that he had shipped home. Chocolate covered coffee beans, pastel chocolate mint lentils, and chocolate covered raspberry rings are the candies that I remember most. He would tell me stories about buying pretzels and roasted chestnuts from street vendors, shopping at B. Altman, Gimbels, and other now defunct stores; telling me tales that made it sound so magical.

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We Were All Just Kids – Ode to the Inspired Genius of Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe

Just before I lost my high level position as director of communications for a national medical association in mid-June 2011, I read Just Kids by Patti Smith. In the darkest days after losing my job, I found inspiration and salvation in Patti Smith’s words. Just Kids also sparked a rediscovery of her groundbreaking music, but with a more appreciative, mature ear than I had at RISD when my freshman roommate played Horses day and night. Her cutting-edge punk rock music was a bit too hard for me back then, but listening to it some 30 years later made me fully comprehend the sheer genius and depth of her musical poetry. Below is a collage I created in homage to Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe that I exhibited in a group show at Studio 659. During my depths of despair, I played several Patti Smith songs over and over as if I was once again a young adult coming of age. Well, I guess in essence I did go through a rebirth of sorts spurred on by losing my high-paying job. Having more time on my hands enabled me to get back to my fine art and exhibiting my work. Gloria, Dancing Barefoot, People Have the Power, and the brilliant Horses among other songs inspired this burst of creativity … that continues to this day. While I haven’t had a major solo gallery show, I feel promise looming on the horizon.

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Picture Postcards Provide Colorful Glimpse into Past and Present Histories

Much has been written about the history of postcards and there are a plethora of websites, collector’s clubs, blogs, and books on the subject. The earliest known picture postcard dates back to 1840. It was a hand-painted design on a card, sent in London to the writer Theodore Hook with a penny black stamp. A rather eclectic postcard collection is among the many treasures I have accumulated over the years. Easy to store in one large shoe box, I take these out on occasion as inspiration for my collages. I have yet to sell any of this collection, but really have no attachment except for a few postcards that evoke long-lost personal memories. Some of these postcards date back to my youth – a few are vintage late 1890s-early 1900s. I have fond memories of riding my bike as a young teenager to Archie’s Coins in Edgebrook and buying a few really cool antique postcards for pennies. I also have an attachment to beautiful, early handcolored photographic postcards bought in 1979 at the Porte de Clignancourt in Paris – my first trip to Europe.

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The Times Square of My Mind

As an impressionable young woman, I journeyed to fabled Manhattan from my relatively sheltered life as an art student at RISD in Providence, R.I. Upon alighting at Penn Station for the very first time, there was a bit of a glitch. My older, worldlier sister who had already been living in the Big Apple for 3 years had not given me clear instructions on where we were to meet. Those were the days before cell phones – there was no way to get in touch with her. I was an innocent 18-year-old in New York City wondering what the hell had happened to my sister – after about 40 minutes or so I decided to go search upstairs and there she was … my street-smart sister nearly as frantic as I. For a good part of this visit I was on my own – marveling at the gritty, wonderful streets of NYC. Camera in hand, I attempted to summon the spirits of dead immigrants on the Lower East Side, admired the Art Deco lines of the Empire State Building – imagining King Kong and Fay Wray at the top, and prowled Canal Street for Vintage. A longtime admirer of the photography of Bernice Abbott, Jacob Riis, Walker Evans, and Helen Levitt, I too desired to capture a moment in time in “The City that Never Sleeps.”

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