By Lost City

“…I decided to stroll the northern-most block of Ludlow Street. It was a short trip down memory lane. Back in the early and mid ’90s, I spent a good amount of time here. Ludlow is where the “rebirth” of the Lower East Side arguably began, with hip bars, restaurants, music clubs and boutiques springing up in the basements of old tenements. (It seemed innocent enough at the time; who knew then where it would lead?) So one might expect the street to be among the most utterly transformed by the area’s recent gentrification and hipification.

Not so. Strangely enough, I found the block to be among the most unchanged in the neighborhood. Certainly, it is no longer even a shade of the LES of old. The pillow seller, the notions stores—every hardscrabble manufacturer in fact—are gone. But the street is a fairly well-preserved snapshot of how it looked in 1993 or so. There is, yes, a monstrous hulking condo thing at the north end of the street, inevitably christened The Ludlow (see above). But next to it are Max Fish and The Pink Pony (below), two hangouts that by now rank as ancient in LES years.” [Read More]