The city waits for no one

Manhattan moves fast. There's no stopping it. And so too do Manhattan bloggers. Yesterday, The Shophound scooped me (but Shophound sounds like nice people -- they at least left behind a link to Weingolb so I'm not totally spun out in their dust).




The removal of Madison Avenue's Soup Burg has been swift, to say the least. The new luxury clothing store that is taking its spot on the Upper East Side seems to be visibly moving in with each shutter opening on my camera. Blink and you might miss it.

The Soup Burg diner, a restaurant I profiled over the summer just before it shut its doors, was a unique landmark on the UES turf. It was odd. It stood out. It wasn't at all cashmere; it was more like chamois, worn but still useful.

Come to think of it, Soup Burg in 2006 was more Madison Street than Madison Avenue. It was almost like the tiny eatery was in constant Halloween costume at the corner of 73rd St. It really belonged with the other Manhattan Madison.

And no one really mentioned it as it closed. Lord Norman Foster's project to add 30 stories to a building in need of renovation across from the Carlyle Hotel, just three blocks north from this intersection -- that change to the street scene was met with derision. The ambitious addition would make this posh area of the Upper East Side seem less like Paris, with its steady flow of architecturely similar seven-storey buildings. Lord Foster's plan to make five floors multiply up into the sky not be accepted. It would change the tone too much, or so it was deemed.

Somehow, without any impact on the surrounding architecture, the Soup Burg changed the tone of this section of the neighbourhood and changed it immensely.

But now it is gone. Did anyone blink?