The Movie Place video rental store. Wood-O-Rama, a lumber yard.
Coliseum Books. Murder Ink and Ivy's Books.

And now, La Rosita. The Upper West Side is crumbling. Well, it seems
that way any time an independent business closes and a new bank branch or Duane Reade pops up in its place. Of course the ritual is as old as New York City. "Remember the old ..." is an old motto.

La Rosita, a rice-and-beans crossroads of Columbia students, young
families, Latino long-timers and old lefties, went out in style the
last week of 2006. Several supporters gathered local musicians and other
performers for three nights of serenading. The waitresses and owners,
Enrique and his son Eduardo, hustled plates of food through the crowded
joint while a quartet of guitarists played or a dancer performed a
flamenco. Hellgate Harmonie was there too, in the form of a trio of two
clarinets and bassoon.

Larry and Dan played clarinet, Keith played bassoon. We did
arrangements of "Marriage of Figaro" and "Don Giovanni," plus a Mozart divertimento. A cheerful but melancholy chatter filled the room, like a bed of warm coals, underneath the music. Later, when the guitarists took over, courtly Enrique, a 77-year-old white-haired man of Cuban extraction, took to the dance floor with a Dominican regular.

It all led one to think, why wasn't this happening regularly? Where
are the informal coffee house gatherings in that neighborhood? Why did it
take the closing of a restaurant to create that atmosphere? Maybe
$18,000-a-month rents have something to do with it. The owners said the
burden was too much to keep them from retiring and moving on. Rosita
was the kind of place with photos of clientele babies in the arms of
waitresses slipped under the glass counter, where you could read the paper for hours with cubs of cafe con leche, where the ropa vieja was always on tap, where you had a choice of black or red beans over white or yellow rice.

Hellgate Harmonie is trying to keep up the informal performing with its new
residency at The Underground, a bar/coffee shop/comedy club a block
away from La Rosita, at 107th Street and West End Avenue. We played sextets there recently, and are hoping to start a "teatime" series of
read-throughs on Sunday afternoons -- perhaps as early as late January.