Monday, May 31, 2010

Avenue A, 9:48 p.m., Memorial Day

Memorial Day weekend in review



A man was struck by a bus in Chinatown...

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2 Cooper Square is charing upwards of $20,000 a month for rents... the most ever for the East Village...

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Shrek was put on sale then thrown away on Avenue A...

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People discarded couches and fake fries...

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Someone overturned all the trash cans in Tompkins Square Park...

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We went to Bike Noise 3 in Tompkins Square Park...

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We went to the Loisaida Festival on Avenue C....

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We went to the BP protest on Houston....

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The new fence at the Cooper Square Hotel got tagged... and cleaned...

Updated 6/1: Bus hits pedestrian on Essex and Canal



From a reader:

Today at 11:48 AM Lucky Star hit an older Chinese man outside of my window at the corner of Essex/Canal. He will more than likely die from the injuries. Bystanders thought they were helping and started to drag the man from under the bus. I along with others got them to stop, but damage may have been done. I hope he lives. ... FDNY was on scene within 2 minutes of the accident and acted quickly to free the man and send him off to the hospital. From what I could see from afar, the injuries along with his accelerated age, it does not look promising.


Still waiting to hear more on this from the mainstream media... nothing yet... The reader who sent me the original information passed along another message...

The whole scene was cleaned up by the time I sent you the photo. All that remains is the sand the firemen spread to cover his blood. They did not remove his shoe from the middle of the street. It's a very sad reminder of what may have been this man's last few moments. The whole incident took place and disappeared within 40 minutes. These buses are dangerous and the drivers some times don't pay attention like they should. The man was in the middle of the crosswalk -- there's no way the driver didn't see him.


DNAinfo has more on the story. According to police, the man's injuries are no considered life-threatening.

Weekend of the discarded couch, and large, fake Pommes Frites

Being a holiday weekend and the end of the month... many people were moving in and out of apartments... which may be why I spotted 13 discarded couches in a few blocks... I started taking photos of each one, but you get the idea...




EV Grieve reader Deb these passed along these shots from the weekend from outside the Christodora House, where a discarded couch provided a rest for the weary...




Meanwhile! Project Chow (@projectchow) sent along this abandoned Pommes Frites sign on 12th Street and Avenue A...



And a few other discarded items from the weekend...



There goes the neighborhood for real: 2 Cooper Square will open with the highest rents ever in the East Village

Yowza. The Wall Street Journal checks in with a story about 2 Cooper Square ...



To the story:

Atlantic Development Group, which owns or manages 48 rental buildings in the city, plans to open next month 2 Cooper, at East Fourth Street near the Bowery. The 15-story, amenity-rich building is charging the highest rents ever in this rapidly gentrifying neighborhood, brokers say. Three-bedroom apartments run as high as $20,000 per month.

Atlantic's initial plans for 2 Cooper were much more modest. In 2004, the developer designed a building aimed at attracting New York University and Cooper Union students.

But Atlantic switched gears when it saw that the Bowery neighborhood was going upscale quickly. Two high-end hotels were built on the street, and a contemporary art museum opened its doors south of Houston. In recent months, Keith McNally and Daniel Boulud have launched restaurants on the Bowery.

Amenities added by 2 Cooper include a 15-seat private screening room and a 75-square foot walk-in refrigerator on the ground floor to hold tenants' food and flower deliveries.

"The neighborhood has become a destination but what's stopped people from moving there is a dearth of luxury properties," says Yuri Lobachevsky, a residential broker with Citi Habitats.

The building has signed leases for 21 of its 144 units, according to Atlantic. The majority have gone to people who already live downtown and were looking for an upgrade, says Richard Cantor, a principal at broker Cantor Pecorella.


Previously on EV Grieve:
2 Cooper Square looking for some "masculine, attractive, intelligent" Clive Owens types with kids — but, lordy, not kids who actually live with them!

Shrek's unhappy ending

So, let's bring some closure to this Shrek Saga... Yesterday began with so much hope and promise... a cardboard Shrek was for sale along Avenue A...



...and, perhaps, this empty space meant that the Shrek had found a home...



This would not be the case, though. As this photo by EV Grieve reader Jeanne shows, Shrek was thoughtlessly thrown into the trash by an unknown Shrek tosser....



Previously on EV Grieve:
The cost of a carboard ogre

Noted

Looking at the weekend box-office report...

Sex and the City 2 notched an estimated $32.1 million on approximately 6,100 screens at 3,445 locations, bringing its total to $46.3 million since its Thursday debut. That's a huge step backwards from the first Sex and the City, which bagged $57 million on its first weekend. Distributor Warner Bros.' exit polling indicated that a whopping 90 percent of Sex 2's audience was female, and 54 percent was under 35 years old. By comparison, the first Sex's opening weekend audience was 83 percent female.


Meanwhile, the SATC2 sign vandalism continued around the neighborhood....





BoweryBoogie has pointed out some SATCII vandalism on the LES...

Neighborhood watch



The flyers hanging on First Avenue and Third Street tell the story...

The cost of a carboard ogre

On Avenue A. This morning!



Flashback to yesterday around the same time...

Sunday, May 30, 2010

Avenue C, 4:12 p.m., May 30



At the Loisaida Festival, Avenue C.

At Bike Noise 3 in Tompkins Square Park









Bike Noise 3 continues



Bike Noise 3 continues in Tompkins Square Park. Morning Glory, Team Spider, Sewage, Wombat in Combat to come.

And buy a T-shirt. More details here.

New Cooper Square Hotel fence tagged

On Wednesday, workers finished putting in the Popsicle fence at the Cooper Square Hotel... a tempting canvas for street artists... and sure enough, in what will be the first of many, I imagine... someone tagged the fence last night... and thanks to EV Grieve reader Ryan for snapping this shot early this morning of the Cooper Square Hotel Anti-Graffiti Team going into action...



I took this shot a little later...




...and just up the way at the new Cooper Union academic building...



Anyway, why did the Coop Hotel clean the tag? I thought they wanted to "fit in with the edgy local art scene?"

Avenue A, 9:10 a.m., May 30

You can say this about ConEd: They don't skimp on the barricades




First Avenue near First Street.

Reminders today: The Loisaida Festival on Avenue C




And I'm a little late in telling you this... but in case you parked on Avenue C and didn't see the signs...