All tomorrow's rooftop parties

[EVE]

Hey! Ho! Let's Go ... look at this new marketing campaign for EVE, the 8-floor residential building at 433 E. 13th St. with a landscaped roof deck and BBQ pits (at the site of the former Peter Stuyvesant Post Office property here between Avenue A and First Avenue).

Multiple EVG readers shared EVE's new ad, which notes "First we had the Ramones... and then the Velvet Underground... And now there’s Eve East Village: Designer studio, one and two bedroom rental residencies."



[Whistling]

Gothamist and SPIN both took note of the Ramones/Velvet Underground campaign this week.

Per Andy Cush at SPIN:

The problem — besides the idea that the kind of gentrification that killed the East Village as a fertile arts community is somehow actually a happy continuation of that community’s legacy — is that the Velvet Underground came first, releasing their first album in 1967, nine years before the Ramones’ self-titled debut in ’76. This is common knowledge for anyone with even a passing interest in this music: the Velvets, with their loud noises, daring subject matter, and repeatedly slammed guitar chords, are often cited as an important predecessor to the punk rock scene that the Ramones exemplified in the following decade.

In the grand scheme of things, this is a petty but pretty hilarious mixup, especially coming from a place that claims close association with the culture of the neighborhood.

And here's Ben Yakas writing at Gothamist:

At a time when there are so many horrible things happening in the world that deserve to be called out, the questionable aesthetic choices of a new East Village condominium really shouldn't amount to a hill of beans. Having said that: there is gross, capitalistic artistic appropriation, like how Target coopted CBGB or how developers have exhumed and defiled the corpse of 5 Pointz and steam-pressed its branding onto a new building in Long Island City. And then there is gross, capitalistic artistic appropriation that gets everything embarrassingly wrong.

This is a variation of a campaign that dropped late last summer...

Got an email this morning for a new building opening in the EV. It reads:

First the East Village had The Velvet Underground

Then The Ramones

Coming Soon
EVE
Designer Studio, One and Two Bedroom Rental Residences

I'll just leave that there and cc: @evgrieve

— John Norris (@Jonnynono) September 1, 2018

And we can all remember when they played at TRGT just down 14th Street.

Anyway, EVE isn't the first luxury rental around here of late to cash in on any rock history to move units. Ben Shaoul's Bloom 62 on Avenue B featured framed photos of Joey Ramone, Grace Jones and Debbie Harry in its model homes in 2017. Then there was this copy from the Bloom website:

It sounds impossible: a fully-appointed luxury building has sprouted in the beating heart of the East Village. A 24-hour doorman greets you before work in the morning, after returning from a cafe in the evening and when heading out to Tompkins Square Park on the weekends. You'll have every modern convenience, from a gym to a roof deck to in-unit laundry, on the same streets where names like The Ramones, Warhol and Hendrix and [sic] paved the history of this neighborhood for years to come.

Shaoul sold the building last fall for $85 million.

Previously on EV Grieve:
All about EVE, the Peter Stuyvesant Post Office-replacing rentals on 14th Street

EVErything about the new luxury rentals at the former Peter Stuyvesant Post Office

Looks like there's a Trader Joe's coming to 432-438 E. 14th St. after all

Iowa teens dance to the Velvet Underground and Bush Tetras — in 1956

A little time waster via Dangerous Minds ... The above footage is from the dance show “Seventeen” that aired in 1956 on Iowa station WOI-TV. The video was uploaded to YouTube without sound. But Dangerous Minds decided to add a soundtrack, and did a pretty damn good job of synching up the dance moves to the likes of the Velvet Underground and the Buzzcocks ... Worth the look: "Too Many Creeps" by the Bush Tetras starts up around the 14-minute mark.

Velvet Underground founding member John Cale recalls his Ludlow Street apartment

These days, John Cale, a founding member of the Velvet Underground, lives in Los Angeles.

However, in The Wall Street Journal today, Cale revisits 64 Ludlow St., where he lived starting in 1964 ... where the fifth-floor apartment became a rehearsal space of sorts for Cale, Lou Reed and company.

The apartment belonged to experimental filmmaker Tony Conrad. Cale moved in to split the $25 monthly rent. "The building was filled with single-minded artists then like poet Angus MacLise, filmmaker Piero Heliczer, director Jack Smith and actor Mario Montez," Cale said.

To an excerpt!

Our apartment was a railroad flat — a long room running from the windows in the front to a small bedroom and a bathroom in the back. I slept on a mattress, under the windowsill in the front overlooking Ludlow. We burned crates and furniture in the fireplace to keep warm. There was no heat in the winter other than the gas stove.

Tony and I lived on what we could afford — mostly canned stew and milkshakes. Across the street in the morning, you could hear kids from the nearby high school singing doo-wop in the doorway there. Other kids threw rocks at us because they thought we looked like the Beatles. A lot of guys around here didn't like them early on.

Read the whole article here.

And here's Cale on the roof of the building the other day...



And here's the video for his newish single...



John Cale and The Wordless Music Orchestra perform tomorrow night at the Howard Gilman Opera House at BAM...

[Top photo — Michael Ochs Archives / Redferns]

Lou Reed's Olympic Moment

If you're watching any of the Winter Olympics, then you've likely seen this AT&T ad featuring Gretchen Bleiler, 2006 Olympic Silver Medalist in Snowboarding...

And you know the song by Lou Reed...



And it's not the first time a VU/Lou Reed song has been used in an ad.

Why does this annoy me?

On St. Mark's Place.

Gonna take a walk down to Union Square...

Karate Boogaloo's pick from over at The New York Nobody Sings.