In what some are calling the “East Village version of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’” customers and friends of Ray Alvarez — the two are really one and the same — have pitched in to help him start paying off his back rent, giving him and his store another lease on life.
We're getting of sorts of e-mails about a helicopter hovering around the neighborhood early this morning/late last night (depending on your schedule...):
"The helicopter was back last night (1/27/10). Woke me up at 4am, flying very low, was very loud. I'm at 12th and 1st in the EV. Really weird, I can't seem to find any answers."
And!
"I've just been listening to a helicopter circle round and round the EV for about an hour...it seems to have stopped now. It was distinctly creepy..."
Did you hear the helicopters last night? So annoying.
And!
Hi, my name is Sebastian Foss. As incredible as it may sound you're about to discover a system how you can drive 1000s of potential customers to any website or affiliate website at $0 cost to you! What if I told you that I'm making thousands of dollars each week and I'm not paying a dime for advertising ?
Oh.
And in the Twittersphere...
I haven't heard any news account to explain this either.... Anyone have any ideas/theories/conspiracies/idle gossip?
I've been so distracted by Harrison Ford's gargantuan cranium of late that I haven't even noticed the 13-story Great Jones Hotel creeping up the downtown skyline...
Ah, here it is upclose at 25 Great Jones Street at Lafayette. One day it will be home to all sorts of fancy eateries and bars and stuff.
(In fact, I saw Close and his assistant enter the building the other day... I was going to ask him about the latest developments, but decided against it...)
So you'd better enjoy the graffiti in this lot while you can...
A Tuesday Money & Investing article about New York's Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village apartment complex was incorrectly accompanied by a photo of the Lillian Wald housing project on Manhattan's Lower East Side, which was misidentified as the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper property.
Thanks to Eater for noticing this...I would have missed it too... As Eater noted yesterday ... this piece of news was buried in an other otherwise ridiculous piece in the Post on hipsters hanging out at rat-packy piano bars: Jesse Malin is planning to open another bar next to Niagara at Avenue A and Seventh Street.
As you may recall, this space was home to the Pizza Shop, which closed in November. As co-owner Kevin Cole said in the EV Grieve comments: "We closed ... because the rent was too high. We struggled every month to make it... someone gave me an offer on the space and i decided it was best to take it."
Horrifying in retrospect. Not sure why anyone ever thought that this was a good image for such ads. ("I got it! Let's have a giant hand crush Michael Keaton using the World Trade Center!" ) Perhaps we can make the case that buildings should never be used as the centerpiece for an ad campaign...
NYU has announced another year of record-breaking admissions, reaching a total of 38,037 for the pool of regular and early decision applicants. For the class of 2014, NYU anticipates enrolling 4,500 students in New York. (NYUnews.com)
From the forgot-to-follow-up-on-this department... A reader asked if I knew anything about a fire on Third Street and Avenue B last week... No, but I did see this Thursday evening on that block...
And if I catch the jokester who put this mag front and center at my newsstand of choice....
My friend Karen Lillis passed along a link to me the other day about Bingo Gazingo, described by the Times in 1997 "as the near-toothless underground performance sensation." The author of such songs as "I Love You So Fucking Much I Can't Shit" died on New Year's Day from injuries that he suffered after getting struck by a cab. He was 85.
You'd hesitate to call him a celebrity by any stretch of the imagination, but New York street/performance poet Bingo Gazingo's obscurity likely served as an aid to his singular imagination and oddball creativity.
With his often crude, spiky, agitated and hilarious rants about sex, dementia, and, especially, popular culture, Gazingo (born Murray Wachs in Queens in 1924) was a Monday night regular every week at New York's Bowery Poetry Club. He was struck by a taxi on his way to one of these very events, presumably on December 28th, and died on New Year's Day.
As Karen told me, "Bingo was wildly unique, and relentless at what he did."
As a young man, he says, he worked as a logger for Broadcast Music Incorporated, or B.M.I., the music licensing agency, sitting over radio play lists with a blue pencil, identifying songs for which the company was entitled to royalties. And then, he says, he disappeared into the United States Postal Service, where he worked for decades sorting mail and loading trucks. "Doing that is like spending 20 years in one day," he says.
But through it all, he says, he never abandoned his dream of being a songwriter. He wrote ballads, novelties, show tunes, country-and-western songs, anything he thought would sell, and left them at stage doors at the Roxy, the Paramount and the Strand, in a time-honored tradition "to try to get my songs to the artists."
"But they never took one of my songs," he says, waving his hands at the memory. ''I thought I would be discovered or something, but it doesn't work that way."
I always intended to go see Bingo one of these Monday nights, but I never did. Wish I would have taken the time to meet this NYC original....
Here's Bingo in action at the Lakeside Lounge in 2006...
SECLUDED CARRIAGE HOUSE. A rare offering! private rear townhouse. This 25' wide threestory plus finished basement rear carriage house has recently undergone a meticulous andtasteful architect designed renovation. From the ground up, only the finest custom finishesadorn this fantastic modernist home. The property's serene setting which boasts both a private and charming courtyard as well as a large rooftop terrace will rejuvinate you. To seduce you, a dynamic Bowery meets East Village locale is downtown's new hip and exiciting neighborhood. You will want to make this gem your oasis in the city!
And here's a look at the $4.25 million home....
According to StreetEasy, the house was on the market for $4,995 million in 2008... Given the proximity of this serene oasis in the city to the Cooper Square Hotel, you'll likely have to enjoy that outdoor space in the winter...when the hotel's penthouse party terrace isn't in use...
After looking at Monday's A Building post (lobby back open, penthouse continues to come down in price), a reader sent along a note saying that the A Building's retail space on 14th Street was still on the market.
New luxury store front at the base of a newly constructed 96-unit luxury condominium. Approximately 1,400 sq. ft. and located at the intersection of 1st Avenue & East 14th Street. 25’ of glass frontage and only steps from the 1st Avenue L-train subway station.
Neighbors include: CVS Pharmacy, Chase Bank, Starbucks, Associated Supermarket, Beth Israel Medical Center, Payless Shoes, Strawberry, Grey Papayas & Stuyvesant Town Rent: $10,500 per month
As the reader noted, given the rent and list of neighbors, only a chain will be able to take this space...