Overpowered by Funk

Filmmaker Paul Dougherty passed along the link to his most recent creation, White Collar Funk 1. (A sequel to his July 2008 video White Collar Funk.)

As Paul notes on YouTube, "In the summer of 1975 while working on E. 23rd St. I'd take a porta-pak out at lunchtime for people watching and capturing street scenes. The area, not *that* different from today, was east of the Flatiron building (district) and was/is kind of a office area, lacking the glamour of midtown (hence the tape name). A little like today, it harkened to an earlier era. It was grey and gritty and I liked it just fine. Besides the office workers, some "street" types came from a welfare hotel(s) east of Lexington. I'm pretty shy so I couldn't bring myself to follow or go up to people, so I did a kind of surveillance. For those reasons many of the shots are very short. Anyway taken together you get a feel for a NY street at the time. Enjoy."

Previous Paul Dougherty videos posted on EV Grieve can be accessed here.

An oral history of the Lower East Side

Filmmaker/video editor Paul Dougherty shoots John J. McCroary's recollections of growing up on the Lower East Side while looking at the book "Life on the Lower East Side: Photographs by Rebecca Lepkoff, 1937-1950." Dougherty, a native New Yorker and East Village resident, tells us more about McCroary on his YouTube post.



I have posted other video works from Paul here.

More from East Houston and Katz's circa 1986

Last week, we shared a photo from EVG reader Paul Dougherty looking at East Houston and Ludlow in 1986 before the onslaught of luxury apartments and hotels...

Flashback!



Paul found a few more from his archives showing Katz's...

...from 1981...



... and 1986...



... and the scene right before he moved from his apartment in the spring of 2007...



Meanwhile, EVG reader Corey shared a current photo that shows the obvious changes in the skyline...



A little half-assed with my Photoshopping, but maybe you get the idea...


[Click image to enlarge]

St. Brigid's as it was...and as it will be...

I had mentioned Paul Dougherty, a longtime video maker, in a post on April 24. Given the good news about St. Brigid's, let's take a look at the church's history via Paul's work....

"White collar funk" on 23rd Street

This is a video, dubbed "white collar funk," made by Paul Dougherty in the 1970s on 23rd Street. You can read about the project here.



His collection includes the a Ludlow Street before and after as well as some interior footage of St. Brigid's. I posted this video in April (not knowing that Jeremiah had posted it in January).

Life before...and after the luxury high rises on the LES

Spending too much time on YouTube these days...I came across these videos by Paul Dougherty, a longtime video maker.

Here's his YouTube page.



Also, check out the his other videos, including inside shots of St. Brigid's.

[OH!: Just found that Jeremiah had linked to these back in January! Sorry Jeremiah!]

The takedown of 100 Avenue A continues

[Bobby Williams]

Demolition work continues at 100 Avenue A… workers are gutting the former theater/grocery to make way for Ben Shaoul's 7-story retail-residential complex between East Sixth Street and East Seventh Street.

There seems to be a lot of interest among residents in this project, given its heart-of-the-East-Village location. These aerial views via EVG reader Paul Dougherty provide a look at what's left up top…




Previously on EV Grieve:
A little bit of Hollywood on Avenue A

East Village Farms is closing; renovations coming to 100 Avenue A

Demolishing 100 Avenue A

We noticed a few workers on top of 98-100 Avenue A on Friday… they were jackhammering away...



And a rooftop view...


[Photo by Paul Dougherty]

The former movie theater/grocery is coming down to make way for Ben Shaoul's retail-residential complex here between East Sixth Street and East Seventh Street. The rendering posted on the plywood shows a new building looking like this...



A retail listing that we posted in May stated that the building will contain 40 residential units.

Also on the plywood outside 98-100 Avenue A…



Previously on EV Grieve:
A little bit of Hollywood on Avenue A

East Village Farms is closing; renovations coming to 100 Avenue A

Inside the abandoned theater at East Village Farms on Avenue A

Reader reports: Village Farms closing Jan. 31; building will be demolished

Asbestos abatement continues at 98 Avenue A, Ben Shaoul's latest East Village trophy

The remaining piece of urban archeology at 24 Avenue A

On Friday afternoon, EV Grieve reader Paul Dougherty (check out some of his NYC-centric films here) captured a little bit of urban archeology under the former sign of Graceland on Avenue A at Second Street... As he says, the sign shows some of the old neighborhood when Avenue A was the baby-nursery furniture district... (BaHa snapped some photos too earlier last week.)



However, by Sunday, all traces of the ghost signage had been removed by workers....





The space now just sits and awaits its fate.

Previously on EV Grieve:
"All uses considered" at former Graceland

More here.

LES dawn... sunrise over Williamsburg

Here's the latest work from filmmaker Paul Dougherty. He explains the video:

"I'm not keen on the new luxury towers cropping up in NYC's low-rise neighborhoods but there they are. I sped this up to make the movement of the elevator and crane more obvious on this construction site."

More on Joey Ramone Place

Last Thursday, I wrote about trying to find Joey Ramone Place on the Bowery and Second Street....

The Post follows up on the piece today... And on page three — right next to Lindsay Lohan!



Per the Post piece by Jeremy Olshan, who also gave me credit for noticing how high the sign is now:

"Joey Ramone Place" is perhaps the most stolen of the 250,900 street signs in New York, according to the Department of Transportation, which recently asked contractors to install the sign for the fourth time since 2003.

He would have appreciated the distinction, said the group's longtime drummer, Marky Ramone, sole survivor of the Ramones' longest-running lineup.

"But maybe they should find a better way to attach it," he said. "Now you have to be an NBA player to see it."

Although most street signs are about 12 to 14 feet off the ground, Joey Ramone Place was raised to 20 feet, an oddity first noted on the blog EV Grieve.

Speaking of Joey, video maker Paul Dougherty sent along this piece on the sign dedication back in 2003...

When East Houston Street was 'a sleepy backwater'

There has been a lot of talk this week about what's next for Ludlow Street ... with the impending closure of Motor City Bar ... the loss of the Pink Pony Cafe... and a cloudy future for The Hat ...

Which brings us to this photo that EVG reader Paul Dougherty recently came across. He shared it with us. It's a view looking south toward Ludlow Street and beyond from his East Houston Street apartment in 1986...



"I had lived in that building for six years and had just moved to a bigger apartment in the front with this great view ... Can't really put in words the sense of neighborhood context one gets from this. Maybe 'sleepy backwater'? Pretty sure this would have been before the first youth bar/restaurant the Ludlow Street Cafe — nice place. From this acorn a mighty oak — blah, blah, blah."

We don't have a compatible today photo ... one that would show the ongoing building boom, featuring The Ludlow, Thompson LES, et al. And not much else... Except for Katz's.

Workers clearing out the mysterious 84 2nd Ave. storefront

Several EVG readers yesterday alerted us to some dumpster action outside 84 Second Ave. between Fifth Street and Fourth Street.

Mr. Baggs spotted workers removing misc. items from the long-empty storefront...





Here's a cut-n-paste from a previous post about this address, which has prompted some mystery through the years:

In February 2009, a man who said that he lived and worked nearby for years told Jill the following about the building:

It used to be a place that sold tuxedos and formal wear. The family had several children, but one of them, a daughter, was raped and murdered in the top floor, possibly in the 1940's [note: it was actually 1974].

The killer was never found. The children (or one of them and a spouse?) still live there and refuse to renovate or change anything. The top floor is exactly the way it was when the daughter was murdered and you can still see the powder where the cops dusted for fingerprints. This man had been inside once and was witness to its originality. He said they have no intention of selling or changing or even of renting out the storefront.

The name of the family is Sopolsky.

This is from The New York Times, dated Jan. 18, 1974:

The nude body of a 40-year-old woman propietor of a tailor shop that rents tuxedos on the Lower East Side was found bludgeoned to death. The victim was Helen Sopolsky of 84 Second Avenue, near fifth Street, whose shop is one flight up at that address. The motive of the attack was not determined immediately...."

Here's more history of 84 via Lost City from February 2012:

It was a temporary home for women in 1884, open to "self-supporting homeless young women, with or without a child." Morris Kosturk, 40, was found dead there in 1921. And Aaron Schneider, who lived here in 1964, was the victim of a hit and run driver.

For years (decades?), you could see a plastic-covered dinner jacket in the second-story window with the neon sign that reads "DRESS SUITS TO HIRE."

[Photo by Jeremiah Moss]

Here are more photos from yesterday via EVG reader Paul Dougherty...





One of the workers yesterday told EVG correspondent Steven that the woman who had lived in the building (and the owner of it) was taken to a nursing home several months ago.

The worker was unsure what was going to happen to the space. There aren't any work permits on file with the DOB for the address. And public records show that building is still in possession of the Sopolsky family...


[Photo by Steven]

More double rainbows!

The above shot is from Paul Dougherty outside his window this evening at 5:35. He quickly quickly collaged it together ... "the most perfect rainbow I've seen, going from 14th & 1st Ave to the waterside towers in Williamsburg."

...and a shot a reader sent along from Midtown...



Earlier!

Today in photos of police-escorted charter buses on Avenue A

EVG reader Paul Dougherty shares this photo from 9:30 a.m. on Avenue A at Sixth Street... NYPD cruiser (one in front and one in back) escorting three charter buses with tinted windows. The first bus was marked District of Columbia.

Jared Kushner in town checking on his East Village properties? Potential homeowners coming from Steiner East Village? Attendees going to a post-post Met Gala party? Anyone?

Remembering Walid Menswear

Walid Menswear went out of business on 14th Street between Second Avenue and Third Avenue last month... As noted, I always liked that Walid sign...




Paul Dougherty, a long-time video maker, sent along this film that he made about Walid back in January... it's titled "Before Old-School" ...