Report: de Blasio administration looking to make street fairs less generic, more local

[EVG file photo from either 2015, 2014, 2013...]

Let's just jump right into Politico's story:

Mayor Bill de Blasio's administration is proposing changes to the city’s street fairs intended to end the corporate flavor of many of the festivals, addressing a long-standing complaint from civic groups and elected officials that the fairs are a costly headache and do little to benefit the communities where they’re held.

Under proposed rules scheduled for a public hearing on October 13, at least fifty percent of vendors participating in a street fair would have to be businesses with locations inside the same community board where the event is being held. That proposal marks a major change that could remake the character of the roughly 200 street fairs the city currently allows each year.

The proposed changes must undergo a period of public comment before being approved. If that happens, then street fairgoers may find more than tube socks and tube steaks during High Street Festival Season next year.

Read the whole article here.

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Group doesn't want street fairs to suck as badly as they do

From the inbox!

Concluding that the vast majority of New York City street fairs are bland and repetitive, and in need of wholesale changes, the Center for an Urban Future today published a report that features ideas for improving these staples of summer from two dozen innovative New Yorkers, including the founders of successful markets like the New York City Greenmarket, Union Square Holiday Market, Brooklyn Flea and Chelsea Market.

The study, titled “New Visions for New York Street Fairs,” starts from the premise that the city’s current system of street fairs desperately need a makeover. It argues that large numbers of New Yorkers are dissatisfied with street fairs for a variety of reasons: there are so many of them that they quickly blend together (there were 321 of them in 2009); a majority of the vendors sell the same bland merchandise, such as tube socks, sunglasses and gyros; a handful of neighborhoods are inundated by the fairs, with a new one popping up almost every week; and with nearly a dozen street fairs on some weekends, the multiple street closures make driving or taking a cab through the city a nightmare. The study seeks to jumpstart a discussion about how to make these public events less generic, more interesting and better reflective of what’s unique about New York.

“New York’s street fairs have been a disappointment for too long,” says Jonathan Bowles, director of the Center for an Urban Future, a Manhattan-based think tank. “It’s time to throw out the cookie-cutter approach and create street fairs that better reflect this incredibly unique and diverse city. There’s no reason to see the same vendors selling tube socks and gyros at almost every fair when New York has so many one-of-a-kind entrepreneurs and artists.”

A PDF of the full report is available here (PDF)

Street fair! Street fair! Street fair!

Several readers recently noted that there haven't been quite as many street fairs/festivals this summer around here.

Hopefully we can squeeze in 5-6 before Labor Day weekend. Cross one off the list, as a fair/festival is slated today on Fourth Avenue, roughly from East 14th Street down to East Ninth Street.

The avenue was still open to vehicular traffic when we passed through… where a lonesome sausage stand stood…



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Ah! And YOU thought it was going to be just another dreary Labor Day Weekend hereabouts! Not SO. The action will be here on Fourth Avenue between 14th Street and like Astor Place.



And for real — doesn't seem as if there were not as many street fairs as in previous summers? By our count, this is No. 5 since May. We could have missed one. Though did we ever leave town this summer?

Previously on EV Grieve:
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Oh, we happened to be at Third Avenue and St. Mark's Place at the exact time (8:20ish) that a seemingly random person pulled the police barricades across the street to mark the start of a — ding! ding! — STREET FAIR/FESTIVAL … actually, The Cooper Square Committee Street Festival, per the signage.



Anyway!





We were also there in time for an exclusive first look at today's porta-potties … (these will do!)



We also heard swear words from motorists who suddenly made u-turns, nearly driving into fools taking photos of porta-potties…



And for all you complainers out there who think there are street fairs like every 20 minutes around here… there hasn't been one of these since May 17, which is like a month in street fair years.

Previously on EV Grieve:
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Just after 8 a.m., the NYPD put up the barricades on Third Avenue at 14th Street ... to block traffic as crews begin setting up for!



It's the annual Third Avenue Festival sponsored by the Cooper Square Committee... and one of the better sessional street fairs, as far as seasonal street fairs go.

At this hour, the various vendors were just setting up...so [in a rather apologetic tone] no sneak previews today...



The festival is noon to 5 p.m., from 14th Street south to St. Mark's Place.

Street fair! Street fair! Street fair!

Rocktober is kicking off in fine fashion ... with a street fair/festival on Third Avenue from Astor Place to 114th Street 14th Street.

EVG deputized Street Fair correspondent OlympiasEpiriot shared the above photo.

As noted last week, the de Blasio administration is proposing changes to the city’s street fairs to make them less tube socky and generic.

Street fair! Street fair! Street fair!

Photos by Steven 

In case you had forgotten! The first Street Fair in two years is now underway on Second Avenue...

EVG reader Terry Howell provided a quickie assessment: 

The Second Avenue Street Fair extends from Seventh Street to 11th Street, unless there's an afternoon shift later. Mainly the same traveling band of commercial sellers with stuff and tchotchkes (crystals, bonsai, baskets, bowls, rugs, jewelry, etc.) that clogged the former street fairs. If you're looking for new food experiences or any local vendors, you will be disappointed, as was I. I searched in vain for "The Pickle Guy." Sad, but it's a start. 

Yes! Welcome back... and maybe THIS will be the year you buy the "Scarface" poster you've been eyeing for the past 15 years...

The Second Avenue Street Fair is tomorrow (Saturday!)

As far as street fairs/festivals go around here, the annual one hosted by Middle Collegiate Church is a good one, with the community spirit absent in those just with the funnel cakes and tube socks.

Via the EVG inbox...

Join us for our annual Second Avenue Street Fair on Saturday, May 6, 12-5pm! Children and families can enjoy activities like a bounce-house, tie-dye t-shirt making, sidewalk chalk, bubble station, Japanese calligraphy, and more!

From 1-5pm, hear live music on the Middle Church stage featuring celebrated East Village musicians, including the Jerriese Johnson Gospel Choir and Village Chorus for Children & Youth. Voter registration and election information will also be available on our block. It’s an all-day party with Middle Church, filled with art, justice and music — you won’t want to miss it!

And this is not the first street festival of the season... that happened on April 9 with the Astor Place Festival ... and there was the Broadway Festival on April 15 on Broadway from 14th Street down to Eighth Street...


[Photo of what you missed on April 15]

H/T EVG reader Marjorie

In case you missed the two street fairs last weekend, or will be away for the five street fairs next weekend, or the weekend after that...

Starts at Third Avenue and 14th Street...runs up to???? Inwood? Westchester? Maine?

Joey Bats opening a shipping outpost on Houston Street

Photos by Stacie Joy

Signage is up for a Joey Bats outpost on East Houston Street between Clinton and Attorney.

Owner Joey Batista (aka Bats) told us that this will be the HQ for his online business. (The company sells natas across the United States via Goldbelly.)

He said he'll also host some pop-up events here as well as promote his two neighborhood locations — 129 Allen St. and, soon, 50 Avenue B.

As for the Joey Bats Café slated for B between Third Street and Fourth Street, he's waiting for all the necessary paperwork to process before opening.

Batista, the son of Portuguese immigrants, started selling pastéis de nata at street fairs around New York in 2016 before opening a location on the LES.

Remembering Carol Joyce on 7th Street

This plaque arrived last week outside 39 E. Seventh St., the longtime home (1963-2020) of Carol Joyce and her husband Bob here between Second Avenue and Cooper Square ...

"In Loving Memory of the Mayor of Seventh Street."

She's remembered here as "anti-establishment, outspoken, compassionate & witty."

In the early days of the pandemic last March, she and her husband stayed at a cousin's country home. While away from the city she died of cardiac arrest on March 22, 2020. She was 93.

Jonathan Ned Katz, a longtime friend, wrote an essay about Carol at OutHistory.org.

She was born in the Bronx on April 1, 1926 ... and later graduated from Washington Irving High School. 

Carol taught textile design for many years at the School of Visual Arts, and she wrote several books on the topic. 

Here are few a excerpts from the essay:

Carol spent her adult life in Lower East Side rentals. In the 1980s, she and Robert Joyce founded the E. 7th Street Block Association which had trees planted, increased street safety and garbage pick-ups, and brought neighbors together at street fairs. Carol fought against gentrification, sometimes winning long battles to keep the heights of new buildings scaled to the neighborhood and protecting old brownstones from being demolished for high rises. 

And...

I always viewed Carol with a bit of awe, as a wondrous, fantastical creature, a quintessential New York character. Bob Joyce said it this way, recalling his wife as "a New Yorker born and bred, with no tolerance for hypocrisy..." 

Her only shortcomings, he noted, were that "she did not drink wine or eat pasta." He called her "the love of my life."

You can read the full essay here. Bob Joyce is now living upstate with relatives. 

Thank you to Dinky Romilly for the photos! 

It has begun

Looks as if street festival season has started up again...Third Avenue between 14th Street and, I'm guessing, 23rd Street was closed off last Saturday. Counted seven of them taking place in Manhattan this coming weekend. (That's SEVEN opportunities to buy four Gap T-shirts for $10 Or bags of tube socks! Or quickie back rubs!) Do these offer any benefit to the local community? I've never heard anyone actually say they look forward to a street festival -- or even admit actually going to one. I'm all for things to bring the community together (such as the various rummage and porch sales different blocks have), but just not the street fairs that seem to peddle the same crap weekend after weekend throughout the spring and summer.

Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher

Name: Robert Shapiro
Occupation: Founder & Director, Social Tees Animal Rescue
Location: 5th Street, between First Avenue and Second Avenue
Time: 6 p.m. on Monday, May 18

I was born in Woodside, Queens, in the mid 1950s but my parents moved to Howard Beach – the citadel of racism, Selma of the north — when I was young. Howard Beach was really Howard Beach man.

I got really lucky. I had a wonderful art teacher when I was in junior high school and he encouraged me to take the test to go to High School of Art & Design. So I went and I met all these city kids and I realized how vapid my existence was. I swear to you, I cried. I remember my father consoling me when I was a kid. I was really upset then. All these other kids were cool and they knew things and culture and going out and my parents never left the house. They were hardworking, blue-collar people.

It takes a certain type of person to have an ego that makes you want to leave your home. I had a lot of teenage angst then. I left home at 17 just to move to the city. I really liked it. I got a job at a department store in the pet department while I lived with my parents. I met this guy who was also this struggling artist. He rented me this little tiny room in his basement that I was able to afford and I could still commute to high school. That was it. I never moved back.

I’ve always loved animals since I was a child. I used to go to the Staten Island Zoo all the time because they had a lot of reptiles. I would also pet Leo, the lion that they used to have there. I used to lean over the rail and he would kind of come up to me. I was always afraid, but he started purring one day, so I started really getting into petting him. I used to cut school all the freaking time to go to the zoo and pet this lion. Petting a lion in the middle of New York? He would purr and he was great and he would lick me, zero fear. Then I got a girlfriend. Next year, I came back to see him ... and I went up to him and he almost killed me. And she never believed any of the stories about me petting the lion.

I still work with animals, but [animal rescue] is a privilege. You can’t just start a rescue unless you are retired from doing something that made some kind of money, because it costs a fortune. So Social Tees was a t-shirt fundraising company. We raised money for human rights organizations all over the country. Schools would sell my shirts. The kids would sell the t-shirts through a catalogue that we would provide. The schools got paid in advance, they sold the shirts retail, they paid us wholesale.

I write a little bit and when I first started making t-shirts, my first line had a terrible name — it was called Global-uh-wareness, and it was all information on these t-shirts about the environment. It was... really cool. It didn’t sell. Nobody cared about it.

Then one night I’m walking down 6th Street, right between 2nd Avenue and 3rd Avenue. I don’t dress to impress but I don’t look like a slob. I was clean-shaven and I’m alone and a woman sees me. She’s not really paying attention and she sees me, clutches her purse, and crosses the street. I thought, ‘that’s a pretty smart thing to do. I don’t have any problem with that.’ I wasn’t offended at all, but then I realized, if I was black, I would have been really hurt. Even though she did it because I was a guy, I thought, man that must suck.

So I made three t-shirts that month. The first shirt said, ‘No, white lady, I don’t want your purse,’ which became, you would not believe how popular this shirt became. Spike Lee bought them for his stores and sold them all over the world. It was crazy. That’s when Social Tees started.

My shirts were humorous even though they were a little bit confrontational. I realized that I could make shirts about things I really cared about, and that’s when Social Tees really happened. From 1991 until around 1998, my whole life was business. It’s funny, when you’re a certain age and you start something, you’re hungry. There were things I cared about, like I would do street fairs and promote my stuff. I would do conventions all over the country where there were school conferences. I would travel by myself with everything. I was hungry.

But I gave it all up. All of a sudden my great idea became not such a great idea. I was selling thousands of shirts a day all over the country. I mean, I had thousands of salespeople selling my shirts, right? Great idea, right? There was this one day where I had to leave my little shop, which was on Bleecker Street, and hire a staff and then trucking and the art department. I needed to expand to make even more money. I was never meant to be a businessperson.

So instead of selling the business like a normal person would, I just gave it up. All that was happening is that everyday I would go to work and I would make more money and I would put the money in the bank and then I would wake up the next day and make more money. I’m not going to live forever, how much money do you need? Money’s great, don’t get me wrong ... It’s so great to be over that. I was miserable even though I had this successful business plan that worked.

That’s what I mean by it’s a privilege to start the rescue. That happened organically. I remember I was with a bunch of friends in Chinatown. We were walking back from a great Vietnamese restaurant called Pho Pasteur on Baxter Street. I see this gleaming dumpster in Chinatown. What were sparkling were literally a million baby turtles. What they do is they buy the babies illegally by the millions for maybe a penny each and sell them for $10. They still do it. Most of the turtles die because they keep them in water and you can’t keep water turtles in water all of the time. They don’t feed them either. They just sell whatever they can and they dump the rest. A whole dumpster, if you can imagine, of turtles the size of a half dollar and smaller.

I took my t-shirt off and I spent like an hour and I found 35 out of these million baby turtles and I put them back in against my body because they were freezing. I took them home and rehabbed them. I think 34 of them lived. Then I was stuck with 34 turtles that were stinking up my apartment like you couldn’t believe.

So I found this guy who worked for the New York Turtle and Tortoise Society — yes there is one — and he was able to find a qualified place for these turtles to go. He ended up moving to Tennessee and I ended up taking his job of picking up turtles and other reptiles from the city and other reptiles — found, lost, abandoned, whatever — from Animal Control, where the dogs and cats are.

I used to pick up a snake here, a lizard here, then all of a sudden I’m seeing this line of animals being euthanized. So I started taking the dogs and cats home. That’s how it started. I didn’t know what I was doing. Now I’m fully licensed and I have all my documentation, but then I was like, take a puppy and take him home. I was learning on the fly. I had never even owned a dog until I did rescue.

That was the late 1990s but I didn’t start doing majority rescue until after 9/11. I took over someone’s lease and all of a sudden I went from having a shop that was one little room to seven big rooms. Now I have this little space and something miraculous happened because of all these amazing people who work for me. They turned it into a virtual shelter. It’s all done digitally. We have a crew who processes applications, and if someone is approved they get to meet the dogs here, but none of the dogs are kept here overnight. I get to do way more rescue.

People say, ‘How can you have freaking exotic animals like that? How can you have an owl in your shop?’ I say, ‘How can you buy cocaine so easily? How can you buy an Uzi?’ In the black market, animals are third, after drugs and arms. We had a baboon once; it was a baby. We had a mountain lion, which was the friendliest thing, in a giant dog crate and it was just rolling over purring. It was going to a rescue upstate with a guy who did wolves and mountain lions. That was the guy with the baboon. The baboons ride the wolves. The guy’s crazy. He looks like Clint Eastwood. I think he has alligators in his living room in a big pool and he swims with them. We’ve had anacondas, alligators and crocodiles. When you’re in New York, you get some crazy animals. Anything you can fit in that door will end up there.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher

Name: Phillip Giambri
Occupation: Storyteller, Submariner, Actor, Theatre Sound Tech, OTB Announcer, Computer Systems / Network Administrator.
Location: St. Marks between 1st and 2nd Avenues.
Time: 1:00pm on Monday June 17th

I’ve been here a long time. I’m from Philadelphia originally. I was in the military when I was 18 and I got out at 22. I was down in a submarine. It’s a strange life. Then I went back to Philly and I went to a drama school for 3 years. Then I moved to New York for Summer Stock [Theatre]. I was passing through New York on my way to California and was taking some acting classes with Stella Adler and I kind of got sidetracked.

The first job I got was on 4th Street between 2nd and the Bowery. It was a good theater block. Cafe La MaMa was there and the Playwrights Horizons and the Fortune Theatre. There was a lot going on in that little neighborhood. So the first job I got was as an assistant stage manager, a sound man, and an understudy for Michael Douglas for the very first play he was ever in in New York, called 'City Scenes.' Dominic Chianese, the Uncle from 'The Sopranos' was in it as well as Raúl Juliá.

I got to move down here by way of the West Village. I moved in with a lady on Washington Place for awhile and when that ended I had nowhere to live. I was going to the School of Visual Arts for awhile and I slept in my instructors loft until he got tired of me, so I moved in with acting friends from Summer Stock on East 9th Street for a couple months. It was really awkward because there were four of us living in a tiny apartment. We had to smoke a lot of dope to stay sane.

So they helped me get the apartment on St. Mark's Place across from the Electric Circus — building number 26. In the ‘60s and early 70s, the Electric Circus was like the Studio 54. It was like a happening place. You would take acid or mescaline or mushrooms or something and go in there and the whole place was designed to make you go bizarro.

I only wanted to be an actor and at the time I erroneously thought that if I worked in the theater rather than doing some regular menial task that at least I would get to know people. Just the opposite happened. Over 3 or 4 years, I gained such a reputation as a competent technical person, who were hard to find outside the union, that it was all the jobs I was getting. I would audition for a part for a Broadway producer, who would know me cause I did his sound work and he would say, ‘C’mon Phil, actors are a dime-a-dozen. We need a stage manager.’

I wound up managing a recording studio that worked with the theater for several years, while I was still looking for acting work. I was the manager, but every summer I laid myself off because we did only theater recordings mostly, and rented sound equipment to theaters and there was no work in the summer. So we’d sit out front on the stoop and smoke dope and drink wine all summer. I did that for like 4 or 5 years in the early ‘70s. It was kind of like a four-year party. People were in and out all the time, crashing, the building was very liberal in terms of sexuality and drugs and stuff. That was around ‘70 to ‘75 or ‘76.

I started to grow up a little when I met my wife. We went on our first date to the midnight movie show at the St. Marks Theatre to see 'Reefer Madness.' It cost $1 and you could bring your own food in and your own weed in and you could sit there all night and nobody would ever hassle you.

In ’74, we formed a St. Marks block association. There was a very influential guy in the neighborhood, Jim Rose, who ran the The Eastside Book Store. He became the head of the block association and we were just overwhelmed with crime in the neighborhood. Once the hippie thing wore off, all that were left were drug addicts and opportunists. It turned from the Summer of Love in ‘67 and ’68 and started really getting dark around ‘73. We realized there were 17 Methadone clinics in the neighborhood and there were all these junkies going there regularly and supporting their habits by beating us up and taking our money. We had the men’s shelter on 3rd street where every crazy person in New York State that got out of a mental hospital or prison was sent to, who were going around killing people and beating people up. We had several cops shot in the neighborhood. It was getting ugly.

I was the police department representative of the block association, so I would get all the crime statistics every month and what a wake up call that was, when you’re actually getting the numbers. We also had fundraising street fairs to try and improve the neighborhood. We got gates and window boxes put in front of the ground floor apartments.

We succeeded in getting the police commander changed in the Precinct. I used to go to all the police meetings and this new guy came in named Gunderson, back in ’75, and he changed everything down there. The 9th Precinct had the reputation, if you got out of the Police Academy you had to learn to be a bag man, and they sent you to 5th Street to learn that. It was a very crooked place. That was part of our problem — the cops had their own thing going on and they couldn’t give a shit about what we did. So with a little muscle and a little politicking, we got rid of the commander down there and they brought this guy Gunderson from Staten Island. He was a hard case who didn’t smile. Nobody liked him over there. We loved the guy. He cleaned the whole Precinct up.

At the time, all the cops kept their windows rolled up and just drove by everywhere and didn’t get out of the car. So we fought to get a permanent foot-beat cop, which they never did in those days. Gunderson said he couldn’t justify one permanent person there since they were so shorthanded in cops, so a friend of mine and I went around at night and took pictures of all the cops, what they used to call cooping, when they’re sleeping on duty in their car and they’re supposed to be patrolling. We had a picture of about 25 cops cooping and we brought them in and said we either get a beat cop or somebody uptown is gonna see this.

So we got a beat cop named George and he lasted here almost 10 years. He was a really sweet guy who used to go to everybody’s birthday parties, christenings, Bar Mitzvahs, and that was at a time when everybody hated the cops. He was like a part of the neighborhood and I don’t think he ever drew a gun in his life.

To be continued... next week...

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

A street festival for your Saturday

[Photo by Vinny & O]

Vendors and other volunteers are prepping for the Cooper Square Committee's annual Third Avenue Festival, which takes place today from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m.

As noted in previous years, this is one of the better street fairs.



Aside from some of the usual stuff (see photo below), the festival features a variety of live performances from a stage at St. Mark's Place at Third Avenue. The acts include Kate Brunotts, Chanese Elifé, the Rod Rodgers Dance Company, Bill Popp and the Tapes and Cherry Sol.



With all this, Third Avenue is closed from Sixth Street to 14th Street.

Joey Bats Café offering a sneak preview outside new Avenue B home

Photo last week by Stacie Joy

Joey Bats Café is opening soon at 50 Avenue B... and starting last week, they've been peddling their pastéis de nata from a sidewalk table here between Third Street and Fourth Street. 

Joey Batista (aka Bats) started selling the Portuguese custard tarts several years back before opening his first outpost at 129 Allen St. near Rivington.

Here's more via a Hungry City feature at the Times from April 2019:

Mr. Batista, 39, the son of Portuguese immigrants, started selling pastéis de nata at street fairs around New York in 2016. The recipe was developed by his mother, Isabel Fernandes, a formidable home cook who made desserts for her brother's restaurant in their hometown, Ludlow, Mass., before heading the kitchen at her son's cafe.

The Avenue B location — a sizeable two-level space — will feature elements of the cafe as well as a lounge featuring comedy and live music. Joey Bats received approval for a liquor license here during last month's CB3 meeting.

No. 50 has sat empty for several years. The pizzeria Johnny Favorite's shuttered on the Fourth Street side in August 2017 after debuting in April 2015. Lovecraft, inspired by horror writer H. P. Lovecraft, closed in early 2018 after three-and-a-half years in business. 

Week in Grieview

[Pumpkins arrived at St. Mark's Market this past week]

Stories posted on EVG this past week included...

Lenin comes down at Red Square (Tuesday ... Wednesday)

Avenue A bomb scare turned out to be broken glass and golf balls (Tuesday)

Fire at Caracas Arepa Bar (Thursday)

Former Guayoyo space for rent on First Avenue (Tuesday)

There will be several eating-drinking choices at the incoming Moxy hotel on 11th Street (Wednesday)

Last call for the Edge (Friday)

The demolition of the Mobil station and full NEKST reveal (Monday)

The former St. Mark's Bookshop is for rent (Monday)

A few more details on the Swiss Institute's move to the East Village (Friday)

JuiceGo opening in the former Cadillac's Castle storefront on Ninth Street (Thursday)

A change in the crap sold at street fairs (Thursday)

130 St. Mark's Place is for rent (Monday)

Desi Galli, now with beer and wine on Avenue B (Wednesday)

Croman case adjourned until November (Tuesday)

About the Stop Work Order at the incoming Taberna 97 on St. Mark's Place (Thursday)

Checking in on 500 and 524 E. 14th St., where work looks to be past the halfway mark (Monday)

East Village IHOP closed for "makeover" (Wednesday)

Activity in the long-empty lot that will house 8 floors of condos on First Avenue (Tuesday)

Activity at Nino's, and brown-paper action on St. Mark's Place (Monday)

Fresno II Gourmet Deli signage arrives on Third Street and Avenue C (Tuesday)

255 E. Houston St. is disappearing (Friday)

... and a moment with Christo in Tompkins Square Park via Steven...

In case you missed yesterday's street fair on Second Avenue, the exact same vendors are on Broadway today

From 14th Street on down....



With the winds today, the vendors were having problems setting up their stuff...






Previously on EV Grieve:
Pass the Tums: First of 458 spring/summer street fairs kicks off today on Second Avenue

Today in street fairs

The annual Third Avenue Festival hosted by the Cooper Square Committee takes place today on... Third Avenue! Between Sixth Street and 14th Street. Hours: 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. 

Meanwhile, the toilet tippers were out early...