Saturday, October 4, 2008

The Marble Cemetery is open today

The Marble Cemetery on Second Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue will be open to the public today....just one of two days a year that this happens, I'm told...In fact, there's a whole block party going on (a good kind of block party thrown by local residents, not professional sausage-on-a-stick types)...The cemetery opened in 1832...and it's one of the loveliest spots in the East Village...this Times piece has much more on the history...

And here are some shots I took from inside the cemetery when it (cough) may not have been open to the public...











Friday, October 3, 2008

The networks are taking the presidential debates a little too far

Obama/Luke Skywalker vs. McCain/Darth Vader in front of the NYSE today on Wall Street.

Oh, this about sums it up

"Straight to Hell."



Or if you prefer it to be a little more dancey...

An appreciation: Gramercy Typewriter


Great piece in BusinessWeek on Gramercy Typewriter at 175 Fifth Ave., which was established in 1932.

Every business day, as he has done for the past 49 years, Paul Schweitzer, 69, travels the streets and skyscrapers of Manhattan making "house" calls, carrying his black leather tool bag by his side. Schweitzer, who insists on wearing a suit and tie while on his rounds, is one of the last of his kind: the typewriter repairman.


Here's a piece on the shop from NPR.

[BusinessWeek photo by Stacy Perman]

If the Dow does plunge again today, you have THIS to look forward to...


This e-mail is apparently making the rounds now from FiDi bar and restaurant Pound and Pence on Liberty Street:

If the Dow Jones Closes 100 Points Lower...

HALF PRICE DRINKS AT THE BAR ALL EVENING

Receive Instant Savings When You Show This Message to the Bartender on Your Phone or on a Printed Copy.

Valid Only On Beverage Purchases at the Bar.

East River Park is ready to slide into the river while everyone putters around



From Downtown Express this week:

New Yorkers will be waiting another year for East River Park to be complete — and maybe more if a state agency succeeds in halting the project.

The Department of Environmental Conservation is worried that workers repairing the East River bulkhead are allowing the shoreline to erode into the water, so D.E.C. tried to revoke the construction permit, D.E.C. spokesperson Arturo Garcia-Costas said.


Also in Downtown Express this week: More on the ongoing East Village/Lower East Side rezoning.

[The accompanying photo seems appropriate for some reason...]

Wall Street Week in Review

As our nation's economy gasped and wheezed through another traumatic week, enterprising reporters, tourists, news networks, protestors and, uh, bloggers, braved a chaotic Wall Street to be a witness to history. Or something equally dramatic.

Here are some snapshots from the week that was Wall Street.














St. Brigid's gets prepped for something ugly

Curbed reported Sept 25 that the back wall will be coming down at St. Brigid's on Eighth Street and Avenue B. There has definitely been some activity out back the last few days, but nothing major...yet.


From a gilded age to a great emptiness...


An excerpt from Judith Warner's "Waiting for Schadenfreude" column in the Times today:

For those of us who have hated this period — the wealth worship, the wealth gap, the elevation of everything suspiciously shiny and irrationally bubbly and stupidly ebullient, there should be some feeling of vindication. But it just isn’t coming. A great emptiness — and a gnawing kind of fear — has taken its place.

Schadenfreude is impossible because the fat cats — the ones who bent the rules, the ones who pushed the envelopes, the ones who paid lower taxes because capital gains were most of their income, the ones who opposed regulations on the banking and mortgage industries — are taking us down with them.

"In the East Village they’re destroying all the beautiful old buildings"


From an article on exploring Brooklyn Heights in the Times today:

Today Montague Street is home to Joe Coleman, an artist who moved there in 1994 after 20 years in the East Village. A painter known for his meticulously detailed portraits of serial killers and other nightmarish imagery, Mr. Coleman and his wife, Whitney Ward, live in an apartment that he calls the Odditorium. Wax figures of Charles Manson and the serial killer Richard Speck, John Dillinger’s death mask, a bullet from Jack Ruby’s pistol and a letter from the cannibal Albert Fish share the Ripleyesque space with some of Mr. Coleman’s paintings.
The East Village that I came to know and love doesn’t exist anymore,” Mr. Coleman said. “I like it much better here. In the East Village they’re destroying all the beautiful old buildings. So escaping here seemed comforting.”


[Photo of the former Gaseteria on Avenue B and Houston Street via GammaBlog. Not that the Gaseteria was a beautiful old building...]

Flier of the week

On First Avenue near Fifth Street. Is this some kind of joke?


Thursday, October 2, 2008

In case you're thinking of driving on Avenue C tonight...

Good luck! Avenue C is getting roughed up...And the side streets are blocked off at Avenue B. What a mess.





About that fruit salad at Citibank


Remember yesterday, when I did a post about fruit salad being sold for $2.50 in the lobby of the Citibank branch at 120 Broadway, kiddingly suggesting that the bank was only able to stay afloat by selling fruit...?

Anyway! First, the good news. It's really nice out today -- perfect fall weather. Oh, and Citibank isn't going out of business. The fruit salad was back today, and I took a closer look. (At the lobby, not the fruit salad.)

In my haste to transfer all my money ($5.76) to Chase yesterday after spotting the fruit salad sale....I overlooked a few things. Like! The fruit salad is only $2. And! All proceeds go to the Light the Night Walk sponsored by the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society.

My apologies to Vikram Pandit (and same time tomorrow night for cards, VP?).

Buy an East Village row house for $32.73



Perfect for the Winter Wonderland in the East Village display I'm creating in my living room this December!

Buy this FiDi condo on eBay for $529,000



And no payments until 2009!

Read the fine print here.

The bubble man of Nassau Street



Dunno how popular bubbles are these days in the Financial District, though.

Noted


From Page Six today:

THAT Kwiat Diamonds will send security to 20 Pine St. tonight to guard the jewels Amanda Hearst and Andres Santo Domingo will wear at artist David Foote's opening, hosted by Porsche Design's fragrance, The Essence . . .

And!:
THE "Sex and the City" tour buses will take a detour today so that diehard fans can take a gander at screen star Gilles Marini . Marini, who played Samantha's shirtless neighbor in "Sex and the City: The Movie," may even strip down again this afternoon while facing off in Ethan Zohn's Grassroots Soccer United match at Sara D. Roosevelt Park on the Lower East Side. The hottie will play with Brandon Routh and gold-medalist Heather O'Reilly to raise money for AIDS awareness.

Candidates for the John Varvatos Preservationist of the Month Club


From the Times today:

The 21-story Cooper Square Hotel may be an imposing presence on the Lower East Side, but its interiors have an intimate scale more evocative of neighborhood buildings. In fact, the hotel was built around one of them, a 19th-century tenement that was not torn down because two tenants refused to move. “It would have been much cheaper to demolish,” said Carlos Zapata, center in picture, the designer, but in the end “the tenement had a positive effect” on the design, inspiring smaller, more livable interior spaces. The first two floors of the tenement became the hotel’s library and offices; the third and fourth house the two tenants, who have their own entrance.

For guests, who will pay $375 to $1,000 a night ($7,500 for the penthouse), “the hotel means to be a home away from home,” said Klaus Ortlieb, left in picture, who developed the $115 million project with Matt Moss, right in picture, his partner at MK Hotels. Among other things, that means there is no formal check-in desk in the lobby, above right: The registration process will take place out of sight, while guests are greeted by a hostess bearing drinks.


Previously on EV Grieve:
“This used to be an area where people got their start. Now it’s a place to land once you’ve made it.”


[Photo: Rebecca McAlpin for The New York Times]

Biden, Palin and popcorn in the garden tonight

Tonight in La Plaza Cultural at Avenue C and Ninth Street...



I'll need something stronger than popcorn to get through this tonight.

About that earthquake in NYC

Curbed had the post yesterday about the earthquake that will likely wipe us out.

(How will the affect your weekend? Don't know!) Meanwhile, here's a scene from the 1933 film Deluge, in which an earthquake LEVELS NEW YORK CITY. And the rest of the country. IT CAN TOTALLY HAPPEN! Run!



Still. I'm more worried about this...seeing as I live on a lower floor and all...

Wednesday, October 1, 2008

Please call for help....

Good lord I'm still futzing around with Google 2001...Oh, look who's playing at Brownies!

Remember when...?



Google is celebrating its 10th birthday. In honor of this, they've brought back their oldest available index. Take a look back at Google in January 2001.

Better yet, search for some vile things in the East Village that arrived after January 2001...and its as if those things never existed! (Search for Pinkberry and see what you find...) Oh, we can pretend. I've just started playing around with this...there goes the rest of the day....

Uh, Mabius for mayor?

In Page Six Magazine this week, "Ugly Betty" star Eric Mabius was asked the following:

If you were mayor of New York City, what would you change?

I'd stop all of the high-rises that are going up. They're making New Yorkers tourists in their own town. Most New Yorkers can't afford apartments in those luxury buildings.


Done.

Is this something to worry about?

The Citibank branch on 120 Broadway in the Financial District is selling bowls of fruit salad in the lobby for $2.50.

Ridge? Pitt? Attorney?

An explanation of "off-off-Bowery." As Grub Street notes, "Yes, folks, this is what it has come to."

Setting the record straight on Lou Reed

I picked up an item yesterday on Lou Reed from the City Room, which cited a Daily Star blurb about Lou Reed wanting a street named after him and all that. Anyway! What wasn't mentioned in any of this!: That item came from this week's action-packed 40th anniversary issue of New York. (Way to source it, Daily Star!)

I realized that last night when I continued my journey through the issue. The Reed stuff was part of the magazine's "New York Questionnaire."


Checking in (so to speak) at the Wyndham Garden Hotel

Workers unveiled the entrance to the 20-story Wyndham Garden Hotel at 20 Maiden Lane yesterday in the Financial District. Still, from the look of things inside, plenty of work remains at this L-shaped hotel that wraps around three low-rise buildings on the corner of Maiden and Nassau.




Regardless, the hotel has its Web site up and running. So I thought I'd check out a room for this week.



Oh. According to the site, they are now accepting reservations for stays after March 15, 2009. Anyway sounds nice, based on the description:

The Wyndham Garden Hotel - Manhattan Financial District is a new, modern, 20 story high rise located in the heart of the New York City Financial District and Wall Street, bordering the historic South Street Seaport and the trendy neighborhoods of Tribeca & The Lower East Side.

Whether you're traveling to New York City for business or pleasure you will find that this magnificent downtown New York City hotel offers easy access to the World Trade Center site, Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, South Street Seaport, Battery Park, The Brooklyn Bridge and hundreds of Fortune 500 companies.


Let's add: "Come and see the end of Wall Street firsthand!"

Previously on EV Grieve:
A Win Won Situation

Though photos with Maria Bartiromo cost $10

CNBC was camped out all day yesterday across from the NYSE on Wall Street covering the continued economic collapse of the free world. Well, it was a long day. And there sure were many pesky -- no, we love you! -- tourists milling about. So the tourists asked if they could have their photo taken inside the CNBC van.



Tree muggers at the La Plaza Cultural

This past Saturday morning, city workers swooped in and cut down a beautiful willow tree on the corner of Avenue C and Ninth Street in La Plaza Cultural. I happened by minutes after the workers left. I spoke with someone who lives nearby. A branch had fallen earlier that morning in the high winds. So the whole tree was cut down "just in case." This resident didn't think that was necessary.



Decision 2008



Who will I go as this Halloween? And where the hell are the Sarah Palin masks? I asked a nice woman working at Duane Reade. She said "Who?" When I said she is the Republican vice presidential candidate, the worker threw up and her hands and said "all the masks that we have are out."

An end to the real estate boom


Excerpts from a Times piece titled "Failed Deals Replace Real Estate Boom:"

After seven years of nonstop construction, skyrocketing rents and sales prices, and a seemingly endless appetite for luxury housing that transformed gritty and glamorous neighborhoods alike, the credit crisis and the turmoil on Wall Street are bringing New York’s real estate boom to an end.

It is hard to say exactly what the long-term impact will be, but real estate experts, economists and city and state officials say it is likely there will be far fewer new construction projects in the future, as well as tens of thousands of layoffs on Wall Street, fewer construction jobs and a huge loss of tax revenue for both the state and the city.

After imposing double-digit rent increases in recent years, landlords say rents are falling somewhat, which could hurt highly leveraged projects, but also slow gentrification in what real estate brokers like to call “emerging neighborhoods” like Harlem, the Lower East Side and Fort Greene.

“Any continued impediment to the credit markets is awful for the national economy, but it’s more awful for New York,” said Richard Lefrak, patriarch of a fourth-generation real estate family that owns office buildings and apartment houses in New York and New Jersey.

“This is the company town for money,” he said. “If there’s no liquidity in the system, it exacerbates the problems. It’s going to have a serious effect on the local economy and real estate values.”

What we can learn from Meyer Mishkin...or not


David Leonhardt writing in the Times today:

In 1929, Meyer Mishkin owned a shop in New York that sold silk shirts to workingmen. When the stock market crashed that October, he turned to his son, then a student at City College, and offered a version of this sentiment: It serves those rich scoundrels right.

A year later, as Wall Street’s problems were starting to spill into the broader economy, Mr. Mishkin’s store went out of business. He no longer had enough customers. His son had to go to work to support the family, and Mr. Mishkin never held a steady job again.

Frederic Mishkin — Meyer’s grandson and, until he stepped down a month ago, an ally of Ben Bernanke’s on the Federal Reserve Board — told me this story the other day, and its moral is obvious enough. Many people in Washington fear that the country is starting to spiral into a terrible downturn. And to their horror, they see the public, and many members of Congress, turning into modern-day Meyer Mishkins, more interested in punishing Wall Street than saving the economy.