Been meaning to check out the completed work on Centre-fuge Cycle 13, the rotating outdoor gallery/construction trailer here along East First Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue.
All the art this time is by Lexi Bella … for a collection titled "Heroines of the Lower East Side" … as part of the first Lower East Side History Month.
Aside from the more recognizable portraits of Debbie Harry and Rosario Dawson … Bella honors the Russ Daughters (of Russ & Daughters fame) …
LaMama founder Ellen Stewart …
Educator Catherine Ferguson, who founded the first Sunday school in New York City …
Hell-cat Maggie, "who fought alongside the Dead Rabbits and other Five Pointers against rival nativist gangs from the Bowery" …
… Lexi also paid tribute to her daughter Roxy, as BoweryBoogie pointed out…
Find more info about Centre-fuge here.
They should have included Hisae, of Hisae's Place at 35 Cooper Square. Of course, that is now the Standard Hotel, the disgusting fucking eyesore of the EV. Hisae ran a restaurant that was half Italian and half Japanese. I kid you not! And she was one of the sweetest people you could ever meet.
ReplyDeletehisae was also one of the first real restaurants in the area (outside of the polish/ukrainian places) and everyone was happy that they had a liquor license. same with pier 9 on second avenue. the good old bad old days.
ReplyDeletethe food was well made and fresh.
Oh, and their all-you-can-eat Sushi Monday nights...heaven.
ReplyDeleteGlad some people remember. Sometimes I wonder if I just dreamed some of these memories. The neighborhood is such a far cry now from what it once was. But I'm sure that's what some old-timers said when people like me moved into the neighborhood (1973).
ReplyDeletePS: Does anyone remember a macrobiotic (?) restaurant on 6th Street between 1st and 2nd called "Cauldron's Well". Nobody I've asked seems to remember that place.
It was The Cauldron owned by Marty Schloss(sp?)
DeleteYes, me, I loved the Cauldron and to this day crave their food!
Delete@Walter - I remember it as The Cauldron; I ate there several times in the early 1980s. Thanks for reminding me, had forgotten all about it...sigh...
ReplyDeleteYou're correct, Gojira. It was called The Cauldron.
ReplyDelete'Cauldron's Well' was the grocery next to the Cauldron macrobiotic restaurant on East 6th street. I worked at the restaurant in the early seventies. The grocery had the best tofu cheesecake, baked by Zeena.
ReplyDeleteI worked there mid-70s!!!!
DeleteI just pulled from an old paperback of mine (Wm. James' The Varietie of Religious Experience)a card from -- and this is the spelling on the card -- The Caldron Restaurant on 308 E. 6th St. The owner was Marty Schlass and his wife Gloria (or was it Glory?). I worked there as a cook, waiter and cashier in 1970 and 1971. It was the hippest place going then. I remember waiting on George Harrison and other celebs, but it was also full of all the regular characters that funky, colorful era.
ReplyDeleteI need to talk to you, looking for recipes from the Cauldron!
DeleteWhen the Cauldron was being put together, Marty asked my then husband Richard Sandler to come as the cook.He helped with getting it set up and then cooked and short ordered.,possibly mainly short ordered. He still lives there, a few blocks away.
DeleteYou could easily find him.He did the film The Gods of Times Square so he's an easy Google.
that would be me, but we were not quite married yet!
DeleteI worked there in 1980-82. Gloria ran the restaurant and store/bakery. I was a baker and store manager. I worked with Cena (someone above spelled it Zeena; I never knew how she spelled it). She was Marty’s mother and she developed all the recipes. I baked an almond cake with tofu-maple frosting, topped with six strawberries, for Sean Lennon’s sixth birthday, the first without his dad. Recently I heard that Yoko worked there in the ‘70s. I loved the mix of hippies and Chassidim that patronized the place. We were kosher-vegetarian-macrobiotic, “every trip in the book,” as I used to say. The restaurant’s astrology chart was framed behind the register. I’m still friends with a guy I met there. Last month I watched a film from 1971 called “Joe,” starring Peter Boyle and a very young Susan Sarandon; a scene was filmed at the Cauldron. I loved every minute of my time there. Every. Minute. I think of it often.
ReplyDeleteyoko ono worked at the paradox macrobiotic restaurant on 7th st., between 1st and 2nd aves, in 1965 and/or 1966; she didn’t work at the caldron which opened on april, 19th, 1969. yes, i was the first cook at the caldron and i was the dishwasher previously at the paradox in the fall of 1966 & yoko ono had recently left the paradox, likely for england.
DeleteArthur and Hiroko Braverman
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone remember a restaurant called Hiro's (or Heros? It was on 6th St or 8th St.
We used to go to it in the 1980s. I only remember it because it is in a journal I wrote back then when my daughter was 2 years old.
It was in expensive so we could afford it back then. I think it was a Japanese health food restaurant.
Does anybody remember it?
Arthur
The cauldron🥢🫖
ReplyDeleteOne special place.
A meeting hall-
Another era♥️
I had a macro bakery on st marks an second-Bethlehem house of bread🍋
Would like to connect with people who worked in:
Angelica-
Bethlehem bakery-
Souen-
Paradox-
You can reach me at:
Kim.c.turim@gmail.com
Thanks!
Kim🥢
They had good miso soup and brown rice w/tahini and tempura. I went there pretty often in 75-76.
ReplyDeleteI lived on East 6th Street between 1st and A from 1972- 74 . I remember the Cauldron so well! Also Hiro's further up the Street. Yes Moshe Shlass and his wife Gloria were the owners. Later they opened the bakery next door and his mother Zeena was the bet baker. Til this day I make Glory's salad dressing (daikon, carrot and beet!) Miss their Tahini Canton pudding! Moshe now lives in Jerusalem for the last 45 years in the old city.....it was a magical time like none other....bridging worlds bothe physical and mystical.....
ReplyDeleteI also remember Bethlem house of Bakery on St Marks....would purchase a loaf each week.
I lived on East 6th, between A and B in 1973. I remember somebody teaching me how to use chopsticks in The Cauldron.. I remember the Mu tea, the brown rice with bechemel sauce, and the back room where you could sit crosslegged at low tables on the floor. A little later on 1980, I remember a woman named Marsha worked the cash register. I thought she was beautiful and was surprised one day when she recognized me in the street, locked arms with me as if we were a couple, and walked with me for a block or two before parting ways.
ReplyDeleteShe knew o existed and that was good enough.
I would luuuv to get the recipe for the "beschemel" dressing that was used over the brown rice at the Caldron(?).
DeleteIt's so wonderful to read people's memories of the Caldron and the Lower East Side from the 70's and 80's. the neighborhood is an entirely different place now. Back then, when I'd answer the phone at the Caldron, potential customers would ask, "Is that a safe block?" By suburban standards, it certainly was not, and the Bowery, from that perspective, a dismal sink of despair. But for me, young and fresh from small-town Louisiana, it was heaven. It had everything I wanted: cultural mix to the max, urban hippiedom, clubs the suited whoever or whatever you were. And i learned a lot about food working at that iconic Japanese
ReplyDeleteMacrobiotic eatery. You could get really healthy eating that way, even if your frequent sins were Radner's cheese cake and, yeah, drugs. Ulysses D'Aquila