On Saturday afternoon, a crew arrived (unannounced) to erect a sidewalk bridge outside 128 Second Ave.
Unfortunately, this happened while the Stage was open for business. And when owner Roman Diakun (in the blue T-shirt below) had stepped away for a moment.
He had to helplessly watch for some 20 minutes while the crew blocked the door to the restaurant to build the safety structure, as these photos by EVG reader Jonathan Jones show.
As we first reported last fall, the building here just south of St. Mark's Place that houses the Stage was sold to rooftop-rager specialists Icon Realty. The building is currently undergoing a gut renovation. One remaining tenant says there aren't many residents left. It has not been easy here.
Previously on EV Grieve:
An appreciation: Breakfast at Stage
Troubling talk about 128 Second Ave, and the long-term future of the Stage
26 comments:
20 minutes? So what?
My guess is that if you had to wait 20 minutes for ANYTHING you would throw a fit. This is someone's business 20 minutes is a long time to watch customers go somewhere else.
The bars cutting across the front doors are really a smooth move.
i will do the limbo dance under the bars to get some of their borshch!
I-)
They did the same to my bar on 7th a few years ago. Had I not been there at 10am...there would have been support beams blocking the basement stock and halfway across the front door. Roman's a saint for not going off on them. 20 minutes in a diner is money lost. The Stage is one of the few authentic Ukrainian treasures in the neighborhood.
Seriously? How is this not illegal, they have in affect seized the property of a legal rent paying tenant. Why doesn't the NY Times pick up on a story and the many others like it happening everyday in the EV LES?
Thugs.
Q. "Why doesn't the NY Times pick up on a story and the many others like it happening everyday in the EV LES?"
A. Because the NYTimes is as piss yellow as the rest of the tabloids.
Icon is bad news wherever they go.
It is illegal. They do it anyway.
Disgusting!!!
That sidewalk safety structure looks a lot like an attempt by Icon to put the Stage out of business.
A place like Stage with all its old school charms, is probably too good for what this area has become.
Blocking the doors like that has got to be a fire code violation.
I thought Stage had at least a couple more years before the landlord put the screws to them. Guess I was wrong.
When Stage is finally killed, I don't think I'll have any reason to step in the EV again.
It's a damn shame. I've turned several native New Yorkers from Queens on to this gem. They had never seen it, and they love it, and soon it will be gone.
One of the last remaining shards of the old EV.
Instead of sidewalk "safety sheds", simply change city code. If anything falls onto the sidewalk from above, anyone working on the site goes to jail for 10 days.
But the sheds are required to "protect people"... and to extort monthly rent from whoever owns the building.
These non-union worker thugs have no thought to just stop working out of decency. They're non-union because look at their hardhats - not one has a Carpenter's Union insignia.
Union workers would never do this.
I wish Icon were prosecuted by NYC to the fullest extent. In fact, I wish NYC would make an example of them, big-time.
They are vile people & I've never seen them show concern for anything but their own bottom line.
PS: The NY Times is totally in developers' pockets. That's why every single Sunday on page 2 of the real estate section you see the "Big Ticket" sale of the week.
While the manner in which this was done definitely does suck, to be clear, I believe some of the cross bracing is just temporary to hold up the shed framing until the top of the shed is assembled. Will then be removed.
BT.. if by anything you mean a drill with a 1/4" drill bit it can fall on your head, 10 days in city jail would not even begin to make up for it.
This company is just plain wrong. The way it can move into a community and push the good working people and local energy out. If you live in a building under ICON you will never pay enough in rent. If you are Rent Stabilized forget it you will be removed.
isn't there a saying bad money pushes out good?
I don't get the fervor for Stage Deli. Because it's an "East Village institution"? Never mind that it serves mild food at best from half-attentive staff? Odessa died a withering death thanks in part to not serving good food.
Who cares what you don't get.
Stage Restaurant is mediocre, at best. If anything, this scaffolding probably helped their business. People who watched it go up probably said "Hey, look at that. I never saw that place before. Let's eat there."
The Stage is nice, old-school, Ukranian, and I always find it to have a friendly vibe. So I like it. But I will also say that the realities of current EastVillage living costs have pushed the prices up up up, and the food is simply not really great. Edible, yeah. Like Odessa before it got totally horrible.
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