Space-age love pad on the block...a "fully original Soho loft" on Avenue D

Check out this brand-new listing... a third-floor space over on Sixth Street at Avenue D. This 975-square-foot, one-bedroom condo is going for $699,000.



Here's the description:

Condo loft ready for you to move-in for only $716 a square foot!! This fully original Soho loft is ready to go at a stunning and spacious 975 square feet!! Located in a newer elevator building and facing south off the street you will enjoy the setting sun, quiet nights, and all the space!! The floors have been white washed for a tasteful but artful look. There is a flat screen TV nook that has been smartly placed in the living space so the TV will flow seamlessly against the wall. Closets everywhere, bath and a half, open kitchen around out this one-of-a-kind one bedroom flex two loft space. The building is a condo so subletting and renting are permitted.

There are other units available here above the Compare Foods...such as a two-bedroom for $764,000 that advertises a "waterview" and "steps away from hot new restaurants, bars and recreation park."



See this all for yourself at 754 E. Sixth St. during an open house Sunday afternoon from 3:30 to 4:30. In keeping with the space theme, Tang and freeze-dried premium ice creams will be served to visitors.*

[*Not really]

Unusual suspects

"The Unusuals" is one of the many TV shows to be filmed around the neighborhood in recent months. It debuts tonight on ABC in the former "Life on Marzzzzz" slot.



Looks interesting. Maybe. Here's Variety's take:

The quirkiness surrounding police work is hardly new, but that's the shaky foundation for "The Unusuals" -- a puzzling ABC series seemingly predicated on the notion that New York detectives are every bit as eccentric as the perps they take off the streets. The premiere represents an uneven introduction to the denizens of the second precinct, with -- to hark back to the "Blues," as in "Hill Street" and "NYPD" -- an ensemble heavily tilted toward Belkers and Medavoys. So while the show does qualify as slightly unusual, its ability to be consistently interesting is another matter.

What I've missed on Life On Mars

Oh, right. Life On Mars is still on...Tonight at 10, in fact. A reader dropped me a note on the topic...I had stopped watching the show after the third episode:

i'm not all that crazy about the show but i like that they're finishing the series this season. anyway, i know you complained that [the lead character] never did anything fun while he was back in time, so i thought you'd like to know that on the most recent episode he had sex with his old baby-sitter, who he'd always fantasized about. i thought that was kind of cool.

No more "Life on Mars"

Variety (via NY Mag's Vulture) has the news:

ABC has decided to end the show after a single year -- but in an unusual move, the net will keep the show on the air through the end of its full run.

That will give the series a rare opportunity to sign off with a proper finale, wrapping up the series' core mystery.

Network insiders said they were fans of the show and pleased with its creative chops -- but that the ratings ultimately didn't warrant a second season. The most recent seg of "Life on Mars" averaged just a 2.0 rating/5 share among adults 18-49, as well as 5.5 million viewers.

The show had been filmed, in part, around the neighborhood going back to last summer. We liked the premise -- time-traveling cop returns to 1970s NYC. And we championed the show until we actually watched it. Oh, it was fine. But I stopped watching after the second or third episode.

Here's our complete "LIfe on Mars" coverage.

An article about "Life on Marzzzzzz" and people who tend to romanticize the city of the gritty ’70s and wonder if those days lie ahead

Sounds boring to me! I want to go shopping! Still, if you must. "Life on Marzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz" returns to the telly on Wednesday night after a hiatus...and the Times today takes a really loooooong look at the show set, in part, in the gritty 1973 NYC, and wonders..."[W]ill people continue to do so when the city feels as if it could be slipping back into those dangerous, crime-ridden days? In other words, will these people still want to look back at this era — fondly or otherwise — as the New York of 2009 increasingly comes to resemble its ’70s-era ancestor in all the wrong ways?

How about more Gretchen Moll? Then we'll looking back fondly. Or something. To the article!

“The image of New York is important to New Yorkers, and it’s part of their self-image,” said Jonathan Mahler, the author of the 2006 book “Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City.”

Many people who stuck with the city through tougher times now feel that they have a stake in its continued prosperity, and, he said, “are now sticking out their chests a little bit. ‘Yeah, I may be living in this little studio apartment, but I’m making it and I’m surviving here.’ ”

Not that New York was utterly beyond redemption in these bygone years: As a kind of modern-day frontier town, Mr. Mahler said, it was teeming with peril, but also with frantic energy and with havens where experimental subcultures could flourish.

“As parts of the city became abandoned and forgotten, they would be taken up by these urban pioneers who would use them for their own purposes and create interesting things there,” he said, pointing to the gay culture of the West Village, the punk rockers of the East Village and the nascent art scene in SoHo, all of which emerged during those years.

Mr. Mahler added, however, that that the 1970s were not in any way a better decade to be living in the city. “I’m much happier to be living here and raising my family in New York now,” he said. “Or at least I could have said that six months ago.”

AND:

AS the New York of today continues to look more like its unsavory 1973 self — a declining economy, upticks in violent crimes like murder and bank robbery and an ever more crumbling infrastructure starved for resources — it remains to be seen whether the romantic feelings of the “Life on Mars” creators (and its viewers) will endure. After all, who wants to turn on a television and be reminded of the bad old days when evidence of bad new days can be seen right outside your window?

More Marzzzz on the way

From USA Today:

Life on Mars got a small new lease on life — four extra episodes — and a big new time slot behind Lost, Wednesdays at 10 ET/PT starting Jan. 28, when the show is now scheduled to air 10 times behind ABC's returning hit. Mars has been yanked to preserve new episodes for the new slot....ABC's programming chief is a Mars fan and decided to give it another try.

Maybe I'll give it another try. I tuned out after the third episode.

Maybe we'll get to see more of Annie Norris too...



Previous Life on Mars coverage here.

Tonight: Episode 3 of "Life on Marzzzzzzzzzzzzz"

Tonight at 10, we will bravely soldier on and watch "Life on Mars."

Meanwhile, Hunter-Gatherer, an aficionado of classic TV from here and abroad, weighs in today on the U.S. version of "Mars":

Hollywood, ladies and gentlemen, is now officially out of ideas. The first two episodes borrow so heavily from the UK version that one wonders at first if ABC bothered hiring writers at all for the domestic offering. But after watching a bit of the show I quickly realized that dialogue this flacid could only be made in the good old USA. Is there such a thing as TV karaoke?
I love Harvey Keitel, and I really like Michael Imperioli and Gretchen Mol. But good actors as they are, they are all hogtied by a dreadful script that attempts to Americanize a UK concept for pablumesque primetime consumption. In this portrayal of life in 1973, howlers reign supreme and Michael Imperioli’s character, Det. Ray Carling, leads the cavalcade of cringe with lines like “he’s as crazy as a fruit bat at a cranberry convention” ……….wow.

Well put.

And HG ends with a sensible question: "[W]hy not just show the original series?"

See you at 10!

Episode 2 review of Life on Marzzzzzzz (a 10-second review)

So! Week two. Better than the first. But it already seems tired after just two episodes. Keitel's ball-busting routine is getting old. Sam Tyler (Jason O'Mara) has the personality of a salami. (And he really wasn't going to eat that vegetable lasagna?) When is he going to loosen up and have some fun? Why not look up his parents? Something! Will give it one more week...

Now something much more entertaining: The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain does "Life on Mars."

Life on Marzzzzzzz (a 20-second review)

As mentioned previously, "Life on Mars" made its debut last night. I'm not much of a prime-time TV person. But! I tuned in anyway. Was a little more curious about the show than I needed to be. So you know the premise: Present-day NYC detective finds himself back in time in "gritty" 1973 Manhattan.

And?

Eh. Or maybe Meh.

For starters, the lead fellow Sam Tyler (Jason O'Mara) is an annoying mix of Mel Gibson and, oh, Michael Sarrazin. Without getting into all the plot points, I understand the confusion...the anger...the feeling of helplessness that he felt, trapped in 1973 NYC while the eldest Cosby kid (Lisa Bonet!) is in peril in 2008.

Still! Think of the fun you could have! Porn in Times Square! Betting on sporting events that you already know the outcomes to! I don't know. Maybe check out some shows. Are the New York Dolls playing somewhere?

Savor the opportunity...revisit a now-vanished bar...go to the top of the World Trade Center (which they showed twice...)....Buy up a ton of buildings in Soho and become a real-estate baron!

Plus, I had so many questions...Did he travel back with money? They showed his East Village apartment...Where did he eat breakfast? Lunch? Dinner? Why wasn't anyone smoking during the scene inside 7B? Why did all the extras look like players from a summer stock production of Hair?

OK, this was only the first episode...maybe all this is explored in the coming weeks. I'll give it a another shot next week.

P.S.
I'll leave the critique of co-star Gretchen Mol to someone more qualified ...

Loving "Kojak"

"Life on Mars," the new time-a-traveling crime drama, debuts tonight on ABC at 10. The show, based on the BBC series, follows a NYC detective who's transported from 2008 to 1973. Confusion ensues! They've been filming the show around the East Village and LES, as Bowery Boogie and Jeremiah have chronicled for us. The show's main character, Sam Tyler (Jason O'Mara), lives in the East Village. In any event, it looks interesting...and I may actually tune in.

Still! The show goes to great lengths to recreate 1973 NYC. The time in which "Kojak" was on the job. The Telly Savalas crime drama debuted in 1973 and played for five seasons.

Here's an entire episode from season four that aired Sept. 26, 1976. Guest stars Richard Gere. Oh, the thing is 45 minutes or so. I'd recommend tuning in for some tough Telly love at the 24-minute mark...and again at the 38-minute mark.



[Via the YouTube page set up by Nicholas Savalas. There are other full episodes there.]

Bonus trivia:
"Life of Mars" co-stars Esquared favorite Gretchen Mol.

Life on Mars Monday

On 7th Street and Second Avenue. Another TV shoot to screw things up. And. Life On Mars?

I prefer this version of Life on Mars...