About the No_B Fest on Avenue B tomorrow (Saturday!)

Avenue B between 13th Street and 14th Street will be the place to be tomorrow for a community event to highlight the work of local artists. 

The No_B Fest will offer up an array of live music, art, poetry and theater on the Avenue from 4 to 8 p.m. 

Participating businesses including the Roost, Revision Lounge and Mona's, whose bartender (and photographer extraordinaire) Aidan Grant helped organize this event. 

And some info via the EVG inbox...

From street art to photography the block will be part gallery, part stage and part dance. 

A raffle and auction will allow anyone to win the artwork. All proceeds will go directly into the pockets of the participating musicians. 

Overall it's a desire to once again light up the foundation these artists built careers on and inspire the power of community collaboration.

Sophie's, Josie's and Mona's will reopen this week

After sitting out the past six-and-a-half months, sister bars Sophie's, Josie's and Mona's will reopen later today with a 25-percent capacity.

The owners are renting small electric ovens and will be offering pizza (as well as a few smaller items) to meet Gov. Cuomo's meal-with-a-drink mandate.... and in keeping with the reopening guidelines, there is only table service. So no sitting at the bar. And masks are mandatory. 

The pool tables at the three bars, which closed at the start of PAUSE in mid-March, have also been removed to allow for more socially distant spacing for the handful of tables.

Of the three bars, only Mona's on Avenue B might have a few outdoor tables. (Owners said they thought outdoor seating on the side streets where Sophie's and Josie's are located might be too disruptive to nearby residents.)

The three are expected to be open from 3-11 p.m., though that is subject to change.

• Josie's (seen below yesterday), 520 E. Sixth St. between Avenue A and Avenue B. (646) 590-0044
• Mona's, 224 Avenue B between 13th Street and 14th Street (212) 353-3780
• Sophie's (seen above last night), 507 E. Fifth St. between Avenue A and Avenue B. (212) 228-5680

Report: Arrest made in armed robbery of Mona's on Avenue B

The NYPD arrested a 29-year-old Brooklyn man wanted in connection with four armed robberies in Brooklyn and Manhattan, including Mona's on Avenue B between 13th Street and 14th Street.

Police took Sanjay McBayne into custody on Saturday following a tip through the Crime Stoppers hotline.

Early last Thursday morning, McBayne allegedly walked into Mona’s "and turned a gun on an employee, demanding cash," as Town & Village reported. He fled the bar with $700.

Check out Nicolina's beautiful bee-heart art at Mona's

Richard Corton and Kirk Marcoe, the owners of Mona's (and Sophie's and Josie's), commissioned local artist Nicolina to create a mural for the bar at 224 Avenue B near East 14th Street.

She offered a sneak preview of it in Tompkins Square Park earlier this summer …



On Friday, the mural went up at Mona's.

The art is hanging between the buildings on the bar's north side … in space protected from the elements … which offers a good vantage point from inside…


[Photo via the Mona's Facebook page]

Joe's Bar is joining the Sophie's-Mona's family

[Joe's Bar last fall]

Longtime favorite Joe's Bar on East Sixth Street has remained closed since proprietor Joe Vajda died this past Thanksgiving. (Joe's opened in that space in 1973. Joe and two other partners previously had a place across the street.)

There were rumors that several people were looking to take over the space between Avenue A and Avenue B from Joe's domestic partner Dottie.

Richard Corton confirmed that he and his business partner Kirk Marcoe, who own Mona's and Sophie's, have signed a lease and sales contract with Dottie.

Which will all be good news for anyone tired of bars with drinks toting, say, heritage pork-infused artisanal ice cubes and shaved nutmeg. And good news for people who really like the neighborhood aspect of Joe's (and great neighborhood bars like Sophie's and Mona's), something in short supply around here these days. Corton isn't expecting to modify much about Joe's.

"Small changes. Clean up. Maybe, if we feel ambitious, we might redo the wallpaper with exactly the same wallpaper. We love that wallpaper but it is in really bad shape," Corton said via Facebook.

Meanwhile, Corton and Marcoe need to seek the approval of CB3 (they are on April's agenda) and obtain a Letter of No Objection from the DOB. If all goes well, then they plan to open this July.

One last detail.

"Per Dottie's request, we are gonna change the name," Corton said. "Joe's will become Josie's."

RIP Markand Thakar

[Photo by Thomas D. Ward]

The folks at Sophie's and Mona's passed along the sad news that Markand Thakar, a longtime regular at the bars, died this week. He was 82. We don't have a lot of details at the moment about a service or any possible celebrations of his life.

His artwork adorns the walls at both bars. He was a regular at the popular Tuesday night jazz sessions at Mona's. You've probably seen him there. And you'd remember having a conversation with him.

You can read about his life and work and view his art at his website, The Skunk Museum & Library. (We particularly like his oil paintings of bar scenes from the 1970s and 1980s.)

Part of his life, in his own words:

I've been asked, on numerous occasions, to explain the origins of my name and of my antecedents - and, just how did my parents, being of such different backgrounds, manage to meet? It has become obvious, that in this day of the American hyphenate, merely stating that I was born in New York City, on the 4th of July, in the fateful year, 1929 — and being the sixth child of a father born in India, and a mother born in Belgium, makes for an insufficient life history...

-------

After the drafting, during WWII, of my three older brothers, I began working as a gofer at a haberdashery that furnished the uniforms for Columbia's Navy ninety-day-wonders, then worked as a soda jerk — during which time I dropped out of High School. On July 18, 1946, shortly after I turned seventeen, I enlisted in the Regular Army and served for about a year in the post-WWII occupation of Japan. As a result, I joined my three older brothers as WWII veterans (all of us having served during WWII's emergency years).

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After my discharge, and over the years, I used up my GI Bill schooling allowance — during which time I worked at numerous jobs: soda jerk, bank page, RR dock worker, apprentice machinist, model maker — all the while, and from then on, I was more or less involved in the making of art. Then, from late 1953, before selling my business in 1974, I supported my wife, Betty Huber (a German Baptist, born in Meriden, Connecticut, in 1926, who was in the process of obtaining a Ph.D.) and our three children as a licensed customhouse broker and registered foreign freight forwarder. My wife of over half a century (now deceased), after obtaining her PhD. carried much of the burden of supporting the family — from 1974 on.

-------

We featured Thakar in a post this past Dec. 22.

[Photo by Thomas D. Ward]

Markand Thakar

You may not know Markand Thakar, though it's likely that you will recognize his work. Several of his paintings adorn the walls of Sophie's on East Fifth Street as well as at Mona's on Avenue B.

Thakar, who was born and raised in New York, is 82. You can read about his life and work and view his art at his website, The Skunk Museum & Library.

The site is also full of his writings. Thomas D. Ward, who took the top and bottom photos on this page, offered this: "Those interested in a first-hand account of the New York art world from mid-century to the present will certainly find much to ponder."

You may also appreciate his vivid, street-level accounts of a native New Yorker in "Noo Yawk, New York." (You can access that work here.)

In addition to the website, he distributes his writing via pamphlets at the two bars the old-fashioned way ...

[EVG]

Depending on the day or time, you might even find him sitting at the bar at Sophie's or Mona's. (He's particularly fond of the Tuesday night jazz sessions at Mona's.) Why not say hello.

[Photos by Thomas D. Ward]

"A model tenement house" 101 years later on Avenue B

I came across this page from the "Apartment Houses of the Metropolis" at the NYPL archives... it's dated 1909... It shows "a model tenement house" at 224-226 Avenue B... where rents go for $20 to $25 per month...



You can see the address here today... 101 years later, not much has seemingly changed outside ... save the storefronts, one of which has been home to Mona's....

Now on to much more pleasant things on Avenue B near 13th Street...

Marty Wombacher pays a visit to Mona's ....

Up all night

Sophie's and Mona's will be among the bars with the proper permits pulling an all-nighter on New Year's Eve...

Posts that I never got around to posting: The fishy soap dispenser at Mona's

"Read it and weep friends"

Since we learned about the possible sale of Sophie's and Mona's, we've been trolling around the blogosphere finding what's being said. Here's a lovely sentiment from The Vault of Buncheness posted Dec. 20:

My dear friend Deena just sent me devastating news about the east village. Most of us know that the East Village ain't what it used to be. That hideous looking condo across the street from the cube on Astor Place sums it up. However, I did not lose faith. Losing Coney Island High was a big blow. Then Kim's Video stores began to dwindle. But even when CBGBs closed its doors, I did not lose faith. When my favorite diner, Polonia, on first Avenue and 7th began to raise its prices after undergoing a fancy rennovation, I did not lose faith. Starbucks, Subway restaurants and smoothie stores are now everywhere. Vinyl stores and vintage clothing stores turned into nail salons and cafes. Tower Records and video are long gone. Sounds Records turned into a tattoo parlour. St. Mark's Place is unrecognizable. I won't even get into rent prices. Yet, through it all, I always felt the East Village was still the coolest place for New Yorkers. My dive bar Mona's, where I have a million fond memories, may have tossed that awesome jukebox with the 45 singles, but it still had great music, a cheap pool table, and that cute bartender who always served me free beers who shall remain nameless. ALL of you know how special that black hole is to me. We have had a lot of wonderful times there and at Sophies. But, now, this HURTS more than all of the above. Read it and weep friends...and if this does not motivate us for a long and overdue gathering at our sacred ground, nothing will.