“Superdive made a lot of us into activists,” a 58-year-old former social worker named Dale Goodson told Capitalnewyork.com, which offered a fascinating history of Superdive.
So, what brand of humanity is considered undignified to a guy who spends his days shepherding the underclass?
Frat boys. Solid men in Big Ten regalia. Business types who spent their college years learning about balance sheets instead of transgressive modes of self-actualization. To these, the East Village can be as intolerant as a monocle-wearing English aristocrat from a P.G. Wodehouse novel, gazing down upon the polloi and pronouncing them a little too hoi.
Community Board 3, at a meeting in which residents carried signs reading (really) “Not in my backyard,” last month opposed one businessman’s request for a liquor license at a new space to replace a former bar at 34 Avenue A — without even listening to his proposal. Silence a dissenting voice? Not very “Rent.”
Or maybe very “Rent” indeed. A bohemian’s idea of anarchy always seems to come with a surprisingly detailed set of standards. The story of the East Village might be how little things have changed — it’s still a cramped little hipster Vatican suspicious of outsiders.
But if your neighborhood is steeped in youthful rebellion, don’t be too outraged when free-spirited types come flocking around in a mad celebration of twentysomething exuberance. And don’t hate them just because their hero is Rex Ryan instead of Allen Ginsberg.
Fed up with drunken antics on the Lower East Side, a neighborhood business association hopes to get off-duty cops to walk what would essentially be the city's first booze beat.
If approved by the NYPD, the moonlighting crime fighters -- in uniform -- would patrol the beer-soaked lanes between Houston and Delancey streets Thursday nights and on weekends.
They wouldn't be permitted to work inside or at the front doors of the many local gin mills, but they could lasso sidewalk lushes.
"We think having a cop on the beat . . . would really help nightlife establishments be quieter and safer," said Lower East Side Business Improvement District Executive Director Bob Zuckerman.
And barflies voiced concern that the off-duty cops could become the fun police.
"This is a noisy city," music writer Nicole Wasilewicz, 25, said outside Pianos on Ludlow Street. "You come here to make some noise."
Cops have finally zeroed in on several possible suspects in the fatal shooting of beloved Second Avenue Deli owner Abe Lebewohl in 1996. Authorities said that development — along with a whopping $130,000 reward — could soon solve the baffling slay case.
WHITE NOISE (225 Avenue B; 212-539-0925)
SCENE: Sexy rock chicks too young to know a lot of the ’80s tunes they’re hearing lounge about on Gothic-style furniture. Co-owners Luke Brian Sosnowski and Timothy Falzone keep Maroon 5 off the playlist, and the scene lasts very, very late. Those who remember Chelsea’s defunct rock club Snitch will dig this scene, especially when bands play surprise shows. People who look like East Villagers circa 2000 will get in easily; those who discovered the ’hood post-Starbucks may find themselves left out.
CROWD: Fashion Week saw plenty of wayward models and late-night stragglers coming from events like the John Varvatos/Original Moonshine whiskey launch party.
BOOZE: A bottle of Stoli is $350, but rarely ordered and not a ticket for admission. The specialty cocktail is a $9 Jack Daniel’s honeycomb lemon mix. Beers range from $4 to $7.
PROS: Has the potential to get trippy and wild.
CONS: First-time operators may struggle to maintain control.
An East Village Romeo who passed himself off as a globetrotting NFL exec is accused of ripping off a beautiful, love-struck divorcee to the tune of a quarter-million dollars.
As he allegedly fleeced her and at least one other woman while posing as an accomplished 40-year-old winner, accused con man John Egan was, in reality, a fat, prematurely gray, 32-year-old sports nut and professional loser who lived with his parents on Avenue C, compulsively trolling the Web.
Now, Egan is the subject of a Manhattan District Attorney's Office investigation. The DA plans to seat a grand jury early next month on grand-larceny charges, said a law-enforcement source.
For beautiful Thea Miller, it may be too late. The San Francisco divorcee claims she was financially ruined and emotionally devastated by the beguiling grifter she met online.
"I was naive," Thea admitted.
It’s a typical Saturday night on the Lower East Side, and the streets are packed with partygoers consulting GPS systems for bars and clubs. Skillfully dodging the bridge-and-tunnel types that crowd the neighborhood on weekends, Fatima Siad makes her way to Ridge Street.
“It’s not as fun to go out on weekends in the Lower East Side,” says Siad, a 24-year-old downtown stunner who once appeared on “America’s Next Top Model.”
Surely, a hip person such as Siad is headed to a hot new boite with a velvet rope, or a fancy rooftop bar? Not even close.
Her destination is a tenement building that has the front door propped open with a brick. Inside, a staircase leads to an abandoned second-floor unit, which was reportedly a drug den three years ago. Tonight, this newly cleaned-up spot is the place to be for roughly 40 tastemakers, who are part of the city’s burgeoning pop-up party scene. Fed up with commercialized, overpriced nightclubs, creative young New Yorkers are taking night life back, according to 27-year-old artist Adam Aleksander, who organizes pop-up parties like the one that happened here two Saturdays ago.
It wasn't a purr-fect crime after all.
Sources said last night that cops had caged the "Cat Lady," the serial stick-up artist who dons clever disguises — including a cat mask — to rob high-end boutiques around the city.
The suspect was identified as Shanna Spalding, 28, of Queens, who sings with a death-metal band called Divine Infamy under her stage name, Purgatory.
He got served at an astonishing 17 of 30 establishments -- 57 percent -- despite the stores and gin joints facing fines up to $10,000 and the loss of their state liquor licenses.
Many of the spots, selected randomly from among 132 places with underage State Liquor Authority violations from May 1, 2009 to May 1, 2010, never bothered to ask the college sophomore for his ID -- a valid New Jersey driver's license showing his birthday, Aug. 29, 1989.
At Kate's Joint, at 58 Ave. B, a female bartender asked for his ID, looked at the license briefly and poured the intern a Blue Moon draft, waving at the owner herself, Kate, as she sat at the bar, which had two signs cautioning that drinking was not legal for those under 21.
Her only question: "Would you like some orange wedges with that?"
A male bartender at Cosmic Cantina, at 99 Third Avenue, looked over the license before selling the intern a bottle of Dos Equis for $5. He then said, "This is for you," and poured a free shot of tequila. When the intern walked out, the bartender encouraged him to take the open but untouched beer with him.
While Zukin expresses substantial ambivalence, she ultimately believes that authenticity is its own reward. Indeed, she goes so far as to propose that authenticity should be used to "ensure everyone a right to stay in the place where they live and work." But this would be disastrous in practice, resulting in rent rules and protections that would leave a grid-locked and static city.
Down that road lies what Justin Davidson pondered in New York magazine ... her the "dedicated yearners would roll back" the tide of affluence, preferring the "cracked-out squats" of the 1980s.
Put that way, I vote for today’s New York, even without the authenticity.
