The 'See You Next Tuesday' book from Sophie's will be here next Tuesday

East Village-based photographer Kyle de Vre is ready to release "See You Next Tuesday," a documentary portrait project turned photo book he shot during his Tuesday afternoon bartending shifts at Sophie's between 2017-2022. 

We wrote about the start of the project in August 2018 ... after de Vre started taking portraits of patrons seated in the comfortably worn bar at 507 E. Fifth St. between Avenue A and Avenue B. 

There's a release party next Tuesday during his shift (3-9 p.m., though the festivities will likely start around 7) where you can purchase a copy of the coffee-table book ($65). You can also order a copy online here.

Previously on EV Grieve:

Tuesdays at Sophie's 

Photos here via Kyle de Vre

Sophie's will be big in London

From the UK Guardian:

New York magazine recently handed out its annual gongs for all that is good in the city - from burgers to dive bars. Former Gawker restaurant critic Joshua Stein offers his alternative awards

They say: Mars Bar (25 E 1st St, +212-473-9842).
We say: Sophie's (507 E 5th St, + 212-228-5680). I mean a dive bar is a dive bar is a dive bar. The appeal is the same: cheap booze, no pretension, hopefully a toilet seat with a lid. Sophie's has all three plus, it has picaresque East Village characters who seem to have walked out of the pages of Henry Roth's Call It Sleep; a truly wonderful jukebox (everything from The Pogues to Gang of Four); and a wickedly competitive pool table.

"Sophie’s can continue sans 'mixologists' or beer sommeliers"

This week's New York magazine has a short piece on Sophie's staying the same, titled "Dive Alive: How did Sophie's survive?"...Nothing new in the story, but it's always nice to see how much the bar means to people. (One note: The article didn't mention Mona's.)

[Photo by Jeremiah Moss]

Remembering yesteryear at Sophie's

Photographer Ali Smith worked the day shift at Sophie's in the early '90s. During that time, she captured all the regulars who helped make the place what it was. (Sadly, this was before our time, so we never got to meet characters like Jimmy Tokens and Degenerate John who are featured in her photos.) Yesterday, Ali put up four framed photos from her time there. If you're at the bar, take the time to look at -- and appreciate -- her work.

"Can someone explain to me the advantage of having bank branches on every damned corner?"

The art of smiling had a short post that was in reaction to the news of Sophie's as reported by Jeremiah's Vanishing New York.

Margaret, the author of the post, shared what a lot of us think these days about the East Village and Lower East Side: "...at this point I'm more surprised to see anything that's still as I remembered it. The last time I was at Russ & Daughters, I bought my pickled herring from the son of one of the daughters, a man I remember from years ago, and I said I hoped they would be there forever; he smiled and said they weren't going anywhere, and in fact they were thinking of expanding. Moishe's Bakery and Ben's Cheese are gone, but Yonah Schimmel's Knishes is still there, dirty as ever.

Can someone explain to me the advantage of having bank branches on every damned corner?"

The origins of Sophie's

Our favorite New York-related blog, Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, had an excellent post Jan. 2 on Sophie's. He spoke with owner Bob Corton, who discussed the bar's history...and future:

In the 1980s, Bob worked for bar owner Sophie Polny, a tough old lady who ran a pub on Avenue A. Bob became manager when Sophie moved her bar (known only as the Polny Restaurant Corp.) to its current location on 5th between A & B, into a space occupied by a joint called the Chic Choc, named for partners Virginia Chicarelli and someone called Chocolate. “Chic Choc” is still written on the doorstep of Sophie’s.

Sophie Polny didn’t like to spend money. Bob recalls, “She only got a jukebox because it came free with the pool table. But she mostly used it for sitting on. The jukebox was her perch.” When she moved to 5th Street, rather than buy new, she brought her old wooden bar with her. It’s still there today, with its stained-glass cabinet doors and cottage-roof motif, a popular style dating back to (from my best guess) the early 20th century.The bar used to open at 10:00 in the morning for the old Ukrainian men who liked to sit all day over beer and shots of vodka. Said Bob, “If I showed up to open at 10:01, there’d be 8 guys waiting out front to get in and they’d hand me a bag of shit for being late.”

Please read the rest here. He also has photo's of Sophie's on his Flickr page.

East Village continues to lose its "sole"

OK, this has nothing to do with Sophie's necessarily, but stories like this are occurring all-too-often as the East Village continues to attract more Duane Reades, bank branches, soulless, overpriced condos and co-ops, and trust-funded douchebags. On the wan: community spirit, a sense of a neighborhood, which Sophie's and Mona's supplies.

The Villager has the story this week on 75-year-old Angelo Fontana who has been repairing shoes in the East Village for 40 years. His shoe repair shop is at 159 Second Avenue at the southwest bend of Stuyvesant Street.

As the paper sadly reports:

But his lease expires at the end of December, and the landlord wants to up the rent from an already-steep $4,000 a month from a raise just nine months ago to an unworkable $5,500 per month. So Fontana will be forced into “early” retirement, a prospect that he does not relish.
“I would like to stay another 10 years, well maybe five years,” he stated. “I’m used to working all my life. I don’t want to stop now. I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m not the kind of person who sits and watches TV all day. I like to be active,” he said.
If he could, he would find another shop in the area because he loves the neighborhood, but rents everywhere are sky-high.
“Soon there won’t be any professionals left,” he predicted. “No more shoemakers, tailors — all gone. People now don’t know nothing,” he declared.