Another new broker for the long-vacant 20 St. Mark's Place

There's a new for-lease sign outside 20 St. Mark's Place between Second Avenue and Third Avenue...

This is at least the fourth broker to try to lease the long-empty retail spaces.

The dearly beloved Grassroots Tavern was the last business here, closing after service on New Year’s Eve 2017... ending a 42-year run in the lower level. The upstairs tenant, the record store Sounds, shut down in October 2015.

According to the new ARA listing, two storefronts are available — separately or as a combo. 

Here's a look at the former Grassroots via the listing images ... (wonder if the place still smells like burnt popcorn?) ...

As you can see, those incredible old murals that workers uncovered during renovations have been removed/covered.

No mention of the asking rent for the storefronts. 

As noted, No. 20, known as the Daniel LeRoy House, was built in 1832. It received landmark status in 1971 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Past lives of this subterranean space — info via Daytonian in Manhattan — include a theater-saloon called Paul Falk's Tivoli Garden in the 1870s... in the 1930s, the Hungarian Cafe and Restaurant resided here before becoming a temperance saloon called the Growler.

After the Grassroots closed, Bob Precious tried to open a bar-pub here, but those plans never materialized after 18 months. 

Applicants for Ichibantei had been on the CB3-SLA agenda multiple times, dating to November 2018, for a liquor license for a new restaurant for the address. They've moved on to other places.

Previously on EV Grieve:
• New owner lined up for the Grassroots Tavern on St. Mark's Place

• 20 St. Mark's Place, home of the Grassroots Tavern, has been sold

• Last call at the Grassroots Tavern

• Behold these murals uncovered behind the bar at the former Grassroots Tavern on St. Mark's Place 

RIP Brian Fair

[Photo outside the former Sounds at 20 St. Mark's Place by Panda Cat]

Brian Fair, owner of St. Mark's Sounds, passed away Thursday after a brief hospital stint, according to friends. (We'll add more biographical information as it becomes available.)

Sounds opened at 20 St. Mark's Place — above the Grassroots Tavern — in 1979. (He also ran an annex for several years in the early 1990s at 16 St. Mark's Place.) Sounds closed for good on Oct. 11, making it the last record store on St. Mark's Place.


[Photo by Alex via Flaming Pablum]

We asked three former employees at Sounds for their remembrances of Fair.

Michael Dolan:

Brian was a curmudgeon, but a lovable one. Think of all the record store clerks you have encountered in your lives. He was the alpha of all of them.

I worked for him for seven years and I'm grateful for that time and experience. I learned a lot about life and music and had a lot of laughs. When I started touring and leaving New York every year, Brian always had a job for me when I returned. I always tried to swing by the store when I was in the neighborhood to say hi or exchange Christmas presents in years to come. We would linger on the steps and share stories and he always made me happy.

I can only imagine after 30 years of selling records and the decline of the industry closing the store left Brian with a void in his life. I only wish he had the time to relax and enjoy his retirement before leaving us so soon.

Paul Kostabi:

My first job in NYC 1984 was working for him remodeling record bins and building Sounds Video from the ground up. The mahogany cabinets at the store survived. A few weeks ago I was there and he said, "you know, what killed me — with a tear in his eye — the mp3. The mp3 fucking killed me."

[He was] a great person.

James Lawrence, who worked at Sounds since 1995, and alone with Fair the past eight years:

He loved rock music, especially hard rock — Motörhead. And since he worked so much in the shop he didn't get to go to many shows. Well, Motörhead sister group Girlschool did a mini tour of the states a few months ago. I knew the Girls from back in the day so we took the day off and went to Brooklyn to see the show. We went early and I was able to introduce him to the Girls. I could tell how happy Brian was. It was the last show he got to see, I believe.

That makes me happy.

Brian loved music. It was his life. He cared about people underneath his gruff appearance. I remember Kembra from Karen Black gave him a homemade card thanking him for his support in the East Village music scene. When he read the card he started to cry.

That's the Brian I knew.

So long Sounds

Tonight is the last night for Sounds at 20 St. Mark's Place... after 36 years in business here between Second Avenue and Third Avenue...

Thank you @helenango for the photo...

Previously on EV Grieve:
The last record store on St. Mark's Place is closing

Closing time: Portraits of 3 newly shuttered storefronts

Photographer Nick McManus is a group portrait artist who works on Impossible Project Polaroids for gallery exhibition here in New York City. This past weekend, he scheduled and shot group portraits of workers at Sounds on St. Mark's Place and Rainbow Music on First Avenue, which closed for good on Sunday. (The Sounds closing date is up in the air still.)

In addition, he visited the original location for Bicycle Habitat on Lafayette, which is closing today. (The shop is consolidating spaces after a large rent increase.)





"I felt it was important to give back to them after so many years of personally enjoying their music and bike services," said McManus, who has been regularly taking these group portraits at business closings.

In each case, he presents the owners with a copy of the portraits — "a physical souvenir of a place they'll miss dearly meant a lot to them."

I asked McManus what the mood was like as these owners were closing up their shops.

At Rainbow Music, owner Bill "Birdman" Kasper "was ready for this to happen. He will be selling CDs on the street in Greenpoint in the near future. The mood was something that could be described in the words of George Harrison, 'All Things Must Pass.'

Over at Bicycle Habitat, the co-owner Charlie McCorkell looked like he would miss his little desk in the back center of a store he's worked out of since 1978. Though they've expanded to four other locations, one of which is on the same block and will consolidate with the other one, the original high-ceilinged wood and iron interior of their original location will be missed as something he spent most of his adult life in and no place would ever equal it. At the moment of the portrait though, the mood was less somber and more work busy as he posed with a staff that knew they had a lot of moving and and clearing ahead of them so that the store would be completely out by [today] when Charlie had to turn over the keys."

You can find more of McManus's work via Instagram.

The last record store on St. Mark's Place is closing

[EVG file photo]

Sounds is shutting down soon at 20 St. Mark's Place between Second Avenue and Third Avenue. The final sale is on now.



There's not much left inside…


[Photo from Saturday by Jeff Stache]

The shop has been around longer than we expected. News of the impending closure first arrived in February 2014.

The second-level retail space remains on the market. There isn't any mention of the rent on the listing.

Sounds joins the ranks of other CD/record shops that have closed on (or near) St. Mark's Place in recent years ... Joe's CDs, 13 CDs, Venus Records, Mondo Kim's, Smash, Norman's, Rockit Scientist Records...

Updated 4 p.m. — You can read some history of Sounds via this HuffPost article from 2010.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Soon, there won't be any record stores on St. Mark's Place, and that sucks

You can check out the other record stores in the neighborhood, including Good Records NYC ... Turntable Lab ... A-1 Records ... Other Music ... Academy Records ... Rainbow Music (until Sept. 30)...

Soon, there won't be any record stores on St. Mark's Place, and that sucks

[EVG file photo]

Here's a bit of depressing (but not really surprising) news buried in a Wall Street Journal piece today about St. Mark's Place:

Sounds, the last of once-many record shops on the strip, recently limited its business days to Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays, said Felicia De Chabris, an associate broker with Halstead Property. She said Sounds' space went on the rental market this month, with its first showings this week.

Among the CD/record shops that have closed on (or near) St. Mark's Place in recent years ... Joe's CDs, 13 CDs, Venus Records, Mondo Kim's, Smash, Norman's, Rockit Scientist Records...

From an EVG post on the topic from January 2012:

Didn't seem like too long ago where you could have spent an afternoon on St. Mark's Place rooting through the bins of the record stores here ... then reading the liner notes/CD sleeves of your purchases at the Grassroots or wherever over a beer ... Ah, how old-fashioned

Meanwhile, all the more reason to support the record stores that remain here ... places such as...Kim's ... Good Records NYC ... Turntable Lab ... A-1 Records ... Other Music ... Academy Records ... Rainbow Music...

Updated 3:34 p.m.
Alex weighs in on all this over at Flaming Pablum.