Showing posts with label ads. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ads. Show all posts

Thursday, December 16, 2010

Members only



EV Grieve reader Marjorie passes along this ad for Sir Richard's Condom Company spotted on the Bowery.... As she notes, "I'm not sure how well-targeted to the East Village it is. Even post-gentrification we don't send a lot of kids to Collegiate."

Not yet anyway!

Tuesday, July 13, 2010

The illegal Chipotle banner is gone

Yesterday, I got word that the Chipotle banner hanging from First Avenue and St. Mark's Place was coming down... Sure enough... as a walk by last evening revealed...



Flashback!



Per a reader yesterday:

So I was living in that building when they put up the banner. Actually, I was lying in my underwear in bed when the guys putting it up drilled it into the wall directly outside my window (the one next to the bottom left hand corner of the banner).

I took it as one more sign that the East Village has become one big Starbucks -- a pantheon of ads and corporate chains. Solution?: I moved to Brooklyn.


Previously on EV Grieve:
That really big Chipotle ad on First Avenue is illegal, probably

Monday, July 12, 2010

Chipotle banner coming down on First Avenue?



Our friends at East Village Wines report that it looks as if the (ILLEGAL) Chipotle sign on First Avenue and St. Marks might be coming down. There's a big crane with some guy wobbling up top fidgeting with the sign. And there's nothing on the truck to indicate a replacement ad. (Photos anyone?)

Previously on EV Grieve:
That really big Chipotle ad on First Avenue is illegal, probably

Wednesday, July 7, 2010

That really big Chipotle ad on First Avenue is illegal, probably

Back in April, I made note of the ginormous Chipotle banner hanging from the building on the northeast corner of First Avenue and St. Mark's Place...




The Chipotle banner is one of several different ads in the East Village and West Village that the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) say is illegal. In a recent letter to Robert LiMandri, commissioner, New York City Department of Buildings, GVSHP Executive Director Andrew Berman noted that the Chipotle sign is illegal because "the property has no signage permits in-process or issued in the last year." The area was inspected and violations issued, but no hearing has been set.

The GVSHP was instrumental in getting that awful Kobe Bryant video game ad removed on Avenue A and 12th Street this spring... I hope the Chipotle ad makes a quick exit too... I hate having such a large fast-food banner on a main thoroughfare of the neighborhood...

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Why the Kobe Bryant video game mural was removed



As we reported last week, the Kobe Bryant video game ad on Avenue A near 12th Street was painted over by workers... The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) has more on what happened here in its most recent update (second item):

GVSHP and the East Village Community Coalition had long called upon the city to take action against the billboard which violated zoning regulations and, which some argued, violated an agreement to maintain the community mural for 10 years. Following complaints about the billboard from GVSHP and many others, and a great deal of attention from blog EV Grieve, the City inspected the site, issued several violations, and scheduled hearings on the violations. The sign was finally removed in late March.


And thanks to Christine Champagne at MediaPost for digging into the background of this wall in a feature last December.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Kobe Bryant's slam chunk

Searching for the truth about the cats and dogs mural on Avenue A

Monday, March 29, 2010

Game over for Kobe Bryant video game ad on Avenue A

So, you know, back in the fall, we devoted a few hundred several posts to Chico's "spay/neuter" mural on Avenue A near 12th Street that was painted over for a Kobe Bryant video game ad.



Anyway, last week, workers painted over the Kobe ad...




So what will we see next on the wall? I'm going with a Vans ad.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Kobe Bryant's slam chunk

Searching for the truth about the cats and dogs mural on Avenue A

Monday, March 8, 2010

From McDonald's to MoMa

Last summer, workers started painting over the McDonald's ad on First Avenue just past Second Street...though nothing else ever replaced the ad...



This weekend, a crew started on the space for MoMa...





...for a new ad for a Marina Abramović exhibit starting this weekend...


Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Alexander Wang launches ad campaign for his new anti-itch powder





On 12th Street at Third Avenue.

Oh! It's his T line. Per BlackBook:

[H]e's making quite a statement with his first-ever ad campaign for his lower-priced line T. "The energy was much more appropriate for something like guerrilla marketing than anything too proper or formal," Wang says of the ads which will only grace NYC sidewalks, not the pages of the magazines currently stocked at your local newsstand.

Sunday, January 31, 2010

Spotting an artwork ad on a cab

Thirty days into the month yesterday... I finally spotted one of the new art ads atop the ads...(the one on the right)



As the Times reported back in December:

[F]or the month of January, Show Media, a Las Vegas company that owns about half the cones adorning New York City’s taxis, has decided to give commerce a rest. Instead, roughly 500 cabs will display a different kind of message: artworks by Shirin Neshat, Alex Katz and Yoko Ono.


Previously on EV Grieve:
But how will we know what reality show to watch or strip club to hit?

Thursday, January 28, 2010

Looking at vintage World Trade Center ads

Our blogging friend This Ain't The Summer of Love had a post earlier this week on vintage advertisements that featured the World Trade Center. For example:




Horrifying in retrospect. Not sure why anyone ever thought that this was a good image for such ads. ("I got it! Let's have a giant hand crush Michael Keaton using the World Trade Center!" ) Perhaps we can make the case that buildings should never be used as the centerpiece for an ad campaign...

Monday, January 11, 2010

Former Starbucks no longer shilling vodka

Curbed noted at the end of the year that the former Starbucks in the now-former Cooper Union was advertising for vodka...



...and now the ads are gone...(and were they even legal?) And does this signal that something is about to happen to the space?


Waterfront property losing value

Over at the Waterfront Spa on Second Street at First Avenue...



...half of the sign was painted over to make way for a new Vans ad over the weekend...

Tuesday, December 29, 2009

Kobe Bryant's slam chunk

Our obsession interest in the former spay/neuter wall on Avenue A near 12th Street continues. As we pointed out the other day, the building's landlord, Desides Weinberg, was critical of the spay/neuter mural because it had not been properly maintained through the years... As Media magazine reported, chunks of the mural had fallen off the side of the building over the years.

Fine. As an EV Grieve reader pointed out...have you looked at the new mural here lately?



Sunday, December 27, 2009

But how will we know what reality show to watch or strip club to hit?





As the Times reports:

[F]or the month of January, Show Media, a Las Vegas company that owns about half the cones adorning New York City’s taxis, has decided to give commerce a rest. Instead, roughly 500 cabs will display a different kind of message: artworks by Shirin Neshat, Alex Katz and Yoko Ono.

The project is costing Show Media about $100,000 in lost revenue, but John Amato, one of Show’s owners and a contemporary-art fan, said: “I thought it was time to take a step back. January’s a slow month. I could have cut my rates but instead I decided to hit the mute button and give something back to the city.”


Uh, gee, thanks?

Thursday, December 24, 2009

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

Searching for the truth about the cats and dogs mural on Avenue A



Back in the fall, we devoted several posts to Chico's "spay/neuter" mural on Avenue A near 12th Street that was painted over for a Kobe Bryant video game ad.

Interestingly enough, Media magazine reported on the story. (Thanks to the reporter, Christine Champagne, who reached out to me for the article.) Here are portions of the piece (you can find the whole thing right here):

For nine years, cats and dogs loomed large over a parking lot on Avenue A as part of an iconic Advocates for Animals mural on the side of a tenement building in Manhattan's East Village. Created by well-known local muralist Chico, the mural tugged at the heartstrings with an assortment of animals — including a sweet kitty with pleading eyes and a trusty German Shepherd — urging local residents to spay and neuter their pets, and providing a number to call for assistance.

But the mural, which can be seen in the opening moments of the 2005 film "Winter Passing," was whitewashed this fall and replaced with an ad for 2K Sports' NBA 2K10 basketball video game, and now NBA superstar Kobe Bryant looms large on the wall.

For her part, Irene Muschel, a social worker and animal activist who runs Advocates for Animals, and hired Chico to paint the mural back in April 2000, didn't even know it had been covered up until MEDIA contacted her.

Muschel claimed that the landlord of 189 Avenue A, Desides Weinberg, was contractually obligated — "We had a legal contract drawn up by an attorney and signed by me, Chico and the landlord" — to keep the Animals for Advocates mural up for 10 years. If that's the case, the mural should have stayed in place until April 2010. "About a year ago, the landlord that signed the contract called me about how he needed income, and he said there was an advertiser who wanted to put something up there, and would I go along with it," Muschel recalls. "I said no, actually, and I had contacted a lawyer. But then it just faded away."

For his part, Weinberg repeatedly insisted that the contract Muschel speaks of was a "phony contract." He also faulted Muschel for not properly maintaining the mural, pointing out that chunks of it had fallen off the side of the building over the years.

One has to wonder: Did New York-based KD&E Advertising, which did the media buy for the NBA 2K10 campaign, realize the ad would replace a mural that had special meaning to East Village residents? KD&E did not return calls or respond to efforts made to reach someone at the agency on MEDIA's behalf by a representative for 72andsunny, the creative agency on the campaign.

Muschel says she is not going to pursue the matter legally or otherwise, instead choosing to focus on the good the mural did. "The mural helped a great many animals get spayed and neutered and provided answers on a wide variety of animal issues to people who called," she muses. "It did its work."


Previously on EV Grieve:
NBA ad takes over