Former 2nd Avenue BP station making for a fine tapestry

The BP station on Second Avenue and East First Street closed in early July.

So until whatever new development comes along here (the rumor is boutique hotel), the property is providing a fine canvas for, well, all this...









Anyway, nothing yet on file with the DOB for the address.

Previously on EV Grieve:
RUMOR: Gas station going, boutique hotel coming on Second Avenue? (31 comments)

BP station on 2nd Avenue closes this month

The 2nd Avenue BP station has closed

Surprise! Police Commissioner not a big fan of 'celebrating graffiti'

[East 6th Street at 1st Avenue]

Police Commissioner William Bratton responded to the Museum of the City of New York's graffiti-art exhibit "City as Canvas."

"I find it outrageous that one of the city's museums is currently celebrating graffiti and what a great impact it had on the city," Bratton said Monday during a meeting with Wall Street Journal editors.

And later...

Mr. Bratton further objected to "having New York City school kids at the impressionable age of 12 years old walking through looking at this stuff and having it advertised as 'Isn't this great?'"

And the museum's response?

Susan Henshaw Jones, City Museum's director, said the show is intended to show how graffiti became an art form, not to glorify vandalism. "We are not in the business of trying to encourage children, teenagers, grown-ups or elders to do graffiti," she said.

Read the article here. (Subscription required)

1st tag returns to Verizon's freshly painted brown wall

[This morning]

Workers painted over the rest of the tags along East 13th Street at Second Avenue on July 28.

It wasn't really the best brown paint job that we'd ever seen.



We walked by that day and noticed that workers got paint and water-blasted graffiti residue on the cars parked here.



Previously.

Painting over the SMELLS on Avenue A

Back in January, the NYPD arrested five people for tagging the roof of 201 Avenue A … A police spokesperson told Gothamist: "Officers observed the word 'Smells' painted in letters six to seven feet tall, and around 10 feet wide."



Anyway, EVG reader dwg points out that workers just painted over the SMELLS tag… as well as the one that had already been up there…



The Post reported that the NYPD charged all five with "making graffiti, criminal trespassing and resisting arrest."

Previously on EV Grieve:
[Updated] Reader report: Taggers nabbed on Avenue A (36 comments)

Capturing 'Cool'

[From August 2013 via EVG reader Marc]

Yesterday's item about the apparent arrest of graffiti writer SMELL reminded me of this post, which I never finished ... I had been documenting some of the Cool tags around the neighborhood... it's the work of "Drew," whose "Ross is Not Cool" tag on David Schwimmer's new East Sixth Street estate in August generated coverage everywhere from the supermarket tabloids to Vanity Fair.

Here are but a few Cool tags from recent months... Anyway, these tags — scourge of the city or a welcome part of the urban landscape?

How long did it take before someone tagged the 'Girls' mural on East 12th Street?

12 days, give or take a day. We spotted the artists starting the mural on the weekend of Dec. 13… Could have been worse…



And we still have a few more weeks before the show's new season on HBO…

Jehangir Mehta's private dining spot looks like an ice cream shop

[October 2012]

As we first reported in September 2012, Graffiti chef Jehangir Mehta was taking over the former bridal shop next door to his well-regarded restaurant on East 10th Street. The concept: Graffiti Me, featuring one 14-seat table for customizable private dining.

And that was the last we heard of all that.

Until one recent day when we walked by… and saw that the orange had been painted over…



The colors kinda makes it look like, oh, an ice cream shop?



Then we walked by again… and saw that it really looks like an ice cream shop now…



Well, we're guessing that this is the evolution of Graffiti Me… now called Me and You.



Kate Gunning, one of the initiators of the project, told this last week to The Boulevardiers:

When you dine at Me and You, you dine in Chef Mehta’s private kitchen, and the whole evening is really about the experience as well as the food. Chef will present each course, telling stories about the ingredients, and on occasion, their connection to a memory from his childhood in India.

Chef’s kitchen is in a secret location in the East Village, because we want it to be special, and only seen by those who dine with him, almost like you’re entering the kitchen in his home. The space is really intimate, with 1 big communal table, and an open kitchen so you can really be with the Chef for the whole evening.

The first of these intimate dinners is tonight.

Noted

There goes the Russo's mural on East 11th Street at First Avenue. (Not sure exactly when this happened.) The most recent Russo's mural arrived in September 2011.

Noted

EVG reader Steven Matthews shares this photo taken yesterday on East Eighth Street between Avenue B and Avenue C.

"I don't think I've ever seen where a graffiti'er corrected an error."

'Stop with the graffiti on this building!'

EVG reader John spotted this Urban Etiquette Sign over at 134 E. 13th St., home of the Classic Stage Company and Everyman Espresso...

In case that you wanted to know that someone recently tagged the Starbucks on First Avenue and East 13th Street

Someone also tagged the wall outside the Starbucks on First Avenue and East Third Street during the blackout...

A quick post-blackout observation

Just a post-Sandy blackout observation... BoweryBoogie noted this too the other day: an uptick in graffiti that occurred during the blackout ... a few examples...

BoweryBoogie heard (unconfirmed) that the NYPD arrested four graffiti artists for tagging walls during the blackout.

Reader requests: 'At least you...' WHAT?

From an EVG reader:

I need your help. Every morning while walking on 2nd Ave, I see half of a phrase written on the top of a building on the NW corner of 7th St. and 2nd Ave. All I'm ever able to make out is "AT LEAST YOU", but I am dying to find out what the rest of it says.

Anyone have access to the roof? A helicopter? Anyone know the rest of what is written there...?

More about Graffiti Me opening soon on East 10th Street

As we first reported on Sept. 4, Graffiti was taking over the former bridal shop next door to its small restaurant on East 10th Street. Grub Street got more details about the new space, called Graffiti Me, from chef-owner Jehangir Mehta:

The space won't be an extension of Graffiti — they'll have separate entrances, kitchens, and menus. Like Graffiti, the new one has fourteen seats, here in the form of a communal table. Taking advantage of this setup, the chef hopes to offer the space for customizable private dining. "If you've caught a fish, you can bring it to us, and we'll create a five-course meal from it," he said. "Or if you have a special bottle of wine, we can match a menu to it."

Graffiti looking to expand on East 10th Street

[Google]

Atelier Muse, a bridal boutique at 224 E. 10th St., closed earlier in the summer... and it looks as if the store's next-door neighborhood, Graffiti, the acclaimed small-plates place from chef Jehangir Mehta, has designs on expanding.

An unnamed applicant for 224 E. 10th St. is on this month's CB3/SLA docket. According to documents on file at CB3 (PDF), Mehta would expand from his current small space, adding four tables (20 seats total) and a stand-up bar with five seats.

Looks as if they'd expand their hours too, from 10:30 p.m. currently on Sunday-Thursday to midnight, and from 11:45 p.m. on Friday-Saturday to 2 a.m.

The SLA & DCA Licensing Committee meets on Monday at 6:30 p.m., at the JASA/Green Residence, 200 East 5th Street at Bowery.

Perhaps this is a subtle hint that tags here are no longer really welcome

The wall here on East Second Street at Avenue C (the side of The Stone) receives its fair share of tagging attention... someone paints the wall... only to be tagged again (familiar story) ...

Anyway, so there's this on the wall now.

Noted

East 13th Street today. Now all brown. Waving, not drowning.

Photo via evilnyc.

Previously.

Noted

Just noting that the 13th Street side of the Verizon building is now graffiti free.

The back-and-forth between graffiti/tags/whatever vs. brown wall has been going on a good two years...

Graffiti-free Verizon building lasts less than one week

Last Tuesday, evilnyc passed along photos of Graffiti Free NYC cleaning up the East 13th Street side of the Verizon building at Second Avenue...

evilnyc just sent this shot of that wall today...

Verizon's ongoing war on graffiti and stuff

Nearly eight months have passed since we last looked in on the ongoing brown-paint war at the Verizon building along 13th Street (at Second Avenue)... we thought that Verizon had simply given up.

Not so!

EV Grieve reader evilnyc just passed along these shots. A new tactic — powerwashing and painting via the city's Graffiti Free NYC...

To be continued...

Previously on EV Grieve:
First tag reappears on the Verizon building

Brownout: Verizon building graffiti painted over

Verizon is going to blow the budget on brown paint