Noted

A resident of 319 E. Ninth St. in the East Village shares this photo of a letter... intended for a resident of 319 E. Ninth St. — in Duluth, Minn. ... and mailed from Duluth, Minn.

A letter for new NYU students: 'think good thoughts about yourself and others'

EVG reader Lori Kohn shared this letter that she spotted taped to a light post on Ninth Street and Third Avenue...


[Click on image for more detail]

The letter of support reads in part:

The struggles among new students at NYU are no doubt taking different forms. You might be struggling with how to meet friends or how to socialize with people who drink when you don't, or how to get involved in something, anything, when time seems so precious, etc. Some of you are wondering if everyone's smarter than you or if you're smart enough to be at NYU. Some of you are stressed with performance anxieties, with being cool. Some of you are just missing a home-cooked meal.

The struggles are real and sometimes hard, but they are normal. They are not a sign of a problem, but just the normal challenges of transitions to a new phase in one's life.

Dismiss any idea that your enrollment at NYU was a fluke. You belong here.

My suggestion: think good thoughts about yourself and others. Relax. And through it all, know that you are where you belong.

The letter is signed by "your neighbor," Mr. Steck.

RIP ucks c on 2nd Avenue

[Photo from June by by Nora Balaban]

Back in June, people start noticing that the Starbucks sign on Second Avenue at East Ninth Street was missing something …

Now, almost just a short six months later… Starbucks is finally replacing the bulbs, as Slum Goddess noted this evening…

Meanwhile at Starbucks on 2nd Avenue …

[Photo by Nora Balaban]

I'm going with ucks c here on out…

Updated 11:51 a.m.

Oh, c'mon. It's the first day of summer.

@evgrieve Ok, but can I go outside now? pic.twitter.com/cz5gU0ZKl6

— Pinhead (@evpinhead) June 21, 2014

Letter to a record store

Gimme Gimme Records closed for good on East Fifth Street Sunday. And on the last weekend, the following letter arrived.

[Click image to enlarge]

The letter writer, a woman named Harriet, has several items of business to discuss. First, does this store buy cassettes? There is also a hard-luck tale about "2 males from Long Island" who came to her apartment in Brooklyn and took her record collection. In all caps, she explains that she was supposed to be paid for all this.

I "thought to God I'd trust them, and I made a terrible mistake."

Lastly she'd like some REO Speedwagon CDs, specifically one that had the following three songs "ON THE SAME CD":

• Keep on Loving You
• I Can't Fight This Feeling
• Take it on the Run

"The store got a lot of weird letters like that. I figured I would put one up in honor of the last day," said Gimme Gimme clerk Eden Brower. "We sort of made fun of it, but I feel badly if her stuff really was stolen. People make up stories like that all the time to get records cheap or free. It's hard to tell who is scamming."

Meanwhile, Gimme Gimme owner Dan Cook has plans to eventually reopen the store in Los Angeles.