These EV Grieve posts received the most reader comments in 2013

Amazingly, a Citi Bike post did not crack the top 10...



Incoming Empire Biscuit on Avenue A launches Kickstarter campaign (July 9, 121 comments)

A case against using the term 'crusty' (June 28, 105 comments)

RIP LES Jewels (Sept. 14, 80 comments)

Report: FDNY rescues partygoers from 2nd Avenue 'rooftop rager' after stairwell collapse injures 1 (Sept. 29, 74 comments)

Avenue A's anti-7-Eleven campaign now includes arsenal of 20,000 stickers (Jan. 8, 73 comments)

Report: The making of Empire Biscuit; plus, people drop biscuits on the floor but eat them anyway (Nov. 12, 72 comments)

Report: Empire Biscuit opens today (Oct. 30, 65 comments)

[Updated] Car smashes into East Village Farm & Grocery on Second Avenue; 6 reported injured (June 19, 62 comments)

Top cop's SantaCon endorsement: 'It's what makes New York, New York' (Nov. 24, 59 comments)

Reader report: 9th St. Bakery is closing after 87 years (Jan. 15, 59 comments)

Here is the future of East 14th Street and Avenue A: 7 stories of residential and retail (Oct. 18, 57 comments)

Thank you to everyone who took the time to leave (or read!) a comment.

Comments

A lively discussion continues on these two posts:

A case against using the term 'crusty' (Friday, 94 comments)

A private party in a public Tompkins Square Park (Saturday, 42 comments)

Year-end listicle alert: The most-commented EV Grieve posts of 2011

Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting...

1) Occupy Tompkins Square Park this weekend (121 comments)

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2) RIP Bob Arihood (70 comments)

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3) An East Village pep talk (63 comments)

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4) In which a film crew calls your wife a 'stupid bitch' on Avenue A (59 comments)

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5) About Mercadito Cantina closing: 'Open letter to EV Grieve and CB3' (58 comments)

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6) Banjo Jim's space to become home to an 'artisanal neighborhood cocktail bar' (48 comments)

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7) Today's sign of the apocalypse: Starbucks taking over The Bean's space on First Avenue and Third Street (48 comments)

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8) [Updated] Resident starting a petition to have the 'Hot Chicks Room' sign removed at the Upright Citizens Brigade (47 comments)

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9) The Hot Chicks Room lives on! (46 comments)

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[Photo by Melanie Neichin via East Village Corner]

10) Crusty Row, now with a vacancy in Tompkins Square Park (46 comments)

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11) So where do you order Chinese food from? (43 comments)

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12) The East Village rolls out welcome wagon for new Starbucks (41 comments)

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13) Continuing to question the BMW Guggenheim Lab's benefits to the local community (39 comments)

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14) Does the East Village have enough places now to order hamburgers? (38 comments)

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15) One man's campaign against 'the doorshitter' on St. Mark's Place (37 comments)

Reader comments: "we freaks will be here to forgive you"

With this ... I'm going to start highlighting comments on a regular basis... Very often, comments here deserve their own posts... As always, thank you for chiming in and being part of this conversation...



From yesterday's lively thread about the Halloween night protest at Tompkins Square Park... I give you Vagabond Beaumont...

To all of those who moved into the Loisaida and were expecting the Upper East Side.... Loisaida was a place for those who wanted to live in a different way and not be harassed by outsiders or even looked at as outsiders at all... The Loisaida was a place for the freaks to gather and rub up against one another... It was a place that not only respected difference but celebrated and encouraged it... It was a community of freaks banding together to create a freak community of immense diversity...

This tribe of freaks coming together is not much different from the waves of waves of immigration of various ethnic groups that came and continue to come to NYC... Those immigrant groups looked for ethnic neighborhoods where they could feel safe and not feel like outsiders... The Jews did it, the Italians did it, the Germans did it, the Polish did it, the Chinese did it, the Puerto Ricans did it, even the African Americans (who were not immigrants) did it...

The freaks of the Loisaida were following in a tradition of gathering in a way to protect themselves and to have a place of their own... The diversity of the Loisaida and the commodification of what came out of the Loisaida (Spoken Word, Punk, Hip-Hop, Graffiti, Avant-Garde Theater, etc...) made the Loisaida a cool place for non-freaks to want to live...

So the non-freaks move in - in their 20's and because the Loisaida is a place of tolerance the non-freaks are welcome... Then the non-freaks get into their 30's and start getting married and having kids and instead of renting a studio in a 5th floor walk-up tenement they buy a $1.2 mil. 2 bedroom condo and all of a sudden what was cool @ 20 is now an annoyance @ 30 and by the time the non-freaks (who were welcomed by the Loisiaida) are 40 they are calling the cops on the freaks because of the noise and complaining to politicians about the deteriorating conditions of "community"...

The majority who live in this city now are people who want don't want freaks around... Don't want them to have a place... Don't want them to exist... Are wiping out the places where they gather and live... It happened in Soho, it happened in the West Village, it happened/is happening in Williamsburg, in Harlem, in the South Bronx... It seems that as fast as the freaks find a place the non-freaks find a way to strangle the life out of it...

But one day when NYC has finally paved it's path over us freaks and the entire city becomes a safe respected shopping mall... Then you non-freaks will have what you always wanted... A suburb without a lawn and a shopping mall @ your doorstep...

NYC the most vital and exciting and diverse collection of freaks in the world will not be able to create and as a result of that the non-freaks will not have the fruits of these freaks to commodify. Because the freaks will not exist... And you non-freaks will have to find another way to pay that $1.2mil. condo mortgage...

When you default on that mortgage and your the system starts to crumble for you and that condo building becomes an abandoned building... The freaks that were in hiding will show up... Squat your $1.2 mil. condo and generate fruits once again...

The Loisaida is not yours... You are passing through... Remember that the next time you call the puh-leez or the politrixters to complain... Your kind will not remain... And not because we freaks are going to do anything about it or ever had the power to do anything about it... You will destroy yourselves, you need no help from us... But don't worry... we freaks will be here to forgive you of your past transgressions and show you how to live another way...

[Photo by John Penley]

Memorable reader comment of the week

There has been a lot of great discussion here this week... from Tompkins Square Bagels coming to Avenue A.... to looking for Sammy... to First Avenue bike lanes... to Crustypunks...

Thank you for the comments, and being part of all this...

Meanwhile, here's an excerpt from a comment that is, well, one that I'll likely never forget...

"My neighbor once threw away her dead cat in a Duane Reade shopping bag." (From World's largest Duane Reade now open on Union Square)

Welcome back!

One of our old friends has returned!

The Macho Man Randy Savage said...
Ooohhhh yeahhhhh. Hot time, summer in the city. Macho Man is back and he's keeping it gritty. YEAH! Ms. Grieve! I had no idea. I don't know what's going on at this Simone place, but if anyone charges the Macho Man for food he doesn't eat, I'm going to CHARGE THEIR FACE. Yeah.

Who's having the best week ever?

From the comments:

Between the Superdive death and the scathing piece on Ben Shaoul in The Real Deal, UPPER Avenue A residents are having the BEST WEEK EVER!!

Party at Cooper Square Hotel

Jill left a comment yesterday about a party she attended at the Cooper Square Hotel. Thought you may enjoy it.

The party was in the 21st floor suite. As far as hotel suites go it was nothing, and let me tell you I've seen a lot of them in lots of cities. Except for the view it was pretty vanilla. They took out the furniture so maybe with furniture it might be better, but really... The giant wraparound deck had no cover from the sun/rain, nor was there furniture out there either (again, maybe for the party they took it out.)

De rigeur slidy wood floors, big windows, very plain "minimalist" I suppose but to me it looks forlorn. The one couch was so wide you coudn't sit back without putting all your legs on it, which is not a good look at a party. I was the only one sitting/perching.

Tiny elevators with a very very long wait. In fact, they mixed the guests in with the party goers so the people who were paying hotel guests couldn't get to their rooms in a reasonable amount of time.

An elevator load of party goers had an argument with one worker when we couldn't get to the 21st floor via elevator, and then they wouldn't let us up the stairs from the 20th floor. He accused us of wanting to sneak in - this to a group of fairly middle aged people in business clothes. Ha! He threatened to call security. I begged him to call security. A handiman we ran into fixed the elevator to bring us up.

When I was leaving there were a few young people hanging around the front desperately trying to get in, and the bouncer wouldn't let them through. There was absolutely nothing for them inside, but they sure thought they were missing something, only because they weren't allowed in.

"If your establishment needs to hire a guy in an orange vest to direct traffic around your club every Friday and Saturday night..."

Crap, is it Thursday already? I meant to share this entertaining and informative reader comment earlier this week. Upon hearing the news last Friday that Le Souk had its liquor license reinstated and was planning on staying in the East Village (as reported first by DBTH), WB had the following to say:

One thing that need not be guesstimated is how much that place sucks.

Jokes aside, Le Souk did go before the Community Board in December. It was "following protocol" should this very thing happen. See here.

And so here we are. Hello.

Many spoke at that meeting. The tone was generally not positive as Le Souk went. It is true that some spoke up for the club, but a fair number of the pro Le Souk comments revolved around the tenuous idea that there exists no middle ground between circuses like Le Souk and the East Village of decades past (see reference 1). On the other hand the anti Le Souk crowd made consistently reasonable points. For example, if your establishment needs to hire a guy in an orange vest to direct traffic around your club every Friday and Saturday night, it's quite possible that your establishment has outgrown its environs.

Anyway, after everyone spoke their minds, the CB ruled that it would be inappropriate for it to make a decision at that time, since the license was suspended. It seemed like an odd decision at the time, given what was said and the place's history.

Now, I am not an attorney but I'm not certain that today's ruling means that Le Souk is on the fast track back to serving $24 Jägerbombs (reference 2). It sounds as if Le Souk needs to reapply for its license, which one would *guess* involves a recommendation yay or nay from the CB. And I can't fathom the CB giving it twelve thumbs up or whatever. The only thing Le Souk has going for it is that it has been closed for months and hence hasn't racked up more violations. But I don't fully understand how this machine works.

Anyway, if you ever have free time, the Community Board meetings are very interesting. It's a good look into one of the larger factors shaping our neighborhoods.

WB

Reader comments

Many thanks to everyone who takes the time to visit this site... I especially appreciate the comments. I wanted to highlight two comments from this past week:

From the Cabin Fever post:

prodigal son said...
I've just returned to New York after a long hiatus, and I've noticed an improvement in terms of yunnie saturation. I can take walks now without constantly being stuck behind someone talking on a cellphone and meandering along the sidewalk. The subway cars seem a little less crowded. But I haven't hit the bars yet.

From the At the Unemployment Olympics post:

Anonymous said...
I've been living in the EV since 1977 - like Sheena I was a punk rocker. I used to tear my hair out about gentrification (like since 1990), but now I have a really different approach - actually a more punk rock approach. Fuck it, let it get destroyed. It's all interesting.

(I have had heartbreaking moments mostly when mom and pops go. There was a BUTTON store on 1st Ave in Momofuko country, can you imagine? Two little - like 5 feet tall, husband and wife - Jewish refugees from WW2. An entire store devoted to buttons. I always felt bad for the guy, he would go to help you and and after about 2 minutes his wife would roll her eyes and grab the button box out of his hands and help you. He couldn't do anything right, it was a chuckle every time.) I don't mourn for the EV scene anymore, because frankly, once we realized it was a scene it was already gone.

When I read this, Vanishing NY and Lost City, I think geez they're pissed off about how much less fun it is now, they'd be suicidal if they knew how really fun it was like 1980. But you guys do a great job.

The new Lower Eastside Girls Club: "We are really, truly, after all this time...breaking ground this year"

Wanted to share a comment to my post from yesterday on the Lower Eastside Girls Club opening its new HQ on Avenue D. It's from GoGirl at the Girls Club. It reads, in part:

We are really, truly, after all this time...breaking ground this year!!!! Just a few comments- that old Villager stuff is ...old. We are no longer an EDC project and no longer affiliated with FEVA. The building is being built through HPD and will only be Girls Club (30,000 sq.ft) and the housing- which is a 50/50 project- 50% market, 50% affordable! And as for that guy appearing to pee against the wall- unfortunate graphic I agree- but what he is really doing is buying an affordable tamale with rice and beans at our cafe take-out window!!!! So bike on over in early 2011. And feel free to drop by our 1st Street center and see the floor plans anytime.

"maybe MOMOFUCKO can open a flavored milk stand?"

As always, many thanks for the comments....Wanted to share one from the Wolfgang-Puck-setting-up-shop-at-the-Fillmore post. From Hunter-Gatherer:

Uhhhh, as someone who has attended and worked shows there. Where are they planning on setting up operations?
does anybody actually think about eating when they got to a show there?
Or, perhaps this will be one of "lifestyle marketing" attempts at sucking off what money is left with the music buying public. $7 budweiser and a $15 puck personal pan cardboard pizza. AWESOME!!!! maybe MOMOFUCKO can open a flavored milk stand? this AINT rock n'roll.