Today in important trend stories

East Village salon featured in report on: Feather Hair Extensions Eating Away at Fishing Lure Supply

The "bad old days" are here again story of the day

Via The Daily News!

The city's murder rate has shot up nearly 15% this year, and residents in the worst-hit precincts are worried New York is headed back to darker days.

The NYPD recorded 437 murders as of Sunday, compared with 382 in the same period last year.

Previously on EV Grieve:
The "bad old days" are here again story of the day

Trend alert! The bad old days are here again!

Are the "bad old days" here again...again?

Hi neighbor: Is this a new era for bar-resident relations in the East Village?

What happened with the Cabin Down Below management and the family next door is the latest example of East Village bar owners trying to be better neighbors...

1) David Schwartz, one of Lit's co-owners, recently outlined the steps his bar is taking to appease their unhappy neighbors. (Read that story here.)



2) The manager of the Elephant on First Street recently told me what she had done to help change perceptions neighbors may have of the Thai eatery. (Read that post here.)

3) In response to an exchange with EV Grieve readers, the GM of Aces & Eights made good on trying to dispel the bar’s Upper-East-Side, preppy reputation by hosting an art show by Curt Hoppe. (You can read that story here.)

4) Last summer, Destination's Mason Reese was the only owner who attended a meeting of residents on 12th and 13th Streets to address issues people were having with the proliferation of new bars on Avenue A. He agreed to close the bar's front windows by 10 p.m. during the week and 11 p.m. on the weekends. (And Reese recently chimed in on a comment thread to remind folks that he has kept his word.)

Maybe this is all for a good reason. Monday night's CB3/SLA meeting showed what can happen when neighbors get organized and work together... As Jill reported:

Tonight's Community Board 3 SLA Committee meeting was possibly historic. The Upper Avenue A residents had such a strong turnout ... The end result, which is often a testament to stamina more than brains, was that nobody got their license approvals tonight, and one of the three bars withdrew their application in the face of so much opposition.

I'm sure there are other bar owners who continue to be good neighbors... (and others who are anything but!) Still! Is this a New Era for Neighborly Love? Do bar owners realize that it might be a good idea to actually cater to people who walk a block or so to the establishment and not travel here on, say, the LIRR? I think back to those ugly, drag-out fights involving the people vs. Le Souk, Death & Company, among others.

As the Cabin Down Below neighbor said, it took a few phone calls, a little waiting... and one evening a bar owner is in the apartment to hear for herself what the noise is like while a contractor was outside on the stairs.

I just don't know if bar owners (and prospective bar owners) are just being smart... or they're scared.

The pastry chef was not high when she created the cereal milk soft-serve ice cream at Momofuku Milk Bar

According to the Times:

Today, a small but influential band of cooks says both their chin-dripping, carbohydrate-heavy food and the accessible, feel-good mood in their dining rooms are influenced by the kind of herb that can get people arrested.

Call it haute stoner cuisine

.

Dude!

But not everyone partakes of the sweet, sweet bud.

The cereal milk soft-serve ice cream at Momofuku Milk Bar ... is a perfect example. A dessert based on the slightly sweet flavor of milk at the bottom of a cereal bowl particularly appeals to someone who knows both high-quality food and the cannabis-induced pleasure of a munchie session built from a late-night run to the 7-Eleven.

Christina Tosi, the pastry chef of David Chang’s empire, said she was stone-cold sober when she invented it. She was in the basement of Mr. Chang’s Ssam Bar late at night, trying to save a failed experiment in fried apple pies.

“I promise you there was no marijuana involved,” she said. “It would have made the stress of it more bearable if it was.”

[Image via]

The "bad old days" are here again story of the day!

From the Post!

Gangs of wilding teens terrorized straphangers this week in a violent spate of daytime robberies and assaults on Manhattan subways -- another indicator the city could be sinking back to the bad old days that once gripped the Big Apple with fear.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Trend alert! The bad old days are here again!

Are the "bad old days" here again...again?

26 years later, it's apparently cool to like Huey Lewis and the News

Trends piece in the Post!

On a night in the East Village last month, the near-empty burger joint Black Iron was gearing up for the dinner rush. “You know,” a bearded bartender remarked to his fellow servers, “I need to start the night properly.”

He cut the music and cued up a new album: “Huey Lewis & The News: Greatest Hits.” Excitement rippled through the room. There was even some whooping. For the next half hour, all conversation revolved around Huey’s guitar prowess. Apparently, it’s very hip to be square right now.

In fact, this spring, the cheesy ’80s are back in full force, with power ballads, film remakes and pink lipstick leading the way.

[Rolling Stone cover via Rolling Stone]

No pants

Fourth Street near Avenue A the other morning -- 8 degree wind chill.

Previously.

Photo of dead East Village artist used for new trends piece on smoking in bars

You probably know about that epic "Hey-people-are-illegally-smoking-in-some-bars" trends piece the Times ran on Sunday...(I didn't read it either.)

As Gawker's Foster Kamer wrote on the "problem with 'smoking in New York' trend pieces," NYTPicker noted that, in an "eerie and unfortunate mistake," the Times' article was accompanied by a photo of Jeremy Blake, the East Village artist who committed suicide in the summer of 2007.

Here's part of the NYTPicker post:

NYT contributor Douglas Quenqua reports on a supposed trend of nightclub patrons flouting the law and lighting up in local trendy nightclubs -- a "new brazenness," Quenqua calls it.

New? Maybe, but the NYT's use of a nearly three-year-old image of famous painter Jeremy Blake smoking a cigarette at the Beatrice Inn doesn't illustrate the point. As many NYT readers know -- and the paper itself reported in a 647-word obituary -- Blake committed suicide in the summer of 2007, at the age of 35.

Blake, whose paintings appeared in the Paul Thomas Anderson film "Punch Drunk Love," is believed to have killed himself by walking into the Atlantic Ocean on July 17, 2007, despondent over the suicide death one week earlier of his girlfriend, the video game creator Theresa Duncan.

The use of the Blake photo raises a couple of interesting questions. Why would the NYT run a photo of a well-known artist -- knowing that many readers would recognize him -- without identifying him in the caption? And why would the NYT run a nearly three-year-old photograph to illustrate a story that purports to document a recent phenomenon?

At the time of their deaths, Duncan and Blake lived in an apartment on East 11th Street adjacent to St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery.

For further reading on Duncan and Blake:
The Golden Suicides (Vanity Fair)

Conspiracy of Two (New York)

Daily News reporter bravely walks on St. Mark's Place wearing a pair of jeggings

Over at the Daily News today, reporter Issie Lapowsky wore a pair of denim leggings around town. Then wrote about it. She took them for a spin on St. Mark's Place, but no one apparently tossed FroYo at her or threw up on her shoes boots...the caption to the photo below reads, "A stroll through the East Village in C&C jeans was not an uplifting experience — though it did win some attention."



According to the article, she did, however, successfully wear them to a class at Yoga to the People.

Zines, which never really went away, are making a comeback

There's a trends piece in the Post today on zines making a comeback. (I never thought that they went away, but, you know, with stupid blogs and stuff....)

Anyway! To the story!

Jenna Freedman, the zine librarian at Barnard, thinks that part of the allure is a reaction to our digital age. "People are overwhelmed by the online world, and retreating to something more manageable and tangible like print feels soothing."

Ayun Halliday started her zine, "The East Village Inky," in 1998 and resisted the pressure to switch to a blog. "I'm a paper fetishist," says the 44-year-old mom of two who lives in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. "I like to think of someone discovering an issue in an attic or a dusty bookstore 20, 50 or 100 years from now." Her latest project is a Zinester’s Guide to NYC.

New York's zine scene is a mix of Gen X veterans, like Halliday, who never stopped publishing, and younger enthusiasts. Freedman has had prospective students who have no memory of life before blogs request tours of the zine library during campus visits.

First, I was always a Generation X fan.



(Try embedding a video in a zine, suckers!)

But seriously, I love zines. And I've kicked around the idea of creating a zine. Jeremiah has had similar thoughts. In fact, I may have stolen the idea from him!

For further reading:
Zine fest (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

What East Village bar will be expanding nationally today?

Yesterday came word that Nevada Smith's and Superdive are considering expanding their bars nationwide. True or not (at least in the case of Superdive), nothing shows financial health more than rumors of going national!

Kind of related. A new Beauty Bar outpost is opening in Chicago early next year.

Noted: What has replaced dim sum

Trends piece on the Post today titled "AFTERNOON DELIGHT:
HOMEBOUND HIPSTERS TURN SUNDAY INTO SLACK SABBATH"

It's 2 o'clock, champagne is pouring and party people are queueing behind velvet ropes at Manhattan's hottest hotel bars. Did we mention it's 2 o'clock in the afternoon?

For New Yorkers, going out has always been a shell game in which they try to wine and dine where tourists and suburbanites aren't. Sometimes that means new, undiscovered venues and sometimes it means ever-changing weeknight parties. Now, for the time being anyway, New York's hippest are hiding in plain sight, smack-dab in the middle of Sunday afternoon, while the amateur set is hung over wherever it is they live.

"Sunday parties are taking the place of dim sum," says ballroom dancer Katherine Tarbox.

And THE No. 1 dim-sum replacement party spot?

The Penthouse at the Hotel on Rivington. "After church, hot models come here for bubbly in the hot tub."

For further reading:
Another backside (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

The recession's hot sellers: running shoes, Spam, Dinty Moore, tanning products

Another recession-related trends story. (AP)

Last time I stayed in a place where everyone could watch me go to the bathroom, I was in jail

"From the chic boutiques of London and Los Angeles to hot new hotels in more exotic locales like India and China, exposed bathrooms are a growing trend — whether in the form of transparent glass walls and shower stalls or bathtubs set in the middle of the bedroom like free-standing sculptures." (The New York Times)

[Photo of NYC's Standard hotel: Matthew Weinstein for The New York Times]

Of course the people we really want to leave just won't

From the Times today: "New York City lost less population to other states in the 12 months ending July 1, 2008, than during any year in decades, according to census figures released Thursday. If that trend continues, the city’s population will top 8.4 million in 2010."

However, these figures don't represent all the job losses that hit in the latter stages of last year. Still, we can make it a trends piece!

“This is new, a real deviation from the average,” said New York City’s chief demographer, Joseph J. Salvo. “Whether it’s a trend is another thing.”

The latest census estimate did not reflect the decline in private-sector jobs in the city late last year.

Dr. Salvo, the director of the Department of City Planning’s population division, said, “When you take a look at the conditions in the rest of the country and what has happened to the housing and economic market in a lot of places our migrants have gone to, it’s very tempting to conclude that perhaps people are staying put more because the opportunities that were afforded there are not there any longer or are no longer attractive.”

In any event! Shall we start a list of people we wish would leave the city? I'll start with the guy on the bus talking on his cellphone about the lack of good golf courses in the city.