A clarification about the 'no pizza' petition on the Lower East Side

As we first noted last Thursday, an 18-year-resident of the Lower East Side created a petition "to promote diversity in low to mid-priced food options for New York City's Lower East Side."

Via Change.org:

Are you sick and tired of pizzerias opening up all over the Lower East Side? With the closures of so many restaurants in the neighborhood, our low to mid-priced food options are dwindling. Pizzerias have over-saturated this part of Manhattan. Sign this petition and maybe Community Board 3 will take notice. *Enough of the L.E.S. pizzeria takeover!*

The person behind the petition, who goes by No More L.E.S. Pizzerias, made an amendment to the petition to help set the record straight. This is NOT about calling for an end to $1 pizzerias (misinformation that we helped spread).

To clarify the point of this petition: It is not an anti $1 slice pizza petition. We're sick of ALL pizzerias. No more $1 slice pizzerias. No more expensive brick oven pizzerias. NO MORE PIZZERIAS!

Despite a lot of media attention (NPR, CBS 2, among outlets), there have only been 27 signatures added to date.

And here's the report from CBS New York...



Previously on EV Grieve:
Petition calls for an end to so many 'shitty' pizzerias opening up on the Lower East Side

GIFs project shows the many changing corners of NYC (also, RIP Mars Bar)

Artist and programmer Justin Blinder has created a project called Vacated, which he explains this way:

Vacated reverse engineers Google Street View to highlight the changing landscape of various neighborhoods throughout Manhattan and Brooklyn. The project finds buildings constructed in the past four years using the NYC Department of City Planning's PLUTO dataset, and it leverages Google Street View's cache to visualize absent lots just before new buildings were constructed.

And!

Vacated mines and combines different datasets on vacant lots to present a sort of physical façade of gentrification, one that immediately prompts questions by virtue of its incompleteness: “Vacated by whom? Why? How long had they been there? And who’s replacing them?” Are all these changes instances of gentrification, or just some? While we usually think of gentrification in terms of what is new or has been displaced, Vacated highlights the momentary absence of such buildings, either because they’ve been demolished or have not yet been built.

He assembled this for MoreArt's public art project, Envision 2017, which asked artists to imagine New York City in the future.

From his project, a familiar corner… Second Avenue and East First Street… where the Mars Bar and other businesses were replaced by Jupiter 21...



Workers are currently fitting the former Mars Bar space with a TD Bank.

You can read an interview with Binder here on Gothamist.

Someone was dressed like a chicken today in Tompkins Square Park, and we don't know why

OK then. Some kind of video/film shoot… Does anyone know what this was for? (Really wrong answers are also encouraged.)





Photos by Bobby Williams.

-----

And earlier…

Someone is dressed like a chicken & dancing in Tompkins square park right now pic.twitter.com/5uVvvW7WoC

— evgrieve (@evgrieve) February 19, 2014

This is how Veselka makes its borscht

For the past 30 years, Malgorcata Sibilski has been making the borscht at Veselka on Second Avenue and East Ninth Street.

The New Yorker has her story right here...



Veselka is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year.

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

California resident says he is the East Village man who vanished 20 years ago and declared legally dead (DNAinfo)

Mathieu Palombino closing The Bowery Diner to make way for new concept (Eater)

STOMP celebrates 20th anniversary at the Orpheum on Second Avenue (BoweryBoogie)

Proposed law would up fine for property owners who don't shovel their sidewalks (Gothamist)

The Heidelberg restaurant struggles to survive in the shadows of the Second Avenue Subway construction project (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

RIP Devo guitarist Bob Casale (The Los Angeles Times)

... and free tonight at Pangea at 178 Second Ave. ... Michelangelo Antonioni's "L'Avventura."





... and things we find on snow piles on East 10th Street...


[Photo by Derek Berg]


[Photo by BagelGuy]

... and Google picked a lousy spot to cut off this headline about Mission Cantina on the LES...

Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher

Name: Mike Stuto
Occupation: Co-Owner, HiFi
Location: HiFi, Avenue A between 10th and 11th.
Time: 3 pm on Monday, Feb 10.

I was born in Whitestone in 1966, but we moved to Bergen County, N.J. in ’77, shortly after the blackout and Elvis’ death. My folks were both native New Yorkers; Dad was Italian and grew up on 111th and Lex; my mother is Syrian and lived in Cobble Hill. But their ethnicity centered mostly around food.

I moved into this neighborhood in March of 1989, a little less than a year after college. Back then I didn’t really know the neighborhood east of 2nd Avenue. I knew CBGBs and St. Mark’s Place and would go to record stores and book stores. I got an apartment on 9th and A, right by Tompkins Square Park. I didn’t choose the area as much as I just needed a place — but I quickly fell in love. We were on the top floor and had roof parties all the time. Then I lived in a storefront at 40 Clinton St., where the Con Ed guy would have to go through my room to read the meters. It didn’t seem that odd to me. I’ve been on Orchard Street near Houston since 1996. Twenty-five years in the neighborhood and 20 years in the bar I now own at 169 Avenue A.

What I loved about this neighborhood was how it felt like a pretty tight community even though there were all kinds of different people living here with all kinds of different life stories. I think what tied them together was a need or desire to exist outside the normal nine-to-five life. It doesn’t mean they were all artists or socialists or off-the-grid radicals, but they all had a respect for the notion that you could live your life the way you wanted to live your life and it didn’t have to subscribe to what the mainstream part of the world expected of you.

That bred an overall respect for people and their life choices. While I was technically a grown-up when I moved here, this neighborhood made me an adult — and for better or worse made me the person I am today. As a 22-year-old kid who could easily have been considered a suburban outsider, I was embraced for who I was and welcomed into this place that has an enormously rich history of defiance of the “normal.”

I was in the record business. I did some college radio promo and marketing, A&R, artist management, and other various functions. When I was out of work in the fall of ’93, I spent most of my time inside 7B where I met many of the people who are my closest friends today.

In early '94 when my unemployment ran out I was hired to book a few shows a month at Brownies. They had just added the “big” stage. Brownies opened in 1989 and they used to have a little stage in the corner up until then. Laura McCarthy opened the bar and was my boss; now she’s my partner. It was an Irish bar with a stage and it slowly became a place that out-of-town bands played at, mostly through Laura’s friends and some independent promoters.

There were always several different music scenes swirling around the place, and when I got there a lot of out-of-town indie-rock bands had been doing shows. The people at Brownies returned calls quicker than the people at CBGBs, which was really all it took. I was a part of that scene and I knew a lot of folks in the business, so in a way it was a right-place, right-time kind of thing. Combine that with an era when anyone with two guitars, a ripped t-shirt and a Sonic Youth record in their bag could get a six-figure record deal, and the place just took off.

In '96, I scored a corporate A&R gig at Columbia Records, which was a pretty miserable experience for me. For the second time it was clear to me that I had zero ability to function in a corporate environment, but it did afford me the opportunity to return to Brownies as a 50 percent partner less than 18 months after I had left.

Brownies’ crowd was pretty much dictated by who was playing. It was mostly white-kids with guitars, but our booking policy was pretty inclusive; we tried to put together interesting bills — and having more than one thriving New York scene to feed off made it an ideal time to do that what we were doing. I had the opportunity to book many bands who went on to huge successes, some of whom I am still quite good friends with.

But the real contribution that place made was to support a somewhat under-the-radar world of rock musicians who did not have that many places to play. It was a pretty insular world and many of the best moments in my life happened inside that room during those years.

Brownies had a great run, but in 2002 we turned the space into a neighborhood bar called HiFi, which is what it is today. Upon opening, the centerpiece of HiFi was EL-DJ — the homemade digital jukebox that I created with a software developer based on my record collection.

When EL DJ first appeared, iTunes was still a Mac-Only program and I did not really know what an MP3 was. To this day, there’s only one of them on the planet — about 4,000 full albums that sound good in a bar. It’s certainly indie-rock centric, but there is a lot of stuff on there for anyone with discerning tastes. I’m a music snob I guess, but I’m not a snob to any particular genre. Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones would be where it all began for me.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

Something rather unexpected is opening on Avenue B (hint: not a bar)

So, yeah — there's a new tenant for the former M&M Variety Hardware at 8-10 Avenue B near East Houston… Top Notch Security — "a growing locksmith, security and home automation company." (Check out their website here. BE PREPARED FOR THE GUNSHOTS!)

EVG regular Salim shared these photos… it appears that Top Notch is not quite open for business…



Back in November, Cantina LES, a sit-down Mexican restaurant, was on the CB3/SLA agenda for a liquor license at this address. We're honestly not sure what happened with this applicant — aside from that they won't be opening here.

Winter Antifolk Festival, now in its 20th year, is underway at Sidewalk Cafe

From the EVG inbox…

Over the last 20 years the back room at the Sidewalk Cafe on Avenue A and East Sixth Street has been an incubator, laboratory and town square for a dynamic community of performing artists. It helped launch the careers of singer-songwriters like Regina Spektor, Adam Green, Kimya Dawson, and Jeffrey Lewis, and today is one of the few remaining Manhattan venues that welcome and nurture emerging performers.

More than 80 artists who represent a cross-section of standout talent from the scene will appear in the Winter Antifolk Festival 2014, running Feb. 18 through Feb 28. Among the notable performers scheduled are Hamell on Trial, Debe Dalton, Crazy & the Brains, Larkin Grimm, Fayaway, and Jason Trachtenburg. Special guest artists will also appear. Sidewalk Cafe is located at 94 Avenue A at East Sixth Street. There is no cover charge, although there is a one-item food or drink minimum.

The biannual Antifolk Festival was launched in the mid-1980s by a group of young songwriters who created the event as an alternative to the more mainstream New York Folk Festival. The Antifolk scene then coalesced around a regular open mic session, the Antihoot, that was spearheaded by the songwriter Lach and moved from spot to spot before settling in at Sidewalk Cafe in 1993. Lach was Antifolk’s ringleader and impresario until 2008 when he handed the baton of leadership to Ben Krieger. Today the landmark Monday night open stage is still the focal point of the Sidewalk scene, although the club offers shows seven nights per week. Krieger now oversees the Sidewalk stage in partnership with Somer Bingham.

So, what is Antifolk? Many participants have said that it describes a community of artists rather than a particular style. “Antifolk revolves around conviction and passion, and is inclusive of many different types of sounds,” said Krieger. “The best way to learn more about it is to come to Sidewalk Cafe and listen to the artists playing today.”

Check out the full list of performers here.

In other Sidewalk-related news, American Songwriter reported yesterday that Ben Krieger is stepping down as Sidewalk's booker. Somer Bingham, who has been running sound there the past six years, will be taking over. Krieger will still be hosting the Monday Night Open Stage.

Video: Hanksy & friends transform this East Village tenement into 'Surplus Candy'

As we first pointed out last month, 324 E. Fourth St. between Avenue C and Avenue D is being fitted for two new floors, not to mention a head-to-toe renovation for 11 residential units. The plans are currently awaiting approval by the city.

The empty tenement was also home to two recent, not-so-secret art shows by Hanksy.

Yesterday, Gothamist posted a video of the Jan. 10 "Surplus Candy" show coming together…



And if you want more Hanksy, the Times filed a profile on the street artist on Sunday. Enjoy that here.

Previously on EV Grieve:
2 new floors, gut renovation in store for empty tenement that last housed a Hanksy art show

At Hanksy's 'Surplus Candy' art show in an abandoned East Village tenement

Going… going…

Photo this evening by Bobby Williams

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

[East 2nd Street]

Video: Celebrating 160 years of McSorley's (Grub Street)

Memorial info about MTA bus driver William Pena, the LES native killed last week on the job (The Lo-Down)

The hawks continue to build a nest around Tompkins Square Park (Gog in NYC)

Ludlow Hotel now booking for the spring (BoweryBoogie)

About the weirdest building in Midtown (Scouting New York)

Concern for this UES block (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

New building life for former Second Avenue funeral parlor

Workers have removed the construction netting and scaffolding from 154 Second Ave., the former Sigmund Schwartz Gramercy Park Chapel now with three extra floors. The building will house luxury rentals and ground-floor retail here between East Ninth Street and East 10th Street.



For a little contrast… here's how the building looked in the summer of 2011…

[Via Off the Grid]

Here's what the address looked like in the 1940s, via Vanishing New York...

And here is the rendering …

Thoughts on the look of the new building?

No word yet on pricing for the units. It's from Icon Realty, who's currently peddling 6-bedroom frat houses on Avenue A.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Former funeral home looks to double in size with help from 'the controversial penthouse king of the East Village'

Redeveloped funeral home looking for a few live retail tenants

The walls come tumbling down at 154 Second Avenue