EV Grieve

Tuesday, August 18, 2009

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

Rush Week in the EV? (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Karate Boogaloo reviews the new Arthur Kane book (Stupefaction)

An EL of a good time (This Ain't the Summer of Love)

TGIF to Union Square fallout. Per an Eater commenter: "I am going to run a $1 shuttle bus between TGI Friday's and Superdive starting at 8pm on Thursdays and Fridays" (Eater)

There will be none of that "discharge of fecal matter" business in this pool! (Curbed)

Jack Shafer debunks the summer's big "trends" stories. Like beer guts on hipsters! "Usually when something is called hip, a top hipster can be found embracing it. But Trebay names no leader of potbelly hipness and uncovers no evidence of hip potbellies in the cinema, the stage, the concert hall, the night club, or elsewhere. It's just these random guts strolling around New York. You might as well say argyle socks are hip." (Slate)

StuyTown thong update (StuyTown Lux Living)

Phil Mushnick: "Every time I hear/read a team or MLB exec rationalize ticket prices as in-line with Broadway show tickets I want to retch. How many Broadway shows have two-hour rain delays? How many matinees are switched to Sunday nights? On Broadway a losing streak closes the show. How many shows would survive if the cast were shut out, 12-0, the script re-written every day and the stars intentionally walked?" (New York Post)

And over at the New York Nobody Sings, Cheetah Chrome gives a guitar lesson:

The last house on the block

On this block in East Harlem, one house remains on the east side of Lexington Avenue between 117th and 118th Streets. I noticed it earlier this summer on a day that I was tooling around town in a rental car.

A search on Google Maps shows that two houses were still standing as of one year ago.

Now, only 1889 Lexington Ave. remains. And there's construction going on behind it and next to it.

Next door, there are 29 residential units -- with a community space on the ground floor -- under construction. It's sponsored by the Bluestone Organization and Hope Community, Inc.

Meanwhile, the lone house remains. I'm curious about its fate. And its history. (I did find the Certificate of Occupancy dating Nov. 12, 1953.)

Rooms are available for rent.

Related:
Activists Arrested After Occupying East Harlem Lot (The New York Times)

Cops Stop Occupation of JPMorgan Chase's Vacant Lot, Arrest 9 or More (The Village Voice)

Developer Bows Out of East Harlem Megaproject (Curbed)

Looking at The New Yorker's Bloomy extravaganza

Ben McGrath profiles King Bloomberg in this week's New Yorker.

It's epic. Here's how it starts:

Michael Bloomberg has never been the sort of public speaker who makes people faint in his presence. He talks too quickly, mispronounces words, and has a weakness for self-referential jokes, at which he smirks readily, like a boy who knows that his mother approves.

McGrath's piece is roughly 10,000 words, so.... here are just a few interesting passages.

Bloomberg took office during a recession, and quickly established himself as a bold and decisive fiscal manager, ultimately demonstrating, as his friend Mitchell Moss, an urban-planning professor at N.Y.U., says, that New York was “open for business after 9/11.” As the economy recovered, Bloomberg set about trying to transform the city, on a scale not seen since the days of Robert Moses. “I think if you look, we’ve done more in the last seven years than — I don’t know if it’s fair to say more than Moses did, but I hope history will show the things we did made a lot more sense,” Bloomberg told me. “You know, Moses did some things that turned out not to be great: cutting us off from the waterfront, putting roads all along the water.” The Bloomberg model, under the direction of Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff and Amanda Burden, the City Planning Commissioner, was based to a large extent on undoing the Moses legacy: rezoning for commercial and residential use large tracts of waterfront property that had once been the province of industry.

Later on, a City Hall reporter offers:

“If he weren’t sometimes such a dick, it would be an unbearable beat.”

Illustration: Gerald Scarfe

New York's Neighborhood Watch

From this week's New York magazine:

Previously on EV Grieve:
Observations from last night's noisy bars meeting

For further reading:
Stop the SuperNoise - Community Meeting (Blah Blog Blah)

Noted

Oops. Meant to post the ongoing weekend recap yesterday morning...

Dumpster of the day

An EV Grieve reader sent along this combo special on Second Street between Avenue A and First Avenue.

What Koi needs on the Bowery

Fresh graffiti on the old Koi notice on the Bowery. And the second part is difficult to make out. Soporific?

Previous Koi coverage on EV Grieve.

Monday, August 17, 2009

Fall?

At the start of every summer, I always say that I'll go see one of the HBO Bryant Park Summer Film Festival films. But I never do it. Afraid I'll start throwing picnic baskets. And tonight is the last one for the summer of 2009. Just as well. It's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind." I'd be lost: I haven't seen the first two. (Boo! Hiss!)

And now I see New York has its annual Fall Fashion issue. Fall? I'd like a do-over on June, please. And I'd like to go see "Dog Day Afternoon" on July 6.

6:20 and I'm finally reading the Times

Did you see the lead to the piece in the Times today titled, City’s Poor Still Distrust Banks?:

In 1986, when the Lower East Side had just one bank in a 100-square block area...

Today, despite a bank branch on seemingly every corner throughout the city, the article notes:

In Manhattan, long the world’s banking capital, 12 percent of households still do not have a bank account... 91,100 Manhattan households feel more comfortable hiding their savings in closets, in pillows — even in brown paper lunch bags. They rely on check-cashers and corner bodegas for cash and post offices for money orders, even as banks are more accessible than ever: the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation reports 682 banks in the borough in 2008, compared with 521 in 2004 — a more than 30 percent increase.

Who will be the next tenant for the former CBGB Gallery?

As Racked reported, the Morrison Hotel on the Bowery -- former site of the CBGB Gallery -- is moving...

...and the "for lease" signs are up now...

Have you read the listing for the property?

It's good. Real good.

With 25 feet of frontage and up to 8,800 square feet of retail space available, 313-315 Bowery offers a unique opportunity to be a part of the resurgent development in the Bowery neighborhood. The hotel, residential and retail developments surrounding the old CBGB space provide extraordinary exposure for this opportunity in one of the city’s distinctive cultural landmarks.

Features
• 25 feet of frontage on Bowery
• 2 blocks away from Manhattan’s largest Whole Foods Market
• Former location of the world renowned CBGB
• Adjacent to over 700 new luxury rental units in AvalonBay Development
• Next to highly successful John Varvatos 315 Bowery boutique, opened Spring 2008

Coming soon: A gourmet deli to go with your karaoke on St. Mark's Place

I wondered how the karaoke joint on St. Marks's at the former home of Mondo Kim's would fill up all that space...

According to plans on the door, we may be in for a gourmet deli.

Seems to make sense. There's already another karaoke place across the street... might as well have another gourmet deli like the one across the street to match...

Previously on EV Grieve:
Karaoke taking over Mondo Kim's space

New world order for Avenue C?

Just posting a, uh, post that I did for Curbed last week.

For sale signs went up [last] week at the Lower Manhattan Congregation Jehovah's Witness at 67 Avenue C near East 5th Street. According to the Massey Knakal listing for the property, the space "is ideal for a user, investor or developer and will be delivered vacant." Indeed; asking $2.2 million.