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7B/Vazac's/Horseshoe Bar at the corner of East Seventh Street and Avenue B is always looking festive in this season of being more festive than usual.
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Sources said this year's SantaCon will kick off around Tompkins Square Park and wind its way through the East Village and the Lower East Side before jumping over to Brooklyn.
Sources said this year's SantaCon will kick off around Tompkins Square Park and wind its way through the East Village and the Lower East Side before jumping over to Brooklyn.
SantaCon organizers confirmed that they also plan to have 80 helper elves along the route to coordinate traffic and make sure their Santas stay respectful to residents and local businesses.
"They're going to be there until about noon, and then wind up in Brooklyn somewhere," a police source told DNAinfo New York. "Hopefully it will be a nice safe day, and hopefully things will be much better than last year."
The police source and Community Board 3 District Manager Susan Stetzer said a SantaCon organizer contacted their offices Tuesday.
Stetzer said that she spoke with a SantaCon representative through email, on the phone and in person, adding he was "very friendly and cooperative" in the "several" conversations they had.
"I am hoping management of Santas on sidewalks and streets will be improved," she said.
When you dine at Me and You, you dine in Chef Mehta’s private kitchen, and the whole evening is really about the experience as well as the food. Chef will present each course, telling stories about the ingredients, and on occasion, their connection to a memory from his childhood in India.
Chef’s kitchen is in a secret location in the East Village, because we want it to be special, and only seen by those who dine with him, almost like you’re entering the kitchen in his home. The space is really intimate, with 1 big communal table, and an open kitchen so you can really be with the Chef for the whole evening.
Name: Rew Starr
Occupation: Host of ReW & WhO, Musician, Guitar Teacher
Location: The Bean, 3rd Street and 2nd Avenue
Time: Friday, Nov. 29 at 4 pm
I was born in the Bronx but I never lived there. My parents were both raised in the Bronx, when it was the country, but my grandparents all came from the Lower East Side. They were from Eastern Europe. My grandmother was in Vaudeville and sang the blues and jazz and supposedly worked with Jimmy Durante. And my mother was an actress and singer. She was an understudy on Broadway to Shirley MacLaine in "The Pajama Game."
I was raised in Westchester but I could never admit it my whole life. I used to lie all the time and say I was from the city cause that’s the only place I ever wanted to be from. I left home when I was 15 and I went to college at Maryland at 16. I was in a big hurry to get to somewhere. Then I moved to Philadelphia for awhile and ran a skincare salon for a few years. Then I came back here and never left. That was in the early ‘80s.
When I moved here my life hit rock bottom and then I met this total stranger, Paul, who had just moved to the city and it changed everything. He moved here because he loved the Ramones more than anything and he just wanted to play guitar and write songs. He told me that I looked like I could sing and write. It was a hidden dream of mine. I always wanted to do that but I never had the chance. So the two of us would meet and we wrote so many songs you can’t even imagine. We would write and write until we finally did our first open mic at the Sun Mountain Cafe in the West Village. Through that we started getting gigs and from then on we played all the time.
We were always called Black Flamingo. We played at Spiral and CBGBs a lot ... there was a place called Street Level, Downtown Beirut — all the local little places. It was fun, but eventually Paul left. He had wanted to add musicians to the mix because he wasn’t the best guitar player. We could write songs and we worked well together but once we got musicians to play with us, what would happen is instead of Paul’s mistakes being hidden they would be louder. The musicians would count and act like musicians and we were two little freak artists that had no training whatsoever. You bring people that know how to play into the mix and he used to get really upset.
Around then I began to hate being a singer/songwriter that didn’t play an instrument. So I learned to play a few songs on the guitar and I got cocky very quickly. Once I started playing I wasn’t codependent. And then I got a job playing sing-a-long in nursery school, so I was paid to practice. That’s why I feel like I’m a permanent kindergarden guitar player, which is my style anyway. I’m a simple writer. I have a punk rock heart but I tell too much information and I never realized until I started playing for kids how inappropriate every song I write is for kids.
I was Black Flamingo for so many transitions and then I got an email that somebody wanted to buy theblackflamingo.com. It was a store in Laguna Beach that did the clothing for the television show Laguna Beach and the Hills. So we became RewBee because my partner in music at the time was named Bee.
Bee was working doing computer stuff at this place on the Upper West Side called AriZZmARadio and they were starting to do these indie web shows, and he wanted to do one, but they said he needed a girl co-host. So we started this web show called RewBee’s world with mostly indie artists and musicians. But within six months our band fell apart and it was really ugly.
The show was every Wednesday and Bee quit on a Tuesday night. Overnight it turned into ReW & WhO. I decided I would have a guest co-host every show — it’s who’s going to be the WhO? Then I moved the show to Otto’s Shrunken Head, which was like my second home. We survive on donations now and we’re so lucky. We don’t expect it but that’s how we survive. Our show is all about rising stars and living legends and people of passion. We don’t exclude anything that’s passionate about something that they truly believe in. We’ve had politicians and the WhO’s are now booked far in advance. We’re also working with an organization called Guitars Not Guns, who give kids a guitar and lessons. Our show is totally guerrilla, it’s totally underground, we have no experience at all, and we keep it going.
I love the East Village and I’ve seen it go through many transformations. I used to live on Mulberry Street when it wasn’t Nolita. It was still Little Italy. John Gotti used to walk around the block and you could smell his cologne. He would take his walks around the block with his friends.
I worked at a shelter for moms and kids doing arts and crafts once a week on 3rd Street between C and D. You couldn’t even get a cab that would take you there. We had to call a car service. There were so many stray dogs and vacant lots. The only time you would walk there was at like 5 or 6 in the morning from the after hours clubs and the only people around were drug addicts and stray dogs with foam at the mouth.
But all I ever wanted was to have little city kids to grow up here, and thank the lord I have two. They grew up in the East Village and I live vicariously through them. They’ve found out that the city is a playground in the after hours. I forget that things like that still go on. They’re in the heat of it all. Fortunately they tell me a lot.
The Center for an Urban Future [has] published the sixth edition of its annual “State of the Chains” study ranking the national retailers with the most store locations in New York City. The study shows that the expansion of chain stores across the city slowed considerably over the past year, even as Dunkin Donuts recently became the first national retailer with more than 500 stores across the five boroughs.
The report reveals that there was only a 0.5 percent increase in the number of national retail locations in New York City between 2012 and 2013, the smallest year-over-year increase since we began compiling data on the city’s national retailers in 2008—and down from a 2.4 percent gain between 2011 and 2012. Two boroughs — Manhattan and Queens — actually experienced a decline in the number of chain stores between 2012 and 2013. Overall, the 302 national retailers that were listed on last year’s ranking expanded their footprint in New York City from a total of 7,190 stores in 2012 to 7,226 stores in 2013, a 0.5 percent increase. This marks the sixth straight year there has been a net increase in the number of national chain stores in the five boroughs.
For the sixth consecutive year, Dunkin Donuts tops our list as the largest national retailer in New York City, with a total of 515 stores. Over the past year, Dunkin Donuts had a net increase of 39 stores in the city (an 8 percent gain). Subway is still the second largest national retailer in the city, with 467 locations across the five boroughs. It had a net gain of 28 stores since last year (a 6 percent increase). Rounding out the top ten national retailers in New York are: Duane Reade/Walgreens (with 318 stores), Starbucks (283), MetroPCS (261), McDonalds (240), Baskin Robbins (202), Rite Aid (190), T-Mobile (161) and GNC (138).
There are now 15 retailers with more than 100 stores across the city, up from 14 last year. Over the past year, 7-Eleven became the latest retailer with at least 100 locations in New York; it expanded from 97 stores in 2012 to 124 today.
Starbucks has more stores in Manhattan than any other national retailer, with 212 locations. In each of the other boroughs, Dunkin Donuts tops the list — it has 154 stores in Queens, 123 in Brooklyn, 72 in the Bronx and 32 on Staten Island.
Among the retailers with the largest numerical growth over the past year:
• Dunkin Donuts: 515 locations, up from 476 in 2012
• Subway: 467 locations, up from 439 in 2012
• 7-Eleven: 124 locations, up from 97 in 2012
• Starbucks: 283 locations, up from 272 in 2012
“I am almost as old as McSorley’s,” says Istvan Banyai, the artist behind this week’s cover. “It’s a quintessential New York landmark that still has a character,” he continues. … "I loved to go to McSorley’s when I lived in New York, before I moved to the woods in Connecticut. It has a lovely atmosphere, and it’s a good place to talk to strangers … and forget the Internet.
There was a time when you could knock on any of a dozen doors in the East Village and walk into a sex, marijuana and LSD orgy.
Many of the relationships are interracial, with the usual coupling being a white girl and Negro man. At places such as The Dom, the Annex, the Old Reliable and PeeWee's Other Side interracial pickups and dating don't even raise an eyebrow.
A Negro writer who lives in the area described one East Village saloon as the "meat market" because because so many chicks from outside the area flock to it, as he said, "to prove how unprejudiced they are."
The artists, writers and hangers-on who take drugs lean toward marijuana and LSD. The slum-dwellers — those who live in the East Village because they have no choice — take heroin or cocaine if they take anything at all.
The "heavy" drugs bring the usual problems of muggings and burglaries, committed by addicts with expensive habits to feed.
Strangely, the great majority of East Villagers are not from the underprivileged classes, trying to fight their ways to the top. Most of them come from middle class families or higher.
A local bank manager told Father Allen [of St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery] that many of the beatnik types are supported by their parents, drawing weekly allowances of up to $100.
Most of these are not artists or writers. Ishmael Reed, whose novel 'The Freelance Pallbearers' is scheduled to be published by Doubleday in the fall, calls them 'A-trainers,' those who ride the subway downtown "to take their lessons in hip," then go back to where they came from.
Not everyone is scornful of the newcomers. Father Allen feels that "terrible tensions are being built up in the community."
He sees a "tendency to develop a 'we-they' attitude — 'we' when we think of ourselves, 'they' when we think of others."
It's a fascinating read, this 1967 Daily News "special feature" story about our neighborhood. Beyond the shrill headline "Love and Let Love" is a good snapshot of the social revolution that took place here.
The last paragraph with naming this new culture "a kind of accidental laboratory" does call it right.
The East Village/Lower East Side by the early 60s was a largely poor and forgotten Eastern European neighborhood. But then because of its cheap rents and old-world immigrant charm came to be an attraction for counter-culture young. Mostly for young white people that sought to counter mainstream America which they felt disenfranchised by.
Out of that intermingling of old and new world cultures an unifying vision sprung of transcending cultural differences. Many, like me, came here because of wanting to be in the front row and watch up close this love revolution unfold a new way of life.
But then soon this spectacle of life drew many of us in to participate in this "accidental laboratory." In time I learned that our neighborhood had already for two centuries been a spawning ground for human social and political progress.
Last line says it well and still good today: "If we can work out our differences here, maybe there's a chance someplace else."
We invite you to an Auction of Signed and Annotated First Editions to Benefit St. Mark's Bookshop
ONLINE AUCTION
Tuesday December 3 - Sunday December 15
LIVE EVENT
Thursday December 5 6-8 PM
$5 at the door
We are conducting an auction of over 50 rare signed and annotated first editions and ephemera from some of NYC’s best known writers. The auction will benefit St. Mark’s Bookshop, and help fund its upcoming move. Included are works from Yoko Ono, Anne Carson, Junot Diaz, John Ashbery, Patti Smith, Art Spiegelman, Walter Abish, Paul Auster, Bill Berkson, Charles Bernstein, Lydia Davis, Kenneth Goldsmith/Joan La Barbara, Richard Hell, Major Jackson, Wayne Koestenbaum, Phillip Lopate, Eileen Myles, Arthur Nersesian, E. Annie Proulx, Sam Shepard, Peter Straub, Lynne Tillman, Anne Waldman and Tsipi Keller.
Bidding begins December 3 online here
On Thursday Dec. 5, you are invited to come to the bookstore, where all the works will be on display for bidding and there will be a Live auction of selected works. If you can’t be present for the live event, you can leave an absentee bid online.
Join us and share wine and light refreshments.
“I would rather go to St. Mark’s Market,” said Mike Romano, 26, a retail purchaser who lives in the East Village. “It’s always the tourists who go to the 7-Eleven. They don’t know you can go to the corner deli Gem Spa and buy everything.”
[Click to enlarge]
In the first photo (above) — from 1st Avenue and East 4th Street — Arcturus and Spica are hanging high, and in the second — outside the playground — there is a big swath of empty sky between Spica and the planet Mercury, just where Comet ISON was plunging toward its rendezvous with the Sun.
How something only a mile or so in diameter was supposed to be visible, and also supposed to survive a close brush with our star, I could never explain. And ISON has confounded the scientific world with its complex and unpredictable demise.
It disappeared on Thanksgiving Day, and then reappeared that evening, and now is said to be fading out. It did not "go gentle into that good night," but kept flaring up, its fatal burns a surprising display, just not one that we could get into position to share in the neighborhood.