An EV Grieve investigative report: In search of the Penistrator

In cooperation with the National Weather Service, we arranged for it to snow this past weekend. Why? We were hoping to capture the increasingly notorious Penistrator, a brazen snowffiti artist who is leaving his (or her? Nah) mark on unsuspecting cars throughout the neighborhood. We hired a profiler to help us in the case. His thoughts: "Based on scant evidence, keep on the lookout for what is likely a white male, Floridian, football fan, in his 20s who may be resentful of the fact that he doesn't have his car in the city."

And so, with the snowfall Saturday night, we began the quest. On first watch we saw a suspicious-looking figure lurking near the site of the original snowffiti on Seventh Street near Avenue B...



Having been spotted, he beat a retreat. The cars were left unmolested. But for how long?






Until Sunday night ... when we arranged for another 1-2 inches of snow to fall on the area. Given our profiler's belief that the Penistrator is a football fan, we also arranged for two high-profile NFL games to be played Sunday.

This combination of snow, football and, possibly, large amounts of alcohol, was all the Penistrator needed... as you can see from this wide path of penistruction on 13th Street that stretches from Third Avenue all the way to Avenue B.






Another clue: An Eagles fan?




And is he adding a new body part to his repertoire?



With the Super Bowl and more snow on the horizon...there's every reason to think this will continue...

The tiki Gods aren't smiling: Waikiki Wally's washed up?

As you know, it has been reported that Lucky Cheng's will be moving from its First Avenue digs to Times Square one of these days...Wasn't sure what was going to happen to Hayne Suthon's other place, Waikiki Wally's... just around the corner on Second Street -- the quirky place where people have gotten their Don Ho (RIP) on since September 2002...From the looks of it, Wally won't be making the move. It's closed. According to a message on The New York City Ukulele Meetup Group site (by the way, I'm not a member), there was a goodbye party for Wally's on Jan. 3. "It will change themes and is being converted from tiki to minimalistic Marfa !! Come take a commemorative piece of Wally's thatch or bamboo ... "



So, with this closure and the loss in recent days of Love Saves the Day and Old Devil Moon, can we assume that kitsch is out...?

Paradiso on Avenue B

Paradiso, an Italian cafe that serves homemade sweets (like Tiramisu) and sandwiches, opened last week at 105 Avenue B near East Seventh Street. (The former spot of Bang On, the hipsterized T-shirt shop.) I stopped by Paradiso to check out their coffee. It's nice and strong. The proprietor and her husband are about as friendly as you can get. And she gave me a free cookie. I'm easy.

Meanwhile, three blocks to the south...another coffee shop looks close to being open

The signage is up for Coyi Cafe...Between Third Street and Fourth Street on Avenue B. (Previously)

Catching up on some Obama graffiti on Inauguration Day

On East Seventh Street near Avenue C.

Confirmed: The Chocolate Bar is gone

Just following up on my post from Friday: The sign has been removed and the interior has been cleared out at the Chocolate Bar, which called East Seventh Street home for nearly seven months.



I'm told they're going to look for another location in the West Village. Any lessons from this? Hmm, maybe candy shops and funeral parlors don't make for good neighbors?


Meanwhile, take a trip back to last summer when the Chocolate Bar first opened. Through the lens of Bob Arihood. His shot (below) from last Sept. 16 is particularly compelling...

Gary Kurfirst, 61

According to the Times: Gary Kurfirst, who helped shape a generation’s rock music aesthetic as a manager, promoter, publisher, producer and label executive, steering seminal acts like the Talking Heads and Jane’s Addiction, died on Tuesday [Jan. 13] while vacationing in Nassau, the Bahamas. He was 61."

The cause has not been determined. The bands he managed included Blondie, the Ramones and the B-52’s.

As the Times notes:

As a young promoter moving to Manhattan from Queens in 1967, Mr. Kurfirst opened the Village Theater, which metamorphosed into the legendary hippie heaven the Fillmore East, later managed by Bill Graham.

The following year he staged the New York Rock Festival at Singer Bowl in Flushing Meadow Park, an open-air event featuring Janis Joplin and the Doors. Its success helped inspire the concert at Woodstock in 1969.

Talking Heads bassist Tina Weymouth remembered his advising her: “Never smile. People will think you’re making money.”

Here's an in memoriam site created after his death.

Noted

From a Page Six Magazine article titled "Private Clubs: Hideouts of the Rich and Shameless:"

The Core Club's membership model has all the over-the-top lavishness of a bygone Sex and the City era —- the annual dues only give you access to pay jacked-up prices on everything else. After all, lunch entrées like the club's pan-roasted Loup de mer (sea bass) cost $38. But today, many members say the thrill of belonging to a hermetically sealed bunker in Midtown is more appealing than ever.

"Every time I walk into the club for lunch, I say, 'No recession here,' " says Fred Davis, one of the founding members of the Core Club and a senior partner at the law firm Davis, Shapiro, Lewit & Hayes.

Adbusters: 11th and Third gets a new ad to keep it warm

Just last week I wondered what happened to all the ads in the neighborhood. Have no fear, ad lovers! Just a little bit ago I watched the big ad go up at Third Avenue and 11th Street for He's Just Not That Into You...



Happened by in time to see Scarlett Johansson's chest get smoothed out.

Kim's long, slow death march finally over

The back story.

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning edition

Jeremiah visits the Holiday (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

The LES as a luxury item (BoweryBoogie)

Hard times at Ray's (Neither More Nor Less)

Jen Carlson interviews EV Grieve favorite Nathan Kensinger (Gothamist)

Three ATMs have been swiped from the LES since Dec. 26 (New York Post)

The New York metropolitan area will lose 181,000 jobs this year -- more than any other region in the country (Associated Press)

Fewer New Yorkers moving out of state (New York Times)

Community comes together after "false prostitution" arrest at Blue Door Video on First Avenue (Gay City News)

Safe-smashing bandits who have been preying on eateries and bars, including a few in the East Village, have been captured (New York Post)

And on the cover of this week's New Yorker...

Met life

At the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Noted

I'm sure this was done with the best of intentions, but it strikes me as...well, just odd. Sidewalk Cafe, Avenue A and Sixth Street.

Snow on Seventh and B

East Seventh Street and Avenue B.

"It was a gray city, a weary one, an older one"

Novelist Kevin Baker has an op-ed in the Times today. It's about his arrival in NYC in the late 1970s. Here are a few excerpts from the piece titled "New York was so much older then."

It was a dirtier city then, more violent, more interesting — more accessible to poor, eager young people. We lived four and five to a railroad apartment, the bathtub in the kitchen in some places, the floors lined with clumpy chalk lines of boric acid that were our useless defense against the cockroaches.

We feasted on $4 platters of Indian food in restaurants on Sixth Street where you could bring your own wine. We went everywhere by subway, riding in gray, graffiti-covered cars where half the doors didn’t open and a single, sluggish fan shoved the air about on summer nights. We took a cab sometimes, when there were five of us and we could get a Checker, one person riding on the jump seat, staring out at the long avenues of the city.

And:

It was a gray city, a weary one, an older one. There were, in those days, pornographic theaters in good neighborhoods; Bowery-style wino bars with sawdust on the floor on Upper Broadway; prostitutes along West End Avenue slipping into cars with New Jersey license plates. It was a city, too, that seemed to open up into an infinite series of magic boxes, of novelty shops and diners, delicatessens and corner bakeries, used record stores and bookstores.

Like Barack Obama we read everything we could get our hands on. It was a movie-mad town then, and we lined up for hours in the cold on the East Side to see the latest Fassbinder or Fellini, the new Woody Allen. We nailed long, flapping schedules of all the revival houses to our walls, from the Thalia and the New Yorker, Theater 80 St. Marks and the Bleecker Street Cinemas. I saw my first Broadway show, “Equus,” for $3, and sat on stage.

[Photo of the 1970s East Village by Litter Bugged via Filthy Messes.]

Perfectly good things someone is throwing away

On East Seventh Street.

The Holiday Cocktail Lounge lives

Not sure if these signs went up yesterday or today at the Holiday on St. Mark's Place...Good news, nonetheless. If it was open last night...anyone go in for drinks? And hooray finally for some good news.

[UPDATED: Jeremiah stops by for a drink....]

For further reading:

Holiday Cocktail Lounge (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Is the Holiday over? (NYPress)

Meanwhile, don't expect to see this guy at the Holiday then

This is from a post I did last July 8. Seemed like a good time for a rerun:

We were talking about the Holiday Cocktail Lounge on St. Mark's yesterday. I later spotted this user review of the Holiday at Zagat.

Understandable...he probably wants to buy a place at the Theatre Condominiums...

Noted

MAYOR Bloomberg, after presenting his State of the City address at Brooklyn College, crossing the street to Applebee's, where his party of six had burgers and he tipped $20 on a $73 check. (Page Six)

I just hope those burgers didn't have any trans fat...

Work out like Derek Jeter -- for at least seven days

This time of year sports clubs like to make us feel fat (fatter?) and pasty (pastier?). So we'd better join! Anyway, for some reason, I keep getting e-mails from the NEW! Derek Jeter ultra sports club health place thing for a free trial membership. Tempting! But probably not. Seems like a lot of work. Couldn't I just meet him at, oh, say, Butter?

PS
Truth is, I'm holding out for Gwynnie's gym.

Freedom of Choice

For two reasons.

1) It's like 2 degrees out. So let's get warmed up by Devo from the Central Park SummerStage from August 2004. (Oh, sweet, sweet August. How I miss you...) Actually, I don't recall being all that hot this night with the torrential downpour that stopped before Devo came on....

2) "Freedom of Choice" seems right for the pre-Inauguration weekend.

On East Seventh Street: Dessert Row seems a little deserted -- Chocolate Bar has closed

Wow. East Seventh Street, particularly on the north side of the street closer to Avenue A, seemed to be booming there for a bit. No more. Well, first, Locks 'n' Lads, the kiddie hair salon, has closed. Their outgoing message on their answering machine confirms it. Meanwhile, farther east, there's activity next to Butter Lane Cupcakes. A neighbor said this vacant space may just become a ground-floor apartment. Then! The Chocolate Bar has been shuttered the last few days. And don't expect to see it open again. I have it on very good authority that this location is officially closed. (And they just opened to so much hoopla in June.) Finally, the signs for the forthcoming East Village Pie Lounge at 131 E. Seventh St. are gone. Maybe that doesn't mean anything, though the spot has seemingly been dormant. The Pie Lounge was to take over the space that previously housed the short-lived Italian cafe Affettati. What gives here? Recession? Stupidly high rents (still)? The East Village wasn't ready for/didn't want/need more high-end dessert places?

The Chocolate Bar yesterday.




Construction next to Butter Lane Cupcakes.



Locks 'N' Lads no more.



P.S.

Oddly enough, the Chocolate Bar's new Egg Cream was just featured in this week's Page Six Magazine.

Wishful thinking

On Water Street in the Financial District this morning. Only off by four hours and, maybe, 50 degrees.