![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv_-kVutTwH5juTUYxMTiYEVlKeCHConMpXtCNmECQ0MJ8oVeZWhtLPIeDElhnVrJFRHumtT6ZERq2e8KS90SYuzBosOe7_iICvbXBVU647en1V0QD8b0jSCWfdqjZDw07MHVhNHZDuOc/s400/unnamed-20.jpg)
Photo from the Tompkins Square Park dog run via Bobby Williams.
Big crowd trying to get 1954 prices at #veselka pic.twitter.com/2mRp0xU4dM
— Kimberly Winston (@kimwinston) July 23, 2014
Name: Lauren Edmond
Occupation: Artist
Location: 9th Street and Avenue A
Date: 4 pm on Tuesday, July 8
I was born in Park Slope and I grew up on Long Island. I came to the East Village when I was 25 in 1977. Cheap rent brought me here. I’ve been an artist my whole life. I have been painting since I was 13. I came here so that I could not have to pay a large rent and just do odd jobs and paint as much as I can, and I’m still doing it 37 years later.
I was an oil painter for 30 years and then I got very toxic from the paint and searched around for another medium. I started painting on my computer in the mid 1990s and I’ve been doing that ever since. It’s been about 20 years that I’ve been painting using software and a Wacom tablet. Either I go completely abstract or I do landscapes of the neighborhood.
It was a slum here in 1977. It wasn’t like this at all. It was a completely different feel. There were a lot of Polish and Ukrainian restaurants. There were bars but there were no cutesy stores. There were interesting stores, clothing — second-hand clothing. There were people who did art and made little things. There were a lot of stores like that. They came and went, even then. There was not this proliferation of bars and cafes like there is now. There were a lot more divey places. It was a different economic time.
Uptown people still made money, but the people who lived uptown wouldn’t come here. They wouldn’t want to live here. I remember one Saturday night in 1978 in the summer. We sat across from the Grassroots and we could count on one hand how many people walked by in one night. I said to myself, Remember this, because it's probably not going to be this way forever, because here is this neighborhood that lies between Midtown and Downtown. How could it not be a big deal? How could it be lost and forgotten? How long could this go on?
It wasn’t until the mid-1980s when the wealthier people started coming here. By 1980 it started to change. We started to get on the map. People were having fun. We had a blast. It was just a lot less crowded. There was a lot of romance. It was very romantic for us young artists. We had a real fantasy thing doing on here.
I remember when we put together the East Village Eye in 1979. I was on the original staff of that and it was great. I got to work with a lot of very good people. The Eye was a newspaper that was devoted to the East Village scene — music, fashion, art. We kept up with politics, but it had a lot of fashion and style and scene, because there was a lot of scene and there was a lot more live music going on, not necessarily just in this neighborhood.
By the 1990s it really had completely changed and now it just keeps getting more so. It’s good and bad. It’s good because there’s more wealth and that’s not a bad thing. People of my generation think all wealth is bad. I don’t agree with that. Wealth is fine. It’s how you use it and what your values are. It’s a tool. Wealth for wealth’s sake can get out of hand, but it’s a tool.
Now they say the old East Village is done, but if you go to another neighborhood and come back here you realize that it is a lot more laid back here than any other place ... it’s got a different style to it here. It’s still the East Village. It’s still creative and it still draws creative people, although not only creative people. You can be creative and be into money. There are a lot of ways to be creative that don’t rely on just putting it on canvas.
Wednesday from 6pm-6:54pm - rolling back the menu to 1954 prices in honor of our 60th year. http://t.co/UKgZbIUs0K
— Veselka Restaurant (@veselkanyc) July 22, 2014
Chan ... allegedly chatted up the 19-year-old victim … in Union Square on June 1 and convinced her to go back to his apartment at 121 E. 12th St., sources said.
There, the two took a shot of booze, but when the victim told Chan she wanted to leave, he forcibly threw up on top of his bed and held her down.
“It will be over in five seconds,” Chan, a Canadian resident, told her.
I'm an East Village resident looking for a very tiny kitchen space (without a storefront) in the area, something hopefully the size of where Otafuku used to be (236 E. Ninth St.). I just need to fit an oven, a refrigerator and a table for rolling out dough. I deliver pastries throughout NYC and I ship them nationally but I want to move on from using a shared space kitchen in Brooklyn.
It's kind of an odd request because of the lack of storefront.
"It is FILLED with artifacts. There are trunks filled with collections of tapes, old cameras, altar-like installations, etc. I found newspaper clippings that the tenant put in a scrapbook, in the 1960s, which were reviews of all the plays he was in. (He was an actor for some period of his life.) There was a folder with a dozen pictures of him and a girl (also looked like 1960s photos).
I also found his diary from 1967 about living in the East Village — totally written in beat style (ie. "Beatles and Brahms and cigarettes in the park and tea and whiskey and Uncle ted.").
Offering freshly-prepared foods, specialty products and catering, the two-level store will occupy 18,871 total square feet – 10,500 square feet at the ground level and the remaining space at the lower level.
A favorite of hungry cab drivers in search of good food and a spot to rest between fares, the span of East 1st in front of Punjabi between 1st and A was once lined with the parked yellow cabs of satisfied customers. Now that span is home to a battered cement median, some orange cones, and not much else.