137 Avenue C getting its extra floor

We've been meaning to check in on the building-wide gut renovation underway at 137 Avenue C near East Ninth Street. Workers pretty much gutted the place, leaving, as far as we can tell, just the north wall and some joists from the old place.

Anyway, the city-approved extra floor is well on its way...



Probably eventually the address will look like the rendering via architect Ramy Isaac …



Approved DOB permits show one residential unit (condo?) on each floor… with a ground-floor retail tenant.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Renovations in store for 137 Avenue C, home to the Sunburnt Cow

The Sunburnt Cow closes for good at the end of this month

137 Avenue C, hollow on the inside

Casablanca now serving hookahs and French-Moroccan cuisine on East 3rd Street

Casablanca opened last week at 189 E. Third St. between Avenue A and Avenue B.

The restaurant-lounge with French-Moroccan cuisine replaces the rather short-lived Lumiere.

Gothamist got a sneak preview. And among their observations:

[Chef Wesley] Wobles's menu features an excellent Hummus Mezze platter as well as a very tasty wild mushroom ravioli entree with roasted garlic cloves, spinach and cognac. You'll also find a Lamb Moussaka with layered eggplant and sliced potatoes and pan seared monkfish with ginger saffron broth, among other savory items.

And!

The decor, which alludes to the classic Bogart-Bergman movie after which the establishment is named, feels a bit haphazard and scattershot, but there's something a little refreshing about a new East Village bar/restaurant that doesn't come fully loaded with an overwrought aesthetic Concept.

And in case any undercover NYU students are wondering, Casablanca's hookah menu is reportedly tobacco and nicotine free.

Casablanca is open every day for lunch noon to 4 p.m., and dinner from 5 p.m. to 4 a.m.

A Citi Bike winter update

[Photo on East 4th Street by Derek Berg]

An EVG reader shared this Citi Bike email update from yesterday... which discussed what the bike-renting/sharing/whatever! has been up to this winter...

Overhauling bikes: We’ve overhauled more than 2,800 bikes since November and are on track to overhaul our entire fleet before the start of peak riding season. This means in addition to fixing anything that’s broken, we’re also replacing cracked seats, fixing or replacing broken bells, checking and fixing brakes, fixing hubs so bikes shift more smoothly and giving the bikes a thorough cleaning to reduce further wear and tear caused when grit gets into the chain and other moving parts. We want your spring rides to be smooth and comfortable. Once our fleet is in good repair, we aim to keep it that way. Starting this spring we will also increase our collection and repair efforts to ensure that broken bikes are quickly identified, removed, repaired and promptly put back into service.

Fixing docking points: We’ve repaired over 1,500 docking points since November and are on track to start the spring with our docks in good working order. If you experience a broken docking point, we want to know about it. Report the station name and the number on the side of the dock to our Customer Service team by phone or email.

Planning for expansion: The first Citi Bike expansion stations are planned for installation this year in Long Island City, Greenpoint and more in Williamsburg and Bed-Stuy. These station locations have been selected through a community planning process lead by NYCDOT and involving the local Community Boards and local residents that took place starting before Citi Bike’s launch.

A to-go order

Christo (probably???) with dinner on East Seventh Street at Avenue B this afternoon… photo by Bobby Williams

Out and About in the East Village, Part 1

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: Sheila Rothenberg
Occupation: Production Manager at Works in Progress NYC
Location: St. Mark's Place between 1st and 2nd
Time: 6:30 pm on Thursday, Feb 5

I’m from Midwood, Brooklyn. My bank was the "Dog Day Afternoon" bank where the real bank robbery happened. So we were not on the map until then. I think I was in high school then. It was a real middle-class neighborhood — private houses, not real big, mostly Jewish and Italian and kind of suburban.

I moved to East 7th Street, between 1st and 2nd Avenues in 1978. I didn’t really know anyone in the neighborhood. I was just looking to move out, because in those days you could afford to move out when you were 21. My apartment was $185 a month and I paid half of that when I first moved here. It was great. I had a job in an office then, and in those days you had to earn your rent in one week. That was the formula back then.

There were Italians who owned the 24-hour vegetable store on the corner of 7th and 1st, and there was the 24-hour Souvlaki place on the other corner. There was one nice restaurant, Pier 9. When my parents would come to visit that’s where we would go. It was a seafood restaurant where the 13th Step is now on 2nd Avenue. Or Hisae was a place on the Bowery and those were the only acceptable places to take my parents.

I’ve worked in this neighborhood most of my life. When I first moved here I was working at an office and I wanted to be a waitress so badly. I got a job on 6th Street. One of the Indian guys opened up Hiros, a fake version of the macrobiotic restaurant The Cauldron. Macrobiotic was the way that vegan is now, but they eat fish. For $3.50, you would get a big pile of brown rice with vegetables and tempura and tahini and orange carrot sauce. It was a very popular restaurant and it was kosher. You’d see religious people in there, which was always funny to me being Jewish, never thinking of the religious Jews I grew up around eating with chopsticks in a macrobiotic restaurant in the East Village.

[Hiros] was my first waitressing job. The owner also owned a bunch of the other Indian restaurants and he was a pig. He sexually harassed one of our friends who worked there, so we all left en masse. I went to the Kiev and they didn’t have any waitressing jobs but they hired me as a cashier. I got the first waitressing job that opened up there.

I loved working at the Kiev. I met a lot of people. And then we tried to start a union because they were treating us terribly. It was bad pay and it was freezing in there. I fell one day. It was raining and they didn’t have good clean-up practices or mats and I just fell completely back. They paid for my chiropractor because they didn’t want me to report it. Then I realized all these things, because I was pretty young and idealistic and very pro-union. So we contacted, I think it was Union 1, and we signed the cards and we started to organize, and then I got fired. They closed the counter down and fired all the counter men.

I never went to cooking school but I was always a good cook. I learned from watching the guys at the B&H and then at the Kiev. My first time cooking [at a restaurant] was one night when the Kiev got busted by immigration. That was another thing that got us really mad. The owner would get people here and give them fake social security cards and then house them, since he owned the building on the corner. So like eight people would share an apartment and sleep in bunk beds. They’d sleep in shifts. He was a bastard. Then when they got busted he denied knowing them. When immigration came and took everyone I had to cook. I was waitressing and cooking.

So I sued them and I won and then I opened my own restaurant on 2nd Avenue, between 1st and 2nd. It was called Dine East. We bought it from Sam of Sam’s Luncheonette. We didn’t know at time, but the reason he made money was because he had poker games in the back. I bought all the equipment from some cokeheads who had a restaurant in Chinatown. I was there from ’83 to ’86 and that’s where I met my husband — he was teaching at La Salle across the street.

It was so much fun and so much hard work. It was like a greasy spoon. My dad was working as my dishwasher. I’m still friends with everyone who worked with us. I really had my regulars. But in ’85, ’86 the crack stuff started happening. The heroin wasn’t so bad because they would not bother you so much. They'd ask, ‘Do you sell bottled soda? Do you have a bathroom?’ They wanted the bottle cap. I’d say, ‘No, because you want to shoot up in the bathroom.’ But crackheads were crazy, so it got a little sketchy. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I had five years left on the lease when I left. It was 28 seats. I made $100, $200 a week. I didn’t know about business so well and I gave a lot of stuff away, but it was really fun. I just realized that I couldn’t really go on with the life we were planning.

Next week: Life after the restaurant business

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

Adieu Casimir

[Photo yesterday by Dave on 7th]

As we noted this past Jan. 13, Casimir closed for renovations at 103-105 Avenue B.

In the comments, several EVG readers who saw renderings for the revamped space noted that the bistro is relaunching as Pardon My French. Yesterday, workers removed the Casimir awning from the premises here between East Sixth Street and East Seventh Street.

Said one EVG commenter:

They are not making Casimir a speakeasy. There was a huge private dining room that was being under utilized right off the front of the restaurant. So it makes sense to move the bar into it, creating a really cool bar and lounge room.

The owner showed me the renderings for the renovation and it looks brilliant. The menu will keep some of the staples but also move the menu a bit more nouveau French, more smaller plate options. Although I wouldn't have changed a thing about the old Casimir, some weeknights and even weekends were a bit slow at dinner. It is a deceptively big restaurant so I applaud the attempt to bring in more of the dinner crowd and I am sure they will do it. As for the new name, hopefully they keep it off the door, ha. I am going to call it PMF. Or Pe-em-euf.

Bedford + Bowery recently spoke with Antonin Brune, a Casimir waiter who partnered with owner Mario Carta on the relaunch. Per B + B:

Casimir fans can rest assured that Brune values the old-school feel of the interior, with its decorative tin ceiling and tiled archway leading to the bar. “It’s still going to have the same look with the low light and candles,” he said. “We don’t want to kill the atmosphere of Casimir, but the restaurant needed some love.”

PMF was hoping for a Feb. 14 reopening. No word on a new opening date.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Casimir temporarily closes to move its bar

Amona Deli & Grocery leaving the Red Square strip on East Houston

Looks like the Shoppes at Red Square will have another vacancy.

An EVG reader sent us these photos of the half-off sale going on now at Amona Deli & Grocery at 250 E. Houston near Avenue B.





While there aren't any store closing signs posted, the cashier confirmed that Amona, always good for an inexpensive egg sandwich, would be shutting down by the end of the month. However, the cashier, who didn't know why they were closing, said that the owner hoped to move to a new storefront nearby.

Officially down to 1 2 Bros. on St. Mark's Place

Workers have stripped away the remaining evidence of the $1.50 2 Bros. Pizza at 36 St. Mark's Place.

The low-budget, low-taste pizzeria quietly closed at the end of January. The $1 2 Bros. a few storefronts away at No. 32 between Second Avenue and Third Avenue remains in business.

This marks the second of the three East Village 2 Bros. to close. The location on First Avenue near East 14th Street abruptly shut down last summer.

Meanwhile, this is the third business on the south side of this block to close in recent weeks … joining the Pinkberry and Hanjoo.

Previously on EV Grieve:
The $1.50 2 Bros. on St. Mark's Place has apparently closed

Sleepy's for the rest of your retail life

A Sleepy's opened back in December at 111 Third Ave. near East 14th St.

At first glance, it's really not exciting retail news. Or is it?

Uh, anyway, Bloomberg Business had a post on Sleepy's yesterday. The Long Island-based company has 32 locations in Manhattan alone … which, as Bloomberg points out, is more than than the Gap (13), Whole Foods (7) and Best Buy (6) combined.

Per Bloomberg: "That's no mean feat, considering that the average American replaces a mattress only once every 10 years."

How do they succeed? Well, you have to watch the video report for the answer… but basically Sleepy's enjoys 50 percent profit margins… with minimal risk (low inventory) and flexible location opportunities (Sleepy's doesn't need prime window-shopping real estate, and will do fine on a second-floor spot).

Of course Sleepy's isn't completely bulletproof. The location at 138 Delancey closed last August.

That storefront between Norfolk and Suffolk remains on the market….

Enjoying the classics with Lou Reed

In case you haven't heard this interview making the rounds the last day or two… PBS released another interview in its Blank on Blank series, this time with a conversation with Lou Reed from 1987… where he puts down everyone from the Doors ("What I mean by 'stupid,' I mean, like, the Doors") and the Beatles ("I never liked the Beatles … I thought they were garbage").

And who did he like?

"I liked nobody."

H/T Dangerous Minds