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Derek Berg shares this Urban Dog Etiquette Sign from Seventh Street: "Stop putting your dog shit on our garbage cans!!!!!"
New York's rent laws are set to expire this June, giving tenants a unique a chance to push for comprehensive legislation to protect and expand rent stabilization across the state — but we won't win without a fight!
Join the Cooper Square Committee, the Metropolitan Council on Housing and University Settlement, along with a number of local elected officials to learn more about the Housing Justice for All coalition's bold policy platform and to find out how you and your neighbors can get involved in the fight to defend the rights of tenants in New York!
"When [Howl! Director] Jane Friedman approached us about helping to stage a big public funeral for this figurative and literal giant, we knew in Hattie's spirit it had to include the East Village community. We organizers were inspired by the Drag March every year from Tompkins Square during Pride weekend, and decided to add such a procession. We did part of the planning from our second home in New Orleans, so naturally the Second Line tradition was also an inspiration as were the LUNGS community garden parades in the East Village that Hattie so loved."
"We have a new restaurant tenant that will keep the open mic tradition alive," he said by email. "We love the East Village and believe in preserving what make its so special. We had a very peaceful transition from the previous landlord who also owned and managed Sidewalk. That owner has now retired from business and had no interest in staying on as our tenant."
Developers East End Capital and K Property Group just secured a $67 million construction loan from CapitalSource and $19 million of mezzanine financing from Canyon Partners to fund the roughly $90 million project at 141 E. Houston St.
The builders will now break ground on the planned nine-story, 68,000-square-foot office property, which will seek rents above $100 per square foot. The project, catering to deep-pocketed tenants in search of luxury boutique offices, is expected to be completed in about two years.
From acclaimed architect Roger Ferris, the only new development of its type on the Lower East Side, 141 East Houston is a new frame for viewing the neighborhood. Column-free and unbounded by walls, it reinterprets the area through a bold geometric perimeter of cladding and glass. State-of-the-art workspaces and private terraces reframe expectations, while a well-connected location recasts perspectives.
With its glass frame and dynamic courtyard running the length of its eastern side, doubling as a second facade, 141 East Houston challenges the distinction between indoors and out.
[T]he renovations at Irving Plaza will be overseen by Live Nation clubs and theaters division and include revamps of the lobby area and the music hall, new bars on all levels, the addition of a downstairs VIP lounge and remodeling of the mezzanine including a new box-seating section configuration.
Originally, the building was four separate brownstones, which were eventually combined into a hotel in the 1870s. In 1927, the building was gutted and turned into a ballroom-style theater and christened Irving Plaza.
Over the next few decades Irving Plaza would serve as a union meeting house, a performance space for folk dance troupes, and a Polish Army Veteran community center, as well as a venue for the Peoples Songs Hootenannies with Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie.
In 1978, Irving Plaza was converted into a rock music venue ...
Across the street from the Angels’ clubhouse a banner touting co-ops for sale flaps in the fetid breeze. A partial rehab, featuring a fresh coat of tan paint over a soot-blackened facade, has transformed a sagging old apartment building into trendy housing for the affluent young. You might think that a beer can’s throw away from the lair of a notorious band of bikers would be a less-than-desirable homesite — and you would be right. That’s why a dark, airless, 400-square-foot, one-room apartment there can be had for only $68,000 (plus $388 a month maintenance), about half the going rate in the city’s tonier precincts.
The Angels ... view the neighborhood’s sudden ascension with mixed feelings. "We’ve moved up in social class without leaving the block," jokes chapter president Brendan Manning. But his smile can’t hide that tinge of resentment common to an area’s old families when the nouveaux riches arrive. As his biker buddy Butch Garcia notes, "We always kept this block clean when it was a ghetto, a slum. Now the rich people moved in and everybody’s trying to keep it clean."
Manning, 31, who lives in an apartment above the clubhouse, as do a number of Angels and their families, anticipates no trouble with the new upscale neighbors. "If they don’t bother us, we can deal with them," he says. "As long as they don’t complain and don’t call the cops and" — his barbarically handsome face grows stern — "don’t hit our motorcycles." He vows with a resolve as ineradicable as his tattoos that, even if the clubhouse becomes an island of sweaty denim in a sea of pin-striped wool, there will always be the Angels: "We were here first. We’re not gonna change. We don’t change for nobody. If they can’t handle it, they can move."
Billing itself as "the kinky film festival," the event is presented by CineKink, an organization dedicated to the recognition and encouragement of sex-positive and kink-friendly depictions in film and television. Works featured at CineKink NYC will range from documentary to drama, comedy to experimental, mildly spicy to quite explicit — and everything in between.
The CineKink NYC festivities commence tomorrow (Wednesday) at 8 p.m. with a fundraising kick-off extravaganza to be held at M1-5 Lounge (52 Walker St.)
The festival then moves to Anthology Film Archives from Thursday through Saturday with several different film programs scheduled for each day.
The moves help officially mark the formal transition away from the MetroCard, which was first introduced in 1994. ...
Rather than swiping a MetroCard, MTA users will instead be able to use a mobile wallet like Apple Pay or tap a contactless bank card at turnstiles and on buses across the city. The new system will test payment options for all-door boarding on SBS buses, a critical measure for reducing the time it takes for customers to board and travel.
In addition to MetroCards, which won’t be completely phased out until 2023, commuters will only be able to use specific, contactless credit or debit cards or mobile wallets from Apple, Google and Samsung to pay for fares during this initial launch.
The MTA won’t unveil its new smart card until February 2021, when it will be available to purchase like any gift card at drugstores and other convenience stores. Vending machines within stations will follow in 2022.