The ghost in you: Looking at 215 Ave. B

I continue to keep tabs on 215 Ave. B at 13th Street. I stop by and take photos every few weeks. This is how it looked Sunday afternoon.




Curbed has the details on the Copper Building, home once to the Roberto Clemente Center community clinic and, before that, a grocery store.

When I was taking these shots a month or so ago, this couple walked up behind me. The man, hipstery in his late 20s, says in my direction, "Who in the fuck would want to live there?" As if maybe I was taking photos as a potential buyer! Hey get your own blog!




No information just yet one how much one of the 17 units will cost (from studios to two bedrooms). But you will have prime views of the the Housing Authority's Campos Plaza just a few hundred feet due east...







Here's how it looked last Sept. 7.

Dumpsters of the day

Outisde Cooper Union.

Noted

On Avenue B and Second Street.

At the Ukrainian Festival

The Syzokryli Dance Ensemble performed Sunday afternoon....





Meanwhile, in the mosh pit... some old friends were apparently shoving each other and falling down. Or maybe just falling down. My view was blocked after these three shots... the fellow on the far right in the second photo wearing jeans and denim shirt got involved...as did the woman in the gray coat. No one seemed very amused by the two on the ground. The woman in gray lifted her cane in the air as if she may take a hack at Hot Dog.

Raising awareness of the East Village/Lower East Side

The East Village History Project aims to educate folks on the East Village/Lower East Side through programs, walking tours, performances, arts and historical exhibitions. Eric Ferrara is the executive director of East Village History Project. He talked to EV Grieve via e-mail about his memories of growing up on Suffolk Street, why it's difficult for him to move away from New York City and how to learn more about the neighborhood.

You're a fourth-generation New Yorker. What's your earliest memory of the EV/LES?

Well, to tell you the truth, it was kind of gritty. We're talking about the early 1970s when the city was going bankrupt. But it was a real tight neighborhood with multi-generational families who all knew each other. My family's run-down tenement building on Suffolk Street had a closet-size tire-repair shop on the first floor and a junk-strewn abandoned lot next door. It was one of those bathtub-in-the-kitchen relics -- common at the time but probably barely exist anymore with all the remodeling and development going on. The immediate area was predominantly Hispanic by this point, with some other left over Slavic and Jewish working-class families (I am half Ukrainian) and a few "hippies" sprinkled in. Underground/independent mechanics lined the blocks. Stray cats roamed freely from one generous old lady's yard to another. Kids played on the sidewalks until all hours (the most popular games were stoop-ball and stick-ball.) People were on the streets all day and night shopping, hanging out or hustling; It was all about the hustle: work, drugs, cigarettes, 8-tracks, auto-parts, whatever -- everybody had a game. There was a shadow economy in NYC that I'm not sure exists anymore.



You've lived other places, but you always came back to NYC. Why?

This I ask myself almost daily... "why!?!" I guess New York City is in my blood. It is where I feel comfortable. Like being in the company of an old friend or something. Sure, he still owes you $50 bucks, but you know your safe and you can be yourself.

Jeremiah Moss, BoweryBoogie and other writers chronicle the ongoing changes in this neighborhood and elsewhere. What's your reaction when you read that, say, another mom-and-pop shop closes in the neighborhood....?

As a historian, I understand this is the nature of the city. Manhattan was built on commerce; set up as a trading post on day one. The Dutch did not arrive and say, "Hey, this is a great place to incubate arts, culture and affordable housing..." That stuff was a byproduct of the ebb and flow of capitalism. This neighborhood in particular has undergone several extreme population changes since the early 1800s, and we are going through another one now. But on a personal level it saddens me greatly. I'll leave it at that until my lawyer is present.

When you give people tours of the EV/LES, what tends to garner the biggest reaction?

Well, the Drinking Tour never disappoints -- but contemporary images of this neighborhood in the 1970s and 80s really shock people who are not aware of the drastic changes. Rows of abandoned, burned out and boarded up buildings; entire swaths of blocks in rubble; homeless sleeping in tents; drug dealers; and so on. I don't want to disillusion people that the entire neighborhood was run-down and entirely dangerous... there were also incredible arts and activism breeding during this time period and a largely hard-working, middle-class population. But I use these particular images to drive the point home of how far we have come.

People also seem to love the gangster stories. Many criminal legends grew up and started their careers on these very streets. We dig deep into the early lives of guys like Luciano, Lansky, Siegel and Rothstein, which the History Channel always skims over. Our Five Points and Women Movers & Shakers tour are also very popular. The Five Points is the birthplace of the melting pot -- and genesis of modern day, working-class, multi-ethnic, industrial America; And some of the most influential women in American history spent time here on the Lower East Side.



What is your favorite part of the tours?

It is really great to meet people from all over the world every day. And I love when long-time locals attend and provide personal experiences. It helps me learn and make up the bigger picture. But the guests I probably appreciate the most are new residents interested in learning about the history.

For those folks not familiar with the East Village History Project,
can you give them a quick overview of what you do?

We are a nonprofit organization made up of native and veteran EV/LES/NY'ers who are active community members and historians. Our goal is to research and accurately document the great history of the Lower East Side and present it to the public through various educational programs (like the walking tours). The idea is to raise public awareness of the historic significance of the greater Lower East Side. EVHP has teamed up with several other local historians, preservationists, museums and educational institutions to provide the most authentic experiences possible. We recently opened the East Village Visitors Center in partnership with the Bowery Poetry Club at 308 Bowery. Here the public can come in at any time and interact with us directly and learn about the neighborhood.

P.S.
The East Village History Project also has a new Web site.

[Photo of Tompkins Square Park and the LES via the East Village History Project]

Now they're getting serious

Friday evening, the rameners put up plywood around the former Loves Saves the Day space on Second Avenue at Seventh Street. Perhaps to keep snoopy bloggers from seeing what's going on inside...or perhaps to curtail the warm neighborhood greetings...




And here's how it looked early Saturday morning,






P.S.
"Drag Me to Hell."

Meanwhile, the Love Saves the Day van makes an appearance

On Second Avenue near Ninth Street.

Things that got laid this past weekend: The sidewalk outside the new Cooper Union building

Meanwhile, the plywood along Seventh Street is gone. And you can get a much better look at what's what.





And I don't recall having seen this sign there...



And on the plywood that remains...

Do the tenants care if Buffalo Exchange has sprung a leak?

On 11th Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue. The leak started two weeks ago? How long has the sign been posted? Have the tenants, um, touched base with the BE people?

Something actually kind of useful opens on Ninth Street

A dry cleaner in the new Ninth Street storefront carved out of a space in the building behind Doc Hollidays ... Not sure about the "organic" part...

The NYSAT project now has an interactive map

The Wooster Collective points us to the following interactive Google map that documents all the different spots around town that were part of last month's New York Street Advertising Takeover (NYSAT) project.



Visit the Public Ad Campaign site for more.

Inside DBGB: "You’ll get kids in trucker hats and they’re never going to eat food and you’re going to turn into a bar before you know it"

The Times published one loooooooooong article on the meticulous planning that's going into Daniel Boulud's new place on the Bowery -- DBGB.

Despite the name, which nods to CBGB, the famous punk rock club a block to the north, the restaurant’s design pays tribute to the area’s history as the restaurant supply center of New York. The walls will be lined with shelves and stocked with glasses and plates as well as pots and pans donated by great chefs from around the world. The kitchen is on the other side of the shelves, giving diners a semi-obstructed view of the cooking.

And!

Mr. Lawrence has also taken the lead in choosing background music for DBGB, which he’s doing with Ear Networks, a company run out of the Hell’s Kitchen apartment-home office of Robert Drake, a sound engineer. The two have been fine-tuning the playlist for weeks, choosing from 45,000 songs in Mr. Drake’s library.

A few days after the mustard-caddy discussion, Mr. Lawrence invited a reporter along for a visit to Ear Networks, where he and Mr. Drake would designate tracks as “lunch,” “dinner” or “late night.” Generally speaking, the quiet stuff is lunch music — because nobody has been drinking — with livelier songs at dinner, and becoming more boisterous as the night wears on.

Mr. Drake clicked his mouse, and “Cowgirl in the Sand” by Neil Young blasted from the speakers.

“Late night or dinner?” Mr. Lawrence asked, shouting over the song.

“You tell me,” Mr. Drake said. “I was going to put it for dinner.”

“Yeah, it’s dinner, you’re right.”

In the end, DBGB will have a library of 4,000 songs and a sound system that can control the volume in different sections of the room.

And!

For restaurants, music is one way to influence who shows up, or at least who comes back. You can aim at a demographic group by playing music that was beloved by its members when they were about 15 years old — the age when fandom typically leaves its most vivid tattoo. By that logic, DBGB is not exactly laying a welcome mat for the just-out-of-college set. There is little in the playlist that was recorded in the last 10 years.

That is no accident.

“It’s hard to get a liquor license around here, as you may know,” Mr. Traussi says, “and one of the things I heard when I canvassed people who live here is, ‘You’ll get kids in trucker hats and they’re never going to eat food and you’re going to turn into a bar before you know it.’ I think that’s an important concern. We’re not looking for that kid, right out of school who is 22 or 23. I think music is an important way to run a food-centric restaurant rather than a bar-centric restaurant.”