Spring for a day

Tompkins Square Park this afternoon… photo by Bobby Williams…

Reminders (Or, A Reminder)

My neighbors will have 1 less hour to yell Wooooooooooooo! tonight. pic.twitter.com/p9MpaeG64p

— evgrieve (@evgrieve) March 8, 2014

Clocks forward at 2 a.m.!

[H/T Stack of New York Times at Associated]

Up in smoke

Second Avenue and East 13th Street … photo by Grant Shaffer. (Steam courtesy of Con Ed.)

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

[The old Mars Bar space via Goggla]

How hipsters ruined the Bowery (Gizmodo)

At the William Barnacle Tavern on St. Mark's Place: "It feels both experimental and trapped in time" (The New Yorker)

The Mexican First Lady and a Jewish Anarcho-Feminist Walk Into An East Village Tenement… (Off the Grid)

Local chef's favorite EV food spots include Sunny & Annie's, Ray's Candy Store and Zaragoza (Serious Eats)

More about the hawks nesting at the Christodora House (DNAinfo)

Work by members of Murphy's Law now on display at the Art on A Gallery (NY1)

The East Village of "200 Cigarettes" (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

24 people applied to be on Community Board 3 (The Lo-Down)

Citi Bike may raise its rates (Gothamist)

Want to take a Tom Waits-themed vacation? (Dangerous Minds)

… and important tweets from the morning…

While standing in front of Gem Spa, a man passed by & said Zoltar was a liar! Slander!

— evgrieve (@evgrieve) March 8, 2014

… also, it's really nice outside.

A new design for Citi Bikes?

EVG reader Mark Smith spotted this today at the Citi Bike docking station on East Fifth Street at Avenue C … a new spring-look for the bikes? A rogue Citi Bike artist? What is going on…?

The Citi Bike blog has the answer:

For the first time, a handful of Citi Bikes will shed their iconic blue for a springtime hue. In celebration of Armory Arts Week, ten Citi Bikes will don artwork created by The Armory Show‘s 2014 commissioned artist, Xu Zhen. While eight of the special bikes circulate in the Citi Bike system, two will be on display at The Armory Show, at Pier 94, through Sunday, March 9.

The 'Show' must go on

Here's Built to Spill at Irving Plaza with "Stop the Show" from 1999. The band will be at the Bowery Ballroom on May 21. Tix went on sale today at noon.

A view of the East Village (and more) from atop the World Trade Center in 1978

Earlier this morning, we posted the photo (via Time magazine) of the neighborhood from atop of the One World Trade Center ...



East Village resident Felton Davis just shared this ... a scan from one of several hundred Kodachome slides from the World Trade Center Observation Deck from the 1970s (this particular shot is circa 1978)... showing the neighborhood (and more) from a similar angle...



Also, as a bonus, here's a photo at sunset showing the shadow of the Twin Towers extending all the way across the East River and into Williamsburg...

Report: Building housing TD Bank and SVA dorms on 3rd Ave. and E. 10th St. hits the market

The 5-story building that houses a TD bank on Third Avenue and East 10th Street is for sale for $28 million, The Real Deal reports this morning.

The building "has 28 one-and-two bedroom apartments and will be delivered vacant." (Actually, isn't this a dorm for SVA students?)

Also, there are "an additional 7,802 square feet of as-of-right air rights," per The Real Deal. Perhaps NYU will take another crack at this property? The school originally wanted the site, according to The Villager.

Prior to construction of this new building, the address housed Bendiner & Schlesinger blood labs. The place was demolished in 2005... there was a plaque on the East 10th Street side commemorating Peter Stuyvesant, whose family once owned the buildings.

At Kossar's Bialys

Photos and story by EVG contributor Stacie Joy

I had my first bialy at age 17 when I moved to New York City. And I was hooked. Immediately.

Through the years, I’d had bialys from many locations, but my go-to was Kossar’s Bialys at 367 Grand Street. It’s a straight line downtown from my Avenue B apartment. There were seemingly always open and had delicious oniony bialys (as well as bagels).



I quickly developed a breakfast habit: bialy, sliced across, toasted with butter, smattering of sea salt. And a strong cup of coffee.

So when I heard that Kossar’s was being sold, like many regulars, I panicked.

When Marc Halprin (president), Evan Giniger (co-owner), and David Zablocki (director of operations) took over last September, they managed to improve the quality of the bialy without losing any of the things that made Kossar’s so famous and reliable. Bialys were fresh-baked every day, and end-of-day leftovers given to Food Bank for NYC as well as local houses of worship.


[David Zablocki]

David and Marc were kind enough to grant me a tour of the bakery (which, by the way, is available if you call ahead and request one!) and allow me to shoot some photos and pester them with bialy based questions. (Hey! Being a bialy ambassador is about bringing bialy knowledge to the people.)



Bialys are made up of only four ingredients (not including the onion or garlic findings that go in the center dent): Water, flour, yeast and salt. Skimp on the quality of any of them and the final product suffers. Bakers start at midnight mixing the ingredients, shaping, resting and proofing the dough (called kuchen). It’s a 3-hour process from start to finish, not including the eating portion. A small piece of every batch is set aside to be blessed by Rabbi Fishelis, and so the bakery can continue to receive its Parve rating.



And no, you do not have to be Jewish or Polish to enjoy a bialy. “All humans can enjoy bialys,” David says.

According to Marc, the best way to eat a bialy is to toast first, then slice. If you must. David admits to putting a pat of butter in the center of a hot bialy and just chowing down. Since Kossar’s is a bakery, not a restaurant, they cannot add a schmear but you can buy a tub of cream cheese at the shop’s fridge and do it yourself at the counter.



One hundred years ago there were bialys everywhere on the Lower East Side. It’s nice to see tradition being carried into the modern day. David told me that old-world food is his heritage and passion and that the bialy hasn’t changed much since Kossar’s started selling it in 1936. In fact, it hasn’t changed much from its Bialystok, Poland, origins.

Anyone who wants to can head down to the bakery early (really early) in the morning to watch the bialys, pletzels, and bagels being baked. The goods will last about three days if kept wrapped in plastic, or will keep if frozen.

What can YOU see?

You made have seen this feature yesterday when it was making the rounds... Time magazine has this mind-boggling (depending on when you are looking at it) photograph from the top of the One World Trade Center.

Gothamist had some info from the news release about how Time got this panoramic shot:

[T]he magazine worked with Gigapan "to build a rotating camera that could withstand the conditions atop the tower. An eight-month process of design and construction resulted in a 13- foot-long aluminum jib that would attach to the base of the spire, and serve as a rotating arm for the camera. Over five hours of shooting, the camera produced nearly 600 images that were then stitched together digitally into a single massive ­image of everything the eye can see in all directions. Users can zoom in and out of the panoramic photo to take in the entire city."

EVG friend Pinhead zoomed toward our part of the city ...



Per Pinhead: "Shades of the old Shorpy's Con Ed pic."

Indeed!

From 1913...

[Click on image to enlarge]

Speaking of views...

[Click image to enlarge]

The latest photo from EVG contributor jdx ... looking north along Avenue A... with the trees of Tompkins Square Park on the right... and with Midtown disappearing in the distance.

Sarge's Deli is back in action on Third Avenue

[Photo by Nick Solares via Eater]

Given the number of old-time NYC restaurants going down… we're pleased to see EVG favorite Sarge's Deli reopen yesterday after a devastating fire wiped them out of business in November 2012.

Per Fork in the Road:

This 50-year-old neighborhood institution has less name recognition than Katz's and Second Avenue Deli, but insiders know the pastrami here is just as moist — and the wait times are half as long.

Eater's Nick Solares paid a visit yesterday… fourth-generation owner Andrew Wengrover promised that things were the same (however maybe shinier)…

Despite the fire, they were apparently able to keep some of their Wall of Fame intact (Larry Storch!)


[Photo by Nick Solares via Eater]

The 24-hour Jewish deli opened in 1963 at 548 Third Ave. between East 36th Street and East 37th Street…


[Photo via EVG]

Hawk bait

Earlier this evening in Tompkins Square Park… headline and photo by Goggla...

[Updated] Was this a 'knockout' attack on the Bowery?

Police are looking for this suspect who sucker punched a 23-year-old man from Rockville Station on the Bowery near Stanton Street early this morning.

The victim was knocked unconscious and taken to Bellevue Hospital with a broken jaw.

There's some speculation that this was part of a Knockout Game attack.

Anyone with information is asked to call Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS (8477).

Updated 12:38 p.m.

The Daily News has a few more details on the attack (including photos of the victim) ... the victim had been at Sweet & Vicious on Spring Street and was walking to another bar around 2:30 a.m. when the punch occurred ... The Daily News described the punch as "a hellacious haymaker."