Sunday, March 23, 2008
Prefab Sprout -- Hey Manhattan!
Music video from 1988. Prefab Sprout, a Brit pop band from the 1980s...and I never told anyone that I actually liked them. But what a sunny little song, so gosh-darn happy about being in the city.
East 10th Street just off Second Avenue, 7:50 a.m., March 23
Too many bank branches? Too many Sarah Marshall movie ads? Too many small businesses like Fontana Shoes closing?
Friday, March 21, 2008
Sophie's will be big in London
From the UK Guardian:
New York magazine recently handed out its annual gongs for all that is good in the city - from burgers to dive bars. Former Gawker restaurant critic Joshua Stein offers his alternative awards
They say: Mars Bar (25 E 1st St, +212-473-9842).
We say: Sophie's (507 E 5th St, + 212-228-5680). I mean a dive bar is a dive bar is a dive bar. The appeal is the same: cheap booze, no pretension, hopefully a toilet seat with a lid. Sophie's has all three plus, it has picaresque East Village characters who seem to have walked out of the pages of Henry Roth's Call It Sleep; a truly wonderful jukebox (everything from The Pogues to Gang of Four); and a wickedly competitive pool table.
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
An open house on East 12th Street
Many of the larger apartments come with a small balcony that overlooks the back of the buildings on East 13th Street. I can only imagine the joy the folks on 13th Street will experience while watching you sit on a tiny balcony in an apartment that costs nearly $5,000.
There's also a lovely rooftop deck with panoramic views of the city. [Updated 3/20: To be fair, the rooftop deck was nice...I sounded sarcastic when I wrote "lovely" -- I often sound sarcastic even when I'm being serious!...the photo below mostly shows the adjacent building's roof...Regardless, a nice rooftop hardly makes up for the steep rents.]
The building opened on March 1...and I was told that it was nearly half full as of Sunday. For my money, I'd prefer to live in the building right next door....this is more my style.
Sunday, March 16, 2008
East 7th Street, 4:50 p.m., March 16
Live like Jimi Hendrix (but maybe without all the mysterious death part)
Accidents waiting to happen?
Got a chill today when I saw the crane (pictured) stretched across Third Avenue like that.
Thursday, March 13, 2008
The way we were
The current Time Out New York has a Lower East Side map circa 1882 that spans Houston to Broome Streets between Norfolk Street and the Bowery. In total, there are 61 liquor bars and 242 lager saloons in that area. A lot, sure, but did they have to worry about annoying I-bankers?
[Map image from Time Out New York via Gawker]
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Breaking: New York Post finds that bars in the East Village and LES can be kind of loud
It has been a whirlwind few days of investigative reporting for the New York Post. Sunday, in an EXCLUSIVE, the paper told of a "shady Atlanta businesswoman armed with a gallon jug of silicone and syringes . . . offering to inject women seeking 'J.Lo butts.' " Yesterday, they turned to another blight of our city: Noise pollution, in particular the racket made by the many bars and clubs in the East Village and Lower East Side. (How much better would our city be without noisy bars and women with J. Lo butts?)
The paper reported, "between July 1, 2007, and Jan. 31, 2008, Community Board 3 -- which covers the two youth-dominated neighborhoods, as well as Chinatown -- recorded 1,872 complaints about the pounding din coming from nightspots. That represented 26 percent of the 7,157 complaints for bars, clubs and restaurants in Manhattan."
"Pounding din?" Nice.
Well, this isn't really any surprise for people who have lived here for more than, say, a week. Yes, it must really suck to live above a bar or club (or even near one), especially since the smoking ban forced people to congregate outside. And since so many seemingly hideous night spots opened. (Won't get into any names here. Let's just say there are a few on Avenue B around 4th Street that attract a heinous mix of jackals. Do you see me throwing up or peeing in the parking lots of your malls in Paramus?)
Oh. Well, back to the Post article. The article was accompanied by a photo of Manitoba's on Avenue B, a bar that I happen to really like (earlier in the evenings, anyway -- I just don't like crowds of any sort). The caption reads: "The sidewalk outside Manitoba's bar, in the East Village, exceeded the danger level of 80 decibels, on a recent night of rowdiness." As you can see from the above photo, there are roughly six people in the bar at the moment (usually when I'm there). Obviously the photo was taken at a different time. (There are even two different photo credits.) Manitoba's isn't even mentioned in the article. What annoys me is that there are dozens of places in the neighborhood worthy of being singled out.
Curious what Handsome Dick Manitoba's reaction was when he saw the piece. The bar does have a history of noise problems, particularly back when they were doing live music on Monday nights. (Blame one prudish couple who bought a place above the bar for this -- not that I'm taking sides!) Still, Manitoba's stopped the music nights. Manitoba seems like a real decent guy and good neighbor. He lives around the corner. I like what he does with the bar.
Finally, on a related note, I do sympathize with folks who are stuck near or above noisy spots -- at least the places in which the residents were there first, and a bar/club opened later. Not quite as sympathetic to people who chose to live above a bar. For instance! A former college roommate moved to New York years back, settling in a nice apartment above the Grassroots Tavern, another bar I like very much, on St. Mark's. She didn't last there too long. Why? "It's too loud." What did she expect? "I didn't think it would be this bad."
Sunday, March 9, 2008
The song in my head
Now, given all the condos and fancy shops and clueless young people with too much money, it seems more like this from the band Whiny Dork Who Could Never Date the Model in the Video. (Actually, that may not be the name of the band. Whatever.)
We don't know what to say about this
An aside: Because all the models I know drink Guinness.
Paying attention to the little things
This plaque is on a building on East Ninth Street between Avenue A and First Avenue. I'm always happy that such tributes survive through the years. Can easily see some new builinding owner or creepy super be like, "Who in the &*&^%$ is Astor Piazzolla...?" and take it down.
By the way, I wasn't familiar with him either until I first saw this plaque some years back.