EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

[East Seventh Street. Photo by Bobby Williams]

If you happen to be in Echo Park: Dee Dee Ramone will have a posthumous gallery exhibit of his artwork via Shepard Fairey (The Los Angeles Times)

Long live El Faro (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

NYPD says suspect in fatal stabbing near Union Square left for Mexico (The New York Times)

Macaron Parlour opens tomorrow on St. Mark's Place (BoweryBoogie)

Brooklyn Flea's Smorgasburg popping up shop at the Whole Foods Bowery (Gothamist)

Cafe Katja reopens tonight on Orchard Street (The Lo-Down)

And at The Awl today, Choire Sicha weighs in on the new East Village/Lower East Side Historic District in a post titled "The Permanent East Village: A Fascist Swamp of Crappy Buildings Now Historic."

An excerpt!

The district stretches down Second Avenue, which is now referred to as "Little Dartmouth Gangsta's Paradise," due to the habits of the khaki-clad worthies who clog its congested sidewalks of an evening, alternately issuing mating shrieks and vomit.

Finally, please put your stickers somewhere else besides Joe Strummer's sunglasses...

[This morning]

Your Shepard Fairey/Cooper Square Hotel daily update!

The Joey Ramone street sign returns to Joey Ramone Place

[Photo from this morning]

After nearly a month-long absence, the city returned the Joey Ramone Place street sign yesterday afternoon (H/T Jessie Malin!) to the northeast corner of the Bowery and Second Street. (This block of Second Street is co-named for the frontman of the Ramones.)

It appeared that the light pole on this corner was under repairs. (Plus, the street sign looked as if it had been bashed a few times.)

The sign first went up in November 2003. The sign remains pretty high up there ...


[Photo from this morning]

This placement happened several years ago after the sign was previously stolen a half-dozen times. So workers raised the sign to 20 feet. Standard street signs are between 12 and 14 feet off the ground, per the Post.



Meanwhile, the two-year-old Joey Ramone-CBGB 40th anniversary mural a block away at Bleecker and the Bowery has been painted over in place of a Debbie Harry-Blondie mural by Shepard Fairey. Will post on that a little later.

Here's a look at the final RBG mural on 1st Avenue and 11th Street

After nearly two weeks of work, @ellestreetart has finished the RBG mural on the southwest corner of First Avenue and 11th Street (first reported here).

Vinny & O shared the top photo... and Elle posed for a few photos afterwards (thanks Lola Saénz for these photos) ... 

The artist wrote a statement on Instagram explaining all the elements of the mural of the late associate justice of the Supreme Court. 

Earlier this month, workers removed Shepard Fairey's "Rise Above" mural that had been on this space for the past four years.

Bedbug artist strikes again with a tribute to bedbug-riddled stores

A mysterious e-mail just arrived with another bedbugs creation by Samuel Mark... On St. Mark's Place near Second Avenue last evening... And the e-mailer confirmed his identity as the elusive street artist Samuel Mark, who previously left a bedbug-ridden couch for Shepard Fairey.

Now with some video...




Previously on EV Grieve:
Bedbugs inspire local artists

The former Schnitz space is for rent

Shepard Fairey is wrapping up work on his mural on East 11th Street at First Avenue... above the space that housed Schnitz.

Several people said that they weren't aware that the sandwich specialists had closed.

We noted on Sept. 2 that the quick-serve restaurant hadn't been open in several weeks ... and that the storefront was listed for rent online.

The retail space for lease sign has been up for maybe two weeks now. According to the listing (PDF) at RKF, the asking rent is roughly $9,100 a month.

No one from Schnitz has responded about the closure via social media yet.

Schnitz, which served old-fashioned schnitzel sandwiches with unconventional toppings, opened here in March 2014. This was the first permanent retail space for Schnitz after gaining a following at Smorgasburg in Williamsburg and Dumbo.

Shepard Fairey's mural tagged and cleaned and tagged again ... again

I can't even keep track of this anymore... the tags are cleaned off, only to return bigger and better...

Read the previous Shep coverage here.

Week in Grieview

Posts this past week included (with a reader-submitted photo from the Ninth Street Community Garden & Park) ...

• Here's the new, larger residential building planned for 280 E. Houston St. (Monday) 

• The 'Daze' of our lives: Adam Zhu's new photo book chronicles today's downtown youth culture (Wednesday) 

• Renovations underway at the former Whitehouse Hotel on the Bowery (Tuesday) 

• At the Tompkins Square Park holiday tree lighting (Monday) ... Seeing the Tompkins Square Park holiday tree in a whole new light (Saturday) 

• The Gallery Watch Q&A: Harvey L. Silver's 'Changin' Times' (Friday) 

• Bad Brains on the Bowery with Shepard Fairey and Glen E. Friedman (Thursday) 

• The New Museum is collecting coats for the Bowery Mission (Tuesday) 

• Cautionary tales: A song inspired by an East Village move (Friday) 

• On the CB3-SLA docket: The Commodore aims for Avenue C; an all-day Italian cafe for 12th Street (Monday) 

• The Zero Irving food hall is now OPEN (Thursday) 

• Memphis Seoul announces itself on 1st Avenue (Wednesday)

• Before Dallas BBQ (Tuesday ... Wednesday ... Thursday) 

• Crab Du Jour sleeps with the fishes on 1st Avenue (Wednesday)

• Gen Korean BBQ House drops the plywood for a full reveal on 14th Street and 3rd Avenue (Thursday) 

• Pizza for the former Subway (sandwich shop) on Avenue B (Thursday)

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You may 'Exit Through The Gift Shop' tonight for free in Tompkins Square Park

The Films in Tompkins series continues tonight with "Exit Through the Gift Shop."

Per Wikipedia:

Exit Through the Gift Shop: A Banksy Film is a film by graffiti artist Banksy that tells the story of Thierry Guetta, a French immigrant in Los Angeles, and his obsession with street art. The film charts Guetta's constant documenting of his every waking moment on film, from a chance encounter with his cousin, the artist Invader, to his introduction to a host of street artists with a focus on Shepard Fairey and Banksy, whose anonymity is preserved by obscuring his face and altering his voice, to Guetta's eventual fame as a street artist himself.

Meant to see this film... never got around to it.

And as we'll cut-n-paste all summer long like the Beach Boys:

Free. Gates Open at 6 p.m. Music Starts ½ Hour before the Start of the Film (sundown)

July 5 — Exit Trough The Gift Shop, Music by Church of Betty

July 12 — Fantastic Mr. Fox, Music by Dandy Wellington And His Band

July 19 — Summer of Sam, Music by The Debonairs and Brendan O’Hara

July 26 — Goldfinger, Music by The Luddites

Aug. 2 — Donnie Darko, Music by The Rad Trads
A Two Boots 25th Anniversary Event with Free Pizza!

Aug. 9 — The Big Lebowski, Music by Main Squeeze Orchestra
A Two Boots 25th Anniversary Event with Free Pizza!

Aug. 16 — Poltergeist, Music by Timbila

Dates subject to Rain Delays.

Films In Tompkins is sponsored by Ella, The Blind Barber, Two Boots, Grolsch, GalleryBar, Tower Brokerage and NYC& Company.

NYPD raises Shepard Fairey threat level to 'high'

Heh. No! Just the NYPD protecting the Houston corridor for the Obama motorcade this evening...



Many thanks to EV Grieve reader Anna for the photos...

Thankfully the Penistrator didn't deface Shep's work for the President to see...

Behind the first book featuring the work of artist Steve Keene

Steve Keene, the prolific Greenpoint-based painter whose work on album covers for Pavement and the Silver Jews is likely well-known to indie-rock enthusiasts, is the subject of a new coffee-table book now in the Kickstarter phase.

East Village resident Daniel Efram,  a longtime Keene collaborator, is producing the art book.

"In my nearly three decades of working on various projects with Steve Keene, my home and many of my favorite SK moments came at 1990s indie rock shows at Brownies or the Lakeside Lounge in the East Village," Efram said in an email. 

Eric Ambel, the former owner of the Lakeside Lounge (RIP April 2012) on Avenue B, recalled how Keene helped give the bar-music venue its identity.

"I was in the process of opening ... with partner Jim Marshall (aka WFMU DJ The Hound). We had a name, the Lakeside Lounge, but we didn't have a concept for the decor," Ambel said. "I suggested we get Steve Keene to do a bunch of paintings for us that had a sort of 'lodge/lake vibe' to them. Steve was way into the idea, and after checking out the colors we had used in the bar, he created an amazing set of images for us. During our 16 years in business at the Lakeside, he would make three completely new sets of art for the bar."

According to Efram, "The Steve Keene Art Book: Live from Subliminal Projects LA, CA" is the first art book attempting to tell the story of Keene's career by showcasing the complete work from his 2016 show at Shepard Fairey's Subliminal Projects gallery. 

You can find more info on the Kickstarter page.

Photo by Daniel Efram

Parting shots for Shepard Fairey on the Deitch Wall

Last night, while Twist and crew were working on the new mural on Houston and the Bowery... several images appeared on the wall.... like the one above... Via the Flickr page of *niCOle* ... you'll find some other messages from last night there... (Thanks to EV Grieve reader T.E.V.B. for the link...)

A new addition next to the Shepard Fairey mural

Your Shepard Fairey/Cooper Square Hotel daily update!

A final look at the Beastie Boys mural on 14th Street and Avenue A

Photo by Jon Furlong 

Here's a last look at the completed 8-story mural of the Beastie Boys on 14th Street at Avenue A.

As previously noted, Shepard Fairey, in collaboration with the Lisa Project NYC, created this stories-high work from a photo by East Village-based photographer Glen E. Friedman. 

The mural is part of the ongoing celebration of 50 years of hip-hop.

Historic bombing on the Shepard Fairey mural

Epic.







Jeremiah has the history of the wall here ... he also posted the first reports of the mural being defaced back in April...

Logan Hicks mural tagged again

The stenciled painting titled "Story of My Life" by Logan Hicks has been on the Houston/Bowery Mural Wall for less than two weeks... and the work has now been tagged twice in the last few days...

Goldman Properties, who owns the space, has been quick to clean up the tags... Will be interesting to see if this escalates to the level of Shepard Fairey hating in 2010.

'Ramones and the Birth of Punk' coming to the Queens Museum in April

[Image via]

In case you didn't see this yesterday. As The New York Times first reported:

On April 10 the Queens Museum will present “Hey! Ho! Let’s Go: Ramones and the Birth of Punk,” a retrospective exhibition that will examine the group’s influence on both music and art, as part of a spate of spring programming under the museum’s new director, Laura Raicovich, that focuses on Queens as a Petri dish of global culture.

The Ramones show, organized with the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles, where a second part of the exhibition will open on Sept. 16, will include more than 350 objects, from the band’s archives and those of Arturo Vega, who designed the band’s logo; from artists like Shepard Fairey and Yoshitomo Nara; and from Mad magazine and Punk magazine, to demonstrate, as the museum says, how the Ramones “served as both subject and inspiration for many visual artists, resulting in a large body of works.”

Here's the Museum's official news release on the exhibit.

And via "Too Tough to Die" from 1984 ...

Images, 2010

A sampling, in no particular order...

• Too many fires, such as this one on 14th Street and Avenue A (photo by EV Grieve reader Sergey)

• RIP Michael Shenker

• Shepard Fairey



• A BP protest



• Sammy



• The year of the bedbug(s)



• A murder outside Sin Sin



• Smurfs, now and forever



• Saving Ray's



• Random street shot, Second Avenue



• Finding EV Lazarus



• World Cup fever



• The end of the Mars Bar?



• Random street shot, Third Avenue



• Loving and hating the new bike lanes



• Exit the Telephone Bar, enter the 13th Step



• Markey Hayden Bena, 1956-2010 (Photo by Bob Arihood)



• Just another Saturday night in the East Village



• A crash and chaos outside The Bean (Photo by Vautrin)



• A murder on Seventh Street



• Art Around the Park



• EVLambo, now and forever — Keep rollin' rollin' rollin' rollin' (Photo by EV Grieve reader Joe)