At the Mystery Lot: Spirits in the materialistic world

Ah, Jeremiah beat me to this today... an art installation of sorts along the 13th Street side of the Mystery Lot that reads MATERIALISTIC, though a few letters appear to be missing now...

A Merry Mystery Lot Christmas

Thanks to Goggla for sharing this! A Christmas scene circa 2012 from the Mystery Lot ... the beloved site of far too many EVG posts on 13th Street between Second Avenue and Third Avenue... home since early 2014 to the Jefferson, an 82-unit condoplex.

The Jefferson is moving on up

EVG Facebook friend Nick Solares shared the above photo from yesterday showing how quickly the newly christened development called The Jefferson is rising at the former Mystery Lot off East 14th Street and Third Avenue ... (Find more of his photos here.)

Meanwhile, Nick shared these two photos from the former enclave of 18th and 19th century charm Mystery Lot...





Previously.

The end is near(er) for the Mystery Lot

We knew this day was coming... not that it makes it any easier... an unhappy East 13th Street tipster points us to the DOB website, where there are three permits pending approval (dated March 15) related to building over this beloved land of bricks, discarded holiday trees, aliens, etc.

[EVG file photo]

As the Post first reported on Jan. 19, the space will become an 82-unit, eight-story development that should break ground this summer for a late 2013 opening. "Prices are still to be determined for the project’s studio and one-, two- and three-bedroom units," according to the Post.

The work permits say that the space will include 86,409 square feet for residential and 5,275 square feet for retail. The good news about the retail: You can likely count out an iHop ... 7-Eleven... KFC... Dunkin' Donuts...Duane Reade...

BKSK is listed as the architect of record... according to the BKSK website, their residential work includes 25 Bond Street, home of $20 million apartments and, once, Will Smith, as Curbed has noted.

We leave with this aerial view of what became the Mystery Lot circa 1913... from ConEd looking at the southeast corner of 14th Street and Third Avenue...

And you can spot the former Jefferson Theatre...

(And apologies — have had this for so long we don't recall the original source... Per Mick in the comments, this is a Shorpy photo.)

The former Mystery Lot sinks ... and rises

On Friday, we got a ground-level glimpse into the former Mystery Lot... Now EVG reader Katja provides an update on the action from above...

Also! It is rising! Here's the first sign of the new development above ground, wedged in the space between 123 Third Avenue and Chickpea...

As we noted in May — there is a retail listing...

Mysteries! Who shovels the sidewalk in front of the Mystery Lot?

Also, the blanket of snow brings the graffiti to life...






Long live the Mystery Lot!

East Village native Anna Colombia on pursuing photography and growing up in the neighborhood

Anna Colombia is an interdisciplinary artist born and raised in the East Village, where she still lives. 

Her most recent publication is "Make Shift Youth," a zine featuring 24 Riso-printed images and letterpress-printed text from her days in the neighborhood's punk scene.

Here, she discusses discovering photography, growing up in the East Village and finding inspiration today.
 

What sparked your initial interest in photography in high school? 

My high school experience was horrible, so I kinda stopped going after a certain point. My mom really wanted me to graduate and to enjoy learning, so she started trying to get me to take high school art classes at SVA. One of the first ones I took was an introduction to photography. I was hooked instantly by the magic of it all and learning how to use the darkroom.

Obviously, being in high school, I didn’t really know what to photograph, so I started by taking pictures of a lot of the graffiti around the neighborhood, and then naturally my friends and the punk shows I was going to. 

Were you known in the punk community as someone who always took photos? What was your initial comfort level with photographing people? 

 I always had a camera with me, but I don’t think I was ever seen as that person always taking pictures. My style of documentation has always been somewhat on the sly, with friends saying they never really knew I had taken certain pictures because it was always so natural.

There was another girl who sometimes hung out and who was always taking photos. She was the one everyone thought of as the photographer. Her collection has got to be amazing, but it always bothered me that she didn’t respect people’s wishes not to be photographed. I have always been very comfortable photographing people, because I have always only photographed the people in my life. 

While I love catching moments of my life through those around me, I also respect when people do not want to be photographed. 

Why did you decide to revisit growing up in the East Village punk scene with "Make Shift Youth"? 

Before COVID shut everything down, I had spent about two years slowly working, scanning all my negatives from high school and the years after. I hadn't looked at my high school photos in so long, and I was surprised by what I had, especially that the majority of them highlighted all these ladies in the scene... something I personally feel you don't see a lot of (or enough of) when it comes to documentation of "alternative" scenes. 

Then, the lockdown happened, and I had a lot of time to sit and play on the computer with the images at home. I had been applying for grants to publish another, bigger collection of photographs from my travels and decided maybe I should start with this collection since it was smaller and really what started it all. 

So, I began slowly working, putting together images I wanted to use for this zine. I had just discovered Riso as a print process, and I really loved the idea that instead of just showing the original images, I could manipulate them to become abstracted and color-blocked prints, combining the two things I love: photography and printmaking.

On the opening page of the zine, you wrote the date and then scribbled it out. Why did you decide not to list the years?

I like the mystery. 

How do you balance documentation and abstraction in your visual storytelling? 

I began publishing zines in high school about being female in the punk scene, using my photographs and words to tell this story. I have been publishing zines and art books for many years now, combining stories about my life with photographs and printmaking. While I really wanted to show these photos, I didn't want to take away from them by visually adding any text or talking about them. 

As a printmaker, my work focuses on abstracting an image and allowing those who see the work to create their own narrative. When I started putting the photos I wanted to print together, I could already see how I wanted to abstract a few of them: extending aspects of the image or cutting out the parts I thought were important. I wanted the narrative to flow from page to page through composition, colors and shapes. 

You were born and raised and are still living in the East Village. Did you ever live elsewhere... or at least consider it? 

 I traveled a lot for a long time, riding trains and hitchhiking, but that's a different story and a whole other body of photo work I'm hoping to one day publish. The East Village has always been my home. 

Why have you decided to stay here? 

This neighborhood and city have changed so much, I honestly don't know anymore. 

How does your environment in the East Village continue to inspire or influence your creative process?

Growing up in the neighborhood was definitely one of the things that started me on the path of the work I make. As a kid and teenager growing up in the East Village, I experienced things a lot of people might not have. My mom is an artist too, so that also helped me see and interact with my surroundings in a unique way. 

I grew up playing in Tompkins and the 6th and B Garden, got in trouble for taking hypodermic needles to show and tell that my friend and I found in the concrete playground of P.S. 19... long before it became what it is now. I drank at Mars Bar when I shouldn't have, and got to go to shows at CBGB and Coney Island High.

All these experiences have shaped who I am today and fueled all my early work. The neighborhood has changed, gentrification and rising rents have priced out all the things I grew up with and loved. And while I do find some inspiration still walking down the streets, I find a lot of what inspires my new work comes from the time I spend traveling across the U.S. and other countries. 

I understand you have a treasure trove of photos. What else from the archives might you feature next? 

I would love to do maybe two or three more volumes or even have a show of the actual photographs. I’ve thought about doing one volume of only photos shot at punk shows...mosh pits, mohawks and a sea of hair dyed in all the colors of the rainbow. 

My real dream, however, has been to publish a photo book of the collection of images I have from after high school, traveling around and across this country for years. 

And did you ever replace your mom's Canon Rebel that you destroyed with beer while in high school? 

We had to get it fixed... she was not happy about that (it was kinda a loaner from her job). I think at the time, I also told her someone at the show spilled beer on it (not me, of course). 

My mom saw how much I loved photography and later bought me a smaller, more pocket-friendly (for my lifestyle) camera, which continues to be my favorite camera to shoot with.

You can find her Etsy shop here.

An L-Shaped footprint ready to make its impression on East Houston Street

In late November, the Mystery Lot of East Houston Street (the empty parcel on the south side of the street between Attorney and Ridge) hit the market, per The Lo-Down. The lot is going for $9.5 million.

Now, it appears more development is in the works for this stretch of Houston... The long-empty adjacent space is now for sale — at $4.6 million.

Here's the listing via Massey Knakal:

The subject property consists of 331 E Houston Street and 161 Ridge Street. 331 E Houston Street is a single story commercial building and 161 Ridge Street is a vacant parking lot. Together, the properties create an L-Shaped footprint with 25’ of frontage on E Houston Street and 20’ of frontage on Ridge Street. The lots have a combined footprint of 3,000 square feet and are located in the newly designated East Village/Lower East Side zoning district which is zoned R8A*. This zone provides an FAR of 5.4 for Residential use, 7.2 with inclusionary housing and 6.5 for Community Facility use which translate to a maximum buildable square footage of 16,200 BSF, 21,600 BSF, 19,500 BSF, respectively. Furthermore, the two lots are adjacent to two 25’ vacant lots on E Houston Street.

So. Combine all this and what do you get?

Q&A with Jake Dobkin, co-founder of Gothamist and author of 'Ask a Native New Yorker'

After helping launch Gothamist in 2003, co-founder and native New Yorker Jake Dobkin enjoyed answering questions and offering advice (often unsolicited!) about NYC to staffers who recently arrived here.

Eventually, Editor-in-Chief John Del Signore suggested that Dobkin, a third-generation New Yorker who grew up in Park Slope, share his humorous and opinionated perspective to readers who may have questions about adjusting to the NYC way of life or to longtime residents looking for a unique point of view.

And so, in the summer of 2013, Dobkin wrote his first "Ask a Native New Yorker" for the news site, tackling a topic that people may wonder about but couldn't find an answer to: "Is It Normal For Roaches To Crawl Through My Hair At Night?"

Now, after 150 columns — addressing questions ranging from "Should I Wash My Hands After Taking The Subway?" to "When Should I Call The Cops On My New Neighbors?" — the series has been turned into a book. I recently asked Dobkin a few questions about "Ask a Native New Yorker."

You've written some 150 "Ask a Native New Yorker" posts for Gothamist. However, the book isn't a repackaging of those. What can readers expect to find in this volume?

I wanted to start from scratch here and really create a volume of advice that could guide a New Yorker from birth until death. I thought a lot of the original columns on the web were pretty good, but they were written under the usual blogging time constraints.

For the book. I had a lot more time and so I think the answers are a lot more thoughtful, and hopefully more amusing. Turns out banging out eight blog posts a day ain't the best way to create quality writing!

In the book, you write that to be considered a native New Yorker, you must have, for starters, been born in one of the five boroughs. What are your feelings about people who say they are a native New Yorker — they just grew up a quick LIRR ride away in, oh, Valley Stream?

I feel bad for these people, because the truth always comes out, and then they look like real chumps. Listen, I grew up in Park Slope — it's not exactly the most hardcore neighborhood in New York, and so I understand why someone might want to shade the truth on their origin story. In college I used to tell people I grew up in South Brooklyn or something.

But ultimately to achieve wisdom you must be honest with the world and yourself about who you are and where you come from, and anyway, it could be worse — you could be from Jersey!

Do you allow for any wiggle room for iconic figures from the city's past or present — people who made an impression on NYC's culture and history though they weren't born here and hence not native New Yorkers? People such as Mickey Mantle, Andy Warhol, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, Patrick Ewing, Debbie Harry and Patti Smith to randomly name six...

Newcomers, immigrants and refugees from the suburbs all contribute to the wonderful tossed-salad that is NYC culture — I'd never denigrate anyone who took the extreme act of courage it takes to move here. That said, I think it's fair to say that natives have a different, and valuable point of view, that is too often overlooked, and which I hope the book shines a light on.

You went to school at Columbia. At the time while making your collegiate choice, did it occur to you that attending, say, Brown or Dartmouth, would have watered down your native New Yorker status by being away for four years?

I was raised by hippie radical communists in Park Slope, whose style of parenting was to avoid parenting as much as possible. So when it came to applying to college I was pretty much on my own.

Stuyvesant High School in those days had about one college counselor for every 950 kids, so there wasn't much advice there either — it was pretty much "don't forget to apply to college!" So I was actually totally unaware Columbia existed until after I graduated from high school — basically everything above 14th Street was like one of those old maps where the far north is labelled "there be dragons."

So I didn't apply there, and actually got rejected by every school except Dartmouth and Binghamton. Now, I knew I couldn't go to Dartmouth, because I had a feeling my whole sarcastic Jew schtick wouldn't play well in New Hampshire. So I ended up going to SUNY Binghamton for 12 weeks, and then dropping out, and at that point, finally, someone suggested I check out Columbia, and I did. It was like I discovered El Dorado — an amazing lost city of gold.

So I wish I could say my college choice was the product of my New York Native realness, but it was actually just a kind of ridiculous stumbling ass-backwards into a situation that worked for me. The moral of the story is I'm not letting my kids apply to any school you can't get to on NYC public transit. Maybe I'd make an exception for Rutgers or something.

The book provides a lot of helpful tips for people new to the city. Do you have any specific advice for residents who are new to the East Village?

I remember when I first got to Stuy, back in 1990 — I was 13, and in those days it was on 15th and 1st, just outside the East Village. Everything south was this giant mystery which took me years to unravel. I actually think the first time I walked down St. Mark's I was 20 years old! But since then I've developed tons of favorite spots, none particularly original — Veselka, Sobaya, 7B, etc.

One of the best secret spots in all of NYC — the New York Marble Cemetery off Second Avenue — I love going in there whenever the gate is open.

Do you still believe — as you write — that New York is the greatest city in the world? You finished this book before Hudson Yards opened.

New York is the greatest city the world has ever seen, and probably will ever see, since between climate change and our current politics, the human race doesn't seem like it has so much time left.

You can't let things like Hudson Yards bother you too much — New York has always changed at a blistering pace, and somehow we always turn out OK. I was up there [the other day] shooting the Shed, and I saw like four hot-dog carts already colonizing the edges of the site. I have no doubt in 10 or 20 years the place will be totally over-run with real New York chaos.

---

"Ask a Native New Yorker: Hard-Earned Advice on Surviving and Thriving in the Big City" (Abrams Image) is now available wherever books are sold.

The Jefferson shows off its open glass

A quick monthly check-in over at The Jefferson on East 13th Street... where there's a lot more brick and glass exposed..





Per Streeteasy, eight of the units are now in contract ... including a two-bedroom penthouse with roof terrace ($2.85 million asking price). Remaining homes range in price from $1.9 million to $2.2 million here at the former Mystery Lot.

Previously.

East Village stories and images from 2011

A sampling from our 3,652 posts from 2012...

January

Fire at the East Village Village Farm

[EV Grieve reader Special Monkey]

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The Great Thunder Blizzard of 2011...

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The Icicle Audi...

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A birthday celebration for Ray ...

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February

The Hells Angels unveil new line of defense for their bench...

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Tompkins Square Park regular Grace Farrell, 35, froze to death while sleeping outside an alcove next to St. Brigid's ...

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Efforts to save historic 35 Cooper Square from demolition...

[Bobby Williams]

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March

A lot of fuss about a sign on Avenue A ...

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Photographic evidence of the elusive Pigeon Lady ...

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April

We started getting that bad feeling...

[Bobby Williams]

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The MTA v. an East Village artist...

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May

The DOH shutters Ray's for too long...

[Dave on 7th]

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We all met the Chillmaster...

[Via Marty After Dark]

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To 186 years of history on Cooper Square ...

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June

Former Burial Society now a hole in the ground on East Fourth Street...

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Howl! came earlier this year...

[Photo by Shawn Chittle]

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July

Introducing the Flaming Cactus of Astor Place...

[Bobby Williams]

--

Walk Man quickly came and went...

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The TSP Ratstravaganza...

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Farewell, Mars Bar ...

[Goggla]

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August

The BMW Guggenheim Lab opened, think tanking ensued.

[Photo by Bob Arihood]

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The NYPD went all out to find the people who beat up Gavin DeGraw ...

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Earthquake...

[AC]

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Hurricane Irene wreaks havoc...

[Photo by Shawn Chittle]

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September

After 30 years, Life Cafe closes (for now)...

[Michael Sean Edwards]

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The free Willie Nelson catches fire...

[@joshchambers]

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October

The Mystery Lot faces a condo after life...



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The IHOP opened, and people ate there...

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Joe's Bar on East Sixth Street closed, opened and closed again... and the proprietor, Joe Vajda, died in November... we await the fate of the bar...

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November

We waited for President Obama to drive by on East 12th Street ...

[Photos by Michael Sean Edwards]

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Nevada Smith's closed to relocate, with luxury housing on the way for the corner on Third Avenue and 12th Street...

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One construction positive: The ongoing renovation of St. Brigid's on Avenue B and East Eighth Street ...

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December

The end.

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Well, that's a fucking depressing way to end a year in review ... so to new hopes and beginnings and all that ...

[Bobby Williams]