About Lucky, a new bar opening on Avenue B — 'There isn’t gonna be a theme'

Photos and text by Stacie Joy

Longtime local writer, editrix and party producer Abby Ehmann is fulfilling a dream of hers and opening a new bar at 168 Avenue B between East 10th Street and East 11th Street called Lucky. I stopped by to see the space during its renovation and to ask her a few questions.

What can you tell us about your new space?

I’m taking over the old Boxcar Lounge space [which closed for good at the end of February after 18 years in business]. It isn’t a very big bar so my plans aren’t too extravagant. I want it to be a comfortable neighborhood bar. I have all kinds of ideas but I want everything to be a surprise! But I am hoping it will be the bar for all the people who feel like there aren’t any bars left for them. 

Why did you want to be a bar owner?

Judging by all the people offering me their ideas, it seems like anyone who’s ever sat at a bar has thought about owning one. Seriously, though, ever since the first time I worked behind a bar I’ve wanted to own one. It was 1992, my “summer of discontent.” I’d been laid off from the ad industry and was crying into the want ads. Tommy at The Village Idiot gave me a job as a barmaid. I’ve had about a million jobs and bartending’s my favorite. I love interacting with people.

What can we expect from your bar? I heard you had an amazing jukebox planned.

Yeah, people have asked what my “theme” is gonna be. There isn’t gonna be a theme. The vibe of the bar will be completely dependent upon the bartenders — almost all people who’ve worked in the neighborhood for years — and the music.

The jukebox will be filled with as many mix CDs as I can collect. I’m hiring DJs to make them for me. I want each one to be an homage to a defunct bar, club, party or “world” — Downtown Beirut, Mars Bar, The Idiot, Motherfucker, Green Door, Jackie 60. Even if the person putting their money in hasn’t ever heard of any of those places, the music will be great. But for those who do know what the mixes mean, I’m hoping it will make them really happy. It’s a warm, familiar nod to the past, to what came before.

What are your favorite bars — in NYC and/or elsewhere?

I’m a huge fan of dive bars, neighborhood bars, places that feel like an extension of your living room…if you have a living room.

Back when I lived on 10th Street between First and Avenue A, I practically lived at Downtown Beirut. I could go there alone and as soon as I walked in the door, Carolyn would hold up a pitcher and point and I’d nod. My beer would be on the bar before I even sat down. That bar was my favorite bar in the whole world. I still miss it. And that jukebox, heaven!

I usually go to Double Down [on Avenue A]. I love the punk rock and PBR. I’ve been going to 2A for 30 years. It was the first bar I went to in this neighborhood. I’m not too sure about their recent upgrades, but the vibe and general feng sui of that place…I love it. Exposed brick and those big windows, it’s the quintessential bar. Sophie’s, 11th Street Bar, International Bar, Manitoba’s, Coal Yard, Doc Holliday’s (when it isn’t full of college kids). Places that feel like they’ve been there forever. And places that don’t have a TV. Not a big fan of the twee cocktail establishments or “speakeasies,” where someone else decides whether you get in or not. I wouldn’t subject myself to that bullshit. I don’t like to wait in line for anything. I mean, even if they were handing out gold bars, I wouldn’t wait in line.

What do you think makes a good neighborhood bar?

Locals and regulars, a bartender who knows your name, or at least pretends to! Knows what you drink. Nothing pretentious or fake. A place you can go when you’re having a really crappy day and you’ll walk out feeling better.

What are your thoughts on the East Village in general? And what are your thoughts on the East Village nightlife in particular?

It’s easy to complain about the East Village and all the changes it’s gone through. I’ve lived here since 1989 and I’ve watched a lot of those changes. It’s heartbreaking when places that have been around for decades close down.

And I hate the new buildings. I have this ridiculous, irrational, somewhat romantic love for old buildings: Old architectural detail, the tenement apartments, walls with history. So whenever something gets torn down, I mourn.

The East Village may not be as “cool” as it used to be. It certainly isn’t as affordable…so many of my friends have moved away, but it’s still better than anywhere else. It still feels like a neighborhood. I can walk down the street and see people I know. Go into a bar or restaurant or Key Food and bump into people. What’s the alternative? I mean, have you been to LA? Hell-fucking-no. New York City is the best place to live. I get choked up, still, when Frank Sinatra sings about it… I swear. I’m a sap. What can I say? It’s the fervor of someone who has chosen this city as home.

I really enjoyed Ada Calhoun’s "St. Marks Is Dead." It applies to the neighborhood and to the city in general: if it’s dead to you, yes, it’s dead. If all you have is old memories and you aren’t creating any new ones, yes, it’s dead.

A lot of the grumblers, including me, simply aren’t raging drunk through the streets anymore. It might’ve been why — or maybe when — we moved here but many have moved on, if not geographically, otherwise. I can’t begrudge younger people their right to rage drunk through the streets. I’m sure there were bartenders who found me and my friends obnoxious. I can bemoan my lost youth and hate on the youngsters, and often do, but complaining about noise in the biggest city in America seems a little…sad.

I’m not a fan of too-high heels and girls who all wear the same dresses when they go out or man buns and overly fussy facial hair or whatever the latest trend is. I’ve never been into trends. So sure, I lock myself into my apartment on the weekends. I guess the bottom line is: noisy bars have always been and should always remain noisy bars. Deal with it. Create your own nightlife. Yes, I’m opening a bar but over the past decade I’ve hosted (much smaller) parties in my living room to avoid the people I find distasteful. Just cope with it however you can.

Anything else you’d like to add?

I feel fortunate to have this opportunity. My landlady isn’t one of those greedy folks who are quadrupling the rent, which appears to be VERY rare, bless her. I have a crystal-clear vision of what I want my bar to be, but I can only control so much. I can create an ambience and curate the music and pick the beer and booze. Once I open the doors, though, who knows? I would like it to be a refuge, or as my friend Joe Vincent said, “an oasis in a desert of douches,” a place that all the people who feel displaced can call home. Or as I’ve said, “a respite from the stumbling insanity.” That’s my vision, anyway. That and a room full of people singing along to "Bohemian Rhapsody."


[Lucky under renovation]

You can keep tabs on the Lucky bar project by checking out Abby’s IndieGogo campaign

Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher

Name: Jenny Adams
Occupation: Writer/Photographer
Location: East 7th Street between 1st and 2nd Ave
Time: Monday, Nov. 25 at 1pm.

I’m from Birmingham, Ala. I grew up there and then went to the college of Charleston. I grew up in the south, went to college in the south and planned to live in the south my whole life. I wasn’t really the adventurous type until after college. And then I moved to Montana on a whim. Somebody had an extra bedroom for rent for $200 a month. My lease was up so I decided to move there for six months. Once I did that it opened the door to the idea that I could do it.

So I moved to New Zealand and lived there for a year. I was 23 and waited tables and worked on a vineyard for spare change, picking grapes for 60 cents every 5 pounds. That’s what a lot of the backpackers do. And then I started running out of money so I moved to Thailand for a few months. I wasn’t working but I had $1,000 left — and you can live for a really long time on $1,000 in Bangkok.

When I went broke, I came back to America. I was not happy. My parents said, ‘You’ve got no money and you’re being a delinquent.‘ I wanted to be a writer. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. My mom’s a writer, my aunt’s a writer and my grandma’s a writer. Of course I had that whole ‘I want to be a writer’ thing but you can’t just go out and write. You have to have a background. My mom actually owned a magazine at the time, so I was like, ‘Sweet, you’ll just give me a job,’ and she was like, ‘No, you have no experience and you don’t know what you’re doing.’ It was the best lesson I’ve ever had. I just expected her to hire me.

So I enrolled in grad school at the University of Mississippi, Ole Miss, in 2006 and I worked in an office in Mississippi for three years as a writer. It was a little painful but it ended up being a good experience. And then things started to happen. I moved back to Alabama and my mom gave me a job. I also got a writing job in Alabama working for a nightlife magazine. I’ve always been in the nightlife segment of writing. It started out with the industry, behind the scenes, stuff for the trade magazines. And then I broke into the consumer side, reviewing bars and spirits.

I lived in Alabama from ‘07 till ’09, when I moved here. I was sick of Alabama and was thinking about moving to New York. I knew nothing about the city, but I said I wanted to move to the East Village because that’s where all the writers lived. So I moved into an apartment on Avenue D. I had never seen anything like it. I vividly remember the first person I saw on heroin. I had never seen anyone just outside on heroin, just freaking out on the sidewalk. Before I had moved here I hadn’t seen poverty in the same way. Alabama, where I lived, was super green and clean and safe. Everybody had a sprinkler and two kids and a dog. And then I moved here and was like, ‘whoa.’ At first I thought I wasn’t going to be there very long. Maybe I’d move someplace less ‘crazy.’ But now I love it and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

Sandy was a surreal time but it was also one of the best times I’ve ever had. Everybody worked so hard during the day and then at night you made new friends because you didn’t have a phone. My building got hit hard. We had tons of water in the basement. Our super lived down there in a livable space. It was completely flooded and his stuff was all destroyed. Sewers backed into the building. It was just a mess. He lost everything.

So I went uptown and got on GoFundMe to raise $1,000 for my super. I didn’t even have emails of anyone in my building but I said let’s try. And we had $600 within 45 minutes. I left it up and the next morning it was at $2,000. We raised close to $12,000 in 6 days. So I gave the super $1,500 and ended up distributing the rest of it out throughout the neighborhood. I did not realize, to give away $12,000 piece by piece, is a lot of work. We went and bought blankets for people. We went to the soup kitchens. All my friends helped. Most of it was $100 here and $200 there, going to buy groceries and shipping them to the Rockaways.

A couple of the supers who worked in the lower-income buildings on East 12th somehow found me and were like, ‘Our building have a bunch of elderly and they’re really poor and don’t have anything.’ So we went down to Target and bought 55 jackets and blankets. Just to watch these supers … take it upon themselves to find me and other people to help get them blankets and space heaters … was a really cool moment.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

The East Village — 'this place is still the best home for a lot of people'

[Photo by Gregoire Alessandrini]

By Jennifer Blowdryer

Of course the very bloodiest single-minded crimes in Manhattan are real-estate battles.

There was that locksmith of a landlord who allegedly made an entire likable middle-age couple go missing. More locally we have Danny Rakowitz, the so-called Tompkins Square Park Cannibal, and his temporary flatmate Monica, who thought she’d get his apartment and ended up in the stew instead. I always felt that the apartment was the key factor in that murder — anybody who was acquainted with Danny should have known better than to cohabit with him for even a moment.

Marla Hanson got her face slashed by landlord-hired goons and got famous the wrong way, enabling her to hook up with a tabloid-hungry author Jay McInerny for a minute. Gary Indiana’s great book, "Depraved Indifference," is a lightning-rod masterpiece about the mother and son who did away with a needy woman who, to be fair to their aspirational level, did in fact own an entire townhouse.

Most real-estate crimes here in the East Village are of the pettiest Dickensian kind – somebody’s got themselves an apartment, all the way indoors, in a building with or without a lobby, or even just a room in an apartment. Their quarters are often piled high with animal hair, collectibles, and palpable loneliness. Once an anchor tenant gives up or loses a domicile, they got nowhere, really, to go. Ever. Because as much as every jackass likes to mention that the East Village has changed, like they just noticed it, the way straight men don’t notice they’re older til they hit the wrong side of 50, this place is still the best home for a lot of people.

I suppose that on the yuppie/crazy/Puerto Rican/Dominican range of remaining East Village tenants, I’d have to be realtor-perceived as one of the crazies. You’ve got to stick with your own kind, even if it takes a microcosm of rezoning, so I sometimes put other crazies up in my small flat. Barflies, charmers, the well-spoken and unmatriculable, they need to be here, even if it means they're on the floor by my bed, under a table, or, worst-case scenario, sucking up my expensive cable TV watching endless episodes of "Wicked Tuna."

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My favorite guests of necessity were originally here in the 1980s, the 1990s, or the aughts, bein’ beautiful, working on the buildings, spackling, plumbing, and being difficult, going to Mars Bar every damn day, gossiping thoroughly about each other in a Yenta way that is more informational than dunning. Because to have a habit, a craft that’s useless in a technocracy, to slide into permanent befuddlement due to the alcohol-poisoned blood that washes over ones brain every 2 minutes or so, to inhabit a permanent state of virulent misinformation due to that cross bred and sprayed substance which weed’s become. Worse yet, future tenants are likely to suffer from the after shocks of some Dick Cheney version of a military invasion. Bad things just happen to a guy who thinks too much and plans too little.

When brutal things happen to a woman she gets a lot less social slack – the world can collectively shun a crone shuddering on a ledge, no longer mom, booty call, or interested listener, unable and unwilling to hear how the world done a man wrong for even a millisecond.

Homelessness is so rampant but dunning that toting around a very large bag on city streets is a social death knell. The art of the bag stash is an artful slight of hand you'd better master if you're in the position of no position. If you’re trying to get a footing in somebody’s apartment then you’d better not be too obvious – put your stenchy belongs under the couch, just behind a chair, in a corner of a closet you hope the host doesn’t use much. One so understands.

I mean hell, I’m not much of a joiner, and groups of, say, 7 folk or more tend to turn on me in a subtle display of hive mind that I often suspect would translate into a public square beat down in another century or town. If it wasn’t NYC and the last great vestige of street life it retains, I’d be a stray cat, a low-down talent snob, an impossible to please slow to anger woman with snarly hair who picks friends like illogical magnets, an artist that needs to be broken.

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[Photo by Gregoire Alessandrini]

In the East Village I fit right in. I can walk to Ray's, talk to Kim and the ad-hoc salon he hosts behind the counter, get myself a peanut butter ice cream and some Belgian fries. If the sun is out even a little bit I could walk across the street to Tompkins Park, swing by Crusty Row and say hello to G-Sus or the late LES Jewels, or the Circle part of the Park to find Eak, after craning my neck to see if Jay is in the chess area to the right side, dominating at a chess table, sober but happy to be only a few feet from the boisterous day imbibers at the 7th Street entrance.

If there’s a conga beat that’s going on more toward Avenue B there are definitely congo players and maybe some of that hard to master off-beat Latin singing, so I walk down more toward the Avenue B side of the benches and stay close by the music, listening, smiling hard. Every few months my endless pursuit of artistic hobbies means a flyer generating visit to Santos at The Source on 9th Street. He’s a good man with a narrow multi-purpose print shop who crinkles his eyes kindly when I’m there on one of my bad days, stammering out my request for a DVD copy, hunched forward and vague but terribly busy with a million projects no Grant shall ever shine on. Santos makes people happy.

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I spent so many nights in a nearby building with the best cuddler ever that one operator came to call me “The Landlord’s Girlfriend,” a sort of fiendish tag muttered from clenched teeth. I sort of was, especially with my responsibility of pointing out the boiler room. Often there’d be a call that required me to get out of his bed way too early for an East Villager, cram on my shoes, and totter down to the basement to show an indifferent city worker where the boiler was. The employee always had a pleasant world weary shrug of an attitude. They'd look at the boiler, check the clipboard, and we'd all keep moving on with our day.

I had to point out the boiler because somebody with a beef called the Housing Department about rats or noise or God knows what, and the city worker with the clipboard was just a guy with a job, and he had to check something off on a form. This was the easiest out for he and I. It wasn’t like they thought there wouldn’t be a boiler room there if they caught us unawares. It was that the accumulated animosity resulted in a promiscuous use of snitching and cross snitching to 311, 911, and any other have-to-respond social services that exist. It was a stunning and extended use of city bureaucracy and we all had to play our parts, just about every other day, there was no way to stop any of it once it got rolling, Common Sense is such a myth.

Construction and history wise it’s an alright building, and it had itself a nice little courtyard that the couple on the first floor ably ran as their own, which tends to happen with ground-floor courtyards. The East Village version of the real-estate death battle writ small was sometimes more interactive than calls to the Housing Department. Like when the special-needs guy from the second floor clocked the courtyard tenant who’d invited him in for a celebratory glass of birthday scotch. Don’t get too friendly with your neighbors, was the lesson.

On another floor an ex-con moved in with the 90-year-old mother of his dead former cellie and knocked her around. He was fond of trying to engage GOLES (Good Old Lower East Side), an exhausted tenant’s rights non-profit, when his tyranny of one became threatened.

Another standing tenant was a not-too-bright nutter who grew up in the building, drew a knife on his trapped walker-bound father. You could hear the son’s security guard shoes tromping around or spot him booking down the steps, spewing the angry monologues of the self trapped, eyes flashing, face puffed up to a bright and scary red.

The low-down sociopathology of Elder Abuse is pretty common in rent-controlled apartments here and maybe everywhere. Pity the very old, the crippled, and frozen agoraphobic hoarder, because once a predator gets past their dented doors that’s all she wrote. Elder Abuse is both a true evil and banal, a crime perpetrated by the illiterate whose goal to just, you know, stay inside is a tenacious mini genocide of a living soul. Most crime, after all, is just poor people doing heinous shit to each other, no millions involved. Homicide cops don’t think much of us, the uncunning poor.

The other day, as I walked down my hallway steps, a woman, too thin, too hard, too much at work, said “Do you like silver?” and I stopped dead in my tracks. “Yes. Yes I do.” I replied, the only answer, because without leaving my own building I had just met the most classic of peddlers and she is after all alive, and deserves to be here as much as the plants, the bankers, the children, the loafers, and the artists.

The female riff raff of the LES are those plants that are just too green, the ones who sprout through the concrete on a so-called esplanade just off the Con Ed plant on the FDR. These unweeds and the peddling riff raff are suspicious activity, which is the safest way to be around here. It’s fun. In turn we, the effervescent place saving plants, refuse to be suspicious of you, you, and you. That’s how you miss the good stuff. Come on over, you Albanian Supers, you wheezing pugs, you silk screening waitresses with no ability to fulfill an order of any kind. We've all got our nerve!

Jennifer Blowdryer is an East Village resident who's been here since 1985 and was conceived in a dumpy tenement off the Bowery, right on Bleecker. She is the lead singer of Jennifer Blowdryer Punk Soul.

I Am a Rent-Stabilized Tenant

East Village resident Susan Schiffman has been photographing the apartments of rent-stabilized tenants living in the East Village for her Instagram account, I Am a Rent Stabilized Tenant. She will share some of the photos here for this ongoing EVG feature.



Photos and text by Susan Schiffman

Tenant: Alison, since 1981

Why did you move to the East Village?

I moved to the East Village because I was turning 21 and my flying rights as the child of an airline pilot were about to run out. I was living in Berkeley, Calif. I had to make a decision. I was born and raised primarily on the East Coast. When I was 18 or 19 I moved to California because my parents and sister were living there. I went with some schoolmates and lived there for about two-and-a-half years. It drove me crazy. I love California. The Bay Area is beautiful, but there are no seasons. I really like it when everything dies and comes back to life.

I was living across the street from a University of California at Berkeley garden and nothing ever died. It was green all the time. People said, “Yeah, it’s winter, it’s raining, you can tell.” Yeah, OK, but it’s still super green. That made me nutty. I was involved here with someone who lived on First Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue. I moved here on my 21st birthday in 1981. At the time, if you were the child of a pilot, you could fly for just the tax. It cost like $8 to fly from California to New York. You would fly standby but you would end up in first class a lot.

How did you find your apartment?

I was staying in Brooklyn where I lived with another friend from school who grew up with the guy I was fooling around with on First Street. He got a call one day, and I answered the phone. It was the woman who was living in this apartment. She said “I heard Sam is looking for a place to live.” I said, “no, he’s not, but I am.” And she said, “well, come on over.”

I had been looking around. You would go into a vacant apartment with a pack of people and there would be this huge scrum about who was going to fill out the paperwork and hand over a check. I came here and talked to her and she said “OK, it’s yours.” You just have to come up with key money. It was something like $500. She wasn’t the landlord. She was the tenant of this apartment. She said we’ll meet with the landlord. We met with him, here in the apartment. We sat at a table, while he dictated the lease. She was a calligrapher. She hand wrote the lease. It was beautiful! I still have a copy of it somewhere. It was crazy. It was a one-page lease. He said things like, “there’s no dancing on the roof in high heels, because you’ll break the roof. No men.” He was old-fashioned.

He was born and raised in the building. His name was Lucio. I signed the lease. I moved in in April. The guy on First Street committed suicide a few months later because he was a paranoid schizophrenic. It was really sad. I did not look for another apartment. It did not occur to me to look for another apartment, ever, until a few years later. Things started changing in the neighborhood.

It became apparent to me and the other current unrenovated apartment dweller in the building, that we should get leases — real leases. There are only two unrenovated apartments in the building now. Because the leases we had, the handwritten leases, were not exactly official. We tried to organize the building to get everyone to be involved. Nobody wanted to go to court to get leases. They were all longterm tenants ... and didn’t want to rock the boat with Lucio. I can appreciate that. We took him to court and got leases. My rent did not go up between 1981 and 1986. Lucio never raised the rent.

In 1986, everyone in the building got rent-stabilized leases. A number of years later, Lucio died. He sold the building right before he died to landlord #2. He came in and started pushing people out. He did everything by the book. He did it legally. The guy who lived next door was a musician who was on the road six months out of the year. By law you have to be in your apartment six months of the year, six months and a day and you’re out.

He twinned that apartment. He made a single apartment into two apartments. That was the first twinned apartment in the building. He put in skylights. He put in a bell and buzzer. Pretty much for 15-20 years I threw the key off the roof. There’s a leak in the roof that has always been there. The roof has been re-tarred a number of times but the leak has always been there.

At some point the roof started sagging ominously and the hole got bigger. I had buckets specifically for the rain. With the help of GOLES [Good Old Lower East Side, a tenants organization] I finally I got the Department of Buildings in here. They made the landlord fix it. The whole apartment is sagging toward the middle of the building. My bed is up on bricks so it’s level. The building is super slanty. Somebody was staying here who wanted to stretch some canvasses and she said she couldn’t find one right angle.





What do you love about your apartment?

I love that it gets so much light. It used to get more before they built the new building for the Theater for the New City. It was the first tall building in the neighborhood and I saw it go up from my window. I like this apartment because it’s my home and I grew up here.

I try to imagine living other places. I can’t really imagine it. I have a real push-pull with this neighborhood. Me and the other woman who lives here who got the leases with me, we’re the two oldest tenants in the building. I’m 57 and she’s around the same age. Everybody else in this building is in their 20s and 30s. They’re in and out in a year or two. I don’t know most of the tenants in this building. Landlord #2 tried to buy me out. He offered me $10,000. Then Landlord #3 offered to buy me out, also for $10,000. As far as I’m concerned, I have to walk away with $500,000, minimum. I know two people from Ninth Street who got $300,000 from Icon Realty.

My sister is always trying to get me to move up the river. She thinks I hate it here. I don’t hate it, but it’s hard to see everything you loved in the area disappear. I’m still miffed by the renovation at the Veselka, when they did away with the backroom. I loved the screen door in there.















If you're interested in inviting Susan in to photograph your apartment for an upcoming post, then you may contact her via this email.

On East Houston, work begins on a new 13-floor residential building

Work has started on East Houston and Ridge Street (331 E Houston St. and 161 Ridge St. to be exact), where a demo crew took down the former one-level laundromat ... to make way for a 13-floor residential building with 78 units for this L-shaped parcel of land. The city OK'd plans for the new building on Sept. 17.

EVG Facebook friend Edward Arrocha shared these photos that he took of the property last week.











The site was active on Saturday... perhaps the crew will employ a flagger next time ...







Records show that Stephen B. Jacobs is the architect for the project. (His firm's East Village work includes the Copper Building on Avenue B and the Village Green on East 11th Street.) Jon Halpern of "East Houston Development LLC" is listed as the owner on the DOB permits. (Halpern is a partner and head of Real Estate Investments at Marathon Real Estate Mortgage Trust.)

Previously on EV Grieve:
An L-Shaped footprint ready to make its impression on East Houston Street

An abandoned car in an empty lot that will soon yield a 13-floor residential building

Week in Grieview

[Thursday evening in Tompkins Square Park]

Posts this past week included...

Mount Sinai Beth Israel offers more details on new East Village hospital, plans for the former Rivington House (Tuesday)

Report: Mayor unleashes the "Green Wave Bicycle Plan" to address increase in cycling fatalities, make streets safer (Friday)

Bartender files federal complaint against Bar None for harassment (Thursday)

NYPD looking for suspect who forced his way into woman's apartment near 12th and A (Saturday)

Ruby’s Cafe bringing its Australian vibes to the former Martina space on 11th Street (Monday)

The new fence at La Plaza is officially complete (Friday)

RIP Paul Krassner (Monday)

Curiosity about the anonymous buyer behind the sale of the Boys' Club Harriman Clubhouse (Wednesday)

This week's NY See (Thursday)

The M14A tops the slow-bus charts (Tuesday)

You may now book a room for October at the Moxy East Village (Wednesday)

787 Coffee and Calexico now open on 2nd Avenue (Saturday)

1st of 2 Flamingos Vintage Pound shops has opened in the East Village (Monday)

The Village East screening Quentin Tarantino's "Once Upon a Time ... In Hollywood" in 70mm (Wednesday)

Old Fashioned Pizza coming to 13th Street (Thursday)

Soft opening for Craft+Carry on St. Mark's Place (Friday)

Pizza Rollio has closed on 9th Street (Tuesday)

Sorbet Cray Cray debuts on Avenue A (Thursday)

Nolita Pizza now serving up slices on 2nd Avenue (Monday)

That's all for Bruno Pizza, which has been closed fire upstairs last November (Monday)

Chinese Graffiti has not been open lately on Avenue A (Tuesday)

14th St. Candy & Grocery has not been open lately on 14th Street (Monday)

... and thanks to the readers (h/t @Jason_Chatfield!) who pointed out the freshly pained awning at the newish cafe Bin 141 on Avenue A and Third Street...



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Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher

Name: Gina
Occupation: Social Worker
Location: East 2nd Street and 1st Avenue
Time: 5:30 pm on Monday, Oct. 19

I was born in Canarsie, Brooklyn. I came to the neighborhood in 1990. I needed to get a job and I had been going to school full-time, and I couldn’t continue that because of my situation. So I got a job at NYU and got tuition remission and finished my degree there. Then I just stayed in the neighborhood.

I got my master's degree in social work. I’m the director of a homeless shelter in the neighborhood. It’s a shelter for older adults with medical and mobility issues. I feel like it’s a very service-rich neighborhood in many ways and I hope that continues because there are a lot of people who have been living here a long time who don’t have high incomes and [it’s hard] to be able to maintain, especially when people become older. It’s difficult to balance if you’re working your whole life and you’re living paycheck to paycheck — one thing can set you off and then you wind up in a shelter.

People like to vilify the homeless but really most people are just poor in a city where rents are skyrocketing. So I feel good that I’m making a difference in helping people to get into a secure environment. Anyone, anyone can wind up there.

My interest in the neighborhood is totally outside of my professional life, though. It’s just a coincidence that I wound up getting a job here. I moved onto St. Mark’s Place in 1990 and that was like the middle of everything. I used to go to Green Door parties at Coney Island High. There was a lot of music and creative people.

But then I got tired of living on St. Mark’s because it was just a little too busy. There were people sleeping on my steps and stuff, so I moved down to the Lower East Side, just a couple blocks below Houston Street on Clinton Street, and then I watched that neighborhood open up. It went from a couple little shlock stores to this whole stretch of trendy restaurants. You never, ever would have expected that in a million years.

My husband grew up in this neighborhood. There was a small Ukrainian community that has really dissipated. I knew nothing about the Ukrainian community until I met him. It’s interesting that there are still people who go caroling. I remember I was my mother-in-law’s house after we first met and some carolers came around and sang Ukrainian Christmas carols. So there’s still a sense of community in that way that’s still there. It’s nice to know at least that the people who’ve been living around here a long time who all know each other still stick together.

Most of my friends who are not native New Yorkers have left because the things they came for aren’t here anymore. The cost of living goes up, but the things that make it fun are gone. It’s depressing, isn’t it? [The neighborhood has] been taken over by people just want to come and drink and just tear the place apart, and it saddens me because the sense of community is really withering away.

In the mid-90s, you had people who were creative, people who were just fun. Now it just feels like you’re being trampled on and then everyone leaves. I think there’s still a sense of community to some extent and we can’t be stuck in the past, but at the same time we should all be part of shaping the future, instead of being the passive recipients of consumerism.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

EVG Etc.: Andy Warhol's durational cinema; Economy Candy's 85th birthday

Some headlines from other sources this past week (with a random photo from Avenue A)...

• City announces a new "public-private partnership" to help unhoused residents (NBC 4 ... city news release)

• Columbia University graduate student is in the ICU with brain trauma; police believe he was attacked on the L after drinks in the East Village (NBC 4 ... ABC 7) 

• Police searching for two men for questioning in the murders of Nikki Huang and Jesse Parrilla (Daily News ... previously on EVG) 

• The number of legal evictions in New York City grew each month in the first half of 2022 (City Limits) 

• A look at the backers of Yuh-line Niou and Carlina Rivera for the open-seat Democratic primary race in the new NY-10 district (The Indypendent) 

• More about "7 Gardens" in East Village community gardens (Artnet ... previously on EVG) 

• Fine-dining destination Kajitsu, which first opened in the East Village before moving to Midtown East, is closing on Sept. 18 (Instagram) 

• Upcoming screenings for Andy Warhol's most often-discussed but rarely-screened films representing experiments in durational cinema — "The Chelsea Girls," "Sleep" and "Empire" (Anthology Film Archives) 

• Coming soon: "Easy Rider" in 35MM (Village East) 

• Some history of the "Physical Graffiti" building on St. Mark's Place (Atlas Obscura) 

• Economy Candy turns 85 (Untapped New York) 

• Russ & Daughters Café on Orchard Street reopens after extended pandemic-related closure (Gothamist)

• About the "Sweet Green" installation at Chinatown Soup (Hyperallergic) 

• Netflix-approved immersive "Squid Game" experience coming to 81 Essex St. on the LES (The Hollywood Reporter)

RIP Susan Leelike

[Susan Leelike from back in the day]

I was very sorry to hear about the sudden passing of Susan Leelike, a longtime East Village resident and activist. She was a regular reader of this site, posting under the name Blueglass. She sent me tips and observations about things happening around the neighborhood.

She was admitted into the hospital last Thursday with cardiac issues. She died on Saturday. Susan was 81.

Gojira, another EVG regular and longtime East Village resident, shared this about her friend...

Her name was Susan Leelike, and she was a city and neighborhood treasure. She was born in 1938, into a very different New York City, to parents of Russian Jewish extraction. Both of her parents were Communists, and she was a true Red Diaper baby who lived for the vast majority of her 81 years in either the West or the East Villages, the last 50 of them on our side of the island.

She co-founded GOLES (Good Old Lower East Side) in 1977 with her friend Floyd Feldman, with the objectives of providing tenant advocacy and shining an early spotlight on neighborhood preservation.

Among other thing, they envisioned the transformation of an underutilized Department of Sanitation facility, in one of Mayor LaGuardia's old former city markets, as a perfect spot for a theater; without their creativity and tireless efforts, Theater for the New City would not today be calling East 10th Street and First Avenue home.

In the 1990s, Susan and her neighbors on 10th Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue took on the 24/7 drug dealers that infested so many streets of the East Village back then and won; this on top of helping to gut-rehab an abandoned, fire-ravaged tenement building that she had called home since 1982.

Now a fully-functioning HDFC, it survived and thrived in no small part to her unceasing labors, and the success of her undertakings helped to turn that block into the destination hotspot that it is today.

She was a founding member of the Democratic Action Club, formed to take on and eradicate the issue of the homeless encampment in Tompkins Square Park, another city-ignored situation which turned one of the only green areas in the neighborhood into a filthy, drug-ridden haven for the homeless, while putting it off-limits to neighborhood residents.

Anyone who utilizes the park today — its playgrounds, asphalt, dog run or lawns – can thank, among many others, Susan. She tried to fight for the preservation and renovation of the now-closed-and-awaiting-demolition Essex Street Market, one of only two instances I can recall of a battle in which she was vanquished.

I called her the East Village Jane Jacobs — her love of New York and its historical significance, her knowledge of the neighborhood and its architectural and personal history, her memories of the things that used to be here that have vanished in the mists of time, were encyclopedic, and the loss of the memories she carried in her head is incalculable.

She labored in obscurity and has passed into the shadows with no fanfare save for that given to her by those of us who loved her, her sense of humor, her stubbornness, her sharp laugh, her crankiness, her belief that a city's history and the everyday people who made it mattered, and above all her fierceness in fighting for the things she believed were right, deeply.

Susan was my friend for 30 years, and on Oct. 26, I was holding her hand as she lost that second battle, surrounded by the family and friends who cherished her, and whom she loved so much in return.

Her passing has ripped another hole in the every-evolving quilt that makes up New York; while to some it may seem tiny, to those of us who knew, put up with and adored her, it is a massive, gaping one that will never be filled. There aren't many like her left today, and we have just lost one of the good ones.

Week in Grieview

Posts this past week included... (with the word from 10th and A)... 

• At NYU, 'Gaza Solidarity Encampment' leads to arrests of over 150 people (Tuesday)

• Police searching for suspect in unprovoked daytime stabbing on 7th Street on April 9 (Monday) 

• The untold story of Snack Dragon's attempted East Village comeback (Tuesday) 

• An early-morning fire at 131 Avenue A (Wednesday) ... assessing the fire damage (Wednesday) 

• Violet times: An Earth Day look at the wisteria on Stuyvesant Street (Monday) 

• From the Poetry Window at East Village Books (Saturday) 

• Dan & John's has closed its original East Village location after 9 years (Tuesday) 

• The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival returns to Tompkins Square Park this Aug. 25 (Wednesday) 

• Celebrating the birth of the Pyramid Club at Howl! Arts (Thursday) 

• A benefit concert for East Village musician Jesse Malin (Wednesday)

• About Stylus, a private members-only club coming to the Lower East Side (Friday) 

• Workers removed a dead elm from Tompkins (Thursday) ... and the city has been planting new trees in the neighborhood (Friday) 

• Closing notices: J-Spec Wagyu Dining and Esora Omakase on 5th Street (Wednesday) 

• Openings: Pizza Pazzo on 1st Street (Monday)

• A retail reset at 20 St. Mark's Place (Monday)

• So long to the longtime sidewalk bridge on 12th Street, and hello to SMØR Bakery (Monday) 

• Sushi Fan has not been open lately on St. Mark's Place (Friday)

• Where to see Films on the Green this summer (but not in Tompkins Square Park) (Friday)

• A smoke and vape shop for the former Gaia Italian Café on 3rd Street (Wednesday) 

• A changing of the bar at 16 1st Ave. (Monday) 

... and beware of those dubious rental listings promising various "doorman amenities" (photo on 9th Street by Steven)...

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Week in Grieview

[Spring in Tompkins Square Park]

Posts on EVG this past week included...

A visit with Steven Antonelli, director of Bank Street Head Start on 5th Street (Friday)

More about the return of the 14th Street busway; 12th and 13th street bike lanes now permanent (Thursday) ... M14 mystery abounds as SBS ticket vending machines arrive (Wednesday)

A CVS is coming to the corner of Houston and Orchard in Ben Shaoul's luxury condoplex (Monday)

This week's NY See strip (Monday)

It looks as if 264 E. 7th St. won't be demolished after all (Thursday)

The SUNSHINE leaves the marquee at the former Sunshine Cinema (Tuesday)

About the NYPD cracking down on bikes without bells in Tompkins Square Park (Tuesday)

Report: First red-tailed hawk egg hatches this year in Tompkins Square Park (Tuesday)

San Loco plotting an East Village comeback? (Friday)

Explosion-site condoplex rising quickly (Friday)

An Earth Day message from East River Park (Monday)

On 9th Street, Cha-an Bonbon to serve as a to-go outpost for Cha-an Teahouse (Tuesday)

In sight: Block's Vision Care relocates inside Block Drugs next door (Tuesday)

The Tribeca Film Festival arrives in the East Village (Wednesday)

2 down, 98 to go: Work starts on the 100 Gates Project at East Village shops (Thursday)

Bright Horizons bringing child care to EVGB (Wednesday)

Reader report: About East Village Acupuncture & Massage on 2nd Street (Wednesday)

East Side Gourmet Deli has closed on 4th and B (Monday ... and Thursday)

When the door is open at the incoming H Mart (Monday)

Green days: How to become a member of the 6BC Botanical Garden (Saturday)

The line for the Jay-Z show on the first night of the Webster Hall reopening (Friday) Union Rat makes first appearance outside Webster Hall (Wednesday)

Cocoa Grinder is closed for now on 1st Street (Monday)

What the F? New subway stop arrives on 4th Street courtesy of 'Mr. Robot' (Wednesday)

And as noted on Thursday, the Wisteria vine on Stuyvesant at 10th Street is in bloom... here are more photos from yesterday...





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A look at 331 E. Houston St., with a rooftop deck for outdoor showers and 'Live Free or Die Hard'

Here's a look at the new 13-floor residential building with 78 units going up at East Houston and Ridge Street.

It just seems ... massive.


[The view from East 2nd Street]

The website of project architect Stephen B. Jacobs offers a few more details on the building at 331 E. Houston St./163 Ridge St.

The ground floor includes the residential lobby, a lounge, and apartments in the rear of the building which have access to outdoor space. A large skylight brings natural light to the gym in the cellar, and stairs provide access to recreational outdoor space in the rear yard. A mix of studios, one, and two-bedroom apartments make up the bulk of the building. The top floor includes a three-bedroom apartment with a balcony. The rooftop is designed as an amenity space for the building, complete with deck seating, projector screen, bar, and outdoor shower.

The interior design was inspired by the raw nature of materials in the Lower East Side, such as exposed concrete and blackened steel, and includes touches of color such as the graffiti tiled accent wall in the lobby.

His firm's East Village work includes the Copper Building on Avenue B and the Village Green on East 11th Street.

Oh, and here are some renderings ...





... and notice the rooftop theater is inexplicably projecting an ad for "Live Free or Die Hard" (aka "Die Hard 4")



The building will reportedly include 20 percent affordable housing.

The L-shape parcel here sat empty for years, the property of reclusive real-estate baron William Gottlieb.

And it's just the latest project in the changing East Houston corridor... including the new 10-story residential building at Suffolk Street ... the 12-story Adele ... and the 9-floor building planned for the former Mobil station lot at Avenue C.

Previously on EV Grieve:
An L-Shaped footprint ready to make its impression on East Houston Street

An abandoned car in an empty lot that will soon yield a 13-floor residential building

On East Houston, work begins on a new 13-floor residential building

What 331 E. Houston St. will look like one day

An abandoned car in an empty lot that will soon yield a 13-floor residential building

Walking on East Houston near Ridge Street, we noticed an abandoned car in the long-empty lot on the south side of the street... not sure how long it has been there...



Anyway, spotting the car served as a reminder to check in on the status of these lots. Last summer, The Lo-Down reported that an unknown buyer has purchased the two vacant lots at 327 and 329 E. Houston St. for $8.4 million, as well as two adjoining parcels at 331 E. Houston and 163 Ridge St. for another $4 million.

It's part of the portfolio that belonged to reclusive real-estate baron William Gottlieb.

Plans were filed in February for a 13-floor residential building with 78 units for the L-shaped 331 E. Houston St./163 Ridge St. parcel. (The DOB disapproved the first round of plans on June 14.) Records show that Stephen B. Jacobs is the architect for the project. (His firm's East Village work includes the Copper Building on Avenue B and the Village Green on East 11th Street.) Jon Halpern of "East Houston Development LLC" is listed as the owner on the DOB permits. (Halpern is a partner and head of Real Estate Investments at Marathon Real Estate Mortgage Trust.)

There are also demo permits on file for the former laundromat here...



There's nothing on record for 327 and 329 E. Houston St.

As for the car, perhaps a test run for the future parking garage here?



Previously on EV Grieve:
An L-Shaped footprint ready to make its impression on East Houston Street

Stuy Town ownership nixes plans for 2 heat and power plants

Beam Living and Blackstone have agreed not to move forward with the two proposed Combined Heat and Power (CHP) plants in Stuyvesant Town. 

This news came via the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association late last week. 

Over the past 18 months, the TA had been working with local elected officials in speaking out about the proposed plans. (Here and here.) 

In 2018, Beam Living announced plans to build a fossil-fuel-burning CHP plant between 245 and 271 Avenue C. Two years later, they announced their intention to create a larger CHP plant under a garage floor on 20th Street. 

Via the EVG inbox:

"This is a highly satisfactory resolution to an issue that concerned many residents. I am grateful to all who signed petitions and postcards and came to our rallies, and to the cadre of hard-working tenants who formed our CHP strategy committee," said Susan Steinberg, president of the Stuyvesant Town–Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association. "I also want to acknowledge the effective support of our elected representatives. In particular I want to call out our Council Member Keith Powers, whose nonstop negotiations with Blackstone resulted in their pulling the project. Finally, I want to acknowledge Blackstone for its willingness to recognize how critical this issue was for us and for doing the right thing."

After years of working tirelessly with the Tenants Association, my colleagues, and residents, this is a great outcome.

Big thanks to @ST_PCV_Tenants, @RepMaloney, @bradhoylman, @HarveyforNY, @MarkLevineNYC, & every single person who helped organize. https://t.co/REpJ0p0qy2

— Keith Powers (@KeithPowersNYC) May 12, 2022

A spokesperson for Beam Living, which manages Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, released this statement to the media: 

"We always take our community’s feedback seriously and are pleased with the dialogue we have had about our collective commitment to making StuyTown and Peter Cooper Village more sustainable and resilient. We are proud of the progress we have made to date and remain committed to bringing resilient and green infrastructure to our community." 

No word at the moment what might happen to the already-built CHP structure (top pic) on Avenue C.

Time to rent at EVGB, where studios ('lofts') start at $3,695

Extell Development's EVGB — the "East Village's Greatest Building" — is now renting at 510 E. 14th St. and Avenue A.

The listings went live on Monday, as Curbed first noted.

In total, there are 110 market-rate rentals here. And "market rate" is apparently $3,695 for a large studio (called "lofts" at the EVGB website). The largest units, with three bedrooms, are asking $12,425.

Here's the description of a two-bedroom unit ($7,455) via Streeteasy:

Make yourself at home in this north facing split two bedroom, two bathroom residence. 412 features generous living space, multiple walk-in closets, and an in-unit Bosch washer/dryer. for entertaining and relaxing. The huge open kitchen is outfitted with Miele and Bosch appliances, Cosentino Silestone Quartz countertops and backsplash, and unique wood and glass cabinets with gunmetal pulls. The four-fixture master bathroom includes a walk-in shower with blackened steel and fluted glass door and double vanity. Both bathrooms feature Porcelanosa tile and Kohler and Wetstyle fixtures. This apartment is finished with hardwood white oak flooring.

Each unit also includes an Alexa home interface for easy Alexa-ing. ("Alexa, how much is $12,425 divided by eight?")

Here's a view of the back of the building, showing the various balconies and the garden units...



Building amenities include an indoor saltwater pool, a bi-level fitness center, a children’s playroom, and a 19,000-square-foot roof deck with bocce, a putting green, a yoga lawn, a wet bar, fire pits and more things to perhaps inspire 13th Street residents who live behind here to call 311.



As you can see, the EVGB site is working hard to appeal to would-be renters... (The "Mmm ... carbs" cartoon cupcake, like)...



EVGB has an Instragram account too... the first one is a puzzler: "East Village will have you Going Back for more again, and again, and again...donuts are just the beginning of what the vibrant neighborhood has to offer."

Anyway!

East Village will have you Going Back for more again, and again, and again...donuts are just the beginning of what the vibrant neighborhood has to offer. #evgb #rentevgb #eastvillage #luxuryrentals #nycrealestate #nyre #realestate #donuts #dessert #eeeeeats #treatyoself #dessert #newyorkcity #newyorker #newyork #vsco

A post shared by EVGB (@rentevgb) on Mar 6, 2018 at 3:16pm PST

All this talk about "East Village's Greatest Building” makes us want to break it down.... #evgb #rentevgb #eastvillage #luxuryrentals #nycrealestate #nyre #realestate #popart #dancing #hipster #vsco #art #artistsoninstagram #colors #milliondollarlisting #eastvillagenyc #newyorknewyork #newyork_ig #newyork #newyorkcity

A post shared by EVGB (@rentevgb) on Mar 1, 2018 at 5:03pm PST

Forecast says - sunny days ahead on the 17,000-square-foot sky deck. Rent EVGB now; your summer-self will thank you later. 🌞🌞🌞 #evgb #rentevgb #eastvillage #luxuryrentals #nycrealestate #nyre #realestate #skydeck #rooftop #grilling #sun #views #nycviews #vsco #popart #newyork_ig #luxurylisting #milliondollarlisting #newyork #newyorker #newyorkstyle #colors #classy #sunnydays

A post shared by EVGB (@rentevgb) on Feb 28, 2018 at 2:36pm PST

Move ins at EVGB start in April.

And as previously reported, part of the retail space in this building will house the small-format Target store. Which someone already tagged.


[Photo from Tuesday]

Extell's other new building on the block toward Avenue B is currently accepting applications for middle-income units.

Previously on EV Grieve:
New 7-floor buildings for East 14th Street include 150 residential units

Target offers details about its flexible-format store opening summer 2018 on 14th and A

The disappearing storefronts of East 14th Street

Extell's new development at 524 E. 14th St. launches lottery for 50 affordable units