After 16 years the vinyl-and-stereo shop moved to a larger space at 84 E. 10th St. between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue.
And they are ready to open the doors today with a soft opening starting at noon...
FDNYalerts MAN ALL HANDS 68 2ND AVE, MULTIPLE DWELLING FIRE IN A BASEMENT,
— FDNYalerts (@FDNYAlerts) February 12, 2017
Thanks for all the well wishes. Everybody got out safely and the bar sustained little damage. We should be open sometime soon after the weekend. Check here for updates.
Located in the East Village, Uogashi concentrates almost solely on sushi. Its parent organization, according to the greeter one evening, owns a fish wholesaler and several stand-up sushi counters in Tokyo, which explains how the prices at Uogashi can be so low. Sushi assortments run $38 and $45 for nine pieces of nigiri sushi, soup, salad, and a hand roll, or $75 for a more elaborate omakase.
I’ve eaten there twice, and sampled all three sushi assortments, and the fish and crustaceans are pristine. The $45 Uogashi sushi begins with a tiny salad in a clear glass bowl and progresses to a miso soup bobbing with slender enoki mushrooms. The sushi course came on a single plate on a banana leaf, and the highlights recently were medium fatty tuna, Japanese sea scallop, and river eel, served warm and burnished in the usual way with sweet soy sauce.
What is the biggest challenge of being a distributor?
The biggest challenge a distributor has for limited release films is finding screens. The highest and best use of real estate in New York City is not movie theaters. So there are very few screens and the real estate for screenings is very tight. We have done very well with the current screens, but I wanted my own screens so I could insure that I could play the films that I feel strongly about that might not otherwise find a home. I tried years ago to buy the Walter Reed chain, but that didn’t work out. So in 2014, I acquired the Quad Cinema ... It’s going through massive renovations. It originally had 570 seats, but will open in April with four state-of-the-art screens, with 430 seats each.
C. Mason Wells, the IFC film programmer who Cohen hired to co-run the Quad, tells me that he tracked Cohen down after hearing that he’d bought the theater. “I was so impressed by the scope of what he was doing,” Wells says. “There are so many people who do individual components, but not altogether—distribution, production, restoration and exhibition. That’s something I want to be a part of.” (Former Film Comment editor Gavin Smith was also brought on board to program the cinema.)
What clinched the deal was Cohen’s decision to dedicate one of the Quad’s four screens to classic cinema, which Wells wanted to focus on, and which is often relegated to matinee or midnight screenings at other theaters.
“Finding a fellow fan is great,” Wells says. “At our weekly meetings we’ll start talking about movies and the merits of them even when there’s other stuff on the docket. He watches pretty much everything that comes out and he can rattle off film facts like a human IMDB. It almost turns into a game of, ‘Oh man, I got stumped by Charles again.’”
“I think it’s going to be a game changer,” he says of the Quad. “I think it’s going to be one of the best places to see film in New York. The programmers will create a new standard. It’s what New York is missing.”
As our time together came to a close, I wondered some things aloud.
What would it have that other theaters didn’t?
“They don’t have what I’m looking for,” Cohen says.
But what was he looking for?
“A soul,” he says. “Going to a movie should be more of an event. It should energize you and provoke discussion. It should be a curated experience, there should be someone to welcome you, to provide history, interpretation. It should be a window on the world.” One with a wine bar.