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Photo yesterday on East Fourth Street by Derek Berg
Ever since my settling on Avenue A in 1971, I have been collecting the neighborhood's history. That gathering is of diverse interest with ephemera and artifacts of all kinds. It includes vintage press photos, flyers, maps, architectural salvage, street signs, etcetera.
One of my favorite finds is this sheet music of 1922 titled "Down On Avenue A." The great cover image in style, fashion and attitude still looks contemporary, timeless.
As now with impending summer the down on Avenue A sidewalk parade has started anew.
Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and Council Member Rosie Mendez today announced the Council will host a “Follow Me Friday” tour of the East Village with local business owners, community members and elected officials on Friday, May 29.
The Follow Me Friday Small Business Crawl will help highlight and promote East Village businesses recovering from the aftermath of the March 26 building explosion ... and will begin with a moment of silence at the site of the explosion on 2nd Avenue and 7th Street. The small business tour will begin at 5:30 PM and will include the following stops:
• Moment of silence for victims of recent explosion (Northwest Corner of 2nd Avenue and East 7th Street)
• Tour of Moishe’s Bake Shop (115 2nd Avenue)
• Tour of New Yorker Market (550 2nd Avenue)
• Tour of Café Mocha (116 2nd Avenue)
• Tour of Bar Virage (118 2nd Avenue)
• Tour of Himalayan Vision (127 2nd Avenue)
• Tour of Enz’s (125 2nd Avenue)
• Tour of Jimmy’s No. 43 (23 East 7th Street)
Those wishing to join the event should RSVP by sending an e-mail here
"John's of 12th Street" is a portrait of a century-old Italian-American restaurant in New York City, one of the last of its kind in a rapidly changing East Village. This observational documentary loosely follows the rhythm of the restaurant’s day, which swings between boredom and frenzy as the old rooms empty and fill, cataloguing the overlooked details of working life and a vanishing facet of New York City.
John's is located at 302 E 12th St. just east of Second Avenue.
Previously on EV Grieve:
Q-and-A with Vanessa McDonnell, director of the John's of 12th Street documentary
Capital One has come up with an alternative to the staid retail bank branch. It will launch a concept in Union Square, at 853 Broadway, on the building's ground, basement and mezzanine levels. The entrance will feature a large café operated by Peet's Coffee. The space upstairs will differ from a typical retail bank branch. Capital One will create a large work lounge, where customers can camp out and use free Wi-Fi.
This site provides an alternative way of browsing the NYPL's incredible Photographic Views of New York City, 1870s-1970s collection. Its goal is to help you discover the history behind the places you see every day.
And, if you're lucky, maybe you'll even discover something about New York's rich past that you never knew before!
Where did these images come from?
The images all come from the New York Public Library's Milstein Collection. While many photographers contributed to the collection, the majority of its images are the work of Percy Loomis Sperr, who documented changes to the city from the late 1920s to the early 1940s.
As with many new projects in neighborhoods that once only supported rentals, 118 East 1st will likely be condos, with its seven units divided over 12,500 square feet of residential space. The average size is a quite hefty 1,800 square feet, with duplexes on the top and bottom and full-floor units in between…
The three buildings destroyed in the March 26 blast—45 East Seventh St. (119 Second Avenue), 121 Second Ave., and 123 Second Ave.—included 15 apartments. Adjacent buildings also sustained damage and many were ordered vacated. While most tenants buildings have reopened, at press time, five apartments at 125 Second Ave. and two at 41 East Seventh St. were still under vacate orders.
Kim-Nora Moses, 52, also lived at 45 East Seventh St. She and her husband, Robert Schmidt, 55, had a three-bedroom rent-stabilized apartment for 23 years, and paid close to $2,000 rent. Moses laments the loss of her gorgeous home, and where she is now pales in comparison. The couple, who had renter's insurance, moved into the same building as Guy this week with help from Cooper Square Committee. Their one-year lease is for a one-bedroom, with a monthly rent of around $800. Lease renewal for the building is dependent on income, and the couple earns too much to stay permanently.
Whatever their rent status, tenants who lost their homes need help. There is some monetary relief on its way to individuals and families affected by the explosion, for housing and material goods. The first installment of $45,000, from the Mayor's Fund to Advance New York City, was released to LES Ready on April 29. More than $150,000 was raised by donation, and LES Ready will disseminate funds based on need.
Some guy asked Brant "Why don't you have your art displayed at your Polo Club?" To which Brant replied, "Because they play polo there."
He invited everybody to come to his foundation in Connecticut to see what he is all about. One woman kvetched that she couldn't get there, is anything closer? He said he has a building in Soho. Well, the guy was trying.
I'm starting to sound too much like I'm defending him.
Again, of all the things that could happen to this building, I think this seems like one of the best things. It will be a private space. Not a lot of people there. Maybe a couple of invite-only openings. I want to believe him. Basically it sounds like a garage to store some of his art.
This year marks the 20th anniversary of Larry Clark’s debut film, KIDS, the portrayal of NYC youth’s escapades in the early 90’s. Some were offended by the raw and anarchic world Larry Clark documented, for those that weren’t, the film became an important document of the time, place and culture.
Through photographing skaters in NYC, Larry Clark came to meet the film’s writer, Harmony Korine and star, Leo Fitzpatrick. The rest of the cast was pieced together with a variety of downtown New York characters including original Supreme team riders Justin Pierce and Harold Hunter. It is a testament to KIDS cultural impact that it resonates today just as much as it did in 1995.
To commemorate the 20th anniversary, Supreme is proud to release a collection of items featuring stills from the iconic film KIDS. The Collection will consist of a Hooded Sweatshirt, Long Sleeved T-Shirt, two graphic T-Shirts, and three Skateboards.
The show, sponsored by Macy’s Inc., will feature fireworks from two additional barges and is moving farther north along the river to give Queens residents a better view. New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio had long sought to return the display to the East River, saying it could be seen by more New Yorkers.
Last year, Mr. de Blasio moved the Independence Day celebration back to the East River after it had been displayed over the Hudson River since 2009.
The fireworks will launch from one double-wide barge south of the Brooklyn Bridge and four barges between 23rd and 37th Streets. The 25-minute show is scheduled to begin at about 9:20 p.m. on July 4 and fire 40,000 pyrotechnic shells into the sky.
Name: Robert Shapiro
Occupation: Founder & Director, Social Tees Animal Rescue
Location: 5th Street, between First Avenue and Second Avenue
Time: 6 p.m. on Monday, May 18
I was born in Woodside, Queens, in the mid 1950s but my parents moved to Howard Beach – the citadel of racism, Selma of the north — when I was young. Howard Beach was really Howard Beach man.
I got really lucky. I had a wonderful art teacher when I was in junior high school and he encouraged me to take the test to go to High School of Art & Design. So I went and I met all these city kids and I realized how vapid my existence was. I swear to you, I cried. I remember my father consoling me when I was a kid. I was really upset then. All these other kids were cool and they knew things and culture and going out and my parents never left the house. They were hardworking, blue-collar people.
It takes a certain type of person to have an ego that makes you want to leave your home. I had a lot of teenage angst then. I left home at 17 just to move to the city. I really liked it. I got a job at a department store in the pet department while I lived with my parents. I met this guy who was also this struggling artist. He rented me this little tiny room in his basement that I was able to afford and I could still commute to high school. That was it. I never moved back.
I’ve always loved animals since I was a child. I used to go to the Staten Island Zoo all the time because they had a lot of reptiles. I would also pet Leo, the lion that they used to have there. I used to lean over the rail and he would kind of come up to me. I was always afraid, but he started purring one day, so I started really getting into petting him. I used to cut school all the freaking time to go to the zoo and pet this lion. Petting a lion in the middle of New York? He would purr and he was great and he would lick me, zero fear. Then I got a girlfriend. Next year, I came back to see him ... and I went up to him and he almost killed me. And she never believed any of the stories about me petting the lion.
I still work with animals, but [animal rescue] is a privilege. You can’t just start a rescue unless you are retired from doing something that made some kind of money, because it costs a fortune. So Social Tees was a t-shirt fundraising company. We raised money for human rights organizations all over the country. Schools would sell my shirts. The kids would sell the t-shirts through a catalogue that we would provide. The schools got paid in advance, they sold the shirts retail, they paid us wholesale.
I write a little bit and when I first started making t-shirts, my first line had a terrible name — it was called Global-uh-wareness, and it was all information on these t-shirts about the environment. It was... really cool. It didn’t sell. Nobody cared about it.
Then one night I’m walking down 6th Street, right between 2nd Avenue and 3rd Avenue. I don’t dress to impress but I don’t look like a slob. I was clean-shaven and I’m alone and a woman sees me. She’s not really paying attention and she sees me, clutches her purse, and crosses the street. I thought, ‘that’s a pretty smart thing to do. I don’t have any problem with that.’ I wasn’t offended at all, but then I realized, if I was black, I would have been really hurt. Even though she did it because I was a guy, I thought, man that must suck.
So I made three t-shirts that month. The first shirt said, ‘No, white lady, I don’t want your purse,’ which became, you would not believe how popular this shirt became. Spike Lee bought them for his stores and sold them all over the world. It was crazy. That’s when Social Tees started.
My shirts were humorous even though they were a little bit confrontational. I realized that I could make shirts about things I really cared about, and that’s when Social Tees really happened. From 1991 until around 1998, my whole life was business. It’s funny, when you’re a certain age and you start something, you’re hungry. There were things I cared about, like I would do street fairs and promote my stuff. I would do conventions all over the country where there were school conferences. I would travel by myself with everything. I was hungry.
But I gave it all up. All of a sudden my great idea became not such a great idea. I was selling thousands of shirts a day all over the country. I mean, I had thousands of salespeople selling my shirts, right? Great idea, right? There was this one day where I had to leave my little shop, which was on Bleecker Street, and hire a staff and then trucking and the art department. I needed to expand to make even more money. I was never meant to be a businessperson.
So instead of selling the business like a normal person would, I just gave it up. All that was happening is that everyday I would go to work and I would make more money and I would put the money in the bank and then I would wake up the next day and make more money. I’m not going to live forever, how much money do you need? Money’s great, don’t get me wrong ... It’s so great to be over that. I was miserable even though I had this successful business plan that worked.
That’s what I mean by it’s a privilege to start the rescue. That happened organically. I remember I was with a bunch of friends in Chinatown. We were walking back from a great Vietnamese restaurant called Pho Pasteur on Baxter Street. I see this gleaming dumpster in Chinatown. What were sparkling were literally a million baby turtles. What they do is they buy the babies illegally by the millions for maybe a penny each and sell them for $10. They still do it. Most of the turtles die because they keep them in water and you can’t keep water turtles in water all of the time. They don’t feed them either. They just sell whatever they can and they dump the rest. A whole dumpster, if you can imagine, of turtles the size of a half dollar and smaller.
I took my t-shirt off and I spent like an hour and I found 35 out of these million baby turtles and I put them back in against my body because they were freezing. I took them home and rehabbed them. I think 34 of them lived. Then I was stuck with 34 turtles that were stinking up my apartment like you couldn’t believe.
So I found this guy who worked for the New York Turtle and Tortoise Society — yes there is one — and he was able to find a qualified place for these turtles to go. He ended up moving to Tennessee and I ended up taking his job of picking up turtles and other reptiles from the city and other reptiles — found, lost, abandoned, whatever — from Animal Control, where the dogs and cats are.
I used to pick up a snake here, a lizard here, then all of a sudden I’m seeing this line of animals being euthanized. So I started taking the dogs and cats home. That’s how it started. I didn’t know what I was doing. Now I’m fully licensed and I have all my documentation, but then I was like, take a puppy and take him home. I was learning on the fly. I had never even owned a dog until I did rescue.
That was the late 1990s but I didn’t start doing majority rescue until after 9/11. I took over someone’s lease and all of a sudden I went from having a shop that was one little room to seven big rooms. Now I have this little space and something miraculous happened because of all these amazing people who work for me. They turned it into a virtual shelter. It’s all done digitally. We have a crew who processes applications, and if someone is approved they get to meet the dogs here, but none of the dogs are kept here overnight. I get to do way more rescue.
People say, ‘How can you have freaking exotic animals like that? How can you have an owl in your shop?’ I say, ‘How can you buy cocaine so easily? How can you buy an Uzi?’ In the black market, animals are third, after drugs and arms. We had a baboon once; it was a baby. We had a mountain lion, which was the friendliest thing, in a giant dog crate and it was just rolling over purring. It was going to a rescue upstate with a guy who did wolves and mountain lions. That was the guy with the baboon. The baboons ride the wolves. The guy’s crazy. He looks like Clint Eastwood. I think he has alligators in his living room in a big pool and he swims with them. We’ve had anacondas, alligators and crocodiles. When you’re in New York, you get some crazy animals. Anything you can fit in that door will end up there.
“Spaces of this size are rarely available in this market, and it’s a great opportunity for a supermarket, a big-box concept, quick-service restaurant, specialty retailer or other service provider to establish a presence on the bustling East 14th corridor, which is widely known for its variety of shopping, restaurants, services and nightlife. We expect to see a lot of interest for these opportunities …"
I live directly behind demolition on 13th street. The other day I was approached by a pollster for fairway market asking me a bevy of questions about my thoughts on a new fairway on the corner of 14th and Ave A.
Walter is always soft spoken, listens intently, and smiles with warmth. Pilar, on the other hand, fills up the narrow shop with her laughter and straightforward banter. The pair first met when Pilar was 16 and Walter was 21. Although her parents didn't approve of Walter, she waited five years for him. It was during that lull that Walter came to the United States to work. He returned to Lima, married Pilar, got her a visa and they've been together ever since.
It's finally a reality. Outdoor seating @hearthrestaurant #twoyearsinthemaking
A photo posted by Marco Canora (@marcocanora) on
I'm seeing these pink flags all over East River Park. Near the running track and the baseball field. I'm wondering if you have any information on what they are and if it's safe to walk your dog through here?