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EVG contributor Stacie Joy was out early on Avenue A and Avenue B last evening … and captured a little of the color and pageantry of Halloween (in most cases!)…
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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. No one who works at John’s is actually Italian, but some have been here for 40 years, including two pairs of brothers and a father and son. JOHN’S OF 12TH STREET catalogues the overlooked details of working life and a vanishing New York City.
The film debuts on Nov. 12 at Spectacle in Williamsburg. Details here.
Previously on EV Grieve:
About the new ownership for 105-year-old East Village institution John's of 12th Street
Report: Deal for East Village treasure John's of 12th Street is off
Out and About in the East Village with Nick Sitnycky Part 1 and Part 2
Are there no NYC songwriters or musicians who could write a song and be a face representing the city? There is no talent in NYC? What is the message to struggling or successful artists? Where are our politicians on this corporate insult to NYC talent? Where are the agencies that represent NYC talent? What is the message to struggling or successful artists? What is the message to the average NY'er? Tell me DeBlasio is different from Bloomberg. It is one thing to make NYC into a corporate mall filled with cookie cutter corporate businesses, but now we have an individual with almost no relationship to NYC as the face and voice representing the city. It is like we have lost our mind?
It showed up about two weeks ago on East Fifth Street near Avenue C. It's not attached to the car in front of it.
It was the subject of a hive of activity when it first arrived. Mechanical repairs, etc.
And now it has become a seemingly permanent fixture on the street. Carefully and tenderly moved according to alternate side parking schedules.
Passersby can't seem to resist sitting on it. I guess I'm having aquatic fantasies. I think the jet ski itself might be sentient.
Name: Gigi Watson
Occupation: Writer, Artist, Cartoonist, Former Club Worker and Owner
Location: 3rd Street between 1st and A.
Time: 1:30 pm on Friday, Oct. 24.
I’m a native New Yorker. I grew up in Ridgewood, on the border between Brooklyn and Queens, which now they can’t decide whether it’s Brooklyn or Queens. It was basically a German, Italian and Jewish neighborhood. The first thing you asked when you met another kid was what was your nationality.
There were places that we didn’t go. Bed Stuy and Red Hook, these were not places to go. In Red Hook, they used to find a dead body every single day. My train was the L, which used to be a horrible, horrible train. The L train connected with the G train, which was murder central. If someone paid me a million dollars in cash and said, ‘Here, get on the G train’, I’d say, ‘No thank you.’
My first apartment in Manhattan was a sublet on Christopher Street in the West Village. I moved in 1979. I then moved to the East Village in 1982, on 2nd Street between A and B. You had to have two or three jobs at the same time just to survive. That’s being a real New Yorker. My rent was so expensive. If I didn’t have two jobs, there would be no way I could cut that rent.
The first club I worked at was Bonds International Casino on Broadway and 45th Street. I was working behind the scenes in the office with guest lists, counting money. We had Blondie, The Clash, Blue Oyster Cult, Motley Crue, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, who sucked. We had all kinds of punk rock bands. That’s where I developed a fear of crowds because the owner, John Addison, sold double the amount of tickets. We had 2,500-seat capacity and he sold 5,000 tickets per performance, and everybody showed up and was hammering on the door, ‘We want the show, we want the show.’ That place was fabulous.
[After Bonds] I worked at an after hours, where I worked the door. Cocaine was fantastic in the 1980s. That went right along with being at the front door. ‘Here, thanks a lot for letting me in,’ and I’d get a gram in my hand. That meant thank you. The stars I met — Nick Nolte, Grace Jones, Robin Williams, Paul McCartney. The list goes on and goes. Cause they would want to party late too.
I first worked in the cashier booth in Crisco [Disco], which is a famous haunt. We must have taken in at least between $8,000 and $10,000 on a Saturday night. It was a lucrative place.
After that I worked at Page 6. I was working the VIP room one month. Liza Minnelli was there snorting her brains out. Rick James comes in and puts a pile of coke on the table. All of a sudden you hear, ‘Freeze.’ So Rick James gets up, ‘Oh, I ain’t going to be arrested, I gotta get out of here, how do I get out?’ I said, ‘Mr. James there’s only one way out and that’s the way you came in.’ He walked out without a problem. It was the people that worked there that got busted because they didn’t have a liquor license.
After that I opened up my club, Trash. I was working at the time at Club 82, which was another after hours on 4th, and the manager there, John Matos said said to me, ‘Gi, why don’t you start your own club? How much do you need?’ We went shopping for furniture and I got all the stuff. I wanted neat 1960s furniture that was gaudy and cool looking. I wanted to do all the murals inside the club. I made the VIP room. I painted a big huge spider web so when you walked in, it was spinning. They would look up and sway from side to side. It was a cool place to be.
But that didn’t last very long because all the people who were great to look at had no money. Punk rockers do not have any money. Nobody had fucking money. Nobody had money for rent, forget about anything else.
Then one day a Hells Angel — this big Angel came in and went up to somebody at the bar and said, ‘Hey faggot’ and pushed him on the shoulder. The guy was a really cool looking punk rock guy and he was intimidated. Once the Angels come in, then it’s their club, and then it’s no longer my club or Trash. One brought many. Nobody would go there anymore. They were too afraid to go through the door. So that’s how Trash ended. That was about the time that punk rock itself was sort of waning.
Punk rock to me means anti-establishment. Punks saw that people conformed all over the place. It’s somebody with real talent to be unique and wild and out there. People used to come and sketch what I was wearing. The more beat up it is the better. They now have distressed leather. What fucking distressed? If you keep it on long enough, believe me it’ll become distressed. I always wanted to look different. I don’t want to look like anybody else. I want to look like me.
Town & Village Synagogue is a community and a building.
We are an active, egalitarian Conservative Jewish congregation serving Lower Manhattan with pride. We recognize the LPC’s designation of our building and honor the work that has been done by both the Bloomberg and the DiBlasio administrations to carefully review and deliberate on our status. Their decision is a testament to our building’s rich immigrant history in NYC.
Our commitment remains: to serve the 400 families who are the core of T&V and to support the greater community of which we are a part. We look to the men and women who championed Landmark designation to continue their loving support of Town & Village Synagogue. May we work together to strengthen this building so that it will be a beacon of spirituality, a center of Jewish learning and a jewel on 14th Street for current and future generations of New Yorkers.
"It's wonderful that after nearly half a century, this venerable piece of our city and our neighborhood’s history will finally receive the recognition and protection it deserves and which we fought so hard for.
"We are disappointed that the Landmarks Preservation Commission excluded [the rear structure] from the designation and believe that their doing so was unnecessary. The Commission could have landmarked the entire site and still allowed construction in the rear, but with designation of the entire site they would have ensured that any new construction did not detract from the valuable historic character of this 150 year old religious edifice."
Please join the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Two Boots and Apple Bank to unveil a historic plaque marking the site of the Fillmore East, the beloved concert hall that filled the corner of Second Avenue and East Sixth Street with music from 1968-1971. The event will include appearances by guitarist Lenny Kaye and Joshua White, founder of the Joshua Light Show, which splashed the concert hall with psychedelic color.
Despite its brief life, the Fillmore East is remembered with tremendous affection by both the artists who played there and the concertgoers who enjoyed it, as a place of warmth, spirit, innovation and the finest popular music. The great impresario Bill Graham opened the hall as a sibling to his Fillmore West in San Francisco, and brought in performers including The Doors, B.B. King, Roberta Flack, The Byrds, Richie Havens, Taj Mahal, Jefferson Airplane, Pink Floyd, Joan Baez, Jeff Beck, the Staple Singers, and many more.
The building was a destination for entertainment both before and after the Fillmore East. It opened in 1926 as a Yiddish theater, soon becoming the Loew’s Commodore movie house, followed by the Village Theater. In the 1980s it was the trendsetting gay nightclub The Saint, becoming Emigrant Bank in 1995, and Apple Bank in 2013. While the façade retains much of its original Medieval Revival style, the rear of the building, which housed the auditorium, was demolished and replaced by the Fillmore apartment building in 1997.
This Halloween, Exit 9 is going insane! Gore-hungry East Village tricksters (and their parents) can feast their eyes on spine-tingling scenes of medical malpractice. Exit 9 will transform its front windows into a grisly operating theater. See actual surgery performed on unwilling victims! You're going to be sick. Bring your own barf bag and get special treats.
From 6:30 to 8:30 pm, whether they want to or not, pedestrians passing the store (located at 51 Avenue A between 3rd and 4th Streets) will bear witness as a demented doctor loses his patience as he loses his patients.
The repair industry has changed a lot over the last few years and having the storefront no longer makes sense. We want to thank our customers and neighbors for the years of friendship and support. We enjoyed every minute.
We are no longer accepting computers for repair in the shop. The last day the shop will be open is October 31st, 2014. Any in-process repairs will be completed, all service warranties will be honored.
If you have a computer in the shop, it must be picked up by October 31st, 2014. We will not be able to store computers beyond that date.
Today, we and the NYC Department of Transportation announced some big changes. Our parent company has new owners, and they have named Jay Walder, a leader with a deep passion for urban transportation, as the new CEO of Alta Bicycle Share.
There is also big news for Citi Bike. Our system will double in size by 2017. New neighborhoods will be added to our system beginning in 2015. By the end of 2017 we will have 6,000 additional bikes and over 375 new stations. The first new stations will be installed in northern Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Long Island City and further into Bedford-Stuyvesant, all neighborhoods originally planned to be part of Citi Bike’s initial deployment. If you would like to suggest a new location for Citi Bike stations, visit the Department of Transportations’s “Suggest A Station” siting portal here.
NYC Bike Share will use this winter season to overhaul the entire fleet of bikes and service docks and kiosks, ensuring that Citi Bike is ready to roll come spring. We will work closely with the team at Alta Bicycle Share to improve our operations and the technology that powers bike share.
Finally, we will be changing Citi Bike’s membership plans. Our Annual Membership rate will change to $149/year. This means a full year of unlimited Citi Bike rides will cost just a bit more than one monthly MetroCard.
At this time, you may still sign up for a new membership or renew an existing subscription at the current $95 rate. We will let you know in the coming days when the rates will increase.