The store opens in September... Meanwhile.
I took
And — woo! Queen Amidala!
... and because someone will bring it up...
Any other thoughts on hot Halloween costumes for 2012?
The city’s stalled bike-sharing program is asking for financial help even before it begins, The Post has learned.
Alta, the company that was supposed to have put 10,000 bicycles on the street starting today, has asked the lead sponsor to accelerate payments of $3.5 million in case the program is delayed until next spring and runs out of cash, sources said.
Slowly shaping up to be one of the more unique productions this year, “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby” has gradually acquired a talented cast fit for its two-film premise — that of a troubled marriage told, in each installment, from the husband and the wife's perspective. A few weeks back Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy were locked in as the couple, and now a slew of new names have come up just as the film heads into shooting.
It is with a heavy heart that I have to announce the closing of Mama’s Food Shop in the East Village, NYC as of last evening. After fifteen years in business (six being under my management) it is finally time to say goodbye. We have had many wonderful years and are forever grateful to all of you for eating with us and making our little place feel so special.
Due to increasing rents and property taxes, and the constant expenses that arise when maintaining an older building, it has become no longer possible to keep our doors open. I have no distain for the landlords in the East Village, for they are put in a precarious position of having an overhead that they too cannot afford.
Sadly, it is the small businesses that suffer from the escalation of the above market commercial rents and property taxes. I now join the ranks of Kate’s Joint, Zaitzeff, Life Café, and Lakeside Lounge; all business that have folded in a neighborhood going through a period of flux.
I look forward to seeing what the East Village becomes (Avenues A-C especially), for at this moment it is a neighborhood that is in the midst of change. Avenue B is a ghost town commercially, the community nature of the neighborhood has all but vanished, and it is over-run every weekend by a generation that has no vested interest in the East Village community except to visit on the weekends.
By no means is this an indictment to the new, younger generation, it is more of an admission that much of the steady business for bars and restaurants has moved to Brooklyn and the high residential rents have stripped the neighborhood of the artistic/cultured feel it used to be known for. Mama’s Food Shop has weathered these changes, including surviving the recession, but as these changes started affecting our business, I realized it was the end of an era.
I feel for those who are opening small businesses in New York City in this day and age. We live in a city where the Health Department has far too much power, the cost of the permits, inspections, and maintenance are so high it is impossible for a Mom & Pop operation to keep up with. I know the city needs to make income, yet I am afraid the ways in which they are doing this is going to cost all of our neighborhoods the character that we look for in this city. I am not against banks or chain restaurants going into neighborhoods, just nervous that this is all that will be left once the small businesses cease to exist.
I am a restaurateur and artist who has lived in and loved New York City for almost twenty years. Luckily, the city and its neighborhoods will always be going through change and I am excited for what is to come both in the East Village and beyond. I will move on, get a full time job, and continue to support the underdog small businesses in and around the city. I simply can’t run one anymore — it’s just too damn hard.
The cemetery’s trustees, descendants of some of the people interred in the vaults — the last burial was in 1937 — have allowed events to be held on the grounds to help pay for badly needed repairs and restorations.
The aim, said Caroline S. DuBois, one of the trustees, was “how we could make the cemetery pay for itself.”
“That has morphed into a business.” The fee for a wedding is $2,500, she said.
The neighborhood’s old grittiness has not disappeared entirely. [Gardener Gresham] Lang said he sometimes found hypodermic needles on the grass. A mulberry tree near the ruined wall is now “the underwear tree” because residents of a homeless shelter nearby “throw underwear, condoms, among other things” into the cemetery.
"I considered carrying mace [after that encounter], but that's absolutely not a common occurrence," Johnston says, adding that she's never been groped or assaulted. "Most people are fairly respectful, at least in terms of my physical space."
"Just as they were putting the finishing touches on 315, there was a flood that apparently did a good amount of water damage on multiple floors to several of their brand new apartments. There were all kinds of cleaning-service vans around ..."
"Douche bag
Your bike is in the basement of 'big bar' because they are very kind. Stop being a dick + locking your bike to our bikes."
"I don't even want this bike back. I just made these flyers to tell you that I hate you, bike thief. I hope you ride my bike without a helmet and get hit by a monster truck. I hope my bike takes you straight to Hell."
I saw a smallish, grey and blue (maybe some purple) budgie or parakeet or little parrot looking bird flying around tompkins square park at about 12:30 today. He was on the fence on the west/north side of the center lawn. When I stuck my hand out he flew away (he can fly pretty well) to the rail on the lawn just west of the center lawn. I tried to get close to him but he wouldn't let me. He was hanging with the wild birds and they weren't attacking him so maybe he'll be ok, but he must belong to someone.
The fire began when a workman's welding instrument ignited a section of the timber cornice, and from there the blaze spread rapidly. "Smoke was pouring out of the hell tower when we arrived," recalls one of the first firefighters on the scene. "I said to myself, 'This ceiling's going to go.' And sure as hell, there was a partial collapse." The rear section of the 50-foot high peaked roof collapsed a half-hour after the fire began.
The 75 firefighters involved with the three-alarm blaze Were faced with many other problems as well. A six-foot iron fence that surrounded the church and a graveyard on one side prevented the companies from utilizing anything but portable equipment. Consequently, a tower ladder had to be employed to spray the front and rear, while the sides of the church remained practically unassailable.
There was also danger of the 150-foot steeple collapsing. "We kept an eye on the steeple'supports," explains John J. Moffatt, the commander in charge of the fire. "If it fell, we would have had a lot of injuries."
The St. Mark’s Church and its yards are just a few reminders of the once vast “bouwerie,” or Dutch plantation, which Peter Stuyvesant, governor of New Amsterdam purchased in 1651 from the Dutch West India Company. When Stuyvesant died in 1672, his body was interred in a vault under the family chapel he’d had built in 1660. In 1793, Stuyvesant’s great-grandson, Petrus Stuyvesant, donated the chapel property to the Episcopal Church with the stipulation that a new chapel be erected and on April 25, 1795, the cornerstone of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery was laid.
Conrad Schnitzler (1937 – 2011) is legendary in the German electronic and avant-garde music scene as a founding member of Tangerine Dream and of Kluster, but his intermedia work from the 60s, 70s and 80s is far less known. On the anniversary of his passing, New Yorkers will have a rare opportunity to see and hear many of his seminal multi-channel concerts and film/video works, most of which have never been screened or performed in the US until now.
THE TOMPKINS SQUARE REBELLION IS ON!!
24th ANNUAL TSP RIOT REUNION!! Commemorate the anniversary of the mini police riot of July 30, 1988, followed a week later by the infamous 6 hour riot inside and outside of Tompkins Square Park on August 6, 1988, in which hundreds of "New York's Finest" from all over the city descended on our neighborhood, indiscriminately clubbing anyone in their sights in furtherance of a non-existent midnight park curfew.
Where: Tompkins Square Park: When: July 29 + August 4 + 5, 2012
These shows celebrate the vitality of the counter cultural scene that has survived on the Lower East Side, despite the rampant gentrification, soaring rents and lost venues that have contributed to the cultural genocide sweeping New York City.
Sunday, July 29:
Blest Mess
Dust Angel
Gas NYC
Nihilistics
Rejuvenate
Iconicide