Photo today on Second Avenue by Allen Semanco...
Friday, December 18, 2020
Lovewild Design debuts on Avenue C
Yesterday, Sierra debuted Lovewild Design at 136 Avenue C between Eighth Street and Ninth Street.
The sustainable gift shop first opened in South Williamsburg in June 2017. However, her heart was always here. The Brooklyn outpost will close after Dec. 24.
In the early 1990s, her parents ran Wandering Dragon Trading Co., the antiques and oddities store on 10th Street between Avenue A and First Avenue ... it was an offbeat shop where some of the neighborhood's more eccentric characters could be found.
In the (now-retired) EVG feature Out and About in the East Village in June 2017, Sierra talked about the influence of the shop on her life ... and her aspirations for running her own business here:
My dream would have definitely been to open my shop up over here but that wasn't possible due to the rents. It just seemed like an inevitable path. I grew up as an entrepreneur, and my parents and my grandmother were entrepreneurs. I used to take things, just find random things outside or in the shop, and I would fix them up and sell them right outside the shop, and then I had a shoeshine business, and then I sold milkshakes, and this was all before the age of 6.Lovewild Design is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.-ish every day. Follow the shop on Instagram for updates.
Image via Instagram
A new look (and name!) for the East Village Neighbors Fridge
There's a new name for the endeavor — East Village Neighbors Fridge ... as well as a new logo, with colors selected to match those at S'MAC.
The fridge's motto is "take what you need, leave what you can," and is made possible by S’MAC, Change Food and East Village Neighbors.
The fridge and food pantry for dry goods is open 24 hours a day for anyone who needs a meal ... it is restocked as needed, which is often. Local businesses and residents continue to make donations...
If you’d like to donate homemade food, they ask that it be clearly labeled, dated, and individually wrapped. East Village Neighbors are also accepting donations via this link.
A holiday market this weekend at the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space on Avenue C
Stacie Joy took these photos during a trip to MoRUS this past weekend...
The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space is at 155 Avenue C between Ninth Street and 10th Street.
Thursday, December 17, 2020
Thursday's parting shots
Sanitation worker spares snowman's life on 7th Street!
This afternoon, Goggla spotted a city snow plow making its way along the block:
I watched the snow plow head down the block and fully expected it to wipe out the snowman and was prepared to witness its death. To my surprise, the plow swerved out of the way and you can hear the sanitation worker shout, "Gotta save the snowman, y'know!"
Watch for yourself...
Grant Shaffer's NY See
Here's the latest NY See panel, East Village-based illustrator Grant Shaffer's observational sketch diary of things that he sees and hears around the neighborhood and NYC...
2 scenes from Winter Storm Gail in black and white
The top photo is looking south on Broadway at 14th Street, 2:24 a.m. Long exposure, low angle, shot from the street.
And below, the Alamo at Astor Place, 2:36 a.m. ... (click on the images to go big!)...
The snowpeople of 7th Street
A post-storm look at East Village curbside dining
In a snow alert situation, restaurants are required to secure their furniture, remove electric heaters from the road, and remove overhead coverings, if possible. Restaurants don’t, however, need to remove any structures or barriers this time around.It's possible that restaurants will be able to resume roadside dining this evening at the earliest.
The city recently imposed more guidelines on restaurants, such as requiring that streetside barriers being filled with 10,000 to 20,000 pounds of sand or soil.
And the structures, many of them quite elaborate, looked to have made it through Winter Storm Gale...
... and even some of the less-sturdy-looking structures along St. Mark's Place between Second Avenue and Third Avenue seemed to fare OK...
The next question is whether NYC bars-restaurants will be able to survive winter with a ban on indoor dining, reluctance on behalf of patrons to eat outside in cold weather and other ever-changing restrictions that will make staying open extremely difficult, owners and operators have said.
Restaurant industry officials point to the state's own data showing that restaurants and bars made up 1.4 percent of COVID-19 cases in the last three months, compared to private gatherings, which constituted nearly 74 percent.
11 p.m. in the East Village, and scenes from Winter Storm Gail
Forecasts for final snow totals range from 8-12 inches to a Jake Gyllenhaal/"The Day After Tomorrow"-type event ... we'll have more on the particulars in one of the 78 upcoming snow posts this morning.
Meanwhile, EVG contributor Stacie Joy shared these photos from a stroll around the neighborhood last night at 11...
... and in Tompkins Square Park...
Report of a small fire inside the empty P.S. 64 building on 9th Street
The fire was said to be contained to the southeast wing. No word on the cause, such as if a squatter was inside the former school.
EVG reader Alta Tseng
shared the top photo and this video clip...
Developer Gregg Singer, who bought the property from the city during an auction in 1998, has wanted to turn the building into a dorm called University Square. The DOB continues to maintain a Stop Work Order — dating to August 2015 — on the property.
In years past several local elected officials, community activists and residents have asked for the return of the building for community use. The building became the Charas/El Bohio Community Center after the school left in 1977. The group was eventually evicted when Singer took over as the landlord. It has sat empty these past 20-plus years, causing locals to be concerned about its crumbling façade.
H/T Eden and Steven!
Wednesday, December 16, 2020
And we're off...
Gallery Watch: In the Woods by Sally Saul at Rachel Uffner Gallery
Text and photos by Clare Gemima
Rachel Uffner Gallery, 170 Suffolk St.
In the Woods showcases a packed room and a half of new ceramic sculptures created with a sense of humor, anxiety and down-to-earthness from Sally Saul in her second solo show at Rachel Uffner Gallery.
The array of sculptures within the space play and interact with our senses of familiarity and comfort while also introducing us to a "new normal." A new struggle, a new challenge, a new moment and a new movement. This show forces us to understand that one way to deal with this shitshow of a pandemic is well, to embrace it. (While wearing a mask, please).
During the last several months of living amidst the coronavirus and its subsequent social sorrows, Saul (married to the incredible Peter Saul) reflects on this confusing but unavoidable new world through her detailed expressions and use of finer details as a ceramicist. The work to me almost felt like a personal chronicling of the artists' time in lockdown, a documentation of pandemic experiences and a tribute to the American lives lost.
Sally Saul consistently incorporates the everyday into her sculptural practice, and this time is no different. At In the Woods, we get to surround ourselves with her forest of birds, flowers and the natural world too, which we can understand as her refuge over the course of this work being created.
Taking time to find enjoyment in the smaller pleasures, Saul's sculpture garden at Rachel Uffner Gallery remains light-hearted but is also question-provoking owing to its sophisticated documentative style.
Will artists who are alive in 2020 continue to make reference to the pandemic we currently occupy? Will self-portraits include protective gear as political or apolitical symbolism? What sort of art history are we forming or moving away from?
But forgetting about all of the more serious stuff, the works bulky form and playful undertones are also cause for a much deserved and maybe overdue giggle. This show has all of the right ingredients in it to make you forget about the weight of the world ... just for a moment.
In the Woods is showing at Rachel Uffner Gallery until Jan. 30.
Clare Gemima is a visual artist from New Zealand. New-ish to the East Village, she spends her time as an artist assistant and gallery go-er, hungry to explore what's happening in her local art world. You can find her work here: claregemima.com
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