Any common themes emerging so far?
"The thing that I kept running into [were] people saying that there was this golden moment on the street when St Mark's was really itself and reached its full promise on this date and for these five years there was no better place in the entire world. It was the heart of culture — the center for music, art and poetry," she said. "People would describe passionately how it was so vibrant and they were so alive, then it died this horrible death."
For instance, Jack Kerouac biographer Joyce Johnson said that St. Mark's was all over in 1974 when someone flipped a cigarette into her son's stroller.
Another person Calhoun interviewed said that the scene died in 1974. Someone else said that all started in 1974. She also heard that the block reached its peak in 1978. Not to mention 1980. And so on.
"I'm really curious what's going on now. Basically my theory right now, based on doing this book, is that everyone was wrong. Everyone who thought it was dead was wrong," she said. "So people who think it's dead now are probably wrong too. My theory is that people coming out of karaoke bars or yogurt shops ... this is going to be some new wave of culture that we don't know about and won't even know about until it's over."
The East Village Meat Market is joining forces with Veselka on Oct. 31 to host the first-ever Pierogi Tasting Day.
Time: 9 a.m. — 6 p.m.
Location: East Village Meat Market, 139 Second Ave. between St. Mark's Place and East Ninth Street.
• We will be serving pierogies from Veselka, Rosa-Ly Pierogi, Streecha Ukrainian Kitchen and Hunter Cultural Center
• We will be giving out free pierogies ranging from the usual potato-cheese to pumpkin and short ribs.
• All pierogies will also be available for sale
Anyone who comes in can enter their name to win one of 5 raffle prizes…. we will be giving away $10, $20, $30, $40, $50 store gift cards. Winners will be announced following week & notified by email.
Anyone who joins our mailing list that day will receive a 10% off coupon by email to use on their next purchase.
Goody bags for the kids will be given out
Join us for a special Post Halloween performance by THE UNDEAD ! After leaving horrorpunk band The Misfits, Bobby Steele formed the Undead in 1980. They soon became one of the first hardcore punk bands based on the Lower East Side and are still going today! They are releasing a new album "The Morgue the Merrier" next month! Set time: 4 p.m.
Also, for the first time, Seth Tobocman will be showing a slideshow of his radical commix in Tompkins Square Park. The slideshow of political artwork will be projected just after sunset and will be accompanied with live music by Eric Blitz, Zef Noise and Andy Laties.
Sure, this gritty East Village enclave saw its fair share of shenanigans related to drug use and violent crime not terribly long ago, and perhaps that’s one reason why new housing construction here has remained relatively dormant — until now.
Yes, at last, Alphabet City is getting a healthy dose of nice housing, and experts agree the activity there comes hand-in-hand with downtown’s development boom. But it also marks developers’ discovery of the area’s cheaper land and convertible buildings. Combined with buyers’ strong demand for downtown living, this previously overlooked zone is filling up quickly with more upscale new options. (They’re a far cry from the rundown artists’ shacks immortalized in the ’90s hit musical “Rent.”)
Beyond the friendly atmosphere and better prices, sources say Alphabet City’s creative spirit — thanks to a long-standing community of artists — is another lure for house hunters.
“What’s nice about the East Village is that it’s finally becoming residentially amenable to everybody,” says Nest Seekers’ Ryan Serhant — who’s gearing up to launch sales at Magnum Real Estate Group’s 33-unit 100 Ave. A. Meanwhile, Magnum’s president, Ben Shaoul, says the area’s “very cool modern bohemian lifestyle vibe” is a winning factor for buyers.
543.5 East 6th Street consists of two contiguous and inter-connected buildings at the corner of Avenue B and East 6th Street. The buildings comprise five residential apartments and two ground floor commercial units, all free market and all currently leased. The free market residential units are on annual leases and the commercial leases expire on 2020 and 2016.
Additionally, there are approximately 800 square feet of available air rights. Luxury triplex unit with deck and private roof, currently rented at $9,000.00/ month, would make an excellent owner occupied unit. Triplex and one bedroom units could be upgraded to increase rent roll. Roof replaced 1 year ago. New HVAC units in triplex. Triplex decks replaced one year ago. Great opportunity to own a performing asset, or as a live in opportunity with income.
[T]hese five buildings on East Fifth Street received a coordinated visit last Thursday [Oct. 22] by a group of representatives from the New York State Attorney General’s office, The New York City Department of Buildings and The New York State Division of Housing and Renewal. All apartment doors were knocked on, and representatives spoke with available tenants, made inspections of apartment conditions and building conditions and issued violations to the buildings. Perhaps the presence of these state and city agencies will ensure that Toledano’s tenants on East Fifth Street will not have to suffer what those at 444 East 13th St. did.
We are doing our best to have your monthly rent payments processed as soon as possible and apologize for any delay in doing so during this first month of ownership. Moving forward you can be confident that processing of your payments will be timely and accurate. This being said, if you have found that your rent check has not been processed for the month of October 2015 and your bank account has not been debited, please re-send your payment to the below address. We have been informed by USPS that there was a system glitch, which resulted in the return of numerous tenant's rent payments. This was remedied on October 19,2015.
If your payment was processed and thus your account has been debited, no action is required on your part. Please continue to ensure that your check is made payable to the order of
the specific LLC designated to your building.
Name: Robert, who is a little camera shy, with Stellar
Occupation: Hair Stylist
Location: 2nd Street and Avenue A
Time: 5 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 23
I’m from upstate New York originally. I moved to California after graduating from SUNY Binghamton. I went to beauty school and ended up having my own salon. It was great. I had traveled around California and had friends who were living in Monterey. I spent 15 years there. But I became sick of the friggin’ fog.
I came to the city in 1986. My parents were moving back up from Florida. I spent two weeks with friends from California and partied my ass off. Then an apartment I had fell through at the last minute and friends said, oh but so and so knows this place on St. Mark's and 1st, so I ended up there with a couple of roommates.
At that point, I would come to Avenue A, go to Odessa, go to the Pyramid Club to go dancing and stuff, but you couldn’t go into the Park. It was a real mess. But I enjoyed the part of the neighborhood you could walk in. It was friendly. You could actually talk to people and meet people and stuff. There’s a sense of community. It’s changing. There are all these new buildings that to me don’t seem to fit in.
My career went really great in California. After a few years I got a clientele together and had my own salon. I was busy as hell. Then when I moved here, I found a salon to work in on 7th and 23rd. It was called Eclipse. I started dating the hair colorist. Then the salon closed for back taxes. We were able to get clients files. So we ended up sitting on 23rd Street splitting up the files. It was coming up summer and you know how dead the city gets. We were like how are we really going to survive?
I ended up back in California because that was the place where I knew. Only lasted a year there because [my boyfriend] freaked out. I think he expected Florida. In California, he'd stand on the balcony looking out through the fog and say, They called this place fuckin’ beautiful?
So we moved to Orlando. This was back in the 1990s. There were lots of job openings and, of course, the weather was great. We had a pool in the backyard and a two-bedroom house. But you can’t make any money. After doing hair for 20 years I was getting paid like $7.50 an hour. I stayed for two years and had eight jobs. I worked a couple jobs for Disney — for the Epcot Center.
I ended up coming back here. I moved to an apartment on Avenue A near 14th Street. There was a large thunderstorm once when I wasn’t there. I came back and said something’s wrong downstairs. There was black mold from floor to ceiling and all around. And [management] did their half-assed renovation of it. They just took a cloth and washed it and slapped on some paint. I didn’t think it was healthy to continue living there. I tried to get the landlord to check it out, to do something about it. The building manager wouldn’t so I got a local lab. I took a piece and they tested it and it came back with like four pages. It was Stachybotrys plus seven or eight other molds. My landlord was like, You’re just freaking out. I was like, You’re goddam right I’m freaking out.
So it was time to move. And now I'm in an apartment between C and D. It is a safer place in a lot of ways, but, then again, I would say that I don’t think it’s that safe, especially on Avenue D and especially later at night. I was returning home [over the summer] and walking the dog. I went up the steps and I saw the cops who were walking by me and I said, thank you for being out here and walking the beat, because I feel like Avenue D is going downhill and they turned to me and said, the whole neighborhood is going downhill.
In my building, two people have reported junkies walking in during the afternoon … and finding junkies in the hallway shooting up. As you walk down the stairs, there are stairs that lead into the basement. I walked out awhile ago and there was a junkie on the steps. He turned and looked up at me and carried on.
