Previously on EV Grieve:
Joe Jr's has closed
Horus Cafe is usually crowded and poorly ventilated, resulting in thick smoke hanging from the ceiling at all hours. But its East Village location is definitely convenient, as evidenced by the swarms of underclassmen who frequent the hookah joint on East Sixth Street and Avenue A on the weekends. DJs spin Top-40 songs and belly dancers drift about Thursday through Saturday nights, adding spice to an otherwise mellow night out. Sample the Middle Eastern menu while you're at it, and you won't be disappointed.
Lower East Side History Project has joined forces with Fourth Arts Block and the Cooper Square Committee to bring the East Village Visitors Center to the heart of the E.4th Street Cultural District.
[H]e's making quite a statement with his first-ever ad campaign for his lower-priced line T. "The energy was much more appropriate for something like guerrilla marketing than anything too proper or formal," Wang says of the ads which will only grace NYC sidewalks, not the pages of the magazines currently stocked at your local newsstand.
Two gorgeous, self-taught downtown designers with seven young urban kids are set to become Manhattan's next reality-TV stars. Think "Jon & Kate Plus 8" meets "Sex and the City."
Artsy downtown couple Bob and Cortney Novogratz, who gut-renovate dilapidated city buildings and transform them into multimillion-dollar homes, are set to star in "9 by Design," a Bravo reality show premiering April 5 that chronicles their chaotic Manhattan life where real estate is the constant family drama.
Their shenanigans could make Bob and Cortney the latest New Yorkers you love to hate -- with some viewers likely to be outraged by the manic couple's constant uprooting of their kids, and others embracing them as the coolest and most photogenic TV parents since Mrs. Partridge and Billy Ray Cyrus.
Cameras follow the nomadic Novogratz clan -- they've moved more than 15 times within a five-mile radius -- as Bob and Cortney scramble to find a temporary apartment in one day after renting out their mansion at 5 Centre Market Place in SoHo.
They check out a $14,000-a-month East Village rental and briefly consider renting out an old bar where they would bathe their newborn in the urinal. They eventually settle on a two-bedroom apartment where all the kids have to share a 12 x 14 bedroom.
During the eight-episode season, Cortney gives birth, the couple builds their first boutique hotel on the Jersey Shore, and designs a private gym in Hoboken, NJ, a beach house in Amagansett and a townhouse in the East Village.
"We wanted to show off New York City like 'Sex and the City' did," said Bob, 46, who is filmed scooting around SoHo on his Vespa with his pregnant wife on the back of the bike.
"Building in the city is stressful," said Cortney, 38. "People can relate to moving whether they've moved once or as many times as we have. We've lost track of how many times we've moved over the past 17 years." Twice, the family has moved three times in one year.
The chronic flippers live in their homes while renovating, then sell them and move on to their next project.
The family currently lives in a five-bedroom, 8,000-square-foot townhouse at 400 West St., where they've built an indoor basketball court for the kids. But Bob and Cortney are already getting bored; they've listed the property for just under $20 million and are eyeing a move to the East Village.
"The kids may end up in therapy," Bob jokes on the show. Indeed, the couple actually named their fifth child "Five."
The Novogratz kids, Wolfgang, 12; twins Bellamy and Tallulah, 11; Breaker, 9; twins Five and Holleder, 4, and Major, 1, attend three different schools.
It would sound strange that I’d think the biggest loss in the East Village would be a Dunkie’s. But the one on Second Ave. between 10th and 11th was one of the nicest neighborhood amenities ever. Where else could you sit on the sidewalk with free wifi, or at a counter by their picture windows in winter, and look out onto one of the oldest buildings in New York City, St. Mark’s Church (built in 1799, and just imagine everything it has seen grow up around it for over two centuries).