Stocking stuffers for St. Brigid's?

Hmm, is that big enough to hold $20 million? On Avenue B and Eighth Street at the entrance to the St. Brigid's renovation.

Actually, we're still infuriated

Daily Candy checks in today with their take on the new Cooper Square Hotel (aka, "Dildo of Darkness"):

Cooped Up
The Cooper Square Hotel Opens

You can hate your neighbors only until you realize you love them.

So it was with The Cooper Square Hotel, which infuriated the testy East Village. Then came the post-construction reveal: Damn, this is one fine-looking, well-mannered new kid on the block.

An intriguing, modern glass tower, The Cooper has enough outdoor garden space to make you think the 6 train added a stop in L.A. The beautiful library off the lobby has a fireplace, bookshelves filled with eclectic volumes from Housing Works, and an honor bar for everyone. (Yes, even off-the-street riffraff like us.) Govind Armstrong’s long-awaited Table 8 outpost will open in February.

Overnight guests (yippee, no more fleabag St. Mark’s hotels!) won’t want to leave, what with the indie movies in the minibar, Red Flower amenities, three bathrobes, and insane city views.

It’s enough to inspire a block party.

Happy holidays from the state comptroller! (And MTA!)

The Post reports today:

It keeps getting worse.

State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli warned yesterday that the city faces budget gaps of $3.5 billion and $8 billion in the next two fiscal years -- far higher than previous forecasts.

That's a sharp increase from the $1.3 billion and $5 billion deficits Mayor Bloomberg projected last month in his budget plan for the 2010 and 2011 fiscal years. It even surpasses the state Financial Control Board's dire figures that came out just five days ago and put the city's budget gaps at $2.3 billion and $6.4 billion.

Meanwhile, subway and bus fare will probably increase to $3 next year!

Now let's go out and spend some money!

Good seats still available! Cheap!

Spotted on the subway platform on 14th Street and Eighth Avenue several weeks after the play closed. (And only after eight performances....)

Noted

Thanks to the tipster who pointed out an item that I had missed Friday: American Apparel is laying off hundreds of employees. We linked to a piece a few weeks back that claimed American Apparel was hiring.

Meanwhile! I didn't realize AA had vans. Do they deliver?

Adult Swim doesn't care for your vandalism, really, really, REALLY wants you to watch stupid King of the Hill

We continue to monitor what will likely be the most important news story of the year, if not our lifetime. As you read here exclusively last week, Bobby Hill was, at first, orphaned and maimed on the wall outside the Tile Bar. Then the satanic cult took Bobby's head and legs.

Anyway! Thanks to the tipster who reported yesterday that a NEW set of Hills were back at Seventh Street and First Avenue. Wow. Does Adult Swim have a Hill Swat Team who works OT on weekends...? Is there a warehouse full of Hanks and Peggys and Bobbys ready for such an emergency?




Oh, also noticed the ad on Lafayette and Great Jones.

Fall from Grace

I was curious how much longer the inspirational message would stay up at the Grace and Hope Mission at 114 Third Ave. near 14th Street. Workers have been pounding away at this place in recents weeks....



to turn it into a barf factory. It's now revealed.



UPDATED: As a commenter notes: I don't think this spot is going to be a Mitchell Banchik bar anymore. I belive this is where Robin Raj (the deli on the corner is relocating too).... The Robin Raj people told me they are moving here sometime between Christmas and New Years.

Jeremiah has some history on the Grace and Hope Mission here. By the way, even though the place shuttered in the fall of 2007, the Grace and Hope Mission's Web site is still up and running.

Noted

Took this shot at 13th Street and Fifth Avenue last night.

An incentive to walk

With subway and bus fares going up to like $25 a ride next year, the Post asked some advertising execs for ideas to raise revenue for the city's mass transit system.

Among their 10 ideas:

Free sample with your bag check? Marketers could pay the MTA and NYPD to slip product samples in your bag at any number of security checkpoints. The freebies might even take the sting out of the inconvenient search.

Rat-vertising: There is a veritable army of vermin "brand ambassadors" running through the subway tunnels. Put them to work for your brand!

Vanity metro cards: The best way to express yourself on the subway short of using a can of spray paint. Similar to custom postage stamps, you pay extra to pick out and order your custom card online.

Exclusive: It's really fucking cold out

EV Grieve's last-minute gift guide

At Avenue B and Fourth Street.

Articles that I didn't get around to reading

A Very Trump Christmas: At home for the holidays with Donald Jr. and family

Unsilent Night 2008

Last Saturday, composer Phil Kline did his latest "outdoor ambient music piece" ... New York magazine's Jonah Green was there for the Unsilent Night trip from Washington Square Park to Tompkins Square Park:

Ho, ho, ho

At Ricky's on 14th Street near Union Square.

Slipriani

With the snow/sleet/rain/shit coming down this morning, walking and driving were treacherous. Just ask the driver of this Cipriani truck, which ended up on its side on Second Avenue at 11th Street this morning around 8. This huge tow truck came along and pulled the Cipriani truck back upright. No word whether any Carpacio Alla Cipriana was damaged during the spill.

More Boss Hog

My photos from the Boss Hog show Wednesday night were pretty so-so. Luckily Gabi Porter was there from Prefix for some shots of Boss Hog and the crowd...but not me.



Here's one other shot from the EV Grieve camera:

I smell dead people

I've had some horrible neighbors...nothing quite like this, though. As the Post reports:

It smells like something at 201 E. 19th St., and it sure isn't Christmas.
The Missionary Sisters of Sacred Heart are suing two tenants in the Gramercy building who they say are creating an ungodly stench that's making their neighbors sick.
Gloria and Michael Lim have "caused noxious, foul and harmful odors to emanate from the [apartment] into the common areas of the subject building as well into other apartments," the nuns' suit says.
"The smells emanating from the subject premises are so horrible and potentially dangerous to the life, health and safety of the tenants" that "on one occasion the Fire Department . . . had to be called."
The odor on that occasion from the apartment was so awful that building workers had become "seriously concerned that the smell was the result of someone having died in their apartment and began ringing certain tenants who live alone to check in on them," the filing says.
When all those people were determined to be still kicking, the concerned firefighters zeroed in on the Lims' apartment, convinced the dead-person smell was coming from there.
They pounded on the door and when they got no answer, they started to break it down, the suit says. Gloria Lim eventually came to the door and asked what the "commotion" was, the suit says.
The firefighters entered the apartment, and Lim told them she was "smoking and drying fish."
When asked by The Post what caused the odors -- which court papers likened to "vomit or rotting meat" -- she only said: "I cook dried fish."

Ugh. The worst thing my neighbor does is play the one disco-y CD he owns over and over....

Never saw this one coming....

"Merry Christmas Baby" by the Ramones.

Spotted: First Raise Plow sign of the season

At 13th Street and Avenue B.

Exclusive: It's still snowing

And I've always noticed that people are especially nice during the first real snowfall of the season...five strangers smiled and said hello to me while I was walking through Tompkins Square Park.

Satanists behead Bobby Hill, warn of future violence against chubby Texans*

Uh-oh! Since our previous post, there has been further desecration of the Hill family. Poor Bobby. No legs. No head. Shall we call him Bob?



Who is taking responsibility?



The happy family just last week!


[Bottom photo via Chet Chat with Chet]

* OK, that last part isn't true.

New service preys on your fears, stupidity

Spotted at Seventh Street and Avenue A.

Good samaritans nab alleged asthmatic iPhone thief

From the Post:

Three good Samaritans chased down a cowardly thug after he beat and tried to mug a woman in front of a trendy Manhattan bar, cops said yesterday.

Kester Robinson, 23, was allegedly trying to steal the 33-year-old victim's iPhone and purse at around 8:15 p.m. Tuesday near Mama's Bar on Avenue B in the East Village, sources said.

"I opened the door and he just took off and I ran after him," said Robert Hart, the bartender and part owner.

Customers Brian Bielemeier and Jude Campbell joined the chase, tailing Robinson for several blocks until the suspect ran out of steam.

"As soon as I grabbed him, he started crying and said, 'Don't call police,' and 'Let go, I have asthma,' " Bielemeier told The Post.

Robinson, who lives in The Bronx, was charged with attempted robbery and faces up to seven years if convicted.

About this time last year

Page Six ran the following item:

December 20, 2007 -- It may be the final nail in the shared coffin of East Village dive bars. Two longstanding holes-in-the-wall, Sophie's on East Fifth Street and its sister spot, Mona's on Avenue B, are up for sale. "The neighborhood has changed so much," co-owner Bob Corton told Page Six. "I love both bars, but they're dinosaurs now." Corton plans to sell the low-lit saloons after the holidays. He has run Sophie's, which adopted its name from its original owner, the late Sophie Polny, since 1986. He opened Mona's in '89. Corton assured us he'll stay in the neighborhood but couldn't predict the future of his beloved drink tanks: "Once the places are sold, what happens to them is really out of my hands."

Sure, we had heard rumors that the bars might be for sale, but it didn't seem like a reality until it appeared in print. (How this ended up in print may be fodder for another post another day.)

So what started back in December 2007 on a drunken, lonely night (always a good combination for doing something stupid, like starting a blog! Plus, actually, it was the middle of the afternoon!) seemed like a temporary thing. At first I'd just collect different news items on the possible sale of the bars. (It wasn't to be gossipy or anything, like, "Melvin wore the same pants again today and drank 17 pints of Yuengling...") Then I thought it could evolve into this project we could all be part of...making little films about the people, etc., who've made Sophie's what it is. Post photos. Chronicling the (possible) end of days. It would be a document capturing a special time and place.

Well, before I ever really figured what to do with the site or told anyone about it, it looked as if the bars were staying in the family. So I retired the site on that positive note.

Right-o! Then, on Feb. 6, Jeremiah Moss, who had been supportive of whatever I had been doing, left a comment encouraging me to continue, to turn my attention to other things in the neighborhood.

Jeremiah Moss said...
hey grieve, whether or not sophie's goes, i hope you'll continue to blog about stuff in our neighborhood. there's plenty of bloggable material to go around!

Phhht! Right!

So, yeah, I continued. Slowly at first. But I was inspired...I began paying attention again to the little things. I became reinvigorated despite the bankbranchification, duanereadification, etc., etc., of the area. I started loving living here again. Really.

Anyway, here I am...grateful to everyone who has been a reader...and I've enjoyed making friends with so many like-minded people who also wonder what the fuck is going on around here. Thank you for being part of this.

Who knew?

The reigning Miss Pakistan lives in the East Village.

749,250 bottles of beer on the wall....

So, you're planning a holiday party. And don't now how much booze to buy. (Oh, and don't invite Susan Cheever!) Evite has the handiest of handy-dandy calculators to help you figure this out! So, say the party will last 999 hours...with 999 heavy drinkers into liquor and beer. So what will you need? Well, you can see for yourself -- roughly 750,000 cans of beer! Off for the liquor now. See you in the emergency room!

Someone done took Hank and Peggy Hill (and Bobby's left leg)

Yesterday at Seventh Street and First Avenue:



And Dec. 10...:

[Bottom photo via Chet Chat with Chet]

Before the theft, Bobby's face got tagged.

Previously on EV Grieve:
More King of the Hill promo sightings; residents wonder how a show that was never, ever funny remained on the air for so many years

OH to you, HO to us

\

This probably doesn't seem like such an odd sentiment if you're sitting inside this place, Bounce Deuce at Second Avenue and Sixth Street. Which reminds me of a joke from third grade:

What goes oh, oh, oh?
Santa Claus walking backwards!

An EV Grieve FYI

Just a reminder that there's a new URL in town here....http://evgrieve.com.

On the Bowery: "It's old versus new -- and these days new would seem to have the upper hand"

The real estate section in the Post today takes a look at an up-and-coming part of town called the Bowery. Sounds interesting.

Street gangs, brothels, flophouses, Joey Ramone - at one time or another, the Bowery has played host to them all. Of the many Manhattan areas to have transformed over the last decade, the Bowery has to rank among the unlikeliest.

Transform it has, though. Homeless shelters like the century-plus-old Bowery Mission still dot the street, and lighting and restaurant supply stores still dominate the retail scene, but gentrification is most definitely on the march.

Definitely!

Yes, the Bowery is booming. Prudential Douglas Elliman broker Rob Gross has worked in the area for more than 20 years. He remembers selling real estate on the Bowery in the early '90s, returning on some occasions from showing apartments to find his car broken into.

"It was definitely off the grid a bit back then," he says.

Today, Gross is handling the new Bowery and Bleecker development - a three-unit building of floor-through condo lofts that includes an 1,862-square-foot penthouse with a private roof deck that's listed for $3.1 million. With Poliform kitchens, 50-inch plasma-screen TVs and prices starting at about $1,500 a square foot, the building is a world away from the formerly dodgy Bowery.

Indeed!

"The Bowery is one of the last areas in New York to experience a kind of seismic shift," says self-storage magnate and neighborhood developer Adam Gordon. "It's an interesting bridge neighborhood. It's at the crux of NoHo, SoHo, the East and the West Village. There are few places that have the access that this neighborhood does."

Gordon owns a plot of land just off the Bowery at 41 Bond St., which he plans to develop as an eight-unit luxury condo building once the financing environment improves. He also owns the Bouwerie Lane Theatre building at the corner of Bond and Bowery, part of which he's recently turned into three condos. One apartment is reserved for Gordon himself, and he plans to put the other units - a 5,200-square-foot triplex penthouse and a 2,500-square-foot full-floor apartment - on the market in March.

Also coming to the once-seedy street: a new five-unit residential building at 263 Bowery from developer Shaky Cohen, a 152-unit luxury rental building at 2 Cooper Square, a Lord Norman Foster-designed gallery building at 257 Bowery and restaurants from Keith McNally and Daniel Boulud.

It's the Cooper Square Hotel, however, that provides perhaps the best metaphor for today's Bowery. Because two residents of the apartment building next door at 27 Bowery refused to give up their units, the hotel was forced to build around them and incorporate their building into its design. And so at the northern end of the street, there sits an old brick tenement building that from the sidewalk looks as if it were being swallowed up by a sleek, glassy high-rise hotel.

It's old versus new - and these days new would seem to have the upper hand.

Or, as Gordon says when asked if he fears the loss of old, edgy Bowery he once knew, "I don't think it's fear. It's an inevitability."

Gordon adds: "I don't pine for the Bowery of 50 years ago. It was a hole."