Shocker: A Rite Aid is closing

Whoa. This is an unusual site. On Seventh Avenue just below 14th Street. I'm used to seeing, "Coming soon: Rite Aid/Duane Reade/Etc."



Given the sale, I thought I'd check it out... get a few basics (toothpaste, etc.) on the cheap. Maybe some kitsch? Well. Picked over isn't quite the right phrase. It was as if I was transported to the Warehouse of Shit No One Would Ever Buy at Rite Aid's Camp Hill, Pa., home office.

Like what, you ask?












I didn't buy anything. I asked the cashier why the store was closing, likely the 10,000th time that he had been asked this question this past weekend. "Business decision." Hmm.

Meanwhile, the Duane Reade down the block is already cherry-picking Rite Aid's old customers. (Never mind that there's a Rite Aid on Sixth Avenue and 13th Street...and Ninth Avenue and 22nd and Eighth Avenue and 24th and...)

A message to brokers: Save your stories of letting you in

Spotted on 13th Street near University Place...



...the apartments above the New York Health & Racquet Club.

A new door at Zips

And now a mysterious new door has been added to the side of the former Zips Deli space at Avenue B and Fifth Street. Possibly a door to enter and exit the kitchen for an upscale diner-type place...?



Previous Zips coverage on EV Grieve.

Photographic evidence from the First-Ever Snuggie Pub Crawl

As mentioned on Friday, the First-Ever Snuggie Pub Crawl took place Saturday. It included stops in the East Village. I was unable to witness, but I sent the rather reluctant Intern of EV Grieve to tail the group. He did so for roughly 20 seconds. But he did manage one photo.



Meanwhile, lvv made a good point in the post of Friday:

lvv said...
I think the most ridiculous part of this crawl may not be the Snuggies, but the sequence of bars.

Why, after SideBar, would one go to two places a few aves east and streets south, only to return to Belmont, which is literally across the street from SideBar? Aren't bar crawls supposed to be sort of directionally sense-making? Are they trying to make people barf?

These are rhetorical questions of course.

Noted

At the new Cooper Union building on Seventh Street at Cooper Square.

Working for the weekend

Friday afternoon, a stretch Hummer tried to navigate a turn from Bleeker onto Mott Street.




It wasn't easy.



For further reading:
Limos, Limos Everywhere (BoweryBoogie)

One of those days

On Fulton Street near Water Street.

The morning after...and the Tompkins Square Park Diets

Record number of people in Tompkins Square Park yesterday afternoon for the nice spring weather? At least record number of people in swimsuits in the lawn for a third weekend of April? A record number of Whole Foods bags? Hard to say.

Opinion: For the first time "NYC is going to struggle with questions about its reason for being"

From Peggy Noonan's column in The Wall Street Journal Friday:

In New York some signs of that future are obvious: fewer cars, less traffic, less of the old busy hum of the economic beehive. New York will, literally, get dimmer. Its magical bright-light nighttime skyline will glitter less as fewer companies inhabit the skyscrapers and put on the lights that make the city glow.

A prediction: By 2010 the mayor, in a variation on broken-window theory, will quietly enact a bright-light theory, demanding that developers leave the lights on whether there are tenants in the buildings or not, lest the world stand on a rise in New Jersey and get the impression no one's here and nobody cares.

The New York of the years 1750 to 2008 — a city that existed for money and for all the arts and delights and beauties money brings — is for the first time going to struggle with questions about its reason for being. This will cause profound dislocations. For a good while the young will continue to flock in, for cheaper rents. Artists will still want to gather with artists — you cannot pick up the Metropolitan Museum and put it in Alma, Mich. But there will be a certain diminution in the assumption of superiority on which New York has long run, and been allowed, by America, to run.

Sunday morning, Avenue C

It's Record Store Day

Go to the Record Store Day Web site for info on participating stores.

This is one of the records that I bought last year. David J. showing a little nipple action, standing in front of a fan. In Style, indeed! (Night Fever was apparently already used...)

Tape delay

The week-or-two-long morbid curiosity over Lady GaGa will (I hope) end soon. Until then! The Superficial had the following shot yesterday:



With this comment:

Lady GaGa decided to pull the ol' "Pretend to Take Pictures of the Paparazzi" routine last night while leaving Bungalow 8 in London. It's a celeb tactic to deter the paps from taking shots because your face is obscured. Of course, it's slightly more effective when, I dunno, you're not wearing a see-through shirt with tape over your nipples.

Meanwhile, I'm not comparing these two in any way whatsover, but the electric tape reminded me of Wendy O. Williams... And I can't believe it has been 11 years since she died -- April 6, 1998.




Previous photos of Lady GaGa on EV Grieve include.

[Bottom photo via Prehistoric Sounds]

P.S.

Sorry for all the nipples today.

Stories from the Times today that I didn't get around to reading

Donkey Ball Stubbornly Holds On Despite Criticism

[Photo: Jodi Hilton for The New York Times]

Then we went down to Coney Island on the coaster and around again

David Lynch directs a Moby video

Shot In The Back Of The Head from Moby on Vimeo.

Hmm.

(Via BuzzFeed)

PUB CRAWL ALERT: Snuggie editon

From SnuggiePubCrawl.com:

Attend the First-Ever Snuggie Pub Crawl in New York, NY
In response to the stunning public embrace of the warm and cuddly Snuggie, the SnuggiePubCrawl.com Team is partnering with PubCrawls.com, who just broke the Guinness book of World Records for the world’s largest pub crawl, to co-host the first-ever Snuggie Pub Crawl in New York. Even though it's just a blanket with sleeves, we're sure that you'll enjoy a spring evening spent drinking with friends and the Snuggie.

What: A pub crawl in New York, New York wearing Snuggies
You must be 21 or older to attend

When: Saturday, April 18th from 12:00pm to 8:00pm

Where:
1. The Village PourHouse - 64 Third Ave at 11th street
2. Side Bar -120 E 15th At Irving Pl
3. Kings Head -222 East 14th Street Btwn 2nd & 3rd Ave
4. Bar None - 98 Third Ave Btwn 12th & 13th
5. Belmont - 117th East 15th street Btwn Park Ave and Irving Pl
6. Still - 192 Third Ave at 17th - 3-5pm
7. Plug Uglies - 257 3rd Ave Btwn 20th St & 21st St
8. Van Diemens - 383 Third Avenue at 27th street

BYO-Snuggie Bring your own Snuggie:
Blankets with sleeves can be purchased at a number of retail stores.

(Via Gothamist)

The "new urban pioneers:" Yeah, but do they have plentiful FroYo and Momofuku? (Oh, wait...)

From The Wall Street Journal today, an article titled Artists vs. Blight. This is a complex topic that deserves more than a smart-assy treatment on a Friday morning. But for now, let's just read some of the article.

Last month, artists Michael Di Liberto and Sunia Boneham moved into a two-story, three-bedroom house in Cleveland's Collinwood neighborhood, where about 220 homes out of 5,000 sit vacant and boarded up. They lined their walls with Ms. Boneham's large, neon-hued canvases, turned a spare bedroom into a graphic-design studio and made the attic a rehearsal space for their band, Arte Povera.

The couple used to live in New York, but they were drawn to Cleveland by cheap rent and the creative possibilities of a city in transition. "It seemed real alive and cool," said Mr. Di Liberto.

Their new house is one of nine previously foreclosed properties that a local community development corporation bought, some for as little as a few thousand dollars. The group aims to create a 10-block "artists village" in Collinwood, with residences for artists like Mr. Di Liberto, 31 years old, and Ms. Boneham, 34.

Artists have long been leaders of an urban vanguard that colonizes blighted areas. Now, the current housing crisis has created a new class of urban pioneer. Nationwide, home foreclosure proceedings increased 81% in 2008 from the previous year, rising to 2.3 million, according to California-based foreclosure listing firm RealtyTrac. Homes in hard-hit cities such as Detroit and Cleveland are selling for as little as $1.

Drawn by available spaces and cheap rents, artists are filling in some of the neighborhoods being emptied by foreclosures. City officials and community groups seeking ways to stop the rash of vacancies are offering them incentives to move in, from low rents and mortgages to creative control over renovation projects.

"Artists have become the occupiers of last resort," said Robert McNulty, president of Partners for Livable Communities, a Washington-based nonprofit organization. "The worse things get, the more creative you have to become."

Later...

Artists have flocked to, and improved, blighted areas for decades -- for example, New York's SoHo and Williamsburg, parts of Baltimore and Berlin, Germany. They often get displaced once gentrification begins. But now, since real estate has hit rock bottom in many places, artists with little equity and sometimes spotty credit history have a chance to become stakeholders, economists and urban planners say.

And, for the record, I like Cleveland. My cousin moved there.

Coming soon to the Tribeca Film Festival

Two documentaries worth noting (among others) ...

Here's how "Blank City" is described in the Tribeca Film Festival program by Cara Cusumano:

New York City in the late 1970s. Underground filmmakers collaborated with experimental musicians and vanguard performance artists, all on a shoestring budget, to create the most daring work of their generation. In stark contrast to the poverty and crime that seemed rampant in the economically struggling city, a community of aggressive, confrontational, vibrant artists flourished: hole-in-the-wall screening rooms abounded, manifestos circulated, and Jim Jarmusch, Nick Zedd, and Amos Poe debuted early works to an audience of their peers. These short-lived but profoundly influential movements dubbed themselves "No Wave Cinema" and "Cinema of Transgression."

Director Celine Danhier brings energy and style to her encyclopedic documentary on the figures and history of this rich but gritty era. Blank City includes compelling interviews with such luminaries as Jarmusch, Zedd, Poe, John Waters, Steve Buscemi, Lydia Lunch, Lizzie Borden, Eric Mitchell, Thurston Moore, Debbie Harry, Bette Gordon, Glenn O'Brien, John Lurie, and anyone who was anyone in the late-'70s East Village art scene. Ample film clips from seminal works bring to life a time and a place lost to gentrification and commercialization in the '80s, but that lives on in a still-thriving tradition of avant-garde art.

Then there's “Burning Down the House: The Story of CBGB" directed by 34-Mandy Stein. (She's the daughter of Sire Records honcho Seymour Stein.) You may read the description of it here.

Danhier and Stein are interviewed in this week's Downtown Express. Stein adheres to a familiar philosophy:

After CBGB’s closed, the space remained empty for a year before John Varvatos moved in with a men’s apparel shop in 2008. He preserved as much of the original club as possible, with walls covered in graffiti and flyers, and rock memorabilia all around. “Thank GOD for John it’s not a Duane Reade,” Stein says.

Meanwhile, Danhier, who grew up in Paris and first saw New York watching "After Hours," had this to say:

In Danhier’s view, the East Village today is, “Construction, construction, construction. It feels strange because a lot of the new constructions don’t seem to fit with the landscape. I do think it’s very tame now. That feeling of being on the edge of something is gone. But, then you find other parts of New York to go to — areas of Brooklyn or a new place in Manhattan will open up — and you’ll feel that energy once again. It just is always shifting around,” she says.

P.S.
Tix for the festival go on sale Monday ... though downtown residents can buy their tix starting Sunday...(They went on sale for AmEx holders Tuesday...) The TFF runs April 22 through what seems like November. (OK, OK -- May 3)

What else do you think would take over a large retail space downtown?

As we mentioned last year, the big Staples store that anchored the corner of Water Street and Fulton Street at the gateway to the South Street Seaport closed up in November.

Meanwhile, there has been plenty of activity at the site....Prepping it for — c'mon, you can guess correctly!






...a big Duane Reade, this according to a construction worker ...
Huge need for this! There isn't a Duane Reade within 100 feet of this location!



OK, OK....the other Duane Reade there on Fulton is simply moving...

Previously on EV Grieve:
That joke isn't funny anymore: Duane Reade opens at location of former OTB parlor on John Street

Breaking, entering and leaving a mess

Has anyone else noticed an increased in car break-ins around the neighborhood...? Such as this one on Avenue B near 10th Street....

"What they may have ended up with is the House that Mute Built"

Joel Sherman in the Post talks about yesterday's new era at Yankee Stadium:

If regular-season Game 1 of this new building is any indication, the dimensions made it across the street from the old stadium, but not the passion. The Yankees wanted to build a museum, a palace, a mall-park. And what they may have ended up with is the House that Mute Built.

Incredibly, after all the anticipation and hoopla, the sellout crowd at this grand opening had about the same zeal as grandmothers playing mahjong. Why? The ticket prices mean a lot more corporate patronage in the seats close to the field, which means far fewer diehards near the action, screaming, taunting, making it uncomfortable for the opposition.

Bellet falls on East Fourth Street

The plywood went around the former Bellet Construction site on East Fourth Street near Avenue B last November....



...and it slowly...



...was dismantled to make room for what the building permit describes as a two-family residence.

During recession, local barbers expand their services

On 14th Street between Second Avenue and First Avenue...



On First Avenue between Third Street and Second Street....

Dumpster of the day

Avenue A near 12th Street.

Noted

On Avenue C at East Seventh Street. And, uh, what door?

Something for Joey

This Ain't the Summer of Love reminds us that yesterday marked the 8th anniversary of Joey Ramone's death. Alex also marks the date at Flaming Pablum.

By the way, his 2009 Birthday Bash is coming up on May 19 at the Fillmore/Irving Plaza.

Looking at 89 Clinton Street

Walked by the newly renovated 89 Clinton St. between Delancey and Rivington the other day....



Open house? Don't mind if I do!



The unit I saw was advertised as a three-bedroom apt. The bedrooms -- I only noticed two -- were on the smallish side. But very nice. Tiny closet.



This unit has access to the still-being-groomed outdoor space. You have to share the space with the two apartments below...




Everything about the space, which had two bathrooms, was topnotch... wide plank oak flooring, washer and dryer, high ceilings, dishwasher, exposed brick, pinpoint hallogen lighting, individual climate control and video intercom....There was even a wine thingee in the kitchen for people who don't want to keep wine in the fridge. (Will it also hold beer?)



And all on Clinton Street! According to the realtor's Web site, this is an "Awesome Trendy location."

So...what's the bottom line here for the two-bedroom space? $4,695. Oh, excuse me for a moment.

OK, OK... there's no fee. And there's something about a free month of rent with a two-year lease. And with a two-year lease, there will not be a rent increase. Still, that rent seems like a lot in these recessive times. I was under the impression that prices were coming down... The agent said that most of the units were already rented for a May 1 move-in date. What do I know then.

Oh! And the sales agent was sitting in the living room. His said this could be converted into a third bedroom.