I do not know what this is for ... or if that guy in the background is part of the shoot...
Meanwhile, inside Tompkins Square Park...
Photos by Bobby Williams
Name: This longtime resident wanted to share his story but asked to remain anonymous
Occupation: Retired
Location: St. Mark's Place between First Avenue and Avenue A
Date: Monday, May 1 at 3:45 p.m.
I’m from Europe. I immigrated here from Greece when I was 5. I came to the Lower East Side, about less than a mile from here. There were a lot of Greek immigrants at that time. It was OK – a lot of people in the neighborhood knew each other, and there was a big Greek community up until about the 1970s. A lot of the old timers started dying and moving out and Chinatown started expanding. There are only a handful of families left now. I’ve lived on the Lower East Side my whole life.
My father had a merchandize business on the Lower East Side, selling housewares, glasswares, cookware. A friend of mine knew the super of a building. He controlled who was going in and out, so I spoke to him and he said, ‘I can keep an apartment aside for you.’ They were much more available then.I started out at $225 a month – it was more than amazing.
I moved in around 1979. I was just glad for a place to stay that I could afford. I lucked out and soon after I moved in, the super friend of mine, I told him, ‘I think I’m thinking of moving out,’ and he said, ‘You know what? Don’t you dare move out. The rents are going to be much higher and you’re going to regret it.’ So I figured, let me listen to the voice of experience, because somehow he had an inkling of what was to happen, and it turned out exactly right. I’m glad I listened to him. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be around here.
When I was in my 20s, and my father’s business was still open, friends from the neighborhood used to go to a place called Adam and Eve. It was on Waverly Place, right near NYU — a big hangout place for students and people in that age group. We used to go there and just drink pitchers of beer and get smashed there, but the difference was that we weren’t out to cause any trouble or be annoying or anything. We used to just sort of hang around with each other. We didn’t get involved with anybody else there.
After I closed my father’s business, I went to work in Century 21 in Brooklyn, and later in the wholesale jewelry business in Chinatown. I stayed there quite some time, 18 years, and then around 2001, the business started going down so I got laid off and I went to work in Midtown in the big jewelry district on 47th Street. I went to work for another wholesale place but much bigger, much busier. The boss and the manager realized right away that I had more experience than most of the people working in there. He grabbed me right away. It’s hard to find somebody to do that kind of work. They had a big mail-order all over the country. Crazy boss, very strict, very paranoid and stuff but I learned how to deal with it.
There were a whole bunch of drug dealers right on that corner where the bar Good Night Sonny is. It used to be a cleaners and they used to congregate and sell that stuff on the corner. They put the guy right out of business because his customers were too afraid to drop stuff off and pick stuff up. I would avoid that side of the street – it was horrible. When Giuliani became mayor, he started cleaning up a lot of the street traffic – one of the few good things that he did. That improved the situation a lot. Didn’t solve it because they just packed up and moved to another neighborhood.
The neighborhood was like the Haight-Ashbury of the 1960s in a way. The East Village became like that and is still like that to an extent. Everything goes, total freedom, and a mixture of people. A lot of freedom just in the sense that you could be whatever you wanted and nobody would look down on you.
A lot of the old-timers have died or moved out or whatever and the yuppies started moving in. You can’t blame them for doing it, but since they’re willing to pay more ... the landlords just took advantage of it and started charging higher rents.
I would prefer it if the rents weren’t up so high but there’s nothing I can do about that. It’s unfair — it’s pushing out the working-class people and the poor people, and the students come in and they’re not thinking of long term. They just stay a year or two until they finish school. Landlords love that because then you can increase the rent by law, so the rents just keep on going up. It’s going to reach another housing bubble I think. I see a lot more signs around, apartments for rent, than I saw the year before.
The high rents have also been pushing out small business. It’s been very hard for any little business to survive. Along this block there’s a high turnover, especially further down. Some of the stores don’t even last a year, and then they’ve got to get out. That’s a horrible situation, because it can’t be that they’re all doing something wrong. It’s just that they can’t make enough. Nobody wants to work for the landlord.
Though intended to protect passers-by from falling debris, these eyesores known as sidewalk sheds have often become a blight, drawing a barrage of complaints from residents and businesses that they block light and views, attract crime and litter and impede foot traffic along congested sidewalks.
It has taken stock of scaffolding and created an online system to better track the structures at a time when there are more of them than ever as older buildings need work and a construction boom produces more towers. In a sweep last year, building inspectors checked every piece of scaffolding and while most needed to remain for safety, about 150 were ordered dismantled because work had been finished.
The new map marks every building with scaffolding with a color-coded dot showing why the structures went up: red for buildings deemed unsafe, light blue for repairs, dark blue for new construction and green for maintenance work. Clicking on a dot reveals more details, including the date a permit was first approved. The older the scaffolding, the larger the dot.
Taking it to the Streets!
The Art + Design of Posters and Flyers on the Lower East Side in the 80s + 90s
Before Twitter and Facebook people had to use the streets to organize, their messages wheatpaste postered right on a pole. It was the era of 'xeroxcracy' and the streets were the gallery walls. These political posters and fliers raised awareness and helped organize community for grassroots political change. The posters range in subject from defending the squats and community gardens, taking on gentrification and the rich, police brutality, gender equality, environmentalism and anti-nuclear war activism. The floors of the museum will be stenciled to resemble the sidewalks of the past.
OPENING: Thursday, May 4 at 7-9 p.m.
HOURS: Tuesday, Thursday-Sunday 12-7 p.m.
Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space
155 Avenue C, between Ninth Street and 10th Street
Show runs until Thursday, June 29
A post shared by Museum of Reclaimed UrbanSpace (@morusnyc) on
I know you've recently been covering a string of thefts around the area. Not sure if this fits the MO but a friend was robbed in my building as he was leaving my apartment. I live on the ground floor and the perp ran down the stairs to hold up my friend for his backpack ... meaning the perp was let into the building somehow.
[P]eople should not let anyone in unless they are expecting someone. My apartment has been buzzed a lot recently by people we weren't expecting — likely trying to get in the building for a variety of reasons.
La MaMa presents
"The Expanded Unicorn Gratitude Mystery"
Written and Performed by Karen Finley
May 5 - May 14
Karen Finley brings her rave reviewed solo performance to La MaMa.
"The Expanded Unicorn Gratitude Mystery" explores the recent heightened U.S. political presidential landscape that takes on citizenship, gender disparity and abuse of power. The individual price of public relationships at the price of privacy becomes divisive with searing psychosexual dynamics of wit and seething revelation. The performance explores magical beings, aggressive thankfulness, and collective intimacy through Shakespearean family nation dramatic traumatics. This is an experimental nonlinear poetic text that creates a jolt of intuition, analysis and unnatural disaster of the human kind.
Only 6 performances: May 5 - 14, 2017
The Club @ La MaMa
74A East 4th Street between Second Avenue and the Bowery
Tickets: $25 Adults; $20 Students/Seniors
Click here for tickets and info.
Croman is said to be thrilled he will get off so lightly, and so is his wife, Harriet, who is part of a wealthy clique of Upper East Side moms.
Croman faced up to 25 years in prison on charges of harassing rent-stabilized tenants so he could lease their units at market rates and inflating his rental receipts in order to fraudulently secure $45 million in bank loans.
[There was] a “Midsummer Night’s Anime” dress code. All around, guests decked out in their finest mingled amid glowing flowers. For dinner, attendees meandered over to Grape and Grain, an adjacent wine bar, for custom bento boxes from David Bouley’s Brushstroke. Afterward, revelers returned to the garden for a dessert of Taiyaki fish cones topped with matcha green tea ice cream. Trays of Minamoto Kitchoan mochi and cookies were passed, along with glasses of Moët & Chandon Champagne and cups of Heavensake sake.
Lower East Side History Month is an annual celebration of the rich and diverse history of the Lower East Side. Each year in May, Lower East Side cultural and community groups, small businesses and residents create a variety of public events, exhibits, tours, and learning opportunities. All events take place in the historical boundaries of the Lower East Side, which includes the East Village, Chinatown, Two Bridges and Loisaida.
In memory of these young men, we ask that our community honor their lives and demonstrate to their families who their loss was also our loss and that we share in their sorrow by co-naming these blocks.
The petition must be signed by a minimum 75 percent of the total number of residential units and 75 percent of the total number of businesses on these blocks. (We appreciate the support, but do not need signatures from elsewhere in the neighborhood. The petitions will be available at neighboring businesses.)
If approved, then City Council will vote on this in May or June. If passed in the City Council, we will set a date with the Department of Transportation for a street blade installation and have a street co-naming event.
What followed was a familiar playbook: Coerce tenants to give up their valuable rent-regulated apartments with threats of eviction or offers of cash payouts, or both. Once the tenants leave, renovate the empty spaces and lease them for considerably more money. “At the end of the day, it’s a part of the business plan,” Mr. Toledano said in a telephone interview.
“He made it really clear that he was going to make it a miserable place to live,” said Jen Bekman, 47, an entrepreneur who lives in another Toledano-owned building, on East Fifth Street. She also fielded daily calls and texts from the landlord. “Sometimes he’d lose his temper. You could just tell that he was kind of volatile.”
The clock was ticking for Mr. Toledano. His deal with Madison Realty Capital gave him a year to clear out apartments, then renovate and rent them.
To shield himself from personal liability, Mr. Toledano had purchased each of his properties using limited liability companies. Last summer, the L.L.C.s that owned the buildings in the Madison Realty portfolio went into default and Madison stopped funding the buyouts.
[Toledano] said he was in contract with an investor to buy a $200 million portfolio of properties in the West Village, a neighborhood where he said tenants were less organized.
“I kind of want to get out of the East Village walk-up business, to be honest,” he said, without a hint of remorse. “There is so much scrutiny of the buyouts.”
Just about done w @ParanthaAlley mural! Add counter, menu, sign, then fresh paranthas come to Bowery Markt May 1! #indianfood #illustration pic.twitter.com/0doW0mFyj6
— Colleen Kong-Savage (@KongSavage) April 23, 2017
Gather at Bowery Road, a neighborhood American restaurant. Chef Ron Rosselli's flavorful and thoughtfully prepared dishes are inspired by long relationships with local farmers and purveyors and loaded with seasonal produce from the Union Square Greenmarket. The restaurant takes its name from its location on 4th Avenue, which was formerly called Bowery Road when it served as the pathway to Peter Stuyvesant's farm.
Located directly off the lobby, Bowery Road is open from 7am-11pm for breakfast, lunch, dinner and weekend brunch.
As Virgo rises in the East, Orion sets in the West, and the seasons change. (At last, after weeks and weeks of nothing but clouds and rain!) When the light from Aldebaran left the star 65 years ago,"Guys and Dolls" was playing at the Shubert Theater on Broadway. When the light from the Pleiades left the star cluster 400 years ago, Shakespeare was writing his plays. When the light from the Orion Nebula set forth 1,600 years ago, Rome was sacked by the Visigoths (later defeated by Attila the Hun). The crescent Moon tonight was passing through Orion between Taurus and Gemini, but was repeatedly blocked by passing clouds.
Essex Crossing, which extends roughly between Stanton and Grand streets to the north and south and Essex and Clinton streets to the west and east, will have 1,061 rental and condominium apartments and include a movie theater, a bowling alley, a three-block-long marketplace and a medical facility.
A majority of the retailers that have signed for space at Essex Crossing are expected to open in 2018, offering services in an area that has been underserved, said Andrew Katz, a principal of Prusik.
Target “sees tremendous potential” in New York City, where there is a dense population and plenty of tourists, making the area one of the company’s priority markets, the spokeswoman said.
Target is using the stores to support its online shoppers, offering them the ability to order online and pick up purchases in the store within an hour. The company plans in June to test same-day delivery service from its Tribeca location, offering store shoppers the option of having their purchases delivered within a certain time frame to locations in Manhattan and parts of Brooklyn and Queens, for a fee.