Peter Jarema Funeral Home ad comes back from the dead on 7th and B

Top photo and new reporting by Stacie Joy

In a surprising move on Friday, workers put up a new ad for the Peter Jarema Funeral Home on the north-facing wall at 108 Avenue B and Seventh Street. 

During exterior renovations last June (first reported here), workers sandblasted away the former ad for the funeral home that's on Seventh Street between Avenue A and First Avenue. 

According to work permits on file with the Department of Buildings, the landlord had approved plans to remove the "deteriorated metal cornice" and "build up and maintain existing brick parapet." 

Here is the result of that work last summer...

The decades-spanning ad touted "Air Conditioned Chapels," and there was a smaller sign for "Vazac Hall Catering" (and "Fine Food"),  a nod to the business before the current and longstanding tenant Vazac's/the Horseshoe Bar/7B... (photo below by Stacie Joy from 2019)...

I reached out to Danny Buzzetta, the owner/managing director of Peter Jarema. 

He figured the old ad had been there for at least 60 years and still featured the phone number listed as OR 4-2568 (letters representing 6 and 7 with the known constant of the 212 area code).

Buzzetta said that someone affiliated with the restoration contacted him last year, saying that after the building finished the brickwork, he wanted to put up a new sign as an ode to an East Village "legacy" business. (We're still determining if this was someone from the landlord, Gibraltar Management Company, or the contractor. We're chasing down that lead now.)

"Honestly, I was shocked because I was very upfront that I don't have the money to pay for this, and as appreciative as the thought was, I never actually thought it was going to happen," Buzzetta said.  "But lo and behold, here we are!"

We previously tried to figure out how long the ad was here. As we understand it, the corner bar dates to the mid-1930s. The funeral home was established in 1906, per its website. 

Via the NYC Municipal Archives, we found this street view from the early 1940s...

As far as we can tell, the ad is for Treadway Shoes (at 67 Avenue B?). A 1980s photo from the Municipal Archives shows the funeral home ad in place, though it's obviously older than that, given the presence of the dated telephone exchange.

There was also some thought — without much evidence — that the ad was created (or augmented) for filming 1974's "The Godfather Part II" (one of many movies and TV shows filmed at the bar). 

Here's the scene (RIP Frank Pentangelli!) shot inside and outside the bar. However, we don't see any ads on the building ...

   

Decades-spanning ghost signage disappears from this East Village building

The neighborhood's most prominent ghost ad has vanished.  

In recent days, workers removed the scaffolding and construction netting at 108 Avenue B, the 5-story building on the SW corner of Seventh Street. (Thanks to Dave on 7th for the initial tip!)

According to work permits on file with the Department of Buildings, the landlord had approved plans to remove the "deteriorated metal cornice" and "build up and maintain existing brick parapet." 

Here is the result of that work...

Now gone: the faded ad for the Peter Jarema Funeral Home on the next block of Seventh Street with the allure of "Air Conditioned Chapels" and a smaller sign for "Vazac Hall Catering" (and "Fine Food")  a nod to the business before the current and longstanding tenant Vazac's/the Horseshoe Bar/7B... (photo below by Stacie Joy from 2019)...

So how old was this signage? As we understand it, the corner bar dates to the mid-1930s. The funeral home was established in 1906, per its website. 

Via the NYC Municipal Archives, we found this street view from the early 1940s...

As best as we can tell, the ad is for Treadway Shoes (at 67 Avenue B?). A 1980s photo from the Municipal Archives shows the funeral home ad in place, though it's obviously older than that given the presence of the OR 4-2568 telephone exchange.

There was also some thought — without much evidence — that the ad was created (or augmented) for filming 1974's "The Godfather Part II" (one of many movies and TV shows filmed at the bar). 

Here's the scene (RIP Frank Pentangelli!) shot inside and outside the bar. However, we don't see any ads on the building ...

   

Anyway, we'll continue to do some sleuthing ... maybe even from the bar, which has retained its timeless look ...

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[Updated] The 13th Step is now going as Downtown Social

Photos by Steven

The 13th Step is apparently undergoing a name change as we enter 2023. 

The windows of the sports bar-SantaCon hotspot are covered... a sign on the window promises "a big reveal" coming this Friday... (an Instagram post says the reveal is coming today) ...

The bar, from the family of like-minded places like Down the Hatch and Off the Wagon, opened here (with comic-sans signage) in the summer of 2010. 

The Telephone Bar closed here in January 2010 after 22 years.

Updated 4 p.m. 

Apparently, the "big reveal" was today... as you can see, the bar is now going as Downtown Social... and reopens on Friday...

A new reading series: Poetry and Prose at P&T Knitwear

Photo from May by Stacie Joy 

Longtime East Villager resident Wayne Kral, who co-produced a reading series from 1995-2015 beginning at the Telephone Bar, then Bar 82, dba and 2A, is launching a new series at the recently opened P&T Knitwear bookshop at 180 Orchard St. between Houston and Stanton. 

The first one is this Monday (July 11) from 6:30-7:30 p.m. He'll be doing this every two weeks at P&T. Here's info about the initial participants via the EVG inbox... 

• Phil Gammage is a New York-based fiction writer and musician best known for his eight solo album releases. Twisting from railroad cars, burlesque houses, endless roads, and the folklore of 20th century America, Phil's stories and songs draw inspiration from his life as a musician, historian, and fiction writer. "Beatniks, Broads, and Burlesque" is a reading from an ongoing short story collection Phil is writing. 

• Phillip Giambri aka "The Ancient Mariner" left home at 18 and never looked back. He's seen and done what others dream of or fear. That's how he lives and that's what he writes. His 2020 novelette The Amorous Adventures of Blondie and Boho is a story of love, survival, and gentrification in NYC's East Village. 

• Jonathan Berger used to read his little poems every Monday night at the Sidewalk Cafe until he couldn't anymore and then he read his little poems every Monday night at Gran Torino until he couldn't anymore and then he read his little poems at Bar Freda until he wouldn't anymore and now he's coming to this.

• Linda Kleinbub is the curator of Fahrenheit Open Mic, founder of Pen Pal Poets & editor of Pink Trees Press. Linda was one of six local poets invited to read at the Americas Poetry Festival of New York 2021. Some of her work is found in The Best American Poetry, Brooklyn Rail, The Observer, and Sensitive Skin Magazine. Her first full-length book of poetry COVER CHARGE is an Unbearables Title from Autonomedia. 

For information on reading contact Wayne at bopstreet@gmail.com

Intellectual property: Thirsty Scholar giving way to the Long Pour

Renovations continue at the former Thirsty Scholar, 155 Second Ave. between Ninth Street and 10th Street... the Thirsty Scholar signage has been removed. (Thank you to Melissa McIntyre for this photo from yesterday morning!)

As previously reported, new owners, David Harris and Cris Nastasi, will be opening a like-minded bar here called the Long Pour. Harris served as manager of Bull McCabe's on St. Mark's Place and previously worked as a bartender at now-closed block-mates the Telephone Bar & Grill and Ryan's Irish Pub. Nastasi was born and raised in the neighborhood and spent 15 years as the technical director of "Stomp" at the Orpheum Theatre on Second Avenue.

And Pete the bartender from the Thirsty Scholar will be working at the Long Pour as well.

H/T Steven  

New owners in line for former Thirsty Scholar Pub on 2nd Avenue

Thirsty Scholar Pub has not been open since the start of the pandemic in March 2020 on Second Avenue between Ninth Street and 10th Street.

New owners are now in line to open a like-minded establishment here. David Harris (above left) and Cris Nastasi (right) will appear before CB3's SLA Committee on Monday for a liquor license for a bar called the Long Pour.

The two, who collected signatures of support outside the space this week, have ties to the neighborhood — and this block. Harris is currently the manager of Bull McCabe's on St. Mark's Place and previously served as a bartender at now-closed block-mates the Telephone Bar & Grill and Ryan's Irish Pub. Nastasi was born and raised in the neighborhood and spent 15 years as the technical director of "Stomp" at the Orpheum Theatre on Second Avenue.

You can find the Long Pour questionnaire on the CB3 website here. 

The virtual committee meeting starts Monday evening at 6:30. The Zoom link is here.

The Thirsty Scholar opened in 1999, first going as the Jolly Rodger. 

Photo by Steven 

From the archives: On the phone with Sylvain Sylvain of the New York Dolls

[Sylvain, left, and David Johansen in 2006]

Ed note: Sylvain Sylvain died this week of cancer at age 69. This EVG post first appeared on March 8, 2013.

Last week, I spoke with Sylvain Sylvain, the guitarist of the legendary New York Dolls, and one of the two remaining original band members. I called him to talk about the program he's hosting at noon today on East Village Radio titled "Rock and Roll Hours." 

He talked to me for about 45 minutes from his home in Atlanta, sharing some favorite East Village memories starting when he moved to the neighborhood from Queens in 1967. 

Sylvain, 62, has a lot of stories, from waiting for coffee at Veselka to being the protopunk band who helped pave the way for others on the NYC scene in the 1970s. Here are some excerpts from the conversation. It was more of a conversation than an interview, so it doesn't really follow a Q-and-A format...

First apartment
"It was ... 1967. It was on East Fifth Street between Avenue C and D. It was $57 a month in rent. For the whole damn place! The apartment had a refrigerator. It worked and everything — the light was on. But it didn’t have a door. [Laughs] It was groovy for about a month or two — during the summer. Then I got the hell out of there real quick. Anywhere past Avenue A you were taking your life in your hands. There was a lot of heroin. It was actually cheaper than pot. It was pretty fucking wild."



Gem Spa, which served as the setting for the back cover of the New York Dolls' first album
"It was a corner place in the late 1960s. It wasn’t much of a joint at all. But we felt like the place epitomized the whole East Village scene — this is where we were living. You could stop there and pick up your smokes and get an egg cream and the newspaper or a magazine. I know Johnny [Thunders] used to really love those egg creams. They got hipper as years went on, where they would sell Melody Maker. It became more of a place once the Dolls took pictures in front of it."

Veselka
"There was the Slow Russians. What do they call that place? Veselka? We called it ‘The Slow Russians.’ You’d ask for a cup of coffee at like 2 o’clock in the morning. By the time they served you the coffee it would be like 6 o’clock in the morning! [Laughs] They were real slow! But they had all those soups and it was pretty cheap. They were open all night too."

Peace Eye Bookstore
"Ed Sanders from the Fugs — one of my favorites — had a bookstore right across the street from Tompkins Square Park [at 147 Avenue A]. I worked there for a couple of months until he discovered that I couldn’t really read because I’ve always had dyslexia, and then he fired me right there."

Rent
"It was cheap. You could live on the Avenues. It was a lot safer. The drugs were softer there. There was marijuana — no heroin. If you wanted to live there, it was like $150 to $300 for a month's rent.

"Every summer, me and [David] Johansen, we used to say, 'OK, I haven't seen that person ... that person just came in. She just came in.' We could count them off. They heard their calling from wherever they came from — the Midwest, the West Coast, upstate New York — even from Queens, like me. These people had a calling to come to the city, and the East Village was the only place that they could afford to live. They would go to art school or become musicians. The only band who I remember before us were the Magic Tramps, which was Eric Emerson. He passed away, the poor guy, on heroin too.

Manhattan
"Queens was a few stops away from Manhattan, but it was a lifetime of travel to get to Manhattan.

"Manhattan was the only free place. As bad as it was in Alphabet City, you were free at least. You could wear what you wanted. Some times you took your life in your hands just walking. It was really dangerous. But at least you were free — that was the bottom line."



Shopping and dressing
"[Dolls bassist] Arthur Kane was on First Avenue. He lived right above a bar [now d.b.a.]. It took us like five hours to get dressed. Arthur was wearing this chick’s zebra waistcoat. It was a print, of course. It wasn’t a real zebra. But it took us hours and hours to get dressed — all this just to go shopping at the supermarket.

"When we get to the supermarket — it was below Houston. It was called the Big Apple. We were in the queue there to pay for whatever food we didn’t stuff into our pockets. This mafiosa guy says 'the things you see when you ain’t got a rifle.'

"I would go shopping from Madison Avenue to thrift shops. And you just made it up on your own.

"We'd get everything from the little kids' motorcycle jackets to beat-up blue jeans. It depended where the fuck you got it. We were the most creative — we were like what they call club kids, but when there were no clubs."

Telecommunications
"Everyone had a telephone. Of course, we never paid for it. You’d pick a name. My name was Ricky Corvette. I'm pretty sure I still owe Ma Bell a lot of money. Back then, you’d call up and say I just moved into this new place. 'OK, what's your name? Ricky Corvette. OK, Ricky we'll be there next week to put in your phone.' I'm talking about 1970."

Johnny's closet
Johnny Thunders had an apartment on Avenue A. His closet was like — everything would be pressed and dry cleaned. He had a real unique way of dressing and picking this and this and that and putting it all together.

When we were picking names for the band, he called me, well, he called Ricky Corvette, and run names by me. 'What do you think of Johnny Thunder?' I'd was like Yeah, that's pretty cool Johnny. The phone would ring five minutes later. What about Johnny Thunders?

Home
"I did have an apartment in New York until 2010. It was on 69th Street off Broadway. Up until a couple years ago we were doing OK so I could still have an apartment in New York. But then I couldn’t afford it. I first moved to LA, and lived there until 1995 and moved here to Atlanta. It was all because of money. Now Atlanta is getting almost as expensive as New York. Almost. I think Nicaragua, friend, is next."

Starting a band
"A lot of kids come up to me like 'Wow, you came up at a really great time!' Oh, fuck no! When the New York Dolls started in 1970, there was nobody. You couldn't get a contract. It took us years. It took until 1973 until we got signed.

"After we started it was five years until CBGB opened in 1975. The Dolls broke up in 1975. There were no places to play. You had to invent places to play. We were the ones who kind of gave birth to groups like Blondie and the Talking Heads." 

 

 [Photos via Sylvain Sylvain]

Basics Plus apparently not closing on 3rd Avenue after all

[Photo from Friday]

As previously reported, housewares shop Basics Plus was set to close this spring at 91 Third Ave. and 12th Street. Employees had said that today, April 29, was the last day.

The prominent going-out-of-business signs in the front windows directed future Basics Plus shoppers to the location on University at 13th Street ... along with notices for 20 percent off all items.

However, in the past week, several EVG readers passed along the news that Basics Plus is staying put. Per one reader:

"I went in there a few days ago to ask when their closing date was, and the employee told me they're no longer closing, they're just downsizing. So I asked why everything was still on sale, and she said she didn't know."

In a brief telephone call, an employee confirmed the change of closing plans, saying that they're just moving out the hardware section. When pressed for more details, she hung up. (The phone went to voice-mail on the return call.)

The store closing/sale signs were still up as of Saturday.

Meanwhile, the Be Juice bar connected to the shop has cleared out...



Basics Plus opened here in August 2014.

Surprise! Surprise! — a like-minded housewares shop with, according to readers, better customer service — was the previous tenant, closing in April 2014 after 25 years in business.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Basics Plus is closing on 3rd Avenue

This has nothing to do with a new LinkNYC kiosk

That toppled telephone booth is just a film prop... Crews are dressing up the front of 94 St. Mark's Place this afternoon... the filming here (and elsewhere) is for the Amazon series "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel," a dramedy written and directed by "Gilmore Girls" creators Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino.

The show stars "House of Cards" alum Rachel Brosnahan as a 1958 New York City housewife "who, through a series of events, winds up exploring the world of stand-up comedy."

Scenes for the pilot episode were filmed last fall at 7B/Vazac's/Horseshoe Bar.

Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.


[Photo via Kathryn Cooper]

By James Maher

Name: Shari Albert
Occupation: Actor, Writer, Producer
Location: The Immigrant, East Ninth Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue
Time: 7 p.m. on Tuesday, March 8

I'm from Philly. I moved here to go to NYU. I was a kid actor. Nothing big, some local Philadelphia television and a lot of commercials, and then I came to the city and went to NYU and got some training.

I moved to this block my sophomore year, and I've been here ever since. I remember… it might have been my first day in New York. Everybody was like, 'Don't go to Avenue A. Don't go to Alphabet City.' I'm like, 'First thing I'm gonna do is go check it out!' So I remember walking down here, going more toward Tompkins Square Park, and I saw a drag queen. I was like, 'Ooh a drag queen, that's exciting!' Then I saw another drag queen and I'm like, 'This is amazing.' Then I saw more and more drag queens. I was like, ‘These are my people. I love this place. This is fantastic!’ I didn't realize that it was Wigstock, back in the day when they had it in Tompkins Square Park. I just knew I was home at that point. It was absolutely magical.

I did a movie in 1995 that won the Sundance Film Festival called "The Brothers McMullen." I was Susan, the youngest brother's fiancé. That kind of start the whole… well, I had the bug before, but now the bug was actually being fed. That started the whole professional career.

I do mostly movies and television. I also love theatre, I just haven't been able to do a lot of New York theatre because right after college I got "Brothers McMullen" and so my career went by the way of film and television, but I did a lot of musical theatre growing up. I had to drop out of NYU for a semester to go to Paris to do a musical, but after that my agents and I went more toward the film and television side of things. I mean, I'd love to do a play. There's nothing like doing a play in New York City — it's kind of the best thing in the world, but it's been awhile since that happened.

I play a lot of women from Long Island and Brooklyn for some weird reason. I'm not really sure why, because I don't have an accent in real life. Turning on the accent now is like turning on a water faucet. I play lots of best friends, lots of sisters, lots of neighbors.

It's pilot season now. It happens right after Sundance, late January through the end of March. That's when the new television shows are auditioning for the following season. You get it the night before, they say, ‘Oh here's 15 pages that you need to memorize and work on for tomorrow morning at 10 a.m.’ You're like, 'Oh, OK, I guess I have to cancel everything tonight.' That's kind of how you have to roll. Look, there's nothing better when it's good. It's the best thing in the world to be able to be paid to be creative and to create characters, whether you're acting them or writing them.

I'm also a writer. I'm a freelance writer by trade, and I have written a bunch of television sitcom spec scripts, so I'm trying to get into TV writing, which is how I want to transition. I'll always be an actor, but I want to get into the creating aspect of things. I did a Web series that I shot in New York called "Good Medicine." It's about a medical marijuana dispensary in Los Angeles, but we shot it here. We raised $20k through Kickstarter and shot five episodes.

I love my neighborhood. I've been on the block for a long time and I've seen a lot of changes, and some of them are great and some of them... Like everything, I have a love-hate relationship with it. I might be biased, but I personally think that East Ninth Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue is the most beautiful block in the East Village. I love it because there are beautiful little boutiques and shops, and it's just really nice to come home and greet everybody.

My favorite thing about Ninth Street and the neighborhood was when my dog Sid and I would walk around. We met so many lovely people. Everybody knew Sidney, everybody. She had one eye. She was an achievement. She would go into different places and run around, into Fabulous Fanny’s or when this was Change of Seasons. I had her for 16 years and she just passed away last April.

I made so many really good friends through her. When she passed, the outpouring of love from the block was overwhelming, and I got beautiful condolence cards. It was very touching because people that I would see on a daily basis, we would stand on the corner and we would cry together. It was really touching and beautiful. I just think that this block is super special. That's the good aspect of this neighborhood.

The bad aspect is all the bro kids who move in — the same kids who do SantaCon and dress up as sexy Leprechauns on St. Patty's Day and throw up in my hallway. I just loathe the new regime of the bro coming in. It's the worst. The 13th Step, that used to be Telephone Bar, which was fantastic. You could meet somebody there and have a decent conversation. Now it's like, oh my God, children. It's frat boy city. I've called 911 more times in front of that bar about fights or people who are passed out in front of there...

Especially with Coyote Ugly around the corner, who I have like a raging one-woman campaign against. I hate them. They are a pox on the neighborhood. I have a real war going with Coyote Ugly because of my bedroom. They have a courtyard where they empty and recycle at all hours of the night, so they're emptying glass bottles at two, three, four in the morning, and then they open up their backdoor and you hear Jon Bon Jovi, 'Shot through the heart, and you're to blame.' Look, I like Bon Jovi as much as the next girl. I'm from Philly. I totally am down with Jon Bon Jovi, but I don't want to hear that shit at four in the morning. And then 'Woooooo!'

I'm like, 'Was I like that when I was in my 20s?' I don't… I'd like to think not. I was living in this neighborhood, and it was so different because we didn't have those kinds of bars. We got drunk in our apartments, respectfully.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher

Name: Mark Mace
Occupation: Retired, Chef, former Director of Operations for Natural Gourmet Institute
Location: East 3rd Street between 1st Avenue and 2nd Avenue
Time: 4 pm on Friday, April 24

I’m originally from Flatbush, Brooklyn. All my family are Brooklynites. My parents moved out to Long Island during the early 1960s when everybody moved out to the suburbs. I lived by the water.

So by the time I was 18, I was a real beach kid. The people I hung out with were all artists and musicians. We were all sort of an artsy crowd as teenagers, but I got bored with that, so we started hanging out here in the 1970s, around 1974. It was dangerous; it was wild. The city was a shithole, plain and simple — an absolute shithole. It was everything that you wanted as a teenager. There was graffiti everywhere; there was filth everywhere. The buildings were dirty; the air was dirty.

There were a lot of things happening in the city. For young people, it was interesting and exciting. There was a lot of good music, a lot of good blues, a lot of good rock, and lot of good performance art. There was a lot of interesting graffiti. The city was a big crucible of art — in all forms.

I had friends who were artists here. They went to Cooper Union. We used to have scotch parties and clam bakes in the school. I remember going to loft parties on the Bowery, and we sat on the ledge of the window and smoked joints and just watched the city. There was almost nobody on the streets. Where the Bowery Hotel is, I remember that was a gas station and there were two junkyard dogs that used to sleep on the pavement ... you could walk right by them and they wouldn’t bother you.

I remember on Second Avenue seeing the junkies hanging out by Gem Spa and we used to call them weebles because they would be standing there with the phone in their hand at the public telephone and they would be leaning over so far that it would be impossible for any human to do that without falling over. That’s why we called them weebles because they would never fall over. Second Avenue was bad and then it pushed back to First and then to Alphabet City.

I’ve had so many careers. I started out in music, as a soundman for a 10-piece bar band with horns and everything. They broke up and then I went to cooking school in Philadelphia. I moved there in 1985 and Philly food-wise was the place to be for some strange reason. I don’t know why and I just happened to be there. I had a great time there and the people were great, but I was a New Yorker. I came back in 1988 and I moved into my apartment on 6th Street.

New York in the 1980s was a great place to be a cook. Food started taking off like crazy. If you were a good cook, and I was a good cook, you could get a job anywhere. I spent 12 years cooking and I moved up the ranks. I must have worked at maybe 15 restaurants, anything from neighborhood places to two- and three-star places.

I then took a job and opened a restaurant in Warsaw, Poland, for a couple in LA, in 1995. My friend called me from LA and said, ‘Hey I got some friends who want to open a restaurant in Poland, do you want to do it?’ My interview was at the Delta Air Lines lounge at JFK and then like six months later I was in Poland opening a California-style cuisine restaurant. It was tough because they didn’t have a restaurant industry.

Then I came back to New York. I worked in a couple of restaurants and then I got a job at a cooking school on 21st Street as the steward. I worked my way into director of operations and I just retired from it. After 25 years of cooking, I hate cooking now. I’ll make a big batch of something and I’ll put it in the freezer.

I appreciate the fact that the city has come up in that it’s renovated and clean, safe and the subways are efficient. You can ride the subways at 3 in the morning and be relatively safe. Now it’s very expensive. A drink will cost you $20. That was a joke when Studio 54 opened up in the heyday of the disco days. Now that’s the normal price. And everything’s a little too precious. I appreciate artisan this and artisan that but it’s gotten to the point where everything is so precious.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

Out and About in the East Village, Part 2

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher

Name: Sheila Rothenberg
Occupation: Production Manager at Works in Progress NYC
Location: St. Mark's Place between 1st and 2nd (the photo for Part 2 is at the Tile Bar on 1st Avenue and East 7th Street)
Time: 6:30 pm on Thursday, Feb 5

Picking up with the end of Part 1

I opened my own restaurant on 2nd Avenue, between 1st and 2nd. It was called Dine East. We bought it from Sam of Sam’s Luncheonette. We didn’t know at time, but the reason he made money was because he had poker games in the back. I bought all the equipment from some cokeheads who had a restaurant in Chinatown. I was there from ’83 to ’86 and that’s where I met my husband — he was teaching at La Salle across the street.

It was so much fun and so much hard work. It was like a greasy spoon. My dad was working as my dishwasher. I’m still friends with everyone who worked with us. I really had my regulars. But in ’85, ’86 the crack stuff started happening. The heroin wasn’t so bad because they would not bother you so much. They'd ask, ‘Do you sell bottled soda? Do you have a bathroom?’ They wanted the bottle cap. I’d say, ‘No, because you want to shoot up in the bathroom.’ But crackheads were crazy, so it got a little sketchy. I didn’t know what was going to happen. I had five years left on the lease when I left. It was 28 seats. I made $100, $200 a week. I didn’t know about business so well and I gave a lot of stuff away, but it was really fun. I just realized that I couldn’t really go on with the life we were planning.

After that, I went to cook at Florent on Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District. It was a hot place. I made salads for Madonna. But there I really learned how to cook. I learned French cooking and how to make sauces.

Then I got pregnant and left. My next job was at the Telephone Bar as a cook for three years. That was great. Barbara Sibley was the general manager and Abe from the 2nd Avenue Deli was the owner and I loved him. Barbara has a lot of integrity and working for them was… like I got paid vacation. What you got at that restaurant was unheard of. She got group insurance for people. She was so flexible with time off. Working there was wonderful.

Today I am a production manager at Works in Progress NYC, a not-for-profit silk-screening company in the East Village. We provide internships for approximately 15 students annually from a growing list of New York City high schools and work readiness programs.

We are often able to provide paid summer jobs for high school students who have interned at WIP and several former interns are currently full-time staff. I like working with teenagers the best. It's fun being with kids and making shirts for people in the neighborhood and meeting great people.

Even though the neighborhood is changing, I still feel like it’s my community and I still have a lot of friends. We got very involved in the schools down here when we had children. We were founding parents of The Neighborhood School on 3rd Street. My husband was the first PTA president and I was the second. We got much more active politically because of the schools and trying to make better schools for kids.

My husband was teaching conflict resolution and I got very interested in the concept, so I did a training and learned to be a facilitator in conflict resolution. It was called Peace in the Family, which is sort of a misnomer. It was about just working with parents about active listening and good communication with your kids and bringing parents in to talk to teachers and to not be scared or intimidated. Then I went back to college since I had never finished college. I worked for Educators for Social Responsibility and then on 12th Street was an organization called the Girls’ Project and I was program manager there.

This block [St. Mark's Place between First Avenue and Second Avenue] was always pretty nice. I’m also a landlord. In 1993 we bought this building. I saw a for sale sign during the savings and loan scandal, so you couldn’t get a commercial loan and this was a commercial building. However, we got a great deal. I think the building dates back to 1840s [and belonged to] Peter Stuyvesant’s son. This was all Stuyvesant’s land.

It amazes me what these tenements are renting for. You know the Groucho Marx thing, ‘I don't care to belong to any club that will have me as a member’? I don’t want to rent to anyone who can afford to live here. We did, and the first rental we had here were these trust-fund kids and they called me to change a light bulb, and they were paying below market. I’m like, ‘That’s not the way it works. You gotta change your own light bulbs.’

I’m one of those people who came here and made good. There’s kind of this balance that people miss in terms of the gentrification. There was a time on 1st Street between 1st and 2nd where you could not walk on that block. I had a friend who lived there, a waitress at the Kiev and they said, ‘No you can’t come in.’ Shooting galleries were a real thing. They had bodyguards and they wouldn’t let you up the steps. I was like, ‘Fuck you, my friend lives up there, I’m going.’ That was the kind of person I was. It was not good for kids; it was not good for anybody.

As I heard de Blasio say on the radio [the other day], ‘When things are done without a plan, it gets screwed up.’ You’ve got to develop and you’ve got to change, but you have to have a plan. It’s greed on the part of people who own stuff but it’s also that there isn't any regulation. Everyone talks about mom and pop and small business and it is so difficult. I could never open a restaurant now.

Read Part 1 here

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

Whatever happened to those British call boxes outside The Telephone Bar on Second Avenue?

Hard to believe that The Telephone Bar & Grill on Second Avenue near East Ninth Street closed a little more than four years ago. The 22-year-old bar was later replaced by (glug! glug!) The 13th Step.

The front of bar was adorned with those old-timey phone booths (or, rather, British call boxes!).

In case you were a fan of the bar, this is for you.

An EVG Facebook friend came across a post yesterday on Messy Nessy Chic featuring a Harlem-based company called The Demolition Depot, which "makes it their business to go in and salvage the irreplaceable pieces of a building’s architectural heritage."

And at the Demolition Depot, you will find these booths for sale...



Now if we could only find some of those old Mars Bar stools...

Previously on EV Grieve:
The Telephone Bar and Grill closing after 22 years

Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher
Name: Barbara Sibley
Occupation: Owner, La Palapa Cocina Mexicana
Location: St. Mark's Place between 1st and 2nd Ave
Time: Noon on Monday, Jan. 13

I’m from Mexico City. My dad was an engineer from New York and my parents moved to Mexico for a project, but when it finished they decided to stay. I had never really traveled to New York as a kid, but I came to go to school when I was 17 and ended up staying. After I got here, I first realized I could live here when I went into the subway and everything was in both Spanish and English. I realized I could be at home. And once you come to New York it’s hard to leave. I always thought I would go back but I never did.

I never thought I would end up having a career in the restaurant business even though I always cooked. I studied anthropology and I’ve always been fascinated with how cultures come together in their food. I started working as a dishwasher while I went to college at Barnard and my sister was at NYU and living at 13 St. Mark's Place. Then I got a job as a waitress at this place called Bandito on Second Avenue between 9th and 10th, around 1984.

For me, with a restaurant you almost have a front row seat to the neighborhood. You see your community and you know the people. You are part of the surroundings in such a tangible way. Even though there is so much change in the neighborhood there is also so much continuity. In the restaurant business I like to say that you get a lot of people who are going through their life sideways and so you have a chance of helping other people fulfill their dreams. We’ve helped a lot of people get through school and they come back and say, ‘Thank God you got me off the streets back then.’

At that time, the staff and the customers in the East Village restaurants were an incredibly talented pool of people. It was very artsy. They were crazy days. There were so many artists and all the galleries were just booming. There were a lot of performance artists. And then you had a lot of actors living here. It was very vibrant. There were a lot of people who had been in squats. People were starting to homestead a little bit. The community gardens were literally cleaned by hand by the people from the squats.

I was waitressing at Bandito until they needed a manager and I said OK and gave them a six-month commitment. It was this little Mexican restaurant, which was not very authentic. That’s where I really started to cook. I would cook behind the scenes, backstage for me and the guys. For one thing, I could go back and forth to Mexico and bring things back. The menu itself was great but the restaurant wasn’t owned by a Mexican. It was owned by a Czech guy from Slovakia named Rudy Mosny, who was friends with Abe Lebewohl from the 2nd Avenue Deli. Abe gave him the idea to do the Mexican place.

Abe was an amazing guy. I used to laugh when he would come over to eat something that wasn’t kosher and he had a knack for popping in anytime I would be cooking Mexican food. I’d be making a big pot of Chilaquiles for the guys in the kitchen and without fail he’d show up. If you’d ever go out to dinner with him and he liked what was on your plate, he’d help himself.

I ended up helping [Rudy] open a restaurant in the West Village ... and they opened a restaurant called Telephone Bar and Grill. I was about to start graduate school and Rudy decided to move when the Berlin Wall went down. He had a chance to go back and reclaim some of the land that had been taken from his family, so he said to me, if you don’t stay and manage I’ll close Telephone, and I couldn’t do that. So I turned around and ended up running it on my own until I opened La Palapa. I realized that I loved my day-to-day life and so it became my career.

I opened La Palapa with a partner 14 years ago. It’s really what I’m homesick for; it’s recipes from my childhood. It’s great because I get to break the stereotypes that people have about Mexico and Mexican cooking. People expect it to be big, cheesy nachos, the salsa and chips. That’s not what you eat in Mexico. Unless someone gives me an incredible tortilla I don’t put a burrito on the menu, because if I did that people would not try the authentic stuff. If I opened today everyone would be like, ‘oh, it’s artisanal’ because we make our own cheese and we make everything from scratch. But I had to do that because you could not get it. And these days I can be even more creative than when I started.

I’ve also been helping and consulting with Robert Ehrlich, who bought the building I live in and the Holiday Cocktail Lounge, which has been a crazy thing. I was in the building and I said, ‘I’m here and I’ve got La Palapa, give me a call if you need help.’ It’s been a constant construction zone. The building was in terrible condition. Next week will be two years since he bought the building. It’s been such an exercise in zen and archaeology. As much as we’ve been trying to maintain it, you couldn’t keep everything. We were lucky on their closing night that we didn’t all fall through. Every time we look behind a wall it’s been a major repair. It’s been an endless process.

Taking down the paneling, there were doors going everywhere. There were old murals from when it was a burlesque house called Ali Baba. There were showers downstairs for the girls. It was a beauty parlor. I’ve got everything in a shed in the back. We found a tunnel that goes across the street to Theatre 80. I did a lot of research when doing all the permits and the space was TL50, Tavern and Liquor 50, the 50th liquor license after prohibition. And most of those were all crooked. And there was a bootlegging tunnel to First Avenue under Theatre 80. The buildings on First Avenue are all a bit cockeyed because of that tunnel.

There’s still a little bit of renovation. At this point I don’t know exactly how it will all end up. It’s remarkable, that any day if you were just camping on the stoop, 10 people would come by and have a memory about the Holiday Cocktail Lounge.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

On the phone with Sylvain Sylvain of the New York Dolls

[Sylvain, left, and David Johansen in 2006]

Last week, I spoke with Sylvain Sylvain, the guitarist of the legendary New York Dolls, and one of the two remaining original band members. I called him to talk about the program he's hosting at noon today on East Village Radio titled "Rock and Roll Hours." 

He talked to me for about 45 minutes from his home in Atlanta, sharing some favorite East Village memories starting when he moved to the neighborhood from Queens in 1967. 

Sylvain, 62, has a lot of stories, from waiting for coffee at Veselka to being the protopunk band who helped pave the way for others on the NYC scene in the 1970s. Here are some excerpts from the conversation, including parts that appear on the East Village Radio website. It was more of a conversation than an interview, so it doesn't really follow a Q-and-A format...

First apartment
"It was ... 1967. It was on East Fifth Street between Avenue C and D. It was $57 a month in rent. For the whole damn place! The apartment had a refrigerator. It worked and everything — the light was on. But it didn’t have a door. [Laughs] It was groovy for about a month or two — during the summer. Then I got the hell out of there real quick. Anywhere past Avenue A you were taking your life in your hands. There was a lot of heroin. It was actually cheaper than pot. It was pretty fucking wild."



Gem Spa, which served as the setting for the back cover of the New York Dolls' first album
"It was a corner place in the late 1960s. It wasn’t much of a joint at all. But we felt like the place epitomized the whole East Village scene — this is where we were living. You could stop there and pick up your smokes and get an egg cream and the newspaper or a magazine. I know Johnny [Thunders] used to really love those egg creams. They got hipper as years went on, where they would sell Melody Maker. It became more of a place once the Dolls took pictures in front of it.

Veselka
"There was the Slow Russians. What do they call that place? Veselka? We called it ‘The Slow Russians.’ You’d ask for a cup of coffee at like 2 o’clock in the morning. By the time they served you the coffee it would be like 6 o’clock in the morning! [Laughs] They were real slow! But they had all those soups and it was pretty cheap. They were open all night too."

Peace Eye Bookstore
"Ed Sanders from the Fugs — one of my favorites — had a bookstore right across the street from Tompkins Square Park [at 147 Avenue A]. I worked there for a couple of months until he discovered that I couldn’t really read because I’ve always had dyslexia, and then he fired me right there."

Rent
"It was cheap. You could live on the Avenues. It was a lot safer. The drugs were softer there. There was marijuana — no heroin. If you wanted to live there, it was like $150 to $300 for a month's rent.

"Every summer, me and [David] Johansen, we used to say, 'OK, I haven't seen that person ... that person just came in. She just came in.' We could count them off. They heard their calling from wherever they came from — the Midwest, the West Coast, upstate New York — even from Queens, like me. These people had a calling to come to the city, and the East Village was the only place that they could afford to live. They would go to art school or become musicians. The only band who I remember before us were the Magic Tramps, which was Eric Emerson. He passed away, the poor guy, on heroin too.

Manhattan
"Queens was a few stops away from Manhattan, but it was a lifetime of travel to get to Manhattan.

"Manhattan was the only free place. As bad as it was in Alphabet City, you were free at least. You could wear what you wanted. Some times you took your life in your hands just walking. It was really dangerous. But at least you were free — that was the bottom line."



Shopping and dressing
"[Dolls bassist] Arthur Kane was on First Avenue. He lived right above a bar [now d.b.a.]. It took us like five hours to get dressed. Arthur was wearing this chick’s zebra waistcoat. It was a print, of course. It wasn’t a real zebra. But it took us hours and hours to get dressed — all this just to go shopping at the supermarket.

"When we get to the supermarket — it was below Houston. It was called the Big Apple. We were in the queue there to pay for whatever food we didn’t stuff into our pockets. This mafiosa guy says 'the things you see when you ain’t got a rifle.'

"I would go shopping from Madison Avenue to thrift shops. And you just made it up on your own.

"We'd get everything from the little kids' motorcycle jackets to beat-up blue jeans. It depended where the fuck you got it. We were the most creative — we were like what they call club kids, but when there were no clubs."

Telecommunications
"Everyone had a telephone. Of course, we never paid for it. You’d pick a name. My name was Ricky Corvette. I'm pretty sure I still owe Ma Bell a lot of money. Back then, you’d call up and say I just moved into this new place. 'OK, what's your name? Ricky Corvette. OK, Ricky we'll be there next week to put in your phone.' I'm talking about 1970."

Johnny's closet
Johnny Thunders had an apartment on Avenue A. His closet was like — everything would be pressed and dry cleaned. He had a real unique way of dressing and picking this and this and that and putting it all together.

When we were picking names for the band, he called me, well, he called Ricky Corvette, and run names by me. 'What do you think of Johnny Thunder?' I'd was like Yeah, that's pretty cool Johnny. The phone would ring five minutes later. What about Johnny Thunders?

Home
"I did have an apartment in New York until 2010. It was on 69th Street off Broadway. Up until a couple years ago we were doing OK so I could still have an apartment in New York. But then I couldn’t afford it. I first moved to LA, and lived there until 1995 and moved here to Atlanta. It was all because of money. Now Atlanta is getting almost as expensive as New York. Almost. I think Nicaragua, friend, is next."

Starting a band
"A lot of kids come up to me like 'Wow, you came up at a really great time!' Oh, fuck no! When the New York Dolls started in 1970, there was nobody. You couldn't get a contract. It took us years. It took until 1973 until we got signed.

"After we started it was five years until CBGB opened in 1975. The Dolls broke up in 1975. There were no places to play. You had to invent places to play. We were the ones who kind of gave birth to groups like Blondie and the Talking Heads." 

 

 [Photos via Sylvain Sylvain]

The campaign against Bar Veloce continues with new flyer campaign

Back in January, we pointed out the flyers along Second Avenue accusing the Bar Veloce owners of allegedly underpaying workers and taking money from the tip pool.

In April 2011, several Bar Veloce workers reportedly sued the owners of the restaurant group for wage and labor violations.

Then, as Eater reported on Feb. 21, the owners were counter-suing the workers for a smear campaign that they believe is tarnishing the Veloce name.

According to the new suit: "customers have been driven away, potential investors lost, and employees unnecessarily upset and confused."

Per Grub Street on the lawsuit, "A note to disgruntled restaurant employees: Taking out a telephone-pole flyer smear campaign may not be such a hot idea."

In any event, we spotted new flyers up and down First Avenue yesterday afternoon... involving a few more parties to the smear campaign — Porsena, Porchetta and Ugly Kitchen ...

We asked chef Sara Jenkins of Porsena and Porchetta if she had seen the flyers. Jenkins said that she had, though she declined to comment on them.

Reports: Bar Veloce suing former employees over East Village flyer campaign

Back in January, presumably former employees of the wine cafe on Second Avenue placed flyers around the neighborhood accusing the Bar Veloce owners of allegedly underpaying workers and taking money from the tip pool.

In April 2011, Bar Veloce workers reportedly sued the owners of the restaurant group for wage and labor violations. Now, as Eater reports today, the owners are counter-suing the workers for a smear campaign that they believe is tarnishing the Veloce name.

According to the new suit: "customers have been driven away, potential investors lost, and employees unnecessarily upset and confused."

Per Grub Street on the lawsuit, "A note to disgruntled restaurant employees: Taking out a telephone-pole flyer smear campaign may not be such a hot idea."

The former Café Charbon will now be known as Hair of the Dog — or The Dog

I was at the CB3/SLA meeting in January where the committee gave the OK for the transfer of Epicerie Café Charbon on the corner of Orchard and Stanton Streets to the team behind The Stumble Inn, Off the Wagon, Gin Mill, Down the Hatch, The 13th Step, etc.

The rep from the bar made a low-key yet professional presentation, and the transfer sailed right through without any objections.

In June, Michael Asch, one of the two senior co-owners of the 13th Step and its sibling bars, told me that the new space would be "a sports bar, pub and grill, serving burgers, salads, sandwiches, etc., with an emphasis on value — both on the food as well as liquor."

Café Charbon closed in June, as BoweryBoogie first reported.

Yesterday, BoweryBoogie did some nice detective work, reporting that the new space could be a second location of the Upper West Side-based Gin Mill.

Asch sent me an email yesterday saying that the Café Charbon space will actually be renamed Hair of the Dog, "and probably quickly to be referred to as 'The Dog.'" Projected opening: Dec. 1. (For the record, Grub Street had this news from Asch first late yesterday afternoon.)

[Photo by Shanna Ravindra for New York magazine]

Previously on EV Grieve:
13th Step owner discusses frat rap, telephone booths and bar names

LES nightlife game-changer: Team behind 13th Step, Down the Hatch OK'd to take over Café Charbon space

LES nightlife game-changer: Team behind 13th Step, Down the Hatch OK'd to take over Café Charbon space

[Photo by Shanna Ravindra for New York magazine]

This one seemingly took a lot of people by surprise at tonight's CB3/SLA meeting:

Alterations/Transfers/Upgrades:
To Be Determined, 168-170 Orchard St (trans/op) (L'Epicerie Cafe Charbon)

This is one helluva transfer. Epicerie Café Charbon, with its pâté maison and moules marinières, on the corner of Orchard and Stanton Streets, will be closing... and the team behind The Stumble Inn, Off the Wagon, Gin Mill, Jake's Dilemma, Down the Hatch and The 13th Step are taking over the space.

The CB3/SLA committee unanimously approved the transfer. A few details: The space will be a full-service tavern open from 11:30 a.m. to 4 a.m. The French doors will close at 10 p.m. There will be $1 drafts at happy hour, a private party room and DJs on occasion (no dancing, though).

No word yet on the name of the new bar.

Previously on EV Grieve:
13th Step owner discusses frat rap, telephone booths and bar names

Images, 2010

A sampling, in no particular order...

• Too many fires, such as this one on 14th Street and Avenue A (photo by EV Grieve reader Sergey)

• RIP Michael Shenker

• Shepard Fairey



• A BP protest



• Sammy



• The year of the bedbug(s)



• A murder outside Sin Sin



• Smurfs, now and forever



• Saving Ray's



• Random street shot, Second Avenue



• Finding EV Lazarus



• World Cup fever



• The end of the Mars Bar?



• Random street shot, Third Avenue



• Loving and hating the new bike lanes



• Exit the Telephone Bar, enter the 13th Step



• Markey Hayden Bena, 1956-2010 (Photo by Bob Arihood)



• Just another Saturday night in the East Village



• A crash and chaos outside The Bean (Photo by Vautrin)



• A murder on Seventh Street



• Art Around the Park



• EVLambo, now and forever — Keep rollin' rollin' rollin' rollin' (Photo by EV Grieve reader Joe)