Week in Grieview

[Second Avenue, photo by Grant Shaffer]

About the new exhibit space at the former deli on East 12th Street and Avenue C (Thursday)

Renovations for HiFi (Wednesday)

Out and About with Nico. D. Smith (Wednesday)

Continuum Coffee closes (Monday)

It kinda snowed for a minute! (Tuesday)

The Strand and sprinklers (Thursday, 35 comments)

Jill Anderson closing on East Ninth Street (Wednesday)

Fair Folks & a Goat opening shop on East 11th Street (Monday)

Where to get coffee before 6 a.m. (Friday)

A "Missed Connection" at Veselka, maybe (Monday)

Idle Hands expands on Avenue B (Thursday)

Oaxaca Taqueria closes Extra Place location with move to East 7th Street (Tuesday)

The East Village of Michael Sean Edwards (Friday)

More changes for 37 St. Marks's Place (Tuesday)

CB3 not into Ben Shaoul's rooftop addition on East Fifth Street (Friday)

A look at the Jefferson's progress (Thursday)

Missing the Mars Bar, still (Tuesday)

New York City's first holistic vapor lounge is opening in the East Village (Monday)

Empire Biscuit (Tuesday, 71 comments)

The Strand using sprinklers to evict the homeless — now in comic form

As DNAinfo first reported yesterday, the Strand installed an outdoor sprinkler system to drive away homeless people sleeping under their red awning along East 12th Street, according to employees. (Management had said the sprinklers were there to clean off the sidewalk.)

The incident prompted Strand employee Greg Farrell to draw a comic based on his firsthand experience of the situation.

The comic is posted at the blog "Strand Ask Us," a nine-part account of the labor struggle that took place between the workers and management at the bookstore in the spring of 2012. (A book on this is due next year from Microcosm publishing.)

Farrell said that the sprinklers were installed this past summer. "So, in fairness, there was no risk of anybody freezing to death at the time."

Updated 2:17
At Vanishing New York, Jeremiah Moss discusses the sprinkler situation ...:

So many of the corporations in the city do horrible, inhumane things every day, on a much larger, often global scale, than spraying water on the homeless. Boycott the businesses that rely on sweatshop and child labor. Boycott the businesses that commit horrifying daily acts of animal cruelty. Boycott the businesses that deliberately destroy the fabric of our communities--and our environment. Do not boycott the Strand. To attack the Strand and not Apple, Amazon, The Gap, and others like them, is a gross misplacement of anger and energy.

Report: The Strand used sprinklers to prevent the homeless from sleeping alongside the store

DNAinfo reports that the Strand used sprinklers to prevent the homeless from taking shelter at night alongside the bookstore on East 12th Street at Broadway.

"It was to keep people from sleeping out there," said a Strand bookseller who asked that her name not be used. "People used to sleep over there and in the morning we have to put out the book carts, so it was a little bit difficult and uncomfortable for some people."

However, a store manager denied that the sprinklers were intended to drive away the homeless, rather that they are used for cleaning the sidewalk.

And a reaction from Marcus Moore of Picture the Homeless: The sprinkler tactic was "an attack on the homeless population" and "this is not what caring people do to each other."

And now, a photo of Morrissey not looking so happy on First Avenue

Several people spotted Morrissey in the East Village yesterday... on First Avenue with two friends looking for a cab. EVG reader Krist Sorge sent me the above photo ... via Instagram.

BoweryBoogie posted a photo here.

As BB notes, the former the lyricist and vocalist of The Smiths was last spotted around these parts coming to the aid of a woman who passed out at the Strand in September.

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

[East 12th Street this morning]

The Mosaic Man's McMansion work on East Third Street (BoweryBoogie)

More about Morrissey assisting a woman who collapsed at the Strand (Gothamist)

A 12-story building for Pitt and Delancey (The Lo-Down)

A night at the Blackbird on Avenue B (The New York Times)

The Yom Kippur riot on the LES in 1898 (The Bowery Boys)

Changes at the Bleecker Street station (Off the Grid)

An appreciation of Neil's Coffee Shop on the UES (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

The end of 5 Pointz (The Observer)

Who called the Ramones a 'bumptious band of degenerate no-talents'?

In case that you haven't seen this yet (I first spotted it Friday over at Flaming Pablum, and the item is making the rounds) ... a little afternoon entertainment via a July 1976 issue of UK weekly music newspaper Melody Maker.

The author did not care for The Ramones, saying that the only place for their "notoriously discordant music is the sweaty downtown Manhattan dives to which they are no doubt accustomed."

At author at the time was 17-year-old Steve Morrissey, who would grow up one day to save fainting woman at the Strand. And front the Smiths and enjoy a successful solo career.

[Click to enlarge image]

Per Buzzfeed, you can buy the issue on eBay ... going for $56.89.

Everyday is like Sunday

I didn't see it myself, but... apparently Morrissey was in the store today and came to the rescue of an elderly woman who fainted.
— Strand Book Store (@strandbookstore) September 23, 2012

The tweet making the rounds tonight...

The Bean's new home on Broadway

On Friday, we reported that the Bean is expanding its operation from its Third Street/First Avenue home... We're just confirming the second location on Broadway at 12th Street across from the Strand...

...at the former home of Quiznos and its toasty bullets.

The Bean opening a second location across from the Strand on Broadway

EV Grieve reader/contributor jdx notes this sign in the window at the Bean on First Avenue and Third Street. Perhaps at this location?

Living local: Here comes the 123 Third Ave. sales center!

So the new condo going up now on the corner of 14th Street and Third Avenue (East Union Square!) looks to be ready to unveil the sales office ... it's on 10th Street between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue... (near the home of the 10th Street Scribbler!)

Given the paper on the front windows, it's likely not open just yet...




Still. Let's take a look inside!

So. First things... I guess "Live Local" is their catchphrase of choice. I mean, you're technically living local no matter where you live, right? (Curious if anyone suggested, say, Livin' la Vida Local?)



And what does living local entail? Well! Whole Foods! The Strand! Paragon! The Coffee Shop!



... and Gramercy Tavern? That's a mere six-plus blocks away! (And phooey on your Union Square Cafe, Danny!)




... and they subscribe to the Times...(Take that Wall Street Journal!)

I guess it all makes sense now why the 123 ad went up here back in January ...



Still no prices just yet on the 123 website.

Remembering Bingo Gazingo

My friend Karen Lillis passed along a link to me the other day about Bingo Gazingo, described by the Times in 1997 "as the near-toothless underground performance sensation." The author of such songs as "I Love You So Fucking Much I Can't Shit" died on New Year's Day from injuries that he suffered after getting struck by a cab. He was 85.

Life Just Bounces had a lovely tribute to the man:

You'd hesitate to call him a celebrity by any stretch of the imagination, but New York street/performance poet Bingo Gazingo's obscurity likely served as an aid to his singular imagination and oddball creativity.

With his often crude, spiky, agitated and hilarious rants about sex, dementia, and, especially, popular culture, Gazingo (born Murray Wachs in Queens in 1924) was a Monday night regular every week at New York's Bowery Poetry Club. He was struck by a taxi on his way to one of these very events, presumably on December 28th, and died on New Year's Day.

As Karen told me, "Bingo was wildly unique, and relentless at what he did."

The Times wrote about Bingo in Janaury 1997:

As a young man, he says, he worked as a logger for Broadcast Music Incorporated, or B.M.I., the music licensing agency, sitting over radio play lists with a blue pencil, identifying songs for which the company was entitled to royalties. And then, he says, he disappeared into the United States Postal Service, where he worked for decades sorting mail and loading trucks. "Doing that is like spending 20 years in one day," he says.

But through it all, he says, he never abandoned his dream of being a songwriter. He wrote ballads, novelties, show tunes, country-and-western songs, anything he thought would sell, and left them at stage doors at the Roxy, the Paramount and the Strand, in a time-honored tradition "to try to get my songs to the artists."

"But they never took one of my songs," he says, waving his hands at the memory. ''I thought I would be discovered or something, but it doesn't work that way."

I always intended to go see Bingo one of these Monday nights, but I never did. Wish I would have taken the time to meet this NYC original....

Here's Bingo in action at the Lakeside Lounge in 2006...



And at the 6 stop at Astor Place...

Former Strand Annex now a Lot Less closeout store

The Strand Annex at 95 Fulton Street in the Financial District closed in October 2008... due, in part, to a 300 percent rent hike on its 15,000-square-foor home...



...and now, I just noticed that a Lot Less closeout store has taken over the space...



One more strike against the reinvention of Fulton Street and FiDi...

Posts that I never got around to posting: Unusual fenestration pattern

City Reality listed the Pros and Cons for One Ten Third Avenue...

Pros:
Doorman
Concierge
Roof deck
Good public transportation
Close to Union Square
Many balconies
Unusual fenestration pattern
Courtyard
Fitness center
Close to Strand book store
Close to many movie theaters

Cons:
Considerable traffic
No sidewalk landscaping
Unusual fenestration pattern

Noted

"Rob Pattinson ... was hit by a taxi cab on Thursday while running away from hysterical fans. RadarOnline.com witnessed the Twilight star get clipped by a cab around noon in front of the Strand Bookstore on Broadway and 12th Street."

Looking at the Royal Building entrance

Just a little east of the Fultonhaus is the Royal Building on 95 Fulton St. I love the entrance, with the two barber poles and old-school IRT sign.




And yes -- this building once housed the Strand Annex. That space is still empty.

Staples pulls out of the South Street Seaport gateway: That was easy

The big Staples store (they're actually all big, huh?) that anchored the corner of Water Street and Fulton Street at the gateway to the South Street Seaport rather quietly packed up its ink and toner, binders and desk organizers, and closed up shop last month. Maybe the Staples brass figured business would fall because NYU's lease on the Rockrose-owned Water Street dorm adjacent to the store will not be renewed after this academic year.



There has been activity here of late, though it mostly seems to be workers clearing out the remaining Staples stuff.



Apparently they don't want you to know a Staples was here.



With the departure of the Strand Annex at 95 Fulton in September, there is some nice, fat storefrontage available on the east-end of the street. Maybe that construction will be completed in the next 10 years or so.

Stranded on Fulton

Weird not to have the Strand Annex at 95 Fulton Street in the Financial District around anymore...the store had been in this location for 12 years (in other locations downtown for another eight years)...but the double whammy of a 300 percent rent hike and the ongoing gutting of Fulton Street gave the Strand folks no other choice than to shutter the place, which happened the third week of September after some dandy sales.



And so the 15,000-square-foot space sits empty.




This box was out front the day I walked by...



At least locals can console themselves with another Dunkin' Donuts opening down the street.




[Top Strand photo taken for Downtown Express by by Jefferson Siegel]

Come on in, the shopping's great!

As Urbanite reported (via Jeremiah) on Monday, the Strand Annex on Fulton Street will close after the summer. Why?

The Annex, purveyor of discounted books both new and used, has been at its current location for 12 years. But store owner Fred Bass says that recent construction in the area has decreased customer traffic and lowered profits.
“We were doing very well with that store, and then they started the construction, which really hurt our sales,” Bass said. “The lease was up, and of course the landlord wanted the normal increase. But we figured the construction will last at least another year, and we just felt that it wasn’t viable to do that.”

Another year? Good luck. I made a joke in April about 2078. That seems realistic. I see this mess on Fulton Street every weekday. It's only getting worse. This is an area you want to avoid. And I know people who do, unfortunately. If something like the Strand is giving up, what about some of the other smaller shops?  They need the business.

Previously on EV Grieve:

Been on Fulton Street lately? What a treat! 

All Fulton Street-related posts are here.

“It’s a corporation, and it’s run like that"

Nice piece of reporting in this week's issue of New York Press. Apparently the Strand is a horrible place to work, with allegations of racial discrimination as well as insensitive treatment of pregnant workers. Not to mention the vermin.

"It’s not the East village hipster bookstore it’s presented to be,” said one current 26-year-old male employee. “It’s a corporation, and it’s run like that."

An aside, I didn't realize that corridor along Broadway was once a haven for book stores. According to the article: "In 1927, Ben Bass opened the Strand on Fourth Avenue, which was also known as Book Row, a stretch from Union Square to Astor Place filled with 48 bookstores. Today, the Strand is the only one that remains in operation."

Another aside. Thinking about something Alex wrote at Flaming Pablum: "I fear that very soon, all the record stores in Manhattan -- big and small, corporate and independent -- will be a thing of the past. And that, my friends, is going to be a sad day. And book stores will be the next to go."

I hate to say that he's going to be right...but he's going to be right.

And, uh, an aside to the asides: Sure, I'm used to advertising being on Page 1, but those American Apparel ads are really annoying.

[Via Gawker]