Photo from the Bowery by John Greally… Gothamist has more double rainbow action here.
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Thoughts on NYC nostalgia of the late 1970s
[Photo by Michael Sean Edwards]The Times has posted content from the fall issue of T Magazine, which includes an essay by novelist Edmund White titled Why Can’t We Stop Talking About New York in the Late 1970s?
Specifically he's talking about 1977-1982… an excerpt:
Those were years when rents were low, when would-be writers, singers, dancers could afford to live in Manhattan’s (East, if not, West) Village, before everyone marginal was further marginalized by being squeezed out to Bushwick or Hoboken. Face-to-face encounters are essential to a city’s vitality, even among people who aren’t sure of each other’s names, for the exchange of ideas and to generate a sense of electricity. In the ’70s, creative people of all sorts could meet without plans, could give each other tips or discuss burgeoning theories or markets or movements.
You can read the whole piece here … there's also an accompanying slideshow that provides a sneak preview of "The Downtown Decade: NYC 1975 – 1985," on display now through Oct. 10 at Rare/Glenn Horowitz Bookseller, 17 W. 54th St.
First Flight Music closing at the end of the month
[Undated photo via the Voice]
First Flight Music, billed as the most complete music store in downtown Manhattan, is closing shop at the end of the month.
Owner Daniel Wollock confirmed the closure in an email to us yesterday.
"After 20 years we have to vacate this store by the end of September," he said. "We thought we had secured a new, albeit smaller location nearby, but it has not worked out."
The 1,500 square-feet of space one level up at 174 First Ave. includes soundproofed practice rooms for shoppers to test out the instruments as well an area for music lessons.
Wollock did not disclose the reason for the closure.
The building here between East 10th Street and East 11th Street was previously owned by the DeRobertis family, who sold it and closed their bakery-cafe last December after 110 years in business.
According to public records, an LLC that shares an address with Jonis Realty paid just under $10 million for the building. (It originally hit the market asking $12 million.)
As previously reported, Black Seed bagels is close to opening in the former DeRobertis space.
First Flight is the second music shop to close along the stretch of the East Village of late. A-1 Music shuttered at 186 First Ave. in early 2014.
Previously on EV Grieve:
[Updated] 174-176 First Ave. is in contract
Sitting empty on St. Mark's Place
While there has been a taker for the former Luca Bar, the spaces that housed its neighbors on St. Mark's Place between Avenue A and First Avenue remain empty.
Back in April, the State of New York seized sister bars the Belgian Room and Hop Devil Grill. The Ton-Up space at No. 127 has been empty since May 2014.
We looked inside the other day and noticed that someone removed the wall that separated the Ton-Up space...
... and the Belgian Room... to perhaps make for a larger bar-restaurant concept some day...
We haven't spotted any for rent signs on either the Belgian Room or Hop Devil Grill. And there aren't any work permits on file with the DOB to suggest any incoming new business.
And some equal time to the ex-Hop Devil Grill ...
Previously on EV Grieve:
The Belgian Room and Hop Devil Grill closed for nonpayment of taxes
Selling off the former Hop Devil Grill
[Updated] Graffiti legend Futura next up on the Houston/Bowery Mural Wall
As we noted on Tuesday, workers prepped the Houston/Bowery Wall for its next mural ... and the first sign of what's to come arrived yesterday...
BoweryBoogie hears that FUTURA (aka Lenny McGurr), the iconic graffiti artist from the 1970s, is next to work on the canvas here.
Per a profile in the Times from 2001: "In the early 1980's, he was one of the most sophisticated of the graffiti writers who moved aerosol art from the New York subway system to the embrace of the gallery world."
Also of note: In 1981, he toured with The Clash, painting live on stage as they performed throughout Europe. He also appears in the video for "This Is Radio Clash" and had other collaborations with the band.
Here's a documentary short on McGurr from 2013...
Updated 1:30 p.m.
Landlord Goldman Properties sent out a news release confirming Futura as the next wall artist. He will start tomorrow.
Wednesday, September 9, 2015
A partially opened gate at the Stage on 2nd Avenue
[Photo today by Steven]
There hasn't been much information about the status of the Stage at 128 Second Ave. The 35-year-old diner has been closed since March 30 here between East Seventh Street and St. Mark's Place during an ongoing legal tussle with landlord Icon Reality.
Today, though, several EVG readers noted that the gate was partially open, and a group of workers (one observer said they were wearing T-shirts for a plumbing company) were milling about out front. Another reader noted that the interior looked mostly cleared out, though the napkin holders and salt-and-pepper shakers remained on the counter.
Despite the possibly encouraging sight of an open gate, EVG correspondent Steven spotted owner Roman Diakun, who shook his head and said that there weren't any updates on the Stage's status.
In the aftermath of the deadly explosion across Second Avenue on March 26, Icon Realty accused the Stage of illegally siphoning gas, which was the basis for an eviction notice in April. Diakun has strongly denied the accusations, and sued the landlord to stop the eviction process... al the while, the diner has been shuttered.
Previously on EV Grieve:
The possibility that the Stage won't reopen on 2nd Avenue
City serves stop work order on Icon Realty-owned building for installing gas pipe without permit across from deadly 2nd Avenue blast zone (48 comments)
Petition to help reopen the Stage
Tenants at 128 2nd Ave. file suit against Icon Realty in housing court
Troubling talk about 128 Second Ave, and the long-term future of the Stage
[Updated] Report: Icon Realty serves the Stage an eviction notice
Stage owner Roman Diakun responds to allegations of illegally siphoning gas
Petition to help reopen the Stage
[Updated] The Stage is giving away its bulk food and supplies to charity
Report: The Stage is suing landlord Icon Realty to halt eviction process
The Stage is now crowdfunding to help in its legal fight with Icon Realty
Jets vs. Sharks tonight on Avenue B and East 9th Street
The hills will be alive tonight with the sound of.. oh, wait — sorry. Wrong musical!
The outdoor summer/fall film series continues tonight at Trinity Lower East Side Lutheran Parish on East Ninth Street at Avenue B.
For free out in the church garden tonight: "West Side Story."
The doors open 7:30. Film starts around 8.
And upcoming at Trinity:
Oct. 21 - "Ghostbusters II"
Updated 4:15 p.m.
In case of rain this evening, Trinity will show the film indoors...
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
James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.
By James Maher
Name: Lisa Arbetter
Occupation: Editor, People StyleWatch
Location: Creative Little Garden, 6th Street between Avenues A and B
Time: 11 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 10
I was born in New York. My family lived in Queens at the time and it was the late 1960s, early 1970s. They moved us out fairly quickly. I only lived here for the first oh-so-formative 6 months of my life. My mom was from the Bronx and my dad was from Brooklyn and at the time we lived in Queens.
My grandfather on my father’s side worked in a vegetable market on the Lower East Side. My grandmother lived on Hester Street. Her family came from one of those towns that was Russia, and then was Poland, or the other way around. It’s a little confusing where she came from. It was the diaspora so people don’t know where they came from. The way she told it — and now this could totally be untrue — was that her family was incredibly rich and they had servants and everything. They had to be smuggled out of the country by their servants and then they wound up here and were very poor.
My dad likes to tell the story about why they left New York. One day they were making breakfast and they put the scrambled eggs next to the table by the window, and he turned around to get the coffee. By the time he came back with the coffee, there was soot all over the eggs. He was like, 'That’s it, we’re moving!' But I think it was more because everybody who had a family back then was leaving.
They took us to this small town outside Pittsburgh called Greensburg. My parents had grown up in these majorly Jewish neighborhoods and they had never been to Pennsylvania. They didn’t know where they were going. I think that they were shocked.
My dad was an entrepreneur. I don’t know where he found them, but he hooked up with these guys who were in Pennsylvania and they started this replacement window company. My mom had this funny Bronx accent and the town that I grew up in was incredibly homogeneous — a very Catholic small town. I remember my dad saying all the time, 'Life is not like this. Life is not like this. It’s like New York. You can't get The New York Times and the only bagels are Lender's.’ We were literally brainwashed into thinking life isn’t this, it’s New York. They would take us here once, twice, three times a year. It was never a question that I would live here. My brother moved here, my sister moved to Albany so we all sort of migrated back.
When I went to school, I was bound and determined to be a therapist. That was it, but when I got there I didn’t really like the program. I went to Syracuse and it happened to have a very good journalism school. I had always liked to write and at the time and I had always been this kid who loved magazines. I just didn’t think of it as a career.
So it happened that they had a program at Syracuse called Magazine and I signed up for that and was hooked. It was at the time when Tina Brown was editing Vanity Fair and it was a big deal. She was mixing celebrity with more high culture, articles on art with tabloid crime stories, but it was a sort of revolutionary mix at the time. She was making a lot of news and I thought it was very glamorous. I loved the idea that I could write and it could be about anything.
My first apartment was on 4th Street between A and B. I had moved in with a friend. It was a crooked apartment with the bathtub in the kitchen — that whole story. I couldn’t afford anything and I was living on an air mattress on the floor. My roommate had a very active social life and I wanted to live by myself so I found a place in Brooklyn. I’ve had four apartments in this city, two on 4th Street and two on Amity Street in Brooklyn. I moved back here in 2006 to 4th Street again. I love the neighborhood so much. There is so much diversity in everything. There’s diversity in the restaurants, the people, the ages, the races and the way people talk, the languages, the way people dress.
I got a job at InStyle around 2000. It was fairly new and the whole idea of the celebrity on the cover was a new thing at that moment. People didn’t care about models anymore. It was sort of like the bridge between the model, the supermodel period and the celebrity period. I then worked at Cargo, which was a short-lived men's magazine, during the whole metrosexual moment in time. Then I got hired at People StyleWatch to help launch it, then went back to InStyle, and now I’m at StyleWatch again.
I started this job about five or six months ago. It’s been crazy but it’s been so much fun. We rethought and redesigned the magazine over the last five months. It was more of a celebrity publication and now it’s more of a street-style publication. There are many blogs but it’s never been put into a magazine format. It’s the entire world. It’s every city, and pulling it together into trends, showing how people put outfits together, adding the service element, adding the shopping element, and also being able to show big beautiful pictures in layouts.
And what I love most about it is the diversity. Style is not one thing; it’s not one body type. All of us think many different things are beautiful, but in the media you see one sort of thing. Now we have a chance to show body diversity, racial diversity, and diversity of style. You see people that aren’t necessarily trendy or the newest thing, but they put their clothes together in such unique ways that it’s fascinating to look at.
James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.
Big Lee's makes it official on 1st Avenue
[Photo by Steven]
Spanky and Darla's closed back in the late winter at 140 First Ave. between St. Mark's Place and East Ninth Street.
The bar quietly reopened under new ownership earlier in the summer… not looking too different from the previous establishment, at least on the outside.
The bar's new neon signage arrived a few days ago — here's Big Lee's Saloon.
Big Lee is a former doorman/bouncer at Hogs & Heifers as well as Coney Island High on St. Mark's Place (he is also originally from Coney Island).
In times of age of high concepts, hand-carved ice and charcuterie boards … it's nice just to have a regular old bar open.
Bar Virage reopens Thursday with a new menu
If you walked by Bar Virage on Second Avenue and East Seventh Street the past two days, then you may have noticed the place is closed… just until Thursday as they prepare for the launch of their new menu. (Bar Virage describes their current menu as "French/Italian/Middle Eastern" influenced.)
They offered a sneak preview of one dish via Instagram…
Virage changed its name to Bar Virage in the spring of 2014 as part of a larger transformation, which included a remodeled dining room and new menu items.
A pop-up fashion thrift shop tonight at Rockwood Music Hall to aid the Bowery Mission
The next L.E.S. amis — described as New York's non-profit fashion thrift store — takes place tonight at the Rockwood Music Hall from 5-9.
Via the EVG inbox: "There will be vintage and new designer women's and men's clothing, and all proceeds go to The Bowery Mission."
Here's some background from the LES amis website:
LES amis was founded by fashion designer Jemima Janney. Born from a recognition of the huge amount of wastage in the fashion industry and a desire to help the many homeless of NYC.
L.E.S. amis collects NYC's best designer clothing from those willing to donate. All clothing sold at our pop up stores is high quality, designer, high fashion and affordable. (We're always up for a barter).
The thrift store coincides with NYC Communion Residency shows, a monthly, multi-genre showcase of local and national musicians. (You can gain access to the show with any purchase from the thrift shop.)
Rockwood Music Hall is at 196 Allen St. between Houston and Stanton.
You can read more about L.E.S. amis here.
Tuesday, September 8, 2015
Community Board 3 member, his wife and daughter's fiancé die in upstate car crash
[Image via Facebook]
Morris Faitelewicz, 58, and his 54-year-old wife Beth, who were well-known on the Lower East Side, died yesterday afternoon during a single-car crash on Route 17 in Sullivan County. Their soon to be son-in-law, 31-year-old Yehuda Bayme, also died. The Faitelewicz's three children — daughter Shani and sons Yaakov and Avi — were injured, but they are reportedly expected to recover.
"The family was a truly amazing Lower East Side family," friend Jacob Goldman told the Post. "Morris volunteered for everything. There was nothing that he was not involved in."
Morris was a former auxiliary police officer, a 9/11 first responder and a member of Community Board 3. Beth was a nurse at Beth Israel.
The family was on their way back to the city when the crash occurred. According to ABC-7: Morris attempted to move into the passing lane, but there was already a car next to his. He turned back but overcorrected, causing the car to run off the road and roll over several times before coming to rest.
The funeral for Morris and Beth is scheduled for tomorrow morning at 10 at Bialystoker Synagogue, 7-11 Bialystoker Place (formerly Willett Street) between Grand Street and Broome Street.
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