Activity at the former site of A. Fontana Shoe Repair

What's going on at the former location of the A. Fontana Shoe Repair on 10th Street past Second Avenue? The shop, there for 45 years, closed in late February. I didn't spot any workers or construction permits when I walked by...And there will be no sarcastic asides about bank branches, yogurt shops or Duane Reades. Anything is possible.
If you're new to this...Jeremiah has provided thoughtful coverage of Fontana's this past year.

Report: State housing official nabbed in rent scam

From today's Post:

A state housing official from Brooklyn was busted for selling lists of rent-regulated tenants to builders so they could target properties for redevelopment, The Post has learned.

Keith James, 53, of Brownsville, a rent program specialist at the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, took the bribes from January 2001 to September 2005, authorities said.

A source close to the investigation told The Post that the rolls - which are not public - "are valuable because it gives developers and potential purchasers insight into the long-term revenue of a building that has rent-stabilized and rent-controlled apartments," allowing them to target buildings with fewer or older rent-regulated tenants.

A Cheap Trick post-concert party from 1978

In case you have 28 spare minutes today...here's a video of a post-Cheap Trick concert party from 1978 at the Palladium. Susan Blond interviews the likes of Linda Blair, John Cale, David Johansen and, of course, Cheap Trick.



[Via Anton Perich on YouTube]

The New York Dolls -- Stranded in the Jungle

A perfect song for a summer Friday. Or any day. Or season.

More on the East Village harassment story

Following up on the post yesterday on the landlord accused of harassing tenants...Curbed has more here.

Meanwhile, Jill from Blah Blog Blah left a comment regarding all this. She has firsthand experience:

I live in one of these buildings. We have had almost half the apartments vacated in the past few months. And once the tenants leave, we never know where they went or what happened to them. We've organized a tenants group but the people who leave are the ones who didn't join the group. Some that we did know left because they decided it just wasn't worth the living conditions. One had a new baby and were so freaked out by the construction, so off to Brooklyn they went.

Who moved in? Not one of the new tenants is over 25. They are renting 400 square foot renovated apartments (3 rooms--2 bedrooms and a common area with a kitchen and very small space for maybe a chair) for $3200 on a third floor walk up in a very filthy building. Probably a little less for the upper floors. Two to an apartment--$1500 to live in the East Village is probably the going rate, crazy. Dozens of bars but nowhere to buy a fresh piece of fish. Who needs food when you can live on alcohol?

The problem is that the landlord operates just on this side of the law. The super was heard recently telling one of the rent stabilized tenants that he doubted if he could adequately fix whatever the problem is "because you know what the landlord wants to do to you folks." They make a repair, but they make it purposely bad. They turn off the hot water for half a day so that by the time the complaint is registered, it has been "fixed." They don't properly register with DOB for permits and then "fix" the paperwork months later, and DOB could give a shit. There are absolutely no penalties or oversight. They take months to renovate an apartment and clean the hallway rarely, so there is dust everywhere, it comes up through the floorboards and infests every crook--I'm still cleaning out shoes that I hadn't worn that are coated in plaster dust from 6 months ago.

But is a dirty hallway enough to go to court? The workers start before legal hours and end after they are allowed to be here, making a lot of noise. Does DOB do anything? No, they are worried about cranes falling, if that.

They evicted my neighbor out and literally threw his stuff down down 6 flights of stairs. Kicked it down. Then he won in court and got to come back.

I could go on about the small things they have done, they all add up, but none individually are enough to make a case that sounds really compelling.

Sid Vicious on New York Cable-Access TV

Sid and Nancy and Stiv Bators and Cynthia Ross of the B Girls in 1978....

Dude, where's my sub?

At the Subway on Maiden Lane in the Financial District.

Reminder tonight!: Richard Sandler

Two documentaries by Richard Sandler, Brave New York and Sway, are playing tonight in the community garden at Sixth Street and Avenue B. (Brave New York chronicles the East Village from 1988-2003.)

Previously on EV Grieve:
Richard Sandler's New York City

[Image: Richard Sandler, 1982]

A mighty wind

Just in case you missed the piece in the Times on the wind farmers of East 11th Street from Aug. 4, the Post did their own version of it today.

Meanwhile, any comments on Bloomberg's windmill energy plan?

Looking at Extra Place

I'm continuing to take in all parts of the Bowery. An appreciation of sorts. As Forgotten New York has noted, Extra Place has been a dead end on the north side of East 1st Street east of the Bowery since about 1800. Here's what it looked like in 1978.


[Top image via Forgotten New York]

Here's what it looked like the other day.

As it has been reported, the cul-de-sac is becoming "a slice of the Left Bank, a pedestrian mall lined with interesting boutiques and cafés."

Now watch this snappy video about Extra Place at 311 Bowery!

The Heterosexuals are coming!

Ugh. On 10th Street. Near Second Avenue.

Landlord accused of harassing longtime tenants

From the City Room this afternoon:

A group of tenant advocates has accused a landlord that acquired 17 rent-regulated buildings on the Lower East Side last year of aggressively harassing tenants in a concerted effort to oust longtime residents from the buildings so that the units could be renovated and the rents raised.

All the buildings, which are rent-regulated, are in an area bounded by First Avenue and Avenue B and East 13th and Houston Streets.

Capturing intertwined lives in the East Village

[Photo Lorcan Otway/The Villager]

The Villager profiles East Village photographer Lorcan Otway this week.

Otway’s photos capture everything from the fast-action danger of a young man trying to resuscitate a friend who had overdosed on heroin (above, which ran in The Villager last June 13-19) to a close-up of a young “crusty” woman, looking tenderly at her pet rat. Most important, each photo has overlapping characters interacting in a shared setting. Their stories are intertwined: A young Ninth Precinct policewoman captured on her training day, Officer Spinelli, shares an ecosystem in the park with Carl, the elderly man dubbed “Santa Claus,” who she will probably scoop up many times for drinking. Smiling Officer Bearne’s face glows with humanity, as does that of Jim “Mosaic Man” Power, as each goes about his life in the East Village Commons — separate, yet connected.

Action item:
Otway's photo exhibit, “East Village Commons: A Loving Portrayal of a Neighborhood,” will be on display at Theater 80 on St. Mark’s Place beginning Monday. It runs for a week.

EV Grieve lost and found

I hope there's a reward! Found on Sixth Street near First Avenue.

The per-man, per-truck moving wars in the East Village

Do I hear $16 per man, per truck, per hour?

At 20 Pine: Oh, my achin' back...

During my guest stint at Curbed last week, I wrote a post on 20 Pine, the big-ass condo conversion that's been taking a looooooong time to get condoized in the Financial District. Anyway, I have the occasion to pass by the place just about every work day. And the 20 Pine sign gives me pause nearly every time.



Hold on. "Hey, lady, could you please move from the..." Oh. She's part of the ad. Poor dear, given her posture, she must have neck and lower back pain. Is this really the best image to help sell a luxury property?

Oh. As for big-ass (classy me), this is what I mean:



And it's, uh, big-assier in person.

Is the standard-of-living bubble ready to burst?

Over at Fortune, Geoff Colvin, senior editor at large, weighs in with the next big financial crisis: "We made it through the bursting of the Internet bubble and now the bursting of the real estate bubble. Next we may be approaching the end of the most worrisome bubble of all: the standard-of-living bubble."

And:

"Since credit card debt has been growing much faster than the economy -- more than 8% in last year's third and fourth quarters and over 7% in May (the most recent month reported) -- people are apparently using it as a substitute for income. Thus, for the past year or so we have still maintained the standard-of-living illusion."

Bottom line?

"Sustainable increases in living standards have to be earned, not borrowed, and that means performing ever higher value work that can't be outsourced. We haven't been meeting that challenge very well; doing so will probably require much more and better education for millions of Americans, which takes time and money. The result may feel like deprivation, but I don't see it that way. Who knows -- we might even find that living within our means and saving a little money actually isn't so bad."

The problem with having talking chairs in hotel rooms

Let's take a quick trip back 55 years to August 1953. An article in that month's Mechanix Illustrated highlights ill-fated inventions, such as talking hotel chairs, which were giving a whirl at the Hotel Edison in Midtown. The concept: When a person eased himself into the chair, his weight would actuate a lever that would start a record playing. When he got up, it would stop. Irwin Kramer, vice president of the Hotel Edison, said of the chairs, “It would be a direct means of advertising. When a guest came into his room and sat down, we thought he’d be pleased to hear something like 'welcome to the Hotel Edison,' and a description of some of our features. We thought it would be quite a novelty.” Right! According to the article, "A pretty girl came in, plumped herself wearily into the chair and the monologue started. She leaped up, peered into the closet and under the bed, then ran screaming into the hall. 'There’s a man in my room,' she gasped. The management had to quiet her." Soon after, the hotel removed the chairs.

Previously on EV Grieve:
At the Hotel Edison: An appreciation

Nothing's shocking?

The John Varvatos fall 2008 fall campaign finds Perry Farrell on the Bowery. According to the John Varvatos Web site, the ads were shot "on top of and around the landmark 315 Bowery building in NYC's East Village." The "campaign reveals Farrell's enigmatic personality and captures Varvatos' detailed sensibility in their truest forms."

Oh, don't mind us: More music videos featuring NYC in the background

So I've been having fun with Alex at Flaming Pablum posting music videos featuring NYC as a backdrop. (He had some real blasts from the past for me: Biohazard! House of Pain!) Anyway, I started the other day with more cheesy fare, but am now getting into stuff that I like.

Sonic Youth, "Kool Thing"


Sonic Youth, "Do You Believe in Rapture?" (An ode to CBGB)

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Railroad Jerk, "Rollerkoaster"


Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, "The Message"


LOUSY quality video of King Missile, "Detachable Penis" (good shots of the old Kiev on Seventh Street and Second Avenue)


Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, "Redemption Song" (Not that old, of course, but a lovely tribute)