Bar Show hopping

Unfortunately, I'm away this weekend. Otherwise, I'd be hitting the Javits Center for The Bar Show 08. As the site says, "The Bar Show is the Only Trade Show specifically for Professionals representing the Bar, Nightclub, Restaurant, and Liquor Store Industry. The Bar Show means business!"

Well, I'm not in the bar business. But! I love going to bars! I'm certain the ownership from all my favorite neighborhood places will be going...to learn the latest ways to dazzle me with laser-light shows, interactive ads and Port-O-Pong! It will make getting drunk even more delicious! And entertaining!

So what will be going on during the convention?

Big Apple Showdown-Flair Bartending Competition - This show will be presented both days on the Main Stage and will feature participants from all over the world who will demonstrate the wildest bottle flipping, shaker spinning and glass tossing on the planet.

DJ CHEF Spinnin' the Beats While Cookin' the Treats. DJ CHEF is the only entertainer who simultaneously cooks & dejays for special events around the globe.

31 st ANNUAL NYC BIG APPLE GRAPPLE INTERNATIONAL PRO ARM WRESTLING CHAMPIONSHIPS TO BE HELD ON SUNDAY, JUNE 22, 2008

Port-O-Pong Tournaments!

Plus, there's the exhibit hall. This caught my attention:

FogScreen is currently working with bars and nightclubs to help them promote and advertise brands in a never before seen way. Consumers can now interact and walk through ads, providing advertisers with endless possibilities for engaging audiences.

Hmm, interesting! I don't understand this whatsoever!



Meanwhile, to get in the proper mood:

Alphabet City...it heats up when the sun goes down!

I watched Alphabet City the other night for the first time in about, oh, 15 years. I wanted to like the movie more than I did. It's definitely worth watching for many reasons, such as seeing a hammy Jami Gertz play a high-priced teen hooker. There are also some great shots of what the neighborhood used to look like.

Anyway, from here on out, I'm only dressing like Vincent Spano.

Movie trailers have sure come a long way since 1984...



Bonus footage!




[Thanks to jeremizle for posting these.]

And another film called Alphabet City in the works...?

The Department of Health is really cracking down

The vernal igloo of Tompkins Square Park

According to this YouTube description: "vernal igloo! living on the streets of nyc for a month, i sometimes slept outside. a perfect spot in tompkins (no 5/0), completely undisturbed & obscured by green, i slept here on & off for about a week. big enough for 1, 4ft x 3ft x 7ft, enough room to sit up even!"




4ft x 3ft x 7ft apartments nearby are going for what now these days, $1,750? (And is that Emile Hirsch in the video?)

Claim: Bruce Willis doesn't own any part of the Bowery Wine Co.

According to the Observer, in a piece posted last night:

“Basically, he’s not really a partner,” confessed Bowery Wine Company co-owner Chris Sileo, one of two people whose names actually appear on the controversial wine bar’s liquor license (Mr. Willis not included).
“We’re old friends,” Mr. Sileo said of the famous action-film hero. “He lets me attach his name to the place to do me a favor because he knew it would help me. We just say he’s involved in the project.”
Given all the fuss stirred up by Mr. Willis’ supposed involvement in the place, however, Mr. Sileo might want to rethink his celebrity endorsement deal.
“I could do without it,” he said of all the recent hubbub. “I think most of it was because Bruce’s name was attached, and they saw an opportunity to get in the paper.
“I have no problem with activists,” he added. “But it is totally misdirected.”
Echoing the sentiments of fellow Bowery retailer John Varvatos—whose splashy opening of a trendy clothing store on the site of the hallowed CBGB rock club sparked similar demonstrations this past spring—Mr. Sileo said his small business is not responsible for the overall upscaling of the neighborhood.
Blame the landlords, he said; not the tenants: “If you want to direct it at Avalon, fine. But don’t direct it at some New York guy who happens to open a place in the Avalon. We could’ve easily opened down the block; we just opened there because it was a decent location and we got a decent rent.”

Bonus: Bruce Willis from his wine cooler days!

Raising the bar

So the Times debuted its Social Q's column in the Sunday Styles section this past, er, Sunday. Written by Philip Galanes, the column aims to "help with an awkward social situation."

I'm looking forward to seeing the following question, "I moved to the East Village a few months ago. There are so many bars! It's sure not like it was in [HOME STATE]. How should I behave when I'm in a bar? Is tipping customary?"

Anyway, in recent months, I've noticed that this new crop of young professionals -- 21 to 25 years of age, give or take a year on the legal side -- aren't very savvy at the ways of a bar. (I'm not a bartender -- just someone who sits in too many of them for too long.) Generally speaking, they're a self-centered bunch who embarrass themselves without even realizing it. Plus, is it really so difficult to know what you want to drink? One young woman came into one of my favorite neighborhood spots and asked what kind of red wine they had. The bartender said they only had a Merlot. "I'll have a piña colada then." How do you go from red wine to that? Or the young group of women at the same bar who asked the bartender for a recommendation on what to drink. Or the woman who asked to see the drink menu at the Grassroots.

So, generally speaking, what's wrong with some of today's neighborhood-bar-going young generation? (Clarification: I'm talking about regular-bar bars -- props to Brooks of Sheffield for that phrase -- not some bottle-service club.)

For starters:

They act as if they've never been in a bar.
They want to pay using a credit card because...
They rarely have cash on hand.
They leave things behind. ("Did you find a black leather bag with a Lumix digital camera inside...?" Heard a variation of that one too many times.)
They always want the jukebox turned up, which is annoying because...
They always play the most obvious songs on the jukebox.
They will rarely buy rounds for each other. Instead of one person coming to the bar and asking for four drinks, each person comes up and orders individually. (And then pay with a credit card...)
They rarely read a book, newspaper or magazine while waiting for a friend. Instead, they send text messages or play with their iPod.
They aren't aware of their surroundings. (It's just fine for the two of you to take up five seats at a crowded bar.)
They carry too many shopping bags.
They are careless with their possessions. (Hey, it's cool to leave your open purse on the bar, I'll watch it for you!)
They need to be stimulated -- forget conversation, give them Big Buck Hunter.
They wonder why they're aren't more TVs.
They always ask what the happy hour special is. And then still try to bargain.
They like to think they are special because they are in your bar.
They think snapping their fingers or clapping their hands will make the bartender respond much quicker.

I'm sure I've left out many annoying habits of the bar-going Yunnie. And you can likely do better. Feel free to add more in the comments. Oh, and if you're a youthful bargoer, please feel free to defend yourself.

The Lower East Side/East Village: The neighborhood continues to go (AGAIN AND AGAIN AND...)

I recently posted the May 28, 1984, New York magazine cover story titled "The Lower East Side: There Goes the Neighborhood." WELL! Turns out New York wasn't the only media outlet in town to notice something going on in the East Village/Lower East Side.

On Sept. 2, 1984, the Times took a similar look at the neighborhood in a piece cleverly titled "The gentrification of the East Village."

To some excerpts!

WHEN Susan Kelley looks out her window she sees a beginning. ''There are so many young professionals sitting on the stoops, ties undone, just talking,'' said the 24-year-old Wall Street real-estate broker as she surveyed East 13th Street, where she has lived for two years. ''There's a feeling of togetherness, of movement. A feeling that things are different every day.''

When Barbara Shaum looks out her window she sees an end. ''I see them walking down the street in identical blue suits with their briefcases and I think, 'There goes the neighborhood,' '' said the leathercrafts maker who has lived in a loft behind her studio on East Seventh Street for 21 years. ''Why are all these people coming here, where they're so riotously out of place? I don't want my neighborhood to change.''

In the meantime, residents of the East Village live in a mixture of past and present, hope and anxiety.

The neighborhood is now home to people like Miss Kelley, who graduated from the State University of New York at Binghamton two years ago with a degree in art history and works for a Wall Street real estate broker. She moved to her renovated two-bedroom apartment on 13th Street because the rent was low - $900 a month, which she splits with a friend - and ''because it was an adventure - I liked the idea of being part of the change.''

It is also home to people like Mrs. Shaum, who watched her neighbors come and go in waves for more than two decades - first immigrants, then flower children, then drug dealers and now young artists and professionals. The rent on her store and adjoining loft was $200 until last year, when her landlord tried to evict her and renovate the building. After a court fight he agreed to give her a three-year lease at $450 a month for the first two years, $500 a month for the last year. ''But when that is up,'' she said ''he's going to try to make me leave again.''

Their neighbors are people like Sally Randall, a fashion editor whose tastes run toward magenta eye glitter and who moved to the area as a student nine years ago and stayed because ''I liked the atmosphere.'' Or Carolyn Dwyer, a clothes designer who opened her boutique, Carioca, on East Ninth Street eight years ago ''because I didn't want to live someplace slick like SoHo.'' Or Mark Clifford, a business writer who has lived near Tompkins Square for three years and felt the need to defend the red Lacoste shirt he was wore to brunch one Saturday morning. ''I'm not one of the preppies everyone's railing against,'' he said. ''This shirt happens to be older than me.''

They recognize the changes they and their peers have brought to the neighborhood.

''When I took these spaces over, nobody wanted them,'' Miss Dwyer said. ''It was a mess outside. People threw garbage in my doorway. I cleaned up, I did my time. To be threatened after you helped to make it a nice place is an insult.''

If you're thinking of living in: The East Village

A few excerpts from a Times article from Oct. 6, 1985, titled "If you're thinking of living in: The East Village:"

PROSPECTIVE buyers of city-owned properties are swarming over the East Village, looking for bargains in hundreds of dilapidated buildings and vacant lots.

Among them are developers and people who cannot afford or will not pay the high rents and condominium prices prevalent elsewhere in Manhattan and hope that the East Village will give them every New Yorker's dream - maximum space for minimal outlay.
Indeed, its proximity to midtown Manhattan and Wall Street is catching the eyes of an increasing number of New Yorkers who view it as the next likely alternative to chic Washington Square, the trendy Upper West Side or the East Side.

A walk through the East Village is all that is needed to see its obvious problems:
* Condominium prices and rents for rehabilitated apartments, while lower than in established Manhattan neighborhoods, are rising fast and are likely to keep rising for the next few years.
* Crime, particularly crime related to drug abuse, is prevalent. Drug deals are made openly in Tompkins Square, the neighborhood's only park, and burglaries have risen markedly, according to officials of the Ninth Police Precinct, which serves the area.
* Quality-of-life problems abound. Residents complain that garbage remains uncollected for weeks, graffiti are endemic and the Fire Department says the East Village is among the most arson-prone areas in the city.

Despite its problems, the East Village has in recent years emerged as perhaps the most artistically avant-garde neighborhood in the city. Its boutiques are stocked with kamikaze clothing and its galleries with doomsday art, adding yet another layer of diversity to its traditional ethnic heterogeneity.

The cultural mix has been further enlivened by an influx of an increasing number of students from New York University, Cooper Union and other colleges, as well as young professionals.

'There are bohemians who live here who are only pretending to be bohemians,'' said Alfred Marston, chairman of Community Board 3 at 137 Second Avenue. ''Actually, many of them are the most straight-laced of people who work days in the financial district and want to shed that prim, professional image at night and on weekends.''

UNLIKE other areas of the city, said Mr. Marston, a financial consultant with a doctorate in economics, ''a lot of people who feel they have missed the boat in their private lives head for the East Village looking for a renewed lease on their youth and, obviously, some of them find it because more well educated, professional people keep coming.''

Mark Rudolph, a free-lance video producer, is such a person. Six months ago, he saw an ad in FYI, the Time Inc. house organ, and eventually moved into a two-bedroom apartment in a newly rehabilitated building at 652 East Sixth Street, near Avenue C. His rent is $900 a month.

In the blocks adjoining his building are dozens of lots, some occupied by squatters living in tents and shacks. ''But you've got to live somewhere,'' said Mr. Rudolph, expressing the feeling of thousands who will not live anywhere but Manhattan.

Rehabilitation of scores of buildings is under way and to hear local developers tell it, the sale of condominiums is brisk. The developers of 65-69 Cooper Square, a new building with 37 studios and one-bedroom condominiums, said more than two-thirds had been sold since it opened several months ago. The apartments range in price from $175,000 to $208,000, with typical maintenance of $329 a month.

But prices are not rising uniformly: The owners of a 20-unit apartment house at 82 East Third Street recently lowered their asking price from $575,000 to $515,000.

Rents for apartments, when available, can be high. Studio apartments on East Ninth Street between First and Second Avenues are being advertised at $725 a month, and two-bedroom apartments at St. Mark's Place and First Avenue have been advertised for $1,500 a month.
Condominium and co-op prices vary widely. Sponsors of a new co-op in a building being rehabilitated at 613 East Sixth Street are asking $165,000 for a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment, with maintenance of about $500 a month.

Things that I do not want to know about

Outside Monique Skin Care on 9th Street near 1st Avenue

Previously on EV Grieve:

Signs of the times

My shopping list today includes rum, vodka, Grand Theft Auto IV, underwear...and I'll start watching Gossip Girl

I'm really tired of suggestive advertising

Dumpster of the Day

St. Mark's Place, between 1st Avenue and Avenue A.