EV Grieve

Thursday, October 30, 2008

The ice storm

In downtown Manhattan, two artists, Marshall Reese and Nora Ligorano sculpted the word "ECONOMY" from a block of ice to symbolize the economic downfall. The 1500 lbs. of ice was put on display in front of the Supreme Court and marked the day the stock market crashed that led to the Great Depression 79 years ago. (New York Post)

Might as well dance.

Stories from the front lines of renting: Recent Yale grads get a deal on an apartment in the LES

From The LES Free Press, written by students in the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism:

The apartment is tiny. None of its three bedrooms holds a bed bigger than a twin. But it’s renovated, clean, and it’s in the middle of the fast-moving Lower East Side – the perfect place for three newly-minted Yale graduates to make their first mark on the city. Apartment hunters Andrew Cedotal, Allison Guy and Danielle La Rocco are on the fence, however. For almost $3,300 a month, they expect more space.

“It’s a great apartment, but it’s a little smaller than we’re looking for,” La Rocco says to the agent showing the place.

What happens next is something that would have been unheard of even a year ago, but that real estate experts say is becoming more common: the agent offers to broker a better deal if the three will take the apartment today. Within minutes, the trio has reduced their rent by a few hundred dollars a month, and La Rocco is dispatched to get a money order while the other two fill out applications. The deal is done.

Do episodes like this mean Manhattan’s notoriously bullish rental market is softening? Daniel Baum, a broker who runs the Real Estate Group, an industry organization that puts out an analysis of Manhattan rental prices each month, says yes.

Then the woman with the Starbucks cup entered the frame

Every once in a while I feel like I could be in another NYC era, just for a moment...On 13th Street near Third Avenue.

John Penley taking a break from Slacktivating

From Scoopy's Notebook in this week's issue of The Villager:

John Penley tells us he has had it, is “burned out” and is leaving and “going somewhere else,” to “parts unknown.” He wouldn’t be more specific. “I’m really busy, I’m moving my photo archives right now,” Penley said when we called on Tuesday afternoon. “I’m tired — no one had to walk in my shoes this summer.” It just won’t be the same without Penley leading the L.E.S. Slacktivists in chants of “Die Yuppie Scum” and feeding us items about…well, about everything and everyone under the sun in the East Village and Lower East Side. But apparently a summer spent tilting at Bruce Willis, the Economakises and the Christodora House has worn him out — but only temporarily, we hope.

Penley in action during the "Let them eat cake" protest last July:

Previously on EV Grieve:
The John Penley collection

Wait, are we walking or stopping here?

On Third Avenue.

Wednesday, October 29, 2008

A collector of New York ephemera

The Times has an obituary today on Herbert Mitchell, 83. "At the Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library at Columbia, where he worked from 1960 to 1991, and in his own sequestered apartment, he assembled something extraordinary, if slightly beyond description," the Times notes. “His was the most eclectic collection of the valuable, the semi-valuable and the somewhat-not-valuable,” his attorney said. Much of it is to be given to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he added. Among the treasures he had already donated: 3,866 stereographic views of New York City from the 19th and early 20th centuries that show Central Park not long after its construction. “One of his real interests was ephemera — that part of history that disappears,” said Kitty Chibnik, the associate director of Avery. The above image from his collection was described by the Times as "The Everard Baths on 28th Street, where gay New Yorkers met."

All along the water towers

For the past two years, Gary Conger has been painting portraits of the rooftop water towers (like the one above) that he sees from his apartment. According to his Web site:

The water towers in my neighborhood (Flatiron/Madison Park) represent an older New York, a city of smaller brick buildings and rooftops that offer living and playing space as well as the hardware needed to run the building. Views of these rooftops and water towers though are being blocked by the new glass towers rising up all around us.

An exhibition of his work, titled "Vanishing New York" (Hey Jeremiah!), is now on display at BooMA, the art gallery at the public relations firm M Booth & Associates, 300 Park Ave. South at 23rd Street, 12th floor. According to the Booth site, "BooMA (with affectionate apologies to MoMA) is one of very few art collections mounted in the halls of New York City public relations firms."

Related:

Bowery Boogie has a nice post from last month on water towers. Jeremiah also has some thoughts on water towers. As he wrote, "I think of the iconic wooden water tanks as lovely anachronisms, symbols of the old New York that is rapidly vanishing."