EV Grieve

Sunday, September 15, 2019

Trek Bicycle opens on the Bowery

A quick note that the Trek Bicycle shop is now open on the Bowery.

As we first noted on Aug. 12, the American bikemaker with multiple retail shops in the city was opening an outpost on the Bowery in the retail base of Avalon Bowery Place between First Street and Houston.

This space has been vacant since Tatyana Boutique closed in January 2016.

Noted

An EVG reader shared this photo from Avenue B the other day ... some business-name high jinks, where the Bowery Moving becomes the Bowel Moving...

Reminders: There is a lot going on in community gardens for the next week

The eighth annual LUNGS Harvest Arts Festival is underway... with a variety of performances, concerts, workshops and other related events happening in the neighborhood's 50-plus community gardens.

Check the LUNGS website at this link for the garden-by-garden schedule.

You can also keep an eye out for this LUNGS newspaper with a rundown of activities ... picked this one up at my laundromat...

The festival continues through next Sunday, Sept. 22.

Question of the day: Where is Bruce?

[EVG photo from 2012]

Over on Seventh Street at Avenue C, someone tagged The Stand, the gallery space that featured Bruce Lee on the gate ... prompting a question...

Where is Bruce?

The Stand opened in 2012.

Saturday, September 14, 2019

At the opening of Linus Coraggio's 'Ramifications'

On Thursday night, Howl! Happening opened its fall season featuring the work — sculpture, painting and mixed media — of local artist Linus Coraggio.

The exhibit, titled "Ramifications," drew a large crowd on Thursday, including alum from the Rivington School sculptors group.

Here's more via Howl! about the artist and exhibit:

Linus Coraggio is a central figure in downtown New York’s early period of explosive art experimentation and cross-pollination of cultural ideas. Street artist and New York City native, Coraggio is best known for his abstract metal sculpture.

The current exhibition surveys Coraggio’s entire body of work, including paintings in expressionist and graffiti style, mobiles, furniture, neon, sculpture, mixed-media collage, and both classic and 3-D graffiti. The exhibition will also include recent collaborations with well-known downtown artists, and an installation of his painted and “sculpturalized” car that has become a recognized cultural fixture on the streets of New York City over the last 10 years.

EVG contributor Stacie Joy stopped by the opening and shared these photos...

[Linus Coraggio]

... and a survey of the work...

You can see the rest of his work at Howl! Happening, 6 E. First St. between Second Avenue and the Bowery. Hours: 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday.

According to the Howl! website: "The exhibition runs through October 10, with a special closing event on October 12."

Reminders: Cash mob at Gem Spa today

[Photo by Jeremiah Moss]

From noon to 2 p.m. today (Sept. 14!), the folks at #SaveNYC are hosting a Cash Mob at Gem Spa — currently adorned as a "Schitibank" branch — on Second Avenue at St. Mark's Place to help support the longtime business. Per the official invite:

Come prepared to spend some money — egg creams, pretzels, t-shirts, toothpaste! — and take your photo with a surprise work of guerrilla street art, as an acclaimed group of cultural activists and designers radically transform Gem Spa into a dystopian vision for the new St. Mark’s Place.

Maybe order an egg cream...

[Photo by Stacie Joy]

This is the latest act of kindness that neighbors have shown for the shop, which Parul Patel has been running for her ailing father Ray, the owner since 1986.

As we've been reporting in recent months, Gem Spa has been struggling of late, in part due to its temporary ban on selling cigarettes and lottery tickets as well as various landlord issues. (The ban ends in November.)

Previously on EV Grieve:
• A cash mob Saturday at Gem Spa (Sept. 10)

• Get your Gem Spa t-shirts or photos of Madonna — at Gem Spa! (Aug. 16)

• Will you buy a Gem Spa T-shirt? (June 28)

• The Gem Spa Zoltar is alive and well and telling fortunes an L-train ride away in Bushwick (June 19)

• "Gem Spa is open!" (June 18)

• What is happening at Gem Spa? (June 11)

• A visit to Gem Spa (May 10)

When Via Della Pace on 7th Street became Hobart & Blackwell for 'The Goldfinch'

[Derek Berg photo from February 2018]

"The Goldfinch" is in theaters this weekend. The adaptation of Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, featuring Ansel Elgort, Nicole Kidman, Jeffrey Wright, Sarah Paulson and Finn Wolfhard, has mostly been trashed by critics for being dull and disjointed. Rotten Tomatoes shows a dismal composite score of 24 percent.

As you may recall, "Goldfinch" crews were here in February 2018 ... and again for reported reshoots in October 2018. They transformed the Italian restaurant Via Della Pace on Seventh Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue into an antiques shop for the film. Derek Berg documented part of the shoot in these photos.