Friday, November 8, 2019
Meet your 'Match'
The new EP via Squid — a UK-based five piece — is due next Friday (it has been out via digital platforms for the past two months). The audio track here is for "Match Bet."
EVG Etc.: Co-op accusations on 7th Street; Noah Baumbach at the Metrograph
[Sky scene from 4th and A]
• A profile of Shuho Yagi, who has been running a number of Japanese restaurants in the East Village since 1984 (City Limits)
• On Seventh Street, a co-op owner "is being accused by neighbors of having guests who shoot heroin between their toes in the lobby, have sex in the corridors — and occasionally jump out the windows." (The Post)
• Man stabbed following dispute near the 7th and A entrance to Tompkins Square Park (PIX 11)
• Citi Biker, the victim of road rage, is nearly run down on the LES; cops blame the cyclist (Streetsblog)
• Apartment dwellers, know your heat and hot water rights (Curbed)
• Five weeks til SantaCon! (Gothamist)
• As The Lo-Down noted, architecture critic Michael Kimmelman praises Essex Crossing "in a piece that makes some good points, but is also loaded with factual errors and mischaracterizations of the Lower East Side mega-project" (The New York Times)
• Builders respond to the vote that gives community boards more time to review ULURP applications (The Real Deal)
• An end to the food hall craze? (Commercial Observer)
• A Noah Baumbach residency (Metrograph)
• A retrospective surveys the career of Holly Fisher (Anthology Film Archives)
• Cornell prof finds rough versions of 12 previously unreleased songs by Lou Reed (Variety)
• A look at some early 1990s NYC music venues, including Mission on Fifth between A and B (Ephemeral New York)
... and over at the Black Emperor, 197 Second Ave. between 12th Street and 13th Street, The Truffleist is now working the kitchen, taking over for Jae Lee's six-month burger residency. (Lee is prepping to open his first restaurant, Nowon on Sixth Street) ...
A look at Book Club, the new bookstore-cafe (softly) opening tomorrow on 3rd Street
Tomorrow (Nov. 9) at 9 a.m., Book Club makes its debut at 197 E. Third St. between Avenue A and Avenue B.
As we've been reporting, this bookstore-cafe is the work — two years in the making — of an East Village couple, Erin Neary and Nat Esten.
EVG contributor Stacie Joy stopped by yesterday for a quick look at the space before its soft opening tomorrow...
The book portion of the storefront will carry a broad selection of adult fiction, non-fiction and a children's section ...
Book Club includes some East Village-specific reads...
The space features an area for sitting and reading ... and a cafe serving MUD coffee. (They were approved for a beer-wine license, though that has yet to be issued.) Expect some community events and readings in the weeks/months ahead. You can follow their Instagram account for updates... or their website.
Meanwhile, they'll be open from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. tomorrow...
Previously on EV Grieve:
Book Club — an independent bookstore with cafe — coming to 3rd Street
Acclaimed pastrami purveyors Harry & Ida's will close this month on Avenue A
[File photo]
Another day, another high-profile closure on Avenue A.
The owners of Harry & Ida's have announced that their Meat and Supply Co. will close the weekend before Thanksgiving at 189 Avenue A at 12th Street.
Siblings Julie and Will Horowitz, who are also behind Duck's Eatery on 12th Street, discussed the pending closure in an Instagram post:
We are heartbroken to announce that we will be closing up shop at the end of the month. We have so loved being part of your community, your celebrations, your lunches, your dinners, and your hearty snacks in between.
Never in a million years would we have imagined that our (not so little) sandwich, once a late night pop-up @duckseatery would receive so much attention this many years later. As painful as it is, we are proud to go out on a high note with the shop busier than ever, our pastrami still holding strong on top national lists and the support of you, our beloved customers.
While our presence on Avenue A will come to an end, we will be carrying on the H&I name with some exciting projects on the horizon. Be on the lookout for our usual array of quirky, cured and smoked products, with a little more plant and a lot less meat this time around. To our fellow delis, we are proud to have served alongside you. Keep the tradition (and the not-so-traditional) alive.
They do not cite any specific reason for the closure.
In August 2018, they shuttered their offshoot Harry & Ida’s Luncheonette in the Financial District after 10 months in business.
Harry & Ida's arrived on Avenue A in June 2015, and immediately drew raves for their pastrami. The market, which specializes in a variety of preserved foods and smoked meats, was named for their great-grandparents Harry and Ida Zinn, Hungarian immigrants who had a store in Harlem.
In October 2017, workers finally removed the sidewalk bridge and scaffolding from the Avenue A side of the Steiner East Village condoplex between 11th Street and 12th Street. For 19 months, the entrance to Harry & Ida's was obscured by all this construction. In total at the time, 19 of their 29 months in business had been under the doom and gloom of a sidewalk bridge.
Other recent closing announcements on Avenue A include Obscura Antiques and Oddities and Three Seats Espresso.
H/T Kenny and Dave!
Sorbet Cray Cray goes bye bye from Avenue A
A for-rent sign now hangs in the front window at 131 Avenue A, the sliver of a storefront between St. Mark's Place and Ninth Street.
The previous tenant here, Sorbet Cray Cray, has packed up and left...
We're told they're opening a new dessert bar on 10th Avenue in Hell's Kitchen.
Sorbet Cray Cray, via the owners of the Chikalicious dessert shop on 10th Street, opened here back in July ... in a revamp of their Churro Cone space.
Thanks to Steven for the photos!
Thursday, November 7, 2019
A pause for poetry at this Big Belly trash can in Tompkins Square Park
Here's another use for a Big Belly, the solar-powered trash cans once at the front lines of the Mayor's rat-reduction plan ... EVG contributor Derek Berg spotted one in Tompkins Square Park with a hand-drawn poem titled "Three Children" (author unknown).
Probably squeeze some ads on there too...
Grant Shaffer's NY See
Here's the latest NY See, East Village-based illustrator Grant Shaffer's comic series — an observational sketch diary of things that he sees and hears around the neighborhood.
After 20-plus years in the East Village, Obscura Antiques and Oddities is closing
Obscura Antiques and Oddities, a wholly unique and one-of-a-kind shop on Avenue A where you can find an array of curiosities, will by packing up its storefront in the weeks ahead.
"Our lease is up at the end of February and we are a bit burned out," co-owner Mike Zohn recently told me. "The business has changed as has the neighborhood, plus the expense and overhead are high."
Yesterday, EVG contributor Stacie Joy stopped by the shop and talked with Zohn about the decision to close ... and tracked Obscura's East Village evolution.
-----------------
My first experience with Obscura Antiques and Oddities was in the early 1990s, when it was called Wandering Dragon Trading Company, co-owned by Adrian Gilboe, Mike Zohn and Evan Michelson, in a storefront at 263 E. 10th St.
A few years later it moved across the street to 280 E. 10th St. and became Obscura Antiques and Oddities (incorporating the name 18 years ago last month) before finding its most recent home in 2012 a few blocks away at 207 Avenue A between 12th Street and 13th Street.
It’s been a neighborhood staple for more than a quarter of a century, which is one of the reasons it’s so hard to come to grips with the fact that the shop is shutting its doors. The store will close at the end of this year, with a possibility of limited hours in January to liquidate remaining items before the lease expires in February. Zohn talked with me about the store’s history, why they are closing and what’s next.
The store’s rent, back in the day, was $250 a month, and it was always a party, Zohn says. Cheap rent, parties every night, music, artists, drinking and smoking — a good time. Gilboe eventually moved to Brooklyn and Michelson and Zohn took over the shop, renamed it, and began working in earnest on the business.
[Mike Zohn]
The store and its two owners became the subject of a popular Discovery Channel TV series in 2010 called "Oddities" and possibly a victim of its own success.
Oddity-type shops popped up all over, the business changed, and more folks were buying and selling the merchandise. Overhead grew, taxes and regulations went up, and as Zohn points out, the neighborhood changed. Rents increased exponentially and parking became impossible. (Zohn lives in Easton, Pa., and Michelson in Plainfield, N.J., and both need a vehicle to transport goods and commute.)
Even though the store’s East Village front is closing, the shop will still be in existence online, and Zohn will continue to produce his Oddities Market and plans to look into the possibility of pop-up Oddites shops, maybe even the East Village one day.
I spoke by phone to Michelson — home sick, recovering from a recent work trip — about her plans for the future. She says there are a million things that interest her, but she won’t settle on anything until after the closure of Obscura.
She’s a founding member of Morbid Anatomy Museum and a scholar-in-residence at its library, and says she’s comfortable with the decision to close the shop. Although sad, she says that it’s organically time to go, that the world, the East Village and NYC are different now. Michelson saw Obscura as an outgrowth of the East Village performance and underground art scene and is eager to begin her next chapter of life, something experiential, not commercial.
Neither Michelson nor Zohn feel rushed into making this decision and both seem conformable with timing and the process. Zohn notes that if you have always wanted something special from Obscura, like, say, the two-headed cow or genuine human skull or a Freemasons book written in code, now is the time to come by.
In addition, fixtures from the shop will be available for sale. Shop hours are flexible, most likely every day from 12:30 to 8 p.m.
Look for more photos from inside the shop in an upcoming A Visit To ... feature on EVG.
Coming to select M14 A/D SBS stops along 14th Street: bus boarding platforms
For those of you who take the M14 A/D SBS ... starting today (Nov. 7), the DOT and MTA will start putting in new bus-boarding platforms as part of the 14th Street Transit & Truck Priority Pilot, which launched in early October.
The DOT has installed these platforms at other locations throughout the city "to make it easier for customers to get on and off buses, give more room for pedestrians on the sidewalk, and help buses move faster as there’s no need to pull over to the curb saving up to a minute per stop."
Today we announced w/@MTA that bus boarding platforms will be installed at seven M14 A/D #SelectBusService stops to further improve bus speeds on 14th St. These platforms provide a dedicated space for riders to board, making access easier & safer. More: https://t.co/lJFltmCTun pic.twitter.com/kRufC0JhQ8
— NYC DOT (@NYC_DOT) November 6, 2019
This MTA link has details on what to expect in the next few weeks as workers install the platforms along 14th Street, from Irving Place over to Eighth Avenue.
Report: Another city plan in the works to address NYC's retail vacancy crisis
[The former Bar Virage on 2nd at 7th]
A story to watch... and a story discussed around here.
Per Gothamist yesterday:
In an attempt to address the staggering number of empty storefronts across New York City, a Brooklyn City Council member [Stephen Levin] plans to introduce a landmark bill next week that would seek to regulate commercial rents.
How staggering? As NYC comptroller Scott Stringer's office recently reported, vacant retail space in the city nearly doubled these past 10 years, up to 11.8 million square feet in 2017 from 5.6 million square feet in 2007. During that time, Stringer's research found that retail rents rose by 22 percent on average across the city.
Which brings up: Whatever happened to the Small Business Jobs Survival Act, which has been around since 1986 ... and after some high-profile support in November 2017, has languished in Council limbo for the past year...?
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