Here's some video of Joey Fatone opening the public restroom thing in Times Square yesterday. (MTV.com)
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
A Landmark article
So, what's doing with the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission? From today's Times:
Ugh.
A six-month examination of the commission’s operations by The New York Times reveals an overtaxed agency that has taken years to act on some proposed designations, even as soaring development pressures put historic buildings at risk. Its decision-making is often opaque, and its record-keeping on landmark-designation requests is so spotty that staff members are uncertain how many it rejects in a given year.
Ugh.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning edition
An infamous walking tour of the East Village (Stupefaction)
Would you like that coffee with a side of guilt? (Esquared)
Gold-painted trash art on 14th Street (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)
Help prevent an eviction (Save the Lower East Side!)
A little bit of the El Morocco in Brooklyn (Lost City)
Graffitti's comeback? (New York)
Trees are planted alongside an ugly builidng on Ludlow (BoweryBoogie)
Somebody is seeing pink hippos on Wall Street!
And what is "seeing pink hippos" a euphemism for...?
Oh, and this photo was taken before the tree went up in front of the NYSE yesterday. Esquared has a nice shot of that.
Retail space available at Cooper Union (plus: watching the construction from day one)
Despite having been following the new Cooper Union project, I didn't realize there was going to be retail space in the building at Cooper Square between Seventh Street and Sixth Street — 3,000-square feet of it.
"Non cooking food?" Uh, how about FroYo? You don't really have to cook that. Just take it out of the bag and throw it in a machine. Then charge $6 for a three-ounce cup!
By the way, have you been watching the construction at the new Cooper Union building via its LIVE Web cam? You can go all the way back to 2003 and watch it all over again...
How depressing.
"No Reservations" at Sophie's
A tipster tells me that globetrotting chef Anthony Bourdain filmed a segment of his show "No Reservations" at Sophie's this past weekend. He was joined by Nick Tosches to discuss great old haunts of NYC. After Bourdain and the film crew left, Tosches reportedly stuck around for more beers and some pool. The episode filmed at Sophie's will air in February.
Well, this is all good for Sophie's of course, but I keep thinking about what Jeremiah wrote in his post on the closing of the Holland:
This just after Anthony Bourdain, mourning the loss of Siberia, praised the Holland, which he called: "A classic old-man bar." He also hailed the Distinguished Wakamba Lounge, a former after-work haunt of mine, and now I'm worried. What if Bourdain has reaper powers?
What's new on Lard Street?
Was on Dessert Row the other...er, Seventh Street...the Butter Lane Cupcakes store is now open for business.
Some good news: The historic "Licensed Undertaker" sign is still intact on the building. Of course, the other half of this space is still for rent...
Previously on EV Grieve:
Something else to threaten the very soul of the East Village: Cupcakes
Some good news: The historic "Licensed Undertaker" sign is still intact on the building. Of course, the other half of this space is still for rent...
Previously on EV Grieve:
Something else to threaten the very soul of the East Village: Cupcakes
Cinematic facelift
Seeing this gave me pause...then I realized they are just doing some minor renovations. (Or at least that's what I was told by one of the women selling tickets. Though! She acted as if she didn't even notice the building was under scaffolding.) Never can be sure these days, of course. Second Avenue at 12th Street. The Village East Cinemas, home of Intelligent Conversations.
Monday, November 24, 2008
CBGB lives...in a warehouse in Williamsburg
From the Times today:
Despite what Neil Young says (“Hey, hey, my, my”), rock ’n’ roll not only dies — sometimes it is crated into boxes and shipped off to a mini-storage unit in the industrial wastes of Brooklyn.
That, alas, is the precise and inglorious fate of CBGB, the legendary nightclub that for 33 years brought hardcore bands like Shrapnel and the Meat Puppets — not to mention chaos and cocaine — to the uplifted gormandizers of New York. Like all good things, the famous club (which closed its doors for good in October 2006) came to an end with a savage finality: the bar stashed in a trailer in Connecticut, the awning pawned off on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum and much of the rest of it left to molder here, in a dingy 3,000-square-foot Moishe’s moving company storage space in Williamsburg, a stage dive from the Navy Yard.
“It’s sad,” said Louise Parnassa-Staley, who was the nightclub’s manager for 22 years, “but it’s not really dismal. It’s quiet here, you know. And there’s no rats.”
There is grim commentary to be found in the fact that Ms. Parnassa-Staley — who once booked acts like Hatebreed and Cattle Decapitation — now makes business calls for CBGB Fashions, a clothing operation run from the storage unit that sells T-shirts, belt buckles, onesies for kids, even a CBGB dog vest for your poodle. That ghastliness is matched only by the news that the club’s former barman, Ger Burgman, son-in-law of the deceased owner, Hilly Kristal himself, is now the customer service representative for online accounts.
Not to mention the CBGB shop on St. Mark's closed last summer and was replaced by a Red Mango.
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