Recession causing retail landlords to be sort of nice and humane

To the Times!

Back in the mid-1990s, when a stretch of Ludlow Street in Manhattan was dominated by boarded-up buildings and wholesale fruit and nut vendors, Terri Gillis’s boutique, TG-170, was one of the magnets that drew intrepid shoppers to the Lower East Side.

That area is now one of the city’s liveliest late-night strips, which made it particularly painful for Ms. Gillis to receive an eviction notice last month because she owed $13,556.26 in back real estate taxes. But in a sudden change of heart, her landlord recently offered to let Ms. Gillis stay for two more years, and even proposed paying part of her future real estate taxes — which retail tenants normally pay.

In this troubled economy, the building manager, Arwen Properties, decided it would rather hold onto a good tenant.

“We’re working with her and trying to compromise,” the lawyer for Arwen Properties, Joel Bernstein, said. “The landlord has got an incentive, naturally, to keep cash flowing.”

Many landlords he advises are coming to the same conclusion, Mr. Bernstein said. Just a year ago, the owners of New York’s most coveted retail and restaurant spaces held almost unassailable power to dictate the terms of their leases. But the recession is changing that equation, as rapidly rising vacancy rates and bankruptcies are making it hard to find new tenants.

Bring your skates...

...if you want to walk on the north side of East Second Street today...

On the bright side, Brandon Jacobs thinks the Giants will be in the Super Bowl next year

Ouch. From the Post:

"You can only get so much blood out of a stone" with budget cuts and other measures, the mayor said.

He proposed closing a $4 billion budget gap in 2010 with $955 million in cuts and savings that reached into every agency -- from the NYPD, which stood to lose another 1,000 cops through attrition, to the FDNY, which could see 12 companies vanish, to the child-welfare agency, which was asked to absorb 608 layoffs.

George Schneeman, 74

From the Times:

Painting, playing poker till dawn and boiling up pots of midnight pasta for friends in his apartment in an East Village tenement, Mr. Schneeman was sometimes described as New York’s last bohemian. That was not quite right. Seventy-four at his death, he was certainly younger than some of the artists who still animate what were once the city’s unfashionable neighborhoods

.

Schneeman died this past Tuesday.

In a post on his blog, Michael Lally remembered Schneeman:

George created a life that was perfect for an artist. In the old days his day job was teaching English to immigrants. But he had a rent-control apartment on St. Marks Place, right in the heart of the action that made the 1960s the 1960s — and ditto for the following decades. Even now, the street reflects the times in ways no other part of the city does.

Oh HENRY

Item: "Wall Street bonuses were more than $18 billion last year — roughly what they were in the fatty, solvent days of 2004."

“My bonus is ‘shameful’ — but I worked hard to get it,” said John Konstantinidis, a wholesale insurance broker, lunching Friday at Harry’s at Hanover Square.

“I’m a HENRY,” Mr. Konstantinidis added. “High Earner but Not Rich Yet.”

Glenn Branca: Structure (1981 The Ascension no wave noise)

A homemade video by suburbanbatherson.

Mid-morning musical interlude

"Strange Powers" by the Magnetic Fields from 1992. Just take in that Coney Island sun. (Oops...I had embedded the wrong video earlier...Heh.)

At the Holland Bar yesterday afternoon

Uh, still not open yet. And the gate was down.

On Tuesday, the Times ran a feature saying the Ninth Avenue dive might be open as soon as the next day! Seemed awfully optimistic, especially given the state of the place that I saw the previous week. At that time, two weeks even seemed like a stretch to for the bar to reopen.

In any event, the place will be open again...just don't know when for sure.

An unusual tag

After leaving the Holland yesterday, I walked on West 35th Street ... where on the door to this rather abandoned-looking building, I spotted some ususual graffiti...



Not a tag that you see everyday.



I consulted with The Graffiti Friend of EV Grieve. He had never seen such a tag either. More of an intellectual twist on the ubiquitous Baby Dino and Chef Pants. Just one of those interesting, mysterious things that you see around the city, The Graffiti Friend of EV Grieve said in a rather intersting, mysterious way.

Noted

Ah, Bruce...brings back some memories....

Danger: Swamp Ass Area

On Cooper Square.

Meanwhile a little farther north...At the under-construction Cooper Union building at Cooper Square between Seventh Street and Sixth Street. Charming!

Chloe Sevigny dig promptly lands St. Mark's retailer Daily News feature story

From the Daily News today:

He doesn't like being called grumpy, but if the sock fits ...

The East Village sock salesman deemed the "grumpiest man on Earth" by actress Chloe Sevigny isn't embracing the title -- but he isn't denying it, either.

"I have my moments," acknowledged Marty Rosen, 45, owner of The Sock Man on St. Marks Place. "I'm from New York. We all have our moments."