EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning edition

Bob Arihood has a not-so-good update on Ray of Ray's Candy Store as well as a report on some Avenue A thuggery (Neither More Nor Less)

The return of DJ Lenny M (Down by the Hipster)

Inside the Pee Pee Phone (Slum Goddess)

An update on the Aqueduct's racino plans (Queens Crap)

Horse-drawn carriages may be replaced by eco-friendly vintage cars (Gothamist)

The Elk Hotel loses some business (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Rite Aid and Sbarro are among the companies who may not last through the recession (Yahoo! News)

Smell like the Astor Place cube (Esquared, who has a new home)

What retailers say about the recession (New York)

Ruffians who sing Sham 69 songs in the middle of the night (Flaming Pablum)

More fun at the Ludlow Residence (BoweryBoogie)

The Blarney Stone is back in business

A lovely sight. No word yet on why they were closed on Fulton Street for seven-plus days...

A pile of clothes at the Royal Tailor

Jeremiah has written about one of the treasures left in the East Village, Gino DiGirolamo, the tailor who has been plying his trade here for more than 40 years. He moved to 14th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B in late 2006.



I walked by his shop Friday night at 10...Per usual, he was still at work...barely visible behind a pile of clothes...





It appears business is good, which makes me happy...


For further reading:
Still Shopping, Maybe, but Now it's For a Tailor (New York Times)

New signage for St. Brigid's

There are new signs up at St. Brigid's on Avenue B at Eighth Street that note the upcoming restoration of the historic church...and its rebirth in the community.




An article in this week's issue of The Villager provides an update on the restoration:

Neighbors, elected officials and friends from near and far gathered on Feb. 1, the Feast of St. Brigid, to celebrate the victory of the Committee to Save St. Brigid’s in the group’s long struggle to prevent the demolition of the 1849 church on Tompkins Square Park.

The committee saw its dream come true last May when the Catholic Archdiocese of New York announced it had accepted a $20 million donation from an anonymous donor, including $10 million to restore and maintain the building and the parish and another $10 million to endow parish schools in the area.

The donor is still anonymous and the archdiocese has declined to identify the “angel” who made the gift.

Edwin Torres, leader of the committee, told the gathering on Sunday that the archdiocese had received the last $5 million installment of the $10 million for the building restoration on Dec. 16 and that architects and engineers have been working in the building at 119 Avenue B since the beginning of the year.

“We’ve been at the site at least once a week and we’ve spoken to the engineers — they’re testing the bricks and mortar in the church to see the extent of the problems,” Torres said, adding, “This will probably be the last meeting of the committee — we’ve achieved what we set out to 10 years ago. But we’ll continue to monitor the site,” he said.

By the way, there's also a new Post Office box there too...the old one at that spot was fairly battered looking...I liked it.


Previous St. Brigid's coverage on EV Grieve here.

I just had to look (but you don't have to)

Found myself on the Upper West Side yesterday afternoon...As you know, the P & G Cafe at Amsterdam Avenue and 73rd Street closed on Jan. 31...and is moving to a new location. Brooks at Lost City had a photo of the iconic neon sign being removed from the building last week...

This is what is used to look like...



I knew it would be ugly...but I walked by anyway.



Ugh. Nothing is left inside, of course. I still looked. While I was peaking inside, another fellow stopped and took it all in. "Wow," he said.

Yes.

Check out Ken Mac's photos of the P & G (how we will remember it) at Greenwich Village Daily Photo.

Alex also paid his respects this weekend over at Flaming Pablum.

Tompkins Square Park Christmas tree update

On Saturday, the Christmas tree in Tompkins Square Park was turned off after nearly two months...

On closer inspection Sunday...



...the lights are still on the tree...



So maybe someone can plug it in for Valentine's Day.

Comings and goings: Third Avenue and Ninth Street

East Village Photo at 35 Third Avenue recently lost their lease and moved...



The store is empty...save, curiously enough, for the rack of NYC postcards.



So this means the corner store on Third Avenue and Ninth Street in the building that houses NYU's Alumni Hall dormitory is available...FroYo anyone? (Just guessing -- seems reasonable, eh?)

Also, we noted a few weeks back that M Sonii, the vintage-y, knicknack-y store at 220 E. Ninth St. near Third Avenue, was closing...appears now they have found a new location...just a few blocks away...



According to a commenter, the Sonii space is owned by the people who run the parking garage next door...and they were looking for a hefty rent increase.

Sintir update (you know, that new place opening on East Ninth Street)

The rather mysterious looking, we're-assuming-Moroccan joint coming to East Ninth Street between Avenue A and First Avenue...

November:


January:


February:


...is one of the few places applying for a new liquor license (wine)...the Community Board 3's SLA & DCA Licensing Committee will consider this other applications tonight at 6:30.

Have a Coke and a smile!

Oh, oops! Wrong soda slogan! At 14th Street and Avenue A.

Meanwhile, in 1980.

Lux life

Third Avenue near Ninth Street. From the Times obituary (via Stupefaction):

Lux Interior, who introduced the excitement of deviant rockabilly to the punk era as the lead singer of the Cramps, died early Wednesday in Glendale, Calif. He was 62.
The Cramps were founded in New York around 1976 by Lux Interior (born Erick Purkhiser in Stow, Ohio) and the guitarist Poison Ivy (Kristy Wallace) with a distinct musical and visual style. As connoisseurs of seemingly all forms of trashy pop culture from the 1950s and ’60s — ranging from ghoulish comic books to Z-grade horror films to the rawest garage rock — they developed a sound that mixed the menace of rockabilly’s primitivist fringe with dark psychedelia and the blunt simplicity of punk.

Also at Stupefaction, Karate Boogaloo has a link to a podcast of a radio show Lux Interior did back in the summer of 1984.

A New York state of mind in Wyoming, Alabama, Siciliy and maybe Pakistan

The Times today rounds up the iconic pieces of vintage New York that have recently been exported.

Cheyenne Diner to Alabama (and now they want the shuttered Ridgewood Theater in Queens)

Moondance Diner to Wyoming

Kim's video collection to a Sicilian town

"And from Pakistan came interest in another New York icon: the Astroland Rocket at Coney Island."

Hmm.

No, it’s not the faltering economy that’s putting venerable New York up for sale and shipment. It may be just coincidental that there is a flurry of outliers who are in a New York state of mind and want a part of it.

“We’re not taking anything from New York — the diner needed saving,” said Cheryl Pierce, who with her husband, Vince, bought the Moondance in 2007 for $7,500. They spent $40,000 to move it 2,125 miles to La Barge in western Wyoming, where it opened on Jan. 12 after a delay to replace a roof collapsed by snow.

It is hardly a new phenomenon, of course. New York has been exporting its bounties, willingly and unwillingly, since the days of Peter Stuyvesant and marauding redcoats.

More recently, according to the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission, cast-iron eagles from the old Pennsylvania Station and Grand Central Terminal have turned up at suburban estates, a kiosk from the 1939 World’s Fair is now a restaurant in New Jersey, parts of an 18th-century ship found at 175 Water Street were sent to the Mariners’ Museum in Newport News, Va., and old subway cars are swimming with the fishes as artificial reefs off the Delaware coast.

[Moondance photo: Nicole Bengiveno/The New York Times]

Breaking: Christmas tree lights turned off in Tompkins Square Park

The tree lighting ceremony was Dec. 14...

Previously on EV Grieve:
By the way, the Christmas tree is still on in Tompkins Square Park