Olivo's on Avenue C

Been meaning to do a post on Olivo's Fashions, a homey and unusual little shop at 55 Avenue C near Fourth Street. It has been here for 36 years, and is a father-son operation. Part of the store is devoted to yarn and fabrics and other things sewing related.

In 2007, though, the store started to be more known as a serious place for video games. In fact, just last Tuesday, Crispy Gamer did a feature on the place titled, "World's Greatest Independent Game Stores: Olivo's Games Depot."

As the second deck of the headline reads, "Welcome to pretty much the only place on earth where you can buy skeins of yarn, adult diapers and a still-shrinkwrapped copy of Rez ($99.99)."

True.

Here's an excerpt from the article, which nicely captures the vibe of Olivo's:

The store is one of those rare, old-time New York places that are almost impossible to find these days. Two-thirds of the store is devoted to yarn, knitting, mannequins, candles, homemade lollipops, porcelain hands designed to hold your rings, and blouses. It's like a thousand five-and-dime stores crammed into 600 square feet. The remaining third -- the front corner of the store -- is devoted to videogames.

And now I buried my lead...I was dismayed to walk by Saturday to see the following...




The elder Mr. Olivo, I believe, was hanging garmets outside on Saturday morning. He said they were closing and had to have everything out of the store. There seemed to be a sense of urgency to this. I went back yesterday to take some photos of the interior and, I hoped, to talk with one of the Olivos. Unfortunately, the gates were down. I'm afraid I'm too late.

Shocker: A Rite Aid is closing

Whoa. This is an unusual site. On Seventh Avenue just below 14th Street. I'm used to seeing, "Coming soon: Rite Aid/Duane Reade/Etc."



Given the sale, I thought I'd check it out... get a few basics (toothpaste, etc.) on the cheap. Maybe some kitsch? Well. Picked over isn't quite the right phrase. It was as if I was transported to the Warehouse of Shit No One Would Ever Buy at Rite Aid's Camp Hill, Pa., home office.

Like what, you ask?












I didn't buy anything. I asked the cashier why the store was closing, likely the 10,000th time that he had been asked this question this past weekend. "Business decision." Hmm.

Meanwhile, the Duane Reade down the block is already cherry-picking Rite Aid's old customers. (Never mind that there's a Rite Aid on Sixth Avenue and 13th Street...and Ninth Avenue and 22nd and Eighth Avenue and 24th and...)

A message to brokers: Save your stories of letting you in

Spotted on 13th Street near University Place...



...the apartments above the New York Health & Racquet Club.

A new door at Zips

And now a mysterious new door has been added to the side of the former Zips Deli space at Avenue B and Fifth Street. Possibly a door to enter and exit the kitchen for an upscale diner-type place...?



Previous Zips coverage on EV Grieve.

Photographic evidence from the First-Ever Snuggie Pub Crawl

As mentioned on Friday, the First-Ever Snuggie Pub Crawl took place Saturday. It included stops in the East Village. I was unable to witness, but I sent the rather reluctant Intern of EV Grieve to tail the group. He did so for roughly 20 seconds. But he did manage one photo.



Meanwhile, lvv made a good point in the post of Friday:

lvv said...
I think the most ridiculous part of this crawl may not be the Snuggies, but the sequence of bars.

Why, after SideBar, would one go to two places a few aves east and streets south, only to return to Belmont, which is literally across the street from SideBar? Aren't bar crawls supposed to be sort of directionally sense-making? Are they trying to make people barf?

These are rhetorical questions of course.

Noted

At the new Cooper Union building on Seventh Street at Cooper Square.

Working for the weekend

Friday afternoon, a stretch Hummer tried to navigate a turn from Bleeker onto Mott Street.




It wasn't easy.



For further reading:
Limos, Limos Everywhere (BoweryBoogie)

One of those days

On Fulton Street near Water Street.

The morning after...and the Tompkins Square Park Diets

Record number of people in Tompkins Square Park yesterday afternoon for the nice spring weather? At least record number of people in swimsuits in the lawn for a third weekend of April? A record number of Whole Foods bags? Hard to say.

Opinion: For the first time "NYC is going to struggle with questions about its reason for being"

From Peggy Noonan's column in The Wall Street Journal Friday:

In New York some signs of that future are obvious: fewer cars, less traffic, less of the old busy hum of the economic beehive. New York will, literally, get dimmer. Its magical bright-light nighttime skyline will glitter less as fewer companies inhabit the skyscrapers and put on the lights that make the city glow.

A prediction: By 2010 the mayor, in a variation on broken-window theory, will quietly enact a bright-light theory, demanding that developers leave the lights on whether there are tenants in the buildings or not, lest the world stand on a rise in New Jersey and get the impression no one's here and nobody cares.

The New York of the years 1750 to 2008 — a city that existed for money and for all the arts and delights and beauties money brings — is for the first time going to struggle with questions about its reason for being. This will cause profound dislocations. For a good while the young will continue to flock in, for cheaper rents. Artists will still want to gather with artists — you cannot pick up the Metropolitan Museum and put it in Alma, Mich. But there will be a certain diminution in the assumption of superiority on which New York has long run, and been allowed, by America, to run.

Sunday morning, Avenue C

It's Record Store Day

Go to the Record Store Day Web site for info on participating stores.

This is one of the records that I bought last year. David J. showing a little nipple action, standing in front of a fan. In Style, indeed! (Night Fever was apparently already used...)