Save the Date: May 8 Kids' Art Bike Parade in Tompkins Square Park

For additional information, visit The East Village Community Coalition Web site.

No anarchists today at Theatre 80

An update on today's fourth annual NYC Anarchist Film Festival via Facebook:

Because of the distractions related to the raid we are curtailing the program to just Judson Church from 5 pm onward till nighttime. We have an amazing program this year of regular and immersive films created by global justice filmakers from all over the world.

For those of you who are concerned about the safety in light of recent police harassment, I would urge you to come out in spite of these threats — we can not allow illegal police state tactics to limit our ability to communicate with one another. The only way to effectively stop this kind of behaviour is not to allow them to sabotage our communication forums.

The Program for this years festival:
5pm - Experimental Videos - Video art engaging the idea of self, creativity and our relationship with the state

6pm - We are Everywhere - Anarchist Projects, Actions and Narratives from around the world. Videos from Mexico, Palestine, Europe, Eastern Europe and Asia

7pm - Squat Me - films about reclaiming private and public space for the common good. Followed by discussion

8pm - Enviromental Justice - Films dealing with enviromental justice issues from Nigeria to Copenhagen to United States.

9pm - The Police State - Films about suppression of resistance movements in United States and elsewhere. Democracy 101 a film about the police tactics during the G20 protests in Pittsburgh last september.

10pm - Insurrection Now - From New York To Greece - Fuck the Police - Includes presentation about current occupy everything projects in california and Immersive Film about the Anarchist Rebellion in Greece

11pm - Surprise Real Time interactive audio perfomance by members of VOID collective from Athens and other guests.

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning edition

L.E.S. Jewels will be sentenced on June 1 (The Villager, third item)

Goodbye to the OTB on Delancey? (BoweryBoogie)

Looking at Ray's new ice cream machine (Neither More Nor Less)

Update on the Lora Deli wall (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

A lonely wall on St. Mark's Place (The Gog Log)

An amazing photo from Hell's Kitchen circa 1989 (Flickr via NYC Taxi Photo)

Astor Place Mud Truck hit by DOH (Eater)

A random fiber interlude....




Go see the group exhibit Structured (details via Nathan Kensinger Photography)

Pizza bloggers have their say on Pulino's (Grub Street)

The East Village Idiot signs off (East Village Idiot)

And three great posts this week at Blah Blog Blah:

Where Beth Israel is

The history of trolley cars on Avenue A

A post on diarrhea and a real-estate broker

And Eater reported this earlier... and I just saw the sign for myself... my beloved Blarney Stone on Fulton Street is really gone...



Which means these signs must be updated...

What to do with the Vegan Bowery Burger

A friend recently made me aware of the existence of the Vegan Bowery Burger at Whole Foods. (I realize these things aren't new...just new to me.) So, for the sake of investigative journalism, I went over to Whole Foods on Houston and Bowery to check them out. (And are these just specific to this location? Are there, say, Union Square Burgers at the 14th Street location.) To my good fortune, they were in stock at the deli counter. They go for $7.99 a pound. I've never ordered veggie burgers by the pound. So I asked for three. To my amazement, they came to $7.99. (So next time someone asks me how much a pound weighs...)



I'm not much of a foodie. The burgers tasted pretty good (couldn't even detect the mustard powder), though I recommend that you eat them with heaping piles of cheese and bacon.

Now! To more important matters. How to market the Vegan Bowery Burger!

First! We need some 1970s-style Bowery street cred... Gabba gabba yum!



...some hotties in Bowery wear... Let me see that fake beef!



We have your Vegan Bowery Burger bitches!



And a celebrity spokesperson....

Beep, beep! Delivery for Mr. Moby!



Then we'll raise the price to $17.99 a pound. See you at DBGB, suckers!

And when the Bowery is still the Bowery

Nicky's reopens tomorrow

Nicky's owner Quynh Dang left us a note regarding yesterday's post on his restaurant closing for renovations....

We'll be open on Saturday. We did need to renovate and get some equipment repaired. Also, we have 2 more months on the lease...we are trying really hard to negotiate with the landlord since he wants to increase it to three times of what the space is worth. However, we ARE also currently working on our City Hall, NYC location on Nassau St. and we still have our Brooklyn location!

See you soon!

Baggy count

There continues to be a discussion on the noticeable increase of crime and drugs in the neighborhood... Per a reader:

I decided to count the number of little plastic bags I saw on my walk home tonight. From the corner of Ave. A and Houston, to the corner of 8th St. and Ave. B, I counted 39(+, I lost count for a block or two) little bags, roughly three a block. That's on one side of the street, after dark, without bothering to look much beyond my feet.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Are the bad old days here again...again?

Turnover at the former Howdy Do space

Last September, a designer boutique opened at the former location of Howdy Do on Seventh Street.... The store had been keeping erratic hours in recent months... and now a "store for rent" sign hangs over the space...



Jeremiah wrote about Howdy Do's closure here... which replaced an egg shop....

Egg shop...vintage kitsch...designer boutique... What's next for 72 Seventh Street?

Reminders: The fourth annual NYC Anarchist Film Festival tomorrow

The fourth annual NYC Anarchist Film Festival is tomorrow... Theatre 80 on St Marks Place from 1 pm to 5 pm and in the basement of Judson Church from 5 pm to midnight.

Here's a trailer from the official festival site:



This year's festival honors the life and work of Brad Will.

Meanwhile, I found the following video via John Penley's Facebook page. The NYPD raided the 13 Thames Art Space in East Williamsburg the other day... here's video of that...



The Times has more on the arrest today in a piece titled "Film Fest Is on Police Radar, Anarchists Say"

Critics dislike NYU 2031 even more than NYU 2010

As you may have heard, NYU held its first open house last night since formally unveiling its ambitious NYU 2031 invasion expansion plan. Before the event, Andrew Berman from the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation spoke out against the plan. We weren't there. But a lot of other people were. So here's a listing of some of the coverage....

The official NYU news release. And here's the plan from NYU.

Protesters dampen 2031 open house (Washington Square News)

Critics Turn Out at Open House on N.Y.U. Expansion (The New York Times)

Anti-Expansion Greenwich Villagers Calmly Storm NYU's Gates (Curbed)

Meanwhile, Alex at Flaming Pablum posted two illustrations of the future campus that a reader found and were since removed, evidently, from NYU's Web site. Here's one of them:



Finally, some words about the NYU event from Save the Lower East Side!:

Scarier still is their silence on the East Village. Looking at the fantasies-afar, you know it's going to pop up here, but they don't give a clue as to where.

The vocal anger of East Villagers prompted the creation of this NYU Expansion Task Force and all these open house presentations. It's good to know that NYU is still so afraid of the East Village that they don't want to tell us where they are looking for East Village real estate.

At Cafe 81, you'd better be quiet or someone will throw a shamwow at you

We've been really curious about what has been going on with Krystal's Cafe 81, the former Verchovyna Tavern aka George's Bar aka Bar 81, on Seventh Street near First Avenue.

As we reported last fall, the bar closed in September for a "vacation," with a reopening on Oct. 1 sign. Well, the place was shuttered until the middle of January. Then, without any fanfare, it quietly reopened with a happy hour.



Things apparently haven't been so quiet of late. An EV Grieve reader noted that the bar recently started a "rockaoke" night every Friday. According to the reader, "It's a live band — amped — with mic'd DJ, doing karaoke ... doors open, screams, etc. The place is packed, with a bouncer, and kids spilling into the street."

Perhaps some folks have complained about the noise... which may explain this new sign that went up on the door... one of the oddest noise signs that we have ever seen...



"Noise detector installed. Once limit is reached, a person would come down from his/her apartment and throw a shamwow at you."

Hmm. Is the sign funny or condescending?

And will you say "Wow" every time you're hit? (And does a shamwow really hold 12 times it weight in liquid?)



Meanwhile, a recent article in Philippine News offers a look at the new bar and chef:

Executive Chef Aris Tuazon hobnobbed from crowd to crowd during opening night of Krystal’s Café 81, the newest Filipino bar-restaurant in the ever-changing landscape of East Village eateries.

Café 81 is the recent reincarnation of Krystal’s Café in Manhattan, which once was a Filipino Karaoke oasis on First Avenue before a Japanese noodle bar took over the location.

Café 81’s vision, Tuazon said, is to balance popular appeal and authentic Filipino cuisine, which is a tricky challenge given the fast-paced food trends and shifting Filipino population of New York City.

When the acclaimed mainstay Elvie’s Turo-Turo closed in Fall 2009 after almost two decades on 13th Street, it pointed as much to the pressures of the economy as it did to an evolving community.

The space inhabited by Café 81 is a testament to the East Village’s ethnic and immigrant communities.

The bar has stood in the same location for over 100 years and was once home to an Italian restaurant, and before that, an Ukranian dive bar.

In the East Village, Filipinos created something of a Little Manila in Manhattan with a revolving door of Filipino businesses and residents. Their visibility was boosted in the 1980s by professional recruitment to the area’s many hospitals, combined with offers of subsidized housing in the midst of ongoing rent strikes in the neighborhood. Many longtime residents and businesses, including Elvie’s, watched the gentrification of the East Village and arrival of new condos and NYU-owned properties.

The Nicky's saga continues

First we heard they might be closing... then they were just moving a few blocks away ... and now, Nicky's on Second Street is closed for renovations? This makes no sense... especially if they do plan to move a few blocks away...