Monday, May 24, 2010

A hidden Chico mural features an owl and backpacking beaver

Thanks to EV Grieve reader evilsugar25~ for sharing this photo on Facebook... A little hidden piece of the East Village...



This Chico mural, dated 2000, is enclosed inside the backyards shared by the tenement buildings on Sixth Street between Avenue B and Avenue C...

"The creeping vine on the left has actually covered up my favorite part of the mural in recent years — a blue/purple owl in the upper left. My second favorite guy is the backpacking beaver," evilsugar25~ writes writes. "I get to see it every day, but I realized there are other Chico fans who would have no idea this was back here... and I wonder how many other 'private' murals decorate enclosed spaces around here."

Another pizza place for St. Mark's Place

Back in November, the Surf City smoothie shop shuttered on St. Mark's Place between Second Avenue and Third Avenue.... and now, after a few delays, it's now a brick-oven pizza place called Totale Pizza....per the sign, looks like some kind of $5.75 deal going on...



Perhaps a less skateboard-friendly alternative to 2 Brothers a few doors to the west...

Good Vibrations? Lava Gina's name change on Avenue C



EV Grieve reader Dan points out that Lava Gina on Avenue C between Eighth Street and Seventh Street has become Vibrations Lounge. Workers painted the front over earlier last week, but the new name in the window just went up on Friday...

Introducing the For Rent District



After reading Thursday's post about Avenue A storefronts, a reader suggests that we call the strip of Avenue A between Second Street and Third Street (west side) the For Rent District from here on out... four of the spaces are available...


Previously on EV Grieve
:
Avenue A by the numbers

Sunday, May 23, 2010

Avenue A, 4:15 a.m., May 23



The mysterious block of concrete at Second Street is now even seemingly more mysterious... Remember, if you see a large block of concrete, say something...

Previously on EV Grieve
:
Here's your mystery block of concrete

Neither More Nor Less, June 2006-May 2010



Out of habit this morning, first thing, I went to look at Neither More Nor Less. I wanted to see what happened, if anything, last night. Because I knew that Bob Arihood would have the story. And the photos.

As you likely know, Bob decided to retire the site this past week. I'm not sure what else to say other than that I'll really miss his work... the neighborhood is better off with his reporting, because no one else does what he did....he captured the absurd, the ugly, the every day that makes the East Village unique....

The Times featured Bob's retirement ...

His style of reporting was of the old-fashioned shoe-leather sort and his main subjects were the itinerant travelers, street drinkers, punks, poets and sidewalk sleepers that once proliferated in the East Village but these days make up a vanishing tribe.

L.E.S. Jewels, Cowboy Stan, Drunkenstein, Bobby Apocalypse, Swami, the Groper, Outlaw, Loan Shark Bob, Barnacle Bill and the Mosaic Man, among others, all appeared in Mr. Arihood’s blog. Some of those subjects are now dead. Others are in jail. A few have survived and moved on.


[Photo of Avenue A and St. Mark's Place from Memorial Day 1991 by Bob Arihood via The Times]

Saturday, May 22, 2010

Death becomes him



Hey now. Just catching up with the Times of New York from the other day... The newspaper reviews Shepard Fairey's Deitch Projects show. And what does the reviewer think?

"On the walls of an art gallery, his efforts look like death warmed over."

Avenue A, 9:18 p.m., May 22

Smurfs cast getting more annoying by the day

Stuyvesant Grocery's three signs

I was going through the photos that I didn't use from the last few months, and I came across this one...



I took this about four or five weeks ago... I liked seeing all three Stuyvesant Grocery signs... Jill captured a better shot of it back in March...

On this topic... in case you haven't read it yet... Eryn Loeb writes about Stuyvesant Grocery here at The Faster Times.

Friday, May 21, 2010

Here's your mystery block of concrete

Earlier today, EV Grieve reader Carl Bentsen mentioned a mysterious block of concrete that, uh, mysteriously appeared on Second Street and Avenue A... and he has now sent along a photo....



Any guesses?

Walk this way