Noted

Avenue A at 10th Street.

The young ones

Sensitive Skin live Sunday at the Bowery Poetry Club

Sensitive Skin magazine has been revived by publisher Bernard Meisler and managing editor Tim Beckett... The print version ran on the Lower East Side in the 1990s, and published such luminaries as Richard Hell, Taylor Mead, Herbert Huncke, Bob Holman (who now runs the Bowery Poetry Club), among others.

And Sensitive Skin is having their first reading since like 1998 at the Bowery Poetry Club this Sunday at 6. There will be readings by Darius James, Christian Hunter, Drew Huebner and Rob Hardin with music by Kurt Wolf (ex-Pussy Galore) and video by Rebecca Gaffney.

Here's the first issue from 1991 ... when it was called 'Peau Sensible' (that's French for sensitive skin...)



For further reading:
Check out Jeremiah's interview with Bernard and Tim at Vanishing New York.

Oh, he's a magic man.....

Per Craigslist:

Magic The Gathering... - m4w - 27 (East Village)

I want you to tap my mana till I'm all tapped out. Be my Exalted Angel, I'll be your Dark Confidant. Take my Rod of Ruin deep into your Karplusan Forest.

Come on, baby. Let's make some magic.

Or!

The Rhong Tiam dilemma: Stay (and remodel) or go

[Photo via]

Grub Street has the official word on what's up with Kurve/Rhong Tiam on Second Avenue and Fifth Street:

"Andy Yang tells us he has closed the East Village outpost of Rhong Tiam. “It was a miscalculation,” he says of its predecessor Kurve, with its infamous Karim Rashid design." (Above!) He's also considering whether to remodel it (bringing the kitchen upstairs) and reopen it with a less off-putting décor, or to simply let go of the space, Grub Street notes.

What do you think? Remodel or let it go?

Previously on EV Grieve:
Kurve/Rhong Tiam's long, strange trip is apparently over

Good sights: Lucy's back open last night

Lucy's has been closed of late (without a note, per usual) ... Didn't get the chance to stop, though, to see what was happening ... a reader had said that she was off on her annual visit to Poland....

[Updated, sort of] The dream is apparently over: De La Vega Museum closes on St. Mark's

Per an alert reader... The De La Vega Museum, run by artist James De La Vega, appears to be closed... the store is all but empty.... (which may explain why he was giving away art recently....) We'll have more on this later...

Friday morning:

Swung by the shop/museum last evening and this morning... all closed up... Considering his penchant for signs in the window...



....I'm surprised there isn't one letting people know what happened...



Meanwhile, near the shop, an unattended mattress sits without a "become your dream" slogan.



Previously on EV Grieve:
De La Vega calling for a boycott on Cafe Mogador, for some reason

Noted

From the Post today:

For a group of NYU students this fall, the only room will be at the inn.

About 50 to 60 students returning to the Greenwich Village campus will be forced to check into a Manhattan hotel because the university has run out of dorm space.

But the young scholars can forget about raiding the minibar or dialing up room service. NYU officials say they'll limit the amenities to phone, cable and Internet service -- but, unlike the dorms, their rooms will get twice-a-week housekeeping.

The photography of Flo Fox

A friend recently introduced me to the work of acclaimed photographer Flo Fox... I asked her via Facebook if I could post a few of her photos from the 1970s and early 1980s in NYC... she agreed... and here's a sampling...








All this is even more remarkable given her background... Fox, who grew up in Woodside, Queens, was born blind in one eye.

Here's an excerpt on her from a profile in Alternative Photography:

According to her, she was an automatic photographer because she never needed to close an eye to take a picture. She lost the vision in her other eye in 1975 and was declared legally blind just at the time that she photographed herself nude for Playboy and Penthouse. It was at this time that one of Flo’s sisters was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis. Soon thereafter Flo began experiencing numbness in one of her hands and legs and had herself tested for MS. The results were positive. She has remained determined to not let this news change anything in her career as a fine arts photographer. This has not been easy with her direction in the medium which is predominately street imagery of people and places predominately set in New York City.

When asked how her disabilities have affected her work, Fox said that she started seeing interfering patterns in 1975 and soon thereafter could no longer focus on an image because of dead nerve endings. As her MS progressed, Flo’s muscle tone deteriorated and she went from using a cane to a motorized scooter.

Check out this interview on Tom Snyder...



You can watch part 2 here.

There are more photos on her website here. Or maybe you could friend her on Facebook.

Cat Days of August

Spotted this kitty out in Red Hook.

Standing outside the Copper Building (waiting on a friend)

Oh, nothing really to note here at the Copper Building at 13th Street and Avenue B... just seeing how easy it will be to look into someone's apartment from street level...






Thought maybe we'd get a response out of EV Grieve reader Despiser of the Copper Crapper too...

The Wall Street Journal on Avenue C

As The Wall Street Journal notes today:

[W]hile the night life has turned Avenue C into a top party destination for young professions and college students, the added noise and traffic is causing increased friction between residents and revelers.

Older residents who moved to the neighborhood in the '60s are now trying to keep out new bars. They have taken their complaints to the Community Board 3, which is restricting the number of new establishments that can sell alcoholic beverages.

According to the community board's website, Avenue C between Houston and 14th streets, an area with 23 liquor licenses, is deemed to have "greatly diminished the quality of life" for residents.

Some say the night life helps the area. "I understand sometimes there is too much noise," said Benjamin Alter, owner of Arcane, "but to me, the more business you have in the neighborhood, the better it makes the economy for the neighborhood."

Yes! Woo!



Anyway, let's flashback via the Times to 2005:

"C will keep its edginess for five more years," predicted Melvina Goren, a partner at Porch, 115 Avenue C (Seventh and Eighth), a candlelit bar known for its large backyard. "And then the scene will move on to Avenue D."

Well, any thoughts on that prediction?