Tuesday, January 15, 2013

Tonight in photos of Charlie Sheen walking into McSorley's

[@auradis]

Oh.



The actor has been in town promoting something or another, and making the talk-show rounds...

12 second of East Village Wooooooooooooo!

Thank you to Gothamist for pointing out the existence of this video. Uploaded yesterday and titled "Guys on top of a bus (roof) as it is driving in New York City (Manhattan - East Vilage)"

First Avenue and East Ninth Street to be exact.

Party bus!


EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

[East 10th Street and Avenue C]

Look what Frank Lloyd Wright was going to build on Second Avenue and East 11th Street! (Gothamist)

Happy anniversary to the St. Mark’s Historic District (Off the Grid)

From Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas to the Bowery (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

Remembering Dashane Santana 1 year later (BoweryBoogie)

MulchFest! (The Gog Log)

Photo purge! (Flaming Pablum)

And too late for the "breaking" headline...

Whatever happened to that really ugly hotel planned for the Bowery?

Mystery Building Week continues. (See here and here for previous installments.)

The Salvation Army's East Village Residence closed here at the Bowery and East Third Street in August 2008. (Find some history of the space here.)

[February 2011, of course, because it doesn't snow here anymore]

And all was quiet for a few years. Until Jan. 11, 2011, when Lois Weiss at the Post reported that the France-based Louzon Group had bought the building and were planning on opening a new hotel here. Across the way from the Bowery Hotel. And two blocks from the then-Cooper Square Hotel (now the Standard East Village). Not to mention the rebranded Whitehouse Hotel and Hostel across the street. And close enough to the 569 hotels planned for the Lower East Side.

Remember the first rendering?

[Via Curbed]

Then! The next rendering! Keep in mind: This is not a joke.

[Via the Observer]

And yes — that's a Jumbotron up there.

As you'll recall, the reaction was... brutal? My favorite comment, via the EV Grieve Facebook page, came from Luc Sante:

It would be cheaper and more useful just to blow up the building and leave a 30-foot crater.

Anyway! Two years later, there's no sign of this hotel. (Which is a very good thing...) There's nothing on file for the property with the DOB. No demolition permits in the works. Nothing.


Did the Louzon Group changed its mind? They paid $7.6 million for the property. Anyone know what's going on with the space? Let us know via the EV Grieve email.

[Image created by Shawn Chittle]

Previously on EV Grieve:
Reactions to new Bowery hotel: 'It would be cheaper and more useful just to blow up the building and leave a 30-foot crater'

Why do the French hate us?

New York City's original Death Star

We had a post yesterday about 51 Astor Place, including quotes from developer Edward J. Minskoff from The Wall Street Journal. (Flashback: "it's great-looking, it fits in to the neighborhood, it's not overbearing.")

So, you know, at least one neighborhood blogger and several readers who just obviously don't appreciate great-looking architecture have dubbed 51 Astor Place the "Death Star."

Meanwhile! Turns out that this isn't the city's first Death Star... Crazy Eddie came across this Shorpy photo from 1902...


Per the caption, "The Waldorf-Astoria, New York." The original, and somewhat forbidding, Waldorf at Fifth Avenue and 34th Street. Complete with the obligatory windowsill milk bottle.

Of course, this Death Star had a short life... In 1929, the original Waldorf-Astoria was demolished to make way for something called the Empire State Building. (Did plans for that ever move forward?)

Not sure I'd describe that old Waldorf as a "Death Star." Maybe we can swap this out for 51 Astor? Dibs on the corner room at the top.

No dice on East Second Street

New Urban Etiquette Sign spotted outside an apartment building on East Second Street between Avenue C and Avenue D...


Includes awesome clip art.


Actually, those look like playing cards. But the point is taken.

Today in Urban Etiquette dog poop signs

On the topic of Urban Etiquette Signs, a reader sent us the shot below from East 12th Street near Avenue B where "there is always dog shit smeared on the sidewalk."

Here's one way to perhaps curb this kind of non-practice ...


This sign led to a conversation about the worst blocks for uncurbed dogs. Aside from this stretch, one candidate suggested was the north side of East Second Street between Avenue A and First Avenue ... on the sidewalk, dubbed by someone as "poop alley," along the Village View parking lot.

That aside, remember — You don't fuck with East 12th Street.

New Year's resolutions: Eat more fries at Ray's


One resolution that we won't break. Photo of Ray by @gerryvisco via the Ray's Candy Store Facebook page.

Rumors: 2 Bros. Pizza is opening another East Village location


BaoBQ closed here on First Avenue between East 13th Street and East 14th Street in August. The for rent signs are down... and someone put up black trashbags on the windows...

We've from several different tipsters now that a 2 Bros. Pizza will take over this space... there hasn't been any official confirmation on this from 2 Bros., who continue to expand in the city... If this is true, then this could be one more reason why Vinny Vincenz Pizza close by on First Avenue is now selling a $1 slice, as noted yesterday.

Of course, there's already a lot of cheap pizza right around here, from Papa John's and Joey Pepperoni across the street to the other Joey Pepperoni's and 7-Eleven around the way on East 14th Street...

The first 2 Bros. opened on St. Mark's Place in 2008.

Monday, January 14, 2013

And now, a photo of Morrissey not looking so happy on First Avenue


Several people spotted Morrissey in the East Village yesterday... on First Avenue with two friends looking for a cab. EVG reader Krist Sorge sent me the above photo ... via Instagram.

BoweryBoogie posted a photo here.

As BB notes, the former the lyricist and vocalist of The Smiths was last spotted around these parts coming to the aid of a woman who passed out at the Strand in September.

5 nights of Nick Zedd and the Cinema of Transgression


From the EVG inbox...

NICK ZEDD & THE CINEMA OF TRANSGRESSION
January 15-19
9pm-late all nights

Glasshouse 246 Union Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11211(G to Broadway, M to Lorimer, or L/G to Metropolitan-Lorimer)

Entrance is free (suggested donation of $10 at the bar)

Leading figure in the avant-garde cinema and NYC underground scene of the 1980’s and 1990’s; Iconic filmmaker, writer, and painter, Nick Zedd returns to New York City for a festival dedicated to his work, providing New Yorkers with the rare opportunity to meet and experience this body of work.

In addition to coining the term “Cinema of Transgression” and critically framing the work of his contemporaries (as creator of Underground Film Bulletin from 1984–90 and writer of the Cinema of Transgression manifesto), Zedd is known for his low-budget films, paintings, and mid-2000’s public television series with Reverend Jen, Electric Elf.

For this event Zedd curated a special program with screenings of most of his works since the 80’s and hosting works of some of his peers in the Cinema of Transgression movement including films by Nicholas Abrahams, Tessa Hughes-Freeland & Holly Adams, Angelique Bosio, Richard Kern, Richard Klemann, Casandra Stark and documentary films by Mary Jordan and Andreas Troeger.

Here's a Nick Zedd Tumblr with more details of what's playing each night.

Zedd lived in the East Village for years... these days he's down in Mexico City with Monica Cassanova and their son Zerak. Here's an excerpt from Whitehot Magazine circa December 2011 on his decision to move:

I could have stayed in New York, but after awhile it became a self-imposed purgatory, going to court, fighting frivolous evictions and continually winning against a psychotic landlord, accepting the ugliness of gentrification and becoming more isolated as the city became a party to which I wasn’t invited. New people to collaborate with kept me there for decades; but they got fewer and farther between. Every scene disintegrated into petty backstabbing or was short-circuited by landlord harassment. A new crop of faux bohemians arrived as part of a sad, fucked-up Simulation. There were so many normal people around I became agoraphobic. They took over my building, paying exhorbitant rents, complaining about the sound of my feet.

Living in NY, your mind gets clouded by the struggle to survive with pointless tension; then you convince yourself you’ve accomplished something special by having one hour of peace a week that anywhere else would be a daily occurence. We put up with it for so long because we know that everywhere else in the country is even more boring. A false sense of self- righteousness infects New Yorkers after years of accepting miserable conditions, bad service and aesthetic ugliness in order to be part of a myth. The City is a good place for roaches and bedbugs but for humans it’s living death. What kind of a city would let the Mars Bar close?!

Gnome alone


Tompkins Square Park today. Leftover entertainment from the MulchFest this past weekend?

Photo by Bobby Williams

Rejected headlines:
Take me gnome tonight
Gnome for the holidays