Monday, October 14, 2013

Tonight's sunset



Photo by Bobby Williams

For another look at the early days of CBGB



Marc Campbell, vocalist of the Nails, is none too pleased about the new CBGB biopic... and at Dangerous Minds today, he offers up an antidote.

For a grittier and more honest view of the early days at CBGB, check out Ivan Kral and Amos Poe’s 1976 cinéma vérité, low-budget (but beautifully shot) The Blank Generation. With its post-dubbed sound and chainsaw editing, the movie doesn’t work as a strait-on, conventional documentary but it does capture some important rock and roll history, a time when rock was starting to feel again.

You can head on over to Dangerous Minds to watch the film if you'd like...

[Image via Dangerous Minds]

Reader report: Someone dumped the turtles from the Ninth Street Community Garden into a hole


[At the garden last spring via Bobby Williams]

An EVG Facebook friend shared a WTF story from over at the Ninth Street Community Garden at Avenue C. Last week, someone gathered the garden's turtles ... and dumped them into a hole in the back of the garden. Thankfully, Garden volunteers recovered the turtles. None of the turtles were apparently hurt.

Per our Facebook friend: "So sad that someone would do that ... those turtles are a bit of a main attraction. Hopefully they'll be left alone."

Bharucha and Banksy



Here's more about the additions from the weekend to the Banksy installation on East Seventh Street and Cooper Square ... via the EVG inbox...

Free Cooper Union is pleased to present the repentance of Jamshed Bharucha.

“Cooper Confessional” depicts Cooper Union’s overpaid and visionless President, Jamshed Bharucha, as he confesses his transgression from a historically merit-based full scholarship model, to an expansionist tuition agenda. Hearing Bharucha’s lament is Peter Cooper, who founded the Cooper Union in 1859 and established the mission of the institution as necessarily providing free education to all admitted students while educating against the evils of debt.

This collaborative work is flanked by an image of the infamous Jamshed the Giant, who insists that must students PAY for years of financial mismanagement and administrative bloat at the Cooper Union, along with the title of the Free Cooper Union Player’s latest drama, Free Cooper: The Musical, which is the sequel to the group's debut hit The Politics of Destruction.

As Banksy notes, “there's nothing more dangerous than someone who wants to make the world a better place,” and with that in mind, and with many more plans for direct action, we continue to fight against tuition at Cooper Union and the rising tide of student debt.



Oaxaca Taqueria opening a new location on East Seventh Street



Based on the new signage here along East Seventh Street between Avenue A and First Avenue... it appears that the fifth NYC location of Oaxaca Taqueria is coming soon...



Oaxaca Taqueria expanded from Brooklyn into the East Village and Extra Place in December 2010... This space was previously home to the Butter Lane cupcakes classroom.

...and the taco revolution continues in the East Village... with the recent arrivals of Tacos Moreles on East Ninth Street... Sembrado’s Tacos al Pastor on East 13th Street ... Taqueria Diana on Second Avenue ... El Diablito Taqueria on East Third Street... and the incoming Otto's Tacos on Second Avenue...

[Updated] Activity at the dormant Pride & Joy BBQ



On Saturday, we saw workers hauling out trash and what not from the dormant Pride and Joy BBQ entrance on East Second Street... As we first reported last November, celebrity BBQ chef Myron Mixon was going to open a restaurant/saloon in the former Lucky Cheng's space. (Read that post here.)

However, a lawsuit between Mixon and his partners threw the opening in doubt.

So, does the sight of workers dumping trash from inside the restaurant mean that the BBQ concept is dead?



We asked Hayne Suthon, who owns (and lives) in the building on First Avenue and operates Lucky Cheng's, now on West 52nd Street, what was happening with the restaurant.

"[The remaining partners] are moving forward without Mixon to open soon," she said.

Perhaps they've paid the ConEd bill too.

Updated 1:30 p.m.

DNAinfo is reporting this afternoon that Pride and Joy BBQ just received a liquor license to open a "220-seat 'draft house' and 'honky-tonk' featuring three bars and about 20 TV screens.

During the SLA hearing last Tuesday, lawyer Ravi Ivan Sharma argued for, and received, a 4 a.m. closing time for the BBQ space. Last December, CB3 approved the license but with a midnight closing time during the week and 2 a.m. on weekends.

"That's not what the applicant bargained for when they took on a very expensive lease," Sharma said.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Myron Mixon's Pride & Joy BBQ now in the works for the former Lucky Cheng's space

Fire reported at incoming Pride and Joy BBQ on East Second Street

Myron Mixon lawsuit puts opening of Pride and Joy BBQ in question at former Lucky Cheng's space

More about the timing of the Tompkins Square/Alphabet City Slow Zone


[Click image to enlarge]

On Friday, CB3 member Chad Marlow learned that the Department of Transportation (DOT) has approved the Tompkins Square/Alphabet City Slow Zone. (Read the background about all this here.)

Here's an update. According to StreetsBlog, there were 74 applications for slow zones citywide. In total, the DOT selected 15 of the zones to be rolled out over the course of the next three years. Turns out the Tompkins Square/Alphabet City Slow Zone is in the highest priority group, and is set for implementation next year. Other neighborhoods receiving a slow zone next year are Norwood in the Bronx, Clinton Hill/Bedford Stuyvesant and Brownsville in Brooklyn, and Jackson Heights, Queens.

The DOT says the applications were evaluated on criteria including crash history, community support, and proximity of schools and senior or daycare centers, as StreetsBlog reported. Slow Zones will include signage, a 20-mph speed limit and speed humps.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Call for an East Village 'slow zone' (34 comments)

Lighting store coming to East 7th Street



The D.L. Cerney boutique closed up after 28 years last November ... a sign in the window at 13 E. Seventh St. point to the new business coming soon... your neighborhood lighting store...



The sign shows that the store will sell light bulbs and customized lamp and light fixtures... and offer lamp repair services... Which reminds me that I actually don't own a lamp.

Sunday, October 13, 2013

Someone apparently took a car door off the Banksy mobile on Ludlow Street


[Image via Banksyny]

This Banksy mobile showed up on Ludlow Street on Wednesday... part of the artist's month-long NYC street residency... as perhaps expected... someone took a piece of the installation (the back door on the driver's side) ... as this photo via Justin McWilliams of the East Village shows...




Banksy's piece on East Seventh Street was quickly altered ...and his some of his other work has been defaced as well this month...

Today in leisure activities in Tompkins Square Park


[Bobby Williams]


[peter radley]

Week in Grieview


[Photo by Derek Berg]

New dorm a go for Cooper Square (Tuesday)

City OKs East Village Slow Zone (Friday)

About that "nasty" kiddie pool on the roof (Tuesday)

Registered sex offender arrested for attempted kidnapping on Avenue B (Wednesday)

Mudspot Café coming to the First Park kiosk (Thursday)

New vegan brunch at The Bhakti Center (Thursday)

Workers cut down trees at Astor Place subway plaza (Wednesday)

Out and About with Sally Young (Wednesday)

The Living Room closes after Oct. 26 (Wednesday)

Duane Reade is expanding on Avenue B (Monday)

Part of St. Mark's Place is now Sara Curry Way (Monday)

The never-ending saga of the illegal rooftop additions at 515 E. Fifth St. (Wednesday)

There's a new coffee shop on East Fifth Street (Monday)

A look at "Mildred Fierce" (Thursday)

People liked this cat painting (Tuesday)

Retail space at 205 Avenue A hits the market (Wednesday)

Plans for new bar-club at 50 Avenue B on hold for the moment (Wednesday)

The future of East Houston and Ridge (Monday)

Not a lot of people like the CBGB movie (Tuesday)

A look at the incoming Root & Bone on East Third Street (Monday)

Extending the Second Avenue bike lane (Tuesday)

One dead Christmas tree (Wednesday)

Updated: Someone already defaced Banksy's East Village street installation


[peter radley]

Banksy unveiled his latest NYC street installation yesterday on East Seventh Street and Cooper Square... And as this photo by @svvalera shows, someone has already defaced his "Concrete Confessional."



This marks the third of his pieces to be defaced during his month-long residency in NYC.

Updated 12:24

More about this via Angus Johnston at Student Activism:

Sometime last night or this morning, the priest in the painting was given a bushy white spray-paint beard which rendered him a dead ringer for Peter Cooper, the founder of the Cooper Union. At the same time, the cross that adorned his neck was replaced with a giant Flavor Flav style clock with a red face and hands set just prior to midnight, the symbol of the Free Cooper Union activist movement.

And there's apparently another confessional showing someone who looks like Cooper Union President Jamshed Baruscha... with a Free Cooper Union tag...


[Photo by @KOKO820]


[Photo by @bobcooley]