Thursday, November 7, 2013

Today in free ads for Microsoft



Just a quick note from Midtown South, where this checkmark arrived early this morning at Astor Place...





The checkmark, plugging a new Office product, points (heh) out that "This is the intersection where oddball and original meet." Perhaps it should say met instead of meet?

Honors for one of the most unique shops in the East Village



The East Village Community Coalition recently honored The Source Unltd Copy Shop with its annual Outstanding Pigeon award for their continued service and commitment to the neighborhood.

Since 1982, the shop at 331 E. Ninth St. between First Avenue and Second Avenue has been a go-to spot for copies, office supplies, cards and postcards created by local artists... and some good old-fashioned community spirit.

EVG correspondent Stacie Joy stopped by the cozy storefront to photograph proprietors Santo and Margaret Mollica.



"The East Village is still one of the few places where you can just be, and come across all kinds of people from all over the world," Santo said.

How do they feel about being honored for their 30-plus years in the neighborhood?

"When I was a kid, my old man sat me down and he said, 'Son (cause he used to forget my name sometimes), there are three things that can help you have a good life: One is to have faith in yourself as well as The Lord; two is to hope for the best but be prepared for the worst; and three is to be charitable toward others and they, in turn, would be charitable toward you," Santo said.

"And me and Marg have always tried to live and work by that code," he said. "So it's nice to have it recognized as working."


[Santo and Margaret with Curtis, who is named for Curtis Mayfield]

Don't mind the fake dead horse on the set of Steven Soderbergh's 'The Knick'


[Photo via The Lo-Down]

As you may have heard/read/seen/smelled yesterday, parts of Orchard Street and the Lower East Side were transformed into the early 1900s for "The Knick," a Steven Soderbergh-directed miniseries starring Clive Owen.

Perhaps our favorite photo from the shoot came via Reddit ...



You can find more photos at BoweryBoogie ... The Lo-Down ... Gothamist... and DNAinfo.

Filming continues today.

520 E. 11th St. is for sale



There's a new listing for the building between Avenue A and Avenue B. Not many details on that listing via Habitatman NYC:

Six Story Walk Up Apartment Building with 27 Residential units & 3 Stores. Plus Laundry Facilities in the basement.

No mention of "air rights" ... and there isn't any copy like "will make for a lovely single-family mansion once you toss out the pesky residents."

Asking price: $18 million.

[Image via Trulia]

SFW: This East Village apartment is 'sexy,' though we don't know why



Here's is a Craigslist ad for a pretty-average looking one-bedroom apartment. The headline describes the place as "sexy." Perhaps it is, though you wouldn't know it from the description:

New renovation

Perfect location near Whole Foods Trader [sic] and all transportation

Sun drenched with windows a [sic] plenty and Skylight

Queen sized Bedroom

Ample closets with Overhead stotage [sic]

Exposed Brick



And the unit is an unsexy $2,150. Any ideas why this is sexy? Or what, in general, makes an apartment sexy, aside from maybe the residents?

H/T @SerenaSpeaks

Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Tonight's sunset



Along Avenue B...

[Updated] Today's Empire Biscuit update

The new biscuitery at 198 Avenue A was back open this morning. Via Eater:

Co-owner Yonadav Tsuna says that they've bulked up their production, brought on a professional baker to streamline the biscuit-making, and smoothed out the service to get those biscuit sandwiches out as fast as possible.

Meanwhile, the Empire Biscuit Help Wanted ad remains on Craiglist, if you are qualified:

Empire Biscuit is hiring experienced line and prep cooks
We're looking for experienced line cooks and prep cooks. All shifts are available. You'll work with familiar and exotic, high quality, seasonal ingredients. You'll have the opportunity to smoke, pickle, and cure. You'll make sweet and savory jams and jellies. We're looking for precision, speed and cleanliness. Please see our menu at empirebiscuit.com. If you don't dig it, don't apply. We're a new restaurant. If you kick ass, you'll grow with us. Please send your resume. We hope to hear from you.

And no word just yet when they will remain open 24 hours a day.

Updated:
Gothamist has a feature on the shop today titled "Inside Empire Biscuit, Finally Ready To Meet East Villagers' Drunken Demand."

Per co-owner Yonadav Tsuna:

"We had some people here Saturday night crying outside," he said, when asked about the necessary closure late last week. Tsuna and his business partner Karl Wilder were inundated with so much early business that they were forced to lock up and hire additional staff in order to keep up with demand. "We're doing five times to ten times more than we thought we would," Tsuna said with a nervous grin.

On Broadway, Blatt Billiards building will be much taller with a glassy face

Catching up to an update about Blatt Billiards, a pool table manufacturer, who will be leaving its longtime home at 809 Broadway near East 12th Street.

The 126-year-old loft building sold for $24 million in May. And the new owners have big plans here, as The Real Deal reported, by nearly quadrupling the building's height with the addition of three apartments.

IDM Capital filed plans to boost the height of the 55-foot building at 809 Broadway to 199 feet, adding 10 stories to the five-story structure.

And!

The new building is expected to have about 22,000 square feet of commercial space, 10,400 square feet of residential space and a 167-square-foot wedge set aside for community facilities, the DOB filings showed.

It all goes as planned, the building will look like this:

Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher
Name: Melissa Hotchkiss (and Jess)
Occupation: Poet and Marketing and Business Development
Location: 5th Street Between 1st and 2nd
Time: 5:45 on Saturday, Nov. 2

I’ve lived in the neighborhood for 24 years this coming January. I’m from Vermont. I’m not sure why I came here. I majored in art history and I wanted to get into gallery work. I had been working in a photography gallery in New Mexico and they had New York contacts, but I didn’t have a job when I came over here. I sort of landed here and then figured it out. I’ve worked for three art and photography dealers and I could not have ever gotten into writing poetry if I did not work with photography for a number of years in my 20s. It taught me a whole new way of seeing.

It was hard at first just landing here. I remember it like it was two minutes ago. I remember getting here, I had these black suede short boots and I was on the corner of 4th Street and 1st Avenue and I’m walking and I just loved it and then I stepped on a mouse that was mangled and dead. For some reason I remembered being so exhilarated by that. I mean, I didn’t kill it. It’s the daily benign craziness that I love.

I’m a poet. I’ve been writing poetry for 21 years. Technically I’m a poet with a stressful day job. My day job is business development at a large accounting firm, but in my off-time I do the editing work and my own poetry. I got a master's in creative writing. I love the East Village and I feel like capturing it. I take a lot of photographs as well, although I love to take one good picture a year. I’ve even done stand-up comedy. I’ve lived like this semi-bohemian life but not in the full way that I used to.

I have one book out called "Storm Damage" and I’m one of the editors for Barrow Street, which is a poetry journal started in 1998. We also create books. It’s almost been 15 years. Barrow Street is named after the street in the West Village where the Greenwhich House Music School is. Prior to that I ran a reading. I have a hard time describing my writing. Right now I’m doing short poems and I’m continually working on my second book. My poems are very spare and I have a lot of East Village poems.

I’m also in a poetry group workshop where we go and share our work, called the Urban Range. One of the elements within our group is the idea of urban poems. The whole sense of urban in the poem or the poets’ psyche. It’s not as if it’s some revolutionary idea, since many people live in urban areas, but that’s part of the group I’m in.

The stories I have are mostly about my apartment building, due to bad neighbors. I live above Downtown Bakery. I’ve been eating there for 24 years — mostly breakfast. I feel like I’m the old lady in the building but I’m not. I outlast almost everybody except for a few others that have been there a long time. It’s one of those buildings where 90 percent is turnover. There was the guy who didn’t understand why at 3 am, blasting his stereo wasn’t a problem. One time I asked him to turn it down and he said, ‘But I just got a new stereo.’

Lately, there was the couple who would fight a lot. At first I could only hear the women and never the guy but then I started to hear the guy. At least he was standing up for himself. I couldn’t escape it — white noise, earplugs. So one night at 2 or 3 am I wrote a note, “I’m sorry you fight so much but the next time that happens I’m calling the police.” I never heard them fight again.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

Apartments in order for this haunted beauty on East 10th Street



104 E. 10th St. between Third Avenue and Second Avenue is one of the more intriguing buildings around. Possibly once haunted, the rather dilapidated building was part of reclusive real-estate baron William Gottlieb's portfolio. (Jeremiah Moss has a nice history of the space, where playwright, poet and performance artist Edgar Oliver most recently lived, here.)

It hit the market in March 2011 for $5.6 million... the listing disappeared then reemerged for $3.9 million. Per the original listing:

Built in 1879, this magnificent, sun-drenched residence is a restoration enthusiast's dream project.

The building offers an unparalleled opportunity to design the home you've always wanted. Its current features include four floors, eight fireplaces, skylight, original moldings, a quaint south-facing garden, an English basement with a separate street entrance, plus a basement below. With additional air rights, this building is primed for vertical expansion, offering opportunities for a roof deck, duplex unit, and more.

Anyway, somewhere along the line, the dream home idea apparently died. There is now a sign noting "apartments" out front. (There isn't a listing yet for the address on the Town website.)



For the outside, it appears the building still needs a good deal of work, though we wouldn't mind seeing it stay like this. (Well, maybe a coat of paint.)


Public records show that the building sold in February to an LLC for $3.5 million.

Previously on EV Grieve:
The charmingly shabby interiors of 104 E. 10th St

The new Westside Market on Third Avenue will have Wi-Fi

Last Monday, we posted the news that Westside Market NYC would open in the base of that monstrosity luxury rental building at 84 Third Avenue and East 12th Street.

Westside CEO George Zoitas, whose father John opened the first store in 1965, shared more details on the new space with The Commercial Observer.

Customers who visit the store will be able to connect to Wi-Fi from electronic devices including smartphones and tablets. In addition to installing Wi-Fi, the company is using technology to create faster checkout counters and an advanced security system.

Trader Joe's, take note.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Westside Market coming to the East Village, 15 comments

One way to kill a tree


[Via EVG reader Ann]

Several readers have noted this WTF situation on Avenue C near East Ninth Street in front of the Sunburnt Cow. In recents days someone basically smothered this tree well with about 500 pounds of cement...



... and people have taken notice, though it may be too late to save this 1-year-old tree...