At 205 Avenue A, where the NYPD stops by 'almost every weekend'

[205 Avenue A roof shot by William Farrington via the Post]

The Post has a follow-up story about our piece on the rooftop parties at Icon Realty's 205 Avenue A.

To the article!

Mitch Kossoff, a lawyer for Icon Realty, said there are guidelines in place for rooftop access, which only the top-floor tenants have access to. Parties past 10 p.m., loud music, consumption of alcohol, barbecuing and smoking are prohibited. Kossoff said he wasn’t aware of any complaints from last weekend’s bash but he’s ready to take necessary action, including eviction proceedings.

And!

Kyle Frey, 25, who lives on the first floor of the newly renovated building said cops come by “almost every weekend.”

And from the EVG inbox: Neighbors concerned about the noise from 205 Avenue A can contact the North Avenue A Neighborhood Association via email.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Friday night's rooftop party at Icon Realty's 205 Avenue A (49 comments)

Your 6-bedroom dream 'frat house' awaits you in the East Village

Icon Realty's new Avenue A 'frat house' is attracting attention

How's life by 326-328 E. Fourth St. these days?

Hibachi Dumpling Express now open on 1st Avenue

Last week we noted that Hibachi Dumpling Express was taking over the space previously held by the 2 Bros. Pizza on First Avenue near East 14th Street.

Hibachi opened today … their phone isn't even working, but they are cranking out some pretty good food…



There are 16 seats inside… though it will likely be better as a to-go or delivery place…



You can find their menu here. (They also have a location on East 23rd Street.)

And a quick turnaround of the space given that the 2 Bros. closed after July 17.

Remembering good times and dead bodies at The Blarney Cove

[June 2013]

The Paris Review has an essay by Joe Kloc on the late, great Blarney Cove on East 14th Street…

Tommy, another regular, recounted an oft-told Blarney Cove legend. One evening, he said, a regular was sitting alone at the end of the bar, minding his business, enjoying his $1.50 mugs of beer with all the usual contentment of an old drinker on a young night. Suddenly, but without fuss, the man set down his mug, shut his eyes, slumped forward, and died right there in his chair. “They put him in the freezer,” Tommy said. And the next day his body was gone.

Read the whole piece here.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Here is the future of East 14th Street and Avenue A: 7 stories of residential and retail

City OKs permits to demolish the empty storefronts along this section of East 14th Street

The Blarney Cove closes for good after tomorrow night

The Blarney Cove sign is down! The Blarney Cove sign is down!

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: Gary Bell
Occupation: Martial Arts Teacher, Boys Club of New York
Location: 3rd Street between A and B
Date: 6:30 pm on Thursday, July 31st

I have lived around here for 35 years. I grew up in Harlem and was raised in South Carolina. As soon as I got out of the military I came down here and took up certain courses. I must have been 22 or 23. At first, I was working in the Wall Street area, for Solomon Brothers. I was doing a receptionist job and one of my co-workers asked me what would I want to do on the side. I told him that I’d teach martial arts, so he got me an interview at the Boys Club.

I started off as a volunteer and ended up working for the Boys Club for 30 years. I was the martial arts teacher. I noticed that most of the kids I dealt with had single moms. A lot of the kids were being bullied. I’m a big advocate of kids not being bullied, so I put my hand in that and I got a couple of kids really standing up for themselves. They had self-esteem, honor, dignity. Most of the kids became policemen, lawyers. It was amazing.

All in all I’m very proud of the work that I did. The best is when they came back to me and their parents would say, ‘By the way, George is playing baseball for a high school team and he’s the top pitcher in the nation.’ I said, ‘This kid was so nervous.’ He had a problem, but he came out good. If I walk just a couple of blocks I’ll see a kid and they’ll say, ‘Hey sensei, how you doing?’ Some of them left and came back and brought their kids.

Another thing that brought me down here was homesteading. I renovated an abandoned building right here on 2nd Street. I started in 1986 and finished it up in 1991. I’m a veteran and I was thinking about buying a building off of my VA Bill and I ran into this and it was a dream come true.

It was an organization run by the Archdiocese. Koch was the mayor at that time, What they’d do is find an abandoned building and squat in it and take it over. There has to be at least 12 homesteading buildings in this neighborhood. So they’d put you on a trial basis working on other people’s buildings and in return they’d give you your own building, abandoned — totally, totally abandoned.

It gave me a lot of respect for construction workers, because I had to do mostly everything — putting up sheetrock, putting in a new roof. Everything you did you were like an apprentice, but the big time stuff like electricity and plumbing, the government gave you professional people to come down here. They started us off with $300,000 to fix the building, but they gave us a time restraint. So they said, ‘OK, we’ll give you this money and this will pay for all the professional people, but you’ve got to finish it off in seven years, because if you don’t, the day before your time limit is up the city can just take the building.’

My building started off with like 12 people, and I guess the work wasn’t going fast enough because a lot of people quit and a lot of new people came in. We’ve got actors, accountants, carpenters. We’ve got all kinds of people.

The neighborhood was rough in the beginning. I was thinking of backing out of the deal because this neighborhood was rampant with crime and drugs. I was here when Tompkins Square Park was literally just homeless people. If you would have looked at it back then you would have never believed this transformation. It had me fooled too. There were no banks around here at all and hardly any restaurants. Now you’ve got them back-to-back. I never thought that would happen. It was very risky. I’m really proud of this neighborhood because a lot of people stuck with it and stayed strong.

The red tape was the biggest problem — the politics behind it. With every building, the Cardinal blessed the abandoned building before you got into it. At that time Mayor Dinkins came by and gave a little speech. Of course the politicians came by and wanted to take pictures of us. We had to put in 20 hours a week.

The whole deal cost me $225 dollars. There are some pictures that will scare you. You would go, ‘Oh my God.’ I said, ‘No way.’ I said, ‘Nah, I can’t do this,’ but as time went on, plus at the time my girlfriend was pregnant, so my son needed some space. So I was focused. I think it took me six years to complete it. It was Christmas Eve 1991 that I moved in. I have a duplex, parquet floors, a rooftop garden, and it’s beautiful man. You wouldn’t believe it.

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

East 7th Street apartment undergoing alien probe remains on the market

Heh.



Thanks to the EVG reader who spotted this (hopefully!) under-renovation studio at 70 E. Seventh St. for rent on Streeteasy.



Think about having an ax and a mirror at the ready when checking the place out… never know when there might be an alien probe…

Checking out the Adele's roof deck

[EVG file photo from April]

For the past two years or so we've been looking at the Adele, the 12-story mixed-used apartment building now renting at East Houston and Avenue D.

A few of the listings mention the roof deck … to date, though, we've only seen the OMG rendering…



We spotted a listing for a two-bedroom unit ($5,133) that includes photos of the roof deck … no pool, but nice city views…







And the "grass" is definitely greener on the roof than it is on the sidewalk outside the Adele.

Previously on EV Grieve:
The Adele joins The Robyn in pop star-friendly East Village corridor

Report: New 12-story, mixed-use building in the works for Avenue D

Familiar business opening in The Adele's retail space on Avenue D and East Houston Street

The transformation of Goat Town to GG's on East 5th Street

We walked by the former Goat Town space the other morning ... where the 4-year-old bistro at 511 E. Fifth St. between Avenue A and Avenue B closed in early July.

Workers have gutted the restaurant to make way for a new concept from the owners called called GG's, which "will serve a very different menu than the current New American menu, but will still include ingredients sourced from the restaurant's back garden," a rep told Eater.

As far as the new space goes, we took a look through the mostly papered windows… still appears to be in the gut renovation stage…



The address has been home to several restaurants since Le Tableau closed in December 2007. Before Goat Town, the space was home to Seymour Burton and Butcher Bay.

Previously on EV Grieve:
[Updated] Goat Town is closing to make way for a pizzeria

East Village apparently down a hookah bar now

Gaia Lounge at 103 E. Second St. between Avenue A and First Avenue was served with an eviction notice on Monday…



Seems as if they weren't here all that long. The hookah bar was the spawn of Temple of Ankh on Clinton Street, which BoweryBoogie reported was "an establishment with the apparent distinction of garnering the most complaints in all of Community Board 3."

CB3 denied Gaia a beer-wine license back in March due to the hookah bar's connection to Temple of Ankh, per BoweryBoogie. (The applicant was apparently a waiter from TOA.)

Feel free to leave your favorite memories of Gaia Lounge in the comments.

Ping pong getting more competitive in Tompkins Square Park

No one was playing anyway.

Photo today via Bobby Williams

Noted

@evgrieve The sign guy may have been a little over eager. #astorplace #notgreen pic.twitter.com/LKs5i0NOKv

— Pinhead (@evpinhead) August 12, 2014

Astor Place...

Friday night's rooftop party at Icon Realty's 205 Avenue A

Back in June, we heard from some unhappy neighbors living near the newly renovated (and now taller) 205 Avenue A — a property billed as an "East Village frat house" in ads.

For several months, neighbors said that they've had to endure various DJ-fueled rooftop parties between East 12th Street and East 13th Street.

When landlord Icon Realty didn't respond to noise complaints, nearby neighbors took up the issue with the offices of Councilmember Rosie Mendez and State Sen. Brad Hoylman. The address was also a topic during June's Ninth Precinct Community Council meeting.

Any progress to note?

Yes, apparently the parties are as loud as ever, as this video that a neighbor who lives several building away shared.



Said the neighbor, "The DJ was up there with sound equipment. It wasn't a charge-at-the-door DJ party. One of the tenants is a DJ and brings his equipment up there sometimes."

The music kicked in around midnight. The neighbor shot the video at 2:05 a.m.

"Many people called 311 and the police showed up around 2:30," the neighbor said. "Not coincidentally the music ceased."

We heard that Lt. Hernandez from the 9th Precinct Community Affairs office has been in contact with Icon Reality about reworking rooftop and backyard use guidelines.

As the resident noted about Lt. Hernandez: "He's been very helpful, but as you can hear, it's still a work in progress."

Previously on EV Grieve:
Your 6-bedroom dream 'frat house' awaits you in the East Village

How's life by 326-328 E. Fourth St. these days?

Icon Realty's new Avenue A 'frat house' is attracting attention

Aug. 25 is the last day for Kim's

As you can see from the signs now up at Kim's Video and Music at 124 First Ave. between East Seventh Street and St. Mark's Place.

As for the sales, the new CD/DVD/Blu-ray releases are 30 percent off ... while the rest of the stock, from vinyl to DVDs, is 50 percent off. As previously noted, for those with discerning tastes, there are still a few treasure to be found in the remaining piles.

We first reported on April 21 that the store is closing. The asking rent is $16,500 for the space.

Previously on EV Grieve:
[Updated] A really bad sign outside Kim's Video & Music on First Avenue (31 comments)

Source: Kim's staff looking for ways to save their store

More about the closure of Kim's: 'We are NOT closing because record stores are dying'

Listing for Kim's Video says space is 'ideal for Bank, 711, Starbucks'

Deeper discounts at Kim's as closing countdown continues