A look at Ori Carino's Best Housekeeping murals

[Click on images for more detail]

A few weeks back we noted that Ori Carino was working on a new installation on the roll-down gates at Best Housekeeping on Avenue A at East Second Street… EVG contributor Stacie Joy recently caught up with Carino, who lives nearby on A, for a look at the final product…



Carino said that the panels took approximately three days apiece to do…





You can read more about Carino, an LES native, on his website here.

Caracas Arepa Bar remains closed due to gas issues

Caracas Arepa Bar has been closed of late … DNAinfo has the story about what's going on here at 93 1/2 E. Seventh St. between Avenue A and First Avenue.

The Venezuelan restaurant closed on Aug. 8 after workers smelled gas. Employees promptly called the FDNY and Con Ed.

As for the extended closure, Vanessa Maldonado, operations manager for the Caracas chainlet, blamed the plumbing company that they hired to fix the problem, per DNAinfo.

To the article:

[A]fter spending two days fixing a gas pipe, the company waited a week to file the necessary paperwork for a Con Ed inspection, all the while assuring the restaurant it was submitted, Maldonado said. Roto-Rooter also avoided her questions, she said.

“All the time they were lying to us, telling us that the papers were in, the papers are here, the person who has the papers is not here,” she said.

And…

“It has been all this unclarity,” she said. “It has been very, very vague and confusing.”

Con Ed is due to inspect the restaurant this Wednesday.

And there is a sign up for Con Ed's arrival…



There isn't any mention of the temporary closure on the Caracas website or social media properties. There is a sign up for patrons…



As the sign says, Caracas To Go is open two doors away…

Taking the pile driver out for a spin on this gorgeous Saturday summer

A reader shared this photo today from East 12th Street and Avenue A… Not sure which construction site it's going to or from… or if surge pricing is in effect.

The Charlie Parker Jazz Festival is tomorrow in Tompkins Square Park

The city's annual salute to the legendary saxophonist is this weekend… with the show coming to Tompkins Square Park tomorrow (that would be Sunday).

Here's the lineup: Rudresh Mahanthappa, Joe Lovano (pictured), Myra Melford and Michael Mwenso.

Head to the Jazz Festival website for info on all the artists.

The free show is from 3-7 p.m.

Workers remove plywood tribute at the site of 2nd Avenue explosion

[Photo from May 18 by Vinny & O]

On May 18, workers removed the plywood fence that surrounded the site of where 119-123 Second Ave. stood until the deadly gas explosion on March 26. However, the plywood — with photos and tributes to Moises Ismael Locón Yac and Nicholas Figueroa, the two men who died on March 26 — remained up behind the new chain-link fence.

Yesterday, though, several readers mentioned that workers took down that plywood fencing…



… and stacked it up in the lot…



Meanwhile, we haven't heard much about the investigation into the blast. Last Friday, in an article about B&H Dairy reopening, the Post had a few updates on what they called "an ongoing criminal probe."

According to the Post, prosecutors and homicide investigators continue to question witnesses.

They spoke to Marius Wesser, the lawyer for chef Machendra Chongbang, who worked at Sushi Park, the site of the explosion. He said that he went for an interview last month at the Manhattan District Attorney's Office.

Per the Post:

“They must have had 20 people there,” Wesser said. “Fire investigators, [DA] rackets bureau people, NYPD — it was pretty intense.”

The DA’s Office declined to comment, and lawyers for Maria Hrynenko, who owned the blast building and the one next door, did not return calls.

H/T Vinny & O

Party tent down

As we like to do, we were taking in the view via the blogger portals along Avenue A … where those condos are going in between East 11th Street and East 12th Street…

This caught our eye(s) …



What went on here? What's with the party tent in the pit?

The moon at the moment

The view tonight from the East Village via Grant Shaffer

Chairman of the Bored

Hey, it's Iggy Pop from 1979 with "I'm Bored."

At the Village East Cinema

[EVG photo from last week]

I've been meaning to write something about the historic theater — my favorite in the neighborhood — on Second Avenue at East 12th Street.

Oh, for starters, something that I was unaware of: Screenings before noon every day are $8, $6 off the usual price. (They also have $1 films for kids and parents in the mornings. "The Wizard of Oz" was playing this week.)

Anyway, that great analog marquee has been carrying the "historic auditorium reopens" message for weeks now. But most of the movies I see here, though, tend to be in the small theaters on the lower level.

I finally sucked it up to see whatever might be playing in the big room upstairs. So, the other morning, I was one of the four people who paid his or her $8 to see — eep! — "Terminator: Genysis" in the historic auditorium…







The renovated auditorium reopened on May 22. Here's more about the refurbishment via the Evergreene Architectural Arts website:

Built in 1925 as the Yiddish Art Theatre, the City Cinema Village East is one of a handful of Moorish Revival-style buildings in New York City. Intended to house Maurice Schwartz’s Theatre Company, the property ultimately becoming a multiplex in 1992.

In early 2015, EverGreene conservators conducted a historic finishes investigation, analyzing and documenting the condition of the ornamental plaster ceiling. Craftsmen removed 75 large plaster elements from the ceiling from which they cast new ornament in our New York City studio. The design decision was made to stabilize the extant ornament and craft and decoratively finish new ornament to be compatible not to restore the ceiling. This lends a “conservation” aesthetic to the Village East Cinema.

Using both traditional and mechanical methods, craftsmen installed new plaster elements into the ceiling and consolidated extant ornament to reinforce the support structure. Decorative artists removed and cleaned flaking paint from the ceiling and inpainted the newly-installed ornament to match the existing palette, seamlessly integrating new with old.

Here's a shot of the restored ceiling via the Evergreene website (they have more photos here).



You can read more about the theater's history at Vanishing New York.

And now you do you want to discuss "Terminator: Genysis"?

How does rent in the East Village stack up against other neighborhoods?

[Click to go big]

The folks at real-estate startup Zumper released a report on the most and least affordable neighborhoods to rent in (specifically one-bedroom apartments)...

In the infographic above, you can see how the East Village stacks up vs. other neighborhoods. For rents lower than the East Village's $2,725 in Manhattan, you could go south to the Lower East Side ($2,550) or head up to Central Harlem and West Harlem, both with a median of $2,100 for a one bedroom, and Washington Heights at $1,750.

Meanwhile, Zumper provided data on how the East Village rates against the city as a whole...

The new lights on the Con Ed substation

Several residents who live on East Fifth Street between Avenue A and Avenue B have told us about a group of people — anywhere from three to 12 at times – who have been sleeping on the sidewalk along the Con Ed substation this summer… according to residents, they pack up and leave early in the mornings.

One resident said that they have worn out their welcome, though declining to go into details on what this meant exactly. (The reader did say the EMTs have had to pay several visits in the morning.)

So perhaps this is why workers earlier this week installed new lighting on the substation (new lights actually went in all around the structure on A and East Sixth Street)…





There are three new lights in total (only two in the reader-submitted photo below) on the East Fifth Street side …



However, as of Thursday night, only one of the three lights seemed to work on East Fifth Street …



If the lights were put up to deter anyone from sleeping here, then they didn't work. Several people still spent the night under the new light in the middle the past few evenings.

The B-Movie King at the Anthology Film Archives this weekend

B-movie titan Roger Corman will be appearing tonight and tomorrow at the Anthology Film Archives on Second Avenue to introduce a few of his classics — "X: The Man with the X-Ray Eyes," "A Bucket of Blood" and "The Tomb of Ligeia."

The Wall Street Journal had an interview with the 89-year-old Corman yesterday. You can read that here. An excerpt as way of an introduction:

Among the 400-plus movies Roger Corman has produced or directed, there are titles more memorable than the films, such as “Attack of the Crab Monsters” and “Teenage Cave Man.”

But there also are early efforts from a string of famous directors and actors whose careers he helped to launch. They include Francis Ford Coppola (“Dementia 13”), Martin Scorsese (“Boxcar Bertha”), Peter Bogdanovich (“Voyage to the Planet of Prehistoric Women”) and Jack Nicholson, whom Mr. Corman first met in a method-acting class.

Mr. Corman ... could have single-handedly invented drive-in movies in the 1950s, when a postwar eruption of teenage culture created a new audience for entertainment at its most sensational. The B-movie impresario kept apace with the times, however, tapping into social trends—and wildly profitable and influential movie concepts—for a career that spans seven decades.

The Anthology is on Second Avenue at East Second Street. Find out more about the screenings here.

And to get you in the mood…