Former Teavana still waiting to be converted into a Starbucks

Back in March, the Starbucks-owned Teavana closed on Broadway and East Ninth Street. This was one of those locations that was to become a regular old Starbucks by April.

A walk by the space the other day shows that it remains an empty storefront for now. (There are approved work permits for a renovation on file at the DOB.)

Meanwhile, on this block, the former Radio Shack is becoming ... a Wells Fargo bank branch next door to the Chase branch.



The Broadway-and-East-Ninth-Street space previously housed Silver Spurs, the diner that closed in December 2013 after 34 years in business.

Pop-Up Trash Trivia on Avenue A

Welcome to your life...

Village Style Vintage Shop moving away from the neighborhood

The shop, part of the L Train Vintage family, is leaving its Seventh Street storefront... the sign on the door notes a relocation to Bushwick in October...



The rent for the storefront between Avenue A and First Avenue is $9,750 per month.

Their No Relation Vintage clothing shop remains open for now on First Avenue between 12th Street and 13th Street.

Former Moonstruck Eatery for rent on Avenue A

The former diner space at 167 Avenue A is now for lease.

According to the listing at Eastern Consolidated, the asking rent is $150 per square foot... and the space between 10th Street and 11th Street is 3,680 square feet... (We heard that they are offering it for $35,000 a month. For real.)

The listing also notes that one of the neighbors is Isis Seafood. WTF?



There was talk of a fish market at 171 Avenue A some years ago.

Anyway.

Moonstruck Eatery closed in July after one year of business.

Mystery kegs at Nino's

Nino's has been closed since last October on Avenue A and St. Mark's Place.

A few people explored taking over the space... but the former pizzeria remains on the rental market.

And over the weekend these [presumably empty] kegs arrived inside the storefront.



Curious who they belong too, given that there any adjacent businesses that are even open... and Nino's didn't serve beer.

FULL full reveals at 100 Avenue A and 26 Avenue B

On Saturday, workers removed the rest of the sidewalk bridge in front of 100 Avenue A... showing off the retail space here between Sixth Street and Seventh Street...



...that will house a Blink Fitness Center later this year.

And at 26 Avenue B, the plywood came down in front of the new residential building between Second Street and Third Street...



We weren't sure if No. 26 was going to have a retail component — looks as if it's just an entrance for the five homes here... thanks to a commenter. The work permits show a 1,600-square foot commercial space on the ground floor for an eating/drinking establishment....



Previously on EV Grieve:
[Updated] 6-story apartment building ready to rise from the former Croxley Ales beer garden

[Updated] Report: 28 Avenue B has been evacuated

1st look at the all-new 26 Avenue B

DumplingGuo is now open on 2nd Avenue

The restaurant offering dumplings and hot pot is now open on Second Avenue at 12th Street.

DumplingGuo began life as Dumpling Go here, and closed for parts of the spring and summer for a revamp.

We posted a copy of their menu here.

NY Grill & Deli opening later this week on Avenue A and 12th Street

The storefront renovation on the southwest corner of Avenue A and 12th Street is winding down. The signage/awning arrived on Saturday.

One of the employees told EVG regular Greg Masters, who took these photos, that NY Grill & Deli is expected to be open later this week.





Poppy's Gourmet Corner, the previous tenant here, closed at the end of January.

RIP Ernest Russell

[Photo by Legacy Russell]

Longtime East Village resident Ernest Russell, a photographer and artist, died on July 31. He was 72. He is survived by his two daughters Angola Russell, a lawyer, and Legacy Russell, a writer, curator and artist.

Legacy shared the following tribute with us.

Before there was AOL, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat — there was DIGITALMAN. DIGITALMAN to many of us is Uncle Ernest, Ernie, Uncle Junie, Daddy, El D, Big E, ER, F STOP, ZERO, The King of St. Mark’s, or one of my personal favorites — coined by my dad’s late friend John — “Oooyyy-knee”. (Dad hated that one.)

The energy my dad brought into the world was electric.

In a recent telephone conversation with poet Fred Wilson, Fred told me of how he met my dad via his connection with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He encountered dad for the first time in a picket line. Dad turned to him and asked, “Hey man, you wanna get arrested today?” When Fred hesitated, dad repeated the question: “Do you wanna get arrested today, or not?”

Growing up with my dad meant there were lessons constantly being doled out, and constantly questions being asked. In moments where I came home from school frustrated or upset about something that had happened with a classmate or teacher, he often reacted by telling me, “Legacy, you gotta get tough.”

As I grew older, when faced with professional obstacles and looking for advice, dad would hand me packages wrapped in brown paper, usually from a cut up Trader Joe’s shopping bag and marked with an all-caps Sharpie signature: “FOR LR LOVE DAD”. Inside, nine times out of ten, was a copy of Sun-Tzu’s Art of War. Where dad pushed me to have a thicker skin, he also never hesitated to cry with me, fight with me, laugh with me, dance with me, sing with me. His ability to be both brave and vulnerable at the same time was inspiring. I collected copies of Sun-Tzu’s treatise as gifted by dad over the years; they often made appearances at birthdays or Christmas. In college when my phone would ring late at night, I would answer to hear jazz playing in the background; dad and I would talk about the day and at some point inevitably he would ask, “Legacy, are you reading Art of War? Are you sure you’re paying attention?”

I paid attention. As a kid I watched my dad like a hawk trying to figure him out. To some degree, he was always a mystery to me. Fiercely independent, creative, compassionate, silly, loving, outrageous, irreverent, I wanted to know every part of him, I so wanted to crack the case of the first man I fell in love with. No matter how much I knew about him, I never knew it all, there were somehow always things he said or did that surprised me.

In moments where it felt like there was no order, there was always a method in place, and often one with a flair. When I was a kid he would take me on nighttime bike rides around New York City; we’d fly across town and stop off at La Taza del Oro on 8th Avenue where we’d sit on stools and eat heaps of black beans and yellow rice. On the way home, I’d sit on the bike’s crossbar, sweating in my helmet in the summer heat, and when I started to fall asleep dad, worried that I would fall off, would chirp loudly, “Stay alert, Eyes-of-the-Moon!”

When I decided I was finally old enough to walk to school alone I came to dad preparing for a fight, dad shocked me by granting me permission to do so without missing a beat; I later found out that the strange sense that someone was following me for those first months was in fact dad himself running behind me, hiding in shops and behind trees when I would look over my shoulder. In times where I raised an eyebrow, Dad said it best, “Legacy, don’t you know that I’m a fool?”

When I first started rebelling as a teenager, sneaking around and breaking curfew to hang out with friends, dad, a legendary night owl who was often up until three or four in the morning playing on his computer, would be awake and waiting for me when I got home. I’d unlock the door and step into the brightly lit room of our studio apartment and he would turn around in his computer chair with his finger next to his mouth like Dr. Evil, “Legacy — what am I? A frickin’ idiot?” He always told me that he had “spies in the neighborhood” which is inevitably how he somehow knew I was drinking 40s at Union Square with characters dad deemed less than desirable, or was now wearing fishnets and a plunging neckline when I had walked out of the house in a decent turtleneck and pants.

When I announced as a little girl that I wanted to be a writer, it was dad who had me practice reading my poetry and short stories aloud. When I got super into Shakespeare and entered into a competition at school to perform a soliloquy of Lady Macbeth’s, dad videotaped me rehearsing for hours: “What beast was ’t, then, / That made you break this enterprise to me?”

In the mid-90s, Dad encouraged me to write to black theatre critic Margo Jefferson at The New York Times and ask her to be my mentor. I wrote a pithy letter to Margo, asking simply if, no big deal, we could just meet weekly to critique my new work; eventually Margo responded saying she wouldn’t be able to meet weekly, but that she’d love to keep in touch. Years later, when, in a curiously elegant twist of fate, Margo ended up on the Advisory Board of a journal for which I am now Visual Arts Editor, she wrote me saying, “I still have a letter from you! And imagine my delight when I read about your life and work in the Times a few years ago.”

Dad was a proud member of a diversely eclectic creative and political community. Though always a Harlem boy at heart, he claimed the East Village as his primary stomping ground where, for many years, he hosted friends and family for gatherings at the apartment, or twilight walks and conversations in this very park. In a 1964 New York Times article, dad, a member of the steering committee of East River CORE, was quoted saying, “Emergency repairs are no substitute for a decent school . . . That's why we’re marching.”

Dad spent a lifetime marching, instilling in me the importance of civil rights, vibing deeply with a mantra of equality and justice for all. He also believed in the power of self-love as a politic itself, a key component for collective action. “Love self!” he always reminded me,“You cannot love someone else or stand up for someone else without understanding how to love and defend yourself first.” Both dad and my mom Kamala were the first people in my life to teach me that black lives matter in their demonstrating how to build that self-love and love for others, an enduring lesson that has shaped how I see the world and a key part of my purpose within it.

Dad, you done good. Thanks to you and mom for gifting to me the most wonderful life, you two most wonderful parents. Ernie, we are going to miss you fiercely. And don’t you worry, we’ll keep fighting the good fight in your honor.

Week in Grieview

[@nyyankeedog out for a ride. Photo by Bobby Williams]

Permits filed to demolish 5 buildings on 11th Street to make way for new hotel (Monday) ... Preservationists say city ignored pitch to designate part of 11th Street as a historic district (Tuesday)

Report: Red Square has been sold for $100 million (Wednesday)

Target offers details about its flexible-format store opening summer 2018 on 14th and A (Friday)

Debate over commercial overlay for 255 E. Houston St. and surrounding blocks continues (Thursday)

Box Kite Coffee now looks to be reopening on St. Mark's Place (Thursday)

4 years of Out and About in the East Village (Wednesday)

Former Mercadito space on Avenue B will be home to Guac (Friday)

On 10th Street, Prime & Beyond has closed; popular Japanese steakhouse coming next (Monday)

Workers are putting in the foundation for the return of the Alamo (Wednesday)

The Quad Cinema reopening pushed back to the fall (Wednesday)

Reader report: M2M to move; Wagamama on the way (Wednesday)

Cafe-office space in the works for Cooper Square dorm retail space (Monday)

Roof fire at 190 Bowery (Monday)

Former Barbone space for rent on Avenue B (Monday)

Signs of life at Lanza's (Friday)

The VNYL will feature Long Island Iced Teas on tap, candied-bacon quinoa sushi (Thursday)

The Christodora House in print now, and soon, on TV (Tuesday)

The PokéSpot opens on Fourth Avenue (Friday)

Kotobuki back in action on Third Avenue (Thursday)

Double rainbow (Thursday)

... and last week someone put up this memorial flyer with a rose on St. Mark's Place where performance artist Klaus Nomi once lived ... he died on Aug. 6, 1983, at age 39...

1st look at the new Mac Board Pro

Another cool design aesthetic from Apple... the interface isn't as clean as other Apple products, though. And you may need more room to use this at a coffee shop.

Spotted on Second Street near Avenue C.

Looking at Centre-fuge Trailer Cycle 21

Here's an early morning look at the in-progress Cycle 21 of the Centre-fuge Public Art Project ... at the rotating outdoor gallery/construction trailer here along East First Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue.

The artists taking part this time are Damien Miksza ... COL_Wallnuts ... ski_ur_newyork ... kwuemolly ... Julia Cocuzza and J. Mike Kuhn...