The real cost of subway delays through the years

Happy Halloween from the L train!

Photo by Grant Shaffer

Large horse head on the loose

[Photo from Oct. 21 by Derek Berg]

The large horse head that arrived outside Bonefade Barbers on Avenue A near Seventh Street back on Oct. 21 is now roaming around the neighborhood...

Some people (this thing is too heavy for a one-person job) apparently tried to steal it ... or maybe it was some kind of act of Halloween tomfoolery.

Anyway, they got as far as Ninth Street between Avenue A and First Avenue, as EVG reader Nancy Blum points out...

5 years of portable boilers on 6th Street

[Photo from yesterday]

The temporary boilers that arrived shortly after Superstorm Sandy remain rather permanently on Sixth Street at Avenue C outside the NYCHA-owned building.

In September 2014, Sen. Schumer and Mayor de Blasio announced that $108 million in federal funding would be used to replace temporary boilers in NYCHA buildings damaged by Sandy. Apparently they haven't been able to get over here these past three years. (The Daily News once reported that a temporary boiler costs $5,000 a month to rent.)

Anyway, a look back at the boilers that have roughly cost the NYCHA $600,000 to rent these past five years.

October 2014...



October 2013...



April 2013...



Early 2013...

I have a bad feeling about this

[Photo yesterday by Bobby Williams]

For the past two days, Casey Neistat, Jesse Wellens and crew have been filming around the East Village (and elsewhere?) for a "Return of the Jedi"-Speeder Bike Chase video for Halloween.

In the past two days, they've been spotted on Third Street, Avenue A and First Avenue.


[Photo via @vedantdragon]

Rebel scum!


[Photo yesterday by Bobby Williams]

I'll post the video once it's released...

I think we might win Halloween @CaseyNeistat pic.twitter.com/zyx9Gs4kgL

— Jesse (@Jessewelle) October 29, 2017

Updated 10/30

Here's the final product...

EV Grieve Etc.: Little storm-proofing progress since Sandy; more Select Bus Service routes

[Photo outside the Cure Thrift Shop on 12th Street by Derek Berg]

Five years after Sandy, city lags on storm-proofing, rebuilding projects (Daily News) ... and inside the failure of the Build It Back program (Curbed)

A visit to Streecha on Seventh Street (The New Yorker ... previously)

Kenny Scharf revisits his old East Village stomping grounds (The New York Times) ... and "Club 57: Film, Performance, and Art in the East Village, 1978–1983" opens Tuesday at MoMa (Info here)

A a "knock out game" assault on Essex Street (DNAinfo)

More about the new community garden next to Project Renewal (Patch)

City adding 21 new Select Bus Service routes, including on 14th Street (Town & Village)

Jean-Georges "delivers the city's worst new restaurant with Public Kitchen" at the Public Hotel on Chrystie Street ... "where a round of pre-dinner drinks for four, including a margarita whose aggressive sugars recall Kool-Aid demi-glace, costs $83." (Eater)

The Ron English pop-up at Toy Tokyo, 91 Second Ave. between Fifth Street and Sixth Street, debuted on Oct. 20 (coverage here) ... it will remain open through Nov. 20...


[Photo via @EdenBrower]

Noted

Microwave photo in Tompkins Square Park this morning by Steven.

Also, as a courtesy and reminder: When it comes to microwaving soups or stews, there's great potential for food to splash everywhere. Ideally, the best way to avoid issues is to first cover up your bowl with either a plate or a napkin.

But if it’s too late for that approach, and you see that your food has erupted or that you’ve left a mess in your wake, the responsible thing to do is to clean up after yourself. Now enjoy this new Park amenity!

Love and loss at the 'Halloween Parade'

Here's Lou Reed with a live performance of "Halloween Parade" (off the New York album) from 1989.

This Halloween is something to be sure
Especially to be here without you

There's the Born Again Losers and the Lavender Boozers
and some crack team from Washington Heights
The boys from Avenue B and the girls from Avenue D
a Tinkerbell in tights

This celebration somehow get me down
Especially when I see you're not around

Tomorrow in Tompkins Square Park

A free show in Tompkins Square Park ... details via the EVG inbox...

The lineup includes:
• Skitzopolis
• Sewage
• Bowery Boys
• Straight To Hell (Clash tribute band)
• Avante Duel starring VON LMO (he was the house band at Max's Kansas City and CBGB)
• Slide show by Seth Tobocman featuring materials from the upcoming Fight Fascism issue of WW3 Illustrated

Also: political speakers, literature tables, and the latest issue of The SHADOW and Time Warp

The fun begins at 2 pm sharp!

A few things to do for Halloween around here

[The makings of extra special Pumpkin Spice Lattes on 3rd Avenue]

Here are just a few of the Halloween-related activities happening in the neighborhood in the next few days... will continue to add to the list as submissions arrive ...

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Via the EVG inbox...

The parents and teachers of Little Missionary's Day Nursery and Sara Curry Day School (on St. Mark's Place) will host a Haunted Halloween Party at La Plaza Cultural Garden on Saturday (tomorrow!) from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Open to the public.

Activities will include a haunted house, creepy maze, games, arts & crafts, face painting, tattoos, fortune telling, music by Willie Vargas, a beloved music teacher at Little Mish & Sara Curry, a photo booth — photos to be taken by Sara Curry parent and professional child photographer Greg Marinaccio. Plus cotton candy, food, drinks, and a bake sale of savory and sweets.

Everyone is welcome. Children and their parents are encouraged to come dressed in costume.

La Plaza Cultural Garden is at the southwest corner of Avenue C and Ninth Street.

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Happening tonight at Scumbags And Superstars, the clothing and gift boutique on Clinton Street between Rivington and Delancey ...



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John Carpenter's "Halloween" is the midnight movie this weekend at the Sunshine on East Houston. Details here.



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The Chinese Hawaiian Kenpo Academy, 122 Second Ave. between Seventh Street and St. Mark's Place, is hosting a Halloween party tomorrow afternoon from 1-4. There will be food, games, prizes, etc., and it will provide a chance to see what they offer in the Academy's new location.



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Per Facebook: Carve your own pumpkin at the 6th Street and Avenue B Garden. This is a FREE Event that begins at 2 p.m. on Saturday (tomorrow!) and continues while supplies (the pumpkins) last.



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Mephiskapheles, the ska punk group formed in the East Village in 1991, is hosting the sixth installment of their annual Devil's Night Danse Saturday evening at the Bowery Electric. Find details here.



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Tuesday starting at 5 p.m., La Plaza Cultural is hosting Haunted Adventure Garden and Rat Race Maze. There is live music from the Rude Mechanical Orchestra at 6 p.m.

Per the EVG inbox:

The theme at this year's spooky Halloween adventure garden is Rats, because whether they rule or horrify, they're part of living in NYC. At this costume party, bring your whole family, as there'll be mystic fortune telling, face painting and thrilling coffin rides.

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Halloween night at the Theatre for the New City on First Avenue near 10th Street...

Join us for NONSTOP theater, cabaret, costume contest, ballroom dancing, scary room and MUCH MORE will bewitch the East Village at Theater for the New City's 40th Annual Village Halloween Costume Ball on OCT. 31! Tickets are $20. Details here.

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And A-1 Record Shop on Sixth Street between Avenue A and First Avenue has a lot of Halloween on display ... press play to see (and hear)...

👂🏼🎃🎃🎃👂🏼 #halloweenrecords

A post shared by A-1 Record Shop (@a1recordshop) on Oct 26, 2017 at 11:51am PDT

I Am a Rent-Stabilized Tenant

East Village resident Susan Schiffman has been photographing the apartments of rent-stabilized tenants living in the East Village for her Instagram account, I Am a Rent Stabilized Tenant. She will share some of the photos here for this ongoing EVG feature.



Photos and text by Susan Schiffman

Tenant: Deanna Kirk, since 1991

Deanna was born in Manhattan, at Doctors Hospital on 69th Street and York Avenue. She was raised near Columbia University while her father attended school there. Her family later relocated to Long Island.

In the 1980s, Deanna moved to Brooklyn. From 1991 to 1995 she owned Deanna's, a jazz club on Seventh Street near Avenue A.

Around the time she opened the club, she found her current apartment through a friend of a friend. No one in the unit had paid rent in almost four years as the building was in such disrepair.

When the new owners took over, they met with Deanna in the bar downstairs from the apartment. They asked her, "How much do you think is fair?"







What do you love about your apartment?

I used to love my clawfoot tub, that was my favorite thing. But they just got rid of it two weeks ago because there was a leak. Now my favorite thing is the wooden moldings from the 1850s that somebody restored 40 years ago.

I love my fire escape and the trees outside my window, the birds and my view of Second Avenue. I have seen so many things on Second Avenue. I sit here and have my coffee and look out onto the trees that meet my window and Second Avenue.

And I love my friends in the building.









Deanna performs at Nomad, the North African restaurant at 78 Second Ave. between Fourth Street and Fifth Street, every Wednesday night from 7 to 10.

"The thing I love best is the neighborhood feeling. It's only a block away from my apartment. Every Wednesday I can just walk a block to my steady singing event, which is a lot like my old jazz club, which is like bringing my old jazz club back for one night a week. I am singing with Burt Eckoff, another rent-stabilized tenant in the East Village since 1968 on Sixth Street."

If you're interested in inviting Susan in to photograph your apartment for an upcoming post, then you may contact her via this email.

A former intern revisits the summer of 1977 on 7th Street

In 1977, Bob Stewart arrived here from Alabama to spend the summer interning for the New York Metropolitan Baptist Association. He spent most of his time that summer on a two-block stretch of Seventh Street between Avenue B and Avenue D. He lived on Seventh and B.

He also had an Olympus SLR, and he took photos during his internship. A selection of these shots will be on display starting Sunday at the Graffiti Church on Seventh Street. The exhibit, titled "40 Years Ago," includes 20 framed photographs and a video slide show.

Stewart later returned to Seventh Street and Avenue B, where he resided from March 1978 to the spring of 1980.

Stewart, who today is the director of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, came back for a visit shortly after his granddaughter was born in 2015.

"That’s what prompted me to pull out the negatives and color slides," he told me in an email. "I realized it’d be 40 years in 2017, so I started working on the project."

The following is an excerpt about the exhibit that he shared...

"I was in college in Birmingham when I was offered the chance to go to New York City for the summer," said Stewart. He jumped at the opportunity, spending 10 weeks on East Seventh Street working alongside several other summer interns.

"Mostly, we did puppet shows and sang songs in one of the small parks between Avenues C and D," Stewart said. "We also took kids on a subway ride to one of the beaches, as well as to a Yankees game."

Stewart used his Olympus SLR to photograph neighborhood kids, as well as his fellow summer interns, who, like Stewart, came from outside the city.

"We were mostly suburban college students, mostly from the South, so entirely unfamiliar with life in the East Village," Stewart said.

One of the young interns Stewart met in 1977 was Taylor Field, a Princeton Seminary student assigned to work in Harlem. Field now serves as pastor of Graffiti Church, which will host the exhibit.

"I remember the heartache, the trashcan fires, and the friendliness of the neighborhood," Taylor said.

Amidst their daily activities, Stewart and his fellow college-age interns — like other residents of the city that summer — had to cope with extraordinary events like the citywide blackout that left entire neighborhoods looted, as well as the threat of serial killer Son of Sam.

"Looking back on that summer, I realize now that we lived through a difficult time in the life of New York City," Stewart said. He recalled seeing a guy get stabbed just down from St. Brigid's School, across the street from Stewart's East Seventh Street apartment.

But most of the weeks were filled with the ordinary, steamy days of a hot New York summer, working with about two dozen "regulars," Stewart said. As the kids got to know Stewart and the other summer interns, they became more trusting of each other.

"Whereas we probably saw each other as very different when we first moved into the neighborhood, by mid-summer we felt at home walking down the street," Stewart said.

Stewart's memories were reignited in 2015 when walking his newborn granddaughter around the neighborhood.

"I recalled having a notebook full of black and white negatives, as well as several small boxes with color slides," all taken during the 1977 summer. Stewart bought a flatbed scanner and started working his way through the acetate sleeves of negatives.

The "40 Years Ago" exhibit opens at 5 p.m. on Sunday at the Graffiti Church, 205 E. Seventh St. between Avenue B and Avenue C.

The exhibit is up through Nov. 30. After Sunday's opening, the gallery hours are:

Sundays: 10 a.m. to noon, 6:30 to 8 p.m.
Wednesdays: 6:30 to 8 p.m.
Thursdays: 9 to 11 a.m.

Hunan Slurp Shop coming to former Ricky's space on 1st Avenue

The coming-soon signage is up at 112 First Ave., where Hunan Slurp Shop will presumably be serving rice noodles here between Seventh Street and Sixth Street...



Not sure who's behind the venture just yet. (Has a familiar ring to Ivan Ramen Slurp Shop in the Gotham West Market.)

The retail listing for No. 112 mentioned a garden. So perhaps the Slurp Shop will have seating out there.

The storefront was previously a Ricky's, which closed in April 2016.

Before Ricky's, the space was home until 2007 to Miracle Grill. The restaurant's garden space was where the residential building is now at 92 E. Seventh St. (No. 92, which was the salon connected to Ricky's, appears to still be for rent as a separate storefront.)

Previously on EV Grieve:
Former Miracle Grill garden not-so-suddenly looks like a condo

Former Miracle Grill space on the market

One restaurant, two buildings

Miracle (Grills): A Ricky's and not an eatery opening on First Avenue

The Ricky's on 1st Avenue has apparently closed