Old Monk offering a free meal this Thanksgiving

Via the EVG inbox...

This Thanksgiving, Avenue B’s contemporary Indian restaurant Old Monk will serve a complimentary Thanksgiving buffet to all patrons that visit.

To thank the neighborhood that has embraced the restaurant since it opened this past summer, as well as help those in need, Chef/Co-owner Navjot Arora has crafted Indian-inspired Thanksgiving dishes including Turkey Meatballs in a curry sauce, Tandoori Chicken Wings, Carrot & Green Bean Poriyal with coconut, Cumin Potatoes, House-Baked Naan Bread, Cranberry chutney with mango yogurt and more.

He hopes to feed more than 300 New York City residents who may not have an opportunity to celebrate the holiday with a warm meal.

WHEN: Thanksgiving, Thursday Nov. 23 from noon-3 p.m.

WHERE: 175 Avenue B at 11th Street

A rep for Old Monk told me that "Anyone who walks through the door will be welcomed. They just need to show up during the [noon-to-3 p.m.] time frame."

EVG file photo via Cheyenne

Report: Part of a man's leg discovered along the East River

There are published reports that part of a man's leg was found washed up along the East River near the FDR and Sixth Street.

Someone spotted the leg (from the knee down) around 11:30 a.m.

Per the Daily News:

It was not immediately disclosed if a foot was attached to the extremity, which was brought to the city Medical Examiner’s office. Further tests will be done to try to determine who the leg belonged to and how it became separated from the person’s body.

And via NBC 4:

Details remain scarce at this point, but an NYPD spokesperson said, "When you find a leg in the water, that's suspicious in itself."

Report: Arrest made in Avenue D murder

The Villager has an update on the murder of 23-year-old Malik Campbell last Friday outside 118 Avenue D at Eighth Street.

On Saturday, police arrested Rashawn Taylor, 18, a resident in the Smith Houses. He is charged with murder and criminal possession of a weapon, The Villager reports.

The NYPD did not cite of motive in the shooting. However, a super who works nearby "blamed the shooting on rivalries between groups of young men living in different public-housing developments along the East River."

As for Campbell:

“Everyone is just sick about it,” said the victim’s grandmother Irma Campbell, who said she helped raise Malik and his identical twin brother, Eli, in Haven Plaza, a block of subsidized housing located off Avenue C at 12th St.

Malik grew up in Haven Plaza with his parents and attended the Earth School on Avenue B and East Side Community High School on E. 12th St.

His grandmother described him as a “good kid, very polite and caring,” though she conceded he had run afoul of the law recently. At the time of the shooting, he was on probation for a low-level drug offense — “pot and pills,” she said.

The packing peanuts are here! The packing peanuts are here!

To pack up the horse head? Or unless this is some kind of new dessert.

Photo on Seventh Street today by Derek Berg...

Happenings 1 month from today

Among the Good Santa-Bad Santa events taking place on Dec. 9 ...

The 9th Annual Cookie Walk is set for Dec. 9-10 at St. Nicholas of Myra Orthodox Church on Avenue A and 10th Street (find more details here)...



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Also on Dec. 9 — SantaCon... the location hasn't been disclosed yet, though the East Village is always a good possibility as the host...

Meet Fresh bringing teas and taro balls to Cooper Square

The second retail space in the base of the Marymount Manhattan College dorm has a new tenant.

Signage went up yesterday here on Cooper Square and Sixth Street for Meet Fresh, a Taiwan-based chain that serves teas and desserts. (Thanks to EVG reader Harry Weiner for the photos!)



The company, now 100 locations strong, was started by the Fu siblings. Here's their story via the Meet Fresh website:

Sister and Brother Fu grew up in a generational farming family in the Feng Yuan District of Taichung, Taiwan. Using traditional food materials and processes, they made chewy taro ball desserts, soft herbal jelly, and delicate traditional tofu pudding, as a continuation of traditional delicacies while integrating innovation!

This marks the first NYC location for the brand. It joins neighbor Pourt, the cafe-networking space, in the dorm storefronts.

The 13-story dorm opened for Marymount Manhattan College students in August 2015. The dorm sits on a lot previously occupied in part by 35 Cooper Square, the Federal-style building that dated to 1825.

Landlord accused of tenant harassment in Chelsea new owner of 7th Street building

[Image via Streeteasy]

A recent transaction to note: 61 E. Seventh St. changed hands for $8.3 million, according to public records dated from late October.

The Sabet Group is the new owner of the 20-unit walk-up between First Avenue and Second Avenue. The seller was listed as the Zimmerman Family Trust.

Streeteasy lists 20 units for the building, where the average rental was $2,400.

In the summer of 2016 the Sabet Group bought 92-94 Second Ave. between Fifth Street and Sixth Street. (Gut-renovated units there are now asking upwards of $7,000 a month, per Streeteasy.)

The Sabet Group has been accused of tenant harassment in the past.

Per Bedford + Bowery:

Tenants in two buildings on 25th Street even took their complaints, which included unmitigated construction, severed telecoms, bug infestations and gas leaks, all the way to the New York State Supreme Court last year. More recently, the company was criticized for dramatically raising the rents on several newly acquired tenants in the West Village, including the prestigious Joffrey ballet school.

As Curbed noted in June 2016, "Sabet Group's inflexible rents also forced famed drag lounge Boots & Saddle to relocate after more than four decades in the building."

Stuy Town to catch some major solar rays

[Rendering via]

Via the EVG inbox yesterday...

Blackstone and Ivanhoé Cambridge today announced plans to implement the largest private multi-family residential rooftop solar project in the United States. The project will be run by StuyTown Property Services (SPS), the property management company of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village.

This 3.8 Megawatt (DC) solar energy system will span across the property’s 22 acres of rooftops. Once completed, StuyTown will have tripled Manhattan’s capacity to generate solar power. NYC-based renewable energy developer Onyx Renewable Partners is project developer for the installation, which is expected to begin this winter and reach completion in 2019.

The installation will consist of 9,671 high efficiency solar panels and will generate enough energy to power over 1,000 New York City apartments annually. The project is expected to offset approximately 63,000 tons of carbon dioxide emissions, comparable to removing 12,000 cars from the road for a year.

StuyTown is the first multifamily building in NYC to have received an ENERGY STAR certification, which it has won three years in a row for its sophisticated energy management technologies ... The community has been particularly active and enthusiastic in supporting StuyTown’s compost waste pickup, averaging just over 10,000 pounds of organic material collected weekly – representing 17 percent of all residential compost waste collected in Manhattan. StuyTown has already reduced on-site greenhouse gas emissions by 10 percent since 2007, and has now expanded into the solar sphere as part of its larger commitment to environmental sustainability.

StuyTown is the largest rental apartment complex in the U.S., with 11,200-plus multifamily units in 56 buildings across 80 acres in Manhattan’s East Village. It houses more than 27,000 New Yorkers and represents 1.7 percent of Manhattan’s population.

Wednesday's parting shot

Photo on Seventh Street today by Derek Berg...

Documentary filmmaker looking for archival photos-footage of Ray's Candy Store

A local filmmaker is working on a documentary about Ray and Ray's Candy Store. He’s looking for older photos or footage of Ray and the store on Avenue A near Seventh Street ... like the one above from the late 1970s by Michael Sean Edwards.

Here's the contact info: ray@rayscandystore.com

Someone vandalized the entrance to the Chinese Hawaiian Kenpo Academy on 2nd Avenue

[Photo by Ryan John Lee]

Last night around 8:30, someone vandalized the front of the Chinese Hawaiian Kenpo Academy (CHKA) on Second Avenue between Seventh Street and St. Mark's Place.

A CHKA spokesperson said that they were giving their free women’s self-defense class when one of the building's residents notified them that someone had tossed a can of paint at the entrance.

"We did not see who did it," the spokesperson said. "We called 911 and the police came right away, spoke to the landlord on the phone and made a report."

Several witnesses as well as the CHKA spokesperson said that a group of travelers/crusties were congregating earlier under the scaffolding outside the building. (The landlord is putting in new storefront windows.)

Here's an account from CHKA:

At around 6 p.m., as our children were attempting to leave the building with their parents after class, a group of 10 or so people with off-leash dogs and open containers were camped out at the entrance under the construction scaffolding. When asked politely to move, they became hostile and violent, screaming and threatening our instructors who asked them to move. The children and families were forced to wait in the building until it was safe to leave.

At one point, one of the dogs lunged at people passing by. We called 911 and the officers who came told the group that they were violating regulations regarding leaning on or being under the construction scaffolding. They finally moved along at about 7:30 p.m. and then the vandalism occurred about an hour later.

[Photo from this morning]

This past summer, a group of travelers/crusties reportedly vandalized the First Ukrainian Assembly of God on Cooper Square at Seventh Street after church officials sprinkled bleach powder on the sidewalk to prevent camp outs.

CHKA, a 20-plus-year-old martial arts school offering classes in Kenpo karate and kickboxing for children and adults, moved here from Avenue A in June.

Out and About in the East Village

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



By James Maher

Name: Margie Segal
Occupation: Teacher, Retired
Location: 4th Street between Avenue A and First Avenue
Date: Monday, Nov. 6

I’m a retired New York City school teacher. I came to college here from New Jersey many, many years ago. I came in the late 1960s. I was in NYU. That wasn’t this neighborhood then, now it is.

As a college kid it was fabulous — fun things happening all around, but the city itself was in pretty bad shape. It was crime ridden over here. But when you’re that age it doesn’t seem to bother you. There were neighborhoods you just didn’t want to go into and this was one of them. I stayed out of Tompkins Square Park. I didn’t really have any trouble, but as a woman I was on guard a lot, especially going near the park, the subways — just being out at night alone was not something you wanted to do, not that I didn’t do it.

My best and favorite memories are going to the Fillmore East every weekend and seeing all those bands — the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, Jefferson Airplane. That was always a fun time. It was a lot of fun staying up and listening to music all night long. It was very cheap. The club scene wasn’t for me. We were just more out and about ... being out and being with friends. Basically it was just being out of the streets.

This neighborhood to me represents everything that New York was and should be. The diversity, and a place for people of all incomes and all walks of life. I hate to see that disappear. I do see that it’s changing. My friends and neighbors are affected by it and that bothers me. I like to live by all kinds of people.

Back then there was just a feeling of freedom and possibility. That’s what this was all about. Maybe if you talk to 18 year olds now they might feel the same way I felt then. You know, it was a horrible world. The Vietnam War was going on, we were protesting, but there was always a feeling of hope that we were going to change things and it would be a better place. We always just felt very free. We had nothing, like Janis Joplin said, ‘Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.’ We had nothing to lose, so we felt free.

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