The pre-Super Bowl delivery situation outside Atomic Wings on First Avenue between 11th Street and 12th Street ... thanks to EVG reader Laura for the photo!
Sunday, February 3, 2019
SUPER BOWL SUNDAY II
The pre-Super Bowl delivery situation outside Atomic Wings on First Avenue between 11th Street and 12th Street ... thanks to EVG reader Laura for the photo!
Week in Grieview
[Wednesday's squall from 2nd Avenue and St. Mark's Place]
Stories posted on EVG this past week included...
RIP Brian Butterick/Hattie Hathaway (Friday)
St. Mark's is deader: St. Mark's Comics is closing after 36 years (Tuesday)
Longtime East Village residents open Foxface, now serving sandwiches at Theater 80 (Thursday)
Looks like there's a Trader Joe's coming to 432-438 E. 14th St. after all (Friday) ... Trader Joe's will end home delivery in Manhattan on March 1 (Wednesday)
A waste of space: 10th Street still waiting for the garbage trucks to move on (Thursday)
Happy No. 20 to Lavagna! (Friday)
Commodities is under new ownership on 1st Avenue (Tuesday)
Ravi DeRossi plans vegan diner in former Bar Virage space (Monday)
Plywood arrives on 7th Street and 2nd Avenue; excavation expected in 2 weeks (Wednesday)
Concern again for Punjabi Grocery & Deli on 1st Street (Tuesday)
Headed south: Mr. White has apparently closed on St. Mark's Place (Monday)
La Plaza's temporary closure for new fencing postponed; farewell to the Winter Flowers (Monday)
Momentary afternoon whiteout in Tompkins Square Park (Wednesday)
Eating in the East Village via Eater (Thursday)
Mi Casa Latina debuts on 14th Street (Monday)
Spicy Moon brings vegetarian szechuan to 6th Street (Monday)
Wara looks to open in early February on 1st Avenue (Tuesday)
Former Kingsley space now for rent (Monday)
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Reactions to St. Mark's Comics closing
[Photo by Steven]
As first noted on Tuesday, St. Mark's Comics announced that it will close at the end of February after 36 years on St. Mark's Place between Second Avenue and Third Avenue.
"I have been working 90 hours a week for 36 years, and I no longer have the wherewithal to fight them — all of these various reasons," owner Mitch Cutler told me about all the different factors that led to his decision to close up shop. "It is challenging to have a storefront business in New York City for a number of reasons...it is challenging to keep and maintain a retail storefront and there are enough impediments now that—like I said, I'm exhausted and can't fight them anymore."
News of the closing was picked up by a variety of news sources (and thanks to Curbed and Gothamist for linking to my post!) ... there was a lot of reaction via Twitter. Here's a sampling...
gutted! I salute you @StMarksComicsNY you've been amazing to my pals and i for our entire careers and always a delight when we stopped by. go there and enjoy them while you can. https://t.co/LUnFcoOhl2
— BRIAN MICHAEL BENDIS (@BRIANMBENDIS) January 30, 2019
This is terrible, soul-crushing news. https://t.co/zUlipwiGhc
— Simon Drax (@SimonDrax) January 29, 2019
Another cool spot going bye bye. Jeesh https://t.co/kSiRcgK7Fq
— francesco marano (@italianmojo887) January 30, 2019
So sad about this. How can there not be a St. Marks Comics in NYC? I was there over the weekend, but I will be again when I am in the city this week to buy some souvenirs of the best comics shop that ever was. @StMarksComicsNY you will always be loved and missed by many! https://t.co/x0fLXvaEYJ
— Sue Bachner (@SueBachnerShow) January 30, 2019
Probably the biggest, fluffiest fantasy in that new Spider Man art experiment that's entrancing the kids now is that that seamless mix of old New York culture and New York tech that it does its damnedest to sell you on. You laugh at first... https://t.co/mmMkoKGpbG
— Bartleby and Jaymes (@nilesformayor) January 30, 2019
Jeez Manhattan, I give up on you https://t.co/c5TowCTS8E
— stepped up (@annkpowers) January 30, 2019
RIP @StMarksComicsNY I worked there age 14, summer 1991. X-Force was huge, the murder rate hit a record high, and I was dating a rollerblader. #stmarksisdead https://t.co/DTKBtMGPO7
— Ada Calhoun (@adacalhoun) January 29, 2019
— fake nick ramsey (@nick_ramsey) January 29, 2019
And there was this from storyboard artist Sean Chen...
Meanwhile, the store is having a clearance sale, as you can see on the sign outside...
[Photo by Steven]
Grant Shaffer's NY See
Here's this week's NY See, East Village-based illustrator Grant Shaffer's comic series — an observational sketch diary of things that he sees and hears around the neighborhood ... and NYC.
Saturday, February 2, 2019
Today in discarded Russian VHS tapes on 2nd Avenue
Derek Berg spotted these on Second Avenue near Fifth Street ... perhaps a marketing tie-in to the new Netflix series "Russian Doll"? (No, but...)
EVG Etc.: African-American history in the East Village; an EV avenue on the Upper East Side
[Doggy bag on 7th Street earlier this week via Derek Berg]
Good Samaritan assaulted at the McDonald's on 14th Street near First Avenue (Town & Village)
Co-working network The Wing is moving its corporate headquarters to the former Stuyvesant Polyclinic building on Second Avenue between St. Mark's and Ninth Street (6sqft ... previously)
A guided tour of African-American history in the East Village (Off the Grid)
Our local City Council rep, Carlina Rivera, discusses the opposition to the new stormproofing plans for East River Park (WNYC ... previously)
Details on the NYCHA, HUD tentative deal (Curbed)
Get the lead out! Tests show lead levels 36x health standard in this Delshah Capital building on Ludlow Street (The Real Deal)
Avenue A — on the Upper East Side? (Ephemeral New York)
The Metrograph is screening Chantal Akerman's mesmerizing documentary "News From Home," featuring long takes of locations in New York City circa the mid-1970s (Official site)
An interview with writer Laurie Gwen Shapiro, a lifelong Lower East Side resident (Untapped Cities)
Another Ramone book to consider — Richie Ramone's "I Know Better Now" (LA Weekly)
15 things (maybe) you didn’t know about the East Village (6sqft ... previously)
The Posties declare winners and losers in the L-train shutdown switcheroo (The Post)
CB2 says no to Elizabeth Street Garden redevelopment (Curbed)
Is the Reported app is curbing bad taxi driving? (Streetsblog)
A look at the residents of Westbeth Artists Housing, the first and largest federally subsidized artists’ colony in the country when it opened in 1970 (Artsy)
... and here's Eden with this crime report (at Tarallucci e Vino?) ...
Good morning! pic.twitter.com/XTcD3FOiAY
— EdenBrower (@edenbrower) January 29, 2019
Noted
One of the homemade street signs spotted along Avenue A. (There's one for No Parking on Avenue A at St. Mark's Place.) Be mindful of the cardboard tickets the city will issue.
Friday, February 1, 2019
Friday's parting shot
Feb. 1 spring fever in Tompkins Square Park... photo today by Bobby Williams...
'Drink' up
London's Snapped Ankles release their second full-length record on March 1. Ahead of that, here's the video for the single "Drink and Glide."
RIP Brian Butterick/Hattie Hathaway
[Photo of Brian Butterick from 2009 by Stacie Joy]
Downtown nightlife legend Brian Butterick, who performed in drag as Hattie Hathaway, died on Wednesday. He was 62. According to a statement from Howl! Arts, Inc., where he served as a board member, Butterick had lung cancer.
Per Howl!:
His warmth, intelligence, wit and friendship, have sustained all of us throughout his many years as a fierce creative force in the community. Provocateur, satirist, and magnet for bringing together diverse individuals into his visionary process, he was an inspiration and a driving force in the Downtown arts world and in all our hearts. We will miss him.
Artforum had more on Butterick, who was born in the Bronx in 1956:
In addition to shaping the East Village’s queer nightlife as a producer and performer at venues such as the Mudd Club and Mother, Butterick was an early collaborator with and lover of artist David Wojnarowicz. He was also a member of Wojnarowicz’s New Wave band, 3 Teens Kill 4 (Butterick played the drum machine). In the late 1970s, Butterick posed for several of the artist’s iconic “Arthur Rimbaud in New York” photographs.
Around that same time, Butterick got a job doing security at the influential queer cabaret and nightclub Pyramid, eventually becoming its creative director. He also coauthored a history of the club titled "Secrets of the Great Pyramid: The Pyramid Cocktail Lounge as Cultural Laboratory" in 2015. It was there, in the early 1990s, that Butterick developed his Hattie Hathaway alter ego, named for his grandmother and Nancy Kulp’s Miss Jane Hathaway character on the CBS sitcom, "The Beverly Hillbillies."
[Photo of Hattie Hathaway from 2011 by Stacie Joy]
In this August 2016 interview with Michael Musto at Paper, Butterick recalled his first nightlife job:
I like to think it was late-night short order cook at the Empire Diner, which was in 1979. Then I was a busboy at Danceteria [a rock dance club at 37th Street], which was really, really long shifts from eight or nine until eight or nine in the morning. They had no liquor license and they advertised in the New York Times! Whatever you can do illegal, they did it. They were all such mobsters. They thought they could get away with it. We all went to jail. By the time they moved it to 21st Street, it was a different branch of the family. Meanwhile, the Mudd Club [a new wavey hangout in Tribeca] was open and Richard Boch was working at the door. After Danceteria closed, I worked at an after hours club called Berlin, which opened at three in the morning. Iolo Carew worked at Berlin and got me the job at Mudd, from 1980-'81.
In a Facebook post, Lady Bunny discussed Butterick's influence during his time at the Pyramid on Avenue A...
A memorial for Butterick is the works; details will be announced in the coming weeks. Meanwhile, people may leave tributes on his website.
[Image via Howl!]
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