Report of a small fire inside the empty P.S. 64 building on 9th Street

The FDNY responded to a report of a presumed trash can fire inside the empty building — the former P.S. 64 — at 605 E. Ninth St. last night around 8 ...

The Citizen app reported that firefighters quickly extinguished the small blaze. Witnesses reported that the FDNY cut a padlock and broke through the plywood surrounding the school between Avenue B and Avenue C to get inside the property. 

The fire was said to be contained to the southeast wing. No word on the cause, such as if a squatter was inside the former school. 

EVG reader Alta Tseng shared the top photo and this video clip...

   

Developer Gregg Singer, who bought the property from the city during an auction in 1998, has wanted to turn the building into a dorm called University Square. The DOB continues to maintain a Stop Work Order — dating to August 2015 — on the property. 

In years past several local elected officials, community activists and residents have asked for the return of the building for community use. The building became the Charas/El Bohio Community Center after the school left in 1977. The group was eventually evicted when Singer took over as the landlord. It has sat empty these past 20-plus years, causing locals to be concerned about its crumbling façade. 

H/T Eden and Steven!

Updated: It's still snowing

Gail says hi from First Avenue and Seventh Street...

And we're off...

The nor'easter dubbed Winter Storm Gail is here, as you likely already noticed. Photo from Tompkins Square Park this early evening by Steven.

Gallery Watch: In the Woods by Sally Saul at Rachel Uffner Gallery

Text and photos by Clare Gemima 

In the Woods by Sally Saul

Rachel Uffner Gallery, 170 Suffolk St.

In the Woods showcases a packed room and a half of new ceramic sculptures created with a sense of humor, anxiety and down-to-earthness from Sally Saul in her second solo show at Rachel Uffner Gallery. 

The array of sculptures within the space play and interact with our senses of familiarity and comfort while also introducing us to a "new normal." A new struggle, a new challenge, a new moment and a new movement. This show forces us to understand that one way to deal with this shitshow of a pandemic is well, to embrace it. (While wearing a mask, please).

During the last several months of living amidst the coronavirus and its subsequent social sorrows, Saul (married to the incredible Peter Saul) reflects on this confusing but unavoidable new world through her detailed expressions and use of finer details as a ceramicist. The work to me almost felt like a personal chronicling of the artists' time in lockdown, a documentation of pandemic experiences and a tribute to the American lives lost. 

Sally Saul consistently incorporates the everyday into her sculptural practice, and this time is no different. At In the Woods, we get to surround ourselves with her forest of birds, flowers and the natural world too, which we can understand as her refuge over the course of this work being created. 

Taking time to find enjoyment in the smaller pleasures, Saul's sculpture garden at Rachel Uffner Gallery remains light-hearted but is also question-provoking owing to its sophisticated documentative style. 

Will artists who are alive in 2020 continue to make reference to the pandemic we currently occupy? Will self-portraits include protective gear as political or apolitical symbolism? What sort of art history are we forming or moving away from? 

But forgetting about all of the more serious stuff, the works bulky form and playful undertones are also cause for a much deserved and maybe overdue giggle. This show has all of the right ingredients in it to make you forget about the weight of the world ... just for a moment. 

In the Woods is showing at Rachel Uffner Gallery until Jan. 30.

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Clare Gemima is a visual artist from New Zealand. New-ish to the East Village, she spends her time as an artist assistant and gallery go-er, hungry to explore what's happening in her local art world. You can find her work here: claregemima.com 

Workers clear lot ahead of new-building construction on 6th Street and Avenue C

Workers have chopped down the three trees in the long-vacant lot on the northeast corner of Avenue C and Sixth Street... ahead of new-building construction here.

As we first reported on Oct. 19, there are approved permits for a 6-floor building with 11 residential units, a storefront and space for an unspecified community facility. 

There has been development talk for this lot dating to 2003. A former gas station, this corner has been vacant since the early 1980s. 

The rendering shows an aggressive fall 2021 completion date. Speaking of the rendering, someone has let his or her feelings be known about the project...

Previously on EV Grieve:

• At the Heap of Ruins Garden Party

• This is the new building slated for the corner of 6th Street and Avenue C

Another late-night break in, this time at East Village Finest Deli on Avenue B

Text and photos by Stacie Joy 

Early Tuesday — 3:08 a.m. to be exact — a thief bashed in the front door of the East Village Finest Deli on the southwest corner of Fourth Street and Avenue B. 

Manager Anwar Shahbain reports that the perp got away with five tablets, several cartons of cigarettes and some small bills for change in the cash register.

The surveillance videos that the Deli shared show the moment of the break in — the thief, who appears to have at least two lookouts, used the top of a fire hydrant to shatter the glass and enter the shop...

   

Given this and a previous two break-in attempts here back in June, Shahbain says they will be forced to buy and install a pricy rolldown gate.

Tuesday's parting shot

Here's a view from the southwest corner of First Avenue and 14th Street ... where, as you may notice, the Christmas tree vendors have already packed up and left — 10 days before Dec. 25. 

One of the vendors told Pinch, who took the photo, that they had sold out for the season.

A second Christmas tree for Tompkins Square Park?

Decorating in progress in Tompkins Square Park... 

Meanwhile, the lights on the other holdiay tree, planted in 1992, were turned on this past Wednesday for the season. 

Photo today by Steven.

Updating: East Village bars and restaurants temporarily close down again

Yesterday marked the beginning of Gov. Cuomo's second ban on indoor dining in the city because of the recent surge in the coronavirus pandemic. 

While outdoor dining, as well as takeout and delivery, can remain, several neighborhood bars and restaurants decided to temporarily close down anyway ...  including those places that have ample space for outdoor seating, such as Esperanto on Avenue C at Ninth Street (thanks to Eden for the photo!)...

Bars such as Josie's, Mona's and Sophie's, which reopened on Sept. 30, had been operating at the limited 25-percent indoor capacity ... and needed to close as they're without any outdoor space for patrons. 

Here's an in-progress look at who has shut down for now (several of these had been noted previously) ... several other restaurateurs were still mulling over their decisions... 

• Boulton & Watt, Avenue A 

• The Copper Still, Second Avenue

• Esperanto, Avenue C 

• The Gray Mare, Second Avenue

• The Jones, Great Jones

• Josie's, Sixth Street 

• Lucien, First Avenue 

• Mona's, Avenue B 

• Otto's Shrunken Head, 14th Street

• Penny Farthing, Third Avenue

• Phebe's, the Bowery 

• Sophie's, Fifth Street (pictured at top yesterday) 

• Sláinte Bar and Lounge, the Bowery

• Van Da, Fourth Street 

• Virginia's, 11th Street

Data that Gov. Cuomo released on Friday showed that restaurants and bars in the state accounted for just 1.4 percent of cases over the last three months while 73.84 percent of exposures were blamed on indoor household gatherings.

As multiple articles have pointed out, many restaurants were already struggling to rebuild their operations after losses sustained from the shutdown of dining during the PAUSE this past March.

--Updated 9:30 a.m.--

The Department of Sanitation has issued a Snow Alert for tomorrow starting at 2 p.m., which cancels all outdoor dining for the duration of the snow alert.

--

The restaurant industry expects more permanent closures if Gov. Cuomo decides to put into place a full shutdown again, which would also ban outdoor dining. (This after restaurant owners had to spend thousands to make their curbside setups compliant with ever-changing city guidelines.) 

Still, despite the end of indoor dining for now, many local bars and restaurants vowed to carry on ...

 

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Celebrating 41 years of the Pyramid Club

Text and photos by Stacie Joy 

Staff gathered late Sunday afternoon outside the Pyramid Club on Avenue A between Sixth Street and Seventh Street to celebrate its 41st birthday. 

The Pyramid, a defining club of the East Village scene in the 1980s, has not been able to reopen since the PAUSE went into effect this past March. 

"We thank our friends, patrons, and the EV community for all the love and support over these past decades," club manager Maria Narciso told me. "You are part of what’s keeping the Pyramid spirit alive during this global pandemic."

There was also a Veniero’s carrot cake to mark the occassion...

To pay tribute to the club, Michelle Joni and friends boarded Glinda the Good Bus for a selection of 1980s music along Avenue A...

Previously on EV Grieve:

• A visit to the Pyramid Club on Avenue A

• A Visit with Michelle Joni and Glinda the Good Bus

A break in at Kolkata Chai Cafe

Someone broke into the Kolkata Chai Cafe late Saturday night here at 199 E. Third St. just west of Avenue B. 

Proprietor Ayan Sanyal said that the incident happened around 2 a.m. Sunday... surveillance video shows the suspect repeatedly trying to break the glass in the front door with an unknown object ... before gaining access...

   

Aside from breaking the door, the perp took off with the cash register. 

"Thankfully there wasn't much cash and insurance should cover the door, but still a hassle and annoying incident in an already exhausting year," said Sanyal, who's hopeful that people will continue getting takeout this winter "because it's looking to be long, cold and short of any financial relief." 

Kolkata Chai Cafe opened here last September. 

And this marks the latest break in at a neighborhood business, joining a list that includes B&H Dairy ... Popeyes ... Tompkins Square Bagels ... and China Town.

Here then, the renovated 84 2nd Ave.

Workers have removed the plywood from outside 84 Second Ave. ... offering the best look yet at the refurbished building here between Fourth Street and Fifth Street. (Thanks to Goggla for the photo!)

As we've been posting (check out that link farm below!), No. 84 received a gut renovation that took the building from 5,829 square feet to 8,439 total square feet with a horizontal enlargement in the rear of the property. The modified No. 84 now also sports a retail space and four residences.

This property has changed hands twice in the past four years. Highpoint bought the building for $7.8 million in the spring of 2018. According to public records, the building sold in May 2016 for $5.1 million. The Sopolsky family had owned it for years.

Also as we've noted several times through the years, the address has a dark past, which includes the still-unsolved murder of Helen Sopolsky, proprietor of the family's tailor shop who was found bludgeoned to death in 1974, per an article at the time.

The storefront had remained empty since her death.

And here's the plywood rendering so you can see how the real-life No. 84 matches up...



Previously on EV Grieve:
• Plywood and a petition at 84 2nd Ave.

• Workers clearing out the mysterious 84 2nd Ave. storefront

• Renovations proposed for mysterious 84 2nd Ave.

• Mysterious 84 2nd Ave. sells again, this time for $7.8 million

• There are new plans to expand the mysterious 84 2nd Ave.

• Renovations underway at the (formerly) mysterious 84 2nd Ave.

• A rendering and vintage erotic playing cards (NSFW) at the under-renovation (and mysterious!) 84 2nd Ave. 

A look at the building in 2009...