Friday, July 2, 2021
Candy O
Today in photos of a sparrow and squirrel sharing a loaf of sourdough in Tompkins Square Park
Before the sparrow joined the feast, the squirrel was digging out the insides ...
A new look — and a second location — for Ki Smith Gallery
Also! Ki Smith is opening a new space — in addition to this one — on Third Street in the weeks ahead. More about that later.
Ki Smith debuted here this past September. A new exhibit arrives next Friday.
EVG Etc.: Abel Ferrara helps reopen Cinema Village; Lydia Lunch gets her due
• The Board of Elections releases (again) the first unofficial ranked-choice tally for mayor's race (Gothamist ... City Limits) Where are the absentee ballots coming from? (The City)
• How the red-tailed hawks have been spending these hot summer days in Tompkins Square Park (Laura Goggin Photography)
• Abel Ferrara's Cinema Village retrospective continues through July 8 at the classic 12th Street theater — all tickets are $5 (Official Site)
• Beth B's biographical documentary on Lydia Lunch, "The War is Never Over," now playing at the IFC Center (Official Site ... Beth B will be there after tonight's 7:45 screening)
• Some history of the Petersfield at 113-119 Fourth Ave. (Off the Grid)
• About the andouille-sausage corn dog at the recently opened Sidney's Five on First Avenue (Grub Street)
• Behold the MTA's subway car of the not-so-distant future (amNY)
Thursday, July 1, 2021
A conversation with Lilly Dancyger, author of the East Village memoir 'Negative Space'
Growing up in the East Village, Lilly Dancyger had many happy memories, from sitting and reading books at the Strand to getting ice cream at Ray’s Candy Store.
At the same time, however, she learned that there was a troubling undercurrent to her childhood as her parents struggled with drug addiction.
Her father, Joe Schactman, was an artist who made sculptures and other art out of discarded objects and was part of the vibrant East Village scene in the 1980s. He died suddenly at age 43 when Dancyger was 12 years old. (A cause of death was inconclusive.)
She spent her teens often in a rage, dropping out of school, experimenting with drugs and staying out all night wandering around the city. Years later as a writer and journalist, Dancyger revisits her own past and father's legacy in “Negative Space” (SFWP), a must-read memoir released to positive notices this spring.
Dancyger, guided by her father’s letters and journals and interviews with his friends (not to mention in-depth conversations with her mother), creates a compelling generation-spanning narrative — part memoir, part investigative journalism.
In the process, she uncovers a patchwork view of her father's life while also coming to terms with her own memories. “Negative Space” includes photos of Schactman’s paintings, prints and sculptures, sharing his art with a new audience in the process.
Today, Dancyger, a writer and editor, lives on the Upper West Side with her husband Soomin, also an East Village native. During a recent phone conversation, Dancyger talked about why she stuck with this book project, her decision to move away from the East Village and the importance of Ray’s Candy Store.
After the book came out, you spotted copies of it at the Strand, a place you spent a lot of time with your father while growing up. How did this sighting make you feel?
Seeing my book at the Strand drove it home and made it feel real in a different way. I’ve been going to the Strand my entire life, and I always browse the front tables; over the last few years, I would check the main non-fiction table and see my friend’s books. So seeing my book there was really cool.
I had been waiting for when it would feel real. Even after the publication date … it felt as if I was pushing this boulder up a mountain for the rest of my life. So it is really, truly out there in the world, in the Strand — that has really sunk in.
My dad loved that store. And we used to go there and hang out for hours. He would hand me a book from wherever he was looking, and I would sit on the floor and read.
In the book credits, you mention that various publishers rejected the proposal more than 50 times through the years. What drove you to make this book a reality?
It was a combination of things. I wanted to give up at a few different points. However, it was my father’s story. And I was doing it not only for myself but also for him. It became this thing where I had committed to doing it, you know? I committed to getting his work out into the world, and I couldn’t give up on that. I’d already sunk six, seven, eight, nine years into this. I had to see it through — otherwise, what the hell was all that for?
Why did you decide to move away from the East Village in recent years?
I held out for as long as I could. For years I felt like I was stubbornly staying there, trying to be a holdout. And eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore — just the changes in the neighborhood. I was walking around bitter and angry, and it was just too painful and upsetting to walk down the street every day thinking about what has been lost in the neighborhood.
It was starting to get to me in a way that negatively affected my mental health and took up too much of my mental energy just getting angry. The whole city is changing. I’m on the Upper West Side now, and it’s not changing as quickly. And I don’t take it personally when something closes up here. I’ve just calmed down.
I’m trying to remember what Jeremiah Moss once wrote: If such and such place closes, he’s moving. I can't recall what place it was.
I used to say that if Ray’s Candy Store ever closes, I’m out of here. Luckily, he’s still there. I think he will outlive us all.
Speaking of Ray’s, in 2010, you and your friend Haley held a fundraiser for Ray’s — the Day of Ray — when he was struggling with a rent hike. Why did you decide to do this?
I had to. There are so many places that closed that I took personally and made me sad, but Ray as a human being and Ray’s as that place — it’s just so important to the neighborhood and so important to me personally. I went to Ray’s when I was a baby with my parents.
When we moved back when I was 14, after being on the West Coast for a few years, I went into Ray’s, and he remembered me from when I was 4 years old. And you know, it felt so great. I had intense emotions about being back. I was happy to be back, but I was angry that I had been away, and I felt like I wanted to be part of the neighborhood again, and I felt like I was coming in as an outsider even though I felt very attached to it already.
When I was a degenerate teenager wandering around by myself, I could go hang out in Ray’s and chat with him at like 4 in the morning. I care about him, and the idea that this gentrification would take that place from him and us was not acceptable.
I highlighted a passage in the book talking about being in Tompkins Square Park with your father: “the smell of water cooking off of asphalt in the sun is one of my strongest sense memories of childhood.” There are happy moments in the book like this. How did you balance these memories with the reality of drug use?
I wanted to show that complexity. I didn’t want to whitewash it and pretend that there was no downside to being raised by drug addicts. However, I also didn’t want to make it salacious and turn it into this drama porn because there was a lot of happiness and love, and my childhood memories are good ones. So, I wanted to make room for all of those different things that are true at the same time.
Was there a point when you realized that perhaps you weren’t experiencing a typical childhood?
It was a slow realization. I think that’s also part of my coming back to New York and coming back to the East Village was so emotionally healing for me — because then it was normal again.
When we were on the Central Coast of California, it was a beautiful, sunny, rich place. I saw that my mom stood out from the other moms — she was the only one with tattoos, motorcycle boots and a nose ring. I waited for her to pick me up with all these sunny California moms.
Back in the East Village, all my friends’ parents were weirdos and artists and a lot of them had drug problems and were kind of strange in one way or another. When I was back in the city, this was all normal, all fine.
In the book, you meet some of your father’s friends, who describe this long-lost East Village world that will likely never exist again. Did you ever think about what it would have been like growing up in a different time in the neighborhood?
I felt that a lot when I was a teenager. In the early 2000s, I felt like it was already too late — I wished it was the 80s or the 90s. But looking back at it now, I realize that I got the last little bit of it.
On June 23-24, Dancyger hosted a book party and exhibit featuring her father's work at 17 Frost Gallery in Williamsburg ...
Report: Diner reviver Louis Skibar eyeing Odessa
According to Jennifer Gould at the Post this week, Louis Skibar, whose Toloache Restaurant Group revived the classic UWS diner Old John's Luncheonette, which dates to the 1950s, is now eyeing Odessa, 119 Avenue A between Seventh Street and St. Mark's Place.
"The Odessa is next on the list," Skibar told Side Dish. "It reminds me of Old John's. They both had an outpouring of support from the neighborhood when it closed. Diners are part of the city. If we can do something to preserve them — me or someone else — then we should. It's a great thing."As EVG first reported earlier last month, Odessa was up for sale on Craigslist — a listing that is no longer available, which might mean a deal is already in the works with Skibar, who started his restaurant career 37 years ago making deliveries and cooking at Old John's.
And what might he do with a property like Odessa? Per the Post:
Over at Old John's, Skibar has worked hard to maintain its old world charm while sprucing things up around the edges.
"I think it's unfortunate that so many diners are closing, but a lot are mediocre and maybe that's why. The feeling of nostalgia is there, but diners still have to deliver quality and provide really good food. We are very aware of this," he said.
He's also updated the diner's look. He's kept classic touches like the black-and-white mosaic marble floor, the tin ceiling and the Art Deco lighting. But he gave the outdated entranceway a clean new look, replacing the faded deep red vestibule that once greeted customers with a simple glass door.
You can read more about the new Old John's at Eater and Gothamist. West Side Rag first reported on Old John's return.
In July 2020, longtime manager Dennis Vassilatos said that Odessa, which dates to the 1960s, was shutting down after a prolonged slump in business due to the pandemic.
However, closer to the last day, co-owner Steve Helios told Gothamist that Odessa was only closing temporarily, that the space would be renovated. (The building's landlord is Odessa partner Mike Skulikidis.) Few people bought this story, though.
And for these last 11-plus months, Odessa has sat frozen in disco-fries time, without any noticeable activity inside.
H/T Upper West Sider!
Former Paper Daisy space for rent on St. Marks Place
This marks the official closure of Paper Daisy, which debuted in March 2019. The cafe-cocktail bar, from the owners behind East Village establishments Boulton & Watt, Drexler's and Mister Paradise, closed at the start of the PAUSE in March 2020 and never reopened.
The storied Cafe Orlin closed here in October 2017, wrapping up a 36-year run on St. Mark's Place.
Yosi Ohayon, the former owner of Cafe Orlin, is the building's landlord.
Wednesday, June 30, 2021
Wednesday's parting shot
6 posts from June
• Mount Sinai Beth Israel decides against plans to relocate and downsize (June 21)
• At fire-damaged Middle Collegiate Church, it's moving day for the historic New York Liberty Bell (June 17)
• RIP Hash Halper, aka New York Romantic (June 15)
• Portraits from the Park Prom (June 9)
• RIP Penny Rand (June 2)
• Tenants: Pigeons have made empty apartment a health hazard in this Steve Croman-owned building on 7th Street (June 1)
A case of mistaken rat identity on the lawn in Tompkins Square Park
Thanks to @arigold for this selection via Instagram...
C&B debuts expanded space on 7th Street
Photos by Stacie Joy
As we've been reporting, C&B chef-owner Ali Sahin is expanding his cafe into the vacant retail space — the former dry cleaners — next door here at 178 E. Seventh St. between Avenue A and Avenue B.
And C&B recently debuted the new-look space, which includes the return of the record player (and records!) ... which had to go with the need for more storage in the spring of 2020 ...
The expanded C&B doesn't include any indoor dining — just increased space for the staff to work as well as a longer to-go counter.
All this makes Ali pretty happy... or maybe it's just the heat!
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