Fire, jump with me

Photos by Stacie Joy

Thursday evening saw the return of a fire-jumping event in an East Village community garden, the first since 2019. 

This year's edition, produced by More Gardens, took place at El Jardin del Paraiso on Fifth Street between Avenue C and Avenue D.

Here's some background:

More Gardens' Chaharshanbeh Suri NYC is a festival rooted in community, sharing, equity, and reverence for the earth through ritual fire jumping, art, music, food, and culture that began in the lands of West and Central Asia.

This fire celebration nourishes our spirits, strengthens our connection to each other, and affirms our belonging by embracing our diverse nationalities, languages, faiths, class, genders, races, and sexual identities. We make gathering joyful through art, music, food, culture, and intergenerational sharing. We hold each other to tend the flames of love, justice, solidarity, and goodness across the planet and right here in the community green spaces of NYC.

The fire team included Joules Magus ... with representatives from the FDNY present for safety. 

An estimated 200 people took part in the jumping ceremony. EVG contributor Stacie Joy was on hand for part of the festivities ...

EVG Etc.: Veselka expanding to Brooklyn, Boris & Horton too

• Starting April 1, enforcement of street vending in NYC will soon be handled by the sanitation department; enforcing vendor rules currently belongs to the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (Gothamist) 

• NYC sheriff deputies question the legality of their pot shop busts (The City... previously on EVG) 

• Chinatown 3 years after the start of the pandemic (Eater) 

• 6 lessons from NYC's first nightlife mayor (The New York Times) 

• Veselka is planning to open an outpost in Williamsburg and a kiosk at Grand Central (The Post) 

• Boris & Horton on Avenue A expanding to Brooklyn (Greenpointers)

• An interview with Chris Spencer of the noise-rock trio Unsane, formed on the LES in the late 1980s (The Big Takeover)

• Hip-hop film classic "Wild Style" turns 40 (The Source) 

• ANOHNI discusses the new photo book on the EV art gang, "Blacklips: Her Life and Her Many, Many Deaths" (DAZED) 

• Check out some essential cinema from the archives of the Anthology Film Archives, including screenings for films by Robert Bresson over the next few days (Official site) 

• And a very strange commercial for German sink brand Schock starring Iggy Pop (The Drum)

Friday's parting shot

A St. Patrick's Day moment along St. Mark's Place today... photo by Derek Berg...

Sweet 'Sixteen'

 

Out now (as of March 10): Love As Projection, the latest solo album from New York-based singer-songwriter Frankie Rose ... formerly of Vivian Girls/Crystal Stilts/Dum Dum Girls. 

The video is for the track "Sixteen Ways."

Revisiting a transformative Sunday on Avenue A

Photos by Stacie Joy

Last weekend, Con Ed and its contractors — Bay Crane, Five Boroughs Flagging Corp. — closed off parts of Avenue A to install a new transformer at the substation between Fifth Street and Sixth Street.

It was an elaborate operation to hoist the 188,000-pound (!!!) transformer and its components, such as a radiator, from flatbeds on Avenue A and across the substation to its position in the back. EVG contributor Stacie Joy donned a hard hat to document the special delivery...

Here's a look at the newly in-place transformer in the alleyway/driveway behind the substation between Fifth Street and Sixth Street (which people always stare into while on a smoke break outside Sophie's) ...

No word yet when Con Ed will wrap up this work. Crews are still working behind the scene. In one development, one of the three porta potties was removed from the Fifth Street side (maybe drop it off at Tompkins?).

Meanwhile, there's word this process will happen all over again with another transformer delivery this fall. 

Report: The Astor Place cube will be ready for a spin once more this summer

The Astor Place cube (aka Alamo), out of commission with structural damage since late 2021 (first noted here), will reportedly by spin-worthy again by July 17.

According to The City, there's a proposal from the Department of Transportation in the works.

The plan, which is slated to go before the city's Public Design Commission on Monday for approval, would see the 1,800-pound cube temporarily removed next month and shipped to Bethany, Conn., for restoration by Versteeg Art Fabricators — a firm that also did restorative work to the cube in 2005.

Their proposal calls for fixing the spinning mechanism and reinforcing and repairing the base of the East Village piece by early July.

The barricades first arrived around the cube in December 2021, before the city removed them in late April 2022. At the time, we were told that the spinning mechanism for the cube, which manually rotates around a pole hidden in its center, was not working. A DOT spokesperson previously told us that they didn't have a timeline for repairing the spinning component.

Tony Rosenthal's sculpture first arrived here in November 1967. 

Previously on EV Grieve:
The Alamo returns to Astor Place this Halloween

Five years later, Astor Place apparently ready for its 2-year reconstruction project

This is what it might be like living inside the Alamo on Astor Place

RIP Tony Rosenthal, the sculptor who created the Astor Place cube

Friday's opening shot (so to speak)

Photo by Steven 

A look-in at McSorley's on Seventh Street around 8 a.m. on this St. Patrick's Day... we were told that some folks started lining up at 6 a.m.

Thursday's parting shot

No strings attached, as seen on Second Avenue today via Derek Berg...

May the farce be with you: 'The Empire Strips Back' is next up at the Orpheum Theatre

A burlesque version of "Star Wars" is next up for the Orpheum Theatre on Second Avenue — the first production to play here after the 29-year run of "Stomp." 

Starting on May 10, "The Empire Strips Back" begins a limited run at the theater between Seventh Street and St. Mark's Place. 

Per the official description: "The classic 'Star Wars' characters are dropped into the world of burlesque. Comedy and striptease, loving detail and hilarious parody… Let us deliver you to the dark side."

Originally from Australia, this "Empire" has been touring around the globe since it first opened in 2011

Tickets go on sale Tuesday at noon. Sign up for info here.

"Stomp" ended its 29-year run at the Orpheum in early January. 

According to Cinema Treasures: "The site on which the Orpheum stands is alleged to have been a concert garden as early as the 1880s and, as such, to be one of the oldest continuously operating places of gathering for entertainment events in New York City." 

In the 1980s, the Orpheum was well-known for Off-Broadway productions such as "Little Shop of Horrors" in 1982, Sandra Bernhard's "Without You I'm Nothing" in 1988, Eric Bogosian's "Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll" in 1990, John Leguizamo's "Mambo Mouth" in 1991, and David Mamet's "Oleanna" in 1992.

Jabba pic via the "The Empire Strips Back" site

First sign of Raising Cane's on Astor Place

Photo by Steven 

Signage arrived this week for Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers at 10 Astor Place at Lafayette Street. 

As reported in April 2022, the Louisiana-based company signed a 20-year lease for 4,300 square feet of space on the ground floor.

The quick-serve Raising Cane's has more than 600 restaurants in 32 states.

No. 10 was, until August 2020, a Walgreens.

Wednesday's parting shot

A walk along Astor Place today... photo by Derek Berg...

Ghost signage on 7th Street

Photo by Steven 

A crew today removed the signage and added a new rolldown gate on the western storefront at 120 E. Seventh St. between Avenue A and First Avenue, where the barber shop the Cut had been... in the process, the workers uncovered some ghost signage for piljo, which I'm sure some people on the block will recall. (Please tell!)

The barber shop has been here since around 2012, and it had been Medusa Tattoo before...