No one attended the schmancy Sex and the City DVD release party

Horrors! Writes Sheila at Gawker: There's no satisfying way to explain the party, other than a PR clusterfuck/fuckup. However, maybe people are getting a little tired of the franchise after a six-year TV run, one of the most-hyped movies of the year, and a cultural reach that, on some days, seems to have infected the entire city with luxury brand names and bus tours. What does this say about the sequel? We're guessing nothing good. Sometimes you just have to get the shotgun and take the old mare out behind the barn.

Saturday morning bonus!

Here's a feature on the Sex and the City Tour from April 2004 by Norwegian journalist Henrik Pryser Libell:

Dee Dee Ramone and Spikey Tops on the Uncle Floyd Show

From April 1991.



Who's Uncle Floyd?

Lucky Cheng's leaving the East Village for the wilds of Times Square

News from GNML via Eater.

As Down by the Hipster notes: "We are also happy that it will be bringing its legions of tourists and bachelorette parties with them. Walking past the restaurant on a weekend night is like walking through a gauntlet of cheese. You know what we mean. You know."

Thanks for the memories!

EV Grieve Etc.

A few things...

Avalon to buy Extra Place from City? (Save the Lower East Side!)

The growing number of tent cities (CNN)

Ken remembers HoJo's (Greenwich Village Daily Photo via Jeremiah)

An evening to save the Bowery (Bowery Boogie)

SJP on the possible Sex and the City sequel (Us -- no giggling, please)

Oh, to be rich and white...to have the ways and means to help out other rich white people (esquared)

[Photo via Forgotten New York]

In which EV Grieve panics for a brief moment

Was startled the other day when I saw the ominous-from-a-distance sign hanging above Life at 1oth Street and Avenue.

Just an "apartment for rent" sign. Uh. Carry on. Nothing to see here...

Anyway, forgive me for being a little jumpy. Last time I made note of a building for sale, the business on the ground floor moved...in this case, Vasmay Lounge at 269 E. Houston St.

Previously on EV Grieve:

Rent lives; Life lives on

Did the Donut Social cause a headache for HOWL?

Scoopy's Notebook in The Villager this week has more on the fallout from the Donut Social on Sept. 5:

The L.E.S. Slacktivists’ sound-permit flap spilled over to the recent HOWL! Festival, causing some howls of frustration from festival organizers. After John Penley, Jerry “The Peddler” Wade and Bill Cashman, Leftover Crack’s manager, argued in federal court that the local crust-core band’s planned concert outside the Ninth Police Precinct on Sept. 5 was being held to unfairly low decibel levels, police apparently felt they had to make a better show of monitoring HOWL! sound levels. Artist James Romberger, whose wife, Marguerite Van Cook, ran this year’s festival, as she did last year, said that “The Death to the Police Rally,” as he called it, caused a headache for HOWL! “We were enforced,” Romberger said. “They stood there all day with whatever those were…sound guns, or whatever.” Actually, Romberger said he’s more concerned about the whole “death” trend of late by local singer/activists, from Leftover Crack’s Sturgeon singing “Kill cops” to David Peel leading choruses of “Die yuppie scum!” “Anyone who’s against the death penalty cannot be behind calling for death,” Romberger stated. “Throwing donuts and pies is O.K., funny, ha ha. But calling for death is anti-reasonable and uncivilized.” Speaking of throwing donuts, we hear that the harassment charge against Sturgeon for trying to pelt police with the pastries on Sept. 5 was dropped but that he was asked to perform 200 hours of community service, which he refused.

Previously Donut Social coverage on EV Grieve.

The oldest tattoo shop in Manhattan

City Snapshots had a nice post this week on Mike Bakaty, proprietor of the only tattoo parlor left from the days when tattooing was illegal in New York. His shop, Fineline Tattoo, is on First Avenue between First and Second Street in the East Village.

As CS notes:

Mike Bakaty draws tattoos with a signed picture of Gandhi hanging in a frame over his shoulder: “To Mike. Your man, Mahatma.” He traveled a lot as a young sailor, and the navy is where he got a taste for tattooing. Then, during what Bakaty refers to as the bootleg years – the period in which tattooing was illegal in New York – he started practicing the art behind closed doors on the Lower East Side.

Among the people who have received a tattoo from Bakaty: Wilford Brimley.

Via a link at City Snapshots, here's a brief look at the history of tattooing in NYC:

For 36 years, there were no tattoo shop storefronts in New York City - not even on the Bowery, where modern tattooing was invented in the 1890s. There were no televisions in street-level store windows showing people getting tattoos, no advertising - save for the tattoos themselves - fliers or vague messages in the back of the Village Voice. Every Tom had to know Dick who knew Harry who knew where to get a tattoo.

Tattooing in New York City went underground after the City Health Department found what it said were a series of blood-borne hepatitis cases coming from tattoo parlors in 1961. Tattoos were done on the second story of buildings on Canal Street, in basements, apartments and backrooms.

Noted

The city’s unemployment rate rose to 5.8 percent from 5 percent in July — the largest monthly increase in more than 30 years — as about 5,200 private-sector jobs were eliminated . . . Many of the layoffs came in the tumbling financial sector, which is one of the city’s biggest employers and the provider of nearly one-fourth of its annual wages and salaries. (New York Times)

What a Steel!

Ads have gone up around the East Village, like the one below seen at 8th Street and Avenue C, for The SteelWorks Lofts coming soon to Williamsburg. The sales gallery is opening in October for the lofts that are priced from $495,000 to $1.5 million.


Seems perfect for the East Village resident who's sick and tired of the overdevelopment and condofication of this neighborhood...to move to a neighborhood with even more ridciulous overdevelopment and condofication.

P.S.
What exactly is "handcrafted living"? And what's up with the blowtorch? Why is Jennifer Beals coming to mind?

"Its quirky feel has come to symbolize the avant-garde, rebellious East Village spirit"

The Daily News takes a look at Red Square on East Houston:

Conceived by self-proclaimed radical sociologist-turned-real-estate-developer [Michael] Rosen in 1989, Red Square occupies land that served as an automobile service station for more than 25 years. Rosen's wife's family bought the property in the 1960s, and, he points out, no homes were destroyed and no businesses were displaced.Red Square was designed by graphic artist legend Tibor Kalman, a Hungarian immigrant. Its quirky feel has come to symbolize the avant-garde, rebellious East Village spirit.

Hmmm.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Looking back: Red Square and gentrification

Otis Williams Jr. on Wall Street

Otis Williams Jr. -- street performer, sculptor, poet and self-proclaimed health fanatic and ex-con -- took to the steps at Federal Hall on Wall Street after work Tuesday to talk about being clean and sober and, uh, some other things that I couldn't quite make out. The tourists seemed entertained. And the Federal Hall officer was jovial enough in ushering Otis off the stairs (in the second video).

Story of a City: New York (1946)

Here's a revved-up version via Rocketboom:


[Via AnimalNewYork]

"Freaks" and cheeks

Sorry, a little off topic here, but I wanted to make mention of this....On Monday, cops raided an S&M parlor in Tribeca and arrested two people, including the club's alleged proprietor, Collin Reeve, 35, of Staten Island. They two were charged with promoting prostitution. Whatever! Let's find out more about Reeve. As the Post helpfully notes in its case to assassinate the man's character:

Marie Santiago, who used to be the superintendent of a Staten Island building where Reeve lived for several years, called him a "freak."

"When they left, we found out they were total freaks. We found videos of him and people playing with people dressed up as dinosaurs," she said.

"When they had a party, the people who came were weirdos. They wore all leather. They would wear spikes around their necks, too."

Noted

Mayor Bloomberg is the 8th wealthiest person in America with a net worth of $20 billion. (Forbes)