EV Grieve

Monday, December 29, 2008

Door is no long "bizarrely heavy" -- now the springs are just tight

Dec. 27!

Dirt Candy on East Ninth Street between Avenue A and First Avenue.

First Avenue trench filled

On Dec. 17, I did a post on the trench that stretches across First Avenue at Sixth Street. As I mentioned, I know someone who lives in a building adjacent to the trench. "I'm really afraid the constant earthquakes will stress my crappy building enough to make the already warped floors collapse."

Anyway, good news for the resident (and anyone who lives nearby) as well as bicyclists, M15 passengers...the trench was filled in the other day...Nice and smooth now.

Foo shoppers

Another building now for sale on Avenue B

Between 11th Street and 12th Street.

Previously on EV Grieve:
There are more than 20 empty storefronts along Avenue B

Dumpster of the day

First Avenue near Ninth Street.

Sunday, December 28, 2008

It's not polite to stare

On Fourth Avenue near 13th Street. I have to admit I was curious what this ad was for...Any guesses? What is the logical client for an ad with a model making the Ass Face? A hotel, of course! The Fontainebleau in Miami Beach. Part of the hotel's "rediscover" campaign.

Oh, as you probably know, the formerly iconic hotel was featured in Goldfinger.

Dumpster of the day

10th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B.

Saturday, December 27, 2008

"The landscape of New York will be virtually unchanged for two years"

From the Times:

Nearly $5 billion in development projects in New York City have been delayed or canceled because of the economic crisis, an extraordinary body blow to an industry that last year provided 130,000 unionized jobs, according to numbers tracked by a local trade group.

The setbacks for development — perhaps the single greatest economic force in the city over the last two decades — are likely to mean, in the words of one researcher, that the landscape of New York will be virtually unchanged for two years.

“There’s no way to finance a project,” said the researcher, Stephen R. Blank of the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit group.

Charles Blaichman is not about to argue with that assessment. Looking south from the eighth floor of a half-finished office tower on 14th Street on a recent day, Mr. Blaichman pointed to buildings he had developed in the meatpacking district. But when he turned north to the blocks along the High Line, once among the most sought-after areas for development, he surveyed a landscape of frustration: the planned sites of three luxury hotels, all stalled by recession.

My apologies!

Got drawn into some dumbass barside conversation...I said with much certainty that, despite being released on Nov. 27, the stuffed turkey Australia was no longer playing anywhere in the city.

I was wrong: It's at the Village East! Hurry! Should be on DVD by Tuesday.

When a beloved neighborhood bar relocates...

Do the regulars follow? On the eve of the P & G closing and moving, the Times looks into the issue...

[I]f drinking and dining have always been a moveable feast in New York, is charisma cartable? Can the character of everything from venerable pubs to palatial eateries migrate with their names and owners? This portability issue has gained new urgency in a season of economic disarray, when property owners are less willing to extend the leases of even the most beloved old-timers.

Loyalists can be fickle, and geography perilous. “New York is so provincial, three blocks is a huge distance,” said Patrick Daley, the owner of Kettle of Fish, the classic step-down barroom at 59 Christopher Street in Sheridan Square, in the space formerly inhabited by the Lion’s Head, a lionized writers’ pub, which closed in 1996.

Not in the article but worth noting: Sophie's moved from Avenue A to its current location on East Fifth Street in the mid-1980s.

Previously on EV Grieve:
An appreciation: the P & G Cafe