More signs from the recession

Man, I loved him in "Getting Even with Dad!"

Filming for the new HBO series "Bored 2 Death" is happening around the neighborhood...



Right now they're holed up in Odessa on Avenue A.



The show stars Jason Schwartzman and Ted Danson. When I took the photo of the flier the other day, two guys in their mid-20s were looking at it. One said something about Ted Danson. His friend replied, seriously, "Yeah, he was in 'Becker.'"

For further reading:
My Stalk-a-thon (Slum Goddess)

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

"It wasn’t long ago that one way the wealthy flashed their fortunes was by decking their dogs in Burberry collars and sending them for spa services. Now even the city’s wealthiest dog owners have cut their budgets and sometimes abandoned their dogs entirely." (City Room)

Two EV icons are on the mend, Biker Bill... and the Mosaic Man (Neither More Nor Less)

Coney Island Freak Show is on! (Gothamist)

Historic mailboxes disappear from Hotel Chelsea (Living with Legends)

Karate Boogaloo has details on the excellent-sounding "What I've Been Hoarding; An Accumulation of Rock and Literary Decadence: 1965 - 85" (Stupefaction)

Jeremiah walks on the East River and revisits 1992 East Village (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Shocker! Orchard Street Hell building shows signs of life (BoweryBoogie)

The link to the video people keep sending me (BrinkJunk)

Lady GaGa knocks out her backup dancer's front teeth (BuzzFeed)

Ridiculous help wanted ad (Gawker)

EV Grieve reader and EV resident Claudia Castillo (a currently unemployed TV producer) shot a nice segment on the Unemployment Olympics the other day. Watch it here. It was also posted to CNN's iReport page.

Cabin fever

Matt Harvey's "Bash Compactor" column in this week's NYPress looks at the not-so-secret, secret speakeasy on Avenue A... Before heading Down Below, he asks a fine question:

Last Saturday night on Avenue A, post-college boozers were spilling out onto the sidewalk from a jam-packed Niagara. Watching drunken couples falling over each other in an attempt to snag a cab, I wondered, if the recession is so deep, why aren’t these people on Greyhound buses back to Rochester?

The Lower Eastside Girls Club's "urban paradise" closer to reality -- groundbreaking set for this year

It has been a long time coming... This vacant lot on Avenue D between Seventh Street and Eighth Street...



...will some day be home to a new 12-story Lower Eastside Girls Club.... The Capital Campaign has been ongoing...



(Before going any further, the people depicted in these renderings really seem out of place... and not at all reflective of the diversity in the neighborhood...and what are those two in the bottom photo on the left doing? The guy on the right looks as if he's peeing against the wall.)

Anyway!

Now, according to an article yesterday at Inhabitat:

Though New York City’s real estate climate is anything but sunny, this year, the Lower East Side Girls Club (in partnership with the Dermot Company, a high-profile local developer) will break ground on a new 30,000–square foot, mixed-use arts and community center on the corner of 7th Street and Avenue D. It will be the first and only Girls Club facility in NYC (when boys and girls clubs nationwide joined in 1986, the Boys Club of New York, operating on the LES, opted out of the merger, leaving the neighborhood’s girls to develop their own organization).

And!

In addition to an expanded version of their Sweet Things Bake Shop, the LESGC’s signature social enterprise, the four-story center will contain open-air space for a farmers’ market, a fair trade bookstore and gift shop, a library for after-school tutoring and book club meetings, a full dome planetarium, a commercial kitchen and culinary training center, a leadership training site for career counseling, an amphitheater, and — if you can believe it—much, much more. The true heart of the project, though, is a science, health, and environmental center that will be available to all community youth.

According to a 2005 article in The Villager:

In 2002, the Economic Development Corporation gave the Girls Club control of six city-owned lots on Avenue D between 7th and 8th Sts. for the site of a new facility...

The Girls Club is not the only beneficiary of the project. About 13,000 square feet of space on the lot will be used for not-for-profit tenants, and 15,000 square feet of studio space will be leased to the Federation of East Village Artists, according to a mayoral press release. Rooftop antennas on the building will provide free high-speed Internet access to residents of two neighboring public housing developments.

As it has been reported, the top eight floors of the building will house 72 apartments.




Note: Just around the corner on East Seventh Street is the $10 million penthouse in the Flowerbox.

Two storefronts on Avenue D

While we're on the topic of Avenue D.

"Ode Fro Avenue D"

I've quoted Dave Crish, an editor at Not for Tourists, hereabouts in the past...Here's a piece he did for NFT from Jan. 20, 2007, titled, "Ode Fro Avenue D."

Began perambulation 'pon th'eponymous rue of yours true, D, fro corner at Second Ave, Biblioteca Fish. North to pole at pipestack, left at 12th to Tompkins Square. Vista clear, slightly bloodshot like 'em passing. Marinated of cheaply attained dose of cognac passant boutiques novel as Bertolt's idiom, Village East. O'er C to entrepot spirito plein of tattered clients at two o'clock. Mezzagiorno. Fro acquiring new slick to park loo and amidst chat of weathered Russians, two, coking, model damsel whispered past shadows dressed in denim torn, purple locks. Trans whiff to make mist of eerie mer, here -- terre trod of fading 'hemia beaux, though, not bent as once it were, however -- cracked as ever in relation the lamin' isle's elsewhere. Demarcated smoked Avenue D. Alphabet City's Z, la.

A "showcase" on East Seventh Street

The Beth Hamedrash Hagadol Anshe Ungarn East Seventh Street, described as "a Beaux Arts synagogue built in 1908 for a congregation of Hungarian Jews," was designated a historic landmark last March.

It was split into five residences in the 1980s. Today, the Times features the folks who live in the building's penthouse.

Notes the article, titled "Once Sacred, Now Their Showcase:"

Until pull-down shades were recently installed, neighbors in the tenement walkups and condominiums across East Seventh Street were afforded unobstructed glimpses of the couple’s king-size platform bed, egg-shaped bathtub and clear-glass shower. The blinds might be optional this summer, as the stands of black bamboo that ring the cedar-lined terrace reach full growth, blocking out any Peeping Toms.

[Photo: Michael Falco for The New York Times]

Noted

This Ain't the Summer of Love reports that Bronx native Ace Frehley will be among the guests christening the new Hard Rock at Yankee Stadium today.

Think he might play this one?

Manhattan home sales: Worse than the decline in the auto industry

"Manhattan co-op prices dropped the most since 1995 and transactions for all apartments plummeted 48 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier as the recession and Wall Street unemployment cut demand." (Bloomberg)

"The drop in sales was worse than the decline in the auto industry. In March, sales at General Motors were off 45 percent from March 2008." (The New York Times)

The Topshop truck as you've never seen it!

Without 150 undergrads huddled around trying to get free shit. Spotted on East 13th Street near Third Avenue. And why the grabby-grabby frenzy? What is this, 2006?

Former Downtown Music location now available

They moved earlier this year from the Bowery to Chinatown.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Downtown Music Gallery is leaving the Bowery

At age 98, Bob Sheppard announces his retirement

Whether or not you hate the Yankees, you have to appreciate the iconic Bob Sheppard, who has been the team's PA announcer since 1951. Now, at age 98, he's retiring. Yankee games will never be the same. (Via Gothamist)

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

Signs of life at Ruby's (Kinetic Carnival)

East Houston to be a nightmare for the next, oh, three years or so (BoweryBoogie)

What's left of Etherea (Flaming Pablum)

Ghosts (East of Bowery)

Part two of the Panorama (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

On the campaign trail with Reverend Billy (Slum Goddess)

Stone Street ready for warmer weather (Esquared)

The early days of the Williamsburg Bridge (Ephemeral New York)