Mind Joe, please

Good morning. Construction on Seventh Street near Avenue A.





DO NOT look at the guy standing there with a camera...



And the truck matches the mural...

The end is near

At 14th Street and Fourth Avenue.

Flashback to last fall...

Noted

"You know times are tough when the tony cafe at a prestigious Manhattan bank gets turned into a thrift store." (New York Post)

Oh, and anything good?

There were no Rolex watches or Gucci bags on hand to be picked from the tables in the Midtown cafe, on Third Avenue at 58th Street. A Versace jacket was spotted among the items, although it was at least a decade old.

And most of the other odds and ends were just old hand-me-downs, such as a can opener from the 1970s, a coffee maker with its lid missing, a book on ancient Indian head massage and a goblet in the shape of the comic-book villain the Joker.

Vicious

For no reason. Good use of "Vicious" perhaps?

Remembering Richard Leck: "He liked the anything-goes quality, the creativity and the street life"

Karen Lillis first met the writer and poet Richard Leck nearly five years ago. And in a rather short amount of time, he made a profound impact on her life.

"Richard was a really positive, steady presence in my life... Among other things — like good life advice from someone who had survived 75 years — he embodied and remembered a New York I was really interested in, a bohemian place people came together to make," Lillis told me in an e-mail. Lillis has since published Leck's work on her Words Like Kudzu Press in Pittsburgh.

Leck, a longtime East Village resident, passed away of heart disease on Dec. 19.

First, some background on Leck's life from his obituary in The Village Voice:

He was drafted to go to the Korean War in 1951, but deferred his service to attend New York University’s Journalism School. During this time, he also reported for the New Jersey Observer. He served in the Army in peacetime from 1956 to 1958, training at Fort Dix and working in Westchester.

In the 1960s, Leck was a habitué of the Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene, frequenting Cafe Figaro, The Limelight and The Commons, but especially Cafe Feenjon. He mingled inside and outside of the coffeehouses with such figures as Yoko Ono; Shel Silverstein; Peter, Paul, and Mary; Feenjon owner Manny Dworman; poet Taylor Mead; offbeat radio show host Long John Nebel; actor Darren McGavin; and painter Yukiko Katsura, among others.

He said of that time, “I didn’t write in those days — I just listened. I just took it all in.”

Leck worked a variety of odd jobs, often retaining a bohemian’s preference for the low-key lifestyle to a regular day job. He did the books for a retailer, he managed an antique store, he sold goods on the street, and he worked with Jewish children.

In recent years, he was a regular customer at Neptune Diner on First Ave., at St. Mark’s Bookshop and at Junior’s on the Fulton Mall, in Brooklyn.

Without any living relatives, Leck was to be buried in Potter's Field. However, Lillis and other friends reached out to Graham Rayman at The Village Voice, who then helped cut through the bureaucracy. Leck was buried in a modest military service at Calverton National Cemetery in Long Island on Jan. 23.

Lillis will host a memorial reading for Leck at the Bowery Poetry Club on Saturday, May 9 from 2 p.m.-3:30 p.m. It will be called "Praise Day Reading for Richard Leck." Free admission. Several writers will read from Leck's poems and excerpts from his memoir, "Jumped, Fell, or Was Pushed."

Here, Lillis talked to me about first meeting Leck and his feelings about life and the East Village.

You met Richard while you were working in the St. Mark's Bookshop. What do you remember about that? What were your first impressions?

Lillis: I was working the register, and Richard came up and opened that book, "The Little Black and White Book of Film Noir." He started reading some of the one-liners to me in an exaggerated accent and telling me about the movies they came from. I came right back with some quotes because I'm a film noir buff myself — it really surprised him that someone half his age knew these movies. So, he just kept talking to me.

I immediate felt familiar with him — he was both a familiar Village type — open to meeting people, very idiosyncratic, ready to give you a piece of his mind. And also a familiar Irish-American type, very entertaining and psychologically smart, very funny with a Vaudeville sensibility. He reminded me a lot of my paternal grandfather.

After that, Richard would come back to the store to talk to me, or we'd go for coffee. It wasn't long before I started compulsively taking notes whenever he talked.

What do you think inspired him about living in the East Village?

Lillis: He liked the anything-goes quality, the creativity and the street life. He liked being able to meet sympatico people, artistic types. He liked not feeling restricted the way he did as a schoolboy.


In his obit for the Voice, Graham Rayman described Richard as "one of that disappearing class of people who make the neighborhood more colorful and more interesting than the yuppie scum who invade this sacred ground and drive up the rents." Did Richard share with you his feelings on the present-day East Village?

Lillis: [Laughs] Yes, Richard shared his feelings on the topic — early and often. He recalled the East Village from when it was "The East Side," and his acquaintances drifted over there to do drugs in the "shooting galleries." This was in the 60s. He said it wasn't the "East Village" until the realtors wanted to sell it, and I think he felt it just kept going in the wrong direction from there. I mean, it was still the Village and unlike anything else, but now he saw the young women who spent hundreds of dollars on their purse dogs' wardrobes, he saw cybercafes where no one talked to each other, he saw bohemian style replaced by adults in sweatpants, he saw people so busy they sped by him at a Manhattan pace, he saw landlords renovating buildings for the worse — over and over — only to jack up prices. He saw young people so worried about money and rent that they couldn't enjoy art or life just for the pleasure of it.

He talked a lot about the glass and steel skyscrapers going up all over the Village. He hated the glass and steel buildings! He liked to talk about the huge windows — "That's not a window, darling, that's a wall!" He said the people living in them must feel like they owned everything they could see. He preferred wood and brick; to him the glass and steel represented the opposite of a home, they just represented coldness and greed, and an imperial mindset.



At the time of his death, he was working on an autobiographical novel. Will any of this be released?

Lillis: Yes, one section of it already has been published in the zine, Go Metric (Issue 22), and more will be, with luck. Several excerpts will be read at the memorial reading. The book wasn't actually a novel but a memoir, working title, "Jumped, Fell, or Was Pushed" — from an adage they used to teach him in his NYU journalism program in the 1950s. Richard liked to refer to the book as comedy-sociology. The book is his life stories from the 1930s through at least the 1980s. It starts out in Jersey City and moves into the New York phase. The Depression, World War II, Mayor Hague, the Army, the Village coffeehouses of the 60s. We were working on the book together — he was telling me the stories and I was writing them down and helping shape them — I wanted to capture his voice and his cadence, and his humor. I have two years worth of material from talking to him once a week, so I believe I have enough to finish it. I may ask his closest friend, Frances, to help me fill in some gaps — she'd been close with him since the late 80s. And I'm trying to get more excerpts of the book published along the way.

Can you talk a little bit about the efforts to make sure that he received a proper burial?

Lillis: Navigating the different city agencies and the misinformation involved was disheartening and very stressful — but some individuals worked very hard to make a proper burial happen, and that was pretty amazing to see. It took a village to bury a Villager! There were many points when we thought the whole thing would go bust and Richard was going to end up in Potter's Field — we couldn't find a next of kin, we didn't have money, we were running out of time, we didn't have help from the VA — they were very rude and dismissive. I felt very overwhelmed working on this from Pittsburgh where I relocated, and Frances was going to different agencies on foot but getting doors slammed in her face. I was just determined that a U.S. veteran should not be ignored in this way, so I kept going up the food chain for leverage — writing to city politicians, then congressmen; organizing email campaigns and getting bloggers involved. Finally I started writing to newspapers, and Graham Rayman at the Village Voice was the only one who responded in due time. First he made some key phone calls to stall the march to Potter's Field. Then he blogged the story, and a few HOURS after he posted it, the Mayor's Office called Frances to say they were taking care of a military burial. The power of journalism — and public shaming — cannot be underestimated!

I learned three things I would pass on: 1.) Everyone should write a will right now, and artists should write down who they want to do what with their art/manuscripts/publishing rights, etc. Get it notarized. 2.) You're allowed to bury your friend if there's no next of kin or a will, you just can't cremate him or her. 3.) An articulate e-mail is now officially more powerful than phone or face time, unless you're someone important.

What do you think inspired him about living in the East Village?

Lillis: I think he also liked the way he could be Manhattan anonymous sometimes, or have people to talk to when he wanted to find them — at the bookstore, the diner.


The view from the kitchen/sitting area at the Sirovich SRO on East 12th Street where Leck lived since 1993.

As Graham Rayman noted: In his poem, "Residents," Leck seemed to be referring to folks like himself when he wrote:

Let dandelions be. They break up
the monotony of the grass.

Open, uh, house on Sunday at the New York City Marble Cemetery

The New York City Marble Cemetery will be open on Sunday from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. The cemetery, on Second Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue, opened in 1831. This Times piece has more on the history. Or go to the Marble Web site.

It's only usually open to the masses twice a year...so... Here are some photos from previous years...







By the way, do not confuse the New York City Marble Cemetery with the New York Marble Cemetery on Second Avenue. That one now has the lovely view of Avalon Bowery Place:

Woman smiles, runs into traffic proudly carrying her Duane Reade bag

Oh, it's just an ad! And the signs confirm that Duane Reade is taking over the former Staples store on Fulton and Water Streets in the Financial District.



Perhaps the Duane Reade 100 feet way will have some good sales then...Better, I hope, than the crap that Rite Aid tried to pawn off...

Realtors are getting really creative in describing their available apartments

On Third Avenue near Ninth Street.
What is this, 2004? When you put up an apartment for rent sign in the East Village and 25 people are lining up to move in...

Happy MC61

MC5 co-founder Wayne Kramer turned 61 yesterday. There was a birthday party for him last night at Manitoba's. It was thrown by John Varvatos.

Ray still trying to get his Social Security

Scoopy has an update on Ray Alvarez at Ray's Candy Store and his ongoing battle to get his Social Security ... In this week's issue of The Villager (fourth item in Scoopy's Notebook): "In a new development ... Alvarez said he’s now got two lawyers helping him. They’re trying to track down a copy of his long-lost Turkish Navy ID that he used to get his green card when Reagan granted amnesty to illegal immigrants back in the 1980s. 'It takes 10 to 22 months to get those papers — I may die before I get them,' Ray explained fatalistically as he mixed up a cherry slush for a customer last Saturday night."

As always, check in with Bob Arihood at Neither More Nor Less for photos and updates on Ray.

[Photo via The Villager/Jefferson Siegel]

Gold Street still telling people that it's temporarily closed for renovations

Gold Street at 2 Gold Street in the Financial District closed last month...but you may not know it from the signs that are still up....



The space is becoming Harry's Italian....

The corner of Delancey and Attorney is ready for development

Last September, we did a post titled The last frontier on the LES? In which we wondered how long before Attorney Street would see more development.



Maybe not much longer. As Patrick Hedlund reports in this week's issue of The Villager:

A prime corner property on the Lower East Side with residential development capabilities of nearly 20,000 square feet has hit the market with an asking price of $3.2 million.

The site, at 178 Delancey St. at the corner of Attorney St. near the Williamsburg Bridge entrance, allows for 13,500 square feet of development under the area’s new R8-A zoning designation.

Massey Knakal Realty Services has been retained to sell the 25-foot-by-100-foot site, which currently houses a vacant one-story structure.

With a voluntary inclusionary-housing bonus, which requires 20 percent of a planned project to be allocated to affordable housing for low- and moderate-income families, the residential floor-to-area ratio could allow for up to 18,000 buildable square feet. With a community facility, the F.A.R. would allow for 16,250 buildable square feet.

Here's the corner for sale:



A commenter wrote the following on my post from last September:

i live on this block, and it's a nightmare. despite the downside of developments "taking away from the LES" i gladly welcome them to come into this street and build. it's better than what's currently there.

due to the traffic patter of attorney street (one way, dead end street, that's hard to get to) it welcomes petty crime from car break-ins, to building vandalism, and dumping in that abandoned lot.

nobody cares about the street, as evident by the torches motorcycles, piles of dog shit, and broken car glass littered throughout the sidewalk.

there have been two fires set in that abandoned lot in the past month. if that's not dangerous enough, the twisted scrap metal that hangs off the boarded-up entrance will surely put your eye out. Conveniently, this all occurs within 20 feet of an elementary school.

I have called 311, the police, and the department of sanitation over a dozen times, and nothing seems to get done. I would gladly welcome developers coming down and cleaning up that street - certainly the city is in no rush to do it.

Related:
Clinton Papaya gutted (BoweryBoogie)

What's happening at the Umbrella House?

There is plywood and a "store for rent" sign up at the Umbrella House, the former squat -- named for its leaky roof -- at 21-23 Avenue C between Second Street and Third Street.




I was curious about what tenant might be coming to this space. I contacted the Urban Homesteading Assistance Board (UHAB), the nonprofit that has acted as a liaison between the tenants and the city throughout the renovation process of the former LES squats.

Here's what UHAB spokesperson Jess Wisloski told me: "Despite the for rent sign on the building, Umbrella has found a tenant -- a local barbershop is planning to expand their business. We hope to see it open for business in the next few months once their renovation of the space is complete."

Previously...before the plywood...







There's a lengthy, complicated backstory on the renovations of the former LES squats. Too much for a blog post. The Dec. 31-Jan. 6, 2009, issue of The Villager explores the issue in-depth in an article titled "Former squats are worth lots, but residents can’t cash in." An excerpt:

In a series of high-profile clashes — particularly on E. 13th and E. Fifth Sts. — the city forcibly evicted many of the squatters in the 1990s. But in 2002, City Hall took a radically new approach: Eleven of the 12 remaining East Village squats were sold for $1 apiece to the nonprofit Urban Homesteading Assistance Board. Under the agreement, the squatters, with UHAB’s guidance, would bring their buildings up to code within one year, then buy them — for just $250 per apartment — and the buildings would become permanently affordable, Housing Development Fund Corporation, or H.D.F.C., co-ops.

In a nutshell from the article, some homesteaders are upset that the lengthy renovations were financed with what they call unfair loans that have saddled them with debt.



Despite some tension between the sides, a UHAB official told The Villager that "four to six of the former squats will be converted to co-ops sometime between now and February," with the Umbrella House being the first to convert.

I asked Wisloski about this timetable: "The Umbrella House has not converted yet, but we hope it will be in the next few months."

One question that I didn't ask: The owner of the barber shop will then pay his/her rent to the newly formed Umbrella House co-op?





For further reading on the Umbrella House:
In Images, the Lower East Side of Starker Days (The New York Times)

Squatters' rights (City Limits)
The article has details on the three-day standoff in 1989 between the Umbrella House squatters and the city...with the cops blocking off C between Second and Third Streets...

A brief history of New York City's Squats (City Limits)

Sweat Equity Pays Off (The Brooklyn Rail)

Squat the world! (Not Bored)

"I fucking hate the changes that have happened. I’d prefer drug dealers and criminals to the yuppie shit that goes on here now"

This week's Time Out features "Great Walks," the best outdoor treks in the city. They select a stroll through the East Village, dubbing it the "Public Eye Watch." Good people watching, you know.

Here's one of their stops:

If there isn’t a swarm of roaring motorcycles outside the cute little brick facade of the Hells Angels’ HQ (77 E 3rd St between First and Second Aves) — rumored site of drug deals and racketeering since 1969 — there’s probably at least a pair of grizzled bikers watching the leggy denizens of nouveau East Village go by. “I lived here 25 years,” croaks one yellow-toothed Angel who declined to give his name before almost literally throwing us off his turf. “What do you mean people-watching? I fucking hate the changes that have happened. I’d prefer drug dealers and criminals to the yuppie shit that goes on here now.” Hurry on to Second Avenue and don’t look back.

P.S.
You may also do the "Sweet Tooth Walk" on the LES.

[Photo via Forgotten NY]