Wish you were here

Outside the Pickle Bar sign at Whole Foods on Houston and the Bowery.

But there is a 25-cent cover charge

A woman walks into Sophie's early one recent evening. She sits down and orders a drink. She pulls out her phone and calls a friend. "Do you want to come meet me? I'm in your neighborhood." But she doesn't know where she is exactly. She goes outside to find the name of the bar. "Sophie's" doesn't appear anywhere out front. The women studies all the signs in the window for a moment and comes back in.



She continues the conversation with her friend. "I'm at a place called Public Telephone."

Fifth Street and Avenue D for $918 a square foot

The other day we featured a countryish home on East Fifth Street... if that was a little too "Green Acres" for you, then consider this new listing on the market further to the east... all the way to Avenue D....

According to Corcoran:

The East Village with soaring 18 foot ceilings and monthly carrying cost below $600 (including real estate taxes). This two bedroom features four oversized southern facing windows with unobstructed open views to allow maximum sunlight all day long. The apartment features stainless steel appliances, including a Viking range there is also a dishwasher and washer dryer.

There are hardwood floors throughout the loft that compliment the marble counter tops and marble baths. The traditional stairs, including cast iron railings help to add unique features to this open layout. The addition of plenty of closest means storage is not a problem. All of these wonderful details are just three short flights up.

The building features a 421-a tax abatement. In addition to the tax abatement, there is a common roof deck only one flight up from this apartment. The building also features bike storage and close proximity to transportation. Get all the pluses of new construction without the additional closing costs.

(Um, that listing came written this way.)

So! Let's see what they mean by all that...







And it's $725,000 for 790 square feet ... for those of you into this kind of thing, that's $918 per square foot... which seems like a lot for a space adjacent to a 3.84 acre city housing project.

Icy, Icy Baby

As The Feed noted the other day, NYC Icy is making a return to the East Village ... after Avenue B between Second and Third Streets a few years back.... team Icy is opening up a temp space on Avenue A next to Black Market.... and, as this photo by EV Grieve reader Steven Matthews shows... NYC Icy opened yesterday...



And they have a chocolate-bacon flavor. Urp.

"Sex and the City 2" ads make empty building look better empty

At 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue a few months ago... when the dread first began (again)...











Now at the same spot ... much better...

Noted

Somewhere on St. Mark's Place... I think... I get mixed up with the 4,987 SATCII ads around...

Noted

An EV Grieve reader shared this with me the other day... it's a writeup on Avenue A's newest full liquor license...:

Take a date for upscale Mexican at Avenue A's dark and sultry Diablo Royale Este.

You'll feel like you've entered a Robert Rodriguez flick stocked with skinny girls in skinnier heels instead of vampires.

Blue vs. White on Avenue A

EV Grieve reader Shawn Chittle passed along this link earlier today... he has a good vantage point to see the dueling productions of "The Smurfs Movie" and "White Collar" ....

Smurfs, White Collar filming on Avenue A Alphabet City Lower East Side Manhattan from Shawn Chittle on Vimeo.

Avenue A by the numbers

While walking north on Avenue A starting at Houston, I counted the number of storefronts. I decided to break the storefronts down into five categories:

1) Restaurants/pizza places/coffee shops (including places that serve alcohol, but where food is usually thought of first)

2) Bars

3) Mom-and-pop shops (questionable usage of that term, for sure, but I'm couting these as dry cleaners, bodegas, liquor stores, tattoo shops, laundromats, psychic readers, etc.)

4) Empty storefronts

5) Regular old businesses (Key Food, Citibank, the more higher-end speciality shops)

And here's what I counted (numbers could be off by one or two...I got distracted a few times...but they're pretty accurate):

Mom-and-pop shops: 39
Bars: 31
Restaurants/pizza shops/coffee shops: 28
Empty storefronts: 18
Businesses: 16

Now, you can quibble with these categories and numbers. For instance, would you consider Sidewalk a bar or restaurant? Or both? I put it in the restaurant category. Ditto for Yerba Buena on Seventh and A. And many of the restaurants also serve at least beer or wine. I'm not sure about a few places, like Ost Cafe on 12th and A.

So, there are plenty of places to get a drink on Avenue A... and there would have at least been one more addition if El Camion had been approved Monday at the CB3/LA meeting.

And for some reason I took photos of 16 places that serve beer or wine above 10th Street on Avenue A ... several of which I like. (I wanted to be clear that this wasn't some sort of condemnation of bars.)

I included the empty space that El Camion wanted at 12th and A... plus the fish market/restaurant that will be opening some time next to Hi-Fi.














Anyway, if my shoddy math skills are working... Of the 132 storefronts on Avenue A:

30% are mom-and-pop shops
23% are bars
21% are restaurants/cafes/pizza shops
14% are empty
12% are businesses

Previously on EV Grieve:
There are 21 empty storefronts along Avenue A

Food OK now at the former Amato Opera

Not much has happened of late at the former Amato Opera, the historic opera house that closed last May after a 61-year run. As Curbed noted, the building sold for $3.7 million.

I had hope for this space after The Real Deal reported in January 2009 that the building's new owner wants another theater to occupy the ground floor.

Perhaps the building's owner changed his mind. Big "store for rent" signs are now up...



... and, as you can see, food is also OK here now ...


\

In more disturbing news, someone removed the commemorative plaque that was placed above the doorway last June.



This isn't a good sign.

As for rent, the address hasn't been listed yet at 9300 Realty.

For further reading:
Amato Opera (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Quick withdraw: HSBC name-change shocker!

As I exclusively reported with an exclusive back on April 27, the new HSBC branch at Second Avenue and Ninth Street showed off its new name... (and helpful warning that guns aren't allowed inside!)



The Stuyvesant Branch.

But now! The branch has changed its name!



Does this mean that the Stuyvesant HSBC branch on First Avenue just past 14th Street has been saved? Or did someone simply make a mistake? Or did millions in focus groups and rebranding just get tossed?

Maybe I should ask Mr. H.



Previously on EV Grieve:
Stuy Town neighbors rallying to save a bank branch

Former Cookout Grill turning Japanese

Over on First Avenue and 13th Street, there's work galore being done at the former Cookout Grill, home of the worst restaurant mascot in restaurant mascot history...

Let us pause...




To the news! A worker says a Japanese restaurant is opening here...



Previously on EV Grieve:
Action at the former Cookout Gill, where vandals beheaded their mascot

After less than six months, Matsukado shutters

Speaking of Japanese, as I noted back in December, Matsukado took over the old Baluchi's space on Second Avenue between Sixth Street and Seventh Street...

Last evening, EV Grieve reader Peter passed along these photos with the news that Matsukado has closed...



The monthly rent is, according to the sign posted on the door, $12,500 a month. And and they owe more than $30,000.




As Fork in the Road noted, Matsukado is family-owned with two other branches in Japan.

What's doing at the Economakis dream mansion on East Third Street?

Scoopy has an update this week in The Villager.



Take it away Scoopy....:

Lower East Side activist Susan Howard told us that a friend of hers who lives near 47 E. Third St. — the East Village "mass eviction" building — hasn't seen evidence of any work going on there for a while and thinks construction has ground to a halt.

Howard urged us to call Alistair and find out what’s up. "Work is progressing..." He said he doesn’t have a specific completion date for when the building will be ready for them to live in as their luxurious, single-family mansion. He said he and his family recently moved out of the place, and are temporarily living in Brooklyn until the job is done. "It came time we had to move out of there," he said of 47 E. Third St. "Our bedroom's gone — it was relocated to a different spot. The steps are being relocated. It was much simpler to just open everything up and build everything at once." Economakis said all the building’s windows are boarded up on the inside, not because no work is going on, but to protect the windows while work is going on.

[EV Grieve file photo]

Previously on EV Grieve:
And Economakis gets the whole building for his dream mansion

The 47 E. 3rd St. protest in video

At the 47 E. 3rd St. protest

Conspiracies: Where are all the fliers?