The Neighborhood School’s Holiday Fair:
A FUN FAIR FOR A GREAT CAUSE!
The Neighborhood School’s beloved Holiday Fair is back! On Sunday, December 5, from 11 am to 5 pm, come out to support a local public school and have a blast. There’ll be carnival games, arts & crafts, face-painting, print-making, henna and temporary tattooing, a huge kid-built maze (made of deconstructed cardboard boxes — the Avenue A equivalent of a corn maze), a raffle and great food from neighborhood vendors including Ciao for Now, Solo Pizza and Mudspot.
And of course there’s the silent auction. A mere sampling of items up for bids this year: Gift certificates to terrific local shops, salons, spas, yoga studios and gyms; passes to the Landmark Sunshine; museum memberships; theater subscriptions; Knicks tickets; Doyle & Doyle jewelry; family portraits by professional artists and photographers; meals at fave neighborhood spots like Mama’s Food Shop, Esperanto, Il Buco, Sugar Sweet Sunshine, Café Mogador, Caracas Arepa Bar, Balthazar and many more! Bid online or in person. Neighborhood School dad and EV institution Richard “Handsome Dick” Manitoba and writer Zoe Hansen will host a live auction at 3pm. Bidding closes at 4pm.
Admission to the fair is free and open to the public. Wondering what a progressive public school in the East Village is like? Come check us out! This is a great (and cheap) way to have fun indoors with your kids on a chilly winter’s day; you can have a nosh and shop for some great items while your kids run around playing and art-making with their friends. Proceeds from the fair support the Neighborhood School PTA, a 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization that pays for the school’s art and music education, field trips, classroom supplies, special programs and teacher support. The Neighborhood School is at 121 East 3rd Street between First Avenue and Avenue A
A once-seedy slice of the East Village is turning into a new night-life Mecca, drawing crowds of late-night revelers to increasingly trendy nooks.
The stretch along East Third Street between Avenues A and D has long appealed to culinary and night-life entrepreneurs. Now, the area is teeming with newly opened bars and restaurants, more of which are venturing farther east toward the grittier Avenue D.
"The rents have gone way, way up, so that the people who made this community vibrant in the first place can't afford to live here," said Susan Stetzer, district manager of Community Board 3, who lives on East Third Street.
Despite those signs of success, some ponder the impact of the changing demographics on the neighborhood.
"It's a weird vibe when people come here for events who have no context of the economics or politics of the Lower East Side—they just come for events." said Steve Cannon, a poet, playwright, novelist and retired professor at City University of New York, who founded A Gathering of Tribes in 1990.
