EV Grieve

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Passing the Bao torch on St. Mark's Place

Eater reported on Friday that Michael 'Bao' Huynh will turn DOB 111 on St. Mark's Place into Barbao, his restaurant that closed last year on the Upper West Side. He's not messing around... the old DOB sign has already been painted over....

Then!

Now!

The Mila Kunis 'Black Swan' Oscar campaign heats up

Now including dumpster tagging...

On East 12th Street near Second Avenue.

Monday, January 17, 2011

East Sixth Street, 8:12 p.m., Jan. 17

At the Mystery Lot Jr.

East Houston between Attorney and Ridge.

This morning outside the Cooper Square Hotel

Regardless if this had anything to do with the hotel... management must have loved an exterminator's truck parked near the entrance...

Tompkins Square Park Igloo back on the market

Hey, that "Soho-style" igloo in the heart of East Greenwich Village in Tompkins Square Park is back on the market. We wrote about it last March. For some reason, it disappeared from the market a week or later.

We checked out the history at StreetEasy:

12/30/2007
Listed by Corcoran at $7,000,000.

3/16/2008
Listing is no longer available.

12/04/2008
Re-listed by Corcoran.

12/18/2008
Listing is no longer available.

01/08/2009
Re-listed by Corcoran.

02/08/2009
Price decreased by 8% to $6,450,000.

3/01/2009
Delisted temporarily.

12/19/2009
Re-listed by Corcoran.

03/19/2010
Price decreased by 11% to $5,750,000.

03/21/2010
Price decreased by 8% to $5,295,000.

03/22/2010
Price decreased by 6% to $4,995,000.

03/24/2010
Listing is no longer available.

1/18/2011
Re-listed by Corcoran.

Anyway! Here it is!

A Princess among us?

The Post reports today that financial adviser Christopher O'Neill, who lives somewhere in the East Village, is now dating Princess Madeleine of Sweden.

O'Neill did not return phone calls, and no one answered the door at his East Village residence, where neighbors say they've spotted the couple canoodling.

[Image via]

In Memoriam: Roger M. Lane

Yesterday marked the seventh anniversary of Jodie Lane's death... She was a 30-year-old doctoral candidate at the Teacher’s College at Columbia University. During the late afternoon of Jan. 16, 2004, Lane, who lived on East 12th Street with her boyfriend, was walking her dogs. She was electrocuted on a snow-covered Con Edison junction box on the southwest corner of 11th Street at First Avenue.

The street was named in her honor in the spring of 2005.

I'm bringing all this up because I just heard that her father, Roger M. Lane, passed away in Texas on Dec. 31. He was 63. Many people were moved by his crusade for justice in his daughter's death. In November 2004, ConEd agreed to pay Lane's family more than $6.2 million and to set up a $1 million scholarship fund in her name at Columbia.

Wrote Gothamist at the time: "We're also very impressed with the efforts of the Lane family, especially Roger Lane, Jodie's father, to push Con Ed to improve its procedures, and we thank the family for caring enough to make sure other New Yorkers are safe."

Gunnar Hellekson, who spearheaded the reform of safety regulations for New York State’s electrical utilities following Lane's death, remembered Roger Lane in a recent post at OnePeople.

"As part of his settlement with ConEd, he’d negotiated access to ConEdison’s safety data, and he spent much of his time in retirement pouring over it. He was using that methodical, exacting, analytical mind to find trends, holes, and anomalies. He wanted to hold ConEd to account, even years after his daughter’s death. He didn’t want another father to suffer the way he did."

I remember the night of Jan. 16, 2004, fairly clearly. It was a Friday, and I was out at Sophie's. This was the story that everyone seemed to be talking about. Did you hear about the woman who was electrocuted walking her dogs? It was such a harmless, everyday activity that you might not think twice about. The tragedy was a reminder of how much life hangs in balance on a daily basis.

Hellekson ended his post this way:

"Jodie Lane’s death brought a great deal of attention to the safety of New York’s electrical system. Until her death, a horse being electrocuted or a woman being burned alive were treated as freak accidents, an unusual but expected risk of living in New York City. After a year of hearings and public attention, it is now understood in both city government and in Albany that these are not acceptable risks, and that something can be done about them. That is Jodie Lane’s legacy. That legacy was secured in 2005, when East 11th Street was named 'Jodie Lane Place.'"

Read more about the Jodie S. Lane Public Safety Foundation here.

About Mercadito Cantina closing: 'Open letter to EV Grieve and CB3'

As we first reported on Friday, Mercadito Cantina on Avenue B is closing on Jan. 30 ...

We received the following note via e-mail on Friday night... titled Open letter to EV Grieve and CB3:

Hello. I am a server at Mercadito Cantina. I'm 22 and I grew up here in the East Village. My Dad's from here too. I find many of the comments regarding our closing highly insensitive and offensive.

I'm really sad about our closing. The staff here works very hard and we have become like extended family to each other. Most of us have been working together here for over 2 years. A lot of us are from the area and the owner and mgmt were really cool about hiring us back during off time between semesters to make some extra cash. To wish us gone or to say we were some kind of bad thing for the community is just wrong.

I know for a fact that Cantina often donated food and gift certificates to many local schools and fund-raising events. I know because I got to serve at some of those events. To say that our neighbors didn't like us is also wrong. All of the shop owners on Ave B are very friendly and close. We get discounts at the vintage shop next store so I doubt we were hurting their business at all. I am also confused about some of the comments saying our costumers were 'D Bags' because most of the people I served were locals. Yes, on Friday and Saturday night we'd get some B&T, but that happens everywhere. As far as I ever knew, the neighborhood really liked us.

It is also incredibly insensitive to say it's 'good' we're closing when you think about the fact that around 25 of us are now going to be out of a job. I am a student and I wasn't planning on staying at the restaurant past the summer, but there are other people, especially the chefs, who have responsibilities and families to take care of. The chefs are decent hard-working guys. They don't deserve any bad feelings.

My soon to be ex-manager is also from here. I want to tell you this story about what he did because I think it says all you need to know about whether or not our restaurant was a good place to have in the East Village. Two summers ago, there was a a group of kids running around Ave B basically making it their mission to wreak as much havoc as possible. Knock over the newspaper machines, throw things, yell and scream at random people, etc. They were driving everyone nuts. They gave an especially hard time to the Frank Sinatra looking dude at 11B ... always throwing his to-go menus all over the street and knocking over his special board. Anyone who seen that guy can vouch that he's a tough-looking dude.

So, when my manager told me he was going to get to know these kids and try to hire a couple of them I thought he was A) out of his mind or B) had a death wish. I should mention he's like 5'5 and not intimidating looking at all. Sure enough he hired two of the kids. One of them is still with us as a bus boy. We had a staff meeting around that time and he told us to welcome the new guys as if they were any other new hires. He never got into why he hired those guys and I never asked him but I assume he felt he had some sort of responsibility as a guy running a business in the neighborhood. He is actually a very sweet guy.

A bunch of us got to go to the CB3 meeting when we applied for a full license the second time. Our manager and one of the owners went up there and basically got yelled at by the ladies who ran the meeting. I really felt they were really confrontational and disrespectful at certain points. Almost looking for a fight. Toward the end they asked the crowd if anyone had complaints or anything against granting us our license and no one in the crowd said a word! I thought we were going to get it!

At one point my boss told one of the women on the panel that he really needed the license because the restaurant had a lot of debt and that there was a whole staff of people waiting for good news and that their jobs depended on it. The woman told my manager that if the restaurant closed it would just create new opportunities for someone else. They asked us why we didn't ask for full liquor when we opened and the owner said he wanted to prove that he wasn't going to be a bar but a real restaurant. The woman then accused him of trying to trick her!!! They did not give us the license. They said places like ours were bad for the neighborhood. I wanted my boss to tell them about some of the things we've done. For some reason, he didn't say a word. Maybe he figured it was a lost cause.

I hope you print this letter. I feel that some of the people on this site and CB3 lump all restaurants and bars into one big group and label us all bad without ever bothering to do a little research or find out what we are all about. I also feel that a lot of these people like to sit around and write swear-laced comments and bitch and complain about the good old days but, they never do anything positive. The story I told you about my boss, that's positive. Who on this site or CB3 has done things like that. We are going to close and a lot of us will probably be unemployed for a while before we get another job. But, the real losers are CB3 and the community. Whether you realize it or not is another story.

Previously on EV Grieve:
[Updated] Mercadito Cantina closing Jan. 30

[Image via]

Do those security cameras on the Kenny Scharf mural really work?

Yes they do, says Billy Leroy, who first passed along the tip that someone had installed security cameras here on the wall at Houston and the Bowery after the latest Kenny Scharf bombing...

A few people questioned whether these things were actually working...

Billy, the proprietor of Billy's Antiques, checked in with the wall's landlord... and learned the cameras are active and recording the wall 24/7.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Latest addition to Kenny Scharf's mural: Security cameras

The Little Bird closes

The Little Bird, the vegan cafe that opened on Avenue B near 11th Street last June, appears to be shuttered. The phone has been disconnected. We contacted one of the owners via e-mail, though haven't heard back. This is seemingly a tough space to make work. The previous tenant, Panache Cafe, lasted just four months. And before this, Cafe de Nova.

Maybe it's — in part — the competition... you have B Cup Café on the corner of 13th Street... and Ninth Street Espresso around the corner on 10th Street (and not to mention their location on Ninth Street and Avenue C...).

Goat Town City Limit

Goat Town over on Fifth Street between Avenue A and Avenue B now has exterior signage...

Subtle enough. And, hey — how about the food? We haven't eaten there ourselves... a few trustworthy EV Grieve regulars have tried it... all say the food is quite good, though portion size seems to vary... and one commenter said that upon his visit, everyone eating and working at Goat Town looked like Luke Wilson's character (pre haircut) from "The Royal Tenenbaums."