BMW Guggenheim Lab did great things here, BMW Guggenheim Lab says

From the EV Grieve inbox yesterday ... a news release titled "BMW Guggenheim Lab Site Officially Returned to the City of New York, Transformed into Community Park" ... Here are the three best passages...

Richard Armstrong [Director of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Foundation] stated, “We are deeply grateful to the City of New York for joining with us in this adventure by allowing a Parks & Recreation property to be the inaugural site of the BMW Guggenheim Lab. We were convinced that the vitality and creativity of this dense, urban East Village location would be the ideal place to launch this experiment. Thanks to the understanding and cooperation of the City, this prediction was realized beyond our best hopes.”

And!

The Lab’s wide range of programs encouraged community engagement and offered insight about today’s dense and changing urban environments, including the need for: the increased activity and involvement of community and neighborhood groups to institute urban change; stronger personal relationships and social interaction within cities to help achieve community cohesiveness; an increased focus on the reuse and revitalization of existing physical and organizational structures; and a growing interest in understanding urban interactions through the use of open-sourced data and models.

Love it when you talk about open-sourced data and models!

The BMW Guggenheim Lab New York received a highly positive response from the public, many of whom have praised its ability to bring individuals together, evoke a sense of community, generate positive energy, provoke questions and then listen to what people have to say, and ignite dialogue that can continue on long after the departure of the physical Lab structure.

Generate positive energy? They must have missed the comments here ... and here...

In any event, the Park is back in the community's hands... a subject we'll have more on later...

FRIDAY: BoweryBoogie has a rundown on Saturday's festivities here.

Previously on EV Grieve:
The Guggenheim wants our rat-infested First Street lot

Residents pitching in to help refurbish First Street garden

Designs for urban life apparently don't include trees

Continuing to question the BMW Guggenheim Lab's benefits to the local community

6th Street Kitchen space for rent

This past Jan. 4, a fire destroyed the 6th Street Kitchen between Avenue A and Avenue B. (You may read our coverage here.)

[EV Grieve reader Jamie]

At the time, owner Chris Genoversa had hoped to reopen. In early spring, chef Andrew Kraft moved on to a new gig on the Upper West Side. With that announcement, the 6th Street folks said "the space is still boarded up but we’re optimistically hoping for something fantastic there in the future."

This is how the space looked in September...

[Dave on 7th]

And this week, "for rent" signs appeared over the rolldown gate...

We reached out to Genoversa for comment last night.

Demolition returns to 11-17 Second Avenue

Last Wednesday, a worker at the site of the demolition of 9-17 Second Avenue suffered a leg injury after being struck by falling debris.

The city promptly issued a full stop work order...

Yesterday, the city rescinded the stop work order ... (hope that you can speak DOBese...)

Bobby Williams noted the crews back on the scene yesterday...

Seems to be just a shell left here ...

Noted

Spotted recently on the gated driveway outside 52E4 — the 15 stories of condo on the Bowery and East Fourth Street.

Back in 15 minutes? What happens if we have an important delivery for John Legend that can't wait?

Report: Jury deliberations begin tomorrow in slaying of Edgard Mercado

In September 2009, police arrested 22-year-old Davawn Robinson and charged him for the murder of Edgard Mercado, a CUNY professor who lived on Avenue C near East Eighth Street. According to the Post this evening, deliberations are set to start tomorrow morning. Robinson is accused of strangling Mercado. Robinson, who faces one second-degree murder count, has claimed that Mercado wanted to be strangled while having sex and that the death was accidental. Gay City News has more on the trial here.

Lunch date

Today in Tompkins Square Park. By Bobby Williams.

Going deep at the Schwimmer's for that 6-story new home

Work continues at 331 E. Sixth St. ... where we continue to speculate that the land under the formerly historic, now-demolished townhouse is the property of David Schwimmer. (A refresher on why this may belong to the "Friends" star here.)

Goggla passed along this photo. And we took a look at the site ourselves yesterday. The workers are digging deep... any deeper and they'll be in Hollywood soon...

There are permits galore now on file with the DOB... we're looking at "the erection of a 6 story one family building."

According to permits, Cooper Union grad (and current Trustee!) Leslie Gill is the architect of record. (No sign of the renderings yet, but we look forward to seeing them!) Among the many projects during her distinguished career, she did the master planning for Warner Bros. Records, Los Angeles. (Did you know that "Friends" was filmed on the Warner Bros. lot from 1994 to 2004?)

Meanwhile.

A caller told the DOB on Nov. 30 that workers are "doing unsafe demolition and it is causing his building to shake and it may cause structural damage."

And now, a comment someone left on Nov. 25 on one of the other Schwimmer posts:

You know what the difference between LA and NYC is (having lived in both places I can speak with some some degree of knowledge)?

In LA they don't give a rat's ass about the character of the neighborhood. There's very little consideration given to architectural context, and they have very few buildings that have been around since the 1850s.

Here we take some pride in the fact that our neighborhoods have some character, and saying that someone can do 'anything they want' with an old building may be technically true, but is completely out of the spirit of what makes this city different and why neighborhoods like the LES/EV what they are.

If someone comes in and buys a perfectly nice old building (and one that might actually be landmark-worthy) and then razes it to put up some monolith that has no relationship to the what's around it, well, then that person is, um, well, an idiot.

Having some knowledge of the world that Mr. Schwimmer comes from, it's not strange that he did what he's doing, because in his world oversize garish houses on small lots is what you DO. You could really care less about what your neighbors do or think or even what their house looks like.

Here, however, that's really annoying and I'd even go so far as to say dramatically uncool. Welcome to NY, David. It's clear you're just an interloper with more cash than sense.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Is David Schwimmer the 'Friends' star who now owns the demolished 331 E. Sixth St. townhouse?

Outrage over total demolition of historic East Sixth Street townhouse

[Updated] Hospital Productions closes on East Third Street

Hospital Productions, the specialty record store that peddled black metal and noise music, has evidently closed up its shop at 60 E. Third St. between First Avenue and Second Avenue. Someone has cleaned out the store and there's that "for rent" sign in the middle of the front window...

I first noticed the sign when it was above the store last month.

Via email, I asked the Hospital folks on Nov. 15 if they were closing/moving. They told me they were "just working on a huge inventory project."

When I saw that the store was empty, I sent another email asking if they were moving or only selling items from their label online ... I received the following: "I am currently out of the office until 2012. Thank you for your patience."

UPDATED: East Village Radio provides more background and color on just how unique this store was...

Hospital was a store like no other in this city, selling a wide-range of fringe music and sound-art from a variety of genres. Established by Dominick Fernow as an extension of his tape label bearing the same name in 2006, Hospital’s early life as a retail outlet was spent in the basement of Jammyland—a record store specializing in dub and reggae. In those days, you’d walk down the aisle of Jammyland while the clerk eyed you suspiciously until you hit an almost totally vertical ladder to descend into Fernow’s foxhole filled with noise, black metal and experimental cassettes, LPs and CDs. Jammyland eventually left, and Hospital ascended from the basement and took over the ground level storefront at 60 East 3rd Street.

Silent night, dark knight: Where are the Tompkins Square Park holiday lights?

On Sunday, we attended the annual tree lighting in the Park ...

Flashback!

[Bobby Williams]

And as this dark, grainy photo shows... the lights are off... they were off Sunday night and last night...

Perhaps it is as simple as someone isn't plugging in the lights? Other theories (or facts!) are welcome...

The night that the music died on East 14th Street

EV Grieve reader joe spotted this old beaut outside the Crocodile Lounge on East 14th Street last evening...

He couldn't find a date of manufacture, but the 10-year warranty must have expired.

This week; Theatre 80's documentary series and short films from Occupy Wall Street

From the EV Grieve inbox...



Theatre 80 and WingFlix present a documentary series of films from around the world and shorts from Occupy Wall Street. Tickets are $10 and may be ordered online here. Come in and have a drink at Theatre80’s William Barnacle Tavern and talk to the filmmakers. Charles Krezell curates this series.

Tuesday, December 13 @8.00pm

“The Orange Chronicles” 2006, documentary 98 minutes Ukraine

The 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine was a massive demonstration of people for democracy and against electoral fraud. Millions braved freezing weather conditions to fight against stolen elections.

THE ORANGE CHRONICLES is a powerfully moving and unique examination of Ukraine's Orange Revolution from the perspective of an intrepid Ukrainian-American filmmaker, recording the build-up to what turned out to be one of the most astonishing bloodless political turnarounds in recent history. Filmmaker, Damian Kolodiy will attend.

Wednesday, December 14 @7:30pm

“Granito, how to nail a dictator” 2011, documentary 103 minutes, Guatemala, Spain, U.S.

GRANITO is a story of destinies joined by Guatemala’s past, and how a documentary film intertwined with a nation’s turbulent history emerges as an active player in the present.

Thursday, December 15 @7:30pm

“Bigger than the Beatles, Obama and the Peeps” documentary 81 minutes, Washington, D.C.

Bigger than the Beatles takes you to Washington, D.C. for the week of January 20, 2009, and Inauguration of Barack Obama. It captures the energy and spirit of that historic event as seen through the eyes of Everyday People.

Because you want to know that the 7-Eleven on the Bowery has added more signage

However subtle...

Could be worse, right?

Previously.

In other East Village signage news...

Signs have recently appeared on First Avenue between Sixth Street and Seventh Street at the incoming L’asso EV ...

From the people behind Mott Street pizzeria L’asso.

And on Avenue C at Ninth Street, the sign is up for The Wayland, the bar taking over the Banjo Jim's space....

3 scenes from Tompkins Square Park today

Photos by Bobby Williams.