Silent night...

Keep getting my holidays mixed up... In any event, St. Brigid's tonight...

Thanksgiving for Sandy Survivors

Volunteers are at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery preparing for the free Thanksgiving meal for people displaced by Superstorm Sandy... 1-4 today...

Per @AMDuross on Twitter — 11am lots of people from EV and other neighborhoods rolling in with donations. Smells amazing.

Holiday tree stands ready for action

Picking up from the earlier post today... holiday tree stands are up and ready at two other neighbor spots... First Avenue and East 14th Street...

...and Second Avenue at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery... looking forward to the arrival of the Holiday Hovel here... (cooler than the Creepy Camper...)

Our tree sources say that the, uh, trees will arrive tomorrow at the First Avenue/14th Street location...

Previously.

On Thanksgiving, remembering the turkey of El Jardín del Paraíso

There is a bit of a mystery surrounding the demise of the turkey who lived in El Jardín del Paraíso on East Fourth Street between Avenue C and Avenue D ... as previously noted, flyers about the turkey's death (from "neglect") were placed by someone in adjacent residential buildings ...

EVG reader Emily Iason took these photos on Oct. 30 ... the day after Superstorm Sandy... looking well...

Meanwhile, other feathered residents are OK there... per these photos by Bobby Williams last week...

It has begun (aka breaking): Christmas tree stand going up outside Rite Aid

The annual passage (or something): Workers began assembling the Christmas holiday tree stand outside Rite Aid on First Avenue and East Fifth Street last, per EVG Twitter friend @JorgeO ... No word just yet on when the trees will arrive ... Meanwhile, inside Rite Aid, the 12-ounce canisters of Original Gourmet Butter Cookies are on sale (with wellness+ card) for $1.69 through Saturday.

'Twas the night before Thanksgiving, when all through Tompkins Square Park...

Not sure that's how it goes. Photos from late afternoon via Bobby Williams...

Stogo is closing on East 10th Street

Stogo, the Vegan ice cream shop on East 10th Street just west of Second Avenue, is closing on Sunday.

Sad News All: Sunday will be our last day open. :( Hope to see all of you until then!

— stogo ice cream (@stogonyc) November 20, 2012

The shop first announced the move yesterday via Twitter. DNAinfo's Serena Solomon following up today, reporting:

With the business battling high rent all year, eight days without income during the post-hurricane blackout and the winter a bad time for sales, Stogo's owners made the call to close.

"We were talking about closing, but [Hurricane Sandy] put a nail in the coffin," said the source, who works at the store on East 10th Street between Second and Third Avenue.

"We were going to try and fundraise to move, but then Sandy happened and I didn't want to ask people to help move our shop when people were homeless and had lost everything," the source added.

Stogo opened in December 2008 at the site of the beloved A. Fontana Shoe Repair, forced out after 45 years due to a big rent hike.

[Jeremiah's Vanishing New York]

Stogo's co-owner is Rob Sedgwick, the brother of actress Kyra.

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

[East Fifth Street yesterday via Bobby Williams]

Plans revealed for the former Billy's Antiques space (BoweryBoogie)

NYPD officers convicted of official misconduct in the rape of an East Village woman will start serving their sentences next month (The Daily News)

35 years later: Tommy Ramone on Rocket To Russia (The Huffington Post)

More on the LES Pathmark closure (The Lo-Down)

A feature on LES cobblers (DNAinfo)

Eater is compiling a list of NYC food-related Sandy fundraisers for local and national charities (Eater)

A lonely South Street Seaport (The Gog Log)

Charles Dickens tours NYC in 1842 (Ephemeral New York)

Good news for a barber in Chelsea (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

And when we last saw East Village Fruit & Vegetable on Avenue B at East 14th Street, the winds from Sandy were ready to rip off the store's awning... DJ Xerox of copycat passes along a photo of the store's new look...

Rolf's annual Con Ed winter wonderland

Hey, it's that time of year when the holiday lights go up at Rolf's ... and we make some jokey Con Ed reference.

Anyway! Here are a few photos of the 2012 lights and Victorian-era tchochkes from last night at the German eatery on Third Avenue at 22nd Street...

And they have the doll with the Brian Jones haircut...

Previously on EV Grieve:
'Tis the season for keeping ConEd in business: The holiday lights are up at Rolf's

Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.

By James Maher

Name: Cosmo Yannis
Occupation: Cartoon Artist
Location: 2nd Street, Between 1st and 2nd Ave
Time: 2:35 pm on Monday, November 19

I’m an artist. I’m a bona-fide starving artist. I do cartoons right now. It’s mostly underground, kind of counter-culture stuff. I’ve been at it for 20 years. I make contributions to different publication, like The Shadow, and sometimes the High Times, just for different causes and to free the weed. What’s crazy is that you can go into a bar and get drunk off your ass, but you can’t have a little puff. It’s changing. It’s the will of the people. The worst thing that weed will do for you is make you raid your refrigerator.

I don’t drink; I don’t smoke cigarettes. I just do weed now and then. I do most of my cooking at home; I’m basically an organic kid. I shop organic and I do green juicing every day. I go to the gym every day. I’m not totally a vegetarian. I’ll eat a chicken now and then; I’ll eat an egg now and then. But I don’t eat meat.

The only reason I moved down here was because it was so cheap. Back when I moved to Orchard Street it was like the twilight zone. All the stores were gated. Women were afraid to walk down Orchard Street, from Houston on down. I used to walk by bars and women would ask if I could escort them to Houston. It was that bad.

I had a couple of Japanese friends who came visiting once and when they found out they were on the Lower East Side, one of them put their hand on their heart, because the Japanese embassy told them not to go down here. They told them to stay away. It was just scary here because you’d walk down the street and everything was closed. You’d wonder, ‘what the hell am I doing here.’ When I first moved in there was a drug dealer on every corner and they would be saying things like, ‘Christmas Trees, Santa Claus.’ Reindeer, that was the codeword for Heroin. At night I’d hear a few gunshots and wonder what the hell I was doing here. But it was cheap.

Now, forget about it – across the street from my building you’ve got a 23-story building going up. They stopped it right now, there seems to be a big dispute. We’ve got all these bars opening up and all these loudmouth people in the middle of the night. And the cigarette smokers right outside my window. Bloomberg put them out on the street, right outside of my bedroom window. When I hit the lotto, man, I’m gonna hire about 400 cigarette smokers and have a big party in front of his house.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

A woody start for The Third Man on Avenue C

The plywood came down around the former Lava Gina space the other day on Avenue C between East Seventh Street and East Eighth Street... Dave on 7th passed along this photo from yesterday...

Coming soon: A new cocktail lounge from the Edi & the Wolf people down the next block... The lounge will be called The Third Man, named after the 1949 film-noir classic starring Orson Welles and Joseph Cotton.

Per Eater: "The Third Man's food program will focus on Austrian-style small plates ... it'll be a fairly small, 15 seat affair. The décor is inspired by Vienna's Loos Bar, complete with 'floating' steel bar hanging from the ceiling."

Management is really earning its money now

A front door somewhere along East 11th Street.

At the New Amsterdam Lantern Walk

In Tompkins Square Park this early evening...

The Lantern Walk is a tradition of German origin that marks the midpoint between the fall equinox and winter solstice and offers a celebration of the light that glows ever brighter within us, even as the days of the year grow dark and cold.

Photos by Bobby Williams. Find more info about the Walk here.

[Updated] Report: Skateboarder dies after collision with truck at Union Square

A 24-year-old skateboarder died today after he swerved into the path of a truck at Union Square, according to a report via the Daily News.

Per the report, he was riding with traffic along Broadway when "he suddenly turned in front of the moving delivery truck" at East 17th Street.

BoweryBoogie has more details here, including a rather graphic photo.

Updated 3:26 p.m.

Gothamist has more details here.