Please mind the new tree on St. Mark's Place

[Photo from May 2013 by EVG reader Ann]

Just about one year ago, plenty of people were pissed after the city chopped down a seemingly healthy ornamental Callery pear tree on St Mark's Place … on the south side of the street near No. 12.

A resident let his/her feelings known — arborcide!


[Photo by Chloe Sweeney McGlade via Facebook]

In November, someone used discarded cooktops, and many other items, to decorate the tree well…


[EVG photo from November 2013]

On Monday, the city planted a new tree in the spot, as part of the MillionTreesNYC program…



And by yesterday, there was a friendly reminder on the tree…



Previously on EV Grieve:
'Arborcide' — People are pissed that this tree was chopped down on St. Mark's Place

[Updated] Behold the cooktop sidewalk garden on St. Mark's Place

Hang out this summer in a St. Mark's Place penthouse — hammocks included

In case that you are in the market for a "furnished summer penthouse rental" on St. Mark's Place. Then you're in luck! Here's a new listing via Streeteasy:

gorgeous loft in the heart of the east village ...massive open loft with windows on 4 sides, a gigantic fire place, hardwood floors and 14' ceilings. windowed kitchen and windowed bath, top floor of elevator building.

Hmm, no mention of those hammocks seen hanging in the pic above. Also, that fireplace might not be too useful if we are in for the oppressively hot summer that summer weather predictors are, um, predicting...



Anyway! The rent: $5,900. The penthouse is at 12 St. Mark's Place — in the former German-American Shooting Society Clubhouse. Back in the late 1880s, the building housed a saloon, bowling alley as well as a small shooting range in the basement.

Movie night in Tompkins Square Park

Earlier this evening… where the assembled were watching "Spider-Man" (unsure it it was the Maguire or Garfield version). The laptop is propped on a trash can, and one moviegoer is sitting on the trash can lid.

Photo by Zak Zavada

A boomtown rat

A TRN original at 190 Bowery. Photo via jdx

Thoughts on the 2014 version of the Tompkins Square Park riot of 1998

[Photo from May 1 by Michael Donovan]

Back on May 1, filmmakers Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini recreated the Tompkins Square Park riots of 1988 for their low-budget adaption of the Eleanor Henderson novel "Ten Thousand Saints." (Read more about the film, due next year, right here.)

Ada Calhoun, who grew up on St. Mark's Place, was 13 in 1988 ... and she was one of the curious onlookers watching the reenactment on May 1. Today at The New Yorker, she shares some thoughts on the filming ... as well as of those who worked as extras on the set.

One man in the gaggle looked more convincing than the others. He was wearing a jacket with a logo for the eighties hardcore band Sheer Terror, and a backward black baseball cap. He had neck and face tattoos, including one that read “Queens” in elaborate script, and two teardrop tattoos under one eye. He identified himself as Danny Diablo, a hardcore musician and native New Yorker who lived near the park at the time of the riots.

“No way,” he said, when asked if he took part in the original riots. “I was a hardcore kid. I didn’t care about politics. My friends are drinking at a bar by here. I hope they don’t come and give me a hard time for doing this.” Asked what the sign he carried said, he appeared embarrassed. It compared Mayor Ed Koch to Hitler. “I actually love Ed Koch,” he said. Next to Diablo, a longhaired man wearing a heavy black leather jacket with fringe chimed in, “Why am I in this jacket? Isn’t it supposed to be August?” He shrugged. He’d answered a casting call. He was just going to go with it.

Read the whole article here (which includes an EVG shout-out).

Previously on EV Grieve:
Filmmakers will recreate the Tompkins Square Park Riot of 1988 this Thursday night

Film crew recreates 'tent city' in Tompkins Square Park

Film crew uses 'D Squat' and phone booths to recreate an 1980s East Village on 6th Street

[Updated] First Avenue subbing for Avenue D today

Another 'riot' in Tompkins Square Park, this time for the cameras

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: Yehuda Emmanuel Safran
Occupation: Professor of Architecture at Columbia University
Location: 7th Street and Avenue B
Date: Thursday, May 15 at 4 p.m.

I was born in Palestine, but I’m officially French. I became French in 1989. I lived 20 years in London, a few years in Paris, and 18 years in New York, in Manhattan. I lived in the West Village, up in Columbia housing, and then seven years ago a colleague who was living on the corner of 7th and C invited me to stay for a month. That convinced me. The next thing I did, I found myself a place.

I’m a professor of architecture in Columbia’s School of Architecture. I also have a magazine called Potlatch. You know what potlatch means? It’s a word used by Indians from the northwest, near Seattle, to describe a very ancient ritual of giving presents. One tribe would give a great deal of presents to another tribe. My magazine is dedicated to the gift of art and architecture.

Seven years ago I established Alphabet City as a site for my project at Columbia. The project invites the students to write the program for some type of contribution to Alphabet City. There’s one library here ... there’s only one Turkish bath. There are no sports clubs. So we have been working for the last seven years, every autumn, doing different projects. We meet at Esperanto at the corner of 9th Street and Avenue C every Sunday evening at 8:30. The students decide. It’s difficult to say what the most interesting project was, because there are so many, from a boxing arena, to a kind of new type of housing, improving on the large housing down there on Avenue D, or a project to establish a swimming pool in the Park.

The East Village attracted me because it’s the least kind of consumer-oriented part of Manhattan and there are a lot of young people here and a lot of different people here. There’s a mixture. It’s more lively and more interesting, in my experience at least.

There are too many [new apartment buildings] and they are too ugly. I think the main problem is the ugliness and the inappropriate development. It’s troubling. Not enough attention is paid to the quality of the designs. It’s driven by real-estate consideration. Ultimately we cannot ignore it, but when it becomes a dominant feature, it doesn’t add anything to the quality of life here.

The problem here of course is the rent went up dramatically over these years. Landlords are very greedy and when they sniff out a chance to make more they jump at it. On the other hand, in 2008, the crisis was a good thing for Alphabet City and the East Village because until then there was a real threat of development, especially from NYU and private development. They were moving in very fast. The local people got threatened by it. They thought that the rent would become out of their reach, and they were right, except the economic crisis stopped this rush of development, which meant that I could even go to my landlady and negotiate the rent down. It came down for a couple of years, but then they picked up.

I think cheap housing is very important. It’s vital. That is a very lively problem in Alphabet City and the East Village in general, because there is a high average of low-income people. I think that is something to cultivate and not to stamp it out.

The East Village has a lot of the general kind of poverty, but poverty all the same. I feel more comfortable among poor people than among well-off people. I know many artists, writers, and so on. I live here because I’m attracted to the kind of ordinariness. This kind of ordinariness and low-key nature is very attractive to me.

There was a great man in France in the 19th century named Proudhon. He was a difficult man, so not completely great, and he wrote the book "The Philosophy of Poverty." Marx was so unkind that he immediately published a book called "The Poverty of Philosophy."

"The Philosophy of Poverty" was interesting because it argued in favor of being poor, in the sense that there’s nothing wrong with being poor. It’s just, society has to allow the poor to be poor, and not to make their lives unnecessarily difficult.

One of the worst things about our society is that it wants to punish you for being poor. It’s easy to understand why, because capitalism thrives on the relentless effort to become richer and richer, because being rich according to this kind of world ethic means that the gods are in your favor. So people are striving so hard that they neglect their life to the extent that they really make the lives of poor people unnecessarily worse, when in fact there are many virtues to being poor. A society that punishes people for being poor is much poorer for it. So that is what I have to say.

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

Rebranded 'Eleventh and Third' will have rentals upwards of $10k

[Friday!]

We've been watching the three-day effort to raise the sidewalk bridge on Third Avenue at East 11th Street …


[Monday!]


[Yesterday!]

All this is ahead of the big renovations at 55 Third Ave., which despite its drab appearance, is not an NYU dorm. The Benchmark Real Estate Group actually paid $57 million for the 12-floor building late last year.

The Real Deal had the scoop yesterday on what to expect in the currently-tenant-free building, now known as Eleventh and Third:

Rent for the units will range from $3,500 for a studio to $6,000 for a one-bedroom to as much as $10,000 for a two-bedroom, the spokesperson said. Some of the one- and two-bedroom apartments feature a private outdoor space.

Oft!

The building is getting a makeover to look less dormy.

As for the retail tenants that share the building … The Smith and M2M appear to be safe.

However, the owners of NY Copy & Printing had to vacate their home here after 22 years, as we first reported.



The owners told us the that the building's new landlord wouldn't continue their lease. Fortunately, NY Copy found a home on East Seventh Street.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Someone actually paid $57 million for this East Village building

Reimagining this 12-story East Village building, now on the market

NY Copy & Printing forced out of longtime E. 11th St. home, opening second location on E. 7th St.

City of Saints bringing coffee to East 10th Street

Signs are up at the former psychic storefront (oh, Jessica!) at 79 E. 10th Street near Fourth Avenue for City of Saints Coffee Roasters … coming soon here…



We don't know a thing about these Saints… they have an Instagram account … and a teaser website that notes "proudly roasted in Brooklyn, served up at 1320 Bloomfield St., Hoboken" … which appears to be an apartment building via Google Street view …

Thanks to EVG reader JBA for the tip.

Former Tu Casa Recording Studio space for lease on Avenue B

[EVG file photo from last June]

Last summer, Tu Casa left its longtime home of 40-plus years … the great mural that adorned the front of 95 Avenue B near East Sixth Street was also whited out …

The "for lease" sign arrived on Monday…



The rendering looks something Zzzzzzzz like…



There's not much info, such as asking rent, on the listing:

Description: Rare opportunity to lease legal commercial loft-like ground floor and second floor in pre-war building. Floors can be connected by tenant via internal stairway. Available for rent separately. High visibility on busy avenue block, in a great residential neighborhood. Space is currently raw and vacant. Approx. 11 ft. high ceilings, great light; basement space of approximately 650 sf. Building undergoing gut renovations.

Tu Casa had been around since 1972. A lengthy list of musicians have played here through the years, including Butch Morris, Black Flag, the Bush Tetras, Dee Dee Ramone and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, to randomly name a few. There was talk that the studio would relocate to Brooklyn, but we never heard anything else about that move.

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

[This morning via an East 14th Street resident]

Beat poet Jack Micheline and the Mars Bar (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

A look at Ian Schrager's incoming Public hotel on Chrystie Street (BoweryBoogie)

100 years of Russ & Daughters on the Lower East Side (Eater)

An update on the endangered Children's Magical Garden (The Lo-Down)

Some video from the Dance Parade on Saturday (GammaBlog)

Visiting the "gallery haven" of the Lower East Side (Crain's)

The overwhelming persistence of neighborhood poverty (The Atlantic/CityLab)

Video: A day in the life of NYC's wonderful, endangered libraries (BoingBoing)

Looping the loop again in Coney Island (Amusing the Zillion)


[Tompkins Square Park this morning]

And now, stories from the Cadillac with the Tiger in it on East 2nd Street

EVG readers may know that we've long admired the above Cadillac on East Second Street ... the one with the stuffed Tiger in it, yes. So then we are especially thrilled to be presenting four stories from the Cadillac with the Tiger in it in the coming weeks... these are all true East Village stories told from the view of — yes — the Cadillac with the Tiger in it.

Hello from the Cadillac with the Tiger in It (Part 1 — Spring has sprung on East 2nd Street)

The magnolia tree in the cemetery bloomed a couple of weeks ago. I wasn't sure if I'd be around to see it — never thought this winter would end.

Each winter the block usually loses a resident. 1993-94 was the last bad winter before this one. (At least what I can remember — I was buried in ice and snow for most of it). That winter we lost Alex S., the old Polish guy who smoked a cigar on the stoop with his coffee and New York Post each morning.

Alex moved into 67 East 2nd St. during the Great Depression when it was a flophouse and he didn't pay any rent (I've often wondered what math the landlords used to raise zero rent by a percentage each year?). Whenever some young punk was having a party on his floor, Alex would stand at the top of the stairs with a crowbar telling the late arrivals to "go home, the party's over."

When spring finally came in '94, Alex was missing from the stoop. His friend Max was telling patrons at the First Avenue Laundromat that he heard that Alex had won the lottery and moved to Florida.

Max was a funny guy. He looked like a 4 & 1/2 foot tall Vladimir Lenin and always wore a Choo Choo Charlie hat and a long military trench coat. He supported himself by refurbishing old cameras and selling them at flea markets. In 20 years I barely heard him speak. He mostly grunted. Whereas Alex only went to the hospital when he lost 60 pounds at age 78 and they discovered he was diabetic, Max would often go to Beth Israel for numerous maladies only to come back later the same day saying no one wanted to treat him.

Max's story about Alex's Florida move sounded a bit ominous to me.

Sure enough, when the weather finally warmed up a carrion smell emanating from Alex' apartment brought the police. In Apt. 12 & 1/2 (It was actually apartment 13 but Alex was superstitious and formed the new numbers with strips of masking tape on his door) they found him.

Alex had been dead about 2-3 months. His body was kept frozen most of that time as he had slightly opened the window next to his bed. What remained of him lay there in his bed surrounded by hundreds of miniature plastic toy soldiers; cowboys and Indians; and odd prizes he had saved from breakfast cereal boxes.

On the back of his bedroom closet door was a 1950's photo of Alex and 3 men out fishing in a boat on a lake. Scrawled underneath the other 3 faces were the dates and years each had passed away before him.

Max had a similar fate befall him a couple of winters later, although he had been dead slightly less than a month when they found him.

Then there was Peter who used to feed the squirrels of the cemetery at dawn each morning. He'd make some weird chirping sound and several of them would crawl up his arms and jump onto his head. (Gross! I call them "rats with bushy tails" — at least they don't shit on me like the pigeons do.)

One winter Peter was found naked on his bathroom floor with a pen near his hand and a makeshift will scrawled on the lower portion of his bathroom door bequeathing the $60,000 cash stashed in his apartment to a lady on East 3rd Street who fed the pigeons and squirrels with him. (...don't know if she ever got any of that money?)

After those deaths a putrid smell seeped from their apartments for weeks. This was made worse by the brilliant super of the building's misguided notion that sprinkling powdered laundry detergent outside each apartment's door would neutralize the bad smell. To this day, the smell of laundry detergent nauseates me because in my mind I mix in the scent of decaying flesh.

----------------------------------------------

But I'm back, this old "war wagon" didn't succumb. Made it through this winter. Just barely — my battery went dead on some of the coldest days.

And I survived a scare this recent Easter weekend....

Between midnight and 1 a.m. Easter morning someone called the city on me and said I was leaking gasoline. Four fire trucks, three police cars and a dozen cops surrounded me for awhile and then left when they couldn't figure out what to issue me a citation for. Nice. Where are they when the weekend kids are puking on the sidewalks and pissing next to my wheels?

And who turned me in? Sure, I leak a little brake fluid and oil and maybe even gasoline on occasion. I'm a senior citizen for Christ's sake! What do they want me to wear, a metal diaper? I still have my pride, you know!

Was it the guy who bought the refurbished apartment for $5 million toward the end of the block? Or someo eco-friendly nut worried about my carbon footprint on the environment — that ship's sailed already, pal!

Yeah, I'm still here. But not for much longer. Soon the sweet scent of the black locust trees flowering in the cemetery will permeate the air. I'll wait around till then. Then I'm going to go. But I'm going on my own terms...

Previously on EV Grieve:
That Cadillac that we've long admired on East 2nd St. now has a stuffed tiger on the front seat

Crowdfunding campaign underway for the family of Wen Hui Ruan

An East Village resident, with the blessing of Wen Hui Ruan's daughters, has launched an online fundraiser for the family.

All proceed's go to the family to help with expenses after the 68-year-old Ruan died following a vicious attack on East Sixth Street on May 9.

According to The New York Times on May 12, Ruan worked for two decades manning an iron at a garment factory. He would send money home to his younger brothers so that his nephews could attend college. "He was always eager to help everybody, anybody," Michelle Ruan said. "Always smiling."

You may find the Fundly site here.

Police arrested 20-year-old Jamie Pugh last week. He has been charged with second-degree murder, robbery and assault.

Renovations at the future St. Mark's Bookshop on East 3rd Street

As you likely know St. Mark's Bookshop will be on the move to 136 E. Third St. just west of Avenue A later this year... the rent-challenged store reportedly officially signed the lease last week.

Meanwhile, there has been activity inside No. 136, as the above photo by EVG reader Yenta Laureate shows.

The city OK'd permits for renovations here last week. Per the all-cap DOB style: "GENERAL CONSTRUCTION ASSOCIATED WITH BOOKSTORE TENANT FITOUT IN EXISTING COMMERCIAL SPACE

As the Times reported, the new store will be half the size of the current one, but the rent of $6,000 is barely one-quarter of the $23,500 charged by their landlord on Third Avenue, the Cooper Union.

According to the DOB permits, $36,500 is the estimated cost for renovations. On Friday night, the Bookshop wrapped up a successful crowdfunding campaign to raise money to finance the move.

Our @Indiegogo closed last night. Thanks for helping us raise $51,740 toward our move! http://t.co/7Wour7EH3C

— St. Mark's Bookshop (@stmarksbookshop) May 17, 2014

The space at No. 136 previously housed Landmark Bicycles, who moved last year to the northwest corner of East Third and Avenue A.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Report: St. Mark's Bookshop prepping fundraiser ahead of possible move to Avenue A.

Is this the new home for the St. Mark's Bookshop?

Report: Barcade eyeing new outpost on St. Mark's Place

[Image via Massey Knakal]

NY Tofu House closed after service on April 6 at 6 St. Mark's Place. Now there's a new suitor for the space, which has seen a quick succession of restaurants (Cafe Hanover!) in recent years.

Gothamist reports that Barcade owner Paul Kermizian has an eye on the No. 6's ground-floor for another Manhattan outpost of the bars featuring classic video games and craft beers.

Kermizian has some history with another previous tenant of No. 6 — Mondo Kim's.

"I used to rent laser discs there in the late '90s!"

Barcade opened its first location in Williamsburg in 2004 … and have since expanded to Philadelphia, Jersey City and, soon, Chelsea.

Barcade is expected to be on the June CB3/SLA docket for a liquor license.

"We hope the community board and the neighborhood agrees we're a good fit," Kermizian told Gothamist.


[Barcade Brooklyn photo via the Barcade website]

Previously on EV Grieve:
6 St. Mark's Place is for lease; NY Tofu House officially closes

6 St. Mark's Place on the market for $14.5 million

P.S.
Whatever happened to The Drunken Clam, the clam-beer bar that opened in the basement of No. 6 in December 2012? Seemed like it went out of business in a hurry.