[Photo by Mike Wolf]
Spotted in the trash on East 10th Street and Avenue B… a $20 value!
Monday, June 1, 2015
Tompkins Square Pool nearly ready to open
Just another few feet to go.
Park photo today via Bobby Williams.
As for the actual Tompkins Square Pool, it re-opens for the season on June 27.
Rumors: Red Square has been sold
A tipster tells us the following:
Red Square has been sold! From what I hear, the ink isn't quite dry. But I think the price was $135 million. The more frightening part of this rumor is that the storefronts may not be long for the world — the new owner will be seeking to build higher on that site.
This is the second time in recent weeks that we heard that the residential complex at 250 E. Houston St. between Avenue A and Avenue B has been sold. (Our other tipster's source was a Red Square employee.)
To date, there's nothing in public records documenting a sale of the 12-floor building that includes 130 rental units and 23,000 square feet of retail space.
Adding to the speculation: None of the empty storefronts along the Shoppes at Red Square are listed for rent. Amona Deli & Grocery closed back in February. The space has sat empty since then. Last week, its next-door neighbor moved away...
One of the other long-empty retail spaces has served as a Halloween pop-up shop in recent years.
The building, the creation of Michael Rosen, opened in June 1989. Here's more from a Daily News article from September 2008:
Red Square occupies land that served as an automobile service station for more than 25 years. Rosen's wife's family bought the property in the 1960s, and, he points out, no homes were destroyed and no businesses were displaced.
Red Square was designed by graphic artist legend Tibor Kalman, a Hungarian immigrant. Its quirky feel has come to symbolize the avant-garde, rebellious East Village spirit.
Rosen has actually apologized for Red Square. (We heard him do so at a Community Board 3 meeting several years ago.) Last we read, he was a nonvoting shareholder in the building and without any involvement in the day-to-day operations.
And it should be noted that there was speculation of an addition atop the existing stores as for back as the summer of 2008, according to this article in the Voice.
In announcing the opening of Red Square in the spring of 1989, the Times reported that the building "includes studios that will rent for $975 a month, one-bedroom apartments for $1,350 and two-bedroom units at $1,900. Mr. Rosen shrugged off the possibility that the rents might be a bit steep for the proletariat, forecasting that interest will stem from young professionals and college students who will share apartments."
Avenue A storefront shuffle
Back in February, Galleria J. Antonio announced that the crafts and custom jewelry shop would be closing in the months ahead at 47 Avenue A.
As we understood it, the proprietors were retiring from the business that has been here between East Third Street and East Fourth Street since 2000. (The shop opened on Madison and 68th Street in 1970 before relocating to Christopher Street … before the move to A some years later.)
However, it turned out to be a short-lived retirement. Galleria J. Antonio is downsizing and moving into the former eyeglass shop a storefront away.
Galleria J. Antonio curator Jesse Gee told us this in a Facebook message: "The eyeglass store will be my retirement store. Isn't that a stitch? I can't stop working because I love what I do and STILL NEED A JOB, but — I must slow down and work fewer days and hours."
Meanwhile, from the rumor mill comes word that the Essex Card Shop at 39 Avenue A is going to open a second outpost in the former Galleria J. Antonio space … the person who passed along the tip used the words "Avenue A department store." We shall see.
The B Bar's Urban Etiquette Sign about their neighbor's trash
A rather amused EVG reader on the Bowery points us to this sign on the building next door to the B Bar.
To the tenants of this building
Please only put your garbage out on the days it is scheduled to be picked up. Do not put your garbage out over the weekend … The garbage on the street is unsightly and unsanitary.
Stern, but a reasonable enough request! Maybe!
The reader then pointed out the B Bar's own unsightly mound of garbage bags yesterday morning near East Fourth Street waiting for private pickup…
New Steve Croman warning flyer makes the scene
Last week, an EVG reader noted a lone flyer on East 11th Street at Avenue B warning potential residents of living in a property owned by Steve Croman, aka 9300 Realty, named one of the top-10 worst landlords in NYC last year by The Village Voice.
This past weekend another flyer arrived … affixed to a city trash can on Second Avenue and East Fifth Street…
In this flyer, Croman is pictured with his wife Harriet … and the flyer's creator points out that Croman "is now the subject of an investigation into potentially illegal tactics used to force rent-stabilized tenants out of their apartments, the Daily News has learned."
That Daily News piece is from last July.
Photos by Derek Berg
Sunday, May 31, 2015
May 31
EVG reader Riian Kant-McCormick sends along the photo with the following:
How can it be? I have no proof of date beyond the rain, but behold a very merry smelling tree at 13th and Avenue A.
And to all a good night.
Perhaps the storm below it here from January?
Tree down on 1st Avenue
The first storm casualty? … on First Avenue at St. Mark's Place…
Images via Sam Teichman photo & video…
Updated 7:47 p.m.
EVG reader Daniel sends along a few more shots…
Week in Grieview
[Photo on East 6th Street yesterday by Derek Berg]
Claim: Landlord of 444 E. 13th St. threatened "to drop dynamite on the building" (Thursday)
Rumor: East Village Cheese Shop relocating to East Seventh Street (Wednesday)
More about the new Café Pick Me Up-Gnocco combo on East 10th Street (Friday)
Out and About with Alicia Mercado (Wednesday)
A bitcoins ATM (Wednesday)
Rent hike KOs Delicacity (RIP Robin Raj) on Third Avenue (Thursday)
The Second Avenue Spice is closing (Tuesday)
Mono + Mono hoping for a mid-summer return on East Fourth Street (Thursday)
Icon Realty bringing Sexyflow to Avenue A (Tuesday)
Reader report: Please don't destroy the trees (Monday)
Selling off the former Hop Devil Grill (Tuesday)
Fancy Juice for First Avenue (Tuesday)
East 14th Street building returns to the market for a few million dollars more (Wednesday)
Elusive night heron becoming less elusive (Tuesday)
Warning flyers posted about renting from Steve Croman's 9300 Realty (Wednesday)
Making the Tompkins Square lawn more seedy (Thursday)
Spicy House is now Young Chow III on Third Avenue (Tuesday)
… and keep an eye out for the hawklets on the Ageloff Towers on Avenue A…
[Photo from Thursday by Bobby Williams]
Manhattanhenge no-show
Clouds took care of any chance of a truly Instagramable Manhattanhenge for a second sunset in a row…
Not sure about crowds elsewhere in wait… but there were a few dozen people at the end of East 14th Street at Avenue C hoping for a show…
The next opportunity will arrive in July…
Half Sun on the Grid
Monday, July 13 8:21 P.M. EDT
Full Sun on the Grid
Sunday, July 12 8:20 P.M. EDT
Thanks to EVG reader Peter Brownscombe for the photos
Saturday, May 30, 2015
20 years ago on East 13th Street
[Photo by John Penley via the Tamiment Library]
By Felton Davis of the Catholic Worker
All night long, we kept vigil, while the huge quasi-military force gathered to clear the squats on East 13th Street.
At about midnight on May 29th, people brought in an over-turned car and filled it with gasoline. One match, or even a careless person with a cigarette, could light this up and create a fire that could spread to the buildings, and trap those who were barricaded inside, burning them to death. How would that help the cause of squatting? How would that help communicate to the public the enormous work that was done to fix up these buildings? Or was it just a desperate gesture, to let the clearing turn into "another Waco," after the fatal confrontation in Texas two years earlier?
The debate will still going on the next morning, when the police brought in a re-furbished military tank, even after most of the gasoline was drained out of the car. The driver sitting on top of the tank motioned the riot officers to get out of the way, because he did not want to stop for those in front of it.
I'm alive today because the officers blocked the tank and dragged us out of the way. The debate over this extreme confrontation, and the extreme tactics brought to bear, continued in Central Booking that night, and it continued in the court where Stanley Cohen represented us, and it continued in the street, as people tried to re-take those buildings, and the Giuliani administration flexed its muscle, and more squatted buildings were seized or bull-dozed by the city.
Thanks for those who kept their sanity during this frightening time, and did not condemn us to death by fire and conflagration. Thanks for the memories.
For further reading:
• The Squatters of East 13th Street
• Battle Over 13th Street
• Tank KO's the Squatters
Daily News, May 31, 1995
• Riot Police Remove 31 Squatters From Two East Village Buildings
The New York Times, May 31, 1995
• Squatters of 13th Street Vs. Power of City Hall; More Than a Symbolic Battle for Control
The New York Times, July 12, 1995
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