Moms speak out about guns with the help of an illustrated book

This morning outside PS 188 on East Houston and Avenue D, a group from The Lower Eastside Girls Club’s (LESGC) Moms Speak Out campaign — women who have been affected by gun violence — joined City Council Member Laurie Cumbo, and reps from the Middle Project of Middle Collegiate Church to launch the distribution of 3,500 copies of William Electric Black's illustrated book "A Gun Is Not Fun."

LESGC's Moms Speak Out participants plan to distribute the books in front of every public school and day-care center with Pre-K through 2nd grade classes in the East Village-Lower East Side.



"I wrote this book because we are losing too many young people of color to gun violence," said Black, aka Ian James, who received seven Emmy Awards for his work as a writer on "Sesame Street." "It is a plague facing our nation and something must be done so I decided to use the 'Sesame Street' target audience and start educating them about this timely, and too often deadly, issue."



Photos by Stacie Joy

Connections and photos at Ray's Candy Store

[Copyright© 2015 Whitney Browne Photography]

Tonight is the opening reception of "At Ray's: Connection Is Why We’re Here," a photography exhibit by Whitney Browne.

Browne, whose work has appeared in The New York Times, HuffPost and Time Out, has worked on and off at Ray's Candy Store, 113 Avenue A, the past two years. And she brought along her camera during shifts.

We asked Browne a few questions about her time at the shop alongside 82-year-old proprietor Ray Alvarez ...

How did you start working at Ray's?

I have been going to Ray’s as a customer since 2006, but in 2013, I started helping him out behind the counter. I go in when I can, which is sporadic at best. Sometimes I am in there for weeks at a time, and then I can’t make it in for months, but whenever I walk in the door Ray welcomes me in.

In 2013, I wandered into Ray’s and he taught me how to make my own egg cream. People started coming in so he taught me how to make fries and shakes. He said he needed some help, so I just started coming back and helping when I could. For a few months in 2013, I was in between apartments and was able to stay in Union Square. I could not sleep, so I would go in and help Ray during the graveyard shift. In all honesty, a big part of why I went to Ray’s and still do, is because I get lonely, and when I am at Ray’s I feel useful.

What intrigues you the most about Ray’s?

I am intrigued by Ray’s perseverance. I love that he has been around for over 40 years. The East Village has always been where I am drawn to in the city, and I like feeling connected to a part of the city that I cherish.

The regulars are also super special to me. I love that people come to Ray’s to hang out and chat. There really aren’t many places of this kind that I know of. Ray’s is a hub. We talk about what’s going on in the world and the city.

I know why I come to Ray’s, it’s personal. About me needing some interaction. I wonder why other people are there too. We all say to hang out, but I think going to Ray’s does something more. I like the characters who walk through the door.

What has been your most memorable moment from your time at Ray’s?

I really don’t know if I have a most memorable moment. It all kinda gets rolled up into an experience.

Maybe the first few times Ray went to lay down in the back and he left me to run the shop. I can remember thinking, "wow, Ray trusts me."


[Copyright© 2015 Whitney Browne Photography]

"At Ray’s: Connection Is Why We’re Here," on view tonight through Monday at 103 Allen St. and Delancey.

Gallery Hours: tonight and Friday 6-9 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, 2-8 p.m., Monday, 6-9 p.m.

There's a raffle tonight for a framed print from the exhibit. The ticket will be drawn at 7:30 p.m. Raffle tickets are $5 each or 5 tickets for $20. All the proceeds from the raffle are going straight to Ray.

Find more details here. The exhibit is co-presented with miLES.

Hitchcocktober starts tonight at Village East Cinema with 'The Birds'

Once again, Village East Cinema on Second Avenue at East 12th Street is presenting Alfred Hitchcock films (Hitchcocktober!) on Thursday evenings in October...

Tonight at 8! "The Birds."



And upcoming:

Oct. 8 — "Shadow of a Doubt"

Oct. 15 — "North by Northwest"

Oct. 22 — "Marnie"

Oct. 29 — "Rear Window"

You can buy advance tix online here.

Subway (sandwich shop) closes on 3rd Avenue and NYU

The Subway location at 41 Third Ave. in the base of NYU's Alumni Hall between East Ninth Street and East 10th Street remains closed for now.

The sign on the door notes that they will be closed for a renovation, presumably…



The interior has been stripped clean.



If this is permanent (and it looks like it), then this will mark the fifth Subway sandwich shop to close in the East Village in the past three years, joining the one on the Bowery … East 14th Street … First Avenue … Second Avenue…

Owners of the Cock head straight to State Liquor Authority for Lit Lounge space

In August, CB3's SLA committee voted against Allan Mannarelli's application to move the Cock from its current Second Avenue home several blocks north to the former Lit Lounge space.

Afterwards, according to a report by Lisha Arino at DNAinfo, Mannarelli said that he planned to appeal directly to the State Liquor Authority (SLA).

He has kept his word: The application will be heard this morning in front of the SLA (PDF here)...



Residents who were opposed to the move to 93 Second Ave. between East Fifth Street and East Sixth Street said that the block was already oversaturated with bars, with 61 licensed operators in the immediate vicinity, among other reasons.

Meanwhile, signs appeared on the Lit door later in August noting that the bar/club would reopen on Sept. 11 after a "deep clean vacation." It didn't open that weekend. However, Lit was up and running this past Friday and Saturday night…

lit opens back up tomorrow

Posted by Lit Lounge on Thursday, September 24, 2015

Lit first closed at the end of July after 13 years. There was talk of a relocation to Brooklyn, but those plans have yet to materialize.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Confirmed: Lit Lounge is closing on 2nd Avenue

New, confusing signs up at the former Lit Lounge space

Asbestos removal underway at Peter Brant's incoming gallery space on East 6th Street

[Photo by EVG reader Paul]

There has been activity this week at 421 E. Sixth St., where workers continue to convert the building into an exhibition space for Peter Brant.

The signs on the front door point to asbestos removal in the weeks/months ahead...



As previously reported, the building between Avenue A and First Avenue is intended to be a gallery space to display Brant's personal art collection. The intention is to have approximately two shows per year, with the first one scheduled for Fall 2016.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Here's what Peter Brant wants to do with his new exhibition space on East 6th Street

Reader report: 421 E. 6th St. will house Peter M. Brant's personal art collection

Peter Brant's East 6th Street Outreach Tour 2015 continues

Peter Brant meets the neighbors

East Village home prices are up by 38% since 2004

Just checking out an interactive map via PropertyShark, which shows how home prices in NYC neighborhoods have changed in the past decade.

Average prices (adjusted for inflation) for condos, co-ops, and single- and two-family homes in the East Village have increased 38 percent — from $1,026 per square foot to $1,416 between 2004 and 2014. On the Bowery, prices climbed 62 percent, from $844 per square foot to $1,365.

These prices have nothing on Williamsburg, which shot up from $275 to $1,015 per square foot between 2004 and 2014 — good for a 269 percent increase, according to PropertyShark's data.

A rainy afternoon photo

First Avenue between St. Mark's Place and East Ninth Street this afternoon via Vinny & O.

Plus there are faces in those clouds...

Arepa Factory coming soon to Avenue A

A Venezuelan restaurant called Arepa Factory is opening at 147 Avenue A just north of East Ninth Street... EVG contributor Steven, who took these photos of the awning and signage that arrived today, noted that workers on the scene are aiming for an opening as early as Sunday...



The storefront used to be part of Café Pick Me Up, which decamped to join the Gnocco space on East 10th Street back in June. Café Pick Me Up was housed at 145 and 147 Avenue A, and they had two different landlords. (Icon at 145 and Croman at 147. No. 145, the corner space, remains on the market.)

No word at the moment who's behind Arepa Factory...

Previously on EV Grieve:
Rent hike forcing Cafe Pick Me Up into its smaller space next door on Avenue A (59 comments)

[Updated] Cafe Pick Me Up expected to close for good after May 31

Café Pick Me Up closes Sunday night ahead of a move to share the Gnocco space on East 10th Street

More about the new Café Pick Me Up-Gnocco combo on East 10th Street

NYPD searching for 2 suspects in armed robbery Monday night at VideoGamesNewYork

[Photo Monday via @Abysswit]

The NYPD is searching for two men they say held up VideoGamesNewYork, 202 E. Sixth St. near Cooper Square, on Monday night.

Here are more details via DNAinfo:

Police said two armed men in their early 20s entered VideoGamesNewYork ... at about 11 p.m. and struck a 32-year-old clerk over the head with a gun before stealing an undetermined amount of cash.

Video surveillance footage released by the NYPD showed the robbers holding an individual at gunpoint and dragging another person on the ground.

The NYPD released this wanted poster...



Anyone with information that could help in the investigation is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). You may also submit tips online.

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: Matthew (with Vincenzo)
Occupation: Welding, Plumbing, Electrical
Location: 4th Street between A and B
Time: 2 p.m. on Sept. 18

I’ve lived here for 46 or 47 years. I’m from the Lower West Side. I remember all the streets being cobblestone. I remember the Els — the elevated trains. I remember playing hockey on roller skates. I remember playing chicken on bicycles where someone would ride on your shoulders and you’d try to knock each other off — crazy games.

It was alright. It was very family oriented and everything was about the block. The neighborhood was all these different zones. There was Chinatown, which was right below Canal, and right north of Canal became Italian and it went from the East Side all the way to the West Side, up 5th Avenue. It was all factories, tenements, warehouses. Then in the Irish neighborhood that was uptown, there was a small pocket of Italians. We used to go to this one place, Esposito's, to get pork and sausage with my grandfather. It was all gangs. Spanish gangs, Italian gangs, Irish gangs.

My family is Sicilian. I always worked for my uncles and my father. My father had eight brothers and one sister. My mother had eight sisters and two brothers. I grew up doing electrical, plumbing and welding. I got my first job working for two German guys up in Yorkville. I was a child and worked in a furniture factory for 40 cents an hour. I used to go in and make hydrogen glues. I used to make glues in the morning. Let me tell you something, 40 cents an hour when I was 5, 6, 7 8… the coolest sneakers were $4.75. I was doing good.

I was born right after the war. The construction business was booming. They had to build for all these new families. The guys coming back from the war — everybody’s wife was pregnant. There were jobs and there was money in the 1950s. People wanted homes. So I started building all these developments out in Long Island — South Shore, North Shore. My father and his brothers built Levittown. It was a big development. There was no shortage of work.

I moved here because I like being anonymous. After I left the Lower West Side, I moved to Chambers Street. It was beautiful — it was like a big void. Nobody was ever around; nobody lived down there. I mean, there were a few people. Then, all of a sudden, it started getting SoHo-y and I said let me get the fuck out of there, and I came here. I betcha I came here about 1970, something like that.

I’ve lived on this block half the time I’ve been down here. I’ve had some outrageous places. I had this huge fucking place for $210 on 9th Street, where I had two rear apartments converted into one. That was between B and C. I also did artwork and I was painting in there. And I had another place on 9th Street. Wait till you hear this, you’re gonna die. It had three working fireplaces, five rooms, a huge backyard, and I paid $65 a month. Then I had a place right over here, top two windows over there, all the way down. I’ve had beautiful places.

The thing about this neighborhood, when it was supposed to be so terrible, you would walk down the street and see a person. You didn’t even know their name but you frequently passed, and you would say good morning and they would say good morning back. Now you say good morning to people and they look at you like you’ve said something terrible to them. There was a lot of community and a lot of love around here man.

Families may have been poor, they may not have had much, but these kids behaved and they were taught manners. If they saw someone from the neighborhood, some old woman carrying something, these kids would run and help her and not for anything. Their parents taught them. And then again their parents were in and out of jail. I’m happy to say I was able to influence some of them. There were a couple of kids who I turned into plumbers, who ended up getting their licenses. There were a couple kids who I turned into welders.

Where George’s bike shop was [on the block], back then there was a sandwich shop. The cold cuts in the display case were green-blue. Didn’t have a slice of bread in the place. They had milkshakes and all that crap. It was called The Sandwich Shop – did not sell one fucking sandwich ever. It was a coke spot. Down the block was brown bag; down the block from that was silver bag; over here was yellow bag.

You would think that, you take a guy like George, George’s landlord raised his rent two-and-a-half times what its worth. Now he’s got a psychic in there. Every single psychic place I have seen open has been open for 3 months and then from there on out the landlord is trying to get them out for back rent. They know how to work this game. Every single one, and for what? I’ve known George since I’ve lived on the Lower East Side, for 45, 50 years.

I want to tell you something funny: I hated my uncles and my fathers for making me go to work all the time. I wanted to hang out with my buddies, and now I thank God because of what I have learned from them. People don’t even know how to do [this work] anymore. In this area right here and the Lower West Side, all below 14th Street, I’ve converted hundreds, no more than 150 but no less than 100 boilers from coal, to oil, to gas. Some of my uncles were plumbers; some of my uncles were electricians, and I started at a very young age. I started at age where it wasn’t so sophisticated. You wanted your lights to come on at a certain time at night and you jerry-rigged an alarm clock to trip a switch. I remember watching my uncle Jimmy do it for my grandma, having the lights come on outside using an alarm clock. And my uncle Jimmy was a plumber, not an electrician. He got the idea from when we were converting boilers from coal to oil — there were timers on them.

Now what I do is I do electrical, plumbing, and welding. I’ve done work in a lot of buildings. I do emergency work for restaurants. I do any type of emergency job. No job is too small and no job is too big. I do plumbing, anywhere from boiler work, to fixing the drain under a sink, to snaking out clogged pipes, I do electrical, anything from putting in a new service, and I do welding, gates and fences. Come springtime I put all kinds of air conditioners in for people. Come fall I take them out. I put a solar panel in this building on 5th Street.

Listen, I mean it — I don’t care, whatever anyone needs done I can do. I’ve been around all this kind of work for so many years. Now there are all these specialists. You’ve got the air conditioner guy and the guy that does this and this. There were no specialists. A guy did work, people worked, they did that kind of work, from hanging doors to pouring cement. I’m 67 years old. Call me. I have no advertising, no cards. I could use some more work.

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

Closing time: Portraits of 3 newly shuttered storefronts

Photographer Nick McManus is a group portrait artist who works on Impossible Project Polaroids for gallery exhibition here in New York City. This past weekend, he scheduled and shot group portraits of workers at Sounds on St. Mark's Place and Rainbow Music on First Avenue, which closed for good on Sunday. (The Sounds closing date is up in the air still.)

In addition, he visited the original location for Bicycle Habitat on Lafayette, which is closing today. (The shop is consolidating spaces after a large rent increase.)





"I felt it was important to give back to them after so many years of personally enjoying their music and bike services," said McManus, who has been regularly taking these group portraits at business closings.

In each case, he presents the owners with a copy of the portraits — "a physical souvenir of a place they'll miss dearly meant a lot to them."

I asked McManus what the mood was like as these owners were closing up their shops.

At Rainbow Music, owner Bill "Birdman" Kasper "was ready for this to happen. He will be selling CDs on the street in Greenpoint in the near future. The mood was something that could be described in the words of George Harrison, 'All Things Must Pass.'

Over at Bicycle Habitat, the co-owner Charlie McCorkell looked like he would miss his little desk in the back center of a store he's worked out of since 1978. Though they've expanded to four other locations, one of which is on the same block and will consolidate with the other one, the original high-ceilinged wood and iron interior of their original location will be missed as something he spent most of his adult life in and no place would ever equal it. At the moment of the portrait though, the mood was less somber and more work busy as he posed with a staff that knew they had a lot of moving and and clearing ahead of them so that the store would be completely out by [today] when Charlie had to turn over the keys."

You can find more of McManus's work via Instagram.

Get ready for some overnight milling of the streets

The city has posted these advisory notices around... noting work starting "on/about" today through Friday (from 7 p.m. to 6 a.m.).

Per the flyers: "Work scheduled on this project includes the milling of streets in preparation for resurfacing by the NYC Department of Transportation Roadway Repair & Maintenance (RRM) division." (Those early RRM records were pretty good.)



Looks like Avenue C will be taking the brunt of this project, from East Houston to East 20th... and First Avenue just between East 14th Street and East 15th Street. Keep an eye out for the No Parking notices along Avenue C too.

Look at 137 Avenue C now

Been meaning to post photos showing how the renovated (and taller by one floor) 137 Avenue C looks these days now that workers finally removed the plywood from the future retail space.

Streeteasy shows two rentals that have been available here between East Eighth Street and East Ninth Street: Both are three-bedroom units, from $4,995 to $5,395. (Both apartments were de-listed on Friday.)

Here's the pitch via Streeteasy for the second-floor rental:

Featuring a BRAND NEW renovated modern 3 bedroom with 2 full bathroom unit! The apartment boasts hardwood flooring throughout, recessed lighting, stainless steel appliances, dishwasher, in unit washer/dryer, energy efficient CENTRAL HEAT AND A/C with an abundance of great light!!! Call me crazy, but no need to go to the beach for sun, simmer out on your own PRIVATE ROOF DECK with gorgeous East Village park view. Be the first to live in the amazing East Village abode!!!

And two photos from the unit...

The building's ground-floor was previously home to the Sunburnt Cow until April 2014.


[Photo from April 2014]

Previously on EV Grieve:
Renovations in store for 137 Avenue C, home to the Sunburnt Cow

The Sunburnt Cow closes for good at the end of this month

137 Avenue C, hollow on the inside

137 Avenue C — still standing!

137 Avenue C getting its extra floor