The first of the incoming trio's signage has arrived on the Fourth Avenue/Astor Place side at Ninth Street this week… Chop't! Per the window dressing, the quick-serve salad place will be "Chopping this Winter." (Wonder if they do firewood too?)
Workers have removed the sidewalk bridge from outside the former Congregation Mezritch Synagogue at 415 E. Sixth St., EVG reader Michael Hirsch reports.
The under-renovation space, which includes an additional level, will house three condos... with pricing starting at $2.95 million…
The slogan for the residences here between Avenue A and First Avenue: "History reimagined … For modern living."
To date, the teaser website just has contact info about the condos. No sign of interior renderings or other details just yet.
WHAT: New Yorker's are used to seeing rodents in the subway but commuters may see a few that are too big to ignore on their commute to work tomorrow morning.
WHO: The event is being sponsored by earthkind®, a North Dakota-based pest prevention company and the makers of the award-winning Stay Away® Rodent repellent that’s proven to keep rodents out of indoor areas, safely and naturally.
WHERE: Giant mice will be greeting commuters at the E. 86th Street and W. 72nd Street subway stations before heading down to Pizza Rat’s home base at the First Avenue L station for an authentic NYC lunch of, you guessed it, pizza! Free samples of Stay Away Rodent® will be given to the first 5000 riders who greet the mice and give them a warm, NYC welcome!
WHEN: Thursday, November 12th from 7:30 am to 1:30 pm
WHY: The earthkind® mice are on a mission to teach New Yorkers how to keep “pizza rat” and other uninvited guests [ED NOTE: Family members?] out of NYC hi-rises, brownstones and homes without using poisons.
In an important post from Monday, we noted that someone removed part of the fence along East Seventh Street near Avenue A at Tompkins Square Park. Given that there wasn't anyone around to ask what was going on, we could only assume that the Samuel S. Cox statue was being moved to the top of 100 Avenue A as a way to compete with Red Square.
Well, as a reader noted in the comments, the fence removal was more likely done to aid the removal of the tree stump near the statue...
Back in early October, the rather unfortunately named Red & Gold Boil (sounds like a topic for a WebMD search) closed after 13 months in business at 30 St. Mark's Place between Second Avenue and Third Avenue.
The sign on the door from management made it seem as if the place may reopen with a new concept. (We look forward to serving you again, etc...)
The notice of eviction that recently arrived has now been joined by a note from the Marshal, announcing that the landlord has legal possession of the space...
The restaurant opened in August 2014 as the Red & Gold Crab Shack... somewhere along the line the boil replace the crab shack.
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.
Name: Willie Correa Occupation: Artist, Sound Engineer Location: East 3rd Street between 1st Avenue and Avenue A Time: 2:45 p.m. on Monday, Nov. 9
I basically had a long history here, but I’ll just give you a quick rundown. I got to the Lower East Side very young — in 1954. I was 2 years old. I grew up and I’ve seen the neighborhood transition. Imagine Avenue C back in the late 1950s. It was still a lot of Jewish stores and stuff like that.
There was a mixture always of different ethnicities. There were the Ukrainians, the Jews, the Italians. My older brother lived kind of through a "West Side Story" thing. He got stabbed. He was going out with an Italian girl. Just like the movie; just like the play. I’ve seen all that. It still has that mixture, but the gentrification has taken it to an extreme.
I was one of the founding directors of the Nuyorican Poets Café, but I’m no longer on the board or stuff like that. I got involved because I’m an artist. [The different arts] at the time all kind of ping ponged off each other. They vibrated off each other and went in their own directions, but it was a mix. I was a sound engineer. That’s why Miguel got me into the café because we needed to hear the poets. Back then in 1974 the audio systems were very poor until I started for them. We started doing broadcasts on WBAI live.
I found the building on East Third Street for them. The structure actually belonged to La MaMa, and [founder Ellen Stewart] basically turned it over to us because we didn’t have enough room at the time.
The neighborhood was going down the tubes. It was a small little bar and we needed the to accommodate all of the interests. So we went back into the neighborhood, took the building, but it took us a long time to come back to the level where we were on Sixth Street, because the neighborhood was diving. It was drug infested. We got a little grant to renovate the building through the city. It was terrible. They messed up the building.
Now I’m working with Taller Boricua in the Barrio, but I still live in the neighborhood. I do their content management. They’ve been around for 40 years and I actually connected with them through the Nuyorican. It’s in the Julia De Burgos Cultural Center on 106th Street. I’m also shooting their work now. They’ve got 40 years of original prints, which nobody can afford, so we’re doing a whole series to make affordable versions.
I’ll tell you one thing — you know the new building that they’re putting up on Avenue A? The Wall Street kids need a place to live and stuff like that, which is cool, but I go by yesterday and you see the sign they’ve got now? It’s this female and she looks like a beached whale. Give me a break. How low can you go? I’m not a woman but it’s low, man.
James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.
Catching up to this story from DNAinfo on Monday… in which reporter Lisha Arino went through public records to find that 311 calls "about the presence of homeless people, homeless encampments and panhandling have spiked in the past year."
Per the article:
More than 300 complaints relating to homeless people were recorded this year through October in the 10009 and 10002 zip codes — which covers the bulk of the East Village and Lower East Side — a jump from the 171 calls recorded last year overall…
The increase in calls continues its upwards trend. Records show that there were only 83 calls logged in 2010.
However, as DNAinfo points out, the "numbers don’t necessarily mean the neighborhoods’ street homeless population has increased." The mayor's office says that "the number of complaints was proportional to the increase of citizens using the 311 app."
In addition, Manhattan Outreach Consortium director Cesar Vanegas said that he has not seen a significant increase in street homelessness recently.
At the end of October, the teaser site went up for the condos a-rising on 64 E. First St. between First Avenue and Second Avenue. (An area which the developers have dubbed — hey ho! — "The Bowery District.")
Yesterday, pricing and model-home pics (H/T Curbed!) arrived for the residences that sit on the former neighborhood scourge La Vie. And you will be paying a pretty premium to live on the former hookah hotspot. Prices for the two homes now available hover just below and above the $3.3 million mark.
An exclusive boutique collection of six full-floor residences with private outdoor terraces in the Bowery District. The Bowery epitomizes both the colorful history and perpetually changing landscape that is New York. 64 East reflects the heritage of this iconic thoroughfare in a forward-thinking, modern design.
Multiple EVG readers came across this scene this morning just before 9 on Avenue A between East Second Street and East Third Street… where workers were mulching up a fallen tree…
Unfortunately, no one (yet!) has passed along what happened to the tree on the west side of the street… How did it fall? Did it crack? Was it struck? Pushed? Bitten? Karate chopped?
Thanks to the EVG reader for the photos!
Updated:
Per the comments, three trees on this block had to be removed...
Tom DiCillo came to New York City to study film at NYU in 1976.
Like other new residents, he was taken by the NYC subway system. "From the moment I arrived in the city, particularly when I'd get on the train, I noticed these tiny daily dramas," said DiCillo in a phone conversation last week. It provided potential dramatic fodder for a filmmaker, "but it wasn't feasible to carry a big camera and canisters of film" to attempt a subway shoot. It wasn't until some 30 years later when DiCillo bought a digital camera did he decide to make a movie capturing a slice-of-life look at the subway experience.
The other featured works are the 20-year-anniversary of his best-known film, the darkly satirical "Living in Oblivion," and the 2006 offbeat dramedy "Delirious," in which Steve Buscemi — also the star of "Living in Oblivion" — plays a small-time paparazzo. DiCillo and Buscemi will both be on-hand tomorrow night for a Q-and-A following the screening of each film.
After serving as cinematographer to classmate Jim Jarmusch's "Permanent Vacation" in 1980 and "Stranger Than Paradise" in 1984, DiCillo dabbled as an actor before striking out on his own as a director.
His first film was the absurdist fable "Johnny Suede" from 1991 and featuring Brad Pitt in his first leading role. (The Johnny Suede character's punk-rockabilly look and style came from some of the musicians DiCillo saw around the East Village in the 1980s.)
DiCillo's subsequent films included casts with Buscemi, Catherine Keener, Matthew Modine, Sam Rockwell, Peter Dinklage and Denis Leary, among others. The films found a limited but devoted audience. His subsequent challenges, from failed financing to lackluster distribution, have been well-documented (here and here, for example).
I spoke with an upbeat and talkative DiCillo on the phone from his Upper West Side apartment for nearly 40 minutes. What follows are some highlights from the conversation edited for length and clarity.
On making "Down in the Shadowland" over a six-year period:
In late 2007, I got my first small digital movie camera that I could carry around with me. I found taking this little camera and shooting whenever I wanted was so liberating that it actually took me back to the most basic impulses that I ever had wanting to be a filmmaker. Seeing something on the street and going Oh my God if I can only put that in a movie.
I thought the idea of capturing these ephemeral moments that exist underground would make for a great project. I started carrying the camera with me every day. After shooting for about four years, I said it was time to come up with a structure for it. [Laughs]
I think it's done. You could probably keep shooting this for 20 years. The whole purpose of it was to see if I could translate what my eyes were seeing to something other people would appreciate. It's kind of an individual journey. It's not a mass thing. The film works the best when you start to feel like it's a surreal and mysterious journey that's going on inside each of these individuals' minds.
I don't feel as if the film is strictly a documentary. There are many different kinds of films that are vérité. Every frame in it is real. But it's not a film that explains or illustrates the experience of the subway. It's less about the subway than it is about us as human beings. Twenty years from now this film is going to seem like a really bizarre time capsule.
On the filmmaking scene in the Lower East Side upon his arrival in 1976:
In that period, the late 1970s through the late 1980s, the city was really falling to pieces. There was a desperate element that fueled a great artistic movement… the punk scene, the independent film scene all were generated by the fact that things were falling apart.
None of my classmates I found interesting ever thought about going to Hollywood. The idea was to take this opportunity to make a film and do something that was completely different than Hollywood. Steve Buscemi was writing and performing plays with Mark Boone Junior. The only thing they really wanted to do was write and perform. They weren't worried about where they did it.
The film scene was that way too. Eric Mitchell, Amos Poe… these guys were making films on Super 8 and screening them in bars. Anybody could make a movie. You didn't have to have this enormous financial machine. New York was that way. It was a fantastic time. There was a feeling that something fresh and new was happening.
On making "Living in Oblivion":
When I got the idea for "Living in Oblivion," the first person to put up money was Dermot Mulroney. He was married to Catherine Keener at the time. She was the first person who I had shown the script to. She sent it to Dermot. He immediately put up $5,000. He said that he wanted to play the director. I said "I'll take your $5,000, but I think you'd be better suited to playing the cameraman." He said, "OK great. How about Steve as the director?" That was the beginning of my relationship with Steve. He said yes without even reading the script.
Steve is one of the most warmhearted and genuine people I've ever met. He is a fascinating actor. I'm thrilled that he is going to be [at the Anthology] with me.
When "Oblivion" was released here, it got a very nice notice from The New York Times, which helped it. A lot of critics panned the film, saying that it was just a movie for filmmakers. It crippled the film in some other markets. It always bothered me because it's like saying, "You can't make a film about astronauts, because only astronauts will want to see it." It's crazy.
On New York City today:
I'm definitely not the kind of person who's going to say that Times Square used to be better before it was cleaned up. I was a visitor there during that period when there were hookers and drugs. You wouldn't really want to go there. But to say that was a better time for the city is bullshit. There is a certain corporate bullshit that has happened to New York. I despise the fact that every single gritty, realistic aspect of the city has been bought by merchandising. A place that used to be a real meat market [has been turned] into something to make you feel like you are in a hip part of Manhattan.
The thing I love about the city … on the street level, it's a very democratic city. You engage with people of every level, shoulder to shoulder every day. New York still has this feeling that it is unique in America. There are people here from all over the world. I'm all for the quiet, small-town idea. But small-town thoughts are what is destroying this country. At least in New York there is a willingness to have different points of view.
On never giving up as a filmmaker:
Part of me believes that this is what I do best, that I have a skill at it. I've never had anything just given to me in life. Everything has been a struggle. Certainly the filmmaking part of my career has been a struggle as well.
There's nothing worse than being two years into raising money for a film, and you think it's going to be a go — everyone says that it's going to be a go — and you get the phone call: "We don't know why, but they just pulled out." It has happened so many times. And you go Ahhhhh! And you start again. I guess it was a belief that what I had written and what I knew what I could do was worth fighting for. The main thing that keeps me going is the thought that I will be making another film one day.
As previously noted, owners of the Associated on East 14th Street between Avenue A and First Avenue in Stuy Town would like to have their supermarket's lease renewed.
However, the current Stuy Town management has refused to commit to a renewal and then tried to buy out the lease. (Find more background at the Town & Village blog, who was the first to report on this.)
And no one knows what the new owners, Blackstone, intend to do. While the lease isn't up for two years, Joseph Falzon, the principal owner of the Associated, has been asking because he wants to renovate the store, per Town & Village.
Now members of the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association have launched a campaign at Change.org to help save the Associated.
Per the petition:
Tell Blackstone we need to save our Associated Supermarket
Stuyvesant Town needs to keep its local supermarket. It is especially important for our seniors who can't walk five or six long blocks to get to the next nearest food market. Since 2005, 4 local supermarkets have closed because of rising rents or because chain drug stores could pay much more. NYC is losing too many of its small stores because of rising rents and because landlords have no real connection or concern for the needs of working class New Yorkers.
Associated is willing to pay more rent if the landlord Blackstone is reasonable. The city is bending over backwards to give all kinds of lucrative incentives away so Blackstone can be reasonable. Having an affordable supermarket is just as essential in maintaining the middle class lifestyle in this unique neighborhood.
As a rep of the tenants association told us, "This all-purpose supermarket is essential not only to many Stuyvesant Town residents but also to those who live south of 14th Street."
