The Villager looks at landlord Raphael Toledano's criminal past

In compiling nearly a 20-building portfolio in the East Village, 25-year-old landlord Raphael Toledano has been accused of allegedly harassing his tenants, and other misdeeds, according to several published reports and a letter from the Toledano Tenants Coalition.

Now tenants are learning about Toledano's criminal past in an article published this week at The Villager. According to the paper, "he was convicted of aggravated assault and causing bodily injury less than four years ago, and once was charged with trying to swindle a bank out of hundreds of dollars, according to New Jersey court records and police reports."

Specifically:

In a 2012 confrontation that landed two teenagers in the hospital, Toledano allegedly beat the two youths with what police reports alternatively describe as a “crowbar,” “a branch” and “a metal or wood object approximately two and a half feet long.”

And in a separate case three years earlier, Toledano was charged with defrauding TD Bank of $500 in a scheme involving multiple withdrawals from three different banks.

A spokesperson for Toledano and his company, Brookhill Properties, dismissed this disclosure as "character assassination," noting that the incidents "have absolutely nothing to do with Brookhill Properties or the company's conduct as a landlord."

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: Spike Polite
Occupation: Musician, Lead Singer for SEWAGE, Actor, Model
Date: Thursday, Jan. 7 at 7:30 p.m.
Location: The Edge, 3rd Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue

You can read Part 1 of the interview with Spike Polite from last week here.

In 1991, I was caught up in these riots because [the police] were starting the process of [cleaning out] Tompkins Square Park. They had it in their minds to change the city, but I was just a kid so I didn’t know what was going on. It started because they beat up this guy Rodney for nothing. They didn’t give a crap about none of those people in the Park. It smelled like shit and there were crack vials and broken syringes everywhere and scary people. But you had your little groups. You’d find your people and you'd be safe.

They had been putting a lot more police presence on the Park out of nowhere and then they started harassing people and taking away their 40 ounces that weren't even opened yet. It wasn’t legal. You can only arrest them or ticket them if they crack it open, and then it's an open container. Rodney came out and the cops tried doing that to him and he did like some football move. He got off with it.

So they gave up on Rodney ... They proceeded to quarantine the area. They had been setting up for days. I just went to save my friend. Everything I was doing was just natural. So they had the bonfires and we got all the 40-ounce bottles and some people were making molotovs but they only did one or two. Sanitation came in and took the garbage away so you didn’t have any more 40-ounce bottles to throw. So then we had to go to the grocery store and get our ammunition there, at the SYP [at 100 Avenue A].

That's when I got accused of hitting a big cop in the head with a brick, but I didn’t. I threw a cantaloupe at him and a head of cabbage. They didn’t catch me then and there because he was a big dude and I was just a skinny punk rocker. They caught me because Newsday put a picture of me with my mohawk up and my band’s name spray painted on the back of my leather jacket. Even though I had a bandana on my face, the mohawk was made with glue so I tied it down but it just sprung back up and the hoodie came off. The cops caught me pretty soon after that because I couldn’t get the shit out of my hair, because it was glue. I got five years of probation.

I had been already dealing with that stuff my whole life, with abusive authority and all that, so for me, punk rock was just being natural. My ambition was always to make it with the music, but it wasn't the music that really happened. It was always that I had my punk-rock look and I got an agent and he worked for Eastwood Talent. He sent me out on jobs and I would go working as an actor. I got my [Screen Actors Guild] card and that paid my bills. I was a model for Armani. Then this agent found me walking down the street one day and he set me up. I worked for Deborah Harry's modeling thing at CBGBs, and then I got sent to "Law and Order." Things took off after that. That all started around ’94.

Then the band stuff took off because my manager from Kostabi World picked me up, Paul Kostabi. He started the ball rolling for it. Kostabi is a good guy. Then he hooked us up with Spike Lee. That was ’98. After that I did a thing with MTV. There was a guy on MTV who pretended to have a similar story as me. His name was Jesse Camp. He was an MTV VJ at the time. He would come out and hang out in the Park after the riots were over and after the Park was reopened.

He came around as if he were rejected and downtrodden like us punk rockers and squatters but he was actually rich. You’d feel something not right with him. Anyway, to get street cred, he hired one of us from the best bands at the time and put us in his band on Hollywood Records. We made a video co-starring Rev. Run as the gym teacher and Marky Ramone as the janitor. That was on MTV.

They’re showing this video every hour and I got the highlight of smashing the guitar that busts into pieces on the video and everybody knows that. And yet people were laughing at me when I walked down the street on St. Mark's Place, disrespecting me. I always command respect ... yet there were these people laughing at me. I was like, "Where the fuck are they coming from?"

That’s a thing that I noticed back in the day was that the people who would come here to see us and be with us but they couldn’t be us full time, so they would just be there on the weekends and be down with our scene and then they would act like we were scum the rest of the week. It’s like a nature show.

You need people. You just need a balance, you know? I never really liked people who were too normal, because I’m an entertainer. I have to be different, and I am different. I kind of had a disdain for people who were normal and see them as people who are condescending, but in all reality, you need people to do their thing. I’m not a political person but I understand systems. Rich people are needed but they're needed to run the system for the people, not to have disdain for them.

[In 2000, Polite was found not guilty in the murder of his Brooklyn landlord. However, he was convicted of second-degree robbery for "leaving the scene of the crime as a passenger in the landlord's 1982 Subaru." He was sentenced to four to 15 years in prison. He served 11 years and was released in 2010.]

I’m a New York State resident but I've been stuck in New York City three times. I was stuck here from my parents sending me to the social services system and to foster homes, then I got out and lived in the squats, but then I got in trouble with the riots. And then the music took off and the acting took off, and then I went and got into trouble again. I got off parole on Jan. 7, 2015. It's been a year and two weeks off parole. I've been stuck in New York. Now I’m looking to go back to Berlin and Amsterdam [on tour]. I’m sorry man, I look to escape from New York because I’ve been stuck here. Shit, they make it hard to live here now. You keep struggling and struggling and it gets harder, you know?

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

Closing portraits at The Sock Man

On Saturday evening, the Sock Man closed down on St. Mark's Place for good.

Photographer Nick McManus, a group portrait artist who works on Impossible Project Polaroids for gallery exhibition in New York, shared these photos as owner Marty Rosen and friends said goodbye to its storefront of 33 years...


[Click to go big]

We first reported on Jan. 7 that the shop would be closing. Rosen was apparently facing an unmanageable rent hike from new landlord Raphael Toledano.

Rosen hopes to find another space in the neighborhood. Until then, the Sock Man remains open for business at www.thesockman.com.

Raw food celebrity chef Matthew Kenney bringing vegan pizza to 2nd Avenue

Workers have cleared out Winebar at 65 Second Ave. between East Third Street and East Fourth Street... and the signage is up to note the incoming concept: plant-based pizza and a wine bar from chef Matthew Kenney...



The new place is called 00 + Co., where Kenney will be "crafting the future of food®" ... (per the sign).

Here's an explanation on the name via Latest Vegan News:

[I]t refers to the high quality flour the team will be using in the pizza dough. As far as cheese, 00 + Co will incorporate a variety of nut-based creations. All pizzas will be wood-fired, of course, and the emphasis “will be on pizza with an abundance of vegetables, pestos and other condiments complementary to the spirit of traditional pizza,” Kenney’s team says.

Raymond Azzi, who owned Winebar, is a partner in 00 + Co. The restaurant is on this month's CB3/SLA docket for a beer-wine license.

Slightly off topic, but who misses Viva Herbal Pizzeria?

Here's the 1st season of programming for the Lower East Side's newest movie theater

Metrograph, a two-theater movie house at 7 Ludlow St., near Canal, has unveiled its first season of programming starting in March.

Among the highlights:

Surrender to the Screen: Watching the Moviegoing Experience (March 4-10)
Titles include: "The Long Day Closes" (Terence Davies, 1992), "Vivre sa Vie" (Jean-Luc Godard, 1962), "Goodbye, Dragon Inn" (Tsai Ming-liang, 2003), "Taxi Driver" (Martin Scorsese, 1976), "Matinee" (Joe Dante, 1993), "Desperately Seeking Susan" (Susan Seidelman, 1985), "Variety" (Bette Gordon, 1983), "Demons (Lamberto Bava, 1985) and more.

Jean Eustache (March 9-17)
Extended engagements of Eustache's two features "The Mother and the Whore" (1973) and "Mes Petites Amoureuses" (1974), along with "Les Mauvaises Fréquentations" (1963), "Santa Claus Has Blue Eyes" (1967) and more rare imported prints. Presented with support from the Cultural Services of the French Embassy and Institut Français. Special thanks to Amélie Garin Davet, Mathieu Fournet, and Françoise Lebrun

Welcome to Metrograph: A-F (March 16 - April 21)
Titles include: "The Age of Innocence" (Martin Scorsese, 1993), "Barry Lyndon" (Stanley Kubrick, 1975), "The Blood of a Poet" (Jean Cocteau, 1932), "Chelsea Girls" (Andy Warhol, 1966, image above), "The Clock" (Vincente Minnelli, 1945), "Comrades: Almost A Love Story" (Peter Chan, 1996), "Deux fois" (Jackie Raynal, 1968), "The Devil Probably" (Robert Bresson, 1977), "Dr. Jekyll and Mr Hyde" (Rouben Mamoulian, 1931), "Equinox Flower" (Yasujiro Ozu, 1958), and more. All films on 35mm or 16mm.

Randomly, the trailer for "The Clock" to break up all this copy...



Old and Improved (Sundays Beginning March 20)
Every Sunday starting March 20, we’re pleased to present a new preservation or restoration. In some cases, these screenings mark the first times these prints have shown to the public. Titles include Dorothy Arzner’s "Craig's Wife" (1936), Garson Kanin’s "My Favorite Wife" (1940), Josef von Sternberg's "Crime and Punishment (1935), Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s "Mysterious Object at Noon" (2000), Djibril Diop Mambéty's "Touki Bouki" (1973), and Joyce Chopra's "Joyce at 34" (1972) plus shorts from New York's Youth Film Distribution Center. All titles on 35mm or 16mm.

Three Wiseman (March 25 - April 14)
Among the greatest and most influential documentary filmmakers who ever lived, Frederick Wiseman is more than just a capturer of reality on screen: he’s a conjurer of unforgettable images and a true artist, chronicling the last half century of American life. Metrograph will show three of his earliest masterpieces — "Titicut Follies" (1967), "High School" (1968), and "Hospital" (1970) — in new 35mm prints. The films were preserved by the Library of Congress National Audio-Visual Conservation Center from original camera negatives in the Zipporah Films Collection.

Indiewire, The Lo-Down and DNAinfo each had sizable previews with the full schedules.

For more on Metrograph and its founder, Alexander Och, head on over to The Lo-Down.

Meanwhile, I'll end with a plug for one of my favorite places in the neighborhood — Anthology Film Archives on Second Avenue and East Second Street.

The Patricia Field storefront is for rent on the Bowery

Back in December, Patricia Field announced that she was closing her boutique at 306 Bowery some time this spring to concentrate on her film and TV work and other various projects.

Field, who has run a shop for 50 years, starting in the West Village in 1966, had been at this location between East Houston and Bleecker (she owns the building) since 2012.

The storefront is now for rent. Here's a sampling of the listing via Thor Equities:

Surrounded by trendy restaurants, boutique hotels and in-demand retailers, 306 Bowery is a unique opportunity on one of New York City's most exciting retail thoroughfares.

In addition to new commercial developments, Bowery is also home to numerous apartment buildings, the New Museum, and residential buildings that have cropped up in the wake of a great amount of development. The Bowery has defined itself a center for the arts, perhaps second only to Chelsea.

There isn't any mention of the asking rent for the space that totals 6,700 square feet and features a separate entrance on Elizabeth Street. And a rendering of the possibilities...

Reader report: A mugging on East 9th Street this evening

The above flyer is hanging at 233 E. Ninth St. between Second Avenue and Third Avenue.

Per the flyer, a delivery woman was attacked in the building's vestibule this evening around 7. One resident told us that the suspect reeked of urine, "and it filled the building with the smell."

Earlier today, an EVG reader passed along word of a mugging last evening outside a building on East 10th Street between Avenue B and Avenue C. There were few details from a resident, who said that a woman entering the building had her mink coat stolen by a man brandishing a 6-inch knife and brass knuckles. (There was a general description of the suspect via the resident: Black male, 5-8, medium build with a youthful appearance "but was probably in his 40s.")

Cleaning the rabbit ears at 51 Astor Place

Wash day again for the 14-foot-tall, 6,600-pound red rabbit sculpture by Jeff Koons inside the lobby at the IBM Watson Building/51 Astor Place/Death Star... photo via EVG reader 8E.

Report: The Ziegfeld Theatre is closing, will become high-end event space

Venturing up to Midtown for a post...In the past, oh, three years, I figured this would be my last trip to the Ziegfeld Theatre on 54th Street. The grand single-screen theater has seemingly been on Deathwatch for years. But it always managed to survive.

Now the time has come to really say goodbye (if you are the type to say goodbye to movie theaters): Steve Cuozzo at the Post is reporting this afternoon that the space will become "a spectacular high-end event space ... a mecca for society galas and corporate events, to open in fall 2017 after a two-year renovation of the space."

The theater, which opened in 1969, will close in a few more weeks. "The Force Awakens" is currently playing.

A little history:

The Ziegfeld Theatre was a Broadway theatre formerly located at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and 54th Street in Manhattan, New York City. It was built in 1927 and razed in 1966. The theatre was named for Florenz Ziegfeld, who built the theatre with financial backing from William Randolph Hearst.

The 'new' Zeigfeld Theater, built just a few hundred feet from the original Ziegfeld theater, opened in December 1969 and the movie house was one of the last big palaces built in the United States.

The theater features 1,169 seats, with 863 seats in the front section and 306 seats in the raised balcony section in the rear. The interior is decorated with sumptous red carpeting and abundant gold trim.

EV Grieve Etc.: Man arrested after following 12-year-old girl home; snow forecast hysteria

[Late afternoon yesterday on East 7th Street]

Man arrested after following 12-year-old girl to her East Village apartment, asking if he could hide inside (Daily News)

Deals via Jared Kushner: Puck Building condo price cut from $66 million to only $58.5 million! (Curbed)

Affordable housing for seniors eyed for Elizabeth Street Garden (DNAinfo)

A Cup & Saucer Luncheonette appreciation (The Lo-Down)

55-60 feet of snow expected this weekend, or it might rain (The New York Times)

Orchard Street down another hosiery shop (BoweryBoogie)

Report: Increased resident participation in city planning produces extreme wealth segregation (BoingBoing)

Honoring folk legend Lead Belly on East 10th Street

There's a ceremony this afternoon at 414 E. 10th St. between Avenue C and Avenue D, the former apartment building of Huddie William Ledbetter — better known as blues and folk great Lead Belly.

Via the Facebook invite:

The ceremony will highlight Lead Belly's time in New York, when he played for children in Tompkins Square Park, performed at Carnegie Hall, Town Hall, and the Vanguard, was the subject of two New Yorker pieces during his lifetime, and laid the groundwork for the folk revival.

A plaque will be affixed to the building which Lead Belly called home for around a decade in the 1940s, and where he hosted folk greats including Woody Guthrie, Pete Seeger, and Cisco Houston.

The event will commence at 3 pm (the start time was originally scheduled for 4:30), and will include special guests. Music may follow at a nearby establishment.

Lead Belly, who died on 1949, was born on this date in 1888. There is a Lead Belly Fest at Carnegie Hall's Stern Auditorium on Feb. 4 featuring Buddy Guy, Eric Burdon of The Animals and Marky Ramone, among many other musicians.

The new owner of Nonna's Pizza on Avenue A says hello

[Photo from Saturday]

As we noted on Jan. 7, the current incarnation of Nonna's Pizza has closed on Avenue A between East 12th Street and East 13th Street.

The new owner left a comment on that post yesterday... and we're sharing what he had to say here:

My name is Jordan Baker ... and I purchased the pizzeria from Astro (previous owner) on New Year’s Day. I’ve heard some gossip about the place (mostly untrue) so I wanted to introduce myself.

I’ve lived and worked in the neighborhood for 3 years, first on 10th street, now on Avenue A and 11th. I love Avenue A and the small businesses that comprise it (with the exception of two franchises that have recently opened that are eye-sores) and I want to keep it small-business friendly as long as possible! I had a good relationship with the previous owner, as a customer and a friend, and I’m taking the spot over, partially as a favor to him (for personal reasons), and partially because opening a pizzeria has been a dream of mine as long as I can remember.

I plan to have a soft-opening sometime next week, and I’ll be giving out free pizza and soliciting feedback from anyone who lives in the area. We’re renovating right now, but I’m usually there all day every day, so pop in and say hi! If you have any questions about the restaurant (I’ve heard a lot of gossip — mostly untrue) don’t hesitate to come by and introduce yourself.

Tatyana Boutique is closing on the Bowery

The upscale fashion brand that sells retro dresses, shoes and accessories is closing its outpost in the Avalon Bowery Place complex at East First Street.



The store is expected to wrap it up next Monday... or possibly a few days after that, according to an email to customers that an EVG reader forwarded to us.

The Las Vegas-based chain (it launched at the Planet Hollywood Resort and Casino) with a dozen locations in the United States (and one in Toronto) started its life on the Bowery in late 2012 as Bettie Page Clothing. (A lawsuit took care of the licensing rights.)

This marks the third high-end store in several blocks here on the Bowery to close... Patricia Fields recently announced that she is closing her Bowery storefront, telling the Times that at age 74, she is "no longer interested in devoting the time necessary to operating this place." In addition, Environment Furniture is shutting down its retail space two blocks to the north on the Bowery.

A sign of hope for St. Mark's Bookshop

[Image via Facebook]

There's a positive development to note in the ongoing saga of St. Mark's Bookshop. Most recently, there were published reports that the rent-challenged shop at 136 E. Third St. between Avenue A and First Avenue was facing eviction by its landlord — the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA)

Now according to Publishers Weekly (via a post on the St. Mark's Bookshop Facebook page), an investor stepped forward to help the shop that has been in business in the neighborhood for 39 years.

Per Publishers Weekly:

An investor responded to the bookstore’s latest financial appeal on GoFundMe. He will take over the store’s lease and pay the back rent of $62,000, if the store raises enough money to stock the store. “He believes, as I do,” wrote co-owner Bob Contant on Monday, “that if we fill the store with books, our business will increase and we’ll be able to pay our way.”

In addition, the NYCHA has agreed to settle. However, as Publishers Weekly noted, the bookshop still has a long way to go. As of last night, they had raised just under $22,000 of their original $150,000 goal. It was not noted just yet how much money is necessary to stock the store.

Previous on EV Grieve:
Report: Latest woe for St. Mark's Bookshop — possible eviction