As you may recall from last month, the owners of Stay Classy, the Will Ferrell-themed bar that opened last October on Rivington Street, announced plans to open another personality-driven establishment — this time in the East Village.
In the weeks ahead, Beetle House — "with an atmosphere and menu inspired by the works of Tim Burton" — is opening at 308 E. Sixth St. between First Avenue and Second Avenue.
The bar will feature drinks such as:
• Beetlejuice – Muddled blackberry and limes, Tequila, Blackberry schnapps, Angostura bitters, splash of cranberry. $14
• Edward’s lemonadee – Old fashioned with Orange bitters $12
• The headless horseman – Hendricks Gin, Lillet blanc, Cointreau, dash of absinthe, fresh lemon juice. Garnished with an orange peel. $16
• Chocolate factory martini – Vanilla vodka, Dorda chocolate liqueur, cream, creme de cocoa. Garnished with a chocolate bar. $14
You can check out the rest of the drinks and food menu at the Beetle House website. (You may text them for a preview invite.)
The space was, until last month, home to Confessional, who announced that they'd be moving to a new location. The space later hit the market for $8,500 a month plus $125,000 key money.
Thank you to Vinny & O for the tip! Time Out had a small write up of Beetle House this week, though the piece doesn't appear to be online.
Spectacular townhouse ... that was formerly one of the city's last tenement Shuls ...was brilliantly transformed into a magnificent home in 2005 by world-famous designers from the Ian Shrager Hotels – earning recognition in Architectural Record for its extraordinary transformation, and attracting the likes of press, politicians and entertainment figures.
Yours to rent is the exquisite result of their top-of-the-line gut renovation: an immaculately-designed, 3 bedroom (possible 4), 2.5 bath fourplex that boasts 3 wonderful outdoor terraces, the finest finishes and fixtures, plus the most advanced automated central audio/visual, lighting, HVAC and integrated security systems.
The 4th story presents a special floor-to-ceiling glass hallway and secluded master bedroom with a custom-built working fireplace, huge walk-in closet, and opulent master bath with an oversized Jacuzzi tub, walk-in shower with steam unit, rain shower, waterfall and separate hand-held shower. Enjoy quiet time on the delightful terrace off the master with a hot tub for 8, or ascend the glass stairs to the top floor sun-drenched lounge/media room (possible 4th bedroom) and terrace that also has Ipe wood floors and planters, copper rainspouts, a custom sound system and security cameras. 3235 interior sf and 982 exterior sf. AVAILABLE FOR 2 MONTH LEASE TERM - FURNISHED ONLY. Live-in caretaker and housekeeper provided on-site in separate apartment.
The EVG reader who forwarded this listing wondered if this was the most expensive East Village rental... The most expensive one that we recall is #3C at 38 E. First St., which had been asking $35,000 in 2014. So the Eighth Street place seems like a bargain.
• Thursday, April 21 — "Garbage Warrior," dir. Oliver Hodge, 2007, 86 min. In honor of Earth Day, "Garbage Warrior" follows U.S. architect Michael Reynolds and his mission to introduce radical sustainable housing to the masses.
Upcoming Movies @ MoRUS include:
• Thursday, May 19 — "Food Inc.," dir. Robert Kenner, 2008, 94 min. The documentary examines how big corporations influence all aspects of food production in the United States.
Movies @ Morus, which play the third Thursday of the month, are free to the public but a suggested donation of $5 is appreciated. Showtime is 7 p.m. at MoRUS, 155 Avenue C between East Ninth Street and East 10th Street.
East Village-based filmmaker Jenny Woodward has released an entertaining new video short titled "Last Days of the Mars Bar," featuring interviews with owner Hank Penza in the days leading up to the bar's closure in July 2011.
Penza shares some colorful anecdotes (and perhaps tall tales), such as how the bar got its name and how the first art appeared on the bar's walls on Second Avenue at East First Street.
And Penza doesn't seem all that broken up about the end of days here.
"Fuck the bar. What am I, crazy? There's a beginning and an end. You hear? The Mars Bar will live forever and I'll die... I feel like there's a beginning and an end, and this is the end to another chapter in my life."
The corner storefronts where Mars Bar stood were eventually demolished in late 2011/early 2012 to make way for the 12-story residential building Jupiter 21. The corner space now houses a TD Bank and The Alchemist's Kitchen, a cafe and shop that sells botanical medicines, herbal remedies and whole plant beauty products.
ABC 7 reports that Theodore Holloway, 23, of Manhattan, has been charged with second degree murder in the death of Elliot Caldwell, 23.
Caldwell, who lived nearby on 12th Street, had a 3-year-old son. "He was a great father. He changed his life for his son. He just got caught up in a bad situation," his aunt told DNAinfo.
Police have yet to release a motive for the shooting.
Updated 8:30 p.m.
DNAinfo has more details. According to their report, Holloway, who fired from the backseat of a parked car, "has been arrested 11 times before, most recently for robbery and assault."
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: Alan Good Occupation: Owner, HENGE Outdoor Ping Pong Tables, Dancer, Choreographer Location: Tompkins Square Park Time: 2 p.m. on Friday, April 15
I’m from Munich, Germany, and Ann Arbor, Mich. My mom grew up in Munich and met my dad there. He was a solider. So we started spending summers there and most of the year in Ann Arbor, where he taught in the medical school.
From growing up in Munich and Ann Arbor in the 1960s, there were big differences in the manner of thinking in the two places. One beaten and old, with a rich cultural history but recent hijacking by a tyrant, and a keenly developed propaganda machine, down to the point where people were ratting on each other. The other one a comfortable, conservative landscape around the intellectual, liberal center of Ann Arbor, and there was a particular ferment, politically and socially.
We moved when I was 3 months old. We just started shuttling every summer. My mom had kind of a PTSD from being in the bombings and bomb shelters. There were easier social guidelines for young women, and just a sense of plenty and comfort. The economic boom in Germany had not yet started, but we were very comfortable here in the states, inventing the concept of suburban sprawl development. So it was very difficult to reconcile these two worlds, but that led to an intellectual growth.
I came to New York in 1977. I changed from the University of Michigan to Purchase in dance. I was pre-med in Michigan. Then after three years there I came to the city. I was lucky. I got a place on Stuyvesant Street, and I’ve been in the same home for 37 years. At the time, I was afraid to ride my bike past First Avenue. It’s just like a 22-year-old coming to New York, not knowing what’s going on, trying to learn from instinct what’s safe and what’s not – you’re developing street wisdom.
I used to dance with Merce Cunningham, who is one of the geniuses of any art form of the 20th century. His partner John Cage, the composer, is a little more well-known. The type of dance is modern dance, and that encompasses several things, but Cunningham based his kind of modern dance on Martha Graham’s style, and ballet, with a lot of his own refining. The ballet was an important part of it.
At the time, a lot of money flowed into dance through the National Endowment for the Arts, so those were kind of the glory days of dance. There were strong pillars of modern dance and great separation between the ballet and the modern world. They thought of each other politically as antagonists, where they mustn’t mix, but that was more in the 1950s and 1960s.
In the 1970s when I got there, aside from the entire cultural revolution that was going on pre-AIDS, there was starting to be this mixture of those worlds and a lot of free thinking — kind of a renaissance. You had people after Merce, who were in the Judson movement, who were experimenting in SoHo. There was again a great respect between the various art forms, like Rauschenberg, and other artists mixed with and did productions with choreographers in SoHo.
It was just accepted that you would keep an open mind and experiment. There was a lot of that going on. Keep in mind that the city was not safe, as we’ve defined it today. The parks had a lot of beaten down and hard earth from lack of maintenance. There were many parts of lower Manhattan that were not developed for retail – no hotels, few restaurants.
The East Village was nothing like it is today. The DNA of the East Village and the glory stuff, like the lesbian playwrights and the drug dealers, and the political movements, definitely were alive here. And went way back to 1850 in Tompkins Square Park — they were having demonstration of Suffragettes. I hate to say it and it’s going to sound perverse, but there’s just something about the comfort, ugliness, and the run downness of the city that made people more honest and more here. They weren’t importing some kind of propriety and stiffer ways of being.
I had a very hard dance solo at PS 122 to perform the day or the weekend they ran out of heating oil. The stage there is very hard. I had a great time doing that but developed Plantar Fasciitis from the freezing hard floor. It’s a funny injury that you need one to 12 months, so I said to my company, I’ve got to take a hiatus. In the back of my mind it looked like a swan song.
It was a time of venture capital in New York, of free business advice. People could have any stupid idea, and if you murmured it at a bar somebody would say, I want a joint venture with you. Add to that that there were these programs of free business advice, of good quality that the city setup, through the Small Business Administration.
I kept bringing these cockamamie ideas to them, like vegetable oil for diesels from the soba restaurant around the corner. My advisers were kind of bored, but one day there was this one guy, 75 years old, who was in the fashion industry. He had coke-bottle glasses and eyebrows out to here, and I said to him, I’m kind of thinking of concrete ping-pong tables. I know them in China and Europe because I lived and taught over there, but I don’t see any here and I can’t find any on the web.
And he stopped what he was doing and looked into the distance and said, ‘Ping pong, I remember ping pong.’ And the complexion in his face changed and his eyes watered a little bit. This was a sincere response, even a physical one.
Next week, Alan talks about his company and ping pong in Tompkins Square Park.
James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.
The film follows the last family-owned matzo bakery in America during their final year in their factory on Rivington Street. The factory moved out of the city in 2015 after 90 years in that location. Condos are on the way.
Levine shared a few thoughts about the documentary, Streit's and the neighborhood with us on the eve of the film's NYC theatrical debut...
On the appeal of the Lower East Side and Streit's:
My family has had a presence on the Lower East Side in one form or another for around 100 years, and though I grew up in New Jersey, I felt compelled to come back to the neighborhood as soon as I could. I've have been here almost 16 years now — a short time in the scheme of things, I know, but long enough to have watched the systematic destruction of so many of the neighborhood institutions I knew from growing up, as well as the displacement of so many and much of the people and culture that drew me and so many others here in the first place.
When I came across Streit's, after passing by their factory on Rivington Street for years unaware of their presence, they were clearly one of the survivors: A fifth-generation manufacturing business operating with 90-year-old equipment in four tenement buildings — and I was drawn immediately to their story.
On the start of filming:
When I began filming there in 2013, it was chronicle the history, resilience and resistance of a family and their 60 union employees who had turned down millions to continue a nearly century-long legacy. They hadn't set out to the "last man standing" when it came to manufacturing in the neighborhood — they simply couldn't imagine doing anything else, anywhere else. This was their home.
But it was clear from the start that their presence their was, as one longtime worker puts in in the film, "in the balance." Despite owning the buildings since the 1930s, the factory had been losing money for several years, as the trifecta of aging, irreplaceable machinery, competition from more modern factories, and a lack of interest from the city as far as supporting manufacturing in the neighborhood finally came to a head.
During what was meant to be the last week of editing the film, the family at last made the announcement that they would be closing the factory and using proceeds from the sale of the buildings to build a new factory in Rockland County.
For another year, I continued filming as they slowly emptied the factory and began their transition to their new facility. I truly believe the Streit family has done as much as anyone could hope for, given the challenges they faced: they stuck it out as long as they could, and instead of simply pocketing the money from selling the buildings, they dove right into building a new factory, keeping it close enough to the city to be within commuting distance of many of their longtime employees, all of whom were offered jobs there.
On the factory's departure from the Lower East Side:
For the Lower East Side, though, the loss has less of a silver lining. In the next several weeks, the former factory buildings are slated to be demolished to make room for seven floors of luxury condos and retail, something that seemed unthinkable – though I suppose shouldn't have been — when I started this film three years ago.
I'm grateful that I had opportunity to start filming when I did, to experience the place as a still-vital piece of the community. And while the timing of the film coming out as its "main character" awaits the wrecking ball is somewhat ridiculous to consider, I hope the timing can perhaps offer a unique opportunity to appreciate a place like Streit's at the same moment it is being lost, and hopefully spark some conversation and action to protect the places like it, and the people who depend on them for their livelihoods, and remind people that the Lower East Side is still a neighborhood of resilience and resistance after all.
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The film's official premiere is tonight at 8. Afterward, there's a premiere party of sorts upstairs at 2A (on Avenue A and Second Street) featuring food from Russ & Daughters. Members of the Streit family and workers from the factory will be there. The party is open to anyone, not just people coming from the Film Forum.
Meanwhile, across the street...the Streit's exhibit continues (through May 5) at Art on A Gallery. The gallery is open tonight until midnight. (You can read more about the exhibit here.)
At both the gallery and at 2A this evening, Levine says that people will be able to buy tickets to the film. (Buy a ticket and receive a film poster and box of matzos.)
Now, to the business awning news. As previously mentioned, the owners of Top A Nails are moving into the empty retail space next to their existing shop on Avenue A between St. Mark's Place and Ninth Street...
And yesterday afternoon, workers put up the new awning for 139 Avenue A... right next to the existing awning at No. 137...
Which one do you prefer?
As for No. 137, the listing shows an asking rent of $6,800.
Another day, another ridiculous revelation in the ongoing investigation into 45 Rivington St. City officials reportedly lifted deed restrictions on the Lower East Side building based on an appraisal that valued the property at $65 million, $51 million less than its sale price.
Some private appraisers in the city are shaking their heads, wondering how the city came up with such a low valuation in New York’s robust real-estate market.
Robert Von Ancken, chairman of Landauer Valuation & Advisory, who has been an appraiser in the city for about four decades, said the rule of thumb is to value development opportunities such as 45 Rivington at $800 a square foot — at minimum.
The city appraisal valued Rivington House, at 45 Rivington St., at $433 a square foot. The city appraisal process “really must have messed up,” Mr. Von Ancken said.
[Via The Wall Street Journal]
To the usual recap: In February 2015, the Allure Group paid $28 million for the property, promising that 45 Rivington — the former Rivington Center for Nursing & Rehabilitation — would remain a health facility. In November, a city agency lifted the the deed in exchange for the Allure Group's $16 million payment to the city. Earlier this year, Allure then reportedly sold the property for $116 million to the the Slate Property Group, a condo developer who plans to create 100 luxury residences in the building that overlooks Sara S. Roosevelt Park.
To date, city officials have repeatedly declined to identify the appraiser or specify the amount of the appraisal, the Journal reports.
"The building is incredible with 12-foot ceilings and a penthouse floor that has a view from the UN to all of Midtown and Downtown. I knew it was doomed to have developers all over it from the first day I got there."
The investigation continues by a group that includes Preet Bharara, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, and New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman.
Several EVG readers noted a strong police presence this afternoon on East Ninth Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue... There's not much information at the moment. According to witnesses, the jewelry store Verameat was robbed by a man with a knife just after 1 p.m. ...
We'll update when more details become available...
Updated 4/22
The Post has a few more details in its Daily Blotter:
The 27-year-old victim was shopping in Verameat on East Ninth Street at about noon on Tuesday when the male suspect walked in, pulled a knife and forced her into the restroom. The woman handed about $200, jewelry, a laptop computer and a cellphone to the robber, who fled, investigators said.
No mention of a description for the suspect... or where a store employee might have been. Seems likely that the store employee was the one robbed....
As you probably know, an L train shutdown for Sandy-related repairs will happen in some form or another. But when?
Yesterday, the MTA provided a date: repairs won't start until 2019.
However, the length of the closure is unknown. Per The Wall Street Journaltoday:
Officials have been weighing options that include closing both tracks running through the century-old tunnel or shutting down one track at a time to maintain some service between Brooklyn and Manhattan.
A full closure of both tracks through the L train tunnel could be completed in about 18 months, but a partial closure could take twice as long and cost more.
MTA officials said the project would involve reconstructing nearly 3 miles of track; replacing 56 miles of signal, power and communications cables; and repairing two fan systems used to evacuate smoke from tunnels.
And those officials will be collecting comments (and expletives) from commuters and other stakeholders starting next month. The MTA's first public meeting to discuss the upcoming repairs is set for May 5 at the Marcy Avenue Armory, per Curbed.
The polls opened this morning at 6 for the New York primary today... (and they are open until 9 p.m.)
There have been some registration issues... which, combined with the interest in the races, "could cause long lines and major confusion at the polls," as Gothamist noted.
Anyone have any reports from the neighborhood polling places? Are the voting machines working? Any new dessert places open while you were in line?
Anyway, as noted earlier, you may watch the primary results tonight at La Plaza Cultural.
