Thanks to EVG reader Jeanne Krier for sharing this photo taken today at 6:30 a.m. ...
Sunday, April 28, 2019
Today's mackerel sky sunrise
Thanks to EVG reader Jeanne Krier for sharing this photo taken today at 6:30 a.m. ...
Saturday, April 27, 2019
Saturday's parting shot
It was quite pleasant out today, though it was still sweater weather for some ... photo from the Tompkins Square Dog Run this afternoon via Bobby Williams.
'A Great Day on 9th Street' this Sunday
Via the EVG inbox...
On Sunday (April 28), the merchants of East Ninth Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue are gathering on a local stoop for "A Great Day on 9th Street," a quasi recreation of the famous Art Kane photo "A Great Day In Harlem."
Afterwards, stroll down both sides of the street and check out the various specials the stores are offering.
Come celebrate our community of small businesses.
#shopthe921
First 2019 Jazz in the Garden!
It's the first Jazz in the Garden at Green Oasis this year... there'll be snacks, plants and the Eric Paulin ensemble tomorrow (Sunday!) from 3-5:30 p.m. The Green Oasis Community Garden is on Eighth Street between Avenue C and Avenue D.
Green days: How to become a member of the 6BC Botanical Garden
The 6BC Botanical Garden is hosting a series of membership orientations over the next few weekends, starting tomorrow (Sunday). The above flyer has the details. The sessions start at 11:30 a.m. in the community garden on Sixth Street between Avenue B and Avenue C.
You can find more details about becoming a garden member at this link.
Also, starting on Monday, you can check out "Whispers in the Grove," an interactive, multimedia sculpture on view through June 7...
Friday, April 26, 2019
Friday's parting shot
The view downtown earlier today from the East Village ... photo by Bobby Williams
The line for Jay-Z this evening
EVG reader Doug shared these photo this evening a little after 7 ... showing the line for the grand reopening of Webster Hall with Jay-Z.
The venue is on 11th Street between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue... the line forms back to Third Avenue and north to 12th Street...
... running alongside Westside Market...
As the top photo shows, 11th Street is also closed to through traffic. (Not sure where the line forms for people seeing "Avengers: Endgame" at the Loews Village 7.)
Webster Hall reopens tonight after nearly 18 months of renovations. Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment and The Bowery Presents bought the landmarked building from the Ballinger family for $35 million in a deal announced in the spring of 2017.
Most of the first shows at the venue in the coming week, including RosalÃa, Patti Smith, Sharen Van Etten, TroyBoi and Vampire Weekend, are sold out.
'Wasted' away
Here's the video for “Wasted Nun" from the recently released new record by the L.A.-based trio Cherry Glazerr.
EVG Etc.: L-TRAIN SLOWDOWN TIME; Webster Hall grand reopening night
[Taco time, 2nd and A]
Streetsblog has more on the NYPD's crackdown on bikes without bells Saturday in Tompkins Square Park and Union Square — aka the "misplaced priorities and racist policies" of the de Blasio administration. Find follow-up stories here and here. Meanwhile, the police commissioner's bike does not have a bell (Gothamist)
There are plenty of L-train slowdown guides to choose from, including at Town & Village ... Curbed ... and NY1
And obviously someone was going to make a parody song about the L-train slowdown (via the Post) ...
A look inside the revamped Webster Hall, which reopens tonight with up-and-comer Jay-Z (Billboard ... previously on EVG)
Politicos want Trader Joe's to deliver again (The Villager ... previously on EVG)
More private, market-rate apartments are coming to a tower planned within a Lower East Side public housing complex (The City)
Farewell old Essex Street Market (Gothamist)
Sietsema liking the smørrebrød over at Smør on 12th and A (Eater ... previously on EVG)
Cash-free places rethinking the cash-free thing (Grub Street)
History of the doomed Sunshine Cinema (Ephemeral New York)
A look at the Keith Haring X Barbie® "who looks as if she fell headfirst into a bin of Keith Haring attire at UNIQLO" (Filthy Dreams)
... and spring in the yard at St. Mark's Church-in-the-Bowery via riachung00...
A visit with Steven Antonelli, director of Bank Street Head Start on 5th Street
Interview and photos by Stacie Joy
Although his parents were both educators, Steven Antonelli never considered being a teacher.
With a degree from the prestigious Berklee College of Music in Boston, Antonelli kept his musical career in play all the while working in a variety of jobs, including in a bakery, a copy shop and as a super.
However, he did end up making his mark as an educator, now serving as director of Bank Street Head Start, a diverse early education program run by the Bank Street College of Education. It provides free preschool and pre-K for families from the East Village, Lower East Side and beyond.
Antonelli is retiring this year. Ahead of that, I stopped by the school at 535 E. Fifth St. between Avenue A and Avenue B and visited with Antonelli, a former Bank Street parent himself.
You have a degree from Berklee College of Music. When did the interest in child development come along?
I began singing while still on the floor in the kitchen, listening to my mother’s lovely alto voice, as she sang "the Great American Songbook." Next there was the piano, covered by cobwebs in the cellar on which I discovered the joy of the black keys.
Soon after, in the second grade, I began playing my father’s very old clarinet and then, of course, came the Beatles, and at 14 — a guitar. I wanted first to be a working man, pushing wheelbarrows full of dirt around with my shirt off. Next I wanted to be a Marine. I always read and wrote a lot so being a lawyer seemed a possibility too.
But I didn’t want to be a teacher! Both my parents were educators; I respected the work, but that path felt expected of me, and so after a year at a liberal arts school, I moved to Boston and Berklee College of Music. I was mostly self-taught at that point playing in blues bands. I actually learned how to read music in my first month at Berklee.
After graduating, my wife, daughter and I moved to New York City. Sixth-floor walkup, bathroom in the hall, tub in the kitchen. I had come to play music and appeared through those years in all the usual places: CBGB, Mudd Club, Trudy Heller’s, Folk City, Beacon Theater.
But it was meeting Ellen Stewart, the founder of La MaMa that created my real connection to the Lower East Side. I met her at her theater on East Fourth Street in 1982 when playing guitar at a benefit concert. I was startled when, after the show, she went up to each of the many performers there and thanked them all personally for appearing.
This was notably different than what bands usually experienced in clubs. A year later, I had the opportunity to write music for a puppet play there and for the next 30 years almost all the music work I did was either directly or indirectly due to her encouragement and inspiration.
When we moved to New York my wife quickly got a job as a graphic artist and so I was lucky enough to be a stay at home father to my first daughter. For brief periods I worked in a bakery, a copy shop, gave guitar lessons, and in the evenings playing numerous low-paying rock gigs.
A year later I became the super of six buildings. The compensation for that position included a two-bedroom apartment, where we still live today. That toehold allowed us to survive in the city.
For my second daughter, I was again the primary caregiver and as I began to volunteer in her school, I realized that I had an ability to motivate kids. I found that the school environment was interesting and creative. I had grown tired and discouraged about being a building super after nearly 10 years.
My wife encouraged me to find more challenging and rewarding work that would both support our family and make my music work also possible. So the summer I turned 38, I had to decide. Lawyer or teacher? Reflecting that if I were a teacher, I could have the summers off to pursue music, I chose teaching and enrolled at Hunter College in a master's in early childhood program.
Ironically, my first job and entire career has been spent in the Head Start program, which operates year-round. So I’ve never actually had a summer off! It is rewarding working with young children but also very exhausting! I do still enjoy visiting the classes with guitar and mandolin and leading them in singing all the preschool hits. “Baby Shark” is the current No. 1.
As a professional musician (guitar, mandolin, mandocello), you’ve played in venues around the world. Talk about that experience.
Although I had been performing in clubs since I was a teenager, when I moved to New York to play music I had no idea what to expect or even how to pursue it. My dreams were vague — playing guitar in a band with a record deal was about as high as my aspirations reached.
Again I must thank Ellen Stewart for providing me with opportunities that allowed my horizons to broaden. It was at La MaMa that I began to compose. I had received a degree in composition from Berklee, but it included no practical guidance in how to actually make a living.
Given the opportunity to write music for plays, work with choreographers, and to present and produce scores of concerts of my own music in a setting that did not include competing with the noise of an ice machine was the real maturing of my musical career. The first time I climbed off a jet with my guitar at Heathrow in London I felt that my young dreams had come true.
Through the years I’ve had the opportunity to play major halls in France, England, Sweden and Denmark. Most notably with Karole Armitage, Jeff Lohn, John Jesurun, Glenn Branca, Virgil Moorefield and Diane McKoy.
I am not famous and have not made much money playing music, but I’ve gotten to play with some incredible musicians. Most important to me I been able to play my own compositions. I have no complaints regarding my life in music.
You played CBGB. How was that?
CBGB was a dump! A world-famous vitally important dump. But they promoted original music and had a great sound system. It wasn’t hard to get a gig there. They were always willing to give bands a try.
What are among your most rewarding experiences at Bank Street Head Start?
I always say my favorite sight each day is seeing children run down East Fifth Street, coming from both Avenues A and B, ahead of their parents, smiling as they run up and tug at the door or jumping to reach the doorbell. They can’t wait to see their friends, tell the teacher something amazing that they’ve seen on the way, sit down to breakfast, or get their hands into the playdough.
In the last 13 years, I have gotten to work with many highly qualified teachers, family workers and staff at Bank Street Head Start. Their commitment is always inspiring to me. Head Start staff members earn significantly less than their counterparts working in public schools.
It is their passion about working with the families that keep them coming back day after day. The stamina that is required to work for eight hours with a group of 20 3- or 4-year-old children cannot be measured. Head Start serves the families in the lowest income brackets. And Bank Street Head Start gives them the best.
[Sylvie Fan, administrative assistant]
[Jeannette Garcia, family assistant]
What can you say about your time as a Bank Street parent?
I was a parent at Lenox Hill Neighborhood House Head Start when my third child was in Head Start there. I had already been at Lenox Hill for five years and had been promoted from teacher to Ed Director by then. I’ve been told that my son William would remind his teachers from time to time, “My father’s your boss you know.”
We participated in the required home visits, and went along to the apple orchard field trips in the fall, and sat to eat breakfast in the classroom like all the other parents. It was a welcoming diverse community just as you find now at Bank Street Head Start.
One outstanding feature of Bank Street Head Start is the diversity of the community. The Lower East Side has always been diverse and our families and staff reflect that diversity. Half of our staff were former Head Start parents.
We are always watching and identifying parents who display talent in working with children. We lure them in as volunteers. Soon they become substitutes, then assistant teachers, teachers, and sometimes, like me, the director. Meaningful parent involvement has long been an important Head Start value. Start model will be prioritized and sustained as the blending of systems is implemented.
What’s next for Bank Street School?
Bank Street Head Start is one of the very best preschools in the city. That’s not just my opinion: Ask our parents. Ask our children. Ask the Department of Education. When the Gates Foundation visited the city to meet with the Department of Education recently and wanted to see what a good preschool looked like, the DOE took them directly to Bank Street Head Start.
We have educators from around the world visiting us each year for the same reason. I’m confident that Bank Street College of Education, the staff, parents, and children will maintain the quality of our program and navigate all the coming changes in the next years.
San Loco plotting an East Village comeback?
[Photo from February by Dave on 7th]
A familiar name is on the May CB3-SLA docket — San Loco.
Per the just-released meetings agenda for May, San Loco is seeking a new liquor license for 111 Avenue C between Seventh Street and Eighth Street.
The questionnaires aren't posted online just yet, so we'll have to wait to find out more details about what San Loco has in store for this space, which was, until February, the tapas joint Marcha Cocina. (Updated: In an email, co-owner Kimo Hing confirmed that they are applying for a license, though they have yet to sign a lease for the space.)
San Loco had a longtime presence in the East Village, starting in 1986 on Second Avenue before later moving across the street to 124 Second Ave. between Seventh Street and St. Mark's Place. (Updated: Edited that address based on reader comments.) That outpost closed in June 2017 "due to a rent increase that is unsustainable," per co-owner Jill Hing. The Avenue A San Loco closed in 2014 after 15 years in business.
[124 2nd Ave. in June 2017]
The quick-serve Tex-Mex restaurant recently closed its location on Driggs Avenue in Williamsburg for a variety of factors, including the ongoing construction of luxury properties around its space and the nighttime and weekend closures of the L train, which became a hardship on its staff. Hing had said she was hoping to relocate closer to Bushwick.
The Lower East Side locale on Stanton Street remains open.
Explosion-site condoplex rising quickly
[Updated the photos — these are from today]
Work is moving at a brisk pace at 119 Second Ave. at Seventh Street, where a seven-floor Morris Adjmi-designed residential building with 21 condo units and ground-floor retail is quickly rising on the lot.
This week the building made its first appearance above street level...
The plywood only arrived in late January ... with the excavation starting several weeks later.
Compare this pace with that of, say, 11 Avenue C, where, after two-plus years, workers have only just finished the foundation.
Three buildings, 119, 121 and 123 Second Ave., were destroyed on this corner during the deadly gas explosion on March 26, 2015.
The new building will include a commemorative plaque that honors the two men who died that day — Nicholas Figueroa and Moises Locón.
This previous post has more details about what has happened here to date.
[Rendering via Morris Adjmi]
Previously on EV Grieve:
Remembering Nicholas and Moises: the Figueroa family marks the 4-year anniversary of the 2nd Avenue gas explosion
LPC OKs condoplex for gas explosion site on 2nd Avenue and 7th Street
Thursday, April 25, 2019
In bloom
Jimmy Carbone shared these photos today... noting that the Wisteria vines are just starting to bloom here on Stuyvesant Street where it connects with 10th Street...
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