Getting to the bottom of that noise last night from somewhere over the East River

Last night, we were on a rooftop in the neighborhood enjoying a nice, quiet evening. Then, about 9:30, we heard a series of loud "bangs." My first thought was the ConEd plant on 14th Street had finally blown. But we still had power. The ruckus seemed to be coming from somewhere over the East River, I'd say in the 30s. From what I could gather, someone was setting off explosive pyrotechnic devices, which can be very dangerous. Anyway, the noise continued for nearly 30 minutes, all the while a great variety of sparkling shapes, often variously colored, could be seen through the cloudy skies. We called the police several times, but couldn't get through. Regardless, my guess is that someone was filming a big Hollywood movie. (These people have no consideration for the rest of us who have to live here.) There are many rumored sequels in the works that may be filmed here, such as Cloverfield 2: We Still Can't Afford a Tripod or I Am Legend 2: Still the Legend Despite that Hand Grenade at the End of the First One. Must have been that.

Anyway, I'll continue to investigate this. Here is 30 seconds of the action.

Tasting the difference

As I wrote one day last week, I've long been a fan of the random use of quotation marks on signs, which is why I'm a big fan of The “Blog” of “Unnecessary” Quotation Marks.) Bonus here for the quotation mark going the wrong way after difference...

A view that I used to enjoy

You know, looking north on Union Square...

The most accurate depiction of life as a runaway in New York City that I have ever seen

At least watch until the Big Dance Scene. (The 3:21 mark if you're in a hurry.) And some nice shots of 8th Avenue from the early 1980s. (And did you know that Pat Benatar was born Patricia Mae Andrzejewski in Greenpoint? Anyway, I always kind of liked her.)

Sonic Youth at Central Park, July 4, 1992

On July 4, 1992, I saw Sonic Youth at SummerStage in Central Park. Sun Ra and his Arkestra opened. I remember SY being as frenzied as I'd ever seen them as they played a Dirty-heavy set. (The record was just about to be released.) I don't remember much else, except that I loved every minute of the afternoon. (No need for all the details!)

There is a bootleg release of the show with:

Teen Age Riot
Eric's Trip
Dirty Boots
Drunken Butterfly
Theresa's Sound-world
Youth Against Facism
Swimsuit Issue
Orange Rolls, Angel's Spit
100%
Kool Thing
Sugar Kane

I couldn't find any video from this 1992 Central Park show. But I did come across Sonic Youth playing "Kool Thing" in Hultsfeld, Sweden, on June 14, 1992 (Close enough!):



By the way, as you may know, Sonic Youth plays later today with the Feelies at Battery Park.

Updated: This week's issue of Time Out New York featured the following line prominently displayed on its cover:

Yes, Sonic Youth was a free event. But you needed to get your tickets in advance. Inside the same issue, you'll see in two places that, although it was free, you weren't getting into the show. SOLD OUT.

Guess no one told this to the person writing the cover lines.

Can't stop the laughing, er, music

For the holiday weekend, let's pay homage to a most deliriously awful movie set in New York, 1980's "Can't Stop the Music." There's camp-o-rama galore with Valerie Perrine, Steve Guttenberg, Bruce Jenner and the Village People.

You've seen it, right? (It's OK if you have -- I actually own the damn thing. Think I paid $2 for it. Or so I'm claiming.)

The rather grainy-looking intro gives you all you need to know. Enjoy!

From the EV Grieve Oversight Department

Meant to post this yesterday. According to the caption: "Protesters for North Playground Renovation, Tompkins Square Park, Manhattan, July 2, 1990." I found this in the New York City Parks Photo Archive.

In case you're wondering why some SATC fans are now into Richard Hell

Many excellent posts from yesterday at Ephemeral New York. The post on Tom Verlaine at the Peppermint Lounge was of particular interest to me. As the post notes, "The Peppermint Lounge is preserved forever in all of its grunginess on DVD in a scene from the great 1982 movie Smithereens."


Wow. This film fell off my radar. I like the director, Susan Seidelman. So I took a look at the movie online. Look at the new box for the film, which stars, among others, Richard Hell. From the director of Sex and the City! She directed three episodes of the show in 1998. (There were 94 episodes in all.) A bit of a stretch for the marketing folks to try to make that connection. Still, however cheesy, the thought of some SATC fans tuning into Smithereens -- thinking the two may possibly be related -- puts a smile on my face.








Here's what KultKlassics had to say about the film.

Good news on Canal and Eldridge; remembering the Witty Brothers

Last November, Jeremiah had an item on the delightfully old-school Cup & Saucer Luncheonette on Canal and Eldridge. A rarity in these glitzy times. And still going strong! Good news, of course. Then! A friend swore to me the other day that the Cup & Saucer had been shuttered. So I headed over to the corner of Canal and Eldridge after work last night to find -- business as usual. Phew. Stupid friend.




By the way, walking north on Eldridge, I noticed this name on the building below:

I wasn't familiar with the Witty Brothers. Didn't realize the hand they played in NYC fashion history. Found this in the Times, from 2006:

Spencer B. Witty, the last of four brothers whose company, Witty Brothers, fashioned and sold elegant men's clothing through a small, prestigious chain of stores in New York, died May 29 at his home in Manhattan. He was 92.
The cause was complications of pancreatic cancer, said his grandson Eric Gould.
In 1939 Mr. Witty — along with his brothers Frederic, Ephraim and Arthur, and a cousin, Irving — took over a company founded by their grandfather David Witty in 1888. It started as one shop on Eldridge Street in Lower Manhattan. By the time it was taken over by the Eagle Clothes company in 1962, there were six stores, one in Brooklyn and five in Manhattan, including two on Fifth Avenue.
"They used luxurious fabrics, cashmere, Scottish tweeds," said Mr. Witty's daughter, Jane Gould, "and this was coming out of the Great Depression." An article in The New York Times about the "Witty boys" in 1952 said it was their insistence on retaining the high quality of their forebears that kept the company afloat through the Depression.

Writing with spray paint is much more difficult than it seems

Apparently. Along Nassau Street.

PDA of the day

Along the romantic corrider of Park Row, where buttocks cupping is in full bloom this summer among young lovers.

At the Firemen's Garden

At 364 E. 8th St., just east of Avenue C on the south side, you'll find the Firemen's Garden. Of all the gardens in the neighborhood, this one is particularly special. There's a sign on the fence that explains the garden is a tribute to all the New York City firefighters who have died in the line of duty. In particular, the sign reads, the site pays homage to the memory of Martin R. Celic, a young member of Ladder Company 18.

There's a reason I'm writing about this today. On July 2, 1977, at 3:10 p.m., a four-alarm fire broke out on the fifth floor of an abandoned six-floor tenement building that stood at 364 E. 8th St. After Celic and his fellow firefighters entered the burning building, the teenager who started the blaze reportedly went back in and set another fire, trapping the men inside.

According to news accounts at the time, Celic and seven other firefighters were injured trying to escape. A fire department cherry picker was raised to rescue the men. They needed to jump from the fire escape on the fifth floor onto the bucket. Celic fell 70 feet to the street. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital, where he died on July 10. He was 25. He was set to be married that October.

The sign on the garden talks more about Celic, and his "love of practical jokes, his joyous irreverence, and his friendliness." You can read more about how the garden came to be here.

Duane Reade wants to make you feel like dancing

Just give me my Beano Food Enzyme Dietary Supplement Tablets and let me get out of here.

Admiring the trash at 2 Gold Street

In the morning...


...and late afternoon.

Impressive! (Looks more impressive in person, of course!) With so much trash, this must be 24k living!

If you're thinking of living in: The East Village/Lower East Side...in 1963,1985,1992, 2000 and 2008

As you may have heard, it's expensive to live here in New York City. Rents just keep going up! For a little perspective, I looked at five articles from The New York Times on living in the Lower East Side/East Village. (Three of the articles came with the headline, "If You're Thinking of Living in: The East Village.")

Renovations on Lower East Side Creating New Living Quarters
May 5, 1963 (and written by Bernard Weinraub! Only thought he did movies...) Article only available for a fee (charged by the Times, not me).

Apartments to be found in the vicinity are primarily renovated lofts and tenement flats. Rentals in the renovated houses vary. According to Harry J. Shapolsky and Harry Gruber, builders and owners of more than 25 buildings on the East Side, south of 14th Street, the monthy rental for a one-and-a-half-room air-conditioned apartment in a building with an elevator ranges from $85 to $100. The monthly rental for a three-room apartment in the same building ranges from $110 to $145.

In a renovated building with neither air-conditioning nor elevator, according to Mr. Shapolsky, the monthly rental for a one-and-a-half-room apartment varies from $65 to $85. A three-room apartment in the same building ranges from $75 to $95 a month.

The emergence of renovated apartments has occurred mainly in the area called the East Village – north of Houston Street, south of 14th Street and east of University Place.

Real-estate manager Richard] Paley places the most favored area on the Lower East Side around Tompkins Square Park…

"This is the last frontier in Manhattan for reasonable rents," he said. "You can live here for 'Bronx' or 'Brooklyn' prices."

If You're Thinking of Living in: The East Village
October 6, 1985
Rehabilitation of scores of buildings is under way and to hear local developers tell it, the sale of condominiums is brisk. The developers of 65-69 Cooper Square, a new building with 37 studios and one-bedroom condominiums, said more than two-thirds had been sold since it opened several months ago. The apartments range in price from $175,000 to $208,000, with typical maintenance of $329 a month.

But prices are not rising uniformly: The owners of a 20-unit apartment house at 82 East Third Street recently lowered their asking price from $575,000 to $515,000.

Rents for apartments, when available, can be high. Studio apartments on East Ninth Street between First and Second Avenues are being advertised at $725 a month, and two-bedroom apartments at St. Mark's Place and First Avenue have been advertised for $1,500 a month.

Condominium and co-op prices vary widely. Sponsors of a new co-op in a building being rehabilitated at 613 East Sixth Street are asking $165,000 for a two-bedroom, two-bath apartment, with maintenance of about $500 a month.

In general, the trend of real-estate prices seems steadily upward, and that portends what many in the neighborhood fear, gentrification. It already has happened to many of the theaters, nightclubs and music clubs that used to abound in the area only a few years ago. Most are gone now, the victims of rising rents.

If You're Thinking of Living in: The East Village
June 14, 1992
Yet the allure of bohemian decadence keeps housing prices up. The building stock includes "more five-story walk-ups than anything else," said Gary Brenner of City Estate Agency. Rents in these and in brownstones and renovated spaces, he said, are $600 to $1,000 a month for studios, $750 to $1,400 for one-bedrooms and $1,200 to $1,800 for two-bedrooms.

Luxury buildings went up during the 1980's. But more than half the owners in the Christodora House, an 85-unit condominium on Avenue B overlooking the park, have rented their spaces, waiting out the recession before selling, according to James Roman, sales manager for the Halstead Property Company, a brokerage, and Red Square, a high-rise rental at 250 East Houston built in the late 80's, "still has empty apartments and a steady turnover."

St. Mark's Real Estate, which handles rent-stabilized apartments, said studios fetch $600 to $700 and two-bedrooms, $1,000 to $1,100.

If You're Thinking of Living In: The East Village; From Mean Streets to Cutting-Edge
December 17, 2000

Prices for co-ops and condominiums have quadrupled since 1996, said Jordan Gitterman, an owner of Magnum Realty, which specializes in East Village properties. Though most buildings in the neighborhood remain rental, condominiums are going on the market with prices ranging from $250,000 for one bedroom to $450,000 for three bedrooms.

''Before this big swing in the 90's, this was a pretty rough area,'' Mr. Gitterman said. ''There are still some rough blocks, but it has changed from a low-income area to a trendy, hip area for young people.''

One recent condo conversion is a 20-unit building on East Fourth Street, between Avenues B and C. The building's history encapsulates much of the neighborhood's last hundred years. Built as a church rectory in the early 20th century, the building was later sold and used as a yeshiva for Eastern European boys. It was vacated sometime in the late 60's, reopened as an arena for amateur boxing matches 10 years later and then was boarded up until it was sold to Urbatech Designers and Builders in 1989, said one of the company's owners, Yoram Finkelstein.

Urbatech renovated the building and put the apartments on the market in the early 1990's, but found no buyers. ''We had an ad in the paper in the early 90's, and people would call and hear it was on Avenue C and they would just hang up,'' Mr. Finkelstein said.

After renting the apartments for a decade, the company put the apartments on the market again in September and sold more than half in two months. Prices run from $340,000 for two bedrooms, to $380,000 for a one-bedroom unit with a roof terrace to $425,000 for a three-bedroom unit, he said.

Even more surprising to many longtime residents is the steep rise in rents in the last five years. Apartments that rented 10 years ago for $500 or $600 now go for two or three times that. Studio apartments rent for $1,300 to $1,400, one-bedrooms go for $1,700 to $1,800 and two- and three-bedroom apartments run as high as $3,000, said Jack Bick, owner of Charaton Realty.

''If you want to live in the East Village, you better be prepared to pay a lot of money,'' he said. ''The only way to get anything for under $1,000 is to share a bedroom.''

He and other area brokers attribute the rapid rise in rents to New York University students who began flowing into the neighborhood in the mid-90's. Most of the neighborhood's apartments fall under the city's rent regulation laws, which generally permit landlords to raise rent by 20 percent for new tenants, and the rapid turnover in student tenants has propelled rents upward. Since students tend to stay in apartments for just a couple of years, landlords can raise the rent when the students graduate and move on.

''By their third and fourth year in college, all the students want to live in the East village,'' Mr. Bick said. ''And Mommy and Daddy say, 'O.K., we'll foot the bill.' ''

Finally, while not specifically discussing the East Village, this article from Sunday sums up the NYC rental market:

Luring Affluent Renters in Manhattan
June 29, 2008

For Mackenzie Rosenthal, who will be a senior at New York University next year and who will be moving into a one-bedroom at 20 Exchange Place this summer, “the perks were just kind of too good to pass up.” She said she and her father had “pored over the lease, saying: ‘Where’s the catch?’ but as far as we can tell, there doesn’t seem to be one.”

When she and a roommate moved into her current two-bedroom walk-up in the East Village, they had to come up with $12,000 to cover the broker’s fee, security deposit and first and last month’s rent. “That was just ludicrous,” she said. “But when I move into my new apartment, all I need is the first month’s rent.”

Ms. Rosenthal said that after factoring in the free month’s rent, her $3,000 apartment will cost her $2,750 a month. She worries that she will not be able to afford to stay in the apartment when her one-year lease is up, but her broker, Jeffrey Carlson of Platinum Properties, said that as an original tenant, she might be able to negotiate the same rate at renewal time.

Employment opportunity of the day

At John and Pearl Streets.

10 Big Shows Daily! (in air conditioning)

So there has been plenty of faux porn in Times Square of late, from Malcolm McLaren's stag mash-ups to a 1970s Times Square massage harem created for a Ryan Gosling-Kirsten Dunst movie.

Boring!

Here's a look back at some real Times Square XXX signage from the 1970s:



[Via raulriveranyc on YouTube]

Previously on EV Grieve:
Here's to a "relaxing" weekend in the city!

"Changing for the bettor"

As you may know, the OTB outlets will stay open now that the city and state hashed out an agreement deal two weeks back.

Now that all this drama is settled, I hope we can see some OTB commercials, like this one from 1986:



Bonus!

An ad from 1986 for Belmont Park:



[YouTube videos via MyCommercials]

But of course (And a look back at 110 Third Ave.)

So what's new at 110 Third Ave.? (Or, shall I say One Ten Third Ave.?)


And this branch won't haven't any of that panhandling (they spell it pan handling, meaning someone who handles pans? Or something to hold hot pots with?) or nonbanking business!



Meanwhile, a moment of silence for the old 110 Third Ave. (Sigh.)


RIP, June 2005.

[Photo courtesy of Patrick Crowley]

And, of course, 110 Third Ave.'s place in cinematic history:

"The old Hollywood sense of lawless New York is rearing its ugly head"

Julia Vitullo-Martin, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, wrote an op-ed in today's New York Post titled "Revenge of the Bad Old Days."

She begins:

Does it feel some days as if New York-- wealthy, successful, seemingly at the top of the world -- is slipping back into the bad old days of crime, noise, dirt, rudeness? Like pentimento rising from an old canvas, the traces of New York's previous misery are appearing on the streets and in the subways -- graffiti, aggressive panhandling, open drug dealing, filthy public areas, ear--splitting noise, screeching sirens, a sense of disorder we thought was gone. It's not "Soylent Green" again, but the old Hollywood sense of lawless New York is rearing its ugly head.



And fast-forwarding past a lot of analysis and stats and what not:

Are we heading backwards? No, but we need to remember our own heritage.

New Yorkers haven't always understood that some ominous trend was beginning. For example, 1958 was the start of what the late Erik Monkkonen, a historian at UCLA, called New York's "rogue tidal wave of violence." Almost no one noticed at the time. It lasted until 1992, when the Dinkins administration, under Commissioner Ray Kelly, began its Safe Streets program. And while Monkkonen was optimistic about New York's future, he warned of the relentless cycle by which, once some "lower level of violence had been achieved, the mechanisms for control and the value of peace get forgotten, and a slow rebirth of violence begins." We can fool ourselves into thinking that the New York of the last few years is the New York that will always be. But our city is and always has been a tumultuous place, in which the miseries of the past don't seem so far away. We need to be vigilant, as we have been since 1992, against the small, unpleasant, menacing intrusions on New York's quality of life.

We know that New York's economic engine, the financial industry, is under immense strain, that the mayor's budget faces severe deficits, and that some businesses are starting layoffs.

Bloomberg has been the right mayor for good times. Now the truly difficult part starts: keeping New York great in hard times.

[Image of the East Village in the 1970s from Litter Bugged via Filthy Mess]