Why the East Village will be a mess tonight and tomorrow

Hmm, there's an ABC show called Cupid (rhymes with stupid) in the works. (Get this: It's an update of the short-lived 1998 series by the same name. Are they so desperate in TVLand that they have to ransack shows that just aired 10 years ago?) From the looks of the parking restrictions starting tonight and lasting through Wednesday, only half the neighborhood should be inconvenienced by this! Hope they bring helicopters!

Even rich people can't afford to see the Mets or Yankees next season

Yesterday I mentioned how expensive tickets were to see the Home Run Derby at Yankees Stadium. That should prepare everyone for what will be charged for normal, everyday tickets next season. No surprise, steep ticket prices will be the norm once the Yankees and Mets open their schmancy new stadiums in 2009. In the Post last Friday, EV Grieve favorite Phil Mushnick wrote about a rather wealthy fellow who has been a Mets season ticket-holder since Shea opened in 1964. As Mushnick reported, this man decided he's not renewing his tickets. His four box seats cost him $5,837 in 1993, $11,836 in 1998, $23,702 last year and $33,300 this season. Last week, the Mets informed him that comparable seats next year will cost him roughly $60,000.

Yesterday, Mushnick wrote that his Friday column "led to a pile of missives from Mets and Yankees season and partial season ticket-holders; those who now realize that they, too, have reached the point of can't return.

"Friday, one wrote that he's one in a group of friends who have purchased the same box seats in Yankee Stadium the last 20-plus years. The first year, the seats were $12.50 per. By 1996, they were $25 per. Last year they went to $150 a seat. This year they are $250 a seat. And, he added, the seats have been in disrepair the last three years."


(Sidebar: And, given the insufferable John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman calling games on NewsRadio 880, you can't even listen to the Yankees...And why does Sterling insist on saying "an A-bomb for A-rod" as his signature home run call?)

Still, there are options left for those of us who like watching baseball: For the price of one draft beer at Yankee Stadium, you can get a good ticket to see the Staten Island Yankees. Better scenery along the way too. And, of course, there are the Brooklyn Cyclones and Newark Bears. And Long Island Ducks. And Atlantic City Surf.

The All-Star baseball theme continues: The Roger Clemens edition

In keeping with this all-baseball theme in honor of tonight's All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium (which I don't plan on watching...)... If you're looking for something to wear for the big game, the Yankees gift shop has some nice team jerseys on sale:


I'll be wearing my Jose Canseco Yankees jersey.

Bonus! Roger Clemens sings (sort of) in this 1987 commercial for Zest!

A Public Service Annoucement from EV Grieve

GOOD GOD, WHATEVER YOU DO, STAY AWAY FROM SIXTH AVENUE BETWEEN 40th STREET AND 58th STREET TODAY!

Oh, why? Let me get press release-y: More than 110 of baseball's greatest current and retired players will star in the fourth annual All-Star Game Red Carpet Parade presented by Chevy on Tuesday, July 15th from 1 p.m. - 3 p.m., before the 79th Major League Baseball All-Star Game at Yankee Stadium. The All-Star Game Red Carpet Parade, which will start at 40th Street and Sixth Avenue and end at 58th Street and Sixth Avenue, is expected to draw approximately 1 million fans on the streets and from office buildings along the route.

Oh, and Mayor Bloomberg will be there!

Anyway, hope someone pulled up the weeds from Sixth Avenue.

Survey: Yuppies in New York City not quite as upwardly mobile as in the past

Gawker has this item from UPI:


New York's hurting financial sector is causing it to slip as a destination for "yuppies," Forbes Magazine found in a survey of young professionals. Turmoil on Wall Street, with thousands of jobs being lost in the wake of the housing crisis, was blamed for New York's drop from first to fourth in the Forbes survey of upward mobility.

"Right now anything would be easier than New York," Richie Rivera, 30, a health insurance administrator from Brooklyn, told The New York Daily News. "A lot of people are losing jobs and trying to find work."

San Francisco leap-frogged over New York into the yuppie top spot thanks to a more diversified economy, followed by Boston with its booming technology sector. Also beating out New York was Houston, where record prices for oil are creating new jobs and more upward mobility in Texas...

Yeah, but I bet we have more wine bars than Houston!

Meanwhile, Gawker commenter averyreade had this response:

Suffer yuppies, suffer.

Now suffer some more. Now beat it. Scram!

Maybe NYC can breathe again soon...

Things that I won't be doing tonight

I keep getting e-mails from my good friends at Ticketmaster saying that seats are still available for tonight's Home Run Derby at Yankee Stadium. Plus, you can come early and watch the all-stars warm up for tomorrow night's annual All-Star Game! Wow, that sounds boring! Still, maybe I could get Nate McLouth's autograph! (Yeah, "who?" is right.)

So, I finally thought I'd take a look. Maybe I'd pluck down my $20 for a tier reserve seat.

Ha!

Let's see, Tier 11, Row X....$150. Plus! The $8 "convenience charge."

So what's the make a decent seat? Box 72, third-base side...$600! Plus! The $8 "convenience charge."

At Apiary: New American and no booze for minors

Apiary has been described as a "new American" restuarant. Open Table (via Eater) offered this description: "Apiary fills a unique niche in the East Village...the chef’s interpretation of American, Regional and Seasonal ingredients will exceed the expected and excite the palates of the guest, offered with all the warmth of hospitable service in a refined setting." It opens soon at 60 E. Third Ave. near 11th Street, a location that used to house the type of business that is becoming extinct in the neighborhood: a laundromat.

By the way, the management at Apiary wants you to know that minors won't be served any booze. Noted.

"White collar funk" on 23rd Street

This is a video, dubbed "white collar funk," made by Paul Dougherty in the 1970s on 23rd Street. You can read about the project here.



His collection includes the a Ludlow Street before and after as well as some interior footage of St. Brigid's. I posted this video in April (not knowing that Jeremiah had posted it in January).

How to sell cologne these days

At 11th Street and Third Avenue.
And what's wrong writing with a pencil or pen and notebook? Regardless, this is horrible. I just don't get what this has to do with expensive cologne.

Vasmay Lounge is moving

[Photo via Twerking Hard in the East Village]

This past Wednesday, I was yammering away about buildings for sale in the neighborhood that also housed bars. And why this was cause for concern. One of these locations was Vasmay Lounge on Houston at Suffolk. (Site of the former Meow Mix.) Well, Twerking Hard in the East Village reported today that Vasmay's has closed...and moved to the former Essex Ale House location on Essex and Houston. (He also reminds us of one of the former bars in the that Essex Ale House spot -- Filthy McNasty's. Have a few stories about that place...)

Anyway, will be curious to see what happens to the former Vasmay space at 269 E. Houston St.

About that hole in the middle of 7th Street and Avenue B

Uh, it's bigger. Yeah, yeah -- it's funny until someone's Lexus gets swallowed. Then we'll hear about it.


Meanwhile, someone may want to look at the holes on St. Mark's and Avenue A and 10th Street and Third Avenue. Or not.

Fliers around Tompkins Square Park this morning

Wonder how long before someone removes these headlines about the Tompkins Square Riots, from Aug. 6-7, 1988. Don't want to upset the yunnies with any unpleasantness...

Live like Keith Richards, Russell Simmons, Britney Spears...

On June 9, Curbed reported on the former Silk Building apartment that, through the years, Keith Richards and Russell Simmons owned. Most recently, Britney Spears sold it for $4 million. As Curbed noted on June 9, the new owner was trying to flip it for $6,595 million.

Well, the pad above 4th and Broadway can still be yours for $6,595 million. It was featured in the "homes of the week" section in the Post this past Thursday.

According to the Post:

Now you can live like a rock star, pop icon or music mogul! We mean that literally, insofar as this "exclusive" newly renovated penthouse in the Silk Building has been previously owned by Keith Richards, Britney Spears and Russell Simmons. There are four levels with three bedrooms - including a full-floor master suite with two bathrooms (out of 4½ total), a mini-bar, a sitting area with a wood-burning fireplace, hand-rubbed custom cherrywood closets and a private hidden entry door. The upstairs guest suite has a terrace with an "incredible" view of the Empire State Building. The condo is fully wired with a new Crestron smart-home system that controls all the lights, putting you in the mood no matter what music you listen to.

The Boston Globe visits the Bowery

There's a piece in the travel section of The Boston Globe today titled "New art museum in the Bowery attracts galleries -- and gentrifiers."

Among the observations made by the Globe correspondent:

The streets were busy with shoppers, merchants, and tourists on the days I explored. It felt as safe as anywhere in New York, though less crowded than SoHo, where I exited the subway to walk along Prince Street to the museum.

Change is part of the fabric of New York. The Lower East Side is the former home to the world's largest Yiddish-speaking community, but that language is rarely heard on the streets anymore. Even the Streit's Matzo factory is moving to New Jersey, although Katz's Delicatessen (remember "When Harry Met Sally") remains largely unchanged. Locals complain Little Italy is losing its true Italian heart but summer festivals still pack the streets. Chinatown bustles with sidewalk Asian markets and new construction.

If history repeats, the influx of galleries and tourists to the Lower East Side will be followed by the likes of such nearby SoHo icons as the gourmet emporium Dean & DeLuca's flagship store and trendy hotels like The Mercer. Gentrification has begun.

Um, OK. So who wants to tell the correspondent about the Whole Foods on Houston and the Bowery? Or take her for a walk on Ludlow (and how do you go to Katz's and miss, well, everything?)...Or...

Meanwhile, a quick look back [video via John LaCroix]:

Noted: Divorces and legends

Headline in today's Post:

ANGUISH OF 'STOCK' SPLITS
DIVORCES SURGE AS WALL ST. WOES HIT COUPLES' SHOPPING SPREES & HAMPTON GETAWAYS

Completely unrelated, but from the Post today:

BON JOVI-AL NIGHT
LEGENDARY ROCKERS ON A ROLL IN CENTRAL PK

Bon Jovi? Legendary? Since when?

"Why are you bleeding?" -- Iggy Pop on the Tom Snyder Show

The former Christodora House resident talks with Tom in 1980.



Bonus! Iggy chats with Dinah Shore in 1977. (And who is that behind the keyboards with a cigarette?!)

The East Village: "Where you can come live on dreams and tofu"

Campbell Robertson takes a look at the Broadway smasheroo "Rent, " which closes in September after nearly 12 years, in the Times Sunday....("Bohemia takes its final bows")

And?

Now, 12 years later, it would be impossible to see the show and think it was set any time in the past decade. Much of “Rent” has become downright nostalgic, almost jarringly so. Several numbers revolve around pay phones and answering machines (20-somethings with answering machines!). Roger, the gloomy, HIV-positive guitarist with a nasty case of rocker’s block, plays gigs at CBGB, then a landmark of the New York underground music scene, now a menswear boutique. A group of lefty hipsters talk politics with no mention of anyone named Cheney or even the first Bush.

And?

Did “Rent” play a part in changing the neighborhood it celebrates? Probably. “Rent” is the “All the President’s Men” of aspirant hipsters, a great advertisement for Alphabet City (once and never more to be marked off by the avenues Awful, Bad, Crazy and Dangerous), where you can come live on dreams and tofu.

And?

I’d go even further and stipulate: “Rent” is a safe, accessible show that at times struggles, even strains, to put up a dangerous front. The “Rent” marketing campaign has tempered that gritty facade in recent years; the show now, like “The Phantom of the Opera,” advertises itself as something you simply have to see — and come back to — because of its place in the culture.

But think about that. Is there a more accurate reflection of recent New York history? Friendly, clean, low-crime, nonsmoking, trans-fat-free, cabs-that-take-credit-cards New York? A city we can’t honestly pretend is rough and gritty anymore?

The 47 E. 3rd St. protest in video

Here are some short clips from the protest at 47 E. 3rd St. tonight. I was there for the first leg of the protest tour. (UPDATED: Jeremiah and Bob Arihood have in-depth coverage of the evening.)











Earlier:
At the 47 E. 3rd Street protest

Reminder

At the Bowery Wine Bar protest

At the 47 E. 3rd Street protest

Here are a few photos from the protest at 47 E. 3rd St. tonight. I was there for the first leg of the protest tour. It was fairly calm and orderly. The protestors were fenced in by the police, roughly a building and a half away from No. 47. (By the way, the police could not have been nicer. At least while I was there.) UPDATED: Jeremiah and Bob Arihood have in-depth coverage of the evening.

The thrill of victory, the agony of the tour bus

At Wall Street and Water Street.