In a pickle Sunday

After you've pickled your livers all weekend (sorry!), head to Orchard Street Sunday for the 8th Annual NYC International Pickle Day.

According to the NY Food Museum Web site:

Your favorite street festival lives on! This year we are expanding to two blocks, giving people lots of room, and heading toward event greater demonstrations, educational displays and community involvement. Bring your own costume, and prepare to pucker!

As always, Pickle Day will feature pickles from around the world, and around the corner. In addition to expanded selection of pickled fruits, vegetables, meats, cheeses, we want to hear from you, what you’re doing, and your relationship to the pickling industry. It’s your festival, after all… on Orchard St, between Broome and Grand, 11-4:30.

Oh, whatever you do, don't invite Mariah!



Photo: In front of Gus's Pickles in 1990 by Bruce Davidson/Magnum Photos

Dear marketing people: ENOUGH with the viral campaigns

Seen on First Avenue. TV Squad was game enough to call the attached number. For a CBS series called "The Ex List." Ugh.

Previously on EV Grieve:
A poorly timed marketing campaign(?)

Righteous Hams 2: Bad to the Bone

Meant to add this to my original post...

Oh, and the Post gave the film one star. Lou Lumenick, taking a break from being a dick to Roger Ebert, writes: Al Pacino and Robert De Niro collect bloated paychecks with intent to bore in "Righteous Kill," a slow-moving, ridiculous police thriller that would have been shipped straight to the remainder bin at Blockbuster if it starred anyone else.

And in the Times, Manohla Dargis writes: In “Righteous Kill” these two godheads of 1970s cinema go macho-a-macho with each other — furrowing brows, bellowing lines, looking alternately grimly serious and somewhat bemused — in a B-movie (more like C-minus) duet that probably sounded like a grand idea when their handlers whispered it in their ears.

Lo king at an o d M A ad

2nd Ave. Sagas takes us back to 1993 with this MTA PSA:



As Benjamin Kabak notes:

I remember seeing this one in the subways, and at the time it was very appropriate. As you can see above, the ad plays on the MTA’s notoriously unreliable public address system. Fifteen years, the MTA swore they were working to improve the PA system. Based on what I hear on the trains and in stations every day, I’m guessing that the PA overhaul is one project not quite there yet.

Anarchy in the UK and US

Stupefaction provides the details on the Howl!-related panel discussion at the Bowery Poetry Club titled "Unrest in the 70s -- US vs UK."

Featured panelists:

Richard Lloyd (Television)
Ari Up (Slits)
Cynthia Sley (Bush Tetras)
Judy Nylon (Snatch)
Walter Lure (Heartbreakers)
Arturo Vega (Ramones)
Steve Garvey (Buzzcocks)

Moderator: Mary Harron

An appreciation: The P & G Cafe

Found myself on the Upper West Side late yesterday afternoon. So I stopped by the beloved P & G Cafe — the family-owned saloon that has graced the corner of 73rd and Amsterdam since 1942. Perfection. The front door was open. A small group of regulars were joking around with each other. The Yankees game was on. (Well, the Yankees are hardly perfection these days...)

Nothing new to report on the bar's fate. Latest rumor is still a Baby Gap. There has been talk of relocation. I didn't ask any questions. Was just there to enjoy it while I can. Like-minded fellows have also paid their respects in the past, including Jeremiah and Lost City.

Headline of the day

I feel so much safer:

NYPD says fewer officers intentionally fired guns

Farewell to 257 Bowery

Curbed has the details:

English architect Lord Norman Foster must be tired of dealing with all the stuffy uptowners (lookin' at you, Tom Wolfe!) who get mixed up in the business of his grand architectural visions, because rumor has it he's heading downtown—to the Bowery, so conveniently left out of the East Village/Lower East Side rezoning. According to a Curbed tipster, Foster & Partners has designed the above nine-story gallery building for an established Chelsea art dealer at 257 Bowery, just north of the New Museum and across the street from FLAnk Architects' planned eco-friendly hotel.

Earlier:
Bowery Boogie has the goods on another gallery opening in the neighborhood.

Appreciating NYC's drinking past (and present)

I enjoyed Off the Presses author Robert Simonson's article in the Sun yesterday titled "Looking at New York's Liquid Past." Here's his look at Times Square:

Walk to Broadway and down two blocks south to the Crossroads of the World. Unsurprisingly, a lot of drinking history occurred at this intersection. On the southeast corner of Seventh Avenue and 42nd Street, you can still see the Mansard-roofed beauty that once was the Knickerbocker Hotel. The bar was so favored a watering hole of uptown swells in the first two decades of the 20th century that it was called the 42nd Street Country Club. (It was also the original home of Parrish's "Old King Cole" oil painting.) Its main importance in cocktail history, though, lies in the once-prevalent claim that its head bartender, Martini di Arma di Taggia, invented the martini in 1912. This is balderdash, since mentions of the drink had been appearing in print for decades prior to that. But give ol' di Taggia a quick salute, anyway.

Directly opposite Broadway was the Hotel Metropole, another popular way station for actors, politicians, and the like. Its house cocktail was the Metropolitan, which is basically a Manhattan, but with brandy standing in for the rye. It hasn't retained the fame the Manhattan has but is still a damned decent drink.

He also provides some nice details about current haunts such as the Algonquin and King Cole Bar.

Reflections on Avenue A

Near Ninth Street.

A sleek new bar at "21"

Change at the "21" Club! As the City Room reports this afternoon:

There are few entries in the annals of New York alcoholism to rival the bar at the “21” Club in Midtown Manhattan. The broad, mahogany bar stood since the 1940s in the center of the first floor. Drinks were had there by the likes of Humphrey Bogart and Ernest Hemingway.

With its celebrity patrons and speakeasy heritage, it was the subject of paintings by artists like Leroy Neiman and immortalized in films, notably “The Sweet Smell of Success.”

But now in the celebrated dining room of “21,” which reopened this month at “21” West 52nd Street after renovation, there is only the sweet smell of shellac, given off by — egads — a sleek new bar, freshly varnished.

It resembles the old bar, down to the brass foot rail, but there are differences. It is much narrower (about half as wide as the four-foot-wide old one), and shorter (by about 12 feet), leaving more space in the dining room for tables. And there are no spittoons.

Salvador Dalí in New York

MoMa is currently showing the exhibit Dalí: Painting and Film (through Monday). In conjuntion with that tonight and tomorrow, there's a discussion-and-films series titled Dalí in New York.

According to MoMa, "Dalí in New York explores the artist's diverse experiences and encounters in New York from the 1930s to the 1960s."

Among the films:

Screen Tests: Salvador Dalí. 1966. USA. Directed by Andy Warhol. By the mid-1960s Dalí had successfully created a marketable persona that was better known to the public than his paintings. This conflation of art and commerce was of distinct interest to Andy Warhol, and he recorded a pair of screen tests — one shot with the camera upside down — that depict a shrewd Surrealist performance by Dalí. Silent. Approx. 7 min.

Dalí in New York. 1966. USA. Directed by Jack Bond. Dalí, amid preparations for an exhibition at the Huntington Gallery of Modern Art, takes to the streets of New York City. He visits the Art Students League studios, comments on the work of Michelangelo, and creates performance art by lying in a coffin atop one million dollars in cash as ants crawl out of a broken egg and across his face. 57 min.

Here's a snippet of the screen test for Warhol:



And here's part of an interview in New York from last October with Robert and Richard Dupont, the underage twins Warhol fancied who became part of The Factory scene:

Richard: Andy brought us to dinner one Sunday with Salvador Dalí at the Versailles Room at the St. Regis. Dalí always had these dinners, and there were always a lot of drag queens. One named Potassa would be wearing a beautiful gown from Oscar de la Renta or Halston, and she would run around with a big bottle of Champagne and say, “Cham-pan-ya!” After we met her, she would always let us know when Dalí was in town and invite us for these dinners. Sometimes Andy wouldn’t be invited, which would make him upset.

New York Post helps New York men try to be better New York men

The Post has a handy-dandy listicle today titled "25 Skills That Make A NYC Man."

Among the 25 skills that New York men "need to have":

2) Not get ripped off by a cabbie: Always have singles. It's amazing how many taxi drivers have only 10-dollar-bills for change when you have only a 20 for your $8 fare. And the answer to "Where ya' from?" is always "Born and raised in New York."

5) Get into a nightclub with your boys: Go in two at a time holding hands. Seriously, this works. The bouncer will assume you're no threat to the girls they just let in to hit on big spending VIPs. And since no homophobe would resort to this trick just to get in, you're probably not a big macho who'll cause trouble, either.

8) Know what not to order in a bar: Don't get cute. A vodka-cranberry takes two minutes to serve. Your Cape Cod-a-colada could be a while. Plus, it's girly.

9) Not get ripped off in a strip club: "A dance" means one song and costs $20. If the stripper keeps going when song two starts, that meter's running. And FYI, they tell every guy he has pretty eyes. Sorry.

10) Know which clubs and restaurants are played out: If your buddy suggested you take your hot new date to Boucarou, he's trying to get her to leave you. Don't trust blog comments - they're often left by publicists and venue owners of a business or its competition.

17) Not get punched by a crackhead: You don't have to respect them, but act like you do. "I don't have a dollar, but I'll catch you on the way back, buddy." He'll forget. He's a crackhead.

22) Make money: Everything here is absurdly expensive and starving artists starve alone. Unless Albert Hammond is in your band, music is your hobby and you need a day job

23) Know your Olsens from your Hiltons: It's mind-numbing, but it's going to come up. Olsens are elfin creatures who dwell downtown, feed on leaves and often look homeless. Hiltons are longer, taller, louder, shinier and much harder to ignore. You'd rather hook-up with an Olsen, you'd actually rather bag a Hilton.

Ready for the day now, men?

Tonight in Tompkins Square Park: The Toy

Meh...I don't get it either. The Toy? As IMDB describes the plot: On one of his bratty son Eric's annual visits, the plutocrat U.S. Bates (Jackie Gleason) takes him to his department store and offers him anything in it as a gift. Eric chooses a black janitor (Richard Pryor) who has made him laugh with his antics. At first the man suffers many indignities as Eric's "toy", but gradually teaches the lonely boy what it is like to have and to be a friend.

Double ugh. (Oh, and the having Bates as a last name sets up a running gag...Master Bates...)



Now allow me to repeat what I said in a post from July 16:

This film series is all well and good. I'm all for free things that can bring the community together. Not to mention I enjoy cheesy Hollywood movies . . . Still, I'd appreciate an outdoor movie series showing more obscure mainstream and independent films and/or a showcase for local filmmakers. How about something on the history of the neighborhood, such as Clayton Patterson's Captured?

Anyway...on Sept. 19 in the Park: The Shining.

Righteous Hams

"They're like Lennon and McCartney." Righteous Kill opens Friday.




Meanwhile, Pacino in Panic in Needle Park tomorrow night at the Anthology Film Archives at 7.

But of course

The Real Deal reports (via Curbed):

Two thirds of a 15,000-square-foot East Village playground that was home to a popular flea market is under contract in a quiet, all-cash sale for $10.4 million to the Archdiocese of New York, court documents said.

The playground, divided into three ownership lots, is adjacent to the shuttered Mary Help of Christians Catholic Church on the east side of Avenue A between 11th and 12th streets. The Archdiocese owns the church located on a 13,000 square foot lot, city records show.

The Archdiocese did not respond to requests for comment, but real estate professionals speculated the church parcel and playground would be sold and developed into residential housing.

For further reading:
The Church Ladies (The New York Times)

[Photo: Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times]

When the Christodora House became a Greek house

[Photos by Charlie Kerman]

In 1983, when the Christodora House on Avenue B was still abandoned, members of the Tau Delta Phi, Delta Eta Chapter at Cooper Union, placed their Greek letters on the west side atop the 17-floor building. Don't have a lot of details, such as how long the letters remained there. Long enough for a photo opp, of course. Photos of the letters crew are below. (Note the condition of the Christodora...)

One iconic NYC concert venue that is getting renovated instead of torn down or turned into a condo or...

The Times on the renovation of the Beacon:

It almost became a grocery store in the 1970s. In the 1980s, it was nearly jackhammered into a cavernous disco with a triple-tiered restaurant. Somehow it escaped becoming a multiplex. And through 78 years, the neglect of the Beacon Theater in Manhattan — aside from occasional spasms of partial renovation — has often been profound.

The Beacon, at 2124 Broadway, at West 74th Street, is familiar to generations of New Yorkers living on the West Side who grew up there when it was a movie house, performance space and, in recent decades, what some have called the Carnegie Hall of rock rooms.

The Beacon went dark last month for a six-month, $15-million restoration by Madison Square Garden Entertainment, a division of Cablevision Systems Corporation, which announced in 2006 that it was leasing the theater for 20 years. The interior face-lift is to be completed by Jan. 31, in time for a February opening.

The Post has high opinions of LES housing

From today's paper:

Low ceilings. Columns in the living room. Drainage grates outside the windows.

What sounds like a Lower East Side tenement is actually a $53.5 million pair of Plaza penthouses bought by Russian hedge-fund manager Andrei Vavilov, who says the developer promised him the epitome of luxury and then handed over an "attic-like space."

Fair warning