But will the FD be as nice as the old Commerce? As Forbes noted:
[W]ill it be good for Commerce customers, who have grown used to a decidedly "non-bank" attitude? Time will tell. TD Bank will have to navigate that slippery slope carefully so as not to damage what they just bought. Commerce is prized for its ability to generate deposits (28% growth annually) and simultaneously spend on perks that many other banks have long ago abolished in the interest of cost savings.
Those perks include things like weekend and late night hours, lollipops and free pens, free coin sorting machines for everyone (even non-customers), and wide open branch lobbies that look more like auto showrooms than bank branches.
Well, they are still dog friendly at least.
You picture the layoffs as “Oh, I worked at the plant for 10 years, and then they didn’t want me to make this certain wheel part anymore.” Not people in this sort of cushy industry — maybe it’s a trickle-up thing? It’s starting to affect the yuppies in the East Village. That’s when you know it’s a recession: when your yuppie neighbors are going on unemployment.
I came home one day and my roommate was trying to call unemployment. That’s when I still had a job, so I was very smug. He was trying to call unemployment to get his unemployment money, but he couldn’t get through the menu because he had just got a new iPhone. So he was trying to find the keypad on the new iPhone. I was like, “I don’t think the unemployment menu is set up for people with iPhones.
After complaints to the city Buildings Department, and concern from the Urkainian community in the East Village, Cooper Union removed a giant banner with a reproduction of a Picasso drawing of Joseph Stalin. That decision has outraged Lene Berg, the 43-year-old Norwegian artist who included the banner as part of her one-woman art installation, “Stalin by Picasso, or Portrait of Woman with Mustache,” in the school’s historic Foundation Building, on East Seventh Street.
“I didn’t get any explanation of what happened,” Ms. Berg, who is based in Berlin, said in a phone interview this week. She said Cooper Union officials removed the banner last Friday, five days after it went up, without consulting either her or Sara Reisman, associate dean of Cooper Union’s School of Art and the curator of the exhibition.
EVEN though the average price for a Manhattan apartment, at $1.5 million, is higher than it was a year ago, some New York neighborhoods have already started to feel the downward tug that has wrenched the housing market elsewhere in the nation.
Other neighborhoods that experienced price drops include the Lower East Side and the East Village, where median prices fell 5.5 percent...
Neil Cardi was walking down E. First St. between Second Ave. and the Bowery, when he stopped. He was wearing a worn-out rocker T-shirt and black skeleton biker gloves, complete with trench coat slung over his shoulders. Standing by the small, cul de sac in midblock, he sneaked a smirk at the grimy, graffiti-covered walls and scraps of trash that decorated the obscure alley.
“This place gives me comfort,” said Cardi, a former amateur musician who has struggled with substance abuse. “I remember spending a night or two here as the Rolling Stones rolled out the back of that door. It used to be CBGB.”
The unmarked place Cardi stood in front of is a deserted street known as Extra Place and some say that since the 1970s this historic alleyway has given character to the Lower East Side.
AvalonBay’s advertisements that run along the walls between the Bowery and Second Ave. read, “The Redefined Bowery.” And redefining is exactly what residents of 11 E. 1st St. and 22 E. First St., together known as Avalon Bowery Place condominiums, want for Extra Place.
“Clean it up!” and “It’s pretty ugly” were the reactions of people coming out of both buildings as they walked from pressure-washed sidewalks surrounding the new buildings to aged, gum-covered splats of cement. Jennifer, a resident of two months who declined to give her last name, said of the attraction of fixing up Extra Place with cafes: “The less I have to travel for nightlife the better.”
So is Extra Place nothing more than an alley that needs a sprucing up or is it one of the last remnants of old New York? The vote is split.
“It’s kind of famous as the back door of CBGB’s. It’s the backdrop of The Ramones’ ‘Rocket to Russia’ album,” said Fred Harris, senior vice president of AvalonBay, of Extra Place. He said it’s unclear if the parcel is even an officially mapped city street, but, “Regardless of its status, or whether or we own it or not, we just want to clean it up, light it and maintain it and pedestrianize it.”
Police arrested three men shortly before 1 a.m. on Fri., Oct. 24, and charged them with stealing four bottles of oral-sex drops, three bottles of massage oil, a porn movie tape, a package of nipple cream and a sex toy, all from Cherry Box, an erotica shop at 162 W. Fourth St. The suspects, Corey Brown, 31; Malcolm Anderson, 26, and John Francis, 28, were charged with grand larceny after the woman who was tending the shop identified them, police said.
For the last 25 years, Malcolm Stogo has been in the forefront in developing today's ice cream concepts leap years ahead of the industry. He is the author of Ice Cream & Frozen Desserts, co-author of Ice Cream Cakes, and author of a new book titled How To Succeed in the Incredible Ice Cream Business. He is President of Malcolm Stogo Associates, an international ice cream consulting firm, as well as founder of Ice Cream University, a seminar series and publishing company on ice cream production, and marketing and publisher of Batch Freezer News and Ice Cream Store News, two quarterly newsletters on everything one needs to know about ice cream production and marketing. In the 1980's, he co-owned Ice Cream Extravaganza (New York), the largest single frozen dessert operation ($1,500,000 in sales). He also invented the chocolate dipped waffle cone now being produced and sold all over the world.
Cyclists, zombified with white and black face paint and dressed in bright, festive colors, took downtown Manhattan for a two hour ride on Sunday, November 2. They rose the dead with loud cheers, "viva bicicletas!" (live on bicycles) and "celebramos los muertos!" (celebrate the dead), in addition to visiting sites of cyclists hit and killed by cars and holding mock funerals.
Village environmental group Time's Up! organized the Day of the Dead bike ride in order to promote safer streets and remember and celebrate the cyclists Brandie Bailey, Rasha Shamoon, Brad Will and their community.
A garbage truck hit Bailey on Houston St. at Ave. A in 2005. Cyclists stopped first at her white "ghost" bike memorial, in order to celebrate the lives of all people killed on this dangerous street. After a moving speech that ended with, "let's celebrate the dead and fight like hell for the living," cyclists cheered and danced to Mexican music performed by former Blood, Sweat and Tears trumpet player Lew Soloff.
Next cyclists rode to where Shamoon was struck by an SUV at Delancey and Bowery on August 11, 2008. They held a 'mock" funeral in the divider of the intersection. Then they theatrically "died" and were "buried" under the wheels of a parked taxi in the Allen Street bike lane, demonstrating the danger caused by motorists parked in the bike lanes.
The final celebration for the dead on the bike ride occurred at a community garden, where Will dedicated much of his activist effort when he wasn't promoting bike riding. Cyclists ended their ride at St. Marks Church, filled with renewed energy to continue their fight for safe streets for all present and future cyclists.
They asked Mayor Bloomberg to join them in the quest for safer streets for all the New Yorkers, who are often eager to get on their bikes, but discouraged by unprotected, un-enforced bike lanes. They called for the city to honor its commitment to making the roads bike-friendly and green.
