"There are new signs up on the restaurant going in at the NW corner of 12th Street and Avenue A indicating that the restaurant will be called OST Cafe." Another tipster tells us this space is "going to be an eastern european style coffeehouse. Kind of like Cafe Sabarsky meets Pravda."
I actually met the owners while they were getting signatures for wine, or something like that. They were nice, though I am not sure they will succeed. They are going to have a doggy window, since they are dog owners and dogs aren't allowed in cafes in this country. Their rent is reasonable at first, especially for the space, but their increases are going to be insane. If they do really well, they might survive. But it does seem like those corners are cursed!
If you’ve had enough of Red Mango, Flurt, YogoMonster and the dozen or other Pinkberry clones that have opened at warp speed around town, it’s time for you to check out Daydream, Union Square’s newest chef-driven frozen yogurt shop. Owned by Gwen Butler and partners, the shop is fashioned like an old-school ice cream parlor with elegant Italian celeste marble tables and counters, walls and ceiling painted as a windswept blue sky, dark tiled flooring and glossy white high wood wainscoting.Their yogurt is prepared in four flavors from live cultures: green tea, pomegranate, and two styles of plain—one is low-fat with a creamy texture and the other is a light-textured nonfat ($3/$5/$6 for plain flavors, $4/$5/$7 for flavored yogurts). But the hook at this shop is the toppings (30-85 cents each) which are all made in-house by chef Greg Pena (and some by Ian Russo) like butter rum crunch, peanut butter crumble, and chocolate covered pretzel bits. More unique toppings include infused and spiced wild honeys, organic fruit dust, dehydrated espresso, milled flax seed, honey roasted wheat germ, and chocolate block shavings grated to order. All their nuts are double-roasted for extra flavor, and we toast our coconut as well. Coming soon, they’ll be serving "moffles" which are mochi waffles.
In his essay on the East Village in NYPress this week, Matt Harvey spoke with East Village filmmaker Rachel Amodeo. She wrote, directed and starred in What About Me. (What About Me was filmed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with a release in 1993.) I've been meaning to write about it...so this presents a good opportunity.
Here's a passage on the film from Harvey's article:
Her film is a naturalist document of pre–Tompkins Square Park riot days. Filmed in black and white — and set to a score by [Johnny] Thunders and Bob Quine —Amodeo’s East Village is a claustrophobic, small town of decrepit storefronts, graffiti, peeling paint; cons, hookers, junkies, lowlifes. The kind of people Travis Bickle wanted the rain to sweep away. Her character is conned, raped, thrown out of her apartment and run over by a motorcycle; but somehow it’s believable. The East Village is seen as something to escape — not buy into.
She smokes crack with Nick Zedd in an unheated apartment and hangs out with bums warming themselves with trashcan fires. During filming, they tried to find real crack for the scene, but Zedd couldn’t find any, according to Amodeo. “That’s what the ’80s was about: dark lighting, and no electricity, experimenting with drugs,” Amodeo tells me in her hoarse voice.
Aside from Zedd and Thunders, the film features Richard Edson, Richard Hell, Rockets Redglare and Dee Dee Ramone, among many other familiar faces.
Here are a few shots from the film, some familiar scenes of past and present places along Avenue A, such as the Tompkins Park Restaurant on the corner of Ninth Street where Doc Holliday's is now:
There's an exterior shot filmed in front of Sophie's. Richard Hell is shown walking into the bar....
...to meet his friend Nick Zedd, though the exterior isn't Sophie's, it's, uh -- I forget.
And here's Dee Dee, in his lone scene in the film:
According to the YouTube description of this video, this scene was shot the day that Johnny Thunders died, April 23, 1991.
From Dee Dee's "Lobotomy: Surviving the Ramones": "After we finished my scene, we called it a wrap and went over to Rachel's apartment to relax and smoke some weed. When we got there the phone rang. It was Stevie (Klasson), the guitar player in Johnny's band. "Rachel, he said. "John died. He's dead".(pg 232)
Dee Dee continues: "But I was still out of control. The reality is that methadone was not blocking my craving for street drugs. I shot up quarter grams of cocaine for a couple of days. Then I went over to the Continental Divide for a tribute concert for John... It was too much for me. I went down to the Bowery and got drunk. The next day I shot up some dope. I just didn't give a damn anymore." (pg 233)
Back to the NYPress article:
Amodeo lives in two-bedroom rent-controlled apartment near Avenue A with her boyfriend, gallery owner M. Henry Jones. The rent is cheap enough that she refuses to specify it. Hell has rent-controlled turf a block west, that he -— in her words -— is “so, so grateful for.” But most of the rest of her friends have vanished from the nabe. “I think, some of them had families and they all lived in one-room studios, and they had to move, others just vanished,” she trails off as if she wasn’t too sure. “It’s kind of scary.”
I ask her when the hood started to feel different for her, and she replies: “I think when Johnny [Thunders] died, it felt like a different place. Stuff was starting to open up.”
Thunders died mysteriously in New Orleans when the film was in post-production. In other words, by the time the film was released it was already a relic of another time. “God,” she adds, “people used to live in the storefronts.”
As you probably know, the owners of the Hop Devil Grill on St. Mark's near Avenue A remodeled the joint to rebrand as the Southwestern themed...Hop Devil Lounge. The Hop Devil redux opened on Dec. 3. Been meaning to stop by, sort of, purely for research reasons. But I did pick up the new menu! Which I compared to the old menu...which leads me to think...
...they cut back on their clip-art budget.
So, anyway -- there's a Southwestern theme...and burgers. And lots of beer.
To be honest, I'm not sure exactly when Mambo Italiano Pizzeria at 347 E. 14th St. near First Avenue closed. In the last six weeks or so. I never paid much attention to it...until the crowds starting forming across the street at Artichoke. That's when the Mambo folks apparently started a little different tact. Their sidewalk sign said, "Try our Artichoke pizza," perhaps in hopes of picking off someone who didn't know which place was which. I'm not sure it worked: I swear I never saw one person in Mambo. The workers would just be in there, standing around, looking hopeful as people walked by... staring across the street at the big line at Artichoke.
In any event, I almost popped in a few times for a pity purchase. Which is really lame. I did that years ago when I lived on Clinton Street. Some new Moroccan place opened (Sago?). Never saw one person in there for the first few months. I wanted to be supportive. I went there twice. Once for something to go. They had a little bar. I ordered a bottle of beer, which came to like $6.92. Fuck me. Then I dragged Mrs. Grieve in there once for brunch or some shit. It was awful. Both times. We still make jokes about the eggs Tagine. They eventually got a little crowd. Then it closed. Then the building got torn down to make way for a condo.
Anyway, I stopped walking by Mambo. Which is why I don't know exactly when it closed.
Gramstand, the cutesy tea and sandwich place on Avenue A between 13th Street and 14th Street, shuttered rather quickly yesterday. As Eater reported, the owners had previously announced that they would close or be sold. Metblogs published the following note last evening from the owners:
Dear Friends and Customers, The Gramstand is closing today and will host a farewell garage sale through the day. Please do stop by and purchase some odds and ends from us. We apologize for the short notice, but it was short notice for us as well. Due to the rising cost of doing business and an overwhelming financial situation, the Gramstand has been forced to close it’s doors.
The owners had been looking to sell the place for $250k or the best offer.
Eater reports that Wolfgang Puck will be catering the food at the Fillmore thingee that should really just be called the Irving Plaza. "Tellers at the venue tell us that Puck has taken over the bar areas and will introduce food sometime in the next two months. And finally, your chance to watch Spoon while eating a pre-wrapped turkey sandwich has arrived."
Check out East Village native Matt Harvey's article in NYPress this week titled "The East Village Isn't What It Used To Be... And It Never Was."
Too much in the article to try to excerpt here. I'll do one. Harvey contacts Richard Hell, who apparently doesn't get out and about much while working on his book:
I email Hell to tell him that he keeps coming up in my conversations around the dusky old town. What’s the deal man, are you up in your rent-controlled apartment with just your memories and Rimbaud? Have you withdrawn from the street and all humanlike zones? He politely replies that he doesn’t want to be bothered. It reads, in part: “Sorry to be a disappointment, I can’t work up much fresh to say on the subject.” When the cultural embodiment of the East Village can’t work up a single quote about his neighborhood, it’s in a lot of trouble.
Matt also talks with Jeremiah Moss, on the phone from his bunker.
I've long been fascinated by the Vigilant Hotel at 370 Eighth Ave. between 28th Street and 29th Street. An old-fashioned flophouse continues to survive in this era of pricey real estate and swanky hotel developments? Miracle of miracles! 14to42 had this information from a 2003 post:
In 1895 the lodgings empire of Angelino Sartirano consisted of hotels at 116 Gansevoort St., 208 and 352 8th Ave., 1553 Broadway, 2291 3d Ave., and here at 370 8th Ave.
The Sartirano (sometimes spelled Sartirana) hotel business is even older, going back to 1888 with his first hotel at 116 Gansevoort St. in the West Village.
The name Vigilant Hotel, however, is not quite so old, and seems to date no earlier than 1916. The hotel is still here (as of August 2003) but to all appearances no longer operates as a hotel in the usual sense...
14to42 also also has links to two photos by Percy Loomis Sperr in the New York Public Library's Digital Collections. The first dated 1932 shows a side wall with "Rooms 25¢." The second dated 1938 shows a small sign over the sidewalk reading "Vigilant Hotel."
14th42 also published this shot from 2003 of the hotel's faded sign:
So, can I get a room here? Sure! It's for men only. And it will cost you $140. A week.
The reviews are mixed on Yahoo! Travel. Someone who has never stayed there gave it five stars while someone who did gave it one star. What was so wrong with it that it deserved that?
Don't ever step foot in this place By A Yahoo! Contributor, 10/08/08 The place is so downtrodden, neglected and downright decreped. The hotel guests are homeless people who arementally ill. Even the police wouldn't stay in this hotel! If I were homeless I wouldn't stay in this disgusting hotel. Im shocked they are still open!
OK, Felix Ungar...we'll getcha a suite at The Carlyle!
Anyway, here's what the place looks like on the inside:
Finally, here's review of the hotel at Not for Tourists by Dave Crish:
A scar, even upon the pissed on pave of Chelsea's north edge. I relate, here, of history's Vigilant. Built some hundred years ago of resilient brick, at present resembling ash. Not the sort of amenitied lodge one peruses on vacation. Piped of, but, three befouled showers, a pair of sinks, and toilettes of excreta. Succinctly, an inn of cells petit rented to gents of varied feather—all poor for whatever reason, breathing the airs of next step below homelessness. $125 per seven days. No credit, no checks, no euros, cartons maybe—of Marlboros. Never gleeful, rarely tended proud asylum sans musique. Fine abode for a bit of drifting or a brief disappearance. In sum, perfect for the bored with responsibilities of maintaining a traceable address. Foam pad, gray, oft cavorted 'pon by bloodsucking mites. Not a lash of social space but narrow hallways. Sphere of little social grace a tincture schizo of few heads cracked—a few murderers, few blooming, and even fewer handsome. Maybe a master once and then. Never a fellow un-weathered. Indeed, the Vigilant Hotel. For the times when desires discordant means and the bench not an option.
I am a female in my mid 60's and I am looking for a room mate. Times are tight and I need some extra money. I am willing to rent out my bathroom in my 1 bedroom east village home.
My bathroom is large. You can easily put a twin air mattress in there. I only ask that when I need to use the bathroom, you or your air mattress are not in it.
I do ask that when you are in the apartment, you confine yourself to the bathroom. I do not feel comfortable with a stranger walking around my living room. This might change as I get to know you better. You may have guest over as long as they are cnfined to the bathroom as well. This might seem a bit odd but please remember the rent is $400 and the bathroom is large.
Alexis Soloski reports in the Voice that the Ohio Theatre will likely close in the new year. The former textile factory at 66 Wooster St. is being sold. According to the Voice: "[M]aintenance expenses and preservation of the façade required by the city created an untenable financial burden," which is why the previous owners reluctantly sold the space.
Said Robert Lyons, artistic director of Soho Think Tank, a nonprofit group that administers the Ohio: "It's not the first cultural institution to succumb to real-estate pressures," he says. "Soon we're going to have a city without any cool theater spaces.... [New York needs] to protect our cultural jewels like this."
The reaction from John Del Signore at Gothamist: "Argh, must everything that makes life worth tolerating in New York City be systematically eradicated?"
In Manhattan, they’re asking what happened to the “Pepsi-Cola” sign. In Queens, they’re asking what happened to the “aloC-ispeP” sign. In both cases, the answer is that it has been temporarily dismantled and will be reinstalled nearby. In any case, the Hunters Point waterfront will not lose this distinctive, ruby-red, 120-foot-long, 72-year-old presence.
I always appreciate any tips... So! A tipster just e-mailed claiming that a Versace store was opening on First Street at the Bowery. The tipster said the item was in Luxury Briefing. Which does me no good since the thing is subscription only. Anyway, it's a former Versace designer opening the store, as Racked reported in October. He has done work for Sarah Jessica Parker, which means this may become a stop on the Sex and the City tour. (OK, sorry. Because I made this joke, it'll probably really happen now.)
In a post last March on a fancy open house on 12th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B, I made reference to liking the doorway below...the building is next door to the big new one with $5,000 rents.
Anyway, not sure how long ago this happened (Jill?), but the building with the doorway got all gussied up.
I’m growing tired - have been tired for some time, I suppose - of writers using their New York residency as a rhetorical device. Maybe this was once acceptable, when being from the Upper West Side or the East Village had a concrete connotation, but increasingly the device feels like an amateurish way of bragging about living in New York, about - woah - renting an apartment in a city that’s - woah - big.
