More King of the Hill promo sightings; residents wonder how a show that was never, ever funny remained on the air for so many years

Picking up from BoweryBoogie and Curbed last week.

Had a sighting at Sixth Street and Avenue A:



And Houston and Avenue B:





Full disclosure: Mrs. Grieve and I are the "residents" the headline refers to. Feel free to defend the show in the comments.

Welcome to the house of Swayzzzze

The Swayzzzze! On the south side of Houston between Norfolk and Suffolk. Two things. No, wait. Make that three!

1) If I'm not mistaken, though I probably am, this address always seems to house some sort of big ad like this. Why?

2) How would you feel living here...and having to go through the door that is actually The Swayzzzze's gun barrel (so to speak) every day?

3) Road House is a fine motion picture. (How Driving Miss Daisy beat this out for Best Picture in 1989 I have no idea. And Daniel Day-Lewis for My Left Foot? The Swayzzzze was robbed.)

Haven't we suffered enough?

From this week's Page Six Magazine.

Tree Lighting in Tompkins Square Park

There were Christmas carols and music and hot cider and community spirit this afternoon at the annual Tree Lighting ceremony at Tompkins Square Park.







And, uh, a live snippet of "Silent Night"....



Unfortunately, at this point, the NYPD swept in and arrested everyone involved. Apparently the Christmas carols exceeding the 20 decibels at 5 feet rule as mandated by the sound permit required by the city. The tree was chopped down as evidence. I asked a police officer what was happening as he packed his gun especially made for dispensing tear gas. Rather humorlessly he said, "These motherfuckers will pay for being too loud."

Sorry. This isn't true. Or funny. But such a scenario crossed my mind.

Toots

All this talk today in the next few posts about fancy cocktails and secret "underbelly" bars makes me...

Well, it makes me want to watch Toots, the documentary on Toots Shoor, the legendary Manhattan saloonkeeper. The film, directed by his granddaughter, will have a limited theatrical run before being released on DVD Jan. 13.

Here's a look:

Noted

The Times features spiffy Crown Heights hotspot Franklin Park today. As the Times reports:

“I came because of the Skee-Ball,” said Ashley Bonnell, 28, on a recent Saturday night, as she sipped a gin gimlet alongside the white subway-style tiles of the smaller bar. “My friends have been calling me to join them in the East Village, but I told them I’m hanging out in my hood.”

From the next stool, her friend Joachim Boyle, 28, who was also drinking a gimlet, concurred. “You don’t know how excited I am to be out of the Village and live here.”

Mr. Boyle pondered whether old-timers would dismiss them as invading hipsters.

“I’m not a hipster,” Ms. Bonnell, a physical therapist, insisted.

“Yes, you are,” Mr. Boyle said, waving toward her long cardigan, red scarf and chunky boots. He tugged on his subtly sheened blue button-down. “So am I.”

Also, the Times offers a handy guide at the end that includes the address and this...:

DRESS CODE Facial hair, cabby hats, zippered sweaters and jeans for men. Oversize cardigans, leggings or skinny jeans, long scarves and flat boots for women.

A taste of Milk & Honey and other "underbelly bars"

In the Times of London today, writer Stephen Bleach takes a tour of the "underbelly bars of New York." La Esquina. Angel's Share. PDT. The Box. Milk & Honey. Village Pourhouse. (Heh. OK, just seeing if you're still paying attention...)

Anyway! Here's his impression of Milk & Honey at 134 Eldridge St. Once he finally gets in and what not.

The address was a sleazily ungentrified street of bins and boarded-up tailors’ shops on the Lower East Side. If La Esquina looked like the place where people get shot on NYPD Blue, this was where they’d dump the body. By the cracked plastic bell push was a dirty sign: “Alterations”. Not promising — but a buzz, a word on the intercom, and we were in.

It took a while for our eyes to adjust to the light. About 10 minutes, in fact. You can tell how cool a place is by the degree of gloom, and if Milk & Honey were any cooler, you’d have to order your drinks in Braille.

In fact, there’s no list. You tell the waitress what mood you’re in and the barman rustles up what he deems appropriate. He sent me a cherry daiquiri. I hate cherries. As Dexter Gordon sax tunes floated lazily in the darkness, we peered at the people around us. From what we could see, they were all very beautiful, which was nice, and appeared to know it, which wasn’t.

“So, here we are,” I said to Jaqui. “This is the coolest place in New York. What do you think?”

She sipped her eggy concoction thoughtfully. “It’s a good bar, and I like the fact we got in,” she said. “But can we go and be tourists now?”

She had a point. Digging into Gotham’s hidden underbelly was fun, but there’s a limit to how cool you really need to be.

“Up the Empire State tomorrow, then a carriage through Central Park?”

“I’ll drink to that,” Jaqui said.

More trendspotting! Fancy cocktail bars for serious drinkers

The Chicago Sun-Times today has an article titled "Pouring on the charm: New York's latest trend takes the old private club and mixes in a new twist." It's written by a New York-based freelancer and examines "haunts for serious drinkers" such as PDT, Death & Co., Tailor, Pegu Club and Doc Holliday's (OK! Again, just checking if you're still with me...)

Hmm...So, who's pushing this serious cocktails trend? In the previous post, the writer discloses that he was a guest of NYC and Company.

Did the police check with the Stone Temple Pilots tour manager?

From the Post today:



I don't know. He could pass for Scott Weiland. A little?

Dharma Punx on the Bowery

The Times features the Dharma Punx movement today:

Punk is not dead, though these days on the Bowery it’s a whole lot quieter. Silent, even.

Every week, dozens of people, usually young and artfully scruffy, climb three creaky flights of stairs off this formerly gritty stretch of downtown Manhattan, a block from where CBGB, the hallowed hall of punk, once stood. Often shrouded in hoodies, inked with tattoos and studded with piercings, they look primed for a serious rock show, and perhaps a few related vices. But in a softly lighted loft, in earshot of the traffic’s roar, they instead find a spot on the floor, close their eyes and take long, deep breaths.

Called Dharma Punx, the gathering is part of a nationwide Buddhism-based meditation network that is part Sid Vicious and part Dalai Lama.

In case you haven't read about this in recent years (the NYC sessions have been going for nearly three years), there's no new-agey mumbo-jumbo. The group here is lead by 48-year-old Josh Korda.

Mr. Korda freely uses four-letter words and makes frequent references to his favorite bands, like the Suicidal Tendencies or the Cro-Mags, a seminal hard-core group. Dharma Punx regulars like the fusion of grit and Zen, and they appreciate that there is no preaching, no proselytizing, no chanting and no mention of dogma.

Spirit of the holidays

Walking with the Grieve family Christmas tree last night. Just turned off Avenue A. Car with Jersey plates cruises by, the driver looking for a parking spot. In a few hours, the mooks inside will be peeing/barfing in the streets before heading home. Driver's side window comes down. Bring it on. "Nice tree dickhead."

Breaking: Model booty at the Cooper Square Hotel

Curbed has the first peeping-tom photo from a scantily clad photo shoot at the just-open Cooper Square Hotel. I'd post the photo here, except that this is a decent family-owned and operated site that wouldn't stoop to gratuitous butt shots to drive up our page views.

Given all this talk about Richard Hell the last two days...

At CBGB...which would have turned 35 this month.

A Leshko's quickie

[Updated: Sorry, I missed doing this earlier. Bob Arihood's words and photos are always compelling at Neither More Nor Less. Check out some of his shots that include Leshko's.]

There's a photo of the late lamented Leshko's (not that one above us) on the corner of Avenue A and Seventh Street in my post on the film What About Me from earlier today. Anywho, I was trying to remember when the original Leshko's closed. (1999.) So I did a little research. Just wanted a share a few passages from articles I found on the place. And I am not being fucking nostalgic, OK! I swear! I love the Yuck Cafe that's there now! Uh, Yeti Cafe, sorry! Er, Yuca.

As Slavs of New York wrote in October 2005:

As more and more Slavs move out of the East Village, their presence is being felt less and less. Two major landmarks recently disappeared: Leshko's and Kiev.

Of course, both are still standing. It's just that both have been renovated, reimagined and reopened, losing much (if not all) of their Ukrainian flavor along the way.

First to go was Leshko's (111 Avenue A at 7th Street), which opened in 1957. New owners closed down the old-school favorite in 1999 and turned it into something that ended up in an issue of Wallpaper* not long after. The menu lost almost all of its Slavic dishes, with the exception of pierogies. But they were reworked almost beyond recognition - mushroom and leek pierogies?

And from the Times of New York in 2000:

For decades, Leshko's has held down a corner near Tompkins Square Park in what was once called the Pirogi Belt, in deference to the neighborhood's Slavic population. Aside from providing early-morning and late-night sustenance to the local clubbing crowd, Leshko's served Ukrainian staples like cabbage soup, boiled beef and the occasional special of jellied pigs' feet.

The Leshko family sold the restaurant in the 1970's, though, and it began to decline, becoming grungier and less and less inviting. Its site, at Avenue A and Seventh Street, is heavily trafficked, and one can easily imagine the new owners selling out to, say, the Gap or Starbucks, one further step in homogenizing the East Village. The owners did, in fact, want to sell the restaurant, but the Leshko family still owned the building, and any new tenant required its approval. The family preferred to maintain the site as a restaurant.

Meanwhile, two business partners who wanted to open a restaurant, Robert Pontarelli and Stephen Heighton, finding that Leshko's was for sale, decided to pursue it. They met with Jerry Leshko, a son of the original owners, who is an art history professor at Smith College, and hit it off. Leshko's was theirs.

First came a thorough renovation. The crumbling coffee shop interior was replaced by handsome hearthstone columns, a dark oak floor, Danish modern lamps and beige-and-white Saarinen chairs offset by burgundy banquettes and a black Lucite bar. The winning look is part Frank Lloyd Wright and part Dick Van Dyke Show.

From here the corner became the Yuca Cafe. Saw Sam Shepard eating there once.

Updated: Sorry, I missed doing this earlier. Bob Arihood's words and photos are always compelling at Neither More Nor Less. Check out some of his shots that include Leshko's.

"maybe MOMOFUCKO can open a flavored milk stand?"

As always, many thanks for the comments....Wanted to share one from the Wolfgang-Puck-setting-up-shop-at-the-Fillmore post. From Hunter-Gatherer:

Uhhhh, as someone who has attended and worked shows there. Where are they planning on setting up operations?
does anybody actually think about eating when they got to a show there?
Or, perhaps this will be one of "lifestyle marketing" attempts at sucking off what money is left with the music buying public. $7 budweiser and a $15 puck personal pan cardboard pizza. AWESOME!!!! maybe MOMOFUCKO can open a flavored milk stand? this AINT rock n'roll.

A little more on the new coffee shop at Avenue A and 12th Street

Amanda at Eater reported this earlier today:

"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."

Meanwhile, a reader had a little more information:

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!

Yes, those corners are cursed. ("Cozily crapalicious" -- Jeremiah Moss)

Noted

From the Strong Buzz via Eater:

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.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Dare to Daydream! -- and eat Fro-Yo

Looking at What About Me

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.”

Hop Devil Lounge vs. Hop Devil Grill

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.

Sad pizza place on 14th Street closes

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.