About this time last year

Page Six ran the following item:

December 20, 2007 -- It may be the final nail in the shared coffin of East Village dive bars. Two longstanding holes-in-the-wall, Sophie's on East Fifth Street and its sister spot, Mona's on Avenue B, are up for sale. "The neighborhood has changed so much," co-owner Bob Corton told Page Six. "I love both bars, but they're dinosaurs now." Corton plans to sell the low-lit saloons after the holidays. He has run Sophie's, which adopted its name from its original owner, the late Sophie Polny, since 1986. He opened Mona's in '89. Corton assured us he'll stay in the neighborhood but couldn't predict the future of his beloved drink tanks: "Once the places are sold, what happens to them is really out of my hands."

Sure, we had heard rumors that the bars might be for sale, but it didn't seem like a reality until it appeared in print. (How this ended up in print may be fodder for another post another day.)

So what started back in December 2007 on a drunken, lonely night (always a good combination for doing something stupid, like starting a blog! Plus, actually, it was the middle of the afternoon!) seemed like a temporary thing. At first I'd just collect different news items on the possible sale of the bars. (It wasn't to be gossipy or anything, like, "Melvin wore the same pants again today and drank 17 pints of Yuengling...") Then I thought it could evolve into this project we could all be part of...making little films about the people, etc., who've made Sophie's what it is. Post photos. Chronicling the (possible) end of days. It would be a document capturing a special time and place.

Well, before I ever really figured what to do with the site or told anyone about it, it looked as if the bars were staying in the family. So I retired the site on that positive note.

Right-o! Then, on Feb. 6, Jeremiah Moss, who had been supportive of whatever I had been doing, left a comment encouraging me to continue, to turn my attention to other things in the neighborhood.

Jeremiah Moss said...
hey grieve, whether or not sophie's goes, i hope you'll continue to blog about stuff in our neighborhood. there's plenty of bloggable material to go around!

Phhht! Right!

So, yeah, I continued. Slowly at first. But I was inspired...I began paying attention again to the little things. I became reinvigorated despite the bankbranchification, duanereadification, etc., etc., of the area. I started loving living here again. Really.

Anyway, here I am...grateful to everyone who has been a reader...and I've enjoyed making friends with so many like-minded people who also wonder what the fuck is going on around here. Thank you for being part of this.

Who knew?

The reigning Miss Pakistan lives in the East Village.

749,250 bottles of beer on the wall....

So, you're planning a holiday party. And don't now how much booze to buy. (Oh, and don't invite Susan Cheever!) Evite has the handiest of handy-dandy calculators to help you figure this out! So, say the party will last 999 hours...with 999 heavy drinkers into liquor and beer. So what will you need? Well, you can see for yourself -- roughly 750,000 cans of beer! Off for the liquor now. See you in the emergency room!

Someone done took Hank and Peggy Hill (and Bobby's left leg)

Yesterday at Seventh Street and First Avenue:



And Dec. 10...:

[Bottom photo via Chet Chat with Chet]

Before the theft, Bobby's face got tagged.

Previously on EV Grieve:
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

OH to you, HO to us

\

This probably doesn't seem like such an odd sentiment if you're sitting inside this place, Bounce Deuce at Second Avenue and Sixth Street. Which reminds me of a joke from third grade:

What goes oh, oh, oh?
Santa Claus walking backwards!

An EV Grieve FYI

Just a reminder that there's a new URL in town here....http://evgrieve.com.

On the Bowery: "It's old versus new -- and these days new would seem to have the upper hand"

The real estate section in the Post today takes a look at an up-and-coming part of town called the Bowery. Sounds interesting.

Street gangs, brothels, flophouses, Joey Ramone - at one time or another, the Bowery has played host to them all. Of the many Manhattan areas to have transformed over the last decade, the Bowery has to rank among the unlikeliest.

Transform it has, though. Homeless shelters like the century-plus-old Bowery Mission still dot the street, and lighting and restaurant supply stores still dominate the retail scene, but gentrification is most definitely on the march.

Definitely!

Yes, the Bowery is booming. Prudential Douglas Elliman broker Rob Gross has worked in the area for more than 20 years. He remembers selling real estate on the Bowery in the early '90s, returning on some occasions from showing apartments to find his car broken into.

"It was definitely off the grid a bit back then," he says.

Today, Gross is handling the new Bowery and Bleecker development - a three-unit building of floor-through condo lofts that includes an 1,862-square-foot penthouse with a private roof deck that's listed for $3.1 million. With Poliform kitchens, 50-inch plasma-screen TVs and prices starting at about $1,500 a square foot, the building is a world away from the formerly dodgy Bowery.

Indeed!

"The Bowery is one of the last areas in New York to experience a kind of seismic shift," says self-storage magnate and neighborhood developer Adam Gordon. "It's an interesting bridge neighborhood. It's at the crux of NoHo, SoHo, the East and the West Village. There are few places that have the access that this neighborhood does."

Gordon owns a plot of land just off the Bowery at 41 Bond St., which he plans to develop as an eight-unit luxury condo building once the financing environment improves. He also owns the Bouwerie Lane Theatre building at the corner of Bond and Bowery, part of which he's recently turned into three condos. One apartment is reserved for Gordon himself, and he plans to put the other units - a 5,200-square-foot triplex penthouse and a 2,500-square-foot full-floor apartment - on the market in March.

Also coming to the once-seedy street: a new five-unit residential building at 263 Bowery from developer Shaky Cohen, a 152-unit luxury rental building at 2 Cooper Square, a Lord Norman Foster-designed gallery building at 257 Bowery and restaurants from Keith McNally and Daniel Boulud.

It's the Cooper Square Hotel, however, that provides perhaps the best metaphor for today's Bowery. Because two residents of the apartment building next door at 27 Bowery refused to give up their units, the hotel was forced to build around them and incorporate their building into its design. And so at the northern end of the street, there sits an old brick tenement building that from the sidewalk looks as if it were being swallowed up by a sleek, glassy high-rise hotel.

It's old versus new - and these days new would seem to have the upper hand.

Or, as Gordon says when asked if he fears the loss of old, edgy Bowery he once knew, "I don't think it's fear. It's an inevitability."

Gordon adds: "I don't pine for the Bowery of 50 years ago. It was a hole."

Then/Now: UWS

The latest entry in David Dunlap's Then/Now series in the Times take us to the Upper West Side, Broadway between 74th and 75th. In comparing photos of that block from 1978 to today, Dunlap notes: "The time traveler recognizes Fairway and Citarella, of course, but the crowd looks younger, more prosperous and less diverse, and there are more children underfoot."

Casually destroyed; hotel to rise here?

The Casual Grill on John Street between Nassau and Broadway in the Financial District is gone. It happened quickly. I swear I just ate there the other day. (Updated: OK, I was reminded that it was three weeks ago...which seems like the other day.) On Monday, I noticed that it was closed. Tuesday, it was gutted. The Casual Grill opened in 2004, and served an array of healthy-enough choices, from salads to smoothies.





And Seh Ja Meh, the Korean place next door, closed in September. (Seemed to have a problem with the health department.) Their interior is also getting gutted. Seh Ja Meh reopened on Greenwich Street.



Updated: One source who lives on the block told me a hotel was going into these two buildings. Hmmm.....

Two Saturdays, two pub crawls

Remember in Night of the Living Dead, when Ben boards up the farmhouse to protect himself and that useless Barbara from the zombies outside? Oh, no reason that I bring this up...just that during the last two Saturday afternoons, the East Village was host to several particularly larger-than-usual pub crawls.

On Dec. 6, I ran into a group (40 to 50?) around 1:30 p.m. who were on some golf drinking game. They started at 7B, then to Manitoba's. According to the "required behavior" on a sheet one of the pub crawlers showed me, you had to "speak with Canadian accent re: ice fishing, hockey, Inuit culture, donuts. French Canadian is acceptable" while at Manitoba's. Maybe this is funny in the pub crawler's universe.

Then, it was Zum Schneider, where pub crawlers had to "talk like a Nazi. Every other sentence must be 'Zat's what she said.' Or. 'Zat's what he said." The tomfoolery continued at Kate's Joint, Croxley Ale House, The Library, Essex Ale House, Arlene's, Motor City (where they were to sing Bob Seeger songs and curse the automakers and bailout) and, finally, Mason Dixon. Oh, and everyone was dressed in doctor's scrubs, golf duds or pajamas.

Last Saturday afternoon, there was a Santa pub crawl (not part of Santacon, which is a whole other story) nearly 100 strong that I encountered on Avenue A. Two of the participants, women roughly 25 years old, asked me where Sophie's was. They were nice enough for being so drunk (already) and oblivious to their surroundings. They were coming from the Double Down. After Sophie's, Niagra was the next stop. I asked them some questions. Where else were they going? Well, hard to say. The one had the list written in pen on her arm and the ink was starting to smudge. They lived in Hoboken. This crawl was some officewide thing that grew. They did it because "it was a fun way to spend a Saturday afternoon."

Except if you live here.

Dancing with Mr. Brownstone

Can you read this? It was scrawled in a doorway adjacent to the Blarney Cove on 14th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B.

Use you're head and keep your ass alive. b.c. youre the only one who's gonna do it...so you be careful the next time you go dancing with Mr. Brownstone.

Swept away at Banco Popular

Banco Popular on Houston and Avenue B is doing business the old-fashioned way...offering you a free gift to open a checking account! On the day I passed by, the gift was a mini-vacuum cleaner.




By the way, funny how some security guards get so antsy about people taking pictures in a bank lobby!

Noted

On the Bowery near Prince.

Boss Hog at the Bowery Ballroom

Boss Hog played their first NYC show in nearly eight years a few hours ago at the Bowery Ballroom. Too often I expect the worst...like some sort of nostalgic horror show. The Band Who Should Have Stopped Years Ago. I felt that way for a few minutes at the onset of the show...I was expecting more, as if I was supposed to be magically transported back to 1990 NYC. Anyway! Not that I was overthinking things! That quickly passed, and I enjoyed the Boss Hog hit parade...I'm looking forward to some new material and a new album now, OK?





And Dirty Martini served as MC for the evening...

A letter from the editor, EV Grieve

Good morning. I hate the Internet. Also, I have a new url — evgrieve.com. The old url is allegedly supposed to redirect people to the new one. That isn't happening. All the links are dead. I'm so suing Al Gore's ass. I'm hoping this will all get sorted out one of these years. In any event, http://evgrieve.com is what to use from here on.

Oh, why you ask? Why do something as stupid as change your url?

Branding. It's all about branding. Branding and paradigm shifts. Soon, I will be rolling out a chain of fro-yo shops — Grieve Berry. I'll be opening five of them on Avenue A between 12th and 13th.

Plus, on the serious side, it made more sense to use evgrieve.com.

Thank you for reading.

How much are those doggies in the window? (C'mon, how can I not use that?)

Along Avenue A.

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

Saturday in the EV: dead rats and Jewels' ass (Neither More Nor Less)

Jeremiah rides the 1 train to bid farewell to the South Ferry Station (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Gov. Paterson wants to tax every goddamn thing that you can think of, pretty much (Daily News)

Boozing + subway shenanigans = death (New York Post)

Nathan Kensinger shoots Willets Point (Nathan Kensinger Photography)

BoweryBoogie has a cool new look (BoweryBoogie)

CBGB is trying to live again (Stupefaction)

Double ugh: No lease for Ruby's yet (Kinetic Carnival)

Those disappearing coffee shops (Blah Blog Blah)

Kirby is suitably horrified at the SATC tour (Colonnade Row)

Staples pulls out of the South Street Seaport gateway: That was easy

The big Staples store (they're actually all big, huh?) that anchored the corner of Water Street and Fulton Street at the gateway to the South Street Seaport rather quietly packed up its ink and toner, binders and desk organizers, and closed up shop last month. Maybe the Staples brass figured business would fall because NYU's lease on the Rockrose-owned Water Street dorm adjacent to the store will not be renewed after this academic year.



There has been activity here of late, though it mostly seems to be workers clearing out the remaining Staples stuff.



Apparently they don't want you to know a Staples was here.



With the departure of the Strand Annex at 95 Fulton in September, there is some nice, fat storefrontage available on the east-end of the street. Maybe that construction will be completed in the next 10 years or so.

Short film of the East Village circa 1971

Trench warfare

Have you noticed the trench that stretches across First Avenue at Sixth Street? I feel as if I need to wear a mouthguard and football helmet when I'm going up the Avenue on the M15. I love the noise the bus makes when the unsuspecting drive -- feeling good for having made the lights -- hits the trench. BuuhhhhBOOOOOM. Or something close tho that. OK, slow down Sandra Bullock!

Anyway, easy enough for me to be lighthearted about it. Then I met someone who lives in a building adjacent to the trench. Not much fun. The noise — BuuhhhhBOOOOOM, if you've been paying attention — is one thing. The resident has other worries: "I'm really afraid the constant earthquakes will stress my crappy building enough to make the already warped floors collapse." Ugh. Last thing anyone needs is another building collapse. This is exactly the kind of thing 311 is for. Give 'em a call. They'll forward a complaint to the DOT.