Day 3: The Blarney Stone is still closed

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning edition

New York Dolls made their uptown debut 36 years ago (This Ain't the Summer of Love, via Stupefaction)

Sucking Icicles (East of Bowery)

Ken has been checking out the Brooklyn Navy Yards (Greenwich Village Daily Photo)

Kirby has more on Great Jones Street (Colonnade Row)

Not cool: Pepsi replaces the Swayzzzzzzzze (BoweryBoogie)

Don't fuck with Central Park (Flaming Pablum)

More vanishing storefronts (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Rotten makes butter better (Hunterer-Gatherer)

The evilest empire: A Live Nation and TicketMaster merger? (Brooklyn Vegan)

Oscar Wilde bookstore closing (Runnin' Scared)

From a New York Times editorial: Lawrence Ferlinghetti once wrote that Coney Island is “where I first fell in love with unreality.” Today, a desolate reality has taken hold at the legendary amusement park. As rides close, bulldozers uproot land that once held delightfully sinister sideshows. The few rides left barely lure neighborhood children and nostalgic tourists.

Reason No. 3,587 why local TV news sucks: Sue Simmons' annual groundhog impression (YouTube)

Ugh: Another dive in danger

Grub Street has the awful news on a Brooklyn classic:

One of the city’s truly gritty watering holes, the Navy Yard Cocktail Lounge, may not have long for this world.

As Daniel Maurer notes, the bar’s building (along with three others) is for sale for $3 million.


[Photo by Daniel Maurer via New York]

The recession reaches Madison Avenue

Last Nov. 6, I did a post after walking on Madison Avenue in the 70s and 60s where all the really nice shops are.

Flashback!

And you know we didn't see one person shopping in any of these stores. Seriously. Post-election hangover perhaps? Or maybe the richies just don't shop in a light rain on weekday afternoons? Or maybe the economy is really fucked. Anyway, every store was the same: A handful of well-dressed employees standing around looking expectantly out the store windows.

So I wasn't surprised to read this in the Times today:

New York’s most elegant shopping corridor, the Gold Coast of Madison Avenue, from 57th Street to 72nd Street, is pockmarked with vacancies as retailers flee sky-high rents. More than two dozen retail spaces are on the market and are either empty now or about to be. Windows that once showcased hand-tooled leather suitcases are now plastered with for-rent signs.

“This is as bad as I’ve ever seen it,” said Alan Victor, a broker who has worked the street for more than four decades and who is an executive vice president of the Lansco Corporation.

Why people move away

I've noticed a few more people than usual moving from the neighborhood. (Perhaps there's a reason for so many more men with vans signs.) Given the drop in some rentals, maybe these people are just moving a few blocks away to a building with better deals. Or maybe they lost everything and have to go bunk with a relative. Or maybe they came here during the heady days of, say, 2005 and figured to become the next Carrie Bradshaw. (Or at least have the chance to sit on her stoop!) I wish I could go up to these people and conduct exit interviews. Why are you moving? What will you miss about the neighborhood? What are you glad to be leaving behind? I'm always curious about this.

Luckily, I came across a blog written by a young professional living on the LES. After one year here, she is moving to another undisclosed neighborhood. Almost in answer to my questions, she provided a list of things she will miss and not miss about her apartment and the LES. Among the items:

Things I will miss:
--The gym. I hope I can still force myself to go to the gym when it isn’t in my building!
--My stainless steel stove
--Dry cleaning in the building
--The statue of Vladimir Lenin on top of the Red Square building. I can see him from my bed so I wake up to him with his right arm in the air every single morning.

Things I will not miss:
--The girls who scream, “Where’s my boyfriend!?” at 4 a.m. while leaving the Lower East Side bars on any given day
--The symphony of honking on Houston Street that forces me to sleep with earplugs
--The fresh vomit that I sometimes step over while leaving for [work] on any given day
--The smell of pickles from Katz Deli that I am forced to inhale when walking home every day
--The fact that there is not a close enough Starbucks
--The mural of Kiss on the brick wall on the bar across from my apartment

I guess that says it all.

This looks perfectly safe!

On Stanton Street between Clinton and Suffolk. This promises to be even more of a hazard with the fresh snowfall...

Closed, no cigars

Dunno if this is one for Jeremiah's Signs of the Yunnipocalypse...but Carolina's Cigars on Nassau Street in the Financial District has closed....



Wasn't exactly a hotspot for fat cats, though telling nonetheless...

Something about the East Village of Des Moines seems strangely familar

First, to be honest, I was unaware there was an East Village in Des Moines, Iowa.



Anyway, this article from yesterday's Des Moines Register shows that we have something in common with their East Village:

Land in the East Village that currently houses a 1930s-era terra cotta gas station will be redeveloped into a paved parking lot next month.

Namely, stupid, rampant development...

And prices are being slashed

Spotted on Avenue B at Eighth Street. Dunno if the fliers were hung with the savings...or a passerby decided to reduce the price...

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning edition

Key Food killer gets 20-to-life sentence (Daily News)

An interview with Philip Glass, who has lived in the East Village for 40 years (Gothamist)

Thirty years ago yesterday: Sid Vicious dies in NYC (Hunter-Gatherer)

New York in legos (New York Times)

Bespoke Chocolates to open tomorrow in Extra Place? (Grub Street)

A forlorn sight at the Cheyenne (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

More art galleries are closing (Bloomberg)

NYC loses another character: RIP Joe Ades (Esquared)

Cheeky!: "In the butt" stickers now terrorizing defenseless signs and other inanimate objects in NYC (Urban Pranksters, In the Butt)

Update on the Blarney Stone: Still closed

Following up on my earlier post on the Blarney Stone on Fulton Street. Uh-oh — it's still closed as of around noon today. Not a good sign. This is a good lunch space...and a better drinking spot. OK, and a good lunch spot to drink in. Anyway, it's one of the few bars remaining in the Financial District worth frequenting...



Looks as if a sign was taped up on the gate....But five measly pieces of tape in this wind? The sign is likely in Brooklyn Heights by now. I walked around to the back entrance on Ann Street and looked inside. Nothing amiss. Everything seems to be where it usually is. The phone just rings...no outgoing message.



So I'm sure this is just a temporary thing...Right?

Still, given the changes sweeping down Fulton Street, nothing would surprise me...

Another Anne Frank tag

I did a post this past Friday on an Anne Frank tag that I saw on a building on West 35th Street between Ninth Avenue and Eighth Avenue. It was not a tag that I had ever seen before...ditto for The Graffiti Friend of EV Grieve (GFEVG)...

Well, GFEVG noticed an Anne Frank tag in Nathan Kensinger's "Abandoned Brooklyn" exhibit from last month. Here's Nathan's photo:



Nathan told me in an e-mail: "It's a piece I included ... because it was such a strange find -- down at the dead end of a street in Sunset Park, surrounded by razor wire, in front of an abandoned Marine Terminal."

From tiki to minimalistic Marfa

It looks as if the former Waikiki Wally's space on Second Street is ready for action...It's Marfa, which is either taken from Dostoyevsky's "The Brothers Karamazov" or the town in Texas. Or, um, maybe it's just Marfa.



They have drink specials...



...and some food...(the sign says the full menu debuts Feb. 12...)





And why are these photos so blurry? It's as if I took them while jogging by or something. Anyway! It wasn't open when I walked by last night some time before 7. Pretty spare decor. Not one piece of Polynesian kitsch spotted. Not even a sliver of bamboo.

Why was the venerable Blarney Stone on Fulton Street closed last night?

They're an 8 a.m.-4 a.m. place.



No sign on the door...and no one answered their phone. This on the heels of getting a sterile new sign.

Phone-y art

On Houston near Allen.






Took these photos Sunday...wonder how long this will remain intact...

Ta-da: It's Tonda

Signage appears at the recently shuttered E.U. on East Fourth Street near Avenue B.



As Eater noted, Tonda will be an Italian trattoria and pizza place...and work appears to be going on behind the papered windows...

Love for sale

After Love Saves the Day closed for good on Jan. 18, I wondered how long it would take for the LSD signage to come down...





It was there Saturday...but was gone yesterday morning....

Unlucky dog?

As Alex noted Sunday, the pooch who kept watch over the now-shuttered Spots' Cafe and Good Dog on St. Mark's Place is no longer on his perch....





In the comments on Alex's post, Jill said that she saw the pup in Chinatown...but, without photographic evidence, can we be sure that it's the same one? I'm actually curious what happened to the big fellow...I've softened my stance on him/her. Maybe I will miss the thing...At first, the dog seemed to represent the continued Disneyfication/froyogurtization of St. Mark's...serving as a metaphor for what was wrong with the neighborhood: big and stupid...Now, given the state of things, I hope the poor thing finds a good home. He/she just wanted to be loved.



Previously on EV Grieve:
Not such a hot spot

[Missing pooch photo by Alex via Flaming Pablum. Head on dog photo via The Voice]

Noted

A new (yes, right?) Neighborhood News feature in New York magazine included the following...

Remembering the Jones Diner

I couldn't let my previous post on the corner of Lafayette and Great Jones pass without an appreciation of the former occupant of the southeast corner (the one with the new hotel) -- the Jones Diner. We lost this one in September 2002.

Here's a passage from a piece that Tom Robbins did for the Voice back in January 2002:

Jones Diner is in an area zoned for manufacturing because, when it was built, the big cast-iron and federal-style brick buildings along Lafayette, Great Jones, and neighboring Bond and East 4th streets were filled with woodworking and machine shops and small garment plants. At breakfast and lunch, workers swarmed through the diner's narrow door, plunking themselves on the green padded stools and into the brown booths. Most of those businesses are long since gone; however, their lofts are now occupied by well-heeled residents and swank high-tech offices.

But Jones Diner has endured. Its $3 breakfast specials (juice included) and the never changing plastic-lettered menus above the big gleaming coffee tureens, offering meat loaf sandwiches for $3.25 and pot roast for $4.50, still lure passing delivery workers as well as employees of the neighborhood's last industrial outposts, the lumber yard down the block and the muffler shop across the street. There is also a loyal cadre of local residents who, in a swath of urban landscape that boasts three Starbucks, an Au Bon Pain, a Wendy's, a McDonald's, and an ever expanding universe of mid- to high-end restaurants, still find the Jones the most comfortable dining place within walking distance for simple meals.

For further reading:
The Fate of a Fabled Greasy Spoon Raises Questions About Landmarking (New York Times)

Former site of the Great Jones Diner (Flaming Pablum)

Jones Diner - Lafayette St. (NYC.com)

[Image: Spencer Platt/Getty Images]