Fire trucks at Fifth Street and First Avenue

Around 6 p.m. Turned out to be a false alarm. But it provided for a few moments of drama.





And people watching.

A lot of motorcycles on the FDR

The reader e-mail continues to get more interesting... Here are shots someone took yesterday afternoon showing hundreds of motorcycles traveling south on the FDR... Anyone know what this was about...?

At 2 x 4: Another bar, another awning?

The Evolution is not dead after all!



According to the door, the bar is being renovated...



As a commenter noted last time:

My roommate and I have been going to 2 by 4 for years now, so when I saw that it shut down, we had to find out what was up. We swung by there last night and saw Eric and Heather inside, so my roommate banged on the door and they opened up. The whole place was gutted and they're doing massive renovations, but they're reopening in mid-July.

It won't be 2 by 4 anymore, but the ownership is staying the same.

Hmm, perhaps the owners needs some suggestions on a theme for the new bar? I'm sure all of you have some good ideas to share. I've always wanted to open a Patrick Swayze Theme Bar — The Swayyyyyyyyyze. Made in his likeness. With drinks like "Next of Kin" and "Red Dawn." But it seems insensitive given his health.

Weekend in review: Theatre 80 to remain a theater

As the headline says, Theatre 80 to remain a theater.

More people left comments on the pink-sweater-at-the-Mars-Bar post.

Cops shut down Angels & Kings.

A band called DNA (but not the good one) filmed a video at the Cooper Square Hotel.

It got cloudy.

It got sunny.

Noted

Friday night at 3Ten Bowery. As the above copy notes, "With summer right around the corner, who could ask for a better motivator to start hitting the gym.... Ladies, you no longer have to wait for Halloween to come around to have an excuse to 'flaunt' it. Men, strip to your skivvies, and be ready to kick it Hefner style with NY's sexiest ladies. Drink, dance and be merry with 75-100 other sexy, confident singles."

Moving into the Coop

A few weeks back in The Villager, Scoopy reported that school officials planned to move into Cooper Union's new academic building at 41 Cooper Square by the summer. (The ribbon-cutting ceremony at the new building is Sept. 15.) Well, this seemed awfully ambitious to me. However, sure enough, over the weekend... the moving trucks lined up....




Meanwhile! The scaffolding is gone from in front of the new building! The graffiti! No!




By the way, what's there now looks a little different from the original rendering...

Step Up 3D returns to the East Village

Filming continues today and tomorrow in the East Village on what will likely be the greatest 3D movie about teen street dancers ever made. Parts of Third Avenue, Second Avenue, Ninth Street, 10th Street and 11th Street will be affected by the dance fever.

Angels & Kings closed today for "maintenance issues"

Such as peeling off notices from the NYPD?

And TMZ checks in...

Jack Black ushers in the return of ads to Third Avenue and 12th Street

After a few months of, uh, blankness, an ad has returned to grace the side of the building on Third Avenue near 12th Street...




Previously on EV Grieve:
Off the wall

Mr. C's on C now open

On Avenue C near Seventh Street. An Italian Trattoria. Previously.

Here's a reader comment from my last Mr. C's post:

I am one of the owners of Alphabet City Wine Co., the wine shop next door. Not sure how the place is gonna turn out but I have had a couple tours of the place and It looks really nice in there. Classic shit. Nothing too fancy. They even have a little backyard seating arrangement.The chef is pretty excited to get started and is doing solid Italian fare. It will be good to have some energy flowing from next door.

Thai coming to former sad pizza place

The former Mambo Italiano Pizzeria (AKA, the sad pizza place) at 347 E. 14th St. near First Avenue closed late last year...



... will become a thai restaurant... (not sure how long the signs have been up, to be honest...)



And a reader comment from the sad pizza post:

My friend and I used to eat at Mambo from time to time a few years ago, but we stopped for a couple of reasons. First of all, the pizza wasn't great. Probably not even good. But what really turned was off was the dough-tossing incident, which still makes us laugh when we talk about it. The last time we went there, two little boys (they were kids of someone who worked there because they kept going into the back of the pizza shop) were running around playing with the pizza dough, literally throwing it around like it was a football as we sat there wondering if they had gotten their hands on the dough that our pizza had been made with... It was funny but a little scary!

About that noise you hear if your windows are open

Fireworks for the 100th anniversary of the Queensboro Bridge. Depending on your rooftop, you can kind of see the fireworks...

Important questions of the day (and our time): Is Madonna hanging out in East Village "dive bars"

A reader sent me this item about Madonna and her current boyfriend Jesus Luz from Radar:

Luz has followed Madonna from London to New York, appeared on her arm at the Met Gala and dive bars in the East Village of Manhattan.

Per the reader:

"Um, is Madonna really hanging out in East Village 'dive bars?'"

Oh, I forgot to mention this ... I was sitting in the Grassroots the other day. And Madonna and Jesus walk on... they only have credit cards, and the Grassroots doesn't take credit cards. So I buy them a $7 happy hour pitcher of Michelob Amber Bock and a $1 basket of popcorn... To thank me, Madonna gives me a Kabbalah bracelet made out of braided red string ...

Yeah, that's not true. If Madonna is hanging out in the East Village, it will likely make the cover of the Post.

Breaking: Sun, blue skies return

Breaking: Blue skies disappear

Fall Out Bar

As Gawker reported last night, Angels & Kings on 11th Street near Avenue A was shut down for serving minors & morons. Pete Wentz is one of the bar's owners.

Anyway, when the bar opened in May 2007, Joshua Stein filed the following report on Gawker.

When emo-troubadour Pete Wentz opened Angels and Kings, a bar in the East Village, our douche canary in our douche mineshaft keeled over and died. First of all, Pete Wentz is going to be there. As he tells Page Six: "Yeah, I'm just gonna be local and drink umbrella drinks." So this isn't your normal dive. According to one of his business partners, this is a dive where "anyone can go and have sex in the bathroom and not get in trouble." So it's located in international waters?

Saturday at the Cooper Square Hotel

Someone standing around told me this was a shoot for a music video.





DNA the band?

Not this DNA, of course.

Sitting one out

The benches on the eastern side of Tompkins Square Park were painted yesterday.




Someone wondered about the wisdom of painting the benches on a late-spring Saturday... a day that promised to bring many people to the park. The person who wondered this could not find a suitable spot to sit. And he did not want to sit in the grass next to people in swimming attire.

"No place stays the same for 15 years, certainly not in Manhattan"

Jim Dwyer writes about Surma Books & Music on Seventh Street near Cooper Square in the Times today. An excerpt:

When Myron Surmach moved from shopkeeping to beekeeping in the 1950s, he turned the store over to his son, Myron Jr., who had a fine run as impresario of Ukrainian dances and parties and outfitting the flower children of the 1960s. Peasant blouses were in demand. Janis Joplin and Joan Baez and members of the Mamas and the Papas shopped in Surma Books & Music.

The grandson, Markina Surmach, whose first language was Ukrainian, lived above the store until he was 6. He left Little Ukraine and New York behind in 1991. “You want to define yourself, apart from the mold,” he said. “I chose to run away.” He started a Web-development business in Denver.

Surmach the beekeeper and store founder died in 1991, not quite 99 years old. His son died in 2003, at age 71. Markina has a sister, who was busy raising her children.

“If I didn’t come back, the store was going to close,” he said.

No place stays the same for 15 years, certainly not in Manhattan. With a few exceptions, Ukrainians have long since drained from the Lower East Side. So have the artists living cheaply. “The homogenization of city life is not unique to New York, or this country,” Mr. Surmach said. “It’s all over the world.”

[Image via]

Theatre 80 to remain a theater: "We intend to keep the East Village a vibrant arts community"

Good news. Lorcan Otway, whose parents built and operated Theatre 80 on St. Mark's Place, left a comment on my post from Thursday. (He also sent the letter to my fellow bloggers who commented on the post.) The news Thursday: The Pearl Theatre Company, which has had a residency at Theatre 80 the past 15 years, is relocating to Midtown for its 2009-2010 season. In a statement, the Pearl's Artistic Director Shepard Sobel said, in part: "While we are disappointed the East Village is losing a theatrical venue to commercial enterprise..."

Which left us wondering what might replace the Pearl as a tenant. Naturally, we assumed the worst. Fear not, though. Here's Lorcan:

Thank you for the kind comments, from past audience members and a former tenant. We dearly loved all the tenants who rented from us, including the Pearl. Be assured that the Otway family still owns and runs Theater 80. My mother is well and sends her dearest regards to all.

When we came to Saint Marks Place in 1964, there was not a tree on the block. My father planted the first three trees on this now tree lined promenade. At the age of eleven, I dug out the auditorium with my father and helped pour the concrete. We are not going anywhere. We helped to build this neighborhood one business at a time, and it can be lost one building at a time. We have held out against times when those who are tearing down the neighborhood seem to be winning. But, like many others, we intend to keep the East Village a vibrant arts community.

I am at a loss to understand the quote from Shepard Sobel that he is “… disappointed the East Village is losing a theatrical venue to commercial enterprise..." Theatre 80 has been the jewel of the off-broadway theaters since my father built it, and we opened in the mid 1960s.

Our theater saw the opening of "You’re a Good Man Charlie Brown", was the home of the Manhattan Festival Ballet, and was the first full time film revival house. For many years Noche Flamenca has performed to sold out audiences.

I have no idea the meaning or source of this information. As managing agent for the Otway family, owners of Theatre 80, I state categorically, we intend to remain a theater. We have turned down offers for other uses of this theater which would destroy the auditorium.

Please be assured that we welcome offers from theater companies to lease this theater.

For some reason, at the time that I did the post Thursday, I didn't make the connection that Lorcan is the son of Howard and Florence Otway. Many of you likely know Lorcan or have at least seen him taking photos in Tompkins Square Park and elsewhere. The Villager profiled Lorcan last August.

I also had the chance to see his work last August in the exhibit "East Village Commons: A Loving Portrayal of a Neighborhood." Here is some of Lorcan's work via Flickr.

Theatre 80 sign via Warsze on Flickr.