That's Life

Nice piece on BushwickBK about Life Café, which recently celebrated its seventh anniversary in Bushwick. Co-owner Kathy Kirkpatrick opened the first location, of course, on 10th Street and Avenue B in 1981. Here's a snippet from the article:

[T]here were also many hardships in running a café that could barely stay afloat. Kathy held an office job in midtown and all the work was straining her marriage. The couple split in 1984 and David wanted to sell the café. Kathy refused and resolved to run it by herself, just as New York City sank into the crack epidemic and the East Village swarmed with unpredictable junkies.

"It was hard for us working in a little neighborhood café, forced to do drug intervention, something we weren’t trained in or prepared for," she said. "We had people shooting up and OD-ing in our bathroom and things were getting pretty ugly."

[Photo via Cactusbones]

Mikey's Pet Shop has closed

As expected, on Seventh Street, after the landlord reportedly jacked up the rent to $20,000 a month. At last word, Mikey's was hoping to move to a new location, though one had not been secured. Rumor is that a nail salon will open here...



Not much free stuff left.



Previously.

Motorino show

Motorino, the much-discussed pizzeria from Williamsburg, opened its EV location today at 5...around 7, the place was surprisingly only half-full... maybe it's the no booze thing (a license is on the way...) S'Mac next door was noticeably more crowded...but it was earlyish and Monday and stuff...



And the pizza part of the menu...

Jim Carroll: "He was an amazing mix of imaginative power at work and straight-up stoner dude"

Great link at boingboing that takes us to a 1987 interview with the late Jim Carroll in the Boston Globe. The story is not available online, but writer Joseph Menn uploaded the article in three sections here on Flickr that you can read.

According to Menn:

"[The interview took place] in person, at a Boston hotel in 1987. He was an amazing mix of imaginative power at work and straight-up stoner dude. He talked about how when he was in heroin withdrawal, the images he wanted would pile up uselessly like parked cars, then move too fast for him to catch, as in 'Koyanisqaatsi.' But first he saw the chocolate on his pillow and said, 'Man, I could dig THAT later!'"

Memories of daily life in now-empty storefronts

You may have seen the little signs taped to a few empty storefronts along 14th Street between Avenue B and First Avenue. It's the work of local artist Nicholas Fraser. I sent him a note asking for some background on the signs.




His response:

"The flyer/cards are my first stab at trying to collect memories people might have of their day-to-day encounters with now empty businesses along 14th Street. I will then re-frame these memories and create a series of ephemeral text drawings placed in front of unoccupied commercial spaces. The texts combine these donated stories and daily observations, evoking past and present moments of daily life at the transitional sites. Laid out in ash and other impermanent materials, each work disintegrates and disappears quickly under the rush of ongoing urban life, echoing the temporal and transitory nature of the moments documented."

This will be part of the Art in Odd Places festival that will feature performance/installations/etc. along 14th Street. You can see some earlier versions of this idea on his Web site.



He has since made larger fliers with more open-ended questions. As he says, it's not important that the memory be from a particular location -- only that it involves a now-closed store somewhere. (Certainly plenty to choose from.) "The limitation to 14th Street is somewhat arbitrary," he says. "Memories from any place in the city really are just as pertinent."

You may send your memories/anecdotes to stories@NicholasFraser.com

Junior's Tompkins Square Park

There was a memorial service Saturday night for Nathaniel Hunter Jr. I had planned to do a piece on him, but it didn't come together ... So, here's information from other sources. First, the Times has a feature on Junior today. Meanwhile, as Scoopy noted at The Villager, Hunter — aka Junior — died in May. He "was known as the 'Mayor of Tompkins Square Park' when he lived there on a bench in the 1980s, holding forth with one and all."

Junior was featured in a Times article from July 31, 1989, titled "Worlds Collide in Tompkins Sq. Park."

Here's how the article begins:

"It's an interesting, intricate social situation," Nathaniel Hunter Jr. observed early yesterday morning from the bench in Tompkins Square Park, where he has lived for the last six years. "The internal contradictions are constantly slamming into each other."

In the after-midnight darkness, nearly 300 homeless people were stretched out in the park -- sleeping, trying to sleep, talking and drinking. Their number has steadily grown from some 137 who were evicted when the police tore down their tent city two weeks ago after a series of clashes. A cooking fire smoldered near some bushes, a tepee and other shelters had been set up from sheets of plastic and cardboard refrigerator boxes.

More and more homeless people have been trickling into the park, attracted both by the latest burst of public attention and the number of soup kitchens operated nearby by religious groups, turning the park into a kind of a sanctuary and rallying point for the homeless.

And later...

Tompkins Square Park, 10 1/2 tree-shaded acres of worn pavement and scuffed grass, is the center of a singular part of Manhattan known variously as the Lower East Side, the East Village, Loisaida, Alphabet City, Community Board 3 or the Ninth Precinct, an uneasy community that is the meeting ground of the two most powerful forces in the city today: drugs and real estate.

The story told by Mr. Hunter -- a gentle, shrewd-spoken, gray-bearded black man known as Junior, who keeps a small rake and shovel by his bench to tend the nearby cherry and black-oak trees -- is that of many of the city's homeless: a single, massive blow pushed them over the margin. In his case, he said, it was the purchase of the nearby high-rise where he lived by speculators who turned it into co-ops, leading to a long, unsuccessful struggle against eviction.

"I was doing everything right, paying my rent on time, paying my cable TV on time," said Mr. Hunter, who was then a self-employed contractor. "But they wear you out after a year and a half or two. I was physically, financially, psychologically pooped out. I just wanted to be left alone, to find a spot in space to cool my head out. So I came here. I found a sanctuary, really, trees, open space, solitude.

"Of course at that time, it wasn't so pulsating with events. But now we have cook fires burning, political activists yelling, police around, all the things I had been running away from," he went on, suddenly bursting into a whoop of laughter at the irony. "Now I'm worried about my actual eviction from the park."

He and many other homeless people were evicted from TSP. As Scoopy noted, he ended up get a job and with the Parks Department and worked at Washington Square Park.

Looking at the "new intersection of cool"

A few weeks back, before Tyson Beckford and his motorcycle gang took over the block, I was walking east on Bond toward Bowery...



..looking at the mix of old and new (mostly new) that we're used to seeing in recent years...




And what did I learn? That this was the "new intersection of cool."

Noted

Speaking of Bond and Bowery. On Saturday morning, I came upon the trash leftover from the Fashion's Night Out Bond Street's Mini-Block Party from Thursday...champagne and pony bottles of Colt 45.






Colt 45? Another example of the faux urban realism that makes the privileged Bowery invaders feel more authentic. Just down the street, the men from the Shelter congregated at the now-vacated Kelly and Ping space were sipping 40-ounce bottles of malt liquor from brown paper bags.

Booty Call

Too easy, that headline. Second Avenue near St. Mark's.

RIP Jim Carroll

He reportedly died Friday of a heart attack. He was 59 or 60 depending on what media outlet you trust. News of his death has just been reported in the last few hours.

Cheerocracy at work

Scott Wooledge, marketing manager for Cheer New York, sent me a note in response to Friday's post on the Bond Street block party that featured cheerleaders from Cheer New York:

There were some some comments made about our team, Cheer New York, that did not I think do the team justice. They suggested Cheer New York lacked the skills to perform a pyramid, I've provided rebuttal in the form of photographic proof to the contrary. The team has a high level of skill and even greater dedication to our charity fundraising. Commercial events like Fashion's Night Out, help finance the good charity work we do on behalf of AIDS Walk, Avon Breast Cancer Walk, Walk MS NYC, Joey DiPaulo AIDS Foundation, and the Alzheimer's Association of New York.

I know event organizers were very pleased with the spirit and the energy the team injected into this fun event, and I also know many of the party goers were impressed and entertained. Many, many of them took the opportunity to tell me so personally as we joined them in the party. I think it's a shame some people are so cynical as to make nasty comments about a group of people who have given so much to the community.

Perhaps they just don't understand who Cheer New York is. I'd invite them to check out our website or see us on Facebook, and learn more about the team's tireless commitment to raising money and supporting charity, and being the most skilled athletes we can be.

Here are some more photos.

Superdive is closed today and tomorrow for renovations

Noted.

"The Motorino sign is up!"

I was standing out front of Motorino, the new pizza place opening tomorrow on 12th Street just west of First Avenue...pretending not to be taking photos...



...and a woman walked by and exclaimed to her friend, "The Motorino sign is up!"



I'm not much of a pizza gourmet -- the two slices for $2 variety works fine for me. But some people seem really excited that Mathieu Palombino, who owns the Williamsburg Motorino, is opening a Manhattan outpost. Another reason to go stand in line! According to the Times:

His seven styles of pizzas will include some with seasonal toppings — brussels-sprout leaves in October, shaved porcini later in the fall and black truffle and taleggio cheese in the winter. There will be antipasti, like slabs of mortadella browned in the oven and vegetables roasted with pecorino. And there will be soft-serve ice cream.

It’s a playful variety of toppings and dishes that will be familiar to Motorino regulars. The simplicity of pizzeria fare has been a departure, though, for Mr. Palombino.

Trained in the most haute of French traditions, Mr. Palombino worked in Europe before moving to New York. He was chef de cuisine at BLT Fish when it was given three stars in The New York Times by Frank Bruni in 2005. (Motorino’s small wine list will be chosen by Fred Dexheimer, who worked with Mr. Palombino at BLT Fish.)

The best time to enjoy the Feast of San Gennaro

Before it opens for the day...and no one is there...












And among the handful of people there in the early hours...Liev Schreiber-Naomi Watts and family.

Street fair!

On Third Avenue above 14th Street.

Models Inc.

Crucial article today in the Post on booking models for clubs. Here's Danny Kane, a former promoter who now co-owns The Gates.

Kane lays out the math behind the models.

“If they’re 5-foot-10 or 5-foot-11, that’s one story. If they’re borderline OK, it’s harder.”

He calculates that a promoter who brings 10 or so girls measuring “5-foot-5 or 5-foot-6” to a Manhattan club or restaurant might command $500 for a night. A promoter who brings in the tall girls can get up to $2,500. In both cases, the models drink for free — the idea being that dudes wishing to party near them will book a table, which typically requires a $1,500 drink minimum per foursome.

Today in Tompkins Square Park

Thanks to The Shadow.

The (Penn Station) eagle has landed

Nice preservation piece in the City Room on one of the old Penn Station eagles. Its new perch: The eighth floor at the new Cooper Union building.


[Photo by Claire Michie]

After all this talk about the "L.A. vibe" Bowery today ....

Sham 69 at CBGB circa 1988.

Plenty more Howl!

The Howl! Festival continues this month... East Village Howler has the complete program, of course. I'm particularly interested in the film series.