Friday, September 25, 2009

Still more Howl!

There's some Howl! left this month. Check out the East Village Howler for more.

Rumormongering: Copper Building film festival

A fairly credible source told me that some EV thrillseekers have been showing films on the white sheets that covered parts of the under-construction Copper Building on 13th Street and Avenue B. Not sure on all the logistics about how this happened exactly, but when pressed, I was assured that this happened several times over the summer. Would have liked to have known then, so I could have joined them...




Meanwhile. Progress! Those sheets are coming down at the Copper.



Previously.

Posts that I never got around to posting: New 16-foot Subway sub looks like rolled linoleum for some reason





Heh. No, no... just a few workers entering a building next door to the Subway on Second Avenue near Ninth Street.

Posts that I never got around to posting: Unusual fenestration pattern




City Reality listed the Pros and Cons for One Ten Third Avenue...

Pros:
Doorman
Concierge
Roof deck
Good public transportation
Close to Union Square
Many balconies
Unusual fenestration pattern
Courtyard
Fitness center
Close to Strand book store
Close to many movie theaters

Cons:
Considerable traffic
No sidewalk landscaping
Unusual fenestration pattern

Posts that I never got around to posting: Nothing but the best for the new Rockrose condos

Out front on Pearl Street.



Previously.

Posts that I never got around to posting: Donut calamity



Barely visible on this tag on Sixth Street...Dunkin Donuts calamity....

Posts that I never got to around to posting: The Lotus club



Fourth Avenue at 10th Street.

Posts that I never got around to posting: Post no bills on the St. Brigid's plywood


Posts that I never got around to posting: Midtown Express

About 10 tickets on the windshield of this Midtown Express truck on 12th Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue... Express?


Posts that I never got around to posting: Wet Red Paint!!!



On Avenue A. And I think a good band name. "Hi, we're Wet Red Paint." Or not.

Thursday, September 24, 2009

My blue Manhattan



When you see the new window display that went up yesterday at the Morrison Hotel Gallery on the Bowery, you'll figure someone is having a little fun with all of us...






A gallery worker told a tourist out front that this was simply "the artist's statement," and that she did not know what it meant. Uh-huh.

And, if you don't know already, the artist is Ryan Adams.

People get ready

We get press releases!

I recently came across your blog and can see that you have a large following in the New York City area. Because of this, I wanted to reach out to you about a new campaign aimed at educating New Yorkers about how to prepare for emergencies.

September is National Preparedness Month, and in order to encourage New Yorkers to prepare for disasters the New York City Office of Emergency Management, the American Red Cross in Greater New York and the Ad Council have launched a new public service advertising campaign called Ready New York.



The campaign asks individuals to get prepared by taking three simple steps:

1) Get an emergency supply kit.

2) Make a family emergency plan.

3) Be information about the different types of emergencies that could occur and the best responses to them.



It is important to engage your readers and all New Yorkers in becoming better prepared for emergencies in their homes, business and schools.



Toward that end, we encourage you to write about Ready New York on your site and share the following “easy-to-use” social networking tools in your post:

Ready New York City campaign website

If you were a college student, what would you prefer to do?


Not to mention Dennis Franz through the years

Just in time for the new fall TV season, reportedly. Thanks to the EV Grieve reader who came across this mashup of the "NYPD Blue" intro...which covers all 129 seasons. Past and present NYC icons include the Mars Bar, Leshko's, the Tower of Toys and the DKNY mural...



Is it me, or does this show seems as if it was on about 50 years ago?

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

Uh-oh...

And who's the lucky 'hood?



Williamsburg! Woo!

No. 2. Lower East Side!

Sample:

Best place to meet people on the Lower East Side

Vanessa’s Dumpling House

Pickup lines to try while you wait for your food:

Beginner: “So, how long have you been in line?”

Intermediate: “I just found a quarter in my couch—can I buy you a dumpling?”

Advanced: “I bet you’re just like this dumpling: smooth and slick on the outside, complex and delicious on the inside. I am too.”
118 Eldridge St between Broome and Grand

In case you were feeling good about things...


Crain's New York has the story.

To Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke, the recession may be over. But in Queens, Anthony Fodera isn't buying it. The president of 80-year-old bakery-goods distributor Fodera Foods says checks are being returned from customers who had pristine payment histories and orders are off by nearly 25% compared with this time last year.

I don't see the recession being over, especially in New York City, where so much of business revolves around Wall Street,” Mr. Fodera says. “It's my gut [feeling] from what I'm seeing.”

For the city, Mr. Fodera's gut appears to be a better indicator than Mr. Bernanke's statement last week that “the recession is very likely over at this point.” With tax receipts, office and hotel room rentals and Broadway ticket sales all tumbling and unemployment continuing to rise, the city's economy has further to fall before the impact of this epic downturn finally subsides. Even the most optimistic economists' estimates have the five boroughs losing about 150,000 more jobs, on top of the nearly 100,000 jettisoned since August 2008. Experts, drawing on past experience, say the bottom could be more than a year away.

Recovery in the city traditionally lags the nation. For example, in 1991, the national recession ended in March, but the city's jobless rate rose for another 18 months. And unemployment in the city didn't peak until 14 months after the national downturn ended in November 2001.

If the recession is ending now, we're probably looking at the end of next year before peak unemployment arrives,” says James Brown, principal economist at the state Department of Labor.

The summer of pink shirts

Fall is here. And maybe it couldn't have arrived at a better time. Back at the beginning of the summer, I wrote a post about a man who walked into the Mars Bar wearing a green shirt with a pink sweater wrapped around his shoulders.



There was some mock horror on our behalf. But it seemed to represent a trend: The entire East Village was fair game to any type of interloper. In any kind of shirt. All summer long.



In the days that followed, I started seeing more and more men in the neighborhood wearing pink shirts.



So I kept tabs.



In one week, I spotted 34 men wearing pink shirts out and about -- drinking at bars, waiting in line for pizza, walking across the Bowery.



Now I don't care what anyone wears. You like pink? That's fine.



What I do mind is the sense of entitlement that seems to come with the person wearing the pink shirt. At least from the people I saw wearing them. Like, that rather serene late afternoon at Manitoba's. Suddenly, the door pops open and eight men walk in, like some kind of SWAT team on a recovery mission. The leader, wearing a pink Oxford cloth, shirt snaps his fingers and shouts to his friend, seriously, "Juke, bro." (Luckily, given the jukebox at Manitoba's, not a lot of damage can be done.) In the next 30 minutes or so during the entertaining reign of terror, the men comfortably arranged themselves around the bar, even doing a round of Irish car bombs. They didn't tip much for all the trouble.

Another night, several people were waiting in a checkout lane at Key. The woman at the cashier was having problems with her food stamps. Something was wrong with her EBT card. She looked embarrassed. And it didn't help that the fellow in line directly behind made it very clear that he was annoyed with having to wait for this, this peasant. He sighed loudly. With a theatrical swoop of his arm, he'd check his watch. And he was wearing a pink dress shirt with his jeans.

So why so many pink shirts? Perhaps the shirts are just a mere prop for the ladies. In this thoughtful listicle in the Post from the summer, we're told how to score a hookup in the Hamptons.



Advice No. 3. Wear a bright pink shirt. "It's like an aphrodisiac for women in the Hamptons."



One night, I ran into a friend out and about. She was meeting a friend -- who turned up in a pink polo shirt. He was a dick. I asked him why he wore pink. He said that it showed off his tan better than a white shirt -- and that it didn't show the dirt as much.



Anyway, soon enough, everywhere I turned, pink shirts.

Pink.

Pink.

Pink.

Pink.

Pink.

Pink.

Pink.

I don't have any answers. But is there someone to blame for this trend?



Anyone?

Posts that I never got around to posting: rats in Toyota East Children's Learning Garden



On 11th Street near Avenue B.

Dumpster of the day



On 12th Street between Avenue A and First Avenue.

Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Your chance to buy two historic townhouses on East 10th Street -- or create Central Village's first single-family mansion!

It's easy to like the tree-lined 10th Street between Second Avenue and Third Avenue -- right in the heart of the St. Mark's Historic District... oh those handsome single-family Anglo-Italianate townhouses!

And now not one but TWO of them can be yours...



...for $12.9 million... both 123 E. 10th St. and 125 E. 10th St. are on the market. (The owner had been selling them. Now Leslie Garfield & Co. is doing the honors... A little description...

Located on a serene tree-lined residential street in the heart of the St. Mark’s Historic District, this pair of exceptionally handsome single-family Anglo-Italianate townhouses [Oh, there's where I picked up that term earlier!], rises four stories above rusticated stone “English basements.” The front parlor windows extend to the floor and open onto an ornamental cast-iron balcony that runs across the twin buildings’ brick façade, unchanged since built in 1854. Pass through the round-arch entryway of each house and you are in a world apart. Each is light and airy with beautifully detailed moldings and mantelpieces; there is a total of eighteen (18) fireplaces and in the rear, a shared idyllic garden. Bring your architect to create the Central Village’s first 28’-wide single-family mansion. Also available individually for $6,475,000 each.