Tuesday, September 29, 2009

At Superdive tonight: Unlimited champagne served by a midget in a pirate costume



The buzzy, pre-opening, OMG-are-they-really-serving-kegs? days of the summer are over for Superdive. Now it's time to do something really stupid to get people talking again! (Guilty!) UrbanDaddy has the Superdive scoop, of course.

Tuesday nights. Unlimited champagne. Sabered open for you. In a bathtub on wheels. By a midget dressed as a pirate.

Let's just let that marinate for a minute.

Welcome to Champagne Tuesdays at Superdive, a new bastion of cultural elitism and intellectual camaraderie, debuting tomorrow in your favorite beer-scented pit of depravity in the East Village.

If ordering a keg to your table, doing a keg-stand on said keg, or generally gallivanting about in the Wild Wild West of dive bars just was too tame for you, here's your chance to let your hair down a little more. Twenty bucks and an appetite for champagne and destruction gets you all the bubbly you can drink, and, yes, that champagne will be sabered and served to you by a little person named Nick wearing a pirate outfit.

At this point, you might be asking yourself why a tiny pirate wielding a tiny saber meant to chop the top off of a champagne bottle is manning a mobile bathtub full of bubbly bottles. And you also might be asking yourself why you would be purchasing champagne from this tiny Jack Sparrow.

Well, because it's Tuesday.

At Le Gamin: à tout à l'heure!


Thanks to everyone who left a comment or sent me an e-mail about Le Gamin Cafe on Fifth Street between Avenue A and Avenue B. Apparently the place is being renovated and will reopen in a few weeks with a new theme. (Dumb question: Does a French-style cafe really need a theme?) Eater has other details. (Image via Eater too.)

P.S. Apologies for that headline. Trying to pad my Google search results in France.

Previously.

New bank branch for Avenue A?



Thanks to the dear EV Grieve reader who passed along this....On Avenue A near 12th Street.

Monday, September 28, 2009

When 72 Avenue B was a luxurious 1,750-seat theater

You'll recognize Fifth Street and Avenue B here...



But until 1957, it was a Loew's theater...



According to Cinema Treasures:

Loew's Avenue B is part of one of the great rags-to-riches stories of showbiz history. Movie mogul Marcus Loew erected it on the very site of the tenement building where he was born. Needless to say, his birthplace was demolished to make way for the luxurious 1,750-seat theatre, which was designed by Thomas W. Lamb and first opened on January 8, 1913, with vaudeville as its main attraction and movies thrown in just as fillers.

The Avenue B was the top Loew's house on the Lower East Side until the mid-1920s, when the circuit took over the Commodore on Second Avenue, which was a much busier area for entertainment and shopping. The Avenue B was reduced to playing movies at the end of their Loew's circuit run, and remained so until its closure around 1957-58
.

As Cinema Treasures commenter Warren G. Harris noted:

The theatre cost $800,000 to build. In his opening night speech, Marcus Loew said "This is the most pretentious of the houses on our string, because my better judgment was over-balanced by my sentimentalism and my longing to do something better here than I ever did before." According to corporate histories, the Avenue B was never successful, but Loew's kept it running for decades as a memorial to its founder, who was born on the spot.


Top photo via.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Former landmark countercultural theater now for rent on Avenue B

Now and then: Bowery and First Street

Bowery at East First Street looking south toward Houston

Late 1970s...



Today...



Top photo reprinted with permission from Randall's Lost New York City Collection

Au revoir, Le Gamin?

A reader notes that Le Gamin Cafe on Fifth Street between Avenue A and Avenue B is now closed.

Saturday, September 26, 2009

The Giants win the pennant!



In East River Park earlier this summer. One of the many photos that I never did anything with... The kids asked to have their photo taken. They said the Giants were the best.

Summer loving...



Another photo from East River Park this summer ...

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.