Bull session

Just going through my camera and finding photos that I took toward the end of the summer... Perhaps the city should charge thrillseekers such as these for a ride.... will give new meaning to bull market....




I liked it when this fellow started to pretend as if he was humping the horn...



(And not quite as wonderful as the shot Dealbreaker last summer...)

Foreigner affairs

I recently had an event in my life — the kind in which people may give you birthday presents. [Pause for applause] A family member with the best of intentions asked me for a few suggestions — a book, DVD, CD. That kind of thing. So I came up with a short list. On that list: Amos Poe's "The Foreigner," complete with some great shots of the EV via 1978. (Alex recently wrote about this film...) And on this glorious day, I opened the package. And....



Well, it's no "Half Past Dead" — but what is?

I also received a John Varvatos shopping spree for my birthday

Reminder tonight: Chicago Bliss vs. the New York Majesty

The New York Majesty kicks off their Lingerie League season at Nassau Coliseum vs. the Chicago Bliss...

This is going to be a difficult test for the Majesty. Chicago already has one game this season under their belts, defeating the Miami Caliente 29-19.

I'm imagining how the games might be covered in the press....

There are three things to expect from the Bliss. The first is for Saran Dunmore to play a big role for them. The best receiving back in in the Lingerie League should see a healthy amount of screen passes coming her way trying to neutralize an overly aggressive blitz. I also expect to see plenty of two tight end sets. Deborah Poles is a matchup nightmare for the Majesty. The third thing to expect is plenty of no huddle spread sets. The Bliss used these to great success versus Miami. It opened the middle of the field for Saran Dunmore to run for 62 yards. Anyway!

Let's Get Lost (New York)

You likely have read about this elsewhere. But! Cyrus R. K. Patell and Bryan Waterman have organized a most impressive two-day conference for tomorrow and Saturday titled Lost New York, 1609-2009. The entire program is here. The conference is sponsored by the Department of English and Humanities Initiative at NYU.

Of interest:

2:00 PM - 3:30 PM: BLOGGING THE APOCALYPSE: NEW MEDIA, NEW GENRES, AND THE LITERATURE OF A LOST CITY

Sukhdev Sandhu (New York University), moderator

Panelists:

Lost City
Ephemeral New York
Flaming Pablum: Vanishing Downtown
Bowery Boogie

Pub crawl haters! FroYo! FroYo! We want a bank branch! We want a bank branch! Starbucks are good for NYC! Starbucks are good for NYC!

Kidding! This will be an invigorating discussion... I won't be in town for it this Saturday. However, Bryan Waterman was nice enough to talk to me and Jeremiah Moss about blogging and what not in advance.

"LE SOUK IS BACK!!"

Concerned residents forwarded me the copy of this message...

Residents of E 4th Street and Avenue B area,
PLEASE, WE NEED YOUR HELP!!!

Have your sleepless nights returned? Have you noticed that the noise and mayhem on Avenue B and the adjacent streets has returned?

LE SOUK IS BACK!!
Unfortunately, sad but true, the case against them was dismissed on a technicality and they are open under temporary license and coming up for a license renewal hearing in the next week or so. If you want to maintain your sanity and get some sleep at night, here are somethings you must do for yourself and the good of the community;

(FYI - Le Souk's Address is 47 Avenue B btwn 3 & 4 Streets)

1. PLEASE phone the SLA right now Complaint Hotline
(212) 961-8378. EVERY day counts. EVERY complaint/voice counts.
SEND your complaints and comments to the SLA.

2. If you'd prefer not to call, here's an easy link to file a complaint to the SLA.

3. As per Susan Stetzer, our CB3 District Manager, everyone must call 311 when the noise is crazy so that the complaints will be logged into the system. They will give you a complaint number which you should then send via email to Community Board 3.

4. If you prefer to send a snail mail letter to the SLA, you may do so at the below address.

PLEASE send a letter protesting this to

Attention: Dennis Rosen
New York State Liquor Authority, Zone One
317 Lenox Avenue, 5th floor
New York NY10027
Please CC: Susan Stetzer who is monitoring the situation. sstetzer@cb3manhattan.org

5. Please come to the CB3 meeting on October 19th at 6:30p to voice your opinions. Le Souk is on the calendar for that meeting.

SLA/DCA Licensing Committee
JASA/Green Residence
200 East 5th Street at Bowery

PLEASE TAKE ACTION ASAP!!!! It will only take a few moments, and the relative peace we had when Le Souk was closed - is at stake !
Thank you for your support.

contact us at: E4StBlockAssoc@yahoo.com

Photo by Yun Cee Ng via.

That newish place that you finally went to

You finally figure you'll give that newish place not too far away a whirl. The crowd there always seems dubious, but you want to remain openminded. And supportive of places in the neighborhood. Plus, the owners seem nice. You go in. The bar area is blissfully free of people. You get a drink. The bartender says that you look "really tired." Long day? Not until now.

Within two minutes, seven people walk in. On the left are the two fellows from France who don't understand the concept of personal space and start gesturing wildly and throwing elbows and doing "Borat" impressions. Then there is the couple who are still in that makeout-in-public-and-snuggle phase of the relationship. You've seen their type before. They're the reason people started saying "get a room."

Then there are the two women with the really big baby stroller. The stroller is parked, putting an end to anyone thinking of sitting in those five seats in the corner that you were eyeing. This is the youngest infant that you've ever seen outside of a hospital. Look at the baby! Look at the baby! There are photos. The bartender takes 10 to 12 photos for the women with the flash on. You are blinded. Your glass is empty. Look at the baby! Look at the baby!

You hear the fellows on your left talk about a party later and the United Nations. They are flirting with the bartender. She is flirting back. On the right, the couple is squeezing together and taking pictures of themselves. You're in a few of the shots. Your glass is still empty. You ask for the check. Oh, you're leaving already? you're asked.

The canopies of NYC

Speaking of restaurants... I had this idea for a photo project: Take a picture of every bar/restaurant in NYC with a canopy. Something about a canopy makes even the most humdrum joint seem a little more classy...maybe even a touch of old New York. It was going well the first few minutes until I walked by the McDonald's on Third Avenue near St. Mark's -- the one with the canopy...

Anyway, here's a sampling of the project so far... only a few hundred more to go! (And if you have suggestions, feel free to leave them in the comments...)

Speaking of canopies...

Have always been curious about the beauty parlor on 14th Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue... Always wondered if they knew about the salon/saloon mistake on the sign...




Did the sign company make the mistake or the salon/saloon owners figured what the hell? Or maybe the salon/saloon owners didn't notice? Or maybe they want to nab any lost people looking for the Beauty Bar up the street...

The Superdive Diaries: In which a reader endeavors to see a midget pirate serving champagne

An EV Grieve reader decided to check out Superdive's new Champagne Tuesdays last night. This is the report.

I arrive at Superdive shortly after 10, eager to experience the
"cultural elitism and intellectual camaraderie" of its inaugural Champagne Tuesday. The cover strikes me as outrageous, until I realize the suggested donation at the Met is also $20, and Superdive boasts guys in white track suits humping the air with one leg off the ground while making a motorboat sound, which the Met most assuredly does not. I am eager to part with my $20.

The bar is filled with black and white balloons with ribbons. I can't see much but I'm sure everyone is dressed nicely and discussing philosophy. Then my world comes crashing down. I am denied entry due to the bar being "at capacity." I'm told to try back in 30 minutes, maybe an hour, but it does not sound promising. It seems less crowded than the grand opening, but there's nothing doing. I'm also told the bar will be closing early tonight, 12:30 at the latest. I am Jack's inflamed sense of rejection.

I stand by, hoping for a break, or at least a chance to observe the makeup of the Champagne Tuesday crowd. A group of nine girls and two guys exit, mostly in work attire. One fellow kicks over something metallic sounding and states "I didn't do that." The crowd is happy-drunk, and well behaved. A woman in leather pants exits and gains admittance for one of her friends who had been waiting outside. It's clear I will not get in, and I retire up the block.

A little bit of Hollywood on Avenue A

Well, let's keep the old movie theater theme going this week... Take a look at East Village Farms on Avenue A between Seventh Street and Sixth Street...and you'll likely be able tell that it used to be a movie theater...



According to the always-reliable Cinema Treasures:

Located on an ever-busy stretch of Avenue A, in the heart of the East Village, this theater is easy to miss. Opened as the Avenue A Theatre in 1926, it was operated by RKO, followed by Loew's, and was closed in 1959.

Today, it's merely a receptacle for retail space on the former orchestra level of the remains of the original auditorium, which have been converted into a health-oriented grocery store called the East Village Farm. The theater's lobby was also converted into retail space, but has been empty for several years.

Like other theaters in this area, the theater's auditorium runs parallel to the street, with a narrow entrance on Avenue A. Much of the theatre's exterior has survived, including its emergency staircase. The decorations in the auditorium are thought to survive, above the false ceiling of the ground floor store.

One of the Cinema Treasures commenters got a peak inside at the mysterious upstairs...perhaps this is where the never-ending supply of sea salt chips are stored...






And here's what the Hollywood looked like circa 1949:



Photos via Cinema Treasures commenters.

The dorm may have left 200 Water Street...

...but the vomiting remains... (with apologies...)




Have seen this three times now by the Rockrose condos on Water Street near John Street the last week or so. (Not that I'm going looking for it or anything...) And three is officially a trend. Late nights at the Hook and Ladder II?

The Angelika turns 20

On this date in 1989, the Angelika Film Center on Houston and Mercer opened. The theater was originally set to open earlier, on Aug. 18, but there were delays. As the Times reported on Aug. 18, 1989:

The Angelika Film Center, a new six-screen movie theater in SoHo that was to have opened today, has postponed its opening for at least a week. The opening of the $4 million center at Mercer and Houston Streets, which is to be Manhattan's only first-run, multi-screen movie theater south of Greenwich Village, has already been postponed several times because of construction delays.

"I have so much egg on my face, if I say Aug. 25, I don't want to have to eat it again," said Joseph Saleh, the president of Angelika Films, the New York-based production and distribution company that has developed the theater.

The postponement, he added, was because city inspectors had "raised objections about the plumbing and sewage-injection systems, which the contractor couldn't resolve in time."

The theater will present a mixture of "major and independent first-run feature films, retrospectives, foreign films and children's programming," including movies released by Angelika Films, Mr. Saleh said. It will open with "Let It Ride," a comedy starring Richard Dreyfuss and Teri Garr; a Disney action-adventure film called "Cheetah," and the American premieres of two Angelika releases - "Emma's Shadow," a Danish movie about a girl who orchestrates her own kidnapping to get her parents' attention, and "Shell Shock," an Israeli film about two soldiers after the 1973 Middle East war.

The center will include two theaters with 265 seats each, and one each with 210, 190, 130 and 85 seats, as well as a 7,000-square-foot lobby with an espresso bar and cafe catered by Dean & DeLuca. It occupies the basement and ground floor of the Cable Building, which was designed in 1894 by McKim, Mead & White to store Houston Street cable cars.

Tickets will cost $7, and can be reserved in advance by credit card.

As commenter King Biscuit noted at Cinema Treasures, only four of the six screens were ready on Sept. 29 (the other two opened on Oct. 4 and Oct. 13). The premiere engagements were "Shell Shock," "Emma's Shadow," "The Navigator" and "Shirley Valentine."

I haven't been to the Angelika in years. It's perfectly pleasant on a weekday afternoon, when not many people are around. Otherwise, my gripes about it are the same as everyone else's gripes: You know, those uncomfortable seats. (Did they ever replace them?) Terrible sightlines. Etc.

Some good memories, I think, through the years. I remember taking an afternoon off, and sitting in an empty auditorium watching Hal Hartley's "The Unbelievable Truth." I also recall being coerced into to seeing "The Crying Game" at the height of its hype, and standing in some crazy line for tickets. And some wisenheimer walks by and divulges an important penis-related plot point to those of us in line.

And maybe I never got over that now-commonplace concept of cafe and theater, which I always thought took the emphasis away from the film. (Nothing so bad as the decision-makers who decided it was a good idea to sell and serve nachos in a theater...)

Back to some history. As that Times article mentioned, the building was once home to McKim, Mead and White's grand Cable Building. Forgotten NY notes, this once "powered Manhattan's cable cars in the late 1890s and early 1900s. Yes, Manhattan once had an extensive system of cable cars rivaling San Francisco's. The building housed the enormous machinery that was necessary to run the cars in Manhattan as far north as 36th Street. The cable rails were converted to electricity in the early 1900s, and largely eliminated by buses by the 1940s."

Here's a shot of the cable building circa 1894:




According to Architecture NY, "the building to the left of Vogel's window (above) was demolished in the 1950s when Houston Street was widened from it's original 2 lanes to 4 lanes. Three other buildings still further left in the first view were also demolished -- around 1915 to make way for a taller office building of 12 stories. The one that was featured with some kind of 'art' bolted to the side wall that created a big stir when the owners wanted to remove it for a billboard. I believe there is Club Monaco on the ground floor still of that 12 story building."

NYC Architecture has everything else that you'd ever want to know about the Cable Building. (There's plenty more information here.)

Before this, the site was home to St. Thomas Church, which burned down in 1851. The church was rebuilt and then demolished circa 1890. Sounds familiar.

Top photo via.

Other photos via.

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.

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.

The unbearable lightness of being on the M103

On Cooper Square.