Former Joe Jr's space looking empty and lonely ... and suspiciously like a future nail salon

Walked by the former home of Joe Jr's at Sixth Avenue and 12th Street for the first time in months ... The "for rent" sign is still up, and the space is all cleaned out, and looking like it's prepped for a bland doctor's office or, more likely, a nail salon...






Previously on EV Grieve:
Joe Jr's has closed

Chico has a new work in progress on Houston and Avenue B

A tipster riding the M9 yesterday afternoon noted that Chico and company were at work on the corner of Houston and Avenue B... and here's the mural so far...




Not sure just yet what this is going to be a mural for...

This replaces the anti-violence mural that Chico and and the POP (Power of Peace) Youth Anti-Violence Coalition created last October.

Meanwhile, right around the corner...

...After checking out Chico's mural, I saw that the shabby liquor store on Houston and B that I like so much wasn't open last night...



I haven't been here in some time... I forget the woman's name who runs the place. I enjoy watching her reaction to some fancypants asking her if they have any, say, really buttery California chardonnays whose grapes were harvested on hillsides composed of Kimmeridgian marl, limestone and chalk. Her reaction is usually either, "WHAT?" or "WHY WOULD WE HAVE THAT."

Figure this is one of those doomed corners...so I'll often take a photo of the storefront. Come to think of it, I took these shots on a Friday afternoon in the fall, and they weren't open then either...

An endorsement that the Horus Cafe management (and neighbors) will just love

Horus Cafe, everybody's worst nightmare favorite hookah hotspot on Avenue B and Sixth Street, received a nice writeup in Washington Square News, NYU's student newspaper...



The premise of the article: "So for those under 21, here are some fun options for your weekend entertainment that you might not have considered before." To the endorsement of Horus!

Horus Cafe is usually crowded and poorly ventilated, resulting in thick smoke hanging from the ceiling at all hours. But its East Village location is definitely convenient, as evidenced by the swarms of underclassmen who frequent the hookah joint on East Sixth Street and Avenue A on the weekends. DJs spin Top-40 songs and belly dancers drift about Thursday through Saturday nights, adding spice to an otherwise mellow night out. Sample the Middle Eastern menu while you're at it, and you won't be disappointed.

Swarms of underclassman...poor ventilation...smoke hanging from the ceiling... why not just call the DOH too?

East Village Visitors Center moves to East Fourth Street

Per the news release:

Lower East Side History Project has joined forces with Fourth Arts Block and the Cooper Square Committee to bring the East Village Visitors Center to the heart of the E.4th Street Cultural District.

The new EVVC is open Tuesday through Saturday, 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

Let's get lost (soberly)

We've heard from readers about those strange numbers on the gate at Professor Thom's on Second Avenue between 13th Street and 14th Street ....



This means nothing to me... A reader explained that this is from "Lost," which begins its finale tonight... and Thom's has a "Lost" viewing party.... I went to the site to link.... and I noticed this:




"Unfortunately, we will not be able to sell alcohol at the event due to Community Board relations but the party will still go on and the food and soda will be flowing."

EV Grieve Etc: Mourning Edition

Ray pays his January rent today (Neither More Nor Less)

Old Hell's Kitchen butcher becomes a — oh yeah! — Subway (Grub Street)

The roll-down gates of the East Village (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

More debate on Avenue D's luxury housing (The Lo-Down)

Remembering J.D. Salinger with a retro white T-shirt (Nonetheless)

Signs of life at new LES tiki bar (Eater)

One to do with those leftover shrimp heads (With Leftovers)

Selling 195 Bowery (BoweryBoogie)

More scary shit about ATM skimmers (BoingBoing)

Stromboli on First Avenue at St. Mark's Place has reopened following the addition...

Barfin' at the Coop: The Serial Vomiter strikes again

We're hesitant to write anymore about this ongoing atrocity versus architecture... However, it is our duty to file this report... As we worldwide exclusively reported last Friday, someone in recent weeks has turned the new Cooper Union academic building into his or her own private vomitorium... We hoped that these were merely isolated incidents, perhaps... perhaps just an extra vicious pub crawl, extended game of flip cup or soapy batch of McSorley's...

No. The Vomitrator is getting dangerous, empowered by the publicity we so willingly heaped upon this sick individual.

As seen Sunday morning...



And, for any of you skeptics who thinks that the Yeti is a myth or believes that balding comes from your mom’s side (or wearing hats), here is further evidence that someone (or thing) is chundering on the Coop... the outline of previous puking sessions as seen here in Exhibits A through E:







We're curious what will happen next. Will the Cooper Union beef up security, particularly after happy hour? Or will The Vomitrator be free to strike again? Given the number of bars/tourists/students in this region, can anything stop The Vomitrator?

The Telephone Bar hangs it up

As I first reported on Jan. 13, The Telephone Bar & Grill on Second Avenue near Ninth Street, an EV mainstay the last 22 years, was closing at the end of the month... there was an "end of the era" farewell Sunday night for regulars...and today, the bar was papered over...awaiting its new tenant, something from the owner of Down The Hatch, among others...

My post on Jan. 13 solicted several reader comments...an outpouring that took me by surprise...

Previously on EV Grieve:
The Telephone Bar and Grill closing after 22 years

What's coming to The Telephone Bar space? Some fratty debauchery, perhaps

Price cutting atop Kiehl's

In early December, we wrote about 203 E. 13th St. #PH4B, the rooftop pad on Third Avenue above Kiehl's...it's a fine looking home that was going for $1.265 million.




Well, thank God that you didn't buy it then.

Why?

Last Thursday, the owners slashed the price by $200,000 (16 percent) to $1,065,000. With that money you just saved, you can buy some shampoo at Kiehl's.

The official listing is here. Streeteasy has some history.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Speaking of rooftops: 'Own a piece of history in this boutique condo Penthouse of the historic Kiehl's Building'

Alexander Wang launches ad campaign for his new anti-itch powder

On 12th Street at Third Avenue.

Oh! It's his T line. Per BlackBook:

[H]e's making quite a statement with his first-ever ad campaign for his lower-priced line T. "The energy was much more appropriate for something like guerrilla marketing than anything too proper or formal," Wang says of the ads which will only grace NYC sidewalks, not the pages of the magazines currently stocked at your local newsstand.

Things that I wish I hadn't read: Katz's corned beef sandwich has 4,490 milligrams of sodium

Which is the same amount as 10 McDonald's hamburgers. (The New York Times via Grub Street)

[Image via]

EV Grieve Etc: Mourning Edition

Ice cream spilled during Avenue A donnybrook Saturday night (Neither More Nor Less)

Thoughts on living in Fishbowl City (Flaming Pablum)

Another vanishing: Aphrodisia Herb Shoppe on Bleecker (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Town Hall on future of Chinatown tonight (Save the Lower East Side!)

Someone using the Pee Phone to make an actual phone call (East Village Corner....Musings by Melanie)

A Meatpacking District Now and Then (Greenwich Village Daily Photo)

Spotting a T-Rex on East Houston (BoweryBoogie)

Is America's greatest family moving to the East Village?

We're still reeling from the feature in yesterday's Post on the superduperfaboo Novogratz family...

After reading this, you may want to move to, say, Greenland. Or someplace where aren't TVs. And we pretty much have to excerpt the entire article:

Two gorgeous, self-taught downtown designers with seven young urban kids are set to become Manhattan's next reality-TV stars. Think "Jon & Kate Plus 8" meets "Sex and the City."

Artsy downtown couple Bob and Cortney Novogratz, who gut-renovate dilapidated city buildings and transform them into multimillion-dollar homes, are set to star in "9 by Design," a Bravo reality show premiering April 5 that chronicles their chaotic Manhattan life where real estate is the constant family drama.

Their shenanigans could make Bob and Cortney the latest New Yorkers you love to hate -- with some viewers likely to be outraged by the manic couple's constant uprooting of their kids, and others embracing them as the coolest and most photogenic TV parents since Mrs. Partridge and Billy Ray Cyrus.

Cameras follow the nomadic Novogratz clan -- they've moved more than 15 times within a five-mile radius -- as Bob and Cortney scramble to find a temporary apartment in one day after renting out their mansion at 5 Centre Market Place in SoHo.

They check out a $14,000-a-month East Village rental and briefly consider renting out an old bar where they would bathe their newborn in the urinal. They eventually settle on a two-bedroom apartment where all the kids have to share a 12 x 14 bedroom.

During the eight-episode season, Cortney gives birth, the couple builds their first boutique hotel on the Jersey Shore, and designs a private gym in Hoboken, NJ, a beach house in Amagansett and a townhouse in the East Village.

"We wanted to show off New York City like 'Sex and the City' did," said Bob, 46, who is filmed scooting around SoHo on his Vespa with his pregnant wife on the back of the bike.

"Building in the city is stressful," said Cortney, 38. "People can relate to moving whether they've moved once or as many times as we have. We've lost track of how many times we've moved over the past 17 years." Twice, the family has moved three times in one year.

The chronic flippers live in their homes while renovating, then sell them and move on to their next project.

The family currently lives in a five-bedroom, 8,000-square-foot townhouse at 400 West St., where they've built an indoor basketball court for the kids. But Bob and Cortney are already getting bored; they've listed the property for just under $20 million and are eyeing a move to the East Village.

"The kids may end up in therapy," Bob jokes on the show. Indeed, the couple actually named their fifth child "Five."

The Novogratz kids, Wolfgang, 12; twins Bellamy and Tallulah, 11; Breaker, 9; twins Five and Holleder, 4, and Major, 1, attend three different schools.

Meanwhile, as you may know, work continues at 238 E. Fourth St. between Avenue A and Avenue B where the former one-level construction company was razed to become a BoCoNo-designed $4 million penthouse.



Previously on EV Grieve:
A Manhattan family that intrigues, intimidates and nauseates

[Photo via]

Washed up: Butcher Bay calls it a day

The long, expensive saga of Seymour Burton/Butcher Bar on East Fifth Street between Avenue A and Avenue B has apparently come to a close... the space is for lease...




A quck refresher on this fish eatery that opened last February:

After The former Le Tableau space closed in December 2007 and became Seymour Burton... there were gut renovations, menu changes, new chefs and CB3 lawsuits...the restaurant closed in November with the following note:



"...closed temporarily to write our memoirs..."

Where donuts were once served, a grocery store opens

From the Department of That Was Really *&%$##@@* Fast... The corpse of Dunkin' Donuts is still warm and, possibly, a little glazey...and on Second Avenue, the first of the two shops have opened in DD's old space... a deli/grocery...




Jeremiah first had the news of DD's split future... Meanwhile, some folks are still in mourning... from Let's Do This Instead (via Eater):

It would sound strange that I’d think the biggest loss in the East Village would be a Dunkie’s. But the one on Second Ave. between 10th and 11th was one of the nicest neighborhood amenities ever. Where else could you sit on the sidewalk with free wifi, or at a counter by their picture windows in winter, and look out onto one of the oldest buildings in New York City, St. Mark’s Church (built in 1799, and just imagine everything it has seen grow up around it for over two centuries).

Previously on EV Grieve:
Dunkin' Donuts closes on Second Avenue; only 428 left in NYC

Dunkin' Donuts Week in Review

New scaffolding reaching to the heavens at St. Brigid's

At Eighth Street and Avenue B.

Previously.

The Cooper Square Hotel's new dining option opens Saturday

Workers have removed the paper on the windows on the former lobby bar at the Cooper Square Hotel...




As Eater reported, the space will be for a "casual cafe"...and we were told this past weekend that it opens Saturday...

Boutique on Bowery possibly opening today; new lease signs appear at 52E4

Boutiques on Bowery is slated to open today in the retail space in 52E4, the 15 stories of condo on the Bowery near Fourth Street... The BOB Web site confirms that the store opens today... The site also lists the hours from Tuesday through Sunday...meaning they likely wouldn't be open today, Feb. 1, on a Monday....

Anyway! With this opening comes the arrival of new "prime retail space available" signs at 52E4...Perhaps something more permanent is coming here some day?

"How to Make it in America" debuts Feb. 14

As you may recall from last fall... the new HBO series "How to Make it in America" has been filming all over the neighborhood... And now, posters are up advertising the show's debut on Feb. 14...



I don't have HBO, so you'll have to let me know how it is...