Caffe Buon Gusto continues to remain restaurant-free

Caffe Buon Gusto on Avenue B at Fifth Street looks to remain vacant for a little bit longer... CBG was scratched from last night's CB3/SLA liquor license docket... Meanwhile, perhaps the space can continued to be used by those in need of shelter for the night...



Previously on EV Grieve:
Caffe Buon Gusto's shelter

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

I forget what the sun looks like.

Art inspired by the Meatpacking District (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Looking at the new liquor bill (Save the Lower East Side!)

A walk in the rain on Astor Place (The Gog Log)

An upgrade for 87 Rivington (BoweryBoogie)

History of NYC in 100 buildings (The Bowery Boys)

FOX films Ray's volunteer delivery crew (Neither More Nor Less)

A Miss Heather video: Short skirts and spiked heels for the rain on St. Mark's Place Saturday night (New York Shitty)

And I love Jorge Colombo's cover art this week on The New Yorker...

March sadness: Superdive transfer off tonight's CB3/SLA docket

Superdive was originally on tonight's docket for a full transfer of their liquor license.... no more, though, as a look at the updated rundown shows... Perhaps the Super brass is too busy planning that Vegas expansion?

East Fourth Street's Novogratz-designed penthouse now on the market

Prepare yourselves for 238 E. Fourth St. near Avenue B, where the superduperfaboo Bob and Cortney Novogratz designed the $4 million penthouse apartment...



The listing is now live. Let's see just how superduperfaboo it is! According to the Corcoran listing:

Step directly from your private, key-lock elevator onto your 3 bedroom, 2.5 bath Penthouse condominium. Offering the highest caliber of finishes, every detail is customized from the Boffi Kitchen outfitted with Macassar Ebony cabinetry and stainless steel countertops to California Closets in all 3 bedrooms. The Great Room soars with 10.5 foot loft ceilings, woodburning fireplace and sunflooded, oversized windows with North and South open city views. Then take your private stairs or elevator directly onto the largest ipe-and-concrete decked terrace you've ever seen in the EV with sweeping Empire and Chrysler building views. Enclosed with sleek glass railings, this terrace is equipped with a Summer kitchen and wiring for outdoor theatre. The first floor of this duplex lends a gracious air of privacy for the 3 bedrooms, all of which have gorgeous sunlight and charming treetop views. The Master bedroom has TWO walk-in custom Cali closets, a sumptuous 5-fixture Master bath suite with dual vanity, oversized glass-enclosed shower and freestanding soaking tub. A large window floods the Master bathroom with all-day natural night. Additional luxury add-ons include radiant heat in all rooms, Crestron security system, and custom baseboard moldings. This finish quality is seen only is magazine-ready, designer homes. Extremely low common charges. Walk to the chicest East Village restaurants, steps to trendy Lower East Side and hottest upscale Bowery venues and gallerie.

At this point in the post, EV Grieve has passed out, overcome by the most wretched excessive East Village real-estate description this week! So please look at the photos and floor plan...







And the price: $3.75 million.

P.S. See more of the Novogratz clan on Bravo when their "9 by Design" reality show debuts April 13 on Bravo.

Tearing up the Telephone

If you were a fan of the Telephone Bar and Grill on Second Avenue, then you may want to avoid looking at this photo... I caught a glimpse inside the bar, which closed at the end of January. Looks as if the new owners are doing a complete gut renovation of the space... they've already auctioned off most of the old fixtures and equipment....



The bar is still there, but little else remains. And on the right is a pile of what can be best described as rubble...

Previously on EV Grieve:
East Village to somehow get frattier: What's coming to the former Telephone Bar

Ringing in the 13th Step: Old Telephone Bar will lose its Telephones

Tri-colored party bus makes pit stop on Avenue C

Anyone know anything about this groovy party bus spotted tooling around the neighborhood on Saturday afternoon...?



The bus made a pit stop on Avenue C near Ninth Street... Inside, I could hear someone explaining the rules of a drinking game over a loudspeaker...



And the reason for the stop? So that a passenger, who brought along her drink (that cup on the ground), could use an ATM...

Monk is opening at former Dance Tracks space

First came word that a thrift shop was opening on Third Street near First Avenue at the former Dance Tracks space...



Then there was the confusion to where, exactly, the Monk Thrift shop was relocating...

Anyway, the thrift shop on Third Street looks ready for business. It was closed yesterday. But a business card on the counter confirmed the store name...



Wonder if Monk will keep the Dance Tracks sign?

Heart of India says hello on Second Avenue

The canopy went up for the new restaurant taking over the former Madras Cafe space near Fourth Street. A commenter said the new restaurant is owned by the folks who ran Curry Majal across the Avenue...

Noted

You've probably seen these signs up the last week or so... I'm not sure who's responsible for them ... and I'm not sure what to think of them...






I think I agree with the reader who sent me an e-mail and the bottom two photos: "not quite art, and not deeply philosophical, but it caught my eye nonetheless."

Pizza that may be better than it sounds

At Veloce Pizzeria on First Avenue.

New SLA chief not a rubber stamper

Crain's has a feature on new SLA Chairman Dennis Rosen titled "The Gunslinger: State's new top liquor cop shrinks license backlog, leaves community groups unsure." If you have an interest in the future of liquor license approvals in the neighborhood, then you may want to give the piece a read...

An excerpt:

“I'm not a rubber stamp for either the community boards or business,” says Mr. Rosen, a former state assistant attorney general who led a state investigation of the SLA in 2005.

Mr. Rosen, who took over in August, is overhauling the SLA from top to bottom. He has dramatically reformed the agency, once seen as a symbol of failure and corruption. He has reduced the nine-month wait for a liquor license to as little as two weeks in some cases, slashed the backlog of applications from 3,000 to 1,800, and stepped up enforcement actions by partnering with local cops to crack down on businesses that flout the law.

Balancing the interests of city residents who want quiet neighborhoods and business owners who serve alcohol late at night is a big challenge for Mr. Rosen. Restaurants and bars have long complained that overzealous community boards overstep their statutory rights by, say, declaring moratoriums on new liquor licenses on busy blocks, and that they call in political favors to get their way.

Mr. Rosen is sympathetic to residents' concerns and is meeting frequently with them, discussing ways in which the agency can help. But community boards were surprised when the SLA recently removed a question from the license application that asks for the business's hours of operation, because city law allows bars to serve alcohol until 4 a.m. Now, many boards are requiring businesses applying for a liquor license to sign an affidavit in which they state their hours of operation. That way, the boards can force the venues to close when they promise to.

For further reading:
Liquor Authority Chief Listens, As Residents and Bar Owners Vent (The Lo-Down)

[Photo by Buck Ennis via Crain's]

First Avenue, 9:12 a.m. or 10:12 a.m., March 14

Dozens of fallen umbrellas.

The long history of 104-106 Bowery

Thanks to the EV Grieve reader who passed along this link to a great story in the Times by Dan Barry that I missed. A few years back 106 Bowery was the flophouse Stevenson Hotel... and Barry traces the building's evolution through the years... An excerpt:

The building at 104-106 Bowery, between Grand and Hester Streets, has been renovated, reconfigured and all but turned upside down over the generations, always to meet the pecuniary aspirations of the owner of the moment. Planted like a mature oak along an old Indian footpath that became the Bowery, it stands in testament to the essential Gotham truth that change is the only constant.

Its footprint dates at least to the early 1850s, when the Bowery was a strutting commercial strip of butchers, clothiers and amusements, with territorial gangs that never tired of thumping one another. Back then the building included the hosiery shop, which promised “all goods shown cheerfully” — although an argument one night between two store clerks, Wiley and Pettigrew, ended only after Wiley “drew a dark knife and stabbed his antagonist sixteen times,” as The New York Times reported with italicized outrage.

Read the whole article here.

One of those days

On the Bowery.

Vote for the 20th Annual Village Awards

From the EV Grieve inbox

Since 1991, GVSHP has presented its Village Awards in recognition of those people and places which make a significant contribution to the quality of life in Greenwich Village, the East Village, and NoHo. This year, GVSHP will present the 20th Annual Village Awards at our 30th Annual Meeting in June.

But we need your help!

Won’t you take a moment to nominate a Village treasure?
You can nominate almost anything or anyone: an individual, business, organization, streetscape, front stoop, restoration, or garden, from anywhere in Greenwich Village, the East Village, or Noho — someone or something you would miss if it was no longer around.

Nominations must be received by April 9, 2010. More information, a list of prior winners, and a nomination form can be found on the GVSHP Web site.

Nominate a Village treasure today!

At Ray's, the "line in the sand" for the East Village

At the Observer, W.M. Akers checks in with a nice story on Ray's titled The East Village's 'Line in the Sand.'

Here's an excerpt:

He is a neighborhood fixture, and since January he has emerged, inadvertently, as a cause. Caught between high rent and slow business, he is suddenly a symbol for local residents who feel they have seen every quirk of their neighborhood ironed out and turned into a Chase Bank. East Village organizer "Reverend" Billy Talen called Mr. Alvarez "a line in the sand." But besides being a symbol, he is a person, one who just wants to keep doing what he has done for so long, even though it's no longer marketable.

Read the whole article here. And the Save Ray's clothing/accessories are here.

What we learned about the owner of new EV pizzeria PJ Hanley's yesterday in the Post and Daily News

Jeremiah has an update today on PJ Hanley's, the new pizza place opening on First Avenue between St. Mark's and Seventh Street... Meanwhile, in case you missed this story in the tabloids yesterday... according to reports, PJ Hanley’s owner James McGown has been accused of renting out his TriBeCa condo for "extreme parties." Reports the Post:

A Brooklyn pizza man transformed his basement TriBeCa condo into a cheesy "extreme party" spot, complete with a stripper pole and a 15-foot slide onto a sunken dance floor, court papers charge.

In a bid to avoid possible legal liability for the bacchanalian bashes, the owner, James McGown, transferred the deed for the apartment to his 6-year-old daughter, his disgusted neighbors claim in papers filed in Manhattan Supreme Court.

The real-estate developer and restaurateur -- he owns South Brooklyn Pizza and PJ Hanley's bar in Carroll Gardens -- bought the basement unit on Reade Street in 2006.

He then allegedly stopped paying condo fees and mortgage payments, and improperly leased the space to a man named Dimitri Dimoulakis.

The filing seeks to stop the revelry and show the door both to McGown and Dimoulakis.

McGown claimed the parties are legal, he's been holding them for 10 years "and there's never been a problem."

Daily News has a story too.

[Image via Grub Street.]

Federal Reserve tagged

So, at the Federal Reserve — home of the largest gold repository in the world, allegedly! — someone took to the side of this Financial District institution with spray paint a few days ago... Officials quickly covered up the offending comments with poster board and duct tape... what did the person write on the building?




Attempts to unfasten the poster board were unsuccessful due to the large amount of Federal Reserve officers making the rounds.

Security has been tight there, of course, since the elder brother of Hans Gruber knocked off the joint in "Die Hard: With a Vengeance".



In any event! Yesterday afternoon, a Fed Graffiti Removal Team arrived to assess the scene and clean...



And what did the vandal write?



From our untrained eye, it appears to say: Audit Me.

The green plastic hat zone (Pub Crawl Alert!)

Pub Crawl alert this weekend!...and it's just not any ol' pub crawl... It's the Guinness Book of Records Largest Pub Crawl — a
five-mile, three-day long crawl starts that starts this afternoon, continues tomorrow morning into the pee wee hours and wraps up on St. Patrick's Day.

Whatever you want to do, fine... but do the rest of us really have to be unwilling participants in your bar-hopping hijinks? Do you have to take over the sidewalks and run in the streets, paying no mind that it might be, say, 2 p.m., and other people aren't really in the green zone?



The participating bars hereabouts are:

Identity Bar
511 E 6th St.

Company
242 East 10th St.

Central Bar
109 East 9th St.

12th Street Ale House
192 2nd Ave.

Village Pourhouse
64 3rd Ave.

Finnerty's Irish Pub
221 2nd Ave.

Kingshead Tavern
222 East 14th St.

BarNone
98 Third Ave.



If this sounds fun, then here's your info on how to join.

Speaking of which, betcha all this will keep EV Heave busy this weekend. Oh, and here's a belated weekend report from EV Heave. (DO NOT GO here unless you want to see you-know-what...)

A St. Patrick's Day alternative

From the EV Grieve inbox:

CRAFTERMATH presents an LES alternative to St. Patrick's Day mayhem in a hybrid boutique/bar.
Punk crafts, film shorts, subversive song!
From 7 til 9pm-ish:

The CRAFTERMATH creative forces sell punk crafts and unusual art at a neighborhood treat-to-behold that features emerging designers and vintage goods. Our artwork is affordable, along w/the drinks. Happy Hour features a $5 beer and whiskey combo. We'll show a collage of films by NYC underground filmmaker LISA HAMMER on the gold-framed movie screen. JESSICA DELFINO will share a new song, perhaps on an uncommon instrument. You can celebrate Women's History Month w/us, and still make it in plenty of time to get out to some place far less cool-looking to drink your green beer - if you still insist!

The Dressing Room Boutique & Bar
75A Orchard Street (btw. Broome & Grand Sts.)
7 til 9pm-ish
FREE