13th Street.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Pillow talk
From the EV Grieve inbox...maybe more of a warning...
New York City's 5th annual, and the world's 3rd annual Pillow Fight Day!
Pillows fly and teddies soar as you converge for a giant urban pillow fight! Swing and whack as you evade pillow-wielding assailants. Bring a soft pillow and wait for the signal. Pillow fight!
Rules: Please follow these guidelines to ensure a safe and fun pillow fight for everybody!
+ Soft, feather-free pillows only!
+ Swing lightly, many people will be swinging at once.
+ Do not swing at people without pillows or with cameras.
+ Remove glasses beforehand!
+ Deposit pillows in donation boxes or take them with you.
+ Pajamas welcome.
Cleanup: Please eliminate your use of feathers. As the pillow fight grows in size, so does the mess. By participating, you are pledging to clean up twice the mess you made :)
This year, pillows will be collected and donated to a midtown no-kill animal shelter to make bedding for rescued dogs and cats.
According to Facebook, "This event has 16,844 confirmed guests." I hope this is worldwide and not just NYC...
[Image via]
Street fair!
On Cooper Square today... oh, how I missed the naked mannequins and charbroiled sizzlin' chicken...
And Cooper Square Hotel guests get this street fair as an added bonus for staying here this weekend...
If you're away, then don't fret... the same vendors will be here 458 more times by summer's end...
And Cooper Square Hotel guests get this street fair as an added bonus for staying here this weekend...
If you're away, then don't fret... the same vendors will be here 458 more times by summer's end...
You always take pictures of a crane
As I've said. This crew on Avenue B near Fourth Street was there to load a new AC unit for Tompkins Square Middle School...
Friday, April 2, 2010
Potheads asked to put a towel under their door
The Luxury Spot brings us this instant-classic apartment etiquette sign from an East Village apartment...
Brownout: Verizon building graffiti painted over
Ugh. Woodland Creature brings the news that the Department of Sanitation just painted over all of the cool graffiti on the Verizon building on the 13th Street side leading up to Second Avenue... I know I have more photos of the wall somewhere... Meanwhile, here's what brown can do for you...
And The Sarah Show got this shot before it was too late...
Solex vs. Christina Martinez and Jon Spencer
The TripWire brings us word that the first single from Boss Hog's Jon Spencer and Cristina Martinez and Dutch sampling guru Solex is now out... A full record from the trio is due May 18.
Meanwhile, here's "Galaxy Man"
Cliches threaten to implode Collective Hardware
There are likely some cool things going on at the Collective Hardware at 169 Bowery, though you wouldn't know it by reading today's Post, who reduces the whole place to painful cliches.
The piece begins:
The Bowery has played host to CBGB, homeless bums and, more recently, upscale museums, hotels and bars. But now there’s an underground art scene straight out of the debauched ’60s era of Andy Warhol’s Factory.
Collective Hardware, housed in a rundown building between Broome and Delancey streets that used to be Weiss Hardware, has nothing to do with wrenches. Instead, it’s a five-floor party-studio-gallery-music space filled with a never-ending parade of pretty people, downtown artists and hangers-on.
Oh, just read the whole thing:
Last Thursday, at a launch party for the nonprofit Fund Art Now, jazz floated through the first-floor gallery from a rented Steinway. On the second floor, members of the cool set were lounging, either getting a trim from the Astor Place haircutters while sipping a no-brand cocktail from a makeshift bar or participating in a séance — there’s an oversized hand-painted Ouija board on the floor.
“I can give an unknown artist an opportunity to show in a place that consistently attracts tastemakers and patrons of the arts,” says Stuart Braunstein, a self-proclaimed “urban instigator” and deejay who launched the space with his business partner, Rony Rivellini, in 2007. The buzz about their venture has grown ever since.
“Where else can you meet MIT think-tank guys, Astor Place haircutters, beautiful models/actors and high-profile gallerists?”
Warhol’s Factory, the art studio where the pop artist made silk-screens from 1962 to 1968, drew all sorts of artists, actors and celebrities (from Dylan to Factory-made “Superstars” such as Edie Sedgwick), who made music and movies among the druggy scene.
Braunstein never met Warhol but was inspired to create a similar environment by Factory alumnus, artist and friend Ronny Cutrone.
The building’s top three floors (which house offices, artist studios and plenty of hard-partying scenesters) are off-limits unless you’re invited. Now Braunstein has a newly minted liquor license, and says he’s negotiating to open a rooftop restaurant.
Andy Warhol, welcome to 2010.
Perhaps things have changed... But, as Eater reported, the CB3 approved a full liquor license in December for Andy Yang, who is opening a Rhong Tiam on the second floor. (This news is on the Collective Hardware Web site.)
Nation’s Restaurant News, who first reported on Yang's arrival to 169 Bowery last November, also mentions that a rooftop bar is in the works.
The Post also gave Braunstein a new hairdoo...
...and the real Stuart...
Jeremiah's Vanishing New York has the history of 169 Bowery here.
[Braunstein image via; 169 image via.]
New York City in photos 1978-1985, take two or three
We posted our first set of photos by Michael Sean Edwards back on Feb. 10... Since then, Michael has been busy uploading more photos to his Flickr account from 1978-1985 (and one from 1988)... and thanks to Michael for letting us repost these...
Times Square subway station 1979:
147 Avenue A from 1984:
Cooper Square from 1980:
Avenue A near St. Mark's from 1984:
Avenue A near St. Mark's Place from 1984:
In a Seventh Street studio from 1978:
From 1988: And Michael could use some help identifying this intersection... he doesn't remember the location...
See his Flickr page here.
Times Square subway station 1979:
147 Avenue A from 1984:
Cooper Square from 1980:
Avenue A near St. Mark's from 1984:
Avenue A near St. Mark's Place from 1984:
In a Seventh Street studio from 1978:
From 1988: And Michael could use some help identifying this intersection... he doesn't remember the location...
See his Flickr page here.
Why is this East Village resident attempting to visit all 193 (or so!) LES bars this year?
EV Grieve reader Alex Oliver has set out on an ambitious adventure: to visit the majority of bars (currently 193, but the number fluctuates) of bars in the East Village/Lower East Side by the end of this year.
He'll make brief notes on each bar while onsite. He calls it the Downtown NYC Bar Project (and there's a Web site), and he plans to continue until his OCD goes into remission or his liver explodes...or until he hits them all.
I asked Alex a few questions about this project. Such as:
WHY?
And the goal of all this?
He sets the ground rules on his site... As of Wednesday, he had been to 35 different bars since March 11... and only 3.9 bars per week to visit to reach his goal!
He'll make brief notes on each bar while onsite. He calls it the Downtown NYC Bar Project (and there's a Web site), and he plans to continue until his OCD goes into remission or his liver explodes...or until he hits them all.
I asked Alex a few questions about this project. Such as:
WHY?
"First, I'd become pretty comfortable in my regular places. And even with a dozen of those, I'd spend my usual after-work drink time at one of those dozen places, rather than expanding my territory. With such a wealth of bars, I guess I needed some inspiration to try new ones.
Second, I work in online media, and I'm fascinated and/or obsessed with local, mobile, location-based content. I wanted to experiment with the technology to report on events or places without having to do it at a later time, on a computer. I built the blog of places initially, and mapped them all, and now am visiting each to add content to that list of places but doing it using an iPhone and a WordPress app; none of the reporting happens unless it's in the field.
Third, in a past life I wrote similar capsule reviews for the Time Out New Orleans travel guide, and wrote critical reviews (mostly music) for a monthly magazine there and for regional alternative weeklies. It always bothered me that the reviews were after the fact, and invariably you'd use other external input -- friend's opinions, other critic's reviews, press releases, etc. -- to inform what you were writing. This is an experiment in complete immediacy, with no influence other than my own observations at that time. They are not comprehensive reviews, by any means, but they are also exactly what I'm witnessing at the time of my visit."
And the goal of all this?
"Apart from proving out the above goals, I guess to provide a resource -- yet another resource -- for people looking to enjoy some of the better bars in our neighborhood, and hopefully appreciate them as community gathering places rather than places to get drunk. I think we have a great tradition of 'locals,' or neighborhood pubs here, despite the places that cater to the B&Ts, and I hope that by accurately describing the atmosphere of each people get a sense of which ones to frequent and feel welcome at."
He sets the ground rules on his site... As of Wednesday, he had been to 35 different bars since March 11... and only 3.9 bars per week to visit to reach his goal!
Anti-NYU letter of the week
From the new issue of The Villager:
Party out of bounds
To The Editor:
And now N.Y.U. states that it plans to expand by 40 percent. Obviously, most of that will have to be in the East Village, since there’s not much space left for their grand ambitions in the Village.
Why does N.Y.U. have to be bigger? What’s the point? So we can choke on their destructiveness to the local population?
God forbid they should get any part of Governors Island; do we have to kick out Bloomberg immediately to make sure that doesn’t happen? The people, the residents that is, need Governors Island for recreation! Those students can go to the Rockies or Europe or wherever they like for their time off.
The view of the Judson Church tower has been ruined by the ugly military-style dorms atop a “law school” for which N.Y.U. tore down the Poe House and allowed Washington Square to be overshadowed. East Village, watch out for buildings around Tompkins Square — soon your sun too will be overshadowed by N.Y.U. high-rises!
It’s a party school and that’s a big part of what residents have against this planned expansion. We in the East Village have seen blood on the sidewalk and students screaming at cops that their fathers are big shots. They’re here to drink themselves numb.
Martin Delarue
Heart of India opens today
Heart of India opens today at 79 Second Ave. near Fourth Street. As a commenter said, the new restaurant is owned by the folks who ran Curry Majal across the Avenue...(their rent got jacked up to $9,000 a month...)
Madras Cafe was here earlier... Not to cast a pall over 79 Second Ave....However, the address was also once home to the Binibon. As we've written before, on July 18, 1981, Jack Henry Abbott, the celebrated ex-con writer, got into a fight with the cafe owner's 22-year-old son-in-law, Richard Adon. Abbott stabbed Adon in the chest, killing him. Ephemeral NY has more on the crime here.
6th Street Kitchen now open
On Sixth Street between Avenue A and Avenue B... According to New York magazine: "After a fifteen-year run in the East Village, the Pan-Asian pioneer O.G. closed in 2008. One of its partners, Chris Genoversa, kept the space and has leisurely been replacing kitchen equipment, ripping out beams and floors, and contemplating what New Yorkers are hungry for in 2010. His conclusion ... 'very homespun, very simple,' with multiculti comfort food and a three-for-$18 assortment of small plates
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