Your unwanted Superdive weekend recap

Friday night. Closed!



Saturday night. Open!

The 2-hour lines for Octoberfest at Zum Schneider this weekend

...and people dress the part...



Octoberfest here runs through Sunday.

White stripes

11th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B.

Michael Shenker, 1955-2010

Longtime East Village homesteader Michael Shenker has passed away..... Friends placed a tribute in front of the former squat at 209 Seventh St., which he helped restore starting in 1987.

Here's a passage on the former squats by Lincoln Anderson in The Villager from 2009...

Michael Shenker came to live in the East Village in 1970, a 15-year-old, half-Jewish kid from Long Island. His model mother had been the Ipana toothpaste lady in TV commercials, which sometimes featured cameos by him and his brother. But things at home weren’t going well, and Shenker decided he had to get out.

The bohemian East Village, with its rocking music scene at the Fillmore East, naturally drew Shenker, an aspiring musician. At first, he was homeless, hanging out and crashing at night with members of a tough Puerto Rican gang. Working odd jobs — one saw him cleaning McSorley’s urinals — he eventually managed to get his own place. But the storefront he was living in had a fire, and then his rent quadrupled in the early 1980s, and he found himself again facing homelessness.

One day, he recalled, as he was sitting in Life Café, “This weird girl Natasha I used to play chess with looked over at me and said, ‘Mike, have you ever heard of squatting?’”

[Top photo by Fly; bottom photo by Caroline Debevec — both via The Villager]

He was also featured in New York from 1996. You can read that piece here.



I asked a few of his friends for comments:

Eden Brower:
I've known Michael since I was around 19 years old ... One thing about Michael is that before Ray's was going to be visited by the Board of Health for a few violations...Michael was there and helped with tiling the floor and cleaning. He also helped many of the squats with getting their electricity done. I'm sad that he's gone.

Barbara Robin Lee:
I'm going to remember him joyfully playing the piano with gusto and lots of talent. I loved his love for music and art. He was an amazing electrician. He was a strident political activist. He was a lover, a saucy flirt in the first degree. He knew no fear. That's about all I can say right now. Above all else, he was a good sober FRIEND!

Cops shutter Webster Hall during "the largest paint party in the world"

So last night, Webster Hall hosted DayGlow, billed as "the largest paint party in the world."


[Via]

Apparently it was quite large... so large, that we hear the NYPD swarmed the club.... giving everyone the boot... and shutting down 11th Street between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue. Per DJ David Berrie, who played at the event, on Twitter: "Wowwww webster hall shut down by cops that's is by farr the most packed I've ever seen webster."

Which, as EV Grieve reader Eric described, "lead to 'Douche On Parade' on Fourth Avenue."

Get your pet giraffe blessed today

I truly do like these flyers.

A few scenes from fall (earnest edition)

Meaning, there won't be a gag photo at the end of some dude throwing up on my front door in an Octoberfest hat or anything...

2 windows on 13th Street

Between Avenue A and Avenue B.

Of course! Douchebag Q and A

Heh. Yeah, I know that it's the movie... still, this gave me a chuckle...




And I like "The Town Douchebag" all together....

Get your pet wolf blessed today

It could be a dog, but I think it's wolf. Good dog clipart is hard to find.

Brainiacs

I give the edge to the Daily News today for evoking a 1950s B-movie quality. In any event, an awful story.

Scene from a sidewalk sale

Your chance to see two films on the gentrification in East Harlem and on the Lower East Side

From the EV Grieve inbox...includes an offer for you

Tuesday, October 5, 6:30 PM

In Danger of Extinction: Gentrification in East Harlem and on the Lower East Side

Residents of these two diverse, vibrant neighborhoods have long dealt with the pressures of gentrification and have struggled for affordability. Their story is told in two recent documentaries. Join the filmmakers for a screening and discussion of "The Lower East Side: An Endangered Place" by Robert Weber and "Whose Barrio?" by Ed Morales and Laura Rivera, with opening remarks by The Honorable Melissa Mark-Viverito, New York City Council, District 8.

Co-sponsored by the office of the New York City Council Member Melissa Mark-Viverito and East Harlem Preservation. This program is presented as part of the ongoing series The Urban Forum: New York Neighborhoods, Preservation and Development

Reservations required: 917-492-3395 or programs@mcny.org

$6 Museum members; $8 seniors and students; $12 non-members

$6 when you mention E.V. Grieve

Museum of the City of New York
1220 Fifth Avenue at 103rd Street

And a trailer for you.... (we had an item on the film in June 2009)



And the ticket price is double if you yell Woo!

Firefighter subdues cellphone thief on Second Street

I've heard reports of a rash of cellphone thefts of late around the neighborhood... (including Slum Goddess.)

The Post has this story today:

A firefighter leaped into crime-fighter mode in the East Village last night -- helping a damsel in distress whose cellphone was snatched by a sticky-fingered thief, authorities said.

Vinny Brennan, 34, who also is a Marine Corps reservist, heard a cry for help near his Ladder 11 firehouse on East 2nd Street around 7:30 p.m.

"I saw a man running towards us on the sidewalk and my Marine intuition kicked in and I decided this one has got to be stopped," he said.

Brennan, who has served in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo, tackled the suspect and his fellow firefighters helped hold him until cops arrived.

Steven Varkony, 32, of The Bronx, was booked for robbery, cops said.

Despite hearing about so many cellphone thefts, NO ONE has tried to take mine...

The Blake Lively photos that I could have taken yesterday in the East Village if....

...I had a really BIG lens and hung out with the paparazzi for hours ...or vice versa!




On 10th Street and Avenue A yesterday....

[Photos via Just Jared]

Blake Lively, Leighton Meester, Penn Badgley, Chace Crawford, Ed Westwick, Taylor Momsen

Woo! Go Search Engines!

OK, OK... the "Gossip Girl" filming continued at 10th Street and Avenue A this evening...



...a Halloween scene, so everyone wore masks... so you couldn't even tell the difference between, say, Leighton Meester and Penn Badgley, though I think his calves are smoother...




...and even the presence of a "Gossip Girl" truck didn't make Table 12's sidewalk cafe any more appealing...

Waiting for Blake Lively and stuff

The 'Gossip Girl' shoot is under way....



St. Nicholas of Myra on 10th Street and Avenue A....



...is being transformed into a Halloween party scene...




After 10 dull minutes, a PA shooed gawkers along, noting that the cast hasn't even arrived just yet....





...which is true, since they're all in my apartment now frontloading... Gotta go — think that Westwick just clogged the shitter.

Don't get any on you

Live Skull at CBGB circa 1986.

Raw Stock: No Wave Films from Downtown NYC, 1976-1984

Our friend Karate Boogaloo points us to some rare No Wave screenings tonight and next Friday in Brooklyn:

Here's the description:

Selected screenings from New York’s own explosive yet fleeting era of filmmaking known as “No Wave” Cinema. Rising from the ashes of a bankrupt and destitute 1970’s Manhattan, and reacting to the modernist aesthetic of 1960’s avant-garde film, No Wave filmmakers threw out the rules and embraced their own brand of vanguard moviemaking. Inspired by the films of Warhol, Jack Smith, John Waters and The French New Wave many of the films combined elements of documentary and loose narrative structure with stark, at times confrontational imagery. Much like the No Wave music of the period from which the movement garnered its label, these filmmakers freed themselves of the constraints of formal training and pillaged the nascent East Village arts scene for co-conspirators in the likes of Lydia Lunch, James Chance, Jean-Michel Basquiat, Debbie Harry, Richard Hell, Vincent Gallo, Steve Buscemi, Nan Goldin, Cookie Mueller and many others. With wildly varying styles, they shared the common mindset of fast and cheap, and catalyzed by collaboration. Equipment could be begged, borrowed or stolen, your friends could be your actors and the city, abandoned and free to roam, could be your set.

Louis V E.S.P.
140 Jackson St, #4D (Take the L to Graham Avenue)

Terry Galmitz's East Village

This past summer, you likely saw the artist Terry Galmitz sitting near various East Village institutions, sketch pad in hand. Starting tomorrow, SB D Gallery will feature his illustrations in a show titled "My East Village."

According to the show's description: "The places which have been precious parts of his life are revisited and illustrated in Terry's own voice, much with his charming wit. Some places are already in the history, some are about to become, and some will hopefully stand for another few decades."

Galmitz turns 64 on Monday. Aside from some traveling, he has lived in the East Village his entire life.



I caught up with him by phone yesterday afternoon at the gallery for a few quick questions.

How did this show come about?

This is something that I've wanted to do for a long time. So this year, I decided to do it. My wife gave me a little folding chair. I took that big pad and sat across the street from some places; some places a little closer. I just sat there. I tried to do two or three places a day. I spent the whole summer sitting somewhere in the East Village. It was just a personal thing that I really wanted to do. I didn't have any deep philosophical thing behind it. I love architecture, especially the old places. I did two places that are long gone. CBGB and the Fillmore East from photos. They were so much part of the Village when they were here.

You've lived here for nearly 64 years. What has stayed the same about the East Village through the generations?

The people who live here have stayed the same, kind of. It's still an artists' neighborhood. Artists, musicians, writers. I had a lot of artist friends who lived in Soho back in the 1970s. I wanted to get a loft there myself. It was cheap. They've all been thrown out. I guess they went to Brooklyn. I'm glad that didn't happen to me. I love being in the city.




Was there one place that closed through the years that was particularly upsetting to you?

Back in 1971, when the Fillmore East closed. I was a young rock-n-roll-going person. I went, 'Oh my God, the Fillmore is leaving.'

A few people I know say the Second Avenue Deli....

Oh, yeah — the Second Avenue Deli. And Ratner's.



What do you think about some of the new buildings in the neighborhood?

Oh, I wonder about it. I don't really like it. I have yet to see a new building that I like. But what do I know? Seems to be a lot of it going up. Some of it is really horrible, actually.


Portrait of the artist.

The SB D Gallery is located at 125 E. Fourth St. between First Avenue and Second Avenue. His work will be up through Dec. 29. Details here.