Clearing East 10th Street for DanceFest 2012

The NYPD was out early this morning clearing streets need to prepare for today's DanceFest 2012... Photos by Shawn Chittle...

In Tompkins Square Park from 3-7 p.m.

Find the complete schedule for the DanceFest here.

Meanwhile, around the corner, the barricades are in place for Dance Parade 2012

The barricades are now in the place for the grand opening of 7-Eleven on St. Mark's Place the annual Dance Parade ...

[Top two photos by Dave on 7th]

[Top two photos by Shawn Chittle]

The DanceFest 2012: Dance Parade kicks off at 1 ... (Details here)

Avenue A at 13th Street, 5:30 a.m., May 19

Photo by Shawn Chittle.

Avenue A, 8:58 p.m., May 18

Earlier today in Tompkins Square Park

Photo by Bobby Williams.

Circuit breakers

The Polecats with "Make a Circuit With Me" circa 1983.

This weekend: The Ukrainian Festival on Seventh Street; DanceFest in Tompkins Square Park

The Ukrainian Festival...

...and tomorrow... the DanceFest 2012: Dance Parade kicks off at 1 ... (Details here)

Then! In Tompkins Square Park from 3-7 p.m.

Find the complete schedule for tomorrow's DanceFest here.

And now, photos of a boot with flowers on Avenue A

New Avenue A beautification project?

Spotted at East Sixth Street today....

Photos by Dave on 7th...

Oh, and here's another angle via Andrew Adam Newman on Avenue C ...

Everyone loves a really bad meatball sandwich!

EV Grieve reader MP sent this along from outside JoeDough today on First Avenue near St. Mark's ...

Heh.

And here's the Yelp review from February...

Probably the worst meatball sandwich (special of the day) I have had in the tri-state area in my 32 years of living here, especially for $12. In all fairness I have not had the other sandwiches but with prices like that coupled with underwhelming food and slow service this will be a skip in the future. Joe Hell No!

Reader report: Starbucks back open on Second Avenue, but the sidewalk cafe is gone

[The now former sidewalk cafe via Google Street View]

A reader notes that the Starbucks is back open after Monday's temporary closure. Curious what had transpired, the reader went inside...

"I just chatted with the girl behind the counter. They were shut down Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday of this week for illegally offering outdoor seating. The seating is now gone and they have no plans to bring it back."

The further adventures of Kita the Wonder Dog of East 10th Street

Back in March, we introduced you to Kita the Wonder Dog of East 10th Street, whose owners recently brought her home from a shelter.

[Kita in March]

Since then, the cards and letters continued to arrive at the EV Grieve P.O. Box. How is Kita? How is she adjusting to life here? That kind of thing.

So we got in touch with Kita's owner for an update.

Kita the Wonder Dog of East 10th Street has spent her days acclimating to the neighborhood. She had a close call with some sort of terrier mix that got off its leash while crossing Avenue A and lunged for poor Kita.

Being the wonder dog that she is she literally leapt out of its clutches and received an ovation from the people seated outside Café Pick Me Up. Kita is heavy into the dog run across the street. While she enjoys chasing pigeons, we’ve tried to explain to her that there’s nothing stealth about a dog with three noisy dog tags and a bright yellow ball in her mouth trying to sneak up on a flock of unsuspecting birds.

She remains undeterred.

Kita spent a recent weekend up in Connecticut and went on a little boat ride.

Once we were smack in the middle of the lake, (Bantam Lake, in Litchfield County, the largest natural lake in Connecticut for those who might be interested) she promptly fell or jumped in — it was hard to tell which. Turns out to be a reasonably good swimmer.

On the next episode: Kita applies for a liquor license.

City temporarily closes Baoguette on St. Mark's Place

Yesterday, Baoguette Cafe on St. Mark's Place was closed... workers were cleaning up the place...

[Bobby Williams]

Now with the gates down, you can spot the DOH stickers...

A handwritten sign says "Sorry we are closed. Need to renew expired permit tomorrow! Hope to open tomorrow."

The expiration date on the document is April 30, 2012.

However, there's more to it than a simple expired permit. According to the DOH website, Baoguette was hit with 80 violation points during an inspection, including evidence of various live things.

Meanwhile, we spotted this under the Baoguette sign out front.. a reminder of the former tenant... Ah, Bamn! (And their website is still live!)

[Updated] There is a woman who has been walking around the East Village topless

NSFW if you keep scrolling

In the past two weeks, multiple readers have sent us emails asking if we had seen a woman walking around the neighborhood topless.

We had not. And we had not seen any photographic evidence of this.

Until now.

Here is a photo via ‏@AskWass ... who noted in a tweet last evening: "Topless girl is Just wandering the east village on this lovely Thursday."

One reader believes that she is simply reminding people that women have the same right as men to appear topless in public. (We don't know for sure if that is her intention. If she would like to contact us via the EV Grieve email ...)

In fact, it has been legal for woman to go topless in New York City since 1992.

Updated:
A reader passed along this photo from outside Whole Foods on Union Square ...

And via @michalmeer1 ... on Second Avenue two weeks ago...

Updated: 3:27 Friday ...

Racked roving photographer Atisha Paulson caught up with the woman, Moira Johnston, yesterday in Union Square ... and interviewed her about her ensemble... Find the interview here. ...

Bonus Q-and-A excerpt:

Can you tell us a little bit about your outfit?

I'm going topless today. It's to raise awareness that's it's legal for woman to be topless anywhere a guy can be without a shirt since 1992 here in New York State.

A quick look at the Bowery south of Houston

Over at 250 Bowery, just a little south of Houston, work continues on the new luxury condos that will include penthouses starting at $2.7 million, as Curbed has been reporting.

And they'll be an Anthropologie anchoring the retail space...

The future... (at night, anyway) ...

[Via Curbed]

BoweryBoogie summarized the lot's recent history here.

Meanwhile, next door at 260 Bowery, there's the doomed Standard Sheetmetal Fabrication Corp.

The building remains on the market...

No price mentioned at RKF ... Per the updated listing, there's "great branding potential" and "Interior walls can be demised." (We'll say!)

Wonder how much longer before all the supply shops north toward Pulino's on the corner will remain where they are no longer welcome ...

A reader offers details about the restoration of St. Brigid's

[Yesterday]

A reader left this comment on our post Wednesday afternoon about St. Brigid's on Avenue B at East Eighth Street....

I’ll try and clear up a few misconceptions as I live near the Church and have been following the process since it began nearly 10 years ago.

1. The Church was never declared a NYC landmark. The NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission ruled against the request for status by a group of individuals because: a) The Church had been modified too much over the years to determine what exactly was part of the requested status. b) It was in a horrible state of disrepair at the time and its very survival made it a huge risk. c) The Landmarks Commission rarely designates Churches because they change so often and the various entities that own the churches don't want to be designated because it makes it difficult for them to make significant changes. They have a very strong lobby in NYC.

2. The central portion of the facade scaffolding was removed [Wednesday] because the contractor needs to start work on the front stairs. He is hoping his portion of the project (all the major interior and exterior construction) will be completed this summer. Significant work to do still on the two towers, roof, exterior fencing, the back, and the interior.

Once their work is done the "liturgical package" work begins: including all interior furnishings —pews, alter, and hopefully the original Keely carved organ. Keely was the original architect and when the Archdiocese tried to demolish the Church '04-'06, the City courts mandated the Archdiocese carefully remove and preserve all interior artifacts. Now no one seems to know where the organ and many other artifacts have gone. a tremendous pity and in contravention of Court orders. The organ was a beautiful piece of work.

Once the liturgical package is complete, the church has to go through a number of city inspections and approvals. My guess is that St. Brigid's might open up for "business" sometime in the early-mid fall. The new parish priest has already moved into the adjacent rectory.

3. The "anonymous" donor is still a mystery. No one has stepped forward to admit making the original $20 million donation, which most likely grew by an additional $10 million after work began and the architects realized they would have to completely redo the outside & foundation. Of the original $20 million, $10 million was dedicated to the restoration, $8 million was given to St. Brigid's school next door and $2 million was put in a church maintenance fund.

Some have speculated that it was Chuck Feeny, multimillionaire Irish-American philanthropist, who made his fortune with duty-free shops and started the Atlantic Philanthropies Foundation. Both he and the foundation have steadfastly denied this. Easy to see why. Others suggest that the Archdiocese itself anonymously "found" the money in order to stave off a confrontation with the New York State Supreme Court where a final case was pending back in 2006. If the Church lost that case it would have had tremendous implications for the ownership of Church property throughout the entire country.

4. There are many good things the current restoration architects, Acheson and Doyle, have done with their budget to bring the church back to the original vision and design of Keely, and execution by the Famine-Irish boat wrights from the local EV community who helped build it back in 1848. They have restored the original brownstone facade, re-made the original windows, made beautiful replacement stain-glass windows (after the Archdiocese willfully destroyed the original hand painted windows in the summer of 2006, in an effort to show its strength and disdain for the community and hasten the demolition process).

The courts issued an injunction stopping the demolition pending the outcome of the case back then. They have painstakingly restored the interior and replaced the old rotting roof with a batten seam, all-copper roof. But they have failed to add back the original 50-foot high steeples on each tower, which could easily be done. And they will not restore the cast-iron fencing around the church — the exact same fencing used and still surrounding Grace Church on Broadway and 10th st.

This will be replaced with an aluminum fence the contractor assures is quite elegant. They did a slap-dash job on the facade of the rectory, quite beautiful originally. But they have done wonderful work supporting the rear wall of the building, the cause of all the structural trouble. It began peeling away from the rest of the church about 30 years ago after an adjacent building was demolished. They have restored and refaced with copper the Crucifix atop the church, and they will replace the original pentacles that were on each corner of the towers. However, they don't seem to be adding back the carved details along the top front ridge of the peeked roof and no one knows if they are planning to return the huge bronze bell removed for "repair" over a year ago.

Hope this helps clarify things a bit.

[Updated] Dream of a vanishing Joe Strummer

I had a dream recently that someone painted over the Joe Strummer mural on the side of Niagara. And when I saw it — while inexplicably riding a bike the wrong direction on Seventh Street (no comments! This was a dream!) — a new mural was in progress. It was black and purple and looked like a bruise.

And it was going to be Ronnie Wood of the Rolling Stones.

I took photos and rushed home to post the photos. (Traveling now with the traffic, harumpf!) I was in such a hurry, I didn't stop at the site of a construction accident. (No one was injured.)

As far as I can remember, this was my first blog-related dream. I recalled a few dreams that Jeremiah Moss shared at Vanishing New York, like the one about A Fontana Shoe Repair.

Unbeknownst to me he has a new blog — Dreams of the Vanishing New York.

Per the description: "Dreams that come in sleep about lost New York places, people, and things, about anxieties and wishes for what could be lost or regained."

Updated: Oh! Jeremiah posted my dream yesterday after I mentioned it in an email.

Report: the Economakis family is now living in 47 E. Third St.

After a nearly two-and-a-half-year gut renovation, the Economakis family has moved into their newly created mansion at 47 E. Third St., Lincoln Anderson reports at The Villager this week.

Per the article:

In an e-mail to The Villager, Alistair Economakis wrote, "Catherine's and my intentions to make 47 E. Third St. our home were always true and genuine as is now evident."

The address was the site of a bitter landlord-tenant fight dating back to 2003. The Villager summarizes what transpired here — basically a handful of rent-stabilized tenants fought a lengthy battle to stop the eviction proceedings by Alistair Economakis who wished to turn the building into his private mansion.

Many EconoWatchers were skeptical that Economakis would ever return, choosing instead to flip the former 15-unit tenement building.

Meanwhile, City Councilmember Rosie Mendez tells The Villager that the Economakises are leasing part of the ground-floor space to a medical facility. Mendez also said that the landlord did not get the OK for a new curb cut for a garage to serve the medical facility.

Previously on EV Grieve:
And Economakis gets the whole building for his dream mansion

At the 47 E. 3rd St. protest

More coverage here.

Lumber lifting on East First Street

Over at the former 9-17 Second Ave., Bendy Thing has given way to a large, wood-toting crane...

As you know, you always take photos of a crane lifting lumber over East First Street...

Photos by Bobby Williams.

Previously.

[Updated] John Varvatos expanding on the Bowery?

Varvatos signage now covers the departed Riff pop-up shop next door at 317 Bowery... a tipster thought that this was only providing coverage for tonight's Paul Weller VIP show at the Varvatos shop.

Earlier! Bobby Williams passes along this photo of workers Varvatosizing the storefront.

Afternoon New York-in-the-1970s photo break

Thanks to VH McKenzie for this link to Retronaut, where there are a handful of NYC in the 1970s photos...