This is the Day

Kissing the Pink with "Maybe this Day" circa 1982.

I love a) the saxophonist and b) the crowd's reaction. [Deathly silence]

Speaking of "This is the Day." Why not. The The from 1983.

2 Bros. back open; Nino's 2.0 closed again

One of the 2 Bros. on St. Mark's Place that closed after a nearby fire in September is back open... this is the one that sells the $1.50 "supreme" slice...

And down on St. Mark's Place, weirdness continues at Nino's 2.0 at Avenue A. Reopened. Closed. Reopened. Now closed again...

The making of the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space on Avenue C

And as noted earlier ... The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS) has its grand opening tomorrow at 3 p.m.

Here's the schedule (all subject to change):

3:00 Chain-cutting ceremony and proclamation by Rosie Mendez
3:45 Slideshow by Seth Tobocman with Eric Bliss, Ben Barson and Joe Merolla
4:30 Talk and slideshow by Adam Purple
4:45 Reading by Maggie Wrigley
4:55 Reading by Felix
5:05 Slideshow by Mac McGill
5:35 Talk by Ben Shepard
5:50 Slideshow by Fly
6:30 Talk by Frank Morales
6:40 Spoken word by Pete Missing
7:00 Sermon and songs by Reverend Billy and The Church of Stop Shopping
8:00 March by Rude Mechanical Orchestra
8:30 Performance by Rude Mechanical Orchestra
Deejaying by DJ Dirtyfinger

MoRUS is at 155 Avenue C between East 10th Street and East 9th Street. Visit the MoRUS website here for more information.

Previously.

Memorial service tomorrow for Donald Suggs

From the EVG inbox...

Friends and loves of Donald Suggs, we will be holding a memorial service for him at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery on Saturday, December 8th, beginning at 1 pm.

Read more about the memorial here. Read more about his life and work here.

Suggs, a familiar face around the neighborhood, died in early October from an apparent heart attack. He was 51.

[Photo by Stacie Joy]

Watch the Ramones on 'Live! with Regis and Kathie Lee' in 1988

In case you've never see it. Something for a lazy, rainy Friday afternoon. Or any afternoon...

Today at Schwimmer Manor

Two reports/photos via Twitter...

1. Bendy Thing doing a Loop-the-Loop outside 331 E. Sixth St. ...

[Via @lcsonka39]

2. Via @SubatomicSound —

Seems David Schwimmer is now pouring concrete for a bomb shelter in his new backyard #MoreNoisePlease

Previously on EV Grieve:
Is David Schwimmer the 'Friends' star who now owns the demolished 331 E. Sixth St. townhouse?

O Come, All Ye Faithful: Tree lighting at Tompkins Square Park is Sunday

From 4-5 p.m., per the sign. And don't worry — I'll have 79 more posts on the tree before the season is over...

Here are scenes from the ceremony in 2008 ... and last year .... And I made this terrible joke in 2010:

Meanwhile, this will be the last year for the tree lighting. On Jan. 3, workers will tear down the tree to make way for a new, 12-story tree. In three years, the current tree will be offered a space here, though at current market rates.

But we did almost lose the tree for real last year after Irene...

Breaking (sort of): Workers return to incoming Avenue A 7-Eleven

[Photo via Shawn Chittle]

We haven't seen much activity at the 7-Eleven coming to the corner of Avenue A and East 11th Street... in the space previously occupied by Bar on A and Angels & Kings... Workers gutted and plywooded (heh) the space back in September... but we haven't seen much, if any, activity here of late.

Until this morning.

'All uses considered' for former Mars Bar space at Jupiter 21

The retail listing — with fresh renderings — is now live for 21 Jupiter, the luxury building that took the place of 9-17 Second Ave. ... and, among other things, the former home of the Mars Bar.

Some details per the RKF listing:

SPACE
Ground Floor 1,400 SF
Lower Level 3,056 SF
Storage Space 1,252 SF

POSSESSION
Second Quarter 2013

TERM
20 years

And!

COMMENTS
Formerly “Mars Bar” location
All uses considered
New construction with premises being prepared for restaurant use
Located at the base of a luxury rental building
Existing 4am Liquor License in place

Any idea why Mars Bar is randomly in quotes? Oh, and does this mean Hank isn't reopening the bar here? (No snickering!)

And what happened to the BP station and other buildings?

Previously:

December Saturdays

For awhile this past Saturday, it seemed as if I ran into swarms of bargoers at every turn. More than usual. Earlier than usual. And this was starting with the brunchers around 12:30 p.m. on Avenue C. (I overheard one well-heeled brunch-goer suggest that they buy some beers and sit on a stoop after brunching on brunch.)

Anyway, I may have made a comment about all this on the EVG Facebook page Saturday. Something like:

A lot of large groups of really stupid people out tonight. Not used to this in the past month. My Jackass Guard is down.

And some 60 people responded, many having witnessed all this too ... a few comments:

• "Huge bro & woo packs from Chelsea over to EV. I ran home to take a xanax."

• "it sounded like an absurdist theatrical performance was walking down my block"

Anyway, since then, several people have pointed out that it's only going to get worse ... tomorrow marks an Ugly Sweater Pub Crawl starting at the Village Pourhouse...

Then on Dec. 15, also starting at the Village Pourhouse....

Per PubCrawls.com:

Yes, it is as crazy as it sounds. Picture thousands of Santas running throughout the streets of the city to some of the best bars that Manhattan has to offer.

Oh, and Dec. 15 is also SantaCon.

As one sort-of EVG acquaintance said last Saturday, maybe we should just be happy that people are returning to the neighborhood post Sandy to help the local economy. Should we just be happy for the swarms?

Home for the holidays at Theatre 80

Earlier this week, I noticed that a new sign went up outside Theatre 80 on St. Mark's Place for the William Barnacle Tavern...

And yesterday, Lorcan and company put up some holiday gear...

Anyway, I realized that I hadn't written about the Tavern since before it opened. For this post in September 2009, proprietor Lorcan Otway, whose parents built and operated Theatre 80 starting in 1964, gave me a tour of the space. (You can read that post here.)

But Jeremiah Moss discussed the Tavern in a post back in January, noting:

The tavern is other-worldly. You feel like you've come upon a weird oasis, as if you've slipped through the time-space barrier and landed in some alternate reality. It's not the absinthe, because you feel it the moment you walk in. Everyone else feels it, too. Newcomers step through the door with exclamations of relief — a quiet bar in the East Village!

Tavern aside, there's a lot of interesting things happening at Theatre 80. Check out their website here.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Barnacle Bill dies

Theatre 80 to remain a theater: "We intend to keep the East Village a vibrant arts community"

Pearl Theatre relocating; what's next for 80 St. Mark's Place?

Your chance to live in the former chapel at the Christodora House

Here's the new listing for #5A at the Christodora House over on Avenue B:

First time available, ever! The original chapel space of the historical Christodora House Condominium. This luxurious, newly gut renovated loft-like one bedroom offers incredible midtown skyline views from it's exclusive terrace of almost 800 square feet in size. Details include wide plank flooring, woodburning fireplace, built-in high end and prewired sound/media system ... All this has turned this incredible space into a one of a kind property. The sense of space is it broadened with its 10'+ ceiling height, equal height french doors and oversized windows.

And the asking price is $1.795 million. Sadly, no photos of the unit. Consolation prize: Floor plan!

Don't recall ever seeing archival photos of the chapel. We've seen these interior photos of the Christodora from 1929. Like the "music auditorium" ...



... the "Christadora medical clinic"



... "fireplace in lounge"



... "Miss Kupkey's bedroom, D-4"



... a "general view of the dining room"



... and the fabled Christodora House pool!


But no chapel.

Per Streeteasy, there was a transaction on this unit back in January for $700,000... we didn't dig through the paperwork.. Maybe later.

So those new gut renovations added $1 million to the unit? (The DOB permits for the space estimate the cost of work at $65,000.) Anyway, there's probably a "going to the chapel" joke here somewhere.

[Photos by Samuel H. Gottscho All photos from the Collections of the Museum of the City of New York.]

Fall Friday flashback: Today in now and thens — Southeast Corner of Fourth Street and the Bowery

On Fridays this fall, and probably winter and spring and... we'll post one of the 12,000-plus EVG, uh, posts from yesteryear, like this one, from Dec. 29, 2010...

-----

1932...


1970s...



Now...


For more about this corner, go right here.

Top photo by Charles Von Buren via The Museum of the City of New York

Middle photo via the Phebe's website.

Inside the Peter Cooper Suite with the CU 11

The 11 Cooper Union students remain barricaded in a room at the top of the Cooper Union Foundation Building ... where they are protesting the possibility of school officials charging tuition to undergraduates... And now there's a video (in MTV Cribs fashion!) showing the inside of the Peter Cooper Suite where the students have been holding forth since noon Monday...

A little background, via the Huffington Post:

Throughout the school's 110 year history as a college, since 1902, it has not charged tuition. That changed in April, when the administration announced that it will begin charging graduate students, and a document leaked to the occupiers shows undergraduate tuition for certain programs is under consideration.

And a scene from earlier today via Bobby Williams...

Previously.

Say hello to Ellen Grossman

Well, just in case you didn't already see this story making the rounds the past 24-36 hours ... the video of Jay-Z (plus entourage and security and fans) riding the R train to the Barclay's Center... and being asked by the kindly woman, Are you famous? (Gawker has more here.)

As The New York Times noted, the woman is Ellen Grossman, an East Village-based artist who lives on St. Mark's Place.

And given the world we live in, she is an instant celebrity of sorts. Per the Times:

To what does she attribute this new found celebrity? Given the economy, the wars and talk of the end of the world, “I think the world is in the mood for a sweet, old lady,” she said.

You can see the exchange between Jay-Z and Grossman at the 19:30 mark of the video ...



h/t The Wall Street Journal

Q-and-A with Leonard Abrams, publisher of the East Village Eye

[The first issue of East Village Eye in May 1979]

Marc H. Miller recently passed along word about the latest edition to Gallery 98, the online store for the 98 Bowery website.

Miller has obtained a nearly complete set of the East Village Eye, the influential arts newspaper/magazine hybrid that published 72 issues from May 1979 through January 1987.

So I thought this might be an opportune time to interview Leonard Abrams, who was 24 when he started the Eye in early 1979. With an array of unpaid contributors, including Richard Hell, Cookie Mueller, Glenn O’Brien and David Wojnarowicz, the Eye wrote about the neighborhood's emerging art scene as well as provided ample music coverage.

His post-Eye career included opening Hotel Amazon, which brought warehouse-style parties to a former LES school featuring, among many others, De La Soul, Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys.

Today, Abrams lives in Williamsburg. In recent years he made the documentary "Quilombo Country" narrated by Chuck D about a community founded by escaped slaves in Brazil. Meanwhile, he has been working on publishing the entire Eye archive online in searchable PDFs accessible for free. ("This is imminent," he says.)

You were 24 when you launched the Eye in 1979. Being pretty young, were there any issues with people taking you seriously as a publisher at the onset?

People thought I was older. Then after the Eye folded they thought I was younger. Actually at the time a lot of people in the scene pretended they were younger so as not to be thought of as hippie interlopers.

But as I recall, there was such a feeling of newness to what we were doing that no one seemed to feel they could pull rank on the basis of age. And finally, I think that people take longer to get going these days. 24 isn't really that young. I started a paper in Denver when I was 21. That was young.

Did it seem as if you were onto something special at the time with the Eye?

Oh yes. I really felt the weight of it at times. In fact I probably would have pulled the plug a lot earlier but that I felt it was too important not to keep doing it. It's not that we were saving lives [we probably cost a few] but just helping sustain an atmosphere where people could feel so much was possible was very important. And feeling we were remapping the brain was heady, as it were.

What was a typical scene like at the Eye office?

We started at 167 Ludlow then moved to I think 54 East 3rd Street then to 120 St. Marks Place then to 605 East 9th Street then to 611 Broadway. A typical scene was me fighting with music editor and typesetter Celeste-Monique Lindsey over something political and/or inconsequential, people coming in for their mail or to pick up a copy, us on the phone trying to get everyone to hand in their stories on time even though they were writing for free and, the last week of the month, a frenzy of editing, typing and pasting-up.

Kind of stuff that seemed more fun after it was over.

[The Eye staff circa 1985, courtesy of Leonard Abrams]

Do you think something like the East Village Eye could work today (print or online) or do you think the days of any kind of scene here are long over?

I really don't know. Today it's so easy to communicate that it's almost like the communication takes the place of the action. Mind you, we were mostly communicating about communication anyway, but still...

The physical limitations of distribution make a difference too. We sent the Eye out all over the country [in a limited way], but I think text is taken more seriously 1) when you have to pay for it and 2) when there isn't so much of it around.

Still, the kind of scene there was at the time was based on a lot of people doing things out of their own need for self-expression, and now, at least in New York, we have a regime in which hierarchy and monetization, the antitheses of creativity, are the starting points. Thus we need to convince Mayor Bloomberg to immolate himself. While we wait for that to happen, someone should step up and print something.

How about Hotel Amazon? Do you think a space like that could work today on the Lower East Side?

I'd like to see one. Especially since a lot of the spaces in the neighborhood are staffed by clueless snotnoses. But what do you expect? It's the club industry. When Hotel Amazon started I was fairly clueless myself, I was just lucky to be around when hip hop was fresh and generating tons of great acts all the time. The other problem is the great increase in legalism and regulation. The Hotel Amazon was illegal in all kinds of ways. Otherwise it would never have happened. But look at Rubulad. They still manage to throw a bash.

What are you most proud of with the Eye?

I'm most proud of having gotten so many of them out. And hearing someone say something like "I moved to NY because I read the Eye in my home state." I was gratified to have published columns by David Wojnarowicz and Glenn O'Brien and Cookie Mueller and Richard Hell. And to have been told that the term "hip hop" was first printed in the Eye. And to have presented so many idiosyncratic voices in such a deadpan manner, as if what they said was as obvious as the weather. That was fun.

[East Village Eye covers courtesy of Marc H. Miller and 98 Bowery]

For further reading on EV Grieve:
Life at 98 Bowery: 1969-1989

Revisiting Punk Art

Reader report: the F train is sucking more than usual lately

From an EV Grieve reader...

What the f*** is up with the F train at 2nd Ave these days? It’s always been pretty unreliable in my opinion, but the past few weeks have been a nightmare in the mornings. I get down there between 8-9 every morning during the week and the line is like 3 rows deep; I can rarely get on the first train that comes. My girlfriend gets there around 7 am and says the trains are coming less often. Is this still a fallout from Sandy?

Which reminds us of another note from a reader...

Ever since before the storm, during the 8:00 AM - 10:00 AM time frame, the damn platform is packed. Had to wait for 4 trains this morning.

Anyone else experiencing the problems with overcrowding on the F? Any solutions? Another line? Bike? Car and driver?

Apartment 13 concept returns for Avenue C space

[EVG file photo]

In October, a group headed by Paul Seres went before the CB3/SLA committee to discuss a new venture called Apartment 13 at 115 Avenue C between East Eighth Street and East Seventh Street. As we understand it, some neighbors opposed the plan, in part due to the presence of co-applicant Aleksandra Drozd of Ludlow Manor/DL (and The Delancey). The committee denied the plan, and the applicants withdrew before appearing before the full Community Board that month.

Apartment 13 returns to the docket for this Monday's CB3/SLA meeting. And, according to paperwork (PDF!) on file with CB3, this time around, only the name of Paul Seres, president of the New York Nightlife Association and a member of Community Board 4 (serving Chelsea), is listed as an applicant.

There are also more details. For instance, here is the dining concept:

All entrees at Apt 13 will be market driven and will be served in the same style as Korean barbeque. Every dish will be served with side dishes, appetizers, condiments, sauces, salads, and garnitures. Seasonally and locally driven. Family styled dinners. Meant to feel reminiscent of an intimate sit down dinner in our apartment. All dishes will change based on market availability. In following the theme and mission statement of apartment 13 we strive to not only support our local state Farms but also our neighborhood by featuring local artists and supporting local businesses.

The paperwork shows 36 tables seating 80 people... and one bar seating 12 people.

And the proposed hours are as follows:
Saturday — 11 a.m. - 4a.m.
Sunday — 11 a.m. - midnight
Monday — closed
Tuesday-Wednesday — 4 p.m. - midnight
Thursday-Friday — 4 p.m. - 2 a.m.

The committee meeting is Monday night at 6:30, JASA/Green Residence, 200 E. Fifth St. at the Bowery.

Previously.

Rawvolution has 'closed for renovations' on East 12th Street

Rawvolution, the raw vegan cafe/retail store on East 12th Street, has closed for renovations. The Santa Monica, Calif.-based store opened in August 2011 here just east of Avenue A.

Jill heard from an employee that the owners are in California ... and they are supposed to reopen Jan. 1.

Meanwhile... anyone ever try the place?

Previously.

Remembering the Second Avenue Baptist Tabernacle

Yesterday we posted that item on the 1920s marketing brochure for 166 Second Avenue... and our friend Pinhead reminded us about what was at the address before the luxury apartment building — the Second Avenue Baptist Tabernacle, which opened in 1850 ...

As Pinhead wrote at East Village Transitions, the church made way for the new building starting in 1928... (Oh, what the bloggers wrote then! Later, we'll pull a quote from Aristocratic Stuyvesant Grieve, aka AS Grieve.)

[Images via NYPL]

The church's former sanctuary is now the Urban Outfitters. Read the whole post here. (And take a look around while you're there! At East Village Transitions, not Urban Outfitters.)