Analyzing Astor Place's mystery artwork

Well, this was sitting by the Cube this morning at Astor Place. (Via Twitter around 8 a.m.)



Another angle via @bomarrblog...



Guesses at what this is supposed to be included... Ziggy, a Cheeto/Cheeseball, a nipple and a gift for Emperor Palpatine.

City OK's 6-floor, 6-unit condo for former East Seventh Street parking lot

[September 2012]

Massey Knakal issued the following news release this morning:

A development site at 277 East 7th Street, located between Avenues C and D ... was sold in an all-cash transaction valued at $1,850,000. The vacant 22.25’ x 97.5’ lot benefits from a curb cut. Currently, the lot is used for ten parking spaces. With a zoning of R8-B and FAR 4.00 residential, the site contains approximately 7,461 buildable square feet. The sale price equates to approximately $248 per buildable square foot.

We noted that this parcel was for sale (asking: $1.95 million) back in February 2011. As reported here in December, there are plans in place to build a six-floor, six-unit apartment building (with presumably a garage of some kind).

The city OK'd those plans from Eisner Design LLC back on Feb. 13, according to city records. South Fork Partners LLC is listed as the owner.

Previously on EV Grieve:
The next sliver of space for development: The parking lot at 277 Seventh St.

Seventh Street parking lot destined to become 6-floor apartment building

A look at the dwindling number of East Village lots

Noted

EVG regular Andrew Adam Newman on Ave C points out this unfortunate juxtaposition from this morning's Groupon email for the area...

Revisiting Fetus Squat on East 9th Street in the early 1990s

Katie Jones lived in Fetus Squat on East Ninth Street between Avenue C and Avenue D for several years in the early 1990s. She recently shared several photos with me. Jones, who now lives in Oregon, left the neighborhood in 1996.

"I think that putting these photos out there after all this time has actually released me in some ways. With technology the way it is today, I was able to post many squatter photos from the early 1990s on Facebook. In doing that I have been back in touch with many people from this time. That part has been awesome," she wrote in an email.

"I wanted to be able to give them their history back and letting go of these pictures people are reminded of what we fought for. They are reminded of their part in the struggle to maintain those squats. I am nostalgic about the past in some respects. I miss the community we had back then. I miss the sense of ultimate trust I had in my activist friends. I also see too many faces in those photos that have died — that part is hard."

She return to the city several weeks ago for a long weekend.

"I had not been to NYC since 1997, so it was the first time I had seen the full effect of the gentrification on the LES. Shocking and sad," she said. "I had been warned by friends who still live in the area, but it really was a mindfuck."

Here are several of the photos with a brief description from Katie. (And a special thanks to MoRUS for putting me in contact with Katie.)

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Fetus Squat 1992
My home for most of 1992 until a fire destroyed the entire building. This shot was taken on 9th Street toward Avenue C. To the left of Fetus is a giant garden that had been reclaimed from one of the numerous vacant lots that were so prevalent in the LES during this time.

I loved living at Fetus Squat. I really found my niche in this building. I learned how to do masonry, put up insulation and sheetrock, gather food from dumpsters and restaurants, and make window frames out of police barricades. (Actually, we used those police barricades for everything from stairs to lofts.)

It really was my first communal experience. I think there were about 30 of us living at Fetus by the time I got there. I had moved to NYC from Miami. The scene was young and punk rock with a lot of political ideologies. More than any other squat, Fetus was where I felt at home. I am still in touch with so many of my friends from this building 20 years later.

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Amy and Soy During Fire at Fetus Squat
This shot was taken during the fire that engulfed Fetus Squat in October of 1992. Everyone got out. The fire department showed up, but only put water on the adjacent building. One of the firemen turned to me and said “Is this your house?” to which I said in a confused, numb way “Yes…” He replied “Not anymore! Hahaha!”

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Fetus Rubble
This photo is of Fetus Squat after the wrecking crew came and demolished all remains of our home. It seemed like days that we all gathered there to sort through the rubble trying to retrieve something from out shattered lives. Scott looks on as Frankie crosses the street with some of his unburied belongings.

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Fetus Rubble Black Flag
This was such an impossibly surreal time for all of us. We were homeless and digging through the remains of our old Squat on 9th and C. You can see the old doorway still intact with the Anarchist Black Flag next to it. We spent days sifting through the rubble looking for belongings.

Shortly after this I decided to travel. Some friends had found a ride down to New Orleans. The guy who was driving put in a mixed cassette tape and I recognized it as one of mine! It kind of freaked me out and I asked him where he got it. He said he found it at the Fetus lot. I never knew this guy before the road trip and here he was with one of my mixed tapes scavenged from the fire. He told me I could have it back, but I was homeless and traveling so I told him to keep it. We all lost everything we had in that fire.

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Lot Between Serenity and Dos Blocos
This shot was taken from the Serenity Squat Roof around 1993. This Lot was on 9th street between C and D. People were living in the van and maybe some of the other vehicles in the lot. A garden and chickens were in the lot next to all the vehicles.

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Lot Between 8th Street and 9th Street
This lot was massive! It was between 8th and 9th streets and Avenues C to D. It was a combination dumping yard and shanty town. The little shacks were made out of items collected in the lot. People were growing small vegetable gardens and I even saw a chicken or two.

I took this shot from the 5th floor of Serenity Squat. This would have been around 1994. On this day the lot clean up by the city began. All of the people that lived in the tents and shanties were evicted. The city came through with bulldozers and just crushed everything in the way. It was very chaotic as people ran around trying to grab pets and possessions.

Construction for new housing began. This construction lasted the whole spring and summer of 1994. At one point a pile driver took up residence and banged four-story metal rods into the ground. Serenity Squat would shake from the impact! We monkey wrenched it a few times just to get some peace and quiet.

St. Mark's Place is dead! Long live St. Mark's Place!

[Window Shade Repairman, St. Marks Place, New York, 1938, by Joe Schwartz. Via Stephen Cohen Gallery]

Ada Calhoun is a freelance journalist working on a narrative history of St. Mark's Place. Last September, Calhoun sold the book, titled "St. Marks Is Dead," to W.W. Norton. Calhoun has her own narrative history of St. Mark's — she was born and raised on the block between Second Avenue and First Avenue in the mid-1970s and 1980s.

The book is due at the publisher next spring, and she is looking for some help.

Per the Facebook events page:

My goal is to track down the best stories, photographs, and historical documents related to the street. I've been going through archives and conducting a few interviews a week, but I know I'm only scratching the surface. In the interest of efficiency, I'd like to invite anyone with St. Marks-related stories or pictures to share to drop by the lovely Neighborhood Preservation Center on March 10th, anytime between 12 and 4, for a St. Marks Place story-gathering event.

ST MARKS STORY DAY
Sunday, March 10 from 12-4
Neighborhood Preservation Center
232 East 11th Street, Buzzer #1
(Near St. Mark's Church)
Snacks provided!

I recently spoke with Calhoun about the book, and what it was like growing up on the block.

"I didn't know any different. I thought it was totally normal. I was used to stepping over bodies walking down the street or being offered drugs every five steps," she said. "I did have this experience when I went to visit cousins in Ohio when I was 11 years old. They had a kiddie pool in the backyard and we went to a drive-in movie theater. And we got root beer floats, which I never had before. I came back fuming at my parents. I was like, What the fuck — you never told me any of this! I felt totally deprived!"

The book will explore the history (going back to the 17th century) and mythology of the street. So far she has talked with more than 100 people about the block and its meaning to them.

Any common themes emerging so far?

"The thing that I kept running into [were] people saying that there was this golden moment on the street when St Mark's was really itself and reached its full promise on this date and for these five years there was no better place in the entire world. It was the heart of culture — the center for music, art and poetry," she said. "People would describe passionately how it was so vibrant and they were so alive, then it died this horrible death."

For instance, Jack Kerouac biographer Joyce Johnson said that St. Mark's was all over in 1974 when someone flipped a cigarette into her son's stroller.

Another person Calhoun interviewed said that the scene died in 1974. Someone else said that all started in 1974. She also heard that the block reached its peak in 1978. Not to mention 1980. And so on.

"I'm really curious what's going on now. Basically my theory right now, based on doing this book, is that everyone was wrong. Everyone who thought it was dead was wrong," she said. "So people who think it's dead now are probably wrong too. My theory is that people coming out of karaoke bars or yogurt shops ... this is going to be some new wave of culture that we don't know about and won't even know about until it's over."

[St. Mark's Place on 2009, via the EVG files]

The Smith eyes basement expansion on Third Avenue

The Smith, the popular bistro on Third Avenue near East 10th Street, is on this month's CB3-SLA committee docket. According to documents, the owners are proposing to add a bar to the restaurant's basement. (The PDF of the application is here.)

In addition to a small bar, The Smith plans to open up the basement area for dining as well.

A media rep for the restaurant told us: "Currently, The Smith East Village is hoping to expand this summer and revamp the downstairs area, but all is still pending final approval."

Restaurant staffers are currently collecting signatures in support of the expansion.

[Image via]

American Apparel celebrating 9 years of gratuitous butt shots on the Lower East Side today

The American Apparel outpost on East Houston and Orchard turns 9 today. (That's 2.3 in Nylon Spandex Micro-Mesh Bra Bodysuit Years.)

In honor of that, there's a big celebratory sale from 4-8 today. BoweryBoogie and The Lo-Down have more details on that. (And they have a coupon.)

Never forget!


Previously on EV Grieve:
And now, my collection of the newish American Apparel ads

HOLD ON TO YOUR PYLONS!

Tompkins Square Park this windy afternoon... via Bobby Williams.

A feel good look back at Nemo, or whatever that storm was called on Feb. 8

Here is something to do while waiting for whatever the Weather Channel named the storm coming into the NY area this evening...

The day after Nemo (the Storm of Feb. 8™), East Village resident Stephen Nangeroni shot video of people (and hawks and dogs) enjoying Tompkins Square Park and the East River Park.

Per Stephen: "The video is purely happy in tone... the idea is to capture the goofiness and fun of a day in the snow."

Here is the link to Vimeo, where it looks better than here.

Richard Hell Week continues

And over at the Observer, Nate Freeman hangs around with longtime East Village resident Richard Hell on the Bowery.

An excerpt from the Observer feature!

“It was an expression of how things were at that moment,” he said, describing the impact of Television, whose first album, Marquee Moon, is perhaps the most hyper-literate of early punk artifacts, a fancily dexterous but punishing record. Having helped forge the group’s downright mathematical guitar playing, Mr. Hell left Television just before the recording of Marquee Moon and went on to form the equally influential, slightly messier band the Heartbreakers. “It wasn’t like we brought something to the world that changed the world, it’s that the world brought us something and we acted on it.”

His memoir, "I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp," is out next week.

As previously noted here:

On Wednesday, March 13, Hell is the guest of East Village Radio's The Rest is Noise show at noon. On Thursday March 14, he will appear at the Barnes & Noble on Union Square. (Details here.)

P.S.

If you want to know more about Marque Moon, then look no further than this book.

Wind KOs front door at the Bean on First Avenue

Winter Storm Saturn is heading our way... expect wet snow, rain, sleet, ice, misery, doom, despair. That kind of thing. Meanwhile, the wind has already been whipping up... this afternoon, EVG regular William Klayer notes that the wind took out one of the doors at the Bean on First Avenue at East Ninth Street...

Bleecker Bob's closing in May; will be replaced by — FROYO

Word is spreading this morning about what will replace Bleecker Bob's Records. Here's an update from the store today on their Facebook page:

STORE UPDATE:: 3/6/13

looks like the new tenant has signed the lease. we've heard they want to be open by June 1. it will take probably around 2 months to get work permits for the massive remodeling job they'll need to do so we're figuring we should be open until May 2013!!
--- get ready for another chain of self serve yogurt/coffee/hot chocolate cafes NYC!!

The store opened in December 1968.

The asking rent for the space was $17,000.

Previously on EV Grieve:
[UPDATED] Let's help Bleecker Bob's find space in the East Village

Bleecker Bob's is for rent

Bleecker Bob's won't be moving to the East Village — or anywhere else, for that matter

Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher

Name: Manny Garcia
Occupation: Owner, Cafecito
Location: Avenue C between 11th and 12th
Time: 5 pm on Friday, Feb 1

I was originally born in Jersey City but I grew up in Miami. My parents are Cuban. My father’s actually a Spaniard but he lived in Cuba for 25 years. I’ve been to Spain but I haven’t been to Cuba yet. I’ve been waiting till it opens up. I still have relatives there who’ve I’ve never met.

Miami is paradise. Most of my family is there. It’s very multicultural. But it’s too much fun and so it’s hard to get serious. It’s a party town, the weather’s beautiful — it’s 80 degrees and you’re trying to work. My first job was at McDonald's when I was 14 and after that I worked in barbacking and bartending and as an assistant manager.

At the same time I was going to FIU Hospitality School and that’s where I met my business partner for the restaurant. He was from New York and one day he called me and said he knew a neighborhood and he thought a Cuban restaurant would be perfect there. So I made a trip and we signed a lease for half the space we have now. Initially it was just a little takeout café with sandwiches, small menu, milkshakes, coffee, and we used to press the sandwiches at the bar. Then about a year later the bakery next door left and we combined both spaces.

Until a year and a half ago I lived right upstairs. I was very connected to my work. Living above made my life very intertwined with the restaurant. My whole life was the restaurant. Even on my day off… I didn’t have a day off. They’d call me and say, “Where are you?”

We just had our 10-year anniversary. There was not much around here when we first opened. On this block was just a bodega on the corner. There wasn’t much entertainment for the neighborhood. Esperanto and Zum Schneider were the only ones here, and people thought we were crazy. They said, “Oh, you’re opening here? Everything has failed here.” But the neighborhood has been great and they supported us from the beginning.

The first year was pretty much all locals. They’ve been our base and they were excited that they had a place to go that they could identify with. Even though there weren’t that many Cuban people in the neighborhood, there were a lot of Puerto Rican, Dominican, and every other Latin culture here. It was much different from working in a restaurant in Miami. Miami was crazy and 90 percent tourists. There were different people every night. There’s more of a community here.

Right after we opened we had the blackout in 2003. It was my birthday. We just opened the doors and gave everything that we had away. We had beers, food, and there was a line outside the restaurant. It was a blackout party.

The hurricane was tough, but we all chipped in together in the same way. We helped people and people helped us and it brought everybody together in the neighborhood. We supported each other. We were all in boots trying to drain basements with generators. Friends who had gas had to go to Jersey to get more gas for people. People chipped in with whatever was needed — flashlights, lights, ice, milk. People would take turns going to Costco on 116th. They would take a list and ask everybody what they needed. They would buy milk and pampers for the kids. The burden was on everybody.

The restaurant itself got hit pretty hard. There was four feet of water in the building and we were closed almost a month. We’re still trying to recover financially. We had to replace everything. We didn’t have power for 3 weeks and to this day we still don’t have Verizon. It’s five months later.

A hurricane, a flood, here? I’m from Miami and I would never think that I would move to New York and have it worse than in the tropics. It’s unbelievable.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

Report: THE EAST VILLAGE IS REALLY NOISY!

So, amNY analyzed 311 data and found that! The East Village is the noisiest neighborhood in the City.

Woo! High-fives everyone!

Oh.

According to the paper's not-really-surprising analysis, the East Village (2,108 noise complaints), the Lower East Side (2,069) and Williamsburg (2,061) are the city's top three offenders.

Local leaders responded:

Susan Stetzer, district manager of Community Board 3, which oversees the East Village, said the area has had the most complaints "for many years" and that it's "nothing new."

How will you celebrate this hard-earned victory?

[St. Patrick's Day 2012 via Bobby Williams]

7-Eleven fallout: East Village groups propose resolution 'to restrict corporate formula stores'

There's a proposed resolution on the docket for tonight's CB3 Economic Development Committee meeting to restrict corporate formula stores in the neighborhood through a zoning amendment. The resolution comes from members of the No 7-Eleven group and the 11th Street A-B-C Block Association.

The groups are seeking CB3's support for the resolution.

The block association has held two meetings now (read recaps here ... and here) to discuss the incoming 7-Eleven on East 11th Street and Avenue A.

Per an invite from the last Black Association meeting:

7-Eleven is coming to Avenue A at 11th Street. The residents of 11th Street won't sit for it. We're drawing the line of suburbanization here.

We have had about enough of chain stores and suburban franchises, Duane Reades, Walgreens and Chase Banks on every corner. We've chosen to fight. Join with us and let's start a city-wide resistance. Let's not sit for it any more.

Below you'll find the resolution. (Find the PDF via the CB3 website here.)


[Click on image to enlarge]

The full Board meets on Feb. 19, 6:30 pm, PS 20, 166 Essex St.

Previously on EV Grieve:
[Updated] More from the anti-7-Eleven front on Avenue A and East 11th Street

Avenue A's anti-7-Eleven campaign now includes arsenal of 20,000 stickers

'No 7-Eleven' movement goes global with BBC report

Work picks up at incoming 7-Eleven; more 'No 7-Eleven' skull posters adorn neighborhood

On the topic of the incoming 7-Eleven at Avenue A and East 11th Street... work has picked up here this week... there has been more activity than we've seen since September...


[Bobby Williams]

(And these trucks have nothing to do with the mashed potatoes vending machine found at a few 7-Elevens.)


[Crazy Eddie]

Meanwhile, we've spotted several of the No 7-Eleven Skull Posters in nearby windows... (Courtesy, presumably, of the No 7-Eleven group...)


[Crazy Eddie]


[Facebook]


[Facebook]

Previously.

13 months later, Grand Opening officially ends at the First Avenue Subway

The Subway at 108 First Ave. near East Sixth Street opened last Feb. 8. EVG Facebook friend Steven noted that the Grand Opening banner has finally been removed... to make way for a new campaign...

Cone-eating sewer grate of Avenue B — fixed!

At East Ninth Street at the entrance to Tompkins Square Park.... flashback to Feb. 23!



And now!



Photos by Bobby Williams.

Feast opens today on Third Avenue

[Photo by Dave on 7th]

Back in July, the New York Central Framing Annex moved from 102 Third Ave. around the corner to East 12th Street...to the New York Central Art Supply Warehouse... We didn't know too much about the new bar-restaurant in the works for the renovated space, which looked as if it has a similar design vibe as Boulton & Watt on Avenue A...

In any event, Feast opens today. And Gothamist has the scoop on what to expect.

Feast styles its menu around the idea of dinner parties, where diners "share plates of food and long conversations" as they would dining at someone's home. Two different "feasts" are available at dinner time, including a Union Square Greenmarket feast that changes with the seasons and a nose-to-tail feast focused around a rotating selection of animals. Diners are seated around large, communal tables made from reclaimed wood, surrounded by vintage pieces like a cast iron stove from Cape Cod, hay pulleys and picture frames.

Here's the menu via the Feast website. According to the menu, the Farmer's Market Feast is $38 per person while the "Nose to Tail Lamb Feast" is $48 person.

Doors are open from 7:30 am – 4 pm Monday through Sunday for coffee and "freshly baked-on-premise-pastries." Feast proprietor Brian Ghaw also owns Savoy Bakery in East Harlem.

Brain Rot pays homage to 171 Avenue A

The latest installment of Ed Piskor's Brain Rot: Hip Hop Family Tree is now online at BoingBoing.

Today, the comic strip visits 171 Avenue A, onetime home of Rat Cage Records and 171A, the illegal club-turned-rehearsal studio that produced records by Bad Brains and the "Polly Wog Stew" EP by the Beastie Boys...

Find today's strip here at BoingBoing. Find all of the Hip Hop Family Trees right here.

[h/t Shawn Chittle]

Previously on EV Grieve:
Remembering Adam Yauch in the East Village