Friday, July 19, 2013

Il Bagatto closing for summer break after Sunday

From the EVG inbox...



Closing for a summer break a little earlier than usual this summer... Meanwhile, we haven't heard any updates on their longtime future here... a listing for the Il Bagatto space (and that of its sister cafe next door, Il Posto Accanto) at 190-192 E. Second St. near Avenue B, showed up on the RKF site back in January ...

Sigmund Pretzel Shop (soft) reopens today

Back in early May, Sigmund Pretzel Shop on Avenue B closed for renovations... to transform from what they call a place for a "neighborhood snack" to more of a "neighborhood restaurant" ... they (soft) reopen today at 4 p.m. ...

Thursday, July 18, 2013

Last night's moon



Meant to post these earlier...





By Bobby Williams.

A summer scene



East 13th Street and Avenue B

This elm is apparently coming down in Tompkins Square Park



After our earlier post today... we've heard from a handful of people who say that this entire Elm needs to be removed in the Park at the entrance on East Ninth Street and Avenue B...



...these photos by Bobby Williams show some hack marks at the base of the tree as well...




[EVG]

Mars Bar closed 2 years ago today


A reader just reminded me of that. Seems longer than two years... (Previously)

Reader report: Limbs coming down in Tompkins Square Park



Several readers have passed along word (and photos) that workers are removing limbs from the great Elm just off Avenue B on at the East Ninth Street entrance of the Park...





No word just yet on why the limbs are coming down... or how much more of the tree will need to be removed...

We'll check in with GammaBlog, who has created the Tompkins Square Park Tree Identification Map...

Q-and-A with Nick Zedd


[From Police State. Willoughby Sharpe, left, and Nick Zedd. Courtesy Nick Zedd]

Nick Zedd is in town from Mexico City for a short visit... he is part of a program tonight at the New Museum titled "Moving Image Artists’ Distribution Then & Now." (Find more details on this here.)

And tomorrow evening, The New Museum is showing a retrospective of his work. Per the program:

Nick Zedd’s commitment to DIY artists’ film distribution helped sustain the MWF Video Club project. He will present and speak about his film work with Michael Carter of MWF. The program will include: The Bogus Man (11 min); Thrust In Me (8 min); Police State (18 min); War Is Menstrual Envy (excerpt; 9 min); Why Do You Exist (11 min); Ecstasy In Entropy (15 min); and Tom Thumb (3 min).

Nick Zedd coined and spearheaded the Cinema of Transgression film movement, directing forty-four motion pictures since 1979 and editing The Underground Film Bulletin from 1984 to 1990. Nick Zedd currently resides in Mexico City where he paints, writes screenplays, shoots videos, and publishes Hatred of Capitalism magazine. He recently presented films and artworks at the Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art in Berlin, and received an Acker Award for Lifetime Achievement in the Avant-Garde.

Michael Carter is a poet, writer, performer, and cultural critic, living in New York City. From 1982–92, he was the editor and publisher of the quintessentially East Village literary and arts journal/zine redtape, and from 1988 to 2003 he was codirector of the MWF Video Club.

Ahead of his visit to the New Museum, we asked him a few questions about his feelings on New York these days (he resided in the East Village for years) as well as Mexico City, where he lives with Monica Cassanova and their son Zerak.

You had a retrospective in Brooklyn in January. Now this at the New Museum. How do you feel returning to NYC — even just for a few days?

I like returning to NYC to see how it's changed and meet old friends. I appreciate the energy of NYC and like to compare it to Mexico City which is so different. There's a sense of desperation in NYC that gives it an edge. I like to observe people. I'm appalled by the loud tourists and ugly humanoids everywhere. There are so many ugly people in NYC, it's incredible.

Yesterday I sat on a park bench in Union Square and watched lovers sit and talk to each other. A black teen with a doo-rag and a wife-beater t-shirt covered in tattoos was talking on a cell phone while his fat girlfriend in a striped dress had her legs draped over his. She waited while he talked to someone, then he embraced her like a small child and it really moved me. There was real love; fragile and fleeting. I'd witnessed something profound. He was beautiful. She was beautiful too. Their love made them beautiful. I wish I'd had a camera on me.

There's a treasure trove of culture in the museums and libraries in NYC and I like selling my art to collectors here. I lived most of my life in NYC so it's still a part of me.

Do you see any positives in Bloomberg's NYC?

The people, who exhibit the NYC strength and anger; the individuality of street people...I never tire of their quality of openness... working class people. They give the city a sense of conviction. A flavor. They're what make it interesting.

We did a Q-and-A with Lydia Lunch back in May. Her advice for emerging artists here: "Leave the country as soon as possible!" What is your advice?

The same. That's why I moved to Mexico. The U.S. is a dead zone for artists.

Do surroundings make a difference? Or do you think the creativity has to come from inside regardless of where you are?

It has to come from inside, but going somewhere unfamiliar can enable your creativity to mutate in ways you'd never expect.

How's life in Mexico City?

It's quieter and more peaceful. It has a magical quality that I'm still discovering.


[Poster courtesy of gallery.98bowery.com]

[Top photo via The New Museum]

Soap opera shocker: Klean & Kleaner reopening as a laundromat



Wow. Klean & Kleaner closed down on East Second Street this past weekend ... the laundromat here between Avenue A and Avenue B had been on the market for use as a bar-restaurant...

Word spread among readers yesterday that a laundromat is back. EVG Facebook friend Edward Arrocha passed along the following: "Klean & Kleaner will reopen as a laundromat. It was sold to a different owner and the washing machine doors were returned. I do not know if it will be Klean & Kleaner or if it will have a change of name."

Indeed, a handwritten sign on the door yesterday courtesy of RyanAvenueA notes the return of the laundromat. No word on how many of the Klean & Kleaner staff will catch on with jobs here.

As previously reported, the owners of the Living Room on Ludlow Street were hoping to take over this space, though the CB3/SLA committee turned down that proposal in May.

BoweryBoogie reported this from that CB3 meeting:

As it stands, this stretch of Second Street was grandfathered into a general residence district, and doesn’t allow for any performances with cover charges. There was reportedly contact with the DOB to settle this issue, but the Living Room hadn’t heard any news as of last night. And they didn’t have the luxury of laying over the application another month due to landlord/lease constraints, so a vote had to transpire.

Word is the landlord figured that the space would sit empty ... and found a new owner willing to pay higher rents to run a laundromat.

Karl Fischer's latest creation makes an appearance above the plywood on East 3rd Street



Back in March, we checked in on 316-318 E. Third St., where a Karl Fischer-designed, 33-unit apartment building is in the works ... replacing a circa-1835 single-family home. At that time, it appeared there were some flooding issues with the foundation...

Workers have found some solid ground ... as the structure has made an appearance from behind the plywood here between Avenue C and Avenue D...




...and here's a rendering of the space...


[Brody/Amirian]

Previously on EV Grieve:


Another parcel of East Village land ready for development

33-unit, Karl Fischer-designed building rising at former home of Community Board 3 member

Landmarks Preservation Commission rejects hearing for 316 E. Third St., paving way for 7-floor condo

Lovely townhouse with bucolic gardens on East Third Street ready for "creative expansion"

East Yoga still planning on finding a permanent East Village home

Fire caused extensive damage to the East Yoga space last November on East 13th Street and Avenue B...


There's now a "for rent" sign on their former space...



We asked Jen, the studio manager at East Yoga, for an update.

"We are definitely planning on finding a new location in the neighborhood, and have been working on that since the fire. We just don't have one yet," she said. "We do, however, have an abbreviated schedule of classes in a temporary location at ABC Sanctuary [on East Sixth Street] on the weekend, and are holding free yoga classes in Tompkins Square Park during the week."

She said that she was hopeful to have some good news about a new space in the coming weeks.

Previously on EV Grieve:
[Updated] Fire at East Yoga on East 13th Street and Avenue B

Free tonight in Tompkins Square Park: brooding, driving, Ryan Gosling

Tonight's free film in Tompkins Square Park is "Drive" from 2011, featuring Ryan Gosling as the brooding wheelman who broods and hits on Carey Mulligan.



There's pre-film music courtesy of Brendan O'Hara.

Of course, all this is weather permitting... If it's a Thursday, then it will rain. Even though it isn't supposed to rain. Check the Films in Tompkins Facebook page for updates on tonight's screening. Four of the five films have been cancelled this summer due to rain or the threat of rain.

And upcoming...

July 25 — The Big Lebowski
Aug. 1 — Rocky Horror Picture Show
Aug. 8 — Chico + Rita
Aug. 15 — Romeo + Juliet
Aug. 22 — O Brother, Where Art Thou

Reader report: NYPD shuts down Adinah's Farm


[Photo by Grace Elizabeth Mangum via Facebook]

Several readers have passed along word that the NYPD has closed Adinah's Farm on Avenue C and East Second Street ... we don't exactly what transpired here... the sign on the corner deli's door notes "stolen property offenses."

Wednesday, July 17, 2013

A summer scene



The Dry Dock Playground on East 10th Street and Avenue D today. Photo by Bobby Williams.

Speaker of the Park



Apparently left behind after Saturday's concert in Tompkins Square Park. Not sure if it will fit in my Citi Bike basket.

Photo by Bobby Williams.

[Updated] About last night's CB3 Citi Bikes public meeting

As noted earlier, Community Board 3's Transportation Committee met last night to hear concerns about the Citi Bike program. We haven't heard about the meeting... or seen any write-ups about what might have transpired... Here's a tweet from Stephen Miller, a reporter from StreetsBlog...


... and later...

He tweeted that he didn't stay the whole time... so maybe the full-blown outrage came later...

Updated 3:40

Ah, The Lo-Down has just filed a report on the meeting... A passage:

Linda Martella said she, too “likes the idea” of the program– just not in front of her store. Martella, owner of Veniero’s Pastry on East 11th Street, said the street is already narrow, and the Citi Bikes across the street took over seven parking spaces and impedes the flow of traffic, especially when there are delivery trucks on the commercial street.

“We are especially concerned with the holiday time when [customers] come to pick up their orders,” Martella said. “We now have lost these parking spaces, making it difficult for the customers to carry these orders out.”

Read the post here.

BoweryBoogie also has a recap of the meeting here.

St. John's coming to 51 Astor Place?

St. John’s University is looking to lease space at 51 Astor Place, Lois Weiss at the Post reports today. As she notes, the building needs to rent about 50,000 square feet to a school to fulfill zoning requirements.

Not a done deal, though.

But sources said the cost for the Fumihiko Maki-designed space is roughly $90 a square foot, and is not sitting well with some of the school insiders, who have been mortified by financial scandals that rocked the school over the last year and feel the high tab is not in keeping with its Catholic roots.

The school is selling its campus location in Tribeca, Weiss reported.

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: Michael Duggan
Occupation: Antique Dealer, Archangel Antiques (334 East 9th).
Location: 4th Street Between 2nd and Bowery
Time: 7 pm on Saturday, July 13th

I’m from Allentown, Pennsylvania. I moved here because I was engaged at the time and the woman I was engaged to had gone to FIT and was a converter for Harvey Bernard, which was sort of a high-end woman’s line. She did all of the development for manufacturing and coincidentally that’s what my current partner does now.

I came straight to the East Village. This was the only place that made sense to me. Most of my friends lived on the Upper East Side at the time — that was where the younger middle class white people would move. It was the safe comfortable place, while this place was edgier. Our first apartment was on Rivington and Pitt Street.

I’ve lived in the neighborhood for 35 years now. When we moved here it was all empty lots. People had goats and chickens. People were camping in empty lots. It was a time when people didn’t want this real estate. I’ve lived above Raul’s Candy Store on Avenue B for 25 years now and we have such a great relationship with them.

This was also the area where you went out and everything crazy was going on. This was the place for people to come and misbehave. I was in fashion sales when I first moved here. I worked in fashion and furniture for the first 15 years I was here for Norma Kamali and then for Versace. I remember one night being out at Cave Canem, which later turned into Lucky Cheng’s, and I went in there and I’m dressed in a Zebra Versace suit since I was working for them. And someone said to me, “You know your friend is downstairs and you have to go and get her.” So I go downstairs and this woman is wearing the identical suit that I have on. They were like, “You have to take care of her, she’s a little toasted.” Here it turns out that it’s Princess Gloria. She was sort of the equivalent of Kim Kardashian of her time. Now she’s best friends with the Pope and her daughter is the editor at large for Vogue.

I work at the button shop on 9th street [Archangel Antiques]. The owners asked me to help them for a few days and I stayed for 20 years. We sell vintage buttons and antiques. We have 2.5 million vintage buttons from the 1830s through the 1950s. Gail, the woman I work for, had started buying maybe 30 years ago and now we predominantly sell our buttons for prototypes to design houses, like Ralph Lauren, J Crew, Anthropology, but also I sell to Boardwalk Empire and Mad Men since they need vintage buttons to go along with the vintage clothing. Everything is evocative of an era.

We’re going to be closing at some point next year. We actually have two storefronts and so there’s a lot of merchandise. The people I work with are in their 70s so it’s just, enough is enough.

Also, the generations have changed. Very few people are looking to buy for their homes anymore because no one has a substantial home life. Having been in and out of home furnishings, and also being a decorator, my house is filled to the brink. Everyone always asks me, “Do you live with your grandparents?” And I say, “No, I like living like this.” Cause for me, I’m kind of the person in the morning, I pull out my 19th-century silver tray and put out all my glassware and silver and have a normal breakfast and people don’t live like that anymore.

And I want to maintain my life. You want to take care of the things you have, those special things. But that also, I think, is a past lifestyle.

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

Alphabetical order on Avenue D and East Houston

In recent weeks, EVG reader Ray has shared some backside photos of the progress at the incoming Alphabet Plaza, the 12-story mixed-used apartment building at East Houston and East Second Street/Avenue D.

From a different angle on the corner, you can see just how massive the thing is ... with 4-5 floors to go...





This is the corner in July 2008 ...


And eventually...


[Via The Real Deal]

Previously on EV Grieve:
Report: 12th-story 'Alphabet Plaza' in the works for Second Street and Avenue D

Alphabet Plaza ready to rise on Avenue D

Alphabet Plaza is rising on East Houston and Avenue D

Easy as...: Alphabet Plaza makes first appearance above ground

Alphabet Plaza starts to apply sun block

Stopped by Houston and Avenue D to pay my final respects

[Updated] As the Rite Aid turns (colors)


[July 7]

The Rite Aid on First Avenue at East Fifth Street continues to delight and amaze, though not really. First came the interior makeover, then the Rite Aiders turned their attention to the exterior, where workers painted it blue... before adding a garden theme.

And now!

EVG Senior First Avenue Rite Aid Correspondent Goggla reports that the East Fifth Street side is getting a design as well... too early to tell exactly what this design will be...





Any guesses before we see the final version?

Updated 7-17

A better view this morning via Goggla...