More about the timing of the Tompkins Square/Alphabet City Slow Zone

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On Friday, CB3 member Chad Marlow learned that the Department of Transportation (DOT) has approved the Tompkins Square/Alphabet City Slow Zone. (Read the background about all this here.)

Here's an update. According to StreetsBlog, there were 74 applications for slow zones citywide. In total, the DOT selected 15 of the zones to be rolled out over the course of the next three years. Turns out the Tompkins Square/Alphabet City Slow Zone is in the highest priority group, and is set for implementation next year. Other neighborhoods receiving a slow zone next year are Norwood in the Bronx, Clinton Hill/Bedford Stuyvesant and Brownsville in Brooklyn, and Jackson Heights, Queens.

The DOT says the applications were evaluated on criteria including crash history, community support, and proximity of schools and senior or daycare centers, as StreetsBlog reported. Slow Zones will include signage, a 20-mph speed limit and speed humps.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Call for an East Village 'slow zone' (34 comments)

Lighting store coming to East 7th Street

The D.L. Cerney boutique closed up after 28 years last November ... a sign in the window at 13 E. Seventh St. point to the new business coming soon... your neighborhood lighting store...



The sign shows that the store will sell light bulbs and customized lamp and light fixtures... and offer lamp repair services... Which reminds me that I actually don't own a lamp.

Someone apparently took a car door off the Banksy mobile on Ludlow Street

[Image via Banksyny]

This Banksy mobile showed up on Ludlow Street on Wednesday... part of the artist's month-long NYC street residency... as perhaps expected... someone took a piece of the installation (the back door on the driver's side) ... as this photo via Justin McWilliams of the East Village shows...




Banksy's piece on East Seventh Street was quickly altered ...and his some of his other work has been defaced as well this month...

Today in leisure activities in Tompkins Square Park

[Bobby Williams]


[peter radley]

Week in Grieview

[Photo by Derek Berg]

New dorm a go for Cooper Square (Tuesday)

City OKs East Village Slow Zone (Friday)

About that "nasty" kiddie pool on the roof (Tuesday)

Registered sex offender arrested for attempted kidnapping on Avenue B (Wednesday)

Mudspot Café coming to the First Park kiosk (Thursday)

New vegan brunch at The Bhakti Center (Thursday)

Workers cut down trees at Astor Place subway plaza (Wednesday)

Out and About with Sally Young (Wednesday)

The Living Room closes after Oct. 26 (Wednesday)

Duane Reade is expanding on Avenue B (Monday)

Part of St. Mark's Place is now Sara Curry Way (Monday)

The never-ending saga of the illegal rooftop additions at 515 E. Fifth St. (Wednesday)

There's a new coffee shop on East Fifth Street (Monday)

A look at "Mildred Fierce" (Thursday)

People liked this cat painting (Tuesday)

Retail space at 205 Avenue A hits the market (Wednesday)

Plans for new bar-club at 50 Avenue B on hold for the moment (Wednesday)

The future of East Houston and Ridge (Monday)

Not a lot of people like the CBGB movie (Tuesday)

A look at the incoming Root & Bone on East Third Street (Monday)

Extending the Second Avenue bike lane (Tuesday)

One dead Christmas tree (Wednesday)

Updated: Someone already defaced Banksy's East Village street installation

[peter radley]

Banksy unveiled his latest NYC street installation yesterday on East Seventh Street and Cooper Square... And as this photo by @svvalera shows, someone has already defaced his "Concrete Confessional."



This marks the third of his pieces to be defaced during his month-long residency in NYC.

Updated 12:24

More about this via Angus Johnston at Student Activism:

Sometime last night or this morning, the priest in the painting was given a bushy white spray-paint beard which rendered him a dead ringer for Peter Cooper, the founder of the Cooper Union. At the same time, the cross that adorned his neck was replaced with a giant Flavor Flav style clock with a red face and hands set just prior to midnight, the symbol of the Free Cooper Union activist movement.

And there's apparently another confessional showing someone who looks like Cooper Union President Jamshed Baruscha... with a Free Cooper Union tag...


[Photo by @KOKO820]


[Photo by @bobcooley]

East 5th Street bliss

Between Avenue A and Avenue B this morning...

We keep posting photos of the sky

[Click on image to enlarge]

This is actually from yesterday morning ... via Bobby Williams.

[Updated] Tree fire in Tompkins Square Park

Shortly after 6 ... There's a tree fire mid-block on the East Seventh Street side of Tompkins Square Park. The FDNY is there and on it, per Dave on 7th and Jose Garcia.

Updated:

A photo and video via @NCintheNYC ...



...and video...



Updated 10-13
GammaBlog has more on the blaze... noting that the tree in question was the great old gnarled Black Locust ... check out more photos here.

And a photo of the gnarled tree yesterday via Bobby Williams...



Haven't heard about any official cause of the tree fire.

[Updated] The latest Banksy is on East 7th St.

If this is of interest... the latest Banksy street installation around the city is on East Seventh Street outside Cooper Union... just follow the crowd to see "Concrete Confessional."


[Photo by capnyc via Instagram]

Top image via Banksy.

Updated:

More photos via EVG regular jdx ...





...and peter radley...





Check out some more photos over at EVG friend Roger_Paw right here.

[H/t @erikakaz]

Free today in Tompkins Square Park: 'Hangin With Satan'

Spotted this at the Park entrance. Don't know anything about it. Per the "Satan" Facebook page:

Hangin with Satan explores an alternative way of looking at the world and ourselves. Told through Satan himself this story challenges the current paradigm that god is the one and only ruler who passes the last judgement on all of us. What if we were taught that we all were gods. That we posses the powers and knowledge within ourselves to fully control our own destinies without going out of ourselves looking for power and guidance. In every human being, there lies a blueprint for their life as well as a record of their past and the past of the world.

The play is set in the Park as well. Starts at 5 p.m.

Noted

Spotted on the Vitamin Shoppe's front door on First Avenue and East 14th Street... can't recall seeing many "unapproved for menacing" signs before...

This morning

St. mark's Place between Second Avenue and Third Avenue.

Meanwhile, in Tompkins Square Park this morning...

A boy walks his goat. (It was all for some video shoot.)

O Romeo, Romeo...

Romeo Void with "Never Say Never" from 1982.

Noted

A bikenapped Citi Bike on East 12th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B? Photo by EVG reader Philipp.

City approves Tompkins Square/Alphabet City Slow Zone

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Back in April, CB3 member Chad Marlow, and the group that he founded in 2011, the Tompkins Square Park & Playground Parents’ Association (TSP3A), kicked off a neighborhood safety initiative.

The group applied to the Department of Transportation (DOT) to have them create what the group is calling the "Tompkins Square/Alphabet City Slow Zone" (TSACSZ).

The TSACSZ, in short, is an effort to improve pedestrian safety for children and all others who live/work/play in the proposed 0.38 square-mile zone by reducing motor vehicle speeds. Per Marlow, the slow zone program takes a well-defined, relatively compact area, and reduces its speed limit from 30 miles per hour to 20 miles per hour, with further reductions to 15 miles per hour near schools.

Now that I've buried the lead Marlow just learned today that the DOT has approved the Tompkins Square/Alphabet City Slow Zone. Per a DOT letter to Marlow, the implementation will take place some time in 2014.

In an op-ed in The Villager last spring, Marlow also revealed a personal reason behind this proposal. In 1995, a drunken driver struck Marlow's father, an accident that left him with quadriplegia and a severe brain injury. His father died 13 years after the accident. (Read the entire op-ed here.)

We asked Marlow via email for his reaction to the DOT's decision:

"I am beyond grateful to the Department of Transportation for approving the Tompkins Square/Alphabet City Slow Zone. I am equally filled with gratitude for all of the community groups, elected officials and members of Community Board 3, whose support for the proposal was instrumental in making it a reality. Most of all, I find myself thinking of my father, Richard Marlow, and how something positive has finally come out of the years of terrible pain and suffering he endured after being hit by a speeding, drunk driver in 1995. I dedicate this effort to his memory."

Previously on EV Grieve:
Call for an East Village 'slow zone' (34 comments)

Why is Vella Market closed?

[Photo via @andrewketler]

Several readers have pointed put that Vella Market has been closed on Avenue B and East Fourth Street... There isn't a note on the gate about a temporary closure... and their phone just rings and rings... Anyone hear anything about Vella? We rather like/liked this place, which just opened in April.

The previous tenant, Kate's Joint, the 16-year-old vegetarian eatery, closed in April 2012.

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

[Photo along Avenue A by Michael Sean Edwards]

Airbnb attacks "vague" New York hotel laws (Ars Technica)

Rebecca Flint Marx bids farewell (for now) to Russ & Daughters (Medium)

At the new home of the Lower Eastside Girls Club (The New York Times)

A lawsuit to stop the NYCHA land leasing plan (Curbed)

The Open Call deadline for Emerging Artists on the LES is Sunday (The Lo-Down)

Check out the Hua Mei Bird Garden in Sara D. Roosevelt Park (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

One year in the life of the East Village/LES Historic District (Off the Grid)

The Bowery can still attract kitchen supply stores (BoweryBoogie)

The markets along Hester Street in 1905 (Ephemeral New York)

A good find: Music video with The Senders on the LES in the late 1980s (Flaming Pablum)

A favorite lonely place (Gog in NYC)

Sarge's looks to have longer to go before opening (Eater)

Looking at Peter Semple’s "Dandy," featuring Nick Cave and Nina Hagen, from 1988 (Dangerous Minds)

...and Au Revoir Simone pays homage to Martin Scorsese's "After Hours" ...

51 Astor Place has its 1st tenant! 51 Astor Place has its 1st tenant! 51 Astor Place has its 1st tenant!

[EVG file photo]

You may have heard the news from Crain's yesterday afternoon: 51 Astor Place has its very first tenant!

1stdibs, an online auctioneer that specializes in the sale of high end vintage goods ranging from furniture to fine art, has agreed to a deal to take the 12-story building's entire third floor, a 42,232-square-foot space, for 15-years.

Woo!

And there may be more celebrating in the near future. Developer Edward Minskoff said, "We're very close to another deal. And we're in negotiations with six other tenants."

The 400,000-square-foot development opened in May without any signed tenants.

Meanwhile! The reaction from Twitter?

.@evgrieve With their first rent bill, of course!

— 51 Astor Place (@51deathstar) October 11, 2013

Previously on EV Grieve:
3 retail spaces available at 51 Astor Place

51 Astor Place demolition begins July 1; 17 months to build new black-glass tower

East Village — the new Midtown?