Someone has bought the former Olivier Sarkozy, Mary-Kate Olsen 'love nest' on East 10th St.

Built in 1854, 123 E. 10th St. is one of the finer houses in the neighborhood... Of late, the James Renwick-inspired home was known, perhaps dubiously, as the so-called "love nest" (per the Post, natch) for Olivier Sarkozy and girlfriend Mary-Kate Olsen.

But! As we noted back in July, the home was back on the market for just less than $7 million. Property records show that Sarkozy paid $6.25 million for the space. We have no idea if the half-brother of the former French president and Olsen ever actually lived here.

The for sale sign out front was recently removed... and Streeteasy shows that the single-family Anglo-Italianate townhouse was in contract as of early September.



No. 123 was on the market for nearly four years before Sarkozy bought it.

The lone tenant at 338 E. Sixth St.

Rory Denis has lived in a rent-stabilized apartment at 338 E. Sixth St. since 1979. And Denis is now the last remaining tenant in the building between First Avenue and Second Avenue that is going through a top-to-bottom gut renovation.

As Serena Solomon at DNAinfo reports, his landlord "has gutted all of the surrounding units, cut off water and electricity, and flooded the area with construction workers who make a terrible racket."

"It is a nightmare," said Denis, who can only get to his fourth-floor apartment by stepping around an active work zone. "I really feel like Chicken Little with the sky falling in."

He successfully took landlord Nurjahan Ahmed to housing court earlier this year to restore his electricity and water. Ahmed told DNAinfo that she had no choice but to temporarily turn off the services because the circa 1900-building needed repairs.

1010 WINS had a report on this last night as well.

Construction watch: 154 Second Avenue

Just a spot check on the progress at 154 Second Ave., the former Sigmund Schwartz Gramercy Park Chapel that will house luxury rentals and ground-floor retail between East Ninth Street and East 10th Street.

EVG reader Terry Howell provides another update from the building's backside.

"The back view looks pretty much like the front view. Can't see thru the netting for clearer idea of what's inside. Progress is slow but steady."





Still no word on what the concrete deck will be. (Can you technically have a rooftop rager on a party patio?)



Previously on EV Grieve:
Former funeral home looks to double in size with help from 'the controversial penthouse king of the East Village'

Redeveloped funeral home looking for a few live retail tenants

The walls come tumbling down at 154 Second Avenue

Tonight's sunset

Photo by Bobby Williams

For another look at the early days of CBGB

Marc Campbell, vocalist of the Nails, is none too pleased about the new CBGB biopic... and at Dangerous Minds today, he offers up an antidote.

For a grittier and more honest view of the early days at CBGB, check out Ivan Kral and Amos Poe’s 1976 cinéma vérité, low-budget (but beautifully shot) The Blank Generation. With its post-dubbed sound and chainsaw editing, the movie doesn’t work as a strait-on, conventional documentary but it does capture some important rock and roll history, a time when rock was starting to feel again.

You can head on over to Dangerous Minds to watch the film if you'd like...

[Image via Dangerous Minds]

Reader report: Someone dumped the turtles from the Ninth Street Community Garden into a hole

[At the garden last spring via Bobby Williams]

An EVG Facebook friend shared a WTF story from over at the Ninth Street Community Garden at Avenue C. Last week, someone gathered the garden's turtles ... and dumped them into a hole in the back of the garden. Thankfully, Garden volunteers recovered the turtles. None of the turtles were apparently hurt.

Per our Facebook friend: "So sad that someone would do that ... those turtles are a bit of a main attraction. Hopefully they'll be left alone."

Bharucha and Banksy

Here's more about the additions from the weekend to the Banksy installation on East Seventh Street and Cooper Square ... via the EVG inbox...

Free Cooper Union is pleased to present the repentance of Jamshed Bharucha.

“Cooper Confessional” depicts Cooper Union’s overpaid and visionless President, Jamshed Bharucha, as he confesses his transgression from a historically merit-based full scholarship model, to an expansionist tuition agenda. Hearing Bharucha’s lament is Peter Cooper, who founded the Cooper Union in 1859 and established the mission of the institution as necessarily providing free education to all admitted students while educating against the evils of debt.

This collaborative work is flanked by an image of the infamous Jamshed the Giant, who insists that must students PAY for years of financial mismanagement and administrative bloat at the Cooper Union, along with the title of the Free Cooper Union Player’s latest drama, Free Cooper: The Musical, which is the sequel to the group's debut hit The Politics of Destruction.

As Banksy notes, “there's nothing more dangerous than someone who wants to make the world a better place,” and with that in mind, and with many more plans for direct action, we continue to fight against tuition at Cooper Union and the rising tide of student debt.

Oaxaca Taqueria opening a new location on East Seventh Street

Based on the new signage here along East Seventh Street between Avenue A and First Avenue... it appears that the fifth NYC location of Oaxaca Taqueria is coming soon...



Oaxaca Taqueria expanded from Brooklyn into the East Village and Extra Place in December 2010... This space was previously home to the Butter Lane cupcakes classroom.

...and the taco revolution continues in the East Village... with the recent arrivals of Tacos Moreles on East Ninth Street... Sembrado’s Tacos al Pastor on East 13th Street ... Taqueria Diana on Second Avenue ... El Diablito Taqueria on East Third Street... and the incoming Otto's Tacos on Second Avenue...

[Updated] Activity at the dormant Pride & Joy BBQ

On Saturday, we saw workers hauling out trash and what not from the dormant Pride and Joy BBQ entrance on East Second Street... As we first reported last November, celebrity BBQ chef Myron Mixon was going to open a restaurant/saloon in the former Lucky Cheng's space. (Read that post here.)

However, a lawsuit between Mixon and his partners threw the opening in doubt.

So, does the sight of workers dumping trash from inside the restaurant mean that the BBQ concept is dead?



We asked Hayne Suthon, who owns (and lives) in the building on First Avenue and operates Lucky Cheng's, now on West 52nd Street, what was happening with the restaurant.

"[The remaining partners] are moving forward without Mixon to open soon," she said.

Perhaps they've paid the ConEd bill too.

Updated 1:30 p.m.

DNAinfo is reporting this afternoon that Pride and Joy BBQ just received a liquor license to open a "220-seat 'draft house' and 'honky-tonk' featuring three bars and about 20 TV screens.

During the SLA hearing last Tuesday, lawyer Ravi Ivan Sharma argued for, and received, a 4 a.m. closing time for the BBQ space. Last December, CB3 approved the license but with a midnight closing time during the week and 2 a.m. on weekends.

"That's not what the applicant bargained for when they took on a very expensive lease," Sharma said.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Myron Mixon's Pride & Joy BBQ now in the works for the former Lucky Cheng's space

Fire reported at incoming Pride and Joy BBQ on East Second Street

Myron Mixon lawsuit puts opening of Pride and Joy BBQ in question at former Lucky Cheng's space

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

[Click image to enlarge]

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.