Friday, December 13, 2013
Enjoy an 'Unsilent Night' Saturday
The 22nd annual Unsilent Night returns tomorrow … here are the details via the official event site:
This Saturday, in Washington Square Park, you have an opportunity to dust off your own pre-digital music players and join the world’s biggest boombox parade conceived by composer Phil Kline. Kline will lead a musical chorus of boomboxes and sound-blasters through the streets of Manhattan to Tompkins Square Park all playing an arrangement of the holiday classic Silent Night
The parade begins at 7 p.m.; meet in Washington Square Park at 6:45. Find more info here.
Previously.
Updated: Here's what the newest East Village dorm will look like
[Photo by Robert Miner]
This morning, workers put up the rendering showing what developer Arun Bhatia's 13-floor "new student housing building" on Cooper Square at East Sixth Street will look like … right next door to the Standard East Village…
The Arun Bhatia Development Organization has developed dorms for the New School and Marymount Manhattan College, among others, through the years.
The dorm will sit on a lot previously occupied in part by 35 Cooper Square, the Federal-style building that dated to 1825.
Previously on EV Grieve:
Something 28,998 square feet or so coming to Cooper Square (and goodbye Cooper 35 Asian Pub?)
Here's what's coming to 35 Cooper Square: 9-story dormitory
Proposed dorm for former 35 Cooper Square looks to be 4 floors taller
City OKs 13-floor dorm for Cooper Square
'Quite simply, SantaCon is a parasite'
At The New York Times today, East Village resident Jason O. Gilbert, a writer and editor at Yahoo News, puts in an opinion piece about SantaCon.
To an excerpt!
Perhaps most distressing about SantaCon is its size and the way that it shuts down and befouls dozens of blocks. Any East Villager (I am one) can tell you that the event makes doing absolutely anything beyond one’s front stoop an impossibility, unless you own swamp waders and a riot shield. Last year, an estimated 30,000 carousers participated in the festivities.
But really, it’s not the disruption or the noise that rankles. New Yorkers can endure street closures and inconveniences for any number of events so long as there is a beneficent impulse, or an obvious reason for the disruption. For a New York City event of its size, however, SantaCon is distinctive, and arguably impressive, in that it contributes absolutely zero value — cultural, artistic, aesthetic, diversionary, culinary or political — to its host neighborhood. Quite simply, SantaCon is a parasite.
Read the whole column here.
Meanwhile, we're still waiting for a positive counter-point… someone to discuss how awesome SantaCon is now, not what it may have been 15 years ago.
Walk with Tish Gervais in the East Village of the mid-1980s
Here's another slice-of-East-Village life from the 1980s courtesy of downtown filmmaker Nelson Sullivan … (this video isn't newly uploaded, just new to us).
From the YouTube description:
At this time in the mid-1980s, Tish Gervais was the transgendered star of the moment in New York — not only because she was transgendered but also because she was sexy and talented too. Along the way, Tish and Nelson encountered Lady Bunny with DJ Dmitry and Tish found serveral magazines featuring her photograph. Video by Nelson Sullivan.
There's not a whole of lot action… just sit back and take in the scenery and see what you can still recognize… (EVG Facebook friend Michael Paul put the date at June 1986.)
Sullivan's archive is now at the Fales Library at NYU. He died of an apparent heart attack on July 4, 1989.
H/T esquared™
Previously on EV Grieve:
The East Village of Nelson Sullivan
The first nice Sunday of 1987 in the East Village
'The Fabulous Personalities of 1980s New York'
You can now rent the former 7-Eleven space on St. Mark's Place
We've been waiting for the "for lease" signs to arrive here at 37 St. Mark's Place at the site of the former 7-Eleven, which closed on Nov 30 as we first reported.
And brokers put one up yesterday.
The listing isn't online just yet. For now, the retail space in the Theatre Condo complex is almost all empty, save for Verizon Wireless store. In the corner slot, a retail outpost of DF Mavens ("The finest dairy-free ice cream in the world. Made in NYC.") will take the former Eastside Bakery (.net?) home.
Meanwhile, the empty 7-Eleven has been oddly photogenic…
Previously on EV Grieve:
[Updated] Reader report: The 7-Eleven on St. Mark's Place has closed (48 comments)
There goes the 7-Eleven awning on St. Mark's Place (23 comments)
Looking again at St. Mark's and 2nd Ave., and more photos of the former St. Marks Cinema
Not many signs of life at The Toucan and the Lion
We can't recall the last time that we saw the well-regarded Toucan and the Lion open for business over on East Sixth Street near First Avenue.
This may not be a big surprise: New operators were aiming to take over the nearly two-year-old self-described "Asian gastropub" during this month's CB3/SLA committee meeting. (Read about that here.)
There isn't a sign noting a closure on the front gates … or any messages on their voice-mail, website or social media properties. (Their last Facebook update is from Sept. 17.) And the restaurant is no longer available for reservations on OpenTable. ("We're sorry, but the restaurant you requested could not be found.")
Prior to the Toucan and the Lion, which opened in January 2012, the address was home to Mara's Homemade.
Someone/Something broke a big window at the 1st Avenue McDonald's
From last night. Over here on First Avenue at the McDonald's next to the Subway… the big window is smashed. Seems pretty recent. (Pretty sure we walked by here Wednesday night and didn't see a smashed window.)
Anyway, take a look at the hole...
Oh wait.
Seems almost too perfect too be manmade. So we're going with alien. Like, an alien laser. Anyone else care to guess what happened here?
C'mon, you guys. This is important.
The Dunkin’ Donuts/Baskin Robbins combo is (almost) alive and well on East Houston
Things had been grim (grim I tell you!) the last two weeks here in the Shoppes at Red Square on East Houston between Avenue A and Avenue B … the Dunkin’ Donuts/Baskin Robbins combo had been "closed for renovations," looking suspiciously on the gutted side.
But!
On Wednesday night, an EVG reader got a look inside, and reported actual renovations taking place… and last night? New bright signage action.
The place looks close to being operational again. So put away those teary farewell signs!
Thursday, December 12, 2013
At Jerry's Newsstand today
East Village resident Kelly King and a handful of other folks handed out flyers today outside Jerry's Newsstand on Astor Place… they were hoping to raise awareness about the stand that Jerry Delakas has operated since 1987. (The Department of Consumer Affairs shuttered the stand for "operating illegally" following an ongoing legal battle. He has a little more than a week to appeal the ruling that he fork over $37,000 or vacate.)
Delakas was there as well, and spoke to a reporter from the Daily News, who stayed on the scene a good hour… East Village-based photographer Michael Paul shared these photos...
There was also a reporter there from Fox 5, though she was filming a segment about Starbucks.
Get Crafty tomorrow at The Children's Workshop School
From the EVG inbox...
The Children's Workshop School is at 610 E. 12th St. between Avenue B and Avenue C. The event is during school hours in the building's front lobby.
The Children's Workshop School is at 610 E. 12th St. between Avenue B and Avenue C. The event is during school hours in the building's front lobby.
[Updated] Report: LIRR will ban booze during SantaCon, though not before it
"We do it based on experience, based on when we've had difficulties….when we're going to be inundated with a lot of people under 21, or maybe just over 21, where they've created problems in the past," LIRR spokesman Salvatore Arena told DNAinfo.
Of course, this year, SantaCon starts at 10 a.m. in Tompkins Square Park... meaning SantaConners arriving via LIRR in the early morning won't be impacted by the ban. So there can be booze business as usual.
Metro North and New Jersey Transit have also issued a temporary ban on alcohol this weekend, per Business Insider.
MTA police officers will be patrolling Grand Central Terminal, Penn Station, and other stations, it said. They will confiscate illegal liquor, and those caught drinking can face fines up to $50 or 30 days imprisonment.
The Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space is celebrating its 1st anniversary, and you're invited
After a Superstorm Sandy setback… the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS) officially opened at 155 Avenue C on Dec. 8, 2012. And in the past year, MoRUS has hosted an array of compelling events, including the Direct Action Fashion Show, the Save Charas Community Center Pop-Up Exhibit and the First Annual MoRUS Film Fest, among many other workshops and readings.
Tomorrow night, MoRUS commemorates its first year. Here are details about the event:
To celebrate a year of achievement and to set the stage for the 2014 slate, the nonprofit, all volunteer-run and staffed history museum will host its 1st Birthday Bash & Benefit on Friday at MoRUS, 155 Avenue C between 9th and 10th Streets, 7-11 pm. (Admission: $8)
To kick-off the evening, Brooklyn Culture Jammers’ Daniel Kinch will perform an excerpt from his play "A CLOWN, A HAMMER, A BOMB, AND GOD," which is based on the true story of Father Carl Kabat who dressed in a clown suit, broke into a Minuteman III Missile base in North Dakota and disabled a missile by hammering the silo door shut. There's also live music from cowpunk band Effing Al Fresco as well as an appearance by Reverend Billy.
Further into the evening will be a panel discussion, WE KNOW SQUAT! AN ORAL HISTORY SLIDESHOW featuring participants in the Lower East Side squatters’ movement such as Fly, Frank Morales and Peter Spagnuolo. A silent auction featuring the art of such neighborhood visual artists as Darryl Lavare, Harvey Wang and Eric Drooker and a raffle of goods and services donated by such retail neighbors as Two Boots Pizza, ABC Beer and Edi & The Wolf will help raise funds for the museum’s 2014 programming.
About MoRUS:
The mission of the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space is to preserve history and promote scholarship of grassroots urban space activism by researching and archiving efforts to create community spaces. We will also exhibit materials that document these actions, to educate people on the political implications of reclaimed space. MoRUS is a volunteer-run nonprofit organization.
Find more information on the MoRUS website and Facebook page.
East Village resident holding rally this morning in support of Jerry's Newsstand on Astor Place
Late yesterday afternoon, East Village resident Kelly King put up these signs on the currently shuttered newsstand that Jerry Delakas has operated since 1987 next to the downtown 6 at Astor Place.
As we first reported on Tuesday, the Department of Consumer Affairs shuttered the stand for "operating illegally" following an ongoing legal battle. He has a little more than a week to appeal the ruling that he fork over $37,000 or vacate.
Delakas was unaware that the city was going to seize his stand, as Jeremiah Moss learned. As Jeremiah noted, Delakas saw the broken padlock, and initially thought that he had been robbed.
So King is taking it upon herself to hold a rally this morning at 11 outside the newsstand. (She says that Delakas will be there as well.)
"He is not a fancy type to have the deep legal education to fight corruption off — he is a newsstand man. He is a villager. He is one of our own," King told me via Facebook. "I am going to stand up for him. I am going to give what I have to give."
And she hopes that some other residents will also be able to to stop by to show support for Delakas today...
EVG reader dbs shared these photos from last night...
The takedown of 100 Avenue A continues
[Bobby Williams]
Demolition work continues at 100 Avenue A… workers are gutting the former theater/grocery to make way for Ben Shaoul's 7-story retail-residential complex between East Sixth Street and East Seventh Street.
There seems to be a lot of interest among residents in this project, given its heart-of-the-East-Village location. These aerial views via EVG reader Paul Dougherty provide a look at what's left up top…
Previously on EV Grieve:
A little bit of Hollywood on Avenue A
East Village Farms is closing; renovations coming to 100 Avenue A
Reader mailbag: Has the city cited you for having gas meters in the hallway?
We got cited recently by the NYC Environmental Control Board for having some of our gas meters in the common hallways ... contrary to a code augmentation memo dating from 1975. We are trying to argue that we are grandfathered to get around the big expenses of moving meters into apartments or the basement ... we've also heard a rumor that many other buildings in the neighborhood are getting hit. This violation is currently causing us grief in renewing our insurance, and could cost us many thousands to cure, so we want to try and band together if there are others in our situation.
So… Any other co-op members have information to share? Have you been cited by the ECB? Have you successfully navigated moving the meters?
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We often get reader queries ... asking for help with, say, donating clothes or books ... or finding an East Village-based caterer... If you have a question for the masses, then try the EV Grieve email...
Previously on EV Grieve:
Reader mailbag: Places to eat that have that old East Village vibe (45 comments)
Reader mailbag: What do I do about my new neighbors who smoke pot all the time? (52 comments)
Reader mailbag: Where is a good place to get a cup of coffee in the East Village before 6 a.m.? (25 comments)
Reader mailbag: Do you have any suggestions for East Village-related holiday gifts? (22 comments)
Dunkin’ Donuts/Baskin Robbins combo remains closed for renovations on East Houston
The Dunkin’ Donuts/Baskin Robbins combo located in the Shoppes at Red Square on East Houston between Avenue A and Avenue B remains closed for renovations. The doughnut/ice cream dispensary has been closed since Dec. 2. (BoweryBoogie noted this on Monday.) Signs on the door point to a reopening yesterday.
However, as these photos by an EVG reader from last evening show, work remains on the space, which looks suspiciously gutted…
While it wouldn't be the first time a Dunkin' Donuts closed around here, the reader who spotted the above work yesterday noted that it looked more like an upgrade than a demolition….
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Afternoon video break: 'Online Mating'
Hila Perry, aka "HiLa tHe KiLLa", who is behind such EVG favorites as "White Girl Wasted" and "NYU Film Rap," returns with a new video... "Online Mating," in which she teams up with Ethan Kaplan for... this.
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