URGENT NEED — This photo was taken [yesterday]. Our pantry shelves are almost completely empty! We are in great need of canned goods, sauces, pasta, rice, beans, grains, and condiments. Please consider donating to help ensure we are able to continue to feed homeless and hungry New Yorkers. Food donations can be dropped off 24/7 at 227 Bowery (at Prince St.). Thank you for for your support!
Name: Arthur Rivers
Occupation: Retired, Hair Stylist
Location: 2nd Street between Avenue A and B
Time: 6:30 p.m. on Monday, Aug. 10
I was born in Harlem, back in the day, in 1938. I’m 77. I was raised in the South Bronx. Being brought up in the Bronx, it was a lot of fun. It was all Irish and Italian in the neighborhood we moved to. I come from an interracial marriage, so it was hard there for awhile because my mother looked white, basically was. But it was good. We had neighbors who were good.
As a kid, I knew there was more to it than living in the Bronx, so I started venturing downtown, checking out different neighborhoods. I would just walk around and see what was going on. Back in 1965 or ’66, I moved to St. Mark's Place and stayed there for a couple years. I was living there with this woman. I had a lot of artists friends. That was when the artists were moving from the West Village to the East Village, and the apartments were cheap here compared to the West Village. I lived there for two years and then I went uptown and lived on the Upper West Side.
When I was about 19 I worked in this kosher butcher shop in the Bronx ... and one guy there, his name was Steve Sportz. He looked like Robert Redford to be honest. He took me up to his friend’s salon on 84th Street and Grand Concourse and when I walked in — bright lights, music and women. All I really saw were some women. I said, ‘This is what I want to do when I grew up.’
So I went to school and I did a lot of traveling. I became a successful hair stylist. I did a lot of entertainers’ hair, magazine work, commercials and stuff. Then I got tired of it, to be honest because there were too many things going on. There were a lot of drugs in the salon and this and that and a lot of my friends died from the virus. The next thing I knew a lot of them were just gone.
I was tired of living uptown so I got out of that and I moved down here. This is where I’ve lived for the last 27 or 28 years. The neighborhood down here has changed immensely. As a kid I lived in Harlem too. My mother was able to buy a brownstone in the Bronx, but the reason why Harlem changed, and a lot of people don’t take this into consideration. It wasn’t just the heroin that came in there. It was the supers. Back in the day the buildings had coal burners, so you had to have a super on the property. Once the oil burners came, you didn’t need the supers anymore.
So that’s how the neighborhood changed. The buildings went down and then crack and heroin and everything else came. Think about what happens when you don’t have a super. When I was a kid they kicked you off the stoop; you weren’t allowed to hang out on the stoop and stuff. Then once they left, the buildings went down. That sort of happened around here, but not as much.
When I first moved here, when you went into the building your doormen were drug dealers and they took care of the building. They took care of the people in the building. This area here, Avenue A all the way over to Avenue D, was drug infested. You didn’t come out.
Now I notice, Thursday through Sunday, you can’t walk on Avenue A – the traffic, millions of people. At one time you were in the house by 9. You didn’t come out again unless you knew some people out here. And you know, I miss that. It might sound crazy. I don’t miss the drugs and stuff but I miss the people who were around here. It really was a neighborhood and everybody knew everybody. If somebody got in trouble you were there for them. It was just a lot of different things that were happening. There was always something nice happening. You knew your neighbor; you hung out with your neighbor. You had your little block parties and stuff.
I’m a New Yorker. I’m an original. There are not that many of us around who are still here. I don’t mind people moving into the neighborhood but just have respect for the people who are here. It’s a community.
I was actually there [Sunday] night and a big group of drunk people were abusing the bartenders and yelling at them to play Taylor swift.. They actually did play 2 Taylor songs to try and please them. Then they started booing because she didn't play the right one.
Dear Neighbors,
As one of the owners of Ballaro, I wanted to shed some light on the events that took place at my establishment this last Sunday night. In my eyes, it was extremely ridiculous. It’s easy to talk shit and to make snap judgements without ever knowing what truly took place, which is why I wanted to write this letter.
To start, I do not know who wrote that sentence on the floor outside of our place, but it was not me or anyone who works at Ballaro. That’s not who I am - I grew up in a family that taught me how to respect people the same... their skin color, race, religion, sexual orientation and age is never taken into consideration when I’m serving customers. I treat everyone with the upmost respect.
I know that I was offended, degraded and treated like shit by a group of 15 drunk people without any valid reason. They were screaming “BOO, YOU SUCK!” at me and my wait staff because Taylor Swift wasn’t playing on our sound system. I then played two Taylor Swift songs for them to placate them and they were dancing and singing all together so I assumed I had made my customers happy.
However, after the two songs ended and the playlist moved on to other artists, they started complaining even more and it escalated. They started screaming that the songs I played weren’t the right one and I was told that, “this place is shit, the music and the people here suck.” I was then told to, “go back to your country with that fucking immigrant face.”
This was the point that I lost control and I finally broke under the consistent barrage of snarky comments to myself and my staff. We had done nothing but serve them and try to make their time as enjoyable as possible and we were all being treated poorly. I yelled at them to leave and asked them all to go.
One of the women in the group took out her phone and said that she was going to make a viral video so no one would come to Ballaro anymore. Now this, more than anything, upsets me because Ballaro is a gathering place for neighbors, friends, lovers and strangers alike. We have a community that gathers in Ballaro and we all love and support each other and welcome anyone in our restaurant and bar. To possibly lose all that because of someone’s tainted point of view on social media, would be the worst thing.
My mission is to make everyone who enters through the front door feel like they are at home, because sometimes New York hardens even the best of us and we forget the true values in life: community and peace.
I’m a dreamer, and as a dreamer I would love to change the world, starting even in the smallest ways. So please, let’s make LOVE VIRAL and not hate! If anyone is bothered at the way I run my wine bar, I’d love to have a calm conversation with them face-to-face. If you truly dislike Ballaro, than luckily there are a million other places in New York that you can go to. I can’t allow groups of belligerent drunk people to insult my bar, myself or my staff. This place is my heart and soul, and I need to protect that.
I’ve learned that everybody deserves a second chance and I have learned the importance of always responding in love, no matter what insults or hurt is thrown at me.
East Village, I hope you will be safe and sound, Taylor Swift or no Taylor Swift.
Sincerely,
BALLARO
PS - You know where to find me if you feel the need to come apologize and pay your $500 check, as you left without paying.
The 280-foot height depicted in submitted DOB drawings is now in line with many of its nearby neighbors, including One Fifth Avenue and The Brevoort East. There have been efforts to landmark or rezone the stretch of University Place to prevent developers from assembling large parcels to erect out of context towers. More worrying, however, will be the low-slung glass base and its future tenants, which may be out of character with the vibrant street.
As the de Blasio administration engaged in a push to reform rent regulations in June, a coalition of tenant advocates and neighborhood organizations seeking to protect renters from landlord harassment received a $1.25 million boost in City Council funding for the upcoming fiscal year.
Stabilizing NYC, which formed last year with seed money from Councilman Dan Garodnick, has since created its own version of the typical "bad landlords" watch list, including seven companies that own or run a combined 509 buildings throughout the city.
Mr. Nelson noted that the building, even though it is newly constructed, will likely sell at a discount, per square foot, compared with a recently sold prewar walk-up in the neighborhood at 117-119 E. Seventh St. That building sold for about $1,300 per square foot in June. Mr. Nelson is expecting to fetch less than that amount for 316-318 E. Third St.— about $1,100 per square foot.
"Living rooms are a fast-disappearing amenity in apartments in the East Village and other neighborhoods where young renters like to go," Mr. Nelson said. "Living rooms don't create revenue, but bedrooms do. That's why my building is unexpectedly cheaper. It has living rooms."
In order to afford the higher rent, he would have to increase his business, but rent plus fixed expenses plus supplies would be $7,000-$8,000 per month. Dividing that by 24 working days per month just does not compute. Albert tells me his best hope is to find a business with a lot of space that wants to sub-rent some of it for him and his equipment.
