EVG Etc.: Jesse Malin's new record and bar; Marcia Resnick's NYC 'Punks, Poets and Provocateurs'

[Mocha Lite and Miss Demeanor outside the Phoenix on East 13th Street via Grant Shaffer]

Jesse Malin on his latest record and new bar Berlin under 2A on Avenue A (The Village Voice)

Flowers Cafe closes tomorrow ahead of redevelopment at 355 Grand St. (BoweryBoogie)

Threat of lawsuit over massage parlor installation at Orchard Street gallery (artnet News)

Stats on bullying in East Village/LES schools (DNAinfo)

History of the honorary street names along Second Avenue (Off the Grid)

About Louis Abolafia, the East Village artist who ran for president in 1968 (Ephemeral New York)

More on Avant Garden's opening on East Seventh Street (Zagat)

A look at photographer Marcia Resnick's new book of NYC "Punks, Poets and Provocateurs" (Dangerous Minds)

A visit to Rachael Ray's 6-level East Village home (The Wall Street Journal, subscription required)

Some history of Peridance Capezio Center on East 13th Street (The New York Times)

Another chance to discuss the East River flood protection plan (The Lo-Down)

The original Palm restaurant space for rent (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

Lou Reed cornerspotting (Flaming Pablum)

… and in the spring of 2014, Michael Sean Edwards, who has contributed photos to EVG through the years, released a book of photography titled "Past Future Past: The East Village: 1978-1980."

The softcover edition ($24.95) is now for sale at Alphabets, 64 Avenue A, and St. Mark's Bookshop, 136 E. Third St.


[Photo on St. Mark's Place by Michael Sean Edwards]

Thinking about the future (and past) of 3rd Avenue and St. Mark's Place

As you probably know, some major change is in the works for the corners of Third Avenue and St. Mark's Place.

To recap:

• Back in June, The Real Deal reported that real-estate investor Arthur Shapolsky is in the process of buying three properties at the northeast corner of Third Avenue and St. Marks Place: 23 Third Ave., 27 Third Ave. and 3 St. Mark's Place. Basically everything from McDonald's to the corner.

According to The Real Deal, the corner could accommodate a 41,500-square-foot commercial building or a residential one of roughly half the size.

To date, nothing about the sale has shown up in public records just yet.

• Last November, the Pappas family, owners of the St. Marks Hotel, filed plans to build a 10-story mixed-use building on the hotel's lot at the southeast corner St. Mark’s Place and Third Avenue. (The hotel would take floors 2-10.)

New York Yimby got a look at a rendering.



This Super St. Marks Hotel structure awaits DOB approval. (The DOB website shows that city last disapproved the plans on March 26.)

Meanwhile, for a little perspective on this corner (at least the northeast side), take a look at this photo that writer Ada Calhoun bought on eBay that dates to 1963...

The coming changes might make for a nice addendum to Calhoun's forthcoming book, "St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America’s Hippest Street," out Nov. 2 from W.W. Norton & Co.

25 E. 7th St. is for sale

Here are the details from the Cushman & Wakefield listing:

A 26’ wide, five-story, multi-family walk-up building located on the north side of East 7th Street between Cooper Square and 2nd Avenue. The building consists of nine residential units, of which three are rent-stabilized, one is rent-controlled, and five will be delivered vacant.

The average in-place rent of the rent-regulated units is approximately $22 per square foot which is only a fraction of market. A majority of the units are large one-bedrooms that could be converted to two-bedrooms or front-back units.

There is also dramatic upside in renovating the free market units, one of which can be converted into a duplex unit with garden access, to attain market rents. The building is located steps from The Cooper Union’s new building and around the corner from trendy East Village eateries such as The Mermaid Inn and Narcissa.

Asking price: $8.95 million

Image via Cushman & Wakefield

A quick look at Coffee Project New York, opening soon on East 5th Street

The coffee shop at 239 E. Fifth St. between Second Avenue and Cooper Square has been in the works for several months now... yesterday was the first day that we have seen the paper off the front windows... EVG contributor Derek Berg says that the place should be open within a week...



The shop has a website and Facebook page (and Instagram), though there's not much other information for the moment...

Are you psyched about this new business on East 4th Street?

An EVG reader let us know that the new psychic's space opened this week at 193 E. Fourth St. just east of Avenue A.

The location has more to offer than the original "psychic coming soon" signage led us to believe. Aside from spiritual advising, the professionals here are also offering life coaching. (No word at the moment what their lifetime coaching record is.) Also, walk-ins welcome.

The storefront was previously home to Bikes, by George!

The Marshal seizes Nevada Smiths on 3rd Avenue

[Image via Facebook]

Several tipsters have told us that the Marshal has taken legal possession of Nevada Smiths at 100 Third Ave.

Here's the official word from Nevada Smiths via Facebook...

Due to Circumstances Beyond our Control Nevada Smiths is temporarily closed. We are working to resolve the Situation and...
Posted by Nevada Smiths on Tuesday, September 15, 2015

Of note: According to DNAinfo back in April, a New Jersey bank filed suit against Nevada Smiths after the bar failed to make the last four payments on a $150,000 loan.

The football/soccer mainstay opened in their new home between East 12th Street and East 13th Street in April 2013.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Nevada Smiths is closed, and here's what's next

Those persistent rumors about 74-76 Third Avenue and the future of Nevada Smiths

The East Village will lose a parking lot and gain an apartment building

Here then, where Nevada Smiths once stood

RIP Adam Purple

[Photo of Adam Purple on 1st Avenue in 2012 by @rahav]

Adam Purple, the activist and environmentalist who was the centerpiece in a city dispute over a blooming oasis on the Lower East Side called the Garden of Eden, died Monday afternoon. He was 84.

According to The Villager, Purple — considered by some to be the godfather of the urban gardening movement — died of an apparent heart attack while cycling over the Williamsburg Bridge to meet a friend in the East Village. (The New York Times has a feature obituary here.)

Purple — born David Wilkie in Independence, Mo. — garnered international attention in the mid-1980s when he battled the city over a five-lot, 15,000-square-foot garden he created amid the ruins of the Lower East Side.

The garden grew from the mid 1970s to the mid 1980s. Purple was known to ride his bike (he had renounced the internal combustion engine, among many other modern conveniences) up to Central Park several times a week and return with mounds of manure from hansom cab horses to fertilize the soil.

The garden, between Forsyth Street and Eldridge Street, just south of Stanton Street, was plowed under by the city in 1986 to make way for low- and moderate-income housing. (Plans to build around the garden never materialized.)


[Photograph©Harvey Wang]

Here's the Times with a feature on Purple from February 1998:

"He is the purest example of a hippie ever seen in this city," said Mary Cantwell, the author of 'Manhattan, When I Young,' who met Mr. Purple in 1985. "He is an artifact of that era, living in a very unlikely time and place, namely present-day New York City."

Mr. Purple has been something of a fringe fixture ever since he moved to the city 30 years ago. His appearance and his moniker were striking even in a city known for its eclectic characters and wild sartorial tastes. During much of the 70's and early 80's, he dressed almost entirely in the royal hue: purple shirts, purple sweaters, purple pants. With his beard, gray hair, floppy green stocking cap, sunglasses and twinkling blue eyes, he looks like Santa Claus if Santa hit the skids and lost the belly.

And from the Times in 1999: "He has been called one of New York City's living treasures, an ornery gadfly, a freelance anarchist. He has gone by many names: Hy Patia, Les Ego, John Peter Zenger 2d, P. E. Ricles, General Zen of the Headquarters Intergalactic of Psychic Police Uranus, and even the relatively mundane David Wilkie."

For more background, check out "Adam Purple and The Garden of Eden" by Harvey Wang and Amy Brost from 2011...



In recent years, Purple had been living in Williamsburg, working with Times Up.

As the Times noted in 1998, Purple started wearing little purple — with the exception of a hat.

He put the color away, he said, after the garden was destroyed.

"Purple went out with the garden," he said. "Adam Purple doesn't exist."

Condos at Ben Shaoul's 98-100 Avenue A will start at $1.3 million; high-end gym eyed for retail space

[EVG photo of 98-100 Avenue A from yesterday]

Turns out that Ben Shaoul's incoming residential building on Avenue A will house condos and not rentals as previously thought.

According to The Real Deal, one-bedroom units will start at just under $1.3 million while penthouses will go for $2.3 million. Per broker Ryan Serhant, prices will range from the high $1,000s per square foot to north of $2,000 per square foot.

Amenities for the 33-unit (we originally heard 29 units) building will include a — ding! ding! — roof deck as well as some private outdoor spaces for several of the residences here between East Seventh Street and East Sixth Street.

Meanwhile, The Real Deal also hears that the ground-floor retail space will house a high-end gym. Equinox already reportedly inked a deal to lease two floors of Shaoul's incoming development on East Houston and Orchard. So maybe look for a high-end gym other than Equinox for the space that last housed East Village Farms. (And this might just finally dash those hopes for a Trader Joe's.)

The residences here are expected to be ready by the late spring or early summer of 2074 2016.

Updated 6:22 p.m.

An EVG reader shared a view from behind the building...



Per the reader: "Here is the backside of the construction. No idea why they left that large area open. Gads."

Previously on EV Grieve:
A little bit of Hollywood on Avenue A

Inside the abandoned theater at East Village Farms on Avenue A

New Facebook group is advocating for a Trader Joe's on Avenue A

Workers back demolishing what's left of 98-100 Avenue A

Rest assured, there isn't a fire in the hole at 98-100 Avenue A

Ben Shaoul's 98-100 Avenue A emerging from the dewatering hole

Life next to 98-100 Avenue A

It's diorama season at the Ninth Street Community Garden & Park

It's peephole season again at the Ninth Street Community Garden & Park on the northeast corner of Avenue C... as East Village artist J. Kathleen White has unveiled her 2015 collection of dioramas.

This year's theme: "Vital Niches"...



An EVG reader shared these photos...







White started creating and sharing the dioramas along the fence here in 2005. Here's her work from 2014 ... 2013 ... 2012 ... and 2011....

The 2015 edition will be up through Nov. 2.

P.S.

There's a free salsa concert Saturday afternoon in the garden...

Kenneth Cole readies new storefront on the Bowery

Workers yesterday were stocking 328 Bowery, where a Kenneth Cole is opening in the days ahead here at Bond.

In reporting on the lease back in June, the Commercial Observer noted that the 10-year deal is for 2,510 square feet on the ground level and 1,604 square feet in the basement. The asking rent for is $300 per square foot. (Cole will be sharing the space with women’s clothing shop Curve, per the Observer.)

Now let's just cut and paste some from an EVG post from May 2013:

The storefront on the southwest corner of Bond and the Bowery has sat empty since the Washington Mutual closed up in March 2009 ... the space has gone though an assortment of brokers...

Previously, the space was "the new intersection of cool."


It was also a photogenic intersection for Bringing it On...


And most recently — a pitstop for Claire Forlani's disembodied scotch ad hands...

The listing from RKF that yielded Kenneth Cole arrived in May 2013.



And serious last call for our Bowery-Bond nickname to take off — BowBo.

Planet Fitness muscling in on Essex Crossing

Gyms are always a popular topic around here (for instance), so...

Planet Fitness has signed a deal to open a 22,000-square-foot complex on the second floor at 145 Clinton St., on Essex Crossing site 5, according to The Lo-Down.

And via Crain's:

"Planet Fitness [offers] a $10 monthly membership fee that makes it accessible to everyone, which was very important to us." said S. Andrew Katz, a principal at the Prusik Group, which is a minority partner in the $1 billion-plus development and oversees the leasing of retail space. "There are gyms that charge $250 a month for membership, but those don't fit the community's needs.”

The 145 Clinton St. building is expected to be completed in 2017.

Report: Woman dies after jumping from actor's East 3rd Street apartment

A woman leaped to her death early yesterday evening from the East Third Street apartment of actor David Harbour, according to multiple published reports.

The Post reports that Harbour met the woman at a treatment center. Harbour was in Canada when the woman jumped from his third-floor window into the backyard of the six-story building between First Avenue and Second Avenue.

Authorities have not yet released the woman's name. She was 29.

Per the Daily News:

“She was someone who struggled,” said Harbour, who was in Toronto for the premiere of his film "Black Mass."

“She was in the shelter system. I was trying to help her out,” he said.

Police told the News that the woman had a history of mental health issues.

Harbour received a Tony Award nomination in 2005 for his role in "Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?" He appears on the HBO series "The Newsroom" and has had supporting roles in films such as "Quantum of Solace" and "Revolutionary Road."

"I'm very confused, I don't understand how this happened," Harbour told the News. "It's a terrible tragedy. I'm very shaken by this."

Silver Monuments Works packs up its tombstones for a move to Queens

Workers yesterday began packing up Silver Monuments Works on Stanton Street and Essex Street for a move to Woodside, Queens, as these photos by EVG contributor Derek Berg show...



Silver Monuments, nearly 70s years old, was the last tombstone business on the Lower East Side... in the city's former monument district...



Here's more on the business via the Times in 2006:

Situated in a five-story walk-up, the store is owned and run by Murray R. Silver, 65, who lives in an apartment above the business, which absorbed three other gravestone dealers, Forsyth, Weinreb & Gross.

Inside, the selection ranging from standard marble “toaster” shapes with the Star of David in relief (customary for men, while women usually get Shabbat candles) to massive granite Torahs rests on squares of tattered artificial green grass to capture the feel of a real cemetery. The oldest gravestone sample, hand carved by Mr. Silver’s late father, Samuel Silver, depicts a broken tree and a flying dove.

“You are now in the house of satisfied customers,” a sign proclaims. Mr. Silver inherited the business from his parents. His father died 20 years ago and now rests in a cemetery on Long Island under a modest family marker engraved “Silver.” His mother, Minnie, who is 95, became the first woman on the Lower East Side to run a monument store’s showroom. She would leave work early so she could put out milk and cake for her children arriving home from school.

According to BoweryBoogie, who first noted Silver's upcoming move, Mr. Silver prefers to "rent the storefront to a 'quiet' business, not a restaurant; perhaps a gallery” after the departure.

CB3 wants your input on 2017 budget priorities

Via the EVG inbox...

CB3 Public Hearing — FY 2017 Budget Priorities
Wednesday September 16 at 6:30 pm — Community Board 3 Office, 59 E. Fourth St. (between Second Avenue and the Bowery)

This is an opportunity for organizations and residents to tell the Community Board their budget priorities.

What parks need reconstruction? What programs need funding? Help us assess the needs of our community.

Every year the Community Board submits a list of capital and expense budget priorities to city agencies. This hearing is your opportunity to have input into these district budget priorities. Tell us how money should be spent in Community Board 3.

Organizations, groups, and individuals representing all segments of the community are encouraged to participate.

Budget clip art via

Veselka is free from its sidewalk bridge

After nearly four and a half months, workers have removed the sidewalk bridge from the building that houses Veselka on Second Avenue and East Ninth Street...





Back in late April, Veselka owner Tom Birchard told us that several small pieces of masonry fell off the building… and the building's landlord quickly had a crew erect a sidewalk bridge ahead of the repair work… unfortunately, the work wasn't completed quite as quickly, and the restaurant's sidewalk cafe was under cover for the late spring and the entire summer.

Photos via EVG correspondent Steven

Avant Garden is now open on East 7th Street

[EVG file photo]

Team Ravi DeRossi (Death & Co., Cienfuegos, Proletariat, etc.) opened Avant Garden, their vegan restaurant/wine bar at 130 E. Seventh St., last night, per Eater.

The chef is Andrew D'Ambrosi, who ran the kitchen at DeRossi's Carroll Gardens seafood restaurant Bergen Hill.

As DeRossi told Eater back in the spring:

D'Ambrosi put a hen of the woods mushroom dish on the menu that DeRossi, who "always hated mushrooms," loved. That dish turned out to be vegan, and so from there DeRossi had the chef begin experimenting with other vegan dishes, offering them as specials at Bergen Hill. Two years later, they've pulled together a list of about 20 that will make up Avant Garden's vegan menu. Those include things like charred onion with chimichurri and seasoned breadcrumbs, and roasted carrots with orange, honey, pumpkin seeds and quinoa, as well as that hen of the woods dish.

Here's a look at their menu…





The opening of Avant Garden coincides with DeRossi's new nonprofit, BEAST (Benefits to End Animal Suffering Today), which will host regular fundraisers for animal rights organizations.

Avant Garden takes over the storefront here just west of Avenue A from Gingersnap's Organic, who decamped to the West Village in January.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Veggie friendly Avant Garden in the works for former Gingersnap's space on East 7th Street

Looking at Futura's 'Concrete Jungle' on the Houston/Bowery Mural Wall

FUTURA (aka Lenny McGurr) finished up work yesterday at the Houston/Bowery Mural Wall … the shadows of the early evening kept us from getting a decent shot… Here are some other shots of "Concrete Jungle" via Instagram…

A photo posted by Marite Iglesias (@maritemianyc) on Sep 14, 2015 at 5:32am PDT

Futura with magnificent finished mural "Concrete Jungle" in a style reminiscent of his radical 1980 "Break" piece. #graffiti #streetart #houstonbowerywall #nyc

A photo posted by @marthacoopergram on Sep 13, 2015 at 7:39pm PDT

Mural madness today as pro BMXer Nigel Sylvester @nigelsylvester leaps over @futuradosmil at #houstonbowerywall. #bmx #streetart #graffiti #futura2000

A photo posted by @marthacoopergram on Sep 12, 2015 at 8:35pm PDT

LES Jewels died 2 years ago today

And someone placed memorial flyers with a rose at the entrances to Tompkins Square Park…





On Sept. 14, 2013, Joel Pakela, aka neighborhood fixture LES Jewels, was found unconscious on Avenue A at East Ninth Street. He died a short time later at Beth Israel. He was 43.

The Medical Examiner's office told The Villager that the cause of death was "blunt injuries of head," though "the manner of death is undetermined."

Previously on EV Grieve:
RIP LES Jewels (80 comments)

Memorials for LES Jewels in the East Village

From St. Mark's Place to 'Moonbeam City'

EVG TV Show Mural correspondent Steven has been watching the progress along the wall outside Footgear Plus on First Avenue at St. Mark's Place... where work started on an ad for the new Comedy Central animated series "Moonbeam City," a sendup of 1980s cop shows, back on Wednesday (above)...





... and here's a look at the final product... an ode to the art-deco stylings of Patrick Nagel...

More about the Birdman closing Rainbow Music on 1st Avenue this month

[Photo in March 2014 by EVG reader Chris F.]

As you may have heard, the Birdman, who works amid the stacks of used CDs, videos and cassettes at Rainbow Music, is retiring and closing his 17-year-old store at 130 First Ave. between St. Mark's Place and East Seventh Street at the end of the month.

The Times today has more about his decision.

“I don’t need the aggravation anymore, and this is aggravation,” he said, looking around at the clutter. “It kept me busy, but now I’m tired.”

And!

He estimates that he has crammed 250,000 CDs and perhaps 50,000 more video and audiocassettes into the small space. Just to enter the store, at 130 First Avenue ... seemed to risk setting off a cascading avalanche of thousands of plastic cases.

“The store is so jammed, people are amazed by it, but then they see I got good stuff,” he said. “I can dig out anything I want. The thing is, I just don’t want to dig anymore.”

To date, the Birdman has never revealed his name, not even for Jessie Auritt's 10-minute short about the store...

However, in the Times, he "reluctantly confirmed that his given name was Bill Kasper."

Previously on EV Grieve:
The Birdman of the East Village

You can read our Q-and-A with Auritt here.