A few things to do for Halloween around here

[The makings of extra special Pumpkin Spice Lattes on 3rd Avenue]

Here are just a few of the Halloween-related activities happening in the neighborhood in the next few days... will continue to add to the list as submissions arrive ...

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Via the EVG inbox...

The parents and teachers of Little Missionary's Day Nursery and Sara Curry Day School (on St. Mark's Place) will host a Haunted Halloween Party at La Plaza Cultural Garden on Saturday (tomorrow!) from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Open to the public.

Activities will include a haunted house, creepy maze, games, arts & crafts, face painting, tattoos, fortune telling, music by Willie Vargas, a beloved music teacher at Little Mish & Sara Curry, a photo booth — photos to be taken by Sara Curry parent and professional child photographer Greg Marinaccio. Plus cotton candy, food, drinks, and a bake sale of savory and sweets.

Everyone is welcome. Children and their parents are encouraged to come dressed in costume.

La Plaza Cultural Garden is at the southwest corner of Avenue C and Ninth Street.

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Happening tonight at Scumbags And Superstars, the clothing and gift boutique on Clinton Street between Rivington and Delancey ...



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John Carpenter's "Halloween" is the midnight movie this weekend at the Sunshine on East Houston. Details here.



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The Chinese Hawaiian Kenpo Academy, 122 Second Ave. between Seventh Street and St. Mark's Place, is hosting a Halloween party tomorrow afternoon from 1-4. There will be food, games, prizes, etc., and it will provide a chance to see what they offer in the Academy's new location.



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Per Facebook: Carve your own pumpkin at the 6th Street and Avenue B Garden. This is a FREE Event that begins at 2 p.m. on Saturday (tomorrow!) and continues while supplies (the pumpkins) last.



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Mephiskapheles, the ska punk group formed in the East Village in 1991, is hosting the sixth installment of their annual Devil's Night Danse Saturday evening at the Bowery Electric. Find details here.



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Tuesday starting at 5 p.m., La Plaza Cultural is hosting Haunted Adventure Garden and Rat Race Maze. There is live music from the Rude Mechanical Orchestra at 6 p.m.

Per the EVG inbox:

The theme at this year's spooky Halloween adventure garden is Rats, because whether they rule or horrify, they're part of living in NYC. At this costume party, bring your whole family, as there'll be mystic fortune telling, face painting and thrilling coffin rides.

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Halloween night at the Theatre for the New City on First Avenue near 10th Street...

Join us for NONSTOP theater, cabaret, costume contest, ballroom dancing, scary room and MUCH MORE will bewitch the East Village at Theater for the New City's 40th Annual Village Halloween Costume Ball on OCT. 31! Tickets are $20. Details here.

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And A-1 Record Shop on Sixth Street between Avenue A and First Avenue has a lot of Halloween on display ... press play to see (and hear)...

👂🏼🎃🎃🎃👂🏼 #halloweenrecords

A post shared by A-1 Record Shop (@a1recordshop) on Oct 26, 2017 at 11:51am PDT

I Am a Rent-Stabilized Tenant

East Village resident Susan Schiffman has been photographing the apartments of rent-stabilized tenants living in the East Village for her Instagram account, I Am a Rent Stabilized Tenant. She will share some of the photos here for this ongoing EVG feature.



Photos and text by Susan Schiffman

Tenant: Deanna Kirk, since 1991

Deanna was born in Manhattan, at Doctors Hospital on 69th Street and York Avenue. She was raised near Columbia University while her father attended school there. Her family later relocated to Long Island.

In the 1980s, Deanna moved to Brooklyn. From 1991 to 1995 she owned Deanna's, a jazz club on Seventh Street near Avenue A.

Around the time she opened the club, she found her current apartment through a friend of a friend. No one in the unit had paid rent in almost four years as the building was in such disrepair.

When the new owners took over, they met with Deanna in the bar downstairs from the apartment. They asked her, "How much do you think is fair?"







What do you love about your apartment?

I used to love my clawfoot tub, that was my favorite thing. But they just got rid of it two weeks ago because there was a leak. Now my favorite thing is the wooden moldings from the 1850s that somebody restored 40 years ago.

I love my fire escape and the trees outside my window, the birds and my view of Second Avenue. I have seen so many things on Second Avenue. I sit here and have my coffee and look out onto the trees that meet my window and Second Avenue.

And I love my friends in the building.









Deanna performs at Nomad, the North African restaurant at 78 Second Ave. between Fourth Street and Fifth Street, every Wednesday night from 7 to 10.

"The thing I love best is the neighborhood feeling. It's only a block away from my apartment. Every Wednesday I can just walk a block to my steady singing event, which is a lot like my old jazz club, which is like bringing my old jazz club back for one night a week. I am singing with Burt Eckoff, another rent-stabilized tenant in the East Village since 1968 on Sixth Street."

If you're interested in inviting Susan in to photograph your apartment for an upcoming post, then you may contact her via this email.

A former intern revisits the summer of 1977 on 7th Street

In 1977, Bob Stewart arrived here from Alabama to spend the summer interning for the New York Metropolitan Baptist Association. He spent most of his time that summer on a two-block stretch of Seventh Street between Avenue B and Avenue D. He lived on Seventh and B.

He also had an Olympus SLR, and he took photos during his internship. A selection of these shots will be on display starting Sunday at the Graffiti Church on Seventh Street. The exhibit, titled "40 Years Ago," includes 20 framed photographs and a video slide show.

Stewart later returned to Seventh Street and Avenue B, where he resided from March 1978 to the spring of 1980.

Stewart, who today is the director of the E.W. Scripps School of Journalism at Ohio University, came back for a visit shortly after his granddaughter was born in 2015.

"That’s what prompted me to pull out the negatives and color slides," he told me in an email. "I realized it’d be 40 years in 2017, so I started working on the project."

The following is an excerpt about the exhibit that he shared...

"I was in college in Birmingham when I was offered the chance to go to New York City for the summer," said Stewart. He jumped at the opportunity, spending 10 weeks on East Seventh Street working alongside several other summer interns.

"Mostly, we did puppet shows and sang songs in one of the small parks between Avenues C and D," Stewart said. "We also took kids on a subway ride to one of the beaches, as well as to a Yankees game."

Stewart used his Olympus SLR to photograph neighborhood kids, as well as his fellow summer interns, who, like Stewart, came from outside the city.

"We were mostly suburban college students, mostly from the South, so entirely unfamiliar with life in the East Village," Stewart said.

One of the young interns Stewart met in 1977 was Taylor Field, a Princeton Seminary student assigned to work in Harlem. Field now serves as pastor of Graffiti Church, which will host the exhibit.

"I remember the heartache, the trashcan fires, and the friendliness of the neighborhood," Taylor said.

Amidst their daily activities, Stewart and his fellow college-age interns — like other residents of the city that summer — had to cope with extraordinary events like the citywide blackout that left entire neighborhoods looted, as well as the threat of serial killer Son of Sam.

"Looking back on that summer, I realize now that we lived through a difficult time in the life of New York City," Stewart said. He recalled seeing a guy get stabbed just down from St. Brigid's School, across the street from Stewart's East Seventh Street apartment.

But most of the weeks were filled with the ordinary, steamy days of a hot New York summer, working with about two dozen "regulars," Stewart said. As the kids got to know Stewart and the other summer interns, they became more trusting of each other.

"Whereas we probably saw each other as very different when we first moved into the neighborhood, by mid-summer we felt at home walking down the street," Stewart said.

Stewart's memories were reignited in 2015 when walking his newborn granddaughter around the neighborhood.

"I recalled having a notebook full of black and white negatives, as well as several small boxes with color slides," all taken during the 1977 summer. Stewart bought a flatbed scanner and started working his way through the acetate sleeves of negatives.

The "40 Years Ago" exhibit opens at 5 p.m. on Sunday at the Graffiti Church, 205 E. Seventh St. between Avenue B and Avenue C.

The exhibit is up through Nov. 30. After Sunday's opening, the gallery hours are:

Sundays: 10 a.m. to noon, 6:30 to 8 p.m.
Wednesdays: 6:30 to 8 p.m.
Thursdays: 9 to 11 a.m.

Hunan Slurp Shop coming to former Ricky's space on 1st Avenue

The coming-soon signage is up at 112 First Ave., where Hunan Slurp Shop will presumably be serving rice noodles here between Seventh Street and Sixth Street...



Not sure who's behind the venture just yet. (Has a familiar ring to Ivan Ramen Slurp Shop in the Gotham West Market.)

The retail listing for No. 112 mentioned a garden. So perhaps the Slurp Shop will have seating out there.

The storefront was previously a Ricky's, which closed in April 2016.

Before Ricky's, the space was home until 2007 to Miracle Grill. The restaurant's garden space was where the residential building is now at 92 E. Seventh St. (No. 92, which was the salon connected to Ricky's, appears to still be for rent as a separate storefront.)

Previously on EV Grieve:
Former Miracle Grill garden not-so-suddenly looks like a condo

Former Miracle Grill space on the market

One restaurant, two buildings

Miracle (Grills): A Ricky's and not an eatery opening on First Avenue

The Ricky's on 1st Avenue has apparently closed

Gramercy Kitchen shaping up on 3rd Avenue

[Photo from 2015 via Facebook]

Back in January, the Gramercy Cafe closed after nearly 25 years in business a few blocks away on Third Avenue at 17th Street.

Signage left for patrons thanked the Gramercy Cafe crew for their years of service ... with notice that the space would reopen as Gramercy Kitchen.

Anyway, the paper is off the windows now...





We heard that they could be open as soon as next week. A reader also said the new proprietors are NYC diner vets. So there's that.

The interior is still shaping up... but it's starting to look diner-y...



H/T Harry Weiner!

Previously on EV Grieve:
Gramercy Cafe closes; Gramercy Kitchen coming soon

Thursday's parting shot

[Click on image for a better view]

Photo in Tompkins Square Park by Steven...

We have some new trees

[Reader-sumbitted photo]

Crews were out early this morning on Avenue A to plant several new trees on the west side between Sixth Street and Fourth Street...


[EVG photo]

A new tree also arrived on St. Mark's Place between Avenue A and First Avenue, where someone has already fashioned a homemade urban tree etiquette sign...


[Photo by Steven]

The trees are via the Department of Parks & Recreation. Their website has a map showing where all the new trees are coming for this neighborhood ... and others citywide.

Deadline approaching for the 14th Street Y CSA Winter Season

The folks at the 14th Street Y shared this... via the EVG inbox...

Shares are still available for the 14th Street Y CSA WINTER SEASON! Act quick!

You have until Oct. 31 [Ed note: Tuesday!] to sign up for your local WINTER CSA (Community Supported Agriculture).

Mountain View Farm supplies farm fresh food to the 14th Street Y CSA.

You will receive six bi-weekly distributions beginning in November — you will pick up a massive (but manageable) box of glorious, fresh vegetables at the 14th Street Y, 344 E. 14th St. (between 1st and 2nd Avenues).

Distribution dates are:
Nov. 20 (Just in time for Thanksgiving!)
Dec. 4
Dec. 18
Jan. 2 (A Tuesday)
Jan. 15 (Martin Luther King Day)
Jan. 29

This makes it easy to enjoy fresh organic produce all through the winter months.

Each distribution will consist of 25-30 pounds of produce.
The cost for one share is $330 for the season (around $2.10 per pound!).

Vegetables you will see in your share include: Carrots, beets, sweet potatoes, potatoes, winter squash, cabbage, purple top and hakurei turnips, black, daikon and watermelon radishes, kale, onions, celeric, leeks, bok choy, garlic and much more!

You can sign up online here. Email alice14ycsa@aol.com if you have CSA-related questions.

RIP Flatbush

[Photo from June by Bobby Williams]

Goggla has sad news about Flatbush, the red-tailed hawk fledgling that Christo and Dora fostered this past summer in Tompkins Square Park.

As she reported yesterday:

He apparently suffered a fatal collision on August 15, which was likely caused by the effects of West Nile virus.

A resident found Flatbush on a balcony at Avenue C and 10th Street on Aug. 15. The discovery was shared with Audubon. The completed lab work showed that Flatbush tested positive for West Nile.

West Nile virus is transmitted by infected mosquitoes that bite the bird. Flatbush did not display any obvious signs of illness, but the virus does not always show itself, and it may have affected him very quickly.

Head over to Goggla's site here for more details.

In June, Ranger Rob (aka Rob Mastrianni, a Manhattan Ranger supervisor) released a juvenile red-tailed hawk into the Park that had been injured earlier in the month in Brooklyn. He was nicknamed Flatbush, as he fell from a nest on Flatbush Avenue.


[Photo from June by Steven]

Previously on EV Grieve:
Flatbush puts on an early-evening show in Tompkins Square Park

534 E. 14th St. is for sale again

[Image via Cushman & Wakefield]

The 5-floor walkup between Avenue A and Avenue B has returned to the sales market.

Here are a few details via the listing:

Cushman & Wakefield has been retained on an exclusive basis to arrange for the sale of 534 East 14th Street, a mixed-use building in the East Village neighborhood of New York City.

• The building consists of 16 studio apartments, 2 of which were combined, over 2 ground level retail units.
• Plans exist to fully extend the ground floor retail units, which would double your commercial income.
• The train is located a block away at 1st Avenue and the crosstown M14 Bus runs along 14th Street.
• Take advantage of this opportunity to own a cash flowing investment property in one of New York’s most rapidly appreciating neighborhoods.

There are two retail spaces in the building. One of the spaces is empty after Tasty Tasty Chinese Take Out closed this past summer.

Asking price for the building: $9.5 million.

No. 534 is adjacent to the smaller of the two new Extell developments nearing completion on the block...



The building has been on the market a few times in the past four years with two different brokers, such as in 2015 when it was seeking $8.995 million.

You only have about 5 more years to use and enjoy the MetroCard

[Image via Cubic]

As you may have heard, the MTA is finally ready to phase out the MetroCard ... and yesterday, the MTA board approved a $500-million-plus contract for a new payment system. Instead of riders swiping their MetroCards, the new system will allow them to use their cellphones or certain types of debit or credit cards to pay their fares directly at turnstiles.

We got a news release about it from Cubic, the company who was awarded the contract, worth $573 million and change.

To the EVG inbox!

The new system allows customers to create personalized transit accounts to see ride history, check balances, add value as well as report lost or stolen cards to protect their funds. They will also have the option of using payment media such as credit and debit cards and mobile devices at the bus or turnstile, instead of purchasing and adding value to a separate fare card, to offer a retail payment experience to transit.

For those customers without a bank card or who prefer not to use one, a contactless card option will still be available with the same account management convenience features. Mobile phones can also be used like ticket vending machines to check account balances and recharge fare accounts anywhere. As a result, customers will experience greater convenience and shorter lines, allowing them to move faster through the transit system.

The initiative will reduce costs for the MTA by significantly reducing the dispensing of fare media, will streamline fare calculation and phase out 20-year-old equipment that is more costly to maintain each year. Ultimately, the new system will provide an enhanced and integrated travel experience across the region including seamless access to Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) and Metro-North Rail Road.

Cubic will be responsible for the design, integration, supply and implementation of the new fare payment system; associated services for platform hosting, hardware and software maintenance; and transition services including supplemental call center support. Equipment will include fare validators and new configurable ticket vending machines in the MTA’s 472 subway stations and 6,000 buses. The contract includes an option to support LIRR and Metro-North Rail Road with the purchase of additional validation and vending equipment.

Cubic’s partners statewide will provide manufacturing, call center and marketing services to the MTA. Transport for London (TfL), operator of the world’s largest open payment and contactless-based fare collection system, and Mastercard ... are also Cubic partners in the contract.

Officials say the plan is to fully retire the MetroCard by 2023.

The MetroCard made its debut on Jan. 6, 1994.

ALSO!

The MTA has announced plans to roll out several new features, including barriers to protect riders. As DNAinfo reported, the MTA will test platform safety doors at the L train's Third Avenue station. (These will be similar to those used on the AirTrain to and from JFK.)

The doors are designed to prevent the cars from hitting people who jump or fall onto the tracks. There isn't a timeline for when these might arrive at the Third Avenue stop, per DNAinfo.

Aside from barriers, the MTA debuted foldable seats on the L train that lock into place during rush hour to give riders more standing room. As the Post noted, there were reports that the seats were still locked in during non-rush-hour times.

Selling Eighty East Tenth

[Photo from Monday]

Sales kicked off the middle of last month for 80 E. 10th St., the 10-floor condoplex at Fourth Avenue.

There are just 12 units here in the development called Eighty East Tenth, ranging from one to five bedrooms.

Of the seven units currently on the market (ranging in price from $1.95 million to $7.85 million), four of them are in contract. (This info is via Streeteasy and the Eighty website.)

Anyway, there are more photos and descriptions of the building since our last look.

Per the 80 website:

Façade

“Eighty East Tenth Street sits at the heart of a historically significant stretch of Fourth Avenue formerly known as Book Row, once the center of the rare and antique book trade in America. Inspired by this unique history, NAVA began an intensive creative process of transforming and expressing the written word into a physical pattern on the building’s façade. The resulting metal surface features a circular grid pattern of discreet concave and convex impressions which make each panel a distinct manifestation of the neighborhood's rich heritage.”

As noted before, a one-level row of businesses were on this corner, including a market and St. Marx Music, until 2007.

The storefronts sat empty for years, waiting for development. Here's the corner in 2013...



The walls of the empty building were also home to the 10th Street Free Press (aka The Scribbler), who has relocated to the wall outside Duane Reade on 10th and Third...


[Photo from Monday]

Renderings via NAVA

Hitchcocktober movie of the week — 'Rebecca'

Like October, Hitchcocktober always seems to go by so quickly.

And so, tonight (at 8!) marks the second-to-last Hitchcocktober movie of the month at the Village East Cinema on Second Avenue and 12th Street.

"Rebecca" is tonight's selection. This 1940 psychological drama starring Joan Fontaine and Laurence Olivier received 11 Academy Award nominations, winning for Best Picture and Cinematography.

[In dramatic tone] This is "Rebecca" ...



And on Halloween night (Tuesday!), there's a screening of "Psycho."

You can buy advance tickets here.

Wednesday's parting shot

Sunset photo by Bobby Williams... #nofilter

Overhead projector trying to be part of this harvest display on 1st Avenue

Outside the Fern near 10th Street... photos by EVG regular Daniel...



It blends in pretty well, so if this helps to spot the projector...

Christo and Dora cross paths

Christo and Dora were hanging out this afternoon atop the St. Nicholas of Myra Church on Avenue A at 10th Street... where Steven took a few photos of the red-tailed hawks before Christo took off ... perhaps to check out the rat scene in Tompkins Square Park...

Today in markdowns in Tompkins Square Park

The dog stroller quickly went from $40 to $35 to $30 to $20 to $10 to free in no time at all. (Dog not included.)

Photo by Derek Berg

Out and About in the East Village

In this ongoing feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village or Lower East Side.



By James Maher

Name: Siobhan Meow
Occupation: Anything I could get
Location: Avenue C and Second Street
Date: Friday, Oct 20

I’m from Brooklyn. Coming here was a matter of my becoming homeless. I was living in Avenue U in Brooklyn, and I used take the train into the city all the time.

I decided to live in the city, and when I got here I got an SRO, but I couldn’t afford the rent. I went through a period of unemployment, I ended up homeless, and I came down here in 1988 because I met some people at ABC No Rio. They let me sleep in the basement, and that’s how I met Geerta Franken because we were both modeling for drawing classes. We went to Seventh Street and met Michael Shanker, who is a wild pirate electrician who hooked us up, and I picked a building because it was around the corner from my best friend’s house.

We opened a squat called Umbrella House. It was an absolute ruin. There were holes in the roof, holes in the floors, all the way down to the first floor, except for the main hallway. The two storefronts were filled to within two feet of the ceiling with old appliances and rubble and stuff, and this is a 12-foot ceiling. We had to dig it out.

We called it Umbrella House because when it rained or snowed, and it was a six-story building, it would go all the way down to the first floor. It was not so dangerous, more like kind of fun. The three flights of stairs in the middle of the building were out so we had to use the fire escapes to go to the top floors.

And of course there was no heat. Winter we spent in a very small room in sleeping bags to stay warm until we hooked up a hot electrical wire that Con Ed didn’t turn off, and then we had minimal electric where we could run heat for free and also power tools. We actually went 17 years without heat, which fortunately for me I was into cat rescues, so I had cat heat. They kept me warm, and also a big Carharrt suit, which is like a sleeping bag you walk around in.

We had to put in our own sewer line. We weren’t legally allowed to do it even though we got a permit for it. We got the permit and we had a licensed plumber overseeing the job, but as soon as we started digging down into the sidewalk, somebody who didn’t like us called up the city and they shut it down.

Fortunately we had started this on a Friday and so we covered the hole with boards and made like we weren’t working on it, but we went into the basement and broke through the wall and literally tunneled under to the sewer main. We had to put boards up because every time a truck or bus went over it, it would cause rocks to fall. That was dangerous and we’re lucky no one got killed, because we did it 24 hours straight for like four days with a chain of people with buckets. Once we got that it was easy to hook up the water

In the first year they tried to evict us and the whole block was closed off with cops. We had a three-day siege, where we stood in the windows to prevent them from knocking our building down. The guy who was working the wrecking ball, he saw us in the window and he got out of the wrecker. He didn’t want to be responsible.

But the more we got things legal, the harder it became for them to evict us. We did most of the repair work by scrounging and pilfering construction sites because there was a lot of construction going on at the time. This was mostly for cement, old joists, and steel beams that they would throw out. And over a period of 20 years we brought it up to where it’s now a legal low-income co-op that we own shares in.

Find Part 2 with Siobhan Meow next week...

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

SLA says East Village resident's drunk brunch suit doesn't belong in court

Last month, East Village resident Robert Halpern sued the State Liquor Authority (SLA) over a loophole in the 1999 law that allows bottomless brunches (drunk brunch, drunch, etc).

As the Post reports, the SLA has responded to the the Manhattan Supreme Court suit. They don't think much of it, and asked the court to dismiss.

“Halpern’s motivation behind alleging these complaints is his self-interest against increased noise and crowds in his community,” the SLA says in court papers.

“Halpern substitutes his own personal judgement for that of the Authority. … Halpern’s remedy, simply put, cannot be found within the walls of this Courthouse.”

Here's how The Real Deal first reported on the lawsuit last month:

“There are too may people running around drinking all the time,” Halpern told The Real Deal. “It’s become more and more of a drinking culture here.”

Halpern’s argument is that bottomless brunches are prohibited by a provision against selling unlimited alcohol for a set time and a set price. The Liquor Authority’s legal counsel has previously taken the position that “brunch specials” are considered special events and exempted from the provision. The suit makes the case that weekly bottomless brunches should not be exempt.

I asked Halpern, a lawyer and longtime resident of the East Village, what the next steps are with the suit.

"Next step in this case is for me to reply to motion to dismiss, and the papers get submitted on Dec. 6," he said in an email. "A motion to dismiss is a commonplace tactic. I don't think there's much merit to the motion, especially considering I am not asking for money, but for a ruling that the Liquor Authority is wrong.

"A judge could rule that the bottomless brunches are illegal under the statute, and the Authority could still decide not to to anything about them, though they are obligated to investigate complaints," Halpern said.