A visit to East River Park

Photos by Stacie Joy

This past July 4, EVG contributor Stacie Joy visited East River Park, documenting the visitors who were out enjoying the holiday and ideal summer weather.

If all goes according to the city's updated plans, then this marked the last July 4 along this stretch of the Park for the next four years. As previously reported, city officials, starting next spring, will close East River Park, burying it with 8- to 10-feet of soil to help protect the east side from future storms as part of the East Side Coastal Resiliency project.

The controversial plan is currently winding through the Uniform Land Use Review Procedure. Community Board 3 recently signed off on the project, though with a list of conditions. (On Monday, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer asked city officials for a 60-day delay for the City Planning Commission hearing to address unanswered questions about the project.)

Stacie noted there was some misinformation about the city's plan from a few of the people she talked with in East River Park, including the length of the closure (one person said 10 to 15 years, which, well...). Another person thought that East River Park was closing for good. Overall, though, Stacie reported that there was a positive, low-key vibe along the waterfront on this July 4 holiday.

Prepping 183 Avenue B for demolition

Prepwork is underway to demolish 183 Avenue B, the four-story building between 11th Street and 12th Street.

The sidewalk bridge recently arrived ... as well as the warning notices about baiting for rats...



As we reported on June 13, reps for the owner of No. 183 have filed plans for a new 8-floor residential building here.

According to the permit filed with the city, the building will have 12 residential units with ground-floor retail. (The demo permits were filed with the city in April.)

In January 2017, Corcoran listed the property with a $4.75 million ask. The building — with air rights intact — sold for that exact amount in April 2017, per public records. The DOB permit lists Richard Pino via the Tompkins 183 LLC as the owner.

Another reminder that a Calexico outpost is opening on 2nd Avenue

The Calexico outpost coming to 99 Second Ave. is moving closer toward an opening... EVG correspondent Steven spotted these open-call signs outside the restaurant yesterday here between Fifth Street and Sixth Street... not sure if they'll be looking to continue hiring today...



The owners — brothers Brian, Dave, and Jesse Vendley — received the OK from CB3 last August for a liquor license for this space, which was previously home to Brick Lane Curry House. (Brick Lane moved one block to the south.)

The Cal-Mex burrito-beer chainlet currently has a handful of NYC locations (Upper East Side, Greenpoint, Park Slope, Red Hook, among them) as well as in Detroit — and Bahrain.

Previously

Noted

The 10 NYC Commandments, as written on a discarded mattress on Second Street between Avenue A and First Avenue...

1. There is only 1 God (Money)
2. Honor thy lease
3. Don't covet thy neighbor
4. Don't worship false presidents
5. Do not lie (except on dates)
6. Do not steal (except from work)
7. I am a fucking jealous God
8. Do not forsake NY
9. Sunday is a day of brunch
10. Do not kill your dream


Courtesy of Adrian Wilson ...

RIP Steve Cannon

[Image via Facebook]

Update: A gathering to remember Steve Cannon and collectively mourn his loss is set for Sunday, July 14 at the Bowery Poetry Club from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Steve Cannon, a local cultural icon who founded the East Village-based A Gathering of the Tribes, died this past weekend. He was 84. A cause of death was not immediately known.

Cannon, who was born in New Orleans in 1935, had been recovering at the VillageCare Rehabilitation and Nursing Center on West Houston Street for a broken hip, according to The Villager.

In 1991, Cannon founded A Gathering Of The Tribes as an arts and cultural organization "dedicated to excellence in the arts from a diverse perspective." It started as a print magazine at the time that he lost his eyesight to glaucoma. Through the years, A Gathering of the Tribes evolved into a salon of sorts in Cannon's East Third Street apartment for artists to meet and exchange ideas.

As The New York Times Style Magazine described it in a February 2018 feature: "It was a living monument to Lower Manhattan’s lineage of multicultural artists and thinkers — people who often get overlooked in favor of narratives of and by successive generations of self-destructing, gentrifying white bohemians — but it was also an all-hours open house, where all were welcome (even the gentrifying white bohemians) and an essential site of Lower Manhattan’s last gasp as the center of the avant-garde."

Here's more on Cannon from that Times piece:

Cannon ... came to New York in 1962, and even before he founded Tribes, he played such a role in New York’s counterculture that he has become a kind of oracular figure to those who have encountered him. In the early ’60s, he convened informal discussions about music and literature with writers like [writer David] Henderson and [his friend Ishmael] Reed and other members of Umbra.

In the 1970s, Cannon ran a publishing house with Reed and the poet Joe Johnson that was one of the first independent presses to focus on multicultural literature. The painter Gerald Jackson once saved him from drowning in the Hudson River. Sun Ra used to seek him out to tell stories about flying around in space. (“If he says he flew into space, then I guess he flew into space,” Cannon says.) He helped integrate the public university school system in New York by becoming an early faculty member at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn, where he taught humanities. The composer Butch Morris refined his ideas of improvised music in his living room.

After a lengthy legal battle with his landlord, Cannon moved out of his longtime Third Street home in 2014, relocating to East Sixth Street.

Cannon's friends and followers have been leaving tributes these past 48 hours...

View this post on Instagram

Steve Cannon R.I.P😎🙏🏽🕊 I remember him always sitting at the corner of the bar at the NuyoricanPoets Cafe smoking a cigarette, long ash refusing to drop. A young poet prepares to take the stage to read/slam/spit his/her poem...but first begins to explain what the poem is about. Steve, the blind ogre with a heart of gold yells out from his sacred corner of the bar "Read the goddamn poem!" He seemed mean but he made us (me) better, made us (me) sharper less afraid to take the stage and just "read the goddamn poem" without apology or explanation. He loved us poets. He toughened us. He is gone. There are more stories more memories... more than more, much more. This is just one of the so many more that popped in my mind. For you Steve I will READ THE GODDAMN POEM #stevecannon #nuyoricalpoetscafe #tribes #blackpoet #apoetsangel #readthedamnpoem

A post shared by Liza Jessie Peterson (@lizajessiepeterson) on Jul 7, 2019 at 9:14am PDT

View this post on Instagram

we love you madly Steve Cannon. Poet. Professor. cultural leader. Gatherer of souls. you did everything imaginable for artists and for our city. you showed us that Magic was still here, despite the new york changes, showing us what yesterday was Like and what today could be. your Space fostered countless new relationships, visions, creations. I found my way to the Tribes doorstep as a wandering 18 year old artist looking for something real.. it changed and illuminated everything. we Honor you by the continuation of generations that Thrived because of your selfless work and your love. we love you madly madly madly. (photographs © No Land, one by @chavisawoods and one by Gaia squarci) @a_gathering_of_the_tribes @bobholman @illybeats #stevecannon #gatheringofthetribes #tribesgallery #umbrapoets #lowereastsidenyc

A post shared by No Land (@nolandtapes) on Jul 7, 2019 at 9:44am PDT

We'll update the post when more details are available, including news of a memorial.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Musical interludes: Steve Cannon plays piano at Tribes Gallery

A Gathering of Tribes faces an uncertain future on East Third Street

P.C. Richard is gone on 14th Street; preservationists want answers about tech-hub commitments

The former P.C. Richard and Son complex on 14th Street at Irving Place has been KO'd ...



Workers have mostly cleared the site for the eventual construction of the 22-story Union Square Tech Training Center (aka tech hub). Foundation work is expected soon.

While there's noticeable progress on this new-building front, the Village Preservation is left wondering what happened to the commitments that were made last summer as part of the tech hub approval "that have been broken or not been met."

The group recently sent a letter (copy here) to Mayor de Blasio and local City Councilmember Carlina Rivera.

Per that letter: "It is deeply disturbing to see that a full year after the approval, while the developer has moved full steam ahead with their project, there has been no movement whatsoever on any of these incredibly modest protections which were promised."

Here's more via the Village Preservation website:

On the occasion of a year having passed since the City Planning Commission approved the upzoning for the 14th Street Tech Hub, we pointed out that the sole zoning protection for the impacted neighborhood promised by Councilmember Rivera and the City – the imposition of a requirement of a special permit for new hotels in the 3rd and 4th Avenue corridors — has not been implemented or even drafted, nor had a promised “tenant protection campaign” for area residents which was to include “community-wide forums” and “door-knocking campaigns.”

The group also took issue with the blocking of pedestrian and vehicular traffic outside the site.

We further pointed out that the developer explicitly committed that all demolition and construction work would be done within the bounds of the property and that neither the sidewalk on 14th Street nor the roadbed would be encroached upon.

Instead, with City permission, the developer has encroached upon the sidewalk and two of three lanes of eastbound traffic, forcing pedestrians waiting for the bus to stand in the street, and completely blocking the single remaining lane of eastbound traffic when MTA buses stop to pick up and let off passengers in front of the tech hub site (where a bus stop is located).

Curbed has more on the story here, including comments from Rivera's office and the Department of City Planning, who says "it is working to address neighborhood concerns raised by the Council member and is combing through what a special hotel permit would entail for the area."

A spokesperson for de Blasio told Gothamist last week that the administration was "actively working to address the concerns respect to future development as well as preservation of existing housing in the Union Square South area."

The project is being developed jointly by the city’s Economic Development Corp. and RAL. The Union Square Tech Training Center includes Civic Hall, which will offer digital skills for low-income residents, as well as market-rate retail, office space and a food hall.

The hub, championed by Mayor de Blasio and initially announced in early 2017, passed through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Process earlier in 2018, capped off by a unanimous City Council vote in August. A rezoning was required to build the the structure, which is larger than what current commercial zoning allows.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Behold Civic Hall, the high-tech future of Union Square — and NYC

Speaking out against a 'Silicon Alley' in this neighborhood

P.C. Richard puts up the moving signs on 14th Street; more Tech Hub debate to come

Preservationists: City schedules next public hearing on tech hub without any public notice

City Council's lone public hearing on the 14th Street tech hub is tomorrow

City Council unanimously approves tech hub; some disappointment in lack of zoning protections

The conversation continues on the now-approved tech hub for 14th Street

Report: Preservationists want probe of the tech hub deal on 14th Street

A rendering and vintage erotic playing cards (NSFW) at the under-renovation (and mysterious!) 84 2nd Ave.

There's now a rendering on the plywood offering a look at what the under-renovation 84 Second Ave. will look like when work is complete here between Fourth Street and Fifth Street...



We noted a few weeks ago that work is underway on the five-floor building, including "a horizontal enlargement at the rear." (Read the previous post for all the details on the renovations.)

Also as noted though the years, the building had a dark, mysterious air ... there was the now-removed plastic-covered dinner jacket in the second-story window with the neon sign that read "DRESS SUITS TO HIRE."


[Photo by Jeremiah Moss]

In 1974, Helen Sopolsky, proprietor of the family's tailor shop, was found bludgeoned to death, according to published reports at the time. The case was never solved ... and the storefront remained empty — save for that dinner jacket — in the years following her death.

Her sister, Betty Sopolsky, remained a tenant of the building, which she sold in 2016. It was not known who else may have lived at No. 84.

Another curiosity about the address was discovered last week. (NSFW below!) A worker with the crew renovating the space showed EVG correspondent Derek Berg these vintage erotic playing cards that were found inside a wall in one of the rooms...



Previously on EV Grieve:
Plywood and a petition at 84 2nd Ave.

Workers clearing out the mysterious 84 2nd Ave. storefront

Renovations proposed for mysterious 84 2nd Ave.

Mysterious 84 2nd Ave. sells again, this time for $7.8 million

There are new plans to expand the mysterious 84 2nd Ave.

Neapolitan Express comes to a halt for now on 2nd Avenue

The Neapolitan Express outpost on Second Avenue between First Street and Second Street has not been open in recent weeks during its advertised business hours...



There's nothing about a temporary or permanent closure on the Neapolitan Express website or social media properties. Calls to this restaurant go to a voicemail box that hasn't been set up... no one responded to an email about the pizzeria's status on Second Avenue.

Neapolitan Express opened here in February 2018. The company started its business life as a food truck. Per the Neapolitan website: "Originally launched in 2013 as the world’s first Eco Friendly Food Truck, Neapolitan Express was officially introduced by lead investors, energy innovators and business tycoons T. Boone Pickens of Clean Energy Fuels and Mayor Michael Bloomberg of Bloomberg L.P."

As for those trucks, at least three of them have been spotted outside the Second Avenue outpost during non-food-truck hours...

Black Iron Burger currently closed for renovations on 5th Street

In case a trip to Black Iron Burger at 540 E. Fifth St. near Avenue B was in your very near future... the quick-serve shop is currently closed for renovations...



... and it's an actual renovation and not code for we're closed forever...



The other three Black Iron NYC outposts are open in the meantime. The East Village location was the first, opening in 2008 (with new ownership taking over in 2013).

Last summer, TripAdvisor rated Black Iron as serving the best burger in New York State.

A night like this: See the Cure's 40th anniversary show Thursday at these East Village theaters

The Cure's 40th anniversary show is in theaters for a one-night-only event later this week ...



You can see "The Cure – Anniversary 1978-2018 Live in Hyde Park London" Thursday night at City Cinemas Village East, Second Avenue at 12th Street ... and the Regal Union Square on Broadway and 13th Street. Show time is 7 p.m. at both theaters.

Now enjoy this flashback to July 2, 1981, when the Cure played the Rock Werchter Festival. They were told to stop their set early to make way for Robert Palmer. So they ended with this 9-minute version of "A Forest"...

Petition to 'Save Tompkins Square asphalt!' closing in on 19,000 signatures

The petition opposing the city's plan to cover the concrete courtyard (aka TF) with synthetic turf in Tompkins Square Park has received overwhelming support in just one week.

As of this morning, nearly 19,000 people had signed their name to "Save Tompkins Square asphalt!"

As we reported last Tuesday, the city has plans — apparently only known to residents who may have attended a Community Board committee meeting in May — to cover the multipurpose courts in the northwest corner of Tompkins Square Park with synthetic turf, a move that surprised and upset a major user of that space since the 1980s — skateboarders.

"While this might look like some flat concrete to a lot of people, this place holds a really deep and sacred importance to thousands of skaters and young people who come together to use this park on a daily basis," East Village resident Adam Zhu, who started the petition, told NBC New York.

The turf project, happening at several area parks, is a result of the city's flood-protection plan that will close East River Park next March for 3.5-plus years. The city needs to find space for the sports teams and youth leagues who use the fields along East River Park.

Turfing the asphalt will also displace other groups here in the corner at Avenue A and 10th Street, including the 400 members of the BlackTop Street Hockey League who use the space on Sunday afternoons.

There is word of a meeting set for early this week between reps for the skateboarders and the Parks Department.

--

The story has also been picked up by Patch ... the Post ... and Fox 5.

You can find the petition here.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Skateboarders upset over plan to add synthetic turf to the northwest corner of Tompkins Square Park

Sioné is the name of Samy Mahfar's residential building at 255 E. Houston St.

Here's a look at 255 E. Houston St./171 Suffolk St., the L-shaped parcel where work continues at developer Samy Mahfar's 14-floor residential building. (The condoplex on the corner of Houston and Stanton is part of a different project.)


[Entrance at 171 Suffolk St.]

Branding on the sidewalk bridge now reveals that the building is called Sioné ...



There's also a teaser site where prospects may sign up to be on a mailing list. The site describes Sioné this way — "A Limited Collection of Luxury Residences"...



The residences here range from studios to three bedrooms — all with or without terraces ...



There's a lot of backstory with this development. Quickly: In September 2016, Mahfar withdrew his application — after a five-year fight with Community Board 3 and local elected officials — for a commercial zoning change for this property and surrounding parcels. He wanted to put a restaurant or retail business on the ground floor. Under current zoning, only a community facility is allowed. (The new building has 6,258 square feet set aside for that usage.)

Mahfar, who has been accused of harassing rent-regulated tenants, had approval for a 10-floor building, which turned into 14 floors and 88 units.

As the Lo-Down reported in December 2017: "Mahfar had already received 421a tax breaks to build some affordable units, but he was also seeking a floor area bonus through the city’s inclusionary housing program." It's not immediately clear how many affordable units may be available in this complex.

No. 255 previously housed the day-care center Action for Progress, which was forced to evacuate in 2009 after construction on the condoplex next door destabilized the building...


[EVG photo of No. 255 from 2012]

Previously on EV Grieve:
Next for 255 E. Houston St.: Community facility/school/medical building?

10-story building now in the works for 255 E. Houston St.

Debate over commercial overlay for 255 E. Houston St. and surrounding blocks continues

Report: Samy Mahfar drops bid for commercial overlay on East Houston and parts of the LES

Café Social 68 coming to Avenue A

Signage arrived last week for Café Social 68, a new spot at 68 Avenue A between Fourth Street and Fifth Street.

This is the former Croissanteria space ... and the new venture is a like-minded concept with coffee, pastries (no croissants though!) and a lunch-dinner menu featuring sandwiches, salads and rice bowls. No word on an opening date, though we're told it should be fairly soon.

Croissanteria closed in the spring after seven years of service.

787 Coffee for 101 2nd Ave.

Looks like an outpost of 787 Coffee is coming to Second Avenue.

Signage is up on the former Block's Vision Care storefront here at Sixth Street (this new location is also confirmed via 787's Instagram account) ...



This will be the second East Village outpost for 787, which grows and roasts their coffee in Puerto Rico. The 787 opened on Seventh Street near Avenue A last October.

This is a coffee-rich zone already with several nearby choices, including the Coffee Project and Southern Cross on Fifth Street just off the Avenue... not to mention Cafe Mocha on Second Avenue and Seventh Street, the Bean on Second Avenue and Third Street, and Kona Coffee and Company on Second Avenue between Third Street and Fourth Street.

As for Block's Vision Care, they merged that business into Block Drugs next door back in the spring.

The Marshal seizes Chouchou on 4th Street

A bad sign at Chouchou, the Mediterranean-Moroccan bistro on Fourth Street between Avenue A and Avenue B... there's a posted notice stating that the restaurant is now in the legal possession of the landlord...



There's nothing at the Chouchou website about a closure. We reached out to ownership to learn more about the situation here.

Chouchou, from Mario Carta, who also runs Pardon My French at 103 Avenue B, opened in March 2017. The cuisine here had been awarded a Michelin Bib Gourmand the past two years. Carta's other venture on this block, Nobody Is Perfect, closed last August.