Wednesday, November 4, 2020

East River Park updates: Construction pushed to 2021; protected bike lanes proposed for Avenue C and East Houston

 Here are the latest updates about the $1.45 billion storm protection project for East River Park:

  - The start of construction, which had been slated to commence this fall, will be delayed until the spring of 2021, according to a presentation the city made at a CB3 committee meeting last month. For further reading: BoweryBoogie and Bedford & Bowery.

- The DOT will propose permanent protected bike lanes on Avenue C and East Houston Street to offset the closure of the East River Park greenway once construction starts. 

    As Streetsblog first reported: "The lanes will run on Houston from Second Avenue to the waterfront and on Avenue C from Houston north to 20th Street, enabling cyclists traveling from below Houston on the existing bike lanes on Pike and Allen streets to connect with the bike network further north." 

    CB3's Transportation, Public Safety, & Environment Committee will hear the proposal on Tuesday at 6:30 p.m. The Zoom info is here

- The full CB3 last week voted to preserve the East River Park's Art Deco Track House and Tennis Center Comfort Station.

  Via the EVG inbox:
Endorsing a proposal put forth by the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative, CB3 voted to recommend that the buildings, adorned with unique maritime terra cotta decorations, be raised to the Park's new grade level and renovated rather than demolished, thereby protecting them from future rising tides.

The CB3 resolution calls for amending the plans of the City's controversial East Side Coastal Resiliency Project. Those plans call for the demolition of the two structures and their replacement with standardized modern structures of the kind planned for parks all over New York City.
Now the city just needs to buy into the plan.

Meanwhile, tomorrow afternoon at 4, you may may watch the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project Community Advisory Group's next public meeting about the project. Submit questions or comments in advance. Watch on the Pratt Center for Community Development’s Facebook page. 

The hotly contested flood-protection plan will bury/elevate East River Park by eight feet as part of the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project

You can read more about various community efforts at the East River Park ACTION website. You can find the city's East Side Coastal Resiliency Project website here

After Con Ed work, Cafe Himalaya and Prim Thai are reopening


After missing seven days of business thanks to Con Ed work, Cafe Himalaya returns to service today.

As noted last week, Con Ed had to make emergency repairs at 78 E. First St. between Avenue A and First Avenue, forcing the 18-year-old family owned Tibetan/Nepalese restaurant and new neighbor Prim Thai to close.

Cafe Himalaya is open Tuesday-Sunday from 1-10 p.m. Find their website here. Or call: 212.358.0160

Previously on EV Grieve:

Tuesday, November 3, 2020

Tuesday's parting shot

The early evening sky from Sixth Street and Avenue A via Vinny & O...

Report of a death outside the Orpheum Theatre

We received multiple reader reports this morning that a man was found dead outside the Orpheum Theatre on Second Avenue between Seventh Street and St. Mark's Place. 

There was a large police presence here this morning around 8 (photo below by Derek Berg) ...
Sources later confirmed that one of the men who had been sleeping on the sidewalk had died. A friend said that the man had been sick, though he had refused to seek medical treatment. 

People have been sleeping here in recent weeks... the group had previously been camped out on the northwest corner of Second Avenue at Seventh Street.

Thank you to Steven ... and 2ndAvenueSilverPanther for the top photo

Businesses along Broadway and the Bowery board up their windows ahead of Election Day

You've probably seen the news reports that some retailers across the country are boarding up their storefronts in anticipation of any potential unrest tied to the fallout from Election Day. (Per the Times: "For weeks, fears have grown that no matter who wins, the aftermath of the election could include unrest.") 

Businesses along Broadway near Astor Place and on the Bowery were among those putting up the plywood in the days before the election. Both corriders were vandalalized and looted in late May and early June at the beginning of the protests. (Here and here.) 

Here's a plywood report from early last evening ... in many cases, the businesses were open...
... and on the Bowery...
... and along East Houston between Avenue A and Avenue B... where the vacant storefronts at 250 E. Houston St. got the plywood treatment...
... Steven shared these photos from Second Avenue at Ninth Street ... as landlords have boarded up two empty spaces... the former Starbucks and Otto's Tacos... this corridor was also hard hit in late May...
Updated 10 a.m. 

Dave on 7th shared this from 14th Street and Avenue A...
H/T Lola Sáenz and Eden!

There's another community cleanup day in Tompkins Square Park this Saturday

There's another cleanup day in Tompkins Square Park... coming up this Saturday morning at 11. 

As previously reported, given budget cuts, Johnathan Young, the head gardener in Tompkins Square Park, has been assigned to other locations ... "leaving Tompkins vulnerable to trash and weeds." 

Unlike the cleanup day on Oct. 10, which attracted up to 50 volunteers, there is a 25-person maximum for this Saturday. RSVP to this email: dayshavegoneby23@gmail.com. 

H/T Steven

Concern for Muzzarella Pizza

Several readers have asked about Muzzarella Pizza on Avenue A between 13th Street and 14th Street. 

The pizzeria has not been open since the early days of the summer ... this after a brief reopening coming out of the PAUSE. There's nothing on the gate or the Muzzarella social media properties mentioning a closure — temporary or permanent. (The last Instagram post is from June 27.) The phone number sends callers to a voice mailbox that has not been set up...

Mozzarella, which serves a tasty meatball hero among other non-pizza items, opened in 1991.

4 years on, the Shepard Fairey mural is being chipped away on 1st Avenue and 11th Street

Thanks to the reader photos/tips about the southwest corner of First Avenue at 11th Street... where workers started removing the Shepard Fairey mural this past weekend  ... these photos are from yesterday...
This work arrived here in October 2016. Titled "Rise Above," the mural featured an image of Fairey's daughter when she was 3 years old. (She is now in her mid-teens.) 

In an Instagram post, the L.I.S.A. Project, the public art charity responsible for this wall, said that "an aged building with a NW exposure and a bad pipe burst has taken its toll" on the mural these past four years.

The mural's goal was "to supply some brightness and positivity for the locals wandering below — especially the children coming and going from neighboring P.S. 19."

The L.I.S.A. Project is promising a new mural on this space.

Meanwhile, at least one reader figured the Michael Jackson mural on the other side of the Avenue might be removed first...

Monday, November 2, 2020

The Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black in Tompkins Square Park

Here's a last look at a festive Halloween this past Saturday ... when the Voluptuous Horror of Karen Black headlined the free show in Tompkins Square Park... EVG contributor Stacie Joy shared these photos of the glam-punk performance legends led by East Village-based artist Kembra Pfahler...

A Taste of the Tropics on Avenue C

Text and photos by Kenna Beban

On the corner of Ninth Street and Avenue C, a palm-size green fruit ripens and falls onto the soft earth below, resting in the shade just feet away from a sunny East Village sidewalk. 
 
“It’s called a pawpaw fruit,” Ross Martin, director of La Plaza Cultural Community Garden, said as he bent over to pick it up. “And it’s native!” 
 
A cross between a mango and a banana, the pawpaw fruit isn’t what one pictures when thinking of New York City. With custardy yellow flesh and large black seeds, it has a tropical flavor more reminiscent of a Caribbean island than a vacant city lot, and yet La Plaza’s small patch of trees have happily taken root in their few feet of soil. 
 
“I’d never seen one growing in Manhattan,” Martin said with a chuckle, “so I thought it would be cool to be the only place that had one.”
This lush community garden is one of many in the neighborhood, a local treasure with squash vines, bamboo branches and wayward weeds spilling through its wrought iron fence. The area became known for the gardens after dozens sprang from the rubble of demolished buildings just a few decades ago.

 

“People associate the neighborhood with gardens and gardens with the neighborhood,” Martin, who’s been with La Plaza for 25 years, said. According to him the “sort of spirit of creativity and ingenuity” that led to the gardens was “part and parcel of the neighborhood.”

“The benefit this place has is more of a community benefit, for bringing people together, giving us a space,” Martin explained. “We can do all that plus produce food.”

 

With supple, velveteen skin and a delicate ripeness, pawpaw fruits feel like they might bruise if you hold them just a little too tightly. Plenty have been plucked from the trees since Martin, a landscape architect, planted the patch himself seven years ago in the wake of Hurricane Irene. The storm had knocked down a weeping willow that stood in the same place, a traumatic event for the garden’s members. 

 

“People came to mourn the tree,” he said, describing the iconic 30-year-old giant that had once shaded the eastern portion of the land with its wispy pale branches. Only the stump remained in the storm’s aftermath. 

 

“We used that as the base for our hugel mounds,” Martin said. Hugel mounds are a common strategy in urban gardens to protect their produce from pollutants by layering wood, mulch, and soil on top of the lead- and arsenic-contaminated lots where buildings once stood. The old willow stump serves as a base for the pawpaw patch and surrounding hazelnut trees now occupying that corner of the garden.

 

“They’re really thriving,” Martin said proudly. “The system really works.” 

 

Hidden by wide, flat leaves, the oblong pawpaw fruits hang in clustered bunches, dropping with ease when the flesh inside turns sweet and spoonable. Picking a ripe one off the branch (which requires nothing more than a gentle twist) feels like saving it a bruising trip to the garden floor a few feet below.

 

“Basically anyone can come in and take anything they want,” Martin said about La Plaza Cultural. His goal is to maximize the garden’s potential as a food producer, a dream that, along with the pawpaw patch, could only take root recently. 

 

“It wasn’t really until the storm came and knocked over the trees that we had light in the garden,” he said. “It’s a really special fruit.” 


››››››››››

Kenna Beban is a journalism student at NYU and freelance writer in the East Village. She enjoys exploring the bits of New York City that bring it to life and tries to get outside as much as she can. 

Ducks Eatery will close this weekend after 8-plus years on 12th Street

Ducks Eatery will be shutting down after service on Saturday here on 12th Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue.

The owners, siblings Julie and Will Horowitz, made the announcement Friday on Instagram:

After a tough few months, we have made the very heavy decision to close our doors for good on Nov. 7. While this is not how we envisioned our time on 12th Street ending, we're choosing to focus on all of the extraordinary experiences that have come out of being part of your community for nearly nine years. 

Thank you for sharing your sense of adventure, your stories and your warmth with us. We are humbled and so grateful.

After opening in August 2012, Ducks Eatery was known for a creative meat-centric menu ... that evolved into more sustainable, non-meat items (including that smoked watermelon a few years back).

The two also previously ran Harry & Ida’s Meat and Supply Co. on Avenue A until last November. 

Harry & Ida's opened in June 2015, and immediately drew raves for their pastrami. The market, which specialized in preserved foods and smoked meats, was named for their great-grandparents Harry and Ida Zinn, Hungarian immigrants who had a store in Harlem. 

Updated 4 p.m.

Eater has more on the closure:
Will Horowitz attributed the closure to the economic downturn from the coronavirus pandemic in a phone call with Eater on Monday. Though the restaurant’s longtime landlords ... attempted to negotiate a rent agreement, keeping the business afloat on takeout, delivery, and outdoor dining sales would have been “impossible,” he says.

...Horowitz says the restaurant’s indoor dining room could accommodate no more than 10 people at the state-mandated 25 percent capacity.

“It would have been a death wish going into winter,” he says

Incoming office building makes first appearance above the plywood at 141 E. Houston

Steal beams, the first above-ground signs of the office building going up at 141 E. Houston St., are now visible from the construction site here between Eldridge and Forsyth...
This will eventually be a 9-floor building that the developers describe like this:
From acclaimed architect Roger Ferris, the only new development of its type on the Lower East Side, 141 East Houston is a new frame for viewing the neighborhood. Column-free and unbounded by walls, it reinterprets the area through a bold geometric perimeter of cladding and glass. State-of- the-art workspaces and private terraces reframe expectations, while a well-connected location recasts perspectives. 
With its glass frame and dynamic courtyard running the length of its eastern side, doubling as a second facade, 141 East Houston challenges the distinction between indoors and out.

East End Capital and K Property Group bought the property for $31.5 million in the spring of 2017.

The vacant corners on the west side of 3rd Avenue and 13th Street

The retail spaces on the northwest and southwest corners of Third Avenue at 13th Street are vacant.

As previously reported, Brazen Fox, the two-level sports bar, shut down in September after seven years in business. And the for rent signs arrived last week. (No word on the asking rent for this "high foot traffic area.")

From 2009-2012, the space had been the restaurants Hea ... and Friend House.

More recently, Bluemercury, the luxury beauty retailer, vacated the southwest corner. 

Gothic Cabinet Craft shop closed in January 2016 after 47 years in business on this corner. A listing showed that the asking rent here at the time was nearly $30,000 a month. 

Opening and/or coming soon: The Dolar Shop, Kyuramen

The Dolar Shop, a global hot pot chain with 50-plus locations, is looking very close to opening the doors at their new outpost on the southeast coast of Third Avenue and 11th Street... this will be the second NYC location for the Dolar Shop, joining the one out in Flushing. (Previously)

Meanwhile...
.... the coming soon signage recently arrived for Kyuramen, a Taiwan-based ramen chain with 120 locations worldwide, at 210 E. 14th St. between Second Avenue and Third Avenue. (Previously

Sunday, November 1, 2020

Halloween night with Moral Panic

On Halloween night, Moral Panic played another quarantine rock session from the front windows (one for each of the three band members) of a residential building on Second Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue... this marks the third show from this location this year. 

While the band put up flyers nearby ... many of the few dozen spectators outside the building heard the music from the Avenues and stopped by... appearing excited by the impromptu live session.

EVG contributor Stacie Joy was on hand for the nearly 30-minute high-energy set...