Sunday, February 13, 2022
Sunday's parting shot
A Bloom Bloom-Book Club mashup for Valentine's Day
Starting at 11 a.m. to whenever the flowers are gone, Bloom Bloom is selling grab-and-go wrapped bouquets and custom floral arrangements.
Book Club is at 197 E. Third St. between Avenue A and Avenue B.
Bloom Bloom is a studio-based florist. Founder Tasha Muresan recently moved to the East Village from Greenpoint.
Week in Grieview
• Where are they now? Catching up with Willie from Odessa (Wednesday)
• You may now open a business in the former NYC HQ of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club (Friday)
• A new 10-year lease for Astor Place Hairstylists (Thursday)
• City Council hosting public hearing on permanent outdoor dining legislation today (Tuesday, 59 comments)
• East Village artist Tom Manco opens a gallery-studio on Avenue B (Monday)
• Farewell to Dress Shoppe II (Monday)
• Last looks at today's 'Law & Order' shoot (Wednesday) ... 'Law & Order' creates a new tent city for Tompkins Square Park (Monday) ... Real-life 'Law & Order' in Tompkins Square Park (Thursday)
• Le Phin debuts on 10th Street (Wednesday)
• The remains of the Delancey Street Pedestrian Bridge (Thursday)
• A memory of Love Saves the Day (Friday)
• For rent signs for the empty storefronts on the SW corner of 14th and 3rd (Monday)
• Eileen Fisher has apparently closed on 9th Street (Monday)
• A message for the camper on 10th Street (Friday)
• A look at '340 E. 9th Street' on 2nd Avenue (Tuesday)
• Steak out: Man reportedly walks out of Trader Joe's with 10 packs of meat (Wednesday, 52 comments)
NYPD is searching for suspect in early morning rape on St. Mark's Place and 1st Avenue
According to a tweet by @NYPDtips, the man attacked the 23-year-old victim at 5 a.m. inside the lobby of her building.
Per amNY: "According to authorities, the perpetrator sexually assaulted the victim, then removed her purse, which contained her wallet and camera. He then fled the location and was last seen heading southbound on foot along 1st Avenue."
We'll update this post when the NYPD releases more information about the suspect. Video of the suspect is below...
🚨WANTED🚨for A RAPE in the vicinity of Saint Marks Place and 1st Avenue. #Manhattan @NYPD9pct on 2/12/22 @ 5:00AM the individual approached the victim inside the lobby of her apt. building Reward up to💰 $3500 Know who he is?📞Call 1-800-577-TIPS Calls are CONFIDENTIAL! pic.twitter.com/mjp9psczN3
— NYPD Crime Stoppers (@NYPDTips) February 13, 2022
Anyone with information that could help in the investigation is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). You may also submit tips online. All calls are strictly confidential.
According to amNY, the victim is in stable condition at a local hospital for injuries she suffered in the attack, including a swollen lip and lacerations to her mouth.
Sunday's opening shot
And if you plan on doing any crafting today, there is a small craft advisory for New York Harbor, including Raritan Bay and Sandy Hook Bay, until tomorrow at 6 p.m.
Saturday, February 12, 2022
[UPDATED] GOOD MORNING FROM 1ST AVENUE
Thanks to Steven for the pics...
That was pretty quick...
About the Winter Fest on Avenue B today
Several community groups and artists are coming together today for the Avenue B Winter Fest (which, given the temps in the high 50s today, may feel more like a Spring Fest) ...
Here's some of what to expect from 1-5 p.m. on Avenue B between Eighth Street and Ninth Street:
- 1:15 and 2 — ShapeUp NYC Cardio classes
- 3 — Mazarte Dance Company (Mexican folk dance)
- 4 — FABnyc musical guests
- 4:30 — 3rd & B'zaar Hot Fashion Show
- 5 — Sunset photo op
There will also be an interactive tape art installation via the artist Kuki and coffee and cocoa courtesy of the recently opened Hekate Café and Elixir Lounge.
Plus! Reps from the Department of Transportation will conduct a survey and outreach about the Avenue B Open Street. If you can't make it, then you can fill out the survey online here.
You can read more about the city's Open Streets program at this link.
Friday, February 11, 2022
Killing me 'Softly'
Arlo Parks released a single titled "Softly" at the beginning of the month... a season-appropriate song "about how fragile you feel in the dying days of a relationship when you're still desperately in love."
The British singer-songwriter is on a bill with Clairo at Radio City on Feb. 24.
An expanded March gallery debuts on Avenue A
March gallery opened late last May at 64 Avenue A (ex-Alphabets) between Fourth Street and Fifth Street.
As EVG contributor Stacie Joy first reported then in August, gallery owner Phillip March Jones decided to open a second gallery next door in the vacant space previously occupied by Mike's Cleaners.
Each space has a featured exhibit — the group show "Circa 1989" and solo works by Joe Minter titled "We Lost Our Spears."
Both will be on view until March 19.
Gallery hours: Tuesday-Saturday from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.
A message for the camper on 10th Street
Photos by Steven
You've likely noticed the camper that has been parked on 10th Street just east of First Avenue.
Apparently, people who live nearby have had about enough of the camper. Some messages have arrived outside (H/T simcitymayor!) ...
You may now open a business in the former NYC HQ of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club
Photos by Steven
Yesterday saw the arrival of a for-lease sign outside 77 E. Third St. between First Avenue and Second Avenue — aka the former NYC HQ of the Hells Angels Motorcycle Club.
Said one nearby resident who lived across the street from the property, "Never thought I’d see a sign like this!"
There are two retail spaces available here... in space where the fellows had their bar and entertainment area and storage space... 
There's not much info on the KSR listing ("located in the Bowery district") ... there isn't any mention of the former occupants (though there is an older street view showing the HA logo and painting of the motorcycle-helmeted skeleton atop the flaming skulls).
There's also a very un-Hells-Angels-esque conceptual rendering of the spaces...
The plaque near the entrance that read "In memory of Big Vinny 1948-1979: 'When in doubt, knock 'em out'" left with the remaining members in 2019. (Vincent "Big Vinny" Gerolamo was the Chapter president who allegedly pushed his girlfriend to her death from the roof here in 1978. He died the next year from injuries suffered in a fight with an Angel in Oakland, Calif.)
Anyway, as we've been reporting, the 6-story building underwent a gut renovation in the past 20 months. In total, there are now 22 residential units here. (The available apartments have a monthly ask in the $4k range — that's for a studio, per the listings at Better Living Properties.)
In June 2019, real-estate investor Nathan Blatter — the new owner of the building — had some ideas for the storefronts here. As he told the Post: "Blatter said he has been contacted by someone curating a Hells Angels museum, and another about a barbershop." He later flipped the building to Better Living Properties.
The last of the members and/or their entourage moved out of No. 77 at the end of March 2019 from the clubhouse that the Hells Angels had in their possession since 1969. They reportedly ended up in Throggs Neck in the Bronx.
Previously on EV Grieve:
A memory of Love Saves the Day
Per the street art here...
"This used to be Love Saves the Day. I used to come in as a kid and get sparklers and sneak peaks at the vintage Playboys."
The East Village Love Saves the Day closed on Jan. 18, 2009. Word was their rent tripled.
The deadly Second Avenue gas explosion in March 2015 destroyed three buildings here, including the space (119 Second Ave.) that housed the shop for 43 years.
Thursday, February 10, 2022
Real-life 'Law & Order' in Tompkins Square Park
Workers were seen discarding the contents in and around the tent. Witnesses said that one of the occupants was arrested after the NYPD said that he could leave, and he refused, per witnesses. The tent was also removed.
This action comes two days after crews for "Law & Order" erected a fake tent city nearby that served as a backdrop to a scene with Anthony Anderson's Det. Bernard and newcomer Jeffrey Donovan as Det. Frank Cosgrove.
Thanks to Steven for the photo.
Previously on EV Grieve:
Showing the former P.S. 64 some love during rally and press conference this Sunday
Photo from last month by Stacie Joy
With the fate of the long-vacant former P.S. 64 at 605 E. Ninth St. up in the air, a group of locals is hosting a rally and press conference here on Sunday afternoon between Avenue B and Avenue C.
Last month, Supreme Court Justice Melissa Crane ruled that Madison Realty Capital can move forward with a foreclosure against building landlord Gregg Singer after years of delay.
When news circulated that the forclosure could move forward, several sources EVG spoke with said that the news was not unexpected. However, at this point, sources said, what happens next, or what this means for the future of the building, is anyone's guess.
Here's more about the rally Sunday afternoon via the EVG inbox:
Join SOCCC-64, elected officials, community orgs, artists and activists this Valentine's Day eve to ask the City to return our beloved community and cultural center, CHARAS / El Bohio.This is an urgent call, as developer Gregg Singer, who purchased the building that housed CHARAS, former P.S. 64 at public auction in 2001, is now in default of his mortgage and is in foreclosure!We are rallying to urge the City to work with us to return our center, and we need everyone's help to make it a reality.
The rally starts at 1 p.m.
Some history. The building became the Charas/El Bohio Community Center after the school left in 1977. The group was eventually evicted in December 2001 when Singer took over as the landlord.
Singer, who bought the property from the city during an auction in 1998 for $3.15 million, has wanted to turn the building into a dorm. (The DOB maintains a Stop Work Order on the property.)
There has been a call to return the building for community use in years past. Given this movement some hope: then-Mayor de Blasio's statement at a Town Hall on Oct. 12, 2017, that the city would take steps to reacquire the building. According to published reports, the Mayor said he'd work to "right the wrongs of the past."
Those plans have never materialized, and it has sat empty these past 20-plus years.
A new 10-year lease for Astor Place Hairstylists
Photo yesterday by Steven
Astor Place Hairstylists was set to close in late 2020 after business plummeted by nearly 90 percent during the pandemic.
However, as announced in November 2020, a group of investors featuring financier Jonathan Trichter, former Hillary Clinton aide Howard Wolfson, pollster Jefrey Pollock and gaming mogul Jeffrey Gural, who's also the landlord at the address, put in the money to keep the shop afloat. (Gural was also said to reduce rent at the time.)
Yesterday, details about a new 10-year lease for the subterranean shop that dates to 1947 at 2 Astor Place (aka 740 Broadway) were announced.
"Astor Place Hairstylists is a New York institution," said Gural, chairman and principal of GFP Real Estate. "As a long-time client I am delighted to see that the business has not only pulled through the worst of the pandemic but is able remain in the same location they've occupied for more than 75 years. They are an important tenant, and we look forward to their continued success."
According to the release, Michael "Big Mike" Saviello, the longtime manager, is now one of the owners.
Previous co-owners John and Paul Vezza retired at the end of 2021, making it the first time since the opening that a Vezza family won't be involved with the shop.
Previously on EV Grieve:
The remains of the Delancey Street Pedestrian Bridge
Here's a look at what's left... the Park and neighborhood sides have been KO'd...
... just the section over the FDR remains ... (now how will they remove this without interrupting traffic on the beloved FDR?) ...
Also, according to the Weekly Construction Bulletin: "Construction activities will necessitate the closure of the sidewalk at Delancey Street between FDR Drive and Baruch Drive."
Park entry remains at Houston, Sixth Street and 10th Street. Everything below Stanton Street is closed and demolished (save for the new passive lawn).
For further reading, the February issue of The Brooklyn Rail has a piece on the $1.45-billion East Side Coastal Resiliency Project titled "Land Grab."
Wednesday, February 9, 2022
Give my regards to...
Steak out: Man reportedly walks out of Trader Joe's with 10 packs of meat
East Village resident Steven Hirsch, a photographer who contributes to the Post, happened to be in the store at the time.
Per the Post article:
Two helpless Trader Joe's staffers had followed the man up an escalator leading to the store's exit but only stopped him from taking a shopping basket outside — not the meat, the video shows.
"They basically just tell us not to do anything, just let them go," a Trader Joe's worker, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, later explained to The Post.
"We get in trouble if we do anything … It don't bother me, I've been working here for two years, I see it happen every day. After a while, you just don't care."The man initially told Hirsch that he paid for the items, but then "claimed that he was homeless and had stolen the food to eat."
"I'm gonna eat it," the man says in the video. "I'm f–king hungry."
The incident made the cover of the Post under the headline "Hamburglar," part of a larger package on how CRIME is UP throughout the city.
Where are they now? Catching up with Willie from Odessa
Text and photos by Stacie Joy
After Odessa’s closed in July 2020 at 119 Avenue A, several EVG readers wrote in asking about longtime waiter Willie Forero.
Thanks to a tip from Bobby Lesko, we found him working at old-school diner Zafi’s Luncheonette at 500 Grand St. (between Willett and Columbia) on the Lower East Side.
I recently dropped by to see how he’s doing, and I’m greeted like family at the unpretentious no-frills luncheonette. Zafi’s is owned by brothers Mike and Gerry Kekatos ... and today I find Mike behind the counter of the 46-year-old business.
He recommends the “grilled chicken con mayo” and confides he tries something different on the menu each day.
If you’d like to drop by and say hi, he works every day except Tuesday and Friday from 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m. He says he’s happy to see regulars and meet new regulars too!
A groovy kind of love: 3rd and B'zaar back with a Valentine's Market this weekend
The mixed-vendor market and event space at 191 E. Third St. between Avenue A and Avenue B will host a variety of local designers, artists, merchants and vintage sellers for this Valentine's weekend.
The Valentine's Market runs Friday-Sunday from noon to 7 p.m.
In a photoshoot with Stacie Joy, organizers (from left) Maegan Hayward, Sara Ann Rutherford and Delphine Le Goff paid homage to some 1980s excess and indulgence ...
You can follow them on Instagram for more info about vendors.
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