Monday, July 25, 2022

Here Nor There has left 9th Street

Photos by Steven 

After nearly two years at 315 E. Ninth St., Here Nor There has left the block between First Avenue and Second Avenue. 

Owner Julia Copeland is moving the store to Austin. Per a recent Instagram post: "We are so excited to grow the brand further but so sad to be leaving our East Village storefront behind."

The boutique, which offered vintage and secondhand clothing as well as an in-house label, opened in the fall of 2020

Julia's dog Percy was an especially big hit on the block...

Openings: El Churro on Houston and Allen

UPDATED: They now close at midnight Monday-Wednesday, 2 a.m. Thursday-Saturday, and 10 p.m. on Sunday!

El Churro has debuted on the SE corner of Houston and Allen (175 E. Houston St. aka 200 Allen St.).

The cafe offers house-made churros, ice cream and several coffee drinks. (You can watch them make the churros through the front window on Houston.)

For now, the hours are 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Management says they will eventually extend their hours until 10 p.m. or midnight on weekdays and 2 a.m. on weekends.

The renovations started on this thin strip of a storefront in early 2022. (Find our other coverage here for more background on previous tenants, etc.)

Meanwhile, signage for Runtz Tobacco arrives on 1st Avenue

Another day, another smoke shop reveal... this time for Runtz Tobacco at 14 First Ave. between First Street and Second Street. (Thanks to the EVG reader for the pic!) 

As far as we can recall, the last tenant in this storefront was the salon One Plus One (not to be confused with the bar One and One a storefront away). 

Something other than a smoke shop opens in a vacant storefront

A spiritual advisor specializing in spiritual things like tarot cards has set up shop at 338 E. 14th St. between First Avenue and Second Avenue (RIP Perfect Threading Salon) ...

Signage up before the official signage included a web address ...
... that went to a New Jersey-based psychic who is seen sitting with either the real Jerry Seinfeld or a Seinfeld impersonator in an Instagram post from 2018 (h/t Steven!) ...
Also, H/T Pinch!

Sunday, July 24, 2022

Limited to One celebrates 5 years

Limited to One is marking its fifth anniversary next week. 

The specialty and collectible record shop, located at 221 E. 10th St. between First Avenue and Second Avenue, opened on July 29, 2017. (Read our interview with founders Kristian Sorge and Nichole Porges here.) 

We're having a birthday party/show/record fair/old school punk distro party on July 31 at Saint Vitus at 7 p.m. We have a few of our favorite bands playing including Common Sage, Amitie, and Light Tower along with a few possible guests! In addition, we will also have a few rare crates of records and merch at the show! 
You can find tickets to the show here.
Saint Vitus Bar is at 1120 Manhattan Ave. in Greenpoint. 

And you can follow the Limited to One Instagram for updates.

Top image via Limited to One

Week in Grieview

Posts from the past week included (with a photo at the former Sidewalk on Sixth and A)... 

• A crowdfunding campaign for Andy Gil, killed by a hit-and-run driver on East Houston Street (Wednesday

• Some 13th Street residents want the fried-chicken smell to stop (Tuesday)

• Seth Tobocman on the story behind a long-covered mural on 9th Street (Thursday

• City officially unveils Manuel Plaza on 4th Street (Monday

• The new East Village location of the Brindle Room set to open next week on 11th Street (Thursday

• Raise your spirits: At WitchsFest 2022 on Astor Place (Sunday

• Construction watch: 204 Avenue A (Tuesday

• The Mermaid Inn is moving closer to its East Village return (Monday

• Kent's Dumpling House has apparently closed on 14th Street (Tuesday

• The former Baker's Pizza space is for rent on Avenue A (Monday

• Openings: Dhom on 12th Street (Wednesday

• The 9th Precinct will add bicycle patrols to the East Village (Wednesday)

• Little Kirin announces itself on St. Mark's Place (Monday

• Reader mailbag: Syringe disposal in Tompkins Square Park (Wednesday

• Kura has apparently closed on St. Mark's Place (Wednesday

• Report: Rivera tops new 10th Congressional District poll; a talk about redistricting (Monday

... and several EVG readers have shared photos of the growing memorial on the NW corner of Second Avenue and Ninth Street... (photo below by Jefferson Siegel) ...
It's a happy birthday for what would be No. 28 for Sabrina Gournaris, who died in August 2019 at age 25. We don't know what her connnection was to this corner (an obituary lists her as a Connecticut resident). Based on the number of flowers and candles, she had many friends and loved ones...

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Follow EVG on Instagram or Twitter for more frequent updates and pics.

Today in posts about things people are stealing

The 9th Precinct tweeted this out the other day... an uptick in catalytic converter theft!

According to the National Insurance Crime Bureau (NICB), catalytic converter theft has spiked dramatically due to three precious metals found inside them: palladium, rhodium, and platinum. How precious are we talking about here? At the time of this writing, an ounce of rhodium costs about $15,000.

Sunday sunrise

EVG regular Jeanne Krier shares this early morning photo...

Saturday, July 23, 2022

Saturday's parting shot

Discarded fridge art on Seventh Street via Derek Berg...

July 23

Carol from East 5th Street shares this photo... as seen this morning in the East Fifth Street pathway through Village View... a grab-and-go Christmas tree ready to make someone's home a winter wonderland on this hot Saturday in July...

Puke Island returns to Tompkins Square Park

The 10th edition of Puke Island takes place tomorrow afternoon (Sunday, July 24) in Tompkins Square Park (and, as it happens, a day after Punk Island).

Scheduled to play: 
  • 2 — The List 
  • 2:45 — Prostitution 
  • 3:30 — Skappository 
  • 4:15 — Iconicide 
  • 5 — Hell's Teeth 
Per the invite: "NONE of the bands performing at this event have ANYTHING to do with one another, other than two simple words: GOOD MUSIC." 

You can read more about the history of Puke Island here.

Bey watch

Second Avenue at Seventh Street...

Friday, July 22, 2022

'Face' time

 

Because Grace Jones was trending on Twitter today (collaboration with Beyoncé) ... here's the video for her 1981 track, "I've Seen That Face Before"...

This part of Avenue A is now officially a dedicated bus lane

DOT crews today put down the bus-lane stencils on the southbound side of Avenue A between Fifth Street and Houston.

As previously noted, parking is no longer allowed between 6 a.m. and 10 p.m. seven days a week in select corridors on Avenue A and Avenue D in an effort to speed up bus times for the M14.

This is one of the transit improvements the city announced as part of the "Better Buses Restart" campaign in May 2021.

Posted signage along Avenue A lists other additions to bus lanes on the Lower East Side...
Previously

Today in grand openings

An EVG reader shared this photo today... outside 44 E. First St. between First Avenue and Second Avenue where the Exotic Green House smoke shop has opened... (and one day we may actually list every new smoke shop that has opened in the East Village the past 3-4 months).

Thursday, July 21, 2022

Thursday's parting shot

A moment with Romey Petite today in Tompkins Square Park... photo by Derek Berg...

Noted

Eden shares some new healthy habits-handwashing messaging from the Tompkins Square Park women's restroom... likely NOT created by the Parks Department...

Seth Tobocman on the story behind a long-covered mural on 9th Street

Interview and images by Stacie Joy 

For 22 years, from 1979 to 2001, 605 E. Ninth St. between Avenue B and Avenue C served as the home to the Charas/El Bohio Community & Cultural Center.

At its peak, it was used by thousands each year, and hosted a wide array of activity: community meetings, children’s programming, art exhibits, music concerts, film screenings, plays, dance recitals, bicycle recycling, construction training, a substance abuse treatment, and political organizing. 
Unfortunately, the abandoned building, the onetime P.S. 64, has sat in disrepair for more than 20 years. (See the end of the post for more background.)

Workers recently removed the plywood from the Ninth Street side, revealing artwork from the days leading up to Charas’ eviction in 2001, including a drawing by longtime East Village-based artist-illustrator Seth Tobocman (above)

The art reads:
A 7-year-old drew this picture at a class here at Charas. The boy was upset because he and his family had found the body of a woman who had been decapitated on their doorstep. That was in the 1980s when they called the Lower East Side the warzone. Now all of N.Y.C. is a warzone. The world is a bad neighborhood. We need cultural centers like Charas more than ever to keep our sanity.
We reached out to Tobocman to learn more about the piece and the story he referenced in the painting. 

How did it feel to see your recently uncovered work in front of Charas? When we first sent you the image, you expressed surprise at seeing it — it had been under plywood for 20-plus years.

When EV Grieve first contacted me, asking me whether I had a mural at Charas, I said “no” because I had completely forgotten about this project. But when I saw the photograph, I immediately remembered it. 

It is strange that this artwork was covered over with plywood to emerge almost intact 20-plus years later like some kind of time capsule, and it makes the past seem close and far away at the same time.

Can you tell us how that work came to be? Why did Charas invite you and other artists to paint the walls outside the building? 

We painted these murals — with Charas’ permission — because the building was facing eviction, and this was a form of protest. Our group, World War 3 Arts In Action, was an artist collective formed to provide signs and banners for the protests against the invasion of Iraq. It included Christopher Cardinales, Sharron Kwik, Samantha Wilson, Carlo Quispe, Diane Jarvis, and others. 

We volunteered to paint these murals ... We started in the afternoon and continued into the evening. Eventually, the police stopped us saying, “No graffiti!” out of a loudspeaker. We did not consider this to be graffiti because we had Charas’ permission. We complied with the police order to avoid creating an incident that might reflect negatively on Charas.
Can you walk us through the story of the child’s drawing referenced in the work? You’ve held on to that piece since the early 1980s. How has it informed the art you created at that time? 

In 1983, an older community organizer, Fred Siedan, started the art classes at Charas with Lupe Garnica’s nonprofit, Chicana Raza Group of the Performing Arts, acting as an umbrella organization and occasionally providing a very small amount of funding. 

A number of artists were concerned about the role of art galleries in gentrifying the Lower East Side. We wanted to find positive ways for artists to work with the community. Eric Drooker and Paula Hewitt Amram had organized a tenant union called Angry NOHO Tenants or ANT. 

I was involved in a rent strike in my building. Sabrina Jones was working with a feminist art group called Carnival Knowledge that had studio space in Charas. We all worked on the magazine World War 3 Illustrated and did political postering and stencil graffiti in the neighborhood. 

Seidan invited us to teach classes. He said the real purpose of these art classes was to keep the kids away from the drug operation, which dominated the blocks around Charas. Parents would bring us all their kids, from toddlers to teenagers. 

Classes were very orderly because the older kids kept their younger siblings in line. Kids liked the classes so much that sometimes I would be walking through the neighborhood, and a group of children would stop me and ask, “When are we gonna have art class again?” 

One day I walked into class and saw this group of very small children sitting in one corner talking quietly to one another. Now that’s unusual, small kids talking quietly. So I listened in. The kids had found the body of a woman who had been decapitated. They were telling each other about this. Trying to describe it. Trying to figure out what it meant. 

I was fascinated by their plain but forceful language, without adjectives, value judgments or cliches. One of the kids eventually painted this wild picture of a screamy-faced woman. At the time, I was trying to do political art, but my real influences were comic books and science fiction illustrations. I really had not found my voice as a writer. 

After hearing the kids, I resolved to learn to write the way they talked and to draw the way they drew. The result was an account of my own witness to violence on the streets of New York called “I Saw A Man Bleed To Death,” which was the beginning of the art and writing style most people associate with my work. I owe a lot to those kids.
When was the last time you were inside Charas and what do you hope becomes of the building? 

The last time I was in Charas was as part of a protest against the murder of Brad Will. A crowd broke in and held the building for about an hour. 

Charas was where the East Village art scene met the Nuyorican art scene, but always on terms set by Puerto Rican community organizers. New York still needs a place like that.
As previously reported, ownership of the property is in transition. In January, Supreme Court Justice Melissa Crane ruled that Madison Realty Capital could move forward with a foreclosure against building landlord Gregg Singer after years of delay. 

Madison Realty Capital reportedly provided Singer with a $44 million loan on the property in 2016. Court records show that he failed to repay the balance by its maturity date in April 2016, and by that September, the lender filed to foreclose, as reported by The Real Deal.

Singer bought the property during a city auction in 1998 for $3.15 million. He has wanted to turn the building into a dorm, though those plans never materialized. There has been a call to return the building for community use in years past. 

The building became the Charas/El Bohio Community Center after the school left in 1977. The group was evicted in December 2001 when Singer took over as the landlord. 

The new East Village location of the Brindle Room set to open next week on 11th Street

The familiar Brindle Room signage went up yesterday at the restaurant's new home, 647 E. 11th St., just west of Avenue C. 

Owner Jeremy Spector tells us that they will debut on Wednesday, July 27, with an abbreviated preview menu through Labor Day. 

For the first few weeks, he said they'll be open Wednesday through Saturday from 5-11 p.m. ... with expanded hours, days and brunch to come soon.

The Brindle Room, known for its burgers, spent 11 years at 277 E. 10th St. between Avenue A and First Avenue. The restaurant was doing takeout during the early days of the pandemic but stayed shut after the spring of 2020.

"The place has really cool ceilings, and it's bigger and nicer than my old spot. But most important to me is that it's in the same neighborhood. I'm pretty fired up — it's been two long years." 
The previous tenant here, Virginia's, will reopen this fall in the old Root & Bone space on Third Street. 

Wednesday, July 20, 2022

Wednesday's parting shot

As seen on the NE corner of Second Avenue and Sixth Street today — "Turn trash into beautiful art for everyone to see" ... photo by Derek Berg