2 bad signs at Luzzo's on Avenue B

Photos by Stacie Joy 

The Marshal has seized Luzzo's La Pizza Napoletana on the SE corner of Avenue B and Second Street. 

A notice on the front door states that the landlord is now in legal possession of the premises...

In addition, there's a yellow closed notice — mostly peeled off — from the Department of Health. The DOH closed the pizzeria late last week following an inspection. 

According to public records, the most recent violations are: 

1) No approved written standard operating procedure for avoiding contamination by refillable returnable containers. 

2) Food Protection Certificate (FPC) not held by manager or supervisor of food operations.

The restaurant's interior is also in different stages of being packed up...

The pizzeria from the Luzzo's brand opened here in May 2022, coinciding with the closing of their 18-year-old coal-oven space on First Avenue. 

There's no word of a closure on the Luzzo's website or social media platforms.

Meanwhile, two new pizzerias are in the works for nearby on Avenue B — Potenza Centrale and Lollo.

The Hard Swallow is now closed

Workers have removed the sign outside The Hard Swallow at 140 First Ave. between St. Mark's Place and Ninth Street (thanks to Steven for the photo). 

As previously reported, the bar closed after service this past Saturday night. This came two-plus months after the sudden passing of co-owner Leroy "Big Lee" Lloyd, who was 51. 

Maria "Sasha" Lloyd, his wife and business partner, hosted a closing-night party on Saturday — which also happens to be close to Lee's birthday — featuring regulars from the Coney Island Circus Sideshow. (Big Lee grew up in Coney Island.) 

While the Hard Swallow is done, Sasha's business partner will be keeping the space and eventually opening a new bar after going through the liquor license process. 

As for Sasha, a lifelong neighborhood resident, she's making a fresh start and will move to Hawaii in the weeks ahead. 

EVG contributor Stacie Joy stopped by The Hard Swallow on its last night... and took a parting shot of Sasha...

... and a very full bar...

The Avenue Cafe bringing pastries and coffee to St. Mark's Place

Photo by Steven 

The Avenue Cafe is expected to open soon at 102 St. Mark's Place between Avenue A and First Avenue. 

The independent/minority-owned shop will offer a variety of coffee drinks and housemade pastries. This marks their first storefront after two-plus years inside the Jamaica Market food hall in Queens.

If you're on Instagram, you can follow The Avenue Cafe here. 

The previous tenant at No.102, Compilation Coffee, quietly closed last fall after a few months in business. (They recently resurfaced in Fort Greene.)

So the Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade will take place this year after all

There will be a Tompkins Square Halloween Dog Parade after all this month.

Last Thursday, organizers canceled the event "for the foreseeable future." According to an Instagram post: "Despite our best efforts to keep the parade going, with ongoing building work in both our local parks [East River and Tompkins] there was just no way to hold the parade this year." 

Organizer Joseph Borduin told EVG and other outlets that there was too much bureaucracy involved with city agencies and local elected officials for the necessary permits and insurance costs — upwards of $50,000. The parade was to take place along the Open Street of Avenue B.

Enter Get Joy, a Connecticut-based dog wellness company, who, according to a press release, jumped in as the exclusive title partner to work with the Friends of the First Run, the official 501(c)(3) fundraising organization for the Tompkins Square Dog Run, to help fund and orchestrate this year's parade. 

"This parade is all about dogs finding joy by spending time with their families and other dogs in their community," Get Joy founder and CEO Tom Arrix said in a statement. 

"I couldn’t have imagined this in my wildest dreams. First, the Mayor offers his support, and then Get Joy reaches out to pay for everything all within the hour," Borduin told EVG's Stacie Joy last night. "I was done with Halloween and ready [to] think about Thanksgiving, but this time, the entire country spoke out and said that this show must go on, and thanks to everyone's support, it will!" 

The parade is scheduled for Oct. 21 from 1-3 p.m. Stay tuned for more details on this 33rd edition.

Updated: Per City Councilmember Carlina Rivera's office:

The parade will take place on Avenue B from Sixth Street to 14th Street, with staging on Seventh Street between Avenue A and Avenue B. Additionally, a stage will be set up in Tompkins Square Park. 

The event was nearly canceled in 2018 as well, though a deal was eventually worked out.

A Bank of America is checking into the corner of 2nd Avenue and 7th Street

Interior storefront renovations are underway at 119 Second Ave. (aka 45 E. Seventh St.) ...

According to work permits on the front window, Bank of America will be the new (and first) tenant of this newish condominium complex ... (H/T Adam!)

This branch arrival comes at a time when banks are reportedly closing neighborhood locations. (Plus, there's a BoA branch three blocks south on Second Avenue and Fourth Street.)

The corner building was ready for occupancy in mid-2021... six years after the deadly gas explosion destroyed this corner in March 2015 and took the lives of Nicholas Figueroa and Moises Locón. 

Figueroa, 23, who had recently graduated from SUNY Buffalo State, was at Sushi Park, 121 Second Ave. between Seventh Street and St. Mark's Place and the site of the fatal blast, dining with a co-worker. Locón, 27, worked at Sushi Park.

The explosion injured over 20 others and leveled 119, 121 and 123 Second Ave. 

The previous corner building housed vintage shop Love Saves the Day for 43 years... closing in January 2009 after their rent was tripled. (Their location remains open in New Hope, Pa.)

Previously

Look at 6 Avenue B now!

Photos by Stacie Joy

Oh! — 6 Avenue B no longer looks as if it has been abandoned for 20 years. 

Workers have removed the scaffolding and construction netting from the under-renovation building on the NW corner of Avenue B.

An LLC linked to Penn Capital South, whose portfolio includes multiple EV properties, bought the building in February... but they didn't decide to keep it long — it's back on the market.

The retail space is for lease, too... here's the listing.

Anyway, as we've noted (a lot!), this was one of the abandoned buildings owned by the estate of the mysterious team of Arthur and Abraham Blasof, both long deceased. However, No. 6 has been generating some income with the cell-phone towers on the roof. 

The liquor store in the retail space closed when the owner passed away in the fall of 2009 at age 89. (Chico created the tribute to her on the gate in February 2010. Will it stay?)

As we've pointed out (here and here), the building was in dismal shape and needed significant work to bring it up to code. Before the renovations, the DOB had cited No. 6 for emergency repairs several times in recent years.

Previously on EVG: 

• Because you've always wanted to know what the inside of the long-empty 6 Avenue B looks like 

• Let's take another look at the eerie remains of the long-abandoned 6 Avenue B 

• Time passages: Check out the interior of the long-empty Mom's Liquor Store on Avenue B

231 1st Ave. up to its 4th business in the past year

Photo by Pinch 

Signage is up now for Chick-N-Smash at 231 First Ave. 

And it will be the latest business for the storefront between 13th Street and 14th Street in the past 12 months.

Tony's Famous Pizza closed late last year ... then came signage for Deli Convenience in the spring... which turned into Dispensary ... before the same signage for Deli Convenience returned by late May. Their grand opening lasted a few months.

Vinny Vincenz had a solid run here for 18 years until the spring of 2021.

Spellbound! It's the return of Hitchcocktober

Somehow, it's Oct. 3 already... and we're late to note the return of Hitchcocktober to Village East by Angelika on Second Avenue at 12th Street. 

And here's this year's slate of Alfred Hitchcock films ... starting tomorrow (Wednesday!) night:

• Oct. 4 — "Rear Window"
• Oct. 11 — "To Catch a Thief"
• Oct. 18 — "Vertigo"
• Oct. 25 — "Shadow of a Doubt"
• Oct. 31 — "Psycho"

Find ticket info here. And be warned: Advance tickets sell quickly, especially the screenings in the large auditorium — the Jaffe Art Theatre. (The Halloween night screenings of "Psycho" are nearly sold out.)

Behold this amazing miniature of Mars Bar

EVG contributor Stacie Joy spotted Danny Cortes today on Third Street and Avenue B... carrying his amazing miniature of Mars Bar (RIP 2011, Second Avenue and First Street). 

Cortes was showing the work before shipping it off to its new home. (And we're not sure how realistic the restrooms were inside this model!) 

The Times recently profiled the miniature/diorama artist. Read the article here.

On 14th Street and Avenue A, Posse in Effect with the Beastie Boys

Photo by Edmund John Dunn

Here's a day 2 work-in-progress look at Posse in Effect featuring the Beastie Boys, a new mural going up on the SW corner of 14th Street and Avenue A (on the east-facing wall of 436 E. 14th St.).

Shepard Fairey, in collaboration with the Lisa Project NYC, is working on the wall... from a photo by East Village-based photographer Glen E. Friedman. The work is part of the ongoing celebration of 50 years of hip hop.

Fairey, the Lisa Project and Friedman last joined forces on the Bad Brains mural last December on Bleecker at the Bowery. 

Tenants crowdfund to aid East Village super critically injured in high-speed car collision

Past and present tenants of 305 E. 11th St. and 310 E. 12th St., adjacent multifamily residential buildings between First Avenue and Second Avenue, have come together to help their longtime super who was severely injured after being struck by a speeding car while visiting his native Albania.

According to a GoFundMe campaign, Haxhi Haxhaj, a super here for 30-plus years, was on his annual trip home last month when he was hit while crossing the street near the family house in Kosovo.

Per the campaign:

He ...  is currently in a medically induced coma, facing a long and difficult road to recovery. His wife, Sadete; children Gentiana and Elbasan (who grew up in our building); daughter-in-law and granddaughters are now with him. 

Haxhi is no ordinary super. Available night and day, he keeps our building spotless and can be seen every morning sprucing up our 12th Street sidewalk and beloved tenants' garden. 

A doting husband, father and, most recently, grandfather, nothing makes him happier than sharing a recent photo and story of his granddaughters. Please help us support this hard-working and devoted man with his extensive medical needs and his family with travel and living expenses abroad. 

According to organizers, he was taken by a medivac flight to a hospital in Istanbul, where he remains in a coma.

You can find the crowdfunding campaign at this link.

Here's the next business for the former Grassroots Tavern space on St. Mark's Place

There's finally a new tenant for the long-empty retail space at 20 St. Mark's Place between Second Avenue and Third Avenue. 

A worker on the scene told EVG contributor Derek Berg that this lower-level storefront — the longtime home of the Grassroots Tavern — is becoming a doggy daycare center.

And that's all we have at the moment.

At least five brokers have tried to lease the space since the Grassroots Tavern closed here after New Year's Eve 2017 after 42 years (upstairs tenant Sounds shuttered in 2015).

At least two potential tenants have kicked No. 20's tires (including this pub concept that signed a lease), but nothing has materialized since January 2018.

As noted, No. 20, the Daniel LeRoy House, was built in 1832. It received landmark status in 1971 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982.

Past lives of this subterranean space — info via Daytonian in Manhattan — include a theater saloon called Paul Falk's Tivoli Garden in the 1870s... in the 1930s, the Hungarian Cafe and Restaurant resided here before becoming a temperance saloon called the Growler.

In case you felt like seeing this exhibit featuring a classic Lower East Side bagel shop

Photos and reporting by Stacie Joy 

Starting today, you can check out the latest immersive art show from U.K.-based artist Lucy Sparrow — a bagel shop where everything is hand-sewn out of felt. 

CLLCTV NYC on Third Street at Avenue B is home this month to Feltz Bagels, described as "an artistic homage to the city's legendary culinary delicacy and the neighborhood bagel joints of the Lower East Side." 

Here's a look at the exhibit, which debuted in August at TW Fine Art in Montauk. (You can read more about Sparrow in this WWD piece.)

Visitors can purchase the felt creations, including hand-sewn bagels in all varieties...

CLLCTV is at 209 E. Third St., just east of Avenue B. The space is open daily from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. through Oct. 31. 

P.S. 

Be sure to check out the backroom... decked out as a corner deli-smoke shop-liquor store...

... even with some felt contraband...

The saga continues...

Photo today in Tompkins Square Park by Steven ... (see this post for the background).

Why the benches were removed from across the street from the 9th Precinct

Photos and reporting by Stacie Joy 

Last Thursday, citing safety and quality-of-life issues, including an increase in unhoused residents, the 9th Precinct removed the park benches from across the station house on Fifth Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue. 

Sources from the Precinct told us that they've fielded complaints and witnessed activities including drinking, drug use and sex work. (Sources said the benches were also serving as makeshift toilets.) All this despite the presence of dozens of NYPD vehicles parked in the vicinity.

The NYPD asked people to unlock their bikes from the benches and fence as well... the posted flyers describe this operation as a "cleanup."

The incidents occurred outside the playground for PS 751 Manhattan School for Career Development on Fourth Street. The benches are the school's property, and officials there were said to be in agreement with their removal.

Benny (below), a resident who lives in a building on Fifth Street adjacent to the benches, approved of the removal, stating that he has seen the drug activity here. Benny has two kids and said he's "scared to walk by sometimes."

Precinct sources said they'd consider introducing a limited number of chairs and tables here at some point in the future... though it remains to be seen where the funding for such additions might come from...

Tenants and businesses are now without gas at 199 E. 3rd St.

Photos and reporting by Stacie Joy

On Thursday, Con Ed inspected 199 E. Third St., the building on the NW corner at Avenue B.

The posted notice states that workers found multiple leaks and shut off the gas to the entire building. 

Unfortunately, as we've seen, these situations take a while to resolve. So, for now, residential tenants of this Steve Croman-owned building will need to use hot plates to cook and get used to cold showers.

Meanwhile, Asian Taste on the corner will be closed for the foreseeable future...

Sadly, this also means that Luigi Iasilli will experience a delay in launching his new project, Potenza Centrale, in the same building.

Previously on EV Grieve:

• The owner of Max restaurant is returning to Avenue B with a new pizzeria 

Retail spaces at the historic 4 St. Mark's Place are now for rent

Both retail spaces at 4 St. Mark's Place near Third Avenue are now available. 

According to the listing at Meridian Captial Group, the upper and lower spaces (each at 2,500 square feet) can be leased separately. 

And the asking rent for each storefront directly across St. Mark's from the new 9-story office building:

• Upper-Level Monthly Rent — $29,000

• Lower-Level Monthly Rent — $26,000 

All uses considered!

The upper level has been vacant... as we can recall, Chi Snack Shop and the Imogene boutique were the last tenants circa 2019. Wanyoo, Asia’s largest gaming café chain, was in the lower level for a minute but never reopened after the pandemic's start in March 2020. A bar-cafe called Lava Ground was the last leaseholder, a business that seemed to be open every few weeks.

Until February 2016, 4 St. Mark's Place housed Trash & Vaudeville for 41 years. The store relocated to 96 E. Seventh St. in 2016.

The Hamilton-Holly House (aka 4 St. Mark's Place), built in 1831, was once owned by Alexander Hamilton’s son. The building, which changed hands for $10 million in the spring of 2016 for $10 million, also underwent a gut renovation and expansion.

House of Munchies debuts on 1st Avenue

The former smoke shop at 111 First Ave. south of Seventh Street recently transformed into House of Munchies, a "420 friendly" establishment offering a variety of accessories and snacks ... similar to the ones offered at other smoke shops, including the one a storefront away on the corner. 

No. 111 was previously Village Smoke & Vape, and before that, 111 Convenience Store ... until late 2012, it was 111 Convenience Store, which sold newspapers and postcards out front... with a variety of Polish-language periodicals.

Sunday's parting shot

Photo by Derek Berg 

Prepping Search & Destroy on St. Mark's Place for Halloween today...

So that tire clamp on Avenue A got the boot

A lot of people noted the lone tire sitting on the sidewalk on Avenue A and 10th Street this past Thursday... with the boot still attached to the wheel. 

We don't know what happened to the vehicle...or the tire... however, EVG reader DP did spot the tie-locking clamp... which someone tossed into Tompkins Square Park...