Monday, October 16, 2023

Storefront signage alert: Hokkaido Baked Cheese Tart on 2nd Avenue

Photo by Steven

The storefront signage is now up for Hokkaido Baked Cheese Tart at 166 Second Ave. between 10th Street and 11th Street. (We first noted this arrival in June.)

This is the second outpost in Manhattan after the brand's first arrival in Koreatown in 2021. 

Here's more about the company, which first launched in Malaysia in 2016: 
Inspired by the distinctly cheesy taste of Hokkaido dairy — and using a traditional recipe from Japan's dairy heartland — it is not surprising that the famed Hokkaido Baked Cheese Tart has been a huge hit throughout Asia. We've successfully launched in Malaysia, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Australia, Indonesia, Brunei and China. 
And! 
The appeal of the Hokkaido Baked Cheese Tart is its combination of a crunchy, shortcrust base and fluffy filling, all pulled together with a deliciously cheesy aroma. Tantalizing and versatile, the Hokkaido Baked Cheese Tart can be eaten at room temperature, chilled, or fresh from the oven...
Nothing has lasted long at his address since the Dunkin' Donuts closed in early 2010. Recent restaurant concepts have included Meyhane, Medina's Turkish Kitchen, Entrez Bar & Grill, Farfasha, Dinah, Pomodora and Luna Cafe Lounge. 

Sunday, October 15, 2023

Sunday's parting shot

Photo by Steven 

A moment in Tompkins Square Park today... 

Week in Grieview

Posts this past week included (with a photo on Ninth Street-Stuyvesant Street by Derek Berg) ...

• RIP Richard 'Pete' Peterson (Wednesday

• Dedicating Frances Goldin Way (Monday

• Skate ramps depart the multipurpose courts in Tompkins ahead of renovations (Thursday

• Here's a look at the renovated interior of the long-vacant 6 Avenue B (Wednesday

• Local band Q&A: A Penny for your punk thoughts (Friday

• Openings: Downtown Threads on Avenue A (Tuesday) ... Babs Home and Pantry on Avenue A (Tuesday) ... Hello, Yam! on 9th Street and Avenue A (Wednesday)

• What's going on at Connelly Theater Upstairs, the former home of the Metropolitan Playhouse (Tuesday

• Taking a 'Deep Dive' at Baker Falls (Sunday

• A cannabis dispensary is the first tenant for this newly created retail space on 7th Street (Monday

• Key Food would like you to use a basket or cart (Monday

• The Con Ed City Dancers! (Wednesday

• The laundromat on 5th and C will remain a laundromat (Thursday

• A New signage era for Big Arc Chicken (Wednesday)

• The former Bong World is for rent on 14th Street (Tuesday

• The Dolly Llama remains closed for renovations (Thursday

• F45 Training next for this 13th Street retail space (Tuesday)

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

Whatever happened to the Champagne's of East Village storefront signs?

Photo from June by Stacie Joy

Back in the summer, the new owners of Nizga Liquors, now LES Fine Wines & Spirits, removed the classic signage — Fine Wine & Champagne's — that anchored the NE corner of Avenue A and Fourth Street for years.

Understanding how much people liked the signs (especially unnecessary apostrophe fans!), management there announced the two signs were for sale.

As we notedIrena Lasenby, a former East Village resident who now lives in Bushwick, bought the smaller of the two signs.

She recently shared a photo of its new home in a garden space outside her apartment... currently paired with an old wheelchair she found discarded on the street...
Long live Fine Wine & Champagne's!

Back in the East Village, the new (as of last fall) landlord has created universal storefronts — sans any signage — for the businesses along 58-72 Avenue A between Fourth Street and Fifth Street. 

Saturday, October 14, 2023

Saturday's parting shot

Photo by Derek Berg 

A Wurlitzer in the rain on Seventh Street today...

Harvest time: Happy 40th anniversary to the 6th and B Garden

The 6th Street and Avenue B Garden is celebrating its 40th year here at the SW corner of Sixth Street and Avenue B. 

Tomorrow (Sunday, the rain date), the garden hosts its annual HarvestFest from 2-7 p.m.

What to expect? Via the EVG inbox...
... free food + music for our community + an enormous list of fantastic raffle prizes from our beloved local businesses (raffle tickets are still just $1 and go on sale at 12:30 p.m. outside the garden on Sunday), with all proceeds supporting the garden. The complete list of prize donors can be found on our website at 6bgarden.org, with even more updates forthcoming... 

Time again for the Village View tag sale

Photo by Stacie Joy

The fall edition of the biennial Village View tag sale happens tomorrow (Sunday!) from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. 

The rain date is next Sunday, Oct. 22, but the forecast looks to improve tomorrow.

As always, you can find the 30-plus residential vendors — selling a variety of items, including clothes, books, houseware, jewelry, bric-a-brac, and more — on the Fifth Street basketball court between Avenue A and First Avenue.

Friday, October 13, 2023

Friday's parting shot

Photo by Robin McMillan 

A little improv after the Parks Department removed all the ramps, boxes and rails from the TF in Tompkins Square Park. 

The multipurpose courts close for renovations for three months on Monday.

This is 'Elvis in the Army'

 

A. Savage, frontman of NYC's Parquet Courts, just released his second solo album, Several Songs About Fire (Rough Trade Records). 

The video here is for "Elvis in the Army."

Local band Q&A: A Penny for your punk thoughts

Photos and text by Stacie Joy
From left above: 
Kevin Yankou, Steve Yankou, Liz Jones & Jordan DeVylder

It’s raining when the members of the local punk band Penny and I meet up at the Avenue C location of San Loco for a late lunch to talk about their history, bubble gum and local performance venues. 

I’m worried that we won’t be able to get our photo shoot in due to weather constraints. Still, guitarist Jordan DeVylder, drummer Steve Yankou, bassist Kevin Yankou and vocalist Liz Jones are game for rainy shenanigans. We had a great time getting soaked at Green Oasis Garden around the corner on Eighth Street before shopping for snacks at the nearby Associated supermarket.
How did the band form, and when? Where did the name come from? 

Liz: Penny started as a different band, Fleaspoon, in 2018. Back then, it was me, Jordan, and two other members, Robin Spoon and Fiona Flea. Fleaspoon slowly became Penny through some dramatic and some not-so-dramatic line-up changes. 

First, with Robin still on bass and Steve on drums, then with me on bass and doing vocals simultaneously. It took a long time to find someone new to play bass — because my bass parts can be overwhelmingly annoying to play — so I could just sing again, but it turns out Kevin was in front of our eyes the whole time! [Kevin is Steve’s brother.] 

I was sitting on the name Penny for years, but whenever I pitched it to people previously, they would say something like, “That’s my girlfriend’s dog’s name.” I am partial to band names that could just be a woman’s name that ends in the letter Y. I also like that pennies, the coin, are essentially worthless, can be lucky or unlucky depending on how they fall, and are everywhere on the ground all the time. “Take a penny, leave a penny,” etc., etc. 

Steve: Liz and Jordan asked me to play drums with them at one practice for fun. I agreed only because I missed them and find it impossible to maintain friendships with anyone I’m not in a band with. But I warned them, “I am a TERRIBLE drummer.” They said they didn’t care. Then they asked me to come again the following week. The rest is history. I’m slowly getting over my imposter syndrome. 

Kevin: The band used to practice in the basement of my old spot, so it was just a matter of going down a flight of stairs to get roped into it, and I’m glad I did because it’s been a lot of fun! 

Steve and I have been playing in our other band for 22 years, so we already had a decent shorthand when it comes to music stuff, and I was already a fan of Liz and Jordan — as musicians and people — so it was pretty easy to say “yes.” 

How do you describe your sound? 

Liz: After much internal and external debate, we have arrived at “924 Gilman comp B-side” as the definitive band descriptor. 924 Gilman is a long-running East Bay DIY space, and we definitely feel like our sound is most closely related to Bay Area ’80s and ’90s punk and the subsequent DIY punk scenes in other parts of the country that we all came up in. 

Some of our other favorite band descriptions have been: “The Muppet band if they didn’t have to play for the Muppets,” “2006-core,” and “That one song sounds like Rudimentary Peni.” Sometimes people call us a riot grrrl band, but that is just a lazy way to say we sound like angry-girl-screaming, which is not untrue.

Steve: Punk as fuck. Mostly kidding. Mostly not kidding.

Kevin: Fun/fast/noisy-punk. 

Your recent cassette tape release — The Bubblegum Tape — comes with a Certificate of Authenticity and a piece of chewed gum by one of the band members. Can you speak briefly about the release and how it came into production? 

Liz: I think we started throwing around the name “The Bubblegum Tape” because we recorded a cover of a very twee Heavenly song, and I was thinking of bubblegum pop music. There is, however, nothing twee about the tape itself. We made the tape specifically for a Midwest tour we went on in August, and I corralled the band into chewing 100 pieces of gum and sticking them into each tape as part of the artwork. Some tapes are completely disgusting, and for that, I am sorry. It is also release 001 for my new label, Rizzo. 

Steve: The gum-chewing party was harder work than it sounds. 

Kevin: We learned that, apparently, I have the dampest mouth; maybe I should smoke weed. 

How long have (three-fourths of) you lived in the neighborhood? 

Jordan: Off and on since 2001, sometimes moving around the city for more affordable neighborhoods. The three of us in the neighborhood have lived here consecutively since about 2016/2017. 

Liz: I moved to the neighborhood in 2017 after living in various other parts of the city. Once I was here, I knew I was home. 

Steve: I met my life partner in January 2012 and started staying with her on East Third Street pretty much immediately. I officially moved in a few years later; I always forget exactly when. 

Kevin: I crashed with an ex-GF on 12th and A for a few months back in ’06 or ’07. Does that count?

You mentioned booking gigs in Brooklyn, and a successful mini-tour this summer in the Midwest was easier. What are your feelings about the local music scene, and do you feel supported here? 

Jordan: Booking shows is always hit or miss, whether in the LES/EV, Brooklyn, or elsewhere. We have all played around here for years in Penny and other bands, but some of our favorite spots to play are community spaces that have not been doing shows recently, like C-Squat and ABC No Rio. 

We tend to have less luck with bar shows around here and end up in Brooklyn or Ridgewood a lot because of that, although we have recently had good experiences booking at Berlin and Rockwood Music Hall.

Liz: The punk scene, more generally in NYC, can be challenging to navigate. It has changed a lot in the last few years, and there is a sense of exclusivity that I had successfully avoided in my life of playing music up until this point. 

But we feel supported and have a sense of community outside the cool-guy echo chamber. I think the whole social media/everything can be commodified era is bad for community in general, and punk is not immune to it. We all got into punk because anyone could do it, and we hold on strong to those values. 

Steve: So me and Kevin —along with many other friends and roommates — booked and ran hundreds of house shows in the Bronx (and later in Brooklyn) from 2010 until lockdown. So I’m here to ask, where are the house shows? I don’t want to have to clean up the next day. Let us play at your house! 

Kevin: What Steve said. The only people I wanna clean up after are me and my cat.
Penny plays at Rockwood Music Hall, stage 1, on Oct. 18 at 10 p.m. along with Posterboy 2000 and Pig Milk.

The band's new cassettes are available at Limited to One Record Shop on 10th Street and Academy Records on 12th Street.

You can follow Penny on Instagram here.

HONK alert!

HONK NY!, the activist and community-based street bands, will be roaming around the East Village this evening starting at 7 ... part of a monthlong NYC "invasion."

Expect to see band members in Tompkins Square Park, La Plaza Cultural, and other community gardens... not to mention Two Boots on Avenue A.

More details here.

Thursday, October 12, 2023

Thursday's parting shot

Photo by Derek Berg 

A new mural in the works on Seventh Street at First Avenue ... via Valentin...

Back to the 80s at Village Works

Tomorrow (Friday!) evening, Village Works is hosting a group show featuring 1980s East Village photography as seen through the cameras of Daniel Root, Brian Rose, Wyatt Abernathy, Ross Bennett Lewis and Peter Bennett. (We featured Peter's photos here.) 

The opening starts at 7 p.m., and the work is expected to be up for a week. 

Village Works is at 12 St. Mark's Place between Second Avenue and Third Avenue.

Oct. 11 (Oct. 12 edition)

An EVG reader submitted this find, spotted yesterday on Stanton Street... complete with a remora tree attached. We're checking the archives to see if this is the latest that we've documented a discarded Christmas tree...

Updated: Looks like the standing record is Oct. 29. DEC. 24! And with apologies to EVG reader Tom!

Skate ramps depart the multipurpose courts in Tompkins ahead of renovations

The dozen ramps, rails and bozes that the skating faithful use on the TF in Tompkins Square Park have been removed before the renovations here starting on Monday.
It's not immediately known who took the skate props — city workers... or perhaps some skaters stashed them for safekeeping or use elsewhere. (Both scenarios seem rather ambitious!)

As previously reportedthe Parks Department will reconstruct the multipurpose courts along 10th Street and Avenue A, adding various amenities, including a two-lane seal-coated walking loop and new asphalt.

According to a landscape architect with the Parks Department (from a presentation in February), there's a lot of "asphalt structural damage," and it "needs to be replaced and repaired. And the only way to do that is to take all the asphalt down to the sub base and put new asphalt down." 

Posted signage states the work will occur between Oct. 16 and Dec. 1.


The laundromat on 5th and C will remain a laundromat

Photos by Stacie Joy 

Renovations continue on the SW corner of Avenue C and Fifth Street, the longtime home of a laundromat. 

The Avenue C Laundromat was expected to close whenever the owner sold the property at 69 Avenue C. There was speculation that the two-story building would be demolished for some kind of new residential development. Who buys a laundromat and keeps it a laundromat!? 

Well, according to TradedNY this past July, Hildreth Real Estate Advisors bought the property from Gwangil Kim for $3.4 million. 

And the business will remain a laundromat — called My Sunny Laundry. 

Here's a look at the ongoing renovations from recent days ... including a new Pepsi machine... 

The Dolly Llama remains closed for renovations

Photos by Steven 

The Dolly Llama has been closed since the late summer at 137 First Ave. between St. Mark's Place and Ninth Street. 

According to the gate signage, the ice cream and waffle shop, which opened in March, is "temporarily closed for remodeling and a refreshed look."
Dolly Llama Watchers (oh, there are some!) wondered why they might need a refreshed look after just six months. 

In any event, the EV location is no longer listed on the Dolly Llama website. And based on the mail and leaves inside the front doorway, no one has been inside of late. However, in an Instagram message, management said they didn't have a reopening date yet but hoped to soon.

The Dolly Llama started in Los Angeles in 2017, and there are multiple locations now in the United States. 

Wednesday, October 11, 2023

Wednesday's parting shot

By Lola Sáenz 

A moment on St. Mark's Place at Second Avenue today... a photo opp with a found portrait of Christopher Reeve... amidst a backdrop of a water main issue on the block between Second Avenue and Third Avenue. (Haven't heard the full story yet about what happened here...)

Meanwhile, on St. Mark's Place...

Photo by Cecil Scheib 

Everyone, let's please give a warm EV Grieve welcome to ... the ... Con Ed Dance Squad! 

As seen today on St. Mark's Place east of First Avenue...

Noted

Photo by Steven 

From this morning on Astor Place... when the Baby Trump balloon made a pitstop on Astor Place... the 19-foot-tall diaper-clad baby first appeared in the U.K. in July 2018, and made its NYC debut later that year... there are reportedly six replicas in circulation in the U.S. for various protests.