BREAKING: Bed bugs infiltrating bedroom(s) of Avenue B

Looks like just another unassuming pile of trash of the curb on Avenue B, just past the Christodora, right?



Well, LOOK CLOSER!



[On Avenue B, between 9th Street and 10th Street]

Walking on Broome Street

On the north side of the street, near the Bowery.

Al's Bar, 1987-88

Just enjoying a shot of the Bowery via amg2000's Flickr page. Plenty more provocative photos there.

Al's Bar, 108 Bowery, circa 1987-88. (Closed in 1994)

An EV Grieve FYI

On 25th Street between 10th Avenue and 11th Avenue.

The Ziegfeld is a "movie palace," which is why the Mets game will be playing there tonight

First, a moment of appreciation for the Ziegfeld, one of two (the Paris Theatre on 58th) remaining single-screen movie theaters in Midtown. A rarity these days. As the Clearview Cinemas Web site notes:

The Ziegfeld Theatre was a Broadway theatre formerly located at the intersection of Sixth Avenue and 54th Street in Manhattan, New York City. It was built in 1927 and razed in 1966. The theatre was named for Florenz Ziegfeld, who built the theatre with financial backing from William Randolph Hearst.

The 'new' Zeigfeld Theater, built just a few hundred feet from the original Ziegfeld theater, opened in December 1969 and the movie house was one of the last big palaces built in the United States.

The theater features 1,169 seats, with 863 seats in the front section and 306 seats in the raised balcony section in the rear. The interior is decorated with sumptous red carpeting and abundant gold trim.

The Ziegfeld is, arguably, the last movie palace still showing films in Manhattan

Not to be Gloomy Grieve, but I do worry about this place. Aside from being a desired chunk of real estate in Midtown. It hasn't even been 1/5 full the last view times I've been there. (Granted, I'm not going to see, say, Iron Man, on opening night either.) I also enjoy their Hollywood Classics series.

So! What to make of this: The Mets-Phillies game is being shown there this evening. (This is becoming an annual event.)

As the press release for this evening's game at the theater touts, "Fans watching the action in larger-than-life style on the Ziegfeld's 50 foot x 23 foot viewing screen will participate in traditional Shea Stadium in-game entertainment and fan giveaways . . . Mr. Met and the Pepsi Party Patrol will also be on-hand to provide entertainment throughout the evening."

There will be beer sales and T-shirt launches too.

Tonight in Tompkins Square Park: Stand by Me

You guys wanna see a dead body?
Oh Vern. How you've lost that baby fat and become Jerry O'Connell and married Rebecca Romijn.

The "last of her kind" on the LES

The Times travels down to Stanton Street for a feature today on Lucita Cangemi, a Roman Catholic nun who has been a social worker in New York since 1961.

Sister Lucita is the last working New York member of an order of Catholic religious women, the Missionary Servants of the Most Blessed Trinity, who have served as social workers with Catholic Charities since 1953. Having taken vows of chastity, obedience and poverty, they became experts in prostitution, jails, diapers, rent, drugs and jobs.

“This is really not about me, but about the exodus of a community that has worked hard in New York, that loved New York and loved their work, and gave services to the city for 50 years,” Sister Lucita said.

The base of their operations for many of those years was on the Lower East Side. Long before the clever restaurants and dress shops, the streets and tenements were home to poor people. The same human problems run across every class and culture, but on the Lower East Side, those problems lacked the insulation and camouflage that money can buy. Another member of the community who just retired, Sister Marion Agnes, worked to salvage abandoned apartment buildings through sweat equity, and more recently converted an old Catholic school into affordable housing.

No word on what will become of her LES office. Maybe a hipster barber shop?

Awfully quiet here...everyone in Denver?

On the Lower East Side in Knickerbocker Village.

Looking at ads on Third Avenue

I spend too much time looking at ads. Especially stupid ads.
For instance, this Nike ad has been bothering me at 11th Street and Third Avenue. What's up with her expression? Did she just soil her Nike sportswear?


And this. Across the street. Just an unfortunate positioning. Or not.


And for no reason.

Taking a picture of a staircase on the Bowery

The appreciation of the Bowery continues. The door to the stairs of these apartments/lofts/whatever was ajar the other evening. On the west side of the Bowery, close to Houston.

Saving Coney Island (on film)

Kinetic Carnival brings us the news that there's a new Coney Island documentary on the way. Here's the trailer for Save Coney Island: the Movie:

NY baseball fans: "Some of them are also facing startling increases in ticket costs during a serious economic downturn"

The Times hits on one of EV Grieve's favorite topics today: New Stadiums: Prices, and Outrage, Escalate.

No American market has witnessed anything like it: two baseball teams and two football teams will open three new stadiums within 17 months and 20 miles of one another, with everything set to be in place by the fall of 2010.
But even as fans of the Mets, the Yankees, the Giants and the Jets look forward to state-of-the-art stadium architecture, better sightlines, wider concourses and more bathrooms, some of them are also facing startling increases in ticket costs during a serious economic downturn.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Even rich people can't afford to see the Mets or Yankees next season

Any bets that S.I. Yankees and Brooklyn Cyclones ticket prices go up as well?

More change coming to Avenue C: "The possibilities are endless!"

Yeah, it's no secret that this building on Avenue C between 6th Street and 7th Street is for sale. It's just when you see the ad for the property in the Elliman window that...that, well, just read the description of this "rare opportunity" for yourself. Then you can throw up on your own shoes.



The building is delivered "vacant and renovated." Like to know what happened to the former tenants...

On Staple Street

In Tribeca. Two short, heavenly blocks -- west of Hudson Street, from Duane to Jay to Harrison Streets.





According to a February 2001 article in the Times:

In 1894, New York Hospital built the House of Relief, a downtown clinic, on Jay from Hudson to Staple, with an ambulance entrance facing Staple. In that year The New York Herald noted that the hospital was sending its ambulance out as often as seven times a day, sometimes on emergencies involving sunstroke, "which so often occurs in the lower part of the city," perhaps because of the large number of men working outdoors on the docks.

In 1907 the hospital built an annex across Staple Street (replacing the saloon/row house at Jay and Staple) as a stable and laundry, connecting it at the third-floor level using a pedestrian bridge.

I didn't do any research to see if this block is earmarked for a condo or something. I just want to enjoy it.

One man's dream: Colorful trash bags in the city

From today's Metro New York:

Adrian Kondratowicz is tired of the “bland and mundane” black trash bags tossed onto city sidewalks. His dream is to see an entire swath of Manhattan south of 14th Street lined with cheerily colorful polka dotted bags for at least one week.

That’s still the goal of his project, TRASH:anycoloryoulike, but for now, the Helmut Lang model-turned-artist has scaled down his vision to a handful of installations using bright pink biodegradeable bags.

“It was difficult to get sponsorship,” Kondratowicz said. “Everyone liked the idea, but no one wanted to write me a check. So I wrote myself one.”

He coughed up $8,000 to make eco-friendly bags because he “didn’t want to create more waste.” They decompose in one to seven years.

And thank you for answering my question. Cost.

The bags are costly to make and are not yet a “mass product,” Kondratowicz noted. He sells signed bags as collectors items — or for trash, if a buyer chooses. The bags range from $10 for the pink with white polka dots to $25 for gold dots.

Meanwhile, don't mind me. I need to do this.

Ad of the day

On West Broadway. Just one of the four icons that Vans has chosen for this new campaign. Oh, and Motörhead's new album is out today.

At the bar with the young fellows who want bacon in their drink

A recent post from The Barmaid Blog:

"Hey, honey, can you guys make a Benton's Old Fashioned?" asks the bedheaded hipster who looks too skinny to support life.

It's a relatively slow moment for a Friday night, so I take a second to appraise him and his friend. Of the nine thoughts that cross my mind in that moment, including the obnoxious juxtaposition of "honey" with "guys," I settle on replying, "I make a great Old Fashioned, but I have to admit I don't know what a Benton's is, and I don't get stumped very often."

"So you're in need of a good stumping?" That's from Bedhead's buddy, a bespectacled dude with a big shrub of curly hair like he's auditioning for the lead in "Knocked Up 2: Electric Boogalo."

I raise my eyebrows. "And you're just the guys to give it to me?"

Bedhead says, "We had it on the Lower East Side a few weeks ago at this place called PDT, but we couldn't get in tonight."

"Dude, PDT's in the East Village," says Jewfro.

"I thought it was Alphabet City?"

"Yeah, Alphabet City is part of the East Village. The Lower East Side is below Houston."

"I thought that was NoLiTa and SoHo."

I smack my hand on the bar a few times.

By the way, a Benton's Old Fashioned is made with bacon.

Looking at New York, I Love You

Moe at Gawker has a post this afternoon on New York, I Love You, which IMDB describes as "an anthology film joining several love stories set in one of the most loved cities of the world, New York." The movie stars everyone: Ethan Hawke, John Hurt, Rachel Bilson, Natalie Portman, Chris Cooper, Orlando Bloom, Shia LaBeouf, Blake Lively, Kevin Bacon, James Caan, Julie Christie, Christina Ricci, etc., etc. (And a dozen or so people are directing the vignettes...including Scarlett Johansson.)

The trailer was released the other day too.

Anyway, here's Moe's take:

Here is the movie's most profound thought thus far leaked:

"This is what I've always loved about New York. Those little moments on the sidewalks, you can watch the buildings and feel the air and look at the people, and sometimes meet somebody you feel like you could talk to."

Which sort of highlights the problem, doesn't it! Like, hey, you can actually look at buildings and talk to strangers, technically, in any place that exists but in New York people have actually bought into the notion that their most mundane experiences and interactions are more special because someone might write a movie about them someday.

And the trailer:

Happy birthday, Gene Simmons!

We don't usually do this kind of thing here. But! Seeing as Kiss is the second-greatest band from New York who liked to get gussied up, we're making an exception! Anyway, Kiss co-founder Gene Simmons was born on this date in 1949 (born Chaim Witz in Haifa, Israel). He and Queens native Paul Stanley formed Kiss in New York in December 1972.

Simmons, of course, is also featured in two of the greatest motion pictures ever made.

Runaway from 1984:


And! The masterpiece: Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park from 1978:


Meanwhile, AMC took to Coney Island to discuss Kiss Meets the Phantom of the Park (via Kinetic Carnival)


We imagine Gene will be doing some really low-key today to celebrate.

Meet the young real-estate moguls in this week's Page Six Magazine

[Image via Harper's Bazaar]

This week's Page Six Magazine features under-30 real-estate moguls in the city. First, there's cover model Ivanka Trump, the "mogul-ette" who helps run her father's real-estate business. 

Though she is, as defunct lad magazine Stuff once put it, “hot enough to liquefy your assets” — whatever that means — she’s smart enough to do it, too. “My passion is real estate,” she says. Discussing a new Trump property in the Dominican Republic, she says, “We sold 63 estate lots for $365 million, on a price per square acre standpoint which rivals homes in Greenwich, Conn. That was done in six hours a year ago with 20 percent hard deposits.” Even though much of this is incomprehensible, what’s clear is that Ivanka means business. “I rarely go out past midnight,” she says. “I get up between 5:45 and 6 a.m. and ride my beach cruiser bike around the loop in Central Park for exercise. It's cantharric."

Oh, and earlier in the piece:

The double lariat necklace around Ivanka’s neck is from her jewelry line, aptly called the Ivanka Trump Collection, which launched in September 2007. According to Ivanka, the line is “designed off my personality and my aesthetic.” The diamond tassel she’s wearing today, for example, is “feminine but with a modern twist on old Hollywood.” It retails for $140,000 at Ivanka’s marquee store on Madison Avenue.

The good stuff comes in the sidebar, though, where we meet the real sweethearts. Like Ben Shaoul!

According to his feature:

At the tender age of 19, Ben dropped out of college in Miami to buy a building in New York and begin his rise to mini-mogul status. Since moving to New York in 1997 and setting up shop in Soho, though, he’s made enemies with East Village hipsters who accuse him of gentrifying their gritty hood. He reportedly even threatened squatters at 120 St. Mark’s Place with a sledgehammer. And he’s not afraid of getting his hands dirty in other ways, either: “I’ve unclogged toilets, laid brick, done dry wall,” says Ben. “I’ve been doing this since I was 19, which is longer than a lot of the older guys.”

Previously on EV Grieve:
Landlord accused of harassing longtime tenants

Why the Village East Cinemas will be showing documentaries all this week

The Post explains:

It used to be that movies in the documentary category had to play for at least three consecutive days in 12 different cities, sometimes resulting in token showings at off hours in the hinterlands.
But now, to be nominated for an Oscar for a full-feature documentary, the films have to play at least twice a day for seven consecutive days in both Manhattan and Los Angeles before the end of August.
That's why the city is overstuffed with documentary screenings this week, with a dozen flicks opening here to make the cut.
The Village East Theater at Second Avenue and East 12th Street is offering two showings a day of the documentaries "Loot," "Fuel," "Crossing Borders," "An Omar Broadway Film," "War Games," "The Choir," "No Subtitles Necessary: Laslo and Vilmos," "The Dalai Lama Film" and "Blessed is the Match."

Beats Indiana Jones on all the screens.

The East Village per-man, per-truck moving wars continue

OK. Given the signs we've seen last week. Do we hear $15?

The good life in New York movies (1987 version): cardigan and wine edition

Catching up with a good Goldenfiddle post from last week:

1987, Fatal Attraction, Glenn Close’s character makes Michael Douglas’ character a spaghetti dinner in her white on white on white New York City apartment. Opera blares from the stereo as he uncorks a bottle of wine. He wears a blue button-down shirt and a navy-blue cardigan, with the sleeves rolled up. Clearly, he is living the good life.


Later that same year, 1987, Wall Street, Daryl Hannah’s character makes Charlie Sheen’s character a spaghetti and sushi dinner in his newly renovated, faux-demolished New York City apartment. Opera blares from the stereo as he uncorks a bottle of wine. He wears a white button-down shirt and an argyle cardigan, with the sleeves rolled up. Clearly, he is living the good life.

The following photos are presented without comment

Move-in day for some NYU students. At 11th Street and Third Avenue. Sunday morning.

At the Staten Island Yankees game

Last Sunday, Mrs. Grieve and I went to our first S.I. Yankees game of the season. Unlike what the Yankees (and Mets) are charging (and will be charging) for tickets and food and booze, an S.I. game seems downright cheap. So to speak.

Transporation: S.I. Ferry (free, of course)
Tickets: They range from $5 to $13
Beer: $5 for a 16-ounce draft

Anyway, here are several shots from the game and ride. There are more on Flickr. Several home games remain this season.

Wikipedia's whoppers

In the Post today, Steve Cuozzo takes a look at Wikipedia's New York City entry. Let's just say it's not very accurate. Cuozzo writes:

[W]hen it comes to the city's geography and streetscape, Wikipedia can be wildly out of date - like its notoriously wrong-headed story on Hunts Point, which (to the neighborhood's dismay) cites 20-year old crime data.

Other entries read like dumb bus-tour guides' off-base spiels. One states that the East Village "is considered part of the Lower East Side" - by morons, maybe, but not by anyone who has ever crossed Houston Street. Nor was the East Village "formerly known as the Bowery."

Changes on East Houston; coming soon -- the Lee

From the Times:

Months may pass before the city’s planning commission decides on a 111-block rezoning of the East Village and the Lower East Side. That rezoning could allow for larger buildings on the neighborhoods’ major streets.

But the connective tissue between the neighborhoods, East Houston Street, is already showing signs of change, as for-sale signs go up and buildings fall — whether because of the proposed rezoning or despite it.

The Lee, for example, is a 12-story glass-and-masonry tower rising at Pitt Street on the site of a former boys’ club. Its nearly 100,000 square feet of space will hold 263 rental units, almost all studios.

In recent years, rentals on East Houston, like the hulking Avalon Chrystie Place and the Ludlow, have catered to the luxury market. But even if the Lee does have similarly large dimensions, as an “affordable” complex it is intended for quite different tenants.

For 105 of the units, the rent will be about $700 a month if the renter moves in from a nearby location and earns no more than 60 percent of the median income, or about $30,000, said David Beer, a director of Common Ground, a nonprofit group based in Manhattan and the Lee’s developer. Applications will be accepted starting in January.

Another day, another film shoot

Still, this looks like an interesting project...the later years of Quentin Crisp, starring John Hurt.

Activity at the former site of A. Fontana Shoe Repair

What's going on at the former location of the A. Fontana Shoe Repair on 10th Street past Second Avenue? The shop, there for 45 years, closed in late February. I didn't spot any workers or construction permits when I walked by...And there will be no sarcastic asides about bank branches, yogurt shops or Duane Reades. Anything is possible.
If you're new to this...Jeremiah has provided thoughtful coverage of Fontana's this past year.

Report: State housing official nabbed in rent scam

From today's Post:

A state housing official from Brooklyn was busted for selling lists of rent-regulated tenants to builders so they could target properties for redevelopment, The Post has learned.

Keith James, 53, of Brownsville, a rent program specialist at the New York State Division of Housing and Community Renewal, took the bribes from January 2001 to September 2005, authorities said.

A source close to the investigation told The Post that the rolls - which are not public - "are valuable because it gives developers and potential purchasers insight into the long-term revenue of a building that has rent-stabilized and rent-controlled apartments," allowing them to target buildings with fewer or older rent-regulated tenants.

A Cheap Trick post-concert party from 1978

In case you have 28 spare minutes today...here's a video of a post-Cheap Trick concert party from 1978 at the Palladium. Susan Blond interviews the likes of Linda Blair, John Cale, David Johansen and, of course, Cheap Trick.



[Via Anton Perich on YouTube]

The New York Dolls -- Stranded in the Jungle

A perfect song for a summer Friday. Or any day. Or season.

More on the East Village harassment story

Following up on the post yesterday on the landlord accused of harassing tenants...Curbed has more here.

Meanwhile, Jill from Blah Blog Blah left a comment regarding all this. She has firsthand experience:

I live in one of these buildings. We have had almost half the apartments vacated in the past few months. And once the tenants leave, we never know where they went or what happened to them. We've organized a tenants group but the people who leave are the ones who didn't join the group. Some that we did know left because they decided it just wasn't worth the living conditions. One had a new baby and were so freaked out by the construction, so off to Brooklyn they went.

Who moved in? Not one of the new tenants is over 25. They are renting 400 square foot renovated apartments (3 rooms--2 bedrooms and a common area with a kitchen and very small space for maybe a chair) for $3200 on a third floor walk up in a very filthy building. Probably a little less for the upper floors. Two to an apartment--$1500 to live in the East Village is probably the going rate, crazy. Dozens of bars but nowhere to buy a fresh piece of fish. Who needs food when you can live on alcohol?

The problem is that the landlord operates just on this side of the law. The super was heard recently telling one of the rent stabilized tenants that he doubted if he could adequately fix whatever the problem is "because you know what the landlord wants to do to you folks." They make a repair, but they make it purposely bad. They turn off the hot water for half a day so that by the time the complaint is registered, it has been "fixed." They don't properly register with DOB for permits and then "fix" the paperwork months later, and DOB could give a shit. There are absolutely no penalties or oversight. They take months to renovate an apartment and clean the hallway rarely, so there is dust everywhere, it comes up through the floorboards and infests every crook--I'm still cleaning out shoes that I hadn't worn that are coated in plaster dust from 6 months ago.

But is a dirty hallway enough to go to court? The workers start before legal hours and end after they are allowed to be here, making a lot of noise. Does DOB do anything? No, they are worried about cranes falling, if that.

They evicted my neighbor out and literally threw his stuff down down 6 flights of stairs. Kicked it down. Then he won in court and got to come back.

I could go on about the small things they have done, they all add up, but none individually are enough to make a case that sounds really compelling.

Sid Vicious on New York Cable-Access TV

Sid and Nancy and Stiv Bators and Cynthia Ross of the B Girls in 1978....

Dude, where's my sub?

At the Subway on Maiden Lane in the Financial District.

Reminder tonight!: Richard Sandler

Two documentaries by Richard Sandler, Brave New York and Sway, are playing tonight in the community garden at Sixth Street and Avenue B. (Brave New York chronicles the East Village from 1988-2003.)

Previously on EV Grieve:
Richard Sandler's New York City

[Image: Richard Sandler, 1982]

A mighty wind

Just in case you missed the piece in the Times on the wind farmers of East 11th Street from Aug. 4, the Post did their own version of it today.

Meanwhile, any comments on Bloomberg's windmill energy plan?

Looking at Extra Place

I'm continuing to take in all parts of the Bowery. An appreciation of sorts. As Forgotten New York has noted, Extra Place has been a dead end on the north side of East 1st Street east of the Bowery since about 1800. Here's what it looked like in 1978.


[Top image via Forgotten New York]

Here's what it looked like the other day.

As it has been reported, the cul-de-sac is becoming "a slice of the Left Bank, a pedestrian mall lined with interesting boutiques and cafés."

Now watch this snappy video about Extra Place at 311 Bowery!

The Heterosexuals are coming!

Ugh. On 10th Street. Near Second Avenue.

Landlord accused of harassing longtime tenants

From the City Room this afternoon:

A group of tenant advocates has accused a landlord that acquired 17 rent-regulated buildings on the Lower East Side last year of aggressively harassing tenants in a concerted effort to oust longtime residents from the buildings so that the units could be renovated and the rents raised.

All the buildings, which are rent-regulated, are in an area bounded by First Avenue and Avenue B and East 13th and Houston Streets.