Posts that I never got around to, uh, posting this summer (probably for real good reasons)

Finding the lone Norbit fan on Thompson Street (or in the city).



An analysis of a Taco Bell "for sale" sign:


That nice chunk of real estate on Third Avenue between 10th Street and 11th Street --formerly home to a Taco Bell -- has been sitting empty for ages. Maybe it's that inexpensive "for rent" sign with the handwritten phone number that just makes it look, well, cheap. What, you throwing a garage sale or do you want to do some business? The landlord must have thought the same thing! They've now added a new sign! Two of them!

The Grand Opening at 16 Handles on Second Avenue.

Making the sidewalks safe for walking in a gum-free environment in front of Walgreens on Union Square.

Portable, electricity-free air conditioners: The styles trend piece the Times missed.



One-man protest at City Hall.

The neat trail of lottery tickets on 10th Street.

A job for the mattress police on 10th Street.



The disapearance of the rickety fan in front of the bodega on Avenue B next to 7B.

After months of standing on the sidewalk, it was gone.



Helping the New York Post with bad headline puns: So the New York Knicks drafted Italian League star Danilo Gallinari with their first-round draft pick in June. The Post quickly called him "The Italian Hero." Well, to help our tabloid headline writers, here are a few more possibilities for the 2008-09 season:

The Italian Stallion

The Italian Job

Oh, Dani boy

That's Italian!

(After getting ejecting for arguing with a ref) Italian wine

Italian air

That's amore!

Baskotti

Analyzing this Ann Taylor ad on Broadway: Is she falling? (If so, why does she look so happy?) Is she jumping? (If so, what is she jumping into nearly fully dressed?)

An EV Grieve FYI

In case you were planning a big outing to the 16 Handles on Second Avenue today...

What's doing in...The Meatpacking District

From yesterday's Daily News:

The venerable neighborhood, long-ago habitat of butchers in bloodstained aprons, hosts an assortment of less savory sorts each weekend: Drunks. Cokeheads. Dealers.

"I hate it," said Johanna Lindsay, who's lived there for eight years. "It's gotten cool, and not in a good way."

The no-holds-barred party, as witnessed by Daily News reporters, knows few boundaries. One reporter was solicited by three dealers within two hours on a Saturday night.

Reporters watched a pair of twentysomething club girls vomit in tandem; a man urinate as he weaved along Washington St.; another man so blitzed he appeared paralyzed on W. 13th St.

Crime stat of the day: Bank robberies up 57 percent in NYC this year

"There are a lot more desperate people," a law-enforcement source told the Post. There have been 263 bank heists in the Big Apple this year, compared with 168 in the same period last year, sources said. That's an increase of 56.5 percent. Perhaps it's more tempting -- or convenient? -- to rob a bank these days since there are bank branches on nearly every corner.

New York Herald Tribune!

Breathless at the Film Forum today and tomorrow. And it's 2-for-1 with Band of Outsiders.

Tonight's forecast at Delicatessen: golden showers

Apparently some residents who live above Nolita hot spot Delicatessen -- with the glass-roofed lounge -- are unhappy with the party atmosphere that it created on their stretch of Lafayette Street. As the Post reports, "one unidentified building resident has taken matters into his own hands, emptying his bladder on the see-through ceiling from his apartment window above."

Mickey Campbell, 45, who has lived in the building for 18 years, tells the Post he "gets woken up nightly by garbage trucks and drunken patrons. The restaurant is filled with "f---ing wankers" and "yuppies, yuppies, yuppies." Delicatessen opened in July.

Oh, and the Post notes: Owners Susan Leonard, Mark Amadei and Stacy Pisonne opened Cafeteria, a 24-hour upscale diner in Chelsea, a decade ago. It quickly became a staple "Sex and the City" shooting location.

That article from the Times on becoming New Yorkers

There was a lot of reader feedback to Cara Buckley's article in the Times from Tuesday on "the sometimes painful adjustments faced by newcomers to New York City."

As she reports in the City Room, "scores of people, it seems, were reminded anew of the growing pains, and delight, that often go hand in hand with moving to the city. Readers’ comments ran the gamut, from lonely newcomers who still felt lost to people who remembered their early days here with great tenderness."

"A few native New Yorkers insisted that it was the arrivistes, rather than people born in the city, that acted standoffish and brusque, and gave the city its reputation for being rude."

Dennis Kelly, who grew up in Long Island and works in Queens, wrote:
As someone who regularly holds doors open for other people, and who is born and raised in New York I find that the rudest “New Yorkers” are younger professionals transplanted from other places that are trying a little too hard to be “real” New Yorkers. Everyone knows the stereotype from movies, and they try to live it. Their only guides along this path are other transplants who have “made it” because they have that “real” New Yorker attitude. Your article only managed to further entrench this stereotyping. Rude is not the new black. It never has been.

Second Avenue on Saturday night

"Nightlife destination" mania continues: 10 new applicants for full liquor licenses on the docket

Save the Lower East Side! brings news regarding the Community Board 3 committee that reviews liquor licenses. Its first meeting of the season is Sept. 15, 6:30 p.m., at 200 E 5th St., corner of Bowery.

Rob reports:

As Among the 40 applications, there are no fewer than 10 new applications for full liquor licenses (called "op" for "on premises" -- scroll down to item 21).

They're everywhere: one on Grand; another just around the corner from it on Eldridge Street; Chrystie is getting hit; around the corner on Rivington too; Allen off Stanton (right next to Epstein's Bar); 2 on 10th Street. Some are restaurants, some are bars; all add to the "nightlife destination" mania, the rising commercial rents, the selling off of the LES to Generation Bloomberg.

Is this finally the end for Astroland?

The Post reports:

The end could finally be here for Coney Island's fabled Astroland Park.

Longtime operator Carol Albert sent a recent letter to lawyers for the site's landlord, controversial developer Joe Sitt, threatening to shut down the 46-year-old amusement park if she doesn't get a two-year lease extension by Sept. 4 at 1 p.m. at the same rate, sources said.

Sitt, however, isn't budging.

"We are extremely disappointed that Carol Albert has decided to give up on the future of Coney Island when her current lease isn't even up for a number of months, said Sitt spokesman Stefan Friedman," adding Astroland would be replaced next summer by new "amusements, games, shopping and entertainment galore."

Astroland appeared doomed only last year until Albert and Sitt struck an 11-hour deal to keep the park open through 2008.

Many expected Astroland to return in 2009 since the city is at least a year away from implementing an area rezoning plan that, in part, would replace Astroland and other attractions with new amusements.

Bud select

Man watching an Anheuser-Busch truck receive a parking ticket the other day in the Financial District said to no one in particular:

"A beer truck getting a ticket? There oughta be a law against it."

Houston and Avenue A, 5:03 p.m., Aug. 29

[Photo by Mrs. Grieve]

Dee Dee B. Goode

Dee Dee Ramone in 1994. For a Friday.

"Apparently they will be serving beer in Hell"

That's Gawker commenter seancasio's reaction to news that Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, "the tumbleweeds from MTV's high-gloss people-spoof The Hills," are planning on opening an "upscale sports lounge" on 29th Street and Third Avenue in Murray Hill. [W via Gawker]

The grittiest, most realistic 90 seconds of any film ever set in New York City

Unfortunately, I couldn't find the particular clip that I was looking for from Taxi Driver. Or The French Connection. Or Sweet Smell of Success. Or...

But! We do have Weekend at Bernie's. Which is appropriate since this classic from 1989 is set during Labor Day weekend. I'm still trying to figure out what route our heroes took to work...



Meanwhile,...I can't remember what the critics thought. They loved it too, right?



Oh.

"I know this town, brother, because I got clothes on my back!"

This is to make up for the Weekend at Bernie's nonsense.

James Cagney in City for Conquest

Going away this weekend...

...or are you having, in the words of the Times, a "staycation?" As the paper notes:

It is a ridiculous word, but that hasn’t stopped the sprouting of so many Web sites with perky “I ♥ N.Y.” staycation ideas — Circle Line, a museum visit, a tenement tour and bialy on the Lower East Side.

And, admittedly, it’s a very fun word to say. Staycation. How was your staycation? My parents went on staycation, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt. Our son-in-law threw his back out on staycation.

As is so often the case, this new thing is nothing new in many parts of New York City. It’s just that it was never named by those level-headed working men and women who do not need a tarted-up pseudoword to enjoy a nice week without work.

Giving thanks to Mixed Use

Thank you to Patrick Hedlund at The Villager who wrote about this site and Bowery Boogie in his Mixed Use column this week.

[By the way, the photo is by Helen Levitt from 1971. Find 24 of her photos of New York City street scenes from seven decades right here.]

Scoopy sees the Christodora's fabled swimming pool

In The Villager this week, Scoopy gets a guided tour of the Christodora's fabled swimming pool and gym. He reports:

Wanting to get to the bottom of this mystery once and for all, this week we found ourselves gazing into an empty, gray, 50-foot-long pool in Christodora House’s basement. It was 8 feet deep at one end and sloped up from the center to a shallow depth at the other end. From the looks of it, it hadn’t been used for 50 years.

We also toured an adjacent gym with decrepit, old basketball backboards without rims and a high, cement-slab ceiling barely hanging onto rusted rebar and looking like it was about to come crashing down any second. The gym and pool spaces are zoned for community-facility use, meaning they could be offices for doctors or nonprofit groups. But, according to our tour guide, the building isn’t under any obligation or deadline to rent these spaces. In fact, Christodora tried to convert the gym to residential use a few years ago, but the city’s Board of Standards and Appeals rejected the condo tower’s hardship application.

Local dog groomer alienating Gossip Girl crowd

On 12th Street near Avenue B.

More fancy $12 cocktails coming to "the Lower East Village"

Eater brings news of Ella, the newest nightspot on the "Lower East Village," as its owners are calling the area. The bar will be at the site of the former Julep at 9 Avenue, next door to the Library.

A list of $12 specialty cocktails, such as the Plum Gin Fizz (Muddled sour plum, 2oz Gin, splash of simple syrup, splash of lemon juice, shaken in a Collins glass) will be served nightly. Bottles of beer are $7 and glasses of wine will range from $10 to $20.

"The Ella staff will fit the theme dressed in classic sexy and sophisticated 1920's attire."

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.