Live above Robin Raj

At 114 Third Ave. At the old Grace and Hope Mission. Given the proximity to bars, a store full of snacks, NYU...I expect that apartment to look something like this soon...




Previous Robin Raj coverage on EV Grieve.

Save the date

Those red lights at the Christodora House

Spooky.

A sign at the Holiday

My pulse quickened a bit yesterday when I saw a sign attached to the front of the now-closed Holiday Cocktail Lounge. I hoped that it would say:

All is well. We will reopen this Friday.

Or something like that.



Hmm.

Meanwhile, Patrick Hedlund notes the story in his Mixed Use column in this week's issue of The Villager:

The no-frills pub, between First and Second Aves., has served as a watering hole for artists and eccentrics for more than four decades. It’s worth noting that another East Village dive, Sophie’s on E. Fifth St., encountered similar troubles a year ago due to the failing health of its owner, but managed to negotiate a deal to stay open. Stay tuned.

True, though Sophie's and Mona's never closed for any business while the bars were being sold...the bars did stay in the family.

Blink, and there's a Vitamin Shoppe

Just seems like yesterday that I mentioned a Vitamin Shoppe was opening on 14th Street and First Avenue...The last few months have seemingly zipped by...and Vitamin Shoppes must be easy to create.

Go Gators? Go home

East Seventh Street.

Snow job

Keep it classy. On Avenue B.

Returning to the scene of the crime

Walking on St. Mark's last night around 7:30, I noticed the usual number of cops making the rounds, eyeballing the crowd, keeping the peace, etc. Not very noteworthy. However. I'm still thinking about the stupid piece from the Post yesterday:

JUST LIKE OL' CRIMES
NYPD'S LETUP STIRS FEARS OF '80S FLASHBACK

There are so many problems with this article. In the "Alphabet City" section alone. The piece begins "Residents and business owners fear..." So what residents do they speak with? A 21-year-old NYU student. That's it. Maybe find someone who has lived here a little longer and likely doesn't move away during the summer? And while Mitch is a very credible source at St. Mark's Comics, he's the only EV business owner the Post talked with. So let's not get into this plural stuff guys. (And there's one quote attributed to him -- I'd be interested in hearing what else he said to the reporter.) Worse, is the imagery that somehow being homeless is the same thing as being a criminal.



And hey -- nothing against poor Carolyn here. Not really her fault a reporter made a poor judgement in selecting a source and asking a speculative question . . . for an article on the NYPD relaxing its enforcement of petty "quality of life" infractions that may turn the city back into a set for Death Wish. She wasn't even born yet.

Anyway. Thank you to everyone who commented on the previous post.

Unborn yesterday

No doubt you've seen the movie posters for The Unborn plastered around the neighborhood...such as these at 6th Street and Avenue C. The movie opened yesterday in theaters.



First reaction? What the fuck is Gary Oldman doing? He plays a rabbi. In the shot below below, Gary reads the script. Yuk, yuk.



Ugh. At least we were spared The Unborn Gratuitous Butt Shot posters for the teenaged audience.

Dang

Was reading Alex's excellent essay on Jeff Buckley over at Flaming Pablum earlier today. He mentioned 1994. And releases from that year. Like Orange. By the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion. Good stuff. So....



And is this one of those videos that Weird Al did for them...?

"Flapper skirts on a bride of Christ! I don't like undercover nuns"

Continuing with our celebration of Elvis's birthday, which was, uh, yesterday. With! Change of Habit. Set in NYC. 1969. Elvis is a doctor. Mary Tyler Moore is a nun. Bring some butter for this corn. Here's the first 8 minutes (with Spanish subtitles...) showing some vintage Midtown NYC.

A belated b-day salute to Elvis

Crud. Meant to post this on his birthday, which was yesterday. Elvis was born Jan. 8, 1935. Here's an excerpt from a press conference he did June 9, 1972, at Madison Square Garden prior to a four-show stint there.



Here's a transcript of the press conference.

Noted

From The New York Post today:

If the NYPD relaxes its enforcement of petty "quality of life" infractions, it could be a turning point back to the days when murders, muggings and mayhem plagued the city, says a law-enforcement expert who played a key role in developing the crime-busting policy.

"You might be pointing to a tipping point," said George Kelling, who helped formulate the "broken windows" approach to policing that was the model for Mayor Rudy Giuliani's successful zero-tolerance policy.

"It's too early to tell . . . but the consequence might be more street crime."

By the way, what does a sleeping homeless man have to do with "murders, muggings and mayhem"?

One small step...

From Hunter-Gatherer: Six-month-old dessert place OKO on First Avenue (Momofuku Place) is closed for "renovations" after opening six months ago....

NYC Young Republicans already missing Bush

YOUNG GOPERS: 'O,' THE PAIN! BUSH LEAGUERS MOURN BARACK ERA (New York Post)

Make that 22 empty storefronts along Avenue B?

Oh, a few weeks ago, I did a post about all the empty storefronts along Avenue B -- 21 by my count.

Well, let's go ahead and make that 22. Panificio, that cute Italian eatery that I never went to at the corner of Avenue B and 11th Street, appears to be shuttered.



Sure, it's possible that they just decided to not open on a Thursday night. And, yes, it's plausible that no one would answer the phone the numerous times I tried to call them. And, it's probable that the one small view from 11th Street that shows the empty interior simply means that ownership removed all the tables and chairs and put a display case in the middle of the dining area while cleaning. Or something. And if you were going to be closed for a few days to clean or renovate, there's no reason to put a sign up for potential diners. Anyway! The place never seemed all that crowded to me since it opened last April. For good reasons, perhaps?

Welcome to New York! Lookee at what you can't afford!

Can't say that I have to travel much via the Holland Tunnel...But I did the other day, returning from my favorite airport in Newark, the Newark International Airport...Fresh out of the tunnel in Manhattan, I spotted this billboard by the hole-in-the-ground gang at 56 Leonard.



Logical space for a billboard advertising gazillion-dollar units...catching the attention of the various delivery-truck drivers, office workers, livery cab operators, B&T clubgoers etc., etc., headed into the city for the day/night...

I'm just surprised the billboard doesn't include a New York City, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg banner.

Getting a little empty on First Avenue between 13th and 14th

Not sure when this happened, but Pistahan, a Filipino joint on First Avenue between 13th Street and 14th Street, is now closed.



Guess they couldn't find any takers for the space. As Jeremiah and Jill have reported, this stretch of First Avenue, particularly the east side of the street, is getting pretty empty.

Love and human remains

We're talking about Courtney Love again for some reason. On Wednesday, Gothamist linked to a Q-and-A that Love did with Heeb. (In case you missed the East Village portion of the interview, I excerpted a portion of it below.) So maybe she'll move back to NYC. (Alex at Flaming Pablum has an opinion on this topic.)

All this Love talk brought me back to the tabloids and blogs recreating her magical evening in NYC on March 17, 2004, when, among other things, she hit a dude on the head with a mic stand, flashed her boobies and got arrested, though not necessarily in that order. Some flashing happened at Wendy's on 14th Street just west of Union Square. Where the photo above was snapped. The dude posing near her breast is Kofi Asare. But what I want to know: Who is the fellow on the right? Where is he today? And why is Love wearing white before Memorial Day?

So here's the end of the interview between Karen Bookatz and Love from Heeb:

Thanks.
Oh, and I have a question, totally off of the topic. In terms of real estate, like, a Williamsburg girl like you, what do you think about that West Village, um, thing that Gwyneth and Scarlett said? I mean, do you think that like, okay, this is going to sound retarded: Am I too famous to live in the West Village? Or, is it OK?

Um, the West Village is like, really awesome, and like really beautiful and quaint. Like who else lives there? Liv [Tyler] and Sarah Jessica [Parker]. . .
Kyle [Maclaughlin] lives there, Michael [Stipe] lived there. Now he lives in SoHo, but Julie, well she’s not famous. Doesn’t Drew [Barrymore] live there?

I thought she lived in the East Village. I lived in the East Village for three years, and I used to see Drew and Chloë [Sevigny]. . .
The East Village is so funny now. I mean, in the ’80s, the East Village was really scary. Now it’s like a trustafarian Disneyland.

Yeah, that’s why I sort of moved out. But for your purposes, the West Village is cool.
My purposes are to be safe. I don’t have to go out every fucking night.

Bulls? Really? Maybe tough bears

At the NYSE yesterday.

Glad Ford is sponsoring this! They have the money to spend! The Professional Bull Riders 2009 Invitational is this weekend at Madison Square Garden. (I'm surprising Mrs. Grieve and taking her for an early Valentine's Day gift! Oh, man. That would be classic.)

More Robin Raj intel (and what about those cartoon hams?)

Thanks to the fine folks at Curbed for the link to my Robin Raj post earlier today. Joey had some additional intel:
"This reminds us that we were in Robin Raj last weekend and asked an employee about the move. He told us they paid under $30,000/month in rent on the 14th Street and Third Ave. space, and the landlord was raising the rent to $60,000/month. Yowza. He also said the landlord hadn't found a taker yet."

And what will happen to those cartoon hams and other illustrations on their outdoor menu? Check out Jeremiah's photos of the RR storefront at Flickr. (Like the one above...)

That joke isn't funny anymore: Duane Reade opens at location of former OTB parlor on John Street

Last May, I wrote about my favorite OTB parlor at 17 John St. in the Financial District getting closed by the state...



... THE NIGHT BEFORE THE KENTUCKY DERBY, only the biggest racing day of the year.



Shall I even bother mentioning what just opened in that old OTB spot?



Seriously! There are now SIX Duane Reade stores within a three-or-so-block radius. (Not to mention a CVS.) And how about that new Duane Reade logo?

Robin Raj prepping for the big move two doors down (and there's signage!)

The folks at Robin Raj Discount Health & Beauty Aids at the southwest corner of 14th Street and Third Avenue are emptying the store in preparation for their move this weekend (I was told) ...



...a few doors down to 114 Third Ave. where there's now signage! And it looks as if the RR guys will now going by Robin Raj Discount & Deli...



Given what I usually see sold there, a better name might be Robin Raj Discount Egg and Cheese on a Roll.

Previous Robin Raj coverage on EV Grieve here.

From tacos to thai on Third Avenue

Been keeping my eye on 58 Third Ave. near 11th Street, former home to the worst Taco Bell in America.* Seems as if the spot was vacant for eons.



I thought it was that inexpensive "for rent" sign with the handwritten phone number that made it look El Cheapo. What, you throwing a garage sale or do you want to do some business? Then TWO new signs were added!



Anyway! Those signs must have done the trick! The plywood went up last fall...now something called Thai Bodhi Tree is coming to this spot.



They'll be going before the CB3 SLA & DCA Licensing Committee
Monday for a beer and wine permit.

* blanket statement.

P.S. Bodhi? Like Patrick Swayzeeee in Point Break?

Mulch Madness

Earlier this week, BoweryBoogie had a post on the annual discard of Christmas trees in the LES (watch out for that one in the street!)...there's a little more orderly process happening now at Tompkins Square Park with the city's annual MulchFest this Saturday and Sunday...Drag your old tree over here and the city will make some nice-smelling mulch for the park. No mattress or couches please!




Just be careful, OK?

Day to night in Manhattan in 2:21

Titled "Twilight Timelapse from Roosevelt Island." According to conorfuhdu on YouTube: "Taken with a Canon PowerShot SD870IS using the time-lapse movie feature. 2sec delay between shots." (Via Roosevelt Island 360)

In front of Lucy's: A sight that gave me the yikes

Given the possible state of our local dive bars today, you have to wonder about great places in high-rent districts such as Lucy's on Avenue A.

So when I saw the dumpster there in front of Lucy's yesterday afternoon...I couldn't help but think the worst. And I'm not alone in this thinking...and she has floated retirement rumors in the past.

Not to worry, though! I took a stroll by the place after its usual 6 p.m. opening time yesterday...Lucy's is still alive and well, the neon bar signs out front as inviting as ever...

Downtown Music Gallery is leaving the Bowery

This music-lover's mainstay at 342 Bowery is moving soon to Chinatown in a basement location at 13 Monroe St. (Click on the images for a better look...and directions...) According to the sign:

We are planning to be open for business there by the first week of January 2009, if not sooner.
We will be focusing even more on our mail-order/web sales at this new location, but we will have a new 'hours of operation' schedule so all our cherished NY and global customers can visit - and one can always call and ask about visiting at other times if those hours do not accommodate one's schedule for a visit when traveling to/through New York City.

And an FYI for tourists:



Downtown Express featured the shop in December 2006. According to the article:

Bruce Gallanter and Manny Maris defy all the snooty stereotypes surrounding record store clerks. Since opening their shop, Downtown Music Gallery (DMG) in May of 1991, the two have fostered an open, inviting atmosphere in their scruffy little record store on the Bowery. Both typical, Village shop and anachronism, co-proprietors Gallanter and Maris have created a modern-day salon, one that sustains imaginative artists who are largely ignored by the mainstream music industry.

Meanwhile, this means, of course, there's another nice Bowery storefront for something overpriced and stupid.

[UPDATE: Thanks to Alex at Flaming Pablum for setting the record straight...the store hasn't been on the Bowery since 1991...they were previously on Fifth Street just east of Cooper Square next to the Scratcher. Check out Alex's post on the shop from last February.]

Meanwhile on the Bowery....

Just a few doors south of the Downtown Music Gallery...another nice Bowery storefront for something overpriced and stupid.

That new coffee shop coming to Avenue B has a name

Between Fourth Street and Third Street.

Previously on EV Grieve:
New coffee place coming to Avenue B

Report: 43.1 percent of East Village sellers have cut their asking prices (for real estate, not drugs)

The Daily News reports today on StreetEasy's latest assessment of the Manhattan real-estate market...(Curbed had this yesterday.) The Daily News break it down:

Manhattan neighborhoods with the most price cuts
These neighborhoods have seen the highest percentage of sellers cutting prices from quarter three to quarter four 2008:

Beekman - 50.6% of listings cut prices
Manhattan Valley - 45.7%
East Village - 43.1%
Central Park South - 41.9%
SoHo - 41.7%

I dunno...still seems to me like the time I was dragged to a Barney's Warehouse Sale...$950 sweaters were on sale for $600!

You know that grand art-deco Metro Theater at 99th and Broadway that has been closed for a few years?

Yeah, its recent long tortured history (condo! restuarant!) is over. It will now be home to an Urban Outfitters. (New York Post, second item). Finally, local residents won't have to travel so far for their Toddland diver down hoodies!

City Room had an item on the Metro (originally called the Midtown, for some reason) in 2007:

From the outside, the landmark Metro Theater on Broadway, an Art Deco jewel box between 99th and 100th Streets, looks almost as exquisite as it must have in the 1930s, when movies were still known as “photoplays,” though no photo has played there for two years.

But the inside, visible to passers-by on a recent afternoon, has been gutted. Gone are seats and plaster and curtains and screen. Gone is a golden ceiling molding with a chain of floral bouquets. Gone are the sylph-filled niches. Gone is grillework that sprouted like corn stalks.

Here's a little more on the theater's past on Tom Fletcher's New York Architecture

The Midtown, designed by the architecture firm of Boak & Paris, opened in 1933. From 1948 through April 1972, it was part of the Brandt circuit, featuring sub-run foreign and independent fare starting in the 1950s. It exhibited films such as Belle de Jour, Shame (and just about every other Bergman movie), Breathless, Hiroshima Mon Amour, Repulsion, L’Avventura, Straw Dogs, and Gimme Shelter, though never in exclusive engagements. After Brandt's management, it operated as an adult film venue.

It was renamed the Metro in 1982.

FINALLY: Some good bar-related news

The Emerald Inn, the Upper West Side saloon that has been serving up drinks since FDR was in office, will live. And you can thank the recession for it.

In September, manager Charlie Campbell learned that rent would double to nearly $35,000 a month for its 800-square-foot space on Columbus Avenue near 69th Street. (Sidenote: How did he learn of this? He saw the location advertised for lease on the Web site of real estate brokerage CB Richard Ellis. Nice!)

Anyway, according to the Times today:

Like so many other stalwart-but-doomed Manhattan holdouts that have lost their leases under the pressure of gentrification, the Emerald — as its habitués call it — was scheduled to close at the end of April; its rent was to more than double.

But the watering hole . . . has won a two-year lease extension thanks to “the whole down economy, where they can’t find a tenant who will pay that much,” said Mike Campbell, 77, the Emerald’s owner.

Indeed, the reprieve “has to do with the economy — and the kind of people the Campbells are,” said Mike Clarke, an owner of the A. J. Clarke Real Estate Corporation, which manages the five-story apartment building in which the Emerald resides. Mr. Campbell’s son Charlie, 49, manages the bar.

As one patron said, "Columbus Avenue has been turning into a strip mall, with chain stores and restaurants. Maybe the recession will help the mom-and-pops stay in business.”

Finally, a little history on the place via the Times:

Mike Campbell’s father (also Mike) opened the Emerald with his brother William. “Exactly when, we’re not sure, but it was 1943 or 1944,” Charlie Campbell said.

The Emerald has been an enduring link to the West Side’s raffish past, when Columbus and Amsterdam Avenues were populated by gin mills and where brawls among patrons, enthusiastically mediated by bruiser bartenders, were not unusual.

“We were called Spanish Harlem until the ’60s, when they put in Lincoln Center,” said Charlie Campbell. In recent decades, the clientele has gone upscale, to professionals who can afford Upper West Side housing, along with a sprinkling of loyal locals, some of them survivors of the era when “West Side Story” was a contemporary narrative.

Previous Emerald coverage on EV Grieve here.

"Beat writers...spent considerable time with the bookies, dope dealers, working girls and alcoholics for whom the Holiday was a second home"

So, as you know, we're all in full-on mourning over what may or may not be the end of the Holiday.

Former East Village resident Mike Hudson had a nice piece on the place and its irascible owner Stefan last May in the Niagra Falls Reporter:

Stefan was old the first time I went in there back in the '70s, and he was older still when the Redhead and I lived a few blocks away on Avenue A during the early '90s. When I went there last week, it mostly to see whether the place still existed and, if it did, fully expecting to hear the particulars of Stefan's passing.

So I was surprised when I walked through the door and saw him there, weighing a lot less and not even bothering to put in his lower dentures anymore, but still standing behind his bar and still irritable.

"What do you want?" he asked.

Hudson gets into the bar's past patrons:

The place wasn't overtly literary in the sense of the White Horse Tavern, where Dylan Thomas suffered his killing seizure after a drinking bout, or the Lion's Head, where Mailer, Hamill, McCourt and Kennedy drank and fought and preened in front of barmaid Jessica Lange, but like many Manhattan dives the Holiday Lounge had its writers.

For years Allen Ginsberg had a large apartment in a building almost directly across the street, and he and other Beat writers like Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Gregory Corso and Herbert Huncke spent considerable time with the bookies, dope dealers, working girls and alcoholics for whom the Holiday was a second home.

When I mentioned them, Stefan cheered a bit.

"Ginsberg, Kerouac, yes. But Auden, Auden always sat right there, under the window. He lived in the house next door. And when the war was ended, after that, he came in one afternoon and said he was going to Vienna. He had a villa in Vienna."

And in the end, Hudson comments on the obvious...what has happened to the neighborhood:

The East Village isn't what it used to be, not 60 years ago or even 10. The writers and artists and musicians are gone, replaced by young Wall Street brokers, trust fund babies and Manhattan real estate speculators as rents have skyrocketed.

Likewise gone, and to who knows where, are the bums, and what was once the most wonderfully diverse neighborhood in the city has now become predictably and boringly white and middle class.

Cell phones glued to their ears, they walk their stupid dogs or ride bicycles on the sidewalk. Inside the living organism that is New York, art takes a back seat to commerce, no matter what they tell you.

Well, it's only Jan. 6...we're still being optimistic for the new year...and the continued existence of the Holiday as we've known it...

Nickel beer at Sam's

Jeremiah's awful news yesterday on the possible demise of the Holiday on St. Mark's inspired to me look into some other old haunts on the street from year's past...I came across this article in the Time magazine archives on Sam's Bar & Grill.

The Nickel In St. Mark's Place
Monday, Apr. 4, 1949

Pale and shaken, 51-year-old Sam Atkins backed away from himself with a feeling somewhere between disbelief and awe. By a single, splendid cerebration he had been lifted out of the ruck into the status of a television curiosity. In his humble Manhattan saloon, Sam had decided to cut the price of beer (the 7-oz. glass) from a dime to a nickel.

Up to that moment Sam was just a pensioned pumper driver from the Bayonne (N.J.) fire department, and Sam's bar & grill was like any neighborhood joint around St. Mark's Place on the Lower East Side. Its only distinctive touch was Sam's cousin, "Bottle Sam" Hock, who amused the trade by whacking tunes out of whisky bottles with a suds-scraper. But the customers got a joyful jolt when Sam opened up one morning last week.

All around the walls, even over the bar mirror, tasteful, powder-blue signs proclaimed in red letters: "Spring is here and so is the 5¢ beer." The early birds drank and took their change in mild disbelief. The nickel wasn't obsolescent after all. The word spread. Sam's bar & grill started to bulge like Madison Square Garden on fight night. People drank, shook hands with strangers and sang.

Then something went sour. The two breweries that supplied Sam cut him off, and an electrician came around and took the neon beer sign out of the flyspecked windows. Somehow, it seemed, Sam had betrayed free enterprise. An organization of restaurant owners muttered that Sam might not be cutting his beer, but he was cutting his throat. The Bartenders Union threw a picket line in front of the place because it was nonunion.

But Sam hung on. He signed up with the union, managed to get his beer through a couple of distributors and a Brooklyn brewery, announced that he was going to have the windows washed, and keep at it. Said he solemnly: "The people want it." By this week Sam's idea had spread to other saloons in Washington, D.C. and New Jersey, and Sam was getting more trade in a day than he had drawn before in a week. The nickel beer was here to stay, Sam announced.

Photos via the Time archive.

Downtown Beirut, around 1990, about 3 a.m.

I can't remember when it closed, 1994? On First Avenue.

Speaking of Downtown Beirut, I came across an article on menright.com about Carolyn, a downtown fixture and bartender at Downtown Beirut and member of Killer Instinct, X.K.I. and Bad Tuna Experiment.



According to the article:

Carolyn was new in town, working for an answering service and as an occassional punk extra in clueless Hollywood versions of the Lower East Side. She spent the nights she wasn't working on the benches in Tompkins Square, or on the stoops around Stromboli's Pizza on St. Mark's Place. She didn't have enough cash to get into the clubs very often. Drink of choice: a forty-ounce Bud.

The article talks about her bands and early years in the neighborhood. And whatever happened to her?

Carolyn resumed her long-interrupted college career and graduated summa cum laude from Hunter College. She got married. She studied for a PhD in English (specializing in Medieval Germanic Languages), wrote grammar exercises for college textbooks, and appeared on Jeopardy. (She won the trip — not the money.)

Carolyn is now the mother of a daughter by the name of Harriet, has a house in the woods, and is a Senior Editor for a major textbook publisher in New York City. Unlike many of her contemporaries on the Lower East Side, she survived. This is her hidden past.

And here's BTE with "Beer Picnic."

Window-washing day at the Empire State Building

This gives me the creeps. I hate heights.

A sign that I like

On 14th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B. Check out the old telephone exchange -- OR 3-4786.