Let's see what those $441 million in free agents look like!

The Yankees kick off their season today in Baltimore at 4. Maybe. Weather looks iffy. By the way, the Yankees spent $441 million in the offseason on free agents. The other 13 American League teams spent $176.28 million on free agents -- combined.

"A thousand crisscrossing fictions"

"Picture Cary Grant in Hitchcock’s 1959 thriller 'North by Northwest' being hustled out of the hotel and into the back seat of a parked car by two goons, having been mistaken for another man. 'Don’t tell me where we’re going,' Grant quips. 'Surprise me.' The car peels away and we are swiftly sealed in another world, our familiar surroundings receding in the rear-view mirror.

"Standing at the same corner half a century later, it’s not hard to feel a curious dissonance between the two places. There’s the tangible New York of concrete and smog, and there’s what the film historian James Sanders has called the 'mythic New York,' the dreamy celluloid landscape of a thousand crisscrossing fictions."

(The New York Times)

Strangely enough, the study also concluded that patrons have the boorish manners of a Yalie

"An expensive coat check, 'Euro Night' on Fridays and a 1,300 percent markup on a bottle of vodka. These are just some of the ways Marquee has remained a popular, if not outrageously profitable, fixture of New York City night life. The rare peek into the business plan of a nightclub comes from the Harvard Business School, where associate professor Anita Elberse and MBA grads Ryan Barlow and Sheldon Wong conducted a detailed dissection of Marquee -- the 5-year-old Chelsea hot spot where celebs including Jay-Z, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan have partied." (New York Post)

And does it really take Harvard researchers to figure this out...?

Balducci's bows out

From the Post:

Balducci's, the storied high-end grocery chain that first opened in Greenwich Village 63 years ago, is closing its two Manhattan locations at the end of the month.

Balducci's is probably best remembered by New Yorkers for its store on Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village, which operated from 1972 to 2003.

After the Greenwich Village store shuttered, Balducci's only Manhattan location for a while was on West 66th Street near Lincoln Center.

That store will close, as will what is now Balducci's Manhattan flagship, a 17,000-square-foot store that opened in 2005 in a former bank at Eighth Avenue and 14th Street in Chelsea.

Be sure to check out the reader comments!

Secretariat loses the Wood

The Wood Memorial is today at the Aqueduct in South Ozone Park, Queens. The biggest racing day of the year there...and a Holy Day of Obligation for some. In his last big prep for the Kentucky Derby, Secretariat came in third at the 1973 Wood Memorial, finishing behind stablemate Angle Light and Sham. Secretariat would never lose another race. He won the Triple Crown that year.

To YouTube we go!:



Previously on EV Grieve:
Thanksgiving at the Aqueduct, Part 2

"Coney Island: Really Fun. Really Open"

From the Times today:

Last September, when the Astroland amusement park, a three-acre sliver of the area, was shut down in a battle with its landlord, erroneous reports went out around the world that all of Coney Island was a corpse. Overnight, it seemed, obituaries were composed. Carnie barkers were invited to their own wakes.

But the rumors of demise had been exaggerated greatly. All of Coney Island, from Nathan’s Famous Hot Dogs to the world-renowned Cyclone, had not dropped off the Boardwalk into the sea.

“They’re all surprised when I tell them we’re still open,” said a frustrated Dennis Vourderis, whose family has run the Wonder Wheel for more than 40 years. “Unfortunately, the press did a great job announcing Astroland had closed, so now people think that Coney Island is closed.

“But they haven’t rolled the beach up yet,” he said. “It’s totally ridiculous.”

The premature announcement of their burial has been so widespread that several local merchants have pooled money in an existential media campaign. Beginning next month, there will be billboards on the highways, bus stop ads, commercials at the movies. The slogan: “Coney Island: Really Fun. Really Open.”

Meanwhile, I was also guilty of focusing on what was closed rather than what was open.

So...go!

Toothless children continue to be exploited by heartless orange juice company

You've likely seen Tropicana's new ads everywhere around the neighborhood in the last three months... the ones with the affluent, happy people snuggling. It makes me want to add more vodka to my orange juice.* The ads showed off Tropicana's new packaging. So how did the campaign go? As AdAge noted Thursday:

Tropicana's rebranding debacle did more than create a customer-relations fiasco. It hit the brand in the wallet. After its package redesign, sales of the Tropicana Pure Premium line plummeted 20% between Jan. 1 and Feb. 22, costing the brand tens of millions of dollars. On Feb. 23, the company announced it would bow to consumer demand and scrap the new packaging, designed by Peter Arnell. It had been on the market less than two months.

The ads, like the one up top spotted on Avenue C, remain around the neighborhood ... Enjoy them while you can! Remnants of a rebranding debacle from the recession. Or something.

* I haven't had a screwdriver since I was 18. Or 19.

See you

NYC-based A Place to Bury Strangers.

Reader comments

Many thanks to everyone who takes the time to visit this site... I especially appreciate the comments. I wanted to highlight two comments from this past week:

From the Cabin Fever post:

prodigal son said...
I've just returned to New York after a long hiatus, and I've noticed an improvement in terms of yunnie saturation. I can take walks now without constantly being stuck behind someone talking on a cellphone and meandering along the sidewalk. The subway cars seem a little less crowded. But I haven't hit the bars yet.

From the At the Unemployment Olympics post:

Anonymous said...
I've been living in the EV since 1977 - like Sheena I was a punk rocker. I used to tear my hair out about gentrification (like since 1990), but now I have a really different approach - actually a more punk rock approach. Fuck it, let it get destroyed. It's all interesting.

(I have had heartbreaking moments mostly when mom and pops go. There was a BUTTON store on 1st Ave in Momofuko country, can you imagine? Two little - like 5 feet tall, husband and wife - Jewish refugees from WW2. An entire store devoted to buttons. I always felt bad for the guy, he would go to help you and and after about 2 minutes his wife would roll her eyes and grab the button box out of his hands and help you. He couldn't do anything right, it was a chuckle every time.) I don't mourn for the EV scene anymore, because frankly, once we realized it was a scene it was already gone.

When I read this, Vanishing NY and Lost City, I think geez they're pissed off about how much less fun it is now, they'd be suicidal if they knew how really fun it was like 1980. But you guys do a great job.

The new Lower Eastside Girls Club: "We are really, truly, after all this time...breaking ground this year"

Wanted to share a comment to my post from yesterday on the Lower Eastside Girls Club opening its new HQ on Avenue D. It's from GoGirl at the Girls Club. It reads, in part:

We are really, truly, after all this time...breaking ground this year!!!! Just a few comments- that old Villager stuff is ...old. We are no longer an EDC project and no longer affiliated with FEVA. The building is being built through HPD and will only be Girls Club (30,000 sq.ft) and the housing- which is a 50/50 project- 50% market, 50% affordable! And as for that guy appearing to pee against the wall- unfortunate graphic I agree- but what he is really doing is buying an affordable tamale with rice and beans at our cafe take-out window!!!! So bike on over in early 2011. And feel free to drop by our 1st Street center and see the floor plans anytime.

Grand opening party for the East Village Visitor's Center tonight

The East Village Visitors Center & Cafe is holding its grand-opening party tonight at 6.

Here's more info from the East Village History Project Web site:

GRAND OPENING PARTY!
Friday, April 3, 2009, 6:00pm - 7:30pm
Join us at this free event to celebrate the launch of this important new community center and mingle with neighbors, business owners, preservationists, educators and historians while noshing on local delicacies. RSVP not required.

Cash bar and free refreshments provided by DeRobertis Pastries , Economy Candy, Russo's, Two Boots, Veselka, Luzzo's and more!

The East Village Visitors Center & Cafe offers local brochures, maps and information about what is going on in the area, historic exhibits and displays, films, educational programs, special events, walking tours and direct access to EVHP historians and educators.

The cafe offers free wi-fi, coffee, sandwiches, snacks, souvenirs, literature and more.

East Village Visitors Center & Cafe
@ The Bowery Poetry Club
308 Bowery
(Between E. Houston and Bleecker St)
New York, NY 10012
Open daily, 11am - 4pm
212-614-8702

Rob Hollander, one of the co-founders of the East Village History Project and the new East Village Visitors Center, spoke with WNYC's Brigid Bergin:

Hey, who's meeting me at the Q?

Not to play into stereotypes, but I haven't met too many fellows who wear boots like that and drink frozen pineapple drinks.

"Bored 2 Death"? Hardly!

Some of us got to stalk Max Fischer ... or watch the trucks rumble along East Seventh Street after filming for HBO's "Bored 2 Death" wrapped last evening at the Odessa.

Friday Photo Follies

And you thought there was a mob scene at TopShop yesterday....Down on Park Row.

"All of the Mets, Yankees and NYC resources could not duplicate what the Romans did 20 centuries ago"

A few excerpts from EV Grieve favorite Phil Mushnick's column in today's Post. The topic: The new stadiums for the Mets and Yankees:

The Mets' new billion-dollar, state-of-the-art, restaurant- and luxury-box-lined park has loads of obstructed-view seats -- same as the Yanks' new park. The Mets are pretending that theirs don't exist, while the Yanks are pretending that theirs were part of the plan, all along.

Who was the architect, George Costanza?

Not that anyone expected anyone to actually consider the sightlines from these seats. Those unwilling or unable to surrender their good senses to continue to attend Yankees and Mets games were deemed persona-get-outta from the start. The plans, after all, always called for fewer "cheaper" seats.

Who knew, three years ago, that such seats would be in demand among the freshly impoverished? Or that corporations, having supplanted real fans as sports' best customers, would be less solvent than both bleacher bums and bleach?

And!

Most remarkable, though, is that in the 21st century, all of the Mets, Yankees and NYC resources could not duplicate what the Romans did 20 centuries ago. The Roman Coliseum, now 2,000 years old, never had a bad seat.

And!

No worries, though. If Mayor Bloomberg and Yankee Vice Emperor Randy Levine are correct in their claim that new ballparks are good for the economy, we can build new ones every two years. Excelsior!

Spinning into DVD

"Spinning into Butter," a racial drama starring Sarah Jessica Parker, was released last Friday, showing locally at the Sunshine on Houston. The film had reportedly been sitting on the shelf for nearly four years and was unceremoniously dumped on the market. The marketing campaign consisted of putting up the Worst Movie Posters Ever on Houston and Avenue B and East Fifth Street near Cooper Union. And probably a few other places.

According to Variety, the film grossed $5,534 during the March 27-29 weekend. It played at four theaters in the country. That's good for a $1,384 per screen average. So let's see if my arithmetic is any good. It played six times a day at the Sunshine; 18 times then for the weekend, we assume. So divide the $1,384 by 18. That's roughly 77. So 77 people saw the movie over the weekend at the Sunshine. Tickets are $12.50 each. So, 77 divided by 12.50.... so that means, on average, six people saw each screening.

By the way, "Spinning into Butter" is no longer playing at the Sunshine.

The new scourge of our neighborhoods: Church chimes

These were spotted on St. Mark's between First Avenue and Avenue A.

The weather of late is causing problems for local businesses

For example!

On East Third Street near Avenue B...



And on St. Mark's Place...

Marilyn Monroe Stumps for the Sock Man

Have you seen these ads around for the Sock Man?






I thought for sure that the Sock Man would use Chloe Sevigny for the ad.

Beer and wine for May

The dismantling of the old Love Saves the Day location on Second Avenue and Seventh Street continues. Meanwhile, as Jeremiah reported, the space is becoming something called May Chan Ramen. On April 20, they'll be going before the CB3's SLA & DCA Licensing Committee for a beer and wine permit.

Please?

At Julius Klein/Art & Design on East First Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue.

Noted

"Sitting in new Yankee Stadium on the first day fans came to the $1.5 billion ballpark, managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner admitted some tickets might be overpriced given the recession but insisted the team read the market correctly for most of them." (ESPN)

(And that's Hal on the left of everyone's favorite all-star!)

I LOVE NEW YORK -- the real stuff, not that fake shit

We get press releases!

I LOVE NEW YORK TAKES STEPS TO RECAPTURE ICONIC BRAND
AND INCREASE REVENUE

OpSec Security and CMG Worldwide Selected to Launch Authentication Program

New York, NY- I LOVE NEW YORK, one of the world's most iconic brands, has launched a new authentication program to protect its brand and legitimate brand licensees from the onslaught of unlicensed and counterfeit I LOVE NEW YORK products in the marketplace. The protection program consists of accompanying officially licensed products with new hologram hang tags and labels, which serve as marks of integrity and control counterfeiting. OpSec Security, Inc., a global leader in anti-counterfeiting and brand protection solutions, and CMG Worldwide, a premier licensing company representing celebrity legends and prized brands, is partnering with I LOVE NEW YORK in the authentication program.

The I LOVE NEW YORK campaign and brand, managed by Empire State Development (ESD), were launched in 1977 to promote tourism and travel for New York State. In May 2008, ESD relaunched the I LOVE NEW YORK campaign to reinvigorate the premier travel brand, nationally and internationally, and further promote tourism in New York State. Today's announcement is the latest component of the brand relaunch.

ESD President and CEO Marisa Lago said, "The primacy of the I LOVE NEW YORK brand is in no small part due to the millions of visitors who purchase officially licensed merchandise that bears the campaign's iconic logo. As part of the relaunch, I LOVE NEW YORK began positioning the brand with contemporary products that go well beyond basic souvenirs. As a result of improving the quality and quantity of official I LOVE NEW YORK merchandise, licensing revenues increased by 70% in 2008-2009."

At its heart, the authentication program serves to further increase revenues and protect the brand as a valuable asset for New York State. Additional steps have been taken by I LOVE NEW YORK to protect the brand, such as the development of "brand guidelines" that aid partners in using the brand's logo in a consistent manner, thereby increasing awareness of and helping to cement an emotional connection with audiences.

"Over the years, I LOVE NEW YORK has become one of the most recognized tourism brands in the world and is widely popular with visitors to New York State. Like many respected brands, counterfeiters have exploited consumers looking for I LOVE NEW YORK souvenirs. We are proud to provide an anti-counterfeiting solution that enables consumers to easily identify genuine I LOVE NEW YORK merchandise from low quality fakes," said Jeffrey Unger, President, Brand Protection, OpSec Security.

Did you make it this far? And, Huh?

More signs from the recession

Man, I loved him in "Getting Even with Dad!"

Filming for the new HBO series "Bored 2 Death" is happening around the neighborhood...



Right now they're holed up in Odessa on Avenue A.



The show stars Jason Schwartzman and Ted Danson. When I took the photo of the flier the other day, two guys in their mid-20s were looking at it. One said something about Ted Danson. His friend replied, seriously, "Yeah, he was in 'Becker.'"

For further reading:
My Stalk-a-thon (Slum Goddess)

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

"It wasn’t long ago that one way the wealthy flashed their fortunes was by decking their dogs in Burberry collars and sending them for spa services. Now even the city’s wealthiest dog owners have cut their budgets and sometimes abandoned their dogs entirely." (City Room)

Two EV icons are on the mend, Biker Bill... and the Mosaic Man (Neither More Nor Less)

Coney Island Freak Show is on! (Gothamist)

Historic mailboxes disappear from Hotel Chelsea (Living with Legends)

Karate Boogaloo has details on the excellent-sounding "What I've Been Hoarding; An Accumulation of Rock and Literary Decadence: 1965 - 85" (Stupefaction)

Jeremiah walks on the East River and revisits 1992 East Village (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Shocker! Orchard Street Hell building shows signs of life (BoweryBoogie)

The link to the video people keep sending me (BrinkJunk)

Lady GaGa knocks out her backup dancer's front teeth (BuzzFeed)

Ridiculous help wanted ad (Gawker)

EV Grieve reader and EV resident Claudia Castillo (a currently unemployed TV producer) shot a nice segment on the Unemployment Olympics the other day. Watch it here. It was also posted to CNN's iReport page.

Cabin fever

Matt Harvey's "Bash Compactor" column in this week's NYPress looks at the not-so-secret, secret speakeasy on Avenue A... Before heading Down Below, he asks a fine question:

Last Saturday night on Avenue A, post-college boozers were spilling out onto the sidewalk from a jam-packed Niagara. Watching drunken couples falling over each other in an attempt to snag a cab, I wondered, if the recession is so deep, why aren’t these people on Greyhound buses back to Rochester?

The Lower Eastside Girls Club's "urban paradise" closer to reality -- groundbreaking set for this year

It has been a long time coming... This vacant lot on Avenue D between Seventh Street and Eighth Street...



...will some day be home to a new 12-story Lower Eastside Girls Club.... The Capital Campaign has been ongoing...



(Before going any further, the people depicted in these renderings really seem out of place... and not at all reflective of the diversity in the neighborhood...and what are those two in the bottom photo on the left doing? The guy on the right looks as if he's peeing against the wall.)

Anyway!

Now, according to an article yesterday at Inhabitat:

Though New York City’s real estate climate is anything but sunny, this year, the Lower East Side Girls Club (in partnership with the Dermot Company, a high-profile local developer) will break ground on a new 30,000–square foot, mixed-use arts and community center on the corner of 7th Street and Avenue D. It will be the first and only Girls Club facility in NYC (when boys and girls clubs nationwide joined in 1986, the Boys Club of New York, operating on the LES, opted out of the merger, leaving the neighborhood’s girls to develop their own organization).

And!

In addition to an expanded version of their Sweet Things Bake Shop, the LESGC’s signature social enterprise, the four-story center will contain open-air space for a farmers’ market, a fair trade bookstore and gift shop, a library for after-school tutoring and book club meetings, a full dome planetarium, a commercial kitchen and culinary training center, a leadership training site for career counseling, an amphitheater, and — if you can believe it—much, much more. The true heart of the project, though, is a science, health, and environmental center that will be available to all community youth.

According to a 2005 article in The Villager:

In 2002, the Economic Development Corporation gave the Girls Club control of six city-owned lots on Avenue D between 7th and 8th Sts. for the site of a new facility...

The Girls Club is not the only beneficiary of the project. About 13,000 square feet of space on the lot will be used for not-for-profit tenants, and 15,000 square feet of studio space will be leased to the Federation of East Village Artists, according to a mayoral press release. Rooftop antennas on the building will provide free high-speed Internet access to residents of two neighboring public housing developments.

As it has been reported, the top eight floors of the building will house 72 apartments.




Note: Just around the corner on East Seventh Street is the $10 million penthouse in the Flowerbox.

Two storefronts on Avenue D

While we're on the topic of Avenue D.

"Ode Fro Avenue D"

I've quoted Dave Crish, an editor at Not for Tourists, hereabouts in the past...Here's a piece he did for NFT from Jan. 20, 2007, titled, "Ode Fro Avenue D."

Began perambulation 'pon th'eponymous rue of yours true, D, fro corner at Second Ave, Biblioteca Fish. North to pole at pipestack, left at 12th to Tompkins Square. Vista clear, slightly bloodshot like 'em passing. Marinated of cheaply attained dose of cognac passant boutiques novel as Bertolt's idiom, Village East. O'er C to entrepot spirito plein of tattered clients at two o'clock. Mezzagiorno. Fro acquiring new slick to park loo and amidst chat of weathered Russians, two, coking, model damsel whispered past shadows dressed in denim torn, purple locks. Trans whiff to make mist of eerie mer, here -- terre trod of fading 'hemia beaux, though, not bent as once it were, however -- cracked as ever in relation the lamin' isle's elsewhere. Demarcated smoked Avenue D. Alphabet City's Z, la.

A "showcase" on East Seventh Street

The Beth Hamedrash Hagadol Anshe Ungarn East Seventh Street, described as "a Beaux Arts synagogue built in 1908 for a congregation of Hungarian Jews," was designated a historic landmark last March.

It was split into five residences in the 1980s. Today, the Times features the folks who live in the building's penthouse.

Notes the article, titled "Once Sacred, Now Their Showcase:"

Until pull-down shades were recently installed, neighbors in the tenement walkups and condominiums across East Seventh Street were afforded unobstructed glimpses of the couple’s king-size platform bed, egg-shaped bathtub and clear-glass shower. The blinds might be optional this summer, as the stands of black bamboo that ring the cedar-lined terrace reach full growth, blocking out any Peeping Toms.

[Photo: Michael Falco for The New York Times]

Noted

This Ain't the Summer of Love reports that Bronx native Ace Frehley will be among the guests christening the new Hard Rock at Yankee Stadium today.

Think he might play this one?

Manhattan home sales: Worse than the decline in the auto industry

"Manhattan co-op prices dropped the most since 1995 and transactions for all apartments plummeted 48 percent in the first quarter from a year earlier as the recession and Wall Street unemployment cut demand." (Bloomberg)

"The drop in sales was worse than the decline in the auto industry. In March, sales at General Motors were off 45 percent from March 2008." (The New York Times)

The Topshop truck as you've never seen it!

Without 150 undergrads huddled around trying to get free shit. Spotted on East 13th Street near Third Avenue. And why the grabby-grabby frenzy? What is this, 2006?

Former Downtown Music location now available

They moved earlier this year from the Bowery to Chinatown.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Downtown Music Gallery is leaving the Bowery

At age 98, Bob Sheppard announces his retirement

Whether or not you hate the Yankees, you have to appreciate the iconic Bob Sheppard, who has been the team's PA announcer since 1951. Now, at age 98, he's retiring. Yankee games will never be the same. (Via Gothamist)

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

Signs of life at Ruby's (Kinetic Carnival)

East Houston to be a nightmare for the next, oh, three years or so (BoweryBoogie)

What's left of Etherea (Flaming Pablum)

Ghosts (East of Bowery)

Part two of the Panorama (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

On the campaign trail with Reverend Billy (Slum Goddess)

Stone Street ready for warmer weather (Esquared)

The early days of the Williamsburg Bridge (Ephemeral New York)

The inside scoop on the East Village outpost of Whiskey Dick's

A note from EV Grieve: Starting today, you'll notice a slight change in the editorial. Previously, I enjoyed chronicling every day life in the neighborhood and elsewhere...lamenting the changes that were occurring in the process. However, to be honest, there's no money in that. So we'll be doing a little more publicist-friendly posts that, I hope, will make this site more attractive for a corporate purchase a la Daily Candy. Anyway, I hope that you do give my new direction a chance. After all, I'm just a guy who lives in the neighborhood.

I have the scoop on a new bar opening "very soon" in the East Village. Can't say much for now, though I will provide some tantilizing clues to its whereabouts in this post!

As I pass my favorite strip of shops, Blockbuster, Subway and Dunkin' Donuts, I come face to face with the glorious plywood, the likes of which has served as a welcome sign of our (long overdue) revitalization of the East Village. Anywho, after shooing aside someone with a digital camera trying to sneak a peak behind the wood, I step inside and come face-to-face with a neon Sam Adams sign. Hello, beautiful! I knew that I had found my new home away from home!

Then I met "Ingrid," the proprietor of this soon-to-be glorious space. She is a longtime EV resident, having moved here in 2005 from her native South Florida where she was slinging drinks at the always popular Whiskey Dick's. She plans on bringing some of the madcap mayhem that marked so many Spring Breaks in SoFa to the East Village. Holla, bitches!

While telling me more about her plans (including a contest to find who can make the most noise on the sidewalk at closing time), she poured me a new Sam Adams Spring Fling Amber Bock. I reached in my pocket for a sawbuck, but she said it was on the house. (Then she gave me a knowing wink!) Dang, had I known this, I would not have had to use that icky-looking graffiti-filled ATM down the street!

Ingrid regaled me with stories from back in the day when NYC was really gritty -- 2000. Oh, what a glorious time that must have been here! Though I'm glad I wasn't here. Where would I have lived? Wait! I know what you're thinking: I said that she moved here in 2003. Guilty! Her cousin lived on Long Island and she paid her a visit a few times in 2000. She got a good feel of the place from Valley Stream.

In any event, she gave me the dish on what to expect: beer pong, hookah, frisbeer, keg stands, flip cup, drink-and-drown nights, college-kids-get-in-free nights. Not to mention her special nosh -- small plates of ramen. Delish! She's even arranging a deal with the city in which Mayor Bloomberg (pray that he's reelected!) renames the East River the East Ramen for her grand opening. (Other ideas for naming rights are Central Dick's or the Financial Dick-strict.)

Well, it's nice to finally find a bar that promises to be full of people who look as if they may actually have a job! (Or soon will have a job on Wall Street!) And, more important, people who don't smell and look old or artsy.

One word of caution: As I said, this place is near Houston. (Oopsy I slipped!) Whatever you do, don't walk east on Houston by Katz's to get here. Smelly! Like pickles! My North Face jacket had to be dry cleaned several times after I walked by just once. Gross.

More TK!