Busy Saturday for Cooper Square construction

Busy Saturday on Cooper Square. Construction all around...

At the Cooper Square Hotel:






At 2 Cooper Square:



At the Cooper Union:




P.S.
A little CBGB nostalgia on Fifth Street:

"They're dead meat" -- and the celebrities who complained about living near a meat warehouse

As Eater reported on April 8, Pat La Frieda's West Village Meat Warehouse was put on the market for $31 million.

In an article titled "They're dead meat," the Post took a closer look at the La Frieda's warehouse, which has been there for 30 years. A few excerpts:

A lot of people would like to see us out of here. We don't fit no more," La Frieda said as he gestured toward the luxury apartments that have sprouted around his warehouse just south of the district.

and...

...La Frieda no longer feels welcome, with noise complaints from ritzy neighbors piling up and city-issued tickets during loading and unloading totaling $84,760 last year.

and...

Actress Eva Mendes and one of the Olsen twins, who briefly owned a penthouse across the street, were among the star-studded cast of complainers, La Frieda's son Pat Jr. claimed.

and...

The La Frieda warehouse was put on the market for $31 million last month, and boutique hoteliers Ian Schrager and Peter Moore have expressed interest, Sotheby's broker Robson Zanetti said.

In its heyday, 250 wholesale butchers chopped meat within the dozen blocks officially known as the Gansevoort Market. By 2003, as men in snug tennis sweaters started outnumbering those in bloodstained aprons, the Greenwich Village Society for Historical Preservation counted just 35 butchers.

In the past year, at least nine meatpackers quietly moved out.

As for the lack of the district's namesake businesses, "It doesn't make a difference to me. I didn't even know this area existed four years ago until I came," said Mario Cameron, controller for the warehouse's new owner, Robert Isabell.

The exodus leaves only seven butchers in the district, all inside a city-owned co-op with a lease set to expire in 2014.

For further reading:
Interstate Food, Inc.: Vanishing (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Signs from the recession

Houston near Norfolk.



Avenue A near Third Street.

Why the paparazzi will be in the East Village tomorrow (OMG! Angelina!)

"Salt" is expected to be one of the big Hollywood summer movie smasheroos upon its release on July 23, 2010. It's a CIA thriller (a rogue agent!) with Angelina Jolie, Liev Schreiber and Chiwetel Ejiofor. It's being directed by Phillip Noyce.

First, of course, the movie needs to be made. Which is why they're filming in the East Village tomorrow, specifically on Second Street between First and Second Avenues.




It promises to be one humdinger of a production. (Let's hope this scene doesn't call for confetti.) "It's the biggest film shoot in New York City right now," a crew member told me. They've been filming around the city...and in Albany! (It's such a big film, Tom Cruise was once going to play the lead role.) The crew member was sitting on the steps the Russian Orthodox Cathedral keeping an eye on the equipment. This was the easy part, he said. Because tomorrow...





...he'll have to help keep the paparazzi at bay. "You'll know when she's here."

"Salt" substitute

The Divine Liturgy this morning at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of the Holy Virgin Protection on Second Street was held in the basement this morning...




...as the church is prepped for a scene tomorrow in the Angelina Jolie thriller "Salt." (And now you know why the headline to this post is so corny.)




Wardrobe and hair and makeup will also be taking place tomorrow in the basement hall.

Things I really probably don't want to know about (with apologies)

Like what, exactly, is all this on Seventh Street outside Caracas this morning. Quite a spectacle. Whatever it is, it's all over the family truckster too.

Sunday in the Park

More details here.

On the bus to Belmont (and no one apparently likes to go the the racetrack anymore)

As I've mentioned, the MTA eliminated train service to Belmont Park race track. (You can take a shuttle bus now courtesy of the New York Racing Association.) Yesterday, the Times paid a visit to the park to see what was what as fans watched live races and the Kentucky Derby simulcast.

Here are a few passages:

For more than a century, the Belmont Special carried throngs of thoroughbred lovers, inveterate gamblers and people who just craved a festive day in the Belmont Park grandstand to the doorstep at one of the grand palaces of American horse racing.

and...

The Belmont Special has been losing ridership for years — a sign of a sharp decline in racing attendance across the nation. Railroad officials say that made it a logical choice to cut. “We’re talking about 100 customers a day, on average,” said Joe Calderone, a railroad spokesman.

and...

On weekdays, the train carried 30 to 35 people last year; so far this spring, the shuttle has carried 7 to 9 passengers a day, Mr. Cook said.

It is a far cry from when train service to Belmont began, on May 4, 1905, the day the park opened. Forty thousand people journeyed to see the inaugural running at the track, most traveling by train in a “pall of soft-coal smoke,” The New York Times said, adding that “when the trains were full the throng had to stand wherever it was when the gates closed until fresh trains could be run in.”

and some logic...

Racing association officials, who lobbied against the elimination of direct train service, estimate that the park will lose more than $5 million this year because of the cut, while the authority says it will save about $112,000.

[Photo: Robert Stolarik for The New York Times]

Triple trouble

At the OTB on Delancey. A big scratch.

Mind Joe, please

Good morning. Construction on Seventh Street near Avenue A.





DO NOT look at the guy standing there with a camera...



And the truck matches the mural...

The end is near

At 14th Street and Fourth Avenue.

Flashback to last fall...

Noted

"You know times are tough when the tony cafe at a prestigious Manhattan bank gets turned into a thrift store." (New York Post)

Oh, and anything good?

There were no Rolex watches or Gucci bags on hand to be picked from the tables in the Midtown cafe, on Third Avenue at 58th Street. A Versace jacket was spotted among the items, although it was at least a decade old.

And most of the other odds and ends were just old hand-me-downs, such as a can opener from the 1970s, a coffee maker with its lid missing, a book on ancient Indian head massage and a goblet in the shape of the comic-book villain the Joker.

Vicious

For no reason. Good use of "Vicious" perhaps?

Remembering Richard Leck: "He liked the anything-goes quality, the creativity and the street life"

Karen Lillis first met the writer and poet Richard Leck nearly five years ago. And in a rather short amount of time, he made a profound impact on her life.

"Richard was a really positive, steady presence in my life... Among other things — like good life advice from someone who had survived 75 years — he embodied and remembered a New York I was really interested in, a bohemian place people came together to make," Lillis told me in an e-mail. Lillis has since published Leck's work on her Words Like Kudzu Press in Pittsburgh.

Leck, a longtime East Village resident, passed away of heart disease on Dec. 19.

First, some background on Leck's life from his obituary in The Village Voice:

He was drafted to go to the Korean War in 1951, but deferred his service to attend New York University’s Journalism School. During this time, he also reported for the New Jersey Observer. He served in the Army in peacetime from 1956 to 1958, training at Fort Dix and working in Westchester.

In the 1960s, Leck was a habitué of the Greenwich Village coffeehouse scene, frequenting Cafe Figaro, The Limelight and The Commons, but especially Cafe Feenjon. He mingled inside and outside of the coffeehouses with such figures as Yoko Ono; Shel Silverstein; Peter, Paul, and Mary; Feenjon owner Manny Dworman; poet Taylor Mead; offbeat radio show host Long John Nebel; actor Darren McGavin; and painter Yukiko Katsura, among others.

He said of that time, “I didn’t write in those days — I just listened. I just took it all in.”

Leck worked a variety of odd jobs, often retaining a bohemian’s preference for the low-key lifestyle to a regular day job. He did the books for a retailer, he managed an antique store, he sold goods on the street, and he worked with Jewish children.

In recent years, he was a regular customer at Neptune Diner on First Ave., at St. Mark’s Bookshop and at Junior’s on the Fulton Mall, in Brooklyn.

Without any living relatives, Leck was to be buried in Potter's Field. However, Lillis and other friends reached out to Graham Rayman at The Village Voice, who then helped cut through the bureaucracy. Leck was buried in a modest military service at Calverton National Cemetery in Long Island on Jan. 23.

Lillis will host a memorial reading for Leck at the Bowery Poetry Club on Saturday, May 9 from 2 p.m.-3:30 p.m. It will be called "Praise Day Reading for Richard Leck." Free admission. Several writers will read from Leck's poems and excerpts from his memoir, "Jumped, Fell, or Was Pushed."

Here, Lillis talked to me about first meeting Leck and his feelings about life and the East Village.

You met Richard while you were working in the St. Mark's Bookshop. What do you remember about that? What were your first impressions?

Lillis: I was working the register, and Richard came up and opened that book, "The Little Black and White Book of Film Noir." He started reading some of the one-liners to me in an exaggerated accent and telling me about the movies they came from. I came right back with some quotes because I'm a film noir buff myself — it really surprised him that someone half his age knew these movies. So, he just kept talking to me.

I immediate felt familiar with him — he was both a familiar Village type — open to meeting people, very idiosyncratic, ready to give you a piece of his mind. And also a familiar Irish-American type, very entertaining and psychologically smart, very funny with a Vaudeville sensibility. He reminded me a lot of my paternal grandfather.

After that, Richard would come back to the store to talk to me, or we'd go for coffee. It wasn't long before I started compulsively taking notes whenever he talked.

What do you think inspired him about living in the East Village?

Lillis: He liked the anything-goes quality, the creativity and the street life. He liked being able to meet sympatico people, artistic types. He liked not feeling restricted the way he did as a schoolboy.


In his obit for the Voice, Graham Rayman described Richard as "one of that disappearing class of people who make the neighborhood more colorful and more interesting than the yuppie scum who invade this sacred ground and drive up the rents." Did Richard share with you his feelings on the present-day East Village?

Lillis: [Laughs] Yes, Richard shared his feelings on the topic — early and often. He recalled the East Village from when it was "The East Side," and his acquaintances drifted over there to do drugs in the "shooting galleries." This was in the 60s. He said it wasn't the "East Village" until the realtors wanted to sell it, and I think he felt it just kept going in the wrong direction from there. I mean, it was still the Village and unlike anything else, but now he saw the young women who spent hundreds of dollars on their purse dogs' wardrobes, he saw cybercafes where no one talked to each other, he saw bohemian style replaced by adults in sweatpants, he saw people so busy they sped by him at a Manhattan pace, he saw landlords renovating buildings for the worse — over and over — only to jack up prices. He saw young people so worried about money and rent that they couldn't enjoy art or life just for the pleasure of it.

He talked a lot about the glass and steel skyscrapers going up all over the Village. He hated the glass and steel buildings! He liked to talk about the huge windows — "That's not a window, darling, that's a wall!" He said the people living in them must feel like they owned everything they could see. He preferred wood and brick; to him the glass and steel represented the opposite of a home, they just represented coldness and greed, and an imperial mindset.



At the time of his death, he was working on an autobiographical novel. Will any of this be released?

Lillis: Yes, one section of it already has been published in the zine, Go Metric (Issue 22), and more will be, with luck. Several excerpts will be read at the memorial reading. The book wasn't actually a novel but a memoir, working title, "Jumped, Fell, or Was Pushed" — from an adage they used to teach him in his NYU journalism program in the 1950s. Richard liked to refer to the book as comedy-sociology. The book is his life stories from the 1930s through at least the 1980s. It starts out in Jersey City and moves into the New York phase. The Depression, World War II, Mayor Hague, the Army, the Village coffeehouses of the 60s. We were working on the book together — he was telling me the stories and I was writing them down and helping shape them — I wanted to capture his voice and his cadence, and his humor. I have two years worth of material from talking to him once a week, so I believe I have enough to finish it. I may ask his closest friend, Frances, to help me fill in some gaps — she'd been close with him since the late 80s. And I'm trying to get more excerpts of the book published along the way.

Can you talk a little bit about the efforts to make sure that he received a proper burial?

Lillis: Navigating the different city agencies and the misinformation involved was disheartening and very stressful — but some individuals worked very hard to make a proper burial happen, and that was pretty amazing to see. It took a village to bury a Villager! There were many points when we thought the whole thing would go bust and Richard was going to end up in Potter's Field — we couldn't find a next of kin, we didn't have money, we were running out of time, we didn't have help from the VA — they were very rude and dismissive. I felt very overwhelmed working on this from Pittsburgh where I relocated, and Frances was going to different agencies on foot but getting doors slammed in her face. I was just determined that a U.S. veteran should not be ignored in this way, so I kept going up the food chain for leverage — writing to city politicians, then congressmen; organizing email campaigns and getting bloggers involved. Finally I started writing to newspapers, and Graham Rayman at the Village Voice was the only one who responded in due time. First he made some key phone calls to stall the march to Potter's Field. Then he blogged the story, and a few HOURS after he posted it, the Mayor's Office called Frances to say they were taking care of a military burial. The power of journalism — and public shaming — cannot be underestimated!

I learned three things I would pass on: 1.) Everyone should write a will right now, and artists should write down who they want to do what with their art/manuscripts/publishing rights, etc. Get it notarized. 2.) You're allowed to bury your friend if there's no next of kin or a will, you just can't cremate him or her. 3.) An articulate e-mail is now officially more powerful than phone or face time, unless you're someone important.

What do you think inspired him about living in the East Village?

Lillis: I think he also liked the way he could be Manhattan anonymous sometimes, or have people to talk to when he wanted to find them — at the bookstore, the diner.


The view from the kitchen/sitting area at the Sirovich SRO on East 12th Street where Leck lived since 1993.

As Graham Rayman noted: In his poem, "Residents," Leck seemed to be referring to folks like himself when he wrote:

Let dandelions be. They break up
the monotony of the grass.

Open, uh, house on Sunday at the New York City Marble Cemetery

The New York City Marble Cemetery will be open on Sunday from 11 a.m.-5 p.m. The cemetery, on Second Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue, opened in 1831. This Times piece has more on the history. Or go to the Marble Web site.

It's only usually open to the masses twice a year...so... Here are some photos from previous years...







By the way, do not confuse the New York City Marble Cemetery with the New York Marble Cemetery on Second Avenue. That one now has the lovely view of Avalon Bowery Place:

Woman smiles, runs into traffic proudly carrying her Duane Reade bag

Oh, it's just an ad! And the signs confirm that Duane Reade is taking over the former Staples store on Fulton and Water Streets in the Financial District.



Perhaps the Duane Reade 100 feet way will have some good sales then...Better, I hope, than the crap that Rite Aid tried to pawn off...

Realtors are getting really creative in describing their available apartments

On Third Avenue near Ninth Street.
What is this, 2004? When you put up an apartment for rent sign in the East Village and 25 people are lining up to move in...

Happy MC61

MC5 co-founder Wayne Kramer turned 61 yesterday. There was a birthday party for him last night at Manitoba's. It was thrown by John Varvatos.

Ray still trying to get his Social Security

Scoopy has an update on Ray Alvarez at Ray's Candy Store and his ongoing battle to get his Social Security ... In this week's issue of The Villager (fourth item in Scoopy's Notebook): "In a new development ... Alvarez said he’s now got two lawyers helping him. They’re trying to track down a copy of his long-lost Turkish Navy ID that he used to get his green card when Reagan granted amnesty to illegal immigrants back in the 1980s. 'It takes 10 to 22 months to get those papers — I may die before I get them,' Ray explained fatalistically as he mixed up a cherry slush for a customer last Saturday night."

As always, check in with Bob Arihood at Neither More Nor Less for photos and updates on Ray.

[Photo via The Villager/Jefferson Siegel]

Gold Street still telling people that it's temporarily closed for renovations

Gold Street at 2 Gold Street in the Financial District closed last month...but you may not know it from the signs that are still up....



The space is becoming Harry's Italian....

The corner of Delancey and Attorney is ready for development

Last September, we did a post titled The last frontier on the LES? In which we wondered how long before Attorney Street would see more development.



Maybe not much longer. As Patrick Hedlund reports in this week's issue of The Villager:

A prime corner property on the Lower East Side with residential development capabilities of nearly 20,000 square feet has hit the market with an asking price of $3.2 million.

The site, at 178 Delancey St. at the corner of Attorney St. near the Williamsburg Bridge entrance, allows for 13,500 square feet of development under the area’s new R8-A zoning designation.

Massey Knakal Realty Services has been retained to sell the 25-foot-by-100-foot site, which currently houses a vacant one-story structure.

With a voluntary inclusionary-housing bonus, which requires 20 percent of a planned project to be allocated to affordable housing for low- and moderate-income families, the residential floor-to-area ratio could allow for up to 18,000 buildable square feet. With a community facility, the F.A.R. would allow for 16,250 buildable square feet.

Here's the corner for sale:



A commenter wrote the following on my post from last September:

i live on this block, and it's a nightmare. despite the downside of developments "taking away from the LES" i gladly welcome them to come into this street and build. it's better than what's currently there.

due to the traffic patter of attorney street (one way, dead end street, that's hard to get to) it welcomes petty crime from car break-ins, to building vandalism, and dumping in that abandoned lot.

nobody cares about the street, as evident by the torches motorcycles, piles of dog shit, and broken car glass littered throughout the sidewalk.

there have been two fires set in that abandoned lot in the past month. if that's not dangerous enough, the twisted scrap metal that hangs off the boarded-up entrance will surely put your eye out. Conveniently, this all occurs within 20 feet of an elementary school.

I have called 311, the police, and the department of sanitation over a dozen times, and nothing seems to get done. I would gladly welcome developers coming down and cleaning up that street - certainly the city is in no rush to do it.

Related:
Clinton Papaya gutted (BoweryBoogie)