On top of it all! (So to speak!) The truly odd Cookout Grill mascot was beheaded by vandals.
Point of discussion: Is there a serial beheader of animated characters in the neighborhood?
Flashback to December!
Sitting on the corner across the street there was a man wearing filthy jeans and a tee-shirt. He needed a shave. He was sitting on the curb with his feet in the gutter. There was a dirty handkerchief tied around his head. His long brown hair fell wildly about his shoulders.
He had a steel garbage can turned upside down between his legs. All its contents were in piles around him and he was beating the bottom of the garbage can with a pathetic vengenace. He was using his fists and the palms of his hands, alternately. I stared at him for awhile, then my gaze passed along and took in the immediate environment. Debris was everywhere in the street and sidewalks. Third Avenue traffic had not yet started. The streets were deserted.
Then I noticed a body laying stretched out on the sidewalk against a rundown building. And then another and another and another. The bodies of sleeping derelicts were scattered liberally around the sidewalks and on the stoops on buildings. It took my by surprise. My mind was blank. I finally thought: "What the hell is this?"
One morning someone came in half carrying a man in his late twenties. The man being helped was over six feet tall. He helped him sit on the cushion of the naugahyde couch I was sitting on in front of the fan. It was exceptionally hot that summer.
The man was filthy, his clothes were torn. His right pants leg was bursting at the seams. He had been lying in the gutter down the street for three days before someone decided to help him into the Salvation Army. From what they could get out of him, he had been wandering in the street one night and a car had struck him. He had crawled between two parked cars. His right leg was broken. It had been bleeding.
I lived around the corner on East 4th Sreet at the time, and ate in Binibon the day of the murder. I was unaware that anything had happened. Nowadays one would expect to find the crime scene taped off, people milling about pointing and murmering, and, perhaps, the beginnings of an informal memorial of flowers. In those days, it was just another murder on the Lower East Side, though once the connection to Mailer was made, the story became national news.
But right now, the pedestrian mall, it must be said, looks a little unworthy of New York.
Or maybe the problem is not the quality of the seats. Maybe the problem is all the people sitting in them. New York is a city of walkers, not sitters; a city of motion, not repose.
Sitting beside Ms. Mia, I was starting to rethink my impression of the pedestrian mall, appreciating some of its merits, messy though they may be. But only for a minute.
“I just really like it here,” she said. “I find it strangely peaceful.”
We’ve come to accept the multitudes of adjectives that rotate in and out of use for Times Square depending on the era: gritty, dangerous, commercial, touristy, kitschy, overpriced, overcrowded, flashy, tacky, corporate. But peaceful?
That’s just wrong.
Just walked past superdive. there were these schmucky "dudes" screaming at the top of their lungs and chanting something at the girl across the street on a bench at OST. one "dude" was wearing a us marine corps shirt and i literally saw him rip off his dog tags and howl. his other "dude" friend was wearing a full on white 70's track suit with white terrycloth headband and aviators. the room was otherwise empty and there was a kegerator near them. i walked past and felt the need to walk past again. on the second go around tracksuit dude was humping the air with one leg up off the floor while simultaneously doing the motorboat sound with his lips. it was about 4:15 pm.
i live [nearby] and needless to say, I'm terrified.
The decision to lease the Water Street building comes as part of the university's drive to provide housing for a student body that includes fewer New York residents than ever before.
"Ten years ago, half of a typical freshman class was from New York," said John Beckman, a spokesman for NYU. "Now that is about 20 percent."
Cooper's most valuable asset is a gift from Peter Cooper's family -- the land under the Chrysler Building. With 1,000 students and a $57 million budget, Cooper currently receives $7 million annually in ground rent from the iconic Art Deco skyscraper. And under an unusual arrangement with roots in the school's original charter, the holder of the Chrysler lease is assessed city real-estate taxes -- but that money, currently $12 million annually, goes to the school. Over the decades, New York City has challenged the arrangement, but Cooper has prevailed in court.
Formed in 1980 after an art show on gentrification, ABC No Rio endured attempts by the Giuliani administration to evict it from its city-owned building on Rivington Street in the 1990s. So when the Department of Housing Preservation and Development decided in 2006 to turn the building over to the collective in exchange for $1 and an agreement that the group would make badly needed repairs, many saw the deal as a crucial step for the survival of a beloved local landmark.
Soon after the transfer, however, an architect determined that the building was beyond repair and would have to be replaced. The budget for the project soared to $2.4 million, from $700,000. And then fund-raising — never easy for a small organization run mainly by volunteers — became even more difficult as the economy declined. Housing officials became concerned that renovations did not begin as quickly as expected; others questioned the group’s ability to finance the expensive task of a new structure.
But much of the uncertainty vanished last week when the Manhattan borough president, Scott M. Stringer, and City Councilman Alan J. Gerson allocated $1.65 million for a new building.
Mr. Stringer arranged for a capital grant of $750,000, citing ABC No Rio’s resilience and cultural value.