Also, noticed that some folks are finding shelter alongside the building.
I also noticed that someone threw up alongside the building. I took a photo. But I decided to spare you.
Hello everybody. I would like to introduce myself. My name is Jennifer London and I am the owner of Xoom. I live in the Lower East Side and am very fond of the East Village, which is why I chose to open there. I wanted to assure you that although there are three other Xooms (all owned and operated by the founder in Tucson), Xoom is far from a chain. I was a regular at Xoom when I lived in Tucson and became friends with the owner. This spring, I asked him if I could open a Xoom in New York and he agreed. For all intents and purposes, this is a locally owned business with its own personality that I assure you will make a good neighbor in the East Village. If you have any questions feel free to go to our website, click on the New York side of the site and you can find my contact info there.
One group of artists and activists spread across Lower Manhattan, transforming innumerous wheat-pasted posters — the ones that readily sprout over scaffolding — into their own canvas.
They would whitewash the posters and then create their own work, or allow anti-advertising advocates to spread their own messages.
But just as quickly as they whitewashed and put up art, workers arrived to put up new posters where the artists had obscured the old ones.
And so it went, back and forth, with drama, confrontation and even a few arrests by day's end.
The takeover efforts were organized by an artist, Jordan Seiler, who founded a group called the Public Ad Campaign to question and challenge the use of outdoor ads in public areas.
Tom Cruise's "Cocktail" is to be turned into a Broadway musical by legendary producer Marty Richards -- and Katie Holmes could be up for a role. The '80s movie is being adapted by Heywood Gould, who wrote the original book and film. Gould told us, "I am writing it as we speak. Marty Richards is on board and he's working on the score. It's far too early to talk about casting. We haven't approached anybody yet. But I do like Katie Holmes." Gould was guest of honor at the other night's "Cocktail" 20th anniversary party at TGI Friday's at Penn Station.
“I think the East Village does have a clear identity separate from the broader Lower East Side, but it clearly also has an identity as part of it, as well,” stated Berman. “It seems that of late there has been a revival of that thinking, and I find many people, especially neighborhood activists, are seeking to rejoin the East Village to the broader Lower East Side and re-identify with it. Interestingly, this may reflect the fact that today the East Village and the Lower East Side in many ways share more in common than they have since the 1960s when the ‘East Village’ identity was first created and the blocks north of Houston St. began to develop a distinct ‘bohemian’ character.”
Both areas are struggling equally with issues of overdevelopment, large-scale gentrification and the difficulty of longtime residents and businesses being able to afford to stay here.
“Not only are they once again very similar in character,” Berman said of the two areas, “but I think in many ways they are seeking to hearken back to the days before the big high-rises, frat bars and exorbitant rents swept over the neighborhood — and the name ‘Lower East Side,’ which is less associated with the gentrification process than ‘East Village,’ may be one way of doing that.”
I keep thinking: I'd love to see the park grow into Ave. A and Ave. B, even given the obvious work that would have to done to reroute traffic, etc. (Well, Union Sq. expanded into the street. And, the George Hecht Viewing Gardens grew up in the street. And, um, well, yes, it would require some doing. I know it's nuts. The Parks Dept. is more likely to, I dunno, turn the Temperance Fountain into a Shacklet and set up craft vendor stalls in the oval, at best, than get expansionist on our asses.)
The 12,366-square-foot edifice at 236 Second Avenue at 15th Street has seven floors, including a basement, sub-basement and mezzanine. It has nine classrooms, a gym, multi-purpose room, art room, library, offices and a courtyard.
In the latest example of “new Tribeca” beating out “old Tribeca,” the Bazzini grocery, cafe and nut shop on Greenwich St. will soon become a Sarabeth’s restaurant.
This won’t be the first time that a neighborhood fixture in Tribeca becomes a chichi food destination — but it could be one of the last, as some see Bazzini as the final holdout of Tribeca’s past.
Tishman Rent Rise in Manhattan Voided by New York’s Top Court
By Patricia Hurtado
Oct. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Tishman Speyer Properties LP, owner of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village, Manhattan’s largest apartment complex, lost a tenants’ lawsuit in New York state’s highest court accusing the company of improperly raising rents.
The New York Court of Appeals in Albany said today the rent increase on about 4,350 apartments in the massive complex on Manhattan’s east side violated the law because it was built with city assistance and the building’s owners received tax breaks.
The ruling upheld a decision by a lower appeals court in Manhattan. That court ruled in March that Tishman and the prior owner, MetLife Inc., wrongfully deregulated the apartments by raising the rents because of a sale of the property in 2006.
Today’s decision means the companies might have to pay millions of dollars in rent rebates to thousands of tenants. State law entitles tenants to triple damages for illegal rent increases, lawyers in the case said.
91 Avenue D is a 3 story mixed-use building that is available through an estate sale. There is one store and two residential units. The two apartments are currently vacant while the lease on the ground floor expires in June of 2011. The store is currently paying well below market rent. It is perfect for a user looking for a space to run their business and expand in the future.
This is a tremendous opportunity to buy an investment property with future development potential on a prime corner in the East Village. It is located in one of the most densely populated areas in Manhattan and benefits from the heavy pedestrian traffic.
The frenetic about-face that transformed Alphabet City from a drug-infested no man's land to the epicenter of downtown cool hasn't quite made it to Avenue D, and some predict it never will. Capped at the south by the bustle of Houston Street and at the north by the soaring smokestacks of Con Edison's East River generating station, the 12-block artery remains largely a relic of the neighborhood's pre-hip past.
There is nary a bar in sight. Not a single boutique. The handful of restaurants serve tostones and chicharones, not goat cheese tapas or tuna tartare. Tough-looking boys hold tough-looking pit bulls at the end of steel chains, mothers push shopping carts to coin laundries, and wrinkled old men in newsboy caps putter in front of the grocery store, keeping a cagey eye on the street.
Still, recent rumors about the fate of the two sprawling public housing projects on the avenue has fueled broader speculation about the avenue's future. Now that Avenue C has become what Avenue A was a decade ago, many residents of Avenue D wonder if their street will become the new Avenue C.
On a two-month cross-country trip, Sax hit all the major deli hubs: Los Angeles, Chicago, San Francisco and, of course, New York, even working for an evening as a counterman at the legendary Katz's deli on Manhattan's Lower East Side. But he also fanned out across North America to Denver; Detroit; Scottsdale, Ariz.; St. Louis; Cleveland; Las Vegas; Ft. Lauderdale, Fla.; Montreal; Toronto; and a dozen other cities. He even made a trip across the Atlantic to visit delis in London, Brussels, Paris and Krakow, Poland, one of the birthplaces of the modern Jewish deli.
Where New York delis tend to be cramped and covered in an intangible layer of old world schmutz, Los Angeles delis are the height of midcentury, suburban modernity. If New York delis are as intimate and familiar as your bubbe's kitchen, then Los Angeles delis, with their spacious banquettes, polite wait staff and abundant parking, are like younger, sexier spokesmodels for the deli world.
While the elevator could fit up to 240 people, only a few are expected to occupy it at a time. It will move more at a rate of 50 feet per minute, rather than the more typical speed of 150, to allow time for people to admire the art inside.
[Th]e elevator will have the same polished concrete floors and white walls as the stationary galleries, and it will be possible to park it on one or another of the floors to extend its space.
Because the building will be sheathed in milled glass and the elevator exterior walls colored a shocking Ferrari red, the moving gallery will be visible from outside, a "dynamic element of the facade inside this translucent tube," Mr. Foster said.
[Gallery co-founder] Angela Westwater sees this feature as "like a beacon, like a lighthouse," she said.