Speaking of rooftops: 'Own a piece of history in this boutique condo Penthouse of the historic Kiehl's Building'

I've always been intrigued by the cabin-looking home atop the Kiehls's building on 13th Street and Third Avenue. Here are two photos from a post that Scouting NY did on the house earlier this year...I read somehwere that one of the Coen Brothers used to live here...




Anyway, I came across a listing for 203 E. 13th St. #PH4B. Apparently this one has been on the market for some time. This PH doesn't include the cabin, though you at least have use of part of that rooftoop space...

According to that listing:

Own a very unique penthouse apartment in the Historical Kiehl's Building built in 1851. This astonishing loft like large one bedroom is in pristine condition with soaring 11 ft ceilings and is flooded with sun. This stunning apartment has original exposed brick & enormous brick arched windows all facing south. It comes equipped with a washer/dryer, built in security system and a beautifully renovated kitchen and bath. The spiral staircase leads to your own very private roof garden oasis of over 400 sq ft! Pets are welcome. Come and see for yourself. Own a piece of history in this boutique condo Penthouse of the historic Kiehl's Building now called Pear Tree Place named after the pear tree that once grew just beyond the front door.

This space can be yours for $1.265 million (715 square feet). But that price doesn't include the hellacious views that you'll have of the mystery lot next door!

The Wacky Wok opens on Avenue D

The Wacky Wok opened on Avenue D and Ninth Street last week. According to their menu, "Healthy food is our priority: using healthy oils, house-made sauce without preservatives, organically grown ingredients, wild fish, free-range meats and poultry whenever possible." (Their emphasis.) Their motto: "Discovering Asia through the flavors."

WW has a tofu Caesar salad ($5.50), a wacky burger with Korean BBQ sauce ($6) and Asian banana split ($4), among many other things...

Noted

Via TwitPic with this message:

"Oy, the pantsless look has reached the East Village."

A meaty role

"Law & Order Criminal Intent" is casting for an upcoming episode about the underground goth scene. Among the roles being filled:

[BLOOD WHORE] 30s. Male. Found in the shadows of a park in the East Village after dark peddling blood. He’s the man in charge of this seedy operation. When the detectives meet him on his turf to ask some questions, he is nonchalant and seems to enjoy messing with them. (1 scene)

Feel free to submit your jokes about real-estate agents and developers...

Newcomers to the Lower East Side have 'amnesia of some sort — a self-entitlement'

At the City Room this morning, Sarah Maslin Nir has a recap from last week's panel discussion titled "The Lower East Side Remembered and Revisited."

The panelists were:
Joyce Mendelsohn, author
Annie Polland, the Tenement Museum
Clayton Patterson, photojournalist and author
Eric Ferrara, the Lower East Side History Project

A few passages from the article:

The influx of luxury buildings and the moneyed residents who can afford them, panelists like Mr. Patterson seemed to say, erase the color and vibrancy of the area, even as they shoo away perceived blight like the suppliers of drug baggies. But if the roof is made of glass and steel and is designed by a celebrity architect, are the stories underneath less “real life”?

The problem, Mr. Ferrara said, is that newcomers to the Lower East Side have “amnesia of some sort — a self-entitlement. Somebody’s paying $3,500 to live in the same two or three rooms where somebody’s grandmother used to sit in the window crying, ‘How am I going to pay my rent?’ ” If they were aware of the history behind sky-high real estate, he said, the pricing out would be “a little easier to bear.”

Yet the very history being rubbed out by developers and yuppies is, paradoxically, what draws them to the area, Ms. Polland said, citing, for example, the Hotel on Rivington’s founding concept: “The area has arrived, but retains it’s colorful, urban diversity,” says literature on the hotel’s Web site. It “caters to the upper class,” she said. “It’s staking its image on the identity of a neighborhood that in order to have that diversity,” officials “would need to be thinking about affordable housing.”

Image via Museum of the City of New York

A Building residents forced to use the service entrance

The lobby of the infamous A Building on 13th Street between Avenue A and First Avenue is finally getting that much needed makeover...



Oh, wait, the building with the rooftop pool and cabanas and hard-partying flip-cup crowd is less than two years old. Hmm. Maybe those Pietra Bedonia stone walls in the lobby needed some buffing?




Oh, and the $2.3 million penthouse is still on the market...there was an open house yesterday on the unit being being flipped for some $300,000 over the original value...

Looking at the "OMG! Car Hit and Flipped By Wrecking-Ball in NYC!" video

In case you haven't seen this viral YouTube thing yet...

According to the description:

Dodge minivan that entered a closed construction zone in Manhattan was accidentally hit and flipped over by the wrecking ball as onlookers watch in horror and ran for cover. Driver escaped with minor injuries.



Mashable discusses the video's authenticity.

Live music returning to the Continental (for at least one night)

And check out the lineup at the Rock 'n Roll reunion on Jan. 17...



Third Avenue near St. Mark's Place. I actually haven't been here since they renovated the space and did away with live music several years ago. As Trigger, the owner, said at the time: "When he first opened the club 15 years ago, the East Village was still the East Village. Now I’m surrounded by McDonald’s and Starbucks and K-Mart and I’m paying that level rent..."

The bacon is back: Permanent Brunch reopens

I just can't type "Permanent Brunch" without shuddering... So how about Permanent Bacon?

Anyway! After PB's seizure last week, the eatery reopened on Saturday...



...at which time EV Grieve reader Creature snapped the following shot...



Still no sign of Burgers, though. Meanwhile, our plans for Permanent Press are on hold...

Pizza place replaces pizza place: No. 28 offshoot coming to Second Avenue

A Numero 28 is coming into the former Singas Famous Pizza space on Second Avenue near 11th Street. Brick oven pizza from Naples, which is supposed to be a replica of the original -- No. 28 on Carmine Street. (Another offshoot, Numero 28 Pizzeria Romana, opened on Spring Street in October.)

Previously on EV Grieve:
Another East Village pizza parlor closes

Cooper Union giving away a couch

Getting more neighborly by the day! What's next? When will they get their own community garden?

And the couch is leftover from Performa 09.

Previously on EV Grieve:
New Cooper Union building gets its first (temporary) storefront tenant

Spot aiming for the middle school set on St. Mark's Place?

Spot, the new dessert bar in the former Iron Fairies space on St. Mark's Place, has unveiled this really subtle sign...

Indian restaurant replaces Indian restaurant on Second Avenue

At the former Madras Cafe space near Fourth Street.

Important news about models who may be moving in near you

According to BlockShopper, Serbian-born model Natasa Vojnovic bought a one-bedroom, two-bath condo at 115 Fourth Ave. for $995,000 in the eight-story Petersfield condominiums near 12th Street. She has worked for Chanel, Calvin Klein, Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent ... and Lenny Kravitz, appearing in the laughable "Where Are We Runnin?" video.

And according to her SuperModel page, she was born in 2005.

Tkettle loses the BBQ Chicken on St. Mark's Place

The Korean-based BBQ Chicken chain at 26 St. Mark's Place that shares space with TKettle....



is now becoming just a TKettle space, and peddling bubble tea and other things...




The BBQ/TKettle place was shuttered by the DOH back in August. Anyway, I don't know a thing about bubble tea, but several people swear by ThirsTea on 10th Street near Avenue A, which opened last summer. There has even been a Courtney Love sighting there, I've been told, which may or may not be a good thing...

Dear Kelsey Ann...

Outside Coyote Ugly tonight...

99X is gone

I wanted to get to 99X on 10th Street one last time...



...but I was too late. The store closed last weekend.




Previously on EV Grieve:
Why 99X is closing

Pricing Christmas trees in front of Whole Foods

A woman asked how much this tree was outside Whole Foods on Houston and the Bowery... Any guesses?



With a straight face, she was told $140.

Tiger Woods branded Gatorade still in stock at Key

Focus, indeed.

Nevada Smith's World Cup fever

On Friday, ESPN (and CNN) held forth at Nevada Smith's on Third Avenue for the World Cup selections...







Which will mean that you will meet the World Cup Loving Friend of EV Grieve one of these days...

Flush with success: Cabin Down Below open again

A sign was up today for the Cabin Down Below at the former Pizza Shop space. Which must mean the great toilet overflow from last weekend has been corrected. Which means they were open this weekend....

Updated: Last day for you pervs to ogle XOXO models on Fifth Avenue

As you may have already read ... some XOXO models have been camping out the last few weeks in an empty storefront on Fifth Avenue at 38th Street... and the models seem to be causing a sensation....



I came across the scene earlier in the week...a scene that was both hilarious and horrorfying...First, you put two models in a window who prance about in bra and panties and seductively brush each other's hair...then you hire a security guard to yell "keep moving -- you can't stand here on the sidewalk" over and over. Like we're really going to move.





And all this is on the other side of the street from the decking-the-halls holiday windows at Lord & Taylor. So there are a lot of tourists who are shocked -- shocked! -- at all this. One mom said to her twentysomething daughter, "You'd never see this back in [Elk Snout, Pigsknuckle -- didn't catch the name of the town]. And then you have a bunch of horndogs with cameras. (Uh, yeah, well, I was technically working...)




The show ends Sunday...the model hours are 12:30-2:30 p.m. and 4:30-8:30 p.m.

Anyway, it all seems pretty tame after the shows at The Standard.

And in response to the comments, YES, there is video...via the XOXO site...





For further reading:
Naked City (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Let the holiday weekends begin

Our blogging friend Bryan Waterman passed along the details on dba's annual holiday fare on Saturdays this month (3-8 p.m.) featuring the work of some local artists...



Anyway, there's a lot of holiday things going on...and The Villager rounds up a lot of the activities right here. And La Superette will be down on Front Street in the South Street Seaport today and tomorrow.

And a little later this week, I'll have more information on the "Skits N Tits! One Year Anniversary Holiday Party" at the Bowery Poetry Club Wednesday night...the evening will mark the debut of CRAFTERMATH, formed by a group of women active in multi-disciplinary arts who love odd, original art, and cheap, anti-corporate gift-shopping in the spirit of comrades like Reverend Billy and La Superette.

Because maybe people really didn't want to pay $26.50 to see Billy Joel memorabilia

Whooa...where have I been today...per Pollstar:

After trying to lure music fans to a downtown Manhattan annex for just over a year, execs at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame are throwing in the towel.Although the closure was announced with no explanation Thursday in a statement issued by S2BN Entertainment, a backer of the venture, HoF CEO Terry Stewart told Cleveland’s Plain Dealer the decision was made by corporate partners who ponied up the capitol for the $10 million dollar spin-off.

Awwwww... let's take a look back...

Xmas is three weeks from today...

...might as well try to get in the mood...

Does this mean the East Village is no longer dead?

Just looking at the new mural on the Mars Bar...




Previously!



(The above photo via)

And, well...as I already pointed out...

EV Grieve Etc., Mourning edition

Photo on Sixth Street between Avenue A and First Avenue sent along by EV Grieve reader Lambert Jack.

What we wanted for xmas in 1955 (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

City of Strangers returns to the Mars Bar (City of Strangers)

The Bowery hasn't been the same since 1920 (BoweryBoogie)

Looking at the LES art scene (The New York Times)

Basement fire on East Ninth Street (Neither More Nor Less)

Eliade's "The Sacred and the Profane" and a sense of place in Manhattan (Save the Lower East Side!)

The girl gangs of old Manhattan (Ephemeral New York)

Canadian doughnut chain coming to the old Zen Palate space on Union Square (A Fine Blog)

John Legend's Bowery bargain (Curbed)

An appreciation of indie comics (NYPress)

Looking at EV Grieve favorite "The Seven Ups" (This Ain't the Summer of Love)

And then! A wave of liquid heat crashed through her. She looked up to find his eyes on hers, filled with smouldering amusement

Page Six Magazine is back! And with this cover story that begins....good lord!

Padma Lakshmi sits in a cozy corner of the East Village Italian restaurant Supper, her black hair half pulled back, the rest rippling around her shoulders. As she orders a cup of coffee and an appetizer of burrata mozzarella with tomato, basil and grilled bread, the Italian words come out with a perfect roll of the r's. The waiter, eager to please but flustered, strains to avoid looking in the direction of Padma's spectacular breasts.

[Bad romance novel quote via]