EV Grieve Etc: Mourning Edition

(Above: Second Avenue at St. Mark's Place)

Blogging Manhattan's landmarks (The Masterpiece Next Door)

CBGB Radio is on the air (This Ain't the Summer of Love)

J. D. Salinger’s New York (The New York Times)

Rickshaw Spidey returns (Neither More Nor Less)

An appreciation of "Metropolitan" (Nonetheless)

NYC's best blogs (The Village Voice)

A better title for "Here is New York" (Patell and Waterman’s History of New York)

Skyline's bookstore cat finds a home (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Friday food videos (With Leftovers)

Antique signs of the LES (BoweryBoogie)

Lady GaGa is apparently popular (The Wall Street Journal)

Can you pick her out of the lineup?



[AP Photo/Evan Agostini via.]

Is a serial vomiter targeting the new Cooper Union building?

First, I apologize for this photo.

However! In the name of crackpot conspiracies news!

In the last month or so, I've walked by the new Cooper Union academic building and have noticed that someone had, well, barfed in the shadows at least six different times, usually on Friday, Saturday or Sunday mornings (duh) .... the first few times, well, ok, chuck it up chalk it up to its proximity to an ample number of students, tourists and bars...but after the fifth time, this is a trend.



There are many places to vomit in the neighborhood. Like in the bathroom at McSorley's. Or on the F train. Or my front steps. Why here so many times? Does someone have an issue with the new building? Is it just an inviting place to yak? Or, worse, after this neighborhood has had to deal with the Penistrator, is a Vomitrator now on the loose?

Space-age love pad on the block...a "fully original Soho loft" on Avenue D

Check out this brand-new listing... a third-floor space over on Sixth Street at Avenue D. This 975-square-foot, one-bedroom condo is going for $699,000.



Here's the description:

Condo loft ready for you to move-in for only $716 a square foot!! This fully original Soho loft is ready to go at a stunning and spacious 975 square feet!! Located in a newer elevator building and facing south off the street you will enjoy the setting sun, quiet nights, and all the space!! The floors have been white washed for a tasteful but artful look. There is a flat screen TV nook that has been smartly placed in the living space so the TV will flow seamlessly against the wall. Closets everywhere, bath and a half, open kitchen around out this one-of-a-kind one bedroom flex two loft space. The building is a condo so subletting and renting are permitted.

There are other units available here above the Compare Foods...such as a two-bedroom for $764,000 that advertises a "waterview" and "steps away from hot new restaurants, bars and recreation park."



See this all for yourself at 754 E. Sixth St. during an open house Sunday afternoon from 3:30 to 4:30. In keeping with the space theme, Tang and freeze-dried premium ice creams will be served to visitors.*

[*Not really]

Shall we dare a Columbia student to shout out a request for "Sweet Jane"?

[UPDATED] Lou Reed is NOT performing Metal Machine Music next Friday at Miller Theatre on Columbia's campus. An orchestra is. Oops. $7 with a student ID.

[Image via]

Noted

At Sutra, the hookah place on First Avenue near First Street.

The “East Village version of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’”

From Lincoln Anderson's cover story in this week's issue of The Villager:

In what some are calling the “East Village version of ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’” customers and friends of Ray Alvarez — the two are really one and the same — have pitched in to help him start paying off his back rent, giving him and his store another lease on life.

Previously on EV Grieve:
More Details on Day of Ray

Why was a helicopter circling the East Village at 4 a.m. or so?

We're getting of sorts of e-mails about a helicopter hovering around the neighborhood early this morning/late last night (depending on your schedule...):

"The helicopter was back last night (1/27/10). Woke me up at 4am, flying very low, was very loud. I'm at 12th and 1st in the EV. Really weird, I can't seem to find any answers."

And!

"I've just been listening to a helicopter circle round and round the EV for about an hour...it seems to have stopped now. It was distinctly creepy..."

And from Lux Living:

Did you hear the helicopters last night? So annoying.

And!

Hi, my name is Sebastian Foss. As incredible as it may sound you're about to discover a system how you can drive 1000s of potential customers to any website or affiliate website at $0 cost to you! What if I told you that I'm making thousands of dollars each week and I'm not paying a dime for advertising ?

Oh.

And in the Twittersphere...



I haven't heard any news account to explain this either.... Anyone have any ideas/theories/conspiracies/idle gossip?

Previously on EV Grieve:
Updated! Mysterious, low-flying helicopter returns...

Taking a look at the latest blight on the downtown skyline

I've been so distracted by Harrison Ford's gargantuan cranium of late that I haven't even noticed the 13-story Great Jones Hotel creeping up the downtown skyline...




Ah, here it is upclose at 25 Great Jones Street at Lafayette. One day it will be home to all sorts of fancy eateries and bars and stuff.



Born to Fit? Heh! Tell that to the understandably pe-od neighbors... (Curbed has a full report on the public meeting on Jan. 19.)



And last year around this time, I snapped photos at 25 Great Jones announcing the hotel would be completed in February 2010...




Meanwhile, next to the Hotel, plans were announced last December for that narrow lot that once housed the Jones Diner... it's a (surprise!) glassy, six-floor retail/residential building...If you've been following this story, then you know how the Hotel is essentially eliminating greatly reducing the natural light into Chuck Close's studio here on Bond Street...



(In fact, I saw Close and his assistant enter the building the other day... I was going to ask him about the latest developments, but decided against it...)



So you'd better enjoy the graffiti in this lot while you can...

25 Great Jones in 1935

Via Curbed.

Let's not get ahead of ourselves: Stuy Town mistaken for Lillian Wald housing projects

From the Corrections & Amplifications in The Wall Street Journal:

A Tuesday Money & Investing article about New York's Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village apartment complex was incorrectly accompanied by a photo of the Lillian Wald housing project on Manhattan's Lower East Side, which was misidentified as the Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper property.

[Avenue D photo via Flickr. Stuy Town photo via.]

Lonely balloon ushers in open house guests at 229 E. 13th Street

At the dormy new rentals on 13th Street near Third Avenue, someone finally removed the "for rent" banner that continued to get tangled up...



For open houses this week (two bedrooms for $3,300; one bedrooms for $2,595), the folks in charge employed a lonely, air-deprived balloon to entice passersby...





Previously on EV Grieve:
What's doing at 229 E. 13th St.?

Report: Former Pizza Shop becoming a bar

Thanks to Eater for noticing this...I would have missed it too... As Eater noted yesterday ... this piece of news was buried in an other otherwise ridiculous piece in the Post on hipsters hanging out at rat-packy piano bars: Jesse Malin is planning to open another bar next to Niagara at Avenue A and Seventh Street.



As you may recall, this space was home to the Pizza Shop, which closed in November. As co-owner Kevin Cole said in the EV Grieve comments: "We closed ... because the rent was too high. We struggled every month to make it... someone gave me an offer on the space and i decided it was best to take it."

The rent was a little more than $10,000 month.

Looking at vintage World Trade Center ads

Our blogging friend This Ain't The Summer of Love had a post earlier this week on vintage advertisements that featured the World Trade Center. For example:




Horrifying in retrospect. Not sure why anyone ever thought that this was a good image for such ads. ("I got it! Let's have a giant hand crush Michael Keaton using the World Trade Center!" ) Perhaps we can make the case that buildings should never be used as the centerpiece for an ad campaign...

We're gonna need some more dorms

NYU has announced another year of record-breaking admissions, reaching a total of 38,037 for the pool of regular and early decision applicants. For the class of 2014, NYU anticipates enrolling 4,500 students in New York. (NYUnews.com)

[Image via]

Stromboli Pizza continues its transformation

At Stromboli Pizza on St. Mark's and First Avenue, as seen here several years ago...



...the work continues on the sidewalk cafe... in November...



early January...



... and last night, in which the place was closed for the renovations...



[Top photo via]

EV Grieve Etc: Mourning Edition

Neither More Nor Less and Slum Goddess were on hand for Ray's 77th b-day bash

Looking at "a non-delirious New York" (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

Remembering First Avenue's La Focacceria (With Leftovers)

Kew Gardens in the 1940s (Blah Blog Blah)

Iggy Pop has a great voice (NPR)

Kosher pita joint shuts it down on East Houston (BoweryBoogie)

When EV rents were $40-$70 a month (Ephemeral NY)

B-day wishes for Legs McNeil (This Ain't the Summer of Love)

From the forgot-to-follow-up-on-this department... A reader asked if I knew anything about a fire on Third Street and Avenue B last week... No, but I did see this Thursday evening on that block...



And if I catch the jokester who put this mag front and center at my newsstand of choice....

Remembering Bingo Gazingo

My friend Karen Lillis passed along a link to me the other day about Bingo Gazingo, described by the Times in 1997 "as the near-toothless underground performance sensation." The author of such songs as "I Love You So Fucking Much I Can't Shit" died on New Year's Day from injuries that he suffered after getting struck by a cab. He was 85.

Life Just Bounces had a lovely tribute to the man:

You'd hesitate to call him a celebrity by any stretch of the imagination, but New York street/performance poet Bingo Gazingo's obscurity likely served as an aid to his singular imagination and oddball creativity.

With his often crude, spiky, agitated and hilarious rants about sex, dementia, and, especially, popular culture, Gazingo (born Murray Wachs in Queens in 1924) was a Monday night regular every week at New York's Bowery Poetry Club. He was struck by a taxi on his way to one of these very events, presumably on December 28th, and died on New Year's Day.

As Karen told me, "Bingo was wildly unique, and relentless at what he did."

The Times wrote about Bingo in Janaury 1997:

As a young man, he says, he worked as a logger for Broadcast Music Incorporated, or B.M.I., the music licensing agency, sitting over radio play lists with a blue pencil, identifying songs for which the company was entitled to royalties. And then, he says, he disappeared into the United States Postal Service, where he worked for decades sorting mail and loading trucks. "Doing that is like spending 20 years in one day," he says.

But through it all, he says, he never abandoned his dream of being a songwriter. He wrote ballads, novelties, show tunes, country-and-western songs, anything he thought would sell, and left them at stage doors at the Roxy, the Paramount and the Strand, in a time-honored tradition "to try to get my songs to the artists."

"But they never took one of my songs," he says, waving his hands at the memory. ''I thought I would be discovered or something, but it doesn't work that way."

I always intended to go see Bingo one of these Monday nights, but I never did. Wish I would have taken the time to meet this NYC original....

Here's Bingo in action at the Lakeside Lounge in 2006...



And at the 6 stop at Astor Place...

$4 million Carriage House will "rejuvinate" while the location will "seduce" you

A new listing came out this week.... Let's take a look at this offering on Fifth Street near Cooper Square, via Corcoran:

SECLUDED CARRIAGE HOUSE. A rare offering! private rear townhouse. This 25' wide threestory plus finished basement rear carriage house has recently undergone a meticulous andtasteful architect designed renovation. From the ground up, only the finest custom finishesadorn this fantastic modernist home. The property's serene setting which boasts both a private and charming courtyard as well as a large rooftop terrace will rejuvinate you. To seduce you, a dynamic Bowery meets East Village locale is downtown's new hip and exiciting neighborhood. You will want to make this gem your oasis in the city!

And here's a look at the $4.25 million home....







According to StreetEasy, the house was on the market for $4,995 million in 2008... Given the proximity of this serene oasis in the city to the Cooper Square Hotel, you'll likely have to enjoy that outdoor space in the winter...when the hotel's penthouse party terrace isn't in use...

A Building retail space still on the market

After looking at Monday's A Building post (lobby back open, penthouse continues to come down in price), a reader sent along a note saying that the A Building's retail space on 14th Street was still on the market.

Indeed!



According to the listing at Tower Brokerage(PDF):

New luxury store front at the base of a newly constructed 96-unit luxury condominium. Approximately 1,400 sq. ft. and located at the intersection of 1st Avenue & East 14th Street. 25’ of glass frontage and only steps from the 1st Avenue L-train subway station.

Neighbors include: CVS Pharmacy, Chase Bank, Starbucks, Associated Supermarket, Beth Israel Medical Center, Payless Shoes, Strawberry, Grey Papayas & Stuyvesant Town

Rent: $10,500 per month

As the reader noted, given the rent and list of neighbors, only a chain will be able to take this space...

Pork place

It appears that This Little Piggy Had Roast Beef is now open on First Avenue near Ninth Street...



...at the former site of Birdies.

More details on Day of Ray

The Save Ray's organizers have announced a few more details about the benefit for Ray's Candy Store:

Day of RAY! Saturday February 6th from noon - 6pm
Benefit show at Sidewalk Cafe! Come see every musician, comedian, poet and performer this neighborhood has to offer.
$5 donation entrance fee at the door, no drink minimums.
15% of sales made from the show going toward the cause.

More details to follow. If you want to help out in any way, then please get in touch with Leah at:

boyslikebarbies@gmail.com

And, you know, there's a Save Ray's Twitter feed, which will have the latest updates...

www.twitter.com/saverays

And there's the Save Ray's Facebook page...

Meanwhile, John Penley has posted photos to his site from Saturday's Save Ray's rally, including this one of Biker Bill...



See more photos here.