Thursday's parting shots

EVG reader Danny shared these photos from today... East Village-style sledding on the small slope of the lawn in Tompkins Square Park ...

Sanitation worker spares snowman's life on 7th Street!

As noted earlier today, Seventh Street has been closed to through traffic between First Avenue and Second Avenue... allowing for residents to use the open space for some post-Winter Storm Gail fun, such as building various snowmen/people. 

This afternoon, Goggla spotted a city snow plow making its way along the block:

I watched the snow plow head down the block and fully expected it to wipe out the snowman and was prepared to witness its death. To my surprise, the plow swerved out of the way and you can hear the sanitation worker shout, "Gotta save the snowman, y'know!"

Watch for yourself...  

Grant Shaffer's NY See

Here's the latest NY See panel, East Village-based illustrator Grant Shaffer's observational sketch diary of things that he sees and hears around the neighborhood and NYC...

2 scenes from Winter Storm Gail in black and white

And a few more photos from Winter Storm Gail... these are courtesy of EVG reader Stephen Kent Jusick...  

The top photo is looking south on Broadway at 14th Street, 2:24 a.m. Long exposure, low angle, shot from the street. 

And below, the Alamo at Astor Place, 2:36 a.m. ... (click on the images to go big!)...

The snowpeople of 7th Street

Some scenes from Seventh Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue. The block is still closed to through traffic because of the post-fire work at Middle Collegiate Church... so the street provided extra space to do things, like, build a snowman to resemble a remote worker in 2020...

... and this...

🤔

A post-storm look at East Village curbside dining

Based on an early-morning walk on several side streets and avenues... it appears that the curbside dining structures (streetearies!) passed their first major winter test during the nor'easter...

The City suspended curbside dining as of 2 p.m. yesterday when the Department of Sanitation's snow alert took effect. Per Eater:

In a snow alert situation, restaurants are required to secure their furniture, remove electric heaters from the road, and remove overhead coverings, if possible. Restaurants don’t, however, need to remove any structures or barriers this time around.

It's possible that restaurants will be able to resume roadside dining this evening at the earliest. 

The city recently imposed more guidelines on restaurants, such as requiring that streetside barriers being filled with 10,000 to 20,000 pounds of sand or soil.

And the structures, many of them quite elaborate, looked to have made it through Winter Storm Gale...

... and even some of the less-sturdy-looking structures along St. Mark's Place between Second Avenue and Third Avenue seemed to fare OK...

The next question is whether NYC bars-restaurants will be able to survive winter with a ban on indoor dining, reluctance on behalf of patrons to eat outside in cold weather and other ever-changing restrictions that will make staying open extremely difficult, owners and operators have said. 

Restaurant industry officials point to the state's own data showing that restaurants and bars made up 1.4 percent of COVID-19 cases in the last three months, compared to private gatherings, which constituted nearly 74 percent.

11 p.m. in the East Village, and scenes from Winter Storm Gail

As of this posting (5:42 a.m. — good morning!), a snow-sleet combo continues to lash the city as the nor'easter — Winter Storm Gail — slowly moves on.

Forecasts for final snow totals range from 8-12 inches to a Jake Gyllenhaal/"The Day After Tomorrow"-type event ... we'll have more on the particulars in one of the 78 upcoming snow posts this morning.

Meanwhile, EVG contributor Stacie Joy shared these photos from a stroll around the neighborhood last night at 11...

... and in Tompkins Square Park...

Report of a small fire inside the empty P.S. 64 building on 9th Street

The FDNY responded to a report of a presumed trash can fire inside the empty building — the former P.S. 64 — at 605 E. Ninth St. last night around 8 ...

The Citizen app reported that firefighters quickly extinguished the small blaze. Witnesses reported that the FDNY cut a padlock and broke through the plywood surrounding the school between Avenue B and Avenue C to get inside the property. 

The fire was said to be contained to the southeast wing. No word on the cause, such as if a squatter was inside the former school. 

EVG reader Alta Tseng shared the top photo and this video clip...

   

Developer Gregg Singer, who bought the property from the city during an auction in 1998, has wanted to turn the building into a dorm called University Square. The DOB continues to maintain a Stop Work Order — dating to August 2015 — on the property. 

In years past several local elected officials, community activists and residents have asked for the return of the building for community use. The building became the Charas/El Bohio Community Center after the school left in 1977. The group was eventually evicted when Singer took over as the landlord. It has sat empty these past 20-plus years, causing locals to be concerned about its crumbling façade. 

H/T Eden and Steven!

Updated: It's still snowing

Gail says hi from First Avenue and Seventh Street...

And we're off...

The nor'easter dubbed Winter Storm Gail is here, as you likely already noticed. Photo from Tompkins Square Park this early evening by Steven.

Gallery Watch: In the Woods by Sally Saul at Rachel Uffner Gallery

Text and photos by Clare Gemima 

In the Woods by Sally Saul

Rachel Uffner Gallery, 170 Suffolk St.

In the Woods showcases a packed room and a half of new ceramic sculptures created with a sense of humor, anxiety and down-to-earthness from Sally Saul in her second solo show at Rachel Uffner Gallery. 

The array of sculptures within the space play and interact with our senses of familiarity and comfort while also introducing us to a "new normal." A new struggle, a new challenge, a new moment and a new movement. This show forces us to understand that one way to deal with this shitshow of a pandemic is well, to embrace it. (While wearing a mask, please).

During the last several months of living amidst the coronavirus and its subsequent social sorrows, Saul (married to the incredible Peter Saul) reflects on this confusing but unavoidable new world through her detailed expressions and use of finer details as a ceramicist. The work to me almost felt like a personal chronicling of the artists' time in lockdown, a documentation of pandemic experiences and a tribute to the American lives lost. 

Sally Saul consistently incorporates the everyday into her sculptural practice, and this time is no different. At In the Woods, we get to surround ourselves with her forest of birds, flowers and the natural world too, which we can understand as her refuge over the course of this work being created. 

Taking time to find enjoyment in the smaller pleasures, Saul's sculpture garden at Rachel Uffner Gallery remains light-hearted but is also question-provoking owing to its sophisticated documentative style. 

Will artists who are alive in 2020 continue to make reference to the pandemic we currently occupy? Will self-portraits include protective gear as political or apolitical symbolism? What sort of art history are we forming or moving away from? 

But forgetting about all of the more serious stuff, the works bulky form and playful undertones are also cause for a much deserved and maybe overdue giggle. This show has all of the right ingredients in it to make you forget about the weight of the world ... just for a moment. 

In the Woods is showing at Rachel Uffner Gallery until Jan. 30.

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ 

Clare Gemima is a visual artist from New Zealand. New-ish to the East Village, she spends her time as an artist assistant and gallery go-er, hungry to explore what's happening in her local art world. You can find her work here: claregemima.com 

Workers clear lot ahead of new-building construction on 6th Street and Avenue C

Workers have chopped down the three trees in the long-vacant lot on the northeast corner of Avenue C and Sixth Street... ahead of new-building construction here.

As we first reported on Oct. 19, there are approved permits for a 6-floor building with 11 residential units, a storefront and space for an unspecified community facility. 

There has been development talk for this lot dating to 2003. A former gas station, this corner has been vacant since the early 1980s. 

The rendering shows an aggressive fall 2021 completion date. Speaking of the rendering, someone has let his or her feelings be known about the project...

Previously on EV Grieve:

• At the Heap of Ruins Garden Party

• This is the new building slated for the corner of 6th Street and Avenue C

Another late-night break in, this time at East Village Finest Deli on Avenue B

Text and photos by Stacie Joy 

Early Tuesday — 3:08 a.m. to be exact — a thief bashed in the front door of the East Village Finest Deli on the southwest corner of Fourth Street and Avenue B. 

Manager Anwar Shahbain reports that the perp got away with five tablets, several cartons of cigarettes and some small bills for change in the cash register.

The surveillance videos that the Deli shared show the moment of the break in — the thief, who appears to have at least two lookouts, used the top of a fire hydrant to shatter the glass and enter the shop...

   

Given this and a previous two break-in attempts here back in June, Shahbain says they will be forced to buy and install a pricy rolldown gate.

Tuesday's parting shot

Here's a view from the southwest corner of First Avenue and 14th Street ... where, as you may notice, the Christmas tree vendors have already packed up and left — 10 days before Dec. 25. 

One of the vendors told Pinch, who took the photo, that they had sold out for the season.

A second Christmas tree for Tompkins Square Park?

Decorating in progress in Tompkins Square Park... 

Meanwhile, the lights on the other holdiay tree, planted in 1992, were turned on this past Wednesday for the season. 

Photo today by Steven.