Owner Muhammad Aslam (above) provided EVG contributor Stacie Joy with an interior update the other day. As you can see, the new floor, walls and ceiling are all in place... with workers starting on the shelving phase ...
Aslam is hopeful that the longtime family-owned business can be up and running again in three to four weeks.
You can check out our previous posts on Essex Card Shop, located in the retail space of the Ageloff Towers between Third Street and Fourth Street, for more background on what has transpired to date.
Supporters of Essex Card Shop have helped it raise more than $91,000 in a GoFundMe campaign.
Friends came out today to pay their respects to longtime LES resident Jose "Joe" Hernandez, who died late last week. He had been hospitalized with liver disease. Hernandez was 71.
In recent months, Hernandez was among the handful of unhoused residents living in tents along Ninth Street between Avenue B and Avenue C, a stretch of sidewalk that has been a frequent target of the Mayor's encampment sweeps. (This was at least the eighth time in recent months where the city conducted a sweep here.)
I've been here for four months now. I am looking for a one-bedroom apartment for my wife and me. I'm retired now. I was a superintendent and building manager for buildings on the Lower East Side. When I was younger, I worked for the Board of Education on Eldridge Street and Forsyth. A friend of mine was sleeping here on Ninth Street, and he was leaving his tent, so I took it. I get a pension and Social Security. Being homeless is not easy, including with the police department. They are very rude. They want us out of here. My wife is Amalia Jordan; we're common law. She’s staying at Masaryk Towers.
During the vigil today, the NYPD and other city agencies returned to this sidewalk space and tossed the belongings of the individuals here.
Mourners, including residents, neighbors, activists and a reverend from the church across the street, were outraged that police had chosen to carry out the sweep during the vigil.
And...
After police and sanitation workers had finished destroying the camp, the vigil continued as planned, though maybe tinged with more anger and bitterness than it otherwise would have been.
As 1010 WINS noted, "After getting robbed twice in city shelters, Hernandez decided he preferred to live on the streets — where he spent his final years as his health failed."
"The sanitation truck stands there, and they start throwing everything in the truck," he said. "I was living there… They throw all the stuff out, clothing. They were begging but they didn't care."
Hernandez's "loved ones remember him as a kind, gentle and loving person, who, despite having very little, took immense joy in giving."
East Village Loves NYC — the local volunteer group formed in the spring of 2020 to feed people in need during the pandemic — is on the brink of shutting down.
The group put out a last-ditch fundraising appeal on Friday — they need $36,000 to keep going from their HQ at the Sixth Street Community Center.
"The support we've received from our community over the past day has been absolutely incredible. Hundreds of calls, texts, voicemails, to let us know that you refuse to see us go.
We don't want to go. We want to keep helping the city we love, while building lasting memories with you and our community. We want to continue spreading love and helping those who need it most."
In the spring of 2020, a handful of friends got together to prepare meals for neighbors. Early on, Ali Sahin, the owner of C&B Cafe on Seventh Street near Avenue B, donated his kitchen on Mondays for the group to cook its meals. By June 2020, they had outgrown the space and started assembling deliveries at the Sixth Street Community Center between Avenue B and Avenue C.
Eventually, the group became known as East Village Loves NYC with 1,400-plus volunteers. In year one alone, the group cooked more than 100,000 meals for New Yorkers ... not to mention donated 325,000-plus pounds of groceries and 7,000-plus pantry bags.
The 9-floor office building for the northeast corner of Third Avenue and St. Mark's Place has new life after the developer received a $70-million loan.
As The Real Deal first reported, Parkview Financial is providing the loan for the refinancing and construction to developer Real Estate Equities Corp. (REEC) for the 61,000-square-foot building at 1 St. Marks Place.
Per TRD, REEC plans on 53,000 square feet of office space and some 7,700 square feet for retail.
Parkview CEO Paul Rahimian said in a statement that 1 St. Mark's Place could be in "high demand from the growing number of tech companies in the area."
Here's more from TRD on the project, slated for a summer 2024 completion, and the office-market outlook:
As of 2019, REEC was shooting for top-dollar rents at the boutique office building, planning to ask for around $150 per square foot. It's not clear what the developer will be seeking when the project finally comes to fruition.
The office market has been decimated in the wake of the pandemic. A recent analysis predicted that by 2029, the city's office stock will drop in value by 28 percent, or roughly $49 billion, due to lease revenue falling and remote work rising further.
Last August, TRD reported that Madison Realty Capital was moving to foreclose on REEC's leasehold interest:
Madison has owned the $48 million loan package backed by REEC's East Village property since 2019. The real-estate private equity firm acquired the debt from South Korean financial services firm Hana Financial group, which provided REEC $79.1 million of debt and sold the $48 million portion to Madison Realty Capital.
Madison filed a complaint with the state Supreme Court in Manhattan, alleging that REEC defaulted on the $48 million mortgage, which combines an acquisition loan and construction loans.
In any event, expect work to ramp up again after months of inactivity. Last October, workers removed the barriers around the work site... allowing pedestrians to use the sidewalks again — for the first time since the barricades arrived in June 2020.
With the air-rights transfer, REEC would have been allowed to build 8,386 square feet larger than the current zoning allows.
REEC picked up the 99-year leasehold for the corner properties for nearly $150 million in November 2017. The previous assemblage, which included retail tenants such as Korilla BBQ, the Continental and McDonald's, was demolished in 2019.
Updated 6/26: Signage at the restaurant states they will now reopen on July 29.
Raclette has closed at 511 E. 12th St.
Multiple readers told us about the "closed" sign on the door here between Avenue A and Avenue B.
Owner Edgar Villongco also confirmed the news to Eater. There isn't any mention of the closure yet on the restaurant's social media properties.
This means, in recent days, that workers are jackhammering away at the base of the previous tenant, B Bar & Grill... there's some piledriving happening too...
The B Bar (b 1994) never reopened after the PAUSE in March 2020. Our previous posts have more background on this Midtown-friendly development via Bowery Hotel owner Eric Goode.
Saturday saw the arrival of new signage at Temakase, the Japanese restaurant specializing in handrolls at 157 Second Ave. between Ninth Street and 10th Street. (Thanks to Steven for the photos!)
Gone is the more minimalist storefront... and in — a colorful red and yellow crab...
Temakase opened in the summer of 2020. Haven't heard any reader reports on this place since then.
Here's another item of interest. The team behind the 12-year-old Ichibantei on 13th Street is looking to open a bar-restaurant serving Japanese cuisine at 100 Third Ave.
The questionnaire on file at the CB3 website shows the still-unnamed concept would feature room for 24 tables/98 seats spread over two floors... with proposed hours of 11 a.m. to 2 a.m. during the week; a 4 a.m. close Thursday through Saturday. (The 69-page questionnaire also includes a sample menu.)
No. 100 between 12th Street and 13th Street last housed the vowel-deficient club VNYL, which shut down at some point during the pandemic. Until September 2015, the renovated building featured the second iteration of Nevada Smiths.
— Archive: Governor Andrew Cuomo (@NYGovCuomo) June 13, 2020
Earlier this week in June 2020, NYC reopened for the first time with workers in construction, manufacturing and retail being allowed to return — this after a nearly three-month lockdown, giving reason for some hope.
Many Twitter users condemned the actions of the partygoers on the street, many of whom were not wearing masks... and at a time when some residents were still wiping down canned goods purchased at the grocery.
In June 2020, bars and restaurants were still barred from allowing patrons inside but were OK'd to dispense to-go drinks.
Eight days later, on June 20, NYC launched its Open Restaurants program, allowing restaurants to expand to sidewalks, curbside spaces and backyards.
• 19-year-old woman was attacked and stabbed early Friday morning at the Delancey Street subway stop (CBS 2) ... Police released video footage of the suspect (ABC 7)
• A year after state lawmakers established the Housing Our Neighbors with Dignity Act (HONDA), not a single hotel has been converted to housing in New York City (City Limits)
• A tour of the "stunning" Lou Reed exhibit at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (Variety)
This summer, Howl! Happening is celebrating Linda Simpson's photographs and her groundbreaking magazine, My Comrade.
Here's more about "My Comrade Magazine: Happy 35th Gay Anniversary" at the space, 6 E. First St. between Second Avenue and the Bowery:
My Comrade magazine was founded by drag queen Linda Simpson in 1987 during the dark era of the AIDS crisis and served as a symbol of hope and frivolity to the East Village gay scene and beyond. Armed with a tongue-in-cheek "revolutionary" agenda, the magazine glorified heroic drag queens and sexy guys in a cut-and-paste mishmash of articles and photo spreads. Lesbians got their due when the flip side became Sister! The sporadic publishing schedule produced a total of 11 issues until 1994. It was revived in 2004 for two more.
The exhibit features reproductions and enlargements of My Comrade's black-and-white pages. Notable contributors to the magazine included photographers Jack Pierson and David Armstrong, painter Stephen Tashjian a.k.a. Tabboo!, and drag stars RuPaul and Lady Bunny. The exhibit also features Simpson's color photos of the era from her acclaimed 2021 photo book, "The Drag Explosion," published by Domain.
EVG contributor Stacie Joy went to the opening last weekend, where she took these photos... including of Linda...
The First Street gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. "My Comrade Magazine: Happy 35th Gay Anniversary" will be up through July 17.
You can check out this feature at Dazed for more history.
There's a slate of bands on tap this afternoon in Tompkins Square Park... headlined by the high-energy rock of InCircles — one of the show's organizers.
ICYMI... John Flansburgh (above left), one-half of They Might Be Giants along with John Linnell, was seriously injured in a car crash early Thursday morning coming home from a show at the Bowery Ballroom.
According to the Daily News: "Flansburgh, 62, was taking a car service back to his Upper East Side home after the band had a show at the Bowery Ballroom at about 12:45 a.m. Thursday when the Ford he was riding in was T-Boned by a 2016 Honda near the corner of Park Avenue and East 102nd Street."
Flansburgh and the 32-year-old livery driver were taken to Cornell Hospital. The guitarist broke seven ribs. (The driver's condition is not known.)
Per reports, 26-year-old Bronx resident William Mota was charged with drunk driving, resisting arrest and refusing to take a Breathalyzer test. Police told the Associated Press that Mota ran a red light, jumped a curb and plowed into the gate of a housing complex, hitting two cars along the way.
Flansburgh wrote about the collision in a lengthy Instagram post...
The collision occured after the first night of TMBG's pandemic-delayed tour celebrating the 30th anniversary of Flood (a great record BTW). The shows will likely start up again later this summer.
While Flansburgh diffused the situation with some humor, Streetsblog pointed out that through June 5, "there have been 41,772 reported crashes (roughly 270 per day), injuring 1,542 cyclists, 3,495 pedestrians and 13,644 motorists" in NYC.
They Might Be Giants were regulars in the East Village in the 1980s... you can read our interview with the band's other John, John Linnell, right here.
Look for a special Pride event tomorrow (Saturday!) at the East Village Queer Market, an event spotlighting queer makers and gay-owned businesses producing consumer goods.
A handful of local vendors will be participating tomorrow in this "celebration of Queer Makers" from noon to 6 p.m. at 50 Avenue A between Third Street and Fourth Street. Find more details here. You can also shop online here.
A version of this 3-minute video via the Kinolibrary Archive Film Collections titled "Drive Through the Lower East Side, New York in 1987" has been floating around the Internet for nearly 10 years...
A reader shared a more-recent version that looks a little more high-quality.
In the silent clip, the driver/film crew start on Houston and turn onto Avenue D... and from here the car drives up and down some desolate side streets between Avenue C and Avenue D... you may recognize a few things ...
