Watch Billy Leroy throw someone into a coffin and nail it shut

Billy Leroy tells us about an independent film project that he's working on called "Don Peyote." Michael Canzoniero directs. While it started out as a small film, the production received funding... and it's turning into some much larger... it stars Dan Fogler and Anne Hathaway.

Anyway, here's a scene that features Billy (and the fellow in the German helmet is Clayton Patterson; the young woman is Billy's daughter Celina Leroy).

Here's the set-up for this scene shot outside Billy's Antiques on East Houston:

"We jump on Dan. I beat him up and throw him into a coffin and nail it shut... It's all part of a nightmare scene he has after ingesting hallucinogenic drugs. Wish I could do this to some of the yuppies that wander into Billy's."

The movie is still in production. Here's a snippet of it.

[Photos by Isak Tiner]

Gone but not forgotten

Remembering a few of our friends and neighbors who died in 2019...

• Tim Schellenbaum



• Steven Cannon


[Image via Facebook]

• Unkle Waltie


[Photo by Steven]

• Ron Edgecombe


[Photo via Facebook]

• Susan Leelike



• Purushottam Goyal


[Photo by Steven]

• Gigi Watson


[Photo by James Maher]

• Felicia Mahmood



• Lucien Bahaj


[Photo courtesy of Clayton Patterson]

• Jonas Mekas


[Image via Facebook]

• Joe Overstreet


[Image via legacy.com]

• Leslie Sternbergh Alexander


[Leslie Sternbergh Alexander and Adam Alexander]

• Brendan Cregan


[Image via Facebook]

• Chaim Joseph



• Brian Butterick/Hattie Hathaway


[Photo by Stacie Joy]

--

Others with ties to the neighborhood who died this past year include Robert Frank ... John Giorno ... Paul Krassner... and Robert Ogden.

Reminders tonight: The Lower East Side Remembered and Revisited

The Lower East Side Remembered and Revisited
CUNY-Graduate Center, 365 Fifth Ave., Manhattan, Elebash Recital Hall

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

Joyce Mendelsohn’s "The Lower East Side Remembered and Revisited," first published in 2001 and is being re-released by Columbia University Press in a revised and expanded edition, including a new section on the Bowery. Panelists will discuss the neighborhood's venerable churches, synagogues and settlement houses as well as the breakneck changes that have taken place. Transformed from historic to hip – aged tenements sit next to luxury apartment towers, and boutiques, music clubs, trendy bars and upscale restaurants take over spaces once occupied by bargain shops, bodegas, and ethnic eateries.

*RSVP FOR TICKET AVAILABILITY

Date: December 2, 2009
Time: 6:30 PM-8:30 PM
Phone: 212-817-8471
E-mail: gotham@gc.cuny.edu

Check out the Web site for more details.

John Penley plans campout at Ben Shaoul's Magnum Real Estate offices this weekend

Longtime East Village activist John Penley is set to campout this weekend outside the offices of Ben Shaoul's Magnum Real Estate on Broadway in Soho. (Set to start at 5 p.m. Friday.)

Per the Facebook invite:

SHAOUL AND HIS REAL ESTATE COMPANY HAVE BEEN AN EVIL CORPORATE REAL ESTATE WRECKING AND GENTRIFICATION CREW IN THE EAST VILLAGE. THE WORST OF THE WORST !!!!

While Shaoul has been a widely criticized developer in the East Village for years, the recent revelations about actor-poet-writer Taylor Mead's living conditions were the impetus for this event.

Articles in The Villager and the Post and at BoweryBoogie have outlined the 88 year old's current living conditions while the Shaoul-owned building on Ludlow undergoes a gut renovation. (Mead, a former Andy Warhol star, had lived in the rent-stabilized apartment for 34 years and didn't want to leave.) According to the account in the Post, "Plaster falls from his walls and roaches crawl up his legs. The kitchen sink doesn’t work."

"It’s going to kill him,” said Clayton Patterson, a neighborhood activist and longtime friend. “This is elderly abuse. It’s pretty Third World when you think about it."

As Curbed put this particular episode, Shaoul is "up to his old tricks. Or, more specifically, his old trick — forcing stubborn, rent-stabilized tenants out of the apartments he owns by having their buildings demolished around them."

Penley had this to say to us via a message on Facebook:

"I am demanding at the protest that he give Taylor a renovated ground-floor apartment in Taylor's building rent free for the rest of his life and provide Taylor with home-care assistance. He just made so much cash speculating and flipping buildings on the LES that doing something humane like I suggest he do would be a very small gesture."

Shaoul has recently sold large parcels of his East Village buildings to developer Jared Kushner. Shaoul is currently converting the former Cabrini Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation on Avenue B and East Fifth Street into residences.

Penley recently held a campout to call on NYU to help house the homeless.

EVG Etc.: Recovering from COVID-19; taking aim at third-party delivery fees

[St. Mark's Place at 3rd Avenue]

• East Village resident Majorie Ingall on the recovery from COVID-19 (Tablet)

• Remembering downtown star — and East Village resident — Nashom Wooden (Popular Publicity ... previously on EVG)

• Jimmy Webb's love for NYC and tight pants (The New Yorker ... previously on EVG)

• The fruit cart returns to First Avenue just north of 14th Street (Town & Village)



• The Department of Transportation and the NYPD not into converting roadways into public space for coronavirus-crammed New Yorkers (Streetsblog)

• Thoughts on the shuttered Starbucks on First Avenue and Third Street and what the neighborhood might look like post pandemic (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

• Amelia and Christo, the red-tailed hawks of Tompkins Square Park, are well — AND PLEASE DON'T USE A DRONE TO TAKE PHOTOS OF THEIR NEST (Laura Goggin Photography)

• NYC rents remain high — for now (Curbed)

• New York state is facing a $13.3 billion budget shortfall (Gothamist)

• City Council is taking up a series of bills on April 29 that could introduce a stricter fee cap on third-party delivery services (Eater)

• Via the EVG inbox: Citywide music performance of "For Our Courageous Workers" planned April 29 at the 7 p.m. cheer for front-line workers (Tenth Intervention)

• Take a look around the 98 Bowery archives (Official site)

• The Hester Street Fair goes virtual (Vogue)

... and East Village-based artist-actor Robert Galinsky recently launched a 30-minute talk-variety show that streams live Monday through Friday at 10 p.m. on Facebook.com/RobertGalinsky. Upcoming guests include Tony winner Maryann Plunkett and documentarian Clayton Patterson.

Week in Grieview

Talking with Lady Bunny at the Pyramid Club (Friday)

NYC's 1st bar for pregnant women goes belly up on Avenue A (Monday)

"Cocaine was fantastic in the 1980s." (Wednesday)

Clayton Patterson responds to Taylor Swift's "Welcome to New York" (Thursday)

TakeMeHome Rotisserie Chicken coming to Avenue A (Monday)

Two years after Sandy (Wednesday)

The return of Lucky Cheng's (Thursday)

Attorney General takes down notorious "tenant relocator" (Monday)

Reactions to the landmarking of Town & Village Synagogue on East 14th Street (Wednesday)

Signs of life at East Village Radio, but what does it mean? (Monday)

The John's of 12th Street documentary premieres soon (Friday)

Caratoes creates a mural on East 12th Street and Avenue C (Tuesday)

A look at 331 E. Houston St., with a rooftop deck for outdoor showers and "Live Free or Die Hard" (Tuesday)

The East Fifth Street jet ski (Thursday)

383 Lafayette wrapped ahead of NYU expansion (Thursday)

First sign of Rosie's Mexican, coming soon to Second Avenue (Monday)

Empire Biscuit turns 1 (Friday)

...and one last look at Halloween weekend... with photos from Union Square by James and Karla Murray...

The Tompkins Square Library hosts 'A Look Back on the East Village of the 1980s' starting Friday

[Via the Tompkins Square Library branch]

On Friday, the Tompkins Square Library branch on 10th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B is opening an exhibit titled “A Look Back on the East Village of the 1980s.”

Some details via the EVG inbox:

This vigorous and enthusiastically researched show will focus on the creative counter-culture of the surrounding neighborhood in the 1980's. It will present important, vital highlights from the night club scene, along with the music, theater, and art activity of that period — a period in which the East Village was recognized nationally and internationally for its sometimes famous and sometimes infamous personalities and places.

In conjunction with the show, the Tompkins Square library has been working with material from the New York Public Library special collections, and with the Fales NYU Downtown archive. Of significant interest are the many photographs and fascinating ephemera and reproductions from the East Village in the 1980s.

In conjunction with the show on Friday night (at 6), the library is hosting a discussion, The East Village in the 1980s, featuring Penny Arcade, Clayton Patterson and Chris Rael. Andy McCarthy, a reference librarian at the Milstein Division of U.S. History, Local History, and Genealogy at NYPL, is the moderator.

"A Look Back on the East Village of the 1980s" will be at the library until Nov. 1. This link has more details on branch hours, etc.

[Updated] Taylor Mead is (temporarily) leaving New York

Taylor Mead, the poet and former Warhol star currently living in hellish conditions during his Ludlow Street building's gut renovation, was scheduled to appear Sunday at the Anthology Film Archives.

He was to appear with director Michel Auder to discuss the 1970 cult classic "Cleopatra," which Mead appeared in alongside Nico and Gerard Malanga. However, that appearance has been moved up to tonight.

Per the Anthology website:

Since going to press with our Spring schedule, we've learned that Taylor Mead will be temporarily leaving NYC (for an undetermined period of time) just before our originally scheduled program on Sun, April 14. As a result, we have added a screening on Tues, April 9, with Taylor in person! Since this may be the last chance to see Taylor here in NY for some time, this evening is not to be missed! Come say goodbye to Taylor as he embarks on an adventure out west!

As you may have read, Ben Shaoul bought the building Mead lives in last summer. Mead, 88, continues to live in his rent-stabilized apartment while the rest of the building is converted to market-rate homes. (Mead has lived here for 34 years and pays $380 a month in rent.)

According to a report in the Post, "Workers hammer outside his door from 7 a.m. till the evening. Plaster falls from his walls and roaches crawl up his legs. The kitchen sink doesn’t work."

Word began to spread via Mead's friends and family last week that a buyout/relocation deal was in the works.

As for tonight, the film starts at 7.

Updated 10 p.m.
We asked Clayton Patterson, who has been working to help Mead, for an update. He said that Mead will be spending a few weeks with his niece in Denver... and that there are possibles trips to New Orleans and Upstate New York to follow... "then hopefully back to the LES." Patterson noted that Mead has not ben receiving any help from any local officials. He received one visit from reps from the offices of Councilwoman Margaret Chin and the Cooper Square Committee, as BoweryBoogie noted. "If Taylor had to rely on these political groups and our politicians he would probably be dead by now," Patterson said last night via email. He was unaware if Mead had reached a buyout agreement with the landlord.

[Image via]

Marlene, 1988

Clayton Patterson's photo page, in which he publishes work from his vast archives, is my favorite feature of the newly launched Villager spinoff, The East Villager.

This week, Patterson presents this photo of Marlene Bailey in Tompkins Square Park from 1988. You may know her better as "Hot Dog."



“I think it’s great to see her looking like that,” Patterson said in the feature. “I think it’s a good example of the difficulties and hard life of living on the street. She’s a neighborhood icon to some — a reprobate to others. I think she’s one of the last of the real survivors out there on the street — one of the street warriors.”

Here's a more recent photo of Marlene (with Poet John Lesko) from Bob Arihood's excellent new photo site, Nadie Se Canoce.

Reminder: "Home Grown LES" and "Captured" Monday night

Special screening of Clayton Patterson's "Captured" — 8 p.m. at Collective Hardware, 169 Bowery
Benefit for Collective Hardware’s “Home Grown L.E.S”

Here's the trailer:

L.E.S. Dwellers make the case against Soho House expanding to Ludlow Street

As you likely heard, Soho House is planning an expansion to 139 Ludlow St. They've already made their pitch to neighbors. (Read BoweryBoogie's post on it here; and The Lo-Down here.)

During this past weekend, L.E.S. Dwellers sent around their campaign again Soho House. (You can read it here.) It's slightly outside my usual coverage zone. But I wanted to share with you what they have to say. (And, of course, there's a major spillover effect from all this to this neighborhood...)

An excerpt from the L.E.S. Dwellers campaign:

Rival gangs of frat boys, sororisluts, suburbanite wannabes, tramps with stamps, and bridge & tunnel douchebags converge on our streets, and a bloody turf war ensues between residents and the drug and alcohol-fueled gangs. If Soho House comes, new gangs arrive with them - Jimmy Choo stiletto girls, newly minted tech-set, B-list models, I-bankers disguised in Thomas Pink and Gucci loafers, trust fund wannabe hipsters, expense account ad men, label whores, and Eurotrash. Our streets will become bloodier and messier than it already is, with the residents further outmatched by the increasingly uncontrollable mobs.

And!

The L.E.S. will officially become the "Eastpacking", unless we as a community do something about it. We can choose to remain silent and compliant, marking our doors with black crosses in anticipation of the Soho House virus incubating at 139 Ludlow Street. Or we can rise up and fight back.

Soho House reps are expected to appear before the CB3/SLA committee next month to apply for a liquor license. Reps have said they wouldn't expect to open on Ludlow Street until the summer of 2014.

Meanwhile, yesterday, Lower East Side documentarian Clayton Patterson explained why is he supporting the Soho House's expansion to Ludlow Street in a post published at The Lo-Down.

An excerpt:

If not them then who? Soho House is not going to build up. They are going to save the look and integrity of the façade architecture. The fact that they are private keeps the crowds down, will be more low key… and so on. Imagine this: it is a large double wide lot- has at the very least 6 stories worth of air right to build up. Imagine a brand new 12 story luxury hotel or apartment eating up the block.

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

Tonight in Tompkins Square Park: The Toy

Meh...I don't get it either. The Toy? As IMDB describes the plot: On one of his bratty son Eric's annual visits, the plutocrat U.S. Bates (Jackie Gleason) takes him to his department store and offers him anything in it as a gift. Eric chooses a black janitor (Richard Pryor) who has made him laugh with his antics. At first the man suffers many indignities as Eric's "toy", but gradually teaches the lonely boy what it is like to have and to be a friend.

Double ugh. (Oh, and the having Bates as a last name sets up a running gag...Master Bates...)



Now allow me to repeat what I said in a post from July 16:

This film series is all well and good. I'm all for free things that can bring the community together. Not to mention I enjoy cheesy Hollywood movies . . . Still, I'd appreciate an outdoor movie series showing more obscure mainstream and independent films and/or a showcase for local filmmakers. How about something on the history of the neighborhood, such as Clayton Patterson's Captured?

Anyway...on Sept. 19 in the Park: The Shining.

Lower East Side artists now larger than life — on canvas

It's likely that you spotted a few workers carrying a large portrait of Clayton Patterson up the Bowery the other day...

Indeed, the portrait is the latest from Curt Hoppe, the legendary hyper-realist artist who is among those showing new work starting this Saturday at the Woodward Gallery on Eldridge Street.

Hoppe is currently working on a series of paintings of fellow Lower East Side artists. Here's Patterson posing with his portrait.

Curt also sent along his portrait of Arturo Vega ...

...and in progress.

Curt hopes to show this series together — likely 15 portraits in total ... we're looking forward to seeing these.

[Photos courtesy of Curt Hoppe]

Previously on EV Grieve:
Q-and-A with Curt Hoppe: Living on the Bowery, finding inspiration and shooting Mr. Softee

Week in Grieview

[Union Square yesterday by Terry Howell]

Shakespeare & Company losses lease on Broadway (Monday … Thursday)

RIP A Gathering of Tribes (Thursday)

The hawk couple of Tompkins Square Park now has three eggs (Wednesday)

Gino DiGirolamo is retiring after 50 years in business (Thursday)

Landmarks Preservation Commission OKs 8-floor hotel adjacent to the Merchant's House Museum (Tuesday)

Clayton Patterson is moving to the Austrian Alps (Monday)

This Little Piggy Had Roast Beef has closed (Wednesday)

Why the East Village smelled like a campfire (Monday)

Check out this rooftop art gallery (Tuesday)

6 St. Mark's Place is for lease (Friday)

Wicked Wolfe BBQ opens on East 14th Street (Thursday)

First exhibit for City Lore (Monday)

Out and About with Jon Gerstad (Wednesday)

Max Fish clears first hurdle in return to LES (Tuesday)

More about the retail-residential complex coming to 50-62 Clinton St. (Thursday)

An updated look at Alphabet Plaza (Wednesday)

Openings: Handsome Dan's and INA (Tuesday)

Hello 311? These street lights along East Houston have been out for a long time (Friday)

Box Kite Coffee softly opens on St. Mark's Place

[Photo by @CCarella]
‏
Box Kite Coffee is in soft-open mode at 115 St. Mark's Place between Avenue A and First Avenue.

The cafe is from Cora Lambert and Erik Becker, who had been operating a pop-up at TriBeCa wine bar Maslow 6.

Liz Clayton at Sprudge.com got the first look on Saturday.

A few details from that post:

The coffee bar is small (though not for New York), with the only seats at the front windows (which will open up to the street in fair weather) and alongside the counter. Lambert says she was inspired by diner counters, and hopes the space will naturally encourage more bar interaction. “We’ve got some sick soda fountain stools that aren’t here yet,” she promises.

Box Kite will also have a limited beer and wine list as well as an offering of food and pastries.

Anyway, you can see for yourself now...

Hi Friends! We are not officially open but our door is open and we are giving away espresso today. Come by and say hello.
— Box Kite NYC (@BoxKiteCoffee) December 23, 2013

The Tuck Shop closed its location here on July 7.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Box Kite Coffee opening at former Tuck Shop space on St. Mark's Place?

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

[Avenue C and East Second Street the other day]

A Jewish-Iraqi pop-up restaurant for East Ninth Street (DNAinfo)

A look at the work of Andrea Stella, founder of The Space at Tompkins (Take Part via HuffPost)

2 LES bars cited for alleged underage drinking (The Lo-Down)

Clayton Patterson op-ed: We need new LES leaders (The Villager)

Ruby's opens on the Coney Island Boardwalk in...



Muji opening a store on Cooper Square (BoweryBoogie)

Those romantic Ramones! (Montreal Gazette)

Why Quinn holds the cards on rezoning and landmarking (Off the Grid)

Losing this Brooklyn landmark? (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

Hulu showing the entire Criterion Collection for free this weekend (Gothamist)

...and how many of those Kate Moss/Rag & Bone ads look like this...

Batman Begins tonight in Tompkins Square Park

An obvious choice given that The Dark Knight opens Friday. This film series is all well and good. I'm all for free things that can bring the community together. Not to mention I enjoy cheesy Hollywood movies. (Not that the films in this series are cheesy.) Still, I'd appreciate an outdoor movie series showing more obscure mainstream and independent films and/or a showcase for local filmmakers. How about something on the history of the neighborhood, such as Clayton Patterson's Captured?

Anyway, back to Batman Begins...and one more wish: Wouldn't mind seeing another Christian Bale movie instead...

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

[Quiet early morning in Tompkins Square Park]

More on the rent hike that may KO Army & Navy Bags on East Houston (DNAinfo)

More about the 51 Astor Place parody account (Commercial Observer)

About the sale of Kossar’s Bialys (BoweryBoogie)

13 Portals hooks up with Clayton Patterson (The Lo-Down)

Weighing in on Blue Ribbon Fried Chicken on Second Avenue (Eater)

Third Avenue survivor gets a new neighbor (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

Fast Food workers strike (Gothamist)

Union Square West now and then (Flaming Pablum)

Belated birthday salute to Charlie Parker (Dangerous Minds)

Sometimes East Village resident Daniel Craig greets the paparazzi outside Gemma on the Bowery (E! Online)

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

[14th Street and Avenue A this morning. By Shawn Chittle]

Helping Caffe Vivaldi (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

Occupy Wall Street's Day of Action yesterday (Daily Intel ... Runnin' Scared ... The Gog Log)

Clayton Patterson at the Zuccotti Park evacuation (BoweryBoogie)

How the NYPD doles out credentials to the press (The New York Observer)

Danny Hoch on Broadway, gentrification (Gothamist)

You guide to New York City's hidden mews (Curbed)