EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

[Shopping on Broadway via Bobby Williams]

Boutique priced out of the LES finds cheaper digs on Madison Avenue (DNAinfo)

Amy talks about her brief marriage to LES Jewels (The Villager)

Video recap of Portals 10-12 (GammaBlog)

Are these the 10 best restaurants on the LES? (Fork in the Road)

Aren't there enough Chinatown bus services? (The Lo-Down)

Yay? Bloomberg threatens to stop holding news conferences (The Wall Street Journal)

Remembering the Ludlow Street Cafe (Flaming Pablum)

History of The Village Voice (Off the Grid)

Manganaro's Hero Boy is saying put (The Commercial Observer)

RIP the original Blarney Stone (Grade "A" Fancy)

An open letter to The DL from LES Dwellers (BoweryBoogie)

Appreciating the Mayfair Barber Shop (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

Williams Burroughs sings! (Dangerous Minds)

... and a reader notes that workers are hoisting some solar panels or something to buildings atop East 12th Street between A and B this morning... You always take pictures of cranes...


[Source: men installing solar panels with crane]

Your guide to construction hell on East 11th Street

East 11th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B continues to be an active zone for ongoing construction. Idling trucks. Large cranes. Blocked traffic. Continuous jackhammering.

Here's a look at the projects making life nearly unbearable for some neighbors.

• The Mary Spink apartments, which will provide affordable housing for formerly homeless and mentally disabled East Villager residents


[Ron Z]


[RZ]

• 510 E. 11th St., where workers are adding a new floor to the existing four-story building...


[Cheryl Pyle]


[CP]


[CP]

• 500 E. 11th St, home of the incoming 7-Eleven. After 11 months of gut renovation, the space is finally looking 7-Eleveny/chainy...


[Bobby Williams]


[BW]

In April, some residents who live above here said that the never-ending work has made their existence in the building "a living hell."

• 181 Avenue A at East 11th Street, where workers are about halfway done demolishing the Mary Help of Christians school and church...


[BW]

After the demo, residents from more than just East 11th Street will have to endure the lengthy (and noisy) construction of developer Douglas Steiner's retail-residental complex.... described in one listing as a "140 unit market luxury rental building."

One East 11th Street resident said that one of these jobs would be off-putting enough, but four happening simultaneously is "fucking ridiculous."

When 20-ton cranes topple over along the East River

EVG reader Luke Dohner Av. C happened by this scene this morning along the East River at East 31st Street... the crane tipped over while repairing a bulkead near the Water Club restaurant...



The Daily News has a report on the 20-ton crane accident:

Workers said the crane, which was on a work barge, got stuck on a support beam when it suddenly crashed forward, sending its back wheels in the air. The scene slowed traffic along the FDR, while some passersby, including one pedaling a rented CitiBike, stopped to gawk and snap photos.

There were no reported injuries. And had this been the Post, the editors would have blamed the accident on the Citi Bike.

[Updated] And now, 3 photos of a really large crane on Union Square

We were so busy admiring the crane here next to the Zeckendorf Towers on East 14th Street near Irving Place, that we never got the official word what the workers were doing... heard a dad explain to his son that the workers were hoisting AC units to the roof...

Anyway, you always take pictures of large cranes. Thanks to everyone who sent in photos, including Dave on 7th...

An EV Grieve reader just sent along this shot of workers packing up the crane late this afternoon ...

David Schwimmer vs. The Coen Brothers on East Sixth Street

Been a busy few days on East Sixth Street between Second Avenue and First Avenue... The Coen Brothers are back filming "Inside Llewyn Davis." The trucks and all that are parked along East Sixth Street. (The crew seems to be filming inside 110 Second Ave.)

[Yesterday, by Bobby Williams]

Meanwhile, construction continues at Chez Schwimm... where the pallets of cinder blocks await ....

[Early this morning, via EVG]

After the various work crews arrived today for their respective jobs, a resident along here noted, "The street is practically nonexistent as the Haddad's vans (where is Justin Timberlake?) are taking over from the Schwimmer cranes, making it impossible for [the construction workers] to close the street at will, as they often do – for deliveries, etc."

The Coen Brothers crew will also be filming tomorrow, then the street can be returned to the Schwimmers.

The crane event at Hyatt Union Square

Well, over here on Fourth Avenue and 13th Street... outside the incoming Hyatt Union Square, we can expect a bigass crane here on the dates below... we love cranes... and photos of them...

We think that they mean Feb. 18 and not 16. Since we didn't see a crane yesterday. In any event. No word on whether the crane will be lifting into place the hydroponic bamboo garden.

Today in photos of ConEd putting in a new transformer on Avenue A

If you walked along Avenue A today, then you likely noticed the cranes, flatbeds, ConEd workers, etc., hanging around... the crew was on the scene to put in a new transformer in the ConEd substation between Fifth Street and Sixth Street... today, ConEd removed the old transformer; tomorrow, they'll put in the new replacement (which will actually be four smaller transformers, according to one of the 300 workers on the scene...) Photos here by Bobby Williams...

You always take photos of cranes

Second Avenue and 13th Street this morning.

Because you always take pictures of cranes

At the Con Ed HQ earlier today... 15th Street and Third Avenue. By Bobby Williams.

At the Day of 1,000 Cranes in Tompkins Square Park

Read more about it here. Photos by Bobby Williams.

Today in photos of very large cranes

You always take pictures of cranes. Like this one here on Second Avenue at Second Street...

And from EV Grieve reader Steven on Second Street near Avenue C...

The sum of all fears

Awful news yesterday, of course: An AC unit fell six stories from an apartment window, bouncing off an awning below and striking a 67-year-old man on Second Avenue.

While reading through the retweets about this story on Twitter, a theme quickly emerged: Many people said that getting hit in the head by a falling AC was their worst fear/nightmare. Well, sure — why not?

Life always hangs in the balance, particularly in an urban environment. So there's always something to put the fear in us, often driven by the media ... getting mugged ... worrying about terrorism ... falling cranes... exploding manhole covers... finding bedbugs... seeing your new neighbor move in with a drumkit...

As for falling objects, well, in a bit of gallows humor, I told @Eden_Brower that yesterday's incident took my mind off thinking about cars hurtling out of parking garages and landing on me. For awhile, anyway.

Perhaps this is a good reminder ... maybe you want to walk on the other side of Ninth Street where the parking garage is between Third Avenue and Second Avenue....

You always take pictures of cranes

As my blogging professor taught me in my Remedial Blogging Class... (You always take pictures of cranes.)

Anyway, here on Second Avenue near Fifth Street... there is a large crane on the scene making a beer delivery to Kabin....



Kidding! They're actually creating an Bike Lane Obstacle Course. Mayor Bloomberg read that city officials did this in Amersterdam too.



Oh, c'mon ... it's early...

More on the East Village harassment story

Following up on the post yesterday on the landlord accused of harassing tenants...Curbed has more here.

Meanwhile, Jill from Blah Blog Blah left a comment regarding all this. She has firsthand experience:

I live in one of these buildings. We have had almost half the apartments vacated in the past few months. And once the tenants leave, we never know where they went or what happened to them. We've organized a tenants group but the people who leave are the ones who didn't join the group. Some that we did know left because they decided it just wasn't worth the living conditions. One had a new baby and were so freaked out by the construction, so off to Brooklyn they went.

Who moved in? Not one of the new tenants is over 25. They are renting 400 square foot renovated apartments (3 rooms--2 bedrooms and a common area with a kitchen and very small space for maybe a chair) for $3200 on a third floor walk up in a very filthy building. Probably a little less for the upper floors. Two to an apartment--$1500 to live in the East Village is probably the going rate, crazy. Dozens of bars but nowhere to buy a fresh piece of fish. Who needs food when you can live on alcohol?

The problem is that the landlord operates just on this side of the law. The super was heard recently telling one of the rent stabilized tenants that he doubted if he could adequately fix whatever the problem is "because you know what the landlord wants to do to you folks." They make a repair, but they make it purposely bad. They turn off the hot water for half a day so that by the time the complaint is registered, it has been "fixed." They don't properly register with DOB for permits and then "fix" the paperwork months later, and DOB could give a shit. There are absolutely no penalties or oversight. They take months to renovate an apartment and clean the hallway rarely, so there is dust everywhere, it comes up through the floorboards and infests every crook--I'm still cleaning out shoes that I hadn't worn that are coated in plaster dust from 6 months ago.

But is a dirty hallway enough to go to court? The workers start before legal hours and end after they are allowed to be here, making a lot of noise. Does DOB do anything? No, they are worried about cranes falling, if that.

They evicted my neighbor out and literally threw his stuff down down 6 flights of stairs. Kicked it down. Then he won in court and got to come back.

I could go on about the small things they have done, they all add up, but none individually are enough to make a case that sounds really compelling.

Linda Stasi on the "destruction of neighborhoods by big-bucks bullies"

New York Post columnist and Turtle Bay resident Linda Stasi has had it with the construction and the cranes. She lets loose in a piece today:

Turtle Bay is just one neighborhood under siege by foreign real-estate moguls building artless, tacky buildings with Chinese money to sell to Europeans, Chinese, Russians and Middle Easterners - the only ones, with the exception of Michael Bloomberg, who can still afford to buy in Manhattan.
Yes, kids, the Russians and Chinese are coming - but they're coming with checkbooks, not bombs - even though the effect is the same: destruction of neighborhoods by big-bucks bullies.

Meanwhile, a graphic from the Daily News (March 2008):

Countdown to the Ukrainian Festival

Ah, yes -- one of my favorite neighborhood traditions kicks off this Friday afternoon on 7th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue. (Been saving up my $1 bills for Chuk-a-Luck all year!) Community spirit at its finest.

Here's a little on the history of Ukrainians in New York. And on the St. George Ukrainian Catholic Church, the centerpiece of the festival.


[©HK/BRAMA.com]

A little of the entertainment from last year:




Of course, how will this feel this year with all this crapola going on behind us?



Watch out for the cranes.