Huminska closes on 9th Street after 27 years in business

In recent months people have asked about the status of Huminksa, the women's boutique at 315 E. Ninth St. between First Avenue and Second Avenue.

Owner-designer Janice Huminska has addressed the situation in a note posted to her website last week. Her shop, which first opened in 1992, is now permanently closed. She writes, in part:

A tough retail environment could not and would not thwart my addiction to fabric and making dresses for all of you! Rather this crazy retail environment has been fueling me, as other obstacles over the last 3 decades have done, to overcome!

I am not at liberty to say exactly what happened, other than that a tsunami hit my longstanding tiny little biz & thru no fault of my own my labor of love was decimated, along with my livelihood ...

You can read her full note below...

"In a changing world, The Villager is still here"

That's John W. Sutter, publisher of The Villager, the weekly community newspaper now celebrating its 75th anniversary. These days, The Villager is the one paper I can honestly say that I look forward to reading. I'll walk around Wednesday night to check out The Villager boxes to see if the paper has been delivered. (I did this years back on Tuesday nights to get the Voice, which I no longer read on a regular basis.) I admire the paper's devotion to community issues...and appreciation of the community spirit that, despite everything from NYU to chain stores, can still be found in the neighborhood.

I started my journalism career at a similar chain of community newspapers that were locally owned. I covered all sorts of meetings (school boards, city council, zoning, etc.). This was almost 20 years ago. The plot lines seem to be the same, from a Midwestern city to here. We had the greedy developers hoping to build six luxury homes on a small parcel of land that would have ruined the fabric of a quaint neighborhood. There were chain drug stores taking over old mom-and-pop storefronts. Locally owned eateries closing to make way for some hideous chain restaurants.

Anyway, there are several essays on the paper's history right here. Here's to 75 more years.

'Small Biz Crawl' this Saturday on 2nd Avenue

From the EVG inbox...

#SaveNYC is a grassroots, crowd-sourced, D.I.Y. movement to protect and preserve the diversity and uniqueness of the urban fabric in New York City. As our vibrant streetscapes and neighborhoods are turned into bland, suburban-style shopping malls, filled with chain stores and glossy luxury retail, #SaveNYC is fighting for small businesses and cultural institutions to remain in place.

After a disaster like the deadly Second Avenue explosion and fire, impacted small businesses struggle to survive. #SaveNYC is holding a Small Biz Crawl along Second Avenue to bring customers, cash and attention to those mom-and-pops in need. This weekend, we’ll do the western side of Second Avenue; next time, the eastern side.

Meet #SaveNYC on Saturday, April 11, at noon. We’re starting at Gem Spa on the northwest corner of Second Avenue and St. Mark’s Place. Buy your magazines, newspapers and egg creams at this first stop. From there, we’ll head down toward 7th Street. Do some gift shopping at Himalayan Visions. Then it’s lunch at the B&H Dairy or Paul’s Da Burger Joint. Your choice. After lunch, we’ll weave our way across the barricades of 7th Street to stock up on groceries at the New Yorkers Foodmarket. Please bring your #SaveNYC sign to let everyone know who we are and why we’re there. Click here to print out signs — and to find out more about #SaveNYC.

In a tweet to us yesterday, Paul's said that their business was down 75 percent since the explosion.

Other food choices on the west side of Second Avenue are Taqueria Diana and Ramen Misoya.

As for B&H, they are hopeful to be back open tomorrow.

Humans of New York inspires an outpouring of support for Dress Shoppe II on 2nd Avenue

Photos from 2019 by Stacie Joy 

Dress Shoppe II, the Indian boutique on Second Avenue between Fourth Street and Fifth Street, has had its share of heartbreak and struggle in the past two years. 

Purushottam Goyal, the family's patriarch, died in September 2019. His wife of 50 years, Saroj Goyal, has been doing her best to keep the shop going... now she is undergoing treatment for breast cancer...

Brandon Stanton, the creator of the popular Humans of New York storyteller series, featured Saroj on his @HumansofNY Instagram account yesterday. He also got involved in helping her business, launching a crowdfunding campaign in the process.

He writes:

Saroj is in a tough spot. She's still grieving her husband. She is undergoing treatment for breast cancer. And the stress is really destroying her mental health. I've spent the last several weeks digging into her situation, and it hasn't been easy to unwind. But I think we've figured out a path.

There's a lot of background on her financial situation. The following is from the GoFundMe page:

By the books — she is behind 24 months of rent. This is due to the disruption of her husband's death, her own health crisis, and the pandemic. Her store is located on 2nd Avenue, which is a prime location. And with tax and utilities, the full arrears would be $200,000. But there is certainly cause for major concessions from her landlord.

But Saroj's "landlord" is not a landlord at all. Her storefront is owned by the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association II. The MHA II is a collective that subsidizes low-income residents on the Lower East Side. This means that the rental income from Saroj's storefront goes directly toward subsidizing the rent for low-income New Yorkers. MHA II is a lifeline to many people. And unfortunately the organization's finances have also been badly hurt by the pandemic.

The board of MHA II is composed entirely of low-income tenants themselves. They have agreed to accept $130,000 to settle Saroj's debts. In addition to this — they have agreed to allow Saroj to stay in the store rent free for another six months as she attempts to sell as much inventory as possible. After this time hopefully Saroj will be in a position to relocate to a more manageable location.

The $130,000 from this fundraiser will not only eliminate Saroj's debt, but it will also subsidize the rent of low-income New Yorkers. Any additional funds will go directly to Saroj, who is currently undergoing treatment for breast cancer and has to pay 20 percent of the expenses out of her own pocket. She is worried about losing her house.

I know it's a lot of context to absorb. But beneath all the numbers and accounting, the goal of this fundraiser is to get Saroj out of crisis so that she can focus on healing. The waters are rising all around her, and we want to get her to some dry ground. The one thing she has is a lot of inventory. So we are hopeful that with some breathing room, she will be able to reposition herself for the long term.

If you are in New York City, and would like some vintage handmade Indian clothing and fabric, please visit The Dress Shoppe at 83 2nd Avenue.

As of 8 a.m., the campaign — amplified by Nicolas Heller, aka @NewYorkNico — has raised more than $412,000 after 17 hours. 

And here's Saroj's story on Humans of New York...

 

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A small business SOS

Save Our Storefronts, a coalition of East Village merchants and community members, recently launched a petition that will help lobby for fair rent relief for NYC small businesses.

We are facing the catastrophic loss of thousands of small and micro businesses, the economic and social cornerstones of our communities.

New York is on PAUSE, but the bills have not paused. The rent has not paused. NOTHING has paused except our ability to survive. Without rent relief, untold numbers of storefronts will shutter. For good. Communities will lose vast numbers of jobs, essential services, vitality and more.

We will lose the very fabric of our city.

You can learn more and sign the petition at this link.

Gallery Watch: 'Last Supper' at LatchKey Gallery

Text and photos by Clare Gemima 

Last Supper at LatchKey Gallery 

Group Show, 323 Canal St. 

Canal Street for a new-ish comer is so hustle and bustle that it is often easy to miss the hidden gems amongst the light stores, plastic museums and fake Louis Vuitton’s lining the sidewalk. 

LatchKey Gallery offers a refreshing respite to this, an incredibly large and open space with a dedicated ethos toward advocating overlooked artists. In this week’s Gallery Watch, I am excited to provide insight into this nomadic contemporary art space that is challenging the status-quo on several different levels. 

The powerhouses behind LatchKey Gallery are Natalie Kates and Amanda Uribe. I was lucky enough to meet Natalie at Silo6776 in New Hope at Scooter LaForge’s exhibition Beef Jerky late last year. I could tell Natalie was an enthusiastic and passionate art lover, but it wasn’t until I had come to learn about her Artist Residency Program that she spearheaded with her husband Fabrizio Ferri that I really got the gist of her dedication to emerging artists. 

Scooter kindly passed on a Zoom invite to Natalie in conversation with Dana Robinson, (a previous artist in residence), which is how I came to learn of LatchKey’s current exhibition Last Supper. 

The show, curated by Tamecca Seril showcases the works of 12 Black female artists, referencing the significant event of the show’s title where Jesus and his apostles gather and consecrate around a banquet feast.

The classic, white-washed representation is (and forever will be) a staple in art history, but that doesn’t mean it can’t be challenged. Last Supper at LatchKey Gallery builds a new table that lifts and honors voices that art history seems to leave out of its canon — those that belong to Black women. 

Last Supper celebrates fellowship and organized radical thinking amongst the curated group of artists. The show positions their work within a contemporary context, in turn creating a discourse around what it means to be Black, female and creative while inevitably disrupting the art world’s tiresome and often gross institutionalized normality. 

Last Supper showcases the works of Shervone Neckles, Ify Chiejina, Turiya Magadlela, LaToya Hobbs, Kimberly Becoat, Nkechi Ebubedike, Josie Love Roebuck, Jennifer Mack Watkins, Dana Robinson, Dominique Duroseau, Ariel Danielle and Ashante Kindle.

The pieces by Shervone Neckles are photographic and hanging from the ceiling, offering something I have never seen before in a gallery space. History, time and torture are suspended in her golden-framed objects and these works were definitely what excited me the most. 

Other works that stood out for me: Jennifer Mack-Watkins’ majestic and sweet prints, Turiya Magadlela’s stunning sewn fabric work at the entrance of the space and Dana Robinson’s charming dappled painted transfers on panel.

As I was watching videos, admiring large-scale paintings and pestering the extremely hospitable and lovely Amanda, I noticed a large back-space to the gallery. Unbeknown to me, this was the studio hosting Kates-Ferri Project artist residency. 

The divide from gallery to artist studio space was raw and generous for the average gallery-goer. Once stepping inside the residency quarters, I was enthralled by another young maker’s world. February’s artist in residence was the beautifully spoken and gifted Eric Manuel Santoscoy-Mckillip, who has filled the space with painted sculptures, freshly designed rugs and a working studio that I was delighted to receive an invitation to tour. 

Born in El Paso, Texas, Eric plays with ideas of overlapping and blurring — subjects that seek to reflect the in-between space of the U.S. and Mexico border. His work is rich in color, crazy with texture and so bold and confident to the point of intimidating. 

At first glance, it looked as though the work was made with 100 percent pure pigment, but thanks to the nature of the studio space, I learned he was using flashe. The artist has built a lexicon around their work that is felt, heard and seen. Eric pays homage to a complex history and identity in the way he uses, as an example, stucco as both a protectant layer and texture creator. 

He has an invested interest in design, derivative colorways and has an explorative and deeply personal practice that pays respect to its roots. He moves between painting and sculpture and has been producing experimental work during his time in the residency. To see more of his work, you can visit his website here.

Last Supper will be showing at LatchKey’s Canal Street and Industry City locations until March 20. To book an appointment, please visit their website. A special thanks to Eric and Amanda for having me.

~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ ~~ 

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 

Reminders: CB3 committees to hear more about the Union Square tech hub tonight

[Rendering via RAL Development]

As noted back on Jan. 25, CB3's Joint Economic Development Committee and Land Use, Zoning, Public & Private Housing Committee will hear more about the Mayor's proposed 20-story tech hub on 14th Street during its meeting tonight. (It takes place at 6:30 at the Henry Street Settlement, Youth Services Gymnasium, 301 Henry St.)

Mayor de Blasio is proposing to turning the city-owned P.C. Richard site on 14th Street at Irving Place into a "workforce development and digital skills training center," among other things.

Here's more about the proposed 240,000 square-foot facility via Crain's:

Civic Hall, a nonprofit that promotes collaboration to solve civic problems with technology, would operate six floors of the building. Half the space would be used for co-working and meetings for the city’s philanthropy, business and tech sectors. The other half is slated to be occupied by five organizations offering tech training. General Assembly, for example, hosts intense coding courses. Per Scholas, a national nonprofit, offers its free tech training to underserved populations that, on average, make less than $20,000 per year before enrolling in and roughly double that income after graduating.

To make this happen, the site/area needs to be upzoned. This zoning change is of particular concern to some area residents and preservationists, who have stressed that the fabric of the neighborhood could be lost with a rash of new developments south of Union Square along Broadway, University Place and Fourth Avenue. (The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation has been leading the efforts behind a rezoning of the area to enforce some height restrictions and affordable housing requirements. The group makes their case here.)

On Jan. 29, the Economic Development Corporation, the city agency overseeing the hub's development, presented the proposal to the Planning Commission, the first step in the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP), as Curbed reported.

The tech-hub project will eventually need Planning Commission and City Council approval. The public-review process is expected to take about around seven months. Crain's lays out here why the hub faces "a thorny approval process."

Previously on EV Grieve:
Behold Civic Hall, the high-tech future of Union Square — and NYC

Speaking out against a 'Silicon Alley' in this neighborhood

P.C. Richard puts up the moving signs on 14th Street; more Tech Hub debate to come

Out and About in the East Village

In this ongoing feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher

Name: Candice Brewer
Occupation: Pharmacist
Location: Avenue A, between 2nd and 3rd
Time: 3:30 on Monday, Oct. 31

I sell drugs for a living. I’m a pharmacist. I’m an Army brat, so I’m from all over the place.

I moved here in 1978, I’ve lived on 7th Street and 11th Street, and then I moved down to below Houston Street in 1986. Everybody I knew lived down here. Affordability brought me here too, because it was a real dangerous neighborhood. I certainly didn’t go to the lettered avenues. That was way too scary, and there were blocks that I wouldn’t even walk during the day. They were too deserted.

If you ever looked at some of the old photographs, you’ll see that there was nothing going on. The buildings were burned out; the cars were trashed. I would walk home in the middle of the street, because people could come out from between the junked cars and places like that. I had the keys in my hand, and always checking before you opened your door so somebody wasn’t behind you. I’ve come out of my house and seen the police going, ‘Freeze!’ And I’ve seen busts where they’ve knocked down doors… and all the helicopters. Now I’m the scariest thing on Avenue C.

Like all of Ludlow Street, Orchard Street went dark at 5. It was all fabric stores and a lot of it was gravestone stores. The Mercury Lounge was a store for gravestones and you got free parking for a half an hour — you know, cause you could make that decision in half an hour. You can see along Suffolk Street, there are still some of the hoists and tackles on some of the old buildings, so they could pull the gravestones in to do the carving.

I love the music scene. You’d see a lot of interesting people, and there were a lot of artists living around here. There used to be such good clubs around here. It was really a fun time. The Ludlow Street Café, which doesn’t get a lot of press anymore, was the first bar on Ludlow Street, and that was like our living room. I think that came in around 1985, maybe even before Max Fish I believe. We would have parties there, Christmas parties, and birthday parties. It really was our community center – our country store so to speak.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

You may now book a room for October at the Moxy East Village

Reservations are now being accepted for dates this fall at the Moxy East Village, the 13-story, 286-room hotel from the Marriott brand here on 11th Street between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue...



Oct. 6 is the first day for any availabilities ...



Here's hotel info from a recent news release:

Conceived by Rockwell Group as a vertical timeline, each floor of the hotel draws inspiration from a different era in East Village history, from the earliest settlers to the punk era to today. Moxy East Village offers 286 design-driven bedrooms, co-working spaces, tech-savvy amenities, and cultural programming that reflects the richly diverse fabric of the neighborhood.

The various rooms include walk-in rain showers, "retro" telephones and "personal screen casting technology" (aka Netflix, Pandora, etc.).

As for drinking and dining, as previously reported, Tao Group is the food and beverage operator and the Lightstone Group's partner at the Moxy East Village. Plans include a lobby bar and café, a 2,600-square-foot rooftop bar and a French-Mediterranean restaurant from chef Jason Hall.

... and here's the most recent hotel rendering...



...and what it replaced...


[Photo from May 2016]

The foundation work got underway here in August 2017. Workers demolished the five residential buildings that stood here in the fall of 2016.

Previously on EV Grieve:
At the rally outside 112-120 E. 11th St.

6-building complex on East 10th Street and East 11th Street sells for $127 million

Preservationists say city ignored pitch to designate part of 11th Street as a historic district

Permits filed to demolish 5 buildings on 11th Street to make way for new hotel

New building permits filed for 13-story Moxy Hotel on East 11th Street across from Webster Hall

Landmarks Preservation Commission approves hotel project that could potentially damage the city's oldest residential landmark

EVG file photo

The Landmarks Preservation Commission voted yesterday to approve an 8-story hotel next door to the landmarked Merchant's House Museum on Fourth Street between the Bowery and Lafayette, prompting a dire response from museum officials. 

As we reported last week, the development firm Kalodop II Park Corp. has been trying to build the hotel for nearly 12 years; the project has been in limbo for the past three years.

In January 2019, the developers sued New York City, the City Council and Councilmember Carlina Rivera over rejecting their Uniform Land Use Review Procedure (ULURP) application for the project. 

The developers have been seeking a spot rezoning to build an 8-story hotel on the site — higher than the current zoning allowed. The full City Council ultimately voted down the rezoning in September 2019. 

Preservationists, not to mention the leadership of Merchant's House, the circa-1832 building, were concerned that the construction could permanently damage the structure, one of only six residences in NYC that is both an exterior and an interior landmark. Local elected officials and Community Board 2 have all opposed the current application for the 8-story hotel. 

During yesterday's meeting, the LPC did not allow for testimony from the Merchant's House or their engineering team.

 The Merchant's House released this statement after yesterday's decision... 

[T]he LPC voted to approve the development next door to the Merchant's House, despite overwhelming and unanimous opposition from the community, preservation organizations, public officials and, of course, from the Merchant's House and our engineers and preservation architects. 

When asked, the developer's engineers admitted that they have no data about what standards are appropriate when dealing with historic decorative plaster. Further, none of the participants today was aware of the plaster study that confirmed irreparable damage will take place. 

The LPC mandated that certain standards relating to vibration monitoring be established. However, even the most state-of-the-art vibration monitoring systems only announce when the vibration limit has been reached — at which point the damage has already occurred. 

Today's vote by the LPC to greenlight a development that is certain to cause irreparable damage to the Merchant's House Museum is a warning to every other landmark in New York City. If the Merchant's House, one of New York's most treasured historical assets, can be subjected to adjacent construction that will destroy its historic fabric, then every landmark in New York City is at risk. 

This decision, even if reversed, will be a permanent stain on the Commission, which has failed in its existential duty to protect Manhattan’s first and New York City’s oldest residential landmark. The Merchant’s House Museum will take aggressive legal action to halt this unacceptable development. 

Thank you to all who wrote letters of support to the LPC and to those who were able to attend or listen to the meeting today. We couldn't do it without you.

You can donate to their legal fund here. (You can support them in other ways here.) You can watch a replay of the meeting here. The Merchant's House proposal starts at the 25-minute mark.

Out and About in the East Village, Part 2

By James Maher

Name: Rafael Hines
Occupation: Sales Director, Morningstar, Writer
Location: Café Mogador, St. Mark's Place
Time: 3 p.m. on Tuesday, Feb. 9

In part 1, Hines talked about growing up with his mother on Avenue D and East Third Street starting in 1961. "We were there until 1968. Our upstairs neighbor was trying to date my mom. She said no, so he set our apartment on fire." They eventually moved to St. Mark's Place between Avenue A and First Avenue.

Being part of the community has been fantastic. On the positive, the artist culture and the music — one of the things that kind of pushed me to be a writer, is all the creativity, which is still here. I see so many of the same people, who were quote-on-quote citizens like myself.

Back then, you were a citizen or involved in this whole other life. Those people I still see, and many of them are still on the block. My wife says, ‘Oh you’re going to the store, so you’re going to be back in two hours,’ because I have conversations every step of the way. All these people moved here, created a healthy economy in the neighborhood, and have been that fabric outside of this other stuff that’s been going on, which kind of comes and goes. There are just so many good people in this neighborhood.

I want to give Mogador a plug, because this place right here is magic. It’s been around for about 30 years. The hostess would carry each of our kids around when they would seat people. My kids eat here three times a week for dinner, and I come here for breakfast.

There was this guy Steven, who lived upstairs, and for year and years he would print out the Good News Newspaper, from newspapers all around the world. It was all articles about people helping other people, and he would staple it together and hand it out here in the morning. There was me and probably six other regulars and we would read our own newspaper and have this morning dialogue about people helping other people. He passed away about six months ago now. He was a really interesting guy.

I remember, the Boys Club and the 14th Street Y for me was just like home. I’m on the board there now. I went there as a kid and now I’m on the board and I’m part of the scholarship committee. The way people impacted my life and mentored me, I try to do the same thing. My mother was on the board there for years. My mother was such a part of this community as well.

That Y does such amazing things. I could talk about that for two hours. It’s a community center. They have a theatre, and then there’s the early childhood program ... a nursery school, a community center for the elderly and yoga classes — all under one roof. They also have a special-needs program, where no one is turned away, where the whole family can be involved. There’s basketball, soccer. All the counselors and everyone involved are deeply committed to caring about this community and the people who it serves.

My mother also had a bridal store on East 9th Street, until she got really sick last year. At one time, I actually had three bridal stores. I was going to be the gown king. It was a total side project. I had three stores on 9th Street between 1st and 2nd, which started out as a little side gig and then grew and grew, until they all kind of imploded.

Now I work for the company Morningstar, which does the ratings for mutual funds and everything else. I’m on the energy side. They acquired the company I worked for in 2009. We were a family-run businesses for commodities and energy.

I’m also a writer. In the past, I used to fly all over the place for work, and I would always pick up the latest thriller and the latest bestseller. I kept thinking, ‘You’ve got a story in you.’ And then during 9/11, my office was in the south tower. Obviously the whole tragedy was overwhelming. At the time, I think a lot of people thought there would be follow-up attacks, although it never happened.

That was my thought and from there that was the genesis of my book that’s coming out this week. I started by just putting small stories together that I thought were funny and then characters started showing up and dialogue started appearing out of nowhere and now I’ve got a full suspense thriller, "Bishop’s War."

It’s an action thriller about a guy who stops a terrorist attack in Union Square Park. The terrorists come after him and his family, but his family is a crime family on the Lower East Side, so it comes full circle. The characters are based on all the people who I grew up with, basically the cops and gangsters. I did a ton of research and I have friends who are over in Afghanistan, who I was sending chapters to.

It’s funny. The first agent I went to said, ‘You know, the dialogue doesn’t ring true.’ I said, ‘That’s funny, because that is word for word what that guy said.’ I didn’t even make that up. I was just using someone’s lines.

Read Part 1 here.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

New sushi options rolling in; Rosella opening on Avenue A

You've likely noticed the activity at 137 Avenue A between St. Mark's Place and Ninth Street of late... Rosella, an environmentally conscious sushi restaurant, is ready to open soon.

Here's more about Rosella:

Former Uchiko chefs Jeff Miller and Yoni Lang will be offering a sushi tasting menu, complemented by small plates and à la carte service, with an emphasis on locally sourced, sustainable fish and seasonal ingredients. Beverage director and co-owner TJ Provenzano, previously of Mayanoki and Rooftop Reds, has curated a selection of domestic wine, cider, and small-batch sake. The restaurant features a spanning wooden bar and fabric walls to create a warm, inviting environment, as well as outdoor seating.

The address was previously Three Seat Espresso.

Meanwhile! Via the tipline... we're told that the new business at 84 E. Second St. just west of First Avenue is called Yo! Sushi, which is now only open for delivery ... this is in the former Julie's Vintage space, as you can see... don't know anything else about this operation, such as if it's affiliated with the YO! Sushi chain (don't see any conveyor belts!) ...

 

H/T Steven!

Report: Teen lied about assault at Avenue A deli

[Image via]

Back in April, Dia El-Deen Hassan, a clerk at Kamaran Deli and Grocery on Avenue A at Fifth Street, was arrested for assault after reportedly hitting a customer with a baseball bat and calling her a tranny.

Authorities now say that the bashing claim was bogus, the Daily News reports today.

The clerk and his attorney denied the allegations from the outset and said that 18-year-old Noel Torres was trying to steal beer.

Surveillance video from the deli reportedly confirms the clerk's version of events. The charges against Hassan are expected to be dropped next week.

Police arrested Torres, who was charged with filing a false report charge, per the News.

The clerk's attorney, Stuart Meltzer, said this about Torres' actions:

"Laws designed to protect the disadvantaged, those that are different, that stand out in society and that are clearly targets … are very important laws and they're designed to protect the fabric of our society."

De-Flea Market today at Double Down Saloon

Via the EVG inbox...

Socially conscious, savvy shopping, mingling, & festive fun to welcome Summer & support Oklahoma Animal Rescue!

This Summertime Edition will be an Outdoor/Indoor Artist Flea Market held in Double Down Saloon's beautiful & spacious graffiti art backyard, which is a hidden urban oasis. We will also have vendors inside the bar, featured in their their newly built game room!

****3 TILL 8PM****

-Healing gemstone jewelry from resident gypsy Anais L'Amour
-Punk crafts and vintage finds from Our Lady of Perpetual PMS
-Reese Rox Chinese knotted jewelry & decopage punk gift boxes
-LuCrafts: fabric/paper collaged light switch plates, magnets, kitschy creations
-Tony Limico's homemade Kim Chi
-Handmade soy candles & captivating home scents by Amanda Wood of Amanda's Pouty Palette
-Taylor Bowen's punk art & paintings
-Tina Portilla's incredible crocheted creations
-Vintage clothing by Divaqueen Kathleen
-Quirky Jewelry by Eileen of e.i Works
-Rez Barquet's hand painted signs & art
-Nordea McKoy's homemade soaps

Find more info on the Facebook event page.

Paper Daisy debuts on St. Mark's Place

[Image via Paper Daisy]

Paper Daisy is now up and running (as of last Thursday) at 41 St. Mark's Place just east of Second Avenue.

The cocktail bar in the former Cafe Orlin space includes the second East Village outpost of C & B Cafe, which opened its quick-serve breakfast-and-lunch operation on Feb. 28. (The original C & B location remains in service on Seventh Street near Avenue B.)

C & B chef-owner Ali Sahin is also the executive chef for Paper Daisy, whose creative team features East Village residents Jaime Felber, Darin Rubell and Thomas Flynn. Combined, their local credits include Boulton & Watt, Drexler’s and the recently opened Mister Paradise.

Here's some info taken from the Paper Daisy opening notice via the EVG inbox...

Paper Daisy takes its name from a Beat Generation poem — "Pull My Daisy" — by Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Neal Cassady when they were together in New York in the ‘40s.

"We thought the free form, collaborative, and tongue-in-cheek nature of the poem was a great way to anchor what we want out of this space," says Felber. "We know how beloved Orlin was. We would only ever put out a product that we care about, are proud of, and believe will add to the neighborhood. It’s our way of paying homage to what was."

Yosi Ohayon, the former owner of Cafe Orlin and the building owner of 41 St. Mark’s Place says, "When I opened this place over 36 years ago, it was so exciting to me to be a part of the fabric of New York City’s dynamic food and beverage scene. I’m ready to retire this part of my life. ... I wanted to pass the space on to someone who lived and knew the neighborhood, who would care about the space the way I did."

Owner Darin Rubell adds, "I was a regular at Orlin my entire life. I grew up just a few blocks from here and I have always admired how this space has been a real home to the diversity that is the East Village."

C & B is open at 39 St. Mark's Place from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. daily. Paper Daisy has hours of 4 p.m. to 4 a.m.

Before Paper Daisy emerged, the space was expected to be Joya Loves Louie, a vegetarian cafe-market-bar combo, as New York magazine first reported.

Cafe Orlin closed in October 2017 after 36 years at the address.

Previously on EV Grieve:
C&B Cafe now part of new venture taking over the former Cafe Orlin space on St. Mark's Place

C&B Cafe debuts outpost on St. Mark's Place

Gallery Watch: Cotton Mouth by Tschabalala Self

 Text and photos by Clare Gemima

Cotton Mouth by Tschabalala Self

Eva Presenhuber, 39 Great Jones St.

Cotton Mouth presents as a formal critique on projected viewings (or constructions) of Black bodies in America. This show is physically and figuratively in your face, hitting the nail on the head with what needs to be addressed socially and artistically right now. 

The demand of this politically charged work is potent with its use of scale and installation method especially. Cotton Mouth is striking, hard-hitting and an exciting insight into the trajectory of young artist Tschabalala Self (1990, Harlem). This is her first solo show at the gallery. 

As you walk into the beautiful space that is Eva Presenhuber on the historically rich Great Jones, you will quickly find yourself surrounded by mixed-media paintings made out of materials such as fabric, thread, charmeuse, silk, velvet, paper, pigment, acrylic and canvas that completely dominate the space.

Cotton Mouth also features sculptures, drawings and an audio work spread across the two gallery floors.
The title of the show and Self’s making process simultaneously speak to slavery, and the mutually exclusive relationship that cotton has with the African-American experience. 

The act of these characters stitched and painted into the canvas by hand carry an emotional and personal significance to Self, while also speaking to the historical devastations of Black slave labor in America. Each constructed character holds power over their self-presentation and external perception unapologetically, an act of power that Black people in America are denied daily.

The work is so hard not to touch based on the array of different fabrics used and sewn together. What was hard for me to believe is that through stitching and constructing, Self has made characters that undeniably hold their own presence and somehow even look different in age and personified life experience. 

Self has impeccably built each and everyone of these characters from scratch whether it be Lil Mama 2 with her plaid and tulle fringed pants or the two lovers in Sprewell that kiss in front of an incredible photo transferred TV. One of the characters even wears the artist’s actual jeans. 

Self’s practice marries her interests in the psychological and emotional effects of projected fantasy with her sustained articulation of Black life and embodiment. Seeing every hand stitch in Self’s work shows the viewer how painstaking and timely it is to create. The labor in each stitch holds affection, memory and protection according to the artist, and I feel as though the painted hands directly applied to the gallery’s walls touch on this too. 

Cotton Mouth by Tschabalala Self is showing at Eva Presenhuber until Dec. 19 

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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 

Out and About in the East Village, Part 1

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher

Name: Christopher Reisman
Occupation: Police Officer, retired
Location: 9th Precinct, 5th Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue
Time: 11 a.m. on Monday, May 5

I’ve lived here since 1969 and I also used to work here. I was a cop. I grew up in the suburbs, in Westchester, and I left school early and wound up in the Army when I was 21 years old. Most of the guys who I was hanging out with there were from New York.

I got out after three years — two years, 11 months and 14 days. I knocked around for a little while and came over to the neighborhood when I was 25. When I was in college I used to come around here for music. I used to listen to a lot of music. You had the Five Spot on 5th Street and then they moved up to St. Marks. You had Port of Call East, East Village Inn, Pee Wee’s, Slug’s.

The area always intrigued me. It has always been unusual. The area was unique in the city for a number of reasons. It had been crushed by urban renewal. There was a very strong neighborhood identification in those days. There were Polish blocks and Italian blocks and Ukrainian Blocks. For the most part, the Jewish families were gone by then. In those days, nobody owned the entire neighborhood. They might have owned their own blocks, but no one group was strong enough to bully the others. If you were going to be a bully you had to stay on your own block. It was almost exclusively blue collar. By the late ‘60s people were starting to be damaged by the war.

As in most communities, the low level criminality was always the cottage industry — selling little pieces of dope or betting on the numbers. Socially, everybody stood down from whatever their position or status was. I remember in Phebe's you’d see cops, actors, firemen, dancers, kids from Chinese youth gangs, and Hells Angels all drinking together, because nobody was in charge. That was the deal.

There were a lot of people involved in the arts because they could afford to live here and work some little job to pay the rent and then practice the rest of the time. It was always to a degree bohemian. It was inexpensive. It was a community that did not for the most part sit and judge you. Everybody had a place as long as you didn’t impose yourself on people.

I knew Hilly Kristal, the guy that owned CBGB. That was an interesting place. It was kind of a sentiment of the times too There were some of us who drank at his other bars — he had a bar on West 9th Street and another bar on West 13th Street, and those were part of the nightlife. We all knew each other and long story short, the night before he opened Hilly’s on the Bowery, typically, he was not ready to open. He still had to put down the floor, which he had neglected to do. So it was me, my roommate who was an electrician, a waiter, and one of his bartenders, and we laid the floor the night before he opened, for a bar tab. This was probably in ‘73 or ’74.

When I joined the cops, I kind of engineered my assignment here, and I wasn’t disappointed. I worked at the 9th Precinct and I first started in May 1969. You had an area where there wasn’t a lot of money and there was certainly very little affluence. For the most part it was not considered a choice assignment. As a matter of fact, very often, cops who couldn’t be punished would be assigned here under the theory of how much harm can they do?

Beginning in the late 1960s, drugs started to erode the social fabric of the neighborhood. I didn’t have any basis for comparison because I hadn’t lived here before, but it became very obvious that this was increasing. There was also a little street culture here, for everybody, in the sense that most people lived in very small apartments, but they lived with their whole families and there was no air conditioning.

Consequently, any opportunity they could get out the apartment was a good thing. So people literally lived on the sidewalks. It was either that or go to a gin mill. It was much, much tougher. Jail was not a unique experience. The sensibilities and sensitivities of incarceration were pretty much evident on the street. If you stepped on somebody’s foot and didn’t sincerely apologize, you’d probably get badly hurt.

We came right during a social change, for us as well, because the department and the city were changing rapidly. The older fellows… we learned from some of the smartest cops in the city, because they had defeated the police department. There were some very creative and intelligent men. Many of them were veterans from the Korean War and several World War II vets. They were all from the city. And then there were the people that you didn’t want to spend any time with.

In those days you worked around the clock. We used to say, if you want to [sleep on the job] it was pretty safe in the daytime, you could go to sleep, because nothing was going to happen. From 10 at night to seven in the morning it was usually pretty busy. They called it the three-platoon system. The first platoon was from midnight to eight, the second was the day shift, and the third platoon was four pm to midnight, and it changed every week. Consequently, you were always sleep deprived.

As time went on you’d probably end up in a job where your hours were a little more regular, but by that time your children were already grown, and your wife was already completely estranged. It was tough that way. There was a very intelligent reform, maybe around the late ‘70s, when they gave cops the opportunity to pick their hours. It also gave them an opportunity to get side jobs, because when you worked around the clock it became very difficult to get a part-time job.

For a cop to get a side job they had to submit a request and identify the employer, get permission and almost always the conditions were impossible, so the cops would take the job on the side and hope they didn’t get caught, cause you had to. I was making a $112 a week, but I was single. If you had a family, you couldn’t do it. Now you had a choice. You either had a part time job or you get cozy with somebody who was going to give you money. In many cases, to some extent it was deliberate by the powers that be. Jimmy Walker had a famous saying when somebody came up to him and said the cops want a raise. He said, ‘Let them get their own raise.’

When I came on the job the police department was very conservative, and part of it still is today. A policeman was fired because he was living in sin with his girlfriend. If you were working here, everybody in the whole world is doing it. The irony was very often that the cops were expected to respect the rights of the individual that they themselves were not entitled.

The early ‘70s was at a time where the police department as a whole was very passive. If you were in uniform and arrested a man for narcotics, the cop would be investigated automatically. If you had too many of these they assumed you were a crook. The official orders would be, if you see narcotics, do not take action. So the public sees me walking by a drug dealer and thinks I’m corrupt. Out of an effort to be genuinely pristine, the job inadvertently created a mass corruption image. So Tompkins Square Park was the result of this type of a free zone, which was really sad for the people that had no other place to be. It was pretty much no blood, no foul.

For the most part, I always worked at night. I worked what was called the public morals, which was called the vice squad. I was assigned to the career criminal apprehension unit. I did that for three years and then went into detective work. I was what they called an active cop. I made a lot of arrests.

We would get what you’d call a kite from a precinct commander, ‘there’s a bookie and he’s working out of candy store x’. We’d go in and place bets and so on. When we started here we didn’t have radios. When you worked the foot post you worked by yourself and it was very instructive because you had to learn how to cope with whatever was going on by yourself without any help. It was only your reputation or how you presented yourself initially that enabled you to do anything at all so you stayed alive.

Burglaries were certainly prevalent. We used to wonder whether there were more than five television sets in the entire precinct, because they would be stolen and resold everyday, which was particularly savage because it was almost always poor people being robbed. The poor people were at the mercy of the vestiges of the middle class and the upper class. Polite solutions were imposed on situations that just didn’t work.

Everybody has watched television, and so everybody knows about crime and how that works and how institutional corruption works, but they don’t have a clue. It’s not their fault. They’ve been educated to think that they know. So this also created problems for us, not the least of which was that none of us have a 26-minute solution to a problem. It’s much more dull and much more unsatisfactory.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

In Part 2, Christopher Reisman talks about the murder of his partner in 1975.

Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher

Name: Ilyse Kazar (and Shiro)
Occupation: ‘Professional Dilettante’
Location: 4th Street between 1st Avenue and 2nd Avenue
Time: 6 pm on Wednesday, June 10

I’m from very far away in the nether regions of Long Island — a universe away. I moved here when I was 20, so I’ve done my major growing up here. I was going to school in Long Island and I had picked my courses out there. I came here for the summer just to experience the city — 38 years ago. It’s been a long summer.

I actually started out on the Upper West Side, but I got my first job at Phebe’s, when it used to be Phebe’s. I just fell in love with New York and I still am. I’m hanging on here in the East Village.

But more than anything it was, for me, the foundation of what this neighborhood used to be, which was an incredible network of people who formed an adoptive family. That started right of the bat for me in this neighborhood, whereas on the Upper West Side at the time, particularly in the area of Columbia University where I had my first sublet, I wasn’t feeling it at all and they weren’t feeling me. I couldn’t find a job.

Somehow just by happenstance or by fate, I ended up all the way down on 4th Street and the Bowery, and got a job. I walked in, said I was looking for a job for the summer, because that’s what I thought. I was tired of lying trying to get a job, so I just said I have no experience but I’m just here for the summer, and I got the job on the spot.

Imagine being from suburbia, having gone to a suburban high school that had tennis courts and then coming here and getting your first job in a restaurant where everyone you worked with and almost everyone that came in was an actor, a dancer, an artist, a writer, a musician, a composer. It was amazing. It wasn’t uptown art. It was that downtown spirit. I was 20 years old. I was fresh blood.

It was a community of people who were misfits, where they came from, and of course there was the continuous population of immigrants. I think there probably was always a high population of students and artists because it was just so low rent. When I moved in my apartment was $135 a month. I’ve been in the same place [ever since]. I was 20 and I have two daughters who I raised here and the baby is 22 now.

I worked at Phebe’s for a couple years and then did a number of restaurant, food and beverage service stints. Then computers came in and I picked up on that, everything from temp office work to starting my own tech business. Mainly I’ve just lived a very unstructured East Village life. I’ve raised my kids… now I’m just rethinking things. I’m the crazy lady — you might find me after a good rainstorm scavenging umbrellas. I snip the fabric off of them. I’m involved in composting, in particular with an organization called Earth Matter that’s headquartered in the Lower East Side and their facility is on Governors Island.

It’s hard to explain. It was just like a big soup pot that was spiced just right. Back in the day, which is some extent to this day, you could interact with people of every type, the person who hands you the slice of pizza, the person standing on line with you at the bodega, the people who used to be in my building. You could knock on your neighbors door and ask, do you have a Q-tip? We knew everyone by first name; we’d have dinner at each other’s houses; we raised kids together. And now I actually find with the people moving in that when you try to introduce yourself, ‘Hey I live in this apartment. I’ve lived here a long time, if you have any questions. I just want you to know who your neighbor is and knock on my door any time you need.’ They actually look at you like you’re weird and they literally back up. Who’s this strange lady talking to me?

But that’s my strongest memory of this neighborhood … that as much as there was a range of ethnic backgrounds, a certain range of income level, and everything from blue collar to complete drop outs, to well-known artists, who were all able to talk to each other. There was a lot of inspiration and cross-pollination going on.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.