Report: Ditch Kills team scrap plans to open tiki-bar concept on Avenue B

The partners behind Long Island City hotspot Ditch Kills will not pursue opening a cocktail bar in the former Mercadito Cantina space, DNAinfo reported this morning.

This decision follows Monday night's contentious CB3/SLA meeting in which the committee denied the request for the lounge to be called The Asphalt Jungle at 172 Avenue B.

After Jean-Paul Buthier, owner of vintage shop Rue St Denis at 170 Avenue B, spoke out against the applicant, Dutch Kills partner Richard Boccato replied that he and his partner Ian Present were "not carpetbaggers," adding, "with all due respect, sir, your accent doesn't sound like a Native New Yorker," as Grub Street first reported.

According to DNAinfo, the committee's denial "shocked Present, who grew up on Avenue B near East 10th Street, just a block from where the proposed bar was slated."

“It would have been a dream of mine to open a bar on the block I grew up on,” said Present, who added his mother still lives on the street and that his family has roots in the neighborhood dating back more than 110 years.

Present and Boccato were applying for for a full liquor license, with a 1 a.m. closing time Sunday to Tuesday and 2 a.m. on Wednesday through Saturday.

“We respect the neighborhood,” Present told DNAinfo.com New York. “We know that it’s residential, and we weren’t looking to stay open till 3 or 4 am.

“I didn’t feel the decision was actually a reflection of the desires of the community," he added.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Dutch Kills crew aiming to take over former Mercadito Cantina space on Avenue B

[Updated] Report: CB3 says yes to Golden Cadillac, denies the Asphalt Jungle (17 comments)

About Mercadito Cantina closing:'Open letter to EV Grieve and CB3' (58 comments)

The Feast of Corpus Christi

Earlier today, parishioners of the St. Stanislaus Bishop And Martyr Roman Catholic Church on East Seventh Street celebrated the Feast of Corpus Christi with a march through the East Village...











Always shocked to see any procession around here these days not related to a pub crawl.

Photos by Bobby Williams.

The plan to document the last month of Webster Hall's existence

[Photo from June]

As previously reported, the recently sold Webster Hall is expected to close in early August ... so that new owners Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment along with AEG-backed The Bowery Presents can begin renovations at the landmarked music venue on 11th Street between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue.

Now, a group of filmmakers are hoping to make a documentary on the club's final month.

Here's their pitch via Kickstarter:

Since 1886 Webster Hall has stood as a gathering place ... cultivating a welcoming environment that included anyone from the mainstream, fringe, underground, or anywhere in between to congregate in the same place at the same time.

On August 9th, 2017 Webster will be closing its doors for renovations. In 2018 it will reopen under corporate management. The Producers of this short wish to make a feature-length film documenting the last month of Webster’s current incarnation in an attempt to preserve its vibe.

You can read more about the project and it goals as well as watch a short at Kickstarter.

The filmmakers have been working at Webster Hall as stage hands since early last year.

"When we discovered that one of the city's last original music venues would be shutting its doors for a corporate clean-up, we were shocked to learn how uninformed both the Webster Hall staff and its neighbors were about the transition," Sanford Jackson, one of the documentarians, said via an email. "After speaking intimately with the staff about the upcoming changeover, we felt it necessary to utilize our talents as filmmakers to document a piece that will genuinely capture what Webster Hall represents within the East Village community and the city's rich nightlife history entirely."

And what have they learned so far during filming?

"One of the more universal themes we've found when talking to staff at Webster Hall is its sheer diversity in both clientele and its staff. On a single night you might expect a children's story book play in the basement, a death metal band in the studio, and an LGBT club night in the ballroom. Thousands of people under the same roof at the same time for remarkably different reasons," said Jackson. "That said, the stories we've heard were really just snippets of a larger tale — a simple introduction to the menagerie of bacchanalia teeming in the memory banks of it's diverse neighborhood and it's employees. We're hoping to capture as much of that as possible with this doc."

At the 9th annual LUNGS Harvest Arts Festival

This last weekend saw two days of arts and events in participating East Village community gardens... as always, the annual LUNGS Harvest Arts Festival — an abbreviated and socially distant version compared to previous years — brought out the best in the neighborhood (art, music, creativity, community, etc.) 

EVG contributor Stacie Joy shared these images from the weekend.

"Sounds of our Ancestors" HOWL Arts at La Plaza Cultural on Ninth Street and Avenue C ...

"The Contemplative Garden: Nature is Healing" at Le Petit Versailles on Second Street...

Penny Arcade reading from "Front Row Seat At The Apocalypse" at La Plaza Cultural ...Michelle Shocked at De Colores Community Yard & Cultural Center on Eighth Street...

Dance to the People in Tompkins Square Park...

   

 Kuki Gomez at El Sol Brillante on 12th Street ... Elizabeth Detjens Maucher in "From Microbes to Metropolis" outside Grace Exhibition Space on Avenue C...  Nora Balaban and some mbira music plus her drawings at La Plaza Cultural...

Samone Leona showcasing her art at La Plaza Cultural ...

Ian Dave Knife at Tompkins Square Park...

 

Live Music from VC, featuring musician/gardeners Victor Weiss and Carmine D’Intino at 6 & B Community Garden ...

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: Lola Sáenz
Occupation: Artist, Poet
Location: 12th Street
Date: Saturday, Jan. 28 at noon

I was born in El Paso, Texas. I always wanted to be an artist. When I left high school, I couldn’t afford to go to art school, so I moved to LA and lived there for about 10 years. I started to do artwork the last few years living there. Then I met this girl who was from here in the gay pride parade and she said, ‘You gotta come to New York because it’s the place.’ I said, ‘Yeah, well, I’ve always dreamt about it.’

I moved to New York in 1990. The first year here I lived on King Street. I was personal training. I had already met a woman in LA who lived in New York City. Her name was Linda Stein, who was a big real-estate broker to celebrities and manager of the Ramones. Linda was the first person who gave me work. I became her personal trainer, for 15 years. She also said that if I needed to move, I could always stay upstairs for free in her apartment where her daughter used to have bunk beds, and I could use their bathroom and kitchen.

So I did, and I moved uptown to Central Park West. It was a tiny little room on the top of the building — a gorgeous view. All I could fit there was a futon and an art table, and it had one window. I would share the bathroom down the hallway with the guys, the doormen. In that building, I met Bill and Judith Moyers and got to train them. Linda introduced me to a lot of clients to train, including the owner of Hess Oil.

Not having a kitchen or a bathroom was tough. So after a year I found this small apartment in the East Village in 1993. I’ve been here ever since. I eventually stopped training Linda to focus on the art, and a few years or so later she was murdered by her yoga teacher. I was shocked and devastated. Most of the magazine and newspaper articles were writing about the story, making it sound like it was Linda's fault. It was impossible that anyone would deserve to be murdered for saying the word fuck or blowing smoke.

I wrote to The New York Times, New York Magazine, etc. in her defense, but no one took my story except Lincoln Anderson from The Villager. And of course I was right. After all the investigation, it was found that the yoga teacher had been stealing from Linda. She remains in prison.

There was a shop called Peter Leggieri's Sculpture Supply Store below my apartment where the record store is now. It became my living room. That’s where I learned how to carve. He would sell stones from all over the world. He would give me a few stones and chisels. It was a great outlet in the East Village because all the artists would stop by and say hello. It was bit rough. There were a lot of drugs on the block. I remember a detective friend would go up on the roof through the back of Peter’s place to spy.

It got rough right in my next-door apartment, which was a lady-of-the-night hangout for all the junkies. It was a little weird. I kept thinking where else can I go, so I stuck it out. I didn’t really care what people did with their lives. People would be getting high on the staircase, and I didn’t want any confrontation with any of them. It was like that for the whole first year.

Then Giuliani came to power, and before you know it the marshals came and broke the door, pulled everyone out, and arrested a bunch of people. The undercover cops started arresting a lot of people. The year after that was cool because I didn’t have to bump into anybody living next door to me. I didn’t care about the outside world — it was just what was next door to me.

I’m a self-taught artist. Since I was a kid, all I wanted to be was an artist. I started to watch and study Picasso and Frida Kahlo and Matisse and Diego. I would go to museums and be inspired by the work. I guess you’re born with it or something. The first few paintings that I did in LA, I felt like I had been guided by the hand of God or something. It was me, but it was like somebody else was there.

I decided to create one painting a year. My artwork has four or five layers of paint, and I don’t like transparency — and the paint supplies are very expensive. I do a lot of city-related paintings and a lot of self-portraits. I add a little poetry to an artwork sometimes. I’ll work on a painting like a maniac. Every painting has its own story. I could work on it for a month straight every day and every night with a couple days off a week. If I’m really in it, I will work it until I feel exhausted or I get stuck.

In Part 2 next week, Sáenz talks about the influence of 9/11 on her work and thoughts on the neighborhood today. "I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else."

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

Parkside Lounge owner Christopher Lee talks about his recovery from COVID-19

Text and photos by Stacie Joy

I almost don’t recognize Christopher Lee when I see him hop off his bike at the corner of Houston and Attorney Street, right by his bar, Parkside Lounge.

He’s wearing a mask, and so am I; additionally, it’s humid out, which has caused my glasses to fog up. When we finally make eye contact there’s a shared smile that can be seen even under our face coverings.

Chris is happy to be healthy, out and about again, and I am happy to see that’s he’s survived his battle with the coronavirus that has taken so many people in its viral path.



The bar, at 317 E. Houston St., is, like most in NYC, shuttered right now due to the COVID-19 crisis, which is deeply personal for Chris. He lost a friend and performer to it and also did a lengthy stint fighting it off.





We step into the closed-up lounge and, from a safe distance, we talk about what happened, how it happened, what COVID-19 felt like, and what may be next for Chris — and for Parkside.

First off, I’m relieved you are feeling better. And I appreciate your willingness to share your story! That being said, what happened? Can you walk us through it? Any ideas about how you may have contracted the virus?

This is a tough one. I was in rehearsals in Midtown every day in addition to being around at the bar all the time. I could have caught it on the subway or from a CitiBike, but I probably picked it up at the bar when I was battening down the hatches on Monday, March 16.

I also want to throw in a “who really knows?” The subway seems to be ideal for spreading germs. We had musician Alan Merrill perform at Parkside the weekend [March 8] before the shutdown and he ended up passing away due to COVID [on March 29], so we know it was in the bar. We found that out before I even got my test results back.

At what point did you think that you may have COVID-19? What was the diagnostic process like?

When I first got sick, I dismissed any notion that I had COVID and thought instead it was a nasty flu. I thought about the possibility [of COVID-19] but dismissed it as paranoia. Then two things happened.

My initial symptoms of fever and aches went away pretty quickly — less than 24 hours. I knew from my staff that the flu was putting people in bed for at least a week and took everyone significant recovery time. I have a strong immune system [but] I probably couldn’t kick the flu that fast. It was a bad sign.

When I got my test for COVID-19, they also tested me for the flu. My doctor said it was a way of ruling out COVID without having to wait who-knows-how-long for that test to come back. It was both nostrils for the swabs — the right for flu, the left for COVID. If the flu test came back positive, I could dismiss the COVID concerns. Well, I got the flu test back and it was negative and this is when I knew I had COVID-19. I also had pretty much kicked it by then so it was just a matter of quarantine until I got the official test results back.

What were the worst of your symptoms?

The headache was incredibly intense. Days of just excruciating pain anytime I looked at anything. During the “double tap” — after I had been symptom-free for nine days and thought I was in the clear — my fever was 103 for three days and the sweat was not something I even thought my body was capable of producing.

My entire nervous system was affected. My skin felt like someone had given me a rubdown with sandpaper but there wasn’t any irritation apparent. My sense of smell went pretty early on. That’s happened to me before, back when I was younger and had the flu so I wasn’t shocked. My taste buds — this was bad. I woke up and it honestly felt like I had fallen asleep with a handful of garlic in my mouth and then tried to wash it down with liquid copper. It was overwhelming.

I also experienced blurry vision along with the crazy headaches as well as an acute sensitivity to light. I couldn’t find my mouse cursor on my computer monitor at one point. I ended up wearing sunglasses inside for a couple of days for some relief. I was usually on the couch half sitting up with my eyes closed. Never comfortable. There was no position I could get into that allowed for restful sleep. Enter the NyQuil!

What has been the worst part of the experience?

The worst part of the experience is the complete lack of understanding of what we’re really dealing with. The White House has been contradicting the medical community. Meanwhile, those folks don’t seem to understand COVID either and they’re blaming it on China not telling us everything.

I was told by my health-care provider that after three symptom-free days I could break my quarantine and go outside. Really? Because after nine fever-free days without any real symptoms I was laid up worse than I was the first time around. Apparently, that was common in the outbreak in China but why wasn’t that communicated to us? Seems like a really good way for a pathogen to get passed on.

I’ve been completely symptom-free now for eight days and I’m second-guessing every little ache/pain I feel. It’s allergy season and I’m allergic to the cats in my apartment as well. You get to feel like COVID is just something that’s always going to be part of you, which I know is not true but the paranoia is real.

Another horrible part of this whole thing is worrying about all the people I’ve come into contact with. I’m terrified I passed it on to my wife but so far, she’s had no symptoms whatsoever. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that she’s part of that small percentage with some immunity because she spent practically a month locked in quarantine with a very infected person. Side note: she’s been incredible throughout this whole thing.

Any upside to this experience

There’s always a silver lining somewhere! I’m ecstatic that I’ll be able to help people in need recover. I’ve got an appointment at the New York Blood Center to donate my plasma for antibody treatment. I’m hoping after the double-tap from COVID I’ll have a strong antibody count and will be able to give support to somebody else fighting this asshole of a virus.

I’m glad that I got sick instead of any member of my staff or family. I mean, the buck stops with the owner, right? Rather than have my staff endangering themselves battening down the hatches of the bar when it was time to close up for quarantine, I did it. It’s completely unreasonable to put people in that position and I’m Exhibit A.

How has your recovery been?

Recovery has been full of trepidation. I’m just waiting for the other shoe to drop — again. Every little sniffle, every hint of a sore throat from allergies, every sore muscle from exercise makes me wonder if I’m about to get sick again. That shouldn’t be possible, but then again, I really don’t think we know anything close to the whole story on COVID-19.

What helped get you through the experience?

When you say you have COVID most people’s first question is, “how are your lungs?” What seems to be the most deadly aspect of the virus is people getting pneumonia and their lungs failing. There are breathing exercises that popped up all over the internet from doctors dealing with COVID patients in ICUs. I can’t stress doing them enough. Breathe deeply. Regularly. If you can do it in a hot shower with eucalyptus oil, even better. I took very long hot showers!

During the first round I tried not to take any fever reducers so my body could burn out the virus and we went pioneer-style and just used a cold washcloth on my forehead to try to give me some relief. But during the double tap when my fever was higher and the head and body aches were worse an important tool for me was inarguably NyQuil. NyQuil was my best friend. It allowed me to sleep and for the most part, I did wake up feeling better than I did the night before. I also drank water with electrolytes to help replenish what I lost from the fever sweats.

Any thoughts/concerns about the future of the bar?

I’ve always had a good relationship with the Parkside’s landlord. Hurricane Sandy really put us in a hole but we worked through that and I’m hopeful we’ll be able to do the same with this pandemic.

Our lives have all changed and the social environment we knew is probably permanently altered. Right now, we’re not even allowed to be open so there’s no money coming in to pay rent. When society does open up, I expect bars to be one of the last businesses the city allows to open their doors. I’m sure it will include capacity restrictions that will slowly get back to normal as the virus infection rates wane.

On top of that, the Parkside is a venue and I don’t see the city letting live music events happen for a long time. DJs, private parties, burlesque shows, live theater, film screenings — these are a huge part of the business model for not just the Parkside but also the entire nightlife industry in New York City. Even worse, and harder to anticipate is how society as a whole will adapt. Will people still want to go to bars at all?

I know landlords citywide are expecting their rent. It’s their business just like the nightlife is ours and at the end of the day, it’s about money. I’m cautiously optimistic that the Parkside will be able to find a way to keep being the Parkside by coming to an agreement with our landlord. We’ve all got to communicate and agree that the next few years will be completely different for our industry than the previous 10.

Downtown NYC has suffered for years because landlords have been getting tax breaks on their boarded-up businesses. Hopefully, this will be the impetus that is needed for City Hall to weigh in to discourage those tax breaks. Then we — and the neighborhood — will be in business.

Turn your East Village apartment into an illegal hotel room in just minutes!

East Village resident Alan Roberts was shocked to receive this offer in the mail from FlipKey.

"I can't believe this company is basically encouraging me to break the law by renting out my apartment as a hotel room. Incredible."

On this topic, did you see the piece at Gothamist a few weeks ago about the city issuing a $30,000 fine to an East Village resident who rented out his room for a few days while on a trip?

Anyway, per Gothamist:

As it stands now, the current law prohibits New Yorkers from renting out single-family apartments, or rooms within them, for fewer than 30 days—unless the tenant or homeowner is living in the home at the same time.

And FlipKey does have a few East Village properties, like this one on East 13th Street...

RIP Ernest Russell

[Photo by Legacy Russell]

Longtime East Village resident Ernest Russell, a photographer and artist, died on July 31. He was 72. He is survived by his two daughters Angola Russell, a lawyer, and Legacy Russell, a writer, curator and artist.

Legacy shared the following tribute with us.

Before there was AOL, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat — there was DIGITALMAN. DIGITALMAN to many of us is Uncle Ernest, Ernie, Uncle Junie, Daddy, El D, Big E, ER, F STOP, ZERO, The King of St. Mark’s, or one of my personal favorites — coined by my dad’s late friend John — “Oooyyy-knee”. (Dad hated that one.)

The energy my dad brought into the world was electric.

In a recent telephone conversation with poet Fred Wilson, Fred told me of how he met my dad via his connection with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE). He encountered dad for the first time in a picket line. Dad turned to him and asked, “Hey man, you wanna get arrested today?” When Fred hesitated, dad repeated the question: “Do you wanna get arrested today, or not?”

Growing up with my dad meant there were lessons constantly being doled out, and constantly questions being asked. In moments where I came home from school frustrated or upset about something that had happened with a classmate or teacher, he often reacted by telling me, “Legacy, you gotta get tough.”

As I grew older, when faced with professional obstacles and looking for advice, dad would hand me packages wrapped in brown paper, usually from a cut up Trader Joe’s shopping bag and marked with an all-caps Sharpie signature: “FOR LR LOVE DAD”. Inside, nine times out of ten, was a copy of Sun-Tzu’s Art of War. Where dad pushed me to have a thicker skin, he also never hesitated to cry with me, fight with me, laugh with me, dance with me, sing with me. His ability to be both brave and vulnerable at the same time was inspiring. I collected copies of Sun-Tzu’s treatise as gifted by dad over the years; they often made appearances at birthdays or Christmas. In college when my phone would ring late at night, I would answer to hear jazz playing in the background; dad and I would talk about the day and at some point inevitably he would ask, “Legacy, are you reading Art of War? Are you sure you’re paying attention?”

I paid attention. As a kid I watched my dad like a hawk trying to figure him out. To some degree, he was always a mystery to me. Fiercely independent, creative, compassionate, silly, loving, outrageous, irreverent, I wanted to know every part of him, I so wanted to crack the case of the first man I fell in love with. No matter how much I knew about him, I never knew it all, there were somehow always things he said or did that surprised me.

In moments where it felt like there was no order, there was always a method in place, and often one with a flair. When I was a kid he would take me on nighttime bike rides around New York City; we’d fly across town and stop off at La Taza del Oro on 8th Avenue where we’d sit on stools and eat heaps of black beans and yellow rice. On the way home, I’d sit on the bike’s crossbar, sweating in my helmet in the summer heat, and when I started to fall asleep dad, worried that I would fall off, would chirp loudly, “Stay alert, Eyes-of-the-Moon!”

When I decided I was finally old enough to walk to school alone I came to dad preparing for a fight, dad shocked me by granting me permission to do so without missing a beat; I later found out that the strange sense that someone was following me for those first months was in fact dad himself running behind me, hiding in shops and behind trees when I would look over my shoulder. In times where I raised an eyebrow, Dad said it best, “Legacy, don’t you know that I’m a fool?”

When I first started rebelling as a teenager, sneaking around and breaking curfew to hang out with friends, dad, a legendary night owl who was often up until three or four in the morning playing on his computer, would be awake and waiting for me when I got home. I’d unlock the door and step into the brightly lit room of our studio apartment and he would turn around in his computer chair with his finger next to his mouth like Dr. Evil, “Legacy — what am I? A frickin’ idiot?” He always told me that he had “spies in the neighborhood” which is inevitably how he somehow knew I was drinking 40s at Union Square with characters dad deemed less than desirable, or was now wearing fishnets and a plunging neckline when I had walked out of the house in a decent turtleneck and pants.

When I announced as a little girl that I wanted to be a writer, it was dad who had me practice reading my poetry and short stories aloud. When I got super into Shakespeare and entered into a competition at school to perform a soliloquy of Lady Macbeth’s, dad videotaped me rehearsing for hours: “What beast was ’t, then, / That made you break this enterprise to me?”

In the mid-90s, Dad encouraged me to write to black theatre critic Margo Jefferson at The New York Times and ask her to be my mentor. I wrote a pithy letter to Margo, asking simply if, no big deal, we could just meet weekly to critique my new work; eventually Margo responded saying she wouldn’t be able to meet weekly, but that she’d love to keep in touch. Years later, when, in a curiously elegant twist of fate, Margo ended up on the Advisory Board of a journal for which I am now Visual Arts Editor, she wrote me saying, “I still have a letter from you! And imagine my delight when I read about your life and work in the Times a few years ago.”

Dad was a proud member of a diversely eclectic creative and political community. Though always a Harlem boy at heart, he claimed the East Village as his primary stomping ground where, for many years, he hosted friends and family for gatherings at the apartment, or twilight walks and conversations in this very park. In a 1964 New York Times article, dad, a member of the steering committee of East River CORE, was quoted saying, “Emergency repairs are no substitute for a decent school . . . That's why we’re marching.”

Dad spent a lifetime marching, instilling in me the importance of civil rights, vibing deeply with a mantra of equality and justice for all. He also believed in the power of self-love as a politic itself, a key component for collective action. “Love self!” he always reminded me,“You cannot love someone else or stand up for someone else without understanding how to love and defend yourself first.” Both dad and my mom Kamala were the first people in my life to teach me that black lives matter in their demonstrating how to build that self-love and love for others, an enduring lesson that has shaped how I see the world and a key part of my purpose within it.

Dad, you done good. Thanks to you and mom for gifting to me the most wonderful life, you two most wonderful parents. Ernie, we are going to miss you fiercely. And don’t you worry, we’ll keep fighting the good fight in your honor.

'Another example of New York City's impending Americanization' — Street signs

We had a pleasant email exchange with East Village resident and EV Grieve reader James C. Taylor the other day. He sent us the following photo, noting that he was veering slightly off of our usual beat.

As much as we think we pay attention to things, such as street signs, I didn't see what the big deal was. He wrote:

"I spotted another example of New York City's impending Americanization: my first sighting of the generic conformist street signs. They may not look like much, but I was still shocked by their ability to make a quiet corner of Greenwich Village look like... well, every other town in the US."

Huh, don't these look like the street signs from, say, this corner?

No!

The signs themselves are basically the same, he said. The difference lies in the type. (He's a graphic designer, so he's into the whole font thing.)

"Notice how 'Greene' and 'St' are lower case? The signs on 9th and B (and all the others, going back to the yellow and black signs) all used a condensed uppercase typeface. The change is part of a federal mandate for all street signs to use a lowercase font called Clearview. I remember reading about it a few months back but hadn't seen one of the new signs until [the other day]."

Anyway, somehow we missed this entertaining story from the Daily News last Oct. 1, in which Bloomberg was a dick when asked about the federal mandate to change the font and capitalization on 250,000 city street signs by 2018.

Said James: "I used to refer to events like these as the encroachment of 'America' upon New York City, but these days it seems like New York is just submitting willingly to whatever 'America' wants. C'mon New York, where's your fight?"

According to that Daily News article, there was one man ready to stand up for New York: Rep. Anthony Weiner. Per the article: "Weiner ... wasn't shy about saying where he stood on the matter. He's considering sending a letter to the feds 'but I'm trying to figure out whether to put STUPID in all caps so they'll understand it.'"

More concern for East Village Cheese Shop

[Photo Saturday by Derek Berg]

East Village Cheese Shop has not been open since Thursday here on Seventh Street between First Avenue and Second Avenue, prompting concern from its patrons.

There isn't any sign on the door about any type of closure. The shop doesn't have any social media presence to speak of (a Facebook page still lists their Third Avenue address that they left in 2015). The phone is also out of service.

East Village Cheese moved here from Third Avenue in September 2015. By April 2016, regulars started worrying about the shop's longterm financial health. (See this post.) The place never seemed too busy. There were other quibbles, such as being cash only, the lack of evening hours (they now close at 6:30) and the lack of ambiance (one reader suggested they pipe in some classical music).

Several EVG readers emailed me about the shop's gate being down since Friday. Per EVG regular cmarrtyy:

Can't say I'm shocked if they went out of business. The store was empty or near empty when I was there. And they were also down to one employee — cutting cheese and working the checkout. Seventh Street is not Third Avenue. There's very little foot traffic ... Sad, if they have closed for good.

Hopefully that's not the case... and this is just temporary.

Updated:
The shop remained closed yesterday (Monday) and today (Tuesday).

Previously on EV Grieve:
Concern for East Village Cheese Shop

Rumors: Duane Reade expansion will take over adjacent storefronts, including East Village Cheese (74 comments)

East Village Cheese makes move to 7th Street official

[Updated] Work starts on new home of the East Village Cheese Shop

Looking at the incoming East Village Cheese shop on East 7th Street

Report: Man in wheelchair tased, robbed on Avenue D

A man in a wheelchair waiting for a bus late Thursday night on Avenue D was robbed by three men who shocked him with a stun gun.

According to NBC 4, the men took $100 from the victim, who is 60.

The incident occurred near 10 Avenue D at 1 a.m.

The NBC 4 report did not include any descriptions of the suspects.

Image via Google Street View

Could this former East Village 'hipster' owe the IRS $172 million?

The Post today picks up on The Smoking Gun's scoop from yesterday...

Here's the Post:

Meet the scofflaw (above) who allegedly owes more than $172 million to the IRS — a broke, former Alphabet City hipster who has had to borrow money from relatives to make ends meet.

Garage-band guitarist Marcos Esparza Bofill quit his floundering job as a day trader in the city after less than a year — and left the tiny tenement apartment that he shared with roommates on East Sixth Street to move back to his native Barcelona, Spain, in hopes of having better luck with music career there, friends said.

"The first thing he said to me [yesterday after learning of the tax bill] was, 'What's the IRS?' " one pal told The Post. "He was shocked. He's trying to figure out what's going on.

"It's something that can easily be cleared up," the friend added. "It's crazy. He's a very chilled, relaxed guy. I think he's making music right now. He plays guitar and I think is doing some deejay stuff."

[Photo via The Smoking Gun]

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: Lisa Arbetter
Occupation: Editor, People StyleWatch
Location: Creative Little Garden, 6th Street between Avenues A and B
Time: 11 a.m. on Monday, Aug. 10

I was born in New York. My family lived in Queens at the time and it was the late 1960s, early 1970s. They moved us out fairly quickly. I only lived here for the first oh-so-formative 6 months of my life. My mom was from the Bronx and my dad was from Brooklyn and at the time we lived in Queens.

My grandfather on my father’s side worked in a vegetable market on the Lower East Side. My grandmother lived on Hester Street. Her family came from one of those towns that was Russia, and then was Poland, or the other way around. It’s a little confusing where she came from. It was the diaspora so people don’t know where they came from. The way she told it — and now this could totally be untrue — was that her family was incredibly rich and they had servants and everything. They had to be smuggled out of the country by their servants and then they wound up here and were very poor.

My dad likes to tell the story about why they left New York. One day they were making breakfast and they put the scrambled eggs next to the table by the window, and he turned around to get the coffee. By the time he came back with the coffee, there was soot all over the eggs. He was like, 'That’s it, we’re moving!' But I think it was more because everybody who had a family back then was leaving.

They took us to this small town outside Pittsburgh called Greensburg. My parents had grown up in these majorly Jewish neighborhoods and they had never been to Pennsylvania. They didn’t know where they were going. I think that they were shocked.

My dad was an entrepreneur. I don’t know where he found them, but he hooked up with these guys who were in Pennsylvania and they started this replacement window company. My mom had this funny Bronx accent and the town that I grew up in was incredibly homogeneous — a very Catholic small town. I remember my dad saying all the time, 'Life is not like this. Life is not like this. It’s like New York. You can't get The New York Times and the only bagels are Lender's.’ We were literally brainwashed into thinking life isn’t this, it’s New York. They would take us here once, twice, three times a year. It was never a question that I would live here. My brother moved here, my sister moved to Albany so we all sort of migrated back.

When I went to school, I was bound and determined to be a therapist. That was it, but when I got there I didn’t really like the program. I went to Syracuse and it happened to have a very good journalism school. I had always liked to write and at the time and I had always been this kid who loved magazines. I just didn’t think of it as a career.

So it happened that they had a program at Syracuse called Magazine and I signed up for that and was hooked. It was at the time when Tina Brown was editing Vanity Fair and it was a big deal. She was mixing celebrity with more high culture, articles on art with tabloid crime stories, but it was a sort of revolutionary mix at the time. She was making a lot of news and I thought it was very glamorous. I loved the idea that I could write and it could be about anything.

My first apartment was on 4th Street between A and B. I had moved in with a friend. It was a crooked apartment with the bathtub in the kitchen — that whole story. I couldn’t afford anything and I was living on an air mattress on the floor. My roommate had a very active social life and I wanted to live by myself so I found a place in Brooklyn. I’ve had four apartments in this city, two on 4th Street and two on Amity Street in Brooklyn. I moved back here in 2006 to 4th Street again. I love the neighborhood so much. There is so much diversity in everything. There’s diversity in the restaurants, the people, the ages, the races and the way people talk, the languages, the way people dress.

I got a job at InStyle around 2000. It was fairly new and the whole idea of the celebrity on the cover was a new thing at that moment. People didn’t care about models anymore. It was sort of like the bridge between the model, the supermodel period and the celebrity period. I then worked at Cargo, which was a short-lived men's magazine, during the whole metrosexual moment in time. Then I got hired at People StyleWatch to help launch it, then went back to InStyle, and now I’m at StyleWatch again.

I started this job about five or six months ago. It’s been crazy but it’s been so much fun. We rethought and redesigned the magazine over the last five months. It was more of a celebrity publication and now it’s more of a street-style publication. There are many blogs but it’s never been put into a magazine format. It’s the entire world. It’s every city, and pulling it together into trends, showing how people put outfits together, adding the service element, adding the shopping element, and also being able to show big beautiful pictures in layouts.

And what I love most about it is the diversity. Style is not one thing; it’s not one body type. All of us think many different things are beautiful, but in the media you see one sort of thing. Now we have a chance to show body diversity, racial diversity, and diversity of style. You see people that aren’t necessarily trendy or the newest thing, but they put their clothes together in such unique ways that it’s fascinating to look at.

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

Shit Week continues: Majestic willow tree butchered on Eighth Street

An EV Grieve reader out walking his dog this morning was shocked to find that the majestic willow on Eighth Street near Avenue C....



... had been hacked down... seemingly overnight...





Per the reader: "maybe it was diseased, but it looked perfectly healthy to me."

Melanie just posted a photo of this willow at East Village Corner. In the comments I said that I loved this tree.

UPDATE:
A reader sends along another photo, noting that "it looks worse in the daylight."



Ugh.

Previously on EV Grieve:
The willow trees of Loisaida

11th Street condo owners want to chop down this willow tree

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: Alex Shamuelov
Occupation: Barber and student
Location: Ace of Cuts, 518 E. 6th St. between Avenue A and Avenue B
Date: 9 a.m., July 9

I’m from Uzbekistan, but my background goes back to Moscow and St. Petersburg. Because of the Soviet Union, it was really tough there but it was a little bit easier in the southern part, so that’s why my ancestors moved down there. So I was born in Uzbekistan and I came to New York when I was 3 years old.

I never thought I’d be a hairdresser. My dad has been a hairdresser for a long time, but when he was young he was a mechanic. His father’s a hairdresser, his brother’s a hairdresser, his mom used to be a hairdresser, and his sister’s a hairdresser. Everybody in my family from both sides — everybody’s a hairdresser. That’s how it was from the old country. Everybody was a hairdresser.

My father always said, ‘You know, listen — it’s better for you to learn a talent than it is for you to hop from one job to another.’ He said, ‘This is something that you’re going to have and something that you’re never going to lose. You never know what could happen in life. Let’s say one day, God forbid, you lose your job, then you have something to turn to. Hair always grows. Everybody always needs haircuts.’

So I took those words into consideration. I was only 15 years old. Imagine when you’re 15 years old, for six months for almost two summers after school, standing next to a barber and not making anything, whereas I wanted to go become a counselor or something, you know. I wanted to make some money. No, my father kept pushing me toward it and I’m happy for that. This is something that I like to do, and not to brag, but I’m good at it. I’ve won competitions and stuff like that. I like to draw and I’m artistic, so this helps me sculpt a person, sculpt a head. So everything worked out well.

I’m 20 years old now and I just opened my own barber shop with my father. [July 9] is actually a month since we opened. Everybody is shocked about that. It’s not easy trying to succeed in this life right now. I have the support of my family. We’re all together. We live next to each other, in a two-block radius in Queens.

The landlord of this building is my previous customer from Long Island. He currently goes to my uncle, because that was my uncle’s barbershop, so he told my uncle about it. So I came one day with my parents and uncle and I loved the place, and now we’re here. I love the East Village. Everybody’s very neighborhoody; everybody’s very friendly. Say if you go to Midtown, neighbors don’t know each other. Here everybody knows each other and they say hi to each other. It’s the same thing where I live Queens — in Rego Park.

You know how landlords are — they want their rent on the spot, so we had to do it quick. I renovated this whole place in about three weeks. I did it for my father mostly. I don’t want him to work for somebody all his life. I wanted him to become his own boss, so that’s why I’m here now. I’m on break from school. I’m helping him out. I’m in the middle of the street so it’s really hard to advertise. You have to be patient. I went from cutting 35 to 40 people a day to cutting five people a day. Psychologically that hurts you.

In Park Slope I used to cut 40 people a day. We were right next to Mayor de Blasio’s house. I’ve cut his hair. I used to see him every day; every day he walked by. It was shocking because you see somebody, you take care of somebody, and then all of a sudden, boom — he’s an icon of New York. Over there you need speed and you need technique, and you need a sense of style. Imagine in 12 hours cutting 40 people. That means about 100 to 150 people come in every day. They used to call me Ferrari because I used to be very quick.

Obviously I’m not going to be the same here because I don’t have that competition going on. That’s why I made this barbershop like this, you know. I have Jameson. I have vodka. I have beer. I have everything for someone to come in and relax. I have a 65-inch TV. People come in, they watch TV. I charge $15. So yeah, hopefully I’ll make it. I was trying to go for a different image for someone to come and relax.

I am also currently in school at LIU, Long Island University, in downtown Brooklyn. I’m trying to get into the pharmacy program out there. It was a challenge for me to pick my profession that I wanted to go for, that I wanted to succeed in. My dream is now opening a pharmacy and having a barber chair, to build a barber shop in the pharmacy, so while you wait for your medicine you get your hair cut real quick. Cause you know how everybody in New York is trying to get things done quick.

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

Gallery Watch: Crichoues Indignation at the Hole NYC; Vantage Points at GRIMM Gallery

Text by Clare Gemima

Crichoues Indignation by Caitlin Cherry 

The Hole NYC, 312 Bowery: Showing through Nov. 15

The HOLE NYC honestly takes it up a notch with every artist they showcase.

 

Upon visiting this gallery, I was shocked to see that The HOLE had transformed entirely, with crisply painted walls, a huge amount of incredible new works and a fresh take on their whole space.

Transforming the gallery for Cherry after Cubed, their previous group show (14 international artists) that utilized the space in an entirely different means, allows viewers to understand just how important looking at art is right now, how passionate The HOLE is and how on board their team is with highlighting the current climate of technology and social media running rampantly hand-in-hand with civil unrest, the election and dismantling (or establishing) social hierarchy in 2020. 

Cherry's oil on canvas works are engulfing in their larger than life scale, confronting the viewer in a familiar digital landscape with Black Femme figures at the foreground, her gazes highlighting the way social media appropriates this community's body image, sexuality and style without highlighting their skill set or expertise. 

An image-run, surface level and vapid Instagram-esque landscape is expressed through Cherry’s undulating use of fluorescent colors, shapes and installation techniques. The artist’s hyper-sexualised characters are based on dancers, bartenders and Instagram models working at cabarets and as online influencers. 

I would recommend seeing this show for an impressive take on its online origin (a misspelt tweet that Kanye West made) that expands into a gooey, delicious and psychedelic series of abstract paintings. 

Cherry also includes a very large paintings vault, housing several canvases that gallery goers can engage with. The vault speaks to the value of archiving digital works (or lack their of) playing with online’s ubiquitous sugar-coating methods and the over-arching authenticity in the art world today. 

PS. The HOLE also has a show on by Anders Oinonen

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Vantage Points by Letha Wilson, Sonia Almeida, Heidi Norton and Claudia Peña Salinas

GRIMM Gallery, 202 Bowery: Showing through Nov. 14

Although the gallery is dominated by a vast amount of captivating and rich work by a male painter, Tjebbe Beekman (Symbiosis), if you get to the middle of the gallery and turn to your left, you will see a small door leading to a descending staircase that you can go down for a refreshing take on (finally) an all women's show!

The work deals with the natural world, conceptually and physically, as the artists criss-cross and mingle with the use of plants, grass, fibre, wax, metal and paper presented in a range of autonomous sculptures, paintings and installations in their final form.

The work in this show is presented on the ground, wall, floor and even corners of the building, challenging conventional installation techniques that demonstrate how space can be manipulated by both delicate and less delicate forms. Nature versus structure, hard versus soft, digital versus organic, etc.

Wilson, Almeida, Norton and Salinas' work compliments each other as much as it highlights the differences in each piece. The most compelling work for me was Reverse timeline (2019) by Sonia Almeida, made out of printed fabric, screen print, fabric pen, cotton, polyester and wool hung from the ceiling, and The Museum Archive by Heidi Norton made out of five panels of glass, resin, plants, beam splitter glass, photo gels, photographic prints, film and an aluminum stand.

This is GRIMM Gallery’s final show before they move to Tribeca.

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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