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: Niall Grant
Occupation: Owner, Tuck Shop
Location: 1st Street between 1st and 2nd Avenue
Time: 2 p.m. on Monday, Feb 1

I’m from the center of Dublin. I was 22 when I came to New York in 1993. I was kind of messing around after dropping out of high school and then I came home one day and my mother was smiling strangely at me. There was a big envelope from the U.S. government on the counter. I had won the Green Card Lottery. My brother, who was here at the time, entered me and it was one of those where you were allowed to send as many entries as you’d like. I sent about 40, but it happened to be the one that my brother sent off because he got my middle name wrong.

Back then a lot of people won the Green Card Lottery. We all wanted to get out of Ireland. I was always going to get out, whether it was London or Australia. A lot of my close friends did as well. I’ve had friends here who I’ve known since age 7. We all came here and lived together and went into different fields. It certainly made it easier.

My brother was living in Williamsburg at the time. So I lived with him for a couple of months, and then I came to the East Village. It was still nice and affordable back then. The bars and the music scene and the restaurants drew me here — everything. It was full of great fun.

I had been working in restaurants since pretty much dropping out of high school. I just started working in restaurants because I needed to pay the rent. I worked at Elephant & Castle in Greenwich Village, which is still there. From there, I went to another part of that restaurant family, which was Keens Steakhouse. I spent about eight years working there in the 1990s. It was very lucrative and lots of fun. You finished work at 11 at night and started at 11 a.m. the next day. Then I opened a bar and a nightclub with my roommates on East Third Street ... before opening up this place in 2005.

I used to have an Australian business partner and we worked very well together. We started the business on a handshake and ended on a handshake three or four years ago. After Sandy, he didn’t want to bother taking the business out of debt again and he wanted to move to California. That’s where the Australian side came from. My side was that I’m Irish but I didn’t want to open an Irish bar. I wanted to do something different. The pies are international. We have a Thai chicken pie, which you might not get in Ireland, but you would get in Australia. And in Ireland and England there’s a meat pie culture.

I love this street. After 11 years here, I know everybody’s face. There are still a lot of the same old faces. All these guys hang out in front of the place. Some have been here for maybe 30 years. You see people grow up. It’s great to be part of a community like that. It’s nice seeing the whole family grow up upstairs. The street hasn’t changed that much, although it has gotten more quiet since we moved in. There’s less nightlife but we’re doing more lunch business and we’re focused on that more.

We’ve also had a place in Chelsea Market for about five years. We’re planning to expand that soon. We’re hoping to sign a new deal with Chelsea Market next week and then we’ll knock that out pretty quickly because the rent is massive. We’re going to have to turn it around quickly and start making money. We’re about to open in a big space across from us, which will allow us to have a second kitchen, which will produce vegetables for here and there. Here we’re bursting at the seams. We can’t do anything more.

I married a girl from the Lower East Side. We met in a bar on Orchard Street eight years ago and had a son a few years later. She’s a New York Times bestselling chef, Doris Choi. She’s taking over part of the vegetable menu and is going to put her influences on it. She’s very healthy. So we’ll have the good and the bad of my pies and her veggie, raw foods. So that’s what we’re going to do in Chelsea and we’re bringing that over here too.

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

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: Nicolina Johnson
Occupation: Street Artist
Location: Portal Zero (Outside the Bean), 3rd Street and 2nd Avenue
Time: 6 p.m. on Monday, April 15

I grew up in Seattle. When I was young I drew all over my parents’ house and all over the walls. I would take a permanent market down the hallway and onto their lampshades and into the bottom of their shoes. They finally were like, “You cannot do this anymore. Please don’t draw anywhere in the house. You can have your room to draw in.” And so I covered every square inch with detailed drawings and poems and secret codes. Even when I was like seven years old I made a little symbol and I put it all around the neighborhood. It was a weird beginning to street art.

I moved to New York in 2002 and to the East Village in 2003. I wanted to see the whole world but didn’t have a lot of money. I just had enough to go to one place and New York was the one place you could go where the whole world was. I wanted culture.

I was a waitress for many years working at the Kitchen Club in SoHo and at a sushi restaurant. I worked a lot of really bad jobs and I eventually got fired from the Kitchen Club. I was devastated and didn’t know what I was going to do with my life until I came to the realization that if I didn’t try art at that point, then there was nothing I could do. I said I would do whatever it took just to make my living painting or making art somehow.

So I started doing face painting in Central Park for kids and six months after that I painted my first window — at Umberto's Clam House in Little Italy. That was the beginning of Paint The Town. It started spreading down the block and so I put a portfolio together. Now we have over 40 clients all over the City.

Art spreads like a happy virus. If you paint one guy’s shop, then the guy across the street wants it. We just did a project last year in Rio de Janeiro where we painted one boat in a harbor of 60 and then the guy next to us was like, “Hey can you paint my boat?” We ended up painting 58 fishing boats and working with 45 different artists. It was a floating gallery.

I do a project called the Hearts of the World for the Lower Eastside Girls Club. They were the first ones to give me a chance and now it’s been all over the world. It’s a collaborative project with kids from around the world, basically asking them to paint what’s in their hearts inside the panel of the stylized anatomical heart. I silkscreen the outline for them and then they can paint in whatever they want.

Recently I did it at an orphanage for blind people in Beijing. I had no idea what to expect and so I outlined the hearts with yarn so they could feel the edges. And one of the children, who was around 7, painted the whole heart blue and I asked him what he was painting and he said he was painting the sky. And then he painted a yellow sun and a green forrest and white clouds. And then he painted over everything in black. And I said, “What are you Painting?” and he looked up at me with these cloudy eyes and a big smile on his face and he said, “I paint the darkness.” I asked him why he painted the darkness and he said, “The darkness is very beautiful. There are many color lights in the darkness.” He painted all of the things he couldn’t see and then he covered it up in the darkness.

I’ve painted on boats, on pedicabs in Central Park, a Tap Tap in Haiti, which are these big, brightly colored taxi-buses, I painted a tour boat in Chile, an Ascensor, which is like a cable car, a few trucks, a piano in Tompkins Square, a canoe. I love to paint moving objects because it will travel to different places and lots of people will see it. It also brings in another level of life and action. I’ve always wanted to paint an airplane. So if anyone has one...

Portal Zero is an introduction to a new project that I’m doing in the East Village with Perola Bonfanti. It was a test to see how many people would use the QR code and to see people’s perception of it. Way more people than we thought used it. Within just a couple of months we had a few hundred people scan it. The official opening is in July. You have to start at Portal Zero outside of the Bean [on East Third Street and Second Avenue]. You scan the QR code and then either answer a question or complete a task and then you can pass through the Portal to the next one.

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

Out and About in the East Village, Part 2

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.


[Nick Sitnycky with longtime John's employee Pedro]

By James Maher

Name: Nick Sitnycky
Occupation: Owner, John’s of 12th Street
Location: 12th Street between 1st and 2nd Ave
Time: 1 pm on Monday, Dec. 16

Yesterday, Sitnycky talked about growing up on Avenue B and the early days of John's of 12th Street...

So 1972 comes around. I was a little young, 27, and I had just gotten married. One of my best friends, whose family owned Angelo’s on Mulberry Street, goes, ‘Nicky you want to buy a restaurant?’ So I go, ‘No, no, no.’ Then he tells me it’s John’s. Danny, who was John’s son, was retiring. I had also met my partner Mike, or Big Mike as they called him, Mikey two names, a few years before in ’69. So in ’72, I go to him, ‘Mike you want to buy a restaurant with me?’

Big Mike was a big guy from the South Bronx and I was a skinnier guy from the Lower East Side. I still call it the Lower East Side. When we started off in the restaurant we didn’t have any experience. Danny helped us and stayed on for a couple of months.

It was a matter of hard work. We both had other jobs. I was with Xerox corporation for almost 20 years while I had the restaurant. I was multitasking all the time. I started in sales, surprise-surprise, and then I was promoted to management and then I did international operations. And Mike was a salesman, selling in the garment district. So we were both in sales and marketing and [the restaurant business] is about people. We understood that money goes where it’s treated best from the minute someone walks in. The one thing we knew was how to be hospitable and friendly from the minute someone walked in.

When we started, Mike learned the kitchen inside and out so would never have an issue. He had a knack for the kitchen. And sure enough, a couple years later our chef broke his leg and Mike was in the kitchen for months. I started taking care of the front more, although Mike was an impresario up front — he was all over the place. We just mixed and matched and worked and worked. We worked as dishwashers, as busboys, we did everything.

This whole staff, this whole organization has tenure. We have tenure here. Our chef is almost here for 40 years now. Our waiters will be here 10 years, 20 years. Pedro’s been with me 25 years. You want to hear about an American dream story? Pedro came here as a migrant worker picking blueberries when he was 15. He was from Mexico city. He became so proficient and was such a good guy that the farmers got him a green card. He stayed there and then came to New York. We sucked him in here when he was 18 and he’s been with us ever since. Now he’s married and has two children, both in charter school. He’s an American Citizen. Talk about living the American dream.

We pursued preservation, just as Danny did. He went over all of the things from the linen to the candles. It’s a real, historic art gallery. This [below me] is 1890s, tile-by-tile hand-laid Belgian mosaic tiles. I get a little ridiculous sometimes. These walls were brought in from Ferrara, Italy, three-by-five foot slabs of one inch thick marble inlaid in terrazzo. The paintings are painted on canvas. There are city-states of Italy, there are various coats of arms, there are scenes. We preserved and maintained them. We’re like curators. We figure we’re the third generation.

This is my whole life. I have a lot of love for this place so I get emotional. We weren’t really planning on selling even though we had some very strong pursuers, big companies. We wanted to make sure that we passed it along to someone like Brett [Rasinski] who was going to be the 4th generation. Brett’s been a regular customer of ours for almost six and a half years. This is a continuation, not a transition. These are the routines, these are the hours, this is our menu. He’s a real preservationist.

I’m going to be doing with Brett what Danny did with us. He wants me to spend a lot of time with him here and it’s an open amount of time. Unfortunately, when we decided on doing this in May of this year, when Brett came back to us with an offer that we accepted, three days later my partner Mike found out he had cancer. From the end of May to July 13th, he was gone.

This is John’s. John’s is what is disappearing in New York, not only in this area. John’s is part of New York City, so we’re very careful to keep things the same. These traditions are very important. There’s a history; there’s a legacy.

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

Previously on EV Grieve:
About the new ownership for 105-year-old East Village institution John's of 12th Street

Out and About in the East Village

The artist who captured the sounds of East Village community gardens during the pandemic

Interview by Stacie Joy

Over the past year, Japanese artist Aki Onda has been visiting East Village community gardens and making field recordings for his project "Silence Prevails: East Village Community Gardens During the Pandemic." (Find the video here.)

Although now back in Japan, his project has recently gone live, and I was able to talk with him about his work, the inspiration behind the project and what’s next for him.

How did this project come about? Can you speak about its history? What made you choose the East Village for your project and what drew you to its community gardens?

I had an idea to do a project about the East Village community gardens for many years, although it took a long time, nearly two decades until I could work on it.

I started visiting NYC around the end of the 1990s and often stayed in the East Village. Back then, the area was home to artists and musicians. I had many friends and it was easy to hang out with them as well as sublet their apartment. I also loved watching avant-garde cinema at Anthology Film Archives, spent hundreds of hours there and met Jonas Mekas. 

His film "Reminiscences of a Journey to Lithuania," which I watched in Tokyo in 1996, had a tremendous impact on my life and art practice. So, it was a big deal for me to meet him. I would visit him at his office, and he would offer a drink to toast even if it was morning. Then, we would go to lunch at his usual Italian restaurant nearby, or Mars Bar.

Mekas organized two exhibitions of my photographs at the Courthouse Gallery in the basement. I donated a couple of large-size prints, and in return, he gave me a small print of his still image, which I still have. I met so many filmmakers while I spent my time at the AFA, and that helped me to absorb the Downtown culture. 

I found community gardens such as Albert’s Garden, Liz Christy Community Garden and 6 & B Garden around that time. Each had a very distinctive character and I sensed there was something to look into. My favorite was La Plaza Cultural, although the garden itself was rough around the edges and unpretentious, I found it a cheerful and festive space. 

Much later, I learned that the garden was founded by Carlos "Chino" Garcia and fellow local activists. Their associations with Buckminster Fuller and Gordon Matta-Clark, and the intersection between art and activism, was also inspiring.

My work, both sound- and visual-based, are often catalyzed by and structured around memories —personal, collective, historical. So, the community garden was the perfect subject, and slowly over the years, I kept visiting those gardens and learning historical backgrounds.  

Finally, I decided to embark on the project in 2019 and there was a strong twist. The original idea was to document the gardens by making field recordings, taking photos, and writing texts through the four seasons from spring 2020 to winter 2021. 

However, the pandemic swept the globe, and as of March 2020, New York was its epicenter and under full lockdown. GreenThumb made a decision to close all community gardens until further notice. Only members were allowed to enter, and my project ground to a halt. 

Nonetheless, I thought it could be interesting to document the gardens in these unprecedented times and began contacting individual gardens directly. In the end, I visited around 25 gardens in spring and summer 2020. Spending time in the gardens was somehow comforting. Those are sparsely populated outdoor spaces and there is low risk of catching the virus. 

And, if I look back to the past, those gardens started as "green oases" by local residents when the city was going through a severe financial crisis in the 1970s. This was the hardest hit area with many low-income residents, and buildings descended into ruin. In that traumatized neighborhood, there was a strong need to improve lives and find sources of hope. 

Somehow, in the midst of COVID-19 crisis, though it’s a different type of crisis, I saw a sort of cycle and thought it’s worth researching and how those garden spaces changed over the last half-century.

What was the most surprising thing that happened while you were recording?

When I was recording in Campos Community Garden, suddenly the wind blew, and the wind chimes hung from a tree, started making beautiful sounds and vibrations. It lasted until I pressed the stop button.

What were the reactions of others as you set up your equipment and recorded sound and images?

I use a handheld cassette recorder, only with a cheap attached microphone. It’s low-key and not like a high-end digital recorder with a fluffy expensive shotgun microphone attached to a long boom. The presence of my equipment is unobtrusive and people feel less uncomfortable. Taking photos is a bit different, and I usually ask them to get permission first as I don’t want them to feel uncomfortable.  

What’s next for you as an artist?

I'm preparing my solo exhibition titled "Letters from Dead Souls" at Portland Institute for Contemporary Art (PICA) in summer 2021, and as well as a few other upcoming exhibitions.  

As for the community garden project, luckily, I developed good relationships with core members of the community garden movement during my research. It's a deep subject and there is a lot more to dig into. I'm planning to continue the research for the next several years and expand the project for another opportunity. Let's see what comes with it...    

Image of the artist by Makiko Onda, all other images courtesy Aki Onda. You can keep up with the artist here.

Report: New York Observer publisher buys 5 East Village walk-ups

New York Observer publisher Jared Kushner, also the principal owner of Kushner Properties, has purchased a $53 million portfolio of walk-ups in the city, including five in the East Village.

According to Lois Weiss at the Post, this properties are:

• 267 E. 10th St.
• 435 E. 9th St.
• 311 E. 11th St. (Huh? This is the nice new Village Green Building)
• 311 E. 6th St.

Another building in the portfolio — at 99 E. 7th St. — will close next month, Weiss reported.

On Aug. 22, The New York Times reported that demand for and sales of walk-up buildings have "reached new highs recently." Per the article:

With rents rising, the fact that many Manhattan walk-up buildings have tenants with rent-regulated apartments offers landlords the possibility of a very large increase in profits when these units are deregulated and shift to market rates. There is also upside potential to raise rents in the market rate units if landlords renovate a walk-up building, many of which have not been modernized in decades.

[Image via Wikipedia]

Cooper Union's plan to remake Astor Place — and the East Village

In case you haven't read it yet, head on over to Jeremiah's Vanishing New York for his take on Cooper Union's plan for Astor Place — and the East Village.

An excerpt!

The redesign of Astor Place is part of the Bloomberg program to remake the East Village into a haven for the upper classes and safety-seeking suburbanites. When considering what's about to happen to Astor Place, we must look beyond the pretty green trees to the motivations behind the plan. Why is it really being done and for whom? Who will benefit the most from it? What will the East Village lose in the long run?

Read the post here.

Previously on EV Grieve:
East Village — the new Midtown?

A visit to Turntable Lab on 10th Street

Text and photos by Stacie Joy

The older I get the less new music I am exposed to, which is why I am always particularly interested in EV Grieve’s Fridays at Five and curated musical selections. It’s turned me on to local rocker Liza Colby, Princess Nokia’s “Tomboy” and THICK’s “Green Eyes,” among others.

In this A Visit To ... I get the opportunity to explore new-to-me music at Turntable Lab with owner Pete Hahn and his Turntable staff.


[Pete Hahn]

Pete arrives — on skateboard — from his nearby East Village home to meet me at the Lab’s storefront at 84 E. 10th St. between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue, and walks me though the store pointing out both beginner record players (now made with USB port) and advanced DJ setups. I even get a mini lesson on the ones and twos on the in-house DJ booth from sales associate Paul Bennett!





Aside from a tour and DJ lesson, Hahn talked about the evolution of Turntable Lab, which had its humble beginnings as an NYU side hustle, to its first shop on Seventh Street between Avenue A and First Avenue. Turntable is now in its 20th year of business.

Turntable Lab got its start while you were at NYU. What experiences led to this launch?

My decision to go to NYU had a lot to do with the city’s DJ/record shop scene. There were lots of record shops, but if I wanted to get equipment, I had to go to a Canal Street electronics stores. I would walk in knowing the market price of an item, get into an intense haggling session, and still walk away paying above market price.

This gave us the idea to create a website that would sell DJ equipment with more transparency — no “call for price,” which was the norm back then. We started in my apartment on 12th Street with a Macintosh G3, a 56K modem, and a fax machine to take orders.

At what point did you realize that this was going to be a full-time business and not a side hustle?

In the first year of the business I was working during the day for a Soho advertising agency. I specialized in internet boom sites (1999) and was assigned to an early beauty ecommerce site. They were paying the agency hundreds of thousands of dollars to build a site that was barely functional. During a meeting I found out that my archaic hand-coded HTML site was grossing more than the beauty site — that’s when I decided to go full time.





Why did you decide to relocate from Seventh Street in 2016 to the current shop on 10th Street? At the time, did you consider moving to another neighborhood?

After being on Seventh Street for 15-plus years, the store needed a major renovation. It was cramped. The basement always flooded. The fixtures were wearing down. Rather than renovate the old space, we decided to start fresh. We never looked at any other areas — we knew we were staying in the East Village.



On that note: Why have you continued to base the TTL storefront in the East Village?

Personally, I think the East Village is still one of the top three record-shopping neighborhoods in the world. You can walk around, eat delicious things, check out Tompkins, find a stoop sale, people watch, and visit other quality record shops.

The East Village — along with many other neighborhoods — have suffered the loss of record/music shops in recent years. What has helped you survive? Twenty years in any business, especially one related to trends in music and music consumption, is impressive.

I could go deep into this, but here’s a quick version:
1) Don’t get stuck in old ways.
2) Respect each other’s tastes in music.
3) Be kind to customers.
4) Make it interesting for customers to visit often.
5) Keep it organized.
6) Know your margins.

The TTL website is robust. Why is a physical storefront still important to you?

Online commerce is inherently soulless. The store helps us maintain our soul by linking us in a different way to our customers, the DJ community, and the neighborhood. Plus, if you can successfully run a storefront these days, you know you are doing something right (and maybe even universally correct).



The storefront spans many genres of music. In one visit, I can pick up the new Diiv, Bat for Lashes and the re-release Rupa Biswas’ 1982 disco jazz LP. How do you decide what to carry?

There’s three people in the company that buy most of the vinyl; but we also get input from everyone who works here. Nearly everyone in the company is a collector. For example, one person is our go-to for decisions on Japanese vinyl and anime soundtracks. If it’s emo, I’ll ask someone else in the company. Distributors also know that we’re super-selective, so they’ll only recommend the top titles to us. I still have that broke college-kid mentality when I’m picking records: they have to be worth it.






[Lauren Jefferson, sales associate]

Looking back to 1999, did you envision that you might be doing this in 20 years?

Hell no! I still can’t believe it. My business partner and I always joke that we can pass it along to our kids, but I think in our minds, we’re mostly serious about the idea. People have tried to buy the Lab a couple times, but in retrospect, I’m glad those deals never went through.

What’s next for TTL?

We’re very focused on continuing to expand our range of exclusives. We’ve been teaming up with audio-equipment manufacturers, brands and labels to create special items. I’m especially excited about this boxset with Stones Throw Records. It will be available at the end of the year and it features our favorite releases from their catalog in a box we designed. Lastly, we’ll continue to develop our in-house audio furniture line: Line Phono.

---

Turntable Lab is open every day from noon to 8 p.m. You can find them on Instagram here.

How green is your street or building?

From the EVG inbox...

I thought your readers might enjoy Rentenna's new NYC Green Heat Map which shows the density of trees in Manhattan, as well as the borough's biggest parks and all of the current active farmer's markets.

Rentenna ranks every rental apartment building on a scale of 1-100, based on a multitude of factors, including transit, amenities, and now our new Green Score which takes into account the apartment's proximity to parks and farmers markets. The Green Map takes it a step further by incorporating the tree density per block so renters can find that beautiful tree-lined street they always wanted.

Here is the site if you're interested.

And from the look of the mappy thing, the East Village is pretty green. Now if we could only get MORE parking spots for cars! (Bwahahaha)

A Thanksgiving feast for neighbors in need at the East Village Community Fridge

Text and photos by Stacie Joy

This morning, a few dozen volunteers got together to prepare and serve Thanksgiving holiday meals to those in need at the East Village Community Fridge, located at S’MAC on the northwest corner of First Avenue and 12th Street.

East Village residents cooked, wrapped, labeled and bagged homemade meals while local restaurateurs Jill and Kimo Hing of San Loco and Marco Canora of Hearth provided additional supplies and assistance. 

Spearheaded by organizers Diane Hatz of East Village Neighbors mutual aid group and Sarita and Caesar Ekya of S’MAC, this effort fed more than 75 individuals and families. 

Says Sarita, “Today is a wonderful day for many and a yet also terribly lonely and hard day for many. We wanted to bring some joy through food to those who otherwise wouldn’t get that. Isn’t that what true community is all about?” 

Diane added, “The pandemic has really brought out a sense of community in the East Village. Every day I see more and more neighbors dropping things off at the fridge, and more and more local businesses are donating items and even hosting fundraisers. Most people who donate to the fridge drop off a few items as they go by, and others are stopping to take a few things they need. This really is a collective community effort.” 

Today’s bagged meals included items like turkey and gravy, stuffing, cranberry sauce, roasted veggies, cornbread, green bean casserole, shortbread cookies, and slices of pie. 

Masks were also provided to those who needed them. If you are interested in making a donation to the Community Fridge, then you can bring labeled, wrapped food by anytime or make a cash donation here.

Community Fridge organizer Diane Hatz ...

Marco Canora of Hearth...

Kimo Hing of San Loco with Jill Hing's homebaked cornbread, cranberry loaves, and pumpkin chocolate chip bread ...

and Jill Hing's pecan chocolate homemade pie ...

Week in Grieview

[Photo on 10th Street by Ed Yoo]

Posts from this past week included...

• Here is an updated map of what's open in the East Village right now (Friday)

• Alphabets has left the East Village (Monday)

• RIP Margaret Morton (Saturday)

• RIP Holly Lane (Thursday)

• Completion date for new office building at 3 St. Mark's Place is February 2022 (Monday)

• This week's NY See panel (Thursday)

• At B&H Dairy: "A Home for Everyone" (Wednesday)

• Essex Card Shop is now open in its new Avenue A home (Monday)

• Green Garden Buffet debuts on 9th Street (Friday)

• East Village Vintage Collective has reopened its doors; ditto for 9th St. Vintage and Spark Pretty (Wednesday)

• Lease termination notice at Third Rail Coffee; Future You Cafe has closed (Thursday)

• These 3 dry cleaners have closed (Wednesday)

• Reader report: East Village street-cleaning tickets back in full effect (Thursday)

• Nolita Pizza leaves 2nd Avenue (Tuesday)

• Another crazy stormy, then another double rainbow (Monday)

• A new surface for Extra Place (Monday)

• Former Haveli Banjara space is being converted into an apartment on 2nd Avenue (Tuesday)

• 2nd Street post the big sinkhole swallow (Wednesday)

• The PokéSpot has closed (Wednesday)

• GNC closing its remaining East Village outpost (Monday)

... and thanks to Laura Sewell for sharing this photo from First Avenue the other evening... the sprit in the sky...



... and a reader passed along this seasonal shot from last night along 10th Street ...



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Follow EVG on Instragram or Twitter for more frequent updates and pics.

I Am a Rent-Stabilized Tenant

East Village resident Susan Schiffman has been photographing the apartments of rent-stabilized tenants living in the East Village for her Instagram account, I Am a Rent Stabilized Tenant. She will share some of the photos here for this ongoing EVG feature.



Photos and text by Susan Schiffman

Tenant: Andy, since 1996





Why did you move to the East Village?

I moved to New York City on April 28, 1991, from Cincinnati. I lived in Hell’s Kitchen on 47th near 10th Avenue, and like everything in the city, it was different than it is now. There were hookers in the vestibule. I loved that, but it wasn’t that much different from my neighborhood in downtown Cincinnati, where you had to run from the bar to your apartment.

I had two roommates. We shared a kitchen and a bathroom. There was no living room. I had a friend who lived in the East Village on 7th, in the next block down from where I am now. I would visit and hang out. When my apartment broke up after a year, I decided to try and find something in the East Village. I started searching. First, I was going to get a roommate or try to move in with somebody, but everyone was nuts. I thought I can’t do this. I’d lived alone since college. I had roommates when I moved here, but I knew one of them from before. He had moved here from Ohio about a year before me. I was worried I couldn’t bring my cat, Sweetness. He said, "come on, bring the cat."

How did you find your apartment?

I walked every block from Broadway to Avenue A from 14th to Houston, looking for notices, looking at super’s numbers and buzzing super’s apartments. Friends of mine, two drag queens (Brandywine and Brenda A Go-Go), had a store on East 7th Street called Howdy Do. They sold toy collectibles and designer sample sale stuff. You could get a Pee-wee Herman doll and a Versace handbag. They were big on the club scene. I was busy on the club scene all through the 1990s.

They said there’s an apartment next door on the first floor. I looked in the window. I didn’t want to be right on the street. So I canvassed the neighborhood. I looked and looked. After all that searching, I came back and I took that apartment.

There are planters in front right now, but when I moved in there were no planters in the front and people were putting their 40 ouncers on my windowsill. I would open the windows from the top. I got used to it. It was also my first apartment in NYC by myself, so that was cool. I was working long hours, I was out every night, I was partying a lot, and so it didn’t really bother me. I was noisier then, too, as my former upstairs neighbor can attest. Now, I’m the one trying to get everyone to shut the fuck up.

I was there for a little over four years when I saw someone moving out. Out of curiosity, I asked the guys who were moving the furniture about the apartment. It was 6B, at the top in the back. So there’s light. The building next door is only four floors. I knew that the synagogue was behind me. I knew it was going to be sunny. Being on the street, I was used to it being not sunny.

I moved upstairs. My rent went up $100. They renovated to a degree — there were many layers of rotten linoleum. They did the floors. The walls were painted dark grey or black. In the summer when it gets warm I roll up all of the carpets, change the bedding to all white, take down the prints and the whole place feels really light and airy. I like to switch it up in the fall for winter, which is what you see now.

When I moved up here I had a futon on the floor. These desks are old classroom desks from 1910 that I got from Open Hunt, that place that used to sell all the furniture on Houston between Elizabeth and Bowery. There are drawers in them from The Container Store. I also got that metal cabinet at Open Hunt. Cheap, but it was painted bright green. I stripped it. Eventually, I got a real bed from a great store called Desiron.

My dad died in 2014; my mom died last June. Some stuff is from her, most of the rugs were from my dad. They had lots of rugs. There were two that I grew up with that are still rolled up. These are ones that my dad bought later, so they’re not necessarily heirlooms. That chair, my parents had before I was born. These prints they had before I was born. They’re just prints from a department store that they bought in the 1960s.



Talk about your work with B&H Dairy.

I’ve got a whole collection of old B&H snapshots — which I collected from the children of three B&H owners — scanned at super high resolution and cleaned up in Photoshop. So now I can blow them up really big. I plan to frame them and B&H will have a little wall of history. Some of the photos are in the 2017 and 2018 B&H calendars.

In late 2013, when mom-and-pop businesses were really starting to close all around the neighborhood, I said, “You guys should really do a t-shirt. People love you. They’ll buy a shirt.” I thought if they can make a couple extra bucks from the t-shirt, it could make the difference between staying open or disappearing. I did the “CHALLAH! por favor” t-shirt and they liked it. I just did the design. Sheila at Works In Progress prints them. They’ve sold about 1,200 over the last four years.

Then the Second Avenue explosion happened in 2015 and the city closed B&H due to no fault of their own. The inspectors put everyone under the microscope. Stuff they would have let go before, they didn’t let go this time around. They were closed for five months. Somebody did an earlier crowdfunding campaign and they raised some money but it wasn’t enough. I organized the second one, it raised about $28,000. There was one donor who donated $7,000 twice!

Also, I did all the press. I’m a publicist and a graphic designer, so I gladly volunteered my skills to help B&H. I stayed involved with B&H through the re-opening and after. Now, I do their Facebook page, Instagram, some graphics. I love that place.



What do you love about your apartment?

I like that it is sunny and there is good cross ventilation. If this apartment had stone walls so I could never hear my neighbors, and if it had an elevator so that I could grow old and die here, I would never leave. I think about moving a lot. You can see half of the Empire State Building. You can see that new building 432 Park, and down here you can see the One World Trade Center. I can also see the top of the Chrysler Building. I love the light and the sun. It’s sunny from mid-morning till sunset. The view is pretty good. You get enough of the skyline.

I’ve got it arranged so that these shelves in the kitchen just absorbed all of my stuff. I used to have a file cabinet, an enormous desk from when I ran a record label, and a tall metal shelf that held my record collection. I got rid of all the office stuff, and these big shelves absorbed everything, including the refrigerator and microwave.

I love reading. I can sit there in that chair and read for hours. It's a great way to spend an afternoon.







If you're interested in inviting Susan in to photograph your apartment for an upcoming post, then you may contact her via this email.

Here are more details on East Village Homes, the affordable housing set for 2nd Street

[Pre-construction look at 302 E. 2nd St.]

As we first reported this past Friday, a 14-story affordable housing complex is in the works for the long-vacant, city-owned parcel on Second Street between Avenue C and Avenue D.

On Friday morning, various officials kicked off the construction phase during a ground-breaking ceremony. Asian Americans for Equality is developing the long-empty lot after the Department of Housing Preservation and Development selected the organization in 2017.

Officials also released more information about the project — called East Village Homes — at 302 E. Second St., which will feature 45 affordable apartments and a ground-floor community facility.

From the news release:

Leroy Street Studio designed the building, which includes sustainable elements and meets Enterprise Green Communities Criteria. The project includes 13 studios, 19 one-bedroom units, 12 two-bedroom units and one apartment for an on-site super.

The building’s facade features a layered system of stucco panels that play off of an array of metal panels with custom-perforated designs. Integrated active design principles include bike storage, easily-accessible outdoor green space and visible stairs and circulation pathways.

Building amenities include a shared roof terrace, a meeting space off of the main lobby and a laundry facility. The project features a resilient design with no basement, water-conserving plumbing fixtures and high-efficiency lighting fixtures.

[Via Leroy Street Studio]



Here's a detail via Patch that wasn't included in the press materials:

Eight apartments will be for formerly homeless people under Section 8 for incomes up to 20 percent of area median income, seven apartments at 47 percent of AMI, 14 apartments at 77 percent of AMI and 15 apartments at 120 percent of AMI — which ranges from annual incomes less than $15,000 to about $90,000 for a single person. It will also have a 1,000-square-foot community facility, roof terrace, and green space.

In addition, officials announced that there's a second phase of the East Village Homes project, which is creating 10 additional affordable rental apartments on a separate site at 276 E. Third St. just east of Avenue C...


[276 E. 3rd St.]