Residents, 9th Precinct meeting tonight about excessive partying at 56 St. Mark's Place

[Rear view of No. 56]

Residents who live near 56 St. Mark's Place, aka The Saint, have organized a community meeting tonight at 7 with Capt. Vincent Greany, commanding officer of the 9th Precinct, to discuss what they say has been non-stop partying at the 8-story rental built in 2005. The meeting will be outside No. 56, which is between First Avenue and Second Avenue.

The organizer of the meeting shared this background:

It has turned into a partying rental building, filled with fresh-out-of-college kids ... partying non-stop and terrorizing neighboring residents only several yards away from it.

The main noise issues stem from rooftop and some units with patios larger than their apartments. On the rooftop, tenants party till 3-4 am with DJs, climb onto the building's water tower, throw beer bottles and puke down to lower levels.

Large terraces are located on the level equal to the 2nd floor. Surrounded by buildings, sound vibrates like an amphitheater. The patios are hidden and only accessible through apartment entrances. It's not visible from the street and the tenants, knowing these issues, have been jeopardizing the quality of life of about 60 residents surrounding 56 St. Mark's Place. They watch movies with outdoor projectors, play music with outdoor speakers and have over 30 people getting drunk and hollering till early morning.

According to the organizer, the Saint is managed by Helm Management, who have "dodged efforts by several neighbors to speak to them about this issue."

Nearly a dozen other nearby residents shared horror stories about the Saint. Here's a sampling from one (edited for length):

First, let me say this — THE SAINT is an unholy nightmare that should be renamed THE SINNER.

Since the beginning of March 2016 there have been 28 parties or gatherings that have gone beyond 12:30 at night. Many have carried on until 3 am, or 4 am, or even later. All of them massively disturb the peace, prevent me from sleeping, disrupt work routines and cause aggravation and ill will. I feel psychologically and emotionally attacked, disturbed and drained. It has ruined the peace in my home and neighborhood.

I have to deal with:

• Almost daily noise, disruption and intrusion — way above normal levels.

• Roof parties — often with DJs and up to 60 or more drunk, rowdy, sometime belligerent guests — inevitably every weekend (sometimes both Friday and Saturday nights). Parties and gatherings also often occur on Sundays and during weeknights.

• We live inside an enormous fishbowl and every sound that is made on the roof or terraces it is magnified, reverberates off the walls of the other buildings. Sitting in my bedroom sometimes sounds like I am in the middle of a nightclub.

• Shrill, infantile screams of “Dude”, “Fuck yeah!”, “Oh my fucking god”, “Pass me a beer”, “Wow, I’m shitfaced”, “I would fuck him”, “Wahoooooooo!!!!!” etc., etc., at all hours of the night.

• Tenants screaming insults when I ask them to be quiet, or to turn down the noise, or to shut the music off. Insults have included, “Suck my cock”, “Fuck you”, “Eat shit”, “You sound foreign, why don’t you fucking go home?“

• Feeling as though the only solution is to move.

Of particular concern is the building's water tower. Per a neighbor:

Tenants have also taken a particular liking to climbing a tower located on the roof, accessed by a narrow ladder, and turned it into their “sky lounge”. They (and non residents, including minors) sit on top of it and drink alcohol, smoke marijuana, flash lights, scream at the tops of their lungs, play music, throw bottles and vomit over the edge, etc., etc.



People use the tower at any and ALL times of the night and morning.

The dangers are SIGNIFICANT. There is no railing on top of it, there is a 35 foot drop to the roof, girls in heels and formal dresses often climb on top of it then scream “How do I get down”. At times as many as 20 kids (usually drunk) have packed on top of it — a space that is no more than 7ftx10ft. If one of these kids falls (odds are one of them will one day) they will SERIOUSLY injure themselves.

Kanye West News Hour

The News Cycle on the aborted early-morning Kanye West show at Webster Hall shows no sign of cycling out... local news crew are camped out outside the venue on East 11th Street between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue...



There are all sorts of first-person accounts from the Kanyefest/Pablo Mob, including at The New Yorker and Los Angeles Times.

And a passage from DNAinfo's reporting...

Neighbors who woke up to find their cars had been used as bleachers overnight were not amused.

"I thought it was going to be a quiet evening, a quiet day, and it was going to be safe," said optician Michael Gomez, 55, who parked his Chrysler and Impala in front of Webster Hall, and came back to find both had dents in the roofs and vomit on the ground nearby.

He estimated it will cost him thousands to fix his cars and says he cannot afford to make the repairs.

"I'm in shock. I'm stunned. I know I'm never going to park here again."

H/T EVG Pablo Mob correspondent Christine Champagne

Report: Ariel Palitz named NYC's first Night Mayor

The newly established NYC Office of Nightlife has named its first director (aka Night Mayor) — Ariel Palitz.

Palitz is well-known in the East Village/Lower East Side as a bar owner (the former Sutra Lounge on First Avenue) and as a member of Community Board 3's Liquor Authority & Department of Consumer Affairs Licensing committee.

As The Lo-Down noted: "Her clashes with local residents fighting new liquor licenses were fairly legendary."

In recently years she has helmed Venue Advisors, "a full-service hospitality consulting company with integrated licensed real estate services."

Mayor de Blasio is to officially make her announcement official later today. Her official title is senior executive director of the Office of Nightlife.

Meanwhile, the Times has a very Times-ian feature with the news.

Since September, when Mayor Bill de Blasio announced he was forming an Office of Nightlife to promote the industry and soothe the strained relations between the city’s night spots and the neighborhoods that complain about their merriment, the local demimonde has been wondering who might nab the glamorous position. Would Mr. de Blasio appoint a modern-day Tex Guinan, someone who would quaff champagne in the small hours of the morning under the trapezes of the erotic circus scene?

In her first interview since accepting the post, Ms. Palitz suggested that her stint as the Nightlife Mayor would be slightly more sober and focus less on carousing than on conflict mediation. In today’s New York, gentrification has pitted partygoers against the settled residents of neighborhoods like the Lower East Side of Manhattan and Williamsburg in Brooklyn. In her first official act, Ms. Palitz promised to hold a series of listening tours and entertain the gripes of those who are bothered by the vomit on their streets or the noise at 3 a.m.

The article notes that Palitz is a fifth-generation New Yorker who has lived in the East Village since 1996.

And more from the Times...

Now in charge of a mayoral office with a 12-person advisory board, a $300,000 budget and a salary of $130,000 a year, Ms. Palitz seems to have realized that even a doyenne of New York night life must make a few concessions when joining city government. On her Tuesday evening drink, she was accompanied, for instance, by a minder from City Hall. While she admits that there were times in her career when she personified “what the no-bar movement rejected,” she also claimed that she has always tried “to find solutions that work for everyone.”

Previously on EV Grieve:
Ariel Palitz responds to Daily News article, 'ripe for picking' comment

ICYMI — Mayor forms Office of Nightlife

Report: SantaCon isn't coming to this part of town in 2014

[SantaCon 2013 via EVG reader Steven Sonnenblick]

SantaCon, the annual charity event beloved by all save for a few curmudgeons who don't like to have fun, is apparently bypassing the East Village/Lower East Side this year.

This year's destination on Dec. 13? Bushwick, as Bushwick Daily first reported today.

So far, it looks like bar owners there are psyched, as they should be.

One bartender told Bushwick Daily:

“I’ve worked on SantaCon while bartending in the East Village. It’s the absolute worst thing ever. Worse than Saint Patrick’s Day! I literally can’t believe it’s coming to Bushwick!” he continued. “I can’t think of anyone that would let drunk vomiting Santas into their bars in this hood. I’m guessing they will be aimlessly walking around.”

As you know, most of the Santa-clad revelers are on their best behavior… of course there are always one or two bad apples as you'd expect in any crowd. (Good God! That Armory Show last year!)



Woo!

Anyway, Christmas came early here.

Per Jessica Roy at Daily Intelligencer:

East Village bars, which have long fought to ban the daytime bar crawl and will be spared this year's vomit puddles, must have made Santa's Nice List this year.

In search of drunk-brunch answers at the Post

This past week, East Village resident Robert Halpern sued the State Liquor Authority over a loophole in the 1999 law that allows bottomless brunches.

Steve Cuozzo uses that as a jumping off point in a column at the Post. Drunk brunch, and drinking in general among the millennial set, is a citywide scourge, he writes.

There’s never been as much binge boozing as there is today. It stretches far beyond the Lower East Side’s infamous “Hell Zone” to Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg and Amsterdam Avenue on the Upper West Side. In the Meatpacking District, vomit on the pavement makes me cringe more than smelly carcasses once did. Even hotel rooftops and high-end restaurants are affected: Top chef Michael White actually employs a bouncer to stand on Lafayette Street to protect his Italian trattoria Osteria Morini from “young, affluent, intoxicated people stumbling from one place to the next,” a manager explained to me.

Any explanations?

A few causes of this drunken oblivion are obvious. Affluent young singles cluster in neighborhoods oversaturated with saloons. Restaurants promote “beverage programs” more than food.

Some media outlets seem bent on driving half the youthful population into AA. Time Out New York’s September issue feature on the craft-beer scene is blurbed on the magazine’s cover as “67% information, 33% inebriation.”

Also! Citing stats that show Manhattan is home to 38 percent more women than men among recent college graduates, Cuozzo believes the imbalance is driving this demographic to drink.

What’s that got to do with binge drinking? When gender expectations are wildly out of sync, anxiety is soothed with alcohol’s fast-acting flood of relief.

Headline of the day: 'Show-Tune-Singing NYU Pukers Make Neighbor's Life a Living Hell'

That comes courtesy of Curbed, who has a piece on an Eighth Street apartment owner near NYU. Oh, the regret of picking this spot!

Not all New Yorkers have to deal with drunken drama students screaming show tunes at the top of their lungs at 4 a.m. ... And then there’s the vomit. It’s more of a weekend phenomenon, especially around the bars in Washington Square.

Show tunes? I'll sing show tunes!

Tompkins Square Park red-tailed hawk is 'much more cool than a hipster'

I totally missed Stephanie Cohen's piece in the Post today of the red-tailed hawk of Tompkins Square Park.... An excerpt!

" ... this Tompkins Square chick boasts something just as important: downtown street cred. Call her the hipster hawk.

So it’s only fitting that Jonathan Ames, the indie writer behind the HBO hit 'Bored to Death,' is a fan.

“I was thrilled to see such a proud and fierce raptor in Tompkins Square Park,” says the Brooklyn-based Ames.

“Right after seeing the hawk, I saw a young man projectile-vomit, so it was quite the full outing.”

Per a Post commenter: "Please, she's no hipster. She kills rats and pigeons and lives off of them. She's much more cool than a hipster."

Many thanks to BaHa for the two photos...

Today in photos of mysterious, gross-looking splatter on First Avenue

EVG reader Peter Hale spotted this today on First Avenue between East 11th Street and East 12th Street... Per Tony: "Juice pulp? Tomato pulp? Cab vomit?"

And, oh good — someone has already driven through it...

SantaCon announces 2021 route; East Village in the crosshairs once again

After a year off with the pandemic in 2020, SantaCon returns for in-person binging and bar crawling at the expense of the rest of the city this Saturday. (First reported here.) 

Yesterday, SantaCon organizers unveiled the 2021 route, which starts at 10 a.m. at 40th and Broadway. Per the SantaCon website: "We will be dancing in the streets and will unleash a holiday celebration NYC has never imagined possible!" 

A $13 donation gets your Santa Badge and access to participating bars, mainly in Midtown West and East. Six of the bars are in the East Village: The Grayson, 16 First Ave., Amsterdam Billiards & Bar, 110 E. 11th St., Doc Holliday's, 141 Avenue A, Horseshoe Bar/7B, 108 Avenue B, the Phoenix, 447 E. 13th St., and Solas, 232 E. Ninth St. 

However, as we've seen in previous Cons, bars not on the official list are often all too happy to participate, including the 13th Step.  (The SantaCon website states that participants must have proof of COVID vaccination.)

Meanwhile, ahead of the 2021 bar list, someone launched a Cancel SantaCon petition...

Per the petition: 

SantaCon is the worst day of the year in New York City. Each year thousands of belligerent drunk people in Santa costumes flood New York City streets, leaving behind a trail of fistfights, vomit, urine and garbage. John Oliver did a segment on the event which highlighted the faux-charitable nature of the pub crawl. He stated that each SantaCon participant only raises $1.66 for charity, which is hardly enough to excuse the violent and inappropriate behavior. The evidence is crystal clear: Santacon does more bad than good. 

This year New York City residents have had enough! We are calling for Mayor Bill de Blasio to show leadership and order the cancelation of Santacon. We believe that this is an issue that unites New Yorkers of all races, religions, and political beliefs. 

Please sign this petition so we can end SantaCon in New York City once and for all. 

You can find the petition here. 

And the petition garnered some support via Twitter...

Dare I say that I’m aligned? https://t.co/u7cybp4GDL pic.twitter.com/x9Twdjp67x

— Gossip Girl (@gossipgirl) December 5, 2021

Oh, and here's the John Oliver segment from December 2019 mentioned in the petition ...