Important decisions of our time

Walking on St. Mark's Place.




Very Berry? Or Pinkberry?

An Olsen twin hangs out at a nice new bar the New York Post considers a dive

Not sure why I'm bothering with this one. First, it's outside the geography of EV Grieve. Second, well... Let's just say this Page Six item today annoyed me for various reasons:

LOWER East Side pub crawlers, who tend to hop from bar to bar on skateboard, were a little surprised to see two black Escalades roll up to Orchard Street dive bar Sweet Paradise at 2 a.m. Sunday. Passing up standard hot spots, Mary-Kate Olsen and her posse slummed it up with some die-hard hipsters. Page Six overheard one bystander comment, "An Olsen just went in there." When asked which troll-sized twin it was, our witness replied, "I think it was the fat one."

The Post's definition of dive bar is different from mine. Sweet Paradise is just fine -- I have no problems with the place. (And I'm a fan of their other spot, Welcome to the Johnson's, though only when it's not full of yahoos.) But a bar that opened in the summer of 2006 isn't a dive bar. I don't care how much the owners recreated the physical characteristics of some old dump that serves a working-class demographic, one without trust funds and $200 haircuts.

"All of Manhattan has lost its soul to money lords"

That's Cheetah Chrome in today's New York Post discussing the new i-banker playground off the Bowery. "Extra Place," as it's being called, is in the former piss-filled alley behind CBGB. (See the Ramones photo above.) As the Post notes, that spot is "getting dragged into the 21st century with a makeover that would make Martha Stewart proud." Yes, because she could afford the kinds of things that are going into "Extra Place." (How not just call it "Extra Expensive"?)

Saint Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, Easter 2008

Prefab Sprout -- Hey Manhattan!

Music video from 1988. Prefab Sprout, a Brit pop band from the 1980s...and I never told anyone that I actually liked them. But what a sunny little song, so gosh-darn happy about being in the city.

East 10th Street just off Second Avenue, 7:50 a.m., March 23

Too many bank branches? Too many Sarah Marshall movie ads? Too many small businesses like Fontana Shoes closing?

Sophie's will be big in London

From the UK Guardian:

New York magazine recently handed out its annual gongs for all that is good in the city - from burgers to dive bars. Former Gawker restaurant critic Joshua Stein offers his alternative awards

They say: Mars Bar (25 E 1st St, +212-473-9842).
We say: Sophie's (507 E 5th St, + 212-228-5680). I mean a dive bar is a dive bar is a dive bar. The appeal is the same: cheap booze, no pretension, hopefully a toilet seat with a lid. Sophie's has all three plus, it has picaresque East Village characters who seem to have walked out of the pages of Henry Roth's Call It Sleep; a truly wonderful jukebox (everything from The Pogues to Gang of Four); and a wickedly competitive pool table.

First day of spring looks and feels more like fall

An open house on East 12th Street

For no good reason this past Sunday, Mrs. Grieve and I decided to go to an open house on East 12th Street between A and B. I've watched this eight-story apartment building go up in recent months and was curious what it would look like inside. (I wish I could remember what was on this lot prior to this apartment building...) Plus, I saw the open house ad in the Times with the price range...$2,900 for studios to $4,900 for two-bedroom apartments (roughly 920 square feet) a month. More than anything, I guess, I wanted to know what nearly $5,000 -- an amount that seems criminal to me -- would get you in the East Village today. The short answer: Not as much as I'd like. By the way, this post isn't meant to rip this new building...everything was top of the line...and I'm really so tired of grumbling about the continued ridiculous rents being charged in this neighborhood...I'm sure I'll have to move away soon enough. But until then! Might as well have some fun.

Many of the larger apartments come with a small balcony that overlooks the back of the buildings on East 13th Street. I can only imagine the joy the folks on 13th Street will experience while watching you sit on a tiny balcony in an apartment that costs nearly $5,000.

There's also a lovely rooftop deck with panoramic views of the city. [Updated 3/20: To be fair, the rooftop deck was nice...I sounded sarcastic when I wrote "lovely" -- I often sound sarcastic even when I'm being serious!...the photo below mostly shows the adjacent building's roof...Regardless, a nice rooftop hardly makes up for the steep rents.]

The building opened on March 1...and I was told that it was nearly half full as of Sunday. For my money, I'd prefer to live in the building right next door....this is more my style.

You've been warned

AKA Amateur Hour.

East 7th Street, 4:50 p.m., March 16

Just wait until tomorrow.

Live like Jimi Hendrix (but maybe without all the mysterious death part)

This rental notice caught our eye (must have been the five exclamation points) in today's New York Times:

Jimi Hendrix Lives On!!!!!

More like his old house lives on. But, yes, starting April 1, you can rent "The Cottage," the unique home at 50 W. 8th Street that Hendrix once lived. Can be yours for $7,950 a month. (Hendrix's legendary Electric Lady Studios is at 52 W. 8th Street.)

The online version of the ad in the Times doesn't mention Hendrx. Neither does the listing at Buchbinder & Warren.

Still, sounds nice, huh?

One of Manhattan's most unique properties offering country living in the heart of Greenwich Village. This 2bdr/2bth home, with washer/dryer and fireplace, offers stylish and sophisticated living with a private outdoor garden/patio area perfect for gardening and entertaining. A secure private entrance leads to this glass enclosed living space where the oversized, sky-lit solarium looks and opens onto the outdoor patio garden. FEATURES- Striking architectural elements include sky-lit solarium/greenhouse - Spacious contemporary 2bdr/2bth home with open plan living/dining areas- Fully-appointed, modern kitchen with custom cabinetry, stainless steel appliances, and stone counter tops- Gas-fueled fireplace- Washer/dryer- Central AC/heating throughout- Pre-wired intercom and cable - Two modern tiled windowed bathrooms- Central Greenwich Village location convenient to wonderful restaurants, great shopping and all transportation.

Great shopping? Like all those shoe stores that went out of business on 8th Street?

By the way, LES native Norman Buchbinder, a principal in Buchbinder & Warren, died early last year. He was 84. The feature obituary in The Villager mentions "The Cottage."

Another signature property he owned known as “The Cottage,” fronting into the backyard garden at 50 W. Eighth St., was once the residence of rock-and-roll legend Jimi Hendrix.

Accidents waiting to happen?

Given the number of high rises (4,000?, 5,000?) going up in the neighborhood ... yesterday's deadly crane tragedy in Turtle Bay gives us pause ... we already had close calls with that piece of shit condo at 110 Third Ave.

Got a chill today when I saw the crane (pictured) stretched across Third Avenue like that.

The way we were

The current Time Out New York has a Lower East Side map circa 1882 that spans Houston to Broome Streets between Norfolk Street and the Bowery. In total, there are 61 liquor bars and 242 lager saloons in that area. A lot, sure, but did they have to worry about annoying I-bankers?

[Map image from Time Out New York via Gawker]

Breaking: New York Post finds that bars in the East Village and LES can be kind of loud

It has been a whirlwind few days of investigative reporting for the New York Post. Sunday, in an EXCLUSIVE, the paper told of a "shady Atlanta businesswoman armed with a gallon jug of silicone and syringes . . . offering to inject women seeking 'J.Lo butts.' " Yesterday, they turned to another blight of our city: Noise pollution, in particular the racket made by the many bars and clubs in the East Village and Lower East Side. (How much better would our city be without noisy bars and women with J. Lo butts?)

The paper reported, "between July 1, 2007, and Jan. 31, 2008, Community Board 3 -- which covers the two youth-dominated neighborhoods, as well as Chinatown -- recorded 1,872 complaints about the pounding din coming from nightspots. That represented 26 percent of the 7,157 complaints for bars, clubs and restaurants in Manhattan."

"Pounding din?" Nice.

Well, this isn't really any surprise for people who have lived here for more than, say, a week. Yes, it must really suck to live above a bar or club (or even near one), especially since the smoking ban forced people to congregate outside. And since so many seemingly hideous night spots opened. (Won't get into any names here. Let's just say there are a few on Avenue B around 4th Street that attract a heinous mix of jackals. Do you see me throwing up or peeing in the parking lots of your malls in Paramus?)

Oh. Well, back to the Post article. The article was accompanied by a photo of Manitoba's on Avenue B, a bar that I happen to really like (earlier in the evenings, anyway -- I just don't like crowds of any sort). The caption reads: "The sidewalk outside Manitoba's bar, in the East Village, exceeded the danger level of 80 decibels, on a recent night of rowdiness." As you can see from the above photo, there are roughly six people in the bar at the moment (usually when I'm there). Obviously the photo was taken at a different time. (There are even two different photo credits.) Manitoba's isn't even mentioned in the article. What annoys me is that there are dozens of places in the neighborhood worthy of being singled out.

Curious what Handsome Dick Manitoba's reaction was when he saw the piece. The bar does have a history of noise problems, particularly back when they were doing live music on Monday nights. (Blame one prudish couple who bought a place above the bar for this -- not that I'm taking sides!) Still, Manitoba's stopped the music nights. Manitoba seems like a real decent guy and good neighbor. He lives around the corner. I like what he does with the bar.

Finally, on a related note, I do sympathize with folks who are stuck near or above noisy spots -- at least the places in which the residents were there first, and a bar/club opened later. Not quite as sympathetic to people who chose to live above a bar. For instance! A former college roommate moved to New York years back, settling in a nice apartment above the Grassroots Tavern, another bar I like very much, on St. Mark's. She didn't last there too long. Why? "It's too loud." What did she expect? "I didn't think it would be this bad."

The song in my head

There were times when I'd walk around the neighborhood...and the vibe I'd get could be set to a song and video like the following from Pussy Galore.



Now, given all the condos and fancy shops and clueless young people with too much money, it seems more like this from the band Whiny Dork Who Could Never Date the Model in the Video. (Actually, that may not be the name of the band. Whatever.)

We don't know what to say about this

An aside: Because all the models I know drink Guinness.

Paying attention to the little things

This plaque is on a building on East Ninth Street between Avenue A and First Avenue. I'm always happy that such tributes survive through the years. Can easily see some new builinding owner or creepy super be like, "Who in the &*&^%$ is Astor Piazzolla...?" and take it down.

By the way, I wasn't familiar with him either until I first saw this plaque some years back.

No room for mom and pop in the neighborhood

Hate to say it, but this was all too inevitable. From this week's issue of The Villager:

Discount stores, ethnic restaurants and small local businesses line the south side of E. 14th St. along the stretch of Alphabet City. Many of these congenial mom-and-pop shops have been serving the lower- and middle-income Lower East Side and Stuyvesant Town communities for decades with their affordable prices and personal customer relationships. But it is becoming more and more difficult for these establishments to survive, caught between rising rents and gentrification. Charlies, at 532 E. 14th St. between Avenues A and B, a neighborhood staple for the past 41 years, is the latest to fall victim to this trend.

Bonnie Rosenstock's article says Charlies will shutter at the end of this month.

“I’ve been coming here since I was 7 or 8,” said a 46-year-old Hispanic woman. “We need to have our community stores. This is what keeps the neighborhood healthy. There is so much greed that is destroying the neighborhood.”

[Image: Villager photo by Bonnie Rosenstock]

Richard Price on the Lower East Side: "This place is like Byzantium"

There's a feature on Bronx-born Richard Price today in the Times. His new novel, Lush Life, is set in the Lower East Side, and concerns a seemingly random murder.

Excerpts from the article:

About the Lower East Side today, Mr. Price said, “This place is like Byzantium. It’s tomorrow, yesterday — anyplace but today.” He added that he sometimes thinks of the neighborhood as a very busy ghost town, where many of the ghosts milling around still speak Yiddish.

His grandparents got their start in the Lower East Side, he explained, and while Mr. Price was growing up his father worked here as a window dresser for the many small clothing shops that used to be an important part of the neighborhood economy.

“In a way the whole place has come full-circle in five generations,” Mr. Price said. “A hundred years ago there were Jews trying to claw their way out of here, and now the descendants of those people are paying $2,000 a month to live in what used to be their tenements.”

[Price image by Sara Krulwich/The New York Times]

East Ninth Street between A and First Avenue, 7:40 a.m., March 1

The bicycle orphans of the East Village

I've always been fascinated by the numerous bicycles chained to just about anything in the neighborhood. Difficult to tell sometimes which ones are still still being used, and which ones are abandoned. Back before I had a camera, I'd pass by this one carcass of a bike on East 10th Street near Second Avenue. Seemed as if every time that I walked by, another piece of the bike was missing. Eventually, the chain was the only thing left. (I kind of figured it was some awful ongoing art project.)

Several years back, there was a woman's vintage bike chained to the light pole in front of Sophie's. It was never touched. Eventually, it was said that the bike belonged to a young woman who did some work at the now defunct Le Tableau a few doors down. She was killed one night after getting hit by an oncoming subway. It was an accident that didn't get much, if any, press. The bike remained there for nearly a year. Then one day it was gone.

Thinking the same thing: NYU dorm!

Funny, how we all had the same thought a few weeks back when we noticed the bodega on the southeast corner of 14th Street and 3rd Avenue and adjoining businesses were vacated. (The bodega just moved around the corner.) Given the proximity of still-kinda-new NYU dorms...well, we'll let Scoopy take over at The Villager in his column this week:

The corner screams out, “Development site!” and more specifically, “Another N.Y.U. dorm!” After all, the location is right in the middle of N.Y.U.’s E. 14th St. dormitory nexus. But Kelly Franklin, an N.Y.U. spokesperson, told us, “We have not been looking at this site nor has anyone approached us about it.”

I would like to add: YET.

"Sophie’s can continue sans 'mixologists' or beer sommeliers"

This week's New York magazine has a short piece on Sophie's staying the same, titled "Dive Alive: How did Sophie's survive?"...Nothing new in the story, but it's always nice to see how much the bar means to people. (One note: The article didn't mention Mona's.)

[Photo by Jeremiah Moss]

Updated: Scaffolding collapse at St. Brigid's

The high winds we had here last night helped bring down the scaffolding in front of St. Brigid's on Avenue B. At 6:45 a.m., cops had things blocked off from 8th Street to 7th Street. And several news crews were on hand preparing to go live with a report. (Putting a reporter in front of fallen scaffolding makes for riveting local news!) No injuries were reported.

In any event, this will only help the Archdiocese of New York try to sell the idea that the church needs to be razed. For an NYU dorm, we're sure. Or some fancy high-rise condos.

Bob Arihood's excellent Neither More or Less has many more photos (like the one he took above). While you're at his site, look around at this amazing photography and narrative of the neighborhood.

Saving St. Brigid's

To be honest, plenty of things need saving in the East Village -- St. Brigid's chief among them. There's a "keep the flame alive" party tonight at Solas. Find the info at the Save St. Brigid's Web site. (Plus, you may see Matt Dillon there...uh, at Solas, not the Web site.)

Loretta On The Roof - 1990

No idea how we came across this footage. It's described as: "Loretta on East 10th Street Rooftop. Summer of 1990. Remembering the day she moved into Manhattan. I miss the Old New York."
Yeah, we do too.

Remembering yesteryear at Sophie's

Photographer Ali Smith worked the day shift at Sophie's in the early '90s. During that time, she captured all the regulars who helped make the place what it was. (Sadly, this was before our time, so we never got to meet characters like Jimmy Tokens and Degenerate John who are featured in her photos.) Yesterday, Ali put up four framed photos from her time there. If you're at the bar, take the time to look at -- and appreciate -- her work.

New York City Big Apple Minute 1980 Commercial

Ah, back before the condos...American Apparel...the Bench. (Uh, OK. We didn't live here then. Still! It still looked a lot like this when we showed up in the early 1990s...)

"Can someone explain to me the advantage of having bank branches on every damned corner?"

The art of smiling had a short post that was in reaction to the news of Sophie's as reported by Jeremiah's Vanishing New York.

Margaret, the author of the post, shared what a lot of us think these days about the East Village and Lower East Side: "...at this point I'm more surprised to see anything that's still as I remembered it. The last time I was at Russ & Daughters, I bought my pickled herring from the son of one of the daughters, a man I remember from years ago, and I said I hoped they would be there forever; he smiled and said they weren't going anywhere, and in fact they were thinking of expanding. Moishe's Bakery and Ben's Cheese are gone, but Yonah Schimmel's Knishes is still there, dirty as ever.

Can someone explain to me the advantage of having bank branches on every damned corner?"

The origins of Sophie's

Our favorite New York-related blog, Jeremiah's Vanishing New York, had an excellent post Jan. 2 on Sophie's. He spoke with owner Bob Corton, who discussed the bar's history...and future:

In the 1980s, Bob worked for bar owner Sophie Polny, a tough old lady who ran a pub on Avenue A. Bob became manager when Sophie moved her bar (known only as the Polny Restaurant Corp.) to its current location on 5th between A & B, into a space occupied by a joint called the Chic Choc, named for partners Virginia Chicarelli and someone called Chocolate. “Chic Choc” is still written on the doorstep of Sophie’s.

Sophie Polny didn’t like to spend money. Bob recalls, “She only got a jukebox because it came free with the pool table. But she mostly used it for sitting on. The jukebox was her perch.” When she moved to 5th Street, rather than buy new, she brought her old wooden bar with her. It’s still there today, with its stained-glass cabinet doors and cottage-roof motif, a popular style dating back to (from my best guess) the early 20th century.The bar used to open at 10:00 in the morning for the old Ukrainian men who liked to sit all day over beer and shots of vodka. Said Bob, “If I showed up to open at 10:01, there’d be 8 guys waiting out front to get in and they’d hand me a bag of shit for being late.”

Please read the rest here. He also has photo's of Sophie's on his Flickr page.

Chain reaction

Local independent businesses in the East Village have had a challenging time making a living in recent years. Here's a group trying to help.

East Village continues to lose its "sole"

OK, this has nothing to do with Sophie's necessarily, but stories like this are occurring all-too-often as the East Village continues to attract more Duane Reades, bank branches, soulless, overpriced condos and co-ops, and trust-funded douchebags. On the wan: community spirit, a sense of a neighborhood, which Sophie's and Mona's supplies.

The Villager has the story this week on 75-year-old Angelo Fontana who has been repairing shoes in the East Village for 40 years. His shoe repair shop is at 159 Second Avenue at the southwest bend of Stuyvesant Street.

As the paper sadly reports:

But his lease expires at the end of December, and the landlord wants to up the rent from an already-steep $4,000 a month from a raise just nine months ago to an unworkable $5,500 per month. So Fontana will be forced into “early” retirement, a prospect that he does not relish.
“I would like to stay another 10 years, well maybe five years,” he stated. “I’m used to working all my life. I don’t want to stop now. I don’t know what I’ll do. I’m not the kind of person who sits and watches TV all day. I like to be active,” he said.
If he could, he would find another shop in the area because he loves the neighborhood, but rents everywhere are sky-high.
“Soon there won’t be any professionals left,” he predicted. “No more shoemakers, tailors — all gone. People now don’t know nothing,” he declared.

RIP Cedar Tavern

Well, we didn't have much hope of the Cedar Tavern on University returning after it closed for "renovations" or whatever back in December 2006. Anyway, The Real Deal has an article today on the former haunt that attracted the likes of Jackson Pollock, Willem de Kooning and Jack Kerouac.

"Cedar is past. Cedar is history. It means something to me. It doesn't mean something to the next generation," co-owner Michael Diliberto said.

Ugh. We had many great times at the Cedar. It wasn't a dive bar in the tradition of Sophie's, but, despite the tourists, there was a similar community spirit. (And we loved Bernie the bartender.) Meanwhile, every day, Manhattan dies a little bit more. Do we really need more condos in the city starting at $1.7 million?

Bonus fun fact: According to Bob Spitz's Dylan: A Biography, D.A. Pennebaker, Dylan, and Bobby Neuwirth met to plan the shooting of Don't Look Back in the Cedar Tavern.

"Read it and weep friends"

Since we learned about the possible sale of Sophie's and Mona's, we've been trolling around the blogosphere finding what's being said. Here's a lovely sentiment from The Vault of Buncheness posted Dec. 20:

My dear friend Deena just sent me devastating news about the east village. Most of us know that the East Village ain't what it used to be. That hideous looking condo across the street from the cube on Astor Place sums it up. However, I did not lose faith. Losing Coney Island High was a big blow. Then Kim's Video stores began to dwindle. But even when CBGBs closed its doors, I did not lose faith. When my favorite diner, Polonia, on first Avenue and 7th began to raise its prices after undergoing a fancy rennovation, I did not lose faith. Starbucks, Subway restaurants and smoothie stores are now everywhere. Vinyl stores and vintage clothing stores turned into nail salons and cafes. Tower Records and video are long gone. Sounds Records turned into a tattoo parlour. St. Mark's Place is unrecognizable. I won't even get into rent prices. Yet, through it all, I always felt the East Village was still the coolest place for New Yorkers. My dive bar Mona's, where I have a million fond memories, may have tossed that awesome jukebox with the 45 singles, but it still had great music, a cheap pool table, and that cute bartender who always served me free beers who shall remain nameless. ALL of you know how special that black hole is to me. We have had a lot of wonderful times there and at Sophies. But, now, this HURTS more than all of the above. Read it and weep friends...and if this does not motivate us for a long and overdue gathering at our sacred ground, nothing will.

Preliminary thoughts on a tragedy

From an e-mail to friends from a Sophie's regular on Dec. 20:

It goes without saying that that item from today's Page Six was badder than bad. Devastating. Tragic. Unjust. And, I hesitate to admit, expected.
I just got back from an extended lunch at the Barrow Street Pub (Tavern? Saloon?) to digest the news, gather intelligence, cope, and curse the moon and stars. After the laughter comes tears. For those about to die, we salute you. Make that a triple.
There's cause for hope, I've been happy to learn. And yet four dollar beers may turn into sixers; flushing toilets may replace the cesspools into which we've all gazed, starry-eyed, on more occasion than one. Time will tell.
For now, I encourage you all to frequent Sophie's with a previously unsurpassed sense of devotion. Raise a glass to all the fucking crazies and lunatics; the gamblers, tall-tale tellers, booze-hounds, stray cats, sports experts, pool sharks, street philosophers, junkheads, and college kids; The nicotine-stained, glass-eyed, trembling, bow-legged, black-lunged, red-eyed, and crinkle-cut; The doughed-down, dunked-up, drowned-out dudes and dudettes who hang out in there. The good people. And Ducky, too.

VIVA LE SOPH!

Oddly enough, this is how she met Dermot Mulroney

Gawker picked up the Sophie's/Mona's sale item from Page Six. After Hours Editor Joshua David Stein posted the following:

end of an era
Sophie's, that dive bar on E. 5th Street that never carded and where I once made out drunkenly on the pool table with a woman who, at the time, I was convinced was Catherine Keener but in fact was just this girl who lived on the floor below me in my dorm , is closing in the New Year. Boo! [NYP]

Trying to be rational

So there have been other fine neighborhoody/divey bars sold that retained some of the original charm...Like the Shark Bar on Spring Street...just got a facelift. (And a lot of new taps...and new, heftier prices). Ditto for the Sinatra Bar (or whatever it's called) on Mulberry...Only difference there is that they got a few flat-panel TVs and started a happy hour. These places only received modest makeovers. Right? Right?

Jeremiah's somber take

Jeremiah's Vanishing New York is an excellent blog that takes "a bitterly nostalgic look at a city in the process of going extinct." Plenty to be bitter about these days.

He wrote this yesterday:

I am still in shock from this sudden news: Beloved East Village dives Sophie's and Mona's are up for sale! Says the owner of both, "The neighborhood has changed so much...I love both bars, but they're dinosaurs now." This is bad fucking news for the East Village.

And so it begins, when depression set in

As seen in Page Six in the New York Post yesterday:

December 20, 2007 -- IT may be the final nail in the shared coffin of East Village dive bars. Two longstanding holes-in-the-wall, Sophie's on East Fifth Street and its sister spot, Mona's on Avenue B, are up for sale. "The neighborhood has changed so much," co-owner Bob Corton told Page Six. "I love both bars, but they're dinosaurs now." Corton plans to sell the low-lit saloons after the holidays. He has run Sophie's, which adopted its name from its original owner, the late Sophie Polny, since 1986. He opened Mona's in '89. Corton assured us he'll stay in the neighborhood but couldn't predict the future of his beloved drink tanks: "Once the places are sold, what happens to them is really out of my hands."

Updated: Sophie's and Mona's are alive and well!