Kurtis Blow's anti-heroin public service announcement

Aired in New York City in the early 1980s, says the person who posted the clip on YouTube.

Bonus: Kurtis Blow for Sprite (1986)

Getting ready to ship out

According to the caption that accompanied this photo: Residents of a flophouse in New York's Bowery tidy themselves up for a cruise aboard the S.S. Delaware on Long Island Sound, July 21, 1936, guests of the Bowery Mission. (AP Photo/N.Y. Daily News)

A quick walk on Allen Street

Walked two blocks, from Delancey to Stanton, the other day...and came across two construction sites. Shocker! I've completely lost track of what's going where. It's wearing me down.

Whistling and blasting

I never understand how we are supposed to remember all this. Maybe, "When you hear a blast, duck."

Team Bride confidential

Did you see the women in the "team bride" T-shirts in the neighborhood Saturday night? I found a blog post on what this was all about: A bachelorette party featuring a scavenger hunt through the East Village. (There were two teams: the grooms vs. the brides.)

Anyway, in case you were wondering what that was all about, here is one of the participant's account of the evening via her blog (names and links have been left out...):

The last thing I recall about the night is having a booty off at the final bar (for those of you that are unaware, a booty off is a ass-shaking dance off competition)…and I might have won. I mean, according to me, that is. I mean, Brand New Booty comes on and no one can shake it like I can. You have to trust me with this.

And really…what is better than spending a weekend with some of your best girls…hanging out in NYC all day and night and having a booty off?

Exactly. Nothing.

Man I love New York.

Some more highlights:

* Asking a crackhead in Thompkins Square Park for directions to a statue and having a homeless man interuppt to give me “real” directions and be strangely alert, happy, and friendly for being outside at 12am in this park

* Going into one of the East Village Precincts with my biggest smile and please be nice to me look on my face while asking the cops if they would take some pictures with us for the game. (they did -– never underestimate the power of boobies in a tight tee shirt)

* Following a guy with tons of tattoos carrying 2 bags of garbage to a graveyard (riiiight)

Did I mention I love NYC? Only in New York could we do a Scavenger Hunt where every area we walked in downtown was filled with people ready to help us with our more outrageous tasks (and this being the East Village most were low key artiste hippie types with lots of “I wanna help” qualities.”)

All the streets were packed with a wide variety of flavorful different people. I am used to this area because one of my siblings lived here (but more towards Union Square and not Alphabet City)…but I could get around Gramercy Park, Murray Hill, Midtown and the Upper East Side in my sleep. Slowly throughout the years I am becoming more and more familiar with the gloriousness that is Soho, TriBeca, West Village and Greenwich Village and many other cute downtown areas. Ah, I love those areas.

But East Village is a whole other animal in many ways . . . Its a quirky and sometimes downright bizarre place…where some streets are almost quiet and dainty and the others are filled with people 24-7 and lined with bars, quick food joints, and restaurants. What a trip a hunt was around there.

15 Seconds of window shopping at Pier 17

The Jason Giambi nutcracker? (At the year-round Christmas in New York store.)

If you're not looking for something New York City related, may I suggest the "Make Love Not War" T-shirt? You can work it into the rotation alongside your WHAM! "Choose Life" T-shirt.

Update on the East 7th Street shooting

The Times has an update on the shooting this morning on East 7th Street and Avenue D:

A gunman shot and injured a man on an East Village street early Thursday and then fired several times through the storefront of a delicatessen, striking an employee who was making coffee, the police and witnesses said. The two men were taken to Bellevue Hospital Center in serious condition, the authorities said.

The suspected gunman then got into a van and drove to a nearby police precinct on the Lower East Side, left the weapon in the vehicle and turned himself in, the police commissioner, Raymond W. Kelly, said at a news briefing.Mr. Kelly said the gunfire erupted over a dispute but he had no further details.

The shooting took place about 8:15 a.m. near 278 East Seventh Street, the police said. That was the building where one of the victims, whom neighbors identified as Calvin Gibson, 50, lived. He was shot six times, the police said.
The other victim, Mohammed Islam, 18, was shot several times in the arm not long after he had opened the Jahanara delicatessen at 280 East Seventh Street, according to his brother, Sohel Arman.
Neighbors said they believed the gunman had been living with his mother in the same building as Mr. Gibson for several weeks after he lost his apartment in Chelsea.
“He was screaming, ‘Stop talking about me!’ ” said the neighbor, Aurelia Diaz, adding that she had heard the noise through her open window. She said she then heard Mr. Gibson saying “leave the kid alone” before it was quiet for about a minute.

Neighbors who knew Mr. Gibson described him as a friendly man and the vice president of a tenant’s association in the building. They said he was a co-owner of a clothing boutique called Dejavu in the East Village.

A woman who lived across the street and said she knew Mr. Gibson, Loreen Stevens, 38, heard a popping sound in the morning and parted her curtains to peer out.
She saw a man standing over Mr. Gibson, who was on the ground.
“He was hovering over him, making sure that he was hit,” she said.
“It was not like he was trying to hide what he was, or what he had just done,” she said. “To me it seemed like he was on a mission.”
The gunman then turned toward the deli and started firing through the glass. There were four holes in the storefront.
Ms. Stevens said she ran across the street but the gunman had gone. She went to Mr. Gibson, who was lying on his side.
“He told me, ‘I was just going to get coffee,’ ” she said. “He kept moving around.”
“I was like, you’re going to be O.K.,” she said. “He kept tossing and turning.”
Ms. Stevens said that Mr. Gibson said he was in pain and kept repeating “4-D, 4-D.”

Channel 7 has video clips.

Hollywood returning to Tompkins Square Park (for just a mere 18 hours or so)

Maybe we'll all get to hobnob with David Duchovny, star of Californication!
Sure, sure! Just hope the crew lets people into Ray's.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Why the East Village will be a mess tonight and tomorrow.

Looking at the current fair housing and anti-gentrification movements

Politics as Puppetry has an essay today titled New York City Anti-Gentrification Movements - A Catalog of Failure

An excerpt:

Rising rents in New York are driven by the cultural product of the city - the skyline and nightlife sold in dozens of movies, hundreds of TV show episodes, and by the government of New York itself. That image has gone global, and makes it possible for foreign investors to pour capital into the city by puchasing buildings wholesale (as is happening in el Barrio), or buying up apartments for vacations (as is happening… well, everywhere). Cheap rents and rent control made New York’s globe-spanning cultural products possible in the first place. (think grafitti, Jay-z, SoHo artist lofts, Punk Rock, New York’s literary avant guarde, etc.) Fair housing and anti-gentrification movements will only get off the ground and into serious change by starting with the popular idea of New York and using those cultural norms against the rapid transformation of New York City into a playground of the rich.

Two good shops

On tiny Cliff Street, which runs between Fulton and John.

And next door, just past the entrance to the parking garage:

Meanwhile, if you go south on Cliff Street, you'll see the 31-story apartment building completed in 2001 that previously served as an NYU dorm. The building is managed by our good friends at Rockrose Development Corporation.

No ball playing for the Ukrainian students

As this sign shows, the students at St. George's Ukrainian Catholic School on Sixth Street near Cooper Union are not allowed to play ball.



Not sure what kind of ball this may be. (Tetherball? Kick ball? Dodge ball? Foosball? Stick ball?) Just ball, OK? The section of the school that houses this sign was opened in 1958. How long after that did the killjoy faculty put up this sign...? How long have these students been deprived of playing ball? (And what is the penalty if they're caught?) Anyway, given what's developing directly across from the school now on Taras Shevchenko Place, I'm sure I could find some people who would arm the students with plenty of bats and balls for recess.

Now and then: 216 E. 7th Street

1979.

2008.

[Photo of 216 E. 7th St. in 1979 by Marlis Momber. Lousy photo of 216 E. 7th St. in 2008 by EV Grieve.]