The per-man, per-truck moving wars in the East Village

Do I hear $16 per man, per truck, per hour?

At 20 Pine: Oh, my achin' back...

During my guest stint at Curbed last week, I wrote a post on 20 Pine, the big-ass condo conversion that's been taking a looooooong time to get condoized in the Financial District. Anyway, I have the occasion to pass by the place just about every work day. And the 20 Pine sign gives me pause nearly every time.



Hold on. "Hey, lady, could you please move from the..." Oh. She's part of the ad. Poor dear, given her posture, she must have neck and lower back pain. Is this really the best image to help sell a luxury property?

Oh. As for big-ass (classy me), this is what I mean:



And it's, uh, big-assier in person.

Is the standard-of-living bubble ready to burst?

Over at Fortune, Geoff Colvin, senior editor at large, weighs in with the next big financial crisis: "We made it through the bursting of the Internet bubble and now the bursting of the real estate bubble. Next we may be approaching the end of the most worrisome bubble of all: the standard-of-living bubble."

And:

"Since credit card debt has been growing much faster than the economy -- more than 8% in last year's third and fourth quarters and over 7% in May (the most recent month reported) -- people are apparently using it as a substitute for income. Thus, for the past year or so we have still maintained the standard-of-living illusion."

Bottom line?

"Sustainable increases in living standards have to be earned, not borrowed, and that means performing ever higher value work that can't be outsourced. We haven't been meeting that challenge very well; doing so will probably require much more and better education for millions of Americans, which takes time and money. The result may feel like deprivation, but I don't see it that way. Who knows -- we might even find that living within our means and saving a little money actually isn't so bad."

The problem with having talking chairs in hotel rooms

Let's take a quick trip back 55 years to August 1953. An article in that month's Mechanix Illustrated highlights ill-fated inventions, such as talking hotel chairs, which were giving a whirl at the Hotel Edison in Midtown. The concept: When a person eased himself into the chair, his weight would actuate a lever that would start a record playing. When he got up, it would stop. Irwin Kramer, vice president of the Hotel Edison, said of the chairs, “It would be a direct means of advertising. When a guest came into his room and sat down, we thought he’d be pleased to hear something like 'welcome to the Hotel Edison,' and a description of some of our features. We thought it would be quite a novelty.” Right! According to the article, "A pretty girl came in, plumped herself wearily into the chair and the monologue started. She leaped up, peered into the closet and under the bed, then ran screaming into the hall. 'There’s a man in my room,' she gasped. The management had to quiet her." Soon after, the hotel removed the chairs.

Previously on EV Grieve:
At the Hotel Edison: An appreciation

Nothing's shocking?

The John Varvatos fall 2008 fall campaign finds Perry Farrell on the Bowery. According to the John Varvatos Web site, the ads were shot "on top of and around the landmark 315 Bowery building in NYC's East Village." The "campaign reveals Farrell's enigmatic personality and captures Varvatos' detailed sensibility in their truest forms."

Oh, don't mind us: More music videos featuring NYC in the background

So I've been having fun with Alex at Flaming Pablum posting music videos featuring NYC as a backdrop. (He had some real blasts from the past for me: Biohazard! House of Pain!) Anyway, I started the other day with more cheesy fare, but am now getting into stuff that I like.

Sonic Youth, "Kool Thing"


Sonic Youth, "Do You Believe in Rapture?" (An ode to CBGB)

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Railroad Jerk, "Rollerkoaster"


Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, "The Message"


LOUSY quality video of King Missile, "Detachable Penis" (good shots of the old Kiev on Seventh Street and Second Avenue)


Joe Strummer and the Mescaleros, "Redemption Song" (Not that old, of course, but a lovely tribute)

Dumpster of the day

East Ninth Street between Avenue A and First Avenue.

Looking at the corner of Avenue A and Sixth Street

I'm not sure what's going on here at this prime slab of East Village real estate at 95 Avenue A at Sixth Street. There was no one around to ask. Venetian food joint Via Delle Zoccolette (which means "song of the pretty girl" -- yeah, I didn't know either) is either going through an extensive remodeling job or it's out of business. Even their canopy is gone.

At the Hotel Edison: An appreciation

Whenever we start reading about old-school joints such as Frankie and Johnnie's facing the wrecking ball, it makes us appreciate the city's remaining institutions even more. Places such as the Hotel Edison and its diner, Cafe Edison (you know, the Polish Tea Room) that Neil Simon and other Broadway types would frequent for its blintzes, borscht and goulash. The hotel, on West 47th Street next to the W smack in the middle of Times Square, was built in 1931, as its Web site trumpets, "in the same grand Art Deco style as Radio City Music Hall." Anecdotes abound about the Edison, like whether the scene in which Luca Brasi gets rubbed out in The Godfather was filmed here...or the Hotel St. George in Brooklyn Heights. Whatever. No matter how dusty around the corners this place is, it remains a treasure from the past.

I have a few more photos on my Flickr page.

"Serial evictees" and rotten tenants

Interesting post by Manhattan-based real-estate attorney Joseph Ferrara about "serial evictees" at the sellsius blog yesterday. As he explains, "A serial evictee will rent an apartment or home with no intention of paying rent (other than the 1 month + security to get in the place). Instead, they plan to get evicted -– after they work the system for up to a year in free rent or cut a deal with the landlord to move out."

I'll let him continue.

"I ran into a few of these clever folks. One of my favorite stories involves an ingenious young woman who stopped paying rent and then staged her own lock-out (with a police report as proof), knowing the penalty in NYC was triple damages plus legal fees. She wanted my client, a poor spoken immigrant, to give her 6 months free rent…. or else. My investigation uncovered the fraud — turned out she was dating a law student who gave her the idea, which she had used several times with success. When I was cross-examining her on the stand and she realized her cover was blown, she literally bolted from the witness stand and tried to run out of the court room. She was tackled by the court officer and hauled into the judge’s chamber (along with her attorney). Only my compassionate client saved her from a new address, with free rent, at the city jail."

OK. Anyway, the post went on to highlight a new site called rottentenant.com -- "landlords venting and helping landlords."

Billy Joel ruins St. Mark's Place: More 80s video fun

We've been having some fun of late finding cheeseball 80s videos shot in New York. Alex at Flaming Pablum has found a few more doozies...(as well as some actually good songs, like Surgery and Freedy Johnston). The dooziest of the doozies, though, belongs to Billy Joel's "A Matter of Trust" video shot on St. Mark's circa 1986. (The embedding thingee was disabled by request...) Good counsel from Alex regarding this song: "Best to turn the sound down..."

[Note from EV Grieve: I changed some of the original copy in this next section at 12:51...I explain it a little more in the comments...]

Meanwhile, moving away from the cheeseball category, here are some more 1980s videos with New York serving as a backdrop....I submit Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out" ...



And, with apologies, Sting's "Englishman in New York" (Why am I apologizing? I like the song/video, but not Sting so much...)



Don't worry -- there are plenty more to come....

Get me out of this Ugly New Building!

I managed to miss the news back in late May of artist Dan Witz adding his own touches to the luxury housing popping up everywhere from here to Brooklyn. In case you did too. He writes in a blog post: "Personally, I can't say I like the new modern architecture very much, it's sterile and so arrogantly disconnected with its surroundings sometimes it seems like giant alien space ships have landed in the night."

Still, the new buildings provide him with a backdrop for creating art. So! "These are photo-based, heavily re-painted stickers, mounted on plastic and glued to the walls of the Ugly New Buildings. I hit the Lower East Side and East Village in Manhattan, and Bushwick, Dumbo, Greenpoint and Williamsburg out here in Brooklyn."

I'm writing about this now because I just came across some of his work in the East Village and decided to do a little research. (These are his photos below; there are more on his Flickr page.)

Meanwhile, in Saint-Tropez

Please allow this quick diversion away from EV Grieve's usual topics...where we visit the pages of Page Six Magazine for The Ivana-logues, the high-society column written by Ivana Trump. Without comment:

To get to a party in Saint-Tropez last week, guests were asked to board a shuttle bus to the property. Well, I have not been on a bus in 20 years and I’m not about to get on one now. So I see this gorgeous French police guy with his big motorbike. I go up to him in my high heels—the guy has no idea who I am, he just sees a good-looking chick—and I say, “Monsieur, can you give me a ride?” I jump on the bike and he has these huge shoulders and he takes me two-and-a-half miles, through the bushes, to the party. When he drops me off, he says, “You look like Ivana Trump.” I say, “I am Ivana Trump and thank you so much for the ride.” He totally freaked out.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Post scribe thinks turmoil in Africa is so trendy in the news right now!

Claim: New York is the most competitive city in the world

According to the Global Urban Competitiveness Project (as reported in The Economist), New York is the most competitive city in the world.

Of course, there is a problem with this No. 1 ranking, as Gawker weekend editor Ian Spiegelman notes: "Competitive people are assholes, and there are too goddamn many of them here!" [Via Gawker]