It's not polite to stare

On Fourth Avenue near 13th Street. I have to admit I was curious what this ad was for...Any guesses? What is the logical client for an ad with a model making the Ass Face? A hotel, of course! The Fontainebleau in Miami Beach. Part of the hotel's "rediscover" campaign.

Oh, as you probably know, the formerly iconic hotel was featured in Goldfinger.

Dumpster of the day

10th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B.

"The landscape of New York will be virtually unchanged for two years"

From the Times:

Nearly $5 billion in development projects in New York City have been delayed or canceled because of the economic crisis, an extraordinary body blow to an industry that last year provided 130,000 unionized jobs, according to numbers tracked by a local trade group.

The setbacks for development — perhaps the single greatest economic force in the city over the last two decades — are likely to mean, in the words of one researcher, that the landscape of New York will be virtually unchanged for two years.

“There’s no way to finance a project,” said the researcher, Stephen R. Blank of the Urban Land Institute, a nonprofit group.

Charles Blaichman is not about to argue with that assessment. Looking south from the eighth floor of a half-finished office tower on 14th Street on a recent day, Mr. Blaichman pointed to buildings he had developed in the meatpacking district. But when he turned north to the blocks along the High Line, once among the most sought-after areas for development, he surveyed a landscape of frustration: the planned sites of three luxury hotels, all stalled by recession.

My apologies!

Got drawn into some dumbass barside conversation...I said with much certainty that, despite being released on Nov. 27, the stuffed turkey Australia was no longer playing anywhere in the city.



I was wrong: It's at the Village East! Hurry! Should be on DVD by Tuesday.

When a beloved neighborhood bar relocates...

Do the regulars follow? On the eve of the P & G closing and moving, the Times looks into the issue...

[I]f drinking and dining have always been a moveable feast in New York, is charisma cartable? Can the character of everything from venerable pubs to palatial eateries migrate with their names and owners? This portability issue has gained new urgency in a season of economic disarray, when property owners are less willing to extend the leases of even the most beloved old-timers.

Loyalists can be fickle, and geography perilous. “New York is so provincial, three blocks is a huge distance,” said Patrick Daley, the owner of Kettle of Fish, the classic step-down barroom at 59 Christopher Street in Sheridan Square, in the space formerly inhabited by the Lion’s Head, a lionized writers’ pub, which closed in 1996.

Not in the article but worth noting: Sophie's moved from Avenue A to its current location on East Fifth Street in the mid-1980s.

Previously on EV Grieve:
An appreciation: the P & G Cafe

Noted

Dunno how long this flier has been up...but I just noticed it yesterday at Seventh Street and Avenue A. The flier goes on to accuse an area business owner of hiring "child molesters." It's signed by a "concerned parent in the neighborhood."

Random photos from Dec. 24 here and in Midtown and a little bit of the UES

Meanwhile, a little closer to home...

Gifts that weren't given or received this Dec. 25

At Duane Reade. Maybe next year Tom!

The Kids are Alright

1998. Coney Island High. Joey Ramone and the Dictators.

My mind is going. I can feel it

I can't help myself. Seventh Street at First Avenue.



What the liar said earlier:
This is the last post related to a King-of-the-Hill beheading or vandalism -- unless somebody does something really clever or cruel (or more cruel)

Confirmed! Robin Raj moving from corner to 114 Third Ave.

The Robin Raj bodega is preparing to move two doors down to 114 Third Ave., the site of the former Grace and Hope Mission. Their soon-to-be-former site on the corner of 14th Street and Third Avenue is up for grabs. Perhaps a nice shiny tower to keep in line with the neighborhood?

Slow news day in Kansas City?

The Kansas City Star today picked up that Times wire service article on cocktail geeks of the LES that we mentioned Dec. 3.

The Star's headline: Amateur cocktail connoisseurs form brotherhood over ice.

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

Some news of interest from this week...in case you've been traveling...

The Times concludes its Then/Now series with shots of Times Square (New York Times)

Everything on the Coney Island boardwalk is for lease -- including Ruby's (Curbed)

Jefferson Market to live again? (Flaming Pablum)

The gas station at the end of the world (East of Bowery)

Appreciating Joe Jr.'s (Jeremiah's Vanishing NY)

More destruction on Ludlow Street (BoweryBoogie)

Marking the sixth anniversary of Joe Strummer's death (Stupefaction)

At the Blarney Cove! (Greenwich Village Daily Photo)

Founder of the East Village History Project can no longer afford to live in the neighborhood

The Times has a nice piece today on the East Village Trivia Night held at the Bowery Poetry Club this past Tuesday. As the paper reports:

“Who was born there? Who died there? Who was shot there?” said the organizer of the event, Eric Ferrara. “We’re interested in everything that’s notable and not so notable.”

Indeed, even before the neighborhood trivia contest began, there was much discussion over the little matter of what to call the neighborhood.

Although contemporary maps generally refer to the area of the East Side between 14th Street and Houston Street as the East Village and reserve the Lower East Side label for the neighborhood south of Houston, most older maps call the entire area the Lower East Side. Some old-timers eschew the East Village name as an aspirational invention of real estate interests trying to pump up property values.

“I use East Village professionally because it is what people know today,” Mr. Ferrara said. “But with family and comrades we still call it the Lower East Side.”

Ferrara grew up on Suffolk Street and is a fourth-generation Lower East Sider. He and some like-minded residents started the East Village History Project in 2001. (Their mission: raise the public's awareness of the East Village/Lower East Side's historic significance and influence in world history.)

The article ends on a rather sad note...it's a shame that a lifelong resident and passionate advocate for the area has to now live elsewhere...

Mr. Ferrara said that he does not reflexively oppose gentrification, but lamented that he had recently moved across the East River to Brooklyn after being evicted from a rent-stabilized apartment on East Third Street.

“I can’t even afford to live in my own neighborhood anymore,” he said.