Xmas is three weeks from today...

...might as well try to get in the mood...

Does this mean the East Village is no longer dead?

Just looking at the new mural on the Mars Bar...




Previously!



(The above photo via)

And, well...as I already pointed out...

EV Grieve Etc., Mourning edition

Photo on Sixth Street between Avenue A and First Avenue sent along by EV Grieve reader Lambert Jack.

What we wanted for xmas in 1955 (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

City of Strangers returns to the Mars Bar (City of Strangers)

The Bowery hasn't been the same since 1920 (BoweryBoogie)

Looking at the LES art scene (The New York Times)

Basement fire on East Ninth Street (Neither More Nor Less)

Eliade's "The Sacred and the Profane" and a sense of place in Manhattan (Save the Lower East Side!)

The girl gangs of old Manhattan (Ephemeral New York)

Canadian doughnut chain coming to the old Zen Palate space on Union Square (A Fine Blog)

John Legend's Bowery bargain (Curbed)

An appreciation of indie comics (NYPress)

Looking at EV Grieve favorite "The Seven Ups" (This Ain't the Summer of Love)

And then! A wave of liquid heat crashed through her. She looked up to find his eyes on hers, filled with smouldering amusement

Page Six Magazine is back! And with this cover story that begins....good lord!

Padma Lakshmi sits in a cozy corner of the East Village Italian restaurant Supper, her black hair half pulled back, the rest rippling around her shoulders. As she orders a cup of coffee and an appetizer of burrata mozzarella with tomato, basil and grilled bread, the Italian words come out with a perfect roll of the r's. The waiter, eager to please but flustered, strains to avoid looking in the direction of Padma's spectacular breasts.

[Bad romance novel quote via]

Skid marks at the Coop

By now, it seems pretty commonplace to see someone using the new Cooper Union academic building as a makeshift skateboard park... Was pretty funny the first, oh, 10 times....





So how's the old Coop holding up so far? Sure, there's some wear and tear from the skateboarders, roller-bladers, BMX bikers, ass-sliders, etc., but the old gal should be able to stay afloat another 150 years or so.

Is the Coop settling into the neighborhood?

Well, six months after the new Cooper Union academic building opened, the space continues to be welcomed to the neighborhood... Will we ever be friends?

Anyway, students have used the front window to advertise keggers...



It has been tagged...



...and used as a shelter from the elements...



...a skateboard park...



...a meeting place for teen gamers...



...a place to take photos...

Correction of the week: Trump is NOT opening a tiki bar at Trump SoHo™ Hotel Condominium New York

Ha! We love Scoopy for this one... in this weeks's issue of The Villager...

A Scoopy’s Notebook item last week wrongly reported that a ground-floor space in the new Trump Soho tower at Dominick and Spring Sts. is slated to be a tiki bar. Eve McGrath, a P.R. spokesperson for the project, set us straight. "First, the property is Trump SoHo™ Hotel Condominium New York," she said, regarding the edifice complex's proper name. Second, she said, "There is no tiki bar planned for Trump SoHo." In fact, according to an explanatory press release McGrath sent us, the spot will be home to a lounge named Bazaar, "created by the team behind South Beach's hottest nightspots, Miami-based restaurant and hospitality group, KNR… . Bazaar will be the place to see and be seen while enjoying impeccable cocktails and playlists by renowned DJs. Luxuriously textured wood walls have a split-face finish, with a simple polished dark charcoal concrete floor continuing the raw and rich design elements in this posh lounge designed by Rockwell." Maybe the construction worker who gave us the wrong information was basing his opinion on the "textured wood walls" with their "split-face finish," which probably look — we're just taking a wild guess here — tiki bar-ish. On the other hand, maybe he was just an "apprentice." Ka-ching!

What to do with the Permanent Brunch space if the closure becomes Permanent?

Yesterday we noted that Permanent Brunch on First Avenue was still rather closed. So, speculating for just a moment, what if Permanent Brunch never comes back? What to do with the space? Can it return to the laundromat it once was. Nah, not in this neighborhood these days.

EV Grieve reader Goggla really nailed it yesterday with this suggestion:

How about Permanent Press? They could do laundry, serve paninis and print a neighborhood rag.

Posts that I never got around to posting: The Holiday is now open seven days a week

Oops! Meant to post this about 6-7 weeks ago! In any event, good news. Cheesy promotions aside (and we understand you need to make some money), we're pleased that the Holiday is back on a seven-day-a-week schedule. After Stefan's death earlier this year, there were questions his family would even keep the bar going... Soon enough, the Holiday was open just on the weekends. Then, in April the bar expanded its hours to Wednesdays and Thursdays. So here's to a great place to drink Mondays and Tuesdays now... and any other day, really.

Posts that I never got around to posting: Bars that aren't so tweet

Marshall Stack on Allen and Rivington is apparently a no Twitter zone.

Posts that I never got around to posting: Band looking for non-jerk and merc types

First Avenue near Seventh Street.

Another UFO sighting in downtown Manhattan

So, you remember that fireball over the East Village that several people reported seeing this past July?

Yeah, totes a UFO. Anyway, now a credible source — UFOstalker.com — brings word of another UFO sighting downtown, this one on Tuesday.

According to the witness:

This happened during the evening, I do not remember the time. My windows face lower Manhattan, just to give you a point of reference as to where the object was. I was sitting at my desk and decided to look out the window. The moment I did an unusually bright 'star' caught my eye. It was too low and to big to be a star, as I realized. I grabbed my camera and recorded a video. It was not moving, it stayed in that one spot, glowing very brightly. The moment I strayed from the object and filmed the whole sky, the object disappeared. It was gone by the time I moved back to the spot. In the video, you can actually see it disappearing as I move the frame away from it. The object did not reappear after that, and I searched the sky for its light after the video ended. But there was nothing. Several other people saw and even recorded this same object disappearing.

And there's some grainy footage at the site above...

Previously on EV Grieve:
Report: Fireball in the sky above the East Village