This morning by the Pee Phone

Avenue A and Seventh Street.

(Updated) Rally to Save Ray's: A little while ago on Avenue A

The protest/fundraiser/street party for Ray's Candy Store continues...stop by and say hello to the Slacktivists... go inside and buy something to eat or drink...

Melanie has posted some of her photos here. ... Bob Arihood has photos, too, at Neither More Nor Less. ... Slum Goddess has more, including a short narrative about the evening. As she wrote:

People stood across from Ray's with signs and candles and chanted at people to buy stuff to help Ray. I wasn't sure if this would scare people away and hinder business, but business was really good for Ray and Ray was very happy about all the support and love shown.

There will be more on this later...

Previously.

Tompkins Square Park, 9:12 a.m., Jan 23

Will New York City gets its very own Whopper Bar?

Oh, probably. From the Post today:

The restuarant chain is set to open a Whopper Bar, offering hamburgers and beer, in the South Beach section of Miami in mid-February. USA Today reported Friday that more Whopper Bars could be coming to hot spots such as New York, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, according to Chuck Fallon, president of Burger King North America.

At the Whopper Bar, beer will be served in aluminum bottles to keep them cold [an EV Grieve intrusion: how novel!] and cost $4.25. A Whopper combo with a beer costs $7.99, roughly $2 more than the same combo meal with a fountain drink.

The Whopper Bar concept offers hamburgers such as the Whopper, Double Whopper or Steakhouse XT built by employees known as a Whopper-ista.... There are 22 different toppings to choose from to build your sandwich.

Meanwhile, on Wall Street...

Report: 16 pedestrian deaths on the LES from 2006-2008

Today, the Times looks at data from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. From 2006-2008, 445 pedestrians were killed during the three-year period. According to the report: "In Manhattan, which had 120 deaths during the period, the heaviest concentration of deaths, 16, was on the Lower East Side, just south of the Williamsburg Bridge." Third Avenue was the deadliest road in the city, with nine fatalities during that time period.

Wild at heart

A Karate Boogaloo pick from over at the New York Nobody Sings. It's Garland Jeffreys, from 1973.

Updated: Save Ray's Day set: Feb. 6 (and a new three-day ultimatum from the landlord)

The above photo of Ray's was taken by Joann Jovinelly, who kindly let me repost this from her Flickr account.

So! Sidewalk Cafe, 94 Avenue A at Sixth Street, will be hosting a benefit show on Saturday, Feb. 6 for Ray's Candy Store. More details to follow. If you want to play or help out in any way, then please get in touch with Leah at:

boyslikebarbies@gmail.com

Meanwhile, Bob Arihood, who has been reporting on Ray's long before anyone else, noted the brisk business at Ray's on Wednesday night... good news to hear. Meanwhile, as Bob reports, Ray turns 77 on Monday. Will there be any surprise visitors, like dancers?

UPDATE: Somehow I inexplicably missed this in Bob's post: Last night, Ray received another three-day ultimatum from the landlord. As Bob noted in the comments: "It was very troubling for those who heard about it."


And, as a reminder...

There's now a Save Ray's Twitter feed, which will have the latest updates...

www.twitter.com/saverays

And there's the Save Ray's Facebook page, which ]has more than 1,200 members now...

And tomorrow night:

There's a protest/fundraiser/street party Saturday night at 8 for Ray's Candy Store. It's being organized by Black Ops Bob and the Slacktivists.

More LES/EV eatery listicle debate

[Photo via here Look, no Ludlow building!]

After last week's top-10 East Village eateries list... Fork in Road today puts out its top-10 list for the Lower East Side....

10. Congee Village (Cantonese), 100 Allen Street, 212-941-1818

9. Clinton Street Baking Company (American), 4 Clinton Street, 646-602-6263

8. Alias (New American), 76 Clinton Street, 212-505-5011

7. Sorella (Italian/Piedmont), 95 Allen Street, 212-274-9595

6. 'inoteca (Small plates Italian), (Italian), 98 Rivington Street, 212-614-0473

5. Kuma Inn, (South East Asian tapas), 113 Ludlow Street,
212-353-8866

4. Apizz (Southern Italian), 217 Eldridge Street, 212-253-9199

3. Katz's Delicatessen (Delicatessen), 205 East Houston Street, 212-254-2246

2. Cafe Katja (Austria), 79 Orchard Street, 212-219-9545

1. Falai (Italian/Florentine), 68 Clinton Street, 212-253-1960

No Odessa! Why you *&^%*#%*&^3! (Ha! Kidding!)

Anyway, dunno if I have the energy to debate another list! In any event, I always like Rebecca Marx's work, so I have to trust her on some of these... Plus, I've only eater at three of these places... and I have a horrible bias against Clinton Street Baking Company purely based on the crowd waiting to get in on weekend mornings...

Meanwhile!



As you may recall, last Friday (and into the weekend), there was some debate hereabouts over Robert Sietsema's top-10 East Village eateries listicle... The choices are also prompting some healthy discussion at Chowhound too... (Via Eater)

Previously on EV Grieve:
A listicle to debate: The best East Village restaurants

Workers begins shoring up St. Brigid's exterior wall (and crack)

Thanks to the EV Grieve reader for these photos.... As the renovation continues at St. Brigid's on Avenue B and Eighth Street, crews are setting up scaffolding this morning to start one of the major challenges of this project: repairing the large crack on the north side, which is partially detached from the church. (The Villager had an article on the architectural plans last March)






Here's a closer look....

Send me an angel

Thanks to Scoopy for the mention this week in The Villager... and for passing this along...

Ray needs an angel:
A local blog reader, on EV Grieve, we believe (hey, that rhymes), might have come up with the best hope — well, maybe it’s more like a prayer — for saving Ray’s Candy Store, at Seventh St. and Avenue A, from eviction. Sure, a fundraiser to pay Ray Alvarez’s last two months rent would be great, but what about going forward? Goggla posted: “Maybe the mysterious donor who stepped in and saved St. Brigid’s will extend their generosity to another neighborhood landmark. If the $8K is raised to save Ray, what about the next month, and the one after that?” In May 2008, the Catholic Archdiocese announced it had accepted an anonymous $20 million donation to restore St. Brigid’s Church and save it from demolition. More recently, an anonymous donor gave the ABC No Rio arts collective $1 million. Could Ray be next?

NYC unemployment rate now 10.6 percent

From the Times:

The unemployment rate in New York City jumped in December to 10.6 percent, its highest level in nearly 17 years, as hotels, museums and builders eliminated jobs and hiring remained weak in most other businesses, the State Labor Department said Thursday.

How many ConEd pylons does it take to change a lightbulb?

Avenue A and Sixth Street.

Let the sandwich wars begin!

EV Grieve reader Creature sent these shots of the Cuban sandwich shop that opens today at Sixth Street and Avenue A... the first of the new Cuban-themed empire coming to this corner...





A few feet away...Bahn Mi Zon, the newish Vietnamese sandwich shop... Who will win the battle of the sandwiches...?



Previously on EV Grieve:
More on 95 Avenue A: Private chef's lounge and a rum punch bar

Dallas BBQ unveils new to-go containers

OK, OK... they're just remodeling their to-go portion of the place on St. Mark's Place.

Former Strand Annex now a Lot Less closeout store

The Strand Annex at 95 Fulton Street in the Financial District closed in October 2008... due, in part, to a 300 percent rent hike on its 15,000-square-foor home...



...and now, I just noticed that a Lot Less closeout store has taken over the space...



One more strike against the reinvention of Fulton Street and FiDi...

The Bowery, 4:57 p.m., Jan. 21

On the Lower East Side, New Yorkers no longer talking like New Yorkers, research finds

From Fox News:

In the early 1990s, comedian Mike Myers regularly dressed up in a giant wig, gaudy fake nails and gigantic sunglasses to become Linda Richman -- a stereotypical New Yorker who had fits of feeling "verklempt" and thought that Barbara Streisand's voice was "like buttah."

"Welcome to Coffee Talk," Myers said at the beginning of his Saturday Night Live sketch, twisting the vowels with an exaggerated New York accent.

This unique accent -- which has set New Yorkers apart for decades -- may now be disappearing among some of Gotham's natives, according to a Jan. 9 presentation at the Linguistic Society of America in Baltimore.

In 1966, linguist William Labov noticed that New York City residents had a peculiar way of saying words like "bought" and "daughter" that pushed the vowels up and into the back of the throat. He included this linguistic quirk, the "raised bought," in his "Atlas of North American English," a definitive text for scientists who study language.

"The longer your family's residence in New York, the more likely you are to raise bought," said Kara Becker, a graduate student at New York University in Manhattan.

Becker revisited the way people talk on Manhattan's Lower East Side for the first time in 40 years. Working with local community activist groups, she interviewed 64 native speakers over the course of two years and analyzed thousands of vowel sounds in their speech.

Older residents like Michael, born in 1933, still sound like New Yorkers when describing their mother's "sauce." But younger residents of Manhattan's Lower East Side, like 25-year-old Sam, did not pronounce "talk" and "cause" like their older neighbors, even though their families have lived in the neighborhood for several generations.

Donald is well and missing the East Village

On Dec. 30, I wrote a post on Donald, a longtime East Village resident who had been evicted from his home earlier in the fall. I was unaware of what had happened to him.

This week, I was grateful that Neil Janowitz, one of Donald's former neighbors on East Fifth Street, sent me a note with updates... Neil has visited Donald several times the last six weeks or so. Neil also filled in some of the biographical information that I was curious about (and he provided me with the new photos on this post). "His full name is Donald Baumgartner, he's 58 years old and he loves himself some Jackie Gleason," Neil told me.



What follows are some excerpts from an e-mail exchange between me and Neil:

------

I was out of town when he got evicted, and came home to find an eviction notice on his door. Our landlord confirmed that he had been evicted, but would or could not tell me where he had been relocated. A few weeks later, I happened across an old entry in the journal that described Donald telling me about 11 Park Place, which he said was the source of his money. ... They informed me he was in the psychiatric ward at Bellevue, and that they were looking for a place to permanently move him.

I visited Donald at Bellevue in late December. The man looked good, but was hell-bent on getting out. He asked a lot about 5th Street — about his old apartment (it's being extensively renovated by an eastern European construction crew that has an affinity for Lady Gaga tunes), the tenants in our building ... We spoke for a half hour, and I left him with my phone number. A couple weeks later, he told me during a call that he was being discharged on January 12. I asked where he would be going, and he said he didn't know.

A week after that, I got a collect call from Donald. Figuring I could just call him back at Bellevue, I declined the charges and called his ward. The nurse on duty told me he had indeed been discharged that afternoon. I asked where he was. She said she didn't know.

------

I panicked briefly about having refused Donald's call, but he tried again five minutes later. I accepted, and he told me he was at East Haven Nursing Home in the Bronx. Way up in the Bronx. He gave me the address, and a friend, Molly, and I visited him on Saturday. For reasons the receptionist couldn't disclose he is considered a "high alert" patient, meaning Molly and I couldn't talk to him in private. We had to drag a bench and chair into the lobby and catch up with him there. He's even saltier about being in the nursing home than he was about Bellevue, and spent the majority of the visit asking Molly and I to write a letter to the resident social working requesting his discharge. He then showed me a note the social worker had given him. It said he would be discharged on July 2. I have to wait and speak to the social worker to find out where he'll go at that point.

------

Donald never mentioned any family other than his sister, Anne (died in January '08), his mom, Anna (died in 1993) and his father, whose name Donald either didn't know or didn't want to share. He didn't get along with his father, who died in 1968.

------



I know he had been in the 511 E. Fifth St. apartment for 25 or 30 years, and prior to that was in another building on 5th Street ... His place in 511 was a trip. Like a time warp. No one had renovated it in two or three decades, so it had a bathtub in the kitchen, two interior bedrooms with windows that looked out on the living room and lots of built-in cabinets and trunks. The floor was so badly worn that you could see various layers / flooring styles dating back an unknowable amount of time.

------

I spoke to Donald last night. In case it interests you. He lived at 82 Avenue B until 1967, at which point he moved into 511 E. 5th. He also attended junior high school at JHS 104, on 20th St., but didn't complete it.

------

Yeah, he's jonesing for the East Village. He asked if he could move in with me. Though, interestingly, when I asked where else he would want to live, he mentioned Brooklyn. Said he's been scouring the Daily News for listings out there. But he didn't know which neighborhood he would want, and couldn't specify what he liked about Brooklyn.



Previously on EV Grieve:
Gone but not forgotten: Donald

Cutting condo prices by 20 percent on East Second Street

Back in November, we took a look at the new million-dollar condos hitting the market on East Second Street between Avenue B and Avenue C.... there were five units, ranging then from $1.2 to $1.9 million...

You remember 229 E. Second St., it looked like this...



And now...



In any event, the price of each unit was just chopped by anywhere from 10 percent to 20 percent... as StreetEasy (and Trulia) shows... the priciest of the units has dropped to $1.61 million from $1.98 million... ... what to do with that extra $380,000?

Well, they look like great homes...



...so close to the trash-strewn lot next door (one of my favorites)...



...and the busy fire station directly across the street...

Previously on EV Grieve:
Million dollar condos hit the market on East Second Street

229 E. Second St. sprouts a roof deck

Post-seizure sale at Thai on Two

Thai on Two on Second Avenue near 12th Street closed several weeks ago...




..and now we learn from East Village Feed that there's a big auction there on Feb. 3... Per Craigslist, everything looks to be going, from cases of beer and wine to fish tanks... Via the listing, in that ANNOYING ALL-CAP style:

CONTENTS OF RESTAURANT TO INCLUDE
FULL ITCH, POTS PANS COMMERCIAL DUSHWASHER 2 FRIALOTORS, WOLF OVEN STAINLESS WORK STATIONS, ORIENTAL WET STATION GRILL, PLATES, CHAIRS 14 WROUGHT IRON OUTDOOR TABLES, BEAUTIFUL ORIGINAL ANTIQUE GOLD LEAF MIRROR APPX 6'.
AN ORIGINAL 16 FOOT ANTIQUE MAHOGHONY BAR COMPLETE WOLD IN FREEZER BOX. SOME CASES OF BEER AND WINE, CC MACHINE STEREO, BLENDERS, 2 FISHTANKS ON STAND, FIXTURES

More on 95 Avenue A: Private chef's lounge and a rum punch bar

Keep seeing more details about what's coming to 95 Avenue A at Sixth Street. Sounds like quite the little empire. This detail is from Metromix:

From a team featuring alum from Mayahuel, Death & Co., and Bourgeois Pig, Carteles is the first of a four-part planned series of Cuban-themed bars and restaurants collectively known as Cienfuegos. The other phases include a rum punch bar, a more formal Cuban restaurant, and a private chef's lounge, but for now this tiny storefront is serving a menu of carefully curated sandwiches.

This all suddenly seems like less of a restaurant and more of a scene.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Coming soon: Work starts on Cienfuegos at long-dormant (and soon-to-be-expanded) 95 Avenue A

Something finally coming to 95 Avenue A

The Save Ray's Twitter feed

There's now a Save Ray's Twitter feed, which will have the latest updates...

www.twitter.com/saverays

And there's the Save Ray's Facebook page, which already has 783 members...

Save Ray's organizers are also putting together a benefit concert. Anyone interested in performing can send an e-mail to Lilly O'Donnell: lillytylluan@gmail.com

Meanwhile, here's a screenshot of Ray's from "What About Me" by East Village filmmaker Rachel Amodeo. She wrote, directed and starred in "What About Me, which was filmed in the late 1980s and early 1990s, with a release in 1993.

Rusty Knot Party Bus makes East Village debut

As Eater noted, last night marked the debut of the Rusty Knot Party Bus, which picks up Knotgoers in Williamsburg and the East Village and plies them with alcohol before they go to the nautica-themed faux dive on the West Side Highway for a big party or something ...

Given the crazy-cat Web site, I figured this might be a shitshow...



I had no intention of getting on the bus -- just curious what might happen while waiting to board. The bus was scheduled to stop at First Street and First Avenue at 8:30 last night (and later at 10:30) ...and it promptly rolled up at 8:28.




Two people were waiting to board. Three more people hustled across First Avenue... other passengers included three-four people who were waiting inside at One and One...and three guys who arrived on skateboards. So 12 by my count. No one was in costume. And only two people sort of squealed while boarding.



The bus idled for nearly 15 minutes...



...before taking off, making a clumsy left onto Third Street...

Gratuitous bikini photo alert: Sports Illustrated swimsuit model buys East Second Street pad

According to a post yesterday on BlockShopper Manhattan, Australian swimsuit model Pania Rose and her beau bought an East Second Street condo for $712,000.

We look forward to seeing her at Hamilton Fish Park this summer.


[Image via SI]

Small shops continue to struggle

We noticed that small shops were either closed or on their way out on Avenue B near 12th Street...



...First Street near First Avenue...



...and Avenue C near Sixth Street...

What cigarettes will cost during Bloomberg's 10th term in office...

An EV Grieve reader sent along the following photo from the bodega on Third Street and Second Avenue... A rather startling price for Newports: $97.5....

Mysterious 81 Cafe mysteriously back open

Last fall, we noticed that Krystal's 81 Cafe, the former Verchovyna Tavern aka George's Bar aka Bar 81, on Seventh Street near First Avenue started keeping irregular hours... Then, the bar never reopened as promised on Oct. 1 after a vacation. We hadn't seen it open since then. Until!

Last night, the bar was back open, a happy hour sign out front...



Previously on EV Grieve:
Cafe 81 will be back from vacation on Oct. 1

At Butcher Bay: A dishwashing/laundry equipment notice

Things still seem awfully quiet at Butcher Bay on East Fifth Street.... Back in November, the eatery papered over the windows...the sign on the door said: "...closed temporarily to write our memoirs..." The other day, we noticed an addition to the front door...



...this sticker.



Perhaps Auto-Chlor wants their equipment back?

Previously on EV Grieve:
Butcher Bay deep-sixed?