Price melting on "Soho-style" igloo in Tompkins Square Park

On Friday, we wrote about a new listing that popped up on Prudential Douglas Elliman for a "Soho-style" igloo right in the heart of East Greenwich Village in Tompkins Square Park.

On Friday, the 15-square-foot igloo was priced at $1.5 million ($100K per square foot!)



However, today, the price has been chopped down to $500K!

Here's the listing:

This fully original Soho igloo is ready to go at a stunning and spacious 15 square feet!! Located in a new igloo and facing southeast off the Park you will enjoy the setting sun, quiet nights, and all the space!! The ground has been white washed for a tasteful but artful look. There is a flat screen TV nook that has been smartly placed in the living space so the TV will flow seamlessly against the snow. Closets everywhere, bath and a half, open kitchen round out this one-of-a-kind one igloo flex two loft space. The igloo is a condo so subletting and renting are permitted. Pets are welcome!

According to Streeteasy, this property originally went on the market around this time last year, but was quickly pulled several warmer days later...

There was an open igloo this past Friday...



...where potential igloo-buyers discovered that the space may be best suited for those under say, 3 feet tall.




If you're interested, then I urge you to hurry. The temperatures are expected in the mid 40s today...

Cafe Brama closes

An EV Grieve reader passed along work that Cafe Brama on Second Avenue near 10th Street had closed... We walked by several times ourselves during prime business hours...and the gate was always down. And no one is answering their phone.

I was unaware of Cafe Brama's origins...Per their Web site:

We, Kostas & Christos, brothers, were born in Poland as children of political refugees, and we grew up in a strong Greek community proudly promoting our culture. After the fall of the Berlin wall Poland become a place with unlimited possibilities and in 1992 we opened the first Cafe Brama. We named it "Brama" which means "Gate" in Polish since it was founded in Szczecin, Poland in the historical Brama Krolewska (King's Gate). King's Gate was built in the acquisition of Pomerania by Prussia.

In 1996 we moved to Warsaw to open another Cafe Brama there and our success allowed us to expand the business and open six locations in the Polish capital. After fourteen years of success and recognition we decided to open Cafe Brama in New York and we chose the East Village because of its casual and comfortable ambience. We belive that the community will welcome the quality and style of the food that we love.

The former Mingala Burmese Restaurant on the block

The same EV Grieve reader who passed along the Cafe Brama news also noted that Mingala Burmese Restaurant at 21 East Seventh St. (a few doors east of McSorley's) had closed. Indeed. I didn't even notice that the place had shuttered and been put up for sale so quickly... The rent is $9,300, according to the Tower Brokerage listing. There is also a Mingala Burmese on the Upper East Side.

Don't you forget about ...our breakfast bar...

Outside Whole Foods on Houston and the Bowery. Not the best Anthony Michael Hall that I've ever seen...

First sign of spring: Tables outside Zum Schneider

Yesterday afternoon outside Zum Schnieder, Avenue C and Seventh Street.

Home for a hawk

EV Grieve reader Erin notes that one of the hawks frequently seen around the neighborhood (and Tompkins Square Park) has been hanging out in an area behind Sixth and Seventh Streets, between Avenues B and C... (seen above to the right on the fire escape...)

Previously on EV Grieve:
A red-tailed hawk on Seventh Street

The Daily News gets a circulation boost

While walking on Avenue B earlier today near 11th Street, I noticed that a stack of the Daily News had been dropped off in front of an apartment building. Likely more papers than residents here. A random act of Daily News kindness? Or part of some Post-Daily News circulation feud?

Classroom lights

At Cooper Union and St. George's from Sixth Street...

Reminders: Ray's delivery

And the menu...




Previously on EV Grieve:
Ray's new Saturday evening delivery service starts tomorrow

Day of snow

As I was the first to report, it snowed yesterday... and some readers were nice enough to send along some photos to help provide a slice of life in the neighborhood from yesterday...

Minnie Romanovich




Megan Morrissey
@mmorrissey





Ken Mac

The day after

Seventh Street and First Avenue

Everything that you've ever wanted to know about the Rusty Knot Party Bus

In January I wrote a post about the Rusty Knot Party Bus, which picks up Knotgoers in Williamsburg and then on First Avenue and First Street and plies them with alcohol before they go to the nautica-themed faux dive on the West Side Highway for a swingin' Monday night...

I didn't actually get on the bus. But I was curious!

Thankfully, a Times reporter boarded the party bus... and pretty much answered all my questions... To the story!

“This bus is a little bit like going back to the New York of the ’70s or ’80s, when it wasn’t about the money, it was about the spirit,” said Richard Mark Jordan, an actor from Bushwick who was gyrating in the aisle with friends and high-fiving strangers.

His revelry, while enthusiastic, seemed tame when compared with the crazed riders chanting “Party bus! Party bus!” while pounding their palms on the bus’s windows. Two guys in skateboard sneakers leaped onto a vinyl-upholstered seat, jerking their heads to the metal anthem “Hell Bent for Leather,” air guitars apparently cranked up to 11.

A woman in preppyish attire who in another context might be mistaken for a Congressional aide tried to crawl through a roof hatch, but her progress was blocked by a bolted cover. She had to settle for another form of misbehavior — pouring a can of Bud over a male friend’s head. He didn’t seem to mind.

“This is raging!” said Ryan McGaffigan, a 32-year-old sales manager in a wool cap, plaid shirt and ’50s-style glasses. He had just polished off two Buds “shotgun” — puncturing the can and finishing it in one long swig.

How could it be boring? The bus runs on irony as much as diesel. The basic premise is a cultural inversion: Manhattan tastemakers once sneered at the “bridge and tunnel” crowd overrunning their night spots. Now, they haul them in by the busload.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Rusty Knot Party Bus makes East Village debut

The Alright stuff

Go fish

Since writing about this three-bedroom condo on 13th Street at Avenue A this week, the price has been slashed by 10 percent from $1.175 million to 1.05 million...



And there's an open house Sunday from noon to 1:30. If you go, please let me know if that fish is still there...