Even Duane Reade wants to be a bar in the East Village

Everyone is getting in on the act! Ha, OK...so Duane Reade outlets have sold beer for awhile now...



However, the DR brass has decided to advertise now, like here at Avenue B and Second Street...

EV Grieve Eatery Etc.: The 13th Step's sign; the Stage's holiday

Noted, outside Cheap Shots (or, Spanky and Darla's) on First Avenue...



Noted, outside the Pig on Seventh Street on July 4...



There's an opening-night party at the 13th Step tonight... I was kindly given an invite to stop by too...



And don't be alarmed to see the Stage closed for awhile...



..they're just taking a summer break...

Same time next year

And from James and Karla Murray, a shot of some East Village fireworks from last night...



[Photo via James and Karla Murray Photography]

Seems like a nice way to end a holiday weekend

Thanks to EV Grieve reader Shawn Chittle for the photo.

NYC's shifting demographics, and the vanishing middle class

I'm catching up on some news...The Times noted that for the first time since the 1970s, a majority of Manhattan's population is non-Hispanic white. According to census figures examined by the paper, the white share of the population rose to 51 percent last year from 40 percent in the 1990s. The rest of the borough's residents were 24 percent Hispanic, 14 percent black and 11 percent Asian.

Per the Times:

Scott M. Stringer, the Manhattan borough president, expressed concern that the "conflation of luxury development and good strong public housing stock" means that "that the borough is becoming a place for very, very wealthy people and enclaves for poor people and that middle-income people are finding it impossible to stay here."

[Image via]

Noted

From the Page Six "Sightings" today:

Scarlett Johansson, in a fedora and thick, black-rimmed glasses, playing pool at Lucy's in the East Village . . .

Noted

At the L stop on First Avenue and 14th Street.

Nighthawks... and Nighthawks

Remember Jeremiah's series on looking for Hopper's Nighthawks? He wrote a condensed version of it for the Times... and his op-ed appears there today.

Meanwhile! Speaking of Nighthawks...reminds me that I haven't seen "Nighthawks," the surprisingly decent Sly Stallone-Rutger Hauer thriller from 1981 in years....it features a climatic scene aboard the Roosevelt Island tram...



(Image via Roosevelt Island 360 ... where you can read more about the movie...)

The CBGB saga continues

For those of you following the CBGB Estate-Buyer saga... Karate Boogaloo has more on it... As KB notes: "I find it very difficult to believe that anyone could purchase a brand name like CBGB, and NOT be able to do something...anything...with it."

[Image via.]

First Street, 10:21 a.m., July 4

You've been warned! And I am taking names!

Good way to make "up to" $1,000... narc on your friends with fireworks from their visit to South Carolina. And what is in that cup there? Hope that it's not a urine sample. 13th Street and Avenue A.

Greetings

From the incomparable Blarney Cove.