Marta reunited with her family

Early Wednesday morning, the NYPD found a woman outside 145 Avenue A. She was disoriented and did not know her whereabouts, per the NYPD. An EMS crew took her to Beth Israel Hospital ...

A few minutes ago, the NYPD sent out this tweet...

twitpic.com/bhajpq - *Update* The woman has been re-united with her family.

— NYPD NEWS (@NYPDnews) November 30, 2012

We posted the original item on Facebook, where one EVG friend recognized the woman as Marta, her former neighbor on East Ninth Street...

Q-and-A with Anonymous, author of 'Diary of an Oxygen Thief' — and East Village resident

"Diary of an Oxygen Thief" was a darkly humorous, self-published autobiographical novel from 2006 about a philandering advertising executive who was also your basic alcoholic and misogynist.

Anonymous is back with "Chameleon On A Kaleidoscope," a sequel of sorts in which the protagonist returns, though this time he is finding his thrills as an online sex addict.

The book, released earlier in the year on Kindle, is available as a hard copy starting next week. (Find more information about both books here.)

Turns out that Anonymous lives in the neighborhood. So via email, we asked Anonymous a few questions about the new novel, self-publishing and life in the East Village.

While writing "Diary of an Oxygen Thief," were you already looking ahead to a second novel picking up where this one left off?

My original intention was to write a book that felt like somebody’s diary. I wanted to give the reader the impression they were eavesdropping. But of course a diary has no finite ending and so it became obvious that there would be a second. That’s when "Chameleon On a Kaleidoscope was born. And now I’m already working on a third in the series; a prequel to "Diary Of An Oxygen Thief." Collectively they’re known as "The Oxygen Thief Diaries."

As a writer, do you envision continuing to remain Anonymous?

Being anonymous is part of the story. I love that there’s no cheesey photo on the backcover and that we don’t have to hear about how the writer lives in Connecticut or San Francisco or Brooklyn or wherever with his two dogs and a cat. Fuck all that. In this case the story is the hero.

Also writing anonymously allows me to inhabit the reader more effectively. Because we can’t Google anyone we’re forced to make up our own minds about what’s happening in the narrative. It actually makes for a more satisfying experience.

What is your top advice for someone considering self-publishing his or her work?

My best advice to a self-published writer is to try to say something that established publishers can’t or won’t. This way your content and marketing merge into one.

How long have you lived in the East Village?

I’ve lived here altogether now for about 10 years — with a break of three years when I moved to Amsterdam. Mostly I love it. I’ve always wanted to live here and I‘m very lucky to have found a rent-controlled building that welcome the likes of me. The area around Tompkins Square is my favorite place in the world. The Helmholtzplatz in Berlin is a close second but only because it reminds me so much of Tompkins Square Park.

Do you have a favorite place to write here? Are you able to accomplish much sitting at, say, a café or a library?

I’m not sure I’m socially equipped to sit in a cafe these days. And I don’t just mean emotionally. Mind you it might just be laptop-envy on my part. But when I do venture out, one of my favorite places is Café Pick Me Up on Avenue A and 9th Street. Perfect for people-watching or more honestly, girl-watching.

Most of my writing is extracted in private in a darkened corner of my fur-lined lair. In fact, writer seems far too pleasant a verb to describe what I do; word-worrier is more accurate.

Do you think the East Village provides a nurturing/creative atmosphere for artistic endeavors? Do you find inspiration here?

The East Village as a neighborhood and my building in particular have been hugely influential in my being able to write fulltime. I’m lucky enough to live in a rent-controlled HDFC that welcomes only artistic tenants so that’s certainly a nurturing environment and since a local woman was murdered in my apartment it came with inspiration ensuite. I can’t wait to write that story.

But let me answer the unasked question here. Yes. The East Village is still cool! I like to tease people from Park Slope and Williamsburg and Bushwick by saying I live a block away from Tompkins Square in West Brooklyn and let them figure it out.

Now what's going on with the Nino's space?

So, Nino's Pizza on Avenue A and St. Mark's Place closed sometime after Superstorm Sandy... and we heard multiple stories about its future ... Then! A few days later, a sanitized, woody Nino's reopened, but the place didn't seem the same. One reader said, "It looks like the inside of a pine coffin."

Plus, the pizza was a little different. And people didn't recognize the workers. Now, in the last few days, the place has closed again. Looks as if workers are refurbishing the interior again... (maybe the communal table will become a reality?)

Anyone know what's going on here...? Workers have painted the exterior and removed the Nino's lettering...

Finally, a random find on YouTube ... a video shot at Nino's after news circulated about Whiney Houston's death this past February...

Looking for where James Bond star Daniel Craig lives in the East Village

The Daily Mail goes looking for some info on Daniel Craig's East Village home and other stuff ... the paper speaks with a "bored-looking concierge" who denies that the James Bond star lives in the "low-key building" in question.

But! Some locals blab. Per the article:

Step into the grimy street outside and the locals are positively falling over themselves to talk about their famous neighbour.

'Of course that’s his place — we see him going in and out all the time,' drawls the lady in the next-door tattoo parlour.

'I did a double-take the first time I saw him in the supermarket,' adds star-struck Debra Johansen. 'He had a flat cap on and he had his head down. He doesn’t look at anyone.'

Not that he and his wife Rachel Weisz will be spending too much time here.

Work is understood to be ongoing on a house in Regent’s Park, where they intend to set up a more permanent home.

...

Back in the UK, the couple have also been spotted house-hunting in Dorset, where they have reportedly briefed estate agents to find them a property with 'a minimum of six acres to ensure complete privacy'.

If celebrity real estate is your thing ... Any guesses where he lives? I thought it was here, though there's isn't a tattoo parlor next door. (And he's not here. Yet.)

Noted

Good Urban Etiquette Sign at the Tompkins Square Park dog run via @delcecato ...

Ludlow Hotel is starting to look like a hotel

A few things here on Ludlow Street ... where work continues at the longtime-coming Ludlow Hotel, subtly nestled next to the Ludlow...

[Last week, probably]

First, a reader sent us this close-up shot of the hotel... so we're posting it. Look, bricks! Windows!

...and secondly... the Ludlow Hotel is on this month's CB3/SLA committee agenda for a liquor license ...

In October 2011, Curbed reported that BD Hotels — the team involved with the Maritime, Chambers, Greenwich, Jane and Bowery hotels — bought the stalled site for $25 million.

For more on the background here, you can check out BoweryBoogie and The Lo-Down.

Previously on EV Grieve:
People behind fabulous hotels opening another likely fabulous hotel on Ludlow Street

Actual work being done at the long-stalled Hotel Ludlow site

Stogo says goodbye

Several readers sent along the goodbye note posted on the door at Stogo, the vegan ice cream shop that closed this past Sunday on East 10th Street ... these photos are from EVG regular samo...

H/t @Mylestanzer

Fall Friday Flashback — Now and then: 10th Street and Avenue A

On Fridays this fall, and probably winter and spring and... we'll post one of the 12,000-plus EVG, uh, posts from yesteryear, like this one, from Dec. 30, 2009...
----------

At Flickr, rollingrck has a great set of old East Village postcards, including this undated shot of 10th Street and Avenue A...


I tried to line it up to compare to today's corner...

Might as well jump...

A brief moment in time earlier today in Tompkins Square Park... disembarking from the rather fragile elm... Photo by Bobby Williams.

Headline h/t.

Noted

Just passing along some toilet-tank decorating ideas... via EVG reader Mike on Avenue B between Sixth Street and Seventh Street...

EV Grieve Etc: Mourning Edition

[East Seventh Street... photo by Bobby Williams]

The LES photos of Rebecca Lepkoff, 96 (The Villager)

Stanton Street Synagogue raising funds for Sandy-related damages (BoweryBoogie)

Blondie's Clem Burke on the good ol' days (The Age)

Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan likes Northern Spy (Eater National)

Original Nathan's Famous won't reopen until the spring (Brooklyn Paper)

Life after Pathmark on the LES (The Lo-Down)

Spotting an old sign in Harlem (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

The last wooden escalators in NYC? (Ephemeral New York)

...and EVG reader c ring passes along these photos from Facebook... showing the Bánh mì Zòn owners cooking for Daryl Hall...

... and, sorry — I keeping doing this. Taking photos of the sunrise...Like this one this morning on First Avenue and East Seventh Street...

Report: Barnes & Noble closing Greenwich Village location

In his column at The Villager this week, Scoopy notes that the Barnes & Noble on Sixth Avenue at Eighth Street is closing for good on Dec. 31.

Meanwhile, entertainment columnist Roger Friedman had this to say about the closure:

In the mid 1980s, Barnes & Noble swallowed up Marboro Books, Bookmasters and B Dalton, among other booksellers. They killed off small booksellers all over the country, eventually destroying business for many beloved New York landmarks like Colosseum, Books & Co., Gotham, Doubleday, and many others. St. Marks Bookstore, in its reduced form, is rumored to be downsizing and moving again.

B&N wanted to rule the world. They took over the B Dalton store at what used to be the gateway of Greenwich Village, but also added a behemoth store at 21st and Sixth (now gone), Lincoln Center (now gone), and downsized the famous main store at Fifth Avenue and 18th st. On upper Fifth Avenue, they ravaged Scribner Books, the best bookstore in New York, which became Rizzoli and is now a Benetton or some clothier.

[Image via Showbiz 411]

Mobil station on Avenue C provides screen for 'Hurricane Exxon' film

Per Nick Pinto at Runnin' Scared:

The Exxon Mobil station on 2nd Street and Avenue C became an impromptu movie theater last night, as a coalition of climate-change activists projected a short film about Hurricane Sandy recovery onto the wall above it.

Said Josh Fox, one of the filmmakers: ""We're dealing with a hurricane that was supercharged by climate change. Really, we should be calling it Hurricane Exxon."

The New York Times had more on the screening here.

[Photo by Jenna Pope via Facebook]

Unfortunately, we didn't find out about the screening until it was too late... But! The 24-minute film is on vimeo...


OCCUPY SANDY from JFOX on Vimeo.

Myron Mixon's Pride & Joy BBQ now in the works for the former Lucky Cheng's space

Leading up to this month's CB3/SLA meeting on Nov. 19, public documents showed that the owners of the new Acme (and Indochine, among others) were proposing to take over the former Lucky Cheng's space on First Avenue. (You can read more on the concept here.)

However, for whatever reasons, those plans never materialized and the group did not appear at the meeting.

Meanwhile, yesterday, CB3 released the SLA committee docket for December, which includes this item:

Pride and Joy (Pride and Joy BBQ LLC), 24 1st Ave (op)

Turns out that this will be the first NYC outpost for renowed BBQ chef Myron Mixon, who, among other things, serves as a judge on TLC's Destination America's "BBQ Pitmasters." (Per his bio, he is known as "the winningest man in barbecue," and authored a best-seller titled "Smokin' with Myron Mixon.")

A Pride & Joy opened earlier this month in North Miami. Per Eater Miami:

Mixon will be using his custom-made smokers and his own line of sauces and spices to serve up some the darn best ribs, brisket, pulled pork, and wings you've ever had.

I asked Lucky Cheng's owner Hayne Suthon (who also resides in the building here on First Avenue) about her new tenant.

"I am beyond excited to have this group comprised of a stellar team covering all bases of food, design construction and operations," she said in an email. "I have found them to be nothing short of super down to earth, sharp, creative and talented."

In addition to the restaurant, the Pride & Joy team apparently has some ideas for other uses of the space.

"As a resident of 1st Avenue and 2nd St since 1986, observing the good and bad trends over the past 26 years, they have been very receptive to my ideas as to what is needed in the neighborhood," Suthon said. "Aside from all of that, I CANNOT wait for them to open; I'm obsessed with good barbecue. I've already had a dream about dining there."

[Pride & Joy photo via Eater Miami]