Not such a Smart Car after all?

EVG regular peter radley spotted this today on Avenue A at East Fifth Street. Anyone see what happened?

Week in Grieview

[East Seventh Street. Photo by Derek Berg]

New 6-story building in the works for East Third Street (Tuesday)

Jared Kushner is buying everything (Wednesday)

A new tenant for the Village Scandal space on East Seventh Street (Wednesday)

There is now a 3-story swingers club on the Bowery (Thursday)

Fly talks UnReal Estate (Thursday)

A rent hike for East Village Shoe on St. Mark's Place (Friday)

Jerry's Newsstand has at least another year on Astor Place (Thursday)

At the Pyramid with Jacquelyn Gallo (Wednesday)

East Second Street penthouse with a private pool and lawn (Tuesday)

Plans for market-restaurant at 125 First Ave. on hold for now (Wednesday)

Croxley Ales extension now open (Tuesday)

Renovations ready for P.S. 122 (Thursday)

Wow, this will be built on Norfolk at Delancey (Monday)

Rats now using forks in Tompkins Square Park (Monday)

Tweet smell of unhappiness in the East Village (Friday)

Alphabet Plaza rising on East Houston and Avenue D (Tuesday)

Look at the Rat Castle now! (Wednesday)

Memory of terrible movie continues to haunt the Bowery

Tonight, as Hollywood honors the alleged best movies of 2012... a moment to note that the billboard for "Playing for Keeps" is still up on the Bowery at East Fourth Street. The movie opened Dec. 7. By now, it's likely playing on TNT. Despite an outpouring of 311 calls from distracted residents and motorists who complain of Gerard Butler's hair and what appear to be smiles from a denture commercial, the ad remains...



There's a 4 percent approval rating from critics at Rotten Tomatoes, who describe it this way: "Witless, unfocused, and arguably misogynistic, Playing for Keeps is a dispiriting, lowest-common-denominator Hollywood rom-com."

Saturday

Is it March yet? Photo by James and Karla Murray via Facebook.

Religious zealots target Zoltar again

As you can see, someone has slapped a sticker across Zoltar's name here outside Gem Spa... AGAIN. (See here.)



"Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on everyones [sic] soul."

Unfortunately in America today, fortune teller machines do not enjoy the same freedoms as everyone else, and find themselves at the mercy of religious extremists. Or, at the very least, the target of people brandishing "Lord Jesus Christ have mercy on everyones [sic] soul" stickers.

Noted

At the M14 stop on Avenue A near East 11th Street. More from the Silent Pro 7-Eleven Collective?

Previously on EV Grieve:
Silent Pro 7-Eleven collective launches shock-and-awe counter-offensive

330 Bowery wrapped and ready

Seeing as I already did two posts about the construction of the scaffolding here on the Bowery at Bond... might as well finish the job. It took workers a week, but they have the historic cast-iron building here wrapped and ready for exterior repairs...

Beware the cone-eating sewer grate of Avenue B

At East Ninth Street at the entrance to Tompkins Square Park. Photo by Bobby Williams.

Flight

Somewhere near East 10h Street today. Photo by Bobby Williams.

He's a Magic man

Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band with "I'm Gonna Booglarize You Baby" circa 1972.

FREE HOT DOGS AT JAPADOG

Right now on St. Mark's Place... photo via EVG Facebook friend Bonnie DeWitt...

A one-year customer appreciation day...



Thanks to EVG Facebook friend Robert Mazze for the above photo...

Lyric Diner Coffee Shop neon survives renovation on Third Avenue

Back in August, we noted that the Lyric Diner on Third Avenue at 22nd Street had closed for renovations... Our friends at the pcvstBEE blog report that the owners reopened the space this week... it's now a Greek restaurant called Taverna.

Some good news. Despite the major renovations, the owners are keeping the cool Lyric Diner Coffee Shop neon on the East 22nd Street side, as this photo from @ThingsWendySees shows...



As for their food, you can check out their new menu here.

Study: Tweets show there are 'pockets of unhappiness in the East Village'

Per the Post:

Researchers from the University of Vermont mapped out the city’s happiest areas using a complex formula that can pinpoint tweet locations and rate their relative “happiness” and “sadness” based on certain key words.

Key words like "sun" and "yoga" (yay! happy!) and sad words such as "hate" and "hell." (How about "another fucking rent hike"?)

(Also. Tricky: A word like "Woooooo!" could be seen as happy or sad, depending on who is on the receiving end of the Woooooo!, if researchers had actually measured Woooooo!)

The data found that the largest concentration of happy tweets came from the Times Square region. (Tourists: duh)

Elsewhere?

While most of Manhattan south of Central Park had people tweeting happily, there were pockets of unhappiness in the East Village, Chelsea and the area around City Hall. There were also a large number of sad tweets coming from the area around the United Nations.

No word if researchers measured emoticons.

An East Village resident to root for during the Academy Awards on Sunday night

"How to Survive a Plague" is one of the five films nominated for Best Documentary Feature in the 2013 Academy Awards.

Here's the official synopsis:

"How to Survive a Plague" is the story of two coalitions — ACT UP and TAG (Treatment Action Group) — whose activism and innovation turned AIDS from a death sentence into a manageable condition. Despite having no scientific training, these self-made activists infiltrated the pharmaceutical industry and helped identify promising new drugs, moving them from experimental trials to patients in record time. With unfettered access to a treasure trove of never-before-seen archival footage from the 1980s and '90s, filmmaker David France puts the viewer smack in the middle of the controversial actions, the heated meetings, the heartbreaking failures, and the exultant breakthroughs of heroes in the making.

France is a longtime resident of East Seventh Street. He has been writing about AIDS since 1982, and as a journalist, his work has appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, GQ, and New York magazine.



"How to Survive a Plague" marks his directorial debut. He's currently working on a book about the AIDS epidemic for publication later this year. In an interview published yesterday at Time magazine, he talks about what it was like to hear the news of the nomination:

It was thrilling. I guess probably everybody would say that, but for me the thrill was that we ran this massive outreach and education campaign around it. And all of this is an effort to give the film a life of its own and to establish it in the marketplace of ideas so that people will turn to it for this history. And an Oscar nomination gives it that much more standing and makes it more probable that it will reach wide audiences for a long time.

Here are some different ways to see the film, which is now on DVD.

Also, thanks to the commenter for pointing out this interview on The Brian Lehrer Show. And Claude Peck left the URL for his review in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

H/T Dave on 7th