Team behind Ofrenda bringing Black Ant to the East Village

The owners of Ofrenda, a homestyle Mexican restaurant in the West Village, is opening Black Ant in the East Village. The restaurant will be located at 60 Second Ave. near East Third Street, in the space previously occupied by Bona Fides.

The Black Ant Facebook page describes itself this way: "Contemporary Mexican Restaurant, Cocktail Bar and Garden."

The Facebook page shared plans for the new space as well…



Black Ant is aiming for a mid-Janaury opening, per their Twitter account.

Read more about Ofrenda's background here at New York magazine.

More on the closing of Continuum Coffee and Continuum Cycles

As we reported earlier this month, Continuum Cycles and Continuum Coffee have closed on Avenue B. We caught up with Continuum owner Jeff Underwood for more about what happened.

The coffee shop opened shortly before Sandy hit last October, and Underwood had a difficult time recovering from the storm damage. (An unresponsive landlord apparently didn't help.)

"I had taken all of my funds and put it into the cafe last year. Not only did our whole basement flood with sewage and salt water, destroying my stock for the cafe and bike shop, we also didn't have phone service or stable Internet service for over three months," he said via email. "This kept us from running credit cards, which is 80 percent of our sales."

Business lagged post-Sandy, and he wasn't able to get ahead of the mounting bills as the year continued.

For now, Underwood said that he plans to regroup over the coming months, with the expectation of reopening a shop somewhere in the neighborhood in the spring.

"I'm actually very excited about taking the winter off to look for the perfect space. I also do dog rescue and training, which I love, so this will give me time to take on more clients and work with more dogs in need," he said. "As for bicycles, I will still take on clients, but obviously at a smaller scale. My goal is to revamp my website for e-commerce, so that we can reach more folks.

"It has been a bittersweet couple of weeks. Closing was a bit hard but the love that people are showing is blowing us away."

Previously on EV Grieve:
Out and About in the East Village with Jeff Underwood

Reader photo from Nov. 17

ArtisanFEST returns to The Neighborhood School on Sunday

From the EVG inbox...

The Neighborhood School’s ArtisanFEST: Art, shopping, snacks and all your holiday gifting under one roof!

The Neighborhood School’s ArtisanFEST is back! On Sunday, Nov. 24, from 10 am to 4 pm, come out to support a local public school and get all your holiday shopping done in one fell swoop. Admission is free and open to the public. Scoop up silk-screened clothing, hand-printed linens, sample-sale items, home decorations, jewelry, fine art and more.

Confirmed artisans include: Lucky Fish (gorgeous screen-printed clothes and home goods); Vale (edgy yet dainty vintage-y jewelry); Wovenplay (imagination-sparking clothes and accessories for wee adventurers and artists); Interior Provisions (affordably luxurious home products with a conscience; Small Trades (men’s and women’s classic clothing inspired by Irving Penn’s 1950s photos); Winter Water Factory (boldly printed organic clothing and accessories); Atsuko & Akiko (exquisite and playful clothing, home décor and jewelry); Jillian Sherry (delicate ripped silk paintings and textile prints); Billie Beads (polymer beaded, bejeweled objets and killer tchotchkes); MUNY (Indian, boho, fair-trade, handcrafted textiles evoking both Mumbai and New York – hence the name); Odette Williams (delightful retro-hip aprons, kid clothes and wall art) and many more. There will also be homemade treats, kids selling their own beaded and Rainbow-Loomed jewelry, and some of those groovy food trucks.

A portion of the proceeds goes to Studio in a School, the wonderful organization that brings together professional artists and public school kids, and to The Neighborhood School PTA, a 501(c)(3) non-profit charitable organization. The Neighborhood School is at 121 East 3rd Street, between First Avenue and Avenue A in the East Village.

Night at 51 Astor Place

A look inside the retail space for lease at 51 Astor Place… photo by Bobby Williams

Report: Arrest made in assault on tourist searching for Citi Bike docking station

The NYPD has arrested a Bronx man for a brutal assault against a British tourist in the East Village, according to the Daily Crime Blotter in the Post. (Didn't spot this online. for some reason.)

Christopher Kappel reportedly approached the tourist, who was searching for a Citi Bike docking station using an app on his smartphone, on First Avenue at East 14th Street around 2:30 a.m. Kappel and an accomplice struck the tourist in the face with a concrete slab and took his phone.

The tourist suffered a broken nose, per the Post.

Report: Some Midtown bars will now ban drunken SantaCon revelers

[Image via Eater]

As DNAinfo reports today, the NYPD's Midtown North Precinct sent letters to about 30 bars in Midtown and Hell's Kitchen urging them not to welcome SantaConners.

Per the letter:

The number of participants has grown large enough to completely overwhelm the sidewalks and public spaces...Having thousands of intoxicated partygoers roam the streets urinating, littering, vomiting and vandalizing will not be tolerated in our neighborhood...It is my recommendation that you do not sponsor this event in any way.

SantaCon is scheduled for Dec. 14 this year. For those of you concerned by all this, we've heard that residents should call 311 in advance of Dec. 14 to either request extra NYPD patrols for the day... or at least express concern.

Back on Oct. 17, State Sen. Brad Hoylman sent a letter to organizers, stating in part:

I strongly urge you to work with the New York City Police Department in order to come up with a strong and effective plan to combat public intoxication and to ensure all participants are respectful of the neighborhoods they visit, as well as handling the overwhelming crowds associated with an event this size. In addition, I urge you make this plan available to the affected local Community Boards well in advance of your event so that they have time to comment and help shape it.

H/T Eater

Previously on EV Grieve:
How was your SantaCon?

A few scenes from SantaCon 2012: Scourge of the city or good time had by all?

The Cooktop Garden has legs

[Monday]

We've been watching the little plot of a former tree and, later, tree stump come alive on St. Mark's Place between Second Avenue and Third Avenue come alive this week.

The latest.





And, perhaps, this plot needs another name... mostly since no one seems to know what a cooktop is! Some discarded cooktops were used to start this whole garden...

Previously on EV Grieve:
[Updated] Behold the cooktop sidewalk garden on St. Mark's Place

A new sidewalk outside Ray's, and, thankfully, the same old stand

[Bobby Williams]

On Tuesday, the city started putting in a new sidewalk on Avenue A from East Seventh Street to just past Ray's Candy Store… displacing the familiar stand out front in the process ...


[BW]

Yesterday morning!


[EVG]


[EVG]


[EVG]

By last night, workers had moved the stand again...


[BW]


[EVG]

We were wondering what was going on with the stand. Just kinda moving around out in the open. We asked Kim, who works the day shift, what was happening… and he assured us that the stand, which may actually pre-date Ray, was returning to its usual resting place outside the store.

And just like that this morning...

Live in a former rectory, now with 'condo finishes'

From the outside, it appears there's still plenty of work left with the gut renovation of 27 E. Seventh St., which once served as a rectory for the pastor and priests of the Order of Saint Basil the Great.

But! Appearances are deceiving, etc., etc. The first rental from the new residential building hit the market on Tuesday, a three-bedroom unit asking $5,190. Per the Streeteasy listing:

Be the first to live in this top of the line, enormous 3 bed! This building has just been gutted, all apartments are brand new, with top of the line condo finishes. Wide plank wood floors, recessed lighting, throughout the apartment. Kitchen features top of the line stainless steel appliances, gorgeous back slash, lots of cabinets, dishwasher and deep sink. Super sized living room, can hold dining table plus couch, coffee table, entertainment center. Each bedroom is large enough for a king or queen bed and furniture. Large closet with overhead shelf space in each bedroom. Bathrooms are fantastic!!! LED showers — let you know when the water is at the perfect temp!

A few photos that accompany the listing...




Back in April 2010, the city shuttered The Village Inn, the hostel that had been allegedly illegally operating here. The building had been on and off the market the last few years, starting at $7.9 million in 2009... various listings said that No. 27 could be converted to floor-through condos, rentals or a spacious single-family home.

The rentals won out, of course.

Not sure how much of the charm was gut renovated out of the building... here's an interior shot from the August 2010 sales listing

Previously on EV Grieve:
The Village Inn hostel on Seventh Street closed by city

From illegal hostel to residential at 27 E. Seventh St.

Seventh Street hostel now ready to become condos or single-family home

Still the best Thanksgiving deal around

We've written before about the Odessa's Thanksgiving day special … quite a feast for the money… we've eaten here several times on Thanksgiving before (when we didn't go to the Blarney Cove or the race track) … and the $15.95 price tag has stayed consistent through the recent years too...

Flashback to 2009…

Flashback: I'm not waiting on a lady...say, what the hell is Mick wearing anyway?

Yesterday's post about the Billy Joel video shoot on St. Mark's Place circa 1986 prompted a few people to discuss when the Rolling Stones filmed "Waiting on a Friend" down the block at No. 98.

So! Let's revisit this EVG post from Dec. 23, 2008... titled I'm not waiting on a lady...say, what the hell is Mick wearing anyway?

-----

Yeah, we've all seen the video for "Waiting on a Friend" enough times...



However, we've never seen these photos taken by schillid when the Stones were shooting the video on St. Mark's Place in July 1981. (I found the photos at the It's Only Rock'n Roll Stones fan site.) Here, the boys hang out at the old St. Mark's Bar & Grill on the corner of First Avenue.




Here's what the corner looks like now.

For more on the St. Mark's Bar & Grill, go here.

Today's hawk(s)

Photos by Bobby Williams

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

[Photo on St. Mark's Place by Chloe Sweeney McGlade via Facebook]

A visit to the Los Amigos Fishing and Hunting Club on Rivington Street (DNAinfo)

A famous neighborhood pear tree (Off the Grid)

More about Madonna in the East Village in 1983 (New York Post)

Revisiting "The Church of Shooting Yourself" (Flaming Pablum)

Remembering Page, a feminist against pornography (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

About Salt Bar replacement Thelma on Clinton (BoweryBoogie)

When Stiv Bators was a pop singer (Dangerous Minds)

Night shopping (Gog in NYC)

Celebrating Pie Man's birthday at the Yippie Cafe (Slum Goddess)

When pigs roamed the streets of NYC (Ephemeral NYC)

...and Joey Arias during a performance Sunday night at Joe's Pub... catch the legendary performer during the next two Sundays at Joe's...


[Photo by Grant Shaffer]

A look at NASA's Minotaur Rocket streaking across the East Village sky

Last evening, the U.S. Air Force launched an Orbital Sciences Minotaur 1 rocket into orbit from a (really?) Spaceport on Wallops Island, Va. Per HuffPo:

The nighttime launch could light up the sky for millions of observers along a wide swath of the Eastern Seaboard, and could be visible from just northeastern Canada and Maine to Florida, and from as far inland as Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky, depending on local weather conditions, according to NASA and Orbital Sciences visibility maps.

The rocket launched into space at 8:15 p.m. And acclaimed photographers James and Karla Murray got this shot ... as the thing traveled some 11,700 mph (per those nerds at space.com)... over our airspace...




Space, the final frontier for more luxury housing...

Out and About in the East Village

In this weekly feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village.



By James Maher

Name: Manuel
Occupation: Contractor
Location: Monday, Nov. 18 at 2 pm
Time: 4th Street between A and B

I’ve lived here my whole life. I’m from the projects. I grew up right here on 4th Street, between C and D. We came from Puerto Rico. My grandparents came from Puerto Rico and mom came when she was a little girl. My step-dad was a permanent fixture on Avenue C and 4th street, where they played dominoes in that little secret garden. They named it after my dad, Ariel Place. He was a very simple man. Ever since he landed on 4th street and Avenue C he never left. He’d stand there right on the corner. Every day he walked the dog, played dominoes, would go upstairs for lunch, come back down, then go back up and he was done for the day. He was a man of routine — and before that he was a man of gambling. He used to gamble a lot. His funeral was just last weekend. A lot of people from the neighborhood came, left him a bunch of stuff, Dominoes, cigarettes, liquor. His coffin was filled with stuff.

Back then the area was congested — it was really crowded. The Jewish people had moved out and the Spanish, the ghetto people moved in. From ‘75 to like ’85 was the big transition — it happened within 10 years. I remember the parties that we used to have, with DJs in the parks and on the FDR Drive. They would light up everything up in the nighttime and you’d see all these people from different parts of the Lower East Side and from the city. It was good in that sense.

It was also good that my mom could walk down the block. She was a small little lady, about 70 pounds, and she could come home at 2 in the morning and nobody would bother her. And there would be junkies all around the place, but these junkies wouldn’t bother her. They had morals.

This neighborhood here was really good, it was family oriented, and a lot of people were connected. All the parties, the New Year's parties, were all so good. Everything was so good. But drugs and credit messed everything up. As soon as they started giving credit out here and stuff like that, that made everybody fall off into their own depression, because now they owed money. They had exceeded their means of living. Once they put that out there it really put everybody in hardship.

But also back in the day you could make so much money, $200 just to walk out the door. You could make $200 spotting, standing at the corner, saying ‘Bajando’ [Down] or ‘Maria.’ You couldn’t even walk down the street without avoiding drugs. People were yelling like, ‘Executive,’ ‘Dom Perignon,’ ‘Black Magic,’ everybody was just yelling things out.

And the police would come by, look at it and just keep going. I think the agenda was to leave the people who did drugs alone. There was work available in the sense of selling drugs. There was a lot of money out here. This area was like a filter. Everybody had to come through here before they could get anywhere else. Now Jersey is where the drugs are and not here.

Back then the owners were burning down the buildings to get their money to go off somewhere else. There were burned-down buildings every other day. Then, what happened was the neighborhood got an opportunity from Koch — get a building for a dollar and fix it up. That was a great thing that a lot of people did. Now a lot of these buildings are owned by the people. We would rehabilitate these buildings, clean them out and gut them because people were using them for shooting galleries. We would break them all up and just leave the skeleton. We would start with the beams, the reinforcement beams, then from there we would put planks and plumbing in. I was only 13 when I started doing that.

Through that I became a plumber and later on in life I became a contractor. My highest point in life, I had 18 guys, and we volunteered to help out in Ground Zero. It was like the end of the world, armageddon. We were camping out in my utility trucks

I haven’t done anything for the past 5 years. I’ve just been in a slump. I broke up with my girl and I went into this slump using drugs, so that’s stagnated me. But I’m about to jump out of it. Right now, I live in the shelter on 3rd street. They have places like Workforce [Development Center] but they don’t really work. What they give you, everybody has. The people on welfare get the same printouts with the job listings. You go there and there are like a thousand people for one job. You think you have the upper hand by having these people help you, but they are just getting you the same thing that you can get yourself.

This is Madonna’s old stoop, 234. We used to hang out here. This is not the original door. The old one used to be covered in graffiti. She loved Spanish men. She was a real freak. She used to hang out here, she used to go to the World, the Palladium. She was really open with everybody. She’d smoke weed with us and everything. She wasn’t closed off, she was open minded and daring — and aggressive. If she liked you she’d tell you.

James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.

Beyoncé probably shot a video on St. Mark's Place last night; remember when Billy Joel did?

Word is/was that Beyoncé was filming a secret-y video (save for the million cops) last night on St. Mark's Place or something. We haven't really looked into this one or tried to find photographic evidence.

But! This news did, rather unfortunately, perhaps, remind us of Billy Joel's "A Matter of Trust" video shot on St. Mark's circa 1986. (We wrote about this back in August 2008. Same counsel as then, per Alex at Flaming Pablum: "Best to turn the sound down…" Though it is your morning.)



Any way that Beyoncé can top this extravaganza?

On First Avenue and East 2nd Street, deli out, American-Middle Eastern restaurant in

The Bistro Cafe & Grill on the corner of First Avenue and East Second Street has vacated the premises after 18 months … in its place will be Spiegel, an American-Middle Eastern restaurant with hours from 8 a.m. to midnight.



Here's the menu that the Spiegel folks submitted with their CB3 liquor license application last month… (CB3 approved the beer-wine license.)



Meanwhile, the Cafe & Grill relocated a few storefronts away to the First & First Finest Deli.

Thanks to EVG regular Salim for the tip and photos.

A history of art and activism at Le Petit Versailles

From the EVG inbox... via the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space

Please join us for an evening with East Village artists Jack Waters and Peter Cramer. In 1996 they started Le Petit Versailles, a New York City LGBTQ community garden located at 346 East Houston St. Petit Versailles is internationally known as an art space of cultural significance that presents year round public events including exhibitions, music, film/video, performance, theater, workshops and community projects.


(From left, Jack Waters, Peter Cramer)

Cramer and Waters will talk about their lives and history as green gardeners, AIDS/ queer activists, and artists. In addition to a slideshow on queer downtown, they will show clips from LPVTV, a 13 part Manhattan Neighborhood Network public access cable series documenting Le Petit Versailles events and history.

Find the Facebook event page here with more info.

The event is tomorrow night from 7:35-9. MoRUS is located at 155 Avenue C between East Ninth Street and East 10th Street.

[Images via MoRUS]

More about Big Dirt Candy

As we noted yesterday, Chef Amanda Cohen got preliminary approval for a liquor license for a new Dirt Candy space at 86 Allen St.

As for the current Dirt Candy home on East Ninth Street, Cohen told us: "We aren't sure what we are going to do with the old space. We are definitely going to keep it, but for now all we know is that it won't be a full-service restaurant."

Later yesterday, Cohen had more to say about all this at the Dirt Candy website:

What will happen at Big Dirt Candy? It’ll be Dirt Candy, only bigger! There will be a bar where you can wait for your table! There will be ice! No more two month wait for tables! There will be more than one non-alcoholic drink on the menu! The chairs will have four legs! Most importantly, everything I’m doing, from the design, to the menu, to the kitchen layout, is being built to preserve the best things about Little Dirt Candy.

Sure, this restaurant is tiny, but there’s a fun atmosphere here where the line between the kitchen and the dining room is gone and where you don’t feel like a bunch of isolated tables scattered across the floor of an eat-a-torium where no one cares about you, but where, on its best nights, it feels like you’re all guests in my house having a party. That’s what makes Dirt Candy special, and that’s what’s it’s still going to be, whether it’s Little or Big.

Cohen is looking at a Fall 2014 opening for the Allen Street locale.

And now, reaction to Twitter arriving in the East Village

Crain's broke the news yesterday that Twitter was negotiating to lease a big hunk of 51 Astor Place…

We sought some reaction from Twitter...

@evgrieve I got so excited when I heard that I sprinkled myself! I'm gonna be The Twit Building!

— 51 Astor Place (@51deathstar) November 19, 2013