Lucy's is on a holiday break

Oh! Stopped by Lucy's the other late afternoon only to discover… she is on holiday until next Friday. And these signs really do need a smiley face.

Introducing the Ramones guitar strap

From the EVG inbox...

Volume & Tone is pleased to announce the release of “The Ramone” guitar strap, created in collaboration with fan favorite, Richie Ramone of The Ramones. This Strap is the first in a series of Celebrity Strap collaborations that Volume & Tone is launching, with 30% of all proceeds going to one of our favorite charities “The Maxlove Project."

The Maxlove Project was Inspired by SuperMax Wilford, a six-year-old fighting brain cancer, MaxLove Project is a 100% volunteer-driven, grassroots nonprofit organization founded to help SuperKids thrive against cancer and life-threatening conditions. Their mission is to provide families fighting childhood cancers with accessible, practical, and kid-friendly whole-body wellness.

“The Ramone” was designed to look and feel like the Schott Perfecto, America’s finest and most symbolic leather motorcycle jacket. Outsiders and lone wolves like Marlon Brando and Steve McQueen wore early versions of the jacket, and later The Ramones wore it as their unofficial uniform, and cemented the jacket’s reputation as a symbol of Rebellion.

Price: $130.

Wish you were here, mostly

Happy Thanksgiving and all that.

In case you are looking to buy the ol' [insert your name here!] family holiday tree on Thanksgiving

You're in luck! You can find some at St. Mark's Market...



Whole Foods Bowery ($50 for a Fraser Fir!)...



...and a new treecomer on Second Avenue in front of Jupiter 21...




No trees just yet at the Trailer Park Santa stand on First Avenue and East 14th Street...



There are likely more stands up. Maybe outside Rite Aid on First Avenue?

Anyway! Buy early, discard early, and pretend it is leftover from December 2012... win a prize.

St. Mark's Birdbath

Alone together again

St. Mark's Place and Cooper Square this afternoon... via Bobby Williams.

Former Bleecker Bob's space back on the market

Bleecker Bob's was priced out of its longtime home on West Third Street this past year, closing for good in April.

And, as you may recall, a Forever Yogurt franchise was set to take over the space, even sporting an oh-so-cutesy record logo on the front door during the summer.

Apparently there won't be FroYo here, at least according to a Facebook update today from Bleecker Bob's:

wow....
today we give a big FUCK YOU to the assholes at Forever Yogurt who closed down a 45 year old landmark record store to build a bullshit froyo shop and now pulled out of the lease!!!

the storefront at 118 west 3rd is now for rent.

Last that we saw, the space for going for $17,000 a month. (Alex has a photo of the rather homemade "for rent" sign here.)

Previously on EV Grieve:
Bleecker Bob's is for rent

Bleecker Bob's won't be moving to the East Village — or anywhere else, for that matter

Ev Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

[On East 4th Street, photo by Michael Sean Edwards]

Last-minute volunteer opportunities for Thanksgiving Day (DNAinfo)

A list of free Thanksgiving meals across the LES (BoweryBoogie)

An update on the renovations at HiFi on Avenue A (the HiFi Blog)

The new 84 Third Ave. could have been a lot taller (Off the Grid)

A look at the new Vape Lounge (NYU Local)

A review of Somtum Der on Avenue A (The New York Times)

The Jefferson Market's future (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

Remembering the K Cafe (Flaming Pablum)

When it was really fucking cold the other day (Slum Goddess)

The Roseland Ballroom will be demolished to make way for a 50-story building (New York Post)

Snapshots of the Rolling Stones on tour in the U.S. in 1965 (Dangerous Minds)

Finally, in case you wondered what a party for the tech set at the Russian & Turkish Baths on East 10th Street looked like. Photos from this event have been making the rounds, so... ValleyWag said that the party "fell just short of Stefon-level absurdity. There was, however, enough wood paneling and strung out girls in bikinis to remake that Fiona Apple video."


[Find more photos by Nicky Digital here]

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: Jenny Adams
Occupation: Writer/Photographer
Location: East 7th Street between 1st and 2nd Ave
Time: Monday, Nov. 25 at 1pm.

I’m from Birmingham, Ala. I grew up there and then went to the college of Charleston. I grew up in the south, went to college in the south and planned to live in the south my whole life. I wasn’t really the adventurous type until after college. And then I moved to Montana on a whim. Somebody had an extra bedroom for rent for $200 a month. My lease was up so I decided to move there for six months. Once I did that it opened the door to the idea that I could do it.

So I moved to New Zealand and lived there for a year. I was 23 and waited tables and worked on a vineyard for spare change, picking grapes for 60 cents every 5 pounds. That’s what a lot of the backpackers do. And then I started running out of money so I moved to Thailand for a few months. I wasn’t working but I had $1,000 left — and you can live for a really long time on $1,000 in Bangkok.

When I went broke, I came back to America. I was not happy. My parents said, ‘You’ve got no money and you’re being a delinquent.‘ I wanted to be a writer. I’ve always wanted to be a writer. My mom’s a writer, my aunt’s a writer and my grandma’s a writer. Of course I had that whole ‘I want to be a writer’ thing but you can’t just go out and write. You have to have a background. My mom actually owned a magazine at the time, so I was like, ‘Sweet, you’ll just give me a job,’ and she was like, ‘No, you have no experience and you don’t know what you’re doing.’ It was the best lesson I’ve ever had. I just expected her to hire me.

So I enrolled in grad school at the University of Mississippi, Ole Miss, in 2006 and I worked in an office in Mississippi for three years as a writer. It was a little painful but it ended up being a good experience. And then things started to happen. I moved back to Alabama and my mom gave me a job. I also got a writing job in Alabama working for a nightlife magazine. I’ve always been in the nightlife segment of writing. It started out with the industry, behind the scenes, stuff for the trade magazines. And then I broke into the consumer side, reviewing bars and spirits.

I lived in Alabama from ‘07 till ’09, when I moved here. I was sick of Alabama and was thinking about moving to New York. I knew nothing about the city, but I said I wanted to move to the East Village because that’s where all the writers lived. So I moved into an apartment on Avenue D. I had never seen anything like it. I vividly remember the first person I saw on heroin. I had never seen anyone just outside on heroin, just freaking out on the sidewalk. Before I had moved here I hadn’t seen poverty in the same way. Alabama, where I lived, was super green and clean and safe. Everybody had a sprinkler and two kids and a dog. And then I moved here and was like, ‘whoa.’ At first I thought I wasn’t going to be there very long. Maybe I’d move someplace less ‘crazy.’ But now I love it and I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else.

Sandy was a surreal time but it was also one of the best times I’ve ever had. Everybody worked so hard during the day and then at night you made new friends because you didn’t have a phone. My building got hit hard. We had tons of water in the basement. Our super lived down there in a livable space. It was completely flooded and his stuff was all destroyed. Sewers backed into the building. It was just a mess. He lost everything.

So I went uptown and got on GoFundMe to raise $1,000 for my super. I didn’t even have emails of anyone in my building but I said let’s try. And we had $600 within 45 minutes. I left it up and the next morning it was at $2,000. We raised close to $12,000 in 6 days. So I gave the super $1,500 and ended up distributing the rest of it out throughout the neighborhood. I did not realize, to give away $12,000 piece by piece, is a lot of work. We went and bought blankets for people. We went to the soup kitchens. All my friends helped. Most of it was $100 here and $200 there, going to buy groceries and shipping them to the Rockaways.

A couple of the supers who worked in the lower-income buildings on East 12th somehow found me and were like, ‘Our building have a bunch of elderly and they’re really poor and don’t have anything.’ So we went down to Target and bought 55 jackets and blankets. Just to watch these supers … take it upon themselves to find me and other people to help get them blankets and space heaters … was a really cool moment.

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

Sidewalk bridge and scaffolding arrive ahead of planned New York Sports Club on Avenue A

A sidewalk bridge arrived Monday outside Gracefully at 28 Avenue A.

And yesterday, workers started erecting scaffold outside the familiar Burger-Klein façade, as this photo via EVG reader Jennifer Kellow shows...



As we reported on April 29, New York Sports Club has plans to open a gym above the market. In May, CB3 approved "the BSA special permit application by New York Sports Club to operate a physical culture establishment/health club at 28-30 Ave A on the 2nd thru 5th floors with entrance on the 1st floor."

Meanwhile, though, the application is still waiting the OK for the Department of Buildings, who stamped a "disapproved" on the first round of plans in April.


[EVG photo from spring 2013]

Furniture seller Burger-Klein occupied the building as early as 1939. Read more about the history of the Burger-Klein building at Off the Grid.

Previously on EV Grieve:
RUMOR: New York Health & Racquet Club taking over the space above Gracefully on Avenue A (24 comments)

New York Sports Club in the works for Avenue A

Have an early Thanksgiving at the Stage today

Today at EVG favorite the Stage Restaurant at 128 Second Ave. … turkey served with sweet potato stuffing, one vegetable, mushroom gravy, cranberry sauce, pie or cake, and coffee of tea — $14.25.

And tomorrow you can compare it to the Odessa's Thanksgiving special.

East Village resident organizes SantaCon Detour, a SantaCon without the drunks and various amateurs

East Village resident Abby Ehmann, who helped organize the original SantaCon here, is behind SantaCon Detour, which she discussed with DNAinfo yesterday:

"It's a SantaCon for people who have been doing it for 10 or 15 years and are tired of it being co-opted by busloads of college kids from upstate or drunken 22-year-olds from the suburbs."

The alternative SantaCon Detour seeks to recapture what Ehmann and others described as the event's countercultural roots as a "dress-up, anti-shop-'til-you-drop culture jam," and not "a bar crawl" or "puke fest."

And!

"If you're a 22-year-old, you're going to see [Detour SantaCon] is going to be a bunch of 50-year-olds," she said. "We wouldn't want them, and they wouldn't want us. They want to be with slutty Santa elves. They want to be drinking in the streets and jumping on taxis."

SantaCon Detour is now in its second year. It will start at the same location as the main SantaCon on Dec. 14, but then the group will go do their own thing.

According to the SantaCon Detour 2013 description at Wherevent:

If you joined up with us last year, you know the program: Trying to SAVE SantaCon by having our own, smaller contingent … This year I plan to, again, hijack a hoard of my Santa friends after the initial meeting location and take them to a spacious place with seats and some brunchy type food (and booze, of course). From there Santa will be on the move to a few fun photo ops and end in the early evening at a venue with drinks and dancing.

[Stock photo by Maria Dryfhout]