[Updated] Reader report: Taggers nabbed on Avenue A

The NYPD apparently arrested three men last night for tagging the rooftop of a building in the 200 block of Avenue A, per EVG reader dwg. Looks like SMELLS took the hit.

Updated 1/30
The Post has a lot more details today about what happened here. Five people were reportedly arrested, including Cash4 — aka Russell Murphy.

Murphy, 28, was charged with making graffiti, criminal trespassing and resisting arrest after he and four others were spotted on the roof of a building at 199 Avenue A vandalizing a wall.

The five took off but were collared by cops after a short chase in which two officers suffered minor injuries, sources said.

Now even the snowfitti has to have a sponsor

Does all art need a corporate sponsor? Is nothing sacred?

East Sixth Street near Avenue A today via EVG contributor Derek Berg.

Out and About in the East Village, Part 2

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: Alex Harsley
Occupation: Owner, 4th Street Photo Gallery
Location: 4th Street between 2nd Avenue and the Bowery
Time: 3 pm on Friday, Jan. 17

Last week, Alex Harsley talked about his tough upbringing in the early 1940s in South Carolina and his move to the Bronx with his mother a few years later... we're starting with the last paragraph from last week's feature...

I settled down in Brooklyn, figured out that was a bad place to live, got divorced and moved to the East Village, around ’65. I got a motorcycle and I had parties continuously, living on 11th Street and Avenue A. I was in this haze. It’s now a very important historical place — 501 E. 11th St. Every place I’ve lived in they’ve destroyed.

Eventually I had to leave there and move to 155 Essex St. I was in the middle of heaven. When I was a kid, Sunday was the worst of all the days. It was bad. You got dressed up in the morning and you had to stay dressed up all day. And don’t you dare get anything on this outfit. Lord have mercy on you. I was brought up in ‘Hell and Damnation.’ Then, these other folks, they celebrated Sunday for real. They went out and sold stuff. It was a major retail area. Every Sunday the world would come to my area and I would go out and say, ‘Wow.’ I came in near the end of that.

Things began to change and I was squeezed out of that in 1972, when I got this space. The person I was collaborating with had a major brain hemorrhage and I freaked. By 1973, I had opened it up as a gallery. I started my own nonprofit art organization called the Minority Photographers. The Minority Photographers was a loosely knitted organization that was drawn together by a common need and a common understanding and need for somebody to talk with. You’d always have somebody to talk with. Once I created that, everybody flocked to it, because it was a window. Then it became a door and then it became a pathway.

From 1973 to 1976, different people started coming. There were people coming out of mental institutions in one corner and people with PhDs in the other corner. Not one of them knew the other one, but they were in my reality. I tried to get all these photographers organized. It was up to me to put the pieces together. It formed a coherent body. It was like the kids I grew up with when I first came to New York. Everybody filled a role of the unified structure. Each person had a job to do. It was all about the interaction with each other.

And once the interaction began to grow then the network began to grow and each one began to understand that the network was what it was all about. I created a lot of problems for a lot of people because of that group.

I also showed up here without the community support, with all these crazy people surrounding me. I stuck out like a sore thumb. They took issues, serious issues. [There were elements] that saw black groups as less than, because most of the black men around here coming out of the war were left to their demise, drinking Sneaky Pete, as the saying goes, that took them to the grave.

I was never part of that but I identified with that. It took a certain amount of time to let them know who I really was, far outside of my color, far outside of all those suspicious people that they saw coming in here without really understanding who these people really were.

I began to understand that I was breaking a lot of rules. There’s a very sophisticated type of casting that goes on. There were no real black folks down here on the Lower East Side. After the Italians left there were a few, a little jazz, a little bit of this. When I came in, black folks were pitted against Italians. You look at the police force and you could see how the caste system actually operated. It picks the beast to do its thing to keep everything in place.

I found the car [Dodge GTS Dart] in 1974. I grew up studying about cars. I went to a trade school that taught me about cars and the fundamentals of the machine itself but I never got a chance to actually practice any of that stuff.

When I got the car it was on the way to the junkyard. Everything was wrong with it. I worked on that car for 10 years, 1974 to 1984. In 1980, I had to take the engine out because it failed. I was always working on it. It was a joke, ‘When you gonna get from under the hood? Do you ever drive it?’ Of course I had just drove it, was racing it, and it broke. I was always fixing it because I would jam it. Awesome power. Let’s run it up to 100 real fast.

A lot of people hated me and hated my car. They had broken in the radio, punched the tires, you name it. It got vicious. I’d fix it and clean it off. It was about me being here without getting their stamp of approval, but they wouldn’t give me a stamp of approval. So the car became the symbol of me and eventually people began to fall behind the wayside.

I came up with the idea of putting the penguin in the car to see what would happen. Initially I had the owl. I put the owl and then the penguin in the car to keep it company. The best art project I had ever done; the most popular thing I have ever done. It worked. People started sitting on the car and the car stopped having problems. This spirit just took over the car.

So now I have to keep it. It was a major attraction for people who have feelings. People recognize the life that’s there. It attracts different people. The bird population didn’t like the owl. They started shitting on the window, on the car. They’re shitting on the owl. I come from the south so I know most of the wildlife on the block. It was a great hit with the tourists and other people who walked by. I don’t know how many thousands of images of that are on the Internet.



I began to get more involved in video and in the computer thing. By 1999, the whole Lower East Side began to change and I had to decide whether I wanted to retire, but I decided I wasn’t going to turn and run. Then I got a notice last year that I have to pay real-estate taxes on this place. Now I’m going through my archive. It’s like picking cotton.

I figure I should do a project on Muhammad Ali. At some point that’s going to go into a book. I went to photograph him at his training camp in Deer Lake, Pennsylvania. I went down to photograph him as a historical object. I had finally figured out how to document him. He was going to spar for the first time in the training camp, which was a big day. I had to get a photograph of him floating. I had to put him up outside, stand him up, have him smile, do a wide shot with the place in the background, do a tight shot, do angle shots, say, ‘Thank you mister,’ and leave.

But I went down there and said, ‘I have nothing else to do, what do I got to worry about?’ It was up to me, so I took full advantage of that and in the process of that I got these nice images. I never really liked working for these people because they edit out the good stuff. They’re looking for certain shots and I got that, but that’s not what it’s all about. The rest was done for me.

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

Read part one here.

Pro Land reopens on East 14th Street

[Photo Monday by Bobby Williams]

The Pro Land sneaker shop on East 14th Street near Avenue A abruptly closed the other day. There was a notice of a sale, but no word of a renovation. The space looked gutted.

Given the rumors (just rumors) that the single-level structures from the post office to the southwest corner of Avenue A will be cleared out to make way for some Double D development, it seemed plausible that Pro Land was a goner.

Per an EVG commenter Monday:

The Pro Land sneaker shop at 14th and A is suddenly closed. Walked by this morning and the place was gutted, men in there working.

Between the billboard coming down on the SW corner of A/14th (exposing the greatly missed Chico 9/11 mural), Stuyvesant Stationery (a few doors down from Pro Land) closing last fall, and of course the closing of the Stuyvesant PO next month, I would't be surprised if everything from Ave A to the detestable A Building gets razed on that side of 14th.

For now, at least, this isn't the case. As these photos yesterday by Bobby Williams show, the space has been quickly renovated and restocked...




The store was to reopen last night.

Anyway, to recap, the beloved Peter Stuyvesant Post Office branch on East 14th Street is closing soon. (The USPS will lease the former Duane Reade on East 14th Street near First Avenue for retail services, such as stamp sales and P.O. boxes.)

The lease expires at the current location at the end of next month. The landlord reportedly told the USPS that they have other plans (residential?) for the building.

Last fall, the Stuyvesant Stationery shop next door to the post office lost its lease and closed.

Previously on EV Grieve:
First sign of more development on East 14th Street?

Report: Closure of the Peter Stuyvesant Post Office is pretty much a done deal

'Ten Thousand Saints' now filming in the East Village

[Photo by Bill the Libertarian Anarchist]

The low-budget adaption of the Eleanor Henderson novel "Ten Thousand Saints" has started principal photography in the East Village... crews filmed on East Ninth Street yesterday (a popular location for shoots these days) ...

A quickie plot via The Hollywood Reporter, who has more details on the production:

"'Saints' is set in New York's Lower East Side in the 1980s and is a coming-of-age story that follows three screwed-up young people and their equally screwed-up parents in the age of CBGB, yuppies and the tinderbox of gentrification that exploded into the Tompkins Square Riots.

The husband-wife team of Shari Springer Berman and Robert Pulcini direct. (They directed the 2003 Harvey Pekar film "American Splendor" with Paul Giamatti.) The cast includes Ethan Hawke as a screwed-up parent.

Curious to see how the Tompkins Square Park Riots are depicted in the film. Maybe just via mentions from the characters? Or will the filmmakers choose to recreate part of it (and in the winter)? After all, we recently saw the return of Wigstock in the Park for a movie shoot.

Reader report: The fire alarm goes off every morning at PS 64

[Photo by Bobby Williams]

From a nearby resident of the school:

The fire alarm at PS 64 at 600 E. 6th St. goes off every morning at almost exactly 6. Emergency lights flash and the alarm sounds for approximately 1 minute waking up the entire neighborhood. Reported it to 311 many times and they claim:

The Department of Environmental Protection did not observe a violation of the New York City Air/Noise Code at the time of inspection and could not issue a notice of violation. If the problem still exists, please call 311 and file a new complaint. If you are outside of New York City, please call (212) NEW-YORK (212-639-9675).

It is the most infuriating situation.

Anyone else experience this from the school?

On a night like this, you need the Cramps

From Dangerous Minds today... here are The Cramps live at the Mudd Club in July 1981.



Will warm you up before you can say "Goo Goo Muck."

And head over to Dangerous Minds to read what Richard Metzger has to say about this video.

Confirmation on what's next for the former Peels space

At the Post today, Steve Cuozzo reports that Andrew Carmellini and business partners Luke Ostrom and Josh Pickard have taken over 325 Bowery, which housed Peels until its sudden closure last week.

Per Cuozzo:

The new eatery, likely to be an Italian trattoria in some form, reflects the Carmellini-Pickard empire’s swift growth.

The chef also operate Manhattan hits Locanda Verde, The Dutch, Joe’s Pub, The Library at the Public, and the newest, Lafayette.

Eater first reported this Peels rumor on Jan. 14.

Updated 11:45 a.m.

Oh! Eater has the scoop on exactly what's next here — a "casual pasta shop" called Bar Primi.

The Urban Etiquette Sign of the Year (so far)

A reader sends this along from East Second Street... presented here without commentary ...

Happy 81st birthday Ray!

[Photo by @zmack]

There was a bit of a celebration last night at Ray's Candy Store... as the proprietor celebrated his 81st birthday... And, as usual, someone sprung for some entertainment... We have more photos, though, someone has to think about the children. So we will post the rest of the adult contemporary shots for them later.

Happy birthday Ray!


[Photo by Shawn Chittle]


[SC]

Hugh Burckhardt has a lot more photos over at his More Than Usual blog... like this one!

Inside a classic East Village tenement before the whole building is renovated

Earlier in the month news came out that Jared Kushner is the proud new owner of two buildings on East Second Street, adding to his East Village collection. One of these buildings, 170 E. Second St., is a classic tenement dating to 1899. And renovations are underway in at least some of the units...

EVG reader Yenta Laureate shared some photos from inside the building showing the floor mosaics, marble hallways and other ornate details from a bygone era ...

















The ground-floor apartment in the back of the building looks particularly interesting... As Yenta's photos show, there's still an interior door with a window transom for light ...







... there's also outdoor space, though via the fire escape...





... and the apartment provides a bit of history... of, perhaps, bad renovations through the years...





Meanwhile, the sign remains outside No. 170 ... noting that Allen Ginsberg lived in apartment 16 from August 1958-March 1961 ...



In any event, it will be interesting (or maybe depressing) to revisit this building once the renovations are complete... and look at the new listings to see how much of the old 170 remains...

Moonstruck Diner temporarily closed for 'operating illegally'

[Photo by @EdenBrower]

The city closed the Moonstruck Diner yesterday over on Second Avenue and East Fifth Street... no one was around the diner to ask about the infraction ... as we've seen along here, the infractions are typically quite minor...

Dining ... and dashing

Bobby Williams caught a hawk enjoying a meal of rodent in Tompkins Square Park...



...while Derek Berg captured one in flight ... in a rather patriotic shot...

[Updated] NYU student jumps to his death from 3rd Avenue dorm

According to published reports, an NYU freshman killed himself after jumping off the roof of the Third North dorm on Third Avenue and East 11th Street early this morning.

NYU released this statement through spokesperson John Beckman:

"It is with great sorrow that we report that a freshman was found in an interior courtyard in the residence hall where he lived. It appears as though his death occurred as a result of a fall from the roof of the building; police and the University are looking into events preceding the discovery of the body in order to determine the cause and nature of his death."

The university has not released the name of the student. Spring 2014 classes begin today at NYU.

Updated 11:40 p.m.

According to the Daily News, citing police sources and fellow students, the 18-year-old victim "was stark naked and apparently high on mushrooms when he plummeted 15 floors to his death."