The new signage went up this afternoon...
Thursday, June 26, 2014
Funky Town now has the brightest awning on St. Mark's Place
The new signage went up this afternoon...
Another sign that it may possibly be a long, hot summer
Spotted on St. Mark's Place by @SuriR
Previously on EV Grieve:
A brief history of humiliating Teddy bears in the East Village
EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition
[Photo on East 4th Street by Jonathan Crane]
Fledgling update (Gog in NYC)
6 ways to celebrate Pride Week (DNAinfo)
About Green Fingers, a new garden shop on East First Street (A Continuous Lean)
Linda Simpson's photos of the NYC drag scene from 1987-1996 (The Cut/New York)
Clinton Street Baking Company looking to expand into the former Min's Market space (BoweryBoogie)
Manhattan renters still want to live in the EV, at least last week (The Real Deal)
About The Save LES Streets site (The Lo-Down)
The Bicycle Film Festival at the Anthology this weekend (Anthology Film Archives)
The Mysterious Time Machine has left 14th Street (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)
Photo: Brazilian models watch the World Cup at Miss Lily's 7A Cafe (Page Six)
NYC ranked as most "Stressed Out" city in America (CNN)
What the regional office of White Castle looks like in Queens (Scouting New York)
Bloomy's soda ban is officially dead, wrapped in plastic (Eater)
… and via The Laughing Squid, film enthusiast Tony Zhou examines Martin Scorsese's use of silence in movies ...
Slate of Thursday night films will return to Tompkins Square Park this summer
We originally heard that the Films in Tompkins series was not going to happen this summer in the Park.
However, we've just learned that there will be a slightly abbreviated series starting on July 10, and playing on consecutive Thursday nights until August. (A few August dates are expected as well.)
Only one film has been revealed so far: "The Rocky Horror Picture Show," which will include a Rocky Horror performance/costume contest. More info on the films as it becomes available.
Meanwhile, the Films on the Green series continues in Tompkins Square Park tomorrow night with a screening of "La Haine."
New closing and reopening dates set for St. Mark's Bookshop
[Photo of new storefront from Sunday]
St. Mark's Bookshop was originally set to close on Monday ahead of their move to 136 E. Third St.
However, workers were still finishing up the new storefront just west of Avenue A. So yesterday store officials released new dates for everything to happen...
Confirmed: We are moving to 136 East 3rd Street on July 1 and will remain open at 31 Third Ave through Sunday, June 29.
— St. Mark's Bookshop (@stmarksbookshop) June 25, 2014The bookshop has been at 31 Third Ave. and Stuyvesant Street since 1992, and in the neighborhood a total of 37 years.
Previously on EV Grieve:
Report: St. Mark's Bookshop prepping fundraiser ahead of possible move to Avenue A.
Is this the new home for the St. Mark's Bookshop?
Report: St. Mark's Bookshop signs lease for East 3rd Street space
Renovations at the future St. Mark's Bookshop on East 3rd Street
Report: Hearth hit with a 65% rent increase; plus, sidewalk cafe in the works
The article noted a recent spate of high-profile closings and a continuing rise in rents downtown. Among the restaurants facing a huge rent hike: the well-regarded Hearth on East 12th Street at First Avenue. They were just hit with a 65 percent increase, according to the Times.
There aren't any plans to close the place, but ...
[T]he chef and owner, Marco Canora, said his entire business model may have to change.
“I’m trying to be a smart businessman,” Mr. Canora said. “But I can’t do that at the cost of turning my back on my entire belief system and serving commodity pork and Perdue chicken.”
Meanwhile, here's one way to help increase revenue: Hearth has applied for a sidewalk cafe. They are on the docket for the CB3/SLA committee meeting on July 14.
Peeling off the layers through the years of the Houston/Bowery Mural Wall
Over at the NYPL Labs blog, Brian Roos had some fun playing around with the Google Street View archive.
Roos, a New York Public Library developer, used the Houston/Bowery Mural Wall to experiment with ... gathering all of the murals that Google captured to 2007, then filling in any of the missing artwork. He created a brush tool that allowed him to "erase" each layer to reveal the one previous to it ... and in the above image, he cut holes on each layer of the murals for a rather disorienting effect.
For a better explanation of all this, head over to the NYPL Labs for more... and see what other ideas Roos has for the layering tool.
Thanks to @seancarlson for the tip.
Hey, that East Houston CVS opens on July 5
Yeah, the one coming to 42-56 E. Houston St. between Mott and Mulberry... signs on the door note a star-spangled bannerish July 5 opening date...
The space previously housed a Subway, a dry cleaners and Soho Billiards.
Previously on EV Grieve:
Retail space that included Soho Billiards is up for grabs on East Houston Street
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
The Doors return to 2nd Avenue
[Photo by William Klayer]
The scene on Second Avenue and East Seventh Street this morning ... workers were moving them into the building receiving the gut renovation next door...
[Photo by Derek Berg]
Speaking of the Doors (blame Derek Berg for that headline!) ... the band played the Fillmore East one block to the south on March 22-23, 1968 ...
See more photos from the shows at Off the Grid...
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
James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.
By James Maher
Name: Kate
Occupation: Arts Administrator
Location: Tompkins Square Park
Date: 4 p.m. on June 18.
I was born and raised in Chicago but I came here when I was 20, and I’ve been here ever since. Chicago is a beautiful city but it just was provincial, so it was either here or LA. I had also passed through here before. I was here for a week and I stayed at the YWCA on 38th Street and met a Broadway actor. I just had a wonderful time.
I was an arts administrator and I worked in the visual and performing arts. I started out in the public school system. There was a federal program called CETA, because of high unemployment, to provide work for artists. I got that for two years working for something called Womens Inter Arts Center. From there I did film production, then went back to video, and then for 21 years I worked for an organization that brought the arts to people with disabilities. I did film and video for social change for the most part but then sometimes I’d be involved with video artists.
In the 1960s, I lived on the Upper East Side, and in the 1970s I lived on the Upper West Side. I had a three-bedroom rent-controlled apartment on Riverside Drive. But with the lifting of rent control, even though my apartment was still rent controlled, the neighborhood changed. The neighborhood used to be in some way like this — a neighborhood. Big apartments, people stayed forever, raised families. That’s exactly why I moved here.
I moved to this neighborhood in 1979. The Upper West Side had changed. I also had a boyfriend living with me, and the landlord told me I had to pay for a roommate. I said I don’t even want to live here anymore. So I got a lawyer and the landlord bought me out. He made it back in about 2 months, you know. It was an ugly apartment. He said you’ve got nine months to find a place.
I was spending all my life downtown and on the subway. My friends were living her. I worked in the West Village, and this is where everything was happening. So I just got up early every morning, since I didn’t have to be at work until 11, and I just walked these streets, talked to supers, rang doorbells. I started in January and I think I found my apartment in March.
I live next store to the library, top floor, rent stabilized since 1979. When I moved in we had a wonderful landlord. He was in an insurance brokerage and he just wanted to get out of the business, so he offered the building for $40,000 to the tenants. No one had a pot to piss in, so no one could even contemplate purchasing it. He sold it to the highest bidder.
After that we didn't have a super and no one tending the boiler. The boiler used to break down all the time, so we didn’t have heat and hot water. The super that we did have was simply a junkie, selling drugs. I came home twice to see someone being carried out dead from an overdose. This was around 1980 or 1981.
I’d come home and in the vestibule, because the lock was never fixed, there would be junkies with the needles still in their arms nodding out. Twice I couldn’t get out of my apartment because drunks had just fallen asleep on my door. I had to call someone to come and wake them up.
The first year I moved in I was broken into. I think within two years I was broken into four times. The third time I walked in on them. I knew they were kids even though I couldn’t see them. They threw me down on the floor. I said, ‘None of us want to do this, one of you go out the roof and one of you go out the front door and I won’t call the cops.’ And they did.
What kept me here ... was that I’m so stubborn. I loved the apartment and I was not going to move out. I never even thought about the neighborhood changing or getting better. It never occurred to me because it seemed so bad. For awhile there was one storefront in the building next door that had a bunch of light bulbs and detergent in the window and a guy sitting on a box in front with a machete in his lap. What do you think they’re selling there? I’d see people using on my block, but it wasn’t really dealing except for that bodega.
I knew all my neighbors and then [the landlords] did a gut renovation on most of the apartments, and charged $3,500 a month for a small two bedrooms. I’m not complaining. I’ve got very nice landlords — the people who eventually bought the building in the 1990s.
This is what happens. I don’t need to tell you this but I will anyway. With the removal of rent control — forget stabilization, but that’s a good model — the minute the tenant moves out it becomes market value. You don’t even need to do any renovations. Then there’s no point in keeping an apartment. You move and there’s no commitment to a neighborhood. That’s why I don’t know my neighbors. They’re only signing 1-year leases. Sometimes they pay a little bit more and stay a second year, but why should they stay?
James Maher is a fine art and studio photographer based in the East Village. Find his website here.
About Overthrow Boxing Club, the gym coming to the former home of the Yippies at 9 Bleecker St.
[No. 9 this past Saturday]
Here's more information about the three-level boxing gym opening at 9 Bleecker, the former home of the Yippies.
The gym will be called Overthrow Boxing Club, named for Overthrow, one of the countercultural newspapers that the Yippies published here.
In a video posted on June 15, Throwback partner Joey Goodwin, aka "the Soho Kid," a Golden Gloves contender and creative director at men's clothing label Unruly Heir, provides a quick overview of the space.
"We're going to turn this into a great spot, and a great business and make some good things happen," he says. "It's going to be boxing meets punk rock ... we're going to keep the history, keep the heritage, and go from there."
And now the video...
As the Times reported in June 2013, Steven L. Einig, a lawyer for Centech, which holds the building's mortgage, "stated that Yippie Holdings, which bought Number 9 along with a nonprofit called the National AIDS Brigade, had failed for more than five years to make payments on the $1.4 million mortgage."
For their part, a lawyer for Yippie Holdings, said that the group was "compelled into foreclosure with payments being rejected" by Centech as part of a scheme or plan to take over the building.
The Yippies had to vacate their home of 41 years this past Jan. 17 while litigation continued. The space here near the Bowery had been on the market for $22,500 in monthly rent.
Previously on EV Grieve:
The Yippie Museum Cafe is in financial trouble
The Yippie Museum Cafe will reopen next Wednesday
A bad sign at the Yippie Museum
Last day for the Yippies at No. 9 — for now
Fights of a different kind coming to 9 Bleecker St., longtime home of the Yippies
Root and Bone opens Monday on East 3rd Street
There's an opening date now for Root & Bone, the Southern-themed restaurant from former "Top Chef" contestant Jeff McInnis and season 11 contestant Janine Booth at 200 E. Third St. at Avenue B.
The sidewalk chalkboard is announcing the opening date for Monday at 11:30 a.m. ...
The restaurant's website describes the place this way:
What we're all about:
Soul nurturing, conscientiously sourced, farm-fresh ingredients.
A craftsman's ethic coupled with artistic culinary thought.
A tribute to the timeless recipes and traditions of a rural America and the warm embrace of its hospitality.
This location was previously home to Mama's Food Shop, which closed in July 2012 after 15 years. Then Heart 'n Soul for a few moments.
Like Mama's, Root & Bone will offer takeaway.
Previously on EV Grieve:
Mama's Food Shop closes after 15 years; 'the community nature of the neighborhood has all but vanished'
Rumors: 'Top Chef' alum Jeff McInnis will help revamp former Mama's Food Shop space
Root & Bone announces itself on E. 3rd St.
The former JoeDough space is now for rent on 1st Avenue
The quick-serve JoeDough sandwich shop closed in February after two-plus years at 135 First Ave.
At the time, Fork in the Road reported that proprietors Joe and Jill Dobias were keeping the space between St. Mark's Place and East Ninth Street "to focus on catering under the moniker JoeDough Catering & Events."
Now, though, there is a new for rent sign up in the front window.
Here are the details via Halstead:
Ground Floor Retail: 300sf + 200sf basement
Sublease: 3 years + 5 year option
Rent: $4,900 per month
Description: Turn Key Takeout restaurant. Fully vented to roof
Key money: Upon request
Compare this to 149 First Ave. up the block ... where the former This Little Piggy Had Roast Beef space is asking $9,500 a month for 500 square feet on the ground floor (and another 500 square feet in the basement).
Continuum Cycles going for another spin on Avenue B
[EVG file photo from last November]
Continuum Cycles and Continuum Coffee closed on Avenue B near East 12th Street last November. At the time, Continuum owner Jeff Underwood said that he planned to regroup in the months ahead, with the expectation of reopening a shop somewhere in the neighborhood.
Looks as if he found his space.
In recent weeks, Underwood has been preparing to open his bike shop in the former Saloon 13 space at 212 Avenue B (the entrance is actually on East 13th Street).
Photos via EVG reader Gamelan
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