Waxing moon over 2nd Avenue

Local astronomy buff Felton Davis was out last night on Second Avenue near East First Street for some moon gazing. It's a warm-up of sorts for next week.

"I only hope that the Full Moon on Monday will be as cool and clear."

Tweet of the day

Someone is driving around the East Village BLASTING Joan Rivers stand up through their car speakers and it is wonderful

— Julia Mattison (@JuliaMat) September 4, 2014

Rest area

Avenue C between East Ninth Street and East 10th Street … photo via Bobby Williams

Noted

Reports Bloomberg News via Crain's New York:

Whole Foods Market Inc., working to shed its "Whole Paycheck" image, has become one of the cheaper chains for grocery shopping in Manhattan, according to a report by Bloomberg Intelligence.

A basket of 97 items, including orange juice and frozen pizza, was $391.39 at Whole Foods, compared with $398.44 from Fresh Direct and $458.84 at Gristedes, according to the study ...

Local politicos join residents of 2 Jared Kushner-owned buildings to speak out about poor living conditions, alleged harassment

[EVG file photo]

Tenant-landlord tensions continue at 170-174 E. Second St., the site of two walk-ups that developer/New York Observer publisher Jared Kushner bought last December.

In July, CB3's Land Use, Zoning, Public & Private Housing Committee heard firsthand about allegations of tenant harassment and quality-of-life issues brought on by gut renovations.

As DNAinfo reported:

Real estate scion Jared Kushner is using lawsuits, disruptive construction and neglect to force rent-stabilized tenants out of two buildings he owns in the East Village, as he converts them to high-end apartments, according to court documents and residents.

This afternoon at 1, Councilwoman Rosie Mendez, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer and the Cooper Square Committee will join the remaining tenants residing at 170-174 E. Second St.

Per the media alert, "Everyone will speak about the poor and unsustainable living conditions including perceived harassment by the landlord and his agents."

The news conference will be outside the buildings between Avenue A and Avenue B.

Here's more from the media alert:

The tenants have faced a lack of repairs, overzealous construction, and lack of communication about the ongoing construction in the buildings, resulting in five ceiling collapses and no functioning mailbox for nearly two weeks. In addition, building construction has resulted in a shutoff of gas, routine unannounced hot and cold water distributions, and severe dust and debris accumulation.

Jared Kushner has owned the buildings for about 8 months. Over the period of Kushner’s ownership of the buildings, there has been a 70 percent turnover rate.

Kushner paid $17.5 million for the two buildings.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Inside a classic East Village tenement before the whole building is renovated

Jared Kushner not done buying every walk-up in the East Village

Two East 2nd St. buildings sell for $17.5 million; will new owner still honor Allen Ginsburg?

Tenants claim: Kushner and Westminster want to destroy this building's beautiful garden

Reports outline how Kushner Companies is aggressively trying to empty 170-174 E. 2nd St.

First stage of portico repair and restoration complete at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery

We noticed yesterday that workers removed the scaffolding from outside St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery on Second Avenue at East 10th Street.

Since April, workers have been repairing and restoring the historic church's portico…





According to Rev. Winnie Varghese, the church's rector, this completes the first stage of the project. The portico floor and accessibility project will likely happen next year.

"We're proud of how much got done — much more than we thought we could do when we started this spring," she told us via Facebook."The portico ironwork is completely restored."

Read more about the restoration, including the funding, over at the church's website here.

And as a bonus, here's maybe the oldest-known photo of the church circa 1865…


[Photo via Roger Jack Walters at Facebook]

Previously on EV Grieve:
Portico restoration begins at St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery

Mourning The Crack™ in Tompkins Square Park

[Image via 2wavv]

Some local skateboarders are in mourning... after several attempts through the years, workers have finally filled in The Crack™ in the ballpark/skateboard area in the northwest corner of Tompkins Square Park.

Our friends at Quartersnacks have the scoop:

The Crack™ is gone. It has been filled with an effective tarlike substance that renders the inch-wide cavity obsolete.

[Image via Quartersnacks]

Here's video footage from a few years back about how to navigate The Crack™ — "the Park’s longest standing obstacle."



Perhaps The Crack™ will be back again some day...

Reader report: Some common-sense tips after several burglaries on East 9th Street

[EVG needs new clipart]

From the EVG inbox… the reader shared the following on Tuesday evening…

I learned tonight that the building I live in on East 9th Street has been burglarized several times in the past two weeks. The first time an apartment on the ground floor was robbed, the second time it was an apartment on a higher-up floor. There was also an incident where a guy was caught trying to jimmy a door open. The police are investigating at least one of these burglaries because financial data was taken. The burglar popped into the apartment while the tenant was home and took what he saw in plain sight. Pretty brazen!

In recent weeks workers from Starion Energy were in the building trying to convert us from Con Ed. One of them made a specific comment to me that indicated he had been studying my apartment. I'm not saying it was them, but these are crimes of opportunity and they should NOT have been let in the building. His comment creeped me out.

Please, DO NOT buzz people into your building if you are not expecting anybody and DO NOT leave the front doors to the building propped open. This should be common sense but people still do it. It may look safe but this is still a city.

A revamped Perbacco reopens tonight on East 4th Street

[Image via Perbacco]

Perbacco, the 14-year-old Italian restaurant at 234 E. Fourth St., closed back in the spring "for exciting remodeling" that included a revamped design, menu and focus on wine.

Reps for the restaurant between Avenue A and Avenue B let us know that Perbacco reopens this evening.

A few highlights straight from the official announcement:

• Perbacco will carry an extensive collection of over 80 Italian wines, representing over 20 regions of Italy. There will be more than 40 wines by the glass to choose from…

• The new wine focus is immediately clear even from the décor, from the visually striking back wall of floor-to-ceiling wine bottles behind glass, to the hanging wine glasses above the pewter bar counter by the entrance.

• New Executive Chef Clelia Bendandi will rework the menu into reasonably priced and portioned small plates.

• Perbacco will have over 35 share-able dishes to choose from, covering the traditional Italian categories of aperitivi, primi (pastas), secondi (fish and meats), and dolce (desserts).

• A few signature Perbacco favorites will remain on the menu – such as the Crème brulee di Parmigiano Reggiano with aged spicy balsamic reduction or the Crocchette di Melanzane, eggplant croquettes in fresh bur rata cream.

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: Jamie (he declined to have his photo taken)
Occupation: Check Cashing Guy
Location: 5th Street between 1st and 2nd
Date: 4:30 pm on Monday, Aug. 25

I’m from Brooklyn, East New York. I grew up in the projects. I had a great time. Projects back then were a little bit different than they are now. I thought they were great.

When we were growing up the playground consisted of monkey bars, one round cement thing and a seesaw. Concrete everywhere. There was no rubber or nothing like that. Everybody who has ever played on that would tell you that they either busted their shoulder or something like that. Everybody got hurt on one of those things.

The thing that I loved about the projects was that you had to negotiate within your building, then this building across from you might not have liked your building, so you had to negotiate with them, and not only that, but your development might not have liked the development across the street.

But the best thing was that it was a community. Everybody knew you. If you did something wrong you were in trouble before you even got home. When they said that the night has a thousand eyes, believe me, they knew. It was a good time, plus we had an imagination. We had nothing indoors, so everything was outdoors. A stick was everything in the world to us. Now if you give a stick to a kid he’s just going to hit you with it.

My grandparents opened this store in 1946, so for 67 years this place has been around. It used to be on East 2nd Street and when they closed that they moved here. My grandparents used to take me into the store when I was 8 years old. They had four stores. All the brothers and my grandfather had a store. There was another store on Broadway and Bleecker. I was always taken to that store. That was where my grandmother would take me, away from my grandfather and uncle. I was always the guy running up the bills, when everything was pen and paper. On the weekends if I didn’t run out fast enough it was, ‘You’re helping grandma today.’ That was how I got started.

Back then there were not many check cashers. Now there’s a whole flood. You had this check casher here, then you had one on Essex, Broadway and Bleecker, 14th Street, and 23rd Street. That was it. So if you’ve lived in this neighborhood, or you know anybody who was ever on the fringe, they went in, whether they paid a bill or cashed a check. We had celebrities from here to there. It’s amazing when I look at the old card file. In every walk of life there are a lot of interesting people and I won’t talk about them, but they made a lot of colorful nights that made your day go quick. It was always a warm feeling when people came in and they didn’t hate the store.

A lot of people misunderstand check cashing stores. You can’t just look at something now. You’ve got to take history into account. Back in the old days there were no banks around here. There was nothing here, and if there was a bank you needed $5,000 or $1,500 and they really didn’t want to deal with that type of population. They didn’t want the mother coming in with the two kids filling out all the forms. So check cashers arose to fill that need. We were the first ATM machines. Banks were 9 am-3 pm Monday through Friday, then say goodnight. There was no 24 hours. We filled the void that we would be open earlier and closed later. At the same time, there are a lot of people, whether they want to say it or not, living week to week with their paycheck. The majority of United States people owe a lot of money on credit. I think [all the banks around now] are a major write-off for them because you can’t have that many customers.

My father was killed during a holdup, working in his own store. That was 1972. So life changed at that point. I was 13. I don’t think my father wanted me to go into his line of work. He wanted me to be my own person. He used to say to me, ‘Jamie, I want to be known as Jamie’s father, versus you being known as Sidney’s son.‘ That was his biggest wish. School was very important. To get into a city school back then you needed an 85 average. There was no deviation from it. So I made sure I was in the 90s. It wasn’t a suggestion; it was a fact of life. You’re going to college.

Who knows, life would have been a little bit different. My mother suffered very badly from asthma and we were going to be going to Arizona at the time. That’s where the doctors recommended to go. We were ready to pick up and go. She was the one that stopped us. So that was it, we stayed around. Then my uncle passed away in 1988 and he offered the store to everybody else and nobody wanted it so I bought it from the rest of the family. I’ve been running it ever since then. The major thing is that when I walk in there it’s not a job. When I walk in there I see my grandmother, I see my grandfather. Cleaning out things, I come across handwriting. It’s a whole life in there and when I walk out and look at the neighborhood, it’s completely changed.

A job is one thing, but this is history. I cannot tell you how many people come in and say, ‘I was here when I was this big.’ They leave the neighborhood and come back and say, ‘You’re still here?’ I joke and say that they never gave me the key to get out. You see, there’s happiness. There’s a conversation. I know everybody, I know your name, I know your kids, I know if you’ve had an operation. There were a lot of colorful people, people that only wanted the money from their left hand. I couldn’t give it to you with my right hand.

We always charged less than other check cashers. I made a living, my kids were taken of and my wife was taken care of. I knew that there was a lot of hardship and if I could have helped, if I could put a dollar, or two or three or four in your pocket… so we always charged less. That was my way of giving back to the neighborhood. Unless you had been to another place, you didn’t know. So what happened was when I was closed for that one week people would come back and say, ‘Oh my God, I’m so glad you’re back!’ They would be shocked.

There’s a lot of hurt; you see it. When you work the window it’s worse. You hear the pain; you hear things; you see the aging. You’ve got kids just starting off and parents with two kids… if I can give you a happy meal. My accountant hates my guts. A lot of check cashers hate my guts because I make them look bad. They wouldn’t give me certain services unless I raise my rates. I tried to explain to people that they’re not charging you more, they’re not stealing from you, they’re charging you the legit rate that I could charge you, but I’m not. It put a smile on me.

So far nothing has been happening [getting back into the store]. I’m trying to get in. That’s the most important thing. I’m trying not to make waves, just trying to get inside. I just don’t understand why it’s taking so long. What happened was there was some construction being done [in the building] and a person put their foot through the ceiling. The person below them had enough and finally called the fire department and police department. Because of the condition of the place, the fire department looked, didn’t like what they saw, didn’t see any permits, and they went around the whole building. By the end of the day, it was everybody out — full vacate.

There’s hope because we know that there are people in the building [on the 4th floor]. So I don’t understand why they don’t let us back there. We were hoping for a resolution a little bit faster than it has. It was supposed to be a lot faster. It was a, ‘Ra ra, we’re going to get you guys in.’ I thought it was going to be one or two days, but then I saw that wasn’t happening. But I’m learning a little history. This is one building but it used to be two buildings. In the 1950s these were two separate buildings and they combined the two. So that’s why the other side is back in. They’re in a different structure.

A lot of people don’t see me now [in an armored truck across from the store]. I had to rent the truck. This was supposed to be a stopgap and next thing you know it’s becoming a way of life.

What’s upsetting is that no matter what happened, we were always open. If there was a blackout, we were open. During Hurricane Sandy and the blackout, we were open. People knew. They would come around the corner. People would come from the Bronx and Brooklyn. They had check cashers right underneath them, but they’d say, ‘You know what, you treated me like a person. I walked in, I was just going on recovery or something like that, you didn’t talk down to me, I’m your customer for life.’ They knew no matter what happened, there’s a light on. That’s what’s hurting me the most is that I’m not in there.

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

NYPD searching for this East 6th Street robbery suspect

The NYPD has released a video of the suspect in connection with the robbery early Monday morning outside 405 East Sixth St. between Avenue A and First Avenue. (The Post originally reported the robbery taking place on Avenue A and East Ninth Street.)

The suspect reportedly used a knife to hold up a 35-year-old woman and take her purse and wallet with $300 in cash as well as her iPhone.

The video via CBS is a little on "The X-Files" side… and we'll try to get a version in which you don't have to watch a Papa John's commercial beforehand … Video updated via the NYPD...



Anyone with information that could help in the investigation is asked to call Crime Stoppers at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). You may also submit tips online.

The last gas station in the East Village has closed

[Photo by @BennyPack]

The Mobil station on Avenue C and East Houston disappeared yesterday. This is a bit of a surprise because it had been previously reported that the station had a lease until some time next year ... when the property would yield to a new building.

Back in March, Hakimian Property filed plans (still waiting for approval) to erect a 9-story mixed-use building on the site. Plans call for 45 residential units and 4,550 square feet of commercial space.

The Times reported in October 2013 that construction would begin when Mobil's lease expires in two years — roughly toward the end of 2015.

The State briefly closed the station in June for nonpayment of taxes.

The BP station on Second Avenue and East First Street closed in early July.

Previously on EV Grieve:
How much longer will the East Village have gas stations?

The East Village will soon be down to 1 gas station

The Mobil on Avenue C is still going strong — for now

You have a little longer to get gas on Avenue C

Plans filed for new 9-story building at site of Mobil station on East Houston and Avenue C

RUMOR: Gas station going, boutique hotel coming on Second Avenue? (31 comments)

BP station on 2nd Avenue closes this month

State seizes Mobil station on Avenue C and Houston for nonpayment of taxes

Man new to area looking for a friend via flyers

‏@CuriousJLuis spotted this flyer yesterday on East Sixth Street near Avenue A.

Say hello to Charles.

According to the flyer:

"I'm sick and tired of this. I just want a friend.

No, not even that. Just someone who can tolerate me for 10 minutes."

I just moved into the area on 6th and A.

I'll be around the neighborhood, but I work a really demanding job as a consultant, so I won't always be available. Weekends work best if you put it on my calendar.

If you see me, please, just say hi."

We don't know if this is a gag of some kind … or a legitimate attempt to make some friends. (There isn't any contact info here.) Someone who looked like Charles was spotted hanging the flyer.

Brazilia Café now serving 'all things gourmet' on Broadway and Great Jones

Reps from Brazilia Café sent us some info on the new upscale food courty place from the folks who designed Eataly. From the EVG inbox...

Located at 684 Broadway (at the corner of Great Jones), Brazilia Café is a one-stop destination offering all things gourmet, from perfectly roasted coffees (sourced from their own coffee farm), to freshly squeezed juices and a smoothie bar for all of your beverage needs. They even offer beer, wine and champagne for those looking to take the edge off after a long day at work. Stop by the soups, salad and sandwich station, or satisfy your sweet tooth with one of the many flavors of Brazilia gelato or pastries.

Also!

Malcolm Stogo (CEO of Fal Foods USA — a subsidiary of Fal Holdings) and his very experienced management team carefully considered every element of the menu to make sure Brazilia delivers that “WOW” factor.

Stogo is behind the DF Mavens opening on St. Mark's Place and Second Avenue.

Gothamist had more details about Brazilia Café yesterday.