A moment with Jim Power

EVG regular Stephen Popkin talked with Jim Power yesterday on St. Mark's Place and Second Avenue.

Stephen asked Jim about the status of his mosaic-covered lampposts that the city removed during the reconstruction of Astor Place.

"At the last Community Board meeting that I attended recently I was told that my mosaics would be preserved. They said that they would remove the lampposts and then cut them down to preserve the mosaics and try to reinstall them back into the area where they came from. I hope that they keep their word."

You can find more updates on Jim's blog here.

Quick — your chance to storm the former Mobil station on Avenue C

Part of the protective fence is down outside the former Mobil station (the neighborhood's last) on East Houston and Avenue C. (Too bad there is not a tree here to rescue.)

Meanwhile, plans are in the works for a 10-floor building with ground floor retail here…

Big word alert: From the front lines of the Avenue B brunch war

An EVG reader noted the arrival of sidewalk graffiti outside bonkers brunch spot Poco on Avenue B and East Third Street …



Per the reader: "I had to look up the word but sums it up about right. Haha."



Also…



…there's a similar message across the Avenue outside Mama's Bar…



One fed-up neighbor describes Poco as a "horror show."

"Poco is constantly crowding the sidewalk, and attracted people from many different areas to come and have a free-for-all of drinking and not realizing that we actually live here," the neighbor said.

Poco's website advertises that it has the "Best boozy brunch on the island."

Day starter

Morning scenes… Tompkins Square Park … and on East Second Street via EVG reader Peter Shapiro…

Transformers: Age of extinction, though not yet on Avenue A

[Photo via @Salim]

As we noted earlier in the week, there's some transformer replacement work going on in the weeks ahead (again) at the ConEd substation on Avenue A between East Fifth Street and East Sixth Street…

Anyway, we just wanted to note today's pretty big crane action… Yes!

And thanks to EVG regular Creature for this six-seconds of crane porn…

Report: Pizza delivery guy robbed for $22 on Avenue D

[Via the NYPD]

On Tuesday night around 7:30, a man delivering a pizza to a building on Avenue and East Fifth Street was robbed.

Per CBS 2:

[H]e was attacked in the elevator by a man who demanded his money.

The delivery man handed over $22. The suspect took off.

The suspect is described as Hispanic, about 25 years old and weighs about 160 pounds, police said. He was last seen wearing camouflage pants, multi-colored sneakers and a jacket with stripes on the sleeves.

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.

No trees yet, but...

There are holiday wreaths on display outside the Whole Foods Market® Bowery on East Houston…

Speaking of holiday trees … soon, everyone's favorite inflatable Santa should (oh Lordy we hope!) return to its familiar holiday home on East 14th Street at First Avenue…

We're guessing that the tree stands will arrive on Wednesday… the actual trees on Friday and Jolly ol' Trailer Park Santa on Saturday…

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

Here comes the sun

Tompkins Square Park looking toward East Eighth Street this morning…

Oh yeah

Thee Oh Sees are playing out at the Warsaw in Brooklyn tonight. Here is the band's previous lineup (they are a trio now) doing "Contraption/Soul Desert" live in 2012…

Who wants to adopt the ExxonMobil tree?

This little fella remains behind at the former BP station that closed on Second Avenue at East First Street in July … in its original Exxon-branded planter … Will it go unclaimed to the day the station is finally demolished to make way for 50,000-square-feet of residences…?

EV Grieve Etc.: Mourning Edition

[Avenue A Flyers Club via Grant Shaffer]

East Seventh Street apartment the centerpiece in this lengthy court battle, which concluded yesterday. Court finds that rent-stabilized apartments can't be seized as assets in bankruptcy (Gothamist)

Checking in at the newish St. Mark's Bookshop (The Villager)

Demolition permits filed for 50-62 Clinton St. (BoweryBoogie)

Hope for the Siempre Verde Community Garden (Curbed)

Check out the movie-theater nights this weekend at the Italian American Museum at 155 Mulberry St. (The Italian American Museum)

CB3 election news (The Lo-Down)

Do you have any BLDG Management horror stories? (Medium)

Rat hunting with Christo, that hunk (Gog in NYC)

The Everything Guide to Last-Chance New York (New York)

A Beastie Boys location photo quiz (Flaming Pablum)

A rustic East Village duplex with dead animal rugs is on the market (Curbed)

Catch "Purple Rain" at midnight (actually 11:55) tonight and tomorrow (Sunshine Cinema)

After 80 years, 727 Hardware in Chelsea forced to relocate (Jeremiah's Vanishing New York)

Classic NYC drug store gutted uptown (Scouting New York)

An interview between Patti Smith and David Lynch (NME)

... and Reverend Billy and the Stop Shopping Choir's "Monsanto is the Devil" residency starts Sunday at Joe's Pub ...

And the survey says: What types of retail and services do you want in the East Village?

Via the EVG inbox...

Take the East Village Consumer Survey
Your input is important for the community

The East Village Community Coalition seeks your opinions to understand what types of retail and services residents and visitors want to see in the community. Help the community understand what is available and what is missing from retail in the East Village. Survey results can identify trends in the neighborhood's retail environment that can help empower businesses and residents work to attract desired businesses.

We are hoping to reach as many East Village residents and visitors as possible. Respondents need not give identifying information to participate. It takes just 5­-10 minutes to share your experience living in, working in, or visiting the East Village.

The consumer survey is part of the of EVCC's retail diversity campaign, which advocates for increased diversity of available retail and local services for residents within the East Village.

Find the survey here.

Some love for Streecha Ukrainian Kitchen

[EVG file photo]

Fork in the Road pays a visit to Streecha Ukrainian Kitchen, the basement home of hearty and inexpensive Eastern European fare at 33 E. Seventh St. between Second Avenue and Cooper Square.

Here's part of Kevin Kessler's article:

Open Friday through Sunday from roughly 8:30 a.m. until 5 p.m., the basement is a haven for local Ukrainian expats and those New Yorkers looking for a taste of authentic Ukrainian fare.

Cheap, fresh, and fast, Streecha serves a small menu heavy on flavor that barely touches your billfold. The standards are excellent. The beet borscht soup ($2) is a lighter version than normally found, with added lentil beans for texture (a nice touch). The stuffed cabbage ($4) is firm and still tender; the boiled kielbasa comes from East Village Meat Market, located just down the street.

The timeless basement cafe is a fundraising arm of the St George Ukrainian Catholic Church just up East Seventh Street.


[EVG file photo]

Previously on EV Grieve:
At the Streecha Ukrainian Kitchen

The Salvation Army's former East Village Residence now with a little off the top

A whole floor, actually … Goggla told us yesterday that the building at 347 Bowery and East Third is without its top floor now. (Not to mention its roof.)

And later, toward sunset…



As we've noted, workers are demolishing the building to make way for a 13-floor, 30,000 square-foot mixed-use residential development. The project is still waiting for city approval.

Specialty bookshop finds a new home 1 block away

[Image via Facebook]

Back in late July, 10,000 Steps A Hungarian Bookstore closed at 545 E. 12th St. between Avenue A and Avenue B.

The closure was short-lived ... the shop has reopened at 516 E. 11th Street between Avenue A and Avenue B. You can find more info on their website.

The store opened in April 2008 "to serve the Hungarian community, those with Hungarian roots in North America and all others from our base in the New York Metropolitan area." The store sells books, magazines, CDs and DVDs.

Cafe Cambodge says goodbye on Avenue C

Last Friday, we noted that the Marshall had seized Cafe Cambodge, the French-Cambodian restaurant at 111 Avenue C near East Seventh Street.

At the time, we were unsure if this was just temporary … However, an EVG reader said that the owners left this message on the restaurant's Facebook page:

Dear friends and family, I just wanted to take a moment to thank you all for the many years of love and patronage. With a sad and heavy heart Cafe Cambodge bids you all farewell. Thanks for all the memories, friendships and good will. We all did our best to keep the dream alive and now it is time to move on. Love, peace and happiness to you all.

Cafe Cambodge opened here back in February ... after the owners revamped the space from its 6-year run as Arcane.

This is the second restaurant to close along this part of Avenue C in recent weeks. Earlier this month, the Marshall seized Lumé, the "Epicurean drinkery" at East Eighth Street.

[Updated] Hop Devil Grill and The Belgian Room closed for now on St. Mark's Place

We noticed the NYPD signage outside the two bars on St. Mark's Place this morning…



The signs note a "violation of Alcohol Control Law."



No mention of the closure on the respective bars' social media properties.

As of tonight, bar places remain closed.



Updated 11-22

Both bars are back open.

It's flu season

And EVG reader Riian Kant-McCormick reminds us that we can stop by Kmart on Astor Place for our Nicki Minaj® influenza vaccine...

Lease-less Greenwich Village cookbook shop may find a new home on East 2nd Street

On Monday, Jeremiah Moss reported that the popular Bonnie Slotnick Cookbooks was not having the lease renewed for its 15-year-old Greenwich Village shop.

However, Slotnick may have a new home already on East Second Street between the Bowery and Second Avenue.

As DNAinfo reports:

After reading news reports about Slotnick's troubles, a pair of siblings reached out to her on Tuesday about a retail space available in their childhood home on East Second Street.

"I'm speechless," Slotnick said after seeing the new spot, at 28 E. Second St., on Wednesday morning. "It's perfect."

Margo and Garth Johnston had been searching for a retail tenant for the belowground space when Margo came across online reports about Slotnick's situation.

"I sent it to Garth and said, 'I’d kind of like a bookstore,'" Margo Johnston said. "And he called me immediately, and we called Bonnie."

The siblings told Slotnick about their mother, Eden Ross Lipson, who owned the building until she died from pancreatic cancer in 2009. Lipson spent more than three decades reviewing books for the New York Times Book Review, and she had an extensive cookbook collection.

The basement-level commercial space is triple the size of the space Slotnick currently pays $3,500 a month to rent at 163 W. 10th St., DNAinfo notes.

The siblings could, of course, make some money off the retail space.

Back to DNA:

But Johnston assured Slotnick that she and her brother are more concerned with finding the right tenant than the rent.

"We've been told we could certainly charge a lot more," Johnston said. "But [getting] the most money is not the important thing. The place is really important to us."

Rent hike forcing Marjory Warren to close on East 9th Street

Marjory Warren, a women's clothing and accessories boutique at 309 E. Ninth St., will close at the end of November thanks in part to a rent increase.

The boutique moved to this storefront between First Avenue and Second Avenue from the Upper East Side in 2009. Aside from the rent increase, owner Chris Warren cited a building tax and a decline in foot traffic that never recovered after Hurricane Sandy as other factors in the closure.

Per a statement to us:

"It's been a heart wrenching process,” said Warren. "I've tried to keep this up and running for as long as possible, but it's simply not viable at this point.

"I'm brokenhearted that I have to leave this wonderful little street. But I have to come back here for business every week so I know I can stay connected to the neighborhood and that offers me solace."

She was able to find a new storefront back on the Upper East Side (115 E. 96th St. near Park Avenue). The new location is set to open on Dec. 2.

As for the East Village location, there's a moving party tonight from 6-9. Find details here.

Farewell, some day maybe soon, to the World Famous Pee Phone™

[Do you remember the times that we had...]

Meant to mention this sooner... On Monday, Mayor de Blasio announced the winner in a competition to replace the city's pay phones.

Meet your new WiFi Internet hotspot stand thing via a consortium of companies called CityBridge:

LinkNYC is a proposal for a first-of-its-kind communications network that will bring the fastest available municipal Wi-Fi to millions of New Yorkers, small businesses, and visitors. The five-borough LinkNYC network, which will be funded through advertising revenues, will be built at no cost to taxpayers and will generate more than $500 million in revenue for the City over the first 12 years.

By replacing the aging network of public pay telephones with state-of-the-art Links, the City aims to transform the physical streets cape — and New Yorkers’ access to information — while also creating new local jobs for the development, servicing and maintenance of the structures.

And they will look like...



The city will eventually replace the pay phones around the city ... with a few exceptions. Via the Times:

The city also plans to remain hospitable to the cape-wearing set. CityBridge said it would maintain three existing “Superman pay phones” scattered along West End Avenue, where a small number of traditional phone booths have survived.

Anyway, you have a little time left to bid farewell to the World Famous Pee Phone™ on Avenue A at East Seventh Street. Maybe one more winter together.

And no word yet if those fancy interstellar, download-25-years-worth-of-the-Simpsons-in-47-seconds LinkNYC things will have a little shelf to hold the vodka like the World Famous Pee Phone™.


[EVG file photo via Bobby Williams]

Previously on EV Grieve:
The Miracle on Avenue A™: World Famous Pee Phone™ has a phone again

Out of order: World Famous Pee Phone™, others, face a future without quarters, whiskey

All is well at the World Famous Pee Phone™

Uh-oh: SantaCon looking for another neighborhood for its participants to trash

[Photo from 2011 by Dave on 7th]

Per amNewYork:

Organizers for SantaCon will continue searching for a neighborhood for the booze-fueled charity bar crawl, deciding to stay out of Bushwick, according to an organizer.

And!

The organizer said Bushwick was one of a half-dozen neighborhoods SantaCon NYC was considering for the Dec. 13 event and that no neighborhood has been selected yet. The organizer declined to name the other neighborhoods.

Few people in Bushwick were rolling out the welcome mat. As Gawker put it in a headline: "Bushwick Bars to Boycott Drunken Disgusting Shitshow Known as SantaCon."

Back to amNewYork:

“Nobody wants it and nobody will allow it,” Ben Warren, owner of The Bodega and Heavy Woods, told amNewYork. “I'm just going to keep them out.”

Warren said he got firsthand experience of “the madness that ensues” during SantaCon while living in the East Village. Now as a bar owner, Warren said he would hire a few door people to keep Santas out of his bars.

“It's like we're preparing for battle,” he said.

Bushwick denizens were also worried about the whirlwind of hard-drinking Santas coming into their neighborhood in the name of charity.

“It's like basically coming to trash the neighborhood,” Matthew Christie, a 23 year-old Bushwick resident, said.

The East Village/Lower East Side served as HQ for the drunken disgusting shitshow last year. Suggestions for 2014?

Previously on EV Grieve:
SantaCon makes it official: The fucking thing starts in Tompkins Square Park

'Quite simply, SantaCon is a parasite' (48 comments)

Let's buy this building! 190 Bowery apparently back on the market

[190 Bowery via jdx]

Back in September, news broke that 190 Bowery, the longtime home of photographer Jay Maisel, was in contract to RFR Holdings for an undisclosed sum.

Condos were one possibility for the 37,000-square-foot building on the corner of Bowery and Spring Street.

Now, RFR is apparently flipping the building, The Commercial Observer reports.

There are reportedly marketing materials dated yesterday making the rounds via Massey Knakal. The price is not listed. (And the previous sale has yet to be filed with the city.)

Maisel bought the 1898 Germania Bank building in 1966 for $102,000. He and his family have lived there ever since. The price tag of the building had been estimated to be in the $50-plus million.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Coolest building on the Bowery may or may not be for sale

Autumn leaves are on the ground

A leaf-covered walkway in Tompkins Square Park near Eighth Street and Avenue B today via Bobby Williams...

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: Elinor Nauen
Occupation: Poet, Writer
Location: 5th Street between 1st and 2nd Ave
Time: 2 pm on Saturday, Nov. 15

I’ve been here since January 1977. I’m original from Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Between graduation from high school in Sioux Falls and moving to New York six years later, I lived in Michigan, Colorado, Maryland, South Carolina and North Carolina briefly, and Maine. I also lived in a bus for a year just driving around. I got out of high school and said, ‘Oh good, nobody can tell me what to do ever again. Now I’m just going to smoke pot and do what I want.’ The most glamorous thing was driving around the country. I wanted to see America. I’ve been to 49 states.

I’m a poet. Why do people come to New York except to be an artist? I was living in the woods in Maine. I was a hippie. I didn’t quite know that the poets were here, but when I was living in Maine I met Joel Oppenheimer. He was a poet who wrote for the Voice, so somebody connected us because he didn’t drive and I was a big driver. Looking back, I realize I was sort of amusing to him, this wide-eyed, completely uneducated, eager young person. He said, ‘You should be a poet and if you’re going to be a poet you have to move to New York.’

So I took the advice. That was combined with somebody giving me a ride here spur of the moment. I had never been in a city, so I was nervous about what it was going to be like. I was here for 10 minutes and I was like, ‘Oh, I’m a New Yorker now, I live here,’ and I went back to Maine and I got all my stuff. I came with my belonging in two paper bags and $100 in my pocket. I was 24.

I lived on Thompson Street for six weeks and then I came home one day and it was the last day of the month and my belongings were in two paper bags outside of the door. I had been evicted. It was very informal. So I went to the Voice and I saw these ads for students and transients up on 39th Street. I didn’t even know it was Times Square. I had only been here a few weeks. So I went up, this little girl from South Dakota, and there was this long hallway of plexiglass and it said, ‘Short stays. Up to 1-hour: $4. 1 to 4 hours: $6. Up to $24 hours…’

I didn’t know what else to do so I stayed there. They put me in this room that didn’t have a lock and there was a used condom on the mantle. I just sort of sat on the edge of the bed and said, ‘Oh no, I don’t know what I’m supposed to do now.’ Then the guy came up a few minutes later, really embarrassed, and he said, ‘I think you’ll be more comfortable here’ and he took me to a room that was more like a room for students. But that didn’t deter me at all. Nothing deterred me.

I loved this neighborhood since the first day I moved in. I found cheap rent [in the building above Gringer and Sons]. When I moved into that building half the apartments were vacant. The guy showed me the first one that had the toilet still in the hall. The second one had a slate tub with a flat bottom, and then he showed me the third one and he said, ‘Well there’s nothing wrong with this one.’ So I moved in and I’ve been there ever since.

My first job in New York was as a messenger, and the first day I went to a type shop for desktop publishing, everything had to be typeset, and I ended up going there practically every day until they said, ‘Oh you seem smart, now you can be our proofreader.’ All of a sudden I was a proofreader and then somebody who knew me was like, ‘We need a copy editor for two weeks for two days a week while somebody was on jury duty.’ So then I had this job and on the second week, one of the days I wasn’t there, everybody quit, so they said, ‘Do you want to be a full-time copy editor?’ So then I had a full-time job as a copy editor, which was great because I didn’t really go to college, but once you have a job nobody cares about your credentials.

I started going to St. Mark's Church in-the-Bowery, which was the home of the Poetry Project. That is how I started meeting people and then I got involved in readings and workshops. I’m still very involved. I’ve been there for almost 40 years now. I love seeing the people coming up and still being excited about art and poetry. But it’s so different [now] because you can’t come to New York with a $100 in your pocket anymore. I feel a tight community of the poetry project people. We’re about to have our 50th anniversary in two years.

Galway Kinnel just died and [I remember] the first thing I did the first day I came to New York was walk on Avenue C because of his famous poem, The Avenue Bearing the Initial of Christ into the New World. I remember the fruits and vegetables for sale on the street. I was like, ‘I can’t believe I’m seeing this.’ Avenue C in those days was probably a block you did not want to walk on. I always felt like I had the protection of the innocence around me.

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

East Village etiquette for AirBnBers: 'Don't piss off the locals'

[Click on the image for a better read]

Here is an Urban Etiquette Sign from inside a 110-year-old tenement on First Avenue near East Sixth Street that has seen a weekly parade of transients/backpackers/tourists for the past year.

Per the sign's creator:

I know it puts me in the category of 'passive-aggressive note-posters.' I don't care anymore.

New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman recently announced that nearly three-quarters of all Airbnb rentals in the city were illegal.

High-end rentals and additional floors coming to the former SVA dorm on 3rd Avenue

[EVG file photo]

The former SVA dorm on East 10th Street at Third Avenue will be converted into – who woulda thought? — luxury rentals.

The Real Deal has more on the developments here:

Slate – a Midtown-based development firm headed by Martin Nussbaum and David Schwartz – and RWN Real Estate Partners want to reposition the building as a high-end rental property. They plan to take advantage of more than 8,000 square feet in unused air rights to add additional floors above the existing structure.

Aufgang Architects was hired to handle design, a representative for Slate told TRD. The new owners intend to determine the number of additional floors – and units – after the design is finalized, the rep said.

Third Avenue between East 10th Street and East 12th Street is shaping up to be a high-end rental row alongside the NYU dorms. The Nathaniel on the southwest corner of 12th Street has rentals going as high as $11,500. And at Eleventh and Third, rentals reach $10,000.

Previously on EV Grieve:
East Village now down a dorm

ConEd will be hogging up some parking spots ahead of another transformer replacement

Via the EVG inbox from your friends at ConEd…

Due to transformer replacement work at the Avenue A substation, pedestrian traffic and some parking spaces will be affected from November 17 to December 14, 2014.

There will be no parking on both sides of East 6th Street from corner of Avenue A to the end of the substation from Monday, November 17 until Sunday, December 14, 2014.

On the day of the transformer installation tentatively scheduled for March 1, 2015, East 6th Street will be closed to vehicular traffic and there will be parking restrictions on Avenue A between East 5th Street and East 6th Street on the weekend of February 28.

These disruptions are necessary to accommodate cranes, heavy equipment, and an oversized trailer needed to remove and replace the transformer. This work will help us continue to provide reliable electrical service in your community.

There will be no interruptions to your gas or electric services during this operation.

We apologize for any inconvenience.

Hope that you have noted all this in your 2015 calendars.

Anyway, so you know what all this means?

Big crane and transformer photo opps galore!

[January 2012!]


[March 2014 photo by Allen Semanco]

Anyone know how many transformers are inside the substation… and how often they actually need to be replaced….?

H/T EVG reader Creature

Momofuko Ko brings the lucky peach branding to Extra Place

EVG reader Russ happened to notice the discreet sign up at 4-8 Extra Place, where Momofuku Ko is opening a new, larger space…



We haven't been following this one too closely… Eater has some interior details here and here.

Previously on EV Grieve:
A look inside the incoming Momofuko Ko on Extra Place

With new restaurant opening, will Extra Place finally become a dining destination?

Extra Place now officially a Dead End

Extra Place and Heidi currently 'closed for renovation' in Extra Place

Anyone ride an 'Annie'-branded Citi Bike today?

We spotted one this morning on East Seventh Street and Avenue A.

Well, you can always ride one Tomorrow. Haha.

Fifty of the "Annie" bikes (to coincide with the movie remake out this December) will be in circulation until the end of the year.

The New York Cares 26th annual Coat Drive is now underway

Per NY1:

With greater urgency this year, New York Cares is launching its 26th Annual Coat Drive.

The agency says it has received requests for 100,000 coats for men, women, and children.

Typically it collects 80,000.

Through December 31, donations of gently used, freshly laundered coats will be collected at hundreds of locations throughout the five boroughs including all NYPD precincts, New York Penn Station, Atlantic Avenue – Barclays Center, and Grand Central Terminal.

You may search for a drop-off location here. Around here you can take coats to the 9th Precinct at 321 E. Fifth St. between First Avenue and Second Avenue ... or the Police Service Area 4 at 130 Avenue C at East Eighth Street.

Report: CB3 OKs liquor license for a David McWater-owned d.b.a.

As we reported earlier this month, David McWater, a local bar owner and former longtime member of Community Board 3, emerged as the new proprietor of d.b.a. at 41 First Ave.

And last night, he went before CB3's SLA committee for a new liquor-license approval.

As BoweryBoogie reported: "Nothing about the bar is changing; it’s the same name, same method of operation, and same staff."

CB3 OK'd the new license, though there was debate about the legality of the bar's backyard. (You can head to BoweryBoogie for the back and forth about that issue.)

Paperwork (PDF!) on file at the CB3 site shows that McWater, who also owns part of The Library, Doc Holliday's and Milano's, and Tower Brokerage's Bob Perl as the principals for d.b.a.

Ray Deter and Dennis Zentek opened d.b.a. in 1994. Deter died in July 2011 from the injuries he suffered in a bicycling accident. Zentek died on March 23 from head injuries he sustained in a fall down a flight of stairs.

According to BoweryBoogie, the heirs of d.b.a. had reached out to McWater about taking over the ownership.