Sunday in Tompkins Square Park...
Previously
Sunday, April 24, 2016
RIP Roland Legiardi-Laura
[Image via Nuyorican Poets Cafe]Several residents have passed along the sad news that longtime East Village resident, Roland Legiardi-Laura, died on Wednesday of cancer. He was in his early 60s.
The Nuyorican Poets Cafe on East Third Street, where he served as a director, posted this on Facebook:
With sadness and fond memories, we raise our glasses to poet, filmmaker and longtime Cafe board member Roland Legiardi-Laura, who passed today. A champion of East Village arts groups, Roland directed the Fifth Night Screenplay Series, founded Power Poetry and co-directed the film "To Be Heard." He was a friend and mentor to many, and he will be greatly missed.
In July 2000, The New York Times profiled Legiardi-Laura (focusing on how he bought a derelict loft space for $10,000 in 1978 inside the former Tompkins Square Boys' Lodging House on Avenue B at Eighth Street):
A poet and filmmaker, Mr. Legiardi-Laura, 47, is perhaps best known as a director of the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, the East Village institution he helped to revive after years of dormancy. His colorful curriculum vitae also includes "Azul," a documentary he directed about the Nicaraguan passion for poetry, and founding Words to Go, a traveling troupe of poets who brought verse to museum steps and street corners.
Now, he is beginning work on a three-part documentary about the history and purpose of American public schooling. "Roland is that rarest of modern social phenomena," said John Gatto, the 1991 New York State Teacher of the Year, who was the project's inspiration. "He is a significant player in cultural and community affairs who's not beholden to institutions or corporations -- a citizen, in the Jeffersonian sense of the word."
Mr. Legiardi-Laura is also the consummate autodidact, the sort who knows the ages of trees in Tompkins Square Park because he dug up the original survey maps.
And he is passionate about the East Village. Asked what he likes about it, he replied, "I'll give you a history of the neighborhood, briefly." Then he continued, straight-faced, "Twelve thousand years ago..."
The Times reveals the Streit's-replacing condos; Ben Shaoul wordsmiths gentrification
[Streit's factory photo via BoweryBoogie]
We've been talking about "Streit’s: Matzo and the American Dream" this past week.
The documentary by East Village-based filmmaker Michael Levine started its week-long run Wednesday at the Film Forum. (There's also a Streit's-related exhibit happening at Art on A Gallery, 24 Avenue A between East Second Street and East Third Street.)
The last family-owned matzo bakery in America closed its four-building factory on Rivington Street last year after 90 years in that location. As you likely know, the developers who bought the property have condos planned for the site.
Today, The New York Times published the first rendering of the new residential complex (the article was online on Thursday, which is why you may have seen this already elsewhere) ...
[Volley Studios via the Times]
Per the Times, 150 Rivington will be a 7-story glass condo "that will house 45 one- and two-bedroom apartments. Sales begin in May, with one-bedrooms starting at around $975,000."
Developers said that they plan to decorate the lobby with memorabilia from the original building.
BoweryBoogie also has part of an interview with Streit's co-owner Aron Yagoda, who tells of Mayor de Blasio snubbing his offer of a tour of the factory.
Streit's now operates out of more modern facilities in Rockland County.
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The piece in the Times focused on small businesses on the Lower East Side that are disappearing... and how Katz's was able to continue moving into the future by selling their air rights for $17 million... so that developer Ben Shaoul could then tear down the rest of the block
for an 11-(or 12!) story condoplex with an Equinox Fitness in the retail space on East Houston between Ludlow and Orchard.
Ray's Pizza, Bereket and Lobster Joint, among others — closed or moved in the process.
"I’m sorry they went out of business, but it’s part of evolution," Shaoul told the Times. "You call it gentrification, I call it 'cleaning it up.'"
Saturday, April 23, 2016
Last legs for East 7th Street street art
[Photo from November by Derek Berg]
Back in November, artist Ernest Zacharevic created this tribute to Lil Crazy Legs on East Seventh Street between Avenue A and First Avenue (next to Porchetta).
Now it's gone... buried under a tag last night... (the aerosol cans disappeared earlier...)
Zacharevic recreated photojournalist Martha Cooper's shots from the 1970s-80s around the city. Lil Crazy Legs — aka Richard Colón of the Bronx-based Rock Steady Crew from the early 1980s — is on the cover of her photo book "Hip Hop Files: Photographs 1979-1984."
Video interludes: NYC in 1993
An EVG reader shared this video... a pleasant 5-minute excursion around Manhattan (sticking to Central Park, Times Square, Wall Street, etc.) in 1993. Its purpose, via the YouTube explanation: "In 2002 D-Theater D-VHS launched in the US — the dealers needed a demo tape of HD footage. JVC reused some HD video [from 1993] that had been shot."
The camera is on East Third Street at the 1:42 mark, where a member of the Hells Angels enacts the no-camera policy... and there's a quick scan on St. Mark's Place between Second Avenue and Third Avenue then from 1:44 - 1:54 ...
Openings: Desi Galli on Avenue B
As previously reported, the proprietors of the well-regarded Desi Galli on Lexington Avenue and East 27th Street were opening a location at 172 Avenue B between 10th Street and 11th Street (the old Mercadito Cantina space).
Anyway, Desi Galli, which offers quick-serve Indian food, opened this past Wednesday (a few days later than previously announced) ... and they are open late (or early depending on your schedule) ...
Open until 3am in the #eastvillage. #midnightsnack
— Desi-Galli (@DesiGalliNY) April 23, 2016
Friday, April 22, 2016
'Summer' happens so fast
The Barcelona-based Zephyr Bones have a new single out today... which might be a good time — given the temps today — to play "Weird Summer" from their debut EP "Wishes/Fishes" from 2014.
Prince tribute at Dallas BBQ?
Or maybe just a coincidence here on Second Avenue and St. Mark's Place.
Photo by EVG Dallas BBQ correspondent Steven
EV Grieve Etc.: Fatal assault at Project Renewal Men's Shelter; new work from Peter Missing
[Smartphone falls off billboard on the Bowery? Photo by Derek Berg]
Felony assault arrest in fatal fight at Project Renewal Men's Shelter on East Third Street (PIX 11)
AEG Live buying Bowery Presents (Billboard)
Kitchen tub in East 11th Street apartment marketed as "vintage detail" (Curbed)
A talk with Cochise and Clayton Patterson, co-authors of "The Street Gangs of the Lower East Side" (Bedford + Bowery)
Prince at the Roxy in 1981 (Dangerous Minds)
About the first show at the International Center of Photography, opening soon on the Bowery (The Lo-Down)
Hunting with Christo in Tompkins Square Park (Laura Goggin Photography)
A move for the Pickle Guys (BoweryBoogie)
On Sunday: The romantic-comedy "The Square Root of Zero" (1963) "pits a pair of Village beatniks against a clan of moneyed squares vacationing on the Maine coast." (Anthology Film Archives)
Some presidential history of the Church of the Ascension, on Fifth Avenue and 10th Street (Ephemeral New York)
...and Peter Missing has put up new work this past week at First Street Green Art Park ... Find more on it at Jeremiah's Vanishing New York ...
#missingfoundation on Houston and 2nd ave park. pic.twitter.com/qwNye2EZHH
— EdenBrower (@edenbrower) April 20, 2016
Remembering Prince: 'Purple Rain' showing Monday night at Village East Cinema
[Thanks to @justzubin for the photo]
Monday, April 25 at 7. Tix are on sale here.
The theater is on Second Avenue at East 12th Street.
And "Purple Rain" is the midnight movie at the Sunshine Cinema on the weekend of May 13-14.
New plans for a 6-story building at 253 E. 7th St.
[Photo from November by Daniel Root]
A demolition crew reduced the former four-story residence at 253 E. Seventh St. between Avenue C and Avenue D into a lot of rubble late last year.
Meanwhile, plans for a 6-story building with six residences never met with city approval.
Now the developer, BSD Realty, has filed new plans for the property. As New York Yimby first reported yesterday, the developers filed new plans this week with Issac & Stern Architects designing the project — another 6-story, 6-residential building with a penthouse... "its units should average a spacious 1,498 square feet apiece, indicative of condominiums." (Ramy Issac of Issac and Stern is well-known for many East Village projects, including 100 Avenue A and 154 Second Ave... and various penthouses.)
As we noted in February, the address is for sale. The listing is still active at the E Property Group website. Among the options here, per the listing: "Your dream custom mansion townhouse." But it looks as if a residential building is the plan.
Previously on EV Grieve:
Options for this lovely East 7th Street townhouse include demolition
New building in the works for 253 E. 7th St.
The disappearing 253 E. 7th St.
253 E. 7th St. is now a pile of bricks
Property at 253 E. 7th St. now for sale; perfect for a 'dream custom mansion townhouse'
[Image from 2014 via Massey Knakal]
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