New photo exhibit celebrates the neighborhood's storefronts

[Click for a better view]

East Village-based photographers James and Karla Murray are curating a new exhibit at the Theater For The New City Gallery starting on Monday evening.

Per the Murrays, whose books include "Store Front: The Disappearing Face of New York" — "The purpose of the exhibition is to act as an artistic intervention helping draw attention to and raise awareness of the importance of preserving the small shops whose existence is essential to the unique and colorful atmosphere of the city’s streets."

Here's a short summary of the workshops and exhibition:

Experience activism and community through the lens of 30 photographers, as they display their work from two free 2017 workshops with photographers and award-winning authors Karla and James Murray. In two sessions at the Neighborhood Preservation Center, the duo taught participants how to use photography and oral history to raise public awareness, build community, and encourage advocacy. Participants learned to create their own powerful photographs of neighborhood storefronts and to connect with the proprietors through personal interviews.

Also, we would like to note that two of the storefronts that participants photographed for the workshop, and were chosen by us to be printed for the exhibition are now closed — Cup & Saucer on Canal Street and the Golden Food Market on First Avenue at East 7th Street. So in the short time that we held the 2 two free workshops (between April and June of this year) and began printing the photographs participants took, we have lost 2 small businesses, both affordable eating establishments. We hope that after people see the photos and read the interview excerpts, that they will help support these small mom-and-pop businesses by actively dining and shopping at them.

The opening reception is from 6-9 p.m. on Monday at the Theater For The New City Gallery, 155 First Ave. between Ninth Street and 10th Street. The exhibit will be up through Sept. 18.

Updated: Cheers Cut bringing Taiwanese fast food to St. Mark's Place

Renovations have been ongoing behind the brown-papered front windows at 36 St. Mark's Place.

A worker there recently told EVG correspondent Steven that the new business will be selling fried chicken... and a sign noting "fried chicken and seafood" recently arrived on the front door...


[Photo by Steven]

Something deep fried makes sense given that the previous tenant here between Second Avenue and Third Avenue was Friterie Belgian Fries, which closed back in January after nearly 18 months in operation.

The previous tenant, Fasta ("Pasta Your Way"), lasted less than six weeks in business. Before that, it was the $1.50 branch of 2 Bros. Pizza, which closed in February 2015.

Updated 9 a.m.

Thanks to @NameCantBe for passing along that this will be a Cheers Cut location.

Here's their official description:

Our Taiwanese-inspired cuisine features flavorful, fresh dishes that deliver an unforgettable experience to your taste buds. We revolve our business around the goal of providing our customers with quality food and service. The menu features a variety of selections, including our famous crispy fried chicken and seafood dishes cooked to perfection, as well as other recipes ranging from bento boxes to noodles. Made with fresh, local ingredients and carefully hand selected and tested, our food will guarantee quality to provide our customers with the best experience possible.

Eater named it as a top spot for fried chicken in NYC:

The monster fillet at this new Elmhurst Taiwanese fast food chain that specializes in chicken and squid has been heavily crumbed and fried to perfection, and is delivered in its entirety — so bring a pocket knife. Crowds line up to get these fillets, and four sweet dipping sauces are offered. The cartoon superhero motif is an added plus.

Report: Landlord and partner sues Root & Bone chefs for spending profits

Chefs Jeff McInnis and Janine Booth, who run Root & Bone on Third Street at Avenue B, face a lawsuit for allegedly using $286,500 in profits from the Southern-themed restaurant for personal ventures, according to multiple published reports.

The lawsuit was filed by Richard Freedman, their business partner who also owns the building. He claims that the chefs, who live above the restaurant, spent some of the Root & Bone profits on a $135,000 apartment renovation and side projects such a like-minded pop up in Puerto Rico.

Per the Daily News:

"McInnis and Booth have assured Mr. Freedman that the restaurant is 'doing fine' but that it was not making much, if any, profit," the suit says.

McInnis, however, said the matter is nothing more than "bookkeeping confusion.”

“There's really no validation of any kind of lawsuit. I wish the guy the best," McInnis said.

And...

Freedman seeks an order that McInnis and Booth have violated their lease. He also seeks damages to be determined at trial.

Eater has published a copy of the 17-page complaint here.

The restaurant opened in June 2014.

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.

Out and About in the East Village

In this ongoing feature, East Village-based photographer James Maher provides us with a quick snapshot of someone who lives and/or works in the East Village or Lower East Side.



By James Maher

Name: Puma Perl
Occupation: Writer/Poet/Performer/Former Social Worker
Location: Avenue A between 4th and 5th Street
Date: 2:30 pm on Aug. 3

I’m from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. One of the things that drew me here, which drew a lot of kids, was the cheap rent. The bottom line is that I just needed somewhere to be and it seemed possible. It had nothing to with wanting to meet artists or making any kind of scene. It was more like Gravesend was death and the Lower East Side was life.

But I also remember when I was in high school, and this is probably something that drew me here, somebody took me to what turned out to be the Electric Circus and the Velvet Underground were playing. I always say that changed my life forever.

You just did not know what you were walking into. One time the super of my building on 10th Street said to me, ‘Walk me to Club 82. I gotta do a pickup,’ and I walked in and there were the New York Dolls. I was like 'What the Fuck?' You could walk into the New York Dolls, into a whole new culture that was starting, but then you’d walk the other way and Tito Puente was playing in what’s now La Plaza Cultural. There was this feeling of community. You could feel like you had everything you needed here, on every level.

My son’s father, Jon Grell, and some of my still surviving friends were in the Motherfuckers. Before I met him, he was in prison, because the Motherfuckers used to do a lot of brilliant things like load firearms into a car on Houston Street... He was a kid and he was very enamored by Sam Melville, who was a brilliant radical guy. [Melville was from another collective and not affiliated with the Motherfuckers.] But the bottom line was that there was a provocateur that nobody should have believed and somehow he got in with these guys, and there were some bombings. Jon had nothing to do with it, but they figured that he was a loudmouthed kid, we’ll turn him, so he did a couple years for basically being a young asshole. That’s his story.

Eventually I went upstate for a year because things got really hard down here. I used to get picked up for being a runaway all the time even though I wasn’t. Jon got out and his probation didn’t allow him below 96th Street. So a mutual friend brought him to outside Ithaca where I was living and that’s how I met him. Then we came back down to the city in the 1970s when his parole ended.

First I lived on this 5th-floor walkup in the back, bathtub in the kitchen, police lock. The building caught fire. My apartment was actually untouched, and I can remember there was a woman next door with two kids and it was four in the morning and I took one kid and she took the other kid and we ran through the flames down five floors. I moved next door to the 6th floor and there were adjoining roofs, so I threw my furniture over the roof.

We moved to 10th and B, and at that time we used to call Avenue B the DMZ, but it was just innate — you just did it. You walked down the middle of the street. You know, you didn’t stop doing anything. I loved 10th Street. It was this Puerto Rican neighborhood. It was this family neighborhood where if your kid fell down someone was going to pick him up – kids on the street all the time, block parties, the social club was down there. I have a million poems about 10th Street.

[Later on], I was living on 7th Street between A and B when the Nuyurican Poets Café opened, which I credit with anything I do, because it was so inclusive that even someone like me from Brooklyn, not an artist — where I grew up in Bensonhurst, it wasn’t even like you were going to the city, you were going to NEEW YOORK — so it wasn’t something that I thought was accessible to me. Everybody was going to this place for poetry - totally incredible.

It came a little later, my being able to conceive of myself as an artist, but that was the start. I mean one of the things that I did there was have a baby with the bartender a couple years later, Eddie Gomez — they knew him as Eddie Piñero, and his brother was one of the three who started the café.

My daughter read her first poem in the café when she was 4 — it was about hot dogs. Growing up with that gives you a place where you know you can go somewhere. I didn’t grow up knowing I could go somewhere. I really credit the Lower East Side, the arts, and the café [to her development]. By that time I was a single mother and I didn’t have the wherewithal to send her to college, but she came into her own.

I have a history of addiction, so when I got clean it was basically about putting a life together. I moved to Brooklyn at that time, so I wasn’t around here a lot during a certain period. I raised my kids, I went to school, and I was so amazed that I tested HIV negative that I wound up becoming a social worker. I had no education when I started, doing outreach for like $2 an hour, going into shooting galleries before this was legal, doing harm reduction.

Then I went to college, and then I became the director of social work organization for people with HIV. People I supervised were asking me for letters of recommendations so they could become social workers. So then I became a social worker — I said well I may as well do it, and I did that for 20 years.

During that time I got back, so I started putting my name on every possible list and I wound up getting Mitchell-Lama Housing on Water Street. During that time is when I really started believing in myself. I started writing. I have four solo collections of poetry, and my first book, "Belinda and Her Friends" was published in 2008 about 10th Street.

Then I wound up becoming a poetry performer with a band, Puma Perl and Friends. We have a regular show at the Bowery Electric called Puma Perl’s Pandemonium. The next show is Sept 15, the day before my birthday. It will be my five-year anniversary.

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

A look at 'Carole Teller’s Changing New York' (and changing East Village)

[Astor Place circa the early 1980s by Carole Teller]

The Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (GVSHP) has an addition to its online Historic Image Archive – a collection titled "Carole Teller’s Changing New York." (View it here.)

Here's part of an email Monday via GVSHP Executive Director Andrew Berman:

Carole is an artist who has lived in the East Village since the early 1960s, who has generously donated to GVSHP over 500 photographic images she took of Lower Manhattan and all of New York from the early 1960s to the early 1990s.

[T]hey show an incredible story of change in New York over the last half century. Carole had a keen and prescient eye catching things on the verge of change, erasure, demolition, restoration, or renewal. All her pictures capture slices of New York that are both familiar and foreign, since every one of these images captures a scene which in one way or another no longer exists, at least as portrayed.

Berman shared a sampling of Teller's photos... (all reprinted with permission)...



Bocce Court at First Park, from First Street west of First Avenue looking to south side of East Houston Street ... circa 1963...

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50-52 Second Ave, southeast corner at Third Street ... circa late 1970s...

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36 St. Mark's Place, south side, just west of Second Avenue, next to Gem Spa ... circa early 1980s...

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St. Mark's Place, just west of Second Avenue ... circa 1980...

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Second Avenue, west side between Second and Third Streets, looking south ... circa 1969 ...

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...and an undated photo of 113 Avenue A near Seventh Street — Ray's Candy Store...

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Prints of all these images are available for sale through the website, with proceeds benefitting GVSHP.

Mayahuel has closed

Last month, Mayahuel, the Mexican-themed cocktail bar on Sixth Street from the Death & Co. team (Ravi DeRossi), announced that it would be shutting its doors after Aug. 8.

Per ownership: "Our lease has come to an end, and renewing wasn't an option."

As we noted on July 18, an applicant was on the July CB3-SLA docket for a new liquor license. The operators include Keith Siilats, a founder of an e-commerce company for financial-service firms, who also happens to own the building.

Siilats told Eater last month that he plans to open a similar bar in the same space.

And there was more background:

Siilats says DeRossi and co. hadn’t been paying rent for a while — a fix that he says was solved after he bought the business from the prolific East Village restaurateur and bar owner. DeRossi acknowledges that they hadn’t been paying Siilats directly, but only because they had sued him years ago for illegal construction that was impacting business, such as flooding the space when it rained. Their attorney had recommended that they keep the cash in escrow, according to DeRossi.

“After years of fighting with Keith in court it came time to renew our lease, as we could not come to an agreement with him we all just decided to go our own ways,” DeRossi writes.

Anyway, Mayahuel closed after service last night. There were some tributes on Instagram.

No word yet on when the new establishment might open here. CB3 approved the application last month. (A PDF with the minutes of the meeting is here.) The venture was described as a "a full-service Moroccan and Mexican fusion restaurant."

Former Eye Beauty Spa for rent on 4th Street

The Eye Beauty Spa closed a few weeks ago at 199 E. Fourth St between Avenue A and Avenue B following nearly 15 months in business.

The Eastern Consolidated listing says that all uses will be considered for the 500-square-foot space, which has an asking rent of $4,500 per month. (The storefront previously housed Salon Champu until December 2014.)

This building was one of six on Fourth Street that the Kushner Companies bought for $49 million from Ben Shaoul’s Magnum Real Estate Group and Meadow Partners back in 2013.

Dr Smood to call on the LES

Been meaning to note the recent arrival of coming-soon signage (it has been up for several weeks) on East Houston and Orchard, where another location of the health-minded chainlet Dr (no period after the r!) Smood is opening shop in part of the old American Apparel space...



Here's more about the operation via a profile in June at Well+Good:

The idea came to Danish business developer Rene Sindlev and his wife, Patrizia Manici Sindlev, when they were living in Denmark and feeling frustrated by the lack of healthy, grab-and-go restaurants. So, they decided to not only open their own—in Miami—but to also make it healthier than anything they’d seen before. Step one? The couple recruited holistic nutritionist and healer Dr. Etti Ben-Zion to spearhead the menu.

“The concept was for everything to be anti-inflammatory,” Dr. Ben-Zion says. “That means 80 percent of your diet should come from plants, which is why our products are 80 percent plant-based.” That’s not all: From juices and salads to sandwiches and snacks (all organic, natch), they wanted every menu item to be as nutrient-dense as possible.

If this sounds too preicious then you can walk one more block to the east to Katz's.

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists & the Make-Up headline the Seaport Music Festival

Via the EVG inbox today...

The Seaport Music Festival is proud to announce its 15th anniversary celebration in partnership with The Village Voice and South Street Seaport Museum ...

In addition to live music, Seaport Music Festival will feature film screenings, comedy and dance.

This year’s lineup includes performances by:

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists, who’s self-releasing his first album since 2010 called "The Hanged Man." At this year’s festival, Ted curated a special lineup which includes: comedic, musical and visual artist Jean Grae, heavy-beat minded electronic duo Azar Swan and NYC rock’n’rollers Big Huge.

New York Night Train DJ Jonathan Toubin has also been invited to curate a line-up, which features The Make-Up, who announced highly anticipated reunion shows this year. The line-up also includes Martin Rev (the surviving half of one of the most important bands of all time, Suicide), James Chance & The Contortions, The Wolfmanhattan Project, Death Valley Girls, Surfbort and Warm Drag.

The free Festival takes place at the South Street Seaport from Sept. 7-10. For more details go here.

[Updated] So long to those spiky structures outside Cooper Union

[EVG photo from March]

Workers today started to disassemble the representations of John Hejduk's pair of architectural structures, "the House of the Suicide" and "the House of the Mother of the Suicide," that honor the Czech dissident Jan Palach.


[Photo by Lola Sáenz]


[Photo by Lola Sáenz]

Hejduk, a Cooper Union graduate, was the founding dean of The Irwin S. Chanin School of Architecture at Cooper Union.

Known as the Jan Palach Memorial, which was permanently installed in Prague in 2016, this was the first public exhibition (via Cooper Union and the Department of Transportation) for the recently revamped Cooper Square plaza.

These were part of a month-long exhibit featuring Hejduk's work that started in March. The sculptures were expected to remain up through June 11.

Given how challenging they were to erect, maybe Cooper Union decided to keep them here longer.

Here were details from Curbed about the project from a post in March.

Over two weeks the Cooper Union team, using power tools and socket wrenches, assembled 400 pieces into both sculptures. They used a wooden yoke to carry each of the 98 spikes onto the roof of each structure, which is 12 feet off the ground. The spikes — which weight about 100 pounds a piece —then project another 12 feet into the air. The framing of both sculptures is made of cedar timber, while the spikes are made out of sheet metal welded together.

Updated 8/9

An EVG reader shares these photos from this morning ... showing what remains...

Dogs are allowed on this beach

Dog Beach debuted last week on Avenue B between 10th Street and 11th Street... outside of Brix ...


[EVG photo]

Not sure about the rules and regulations here, such as if a City Permit is needed for a wedding on the beach.



Thanks to EVG reader Cheyenne for the photos!

A look at the revised design for an expanded Anthology Film Archives

[EVG file photo from March]

The the Anthology Film Archives takes another step today toward realizing their building "completion project" on Second Avenue and Second Street.

As previously reported, there are plans to add an addition to the landmarked building that will include a library and cafe, two amenities planned for the space ever since co-founder Jonas Mekas bought the building in a city auction in 1979.

These plans go before the the Landmarks Preservation Commission today.

And New York Yimby reports that there have are some changes to the revision and expansion:

The submission to the LPC represents a major change from the previous iteration of the plans, which was substantially glassier. The extension of the facade will consist of a coated copper base, and accents clad in corten steel will line the windows of the library, which have been downscaled substantially. Above that, the addition will feature ‘Anthology Film Archives’ in metal-mesh lettering, covering the penthouse level of the project.

Anthology Film Archives’ expansion will measure a relatively small 14’4″, and even with the extension, the structure will be shorter than its neighboring buildings.

Here is the new rendering from Bone/Levine Architects ...



...and the previously revealed rendering...



"The time came that we cannot postpone anymore," Mekas told Bedford + Bowery in January. "Because we have so much material, we have so much paper, books, periodicals, documentation on cinema that we have to build a library and make those materials available to researchers, scholars, students."

If all goes well, then the expansion would be complete by 2020, per NY Yimby.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Checking in on the 'completion project' at the Anthology Film Archives

Renderings reveal the MTA's plans for the Avenue A L station; why does everyone look so happy?

You may have noticed the MTA signage that arrived last week along 14th Street at Avenue A...



...announcing [the obvious] that preliminary work is underway for building new entrances at Avenue A and a new power station at Avenue B for the L train.

The renderings provide a sneak preview of what's in store here...







... and a closer look at the rendering scalies... a happy-looking lot who must not think that they'll be experiencing delays due to, say, signal and switch problems or track fires...









And on 14th Street at Avenue B... presumably the new power station for the L will be going in along here somewhere...





As you likely know, this work is starting ahead of the L train shutdown between Bedford Avenue and Eighth Avenue to repair the Sandy-damaged Canarsie Tunnel. The shutdown of the L is expected to last 15 months with a start date of April 2019.



Previously

More legal drama with Raphael Toledano and 97 2nd Ave.

The 6-story building at 97 Second Ave. between Sixth Street and Fifth Street was one of the first East Village properties purchased by Raphael Toledano, who would later buy several portfolios of buildings.

Now the building, which has a complicated recent history (there was a lawsuit in 2014 involving Toledano and another broker), is involved in more legal drama.

The Commercial Observer breaks it down:

Landlord Raphael Toledano is seeking Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for an East Village walk-up building, which he says Delshah Capital’s Michael Shah has “commandeered,” according to a filing in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Eastern District of New York...

And...

On July 21, Delshah Capital announced the “acquisition of a defaulted note encumbering the property” at 97 Second Avenue. Delshah said in a news release that day, “Shortly after acquiring the defaulted senior note, Delshah worked directly with the building’s now former owner to enable them to recoup their capital and to take possession of the property at 30 percent below market value.”

Public records show that Toledano paid $4.95 million for it in April 2014. Toledano said in the bankruptcy protection filing that the property is valued at $15.1 million, per the Commercial Observer.

Previously on EV Grieve:
Raphael Toledano-owned 97 2nd Ave. is on the auction block

Webster Hall ending its current run with Action Bronson on Thursday night

[Image via Facebook]

Webster Hall this morning announced the headliner for its last night in business on Thursday — the Queens-based rapper Action Bronson...

We are pleased to announce that @ActionBronson is playing our End of an Era show presented by @themeadowsnyc on 8/10

— Webster Hall (@WebsterHall) August 7, 2017

As previously reported, Brooklyn Sports and Entertainment, along with AEG-backed The Bowery Presents, teamed up to buy the building for $35 million.

After Thursday night, the landmarked building on 11th Street between Third Avenue and Fourth Avenue will be closed for an undisclosed period of time (likely between 18 to 24 months) for renovations and conversion to a music-only venue. (There will no longer be any club nights here, per various reports.)

In closing out the current iteration of Webster Hall, management booked surprise shows with Nine Inch Nails on July 31 and, for the last club night this past Saturday, Skrillex...

We can't even put a caption to the legendary nature of this photo @Skrillex - 📸 @dailyeyes pic.twitter.com/LymAHyTXxR

— Webster Hall (@WebsterHall) August 6, 2017

The Ballinger family has owned and operated Webster Hall since 1989.

The building first opened in 1886.

Shake Shack announces itself at the Death Star

As previously reported, Danny Meyer’s fast-growing burger chain is opening a 3,000-square-foot outpost in/at 51 Astor Place/IBM Watson Building/the Death Star.

On Friday, the Shake branding arrived here at Third Avenue at Ninth Street... (this location will also serve beer and wine...)



... and they are ready to Shake, rattle... and hire...

The 14th Street Shoe Repair Shop has closed

The 14th Street Shoe Repair Shop, 428 E. 14th St. between Avenue A and First Avenue, has closed.

An EVG reader said that Saturday was the last day for business. We were told that the cobbler could not remain open following a rent increase.

A vendor named Ba had also been selling items such as socks, gloves and phone chargers in front the past three years. (He was at the East Side 99¢ space before this.) EVG reader Michael Paul believes that Ba may move to another storefront on the block.

Previously on EV Grieve:
The shoe repair post that you've been waiting for

New York Health Choice (aka Eastside Market) has gone dark for now on Avenue C

Earlier last week the lights went out inside New York Health Choice (aka Eastside Market) on Avenue C at 11th Street.

EVG reader Cheyennne, who shared the top photo, said the the store's shelves were looking bare in recent weeks. An employee said that she was unsure if they would reopen.

This wouldn't be the first time that the market, which opened on Dec. 20, 2012, temporarily closed. The space, operated by the owners of Yankee Deli across 11th Street, closed for renovations starting in December 2015 ... returning to business in May 2016.

The storefront has also been on the retail market since May, with an asking rent of $10,500.

Horus Kabab House airs out their sidewalk cafe on 6th Street

[Photo Friday via @RatedRuwan]

Back on Friday, workers demolished the enclosed sidewalk cafe at Horus Kabab House on Avenue B at Sixth Street... to then unveil a new unenclosed sidewalk cafe...



Both Horus locations (10th and Avenue A being the other) have had noise and various law-enforcement issues in the past. According to the May 2008 CB3 minutes (PDF here), the Avenue B location "has had numerous noise complaints and received numerous summonses for being occupied over capacity and putting too many tables on the sidewalk and whose sidewalk café permit has recently been denied renewal."

Despite the discreditable past, CB3 approved the move from enclosed to unenclosed sidewalk cafe this past April. Per the minutes (PDF here) from that meeting:

WHEREAS, given the history of complaints in operating its previously permitted unenclosed sidewalk café, its violations in operating its premises, its 311 call history despite its now enclosed sidewalk café and the residential character of East 6th Street, Community Board 3 cannot approve a sidewalk café permit greater than eight (8) tables and sixteen (16) seats with limitations on its hours of operation;

THEREFORE, BE IT RESOLVED that Community Board 3 moves to approve the application for a sidewalk café permit for El Sayed 1 Corp., doing business as Horus Kabab House, for the premise located at 93 Avenue B, on the corner of Eats 6th Street and Avenue B, because the applicant has signed a change agreement which will become part of its DCA license that
1) its café will consist of eight (8) tables and sixteen (16) seats located flush against the façade of the
premises on East 6th Street, and
2) its hours of operation will be 12:00 P.M. to 10:00 P.M. all days