Five years ago, Zaragoza Mexican Deli & Grocery, run by the ever-hospitable Martinez Family (Pompeyo, Maria and son Ruben), lost their license to sell beer.
This week, against all odds, they got it back. Please join them tonight when they celebrate Mexican Independence Day from 6 to 9 PM, with music by Mariachi Infante and singer Selene Muñoz, plus refreshments galore.
Annual 9th Street A-1 Block Association Block Party
Saturday, Sept. 16, 11 a.m. – 5 p.m. (no rain date)
Live Music (from noon - 4 p.m.)
MUSIC LINE UP:
Ginga Pura
EV-3
Sea Kelp (Originals)
Ron and his Personal Demons
BroadBand
Resident artists, crafts people, and photographers will be showing and selling their work, and residents will be selling a la "stoop sale" — antiques, bric-a-brac, clothing, accessories, music, jewelry, etc.
Block businesses include:
• Beetle Bug (florist), Enchantments, Flower Power (herbs), Love Gang (clothing), Mr. Throwback (vintage clothing and accessories), Ollie's Place (cat adoption), Pink Olive (gifts), Polytima (jewelry), Puppy Love Kitty Kat (pet supplies), Reason Outpost (clothing)
• Restaurants/Cafes: Cagen, Good Beer, Superiority Burger, Tacos Morales, Thursday Kitchen, Whitman's, Zucker Bakery
• Hair Salons/Barbers: Crops for Girls, Lovemore & Do, Maria Mok Salon, Neighborhood Barber, Tsumiki Salon
Join us for our two-year anniversary party 🎉 featuring the fucking terrible art and video show, tarot card reading by @gaylestacher, free drinks, & 20 percent off store wide! Starts at 7 p.m. Thanks to our amazing customers who have helped a small business survive over these last two years!
Hyperkinetic landlord Raphael Toledano, whose alleged methods in evicting tenants from rent-stabilized apartments made him enemy number one of the New York City tenant movement, faces eviction at his $13,800 a month Upper West Side home, where he claims to be a rent-stabilized resident, court records show.
“This has got to be a joke, right?” said SaMi Chester, a tenant organizer at the Cooper Square Committee who actively works with tenants in Toledano’s buildings; they frequently claim they are being harassed by the 27-year-old landlord. “Here’s a guy who’s built his career on screwing over rent-stabilized tenants. Now he’s doing that?”
Toledano, who recently filed for bankruptcy on a portfolio of multifamily buildings in the East Village amid claims he was overleveraged, essentially operated a real estate business whose model depended on vacancy deregulation to crank up rent rolls.
The struggles among new students at NYU are no doubt taking different forms. You might be struggling with how to meet friends or how to socialize with people who drink when you don't, or how to get involved in something, anything, when time seems so precious, etc. Some of you are wondering if everyone's smarter than you or if you're smart enough to be at NYU. Some of you are stressed with performance anxieties, with being cool. Some of you are just missing a home-cooked meal.
The struggles are real and sometimes hard, but they are normal. They are not a sign of a problem, but just the normal challenges of transitions to a new phase in one's life.
Dismiss any idea that your enrollment at NYU was a fluke. You belong here.
My suggestion: think good thoughts about yourself and others. Relax. And through it all, know that you are where you belong.
“I’m worth a fuckload of money bro.” @markgmaurer’s profile on the rapid & rocky ascent of EV landlord Rafi Toledano https://t.co/Y3Qvbea8jT
— Kerry Barger (@kerrybarger) June 1, 2016
In August ... Toledano filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection on the property and tried to procure a buyer. According to court documents filed by Shah, Toledano also used that time to threaten and extort him. Toledano threatened to instruct the tenants to withhold rent, according to the documents, and told Shah, “I will bury you, literally. I will bury this building and make sure of it.”
The 27-year-old landlord is awaiting approval for the sale of the deeds of 15 distressed East Village properties to lender Madison Realty Capital, which recently replaced him as property manager on the buildings.
Paul McDonald, who spent 13 years as a product manager at Google, wants to make this corner store a thing of the past. Today, he is launching a new concept called Bodega with his cofounder Ashwath Rajan, another Google veteran. Bodega sets up five-foot-wide pantry boxes filled with non-perishable items you might pick up at a convenience store. An app will allow you to unlock the box and cameras powered with computer vision will register what you’ve picked up, automatically charging your credit card. The entire process happens without a person actually manning the “store.”
Bodega’s logo is a cat, a nod to the popular bodega cat meme on social media – although if the duo gets their way, real felines won’t have brick-and-mortar shops to saunter around and take naps in much longer. “The vision here is much bigger than the box itself,” McDonald says. “Eventually, centralized shopping locations won’t be necessary, because there will be 100,000 Bodegas spread out, with one always 100 feet away from you.”
I asked McDonald point-blank about whether he’s worried that the name Bodega might come off as culturally insensitive. Not really. “I’m not particularly concerned about it,” he says. “We did surveys in the Latin American community to understand if they felt the name was a misappropriation of that term or had negative connotations, and 97% said ‘no’. It’s a simple name and I think it works.”
But some members of the Hispanic community don’t feel the same way. Take Frank Garcia, the chairman of the New York State Coalition of Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, who represents thousands of bodega owners. Garcia’s grandfather was the head of the Latin Grocery Association in the 1960s and was part of the original community of immigrants who helped settle on the term “bodega” for the corner store. “To me, it is offensive for people who are not Hispanic to use the name ‘bodega,’ to make a quick buck,'”Garcia says. “It’s disrespecting all the mom-and-pop bodega owners that started these businesses in the ’60s and ’70s.”
Trying to destroy bodegas with a startup called “Bodega” that has a bodega cat logo is… just awful. https://t.co/1W4pSnXoXn
— hello i am anil (@anildash) September 13, 2017
my bodega owners are yemeni immigrants and the bodega not only affords them a life in new york but also allows them to send money back home
— Jessica Roy (@JessicaKRoy) September 13, 2017
Weird that they're calling this heinous vending machine "Bodega" and not "Gentrification Box" https://t.co/xPCozclRRD
— Tristan Cooper (@TristanACooper) September 13, 2017
If Bodega were called Nile or Mississippi, would reaction have been the same? FreshDirect, Amazon are active in NYC & not great for bodegas.
— Anjali Khosla (@hellomountfuji) September 13, 2017
I see the Bodega backlash backlash has begun.
— Ian Bogost (@ibogost) September 13, 2017
*rubs hands together* Just as the machine learning predicted.
