Sunday, June 12, 2022
Sunday's opening shot
EVG Etc.: A post with links to stories about Lou Reed, Henry Winkler; more!
Midtown view Friday evening
• A year after state lawmakers established the Housing Our Neighbors with Dignity Act (HONDA), not a single hotel has been converted to housing in New York City (City Limits)
... and a video making the rounds this weekend ... riding into Williamsburg on a J/M/Z train...
• A tour of the "stunning" Lou Reed exhibit at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts (Variety)
• A memorial show for the late Howie Pyro at the Bowery Ballroom on July 23 (Official site)
• Court tosses the new Assembly district maps, though it won't impact this year's races (Gothamist)
• More on Carlina Rivera's Congressional bid (Gotham Gazette)
• Spectacular pics of the red-tailed hawklets in Tompkins Square Park (Laura Goggin Photography)
• The team behind the 11th Street Bar is reopening Mugs in Williamsburg (Greenpointers)
• The unlikely success story of Manhattan's only Burmese restaurant — Little Myanmar on Second Street (Saveur ... previously on EVG)
• Let's check out the East Village closet of Sunflower Bean's Julia Cumming (Coveteur ... previously on EVG)
• NYC's burger shops are weighing how to respond to calls to boycott the company behind Martin's Potato Rolls (Eater)
• The "intrepid playfulness" at Nudibranch on First Avenue (The New Yorker)
• Henry Winkler meets fans while dining at Katz's (Thrillist)
• A look at the new hotel Nine Orchard on the Lower East Side (Vogue)
Yo WTF!? These people just came over the Williamsburg bridge on top of the train. pic.twitter.com/osEtX4a0cp
— GOOSE (@GooseyMane) June 11, 2022
Saturday, June 11, 2022
'Happy 35th Gay Anniversary' to Linda Simpson and My Comrade at Howl! Happening
Photos by Stacie Joy
This summer, Howl! Happening is celebrating Linda Simpson's photographs and her groundbreaking magazine, My Comrade.
Here's more about "My Comrade Magazine: Happy 35th Gay Anniversary" at the space, 6 E. First St. between Second Avenue and the Bowery:
My Comrade magazine was founded by drag queen Linda Simpson in 1987 during the dark era of the AIDS crisis and served as a symbol of hope and frivolity to the East Village gay scene and beyond. Armed with a tongue-in-cheek "revolutionary" agenda, the magazine glorified heroic drag queens and sexy guys in a cut-and-paste mishmash of articles and photo spreads. Lesbians got their due when the flip side became Sister! The sporadic publishing schedule produced a total of 11 issues until 1994. It was revived in 2004 for two more.The exhibit features reproductions and enlargements of My Comrade's black-and-white pages. Notable contributors to the magazine included photographers Jack Pierson and David Armstrong, painter Stephen Tashjian a.k.a. Tabboo!, and drag stars RuPaul and Lady Bunny. The exhibit also features Simpson's color photos of the era from her acclaimed 2021 photo book, "The Drag Explosion," published by Domain.
EVG contributor Stacie Joy went to the opening last weekend, where she took these photos... including of Linda...
The First Street gallery is open from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday. "My Comrade Magazine: Happy 35th Gay Anniversary" will be up through July 17.
You can check out this feature at Dazed for more history.
The bands playing in Tompkins Square Park this afternoon
Other bands: 95 Bulls ... The Vansaders ... No Grudges ... and (get there early for) Jade Tourniquet.
The show is expected to run from 1:45 to 6 p.m.
Best wishes to John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants
According to the Daily News: "Flansburgh, 62, was taking a car service back to his Upper East Side home after the band had a show at the Bowery Ballroom at about 12:45 a.m. Thursday when the Ford he was riding in was T-Boned by a 2016 Honda near the corner of Park Avenue and East 102nd Street."
Flansburgh and the 32-year-old livery driver were taken to Cornell Hospital. The guitarist broke seven ribs. (The driver's condition is not known.)
Per reports, 26-year-old Bronx resident William Mota was charged with drunk driving, resisting arrest and refusing to take a Breathalyzer test. Police told the Associated Press that Mota ran a red light, jumped a curb and plowed into the gate of a housing complex, hitting two cars along the way.
Flansburgh wrote about the collision in a lengthy Instagram post...
While Flansburgh diffused the situation with some humor, Streetsblog pointed out that through June 5, "there have been 41,772 reported crashes (roughly 270 per day), injuring 1,542 cyclists, 3,495 pedestrians and 13,644 motorists" in NYC.
They Might Be Giants were regulars in the East Village in the 1980s... you can read our interview with the band's other John, John Linnell, right here.
And while were here...
Friday, June 10, 2022
Details about a LES Pride Book Crawl tomorrow (Saturday!)
Several bookstores of the LES and East Village are participating in a bookstore crawl, the focus of which is Pride Month.
The crawl starts at noon on Saturday, June 11, and each store is offering giveaways and prizes.Participating stores:• Bluestockings Cooperative Bookstore at 116 Suffolk St.• Book Club Bar at 197 E 3rd St.• Sweet Pickle Books at 47 Orchard St.• Yu & Me Books at 44 Mulberry St.• McNally Jackson at 52 Prince St.• Pillow-Cat Books at 328 E 9th St.
'Cheap' thrills
There's a new video out today via Surfbort, hanging here in Times Square. "Cheap Glue" is off the band's Keep on Truckin' release.
Details about the East Village Queer Market on Avenue A tomorrow
Photos by Stacie Joy
A handful of local vendors will be participating tomorrow in this "celebration of Queer Makers" from noon to 6 p.m. at 50 Avenue A between Third Street and Fourth Street. Find more details here. You can also shop online here.
The sponsors are the East Village Independent Merchants Association, 3rd and B'zaar and Exit9, with co-owner Charles Branstool pictured below. 
Come, let's drive along some side streets between Avenue C and Avenue D in 1987
A reader shared a more-recent version that looks a little more high-quality.
In the silent clip, the driver/film crew start on Houston and turn onto Avenue D... and from here the car drives up and down some desolate side streets between Avenue C and Avenue D... you may recognize a few things ...
Ray's is ready to crank out the ice cream all summer long
As Peter Brownscombe noted, Ray now has four machines of varying vintages working at varying efficiencies.
Per Peter: "So anyone requiring an ice cream this summer, you know where to go."
Ray's, 113 Avenue A at Seventh Street.
Your first look inside the new East Village Taco Bell, opening NEXT WEEK on 3rd Avenue
On the inside, though... Steven got a look inside...
You can see the machine marked Chill Drink Enjoy* (which WAS going to be the EVG summer catchphrase...😔)
A worker said they'd be open next week.
* one could read that as Chill Enjoy Drink too.
Thursday, June 9, 2022
Thursday's parting shot
A benefit concert for Ukraine at the Church of the Most Holy Redeemer
Details via the invite:
Please join us for an evening of classical music to support an important cause! This concert will include works by Ukrainian classical composers Mykola Lysenko and Myroslav Skoryk, plus others. Performers will include opera singer Elena Heimur, violinist Lea Lang, the choir of St. George's Ukrainian Catholic church, and pianist Clara Bartz.
Free admission; suggested donation $25. All proceeds go to Catholic Near East Welfare Association (CNEWA). Donations may be made in-person at the event...The concert starts at 7 p.m. at the church, 173 E. Third St. between Avenue A and Avenue B.
Find more details here.
A look inside Globe Slicers, one of the most unique storefronts on the Bowery
Photos by Stacie Joy
We've long been fascinated by Globe Slicers, which has been in business on the Bowery between Houston and Prince since 1947. (Happy 75th anniversary!)
And we've always wanted to stop in, but never got around to coming up with a cover story to shop for new or rebuilt slicers, mixers, grinders or other food-prep equipment ...
The folks here were nice enough to let EVG contributor Stacie Joy take some photos of the delightfully cluttered storefront...
Oh, and what you came for... the slicers!
There are some quirky touches on the shelves ... 
While this retail corridor continues to upscale, Globe Slicers remains an old Bowery throwback...
Dayton in Manhattan has an extensive history of the address dating to 1832 when dry-goods merchant Daniel C. Boughton lived here.
Within a decade it had been converted for business, with Holdridge & Co.'s drug company in the ground floor. Among the items it marketed to pharmacists and direct users were the Dinner Pill, a "means of exterminating disease and promoting health," and "Dr. Taylor's original and genuine Balsam of Liverwort."
In the mid-1970s, the second-floor unit (aka, "The Blondie Loft") was home to Blondie's Debbie Harry and Chris Stein. At the same time, designer Stephen Sprouse lived on the top floor.
Updated: In the comments on Instagram, Chris Stein noted: "We occupied the whole upper building with a few other people. It was totally haunted. The first floor was a very ancient liquor store back then around 1975-6."
He also thought Globe Slicers moved to 266 from a nearby location after this time period.
266 Bowery today . The Blondie Loft where we put the 1st album together . pic.twitter.com/AhbV6ia3G5
— Clem Burke (@clem_burke) April 3, 2016
Filming notices for 'Gossip Girl' outside Key Food; see you in the aisles xoxo
Crews for the HBO Max reboot of "Gossip Girl" will be in the neighborhood today (Thursday!) and tomorrow (uh, Friday!).
EVG GG Watchers© have spotted filming notices on Fourth Street and along stretches of Avenue A.
Storylines for season 2 have been kept under wraps, so we might as well speculate what the young adults from Constance Billard-St. Jude's School are going to be doing.
The proximity of the notices to Key Food can only mean that the grocery will play a — pardon this — key role in a plot line, like (typing out loud here) that Zoya buys a "cake for any occasion" here as a makeup gift for the canceled Julien or Monet de Haan has a crisis of it-girl status while looking for the moved-several-times Skinny Pop. Or maybe the gang stops by for to-go sushi for lunch on the steps of the Met. (Yes, it's out of the way and not really very good, but through the magic of TVmaking, the Brooklyn Bridge seems like 4 blocks to Central Park.)
(As an aside: Given the no parking signs around Key, where are all the delivery trucks going to idle/double park over the next two days? On the lawn at Village View?)
Anyway, GG notices are also posted outside Katz's, which might mean a GG-corned beef combo is in our future... one can dream!
The East Village was a popular location during the run of the original CW series (2007-2012) ... like outside Doc Holliday's ... or inside Veselka.
El Churro for Allen and Houston?
Back in February, workers at the scene told EVG contributor Stacie Joy that a cafe-coffee shop was in the works for the space, though they didn't have the business name.
Well, based on recent façade additions, 200 Allen St. Watchers© figure the business name will be El Churro...
We'll see!
As for the past, Eastanbul Gyro Kebab and Smyrna Bakery closed here last fall. Empire Gyro, with a 24/7 schedule, opened here in February 2019 ... with the conversion to Eastanbul (and Smyrna) in the summer of 2020. The space was previously Sugar Cafe for 10 years.
And because someone will mention it! Economy Foam (and later, & Futon) anchored the corner from 1937 to 2003.
Akina Sushi has not been open lately
Yelp lists the restaurant as closed... and the phone is not in service. (Delivery is also no longer available via the usual third-party apps.)
Owner Tim Chang opened Akina Sushi in December 2008... and fans of the restaurant have noted their appreciation of the staff, including Tim's wife Nicole and sometimes his mother. His sister May owned the now-closed nail salon next door.
Wednesday, June 8, 2022
'Room With Stars' at Theater for the New City
This partly autobiographical play, written by Nina Howes and directed by longtime EV resident Elizabeth Ruf, "evokes the culture and music of the height of the Vietnam War era on the Lower East Side."
The play runs through June 19, with showtimes Thursday-Saturday at 8 p.m. There's a 3 p.m. matinee on Sundays.
Find more info here.
Here's more:
Teenaged Samantha’s dreams of a scholarship to college are shattered when she's expelled from high school and locked up for her anti-war activities. Her hard-working mom is no help, and her Puerto Rican boyfriend actually wants to enlist. Samantha finds an ally in her boyfriend's fiery aunt, Angelina, a volunteer at the Catholic Worker. The playwright and the community-minded artistic team of "Room With Stars" hope to inspire new generations to speak out against the atrocities of war and all forms of injustice.EVG contributor Steven caught an opening-weekend performance and gives it high marks...
Theater for the New City is at 155 First Ave. between Ninth Street and 10th Street.
Photos courtesy of Andreas Weigelt
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