McSorley's 'bringing all the energy back inside'

Photos by Steven

The COVID curbside-dining era in McSorley's long history has ended. 

Yesterday, workers removed the outdoor structures at the 169-year-old NYC institution, 15 E. Seventh St. between Second Avenue and Cooper Square. 

"They served their purpose. Now, back to normal and to bringing all the energy back inside the Old Ale House where it belongs and existed peacefully for ages," Gregory de la Haba, the co-owner and operator of McSorley's, told us via an Instagram message. "We're grateful to all our neighbors who tolerated the outdoor seating during COVID's mandates and restrictions." 

The saloon had two equal-sized structures where patrons could sit and drink mugs of light and dark ale or order a burger and fries or the cheese and raw onion plate.

The $1 cheese slice at 2 Bros. on St. Mark's Place is now $1.50

Early $1 slice joint Two Bros. Pizza has bumped the price to $1.50 at 32 St. Mark's Place between Second Avenue and Third Avenue, its first NYC outpost.

The new signage went up on Friday, per EVG reader Tom. 

Toward the end of 2021, with prices surging on everything from flour to paper plates, many 99-cent/dollar slicerias citywide started increasing the cost by 50 cents ... 2 Bros. went to $1.50 at the Chelsea outpost, as the Post reported. Per the Times, 2 Bros. was still charging $1 at six of its nine locations.

Now, on St. Mark's, you can get two cheese slices and a can of soda for $3.99, up a buck from before. 

While most budget EV slice shops are charging $1.50 now, there is an outlier with the pending arrival of a new 99-cent joint on 14th Street.

For a time, 2 Bros. had two slice outposts on the block. The location with the upscale $1.50 SUPREME slice closed at 36 St. Mark's Place in 2015. 

Weekend's parting shot

Photo by Rainer Turim 

As seen yesterday along 10th Street and Tompkins Square Park... owner said that he'd been driving this for 30-plus years...

Week in Grieview

Posts this past week included (with a photo — "make your best offer" — from 14th Street by Daniel Efram) ... 

• A new home and name for Café Cortadito (Monday)

• 3rd & B'zaar's new market will feature the work of women-owned businesses (Wednesday) 

• May the farce be with you: 'The Empire Strips Back' is next up at the Orpheum Theatre (Thursday) 

• A new era for the old Bad Pussies wall on 3rd Street and Avenue B (Tuesday) 

• Fire jumping returns (Saturday) 

• Revisiting a transformative Sunday on Avenue A (Friday) 

• What's happening on this block of 5th Street? (Tuesday)

• CM Rivera addresses 'operations improvements' for Tompkins Square Park (Wednesday) 

• Openings: The York on Avenue B (Tuesday) 

• Corner spaces for lease along Houston at Elizabeth and the Bowery (Tuesday)

• Report: The Astor Place cube will be ready for a spin once more this summer (Friday) 

• Corner development battle: 360 Bowery takes commanding lead over 1 St. Mark's Place (Monday) 

• Ghost signage on 7th Street (Wednesday) 

• On the rental market: 118 St. Mark's Place (Wednesday) 

• March madness! Key Food continues to up its St. Patrick's Day game (Monday) 

• First sign of Raising Cane's on Astor Place (Thursday) 

• Gelato 1st and 10th (Monday) 

• Report: Angel's Share has a new home (and what of its old home?) (Monday) 

... and on First Avenue between Ninth Street and 10th Street, the short-lived Healthily Deli is now going as Top1 Convenience (thanks to Steven for the photo)...

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The eyes have it

Photos by Stacie Joy 

We spotted Jappy Agoncillo working on this new mural yesterday outside the Ridge Hotel on Houston at Eldridge...

... featuring Best Actress Michelle Yeoh in "Everything Everywhere All at Once." 

Daniel Kwan and Daniel Scheinert's absurd multiverse comedy, which is still playing in several EV theaters, won seven Oscars. Kwan and Scheinert won the directing category and best original screenplay. 

By the way... Kwan's mother, June Kwan, is an owner of Spicy Moon, the vegan Szechuan restaurant at 328 E. Sixth St. between First Avenue and Second Avenue (read more in this article at Vulture).

Saturday's parting shot

A reader shared this from Second Street between Avenue A and First Avenue... unfortunately, the toilet here is currently out of service...

Noted

From the Citizen app: "Report of Suspicious Box Spilling Pink Sand" on First Avenue and Fourth Street. 

A Citizen commenter suggested that this is simply fairy dust.

Fire, jump with me

Photos by Stacie Joy

Thursday evening saw the return of a fire-jumping event in an East Village community garden, the first since 2019. 

This year's edition, produced by More Gardens, took place at El Jardin del Paraiso on Fifth Street between Avenue C and Avenue D.

Here's some background:

More Gardens' Chaharshanbeh Suri NYC is a festival rooted in community, sharing, equity, and reverence for the earth through ritual fire jumping, art, music, food, and culture that began in the lands of West and Central Asia.

This fire celebration nourishes our spirits, strengthens our connection to each other, and affirms our belonging by embracing our diverse nationalities, languages, faiths, class, genders, races, and sexual identities. We make gathering joyful through art, music, food, culture, and intergenerational sharing. We hold each other to tend the flames of love, justice, solidarity, and goodness across the planet and right here in the community green spaces of NYC.

The fire team included Joules Magus ... with representatives from the FDNY present for safety. 

An estimated 200 people took part in the jumping ceremony. EVG contributor Stacie Joy was on hand for part of the festivities ...

EVG Etc.: Veselka expanding to Brooklyn, Boris & Horton too

• Starting April 1, enforcement of street vending in NYC will soon be handled by the sanitation department; enforcing vendor rules currently belongs to the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection (Gothamist) 

• NYC sheriff deputies question the legality of their pot shop busts (The City... previously on EVG) 

• Chinatown 3 years after the start of the pandemic (Eater) 

• 6 lessons from NYC's first nightlife mayor (The New York Times) 

• Veselka is planning to open an outpost in Williamsburg and a kiosk at Grand Central (The Post) 

• Boris & Horton on Avenue A expanding to Brooklyn (Greenpointers)

• An interview with Chris Spencer of the noise-rock trio Unsane, formed on the LES in the late 1980s (The Big Takeover)

• Hip-hop film classic "Wild Style" turns 40 (The Source) 

• ANOHNI discusses the new photo book on the EV art gang, "Blacklips: Her Life and Her Many, Many Deaths" (DAZED) 

• Check out some essential cinema from the archives of the Anthology Film Archives, including screenings for films by Robert Bresson over the next few days (Official site) 

• And a very strange commercial for German sink brand Schock starring Iggy Pop (The Drum)

Friday's parting shot

A St. Patrick's Day moment along St. Mark's Place today... photo by Derek Berg...

Sweet 'Sixteen'

 

Out now (as of March 10): Love As Projection, the latest solo album from New York-based singer-songwriter Frankie Rose ... formerly of Vivian Girls/Crystal Stilts/Dum Dum Girls. 

The video is for the track "Sixteen Ways."

Revisiting a transformative Sunday on Avenue A

Photos by Stacie Joy

Last weekend, Con Ed and its contractors — Bay Crane, Five Boroughs Flagging Corp. — closed off parts of Avenue A to install a new transformer at the substation between Fifth Street and Sixth Street.

It was an elaborate operation to hoist the 188,000-pound (!!!) transformer and its components, such as a radiator, from flatbeds on Avenue A and across the substation to its position in the back. EVG contributor Stacie Joy donned a hard hat to document the special delivery...

Here's a look at the newly in-place transformer in the alleyway/driveway behind the substation between Fifth Street and Sixth Street (which people always stare into while on a smoke break outside Sophie's) ...

No word yet when Con Ed will wrap up this work. Crews are still working behind the scene. In one development, one of the three porta potties was removed from the Fifth Street side (maybe drop it off at Tompkins?).

Meanwhile, there's word this process will happen all over again with another transformer delivery this fall. 

Report: The Astor Place cube will be ready for a spin once more this summer

The Astor Place cube (aka Alamo), out of commission with structural damage since late 2021 (first noted here), will reportedly by spin-worthy again by July 17.

According to The City, there's a proposal from the Department of Transportation in the works.

The plan, which is slated to go before the city's Public Design Commission on Monday for approval, would see the 1,800-pound cube temporarily removed next month and shipped to Bethany, Conn., for restoration by Versteeg Art Fabricators — a firm that also did restorative work to the cube in 2005.

Their proposal calls for fixing the spinning mechanism and reinforcing and repairing the base of the East Village piece by early July.

The barricades first arrived around the cube in December 2021, before the city removed them in late April 2022. At the time, we were told that the spinning mechanism for the cube, which manually rotates around a pole hidden in its center, was not working. A DOT spokesperson previously told us that they didn't have a timeline for repairing the spinning component.

Tony Rosenthal's sculpture first arrived here in November 1967. 

Previously on EV Grieve:
The Alamo returns to Astor Place this Halloween

Five years later, Astor Place apparently ready for its 2-year reconstruction project

This is what it might be like living inside the Alamo on Astor Place

RIP Tony Rosenthal, the sculptor who created the Astor Place cube

Friday's opening shot (so to speak)

Photo by Steven 

A look-in at McSorley's on Seventh Street around 8 a.m. on this St. Patrick's Day... we were told that some folks started lining up at 6 a.m.

Thursday's parting shot

No strings attached, as seen on Second Avenue today via Derek Berg...

May the farce be with you: 'The Empire Strips Back' is next up at the Orpheum Theatre

A burlesque version of "Star Wars" is next up for the Orpheum Theatre on Second Avenue — the first production to play here after the 29-year run of "Stomp." 

Starting on May 10, "The Empire Strips Back" begins a limited run at the theater between Seventh Street and St. Mark's Place. 

Per the official description: "The classic 'Star Wars' characters are dropped into the world of burlesque. Comedy and striptease, loving detail and hilarious parody… Let us deliver you to the dark side."

Originally from Australia, this "Empire" has been touring around the globe since it first opened in 2011

Tickets go on sale Tuesday at noon. Sign up for info here.

"Stomp" ended its 29-year run at the Orpheum in early January. 

According to Cinema Treasures: "The site on which the Orpheum stands is alleged to have been a concert garden as early as the 1880s and, as such, to be one of the oldest continuously operating places of gathering for entertainment events in New York City." 

In the 1980s, the Orpheum was well-known for Off-Broadway productions such as "Little Shop of Horrors" in 1982, Sandra Bernhard's "Without You I'm Nothing" in 1988, Eric Bogosian's "Sex, Drugs, Rock & Roll" in 1990, John Leguizamo's "Mambo Mouth" in 1991, and David Mamet's "Oleanna" in 1992.

Jabba pic via the "The Empire Strips Back" site

First sign of Raising Cane's on Astor Place

Photo by Steven 

Signage arrived this week for Raising Cane's Chicken Fingers at 10 Astor Place at Lafayette Street. 

As reported in April 2022, the Louisiana-based company signed a 20-year lease for 4,300 square feet of space on the ground floor.

The quick-serve Raising Cane's has more than 600 restaurants in 32 states.

No. 10 was, until August 2020, a Walgreens.

Wednesday's parting shot

A walk along Astor Place today... photo by Derek Berg...

Ghost signage on 7th Street

Photo by Steven 

A crew today removed the signage and added a new rolldown gate on the western storefront at 120 E. Seventh St. between Avenue A and First Avenue, where the barber shop the Cut had been... in the process, the workers uncovered some ghost signage for piljo, which I'm sure some people on the block will recall. (Please tell!)

The barber shop has been here since around 2012, and it had been Medusa Tattoo before...

CM Rivera addresses 'operations improvements' for Tompkins Square Park

In the past few years, there has been a spate of complaints and concerns about the state of Tompkins Square Park, including quality-of-life issues ranging from increased drug use and crime to a reduced Parks workforce that resulted in more litter and weed-filled gardens. 

In addition, the public restrooms had been shuttered for four months due to a malfunctioning boiler and a broken pipe in the basement of the field house. To some surprise, the restrooms reopened in early March ... only to close and reopen in the following days.

Reconstruction of the Tompkins Square Park field house is expected to start soon. During the 18-month project, parkgoers are instructed to use restrooms at the McKinley Playground on Fourth Street between Avenue A and First Avenue adjacent to P.S. 63/the Neighborhood School. (Tomorrow night, March 16, CB3's Parks, Recreation, Waterfront, & Resiliency Committee will hear an update on the renovation project. Join via Zoom here.)

Against this backdrop, local City Councilmember Carlina Rivera released this statement yesterday, titled "Tompkins Square Park Operations Improvements" ...

Our public spaces are precious to New Yorkers. They are a respite from the busy life of the city, a meeting place for friends, an adventure for children, and beloved by all. It takes a village to care for them, and District 2 is full of beautiful, active spaces that inspire neighbors and bring the community together. 

Over the past several months, my office has been working to improve our parks by building a coalition with community members, service providers, local police precincts, community boards, colleagues in elected office, and other stakeholders to address public safety, park maintenance, and sanitation concerns at all our parks, with an operational model tailored specifically for Tompkins Square Park. With spring around the corner, this is a great time to value these neighborhood gems and maintain them together. 

Our work at Tompkins is part of a greater, funded revitalization effort that I have been working on throughout my tenure. Construction on a number of capital projects in Tompkins Square Park will start this year beginning with reconstruction of the Field House and its public restrooms that will see these structures finally meet standards for accessibility. The end of the year we will see the renovation of the multi-purpose court replacing the existing asphalt, basketball backstops, benches, drinking fountains, and other improvements.

For our daily uses at Tompkins, I have secured resources and allocated $20,000 in additional funding to bring on more dedicated staff members to improve maintenance and increase cleanup in the park, with a priority on playgrounds and pathways. I have also allocated more funding to ACE Programs to provide additional sanitation services around the perimeter of the park and the surrounding blocks on weekend mornings. ACE is a job training and employment services organization that works with homeless and formerly homeless individuals to get good jobs and help improve neighborhoods. 

There are specific mental health and substance use-related challenges at Tompkins that require community-based engagement and we are addressing these concerns with pioneering organizations Goddard Riverside and Housing Works, doing in-person engagement, and needle pickup and needle disposal kiosk maintenance, respectively. 

With all nonprofits we call partners, information and connections housing and social services are available. Along with the 9th Precinct, appropriate local concerns are responded to by NYPD's Special Enforcement Unit, and the park is closed every night in accordance with posted hours.

To see our coalition in action, please check out our video below. And as always, I encourage neighbors to stay in touch with my office with concerns and conditions of the park. I am grateful to community members for their sustained advocacy and for working to make our neighborhood a better place to live and work.