David Cross Finds the East Village ‘Mildly Heartbreaking’

subwayDaniel Maurer Seen on the Bowery.

Last month, Amber Tamblyn told The Local that she and her fiancée, comedian David Cross, planned to leave the East Village for Brooklyn at the end of this month. Mr. Cross has griped about changes in the neighborhood before: “A Subway Sandwich just opened up on Avenue B,” he told Bullett in August, “and a large frat/sports bar is coming to the old Café Charbon on Orchard and Stanton, so it’s truly time to go.”

Now he’s back at it, telling Gothamist:

I’ve been fed up with what’s going on for about five years. There are so many examples but let me just sum up. On Houston—I think between Second Avenue and Bowery, or maybe it’s Allen and Chrystie—there’s a big, huge 7-11 with big, beautiful 7-11 signs. [Ed: We think he’s referring to the one on Bowery.] There’s an IHOP on 14th Street, Subway sandwiches all over the place. The thing is, I left Atlanta a long time ago and I’m spending way too much money to live in Atlanta again, you know?

He goes on: “It’s mildly heartbreaking. It’s just becoming more and more like a mall. I might as well be in St. Louis. It’s very, very quickly, rapidly losing a lot of its character.”

Don’t be so cross, David! The neighborhood isn’t all IHOPs and Subways. We still have Café Rakka, where you told Grub Street the lentils and falafels were “some of the best I’ve ever had.” And what about Minca? It’s still “cheap, filling, and everything is infused with succulent pork fat.” And after you said that back in 2007, it opened a sister location, Kambi Ramen House, on 14th Street! See? It’s not all downhill.

Sigh. And this after Alec Baldwin called the area “one big bus depot of drunken young people.”

At least Ms. Tamblyn struck a more positive note last month when she told The Local, “We are going to try Brooklyn for a year. See how it goes. We will watch for the East Village’s smoke signals. Maybe someday we’ll be back: Who knows?”