In 2007, Daniel Altman began dating his boss, jewelry designer and East Village resident Chris Habana. He worked as Chris’s assistant (and eventually moved in with him) during the two years they were a couple. Watch The Local’s video to hear how the old adage about mixing business with pleasure eventually proved true, and why Dan, 27, decided to keep working with Chris, 37, after their romantic relationship faded.
A dozen Occupy Wall Street demonstrators staged a “bed-in,” inspired by John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s 1969 anti-war protests of the same name, at Washington Square Park this morning. The group brandished flowers and took turns lounging on a mattress while inviting passersby to join them in bed. (Just in case anyone is feeling really lonely this Valentine’s Day.)
“Imagine every mattress in New York City – or maybe, who knows, the planet, since the Internet allows us to have this dialogue – every mattress, indoors or outdoors, becoming a stage for free speech and public expression and even human expression,” said Alexandre Carvalho, 28, an activist with a group called Revolutionary Games.
Mr. Carvalho added, “Because it’s boring to be political all the time. Maybe you can just be in bed with your friends and just talking about what it means to be living a happy life.”
I’m originally from Paris, so I’m fascinated by New York in the snow. I’ve lived here for almost 13 years now, but like a child, I’m still the first one out when it snows. For the first storm of 2012, I left my apartment in the East Village to capture the pristine landscape before it got spoiled by traffic. The hardened conditions turned the streets into a desert, with people like the ones above looking for a warm, dry refuge. Read more…
As Valentine’s Day approaches, The Local is celebrating East Village couples. We’ve already heard the story of Doug Quint and Bryan Petroff of the Big Gay Ice Cream Shop. Today, meet James Sanderson and Veronica Marquez.
Though born in New York, James was raised in England, and didn’t return to the United States until he was an adult. Veronica was born and raised in Venezuela, and came to the United States for college. In 2005, they met in a real estate office while they were both looking for an apartment. Four years later, James proposed at the same office; the couple now lives together, in a loft on East 13th Street.
Watch The Local’s video to hear how they turned a chance encounter into an East Village love story.
Of course the party didn’t stop after yesterday’s ticker tape parade. The Post reports that the New York Giants Super Bowl victory celebration continued into the night, with Justin Tuck, Mario Manningham and other G-Men taking a party bus to the Village Pourhouse and then heading to SideBar at Union Square.
The area around the Village Pourhouse was flooded with carousers after the big game on Sunday, as the above YouTube video shows. Other videos show hooting and hollering at the 13th Step and outside of Croxley Ales.
Chris PalmerRyan Morningstone showed up at 10:30 a.m.
So how did all those Patriots fans who blitzed Professor Thom’s take the Giants win last night? Not too well, as you can imagine.
“This sucks,” said Melissa Garcia, 26, in barely more than a whisper.
Ms. Garcia, from Country Club, Bronx, had lost her voice from screaming during the game. After Tom Brady’s last-second Hail Mary pass fell to the turf in the end zone, ensuring a Giants’ victory, she slumped down onto a barstool and cupped her head in her hands while leaning onto a table littered with half-empty beer bottles.
The crowd exited quickly and quietly after the final whistle, turning Professor Thom’s into an island of heartbreak in a citywide sea of celebration.
“This one hurts,” said Jeffrey Tente, 24, standing outside the bar.
Mr. Tente, an East Village resident, grew up in Rhode Island. His dad has been a Patriots season ticket holder since before Mr. Tente was born, and the two attended the last two Patriots playoff games before this Super Bowl.
“I’ll give the Giants credit, they played a better game,” he said, sporting an oversized jersey of Devin McCourty, a Patriots cornerback. “But it sucks to be in this situation.” Read more…
East Village Farm, the convenience store that’s leaving the corner of Avenue A and Seventh Street, has announced that it’s “going out business” on Feb. 5, with the flower man lingering until Feb. 14 – Valentine’s Day. Now we know where we’ll be buying our roses.
Ralph Feldman, 76, was a fireman in the Bronx with Engine 45 for two decades, and then in Harlem with Engine 37 for several years. Before retiring about 26 years ago, he served as a fire marshal intermittently. In 1969, he bought a building at 315 East Eighth Street and in the 1970s and ’80s he photographed fires near there, sometimes giving a hand to his fellow firefighters.
On his block of mostly vacant buildings, there were as many as five fires a week, said Mr. Feldman. “At the same time when the Bronx was burning, the East Village was burning,” he said. “All of Brooklyn was burning. In the ’70s and ’80s, big portions of the city burnt down.” Mr. Feldman spoke with The Local about his photos. Read more…
Daniel MaurerA 7-Eleven is said to be opening in the former porn shop next to IHOP.
Back in November, Amber Tamblyn told The Local that she and her fiancée, comedian David Cross, planned to leave the East Village for Brooklyn. Last month, Mr. Cross, who had previously bemoaned the arrival of a Subway on Avenue B, complained to Gothamist about the neighborhood’s new 7-Eleven and IHOP (that was before news broke, today, of another 7-Eleven.) This week, The New Yorker tags along as he makes the big move to – wait for it – Dumbo.
In the Talk of the Town piece, which is available online to subscribers only, the comedian reiterates, “I’m really not one of those whiny, annoying people who complain about any change, but there’s a 7-Eleven and an IHOP in the East Village now. It could be a suburban mall. Also, I was a younger man when I came here, doing younger-man things.” He clarifies: “I’m trying to be classy about saying ‘I don’t go out and get laid anymore.’” Read more…
Some folks get prickly about discarded Christmas trees littering the street well after they were due to go to the evergreen graveyard (MulchFest was a week ago!), but those rogue conifers are more or less invisible to us: See, we’re fixated on some unsightly leftovers from All Hallows’ Eve. On East 12th Street between First and Second Avenues, inside of a fenced-in lot behind P.S. 19 Asher Levy School, about ten pumpkins have been squatting on a bench and a table – ever since Halloween, presumably. And as you can see from our close-ups below, these pumpkins are in desperate need of chunkin’. We’re about to roll up our sleeves and get to the gooey, seedy bottom of this mystery, but in the meantime: is anyone else similarly vexed by this? Can someone from Liquiteria, the Juice Press, or Rawvolution walk a few blocks over and juice these suckers already? Read more…
In November, Andrea Truden, the adult-film actress turned singer who, as Andrea True, had a disco hit with “More, More, More,” died at the age of 68. She left no survivors, but on St. Marks Place, her musical legacy lives on in the form of Joe Barbosa, who toured the world with her as part of her backing band, the Andrea True Connection.
For years, Mr. Barbosa has sold vinyl outside of Rockit Scientist Records, first in front of the store’s former location on Carmine Street and for the past several years, on the St. Marks Place strip. Passersby who see him hawking records next to a sign that reads “Joey’s Vinyl” have no idea that he himself has a place in music history.
Mr. Barbosa, 61, began playing guitar in the ’60s. In 1976, at the age of 26, he was living in his parents’ apartment in Washington Heights and playing in a barroom cover band when Ms. Truden’s manager, through a mutual acquaintance, recruited him to play in her touring band. At the time, “More, More, More,” with its hook of “how do you like it?”, hadn’t yet risen to #4 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
“When we first auditioned for her, it was going up the charts and her manager said this was going to be a big hit,” said Mr. Barbosa. “Andrea wasn’t much of a showperson, so she hired four dancers that had all these disco moves to make it into a disco show. We traveled all over the country.” Read more…
“I find the East Village to be a difficult place to take photos. Difficult because our visual world is saturated with images of these blocks. Thus, you can feel trapped in a cliché — a cliché based in an idealized past, or a gentrified, dystopian vision of what is to come. Nevertheless, I love to photograph the East Village to participate in this negotiation. The negotiation is, for me, encapsulated in this idea of ‘Everyday Abstractions.'” Read more…
During football season, Julian Swearengin’s Downtown Giants have three practices each week at three different parks: Chelsea Waterside Park, the Battery Park ball fields and Pier 40. Games take place at East River Park on Saturdays. Confused parents frequently end up at the wrong location and players complain about the hectic schedule. Just to add insult to injury, Mr. Swearengin sees a solution to the problem most nights from his apartment with a view of East River Park.
“There are many nights when soccer and football fields are empty. On the same night, my kids are wedged into a corner on Pier 40,” said Mr. Swearengin, the founder of the team for kids up to 15 as well as a former coach. “There’s certainly an overall frustration that there’s no consistency with the permits.”
But soon, the system that maddens Mr. Swearengin and many others will likely be reformed. For the first time since 1999, the Parks Department has proposed changes to its permit system, raising hopes that the vise-like grip many leagues have over coveted ball fields may be loosened.
If the laws are approved, youth leagues applying for new permits will be given priority over all other applicants. The Parks Department will also have the right to reduce the hours of field time for adult leagues that dominate a particular park.
The proposals are in part a response to complaints from an assortment of league administrators at meetings around the city. In Community Board 3, around 20 league operators have bemoaned a permit system that they described as obscure and ripe for abuse. Read more…
The Local was a journalistic collaboration designed to reflect the richness of the East Village, report on its issues and concerns, give voice to its people and create a space for our neighbors to tell stories about themselves. It was operated by the students and faculty of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, in collaboration with The New York Times, which provides supervision to ensure that the blog remains impartial, reporting-based, thorough and rooted in Times standards. Read more »
