Earlier this week, The Local interviewed Ed Sanders, who is often associated with the Yippies. How’s the movement doing these days? Quite well, if its new cafe is any indication.
The Yippie Museum Café at 9 Bleecker Street hadn’t been on anyone’s party map recently, but after closing over the summer and reopening with a renovated basement, a new paint job, and new menu items such as vegan cookies and empanadas, the longtime Youth International Party headquarters is hopping once again. Next spring, it will host its first comprehensive exhibit of Yippie artifacts.
Part of the credit goes to Michael McKenna, who was called in last spring to give the café a makeover. The manager cleared out the front of the room, so passersby could get of glimpse inside, and found good homes for 30 cats living upstairs (there had been complaints of a weird smell). Mr. McKenna is still sprucing up the place, but said he had already seen an increase in interest among daytime customers as well as organizations wishing to use the cafe for events. Read more…
Meredith Bennett-SmithA hallway in the “permanents” wing (left) is much less colorful than one in the “transient,” or youth hostel wing.
Lisa Grossman has big dreams for a tiny space in the Whitehouse Hotel, one of the last of the old Bowery flophouses still sheltering permanent residents. The personal trainer, a Brooklyn native who now lives in New Jersey, hopes to open a fitness studio catering to the transient backpackers that pay $30 per night to stay in the boarding house’s 4-foot-by-6-foot cubicles. It’s just one of the recent improvements that former owner and current operator Meyer Muschel hopes will drum up business at the Whitehouse.
Ms. Grossman, a wiry, enthusiastic mother of five, said she has been training people ever since she began charging her dorm-mates at Syracuse University $5 each for workouts that consisted of Jane Fonda moves and track running. Seventeen years later, she tailors regimens to the individual needs of her clients. But Studio Fit will cater to the youth-hostel guests of the Whitehouse – many of them Asian and European tourists and students.
“A lot of people come there from all over the world,” Ms. Grossman said. “The rooms are so small, but the Europeans think they’re great. They want to see the city, and the city is a place to be fit.” Read more…
Stephen Rex BrownBroken windows on the third floor of 26 St. Marks Place.
A fire at 26 St. Marks Place was reported at 10:03 a.m. today, said a spokesperson for the F.D.N.Y. Water was on the fire within ten minutes and it was under control by 10:33, the fire department said. When The Local arrived on the scene between Second and Third Avenues, items of singed clothing as well as an office chair were seen being tossed out of a window on the third story, where the fire started. The F.D.N.Y. said that it was not able to reveal the cause of the fire at this time; no one has been taken to the hospital as of yet. We’ll have updates if and when they become available.
Update | 11:05 a.m. Battalion Chief Ed Carney said the blaze was a mattress fire that broke out in a front apartment on the third floor and was extinguished within fifteen minutes. One person refused medical attention and will be taken care of by the Red Cross.
With change in store for Billy’s Antiques, it’s good to know that the neighborhood’s other reliquary for bizarre and macabre artifacts, Obscura Antiques and Oddities, is still going strong. Season three of “Oddities” will premiere on the Science channel on Dec. 17 at 9 p.m. Here are just some of the customers and items mentioned in the episode guide: “An evil clown touting a grinder,” “a smoking lung,” “some art, made of body parts,” “a devil-horned patron… looking to rid himself of a possibly possessed spirit,” “an extraordinary exploded skull preparation,” “incredible 18-inch fingernails,” “a prostate warmer,” “an unusual Tibetan skull drum,” “a chainsaw-wielding performer,” and “a taboo piercing kit that isn’t used to put holes in ears.”
Stephen Rex BrownWorkers were back at the Mars Bar site today.
The worker injured by falling rubble yesterday at Mars Bar is at home and doing well, the superintendent of the construction site said today.
Stephen Rex BrownAn overhead view of the demolition, taken yesterday.
“He’s good, back at home. He has a few days off,” said the superintendent, who did not wish to give his name.
Another worker shoveling rubble into a dumpster said that his fellow laborer had not broken his leg, as had been rumored yesterday. The worker also did not want to give his name.
A Department of Buildings spokeswoman noted that a stop work order had been issued for hazardous conditions at the site. The order also reports that a 16-by-20-foot section of ceiling collapsed on the worker, causing the injury. Previous complaints, some of which were filed by a neighbor, were investigated and no violations were issued, the spokeswoman added.
The work site must be deemed safe by the city Environmental Control Board before the stop work order can be lifted. The date of that hearing was not immediately available.
A veteran psychic has left her storefront at 86 East Third Street between First and Second Avenues. During a telephone conversation, the psychic, who said her customers know her as Cathy and did not want to give a last name, said that she closed her shop a few weeks ago after her landlord of ten years more than doubled her rent.
“I was getting a great deal,” she said, “but once it ran out, it ran out.” Read more…
It’s happening right now: As spotted by The Local’s Stephen Rex Brown (on Twitter) and Lauren Carol Smith (above), workers are installing signage at 351 Bowery, where the much ballyhooed 7-Eleven was due to open today. It’ll be a little longer before the store pits its Biscuit Breakfast Sandwich against the ones down the block at Peels: A worker on the scene says the convenience store will open “sometime next week.”
A little earlier than expected, Lucyna Mickievicius has reopened her namesake bar, Lucy’s, after visiting family.
“I was in Poland for nine days in Warsaw, and I was with my son and daughter,” she told The Local yesterday in Polish. “In New York you’re always running and it’s good to get away. But when you don’t have New York, you miss it dearly.”
Lucy said she had a good time abroad. “My sister came to see me from the city of Gdansk, and I saw some of my old, dear friends. It was wonderful to see them.”
But she missed her customers, too. She was on her way to her bar on Avenue A when she told The Local, “I’m very excited that I’m back.”
We are, too. Stay tuned for our video tribute to Ms. Mickievicius.
The Local’s Stephen Rex Brown Tweeted from a meeting of Community Board 3’s Youth & Education Committee last night: “And the name change to S.T.A.R. Academy at P.S. 63 gets the green light from C.B. 3. Members of the board decline the celebratory free doughnuts.” The unanimous vote of approval will now be considered by the full board, and then the District 1 Community Education Council for ultimate approval. At the meeting, a fifth grader said the new name “brings out the star inside. William McKinley? It’s just boring … He was assassinated?”
Noah FecksTink’s Cafe, coming to 102
East Seventh Street
Good morning, East Village.
EV Grieve reports that a small fire broke out at Gyro King on First Avenue earlier this morning.
A Citi Habitats survey posted on The Real Deal indicates that the city-wide apartment vacancy rate is down from last year. In the East Village, the average price for a studio is $1,871; one-bedrooms are going for $2,448.
L magazine points out that Fred Armisen of “Saturday Night Live” and “Portlandia” will be performing at Other Music on Sunday. According to the blurb in the record store’s newsletter, “Fred will be performing songs from perennial favorites including the Clash, Devo, the Stranglers, the Damned and Husker Du, and truly, that’s all we know.” Read more…
At a meeting of Community Board 2’s S.L.A. Licensing committee tonight, the owners of Boerum Hill delicatessen Mile End will ask the board to support a beer and wine license at its forthcoming NoHo location. Noah Bernamoff, an owner of the Montreal-style smoked-meat destination, said that he expected neighbors to object to his plans to serve draft beer at 53 Bond Street.
During a telephone conversation earlier today, Mr. Bernamoff said that the beer program would be a nod to Lower East Side delicatessens of old. “Ultimately the idea is to eat a classic deli sandwich with a classic deli beverage, which until the 1940s was beer,” he said. “The beer is going to be integrated into a wider beverage program. We’re going to be making our own sodas, doing hand-squeezed juices, and serving Stumptown coffee.” Mr. Bernamoff said he is currently talking to Red Hook brewer Sixpoint about creating a Mile End beer that might use malts smoked in the deli’s smokers. Read more…
The BBC reports that the authority in charge of developing public spaces for the London 2012 Olympic Games has picked a name for the Olympic village, and it’s: East Village! Once the games are over, the new neighborhood – the latest to steal our name after that development in Calgary – will consist of 1,439 homes (mostly for rent) and 1,379 “affordable” homes for rental and purchase, as well as a school, parkland, and more than 30 shops, cafes and restaurants.
Lady Gaga has been rather ubiquitous lately. Around the same time she signed books at the New Museum, her former Stanton Street apartment went up for rent. Meanwhile, here in the East Village, she was posing for Annie Leibovitz. Check out the behind-the-scenes footage that VanityFair.com has posted to YouTube and (at the 0:58 mark) you’ll recognize the Launderette at 97 Second Avenue, which is no stranger to such takeovers. The video contains nudity, but the most memorable part might just be when Gaga wobbles down Second Avenue in gigantic platform shoes.
Gamma Blog has now posted video footage of the Occupy Wall Street Farmers March from La Plaza Cultural to Zuccotti Park, and the Examiner reported from the scene on Sunday. Speakers included Mike Callicrate, who in 1996 was among a group of farmers who sued I.B.P. (now Tyson) for violating anti-competition laws, and Jim Gerritson, who led a suit against Monsanto.
The above photo is from the Occupy Wall Street Farmers March from the La Plaza Cultural community garden to Zuccotti Park. You can see more of Tim Schreier’s photos here. On Sunday, about 250 participants (by EV Grieve’s estimate) marched to promote “dialogue, solidarity and solutions to corporate control of our food system,” according to a flyer.
The Times reports that Billy’s Antiques, the tent near the corner of Bowery and Houston that has been stocked with oddities and ephemera since 1986, will close so that its landlord can start construction on a two-story building. Billy Leroy, the tent’s “Barnumesque” owner, will be allowed to reopen in the new building, but a member of his staff considers the closure “part of that final transition to a landscape of Pottery Barns and Starbucks.”
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 »
