Mary ReinholzAron Kay, the Yippie “Pieman” who in the 1970s became a counterculture hero for throwing pies in the faces of political enemies like William F. Buckley, Jr. and Phyllis Schlafly, was admitted to the emergency room at Beth Israel Medical Center earlier this week, complaining of what he called “cold flashes” and severe leg pain.
The Canadian-born Mr. Kay, 63, who now lives in Bedford-Stuyvesant, is currently in a ninth-floor hospital room undergoing treatment for cellulitis on his legs, a skin infection he admits is most likely related to the 366 pounds he is carrying on his 5′, 10″ frame.
“I’m a food freak. I like fried foods like French fries and hamburgers, different things,” he said during a disjointed conversation with The Local interrupted by a nurse, a physician, a chaplain and hospital staffer bringing him a modest lunch.
Wearing a voluminous hospital gown and sporting an elfin look thanks in part to a multi-colored knit cap, Mr. Kay acknowledged that shedding a hefty portion of his weight may well be the biggest battle of his life. “I’m here because I’m trying to survive,” he said of the hospital visit. “I don’t want to throw my life away. The trouble is when I try to stop, it acts up. I get frustrated because the pain doesn’t end.” That, he said, is when he resumes overeating.
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Scott LynchThe moment has arrived: Wylie Dufresne will open Alder, a “modern interpretation of a traditional tavern,” on Second Avenue tonight.
Funny thing: Mr. Dufresne — who on April 9 will celebrate the 10th anniversary of WD-50, his Lower East Side temple of modernist cuisine — has set up a stone’s throw from Michael White, who’s also in the running for a James Beard Foundation Award this year (the five finalists in the Best Chef NYC category were announced earlier this month). But don’t accuse him of following Nicoletta into the nabe: the Rhode Island native (hence Narragansett on tap) lived in the East Village for 15 years and attended high school nearby, according to a press release.
“The East Village is where I cut my teeth as a kid,” Mr. Dufresne told The Times last month. “I ran around here on a skateboard.”
At Alder, WD-50’s beverage director, Kevin Denton, has concocted $12 cocktails using ingredients like pine-infused rum, grape-must molasses, smoked maple and the like. The $25-and-under menu, overseen by Mr. Dufresne along with executive chef Jon Bignelli (formerly chef de cuisine at WD-50), is no less inventive. See for yourself below.
The 56-seat spot won’t take reservations: it’s open to walk-ins Wednesday through Sunday, 6 p.m. to 11 p.m. Read more…
Marc H. Miller East Village Eye, June 1979Speaking of neighborhood artifacts: you can now get your hands on copies of the underground paper that filled the void after the East Village Other stopped printing in 1972.
Marc H. Miller is selling original copies of the East Village Eye on his Website, 98Bowery.com, which chronicles life on the Bowery from 1969 to 1985 and sells art that parallels the period. Mr. Miller, an active artist during the ’80s who penned the magazine’s “Miller’s Memorabilia” column about local art and photography, is selling the copies on behalf of a former editor.
Marc H. MillerFounder and editor Leonard Abrams published 72 issues of the alternative paper from 1979 to 1987. The mag covered the raucous art, music and street culture of the ’80s. Punk, disco, new wave and hip hop were vibrating through the neighborhood, offering up a soundtrack to the political and social movements that would ultimately shape the decade.
Each issue reflected the mood of that month, taking the pulse of the community. “Steve Hager, an editor who went on to work for High Times, wrote one of the first articles on hip-hop,” said Mr. Miller. “The Eye actually claims to be the first place that the term ‘hip-hop’ ever appeared in print.” The outlet also covered a lot of artists on the cusp of their fame, like Keith Haring, Kathy Acker, the Beastie Boys, Afrika Bambaataa, and Betsy Johnson. Read more…
Phillip Kalantzis Cope Good morning, East Village.
“Artist Jean-Michel Basquiat left behind a secret trove of unseen work in his former girlfriend’s East Village apartment before he died tragically in 1988, she claims.” [NY Post]
Community Board 3 has sent out its April calendar of meetings. [CB3]
“John Penley’s campout in front of New York University’s Bobst Library may have started slowly after he launched it on March 1, but by the end of two weeks he had definitely built momentum.” [The Villager]
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N.Y.U.Faculty members discussed New York University’s plan to expand in Greenwich Village at a town hall organized by the N.Y.U. Space Priorities Working Group today. The first of three subcommittee meetings came a day after residents of Washington Square Village appealed the dismissal of their lawsuit against the university.
The city has already approved development within two superblocks, but the Working Group is seeking to “undertake a deeper comprehensive review of the academic and non-academic space needs for the community,” said Allyson Green, a faculty member of the group.
Faculty members voiced a wide range of concerns. Read more…
Samantha BalabanIt’s official: ABC Animal Hospital is moving from its 14th Street location to its new home at 200 Avenue A tomorrow.
As previously reported, almost all of the buildings west of the animal hospital, between Avenues A and B, were leased for a 99-year period to a company going by the name of East Village 14 LLC.
Today, The Local spotted a note announcing that the move to Avenue A will take place tomorrow. According to the signage: “Our new space is still under construction, but our pharmacy, and store for food purchases will continue to operate in the basement of our new space. We expect to start seeing appointments as usual by April 16th.”
The animal hospital had been at 532 East 14th Street for about five of the 14-plus years it has been in the East Village. It is taking over the space at 200 Avenue A that used to house Superdive, the controversial bar that closed in 2010.
Daniel MaurerFederally-mandated lower-case street signs have arrived on the Bowery. Yesterday, we spotted a lone lower-case Bowery sign across from Bleecker Street (adjacent the old CBGB, appropriately enough), and today: upper-case Cooper Square signage is coming down. Say goodbye to the all-caps Bowery while you can. Here’s a look at the old and the new.
Daniel Maurer CAPTION
Fourth Arts Block and Made in the Lower East Side have announced the rates for their FABWorks Storefront, opening next Monday. $40 gets you part-time access to the co-working space, which will offer free printer access, coffee and WiFi weekdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. You can also rent the space to use as a classroom ($40 every two hours), event space ($120 per night) or pop-up shop ($90 to $400 per day). Check out the details here.
Michael Natale Good morning, East Village.
Some specifics on the homeless man who caught on fire in a Noho subway station Friday: “The man was playing with a lighter when he accidentally set his leg on fire at 7:10 a.m. inside of the Bleecker Street 6-train subway station, police and the FDNY said.” [NY Post]
Warhol star and poet Taylor Mead is “in a game of chicken with real-estate mogul Ben Shaoul, who bought his Ludlow Street building with other tenements last summer for $16.5 million and has begun converting them to market-rate apartments. The Lower East Side legend’s tiny fifth-floor pad is filled with dust and cockroaches, and the building is now a noisy construction site — but he refuses to leave.” [NY Post]
Celebrity chef Bobby Flay is reopening his Spanish-Mediterranean restaurant, Bolo, at 324 Lafayette St., between East Houston and Bleecker streets.[DNA Info]
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Courtesy Oh, My Nails!
Courtesy of Oh, My Nails!All the single ladies, take note: a manicurist who did Beyoncé’s nails when she was manager at Sakura Nail and Spa has opened her own place.
Mo Qin, known to most of her customers simply as Momo, has quietly opened Oh, My Nails! at 117 East Seventh Street.
Why did the artist who has jazzed up the nails of Serena Williams, Mary J. Blige, Kelly Rowland, and Solange set up shop a short walk from her old employer? “I like the neighborhood and the people here are more into art so they know what is real good art,” she said.
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Anthony Pappalardo
Anthony Pappalardo The East Village has lost quite a few backyard gardens in recent years: the back patio at Bull McCabes is still closed, the ones behind Le Souk and I Coppi sit dormant, and what used to be the beer garden of Croxley Ales is now a construction site where a six-story building is due to rise. But a newcomer is filling the void with rock footbridges and waterfalls. That’s right: at Slide, you can now enjoy booze-infused milkshakes, fried green tomatoes and bulgogi sliders to the soothing sound of water dribbling into a koi pond.
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Mary ReinholzA well-known East Village pacifist, who burned his draft card in the 1960s, was out running errands last month when a fire erupted in his apartment of more than 50 years and turned it into something resembling a war zone.
David McReynolds, the retired longtime field secretary of the War Resisters League and the first openly gay man to run for president, said he spotted fire trucks outside his block on Feb. 24, and then was stunned to discover a small army of firefighters and police officers in his flooded studio. There was broken glass on his floor and water damage on the walls; his books were charred and his DVDs were ruined. Even his cellphone was destroyed.
Fortunately, however, negatives from photographs that have “historic value” survived, including snapshots that Mr. McReynolds took a half century ago of social-justice luminaries like Martin Luther King, Jr., Bayard Rustin, Norman Thomas, and A.J. Muste. He also learned that a ground floor apartment in his building on East Fourth Street was empty and ready to rent.
“God looks after atheists,” said Mr. McReynolds, 83.
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Scott Lynch Good morning, East Village.
“A homeless man set himself on fire in the Bleecker Street subway station during Friday morning rush-hour, FDNY said.” [DNA Info]
The Neighborhood Preservation Center on East 11th Street will screen “The Domino Effect,” a documentary about the Domino factory redevelopment that “everyone concerned about gentrification should see.” [Save the LES]
East Village band The Virgins will play Bowery Ballroom with Har Mar Superstar on April 1. [New Yorker]
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Kavitha Surana
Kavitha SuranaChanting “Public housing under attack! What do we do? Fight back!”, members of the Alfred E. Smith Houses’ tenants association urged residents to boycott a meeting in which the New York City Housing Authority pitched its plan to lease land to private developers.
Representatives of the housing authority appeared at P.S. 126 last night to promote its contentious new scheme to raise much-needed capital for building maintenance by leasing out parking lots and playgrounds at eight of its developments, including Smith Houses.
Earlier in the day, housing authority employees had knocked on doors to encourage residents to attend, but members of the tenants association said they felt ambushed by the plan and bewildered by a lack of communication with the housing authority. The tenants group wanted to postpone the meeting until next month, both so that it would have more time to organize and to accommodate members who could not attend on March 20 or might be away for Passover or Easter holidays in the coming weeks. According to Aixa Torres, the group’s president, the housing authority eventually agreed to an April 11 meeting, but it also refused to cancel the March 20 meeting.
“This has become a power play between N.Y.C.H.A. and me. They have said that I am being unreasonable. I don’t think I am,” said Ms. Torres, who organized the boycott last night after the agency refused to change the date. “I think my residents deserve a 10-day notice. Instead they got three days.”
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Phillip Kalantzis CopeGood morning, East Village.
Martin Scorsese wants to see the Bowery protected from highrises. “The former Elizabeth Street resident wrote to the City Planning Commission on March 13, urging it to support the East Bowery Preservation Plan, which includes limiting new development height to 85 feet on the infamous strip’s eastern flank.” [DNA Info]
The folks at 7A tell us Lenny Kaye of the Patti Smith Group will perform with folk legend Cindy Lee Berryhill at the cafe’s upstairs Treehouse on March 24 at 8:30 p.m. They’ll be opening for Tom Clark, who opened the venue in July of 2011 and will perform with his high-school bandmate Brian Halverson in a tribute ot the Everly Brothers.
“With thousands of feral cat colonies in New York City, a nonprofit organization is training volunteers how to care for the stigmatized felines through workshops on humanely trapping, fixing and then releasing the animals.” [DNA Info]
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Daniel MaurerAfter nearly five years on First Avenue, jewelry designer Lisa Linhardt is moving her showcase to Nolita.
A sign on the window of Linhardt Gallery, at 156 First Avenue, indicates the by-appointment shop will close April 1 and move to 211 Mott Street, between Prince and Spring Streets.
“We are truly humbled by all the great exposure the East Village has given us — with our jewelry adorning the covers of magazines such as Elle and Vogue, to celebrities wearing Linhardt pieces, such as Alicia Keys, Gisele Bundchen and Jennifer Lopez,” reads the goodbye message.
The designer specializes in jewelry made from recycled precious metals and organic stones, including a $140 “Loisaida” bracelet. “An ‘insider’ term — this is the neighborhood that Linhardt resides in – and we wear our ‘Loisaida’ with pride,” reads a description of the item.
Not anymore: the Nolita store’s opening party is April 12.
Courtesy of N.Y.U.
Chances are “very good” that rent-stabilized tenants of Washington Square Village will appeal the dismissal of their lawsuit against N.Y.U., said their attorney.
“We’re very disappointed with this decision,” said Lawrence Goldberg. “The judge put the burden on the poor and elderly instead of on N.Y.U., where it belonged.”
Monday, a judge ruled that the state supreme court wasn’t the appropriate venue for the lawsuit, which alleged that, by redeveloping a park-like courtyard at Washington Square Village in order to make way for high-rise buildings, N.Y.U. was depriving tenants of a “required service” in violation of rent stabilization law.
Mr. Goldberg rejected as a “red herring” the notion that the project was still “in its infancy,” as the judge put it in a ruling that suggested the matter was the domain of the Department of Housing and Community Renewal. “We’re reviewing our options as to whether or not we wish to appeal, go to the D.H.C.R., or do both simultaneously,” said the attorney. Read more…
Ray Sumser, the East Villager who drew pretty much every cartoon character ever, is back with a new project. This time, he wants you to suggest your favorite female characters from comic books, cartoons and video games, so he can create “a sampling of the often overshadowed and under-appreciated heroes that are pop fiction females.”
According to Mr. Sumser’s Kickstarter blurb, the idea arose because the epic creations he has shown in Union Square, including a crowd-sourced collection of comic-book villains, “tended to be boys clubs. This seems like something worth acknowledging and possibly changing.”
And so he has kicked off his latest with drawings of Miss Piggy, Belle from “Beauty and the Beast,” Patti Mayonnaise from “Doug,” Velma from “Scooby-Doo,” Valerie from “Josey and the Pussycats,” and Marceline the Vampire Queen from “Adventure Time.” You’ve got eight days to contribute $15, which gets you a print of the finished work with your favorite character in the mix.
