On the eve of All Saints Day, The Local is contemplating sister acts and Christian anarchists. While we’re at it, let’s check in on St. Brigid’s Church, which is due to reopen in February of next year, after a decade of tumult.
Brick by brick, St.Brigid’s Roman Catholic Church at Avenue B and East Seventh Street is slowly and steadily being restored to its former glory. First shuttered in 2001 due to a crack in the building, it has been the subject of controversy since 2004, when the parish was disbanded and the Archdiocese of New York announced plans to demolish what it said was a “hazard” that could have collapsed at any time. The demolition plans for the “Famine Church” (so called because it was built by the Irish immigrants fleeing the potato famine in the 1840s) was met with a massive outcry from parishioners. After a series of protests and an anonymous $20 million donation, the church is now on track to reopen in time for next year’s Feast of St. Brigid. In this video, Edwin Torres, the Chairman of the Committee to Save St. Brigid’s Church, gives The Local a rare inside look at the restoration.
Soon after legendary folk singer Loudon Wainwright III finished performing for cheering protesters in Zuccotti Park yesterday afternoon, telling them that the Occupy Wall Street encampment reminded him of the 1968 “Summer of Love,” a Catholic Worker band called the Filthy Rotten System showed up.
Bud Courtney, who plays banjo in the group, said its decidedly unholy name came from the late Dorothy Day, who started the Christian-anarchist Catholic Worker Movement 78 years ago with Peter Maurin during the Great Depression. She is now being considered for sainthood by the Catholic Church.
“Dorothy observed that all of our problems come from our acceptance of the filthy rotten system,” said Mr. Courtney, 61, a former actor who served on a Christian Peacemaker Team in Iraq last year and now lives at one of two Catholic Worker hospitality houses in the East Village. With the help of several bandmates as well as protesters who sang along, he belted out Woody Guthrie’s classic, “My Land is Your Land.” Read more…
Happy Halloween, East Village. Still looking for a costume? Maybe this will inspire you: Contributor Tim Milk, an East Villager who remembers the subway system as a very scary place, recalls a peculiar incident in the late 1990s.
Rachel CitronThe subway system today: A very different place.
Robbery, brutality, even death used to haunt the New York City transit system during that time many now choose to call “the bad old days.” The manifold horrors that lurked below street level still comprise an indelible legend. If you, alone and vulnerable on the desolate platform, survived the long, long wait for the chronically delayed and broken-down trains, things more loathsome still awaited you on board. Flashers, muggers, rapists – these were the least of your worries. Also riding with you were the bogeymen – the monsters who earned the most fearsome monikers. “The Finger Man” stalked the Lexington line with wire cutters, snipping off the digits of his victims to more quickly steal their diamond rings. That his story was probably just an urban myth was irrelevant – it was well understood that a trip to an outer borough such as Brooklyn could very well be your last.
And so I never went there. The districts outside of Manhattan lay beyond the pale – like lost, forbidden kingdoms. But by 1997, all of this had changed. Through certain deft law enforcement strategies, crime on the subway had vanished. How exactly this was accomplished was not entirely clear, but no matter: people at last felt safe riding anywhere and everywhere. For me it meant happy excursions to all ends of town without the inconvenience of sheer mortal terror.
One fine Sunday I made just such an outing, boarding the Brooklyn-bound F at the Second Avenue stop. Read more…
Alexander Kok10th Street and First Avenue on Saturday.
The Times interviews the mother of Pvt. Danny Chen in her East Village apartment. The soldier, whose death in Afghanistan is still under investigation, was “a child of Chinatown who, amid self-doubt about his physical abilities, strived to succeed in the military.”
Last week it was reported that 68-70 Second Avenue, also known as 86 East Fourth Street, went for $8.7 million. Now a tenant tells EV Grieve that “the new owner and management are declining to offer new leases as current tenant leases expire.” Also according to a banner spotted by an Grieve reader, a complex of full-floor lofts is coming to 222 Seventh Street near Avenue C.
The Bowery, which already boasts Hair Date and (at Cooper Square) Hair Mates, has a new tenant: Takamichi Hair is moving from 35 Great Jones, into a space at 263 Bowery that, per a press release sent to Bowery Boogie, “has the feel of a chic, modern, art-collector’s home.” Read more…
I’ve never crossed an empty Cooper Square — there are always people coming up out of the entrance for the 6, in line at the Mud Truck, messing around with the cube. Homeless guys, fruit cart guys, drunk college students. It’s not where I would have thought to look for a clean, minimalist image, but a few weekends ago when I was standing at the corner of Eighth Street, across from the Starbucks, I pointed my camera down and found an abstract geometry in the lines formed by crosswalk paint and the edge of the curb. Then the light changed and there were people walking through my photograph. Read more…
Dominique Zonyee ScottAt Keith Salgado’s memorial last week.
The Lo-Down reports that the police have arrested their suspect in the shooting of Donovan “Keith” Salgado: “Hockeem Smith was taken to the 9th Precinct yesterday, where he remains today. According to an NYPD spokesman, he was arrested at approximately 1:30 a.m.” The 24-year-old faces charges of murder, robbery and criminal possession of a firearm.
Stephen Rex BrownThe blinds are drawn at the preschool, which abruptly closed earlier this month.
When Devon Eisele took her 4-year-old daughter to Love A Lot preschool on Clinton Street on July 1 and Con Edison had cut the power, that was the last straw. While teachers did their best to improvise, taking the tykes to playgrounds and out for lunch, Ms. Eisele and her husband decided to withdraw their child from the financially struggling school.
As it turned out, they left at just the right time. Days later, the Clinton Street space closed, and the school was consolidated into the original location on Suffolk Street.
On October 5, that location abruptly closed, leaving parents scrambling to find a new preschool, and teachers fuming about months of unpaid wages. That day, the Department of Health revoked Love A Lot’s operating permit, citing “lack of an educational director, inability to provide documentation of staff medical records, and failure to screen staff,” according to a spokeswoman. Previously, the same location had been cited by city health inspectors for a variety of violations, including not having a staff member trained in CPR on site, lack of working fire and carbon monoxide alarms, and problems with hot and cold water — all of which were resolved, according to the spokeswoman.
The owner of Love A Lot, Olga Bosio, is named in two lawsuits, one from a former teacher seeking $6,500 in back wages, and another from former parents seeking $10,500 for tuition paid up front, as well as deposits for the school year. (According to Ms. Eisele, tuition at the school was around $2,000 a month.) Read more…
Community Board 3 just posted its calendar of meetings for November. Items of note: The Bean has signed up to ask for wine and beer licenses at its two forthcoming locations, and Nublu has signed up to plead its case for liquor at 151 Avenue C, just four blocks from its troubled original location. We’ve asked Nublu’s owner Ilhan Ersahin to comment about any plans he might have; while we await his response, find the full calendar here.
Just when East Villagers had started to think that all hope was lost to save the St. Mark’s Bookshop, the store’s owners said today that their landlords at Cooper Union are reconsidering lowering the rent by $5,000.
“They said the decision is under reconsideration,” said Bob Contant, co-owner of the 33-year-old book store.
On Tuesday, Mr. Contant told The Local that Cooper Union President Jamshed Bharucha and Vice President T.C. Westcott had told him and his partner Terry McCoy that there was nothing the school could do about their $20,000 rent. As other outlets ran with headlines such as “St. Mark’s Bookshop DENIED Rent Reduction From Cooper Union,” a Cooper Union representative insisted to The Local that the matter was not yet settled, and that a final decision would come by the end of the month. Reached today, Mr. Contant said he was scheduling a meeting with Ms. Westcott for next week.
Today, Cooper Union spokeswoman Jolene Travis reiterated that a decision about the rent had never been officially reached. She had no information about next week’s meeting.
While EV Grieve points out that there will be a mass in honor of Bob Arihood tomorrow at the Most Holy Redeemer Church on East Third Street, messages posted just minutes ago at Neither More Nor Less and Nadie Se Conoce indicate that someone (it’s uncertain who) has stepped up to maintain the late blogger and photographer’s two sites: “The site will be preserved in a static state,” reads one of the posts. “Comments wont be allowed, but all the old existing comments will be retained and viewable.”
Some drama coming out of our own Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute today (or at least, what passes for drama in our world): The Local’s co-creator Jay Rosen responds on his PressThink blog to a “sting” operation by conservative activist James O’Keefe. With the apparent help of an operative posing as a potential student, Mr. O’Keefe covertly taped one of the NYU professor’s classes in an attempt to show an elite liberal bias at The New York Times. Mr. Rosen calls the result “incoherent, context-less and, frankly, boring.”
Last night, just a couple dozen people braved the rain and cold to help kick off the first Greenpoint Film Festival with the premiere of Jonas Mekas’s new documentary, “My Mars Bar Movie.” The film, which Mr. Mekas, 88, said he had recorded during trips to Mars Bar over the course of fifteen years at Anthology Film Archives across the street, begins with a close-up of the archivist and filmmaker’s first name carved in the bar, followed by admiring shots of an insect-ridden fly strip and then the first of countless clinking tequila glasses.
Throughout the documentary, Mr. Mekas’s camera darts frenetically – almost kaleidoscopically – from the graffiti on the walls to the ceiling fan to the pinball machine to a cigarette perched in an ashtray (later in the movie, after years have passed, bar-goers complain about having to smoke outside), stopping only occasionally to concentrate on the stoney-eyed female bartenders and the international array of fellow filmmakers and artists that serve as Mr. Mekas’s drinking companions. Read more…
The Guardian writes about Goldman Sachs withdrawing $5,000 it gave to the 25-year-old Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union, where many in the Occupy Wall Street movement have started banking. After the not-for-profit bank on Avenue B put Goldman Sachs’s name on an invite to a dinner honoring Occupy Wall Street, a representative of the investment bank told the credit union that it would “never get another dime from any big bank,” according to one of author Greg Palast’s sources.
Police have found the man they believe robbed Le Basket at gunpoint last week. According to the Post, Jed Cappelli is also charged with flashing a gun at a bodega on Avenue A and East Third Street early Monday morning. DNA Info points out that the Bronx resident has not been linked to a similar robbery at 131 Second Avenue.
The Wall Street Journal talks to Mink Stole. Best known for her roles in John Waters movies, she’s now starring in an adaptation of a Tennessee Williams comedy, “Now the Cats With Jewelled Claws,” at La MaMa. Read more…
Speaking of jewelry: New York magazine photographed Vera Balyura, the jewelry designer who owns VeraMeat, for its Look Book column, and she says she’s “going to dress up, like, all week long.” Guess we’re not the only ones looking forward to Halloween. For more on Ms. Balyura, check out The Local’s chat with her last year.
Stephen Rex BrownThe shuttered store at 64 East Fourth Street.
Sara’s Vintage and Handmade Jewelry on East Fourth Street closed over the weekend, and the landlord says it is being evicted.
The store, which opened in 2008, sold vintage and antique jewelry as well as handmade jewelry by local designers, according to Yelp.
The store’s landlord said that it was far from an ideal tenant.
“They didn’t pay the rent for roughly the last six months,” said Valerio Orselli, the executive director of the Cooper Square Mutual Housing Association. “They are being evicted.” Read more…
Eater talks to Taavo Somer and William Tigertt a year after the opening of their Bowery restaurant, Peels, which recently got a visit from Chuck Close. Mr. Somer reveals they plan to add a downstairs bar, which has been “taking a long time.”
Think its rainy near you? Not as rainy as it is on a block of East 10th Street (between Second and Third Avenues) that has been closed to traffic for the filming of a Comcast commercial. The Local stopped by just minutes ago and watched a high-grade sprinkler shower water onto one of the company’s trucks during one take. All very dramatic, but what’s a Comcast truck doing in the East Village? It’s about as fishy as a subway stop across from Veniero’s. Indeed a call to Comcast customer service confirms that Time Warner is the block’s cable provider. As if we didn’t know that. But who knows, maybe the folks at Comcast are hoping to pass the St. Mark’s Historic District off as brownstone Brooklyn?
Okay, so we were a little surprised to hear that Beyoncé gets her nails done in the East Village, but Brendan Bernhard might not have been. In his latest essay, he points out that ours is a neighborhood that caters to the body.
Susan KeylounThe nail paint at Susan Nail & Spa at 149 Avenue A.
It’s one of the things I love about the East Village (and miss when I’m gone): the amount of attention to which your body can be paid (if you’re willing to pay for it) on almost any street.
Take the venerable Russian & Turkish Baths on East Tenth Street between First Avenue and Avenue A (forever and ever the hottest place in the neighborhood in the literal sense), where in under twenty minutes, a lifetime’s worth of clogged pores can be brutalized into unleashing rivers of salt.
Susan Keyloun
On weekdays after work the place can be as packed as a subway car, filled with the Ordinary and the Beautiful. You see boxers and dancers and models and performance artists and India-rubber yogis and other aristocrats of the physique, not excluding exhibitionists, dowsing themselves with ice-cold water in rooms ramped up to temperatures Satan would balk at. There are people who spend hours there almost every day of the year; after a decade or so, they start to look like steamed fish. In the afternoon it can be quite empty: I once shared the “Turkish Room” with a heat-loving rat. Read more…
Courtesy of SakuraHalloween nails (not Beyoncé’s).
So, did you see those paparazzi shots yesterday of Beyoncé Knowles leaving Sakura Nail and Spa on East First Street, near Second Avenue? They even reached England! Maybe, like us, you found it hard to believe that the 18th most powerful woman in the world (per Forbes) would get a mani just a stone’s throw from the old Mars Bar. Surely the tabloids and gossip sites were confusing Sakura’s East Village location with the Upper East Side original. Actually, no: Earlier today, Fumiko Kano, the technician who did Beyoncé’s nails, assured us it happened right here in the neighborhood. 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.
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