Gloria Chung

Good morning, East Village.

In what EV Grieve dubbed “The Great Thunder Blizzard of 2011,” we were only one inch away from getting the 20 inches of snow that blanketed the city in the Dec. 26 blizzard. NY1 reports it’s our snowiest January ever, our sixth snowiest winter, and the eighth largest storm in city history. This time, “We were ready for it,” Michael R. Bloomberg told NY1 this morning after declaring a weather emergency last night. Grieve has some great neighborhood photos of the storm, including a snow-covered Tompkins Square Park, a fallen tree at East 10th Street and Second Avenue, and a downed awning at Kafana on Avenue C.

Brooklyn-based emcee Saigon has been out volunteering at the Bowery Mission the last few days, handing out blankets to the homeless, according to Bowery Boogie. Over on Avenue D, the homeless were bracing for the snow, as we reported yesterday.

If you’re off for the day and down for some sledding, Gothamist has a list of the best places to get your sled on.

After working up an appetite in the chill, head over to Ray’s on Avenue A and try his new roast beef on rye sandwich for $5. Nadie Se Conoce has a photo that’ll make you drool. Or, head out for some brunch since, surprise, surprise, according to Crain’s, New Yorkers love brunch more than residents in any other metro area.

Suzanne Rozdeba Nick Alija, manager of Cucina Di Pesce, says that the perception by some neighborhood residents that the restaurant shut down after a fire earlier this month has cut business by about 40 percent. Below: Mr. Alija with a few patrons at the half-empty restaurant Tuesday night.

It was 9 p.m. on Tuesday night, and Nick Alija looked out at the half-empty dining room at Cucina Di Pesce and shook his head. Five tables were occupied, surrounded by space heaters pumping out warmth into the restaurant, which was damaged by a Jan. 4 fire that roared through the building next door.

Mr. Alija, a manager at the restaurant, knows that the damage could have been far worse. The East Village Farm & Grocery, where the fire started, was gutted. While Cucina was spared that fate – and has been able to remain open despite needing thousands of dollars in repairs – it has found itself stuck in a kind of commercial limbo: it is open for business but many people think it has shut down.

“I’ve heard people standing outside the restaurant saying we’re closed down, and have seen people online writing the same – and it’s not true,” Mr. Alija, 31, told The Local. “I’ve been telling people we are definitely open. It’s been a nightmare.”
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Chelsia Rose Marcius Felix Gates, 57, shoveled stranded motorists out of snow piles during December’s snowstorm. For many of the East Village’s homeless, the inclement weather can bring new opportunities to make money by performing odd jobs.

Snow for the homeless of Avenue D is a mixed blessing. They can earn quick cash shoveling out stranded motorists, but it is not enough to get them off the streets.

Take Abraham Rosado, for example.  Mr. Rosado, who’s 56, has earned money during winters on Avenue D by shoveling snow. To keep warm, he seeks out sidewalk grates and liquor stores.

It is a wearing routine when the temperature dips below freezing and, according to AccuWeather.com, Mr. Rosado will have more such days to endure. The last week of January is forecast to include a few more days of snow and possible rain with little sun.

That means Mr. Rosado may make a small profit wielding his shovel. But it also means that the only sustained periods of relief from the outdoors that he will likely be able to count on will come during dinner hours at a local soup kitchen.

Many of Alphabet City’s homeless helped commuters last month plow through piles of snow in exchange for a small fee.

Others like Shea Darnell Belle, 30, a homeless man born in the East Village, said they offer assistance for free, or next to free.

“One lady had me shovel out her car,” he said. “She asked, ‘What do you charge?’ and I said, ‘What you can afford.’”

Felix Gates, 57, who sells cigarettes on the corner of Avenue D and Ninth Street, watched during the late December blizzard as some motorists struggled to restart engines that sputtered and stalled. Some of those people left their cars unattended for a few days until the snow was cleared. Their misfortune ended up providing a boon to some homeless men and women who managed to get inside the vehicles and use them as temporary shelters.

Others, of course, slept outside, even in frigid temperatures.

“Many of them sleep on the steps, on stairways before the police tell them to go to a shelter.” Mr. Gates said. “You see people move from one spot to another, just trying to stay warm. I’ll be glad when it’s all over.”

Gloria Chung

Good morning, East Village.

In case you haven’t had enough of the snow, we’re getting dumped on again now and expecting up to five inches. Look on the bright side – it’ll turn into a messy mix of sleet and ice by the end of the day, reports NY1.

Meanwhile, Community Board 3 has unveiled its State Liquor Authority agenda for a Feb. 14 meeting, where Superdive, a troubled bar on Avenue A, will ask for a renewal of its liquor license, Momofuku Milk Bar, on Second Avenue near East 13th Street, will request a new liquor license, and Ninth Ward, on Second Avenue between 11th and 12th Streets, is applying for a sidewalk cafe. If you want to join in the fun, the meeting will be held at the JASA/Green Residence on East Fifth Street at 6:30 p.m.

If you’ve got pierogies and borscht on the brain, run over to the Veselka kiosk at First and First. There’s a strong possibility the little Eastern European spot will be turned over to the city’s Parks Department after the owner, Tom Birchard, expressed concern over a costly requirement to install a bathroom, according to Crain’s.

Take a nostalgic look at the East Village in the late 80’s, with pics on EV Grieve, and of the Lower East Side from the 60’s to the 80’s with photos at 21-7 magazine.

Got rats, bedbugs or cock roaches? A company called Optomen Productions is looking for tenants with severe infestations for a new documentary, according to Bowery Boogie. They’ll take care of your pest problem, free of charge.

Dale W. Eisinger

Jenn Pelly Adam Cole, the reclusive street artist who is also known as Cost, and the newspaper distribution box that he designed. The box was stolen from a street corner and Mr. Cole played a role in its recovery.

In the early 90’s, Adam Cole, a.k.a. “Cost,” hit the streets undercover. As one half of the now-mythic graffiti duo Cost and Revs, he was busy revolutionizing the graffiti world and catapulting the wheatpasting medium to an international street art phenomenon. According to Mr. Cole, he and Revs were wanted by the NYPD. He wore a mask in photographs.

In 2010, Cost’s life is different. After remaining largely quiet since a graffiti-related arrest in the mid-90s, he heads to Mars Bar for a recent interview — on the theft and recovery of his most recent work — in a Porsche. Over noontime beers, Mr. Cole explains he has done “okay” for himself with “honest work” as a small business owner. “I don’t want to run from the law anymore,” he says, each word’s articulation recalling his home borough, Queens. As one of New York City’s most infamous and enigmatic street artists, Mr. Cole found himself, in December, chasing after a thief himself.

Described by Cost as a “professional street art thief,” that Brooklyn-based criminal stole, a carefully crafted newspaper box Mr. Cole created for Showpaper, a free newssheet of all-ages DIY concert listings distributed throughout the city. The box was Cost’s largest public artwork since his mid-90s arrest, and hit Second Avenue at Houston Street one Monday last November. By the Thursday evening, it was stolen, and immediately posted on eBay with a $4,000 price tag. The box has been off the streets since—but after being recovered by project curator Andrew Shirley in December, it will return to the East Village in coming weeks.

When it first hit the East Village, the box was loaded with rocks and concrete, but Mr. Shirley, also at our Mars Bar meeting, was not surprised by its theft. “We dropped the box off around two in the afternoon, and as we drove back down First Avenue, that day, I didn’t even expect to see it then,” Mr. Shirley said. “I didn’t think it would last a day.”

“The thief represents society to me,” Mr. Shirley said. “Society is all about money —capitalism, and making a buck. The thief took the joy and purity out of the project.”
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Vivienne Gucwa

When I walked into Mars Bar for the first time I immediately noticed the smell. It was more of a stench, the same odor that permeates my yoga studio after a crowded Bikram class. The second thing I noticed was the man next to me at the bar, who pulled out a deli-bought sub from a paper bag. After a few bites, he ordered a Budweiser from the bartender. Mars Bar does not serve food. Even so, the bartender was remarkably nonchalant about the customer who was halfway through his dinner.

The establishment has been tirelessly documented as a quintessential New York City dive bar — a remnant of an East Village before the Bowery accommodated luxury hotels. Its graffiti-adorned walls, scrawled with disparaging phrases like “Die, Yuppie Scum,” take aim at the shiny high rises and condominiums popping up at an alarming rate.

Now, as Mars Bar prepares to close its doors for at least the next two years – and perhaps longer – it seems like an appropriate time to take a step back and assess the East Village’s best dive bars before they close for good.
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Chaz Kangas.

Passing by the corner of Second Avenue and Fifth Street on a Monday night has become quite a different experience in the three months since Sin Sin closed. The former home of Freestyle Mondays, the vibrant, laidback epicenter of one of the country’s longest lasting hip hop scenes, now sits in silence with the tinted windows whispering to passersby about parties past. Sometimes I’ll even stop in front of the windows and peer inside for a brief moment of nostalgia. When I do this for more than 10 seconds, a local resident will approach and say something to the effect of “that place is closed, the party is over.” While it’s hard to deny the first half of that sentence, the latter portion couldn’t be more wrong.

For many involved in the East Village hip hop scene, “Freestyle Mondays” is the center of our musical solar system, and it would take more than an eviction notice to eclipse such a brightly shining community. When it was announced that Sin Sin would be closing last October, there was tremendous interest from different venues offering to inherit the event and keep things continuing as usual. Eventually, hosts iLLspokiNN and Mariella chose Bar 13, (13th and University) as Freestyle Mondays’ new home. Since then, even amid the numerous snowstorms, the loyalists have returned.

But this move doesn’t mean a complete migration of hip hop from the East Village. Brown Bag Thursdays, a bi-weekly rap showcase at Voodoo Lounge (First Avenue and Second Street), is currently in its second year and is becoming something of a landmark for rap enthusiasts to visit.

Organized by local favorite rhyme collective the Brown Bag All Stars, the event has become one of the area’s premiere hip hop attractions, pairing local acts back-to-back with independent rap artists from all over the continent. This international appeal has resulted in events such as last December’s benefit for the family of Minneapolis rapper Michael ‘Eyedea’ Larsen who died suddenly in October. It’s this outreach and togetherness that exemplifies what makes the scene so special as Brown Bag Thursdays joins long-running hip hop open mic End of the Weak (Sunday nights at Club Pyramid on Avenue A) as another staple in keeping the underground rap scene in the East Village alive. In a genre with an ever-changing sound, perhaps it’s fitting that the walls surrounding it change too.

Chaz Kangas writes about the hip hop music scene at his blog.

Phillip Kalantzis Cope

Good morning, East Village.

This morning began with the sight of fresh snowflakes and also a reminder that no matter how pleasing the sight may be to many eyes, it also can also come with a cost. The Times reports that city officials have put the pricetag for cleaning up last month’s blizzard at about $68 million.

EV Grieve has a full report about one of the season’s most vivid reminders of the severity of the recent temperatures: efforts to free a car that was frozen under a sheet of ice when a water main burst on East Second Street. An image of the car also made the front of The Post.

Two development projects are also being discussed in the blogosphere. Grieve has more on an effort to stop development at 35 Cooper Square (including a look at the building and its neighbors from 2004). And turning our gaze a bit south of the neighborhood, Bowery Boogie has a report on Community Board 3’s passage of new guidelines for development of the Seward Park Urban Renewal Area – an agreement years in the making.

Suzanne Rozdeba The East River Park is the focal point of an unrealized plan for a unbroken protected greenway on Manhattan’s east side. Below: The park, renamed for former Mayor John V. Lindsay in 2001, is also a hub for runners and cyclists.

Before the construction of the East River (later FDR) Drive and the public housing along the east side of the street, Avenue D’s relationship with the East River was much more direct than we see now. When the area was still dominated by an active industrial waterfront, almost every east-west street in the neighborhood flowed directly into the river. Today, only a couple of those streets give access to the waterfront and the FDR must be traversed first.

Indeed, a quick look at some historical photographs and maps shows that the water was physically much closer to Avenue D than it is today. For instance, if you stood on the corner of 13th Street on Avenue D in the 1930’s, you could look directly at the water lapping up against the dock, while today that view is dominated by a power plant. Meanwhile, a walk from the corner of East Sixth street and Avenue D would deliver you to the water’s edge after approximately 900 feet, and the equivalent walk today is about 350 feet longer.

The difference, of course, is due both to FDR Drive and the East River Park (renamed John V. Lindsay Park in 2001). What the neighborhood lost in direct access to the water, it gained in additional open space. In fact, it gained Manhattan’s biggest open space south of 59th Street. The park, which is almost 60 acres in size and stretches from East 12th Street to Montgomery Street, owes its origins to the FDR Drive and Robert Moses, the man behind almost every piece of serious infrastructure conceived and/or constructed between the Great Depression and the city’s financial crisis of the 1970’s.
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Colin Moynihan.

Although I was born in Manhattan my first trips to the East Village came as a teenager in the 1980’s when I traveled to the Bowery – CBGB! – and to St. Marks Place, where I spent hours in used record stores and book stores.

Later, in the early half of the 1990’s, I moved to Suffolk Street, a few blocks below what is generally considered the southern end of the East Village, although I always tended to consider the territory above East Houston Street to be the northern zone of the Lower East Side. (There will be more, in future posts, on the nature of geography and labeling of neighborhoods.)  I have lived just south of Houston since then, but my travels and my interests have always extended beyond that borderline.

In the late 1990’s I began writing newspaper stories about the area and it was then that I began to see events not so much in terms of what they meant to me but in terms of how they affected others and how they fit into a historical or cultural context.  Some of my first stories were about local landmarks, squats, the struggles surrounding the future of the Charas / El Bohio community center, the community gardens – during both celebratory moments and times of tension – and the nearly ceaseless battles over real estate and development that have shaped so much of the recent history of the East Village and continue to do so today.  (More, also, in future posts, on that.)

Over the last eight years, I have reported and written more and more about the world beyond the East Village.  But I have never stopped roaming the neighborhood, talking with people and paying attention to what is going on there.

I have also continued to write about the East Village: The departure of a market, a cafe, or a large, eccentric piece of public art; the possibility of privatizing public space; the troubles faced by a mainstay of the local landscape; the tradition of protest and debate; the death of a neighbor and existence as it is experienced on a certain stretch of Avenue A.  To me these are not just interesting stories.  They are narratives of vital concern to the people who cherish the neighborhood’s streets and parks and buildings and sense a connection to the other lives that are lived here. I know that I am not the only one who feels that kinship.

I’m fortunate to be able to start off in this job with the benefit of a solid base established by my predecessor, Kim Davis and the site’s chief editor, Richard G. Jones. (Kim and Rich, thank you.)  And I’m hoping to help continue making The Local a site where people go to read about –– and to write about –– the events and occurrences that make life in the East Village something worth caring about.

To all contributors: I look forward to working with you.  And to all members of the community: consider this an invitation to become a contributor.

Colin Moynihan is the community editor of The Local East Village. If you are interested in becoming a contributor to the site, please email him.

Vivienne Gucwa

Good morning, East Village.

We begin the week with a look back at a piece of East Village history. The Bowery Alliance of Neighbors is circulating a petition to stop the development of the historic building located at 35 Cooper Square, now the home of Cooper 35 Asian Pub. The alliance is also holding a rally and news conference Friday to protest the building from being destroyed. It’s one of the oldest houses on the Bowery, and was sold for $8.5 million in November. Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York put together a comprehensive look at the building’s history.

Meanwhile, street artist Kenny Scharf is speaking out about the tagging of his huge mural at the corner of Houston Street and the Bowery. “It really hurt me,” Mr. Scharf told The Post. “It was a big diss.” The mural was defaced during December’s big blizzard, and the Big Time Bombers, a graffiti gang, is being blamed. Take a peek at what the wall looked like in the 60’s on Bowery Boogie, which has stills from director Martin Scorsese’s 1967 film, “Who’s That Knocking At My Door.”

If you’re out riding your bike, be extra cautious to follow the rules. The NYPD has handed out close to a whopping 1,000 tickets this month to cyclists accused of breaking the law, which includes violations such as riding the wrong way and up on the sidewalk, running lights, and making illegal turns, reports The Post.

But before you head out into the deep chill, keep in mind that it’s 12 degrees, though it’s suppose to warm up to a balmy 18, according to NY1. Bundle up.

For more than three decades, Marlis Momber has chronicled the changes that have occurred in the East Village and the Lower East Side – Loisaida. She reflects on 30 years of observing a community in transition.

“I hope we will learn from this having lost against gentrification, but it was inevitable,” said Ms. Momber in her East Fourth Street apartment as she sorted through photos, such as this image from 1986. “There’s this sense now that we must reconnect — preserve and continue — or all the earlier stuff will be for naught.”
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Kim Davis.

My last day as Community Editor of The Local East Village finds me looking back on what has been a long and eventful journey. For me, the journey didn’t begin with a phone call from Rich Jones, or even with the friendly interrogation to which I was subjected by Jay Rosen and his Studio 20 journalism class.

The journey, for me, began more years ago than I would like to think, still living in London and devouring everything I could read about downtown New York. The history, the legends, the tales of the artists and poets. Books by Joseph Mitchell and Ronald Sukenick, photographs by Fred McDarrah. I even subscribed to “The New Yorker” – not uncommon, I know, but I used to check “Goings on About Town” and plan what I might do with my evening if only I wasn’t 3,000 miles away. Danny’s Skylight Room at the Grand Sea Palace sounded like the most exotic joint on earth.

Almost 15 years ago, I saw my chance and seized it, moving first to Midtown with a temporary job, before settling in the East Village and beginning the process leading to residency and something like permanence. My daughter was born in New York, has grown up in the East Village, and will have the memory of it always. Call me a romantic, but one day she will realize what a wonderful gift that is.

Although I’ve been a writer of one kind or another as long as I can remember, I could hardly have imagined when I set out on this trip that I would have the opportunity to help edit and even modestly shape a site like this. That will be a great memory for me going forward: like celebrating my green card by going out and buying a Yankees jersey (number 42), this has been another ritual of arrival in the pre-eminent city of arrivals. Thanks to The Local, to Rich and the rest of the team, for giving me this home. And you haven’t heard the last from me.

All the best, of course, to Colin Moynihan in taking this all to the next level.

Kim Davis is the founding community editor of The Local East Village. He blogs at www.pinkpignyc.com.

Simon McCormack Investigators with the City Commission on Human Rights have begun looking into an allegation of bias at the Continental bar.

The City Commission on Human Rights has begun investigating an allegation of racial discrimination against the owner of the Continental bar, who has been accused of denying admittance to African-American patrons.

The commission, which is charged with examining civil rights complaints in the city, has been looking into an allegation of bias at the bar for the past month. A spokeswoman for the commission confirmed that an investigation is underway but, citing confidentiality concerns, declined to provide any additional details.

The owner of the bar, Trigger Smith, said that he intended to cooperate fully with the commission’s investigation and denied that there was anything improper about the admittance policy at the Continental.

“There’s not a prejudiced bone in my body,” Mr. Smith said in an interview with The Local earlier today. Mr. Smith acknowledged that the commission had conducted another investigation into allegations of bias at the bar several years ago. However, he said, that case was closed. Mr. Smith, who is white, said that his own review of the bar’s policies led him to believe that there were “a fair mix of colors” in the bar.
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Suzanne Rozdeba Hung-Ry, 55 Bond Street.

In the course of my first lunch at Hung-Ry, a neo-noodle restaurant at 55 Bond Street, I used my chopsticks to tweezer from my bowl a rather odd black wedge-shaped object, walked it over to the chef, Michael Hodgkins, who was standing behind the counter and said, “What’s this?”

“That’s the gizzard,” Mike explained. “It filters the soil which gets into the chicken’s system and gives it a. . .” He searched for the word.

“Soily?”

“Earthy flavor.” A lot of people, Mike added, regard a gizzard with deep suspicion. I had, too. But by the time I had reached the bottom of my duck breast noodle soup, I was hunting everywhere for those cushy, earthy bits of innard.

When I say that Hung-Ry practices neo-noodle cuisine, I mean that Mike has adapted the Chinese convention of broth, noodle and meat for a different world, and a different palate. Mike’s own training is French — he says that he worked for people who worked for Alain Ducasse, which I suppose is something like jamming with someone who once jammed with Bono — and he has infused into this ancient and rather tired staple a thrilling intensity of flavor and a commitment to fresh and exotic products. The duck breast in my soup had been exquisitely grilled and layered atop a bed of thick noodles which Chen, the noodle-man, had just finished stretching and twisting and yanking and then chopping. The broth was so redolent of distilled essence of duck that I couldn’t bear to order a dessert for fear of dispersing the flavor.
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Colin Moynihan.

We at The Local are happy to announce that Colin Moynihan, a reporter who during a period of 12 years has written about the East Village for The Times, is joining the blog as its next community editor.

Mr. Moynihan, who has also written for The New Yorker, New York magazine, and The
Village Voice, succeeds Kim Davis, who recently completed a six-month rotation as the site’s founding community editor.

“I’m looking forward to joining in the intrepid journalistic experiment that The Local began five months ago,” said Mr. Moynihan. “The East Village has a rich history and a legacy of great reporting and writing. It will be exciting to be part of a project that will try to contribute to that legacy while helping to write the next chapter in the neighborhood’s history.”

Richard G. Jones, the editor of The Local, praised the depth and breadth of Mr. Moynihan’s journalistic experience.

“We are extremely fortunate to have an editor of Colin’s caliber who brings an understanding of The Times’ standards and values, an innate knowledge and appreciation of the East Village’s distinct culture, and absolutely impeccable reporting chops,” Mr. Jones said.

Vivienne Gucwa

Good morning, East Village.

After getting about four inches of snow overnight, the last of the flakes have fallen as we make our morning commutes. The Sanitation Department was out in full force to make sure that no street was left behind in our fifth snowstorm this winter, reports NY1.

In architecture news, there’s an updated version of the design for the proposed Bowery Hotel from The Observer, which says of the plan, “it has light up balconies that will shimmer at night, bringing a bit of that dance-club flare back to the cleaned up thoroughfare.” The comments aren’t any more flattering than when we first saw the design for the hotel, which will stand on the site of the old Salvation Army building. One commentator on Curbed wrote: “Looks more like it’s ‘festering’ than ‘shimmering,’” while another said, “Is restraint really uncool?”

Meanwhile, the bike lane debate keeps getting hotter. At a Brooklyn community board meeting last night, residents argued with Department of Transportation officials, saying that the agency inflated numbers of cyclists using a Prospect Park lane, according to The Post. Our own bike lanes debate continues, and if Jimmy McMillan had any say in it, he’d do away with them all.

And if you’re planning on watching the Jets play the Pittsburgh Steelers on Sunday night with a berth in Super Bowl XLV at stake, The Post has an in-depth championship game preview. But if you’re not feeling the football love, EV Grieve suggests some bars without TVs where you can drink, minus the football fanatics.

The Local is pleased to announce that Colin Moynihan, a reporter who has written about the East Village for The Times over a period of 12 years, will join the blog as its next community editor. Mr. Moynihan succeeds Kim Davis, who recently completed a six-month rotation in the position. We will have more details and a fuller post tomorrow. —The Local

Courtesy David Amram David Amram will celebrate his 80th birthday with a fundraiser at the Bowery Poetry Club Jan. 30.

The rapidly altering Bowery landscape might prove disorienting to someone who first performed at the fabled Five Spot jazz club in 1956, then located on the Bowery at Fifth Street. For David Amram this isn’t the case, as he prepares to celebrate his 80th birthday at a fund raiser for The Community-Word Project on Jan. 30 at The Bowery Poetry Club. A long-time downtown resident, Mr. Amram has continued to create music, perform and remain vital over the past half century. He explains that “It’s important for young artists to see it’s possible to lead a creative life in the arts.’

Internationally known as a composer, multi-instrumentalist, conductor and author, Mr. Amram has composed more than one hundred orchestral and chamber music works, along with film scores such as those for “Splendor in the Grass” and “The Manchurian Candidate.” He has collaborated with a vast legion of performers including Charles Mingus, Willie Nelson, Dizzy Gillespie, Langston Hughes, Bob Dylan, Miles Davis, Nina Simone, and scores of others. In 1966, Leonard Bernstein chose him as the first guest composer-in-residence of The New York Philharmonic.
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