After catching a rent break in November, the St. Mark’s Bookshop isn’t quite in the clear. “We’re hanging in there, barely,” co-owner Bob Contant tells Publisher’s Weekly in an item noticed by Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York. “It’s a difficult April. Traffic is down. Without an increase, we can’t rebuild our inventory. We’re 20 percent short of where we need to be.” According to Publisher’s Weekly, “a few landlords have come forward offering the store lower rent, but moving would be costly and the store’s business credit cards are already maxed out.” Hey, The Local did its part last night by springing for copies of Clayton Patterson’s neighborhood histories, “Captured” and “Resistance.”
Know Your Occupiers: The Union Square Protester Primer, Pt. 5
By JARED MALSINWho are the men and women seeking to occupy Union Square Park? So far we’ve met Karin Hofmann and Justin Stone-Diaz; Fathema Shadida and Tim “Chyno” Chin; John Eustor and Carlton Hall; and Ed Mortimer and James Pistocco. Today, in the final installment of The Local’s series, meet two more of your new neighbors.
Name: Sam Wood
Age: 22
Originally from: Farmingdale, New York
Current residence: Full-time occupier. “I’ve spent a decent amount of nights here in Union Square.”
Job before joining occupy: Unemployed
Current job: Full-time occupier, unemployed Read more…
Balazs Pushes Standard Facelift, Assures Neighbors ‘We Hate Weddings’
By STEPHEN REX BROWNThe famed hotelier Andre Balazs pitched his plans for the remodeled Standard East Village to East Fifth Street residents on Thursday night, explaining that the Cooper Square Hotel’s layout on the bottom two floors was a key factor in its bankruptcy.
The owner of the recently renamed 21-story hotel intends to reorient the main floors to the west by creating an outdoor dining area that faces the Bowery, as well as a new lobby.
“The hotel failed,” said Mr. Balazs. “We bought it from bankruptcy. One reason was that the public spaces didn’t work.”
The rearrangement would also, he added, reduce the noise that angered neighbors, some of whom have windows that abut the hotel. Read more…
The Day | Judge Throws the Book at Library Lifter
By DANIEL MAURERGood morning, East Village.
Above: Ray’s Candy Store, home of Obama fries, is now saluting Occupy Wall Street. Meanwhile over at Cooper Square, the Illuminator saluted the 99 percent again last night: see our photos here. And check it out: Ray now has a Wikipedia page, and according to The Villager, he has a new iPhone, too.
Earlier this week, when The Local spotted 7-Eleven signage going up over St. Marks Place, a representative told us the store would open at the end of this month. Now The Daily News trolls local residents for reactions and hears more or less the same thing we heard back in September: “We got rid of The Gap 15 years ago,” says one local. “We can get rid of 7-Eleven.”
The Post reports that Andrew Hanson, the “book worm” who was caught selling stolen library books to East Village Books, has been sentenced to 2.5 to 5 years in jail for felony burglary. Read more…
Farewell, Nice Guy Eddie’s: Restaurant Taking Over
By STEPHEN REX BROWNAfter a 16-year run, Nice Guy Eddie’s will be replaced by a restaurant operated by Darin Rubell, the owner of Ella and Gallery Bar, documents posted on the Community Board 3 website reveal.
David McWater, the owner of the bar at Avenue A and East Houston Street, has not returned an email seeking comment. Mr. Rubell also had no comment. A liquor license questionnaire, prepared for the community board’s SLA committee in advance of a meeting next week, says that the new 10-table restaurant will serve “American comfort food” from 11 a.m. to 4 a.m. everyday. It also notes that the restaurant will include “numerous” televisions, raising the possibility that it will continue catering to sports fans. No word yet on whether the new joint will be dominated by boisterous Philadelphia Eagles fans on any given Sunday, as is the case with Nice Guy’s. Read more…
Making It | Neil Mendeloff of Plantworks
By SHIRA LEVINEFor every East Village business that’s opening or closing, dozens are quietly making it. Here’s one of them: Plantworks.
It ain’t easy being green. Neil Mendeloff, a onetime Parks Department employee, and his wife Verna, a terrarium and bonsai specialist, opened Plantworks on Mercer Street some 38 years ago; it moved to Waverly Place two years later and eventually put down roots at 28 East Fourth Street, where for the past 28 years it has helped beautify many a Manhattan home, university, restaurant, government building and hotel. But now, Mr. Mendeloff says, his rent may double. Unless his landlord extends an olive branch, his lush wonderland of Florida palm trees, Japanese maples, and Oregon pines could end up buried six feet under. We asked him how he’s managed to make it this far.
You have a lot of space in the heart of some high-traffic blocks. What are you working with size- and price-wise?
I’ve got about 3,600 square feet here and started out paying about $2,800 a month. We’ve been up to about $15,000 a month recently. There have been slight reductions during recessionary times though. I also have the yard next door and have a separate landlord for that which is an additional cost. It’s an additional $6,000 a month. Read more…
Know Your Occupiers: The Union Square Protester Primer, Pt. 4
By JARED MALSINWho are the men and women seeking to occupy Union Square Park? So far we’ve met Karin Hofmann and Justin Stone-Diaz; Fathema Shadida and Tim “Chyno” Chin; and John Eustor and Carlton Hall. Today, meet two more of your new neighbors.
Name: Ed Mortimer
Age: 56
Originally from: Connecticut
Current residence: Full-time occupier. Couch surfing. Occasionally sleeping on street.
Current job: Volunteer street medic
Looking for work? No. Dedicated to work with Occupy: “I’ve never worked so hard in my whole life.” Read more…
Inside the Abandoned Mary Help of Christians School
By DANIEL MAURER
Photos: Daniel Maurer
The Local got a look inside the eerily abandoned Mary Help of Christians school when we visited the set of “Girl on the Train” last night. The school was closed in 2006 – a victim of Archdiocese of New York’s citywide restructuring – and its building is currently on the market along with the connected church, which closed in 2007 (though it still hosts Sunday masses).
Some of the old gymnasium’s floorboards have been uprooted and the paint is peeling off the walls, but remnants of the building’s former incarnation remain: a discarded pencil sharpener here, a school desk there, a handwritten sign on a closed door reading “Teacher’s Only!” Most haunting are the messages that linger on chalkboards: “Te amo Jesus, por favor habre nuestra iglesia” reads one (“I love you Jesus, please open our church”).
Have a glimpse inside, via our slideshow. (There’s just something about abandoned school buildings.) You’ll see some graffiti and equipment from the film shoot, but you’ll also see gloriously untouched murals, starting with one by Chico. It reads: “Mary Help of Christians Welcomes You.”
Film Turns Mary Help of Christians School Into After-Hours Club
By DANIEL MAURERLast night, Mary Help of Christians Church was ethereally illuminated as writer-director Larry Brand filmed scenes from “Girl on the Train,” a neo-noir thriller starring Henry Ian Cusick as a documentary filmmaker, Stephen Lang as a detective, and Nicki Aycox as the titular femme fatale.
Rebecca Reynolds, a producer, said that the corner of East 12th Street and Avenue A will feature prominently in the indie flick: scenes were shot at Table 12, the deli across the street, and inside of the vacant school building behind Mary Help of Christians, as well as in Brooklyn, Queens, Riverdale, and on the Metro-North train. “This location can just be so many things,” she said, nodding toward the church’s rectory. “We were able to use it as Lexi’s childhood-home kitchen, we did an after-hours club in here, we did an abandoned tenement room, plus they have a dining hall where we fed and catered the crew.” Read more…
The Day | Rents Just Keep on Climbing
By DANIEL MAURERGood morning, East Village.
Signage for that Middle Eastern cafe from the owners of Tompkins Finest Deli has gone up at First Avenue and Second Street, as you can see above. And further up the avenue near St. Marks Place, the space that formerly held Cotan will be replaced by another sushi joint, according to an employee from neighboring JoeDough. The Local spotted plywood going up yesterday.
The Local reported last night that a scuffle on Bleecker and Lafayette Streets involving an alleged iPad thief ended with two police officers going to the hospital with cuts on their arms and legs.
If the Parks Department didn’t want to bait Tompkins Square Park last summer, here’s why: Three red-tailed hawks have been found dead in and around Central Park, and The Times reports that the culprit is rat poison. In happier hawk news, City Room is asking readers to name two baby hawks that just hatched in Washington Square Park. Read more…
Bleecker Street Melee Sends Two Police Officers to Hospital
By DANIEL MAURERA man accused of stealing an iPad tangled with police officers at Lafayette and Bleecker Streets earlier today, sending two of them to Bellevue Hospital with cuts to their arms and legs.
The police said that around 3 p.m. today, a 25-year-old woman left her iPad on the counter at 230 Mulberry Street, where it was swiped by a man who entered the store and then fled toward Houston Street. At the Bleecker Street subway station, a police sergeant and a transit officer spotted a man fitting the suspect’s description and carrying an iPad. When they approached him, he took off running, a police representative said. Read more…
Video: East Village and L.E.S. Protesters Target Midtown Bank
By EVAN BLEIERMore than 100 people organized by Good Old Lower East Side, the Cooper Square Committee and other local groups rode to midtown in school buses this afternoon to protest Bank of America.
After pouring into the lobby of the bank’s branch at 42nd Street and Sixth Avenue, the protesters – many of whom were residents of low-income and public housing buildings in the East Village and Lower East Side – chanted “banks got bailed out, we got sold out,” and “Bank of America, bad for America” as security guards and police officers told them to disperse. Read more…
Know Your Occupiers: The Union Square Protester Primer, Pt. 3
By JARED MALSINWho are the men and women seeking to occupy Union Square Park? So far we’ve met Karin Hofmann and Justin Stone-Diaz as well as Fathema Shadida and Tim “Chyno” Chin. Today, meet two more of your new neighbors.
Name: John Eustor
Age: 46
Originally from: Queens
Current residence: Was a full time occupier at Zuccotti Park, currently staying in New Jersey.
Current job: Unemployed computer programmer
Looking for work? “I’ve been looking for work, yeah, but I’m looking for work that is not in that corporate mindset. I worked in pharmaceuticals, banking. I worked on Wall Street for seven years. I worked for all these different kind of industries and they’re all the same.” Read more…
The Skinny on the Slimming of N.Y.U. 2031
By STEPHEN REX BROWN and NATALIE RINNN.Y.U. announced today that, after negotiations with Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer, it had agreed to reduce its ambitious expansion plans on two blocks south of Washington Square Park by nearly a fifth.
The revised plan includes significant changes for all four proposed buildings and the elimination of 377,000 square feet in the project, which originally called for 2,474,000 square feet of new space.
The new plan “strikes a balance between a great university’s need to grow and the importance of preserving Greenwich Village’s distinctive, historic character,” Mr. Stringer said in a press release. “There was nothing easy about this: Everyone had to give up something. No one got everything they wanted.”
The project, dubbed N.Y.U. 2031, will now go before the City Planning Commission and then the City Council. Community Board 2 voted unanimously to oppose the plan in February. Read more…
Watch the First Five Minutes of Jonas Mekas’s Mars Bar Movie, Opening Friday
By EVAN BLEIERWith its former home at First Street and Second Avenue now a hole in the ground, a couple of Mars Bar’s neighbors are paying tribute to it in the next days.
Tonight from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. (to the dismay of some bloggers) upscale boutique Blue & Cream will launch an exhibition of photos that Debby Hymowitz took at the old dive in 2010 (you can see some of them online). And tomorrow, Jonas Mekas’s love letter to the watering hole, “My Mars Bar Movie,” opens at Anthology Film Archives. It’ll be its first screening since an underattended premiere at the Greenpoint Film Festival in October.
From the film’s first five minutes (excerpted exclusively above), it’s clear this isn’t a traditional documentary. The director said as much yesterday afternoon, nursing a beer and a double shot of vodka at Anyway Café. Read more…
And Now, Watch a 7-Eleven Sign Go Up on St. Marks Place
By DANIEL MAURERAs soon as The Local noticed yesterday that 7-Eleven decals had been affixed to the windows of the former Jas Mart, we dispatched news vans to the heart of St. Marks Place. They’ve been stationed there ever since, awaiting the new store’s moment of christening. Readers, that moment came mere minutes ago, and our cameras were rolling as workers hoisted the universal Slurpee sign in place.
Okay, so in all honesty, we just happened to see this on our lunch break, but don’t let that detract from the drama. A 7-Eleven rep previously told The Local that the store at 35 St. Marks Place, along with another one on 14th Street, would open by the end of July. Looks like it could be even sooner.
Update: A representative says the store should open by the end of this month.
Leave Her Home on East Third? Not Without a Fight
By SUE PALCHAK-ESSENPREISA few weeks ago I had a night so magical it only could have happened in New York City: rooftop skyline, cocktails, killer jams. We were giddy. It was one of those nights that makes you want to dig out your old “I heart NY” t-shirt and wear it to bed.
The next morning, I got a buzz from the mailman. It was a registered letter from the landlord: we were getting evicted from our home at 50 East Third Street.
Our building sold and the new landlord had no interest in renewing our lease, so we were given 60 days to pack up our lives and vacate our apartments by May 14. Around 20 other people in our building and two neighboring ones at 54 and 58 East Third Street received the same notice. I was told that the sale of the building hinged upon the vacancy of our apartments. Our lives were used as a bartering chip.
The rug was literally being pulled from underneath us. Read more…
With Looser Beer-and-Wine Rules, C.B. 3 Hopes to Repair ‘Infamous’ Reputation
By NATALIE RINN
committee chair Alexandra Militano leafs through them.
Before finalizing a controversial set of stipulations that would ease Community Board 3’s stance against new beer-and-wine licenses in nightlife-heavy areas – so long as applicants agree to close shop early – a task force decided last night to seek counsel from a higher power: the State Liquor Authority.
During a meeting at C.B. 3’s offices last night, District Manager Susan Stetzer said that the board should repair a feeling that it is particularly unbending, shared by applicants and the S.L.A. alike. “We have become infamous,” she said, explaining that applicants’ lawyers approach the S.L.A. and say, “C.B. 3 has a moratorium [on new licenses in resolutions areas], and it’s illegal” – a sentiment with which S.L.A. chair Dennis Rosen agrees, according to Ms. Stetzer. “We are losing respect and clout,” she said. Read more…
The Day | Greek Newcomer Boukiés Opens Monday
By DANIEL MAURERGood morning, East Village.
A manager at Boukiés, the Greek restaurant that will replace Heartbreak on the corner of Second Street and Second Avenue, tells The Local it will open next Monday. As you can see above, the new restaurant from the owner of Pylos hosted its first private event last night.
Speaking of restaurants, The Times bestows three stars on seasonal Japanese hideaway Kyo Ya, putting it in the company of less than a few dozen others around town. Other East Village establishments to boast the honor are Il Buco, Momofuku Ssam, and Momofuku Ko. Critic Pete Wells writes, “If you have heard of Kyo Ya, chances are you have been told that the kaiseki menu is the thing to get. It is a rare treat, no question, but so are many of the dishes that can be ordered à la carte with a smaller investment of time and money.”
Ryan Devereux, a journalist at The Guardian, tweeted about another demonstration for Trayvon Martin. This one went from Union Square to the Riis Houses and back last night. By his estimate, the crowd was “a few hundred” strong. Read more…