City Room reports that unionized workers at the Strand have rejected a proposed new contract because it would’ve cut vacation days, frozen pay for a year, increased the cost of health care, and cut benefits for newer employees. The bookstore’s management says the move is to compensate for sales that have fallen roughly 5 percent over all since 2008.
Though citywide rents remained relatively high throughout the winter, an MNS report picked up by Curbed brings good news about the East Village rental market: “The biggest decreases in rents from February to March took place in the East Village, where non-doorman studios are now 6.5 percent less.”
Gothamists sees bitter irony in the fact that upscale boutique Blue and Cream is paying tribute to grungy Mars Bar via a new photo exhibit: “Because if there is one thing we can all agree on about the old girl’s clientele, it was how much they just loved the kind of people who buy and sell $220 black t-shirts!” Read more…
Fresh off his recent art show, Warhol superstar Taylor Mead will take questions at a screening of his work tonight at 7:30 p.m. Anthology Film Archives is presenting a new restoration of Robert Wade Chatterton’s 1961 film “Passion in a Seaside Slum,” shot during Mr. Mead’s brief foray into the Venice Beach Beat community, as well as two Vernon Zimmerman movies of the same era: “Lemon Hearts,” in which Mr. Mead plays almost a dozen characters, and “With Lust.”
The Local has discovered that Joseph Chetrit, the real estate mogul who last night faced Community Board 4’s disapproval of his controversial plan to bring a rooftop extension to the Hotel Chelsea, plans to convert an office building at 708 Broadway into another hotel. As with the Chelsea, the developer is seeking to add another story to the building at Broadway between East Fourth Street and Washington Place. An application filed with the Department of Buildings on Tuesday estimates that the conversion will cost a little over $9.5 million.
The application proposes that 127,064 square feet of space in the building, which comprises ten stories on the Broadway side and eight stories on the 404 Lafayette Street side, be divided into 249 units. Gene Kaufman, the architect who is also working on the Chelsea’s renovation, is listed as the applicant of record. Neither Mr. Kaufman nor the notoriously press-shy Mr. Chetrit have responded to The Local’s interview requests. Read more…
Baseball fans are crowding the sidewalk at Broadway and East Fourth Street, waiting for a chance to get an autograph from Yankee great Bernie Williams in the MLB Fan Cave. The baseball Xanadu is in full swing for opening day, and even has fresh AstroTurf around the entrance. Photos of fans with the longtime outfielder are alloverTwitter.
The Third Street storefront where a psychic known as Cathy plied her trade is still boarded up, but the end of fortune telling in the East Village doesn’t seem to be nigh. A month ago, neon signs announcing a “Life Coach” and “Psychic Boutique” appeared in a window at 39 East First Street, between First and Second Avenues.
This is where “Ms. Lisa,” 28, is now offering tarot readings, palm readings and life coaching. When The Local stepped into her boutique earlier this week, a shirtless young man appeared from behind an ornamental screen separating the small entryway from the rest of the apartment. “Take a seat,” he said. Ms. Lisa was in the shower. Read more…
Billy Leroy may have buried his tent on the Bowery last month, but the antiques dealer isn’t done snatching up oddities from around the world. He just got back from Glasgow, Scotland, where the seventh episode of the Travel Channel’s “Baggage Battles” was filmed. “It was a bidding bloodbath between me and my co-competitor Laurence Martin on a very historic item,” he wrote in an e-mail to The Local. “The Scottish people are really friendly and the single-malt whiskey is sublime.”
In this footage provided exclusively to The Local, Mr. Leroy, seated in front of a skull stash with his trademark cigar in hand, lets us in on the secret of getting a good deal. After the show premieres April 11 at 10 p.m., he’ll try his luck in Miami, during the filming of episode eight. “Boy, TV Land is a lot different then the Bowery,” he said. “I am starting to miss Bowery Misfits.”
After becoming persona non grata in Berlin’s Kreuzberg neighborhood, the BMW Guggenheim Lab is setting up in Prenzlauer Berg. “The decision to relocate the Lab was not an easy one,” Richard Armstrong says in a statement quoted by Gallertist NY, “but we are very pleased to have so quickly confirmed such a suitable alternative and to continue the urgent and important discussions we have begun about cities, and specifically about Berlin.”
NPR runs a photo of the old Bowery along with a story about “Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York,” a new book by Richard Zacks about the police commissioner’s attempt to clean up what was a “wide-open” town in the late 19th century.
Locals grumpy about smartphone zombies have something new to grumble about. Today Google unveiled its futuristic Google Goggles, which stream information on the lenses of a pair of high-tech glasses. A video highlighting the mind-boggling — and mildly creepy, perhaps? — features of the gadget visits familiar sights like the Mud truck and the new Cooper Union building. Would you be seen in public wearing these things?
Lauren Carol SmithThe site’s founders, Seth Cohen and David Sauvage.
Frustrated with the media’s portrayal of the Occupy Wall Street movement, two veterans of the film industry aim to bypass it entirely with a website that aspires to be a portal to all things O.W.S.
Founded by David Sauvage, who last year co-produced a promotional spot for the movement, and Seth Cohen, Occupy.com celebrated its launch last night at the hot and crowded Arrow Bar on Avenue A. With substantial financial backing from west coast lawyer and producer Larry Taubman and a staff of around 10 people, the polished site is trying to reach an audience beyond the protesters familiar with Zuccotti Park and Union Square. Read more…
Here’s the latest installment of “Police And Thieves,” The Local’s regular roundup of crime. What follows are the latest reports from March 26 to April 1, sorted by the type of incident. Plus: Our map of all of crime since Jan. 15.
Stabbings and Slicings
Four men stabbed a guy twice on March 28. The victim told the police he was walking on East Seventh Street between Avenue A and Avenue B at around 12:30 a.m. when the quartet grabbed him from behind. He managed to fight off the group, continued walking to a relative’s house on Avenue D and realized he’d been stabbed. The victim was treated at Bellevue Hospital and was expected to live.
A guy sliced a 27-year-old’s face and hand with a box-cutter on March 30. The victim and the suspect were in an apartment on Avenue D near East Fifth Street at around 3 p.m. when the fight broke out. Read more…
“It is the real estate taxes that kill me,” Hossein Amid, owner of Gizmo Sewing Supply told The Local yesterday. “I hope that they do something about the real estate tax because my kind of business doesn’t make that kind of money.”
It’s a complaint we’ve heard more than a few times. Last week it was Abdul Patwary of Dual Specialty Store: “Taxes are really high,” he said. “This month I paid over $5,000. I always pray we’re going to be O.K.”
The week before that, Larry Guttman, a landlord who just leased space to a 7-Eleven, explained, “Property taxes are dramatic. The increases are incredible and they go up steadily every year.” Add to that, some believe that city property-value assessors are overburdened and aren’t trained well enough to make accurate assessments, as The Times reported yesterday.
The Local visited some of East Ninth Street’s beloved business owners to hear what they had to say. Watch the video above and you’ll see that some believe the burden of property taxes has become downright deadly.
Scott Lynch snapped the above photo of graffiti artist Fumero beautifying a wall of The Strand yesterday. You can see the product of his work here.
The Lo-Down reports that Community Board 3 has a handful of new members, including an architect, a real estate broker, the co-owner of Pushcart Coffee, a former member of the City Council in Chapel Hill, N.C., and the owner of Nom Wah Tea Parlor.
According to the Post, the police nabbed a man who lifted a $3,598 jacket from the John Varvatos store. A DNA sample of gum left in the pocket of a coat that the man left behind led investigators to their suspect. Read more…
The bacon will keep sizzling, but the smell won’t linger.
At least that’s what Ed Scannapieco, the owner of the IHOP on 14th Street, expects when he installs a new ventilation unit that costs $40,000.
“It knocks down virtually all of the odor and almost all the noise,” said Mr. Sannepieco, who was taking a break from an IHOP conference in Washington, D.C. Read more…
Stephen Rex BrownFirefighters at the Schwimmer house.
A small crane lifting construction material at the Schwimmer house knocked over a piece of scaffolding this afternoon, injuring a pedestrian below.
Frank McCarton, the deputy commissioner of operations with the Office of Emergency Management, said that the scaffolding struck the passerby at around 2:30 p.m. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital with a minor injury to his shoulder. Read more…
For every East Village business that’s opening or closing, dozens are quietly making it. Here’s one of them: Gizmo.
Shira LevineHossein Amid
The notion of describing sewing accessories as “notions” is a rather antiquated one. But notions, like buttons, snaps, trimmings, seam rippers and collar-stays, are exactly what Hossein Amid has been selling to the East Village’s artists, D.I.Y. designers, and drag queens for 22 years. The trimmings and fabrics at his First Avenue shop, Gizmo, are particularly popular among casual costume designers. “Every year, Halloween is a big, busy time for me,” Mr. Amid told The Local. But how does Gizmo manage to make it the rest of the year?
Q.
You must really love to sew.
A.
Repairing this stuff is what I like doing. I have a mechanical background from when I lived in Iran. When we first opened in 1990, my wife did all the sewing, now she doesn’t. My work is helping people find what they need and repairing sewing machines. Read more…
Gothamist reports that two Occupy Wall Street protesters were arrested for unknown reasons as the police again closed Union Square Park this morning. “We passed by Union Square from the north just before midnight, and the first thing that caught our eye were the dozens of police cruisers and vans parked in the bike lane along the entire east side of the park,” Gothamist complains. “This creates an obvious hazard, forcing bikers out into the two lanes of traffic zooming down Park Avenue.”
Daniel Squadron’s office has issued a press release indicating that the State Senator and other politicians are calling on Macy’s to move its fireworks, which have been launched off of the Hudson River since 2009, back to the east side. Sounds good, as long as the Hells Angels don’t revive a Fourth of July tradition described in “Alphaville” by former undercover officer Michael “Rambo” Codella: “On Third Street the Hells Angels took shopping carts and fifty-gallon oil drums, dumped hundreds of dollars in contraband fireworks into them, doused the whole thing with gasoline and, like it says on the package of Black Cats, would ‘light fuse, get away.'” The celebration turned deadly in 1990 when a 14-year-old boy was killed by shrapnel from the eruption.
The 14th Street Y has released the cute video above, featuring Nathan Tysen, the winner of its “green song” contest, along with some of the Y’s kids. According to Mr. Tysen’s website, the singer-songwriter has written tunes for “Sesame Street,” which (fun fact!) was almost called 1-2-3 Avenue B.
The latest on stop and frisk: The Times publishes an editorial regarding a lawsuit that the N.Y.C.L.U. has filed regarding a program that allows the police to patrol private rental buildings. “The city claims that the Clean Halls program fights crime and that building owners and managers heartily approve of it,” it reads. “But that does not justify the kinds of abuses that the plaintiffs claim to be receiving at the hands of the police. At the very least, the city needs to make sure that its officers are following the law and treating these residents with respect.”
33 St. Marks Place, the building that houses outgoing Rockit Scientist Records, is for sale for $7.5 million. The listing touts “nine apartments; eight in the front building and one duplex unit in the rear carriage house of approximately 1,200 square feet.” 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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