Courtesy Scott Kenemore What passes for fun in the Midwest.We have 7-Eleven stores here in Chicago, thank you very much.
I was supposed to come to New York this month to give a reading from my new novel about a zombie attack on the Windy City. I bought myself a plane ticket (not that expensive on JetBlue, but still) and was all but eagerly clutching it in anticipation. (If you’re not from the Midwest, you might not have a sense of how excited I was: a reading in the East Village, in a cool bar, and as part of the Guerrilla Lit Reading Series was something to look forward to.)
But then the venue — Bar on A — was closed, reportedly to make way for a new 7-Eleven. This development was was harder to swallow than a KZ3™ Battle Fuel Slurpee.
When you’re a writer living in Chicago, you think of New York City as “headquarters.” It’s where your agent and publisher are, where important stuff happens, and where you occasionally get to go for meetings or readings or whatever. It’s fun and cool and inspiring, and filled with interesting things. It’s awesome for writers in ways the metropolis of the Midwest is often not.
Being a writer in Chicago can feel like trying to meet women at a party thrown by a church. I am not the first person to have observed this. In “Chicago: City on the Make,” Nelson Algren bemoans “a city whose pleasures are so chaste” and laments the “hipless biddies entitling themselves ‘Friends of Literature’” who stand ever-ready to throw a stuffy daytime function where the punch is non-alcoholic and the conversation is polite.
Writers don’t want this.
Writers want to go to places like the East Village and womanize and get drunk and meet interesting, daring, wonderful, terrible people. Read more…
Sarah Darville Work at Blackbird earlier today.Blackbird will open in the former Lakeside Lounge space next week with seasonal cocktails on offer and a longtime CBGB bartender at the helm.
As The Local revealed last month, the new bar’s principal owner is Laura McCarthy, an original partner in Lakeside who also helps run Bowery Electric, HiFi, and Niagara. Her operating managers will be Maria Devitt, a neighborhood bartender for over 15 years, including a 10-year stint at CBGB; Jesse Malin, who is also a partner in Niagara and Bowery Electric; and Mr. Malin’s bandmate in D Generation, Danny Sage.
During a stop-in earlier today, it was clear the former Lakeside space was getting a major makeover (ongoing construction has delayed a friends-and-family opening planned for tonight). Ms. Devitt said a new black-and-white look, which she described as “60s rock and roll,” would appeal to a broader audience.
“I said, ‘Let’s make it a place where girls want to go – have bathrooms that work and don’t smell horrible,’” she told The Local. “People say, ‘I love a dive bar. I love that it’s dirty and all that.’ And I enjoy it too – but I have to be pretty drunk to enjoy that.” Read more…
Vivienne GucwaTop of the morning to you, East Village!
Ephemeral New York mourns some bygone record shops, including the Saint Mark’s Music Exchange, but it’s not all doom and gloom on St. Marks. EV Grieve notices that the space that briefly housed the CBGB store now hosts a tattoo and tobacco accessories shop. Speaking of CBGB, Bowery Boogie reports that John Varvatos and Jesse Malin of Niagara are teaming up to host a Sirius XM show, “New York Nights…Direct from the Bowery.”
EV Grieve notices web postings indicating that Bar on A seems to be for sale and Banjo Jim will close on Tuesday; meanwhile City Room remembers Mars Bar’s alternate identity as an art gallery, and WNYC also revisits the dive’s closing. Elsewhere on the art scene, EV Grieve gets a glimpse of the BMW Guggenheim Lab’s food menu, by East Williamsburg pizza destination Roberta’s; and the Times considers Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s online gallery of photographs from the East Village in the 1980s, also on display at the Asia Society.
Finally, New York magazine strolls the neighborhood with onetime “mayor of the East Village” Aziz Ansari. The actor and comedian identifies “East Village dogs” and interrogates a NYC Icy employee: “This is pumpkin flavor, not pumpkin-pie flavor. Pumpkin pie has pie crust in it.”
