Results tagged “thevillager”

If you've been following the Julian Schnabel-branded apartment building, Palazzo Chupi, then you might be interested to learn that the remaining two units went on the market today. What's not good enough for Bono and Madonna may just be good enough for you! So if you've had your savings earmarked for that perfectly pink West Village apartment that you can call home, The NY Times has the listing and Curbed has the floorplan; here are some highlights:

It wouldn't be Fashion Week without a little bit of scandal, and this week a state government employee nearly made runway roadkill out of designer Marc Jacobs.

Over the weekend, Reverend Billy and his Stop Shopping Choir paid a visit to a closing establishment on 10th Street across from Saint Mark's Church. After 45 years Angelo Fontana's shoe repair shop is being priced out of the East Village, and the good Reverend was there to make some noise.

As chains take over every nook and cranny of this city, some people in the East Village are forming a united front against them. The Villager reports on the corporate takeover, the resistance and the new spin on this story as old as time.

When The Villager broke the news that fancy East Village cocktail lounge Death & Co. would be temporarily shut down by the State Liquor Authority, no one was as publicly dismayed as Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni. In a blog homage to the elegantly dark nightspot, Bruni gushed:There’s a drink on Death & Co.’s latest cocktail menu with bourbon and rye, along with Courvoisier and bitters. I may in fact have had it – or...

The city is showing the door to a daycare facility that has called P.S. 122 its home for 26 years. The Children's Liberation Daycare Center (CLDC), which serves 88 kids between the ages of 2 and 6, is going to court later this month to object to its ejection from the building, with no plan for the daycare center's return. The CLDC shares P.S. 122 with three arts organizations and it's the city's Dept. of...

Critical Mass, which came to New York around 1993, hasn't always been a cause for concern amongst the city's police. After 2004's Republican National Convention coincided with that month's Critical Mass in Manhattan, things changed. The ride has taken a more political tone and there's often an air of protest circling it.

The project runs through tomorrow and gives anyone free use of the bikes, which can be used for up to 30 minutes (probably not long enough if you're following Owen Wilson's NYC biking itinerary). So far about 25 riders a day have given the bikes a spin (we checked out the storefront earlier today and there were plenty of them available).

Workers crammed into small spaces and contending with oppressive heat on the Lower East Side. Thank goodness for the labor movement of the early 20th Century. Or are the very people who commemorate those days enduring the same conditions? The Villager reports that workers at The Lower East Side Tenemant Museum are taking a page out of their own history books and forming a union. Their complaints include extreme temperatures and cramped workspaces. They want improved working conditions, better pay, and benefits. Irony is alive and well on Orchard St.

Police and street vendors don't mix. The Villager reports that comedian and Soho resident Whoopi Goldberg thinks the treatment the police give the vendors is "atrocious," and she's not alone.

- A lovely family story, centered around the casual Puebla Mexican Food restaurant in the EV, was recently told in the The Villager. Some of the food is quite good, we are partial to the roast pork tacos served just as they should be, simply dressed with cilantro, onion and a bit of tomatillo salsa.

The contract talks between the NYPD's captains' union and the city have hit the brakes. The union has been working without a contract for 40 months, and now the matter will have to go to the Public Employment Relations Board for binding arbitration. This comes as the starting salary of police recruits are under increasing scrutiny. The NY Times has an editorial, calling the $25,100 "a pauper's sum" and pointing out it's no surprise that the NYPD recruited just over 40% of its goal.

The Villager is reporting that the Greenwich Village Society of Historic Preservation last week submitted a report calling for the creation of a South Village Historic District. Comprised of 38 blocks and about 800 buildings, it would be the city’s first tenement-based district.

This Sunday, Time's Up! is organizing a 2006 Cyclist Memorial Ride that will honor all cyclists who were killed on NYC streets last year. There are two routes - one for Queens/Brooklyn/Manhattan and one for Bronx/Upper Manhattan - that will converge at West Houston and LaGuardia Place, where Derek Lake died in June and then visit other spots where cyclists were killed. More information after the jump; additionally, here's a list of Ghost Bike Memorials in the city.

Development along the Hudson isn't letting up anytime soon. Now that Hudson River Park construction is well underway (and completed in some parts), proposals are being floated for refurbishing the hulking 14-acre Pier 40 terminal.

Ooh, the NY Times reports that Senator Hillary Clinton had lunch with former Senator Al D'Amato and former Mayor Ed Koch yesterday at the Four Seasons, which Four Seasons co-owner Julian Niccolini likened to "the Second Coming of Christ." And how, as D'Amato is a notable Republican power player. Apparently the trio have lunch at least once a year, and Clinton picked up this meal's check.

We're been covering the streetart renaissance at 11 Spring Street for the last couple of weeks-- new pieces are going up every day, and the new owners of the building seemed to be endorsing the work. Last night, we had a chance to catch up with Wooster Collective, the preeminent streetart website, and asked them what was going on. They told us that the new owners have asked them to curate the decoration of the building-- both inside and out-- through the end of the year, with a huge party on December 16th to celebrate the building, the art, and the end of the project. The Villager has some more details:

Heckling (followed by civility) was alive and well at last night's Community Board 3 meeting at Cooper Union. Wearing "Please IMPROVE the Plan!" stickers, East Village and Lower East Side residents interrupted Department of City Planning Commissioner representatives as they presented a plan for the area's first rezoning since 1961 ("Define affordable," shouted one audience member - $56,000 for a family of four, in case you're wondering, and, no, they didn't have numbers for individuals).

+ And happy 102nd birthday, NYC Subway! You don't seem a day over 85!

On September 18, Williamsburg resident Joshua Crouch was killed while crossing the West Side Highway near West 12th Street. With few clues in the case - and the police seeming to chalk it up to being a hit-and-run, Crouch's friends and family have been asking people to come forward if they have information. The Villager reports that one Village resident may have a clue:

Gary Friedman, whose apartment overlooks the intersection where Crouch was hit, said he saw a large tractor-trailer, most likely an 18-wheeler, backing up around the time of Crouch’s death on Mon. Sept. 18 sometime around 3:20 a.m.

Continue reading "Friends and Family Look for Answers in Hit-and-Run Death"

- And some of the most gorgeous New York City photograph we've seen are from Arnold Pouteau - here are his pictures on Flickr

- It's Chang-mania! Read and hear all about Momofuku's David Chang at Off the Broiler and The Villager. Then go get one of his Ssäm.

The hoopla over the new NYU dorm rising above St. Ann's Church we moaned about last week looks to be heating up. After the Villager reported on the 242-foot-tall dormitory NYU associate vice president of government and community affairs Alicia Hurley has started fighting back by defending the plans. She contacted us about the story in an e-mail:

Last week's "news" of our new residence hall hit the bandwith [sic] and airwaves with very little accuracy and was orchestrated by a local group whom I can only guess feels they have been left out of the process. But the group's executive director has taken on NYU in an effort to build his own political profile and career, and frankly it has come at the expense of open dialogue between NYU and the community. At this point we have decided that we need to find a mechanism for outreach and communication that might not call on that group or its executive director as a middle point. The story you are reporting comes from the agitation of that decision.

With friends like NYU President John Sexton protecting the East Village, which he calls a "fragile ecosystem," who needs enemies? The only nice thing we can think to say about the 26-story, 261 foot tall (or maybe 242), 700-bed building that NYU and its developer Hudson Companies are building over the site of St. Ann's Church on East 12th Street (rendering above) is that, well, it certainly is tall. In fact it will be the tallest building in the East Village.

Apparently bad behavior by real estate developers isn't limited to Brooklyn. On Tuesday, the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission awarded protected status to the old PS64 building on Ninth Street. The building had been occupied for 20 years by CHARAS/El Bohio, a community organization, until it was bought by Gregg Singer. He announced plans to strip the building of its architectural details and turn it into a 19-story university dorm, outraging just about everyone in the neighborhood. Outraged by the Landmarks decision, Singer has announced his revenge on the neighborhood activists: stripping the building of its architectural details and turning the building into a homeless shelter! The Villager has a long report:

The last vestige of 1970s SoHo is about to disappear: Rocks in Your Head, the record store on Prince Street, is closing after twenty-eight years of business. Manhattan's loss is Brooklyn's gain: the store is moving to North 5th and Roebling Street in Williamsburg. The Villager reports:

Will there be a showdown at the Washington Square Park dog run? The Villagers reports that parks goers have had some less than pleasant run-ins with the parks enforcement police. A few incidents include a woman being followed into the bathroom by male officers, a dog owner being somewhat harrassed for identification (after the dog peed on some snow which was over grass...but how would you know there was grass there?), and a permitless juggler being kicked out of the park. Wow, it feels like Giualiani-era NYC, only now the broken windows are everyday activites! The Parks Enforcement Police says that in some of the cases, the officers were new recruits and less familiar with how to deal with parks goers and that the police are trying to make sure things go smoothly in the park. However, one park goer tells The Villager, "“They’re trying to keep people from doing what Washington Square Park is known for — you know, the creative types. They’re just taking away the whole personality of the park and they’re being very nasty about it.” Yep, that's Giuliani-era NYC all right.

Amuse-Bouche put together this informative mashup of BYOB establishments around town. These are places that either allow you to bring your own for free, or have low "corkage" fees-- that's what they charge you to open the bottle in the restaurant. Much of the data is drawn from the NYMag BYOB list, so it may be a little bit out of date.