The Lo-Down Magazine - November 2014

News from the Lower East Side

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NOV. 2014

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PASTOR & ARTIST Father Andrew O'Connor St. Marys' DIY Priest Also inside:

Amanda Cohen of Dirt Candy The Lo-Down | TheLoDownNY.com

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LO-DOWN Ed Litvak Editor-in-Chief Traven Rice Publisher/Arts Editor Jennifer Strom Associate Editor/Food Editor Kim Sillen Art Director Alex M. Smith Contributing Photographer

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LO-DOWN November 2014

in this issue

letter from the Editor: Since his arrival at St. Mary’s Catholic Church on

Grand Street last year, we have been meaning to profile Father Andrew O’Connor. As the new leader of one of the neighborhood’s oldest and largest religious institutions, he was obviously a worthy subject for a story. But we were also hearing about some of the interesting new things going on inside and even on top of the church: beekeeping on the roof, restoration projects, a socially conscious fashion line operating from the basement. So we headed over to St. Mary’s to get to know Father O’Connor better. As you will read in this month’s cover story, we found a pastor with a major creative streak and a strong desire to reach out to the larger community. Staying with the theme of transitions, we have one of our own at The Lo-Down. Traven and I want to wish Jennifer Strom, our associate editor and food editor, the very best as she moves on to new projects.

Jennifer was instrumental in the launch of this magazine and has been an invaluable member of the team, as well as a great friend. Our publication has benefited tremendously from her talent, passion and experience as a journalist.

We hope you enjoy our second-to-last edition of the magazine for 2014. We’ll see you online at thelodownny.com.

Ed Litvak

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Cover Story A priest who uses art to foster community

12 New Arrivals Fred.NYC, LESpace, City CoPilot

14 Calendar/Feat ured Events Blonde Redhead at Bowery Ballroom, AUNTSforcamera exhibition at the New Museum, Hodworks’ Dawn at Abrons Arts Center

16 Neighborhood News Siempre Verde Garden boost, fatal pedestrian accident, Rivington House deal

18 The Lo-Dine

Amanda Cohen on Dirt Candy

20 Briefs: Bruffin Cafe, Galli, Stanton Street Kitchen

22 Ar ts Watch The LES gains a prominent photography center

24 My LES Neighborhood activist Marc Richardson

28 LES Sideways

Evan Forsch’s cartoon

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On the cover: Father Andrew O’Connor inside St. Mary’s Catholic Church on Grand Street.

Photo by Alex M. Smith

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Father O’Connor of St. Mary’s:

Designing Clothes, Weaving Community

By Ed Litvak

Father Andrew O’Connor inside the refurbished library at St. Mary's rectory. Photo by Alex M. Smith.

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November 2014

T

he pieces are made from handwoven organic cotton, infused with a New York aesthetic and touted by Cameron Diaz and Anna Wintour. But this is one

Orchard Street. The place to see these distinctive fashions is the rectory at St. Mary’s Catholic Church.

That’s right: Father Andrew O’Connor, “I come from the orientation of ‘Let it who was appointed head of the Grand be handmade, do it well,’” he explained Street parish last year, is a sought-after during a recent interview. In helping to clothing designer and the creative force revitalize the tradition of making things, behind a company called Goods of Con- he’s hoping to fulfill a lofty goal: supportscience. His designs ing the parish and are displayed in a new building community. church gift shop, a O’Connor, who part of a larger plan to comes across as engage both the parfriendly and thoughtish and the greater ful, has been busy in Lower East Side comhis first year at St. munity around the Mary’s, initiating sevfading art of craftseral building improvemanship. ment projects, launchThe three-story red ing new youth brick rectory building, programs and taking located on Attorney his socially minded Street just to the west company to the next of the church, is easy level. During our visit, to miss. Upon ringing we talked about all of the doorbell, visitors that, and discussed are buzzed inside and what it’s like heading directed down the one of the city’s oldest hallway to a newly reCatholic churches, an from St. Marys’ gift shop. stored library. It’s institution that’s adwhere you will often find O’Connor and justing to a new head pastor for the first see the most visible signs of change in one time in nearly three decades. of the neighborhood’s most venerable reFollowing a retreat to Guatemala in ligious institutions. Finely tailored clothes 2004, O’Connor came up with “social fabline a rack in one corner, while honey ric,” a material created from wild cotton from beehives kept on the church roof still growing in Central America’s vanishand other handmade items sit on a table. ing forests and utilizing the nearly lost art For Father O’Connor, who has a back- of back-strap weaving. The fabric is proground as a painter and sculptor, these duced by Mayan Indian weavers who pursuits are not extracurricular; they’re are paid a living wage. The first pieces, asan integral part of his ministry. sembled by tailors in O’Connor’s former The Lo-Down | TheLoDownNY.com

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parish, were religious garments. While the material was imported, the designs were uniquely American and specific to New York. After establishing the company, Goods of Conscience, the clothing line grew to include shirts, pants, dresses and other items for both men and women. It made a big splash in 2009 when Cameron Diaz wore a pair of O’Connor’s shorts on the cover of Vogue. Now the venture is headquartered at St. Mary’s, employing local craftspeople. The profits support parish programs and the needy. “This is a store that is part of the church,” O’Connor explains. “So I have integrated it into the life of the church, but in business terms, it is vertically integrated.”

It’s obviously a major transition in any parish when a new pastor arrives on the scene. In the case of St. Mary’s, O’Connor succeeds a priest, Father Neil Connolly, who helped guide the Lower East Side through some pretty dark times in the 1980s and 1990s. Connolly was a fierce advocate for the poor and a towering figure within the Latino community, which has made up a large portion of the parish in the last several decades. But the Lower East Side is familiar territory for O’Connor. St. Mary’s was his first assignment after becoming a priest in 1996, working under Father Connolly. Born in

the Midwest and raised in New Haven, Conn., O’Connor was most recently at Holy Family Catholic Church in the Castle Hill section of the Bronx.

Now he’s back downtown, and a lot has changed, of course. On the LES today, O’Connor says, “There is a large population of Hispanics living side by side with the new tide of gentrification.” Part of the challenge for him now is to appeal to a broader cross-section in the neighborhood while continuing to serve the traditional constituency, or as he puts it, to “welcome a greater community without disaffecting the Hispanic community. I don’t want that community to be washed away, as this other tide comes in.”

One way O’Connor is reaching out is through collaborations with people on the Lower East Side. Among them is Cha Cha Pisani, a local resident and hat designer who is helping to run sewing workshops for young people in the basement of the rectory. She’s also offering her small-business know-how to the development of an online store for Goods of Conscience, as well as the on-site gift shop.

Noting the store’s low profile, O’Connor says it is “hidden in plain sight to the whole community, so we’d like to unveil it a little bit.”

While anyone in the community is

welcome to stop by during daytime hours, there will be a holiday open house Nov. 20 (see info box). The idea behind the store, says O’Connor, is to establish a parish benefice, a profit-making enterprise dating from medieval times. The benefice integrates the clothing company with other products, including scarves, votive candles and Guatemalan coffee. Father O’Connor also provides hops for beer made by the Bronx brewery, although it’s not available in the church. In the future, he hopes to offer workshops for priests on starting their own parish benefices. As O’Connor explains on the Goods of Conscience website, it’s to fulfill a vision of “a global network of interconnected, interdependent local, self-sustaining businesses—a global social fabric.”

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Some of the changes at St. Mary’s are that the topic of SPURA was an emotionplainly evident. Over the course of nine al one in a parish community being months, Father O’Connor and a team of squeezed by gentrification. At the same volunteers, including a couple of talented time, O’Connor says, times have changed carpenters, transformed the library, and the parish is in a position to adapt to which was previously divided into four those changes. small rooms with a drop ceiling and lino“I think Essex Crossing has presented leum floors. Today, the grand room fea- us with a great opportunity that we need tures polished wood, glass cabinets filled to seize,” he explains. In recent months with books and he has had connew furniture, inversations with cluding a table Isaac Henderson, made with rethe project manclaimed wood and ager, about a porlegs fashioned from tion of Essex old communion Crossing known rails. The project, as the Market and others like it Line, which will throughout the offer micro retail church, are meant stalls to craftspeople to redeem the hisand entrepreneurtoric 1833 building. ial startups. The “We don’t have commercial spaces, any money,” Father as well as an incuO’Connor says, “but bator, will literally The rectory at St. Mary’s, 28 Attorney St. what we do have is be in St. Mary’s the space to do a backyard, spreadworkshop. We have interesting things ing out across Broome Street. O’Connor is lying in the basement and we have inge- intrigued by the possibility of drawing the nuity. So basically the restoration suits us parish into this part of the project. “If [pabecause this is just what’s here.” rishioners] have jobs, that helps us build One of the issues that defined his pre- up our community,” he says. “Certainly decessor’s tenure on Grand Street was the housing is important, but the bigger decades-long battle over the former thing really is those jobs.”

Seward Park Urban Renewal Area, Looking back at his earlier stint on which surrounds St. Mary’s. Father the Lower East Side, O’Connor recalls the O’Neil fought for 100 percent affordable alternative creative spirit that was still housing on the SPURA parcels before thriving in the neighborhood at the time. reluctantly supporting a 50/50 split be- He remembers Tonic, the avant-garde tween market rate and affordable apart- music club on Norfolk Street, and Arments in 2011. O’Connor had just arrived lene’s Grocery, which had just opened. “I on the Lower East Side last fall when the loved the music scene back then and the Essex Crossing development team was rawness of it,” he says. Today he’s asking, unveiled. He was certainly well aware “Is it possible to find common ground be10

November 2014

tween the church and the art community?” It’s a question he’s exploring through Essex Crossing but hopes to expand to the broader neighborhood.

“We want to have people give us a chance,” O’Connor says.

“They know the Catholic Church is associated with art and beauty, and it has a tradition behind it.”

In his new parish, O’Connor sees the “opportunity to blend the [local community’s] expectations of the Lower East Side being the vanguard of great, thoughtful design, a haven for the intuitive spirit that helps save cities” with what’s happening within the church. “We need to see that it exists here, too.” If people “want the Lower East side to be in abundance of that spirit and to save it,” O’Connor suggests, “maybe that’s part of their work, to come in and explore some fragment here at St. Mary’s, some missing piece that they might not have expected, that exists in abundance here.”

The gift shop in the rectory at St. Mary’s Church is open Tuesday through Saturday from noon to 5 p.m. A holiday open house will be held Thursday, Nov. 20, 4 to 8 p.m. The rectory is located at 28 Attorney St., just off Grand Street.

TOP: Cameron Diaz was pictured in Vogue in 2009 wearing a pair of shorts from Goods of Conscience.

MIDDLE: A model with a dress designed by O’Connor.

BOTTOM: St. Mary’s Catholic Church, 440 Grand St.

More information at goodsofconscience.com.

The Lo-Down | TheLoDownNY.com

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new arrivals edited by Traven Rice

Fred.NYC

(192 Orchard St., fredconnors. com): Nova Scotia super stylist Fred Connors brings his salon and beauty products to the LES in his first U.S. foray. His Orchard Street location focuses on hair and beauty, without the cafe element of the larger Halifax flagship. The salon is open by appointment 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily.

FEIT DIRECT

(2 Prince St., feitdirect.com): The limited-edition handmade shoes and accessories store presents its first permanent NYC outpost.

Feit (pronounced “fight”), now located just off the Bowery, has had a few pop-up shops in the area for the last few years. Founded by Australian brothers Tull and Josh Price, the shop touts sustainable high-quality materials made with minimal environmental impact. Store hours are Monday through Thursday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m., Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sundays noon to 7 p.m.

CITY CoPILOT

(143 Orchard St., citycopilot.com): Offering daily luggage storage, key exchange and package deliveries, this new chain acts as a “neighborhood front desk” for travelers and locals who don’t have a doorman. The desk is open 8:30 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily; look for expanded hours in the future.

PREMA HAIR

(101 Stanton St., premalove.com): Taking over the old Pimps & Pinups space, this team of Australian fashion stylists offers “creative cutting, colour correction and editorial work” for your next fashion shoot, or just so you can feel like a model walking down the street, all starting at $65. Salon hours are Tuesday through Friday 11 a.m. to 9 p.m., and Saturday and Sunday 11 a.m. to 7 p.m.

GBE (291

Grand St., gavinbrown.biz): International art star gallerist Gavin Brown opens a second space loosely coined as more of a “basement” with the first show, works by Steven Pippin, set to open Nov. 11. Gallery hours are not yet set.

LESpace (201 Allen St., madeinles.org): Popping up in the former

Los Perros Locos space, the teams from miLES and FAME.creative are joining forces to entice chefs, artists, artisans and innovators to bring their ideas to life in this “pop-up launchpad.” The commercial kitchen is still intact, along with built-in cooking and drinking licenses. There is also a 300-square-foot open gallery space so the events should be creative—and tasty. Contact alex@losperroslocos.com for more info.

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November 2014

Help Us Choose the Top Shops & Services on the LES! T HE L O- D OWN R EADER S URVEY

ST E B

OF THE

LES

S HOPPING & S ERVICES 2014

Last year we debuted The Lo-Down’s Best of the Lower East Side Awards, bestowing honors on your favorite restaurants. This year we want to know your choices for shopping and services. We’ll be awarding honors in the categories listed below. Add your vote to our online reader poll!

SHOPPING women’s clothing men’s clothing kids clothing jewelry shoes bicycles eyeglasses housewares/ home improvement

SERVICES dry cleaners tailor tattoo parlor hair–women hair–men nail salon plumber car service

To vote, visit: thelodownny.com/bestoftheles2014.

Vote by November 24. | TheLoDownNY.com We’ll have the results in the December editionThe ofLo-Down our magazine.

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what to do in

calendar

Visit our CALENDAR online at www.thelodownny.com/calendar for more details and to add your own events.

Edited by Traven Rice

Thurs.

6

NOVEMBER

Wed.

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Netta Yerushalmy’s Helga and the Three Sailors at Danspace Project: Catch the world premiere of a new piece by New York choreographer Netta Yerushalmy, who focuses on presenting the sensation of things as they are perceived, not as they are known. She is joined in performance by dancers Marc Crousillat, Amanda Kmett'Pendry and Sarah Lifson. Through Nov. 8, 131 E. 10th St., 8 p.m., $20, danspaceproject.org.

Thurs.

6

The Invisible Hand

at New York Theatre Workshop: Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Ayad Akhtar (Disgraced) makes his NYTW debut with a play that follows Nick Bright, an American stockbroker, into a terrifying world of kidnapping and torture in a remote region of Pakistan. The piece takes a chilling and complex look at how far we will go to save ourselves and the ramifications of our individual actions.Through Jan. 4, 79 E. Fourth St., $75 non-members, showtimes vary, nytw.org.

Sat.

22 AUNTSforcamera Opening Event at New Museum: Join

in with your own camera as 15 guest artists create a live exhibit, offering a selection of short, long and durational performances arranged and coupled in different unrehearsed combinations. The event coincides with the opening night party for the AUNTSforcamera exhibition at Trouw in Amsterdam and will be livestreamed into the dance/art/club space there.

Visitors are encouraged to film the performances via a camera set up with 360-degree perspective in the middle of the museum. 235 Bowery, 5 p.m., $6, newmuseum.org.

The Places You’ll Go at Dixon Place:

Two existential postmen suddenly find there is something missing in this original new comedy from writer, director and actress Hila Ben Gera, who takes a lighthearted look at success and self-determination. And mail. Also Sat., Nov. 15 and Friday and Saturday, Nov. 21 and 22, all at 7:30 p.m., 161A Chrystie St., $17 advance/$20 door, dixonplace.org.

Fri.

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November 2014

Hodworks’ Dawn at Abrons Arts Center: The Budapestbased company’s U.S. premiere of a daring piece of “radical research” by Hungarian choreographer Adrienn Hód, in which the naked human body takes center stage, representing an “animal character” of the body as something that is stifled and taboo in today’s world. Also Sunday, Nov. 23.

7:30 p.m., $20, 466 Grand St., abronsartscenter.org.

Thurs.

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Featured

EVENT

BLONDEREDHEAD at The Bowery Ballroom

Two decades in, the weird yet dreamy New York-based trio of Kazu Makino and twin Italian brothers Amedeo and Simon Pace have just completed their ninth album, Barragán. Though the album is haunted by the romantic split between Makino and Amedeo Pace, most notably on the exes' spare, bewitching duet, "Seven Two," they continue to shake things up by paring down the post-Sonic Youth, art-punk, shoegaze, noise rock elements of past works and presenting something new. Also Wed., Nov. 26, 6 Delancey St., 8 p.m., $25, boweryballroom.com.

The Annual Post-Thanksgiving MultiEthnic Eating Tour: Bring your out-oftown guests on a tour combining the history of the diverse Lower East Side with a series of small food samplings, or noshing stops, from local shops and markets representing the Dominican, Jewish, Italian and Chinese communities of the neighborhood. Meet at the southwest corner of Delancey and Essex streets, in front of the Chase bank, 11 a.m. and 2 p.m., reservations required, $25 includes food samples, bigonion.com.

Fri.

Sun.

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23 Annual Boutique Flea Market at the Co-op Village NORC: The Educational Alliance hosts a market featuring handmade knitwear, toys, purses, candles, jewelry, used books and a raffle with prizes that include local gift cards. Proceeds benefit the Educational Alliance’s Co-op Village NORC, a unique program for older adults living in the Lower East Side co-ops. 477 FDR Drive (at Grand Street), Community Room M, 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., edalliance.org.

Sun.

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The Great Turkey Scavenger Hunt at the Museum at Eldridge Street: Bring the family and make turkeyshaped challah, holiday art and go on the hunt. As a “preservation detective,” you will follow a trail of centuryold clues, look for a hidden turkey and discover how this historic synagogue tells its own Thanksgiving tale. 12 Eldridge St., 11 a.m., $15/family, eldridgestreet.org.

The Lo-Down | TheLoDownNY.com

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neighborhood news edited by Ed Litvak

real estate

transportation

For the third time in a two-month period, a pedestrian was killed on the streets of the Lower East Side/Chinatown. The accident happened at around 4 a.m., as an elderly woman was attempting to cross Canal Street at Elizabeth Street. Police say the driver of a 2003 Jeep Grand Cherokee struck the woman, who was crossing Canal from south to north. City Council member Margaret Chin’s office was told by the NYPD that the victim was lawfully walking with the signal and was still in the crosswalk as the light turned green for cars. Chin urged the police department to file charges against the driver. In a statement, she said, “The truth is that excuses mean nothing when someone is killed as the result of negligence.

If a pedestrian is within a crosswalk, they have the right of way. Period.” An 82-year-old woman was killed in a traffic accident on South Street in late August. A third pedestrian died Sept. 25 after being struck by the driver of a van at Kenmare and Elizabeth streets.

Community Board 3 last month came down firmly on the side of the Siempre Verde Community Garden, which is fending off a residential development proposal from the city and a powerful real estate family. A plan for a 16-unit apartment building on two city-owned lots at 137 Attorney St. and 181 Stanton St. was first floated by the estate of William Gottlieb two years ago. The project would also utilize an adjacent privately owned parcel. In 2012, the Department of Housing Preservation and Development agreed to allow a local group to use the space for an interim community garden. Now the city is weighing whether to move forward with the project, which would include three affordable apartments. At a meeting last month, garden activists argued, and community board members agreed, that retaining a vibrant garden in an area of the neighborhood lacking in green space should be the priority. Thehbia Hiwot Walters, a city planning official, said she understood the community’s point of view and promised to take the neighborhood’s concerns back to City Hall. The board approved a resolution asking the city to make Siempre Verde a permanent garden. real estate

There was more proof of the overheated luxury apartment market on the Lower East Side in October. Brokers began marketing 38 apartments at 50 Clinton St. to what the Daily News described as “entry-level buyers and young professionals.” One-bedroom apartments, undersized at about 650 square feet, are expected to go for close to $1 million. DHA Capital purchased a building site, consisting of a row of single-story commercial buildings, for $28 million. The lone remaining tenant, acclaimed restaurant wd~50, plans to close at the end of this month. Meanwhile, sales launched at 100 Norfolk St., a cantilevered condominium project on a site once owned by Ratner’s delicatessen.

Prices range from $800,000 to $4 million.

Finally, the publicity push got underway for 11 luxe apartments that will be built above Ian Schrager’s Public Hotel at 215 Chrystie St. Prices start at $7 million and top out at over $20 million for the penthouse.

50 Clinton St.

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November 2014

100 Norfolk St.

PING PONG

SWINGS

Rendering Gulick Park redesign. Courtesy NYC Parks Department. parks

Three small parks on the Lower East Side will receive renovation funds as part of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s $130 million plan to devote more resources to green spaces in low-income neighborhoods. In an announcement on Oct. 7, the city awarded $2 million for a comfort station at Luther Gulick Park, at Willett and Delancey streets. A local organization had already raised $6 million for the rehabilitation of the tattered space, with the help of local elected officials such as Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, City Council member Margaret Chin and state Sen. Daniel Squadron. The Sol Lain Playground at East Broadway and Henry Street will receive $3.3 million. Another $3 million is going to the Henry Jackson Playground on Madison Street. In his campaign for public advocate, Squadron called on wealthy park conservancies to divert some of their funds to parks in low-income communities. De Blasio said that while he decided the first step should be public investment in the city’s parks, it’s also a priority to work with conservancies on a version of Squadron’s proposal. In a press release put out by the mayor’s office, Squadron said, “A year and a half ago, folks were not talking about parks equity, and now Mayor de Blasio is addressing the most glaring inequities in neighborhood parks around the city…

[I] look forward to continue addressing the parks equity crisis.” health care

A deal appears to be in the works to keep Rivington House, the AIDS nursing home, open as a general nursing facility. This past July, VillageCare, the longtime operator of the facility at 45 Rivington St., announced its decision to close the location at the end of this month. As AIDS treatments have improved, officials said, the center has been half-empty for the past several years. Initially, they indicated that the state, which is determined to cut the number of nursing home beds throughout New York, refused proposals to convert the facility to a general nursing center. But in a public meeting last month, members of Community Board 3 reported that Gov. Andrew Cuomo appears to have had a change of heart. One sticking point is the deed on the building which requires it to be operated as a nonprofit community health care facility. A purchaser is reportedly negotiating to acquire the building and then to petition for a deed change to operate Rivington House as a for-profit enterprise.

Board members declined to identify the buyer. The powerful labor union 1199SEIU has been lobbying local elected officials on behalf of workers at the facility. If the deal goes through, their jobs would be saved.

The Lo-Down | TheLoDownNY.com

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THE

LO-DINE

By Jennifer Strom

Dirt Candy Sinks New Roots on Allen Street

Photo: Courtesy of Dirt Candy

Photo: Stephen Elledge

Left: Spinach Mille Feuille with Grapefruit Ricotta and Smoked Pistachios; Right: Amanda Cohen In 2008, after a career cooking for other people, chef Amanda Cohen launched Dirt Candy, a tiny vegetarian restaurant in the East Village whose popularity quickly outstripped its capacity. With 18 seats and a miniscule kitchen, its reservations booked up more than two months in advance and its walk-in lines grew legendary.

After two years of shopping for larger digs, Cohen’s first look inside the former bus station at 86 Allen St. told her she’d found a new home for her restaurant.

“I said, ‘This is exactly where my kitchen should be,’” Cohen said. “I could see it from the moment I walked in.”

The broad storefront that runs most of the block between Grand and Broome streets has undergone a total renovation. Cohen’s plans revolve around a large kitchen that’s open to the 50-seat dining room and the 10-person bar, so diners can observe the action at the stove. The expanded space has also enabled Cohen and her team to think big about what they serve.

“Our menu was so dictated by the size of our fridges—we have so much more room to play in now,” she said. “We’re all really excited to spend the next two months testing recipes.”

The original Dirt Candy on East Ninth Street, which has collected “Best Vegetarian Restaurant in 18

November 2014

NYC” awards from the Village Voice, L Magazine and other media, closed Aug. 30. If all goes according to plan with Con Edison service and other variables, the new location is scheduled to open by the end of the year.

While it will be more expansive, the menu at “big” Dirt Candy will be similar in genre to “little” Dirt Candy, Cohen said. She crafts each dish around a primary ingredient, and then riffs on it in ways that all work together. For example, the entree called “Beets” is composed of salt-roasted beets, Thai green curry, beet gnocchi and whipped coconut galangal cream. Appetizers run about $12, while entrees clock in around $20. Everything on the menu can be made vegan on request. Desserts include options like carrot meringue pie and rosemary eggplant tiramisu. Cohen plans to serve both lunch and dinner, as well as beer, wine and liquor.

A prolific blogger on her own website and an occasional columnist for the citywide food blog Eater, Cohen is the opposite of the mysterious, aloof chef type. She readily shares the thinking behind her creations, as well as her strong and sometimes contrarian opinions about her industry in engaging prose. About the beets dish, for example, she tells readers on the restaurant’s blog that beets are almost never featured in Asian cooking, so she gave it a shot. “I decided that I’d take my beets

on an adventure and make a curry for them,” she wrote. “If any vegetable could stand up to curry, it would be beets with their solid, stolid earthiness.”

Earlier this year, she took to a larger audience at Eater in a couple of thought-provoking essays about the practice of tipping (which she argues should be abolished in favor of fairer wages for restaurant workers) and the trust between restaurateurs and their patrons (which she thinks needs some work).

Dirt Candy’s move to the Lower East Side is big news for the neighborhood’s restaurant scene, which will also welcome a new and larger version of Mission Chinese Food this winter. Chin Chin, an upscale Chinese restaurant that’s made its home in Midtown for nearly three decades, also plans to move here in 2015.

Cohen knew she wanted to stay near her original location, and calls the LES “the last of the reasonable rent there is in Manhattan.” She noted the somewhat recent additions of vegetarian-friendly restaurants like Dimes on Division Street and El Rey Coffee Bar and Luncheonette on Stanton Street as indicators that Dirt Candy would find an appreciative audience among its new neighbors.

“This is going to be a really fun neighborhood,” she said. “Not that it isn’t fun now, but it’s on the cusp of getting ready to blossom.”

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THE

LO-DINE (continued)

A Dining & Drinking Roundup

by Jennifer Strom

now open

The first brick-and mortar shop from the Smorgasburg purveyors of brioche-muffin hybrid pastries opened in mid-October on the ground floor of the building that houses The Yard coworking space. Billed as “the perfect meal in a muffin,” the treats come in both sweet and savory options. Some are styled after a favorite food in a particular country, such as buffalo chicken and blue cheese in the American version and Brie cheese in the French. Cafe hours are 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. weekdays, and 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. on weekends.

Bruffins are also sold in Fairway markets, and a second permanent location is planned at the Gansevoort Market in Chelsea. The bruffin has some company on the neighborhood’s hybridpastry market; Creffle Cafe opened on Stanton Street in September, specializing in a crepe-waffle concoction.

now closed Two neighborhood eateries—a relative newcomer and an old-time Chinese restaurant—shuttered this fall. Wacky Colombian hot dog shop Los Perros Locos closed at the end of September after less than two years at 201 Allen St. Chef Alex Mitow plans to take his restaurant on the road, doing more pop-up events like the series of dinner and dance parties he hosted in a vacant storefront on Grand Street this spring, while his former dining room has 20

November 2014

morphed into an arts and events space (see New Arrivals, page p. 20 column 2). At the corner of East Broadway and Rutgers Street, longtime fixture Wing Shoon also closed in late September after the city marshal locked the doors. The large space, which was once home to the venerated Garden Cafeteria, is now for lease. That block is poised for big change with the imminent relocation of Mission Chinese, which is due to open in the former Rosette space by the end of the year.

coming soon

Galli Restaurant

98 Rivington St. | gallirestaurant.com

Soho’s two-year-old Italian trattoria is expanding to a second location, headed by partners Steven Gallo (the chef), designer Karen Gallo and Michael Forrest. Forrest, who is also a partner in the original on Mercer Street, is the president of the board of directors of the LES Business Improvement District and owns the Rivington Street building, which was most recently home to wine bar ’Inoteca for 12 years. The menu consists of Italian comfort food like calamari with marinara sauce and chicken parm, along with a few dishes that push the classics envelope. Locally sourced craft beer, Italian wine and cocktails are on the beverage list. It will serve lunch, brunch, dinner and late night meals daily, with dinner entrees ranging from $12 to $25. As of press time, Galli was scheduled to open on Oct. 28.

Stanton Street Kitchen 178 Stanton St | (no website yet)

Chef Erik Blauberg is striking out on his own after a long career that included eight years at the iconic 21 Club uptown, as well as a decade of consultant work and a teaching gig at the Culinary Institute of America. The former Moldy Fig jazz club space has been transformed into a new American bistro, with a ground floor dining room that seats 70 at tables, plus a 10-person bar. The basement space includes a chef’s table, a speakeasy-style lounge and beer and wine cellar. The lengthy menu includes classic dishes and farm-sourced bar bites. Proposed hours are 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. weekdays and 11 a.m. to 4 a.m. weekends.

Chin Chin chinchinny.com

After 27 years in Midtown, proprietor Jimmy Chin shuttered his beloved upscale Chinese restaurant last month, sending it off with a grand party amid laments about skyrocketing uptown rent. But it wasn’t the end; Chin announced plans to move to the Lower East Side. He told the food blog Eater: "Instead of melting away and dying, I'm going downtown to rejuvenate myself and get young again." He’s apparently eyeing a vacant space near the intersection of Essex and Rivington streets; stay tuned for details.

cookbooks At the end of this month, pioneering chef Wylie Dufresne will close wd~50, his 11-year-old Clinton Street restaurant, to make way for a real estate redevelopment project. Whether or not the groundbreaking restaurant eventually reopens in a new home, as Dufresne has hinted it may, its inventive dishes will live on in perpetuity, thanks to a cookbook due out next year. Dufresne has partnered with Peter Meehan, the co-founder and editor of Lucky Peach, to collaborate on a book through Anthony Bourdain’s publishing company, Ecco. If molecular gastronomy isn’t your thing, however, several other LES restaurateurs and bar owners have cookbooks due imminently or just released. Among them: the team behind Fat Radish, which published The Fat Radish: Kitchen Diaries in late September, featuring many of the vegetable-centric dishes that made the Orchard Street eatery popular. On the beverages front, the East Village’s Death & Co. came out last month with Death & Co.: Modern Classic Cocktails, showcasing more than 500 recipes from the East Sixth Street lounge’s eight years on the edge of cocktail culture.

The Lo-Down | TheLoDownNY.com

21

arts watch International Center of Photography Coming to LES

ICP’s Mark Lubell. Photo by Tanya Braganti.

By Ed Litvak The highly respected International Center of form photography. Lubell said he wanted ICP to be Photography has decided to move its museum to in close proximity to the New Museum, an instituthe Lower East Side. Mark Lubell, the institution’s tion that embraces experimentation and new ideas.

The New Museum’s arrival on the Bowery in executive director, told the New York Times in a Sept. 24 article that the board of directors approved 2007 triggered a wave of gentrification, but also the purchase of a building on the Bowery. Since touched off an art gallery boom in the surrounding sensitive negotiations were ongoing, he declined area. The gallery district, which some observers predicted could not endure in the face of skyrocketing to reveal the exact location.

Lubell said the building, near the New Museum, real estate prices, continues to thrive. The photogwould provide “a real frontage so that we can have raphy center’s presence, as well as the arrival of an a direct dialogue with the street, and that’s key to annex of the Andy Warhol Museum as part of the our mission going forward.” The Times noted that big Essex Crossing project, are likely to further esICP is “regarded as one of the most innovative and tablish the neighborhood as an art destination.

ICP’s school will remain in Midtown, at Sixth experimental institutions for photography in the world,” but added that it has struggled to attract Avenue and 43rd Street, until 2018, when its lease financial support and visitors to the museum. The expires. Lubell said he would like to bring it downBowery move is part of the 40-year-old organiza- town as well in the coming years. Exhibitions are extion’s plan to attract bigger crowds and to become pected to debut in the new Bowery space no later more relevant as digital media continues to trans- than the middle of next year.

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Marc

RICHARDSON

For our regular feature spotlighting the people who live and work on the Lower East Side, we talked with community activist Marc Richardson.

How long have you lived on the LES? I moved with my mom to the LES in late 1979 and have been here mostly ever since; so I guess that’s 35 years now.

Why did you move here?

My mom was a struggling artist at the time and was back to being a single mom. So it would seem the prospect of “affordable” housing brought us to the LES as we had heard through word of mouth about the new buildings now known as Land’s End II were opening up... I came of age on the LES; it’s the one place I’ve lived the longest and have some of my oldest surviving ties. I got my first “on the books” job at age 15 while living on the LES selling papers for the New York Post.

What do you do?

I’m an office manager in general services at a mid24

November 2014

sized financial corporation downtown by the World Financial Center. I’m also the vice president of the Land’s End One Tenant Association and a board member of Tenants United Fighting For Lower East Side (TUFF-LES)... There is power in numbers; we need a forum for residents to hash out differences and develop consensus so we can present a unified front and produce a sustainable community that we all can be happy with.

Tell us about your apartment—the good, the bad and the ugly.

I live at 257 Clinton St., aka Land’s End One...

Though the average square footage of apartments in my building are smaller than our counterparts at Land’s End II and Two Bridges Tower next door. All things considered you could do much worse for city living, so I’m pretty satisfied with my apartment though I could use more space.

What’s your favorite spot on the LES and why?

It has changed over the years. When I was a teen-

How have you seen the neighborhood change?

Oh boy, has the neighborhood changed, yet in some ways it hasn't at all. Back in 1979, the streets looked like a scene out of the ’71 film The French Connection; in fact, I think they actually shot a scene on Dover Street and Front Street. The old Pathmark site still had Water Street, running through from Rutgers Slip to Pike Street, with what looked like a scary dark alley of dilapidated tenement buildings. Prostitutes still walked the street and frequently serviced johns up Water, Pike, Rutgers and all along the East River under the FDR, which was one huge parking lot. The only thing stopping cars from rolling into the river were square cut logs that ran the length of the embankment. Storefronts posing as legitimate would in some cases openly sell illegal drugs as they wouldn’t even attempt to stock groceries or anything for sale except a blatantly obvious token showing of goods. The streets were abuzz with teenagers and kids hanging out: playing stick ball, football, basketball and all sorts of street games, as this was a time before the rise of the Internet, cellphones and all the things that keep our kids preoccupied these days. We had a greasy spoon on the corner of Madison Street and Rutgers Street above the train station; you could get a souvlaki, gyro, cheeseburger or anything that could be fried on a griddle while standing on the sidewalk through the window or sweat inside on a counter stool. Pizza was 50 cents. So were cigarettes, which I could buy for my mom along with a six-pack without a second look. We had a butcher, a same-day on-premises cleaners and a real pizza shop right

on Madison. Oh, and a video arcade, penny candies and housing cops. There was only one school in each school building and Gouverneur was still a hospital with a working emergency room. I could go on. Strangely it often feels as if nothing has changed, as the buildings in many areas are all the same or at least structural change has been slow and in spurts over the years I’ve been here.

What do you miss from the old LES? Some of the neighborhood small business staples like the old school barbershop which also used to be on Madison Street, or a number of the other local shops that are now nonexistent in the local area. Even though Pathmark came with mixed reaction in the early ’80s, it is sorely missed now that it’s gone. I miss many of my old friends, most of whom have moved out; I sometimes feel like a stranger in my own community. It’s harder than I thought it would be to sustain that sense of community that I once felt a part of.

Is there a new arrival you love? Why? I like the look and feel of the recent modifications to the East River Esplanade, like the exercise areas are really an eye-opening novel idea to me. I’d like (continued on page 27)

Join the THE

ager, it was often right on Cherry Street between 265 and 275 Cherry St., where everyone from the neighborhood would pass; so folks would stop, we’d play the boom boxes and consume other unmentionables, but otherwise hangout all in good fun all year round. Some years we spent plenty of time on the basketball court on South Street and Rutgers Slip. Some years after my mom remarried we opened a deli restaurant on the corner of Henry Street and Jefferson Street called Aten-Ra International Gourmet Deli Restaurant. It was an interesting vantage point to experience the neighborhood from as a proprietor of a business. Nowadays I don’t hang out as much, but occasionally take in the East River Esplanade waterfront, or rollerblade along the East River park or have dinner at Cafe Petisco on East Broadway.

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25

(continued from page 25) to see more valuable uses of community space like this. I’m torn over other aesthetically pleasing additions only, as they represent in some sense gentrification and often do not appear to be targeted to the lower/moderate-income residents who have long characterized and embodied our community.

What’s the strangest thing you’ve ever seen on the LES? I’d have to say the emergence of apartments selling for millions a couple of blocks away from the former sites of the above illicit activity. Particularly, the recent Extell proposal for a 68-story luxury condominium building; I mean I don’t even think we have anything even half that height in the area.

Who’s the best neighborhood character you’ve met and why?

Ha, are you kidding me? This is the Lower East Side, virtually everybody is a character including me. I once got in trouble for scratching the “Gr” off the “Keep off Grass” signs at Land’s End One; I realize now I should have added a comma after “off,” as that is what I was going for but ended up saying something entirely different. We certainly have notables like Jayson Williams, who I used to play basketball with when he was actually shorter than me, or institutions like Shelly Silver, who I’ve met once or twice.

Tell us your best LES memory.

OK there are so many stories and so little time, but this one comes to mind: It was late and we teenagers were out late drinking and engaging in other ill-advised behavior. As I was one of the few who actually worked a summer/after-school job and thus had a little money in my pocket, I volunteered to go get some pizza and other sustenance for the group, as was my custom. In the wee hours of the morning I recall hopping on my bike, which had no brakes, to ride the empty streets all the way up to Stromboli’s in the East Village, which I think was on Eighth Street. I carefully balanced the pizza box on my handlebars while holding down the pizza box with my thumbs and otherwise precariously allowing it to rest up there somehow. Despite not having brakes and having to navigate through a stop here and there, I managed to make it to Madison Street and decided to cut through the long path going through LaGuardia Houses. As I approached Cherry Street a quick gust of wind came off the East River and whipped open the pizza box, which flew into my face. I swerved out of control and crashed right on the lawn behind 55 Rutgers St. and landed right on the pizza box. I wasn’t injured or anything; all I remember was my friends running over and grabbing slices of pizza from the box and even one which someone peeled off my back. It was so hilarious, we thoroughly enjoyed the moment. I didn’t even get a slice, by the way.

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November 2014

THE

LO-DOWN

The Lo-Down is the Lower East Side’s essential community news source.

Founded in 2009, Lo-Down Productions LLC produces this monthly magazine as well as a website, thelodownny.com, which is updated daily with neighborhood news, arts coverage, restaurant information and more. The primary editorial coverage area is bounded by East Houston Street on the north and Bowery on the west, although some stories range above Houston Street, as far uptown as East 14th Street.

The print magazine is published 10 times each year, with double issues in July/August and December/January. Each month, 12,000 copies are distributed throughout the Lower East Side.

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Inquire by email at ads@thelodownny.com or by phone at 646-861-1805. Story tips, article submissions and letters to the editor are welcome via email at tips@thelodownny.com.

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