by Yori Yanover

Over the past month I’ve been contributing less than usual to this blog because of a few things that have reared their intermittently lovely and ugly heads. SO when I looked this morning at my Treo camera-phone combo thingie I realized there were several stories I had wanted to do and didn’t. I don’t think it really makes sense to pursue those stories now, but here’s the notes and pictures, so the ideas won’t be lost completely.

1. Discipline Via Cellphone
My daughter is supposed to clean up her breakfast table before she goes to school. One morning this month she really really didn’t. So I took this image and sent it to her over the phone as a kind of parental rebuke. Later, my daughter pointed out that my composition was spectacular. Here’s the complete, uncropped image. I do think there’s something very together about this picture.

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2. Don’t Park on my Sidewalk
For a few mornings in a row I spotted these vans parked in the nook behind the East River Housing Building 4. It pissed me off no end, especially when this old lady in a wheelchair had to maneuver around the bastards who were blocking her path. Not nice.

3. How Much Is the Kitty in the Window?
It was one of the coldest mornings this month and my daughter was down with a cold, and I was walking on Attorney Street and chatting with her on the phone when I saw this cat in the window. So I tried to send it to her phone but the delivery failed. Black cats are not lucky creatures.

4. Great Minds Think Alike, Also Not So Great Minds Sometimes Do
I saw this mobile unit for elderly persons near Baruch Housing on the FDR Drive. It’s called Grand Ambulette, and their logo is astonishingly reminiscent of this magazine I publish, the Grand Street News. I found it mildly amusing.

by Jonathan Leeder
It doesn’t get any lower in the lower east side than at the dive BAR 169. It’s grimy here, but that’s a good thing. On Thursday eve Dank SkullKap will be performing. These Brooklyn Jewish Jammers throw down hard psychedelic trance grooves.

Over at The Bowery Ballroom is Toubab Krewe who combine rock and roll with west African sounds. They are a staple of most summer festivals, but on Thursday they are headlining on the Bowery.

On Friday night over at Rockwood Music Hall is indie piano pop princess Angela Ortiz.

Over at Crash Mansion is Christopher Robin Band, a rock and roll act with hints of bluegrass in the mix.

Saturday night at Fontana’s is Villa Vina, a Brooklyn band not afraid to dabble in electronic or prog rock genre, or melt the two into their own sound.

The big show of the weekend is Patti Smith and Alejandro Escovedo who will be playing The Bowery Ballroom on both Saturday and Sunday nights. Ms. Patti Smith really needs no introduction here, right? Just in case you live under a rock, she was a focal point in the 1970’s CBGB’s punk rock scene. She can kick all of our butts at once without breaking a sweat. She can probably even kick Chuck Norris’s butt. Alejandro Escovedo will be supporting, and he couldn’t be happier. He is living the clean life after years of drugging and near death experiences. He is also making the best music of his career.

On Sunday night, Hot Day At The Zoo will be at the Parkside Lounge, pretty far east on Houston. This show is a post-Moe. show and will be a jammy event. Expect the “kidz” still raging from the moe. and Disco Biscuts shows uptown to be here, coming down off of whatever they managed to get their hands on. It should be interesting regardless of the music.

by Jonathan Leeder
If you’re holiday plans keep you in the city, you might not feel like Will Smith in the new I Am Legend movie, but I bet there will be less people running around, more parking spaces, and just a chill vibe all around.

On Thursday evening over at Rockwood Music Hall is Brooklyn’s very own Chris Bergson. Chris knows his way around a 6 string, and likes to genre jump from rock, to blues, to soul, and doesn’t leave funk feeling left out either.

Over at The Alphabet Lounge is Reality Addiction. These guys are from Jersey and play alt-rock music, not too far off from the Goo Goo Dolls or a Third Eye Blind. They’ll be hoping to gain some respect and pay some dues so they don’t have to play this crappy venue again.

Friday night at the Mercury Lounge is both O’Death (who will also be there on Saturday eve), and Hoots and Hellmouth. O’Death is quite peculiar act, hailing from the E.U., and possessing a strong love of punk and Appalachian old-timey music. I know the two don’t typically go hand-in-hand, but you gotta hand it to them for taking chances. Hoots and Hellmouth are an indie-experimental act coming from Philly. They are a band in-flux, but sometimes that is when a band figures out their path, so this could be a hot show to catch.

Saturday night has O’Death again at the Merc, along with Takka Takka. Takka Takka is another indie pop-rock unit from Brooklyn. I saw them open for The National this summer at The South Street Seaport and remember liking them more then the over-hyped headliner. I’ll be curious to see what they can do in an indoor room and with a longer time to play their set.

Sunday night, the Bowery Ballroom features The Slackers. This should be a fun show because this is truly a live party band. They mix island vibey ska and roots reggae with good old soul sounds. If it’s as cold out as they say, this show will warm your bones. And since most people have off on Monday, NO EXCUSES! Come on out and see some live music!

by Yori Yanover
On a stormy, drizzly Sunday afternoon in December, a small group of Lower East Side residents gathered at the Henry Street settlement’s Abrons Art Center recital Hall, to celebrate the 48th issue of the Grand Street News. The crowd included, most notably, Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, who was nice enough to check out the event. Silver also sent both his liaison persons to the neighborhood, which added significantly to the size of the gathering.

Many of our writers were absent: One was in Melbourne, Australia, another in Havana, Cuba. The arts columninst was down with the flu. It made us appreciate that much more our writers who braved the elements to come talk about their work: Music columnist Jonathan Leeder, photojournalist Pat Arnow, and former GSN reporter Liz Thomas.

The topic of discussion was, more or less, Is the Lower East Side as hip as everybody says it is, or is all the hip talk only a self-perpetuating media hype? Interestingly, just about everybody was pretty convinced the neighborhood was sexy, but not too sexy. That’s because everybody was pretty sure safe streets were as important as cool streets.

When we turned to the audience asking for ideas for things we haven’t covered yet, a clear theme emerged: They wished for more information on places where older folks can go to have fun. We are definitely going to obey those wishes in our upcoming issues.

Our marketing director, Nancy Kramer, shared with the audience some of her enthusiasm about the magazine and the neighborhood. Come to think of it, everybody there was pretty excited about both the LES and the GSN.

by Yori Yanover
The East River Co-Op annual meeting last Wednesday night was refreshingly dull. Compared to the Meet the Candidates night a week earlier, it was quite peaceful. Compared to the shareholders’ meeting in the same auditorium a year ago, it hardly registered. If you prepared for a no holds barred kind of night, based on so many months of politicking, a lawsuit, underdoor leaflets and counter leaflets, wanted and unwanted voter solicitation — you were in for a big letdown.

As one participant in MissLinda’s LES Community Forum (lesonline.proboards54.com) put it: “I was thrilled to pieces to not see anti-Wolf shirts. Not because I’m pro-Wolf, but because I’m anti-stupid-t-shirt.”

Wolf, in case you just moved into the neighborhood, is attorney Alex Wolf, who’s been running an ambitious campaign to get a foothold in the East River Board of Directors for the past year, since before he actually moved into his ER apartment.

Obviously not given to clandestine operations, Wolf chose direct, muscular confrontation with the powers that be at East River. Not eligible to run himself, because of his newbie status, he put together an acceptable slate of candidates for the three open seats on the board. Collaborating with the legal firm Andersen Oches, Wolf came at the board and the management from every conceivable angle, including a costly lawsuit.

But you couldn’t find any of that bad blood at the shareholders’ meeting. Approximately 500 folks filled up the Lippmann Auditorium, and another 50 followed the proceedings from the community room, via a video link. The vote itself was a crowded affair, but fairly orderly. The discussion that followed was benign and civilized for the most part, with the noted exception of one elder who took the mic to accuse co-op officials of ruining his life. But even in his case, the board president, Leonard Greher, and everyone else in the room, waited patiently for the man to conclude his speech.

Still, civilized meetings on occasion divert attention from serious issues and victories can send the wrong message as well. And so while the outcome was one I had been looking for: An uneventful meeting in which the candidates I supported won (all three Wolf candidates failed to make it this time), East River may be in for a bit of a rough ride in the coming year.

Harold (Heshy) Jacob, the co-op’s General Manager for the past two decades and the architect of the privatization of some 4700 units in Co-Op Village, is due to retire sometime in 2008. It is not yet clear whether the BOD at East River will select Alan (Shulie) Wollman, the current manager, as his successor. Apparently, the search committee is still interviewing.

This is a very good time for Heshy Jacob to retire. He gets to leave behind a relatively healthy corporation, and several thousand shareholders up-and-down Grant Street, including yours truly, owe him their financial empowerment. Jacob is leaving just when the co-ops have to make some serious decisions about their future. Not just finding new sources of energy, and smarter ways of managing the ecology of the buildings — hopefully, greening will become commonplace in New York City, and the board and new general manager wouldn’t have to re-invent the wheel.

But they will have to decide how to fill the void left by a self-styled general manager who was often more general than manager. Jacob’s aggressive style may have put off more than the occasional shareholder, but he got the job done with admirable dedication. The men and women who’ll face the shareholders from the dais next year will have had to decide by then how to reinvent Heshy Jacob.

by Yori Yanover
My sources are telling me the Wolf slate lost by as many as 170 votes. My understanding is that not one of them has made it into the board.

Phew.

In my opinion, the ER BOD must look at the next year as a temporary reprieve it has been granted to improve communications with shareholders.