As the old saying once went, “A you’re alright, B you’re brave, C you’re crazy, D you’re dead.” It’s not news that Alphabet City is no longer the minefield of socioeconomic misfortune it once was, but even today, when the focal point for gentrification outrage has migrated to Brooklyn neighborhoods like Bushwick and Crown Heights, there’s still a surprising amount of upheaval happening on the east side of Manhattan.

Avenue A is as established as Central Park West (hell, even the rhyme couldn’t find anything negative to say about it). Avenue B, for its part, was once a pleasingly lawless strip – close enough to the safety of A for a quick escape but darker, studded with rowdier bars, velvet-curtained second-floor hideouts, and those mystery loft/storefront/abandoned tenement spaces that drew band practices and parties. Now, that velvet-lined den is a well-marked, bowties-and-arm-garters cocktail lounge and Tompkins Square Park is home to hipster hockey leagues.

But even three short years ago, Avenue C was another story, a country unto itself where brand-name pharmacies and supermarkets still feared to tread. Between the Laundromats and bodegas were long stretches of rusting fire escapes, graffiti murals featuring neighborhood heroes, not rock idols, and families picnicking on their stoops. Since then, a smaller, more interesting kind of takeover has happened, one not led by kids looking for the next cheap buzz but by food and drink pioneers looking for a quiet space to do their own thing.

At Bobwhite Lunch & Supper Counter (94 Ave. C; bobwhitecounter.com), that thing is a concept that, by all rights, should be old news. All fried chicken, all the time? Hold on a second, Dirty Bird, Hill Country Chicken, all five locations of BonChon and Charles’ Pan-Fried just called to invite you to 2008. But what Bobwhite has done is subtler, more exciting than simply lodging another vote in the brine-or-no-brine debate. They’ve built an old-fashioned lunch counter straight out of small-town Virginia in an elegant, modern space – no tired red plastic baskets and gingham to be found. Fried chicken dinners come with a buttermilk biscuit, honey, hot sauce or the mustardy relish called chow chow for customization; sides include Brunswick stew, a homely regional favorite that includes tomatoes, corn and pork.

Edi & the Wolf (102 Ave. C; ediandthewolf.com) is another unexpected space, this one tying the nouveau industrial aesthetic of dark wood and iron to bright, big windows and bunches of side-of-the-road greenery dotting the communal table. Perhaps because Austrian cuisine’s reputation is still tied to hearty schnitzels and sausages, Edi’s food manages to be both authentic and innovative, depending on who you ask. The schnitzel is there, but so is a farmer’s cheese and pumpkin seed spread to share, and wild mushroom ravioli with grilled chard.

And while cocktail atavism is big business on the LES and across Manhattan, with “original formulation” spirits and ungarnished Old-Fashioneds the only way to go, nobody is going as far, and having as much fun, as Evelyn Drinkery (171 Ave. C; evelynnyc.com). Skip way over Prohibition, past the Roaring Twenties and back into the late 19th century and you’ll find the phosphate, the soda fountain standby that added an acid tang to everything from cola to claret. Evelyn plays with these in a number of cocktails dispensed through a CO2 tank for light, fizzy refreshers that belie the complex combinations of bitters, spirits and house-processed juices underneath. For the New Yorker’s take on the soda fountain, there are also egg creams, made with infused milks and flavored syrups to take on not just the old classic (in which they rightly use Fox’s U-Bet rather than making their own), but Earl Grey tea, an Orange Julius, and the root beer float.

Avenue C still feels like home for the families and the Laundromats, and in these heady days it’s easy to believe that the neighborhood will find its own balance, keeping out the cheap beer holes and encouraging the pioneers looking for a little room to express themselves. If not, there’s always Avenue D.

Oyster shell dresses and green grass suits raise awareness of the city’s community gardens

Michael Leete, who works at the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space (MoRUS) in Alphabet City, showed up for last weekend’s “anti-fashion” show dressed as a sparkly orange tree. Leete, 28, and fellow acts were decked out head-to-toe in all recycled and organic material.

“We’re exposing a different side of fashion,” Leete explained of the show’s mission. “We’re showing how it can be used in protest to make the act more interesting.”

While high-end fashion is invading New York City for February Fashion Week, MoRUS and its partner organizations had something a little different, something a little earthier, in mind for their show, which took place at the museum’s C-Squat on Avenue C.

Another volunteer, Barbara Ross, came strapped with dangling oyster shells.

“New York City once had oysters in the Hudson River that were wiped out,” she said of her costume’s purpose. “There’s talk of bringing them back to help with storm surges.” Ross’s oyster shell costume was meant to shed light on the potential environmental benefits of mollusks.

“All these costumes have a green message,” she said. “They show what people can do.”

“Fashion can also be functional,” Leete said, adding that costumes like his, a part of the Earth Celebrations series, were intended to raise awareness of the city’s prolific community gardens and plans to demolish them.

Earth Celebrations is a nonprofit organization directed by activist Felicia Young that aims to preserve these gardens through art and performance.

In addition, the show had a broader mission of bringing attention to how costumes and props can be used to promote positive change in the face of social, environmental and political issues—including the use of puppets to support the Occupy Wall Street movement.

Prior to the show, Young took the stage to talk about the group’s work.

“New York City has the highest concentration of community gardens in America, and Earth Celebrations helped save them,” Young said. “People didn’t even know these gardens existed.”

Young said the gardens grew out of rubble-filled lots of the 1970s, cultivated by individuals who helped transform neighborhoods previously considered slums. Real estate developers then began targeting those very spots.

“These gardens should not be a temporary stopgap on the way to luxurious neighborhoods,” Young said. “These are not vacant lots.”

Over time, since the organization’s founding in 1991, politicians like former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and Mayor Michael Bloomberg got involved in helping preserve the gardens by providing grants and helping raise awareness.

Volunteers Isabelle Garcia, 31, and Lauren Mittelman, 24, walked the recycled runway in suits made of grass, which was grown directly onto the costumes by Bill Di Paola, a MoRUS co-founder and staunch activist in the city with the environmental organization Time’s Up!

Mittelman said the suits represented how easy it can be to grow something no matter the context. “If you can grow grass on a suit in a week, you can grow sustainable stuff anywhere,” she said.

Amanda Buckley, a 30-year-old painter in the city who works a variety of odd jobs, was in the audience on Saturday. Buckley heard about the museum’s show on Facebook and decided to check it out.

“I’m interested in how political activism can exist in an artistic context,” Buckley said.

Another audience member, Jerry Trudell, said he used to squat nearby in the 1990s and helped start the transformation of vacant lots into gardens that brought Earth Celebrations into being. He said a garden procession went around every year to support and bring visibility to the garden coalition by uniting garden activists from different areas.

MoRUS’ “anti-fashion” show also included a brassy performance by the Rude Mechanical Orchestra, a volunteer-run band, complete with dancers, which regularly shows up at a variety of protest events, rallies and benefits throughout the city. The band first formed to protest the Republican National Convention.

Hanna Kyle Moranz, 31, a dancer who’s been with the band since 2008, said the orchestra, like MoRUS and its partner organizations, “strongly believes in the power of spectacle for positive change.”

Richard Blodgett has spent decades getting to know the Charlton Street community

By Rebecca Temerario

Richard Blodgett didn’t expect to fall in love with New York. After graduating from Middlebury College in 1962, Blodgett relocated to New York City for a job with the Wall Street Journal. In 1968, Blodgett moved to his current address. Forty-four years later, Blodgett remains a resident of historic Charlton Street, where he serves as president of the Charlton Street Block Association, a position he has held on and off for 10 years.

Blodgett instantly fell in love with Charlton Street because of the old houses and neighborhood charm.

“Everybody knows each other. I have a neighbor who has been here since 1941,” he said.
Charlton Street possesses a rich history; Aaron Burr is credited with the conception of Charlton Street, naming the road after Dr. John Carlton, a former president of the New York Medical Society. John Jacob Astor funded the street’s development, and George Washington once resided in the area. Other notable residents have included poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, singer Mary Travers of Peter, Paul and Mary, and actress Sarah Jessica Parker.

As Charlton Street’s resident community builder, Blodgett “likes interacting with people—it’s a wonderful way to know neighbors and work together for the community.” Blodgett’s block association contains 325 houses on Charlton Street from Sixth Avenue to Varick Street. The Charlton Street Block Association is also responsible for the upkeep of Charlton Plaza, a neighborhood park.

“We have a lot of resident gardeners,” Blodgett said.

Blodgett also serves on the South Village Advisory Board, part of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation.

“Dick has been the president of the Charlton Street Block Association for more years than I can count,” said Andrew Berman, head of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. “He is a neighborhood historian and has led fights to address traffic safety issues and to preserve the character of his neighborhood. He knows everyone in his little micro-neighborhood south of Houston Street.”

Blodgett not only knows his neighbors, he knows his restaurants and shops too. Speaking of a favorite restaurant in the South Village, Once Upon a Tart, Blodgett can say that he “was there the day it opened, twenty-some years ago.” Pointing to vintage pictures on the wall, Blodgett comments that Once Upon a Tart was once a bakery. He even knows the owner.

Blodgett’s role as community builder and historian doesn’t stop there. He has partnered with Berman and the South Village Advisory Board in order to historically preserve the South Village, and designate the area from Sixth Avenue to West Boulevard, between West Third Street to Watts Avenue. Unlike Charlton Street, which was designated as a historic district in 1966, that area isn’t protected from the possibility of buildings being torn down. Blodgett wants to change that.

Currently, Blodgett is involved with the Coalition for the Pedestrian Safety and Houston and Sixth. After a woman was killed near that intersection in August, the Coalition has petitioned the Department of Transportation for “a dedicated green light for pedestrians, so that they can cross while all traffic at the intersection is stopped,” said Blodgett. The Coalition collected 1,624 signatures on their petition, and is supported by New York City Council Speaker Christine Quinn. Blodgett and the Community Board are currently awaiting a response from the DOT.

Blodgett has also been an instrumental voice in a proposed rezoning of Houston Square. The area near Trinity Church as it stands now is mostly commercial, but seeks residential zoning. Blodgett is working with Trinity Church on the issue of building height; he stresses that the tall buildings would change the character of Houston Square.

In his role as president of the Charlton Street Block Association, Blodgett has become an integral voice of his community. He has even penned an extensive history of Charlton Street. Blodgett will surely join the list of notable Charlton Street residents as future historians and community builders look back on his admirable service to his community.

PETER COOPER VILLAGE RESIDENTS STRUGGLE WITH NO GAS, ELECTRICAL PROBLEMS AND FLOODED BASEMENTS

While most of Manhattan’s East Side neighborhoods have overcome Hurricane Sandy’s damages, some areas are still trying to catch up. Peter Cooper Village, particularly, is in an ongoing struggle to restore basic services to some of its buildings, like gas and intercoms, after the storm’s record-breaking surge flooded the complex’s basements. Management there is orchestrating a frenzy of repairs, which are moving things forward but displeasing many village residents.

“What I don’t like is all this secrecy,” said Arthur Wolf, an elderly tenant who sat on a bench in the middle of the iconic red brick private housing community. “They tell us only what they want to tell us. What’s all this stuff?” He gestured to the growling portable generators and patchwork of yellow tubing scattered between the buildings around him. Workers with wheelbarrows appeared out of a below-ground door and carted piles of debris to East 20th Street. During the storm, the basements of Peter Cooper Village’s buildings, located between East 23th and 20th Streets and First Avenue and Avenue C, took on up to 6 feet of water. A lot remains to be cleaned up.

“Nobody will tell what all this is, exactly, and how long it will go on,” added Marcia Robinson, a tenant who sat with Wolf.

Lax communication from the owner of the complex, CW Capital, has upset a number of tenants. Many rented personal storage space in the buildings’ basements, where they stored items such as clothes, decorations, memorabilia, documents and even paintings. After the flooding, residents were eager to assess the damage to their belongings underground, but at first were not allowed to enter the basements because of safety concerns. Then, according to Susan Steinberg, chair of the board of directors of the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association (Stuyvesant Town, the village’s next-door sister development, was not heavily damaged in the storm because its buildings do not have underground storage), residents received a notification shortly before Thanksgiving that they had until Nov. 30 to retrieve their things. After that date, everything remaining in the storage areas would be discarded.

“CW just wants to steamroll ahead,” Steinberg said. “Some tenants needed more time. They couldn’t sort through their things in just one trip.”

When the residents arrived to rummage through the remains of their possessions, they were required to sign a waiver that relieved management and its affiliates from blame if they were injured. This document forced many residents to second-guess the need to salvage their items. What exactly was in these basements that was so dangerous?

“We were getting messages left, right and center,” said Steinberg. “There was a lot of anger, a lot of frustration.”

Following complaints, CW extended retrieval dates by five days, and agreed to transfer the flooded belongings of those who could not visit the basements to an above-ground drop-off point. According to Steinberg, those who already signed waivers were not allowed to revisit their storage areas.

Flooding also damaged basement electrical systems and gas pumps, shorting intercom circuits and leaving some tenants still without heat. Workers now must check gas valves in each of the complex’s thousands of units, and sometimes have to drill locks to enter. They reportedly have caught at least one resident in the shower while entering apartments.

City Council Member Dan Garodnick is a Peter Cooper Village resident, and he affirmed that life was still far from normal for many tenants. “We hear about people who still have their gas out, who still can’t access their basements, who have no washers and dryers, who lost their cars in garages, whose intercoms don’t work,” he said. He noted that his own intercom and washer-dryer were inoperable.
Garodnick expressed grief that some tenants’ approval of the property manager had declined after what he said was a highly cooperative recovery effort in the storm’s immediate aftermath. With the Tenants Association’s and CW’s help, Garodnick organized a large-scale volunteer emergency response that checked in with every tenant in the complex to address their needs. Steinberg called the effort “fantastic” and affirmed CW’s involvement.

“We worked hand in hand with management during the crisis. We were very happy to do so,” Garodnick said. “That level of collaboration has changed, unfortunately. There’s much less communication, much less information being shared.”

In Steinberg’s words, things returned to “business as usual.” Both she and Garodnick said they were not certain why this was, but Steinberg speculated that CW’s desire to return buildings to normal trumped their interest in responding to tenants.

CW themselves—via their office, Peter Cooper Village Residential Services and public relations firm—could not be reached for comment on their relationship with tenants, and did not respond to messages before press time. On the village’s website, www.pcvst.com, management has a “Post-Storm Updates” in which posts over the past month detail repair progress. CW Capital Managing Director Andrew MacArthur posted there shortly after the storm, “While this last week has been extraordinarily trying, it also highlighted all that is special about our community. Our younger residents kept careful watch over their elderly neighbors and our elderly residents provided us all with an example of how to overcome adversity with good humor and fortitude. Our political figures pitched in, and the various resident groups have done their part. Finally, our staff has demonstrated a commitment to this community that is extraordinary. During this last week, PCVST showed what it means to be part of a community you should all be proud to call home.”

John Marsh, president of the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association, acknowledged issues in communication between CW and tenants, but asserted that overall the property manager was doing a good job with repairs, given the scope of the damages. “They’re dealing with it very aggressively, and we know it’s tough,” he said.

Marsh toured some of the basements shortly after the hurricane, and was one of the first to see the extent of what was lost. “It was pretty devastating,” he explained. “Piles of rubble, water lines above your head, glass smashed—it looked like a fire without the fire.”

Garodnick recently reached out to city agencies for assistance in making sure that there are no lingering safety issues in the buildings’ basements. By his request, workers from the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development have begun daily inspections of the complex’s damaged properties.

“We will make it through this,” he said.