Veselka Bowery

Sequels are a terrible idea. Be it movies or restaurants, the impulse that makes a person want to capitalize on a success by replicating or, god forbid, altering it, ultimately ends only in disappointment. Success is a slippery thing made up of hundreds of variables, only a handful of which can be controlled. Audiences are irrational, and dishes that thrilled them one week may flop the next. A concept that had two-hour lines forming at your door in one location may create a ghost town 15 blocks north.

It is there that Veselka saw it had a fighting chance. After all, what uncertainty is there about the East Village institution? The most cutting criticism you can dredge up is that it’s not the most authentic Ukrainian food in the neighborhood, and while it’s still plenty authentic for the early-bird babushkas who take their borscht there daily, that’s hardly the point. Veselka’s appeal lies in its effortless integration of American diner classics and Eastern Bloc comfort, the old-school New York service ethos that is surly and brusque one minute, warm and motherly the next, and its wholly democratic clientele. Veselka is not looking for an audience to manufacture a particular atmosphere; Veselka waits for you to come to it in whatever form you find yourself.

So maybe you want to come to Veselka on a date, or with the family, or before an evening out. The original Veselka is just not equipped for that—once you’re out of college, taking a date to a 24-hour diner is decidedly a dealbreaker. Perhaps the owners finally saw this one chink in their armor—or maybe they just wanted to get paid. Either way, they decided it was time for a sequel, leaving loyal customers nervously hoping against hope as the new venture, Veselka Bowery (9 E. First St., veselka.com/bowery), underwent a lengthy construction.

Tucked away on a side street in the lobby of one of the cookie-cutter condo buildings that spell the end of the Bowery, this Veselka is open and airy, glass-fronted and high-ceilinged, with warm wood tables and polished concrete floors. It’s almost too open in spots—lifelong New Yorkers, used to being crammed into corners, often don’t know how to fill large spaces. Instead of a bakery counter, the entryway faces a long bar lined with every possible iteration of the Eastern European stalwart spirit, vodka. That’s right, this Veselka has a full liquor license, and is putting it to good use with an extensive list of well-balanced cocktails that orbit around vodka’s sun.

The menu is described as more contemporary, but it turns out to have room for all the classics (breathe easy, there are still plenty of pierogies here) while bringing everything up to a new standard of presentation and refinement. Instead of a couple of slices of challah and some foil-wrapped butter pats, bread for the table comes with a housemade farmer cheese that is somehow never enough, no matter how many times it’s replenished. Pickles in the finest Slavic tradition accompany meat and vegetable boards built for leisurely nibbling with cocktail in hand. And entrees, while slightly overwrought in their descriptions, are just interesting enough in their execution. Even the ill-advised-sounding lobster pierogi are appropriately delicate and shockingly tasty.

Service is no longer brusque, just forthright and friendly. It’s off-putting at first, but the longer you stay, the more pleasant it becomes. It may not be quite as polished as the decor would suggest, but that fact keeps you grounded to the essential Veselka-ness of the place, the nonjudgmental, takes-all-comers attitude that has fueled the business for 58 years.

There are some who will be wary of Veselka Bowery no matter what anyone says, and that’s just fine. The original location is ready for you in all its 24-hour hangout glory, and it’s guaranteed to never change. But if you want to have a grownup restaurant experience with all the comforts of home, I’ll see you at Veselka Bowery.

Photo by PaulSteinJC, courtesy of Flickr Commons

Olek strikes again! Polish-born crochet artist Agata Oleksiak added some color to Lower East Siders’ commute this morning by hanging two pairs of pink camouflage yarn-covered sneakers alongside the many old shoes dangling from wires above the intersection of Broome and Eldridge Streets.

Olek’s knitted street art is a downtown staple by now. In the past two years, the New York transplant has fully adorned shopping carts to cars with her elaborate crocheted designs. The public displays often promote her larger scale gallery projects – such as her an entire apartment covered in crochet patterns, furniture, appliances and all  – but they have also occasionally become large scale projects of their own: in January 2011 she covered Wall Street’s massive Charging Bull sculpture, and in October 2011 she crochet-bombed the Astor Place Cube.

Olek in her crocheted apartment. Photo by HAPPYFAMOUSARTISTS, courtesy of Flickr Commons.

Olek’s street pieces usually don’t stick around for long, so take the time to enjoy them when they pop up. And don’t worry that you’ve missed your chance, because today’s colorful hanging shoes hint that another spree of public works might be on the way this summer to generate hype for her upcoming exhibit at the Smithsonian museum in Washington, D.C. Check out the chronological list below of where her work has appeared on the city’s streets and what it has covered in the past few years, and see if you can find out where and what she will strike next!

OLEK’S CROCHET BOMBS

2010

• Intersection of Suffolk and Rivington Streets: bicycle, locked to a post –
  

  Photo by easy mo drew, courtesy of Flickr Commons

  Olek’s crochet street art debut! Later moved to the entrance of Essex Street Market, where the artist had an exhibit.

• Elizabeth Street: car and another bicycle, both parked outside the Christopher Henry Gallery.

• Intersection of Bowery and Delancey Street: children’s bicycle, chained to a street sign.

• Wall Street : Charging Bull Sculpture.

2011

• Stanton Street: bicycle, across from Olek’s exhibit at the NY Studio Gallery.

• 358 Broome Street: image on the side of the building of a girl holding balloons, a tribute to iconic street artist Bansky.

• Northwest corner of Chrystie and Delancey Streets: another girl with balloons image on the side of the building.

• Petrosino Square just off Lafayette Street: children’s tricycle locked to a post.

• Tompkins Square Park: sculpture of a life-sized “walk” crosswalk signal
  

  Olek likes to cover people, too. Photo by See-ming Li, courtesy of Flickr Commons.

  man, created by Scott Taylor.

• Astor Place: “The Alamo,” the Astor Place Cube.

• Rivington and Suffolk Streets: shopping cart, chained to scaffolding at the Clemente Soto Velez Center.

• 147 Orchard Street: another shopping cart, chained to the Volang boutique.

• East First Street and the Bowery: a third shopping cart, chained to a tree.

2012

• Jersey Street between Lafayette and Crosby Streets: four strollers locked to street signs with the combined message “Love and stop lights can be cruel.”

• Broome and Eldridge Streets: two pairs of shoes hanging from the wires over the intersection.

– Paul Bisceglio

If dodging speeding cabs, wayward cyclists, and lost tourists on the city’s sweltering streets this summer isn’t enough, here’s another thing to look out for: bees — a whole freakin’ lot of ‘em.

Honeybee swarms of cinematic proportions have terrified city goers this spring from Brooklyn to the Bronx. They bombarded a fire hydrant at the South Street Seaport, crowded the Bowery and even trapped a family in a Volvo at Pier 92.

The source of these swarms is one of the city’s fast growing hobbies: beekeeping. Former Mayor Rudy Giuliani banned honeybees from NYC back in 1999 along with cheetahs, elephants and other exotic pets, but the re-legalization of beekeeping in 2010 ushered in a new trend. New York Post reports that since the ban was lifted, the number of registered hives in the city has increased from three to 161. Hives  range in size from small rooftop collections to Brooklyn’s Navy Yard, which boasts the city’s largest habitat with 20 hives and 20 million bees.

The Post explains that swarms occur unprovoked as part of the honeybees’ instinctive annual life cycle, but also from disease, overcrowding, and other symptoms of neglect. Poor beehive management has contributed to the 30 distinct bee clusters on buildings, light poles and fire hydrants across the city in recent months.

And here’s the wonderful news: “It hasn’t even started yet,” said Anthony Planakis, the police officer in charge of removing the swarms. “Within the next week, we’re going to be bombarded again.”

Andrew Coté, founder of the New York City Beekeepers Association, agreed. “There are too many hives right now,” he told the Post. “As it increases in popularity, it will be more and more difficult to control.”

The Gothamist warns city residents of a coming “beepocalypse,” but we should note that this title already belongs to the sharp decline in honeybee and bumblebee populations in the U.S. since 2006. If we’re all going down in a swarm of bees in the next couple of months, we might as well be accurate.

Martin Scorcese accepting his 2012 Moth Award

As director Martin Scorcese accepted the 2012 Moth Award last week, he paused to take in the opulent locale of the annual Moth Ball: Capitale on the Bowery. Capitale, the former home of the Bowery Savings Bank, is a Beaux Arts national landmark that boasts 65-foot ceilings supported by a series of columns, the entryways decorated with sumptuous red curtains.

Scorcese, who pointed out that most of his stories take two to three hours to tell, offered a tale from his childhood involving the bank. As a young neighborhood kid, Scorcese, along with his classmates, was afforded a field trip to the building, where they were each allowed to touch a $1,000 bill.

Now celebrating its 15th year, The Moth was started by poet and novelist George Dawes Green, who hoped to recreate the summer evenings he had spent in Georgia on a friend’s porch telling stories amongst a big group. While the first official Moth event was held in Green’s living room, the storytelling series has since expanded to events across the country. To find the next storytelling hour in New York City, visit themoth.org.

2012 Mothshop Scholarship Award recipient Eddie Altiere and the Rev. Al Sharpton

Tyra Banks

Darryl “DMC” McDaniels, Co-founder of Run-DMC

George Dawes Green, founder of The Moth, and Catherine Burns, artistic director of The Moth

By Paulette Safdieh

It takes a lot to impress a New Yorker. Out-of-towners and tourists, newly transplanted co-workers from the West Coast (and, at times, even our Uptown counterparts) get excited about seeing the latest Broadway show or MoMA exhibit, but we shrug our shoulders like we’ve seen it all before. We have our own idea of what’s cool.

Downtown thrives on the charm of unconventional culture—which is why a haunted house museum finds its home on Bowery and not on Museum Mile. Unbeknownst to a lot of us, our exclusive hub south of 14th Street has its own fair share of museums—depending on what your definition of museum is. Some travel from location to location setting up pickle exhibits, some cater to house ghosts and some showcase comic books like the Metropolitan Museum of Art does Rembrandt works. So what if you intentionally missed the Alexander McQueen exhibit this year? There’s a different kind of viable culture thriving in our own quarters that you don’t need to wait two hours in a line to experience.

Skyscraper Museum

Across the street from the Jewish History Museum and down the block from the Museum of the American Indian, this tribute to our city’s favorite form of architecture is yet another reason to hop off the train at Bowling Green. A small, one-floor space, The Skyscraper Museum showcases an array of historical documents (including newspaper clippings and World Trade Center floor plans) and an impressive wall exhibit of the world’s tallest buildings.

Black-and-white photographs of New York City construction sites line the ramp leading from the gift shop entrance to the one-floor dedication to our city’s—and the world’s — most famous high-rise buildings. Tall glass windows and overhead mirrors give the illusion of walking through an indoor skyscraper park, allowing visitors to navigate between the pillared cases that hold model buildings, including Dubai’s Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest at 2,717 feet, and the Kingkey Finance Tower in Shenzhen, China.
Interactive touchscreens and wall-mounted television screens teach about skyscraper form and history—did you know there are jumbo skyscrapers (surface area up to 2 million square feet) and super jumbos (up to 4 million square feet)? The museum’s collection also includes a replica New York Times front-page story from 1947 announcing the proposal for the World Trade Center site and the letters exchanged between famed architect Minoru Yamasaki and the paper’s architecture critic.

The Skyscraper Museum, 39 Battery Pl. (at Little W. St.), 212-968-1961, www.skyscraper.org; Wed.–Sun., 12-6 p.m., $5.

NY Food Museum

Because everyone loves food (although not everyone loves museums), the NY Food Museum opened in 1998 with mass appeal, giving New Yorkers a new way to celebrate tasty grub and learn a thing or two while they’re at it. Since originating the city’s annual International Pickle Day nine years ago, the NY Food Museum has continued to give us reason to believe that New York’s tastebuds enjoy food beyond the realm of red velvet cupcakes and Halal food from a cart.

The NY Food Museum is not a sight to be seen one afternoon and never revisited, mainly because of its traveling status. Sans a permanent home, the museum hosts discussion panels, film showings, traditional exhibits (including their first How New Yorkers Ate 100 Years Ago) and the upcoming Lower East Side Pickle Day this spring. Beware of the crowds; pickle day draws tens of thousands of visitors every year.

NY Food Museum, 59 Orchard St. (betw. Grand & Hester Sts.), 212-266-9010, www.nyfoodmuseum.org; call for exhibition dates, times and prices.

Italian American Museum

Appropriately nestled on the corner of Mulberry and Grand streets among the Italian bakeries and aroma of freshly cooked pasta, the Italian American Museum pays homage to the first Italian immigrants to come to New York City.

The museum’s director, Dr. Joseph Scelsa, an extremely knowledgeable—you guessed it—Italian-American sociologist, bought the building in 2008 from the Italian-American Stabile family, with the hope of archiving community artifacts from the last century and a half. The Stabile family emigrated to New York in the 1860s and first opened the space as a bank.

The museum’s interior is built around the actual glass booths where the tellers sat, and includes an array of artifacts from the 19th century through today. The collection ranges from Italian-American currency printed in New Jersey during World War II (when the U.S. occupied Italy) to the first vendor plates from the annual San Gennaro festival. Old passports and luggage tags are showcased beside community photographs, marriage certificates and even a restored wedding dress. The very back of the museum holds an organ that dates back to 1898, a 6-foot-tall bank vault and hand-cranked calculators used in the space years ago.

Welcoming about 100,000 yearly visitors, the museum preserves a culture unique to our city’s Little Italy—“the most famous Little Italy in the world,” according to Scelsa.

Italian American Museum, 155 Mulberry St. (at Grand St.), 212-965-9000, www.italianamericanmuseum.org; weekends, 12–6 p.m., $5.

Merchant’s House Museum

Celebrating its 75th year in business, the Merchant’s House Museum welcomes between 50,000 and 100,000 curious every each year to explore the supposedly haunted, 139-year-old row house on East Fourth Street. The museum first opened in 1936, three years after the death of Gertrude Tredwell, the last person to live at 29 E. 4th St. The Tredwell family lived in the house for over 100 years, and a visit to the museum suggests they—or their ghosts—still do.

Once you walk up the wsix steps from the sidewalk and step through the white marble door, be prepared to hear strange sounds of nonexistent footsteps and catch yourself looking over your shoulder in fear. Through the display of 3,000 untouched possessions from the Tredwell family and their four Irish servants, including old clothes and a wooden piano, the museum evokes a creepy sense of abandonment. Throughout the two floors, stationed amongst the roped-off furniture, fully dressed mannequins of the Tredwells appear more authentic than any sculpture at Madame Tussaud’s.

If you can get past the spookiness, the Merchant’s House Museum also serves as an educational opportunity to learn about New York City architecture and lifestyle history. A double parlor room on the ground floor showcases mahogany chairs, hanging gasoliers and paintings, all dating back to the early 1900s. The intricate mouldings lining the ceilings and brick exterior helped earn the building landmark recognition as the only historic house museum south of 14th Street.

Merchant’s House Museum, 29 E. 4th St. (betw. Bowery & Lafayette St.), 212-777-1089, www.merchantshouse.org; Mon.–Thurs., noon–5 p.m., $10.

Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art

Some of us have a greater appreciation for the brilliance behind Charles Schulz comics than famous Renaissance paintings. The Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art lets you know you’re not alone, presenting a collection of the best graphic arts, classic comics and cartoons from around the world. Located amid the tourist frenzy of Broadway in Soho, the museum has its own discreet, quiet space on the fourth floor of an office building.

Though small, the museum offers a collection of newspaper funnies, Japanese anime, comic strips and gag cartoons to bring back feelings of childhood nostalgia and leave you asking why you ever stopped reading Archie comics. It examines how issues of the First Amendment and censorship have tangled with graphics over time and how the images on display reflect the period in which they were created. Should a visit awaken your creative flair, offered classes include the Craft of Comics Writing and Writing for Animation. A gallery-style museum, rotating exhibits are set up every few weeks, so always call ahead to confirm whether the museum is open.

Leave time after your visit to head over to Animazing Gallery on Greene Street, a 26-year-old gallery featuring artwork from greats like Tim Burton and Maurice Sendak, to keep in the spirit of the day.

Museum of Comic and Cartoon Art, 594 Broadway Ste. 401 (betw. Houston & Prince Sts.), 212-254-3511, www.moccany.org; Tues.–Sun., 12-5, $6. 

Museum of the American Gangster

Scarface fans, rejoice! This museum, hidden behind a 10-foot black gate on St. Mark’s Place, is home to some great gangster paraphernalia. Established just over a year ago in a onetime speakeasy, the museum showcases the scandalous and violent years of the Prohibition era with artifacts ranging from 100-year-old stills (the vesssels used to make moonshine) to the infamous bank robber John Dillinger’s death masks.

A visit to the museum, which more closely resembles a small schoolroom than the MoMA, starts with a showing of a 15-minute video about American history in the early 20th century. Simply furnished with a bench and four wooden chairs, the museum teaches about the history of the building itself and the gangsters who operated out of it, Walter Scheib and Frank Hoffman.

After purchasing the building in 1964, the current owner discovered a copper safe filled with $100 gold notes (equivalent to millions of dollars today), cigarettes and beer bottles left by Scheib and Hoffman. Over the years, the owner’s decision to gather these and other relics and expand the collection into a full-fledged museum came to fruition last spring.

The safe, now covered in rust, sits at the museum’s entrance filled with replica bills and the bottles found inside years ago. Wanted posters, newspaper clippings and Pat Hamou paintings line the walls of the museum, which has a special Valentine’s Day Massacre section and hand-drawn diagrams of American history. Although visited by local school groups and gangster enthusiasts, the museum has some days when nobody walks through the door. Make sure to visit the theater and bar on the ground level to cap off your visit and celebrate the legality of alcohol.

The Museum of the American Gangster, 80 St. Mark’s Pl. (betw. Ave. A & 1st Ave.), 212-228-5736, www.museumoftheamericangangster.org; 1-6 p.m., $15.

[photosmash id=32 layout='gallery_view_layout']