The East Village....has there ever been anything else quite like it in the City That Never Sleeps? This is the neighborhood that lives up to the term. Take a walk through the streets of the East Village anytime day or night. It's like the song says, "You'll never walk alone."
If you are a long-time resident like myself....and I don't mean you have been living here for 10 or 15 years....I mean you have been here a quarter of a century or longer, you will remember a different East Village. One where you found cheap restaurants with great food like Kiev, Bini-Bon, or Siam Square, all now sadly gone. One where you found more Indian restaurants that you could eat in over the course of three weeks and not repeat a place.....gratefully some of these are gone. One where you could buy nails by the pound while getting expert advice from an oldtimer on how to install a gas stove,....like Kamenstein's.
Yes, the lament will never end. But now....you can go to sports bars with hi-def big screens to watch sports; dine on oysters and champagne at Calliope; eat sushi flown in fresh from Japan at Jewel Bako; or eat designer pizza with all kinds of things on it that was never meant to be on pizza.
The parking lots are gone; replaced by the undulating glass tower condo (can you say $8M for a view?) designed by Gwathmey-Seigel on Astor Place; the red brick industrial looking with luxury apartments for rent on Bowery and East 4th (still renting after all these months?); or the yuppie looking Avalon development on both sides of Houston Street that have brought pedestrian traffic to the area of the like that has not been seen since pre-depression days.
We are now in the era of landmarking the stretch of Second Avenue from 1st Street to 12th street thanks to the city. These wonderful buildings that define the neighborhood will be forever a part of the East Village. No longer will we lose the character of the architecture that defines the neighborhood.
Of course we will always have the restaurants and bars that just don't care about their neighbors. They attract the worst of the city. The drunken revelers who toss their garbage on the sidewalks every night because they just have no manners, nor care about being civil. The same offenders urinate in doorways; kick over newspaper/periodical stands; upturn garbage receptacles; scream in the streets as they try to look cool and attract the attention they don't get at home; and generally behave like animals every evening.
The bars and restaurants who overserve paying customers and serve underage drinkers with phony IDs are the worst offenders. Fights break out. Regurgitating college kids leaving their food and drink on the sidewalks. Commercial garbage is tossed out willy nilly on the sidewalks spilling over with the detrius of food waste for the rats to feed upon.
The East Village is a neighborhood with character and characters. Come see for yourself, but have some respect. Some of us do live here!
