The New York Observer » Lower East Side

What Facades! Is the New Museum Gaga?

Is there more to Lady Gaga and the New Museum than a Lower East Side home and a book signing? That is what travel and design web show Great Spaces argues in this video, which is a little bit shallow but nonetheless intriguing. Read More

Lower East Side Finally Getting a Half Decent Boutique Hotel

Incredibly gentrified as it has become, the Lower East Side is still lacking that hallmark of neighborhood development: a decent boutique hotel. Sure, The Hotel on Rivington was one of the firm mega-towers to mar the tenenment-scale neighbhorhood's skyline, but The Observer has always found that place to be pretty meh, and only getting worse. The Thompson has not been much better.

Now, one of the most stalled structures in the city, 180 Ludlow—it's been an empty shell for years, something straight out of bombed out Beirut—has found a buyer, and it is the very reputable gang at BD Hotels, Curbed reports. Read More

Big Snare On Kenmare: The Wee Hours Tracks Down the Men Who Mugged Us

The unmarked cop car sped out into the late night cobwebbed streets of Nolita at 3 a.m., bursting through red lights, sirens blaring, and ricocheting around turns that shook us back and forth, east to west. We had to lay low in the back seat, even for the quick trip to the corner of Mott and Houston. We pulled up next to three cruisers, sitting hotly in a giant cough of simmering exhaust, tire tread and the flash of red, white and blue.

Read More

Welcome to Art Market Boom 2.0

The New York art world may be entering uncharted territory.

Why do we think so? Let’s look at the big picture: In June, dealers at the Art Basel fair reported that business was booming. Art, we were told in report after report, was selling as it had in the heady days of 2006 and 2007, when the housing crash and the worldwide economic crisis were merely theories in the heads of a few sharp-eyed economists and canny hedge fund managers.

Last month, the world’s two leading auction houses, Sotheby’s and Christie’s, announced record revenues for the first half of the year, having moved $3.4 billion and $3.2 billion worth of art and other goods, respectively.

Now, for New York: there are, at this moment, more galleries, more artists, more curators and—perhaps most significant—more square footage devoted to art than at any time in the city’s history. The art world has never been wealthier, and that wealth has never been more intensely concentrated. Read More

On Wettest Night of the Year, at Least One Spot Parties On

It rained Saturday night! The Wall Street Journal sent reporters to far-flung locales such as Long Island City and Crown Heights, where places decided to stay open despite the fake hurricane that, it turns out, never actually existed. Some barkeeps and deli owners thought, hey, a hurricane has never hit New York before. Maybe it'll just rain a little. Maybe I can make an extra buck. Maybe things will be OK.

And that's what happened! They might have gotten a little bit wet, but they did great business. Read More

James Franco’s Art Show Closed Over Legal Issue

For the moment, Renaissance man James Franco's art exhibition at the Lower East Side's Asia Song Society gallery, "High/Low, Rob Lowe," is shuttered. A gallery spokesperson told The Observer on Friday afternoon that a legal issue related to the exhibition was responsible for the closure. Update Aug. 12, 7:31 a.m. Early this morning, the gallery released Read More

Lower East Side Gallery District Grows Some More

Our colleague Andrew Russeth reports that the burgeoning Lower East Side gallery district continues to ... burgeon. There may be as many as 60 galleries, in fact, in the neighborhood now. Here is the latest: Read More

Chicago’s Golden Gallery Opening Branch in the Lower East Side

The burgeoning Lower East Side gallery district is about to gain one more gallery, with Chicago’s Golden Gallery set to open up shop in a ground floor space on Elizabeth Street, just south of Broome Street, in September. Golden, which was founded in 2008, will continue to operate its space in the Windy City. Read More

Triangulate! Artists Buy Funky Federalist on LES

Artistes Inka Essenhigh and Stephen Mumford have settled into a new townhouse that will surely suit their creative sensibilities.

The couple bought a wacky, historic fixer-upper on the Lower East Side. Read More

Streetballers, Extra-Short Shorts and Extra-Short Stars

On Monday, The Observer braved the heat and schlepped down to the LES home of the City’s second-oldest Catholic high school, La Salle Academy. The alma mater of pro-baller Ron Artest was an all-too-appropriate venue for the filming of the third-annual Converse Band of Ballers 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament to air on MTV2 in mid-August. Despite Read More

Finally! A Pretty Parking Garage

New York City may have the lowest rate of car ownership of any major metropolis in the country, but that does not mean we are without that American icon, the unsightly parking garage. Many of these structures date to the middle of the last century, the golden age when cars were cool--not costly, congestive and environmentally unconscionable--and architecture was formless, slick and sometimes even brutal. Deteriorating and out of style, these ungainly edifices are in need of repairs and a makeover, a project the city's Department of Design and Construction has recently undertaken, overhauling our parking garages for a new century.

The first such project is the municipal garage at Essex and Delancy streets, behind the McDonald's on the Lower East Side. New Yorkers could be forgiven for missing the building, but those who know it can probably recall the matchsticks of brown concrete, rusted and crumbling. "The facade is very beautiful but very dated," Faith Rose, the senior design liaison at DDC, told The Observer. "It's a very 1950s-era concrete look. I love that era, but it's deteriorated physically and aesthetically." Read More

Those Were The Days! Damon Johnson’s Homecoming

Last week, a gallery and bar on the Lower East Side—called, appropriately enough, Gallery Bar—played host to a style installation by the 33-year-old artist Damon Johnson. The choice of neighborhood was key. “The Beautiful Chaos: A Style Installation,” which attracted a scarf-heavy crowd who guzzled red and white wine while dodging multiple photographers, was an Read More

The Strokes Return With First Single in Five Years [LISTEN]

Last Fashion Week, The Observer attended the Tommy Hilfiger after party at the Met and witnessed the first New York performance by The Strokes in five years. A decade removed from gigging in front of a dozen people on the Lower East Side, the singularly awesome five-piece burned through the classics, opening with "New Read More

The Secret Codes of Hotel Chantelle

"Tim would like to invite you to go downstairs,” the bartender at Hotel Chantelle said to The Observer.

The Observer wasn’t sure who Tim was, but of course we accepted.

It was Monday night at the hidden World War II–themed bar on the stretch of Delancey Street that’s spitting distance from the Williamsburg Read More

A Sneak Peek at The Drunk Diet, a Self-Help Opus by Gaga’s Boyfriend

Yesterday, St. Martin's Press acquired a book by Lower East Side bar-owner Luc Carl. He's best known at Lady Gaga's boyfriend, though he has another distinction as well: he lost 40 pounds while maintaining a lifestyle of consistent daily binge drinking.

What can we expect from The Drunk Diet? Well, The Observer may not have Read More