Legacy Russell

This past summer we wrote about Legacy Russell, an artist embarking on a year-long project that in its different phases (called "rites") explores the nature of memory in the East Village and the Lower East Side. When we first met Russell she was working on the first "rite" -- the "Rite of Remembrance" -- in which she sat in Tompkins Square Park taking down people's stories of the neighborhood. Now, Russell is in the midst of the third "rite," the "Rite of Rearrangement" in which she takes portraits of people in a local site of their choosing. She will eventually print those portraits out as large scale black and white images that can be hung up as public sculpture. The rite "is going to be an opportunity for people to look at and evaluate their personal geography," she told Runnin' Scared this week.

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Who said no one cared about print anymore? A man attempted to climb the New York Times building this morning. Why? According to the New York Post, when the man was on the ground he explained he attempted his ascension because he "was looking for a copy of the newspaper." Yes, as one person said on Twitter, he could have just read it online, but maybe he just really wanted ink-stained fingers.

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Rebecca Nathanson

​Back in December Runnin' Scared wrote that Billy's Antiques an Props "is one of the last remnants of the 'old Bowery.'" Now that remnant has become a relic as the green tent housing Billy's has been laid to rest. Saturday morning, the tent was taken down, the New York Times reported. In the afternoon, mourners came out to mark the event with song, eulogy and procession. The tent was placed in a coffin, which then was paraded around the surrounding area.

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Rebecca Nathanson

​For the last 25 years, a massive canvas tent has stood on the north side of East Houston Street between Bowery and Elizabeth. For the last 10, that tent has housed Billy's Antiques and Props, an antique store that specializes in obscure objects. Owned by Billy Leroy, the store is one of the last remnants of the "old Bowery."

This winter, however, as reported by the New York Times, the tent will come down for good and be replaced by a two-story building, part of which will include Billy's. In keeping with the store's current, slightly sinister atmosphere, the tent will be buried beneath the new building as a way of celebrating its importance to the history of both the store and the Bowery, which was once heavily populated with tent shops.

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Interesting factoid: the Watergate scandal caused enrollment in journalism schools to be at an all-time high in 1974, since budding journalists wanted to be just like Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

JY CINEMASHUP - All the President's Boys from Jeff Yorkes on Vimeo.

Could this remix of the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage" with All The President's Men, the movie that made paging through documents in a library look sexy and dangerous, cause a similar effect?

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Those were (will be) the days

Tonight's Fashion's Night Out, which means more extravagantly stupid shit than usual is going on in our City! There's Pauly D and Miss Piggy and Nicki Minaj, and oh just read these damn lists for yourself, will you. Not one to be outdone, Nike today unveiled the Holy Grail of cinematic sneakers: the Nike Air Mag--Marty McFly's moonboot Nikes from Back to the Future II.

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Preston, when he was working at the Sea Colony

​For about two years, Preston Mardenborough has diligently continued to post an ad to Craigslist seeking people who remember a bar called the Sea Colony. Mardenborough, now 68, was one of the few men who worked at the long-closed lesbian hangout in Greenwich Village in the mid to late '60s, and he wants to find and reconnect with his old pals. But he hasn't found any.

"I had a lot of good friends there, and everyone just, poof, disappeared -- like everything else, I guess," he told us.

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Wikipedia

​At Monday night's screening of Dirty Dancing, hosted by Jezebel for the New York Abortion Access Fund at Cinema Village, one attendee asked screenwriter Eleanor Bergstein to entertain the audience with what would have been some fan fiction.

"I'm wondering if in your mind you have any idea what happens to Johnny and Baby at the end of the movie?" the fan posited during the question and answer session.

"Sure I do," Bergstein answered. "But what you have in your mind is just as valid as what I have."

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"Won't you be my neighbor? REMIX!"

​A decade after Mister Rogers' Neighborhood went off the air, PBS has announced a spin-off called Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood. The series will be animated and star Daniel Tiger, the son of Daniel Striped Tiger, who was originally a puppet. The original Mister Rogers' Neighborhood was pulled from syndication in 2008 and its host and creator, Fred Rogers, died in 2003. The new show will premier in the Fall of next year and feature "grown-up" versions of original characters and their children. It is expected to teach the same message of neighborly kindness as Mister Rogers' Nieghborhood, but probably with more lessons about the dangers of sexting. [EW]

Esther Zuckerman

​As EV Grieve pointed out this morning, there is construction -- or deconstruction -- going on at Mars Bar, which closed Monday of last week. However, it's not part of the official demolition of the building. We went by this afternoon and were greeted by owner Hank Penza, who seems to grow surlier with each of our visits. He told us to talk to a man standing next to him, who declined to be named, but said he "works with Hank." That man told us they are tearing down the bar and taking the bricks out of the wall for use in the new bar, which will open in a few months somewhere yet to be determined in the neighborhood. "We're trying to preserve as much as we can," he said, adding that demolition of the entire building at the corner of East First Street and Second Avenue will happen in August. [ezwrites]