The old Ludlow Street location. (Photo: Shanna Ravindra)
When it was priced out of the Lower East Side after 16 years there, The Living Room said it didn’t want to move to Brooklyn — but after closing in October, the beloved singer-songwriter venue where Norah Jones cut her teeth is angling for a new home on Metropolitan Avenue in Williamsburg.
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(Art by Sarah Quinter)
Bedford Avenue hasn’t seen as much recent turnover as Grand Street has, but that may be about to change. If you’ve walked down Williamsburg’s main drag in the past few weeks, you may have noticed an uptick in shuttered storefronts and signs saying “We’ve Moved.” Meanwhile Manhattan transplants like a gluten-free pizzeria and a foreign-language bookstore have moved in, and brokers say more of them are coming.
(Photo: Elizabeth Flock)
It’s lunchtime at Polski Meat Market on Manhattan Avenue in Greenpoint, and business is dead. Again. An older woman makes pierogis in the back, while her son Adam Parys mans the meat case, which contains nine kinds of kielbasa, and another employee straightens the shelves. In half an hour, only one customer steps inside.
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On its face, writer-director-filmmaker Desiree Akhavan’s first film, Appropriate Behavior, is about common lesbian experiences: the struggle to come out, tussles with identity, and what happens when a relationship fails as a result. But as the film debuted at the Sundance Film Festival this weekend, the audience response happened just as often around the film’s examination of person as of place.
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Until we return to our usual schedule Jan. 3, enjoy this daily series of longer pieces in which we unravel the mysteries and the histories of storied addresses.
The Greenpoint Terminal today, during an exhibition there: (Photo: Nathan Kensinger)
On a recent white-gray Sunday, the Historic Districts Council gave a tour of what remains of the Greenpoint Terminal Market, a complex of old industrial buildings along the East River that was engulfed in 2006 by a mysterious 10-alarm fire. On the day of the blaze, billowing clouds of gray smoke stretched across the river, and could be seen all the way to Chelsea.
Olga Bell both disrobed and dressed up for her latest music video, released Thursday from one of her experimental side projects, “nothankyou.” The Williamsburg (via Russia and Alaska) singer-songwriter appears first in the video as a bare-chested brunette, then as a demure version of herself in glasses, and finally in a blond wig. At the end, all three characters stand side by side, and it’s clear they’re all Bell.
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