Yuan, on 2nd Ave.
Yuan, a new East Village restaurant specializing in Guilin-style rice noodle dishes, aspires to serve the “sophisticated Chinese food lover,” according to lettering on its glass storefront.
Currently in “soft launch,” the restaurant will officially open next Wednesday or Thursday, hot on the heels of 99 Favor Taste’s expansion to St. Marks Place.
Tompkins Square Park
(Photo: James Jowers)
“As the hour grew late and working people around Tompkins Square Park began turning out the lights on Memorial Day 1967, police asked several hundred music lovers to turn down the volume of a guitar-and-bongo concert in the park,” reported the New York Daily News. “The crowd’s reply … was a barrage of bottles, bricks and fists that left seven officers injured.
“And thus began the Summer of Love.”
(Photo: Youngna Park)
It’s the final countdown.
Update your calendars if you’re planning to raid Trash & Vaudeville’s St. Marks Place location one last time before it leaves its home of over 40 years. The closing date has been moved up to this Sunday.
With a “Hey Ho Lets Go,” the store announced last week that its last day before relocating would be Monday, Feb. 29, but we’re now told that’s been changed to Feb. 28. The reopening at 96 East 7th Street, near First Avenue, is still slated for early March.
(Photo by Kavitha Surana)
The story of Mamoun’s had a happy ending, but not so for another St. Marks Place institution. Marty “The Sock Man” Rosen is shuttering his doors this Friday, January 15. Today, we caught up with the beloved grump, who confirmed rumors of the closing and told us he’d been socked with a rent hike.
“This is the East Village,” he said, in the midst of rearranging the funky socks and tights he has long sold to everyone from neighborhood punks to Chloe Sevigny. “I don’t want to leave this block. As bad as it is, I don’t want to leave. I don’t know what to do.” He’ll be looking for a new space, but in the meantime you can still order online.
First came word of Sock Man’s closing and now we get wind that Mamoun’s Falafel Restaurant is leaving its longtime digs at 22 St. Marks Place. But don’t go crying “St. Marks is dead” just yet — the cheap-eats landmark is moving a few doors over and expanding.
According to a press release from broker Eastern Consolidated, the falafel joint has arranged a 10-year-lease at 30 St. Marks Place. At 1,400 square feet, the new storefront, previously home to Japadog and then Red & Gold Crab Shack, will be double the size of the current one.
Chest of Pleasure, new sex shop on St. Marks Place. (Credit: Joshua Alvarez)
Trash and Vaudeville is going, St. Marks Sounds is gone, and a Caffe Bene is on the way. But, as noted in a new history, St. Marks Place “will probably always elude true respectability.” Indeed, the block between Second and Third Avenues just got a new sex shop.
Everyone has a St. Marks story — my first was smoking free hash after getting ripped off on bunk X. “And since the middle of the twentieth century, kids from all over the country, and the world, who wanted to be writers or artists or do drugs have come to St. Marks Place to find one another and themselves.” So says St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America’s Coolest Street, the dizzyingly fascinating mostly-oral history by Ada Calhoun, which launches Monday, Nov. 2, at Cooper Union with free beer from Brooklyn Brewery and a punk cover band—the St. Marks Zeroes—featuring Ad-Rock.
Owner Lev Kelman. (Photo: Joshua Alvarez)
First the East Village got the city’s first kava bar and now comes its first hemp bar.
A large dark blue banner hangs just outside Brooklyn Dark Hemp Bar, amidst all the head shops on St. Marks Place. Earlier today, we found owner Lev Kelman setting out free samples of his ubiquitous Brooklyn Dark chocolate bars on the counter. Next to him, a coffee and espresso machine was primed and ready. Hemp chocolate brownies, pastries, and cookies were laid out on baking sheets in a small showcase on top of the counter. A few hemp t-shirts were displayed on a red brick wall.
(Photos: Daniel Maurer)
It takes a lot to stand out on St. Marks Place, so who can blame these two ADD-stricken restaurants for seeing what sticks.
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(Photo: Daniel Maurer)
Because you can’t have more desserts on St. Marks Place without having somewhere to work them off, a new gym is opening in the onetime home of Mondo Kim’s.
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