The Plight of Lower East Side Small Businesses
Pepto-Bismol. Nowadays, Rona Economou, owner of a small Greek food stall in the Essex Street Market, keeps it handy. Stress makes her stomach uneasy. And her right eye, it twitches. Even in seemingly ordinary moments, like when she’s done laboring over the stove, the day’s cooking complete, and stands watch over her spinach pies, pear [...]
VIDEO: Lower East Side Businesses Getting a Boost
Hurricane Sandy robbed Lower East Side businesses of at least a week’s worth of revenue. Evan Burgos has the story of one organization that’s lending a hand. Video from Evan Burgos on Vimeo.
Lower East Side Back to Normal on Election Day
Lower East Side Back to Normal on Election Day from NY City Lens on Vimeo. A week after superstorm Sandy knocked out electricity in downtown Manhattan, Lower East Side residents had no trouble casting their votes on Tuesday. Though one site was changed because of flooding, voters on the east side of lower Manhattan, [...]
Lower East Side Organization Conducts Sandy Relief Efforts
Through pitch-black apartment corridors in Chinatown to the hundreds of restaurants and shops lining the Lower East Side, a small army of volunteers fanned out in those neighborhoods to provide emergency assistance to residents who have been without power and other basic services for the last four days. Since Tuesday, CAAAV: Organizing Asian Communities, a [...]
Men Seek Refuge, Guidance at Lower East Side Shelter
James Macklin sat in the cafeteria of the Bowery Mission, a soup kitchen and homeless shelter on Manhattan’s Lower East Side, talking of the men he used to be among. He first walked in as an unemployed 40-something, at a low point in a life that began with his mother, a 13-year-old rape victim, [...]
Where Pickles are Only the Beginning
Mike Chu doesn’t smell a thing. Not anymore. After 15 years working amid the salty, vinegary stench that swirls in the nostrils at this pickle shop on the Lower East Side, Chu is immune. The sour aroma, oddly enjoyable, emanates from 29 barrels of fermenting vegetables that account for about half of the storefront [...]
Exhibit Provides a Peek at Proposed Underground Park
City development normally aims upward. One project though has the opposite trajectory: a park — trees, grass, moss and all — tens of feet underground in the Lower East Side. They’re calling it the world’s first underground park. The plan is to turn 1.5 acres of the unused Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal, under Delancey Street [...]
