east village idiot

A tragic shooting at 4:30 on Sunday morning left a beloved community member dead as he tried to intervene in a fight that broke out outside a bar at 13th Street and Avenue A. It’s the first confirmed homicide in the 9th Precinct this year, and the details are gruesome. Taz Pagan was shot point-blank in the head simply for trying to break up a fight outside Forbidden City, where he often DJed and was bouncer who was off-duty. Even more tragically, he was a single father who leaves behind two children.

This atrocity must not go unpunished. Unfortunately, the perpetrators got away. Police were combing the neighborhood yesterday looking for clues. While spending some of my Sunday afternoon across the street from the scene of the crime, the detectives of the 9th acted very professionally and were doing their damned hardest to find any clue to help catch these heartless sons of bitches.

At the same time, however - not 10 hours after Taz Pagan was shot and killed - neighbors along Avenue A were shamelessly harping on his death as another example that East Village nightlife has gotten out of hand. As family members and friends were mourning Pagan’s death at a makeshift memorial outside Forbidden City, cranky neighbors hopped on their soapbox to complain to the press about the noisy bars on Avenue A and the 4am closing time of these bars, and attempted to make the case that it contributed to Sunday morning’s shooting. But the circumstances of the crime, the timing of the incident, and the very location of the incident itself tell otherwise, and show just how desperate a vocal minority of the East Village has gotten in trying to rob the neighborhood of its vibrant nightlife.

Nearby bars on Avenue A have drawn the ire of neighbors in the East Village recently. Things came to a head just last week when a community meeting was called to discuss the recent opening of two new bars - Destination, at the corner of Avenue A and 13th, and Superdive, one block further south.

I mention this only because this incident has nothing to do with either of these bars, yet these neighbors tried to shoehorn their complaints from that meeting into the dialogue about Pagan’s death. In fact, this incident has very little to do with Forbidden City (which has been open, by the way, for more than seven years), since according to the Post’s account of what happened, the gunman was never even at the bar. It has nothing to do with the closing times of these bars, since thousands of bars in this city close at 4am every night without incident. It has nothing to do with the “fratty crowd” that patronizes places like the ghastly Superdive and roam the neighborhood in noisy packs in search of pizza or tacos after the bars close.

Pagan’s death has everything to do, however, with the fact that hoodlums still exist in this city, they still carry illegal guns, and they still believe that violence is the only way to solve a problem. On top of this first homicide, there have been 90 reported felony assaults in the East Village this year. I was mugged earlier this year at knifepoint on 12th Street. Overall, crime in the neighborhood is up only slightly over last year, but it’s still a problem. If my cranky neighbors spent less time complaining about a few drunkards and more time devoting their efforts toward curbing violence, maybe some of this wouldn’t have happened.

Let me tell you a story. On a mild November night in 1990, a bouncer refused to let two patrons into a vibrant East Village nightclub without paying. Those two patrons went back to a car, grabbed a gun, and shot and killed the bouncer. That tragic and seemingly random incident set off increased community scrutiny of the club, and a string of other violent incidents at similar nightclubs elsewhere in the city during the 1990s led to this particular club’s demise.

That club was the Palladium. You know what’s there now? An NYU dorm and a chain supermarket.

Is that the future of Avenue A? I sure hope not.

So please, let’s all calm down, show some respect to Pagan’s family and friends, and stick to the issue at hand: a member of our community died at the hands of hoodlums that infiltrated our neighborhood. Let’s do everything we can to bring the perpetrators to justice and make sure it doesn’t happen again. It would be awful if the already tragic death of a beloved member of our community led to the death of East Village nightlife - the very industry Taz Pagan used to express himself and make part of his living.

Above, Google Map’s view of the East Village.

Observe:
- A briefly historical landmark that closed in 1971
- A neighborhood institution that closed in 2006 and reopened 20 blocks away
- A bar that opened in 2007 and has a habit of serving obnoxious underaged emo kids

Ironically, the one point of interest that’s still open is the least deserving of being a “point of interest.”

A sign of the times: business at your bar can’t possibly be all that good if you find the need to advertise in cabs.

At the end of last August, East Village institution David Bagels was forced out of their space on 1st between 13th and 14th by their greedy landlord, who preferred to rake in the dough with the generic and God-awful Hot & Crusty who leased the space a couple doors down on the corner of 14th and 1st. This left David Bagels with one location, about seven blocks north, which never seems as crowded on weekend mornings as this location did.

So, ten months later, what has moved into the old David Bagels space?

Nothing. The space has sat empty and motionless for nearly a year.

Serves their old landlord right. I’m sure their financial situation is much better with nothing there than a popular bagel shop that churned out the best everything bagels known to man.

I have not set foot into that Hot & Crusty since David’s closing, and I never will again. The people who ripped out a neighborhood institution in favor of an empty, rotting storefront don’t deserve anyone’s business.

I didn’t want to post this on a Monday, because it would make everyone utterly miserable.

So, uh, Happy Tuesday, everyone!

 
(Taken on the corner of 18th & Broadway)

There is a rash of these on a stretch of Chrystie Street and 2nd Avenue around Houston. The accuracy of its execution is much more pronounced at night, obviously, when throngs of Bridge-and-Tunnel trash traverse the East Village and Lower East Side and very much deserve being flipped off.

EASY WAYS TO FREAK ME OUT - Send me an e-mail while I’m out of the neighborhood with the subject line “EV on Fire.” Attach a series of pictures on Flickr that look vaguely like my building in low-resolution. Force me to frantically call my roommate to make sure it’s not our building that’s on fire. (Thanks, Mason!)

13th & 4th, 8:32am.

NYU isn’t a public institution. They don’t have to open their books and share you the details of their endowment, and they have every right to kick you out. They’ll just as easily find some other sucker willing to pay 200Gs for an NYU diploma.

Besides, if you can afford to go to NYU already, then a little increase in tuition is probably not going to kill you.

You’re not paying for it, anyway! Your rich parents are. Why aren’t they protesting with you? Oh, right. They’re out in the real world, trying to support your $50,000-a-year habit called “living in New York City without any income.”

You know, you could be like most logical people and move to New York after college. I know that comes with the burden of responsibility, but with a college diploma, there are people who will actually PAY YOU to live here! IMAGINE THAT! 

Some of the causes you’re fighting for are quite noble, but complaining about how expensive NYU is when you chose to go there isn’t going to get you any sympathy from me.

There are plenty of things that bother me about the Trader Joe’s on 14th Street, but one thing that boggles my mind are its hours of operation. It’s open from 9am-10pm. And every morning, by 8:55am, there is a throng of eager customers waiting to get in and beat the crowd.

 This is the 50+ (in both number and age) deep crowd that gathered outside the doors this morning. It’s too bad that most days, by the time this crowd is forming, I’m already at work. When people tell me that I should shop during “off hours” to avoid the crowds, almost all of these “off hours” are while I’m at work.

I just wonder why they have to open so late. Whole Foods is open at 8am, a block away. There are some grocery stores in this city that are open 24 hours a day (admittedly, I’d never ask that of Trader Joe’s - they need time to clean up from the tornado that rips through their store every day). We New Yorkers aren’t late risers. This isn’t Portland, Oregon! We’re not hippies! We have jobs!

There are very few Trader Joe’s that open at 8am across the nation. Most of them are in California and Arizona, where their stores close earlier (9pm). Their standard opening time is, it appears, 9am. I don’t quite know the reasoning behind this, but what works in other places doesn’t always work in New York (see also: building a store in Manhattan and being forced to reconfigure the store to add more checkouts within weeks of opening).

If there was any Trader Joe’s that would be ripe for extended hours, it would be one where people literally wait outside just to get in, like a private club. Come on, Trader Joe’s. You can get up an hour earlier! Wake up and smell the coffee. I know just where to get it, too: the sampling station!