East Villagers are beside themselves in anticipation of the event that almost rivals the Halloween Dog Parade: Santa Con!
To help get you into the Santa spirit, here is a picture from last year's SantaCon, outside the beloved The 13th Step, on Second Avenue:
East Villagers SantaConners.
If you want to be a SantaConner (not to be confused with Sarah Connor), you still have time to purchase your Santa costume at such local, beloved boutiques as Party City!
This truckload of trees was being delivered yesterday, outside the public housing project on Avenue C:
Truckload of trees.
Here is a tree mover preparing to move a tree:
Preparing to move a tree.
There was no fanfare for this delivery — no clowns or jugglers — just down-to-earth tree planting, the way it was meant to be… in the East Village Today!
I was walking up First Avenue this morning, when I saw an altercation occurring across the street from me, at the intersection of East 9th Street. Lucky thing I had my video camera with me!
For the past three years, since the days following Hurricane Sandy, East Villagers have grown accustomed to the sight of these two trucks, which house the Emergency Heating Units that have been used to provide heat to the public housing project on the corner of Avenue C and East 6th Street:
Emergency Heating Units.
It looks like their days are finally numbered! This sign was recently erected behind the fence that protects the children's playground:
East Villagers love to speed headlong into the future, but sometimes they like to stop and reminisce.
That seems to be happening more frequently for one person, who has taken to scrawling 30-year-old slogans on lampposts and newspaper boxes:
Newspaper box.
…and hanging up signs that used to be hung up in the mid-1980s, like these that I saw this morning, on Avenue C and East 5th Street:
Mid-1980s signs.
Here is a horizontal close-up:
Horizontal close-up.
If you're wondering, it's no easier to read in person!
Here's a vertical close-up:
Vertical close-up.
The signs and the inverted martini glass with the line through the spilling contents were those of a band called Missing Foundation. You can find their songs on YouTube!
East Villagers know that change is cyclical — these cycles do not come back exactly to where they started; they don't make a perfect circle. Instead, change is evolutionary, moving in a spiral. Which is to say that it is not 1985 any more, and no one will respond to calls to mug yuppies, or not act "civilized".
