Bowery Boogie | A Lower East Side Chronicle

Grub Street is reporting that a new Hester Street Fair is coming to the empty dead-end park space at Essex Street.  It will be a seasonal flea market of sorts, running between the hours of 10 am and 6 pm on Saturdays and Sundays.

Yesterday was the culmination of Chinese Lunar New Year festivities, with the annual parade marching through the streets of the Lower East Side.  The weather was perfect for the occasion, warm without a cloud in the sky.  There were, however, plenty of NYPD choppers buzzing overhead.

Yesterday was the first day of the Chinese Lunar New Year, the year of the tiger.  Thousands gathered in the tight quarters of Sara D. Roosevelt Park (basketball court in the functioning half of Hester Street Playground) to kick off the celebration with a bang.  Indeed, it was the annual New Year’s Day Firecracker Ceremony, a [...]

In the eight-month eternity since work first began on a new Hester Street Playground, this section of Sara D. Roosevelt Park has been through some hell.  The big CATS and their earth-moving friends were brought in and summarily surrounded by chain-link fences.  And then came the destruction of the kitchy plaza seating and uprooting of [...]

Walking south down the Bowery these days, you may notice a not-so-subtle change in the skyline.  Indeed, at the corner of Hester Street, the Wyndham Garden Hotel is slowly rearing its concrete head above the low-rise surroundings.  Out of character. Out of context. Out of control.