Zappos to Bring Brick and Mortar Shoe Store to Union Square

Here’s what’s on display in the park:

Miranda July is a fiction writer (No One Belongs Here More Than You), a filmmaker (Me and You and Everyone We Know), a performance artist (Things We Don’t Understand and Are Definitely Not Going to Talk About), and an occasional sculptress. It’s that latter designation that’s the focus of a new public art installation, the comparatively terse “Eleven Heavy Things,” organized by Deitch Projects, which opened late last week in New York’s Union Square Park. (The installation will remain in the park through October 3rd.) The sculptures, many of which revolve around a line of text written in July’s own hand, prod the viewer into audience interaction. “What I look like when I’m lying,” reads one, a white tablet through which the viewer can stick his head. A trio of pedestals — labeled ‘The Guilty One,’ ‘The Guiltier One,’ and ‘The Guiltiest One’ — asks participants to gauge (and flaunt) their general culpability. Three of the sculptures are wordless “headdresses,” decorative sculptures that July compares to the dialogue-free stretches of a movie: “The shapes are those parts of this piece.”

The City Streets store on the street level of our building is set to close up shop. What will come next?

Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York has a look back at the old Union Square Theater, which once stood on the site of the big (former) Virgin store building on 14th St. Interesting!

Eater reports:

The 40-year-old icon Gotham Bar and Grill has shuttered again — this time for good. Earlier this year, it was the victim of a cyberattack in which it lost $45,000. “The restaurant could not claw back from the theft,” owner Cassandra Csencsitz said of the decision not to reopen. “The goal was to go back to our investors to reopen this fall, and time just kept going by until it became clear we could not reopen this fall or for the holidays. It is over,” she told writer Andrea Strong. This is the second permanent shutter since 2020, with Gotham closing permanently the first round in 2020 — after 36 years — before reopening in 2021. In 2019, Victoria Blamey took over the kitchen from longtime chef Alfred Portale. Chef Ron Paprocki, a former Gotham pastry chef, most recently led the kitchen.

Reminder: the co-op’s annual meeting takes place on Monday, January 30, at 7PM at the International Seafarer’s House, 123 East 15th St. second floor (take the stairs to the right of the entrance for easiest access).

Next week (June 11 to June 15), Mechanical equipment deliveries and work on them will continue at the 17th and 18th floor levels. The superstructure concrete work will be completed on the building buy the end of the month. Deliveries for the internal systems of the building have been ongoing and will continue, although they should not greatly affect the flow of pedestrian and road traffic.

The following week (June 18 to June 22), we will be working on the machine room levels on the 17th and 18th floors. Deliveries for the internal systems of the building have been ongoing and will continue, although they should not greatly affect the flow of pedestrian and road traffic. The crane on site will be demobilized and removed from site at the end of June.

This weekend the site will be open on Saturday, June 9th for superstructure related activities between the work hours of 7AM and 5PM as permitted by the City. To control noise levels within the site, work activities will be limited to the placement of formwork and concrete, plumbing and electrical work, rebar for concrete placement, using the crane and equipment to support all activities. Safety horns are used, and required by law, to coordinate lifting with the crane and to alert the workers of the danger overhead. We have directed the operators to limit the use of horns to one short sounding and to use the crane later in the day .