The Girl Scout troop serving girls in the city’s homeless shelters that captivated New Yorkers last year will be selling cookies again in Union Square this week.

Troop 6000 will hold its cookie sale at Kellogg’s NYC Cafe, where members had their successful inaugural sale last year. Long lines quickly formed as news spread about the troop, and the girls ended up selling 36,000 boxes.
This year, the troop has a goal of selling 60,000 boxes. The girls will be at the store from 1 to 6 p.m. on April 22 to April 26.

The troop started at a homeless shelter in Queens in 2017, but grew to include hundreds of girls at 15 shelters across the five boroughs, the city announced last year. The troop is led by women and mothers also living in homeless shelters and holds meetings every week at the participating shelters.

from Gothamist.com

The Metronome, the hulking piece of public art omnisciently keeping time in Union Square, has been an object of both fascination and derision for twenty years. The work is meant to be a rumination on time and rituals, and features a massive rock, a whirring digital clock that means wildly different things depending on who you ask, and a hand from Union Square’s own equestrian statue of George Washington that points to its history.

Yet something seems to be off about the Metronome. As a tipster pointed out to Gothamist, the steam that was supposed to emerge from the center of the piece hasn’t worked in ages, it doesn’t seem to have been maintained in a while, and even its website is defunct.

That might be because the Metronome wasn’t ever finished, as Kristin Jones, the artist who created the piece along with Andrew Ginzel, tells Gothamist. It was always meant to be more than be a “gaping hole,” “void,” or “smoldering anus,” as it’s been called before. Jones says that the “dismissive and inadequate” upkeep from The Related Companies (the real estate company that owns the property) means the Metronome has never looked, or kept time, as they intended it to.

According to Jones, the piece, a nod to European clocks’ different mechanisms for telling time, originally was going to emit steam twice daily (at noon and midnight) along with bursts of sound. It barely has, if ever. She also notes that in spite of “periodic upgrades” to the numeral display, the clock was “never correct in the first place,” especially because the artists never saw it before it went up and it never had the flexible software it needed.

Jones knows that people seem baffled about what the numbers represent: They don’t, say, represent the national debt or the time left until the Earth implodes, and it is indeed a clock meant to be read left to right. (The left half, at least, which displays the time since midnight. The right half, which shows the time remaining until midnight, should be read right to left.)

Curiously, the Metronome, steam and all, is prominently displayed on Related Rentals’ website, currently hawking one-bedroom apartments at the Union Square locale for a starting price north of $5,500 monthly rent. (“Live Luxuriously in a Work of Art,” it reads.) Related did not reply to Gothamist’s request for comment.

The Metronome came about when Related approached the Municipal Art Fund in 1995, as The New York Times reported, about what to do with the building’s wall space. Eventually Related and the Public Art Fund held a competition where artists submitted proposals for the wall. Kristin Jones and Andrew Ginzel ended up getting the commission, and in 1999 the Metronome first began ticking along at Union Square.

Since then, the artists say, they haven’t had input, or knowledge, as to how the artwork is being maintained, if at all. Jones says she’d personally rather see the Metronome be torn down instead of continue in its current state. “Since they don’t [correspond with us] I’m not interested in seeing the light bulb in the hole where there’s no steam,” Jones says. “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Stephen Ross, the billionaire developer and chairman of Related, is responsible for Hudson Yards’ Vessel, the wastebasket-like stairway to…somewhere that owns your photos. Ross hasn’t been shy about his distaste for the piece Related had a hand in creating at One Union Square South. “It was a disaster,” he told The New Yorker last year. “That thing where the smoke comes out? Whatever the hell it is.”

“Union Square South was and is a machine for enrichment, as is so much of real estate development today often without sincere civic vision,” Jones and Ginzel wrote in a statement. “Witness Hudson Yards. If Mr. Ross maintains ‘The Vessel’ as he has Metronome, pity the public who must contend.”

One of New York City’s top sushi chefs is back with her well-received omakase pop-up. Oona Tempest will revive Sushi by Bae next month — except this time it will be a permanent sushi counter in Union Square.

Sushi by Bae initially began as a sister pop-up to David Bouhadana’s proliferating Sushi by Bou back in 2017, and the idea is similar here. She’ll open a six-seat counter at 118 East 15th St., near Irving Place, on May 1, with a Sushi by Bou to open at the counter’s other six seats later in the month.

Sushi by Bae will follow a timed format, with a 90-minute, 15-course Edomae-style omakase, priced at $110. Diners can expect pieces of fish sourced from both Japan and the U.S. like a Japanese sea bream aged in kelp, cuttlefish, rosy seabass, and Hokkaido uni, though the menu will constantly evolve, Tempest says. Joshua Batista, who has worked with Sushi by Bae partner Simple Venue for a while, will lead the beverage program, which includes cocktails — an unusual element for omakase.

Tempest’s Sushi by Bae brand began as a pop-up inside Bouhadana’s Sushi by Bou within Meatpacking’s Gansevoort Market in 2017. Tempest, 26, was an apprentice of the late chef and respected NYC sushi master Toshio Oguma, working under him at acclaimed Upper East Side restaurant Tanoshi Sushi.

Though she’s most recently spent time at high-end, pricey sushi counters like Shoji at 69 Leonard Street and Sushi Ginza Onodera, she aims to keep things more casual at her own restaurant. She plans to follow Oguma’s philosophy in that it shouldn’t cost New Yorkers “an arm and a leg to have good sushi,” she says, one of the reasons she’s pricing the 15-course menu at $110 — to make it “more accessible.”

Sushi by Bae is located in the same space as sports bar Sidebar, though it has a separate entrance. It’ll be open from Tuesday to Saturday with three seatings per night, at 6 p.m., 7:30 p.m., and 9 p.m. Reservations are now open.

Demolition of the building which a PC Richard & Son store occupied at 124 E. 14th St. will begin immediately followed by construction of a 21-story, mixed-use office building that will house the new Union Square tech hub. Suffolk Construction will be the project’s general contractor.

RAL Development Services in a joint venture with Junius Real Estate Partners closed a $120 million construction loan from Bank OZK. Junius is a real estate investment unit of J.P. Morgan Private Bank, a division of J.P. Morgan Asset Management. Its focus is high yielding real estate equity and debt investments.

The developers also signed a 99-year ground lease with the New York City Economic Development Corporation. The New York Post reported the joint venture has agreed to the following arrangements: It made an up-front payment of $5 million and will not pay rent for the first three years during construction and lease-up. Afterwards the annual base rent will be $2.3 million for the first five years. The rent will then increase by 2% every year through the 30th year. Following this period, the rent will be subject to fair market resets. A spokesperson for RAL confirmed these financing terms with GlobeSt.com.

Last year, the city council approved the tech hub following New York City’s ULURP process. The steps were required to increase the as-of-right building height from 14 floors to 21 stories. 

For 25 years, RAL will lease six of the floors to the non-profit Civic Hall, which will create a digital training center, a tech incubator, co-working spaces, event spaces and an urban food hall. RAL will lease the top 14 floors of the 21-story building at market rate. According to the RFP issued by NYCEDC, the tech hub is expected to create over 500 jobs in Union Square.

Josh Wein, financial director of RAL, says, “In addition to the multitude of benefits this development provides for the City and its workforce, which have been designed to promote job creation and growth in the technology sector, we’ll be creating the finest modern office building in Midtown South.”

Community groups including the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (now named Village Preservation) advocated for neighborhood protections to accompany approval of the tech hub. They supported the educational and public goals of the project but protested its development without inclusion of rezoning for surrounding neighborhood streets. They requested limited heights for new developments, removal of current incentives for hotel and dorm development, and the inclusion of affordable housing with new construction for a limited area around the center.

The neighborhood organizations expressed they were concerned about an eventual destruction of the unique character the Village—starting with its now being referred to as Midtown South.

Rock venue Irving Plaza is set to go quiet this summer for an eight-month renovation. The 150-year-old venue hosts its last scheduled show for the year on June 30—headlined by tropical band Guaco—before shutting down for work that is scheduled to last until next spring.

Live Nation, the concert hall’s operator, announced the planned renovations this week along with the Polish Army Veterans Association, which has owned the building since 1948.

The 3,300-square-foot hall was converted from a Polish-American community center into a concert venue in 1978. Since then, Irving Plaza’s marquee has listed big-name artists including Bob Dylan, the Foo Fighters, Radiohead and the Talking Heads. Paul McCartney played a surprise show there to a capacity crowd of about 1,000 on Valentine’s Day in 2015.

But, as some Yelp reviews document, concertgoers have complained about the venue’s narrow interior and a layout that makes it difficult to buy a drink or use the restroom without missing segments of the show.

Live Nation is promising that the venue will reopen with a revamped lobby, new bars, a downstairs VIP lounge and a remodeled mezzanine with a new configuration for box seats. A Live Nation spokesman said four new bathrooms are on the way as well.

The northeast corner of University and 13th St., looking east, circa 1935. That’s the corner with the Basics hardware store. Fascinating!

Nom!, whatever that is, has signage up at University and 11th at the former site of Whitney Chemists. One can assume it will provide food of some sort, but no other details are available yet.

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

Boasting two floors, three studios (including a heated one), and over 100 workouts per week, the flagship location of Fithouse off Union Square  garnered the attention of over 500 new members in its opening weekend alone. Combined with the diversity of class types (barre, bounce, dance, HIIT, sculpt, and yoga) and instructors’ notoriously noteworthy energizing playlists, it’s the ultimate spot to sweat and be seen. Spread across 6,400 square feet, the one-stop shop also provides luxe showers, private changing areas, lockers equipped with charging stations, and a full refresh bar. Unlimited class memberships are $189/month.

From Gothamist.com:

Fragrant bricks of dark, heavily seeded rye. Marshmallow puffs studded with peanuts, a swirl of caramel hidden inside. Smorrebrod piled with bright, blackcurrant herring, or roasted chicken salad. Gooey cinnamon and chocolate “socials.” Hot rolls stuffed with ham and messy with eggs. Intensely chocolatey Truffle Logs. Ole and Steen, aka Lagkagehuset, a Danish bread and pastry shop which opened on Thursday in Union Square, wants to be your new everything bakery, a place to sit and enjoy a full meal, or grab a coffee and a treat (or a box of treats), or a loaf or three of bread. Given how exceptional everything I’ve eaten here over the past couple of days has been, it has a very good shot at doing just that.

Founded in 1991, in Copenhagen, by Ole Kristofferson and Steen Skallebaek, there are more than 90 of these in Denmark and the UK, but the Union Square flagship is the bakery’s first outpost in this country. It will not surprise you that, like its international-chain baked goods predecessors here (Breads, Le Pain Quotidian, Maison Kaiser), the company is planning on opening more shops in NYC, and already have two spaces leased and under construction in Midtown. But until then expect legions of homesick Danes, Brits, and anyone who appreciates first-rate sweets and carbs to descend upon this spot.

Most of the baking is done right here at the Union Square location—they prep the long-fermented dough at a commissary kitchen in Long Island City—but there’s still plenty of room left for seating for about 70, available at both the street level and in a large dining room/hang out spot downstairs. The real action, of course, is up front, with breads and pastries stacked high in the window looking out onto Broadway and at the long counter just inside the door. Even during the general mayhem of opening day, the young staff was speedy, efficient, and eager to answer the many questions thrown at them by Lagkagehuset newcomers.

The menu is long and appealing, but a few highlights from a couple of preview events these past few days include an insanely rich and delicious Peanut Pie, which is basically a chocolate covered brownie stuffed with peanuts and caramel; the dense and chewy loaves of Rugbrød, or Danish rye bread; the Chistianshavner, a fluffy fruit tart, available in small or large sizes, and featuring one of the best crusts—hazelnut with “cookie crumble”—you’ll ever eat; and the Marzipan Slice, which is actually more like a log, and will satisfy that very specific almond-cake craving like few other pastries in town.

In addition to the breakfast dishes (Skyr Yoghurt Pots, bowls of Porridge) and an array of sandwiches and salads, there’s also hot food such as Chicken Meatball Stew, Brandt Beef Soup, and Herb Roasted Salmon. Coffee, juices, beer, and wine provide liquid refreshment.

Ole and Steen: Lagkagehuset is located at 873 Broadway between 18th and 19th Streets and is open weekdays from 6:30 a.m. to 10 p.m., and on weekends from 7:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. (929-209-1020; oleandsteen.us)