Phillip Kalantzis Cope

Good morning, East Village.

As we offer you our daily greeting, we pause to ask how you’d greet a neighborhood Wal-Mart?

At Wednesday’s Community Board 3 meeting, Wal-Mart representatives expressed a wish to open up shop on the Lower East Side as part of an effort to stake its presence across Manhattan. DNAinfo reports that a coalition of groups opposed to the retailer called Walmart Free NYC asked the Economic Development Committee to vote against any future developments that could adversely affect small businesses.

But in a recent poll of New York City voters by Quinnipac University, 68 percent of respondents said that they’d shop at Wal-Mart. Would you? Let us know in the comments section below.

A vision of our community’s future is being offered through the weekend with the first Festival of Ideas for the New City, a collaborative project featuring downtown organizations with conferences and events, and a “Streetfest” along the Bowery.

The festival, which began Wednesday and carries on through Sunday, highlights the history of the Bowery with local voices, including Rob Hollander of the Lower East Side History Project, who’ll be giving a walking tour entitled “The Bowery: How It Got There and Where It’s Going,” beginning on Astor Place.

If you plan on going, you may want to bring along an umbrella: Today’s mix of clouds and sun will most likely give way to rain by Saturday.