Gloria Chung

Good morning, East Village.

Some East Village institutions may be closing down, but now people are starting to notice the complete disappearance of others: The Times reports that the traveling wanderers, known to locals as ‘crusties,’ who typically take up residence in Tompkins Square Park in the summer, have yet to be seen. One local blogger attributes the lack of crusties to the amount of summonses that they received last year.

As we told you yesterday, a group of East Villagers were among those who gathered in Albany to fight for the continuation of rent control laws. After a good deal of back-and-forth in the state Senate, the rent control laws have been extended into 2019, though without some provisions that advocates hoped will safeguard housing for some of the neediest groups.

The questioned continuation of the M15 Select Bus Service along First and Second Avenues will be the hot topic at tonight’s Community Board 3 meeting. The $60 million service was launched in October and one city councilmember expressed disapproval of the ticket machines.

A surprise six-month sweep of restaurants by the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene resulted in tickets for 704 restaurants that were not properly displaying their hygiene letter grade placards. Restaurants that do not display their grades in a “clearly visible place” can be stuck with a $1,000 tab.

DNAinfo did a review of the city’s bike lanes and the East Village came up as an area with very few blockages by cars. Police cars were cited as some of the most common offenders.