Michelle Rick Good morning, East Village.
After The Local revealed yesterday that Neal Essex, the man accused of raping a woman on Eighth Street, had a lengthy jail record and history of mental illness, The Post now weighs in with more details. In 1991, years after bludgeoning his mother to death in 1984, he was found not guilty due to insanity, and spent time in mental institutions until he was released in 2005. The victim on Saturday was in her 60s.
DNAinfo reports that the police are on the lookout for a man who robbed an Upper East Side convenience store and then, an hour later, pulled a gun on an employee at a convenience store on First Avenue and Ninth Street.
ArtsBeat stops in to the Antifolk Festival at Sidewalk Café before it ends on Sunday. The “harder edge and social anger of some the early songwriters – Roger Manning, Brenda Kahn, Cindy Lee Berryhill – has given way to more angst and soul-searching,” and the atmosphere surrounding the scene has changed, since “the neighborhood’s gotten too expensive for starving artists and many of the musicians live out in Brooklyn these days.”
Speaking of artists in the neighborhood, The Providence Journal reminds us that comedic actor Jonah Hill, before going on to star in the new “Moneyball,” “began his career in Manhattan’s East Village, performing the one-scene plays he wrote.” The bar where he performed the skits? Black and White on East 10th Street, according to a TMZ bio.
Another actor who cut his teeth in the East Village, Eddie Redmayne, lived here while performing in “Red.” He tells …Ology, “I had this slightly wannabe bohemian existence and took up painting, at which I’m appalling. I also bought several guitars.”
The Root reviews a work-in-progress documentary, “Mr. Soul! Ellis Haizlip and the Birth of Black Power TV,” about the 1960s PBS show “Soul!” which featured live performances from the likes of Lee Morgan. Mr. Morgan was shot and killed by his common-law wife while playing on stage at a jazz club, Slugs, in the East Village.
Is this the neighborhood’s new De La Vega? Metro profiles an East Village and Lower East Side street tagger who goes by the name of Marcus Motion: “He writes his messages in Sharpie, chalk or even with masking tape on discarded mattresses, ironing boards and pieces of old cardboard.”
