Phillip Kalantzis-CopeGood morning, East Village. The FAB! Festival and the falling tree certainly weren’t the only things that happened over the weekend.
A spokesman for the police told City Room that approximately 80 people were arrested on Saturday as Wall Street protesters marched from Zuccotti Park to Union Square. According to the spokesman, police arrested “individuals who blocked vehicular and pedestrian traffic, but also for resisting arrest, obstructing governmental administration and, in one instance, for assault on a police officer.” A Metro section follow-up indicates that officers, in what a spokesman for the protesters calls “police brutality,” used pepper spray. The department says it was used once, “appropriately,” in the case of a woman who was trying to prevent the deployment of a mesh barrier on East 12th Street. NYU Local has footage of that incident, and City Room posted more videos from the protest.
The 14th Street Y is being transformed into an “energy-efficient wonderland,” reports NY1. Along with teaching younger members how to recycle and conserve, the organization plans go green with its building’s 1,900-square-foot roof, which would add to energy conservation by capturing storm runoff.
Across the pond (the Atlantic Ocean, not the East River), The Independent informs us that artist George Condo, who first made a name for himself in the burgeoning East Village art scene alongside Keith Haring and Jean Michel Basquiat, will be featured in two London exhibitions. You may know Condo’s work from his controversial album covers for Kanye West’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.”
Meanwhile regarding the current East Village art scene, The Morrison Gallery has left the Bowery, according to signage spotted by EV Grieve.
To celebrate the opening of UCBeast earlier this month, New York Magazine has published an oral history of the Upright Citizens Brigade. For examples of the troupe’s enduring cultural influence, see NBC’s Thursday night schedule.
EV Grieve posted several photos yesterday of an air conditioner that fell out of an apartment window on East Fifth Street and Second Avenue. No word yet as to whether the owners of the unit were disgruntled Jets fans.
