Abe Lincoln’s Jr.’s sidewalk art; Artist Alley at Extra Place.Scott Lynch

Three months after Occupy Wall Street started to take hold, in part after a planning meeting in Tompkins Square Park, the N.Y.P.D. began clearing Zuccotti Park of protesters and their property around 1 a.m. this morning. The Times reports that 70 protesters, some of whom had chained themselves together, were arrested for defying orders to leave the park. Gothamist had updates throughout the night, and linked to an Observer report that Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez was arrested (according to the press secretary of Councilman Jumaane Williams, he was bleeding when he was taken away). The Post reported that at least one police officer was injured: “He was seen being taken out of Zuccotti Park on a stretcher, his eyes closed and with several lacerations on his face.”

Mayor Bloomberg explained in a statement that he and the park’s owner, Brookfield Properties, felt the encampment was “coming to pose a health and fire safety hazard to the protestors and to the surrounding community.” His complete statement is reprinted on City Room, which also posted a photo of Zuccotti Park at 7:22 a.m., completely cleared of protesters. 

Late last night, news trucks were still parked outside of the First Avenue apartment where an attempted rape occurred Sunday morning. The victim, a 27-year-old fashion firm employee, tells The Post what she did after her attacker put his hands on her in the stairwell of her building: “As soon as I felt that, I spun around kicking and screaming. I had lots of adrenaline, so I was pretty aggressive.”

According to the Lo-Down, officers of the Lower East Side’s Seventh Precinct recently followed a man carrying a nine-milimeter gun into the East Village, where he was arrested on East Fourth Street.

City Room reports that Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver was sporting “bruises on his face and a set of stitches under one of his eyebrows” after hitting a pothole and being tossed from his bike last week.

“The Bowery is losing its soul one building at a time,” writes Bowery Boogie, noting that 140 Bowery, the two-story brick building that houses Lighting Library and Classic Lighting, has lost two distinctive dormers from its roof. Elsewhere on the avenue, EV Grieve notices that 7-Eleven is hiring.

Ephemeral New York pays homage to Stanley’s, a bygone bar on the corner of 12th Street and Avenue B that in 1965 was described in a guide book as “the granddaddy of the East Village ‘in’ bars.”

In a video, NY1 highlights the sisig, “a traditional Filipino dish that uses unusual pig parts,” at Maharlika on First Avenue. “When the dish arrives at your table, it’s sizzling, popping, and cracking,” says Liza de Guia.

An ex-East Villager tells Curbed why he moved from a former S.R.O. on First Street to an apartment three blocks from Central Park: “The tipping point came when I yelled at a junkie shooting up on my stoop.  He freaked and I ran.  I looked back; he stood in the middle of the street, too high to chase me.”