Phillip Kalantzis-Cope

Good morning, East Village.

The Lower East Side Preservation Initiative tips us off to an event, “Germany in America: Kleindeutschland and New York City’s Lower East Side,” that will include an illustrated talk by Dr. Richard Haberstroh, a genealogist, about the East Village’s Little Germany, which was once the third-largest population of Germans in the world. It’s tomorrow from 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. at the Neighborhood Preservation Center at 232 East 11th Street, between Second and Third Avenues. E-mail LESPI-nyc.org or call (212) 477-9869 to make a free reservation.

The folks at Horse Trade Theater tell us that some productions from Frigid New York festival – “Fear Factor: Canine Edition,” “Little Lady,” “The Terrible Manpain of Umbertto MacDougal,” “The Rope in Your Hands,” “Missed Connections,” “Coosje,” and “Rabbit Island” – have been held over and Frigid Hangovers will run March 5 to 10 at The Kraine Theater. Tickets can be purchased online here.

Speaking of the Frigid festival, East Village Arts hears from Tim Murphy of “Blind to Happiness,” which “aims to leave the audience questioning their own perceptions and derivations of happiness.”

The discussion about teacher evaluations continues over at SchoolBook. The Local pointed to that site’s teacher data from East Village schools yesterday.

The Real Deal reports that legal squabbles still surround 169 Bowery, where an arts collective was given the boot after it couldn’t make the rent. The building is currently being converted to residential use.

According to the Financial Times, Gabrielle Hamilton, the chef-owner of Prune, is “toying with the idea of a shop selling ready-to-cook foods.” She’s also writing a cookbook, to follow up the memoir that three people on the same subway car were recently spotted reading.

Godlis writes about his photograph of Television at First Avenue and Ninth Street: “People have asked me quite often over the years about the location of this photo – even people who live in that neighborhood. And I am sometimes stumped myself, because there was still an outdoor fruit and vegetable stand on that corner for many years. And all those quirky little stores – Curtain shops, button shops – are now restaurants.”

EV Grieve noticed that a small fire broke out in a van on East Second Street between Avenues A and B.

The Times reports that Wallace Shawn and André Gregory, the creators of “My Dinner With André” and “Vanya on 42nd Street,” will debut their net film at the Pen and Brush, an East Village art club: “Their next project will be a filmed version of Ibsen’s ‘Master Builder,’ adapted by Mr. Shawn and directed for the screen by Jonathan Demme.”

Phillip Kalantzis-Cope, a photographer whose street scenes appear on The Local regularly (that’s his photo up there!), speaks with Bangstyle: “Most of my NYC photos are of the East Village. I find the East Village to be a difficult place to take photos. Difficult because our visual world is saturated with images of these blocks. Thus, you can feel trapped in a cliché – a cliché based in an idealized past, or a gentrified dystopian vision of what is to come. Nevertheless, I love to photograph the East Village to participate in this negotiation.”

Another chronicler of the neighborhood, Richard Kostelanetz, tells the Forward he’s moving to Bushwick and recalls the time when “a decrepit synagogue over near Avenue C” tried to reorganize for artists: “I remember an opening where many prominent East Village people showed up, all of them, including gentiles, wearing baseball caps, as Steve Reich does, as our preferred kippah. However, I never again heard from the fellow organizing it, a television director named Zebra Davis.”

Ariel Palitz, the owner of Sutra who also sits on Community Board 3, tells Blackbook more about why she’s trying to sell the club. She also talks about how the East Village has changed: “Aside from the obvious gentrification that pushed out the diversity of large ethnic families and artists and musicians – and, yes, even a few drug dealers and prostitutes – what has changed the most is the great neighborhood feeling it used to have.”