Daniel Maurer Good morning, East Village.
As expected, “Boardwalk Empire” has started shooting inside of Mary Help of Christians Church. Above, at left: a man in 1920s attire checks his cell phone.
Anthony Planakis, the officer who was called to control that swarm of bees on the Bowery tells The Times he’s been quite busy lately. “Since mid-March, he said, he has tended to 31 jobs in the five boroughs, more than twice the number he handled last season, which is normally mid-April through July.”
The Times reports that Adrian Benape, the parks commissioner who “got his start as a teenager cleaning locker rooms at a city pool in the East Village and picking up litter in East River Park, and ended up overseeing the most ambitious program of building and refurbishing New York City’s parks since the era of Robert Moses,” is leaving the department.
Show Business Weekly reviews “The East Village Chronicles: Evening A,” a new series at the Metropolitan Playhouse that “showcases the grit and the glamour of this unique New York City neighborhood, spanning over hundreds of years from the Civil War Era to ‘some time soon.'” The review is favorable, though the characters in the CBGB play are “too large and too loud to be believable.”
Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York stops into Blue & Cream to check out its exhibit of Mars Bar photos and finds more than a little irony in all of it. “Blue & Cream has chosen to showcase one of Mars Bar’s last murals. The words “The East Village Is Dead” are drenched in blood and flanked by images of its killers. In this space, it feels like a victory flag.”
Old New York posts a photo of the Electric Circus nightclub on St. Marks Place in 1967.
Grub Street reports that the team behind Dell’Anima, Anfora, and L’Artusi will open L’Apicio at 11 East First Street, on a block that’s “a rather charmless one with new high-rise buildings (where Veselka Bowery landed) that frankly doesn’t feel all that East Village-y.”
Speaking of wine bars, Grub Street also notes that Terroir has kicked off its fifth annual summer of Reisling. It’s all Reisling, all the time on East 12th Street.
Gabrielle Hamilton, chef-owner of Prune, tells Serious Eats she enjoys her day-to-day life. “I’m pretty much in control of how I spend my day, and I like not having a routine. Today could be a cooking day, tomorrow’s a writing day, the day after that speaking at a cooking event, and the day after that staying home and actually knowing my children and seeing what they’re about.”
