The Day | 7,500-Pound Molecule in Union Square, and 11 Other Morning Reads

Malcolm D. MacDougal III: Microscopic Landscape, in Union SquareScott Lynch

Good morning, East Village.

Above, Scott Lynch got a shot of Malcolm D. MacDougall III’s “Microscopic Landscape 2010,” a 24-foot long, 7,500-pound sculpture that “finds its inspiration in the multi-faceted structures and activities seen on the molecular level,” according to a press release. It will be on display in Union Square’s Triangle Park through January 2013.

The folks at the CBGB Festival send word that they’ve finalized the lineup for their summer festival, and tickets for film screenings go on sale Monday. Among the 300 bands playing are Agnostic Front, Fishbone, Superchunk, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, JD Samson & MEN, MXPX, Reggie Watts, The Dirty Pearls, LA Guns, David Johansen, Guided By Voices, Pains Of Being Pure at Heart, Cloud Nothings, War on Drugs, The Virgins, D Generation, and The Cro-Mags. More info here.

DNA Info reports that at a heavily protested meeting at Cooper Union yesterday, the city’s Rent Guidelines Board voted to increase rents by 2 percent or $20 (whichever is higher) for one-year leases and 4 percent or $40 (whichever is higher) for two-year leases. The Post points out that the increases were the lowest in a decade.

At the sentencing of Oscar Fuller, who punched her into a coma during a dispute about a 14th Street parking space, Lana Rosas says, “the only thing I want to do is spit in this dude’s face, which I’m not going to do,” according to The Post.

According to Velvet Roper, Philip Glass’s piano malfunctioned during his concert at Battery Park, which was attended by some 5,000 people despite the heat.

And how did some people deal with the weather yesterday? By hitting the Russian and Turkish baths, of course! “Once you go outside in the 90-degree heat, it feels like nothing,” the sauna’s manager tells The Post.

According to the Daily News, more people are getting hit by subways: “Trains slammed into 66 people between January and May — a 10 percent increase over the same period last year, according to MTA statistics. Nearly 150 people were struck by subway trains last year, a 15 percent jump over 2010.”

AFC busts out some serious snark while visiting a handful of Lower East Side gallery shows. For example: “There’s 30 artists in this show and a whole lot of it deals with the commercialized female figure, plastic flowers, and barbie dolls. I think I thought that’s what feminism was about when I was, I dunno, 14?”

The Times notes that Kate Edmunson will be at Joe’s Pub on Tuesday. The Austin, Tex. artist “has a honeyed, light-gauge, faintly crinkly singing voice, an instrument of self-containment and reflection.”

Just below Houston, the News profiles a handful of people who live or work in NoLIta, a neighborhood that’s “sophisticated, fashionable, and a bastion of serenity at the crossroads of urban chaos.” A bearded, Ray Bans-wearing gentleman in “experiental marketing” [sic] says, “I have meetings at Café Gitane all the time and I get my coffee here. I ride my bike to work.”

The Times ventures into Yoppari, a sushi den in a repurposed railroad apartment on the Lower East Side: “It feels illicit, to be hovering here on the crumbly stoop of a Lower East Side tenement. Press the buzzer, and a voice, garbled, exacts your name. The doorknob clicks, and you blink a moment in the bright foyer, until a pocket door skids open and a figure in black, behind a curtain of ropes, beckons.”

Grub Street notes that Russ & Daughters will host its annual new-catch Holland herring pairing at Astor Center on June 26. “Each herring dish — prepared by guest chef Chikara Sono — will be paired with a cocktail.”