Michelle Rick

Good morning, East Village.

The Wall Street Journal thinks Alphabet City has gone from being a “a no man’s land” to “a kind of Epcot version of the city’s coolness.” The president of DSA Realty says, “We’re seeing a lot more young women come to the neighborhood, I’d say a 70/30 split,” with new residents working in fashion, tech and media.

The co-owner of D.L. Cerney, who plans to close the 28-year-old boutique to focus on her art and writing, has noticed the changes in Alphabet City: “Back in the 1980s and into the 90s,” Linda St. John tells Jeremiah’s Vanishing NY, “this whole neighborhood was just filled with creative people. Now, nobody’s left. The way Rudy cleaned up the neighborhood was awesome, but now it’s too clean. When did those French bistros end up on Avenue D?”

According to The Times, The Stone is celebrating the centennial of composer John Cage’s birth with a “Cage100 festival” that kicked off Tuesday. “The Stone is a proudly humble space,” Anthony Tommasini writes of the venue, “just a black room with chairs for at most 50 and a big whirring air-conditioner that has to be turned off during concerts, even when the humidity is as thick as it was on Tuesday night.”

The Post discovers that Eastern Bloc will hold a fundraiser for Obama this Saturday that “will feature go-go boys grinding on a stripper pole and a host committee including former New York Ranger Sean Avery and Jack White’s ex Karen Elson.”

The Post also hears that the Standard East Village will launch an “underground pop-up club,” open for just 22 nights with tastemaker Andre Saraiva as host. Chez André will be “an intimate raw space with a ‘live karaoke band.'”

With Fall approaching, Gamma Blog get serious about a plan to identify and map the trees of Tompkins Square Park.

The Times recommends a new show at The Hole: the first New York show highlighting the work of a California-based animator. “An exceptionally imaginative satirist, Eric Yahnker skewers a variety of usual and not-so-usual suspects from politics and entertainment in drawings great and small.”

DNA Info profiles the Rebecca Marrin fashion line sold at Grey Era Vintage. “Formichella, a fashion graduate from Savannah College of Art and Design, then takes over by attaching each stud and sewing each jacket or shirt back together by hand in her East Village apartment. Whether it is dyed, reconstructed or studded, each piece can take her days.”

Porsena’s new Extra Bar joins Calliope in Grub Street’s Restaurant Power Rankings.

According to a flyer, the Educational Alliance Art School is holding a $25 pottery workshop on Sept. 13 and 19, 6 p.m. to 8:30 p.m., 331 East 12th Street. They’re also offering an oil painting class on the same days and same location, $10.

And a reminder: the Iron Chef event at the Tompkins Square Greenmarket is Sunday.