Scott Lynch Good morning, East Village.
The Daily News reports that Michael McManus, a.k.a. the White-Glove Bandit, was arrested near Tompkins Square Park yesterday afternoon. The F.B.I. believes he’s the man who robbed the HSBC branch at Broadway and East Ninth Street on Monday, along with three other banks.
Dwyane Wade wasn’t spotted at Tompkins Square Park on Sunday, despite the Post’s report that the NBA star played a game of pick-up basketball with some kids there (The Observer points out that he was at Thompson Street Playground in SoHo). But another celeb was spotted in the East Village: Rachel Weisz checked out a $8.5 million townhouse at 238 East Fourth Street, between Avenues A and B. The Post calls the townhouse “gorgeous” — you be the judge!
Speaking of which, Real Estate Weekly reminds us that it’s harder to score an East Village apartment than some people think. One group is having trouble finding a true four-bedroom for $5,500 a month, and their broker “recently convinced another college student, who was bent on living by herself in the East Village on a budget of $1,700 a month, to search for cheaper apartments on the Upper East Side.” Ouch.
The Lo-Down has the rather dramatic story of a woman who couldn’t leave her apartment for work and had to be cherry-picked from her fourth-floor window by the fire department because a landing of the building’s staircase had been removed – without a construction permit, it turned out. The city slapped a stop-work order on the building, which is owned by Ben Shaoul.
East Village Arts puts in a plug for “Chloroform Dreams,” a play at the Red Room that “takes a poetic protagonist, a dame named Daphne, and a seedy underworld adventure, and presents it to the audience through an eclectic and fantastical lens. The result is a theatrical experience unlike like any other.”
Ephemeral New York points out that Elizabeth Jennings, a black schoolteacher, became the “Rosa Parks of Manhattan streetcars” when she refused to wait for a “colored”-only streetcar in 1854. She sued and won $250 in damages. The incident happened at Sixth Street and the Bowery.
The St. Mark’s Bookshop tells Vanishing New York that a cash mob there was a success: “”The store was bustling. I wasn’t sure what the results were until I got a chance to go over Sunday’s receipts. In the hour between 1:00 and 2:00 p.m. we did about $1,250 dollars worth of business, which is at least three times what we would normally do at that time.”
Paper notes that May Anderson, a model and the assistant director of The Hole, is on the cover of Playboy this month and will be signing copies today at the Bowery gallery.
Remember the bike racks we told you would be installed on the street outside of the Mudspot back in February? Well, they were installed yesterday.
EV Grieve also noticed a “For Rent” sign going up at the recently vacated Kate’s Joint. We won’t bother spreading the rumors that are already circulating about the space.
Fork in the Road notes that on Friday starting at 4:20 p.m., the Stoner’s Delight sandwich at JoeDough will be just $4.20.
