Scott Lynch East River Park

Good morning, East Village.

And congrats to the neighborhood’s own Tim “Eater X” Janus, who placed second in the Nathan’s Famous International Hot Dog Eating Contest, downing 52.25 dogs in 10 minutes. His roommate Crazy Legs Conti ate 20. Meanwhile at the Crif Dog Classic, Takeru Kobayashi downed 68.5 dogs, which would’ve edged out Joey Chestnut’s 68 had he been competing in the Coney Island contest.

The Daily News and The Lo-Down report that a police officer was shot during a confrontation in the Seward Houses. He was saved by his bulletproof vest and the suspect is at large.

The Daily News spotted Katie Holmes with daughters Suri at Sundaes and Cones on Tuesday.

Tablet contemplates the wave of gentrification that has surrounded the Jane’s Exchange thrift shop. “This neighborhood used to be pretty grungy,” says the store’s co-owner, Gayle Raskin. “But I sort of wish it could have stopped gentrifying about 10 years ago. People used to be depressed by the junkies, but I’m more depressed by all the shrieking girls in towering heels looking like they’re going to topple over. My children love this city, but I can’t imagine them living here as adults. That’s disheartening. The city was much more open to possibility years ago.”

Ravi DeRossi tells Diner’s Journal that the State Liquor Authority turned off the taps that dispense gin and tonics at his new bar, Gin Palace. “He said he believed that the liquor authority’s action was rooted in a Prohibition-era law that forbids a bar from taking alcohol from a bottle, pouring it into another and serving it. The rule was created to protect consumers against unscrupulous tavern keepers who might be adulterating their liquor.”

The Villager notes an upcoming town hall: “Borough President Scott Stringer will hold an East Village Town Hall Meeting on Tues., July 17, from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. at the Tompkins Square Library, 331 E. 10th St., between Avenues A and B.”

Gamma Blog notes the grand reopening of Key Foods on East Fourth Street: “they’ve really upgraded the store, and they now stock extensive organic produce etc. Congratulations to an old store willing to change with the times.”

Sara Jenkins is among a few chefs who tell City Room what they’d pack in a summer picnic. Spanish tortilla, she says, “was a classic of my mother’s. Living in an impoverished Madrid in the late 1960s, she cooked the classic: onions and boiled potatoes, just barely bound with beaten egg and fried in extra virgin olive oil.”

Looking to pack a book with that picnic? Blouin Art Info recommends “Fire in the Belly.” Cynthia Carr’s “magisterial” new biography of East Village artist David Wojnarowicz is “a compelling picture of a time in New York that has now completely vanished, when an existence devoted to art, on the margins, was still possible, and not necessarily something to be romanticized.”

Bowery Boogie attends the opening of “Our Ladies of Infamy and Grandeur,” an exhibit of gilded paintings by Graham Preston, and also has news about the artist who will be involved in the next cycle of the Centre-Fuge project, which kicks off July 12.