Last night at Capitale, Tyra Banks presided over a “Flawsome Ball” benefiting the TZone, her leadership development center in the forthcoming new location of the Lower Eastside Girls Club.
Asked if she would give Mitt Romney binders full of TZone women should he be elected, the supermodel laughed. “I almost Tweeted about the new season of ‘Top Model’ being full of binders of men and women,” she said. The election was also on the mind of Rosario Dawson, who said she was helping the Obama campaign sign up minority voters. Read more…
After almost a month of using makeshift classrooms in buildings around the city, East Side Community High School and Girls Prep Middle School received more bad news this week: construction on their evacuated East 12th Street building is now slated to last into February.
In a letter to parents, Kathleen Grimm, Deputy Chancellor of the Department of Education, said that repair of the building’s east side, where on Sept. 24 a wall was found to have separated from the structure, would involve the basement-to-roof construction of a new masonry-and-steel wall. “This work will take several months to complete,” said Ms. Grimm. The new plan is to move the schools back into the building during their February break, after which the building’s brick facade will continue to be rebuilt off-hours. Read more…
Self-styled as a “multimedia one-man feat,” Darian Dauchan’s “Obamatry” opens up a dialogue between America and its president through speech, video, and music. Oftentimes it is difficult to gauge who exactly is speaking through Mr. Dauchan; the spoken word artist channels Obama as skillfully as he does the diverse people of America, exploring the hope, disappointment, trust, and fear which we’ve felt sometimes simultaneously these past four years.
Grounded in spoken word, the piece contains plenty of impressive rhapsodizing embellished with alliteration and peppered with humor. These are the moments when Mr. Dauchan reaches, along with the audience, a near ecstasy, not explaining but illustrating what it feels like to be black in America, to be let down by one’s leaders, or simply to be American. Fans of Mr Dauchan will see previous material (such as the poem in the video below) worked into this polyphonic framework. Read more…
For every East Village business that’s opening or closing, dozens are quietly making it. Here’s one of them: Otto’s Shrunken Head.
Otto’s Shrunken Head turns 10 today, and tomorrow the punk-rock tiki bar and live music venue will celebrate with an overflowing scorpion bowl of bands, DJs, and raucous revelry. The decade hasn’t been all sugar: partners Steve Pang, Nell Mellon and Patricia Lou have survived everything from a devastating fire to rising property taxes. “We came out of the worst year ever for us with that fire and now seeing that we were able to make it to ten years, I feel confident that we will be here a while,” said Mr. Pang. “We are beginning to make our mark on the city.” We grabbed a few words with Mr. Pang to chat about Otto’s’ journey toward becoming an institution, in a city that has lost many of them.
Q.
You’re at ten years; how would you say business is doing?
A.
We are doing well. This is our best year yet. Even when it’s slow we tend to have a nice crowd always at the bar. Summer is always a slow time for bars in general, and now that summer is over we’re really busy again. Fall to after Christmas is our busiest time. Read more…
A teaser video for the “Mad Supper” installation at Ideal Glass.
FRIDAY, OCT. 19 “Ghosts of New York Tour: Peter Stuyvesant And His Ghostly Neighbors Of The East Village”
During this tour of some of the neighborhood’s spooky sites, the tour guide will perform as a downtown denizen from the past, such as Edgar Allen Poe, Mark Twain and Washington Irving. 7 p.m., tour begins at St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery, 131 East 10th Street at Second Avenue, (718) 591-4741, ghostsofny.com/calendar/; $25.
SATURDAY, OCT. 20 “Halloween Haunting: Phantom Pub Crawl of the East Village Starring Harry Houdini”
Join the search for Harry Houdini, Edgar Allan Poe, Jonathan Swift and other ghosts known for their fondness for the drink, at some of their favorite drinking spots. The tour meets in front of the lion sculpture in front of St. Mark’s Church-in-the-Bowery, northwest corner of Tenth Street and Second Avenue. 6:30 p.m. $25 by credit card online; $30 in person if space is available. Read more…
Taureau isn’t the only recently closed restaurant making a comeback: I Coppi, which closed in September, will reopen in the former home of Vampire Freaks, under a new name, I Cipressi.
“I just wanted to make a change, to start new and fresh,” Lorella Innocenti, the restaurant’s owner, said of the new monicker.
While the name may have changed, the menu will remain largely the same, with the possible addition of a few new Tuscan dishes. “I am going to keep the dishes that I know people want, and once in a while put in new dishes and specials,” said Ms. Innocenti. Read more…
Croissanteria, the café and bakery whose owner David Simon we spoke to last month, will open tomorrow at 7 a.m. Mr. Simon’s partner in the venture is Selmo Ribeiro, 31, who also owns a burger joint in Lagos, Portugal.
As you can see from the menus below, the café will offer a variety of croissants, mini croissants, and croissant sandwiches – plus a loyalty program in which every tenth coffee is free, with funds from the tenth coffee going to a neighborhood charity. The tiled space is decorated with a large wall clock from an antique shop on East Ninth Street and benches with red cushions from a synagogue.
A little over a week after musicians sang out against the “Purple People Eater” at a benefit show, a “Purple Monster” will take to the streets during a march (complete with marching band!) against N.Y.U.’s expansion plan. The organizer of the protest – All in the Red, a group advocating debt-free education for all – has released a series of posters that play up the whole Godzilla thing.
If you want to see the guy in a Barney costume Purple Monster for yourself, the march will start at 1 p.m. Saturday (the school’s Alumni Day), at Washington Square Park’s Garibaldi Plaza. In the meantime, watch our video to hear Andrew Berman of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation (which has endorsed the march along with Save WSV Sasaki Garden Committee and other groups) discuss his concerns about N.Y.U. 2031’s effect on green space in Greenwich Village, and in particular the already memorialized Sasaki Garden.
N.Y.P.D.The suspect in a Sept. 20 punch-and- grab.
Last Tuesday’s gunpoint robbery wasn’t just an isolated occurrence. The early-morning incident in which three men in bandanas held up a woman at gunpoint was part of an emerging pattern, said Deputy Inspector John Cappelmann at a meeting of the Ninth Precinct Community Council last night.
The robbery on East 12th Street, between First Avenue and Avenue A, followed a similar incident two days earlier, on Sunday, Oct. 7. The earlier victim, also robbed at gunpoint by three men, didn’t report it until Tuesday morning, according to the precinct’s commanding officer.
Deputy Inspector Cappelmann assured meeting attendees that police are investigating and a dedicated patrol force would be in the area on Friday and Saturday. Read more…
Annie FairmanAida Salgado (front, center) lit candles with friends and family in rememberance of her late son.
At a memorial service Sunday, Aida Salgado recalled the early morning, on Oct. 16, that her son was shot in the courtyard of the Campos Plaza housing development, and the year that has followed. “My world came crashing down, and I was engulfed in a wrenching pain that only can be felt by another parent who has lost a child,” she told friends and family members gathered at Firemen’s Memorial Garden on Eighth Street.
Stephanie Federico, who wore a t-shirt depicting Donovan “Keith” Salgado, said she had expected the 17-year-old’s tragic death to put a damper on youth violence in the neighborhood. “People felt as though maybe it was gonna be over after he passed,” she told the gathering of about a couple dozen people. “But a lot of things didn’t end. It actually made things a lot worse.”
Another attendee left little doubt about the matter: Maizie Arroyo, a longtime resident of the East Village who recently moved to the Bronx, said that on the subway ride to the memorial, a group of young men tried to “jump” one of her teenage companions because he was wearing a laminated photo of Mr. Salgado around his neck. Read more…
Theatre in Asylum’s piece “Revolution in 1” opens with the “Cast of Revolutionaries” turning in place on the tiny stage. Rest assured, this is not just a ham-fisted leftist play, but a smart, oftentimes funny look at historical revolution through a hybrid of drama, performance art, and dance.
The work’s major strength is its restlessness – the six women on stage embody historical views which constantly collide: The democrat is dismissed by the oligarch, who is one-upped by the aristocrat, who is questioned by the plutocrat, and they are all repressed by the dictator. And this cycle continues. The cast is cautious not to let their own politics show strongly, often poking fun at both sides of a conflict; a farce of the first presidential debate regressing into a thumb-wrestling match is a particularly sobering view of absurdity.
In presenting revolutionary figures, the piece sometimes swings away from neutrality, but one can hardly fault the writers for sympathizing with the jailed members of Pussy Riot, or with the pepper-spray victims at UC Davis. Using extensive quotation and minimal props, these reenactments echo the portrayal of events in the media eerily, and, calling upon the collective memory of the audience, tap into the fundamental power of theater; the sterile, distanced view of TV news has no place here. Read more…
Pat Ivers and Emily Armstrong continue sorting through their archives of punk-era concert footage as it’s digitized for the Downtown Collection at N.Y.U.’s Fales Library.
Pylon’s debut album.
A few years ago, a woman took her 14-year-old daughter to a Sleater/Kinney concert. After the show, a band member approached the mom and breathlessly asked, “Are you Vanessa from Pylon? We love you!” Score one for the parental unit.
Pylon is the greatest group from the new wave scene that you probably never heard of. When Rolling Stone saluted R.E.M. as the best band in America in 1987, their drummer Bill Berry disagreed. “We’re not the best rock ‘n roll band in America.” He thought Pylon was.
In 1978, they were four art students from Athens, Georgia, a southern college town where bands like the B-52s were establishing a beachhead for alternative rock. Lead singer Vanessa Briscoe Hay recalls that their path to forming a band was “as unlikely as it seemed preordained.” Guitarist Randall Bewley and bass player Michael Lachowski began writing music and practicing in a studio. Their penchant for playing the same riff over and over earned the attention of their exasperated upstairs neighbor, Curtis Crowe, who finally knocked on their door and offered to be their drummer. Read more…
Last night the folks behind Maharlika opened Jeepney, just a handful of blocks up from its sister establishment.
Unlike Maharlika, which serves up relatively standard fare, Jeepney is a Filipino “gastropub,” meaning “a place to hang out with friends, get great comfort food, and have a couple of brews,” said co-owner Nicole Ponseca. So what’s comfort food here? Think meatloaf and kamote (a sweet potato common in the Philippines); a Chori burger with the Pinoy sausage, longanisa; and a unique version of the renowned noodle dish, pansit, that includes oysters, shrimp, calamari, pork, and fried pork rinds.
The large, “family-style” dishes, which are meant to be shared, showcase the Filipino flavors of sweet, sour, and especially salty: the Jeprox salad consists of seasonal greens that are tossed in fermented shrimp paste and topped with crispy fish bones. “This dish is salt on salt, but I think people don’t understand that in the Philippines salt is more than a condiment – it’s the star attraction,” Ms. Ponseca said.
You’ll even find saltiness in the drinks: one cocktail infuses beer with the flavor of bitter melon. Read more…
Dana VarinskyScott Stinger and Daniel Squadron add new plants.
At the official opening of Robert E. Simon Complex’s rooftop garden today, fifth-grader Julia Cannizzo pointed to two small lettuce plants and introduced them as Bob and Bruce Lee. “It’s really exciting to see the baby plants grow because they look so optimistic,” she said.
Borough President Scott Stringer, State Senator Daniel Squadron and Councilwoman Rosie Mendez – who all contributed funds to the four-year, million-dollar project – led today’s ribbon cutting, joining students and teachers of the Earth School, P.S. 64, and Tompkins Square Park School, which share the East Fifth Street building.
Ms. Mendez told The Local that the garden was a natural continuation of the neighborhood’s history. “Before community gardens were popular, this community, with all the devastation here, went into these lots and they cleared the debris and the rubble and made community gardens. So this feels like an extension of that vision.”’ Read more…
A couple of family-run joints are new to the neighborhood. First, Elsewhere Espresso, the coffee shop owned by three siblings, opened this morning, as you can see from the balloons at right. It’ll be open 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., seven days a week.
Just a block north, Tink’s Restaurant, which we first told you about in January, will finally open next Thursday. It, too, is a family affair, as Isabella Aqel will run the spot with the help of four sisters, a brother, and her parents.
“If I didn’t have them, there’s no way I’d be able to do this,” Ms. Aqel, 25, told The Local today at the restaurant on East Seventh Street, where her twin, Sophia, her brother Alex, 23, and her 52-year-old mom, Jenny, who runs a family sheet-metal business in East Harlem with her husband, were helping put some finishing touches on the place. She hopes her restaurant will be “a sit-down place you can bring your boyfriend or girlfriend, a romantic, date spot.” Read more…
In the month since Pouring Ribbons opened, owners Joaquin Simo, Jason Cott, Troy Sidle, and Toby Maloney have been stirring up more than cocktails: they’ve been waging a friendly(?) Twitter war with “the boys” over at the neighborhood’s other recently opened cocktail spot, Evelyn Drinkery. It all seems to have started when Evelyn Drinkery asked whether Pouring Ribbons was a sewing club, and quickly devolved into accusations involving armpit hair, man purses, phosphate drinks and Taylor Swift. Oh, those crazy cocktalians!
Anyway, after all the back and forth (which you can read for yourself below), we just had to stop into Pouring Ribbons and see what the place was all about (sorry, Evelyn Drinkery, but Mr. Simo, formerly of Death & Co., is the American Bartender of the Year). Despite all the tomfoolery on Twitter, they take their cocktails pretty seriously, as you can see in our video above. Read more…
After selling macarons wholesale for three years, Christina Ha and her husband Simon Tung opened the first brick-and-mortar location of Macaron Parlour earlier this afternoon.
The shop offers classic varieties of the French confectionery, like pistachio and lemon, plus unconventional flavors (e.g. honey and cognac), some of which were inspired by junk food. “We really want to stick to things that her and I grew up with, ” Mr. Tung said, citing a s’mores macaron as well as a bacon one with maple cream cheese filling. The store also offers cookies, croissants, and other goodies.
The shop’s story is as sweet as its baked goods. The owners, who got married in April, met at a Halloween party in 2009: she was dressed as Lady Gaga and he, along with his friends, went as a nerd. “She picked me out of all the nerds,” Mr. Tung said proudly.
Ms. Ha attended pastry school at the Institute of Culinary Education and Mr. Tung also worked in the food industry, so they decided to go into business together. Read more…
To promote the Bike-Friendly Business District, Veselka is giving out complimentary carbs to cyclists. The pierogi promotion goes till 7 p.m., so get to peddling.
On the heels of last week’s rededication ceremony, The Public Theater unveiled two new amenities this week. At an event last night, the “Shakespeare Machine,” a sort of high-tech LED chandelier, made its formal debut. The installation – created by artist Ben Rubin and statistician Mark Hansen, who collaborated on a similar work in the New York Times building – pays tribute to the Bard’s works by parsing up his language and displaying it in found patterns.
Watch the above video to see the machine in action and hear more about how it works.
And below, have a look at The Library, the lounge that Andrew Carmellini’s team, along with the folks at Joe’s Pub, have installed on the Public Theater’s new mezzanine. The books and trinkets on the shelves were picked by designer David Rockwell in collaboration with The Public’s archivists. For more, including the menu, refer back to last week’s post.
The Local was a journalistic collaboration designed to reflect the richness of the East Village, report on its issues and concerns, give voice to its people and create a space for our neighbors to tell stories about themselves. It was operated by the students and faculty of the Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute at New York University, in collaboration with The New York Times, which provides supervision to ensure that the blog remains impartial, reporting-based, thorough and rooted in Times standards. Read more »
Jonathan Krohn Tyra Banks
