Gabbi Lewin

The sign read, “Free advice from Francisco: Relationships, Sex & Dating.”

Spotted at the foot of the East Village near Astor Place, Francisco Ramirez sits face-to-face with anyone who wants to take a seat. For three years, Ramirez has been offering advice on relationships, sex and dating for no charge (no donations are accepted either). He views this opportunity as an innovative method to provide a public service to a diverse audience—including sexual partners, individuals and the homeless. He told me that this is his opportunity in life to connect with people. He offers everyone the same educated responses on how to stay healthy as those who would often pay high prices might receive.

With a Master in Public Health, concentrating in sexuality & health from Columbia University, he provides well-researched information. This community-based educator doesn’t stay in one place either, offering his free services every weekend, whether it is in Washington Square Park or Union Square. Ramirez is also a global consultant for HIV and sexual health at the United Nations and a contributor to MTV’s “Staying Alive” campaign, continuing his 15-year dedication to the education of public and sexual health issues.

It is becoming more and more rare these days to find anyone with as many credentials as he has offering his time and expertise free. Find out where Francisco will be next, or write to him at his website. Better still, just stumble across him on the streets when you have something on your mind.

Rachel OhmJanette Brown holds a copy of the letter she and six other residents sent to the state Attorney General in an effort to fight against the purchase of 390 East Eighth Street, a low-income housing building, by Tower Brokerage.

Carlos Baez has been a resident of 390 East Eighth Street for over 30 years. Rachel Ohm

For 36 years Carlos Baez, 63, has called 390 East Eighth Street home. The two bedroom apartment that he shares with his niece on the first floor of the building holds his large collection of VCR tapes, which includes every Whoopi Goldberg and Charles Bronson movie ever made. Because he used to be the super of the building, Baez’s apartment is bigger than most and is conveniently located on the first floor, the perfect spot because his 14-year-old dog, Little, has arthritis and can barely walk up stairs.

And yet he’s thinking of moving.

On Feb. 25, 390 East Eighth Street, a dedicated low-income housing building, was sold to Tower Brokerage, an East Village real estate developer with plans to put in market-rate apartments.

The HDFC, the tenant-owned and operated corporation that currently owns the building, finally conceded to the sale seeing no way out from a financial debt that accumulated during the years the building was being run by a non-profit called Interfaith Adopt-a-Building.

The building “owes the city about $1.2 million in water bills and taxes,” said Robert Perl, president of Tower Brokerage. “This sale is the only way to pay the city funds.”
Read more…

Phillip Kalantzis Cope

Good morning, East Village.

EV Grieve reports that renovations continue on St. Brigid’s Church on East Eighth Street and Avenue B after workers put new scaffolding up last week. Repairs to the landmark church began in 2009 after a mysterious donor saved the historic church from demolition. Read more about it here, here and here.

While one church gets a facelift, another one celebrates its 165th anniversary on Broadway.

Meanwhile, Grieve also points us to residents at 97 East Seventh Street, who are hoping for a miracle of their own after having gone 17 days without gas for cooking, though word is that management will have the problem fixed by today.

In other news, a man who punched a woman and nearly killed her over an East Village parking spot apologized yesterday after being charged with second-degree assault, DNAInfo reports.  Read more about what sparked the feud here.

Yesterday marked the beginning of National Procrastination Week. It’s only fitting that you start celebrating today. Or tomorrow, for that matter.

And it’s another beautiful day in the East Village, with sunny skies and temperatures expected to reach a high of 46 degrees.

Dayna Clark

Last week, we shared the story of how parents at Girls Prep Middle School are upset at the abrupt dismissal of the school’s principal, Kimberly Morcate.

The post struck a chord with many readers.

Cary Abrams questioned the school’s poor performance on recent standardized tests, commenting:

“The fact that a school is able to drop from the 82nd to the 13th percentile in a year is highly circumspect, more indicative of the unreliability of the evaluation process than other factors.”

Vilma wondered about the reasons behind Ms. Morcate’s dismissal; the board of directors declined to comment on the basis of their decision:

“I believe the Board that decided to fire Ms. Morcate did the wrong thing and they KNOW it and as much as they want to ADMIT it and bring her back, they will do no such thing. I just hope the girls do well on their tests this year and if they don’t then it will be FURTHER PROOF of the firing of Ms. Morcate with no reason at all.”

Maria A. noted how much affection students at the school felt for Ms. Morcate:

“Ms. Morcate is an incomparable, and irreplacable principal and it’s a shame that we lost a person who has a heart filled with love for all our girls. (Ms. Morcate, we love you and you don’t know how much Katie misses you. She prays and she cries for you. We wish you good luck and a lot of hugs, Thanks for your dedication and for sharing your knowledge with all of us.)”

Join the conversation: Should the board have been more transparent about the reasons behind Ms. Morcate’s dismissal?

Michelle Rick

If you had to identify one defining feature of life in Manhattan, it just might be pedestrianism. There are places where calling someone or something “pedestrian” is an insult; this isn’t one of them. Here, “pedestrian” is an identity to share and be proud of. It does occasionally need defending.

Only a minority of us have cars, but every New Yorker walks and lives near things worth walking to (no matter how often we also take taxis or Zipcars or anything else). Our street grid, formed by the 1811 Commissioners’ Plan, predates the automotive invasion of American space by nearly a century. We’re the pre-automotive Americans, by design and by history as well as by inclination. And if factors like climate change, oil shortages, energy costs, Middle Eastern warfare, and rising awareness of what cars do to human bodies all suggest that the automotive era won’t last forever, we’re ready for post-automotive life, too.

On the East Side, the human/vehicular competition is particularly intense, and with the tire tracks on people’s backs to prove it, a coalition of community groups led by the nonprofit group Transportation Alternatives (along with the East Village Community Coalition, East Harlem Preservation, Civitas, Upper Green Side, and others) has developed an East Side Action Plan to define goals for the improvement of street safety involving multiple city agencies. The East Side, particularly the East Village, is a logical place for this: the area from Chinatown up to East Harlem accounts for only 8 percent of the city’s population but 22 percent of its pedestrian commuters, 13 percent of its bike commuters – and 11 percent of its “fatal and injurious” crashes.
Read more…

Michelle Rick

Good morning, East Village.

Last week, we reported on a mysterious writer who was posting mystery pages of a manuscript on lampposts and mailboxes all over the East Village. Since then, it seems more undercover authors have chosen to take the self-publishing routes. EVGrieve spotted pictures of new pages that have popped up throughout the neighborhood, including a piece of fiction titled “The Two Little Canker Sores.” Have you seen any more?

What goes better with cupcakes than, say, burritos? EVGrieve reports that Cowgirl Cupcakes, a completely vegan restaurant that specializes in both, opened its doors on East 10th Street between First Avenue and Avenue A.

And if you’re still hungry after all that, Nearsay.com offers up suggestions on where to grab a quick bite in the East Village for under $10.

The Times reports that the building housing A Gathering of Tribes, an art gallery and salon on East Third Street between Avenues C and D, is up for sale at a listing price of $2.9 million.

In other news, the Department of Education will hold a final public hearing tonight to get feedback on plans to expand the Girls Prep Charter School to a new location.

Sick of rain? Today’s weather offers us some relief from yesterday’s showers. Expect sunny skies and a high of 45.

Adrian Fussell on following his camera around the city.

“A lot of people exclusively shoot at dawn and dusk because of the lighting. I always try to carry my camera when the sun goes down. Winter skies are some of the most beautiful, and with the reflection on Trump Soho and the lighting behind the silhouettes downtown, it looked like there were two suns. “
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This week’s Street Style features menswear including sporty jackets and accessories and vibrant colors and patterns (neon in winter?) that we expect to see more of this spring.

Classics like a vintage backpack, straw fedora and tailored jackets are always in style, as are clothes that fit well and reflect personality — whether that be in a hairstyle, handmade jewelry or clothing that is so well made it has lasted years and still fits.

Street Style hits the pavement with some locals to find that in the East Village the average man on the street is anything but.

NYU Journalism’s Rachel Ohm and Claire Glass report.

Rachel Ohm Dancers rehearse for this weekend’s continuation of “Body Madness” at Danspace in St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery.

As a warm-up, Mariangela Lopez instructs her dancers to walk across the hardwood floor of St. Mark’s Church without music. They begin slowly and as they progress to the opposite end of the room their movements become more pronounced. They stretch and contort their bodies, reaching to the sky and crawling on the floor, moving around and with each other.

When the music finally comes on, they are scattered to different parts of St. Mark’s. One dancer is in the upstairs vestibule, another in the risers on the side, and some are on the floor.

They are preparing for their next performance with the Danspace Project, a contemporary dance studio that has been performing in St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery since 1974, in a space that is also home to poetry and theater projects while still being a practicing Episcopal Church.

Last year Danspace executive director Judy Hussie-Taylor started the Choreographic Center Without Walls, an effort to bring dance curators, choreographers and artists together for a series of performances she calls “platforms”. One year later and the project has become an important part of what Danspace is all about.
Read more…

Phoenix Eisenberg

Graffiti is an iconic form of artistic rebellion, whose epicenter has long been New York City.

With activities ranging from boxcar tagging to anarchistic promotion, the graffiti artist has a persona associated with intrigue and deviousness. But why the fascination with graffiti as a fine art in the last few years? Do popular graffiti artists today such as Banksy, Judith Supine, Shepard Fairey, and Dan Witz still portray rebellion?

Antonio Garcia, better known as “Chico,” started his career of spray-painting illegally, but soon found a new way to use his talents. Seeing the plain walls and brick that covered the Lower East Side, Chico saw a market. Today it is difficult to walk a block without seeing his commissioned work, whether it is a memorial or a small ad for a veterinarian business. Although Chico’s work is arguably just as skilled and creative as some of the greatest artists in the field, he has not drawn as much interest as Banksy or Shepard Fairey. Perhaps this is because, in jumping on the legal and marketable side of the art form, he risks losing the exact quality that draws so many to graffiti – the thrill of the illicit.

Greg Howard A candle burns in a makeshift alcove where Grace Farrell died Feb. 20.

Twelve days ago, the frozen body of my childhood friend Grace Farrell was found on a few sheets of cardboard in an alcove at St. Brigid’s Catholic Church on Avenue B in the East Village. It was a tragic end to a sad and troubled life.

Mary Grace Farrell came into my life when she was barely seven years old and I was 16. I grew up in Saint Vincent’s, a children’s home run by the Daughters of Charity in Drogheda, Ireland, and it was there that Grace spent three relatively happy years.

Grace was a beautiful and engaging child with a bright, sunny disposition. She was warm and affectionate and full of fun. She smiled often and loved to laugh, deeply. In many respects she was a normal child, though her early years were anything but.

Being born to a young, unmarried couple in 1970’s Ireland would make for a difficult life. Grace’s mother, realizing this, faced a Solomon’s choice of sorts. She could keep her baby and face that lonely and uncertain road together or she could give her up for adoption in the hope of a better chance. She bravely chose the latter path.
Read more…

Adrian Fussell

Good morning, East Village.

We begin with a report from a bit south of our neighborhood.  A fire broke out Thursday night at 202 Mott Street on the fourth floor of an apartment building. Bowery Boogie was on the scene, and noted that ash and debris were falling from the building.  NYU Journalism’s Adrian Fussell, was there as well, and photographed the scene. DNAinfo reported that a 75-year-old woman was taken to New York Downtown Hospital with first degree burns to her head. Two firefighters also sustained unspecified injuries.

In other news, EV Grieve reports that Phil Hartman is returning to 34 Avenue A after Mr. Hartman and his brother Jesse closed Mo Pitkin’s House of Satisfaction in 2007.  EV Grieve notes that Mr. Hartman’s name is listed as the contact on the recently posted Community Board 3 flyer outside 34 Avenue A. The flyer states that Mr. Hartman plans to open up a restaurant, bar and performance space venue, similar to Mo Pitkin’s.

EV Grieve was also given a tip this morning that “30 Rock” is filming scenes inside Lucky Cheng’s on First Avenue today.  If any one happens to pass by today, send us your photos or tweet them to @nytlev.

As for the weather, it’s going to be partly cloudy out today with a high of 42 degrees.

Kathryn Kattalia The Local joins a search for the pages of a novel by an anonymous author that have been affixed to street lights, newspapers distribution boxes and elsewhere. Above, The 11th page of a mystery manuscript hangs on a lamppost on East 11th Street between First and Second Avenues.

I found page six.

Staring at a ripped, weathered and barely legible piece of paper haphazardly taped to the side of a graffiti-covered ATM machine, I let the weight of my victory sink in. Like a treasure hunter unearthing a coveted chest of gold, I had discovered what everyone else wanted to find. There on East Sixth Street, barely visible from the sidewalk, was the elusive page six.

Like almost every other blog in the neighborhood, The Local has been on a literary goose chase, tracking down pages of a mystery manuscript that someone has plastered to lampposts, mailboxes, streetlights and garbage cans throughout the neighborhood. At the bottom of each page, readers are told where they can find the next installment of the story, apparently titled “Holy Crap.”

Earlier this week, the New York Post reported finding pages 7 and 8 on lampposts in the neighborhood, as did fellow blogger EVGrieve. No one had located pages one through six. Always up for a good mystery, I decided to scour the neighborhood myself, choosing to start where the others left off. My goal was to try to find what no one else had.
Read more…

Dayna Clark Some parents at Girls Prep Middle School are upset at the abrupt dismissal of the school’s principal last month.

After the abrupt dismissal last month of the principal at Girls Prep middle school, a group of parents have begun mobilizing a campaign for her re-instatement.

The school’s board of directors voted last month to remove the principal, Kimberly Morcate, after the school’s scores on the city-wide progress report fell from the 82nd percentile to the 13th percentile.

Board members did not say that Ms. Morcate’s dismissal was linked to progress report scores.

“We will not discuss the circumstances surrounding Ms. Morcate’s termination out of respect to her,” one board member, Eric Grannis, said at an emotional board meeting Tuesday night.

Nevertheless, many parents said that they were upset about the move and the potential disruption to the school’s students because it was made in the middle of the school year. Ms. Morcate’s last day at the school was Feb. 18.

“You rocked our world and we want some answers,” one parent, Harley Sanchez, 27, told the board at Tuesday’s meeting. She has a 10-year-old daughter at Girls Prep, a charter school, which is now temporarily housed on Astor Place.

Ms. Sanchez and other parents have started to circulate an online petition on behalf of Ms. Morcate, who was very popular among parents. The petition says, “This termination came with no explanation or consideration of the negative impact that this would have on the Girls Prep family.”
Read more…

Abraham Lincoln, in a portrait by Matthew Brady taken only hours before his famous Cooper Union address, given 151 years ago last week. Insert: a contemporary view of Cooper Union, from an engraving in Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper, 1883.

Tim MilkThe Great Hall today.

It’s a common trope around these parts, and a friend of mine says it all the time. “Huh? What? I mean, come on, I don’t know about that.” It’s almost palpable as you cross from Broadway west to east, this game of contention.

Socially, politically, it’s been a longstanding history, going back to the 1850’s, when the urbanity of lower Manhattan began to seep like an aroma into the enclave we now call “The East Village.” But more than that, it was almost as if a lens had been held up to catch the lunar rays, and send them down here, right here, a place like nowhere else, where skeptics and firebrands, bohemians and bon vivants converge to strike their poses. One might wonder where all this contention had its start, yet I believe it was never more apparent than when Abraham Lincoln came here to speak.

On Feb. 22, 1860, on the eve of the great Civil War and before his nomination as Presidential candidate seemed possible, Lincoln boarded a train that drew him some 1,800 miles eastward, all six feet five inches of him, folded like a jackknife into a second-class seat. He had a speaking engagement scheduled in New York, and that alone was worth the trip. Originally, he was set to speak in Brooklyn, but a change of venue brought the affair to Cooper Union, a recently established learning center designed to draw thinkers and dreamers to an area that had become, well, just a bit slummy.

Our “Prairie Orator” arrived in New York on Feb. 26, dressed in a brand new suit. It was, however, criss-crossed with razor-sharp creases, having come all the way from Illinois in a very small handbag. He looked grotesque, one man said, as he shambled along, exhausted and rumpled, in the cruelest new shoes known to mankind. Once he had booked a room downtown for the night, he sat up late, refining his speech.
Read more…

jdx

Last week, we brought you a photo essay by jdx, a community contributor to The Local. His images seemed to resonate with many of The Local’s readers, who offered a range of reactions about the images and jdx’s commentary on the East Village, its past and its future.

“In a neighborhood that is progressively morphing to costly glass and sheetrock,” jdx wrote of an accompanying image of First Houses. “Someday these untouchable buildings might be the only trace of an East Village that has any sense of its own history.”

Those sentiments struck a chord with many readers.

Pauline Zubin wrote:

“not only are the pictures interesting and worth several looks. the description of each one was informative,
so often we walk by these very things and not take notice. i want to thank the photographer for making them beyond noticeable.

Guillermo added:

“These are very inspirational, poetic, and neolithic. We want more!!!”

Phil Vale said:

“The photographer has found angles that restore the allure of a dangerous, artistic and inspirational East Village, where people gathered to see cokeheads, not Cakeshops, and the most exciting thing on the street wasn’t a new food van. Poverty and violence mingled with music and sex while the wealthy, protected and curious went slumming for an experience. We get another glimpse of that here.”

Join the conversation: What does the work evoke for you?

James Metalarc, 37, is a street musician who has been performing in New York City since 2006. For the past six months he’s been a regular at the Astor Place subway station, entertaining commuters with the reincarnated sounds and stylings of the late Jimi Hendrix. He prefers the term street musician to busker and sees his performances less as an act than an extension of his lifestyle as an artist. To him music is an act of worship.

“The Rejimi Experience,” came about after Mr. Metalarc took stock of the resemblance between himself and the iconic rock star. He had been playing reggae at the time, and was not getting much attention from his audience. He could barely strum a guitar.

He learned Hendrix by ear and it didn’t take long for people to respond.

“Hendrix changed everything for me, it gave my act a whole new structure people could relate to,” Mr. Metalarc said.

Michelle Rick

Good morning, East Village.

It’s Christmas in March! At least for the cast and crew of DirectTV’s “Damages,” who were filming at Moonstruck Diner on East Fifth Street and Second Avenue yesterday. Thanks to Jason Samuels of NYU Journalism for sending us this photo via Twitter earlier in the day. EV Grieve also has some nice photos of the set, but no sign of “Damages” star, Glenn Close.

Wholesome Foods, a gourmet deli, on Avenue C is now open for business, after the Mini-Market, or “Cobra” Market as locals called it, closed in January. Meanwhile, Death & Co., a bar on East Sixth Street, was temporarily closed last night due to a delay with its liquor license renewal, EV Grieve reports.  Death & Co. will be back open tonight. We reported yesterday how some bar owners are unhappy with the liquor license reform in the East Village.

As for the weather, it’s a little colder today than yesterday, with a high of 35 degrees, so don’t be deceived by the sunny skies on your way out.