Art in Odd Places is underway on 14th Street: earlier this week we ran Scott Lynch’s photo of Marie Christine Katz, who is inviting the public to join her as she walks and knits. She’s just one of many artists and performers livening up 14th Street now through Oct. 15. The Local took its own walk down the boulevard, with a camera in lieu of knitting needles, and encountered poet Michael Howley, among others. Watch the above video to hear him read and to see some more guerilla art from the festival.

If you care to hear more from Mr. Howley, watch a second video in which he tells us why he’s reading poetry on the street, to be overheard by passersby. “We’re all just walking by, we’re just passing through this life,” he said. “And 14th Street is life.”

Daniel Maurer Half of the neighborhood’s Subways.

Back when we took stock of all the East Village’s chain stores, we discovered that Subway was the most ubiquitous chain in the neighborhood, with eight locations.

Make that seven – at least, for now.

The sliver of a location at 227 First Avenue, between 13th and 14th Streets, was closed today, with UPS delivery notices from last week affixed to the shutter.

We placed a call to the store’s next-door neighbor, Gabay’s, and a man who identified himself as the sub-landlord of the Subway space, who did not want to give his name, said the franchisee closed the store for “personal reasons.” He added, “All I know is that they’re looking for another franchisee.”

Of course, there’s another Subway just six blocks down First Avenue. We also like Russo’s for sandwiches.

Suzanne Rozdeba Margaret Hearn in her East Village apartment.

Margaret Hearn has given up the $747-a-month Gramercy pad she was holding on to as security, while continuing to fight for her $291-a-month, rent-controlled three-bedroom on East 12th Street.

“I don’t want to be there, it’s not home to me,” Ms. Hearn said of the 300-square-foot alcove studio in Gramercy that she has kept for 20 years. She said it was a financial burden to pay for both apartments, and that “nasty comments” from those who read about her living situation persuaded her not to renew her lease, which expires Oct. 31.

Last month, she told The Local she was fighting to keep her East Village apartment because she believes she is the rightful heir to the two sisters who in 2008, she said, asked her to share it with them.

“Win or lose, this is my home. Not because I feel entitled to it, or that I earned it, or anything like that. This is where I’m connected because of my relationship to the ladies. They were my family, and the neighborhood is my family,” she said yesterday.  Read more…

Daniel Maurer

Allow us to sprinkle a few nuggets (nibs?) of information on you, fro-yo fiends: the Red Mango that came to Stuyvesant Town last month (the first in the area since the St. Marks store closed a couple of years ago) will celebrate its grand opening next Thursday by doling out free small frozen yogurts. They’ll also give away merch such as t-shirts to the first 100 customers, from 7 p.m. to 11 p.m.

Elsewhere in self-serve land, EV Grieve notices that Only U, a colorful fro-yo joint that opened in July, has already closed. Read more…

Suzanne Rozdeba

The Valley National Bank on Fourth Avenue was held up around 12:30 p.m. today.

A man thought to be around 50 years of age, wearing a jean jacket and with grey-blonde hair, walked into the bank at 111 Fourth Avenue, near 12th Street, and left with an unknown amount of money, according to one of the responding officers, Alan Tagliamonti. “The suspect fled immediately,” he said. Investigators were still trying to determine the amount stolen when The Local arrived on the scene around 1:30 p.m.

After celebrating its fifth anniversary last week and the creation of an East Village/Lower East Side Historic District yesterday, the Lower East Side Preservation Initiative is already looking to the future (via the past, of course). The group wants to see the East 10th Street Historic, created in January, extended to other buildings around Tompkins Square Park.

Richard Moses, the organization’s president, said the L.E.S.P.I. is currently surveying buildings from St. Marks Place/Eighth Street to 12th Street, in the blocks on either side of the park, to determine which of them should be part of a proposal that will be submitted to the Landmarks Preservation Committee. The protected area, which would likely be called the Tompkins Square Historic District, would include Avenue B alongside the park, as well as the park itself. Read more…

L.P.C. The original (left) and final (right) historic districts.

Daniel Maurer 112-116 First Avenue

Six addresses originally slated to be part of the East Village/Lower East Side Historic District were ultimately excluded from the protected zone.

Elisabeth de Bourbon, a spokesperson for the Landmarks Preservation Commission, said that 343 and 403 East Sixth Street as well as 92 East Seventh Street and 112-116 First Avenue were left out because “they don’t have a style, unlike all the other buildings in the district which do have a style such as Italianate, Queen Anne, and Romanesque revival.” Read more…

A woman was robbed at gunpoint early this morning.

Chilling screams were heard near East 12th Street and Avenue A around 3 a.m.

The commanding officer of the Ninth Precinct, Deputy Inspector John Cappelmann, confirmed that a woman was held up at gunpoint by three men.

Though neighbors were awakened to a cry of “rape,” no formal allegations of sexual assault were made, said Deputy Inspector Cappelmann. The victim was sobbing as she told officers who responded to the incident, “I have nothing; he took everything.” She was unable to give a detailed description of her attackers, according to the commanding officer. No arrests have been made in the case.

N.Y.P.D.

The police are seeking to question Joshua Nunez, 21, in connection with a fatal shooting that occurred Saturday night outside of a Lower East Side barber shop.

NoLIta resident Charles Fernandez was attacked outside of the Jose Beauty Salon and Barber Shop at 110 Forsyth Street, around 9:30 p.m. Saturday night. He was shot in the torso and taken by private means to Bellevue Hospital, where he was pronounced dead on arrival.

The shooting was just one of several weekend incidents in the area. In addition to an alleged rape in Tompkins Square Park and a fatal slashing near Union Square, a man was stabbed Saturday night in the subway station at West 14th Street and Seventh Avenue, according to Gothamist. The 28-year-old victim was in stable condition after the attack, per the Post.

Daniel Maurer

Just in time for the 50-degree weather(!), Il Buco Alimentari & Vineria has scored a dozen outdoor seats. You can now enjoy the hefty porchetta sandwich right on Great Jones Street. The sidewalk café will remain open for lunch and dinner as weather permits.

By the way, Il Buco A & V also has a loft space you probably didn’t know about, and this week it’ll be put to use as Renato Brancaleoni presents a series of dinners showcasing his handcrafted cheeses.

Suzanne RozdebaFrom left: Yurij, Gregory and Larissa at Elsewhere Espresso.

Earlier today, Gregory Bohdanowycz, 33, his sister, Larissa, 30, and their younger brother Yurij, 27, put the finishing touches on Elsewhere Espresso, the coffee shop they’ll open on East Sixth Street later this week.

Mr. Bohdanowycz described the project as a “work in progress,” explaining with a laugh, “There’s probably a lot of baggage from just being brothers and sisters for so long.” On the other hand, the siblings don’t pay rent, because their family owns the building. “Once we get going, we’ll be paying rent by the year’s end. But I don’t think we’ll get kicked out,” he quipped.

Ms. Bohdanowycz said she wanted locals to think of Elsewhere as “a neighborhood place,” so the shop will offer free WiFi with coffee purchases as well as tables and chairs made from the refurbished space’s original floor beams. Read more…

Last month’s story about an East Village resident fighting for a $291-a-month rent-controlled apartment sparked many a comment: one reader insisted that Margaret Hearn was “abusing a system meant for New Yorkers who earn modest livings to be able to continue to live in the city”; another posited that she had “earned her right to keep [her apartment] and belongs to a community.”

Perhaps the most notable comment, from a group called NYC Renters’ Alliance for Housing Choice, argued that “we need to reform the rent laws to make them more market-rate tenant friendly.” While local groups like Good Old Lower East Side and the Cooper Square Committee fight for the rights of low-income tenants, it’s not often we encounter a staunch advocate for market-rate tenants. (Though there have been notable cases.) So we decided to speak to the group’s founder, Gregory Bronner, 36, a Harlem resident and life-long New Yorker who thinks rent regulations should be phased out, with moderate subsidies given to the “truly needy.”

What was the idea behind starting this group?

In landlord-tenant issues, you realize there are stakeholders who don’t have a voice, and they are predominantly market-rate tenants. We are mostly market-rate tenants, stakeholders who got priced out of New York and have to move to the suburbs, people who got divorced and had to move out, and some landlords. We started last year and so far we’re just on Facebook, with 105 members. Read more…

Joann Pan

Locals craving East Village Thai’s finger rolls, peanut sauce-drenched chicken satae sticks and the pad thai dish that The Daily News recently declared one of the “best of New York” will have to go elsewhere for now.

The gates of the hole-in-the-wall takeout joint between Second and Third Avenues were down during lunchtime today: a note indicated that a gas shut-off had forced it to close until “the problem is resolved.”

We’ve reached out to Jakobson Properties, the landlord of 32 East Seventh Street, for more information.

Michael Jones New York Red Bulls

The police have released new video of the man they say stabbed 25-year-old Michael Jones to death near Union Square early Sunday morning.

The Times reports that detectives are reviewing surveillance footage that shows Mr. Jones walking down West 14th Street with his attacker shortly before he was stabbed in the neck and torso (his ear was also cut off). According to The Post, he had been bar-hopping earlier in the evening, and called his girlfriend around 4:17 a.m., shortly before the assault.

Mr. Jones – a Liverpool native, per the Daily News – was in his fifth year as a coach at the New York Red Bulls Academy, a youth training program. (He is not to be confused with former Red Bulls defender Mike Jones.) The soccer team released a statement describing him as “a tremendous individual, a fantastic coach who loved soccer and a terrific friend for many of us.”

Scott Lynch The Art in Odd Places festival is on.

Good morning, East Village.

In case you missed our weekend posts, a homeless man was arrested after a woman said she was raped while sleeping in Tompkins Square Park Friday night. Plus, two more disturbing incidents: on Saturday, a NoLIta man was shot and killed outside of a Lower East Side barber shop, and on Sunday morning, a New Jersey man was slashed to death near Union Square. We’ll have more on that later this morning.

The Times notes that friends and relatives of Lower East Side documentarian Bradley Will are still pressing for information about his 2006 killing in Oaxaca, Mexico.

Former East Village couple Amber Tamblyn and David Cross got married, per US Weekly. An attendee said that Yo La Tengo played Superchunk, Mission of Burma, and Pixies covers at the ceremony. Read more…

A man was fatally shot on the Lower East Side last night and another was stabbed to death near Union Square early this morning.

Shortly before 4:24 a.m. today, a man was assaulted in front of 25 West 14th Street, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues, the police said. The victim, 25, was stabbed in the torso and neck. He was pronounced dead on arrival at Bellevue Hospital.

No arrests have been made, the police said. The Post has some gruesome details about the crime scene.

Investigators are also searching for suspects in the shooting of a man outside of a barber shop at 110 Forsyth Street last night. Witnesses told The Lo-Down that an argument at Jose Beauty Salon and Barber Shop spilled out onto the street.

Update | 3 p.m. The police have now identified the victim of this morning’s stabbing as 25-year-old Michael Jones of Hasbrouck Heights. The investigation is still ongoing.

Update | 7:45 p.m. The victim of last night’s shooting has been identified as Charles Fernandez, a NoLIta resident. The police said he was shot in the torso and pronounced dead on arrival at Bellevue Hospital. He was 29, not 32 as first reported by The Lo-Down. Also, the police now say that this morning’s shooting victim was a resident of West Harrison, N.Y., not Hasbrouck Heights, N.J. as they originally reported. The suspect in that homicide, thought to be between 25 and 30, appears in the video above.

Update | Oct. 8, 7:20 p.m.
Here’s the Guy Police Are Looking For After Lower East Side Shooting
New Video of Union Square Stabbing Suspect

Daniel Maurer The entrance to the park last night.

Daniel Maurer Police tape in the park.

A man was arrested last night after a woman said she was raped in Tompkins Square Park.

The police said that around 10 p.m., a woman who had been sleeping in the park said she was awoken to a man raping her. She ran to a nearby store for help. The police searched the area and arrested an individual who fit her description, and are currently trying to determine whether the woman’s allegations are truthful.

Last night, shortly after midnight, an area inside of the park, near Avenue B and East Eighth Street, was cordoned off by police tape.

Update | 8:50 p.m. The Daily News reports that the suspect is a 27-year-old homeless man, Ruben Canales.

Photos: Daniel Maurer

East 12th Street was closed this morning so that a crane could hoist contractors who performed work on the building’s northeast corner. Until now, workers have been disassembling bricks, one by one, from the middle of the building’s eastern wall. Today, they drilled a series of holes down the building’s northeast corner and hammered in metal spikes; a bungie-esque cord is currently wrapped around the corner of the building that’s closest to 12th Street and Avenue A. A worker on the ground said they were checking to see whether the building’s wall was still bulging.

Watch The Local’s slideshow to see this morning’s activity and the current state of the wall. We’ll have more on the relocation of Girls Prep and East Side next week.

Also: Flyers being handed out near the church parking lot, which was the site of the Mary Help of Christians flea market but is now being used by construction vehicles, indicate that the flea market will be at Immaculate Conception Church every Saturday, starting next week.

Suzanne Rozdeba

As State Senator Daniel Squadron called for tougher gun laws at a press conference at Campos Plaza today, new information emerged about a shooting outside of The Central Bar on Sunday. Some believe the incident was tied to ongoing beef between certain residents of Campos Plaza in the East Village and their rivals in the Baruch Houses, on the Lower East Side.

Norris Barrino, 55, told The Local that his son, 26-year-old LeRon, was the organizer of an open-mic event at the sports pub where a fight broke out at around 10:40 p.m. Everything was fine, said Mr. Barrino, until “some gang members weeded in.”

Mr. Barrino was at Central Bar early in the night and heard an account of later events from his son, who did not respond to The Local’s request for comment earlier this week. According to Mr. Barrino, the trouble started with a rap about the killing of Donovan “Keith” Salgado, almost a year ago. “There was a comment made about a woman whose son was killed here,” said Mr. Barrino this morning at Campos Plaza. “One of the guys knew that some of the guys who were involved with that were there. He got up and rapped about him. He said, ‘The guys who killed Keith are here.’ That’s what started the whole thing.” Read more…